Jon Grimwood - End of the World Blues

“No there aren’t,” said Lady Neku.

The voice gave her a list. It was right, of course, provided you counted servitors and retainers. She stood in the duct below the audience chamber, reached by the helix of stairs behind the unicorn. No one had seen her pull aside the tapestry and hide herself; they were all too busy watching Lady Katchatka die.

“Open,” demanded Lady Neku, more to banish this thought than any real belief High Strange might listen.

“And if I do?” it said.

“We die,” said Lady Neku.

“That’s what you want?”

Lady Neku nodded her head.

“Say it,” the voice said. “Name the people you think should die.”

“I don’t know all their names,” said Lady Neku crossly, as she rubbed knuckles into her eyes and folded her cloak tight, to hide the sight of blood which was beginning to make her feel sick.

“So you’re saying you want people killed, but you don’t actually know their names?”

Yes, that is exactly…well. Lady Neku thought about it. Maybe not exactly.

“You want Luc dead?”

Of course I want… She hesitated. Killing Luc was her duty. Something to which she should dedicate the rest of her life. All the same. “This isn’t fair,” Lady Neku said.

“Nor is opening that door.”

For the rest of their conversation Lady Neku sat on the floor, her knees pulled up to her chin and her back against the door she’d been trying to open. She knew the discussion was mostly internal. High Strange just helping to pick through her thoughts.

“All right,” it said. “I’ve opened the door…Only a fraction,” it added, as Lady Neku scrambled to her feet. “The air is already thinner and your core temperature has begun to fall. That’s why the bleeding is less. In a few seconds Luc and his father will begin to search for you. A short while later, they’ll stop looking and make plans to abandon the habitat.”

“And me?” asked Lady Neku.

“Ah yes,” said High Strange. “I need to talk to you about that.”

Her life was saved by a bowl. Along with the life of Luc, his father, their retainers, other families, and people who clung to existence in parts of the world Lady Neku barely realised were inhabited.

The whole of humanity had been preserved because of a wafer-thin bowl barely larger than Lady Neku’s cupped hands. It was old, it was cracked beneath the rim, and it was the colour of burned earth. It was also, according to High Strange, proof that humanity was capable of more than it seemed. That they were worth protecting.

“We are the ghosts,” said High Strange.

“Of what?”

“Your machines.” It smiled, she could hear it in the voice. “We tied the knots for you and made the sails. We hold up your habitats. All you have to do is manage yourselves.”

“We’ve failed.”

“Katchatka failed. Lord d’Alambert will fold this station into his segment and grow new sails, with help from me. The weather will be stabilised. As your mother once said, everything comes at a price.”

“Her death,” said Lady Neku, eyes refilling. “My brothers.”

“No,” said High Strange. “You.”

Her cloak smelled of smoke and black ash formed moons beneath her fingernails, which were broken from having scrabbled through the rubble of a recently burned bar. The air in High Strange was thin and cold enough to make Lady Neku shiver, though that might have been the last of her memories falling into place.

Staring round the frozen chamber, Lady Neku saw the banquet table and her brothers where they sat. Lady Katchatka regal in a silver chair. Ice frosting the walls and the tiles and even the knives and forks on the plates laid out in front of the dead.

“Oh fuck,” she said. “I came back…”

She’d chosen exile. And offered her choice of time and place, had chosen where and when the bowl was made, because High Strange believed she would be happy there. Denied her own life, Lady Neku accepted a life that came frighteningly close.

Everything was possible in an infinite universe. That much was obvious. Less obvious, until one thought of it, was the fact that everything possible was possible twice, or three times, or as many times as anyone was prepared to throw the dice.

“I broke my memories,” said Lady Neku, wondering if this was excuse enough for her return.

“Neku,” said High Strange. “We’ve been through this. The beads only worked while you were here with me. There’s no me where you went, so no beads and no easy memories. Only you.”

“It’s weird there,” said Lady Neku. “No one is friendly and Kit’s bar has just burned down and the only normal person I’ve met so far is a cat.”

“Neku…”

“I have to go back,” she said.

“Yes,” said the voice. “You do.”

The shuttle bus from Narita Airport was a quarter full, as always. A Korean boy with spiky hair sat at the back, pointedly ignoring signs not to use his phone while the bus was in motion. Leaning against him was a Japanese girl lost in admiration, but the boy was still embarrassed enough to be angry about something that happened earlier.

A customs officer had pulled him out of a queue in arrivals and unpacked his luggage with excruciating slowness, carefully unfolding each item of clothing as the line looked on. It had been all the boy could do to bow when she let him go.

Rain hammered the bus, obscuring its windows. Behind the downpour hid trees and houses, a waterlogged crocus bed looking like a tiny paddy field. Half-seen factories stood back from the motorway, screened by sodden banks of earth. Just another summer’s day in Tokyo, with its heat hanging on the edge of tropical.

Soon the bus would reach Odaiba and the artificial islands built to house Tokyo’s overspill. Some of this area was still poor, but most had spawned wild architecture and ever-more-expensive shopping malls. It was the same city, Kit told himself. He’d been in love with its anonymity from the moment he first arrived; its anonymity and ability to change so fast it always remained the same.

It still was that city, but he was going to abandon it all the same, once he’d done what he came to do.

Having wrapped themselves around each other, the teenage couple behind him fell asleep, lulled by the warmth and that weird jet-lag dilation which means one’s mind has trouble catching up with its owner after a long flight.

Kit’s fake passport had carried him through customs. He suspected he had the Korean boy to thank for that. So disapproving had the smartly dressed young officer been at the couple who’d preceded him that she gave Kit little more than a glance.

“Are you carrying drugs?”

Kit had shaken his head firmly.

“Why are you here?”

“Holiday,” said Kit. “I’m only here for a week. At the Shinjuku Hilton.”

The officer nodded, as if this was where she’d expect someone like Kit to stay, stamped his passport, and motioned Kit through. Both questions had been in English and Kit had been careful to answer the same way.

The hand in his pocket had been borderline rude, but he was gaijin, and besides being regarded as ill bred was infinitely better than having a Tokyo customs officer wonder why his little finger was missing.

No Neck answered the phone on the first ring, his wide-cheeked face scowling from Kit’s tiny screen. As Kit watched, the man dragged a smile from his memory. “Media liaison,” he said.

“What?”

“English language liaison. 47 Ronin. How can I help?”

“It’s me,” said Kit, flicking his Nokia to visual.

There was a sudden silence. “Benny?” said No Neck. “From the Times ?”