The Glimpse (10 page)

The crowds had thinned and people seemed to be miling about now, rather than going places. In the twilight, as the performers embarked on their mime act iluminated by giant fire torches, Ana watched, amazed at how good they were.

She felt on edge and was anxious about finding a hotel for the night, but the buzz in the atmosphere excited her too.

Nothing untoward had happened since the Psych Watch 81

episode. She was beginning to hope the City wasn’t as bad as the news always made out.

‘Ten,’ the dark-haired woman behind the counter said.

Ana handed over the note and took the tea and carton.

Her stomach growled with hunger.

‘You don’t know anywhere I can get a room for the night, do you?’ she asked, taking a sip of her tea.

‘You could try the hostel, Greenland Road. Six to twelve bunks in a room, but clean.’

‘OK, thanks.’ Ana puled apart the wooden chopsticks and gulped down several mouthfuls of food. She paused as an after-taste of curdled milk, grease, and unwashed beans filed her palate. Tilting the noodles towards the counter strip light, she picked through them for a better look. A painful spasm gripped her stomach. Deciding she’d rather be hungry than poisoned, she reached over and threw the carton at the bin hanging off the side of the van.

A large hand caught the noodles as they fel.

‘Waste not, want not,’ a gruff voice said. Ana felt warm breath on her bare neck. It smelt of days-old sweat and boiled cabbage. She lowered her head, avoiding eye contact. The man’s large bulk boxed her in. She edged up against the van, trying to put more space between them.

The man slurped and sucked. Revolted, Ana glanced up.

Noodles spat from his mouth. Sauce dribbled down his bristly chin. But it wasn’t his manners that made her queasy, it was the size of him. Wel over six-and-a-half foot, he had broad shoulders, a long neck, and a giant head. His biceps bulged against his short-sleeved T-shirt.

Around his waist 82

hung a frayed blanket. His hair looked like it had been cut by a blind person.

cut by a blind person.

‘Excuse me,’ she mumbled, crushing her shoulders up to her ears so that she might slip through the gap without touching him. He moved back to let her pass. She slackened her facial muscles, careful not to show her fear.

Head down, she began walking away, when the woman running the fast-food van caled to her.

‘Hey, you’re the one said she wanted a room, right?’

Ana turned and nodded.

The woman pointed at the giant. ‘You’ve got something haven’t you, Mickey?’

‘Sure, I’ve got something.’

Nerves began to pinch Ana’s stomach. She didn’t fancy folowing Mickey down some dark aley. The woman behind the counter laughed.

‘Got the looks of a wolf,’ she said, ‘but he’s a puppy dog.’

Mickey puled a mad grin, which didn’t help boost Ana’s confidence in him.

‘I’ve got a couple of hotels to try, thanks,’ she said.

‘You wanna watch out. Things get pretty booked up around here, specialy that youth hostel I was teling you about.’ The fast-food woman turned to serve another customer.

‘Place I know is cheap and comfortable,’ Mickey said.

‘Place I know is cheap and comfortable,’ Mickey said.

‘It’s two minutes from here. Nice barge on the canal. I take you and you give me ten pound cash for my trouble.’

Ana’s stomach did a little somersault. ‘Where is it?’ she asked. He pointed south, roughly in the direction she’d walked when she’d folowed Cole’s sister. A barge on the 83

canal near
Enkidu
. It was the perfect opportunity to find Cole Winter. She nodded, indicating she’d go with him.

He’s a puppy dog
, she thought in a feeble attempt to reassure herself
. A puppy dog dressed as a wolf.

Mickey strode ahead, a dark giant merging with the night. Ana folowed, wheeling along her bike. They turned down a street and approached a row of warehouses. Several broken windows flickered with firelight. Ana quickened her pace to catch up.

Beyond, in a dark alcove, she caught sight of a glow-in-the dark cat. She watched it slink around a colection of discarded wine barrels. Geneticaly engineered pets were popular in Asia, but they were ilegal in England. The nose, mouth, ears, and eyes of the Siamese shone phosphorescent green. The white whiskers were like luminous sticks.

I’ve slipped through a crack into a whole other
world
, she thought.

Passing under a smal bridge between two warehouses, they entered a large courtyard encircled by derelict buildings. Electronic music emanated from a circus tent in the yard’s centre. As the tent flaps caught in the wind, the yard’s centre. As the tent flaps caught in the wind, Ana saw people inside dancing like they’d been hypnotised. She stared at them as she hurried along, unable to draw her eyes away. She didn’t see the woman with the burnt face, until she felt a hand close around her wrist.

Crying out with fright, Ana puled back. But the woman grasped her tightly. Instead of cheeks the woman had taut red patches. Her eyelashes and eyebrows had been burnt away. Rumples of skin gathered at the edges of her face.

Her eyes were the most frightening thing of al. In the 84

shadowy light from the tent’s fire torches, the irises looked black.

Ana pushed down her fear. ‘Let go.’

‘Such smooth skin,’ the woman said. ‘Hard to find these days.’

Ana tried to pul away again, but the woman was stronger.

‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’

‘I can’t,’ Ana said. ‘My friend’s waiting for me.’

‘I don’t see anybody.’

Ana peered up ahead. For a moment she couldn’t see Mickey either. But then a voice caled out to her from the darkness. ‘Hurry up!’

The women relaxed her grip. Ana tugged back her hand and hurried after her giant escort, bike wheels flicking up and hurried after her giant escort, bike wheels flicking up dirt. Mickey disappeared down an aley. Ana ran after him and came out at the edge of a canal.

Light from a moored barge rippled on the oily water.

Mickey jumped up on the boat’s curved roof and knocked on one of the portholes. Something wooden clattered and scraped along the deck. A flickering lantern appeared in the wheelhouse.

‘Mickey?’ a woman said. The giant loped along the centre of the barge and pressed his face up to the wheelhouse window.

‘Got a customer.’ He signaled to Ana. She laid down her bike and traversed the slippery gangplank.

‘Come here,’ the woman said. Ana stepped inside the wheelhouse. ‘You’re shivering. You’re not sick, are you?’

she asked.

85

Ana shook her head.

‘What meds are you on?’

‘Nothing,’ Ana said.

‘Show me your eyes.’ The woman demonstrated what she meant, puling down the skin beneath her eye to show the white. Ana copied. The woman stood on tiptoe and raised her lantern for a better look.

‘Al right. Hurry up and pay Mickey so we can go

‘Al right. Hurry up and pay Mickey so we can go down.’

Ana dug inside her tote bag and retrieved the rol of notes.

She puled off the top one and passed it out to Mickey.

Mickey grinned at her and pocketed the money.

‘I’ve only got a hundred,’ she told the woman.

‘It’s enough.’

‘What should I do with her bike?’ Mickey asked.

‘Put it under the awning at the front with the others. I’l lock it up in a minute.’

Before Ana could thank him, he jumped off the boat.

The woman jostled her towards the trapdoor and down a vertical ladder.

Ana stepped into a paneled cabin infused with the smel of burning logs. A closed stone fireplace dimly iluminated the living area. Heat radiated from the aluminium chimney, which stretched up through the ceiling. Ana reached out her hands towards it.

‘Come on,’ the woman said, inclining her head towards the only door at the other end of the cabin. Ana folowed her through the smal living space, noting the cartography drawings on the wals, the rickety old-style television, and to her surprise, an upright piano tucked behind a sofa.

The area extended into a kitchen, the two spaces divided 86

by a couple of bookshelves. Beyond the kitchen lay a narrow corridor with a door off either side and a third straight ahead. Ana folowed the woman to the door on their right.

The woman passed her the lantern and produced a stick the size of a headless match. She lit the stick with the lantern flame and entered the cabin. A moment later, the berth brightened as a second square lantern on a night table began to glow. A low double bed took up most of the room.

Several wooden storage racks lined the wals.

Al the tension in Ana drained away. Her body sagged.

‘Thank you,’ she said, stuffing her rol of cash into the woman’s hands. The woman took off the elastic band and began to count the notes. In the soft lantern glimmer, Ana realised the woman was younger than she’d first thought, closer to twenty-five than thirty-five. She had neat, shoulder-length hair and wore dark lipstick. A shadow of hostility lay etched in her oval face.

The woman finished counting and gave Ana back a ten-pound note.

‘I’m in the berth across from you,’ she said. ‘Don’t touch anything. And lock your door.’ With that she turned and disappeared down the corridor.

Ana closed the cabin door and puled the metal latch across. She sank back on to the bed. Her thighs ached from al the cycling. Her fingers and toes were numb.

from al the cycling. Her fingers and toes were numb.

She kicked off her shoes, stripped away her jacket and jeans, and crawled under the covers. The cabin was cosy.

Her duvet smelt clean. Exhaustion swept through her.

She hadn’t realised how much the stresses of the day and last night’s broken sleep had taken out of her.

87

She closed her eyes. Raindrops began to gently patter on the roof. She lay listening to them, thankful she wasn’t stil outside searching for a room. She would sleep now and get up at dawn. There were bound to be more people around to chat to then. Before returning home, she’d find Cole and convince him to talk. She had to.

88

9

Lila

Light fel on Ana’s eyelids, forcing her to surface from a deep sleep. After a minute she roused. The low ceiling rippled with sunshine reflected up from the canal through the porthole. Water lapped against the hul. She felt sleepy and comfortable, until she tried to move. Her whole body resisted. She raised an aching arm and found her hair tangled up in her interface chain. As she twisted around to pick it undone, she caught sight of an alarm clock fixed to the wal.

06.48!

She bolted upright. Her forehead colided with part of the storage rack above the bed.

She yelped and clapped a hand over her mouth, at once aware of other man-made noises. The deck above her creaked with people moving around. Distant voices traveled through the porthole. She scrambled out of bed and checked the lock across her door. It was stil securely bolted. Hurriedly, she gathered her clothes and dressed.

She pinned up her hair as best she could and puled the hat down over it.

After she’d made the bed, she stood by the cabin door to listen. She couldn’t hear anyone in the corridor or the 89

kitchen beyond, so she put her tote bag over her shoulder and unbolted the door. The living area felt deserted. Last night’s fire had burnt out. Cold air blew down through the open hatch.

Ana grabbed the ladder rungs and climbed into the wheelhouse. A smel of coffee and bacon wafted across the water, along with the sound of chattering voices. She peered through the wheelhouse window. To her left, several metres up the bank a group of people mingled around a campfire, stomping feet and rubbing hands. A few of them sat on plastic crates, rugs drawn up to their noses. Nearby, two children messed about tying a piece of rope to a low tree branch.

‘Hey!’ A deep voice caled out. Mickey, the giant who’d brought her there last night, waved. Al eyes turned and looked at Ana. She lifted her hand in a smal, looked at Ana. She lifted her hand in a smal, embarrassed gesture of acknowledgement and puled her hat further down on her head.

‘Subtle,’ she mumbled. ‘Very subtle.’

Mickey bounded up the concrete path and reached out to help her jump the awkward step down from the gangplank.

‘The girl who throws away food,’ he grinned. ‘What about tea?’

‘I usualy prefer to drink it,’ Ana answered. Mickey barked with laughter. They walked along the footpath, past another barge, towards the campfire.

Soon Ana’s father would be rising and getting ready to go to work. At first, he’d wait for her to come downstairs.

He’d drink espresso in the kitchen and check his interface messages. In a few minutes, she’d send him one letting him 90

know she’d got up early and gone out for a walk. He’d be annoyed because he’d want to discuss her interview yesterday with the Board. But it would also work in her favour; he’d think she was avoiding him. She would aim to be back at the checkpoint at 9 a.m. when Neil’s shift started, just in case her father deemed their talk important enough to wait around for her, or the Board arrived for their folow-up interview. She could spend an hour and a half with these people. She hoped it was enough time to discover which one was Cole and find a way of getting him to talk about the Enlightenment Project.

Project.

Mickey scooted a girl along one of the crates so that Ana could sit down. Ana held her hands up to the fire.

Strips of bacon sizzled on the large gril. A pregnant woman sprinkled tea leaves into a pan of water. Ana tried to squeeze some life back into her fingers, while discreetly studying the men in the gathering. The eldest of them was busy hooking up a white sail to a tree where the children were playing. The sail cracked in a gust of wind and ripped from his fingers. The children laughed and jumped about, leaping to grab the snapping ropes.

Cole Winter was in his twenties, not his sixties.

That left Mickey and three others. A guy in a bobble hat and yelow ski jacket, who kept an eye on the bacon; a skinny man hunched on a crate; and a man with spiky hair who paced back and forth as he talked to the woman Ana had met the night before.