I had stayed up much of the night watching films of interrogations, from Ul Qoma and from Besźel. A Besź border guard and an Ul Qoman, passersby from both cities who knew nothing. “People started screaming …” Motorists over whom bullets had gone.
“Corwi,” I said, when her face appeared on the wall.
“So where is he?” A quirk of recording made her voice far away. She was angry and controlling herself. “What the fuck has boss-man got himself into? Yes, he wanted me to help him get someone through.” That was all they established, repeatedly, her Besź questioners. They threatened her job. She was as contemptuous of that as Dhatt, though more careful how she phrased it. She knew nothing.
Breach showed me brief shots of someone questioning Biszaya and Sariska. Biszaya cried. “I’m not impressed with this,” I said. “This is just cruel.”
The most interesting films were those of Yorjavic’s comrades among the extreme nationalists of Besźel. I recognised some who had been with Yorjavic. They stared sulky at their questioners, the policzai . A few refused to speak except in the company of their lawyers. There was hard questioning, an officer leaning across the table and punching a man in the face.
“Fuck’s sake,” the bleeding man shouted. “We’re on the same fucking side, you fuck. You’re Besź, you’re not fucking Ul Qoman and you’re not fucking Breach …”
With arrogance, neutrality, resentment or, often, compliance and collaboration, the nationalists denied any knowledge of Yorjavic’s action. “I’ve never fucking heard of this foreign woman; he never mentioned her. She’s a student?” one said. “We do what’s right for Besźel, you know? And you don’t have to know why. But …” The man we watched agonised with his hands, made shapes to try to explain himself without recrimination.
“We’re fucking soldiers. Like you. For Besźel. So if you hear that something has to be done, if you get instructions, like someone has to be warned, reds or unifs or traitors or UQ or the fucking Breach-lickers are gathering or whatever, something has to be done, okay. But you know why. You don’t ask, but you can see it’s got to be done, most of the time. But I don’t know why this Rodriguez girl … I don’t believe he did and if he did I don’t…” He looked angry. “I don’t know why.”
“Of course they have contacts in the deep state,” my Breach interlocutor said. “But with something as hard to parse as this, you can see the possibility, that Yorjavic maybe wasn’t a True Citizen. Or not only, but a representative of a more hidden organisation.”
“A more hidden place maybe,” I said. “I thought you watched everything.”
“No one breached.” He put papers in front of me. “Those are the findings of the Besźel policzai who searched Yorjavic’s apartment. Nothing linking him to anything like Orciny. Tomorrow we’re leaving early.”
“How did you get all this?” I said as he and his companions stood. He looked at me with a motionless but withering face as he left.
HE RETURNED AFTER A SHORT NIGHT, alone this time. I was ready for him.
I waved the papers. “Presuming my colleagues did a good job, there’s nothing. A few payments come in time to time, but not that much—could be anything. He passed the exam a few years back, could cross—not so unusual, although with his politics …” I shrugged. “Subscriptions, bookshelves, associates, army record, criminal record, hangouts, and all that mark him out as a run-of-the-mill violent nat.”
“Breach has watched him. Like all dissidents. There’s been no sign of unusual connections.”
“Orciny, you mean.”
“No sign.”
He ushered me finally out of the room. The corridor had the same scabbing paint, a worn colourless carpet, a succession of doors. I heard the steps of others, and as we turned into a stairwell a woman passed us, with a moment’s acknowledgement to my companion. Then a man passed, and then we were in a hallway with several other people. What they wore would be legal in either Besźel or in Ul Qoma.
I heard conversation in both languages and a third thing, a mongrel or antique that combined them. I heard typing. I never considered rushing or attacking my companion and trying to escape. I admit that. I was very observed.
On the walls of an office we passed were corkboards thick with memos, shelves of folders. A woman tore paper from a printer. A telephone rang.
“Come on,” the man said. “You said you know where the truth is.”
There were double doors, doors to an outside. We stepped through, and that, when the light ate me up, was when I realised I did not know which city we were in.
AFTER PANIC AT THE CROSSHATCH, I realised we must be in Ul Qoma: that was where our destination was. I followed my escort down the street.
I was breathing deep. It was morning, noisy, overcast but without rain, boisterous. Cold: the air made me gasp. I was pleasantly disoriented by all the people, by the motion of coated Ul Qomans, the growl of cars moving slowly on this mostly pedestrian street, the shouts of hawkers, the sellers of clothes and books and food. I unsaw all else. There was the thrum of cables above us as one of the Ul Qoman inflates butted against the wind.
“I don’t need to tell you not to run,” the man said. “I don’t need to tell you not to shout. You know I can stop you. And you know I’m not alone in watching you. You’re in Breach. Call me Ashil.”
“You know my name.”
“While you’re with me you’re Tye.”
Tye, like Ashil, was not traditional Besź, nor Ul Qoman, could just plausibly be either. Ashil walked me across a courtyard, below facades of figures and bells, video screens with stock information. I did not know where we were.
“You’re hungry,” Ashil said.
“I can wait.” He steered me to a side street, another crosshatched side street where Ul Qoman stalls by a supermarket offered software and knickknacks. He took my arm and guided me, and I hesitated because there was no food in sight except, and I pulled against him a moment, there were dumpling stations and bread stalls, but they were in Besźel.
I tried to unsee them but there could be no uncertainty: that source of the smell I had been unsmelling was our destination. “Walk,” he said, and he walked me through the membrane between cities; I lifted my foot in Ul Qoma, put it down again in Besźel, where breakfast was.
Behind us was an Ul Qoman woman with raspberry punk hair selling the unlocking of mobile phones. She glanced in surprise then consternation; then I saw her quickly unsee us as Ashil ordered food in Besźel.
Ashil paid with Besźmarques. He put the paper plate in my hand, walked me back across the road into the supermarket. It was in Ul Qoma. He bought a carton of orange juice with dinar, gave it to me.
I held the food and the drink. He walked me down the middle of the crosshatched road.
My sight seemed to untether as with a lurching Hitchcock shot, some trickery of dolly and depth of field, so the street lengthened and its focus changed. Everything I had been unseeing now jostled into sudden close-up.
Sound and smell came in: the calls of Besźel; the ringing of its clocktowers; the clattering and old metal percussion of the trams; the chimney smell; the old smells; they came in a tide with the spice and Illitan yells of Ul Qoma, the clatter of a militsya copter, the gunning of German cars. The colours of Ul Qoma light and plastic window displays no longer effaced the ochres and stone of its neighbour, my home.
“Where are you?” Ashil said. He spoke so only I could hear.
“Are you in Besźel or Ul Qoma?”
“… Neither. I’m in Breach.”
“You’re with me here.” We moved through a crosshatched morning crowd. “In Breach. No one knows if they’re seeing you or unseeing you. Don’t creep. You’re not in neither: you’re in both.”