Falling (17 page)

‘Jude!' her mother's ghost-voice screams, carried on a shimmer of cheap perfume from the vertiginous blur that edges the roundabout of her life. ‘I'll come for you. I won't let them keep you in that place. I promise –'

–talked about it. Because they didn't want to face up to it. Didn't want to admit that it could happen to them. Deny it, and it'll never happen.

Okay. Stop panicking, and you'll find a way to solve the problem.

You're Adrift. You've lost your bearings, slipped off the solid walkways that link your present and your past, down into the cracks in between. What you see before you is your life, flashing quite literally before your eyes. You have to find a stable point – somewhere, anywhere – and jump at it. ReTrace to it. Then, from there, you can get back on track.

And you have to stay calm. Because it's the panic that destroys people, the uncertainty that haunts them when they finally find their way back with their sanity in shreds. Stay calm and you'll be fine.

Of course, if it is simply being Adrift that rips your mind apart, then the damage is already done – so why worry?

‘We're offering you a vocation,' Warner says, somewhere out there in her distant past. ‘A career. A future. Exercising the most extraordinary gift mankind has ever known. We're offering you something to live for.'

It's not too late.

I hope.

Among the whirlwind, Fitch was crying out, in passion or in pain. Jude folded her hands over her ears, trying to squeeze the memories out of her field of vision. It made no difference. It was all inside her head, all part of her, and there's no escaping from yourself.

A glimpse of the empty streets of the Bankside, the one time after the Migration that she'd gone back. Broken glass in the scorched frame of the SideRide, litter rotting in ghost-town alleys. Even the rats had left.

She reached for it. Felt the chill of steel under her hand as she rattled the locked door of Block 24 –

Gone.

She had to find something solid. Take shelter in a definite event of her life, and ReTrace her way from there. The next hint of a place and time that seemed accessible, that seemed real, she had to make a break for it.

That was what the others had done, the ones who'd made it back. Because some had. It was possible. She'd seen a couple of them, at the Retirement Home. And look, out among her jumbled memories, there they all were. Huddled under their blankets as the nurses brought them tea and smiles. Still riding the whirlwind in their minds, blank eyes reflecting the lamplight, fidgety hands playing out their journey in shaky Morse Code as they recited mantras and poems and nonsense to keep the whirling memories at bay.

There. Something solid, something real.

Go.

TEN

The Past

Light. Dark. Light.

Something obscuring her vision. A flap of cloth, a curtain? Warmth behind her, flesh-warmth. She tried to turn. Held too tight, held by giant arms that squeezed resentment into her even as they protected. Her head felt strangely heavy and something was very wrong –

‘Hush, Jude,' her mother's voice whispered, heavy with echoes. It came from somewhere above her, somewhere high and distant, yet vibrating –

Vibrating through the glossy plastic of her mother's raincoat. The plastic where Jude's baby-fat cheek rested, the plastic swathing the arm that held her. A raincoat the size of a bedsheet, a tent, damp with mist as her mother carried her, a babe in arms, through the patterns of light and dark that were the night-time city.

She opened her mouth to scream, but all that came out was a baby's cry, thin and weak and inconsolable. Her mother squeezed her tighter, bent close: a blur of skin, the strange, exaggerated movements of her mouth as she hummed and hushed a child who was not a child at all.

I'm a baby.

I'm helpless. I can't even change my own nappies, let alone my own fate.

A car horn blared. Her mother scurried for a few steps, cursing, and slowed again. Muscles tensing and relaxing; a jolt now as she shifted the weight of the helpless bundle in her arms.

Forcing herself to relax, to take stock of the situation, Jude looked down at herself. Flounces of knitted blanket bundling a frilly dress. And little woolly booties kicking vaguely at the night. Isn't that cute?

I wonder what I look like?

No hair, eyes like marbles, and I scream all the time, probably. All babies are like that. Though it is weird that there were no photographs. Even the unwanted usually get photographed at this age. It's only later that the family album develops amnesia, missing out chunks of a family or a life.

What if I need to take a piss?

Okay, just calm down and think.

Lights flickered at the edge of her vision. Green to amber, amber to red. Traffic lights. Working traffic lights. Been a long time since she'd seen any of those. The sharp tang of petrol, the off-key blare of horns, the affronted yells of pedestrians losing brief, hopeless battles for priority. Engines revving in time with the pulse, voices rising and falling to weave a peculiar urban melody.

The thin drizzle caught the light strangely, filling the streets with a glittering mist, reflecting back the colours of the garish window-displays. Adult faces loomed in and out of the light, unnaturally close, grim with internal struggles that no one would expect her to understand.

She could see her mother's face quite clearly. Younger than Jude remembered her, and softer. Thinning hair tied back, but edged with a halo of loose strands that glittered gold in the hazy light. She was wearing make-up, and her inexperience with it showed. Heavy on the mascara, light on the blusher. Some skills, or lack of them, obviously did run in the family. She was wearing blue, a solid, aggressive blue that didn't quite go with the bronze chain around her neck. She looked very determined, and more than a little afraid.

She'd never seemed the sort to take midnight walks with her infant nearest-and-dearest – and though begging with a babe in arms is the oldest trick in the book, she was never the type, and we're moving a little fast to be working the crowd. So where are we going?

The scent of baking bread drifted past, sudden and mouth-watering. And that's another thing. I hate milk. I don't want to be stuck here when dinnertime comes around; my stomach's already rumbling.

Why have I ended up here, in the most helpless phase of my life?

Darkness, sudden and suffocating. Jude squirmed ineffectually for a moment before realising it wasn't any part of her mother blocking her vision. They'd entered a building. White walls, black walls; a blur of light reflecting on glass; the dulled echoes of voices and faint music. Petrol smell fading to chemical flowery-freshness, the thin chimes of elevators arriving and departing somewhere out of sight.

Another voice, close and vaguely familiar. ‘Is this the child?'

‘No,' Jude's mother murmured. ‘I left my daughter at home and nicked this one out of a pram on Wardour Street, what do you think?'

Jude managed a small gurgle of a laugh. Her mother looked down at her, startled.

The tall man in the doorway didn't look surprised by this preternatural occurrence. He just made a note on his clipboard before stepping back out of her line of sight. ‘You did come here of your own free will, Ms DiMortimer. No one can force you to give up your child – even when such a bright future awaits her if you do.'

Her mother's grip tightened convulsively. ‘I came to listen. That's all. No decisions.'

‘Of course. Won't you come through?'

A shift in the quality of light; a dim room lit by wall lamps, bright Art Deco points of light. An expanse of cold grey metal swam into focus as her mother sat down. A table, conference-style, separating her from the blurred outline of a red-haired man.

Give up your child?

She never told me she even considered this. All right, it's not the kind of revelation they advise in parenting classes – ‘Did I mention, Jude dear, that I nearly gave you away?' Not exactly reassuring, but things like that have a habit of slipping out. And what's all this about a bright future? Did they know, even then, that I was a ReTracer?

And how could they have? I couldn't even speak, let alone –

Oh, think about it, Jude. People who can travel backwards through time, passing messages back through the organisation to the appropriate year. I'll bet GenoBond know which babies will turn out to have ReTracing abilities before they're even born.

‘Ms DiMortimer,' the red-haired man said, ‘Life's been hard for you, hasn't it?'

Her mother snorted amusement.

‘It's a difficult business, bringing up a child on your own. You've also had disagreements with the Housing Department, and a continuing lack of gainful employment, various legal difficulties and squabbles…'

‘Yes. I wonder who I have to blame for all that?'

Teasing him? Or is that what she really believes? Was she, well, unstable, even this early on, and I never noticed?

‘Hmmm.' He made a note on his clipboard.

‘Another black mark, I presume?'

He blinked.

‘And if I ask too many awkward questions, is there a box marked PARANOIA for you to tick? Or do you just hit the emergency button and the men in white coats rush in and drag me away?'

The young man bit the end of his pencil. ‘As I was saying. Life has been difficult for you. And now, with the Hurst programme approved and the upheaval that's liable to cause –'

‘Not for me.'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘It won't cause me any upheaval. Because I'm not going anywhere.'

‘Well, that's your choice, Ms DiMortimer. Though I have to say, bringing up a child in the place that the city's liable to become after all, ah, stabilising influences have pulled out, that's going to be…'

Her mother smiled. ‘A child's dream come true, yes.'

‘Perhaps. But not everything that a child wants is good for them.' He looked a little relieved, as if he'd finally wrenched the conversation back on track, got the upper hand again at last. ‘GenoBond, however, always places the long-term welfare of the child at the centre of its plans. If you were to agree to place Jude in the programme, she'll be placed with a loving foster family, have the best schooling imaginable, and training to assist her in developing her talents –'

‘You'll stick her in a greenhouse, with all your other little prodigies,' her mother's voice was tight and toneless. ‘And weed her out if she doesn't grow the way you intend, I'll bet.'

‘Now, Ms DiMortimer, that's not true at all.'

Jude's mother sighed. ‘You wouldn't last five minutes on the streets, would you?'

‘I'm sorry?'

Pushing a stray strand of hair out of her eyes, she began, ‘First rule of trading – you have to have something that the other person wants. And what have you got that I want?'

‘With respect, it's your daughter's wants and needs –'

‘Me, Jude, whoever. What are you offering us? Pretty dresses and expensive toys? I can get those. Cut-price, traded, stolen. They're just commodities.'

The tall man had turned an interesting shade of purple. Mum often had that effect on the minions of authority. ‘Obviously,' he said, ‘the benefits are rather more than financial. Her education –'

‘You're planning to use her as an inter-dimensional messenger. Why would she need an education? What use is geography and geometry, when all she has to do is turn up and announce the future?'

He cleared his throat again. ‘Ms DiMortimer. I can't help but feel that you're being deliberately awkward.'

‘I'm asking sensible, logical questions. You're failing to answer them. That doesn't inspire my confidence in you as a fit person to take care of my child.'

‘I appreciate that you have a great deal invested in Jude's future, emotionally, I mean –'

‘Of course I do.' Almost a growl, full of submerged anger. ‘She's my daughter. My own – and only – flesh and blood. And I'm going to do everything I can to care for her and protect her – from you and your plans to turn her into a state-controlled robot, and from anyone else who'd try to harm her.'

What happened, mum? How did we get from this to twenty years later, living a few miles apart but separated by a wall neither of us knows how to scale? If anyone knows, it's the mysterious red-headed man here. Shuffling his paperwork; shifting gears in his head, trying to decide which tactic to adopt next. ‘You do realise,' he said finally, ‘that GenoBond has a lot of influence, and if we chose to, we could make life very difficult for you.'

This explains everything. GenoBond wanted me reared their way, parented by company wage-slaves and indoctrinated from the cradle to the company pay-roll. But my mother exercised her inconvenient legal right to say no. And that's when everything started going wrong for us.

The jobs that never materialised, the apartments we were evicted from, the deals that didn't work out. Always waiting for her to crack, to take a step over the legality line. And one day she hacked into the housing department's computers to get us a roof over our heads, and the police swooped in and took me away.