China Mieville

by The City

  “Jesus,” I said, but we were moving.

  With a key and a quick expert twist Ashil opened a random parked car, selected by unclear criteria. “Get in.” He glanced back. “Cessation’s best done out of sight; they’ll move them. This is an emergency. Both cities are Breach now.”

  “Jesus …”

  “Only where it can’t be avoided. Only to secure the cities and the Breach.”

  “What about the refugees?”

  “There are other possibilities.” He started the engine.

  There were few cars on the streets. The trouble always seemed to be around corners from us. Small groups of Breach were moving. Several times someone, Breach, appeared in the chaos and seemed about to stop us; but each time Ashil stared or slapped his sigil or drummed in some secret fingercode, and his status as avatar was noted and we were away.

  I had begged for more Breach to come with us. “They won’t,” he had said. “They won’t believe. I should be with them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone’s dealing with this. I don’t have time to win the argument.”

  He said this, and it had been abruptly clear how few Breach there were. How thin a line. The crude democracy of their methodology, their decentralised self-ordering, meant that Ashil could do this mission the importance of which I had convinced him, but the crisis meant we were alone.

  Ashil took us across lanes of highway, through straining borders, avoiding little anarchies. Militsya and policzai were on corners. Sometimes Breach would emerge from the night with that uncanny motion they perfected and order the local police to do something—to take some unif or body away, to guard something—then disappear again. Twice I saw them escorting terrified north African men and women from somewhere to somewhere, refugees made the levers of this breakdown.

  “It isn’t possible, this, we’ve …” Ashil interrupted himself, touched his earpiece as reports came in.

  There would be camps full of unificationists after this. We were in a moment of outright foregone conclusion, but the unifs still fought to mobilise populations deeply averse to their mission. Perhaps the memory of this joint action would buoy up whichever of them remained after that night. It must be an intoxication to step through the borders and greet their foreign comrades across what they made suddenly one street, to make their own country even if just for seconds at night in front of a scrawled slogan and a broken window. They must know by now that the populaces were not coming with them, but they did not disappear back to their respective cities. How could they go back now? Honour, despair, or bravery kept them coming.

  “It isn’t possible,” Ashil said. “There is no way the head of Sear and Core, some outsider, could have constructed this … We’ve …” He listened, set his face. “We’ve lost avatars.” What a war, this now bloody war between those dedicated to bringing the cities together and the force charged with keeping them apart.

  UNITY had been half written across the face of the Ungir Hall which was also the Sul Kibai Palace, so now in dripping paint the building said something nonsense. What passed as Besźel’s business districts were nowhere near the Ul Qoman equivalent. The headquarters of Sear and Core were on the banks of the Colinin, one of the few successes in the attempts to revivify Besźel’s dying dockside. We passed the dark water.

  We both looked up at percussion in the otherwise empty locked-down sky. A helicopter the only thing in the air, backlit by its own powerful lights as it left us below.

  “It’s them,” I said. “We’re too late.” But the copter was coming in from the west, towards the riverbank. It was not an exit; it was a pickup. “Come on.”

  Even in such a distracting night Ashil’s driving prowess cowed me. He veered across the dark bridge, took a one-way total street in Besźel the wrong way, startling pedestrians trying to get out of the night, through a crosshatch plaza then a total Ul Qoma street. I was leaning to watch the helicopter descend into the roofscape by the river, half a mile ahead of us.

  “It’s down,” I said. “Move.”

  There was the reconfigured warehouse, the inflatable gasrooms of Ul Qoman buildings to either side of it. No one was in the square, but there were lights on throughout the Sear and Core building, despite the hour, and there were guards in the entrance. They came towards us aggressively when we entered. Marbled and fluorescently lit, the S&C logo in stainless steel and placed as if it were art on the walls, magazines and corporate reports made to look like magazines on tables by sofas.

  “Get the fuck out,” a man said. Besź ex-military. He put his hand to his holster and led his men towards us. He came up short a moment later: he saw how Ashil moved.

  “Stand down,” Ashil said, glowering to intimidate. “The whole of Besźel’s in Breach tonight.” He did not have to show his sigil. The men fell back. “Unlock the lift now, give me the keys to reach the helipad, and stand down. No one else comes in.”

  If the security had been foreign, had come from Sear and Core’s home country, or been drafted in from its European or North American operations, they might not have obeyed. But this was Besźel and the security was Besź, and they did as Ashil said. In the elevator, he drew out his weapon. A big pistol of unfamiliar design. Its barrel encased, muzzled in some dramatic silencer. He worked the key the security had given us, to the corporate levels, all the way up.

  THE DOOR OPENED onto gusts of hard cold air amid surrounds of vaulting roofs and antennae. The tethers of the Ul Qoman gasrooms, a few streets off the mirrored fronts of Ul Qoman businesses, the spires of temples in both cities, and there in the darkness and the wind ahead of us behind a thicket of safety rails the helipad. The dark vehicle waiting, its rotor turning very slowly, almost without noise. Gathered before it a group of men.

  We could not hear much except the bass of the engine, the siren-infested putting down of unification riots all around us. The men by the helicopter did not hear us as we approached. We stayed close to cover. Ashil led me towards the aircraft, the gang who did not yet see us. There were four of them. Two were large and shaven-headed. They looked like ultranats: True Citizens on secret commission. They stood around a suited man I did not know and someone I could not see from the way he stood, in deep and animated conversation.

  I heard nothing, but one of the men saw us. There was a commotion and they turned. From his cockpit the pilot of the helicopter swivelled the police-strength light he held. Just before it framed us the gathered men moved and I could see the last man, staring straight at me.

  It was Mikhel Buric. The Social Democrat, the opposition, the other man on the Chamber of Commerce.

  Blinded by the floodlight I felt Ashil grab me and pull me behind a thick iron ventilator pipe. There was a moment of dragged-out quiet. I waited for a shot but no one shot.

  “Buric,” I said to Ashil. “Buric. I knew there was no way Syedr could do this.”

  Buric was the contact man, the organiser. Who knew Mahalia’s predilections, who had seen her on her first visit to Besźel, when she angered everyone at the conference with her undergraduate dissidence. Buric the operator. He knew her work and what she wanted, that abhistory, the comforts of paranoia, a cosseting by the man behind the curtain. In the Chamber of Commerce as he was, he was in a position to provide it. To find an outlet for what she stole at his behest, for the invented benefit of Orciny.

  “It was all geared stuff that got stolen,” I said. “Sear and Core are investigating the artefacts. This is a science experiment.”

  It was his informers—he like all Besź politicians had them—who had told Buric that investigations had occurred into Sear and Core, that we were chasing down the truth. Perhaps he thought we had understood more than we had, would be shocked at how little of this we could have predicted. It would not take so much for a man in his position to order the government provocateurs in the poor foolish unificationists to begin their work, to forestall Breach so he and his collaborators could get away.

  “They’re armed?”
Ashil glanced out and nodded.

  “Mikhel Buric?” I shouted. “Buric? What are True Citizens doing with a liberal sellout like you? You getting good soldiers like Yorj killed? Bumping off students you think are getting too close to your bullshit?”

  “Piss off, Borlú,” he said. He did not sound angry. “We’re all patriots. They know my record.” A noise joined the noise of the night. The helicopter’s engine, speeding up.

  Ashil looked at me and stepped out into full view.

  “Mikhel Buric,” he said, in his frightening voice. He kept his gun unwavering and walked behind it, as if it led him, towards the helicopter. “You’re answerable to Breach. Come with me.” I followed him. He glanced at the man beside Buric.

  “Ian Croft, regional head of CorIntech,” Buric said to Ashil. He folded his arms. “A guest here. Address your remarks to me. And fuck yourself.” The True Citizens had their own pistols up. Buric moved towards the helicopter.

  “Stay where you are,” Ashil said. “You will step back,” he shouted at the True Citizens. “I am Breach.”

  “So what?” Buric said. “I’ve spent years running this place. I’ve kept the unifs in line, I’ve been getting business for Besźel, I’ve been taking their damned gewgaws out from under Ul Qoman noses, and what do you do? You gutless Breach? You protect Ul Qoma.”

  Ashil actually gaped a moment at that.

  “He’s playing to them,” I whispered. “To the True Citizens.”

  “Unifs have one thing right,” Buric said. “There’s only one city, and if it weren’t for the superstition and cowardice of the populace, kept in place by you goddamned Breach, we’d all know there was only one city. And that city is called Besźel. And you’re telling patriots to obey you? I warned them, I warned my comrades you might turn up, despite it being made clear you have no business here.”

  “That’s why you leaked the footage of the van,” I said. “To keep Breach out of it, send the mess to the militsya instead.”

  “Breach’s priorities are not Besźel’s,” Buric said. “Fuck the Breach.” He said it carefully. “Here we recognise only one authority, you pissing little neither-nor, and that is Besźel.”

  He indicated Croft to precede him into the helicopter. The True Citizens stared. They were not quite ready to fire on Ashil, to provoke Breach war—you could see a kind of blasphemy-drunkenness in their look at the intransigence they were already showing, disobeying Breach even this far—but they would not lower their guns either. If he shot they would shoot back, and there were two of them. High on their obedience to Buric they did not need to know anything about where their paymaster was going or why, only that he had charged them to cover his back while he did. They were fired with jingo bravery.

  “I’m not Breach,” I said.

  Buric turned to look at me. The True Citizens stared at me. I felt Ashil’s hesitation. He kept his weapon up.

  “I’m not Breach.” I breathed deep. “I am Inspector Tyador Borlú. Besźel Extreme Crimes Squad. I’m not here for Breach, Buric. I represent the Besźel policzai, to enforce Besź law. Because you broke it.

  “Smuggling’s not my department; take what you want. I’m not a political man—I don’t care if you mess with Ul Qoma. I’m here because you’re a murderer.

  “Mahalia wasn’t Ul Qoman, nor an enemy of Besźel, and if she seemed to be, it was only because she believed the crap you told her, so you could sell what she supplied you, for this foreigner’s R and D. Doing it for Besźel, my arse: you’re just a fence for foreign bucks.”

  The True Citizens looked uneasy.

  “But she realised she’d been lied to. That she wasn’t righting antique wrongs or learning any hidden truth. That you’d made her a thief. You sent Yorjavic over to get rid of her. That makes it an Ul Qoman crime, so even with the links we will find between you and him, nothing I can do. But that’s not the end of it. When you heard Yolanda was hiding, you thought Mahalia’d told her something. Couldn’t risk her talking.

  “You were smart to get Yorj to take her out from his side of the checkpoint, keep Breach off your backs. But that makes his shot, and the order you gave for it, Besź. And that makes you mine.

  “Minister Mikhel Buric, by the authority vested in me by the government and courts of the Commonwealth of Besźel, you are under arrest for Conspiracy to Murder Yolanda Rodriguez. You are coming with me.”

  SECOND AFTER SECOND of astonished silence. I stepped slowly forward, past Ashil, towards Mikhel Buric.

  It would not last. The True Citizens mostly had not much more respect for we who they believed were the weak local police than for many other of the herdlike masses of Besźel. But those were ugly charges, in Besźel’s name, that did not sound like the politics for which they were signed up, or the reasons they might have been given for those killings, if they even knew about them. The two men looked at each other uncertainly.

  Ashil moved. I breathed out. “Fuck damn,” Buric said. From his pocket he took his own small pistol and raised it and pointed it at me. I said, “Oh,” or something as I stumbled back. I heard a shot but it did not sound as I expected. Not explosive; it was a hard-breathed gust of breath, a rush. I remember thinking that and being surprised that I would notice such a thing as I died.

  Buric leapt into instant backward scarecrow motion, his limbs crazy and a rush of colour on his chest. I had not been shot; he had been shot. He threw his little weapon away as if deliberately. It was the silenced blast of Ashil’s pistol I had heard. Buric fell, his chest all blood.

  Now, there, that was the sound of shots. Two, quickly, a third. Ashil fell. The True Citizens had fired on him.

  “Stop, stop,” I screamed. “Hold your fucking fire!” I scrabbled crabwise back to him. Ashil was sprawled across the concrete, bleeding. He was growling in pain.

  “You two are under fucking arrest,” I shouted. The True Citizens stared at each other, at me, at the unmoving dead Buric. This escort job had become suddenly violent and utterly confusing. You could see them glimpse the scale of the web that snagged them. One muttered to the other and they backed away, jogged towards the lift shaft.

  “Stay where you are,” I shouted, but they ignored me as I knelt by wheezing Ashil. Croft still stood motionless by the helicopter. “Don’t you goddamn move,” I said, but the True Citizens pulled open the door to the roof and disappeared back down into Besźel.

  “I’m alright, I’m alright,” Ashil gasped. I patted him to find his injuries. Below his clothes he was wearing some kind of armour. It had stopped what would have been the killing bullet, but he had been also hit below his shoulder and was bleeding and in pain. “You,” he managed to shout to Sear and Core’s man. “Stay. You may be protected in Besźel but you’re not in Besźel if I say you’re not. You’re in Breach.”

  Croft leaned into the cockpit and said something to the pilot, who nodded and sped up the rotor.

  “Are you finished?” Croft said.

  “Get out. That vehicle’s grounded.” Even through pain-gritted teeth and having dropped his pistol, Ashil made his demand.

  “I’m neither Besź nor Ul Qoman,” Croft said. He spoke in English, though he clearly understood us. “I’m neither interested in nor scared of you. I’m leaving. ‘Breach.’” He shook his head. “Freak show. You think anyone beyond these odd little cities cares about you? They may bankroll you and do what you say, ask no questions, they may need to be scared of you, but no one else does.” He sat next to the pilot and strapped himself in. “Not that I think you could, but I strongly suggest you and your colleagues don’t try to stop this vehicle. ‘Grounded.’ What do you think would happen if you provoked my government? It’s funny enough the idea of either Besźel or Ul Qoma going to war against a real country. Let alone you, Breach.”

  He closed the door. We did not try to get up for a while, Ashil and I. He lay there, me kneeling behind him, as the helicopter grew louder and the distended-looking thing eventually bobbed up as if dangled from string, pouring a
ir down on us, ripping our clothes every way and buffeting Buric’s corpse. It tore away between the low towers of the two cities, in the airspace of Besźel and Ul Qoma, once again the only thing in the sky.

  I watched it go. An invasion of Breach. Paratroopers landing in either city, storming the secret offices in their contested buildings. To attack Breach an invader would have to breach Besźel and Ul Qoma.

  “Wounded avatar,” Ashil said into his radio. He gave our location. “Assist.”

  “Coming,” the machine said.

  He sat back against the wall. In the east the sky was beginning faintly to lighten. There were still noises of violence from below, but fewer and ebbing. There were more sirens, Besź and Ul Qoman, as the policzai and militsya reclaimed their own streets, as Breach withdrew where it could. There would be a day more of lockdown to clear last nests of unifs, to return to normalcy, to corral the lost refugees back to the camps, but we were past the worst of it. I watched the dawn-lit clouds begin. I checked Buric’s body, but he carried nothing on him.

  ASHIL SAID SOMETHING. His voice was weak, and I had to have him repeat himself.

  “I still can’t believe it,” he said. “That he could have done this.”

  “Who?”

  “Buric. Any of them.”

  I leaned against a chimney and watched him. I watched the sun coming.

  “No,” I said finally. “She was too smart. Young but…”

  “… Yes. She worked it out in the end, but you wouldn’t think Buric could have taken her in to begin with.”

  “And then the way it was done,” I said slowly. “If he had someone killed we wouldn’t find the body.” Buric was not competent enough at one end, too competent at the other, to make sense of this story. I sat still in the slowly growing light as we waited for help. “She was a specialist,” I said. “She knew all about the history. Buric was clever, but not like that.”