Transition (51 page)

The smell of a bakery distracted her as the square in front of San Giacomo di Rialto opened out to their left.

“Still hungry!” she cried out.

“I know, dear,” Mrs Siankung said, trying to keep an arm round the girl’s waist. “We’ll eat soon.”

“Wot you lookin at then, squire?” Bisquitine said in a deep voice as two bronze-skinned teenage girls passed by, staring and
then laughing at her. “Pop a crap on yo petal, bitches, upside ya head. An no mitsake, mistake, mystique, Mustique. I meant
that.”

“Shush now, dear.”

“Claudia?” a man said suddenly, stepping right in front of Bisquitine. She had to stop, as did the others. The man was tall.
He wore sunglasses, had salt-and-pepper hair, wore a suit and carried a briefcase. He took the sunglasses off, frowned, eyes
screwing up as he stared into Bisquitine’s eyes.

“Ill met by sunlight, my good fellow,” Bisquitine said haughtily. “Why, I’ve half a mind to scratch the boundah!”

The man looked confused and concerned in equal measure. “Claudia?” he asked. “Is that you? You were supposed to be at—” He
took a step back, taking in the knot of people obviously with this woman who looked like somebody he knew and yet was not
her. “Hey, what the hell’s—”

Mr Kleist didn’t wait for the nod from Madame d’Ortolan. He stepped up to the man, saying. “Sir, if I may explain…” and did
a straight-finger jab into his throat. Gasping, eyes wide, unable to speak, clutching his gullet, the man staggered back.
It had been done so quickly that it seemed nobody had noticed. “I’ll catch you up,” Mr Kleist told the others quietly. He
squatted as he made the man sit down on the road surface, still wheezing and struggling for air. Madame d’Ortolan glared at
Mr Kleist but he couldn’t just leave the man making that noise. He told himself that he was lingering here because he needed
to make sure the man stayed down, out of action, not likely to follow them, but really it was to stop him making that terrible
choking, gasping noise; to ease him. He pinched the fellow’s neck, attempting to reopen his windpipe. The man tried to bat
his hand away. A crowd of people had formed around them and he heard somebody call for the carabinieri. The man made a series
of terrible gagging, strangling, sucking noises.

Bisquitine glanced back as they hurried away. “Dat gotta hurt, sho nuff. I’d get some cream on that. Trot on!”

“Dearest,” Mrs Siankung said, “please. We’re nearly there. Very soon.”

“When, sir? Why, sir. I’ll tell you when, then; somba tyme atwixt da the Quilth of Oncoldyou-such and zee Chonce of Plastemper;
tankums, wilcums, noddinks, hurtsies. Oh-dear-oh-dear-oh-drear. Oh-dear-oh-drear-oh-drolldums. The backstroke? In these shoes?
Have you taken leafs off your fences? Enough already. You muddy funster; you’re landfill.”

“I wish we could shut her up,” Madame d’Ortolan muttered to Professore Loscelles as they hurried up towards the broad shallow
steps of the Rialto itself.

“I suspect—” the Professore began.

“Tuk-tuk, talkink in the ranks!” Bisquitine sounded affronted.

“There there, dearest,” Mrs Siankung said, patting her arm. She glanced back at Madame d’Ortolan.

“Noo,” Bisquitine intoned in her deep, masculine-sounding voice. “But quate appy to use this poor damaged creatchah for your
own dimmed ignoble ends, midim. Ain’t dat de trute!”

“Bisq, shh!”

“Poor damaged creatchah, poor damaged creatchah…”

They had climbed almost to the summit of the Rialto, the crowds growing ever thicker and more chaotic. Madame d’Ortolan grasped
Mrs Siankung’s arm. “Is he
here
?”

Bisquitine stopped suddenly, did a little dance and with one arm straight out pointing said triumphantly, “Bingo! Bandits
ahoy, chumlets! Thar she blows!”

Adrian

So I’m standing here at the very top of the very middle bit of the Rialto in Venice, feeling like a bit of a muppet and wondering
what the chances are that this is some gigantic long-winded, long-game wind-up. (Except it can’t be, can it? All that monthis
as standard instruction ey over the years was real enough, and the box Mrs M sent and Fred asked me to bring didn’t show up
in my hand luggage when I went through Heathrow security, did it? Sailed past.) But anyway, that isn’t stopping me from getting
that What-the-fuck-am-I-doing-here? feeling, even though, yes, it’s all very lovely in a sunny, chocolate-boxy, can’t-move-for-bleedin-tourists
kind of a way, and here I go having to step away from the very top of the very centre bit yet again because yet another group
of Japanese or Chinese or whatever tourists want to take a photograph of one of them standing at exactly that point, when
this little bunch of frankly not very well dressed people come marching up the steps from the opposite direction I arrived
from.

There’s a mousy bint in a white dressing gown in the middle of them, hair straggling everywhere, muttering to herself. Proper
nutter. Then she sees me and sort of jogs on the spot and points and blabbers something, just as I feel a hand on my elbow,
cupping it like a brandy glass but I don’t know which way to look because this lot with the lady in white at their centre
are all fucking looking at me now and starting up the slope towards me while the person behind me holding my elbow says quietly,
“Adrian? I’m Fred.”

The Transitionary

Adrian turns to me and his expression and body language changes instantly. “Tem, my darling man,” he says.

I stare at him, then look beyond him to where the others are, the small group intermittently visible through the swirl of
people coming and going and chattering and laughing on the bridge. This group includes Madame d’Ortolan, Professore Loscelles
and the frightening weirdness of the presence that has been blocking my new-found abilities for the last half-hour. Except
she isn’t blocking them any more. Not since the instant that somebody different stepped into Adrian’s shoes.

The approaching group is six or seven metres away, hurrying raggedly towards us.

“Tem, my love,” Adrian says. “I believe you’re free to do something now. I think you’d better do it. Leave Madame d’O. I need
to talk to her.”

I can’t approach the girl’s mind. The rest – the people who attend her, the Prof, the muscle boys and the specialist adepts,
including a guy called Kleist who’s hurrying towards the group from the street behind – them I can work with. They all become
convinced they really are tourists and just wander off to look at the lovely views. I work the same trick with the rest of
the intervention teams, all of whom had been ordered to about-turn and are in the process of converging on the Rialto. The
group in the launch – currently exceeding the speed limit back up the Grand Canal to a wavelike chorus of shouts and horns,
and almost at the Rialto – unanimously decide to visit Burano for ice creams, though they’ll be pulled over by a police launch
near the railway station a few minutes later anyway.

Meanwhile, all l’Expédience people who were carrying weapons have picked them out of their pockets with looks of puzzled distaste
and, holding them by thumb and finger, disposed of them. Four Tasers and six handguns have splashed into canals, to join all
the other secrets the waves have hidden over the centuries. The whole fragre of the locality relaxes distinctly.

For a few moments, Madame d’Ortolan is left bewildered. Then she starts shouting furiously at her people as they saunter away
wide-eyed, smiling, ignoring her. “Mr Kleist! Loscelles! Mr
Kleist
!”

Only Bisquitine remains unaffected, looking bemused as the people around her disperse. “Rum to-do,” she muses, and picks her
nose. “Business elsewhere, Mr Rumblebunk, I’ll be bound.”

So I have time to ask Adrian, “Mrs M?”

She makes Adrian bow. “Indeed. Hello, Tem. Glad you jumped the way you did. Welcome aboard.”

“You can do this? Flit to somebody who’s already been transitioned?”

She spreads Adrian’s arms, “Patently. Well, when it was me who popped their transitioning cherry, anyway. Good trick, eh?
I’ve been developing my talents. So have you, obviously. Congratulations.”

“The people on the list?”

“Safe. I got to all of them first.” She winks at me. “It’ll cost ya.”

“And what now?”

“I’m afraid you have to go, my love.” She feels inside the jacket, pulls out the box that Adrian brought from London and gives
it to me. “Take this and get well away, Tem. I mean,
well
away, untraceably distant.” She glances round to see Madame d’Ortolan looking undecided, then, with a word and a nod to the
girl in the white robe, start towards us again. She turns back. “No matter what happens here, you need to disappear. Whoever
controls the Concern, even if it’s the good guys, chances are they’ll want to find you and take your mind to bits to find
out how you can flit without septus. Or they’ll just kill you.” She smiles, nods at the box. “Soon you won’t need that.” Again,
she glances briefly towards Madame d’Ortolan, who is having to push a party of laughing Chinese girls out of the way to get
to us. “Now go,” she says, closing my fingers round the box. “You’ve done all you can. This is my show now. I hope I see you
again. Go.” She places a finger briefly on my lips, then turns away to face Madame d’Ortolan.

Mrs Mulverhill

The angry-looking woman in the orange velour jumpsuit walks up to the man in the tan jacket, ignoring the jostling crowds
and the wash of humanity pressing in from all sides. The girl in the white towelling robe trails vaguely after her, still
digging into her nose with the one remaining fingernail she hasn’t broken or cracked in the hours since she found herself
in this body. She sighs. “Still hungry,” she mutters. She finds something up her nose and eats it. Success! Chewy
and
salty.

Madame d’Ortolan stands in front of Mrs Mulverhill, close enough for the veloured breasts and belly of her current incarnation
to touch Adrian’s shirt, open jacket, jeans. She stares into the grey-green eyes.

“Hello, Theodora,” Mrs Mulverhill says, in Adrian’s pleasantly deep voice. “How’s tricks?” Madame d’Ortolan tries to take
Adrian’s wrists in her hands but finds her own wrists grasped. “I don’t think so, Theodora. Let’s stay here and discuss this
like civilised people, shall we?”

“What in the holy fuck
are
you, Mulverhill?”

“Just a concerned citizen of the Concern, Theodora.” Mrs Mulverhill uses Adrian’s face to smile over Madame d’Ortolan at the
girl in the white robe.

Bisquitine waves back with one finger. “Sui amazaro. Climb ev’ry woman. Ah belong to
you
, Underground.”

“You hypocritical bitch.”

“Oh, now, Theodora, I’m not the one trying to murder my way to absolute power within the Central Council. You might have noticed
your loyalists have gone unharmed.”

“Really? What about Harmyle?”

“Oh, he was a traitor so many times over that I’m not sure even he knew who he was betraying at the end. He was a disloyalist.
I think offing him was just to get your attention.”

“You think. Let’s ask Oh himself, shall we?” Madame d’Ortolan struggles to free her hands, in vain.

“The point is I could have murdered them all in their sleep if I’d wanted to. But then I’m not you. I’m going to stay an outsider.”

“You’ll stay dead when we kill you.”

“You’d have to catch me first, which you have signally failed to do so far.”

“Try flitting now, then.”

“Oh, I know, so close to your little friend here, we’re all stuck with what we’ve got.”

“And with their vulnerabilities,” Madame d’Ortolan hisses, and tries to knee Adrian’s body in the balls. Mrs Mulverhill turns
Adrian to one side, still gripping Madame d’Ortolan’s wrists. The velour-padded knee thuds into the side of Adrian’s thigh.

“Ow! Now, Theodora: civilised, remember?”

“Eye bee eye bee for eye for-oh,” Bisquitine sings. “It’s all idiotic nonsense. Mama’s little baby loves shortbus, shortbus.”
She is standing quite close behind Madame d’Ortolan. She sticks her tongue out the side of her mouth, extends one index finger
and pokes Madame d’Ortolan in the small of her orange-clad back. “Me belly finks me froat’s cut. Wot’s a gel to do then, sing
for me suppa? I should cocoa, coco. Let me tell you.”

Madame d’Ortolan whirls round as best she can with her wrists still held and spits, “Do
not
touch me!”

Bisquitine takes a step back and folds her arms, looking grumpy. “Leiplig!” she growls. “My war chariot! At once, d’you hear!”

Madame d’Ortolan turns and presses further into Adrian, who tenses as Mrs Mulverhill holds her ground. Madame d’Ortolan goes
on tiptoe to put her mouth as close as she can to Adrian’s ear. “If I had a gun I’d blow your brains out the top of your fucking
head.”

“Jings. We’ll take that rifle now, Chuck.”

Mrs Mulverhill makes Adrian sigh. “You’re not entirely comfortable with this whole ‘civilised’ concept, are you, Theodora?”

“Why are you doing this, Mulverhill? You could have been on the Council years ago. There’d have been peace, a pardon. No grudges.
We’re pragmatists and you’re gifted. You made your point. What more can you want?”

“Give up this day our Mendelbrot.”

“All this is tired, Theodora,” Adrian’s voice says. Mrs Mulverhill uses Adrian’s face to smile at a couple of passing nuns,
monochrome punctuations amidst the colourful throng. “And keeping me talking while your teams come groggily back to their
senses isn’t going to work. In the meantime our man Tem is getting away, and anyway, your little chum there is ticking down
to zero.” She nods at Bisquitine, who is staring intently at the back of Madame d’Ortolan’s head.

“Und dat is dat und vat noo? Terminé, terminé.”

“Let me worry about her.”

“I wish you had, but it’s too late now,” Adrian’s voice says with every appearance of resignation and sadness. “Madam, I don’t
think you realise what you’ve unleashed here.”

“And you do, of course.”

“Yes. Like Tem, I can see round corners.”

“We’ll get him.”