The New Girl (Downside) (26 page)

Usually I would not be conducting these matters, but Varder Batiss’s sub-assistant has recently... depreciated.’

Guts churning, Tara struggles to keep calm. ‘Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Don’t be apologetic. Happens to everyone, does it not? Varder Batiss personally approved his recycling.’

What the hell does that mean? ‘Did you follow me here?’ She’s not sure what else to ask, what to say. If these people are involved in something as serious as child abduction,
she needs to tread carefully.

‘Oh yes. I have been tracking you since you reneged on your agreement. Renege – that is the correct parlance, is it not?’ He chuckles again. ‘I’m working on my
pronunciation.’

‘I explained to your boss that I can’t provide the baby. There was a mishap with him.’

‘A mishap?’

Tara digs in her bag, removes Baby Tommy’s burnt head. ‘This.’

He peers down at it, doesn’t seem surprised that she’s just pulled a charred baby’s head out of her bag. He clucks his tongue. ‘Oopsie doopsie. What a karking
mess.’ He reaches for his briefcase, clicks it open. ‘I usually do shortfall insurance collections, viables and the like, but lucky for you I was in this exact upside node location
dealing with a matter that is now resolved.’ He chuckles. ‘I don’t think I need share that contracts are my reason for subsisting.’

‘Why does Batiss want this baby?’

‘Want?’ He chuckles again. ‘He doesn’t
want
.’

‘But what was he going to do with him?’

‘Mrs Tara Marais, I do not know the answer to that question. I am not here to question why, only to deal with the repercussions of a breach. Now. I believe you embarked on a signalled
contract. Not a primo method, but Varder Batiss felt you were a... trustworthy br— upside citizen. I am assured that in the law of this node, signals – electronic messages, you call
them? – are as acceptable as triplicate contracts, so I won’t waste your time with dilly-dallying. The penalty you have been assured of, have you not?’

‘What is this penalty?’

He waves his claw-hand vaguely. ‘Oh dotting the eyes and tutting the tees.’

‘I don’t understand. I’ve said that I’ll return the money.’

He actually laughs. ‘Money? You mean brown currency? Oh no.’

‘What do you want with me?’ There’s something in his hand; it’s blocky and shiny – a gun? She needs to get out of here, she needs to run. But her legs feel heavy,
as if her shoes are glued to the floor.

‘Don’t concern yourself, Mrs Marais,’ he says, darting forward. ‘This won’t hurt a bit.’

Father was wrong. The karking upside halfpint
was
missed and dust was kicked up. But all should be primo now. Penter has read and initialled Node Agent Rosen’s
report on his dealings with the School Principal Duvenhage. There were no complications. The sweep is complete. Dispatching a node agent was one of Father’s tasks, but Penter has found it
remarkably unchallenging to discharge his duties.

Or should she say Varder Batiss’s duties, for she now knows his real name. She’s tried to think of him as Varder Batiss, but the name doesn’t sit easily. He will always be
Father to her.

She paces through her living quarters. She has filed her reports, she has done her duty, so why does she feel so karking stale? Is she still poisoned by blissful love? Or is the thought-seep
still muddying her mind? Her penetration is renewed every second Moneyday at Dead Shift, which makes it just two shifts to go. The thought calms her, but she hasn’t received the confirmation
signal from the clinic yet, which she should have received a shift ago. Just a clerical error, she hopes.

She fingers the last of the ready beans she smuggled back from the precinct, several of which are now limp and decaying. They do not taste the same at home as they did in the precinct. And she
is not as comfortable in her quiet pod as she used to be. She’s too used to hearing the whir of the machines outside the precinct gate, the bang and shriek of Jane’s documents, the
chatter of the birds and the scratching of Jane’s pets. Here there is only the hum of the great wheel in the Bowels.

It is too quiet.

She opens her locker, retrieves the mimeograph of Father she purloined from the precinct kitchen. She wonders what form his punishment will take. He has many periods of service left before his
scheduled depreciation, so perhaps the Ministry will be lenient. He has played, there is no doubt, but he is efficient. Does he blame her for doing her duty and reporting his disregard to the
Ministry? Does he even think of her at all?

She hears a cough, turns to see Bakewell Klot, one of Management’s Security Agents, lurking in her doorway. She fumbles the mimeograph back into the locker, hopes that he will not ask her
what she is doing.

‘Penter Ulliel,’ he says. ‘First Minister Cardineal Phelgm requests your presence in the Ministry Boardroom.’

Penter gasps. In all her periods she has only once been called to the boardroom – when she was notified of her lifework assignment and installed. Why would someone as senior as Cardineal
Phelgm want to see
her
?

Could it be a matter regarding Jane? It was, after all, Jane who invited the brown educator into the precinct on Father’s orders. Penter is also concerned about Jane’s dealings with
that purloined brown – Ryan – although Manestream Lygoate, one of Penter’s immediate superiors, told her that Jane’s experiment has been authorised. Penter has high regard
for Jane, feels a sense of protectiveness for her – a feeling that she knows will disappear when she undergoes her penetration renewal.

‘Thank you, Bakewell Klot,’ she manages to respond. ‘I will hurry.’

She checks to make sure her uniform is pristine, then follows Bakewell Klot towards the lifts.

She clasps her shaking hands behind her back as they glide up to the Ministry levels. The lift doors slide open and Klot bids her farewell as she exits onto an unnumbered floor in the upper
domain.

One of Cardineal Phelgm’s underlings rushes forward and bares his stripped gums at her. She can tell by his primo bodily modifications, which include facial and limb amputations, that
Cardineal Phelgm must hold this underling in high regard.

‘Penter Ulliel,’ he says, ‘I am First Underling Janus Stoat. Please, come this way.’

He guides her across the greeting area towards the towering boardroom doors. Flakes of gold in the floor tiles twinkle beneath her feet, and she scans the portraits of past Ministry officials
that line the walls. They are hallowed faces in the annals of the Administration, and she can name every one. Her hands are no longer shaking. The upper domain is impressive, but it is not as
overawing as she remembers from her installation. She was still a halfpint then, scared and impressionable.

She follows him through the doors and into the boardroom itself. Cardineal Phelgm is squatting at his desk at the far end, a cloud of lesser and senior underlings chained discreetly to a
flotilla of desks in front of him. Underling Stoat ushers her forward.

She has heard rumours that Cardineal Phelgm is fused to his desk because he is fearful of upstarts grasping his position. As far as Penter is aware, he has never left the boardroom since he was
invested, receives even his penetration renewals, periodic modifications and victuals connected to his chair. She feels a stirring of distaste at the sight of his greenish-white skin and bloated
jowls. He reminds her of the depreciated thing she saw floating in the precinct pool, but she knows that his stripped veins and amputations are of the most opulent quality and should be esteemed.
She needs to watch her words very carefully. In this room, she needs even to watch her thoughts.

‘Penter Ulliel,’ he says, gazing at her through his single modified eye. ‘May I commend you on your catalogue performance. The viable has been successfully integrated.’
Penter nods, feeling the warmth of regard flushing her veins.

Cardineal Phelgm grunts and waves one of his stumps at Underling Stoat. ‘You may proceed.’

Underling Stoat plucks a file from the towering stack of papers piled around Cardineal Phelgm’s head. Penter recognises it as the report she made on Father.

‘Is this the entirety of the matter, Penter Ulliel?’ Cardineal Phelgm grunts.

‘Yes, your Superiority,’ she says.

Cardineal Phelgm rolls his eye. ‘Truly, it is almost as if this Varder Batiss is
asking
to be recycled.’ He makes a rumbling sound in his throat and the underlings laugh
along with him.

Penter does not laugh. The bile is rising in her stomach. Is Father to be terminated? She cannot help but speak. ‘Your Superiority?’ she says, her entrails cramping at her temerity.
‘May I enquire as to Father – to Varder Batiss’s – punishment?’

‘You may not,’ Cardineal Phelgm barks, and the room falls silent. ‘It is not in your purview. But for your information, Penter Ulliel...’ – he sneers, or smiles,
she’s not sure which – ‘this is by no means the only transgression of Varder Batiss.’

He leans forward, uses the microtech pincers fused to his other stump to push a sheaf of papers towards her.

She looks down at the file, which she has not seen before. It is from Node Agent Rosen, the same agent she dispatched to deal with that man Duvenhage.

She reads it in disbelief, can barely keep her features neutral.

This was not authorised. This was not discussed. The extent of Father’s playing is disregardful in the extreme. It seems that Ryan is not the only brown that Father has scouted
unauthorised.

‘Penter Ulliel,’ Cardineal Phelgm grumbles, ‘you can resolve this?’

She nods.

‘You must decide how to dispose of this unauthorised brown. If you wish to terminate it, you will have the full cooperation of the Terminal Ward.’

He sinks back in his chair, closes his eye. She is dismissed.

She exits the boardroom, intent on undergoing her penetration renewal immediately. It can’t be healthy to feel this way.

But when she reaches the lifts she does not press the button for Level H. Instead, almost as if her hand is following a command of its own, she chooses one that will glide her down to the senior
Ministry Apartments.

To where Father keeps his private quarters.

Ryan stands up groggily and wipes the blood off his chin. That upsized Number Two was heavy going, but he knows that now he’ll be nourished for the next several shifts.
He vacuums the rest of his SugarGas and, even though he’s full, crams a last fistful of Starchsticks into his mouth. They’re like popcorn. He elbows his way through the throng of
Shoppers and Customer Care Officers cluttering the entrance to McColon’s and hurries back to the elevator bank. There are just a few moments until his next class.

He scans his ID token over the pad marked ‘Academy Only’ and the lift doors glide open. He steps inside and they close again; he leans against the mirrored back wall and the lift
starts moving. As they ascend – or descend; he’s not sure – the lift plays a panpipe rendition of a tune he’s heard before. The shunt hole at the base of his skull beneath
his ear throbs as he tries to recall the title. This information is not directly relevant to today’s syllabus but it’s not completely obliterated either. He’s very lucky to have
been deployed as a tutor and he knows it’s all Jane’s doing. She likes him.

He spoke to a brown who worked somewhere in the Mall – at Nondegradable Polymer Playthings or Lonly Books – a couple of shifts ago. He’d just clicked out for victuals so was
able to tell him how the shunt works on retail CCOs. Their scope is narrowed entirely to making sales and serving customers, especially Shoppers. As a tutor of Upside Relations classes, the breadth
of Ryan’s upside experience contributes to the lessons, so his scope is set far wider.

But he still can’t remember the title of this damn song.

Not to worry. The lift doors slide open and he scans past the administration desk and into his class where the halfpints are waiting.

When he taught his first lesson, a few shifts ago – time doesn’t really work the same down here – he experienced a shock of recognition when he saw the faces staring back at
him. Their skin was mottled and pale, undertones of green and purple blushing through, scars from recent modifications still healing. He realised that he was looking at the same sort of kids who
were arrayed in Duvenhage’s photographs; they weren’t dead or beaten, they were merely modified and marked up as examples for the upside scouting project. They were never harmed. In
retrospect, after his job had been explained to him by the Assimilation Agent, he felt like such a fool for jumping to conclusions.

These are not abused kids or victims of anything; far from it. This is an elite group of halfpints which has been up-streamed to the Ministry of Upside Relations. After their courses,
they’ll be assigned to special projects or to Node Agent mentorships.

He starts his speech with the script that’s been uploaded. ‘Half-pints, my name is Ryan Devlin.’ There are titters from the back of the class. ‘As you know from your
previous modules, key to successful operations in the upside is assimilation and evasion. You must blend in and keep your covert activities covert.’

A hand shoots up at the back of the class. The child – Ryan’s not sure whether it is a boy or a girl, since the features are both delicate and hairy – asks,
‘Why?’

‘Why what...’ – Ryan scans his class seating plan – ‘Argent?’

‘What would you – they – do to us if they caught us?’

‘It depends, but you might get arrested by the police force and jailed. They would ask you many questions and might even eventually uncover the nature of the relationship between the
upside and the downside. You know from your previous modules that most upsiders are not even aware of the existence of your people, your world. To have this reality suddenly uncovered would be
suboptimal. Upsiders, browns, forgive my language’ – there are more titters from the back of the class – ‘tend to react violently to surprises.’