The Race (39 page)
Authors: Nina Allan
The metal signboard above the door reads
Hotel Charlotte
.
“You can stay here for a while,” Nestor says. “Just for a couple of days, until I can find you something more permanent. It’s a bit rough, but it’s safe, and the rooms are clean.”
“I don’t have much money,” I say, and it’s true, I don’t, just the money Lin gave me. This is a problem I haven’t thought of up until now.
“Don’t worry about that,” Nestor says. “Your father paid me well. There’s plenty to spare.”
He takes me inside the hotel. There is a tiled foyer, a wide, balustraded staircase. A woman is seated behind a Perspex-covered counter, reading a magazine. Nestor speaks to the woman in Thalian, but I’m too overwhelmed by the strangeness of everything to make the effort to catch what he says.
I see money change hands. The woman writes something into a ledger and then hands me a key.
“I can’t go up to the room with you,” Nestor says. “A man can’t go to a room with a woman here, not unless he is also staying at the hotel. Will you be all right here until the morning? There’s a
cantina
just across the road – you can buy a cheap meal there.”
I nod. I do not trust myself to speak in case I burst into tears. “Your room’s on the third floor,” Nestor says. “Just follow the staircase around to the right. I’ll return in the morning. Wait for me here in the lobby, at around ten o’clock? I’ll bring your luggage. We can work things out then. For now, just get some rest. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
He nods to the woman behind the counter and then he leaves. It is only once he’s gone that I realise I don’t have his address or his telephone number, or any way of contacting him at all, should he not reappear, as he promised, the following morning.
It comes to me that I am more alone than I have ever been in my life.
~*~
I hear the pht-pht-pht of the overhead ceiling fan. I glance quickly at the woman behind the counter, but she’s gone back to reading her magazine.
My head is humming. I feel dog tired suddenly, tired as death. I feel as if my life has become unhooked from the rim of the world, as if it could spin off in any direction and no one would notice.
I climb slowly upstairs to my room.
~*~
The room is high up, under the eaves. The window is wide open, but the build-up of heat from the day still makes the confined space stifling. There is an electric fan in one corner and I switch it on.
The bed sheets are faded, but clean. The floor of the room is covered with green linoleum.
I sit down on the edge of the bed. From the open window I can hear the evening sounds of dogs and children, fighting and playing and shouting in the street below. It’s as if I can feel the city breathing, yawning in the dusty heat, accepting me inside.
Big cities, I am coming to realise, are more complex than mazes. Keep their secrets, and they will do their best to keep you safe.
I know now that even if they find me, the person they are looking for is already no more.
What is happening now is happening to me, Lumey Maree.
Who I become from here is for me to decide.
With special thanks to Ian Whates and NewCon Press for having the imagination and confidence to make this book happen, and to Ben Baldwin for his intuitive understanding of how it should look. Thanks also to the friends and colleagues who have provided advice, enthusiasm and support as
The Race
progressed, Andy Cox, Mike Harrison, Simon Ings, Carole Johnstone, Joanna Kavenna, Joel Lane, Cleaver Patterson, Alastair Reynolds, Rob Shearman, Tricia Sullivan, Emma Swift, Peter Tennant, Douglas Thompson, Sam Thompson and Maureen Weller among many others. Thanks and love to my mother, Monica Allan, for her unstinting support and confidence in me, and to Chris, as always, for being there and being everything.
Also by Nina Allan:
Microcosmos
Microcosmos
collects seven mini-masterpieces from one of the most intelligent and interesting writers of genre fiction to emerge in recent years. They include the BSFA Award shortlisted “Flying in the Face of God” and two brand new stories, “A.H.” and “Higher Up”, that are wholly original to this book.
“Each story is excellent, but I found the final three simply superb. Perceptive, mysterious and unsettling, Nina Allan is an author to watch.”
– Amazing Stories
“Beautifully written and paced and enigmatic, yet in an entirely lucid way.”
– Ian Watson
Microcosmos
is available to purchase now in e-book or as a signed limited edition hardback
from the SpaceWitch site
:
The Moon King
Neil Williamson
The stunning debut novel from one of Britain’s finest writers of genre fiction.
All is not well in Glassholm. Amidst rumours of unsettling dreams and strange whispering children, society is disintegrating into unrest and violence. The sea has turned and the island’s luck monkeys have gone wild, distributing new fates to all and sundry. Turmoil is coming…
“
The Moon King
is adult, literary fantasy at its best.”
– Eric Brown, the Guardian
“
The Moon King
is a mysterious, luminous read, full of intriguing characters... Beautifully written and thoughtful. Sure to be one of the best debuts of this or any other year.”
– Jeff Vandermeer
“The sort of book that creeps into your dreams.”
– Chris Beckett, winner of the 2013 Arthur C Clarke Award
“
The Moon King
has you hooked from the start.”
– Edinburgh Book Review
Available now in
paperback
,
signed limited edition hardback
, and
e-book
.
Publishing quality Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dark Fantasy and Horror for eight years and counting
Winner of the 2010 ‘Best Publisher’ Award from the European Science Fiction Society.
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To date, NewCon Press has published work by:
Neil Gaiman, Brian Aldiss, Kelley Armstrong, Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter, Christopher Priest, Tanith Lee, Joe Abercrombie, Dan Abnett, Nina Allan, Sarah Ash, Neal Asher, Tony Ballantyne, James Barclay, Chris Beckett, Lauren Beukes, Aliette de Bodard, Chaz Brenchley, Keith Brooke, Eric Brown, Pat Cadigan, Jay Caselberg, Michael Cobley, Storm Constantine, Peter Crowther, Hal Duncan, Jaine Fenn, Jonathan Green, Frances Hardinge, Gwyneth Jones, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, M. John Harrison, Amanda Hemingway, Paul Kane, Leigh Kennedy, Kim Lakin-Smith, David Langford, Alison Littlewood, James Lovegrove, Una McCormack, Sophia McDougall, Alex Dally McFarlane Gary McMahon, Ken MacLeod, Ian R MacLeod, Gail Z Martin, Juliet E McKenna, John Meaney, Simon Morden, Mark Morris, Anne Nicholls, Stan Nicholls, Marie O’Regan, Philip Palmer, Stephen Palmer, Sarah Pinborough, Rod Rees, Andy Remic, Mercurio D Rivera, Adam Roberts, Justina Robson, Gaie Sebold, Robert Shearman, Sarah Singleton, Martin Sketchley, Kari Sperring, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Brian Stapleford, Charles Stross, Tricia Sullivan, EJ Swift, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Steve Rasnic Tem, Lavie Tidhar, Lisa Tuttle, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Ian Watson, Freda Warrington, Liz Williams, Neil Williamson…
and many, many more.
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