Sequela (15 page)

'And the fact that they'd sent a spy in there?'

'The word of a religious body against the prostitute daughter of a convicted terrorist?'

'Don't call her that,' Cherry said.
Convicted terrorist
. All she knew of her mother was archived headlines that began with those words.

'But you get my point,' Lady said. 'This is a church we're talking about – when it comes to controlling people, they wrote the book. Look, you are being asked to swap all this for a life inside the City, a legitimate job, fame even and all they want in return is for you to report back to them once in a while. What's wrong with you? You have to think about the long game.'

'What if it turns nasty? You're making these guys sound worse than the lootmaster generals. What are they up to? You say it's not terrorism, but who's to say?'

'You're a worrier, Cherry. You've always been a worrier since the day you came here. It's nearly cost you your job once or twice, you know? How can someone work harvesting disease when they are so paranoid? If you didn't have that screen you know you would have been out on your ear.'

'I'm not paranoid. What if my screen is just part of it? What if they want someone with terrorist "genes" to frame for something they're up to? You've just told me these guys could turn on me at the drop of a hat. I just want to know what I'm getting into. '

'I'll tell you what you're getting into. I've seen it before with countless Real Church schemes. They want to make a point. They want to make us think that the City is the seat of all woe and try to get permission to reopen a site there and they think sending you in to V might get them some juicy gossip to help them do that. If they managed it they'd be top of the religious pops and blow all the old churches out of the water.

'But they won't manage it. They'll cause a bit of a stir outside of the City, support will rally for a short time and then things will go back to normal. The City will issue a statement with some platitudes for the ears of us outside and they can say whatever they want because no-one inside the City will care. Nobody cares, Cherry. Even the people out here who think they care about who's in charge, what's going on in the City – all they really care about is whether they and their families are getting by. If they are, everything's fine. If they're not, they need something to rally round. This might be the latest thing to rally round, but it's not going to change the world.'

'And what's in it for you?'

Lady's neck began to grow red and blotchy.

'What do you think, Cherry? Money. Big money. Enough to make this place over good and proper: a new coat of paint, new tunics for all of you, a revamped wardrobe. Maybe even some blackmarket nanoscreens so that we can monitor things ourselves instead of giving a cut to those bloodsuckers at V. I could blow Franco out of the water with those kind of resources.'

'You really don't think they're going to do anything drastic? If it's worth such a lot to them, doesn't that mean they've got some master plan?'

'No!' Lady laughed. 'They may have a plan, but they're not going to get anywhere. We can help them out, do what they want, take the money and when it doesn't work, that's their lesson to learn. Lord knows they've never managed to figure it out before. Plus, V's new business model is a bigger threat to us than any harebrained scheme those two could hatch and anything they do that might stall V's progress can only be a good thing.'

'But what they're asking me to do, it's still…'

'You have a moral problem with it? A religious problem with it?' Lady raised an eyebrow.

'No, but…' Cherry thought for a moment. 'What's to say I have to do it anyway? Can't I just take the job and then wave them goodbye, wave it all goodbye? You ask for your money upfront – everyone's a winner.'

'Cherry,' Lady lowered her brows, 'I'll be getting paid a wage just like you. You cut yourself off, you cut us all off; your friends will never see the benefit. You get in there, do the job and keep your nose clean and you'll be fine.'

Cherry waited for a moment to check that Lady was finished. 'I see…well…' she said.

'Like I said, you'd just be doing a job and keeping your eyes open.'

'I need to think about it.'

'Go on then.' Lady indicated the door. 'Think.'

Cherry got up and walked to the door. Opening it slowly, she looked back over her shoulder.

'But Cherry,' Lady added, taking the handle and pulling the door back and forth a little, as if she was working up to slamming it, 'you've got a new job, or you've got no job.'

-o-

'Gerald, I've got to go,' Kester said. 'Mrs Farrell has set me up to talk with some other scientist. Sounds like she might be from a competitor, so I'm not sure how that'll play.'

Kester stood as if waiting for Gerald's permission to leave. He was sweating in all the wrong places – knees, eyelids.

'Don't worry about it,' Gerald said. 'She wouldn't send you if she didn't think you'd cope with it.'

In the lift, Kester started clicking out a rhythm with his fingers, quietly at first, then louder and faster until both arms were going, a sort of edgy syncopated rhythm; the frayed nerves rag. Then, realising what a weird thing it was to be doing, he stopped and put his hands in his pockets.

Two days previously he had spent the whole night with Farrell and he wasn't sure what to make of things. It was hell having no boundaries. The technicians in his lab freely used the exchange booths. He'd had a couple of hard-to-turn down invitations and one when the lab was quieter that had proved impossible to turn down. Farrell knew about these, presumably. She had made comments about the technicians in question and their 'ambitions' – seemed to see it as a mark of quality. And then there was Farrell herself. They had been together quite a few times, but always at her initiation. Should he be approaching her? Was that the right way to show his own ambition? He must act professionally. He felt he should have had etiquette training; it should have been included in his induction. His stomach fell heavy as the lift came to a halt.

-o-

Alexis was waiting for Kester in the lobby. She watched as he came out of the lift. He looked like he was lost. She smiled, turned and walked out of the front entrance. He would follow her, sure as a mongrel would follow a pedigree. She could hear his hurried footsteps behind her. About halfway across the square he caught up with her and appeared by her side, walking a deferential sideways walk, looking up at her. She kept her eyes on where she was going. Kester bumped into someone and fell out of her vision briefly, then popped back into sight, panting.

'Mrs Farrell,' he said.

'Call me Alexis.' He should call her by name. She wanted him to call her by name, but she felt uncomfortable saying it.

'OK, Alexis.'

'But not in front of anyone.' People would talk and she wasn't sure yet if that would be a good thing or not. She was walking like a machine, pistons driving. Kester fell out of view again and gave a little skip to catch her up.

'This meeting,' Kester said. 'Are you going to brief me? I didn't know if I should bring anything.'

'We're not going to a meeting.'

'Oh.'

'I thought I should show you round the PlayPen. You're not getting out enough.' Alexis strode on. She had been watching him on the lab cameras. He was always there. He didn't seem to go out with friends particularly, didn't seem to be having much fun with the booths. As she inhaled, she felt the breath draw into a satisfied sphere, rolling behind her nostrils. She snorted, dismissing the feeling. 'But we can't arrive back together.'

'Really?'

'You told your colleagues you were going to a meeting?'

'Yes.'

'Well let's stick to that truth shall we. I don't like to look partisan – people get restless if they think I have favourites.'

'Favourites?'

'I said if they
think
I have favourites. I don't, but people are paranoid.' Alexis looked round at Kester. She didn't want to give him the wrong idea. 'Don't you think?'

'I suppose so.' He shrugged. 'I'm not so in demand myself.'

'That's not what my spies tell me.' Alexis laughed.

Kester's reflection of her laugh was thin, wobbly, a hall of mirrors laugh.

'Have you been to the PlayPen before?' Alexis changed the subject. 'I assumed you hadn't.'

'Assume away. I've only seen pictures.'

'The Millennium Pen?'

'Nope.'

'Non-City workers can get passes you know.' Alexis knew that few of them bothered. Unless you were a rich tourist or a visiting worker who had an agent or department to sort out your pass for you it was a real pain.

'I know they can in theory, but have you seen the form you have to fill in to get one?'

Alexis felt a smile building behind her face, but didn't answer.

'And it's pretty expensive too.'

'They should build one for the Institute. Your academic friends appreciate good clean fun, don't they?'

They were almost at the north entrance.

'Yeah, but who's going to pay for it?'

'It's not always a case of paying. A little bit of sponsored research here and there would probably do it. PlayPen might even build one for free to give perceived strength to their own "scientific" claims. Who knows?'

As they rounded the corner, the PlayPen came into view and its sound hit them: a recording of a swimming pool slowed down, the squeals lower and longer, the laughter deeper, coming from City workers of all ages, but the unguarded joy the same. Alexis felt her body lightening. It was one of her favourite places. From her office in the V building she could see the hole it made in the City skyline. It was shorter than most of the surrounding buildings and looked like a shaft running down that might never stop, might continue on down even after it hit the ground. When she felt trapped she liked to imagine herself freefalling down through the buildings to reach it.

As they crossed the road, Alexis glanced over at Kester. He was gawping. She smiled, pleased at his reaction as if the PlayPen belonged to her. She followed his gaze back to the structure, looking at it properly for the first time in years. It stretched a quarter mile in both directions from where they had emerged and was enclosed by chicken wire fences like a gargantuan kids' play park, many stories high. She let her eyes fall up the twenty themed floors, from the more traditional lower ones with their slides, swings and roundabouts up past a jolly-roger flag, the leaves of jungle plants, the tip of a dinosaur's tail, each floor connected to the next by a network of ramps and ladders right up to the top where a glass, lozenge-shaped room appeared to float above the rest of the structure. At each corner, there was a circular lift shaft, taking the less energetic clients straight up to the floor of their choice.

Alexis looked back at Kester. He was trying to suppress an idiot grin. As she watched him he laughed out loud.

'They've extended and improved it a bit since you read about it, I expect,' she said.

Kester drifted away from her side towards the fence, his hands reaching to grab the chicken wire. She took hold of his arm.

'This way. We've got a corporate pass for north entrance.'

They entered through the wide quadruple doors, which were constantly greeting people with a squabble of different names. Alexis thought she heard the sharp kick of Kester's name amongst the rabble, but couldn't be sure. Just inside the door, the rush of clients were channelled into eight short corridors, divided by rails of orange boiler suits that were revolving at the same pace as the moving walkway below. There was a beep alongside each of their chests as they approached the rail queue.

'Sizing information,' Alexis whispered into Kester's ear from behind. 'See – the suit alongside you will be your size. It sometimes gets confused though – can't keep up. Don't be offended if it misjudges your girth.'

She giggled as she drew back to take her own suit off the rail, observing Kester's confusion as he realised that everyone was stripping down to their underwear, if they were wearing any. He did the same, wrestled his clothes onto the hanger and managed to clamber into his suit just as he was turfed off the walkway.

'It's a fine art,' said Alexis as they emerged onto the first level. She took his elbow and moved him out of the way of the stream of clients entering behind them. 'You didn't do badly for a first time.'