The City and the City Part 6

Corwi was waiting for me. "So?" She handed me coffee. "What did they say?"

"Well, it's going to be handed over. But they made me jump through hoops." We walked towards the police car. All the streets around Copula Hall were crosshatched, and we made our way unseeing through a group of Ul Qoman friends to where Corwi had parked. "You know Syedr?"

"That fascist p.r.i.c.k? Sure."

"He was trying to make out as if he wouldn't let the case go to Breach. It was weird."

"They hate Breach, don't they, the NatBloc?"

"Weird to hate it. Like hating air or something. And he's a nat, and if there's no Breach, there's no Besel. No homeland."

"It's complicated, isn't it," she said, "because even though we need them, it's a sign of dependence that we do. Nats are divided, anyway, between balance-of-power people and triumphalists. Maybe he's a triumphalist. They reckon Breach are protecting Ul Qoma, the only thing stopping Besel taking over."

"They want to take it over? They're living in a dreamworld if they think Besel would win." Corwi glanced at me. We both knew it was true. "Anyway, it's moot. He was posturing, I think."

"He's a f.u.c.king idiot. I mean, as well as being a fascist he's just not very clever. When are we going to get the nod?"

"A day or two, I think. They'll vote on all the motions put in front of them today. I think." I did not know how it was organised, in fact.

"So in the meantime, what?" She was terse.

"Well, you've got plenty of other stuff to be getting on with, I take it? This isn't your only case." I looked at her as we drove.

We drove past Copula Hall, its huge entrance like a made, secular cave. The building is much larger than a cathedral, larger than a Roman circus. It's open at its eastern and western sides. At ground level and for the first vaulted fifty feet or so above it is a semienclosed thoroughfare, punctuated with pillars, traffic streams separated by walls, stop-started with checkpoints.

Pedestrians and vehicles came and went. Cars and vans drove into it near us, to wait at the easternmost point, where pa.s.sports and papers were checked and motorists were given permission-or sometimes refused it-to leave Besel. A steady current. More metres, through the inter-checkpoint interstice under the hall's arc, another wait at the buildings' western gates, for entry into Ul Qoma. A reversed process in the other lanes.

Then the vehicles with their stamped permissions-to-cross emerged at the opposite end from where they entered, and drove into a foreign city. Often they doubled back, on the crosshatched streets in the Old Town or the Old Town, to the same s.p.a.ce they had minutes earlier occupied, though in a new juridic realm.

If someone needed to go to a house physically next door to their own but in the neighbouring city, it was in a different road in an unfriendly power. That is what foreigners rarely understand. A Bes dweller cannot walk a few paces next door into an alter house without breach.

But pa.s.s through Copula Hall and she or he might leave Besel, and at the end of the hall come back to exactly (corporeally) where they had just been, but in another country, a tourist, a marvelling visitor, to a street that shared the lat.i.tude-longitude of their own address, a street they had never visited before, whose architecture they had always unseen, to the Ul Qoman house sitting next to and a whole city away from their own building, unvisible there now they had come through, all the way across the Breach, back home.

Copula Hall like the waist of an hourgla.s.s, the point of ingress and egress, the navel between the cities. The whole edifice a funnel, letting visitors from one city into the other, and the other into the one.

There are places not crosshatched but where Besel is interrupted by a thin part of Ul Qoma. As kids we would a.s.siduously unsee Ul Qoma, as our parents and teachers had relentlessly trained us (the ostentation with which we and our Ul Qoman contemporaries used to unnotice each other when we were grosstopically close was impressive). We used to throw stones across the alterity, walk the long way around in Besel and pick them up again, debate whether we had done wrong. Breach never manifested, of course. We did the same with the local lizards. They were always dead when we picked them up, and we said the little airborne trip through Ul Qoma had killed them, though it might just as well have been the landing.

"Won't be our problem much longer," I said, watching a few Ul Qoman tourists emerge into Besel. "Mahalia, I mean. Byela. Fulana Detail."

Chapter Seven.

TO FLY TO BESZEL from the east coast of the US involves changing planes at least once, and that's the best option. It is a famously complicated trip. There are direct flights to Besel from Budapest, from Skopje, and, probably an American's best bet, from Athens. Technically Ul Qoma would have been harder for them to get to because of the blockade, but all they needed to do was nip into Canada and they could fly direct. There were many more inter national services to the New Wolf. from the east coast of the US involves changing planes at least once, and that's the best option. It is a famously complicated trip. There are direct flights to Besel from Budapest, from Skopje, and, probably an American's best bet, from Athens. Technically Ul Qoma would have been harder for them to get to because of the blockade, but all they needed to do was nip into Canada and they could fly direct. There were many more inter national services to the New Wolf.

The Gearys were coming in to Besel Halvic at ten in the morning. I had already made Corwi break the news of their daughter's death to them over the phone. I told her I would escort them to see the body myself, though she could join me if she chose. She did.

We waited at Besel Airport, in case the plane came in early. We drank bad coffee from the Starbucks a.n.a.logue in the terminal. Corwi asked me again about the workings of the Oversight Committee. I asked her if she had ever left Besel.

"Sure," she said. "I've been to Romania. I've been to Bulgaria."

"Turkey?"

"No. You?"

"There. And London. Moscow. Paris, once, a long time ago, and Berlin. West Berlin as it was. It was before they joined."

"Berlin?" she said. The airport was hardly crowded: mostly returning Bes, it seemed, plus a few tourists and Eastern European commercial travellers. It is hard to tourist in Besel, or in Ul Qoma-how many holiday destinations set exams before they let you in?-but still, though I had not been I had seen film of the newish Ul Qoma Airport, sixteen or seventeen miles southeast, across Bulkya Sound from Lestov, and it got vastly more traffic than us, though their visitor conditions were not less strenuous than our own. When it had been rebuilt a few years previously, it had gone from somewhat smaller to much larger than our own terminal in a few months of frenetic construction. From above its terminals were concatenated half-moons of mirrored gla.s.s, designed by Foster or someone like that.

A group of foreign orthodox Jews were met by their, judging by clothes, much less devout local relatives. A fat security officer let his gun dangle to scratch his chin. There were one or two intimidatingly dressed execs from those gold-dust recent arrivals, our new high-tech, even American, friends, finding the drivers with signs for board members of Sear and Core, Shadner, VerTech, those executives who did not arrive in their own planes, or copter in to their own helipads. Corwi saw me reading the cards.

"Why the f.u.c.k would anyone invest here?" she said. "Do you reckon they even remember agreeing to it? The government blatantly slips them Rohypnol at those junkets."

"Typical Bes defeatist talk, Constable. That's what's doing our country down. Representatives Buric and Nyisemu and Syedr are doing precisely the job with which we entrust them." Buric and Nyisemu made sense: it was extraordinary Syedr had got into organising the trade fairs. Some favour pulled in. The fact that, as these foreign visitors showed, there were even small successes was even more remarkable for that.

"Right," she said. "Seriously, watch these guys when they come out-I swear that's panic in their eyes. Have you seen those cars ferrying them around town, at tourist spots and crosshatchings and whatever? 'Seeing the sights.' Right. Those poor sods are trying to find ways out." I pointed at a display: the plane had landed.

"So you spoke to Mahalia's supervisor?" I said. "I tried to call her a couple of times but can't get through and they won't give me her mobile."

"Not for very long," Corwi said. "I got hold of her at the centre-there's like a research centre that's part of the dig in Ul Qoma. Professor Nancy, she's one of the bigwigs, she has a whole bunch of students. Anyway I called her and verified that Mahalia was one of hers, that no one had seen her for a while, et cetera et cetera. I told her we had reason to believe dot dot dot. Sent over a picture. She was very shocked."

"Yeah?"

"Sure. She was ... kept going on about what a great student Mahalia was, how she couldn't believe it, what had happened, so on. So you were in Berlin. Do you speak German then?"

"I used to," I said. "Kin bisschen." "Kin bisschen."

"Why were you there?"

"I was young. It was a conference. 'Policing Split Cities.' They had sessions on Budapest and Jerusalem and Berlin, and Besel and Ul Qoma."

"f.u.c.k!"

"I know, I know. That's what we said at the time. Totally missing the point."

"Split cities? I'm surprised the acad let you go." cities? I'm surprised the acad let you go."

"I know, I could almost feel my freebie evaporating in a gust of other people's patriotism. My super said it wasn't just a misunderstanding of our status it was an insult to Besel an insult to Besel. Not wrong, I suppose. But it was a subsidised trip abroad, was I going to say no? I had to persuade him. I did at least meet my first Ul Qomans, who'd obviously managed to overcome their own outrage, too. Met one in particular at the conference disco as I recall. We did our bit to ease international tensions over '99 Luftballons.'" Corwi snorted, but pa.s.sengers began to come through and we composed our faces, so they would be respectfully set when the Gearys emerged.

The immigration officer who escorted them saw us and nodded them gently over. They were recognisable from the photographs we had been sent by our American counterparts, but I would have known them anyway. They had the expression I have seen only on bereaved parents: their faces looked clayish, lumpy with exhaustion and grief. They shuffled into the concourse as if they were fifteen or twenty years older than they were.

"Mr. and Mrs. Geary?" I had been practicing my English.

"Oh," she said, the woman. She reached out her hand. "Oh yes, you are, you're Mr. Corwi are you, is that-"

"No, ma'am. I'm Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Besel ECS." I shook her hand, her husband's hand. "This is constable Lizbyet Corwi. Mr. and Mrs. Geary, I, we, are very deeply sorry for your loss."

The two of them blinked like animals and nodded and opened their mouths but said nothing. Grief made them look stupid. It was cruel.

"May I take you to your hotel?"

"No, thank you, Inspector," Mr. Geary said. I glanced at Corwi, but she was following what was said, more or less-her comprehension was good. "We'd like to ... we'd like to do what it is we're here for." Mrs. Geary clutched and unclutched at her bag. "We'd like to see her."

"Of course. Please." I led them to the vehicle.

"Are we going to see Professor Nancy?" Mr. Geary asked as Corwi drove us. "And May's friends?"

"No, Mr. Geary," I said. "We can't do that, I'm afraid. They are not in Besel. They're in Ul Qoma."

"You know that, Michael, you know how it works here," his wife said.

"Yes yes," he said to me, as if they had been my words. "Yes, I'm sorry, let me ... I just want to talk to her friends."

"It can be arranged, Mr. Geary, Mrs. Geary," I said. "We'll see about phone calls. And ..." I was thinking about pa.s.ses through Copula Hall. "We'll have to get you escorted into Ul Qoma. After we've dealt with things here."

Mrs. Geary looked at her husband. He stared out at the buildup of streets and vehicles around us. Some of the overpa.s.ses we were approaching were in Ul Qoma, but I was certain he wouldn't forebear staring at them. He would not care even if he knew not to. En route there would be an illicit, breaching, view to a glitzy Ul Qoman Fast Economy Zone full of horrible but big public art.

The Gearys both wore visitors' marks in Bes colours, but as rare recipients of compa.s.sionate-entry stamps they had no tourist training, no appreciation of the local politics of boundaries. They would be insensitive with loss. The dangers of their breaching were high. We needed to protect them from unthinkingly committing acts that would get them deported, at least. Until the handover of the situation to Breach was made official, we were on babysitting duty: we would not leave the Gearys' sides while they were awake.

Corwi did not look at me. We would have to be careful. Had the Gearys been regular tourists, they would have had to undergo mandatory training and pa.s.sed the not-unstringent entrance exam, both its theoretical and practical-role-play elements, to qualify for their visas. They would know, at least in outline, key signifiers of architecture, clothing, alphabet and manner, outlaw colours and gestures, obligatory details-and, depending on their Bes teacher, the supposed distinctions in national physiognomies-distinguis.h.i.+ng Besel and Ul Qoma, and their citizens. They would know a little tiny bit (not that we locals knew much more) about Breach. Crucially, they would know enough to avoid obvious breaches of their own.

After a two-week or however-long-it-was course, no one thought visitors would have metabolised the deep prediscursive instinct for our borders that Bes and Ul Qomans have, to have picked up real rudiments of unseeing. But we did insist that they acted as if they had. We, and the authorities of Ul Qoma, expected strict overt decorum, interacting with, and indeed obviously noticing, our crosshatched neighbouring city-state not at all.

While, or as, sanctions for breach are severe (the two cities depend on that), breach must be beyond reasonable doubt. We all suspect that, while we are long-expert in unseeing it, tourists to the Old Besel ghetto are surrept.i.tiously noticing Ul Qoma's gla.s.s-fronted Yal Iran Bridge, which in literal topology abuts it. Look up at the ribbon-streaming balloons of Besel's Wind-Day parade, they doubtless can't fail (as we can) to notice the raised teardrop towers of Ul Qoma's palace district, next to them though a whole country away. So long as they do not point and coo (which is why except in rare exceptions no foreigners under eighteen are granted entry) everyone concerned can indulge the possibility that there is no breach. It is that restraint that the pre-visa training teaches, rather than a local's rigorous unseeing, and most students have the nous to understand that. We all, Breach included, give the benefit of the doubt to visitors when possible.

In the mirror of the car I saw Mr. Geary watch a pa.s.sing truck. I unsaw it because it was in Ul Qoma.

His wife and he murmured to each other occasionally-my English or my hearing was not good enough to tell what they said. Mostly they sat in silence, each alone, looking out of windows on either side of the car.

Shukman was not at his laboratory. Perhaps he knew himself and how he would seem to those visiting the dead. I would not want to be met by him in these circ.u.mstances. Hamzinic led us to the storage room. Her parents moaned in perfect time as they entered and saw the shape below the sheet. Hamzinic waited with silent respect while they prepared, and when her mother nodded he showed Mahalia's face. Her parents moaned again. They stared at her, and after long seconds her mother touched her face.

"Oh, oh yes that's her," Mr. Geary said. He cried. "That's her, yes, that's my daughter," as if we were asking formal identification of him, which we were not. They had wanted to see her. I nodded as if that were helpful to us and glanced at Hamzinic, who replaced the sheet and made himself busy as we led Mahalia's parents away.

"I DO WANT TO, to go go to Ul Qoma," Mr. Geary said. I was used to hearing that little stress on the verb from foreigners: he felt strange using it. "I'm sorry, I know it's probably going to be ... to be hard to organise but, I want to see, where she ..." to Ul Qoma," Mr. Geary said. I was used to hearing that little stress on the verb from foreigners: he felt strange using it. "I'm sorry, I know it's probably going to be ... to be hard to organise but, I want to see, where she ..."

"Of course," I said.

"Of course," Corwi said. She was keeping up with a reasonable amount of the English, and spoke occasionally. We were eating lunch with the Gearys at the Queen Czezille, a comfortable enough hotel with which the Bes Police had a long-standing arrangement. Its staff were experienced in providing the chaperoning, almost surrept.i.tious imprisonment, that unqualified visitors required.

James Thacker, some middle-ranking twenty-eight-or -nine-year-old at the US emba.s.sy, had joined us. He spoke occasionally to Corwi in excellent Bes. The dining room looked out at the northern tip of Hustav Isle. Riverboats went by (in both cities). The Gearys picked at their peppercorned fish.

"We suspected that you might like to visit your daughter's place of work," I said. "We've been in discussion with Mr. Thacker and his counterparts in Ul Qoma for the paperwork to get you through Copula Hall. A day or two I think is all." Not an emba.s.sy, in Ul Qoma, of course: a sulky US Interests section.

"And ... you said that this is, this is for the Breach now?" Mrs. Geary said. "You said it won't be the Ul Qomans investigating it but it'll be with this Breach, yes?" She stared at me with tremendous mistrust. "So when do we talk to them?"

I glanced at Thacker. "That will not happen," I said. "The Breach is not like us."

Mrs. Geary stared at me. "'Us' the ... the policzai policzai?" she said.

I had meant the "us" to include her. "Well, among other things, yes. It... they aren't like the police in Besel or in Ul Qoma."

"I don't-"

"Inspector Borlu, I'll be happy to explain this," Thacker said. He hesitated. He wanted me to go. Any explanation carried out in my presence would have to be moderately polite: alone with other Americans he could stress to them how ridiculous and difficult these cities were, how sorry he and his colleagues were for the added complications of a crime occurring in Besel, and so on. He could insinuate. It was an embarra.s.sment, an antagonism to have to deal with a dissident force like Breach.

"I don't know how much you know about Breach, Mr. and Mrs. Geary, but it is ... it isn't like other powers. You have some sense of its... capabilities? The Breach is ... It has unique powers. And it's, ah, extremely secretive. We, the emba.s.sy, have no contacts with ... any representative of Breach. I do realise how strange that must sound, but... I can a.s.sure you Breach's record in the prosecution of criminals is, ah, ferocious. Impressive. We will receive word of its progress and of whatever action it takes against whoever it finds responsible."

"Does that mean ...?" Mr. Geary said. "They have the death penalty here, right?"

"And in Ul Qoma?" his wife said.

"Sure," Thacker said. "But that's not really at issue. Mr. and Mrs. Geary, our friends in Besel and the Ul Qoma authorities are about to invoke Breach Breach to deal with your daughter's murder, so Bes laws and Ul Qoman laws are kind of irrelevant. The, ah, sanctions available to Breach are pretty limitless." to deal with your daughter's murder, so Bes laws and Ul Qoman laws are kind of irrelevant. The, ah, sanctions available to Breach are pretty limitless."

"Invoke?" said Mrs. Geary.

"There are protocols," I said. "To be followed. Before Breach'll manifest to take care of this."

Mr. Geary: "What about the trial?"

"That will be in camera," in camera," I said. "Breach ... tribunals," I had tried out I said. "Breach ... tribunals," I had tried out decisions decisions and and actions actions in my head, "are secret." in my head, "are secret."

"We won't testify? We won't see?" Mr. Geary was aghast. This must all have been explained previously, but you know. Mrs. Geary was shaking her head in anger, but without her husband's surprise.

"I'm afraid not," Thacker said. "It is a unique situation here. I can pretty much guarantee you, though, that whoever did this will not only be caught but, be, ah, brought to pretty severe justice." One could almost pity Mahalia Geary's killer. I did not.

"But that's-"

"I know, Mrs. Geary, I'm truly sorry. There are no other posts like this in the service. Ul Qoma and Besel and Breach ... These are unique circ.u.mstances."

"Oh, G.o.d. You know, it's... it's all, this is all the stuff Mahalia was into," Mr. Geary said. "The city, the city, the other city. Besel"-Bezzel, he said it-"and Ul Qoma. And or seen it." I didn't understand that.

"Or seen seen ee," Mrs. Geary said. I looked up. "It's not Orsinnit, it's Orciny, honey." ee," Mrs. Geary said. I looked up. "It's not Orsinnit, it's Orciny, honey."

Thacker pouted polite incomprehension and shook his head in question.

"What's that, Mrs. Geary?" I said. She fiddled with her bag. Corwi quietly took out a notebook.

"This is all this stuff Mahalia was into," Mrs. Geary said. "It's what she was studying. She was going to be a doctor of it." Mr. Geary grimace-smiled, indulgent, proud, bewildered. "She was doing real well. She told us a little bit about it. It sounds like that Orciny was like the Breach."

"Ever since she first came here," Mr. Geary said. "This is the stuff she wanted to do."

"That's right, she came here first. I mean ... here, this, Besel, right? She came here first, but then she said she needed to go to Ul Qoma. I'm going to be honest with you, Inspector, I thought it was kind of the same place. I know that was wrong. She had to get special permission to go there, but because she's, was, a student, that's where she stayed to do all her work."

"Orciny ... it's a sort of folk tale," I told Thacker. Mahalia's mother nodded; her father looked away. "It is not so really like the Breach, Mrs. Geary. Breach is real. A power. But Orciny is ..." I hesitated.