Mappa Mundi

by Justina Robson

There were odd sounds in the living room and a smog that told her Dan was in and not alone. The kitchen lights were on, showing that spag-bol had been enthusiastically cooked and then left to boil over.

  She picked up her case and barged the living-room door open, making plenty of announcing-herself noise. The lights were out but as she passed the sofa reflected gleams of flame (from her fancy gothic candelabra and her candles) shone pale off three legs, an arm, and a tangle of throw-cloth on the sofa, items which her brain all-too-easily resolved into Dan and his guest in flagrante.

  She lifted her case right up next to her face to block them from her sight as she stumbled through the piles of clothes on the floor.

  “Didn't see anything, didn't see anything!” she repeated in a quick burst.

  Dan mumbled from somewhere in the many-limbed hillock, “'S all right, we're just about done anyway.”

  From behind the thin panels of her own door she thought that the other voice sounded like it belonged to Slow Joe, the alleged deejay who was either always one night before or one night after a really good gig that somehow Natalie or Dan never managed to get to—“You work freakth are alwayth thtuck in the offith, like. No freethtyle happenin'!” The voice had an affected lisp on top of its affected accent that was supposed to make it sound artistic. Definitely the man himself.

  Natalie put the radio on to a talk station so that Joe wouldn't find an excuse to come in and start moaning about music. She opened her case and prised out the box of fried rice she'd bought on the way home. No cutlery. Well, she wasn't going through Mata Hari's boudoir scene again.

  She was eating, using two pencils for chopsticks, with her face halfway inside the carton when Dan put his head round the door. His shaggy-brown-dog hair and spaced-out expression were perpetual, as though he was living in his own portable Barbados. She envied it with all her heart.

  “Hello, Smiler!” He beamed at her. “How's things at the mad factory?”

  It always annoyed Natalie that he talked as though he didn't work there himself, as though he had nothing to do with the place and could just leave it without a second thought, which was true. He could. She, on the other hand, had responsibilities…but she'd had enough martyrdom for one night.

  She scowled. “What's that stuff in the air?”

  “Joe brought it. Cuban something. ‘S useless, anyway. Bit late for you, though. Swinging from the rigging all over town, are they? Weather brings it out in people, I reckon. Rain all the time. What they need is some serious smoke.” He seemed to notice that she wasn't joining in and gestured with his nose towards the papers and electronics scattered around her, “You never know when to quit the job, do you?”

  “I'm fine.” She scrubbed her feet against the carpet and nodded towards the door with a look that asked when Joe was leaving.

  “Yeah, you look it. Left your shoes downstairs again? Joe's just going. I'll get ‘em.” He vanished, leaving a puff of incense and poppy ash in his wake that boiled up in the stale air of her room and then vanished.

  “Your cheap conjuring does not impress me, Doctor Connor,” she said, eyes narrowed, and then sighed and looked around her. Even pantomime villains did better than this.

  Peeling wallpaper, still not fixed after two years. Dirty clothes on the floor right. Part-used on the floor middle. Washed and dried but not ironed, floor left. Washed and dried, no chance of ironing ever, hanging on each post of the bedhead like two dead angels moulting. The incense covered most of the faint smell of mildew coming from the sash windows and it made her sneeze.

  She got up to see if Slow had gone yet, and got an eyeful of bare buttock trying to squeeze itself into tight trousers that were made of some material that glowed blue in the dark. He had a sixth sense for any kind of attention and turned on her with a sneer at her grey work suit.

  “Fashion pathing you by again, ith it?” he said, the effect spoiled as he hopped to put his shoes on. He gave her a twirl when he was done, and had to thrust a hand out to the table to stop himself falling over. Cologne, alcohol, and fresh sweat wafted off him. A nervous giggle passed his lips and was stifled. He glanced to see if she'd noticed.

  “It's pathed you on the way back again,” she retorted, unable to prevent herself mimicking his lisp. “Where did you get that shirt? It looks like it's made of cheese.”

  “Pith off.” He grabbed his coat from the darkness on the sofa and gave her the fingers.

  She gave them back to him without any interest. “Got any gigs lined up?”

  “Got any life lined up?” he shot back over his shoulder as he groped around in the half-light, picking things up and stuffing them in his pockets.

  Natalie watched him, trying to see what items of debauchery he'd brought with him, or if he was stealing, but it was too difficult and besides, she didn't know what she or Dan owned that was worth the bother. She hadn't got enough energy left to make a witty response to his last dig. Instead, she chewed her rice at him vacantly, following his every move until he made for the door, his trousers giving him the revolving hip action of a carriage clock. It looked painful and she was glad. She thumbed the lights and the TV on and sat down, with only a trace of revulsion, in the warm crater that was the sofa.

  It was good to be home.

  She felt even better when Dan returned with her shoes, rescued from the puddle outside. He put them to dry under the radiator and sat down next to her. They both stared at the big-screen doings of some US police show involving a team of trained dogs. Dan liked the programme: it reminded him of White Fang, but less romantic.

  “Some bloke called,” he said after a minute.

  Her heart sank; she knew no one. “Who?”

  “I dunno. Some American.”

  “Shit. When?” An efficient stalker she could live without. “What did you say?” She put the rice down and searched around for the remote. Dan was sitting on it.

  “Important is he?” Dan said, feigning lack of interest.

  “Move your arse. I didn't say that.”

  Dan turned his head and looked down at her, “Got a fancy man, have we? All tucked away at the Hilton when she says she's going to do the volunteer hotline. And such a virtuous cover story, too.”

  “And if I did, why would he be calling here?” Natalie leaned over him to make a grab for the house controller but he picked it up first and held it out of her reach. “Dan!”

  “If you tell me…” he began.

  “He called the hotline!” she snapped. “Tonight. He called me there and he knew my name. I don't want some mad git knowing everything about me.”

  Dan's taunting grin softened. He let her have the remote.

  Natalie cued the answer service. It was the same man. There was no image, only voice. It played over the silenced pictures of slo-mo malamutes on patrol.

  “Doctor Armstrong? I've gotta see you straightaway. Please call. Here's the number, in case you didn't get the message at the Clinic. I'll be at the hotel.”

  “You think he's a nut?” Dan asked, using his toe to pick up a sock from the carpet. “He sounds normal. Could have got your number from the Clinic registry.”

  “Not the flat number,” she said. “And they always start by sounding normal. Mostly. And here, what would you bet on it? He says he's an agent for the FBI, but he's in Britain. He says he has to see me, but not why. He doesn't give any proof of ID. His name, for Christ's sake, is Jude Westhorpe. Allegedly.”

  “Now you mention it, it does sound something of a long shot.” Dan drew a thumb and forefinger around his nonexistent goatee and narrowed his eyes. His heavy fringe came down like the fire curtain at a theatre and made him look like an old sheepdog. “Ten quid he's real.”

  “Done.” She finished her rice and threw the carton onto the table.

  In the dark and the quiet the room smelled terrible; smoke and sweat, sex and old dust. The TV dogs bounded down an alley and leapt a six-foot chain link fence. Soft rock accompanied their flight as Dan cued the sound. Natalie stood up to
open the window and let a blast of cold air in. She looked out at the night across the roofs of the terraces opposite and wondered where life was going. She'd done nothing important in six months. She had her interview with the Ministry to wait for. If that went bad then she didn't know what she'd do. She didn't like to think of leaving, not when Dan was here. Without her, what would he get up to?

  Under her sore, door-karate foot she felt something unidentifiable, but moist and a little slimy. It was, curiously, the most sensual and attractive experience she could remember having in recent weeks.

  “I'm off to bed.”

  Dan snorted, “What, and I threw Joe out for one mad bloke's phone call and two minutes of mind-numbing conversation? Jesus, it's more fun at work.”

  “Yeah,” she said and was already more than half asleep before her head hit the pillow. As Natalie slid out of the waking world it occurred to her that half asleep was the state she lived in these days. Awake was something she wouldn't know if it bit her on the ankle. Awake people noticed that Dan needed her attention and she didn't do that. She tried to get up and apologize but it was too late for that. Her mind slipped from her and into the dark.

  Jude Westhorpe stood on the long straight section of Haxby Road where the spiked iron railings that surrounded the York Clinic for Psychiatric and Psychological Research were overhung by mature lime trees offering a small measure of concealment. He idled for a minute or two to look, his jacket slung over his shoulder, expression vague, pretending to be a curious tourist. The trees formed a single row that bordered a wide swathe of grass, landscaped in curves and dips so that it held the old red-brick buildings as though in the palm of a protecting hand. He recognized the pattern as one that made fast running impossible and mowing a trial. On the far side of the compound the parking lot was a maze of thorny bushes, again giving no clear escape routes.

  Jude began walking slowly along the lane. Closer to the gates he noticed that there was a uniformed security official/greeter at the door, who was connected by lapel mike to the ones manning the barriers at the fence. He made as though to tie his laces, reaching through the rails at the same time to recover the tiny surveillance unit he'd left the day before. He had a feeling his high-tech espionage was all in vain. From the aerials and dishes on the flat roof of the modern block to the suspiciously large number of people who moved around the doors, he didn't think there was going to be an easy way in, and this Armstrong woman wasn't going to call him, not with the approach tactics he'd used so far.

  Once he was out of sight of the Clinic he paused to sit on a bench, wood grey with age and wear, on its back a bronze plaque that said “Mrs. Phillip Sillitoe, MP.” He used his Pad to check Armstrong's picture again—by now it was almost etched on his brain. He looked for her everywhere he went: a small woman, early thirties, slim, with a red-purple crop cut and a face made elfin and bold at the same time by sharp cheekbones and a powerful, long mouth that she usually lipsticked in shocking colour. Her mouth fascinated him. It looked like it would open onto something more than just teeth and tongue. It looked as though something wicked and erotic, sharp and lethal lived inside it and could leap out.

  The surveillance unit hadn't managed to get any sightings of her. Jude sighed with annoyance and made himself start walking towards the city centre. The hangers-on he'd seen must be Ministry agents or plainclothes police, and he had maybe two days left before someone noticed that he wasn't on vacation at his mother's house in Seattle. He had to do something more drastic.

  Considering exactly what this could be lengthened his walk until he was almost through the centre of the impossibly tiny town, approaching one of the bridges that crossed the river. Unwilling to go further he took a turn down to the waterfront and bought a drink at the small pub there named the King's Arms, which seemed to be one of the attractions he ought to visit, judging by the number of students and pot-bellied men loafing around it.

  The barman, a genial, overweight, utterly unremarkable man in some new, sleazy shirt whose material played video images across the pockets, served him a pint of Theakston's; a dark beer, it smelled faintly of vinegar and old, watery cellars. Jude watched the windows on the man's chest, sun setting behind the clouds, a flight of black-winged gulls. He wondered what the images were supposed to tell him and briefly wondered what he'd put on his own pockets if he had the bad taste to try it. Probably a picture of some fabric, the same as the rest of the shirt. Ironic, but not very original.

  Jude sighed with annoyance at his own predictability, took the drink outside, and sat at a trestle table that was covered in old glasses and sandwich packets, drinking the beer very slowly. In obedience to his wishes and the alcohol in his otherwise empty stomach time stretched out and developed holes, beckoning him to fall into them.

  He stared at the river. The water was high enough to be almost level with his feet. Brown and thick, it was full of unpredictable currents, slow on the surface, racing underneath. It looked almost like you could walk on it. Getting into the clinic would be like that, too—like walking on water.

  In the pocket with the disk of stolen files he'd brought to give to Doctor Armstrong was the photograph from his sister's backpack. He took it out and looked it over yet again: his mandala. Funny how objects could freight meaning like cargo-craft, a scrap of paper as heavy as a safe full of lead. This one carried that kind of weight and served to remind him of all the great justifications he had for being here, lying to his partner, lying to his boss, getting his mother to cover, getting false papers and a bogus ID to use, just in case. In case Armstrong wasn't easy to get hold of. In case he was pushed to the point he was at now, pinned to it. And, God, he didn't want to do a cover number because that was an easy way to get caught out, but soon, in an hour or so, he was going to have to.

  The photograph showed White Horse's wood-framed house, burned to the ground. He'd spent summers there, riding and hiking with her and her mother, while his own mother worked nine-to-five at a Seattle accountancy practice to keep him in school and his friends got sent to summer camps and private villas in Europe. Deer Ridge #32 was a second family home to him. He'd never realized how cheap and fragile it was until he'd seen this image.

  Where the sitting room used to be a few brittle spars of black char reached up from the cinders; four fingers outstretched for help and no thumb. On the left side the washing machine was just recognizable, its door slimed with oily smoke, frame melted. Here and there were fragments of other things: the corner of the piano lid, the funny, homemade metal casket that had held the TV and radio unit, springs from the lousy guest bed that always made his back feel like he'd gone ten rounds in the ring still holding their shape like giant cartoon hair. Rills of grey smoke gathered in the shape of snakes where the table and chairs had been.

  With the house out of the way and the branches of the Scots pine next door crisped up you could see a clear view of the mountains. The sky was brightly blue over their summits, a trail of cloud like a puff of cigarette smoke blurring from their tops, and the sunlight glinted in a tiny flash from the valley where the reservation wire-fence line ran alongside the narrow dirt road towards the highway.

  That place was about six thousand miles away but Jude only had to touch the picture to smell the ash on the breeze and feel the tremor in his sister's hands where the camera shake had blurred the foreground into a mess of green and brown. Five years ago he'd never thought he'd see it again.

  They'd had their last fight when he left the marines and joined the newly set-up Division of Special Sciences in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There was no government agency more symbolic of all that White Horse hated about the state, and rightly so. Their father had died in one of the skirmishes during the occupation of Pine Ridge in the 1970s, and by a government bullet. Leonard Peltier eventually went down to Leavenworth for the two agents who were killed, because somebody had to go, and even though she was barely one at the time this miscarriage of justice was the primal force in shaping the political ac
tivist and passionate cultural advocate who grew up to be White Horse Jordan, Jude's half sister.

  It was this part of her, and not the other parts that liked him better, that had barred him from entering that now burned-down place ever again. Many seasons ago, when it had still been standing, and about the time that Martha Johnson had opened her second store downtown, they'd exchanged their views.

  “You've joined the fucking enemy!” White Horse screamed at him, her face dark with fury as she physically pushed him off the step and onto the path. “There's nothing between us any more! Nothing! Go back to your mom's rich white family and live a great life doing good for the state that loves you so much. You don't deserve Dad's name!”

  Jude had been too angry to speak, but she could see what he wanted to say and cut it off with a slicing motion of her arm.

  “You're betraying us. Everything. You spit on us and our history! All for your money and the power to shove little people around!”

  “I'm not the one who said they were little, remember that.”

  “Fuck you! Traitor.”

  “And what are you? A cultural dinosaur! A fascist preservationist! Holding back everyone who follows you by forcing them to stay on bad land, in poor housing and with no prospects when they could be a part of the future and not the past. You're always whining on about history. Well, that shows there's no point in clinging sentimentally to old ways as if you were still living in the goddamn' stone age. Everything changes! Talk about spirit? You haven't got the monopoly on that end of the world. You don't own it because of the color of your skin like some fucking multiple-entry permit. Don't you think we have to change as well?”

  For once he'd reduced her to jaw-breaking silence.

  He didn't say the final thing in his heart, which was that he'd agreed to ditch the marines and sign on with Special Sciences because it seemed like a chance to set a thing straight that was broken; to work from the inside and force what he could of the FBI into a better, more just kind of shape. It was the sort of foolish ideal, like her own, that White Horse would have instantly leaped on and shredded in contempt. Jude hadn't been sure that he'd have enough conviction left to carry it through. But when she got angry he pushed aside his concern that a single person made little difference inside the huge politics, especially a minor servant like him.