Falling

by Debbie Moon

  ‘Me?’ Farah pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to hold in her astonishment. ‘Owning shares?’

  No, my love. Not in my world. The way I remember it, it was Ahmed Saxton who did the dirty on the Stock Exchange. The training officers were livid. Threw him out, but what did he care? The deal was legit when he made it, hours short of the Act becoming law. They couldn’t touch the money.

  Jude grinned and winked, and found that her delight was genuine.

  ‘Shares,’ Farah sighed, as if Jude had advised her to invest in carthorses or tea clippers. Then that infectious smile cracked her face and she threw both arms around Jude. ‘I’ll miss you.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere. I mean, fifteen-year-old Jude will be back in charge of this body the moment I ReTrace. That’s assuming you don’t break all my ribs in the meantime…’

  Farah sprang back so quickly she almost fell over. ‘Sorry. Didn’t – Sorry.’

  The sun glittered on the metal heart she wore on a chain around her neck, on the multiple, mostly useless zips scarring her skirt. She seemed to glow from within.

  Losing focus. Jude was being pulled back.

  ‘Farah –’

  At her feet, the gravel patterns squirmed as if jolted into sentience. Their helixes entwining in an erotic parody of conception, worming into some strange new lifeform. The smeared continents of a hundred thousand infinitely repeating worlds receded from her across the rooftop, alternate worlds she could no longer tell apart.

  Emma’s eyes met hers as the light flared to swallow her.

  ‘Unless we can find a world where we weren’t born us.’

  Gone.

  SIX

  A Party…

  ‘– and then I said –’

  An elbow jogged her arm; a mumbled pardon, a glimpse of a face punctuated by diamond studs and framed by blond curls, and the woman was gone. Jude blinked down at the champagne in her hand, her strappy high heels, the out of focus carpet below them.

  ‘And then she said,’ Fitch finished helpfully, ‘you may well be a bishop, but I know a parson’s nose when I see one!’

  Laughter, fuelled more by alcohol than amusement.

  Oh, this is wonderful. Major crisis in progress, life in danger, limited amount of time to save myself, etc. And what do I do? I go on a guided tour of my social life to date. Childhood, tick that off. Adolescence, yup. Big party with champagne and general decadence? Got that too.

  Stepping back from the circle of sniggering faces, she tried to turn on her heel. The room tipped alarmingly to one side, righted itself. She wondered if they were on a boat.

  ‘Jude?’

  Fitch’s hand, delicate and sheathed in lace, fell on her arm. Gloves, how kitsch. How Fitch. Hey, that was pretty funny –

  Stop that. Sober up. And stop swaying. People will think you’re the dance act.

  ‘I’m fine.’ One step. Another. Still upright. ‘Just need some air.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get any going that way. Come on.’

  Leaving Fitch in charge of the steering, she concentrated on the walking. It made things simpler.

  Where am I? Whose party is this? Why did I drink this much of their champagne? And why am I wearing these ludicrous shoes?

  Images reared from the corner of her vision to startle her. A flower vase, a splatter of red and gold against green walls. A table of shimmering glassware. A familiar face, mouthing words too fast to take in. Light and shadow, groping hands, private huddled conversations in the dark.

  She pasted on a smile and tightened her grip on Fitch’s hand.

  ‘I know,’ Fitch said, as the green gave way to glass and, abruptly, to the narrow metal curve of a balcony.

  ‘You do?’ Jude reached for the railings. Cold, wet to the touch. Air’s damp too. Been raining recently. Somewhere below, green and brown blurred together, punctuated by the bright mobile sparks of dresses and suits and coats. Outdoors. Nice. Damp.

  Closing her eyes, she compared the image against a million billion fragments of her past, cross-referencing in ways her conscious mind couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  Nothing.

  ‘I meant,’ Fitch continued patiently, ‘that I know what’s happening. I saw it in your eyes. Like you’d just woken up and didn’t know where you were. You’ve done that going back in time thing, haven’t you?’

  ‘Shhh. If anyone hears you, all hell’s going to break loose.’

  Fitch blew air through her teeth. ‘It already has. Did you see the cabaret?’

  ‘I’m serious. No one is supposed to know when a ReTracer is –’

  ‘I know that, my love. That’s why I bought you out here.’

  ‘Oh. Good point.’

  ‘I never thought about that before. How scary it must be. To suddenly be somewhere else and not know where, maybe, or why.’

  She opened her eyes.

  The balcony looked down on some kind of concourse. Circular and about twenty metres below. A shadowy intermediate level separated them, flickering with occasional neon. Too quiet for bars. Shops, maybe, after hours?

  But this wasn’t any mall she’d ever set foot in. Too well kept, for a start. And then there was the fact that the concourse was mostly turf. Shrubs, flowers, and turf. People passing through, but in no hurry. Holding hands, yelling greetings. Happy people, smiley people. And none of them seemed to be carrying weapons, which was the weirdest thing of all.

  She looked up. Domed roof, high enough to make her dizzy. The sky outside was that amazing blue that only appears at the moment the sun touches the horizon. As a child, she’d thought something that vivid had to be somehow solid and had climbed onto the window ledge hoping to gather handfuls of it. It was amazing, all things considered, that she’d lived this long.

  When she lowered her gaze, Fitch was looking at her with the worried curiosity of someone who suspects an elderly relative is already halfway down the road to senility.

  ‘Since you’ve guessed my little secret,’ she conceded, ‘I suppose you may as well tell me where we are.’

  ‘Willington Green,’ Fitch beamed. ‘Warner’s throwing a party.’

  Warner? This wasn’t his house. She’d been to his house; big lawn, hydrangeas. Inhabited by a grinning wife with a wine glass glued to her hand and a teenage son who seemed more than averagely sulky.

  ‘A party? In a mall?’

  ‘What… ? No. Willington Green is a Hurst.’

  ‘Oh God. Tell me I haven’t signed anything.’

  The ‘senile relative’ look returned to Fitch’s face, just for a moment. Then her face creased with laughter. ‘You? Sign up to live in a Hurst? You have to be kidding.’

  ‘That’s what I sincerely hope.’

  Still grinning from ear to ear, Fitch shook her head. ‘It’s a party, Jude. Couple of suits are trying the hard sell, but no one’s sober enough to give a damn. And you don’t think I’d let you sign anything in this condition, do you?’

  Crisis over, Jude leaned on the safety rail and took a couple of deep breaths.

  Below, a few isolated figures were wandering, consulting maps or leaflets as if searching for something of interest. Whatever it was, she didn’t think they’d find it here. The only things here were darkened branches of The Health Factory, and identical rectangles of door and window and fire exit patterning grey walls.

  Then she realised the joyous squeaking of the couples below was aimed at those same identikit rectangles, and their flouncy curtains and triple security locks, and realised the salesmen were having more success than Fitch realised.

  ‘Actually,’ Fitch said, ‘these ReTracer types are all right. Know how to throw a party. I’m surprised you haven’t introduced me to them before.’

  She forced a smile. ‘Wanted to keep you all for myself.’

  ‘Right. Like I’m going to run off with Schrodinger, or whatever his name is.’

  A cold knot of anger contracted in her gut. ‘Schrader?’

  ‘That’s the one. Big
blond guy, thinks he’s evolution’s gift to women. Been sidling up to me all evening, muttering about wanting to talk.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’ She glanced back at the dying blue of the sky. ‘Don’t trust him an inch further than you can throw him.’

  ‘Did I look like I was going to?’

  ‘No,’ Jude conceded. Taking a moment to examine exactly how she did look, in that black and gold cocktail dress and those gloves. She looked beautiful. And dangerous. As always.

  In fact, she looked like an ally.

  ‘How would you feel about helping me out?’

  Fitch grinned. ‘What, in public?’

  ‘Keep that thought for later. Right now – how would you feel about bringing Schrader out here and having that little chat?’

  Fitch scowled like a child threatened with the loss of a favourite toy. ’And if he is just after some horizontal action?’

  ‘Then you’re quite capable of throwing him off the balcony. But something tells me that’s not what’s on his mind.’

  ‘He’s involved with this, isn’t he? Whatever you’re trying to sort out.’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. But maybe.’

  Fitch drew herself up to her full height. For a moment, Jude was almost tempted to pity Schrader.

  ‘Okay. Let’s go get Mr Blond. You’re going to be listening in, right?’

  ‘Eventually.’ Jude let go of the balcony and was delighted to find that the world remained still and upright, if slightly fuzzy round the edges. ‘First, I have to go find a witness.’

  The function room had stopped spinning – very considerate of someone – and the buzz of conversation had dropped to a bearable level. Lots of familiar faces, suddenly pasted onto glamorous frocks and risqué cut-away suits that reminded her of male strip troupes.

  Marty the security guard had actually regened for the occasion – ten per cent swarthier and twenty per cent less muscle, by the looks of it. They’d better hope they didn’t have a major security crisis before he changed back. Or maybe he was planning a change of career. The way he was handling that voluptuous sixty-something from Accounts, gigolo looked like a good bet.

  God, she hated work parties. Come Monday, she was going to have to look all these people in the eye again, and forget that he’d been found in the toilets with the post-boy, or she’d ended up face first in the punch bowl.

  Taking another deep breath, Jude stepped round a seven-foot-tall woman from Genetic Analysis and scanned the room for her target.

  ‘The name’s Warner,’ she imagined him murmuring to some doe-eyed trainee, somewhere among the crush. ‘Calvin Warner, Head of Agent Assignment. Actually a good deal more exciting than it sounds.’

  Okay, he probably wasn’t busy smarming one of the trainees into bed. Though, judging from the neat pairs of grey suits and bright cocktail dresses to be found in every corner of the function room, he was the only one who wasn’t.

  He wasn’t at the bar either, which did surprise her. That only left the men’s room, and she didn’t fancy searching that.

  Come on. Fitch said she’d give you ten minutes before approaching Schrader – and if he pounces on her before she’s ready, she may not be able to delay him.

  Schrader had better be involved in all this. If he wasn’t, if the line of enquiry she was following was a product of her imagination, then she was obviously headed for a nice relaxing stay at the nearest asylum.

  Plunging through the loose crowd of twittering couples hovering in the doorway, she stepped out into the artificial twilight of a Hurst night.

  It took her a second to focus – or rather, to believe what she was seeing. To register the neat low doorways and leaded-glass windows, the pastel walls and immaculate window boxes, as something other than an alcohol-induced retreat into childhood. To realise that people actually lived in these toy-box houses, lived and squabbled and got up in the morning to face their neighbours without embarrassment.

  Forget Hursts. They should have called them nurseries. A tent fortress for your castle, a womb without a view. Why wait until you’re dead to get a box all your own?

  Then she heard the whisper of a familiar voice, and realised that she wasn’t the only one taking the scenic tour.

  The corridor – road, she realised belatedly – was wide, but the strange springy surface didn’t seem to be marked up for vehicles. Anyway, in this enclosed and echoing rat-trap, she’d hear even the quietest traffic long before it hit her.

  Resisting the impulse to tiptoe, she set off in search of the voice.

  The windowsills displayed assorted tokens of ownership, as if the occupants were afraid their anonymous box might be re-colonised in their absence. Children’s toys, wooden animal figures carved for a few pence an hour in downtown warehouses renamed Mali or Senegal to give some validity to a ‘Made In Africa’ sticker. China figures too old and cheap to be anything but family heirlooms; not worth selling, but somehow imbued with too much dark magic, too many ancestors’ potential curses, to be thrown away.

  She came out at an intersection, where a hexagonal skylight cut upward through layers of identical corridors. Blurs of movement paced the glass, three floors up, or five, or ten. The insomniac inhabitants of the Hurst, taking their dry, mudless, temperature-regulated constitutional? Or visitors, planning out their future? ‘Wouldn’t this one be just ideal, John?’ ‘Why, yes, Jane, but so would all the others…’

  The next stretch of road was bounded by wide expanses of safety glass. Low-level lighting within gave her a glimpse of the interiors: desks and roundabouts, computer terminals and ABC charts. Shaking her still alcohol-fuddled head to clear it, she managed to separate the two worlds, reality and reflection, to opposite sides of the road.

  Right hand side, offices; left hand side, crèche. Watch mummy and daddy at work only a road-width away and ponder that one day, you’ll cross the road to your very own desk and chair and peptic ulcer. That’s education for you.

  Another intersection, heavy with an unnatural silence. Maybe they pump sleeping gas through your air conditioning. Just to make sure you don’t have any nightmares about freedom and chaos and wake the neighbours, of course.

  Somewhere along the right-hand corridor, she heard Warner’s voice say, ’I can’t be held responsible for the free choices of my employees, you know.’

  Jude grinned. Hold you responsible for anything, Mr Warner? How dare they be so inconsiderate?

  ‘They should,’ a precise, embittered voice murmured, ‘have been trained better.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. Training has never been my responsibility.’

  ‘That’s as may be. The fact is, we are terminally short of travellers, and even one who won’t fall into line is one too many.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Warner muttered, ‘you should try giving her all the facts, instead of expecting her to sign up for a handful of hints and whispers.’

  ‘The moment you give us some reason to believe that she will sign up, she can be trusted with the facts. Until then –’

  Warner cleared his throat; halfway along the corridor, Jude froze, suddenly convinced that he’d heard her approaching. ‘I need to get back. If I’m not at the commemoration ceremony –’

  ‘Then the world will end, yes. You have an exaggerated idea of your own importance, Warner. GenoBond would be able to go on functioning without you.’ His voice tightened slightly, adding weight to a threat. ‘After all, one of these days, we’ll have to.’

  Her heel clicked against a metal plate, a drain cover or something, and suddenly the tall man was drawing back into the shadows and Warner turned to meet her, as sweaty and over-enthusiastic as a husband who’s just hustled his mistress through the back door. ‘Jude? Taking a look around, eh? You see, I told you you’d like Hurst living if you’d just give it a try.’

  There were a lot of things she could have said to that, but by now Fitch would be well past fluttering her eyelashes at Schrader and onto the real business, and they’d probably missed the good stuff alrea
dy.

  ‘Mr Warner,’ she panted, making it look as if she’d crossed the whole Hurst in a hurry and this was vital and urgent. ‘Can you spare a moment?’

  His eyes darted to the thin man standing in the shadows, searching for an excuse to say no. The stranger flashed his teeth in what might have been a smile, and said nothing.

  ‘Oh come on,’ she protested. ‘Don’t embarrass me here. These people went to all the trouble of setting up a surprise presentation for you and nothing I can say will get you to it?’

  ‘Surprise?’

  Taking advantage of his confusion, Jude grabbed Warner’s arm and tugged him forward, away from the shadows and the silent, resentful stranger. ‘Come on. If we’re late, I’ll only get the blame.’

  ‘I’ll, er –’ Warner twisted in her grasp, firing apologies back at the thin man. ‘We’ll talk about this later.’

  ‘Mmmmm,’ his companion half-agreed, as the intersection corner separated them, and Jude was left trying to decide whether she was going to eavesdrop on the wrong conversation.

  Warner tugged free of her grasp, made an ineffectual attempt to smooth the creases from his jacket. ‘All right, Jude. What is this really about?’

  ‘We’re going to eavesdrop.’

  ‘I see. On whom, and doing what?’

  ‘You have a dirty mind, boss.’

  The doorway to the party room was empty now; a sea of grey and colour gathering at the far end, where a short, shrill woman in a dress of silver scales was tapping on her glass, and squeaking, ‘Quiet, please!’ like a lost schoolmistress. More familiar faces; Miyahara, even, jostling for position, squeezing the miniature video-camera in his fist like a weapon as he battled for the best footage.

  What could be going on at a departmental party that a freelance reporter would consider worth recording?

  Warner’s face creased in annoyance. ‘I should be here for this. People take note, you know. My next promotion could depend –’

  ‘Don’t worry, boss. If you don’t get the directorship, I’ll ReTrace back and knock off your rival for you.’

  All that emerged from Warner’s throat was a strangled sob.

  ‘That was a joke, by the way.’