Wendell sat down beside his briefcase. 'This fax printout links the mutant with the Zawba'a.'

'I know.'

'I know you know, you stupid b.i.t.c.h. You retrieved those numbers from your dedicated terminal and you fed them into Tristan Smith's fax machine and then you printed out the call report. We know exactly what you did. But what you did not know is that the VIA has a major operation on to round up Zawba'a. Gabe Manzini is very interested in your case. Mr Manzini is a good friend of Efica's. We'd really hate to have him as our enemy.'

'Oh,' she said.

Their knees were almost touching. 'Do you know how many years it took for us to persuade the VIA to take us seriously? They're New World people like us, but you would never know it from their patronizing att.i.tude. They're worse than the English or even the French. Do you know what it took, the things we did for them so they would trust us? The s.h.i.t we ate? Friends of mine got killed just so these f.u.c.kers would share information with us. So when some little spin drier ...'

'Don't call me that ...'

'I thought you were smart. Doctor, right? Am I right? Doctor of f.u.c.king Philosophy?'

She knew that she should not be so near him, but it was equally dangerous to move away.

'We can't trust you, Jacqui. You're acting like the enemy.'

He took her face in his hand. She tried to push the hand away, but he was too big, too strong. Her face was small, his hand large, and he held the jaw so hard, pressed his thumb so cruelly, she thought it would break through the skin, and she was frightened, not just of the pain now, but what the pain would grow to, of his size, his bulk, his pale, pale eyes, the level of resentment she saw there. But then his face softened, his hand loosened.

'Jacqui, Jacqui,' he said.

He touched her cheek gently. She made herself very still.

'Did you want to visit Saarlim?'

She did not know how to answer him.

'I hope it wasn't that. It's such a pile of s.h.i.t.' He looked at her petulantly. 'Isn't it?'

She nodded.

'I never saw such s.h.i.t,' he said. 'It stinks. It's full of n.i.g.g.e.rs. Why did you do it, Jacqui?'

He had that sticky angry feeling about him. He gave off a smell she had always thought it was s.e.x, but it was anger.

'You don't involve the Voorstanders like this and not have a result. Now I'm here, we're going to have a result.'

Jacqui felt ill. 'What are you going to do?'

'What are you going to do?' he mimicked her. 'I'm going to have to kill Tristan f.u.c.king Smith before the Efican Department finds out the real story.' he mimicked her. 'I'm going to have to kill Tristan f.u.c.king Smith before the Efican Department finds out the real story.'

Jacqui began to cry.

Wendell looked at her, shaking his head.

'You silly b.i.t.c.h,' he said. 'You're lucky they sent me.'

He put his arm around her shoulders and she laid her head on his chest, listening to his heart, the pa.s.sage of dry air through his moist and gluey lungs. 'Your fax came true. You made the poor little f.u.c.k a terrorist.'

44.

Jacqui was kneeling beside my bed. She was beside me, so close that I could smell mint toothpaste when she called my name.

I knew she was there, but I stayed asleep. In my sleep I was lovable. In my sleep I had not disgraced myself at a dinner party. In my sleep she had different colours in her eyes, small islands of translucent brown, in a sea of coral blue.

'Tristan, hurry!'

Even as I rose regretfully towards her urgent voice, she remained a mystery of nature, beyond explanation and, because of that, someone who might, one day, mysteriously, love me.

When I opened my eyes, I found her in a slightly dazed and dishevelled state, unwrapping a small parcel on the floor.

'Tristan, please.'

I had been asleep on Bill's dining table with Wally's feathery snore playing in my ear, the sheet up across my naked face. Now I allowed her to help me down on to the littered rug and out into the muggy air of the balcony, where I saw she had the Simi suit laid out upon the ground, its gloved hands pointing away into the potted plants and creepers. I pulled my nightshirt tight around me, looking at the Simi without enthusiasm.

'Put it on,' she said.

'Why?'

'We've got to leave.' She stamped her foot. 'Quick, quick.' Her very strong, straight hair was actually bristling, not just on her crown, but on the fringe as well.

My muscles were still suffering from the exertions of the day before, but I laid my weary body down and soon felt the familiar tug and slide as I was sewn inside, snug as potatoes in a sweaty sack. Before she closed the parcel tight, she slipped her cool dry hand in around my neck. A second later I felt a small adhesive plaster applied in the region of my Adam's apple. As she smoothed it down with her fingers there was a brief stinging pain, like the bite of a small black ant.

'Don't say a word, Tristan,' she said, kneeling by my head. 'Don't even squeak. Just trust me while I finish sewing your suit together, and let me tell you where I was while you were sleeping.'

I stared out through my eye-holes at the concrete floor, the blue glazed pots.

'You're not going to like me, Tristan, when you know who I am, but just the same, mo-frere, I wanted to do something nice for you.'

She turned my head again. I imagined I knew what she was going to tell me, i.e. she was a woman.

'It isn't much,' she said. 'I hope you like it, but if you don't like it, you can at least be comforted by the fact that it hurt like h.e.l.l to pay for it.'

I could imagine her frowning while she snipped with scissors at her untidy needlework.

'I went to a shop called Ny-ko Effects,' she continued. 'Malide told me it was there, otherwise I would never have known ten floors up in some c.r.a.ppy little alleyway, run by some little Greek man with hair on his knuckles. Be still ...'

She stood and shut the sliding door. I sat up.

'Now, please ... we haven't got an awful lot of time.'

'What's ... that ... thing ... on ... my ... neck?'

My words were repeated by someone else. What's that thing on my neck? What's that thing on my neck?

Jacqui smiled at me. 'Not bad,' she said. 'Not bad at all.'

'You've ... got ... a ... tape ... recorder?' I asked.

A light tenor voice repeated after me, You've got a tape recorder? You've got a tape recorder?

'Do some Shakespeare,' she said. 'Quick. Do that bit from The Tempest The Tempest that you like.' that you like.'

'What ... have ... you ... done?' I asked, sitting up. What have you done? What have you done? The effect was seriously disconcerting. The effect was seriously disconcerting.

'You're wearing a "Two-pin Vocal Patch" like the actors in the Water Sirkus. You have a one-inch speaker sewn inside the Bruder's snout, and it is recommended that you change the patch every week. It's what they call a "Mid-frame" voice. You should have seen it, the shop. You wouldn't believe the stuff they have there.'

'I ... can ... talk,' I said.

I can talk.

'Recite something. My name is Ozymandias ...' My name is Ozymandias ...'

It's ... very ... weird.'

It's very weird.

'You sound like Piper McCall. Do the bit from Henry V Henry V, the speech before Agincourt.'

'Piper ... McCall ... is ... a ... great ... actor.'

Piper McCall is a great actor.

'So are you, mo-chou,' she said, kneeling to pick up needle, thread, crumpled paper. 'So now you can speak to Mr Millefleur. You can say all the things that are on your mind. Speak with your lips closed. I've stuffed a lot of paper in the snout to m.u.f.fle it, but you don't want the broadcast voice to compete with the lip voice. Come on, we're going now.'

'Now is the winter of our discontent, Made glorious summer by this sun of York.'

'You could be in the Sirkus. You really could. You could be a star.'

'Thank you,' I said. It was disconcerting to have my voice booming around me inside the Mouse head. I said. It was disconcerting to have my voice booming around me inside the Mouse head. 'Thank you.' 'Thank you.' I had to work at keeping my mouth closed. Even then my perfectly enunciated speech had a muddy undercurrent. I had to work at keeping my mouth closed. Even then my perfectly enunciated speech had a muddy undercurrent.

'Do I have an accent?'

'Tristan, we can't hang around here,' she said, opening the door into the apartment. 'I have things I have to tell you.'

'Tell me how it works.'

'It picks up on the resonance,' she said, whispering, so as not to wake up Wally, 'the vibration on the throat. It has a little chip which knows how to convert this to properly modulated speech. But listen, listen to me ...'

'I want you to wear women's clothes.' I said that. It was like a dream I didn't know where it had come from. I said that. It was like a dream I didn't know where it had come from.

'What?' she said, looking at me, blinking, her lips apart.

'Dress like a woman.'

She tugged at the sleeves of her jacket and did up a b.u.t.ton. 'What exactly does that mean?'

A delicious bloom appeared on her cheeks and neck.

'What?' she said.

I did not say anything. I was in a daze. The world was soft and out of focus.

'I don't have any girl clothes.'

'Malide does.'

She looked at me, hiding her expression with her hand.

'Quickly,' she said. 'Go and wait out there.'

I went back on to the balcony outside. I paced.

I was Meneer Mouse waiting for Madam Mouse on a street corner. I was the beau with the bunch of flowers, the stage-door Johnny. I was not a target of a.s.sa.s.sination. Not as far as I knew. I was the inhabitant of a trothaus, on a balcony high above Demos Platz, a Sirkus star, waiting for a girl to come and join me. It was yearning, desire, the most exquisite kind of pain.

I heard the door, the soft slide of machined aluminium.

Madam, Meneer, she was so lovely. She wore a simple skirt, long and black, and a tight-fitting blue halter. But it was not the dress or her body, but some bright, high light in her perfectly boned olive-skinned face. She wore no make-up, her hair was ruffled, but she was electric.

'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'I've been a stupid person. If there was a h.e.l.l, they'd have to send me there.'

I hardly heard her. I saw her. I was so happy. I knelt in front of her.

'My speech,' I said.

'There's no time,' she said.

I knelt beside her. I picked a little flower from out of Malide's window box. Wally would have died to see it a sappy thing with a stalk like a daffodil. She took it from me, and held it in both hands.

'I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow.'

I was Caliban, of course. You should have heard me, Meneer, Madam. I was funny, ironic, mocking, and so clear. clear.

'And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts,' I said.

'Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how to snare the nimble marmoset ...'

She sat on the white plastic stool beside me. Only then did I notice her face, the tears welling in her eyes.

'I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries.'

'Tristan,' she said.