a problem of money, education, but above all drugs and alcohol. People live in a virtual world; they don’t know what the real world is. They are manipulated into a kind of hypnotised state of docility. Young people pass their time on their couches with their virtual visors, recreational drugs and alcohol, they’re not interested in real sport or even real sex.”
“What does the government do about it?”
“Nothing, it’s all part of the authoritarian state.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“Each person carries an obligatory TRIP nanocard....”
“Trip?”
“Yeah, a transmitting, receiving, indicating and positioning device, powered by body heat. Information can be received at all times, benefits paid, taxes, medical information, fines as well as personal identification, social security number, health, you know if the person is a carrier of disease, for example aids, criminal records, driving licence, employment. With the nanocard a person can be located in seconds, if he has an accident or falls ill his family can be informed, and the hospital can get to his medical record and blood type.”
“It’s not all negative.”
“By all means no, but it’s still Big Brother.”
“I imagine it’s possible to hack into the system and change information.”
“Of course, nothing is perfect but any person found guilty of breaking into the system and modifying data is very seriously reprimanded, the only ones outside of the system are the Clapos and Horbans.”
“What!”
“Clapos,” laughed Guiglione, “it means ‘que de la peau’ – only skin, skin and bones, it rhymes with Clodos, Drogos, Alcolos. The dregs of society.”
“I see,” said Ennis absorbing the information. “What about Horbans?”
“Banished, I suppose, beyond the pale. Most of them smuggle drugs from the Zone by the sewers and the Metro during the night from beyond the Périphérique.”
Wanted
The next day they were up early to meet a passer, who would guide Ennis in the Zone. They were to meet in one of the cafés nearby the Place du Trône. It was a fine day; the morning was a little cooler with a certain freshness in the air.
They stopped to look at the murals before the columns near the 17th century customs houses. The face of Boublil filled the public TS screen and his high voice echoed across the avenue, his head was bowed reading from a paper.
“... man is dangerous, wanted for murder and association with terrorists. Do not hesitate to contact the police of your quarter or the Ethnic Affairs Brigade. Your safety is in peril, help us to protect your rights and our Gallo-European privileges.”
Then a picture appeared on the screen, it was Ennis.
Guiglione pulled him as he stood hypnotised by his own image.
“Don’t panic. Come on let’s get away from here. We’ll get on the Magnotram,” he said pointing in the direction of the silver tram that glided towards its stop.
They looked up as a copter passed above them with an almost silent swish of its rotors heading towards the Zone on its surveillance patrol. The RASE copters carried ultra sophisticated equipment connected to Ministry of Sate Security where all movements, noises and transmissions were analysed in real time.
“Were lucky I suppose there’s a better chance of escaping detection in crowds than standing in line, like in airports or Metro turn styles.”
“The most important thing right now is to get you into the Zone!”
At that instant three RASE men appeared at the base of one of the columns, they ran slowly, their arms at the ready, looking around, scrutinising the bystanders.
“There!” cried an elderly woman who seemed to have been waiting for them. She pointed a finger in the direction of Ennis and Guiglione.
“Quick, run!” shouted Guiglione
They started running with the armed RASE men hot on their heels about thirty metres behind them. Their pursuers wore heavy bullet-proof armour with full visored helmets, knee and elbow protectors and lace up parachutist boots. The RASE men were handicapped by their equipment but they knew that help would arrive as soon as the copter picked up their signal.
“Halt! Police! Halt!”
Guiglione pulled out an automatic and fired a shot in the direction of their pursuers.
“Faster, they’ll kill us!”
Guiglione knew the risk, under any other circumstances they should have ended up in handcuffs, but today that was not to be, what Boublil wanted was Ennis dead, Guiglione would have simply been unavoidable collateral damage.
That evening the colonel of the anti-terrorist section of the RASE explained on the National News, “Our mission was to avoid bloodshed, to take the suspects alive for the purposes of the enquiry. Towards nine thirty this morning, a person who had observed two men acting suspiciously near the Magnotram stop at Place du Trône alerted us, one of them resembled the suspected terrorist Ennis.
A unit of the RASE and a two Zone Patrol Guards were dispatched to the scene. Ennis was sighted with an accomplice in the doorway of the old customs house. Our units approached and stopped about twenty metres from the terrorists and ordered them to place their hands on their heads. The American replied by pulling out an arm and firing at our men.
Warning shots were returned but they refused to surrender, instead they continued to fire, five shots, our units had no choice but to defend themselves.”
o0o
Ennis passed the night in an uninhabited building that was in the course of renovation on Rue de la Voute. He had heard the sound of police sirens all through the night after the gunfight. He thought of Guiglione whose desperate courage had enabled him to escape, he had been certainly wounded and was perhaps dead.
Towards six thirty in the morning he left dressed in a plasterers overalls and hat that he found in the building and went up to the second floor where he climbed out of the window onto the abandoned tram line that had once been a railway. He followed the line over the bridge that crossed the Cours de Vincennes and continued to the Barrier where he climbed into a ruined building and down to street level where he headed east crossing Boulevard Davout into a derelict area that adjoined the Périphérique, the covered urban motorway that encircled Paris, which had been converted into an underground Magnotram line.
Ennis made his way along the roof of the Périphérique overgrown with weeds and bushes northwards to Montreuil where the Périphérique formed the eastern wall of the Zone.
He was careful to avoid being seen as he slipped down the wall into an abandoned parking lot filled with the rusting carcasses of old cars.
Ennis saw smoke rising slowly from one corner of the car park and he quickly took cover between the heaps of rusting debris. It looked like a camp of Clodos but there was little movement, it was too early and they certainly had no urgent appointments. To his left was Rue Avron and two blocks to the south was the Barrier, running along the centre of what had been Rue des Grands Champs, a concrete wall topped by razor wire
The day was going to be hot and dangerous. He had no idea how he was going find the meeting point Guiglione had indicated to him. He was sure that his dramatic escape had been reported on the news and was in little that the Zone Patrol was out hunting for him.
The Périphérique was a no-man’s-land between rich Paris and the suburbs that were now almost deserted dotted with islands of a working class and ethnically correct population, who did not enjoy residential rights in capital but many of whom were daily commuters holding non-residential MARA work permits, sparingly issued by the Ministry for the Attribution of Remunerated Activities. It provided work in honest but lowly paid jobs in the capital, a means of supplementing the meagre state allocations to poor unqualified Gallos.
The Zone was sandwiched between Paris and the northeast arc of the Périphérique; it was what had once been part of the 19th and 20th arrondissements of the city. It had been designated as a temporary transit Zone fifteen years earlier during the PEP, the Population Exchange Pro
gramme with the Autonomous Region, but like many temporary measures it continued to serve as a special Zone to accommodate non-Gallo short-term contract workers.
He followed the wall and found a Metro station, Maraichers, where he studied the map looking hopefully the street mentioned by Guiglione. He was not sure of the exact name there was one that seemed that sounded right just a couple of blocks further on. It was not difficult to find but he was surprised by the dense crowds of people on the streets that reminded him of certain run down districts of Moscow. Shabbily dressed people sold their shoddy goods on the pavements. From time to time an old petrol scooter passed by in a cloud of blue smoke sometimes pulling a small trailer loaded with plastic jerry cans and cardboard boxes.
There were few four wheeled vehicles, Guiglione had explained the number of permits issued by the Ministry of the Environment were limited and too expensive for the Zonards and the underclass’s.
A copter passed overhead, they patrolled the sky above the Zone, surveying all activity but they rarely intervened in the problems or disputes of the Zonards, their only concern was to see that the troubles did not overflow into the City.
A Revolutionary
He was astonished to see several small black pigs. They grunted noisily as they rooted for food with their snouts in the piles of stinking rubbish. The canal was overflowing with rotting detritus and oily bubbles rose to the surface in the putrefying black water.