Angelmaker (22 page)

She wonders whether there’s just a bomb on the other side, then reasons that Abel Jasmine or the Keeper or someone must come through here all the time to check on the generator, and it is therefore unlikely to explode without warning. And then, too, that would run counter to her perceptions about the strategic construction of the train: everything runs to preserve this room, not destroy it … though no doubt there is a mechanism for that,
in extremis
 …

Enough. She opens the door.

Nothing happens. No klaxons, no furious shouts. So. She gropes along the wall, finds the desk, switches on the lamp.

“You owe me five shillings, Abel,” Amanda Baines says cheerfully. “She made it all the way.”

They are sitting in the shadows on a leather couch, Abel Jasmine in his dressing gown, and Amanda Baines with a jaunty sailor’s outfit
complete with captain’s hat. It is not the kind of outfit you would go to sea in. It brings new meaning to the description “saucy tar.”

“Bloody hell, girl,” Amanda Baines says, “we need to get you cleaned up.”

“Good work, all the same, Miss Banister,” Mr. Jasmine says. “Very good, indeed.” He smiles.

“I’m not in trouble?” Edie asks.

“Oh, God, yes, of the most frightful kind. But no, you are not being disciplined. You are being promoted and transferred. You may shortly regard that as very big trouble indeed. But you passed what you may wish to think of as an informal test. You formulated a plan, acquired information, timetabled the whole thing, and refused to be distracted by … shall we say, physical blandishments?”

Edie blushes from the roots downwards.

“So now, my dear, you are moving up in the world. However, that’s tomorrow. Today, we need to get that cut seen to and—good Lord, whatever happened to your hair?”

“A tree,” says a husky voice from the doorway. “The Bracknell Woods.” And there is Clarissa Foxglove, in her dressing gown. “I waited until they were gone,” she tells Edie, “and the Ely bridge nearly took my head off altogether.”

Abel Jasmine smiles paternally.

“Off you go, both of you. Things are going to change for you, Edie. We’ll talk about it in the morning. But from all of us: well done. Well done, indeed. Now, Clarissa will sort out that hand for you.”

Edie allows herself to be led away.

Clarissa Foxglove cleans her hand quite ruthlessly, and Edie yelps a couple of times as she goes after an embedded bit of dirt. Then she escorts Edie to the baths and hands her warm towels with a very professional air, and finally walks her back to her stateroom.

“You knew all along?”

“Oh, yes. Someone goes for it about once a year. It’s who we all are. Fools for love of country, and so on.” Clarissa smiles. “Come on. Time to put you to bed.” She shunts Edie gently forward, pressing against her back, and Edie remembers the question of whether they should bare their souls. She can feel the other girl very clearly behind her. She turns around, smells mint and cigarettes, and knows it is the scent of Clarissa’s mouth.

Clarissa Foxglove stretches. She throws her arms out to the side and lifts them very deliberately up above her head. Edie watches.

“I expect you’re very tired,” Clarissa says. “I know I am. It’s been a long day. But on the other hand, you might—just might …” she shifts her weight against the door and lets it close, her back arched just a little, revealing a deep, broad V of skin “… want to stay awake a bit longer.”

Edie makes a noise which is almost a groan and lunges forward. Clarissa Foxglove is already half out of her gown.

Edie Banister, girl superspy, lands on her back and makes a noise like someone dropping a set of bagpipes. She can see blithering yellow sparkles, playing on her eyeballs.
Ooh. Pretty …

She tries to breathe. It’s extremely uncomfortable. She can feel the train rolling under her, the rails in her chest.
Zigadashunk tchakak
. Points.
Shaddadtakak
.

Little yellow sparkles. Bit spangly and brown. Mrs. Sekuni appears next to her and pokes her sharply. It provokes a cough, and suddenly she can breathe again, clear and deep.

“That was not very good,” Mrs. Sekuni says. “It was
very
not very good.”

“Bad,” says Edie hoarsely, now that normal services have been restored to her lungs.

“No,” Mrs. Sekuni replies. “It was not bad. It was very not very good.”

For Mrs. Sekuni, who is small and South-East Asian and very pretty, precision is important. If English does not possess the necessary nuances, the language will be modified until she can convey what she wishes to say. Thus a sequence of not-goodnesses ranging from “quite not very good” which is better than “not very good” but not actually acceptable, downwards to “very not very good” and “really very not very good” and “very very not very good.” Mrs. Sekuni is entirely capable of using a selection of English words to fill these positions in her measure, but English words mean subtly different things to each individual English person, and Mrs. Sekuni some months ago got tired of demonstrating her version of those words and having soldiers and spies and policemen argue with her. So now she just uses English in her own way, and one of the first things her students have to learn is where on the slide rule of catastrophe their latest effort comes.

“Very not very good,” Mrs. Sekuni says sorrowfully, and Edie feels a pang of remorse. Reading a dusty book from a great stack on his table, Mr. Sekuni clears his throat and glances at his wife reproachfully.

“It was better,” Mrs. Sekuni allows. “Better.”

So Edie, revitalised by the knowledge that although she is still useless she is at least improving, scampers to her feet and takes her position on the
tatami
. This is a Japanese word meaning “practice matting,” except that it doesn’t quite mean that, so now there is a new Sekuni-English word to mean exactly what the original means, and by happy coincidence this word sounds like an English person trying to say the word “tatami” in Japanese.

Edie has recently learned a number of interesting concepts from Mrs. Sekuni as part of her study of
budo
. “Not just bujutsu!” Mrs. Sekuni says sharply. “
Budo!
You will learn more than my skin and flesh.” At which Edie blushed enormously and looked the other way.

Mr. Sekuni shouts “Hajime!” and Edie attacks, then finds herself flying through the air again, though this time she manages her landing well and rolls to her feet, once more on guard. Mrs. Sekuni nods judiciously.

“Better?” Edie asks hopefully.

“Very better,” Mrs. Sekuni says.

“I don’t understand,” Edie says later, while Mrs. Sekuni watches a company of special soldiers work through their training in orderly pairs against the backdrop of the
Lovelace
’s dojo. “I thought Japan was our enemy.” Because Japan and Britain have not been cordial since Tientsin.

“No,” Mr. Sekuni says. “Japan is no one’s enemy. It is an island composed of rock and earth, washed by the sea and the rain and shadowed by a great volcano. Japan itself has no political or even imperial opinions of any kind. Even the people of Japan—and there are many different kinds of people in Japan—even they are not your enemy. The Emperor, perhaps. The state, most definitely. But not us—which is why we are here.”

“Do many people in Japan feel this way?”

“Yes,” says Mr. Sekuni.

“No,” says Mrs. Sekuni.

“Many,” Mr. Sekuni asserts firmly.

“But not a large fraction of the overall population,” Mrs. Sekuni says with great precision, and this Mr. Sekuni has to acknowledge is quite true.

“We are communists,” Mrs. Sekuni says matter-of-factly. “We do not believe in emperors or queens or free markets or even the dictatorship of the proletariat. We believe in a world where people are equal in dignity, not contempt, and where resources—which under Capital are distributed through the quasi-randomness of a market operating blindly with respect to things which cannot easily be measured—are allocated in a sane fashion by the State.

“But that is all I have to say about that because I am not allowed to promulgate my disgusting Nippo-Marxian propaganda to operatives of S2:A, by special order of Mr. Churchill, who by the way is a fat, smoke-filled reactionary warthog and a very nice man.”

She sighs. For a moment, her face relaxes and Edie can see the signs of early age in her: lines of gentle care and creeping sorrow. Then she rolls her head briskly, and there’s a gristly popping sound.

“Come,” Mrs. Sekuni says, drawing Edie back onto the mat. “Yama Arashi. The mountain storm.” A wide space forms around them; Mrs. Sekuni has stern views about people who stray into her personal training area.

“Take this and strike.” She hands Edie a long wooden stick, notionally a sword. “No hesitating! Strike!”

Edie does, as she has been taught. Mrs. Sekuni does not roll away or retreat. Instead, she moves forward, arms open as if she intends to embrace the blade. Edie has a horrible image of her doing just that, some furious soldier of the Emperor delightedly cutting her in half, and Mrs. Sekuni’s beautiful, tiny figure parting company along a diagonal line, and Mr. Sekuni’s genial, clever face moving from grief to rage as he tears the soldier apart and runs howling at his nation’s lines and is in turn shredded by more modern weapons.

Edie has stopped dead. The wooden practice blade is hovering halfway down. Mrs. Sekuni meets her eyes.

“Yes,” she says. “What we do here is very serious indeed. Again.”

This time, Edie does not stop. Mrs. Sekuni does not stop either, and her arms embrace, not the sword, but Edie’s own, and squeeze and turn, and Edie finds herself rotating and flying and landing on
the ground, and now by some strange process Mrs. Sekuni controls the weapon, and Edie lies flat on her back, vulnerable in a way which is so total as to be very erotic. Mrs. Sekuni is locked along her, one knee on her chest and one hand on her face, the other on the hilt of the practice sword, which lies across Edie’s neck. Her eyes stare into Edie’s, brown and deep and very grave. They wear the traditional
gi
, a training suit, and Edie can smell sweat, wartime detergent, and something spiced and lingering which makes her mouth pucker. With a great effort of will, she does not glance down at the v-line of Mrs. Sekuni’s jacket. She can feel the pressure of one small, muscular breast against her.

Mrs. Sekuni grins wickedly, then releases Edie and rolls smoothly upright. The Sekunis have an unconventional approach to issues of marital fidelity owed to their conviction that more familiar understandings of love are the province of patriarchal totalitarianism. They also, to Edie’s considerable frustration, have a firm rule against sleeping with students.

Mrs. Sekuni’s tongue appears briefly as she taps her front teeth with it. Edie looks away.

“Why is it called ‘Yama Arashi’?”

“Possibly because
uke
hits the ground with a very loud bang,” Mrs. Sekuni suggests. “Learn it, Edie. Yama Arashi is very good
budo
. Difficult, because it contains many things within it. But very very good.” And then, looking over Edie’s shoulder, she claps her hand to her forehead in horror.

“Mr. Pritchard! What are you doing? Is that
O-soto-gari
? No! It is not! It is a yak mating with a tractor! That is
really
very very not very good! My grandfather is weeping in Heaven, or he would be if there were such a place, which there is not because religion is a mystification contrived by monarchists! Again! Again, and this time do it properly!”

When Mrs. Sekuni is content with Edie’s combat skills, Mr. Sekuni begins teaching her about guns and explosives.