Mappa Mundi (37 page)

“I've got a bomb,” she said.

Firm. Loud. Insistent. Absolute.

I.

Have.

A.

Bomb.

Four words that fill and define a large space of unpleasant possibility.

She waited for the information to sink in.

“Don't send any signals.”

She glared at the pilot, who took his foot back meekly and tucked the toe in behind his other ankle.

“I want you to divert this flight to JFK.”

Natalie felt like she was living in someone else's life, a rider on a wave. She felt delirious, but this didn't make it out to her surface.

The copilot looked stupefied. “New York?” she said, frowning and wrinkling her forehead. “It's going to DC, and you want to divert it to…New York?”

“That's right,” Natalie said.

“Hell, honey, you can drive from DC to New York,” the copilot replied, the whites of her eyes stark and round in her dark face.

Natalie held firm.

The two pilots shared a glance of confusion.

“Bomb?” asked the pilot. “Where?”

Natalie patted her chest, “Right here. Body cavity specially made. One lung removed. Plastic explosive, enough to finish all three of us, and the nose. Triggered by a tooth switch.”

She'd read that in a book and it sounded just plausible enough for her to risk it not being wrong. Her fury and grief over Dan gave her more than enough emotional conviction to pull it off.

“JFK.”

The copilot sighed and nodded, “Okay, lady. It's your party.”

The pilot said, “You know, you'll get a lighter sentence if you remove yourself voluntarily into arrest before we have to change course and notify the authorities.”

“Oh, will I?” Natalie said lightly. “Okay then.”

They stared at her.

“Is this some kind of practical joke?” the copilot said, starting to scowl.

“No,” Natalie held out her hands for the cuffs. “This is serious. Call the local police and have them meet me on the runway. I changed my mind. But I can change it back.” She grinned.

The pilot returned to flying and started calling instructions to the crew for Natalie's arrest. The copilot just shook her head.

“You're nuts,” she told Natalie. “This is a five-to-ten stretch.”

“On the runway,” Natalie insisted. “With lots of armed officers and a big, bomb-proof truck.”

Through the windscreens she watched the colour overhead change softly from black to blue.

Jude looked down at his sister's face and saw that he had been dragged into the wrong reality by the vicious twist of a timeline he hadn't really believed in.

All through the news that she'd been found stranded among tide-fuls of junk at the Mean Low Water line alongside Rock Creek Parkway; all through the journey to the city morgue; all through the preamble and the coroner's assistant telling him to take his time—he hadn't believed for an instant that it would really be her. Even when he nodded in his ignorance and the assistant drew away the cover sheet from her head, he'd seen the grey pallor and magenta lips of an old drunk bag girl, her horrible flea-ridden hair matted into thick dreadlocks, her face distorted with an expression of self-hate. It wasn't White Horse, who had waist-length, shining black hair so smooth that not even a fleck of dust could stick to it.

Beneath her chin the weals of the fire marks had become a beige, age-spot brown. The wrinkled scar tissue looked healthy against the rest of it. Her eyes were closed. He wanted to look into them and be sure she wasn't there. What was under there? He waited for her to breathe.

The coroner's man laid the sheet down carefully, leaving her head exposed, “Would you like a moment alone?”

Jude nodded, but he didn't want to stay there another second. He turned away and said, “That's her,” and then walked out of there as fast as he could and into the bright sunlight on the steps outside. He gulped at the soupy humidity and blew the cool, deadly vapour of the tiled room out of his nose and mouth. He stared vacantly at the street and then, with a weakness in his legs, sat down on the steps and put his head in his hands.

In his mind's eye he saw Tetsuo's cat, globular eyes shining. It opened its mouth into a rosy bloom and a trail of fine black hair was vanishing down its softly petalled throat. He stared at the cars passing to get rid of the image but its emotional scent lingered; a sweet stink of repulsion.

The assistant came out and offered him a cup of water. Jude drank it. He felt that he didn't know where he was. The soft membrane of the air against his skin had been pushed through and he was on its other side now, in a city that was at every turn just like his own, but whose meanings he couldn't read.

“Do you think you can come and fill out the arrangements? It'll only take a few moments. There's a counsellor on hand if you'd like to talk,” the man said, awkward, with a tentativeness that made Jude want to shout at him.

“I'm fine,” he said and got up. They went indoors and he answered the necessary questions that would release the body for burial.

“What did she, I mean, how did she die?” Jude asked finally, mustering the courage at the last moment. He didn't want to know, he just had to.

“Drowning,” the assistant said, trying to make it sound less horrible by saying the word gently. “But her blood alcohol was high enough to kill her on its own.”

“Blood alcohol?” Jude repeated stupidly, glancing around the calm, efficient room and then back at the neat collar and blond hair of the coroner's official. He was a clean-cut young man. Unconsciously he
tried to pare the nails of one hand with those of the other as Jude watched him, removing an invisible filth.

“She didn't even drink.”

The man checked the records, using his finger to trace across the charts and show Jude he was patient. “Blood alcohol level ten times the legal drink-drive limit. Champagne.” He paused and blinked, surprised and unable to suppress it. “Champagne, and whiskey. I can even tell you the brand …”

“But she was alive when she went in the water?” Jude had to get it straight.

“Her lungs were full of water,” the assistant agreed, nodding. “If they hadn't—”

“So, where's the homicide detective?”

“Excuse me?”

“My sister didn't drink. She didn't like swimming. She was afraid of deep …” Jude found his throat hurt. He started again, spreading his hands out on the desk, looking at them and not at the official. “Why isn't there a homicide investigation?”

“Um … according to my information she was a registered alcoholic street person …”

“That was ten years ago,” Jude said, looking up from the spread of his fingers where his nails were starting to become white. “And in another state. She hasn't drunk in all that time. She didn't drink. How could she have a record here? Are you listening to me?”

“Please, there's no need to get agitated, Mr. Westhorpe. I can call a detective in, to take a statement. I'll do that right away.” He got up and hurried out, closing the door after him.

Probably this guy'd had worse cases to deal with, much worse, but Jude didn't have any sympathy to spare. So, they were going to treat it as the accidental death of a bum? He shouldn't be surprised by this. He shouldn't be surprised by anything. Even if there was an investigation it would only end up inconsequential, or pinned on some worthless
expendable who certainly hadn't done it. Whoever had put an end to White Horse's inquiries wasn't going to stumble over details like that and he knew already who they were, their office if not their name. Why bother?

He got up, put his jacket back on, and walked out, rubbing the centre of his chest where it felt like something sharp was trying to grind its way out from the inside.

The rest of the day he sat in a dark bar, on his own, one of those places that caters to lonely thinkers and doesn't try to make any efforts at creating a social scene. Amid its purple walls and dark green lighting, flaking paint and the smell of deeply entrenched dry rot he made the arrangements to send White Horse back home: coffin, carrier, delivery points. He called his Uncle Paul, the peanut butter king.

“Jude,” Paul said, sitting down in the blue-and-white-check kitchen of his house on Deer Ridge, curtains blowing in the fine breezes of a sunny Montana afternoon.

Jude waited for Paul to see his expression and change, become ready for the thing that nobody was ever ready to hear. As the old man's face softened and the brows drew closer he said, “White Horse is dead.”

Paul's face didn't change much. He nodded after a moment. “You okay?”

“I'll be fine,” Jude said. “Here's the arrangements. I put you down as delivery address for the body. Nearest living relative out there.”

Paul nodded as the files came through. “I'll see to everything this end, don't worry.”

“Thank you.”

“Will you be coming?”

To the funeral, he meant. Jude hesitated. “Yes. Let me know.”

Paul nodded. “You looking out for her there?”

Was he investigating?

“Yeah.”

“I'll tell the others. We'll pray for you.”

They looked at each other for a few moments but Jude couldn't bear the lack of questions and the calmness; his finger pressed the End key and the Pad went dark.

Hadn't White Horse said that she'd gone to see some lawyer Mary recommended? He'd meant to call and check but he hadn't. Why not? It would have taken a minute. He had the numbers.

He called them now. The girl on the phone confirmed the name and appointment. She said White Horse had never showed up. He asked if Mary Delaney had referred her and the girl answered that she hadn't; White Horse had made her own appointment and would he like to reschedule for her? He said no. No appointment.

Leaving a twenty on the table for his Russian coffee Jude went home and reread the note she'd left for him, touching it this second time with the knowledge that it was the thing that had been closest to her most recently. Nothing about it suggested it had been written under duress. It was almost illegible.

He traced the lines of it with his finger and reminded himself of Natalie, touching her own writing in the back of the file. Dully he recalled that she was supposed to arrive soon. He looked at the clock. It was late, he had no food in. He walked through the apartment, blank, and for the first time ever noticed that it reflected exactly this blank state, as though he'd been expecting it and unconsciously prepared for it; the moment when personality breaks down and waits to reform in a new shape. White Horse had said he'd run off to the East to get made and find his skin. All this time was preparation. Now the flaying of the old. He shivered and thought he caught a scent of snow, but it was his imagination.

Later … later … but his thoughts wouldn't run any further.

White Horse had left a few clothes behind. Washed, they were hanging out to dry on the rack in the spare room. He began to take them off and fold them up. He got out the iron and pressed her shirts,
breathing in the scent of hot steam and cotton. He put the iron away and placed the clothes in an overnight bag and went to strip the bed.

Her nightshirt was under the pillow. It said on it, “I've been to Yellowstone National Park,” but, as far as he knew, she never had. Fragments of broken-off hair dusted it.

He held the shirt in his hands and put it to his face. Hours ago she wore this. Stayed here. Safe with him until he went away. He should have known better. He
had
known better. The fact became unbearable.

Jude opened his mouth and jammed the cloth into it and against his nose, into his eyes.

Mikhail Guskov sat with his feet up in the common lounge area of the Sealed Environment, talking with some of the other newly arrived members of his team. They were drinking tea and coffee and trying to make themselves comfortable in the functional room with its utilitarian furniture and breeze-block walls. Obviously there wasn't going to be much time for relaxing but it was hardly the kind of development environment that showed any forethought, particularly in these days of work-play crossover. It reminded Mikhail of the old days in Moscow more than he cared to remember but a part of him thought it was nonetheless fitting that they'd rather hole up alone in their own parts of the cage than come to this cheerless place in an effort to find company. It was what they deserved—purgatory.

Nikolai Kropotkin, neuropsychologist at the Moscow Brain Institute, and Isidore Goldfarb, the American programming developer who had worked on Mappaware from the outset, both seemed not to care about the environment very much: Kropotkin because he was used to practical economies and Goldfarb because he had Asperger's syndrome and didn't notice it.

They paused a moment in their discussion to listen to the sounds of others moving in—Lucy Desanto, Alicia Khan, Calum Armstrong.

“Gang's all here,” Goldfarb stated. He gave a practised social smile
and held it for precisely the number of seconds his training had instructed him to.

“Not quite,” Guskov replied, blowing on his lemon tea. “Natalie Armstrong has yet to arrive. Her journey has taken a small detour.”

Kropotkin, older, wiry-haired, grey, and small like an Arctic fox, peered through steaming-up spectacles. “I don't blame her. I, too, would take a detour.” He drank his coffee at a scalding temperature that forced him to suck air in over it with a smack of his lips.

There was a moment's quiet. They were all aware of the lengths the US had promised to go to should it be necessary to persuade them to work harder. They knew what Guskov meant by a detour.

“She can't escape.” Goldfarb stated that, too, as a fact.

“That depends,” Guskov said, glancing down at their Pads on the table—they had been file sharing and discussing the case of Patient X—“on what she is.”

Kropotkin finished his mug and stared into its empty depths as he spoke. “There is still no consensus on the fate of Patient X,” he said. He put the mug down. “The camera footage seems impossible, yet there's no evidence that anyone has interfered with it. My assessment of the Selfware system of Dr. Armstrong's suggests, in simulation, that there may be a point at which the restriction of the NervePath to neural cells may be worked around by this programme, which regards all cells as capable of transmission of information.

“I believe that the redefinition would write back to the core NP code and override the distribution constraints, making the nanyte structures capable of invading the entire body, treating it like an extension of the brain. After that, the reorganization and prioritization involves not just the connections of the central nervous system, but all systems. This creates an information potential that would considerably outstrip the most advanced of our mechanical processing capabilities. Coupled with the verbal evidence of Patient X's behaviour in his last hours, we should face the possibility that some kind of understanding
of fundamental particle physics has taken place at a direct level, and enabled him to interfere with his own atomic structure.”

Kropotkin paused. “It sounds insane. Yet it must be an explanation we consider.”

He met Guskov's stare, his own dark gaze deeply uncomfortable. “I can't tell you what an extreme difficulty I have with this supposition. Nothing in physics suggests that it is possible to influence directly the structure of hadrons without the application of gravitronic or electromagnetic forces, and to consider a human being becoming capable of enabling such forces by willpower or thought is simply absurd.”