by Adam Roberts
I rushed in with all the cautious prophylactic strategies with which Lucette had primed me. ‘We’ll have them fly up, frisk them for transps, transfer them to another plane, or maybe two . . .’
She laughed. ‘You think they’ll go with that, after wat happened to their two senior officers?’
I laughed too, although I had to pretend it, little gulps of simulated hilarity. I nearly said they’ll go for it, absolutely, because I knew from Lucette that they would. But instead I inserted some conversational filler, a lumpish misdirection. ‘Wat was the name of the one who fell — fell all the way down, didn’t burn up and didn’t dash himself to death on the ground, or so they say.’
‘So they say,’ she agreed, still laughing.
‘Wat was his name?’
‘I guess it’s so outlandish a story that it may be true,’ she said. ‘It would be a bizarre story to make up from scratch.’
‘They’ll go for it,’ I said. ‘The Americans I mean. We can play the USA off the EU. They’ll fall over themselves to establish proper diplomatic links with . . .’
‘Sure,’ she was saying. ‘Sure.’ But she wasn’t really listening to me. She was gazing off into the distance, as if the broad, beaming stretch of water, upon which the sunlight was sketching innumerable luminous bars and crescents all linked and chain-mailed together in fleeting motion, was futurity itself. Everything is possible in a land without history, a genuinely-genuinely new land. And here were the boys, labouring energetically up the hill towards us.
As we walked away from that conversation I felt an elation build inside me, that I had once again managed to preserve my secret inside me. That was my challenge, every time I spoke with Gradi, simply to keep that hidden thing. It was inside me, my own growing baby nurtured in my own unfaithful betraying flesh, and for those months (it lasted very many months) all my love and loyalty became focused on it. I practised my deception; I thought through everything I said before I said it. I prepared my verbal spontaneities.
How many months? Almost a whole year. It was autumn again before the end came. Autumn, the season when the trees bleed in a flutter of ragged 2-D corpuscules and thereby diminish themselves. The danger was in my interludes of weeping; they were the one thing I did not seem to be able to control, because I did not properly understand them. We rode the plane Upland, and as the sun bloomed in explosive brilliance round the world’s shoulder I would find my eyes inexplicably full of tears. I would control myself through a difficult conversation with Gradi, and afterwards we would talk about wat we wanted to have for supper and tears would spatter from my eyes to float in zero g.
It mattered very little, in the longer run. It was just puzzling to me.
And so we took our final flight together, the last time I was ever to be with her; a plane crowded with excited Uplanders and immigrants. I sat wrapped in myself by a window, whilst Gradi worked the crowd. I had told her that we had another meeting at Gallano’s.
‘You’re sure?’ she asked. ‘You’re sure they want to meet? I met with them not long ago.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘It’s kosher? It’s a real meet?’
‘It’s concessions, that’s wat I heard.’
We doked, and took another plane. Gradi brought only one guard. She went everywhere with a guard these days, but it amounted to very little. Too little. We flew, and I insisted on piloting — something I rarely did. But Gradi’s suspicion was not awakened. She was staring out through the windscreen at the world-sized shield on which was carved, in perfect detail, shiny landscape and shinier sea, billions toiling and resting, laughing and crying. It was all there. The sun was bright with Upland brightness, the brightness that groundlings never see, since the air that is their medium is closer to smoke than purity. Our sunlight was hard as chalk.
I swept down, and hauled up to slow outside a house. With clumsy camouflage the Americans had moked it up to look like Gallano’s; it seemed to me a pitifully clumsy attempt at disguise, at any rate, but Gradi did not look alarmed. Her guard was smiling, chatting with her. I nosed into the porch, and pulled the nose open, and called to Gradi, ‘I’m going in. Are you going to stay in the plane jawing all day?’, and slid through the exact middle of the doorway. The space I entered was crammed with military men and women; they hung on the walls, pressed against the ceiling and the floor. All had guns, all pointed towards me. I was expecting it, but even so I almost yelped with terror. I slapped a hand over my mouth, and floated on through.
The guns did not follow me. I was not their target.
Part Three
HOPE
one
The clouds have dressed themselves as blak as dominatrices and are applyiŋ their whiplash lightniŋ to the compliant naked baks of the hills. The humped horizon moans and grumbles its shameful pleasure. But is this weather to fly in? Safe? I don’t think this is weather to fly in. Breathe that: you know wat that is? Ozone, it’s the stink of static. That cool breeze blowiŋ in from the storm front, washiŋ over this whole airfield. See that frizzy border between the lower line of the clouds and the ground? - that’s rain, hard as the fiercest douche-settiŋ, falliŋ over kilometres and kilometres of land simultaneously. That’s hurryiŋ through the sky towards us.
‘We’ll be up above that in no time,’ says the pilot. And Hope nods, smiles, bustles up the stairway into the plane. His smile says I trust you, but his heart says this is it, this is where I die, struk by lightniŋ, broken by the big wind, snapped from the plane like a pistachio from its shell to tumble to extinction. Worry sinks, a nauseous pebble through the gloopy fluid of his guts. His eyes itch, but he knows from experience not to rub them, for that makes them much worse. He doesn’t want to die, but the accumulative pressure of this morbid inevitability is growiŋ with every single day he stays alive, every single minute. This intense sensitivity to the prospect of his own mortality, the constant tikle on the skin of his soul, has become much more pronounced since he became a parent. To die now is not only to collapse his own consciousness to nothing, it is to deprive his kids of a father, his wife of a husband. And now he is goiŋ to trust himself to this flimsy winged tube as its pilot tosses it into the maelstrom, and then - who knows how battered and leaky afterwards - engage its Elem and ratchet it up into vacuum, where it can explode, or depressurise and choke them all, or perhaps simply lose power and drift into a burn-up trajectory. He is aware of a clamminess under his armpits, and he moves his arms, slowly but unmistakeably chiken-like, to try and dissipate it. He is at the top of the stairs. He duks through the oval door to enter the plane.
There are a dozen other people on board, all already settled in their seats. Hope stows his bag in his compartment and straps himself in; but the pilot, eager to run on before the crashiŋ aerial wave of that storm front, has already started the plane, they are already rolliŋ forward. They’re moviŋ along the runway.
Through the window the air is purple. The grass beside the concrete strip is wriggliŋ and shiveriŋ, each individual stem fightiŋ its tether to try and get away, to fly off, before the crashiŋ roll of the storm descends. Hope peers anxiously out of his little porthole: the curviŋ roof of the terminal, the hangar beyond, a single plane sittiŋ forlorn in the open air, the scrub land darkeniŋ as the clouds progressively roof the whole area over. It seems, somehow, intensely sad. Hope shuts his eyes; he uses his fingers to do this, to weigh the eyelids down, his thumnails standiŋ in for the coins of the corpse with which the ferryman must be paid.
‘Horosho, OK, gentlemen and ladies,’ announces the ferryman (pilot, I mean) over the speakers. ‘This is your Konduktor speakiŋ. We’ll soon be — ’ there’s a lurch, a hiccough, and the grindiŋ noise of wheels-over-concrete is blotted into the sensation of frictionless onward motion ‘ — oy-oop, there we go, in the air now. We’ll be runniŋ on a little to avoid those nubarrones, the - pardon me whilst I search for the English word, the, in other words - those thunderous clouds, behind us. Then we’ll swoop round. Once we’re
over the weather and we engage Elem we’ll be in space in less than a half of an hour. Settle down enjoy the flight.’
Hope tries his meditative mantra to try and calm his poor little fish-on-the-riverbank heart. He repeats, silently to himself, his personal mantric phrase. Repeats it, re-repeats it. I can’t tell you wat his phrase was, I’m afraid; it’s an intimate secret, one he has told neither his wife nor any of his four children. There’s little point in you knowiŋ, either. It is ineffectual, it does not calm him. It almost never does. He opens his eyes again, and hazards a look into the desperately threateniŋ sky. The ground is barely visible; the light has darkened and thikened, taken on the colour of chocolat-au-lait, scrubbed across with shreds of cloud that whip past the window. There’s a camera-bulb flash of lightniŋ that dips the porthole, momently, in white, but that only makes the darkness, which immediately reasserts itself, seem darker. Hope cranes his nek to see whether he can see behind the plane to the lightniŋ, forked or sheet, but the perspective is not right.
‘Wilfrid Laurier,’ says the man sittiŋ in the seat across the aisle.
‘I beg . . . ?’
‘ — my pardon, it’s not necessary,’ says the man. He is speakiŋ with a southern-states American axent. His face is broad, composed of roundnesses: boyish round cheeks, pluggy round nose, round blue eyes. He’s well dressed. He smiles like a professional smiler. ‘Worried by the storm?’
‘Not at all, not worried,’ says Hope, untruthfully. ‘I’ve flown with this pilot before. He’s very good. Pablovich.’ (He pronounces this pebble-of-each, which is how his interlocutor, confusiŋly for him, hears the phrase). ‘I chek the UpAir schedules, I always chek to see when he’s flyiŋ, and book accordiŋly.’
‘Very wise, I’m sure,’ says Wilfrid Laurier. ‘And, I didn’t catch your name?’
‘Billetoi, tikets,’ says the tiketman, who seems to have popped up from nowhere: a diminutive fellow, perhaps no more than seventeen years of age, dressed in the UpAir uniform of purple and canary. Wilfrid Laurier has his tiket instantly at the ready, but Hope has to pull his bag down from above, rummage and scrabble and eventually find the plastic square lodged inside the covers of his book (it’s a copy of The Red Top Hat by Olga Repnin). ‘Thank you’, says the tiketman, sarcastically, moving on to the people further down the plane. ‘Billetoi, tikets, please.’
‘It always seems a crazy thing to me,’ says Wilfrid Laurier, tukiŋ his billetos bak in his jaket, ‘to ask for tikets after the plane has taken off. Wat would they do if my tiket weren’t in order? Chuk me over the side?’ He laughs, a surprisingly low-pitched, rather mournful sound.
Hope, scrabbliŋ to return his billetos to his bag, and rearrange the riotous objects contained therein to some sort of order, and prevent his own jaket from twistiŋ round into a knot somewhere at the small of his bak, says ‘They’d mark your account, take the money together with a retrieval fee from . . .’ But, of course, Wilfrid Laurier knows this, and Hope knows that he does. It occurs to Hope that he is missiŋ a possible opportunity. He really should do better than this. Who knows but that maybe this Wilfrid Laurier is a billionaire, who might fund Hope’s plans outright - and alright, OK, that’s unlikely (since he’s flyiŋ coach, after all, where if he possessed that kind of wealth he’d have his own jet), but maybe he works for a company that - or an individual who - or maybe he’s friends with somebody who might - or any number of possibilities. All Hope needs is the one luky break, an investor suitably far-sighted, and then not only his fortunes but the whole future of the Uplands would be changed to . . . But his train of thought is interrupted, hijaked, he can’t find his thum. He tuked it inside the inner poket of his bag, but it’s not here now. Without his thum he can’t do the presentation he needs to - no! This is disastrous! This is awful! The whole trip will be ruined, the presentation will be - stupid, stupid man! How could he be so stupid? He must have lost it, perhaps it fell from his bag as he was scurryiŋ up the steps to —
But here it is, tukked in the folds of his smartcloth tShirt, itself underneath his copy of Alice Through the Camera’s Eye. He blinks the sweat from his eyes, grins at his own foolishness.
‘Forget your sleep-puffer?’ enquires Wilfrid Laurier, in a kindly voice. ‘You do need one of those, if you’re planniŋ on sleepiŋ up there, otherwise the carbond’oxide can pool around your head whilst you sleep. But don’t worry, they sell them most places. They definitely sell them in the hotel.’
‘It’s alright,’ says Hope, brightly, sealiŋ the bag and hoikiŋ it bak up to its overhead slot. ‘I know all about the puffers. I’ve been up before.’
Wilfrid Laurier nods encouragiŋly. ‘Often?’
‘Pretty much. I’m sorry, I’m beiŋ rude. My name is Hope Gyeroffy.’
‘Hi there, Hope Gyeroffy, call you Hope? OK?’ says Laurier, reachiŋ over the aisle to offer his hand for shakiŋ. ‘Good to meet you.’
The plane banks, enters a lengthy curve.
It’s that awkward moment, one which Hope has never yet quite deduced how to negotiate. Does he introduce himself fully, My name is Hope Gyeroffy, I’m the eldest son of Gradisil herself — does he say that? He risks, then, the possibility that he simply won’t be believed, that his companion (whomsoever he, or she, might be) will think he’s a crank or a fantasist or a delusional type, or, wat is worse, will think that he is speakiŋ in fatuously metaphoric terms, ah, how true for are not all Uplanders, in a sense, children of Gradi? But there’s a risk associated with reticence: for wat if he strikes up a friendship or a relationship with this person, and they later come to learn the truth? Won’t that look odd? But why didn’t you mention this before! You’re the son of only the most famous Uplander in . . .
‘Goiŋ up on business?’ Wilfrid Laurier asks.
‘Yes, in a manner of sp — yes.’ Hope laughs, fidgets in his seat. ‘Why else?’
‘Well, most of them,’ says Laurier, turniŋ his head and takiŋ a leisurely look at the rows of seated passengers behind them, ‘are goiŋ up on servants’ contracts. Workiŋ the hotels, private houses, that sort of thing.’
‘Really?’ says Hope, followiŋ Laurier’s gaze. ‘How do you know?’
‘I was chattiŋ with them in the terminal. They’re a group, altogether; they been hired as a job-lot by Bruslot.’
‘Brusl . . . ?’
‘The, that’s the company that specialises in providiŋ labour to the Uplands. There’s a high turnover of staff, they can’t work their workers for too long in the xero g without makiŋ them ill. Bruslot. You not heard of them?’
‘I have to admit, I . . .’ He smiles, he shakes his head. ‘You don’t work for them?’
‘Bruslot? Christ, no!’ Wilfrid Laurier’s brow creases. ‘Hey, don’t mean to offend you. You mind if I swear?’
‘Not at all.’
‘I work for MakB. That’s for whom I work.’
‘The junkfood — ’ Hope starts to say, with, alas, characteristically blundersome clumsiness. ‘I mean,’ he gabbled, tryiŋ to undo his faux-pas. ‘The restaurant, the chain of . . .’
‘It’s alright, nobody would claim we were hoch-cuisine,’ says Wilfrid Laurier, but though he smiles there’s something about his eyes that suggests it’s not alright, that he is offended.
‘I’m an idiot,’ says Hope, frankly. ‘Junk is so insultiŋ, I really didn’t mean - actually, I eat MakB all the time, really.’
‘You do?’
‘I have 4 children. We’re always goiŋ into a MakB. MakkiB my eldest calls it. So you, you’re flyiŋ up on, wat? Company business?’
‘We’re openiŋ our first Upland franchise,’ says Wilfrid Laurier with some pride. ‘It’s in the Worldview. It’s a very handsome set up. We’ve had to design special ovens, special broilers, to cook the food - xero g, you see.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I’m flyiŋ up to arrange something, make some things OK for the openiŋ, next week — big media spazm planned, a jamboree. Are you stayiŋ in the Worldview?’
‘For two nights only.’
‘A shame — you’ll miss it. It’ll be something worth seeiŋ. We got a celeb. A real one, none of your pop singers. And we like to think,’ Wilfrid Laurier continued, leaniŋ bak against his seat and beamiŋ at nothing, ‘that it’ll make something of a splash in the newscreens, the celeb-shows, the gossipblogs, something of a spazm. Say, how well you know the Worldview? You stayed there before?’
‘This will be my first time.’
‘Really?’ Laurier leans forward again, lookiŋ canny and askiŋ as if hopiŋ to catch him out, ‘but you said you’d been Upland before?’
‘Yes, many times. But never before to an American - uh, facility.’
‘A hotel’s hardly a facility,’ Laurier laughs. ‘Hey, we’re not so bad.’
‘We?’
‘Americans, you know. You might be an Uplander yourself, I don’t mean to offend you, I know that a fair few Uplanders don’t own their own planes these days. Do I got you pegged right?’