Lady introduced them formally.
'Gentlemen, this is Cherry. Cherry, these are Ministers Clarke and Blotch.'
Clarke and Blotch. To Cherry it sounded like one of those ridiculous City firms.
'Ministers Clarke and Blotch are here to ask for co-operation from the Hospital. I wanted to introduce you to them as you have qualities that I believe they will be interested in.'
'My nanoscreen.'
'There are many things which mark you out from the other girls here, Cherry. Your nanoscreen is one of them, but in this case it's your looks and your trustworthiness that the gentlemen are interested in.' Lady spoke as if reading from an autocue.
Cherry gave a puzzled frown.
The tall man, Clarke, touched his pendant and took a long breath. The fat man, Blotch, was looking at the floor beside his chair.
'Cherry. A pleasure to meet you.' Clarke's voice was deep and thrilled Cherry unexpectedly, rattling her voice box. 'Thank you for agreeing to meet with us today. We know that you are…a busy woman. I wanted to tell you a little about our project. How much do you know about the Church?'
'Which church?' Cherry asked, holding a straight face.
The men looked pained, as if they had both caught wind of an unpleasant smell.
'The Real Church,' Clarke said, touching his necklet again. 'The only true church.'
'Of course,' Lady said, leaning towards him and smiling. Her hands began to wander and though she clasped them firmly on her lap they continued to strain and twitch against one another.
'Of course,' Cherry repeated, 'but you know how it is, all these organisations calling themselves churches.'
'Oh, we know.' Clarke shook his head sadly. The wrinkles on one side of his face and then the other deepened in turn with the movement of his head.
'Cherry,' Lady said, catching her eye.
Cherry closed her mouth and smiled, putting on her best listening face.
'As you will no doubt know,' Clarke said, 'the Real Church is working to re-establish a presence in the City in order to help the poor fallen souls who live and work there.'
'Poor in the spiritual sense.' Blotch made his first contribution to the conversation, but continued to look at the floor.
'Yes. Thank you, Minister Blotch. We have made great inroads in the past but this year we are launching a more…aggressive approach to the problem.'
'Problem?' Cherry asked.
Lady shot her a sharp look.
'The problem of sin,' Clarke said.
Clarke was a kindly man, Cherry decided. He was more genuine than the shiny suits on the web.
'Sin abounds in the City and their sin affects us here on the Outside. It was their protected promiscuity that first saw the hideous diseases they wear emerging, their behaviour that has sparked the epidemic in STVs. Do you think you would be living in these conditions if it weren't for the City folk? Do you think the…' Clarke couldn't bring himself to say the word and touched his necklet. 'Your trade would be necessary if our land wasn't run by…' He looked to his portly compatriot to take up where he had left off.
'By a giant pen of filthy, sex-obsessed sinners.' Blotch burst into life, looking up. His eyes burned straight through Cherry's, focused on the hellfire he was visualising. 'By the fallen; by the worshippers of power, money and sin itself.' This sort of speech was a bit more familiar to Cherry. She could picture him in the lamé uniform of the web preachers, a bird all foiled up and cooking in its own rage.
'I see,' Cherry said.
Lady nodded and smiled approvingly.
'Have you heard, young lady, of designer viruses?' Blotch asked.
'I don't know. I suppose I might have heard something.'
'Have you heard, young lady, that the right hand of Satan himself is working in the City right now under the name Doctor Kester Lowe?' Blotch's voice and colour rose as he spat the word 'Doctor'.
'I don't think I did know that, no,' Cherry said, trying not to smile.
'Doctor Kester Lowe is a virus designer –' Clarke took over again, the move perhaps triggered by the obvious rise in his colleague's blood pressure, 'the designer chosen to head up V's new viral design department. Now, the department is currently recruiting for models.'
'Models?'
'Models to be used as test subjects for Doctor Lowe's new viruses and of course to eventually model the end result, presumably in some kind of photoshoot or public appearance – we don't yet know.'
'A fashion show,' Blotch conjectured, standing up. 'A show the likes of which has only ever been witnessed on the catwalks of hell!' White spittle flecks flew from the corners of his mouth as he spoke.
'I'll take it from here.' Clarke stood and laid a soft hand on Blotch's shoulder. 'Young lady, your kind benefactress has arranged for you to fill one of these modelling positions.'
'What?' Cherry glanced over at Lady in disbelief.
'The position will guarantee you City resident status for the duration of your employment with V, which Lady's contact has assured us will be lengthy, if not permanent in the contract sense. However, the position isn't without its responsibilities.' Clarke's brow furrowed. 'We would require you to pass regular reports to my colleague Blotch regarding the activities of the department and its employees.'
'Reports? You're asking me to spy on them for you?'
'That's rather an indelicate way of looking at it. We fear that V is straying into some unholy territory with their virus development and we just want a pair of eyes on the inside so that we can keep a handle on things.'
'Right…' Cherry drew out the word. She looked from Clarke to Blotch and back again.
'We know that this will be a big change for you but we'd ask that you consider our proposition seriously. It is, after all, an opportunity for absolution. It is a chance for you to leave behind your life of sin and start anew as an agent of the light.' Clarke took a breath and smiled. 'It was wonderful to meet you, Cherry.'
'I look forward to working with you,' said Blotch, 'should you choose to help us. And remember: if you do, yours will be the hand that saves every soul within those walls that can be saved.'
When they were gone, Cherry tucked one leg up underneath her, put her forehead down in her hand and thought hard. She took her Book out of her pocket, switched it on and stared at the picture of her mother. It was the perfect opportunity for her. But it wasn't right. Outside, she could hear Lady's tones soothing the churchmen down the corridor and out of the side doors.
'Cherry?' Lady came back in to the room.
'You really think this is wise?' Cherry asked.
Lady walked to the window to check that the Church men were out of earshot. They were back at their van across the car park. She waved at them with a tight, polite smile.
'What do you mean?' she said.
'Spying. What they're talking about is spying. It's not exactly your classic clean slate they're offering here.'
'Cherry, if you've any brains you'll take the chance you've been given. If you want to find out about your mother, the City is the place to do it. You know my advice on the matter, but there it is. Don't get me wrong – this is no favour. They needed a girl and you fitted the bill – that's all. If she was taller and narrower and had a screen I'd as soon have sent your friend Marlene. Anyone in this place would jump at this opportunity and you have more reason to than most. Don't be a fool. Do it.'
'So I go in there and find her, but what? I tar myself with the same brush in the process. Like mother, like daughter. Is that why you suggested me? Do they know?'
'Cherry, you'd just be taking a job and keeping your eyes open. It's hardly on the same scale as terrorism.'
'Alleged terrorism. Do they know?'
'Of course they know. So there'd be no snooping around while you are working for the Church. Nothing – you understand? You wait until this is all done and dusted. If you're lucky, you get to stay on long enough to investigate. But if they find out you have been snooping around, putting their operati
ons at risk, they wouldn't hesitate to drop you in it. You wouldn't last long once it got out – you working for V, with your pedigree? I don't think so.'
'And the fact that they'd sent a spy in there?'
'The word of a religious body against the prostitute daughter of a convicted terrorist?'
'Don't call her that,' Cherry said. Convicted terrorist. All she knew of her mother was archived headlines that began with those words.
'But you get my point,' Lady said. 'This is a church we're talking about – when it comes to controlling people, they wrote the book. Look, you are being asked to swap all this for a life inside the City, a legitimate job, fame even and all they want in return is for you to report back to them once in a while. What's wrong with you? You have to think about the long game.'
'What if it turns nasty? You're making these guys sound worse than the lootmaster generals. What are they up to? You say it's not terrorism, but who's to say?'
'You're a worrier, Cherry. You've always been a worrier since the day you came here. It's nearly cost you your job once or twice, you know? How can someone work harvesting disease when they are so paranoid? If you didn't have that screen you know you would have been out on your ear.'
'I'm not paranoid. What if my screen is just part of it? What if they want someone with terrorist "genes" to frame for something they're up to? You've just told me these guys could turn on me at the drop of a hat. I just want to know what I'm getting into. '
'I'll tell you what you're getting into. I've seen it before with countless Real Church schemes. They want to make a point. They want to make us think that the City is the seat of all woe and try to get permission to reopen a site there and they think sending you in to V might get them some juicy gossip to help them do that. If they managed it they'd be top of the religious pops and blow all the old churches out of the water.
'But they won't manage it. They'll cause a bit of a stir outside of the City, support will rally for a short time and then things will go back to normal. The City will issue a statement with some platitudes for the ears of us outside and they can say whatever they want because no-one inside the City will care. Nobody cares, Cherry. Even the people out here who think they care about who's in charge, what's going on in the City – all they really care about is whether they and their families are getting by. If they are, everything's fine. If they're not, they need something to rally round. This might be the latest thing to rally round, but it's not going to change the world.'
'And what's in it for you?'
Lady's neck began to grow red and blotchy.
'What do you think, Cherry? Money. Big money. Enough to make this place over good and proper: a new coat of paint, new tunics for all of you, a revamped wardrobe. Maybe even some blackmarket nanoscreens so that we can monitor things ourselves instead of giving a cut to those bloodsuckers at V. I could blow Franco out of the water with those kind of resources.'
'You really don't think they're going to do anything drastic? If it's worth such a lot to them, doesn't that mean they've got some master plan?'
'No!' Lady laughed. 'They may have a plan, but they're not going to get anywhere. We can help them out, do what they want, take the money and when it doesn't work, that's their lesson to learn. Lord knows they've never managed to figure it out before. Plus, V's new business model is a bigger threat to us than any harebrained scheme those two could hatch and anything they do that might stall V's progress can only be a good thing.'
'But what they're asking me to do, it's still…'
'You have a moral problem with it? A religious problem with it?' Lady raised an eyebrow.
'No, but…' Cherry thought for a moment. 'What's to say I have to do it anyway? Can't I just take the job and then wave them goodbye, wave it all goodbye? You ask for your money upfront – everyone's a winner.'
'Cherry,' Lady lowered her brows, 'I'll be getting paid a wage just like you. You cut yourself off, you cut us all off; your friends will never see the benefit. You get in there, do the job and keep your nose clean and you'll be fine.'
Cherry waited for a moment to check that Lady was finished. 'I see…well…' she said.
'Like I said, you'd just be doing a job and keeping your eyes open.'
'I need to think about it.'
'Go on then.' Lady indicated the door. 'Think.'
Cherry got up and walked to the door. Opening it slowly, she looked back over her shoulder.
'But Cherry,' Lady added, taking the handle and pulling the door back and forth a little, as if she was working up to slamming it, 'you've got a new job, or you've got no job.'
-o-
'Gerald, I've got to go,' Kester said. 'Mrs Farrell has set me up to talk with some other scientist. Sounds like she might be from a competitor, so I'm not sure how that'll play.'
Kester stood as if waiting for Gerald's permission to leave. He was sweating in all the wrong places – knees, eyelids.
'Don't worry about it,' Gerald said. 'She wouldn't send you if she didn't think you'd cope with it.'
In the lift, Kester started clicking out a rhythm with his fingers, quietly at first, then louder and faster until both arms were going, a sort of edgy syncopated rhythm; the frayed nerves rag. Then, realising what a weird thing it was to be doing, he stopped and put his hands in his pockets.
Two days previously he had spent the whole night with Farrell and he wasn't sure what to make of things. It was hell having no boundaries. The technicians in his lab freely used the exchange booths. He'd had a couple of hard-to-turn down invitations and one when the lab was quieter that had proved impossible to turn down. Farrell knew about these, presumably. She had made comments about the technicians in question and their 'ambitions' – seemed to see it as a mark of quality. And then there was Farrell herself. They had been together quite a few times, but always at her initiation. Should he be approaching her? Was that the right way to show his own ambition? He must act professionally. He felt he should have had etiquette training; it should have been included in his induction. His stomach fell heavy as the lift came to a halt.
-o-
Alexis was waiting for Kester in the lobby. She watched as he came out of the lift. He looked like he was lost. She smiled, turned and walked out of the front entrance. He would follow her, sure as a mongrel would follow a pedigree. She could hear his hurried footsteps behind her. About halfway across the square he caught up with her and appeared by her side, walking a deferential sideways walk, looking up at her. She kept her eyes on where she was going. Kester bumped into someone and fell out of her vision briefly, then popped back into sight, panting.
'Mrs Farrell,' he said.
'Call me Alexis.' He should call her by name. She wanted him to call her by name, but she felt uncomfortable saying it.
'OK, Alexis.'
'But not in front of anyone.' People would talk and she wasn't sure yet if that would be a good thing or not. She was walking like a machine, pistons driving. Kester fell out of view again and gave a little skip to catch her up.
'This meeting,' Kester said. 'Are you going to brief me? I didn't know if I should bring anything.'
'We're not going to a meeting.'
'Oh.'
'I thought I should show you round the PlayPen. You're not getting out enough.' Alexis strode on. She had been watching him on the lab cameras. He was always there. He didn't seem to go out with friends particularly, didn't seem to be having much fun with the booths. As she inhaled, she felt the breath draw into a satisfied sphere, rolling behind her nostrils. She snorted, dismissing the feeling. 'But we can't arrive back together.'
'Really?'
'You told your colleagues you were going to a meeting?'
'Yes.'
'Well let's stick to that truth shall we. I don't like to look partisan – people get restless if they think I have favourites.'
'Favourites?'
'I said if they think I have favourites. I don't, but people are paranoid.' Alexis looked round at Kester. She di
dn't want to give him the wrong idea. 'Don't you think?'
'I suppose so.' He shrugged. 'I'm not so in demand myself.'
'That's not what my spies tell me.' Alexis laughed.
Kester's reflection of her laugh was thin, wobbly, a hall of mirrors laugh.
'Have you been to the PlayPen before?' Alexis changed the subject. 'I assumed you hadn't.'
'Assume away. I've only seen pictures.'
'The Millennium Pen?'
'Nope.'
'Non-City workers can get passes you know.' Alexis knew that few of them bothered. Unless you were a rich tourist or a visiting worker who had an agent or department to sort out your pass for you it was a real pain.
'I know they can in theory, but have you seen the form you have to fill in to get one?'
Alexis felt a smile building behind her face, but didn't answer.
'And it's pretty expensive too.'
'They should build one for the Institute. Your academic friends appreciate good clean fun, don't they?'
They were almost at the north entrance.
'Yeah, but who's going to pay for it?'
'It's not always a case of paying. A little bit of sponsored research here and there would probably do it. PlayPen might even build one for free to give perceived strength to their own "scientific" claims. Who knows?'
As they rounded the corner, the PlayPen came into view and its sound hit them: a recording of a swimming pool slowed down, the squeals lower and longer, the laughter deeper, coming from City workers of all ages, but the unguarded joy the same. Alexis felt her body lightening. It was one of her favourite places. From her office in the V building she could see the hole it made in the City skyline. It was shorter than most of the surrounding buildings and looked like a shaft running down that might never stop, might continue on down even after it hit the ground. When she felt trapped she liked to imagine herself freefalling down through the buildings to reach it.
As they crossed the road, Alexis glanced over at Kester. He was gawping. She smiled, pleased at his reaction as if the PlayPen belonged to her. She followed his gaze back to the structure, looking at it properly for the first time in years. It stretched a quarter mile in both directions from where they had emerged and was enclosed by chicken wire fences like a gargantuan kids' play park, many stories high. She let her eyes fall up the twenty themed floors, from the more traditional lower ones with their slides, swings and roundabouts up past a jolly-roger flag, the leaves of jungle plants, the tip of a dinosaur's tail, each floor connected to the next by a network of ramps and ladders right up to the top where a glass, lozenge-shaped room appeared to float above the rest of the structure. At each corner, there was a circular lift shaft, taking the less energetic clients straight up to the floor of their choice.
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