In World City (7 page)

What little she knew of her father, Miranda was surprised he had given this blackmailing Joe any room at all. But, perhaps there was something her father had not said. In some ways, she didn't trust the entire story. There were bits of it that didn't fit with what she had experienced – like how in control he claimed to have been – and because there were bits that didn't fit, and because she had only a tenuous notion of the world he was talking about, she doubted everything. But powerful people were coming all the way to the island she had been imprisoned on and if she gave her father all the support she could, she might help ensure she would no longer have to live there. Before she dropped off to sleep, propped against the wall – where Donnell would find her shortly after and carry her up to bed, thinking to himself the kid had just wanted more time with her dad – Miranda heard her father say, “So I have set it all up so they have to come and take what I offer them. That's my condition – that they come to me here to finalise it all. They're coming the day after tomorrow and they will do what I tell them, Lefevre – they will do what I tell them.”

*

They came two days later and they did what Whitlam told them, even Anton Staels, chairman of Lifeline Services Reserve, the principal joint pension-funds agency, whose client investments could have bought the entire island twice over with an hour's interest on the wealth they commanded. Whitlam was dangerous enough to lengthen that time to two hours. The others who came were Matthew Waterhouse, Director of the Ageing Initiative Trust, and William Burger, Senior Research Fellow of the Hollenbeck Institute in Basel, the one individual far enough down the pecking order for his work to be tied to a specific geographical location.

On being introduced, Miranda took in none of these grand titles. She merely noted that Mr Staels was rather high and patronising and was clearly unused to dealing with children, whereas Mr Waterhouse was older and easier, and gave her a nice smile. Mr Burger puzzled her, though. He seemed far too young; more like an older brother, but an older brother with plans of his own and not much time for a younger sister. He was quite good-looking though.

Miranda also observed that on the day of their arrival Donnell had acquired two assistants. They looked rather unpleasant and didn't make the slightest effort to be friendly towards her, unlike the other islanders she had met. The other islanders were mostly disappointed by her cool response, but Miranda noticed whenever their efforts were not made. The two hired hands spent most of their time during the visitation striking prominent poses in doorways, one hand occasionally lifting to the slight bulge under the left shoulder of their over-sized and obviously newly-bought jackets.

The visitation arrived in the afternoon and stayed one night. Miranda was included in the dinner they had together. She listened closely to the conversation but found it difficult to follow. She nevertheless caught references to issues and places her father had told her about, in particular the institute in Basel.

In a lull in the talk, she asked, “Mr Staels, why are you so interested in one institute? You must have many institutes, even more than my father.”

And Staels had replied, with an odd sort of smile, “I am interested in one institute in particular, Miranda, because your father requires it of me.”

In another lull, she asked, “Mr Waterhouse, has your Ageing Initiative found any way of stopping people dying?”

And Mr Waterhouse had replied, “I don't think that we will ever be able to stop people dying but we have helped them towards a longer and healthier life.”

After which Miranda had asked, “Mr Burger, do you think people will ever be able to live forever?”

William Burger said, “I don't know, but I'm working on it,” and the others laughed.

Though she was included in the dinner, Miranda was not included in the talk afterwards. She was told it was her bedtime. She went up dutifully then crept down to listen. She fell asleep propped against the wall again and Donnell had to carry her back up to her room again. Before she drifted off she heard her father say, “Anton, your funds are in the business of creating an image of eternal life. You know you're going to have to sustain that hope and to do that you're going to need breakthroughs, new developments, progress. That's how you get your edge over those that remain outside of your trust and try to go it alone. So you have no choice but to deliver. That's why I want this arrangement. I want a portion of whatever comes out of the institute. That's due to me. The institute wouldn't exist if it wasn't for me. So when Prof Joe and you, Burger, finally deliver I need to be there.”

In the morning, after breakfast, as the visitors were about to depart, Mr Staels said to her father, within Miranda's hearing, “You have a very bright daughter there, Whitlam. You should think seriously about her education. I put my children through Spielman's. You should do the same. After all, you can afford the risk.”

Dion listens to the muffled steps of the porter, moving further away down the corridor. He hears the door click shut behind him. Slowly his eyes grow accustomed to the weak illumination from the scattered constellations of indicator lights and the dim square of the drawn blinds. He takes a pen-sized detector from his inside pocket and begins to move around the room, shifting aside the bland, decorative pictures, pausing to look at one of a jungle-clad atoll, a jewel of green and white set against a background of deepest blue. As he moves, he sweeps the black tube of the detector around these mundane objects. He feels his actions have all the necessity of a ritual – a fragment remaining lodged in his awareness from his time in the Waste. Only a fragment, though, for out in the Waste such invocatory protocol circumscribes not only arrivals in strange or unexplored places but every action anyone might conceivably undertake.

Dion completes the sweep. There are no signs of surveillance. The place is secure as only rooms in the best hotels can be: nothing extra, nothing unexpected, nothing missing, only the familiar neutrality of a perfectly appointed hotel room.

He thinks of other such hotel rooms he has occupied: thinks of a long time ago when Miranda Whitlam would wake beside him, hair messed across the pillow, mistress of all she surveyed, and himself arbiter of her future; lying beside each other in the middle of everywhere and nowhere, World City, where all is so connected that location no longer exists.

Time is a location though and he looks back on the scene still wondering who they were, those two lying in that bed, each in a waking dream that each had made the other principal player in.

They arrived in Europe by air: Dion, his mother, his father.

The aircraft exit opened onto a tube: steely, silver and filled with people. Dion followed his parents up. He found himself flinching as men and women hurried past. Their movements were brittle and aggressive and seemed to extend beyond the confines of their bodies. Some reached into coat pockets to pull out phones into which they shouted short, demanding messages. Others simply pushed ahead as fast as the constrained space would allow.

In no time, they were disgorged into a long, glass-walled corridor, where they joined a greater flow of hurrying travellers. Dion's father stepped confidently into the stream, looking like a man who has arrived exactly where he wants to be. Dion and his mother followed slightly behind.

A lowering afternoon sun poured in through the transparent walls, the slight tint of the glass giving the scene an underwater quality. Dion felt a dream-like unreality come over him. He tried to keep the feeling in check by stepping only in the pools of light between the black bars of shadow cast by the supports of the great glass walls. It helped a little to have something he could work on in this vast depersonalising space. But then he was on a moving walkway taking no steps at all, the bars of shadow passing across him and over his feet. He tried a few half-hearted moves to avoid having his feet on the ground when the bars passed over but the ritual's power had already faded. He was entirely in the hands of others.

The corridor ended in a hall, where his father led them to a short line of people, at the head of which was a uniformed official seated behind a desk. While they waited, Dion saw that most of the volume of travellers had been diverted into a broader channel off to one side. This main stream passed between two pillars and, as it did so, each hurrying figure held something up. It was as if the stream was breaking over a rock in mid-channel, its flow disrupted but its pace undiminished.

The queue Dion and his parents were waiting in gradually shortened until it was their turn at the desk. His father handed over some papers and exchanged a few words with the uniformed official who, after a few questions, spoke into a phone and asked them to stand to one side so he could deal with the next group. Another man in uniform appeared and beckoned them to follow. They were conducted to a room where a woman, seated behind a lightly-constructed steel desk, greeted them politely. More papers were handed over for inspection. A computer screen was consulted. The woman looked up, smiled, rose, and ushered them out of a door opposite the one they had entered by.

Outside, they rejoined the main stream, its volume augmented still further by joining tributaries of passengers. The flow carried them into a broad, brightly-lit hall where people thronged around automatic baggage-handling gear. Dion watched patiently, observing when the people around him succeeded in identifying their own uniquely personal combination of dents, scratches and designer label. Eventually, his father pulled out the little luggage they had checked in and loaded the cases onto a trolley. Mother and son followed father and trolley into a chamber even more brightly lit than the baggage collection hall. A few uniformed men and women stood behind broad metal tables. On one, somebody's case was open and all the contents were spread out around it. Dion was interested in this. It looked messy, accidental and dangerous. But they were through the chamber before he had time to examine the event.

They passed between more of the kind of pillars Dion had seen the main stream pass between while they had been waiting their turn earlier. Nothing interrupted their progress. The wall his father was pushing the trolley towards slid aside and they were disgorged with sudden shock into the teeming din of the arrivals hall, their path flanked by a crowd of people holding signboards. Dion's father went up to a man holding one that had ‘Lefevre' written on it in an urgent scrawl. The man took charge of the baggage trolley and navigated them past an array of signs, through the crowds, and finally to a discrete exit, which slid clear for them.

Dion managed to take only a few breaths of the first fresh air he had tasted in almost twelve hours. Then he was ushered into the back of a large car, polished to a shine like he had never seen before. He heard the luggage being hoisted in, the boot lid slam and the doors shut. As they moved off, he watched a chaos of cars, buses, buildings, advertising signs, roadways, exits and entrances pass by, all of which eventually resolved into a single, fast track that swept them away from the airport. The track joined a greater one, and then a greater one still, the car drawn into the torrents of traffic like a leaf hurled into the rapids.

Their car continued to gather speed, keeping abreast of the waves of traffic. Sometimes it overtook, sometimes it was overtaken, the cars and lorries sliding past with eerie slowness against the background blur of the roadside. A low, hard light broke over the land. All around were broad, flat fields, mostly earth-brown, but some with expanses of dull-green vegetables growing. It looked to Dion as if the land had been drained of all vitality, leaving nothing but empty spaces of appalling immensity; their defining limits the horizon and sky.

As he gazed out on this wasteland, Dion felt himself being sucked out into the vast vacuum that was Europe. This was where Miranda Whitlam had come from, and where that man who had called him a filthy little nigger had come from, the man who had thought that slapping him was the way to get to the truth.

*

The memory of it still burned. After the moment of shock at the attack had passed, Dion had taken in the situation in an instant. The reasons for it were beyond him, but it was clear that Miranda Whitlam was going to deny him and that the man was bound to believe anything she said. So Dion had held his silence the few moments necessary to make it clear he was going to choose what he would say and when he would say it. Then he had announced, ‘I'm Dion Lefevre and I done nothing wrong,' and made off, easily slipping the man's grip and disappearing into the trees. Behind him, he heard Miranda Whitlam say casually, as if his having been beaten up was of no concern to her, ‘I think he's Mr Lefevre's boy, Mr Lefevre who works for my father.' Then he had heard the man who had been beating him up say breathlessly, ‘That's good. That's worth knowing. We can get his father to deal with him.'

His father had continued the beating Miranda Whitlam's man had started, only his father's beating was more savage, deliberate and remorseless. As the strap rose and fell, Dion had heard his father growling, ‘You stupid little fucker. I've spent years getting on Whitlam's right side and you go and do this. I'll be lucky to get a place as a fucking caddy on the golf course after this. Damn you, boy. If you want to go spying, you fucking well go spying one of the local girls, you dirty little creep.'

Dion had not said a word as his father raised bloody welts on his back – this man who had arranged to have his island torn to pieces with holiday homes and golf courses, who had driven his grandmother away, who was threatening to take him away, who was beating him.

Afterwards, Dion had come to hope that the ignorance of the people around him as to what had really happened might actually work in his favour, might indeed cause his father to end up as a golf caddy, still on the island. But all Whitlam had done was speed up their departure. ‘That's one good thing to have come out it, but no thanks to you,' had been his father's final judgement on the matter. So here they were, even sooner than expected, in this enormous space that left him more completely alone than he had ever been before.

*

They entered the edges of a city. Towering factories and storage depots wheeled by. Apartment blocks shrank between giant complexities of steel and glass. Columns of steam rose from enormous chimneys. Any remaining sense of choice and control Dion might have retained had by now evaporated completely. He stared up at the sign gantries straddling the road and saw that the words and numbers meant nothing. He was nowhere and travelling very fast.

The low, hard light breaking over the scene made Dion think of the Cabrits at evening. But it was different here. The spaces that surrounded them, the speed of the car, the low, hard brilliance of the evening light, and each mote of traffic being swept on its predetermined course through the great, empty continent, all conspired to distance rather than include him.

The driver turned on the radio and a high, yearning music with a deep pulse of base rhythm filled the car. The music seemed to draw Dion out of the top of his head into a cool, free realm of infinite possibilities made of nothing except this smooth directed motion, the low, hard light and the pulsing music. In the face of the impersonal immensities he had been cast into, a hopeless dismay came over him. It was all extraordinary and rather lovely, and empty as the space between stars.

He thought of Miranda Whitlam. He ought to hate her. But he didn't and he couldn't understand why. This troubled Dion. It troubled him almost as much as the image of her face, looking up with delight as he pulled the crayfish from out of the water, or giving him a trusting half-smile when she had decided to go for a swim after all. But she had denied him and he found himself gnawing on that fact, like a dog with an especially intractable bone. In their brief meeting he had given her the very best he could. And that was something better than anyone else could ever have given her. Surely she had been beginning to realise that. Surely she must have felt something of the perfection in the moment just before that man arrived. Why then had she denied him and looked on him with dismissive contempt? Why had she done that, and why didn't he hate her for it?

The car he was being driven in continued to breast the flood of traffic, until it abruptly hurled itself off into a tributary. Everything slowed and Dion's sense of infinitely expanding spaces began to ease. They were passing through a tidy industrial area, with low-built, glass-fronted office and factory blocks surrounded by expanses of well-kept lawn. Traffic on the roads they passed along moved more sedately, stopping and starting at intersections rather than rushing furiously on without pause. Then they were in a broad, tree-lined street flanked by discrete building-cubes that glittered with neon advertising in the early twilight. The driver turned into a narrower side street, where residential blocks rose from well-tended grass surrounds. There were low trees spaced at intervals between the buildings. Street lamps shed a harsh, bluish light that silvered the yellowing leaves and cast dark shadows amongst the trees.

Dion had only ever seen such places on the television, usually as backdrop for some drama or comedy. Staring out through the car window was not much different, only there was no sense of entertainment, or even just filling in time. This place was about to enclose him; the car door would open and he would be out there in it. He thought of his grandmother's talk of stepping into a new world. It had sounded exciting, the way she had described it; full of surprises. But this new world did not look exciting. It looked as if school had multiplied itself a hundred times over, with proliferating classroom blocks set in open spaces that had been perfectly tended by an army of janitors.

The car drew up in the forecourt of one of the apartment blocks. The driver got out and opened the doors for them, first for Dion's mother and then himself. His father briskly climbed out from the front and stood for a moment surveying their surroundings. Dion felt cool air on his face, air that carried a slightly dank, decaying smell that he was unfamiliar with. He could hear voices of children playing somewhere amongst the buildings. The driver led them directly to the entrance, reached into his pocket, pulled out a bunch of keys, selected one and opened the door into the apartment block lobby.

The driver helped them with their cases to the lift, handed Dion's father the bunch of keys and said goodbye. Dion's father dropped the keys in his jacket pocket, stacked the cases at the back of the lift, saw that Dion and his mother were in and pressed one of a panel of buttons. It had a five on it. Dion felt himself suddenly heavy, then there was a synthetic chime and a number five lit up in a panel above the door. They came out on a narrow, tiled landing. At each end of the landing was a wall-high window with a potted palm set in front of it. Opposite the lift were three doors, and on either side of the lift entrance were another two doors. Each door had a number on. Dion's father hefted the cases out of the lift and onto the landing. Then he pulled out the bunch of keys, checked a label tag, walked up to one of the doors and inserted a key into the lock. He pushed the door open and Dion and his mother followed, leaving the cases outside. There was an entry lobby then a spacious living room. The place felt clean and unlived in. It smelled of air freshener. Dion's father made for the middle of the room then turned to face them. He said, “Here we are. What do you think?”

“It's wonderful,” Dion's mother said. She looked at her husband with immense pride.

“I told you I could handle old Whitlam,” Dion's father said.

Dion looked around, taking in the settee, the two armchairs, the coffee table, the shelf unit and the television. He said nothing, and he had no intention of saying anything. This would be his protection now, his armour. He would be mute or at most monosyllabic. That way this awful world he had been dumped in would have as little hold over him as possible. That way he would protect his memories. He had already had some practice when he was being beaten up by his father. Then he had been silent, letting the pain and humiliation wash through him while all the while he thought only of that moment of perfect awareness with Miranda Whitlam floating in the pool and him knowing he would live forever.

This silence was a lesson his grandmother had not told him. He had been forced to learn it for himself. His grandmother had never told him about adversity and suffering, although she had shown him some rather nasty things that insects did to one another. But in the brief time they'd had together, she had been intent on opening him up to what was around him, and the minor shocks and horrors had been no more than part of that process. What was he to do when it was him that was caught in the trap now? What was he to do when he was five floors off the ground in a place that was nowhere, with all of his grandmother's vision but none of her strength and power?