by Carl Neville
She has had her time and still has access to her pleasures, and as for the problem of the generations, well, perhaps this truly is the last one and so, one cannot have everything, and so she is reconciled, she tells herself, except for perhaps, this little thing, except for perhaps, that.
An Interview with Robert Gillespie: Extract 1
Verona: You stayed in contact with Crane after?
Gillespie: Aye not really no. He withdrew, almost completely, too much attention for his condition of course, and the music. He was quite a withdrawn character y’know. Then the book arrived…
Verona: Resolution Way?
Gillespie: Well that was a late surprise, brought him back to everyone’s attention. All Crane did, really, from this perspective, was pilfer, copy, shuttle across aesthetic forms from one set of worlds to another. In this sense he wasn’t a visionary or whatever they want to say about him. He was, excuse the phrase, a trans-dimensional mercantilist.
Verona. I need to pick up a copy.
Gillespie: I am in there you know, not even a change of name. Interesting, it’s been popular because you know it isn’t another gloss on the inevitability of the workers seizing the wheel of the world and a paean to the historic destiny of the masses and all that.
Verona: Did you…?
Gillespie: We still have a wee bit too much of all that for my taste, to be frank.
Verona: I see. Do you have anything of Crane’s that might be unavailable. A private collection?
Gillespie: No, no. Don’t you know we don’t have private things anymore? Everything goes into the public domain.
Verona: So everything is up on the Urkive or in the library system?
Gillespie: Aye.
Verona: So, what about the Field Recordings?
Gillespie: Well, now that’s a can of worms you’re opening there (laughs)…
Barrow
Barrow has proposed himself as the one who will meet with Bewes’s immediate family, break the news. First the grandson, Dominic, then the widow, Jennifer.
Barrow nods to the security camera, swipes in, sees there are scanners hastily erected next to the stairs and the lift. He stands between the two sides until it beeps its approval and the lift descends. The lift smells of drink and he feels a little saliva rise in the back of his throat, touches the flask full of tea in his coat pocket. It is important that he’s got through this period of hiatus, he himself doesn’t even think of it as a retirement anymore, without pills or booze, just Rose and Frith, a well-balanced diet and exercise: he never was one for the drink or the pills anyway really, he thought they were a symptom of despair, not an antidote to it. He taps at Bewes’s door, receives an instant, yeee-ssss, yes. The man stands up from behind his desk and extends his hand — he’s tall, in a greyish-purple suit, exceptional tailoring even by the PRB’s standards, a dark and handsome face, the eyes’ intensity undercut by the openness of his expression.
Tea? The house Special T or?
No, no, Barrow smiles. I prefer to work unassisted these days.
As do I.
I assume this is connected to my grandfather.
The autopsy has revealed some irregularities.
Exposure of some kind?
More simple than that. He was poisoned. XV2.
I see.
And so it’s become a murder investigation, obviously. And along with the break-in, well it has become rather large scale now.
My god, I see. What can this department do to help? I’m officially on leave. Bereavement. Only came in to tidy up a few things. He stands and moves to the window. The Americans? Domestic? I would hate to think domestic, after all the old man did for the people of these isles, he says.
America, we think. We think your house guests may be involved.
Who? He turns, looks incredulous. Tom? Tom, I have known for years, he is the mildest, he… unless he’s been got to.
He has been on an exchange visit. We think the girl Verona is also heavily implicated. We need to get them; we also need the names of anyone who was at the house that night.
Easily provided.
There were further irregularities at the airport. Verona hasn’t been fully scanned.
I see. How was that facilitated? Those systems should be impregnable.
We think it was from within the department, somewhere in SSF4, we assume.
That’s a vast domain to cover. Do you have the manpower?
Frankly, no. Not at this stage. I have applied up chain. We need to inform your grandmother, search the house. Do you want to break the news to her? We have some excellent, highly trained people.
Perhaps professionals are better.
We have those professionals accessible to you too, Barrow says, and Dominic waves the idea away, is pensive for a second, then looks up, takes a deep breath, half smiles.
And of course, we need to find Verona and Tom.
My understanding, he says, is that they have gone out to the farm.
The Team
Only you are here from the team? she asks. Tereza is a little more short-tempered than usual this morning, Abhishek can’t help but notice. Perhaps she has been drinking. He would voice his concern over her health and ability to process information, the effects of alcohol on the working memory, but she knows all these things already, and so he keeps his observations to himself for the moment.
How can we… how are we supposed to assemble back-up teams when everyone is so involved in the Games and no one wants to come in and join us? She lowers her voice. On the way in I saw a big group of PCSDF operatives, Russians, sitting around downstairs, for the second day running, why can’t we use them?
Put in a request.
I have, she says. And they told me at the moment they were looking at how they could be deployed. I mean…, she says as she starts to tap out a message into her Passocon. Where is Barrow? He should be taking responsibility for organising this. It’s not my job to make these decisions. And Katja?
Abhishek shrugs. Barrow has her working on something I suppose he thinks is important.
Do you think they are…? Do you think their relationship is more than professional?
You sense something?
She sighs. I don’t know, I don’t know, she says. I know we need more people. Lewis, where is she?
Well, he smiles, you know Lewis needs to be given free range really.
Very nice to be given that, but some people need to do the nuts and bolts, she says. We can’t all be Winter Academy visionaries chasing our mystical insights. Someone needs to organize a search and arrest of real-life suspects, she says.
Tereza
Post-Bureaucratic Socialism, that was what they were all promised. She remembers that phrase from when she was just a child, her father saying it with a certain relish. Well!
She sighs, send in a request form is the message that has come back from her initial request for a crew to detain the suspects, typical. She sends another message back asking which form they require and, having so far received nothing, she goes into the next cubicle and stands in the doorway until Abhishek looks up, she thinks a little reluctantly, from his Passocon.
SSF4! she says, they want everything done with the system and it’s so slow. They want a request form and I don’t know where it is. I don’t know why I have to take on the responsibility for organising a request for an arrest, it’s hardly my area, this is typical of—
Would you like me to show you where it is on the system?
She sighs. Well, yes.
It’s in the templates section.
Templates? Why is it in there?
All the forms you need are in there. In the SSF4 sub-folder.
My role descriptor says I need to do a daily S.A.A.R. report, where is that?
That’s in templates: S.A.A.R., they are in cross-departmental reports.
How am I supposed to know that? I have had no training.
Abhi nods. Well if you have any questions, ask me.
The scre
en keeps flashing up “action needed”, she says.
Click the little button at the top of the insert to dismiss it for thirty minutes. You can only do that a certain number of times before the system locks up though, and you can only address the action that you have been delaying.
It’s not like this for SSF3, she says, we have very clear roles, very fixed workloads and expectations.
Well SSF2 is by its nature more fluid, requires a little more lateral thinking and spontaneity, Abhi says.
Are you saying I can’t think laterally?
No not at all, just that expectations between roles might need adjusting a little.
A pause.
Well thank you for your offer of help, but I think I will be fine. I’ll try to be more lateral and spontaneous, then I won’t have to bother you so much.
Tereza no, I…, he starts to say, but she has already turned back to her own cubicle, where she sees there has still been no response and decides to make a video call. She sits repeatedly clicking the end of her pen until it’s answered by a middle-aged man with very baggy eyes.
I don’t know how to make an official request, she says, but we need to make an arrest, high level.
We have seen your message, the colleague says.
What’s the manpower situation at the moment?
Most of our capacity has been absorbed by the Games themselves.
We need a reallocation for an arrest, she says. Good she made a call, maybe now they are getting somewhere.
We can ask, the man from personnel says.
Ask?
We are moving toward a purely voluntary and co-operative model in most security matters. It’s hard to get people in to perform certain functions. Most of the old full-timers have retired by now.
We must have some trained and expert personnel.
Well if you want those you will have to submit a request, he says as S.A.A.R. REPORT ACTION NEEDED flashes up at her and she clicks the button that sends it back to sleep. So we can submit it to SSF1.
Why can’t I just submit it myself?
That’s not the protocol, he says.
Not the protocol, well. She knows why that is, so they can filter out anything that SSF1 can’t be bothered addressing.
Well I think this is ridiculous, she says, and sees the man is a little taken aback.
I can only say — he begins, and she enjoys a little burst of satisfaction as she cuts the video link halfway through his response.
Katja
First she is being tied up in admin tasks when Barrow could have brought someone in from SSF4 to do routine database work that he either doesn’t know how to do or isn’t prepared to do himself, and now at the other end of the spectrum she has to go and explain to Jennifer Bewes that her husband has been poisoned and oversee the search of the premises. She has had her training in related matters but doesn’t know again why someone with greater expertise has not been drafted in; certainly anywhere else in the Co-Sphere they would have followed designated roles much more carefully. She understands they are stretched with the Games, but what about all the Co-Sphere manpower at their disposal? Perhaps Barrow has requested it but been told no one is available. It does seem a little, well, improvised compared to what she is used to, the PRB is not exactly in alignment with the rest of the Co-Sphere there it seems.
She reads Jennifer Bewes’s public profile on the ROD, feels more than a little intimidated by it, rehearses what she will say and as they pull up outside the house she tries to anticipate the range of Jennifer Bewes’s responses and how she might best address them. She signals to the others to stay in the car. Barrow, she senses, is in her earpiece, open channel, tapping in and accessing the camera on her lapel, the patch sends a tiny dose of Dev into her system and soothes her nerves, sharpens her focus as she approaches the door. She composes herself then presses the bell and is relieved when a young man answers. This must be Dominic Bewes.
I have informed my grandmother, he says with a sympathetic smile, he can detect her tension perhaps. I thought it was best.
We still need to search the premises.
Of course, he says and steps to one side as SSF3 file in from the car, devices in hand and masks on. Even as they come down the drive she can hear the detectors clicking.
They pick up on infinitesimally small traces, Dominic says, don’t be alarmed. She blushes slightly, annoyed at having to be reassured when she is supposed to be taking control of the situation.
Yes, she says, sounds defensive, excuse me, her ROD buzzing as the team head up the stairs. It’s Barrow requesting a patch through to the team’s lapel cameras. She facilitates as Dominic says, Well, I’ll go and see to my grandmother.
I’m sorry, she almost says with a surge of guilt, as one of the SSF3 team shouts down the stairs that they need a containment box.
Tereza
The only SSF1 contact details she has on her list are for an anonymous entry-point message/contact number. Instead of sending a message she decides to ring them using the phone function on the Passocon and devote herself to figuring out how the daily bulletin and the S.A.A.R. reports work.
The phone keeps ringing until she can’t stand it anymore. She checks that the office is on the same floor as her cubicle and decides to go in person, leaving her own phone ringing, still trying to get through.
She pauses outside the door, can’t hear anything. Have they diverted calls, put a block on anything from SSF2? Is this intra-departmental politics? Surely not at this level. And at such a crucial moment?
She knocks, waits, knocks again. A middle-aged woman opens the door, steps out into the corridor and closes it behind her.
If your call isn’t being answered there will be an excellent reason for that.
We need to make an arrest.
You have already been informed as to the logistics of this by SSF3, I believe.
They told me to ask SSF1 directly. What about all the Russians that are wandering about? A slip, she shouldn’t use the term to describe the Pan-Co-Sphere security forces, drawn as they are from all the language groups of Europe, but, well, everybody knows the Russians have the final word on everything and so anyway she refuses to feel bad about using the word.
I am afraid, the woman says, Tereza squints at her name badge, Sylvie, PCSDF forces are currently disbarred from taking on SSF roles and all the regular personnel are being deployed at the Games.
Who is the highest level SSF1? Is this you?
This is Mr Squires’s office, Sylvie says. You could go above his head to Waterston, she says, but confidentially, if you are committed to your career here in SSF I would advise that you follow the protocols of the SSF1 member who is most likely to be the head for the majority of your time here.
A long pause.
This is ridiculous, Tereza says, and turns away as Sylvie slides back around the door into the office.
This is ridiculous, she finds she is repeating to herself as she goes round to Barrow’s office, getting lost on the way and finding she has to follow the colour-coded lines on the floor. She doesn’t want to talk to Barrow about it particularly, or look like she’s making a fuss, especially after she can’t really remember what she said in the Canteen, and is unsure what to do, but doesn’t have much choice. She goes into his office with a perfunctory knock at the door. From his perspective you might say she has barged in, but this situation is ridiculous, and she tries to explain it slowly and calmly but finds her exasperation has it all come tumbling out as he sits there quietly nodding, only half listening.
I’ll get Waterston to authorize a reallocation, he says. Perhaps you should have a recuperation break, he adds, by which he means a Deveretol.
Rose
Barrow is buzzing in on the main screen in the flat. She has it on a five-second delay for intimate contacts before they are automatically put through. There he is, sitting in his office on the other side of the river, the lamplight low and bright, intensifying the lines under his eyes, the grooves on
his forehead.
Barrow, she says. How nice to see you. Will we be encountering each other in the flesh anytime soon, do you think?
My apologies, Barrow says. Things are more complicated than I thought.
Aren’t they always? You haven’t rung in to tell me that, she says.
I need to find out about Crane.
Crane? Ask me, she says.
I need someone more neutral.
Neutral for you or neutral in regard to Crane? she asks.
Both is best.
She blows smoke out, narrows her eyes. Crane? What on earth can he have to do with anything you are involved with Barrow?
His name seems to be, he pauses, circulating. Circulating in certain circles.
They both smile at his clumsiness with words.
Well, the Breach, she says. Crane is lucky enough not to have had any kind of public profile in the years since. Mystique has clung to him. Plus, say what they will, everyone loves a tragic, brilliant, lost, beautiful boy. She smiles. I know I did. Pauses. Do.
She holds Barrow in her gaze, tries to detect some discomfort, irritation, jealousy, but his face betrays so little.
So you are aware of this increased interest? he asks.
Well, she says, puts the Passocon to one side. His Urkive page has been accessed much more frequently recently. Some uploading of what looks like new material, a sound file, from a source I can’t verify. If it is something new, undiscovered, that would be unusual. Field Recording #4.
