When We Have Wings

by Claire Corbett

  I looked up from my slick at the dim street thronging with people. I knew this kampung well. It’d been one of my hunting grounds in my former life as an officer of the law but it’d been a long time since I’d visited. No telling how many informers, petty crims and errand runners for the crime bosses I’d tracked down here.

  I sipped the hot malted. On my way in, as I’d picked my way through the mud between the shacks, I’d come to a large sign I hadn’t seen before: Main Street. Main Street was not a street at all but a rounded hump that formed the kampung’s central spine. Walking down the middle of the concrete semicircle which was at least three metres across, I suddenly remembered what it was: a large, leaking water main. Ah, Main Street. Now I got it. Very good.

  Cam and her colleagues considered Central Lines a ‘mature’ slum. That meant some shacks had concrete walls, and the residents had organised basic services, such as pirated electricity. Some shacks had their own water tap—an inconceivable luxury in the Venice or most parts of Edge City—and they all had televisions or other screens of one sort or another.

  Even in the funereal shadow of Junction Road No. 5, the tin and concrete walls around me glowed, just as I’d remembered, in every shade of aqua, turquoise, saffron and hot pink paint and were plastered with archaeological layers of stickers, graffiti, murals and posters advertising films, toothpaste, oil, politicians. Strings of orange and pink lights outlining doorframes here and there shone weirdly through the morning gloom, advertising gambling dens and cramped bars (Zipper Hurricane, $pooky Baby Gang and BAR BAR BAR BAR! looked like places to avoid).

  A group of teenage girls sauntered past Best Quality Cafe Isn’t It. A woman hurried up to one girl, whose hair fell down her back, thickly braided with jasmine and a jewelled snake I assumed was not real, or at least not alive. Her hair was longer than her skirt. They had a brief argument. The girls lounged away. The woman, dressed in a purple shirt and trousers and shiny purple beads at her wrists and throat, turned towards the cafe. Mira.

  I raised my hand. She came over, shaking her head, and sat down, putting her bag and sunglasses on the table.

  ‘Everything alright?’

  Mira rolled her eyes. ‘Well, you know.’

  Was Snakegirl the demure Ellie I’d seen in the school databases? Well, it was the weekend in Central Lines after all.

  The waiter appeared. Mira ordered tea.

  ‘Thank you for meeting me,’ I began but Mira held up her hand.

  ‘I haven’t brought anything for you,’ she said.

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘I don’t think you do, if you could ask me to risk my job.’ Mira looked around her. A rhythmic pounding started up, a few blocks further back along Junction Road No. 5.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask—’

  ‘No,’ said Mira. ‘It’s impossible.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So, why are you here?’

  Mira looked down at her tea.

  ‘You’d like to talk,’ I said.

  She looked up, eyes shiny.

  ‘I want you to know that you’re on to something.’ She hissed the words.

  ‘Yes. Good,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t give up. Especially for Peri. She’s different.’

  ‘Yes, I am seeing that,’ I said.

  ‘No, no, you don’t,’ said Mira. ‘She is really different. They—’ Mira began to weep. After a couple of minutes she rubbed her eyes, blew her nose. ‘You know, about the babies?’

  ‘Ah, Peri said she had one. As a surrogate.’

  Mira nodded. ‘Yes. There’s more of those.’

  ‘Women fliers don’t like being pregnant?’

  Mira shrugged. ‘Some do, some don’t. Some can, some can’t.’

  ‘I see. And Eliseev helps them?’

  Mira nodded, drank her tea.

  I looked around. There could hardly be a better place in the entire City to have a conversation like this; no flier could see us, no-one could overhear us in all this noise and no human drama, no weeping or screaming or laughing, was unusual or worth noticing here.

  ‘And Peri? Why is she different?’

  ‘She—she didn’t know. They didn’t tell her.’ Mira was crying again.

  I reached across the table, took her hand. ‘Please.’

  Mira looked up. ‘Peri was already pregnant.’

  ‘What?’ I dropped her hand.

  ‘The day of the embryo transfer. They tested her. She was already pregnant. Very early. She didn’t know.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I gasped. ‘To Peter?’

  ‘Yes. And . . . and . . . she was already out cold, so they left her there while they decided what to do. And they decided to do nothing. They brought her out but of course she thought she’d had the transfer.’

  ‘Who decided? Eliseev? Eliseev and Peter?’

  Mira stared away over my shoulder. She nodded slowly. ‘Dr Eliseev talked to some people. He was very excited. And he talked to Peter—to Mr Chesshyre. I was there, monitoring Peri. And Dr Eliseev said this was good, they wanted this pregnancy to continue, that it was better, better for him, better for the company, better for the baby, better for Mr Chesshyre.’

  ‘And Peter agreed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I sat back. ‘Wow.’

  A moment.

  Mira took a deep breath, looked around for the waiter. Ordered more tea.

  I’d come to a stop, a machine switched off. My exhaustion caught up with me and I wanted to just put my head down on the table. I could sleep right here, amid the competing racket of televisions blaring from first-floor windows, the squawking of chickens, the fire-eater attracting a crowd a few doors up.

  ‘So, let me get this straight. Peri agreed to have a child for Peter and Avis. But they found out she was pregnant and Eliseev persuaded Peter to go ahead with the child she had already conceived? She gave birth to her own child—genetically, physically, in every way? And she didn’t know?’

  Mira put her head in her hands. ‘Yes. No. I mean, yes, she didn’t know.’

  ‘What about Avis? Did she know?’

  Mira pursed her mouth, as if sucking a lemon.

  She’s always like that, Halley had said.

  ‘Mira, does Avis have some sort of problem? Like, oh, I don’t know . . . takes too much Zefiryn, something like that?’

  Mira shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t know.’ She thought. ‘It’s possible. Zefiryn’s not addictive, though.’

  ‘People can take too much of it.’

  Mira looked annoyed. ‘It’s not addictive the way nicotine is. Of course you can take too much. It’s a bit like alcohol—well, it’s nothing like alcohol in its effects but you know, you can take a little every day without too much damage. But you shouldn’t take too much. Lots of people are fine with it. Some aren’t.’

  ‘Why did Eliseev and Peter do this?’

  Mira rubbed her hands over her hair.

  Hikikomori boy’s message: What’s deal with Dr E???? Cracked government agencies with less security.

  The building. The building. Eliseev’s whole building was wired up with what hikikomori boy called Cerberus fortifications.

  ‘Mira, who did Eliseev talk to? Someone in Diomedea?’

  Mira nodded.

  ‘So Diomedea was interested in Peri’s pregnancy?’

  ‘They were interested in her from the beginning. As soon as Mr Chesshyre brought her in. Dr Eliseev did the full work-up—well, they always do that.’

  ‘And Dr Eliseev usually consults with Diomedea.’

  Mira’s expression was flat. ‘There’s nothing bad about that,’ she said. ‘The opposite. Dr Eliseev’s work with Diomedea is precisely why he’s so sought after. He has access to all the latest research
and treatments. Don’t you see? Diomedea is the leader—well, along with MicroRNA/Corvid and a few others—but Diomedea is really the leader in the field. They keep an eye on just about every flier, every series of treatments, every transition to Flight and as much follow-up information as they can. I mean it’s not as if there’s so many fliers that that’s difficult.’

  ‘And in Peri’s case, Eliseev actually performed some of the latest research,’ I said. ‘He’d already done the germline engineering on Peter, before Peri got pregnant?’

  ‘Of course. He could hardly have been ready to do the embryo transfer if he hadn’t already done that. It was—it was also to do with her history.’

  I’d read some of Peri’s file. Think. What would interest Diomedea? Something I’d read without paying too much attention, because I had been so focused on finding Peri, now stood out. The very incident that led to her being taken into foster care. Her father had disappeared and she’d been abandoned by her mother on a rooftop. She was three. Burned by the sun, clinging to a railing, it had taken them an hour to uncurl her fingers.

  ‘Her father went missing. Does that have something to do with Diomedea’s interest in Peri?’

  Mira was checking something on her slick. She nodded without looking up. She wanted to bring this to a close; she’d had her big emotional release, cried over poor Peri robbed of her baby, what mother wouldn’t feel bad for her? But she wasn’t going to do anything about it.

  ‘Why did Diomedea want Peri’s pregnancy to go ahead? And why did Peter?’

  ‘I don’t know everything,’ Mira said, starting to gather her things. She put her sunglasses and slick away in her bag. ‘But there was something about Peri being second generation. One of the first. The Ches- shyres—they weren’t—they aren’t. Second-generation fliers, I mean.’

  ‘Second generation? You’re telling me Peri’s father was a flier?’ I shook my head in disbelief. Mira’s silence was confirmation: Peri’s father was a flier. ‘So Diomedea was keen for Hugo—for Peri’s child to be born. Because her father was a flier. Guess that really does make her exceptional. Oh, oh, now I get it.’ I hit my palm to my forehead.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her permanent residency. Of course. Diomedea would be able to make that happen. And they wanted to make sure she—and Hugo—stayed where they could find them. So they could keep studying them. But why did Peter—Mr Chesshyre—’

  Mira stood up. ‘Like I said, I don’t know everything. But Dr Eliseev promised Mr Chesshyre that Diomedea would pay for everything—Peri, the pregnancy, her wings, anything Hugo needed. That—that adds up to a lot.’

  ‘Peter’s rich,’ I said. ‘That can’t be the only reason.’

  Mira looked down at me. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘I think I must know more rich people than you do, Mr Fowler. Dr Eliseev did say to him one thing though—something like, you know the saying, a bird in the hand . . .’

  ‘You mean Peter’s chance to have his own child might not come again?’

  ‘Yes. If we aborted her child, went through another procedure with the embryo transfer, more drugs, all that, it’s not pleasant—and what if she changed her mind? Maybe it wouldn’t work with Avis’s genetic material, Dr Eliseev said that too.’

  ‘And Peter had what he wanted: his own child.’

  ‘I never said any of this,’ Mira said, pulling out her wallet. ‘Find your own evidence if you can but I won’t back you up. We never met.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘You want me to help Peri, somehow, but you don’t want to upset your boss even though what he’s done is criminal. Or at the very least unethical to the highest degree. And you don’t want Diomedea exposed either.’ I waved my hand to indicate Mira should put her wallet away. Least I could do was pay for her tea.

  ‘Diomedea hasn’t done anything wrong,’ said Mira, shaking her head and giving money to the waiter. ‘Not that I can see. They didn’t tell Dr Eliseev not to tell Peri about her baby.’ She looked at me, challenging. ‘If it wasn’t for Diomedea, Peri’s baby wouldn’t even exist.’

  One way of looking at it. I noticed she wasn’t bothering to defend Eliseev.

  ‘Good luck,’ Mira said as she walked away. Within seconds she was swallowed up by the crowds. I’d wanted to ask her about Luisa but I’d done well enough to get the information on Peri. And Peri was the special case, the one that had upset Mira, made her question what she was doing working for Eliseev. Even if Luisa had been sent to Eliseev to have Brilliant’s babies for him, Mira probably had no mo- tivation to tell me about her. Except. Except that she was dead.

  I walked away up Junction Road No. 5, thinking about everything Mira had told me. I should be furious with Chesshyre but I was too tired for any more rage; I’d already wanted to kill him a few times on this case, what was one more outrage, even if it was the worst of all? Poor Peri.

  The pounding that had started up earlier was getting louder. I crossed an intersection with a drainage canal and saw, along its cement banks, men and women slamming the mottled ground with mallets. Bright dust flew into the air. I drew out an old tissue and held it to my nose as I walked past. They were pulverising old paint chips into dust so that it could be reconstituted as paint. The scene was gorgeous—cement stained in streaks of crimson and azure, green and gold, air hazed by flying rainbow spray, but the dust would be poisonous to breathe. The people pounding wore no protection, their singlets and shorts fiery red and lush green with paint dust.

  But Mira was more representative of Central Lines than these men and women pounding paint. Many people in Central Lines were educated, worked in good jobs and could have afforded middle-income housing. Except that there wasn’t any. So here they were, in the kampung, which did have a few more luxurious sections further up the embankment, where houses and apartment blocks sported stone facades and satellite dishes.

  I was almost out of Central Lines, heading towards where I’d parked the car, when a loud ‘Ah!’ went up from the crowd milling around one of the light-rail stanchions. They were looking up at the embankment where dots of green and blue and crimson tumbled down the face of the apartment blocks, swinging sideways from the stalks of satellite dishes and swooping low into the slum. Now they were careening madly through the gaps of the light-rail stanchions, looping over the rail line itself, just skimming it, and then dropping towards the pavement, only to run up the sides of the light towers and zoom into the air again. A cheer went up from the crowd; shouts, clapping. It was those wild flier-athletes again, the ones who used the whole City as their playground, and the crowd loved the entertainment. They gasped and whooped and the fliers whooped back, waving down to the crowd and disappearing into the blaze of noonday sun.

  I stood staring into the sector of sky where the fliers had vanished. The red Raptor. He had to be Diomedea’s. Had to be. Who else could afford—and had a motive—to hire one? Eliseev would have alerted Diomedea but they didn’t get onto tracking me until I’d got back from RaRA-land. Now they were keeping an eye on me because they didn’t know where Peri and Hugo were; no-one seemed to. The Raptor broke into my flat trying to find any information that I might have on Peri and Hugo. What would he do if he found them though? From what Mira had said, Peri and Hugo represented an important investment for them so it was doubtful that he’d harm them. Did Diomedea know about Luisa? If they knew, and if it was nothing to do with them, they might be concerned for Peri and Hugo’s safety. Maybe the Raptor planned to spirit them away somewhere.

  I did more work at home on the material from Brilliant’s office and found a subsidiary project attached to Hermes; at least, the money spent on it had been allocated the same cost centre. This project didn’t seem so obscure. Titled ‘Nest Egg’, it was a series of small programs in towns across the regions. The point of the project seemed to be to spread a little money, and goodwill, among non-fliers: drop-in clinic here, community art venture there.
They referred to these programs constantly in public statements as proof that they were not elitist, not solely City-based and not concerned only with fliers. Nest Egg was a necessary—though rather pathetic, if you looked at the actual amounts of money involved—element of Brilliant’s strategy as an MP, rather than as a church leader, it seemed to me.

  I got up from the dining table. I was getting nowhere with the church projects and could find no mention of Luisa.

  My head was fuzzy and I struggled to pull my flat into a sort of order but late that afternoon I ended up on the couch wondering why the place didn’t look much better.

  I lay on the couch and watched the news, feeling as if the couch was engulfing me in vile grey glue sticking to my arms, my legs and, worst of all, invading my brain, sticky threads snagging each thought. Was whatever sickness I’d picked up going to kill me? Should I be taking myself to hospital? I couldn’t move. Finally I slept, news channel still on, still repeating its images of landslides, monsoons, sporting events.

  I woke much later and lay there motionless, staring at the news, recalling why I’d got out of the habit of watching it. With each passing minute I was becoming more certain that Peri and Hugo were dead. Would it have made any difference if I’d taken the case straight to Henryk? If they’d died at the hands of the Raptor, or in the storm, it had already been too late, less than twenty-four hours after my return from RaRA-land. My mistake had been to take this case on in the first place. I’d had misgivings from the start and now I was being shown just how greedy and culpable I was for ever going along with Chesshyre. He was responsible, finally, for putting his son and Peri at risk but I wasn’t much better, was I? He’d used Peri for his own gain and perhaps I too had made decisions more for my benefit than hers and Hugo’s.