House of Dust (22 page)

We declined that offer and kept our luggage to ourselves, provoking a disappointed twitch of Silver Suit's lips.

Katharine stepped forward as we approached. “Where have you been? I almost ended up on the plane without you.”

“I don't think so.” I pulled out my mobile and called Sophia. I wanted to ask her to watch over the old man, but the call was diverted so I left the message with her secretary. I hoped Sophia was resting. Knowing her, I reckoned she was more likely to be hard at work in her lab.

“So you have finally decided to grace us with your company, Citizen Dalrymple.” Professor Raskolnikov's voice was deep and disapproving. “I hope you are more punctual when you are a guest in New Oxford.”

He turned away and rejoined Raphael and the rest of her entourage. Beyond them was a large group of well-dressed men and women. I recognised none of them and wondered who they were. Probably more consultants for the prison initiative.

Then I heard a voice I recognised behind us.

“I don't care if there is no reservation for me. I am the public order guardian of this city and I order you to let me on the helijet.”

Davie and I exchanged glances.

“Don't tell me the Mist's going to be on our backs,” he groaned.

We watched as Raphael strode over to meet the guardian, who'd barged past Silver Suit.

“Administrator,” the Mist began, “I really must insist—”

“You really must leave this area, guardian,” Raphael interrupted, making no attempt to conceal their conversation from the rest of us. “I've already told you, we do not require any other Edinburgh personnel.” She looked over towards me. “Citizen Dalrymple and his team will be quite sufficient.”

“But we are investigating the death of a Council member,” the Mist spluttered. “One of the most important people in—”

“Enough!” The administrator's voice was sharper than the blade of an auxiliary knife. “Go back to the senior guardian and tell him I will be in touch. Goodbye.”

Lewis Hamilton's successor stood limply on the concrete, strands of her lustreless hair protruding from the normally tight elastic she fastened round it. Then she fired a poisonous glare at me and turned on her heel. I couldn't understand why the newly appointed guardian was so keen to leave Edinburgh, or why she was suddenly so outraged by Lewis's death. And I was surprised at the way Raphael had publicly humiliated her. It was almost as if New Oxford's dealings with Enlightenment Edinburgh had moved to a different level – one of master and servant rather than equal partners.

The man in silver moved towards us with a smile on his face, then sobered up rapidly when he saw Raphael's expression.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are ready to board. Please follow me.” He ran his fingertips over a small device he was holding in the palm of his hand and watched as the door leading to the apron opened.

We walked up a short flight of steps that led directly into the rear of the helijet. I breathed in a mixture of aviation fuel and leather – the spacious dark blue seats were of that material – and blinked. The interior of the aircraft was sleek and well lit, the fittings all in silver. I had a flash of the science-fiction movies I used to watch when I was a kid: vast metallic spacecraft with powerful weapons, astronauts in bulky suits and highly intelligent computers. They suddenly seemed very close. Then I remembered the alien beings that often haunted the dripping cargo spaces and scurried through the ventilation ducts to ambush all available humans – and felt a crushing wave of apprehension.

Davie obviously didn't. He was taking his seat avidly, a broad smile on his face.

I sat across the aisle from Katharine and fiddled with the card I'd been given. A cup with a lid was ejected slowly from a panel in the rear of the seat in front of me.

“Did you mean to do that?” Katharine asked.

“Of course,” I lied.

Then the lights were dimmed and the engines on each side of the wide fuselage began to whine, though the noise was much less than it was at street level beneath the blast shields.

“Here we go,” Davie said from behind.

I nodded. “Here we go. Goodbye, Edinburgh.”

For a few seconds I found myself wondering when – or if – I'd see my home city's buildings again. Then the engine nacelles swivelled round and the noise level increased.

We had lift-off.

Chapter Ten

Despite the automatic belt that had moved over my lower midriff with a hum and a click, I was clutching the sides of my seat, expecting a sudden surge of power. Although I hadn't been on a plane since the early years of the century, I still remembered the way your stomach suddenly seemed to empty as the brakes were released and the gunned-up engines sent the aircraft down the runway like a giant artillery shell.

I was to be disappointed, or rather, pleasantly surprised; I was never the world's best passenger. The helijet was making a fair amount of noise but it lifted itself off the museum roof smoothly, no blast or jolt to shake its occupants up.

“Bloody hell,” Davie gasped, staring out of his egg-shaped window. “Isn't this something?”

“It's an aircraft,” Katharine said sarcastically. She closed her eyes and relaxed, unmoved by the hyper-advanced machinery.

I was with Davie on this one. What we were seeing really was something. From the window on my side I watched as the centre of Edinburgh sank away beneath us, the castle's imposing bulk getting more like a kid's toy by the second. Even Arthur's Seat was reduced to the status of a minor mound, the aerial perspective flattening the green hill and the dark scars of the crags. Initially I could distinguish the inhabited areas inside the city line, but soon the devastated buildings and potholed roads of the outer suburbs where the drugs gangs once held sway looked no different from the rest of the city. It was as if twenty-five years of Council rule, of penning the city's remaining populace inside the carefully guarded border, had achieved nothing. The guardians should all have been given a trip on the helijet. It might have taught them humility.

“Look,” Davie said. “The mines.”

Directly beneath us the patchwork of fields – green pastureland, cereals and root crops interspersed with brown ploughed areas – was pockmarked by blackened earth and rundown buildings. For ordinary citizens it was difficult to decide which punishment rota was worse: a month underground hacking out the coal essential for electricity generation, or a month being drenched or parched, depending on the season, on the city farms. I couldn't recommend either.

Then we began to ascend more steeply, cutting through layers of cloud that soon became thick enough to obscure the view. Edinburgh was gone, lost in the mass of white. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. I let myself sink into the luxurious seat and had a more detailed look at the control card I'd been given. After a few minutes of fumbling I managed to work out how to access the different options that appeared on the small screen when I touched the numbered keys. That way I made the back of the seat move backwards and forwards like a tree in a strong wind, got myself a packet of what looked like desiccated rabbit droppings, though the label called it Nox Vitamin Snack, and obtained my very own strong wind from a panel above.

“Have you finished playing, citizen?”

I jerked forward. The voice came out of a speaker next to my ear that I hadn't noticed.

“If so, come to the front of the cabin. I want to talk to you.” Administrator Raphael was in her autocratic mode. When she said “want” she meant “require”, not “desire”. I gave her a minute to wonder whether I was going to respond.

Before I did, I entrusted my bag to Davie. Then I walked up the gently sloping floor, feeling my boots sink into the thick dark blue carpet.

It was about time Raphael came clean.

I passed Professor Raskolnikov on the way. He gave me a scowl that made me wonder if I'd unwittingly deleted all his crime and punishment files when I was fiddling with the control card. Then I saw the empty seat across the aisle from the administrator and realised that he'd been expelled to make room for me.

“Sit down, Citizen Dalrymple,” she said, inclining her head to the right.

I decided to take my life in my hands. “You can call me Quint, you know,” I said as I obeyed her command. “What's your first name?”

For a moment she looked nonplussed, then she turned her piercing eyes on me. “Administrators in New Oxford are not addressed by forename.”

“But you do have a first name? Family and friends use it, don't they?” I took in the unrelenting expression. “You do have family and friends?”

Raphael seemed uncertain for a moment, the skin on her face less taut than usual. Then she went back to type. “Administrators are expected to give all their attention to their work,” she said, raising her nostrum from her chest and glancing at the display. All I could see was a matrix of numbers and letters. “We avoid all distractions.”

“Now I understand why you've been getting on so well with Edinburgh guardians,” I said. Although Sophia had recently had a child, she was the only one of her rank to have taken advantage of the loosening in the Council's celibacy regulations and rejoined the human race.

Raphael gave me a sharp look. “Be serious for a while, citizen. If you can.”

“I am being serious, administrator,” I replied with a grin.

“And grow up.”

That was a trickier one. I let it pass.

“Very well.” Raphael pushed her thin frame back in the leather seat and formed her hands into a pyramid underneath her chin. “I said I would impart certain information to you during the flight and that's what I intend to do.” She glanced at her nostrum again. “We only have half an hour at most.”

I looked out of the window and saw that the cloud layer below was passing at what seemed like a very high speed.

“First of all, some points of detail you should know. The footprints you found on the floor of the derelict flat in Leith.”

“Oh aye?” I said, remembering the heavily ribbed mark from a shoe or boot.

“An identical print was found on the staircase outside your own flat.”

“What? I never heard that.”

The administrator gave me a tight smile. “I'm sure the public order guardian didn't intentionally keep the updated scene-of-crime report from you.”

I was as sure about that as I was that the drinking water ration would be increased in the summer, but I kept my thoughts about the Mist to myself; although Raphael bawled her out before we left Edinburgh, the pair of them had seemed to be pretty close before that.

“Anyway,” the administrator continued, “that isn't the most important point about the print.”

That sounded interesting. “It isn't? What is then?”

She looked down at her knees. They were pressed tightly together, the black material of her trousers creased out of line. “That particular marking is to be found on a make of boot produced by Nox Footwear Industries.” She looked at me sternly. “I understand that its design number is NF138B and that it is sold exclusively to students of the university.”

I started to scribble in my notebook.

“I will supply you with a full digital record of our conversation, citizen,” the administrator said.

“I prefer to write my own record.” I turned to watch her. “Sold exclusively to students, you said. Does that mean only students wear that kind of boot?”

She nodded. “And – to pre-empt your next question – none of the Oxford personnel who have been in Edinburgh is a student.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Students wear different shoes from university staff?”

“You'll find we're very organised about that kind of thing, citizen.”

“Is that right? So how do you explain the prints in Leith and outside my place, administrator?”

She met my eyes with her own. “That's one of the things I'm expecting you to do.”

Before I could take her up on that the man in the silver suit appeared and leaned over Raphael. I couldn't hear much of their whispered conversation but I did hear a reference to “the large man with the beard”. Oh shit. What was Davie up to?

The administrator looked at me round Silver Suit's legs. “Apparently your colleague Hume 253 has asked to visit the cockpit. Can you vouch for him?”

I nodded. “He's never flown before.”

She dispatched the steward and shortly afterwards Davie came past, looking like he was in seven times seventh heaven.

“Let's move on,” Raphael said briskly. “The next—”

“Hang on, we haven't finished with the footprint yet.”

“I told you, citizen, you'll get a full record.” Her eyes were steely. “Kindly refrain from interrupting.”

I got the feeling that there was a lot more discipline in the university than there had been in the past, as the New Oxford incarceration initiative back home suggested.