Recursion (6 page)

“This place is a mess, huh? The new station can’t open too soon.”

Constantine jumped at the sound of the voice. A woman was standing at the far end of the elevator.

“I didn’t see you get in here,” said Constantine, checking his intelligences.

—I did, said Red.—She slipped in just as the doors were closing. You were turning to look at the view.

“You, of all people, shouldn’t be surprised at how I slipped in here.” She held out a hand. “I’m Mary Rye. That’s my name.”

Constantine refused her handshake. Mary gave a sniff and withdrew it. She pointedly wiped her palm on the pocket of her green jacket.

—She’s been drinking, said Red.

“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t deserve that,” said Mary, head tilted forward. Her thick Australian accent made her sound old-fashioned in these days of standardized elocution. “How long have you been a ghost? Two years, I’d guess. So what the fuck do you know about it? Nothing. That’s what you know about it: nothing.”

Constantine felt himself perspiring. Sweat was trickling down the small of his back, despite the air-conditioned freshness of the elevator.

He spoke carefully. “A ghost? I don’t understand what you mean.”

Mary gave an impatient shrug of her shoulders and waved her hand dismissively. Her green suit looked expensive but shabby. Two long strands of cotton trailed from the hem of her blouse. A brooch in the shape of three little cats was pinned lopsidedly to her lapel.

“Sure you don’t,” she said with heavy sarcasm. She waved her hand in the direction of the doors. “Look, I’m not blind. I’m not stupid. I know what to look for. I know what I see. I wait on the platform and I look out for people like you arriving. A train pulls in and the crowd on the platform parts like the Red Sea? I look to see who’s walking along the path that forms. I see the cameras suddenly turn to look in one direction? I look in the other. I do that and I spot someone like you. The most ordinary-looking person in the building, and yet you never have to stop or step aside; your elevator is always waiting and your car always stops right by the exit. You never get stuck behind the person with the luggage and you’re always just ahead of the person stopping to ask directions. You’re one huge statistical improbability: your life is planned so that you will never be remembered. You’re a ghost. Just like me.”

She finished speaking just as the skylift emerged from the ground into the red light of evening. Through the glass, they could see rush-hour pedestrians hurrying by in all directions. Constantine tapped his fingers against the hard plastic of the console that nestled in his pocket.

“Well, whatever you say, madam. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

He stepped out into the cool Australian evening and strode toward the waiting boat that would take him to his hotel. Mary took hold of his sleeve and pulled him backwards.

“Hey, don’t you madam me and then walk away. I was speaking to you. Didn’t you hear me? Of course you heard me. You were ignoring me. Being rude.”

Constantine turned to face her, conscious that she was on the verge of making a scene.

“Would you mind letting go of my arm please, mad—” He paused.

—Mary, reminded the Blue intelligence. There was an edge of amusement to its voice.

Constantine said nothing. Mary gazed at him with bleary eyes. There had once been a pretty face there, thought Constantine abstractedly, but now it was lost beneath the podgy swelling of fat and over-applied makeup. She spoke gently, her hard little chin pressing down against its soft cushion of flesh.

“I have a name,” she continued with a drunkard’s dignity. “Please do me the courtesy of using it.”

“Very well…Mary. Please let go of my arm.”

The two uniformed porters who stood by the varnished wooden sides of the hotel boat were now looking in his direction. Pink galahs fluttered beneath the huge expanse of the red sky. Constantine felt incredibly exposed.

Mary caught his expression and laughed.

“What are you so worried about? No one will be watching us. We’re both invisible. Both invisible. Fact of life. Fact of our lives, I should say.”

At that she took hold of her green skirt by the hem and pulled it right up so the tops of her thighs were exposed.

“Stop it,” muttered Constantine.

“Why?” Mary asked, pulling her skirt up still further to show the faded pink daisy-printed panties she wore beneath. “See what I mean?” she said. “No one’s looking at us, are they? Are they? Are they looking at us? No.”

Constantine turned his back on the two hotel porters, who were now looking in any direction but his. He took hold of Mary’s skirt and pulled it back down.

“For goodness’ sake, stop it. What do you want?”

“I want you to acknowledge me for who I am. I want you to speak to me. And I want to do you a favor. I might know something to your advantage. Yes. To everyone’s advantage. Listen to me and you could become a big man. The savior of Stonebreak, they’ll call you.”

Constantine paused, listening to his inner voices.

—She certainly believes that what she’s saying is the truth, said the Red intelligence.

—If you go along with her for the moment, she will at least stop drawing attention to you, said Blue.

—I have nothing to add, said White.

Constantine and the others waited for a moment for the last intelligence, the Grey one, to speak, but as always it remained silent. Constantine gave a shrug. He turned to Mary.

“Okay. I’ll listen, but no more drawing attention to us.”

Mary gave a delighted smile. “Good. You won’t regret this. Come on. This way. We’re going up to the top of the city.”

She linked her arm through Constantine’s and began to walk along the side of the canal.

“You still haven’t told me your name.”

“Ben D’Roza,” said Constantine.

“Ben? I don’t think so. That was the name on your train ticket, and it will be the name on your hotel reservation, I’m sure, but it’s not your real name, is it?”

Constantine sighed.

“Okay. It’s Constantine,” he said. “Constantine Storey.”

“Constantine,” said Mary carefully, as if practicing the name. “Constantine. I like that. And have you ever been to Stonebreak before, Constantine?”

“Yes. Several times.”

“Business or pleasure? Business, I bet, since you’ve got the face of someone who couldn’t have fun in a brothel with a platinum e-card tied to his dick. Have you ever been a tourist here in Stonebreak, Constantine?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Then let me show you around. I’ll show you something that will interest you.”

She slipped her hand down Constantine’s arm and took hold of his left hand, squeezing it tightly with her fat fingers so that his wedding ring dug painfully into his flesh.

They walked along a typical Stonebreak street. A wide, shallow, canal ran parallel to the narrow road, separated from it by a series of wide, tree-planted lawns. The whole was bordered by short rows of one- or two-story shops and houses, intercut with narrow alleyways accessible only to pedestrians. Chairs and tables had spilled from the cafes and bars out onto the lawns and were now slowly filling with the evening trade. A young woman walked by, hanging onto the arm of a tanned young man. She was dressed in the latest fashion: a simple white shift, her neck and arms wrapped in exotically curved bangles of silver and gold. She smiled prettily at Constantine and Mary as they passed, heading in the opposite direction.

The smell of the evening grass, the gentle splash of the water, the sheer prettiness of the cool narrow alleys, all these had helped Constantine relax sufficiently to return the young woman’s smile, though he was still confused.

“On nights like this, you wonder why they call Stonebreak a design failure,” said Mary.

They passed a cafe done up in period style: glass tables, bent beech chairs, and white linen. From its wide windows, light shone across the darkening lawns, illuminating the customers sipping beer and wine at tables arranged in a circle around an enormous lime tree.

“Where are we going?” asked Constantine, eventually.

“Relax,” said Mary. “Do you see any other people around here looking tense? No. They’re all out for a pleasant evening’s stroll and a drink. Do you want to be noticed? I don’t think so. So just hold my hand and try to look as if you’re enjoying yourself.”

Constantine had been enjoying himself. Now he suddenly realized how incredibly out of place he appeared in his business suit. He wished he’d had time to change into the same cool, loose-fitting dress the locals adopted.

“Now,” said Mary, “at the moment we’re on the second level of Stonebreak. Residential and leisure: medium-density housing and shopping. We’re going to head to the center, the fourth level: cultural quarter and Source. Stonebreak, as you should know, is built as four concentric circles, each raised above the last. Beneath us lies a thin layer of maintenance ducts and so on, and beneath that, the main support structure, and beneath that again the transport system and I-train terminus.”

“Thank you for the travelogue. Is there a reason for it?” asked Constantine.

Mary shook her head. “Just being friendly. It’s nice to have someone to speak to. Talking’s nice, don’t you think? It’s nice to have a conversation.”

Constantine muttered something in reply. Mary chatted away happily.

“When I first started out I had a comfort family set up for me in Brazil. I did a lot of work in Brazil. I was there a lot of the year. Hans, that was my husband…well, he thought he was anyway. You know how it is. Two kids. Ellie and Gerhardt. It was somewhere to go and have a decent meal and just chat with someone…”

Her voice tailed off as she strolled on, lost in thought. Constantine glanced at her and felt a sudden stab of pity. She was obviously living in much reduced circumstances now. The shabbiness of what had been an expensive suit and her once exercise-honed body running to alcohol-fueled fat suggested someone who had been high up within a company hierarchy. This physical manifestation of failure walking alongside him reminded Constantine of the pressure to succeed he himself was under. He turned his face from the narrow alley squeezed between two yellow stone cottages. A silver strand of nothingness showed at its end.

The gap beneath the sky was spreading. He was going mad.

Mary seemed to rouse herself.

“What about you, then?” she said. “Do you have a comfort family?”

“Me? No,” said Constantine, his mind still elsewhere.

Mary gave a knowing laugh. “Of course not,” she said, a note of bitterness creeping into her voice. “I forgot. It’s different for men, isn’t it? I bet you’ve got a string of skinny, unwitting twenty-year-old girls lined up from here to Alaska. All their details looked up from your company database and a script worked out so you can flatter your way into their apartments and their panties. I remember what it used to be like. It feels more moral to you than using a brothel, doesn’t it? And you don’t get your dinner cooked in a brothel, or your shirts ironed, or someone sitting up at night watching football with you, or slicing lemons when you have a cold, or—”

“I’m married.”

Mary stopped dead, her hand pulling Constantine backward. She opened her mouth wide in disbelief and began to laugh.

“Married? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“It means something to me,” said Constantine simply. Mary brought her face close and breathed a sweet, alcohol breath over Constantine. She looked up into his eyes.

“I don’t believe it. You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

She turned around again, took his hand, and began to drag him back along the street.

“Come on. We’re going to be late.”

Night shadows were spreading. White light shone from the spherical paper lanterns strung in looping lines between the chestnuts and limes that marched up the central lawn. A white barge came gliding down the canal, elderly people enjoying their pre-dinner drinks on the deck; the smell of prawns being fried in garlic and butter wafted from the open windows of the galley below.

—This is taking too long, said Blue, his voice seeming too loud in the stillness that was settling with the evening.—Are we being led into a trap?

—I can’t see anything around us, answered Red.—Besides, I trust her. Her body language backs up her words. I don’t think she’s keeping anything from us.

—I…agree, said Blue,—but I can’t help thinking that someone with the ability to train as a ghost might have enough skill to conceal her motives, even from us.

“Be quiet,” muttered Constantine, concealing his mouth with his hand and pretending to cough. “She’s watching me. She knows I’m listening to you. You’re supposed to be a secret, remember?”

Mary was gazing up at him again, her eyes full of cool appraisal. Constantine nodded toward the barge.

“That smells delicious, doesn’t it?” he said.

A pair of tramlines emerged from a side street to their left and swept round to follow the axis of the central strip of grass. The line of trees now moved to one side to make way for it. They walked on in silence for a while. Presently a tram came bumping along, an ancient construction of wood and metal that clanked and rattled as it trundled down the rails. It slowed sufficiently for Mary and Constantine to climb on board and then grumbled to itself as it sped up again. The pair sat down on a bench of varnished wooden slats. Constantine rubbed his fingers approvingly across the warm wood.

“When Stonebreak was set to build itself, they wanted the best of all worlds,” said Mary. “The Australian and Southeast Asian government wanted it to be both ultra modern and ultra traditional. That’s why you can still see the VNM bodies in the I-station, and that’s why the tramlines zigzag around this level. Some thought trams were too modern to be ultra traditional, so it was decided that no line should run the entire length of any street. It will be a twisty journey from here to the locks.”

“Fine,” said Constantine, surprised to realize how relaxed he was becoming. If it hadn’t been for his encounter with Mary, he would have gone straight to his hotel and would now be worrying about tomorrow’s business. Instead, he was seeing the sights of Stonebreak. Even the mystery of his guide’s purpose and identity was giving him something else to think about for a while. It helped that Mary did not seem threatening in any way.