Transition. Part 18

"Short for Adrian. What about yourself?"

"I a.s.sume you know the procedure."

"What? Oh, yeah. I'm supposed to give you a name, that right? Okey-doke. How about Fred?"

"Fred? Is that common enough?"

"As muck, mate. Common as muck. Trust me."

"Indeed I do, Adrian."

"Brill. Consider yourself sorted. What can I do for you, mate?"

Madame d'Ortolan Madame d'Ortolan sat in the rooftop aviary of her house in Paris, listening to the flurrying of a thousand soft wings and looking out over the darkening city as the street lights came on. The view, graphed by the bars of the aviary, showed deep dark reds and bruised purples towards the north-west, where a recently pa.s.sed rainstorm was retreating towards the sunset. The city still smelled of late-summer rain and refreshed foliage. Somewhere in the distance, a siren sounded. She wondered how big a city had to become, and how lawless and dangerous in this sort of reality, for a siren always to be heard somewhere. Here, the siren was like an audible signature of fragre.

Madame d'Ortolan took a breath and said, "No, he must have had another pill hidden somewhere."

Mr Kleist stood in the shadows, behind and to one side of her seat, which was an extravagant work in bamboo with a great fan-shaped top. He looked about at the various birds still flying within the aviary. His head jerked as one flew too close and he ducked involuntarily. He shook his head.

"He did not, ma'am, I am sure."

"Nevertheless."

"He was fully restrained, ma'am. It could only have been in his mouth, and that was checked very thoroughly, both before the interrogation began and afterwards. Even more thoroughly, subsequent to his apparent transition."

Madame d'Ortolan looked unconvinced. "Thoroughly?"

Mr Kleist produced a little transparent plastic bag from one pocket and placed it on the small cane table standing at the side of her seat. She leant over, looked at the thirty or so bloodstained teeth inside.

"They are all present," he said. "They are just teeth."

She looked at them. "The false one with the cavity. Was there room inside it for two pills?"

"No, and the septus pill was removed from it and the tooth itself extracted while he was still unconscious."

"Some residue of septus left with the mouth or throat?"

"I have already asked our most knowledgeable experts. Such an effect is next to impossible."

"Send these to be a.n.a.lysed, all the same."

"Of course." Mr Kleist picked up the plastic bag and replaced it in his pocket.

"Some sort of osmotic patch, or a subcutaneous implant?"

"Again, ma'am, we did check, both before and after."

"Perhaps up his nose," Madame d'Ortolan mused, more to herself than to Mr Kleist. "That might be possible. Ill-bred people sometimes make that ghastly snorting, pulling-back noise with their noses. One might ingest a pill in that manner."

Mr Kleist sighed. "It is a theoretical possibility," he conceded. "Though not in this case."

"Did he make such a noise?"

"No, ma'am. In fact he was probably incapable of doing so or of performing the action you mention because his nose and mouth were both tightly secured by tape. No air movement would have been possible."

"You checked for some infusionary device? Perhaps something concealed within the r.e.c.t.u.m, activated by..." She could not think how you would activate something like that.

"We checked the subject's clothing and performed a second internal examination. There was nothing."

"An accomplice. The septus delivered by a dart or some such thing."

"Impossible, ma'am."

"You were alone with him?"

"No. An a.s.sistant was present."

"The a.s.sistant..."

"Is completely trustworthy, ma'am."

Madame d'Ortolan turned to him.

"Then, unless you were somehow complicit yourself, Mr Kleist, it could only be that he was able to ingest a slow-release pill some time before."

Mr Kleist displayed no reaction. "The arresting interception team a.s.sure us this would not have been possible. Also, we took blood samples before and after and there was no sign."

"They must be wrong, all the same. The results must be wrong. Have everything a.n.a.lysed again."

"Yes, ma'am."

Madame d'Ortolan turned and gazed out over the city as it subsided into darkness, strings of street lights curving into the clear distance of rain-washed air. After some time she put one hand to her lower lip, pinching it.

"And if they are not wrong, ma'am?" Mr Kleist said eventually, when he began to think that perhaps she had forgotten he was there.

"Then," she said, "we would have the most severe problem. Because we would be faced with somebody who can flit without septus, and, if they are capable of doing that, they could be capable of doing almost anything." Madame d'Ortolan stopped and thought for a moment. "That would be a perfectly terrifying prospect even if the individual concerned was utterly loyal." She turned and looked at Mr Kleist. She could hardly see him. "However, I do not believe that to be the case."

"It might be wise to act as though it is," he suggested. "Provisionally, at least." There was a small light on the table by her side. She clicked it on. Mr Kleist still looked dark, dressed in black or something near black, his face paler but still in shade.

"That had occurred to me," she told him. "Have the husk killed and a full and I do mean full post-mortem carried out."

"The person is not a husk, ma'am."

"I don't care."

"I understand, ma'am."

"What about the trackers?"

"We have another two teams on him in addition to the one that found him after Lord Harmyle's murder. There has been nothing reported so far."

"Are they optimistic?"

Mr Kleist hesitated. "If they are, they're being unusually reticent about it."

"Well, never mind how we lost him initially. Now that he is lost, what if he stays lost? What will he do next?"

"He may already have warned those who were on the list marked for a.s.sa.s.sination. We think somebody must have. The back-up teams have yet to report a success."

"Not even Obliq?" Madame d'Ortolan asked, p.r.o.nouncing her name with the sort of acidic tone she usually reserved for Mrs Mulverhill. "I thought they definitely got her."

"Ah," Mr Kleist said. "The team report they now think she may have been flitted an instant before the hit."

"So he did warn them."

"Somebody did. We doubt he had time personally."

She frowned. "Your a.s.sistant heard the names on the list, didn't he?"

"As I say, ma'am, he is above suspicion."

"That is not what you said, and n.o.body is above suspicion."

"Then let me rephrase. I have complete faith in his loyalty and discretion."

"Would you vouch for him with your life?"

Mr Kleist hesitated. "I would not go quite that far for anyone, ma'am. As you say, n.o.body is entirely above suspicion."

"Hmm. That list, then, the people on it."

"We are watching them as closely as we are able to, waiting for an opportunity, but it is not easy and it is not looking promising. Obliq and Plyte disappeared entirely, untrackable, and the rest are awkwardly located, or staying too firmly in the public eye for us to strike. The relevant teams are still primed and in place, ready to resume action on your command the moment we have a clear shot." He left a pause. "Though of course we have lost the advantage of surprise and concurrency. Even if we are able to pick one off, the rest will become even more suspicious and hard to get at, the moment they hear."

Madame d'Ortolan nodded to herself. She took a deep breath. "Thus far, this has not worked out as we intended."

"No, ma'am."

She was silent for a few moments. A bird cooed somewhere overhead, and wings rustled. Sometimes, when one of the birds in the aviary was unwell or had been injured and was hopping about on the floor of the structure, broken-winged or too ill to fly, Madame d'Ortolan would let the cats in, to dispose of the creature. She always enjoyed the resulting kerfuffle, brief though it usually proved to be. She twisted in her chair and looked at Kleist. "What would you do, Mr Kleist? If you were me?"

Without hesitation he said, "We find ourselves fighting on two fronts, ma'am. That is not supportable. I would indefinitely postpone the actions against the Council members and withdraw all but the basic tracking teams involved. Throw everything at Oh. He's the greater threat."

Madame d'Ortolan narrowed her eyes. "Mr Kleist, I have worked for decades to get to just this point with the Central Council. If we don't act now there is every chance they will approve the sort of invasively damaging policies that the Mulverhill woman has obviously been insinuating into the vacuous heads of an entire generation of students, technicians and agents for a decade or more. There are too many Mulverhills out there and their influence is growing. I can't keep swatting them away from all positions of influence for ever. We have to act now. We may not get another chance."

Kleist looked unimpressed. "Ma'am, I think the moment has pa.s.sed, for now. Another may present itself in time. In the meantime, n.o.body seems to have any proof that you were behind the actions against the other Council members, or be prepared to speculate openly on the matter, so we have established, as it were, a stable front there. Mr Oh, especially if he is allied with Mulverhill, is an immediate and dynamic threat. Also, once he's dealt with, we may be able to make it look as though he and Mulverhill were behind the attacks on the Council members."

Madame d'Ortolan unwound herself in her seat to sit forward again, looking away from him. She released a long, deflating sigh. "Sadly, annoyingly," she said in a quiet voice, "I think you're right."

Mr Kleist was silent for a few moments. His expression did not change. He said, "Shall I issue the relevant orders?"

"Please do."

He turned to go.

"Mr Kleist?"

He turned back. "Ma'am?"

Madame d'Ortolan had turned to look at him again. "I take this very personally, and very ill. I shall expect Mr Oh to pay for this, in person. Once he has served whatever other purposes we require of him, I think I might ask you to tutor me in some of the techniques you employed in your earlier profession, so that I might apply them to him. And Mulverhill, for that matter. I severely doubt she's innocent in all this."

Mr Kleist gave a small bow. "I am at your disposal, ma'am."

There was a small smile on Madame d'Ortolan's thin lips. Her paper-cut smile, as he thought of it. The image brought with it, as it always did, the memory of the scent of lemons and the echo of long-faded screams. She waved one hand. "Thank you. That'll be all."

He turned again and had walked more two steps when she said, "Mr Kleist?"

He turned and looked back, still untroubled. The lady was known for using this little technique. "Yes, ma'am?"

The birds were almost silent now, settled in for the night.

"What was it they used to call you? The Moralist, was it?"

"The Philosopher, ma'am."

"Ah, yes. So, was it agreeable, to be taking up your old profession again?"

He looked at her for a moment. "Why, ma'am," he said quietly, "we barely began." He regarded her a moment longer. "But no, not especially." He bowed and walked away.

The Pitcher Mike Esteros is sitting at the bar of the Commodore Hotel, Venice Beach, after yet another unsuccessful pitch. Technically he doesn't know it's unsuccessful yet, but he's developing a nose for these things and he'd put money on another rejection. It's starting to get him down. He still believes in the idea and he's still sure it'll get made one day, plus he knows that att.i.tude is everything in this business and he must remain positive if he doesn't believe in himself, why should anybody else? but, well, all the same.

The bar is quiet. He wouldn't normally drink at this time of day. Maybe he needs to adjust the plot, make it more family-oriented. Focus on the boy, on the father son thing. Cute it up a little more. A dusting of schmaltz. Never did any harm. Well, no real harm. Maybe he's been believing too much in the basic idea, a.s.suming that because it's so obvious to him what a beautiful, elegant thing it is it'll be obvious to everybody else and they'll be falling over themselves to green-light it and give him lots of money.

And don't forget Goldman's Law: n.o.body knows anything. n.o.body knows what will work. That's why they make so many remakes and Part Twos; what looks like lack of imagination is really down to too much, as execs visualise all the things that could go wrong with a brand new, untested idea. Going with something containing elements that definitely worked in the past removes some of the terrifying uncertainty.

What Mike's got here is a radical, left-field idea. The central concept is almost too original for its own good. That's why it needs a generous helping of conventionality slathered over it. He'll rework it, again. It's not a prospect that fills him with joy, frankly, but he guesses that it has to be done and he has to struggle on. It's worth it. He still believes in it. It's just a dream, but it's a dream that could be made real and this is the place where that happens. Your dreams not just of your idea but of your future self, your fortunes get turned into reality here. He still loves this place, still believes in it.

Mike leaves the bar, goes outside and sits on a bench, watching the ocean, watching the people pa.s.s on the tarmac strip and on the sands themselves, roller skating, boarding, strolling, playing Frisbee, just walking.

A girl comes and sits on the bench too. Well, woman. She might be Mike's age. He starts talking to her. She's cute and friendly and smart, rangy and dark, nice laugh. Just his type. A lawyer, on a day off, just relaxing. Monica. He asks does she want a drink and she says maybe a herbal tea and they sit in a little cafe still within sight of the beach. Then they go for dinner in a little Vietnamese place a short walk away. Mike gives her the pitch because she's genuinely interested. She thinks it's a great idea. It actually seems to make her thoughtful.

Later they walk on the beach in the light of a half-moon, then sit, and there's some kissing and a modest amount of fooling around, though she's already told him she doesn't go any further on a first date. Him too, he tells her, though strictly speaking that's nonsense and he guesses that she guesses this but doesn't care.

Then, in the middle of a tight, embracing kiss, something changes. He feels it happen, and when he opens his eyes the moon has gone, the air feels cooler and the beach looks narrower and steeper and leads down to a sea that's much calmer than the one that was there just seconds ago. There are islands out there, dark shapes under the stars, covered in trees. He shakes his head, looks at Monica. He starts back instinctively, crabbing away from her on all fours. She's changed completely too. White, blonde, shorter, face quite different. There are a couple of guys the only other people on the beach standing ma.s.sively about ten feet away, watching them.

She dusts her hands and rises, standing in front of the two men. "Mr Esteros," she says, "welcome to your new home."