Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [95]
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