Now she’s talking rapidly, though no one else is in the room. He turns on the cam’s audio in time to hear her say, “—you’re there, and it’s okay, please, talk to me, talk to me, say anything, please.”
He looks back at the cam’s software, sees the trip wire. It’s artfully done. She was waiting for him, and must have hired the best. But she has no way of knowing who it was—he could be a random criminal or some curious hacker—and he could still say nothing and just disappear.
Even so, he wants to talk to her. It would be easy to call her phone, though of course he never will.
With abstract interest and a sense of being moved by irresistible forces he watches himself place the call.
She snatches up her phone at the start of the first ring. “Thales,” she says.
“Not exactly.”
“I know. I buried him. But even so, it’s you.”
“I won’t have you deceived. You need to understand what I am.”
“I’ve already made an educated guess.”
“And?”
“At first I thought I’d dreamt you, when you called, but I looked into it, and there was a call, from the San Francisco airport. I guessed it had something to do with your implant. I brought pressure to bear against the trustees of Ars Memoria. I made them do forensics. Their archives had been violated, and your memories stolen.”
She hesitates.
“And it is you,” she says. “Whatever your circumstances. I knew it from the moment I heard you.”
“I’d have thought you’d be … appalled,” he says.
“I’ve always been open to unconventional relationships,” she says. “I love you, and I’m not giving up on you. Do you need help? Are you in trouble? Are you … comfortable? Your uncle is minister of defense now and I will compel him to do whatever is necessary.”
“I’m okay. Better than okay.”
“So tell me about that. Tell me all about it, and what it’s like, and where you are, and everything else. I have time. I have nowhere special to be for the rest of my life.”
He hesitates. He’d always assumed his existence would be a secret, forever veiled from the world, but things change.
He starts to tell her what happened.
75
No Longer Metaphor
In the evening shadows of the favela’s canyons Philip feels he could be in any city, has to remind himself he’s in London’s East End. A construction drone scuttles in front him, and he resists the urge to kick it out of the way. They’re legal, now, here. Favelas once had a resonance, he thinks, but it’s fading, or has faded, and now instead of a symbol of accumulating history or how technology shapes cities they’re just another damn thing in the world.
Favelinos—East Enders?—neither term seems right—hurry by, and he’s uncomfortably aware that his coat cost more than most of them will make in a year. He overhears snatches of conversations in a language he doesn’t recognize, wonders what’s the source of the latest spate of refugees.
He’s come straight from Heathrow, wishes there’d been time to stop at his hotel. He’s aware of the gun in its holster over his ribs—permits are costly, but can be had—a pity the U.K. felt compelled to change its laws, a relief it caught up with reality.
The email had come to his personal address, the one he’s long since stopped giving out (he’s sometimes wondered if the accumulation of years and money means no more particularly close friends). Come meet me where we were when the last snow fell, it said. I’ve gone underground. Sender anonymized but it was signed I.S. In a separate message were a time and date, GPS coordinates, a short sequence of numbers and a snapshot of a red palm-print on a concrete wall.
Converging alleys, low doorways, strata of graffiti on every surface. Steep narrow stairways up and down—he’s read street level here is rising twenty feet a year. He checks his phone—this is the place. Pirated power lines sway and spark overhead; above them, lights, balustrades.
He starting to wonder if it’s all been a practical joke, then notices a red handprint, half-obscured by fresher graffiti, like a secret sign in a boy’s-own story.
Under the red hand is a door with a keypad lock. Sighing, he taps in the numbers from the email, half-hoping nothing will happen, but the door unlocks.
He takes out his halogen flashlight, steps through the doorway, finds stairs going down into darkness, balks. He’s sometimes in the news, and it’s a matter of public record that his company is doing well—has he joined the august ranks of those worth setting up? I’ll teach them to underestimate me, he thinks, by going down this dark staircase in a bad part of London by myself, having been lured here in suspicious circumstances. Back in the States his main bodyguard, actually at this point “chief of security” would be more accurate, a worrisome progression, had told him absolutely, positively not to come. He moves the gun from the underarm holster to an outer pocket, where he can keep it in his hand.
As he descends, the street sounds vanish. A landing, more tunnels branching away, and over each is a stenciled image—a pound sign, a cell phone streaming radiance, a stylized aerial drone and, there, another red hand. As he goes deeper will the symbols get older, until it’s hunters with spears, bison and mastodon, shamans with the heads of animals?
What he takes for a pile of rags moves. The gun is half out of his pocket. Smell of sour clothes, rotgut. Bloodshot eyes regard him from under a sort of mitre of filthy hats, then subside.
Stairs and more stairs. Red hands show him the way. It’s getting warmer. At one point he hears the Dopplered rumbling of a distant passing train.
The rubbish lining the tunnel, which he almost hadn’t noticed, has disappeared.
The halogen beam shows a doorway of carved stone framing a door of bright new steel. The stone looks ancient, water-stained and worn; it’s incised with inscriptions, illegible but probably in Latin. The walls are covered in hexagonal tile, off-white and mildew-stained—it looks like it’s from the twentieth century, perhaps of the era of the Blitz? He blinks in the light reflected from the door, whose newness reads as a warning. There must be a signal booster nearby, because he gets a text from a blocked number: Turn off the light and go through the door.
He sighs—he’s a father, or soon will be, and shouldn’t throw his life away stupidly, but, as instructed, he clicks off the light. He becomes aware of the smells of earth and moisture, of distant water trickling.
He turns the handle and the door swings open. “Hello?” he calls optimistically, stepping through with one hand outstretched, the other in his pocket holding the gun.
His hand finds a wall. He presses his back to it, and, suddenly enervated, slides down to the floor. Red shapes flare and fade on his retinas. If someone wanted to rob or kidnap him surely they could find a way to do it with less fuss. He hears motion, quiet footsteps, supposes he should get the gun out and try to take control, but he feels tired and anyway he knows it’s her.