‘And where do men fit into all this?’
‘Oh, they don’t try to fit us in. They just set us a good example. And we integrate our activities and interests as a subordinate, servicing part of this community, just as traditionally women’s work has serviced the masculine economy – in fact, that’s still how many of the women here earn money outside: as teachers, nurses, secretaries—’
‘Bank tellers?’
‘I think that, too, yes.’
‘Sounds a bit sexist to me.’
Anderson laughed. ‘Now that’s a word I haven’t heard in a long time.’
They entered a large, low room, almost a factory floor. Dozens of women worked intently at sewing-machines. A few of them were obviously making clothes, but even Kohn could see that some of the items being made from vast pieces of thin silk had to be something else. He indicated them with his head as they walked along the side of the room. At the same time he tried to see if Cat were among the women there, but – as far as a quick glance could tell – she wasn’t.
‘Pavilions, canopies,’ Anderson explained. ‘Very popular at society garden parties.’
Pavilions? Moh ran some of the shapes through again in his head, then left something at the back of his mind to figure them out. There was another thing that didn’t quite fit here. The ideas that Anderson had expounded struck him as too daft and too sensible at the same time: the femininists were giving some very old-fashioned views a subversive twist, but the tenets Anderson had expressed lacked the seductively counterfactual gormlessness of ideology. (Men are free. Men are equal. Men are such beasts.) Or perhaps Moh was just overestimating the human species: ‘If there’s a folly unvoiced,’ his father had used to say, ‘some little sect will emerge to voice it.’
A woman fell into step with them. She introduced herself as Valery Sharp and described herself as the block administrator. She was small – petite, Kohn mentally corrected himself – and pretty, with the glamorized hausfrau look of some ancient advertisement for detergent: gingham dress, floral-print apron, blonde curls held back with a starched cotton kerchief. She sent Stuart off to get coffee for the lady in the truck and showed Kohn into her office, a small room off the workshop area.
‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ she remarked brightly, closing the door. She sat down behind a desk and invited Kohn to a chair. ‘Someday all offices will be like this.’
The desk looked more like a dressing-table. It had a frilled valance around it. The frills had frills. The chair was swathed in fabric tied with bows; the white wallpaper was sprigged with pink rosebuds; the air was thick with jasmine potpourri. Kohn felt as if he’d stepped into her bedroom. Goddess knew what that was like.
‘It would make a change,’ he said truthfully. He could imagine the entire planet turned over to this sort of taste: roses round every door, perfume on every breeze, men and machines devoted to providing the basic materials for women to endlessly titivate and prettify and tart up…He really should give more of his money to the space movement.
Valery smiled wryly. ‘It gets me like that, too, sometimes,’ she said.
Kohn looked at her, puzzled at this admission. He was reluctant to reveal that he knew there was some connection between this place and the ANR.
Valery looked at him very directly and added, slowly and distinctly: ‘Civis Britannicus sum.’
Kohn stared at her, astounded. The phrase wasn’t exactly a secret password but it was the next best thing: he’d never heard anyone say it without meaning it. It affirmed a continuing sense of Republican citizenship, and there were places where it could get you shot.
‘Gens una sumus,’ he responded. His mouth was dry, his voice thick. ‘We are one people.’ It drew a sharper line than all the manufactured divisions of the Kingdom, and put the speaker on the other side of it.
‘So what’s all this—?’ he began.
And then, suddenly, he saw it: the pieces fitted together – literally.
‘Parachutes!’ he said triumphantly. ‘Microlites, hang-gliders…’
Valery’s eyes narrowed. ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘How did you figure that out?’
Kohn shrugged. ‘With my good right brain.’
She still looked puzzled, but as if she believed him.
‘OK, Kohn. You know Cat is here?’
He nodded. ‘You picked a pretty roundabout way of telling me.’
‘Yes,’ said Valery. ‘There was a good reason for that. It’s the same reason that the ANR is staying off the nets as far as possible: they’re no longer certain the systems are secure.’
‘What makes them unsure?’
‘I don’t know,’ Valery said impatiently. ‘What I do know is this: we received an urgent message through…channels…to persuade Catherin Duvalier to come and stay with us, and to fetch you here. Donovan is out to get you, and not just for this stupid ransom affair. Now, I don’t know what this means, but I’ve been told to tell you that Donovan knows who you are, and so does Stasis. They’re working together now. Donovan’s challenge was an attempt to lure you to the hospital, where he could find you – fortunately we got Catherin out of the way first. We did send a girl to see you, but she wasn’t able to make a sufficiently secure contact.’
‘Ah! At Brent Cross?’ Kohn snorted. ‘It only made me more paranoid.’
‘She wasn’t very experienced, and we may have overstressed the caution,’ Valery admitted. ‘Anyway, now you are here, we can sort out the ransom business. That won’t stop Donovan, I’m afraid, but at least he’ll have to call off his hue and cry against you.’
‘Can you do that without him knowing where I am?’
‘Certainly,’ Valery said with a smile. ‘Through the Body Bank, remember? All we need is your digital signature, and Catherin’s. Our bank teller will witness it and everything will be legally in the clear.’
‘You’ve just said you don’t trust the nets any more.’
‘We’re talking about different levels,’ Valery said vaguely, or with intentional obscurity.
‘OK. And then what?’
Valery fixed him with a severe look. ‘The ANR,’ she said firmly, ‘is very anxious that you should go immediately to a controlled zone. That’s all I know.’
‘Somebody else suggested I do that,’ Kohn said. ‘I’ve been considering it. It’d be difficult, seeing as the ANR have put the fear of God into the Hanoverians.’
‘We can arrange safe passage,’ Valery said. ‘I’ll tell you about it later. Meanwhile, let’s get this mess sorted out, all right?’
Kohn agreed almost absentmindedly, preoccupied by the implications of what he’d just learned. Valery tilted up a desk terminal – it was shaped like a mounted mirror – and Moh jacked in his computer and passed his digital signature into the handover document. Valery messaged Cat, and after a moment the document showed that her dig-sig was in as well. Kohn watched as the Body Bank registered the transaction. He now had a credit – which he doubted he’d ever collect – of five hundred marks with the Carbon Life Alliance.
The consequences of the deal rippled outwards through databases, and in less than a minute Catherin’s name was cleared and Donovan’s case against Kohn was dropped. Querulous, disappointed queries instantly began to flash around the low-life newsgroups. Kohn shook his head and caught Valery in the same gesture. They shared a disillusioned smile.
Valery was about to fold away the terminal. Then something on the screen caught her attention. She raised an eyebrow at Kohn.
‘It seems Catherin would like to see you.’