The City & the City - China Mieville [121]
“Ashil, for Christ’s sake listen to me. Listen to me. You think this is coincidence? Come on. Ashil, don’t open that door. You think we get to this, you think we figure this out, get this far and all of a sudden there’s a fucking uprising? Someone’s doing this, Ashil. To get you and all the Breach out and away from them.
“How did you find out about which companies were here when? The nights Mahalia delivered.”
He was motionless. “We’re Breach,” he said eventually. “We can do whatever we need …”
“Damn it, Ashil. I’m not some breacher for you to scare; I need to know. How do you investigate?”
At last: “Taps. Informants.” Glance up at the window, at a welling-up of the crisis sound. He waited by the door for more from me.
“Agents or systems in offices in Besźel and Ul Qoma tell you what you need to know, right? So someone somewhere was going through databases trying to find out who was where, when, in the Besź Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s been red-flagged, Ashil. You sent someone looking, and them pulling up files has been seen. What better evidence do you need that we’re onto something? You’ve seen the unifs. They’re nothing. Besźel and Ul Qoma, doesn’t make a difference, they’re a tiny bunch of dewy-eyed punks. There’s more agents than agitators; someone’s given an order. Someone’s engineered this because they’ve realised we’re onto them.
“Wait,” I said. “The lockdown … It’s not just Copula Hall, right? All borders to everywhere are closed, and no flights in or out, right?”
“BesźAir and Illitania are grounded. The airports aren’t taking incoming traffic.”
“What about private flights?”
“… The instruction’s the same, but they’re not under our authority like the national carriers, so it’s a bit more—”
“That’s what this is. You can’t lock them down, not in time. Someone’s getting out. We have to get to the Sear and Core building.”
“That’s where—”
“That’s where what’s happening’s happening. This …” I pointed at the window. We heard the shattering of glass, the shouts, the frenetics of vehicles in panicked rush, the fight sounds. “This is a decoy.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
IN THE STREETS we went through the last throes, the nerve twitches of a little revolution that had died before it was born, and had not known it. Those dying flails remained dangerous, though, and we were in a soldierly way. No curfew could contain this panic.
People were running, in both cities, along the street in front of us while the barks of public announcements in Besź and Illitan warned them this was a Breach lockdown. Windows broke. Some figures I saw run did so with more giddiness than terror. Not unifs, too small and too aimless: teenagers throwing stones, in their most transgressive act ever, little hurled breaches breaking glass in the city they did not live or stand in. An Ul Qoman fire crew sped in its bleating engine the length of the road, towards where the night sky glowed. A Besź wagon followed seconds behind it: they were still trying to maintain their distinctions, one fighting the fire in one part of the conjoined facade, the other in the other.
Those kids had better get out of the street fast, because Breach were everywhere. Unseen by most still out that night, maintaining their covert methods. Running I saw other Breach moving in what could pass as the urban panic of citizens of Besźel and Ul Qoma but was a somewhat different motion, a more purposeful, predatory motion like Ashil’s and mine. I could see them because of recent practice, as they could see me.
We saw a unif gang. It was shocking to me even then after days of interstitial life to see them running together, from both chapters, in clothes which despite their transnational punk-and-rocker jackets and patches clearly marked them, to those attuned to urban semiosis, as from, whatever their desire, either Besźel or Ul Qoma. Now they