Dream Paris (22 page)

“Are you okay with that, Francis?”

“I don’t see that I have any say in the matter, Anna.” He folded his arms and looked out of the window. I did the same, looked at the little lights that hung from the branches of the trees that lined the road, burning brightly in the night.

“Is that burning fruit?” I said. Francis didn’t answer, he was too busy sulking.

T
HE CARRIAGE PULLED
up before our hotel. A man in a yellow-and-black-striped uniform opened the door.

“Good evening, citizens,” he announced. I noticed how fine the cockade pinned to his jacket seemed to be. Red, white and blue silk, expertly stitched.

“Acting as a doorman doesn’t seem very revolutionary,” I said.

“Ah, but I choose to do this,
mademoiselle
. I am the equal of every man or woman who comes into this place. And if I see an aristocrat, then…”

He pulled a finger across his neck.

“Of course,” I said.

We marched across the marble lobby to the front desk.

“
Chambre 113,
” said Kaolin.

“
D’accord.
”

The receptionist handed across the keys with a very un-citizen like look that quite clearly distinguished between
(5)nous
and
vous(5)
.

“And now I wish you
bonne nuit
,” said Kaolin. “I will return in the morning to take you for your appointment with Jean-Michel Ponge, and then on to the Public Records Office and, hopefully, your mother.”

F
RANCIS INSISTED THAT
we both share a room. I didn’t make too much of a fuss, I was worried, too. Dream London had been dangerous, but it had been my home town. I’d known people there, I’d known the rules, sort of. Here, I was a foreigner.

“They’re all talking bollocks,” said Francis. “Are we really supposed to believe they want to help free the British that were marched here? If they were that concerned about them, they’d never have allowed them to be bought in the first place.”

“They might not have had a choice.”

“Really? I thought that Committee for Public Safety ran things here. Allowing workers to be bought doesn’t sound very equal.”

I sat down on the edge of a seat. I felt exhausted.

“I know. I know. But they said they’d help find my mother. What other leads do we have?

“There’s the fortune. Where are we up to on that?”

“I don’t know. We’ve seen the ruined castle. We’re supposed to be in the
Café de la Révolution
on Nivôse 22nd. What’s today’s date?”

“I don’t know.” He rubbed his chin. “This is the
Hotel de la Révolution
. Do you suppose the café is here?”

“I doubt it. I bet there are loads of
Cafés de la Révolution
in this city. Look, I don’t like the
Banca
either, but what else am I supposed to do?”

“I know.” Francis looked frustrated. “But why are they making such a fuss of us? There must be many people in this city looking for lost relatives. I can’t imagine the
Banca di Primavera
rolling out the red carpet for everyone.”

“But we might be the only ones who’ve come here from London.”

“No. That woman on the train said there were others.”

“Well, we might be the only ones who can find our way back.”

And we both turned to look at the wire from Francis’s backpack, stretched out across the floor and running out under the door.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
dawned bright and clear, the sky a much deeper blue than normal, the sun so much brighter.

There were new clothes laid out for us. A smart yellow suit for Francis with shiny gold lapels, a white shirt and a checked red cravat that I helped him tie. There was also a brushed brown top hat and pair of white gloves. For me, an ivory silk dress with white lace at the cuffs and little blue bows down the front, a pair of black patent leather boots and a little parasol.

Francis wolf whistled when he saw me, then apologised when he caught my eye.

“We’re hardly Children of the Revolution, are we?” he said.

Kaolin had changed her outfit, too. She arrived at our door just after breakfast (coffee and hot milk in silver pots, beautifully baked brioches and croissants, jam in little pots). She was wearing a yellow-and-white-striped silk dress, a white cap and white shoes.

We followed her through the lobby of the hotel and out of the entrance. There wasn’t a carriage waiting for us; instead, Kaolin walked out onto the wide boulevard in front of the hotel and waited, looking at the traffic. A red Dream Parisian car trundled by, trailing blue smoke and rattling violently. Kaolin pointed to the car and it pulled to a halt. She walked jerkily to the side window and began to speak to the driver. Like all Dream Parisian vehicles, the car seemed too small and narrow. Vehicle construction in Dream Paris seemed to have evolved entirely separately from our world.

“What’s she saying?” asked Francis.

“I don’t know. Something about the
Banca di Primavera
. I keep hearing the word for
dress
, I think.”

The man was losing the argument. He climbed out of the car looking pale, and handed the keys to Kaolin.

She turned, her white face glowing in the bright morning.

“Are you ready, pretty Anna?”

“Yes. What happened there?”

“I called in a debt,” said Kaolin, quite simply.

We climbed into the car and set off, Kaolin driving.

D
REAM
P
ARIS WAS
hotter than Dream London. The sky was bluer, the colours brighter, the reflections harsher. The wide squares of white gravel hurt the eyes, the flashes from the fountains and ponds imprinted lines and loops on your vision. The people of Dream Paris lived in the shade, walking in the dappled shadows of the plane trees, seated under the canopies and umbrellas of the shops and cafés. Of the homeless, there was no sign today. They must have been swept clear of the nice spaces as morning broke.

The roads widened as we headed towards the
Grande Tour
. Eventually we turned onto a wide boulevard, a line of rectangular lakes down the middle, fountains, green grass, trimmed trees. The tallest Eiffel Tower stood at the end, its covered length reflected in the waters.

“I will tell you a story about this view, Pretty Anna,” said Kaolin. “No one noticed quite when the first Eiffel Tower appeared in Paris, over two hundred years ago. When first seen, it was no bigger than the tip of your little finger. When the Revolution was in full flow, a second Eiffel Tower appeared, the height of a man, just down there, where the small arch now stands. And then, at the end of the Revolution, a third grew, on the spot where the North Tower now stands. The revolutionaries tore them all down.”

“Why?” asked Francis.

“The revolutionaries don’t like the towers. It is a citizen’s duty to report if a tower is found growing anywhere. The Committee for Public Safety will attempt to destroy it before it’s rooted.”

Francis still looked puzzled. He’d never lived in Dream London, of course.

“The towers grew in Dream London,” I said. “They were part of the changes. It’s no wonder the revolutionaries try and keep them under check.”

“Okay.”

“Even so,” said Kaolin, “after the Revolution, it seemed a great joke for the Committee for Public Safety to build a fourth tower out of metal. I have seen the plans in the Public Records Office. It was quite a thing, a tenth of the size of the
Grande Tour
that you see there. I don’t know if it would be possible to
build
such a thing…”

“Why wouldn’t it be possible…?” began Francis.

“… but they certainly meant to try. They dug foundations, they poured concrete, they began to bolt together iron to make the base section, and then…”

Her voice tailed away.

“And then what?” I said.

“Some say that the world unfolded then. Just as your home recently separated into Dream London and London, Paris separated into Paris and Dream Paris. The
Grande Tour
regrew unnoticed amongst the half-completed metal construction and shouldered it aside. Perhaps, in another world, the metal copy still exists. A poor copy, nothing more than a skeleton.”

“It’s a universal idea,” I said. “This is physics. You want to build something tall with materials of a certain strength, this is what you’d come up with. It’s a mathematical form. The curve of the four pillars, the way they support each other…”

I was so busy showing off I didn’t ask the important question. That was left to Francis. “Why are they all wrapped in cloth?”

“So no one can see what’s underneath, of course,” said Kaolin. And that was that. “I’ll let you out here. They won’t allow cars under the Tower.”

I
T WAS ANOTHER
world in the vast space beneath the tower. A world that was quite definitely one of
Liberté, Égalité et Fraternité
. Every citizen there was dressed in blue or grey breeches, white shirts, blue jackets and a red Phrygian hat. If someone had wanted Francis and me to stand out amongst them, they couldn’t have done a better job of choosing our clothes.

My papers were taken, inspected, re-inspected, passed on to superiors and handed back for further inspection. I was slowly ushered forward through the busy crowd to one of the pillars. At every step I was regarded suspiciously, I saw people pointing to me, I heard mutters of
Espion
. And all the time Francis – big, strong soldier Francis with his backpack trailing a wire all the way back to Blighty – was received with nothing more than a smile and courteous nod.

After what seemed like hours we made it to one of the vast pillars and were shown into a lift similar to the one we’d ridden last night at the North Tower.

“
477e étage,
” said the woman at my side. The lift operator nodded and pressed one of the hundreds of rather grubby white buttons that lined the wall. We rose into the air, surrounded by the children of the Revolution. Whereas the North Tower had been the last word in luxury, this tower was testament to the institution. As we stopped at various floors I saw corridors decorated in grey and eau-de-nil, floors laid with grey linoleum and set out with regulation furniture. The place was a hive of dynamic equilibrium as papers were moved from one place to another.

We reached the 477th floor and stepped out into yet another pale grey corridor. There was a list of names and room numbers on one wall. We found Jean-Michel Ponge’s name with a little difficulty, we found room 17e with just a little more.

Jean-Michel was sat behind his desk, looking like a particularly lugubrious bloodhound, albeit one in need of a shave. There were a collection of yellow and green cubes of different sizes on his desk.

“Have you seen one of these before?”

He held up a yellow cube, the size and weight of a tennis ball.

“I’ve not,” I said. “What is it?”

“I think it’s a lemon. The green ones are limes. They were found floating down the Seine.”

“Why are they that shape?”

“That is the question,
non
?”

“Who found them?” asked Francis. “I thought the river was full of dinosaurs.”

Jean-Michel rose from his chair, he beckoned us to follow him to the window of his office. There was a telescope fixed there. He looked through it, adjusted it.

“Look,” he invited Francis, who placed his eye to the telescope. “What do you see?”

Francis adjusted the focus.

“I see… I see men and women on the banks of the river. They’re the wrong side of the guard walls. They’re collecting something…”

“Mussels,” said Jean-Michel.

“There’s someone on guard! Something’s approaching, something in the water. A mosasaur…” He swore.

“What happened?” I said.

Francis straightened up.

“There was someone on watch. They ran for the safety of the bank. The mosasaur jumped for them. It missed.”

“The homeless,” said Jean-Michel. “They congregate here in Dream Paris. They take any work there is, even musselling. There is little enough food in Dream Paris to feed the regular citizens.” He returned to his desk. “So, how was your dinner in the North Tower?”

A point had been made.

“You knew we were there,” I began.

“It was very nice, thank you,” said Francis, smoothly.

Jean-Michel almost smiled at that.

“I’m sure it was. I can’t remember the last time I sat down to lobster Thermidor. And I hear that the
Banca di Primavera
is to aid you in your search for your mother. Do you consider that a wise alliance?”

“It’s the only help we’ve been offered so far,” I said.

“I would have suggested the Public Records Office myself, Mademoiselle Sinfield. You know, I could instruct you not to associate with the
Banca di Primavera
, for your own good if not that of the Revolution. However, as I suspect you are already in their debt, that would be rather pointless.”

“We’re not in their debt,” I said. “I made sure of that. The meal was free.”

“A free lunch?”

“It was dinner.”

“The
Banca di Primavera
is very subtle.”

“Thank you for your advice. Is that why I’m here? Or can I go now?”

“You’re so touchy. Why can’t you allow anyone to help you?”

He looked at Francis as he said this.

“Because she’s seventeen,” said Francis. “And she knows fucking everything.” I raised my eyebrows at the sudden passion in his voice. My reply was deliberately cool and measured.

“And because I’ve found that waiting for people to help you is a pointless exercise. Now, can we be about our business, M Ponge?”

Jean-Michel and Francis were looking at each other again with an expression that said, quite clearly,
women!

Jean-Michel rose to his feet.

“No, Anna, I think not. You see, whilst you were enjoying dinner last night, we’ve been finding out a little bit more about you.”

“From who?” asked Francis.

“Surely that should be
from whom
?”smiled Jean-Michel. “That is the correct English,
non
?”