by Adam Roberts
‘I’d call myself an Uplander,’ says Hope, nervy. ‘Yes.’ He always feels a fraud sayiŋ this, although he has as much right to call himself this as anybody.
‘So, first time on American territory, yeah? Well, well, it’s been 30 years since the war. More than 30 years. I’ve yet to meet an Uplander who carries a grudge. You don’t carry a grudge?’ Without waitiŋ for an answer, as if takiŋ the answer for granted, he continues, ‘Besides, the way I like to think of it: there’s never been a case of 2 nations, both of which have MakB restaurants on their - soil, I was goiŋ to say, let’s agree on in their space — there’s never been a case of 2 such nations ever goiŋ to war. The conclusion? Easy. MakB prevents war! Not that I’m sayiŋ there’s something magical in our patties, or our VegeBox cooked in its copyrighted marinade, of course not!’ This is startiŋ to sound like the sort of prepared speech trotted out in front of investors’ meetings, or to senior managers of companies in negotiation for ancillary rights. ‘It’s just that. Trade makes more sense. Than fightiŋ. There are more trade outlets in the Uplands now than there’s ever been. It’s a new frontier for the hardworkiŋ businessperson.’
‘Well,’ says Hope, a little thrown by the earnestness of this speech. ‘Quite.’
‘Are you even old enuff to remember the war? You don’t mind me askiŋ.’
‘No, don’t mind you ask - actually yes. I mean, yes, I do remember the war. I was just a kid, and watched the whole thing on the news, downbelow.’ He thinks about addiŋ something else, about his family, about Gradi, but he doesn’t.
‘The,’ says Wilfrid Laurier with mighty emphasis, thuh! Then he says ‘Tea’, and Hope understands, a beat too late, that he is sayiŋ Thir-ty Years with a deliberately exaggerated rhetorical flourish. ‘Yurrrs,’ he concludes, with a shake of his head. ‘It’s a devil of a lengthy time. That’s my point.’
‘I quite agree.’
‘I know it still lives on, but as history. Yes? I’m dedicated to makiŋ the most of the future in the Uplands. There’s no point in gettiŋ bogged into the past. The possibilities — ’
With a miniature electronic yawp, followed by a hum, the speakers come on again. It is the pilot speakiŋ. ‘Gentlemen and Ladies,’ says Pablovich in his Tartary-axented voice. ‘In one moment I shall be enjagiŋ the Elem, please strap.’ The communication ends abruptly.
‘I’ll tell you wat,’ says Wilfrid Laurier, sittiŋ bak properly in his seat and sealiŋ his waist-strap. ‘We’re gettiŋ a celebrity to open the franchise - it’s a first for MakB, this Upland outlet, a first for world trade and the eatery business, so we’ve pushed the boat out. Do you know who we’ve got?’
‘I’ve no - I mean, I don’t really — ’
‘The man who fell to Earth himself! Colonel David Slater himself! That’s one of the things I need to do, I’m his corporate liaison. He’s booked in, luxury suite, company’s expense. I got to meet him, make sure he’s tuked in nicely, give him his speech. We want him to learn the speech.’
‘You don’t say,’ says Hope, but his attention has wandered. The pilot’s announcement of the imminency of Elemag has rekindled his terrors. It’s one thing to move through the air, supported on the broad wings, cushioned safely above and below by atmosphere. It’s quite another to slip from the air in which so many heavy things (those galleon-shaped clouds, those great glintiŋ curves of multicoloured steel we call rainbows) are supported, into nothing at all, nothingness, vacancy, emptiness. That’s not right. It offends his common sense, even though that very anxiety makes Hope feel like a religious bigot, if Gawd had intended us to fly into space he’d have furnished space with good cleanly air — and, he realises, he is not fittiŋ the smartcloth seal of his seatbelt together, he is holdiŋ one end of the strap in one hand and scrabbliŋ at his own groin with the other. He disgusts himself. He is fearful and disgustiŋ. He tries to cover his own incommotion with a laugh, but he’s not fooliŋ anyone. He is blushiŋ rose-colours, both pink and scarlet, in his face. There is sweat comiŋ out of him. He is a leaky hessian sak masqueradiŋ as a man. But then, with a whine of the motor firiŋ up and that distinctive sluggish lurch, the plane piks up the Elemag effect and starts to climb. Hope looks through his porthole again. The air is blak, but the ghost of the lightniŋ still clings, in miniature spectral form, about the edges of the wings, flutteriŋ up in shiniŋ stars.
At least we’re up above that thunderstorm now.
‘So wat’s your business?’ Wilfrid Laurier is askiŋ.
Still tryiŋ to get his breathiŋ properly under control, Hope removes his eyes from the porthole. ‘I’m meetiŋ,’ he says. ‘I’m meetiŋ the representative of an — ’
But Laurier isn’t really interested, that’s very obvious. ‘You like it up there?’
‘ — an American investment corporation, representiŋ a - sorry?’
‘You like it up there?’
‘Yes,’ says Hope, surprised at himself. ‘I do. You?’
Laurier is all puzzlement. ‘Me?’
‘Do you like it up there?’
‘Do I? You kiddiŋ? I love it! I wish we’d won that fukiŋ war - no offence, I’m only jokiŋ, but then it’d have been stars-and-stripes amongst the stars. Man, I’d have planned to retire there, if that had been the case. Do I like it up there?’ Laurier seems disproportionately amused by Hope’s banal enquiry. ‘You kiddiŋ? I love it up there. It’s a river of diamonds. Une rivière de diamants.’ Something in his manner makes Hope think he is deployiŋ this gaudy metaphor not to express the poetic beauty of the Uplands but rather its enormous and as yet untapped financial potential.
He seems to be asleep now, this hideously hearty American, with his pharmakos-toned skin and his blue smartcloth suit. Hope doesn’t want to wake him. He tries to read one of his books, glanciŋ round guiltily at the other passengers, most of whom are absorbed in screens. Readiŋ a book is a pretentious affectation these days, like weariŋ spectacles, or speakiŋ Latin; and Hope cannot shake the sense that, perhaps, he’s doiŋ it as a kind of pretentious performance even for his own benefit, as if he is tryiŋ to convince his sceptical innerself that he is more intellectual than in fact he is. His eyes, drawn by the fearful possibilities of the porthole (the wiŋ has come off! Elem flight has been revealed to be a collective hysteria and now the madness has worn off! A rogue flier is loomiŋ up to crash into us - we’re-goiŋ-to-die!), finds it hard to concentrate on the words on the page. The book is The Red Top Hat. The ghastly Dr Blagovo has been murdered. A huge hammer has crushed his skull, a hammer so heavy that only a circus strong man or a professional body-builder could ever have wielded it (the story is set in 1922; Hope isn’t sure about the prevalence of professional body-builders at that time). A dozen people have the motive to kill the sinister doctor, and flashbak scenes (how very twentieth-century) reveal that he was blakmailiŋ them all, burstiŋ in upon them in the commission of some sinful or criminal act with his ludicrously egotistical cry ‘I am the Doctor!’ But which of the twelve suspects is the owner of the titular chapeau, the clue indicative of their guilt? The problem is not enuff to keep Hope reading - indeed, it so happens, he will never finish this particular story (the answer, in case you care, is that the culprit is the one person too diminutive and weak to ever have lifted the hammer; and the twist is that, standiŋ on a stepladder, she pulled it from a high shelf and it happened to land head-onto-head on the wiked Doctor standiŋ below). Hope watches the porthole. The world is visible there, and then, with a clik and a burr, the speaker comes on, and Pilot Pablovich announces to his passengers that dokiŋ at Hotel Worldview is imminent.
Later, as he floats out of the door and into the hotel’s spacious porch, with its barndoor-sized portal closed fully to enclose a space large enuff for 3 planes simultaneously, his attention is distracted again. He tuks his feet into the dragalong and is gently hauled, with all his fellow travellers 2-by-2 in a line behind him, along to the chek-in. A small crowd is there, gathered round, waitiŋ, perhaps, to greet various disemba
rkees. Hope, holdiŋ his bag, slides underneath the 3-D Worldview logo, its O alternately an eye and a schematic of the world. Then his tiket is cheked, his national accreditation and his reservation, and he fits clumsily a snap-twang harness to his shoes. There’s an announcement: a second plane is dokiŋ, haviŋ flown up from American ground, and the waitiŋ crowd becomes more excitedly agitated. So it seems that this crowd has actually gathered to meet a traveller from this latter flight, a celebrity no less. Hope loiters, to see who it is - and it is, as he suspected, Colonel Paul Slater, holdiŋ his artificial hand (indistinguishable from his fleshly hand) up to greet the gawping crowd. Celebrity does that. But it is not this American folk hero who snags Hope’s eye, not at all. Instead, it is a much less famous figure; tall but gaunt, sandy hair cut short over a slightly bulbous skull but standing up as if charged in the xero g, leaniŋ forward into an elasticated stride, seen only from the side, but unmistakeably the man whom Hope thinks he is. There isn’t time to slip passage into a different groove in the floor and snap-twang over to him to double chek, to ask his name; he’s gone, he’s through a door and away, followiŋ Slater and himself followed by an anonymous third. But Hope doesn’t need to double-chek. He doesn’t need, he doesn’t want, to meet the person in question. He knows.
He can hardly believe it.
He disengages the elastic from its groove in the floor and floats to one side. He needs to get to a phone. There goes Wilfrid Laurier, marchiŋ past, calliŋ out, ‘Hi, Hope’ as if he is announciŋ to the world the height of his aspirations, and addiŋ, as he moves past, ‘See you later’. Hope is still gawpiŋ. He scrapes his toes along the floor to propel his floatiŋ self to the side, where several hoods perpend. Inside is a public phone, and Hope chatters the number into the grille in so agitated a manner that the AI has to ask him to repeat it. He gets through, the connection is made, and his brother answers. ‘Sol,’ says Hope. ‘Sol Sol Sol. I’ve seen him - he’s here.’
Sol looks out of the screen at him. The implacability on his brother’s face, the simple refusal to be moved, to become agitated or excited, that is very much Sol; that’s him to a T. His face remains impassive. ‘Who’s he?’ he asks, plainly. ‘And where’s here?’
‘Here,’ says Hope, loweriŋ his voice - absurdly, because, the least secret thing about this place is its name (the O in Worldview is an eye now, blue as Wilfrid Laurier’s) ‘is the Worldview, you know it? The American-owned hotel. He is Dad.’
Sol is nodding slowly. ‘And you’re sure?’
‘And,’ says Hope, noddiŋ along, ‘I’m sure.’
two
Sol is comiŋ now - flyiŋ over. Flyiŋ straight here as soon as he can connect with a plane that’s booked-in. ‘Are you sure?’ Hope frets on the phone. ‘It’ll cost just comiŋ inside. It’s not like a groundliŋ hotel, they charge you for just steppiŋ inside the lobby here.’ He is babbliŋ, and Sol knows it, and he knows it himself. ‘It’s not like downbelow, course it would cost a lot lot more to park a private plane. But — ’
‘There are several hotels downbelow that charge people to step into their lobby,’ Sol replies in a factual tone of voice. But, of course, the hidden burden of Hope’s communication is not factual, but freighted with symbolical anxieties. It is not like downbelow in that, once you’re in a house you cannot simply step outside. If you discharge a handgun into a twitchiŋ, weepiŋ, elderly body, then up here you cannot simply throw the weapon in the river and run over 3 fields to where your car is parked. Kill a man and you’re stuk there. Knowiŋ this, but also knowiŋ the tectonic implacability of his brother’s will, Hope feels only squished and pressured and horribly overwhelmed by everything. Why did he have to be here? Of all places? Why did Hope have to glimpse him?
Hope is clutchiŋ at reasons for Sol not to fly over. ‘I’m booked into a single - it’s nothiŋ more than a tube, you know, it’s not a room. There’s no way we could both fit in there.’
‘Change your bookiŋ,’ Sol orders, in his grey voice. ‘Extend your stay, and book us a double tube. Book us a room; we’ll probably need a room - a suite.’
‘Alright,’ said Hope, miserably. ‘But it may not be possible. The hotel is pretty full; there’s a do, a thing, a happening, MakB is openiŋ a junk-outlet. There are celebrities here.’ He cannot stop his mouth runniŋ on. ‘Slater is here, that guy who fell all the way through the — ’
‘Do you think that’s why he is here?’ interrupts Sol.
This had not occurred to Hope. ‘I don’t know. I suppose it could . . .’
‘Here’s wat you need to do,’ says steely-voiced Sol. ‘You need to chek the schedules of flights out.’
‘Out - and in?’
‘No,’ (said scornfully) ‘Just out. They won’t let you see passenger lists, but every time a plane is scheduled to fly out you need to go to the embark-lounge, just wait there, see whether he comes in. If he does we’ll need to hire a taxi-plane to fly us down to follow him. Listen to me, brother - are you listeniŋ? Good, because we cannot let him go. We may not get an opportunity as good as this again - do you understand?’
Hope’s problem is not that he doesn’t understand. Hope’s problem is that he understands too well. They’ve been put into a suddenly enormous velocity by fate, both of them. They’re freefalliŋ towards the ground like the celebrated Slater once did, at a hundred miles an hour, at terminal velocity and the ground a flat pan of concrete miles wide. It is the inevitability of it all that causes fibrillations in Hope’s heart muscles, sweat, trembliŋ. He cannot bear to contemplate just how horribly, fatally inevitable it all is. It’s such an elaborate way to commit suicide. He thinks of sayiŋ this to Sol, right now. But wat would be the point in sayiŋ it? Sol would simply repeat that they’ll never get so good a chance again - their quarry confined in the spacious but nevertheless finite topography of the Worldview rather than roamiŋ the endless Cartesian plane of the world below, in who-knows-wat location in the midst of enemy territory. It’s true, it’s right, but how strongly Hope wishes it weren’t.
‘Wat are you doiŋ there, anyway?’ asks Sol, his face showiŋ its first expression (a slightly crumpliŋ of the brow to indicate curiosity) in place of his usual mask-like self-control. ‘Are you there for this junk-food openiŋ thing?’
‘No! I’m talkiŋ to a potential investor.’
‘Oh,’ says Sol, the crumpled brow smoothed again, his uninterest in his brother’s plans insultingly obvious. ‘It’s your old-time thermometer thing.’ Hope closes his eyes. This is Sol’s joke, or, more accurately, this is the closest Sol ever comes to makiŋ a joke - with all the corrosive implications of laughter, of lettiŋ one’s-guard-down, of common humanity that jokiŋ would carry with it. He had made this joke (‘huh! it sounds like the action of an old-time thermometer!’) right at the beginniŋ of the project, when Hope first told him 8 years ago, shortly after the legal papers had been filed and Moving Mercury Inc had officially come into beiŋ. 8 hard years, duriŋ which time Sol had made not one single expression of interest. Every time Hope mentioned the project Sol made the same joke.
‘My meetiŋ is tomorrow,’ gabbles Hope. ‘I’m booked in 2 nights, in case there’s a follow-up from the, um, potential investor.’
‘Book for a week.’
‘And pay for it - how?’
Sol snorts. ‘You can’t afford a double room at a hotel for a week? Your interplanetary corporation isn’t generatiŋ much income, then.’
‘It’s not an investment corporation,’ replies Hope, stung into crossness by his brother’s attitude. ‘Investment is just the — ’
But the phone call is over, the phone connection disintegrates into the swirliŋ logo of North American Screen Telephonies Inc. That’s that.
Sol is comiŋ under a pseudonym. He will come on a public flight, rather than pay the cost of private parkiŋ (which of course he could afford - Sol has not lost his money, as Hope has: but if he flew in his own plane it would betray his true identity, and that might alert authorities to the da
nger for Paul Caunes; or might have consequences later on. After the deed. Hope doesn’t like to think of that, the deed, the deadeniŋ, deadly deed).
Hope spends a frustratiŋ half hour tryiŋ to get his reservation altered, because, you see, something has come up, a colleague is comiŋ to help him with his presentation to - yes, yes - and more time as well, further days, yes? The clerk is not used to dealiŋ with customers face-to-face, and seems nonplussed, but the arrangements are made. The fact that Hope is prepared to take one of the largest double rooms on the top storey smooths his path; that’s mucho money, mucho. It seems that the openiŋ of a junk-food outlet, even in space, is not so enormous a media opportunity as Wilfrid Laurier made out. The hotel has many empty rooms.
Hope’s head feels overinflated, as it always does when he comes up to xero g. It’ll take his body a night to adjust. The blood which gravity usually pools in his legs is now distributed perfectly evenly throughout his vascular system, overfilliŋ the veins and arteries of his upper body. But it does give him wat they call the drinker’s window. He fits his elasticated walkers into a slot and snap-twangs down the entrance corridor to the main atrium.