And as for the hotel they are putting her up in until she can move into the condo they found for her in the east end of the city (“Sorry, we couldn’t find anything closer.”), well, even the American tourists who stay there have a touch of class. Fortunately, Katrijn Verbrugge has a suitable wardrobe — she completely reoutfitted herself in London, which her discreet guardian angels certainly would not have found strange: apart from her UK bank account, of course, she lost everything in “the Troubles,” as they say in the civilized countries. Her job in Professor Brangden’s laboratory, at the University of Witwatersrand, her house in a nice neighbourhood, all her family souvenirs. All her papers and diplomas, except for what she had on her when she fled. No one needs to know that those papers are artistic creations from the shady part of Johannesburg — the shady part of Johannesburg has itself disappeared in the orgies of bombings and counter-bombings by the rival factions, like the government buildings and their databanks.
It takes them five days to reach the capital, along dusty tracks after they leave the forest. In one of the villages where they stop along the way, it’s the television hour. More than half the adults and children are dying of AIDS, or whatever name has been given here to this new plague, and the rest are in not much better shape because of malnutrition and kwashiorkor, but they are all gathered around the blue glow of the TV screen to gaze at the other world. After the reports on a bombing here, a war there, the ritual squabbling at the United Nations, and the latest lurches of the stock exchanges, where the electronic trillions float, virtual and yet critical for those who do not possess them, the news program obligatorily ends on a light note: cryonics, the latest fad for the rich, who get sick in spite of their wealth or who can’t reconcile themselves with getting old, persistent in their belief that immortality will be accessible sometime in the future. Substantial progress since the heroically fraudulent times when they cut off heads since they couldn’t properly preserve the whole body: “a promising new approach using liquid helium instead of nitrogen…”
This is followed by statements from Arnold Brangden, the national leading expert who is always consulted on the topic, and whose research is more or less in the same area, but, notes the professor, with medical objectives that are more serious than those of the Canadian and American “corpsicle” firms.
She listens. No surprise there. More like a kind of inner acceptance, the amused feeling that the universe, as usual, is giving her everything she wants on a silver platter. Now she has a very clear purpose, her path is laid out for her, leading from Johannesburg to Montréal, by way of the University of Witwatersrand.
Father Nguyen (he asked to be called that, and not “Doctor”) can’t keep from chattering to fill the long bumpy hours; so she pretends to learn English with him, a few words then short phrases (the differences, once again, are minimal from the version she learned during the last transition). The priest decides to take her to the British Embassy rather than the American: who knows, her facility with the language might be related to her lost identity? She doesn’t try to give him the slip. Any embassy will do, in fact. In the beginning, she always tries to keep a very low profile, be invisible. She prefers to avoid anything that would make her show up on the radar of the police and the other intelligence agencies — biometric data, photos, wanted notices. But every time she has been unable to avoid it, and it has become almost systematic during her most recent transitions, she has had to admit that embassies were an ideal resource. While they try to find you an identity, they house you and feed you, with an often genuine sympathy for your difficult situation — and you can quietly get your bearings, decide what steps to take next, find the necessary contacts and, when the time comes, disappear into the woodwork.
They find no one “for the moment” who matches her description and has been reported missing, either in South Africa or in neighbouring countries; but, they assure her, they will cast the net wider: England, Australia, North America. Nor do they find a double or twin, which isn’t surprising either: this hasn’t happened yet, anywhere, so why would it be different all of a sudden? Meanwhile, more than a month has gone by, which she has made good use of, miscellaneous reading, radio, television: her brain, trained to synthesize all kinds of data, tells her that South Africa is a powder keg ready to explode. One year, maybe two. There will be no Bridge in this country. But just enough time to establish her new identity. As the weeks pass, she “discovers” an interest for and knowledge in scientific laboratory work, physics, chemistry; she carefully feeds this information to Karine Langstadder, the agent in charge of her file, who, of course, sees this as an encouraging sign and urges her to pursue this likely link with her old identity. Three more months elapse, however, without any results regarding that identity. It is time for Jane Doe to rejoin society, they decide at the embassy. They suggest she choose a name for herself. She doesn’t know the name of the little village where Father Nguyen picked her up, but the mission was in another village called Maasbruggen: she suggests “Karine Maasbruggen.” Karine Langstadder smiles, touched.
They check that no other person with that name exists, they issue her papers, and they throw her a little goodbye party. With the help of the embassy, she goes through the necessary steps to register as a student in Witwatersrand, in the department of biophysics where Arnold Brangden works. She shines quickly enough to be recruited by the professor. From then on, all she has to do is wait, while preparing her exit. One year later, three weeks after Mandela’s assassination, the capital is convulsed in more and more bloody fighting, Witwatersrand and its data banks are in ruins, poor Brangden has even been killed, but one “Katrijn Verbrugge” — the family name is common to thousands of Afrikaners — is on a plane to Lusaka, one of the last flights out before the airport is completely shut down. Carrying in her pocket, dated one month earlier, a glowing letter of recommendation signed by the professor, or almost. Everything is going according to plan.
Exactly five minutes of banal pleasantries — Carol Cooper’s internal clock is as good as a Voyager’s. Then they get down to serious business. She quickly leafs through the contract while the director of Cryovital runs through the clauses with her, going through the motions, completely unnecessary, but it’s standard practice. In a way that is obvious, she does not read it and hurries to sign it at the places indicated — a poor little lost thing, still in shock, happy just to have found a proper job in this big friendly country that … of which… She knows that the whole arsenal is in place, tight as a drum, confidentiality clauses, intellectual property, all kinds of security requirements. But this contract means nothing. The final result will be the same. In Witwatersrand, she hardly had any problems ensuring that the results of her work, her “lucky” finds, were stolen by dear professor Brangden, thus guaranteeing her anonymity within the “research team.” She let it show through in the letter of recommendation: Katrijn Verbrugge is ideal material for a private company, a brilliant researcher with no head for business. The more they believe that, the less wary they will be of her.
Once the contract is signed and the ritual handshakes exchanged, with smiles, Carol Cooper hands her over to Matt Frölich, who is not exactly the head of security as she had thought, but almost: supervisor of the “Freya Project.” Now that she is the exclusive property of Cryovital Ltd., he will confer upon her all the outward signs that allow her to circulate freely among the herd.
They don’t pull any punches — could Cryovital be the cover for a Canadian government project, or even an American one, since the big brother to the south has free rein here? Fingerprints, retinal scans, DNA… She submits with complete docility — including, of course, undergoing a polygraph test, to establish her baseline, which doesn’t phase her for a second, she’s done that before. She sometimes helped things along a little, but during the South African demolition derby, any relationship between Karine Maasbruggen and Katrijn Verbrugge went completely up in smoke, and the identity of the l
atter runs deep enough so that no alarms are set off in the minds of people who have no reason to be suspicious of her and to whom she will give no reasons to be suspicious.
Once duly identified, labelled, entered in the databases, and provided with all the keys, passes and necessary codes, she allows herself to be led towards the holy of holies, the research section where she will meet the rest of the team.
The elevator plunges downwards. For a long time. Through many basement floors. A little splinter of uneasiness, quickly plucked out. There are always good, perfectly logical, and even scientific reasons, to install deep underground what you want to be secure and discreet research facilities. She reviews what she knows about her future colleagues. According to the information she has been able to collect, there are no big names on this team. Cryovital is doing research on very low temperatures for strictly medical purposes, but the equipment it has obtained recently, and the fact that in the last six months they have hired a half dozen promising new graduates in physics and biology, were enough to put the company in her sights. The other possible company, Lifeline Inc., is directly involved in the fabrication and management of corpsicles, but it’s an American company, just a little too much in the pockets of the party in power, where security must be a lot tighter. As things are at present, it is easier to take refuge in Canada. In any case, Cryovital’s “Freya Project” — they haven’t explained it to her in detail yet, they’re keeping that for dessert, evidently — has gone beyond the exploratory stage. She is arriving at just the right time to nudge the research in the required direction.
The elevator opens with an almost silent hiss. Precision-lit corridors, neutral colours, hushed atmosphere. One door after another flashes and slides open with a click for Frölich’s card. Sometimes they walk past walls of glass behind which silhouettes in white or green smocks work. Everything looks very familiar. Too familiar, but she refuses to dwell on that. This is not the first time she has gone through a similar place and it will not be the last. One more door, and she immediately sees the metal sphere, in the center of the room. More than three metres in diameter, massive, firmly bolted to its wide base frame into which disappear hoses, tubes and electrical cables. This sphere appears to be very advanced already. Nothing yet to produce the magnetic field. They must have read Brangden’s last paper though. But that’s obviously why they hired her. Slight amusement — preferable to the little step back she still had to suppress when she entered.
There are half a dozen people in the room — emerging from behind the sphere and coming in from small adjoining labs to meet the new recruit. Three variously exotic, very young women — one Asian, one Amerindian, one likely Jamaican, they’re ecumenical at Cryovital — a big gangly nerd, little ant head under a curly mane, thick, horn-rimmed glasses, a pudgy guy with an unruly mop of hair, in his fifties, filthy white smock, with the look they used to call the “nutty professor” one or two transitions back, one of those inventors of fantastic gadgets that are sometimes there just when you need them. And a young man barely in his thirties who walks over to her, his hand already extended. He is tall, broad-shouldered, dark and radiant, very brown skin, black hair, piercing eyes, big smile. “Jorge Dayar,” says Frölich, who then introduces the others one by one.
She’s barely listening to him, doesn’t matter, her absolute memory already contains their names and everything she needs to know about them. She shakes hands, smiles, certain that her face betrays nothing. She’s not surprised, no, she’s not surprised, in a few seconds she’ll even tell herself she was expecting it, yes, still this generosity of the universe with every transition, she’ll tell herself it’s normal, that it’s okay. Whatever his name, his age, it’s him. Again. Always. Of course.
“What time is it?”
Pretext. She could look herself, he left his watch on the nightstand on her side of the bed. But she deliberately accentuates her satiated languor, to make the moment last longer. Because maybe it’s the last time, because maybe tomorrow they will be dead. Mustn’t think that way — she won’t tell him, he would scold her and he’d be right. Tomorrow will instead be the beginning of a new life, and not only for the two of them, because tomorrow they will have destroyed the ICC. But, after the others left, that afternoon, when he pulled her towards him, when they made love, and again, and again, she thought “vigil of arms,” so as not to think “funeral vigil,” images floated in her mind, knights or priests lying with their arms stretched out in a cross on the cold stone in front of an altar, and it was really that, he on her, she on him, like an ultimate sacrament they were administering to each other.
He leans half across her to look at his watch. She takes advantage of the position to kiss his chest, squeeze his bum, as smooth as a teenage boy’s in spite of the fact he’s almost forty, sniff his smell, a mix of sweat and sex, and, residual hints of his cologne — he put on cologne, today: just like him! — those hints of vanilla and cinnamon that always make her hungry for his skin. He smiles above her, leaning on his two outstretched arms: “Time to go.”
Without exchanging another word, they get up, dress, gather their gear, check the equipment one last time, stow it in the van, and set out in the traffic. End of rush hour, it’s getting quieter, curfew soon. They drive out on the north shore embankment towards the east, passing the massive oval of the ICC complex and its strange slanting tower rising like the prow of a ship under the little circular ring that crowns it. The sun is setting. On their right, in the dulling light, there are silvery glints on the river. A light mist begins to rise up from the Longueuil Shoals, masking and unveiling one by one the half-drowned carcasses of old buildings, illuminating then extinguishing orange and pink glints in the broken windows, on the bricks that the vegetation have not yet covered. Then the car fills with the heavy smells of the recycling plants in spite of the air conditioning.
She doesn’t want to think too much about the crossing they will have to make underwater. Their wet suits will protect them from the pollution, at least what is floating visibly in the water of the river. As for the rest, the radioactive mud and mutant creatures as big as a bus, Egon just frowns and says: “Urban legends, Katie.” Then adds, deliberately spoiling the effect: “At worst, creatures as big as a car.” And laughs at her worried expression. They have something to defend themselves with, in any case.
The traffic has thinned to almost nothing by the time they reach the official boundary of the city — only half an hour till curfew. Not a single patrol in sight though. After all the trouble they’d gone to preparing all those false papers and repeating their cover story dozens of times! They take a narrow service road that leads down to the river along the embankment and stop the van, lights off, near one of the big drainage pipes. It’s secured, of course, but it’s not the one they’ll be going through.
And now, the hard part: waiting, in the camouflaged van between the pipe and the twisted but leafy willow that has stubbornly decided to grow there. Egon tilts back his seat and closes his eyes. She does the same, one hand reaching over to his thigh. She envies his ability to sleep anywhere, no matter what the circumstances. She can’t do it. She surprises herself though; he’s the one who wakes her up. Almost midnight. She remembers, she shrugged her shoulders when they decided the time. Why this stupid fetish? He doesn’t take offence: “We’re programmed to sleep at night, Katie. Reflexes not so sharp, distractions, all that — especially in places where we feel perfectly safe.”
No doubt because she made a sacrifice to biology with her little nap, she feels particularly alert.
They put on their gear, and tether the rest of the equipment in waterproof bags to their belts, and dive in. Low tide, they don’t have to go very deep. And no monsters, but heavy, dark water barely penetrated by the light from their headlamps. Only about fifty metres in all. To the old submerged pipe.
The grate is heavy, but not secured and, after being worked on during a previous dive, it open
s easily. About a hundred metres more, to the point where the two networks join above the level of the river, and they can get out of their wetsuits. Terribly noisy inside, in spite of all their precautions. And it stinks. God only knows what came and died here, and how it got this far — at least it wasn’t a skunk! Egon has planned for this and hands her a stick with a strong menthol smell that she rubs on her upper lip, even though it’s not really very effective in neutralizing the stench of sewage and rot. “Breathe through your mouth,” he says when he sees the face she’s making. He secures his backpack on his shoulders, and she does the same, then they activate their biolumes and head up the echoing pipe. After about a hundred metres, they’re past the maximum stench zone, and the menthol ointment is now a sufficient barrier; and as long as they follow the main pipe, they can walk without bending over. From time to time, Egon checks the map — they have to be sure not to miss the fork that will take them to the west and the ICC. Two months of cautious research just to draw up this map from bits of data scattered in the nooks and crannies of an old municipal data bank that had not been properly purged. And then six months to assemble all the equipment.
And here they are.
They’re making good progress. Since they haven’t run into any patrols along the way, they’re almost half an hour ahead of schedule. That means a longer wait for the diversion created by the rest of the team. “They’ll be above, how will we know?” He smiled: “Any kind of incident in the security perimeter sets off a general alarm.”
Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction Page 11
