by John Meaney
‘Not so you’d know. He’s an interesting fellow, but we know who he is.’
‘Oh.’
‘He writes about habits, or something. And how’s that book you’re carrying, Gabby?’
It took her two full seconds to respond to her new name.
‘Sorry. Er, I’ve not really read it yet.’ She looked at the mesmerism book. ‘I think it might be interesting.’
‘Hmm. Well, come along. It’s a short walk in peacetime, but making one’s way without streetlights tends to slow one down.’
‘There’s a quarter moon.’
‘Luckily, or we’d more than likely be tripping onto our faces.’
Banbury Road was quiet, with only a few souls walking home at this time, in darkness. They passed University Parks - ‘Many a rugger match I’ve played in there,’ said Rupert - and then had to explain what he meant by that. Such inconsequential chat sustained them until they reached a big old house, no grander or spookier than its neighbours. Their feet crunched on gravel, and then Rupert was tapping on the front door.
‘Hello, Mrs Wilson. We’re here.’
It was strange for someone to open their door in darkness.
‘Come in, Master Forrester. Come on in.’
Rupert touched Gavriela’s arm, and led her inside. Once the front door was closed and a heavy drape pulled across, Mrs Wilson switched on an electric light.
‘Into the front room, my dears.’ She was white-haired but lively-looking. ‘We have chicory coffee or acorn tea, your choice.’
‘Whichever’s best for you,’ said Rupert.
He beckoned Gavriela to a well-stuffed green armchair, and sat in its counterpart.
‘You can trust Mrs Wilson,’ he added. ‘But it’s best to make a habit of keeping details to yourself.’
‘A habit you have?’ asked Gavriela.
‘I should hope so. Why?’
‘Because you have not told me anything yet.’
‘Ah.’
‘So besides the fact I’m working in Oxford, I don’t—’
‘Not really. It’s such an obvious target, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s not the best place to conduct war work, you see. You’ll stay here only until we find you someplace closer to the project. Assuming it works out tomorrow, when you meet the others.’
‘I suppose that’s—’
But that was when Mrs Wilson appeared, tray in hand.
‘A night-time cuppa, and then you, Master Forrester—’
‘She’s known me since I was young,’ said Rupert.
‘—can make your way home or sleep on the sofa, your choice, but this tired-looking young lady will be going straight to bed.’
Rupert looked at Gavriela, then at their hostess.
‘Yes, Mrs Wilson,’ he said.
Gavriela’s was an attic bedroom, under the eaves. The bedstead was of polished brass, the floral curtains were reinforced by drapes of rough fabric, and dark-green linoleum lay on the floor. On the small bedside table lay her notebook and writing implements: a fountain pen and revolving pencil in identical mother-of-pearl, a present from Mother and Father, all that she had left of them. Her few clothes hung in the wardrobe. With everything organized, she simply stood there in her cotton nightgown, taking in the domestic solidity of the room.
Then she switched off the electric light, padded on bare feet to the window, and pulled open the curtains, allowing silver moonlight in.
She climbed into bed, then shifted her pillow so she could lie diagonally across the narrow bed and see the quarter-face of the moon. On the day she met Inge, Petra and Elke in Zürich, Inge had talked about a rocket trip to that other world, and its impossibility when there was nothing to push against. She remembered explaining Newton’s laws, and still finding it impossible to convince Inge, until she got Inge to close her eyes and imagine she was standing on a frozen lake, wearing ice skates and holding a heavy case. And when she threw the case away from her, what would happen?
‘Why, I’d slide backwards and—’ Inge’s eyes had snapped open. ‘Gavriela, you’re a genius.’
Gavriela was not sure, but perhaps that evening formed a beginning: the moment she began to understand the relationship between daydreams and equations, imagination and analysis.
She let out a sigh, wondering where her Inge and Elke were now. Not Petra - she was in a cemetery in Brandenburg, courtesy of a downward spiral that no one had been able to pull her out of.
So bright, the moon.
One may utilize extended fixation of the eyesight upon an object, such as the traditional fob watch, or indeed any bright object, to induce mesmeric trance.
She drifted amid echoes of a dream, fragments of hallucination, shards of imagination.
—I am Kenna.
—And you’re the leader.
—Yes, Gavriela.
—And the others?
—You’re the first.
The moon, so enchanting, so silver, so bright.
She wrote in her notebook, pen-nib and pencil-lead lightly scraping the paper. Although the moon appeared bright against the night-sky backdrop, inside the room it provided poor illumination; but that did not matter.
Beneath her closed eyelids, as she wrote with a pen in one hand and a pencil in the other, Gavriela’s eyes flicked from side to side.
FORTY-SIX
FULGOR, 2603 AD
Banners and holosculptures, quickglass birds and persistent fireworks, smartkites and dirigibles, were proliferating over every district of Lucis City - even the exotic parts, like Parallaville, and the sleazy areas, like Quarter Moon - for today was Last Lupus, the final day of Festival, and the last chance for everyone to party.
Ingram’s Corner was a crossroads, a juxtaposition of opposing architectural styles, yet an apposite communion of appetites: from the battered building that contained several dozen fifteen-minutes-and-you’re-finished brothels and smackjoints, to Ebony Tower, a rearing quickglass monstrosity, home to some two hundred floors of restaurants and stores, and clubs that never closed, not to mention a hard-to-classify establishment called The Church of the Continual Orgasm.
Roger watched from a window on the twentieth floor, staring across the way at the squat building opposite, plotting his entrance to Drone Dollies. Part of him was yelling that this was stupid, that he should call the peacekeepers and damn the consequences; but Roger Blackstone’s name, image and voiceprint would be on the detain-immediately list, and there was no telling how long it would take before he could get someone to listen to him.
One option was to take time to create a false ident, using the new utilities in his tu-ring - or he could take direct action, and make somebody pay.
The squat building from above was an eight-storey hollow rectangle. From here he could see how to work it: ascend to roof level, go over the inner edge, get in through a quickglass wall. The building’s logs would tell him where she was; but he had no hope of cracking the security without the breach causing alarms to execute. The extraction needed to be fast, and that meant having Superintendent Sunadomari’s ident in his call buffer, ready to make contact. Roger could report Alisha’s circumstances even if building security took him down.
I still can’t believe I’m doing this.
He had a visceral hatred of heights and a civilized horror of violence; but this was going to happen. With a last look at the target building, he turned away, took one of Ebony Tower’s flowshafts down to ground level, and went outside.
Overhead, a smiling blimp with cartoon smile was waving stubby arms, chuckling and singing a children’s song. On the ground, the number of revellers was growing by the minute, some waving streamers or causing holofountains to sparkle, virtual fireworks to bring on the party mood; while in the distance, a silver dragon stood out among the floating marvels. But Roger was not here for Festival.
Head down and swallowing, he went through the ground floor entrance, not looking at the six hul
king men and women who lurked there on guard. But nervous young men were welcome, ideal customers for the trades practised inside.
The more he tried not to think of what might be happening to Alisha, the more his muscles shook.
Access to each floor was by flowramp. He went up them in sequence, trying not to pause overlong at the fifth floor, seeing the Drone Dollies holosign, then continuing up to the top floor. His hands were bare as he pressed his tu-ring against the wall, sending infiltration sprites through the system, their questing algorithms keyed on Alisha’s appearance. Leaving them running, he stepped back, looked up at the ceiling, then beamed a command. An oval opening melted, revealing green sky, and the edge of a dirigible passing overhead.
No one saw the quickthread tendril descend then haul him up to the roof. He rolled sideways on to the surface as the tendril slurped back and the opening closed up.
A small holo opened, showing Alisha’s location. He transferred a mapping to his smartlenses, and blinked. Now a glowing blue line appeared to cross the roof, leading to the edge and over, with a straight three-storey drop to a highlighted cross-hair target: an innocuous portion of wall. It seemed Drone Dollies’ customers did not care to have windows opening on to the rooms where they received their services.
They can’t have done anything to her yet.
But he knew where she was. He blinked away the visual overlay, no longer needing it, then dabbed at his eyes and threw away his smartlenses. Damn what people might think if they saw obsidian eyes. For the first time in his life, he knew who he was.
From his sleeves, quickglass slithered over his hands, forming gloves once more.
He closed his eyes, visualizing, remembering his last experience being terrified by heights, knowing he had to watch himself as a detached observer in his mind.
Roger, himself, wobbles and nearly falls, walking along a too-narrow ridge in Quiller Park. No, back up. He is calm in the moment before he sees the trail, and starts to get afraid. Then afterwards. Cursing, rubbing tears from his eyes; and finally laughing, realizing he is safe once more.
It was an ancient technique but he never had the motivation to use it. He ran the memory backwards in his mind, five times over, concentrating hard, because the amygdala reacts faster than the frontal lobes, and that was where he had to change the unconscious process that the surface of the mind calls fear, making it ridiculous.
There was no time to create a new visualization of confidence, or to check if the partial neurocognitive recoding had worked. Instead, he extruded tendrils from his left glove, hooked into the roof material, then stepped over the edge, and looked down.
And for a moment, grinned.
Alisha.
He lowered himself into the abseil.
Bands of quickglass formed spirals around his torso, reinforcing the left sleeve and spreading the load, taking strain away from his shoulder. Leaning back, he walked down the wall.
It was an open atrium, and other businesses were less shy than Drone Dollies: they had windows overlooking the quadrangle below. He had the peripheral impression of people inside rooms, but whether they saw him or not, he was too busy to care. He counted steps, estimating his descent, and then he was in place.
His tu-ring broadcast its command signal, and the quickglass wall began to soften. Roger closed his eyes for a second - shit, I am scared - and brought his knees to his chest, torque keeping his soles against the surface so he squatted against the wall.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
And he thrust himself away, swinging back, before returning feet-first for the softened area - fuck I’m insane - and then he was sliding through - holy shit - and he was inside.
What he saw and smelled was awful.
Fat pale buttocks pumping, and then the man was rolling off her - ‘Oh God, oh no, I’m sorry’ - his hairy belly wobbling, while the stench of semen was awful. Roger’s only thought was: It shouldn’t be like this.
Alisha’s eyes were rolled up, her splayed limbs limp, her clothes open.
‘I’m . . . Sorry. Sorry.’ The fat man was backing away, his limp, dripping penis not quite obscured by drooping flesh. ‘Don’t . . . Please.’
Shouts from the corridor outside, and the sound of running feet, told of security heading this way. Roger had disabled the room’s inbuilt defences; he had not thought to seal the door.
Shit. Alisha. Shit.
His left hand was still attached to the tendril, but there was slack. He pulled her up to a sitting position, clasped her hard and lifted, then backed out of the room with her, through the window, and jumped.
The wall was hardening in place above them as he and Alisha descended like a spider to the ground.
Five minutes later he was high up, on the roof of Ebony Tower, looking down at the building far below where had rescued Alisha - if it had been a rescue. She lay limp, sprawled inside the parapet, her clothes not quite wrapped around her. Now he had succeeded in what he had planned, he was clueless as to what should happen next.
I’ve always been shit at planning.
He could not look at her. Not straight on.
I didn’t think it would be this bad.
This was Lucis City, the richest city on Fulgor, and this kind of thing should not happen here. It should be impossible.
‘“Should ”,’ Mum had said once, ‘is usually code for “ain’t never gonna happen.” You should bear that in mind.’
Everything was awful.
No guards had stopped him at ground level, as he walked through a square archway from the unkempt quadrangle to the street outside. They must have all run up indoors, answering the alarms on the fifth floor. But plenty of pedestrians had stopped in their tracks, scarcely able to process the sight of him carrying a near-naked mindless woman in public. Commotion followed as he entered Ebony Tower and took a flowshaft, commanding a fast ascent through two hundred storeys, and coming out on the rooftop observation deck.
There had been maybe a dozen sightseers, but they had backed away, wide-eyed, and gone down inside the building. No doubt peacekeepers would already be on their way.
He activated his tu-ring.
‘Superintendent Sunadomari?’
So even a Luculentus could look surprised.
‘Roger Blackstone. You’re still on Fulgor?’
‘I have Alisha Spalding.’ He moved his fist, changing the transmitted point of view. ‘We need medics.’
‘They’re en route now. Remain on Ebony Tower.’
The holo winked out.
Overhead the sky was filled with celebration: dirigibles and holofloats, gleaming banners, virtual fireworks, diaphanous smartkites, and now a whole flotilla of glistening silver dragons. On the streets below, revellers thronged, determined to enjoy the final day of Festival, to glory in Last Lupus.
While Roger could only watch, his thoughts hollowed out, in a world filled with absence.
FORTY-SEVEN
EARTH, 1940 AD
The birds in the oak trees knew nothing of totalitarian regimes or the cares of humans; they sang because it was spring, and to ward rivals off their territory, for they had nestlings to care about. To Gavriela, coming awake on her first morning in Oxford, it was the truest of hymns, celebrating life.
And then she saw her open notebook on the floor, the fountain-pen next to it, and the matching pencil beneath the bedside table where it had rolled.
‘What’s this?’
The pencil script and ink passages were on opposing pages, and their styles differed.
Consciousness, she read on the right page, is thought observing thought. Freud identifies the majority of thought with unconscious processes.
Gödel’s theorem applies only to logic systems that allow statements about statements. Logics may be self-descriptive like conscious thought, or not, like unconscious mentation.
Night-time jottings could be hints of profound ideas that might be recaptured; or they could be dust from the imagination, blown away by the morning.
Schrödinger’s wave equation is deterministic. The behaviour of the probability wave, moving through time, is exactly calculable from the initial conditions. Perhaps a deterministic, predictive psychodynamics of history is possible, provided it restricts itself to the unconscious behaviour of the world’s peoples.
And, further down:
The behaviour of the mob?
While the writing on the lefthand page was shakier.