Falling (13 page)

Taking another deep breath, Jude stepped round a seven-foot-tall woman from Genetic Analysis and scanned the room for her target.

‘The name's Warner,' she imagined him murmuring to some doe-eyed trainee, somewhere among the crush. ‘Calvin Warner, Head of Agent Assignment. Actually a good deal more exciting than it sounds.'

Okay, he probably wasn't busy smarming one of the trainees into bed. Though, judging from the neat pairs of grey suits and bright cocktail dresses to be found in every corner of the function room, he was the only one who wasn't.

He wasn't at the bar either, which did surprise her. That only left the men's room, and she didn't fancy searching that.

Come on. Fitch said she'd give you ten minutes before approaching Schrader – and if he pounces on her before she's ready, she may not be able to delay him.

Schrader had better be involved in all this. If he wasn't, if the line of enquiry she was following was a product of her imagination, then she was obviously headed for a nice relaxing stay at the nearest asylum.

Plunging through the loose crowd of twittering couples hovering in the doorway, she stepped out into the artificial twilight of a Hurst night.

It took her a second to focus – or rather, to believe what she was seeing. To register the neat low doorways and leaded-glass windows, the pastel walls and immaculate window boxes, as something other than an alcohol-induced retreat into childhood. To realise that people actually lived in these toy-box houses, lived and squabbled and got up in the morning to face their neighbours without embarrassment.

Forget Hursts. They should have called them nurseries. A tent fortress for your castle, a womb without a view. Why wait until you're dead to get a box all your own?

Then she heard the whisper of a familiar voice, and realised that she wasn't the only one taking the scenic tour.

The corridor – road, she realised belatedly – was wide, but the strange springy surface didn't seem to be marked up for vehicles. Anyway, in this enclosed and echoing rat-trap, she'd hear even the quietest traffic long before it hit her.

Resisting the impulse to tiptoe, she set off in search of the voice.

The windowsills displayed assorted tokens of ownership, as if the occupants were afraid their anonymous box might be re-colonised in their absence. Children's toys, wooden animal figures carved for a few pence an hour in downtown warehouses renamed Mali or Senegal to give some validity to a ‘Made In Africa' sticker. China figures too old and cheap to be anything but family heirlooms; not worth selling, but somehow imbued with too much dark magic, too many ancestors' potential curses, to be thrown away.

She came out at an intersection, where a hexagonal skylight cut upward through layers of identical corridors. Blurs of movement paced the glass, three floors up, or five, or ten. The insomniac inhabitants of the Hurst, taking their dry, mudless, temperature-regulated constitutional? Or visitors, planning out their future? ‘Wouldn't this one be just ideal, John?' ‘Why, yes, Jane, but so would all the others…'

The next stretch of road was bounded by wide expanses of safety glass. Low-level lighting within gave her a glimpse of the interiors: desks and roundabouts, computer terminals and ABC charts. Shaking her still alcohol-fuddled head to clear it, she managed to separate the two worlds, reality and reflection, to opposite sides of the road.

Right hand side, offices; left hand side, crèche. Watch mummy and daddy at work only a road-width away and ponder that one day, you'll cross the road to your very own desk and chair and peptic ulcer. That's education for you.

Another intersection, heavy with an unnatural silence. Maybe they pump sleeping gas through your air conditioning. Just to make sure you don't have any nightmares about freedom and chaos and wake the neighbours, of course.

Somewhere along the right-hand corridor, she heard Warner's voice say, 'I can't be held responsible for the free choices of my employees, you know.'

Jude grinned. Hold you responsible for anything, Mr Warner? How dare they be so inconsiderate?

‘They should,' a precise, embittered voice murmured, ‘have been trained better.'

‘I wouldn't know. Training has never been my responsibility.'

‘That's as may be. The fact is, we are terminally short of travellers, and even one who won't fall into line is one too many.'

‘Maybe,' Warner muttered, ‘you should try giving her all the facts, instead of expecting her to sign up for a handful of hints and whispers.'

‘The moment you give us some reason to believe that she will sign up, she can be trusted with the facts. Until then –'

Warner cleared his throat; halfway along the corridor, Jude froze, suddenly convinced that he'd heard her approaching. ‘I need to get back. If I'm not at the commemoration ceremony –'

‘Then the world will end, yes. You have an exaggerated idea of your own importance, Warner. GenoBond would be able to go on functioning without you.' His voice tightened slightly, adding weight to a threat. ‘After all, one of these days, we'll have to.'

Her heel clicked against a metal plate, a drain cover or something, and suddenly the tall man was drawing back into the shadows and Warner turned to meet her, as sweaty and over-enthusiastic as a husband who's just hustled his mistress through the back door. ‘Jude? Taking a look around, eh? You see, I told you you'd like Hurst living if you'd just give it a try.'

There were a lot of things she could have said to that, but by now Fitch would be well past fluttering her eyelashes at Schrader and onto the real business, and they'd probably missed the good stuff already.

‘Mr Warner,' she panted, making it look as if she'd crossed the whole Hurst in a hurry and this was vital and urgent. ‘Can you spare a moment?'

His eyes darted to the thin man standing in the shadows, searching for an excuse to say no. The stranger flashed his teeth in what might have been a smile, and said nothing.

‘Oh come on,' she protested. ‘Don't embarrass me here. These people went to all the trouble of setting up a surprise presentation for you and nothing I can say will get you to it?'

‘Surprise?'

Taking advantage of his confusion, Jude grabbed Warner's arm and tugged him forward, away from the shadows and the silent, resentful stranger. ‘Come on. If we're late, I'll only get the blame.'

‘I'll, er –' Warner twisted in her grasp, firing apologies back at the thin man. ‘We'll talk about this later.'

‘Mmmmm,' his companion half-agreed, as the intersection corner separated them, and Jude was left trying to decide whether she was going to eavesdrop on the wrong conversation.

Warner tugged free of her grasp, made an ineffectual attempt to smooth the creases from his jacket. ‘All right, Jude. What is this really about?'

‘We're going to eavesdrop.'

‘I see. On whom, and doing what?'

‘You have a dirty mind, boss.'

The doorway to the party room was empty now; a sea of grey and colour gathering at the far end, where a short, shrill woman in a dress of silver scales was tapping on her glass, and squeaking, ‘Quiet, please!' like a lost schoolmistress. More familiar faces; Miyahara, even, jostling for position, squeezing the miniature video-camera in his fist like a weapon as he battled for the best footage.

What could be going on at a departmental party that a freelance reporter would consider worth recording?

Warner's face creased in annoyance. ‘I should be here for this. People take note, you know. My next promotion could depend –'

‘Don't worry, boss. If you don't get the directorship, I'll ReTrace back and knock off your rival for you.'

All that emerged from Warner's throat was a strangled sob.

‘That was a joke, by the way.'

He was too busy grabbing a champagne glass from a passing waiter to reply.

The crowd was, if anything, getting noisier, but the fish-scaled woman had decided to start anyway. ‘It is my great pleasure to welcome here tonight our guest of honour –'

Warner was still gulping champagne and looking unfashionably pale. She reached to pluck at his sleeve, but he stepped back, out of reach, almost knocking over a couple of teenagers in rumpled suits who'd arrived late for the speech.

No more jokes about political assassinations, must make a note of that. Obviously hit a sore spot.

Which might explain why he was talking to a shifty-looking stranger down a side street in Toy Town in the middle of the night…

Filing that possibility for future investigation/gossip/ blackmail, Jude nodded impatiently towards the door. Warner scowled furiously, and looked around for somewhere to put his glass.

‘A pioneer in the primary research field of our century, a man to whom so many of us owe so much of our happiness,' fish-scale woman simpered, stepping back in the humble manner that must be genetically engineered into event hostesses. ‘Show your appreciation, please, for Dr Martin Harchak!'

Applause – genuine, for once. Even some cheers. And there he was, thinning hair carefully shaped to hide the bald patches, smart suit hanging awkwardly off his shoulders, managing the thin smile of a man who's won a competition he never even entered. Harchak, petty gang-lord and breeder of wolf-men, last seen bruised and humiliated in an alley outside Club Andro.

Or had that even happened yet?

Warner was moving for the door. No time for curiosity about what the Hursts and their well-manicured guests owed to Martin Harchak.

Back through the party – jostled, hustled, elbowed and grinned at, fending off fragments of greetings and protests and old, old pick-up lines. Nudging Warner like a disobedient sled dog towards the side door, the corridor to the balcony, and the beginnings of some answers.

The corridor was in shadow, and all she could see was two silhouettes, two mismatched profiles against what was left of the light. Shoulders back and jaws raised as if squaring up for a fight.

They were barely going to be in time for the fireworks.

‘That's another thing. I wish you'd stop calling me “boss”. Makes me –'

‘Shh.' She pulled him sideways, keeping close to the wall. The raised surface of some textured fabric tickled her bare skin, distracting her with false danger signals.

‘You have to be aware of that,' Schrader was saying. ‘You can't have lived with her so long without noticing signs of instability.'

‘Bullshit,' Fitch muttered.

‘I appreciate that you have a certain loyalty to her. That's good.' Half a step closer; trying to use his height to intimidate her. Or to look down her neckline. ‘But for your own sake, you have to consider very carefully –'

‘That Jude's deranged? I've considered that for as long as it deserves – oh, four seconds, maybe – and come to the conclusion that you're lying to me. Now, why would you be doing that?'

She could almost hear the smile in Schrader's voice. ‘Well. Perhaps because Jude is a very dangerous woman who, unbeknown to her, has the power to change the world.'

Warner's hand fell on her shoulder. ‘Stop.'

‘What?'

‘You don't know what you're getting into. You're in enough danger already –'

Schrader was speaking as well, but she couldn't take in both conversations at once. Something about the greatest good, drowned out by Fitch's unprintable reply, cut across by Warner, ‘We have to get out of here.'

‘Why?' Jude demanded, as she followed his gaze to the ripple in the crowd far behind them, the ripple of figures closing purposefully on the corridor, and them.

Whatever's going on here, Warner's trapped, however unwillingly, right in the thick of it.

‘You son of a bitch,' Fitch snarled, stepping back as Schrader's hand fell on her shoulder. Lace ripped as she raised her hands, readying those lethal nails for self-defence.

Unthinking, Jude plunged forward. The corridor separating them was three strides long, three split-second strides, and she was still too late.

Schrader turned his head, just enough to be sure she saw his smile.

And then he disappeared.

In the strictest, Cheshire-Cat sense, slowly but without doubt – disappearing. No melodramatics, no thunder and lightning, no transporter beam from the heavens. Just a thinning to transparency, and beyond, into nothingness.

Jude pressed her palms to the rough cloth of the corridor walls, staring into the afterimage of his insolent grin, and reminded herself to breathe

ReTracers couldn't do that.

Could they?

She turned to Warner, but the world was already slipping away.

SEVEN

A Slip-road, date unknown

The ground went out from under her in the dark, and she fell.

Grass, wet and slippery, greasing her threadbare jeans with mud as she slithered blindly down a shallow slope, thrashing for handholds that didn't exist. Too dark to see, too hot to breathe.