He found he had his eyes closed, his fingers crossed.
Ping. And there it was, on twenty pages of spreadsheet: dates, times, companies, goods sent. He excluded finished garments, reducing it to five pages, and tabbed down through the list of fabric sales. He was beginning to think he might as well have called up the Yellow Pages for dressmakers when he noticed – among all the Lauras and Angelas and Blisses and Bonnys – a customer called the Women’s Peace Community.
Three consignments in the past month, all consisting of tens, no, hundreds of metres of fine silk. One order still outstanding: the fabric had just come in by air, and awaited delivery. The order had been placed four days ago, in the morning. When he’d encountered the Black Planner.
Yee-ha!
As he stared at the line of information it began to blink. A message came up.
‘CROSS-REFERENCE ON WOMEN’S PEACE COMMUNITY EXISTS. DISPLAY?’
A big Y to that. The pages rippled as the program followed pointers through the Collective’s databases. Then the scene cleared to display a videophone message that had been waiting in the Pending file since the day before yesterday.
The phone’s flat screen popped up in the middle of the virtual scene. As the picture stabilized Jordan thought, for a startled moment, that he was seeing an interior view in Beulah City itself: a parlour with overelaborate furnishings and drapes; two women in long, likewise overelaborate dresses, all petticoats and pinafores. The woman in the foreground sat primly, hands folded in her lap, facing the camera. The other sat on a sofa behind and to the left, paying no attention to the call; she was concentrating on a piece of needlework, her fair curls falling forward in front of her face.
‘Felix Dzerzhinsky Workers’ Defence Collective?’ the first woman asked, the words sounding incongruous. She nodded at the confirmation. ‘Good. We require professional advice on neighbourhood security, and we understand that you have some experience in this field. Please call us as soon as possible. Thank you.’
She reached forward to sign off, and just as she did so the woman in the background looked up. She looked straight at the camera from across the room, brushing her hair back from her forehead with her wrist.
Jordan jumped at the shock of recognition.
It was Cat.
The picture clicked off.
Jordan passed a note into Mary’s work-space, asking her to take a break. She did, after another strenuous minute. Jordan ran the message for her.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘That’s Cat! At the end there.’
Mary frowned. ‘Let me see that again.’ This time she magnified the last section. ‘Yeah, well it certainly looks like her, but…’
‘You’d never expect to see her dolled up like that?’ Jordan smiled to see he was right. ‘It’s the way she’s pushing her hair back. It’s like the picture in Moh’s room, shows her doing just the same thing. Except in the picture it’s a spanner she’s working with, not a needle.’
‘Well, Jordan, I don’t know how you think we live, but I’ve never been in Moh’s room,’ Mary said with a giggle. ‘You’ll have to show it to Moh.’
Jordan was about to do that when he remembered what the message was actually about, and how he’d found it.
‘Let me just fix something up first,’ he said.
‘Yeah, that’s Catherin all right,’ Moh said. He saved the image from his glades and cleared the view, turning his attention to the Tinkerbell-sized fetches of Jordan and Mary above his hand-phone. ‘Well spotted, Jordan. I might have not have recognized her myself if it weren’t for that thing with the hair. Cat disguised as a lady – that’s a laugh.’
‘I think you were meant to spot it,’ Jordan said. ‘You or one of the comrades. They’re telling you: Cat’s here, come and get her!’
‘So why not call us and say that? Who are these people, anyway?’
‘Feminists – femininists,’ Mary corrected herself. ‘Women’s Peace Community, some kind of sweetness and light outfit—’
‘Yes!’ Moh shouted. ‘The Body Bank!’
Janis, who like him was prone, looking at the phone display, winced as the sound filled the narrow volume they lay in.
‘Sorry, Janis.’
‘What’s that about the Body Bank?’ Mary asked.
‘There’s a teller at the Body Bank at Brunel University – she’s a femininist. Only one I’ve ever met, as far as I know…’
‘It’s been getting quite fashionable recently,’ Janis interjected.
‘OK, interesting. Anyway, I remember this lady noticing that Cat wasn’t included in the deal over the crank bomb team. She might have followed it up.’
‘That’s possible,’ Jordan said. ‘But why should Cat go there?’
Mary shook her head. Moh shrugged.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ said Janis. They all looked at her. ‘Cat had just been thoroughly shafted in this game of soldiers. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if she wanted out, wanted at least a bit of peace and quiet. Even if it did mean having to sit and stitch. In fact, especially. Soothes the mind.’ She rolled over and laughed. ‘Try it sometime, guys and gals.’
‘Sanctuary,’ Moh said. ‘OK. That makes sense, I guess. Just as well you noticed the message.’
‘It wasn’t an accident,’ Jordan said carefully. ‘It wasn’t the search for Cat that brought it up, it was the…Beulah City follow-up.’
‘But why—?’
Moh was about to ask why the ANR should have any connection with this Women’s Peace Community when he remembered that Mary wasn’t in on the whole story. ‘Uh, what’ll we do, call them back?’
‘I already have,’ Mary said. ‘Didn’t say anything about you, just said we’d send someone over today.’
Moh turned to Janis. ‘You game for this?’
‘Sure. Should get Donovan off our backs, at least.’
‘At least,’ Moh agreed. And maybe lead us to the ANR as well. ‘I’m thinking about how we’ll get there,’ he added. ‘Mass-transit might take us out of our insurance cover.’
‘That’s all OK,’ Jordan said. ‘I’ve set it up. They’re taking a delivery of silk from Beulah City –’ Jordan paused, as if to make sure Moh had got that point. ‘But it’s in a place that no driver from Beulah City would go.’
‘Not one of those terrible places, is it?’ Janis asked.
‘Oh, no,’ Jordan said.
Mary smiled impishly. ‘It’s a small semi-closed neighbourhood in the Stonewall Dykes,’ she explained.
‘I see,’ Moh said after a moment. ‘Major fire-and-brimstone target area. So how do we get there?’
‘The truck comes out of Beulah City, goes to a pick-up point where it’s handed over – Mary’s got the map – and you drive it the rest of the way. It’s all in the name of a dummy company I’ve created.’
‘Sounds safe enough,’ Moh said. He had a thought. ‘Not a women-only area, is it?’
Jordan turned to Mary with a baffled gesture.
‘It’s OK,’ Mary said. ‘I’ve checked. They have no objection to men. In their place.’
‘This community is sounding more sensible all the time,’ Janis remarked, running a possessive hand down Moh’s back. He turned and grinned at her.
‘Hey, I’m quite used to being dominated by women.’
‘You should be so lucky,’ Mary said. ‘Right, here’s the details. Jordan’s made all the arrangements.’ She did something out of view, and streets and times appeared on the phone screen.
‘And get up, you two,’ she added, just before she and Jordan vanished. ‘It’s a fine afternoon.’
There wasn’t room to stand up in the double bed-cell they’d rented, so it took them a while. They had to get their clothes on, lie face-down and slither under their packs, then crawl backwards out of the hatch and down a ten-metre ladder to the ground.