The building whirled around him, and the distant ground sang up at him.
He clamped his teeth shut, put his arms out at his sides, and lowered his weight, though he had to bang his knees against the wall to do it. The last move saved him from falling. This was it, the moment he'd been expecting and dreading.
He shuffled on the ledge, using the right hand wall as a support, and turned until he was facing away from the building. Straight ahead, he saw the black iron railings of the fire escape leading to his own window. There was a platform between flights of stairs, just a short distance ahead, and a little below him. It had looked an easy jump from the roof. Now it looked like a leap across the gaping mouth of a titan.
He closed his eyes, and wondered what it would be like if he stayed there. He had a nice view, if you like birds' eyes and alleys. He'd probably get a little rainwater from time to time, and as many pigeons as he could stun with his mighty fists. It might make a half decent picture series, except...
No camera.
He gritted his teeth, sucked in air, fought down an attack nausea and vertigo, and hurled himself from the ledge.
There came a moment of incredible freedom, as if he'd grown wings. It seemed to last for an age, and then he crashed down on the iron railings, felt them shiver beneath him, and felt spikes of agony stab through his knees and elbows where they struck metal. Though agony made him want to go foetal, he had sense enough to roll onto the stairs, to be small and hard to see. He feared the man watching the back would hear the noise. He'd expected the iron platform to ring out, to make a clamour that would bring Gell Shield down on his head, but the sound of impact was subdued; instead of clanging like a bell, the metal shook, making a low note like a tuning fork.
If the man below heard or saw anything odd, he didn't show it.
Soro sighed with relief, forced his tormented limbs to carry him, and slipped into his home.
***
Something leapt on him.
He gasped with surprise, fell into a crouch, his muscles tight and ready for action, all before he realised his assailant had the size, shape and texture of a child's teddy bear.
"Squiz," he said, and though the word was spoken with relief and satisfaction, it came out as a sob.
The monkey sat on his shoulder and tousled his hair, chirping like a happy little bird. Soro patted him, stroked his fur, and found him a handful of raisins in the kitchen.
"Even if everything else has turned inside out..." he muttered.
He grabbed his camera off the nightstand, and was about to disappear when he heard the phone ring.
Soro had a cell, of course, but he tended to keep it switched off, and the battery in a different pocket. It wasn't just paranoia; if he'd had the GPS active during his New Verity infiltration, he'd have left himself wide open to legal reprisals. Since he was never sure when he'd be taken by the urge to roam and snap, he kept his cell out of action, except when he needed to contact someone.
He'd been happy with the arrangement, but Sam had not. "You've got to leave a channel open, Soro," he'd said. Hence the landline, a sturdy black phone that sat in the living room, by the sofa.
He put his hand on it, and paused. "Could be a trap," he muttered. The watchers might have seen something as he made his approach. If he answered, they'd have confirmed he was back, and then he'd have trouble come smashing through his door.
"I've run enough," he said. "I got away once, beat their men, and I can do it again."
He didn't dwell on how luck had helped him; the coffee spill, the handy dumpster. He told himself if those things hadn't come along, he'd have made some luck of his own.
He lifted the handset. "Open Road Pizza," he said.
***
"Hello Song."
He gasped, choked, and his eyes grew round. He tried to speak, but his voice had gone into hiding.
The voice on the other end of the phone sounded syrupy and smarmy, like a patronising school marm. "This isn't a bad time," she said.
He grunted, and found his voice. "I didn't say it was."
"But you were about to."
"I don't know why you'd think that."
"Perhaps because of the men watching your home. The men who tried to steal you away this morning."
He exchanged a worried glance with Squizzle. "You must be with Gell Shield."
"Oh, you know about them. That saves me the bother of explaining their agenda to you."
"Agenda... Listen, what the h-"
"No, you listen, Song."
"Stop calling me that!"
"But it's your name."
"Well nobody calls me that!"
"Except perhaps your brother."
"My-" He caught himself. He rubbed his forehead, and Squiz patted the back of his head, making a soothing cooing sound. He grinned at the monkey, and turned back to the receiver. "You were right. Or wrong. Anyway, this is a bad time. Let's play this game another time, like in fifty million years."
He started to put the phone down, but the woman spoke fast enough to catch his interest. "Because of Gell Shield? Would you like them to leave you alone for good?"
"No," he said, nettled. "I'd like them to tie me up and sing to me."
If his sarcasm irritated the woman, she didn't show it. She carried on in her superior tone. "I know you can see their vehicle from your window. It's a black van."
"No, really?"
She had to be wearing a sarcasm proof vest.
"Go to your window and take a look. Then decide if you've got time to take my call."
He put the phone down, but he muttered loud enough to be heard, "if this is what it takes to get rid of you..."
He sidled up the window, afraid for some reason that this was a set up for a sniper with an abysmal sense of humour. He peered out of it sidelong, and saw the black van down the street; he couldn't see the whole thing, just the front where it poked out of the side street.
A blue car drove past, and then a red car. A seagull flapped between buildings, surprising hell out of a pair of pigeons. The sun continued to shine.
"To Alaska with this," he muttered, turning away.
A squeal of tires caught his attention.
He turned back to the window, and saw a police car pull up by the side street, and a couple of cops in dark blue uniforms got out and approached the side street. Seconds later a second patrol car screeched to a halt in front of the side street, but by then the first two had already emerged, shoving a couple of men in black overalls toward the patrol car. He couldn't be sure at that distance, but his trained eyes caught a glint of metal at the wrists of both Gell Shield men, one of them had lost his cap, and he thought he saw a splash of red on his nose and upper lip.
The first patrol car took off, and the second rolled at a lazy pace towards his building, and then along his street.
He ground his teeth together, rubbed his jaw, and frowned out of the window. Of course he was happy for the police to lock up Gell Shield's overzealous agents, but he hadn't called them. The woman on the phone had to be powerful, or she had to be representing someone with influence. And whoever it was, they had taken a close interest in his affairs.
His skin crawled, and he couldn't keep his brow from getting narrow. He felt uncomfortable.
He strode back to the phone, stared at it in silence, and then he snatched it to his ear.
"You've made some kind of point, Miss Mystery," he said.
"Call me Belle."
"Okay Belle," he said, perched and stiff on the edge of the sofa. "So whaddya want?"
"Why don't I tell you in person."
***
He looked up at the UN building. He'd been here a few times before, scoping it out for pictures, but he'd never found it an appealing subject. It rose above him, a tower of glass and reinforced steel, and it shone in a sort of pretty way when the sun hit it at the right angle. That was about all he could say for it. It lacked the grandeur of the Empire State Building, or the aesthetic appeal of the Ch
rysler Tower. It didn't have the stately majesty of the Capitol or the White House. It was a seat of power, yes, and when you remembered that, when you considered the men and women who worked there, how diverse their backgrounds, how wide their influence could spread, then you could imagine it as a place of import. But it took a tremendous imaginative effort to see it so. Soro's talent, what had made him valuable and then famous, was to find the beauty in all things, even the most common. But something about the UN building defied his skill. He looked at it, willing it to be beautiful, demanding that it show its sweeter face to him, but the tower stood over him, obstinate. It seemed to say, I am not come to be beautiful. My splendour is not for the eyes.
He knew he was delaying the moment, but something held him back. He couldn't call it a presentiment, nor even fear, but some intangible sense that once he crossed the threshold of the tower, he would put himself into the hands of an unknown.
He gritted his teeth, and went forth.
"Call me Belle," she said as he entered her office.
He caught a strong smell of sugar, strawberries, and a touch here and there of cinnamon or ginger. The woman clumped over from her desk, and thrust out a hand that reminded of the man who'd chased him. He accepted the hand, but he remembered that man, and how he'd left him, wallowing in stink and garbage.
She didn't shake his hand, as he'd expected. Instead she pulled him inward, and for a horrible second, he thought she wanted to kiss him, or worse. The sight of her, a hefty girl vacuum packed into a black pinstripe suit, with goggling eyes and a face even a mother would try to forget, did not put him in a kissing mood. Quite the reverse.
With relief, he saw she wasn't going to kiss him. She half-led, half-dragged him past her desk to the window. As they crossed the room, he saw the huge model building that dominated her desk. It had a large cutaway section, so you could peer inside, and see hundreds of tiny rooms, each one connected to a central chamber by...spokes?
She whisked him on before he could get a better look. He noticed one other thing about her office; stacks of overflowing filing cabinets surrounded her desk, crammed together, and still overflowing with yellowing paper files, but she had no computer.
The filing cabinets alone would have suggested something odd, but the missing computer and the enormous model building on the desk, together they made him uncertain and wary.
They reached the window, but still she held onto his hand. He felt more and more uncomfortable, but he was dealing with an unknown creature here, maybe a helpful beast and maybe a dangerous monster. He didn't want to antagonise the woman, so he allowed her to continue clutching his hand in her hot, moist, oversized paw.
"Look," she said, waving her free hand out across the city. "Isn't it beautiful?"
He looked out at New York. He saw tall office towers, grey in the afternoon light, at the wrong angle to glitter. He saw a bunch of cars stacked up at a broken traffic light. He saw a gang of school children herded down the street by a harassed young teacher, her long red scarf trailing behind her.
"Well?" asked Belle.
"Wait," he said, frowning down at the city.
She shifted on her feet, cleared her throat, and he felt her hand grow even more damp. He had the sense that she was unused to waiting on others, and didn't enjoy it.
She coughed. "I said, isn't it-?"
"It has some appeal as a panorama," he said. "But the light is bad. If we waited until nightfall, the city lights would make it more striking, although we'd lose a lot of detail. No, at present it would serve better as the background for a more specific image. Say, perhaps, that woman, that teacher with the trailing red scarf. She'd make a good subject, herding her flock through the metropolis. Their colour and buoyancy would contrast with the grey palette of the city materials, with the smoke from the road, with the cold, lustreless sheen of the window glass in those towers. And," he continued, eyeing her sidelong, "with the wire fence and armed men guarding this building."
She flushed, and pulled away from him. At last he had his hand back, and he had a strong wish to wipe it clean on his shirt; he'd changed after his morning's ordeal, and now wore an unbuttoned red shirt, open like a jacket, over a black t-shirt and a pair of new blue jeans. The jeans were as yet unmarked, and he wondered how long they would stay that way. The red shirt had fewer pockets than a real jacket, and he couldn't have crammed them with snacks for Squiz. He hadn't wanted to leave the little fellow alone, but he wasn't sure the UN was ready to accept monkeys.
"Very... Very comprehensive," said Belle. She beamed. "I'm glad I called you. You're an expert photographer, of course, but with your special gift, you're exactly what I want."
"What you want," he echoed.
"The concrete jungle. The urban wasteland," she said. "Ever since cities came to dominate, ever since they became the centre of our civilisation, we've had pundits and cavillers spout such hateful slogans. Isn't it true?"
"I guess."
If she was unperturbed by his lack of reaction, she buried her feelings, and went on with greater fervour. "Look at our works of art. Take 1984 and Brave New World. Take Blade Runner and Logan's Run. Each pair shows an incredibly different vision of modernity, yes, different on the surface! But underneath, it's all loathsome, sick, rotten. You have to seek out the crassest fantasy to find a warm, pleasing, genuine celebration of the modern world, and the focus of that world, the city. We have poets and singers for the beauty of the ancient world, for the splendour of Earth and nature. Where are the songs of the city?"
He thought of Whitman, and others like him, and knew she was mistaken. There were voices, and good, strong ones, speaking and singing on behalf of modern life, of cities, of the machine age. But he had seen the fanatic zeal in her bulbous eyes, and he had no reason to antagonise her. "You speak well," he said. "Perhaps, though, you could use a better audience. I'm not sure where I come into this."
"You stand in the centre of it!"
He raised his brows, and glanced around.
"No, no," she shook her head, frowning. "Not here, not this... You! Your gift. Your talent, whatever you want to call it. You can see the beauty that other overlook. You can select it and enhance it, you can make it visible. You can take a little broken ugly thing, stand at the right angle, and see it as beautiful, as glorious as a rose and as a star."
Soro was not unfamiliar with compliments and celebration. This, however, so effusive, so fulsome, it brought colour to his cheeks. "You're too kind," he said. "Way too kind. I just shoot what's there. Anyone could do it."
"But they don't. They can't."
"I don't know why not."
She waved her hand as if to brush the question aside. "Who knows? That's a question for the philosophers, or perhaps the neuroscientists. You have a gift. Let's use it. We can do something wonderful for the world. We can give the city back its dignity. We can return to man his pride, his self respect."
He noted the transition from 'you' to 'we'. He felt a crawling sensation across the nape of his neck, and an uncomfortable tremor in his chest. "You talk well," he said.
"You said that."
"I meant it. Your project, or proposal, or whatever it is, is quite interesting, but it isn't why I came here."
"I helped you," she said.
"I believe you did. I would like to know why."
She leaned towards him, her eyes swollen and feverish. "I want you," she said, "to enter my contest."
***
"Contest," he said. "Your contest."
His confusion must have shown on his face, because she patted his arm with her large, damp hand, and gave him a mothering look. "You poor lost little boy," she said.
Irritation warred with nausea, making his lips and nose wrinkle. There was something cloying about the woman; just as the office stank of sugar and sweet things, she smelled of condescension.
He shrugged off her hand. "Look," he said. "Thanks for helping me before, I guess, but I didn't come here to hear your views on art and cultur
e. I've got plenty to do; I'm busy enough without entering some mysterious contest, and I don't need whatever prize you might care to offer. Thank you, really, and goodbye."
He walked away, wound past the big mahogany desk and the model building that sat on it, seeming both minute and massive, like a castle built by pixies.
Belle called from beside the window. "It's very prestigious, my contest."
"Thank you again," he said over his shoulder, going on his way.
"You could play hob the nob with a good many famous people, lots of beautiful girls...and boys."
He shook his head, almost at the door.
"Of course," she added, her voice rising and desperate, "there’s the prize money...a million dollars isn't much these days, but..."
He opened the door, and walked out through it.
"I see. If I can't offer anything else then salut!"
The door swung shut behind him, but he halted as her last word sank into his mind. "Salut," he muttered. "Salut?" He shook his head. "No way. No, no... But on the phone, she called me Song."
He bent his head forward, squeezed his eyes shut, and massaged his brow with one hand. She hadn't said it by accident. She was American, they were in New York, and nobody he'd ever met there used colloquial French to say farewell.
Damn! He'd thought he was free of her.
He turned around in her outer office, and the secretary, a slim, attractive woman, shook her head. "Don't go back in there," she whispered.
He gave her a half smile, and shrugged. He pushed the door open, and strolled back in, doing his best to look nonchalant. Maybe he was caught, but he didn't have to show it.
She batted her eyes and beamed at him. "I'm so pleased that you changed your mind."
"I haven't," he said. "About your contest, anyway. But you called me Song, so you know..."
"That your brother's name isn't Sam," she finished for him.
He walked halfway into the room, and leaned against her model. She gasped, and gave him a hurt expression, but he remained in place. When it became evident that he wasn't going to move or speak, she sniffed, brushed a few crumbs from her lapel, and simpered. It was as pleasant as a pug dripping with maple syrup.
"Beautification," she said. "The Beautification." She managed to pronounce the capital letters.