End of the World Blues

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Those two were the reason she’d refused an upgrade. Neku didn’t want to be seen yet, and just agreeing to come forward like this had taken more nerve than she expected.

  It had been Kit’s friend who had told Neku where Kit was going and why. She’d found him in a gaijin bar, along with two girls, half a dozen bozozoku, an English photographer called Gaz, a black cat, and a map of Roppongi spread out across a table. It was the third Irish bar she’d tried.

  “Ah,” said the huge man. “It’s the goth kid.”

  A couple of bozozoku looked up.

  “Which kid?” demanded one.

  “That one,” he said, nodding towards the door. “She’s friends with Kit…”

  A girl snorted.

  Making herself approach the table, Neku bowed slightly. “Can I talk to you?”

  The man pointed to a stool at the next table and made dragging motions, indicating that Neku should join them.

  “Not here,” said Neku.

  The man sighed.

  His name was No Neck and his first kiss tasted of beer. There wasn’t a second, because Neku had turned her face away by then. “It wasn’t like that,” Neku said, when he asked how long Neku and Kit had been friends.

  “Wasn’t it?” No Neck looked doubtful. “You sure? I mean, everyone knew he had a Japanese lover.”

  “Yoshi,” said Neku.

  No Neck shook his head. “Yoshi wasn’t his mistress. Not sure what she was,” he added, half sobered by Neku’s mention of the dead woman. “It was complicated, that relationship.” No Neck stared at Neku, suddenly seeing her. “Until I saw you,” he said, “I wasn’t sure Kit did normal…”

  “I’m seventeen,” said Neku, adding another two years to her age.

  “Yeah,” said No Neck. “That’s what I mean.”

  “Are you all right?” Cherry was looking anxiously at her celebrity passenger, who’d stalled a handful of steps from the cabin door.

  “Just thinking,” said Neku. About what was not a matter for sharing. Life was complicated and death made it more so. Kit Nouveau owed her a life, which meant he was bound to her. Although Neku wasn’t sure Kit understood that. But in saving him, she’d assumed responsibility for his happiness. She wasn’t sure he understood that either.

  He also had her memory beads, or what was left of them. At least, Neku hoped he had.

  “Through here,” said Cherry, knocking twice on a door.

  Neku heard the sound of a lock being flicked on the far side. It made sense to secure the doors, she supposed. Neku might have been anyone.

  “Is this Miss Aiko?”

  The stewardess nodded.

  Somehow, Neku had expected the pilot to be a man. Maybe middle aged, with swept back hair going grey at the temples. Instead the woman wearing the Captain’s uniform looked young and businesslike.

  “Konichiwa,” said the Captain.

  Neku bowed slightly. “Konichiwa,” she offered in turn. Since it was dark in the main part of the plane but daylight outside, konichiwa was just as good as konbanwa or ohayo gozaimasu. It being neither morning, afternoon, or evening, but something out of time, in between.

  “God,” said the Captain. “Will you look at those studs.” Her words were for the co-pilot beside her. “That’s what Annabel wants. You wouldn’t believe the fights we’ve been having.”

  “How old is your daughter?” asked Neku.

  It was meant as a simple question. Although, from the shock on the Captain’s face, Neku assumed her question had been taken as criticism. And then Neku understood the truth was simpler still…the Captain simply hadn’t expected Neku to be able to cope with colloquial English.

  “I spent…” Neku paused. She had no idea if Mika Aiko had spent time in America or England. And while the Captain was unlikely to know, it was possible Cherry might. “I learn languages fast,” Neku said, then smiled.

  Like all the best lies it was impossible to refute. Not the least because it happened to be true.

  CHAPTER 26 — Nawa-no-ukiyo

  Chaos began with six words, Lady Neku could remember that much. It was a simple enough statement…little to suggest her life was about to change irrevocably. Your mother is looking for you.

  The voice came from an alcove, where a marble statue glared at the floor of a corridor few even knew existed. The corridor was wider than it was tall, windowless and lit with flickering globes set into a low ceiling.

  Lady Neku sneezed—dust had that effect on her.

  A simple maintenance duct under a hydroponic farm, before title inflation hit High Strange and the farm became the Stroll Gardens and the duct acquired statues, the metal tube ran the entire length of a bigger spur, from one side of the ring all the way through to the other. Doors sealed the duct where it left the spire, clumsy welds holding them in place, though these looked newer than the seamless joins found on most doors leading off the maintenance tunnels.

  She’d been five when she first found the corridor, maybe six, when her hair was still faded silver and her eyes strange enough to make her brothers look away. She gained entrance by kicking the back off a cupboard and stepping into a circular room. The room had three other doors, two of them leading to other cupboards and the third to this corridor.

  It was, she felt, an impressive find…although it would have been more impressive if she hadn’t kicked the backs off a dozen other cupboards first. And it wasn’t just cupboards, there was that panelling in her mother’s study and a huge portrait of the first Duke of High Strange. Lady Neku had been certain the painting hid a secret door.

  Lady Neku had spent much of her sixth year trying to discover if the lights in her corridor were always on or if they lit as she entered. She also wondered why the dust remained, when spider bots automatically ingested dust everywhere else.

  It was months before she realised High Strange put the dust there especially for her. The access tunnel was sealed at both ends. She was the only person, so far as she knew, to know it existed. No way could that much dust settle in the days between her visits.

  “Your mother is looking for you,” said a second statue. “As are your brothers.”

  The figure was naked, wore winged sandals, and had his hair twisted into a marble top knot. He was the latest addition to the corridor’s collection and looked exactly like Nico.

  “My brothers?” That did surprise Lady Neku. Most weeks she could be forgiven for believing her brothers had forgotten she even existed.

  “Your brothers,” insisted the statue. “And your mother.”

  Lady Neku sighed.

  Miss a couple of meals, skip a week’s worth of lessons, cut your throat, and everyone wanted a bit of your hide. Lady Neku ran through the things she might have done wrong. On balance, she’d have to say she’d been pretty good. Maybe it was her most recent trip to the schloss? But…I mean, she thought, they couldn’t possibly know about that.

  Of course not.

  Scuffing dust, Lady Neku slid her way to the middle of the corridor and finished with a quick twirl that left her dizzy and slightly breathless in front of a double helix of steps. The spiral came out behind a tapestry in the audience chamber above. Up close one could see that the tapestry of a girl with a unicorn was stitched, but from a distance the picture looked like a painting.

  It was very old.

  Millions of years had been mentioned. Right back to the far side of the Great White, when there was only one inhabited planet and this was it. Of course, millions was relative. Like most things to do with time, it all depended on how fast you were going, who was doing the counting, and where they stood.

  On that basis, her great-great-great-great-grandfather had been nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, three hundred and twenty when he died, which was ridiculous, because everyone knew he’d died young.

  History only made sense if one discounted the jump. Always assuming one could define jump in a way that actually made sense. It seemed to Lady Neku that the originators had undertaken the t
emporal equivalent of dumping waste. Small wonder her world now came with its own exclusion zone.

  In a galaxy rich with life no one came calling and the last people to be shifted forward were the families themselves; falling into a world where the future had arrived before them.

  It was a cheap trick, that was what her mother said.

  “Where are my brothers?” Lady Neku demanded.

  A simple answer would have been enough. Instead she got a visual of her mother’s study, with its amber-panelled walls, old carpets, and stained glass windows. Lady Katchatka sat in a gilded chair beneath a huge mirror, her greying hair brushed back from a ravaged face. There were wooden stools set out for the boys, but they still sat at her feet. Lady Katchatka was stroking Petro’s hair as she might stroke a cat, absent-mindedly and only half aware.

  “Who was the last to see her?”

  That was Nico, the youngest. A good three years older than his sister, he looked younger, his face still round with childhood and his dark hair worn so it flopped elegantly into one eye. “Well?” he demanded, brushing imaginary dust from a black velvet sleeve.

  Petro and Antonio shrugged as one.

  “You know what she’s like,” said Petro. “I’m not even sure this is a good idea.”

  The fingers stroking his hair stopped their caress.

  “I can see its good points,” he said quickly. “I’m just worried about what will happen if the plan goes wrong.”

  “It won’t,” said Lady Katchatka. “All she has to do is shut up and smile. How hard can that be?”

  “For Neku…?” said Antonio, only to drop into silence the moment he realised her question was rhetorical.

  “What interests me,” Nico said, “is what you’re going to tell her. I mean, this is Neku. When did she last do anything expected of her? As far as she’s concerned, we might as well not exist.”

  I wish, thought Lady Neku. “Do they know I’m watching?” she asked, not bothering to vocalise her question. “No…What I mean is…Oh fuck, you know what I mean.”

  “They don’t know you’re watching,” said High Strange. “Besides,” it said, “you’re not, I am.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Once upon a time,” said High Strange, “humans believed the earth was flat.” Before Lady Neku could protest that she already knew this, High Strange dipped the lights around Lady Neku, then re-lit them. She was meant to listen, Lady Neku realised.

  “They believed the earth was flat because it looked flat.”

  “Well, obviously,” began Lady Neku, then stopped. “Sorry,” she said, when she realised she’d interrupted anyway.

  “No,” said the voice. “Go on. What shape is the earth?”

  “Round,” said Lady Neku.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I can see it from most of the windows.” She stopped, wondering why the voice laughed.

  “People see only what they expect to see,” it said. “To you, the planet is round, because that’s how it looks. You need to ask yourself how it looks to people who live under its surface.” Lady Neku thought about that. “Flat,” she said finally. She wasn’t convinced by this answer, but it seemed to be the answer expected. “Although they know it’s round…”

  “How?”

  “Because we tell them.”

  “You tell them lots of things. Since the bulk of what you say is lies, why should they know which fragments are true? You say they are here for their own good. You say you exist to protect them. How simple do you think these people are?”

  “Very,” said Lady Neku.

  High Strange sighed. “You should go,” it said. “You know how your Lady Mother hates to be kept waiting.”

  “Okay,” said Lady Neku, then hesitated. “What does believing the earth is flat have to do with my mother?”

  “Think about it,” said the voice. “And tidy yourself up before you go in.”

  Obviously enough, since Lady Neku was officially unaware that her mother wanted to see her, and since her mother’s study was not somewhere the girl would usually go, she needed to find a reason to visit.

  “Fish,” she told her cat.

  This was enough to get the animal’s attention.

  “Real?”

  “Of course,” promised Lady Neku, wondering where she’d get fresh fish this time. Her mistake had been to feed the animal Nico’s goldfish in the first place, no matter how much her cat begged.

  “Now?”

  “Later,” she said firmly.

  All the cat had to do was get comprehensively lost. Since High Strange had a hundred and nineteen levels in the spire alone, twelve spars, ninety knot rooms in the ring to handle karman lines and more maintenance tunnels than anyone had ever bothered to count, that should be relatively easy.

  Once the cat had sloped off, adding extra demands and sub-clauses tied to any late delivery of its food, Lady Neku took a shower. The water was warm and undoubtedly tasteless, but she still kept her mouth firmly shut. Lady Neku used water because Nico once told her about a great aunt who was cooked so thoroughly in a malfunctioning cleanser that flesh fell from her bones.

  A week later, he stopped her in a corridor and wondered, idly, if she realised the liquid in which she now bathed was distilled from his piss? An hour passed before Lady Neku started to worry about how Nico knew she’d begun taking showers.

  Having dried herself, Neku dressed in a simple white frock and combed her hair until it fell around her shoulders. She debated using a silk scarf to hide the scar on her throat and decided against.

  The staircase to her mother’s study was empty. Lady Neku stopped, rephrasing that thought. There were no members of her immediate family on the stairs. There were, however, numerous servitors, a guard, and a kitchen girl. All looking slightly breathless, as fugees did when placed in high orbit. The girl had been crying.

  “It’s okay,” said Lady Neku. “You can tell me if something’s wrong.”

  The girl kept her mouth shut and her eyes on her feet.

  “Or not…” Having opened the study door, Lady Neku barged her way into the room and froze just inside.

  “I’m…” She caught herself. “Lady Mother.” The curtsey Neku sketched was almost elegant. “Lord Brothers.”

  Lady Katchatka’s smile spoke of deep thoughts and dark plans. Her smile and her eyes were two of Lady Katchatka’s strongest assets. Her daughter took care not to smile back.

  “You’re late,” said Nico.

  “For what?” Lady Neku did a good job of looking puzzled. Since all four of them regarded her as an idiot, this took remarkably little effort. She just pulled a face and her brothers and mother imposed their own meanings onto the expression.

  “My message,” Lady Katchatka said.

  “What?” Lady Neku bowed her head. She had no wish to get slapped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have missed the call.” Neku saw her mother blink and knew she was checking with the major domo.

  “I sent it an hour ago.”

  “Ah…” Neku took time to consider this. “I’ve been looking for my cat.” What correlation there could be between the cat being missing and the call went unspecified, but no one asked her to explain. One of the great advantages of being the family idiot was that she had very little to live up to.

  “Did you try asking the kami?” said Nico, with a smirk.

  “Nico.” Their mother’s voice was sharp.

  “Just wondering,” he said.

  “Well stop.” Lady Katchatka glared round at the boys, softening her gaze as it reached her daughter, which worried Lady Neku greatly. “We’ll have no such talk…you can go,” she told Nico. “You can all go.” She meant the boys. “Your sister and I have a wedding to discuss.”

  CHAPTER 27 — Saturday, 23 June

  “Next…”

  The immigration officer at Heathrow flicked through the Japanese girl’s passport to check the stamp marks, uncovering New York, Paris, and Milan. After this,
he matched her face to the smiling photograph and took fingerprints, checking these confirmed a twelve-point match with the example held on her passport’s digital strip.

  The fingerprints tallied. And the passport definitely showed the young girl shuffling her feet in front of him, though her hair looked shorter, having been pinned back before the picture was taken. Neku was pleased with that touch. She already knew the digital strip said all the right things, down to height, weight, original hair colour, and iris pattern. So far no one had checked these, but it was good to know the details were correct if they did.

  Besides, what else was she going to do with all that stolen cash, if not give a fistful of it to Tetsuo for top of the range fakes…Invest it, buy herself an apartment in Marunouchi, give the stuff back? She could just imagine trying. Hi, I’m no longer the person who took your money. These days I’m someone else…No, honestly.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Holiday,” said Neku.

  “And you’re staying at…” The officer examined the form Neku had filled out on the plane. “Flat 7, 5 Hogarth Mews, Fitzrovia?”

  “North of Soho,” said Neku brightly. “A friend of the family. I’m using his flat.” She’d gotten the address from No Neck, who’d been given it by Kit.

  “Do you plan to find work in England?”

  It was one of those trick questions. Neku knew it was a trick question because the man left a slight gap between each word and watched her eyes.

  “I intend to write.”

  While he was still thinking this one through, Neku unzipped her shoulder bag and dumped a paperback of TunaBelly in front of him. When he still looked blank, she took back her passport and opened it, pointing out the match between names.

  “It contains a clear and troubling truth,” Neku announced, translating the cover quote.