I found fracturedcity.org , the main discussion site for the kooks of dopplurbanology, Ul-Qoma-and-Besźel obsession (the site’s approach of conjoining the two as a single object of study would outrage polite opinion in both cities, but judging by comments on the forum it was commonly if mildly illegally accessed from both, too). From there a series of links (cheekily, confident in the indulgence or incompetence of our and the Ul Qoman censors, many were servers with .uq and .zb addresses) gave me a few paragraphs copied from Between the City and the City . It read as Nancy had suggested.
My phone startled me. I realised that it was dark, after seven.
“Borlú,” I said, sitting back.
“Inspector? Oh, shit, sir, we have a situation. This is Ceczoria.” Agim Ceczoria was one of the officers stationed at the hotel to look after Mahalia’s parents. I rubbed my eyes and scanned my email to see if I’d missed any messages coming in. There was a noise behind him, a commotion. “Sir, Mr. Geary … he went AWOL, sir. He fucking … he breached.”
“What?”
“He got out of the room, sir.” Behind him was a woman’s voice, and she was shouting.
“What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know how the fuck he got past us, sir, I just don’t know. But he wasn’t gone long.”
“How do you know? How did you get him?”
He swore again.
“We didn’t. Breach did. I’m calling from the car, sir, we’re en route to the airport. Breach are … escorting us. Somewhere. They told us what to do. That’s Mrs. Geary you can hear. He has to go. Now.”
CORWI HAD GONE, and she wasn’t answering her phone. I took an unmarked squad car from the pool, but ran it with the sirens making their hysteric gulp gulp noises, so I could ignore traffic laws. (It was only the Besź rules which applied to me and which therefore I was with authority ignoring, but traffic law is one of the compromise areas where the Oversight Committee ensures close similarity between the rules of Besźel and Ul Qoma. Though the traffic cultures are not identical, for the sake of the pedestrians and cars who have, unseeing, to negotiate much foreign traffic, our vehicles and theirs run at comparable speeds in comparable ways. We all learn to tactfully avoid our neighbour’s emergency vehicles, as well as our own.)
There were no flights out for a couple of hours, but they would sequester the Gearys, and in some hidden way Breach would watch them onto the plane, to make sure they were on it, and airborne. Our embassy in the US would already be informed, as well as the representatives in Ul Qoma, and a no visa flagged in their names on both our systems. Once they were out, they would not be back in. I ran through Besźel airport to the office of the policzai , showed my badge.
“Where are the Gearys?”
“In the cells, sir.”
Depending on what I saw I was ready with, do you know what just happened to these people, whatever they’ve done they’ve just lost a daughter , and so on, but it was not necessary. They had given them food and drink and treated them gently. Ceczoria was with them in the little room. He was muttering to Mrs. Geary in his basic English.
She looked at me tearfully. Her husband was, I thought for a second, asleep on the bunk. I saw how very motionless he was and revised my opinion.
“Inspector,” Ceczoria said.
“What’s happened to him?”
“He’s … Breach did it, sir. He’ll probably be okay, wake up in a bit. I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell they did to him.”
Mrs. Geary said, “You’ve poisoned my husband …”
“Mrs. Geary, please.” Ceczoria rose and came closer to me, lowered his voice though he was talking now in Besź. “We didn’t know anything about it, sir. There was a little bit of a commotion outside and someone came into the lobby where we were.” Mrs. Geary was crying and talking to her unconscious husband. “Geary kind of lurches in and passes out. The hotel security go at them, and they just look at this shape, someone behind Geary in the hallway, and the guards stop and wait. I hear this voice: ‘You know what I represent. Mr. Geary breached. Remove him.’” Ceczoria shook his head, helpless. “Then, and I still can’t see anything properly, whoever’s speaking’s gone.”
“How …?”
“Inspector, I don’t fucking know. I … I take responsibility, sir. Geary must have got past us.”
I stared at him. “Do you want a bloody biscuit? Of course it’s your responsibility. What did he do?”
“Don’t know. Breach were gone before I could say a word.”
“What about…” I nodded at Mrs. Geary.
“She wasn’t deported: she didn’t do anything.” He was whispering. “But when I told her we had to take her husband, she said she’d go with him. She doesn’t want to stick around on her own.”
“Inspector Borlú.” Mrs. Geary was trying to sound controlled. “If you’re talking about me you should talk to me. Do you see what’s been done to my husband?”
“Mrs. Geary, I’m terribly sorry.”
“You should be …”
“Mrs. Geary, I didn’t do this. Neither did Ceczoria. Neither did any of my officers. Do you understand?”
“Oh Breach Breach Breach …”
“Mrs. Geary, your husband just did something very serious. Very serious.” She was quiet but for heavy breaths. “Do you understand me? Has there been some mistake here? Were we less than clear in our explanations of the system of checks and balances between Besźel and Ul Qoma? Do you understand that this deportation is nothing to do with us , but that we have absolutely no power to do anything about it, and that he is, listen to me, he is incredibly lucky that’s all he’s got?” She said nothing. “In the car I got the impression that your husband wasn’t quite so clear on how it works here, so you tell me, Mrs. Geary, did something go wrong? Did he misunderstand our… advice? How did my men not see him leave? Where was he going?”
She looked still as if she might cry; then she glanced at her supine husband and her stance changed. She stood straighter and whispered something to him that I did not catch. Mrs. Geary looked at me.
“He was in the air force,” she said. “You think you’re looking at some fat old man?” She touched him. “You never asked us who might have done this, Inspector. I don’t know what to make of you, I really don’t. Like my husband said, you think we don’t know who did this ?” She clutched and folded and unfolded a piece of paper, without looking at it, took it out of a side pocket of her bag, put it in again. “You think our daughter didn’t talk to us? First Qoma, True Citizens, Nat Bloc … Mahalia wasafraid , Inspector.
“We haven’t figured out exactly who did what, and we don’t know why, but where was he going, you say? He was going to find out. I told him it wouldn’t work—he didn’t speak the language, he didn’t read it—but he had addresses we got from the internet and a phrase book and, what, was I going to tell him not to go? Not to go? I’m so proud of him. Those people hated Mahalia for years, since she first came here.”
“Printed out from the internet?”
“And I mean here , Besźel. When she came to the conference. Then the same thing with others, in Ul Qoma. Are you going to tell me there’s no connection? She knew she’d made enemies, she told us she’d made enemies. When she went looking into Orciny she made enemies. When she looked deeper she made more. They all hated her, because of what she was doing. What she knew.”
“Who hated her?”
“All of them.”
“What did she know?”