Mappa Mundi (18 page)

“My thoughts exactly.” Mary smiled at him, using all the force of her wit to try and elicit a friendly response, not giving in when she didn't get one. “That's why we want to move to Isolation now.”

As she had anticipated, he was not surprised by her challenge. He moved suddenly, lunging forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he considered her proposal. Finally he said, “The site is prepared?” He glanced up at her through his heavy, overgrown hair, cheeks and jaw very heavy at that angle, like a boxer's face that had taken her best punch and could take a lot more.

“Yes.” Which was not strictly true, but she knew Dix could make it happen, because she had to.

He nodded. “And if we do this now, we will have to take in with us the extra personnel. It's outside the plans we drew up. These people will have to be imported, spirited in from all over the world. Can you do that?”

“How many?” Dix had warned her about this, and she dreaded the question. In order to go into Isolation the whole team working on Mappa Mundi would have to enter a closed environment, cut off from the outside world. The NSC had prepared for this eventuality a year ago, when the first stage of Mappa Mundi had been completed and it was already clear that the price of information was good enough to soften the resolve of more than a few. The site was limited, however. It didn't have the equipment or the space to allow significant alteration in a short time. Even getting it ready within a few weeks was going to drag out their resources to the limit.

Guskov didn't need to consult his notes. “Twenty-five.”

Which was ten more than she'd bargained on. She laughed. “Twenty,” and that was too many.

He shook his head, “Not at this level. There's too much to be done.”

“Twenty,” she said, wishing that she'd picked a lower figure.

His nostrils flared in contempt. “Not possible.”

“Twenty. Five more would tip the entire system into a potential disaster. The site can't support that many. It's twenty.”

And here she had him because the government called this one, whether he liked it or not, and he knew it.

“Choose who you like,” Mary added, generously indicating the entire world with a half-shrug, “but by tomorrow I want a list of twenty names and not one more.”

Guskov hesitated and then sat back, regarding her with a fatherly tolerance.

“Do you know that among my scientists many are deeply uncomfortable with the obvious implications of this project? It offends their moral sensibilities. They see immediately that for all your sweet words it is a perfect tool for repression. Of that twenty, at least half, or more of them, may quickly be pushed across the line where they refuse their labour and, once they are sealed in, then who will I use as they join the strike? Who will police them, so that they do not sabotage the work in a moment of misguided, heroic idealism?” He leaned his head on one side and looked at her through steepled fingers.

“I wouldn't dare to suggest anything to an expert in coercion,” she said easily. “You can answer that better than I could.” And now wasn't she on the back foot? She had to grit her teeth behind her cool façade.

“So,” he mused, “you would take their families hostage, you would impound their assets. You, the American government, would use basic emotional router programmes and your inept, undereducated NervePath programmers to resculpt their personalities? All these tactics your culture stands against, first and foremost among all nations, and you will not hesitate? There is nothing so low that you will not stoop to it, to crush freedom's life out, without mercy?”

Mary felt her own smile go bitter cold now. “You can rely on that.” As she said it and his smile intensified into one of warmth she knew that this one wasn't a bluff. She would. She could. The knowledge was
a triumph and a disappointment, the two emotions so intimately entwined that she couldn't separate them.

“Then I will give you my list,” he said. “Ten names. As we agreed.”

She frowned questioningly at him.

Guskov smiled and disentangled his hands, spreading them out in the air. “There are some people,” and his look made her aware that he suspected she knew who they were, “that even I would not trust, Ms. Delaney.”

Part of her longed to ask if he would have included her on that list or not, but she'd already given enough points away on the day. She offered him a drink and they toasted their agreement with vodka.

When he'd gone and she had to send her news to Rebecca Dix, Mary paused with her hand on the Pad control. She had the sensation that she'd missed something, and then realized it was only the glass shuttle that had gone from its place. She shook her head to clear it of the feeling, and started calling.

Natalie stared at the ceiling of the guest room as dawn was breaking. Its faint, grey light came through the uncurtained window like the breath of an old animal out in the cold, weak and unwilling. From the street she heard the milk cart come whirring quietly, bottles chinking for houses other than hers.

She couldn't believe herself. What a moron. What an idiot. Talking like that and then … she cringed inwardly at the memory of her wanton behaviour. Oh my God. He'd think she was a Total. And then she thought of the file and today's experiment at the Clinic, which she'd conveniently forgotten about last night, and it was too much. She wanted to be safely away in her old life where nothing happened.

Beside her Jude rolled onto his back and reached over to touch her shoulder.

“Awake?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at his face.

To her relief, he smiled and tucked both hands under his head. “I guess I look as bad as you feel?”

“Much worse.” She was touched, surprised, glad when he pulled one hand out again and brushed the tip of her nose with one finger in a tender caress.

“Your science has done something to my head,” he said wryly, but she didn't know this time what was meant. She wanted to think he was referring to a feeling he had for her that was more than friendly, something, not a headache or the problems of Selfware or gratitude for the project she'd told him about. But the smarter, self-preserving element of her wasn't awake yet. She said, “Do you always sleep with your informants?” and instantly regretted it.

He smoothed a piece of her hair down against the side of her head. “Actually, since my last girlfriend upped and left me for a baseball player with two houses in Europe and his own yacht, I've been working, and most of my informants ask for money or police protection instead.”

“Silly me,” she said, wishing there was a way to apologize. She should be thanking him.

“I'll leave you ten bucks when I go, if it'll make you feel better.”

“When's your plane?”

“Nine.”

“Then we should get going.”

“Wait a minute.” He drew his hand back. “What's the matter?”

“It's not you,” she hated herself. “I'm just not used to—this.” She pulled the covers up to her chin. “I don't do this. I…”

“Yeah, I know. You're mad.” Jude rubbed his own face and sighed. “You told me. So, when will I see you again?”

“Don't joke,” she said, trying not to be both pleased and hurt. She wanted any feeling that wasn't accompanied by its opposite.

“I'm not.”

“You're playing a game with me.” Why did she say this? Only actresses said lines like that. What did it mean?

“And what're you doing with me if I am?”

Natalie stared up into his dark eyes. They were night. And here was the blue of morning. She pushed the worthless parts of herself aside and decided on honesty instead.

“Well, how stupid would it be to say I've fallen in love with you at first sight, given that you're a hotshot FBI agent and I'm a bonkers woman in a lab coat whose most exciting regular experience is sticking electric shocks up other people's temporal lobes and watching them dance the cancan? That would have been attractive. Oh, and I could have told you about my lonely single woman's life, living with her closest friend, a gay man, in a flat-share that closely resembles the cliché of the age—the only thing missing is the cat and that's because ours ran away. I can see instantly that a man like you would go for that. Like a shot. Pow. Result.”

“You talk too much,” he said and kissed her.

“Stop it.” Natalie loved the kiss but turned her head away. She wanted to believe him but there was herself in the way; the information didn't compute with what herself said could be true.

“What? Changed your mind? Okay, okay.” He lay down again and sighed. “Get lost, Jude.” He rolled over and sat up at the edge of the bed.

Natalie felt sick. She watched him get up, testing his clothes where they hung on the chair to see if they'd dried out, putting his fabulous body away and out of her reach forever. Worse than that, going away forever. They'd liked each other enough. She'd thought she could tell him about her life and she had. He wasn't making fun. What was she doing? This was pathetic.

“I didn't mean it. I'm acting like a fool.” Natalie flung the covers back despite the fact that the house was cold and she was naked. “Stop. I mean. Come back. If you're not joking. The situation. I didn't think you could really like me.”

He turned around, shirt half on, “I know. I listened to you, remember? I saw your Map. I heard your rat's-ass-crazy plan to enlighten everyone in the world by reconfiguring their brains
and
your weird
conviction that given enough of a chance everyone on the planet will become a good person when they understand the Way. I know about the difference between a spiritual experience and physical reality and the validity of both of them, I've seen it on your machine. I've heard it all. I assume you haven't infected me with some software that turns me into your love puppet, so, now, can you see where I have it tattooed that I do everything you say?” He held his arms out to either side and gave her a questing look.

Natalie stared at him, her lower jaw loose.

Jude grinned and pointed at her with both hands in gun position, “Now you know what it's like to be on the other end of that. Do I do a good Doctor Armstrong?”

She nodded, drily. “Your pants are inside out.”

He looked down at his naked body and she laughed.

They were dressed by five-thirty. In the kitchen Natalie felt her delight sink down as she saw the file papers. She helped Jude pick them up and put them all back and made a half-hearted attempt to scrape the spilled wax off the tiled floor. As the catches on his flight case snapped closed she stood up and put the knife she'd been using into the sink. It made a dull, bored sound that died quickly. She had heard it a million times, the peculiar tone of metal on metal in that place. The whole of the last twenty-four hours seemed utterly unreal. Being in that house, cluttered with memories, was only the icing on the experience. She looked at Jude and her heart almost stopped. He and she—but he was going. Perhaps that was what had made it so easy after all.

“Ready?”

“No,” he said and walked out, sombre, his head bowed.

She followed him and they went out through the back door and along the side of the house where a small pedestrian gate let them out onto the road. They turned towards the road out of town and walked in the fresh morning light to the hotel at the corner, where Jude got a taxi to the airport.

As he watched the car pull up he turned to her. “I'll be in touch,” he said.

“Yeah.” She nodded.

He was still looking at her, his stare intense. “Take it easy.”

“You, too.” She closed the car door for him and then knocked on the window. It opened for her automatically, the taxi's engine rising to a waiting hum. “Hey,” she said, “I'm glad you exist.”

His face broke into a grin. “Ditto,” he said.

She tapped the window and it closed again, sealing him in.

Natalie watched his car drive away out of sight. She listened—for shots, for a bomb, for anything. The morning was calm. Her face felt raw in the cool air, where his unshaven face had rubbed it. Her whole body felt raw. She shivered in delight and set off to walk home across the city.

If this was the way the real world got you to pay, it was worth it.

Dan woke up to a hammering on his bedroom door.

“Dan, you idiot. It's seven thirty! Get up!”

He recognized Natalie's voice and a glut of relief swept over him, almost dislodging the ferocious hangover for a second. Then he remembered why it was important to get to work early—today they were doing the Bobby X experiment.

The door opened and Natalie came in, holding out a mug of black coffee and a couple of white tablets. “Come on!”

“Thanks. What're these?”

“Just take them. I bought breakfast. Eggs, everything. It's in the kitchen.”

The thought made him queasy. But he took the tablets and washed them down with scalding mouthfuls of the tarlike stuff in the mug. After only a few moments he started to feel better.

“What's in them?” he muttered as he dragged himself out of bed and into a dressing gown. Natalie shouted back something about a prescription
but he wasn't quite tuned in yet. There was something last night that he'd been desperate to talk to her about. Now, what was it?

He sat down on the kitchen's only stool and watched her open a pack of bacon, lay the slices on the grill. When she turned around he noticed her face.

“Shit, Natalie! You got him!”

“Sound any more surprised and you can wear this spatula.” She brandished it in his face and splattered a few drops of hot fat on his dressing gown, but she was full of an energy that Dan recognized easily and he wasn't impressed.

“I bet he was good. Was he? I saw you at the … I mean, I missed you at the pub. So, tell me.” The little white tablets were good, he felt almost human.

She turned to him, “Saw us where? Oh Dan, you weren't…?”

“Some bloke was following you, or him.” At the memory of it he touched his ribs and felt instant pain. “I got rid of him,” he said proudly.