Ilkay took her hand. “Don’t worry about the mix-up. It will be … interesting. Something new. Okay—not exactly new, but something I have not done for a long time. And I’m just so glad that you came, despite everything.”
“What do you mean?”
Ilkay’s eyes widened a bit, and Regina saw she had slipped, had revealed something not to be known outside the siloes of the classified highrises that crunched the world’s ugliest layers of data. No wonder they didn’t let her out much: she may have been one of the world’s greatest security analysts, but she was a clumsy liar.
Ilkay recovered and continued. “You know, this really is going to be fun. This guy even looks a little dangerous. God only knows what he’s been put up to while we weren’t around.” Ilkay grinned wickedly and ran a nail along the inside of Regina’s ropy wrist. “I can pretend you’ve traveled through time all this way from Pylos to be with me…”
“I guess that, in a sense, I have.”
At that moment the muezzin’s voice called from atop one of the minarets. Cutting clearly through the rain, the muezzin’s trained voice, a rich contralto, carried so commandingly through the air that it almost seemed to come from speakers, despite the laws in Istanbul forbidding any amplification of the human voice. Both Ilkay and Regina paused until she had finished her call, staring at each other, cow-eyed as a couple of teenagers on a first date. Like it was every year, and just as exciting and good. When the muezzin had finished her song, Ilkay caught the eye of a young waiter and made a sign in the air for the check. The young man nodded, unsmiling. The bent, friendly old man who had been serving their table was nowhere to be seen.
When the check came, Regina saw she had been charged for two teas.
“Sorry,” she said to the young man. “The other waiter said that I would be only charged for one of these…”
The young man shook his head. “You spilled the first one. You’re responsible. You pay.”
Regina began her protest. “Look, I’m happy to pay, but…”
“No, you look.” The young man spat back at her. “I don’t care what he said. You blanks think you can do anything you want. Spill a tea with your clumsy hands and not pay, forget to tip us because we won’t even recognize you next time. You pay for what you took, like anyone else. Like the real people here.”
Ilkay interrupted. “It’s no problem. We’ll pay. You can save the speech.”
Stunned by the young waiter’s hostility, Regina felt the pure, chemical haze of rage rising in her body. This was new—a feedback of violence that seemed embedded directly in the muscle and bone, a sudden awareness of her physical power, and a desire to use it so strong that it distorted thought. She wanted to smash a fist into the young waiter’s face. Or a chair.
Grasping Regina’s knee under the table to restrain her, Ilkay waved her palm over the check. “It’s done, and a regulation tip for you, as well.”
The young man shrugged. “I deserve more, putting up with you people every day.” He muttered something else as they got up to leave. Regina did not catch it, but Ilkay’s cheeks flushed.
As they were walking away, Regina turned and looked back at the terrace of the little café where they had met for countless years. The young waiter stood, arms crossed, watching them. As Regina caught his eye he turned his head and, keeping his eyes locked on hers, spat on the sidewalk.
Ilkay squeezed her hand. “Come on. We’ve got…”
Regina interrupted her. “What did he say, that last thing?”
“It’s not important.”
“Tell me.”
Ilkay smiled gently. “You’re going to have to get used to that male blank. You’ve never been in one before, have you?”
Regina shook her head. “No.”
“You need to ride on top of it, the way you would a horse. Don’t let its adrenaline surges and hormones get the better of you, or the feedback will distort your decision making. Cloud your thinking.”
Regina shook her head, as if to clear it. “Yeah, I can feel that. But what did he say?”
Ilkay tugged at her hand, and they walked in the direction of the Hagia Sophia. In this early hour, there was almost no one on the sidewalks and the squares. The figures that they saw, all locals going about their own business, drifted in a clinging mist that did not quite turn to rain. “I’ll tell you,” Ilkay said, “but only if you promise, then, to concentrate on me. On us, and our time here.”
Regina stopped walking, gathered herself. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I got carried away. It’s embarrassing.”
Ilkay punched her arm, playfully. “Well, don’t forget to add this to your simulation. You can bet those men on Sphacteria were feeling exactly the same adrenaline surges, and it was having the same distorting effect on their decision making.”
Regina grinned. “I was thinking the same thing. Always the analysts, the two of us.”
Ilkay pulled them along toward the Hagia Sophia’s entrance. Its heavily buttressed mass loomed. “He said, ‘why don’t you dead just stay dead?’”
Regina felt her teeth actually grit themselves. “I earned this. We both did. We’ve worked hard, both of us. We spent lifetimes sharpening our skill sets, making ourselves valuable, making real contributions to science. I’m not some trust-fund postmortem cruising around in a speedboat off Corsica. We competed fairly for our places in the highrises. We worked for this. And … who do they think keeps them safe? And who spends all their money here, pays for the maintenance of these places, keeps their restaurants open? And…” She trailed off helplessly.
“I know, I know,” said Ilkay. “Now forget about it, and let’s go visit a church that has stood for over two thousand years, and let the temporary things be temporary.”
* * *
The house Ilkay had rented for them, one of the ancient wooden homes along the Bosporus, was like a wedding cake fresh from a refrigerator—all white paint thick as frosting, china-fine detail, silken folds, and chilled from top to bottom. The heating system was apologetic but insufficient. They built a fire in the master bedroom’s fireplace, found wool blankets in a trunk, ordered a very late lunch, and clumsily explored the possibilities of their new configurations. Then, increasingly less clumsily.
By the time lunch was delivered, they were exhausted and starving. In near silence, wearing their blankets like woolen superhero capes, they spread fig jam on fresh bread and watched sleet spin down over the Bosporus and spatter slush against the windowpanes. Out on the roiling chop of the strait, a fisherman in a small rusty boat and black rubber rain gear determinedly attempted to extract some protein from the water. His huge black beard, run through with gray streaks, jutted from under his sou’wester, with seemingly only the axe blade of his nose between.
Regina dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “It’s amazing to think that these people have lived in a nearly identical way for centuries. Technology changes some things, like maybe fish-locating sonar systems and nearly perfect weather forecasting—but for the fisherman who actually has to get the fish on the hook, in any weather that comes, not much has changed.”
“The physical things—the actual moving of matter around—are immutable,” agreed Ilkay. “As we have been experimenting with all morning.” She grinned, carefully applying fig jam. “And that’s why, I think, these weeks are so important. They remind us of the base—the essentials, the substance of life and the world. Not that what we do isn’t important. Not that who we are usually isn’t real…”
Regina finished the thought: “But it’s just so abstract. Immaterial. Not without consequence, but…”
“But without immediacy.” Ilkay interjected. Then, after a long pause … “Regina, I miss you terribly. All year. And I cram everything I can into these short few weeks. And every year, I am afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Afraid that next year, you will not be waiting for me at the café. These few weeks, always in winter … they are everything to me. They aren’t a vacation �
�� they are the sum and total of everything of meaning in my life. It’s not that … it’s not that I don’t value my work, or think it saves lives. I haven’t lost faith in the project. We watch over a troubled world, in my highrise … a world cruel people are constantly trying to tear to pieces … but none of that work seems to matter nearly as much as the moment I see you again. Sometimes, I feel my work is eating away at who I am. It’s like watching a shadow underwater: you know it is just seaweed, this shadow, a harmless mass writhing in the current, nothing to worry about. But what if it is a shark? A shadow with teeth and volition? The more you stare at the shadow, straining to make out its outline, the more certain you become that it is a shark—until you convince even yourself. This constant watching—it eats away at your feeling of security. It eats away, I think, at your sanity. And I’ve been afraid to tell you, because I feel as if once it’s said, it will shatter all this … this causal sort of … easy feeling between us.”
Regina put an arm around her. Her thicker arms were increasingly feeling as if they were her own. She pulled Ilkay toward her. “This was never casual or easy for me, Ilkay. And I’ll always be at the café. Every single year.”
* * *
The weather did not improve after lunch. The Bosporus swelled and churned, and the rain came down in columns. There was time to sit long over lunch and talk, and to lay under the heavy covers of the four-poster and talk. Dinner was brought in a dripping container, and they tipped the young woman who brought it, soaked to the skin, double for her efforts. The sun set, and on the strait the lights of small boats bobbed in the dark between the chop of the water and the sky. Just after 8:00, the door buzzer jangled. They had been having cups of tea in front of the fire. Regina saw Ilkay immediately tense, like a cat hearing a dog bark in the distance.
The man on the doorstep was in a long, gray raincoat, black rubber boots, rain pants. Under his sou’wester an abglanz turned his face into a swirl of shimmering, ever-changing abstract patterns. In a tech-limited city, the effect was particularly jarring.
“Good evening,” the composite voice said to Regina. “I apologize for the interruption of your timeshare. I hope to take up as little of your time as possible. I must speak to Ilkay Avci. This is, unfortunately, a matter of urgency.” His credentials drifted across the shimmer of the abglanz. Istanbul Protectorate Security High Commission.
Standing in the corridor behind Regina Ilkay said, “Come in, inspector. Hang up those wet things.”
As he did so, Regina noticed a port wine birthmark on the back of his hand. It was large, spreading across his wrist and up to the first knuckles of his fingers in a curious, complicated pattern, like a map of unknown continents. They should have given him an abglanz to cover that, she thought. I would know him again anywhere. They went into the living room.
“I apologize,” the inspector said to Regina, “but due to the classified nature of this conversation, I will have to ask you to wear this momentarily. Once you are seated comfortably.” He produced the slender metal cord of the scrambler from the pocket of his shirt. No matter what they did to that thing (this one was a cheerful yellow) it still looked like a garrote. Regina settled into a chair and let him place it around her neck. He clipped it into place gently, like a man fastening the clasp of his wife’s necklace.
She was in Gulhane Park, at the peak of the Tulip Festival. The flowers—so large and perfectly formed they seemed almost plastic, were everywhere, arranged in brightly colored plots, swirling patterns of red, white, orange, maroon, violet, and cream. A few other tourists roamed the paths of Gulhane, but the park was, for the most part, empty. It was a cool spring day, smelling of turned earth. It was an Istanbul she had not seen—had not been able to afford to see—since the austerity, so many years ago now, had reduced her highrise’s benefit levels. But, she thought, bending to cup the bloom of a Chinese orange tulip with a cream star at its center, what I gained when I lost this season was Ilkay. And that is enough to replace all of this. Though—just for a moment—it was good to feel the warm edge of summer hiding in the air, to close her eyes and let the sun bleed through her eyelids.
She wondered how wide the extent of the simulation was. Did it extend beyond the walls of Gulhane? The face of a passing tourist was glitchy, poorly captured, the woman’s features wavered. No, it would be only the park, a tiny island of flowers, green paths and good weather. But did it extend as far as the Column of the Goths? She would like to see that ancient object, surrounded by flowers in the spring. She began to walk further into the park. A crow glitched from one branch to another in a tree just beginning to leaf, its caw jagged with digital distortion.
She was back in the chair. The inspector stood over her, putting the scrambler back into his pocket. “Give it a moment before trying to stand. Just in case. And again, my apologies for any inconvenience. The Istanbul Protectorate Security High Commission thanks you and will apply a small amount in contemporary lira to your accounts for the inconvenience. It isn’t much, I am afraid—but enough for a good meal on the Galata Bridge for the two of you.”
Ilkay was standing at the fire, warming her hands. “The courtesy is much appreciated, Inspector. At a later date I will review this interaction and give it the full 5-star rating.”
Once the inspector was gone, they both found they were too exhausted even to watch the fire burn down to its embers. They went to bed early, sliding into sheets as cold as the skin of ice on a river. Regina asked nothing about Ilkay’s conversation with the Inspector. It was one of the rules of their relationship, unspoken between them. Sometimes, things about Ilkay’s work were offered up, but Regina never asked for them.
“Perhaps next year,” Ilkay whispered in the dark, “we should meet somewhere else. Maybe it is time for a change.”
“What happened?” And now Regina felt the rise of anger in her. Somewhere else? Where? It was not enough that she had no contact with Ilkay during the year, only these few weeks when they could see one another—now they had to intrude on this as well, eroding even this small island of peace—as if it were too much to ask to have even this one thing. The face of the young waiter at the café rose up in her mind, spitting on the pavement.
“Nothing.” Ilkay said. “Nothing at all. Tensions, or rumors of tensions. That’s all it ever is, it seems. Like the shadow in the water. It’s almost always seaweed. It’s almost never a shark. But my job is to watch the shadows. And I’m tired, Regina. So very tired of being afraid. Why can’t they let me at least have this? These few weeks. Haven’t I earned a little peace in my life?”
* * *
The morning of the fifth day was bright and cold. The sky was opalescent. The mist that had clung to everything had risen to become a single, thin sheet of gauze, shrouding sun from earth. Under the Galata Tower, huddled beneath the glowing hood of a terrace heater, they drank black tea and coffee and had breakfast—honey and butter, warm bread and white cheese, tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs—and lingered over the meal. There were other blanks at the café, together and alone, smiling and laughing or quietly reading newspapers. Real newspapers, on real paper: one of the great joys of Istanbul.
The blanks sat on the terrace, oblivious to the cold, with only the heaters preserving them from the chill. The café’s waiter, on the other hand, stood inside the café, watching his patrons from behind glass, continually rubbing his hands together for warmth. He was a middle-aged man moving toward old age, his thin hair combed straight back on his scalp. The cold, thought Regina, was different for him—lasting months out of the year, coming too soon and leaving far too late. For the blanks on his terrace, it was a joy to experience it, after their highrised, simulated year. Who were they all? Number-crunchers, of course, of one kind or another, moving data around. There were pure mathematicians among them, financial analysts, scientists and astronomers, astrophysicists and qualitative historical analysts. And those, like Ilkay and herself, working in more esoteric fields.
Regina had never thought de
eply about the difference between the blanks and Istanbul’s permanent residents, the “locals,” as they were called by some—but not by Regina, who liked to think of herself as a local, liked to think of this city as her city. Hadn’t she earned that, by returning here every year for so long? Over the last few days she and Ilkay had “made their rounds,” as they called it—despite the bad weather, they had visited all of their old places—eating fresh fish on the Galata Bridge (subsidized by the Istanbul Protectorate Security High Commission), walking the land wall that had protected, for a thousand years, an empire that had been destroyed well over a thousand years ago. On the third evening, from an open-topped ferry crossing the strait to the Asian side, they had watched the interstellar array on one of Istanbul’s distant hills fire the consciousness of another brave, doomed volunteer into the stars, riding a laser into failure and certain death. The blanks on the ferry had applauded. The locals had hardly seemed to notice.
But it was different for them. The waiter blew into his hands and watched his patrons with no expression on his face at all as they laughed and spread honey on their bread. He simply wanted to be warm, wanted the spring to come. Time moved along—and the faster, the better. The blanks were his economy, providing him with a living. In winter, the tables were half empty. In the summer, they would be full. All the tables would be full. The blanks would take the city over, ferreting out even the most local of the cafés, the most “authentic” places to eat. Raising prices, elbowing out the city’s residents, who would retreat deeper into the alleys and back streets. And the interstellar program ground on, engaging the imaginations of thousands, employing a hundred highrises, but without any news or results or breakthroughs for generations. Its promise was now ignored by the majority of the five billion, whose main task was just to live, here and now, not to worry about homes beyond the stars.
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