After a two-week or however-long-it-was course, no one thought visitors would have metabolised the deep prediscursive instinct for our borders that Besź and Ul Qomans have, to have picked up real rudiments of unseeing. But we did insist that they acted as if they had. We, and the authorities of Ul Qoma, expected strict overt decorum, interacting with, and indeed obviously noticing, our crosshatched neighbouring city-state not at all.
While, or as, sanctions for breach are severe (the two cities depend on that), breach must be beyond reasonable doubt. We all suspect that, while we are long-expert in unseeing it, tourists to the Old Besźel ghetto are surreptitiously noticing Ul Qoma’s glass-fronted Yal Iran Bridge, which in literal topology abuts it. Look up at the ribbon-streaming balloons of Besźel’s Wind-Day parade, they doubtless can’t fail (as we can) to notice the raised teardrop towers of Ul Qoma’s palace district, next to them though a whole country away. So long as they do not point and coo (which is why except in rare exceptions no foreigners under eighteen are granted entry) everyone concerned can indulge the possibility that there is no breach. It is that restraint that the pre-visa training teaches, rather than a local’s rigorous unseeing, and most students have the nous to understand that. We all, Breach included, give the benefit of the doubt to visitors when possible.
In the mirror of the car I saw Mr. Geary watch a passing truck. I unsaw it because it was in Ul Qoma.
His wife and he murmured to each other occasionally—my English or my hearing was not good enough to tell what they said. Mostly they sat in silence, each alone, looking out of windows on either side of the car.
Shukman was not at his laboratory. Perhaps he knew himself and how he would seem to those visiting the dead. I would not want to be met by him in these circumstances. Hamzinic led us to the storage room. Her parents moaned in perfect time as they entered and saw the shape below the sheet. Hamzinic waited with silent respect while they prepared, and when her mother nodded he showed Mahalia’s face. Her parents moaned again. They stared at her, and after long seconds her mother touched her face.
“Oh, oh yes that’s her,” Mr. Geary said. He cried. “That’s her, yes, that’s my daughter,” as if we were asking formal identification of him, which we were not. They had wanted to see her. I nodded as if that were helpful to us and glanced at Hamzinic, who replaced the sheet and made himself busy as we led Mahalia’s parents away.
“I DO WANT TO, to go to Ul Qoma,” Mr. Geary said. I was used to hearing that little stress on the verb from foreigners: he felt strange using it. “I’m sorry, I know it’s probably going to be … to be hard to organise but, I want to see, where she …”
“Of course,” I said.
“Of course,” Corwi said. She was keeping up with a reasonable amount of the English, and spoke occasionally. We were eating lunch with the Gearys at the Queen Czezille, a comfortable enough hotel with which the Besź Police had a long-standing arrangement. Its staff were experienced in providing the chaperoning, almost surreptitious imprisonment, that unqualified visitors required.
James Thacker, some middle-ranking twenty-eight-or –nine-year-old at the US embassy, had joined us. He spoke occasionally to Corwi in excellent Besź. The dining room looked out at the northern tip of Hustav Isle. Riverboats went by (in both cities). The Gearys picked at their peppercorned fish.
“We suspected that you might like to visit your daughter’s place of work,” I said. “We’ve been in discussion with Mr. Thacker and his counterparts in Ul Qoma for the paperwork to get you through Copula Hall. A day or two I think is all.” Not an embassy, in Ul Qoma, of course: a sulky US Interests section.
“And … you said that this is, this is for the Breach now?” Mrs. Geary said. “You said it won’t be the Ul Qomans investigating it but it’ll be with this Breach, yes?” She stared at me with tremendous mistrust. “So when do we talk to them?”
I glanced at Thacker. “That will not happen,” I said. “The Breach is not like us.”
Mrs. Geary stared at me. “‘Us’ the … the policzai ?” she said.
I had meant the “us” to include her. “Well, among other things, yes. It… they aren’t like the police in Besźel or in Ul Qoma.”
“I don’t—”
“Inspector Borlú, I’ll be happy to explain this,” Thacker said. He hesitated. He wanted me to go. Any explanation carried out in my presence would have to be moderately polite: alone with other Americans he could stress to them how ridiculous and difficult these cities were, how sorry he and his colleagues were for the added complications of a crime occurring in Besźel, and so on. He could insinuate. It was an embarrassment, an antagonism to have to deal with a dissident force like Breach.
“I don’t know how much you know about Breach, Mr. and Mrs. Geary, but it is … it isn’t like other powers. You have some sense of its… capabilities? The Breach is … It has unique powers. And it’s, ah, extremely secretive. We, the embassy, have no contacts with … any representative of Breach. I do realise how strange that must sound, but… I can assure you Breach’s record in the prosecution of criminals is, ah, ferocious. Impressive. We will receive word of its progress and of whatever action it takes against whoever it finds responsible.”
“Does that mean …?” Mr. Geary said. “They have the death penalty here, right?”
“And in Ul Qoma?” his wife said.
“Sure,” Thacker said. “But that’s not really at issue. Mr. and Mrs. Geary, our friends in Besźel and the Ul Qoma authorities are about to invoke Breach to deal with your daughter’s murder, so Besź laws and Ul Qoman laws are kind of irrelevant. The, ah, sanctions available to Breach are pretty limitless.”
“Invoke?” said Mrs. Geary.
“There are protocols,” I said. “To be followed. Before Breach’ll manifest to take care of this.”
Mr. Geary: “What about the trial?”
“That will be in camera,” I said. “Breach … tribunals,” I had tried out decisions and actions in my head, “are secret.”
“We won’t testify? We won’t see?” Mr. Geary was aghast. This must all have been explained previously, but you know. Mrs. Geary was shaking her head in anger, but without her husband’s surprise.
“I’m afraid not,” Thacker said. “It is a unique situation here. I can pretty much guarantee you, though, that whoever did this will not only be caught but, be, ah, brought to pretty severe justice.” One could almost pity Mahalia Geary’s killer. I did not.
“But that’s—”
“I know, Mrs. Geary, I’m truly sorry. There are no other posts like this in the service. Ul Qoma and Besźel and Breach … These are unique circumstances.”
“Oh, God. You know, it’s… it’s all, this is all the stuff Mahalia was into,” Mr. Geary said. “The city, the city, the other city. Besźel”—Bezzel , he said it—“and Ul Qoma. And or seen it.” I didn’t understand that.
“Or seen ee,” Mrs. Geary said. I looked up. “It’s not Orsinnit, it’s Orciny, honey.”
Thacker pouted polite incomprehension and shook his head in question.
“What’s that, Mrs. Geary?” I said. She fiddled with her bag. Corwi quietly took out a notebook.
“This is all this stuff Mahalia was into,” Mrs. Geary said. “It’s what she was studying. She was going to be a doctor of it.” Mr. Geary grimace-smiled, indulgent, proud, bewildered. “She was doing real well. She told us a little bit about it. It sounds like that Orciny was like the Breach.”