Mappa Mundi

by Justina Robson

  “Friends?” She had the strangest impression, in what she was coming to recognize as the true Selfware style of magical knowledge from nowhere, that the person he was talking about was someone she'd met. But that was ridiculous.

  “Yeah. The best.” But he didn't sound certain.

  Natalie tried not to wonder why he'd chosen never to mention her before, but she did wonder. Yes, his trip to England had been covert, but even so. Wouldn't this friend be helping him to investigate this? Natalie tried to shake off the feeling that Jude was rapidly becoming more of an enigma as her knowledge about him increased.

  “You mean, you were friends, and now you're not?” She tried to get him to clarify.

  “I don't know.” He looked across at her and just like a switch being flicked the Jude she did remember seemed to come back on. “Sorry. This must sound like a crock to you, but this box …” He held it in his hand and then, without warning, grimaced and crushed it up into a small grey and red ball. Then, when he turned back to her, his face was calm.

  “A lot's happened.”

  “To me, too,” she said, and then her decision was made about whether she could or should trust him, could or should involve him further. “Come on. We can't stay here. Get whatever you need and let's go.” But it was hard to say it. All she wanted to do was sink down on one of those couches and curl up and sleep, not go out into a country and city she didn't know with nowhere to hide.

  He stared blankly at her as though he didn't understand a word of it but then got to his feet. Back to dull again, hesitant and pained, he nodded.

  “Give me a minute or two.”

  He disappeared into one of the other rooms and she heard the sound of wardrobes opening. She poured herself a cup of hot water and sipped it as she made a closer inspection of the room. Its neatness and order made her feel even more ravaged and helpless.

  “What did she do with the machine?” Natalie called through, without really thinking about the question.

  “It was taken off her,” he said, grim-faced as he returned. He took the beaded thing off the wall and removed the back of it, taking the necklaces and other things out from their pinnings and packing them carefully in rolled T-shirts, which he placed in a briefcase. He explained, in clipped terms, what had happened, the kidnap and the threats.

  “Your cornflakes packet is all chopped up,” she said, not sure herself why it was important, only that nobody here looked like they had the time or inclination to play with cardboard and glue for fun.

  Jude looked blank. He obviously wasn't someone who ate at home very much. It seemed like news to him.

  “You said she was determined to find hard evidence. The scanner was it. But she carried it round in her bag all the time, you said, even after you warned her. She must have thought it would expose her to danger. Wouldn't it have been better to put it in a safety deposit?”

  Jude shrugged, but his expression showed that his thinking was suddenly starting to follow hers. “She didn't trust big institutions, banks included.”

  “Do you think she might have left it here?”

  “What, and made a convincing replica out of that?”

  “No. But it's like any other device. It's got a fancy outside and working insides. The outside isn't important, and, more to the point, it's the kind of thing that you couldn't tell didn't work unless you had some active NervePath to test it on. She didn't. She may have realized that and taken the case with her in case she was caught, to use as a bargaining chip for her safety. Others would have no reason not to believe it was the real thing and she got to protect her evidence.” Natalie knew she was right.

  “She might not have told you, so you wouldn't be able to give it away if you were questioned. You've got to expect that whoever did this to her isn't going to stop at raiding this place and—”

  “Did what to her?” He was cold and direct as his stare arrowed at her across the room.

  “Drowned her in the—”

  “I didn't say anything about that.”

  The temperature in the room seemed to drop to absolute zero. Natalie at once realized that she had no idea how she knew the details of what had happened to Jude's sister, except that she did, and he was now looking at her with piercing suspicion and a simmering, violent hostility. She was glad the breakfast bar was between them again.

  “No,” she said, reaching for her treatment voice and letting her own shock show with it. “You didn't. But she did drown in the Potomac, didn't she? And—” she didn't understand what came into her mind next, but she said it aloud “—she was drunk on champagne.”

  Jude left his briefcase and stalked across until their faces were only a foot apart, the bar between them. He leaned closer, his dark eyes scrutinizing hers and brimming with the beginnings of tears that she could see were due more to anger than to grief at this moment. His voice was quiet and more controlled than she expected.

  “You'd better tell me what the hell happened to you in that accident or we are going our very separate ways.”

  In as few words as she could, keeping it simple, she told him what had happened and how she believed she was changing.

  “I've never had this before,” she insisted, not giving an inch. “I don't even have a theory for it. On the plane, in the taxi—it was like I could read people's body language and get information out of everything they did. I knew their real feelings. That was like seeing their mind. But I don't know how I know about White Horse. I just know. It must be from you. I don't know how. How could that kind of thing be in your behaviour? It couldn't.” She held her hands out in the universal gesture of supplication and he looked down at them, unable to stop his suspicion, his natural dislike and distrust of someone with an apparent ability that was out of his understanding and that violated the privacy of his own mind.

  Natalie would have felt the same. She did feel the same. She didn't want to acquire the contents of other heads without asking. She'd been through lots of minds, many deviant and damaged, some banal, some wretched. Imagining them as her own was bad enough. This was frightening.

  She put her hands down on the cold marble top and took a long breath as Jude leaned on the bar, head down, thinking hard.

  “Actually, that's not quite right,” she said. “I have heard a thought before, but I didn't know what it was.”

  He looked up reluctantly through his long fringe, face still swollen with emotions he wasn't ready or able to express.

  “It was yesterday now. It woke me up. I went out to find where it had come from and I thought it must be Dan, even though that's ridiculous. He was miles away. But I'd been under house arrest and they wouldn't even let us call each other. I didn't know if he was still at the police station—they thought he'd sabotaged the experiment, you see, at first.

  “So I thought, here's my chance, I'll go and see him. But there were police all over the flat and there was nobody where I thought I should go, so I ran back home. I didn't know what was going on, but I decided I couldn't stay and obey any more—the Ministry had something to do with the sabotage or, at least, they allowed it to run on once it'd started. I skipped the flight I was meant to take and came here instead. On the way—” She paused and looked around the place for assistance, a way to protect herself from what she had to say.

  She looked at Jude's face and clung on to its mistrust and its misery.

  “I got a call from someone on this side, the American side, I think. Her accent was all wrong. She had Dan. She told me that if I didn't go straight back and start cooperating that they'd send someone who would—” she made a gun shape out of her hand and pointed it at her head, “—zap me with something that would make me comply. And in case I didn't want to believe that she could, she used it to kill Dan, right there. She switched him off. He's dead.”

  Jude immediately closed his eyes and squeezed them shut. He straightened his back and sighed, “I'm sorry.” But there were too many emotions seething in him for him to be able to say any more.

&n
bsp; Natalie walked around the end of the bar and put her arms around him. He turned and they held each other tightly for a while. By mutual but unacknowledged agreement they drew apart after a short time and Jude went back to his briefcase, checking his Pad was in his pocket. Natalie kept her hands inside hers, the old Pad under her left palm. She watched him take a last look around. His gaze fell on the grey and red ball of the tea box and stayed there, transfixed.

  He looked at it for almost a minute.

  “What does it mean?” she asked quietly, as he finally turned away and picked up his case.

  His face was grim and he looked like he was pushing fifty in that moment.

  “It means I think I may have been a fool,” he said. “I can't quite tell you why. Maybe it means nothing.” He went into another wandering moment in which he seemed completely lost, and then the marine in him, or the detective, took over and said, “If White Horse did leave that scanner here, I haven't seen it. Do you need it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I've got nothing with me. It could help, if someone comes who's already under the influence, or if I need to switch it on again.”

  “Again?” He stared at her, uncomprehending. “I thought it'd be more use for taking out whatever they throw at you.”

  “Maybe.” She could see he wasn't ready for her line of thinking—that Selfware accelerated even further could enable her to get around almost any kind of trouble. At a cost. She let it go. “There isn't time for a long search. Is there anywhere that she was likely to hide it?”

  He shook his head. “She hadn't been here long.”

  “What kinds of places does she usually hide things?”

  “Hide? I …”

  Natalie could see him thinking way back, to their childhood. “Places like, kind of obvious but not obvious. Somewhere you'd have to try and find it, not immediately see it. She had this bangle once, turquoise and silver, cheap but she thought it was good. She hid it one time, too well, and never remembered where she put it. Still lost. Ever since then she always used to pick a place that she'd come to for another reason …”

  “Do you think she'd put it somewhere you might stumble over it, in case something happened to her?” Natalie had a headache coming on but she tried to stay calm and persist. The chance of finding a working scanner was too good to miss. It could mean the difference between freedom and slavery. “Someplace only you were likely to go? Maybe something you had in common might mark it out? Or, if both of you were compromised, something that could be sent home to your family as a personal item?”

  He looked in the direction of each room of the apartment in turn, progressing mentally through each one and its objects, its angles. “I can't …” He hesitated, looking at the kitchen. “Wait.”

  Natalie watched him as he strode suddenly to the cupboard under the sink and began hauling out large silvery tins, reaching behind to put them on the bar near her. She read the side and its utilitarian writing—Peanut Butter. Be sure to eat something from the four food groups every day.

  Jude reached into a drawer and passed her a knife. He began to open the first can, which seemed lighter, using the knife as a lever for the pressure-fitting lid.

  Natalie couldn't believe anybody bought peanut butter in such huge quantities. She opened hers and was faced with a paper seal and then a solid mass of light brown sludge. She weighed the can in her hand. It said on the side it held three pounds. American pounds—what was that in real weight? She was distracted by Jude, who had plunged his hand straight into the opened tin and was feeling around in the bottom.

  Natalie turned hers over and looked at the lower ring seal. It did seem a little bent in places.

  “There's something,” he said, a second of excitement lifting his tone to near normal.

  Natalie started to scoop the thick, cakelike, oily stuff out and put it on the tin lid. As Jude pulled out a plastic bag from his and peered at the microchips it held she grabbed a second one, larger, and extracted it from the base of her tin. The smell made her realize how hungry she was. Starving. She picked up a lump and started eating it as she saw that her bag held the projection board and cooling system. The third tin they wrenched the base off completed the whole scanner.

  “She was a good engineer,” Natalie said, licking her fingers and hand clean. “They look fine.”

  Jude vanished for a minute as she shoved another handful of the goop in her mouth and then reappeared with a small toolkit box that he slid into her right pocket.

  “We have to go now,” she said, ripping a section of paper towel out of the dispenser and cleaning her hands.

  “Agreed.” He collected his case. “The only question is, where to?”

  “Anywhere,” she said, following him to the door. “Anywhere we can talk and not be overheard.”

  He turned to her in the confined space, looking down at her. “I really am sorry.”

  “I know.” She leaned past him and opened the door, trying to ignore the sudden uprush of tears in her eyes at what she could see inside him, inside herself. “Let's go.”

  Mary discovered the facts of Natalie's second escape late. The cops called out to the airport had taken FBI officers with them, but since none of them knew anything about the Mappa Mundi project or Natalie Armstrong's special status they treated her as an ordinary crazy bomb suspect and put her in a truck to take her to the explosives and detonation site out of town. The personnel that Mary had sent to the airport herself hadn't been filled in on the developments during the flight because that got relayed to the local team, who weren't her familiars. They'd stayed on in the arrivals hall as the police shot out in force onto the apron in a far distant corner of the airfield.

  Alarms had only spread wider once the truck arrived and was opened to reveal an empty space with no sign of Dr. Armstrong's presence save a couple of red hairs and some clothing fibres stuck to the chair inside that matched those on her airplane seat. By the time the Feds had called in a TV magic expert to help them figure out how she'd gotten out of a high-security vehicle without appearing to touch it Mary was settling down in the tub for a long, hot soak, thinking that her day had already been more than sufficiently filled with stress and degradation.

  The news made her haul herself out again five minutes later and start getting dressed, cursing loudly with every Irish insult she could think of. Armstrong had got her message but wasn't going to play? Or maybe that stuff in her head had given her access to a whole new world of genius that Mary wasn't able to react to fast enough. But let's not think that, she decided, towelling her legs until they were an angry red. Let's not get ahead of the game.

  She made herself comb her hair slowly, picking out the tangles, and read Jude's message, the one she'd ignored at the Pentagon.

  “Mary—White Horse never arrived at your legal office. She's been found in the river, they say. I'm going to ID. Can you meet me? Just in case. I've tried her numbers, but no answer. It's like the Pad's vanished, even using MaxTrace. Or catch up with me at home. Or call ASAP. Jude.”

  It didn't sound as though he suspected her at all, even though he knew about her connection to the law office concerned. Even so, this had been a couple of hours ago. She called him. There was no reply and the rebound said that his Pad was out of service. Probably he was at home with everything switched off. She'd have to go there.

  She pulled on jeans and a sweater over her underwear and put some cowboy boots on her feet. She tied back her hair with a bolero tie. Looking at her face in the mirror she put on only a trace of makeup. Lots wouldn't look sympathetic. Even thinking about what she'd ordered done and what she'd done herself made her feel giddy and out of kilter. She hadn't been sure she was capable of it, not even fixing Guskov's scientists up, but she'd done it and the triumph over herself was tainted with disgust. The face in the mirror hardly seemed like her own. The blush and the foundation couldn't make it so, but when she put on her perfume and picked up her bag she felt absolutely ordinary again. So this was what it was like to
be a ruthless, dedicated careerist—it had its moments of twisted exhilaration and its vast flat acres of plain, boring, ordinary life. She couldn't decide if that was disappointing. Maybe she'd have been happier if she'd grown another head. The thought made her laugh.

  Jude's apartment was only five blocks from hers. She walked, gathering her thoughts, stopping at the Seven Eleven on his corner to pick up a care pack of basic groceries: milk, coffee, fruit, his favourite ice cream. More out of habit than judgement she took the back stairs to his building, using her own key set—she'd done it deliberately when she came to see White Horse in case that nosy doorman took it into his head to start talking about her visits and now it seemed prudent even though there was no real need.

  When she cued the presspad on the door she felt genuine trepidation: she'd never seen Jude in deep stress and she didn't know what she'd find. Her curiosity faded as the moments passed, however, and she realized that either he wasn't answering or he wasn't there.

  She took out her Pad and overrode the door system, sure he wouldn't mind if he was just slow in moving: they had passes to each other's places as a matter of routine. Once it opened she called out,

  “Jude? It's Mary. Sorry I'm so late!”

  But there was no answer.

  Mary walked slowly in and took a look around, putting the grocery bag on the breakfast bar. She saw the open tins and stared at them. He'd had a real go at those for some reason. Maybe because they were BIA? He hated peanut butter, she knew that, and the BIA connection could have set off a rage against the perceived injustices of his sister's life, the all too real outrage of her death. People did strange things in their grief.

  Then she noticed the pictures that had been taken down and torn apart. The beaded pieces were family heirlooms, deeply connected to everything he shared with White Horse.

  She was looking at them in more detail when she noticed the balled-up cardboard on the floor and a little chill ran down her back. She picked it up and it was, as she'd thought, an empty tea-bag container. Fair enough, you rip down your pictures and drag out what's dear and important, maybe you take it away to hide or send home or do something else with it that eases your pain, but Jude was a neat freak. He didn't throw trash. He wouldn't leave this here.