The City & the City - China Mieville [78]
Of course there would be paranoia, for a visitor to this city, where the locals would stare and stare furtively, where I would be watched by Breach, of which snatched glances would not feel like anything I had experienced.
My cell phone rang, later, while I was sleeping. It was my Besź phone, showing an international call. It would piss credit, but it was on the government.
“Borlú,” I said.
“Inspector…” Illitan accent.
“Who is this?”
“Borlú I don’t know why you … I can’t talk long. I … thank you.”
“Jaris.” I sat up, put my feet on the floor. The young unif. “It’s…”
“We’re not fucking comrades, you know.” He was not speaking in Old Illitan this time, but quickly in his own everyday language.
“Why would we be?”
“Right. I can’t stay on the line.”
“Okay.”
“You could tell it was me, couldn’t you? Who called you in Besźel.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Right. This call never fucking happened.” I said nothing. “Thanks for the other day,” he said. “For not saying. I met Marya when she came over here.” I had not given her that name for a while, but for the moment when Dhatt had questioned the unifs. “She told me she knew our brothers and sisters over the border; she’d worked with them. But she wasn’t one of us, you know.”
“I know. You set me on that track in Besźel …”
“Shut up. Please. I thought she was at first, but the stuff she was asking about, it was … She was into stuff you don’t even know about.” I would not preempt him. “Orciny.” He must have interpreted my silence as awe. “She didn’t give a shit about unification. She was putting everyone in danger so she could use our libraries and our contacts lists … I really liked her, but she was trouble. She only cared about Orciny.
“Borlú, she fucking found it, Borlú.
“Are you there? Do you understand? She found it…”
“How do you know?”
“She told me. None of the others knew. When we realised how … dangerous she was she was banned from meetings. They thought she was, like, a spy or something. She wasn’t that.”
“You stayed in touch with her.” He said nothing. “Why, if she was so …?
“I … she was …”
“Why’d you call me? In Besźel?”
“… She deserved better than a potter’s field.”
I was surprised he knew the term. “Were you together, Jaris?” I said.
“I hardly knew anything about her. Never asked. Never met her friends. We’re careful. But she told me about Orciny. Showed me all her notes about it. She was … Listen, Borlú, you won’t believe me but she’d made contact. There are places—”
“Dissensi?”
“No, shut up. Not disputed: places that everyone in Ul Qoma thinks are in Besźel, and everyone in Besźel thinks are in Ul Qoma. They’re not in either one. They’re Orciny. She found them. She told me she was helping.”
“Doing what?” I only spoke at last because the silence went on so long.
“I don’t know much. She was saving them. They wanted something. She said. Something like that. But when I said to her once ‘How d’you know Orciny’s on our side?’ she just laughed and said ‘I don’t, they’re not.’ She wouldn’t tell me a lot. I didn’t want to know. She didn’t talk about it much at all. I thought she might be crossing, through some of these places, but…”
“When did you last see her?”
“I don’t know. A few days before she … before. Listen, Borlú, this is what you need to know. She knew she was in trouble. She got really angry and upset when I said something about Orciny. The last time. She said I didn’t understand anything. She said something like she didn’t know if what she was doing was restitution or criminal.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. She said Breach was nothing. I was shocked. Can you imagine? She said everyone who knew the truth about Orciny was in danger. She said there weren’t many but anyone that did wouldn’t even know how much shit they were in, wouldn’t believe it. I said ‘Even me?’ she said ‘Maybe, I maybe already told you too much.’”
“What do you think it means?”
“What