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By Root 1011 0

fairs with foreign businesses, and that counted out Buric, who had had some success overseeing such events, Nyisemu, and even Syedr. These of course were sacrosanct occurrences. That Katrinya had meetings with diplomats. That Hurian, commissioner of the Ul Qoma Exchange, an impossible-to-reschedule meeting with the Ul Qoman health minister, and very et cetera, and there would be no special meeting. The young dead woman would have to remain inadequately investigated a few more days, until the gathering, at which time, between the indispensable business of adjudication on any dissensus, of the management of shared resources—a few of the larger grid power lines, drains and sewage, the most intricately crosshatched buildings—I would be given my twenty-minute slot to make my case.

Perhaps some people knew the details of these strictures, but the specifics of the Oversight Committee’s machinations had never been of interest. I had presented to them twice before, long before. The committee’s makeup had been different then, of course. Both times, the Besź and Ul Qoman sides almost bristled at each other: relations had been worse. Even when we had been noncombatant supporters of opposing sides in conflicts, such as during the Second World War—not Ul Qoma’s finest hour—the Oversight Committee had had to convene. What uncomfortable occasions those must have been. It had not met, however, as I recalled from my lessons, during our two brief and disastrous open wars against each other. In any case, now our two nations were, in rather a stilted fashion, supposed to be effecting some sort of rapprochement.

Neither of these previous cases I had presented had been so urgent. The first time was a contraband breach, as most such referrals are. A gang in western Besźel had started selling drugs purified from Ul Qoman medicines. They were picking up boxes near the city’s outskirts, from near the end of the east-west axis of the crossroad railway lines that split Ul Qoma into four quadrants. An Ul Qoman contact was dumping the boxes from the trains. There is a short stretch in the north of Besźel where the tracks themselves crosshatch with and serve also as Ul Qoman tracks; and the miles of north-seeking railroads leading out of both city-states, joining us to our northern neighbours through the mountain gash, are also shared, to our borders, where they become a single line in existential legality as well as mere metal fact: up to those national edges, the track was two juridical railroads. In various of those places the boxes of medical supplies were dropped in Ul Qoma, and stayed there, abandoned trackside in Ul Qoman scrub: but they were picked up in Besźel, and that was breach.

We never observed our criminals taking them, but when we presented our evidence that that was the only possible source, the committee agreed and invoked Breach. That drug trade ended: the suppliers disappeared from the streets.

The second case was a man who had killed his wife and when we closed in on him, in stupid terror he breached—stepped into a shop in Besźel, changed his clothes, and emerged into Ul Qoma. He was by chance not apprehended in that instance, but we quickly realised what had happened. In his frantic liminality neither we nor our Ul Qoman colleagues would touch him, though we and they knew where he went, hiding in Ul Qoman lodgings. Breach took him and he was gone too.

This was the first time in a long time I had made this request. I put my evidence. I addressed myself as much, politely, to the Ul Qoman members as to the Besź. Also to the observing power that must, surely, invisibly have watched.

“She’s resident in Ul Qoma, not Besźel. Once we knew that we found her. Corwi did, I mean. She’d been there for more than two years. She’s a PhD student.”

“What’s she studying?” Buric said.

“She’s an archaeologist. Early history. She’s attached to one of the digs. It’s all in your folders.” A little ripple, differently iterated among the Besź and the Ul Qomans. “That’s how she got in, even with the blockade.” There were some loopholes and exceptions