Mappa Mundi

by Justina Robson

  “No,” he admitted and put his cases down. “I went to MIT, did biology, went into the marines, and got poached into a special branch of—” He hesitated, seeing her face wrap itself around a sardonic look as she mouthed silently, “…the FBI.”

  The line of her extraordinary mouth encompassed humour, resignation, and disappointment all at once. He found himself staring at its muscular precision with unprofessional speculation.

  “Yeah.” It was a moment or so dawning but he realized that she must have been the one he spoke to that first night on the hotline. “Listen, I guess this isn't a very good start, but I tried a legitimate way and—”

  “Okay.” She held her hands up and already looked infinitely sick of pretending to believe him. “You've tried very hard to get hold of me. We're here for five minutes anyway because of the safety systems and the airlock prep-time for the BSL-4 zone, so you've got that long. I have to be in a meeting and I don't have time for whatever spying, blackmail, or looney-tunes you've got. So make sure you fit it all in.”

  Jude rubbed his face with his hand. He suddenly wasn't sure he could persuade her, and he wasn't even sure that what he had was worth her contempt. The weariness of the last seventy-two hours crept through him, numbing his limbs, but he took out his Pad and showed her the screen. Shakily he cued a photograph and she, looking bored, gazed impassively at it.

  He took a second to register his own irritation with her attitude and it gave him the energy to speak forcefully, “This is me and my sister, aged eighteen and seventeen.”

  “Mmn.” Neutral. She glanced at his face, gaze flicking across it like she was examining a portrait for likenesses.

  Jude pointed at the screen, “This is her house. That in the background is Deer Ridge. This line is where the reservation's boundary runs and this—” he changed views “—is the town of Deer Ridge itself. Bar, bingo, stores, gas station. Your average American backwater.”

  “Mmn hmm.” Still listening, but watching his face more than the Pad. Maybe she thought he was crazy. He'd thought so before now.

  “This is her house as it is now.” He showed her the Polaroid from his pocket.

  Armstrong took it and looked it over. Her left eyebrow dropped fractionally into a demi-frown and was corrected. “Nasty. She wasn't in it?”

  “No. That is, not fatally.” He changed the slide view on the Pad again, his fingers stumbling on the keyboard. His voice threatened to waver and he had to breathe hard, “And this is who burned it down.”

  They both looked at the picture of a mild-faced, middle-aged Native American woman in a colourful waistcoat and jeans, smiling at the camera, her hand holding the rope of a stout brown pony on which a child was riding backwards.

  “Her name is Martha Johnson and she lives, lived, half on the res and half off, because she has two stores in the town and she did door-to-door deliveries for twenty-five years. Three weeks ago she had a visit from some government guys—claimed they were Feds, but no way—passing through, looking for some of the young troublemakers—you know there's some tension between the res kids and the others, the usual stuff but recently someone wrecked the stands after the high school ball game and they're both blaming each other. Anyway.” He realized his time was getting short and Natalie Armstrong's expression was still only polite.

  “After they've gone Martha starts getting aggravated. By the time they find her dead in one of the dry creek beds, shot with her own .22 pistol—not very effectively, it took her a few hours to die—she's stabbed three people and tried to burn down five properties, including my sister's house. She also shot nine domestic cats, two dogs, both survived, and her husband. Married twenty-one years. Had five kids. One in college, one in prison, three with good jobs—that's Georgie there in the picture on the horse, she's the one in prison. Six-hour operation but husband didn't survive.”

  He paused for breath and risked another look at her. His hand holding the Pad up was turning white and numb with tension.

  Armstrong glanced up at him and Jude saw that fast mind turning what he'd said over and over, already trying to see what she might have to do with it and reaching for the vital clue. At least, he hoped she was.

  He forced his bloodless hand to work and changed the views. He had a gallery of police mugshots, native, white and black, some of them dead ones, naming them as they passed. “These people all exhibited peculiar and undiagnosed mental illnesses in that same week. Their statements and circumstances were all catalogued in detail by officers at the local station, but then confiscated by another FBI unit sent in for investigations. No charges have been brought for eight murders, four attempted murders, one rape, three counts of burglary, twenty-one counts of assault, and at least fifteen other crimes including animal cruelty, vandalism, and incitement to riot. All the suspects here have been arrested and held without trial since two weeks ago Thursday, under the Mental Health Provision. Until the day of that visit though, all these people were absolutely okay. Since their arrests there's been no repeat of the violence and disorientation in any other people in that town. One affected person was a traveller from out of state. He was arrested last Tuesday in Wisconsin for trying to rob graves and was committed to state care indefinitely. No prior indication of any kind of mental or stress-related disorders.”

  Jude met Dr. Armstrong's gaze again, the grey-green stare focused on him with disquieting precision. “I've met him,” he said, careful not to glance away. “In the hospital. He wasn't even able to give his own name. The doctors have no diagnosis. It doesn't fit anything they've ever seen before. I can give you the report. They said his mind was just—scrambled, like someone had stuck a spoon in his head and scooped it around.”

  He didn't think he'd ever met someone so compelling to look at, nor so difficult to read. Even now, when he had seconds left to make his case, he found himself wishing they could have met under other circumstances when he could get to know her.

  “You mean altered at a physical level?” she asked. “Did they scan it?”

  “It's in the report. Yes.” He knew five minutes had to be up. “And there's one other thing, in case this doesn't interest you.” He stumbled through putting the files from his pocket into the Pad and getting them loaded. He wanted her to tell him they were irrelevant. He wanted to see how her face changed when she looked at them, even though he'd have no idea what she was thinking.

  “Here. My sister stole these from the arresting agents. I thought—that is, I was told by my colleague in Washington that you'd know what this is.”

  As the files came up Armstrong took the Pad out of his hands and stared at it. Both sides of her face set like stone. Only her eyes dashed back and forth as she read line after line of the code he hadn't even been able to identify.

  After a second she said, “What colleague in Washington?” Her voice was cold and direct, like a general ordering an assault on a hard target.

  The door locks beeped, to show that they were ready. She didn't move, but paged down the file in slow, regular sections.

  “I can't say.” Jude had thought this over a lot before he came here, knowing she would ask. He'd decided that, if the worst case was true and the files were bad, she couldn't betray what she didn't know.

  “And what made you come here to find me, instead of going to a NervePath expert in America?” She was still reading as she spoke, multitasking, though he had no doubt she was listening to him very closely.

  “I thought it may be a piece of government work. Everyone I could talk to there may be involved. They either wouldn't confirm what it was or they'd know someone had found it out. Usually we're not supposed to tread on the toes of National Security. But this—” He struggled to justify such a huge break with procedure, even to himself. “It's personal. I got your name on a Netsearch. My newspilot chose you as the most likely candidate to help me.”

  “I must have an interesting profile, then,” she said and looked up at him, almost joking. The laughter drained from the right side of h
er face, lingered a little on the left. “This could have you arrested and indefinitely detained right now.” She handed the Pad back. “Did you know that?”

  “It was a chance.”

  She nodded. “And if I help you then you won't be the only one breaking the law. They still kill people for less.”

  There was nothing he could do but wait and watch her. Her gaze didn't break once from his, although her eyes narrowed as she strove to see into his soul. If she said no, then he was out of ideas and he'd have to go home and admit failure. He thought of his sister's face and the red, furious scars that splashed it.

  “I'll need to read this in detail to know whether or not it's responsible for the activities you've mentioned,” Armstrong said after another ten seconds had passed. She jammed her hands in the pockets of her white lab coat, shrugged as if to be rid of the weight of the decision, and keyed the airlock to open the outer door. “Before I do—what are your feelings on this kind of technology? If it were to turn out that your suspicions are right and your government is creating this for military or national use, then what? And what happens to me?”

  It took a second or two for him to realize she had agreed.

  “I was kind of hoping it wouldn't be that,” Jude said slowly and saw her cynical nod at his silly idea. In his relief he was able to grin and say, “You know, you're a very difficult person to talk to when you're not being Jennifer on the emergency line.”

  “Not always,” she said. “Only when I'm being asked to commit treason.” She gave him an oblique glance, kind of shy, he thought, not understanding it.

  “So.” He felt a weight lift from his shoulders and sink right into the centre of his heart. “It's real.” He thought he was going to have to sit down or fall but there were no chairs, only the tough floor.

  “I think we'd better finish this conversation right here,” she said. “Clever of you to pick an airlock. No mikes.” And she inclined her head towards him, conceding the point.

  Jude found he was still smiling at her.

  Natalie looked at Jude carefully and saw someone who had just received a shock. She asked, “Jude's your real name?”

  “Yeah.”

  She nodded slowly. He had started out by telling the truth and taking a risk. The lying had only been a necessity. On the other hand, there were so many unanswered questions that this raised she didn't feel like touching it. She'd surprised herself saying yes—probably because she wanted an excuse to see him again. She could feel the far-reaching consequences of this stupidity twist inside her, as if she was a puppet being tugged by strings from the future, as she said, “Okay. Leave this with me. But I want to know exactly how your sister got hold of it. What she told you it was, what it did, why she thinks so.”

  “You think she might be lying?” Now he was surprised.

  “You don't?” Natalie shook her head in disbelief. “You think people carry this stuff around in the open? No way. Was it in this format when she got it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On a disk like this, or is this a copy?”

  “I assumed…I downloaded it from a machine, some kind of remote control thing like a PocketPad but a bit bigger.”

  “Come with me,” Natalie said. Her pager went off like an epileptic mouse, reminding her that she was supposed to be heading for the conference suite. She switched it off.

  They marched quickly to her office where she took down a worn catalogue of glossy pages from a locked shelf unit. Opening it up to one of the early pages she pointed at a black object, halfway between a Pad and a gun in style, with a keypad and a single-line command screen. She lifted her eyebrows to ask the question. They weren't going to give away information, because aside from the airlocks and wash down facilities in the BSL-4 section, the Clinic was monitored.

  Trying not to notice the effect it had, she leaned close to him so they could whisper.

  “Like that,” he said, his breath touching her face with the scent of peppermints. “What is it?”

  Natalie wasn't immediately able to reply, and not only because she was imagining the breath to be a kind of kiss. It was her turn to experience a shock. All she could see and hear for that second was the Ministry guy saying “out of the question” and she was thinking, How can it be out of the question? If Mappaware's already out in uncontrolled trials somewhere. What the hell are you saying this to me for? How can you sit there and pretend when you're already using this crap, addled, defective version in the real world? Or don't you even know, you dickhead?

  She felt the soft exhalation of Jude's patience against her cheek. She put her lips next to the soft wing of hair over his ear and said, almost noiselessly, “It's a handheld version of the big stuff in our treatment centre. Definitely not for public use.”

  “Who makes it? Is that its serial number?” He asked these questions by pointing.

  She replied by showing him the page in the catalogue and added, “I don't know about that number, I assumed it was the price.”

  “How many?” he asked, waving his fingers.

  She held up five fingers and one thumb, then lifted another finger, not sure.

  He indicated the machine in the picture and did an elaborate shrug —What does it do?

  She looked at him and realized it didn't need a full-on explanation. With a half-smile kindled by self-consciousness and lust she took his head in her hands, fingertips to his temples and face in the old Vulcan mind-meld, hoped he knew the show, and rested her forehead against his. It reads minds.

  The intimacy, no practical need for it beyond her own desire and his permission, had a delicate-as-eggshell quality, a high voltage that made the hair on her head stand up. They stared into one another's eyes. He blinked slowly and checked out her right side, her left side, looking to see which eye she was hiding behind. Natalie could feel his carefully controlled breathing. Another two inches and they would kiss.

  She flinched back, remembering herself, but he'd understood her well enough.

  His expression was growing more serious all the time. Lines had begun to appear on his forehead.

  “And it writes to them,” she added, drawing on his forehead with her finger.

  She doubted he'd know what she wrote, so fast and so vaguely. Kiss me.

  The one good thing about having been institutionalized-mad was that it was a great excuse to use for any moments of real slippage, when the meanings of fantasy began to emerge in the real world. Slippage hadn't happened to her for an eternity. The thrill of making it happen now was a charge so intense she had to turn away in case he saw that she was unable to contain it. She pretended to execute some commands on her desk station.

  As Natalie got her wits back she considered that her information wasn't as impressive as it seemed. Mappaware could just about write Kiss me and anything that wasn't more taxing than the equivalent of Peter and Jane books. It wasn't like a command-code yet. But maybe, from what she'd just read in the airlock, her knowledge was sadly lacking in that department.

  Jude stared at her and at the catalogue page for a second or two, his mouth ajar, and then it closed. He took out his Pad and wrote on the screen, showing the note to Natalie, his face full of concern, “My sister still has it in her bag.” He paused and then quickly scribbled after it, “Do they come fitted with radio-locators?”

  Her pager was hopping mad in her pocket. “I have to go.” For an answer to his question she shrugged, but her expression wasn't very hopeful. He nodded and worry erased what was left as a result of their brief contact.

  With more speed and quiet than she had imagined he'd be capable of he was halfway out the door before she ran up to him and jammed her hand in his overalls pocket, taking the Pad. She expelled the file disk with a flick of her thumb and put it in her lab coat, signing that she'd read it more carefully and call him. He looked at her with misgiving but then nodded.

  On second thought, Natalie was almost sure that every piece of PathSystems equipment came with GPS and could b
e lasered to a bubbly mess from orbit within a range of accuracy of less than a metre, but it didn't seem helpful to say so, and by the look of Jude he had already guessed as much. She followed him far enough to see that he was going okay and not being arrested by security, and then turned back. Behind her own closed door she waited and breathed for thirty seconds, even in and even out. A deep breath is a…

  But at the end of it she didn't feel clean. She felt sick. There were so many unknowns and sudden, nasty traps: he's lying, he's a plant, he's a double agent, a foreign agent, a test from the MoD, or he's telling the truth. But which one? And the physical fact of him had confused her more than she'd liked. Well, that wasn't strictly true. She'd liked that by far the best, which was unprofessional, stupid, and had already got her in trouble.

  Composing herself, Natalie sent a message to the conference room explaining that she would be late by another ten minutes because of a Pad failure. In that time she ought to be able to see what this file was exactly. Although she'd read it in the airlock she'd been so distracted by him she wasn't sure.

  With shaking hands she loaded it into her own Pad and started reading in earnest.

  Dan's second lunch meeting was outside the Clinic, but not far away. It took place over a secure Pad link, and the lack of glamour in its location—a park bench—was more than made up for by the pay. Not that Dan was short of money now, but he knew it was going to take more than a measly few hundred thousand to get rid of Ray's interest in him during the foreseeable future. This job had the added bonus of being legit.

  Shelagh Carter worked for the Defense Directorate as a watchdog, a person who kept an eye on Ministry business from within, making sure there were no unfortunate leaks or sudden departures of key people. Her job title itself was hazy and Dan didn't remember it, but her credentials were impressive and the small good deeds that she asked him to do, keeping the country honest, made Dan feel better after his much less virtuous dealings with Ray Innis.