The Tourist

by Robert Dickinson

  “Perhaps it was reinstated,” Edda says. “The military had requisitioned the commercial ones. They had to divert us somewhere.”

  “We lost a fixed point?” Li is excited. “Can that happen?”

  “It’s possible,” Erquist says mildly. “Losing a fixed point was not uncommon in the early years. There were miscalculations. It’s safer now, but there’s always a possibility of error. Mind you, fixed was always safer than unbound travel. That was dangerous. Small teams, and most of the transport was taken up with the equipment they’d need to return. The Richardson expedition.” He sounds wistful. “I heard an entertainment about it as a boy. It obsessed me. I tried to learn everything I could. Of course, the technical side was beyond me, but the adventure of it—going somewhere and having to construct your own means of getting back—all that was very appealing. Of course, I didn’t really understand the dangers. To be sent back only ten years before the NEE when the political situation was so poorly documented—that was a risk. But it had to be somewhere with energy supplies and no strong central authority. So they were sent to a potentially dangerous era with no certainty they’d be able to return. The calculations were crude by modern standards…” He chatters on, his voice gentle and even. “Everybody involved wrote about their part in it. Except of course Richardson herself.” Richardson stayed behind. If she left an archive it’s never been found, which is why she turns up in crank theories where she either causes the NEE or witnesses the real cause and has to be silenced. “I read everything I could about them as a boy. Travel looked like the most exciting thing in the world…”

  We’ve been walking for about fifteen minutes. I’m starting to feel tired, the post-translation fatigue all travellers are warned about. My leg doesn’t hurt, possibly because of the gentle pace and relief at still being alive. Erquist, who was asleep for part of the translation, is the only one unaffected. He talks about his old enthusiasm for the Richardson expedition (“Look where that led me”) until we turn another corner and there’s a gate ahead of us. It’s open, and leads somewhere just as dimly lit. And silent: no announcements or recorded greetings, no music or any other sound. And no one waiting for us, friendly or otherwise. We step out into a hall only slightly smaller than a resort interzone. It’s dark: only a quarter of the lights are working. There are no signs anywhere, no active screens—no inactive ones either: just bare walls in the same dark, metallic grey. The place looks abandoned. The theory that we’re in an old, hastily recommissioned zone looks plausible. “They must have been able to activate it remotely,” Erquist says. “Still, I’d have expected somebody to be waiting.”

  I remember I’m carrying a sophisticated communications device and take out my handheld. When I try scanning for signatures the only ones I can find are ours. There is nobody—nobody with a signature, anyway—within a half-kilometre, although with all the shielding I could easily miss somebody. Erquist checks his own device, with the same result. Li takes out her mobile from the 21st. “If this finds anything, we’re in trouble.” It doesn’t.

  Edda points at the far wall. “There’s a door.” I can’t see anything but I trust her. It’s only as we cross the hall, past the empty booths that appear to be geometrically arranged, that the cold starts to sink in. The floor is covered with a fine grit that crunches underfoot. The door, two sheets of lighter-coloured metal, has no lighting around it, no sign indicating what might be on the other side. Edda pushes against it and it folds back with a squeak.

  On the other side it’s darker still. The hall behind us is the only source of light, and that seems to be getting dimmer. Ahead of us is what might be a broad avenue in a medium-sized town. There are structures on each side but no sign of light or activity. Overhead is pitch-black. “Definitely an abandoned neighbourhood,” Erquist says. He turns to the Safeties, who hang back as if they were hoping not to be noticed. “Do either of you have night vision?” They both raise their hands. “We’re going to walk along this pathway,” Erquist tells him. Pathway seems an odd word. The route seems wide enough for three lanes of traffic. “Could you please lead the way?” he says to the younger one, his Happiness training reasserting itself. “You,” he says to the other one. “It would be helpful if you could keep up the rear. We’re can’t be very far from an inhabited area. The rest of you, keep together.”

  We start walking, following the luminescent piping of the younger Safety’s uniform. Now that we’ve started building on the surface again most of our cities have uninhabited districts. The authorities either let them slowly collapse or be taken over by former Happiness in the hope they’ll generate culture. This one seems to have been left to collapse. “Research facilities,” Erquist says. “Probably military. It makes sense. They wouldn’t have put a zone near a population centre in those days.”

  There’s still nothing visible ahead of us. No lights, no movement. After the incessant noise of the 21st this place is eerily quiet. It isn’t just the absence of traffic and alarms or sirens or people or the continual noise of machines—heating units, air-conditioning units, electrical substations, the ubiquitous grind of their music, all the hums and clicks of hundreds of devices. There’s no weather down here: no rain drumming against the ground, no wind, no trees for the wind to move through. We seem to be in a completely dead place. “And I thought City Three North had nothing going on,” Li says.

  “I always wanted to see Africa,” Edda says.

  “When?”

  “20th, 21st.” She’s being typical Happiness, trying to distract us. “Any time you could still see the megafauna.”

  It works. We reminisce about what made us travel: to see the society that existed before the NEE for Li; I mention Brink and Nakamura; the older Safety remembers Artegal: “I used to listen to it every night.…” It’s hard to tell how far we’ve come. You walk more slowly in the pitch dark; you don’t have any points of reference. The lead Safety tells us some of the structures now start to resemble barracks or blocks of flats.

  Finally Erquist says, “Let’s see what’s in this one.” He doesn’t say why he’s chosen this building rather than another. The door is metal, and, beneath the usual layer of grit, glass. The older of the Safeties cuts out the lock and we’re inside, the other Safety leading the way. There’s a hallway with a concrete staircase, and doors at each side which lead to smaller hallways with more doors. It reminds me of Cantor’s block of flats back in the 21st: the same floor plan, almost the same scale. The Safety opens one of the internal doors. It leads to what is recognisably an apartment. Surprisingly, there is still furniture: a table and sofa in one room, a bed in another, a narrower room lined with cupboards that was once a kitchen. Li fumbles at the walls. If there are switches or scanners they don’t respond. She finds bedding in a wardrobe, but no clothes. The grit that is everywhere outside hasn’t found a way in. The air is stale, but breathable. Something from the surface is still reaching here. There must be concealed vents. The other doors lead to similar rooms.

  We gather in the hallway. Erquist hands out energy bars. We chew slowly, sipping carefully from bottles of water, blankets wrapped around our shoulders. “The question is,” Erquist says, “do we keep going in the hope of finding help, or do we stay here, closer to the zone?”

  “Keep going.” Li’s answer is immediate.

  “We’ll stay,” the older Safety says. “We’ll stay here.”

  “Here?” Edda says. “Really?”

  The Safeties exchange a glance. “It’s what we’ve decided.”

  Erquist doesn’t try to talk them out of this. He goes straight to negotiation: they can have a third of the food and water; we will take a sidearm and a night-vision set. After five minutes the Safeties’ resistance is worn down and the equipment is surrendered and we’re ready to leave on what look like friendly terms.

  Edda takes the NV. “I’ve used this before.” One day I’ll have to ask about her training. “Everybody ready?” Erquist takes her left hand. I take her right. Li takes my ri
ght. “Like children,” Li says, “lost in the forest.” She laughs, remembering something. “Follow the yellow brick road.” Early 20th-century culture. A children’s entertainment. We resume walking, a steady pace, but slow. Edda squeezes my hand.

  “What can you see?” I ask.

  “A straight path surrounded by boxes.” Her visor emits a faint glow, like the after-image of light. “I can’t see anything alive. I thought there’d be weeds, moss.”

  “There’s no sunlight,” I say.

  “I expected rats.”

  “Tunnel Boy,” she says. “Do you think Hayek knows where we are?”

  “There’ll be enough information,” Erquist says. “Hayek will do everything he can.” The present tense is jarring: the 21st is long over by now. The resort will have gone, the valuable parts taken home, the rest left to fall into ruins. Erquist talks as if it still exists. It’s the logic of travel: the past is just another country, and, if you can afford the translation, you can always go back. Nothing is lost, nobody really dies. You die, of course: but, if they have the right resources, other people can always come back and see you. You remain alive for them. “He won’t give up easily,” Erquist says.

  “So maybe we should have gone back to the zone,” Li says.

  “No. There’s no energy left there. Our translation must have used whatever reserves they had. It might even have been the source. Those lights at the zone were fading when we left. They’ll be dead by now. Plus if we’re traced they won’t be able to send a transport to the zone with one already there, but they’ll send it as close as they can. And a translation outside a properly shielded zone can be, well, disruptive. We’ll want to be at least two kilometres away when it arrives. Especially in an enclosed space.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the Safeties that?”

  “They’ll be aware of the risks.” Erquist is all mild reason. “Besides, couldn’t you see how uncomfortable they were around us? All Safeties of that generation get like that eventually. They can only stand each other’s company.”

  “So that’s our plan?” Li tries for the same nonchalance. “We just keep walking?”

  “Until we find other people. Or at the very least light and food. Then we wait to be found.” He makes it sound easy.

  “We shouldn’t have to wait,” Li says. “If they were going to send help they’d have sent it already. Forget rescue, they could have arranged a welcome party.”

  “Days,” Erquist says. “We shouldn’t have to wait more than a few days.”

  For what seems a long time the only sounds are our footsteps, our breathing and the rustle of our clothes. Li’s device can produce a tiny beam of light, but it’s not strong enough to illuminate anything at further than arm’s length. Occasionally we stop to look at one of the structures we pass. There are windows in some of them, as if this stretch was once well lit and busy and people would have looked out to see what was happening. Without landmarks we might as well be walking on a treadmill. I try closing my eyes, thinking that when I open them again there might be a slight difference. There isn’t. Occasionally I think I’m starting to adjust and can make out the shapes of the structures around us. It’s an illusion. The shapes change when I look again.

  “We may have to find something soon,” Li says. “I think it’s getting colder.”

  She’s right. The temperature has dropped still further, as if night has fallen somewhere overhead. We walk more briskly. “We’ll find a suitable building,” Erquist says. I can see the glow of his handheld. “Still nothing. Spens, can you read any signatures?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Perhaps they don’t have them here,” Li says. “Spens,” she says, “does this remind you of the Tunnels?”

  “No.” The painkiller is just beginning to wear off. “They were noisier.”

  This place is beginning to spook me. I find myself wondering if there aren’t people all around us, silent and adjusted to the dark, listening to us pass.

  Li breaks the silence. “I could have crossed City Three North by now,” Li says. “Even at this speed. Is anything changing?”

  “The roof is getting lower.” Edda sounds bored. “None of the buildings are more than four storeys.”

  “Do any of them look as though they reach the surface?” Erquist says. “There must have been a point of entry.”

  Edda stops walking. “This one goes all the way to the top.”

  “Do we really want to go to the surface?” Li says. “We don’t know what’s up there.”

  “If there’s a chance of a signal, yes,” Erquist says.

  “We don’t know if it will lead to the surface,” Li says. “It might just lead to another level.”

  “We’re not so deep,” Erquist says. “There’s air down here. We can still breathe.”

  “Small mercies.” Li sounds amused. “Well, it has to be better than this. Or different, at least.”

  We start walking where Edda leads us. When I stub my foot against a step it registers as an ache in my shin. “Here we are.” Li’s mobile casts its feeble light: there’s a flight of steps, perhaps a dozen, leading up to a vast double door with glass panels. Edda finds the locks—three of them—and starts cutting.

  While we wait, Erquist talks. There are cities, he says, that are essentially one building extended in all available directions and there are cities made up of prefabricated units thrown up in caverns and mineshafts. This is the second kind. “Definitely some kind of research establishment. That accommodation was basic. Students, military.”

  Li keeps her torch on Edda. “I can’t imagine it ever being cheerful.” She notices something by the door. “Can anybody read this?” Erquist goes to look, and then, because there is nothing else to do, I look as well. There are marks in the metal architrave, like the impression of writing left on the page underneath. It’s faint, but when the light is shown at the right angle it’s possible to make out what look like letters. It doesn’t seem to spell anything: random strokes with the occasional H or T. “It’s meaningless,” I say. “Or initials.”

  “No.” Erquist traces the letters with his index finger. “It’s Cyrillic.”

  Li shines the light around the door, looking for more signs. “So what does this mean? That we’re somewhere east? Like City Two East?”

  “Perhaps not that far,” Erquist backtracks. “It’s only one sign. And the alphabet was used from the Baltic to the Black Sea.”

  “Great,” Li shivers. The heat from Edda’s cutting tool is making us aware of the cold. “If we meet anybody we can ask if they know Picon.”

  “Who’s Picon?” Edda switches off her cutter and pushes against the door. It doesn’t move. “Spens, help me here.”

  With my shoulder against it, the door begins to move. I try to be careful about putting too much weight on my stump. Eventually it’s open just wide enough for us to slip inside. “Some sort of reception area,” Edda announces. “Staircases on each side. They’re meant to be impressive.”

  “Or they didn’t trust the power supply for lifts.” Li releases my hand. I hear her walking ahead of us. “Look!” she says. I stumble forward, not seeing anything. “Look up,” Li says. Overhead, about the size of a winter moon, is a disk of light.

  The wrong place

  It’s late afternoon when you reach the Western suburbs. You don’t recognise anything. There are nomads living in the ruins. They’ve put roofs of waterproof sheeting over the bare walls of what were once garages. You watch from the solar as Riemann tries talking to them. The nomads—thin, dark men in faded synthetic robes—are afraid of Riemann. They seem to think he’s part of an advance guard. They listen nervously, shake their heads at everything he says and flee at the first opportunity. They’ll probably move out that evening, convinced their latest refuge is about to be overrun.

  The old city would have welcomed them, you think. The old city was beautiful.

  It’s gone.

  Riemann drives towards what should be the centre, a
long what had once been the main road to the factory belt. “Recognise anything yet?”

  You don’t. Apart from a few low walls there isn’t much to recognise. The superstructure has been levelled. From above it would look like a plan of a city, as if it was all still to be built. Weeds have long since broken through the old pavements; there are places where the ground has subsided.

  Riemann becomes more sombre as you approach the centre. From time to time you point at a trace of a building: “That was a school” or “That was a district office” or “That was a theatre.” They’re lies each time: you don’t know what the buildings had been. You can’t tell if you were ever in this part of the city. You make the claims to see how he’ll react. He seems to believe you, and looks gloomier with every passing minute. He hasn’t found a trace of whoever he’s looking for. He has one of their machines for detecting signatures and looks at it frequently, frowning each time. His information is wrong, you think. His techs have miscalculated. His missing people are in a different place or the time is wrong. They come here, but not until next week, just after he stops looking. Or they came here months ago and are already dead.

  Or this is the wrong place.

  You wonder why they’re so important.

  You reach a crater where the lower levels must have collapsed. Riemann stops as close to the edge as he dares, climbs out and peers down. You follow him, keeping a safe distance. You get dizzy sometimes; you don’t want to fall. You guess the crater is nearly two kilometres across, wide enough to have contained most of the old city. Cathedral Square, the Parliament Building, the courthouse over the boys’ home, your old hidden room with its view of the street, the assembly room with the pipes where you stood with the other girls—everything is rubble and weeds. Riemann doesn’t say anything.