“No. I treat them as what they are: a commodity to be exploited, as and when it suits us. But hatred? No.”
She decided it might be time to listen. “And the connection with Antiquities?”
“A very profound one. As the nature of the second discovery became clear, we realised that we needed to work with Antiquities on a more fundamental level. The simplest solution was to replace DeForrest with myself, so that I had an absolute overview of all Earth-based activities.”
“I always said it was a political appointment.”
“But not in the way you meant it.” His tinted spectacles caught the light, like two little windows into clear blue sky. “Now I want to ask you about the maps.”
She prickled, realising that she had been under surveillance all along. She should have known they would keep their eye on her. “Were you responsible for sending them? Were the maps some pointless test, like the Mahler recording?”
This seemed to amuse him. “They warned me about you.”
“And what did they say?”
“That you’d speak your mind. I already knew from personal experience that you have little respect for authority.” His tone softened. “They also told me you have a good eye for detail. Now tell me what you made of the maps.”
A small inner voice told her that more depended on her answers than was immediately apparent. She felt her voice catching in her throat, her usual fluency deserting her. “I only looked at one, and there was something about it that didn’t make sense.”
“Continue,” Caliskan said.
“According to the copyright information, the map was printed over a century before the Nanocaust, yet it was in excellent condition—just like the Mahler recording.”
“Did the period of the map strike you as significant in any way?”
“No,” she said. “Only in so far as it just about falls within my frame of interest.”
“Only just?”
Auger nodded. “Yes. I’m pretty good on Paris in the Void Century, up to twenty seventy-seven. Things get a bit foggier if you go back to nineteen fifty-nine. It’s not that I don’t know anything about that period, just that I’m much less familiar with it than I am with the later decades.”
Caliskan pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “Let’s say I wanted to talk to someone who was an avowed expert on precisely that period. Given your network of academic contacts, who would you suggest?”
Auger thought for a moment. “White,” she said. “Susan White. I’m sure you’re familiar with her work. She authored that report on the EuroDisney excavation last year.”
“Know her well, do you?”
“Not especially,” Auger said. “We’ve exchanged a few messages and had the odd conversation at academic conferences. I may have refereed one of her papers; she may have refereed one of mine.”
“You consider her a rival, don’t you?”
“We’re both fighting for the same research budget. It doesn’t mean I’d scratch her eyes out.” Sensing that her usefulness to Caliskan was coming to an end, she said, “Look, I’m sure I could put you in touch with her.”
“Actually, we’ve already contacted her.”
Auger shrugged, her point made. “Well, then, what do you need me for?”
“There’s a problem with White. That’s why we’ve come to you.”
“What kind of problem?”
“I can’t tell you, I’m afraid.” He clapped his hands together and showed her the palms. “That’s a matter for the other candidate. Don’t feel bad about it, Auger: you were always our second choice, but as a second choice you came very highly recommended.” Caliskan dipped his head towards his desk, picked up a massive black pen and began to make an entry of some kind in a journal, the nib scratching against high-quality paper.
“And that’s it?”
He looked up momentarily from his writing. “Were you expecting something else?”
“I thought…” Auger stopped.
“You thought what?”
“I failed, didn’t I? I didn’t get whatever it was you wanted me to get.”
Caliskan’s pen halted its scratching. “I’m sorry?”
“There was something in the map I was supposed to see.” Committed now, she felt a heady rush of certainty as the elusive detail she’d been missing clicked into place. “Well, I did see it. I just didn’t know what to make of it.”
Caliskan returned the pen to its inkwell. “Continue.”
“The map doesn’t make any sense, even for one printed in nineteen fifty-nine. It’s more like a map of Paris from the twenties or thirties, masquerading as one from thirty years later.”
“In what way?”
“The street names. There’s no Roosevelt; no Charles de Gaulle; no Churchill. It’s as if the Second World War never took place.”
Caliskan closed his journal and slid it to one side. “I’m very glad to hear you say that,” he said. “I was beginning to think that perhaps you weren’t the right woman for the job after all.”
“What job?” Auger asked.
From a desk drawer Caliskan produced a ticket, embossed with the Art Deco flying horse of Pegasus Intersolar. “I need you to go to Mars for me,” he said. “Some property has fallen into the wrong hands and we’d rather like to have it back.”
The name of the ship was the Twentieth Century Limited. Auger glimpsed bits of it—never the whole thing—as she was being processed aboard, led from one pressurised embarkation point to the next. It was a huge vessel by Thresher standards, six or seven hundred metres long, but the liner was making its run to Mars at much less than normal capacity. With the increase in tensions across the system, people had cut back on unnecessary travel. So far the hostilities had been confined to dissenting elements amongst the Slashers, but two USNE ships had already been caught in the crossfire, resulting in the loss of civilian lives. Inessential outposts had been mothballed and a number of intersolar transit concerns had declared bankruptcy.
When she had finished her drink in the observation lounge—watching Earth and Tanglewood recede—she checked the local time and made her way back to her cabin. She had opened the door and was moving to flick on the light when she realised that the light was already on and the cabin occupied. Auger flinched—for a moment she thought she had opened the wrong door—but then recognised her luggage and coat on the end of the bed.
It was her room, and the two people sitting on the edge of the bed were Ringsted and Molinella, the Securities Board agents she had already met in Tanglewood.
“Verity Auger?” Ringsted asked.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Of course it’s me.”
“Check her out,” Ringsted said.
Molinella stood up and pulled out something that looked like a pen. Before Auger could react, he had expertly pinned her against the door and was holding one of her eyes open and aiming the end of the pen into it. Intense blue-green light zapped her retina and sparked painfully across her brain.
“It’s her,” Molinella confirmed, releasing his hold.
“You know it’s me,” Auger said, shaking her head to clear her vision of afterimages. “We’ve already met. Don’t you remember?”
“Sit down,” Molinella ordered. “We have a lot to get through.”
“Give me a break,” Auger snapped. “We’ve only just left port. We have another five days until we get to Mars.”
“Five days would barely cover it even if we had the luxury of that much time.” Molinella fixed her with the blank expression of a tailor’s dummy. As before, both agents wore suits, but this time the cut was not quite as formal. They could, Auger supposed, just about pass for a pair of slightly straitlaced Thresher newlyweds.