Fractions (23 page)

Three consignments in the past month, all consisting of tens, no,
hundreds
of metres of fine silk. One order still outstanding: the fabric had just come in by air, and awaited delivery. The order had been placed four days ago, in the morning. When he'd encountered the Black Planner.

Yee
-ha!

As he stared at the line of information it began to blink. A message came up.

‘
CROSS-REFERENCE ON WOMEN'S PEACE COMMUNITY EXISTS. DISPLAY
?'

A big Y to that. The pages rippled as the program followed pointers through the Collective's databases. Then the scene cleared to display a videophone message that had been waiting in the Pending file since the day before yesterday.

The phone's flat screen popped up in the middle of the virtual scene. As the picture stabilized Jordan thought, for a startled moment, that he was seeing an interior view in Beulah City itself: a parlour with overelaborate furnishings and drapes; two women in long, likewise overelaborate dresses, all petticoats and pinafores. The woman in the foreground sat primly, hands folded in her lap, facing the camera. The other sat on a sofa behind and to the left, paying no attention to the call; she was concentrating on a piece of needlework, her fair curls falling forward in front of her face.

‘Felix Dzerzhinsky Workers' Defence Collective?' the first woman asked, the words sounding incongruous. She nodded at the confirmation. ‘Good. We require professional advice on neighbourhood security, and we understand that you have some experience in this field. Please call us as soon as possible. Thank you.'

She reached forward to sign off, and just as she did so the woman in the background looked up. She looked straight at the camera from across the room, brushing her hair back from her forehead with her wrist.

Jordan jumped at the shock of recognition.

It was Cat.

The picture clicked off.

 

Jordan passed a note into Mary's work-space, asking her to take a break. She did, after another strenuous minute. Jordan ran the message for her.

‘Well?' she said.

‘That's Cat! At the end there.'

Mary frowned. ‘Let me see that again.' This time she magnified the last section. ‘Yeah, well it certainly
looks
like her, but…'

‘You'd never expect to see her dolled up like that?' Jordan smiled to see he was right. ‘It's the way she's pushing her hair back. It's like the picture in Moh's room, shows her doing just the same thing. Except in the picture it's a spanner she's working with, not a needle.'

‘Well, Jordan, I don't know how you think we live, but I've never been in Moh's room,' Mary said with a giggle. ‘You'll have to show it to Moh.'

Jordan was about to do that when he remembered what the message was actually about, and how he'd found it.

‘Let me just fix something up first,' he said.

 

‘Yeah, that's Catherin all right,' Moh said. He saved the image from his glades and cleared the view, turning his attention to the Tinkerbell-sized fetches of Jordan and Mary above his hand-phone. ‘Well spotted, Jordan. I might have not have recognized her myself if it weren't for that thing with the hair. Cat disguised as a lady – that's a laugh.'

‘I think you were meant to spot it,' Jordan said. ‘You or one of the comrades. They're telling you: Cat's here, come and get her!'

‘So why not call us and say that? Who are these people, anyway?'

‘Feminists – fem
inin
ists,' Mary corrected herself. ‘Women's Peace Community, some kind of sweetness and light outfit—'

‘
Yes
!' Moh shouted. ‘The Body Bank!'

Janis, who like him was prone, looking at the phone display, winced as the sound filled the narrow volume they lay in.

‘Sorry, Janis.'

‘What's that about the Body Bank?' Mary asked.

‘There's a teller at the Body Bank at Brunel University – she's a femininist. Only one I've ever met, as far as I know…'

‘It's been getting quite fashionable recently,' Janis interjected.

‘OK, interesting. Anyway, I remember this lady noticing that Cat wasn't included in the deal over the crank bomb team. She might have followed it up.'

‘That's possible,' Jordan said. ‘But why should Cat go there?'

Mary shook her head. Moh shrugged.

‘Oh, for pity's sake,' said Janis. They all looked at her. ‘Cat had just been thoroughly shafted in this game of soldiers. Wouldn't surprise me at all if she wanted out, wanted at least a bit of peace and quiet. Even if it did mean having to sit and stitch. In fact, especially. Soothes the mind.' She rolled over and laughed. ‘Try it sometime, guys and gals.'

‘Sanctuary,' Moh said. ‘OK. That makes sense, I guess. Just as well you noticed the message.'

‘It wasn't an accident,' Jordan said carefully. ‘It wasn't the search for Cat that brought it up, it was the…Beulah City follow-up.'

‘But why—?'

Moh was about to ask why the
ANR
should have any connection with this Women's Peace Community when he remembered that Mary wasn't in on the whole story. ‘Uh, what'll we do, call them back?'

‘I already have,' Mary said. ‘Didn't say anything about you, just said we'd send someone over today.'

Moh turned to Janis. ‘You game for this?'

‘Sure. Should get Donovan off our backs, at least.'

‘At least,' Moh agreed. And maybe lead us to the
ANR
as well. ‘I'm thinking about how we'll get there,' he added. ‘Mass-transit might take us out of our insurance cover.'

‘That's all OK,' Jordan said. ‘I've set it up. They're taking a delivery of silk from Beulah City –' Jordan paused, as if to make sure Moh had got that point. ‘But it's in a place that no driver from Beulah City would go.'

‘Not one of those
terrible
places, is it?' Janis asked.

‘Oh, no,' Jordan said.

Mary smiled impishly. ‘It's a small semi-closed neighbourhood in the Stonewall Dykes,' she explained.

‘I see,' Moh said after a moment. ‘Major fire-and-brimstone target area. So how do we get there?'

‘The truck comes out of Beulah City, goes to a pick-up point where it's handed over – Mary's got the map – and you drive it the rest of the way. It's all in the name of a dummy company I've created.'

‘Sounds safe enough,' Moh said. He had a thought. ‘Not a women-only area, is it?'

Jordan turned to Mary with a baffled gesture.

‘It's OK,' Mary said. ‘I've checked. They have no objection to men. In their place.'

‘This community is sounding more sensible all the time,' Janis remarked, running a possessive hand down Moh's back. He turned and grinned at her.

‘Hey, I'm quite used to being dominated by women.'

‘You should be so lucky,' Mary said. ‘Right, here's the details. Jordan's made all the arrangements.' She did something out of view, and streets and times appeared on the phone screen.

‘And get up, you two,' she added, just before she and Jordan vanished. ‘It's a fine afternoon.'

There wasn't room to stand up in the double bed-cell they'd rented, so it took them a while. They had to get their clothes on, lie face-down and slither under their packs, then crawl backwards out of the hatch and down a ten-metre ladder to the ground.

‘Weird,' Janis said as they walked out along narrow passages between banks of bed-cells. ‘Like left luggage.'

‘Left passengers.'

Little Japan hit them like a rock concert as they stepped out of the door. They took the slidewalk, changing tracks frequently, swaying in the crowds. Moh found he was half-consciously generating a running mutter of body-language that created a small space around them, whatever the crush. He gave up trying to process the incoming information, the solid-state semiotics of the place.

‘Doesn't feel oppressive,' he said. ‘That's what's so strange.'

‘Something in the food,' Janis said. ‘Inhibits the anti-crowding pheromones.'

It bothered him that he couldn't tell if she were making it up.

The trailer park, in an indeterminate zone between Little Japan and one of the more multi-cultural areas, felt like open space. There was an average of a metre between bodies here. The huge trucks lay charging up, drivers lounged, and vendors vended.

‘Ah, the wonders of the free market,' Janis grouched, narrowly avoiding a tray of hot drinks being carried at alarming speed on the head of a five-year-old.

‘Not as free as it looks,' Moh said. ‘These places tend to be run by gangs. Shady jurisdictions and that.'

They found the light container truck they were after in a corner of the park near the feeder road. The driver shoved a magazine into his pocket as they approached, and stood up, looking slightly embarrassed.

‘Hi,' Kohn said. ‘River Valley. You're expecting us?'

The man smiled and nodded. He handed Moh the key, took a receipt and headed off, evidently not straight to the nearest rail station.

Janis and Moh climbed into the cab. The truck was owned by a rental company and changed hands often – that much was obvious from the condition of the interior. Moh had a sudden thought. He passed the key to Janis.

‘You drive,' he said.

Janis took the key, smirking, and turned the switch with a flourish. The engine responded with a faint hum.

‘Aw,' she said. ‘It's not like the films I saw when I was little.' She made internal-combustion-engine noises as the truck glided out of the park.

‘Nah,' Moh said, adjusting his seatbelt. ‘It were a man's job in them days – aaarrrgh, stop…'

There actually was a wall called the Stonewall Dykes, but it was more to prevent people from entering unwittingly than to keep anyone out – or in. In the bad old days of the Panic it had had a more serious function, but now it was just a bit of retrovirus chic – isolation camp. The real protection of the area – the Gay Ghetto, the Pink Polity, the Queer Quarter – was in the strong, gentle, capable hands of a militia called the Rough Traders.

The truck pulled off the clearway and down a side street, past a portion of the wall on which someone had written ‘Sodom today – Gomorrah the World!', and they were in. Just another street, except suddenly there were no women. A bit further and there were no men; further yet and there were both, but you couldn't tell which was which, all gaudy and glad-ragged and gay.

‘What's the difference between this sort of thing and what's outside?'

‘None at all, that's the point. There's nowt so queer as folks, as they say up North—'

‘Oh shut up. That's not what I meant. What's the difference between these specialized neighbourhoods, or whatever you call them, and the mini-states?'

‘No wars.'

‘It can't be that simple.'

‘Looks like it can.'

‘The future and it works, huh?'

Kohn laughed. ‘It keeps people like me
in
work. In my future society we'd be out of a job. No wars over territory
and
no fights over property.'

‘Yeah, yeah…'

Kohn gave directions for a few more turnings. They came to a halt in a car park in front of a large housing estate built as a single block: four sides around a courtyard, the side in front of them having an opening about three metres high and five wide. Through it they could see a lawn and flowerbeds. All the windows in all eight storeys of the block had curtains of ruched peach satin in front of other curtains of frilled net. Another truck and some small vehicles and bicycles stood unattended in the car park.

A man came out of the entrance and walked up briskly. He wore a plain brown loose-fitting smock and trousers and had short blond hair. He stood for a moment at the front of the truck and then stepped up to the door beside Kohn.

Kohn lowered the window. He decided for the moment, to stick with the ostensible reason for their visit. ‘Hi,' he said. ‘I'm the security adviser—'

‘Mr Kohn? Ah, hello. My name's Stuart Anderson. Your agency told us to expect you. I'll be asking you in in a moment, but first I'd like a word with the lady.'

Janis leaned across. ‘Yes?'

‘I'm sorry, ma'am, but would you mind waiting while your companion looks around? No offence intended – it's just the rule of the community. The only women allowed in are those who live here or are associated with us, and you…' He smiled regretfully like a waiter telling you something is off tonight. ‘Refreshments will be brought out to you if you wish, or you may take a walk in the area.'

‘
Thank you very much
,' Janis said. ‘What sort of women-oriented community keeps ordinary women out and lets men in?'

‘Femininists,' Anderson articulated.

‘Ah, so,' Kohn said. ‘You should have worn a frock, Janis, make-up like lacquer and false eyelashes. Then they might have let you in for a boring examination of their building, which is what I'm down for.'

Anderson gave an open, genuinely amused laugh.

‘Don't take it to heart, ma'am. We won't be more than an hour, and in the meantime, if you wouldn't mind easing the truck forward a bit so we can get it unloaded and reloaded…'

Janis shrugged and blew a kiss and a scowl. Kohn climbed out.

‘Please leave any weapons,' Anderson said.

Kohn detached the computer and heaved the bag back into the truck. Anderson coughed politely. Kohn thought for a moment, sighed, and passed Janis a pistol, a throwing knife, a flick-knife and a set of brass knuckles.

They walked across the courtyard. People strolled about or worked at the garden. The women, as Kohn had expected, were wearing every exaggeratedly feminine get-up known to man. The men looked rather drab and conventional by comparison. No old people; no children.

‘So tell me, Stuart, what's it all about? If you don't mind me saying so, you don't look very sissy to me.'

‘Of course not,' Stuart said. ‘That's not what we're into. Our aim isn't to merge or reverse the sex roles but to make femininity the dominant
gender.
'

Moh shook his head. ‘I still don't get it.'

‘It's all to do with
peace
,' Anderson said earnestly as they entered the block and walked down a bright corridor. ‘We're sickened by the violence that goes on all around us, and the femininists have a theory which explains it. The so-called masculine virtues have outlived their usefulness. Aggression, ambition, production. We've reached a point where the whole earth can be a home, a garden, a sanctuary. Instead it's used as a factory, a hunting-ground, a battlefield. That's what we mean by the dominance of the masculine virtues. What femininism advocates and tries to practise is the long-overdue domestication of the species through the feminine virtues: domesticity itself, of course, plus gentleness, caring, contentment: channelling energy into art, adornment, decoration…All low-impact activities, you see, and utterly absorbing. Take embroidery, for example, which many find entirely satisfying as a full-time, lifelong occupation, yet the material resources used in it are negligible…and of course the product is valuable, including to rich collectors.'

‘And where do men fit into all this?'

‘Oh, they don't try to fit us in. They just set us a good example. And we integrate our activities and interests as a subordinate, servicing part of this community, just as traditionally women's work has serviced the masculine economy – in fact, that's still how many of the women here earn money outside: as teachers, nurses, secretaries—'

‘Bank tellers?'

‘I think that, too, yes.'

‘Sounds a bit sexist to me.'

Anderson laughed. ‘Now that's a word I haven't heard in a long time.'

They entered a large, low room, almost a factory floor. Dozens of women worked intently at sewing-machines. A few of them were obviously making clothes, but even Kohn could see that some of the items being made from vast pieces of thin silk had to be something else. He indicated them with his head as they walked along the side of the room. At the same time he tried to see if Cat were among the women there, but – as far as a quick glance could tell – she wasn't.

‘Pavilions, canopies,' Anderson explained. ‘Very popular at society garden parties.'

Pavilions
? Moh ran some of the shapes through again in his head, then left something at the back of his mind to figure them out. There was another thing that didn't quite fit here. The ideas that Anderson had expounded struck him as too daft and too sensible at the same time: the femininists were giving some very old-fashioned views a subversive twist, but the tenets Anderson had expressed lacked the seductively counterfactual gormlessness of ideology. (Men are free. Men are equal. Men are such beasts.) Or perhaps Moh was just overestimating the human species: ‘If there's a folly unvoiced,' his father had used to say, ‘some little sect will emerge to voice it.'

A woman fell into step with them. She introduced herself as Valery Sharp and described herself as the block administrator. She was small – petite, Kohn mentally corrected himself – and pretty, with the glamorized hausfrau look of some ancient advertisement for detergent: gingham dress, floral-print apron, blonde curls held back with a starched cotton kerchief. She sent Stuart off to get coffee for the lady in the truck and showed Kohn into her office, a small room off the workshop area.

‘Lovely, isn't it?' she remarked brightly, closing the door. She sat down behind a desk and invited Kohn to a chair. ‘Someday all offices will be like this.'

The desk looked more like a dressing-table. It had a frilled valance around it. The frills had frills. The chair was swathed in fabric tied with bows; the white wallpaper was sprigged with pink rosebuds; the air was thick with jasmine potpourri. Kohn felt as if he'd stepped into her bedroom. Goddess knew what
that
was like.

‘It would make a change,' he said truthfully. He could imagine the entire planet turned over to this sort of taste: roses round every door, perfume on every breeze, men and machines devoted to providing the basic materials for women to endlessly titivate and prettify and tart up…He really should give more of his money to the space movement.

Valery smiled wryly. ‘It gets me like that, too, sometimes,' she said.

Kohn looked at her, puzzled at this admission. He was reluctant to reveal that he knew there was some connection between this place and the
ANR.

Valery looked at him very directly and added, slowly and distinctly: ‘
Civis Britannicus sum.
'

Kohn stared at her, astounded. The phrase wasn't exactly a secret password but it was the next best thing: he'd never heard anyone say it without meaning it. It affirmed a continuing sense of Republican citizenship, and there were places where it could get you shot.

‘
Gens una sumus
,' he responded. His mouth was dry, his voice thick. ‘We are one people.' It drew a sharper line than all the manufactured divisions of the Kingdom, and put the speaker on the other side of it.

‘So what's all this—?' he began.

And then, suddenly, he saw it: the pieces fitted together – literally.

‘Parachutes!' he said triumphantly. ‘Microlites, hang-gliders…'

Valery's eyes narrowed. ‘Very good,' she said. ‘How did you figure that out?'

Kohn shrugged. ‘With my good right brain.'

She still looked puzzled, but as if she believed him.

‘OK, Kohn. You know Cat is here?'

He nodded. ‘You picked a pretty roundabout way of telling me.'

‘Yes,' said Valery. ‘There was a good reason for that. It's the same reason that the
ANR
is staying off the nets as far as possible: they're no longer certain the systems are secure.'

‘What makes them unsure?'

‘I don't know,' Valery said impatiently. ‘What I do know is this: we received an urgent message through…channels…to persuade Catherin Duvalier to come and stay with us, and to fetch you here. Donovan is out to get you, and not just for this stupid ransom affair. Now, I don't know what this means, but I've been told to tell you that Donovan knows who you are, and so does Stasis. They're working together now. Donovan's challenge was an attempt to lure you to the hospital, where he could find you – fortunately we got Catherin out of the way first. We did send a girl to see you, but she wasn't able to make a sufficiently secure contact.'

‘Ah! At Brent Cross?' Kohn snorted. ‘It only made me more paranoid.'

‘She wasn't very experienced, and we may have overstressed the caution,' Valery admitted. ‘Anyway, now you are here, we can sort out the ransom business. That won't stop Donovan, I'm afraid, but at least he'll have to call off his hue and cry against you.'

‘Can you do that without him knowing where I am?'

‘Certainly,' Valery said with a smile. ‘Through the Body Bank, remember? All we need is your digital signature, and Catherin's. Our bank teller will witness it and everything will be legally in the clear.'

‘You've just said you don't trust the nets any more.'

‘We're talking about different levels,' Valery said vaguely, or with intentional obscurity.

‘OK. And then what?'

Valery fixed him with a severe look. ‘The
ANR
,' she said firmly, ‘is very anxious that you should go immediately to a controlled zone. That's all I know.'

‘Somebody else suggested I do that,' Kohn said. ‘I've been considering it. It'd be difficult, seeing as the
ANR
have put the fear of God into the Hanoverians.'

‘We can arrange safe passage,' Valery said. ‘I'll tell you about it later. Meanwhile, let's get this mess sorted out, all right?'

Kohn agreed almost absentmindedly, preoccupied by the implications of what he'd just learned. Valery tilted up a desk terminal – it was shaped like a mounted mirror – and Moh jacked in his computer and passed his digital signature into the handover document. Valery messaged Cat, and after a moment the document showed that her dig-sig was in as well. Kohn watched as the Body Bank registered the transaction. He now had a credit – which he doubted he'd ever collect – of five hundred marks with the Carbon Life Alliance.

The consequences of the deal rippled outwards through databases, and in less than a minute Catherin's name was cleared and Donovan's case against Kohn was dropped. Querulous, disappointed queries instantly began to flash around the low-life newsgroups. Kohn shook his head and caught Valery in the same gesture. They shared a disillusioned smile.

Valery was about to fold away the terminal. Then something on the screen caught her attention. She raised an eyebrow at Kohn.

‘It seems Catherin would like to see you.'

Kohn felt his ears going red. ‘Yeah, I guess she has a few words to say to me.'

‘Right,' said Valery. ‘Go out, then through the door on the left to the garden, and in the first french window. I'll be along in a few minutes.' She smiled quizzically. ‘I imagine the worst should be over by then. After that we can discuss what you do next.'

‘I have a companion,' Kohn said. ‘She's out in the truck at the moment, and she'd have to be involved in any decisions.'

‘Of course.'

‘OK. See you,' Kohn said.

He went out into the garden, through a glass door and into a kind of parlour full of overstuffed chairs and large vases. In one of the chairs a woman sat, head half-hidden by a bonnet, bowed over the lap of the huge spreading skirt of her dress. She was meticulously stitching small pieces of coloured fabric on to the back of a denim jacket. A circular pattern with lettering around it was already beginning to take shape. She looked up, slowly, eyelashes lifting modestly.