by Tim Scott
After a few minutes, a man dressed in a black suit and wearing sunglasses came through from the back to the counter.
“Ah, good, we’ve been holding your table upstairs. Please go up,” he said.
“We didn’t come for a pizza. We brought the fridge and the virus,” said Nena.
“Please, go up to your table.”
“We’ve had two pizzas today already. Who do we see about the fridge?”
“Please, you must go upstairs. I apologize that we are very busy today. I will take the fridge through to the kitchen. He’ll be looked after there.”
“You know about the virus?”
“Of course. Everything is taken care of.”
Nena nodded and we made our way up the two flights of stairs. The room was packed. Tables had been jammed in at angles, all filled with people dressed in black, wearing sunglasses and eating pizza.
We were shown to a small table in the corner. It was more cramped than before. As soon as we sat down, a waiter came and took our order, and after a while a man dressed in black made his way across the room and joined us.
“I’m glad you came back for some more pizza. It’s a great relief to have the test tubes. We will destroy the virus.”
“Good. But we didn’t come for the pizza.”
“No?”
“No. What about the mayor?” said Nena.
“His operation will be destroyed. Maddox will see to that.”
“How come Maddox is responsible for all of this?”
“He found the door as well. And we did a deal with him.”
The waiter returned with our pizzas. The order was spectacularly wrong. I got a cup of hot milk, and Nena was presented with a bowl of radishes.
“Ah. They must be very busy. It makes the outcome of the order even more uncertain,” said the man in black.
“Not even pizza?” I said, looking at the milk.
“No. Maddox will destroy the mayor’s operation tonight, during the fireworks,” said the man, adjusting his sunglasses.
“And the city wall?”
“We’re working on it. That may take a little longer, but we’ll try and nudge events in the right direction. Please, enjoy your food. You have done everything perfectly.”
I tried the milk. It was smooth and comforting. I had not had hot milk since I was a child.
And I saw Nena was happily eating the radishes. I drank more of the milk and found I was going to have it all.
Fifteen seconds later I realized it had been drugged.
chapter
SEVENTY-EIGHT
A dream.
New Seattle, but the streets were deserted.
Except for a man dressed in a black suit wearing sunglasses, leading us somewhere. Someone else was there with me and I felt a huge sense of tenderness toward the person, but I didn’t know who it was. Or why I felt like this.
Then a building. A set of stairs. And a huge wooden door and we stepped through. The interior was large and cool.
And outside in the street, New Seattle was throbbing with people.
chapter
SEVENTY-NINE
The mayor’s eyebrows tilted viciously. “Still no sign of the last batch of the virus?”
“No. The fridge hasn’t been found.” The cop’s jaw hung open out of laziness. There were ten of them around the table.
“And how long until we can be ready to release another?”
“Three weeks. A month. It takes time,” said the scientist. “The process is very—”
“Yeah, yeah. This is bad, you understand? This assignment lost and the one before contaminated. It became an irony virus. Is that any help to me?”
There was a general shuffling.
“What good is it having people acting ironically? Just makes the city look stupid. What’s the point of that? And why haven’t you found that fridge? Give me a good reason why I should accept your flimsy explanations.”
Maddox tried to sort his feelings into words, but it didn’t happen immediately, so his mouth made a variety of shapes and then closed again.
“You find that fridge all right,” the mayor said, looking around the table, “and you do whatever needs to be done. Bring in anyone who might have seen it and head hack them here. This has gone too far.”
“Yes, it has,” said Maddox.
“I would hate for any of you to go the way of Lieberwitz,” said the mayor. “He started having second thoughts. So I made sure he didn’t have any thoughts at all after that.”
There was silence.
PART THREE
chapter
EIGHTY
A raven screeched.
I sat bolt upright, staring the thing in the eye as it perched on the drongle roof. Then it was gone into the night.
The dream about New Seattle lay in my mind, and then was swamped by the cold reality of the drongle.
I sat up and tried to stretch away the cold stiffness in my back. I was unusually thick with sleep. Outside, an outlet of the Quantum Physics Pizza Delivery Company slipped by. It was a chain. They had one in Saratoga, I remembered.
A girl sat opposite, her long hair in straggling curls. She must have gotton in after I fell asleep. There was a small fridge next to her.
I massaged my head as we rumbled through a junction. It felt like I had a hangover. Maybe I had caught something.
New Seattle.
I had not been in this city for eight years. Eight years that had been filled with nothing more memorable than slightly cold food.
I stared out at the gleaming city lights and a massive Health and Safety sign appeared over the shoulder of the girl, filling the dome with brilliant green light.
“Don’t buy indoor houseplants. They look green and luscious in the shop, but will die in weeks,” it said.
My life had gone missing since I had last been here, mislaid among too many motels, too many bad memories, and a never-ending succession of nights fogged with the bittersweet taste of mojitos. I had tried to close the door on all that had happened, but that door had never quite shut, and the past had seeped out in a deadly trickle.
Street after street of tall buildings ablaze with lights. I wondered what had possessed me to come back to this city. And then abruptly we juddered to a halt in a line of drongles at a police checkpoint.
The girl had been holding her head and now looked around.
“Thank you for traveling today,” said the drongle’s tinny voice. “Your lucky beheaded aristocrat is the Duke of Monmouth. Please take the receipt. It is being printed on material that may contain nuts, so if you are allergic, please use the tongs provided.” A spool of paper unwound from the machine, and a pair of tongs clattered down through a slot and landed on the floor. Neither the girl nor myself said anything.
A cop pulled open the dome and jabbed his flashlight into our faces. “Out of the drongle,” he said, his voice thick with officious boredom. “This looks new,” he said. “Since when were there any brand-new drongles in New Seattle?”
“Is there a problem?” I said.
He thrust the flashlight in my face again.
“No problem. Just step out of the drongle. Routine police check to keep Mother New Seattle free from low-life scum.”
We climbed out and stood on the sidewalk in the chill of the night air as more drongles pulled in behind ours and waited in a forlorn line.
It occurred to me that I was wearing a suit that wasn’t mine. The thought grew in strangeness, and I suddenly felt overly aware of my body. I checked the pockets and found a brochure from an exhibition about sharp corners. There was also an envelope with two tickets for something. None of these things were mine.
In another pocket were a pile of badly folded photos from a head hack, but it was too dark to make them out. I tried to recall what had happened, but the cop had returned, his cap pulled down improbably low on his head.
“Don’t I recognize you?” he said, prodding my chin with the flashlight.
“No,”
I replied.
“You were through here last night,” he said, running the flashlight over my face again. He was so close I could smell the pizza on his breath.
“I was in Portland last night.”
Another cop jammed a cold jack pin into the feed at the back of my neck. My headache vaulted, trying to get out near my temples, and cut all my thoughts into small pieces.
“I recognize her, too. You were both through here last night. Is this your fridge?”
“No,” I said.
“It’s mine,” said the woman, but her words lacked weight.
“Hey, he’s an ex–New Seattle cop,” said the one scrolling through my details on the Handheld Feed Reader.
“That’s it,” said the other cop. “I knew it was you. We sent you for a hack yesterday.”
“I just arrived in this city. Five minutes ago.”
“Great story. Let’s hear his mood,” said the first cop.
It played out as a piece of Motown that had bits missing.
“Guess what? The booths around here are all broken, so we’re sending you both off to Head Hack Central. Again.”
“Hey! We’re not together,” said the girl. “I don’t know this guy.”
“You do so know him,” said the cop. He pocketed his flashlight and moved on to the next drongle. “Have a fun evening. Your fridge will be in the Cold Compound. That is, if it’s not on the register.”
My hands were cuffed and a thin red collar snapped onto my neck. They did the same to the girl. Then we were herded into a four-man cop drongle and after I kicked up a commotion, they went looking for my bag but they came back empty-handed.
A cop clambered in, hauled the hood shut, and sat there with his mustache casting a shadow across his face as we swept through the streets. Several picture screens flickered into life, and the image of a small man with short neat hair and overlarge eyebrows appeared. I felt a visceral dislike of the guy.
“Hi, I’m Dan Cicero, mayor of New Seattle. You might have heard of me. People call me the Mayor of Safety.” His eyebrows overpowered the rest of his expression with their sheer bulk. “We have a zero-tolerance policy on danger in this city. If you feel scared or even nervous, call our slightly-on-edge help line, where a counselor will be happy to talk to you about nice things like pet rabbits.” His eyebrows eased down to a stop above his eyes.
“Stay safe! Watch out! Stay safe! Watch out for that—” sang the screens. Then there was the drawn-out sound of a long, tortuous crash.
The mayor’s face returned.
“And remember, please don’t die for no reason. I mean, what’s the point? Right?” His face flickered and then froze on the screens.
“Why does he say that?” I said. “‘Don’t die for no reason’?”
“It’s just a slogan.”
“A slogan? But people do die for no reason.”
“Hey, this isn’t a seminar,” said the cop, and he banged a panel with his foot. The picture flickered.
“Right,” I said.
Another H and S sign swung by outside.
“Don’t ever be tempted to let your girlfriend cut your hair,” it proclaimed, sending a bright green swath of light strobing through the dome roof. I looked at the girl again.
“Do you have a headache?” I said. “I have a headache like my head has been in a vice.”
“Yeah, so do I.”
The cop banged the panel again to try and get the screens working.
“Hey, watch the screens,” he said as they came back to life. “It’s all about not bumping into tables. You might improve as citizens.”
Welcome home, Huck, I thought. Welcome back to New Seattle.
chapter
EIGHTY-ONE
Mendes went slowly, jabbing his flashlight beam across the walls and through the stale air. It smelled damp, and breathing it seemed like inhaling little bits of death. He headed farther along, dragging the bag with the SEMTEX behind him. Maybe that was why the heavy, dead air also seemed so irredeemably laced with sadness.
He was sweating more now from the fever.
It was hard to know where he was. The building drones had been hacked into so many times, and by so many different groups, that the tunnels they had made through the city wall were haphazard.
He came to another junction and unfolded the huge map so he could see the right section.
He thought he must be near the main gate now. He stopped to listen, but there was nothing but the cold, damp silence. For the first time in a long while, he thought about the place he grew up and how, when he had been a kid, he had gotten such pleasure from simple things like climbing the tree at the back of the house. He had done it so often the branches had worn smooth.
chapter
EIGHTY-TWO
Harsh fluorescent light.
The holding area was a temporary metal cage thrown up around some seating. A man in a suit had been brought in before us and squirmed about with enough audible sighing to fuel a small midwestern town.
A woman with a wild accent was standing at the bars, chewing gum trying to get the cops’ attention. “Hey, sometimes you have to take a chance on people, don’t you? Otherwise life passes you by and you end up as a quantity surveyor. What’s the point of that? I had a cousin who did that. All I’m saying is that people who don’t trust anyone else end up with nothing. Come on, let me out of here,” she called. But the cops just ignored her, and she kicked the bars.
“Something’s wrong,” I said to the girl.
“Wrong?” She looked at me. She had brown eyes.
“Yeah. Do you feel as though you’ve stepped into another life—one that looks like the one you were in before, but with tiny, crucial differences?”
“I feel like I have a headache that could win an award.”
“Yeah. That wasn’t your fridge, was it?”
“No.”
“You think something’s wrong?” I said.
“Wrong? No.”
The businessman sighed again. He clearly felt being here was the kind of injustice that would require nothing less than a personal apology from God.
A group of cops entered the cage with a flurry of keys. Two of them came over. “You two,” said one, and then they herded the girl and me down the corridor with little more than the nod of a head and a grunt.
A line of framed certificates had been screwed carelessly to the wall. One said: “National Police Awards. Longest Stare at a Suspect without Saying Anything.”
I tried to pull at the threads of the strange edges that seemed to surround everything, but all I got was a bunch of frayed ends. Our little party reached the head hack rooms and the girl was uncuffed and led into Head Hack One.
The cop took off my cuffs and a nurse led me through a corridor into Head Hack Two. “This way,” she said. “Can I get you a glass of wonker?”
“What is wonker?”
“It’s like water, but not as good.”
She opened the door to the head hack room, and the smell of ammonia hit me so strongly I closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry about the fumes. I dropped a bottle. We’ve just cleared it up.”
“Yeah,” I said, as I struggled to see.
“The ether in the solution might make you feel faint. Through here, and we’ll see what you have.”
“You’ll just find a few images of a bar in Portland and not much else,” I said, trying to ignore the ammonia-induced tears forming in my eyes as she guided me into the chair and plugged into the feed on the back of my neck.
“Yes, I’m sure. But it’s amazing what people store away without knowing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s amazing what you can store away.”
While my hands were free I pulled out the head hack photos from my pocket. I felt a frisson of shock. The top one was of Abigail.
chapter
EIGHTY-THREE
The doctor stared at my folder.
“Your records have been deleted. Would you know
anything about that?”
“No, I’ve just arrived in this city.” But it was another loose end flailing about, and I didn’t like it.
“I see. Are you aware of having any alfalfa allergy?”
“No.”
“No? Doesn’t make you feel sick? Or make your elbows tend to stick out more than usual?”
He demonstrated.
“Why would it do that?” I said.
“I don’t know, but the human body is a remarkable piece of engineering. Type 3-B gel with alfalfa, please, Nurse. Can I check the box marked adverts?” He had turned back to me. “We have one about goose-down pillows at the moment that we can insert quite painlessly. It will play randomly in your mind for no more than a month. You will be paid a fee dependent on your age and social status.”
“No, I don’t want any adverts.”
“Really? Do take a moment to consider this. We pay cash, and the intrusion is minimal. Many people find it life-enhancing.”
“No adverts.”
The doctor nodded.
I had known people who had come on hard times who had taken every advert going, until they could do nothing more than spend their days watching the endless stream of commercials vying for attention in their mind. It was possible to make a living like that, but only if you didn’t want a life.
“Good. Well, sign here, and over here. And fingerprint there. And kiss the paper there, hard.” He held the form for me. “Kiss there again,” he said pushing it against my face again. “Harder. Kiss harder. As hard as you can. Harder! Even harder! Fine. This is your copy and your spare. I’ll staple those to your jacket. There. The hack will take no more than a few seconds. I will not probe any further than twenty-four hours. You have my word on the oath I have sworn to the Medical Council Bear. Fire the head torsion, please, Nurse.”
The two plates came forward and clasped my cheeks, holding my skull in an overtight grip.
