I watched the local buildings’ numbers. They rose in stutters, interspersed with foreign alter spaces. In Besźel the area was pretty unpeopled, but not elsewhere across the border, and I had to unseeing dodge many smart young businessmen and –women. Their voices were muted to me, random noise. That aural fade comes from years of Besź care. When I reached the tar-painted front where Corwi waited with an unhappy-looking man, we stood together in a near-deserted part of Besźel city, surrounded by a busy unheard throng.
“Boss. This is Pall Drodin.”
Drodin was a tall and thin man in his late thirties. He wore several rings in his ears, a leather jacket with obscure and unmerited membership insignia of various military and other organisations on it, anomalously smart though dirty trousers. He eyed me unhappily, smoking.
He was not arrested. Corwi had not taken him in. I nodded a greeting to her, then turned around slowly 180 degrees and looked at the buildings around us. I focused only the Besź ones, of course.
“Breach?” I said. Drodin looked startled. So in truth did Corwi, though she covered it. When Drodin said nothing I said, “Don’t you think we’re watched by powers?”
“Yeah, no, we are.” He sounded resentful. I am sure he was. “Sure. Sure. You asking me where they are?” It is a more or less meaningless question but one that no Besź nor Ul Qoman can banish. Drodin did not look anywhere other than in my eyes. “You see the building over the road? The one that used to be a match factory?” A mural’s remains in scabs of paint almost a century old, a salamander smiling through its corona of flames. “You see stuff moving, in there. Stuff you know, like, comes and goes, like it shouldn’t.”
“So you can see them appear?” He looked uneasy again. “You think that’s where they manifest?”
“No no, but process of elimination.”
“Drodin, get in. We’ll be in in a second,” Corwi said. Nodded him in and he went. “What the fuck, boss?”
“Problem?”
“All this Breach shit.” She lowered her voice on Breach . “What are you doing?” I did not say anything. “I’m trying to establish a power dynamic here and I’m at the end of it, not Breach, boss. I don’t want that shit in the picture. Where the fuck you getting this spooky shit from?” When I still said nothing she shook her head and led me inside.
The Besźqoma Solidarity Front did not make much of an effort with their decor. There were two rooms, two and a half at generous count, full of cabinets and shelves stacked with files and books. In one corner wall space had been cleared and cleaned, it looked like, for backdrop, and a webcam pointed at it and an empty chair.
“Broadcasts,” Drodin said. He saw where I was looking. “Online.” He started to tell me a web address until I shook my head.
“Everyone else left when I came in,” Corwi told me.
Drodin sat down behind his desk in the back room. There were two other chairs in there. He did not offer them, but Corwi and I sat anyway. More mess of books, a dirty computer. On a wall a large-scale map of Besźel and Ul Qoma. To avoid prosecution the lines and shades of division were there—total, alter, and crosshatched—but ostentatiously subtle, distinctions of greyscale. We sat looking at each other a while.
“Look,” Drodin said. “I know … you understand I’m not used to … You guys don’t like me, and that’s fine, that’s understood.” We said nothing. He played with some of the things on his desktop. “And I’m no snitch either.”
“Jesus, Drodin,” Corwi said, “if it’s absolution you’re after, get a priest.” But he continued.
“It’s just… If this has something to do with what she was into, then you’re all going to think it has something to do with us and maybe it even might have something to do with us and I’m giving no one any excuses to come down on us. You know? You know?”
“Alright enough,” Corwi said. “Cut the shit.” She looked around the room. “I know you think you’re clever, but seriously, how many misdemeanours do you think I’m looking at right now? Your map, for a start—You reckon it’s careful, but it wouldn’t take a particularly patriotic prosecutor to interpret it in a way that’ll leave you inside. What else? You want me to go through your books? How many are on the proscribed list? Want me to go through your papers? This place has Insulting Besź Sovereignty in the Second Degree flashing over it like neon.”
“Like the Ul Qoma club districts,” I said. “Ul Qoma neon. Would you like that, Drodin? Prefer it to the local variety?”
“So while we appreciate your help, Mr. Drodin, let’s not kid ourselves as to why you’re doing it.”
“You don’t understand.” He muttered it. “I have to protect my people. There’s weird shit out there. There’s weird shit going on.”
“Alright,” Corwi said. “Whatever. What’s the story, Drodin?” She took the photograph of Fulana and put it in front of him. “Tell my boss what you started telling me.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s her.” Corwi and I leaned forward. Perfect synchronised timing.
I said, “What’s her name?”
“What she said, she said her name was Byela Mar.” Drodin shrugged. “It’s what she said. I know, but what can I tell you?”
It was an obvious, and elegantly punning, pseudonym. Byela is a unisex Besź name; Mar is at least plausible as a surname. Together their phonemes approximate the phrasebyé lai mar , literally “only the baitfish,” a fishing phrase to say “nothing worth noting.”
“It isn’t unusual. Lots of our contacts and members go by handles.”
“Noms ,” I said, “de unification.” I could not tell if he understood. “Tell us about Byela.” Byela, Fulana, Marya was accruing names.
“She was here I don’t know, three years ago or so? Bit less? I hadn’t seen her since then. She was obviously foreign.”
“From Ul Qoma?”
“No. Spoke okay Illitan but not fluent. She’d talk in Besź or Illitan—or, well, the root. I never heard her talk anything else—she wouldn’t tell me where she came from. From her accent I’d say American or English maybe. I don’t know what she was doing. It’s not… it’s kind of rude to ask too much about people in this line.”
“So, what, she came to meetings? She was an organiser?” Corwi turned to me and said without lowering her voice, “I don’t even know what it is these fuckers do, boss. I don’t even know what to ask.” Drodin watched her, no more sour than he had been since we arrived.
“She turned up like I said a couple of years ago. She wanted to use our library. We’ve got pamphlets and old books on … well on the cities, a lot of stuff they don’t stock in other places.”
“We should take a look, boss,” Corwi said. “See there’s nothing inappropriate.”
“Fuck’s sake, I’m helping, aren’t I? You want to get me on banned books? There’s nothing Class One, and the Class Twos we got are mostly available on-fucking-line anyway.”
“Alright alright,” I said. Pointed for him to continue.
“So she came and we talked a lot. She wasn’t here long. Like a couple of weeks. Don’t ask me about what she did otherwise and stuff like that because I don’t know. All I know is every day she’d come by at odd times and look at books, or talk to me about our history, the history of the cities, about what was going on, about our campaigns, that kind of thing.”
“What campaigns?”
“Our brothers and sisters in prison. Here and in Ul Qoma. For nothing but their beliefs. Amnesty International’s on our side there, you know. Talking to contacts. Education. Helping new immigrants. Demos.” In Besźel, unificationist demonstrations were fractious, small, dangerous things. Obviously the local nationalists would come out to break them up, screaming at the marchers as traitors, and in general the most apolitical local wouldn’t have much sympathy for them. It was almost as bad in Ul Qoma, except it was more unlikely they would be allowed to gather in the first place. That must have been a source of anger, though it certainly saved the Ul Qoman unifs from beatings.