The City & the City - China Mieville [100]
“Corwi, I owe you, I owe you.”
“Do you think I don’t know that, boss? It’s you, your guy Dhatt, and his ahem ‘colleague,’ right? I’ll be waiting.”
“Bring your ID and be ready to back me up with Immigration. Who else? Who else knows?”
“No one. I’m your designated driver, again, then. What time?”
The question, what is the best way to disappear? There must be a graph, a carefully plotted curve. Is something more invisible if there are no others around, or if it is one of many? “Not too late. Not like two in the morning.”
“I’m glad to fucking hear it.”
“We’d be the only ones there. But not in the middle of the day either; there’s too much risk someone might know us or something.” After dark. “Eight,” I said. “Tomorrow evening.” It was winter and the nights came early. There would be crowds still, but in the dim colours of evening, sleepy. Easy not to see.
IT WAS NOT ALL LEGERDEMAIN; there were tasks we should and did perform. Reports of progress to finesse, and families to contact. I watched and with occasional over-the-shoulder suggestions helped Dhatt construct a letter saying polite and regretful nothing to Mr. and Mrs. Geary, whose main liaison now was with the Ul Qoma militsya. It was not a good feeling of power, to be present a ghost in that holding message, knowing them, seeing them from inside the words which would be like one-way glass, so they could not look back in and see me, one of the writers.
I told Dhatt a place—I did not know the address, had to describe it in vague topography, which he recognised—a piece of parkland walking distance from where Yolanda hid, to meet me at the end of the following day. “Anyone asks, tell them I’m working from the hotel. Tell them about all the ridiculous paperwork hoops they make us jump through in Besźel, that keep me busy.”
“It’s all we ever fucking talk about, Tyad.” Dhatt could not stay in one place, he was so anxious, so frenetic with lack of trust, in anything, so troubled. He did not know where to look. “Blame you or not, I’m going to be on school liaison for the rest of my fucking career.”
We had agreed there was a good possibility we would not hear from Bowden again, but I got a call on poor Yallya’s phone half an hour after midnight. I was sure it was Bowden though he said nothing. He called again just before seven the next morning.
“You sound bad, Doctor.”
“What’s happening?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Are you going? Is Yolanda with you? Is she coming?”
“You have one shot, Doctor.” I scribbled times on my notepad. “If you’re not going to let me come for you. You want out, be outside the main traffic gate of Copula Hall at seven p.m.”
I disconnected. I tried to make notes, plans on paper, could not. Bowden did not call me back. I kept the phone on the table or in my hand throughout my early breakfast. I did not check out of the hotel—no telegraphing of movements. I sorted through my clothes for anything I could not afford to leave, and there was nothing. I carried my illegal volume of Between the City and the City, and that was all.
I took almost the whole day to get to Yolanda and Aikam’s hide. My last day in Ul Qoma. I took taxis in stages to the ends of the city. “How long you staying?” the last driver asked me.
“A couple of weeks.”
“You like it here,” he said, in enthusiastic beginner’s Illitan. “Best city in the world.” He was Kurdish.
“Show me your favourite parts of town, then. You don’t get trouble?” I said. “Not everyone’s welcoming to foreigners, I heard …”
He made a pooh-poohing noise. “Are fools all over everywhere, but is the best city.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Four years and some. I was one year in camp …”
“A refugee camp?”
“Yeah, in the camp, and three years study for Ul Qoma citizenship. Speaking Illitan and learning, you know, not to, you know to unsee the other place, so not to breach.”
“Did you ever think of going to Besźel?”
Another snort. “What’s in Besźel? Ul Qoma is the best place.”
He took me first past the Orchidarium and the Xhincis Kann Stadium, a tourist