It was just as well that Naz had told me what he would be wearing: there was another young Asian guy in the Blueprint Café. I’d have known which one was Naz, though, after all. He looked just like I’d imagined him to look but slightly different, which I’d thought he would in any case. He was sitting at a table by the window, keying something into a palmtop organizer. He had an interesting face. For the most part it was frank and open-but his eyes were dark: dark, sunk and intense. He rose to greet me, we shook hands and then we sat down.
“No problems getting here?” he asked.
“No, none at all,” I said. The Blueprint Café’s walls were hung with photographs of eminent British designers. This was good, very good. A waiter appeared and Naz asked for a large bottle of mineral water.
“Shall we eat?” he asked me.
I wasn’t particularly hungry. “What do you think?” I asked him back.
“Something light,” he replied.
We ordered kedgeree and two small bowls of fish soup. No wine. The waiter walked away towards the kitchen, which was visible behind a large round window. It was designed that way-not totally open, so diners could see every last thing the chefs were doing, but open enough to give them glimpses of the kitchen: blue flames jumping out of frying pans, fingers raining herbs down over dishes, things like that.
“Before we begin realizing your project,” Naz said, “we need to get a sense of scale. What size of building do you have in mind?”
“A big one,” I said. “Six or seven floors. Have you ever been to Paris?”
“I was there two weeks ago,” said Naz.
“Well, the way buildings are there,” I told him. “Large tenement buildings, with lots of flats stacked on top of one another. That’s the type of building I need. My flat must be on the top floor but one.”
“And the building opposite? If I remember rightly, you indicated that you’d probably need that building too.”
“That’s right,” I said. “It should be almost the same height. Perhaps one floor lower. When I say ‘opposite’ I mean facing at the back. Across a courtyard. I need that building for two things only: red tiles on its roofs and black cats walking over this.”
“Roofs plural?” he asked.
“They go up and down,” I told him. “Rise and fall. In a particular way. We might have to modify them. We’ll certainly need to modify lots of things throughout the building and the courtyard.”
“Yes, so you told me,” Naz said. “But tell me about the people you propose to fill the building with. The primary building, I mean. Will they be actually living there?”
“Well, yes,” I answered. “They can actually live there too. They’ll have to get used to being in two modes, though: on and off.”
“How do you mean?” asked Naz.
“Well, on when they’re performing the tasks I’ll ask them to perform. The rest of the time they can do what they want. Like soldiers: they’re on parade at one moment, then afterwards they go and smoke their cigarettes in the guardroom, and have baths and maybe change into civilian clothes. But then a few hours later they have to be back on parade again.”
The waiter came. Naz’s palmtop organizer was lying in front of him. It was a Psion-one of the companies Matthew Younger and I had bought stocks in. It was lying face up on the table, but Naz wasn’t using it. Instead, he was logging my requirements in his mind, translating them into manoeuvres to be executed. I could telclass="underline" something was whirring back behind his eyes. For some reason I thought of scarab beetles, then of the word “scion”. The thing behind Naz’s eyes whirred for a while, then he asked:
“What tasks would you like them to perform?”
“There’ll be an old woman downstairs, immediately below me,” I said. “Her main duty will be to cook liver. Constantly. Her kitchen must face outwards to the courtyard, the back courtyard onto which my own kitchen and bathroom will face too. The smell of liver must waft upwards. She’ll also be required to deposit a bin bag outside her door as I descend the staircase, and to exchange certain words with me which I’ll work out and assign to her.”
“Understood,” said Naz. “Who next?”
“There’ll also be-what does the word ‘scion’ mean?”
“I don’t know,” Naz said. “Let’s find out. I’ll contact a colleague and tell him to look it up.”
He took a tiny mobile from his pocket, switched it on and composed a text message. The phone beeped as he typed each letter in. He laid the phone down on the table top and let it send its message. I pictured his office again: the blue and red Tupperware in- and out-trays, the glass inner walls, the carpets. I traced a triangle in my mind up from our restaurant table to the satellite in space that would receive the signal, then back down to Time Control’s office where the satellite would bounce it. I remembered being buffeted by wind, the last full memory I have before the accident.
“There’ll also be,” I went on, “on the floor below this old lady, a pianist.”
“So who else lives on her floor?” Naz asked.
“No one,” I said. “No one specific, I mean. Just anonymous, vague neighbours.”
“These vague neighbours: they don’t have to be on parade? On, I mean? They can be off the whole time?”
“No,” I said. “All the…performers-no, not performers: that’s not the right word…the participants, the…staff…must be…I mean, we’ll need complete…jurisdiction over all the space.”
“But go on,” Naz said. “Sorry I interrupted you.”
“You did?” I asked him. I was slightly flustered now; I felt my tone was slipping. I thought of the last formal word I’d used and then repeated it, to bring my tone back up. “Well, yes: jurisdiction. On the floor below the liver lady, or perhaps two floors below, there has to be a pianist. He must be in his late thirties or early forties, bald on top with tufts at the side. Tall and pale. In the day he practises. The music has to waft up in the same way as the liver lady’s cooking smell does. As he’s practising he must occasionally make mistakes. When he makes a mistake he repeats the passage slowly, over and over again, slowing right down into the bit that he got wrong. Like a Land Rover slowing down for bumpy terrain-a set of potholes, say. Then in the afternoons he teaches children. At night he composes. Sometimes he gets angry with…”
Naz’s mobile gave out a loud double beep. I stopped. Naz picked it up and pressed the “enter” button.
“Heir or descendant,” he read. “From the Middle English sioun and the Old French sion: shoot or twig. First citation 1848. Oxford English Dictionary.”
“Interesting,” I said. I took a sip of my mineral water and thought of the scarab beetle again. “Anyway,” I continued after a moment, setting the glass down, “this guy sometimes gets angry with another person who I’ll need, this motorbike enthusiast who tinkers with his bike out in the courtyard. Fixes it and cleans it, takes it apart, puts it back together again. When he has the motor on, the pianist gets angry.”
Naz processed this one for a while. His eyes went vacant while the thing behind them whirred, processing. I waited till the eyes told me to carry on.
“Then there’s a concierge,” I said. “I haven’t got her face yet-but I’ve got her cupboard. And some other people. But you get the idea.”
“Yes, I get it,” Naz said. “But where will you be while they’re performing their tasks-when they’re in on mode.”
“I shall move throughout the space,” I said, “as I see fit. We’ll concentrate on different bits at different times. Different locations, different moments. Sometimes I’ll want to be passing the liver lady as she puts her rubbish out. Sometimes I’ll want to be out by the motorbike. Sometimes the two at once: we can pause one scene and I’ll run up or down the stairs to be inside the other. Or a third. The combinations are endless.”