“It isn’t possible,” Ashil said. “There is no way the head of Sear and Core, some outsider , could have constructed this … We’ve …” He listened, set his face. “We’ve lost avatars.” What a war, this now bloody war between those dedicated to bringing the cities together and the force charged with keeping them apart.
UNITY had been half written across the face of the Ungir Hall which was also the Sul Kibai Palace, so now in dripping paint the building said something nonsense. What passed as Besźel’s business districts were nowhere near the Ul Qoman equivalent. The headquarters of Sear and Core were on the banks of the Colinin, one of the few successes in the attempts to revivify Besźel’s dying dockside. We passed the dark water.
We both looked up at percussion in the otherwise empty locked-down sky. A helicopter the only thing in the air, backlit by its own powerful lights as it left us below.
“It’s them,” I said. “We’re too late.” But the copter was coming in from the west, towards the riverbank. It was not an exit; it was a pickup. “Come on.”
Even in such a distracting night Ashil’s driving prowess cowed me. He veered across the dark bridge, took a one-way total street in Besźel the wrong way, startling pedestrians trying to get out of the night, through a crosshatch plaza then a total Ul Qoma street. I was leaning to watch the helicopter descend into the roofscape by the river, half a mile ahead of us.
“It’s down,” I said. “Move.”
There was the reconfigured warehouse, the inflatable gasrooms of Ul Qoman buildings to either side of it. No one was in the square, but there were lights on throughout the Sear and Core building, despite the hour, and there were guards in the entrance. They came towards us aggressively when we entered. Marbled and fluorescently lit, the S&C logo in stainless steel and placed as if it were art on the walls, magazines and corporate reports made to look like magazines on tables by sofas.
“Get the fuck out,” a man said. Besź ex-military. He put his hand to his holster and led his men towards us. He came up short a moment later: he saw how Ashil moved.
“Stand down,” Ashil said, glowering to intimidate. “The whole of Besźel’s in Breach tonight.” He did not have to show his sigil. The men fell back. “Unlock the lift now, give me the keys to reach the helipad, and stand down. No one else comes in.”
If the security had been foreign, had come from Sear and Core’s home country, or been drafted in from its European or North American operations, they might not have obeyed. But this was Besźel and the security was Besź, and they did as Ashil said. In the elevator, he drew out his weapon. A big pistol of unfamiliar design. Its barrel encased, muzzled in some dramatic silencer. He worked the key the security had given us, to the corporate levels, all the way up.
THE DOOR OPENED onto gusts of hard cold air amid surrounds of vaulting roofs and antennae. The tethers of the Ul Qoman gasrooms, a few streets off the mirrored fronts of Ul Qoman businesses, the spires of temples in both cities, and there in the darkness and the wind ahead of us behind a thicket of safety rails the helipad. The dark vehicle waiting, its rotor turning very slowly, almost without noise. Gathered before it a group of men.
We could not hear much except the bass of the engine, the siren-infested putting down of unification riots all around us. The men by the helicopter did not hear us as we approached. We stayed close to cover. Ashil led me towards the aircraft, the gang who did not yet see us. There were four of them. Two were large and shaven-headed. They looked like ultranats: True Citizens on secret commission. They stood around a suited man I did not know and someone I could not see from the way he stood, in deep and animated conversation.
I heard nothing, but one of the men saw us. There was a commotion and they turned. From his cockpit the pilot of the helicopter swivelled the police-strength light he held. Just before it framed us the gathered men moved and I could see the last man, staring straight at me.
It was Mikhel Buric. The Social Democrat, the opposition, the other man on the Chamber of Commerce.
Blinded by the floodlight I felt Ashil grab me and pull me behind a thick iron ventilator pipe. There was a moment of dragged-out quiet. I waited for a shot but no one shot.
“Buric,” I said to Ashil. “Buric . I knew there was no way Syedr could do this.”
Buric was the contact man, the organiser. Who knew Mahalia’s predilections, who had seen her on her first visit to Besźel, when she angered everyone at the conference with her undergraduate dissidence. Buric the operator. He knew her work and what she wanted, that abhistory, the comforts of paranoia, a cosseting by the man behind the curtain. In the Chamber of Commerce as he was, he was in a position to provide it. To find an outlet for what she stole at his behest, for the invented benefit of Orciny.
“It was all geared stuff that got stolen,” I said. “Sear and Core are investigating the artefacts. This is a science experiment.”
It was his informers—he like all Besź politicians had them—who had told Buric that investigations had occurred into Sear and Core, that we were chasing down the truth. Perhaps he thought we had understood more than we had, would be shocked at how little of this we could have predicted. It would not take so much for a man in his position to order the government provocateurs in the poor foolish unificationists to begin their work, to forestall Breach so he and his collaborators could get away.
“They’re armed?” Ashil glanced out and nodded.
“Mikhel Buric?” I shouted. “Buric? What are True Citizens doing with a liberal sellout like you? You getting good soldiers like Yorj killed? Bumping off students you think are getting too close to your bullshit?”
“Piss off, Borlú,” he said. He did not sound angry. “We’re all patriots. They know my record.” A noise joined the noise of the night. The helicopter’s engine, speeding up.
Ashil looked at me and stepped out into full view.
“Mikhel Buric,” he said, in his frightening voice. He kept his gun unwavering and walked behind it, as if it led him, towards the helicopter. “You’re answerable to Breach. Come with me.” I followed him. He glanced at the man beside Buric.
“Ian Croft, regional head of CorIntech,” Buric said to Ashil. He folded his arms. “A guest here. Address your remarks to me. And fuck yourself.” The True Citizens had their own pistols up. Buric moved towards the helicopter.
“Stay where you are,” Ashil said. “You will step back,” he shouted at the True Citizens. “I am Breach.”
“So what?” Buric said. “I’ve spent years running this place. I’ve kept the unifs in line, I’ve been getting business for Besźel , I’ve been taking their damned gewgaws out from under Ul Qoman noses , and what do you do? You gutless Breach? You protect Ul Qoma.”
Ashil actually gaped a moment at that.
“He’s playing to them,” I whispered. “To the True Citizens.”
“Unifs have one thing right,” Buric said. “There’s only one city, and if it weren’t for the superstition and cowardice of the populace, kept in place by you goddamnedBreach , we’d all know there was only one city. And that city is called Besźel . And you’re telling patriots to obey you? I warned them, I warned my comrades you might turn up, despite it being made clear you have no business here.”