Of course, any sense of being free soon passed off. He’d broken free of captors who meant him and the Empire no good, and who had made their feelings plain by killing Simeon, or providing nothing that a civilised man would regard as medical assistance. But what next? If he’d meekly waited for Tarquin to come in and settle things, he might by now have been heading back to his lodgings. The government here needed someone to convey its bizarre wishes to Constantinople. Why should these people not simply have put him alone on whatever vehicle they’d had in mind for the midnight exit from London?
Too late to worry about this. There were two killings that stood between him and that earlier possibility. And Michael had been sent here with Simeon to get more than yet another threat of conquest for the Empire. The Greek doctor had been about as hostile as anyone could be. But the driver had been half-Greek, and he’d spoken of others who wanted to help. Michael pulled up the collar of his shirt and fumbled with the unfamiliar fastenings that would close it about his neck. His duty was to get to that driver, or to some other Greek, and do whatever he could to arrange for the defence of the Empire. He thought again of what Tarquin had said about a future that was plainly in the past for these people. Sooner or later, the Turks would pour across the frontier and seize the heartland of the Empire—the place where most of its food was grown, the place where most of its fighting men were born. And, somewhere in their unstoppable path, was the family estate of which Michael would, assuming an avoidance of catastrophe, in time become hereditary lord. He would do his duty to country and to family. So far as might be possible, he’d also avenge his uncle’s death.
He looked at the thin stream of pedestrians who went about their late business. From overhead came the sound of another flying machine. This one was equipped with a powerful light that cast its shining glow across the road and its pedestrians. Was it there to keep order? Was it there to look for him? He couldn’t say. But it reminded him that he was a lone fugitive, in a city he didn’t pretend to understand, and with no conceivable plan for making contact with anyone who even might be inclined to give help that could be of use.
As the overhead light moved in his direction, he dodged into another darkened side street. He waited for the loud noise to move away. With a last flash of light on the pavement, it rose higher into the sky and moved towards a main junction far ahead. Uncertain again, Michael leaned against the smooth bricks of a wall. Now it was different authorities he’d be meeting, it was possible for him to walk out into the street. He could stop everyone he met, and say the words “James Duffy.” Sooner or later, that would get him back into custody. Since his flurry of bold resolution, his heart had been steadily sinking. If all he had to give the Emperor was an offer of genteel conquest, was that not something he should accept? What on earth was he doing out here but delaying the inevitable?
He swallowed and stood up straight. He would have gone back into the flow of pedestrians, when he heard a single, terrified cry. It came from the impenetrable gloom of the side street. It was impossible to say anything in this darkness. But he had the impression that the cry had come from a narrow turning half way along the side street.
Not bothering to think matters through, he took a step in the direction of the cry.
Chapter Seventeen
After a loud splutter, the telescreen in Leicester Square came on with the afternoon electricity. In need of a rest from trying to run away on four inch stilettos, Jennifer put her carrier bags down on the reasonably clean pavement and looked round. It had, the previous afternoon, been easy to get away from Radleigh’s men. All she’d had to do was turn on the tears, and then ask the humpy man about transport reform back in the days when there was enough to be worth reforming. It was while he and his friend explained for a second time about the award of unified road and rail franchises that she’d twisted loose from their grip and made a dash for Trafalgar Square. She’d plunged at once into the swarms of the disabled and therefore starving poor, and stepped out on the other side into a rickshaw that had taken her up Charing Cross Road.
It had been so easy that coming out again from the Indian’s rooming house and brothel hadn’t worried her. She could have sheltered there in the much finer room she’d got by handing over one of her silver pennies. Instead, the smell, and the need to try and think out her next move, had brought her out for an afternoon of recreational shopping. All had gone well until she decided to check out the security surrounding Charing Cross Railway Station. One look at the armoured cars and the tight security barriers, and she’d turned to go back to the streets where everything could be bought without ration coupons. Beside the burned out shell of the National Gallery, she’d come face to face again with the two men Radleigh had set on her the day before. Since then, it had been hard going on these heels to outrun their firm but cautious pursuit. At last, after a detour though a Chinatown where most restaurants and shops had somehow managed to stay in business, she was back in Leicester Square.
Shifting position to try taking pressure off the blisters coming up on her right foot, she watched a woman with an orange face smile down at the gathering crowd and begin today’s catalogue of lies. “The authorities took swift and effective action to disperse the protesters,” she said with bright assurance. A picture of villainous brown faces spread over the screen. “There was minimal disturbance to local communities, and no casualties were reported.” Before the newsreader’s face came back into view, there was a shout of approval and some waving of fists from a crowd that had no love of Moslem troublemakers. Her smile broadened to an idiot grin as she moved to a story of how a dog left behind in Surrey had followed the exact path taken by its owners when they were relocated to work in a Wimbledon tin plate factory. No mention how a family pet had survived The Hunger, let alone any kind of journey. Instead, there was a fade to what must have been footage reused from the Olden Days. Jennifer had seen enough. She picked up her bags and continued on her journey towards the Haymarket. She’d covered fifty yards in shoes she should never have tried on, let alone bought, before the yapping of the dog and the cries of its owners had given way to another story about some new hormone that could make sheep grow to the size of cows without a proportionate increase in feeding.
Her heart skipped a beat as two policemen stepped into view. “Got your tickets?” one of them rasped. He cocked his rifle and struck and aggressive pose. But all this was for the shabby workmen who’d been drifting along in front of Jennifer. In her clothes, she was above demands for identification. She walked past the officers. One of them clicked his tongue loudly. The other gave a slow wolf whistle. She tried to keep the sound of her high heels on the pavement to a steady clicking as she walked out of the square and turned left into a road where all the shops were open, and where the armed guards outside every one of the shops had no interest in those who were merely passing by.
There was the boom of another telescreen in Piccadilly Circus. She could hear the androgynous voice of the Government’s Chief Scientific Officer. What he was saying she couldn’t hear. But it had the soothing quality you associated with a particularly insane falsehood. The last time Jennifer had taken the trouble to listen, he’d been describing some anomaly in the orbit of the moons about Jupiter that might indicate a return to “Normality.” That had been two months before. The world since then had stayed obstinately as it was. Perhaps he was now admitting that summer had come a little early, or that this was, at least, the hottest March on record.