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  “Let me think about it, Carlo. I can’t decide now.”

  “Okay then. You can see her again tomorrow. If there’s any change before then, I’ll get word to you.”

  She went down to the lab and collected Barbara’s pair of coffee mugs, her holo of a crimson rose, a gold-nibbed pen, and half a dozen pages of notes that Dr. Schneider agreed were too cryptic to be of use to anyone else. Elinda intended to try and decipher them for clues as to what had led Barbara to prepare the leaflet.

  Outside the clinic, she looked at the clouds blowing above the valley. It could still snow again that year, she thought. She remembered floundering around the landing field on skis with Barbara, neither of them sure how to negotiate any but the gentlest slopes, and both of them getting more and more frustrated until they stuck their skis in a snow bank and threw snowballs at each other for half an hour. They had laughed a lot in those days—had been able to laugh at almost anything.

  She left the things she had taken from Barbara’s desk in the office and then went on to the Greenhouse. She spent an hour doing an inventory of the crops ready for harvest and checking the water deionisers, and started walking back to the office. The air was cool, the wind coming in gusts with the approach of another night, and she felt a strange warmth at the idea of being cocooned in snow. Then she realised that Jon Grebbel had been in her thoughts all morning. Even while she had been wiping Barbara’s face, part of her mind had been elsewhere, intent. . . .

  When she reached the office, she almost walked in before she heard the raised voices.

  “It has practically nothing to do with the hippocampus,” Larsen’s voice said in its most pedantic tone. “The whole point of those procedures—”

  “I don’t care about that,” another man’s voice broke in. “If you’d helped her the way you helped me, she wouldn’t have—she wouldn’t be . . .”

  Larsen said something she did not hear, then added, “I’m not sure that I have helped you.”

  As she hesitated, the door opened and a tall, red-faced man came out. She had seen him occasionally in the Admin building: Robert Strickland—he played sweeper for their soccer team. He flinched when he caught sight of her, as though guessing she had overheard, and he was hurrying past when he seemed to recognise her.

  “You’re—I’ve seen you with Barbara Evans, haven’t I?” he said. “I wonder—I’m looking for someone. Do you know Erika Frank? About your height, and blonde too, but darker colouring. She worked at the landing field in the radio room. She always wore those wooden bracelets, half a dozen of them, it seemed like, silly, clumsy things—I mean, she wears them, she works there, she—” He swallowed and fell silent, his eyes desperate.

  “I’m sorry,” Elinda whispered. “I don’t know her. I’m sorry.”

  “No. Of course not. Excuse me.” He turned to go.

  “Just a moment. How long has she been missing?”

  “That’s just it—it might be two weeks. She was supposed to go back to the Flats for a training course, only I found out she never got there, maybe she never left. Somebody knows, though, somebody knows what happened to her, somebody here. Ask your friends.” He peered at her sharply then turned and hurried away.

  Larsen looked up quickly when she went in. “I had assumed you wouldn’t be back today,” he said. “But as long as you’re here, you can help me check the monthly budget.”

  She had no appetite and worked through lunch. Chris came in, his hands grimy from helping work on a truck suspension, and reminded them about the open party at his home the following evening. Larsen, unusually irritable, twice snapped at her for not paying attention.

  She worked late, and when she locked up, the sun had slid behind the Five of Diamonds, although the sky was still brilliant. She walked home through the long dusk and the cutting wind, unable to remember a thing she had done.

  The bungalow was full of Barbara’s presence. It seemed to her now that most of the decoration had been Barbara’s ideas. Certainly the surrealist landscape painting by Jessamyn in the living room had been one of hers. She wondered what Grebbel would think of it, whether she should return it and hang one of the throw rugs instead. She wondered how important Grebbel was becoming to her, why she kept putting off Carlo’s invitations to return to therapy, and why these thoughts should be filling her mind.

  Barbara would have laughed at her once and taken her for a walk; more recently she would have been impatient. Brooding, she would call it. It’s today that matters, and tomorrow. That’s why we’re here now. Let the past look after itself.

  There would have been the aggrieved, defensive tone edging into her voice. And now . . . Careful, she bites.

  Outside, shadows were sliding up the northern walls of the valley, and the swirling clouds becoming crimson-edged in the low sunlight. She ate a quick meal of leftovers, then picked up her coat from the couch and went out.

  She had intended visiting Paulina and Louise next door, but met them on their front path, going out. “It’s the newsfeed at the Hall tonight,” Paulina reminded her. “Come along for a change.” Her tone suggested they had heard about Barbara.

  She had wanted to talk, but she agreed to go, and decided it was probably the best thing to do. Their implied sympathy made her uncomfortable, and she was reminded how much she envied them their relationship.

  Ahead of them, one of the bluish lights along the main street flickered and glowed, and then the others shivered into life like a string of diamonds. “They haven’t got the settings right yet,” Louise commented. “Lights should have been on an hour ago this time of year.” She ducked her head against a cold gust.

  “Yeah,” said Paulina as they wandered across the road, “with all the traffic we get through here, it’s a wonder there hasn’t been a massacre.”

  “Is that why you go to these things so often,” Elinda asked, “because you miss all that—freeways and traffic jams and the rest of it?”

  “Sure we miss it,” Louise said. “You’ve no idea how glamorous such memories are from this distance. It’s the best reason for coming here, to make that mess look captivating.”

  At the Hall, the doors were open and some of the seats were already occupied. There was no reason Grebbel should have been easy to see in the dimly lit rows, but she recognised him almost immediately in the middle of a row near the back. She brought the others with her and introduced them as she sat beside him. The two of them regarded Grebbel with curiosity. Elinda wasn’t sure if it contained disapproval.

  The lights started to go down. “If they’re starting already,” Paulina said for Grebbel’s benefit, “there must be a good ten minutes’ worth of noticeboard to sit through. Most of it’s a waste of time, but if we come any later, it’s hard to get a seat. No, thank god, a false alarm.” The lights had stopped fading, but the Hall was still not fully dark. Abruptly a picture flashed onto the screen. It blurred, then came into focus as a young woman’s face. Beside it, a block of text appeared in plain capitals and began to roll up the screen. ERIKA FRANK HAS BEEN MISSING FOR TWO WEEKS. The portrait was replaced by a full-length shot of her with the coffer dam in the background. SOMEONE KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED TO HER. Another picture of her, beside the dirigible mooring pylon. IF SHE IS NOT FOUND BY TOMORROW NOON, THIS COMMUNITY WILL ANSWER FOR IT. The first portrait flashed up again for a moment, and then the screen went dark.

  Grebbel looked questioningly at her, and she shrugged, unready to put her doubts and suspicions into words.

  “Well,” said Paulina, “first those leaflets, now this. You’d think they could keep tighter control over the lunatic fringe. But then I bet only forty-five percent of the population’s in the pay of security.”

  “Erika Frank,” someone said,”—isn’t that Bob Strickland’s girlfriend?”

  “Strickland thought so, anyway.”

  “What do you think it meant—‘will answer for it’?” Grebbel asked.

  “Probably a bluff,” Paulina said, “if it isn’t just a practical jo
ke.”

  Before the muttering from the audience drowned everything else, Elinda thought she heard voices raised behind the stage, where the projectors must be.

  Then the house lights faded completely and the screen lit again. Elinda missed most of the few noticeboard items that appeared, wondering about the threatening tone of the first item, and whether it fitted the man she had seen with Larsen. The main feature began, and she made an effort to concentrate.

  There was a soundtrack with music and a commentary, but it had no meaning for her. The pictures filled her mind. Wide plains divided into olive and brown cultivated squares. A city, sprawling under low, yellowish skies. There were tight knots of freeway interchanges, thick with traffic. Weather-stained freighters moored at a dock. The water, violet-dark and greasy, licked at their hulls. Gulls fought over debris churned up by the propellers of the tugs.

  I know this place, she thought. I don’t recognise any of it, but I know it. Is that why I’m shaking?

  Trucks thundered over concrete arches, where grimy rows of houses huddled on narrow streets. Words on the soundtrack she could not follow, the music beating at her.

  He’d understand what I feel. He wouldn’t laugh at me.

  And Grebbel, watching the images unfolding before him, felt his mind being squeezed into a smaller and smaller space, as though the sight of his old world was drawing his memories toward it, but they could get no further than whatever had happened in the Knot.

  A map appeared on the screen. South America, his mind said, as if this was another psych test. Other pictures followed, and his mind laboured to keep up. Mountains, it said . . . Andes? Snow. Cold. With part of his mind that hid from the verbal testing game, he felt her presence next to him. Highway. Airport runway.

  Blue-helmeted troops poured from transport aircraft, were shown driving through streets lined with blackened ruins, then setting up road blocks, searching buildings, directing traffic around a crater at an intersection.

  Peacekeeping, his mind said. Martial law. Revolution.

  Chaos.

  Name? Jon Grebbel.

  Nationality?

  Residence?

  She brushed against him in the dark, her skin chill and damp.

  Name? Jon Grebbel.

  Occupation?

  Occupation?

  Dark. All dark.

  One hand to clutch in the dark.

  Afterwards, in the knot of people fastening coats and filing out of the Hall, they found time to talk.

  “Did it strike you the same way?”

  “Having trouble understanding what was happening? Yes, like—”

  “—like a garbled stream of memories.”

  “Like trying to listen to a talk, I was going to say, when everyone’s whispering around you.”

  “Only the whispers were inside your head.”

  “Maybe there’s a block against understanding what we were then, maybe we’ll never be able to get it back.”

  The crowd was dispersing. Paulina and Louise had slipped away.

  “It was uncomfortable in there. I was—scared, I think.”

  “We both were.”

  “Are you sorry you came, then?”

  “A bit. No.”

  “Neither am I.”

  They walked slowly down the empty street.

  “I may have found a new job,” he said, “substituting for your friend.” He described his visit to the lab that morning. “And this evening, I spent an hour practising on some of the equipment. Do they know what happened to her?”

  “They don’t know a damned thing. Those leaflets, the other morning, and that missing woman at the start of the show tonight . . . We were lovers, Barbara and I.”

  “I thought so,” he said, and abruptly risked asking: “‘Were’ or ‘are’?”

  “I . . . don’t know. There’s so much going on, and I don’t even know what’s inside my own head. I feel I’ve let her down. I always feel that. I have to find out what happened to her. She had something to do with the leaflets, I found evidence at home. I haven’t told anyone yet. If you can look at her computer files, can you see if there’s anything among them that looks like a clue.”

  “Yes, I’ll try,” he said. “What about Security?”

  “I don’t know. They were reluctant to go and search for her yesterday. Their priorities didn’t allow it. And if she was involved in something they’d call subversive . . .”

  “So you’d be on your own. I’ll see what I can do to help.”

  “Yes. Thanks.”

  They followed a path, staying close together, not saying much. Behind them, the street lights went out, all together. Above them, the sky was still flushed pink and mauve.

  “It’s late,” she said. “They use the lights to remind us it’s officially midnight. We’d better get back.” They turned. “I almost forgot. One of our staff is having a get-together tomorrow night. You should come—give you a chance to meet people. I’ll give you the address. Have you got something to write with?”

  “No. But tell me anyway. Trust my memory.”

  She laughed, and gave him Chris’s address.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said.

  “Maybe we will at that.” She found herself giving him a genuine, uncomplicated smile. “See you tomorrow.”

  FIVE

  Everyone called it the Factory, though it was actually a cluster of low buildings ringing a structure like a circular barn. It was where everything that had not been shipped to Janus for reasons of cost, convenience, forgetfulness or security was reinvented, imitated or faked. And it was where everything—whether crated in shockfoam, chromed and slick with grease, or put together from spare computer chips and parts of an arc welder—went for repair and maintenance.

  Freya ran the Factory. She was a small, round-faced woman, with wide, innocent-looking eyes in the face of a fading seraph. When Elinda went to the service counter, Freya herself was examining a circuit diagram with a man, and apparently counting on her fingers. “Give it another afternoon,” she said to him. “If you can’t come up with anything by then, I’ll tell them we don’t do voodoo without a blood price.”

  She turned to Elinda. “Sorry to keep you. I’ve got to get back in the shop in a minute, but maybe I can help you while Peter thinks about his homework.”

  “Actually, I’ve got a question rather than a technical problem,” Elinda said. She introduced herself and pulled out the leaflet Larsen had found on the cafeteria table. “I’m trying to trace where this came from.”

  Without giving too many details, she explained about Barbara and said she was looking for any clue as to what had happened to her.

  “Medium, or message?” Freya asked. “We deal in hardware and technical information, mostly by request in triplicate, with signatures in precious bodily fluids. I like to think what messages we give out are more reliable than what you’ve got there.”

  “I was thinking of the medium. The ink or the paper—is there a chance you could identify either of them?”

  Freya examined the leaflet. “One copier is much like another, and we don’t have a monopoly on them here. In principle, we could set up a little forensic investigation. But to get us to do it for an unofficial request, you’d have to have something we wanted pretty goddamned badly in return, and you don’t look as though you do. Five or ten lab days’ worth? No, I didn’t think so. Let’s see. The paper might be a better bet than the ink. We don’t turn out that much white paper, and it sounds as though there was a fair number of sheets in this run. Try Raul Osmon, down in Hut Seven. He runs the paper mill. He might remember something.”

  Hut Seven gave out the smell of strong chemicals and the sound of orchestral music. The first Elinda assumed were needed for bleaching. The music stirred something within her, uncomfortably, but eluded her memory. Even after the darkness outside, the interior of the hut was dim, leaving her with an impression of grey, galvanised tanks like large bath tubs and bulky machinery with ho
ppers and pumps. Working on a machine part was a squat man with brown hair straggling over his eyes.

  He straightened up as she came in, and she recognised him as the part-time technician who worked in Barbara’s lab.

  “Why, yes, hello,” he said. “Aren’t you the friend of Ms. Evans? I’ve seen you there, haven’t I, often enough to remember your face. And how can we help you now?” His eyes were pale and deep set, under almost invisible eyebrows. He looked to be in his late thirties. “Raul Osmon, that’s me. Always glad to assist.”

  Elinda brought out the leaflet and repeated her request. He took the sheet to a desk in the far corner. When he sat and switched on an angle lamp, he saw that she had remained by the entrance. He beckoned. “Come. Come. Sit here. You like Rachmaninov?”

  She picked her way between the machines and the arrays of tools in meticulous rows where repairs were evidently continuous. She realised she had been beating time to the music. “Is that who wrote it?” she said. “I didn’t recognise it.”

  “The third piano concerto: Kusinov and the Montreal symphony under Feinstein. Just before the assassinations. But I can see you don’t remember. Does that mean you’ve lost music along with everything else? Dreadful, dreadful.”

  “Perhaps I’d never heard it before.”

  “No, no, not you. You’re a musical person. I could tell as soon as I saw you. A young woman like you—let me see your hand. There, very fine, very strong. But not large—a real woman’s hand. You’d be a string player—a violinist for sure. Not a violist, scraping away buried in the depths of the orchestra. And never a bassist, heaving that black coffin about like a vampire. You might have played the cello, I think: I can see you have dark soulful stream of song within you. But I think the violin is yours. You were meant to soar above the herd, to point us toward the light. Or maybe you were a soprano.”

  “I don’t sing,” she said brusquely. “I don’t like singing.” In a different mood, she might have found this line amusing, but now she was getting impatient. Before she could stop him, he was off again.