The City & the City (34 page)

“Look at this,” I said. “You’re evidence this could all be real.” The interstitiality which made Orciny so absurd to most citizens of Besźel and Ul Qoma was not only possible but inevitable. Why would Breach disbelieve life could thrive in that little gap? The anxiety was now rather something like
We have never seen them
, a very different concern.

“It can’t be,” Ashil said.

“Ask your superiors. Ask the powers. I don’t know.” What other, higher or lower, powers were there in Breach? “You know we’re watched. Or they were—Mahalia, Yolanda, Bowden—by something somewhere.”

“There’s nothing linking the shooter to anything.” That was one of the others, speaking Illitan.

“Alright.” I shrugged. I spoke in Besź. “So he was just a random, very lucky right-winger. If you say so. Or maybe you think it’s insiles, doing this?” I said. None of them denied the existence of the fabled scavenging interstitial refugees. “They used Mahalia, and
when they were done they killed her. They killed Yolanda, in a way exactly so you couldn’t chase them. As if of all the things in Besźel, Ul Qoma, or anywhere, what they’re most scared of is Breach.”

“But”—a woman pointed at me—“look what you did.”

“Breached?” I had given them a way in to whatever this war was. “Yes. What did Mahalia know? She worked something out about what they had planned. They killed her.” The overlaid glimmer of nighttime Ul Qoma and Besźel lit me through the window. I made my ominous point to a growing audience of Breach, their faces like owls’.

They locked me in overnight. I read Mahalia’s annotations. I could discern phases of annotation, though not in any pagewise chronology—all the notes were layered, a palimpsest of evolving interpretation. I did archaeology.

Early on, in the lowest layers of marks, her handwriting was more careful, the notes longer and neater, with more references to other writers and to her own essays. Her idiolect and unorthodox abbreviations made it hard to be sure. I started page on page trying to read, transcribe, those early thoughts. Mostly what I discerned was her anger.

I felt a something-stretched-out over the night streets. I wanted to talk to those I had known in Besźel or Ul Qoma, but I could only watch.

Whatever unseen bosses, if any, waited in the Breach’s bowels, it was Ashil who came for me again the next morning, found me going over and over those notes. He led me the length of a corridor to an office. I imagined running—no one seemed to be watching me. They would stop me, though. And if they did not, where would I go, hunted in-betweener refugee?

There were twelve or so Breach in the cramped room, sitting, standing, precarious on the edge of desks, low muttering in two or three languages. A discussion midway. Why was I shown this?

“… Gosharian says it hasn’t, he just called …”

“What about SusurStrász? Wasn’t there some talk …?”

“Yes, but everyone’s accounted for.”

This was a crisis meeting. Mutterings into phones, quick checks against lists. Ashil said to me, “Things are moving.” More people came and joined the talk.

“What now?” The question, spoken by a young woman wearing the headscarf of a married Besźel woman from a traditional family, was addressed to me, prisoner, condemned, consultant. I recognised her from the previous night. Silence went through the room, leaving itself behind, with all the people watching me. “Tell me again about when Mahalia was taken,” she said.

“Are you trying to close in on Orciny?” I said. I had nothing to suggest to her, though something felt close to my reach.

They continued their quick back-and-forth, using shorthands and slang I did not know, but I could tell they were debating each other, and I tried to understand over what—some strategy, some question of direction. Periodically everyone in the room murmured something final-sounding and paused, and raised or did not raise a hand, and glanced around to count how many did which.

“We have to understand what got us here,” Ashil said. “What would you do to find out what Mahalia knew?” His comrades were growing agitated, interrupting each other. I recalled Jaris and Yolanda talking about Mahalia’s anger at the end. I sat up hard.

“What is it?” Ashil said.

“We need to go to the dig.” I said. He regarded me.

“Ready with Tye,” Ashil said. “Coming with me.” Three-quarters of the room raised their hands briefly.

“Said my piece about him,” said the headscarfed woman, who did not raise hers.

“Heard,” Ashil said. “But.” He pointed her eyes around the room. She had lost a vote.

I left with Ashil. It was there on the streets, that something fraught.

“You feel this?” I said. He even nodded. “I need … can I call Dhatt?” I said.

“No. He’s still on leave. And if you see him …”

“Then?”

“You’re in Breach. Easier for him if you leave him alone. You’ll
see people you know. Don’t put them in positions. They need to know where you are.”

“Bowden …”

“He’s under surveillance by
militsya
. For his protection. No one in Besźel or Ul Qoma can find any link between Yorjavic and him. Whoever tried to kill him—”

“Are we still saying it’s not Orciny? There’s no Orciny?”

“—might try again. The leaders of True Citizens are with the
policzai
. But if Yorj and any other of their members were some secret cell, they don’t seem to know. They’re angry about it. You saw the film.”

“Where are we? Which way is the dig?”

HE TOOK US BY THAT AWESOME SUCCESSION
of breaching transport, worming through the two cities, leaving a tunnel of Breach in the shape of our journey. I wondered where he carried what weapon. The guard at the gate of Bol Ye’an recognised me and smiled a smile that quickly faltered. He had perhaps heard I had disappeared.

“We’re not approaching the academics, we’re not questioning the students,” Ashil said. “You understand we’re here to investigate the background to and terms of your breach.” I was police on my own crime.

“It would be easier if we could talk to Nancy.”

“None of the academics, none of the students. Begin. You know who I am?” This to the guard.

We went to Buidze, who stood with his back to the wall of his office, stared at us, at Ashil in great and straightforward fear, at me in fear that was more bewildered:
Can I speak of what we spoke of before?
I saw him think,
Who is he?
Ashil manoeuvred me with him to the back of the room, found a shaft of shadow.

“I haven’t breached,” Buidze kept whispering.

“Do you invite investigation?” Ashil said.

“Your job’s to stop smuggling,” I said. Buidze nodded. What was I? Neither he nor I knew. “How’s that going?”

“Holy Light… Please. The only way any of these kids could do it would be to slip a memento straight in their pockets from the ground, so it never gets catalogued, and they can’t because everyone’s searched when they leave the site. No one could sell this stuff anyway. Like I said, the kids go for walks around the site, and they might be breaching when they stand still. What can you do? Can’t prove it. Doesn’t mean they’re thieves.”

“She told Yolanda you could be a thief without knowing it,” I said to Ashil. “At the end. What have you lost?” I asked Buidze.

“Nothing!”

He took us to the artefact warehouse, stumbling eager to help us. On the way two students I somewhat recognised saw us, stopped still—something about Ashil’s gait, that I was mimicking—backed away. There were the cabinets where the finds were, in which the latest dusted-off things born from the ground were stored. Lockers full of the impossible variety of Precursor Age debris, a miraculous and obstinately opaque rubble of bottles, orreries, axe heads, parchment scraps.

“Goes in, whoever’s in charge that night makes sure everyone puts whatever’s been found away, locks up, leaves the key. Doesn’t get out the grounds without we search them. They don’t even give us shit about that; they know that’s how it is.”

I motioned Buidze to open the cabinet. I looked into the collection, each piece nestled in its little house, its segment of polystyrene, in the drawer. The topmost drawers had not yet been filled. Those below were full. Some of the fragile pieces were wrapped in lint-free cloth, swaddled from view. I opened the drawers one below the other, examining the ranked findings. Ashil came to stand beside me and looked down into the last as if it were a teacup, as if the artefacts were leaves with which one could divine.

“Who has the keys each night?” Ashil said.

“I, I, it depends.” Buidze’s fear of us was wearing, but I did not believe he would lie. “Whoever. It’s not important. They all do it sometimes. Whoever’s working late. There’s a schedule, but they’re always ignoring it…”

“After they’ve given the keys back to security, they leave?”

“Yeah.”

“Straightaway?”

“Yeah. Usually. They might go to their office a bit, walk in the grounds, but they don’t usually stick around.”

“The grounds?”

“It’s a park. It’s … nice.” He shrugged helpless. “There’s no way out, though; its alter a few metres in, they have to come back through here. They don’t leave without being searched.”

“When did Mahalia last lock up?”

“Loads of times. I don’t know …”

“Last time.”

“… The night she disappeared,” he said at last.

“Give me a list of who did it when.”

“I can’t! They keep one, but like I say half the time they just do each other favours …”

I opened the lowest drawers. Between the tiny crude figures, the intricate Precursor lingams and ancient pipettes, there were deli-cats wrapped. I touched the shapes gently.

“Those are old,” Buidze said, watching me. “They were dug up ages ago.”

“I see,” I said, reading the labels. They had been disinterred in the early days of the dig. I turned at the sound of Professor Nancy entering. She stopped hard, stared at Ashil, at me. She opened her mouth. She had lived in Ul Qoma many years, was trained to see its minutiae. She recognised what she saw. “Professor,” I said. She nodded. She stared at Buidze and he at her. She nodded and backed out.

“When Mahalia was in charge of the keys, she went for walks after locking up, didn’t she?” I said. Buidze shrugged, bewildered. “She offered to lock up when it wasn’t her turn, too. More than once.” All the small artefacts were in their cloth-lined beds. I did not rummage, but I felt around at the rear of the drawer without what I imagined was the preferred care.

He shifted, but Buidze would not challenge me. At the rear of the third shelf up, of things brought to light still more than a year ago, one of the cloth-wrapped items gave under my finger in a way that made me pause. “You have to wear gloves,” Buidze said.

I unwrapped it and within was newspaper, and in the twist of paper was a piece of wood still flecked with paint and marked by where screws had held it. Not ancient nor carved: the offcut of a door, an absolute piece of nothing.

Buidze stared. I held it up. “What dynasty’s this?” I said.

“Don’t,” said Ashil to me. He followed me out. Buidze came behind us.

“I’m Mahalia,” I said. “I’ve just locked up. I’ve just volunteered to do it, though it’s someone else’s turn. Now a little walk.”

I marched us out into the open air, past the carefully layered hole where students glanced at us in surprise, on into the wasteland, where there was that rubble of history, and beyond it out of the gate that would open to a university ID, that opened for us because of where and what we were, that we propped open, into the park. Not much of a park this close to the excavation, but scrub and a few trees crossed by paths. There were Ul Qomans visible, but none too close. There was no unbroken Ul Qoman space between the dig and the bulk of the Ul Qoman park. Besźel intruded.

We saw other figures at the edges of the clearing: Besź sitting on the rocks or by the crosshatched pond. The park was only slightly in Besźel, a few metres at the edge of vegetation, a rill of crossover in paths and bushes, and a little stretch of totality cutting the two Ul Qoman sections off from each other. Maps made clear to walkers where they might go. It was here in the crosshatch that the students might stand, scandalously, touching distance from a foreign power, a pornography of separation.

“Breach watches fringes like this,” Ashil said to me. “There are cameras. We’d see anyone emerge into Besźel who didn’t come in by it.”

Buidze was hanging back. Ashil spoke so he could not hear. Buidze was trying not to watch us. I paced.

“Orciny …” I said. No way in or out of here in Ul Qoma but back through Bol Ye’an dig.
“Dissensi?
Bullshit. That’s not how she delivered. This is what she was doing. Have you seen
The Great Escape?”
I walked to the edge of the crosshatched zone, where Ul Qoma ended for metres. Of course I was in Breach now, could wander
on into Besźel if I wanted, but I stopped as if I were only in Ul Qoma. I walked to the edge of the space it shared with Besźel, where Besźel became briefly total and separated it from the rest of Ul Qoma. I made sure Ashil was watching me. I mimed placing the piece of wood in my pocket, stuffing it in fact down past my belt, down the inside of my trousers. “Hole in her pockets.”

I walked a few steps in the crosshatch, dropping the thankfully unsplintering wood down my leg. I stood still when it hit the ground. I stood as if contemplating the skyline and moved my feet gently, letting it onto the earth, where I trod it in and scuffed plant muck and dirt onto it. When I walked away, without looking back, the wood was a nothing shape, invisible if you did not know it was there.

“When she goes, someone in Besźel—or someone who looks like they are, so there’s nothing for you to notice—comes by,” I said. “Stands and looks at the sky. Kicks their heels. Kicks something up. Sits on a rock for a moment, touches the ground, puts something in their pocket.

“Mahalia wouldn’t take the recent stuff because it was just put away, much too noticeable. But while she’s locking up, because it only takes a second, she opens the
old
drawers.”

“What does she take?”