How could one not think of the stories we all grew up on, that surely the Ul Qomans grew up on too? Ul Qoman man and Besź maid, meeting in the middle of Copula Hall, returning to their homes to realise that they live, grosstopically, next door to each other, spending their lives faithful and alone, rising at the same time, walking crosshatched streets close like a couple, each in their own city, never breaching, never quite touching, never speaking a word across the border. There were folktales of renegades who breach and avoid Breach to live between the cities, not exiles but insiles, evading justice and retribution by consummate ignorability. Pahlaniuk’s novel Diary of an Insile had been illegal in Besźel (and, I was sure, in Ul Qoma), but like most people I had skimmed a pirated edition.
I did the tests, pointing with a cursor at an Ul Qoman temple, an Ul Qoman citizen, an Ul Qoman lorry delivering vegetables, as quick as I could. It was faintly insulting stuff, designed to catch me inadvertently seeing Besźel. There had been nothing like this the first time I had done such studies. Not very long ago the equivalent tests would have involved being asked about the different national character of Ul Qomans, and judging who from various pictures with stereotyped physiognomies was Ul Qoman, Besź, or “Other” (Jewish, Muslim, Russian, Greek, whatever, depending on the ethnic anxieties of the time).
“Seen the temple?” Dhatt said. “And that there used to be a college. Those are apartment blocks.” He jabbed his finger at buildings as we passed, told his driver, to whom he had not introduced me, to go various routes.
“Weird?” he said to me. “Guess it must be strange.”
Yes. I looked at what Dhatt showed me. Unseeing, of course, but I could not fail to be aware of all the familiar places I passed grosstopically, the streets at home I regularly walked, now a whole city away, particular cafés I frequented that we passed, but in another country. I had them in the background now, hardly any more present than Ul Qoma was when I was at home. I held my breath. I was unseeing Besźel. I had forgotten what this was like; I had tried and failed to imagine it. I was seeing Ul Qoma.
Day, so the light was that of the overcast cold sky, not the twists of neon I had seen in so many programmes about the neighbouring country, which the producers evidently thought it easier for us to visualise in its garish night. But that ashy daylight illuminated more and more vivid colours than in my old Besźel. The Old Town of Ul Qoma was at least half transmuted these days into a financial district, curlicued wooden rooflines next to mirrored steel. The local street hawkers wore gowns and patched-up shirts and trousers, sold rice and skewers of meat to smart men and a few women (past whom my nondescript compatriots, I tried to unsee, walked on their way to Besźel’s more quiet destinations) in the doorways of glass blocks.
After mild censure from UNESCO, a finger-wag tied to some European investment, Ul Qoma had recently passed zoning laws to stop the worst of the architectural vandalism its boomtime occasioned. Some of the ugliest recent works had even been demolished, but still the traditional baroque curlicues of Ul Qoma’s heritage sights were made almost pitiful by their giant young neighbours. Like all Besźel dwellers, I had become used to shopping in the foreign shadows of foreign success.
Illitan everywhere, in Dhatt’s running commentary, from the vendors, taxi drivers and insult-hurling local traffic. I realised how much invective I had been unhearing on crosshatched roads at home. Each city in the world has its own road-grammar, and though we were not in any total Ul Qoma areas yet, so these streets shared the dimensions and shapes of those I knew, they felt in the sharp turns we took more intricate. It was as strange as I had expected it would be, seeing and unseeing, being in Ul Qoma. We went by narrow byways less frequented in Besźel (deserted there though bustling in Ul Qoma), or which were pedestrian-only in Besźel. Our horn was constant.
“Hotel?” Dhatt said. “Probably want to get cleaned up and have something to eat, right? Where then? I know you must have some ideas. You speak good Illitan, Borlú. Better than my Besź.” He laughed.
“I’ve got a few thoughts. Places I’d like to go.” I held my notebook. “You got the dossier I sent?”
“Sure did, Borlú. That’s the lot of it, right? That’s where you’re at? I’ll fill you in about what we’ve been up to but”—he held up his hands in mock surrender—“truth is there’s not that much to tell. We thought Breach was going to be invoked. Why didn’t you give them it? You like making work for yourself?” Laugh. “Anyway, I only got assigned all this in the last couple of days, so don’t expect too much. But we’re on it now.”
“Any idea where she was killed yet?”
“Not so much. There’s only CCTV of that van coming through Copula Hall; we don’t know where it went then. No leads. Anyway, things …”
A visiting Besź van, one might assume, would be memorable in Ul Qoma, as an Ul Qoman one would be in Besźel. The truth is that unless someone saw the sign in the windscreen, people’s assumption would be that such a foreign vehicle was not in their home city, and accordingly it would remain unseen. Potential witnesses would generally not know there was anything to witness.
“That’s the main thing I want to track down.”
“Absolutely. Tyador, or is it Tyad? Got a preference?”
“And I’d like to talk to her advisors, her friends. Can you take me to Bol Ye’an?”
“Dhatt, Quss, whichever’s fine by me. Listen, just to get this out of the way, avoid confusions, I know your commissar told you this”—he relished the foreign word—“but while you’re here this is an Ul Qoman investigation, and you don’t have police powers. Don’t get me wrong—we’re totally grateful for the cooperation, and we’re going to work out what we do together, but I’ve got to be the officer here. You’re a consultant, I guess.”
“Of course.”
“Sorry, I know turf bullshit is bullshit. I was told—did you speak to my boss yet? Colonel Muasi?—anyway, he wanted to make sure we were cool before we talked. Of course you’re an honoured guest of the Ul Qoman militsya.”
“I’m not restricted to … I can travel?”
“You’ve got your permit and stamp and all that.” A single-entry trip, a month renewable. “Sure if you have to, if you want take a tourist day or two, but you’re strictly a tourist when you’re on your own. Cool? It might be better if you didn’t. I mean shit, no one’s going to stop you, but we all know it’s harder to cross over without a guide; you could breach without meaning to, and then what?”
“So. What would you do next?”
“Well look.” Dhatt turned in his seat to look at me. “We’ll be at the hotel soon. Anyway listen: like I’m trying to tell you, things are getting … I guess you haven’t heard about the other one … No, we don’t even know if there’s anything there and we only just got sniff ourselves. Look, there may be a complication.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“We’re here, sir,” the driver said. I looked out but stayed in the car. We were by the Hilton in Asyan, just outside the Ul Qoma Old Town. It was at the edge of a total street of low, modern concrete Ul Qoman residences, at the corner of a plaza of Besź brick terraces and Ul Qoman faux pagodas. Between them was an ugly fountain. I had never visited it: the buildings and pavements at its rim were crosshatched, but the central square itself was total Ul Qoma.
“We don’t know for sure yet. Obviously we’ve been up to the dig, talked to Iz Nancy, all Geary’s supervisors, all her classmates and that. No one knew anything; they just thought she’d fucked off for a couple of days. Then they heard what had happened. Anyway, the point is that after we spoke to a bunch of the students, we got a phone call from one of them. It was only yesterday. About Geary’s best friend—we saw her the day we went in to tell them, another student. Yolanda Rodriguez. She was totally in shock. We didn’t get much out of her. She was collapsing all over the place. She said she had to go, I said did she want any help, blah blah, she said she had someone to look after her. Local boy, one of the others said. Once you’ve tried Ul Qoman …” He reached over and opened my door. I did not get out.