The City and the City Part 12

"It's right there, Sergeant. Just me. This is my driver. I'm being picked up, and the constable here'll be coming straight back. In fact if you look, I think you can see my party over in Ul Qoma."

There, uniquely at that convergence, we could look across a simple physical border and see into our neighbour. Beyond, beyond the stateless s.p.a.ce and the backwards-to-us-facing Ul Qoman checkpoint, a small group of militsya of militsya officers stood around an official car, its lights stuttering as pompously as our own, but in different colours and with a more modern mechanism (true on-off, not the twisting blinder that our own lamps contained). Ul Qoman police lights are red and darker blue than the cobalt in Besel. Their cars are charcoal and streamlined Renaults. I remember when they drove ugly little local-made Yadajis, more boxy than our own vehicles. officers stood around an official car, its lights stuttering as pompously as our own, but in different colours and with a more modern mechanism (true on-off, not the twisting blinder that our own lamps contained). Ul Qoman police lights are red and darker blue than the cobalt in Besel. Their cars are charcoal and streamlined Renaults. I remember when they drove ugly little local-made Yadajis, more boxy than our own vehicles.

The guard turned and glanced at them. "We're due about now," I told him.

The militsya militsya were too far for any details to be clear. They were waiting for something though. The guard took his time of course were too far for any details to be clear. They were waiting for something though. The guard took his time of course-You may be policzai policzai but you get no special treatment, we watch the borders but you get no special treatment, we watch the borders-but without excuses to do otherwise eventually saluted somewhat sardonically and pointed us through as the gate rose. After the Bes road itself the hundred metres or so of no-place felt different under our tires, and then through the second set of gates and we were on the other side, with uniformed militsya militsya coming towards us. coming towards us.

There was the gunning of gears. The car we had seen waiting sped in a sudden tight curve around and in front of the approaching officers, calling out one truncated and abrupt whoop whoop from the siren. A man emerged, putting on his police cap. He was a bit younger than me, thickset and muscular and moving with fast authority. He wore official from the siren. A man emerged, putting on his police cap. He was a bit younger than me, thickset and muscular and moving with fast authority. He wore official militsya militsya grey with an insignia of rank. I tried to remember what it meant. The border guards had stopped in surprise as he held out his hand. grey with an insignia of rank. I tried to remember what it meant. The border guards had stopped in surprise as he held out his hand.

"That'll do," he shouted. He waved them away. "I got this. Inspector Borlu?" He was speaking Illitan. Dyegesztan and I climbed out of the car. He ignored the constable. "Inspector Tyador Borlu, Besel Extreme Crime, right?" Shook my hand hard. Pointed to his car, in which his own driver waited. "Please. I'm Senior Detective Qussim Dhatt. You got my message, Inspector? Welcome to Ul Qoma."

COPULA HALL HAD OVER CENTURIES SPREAD, a patchwork of architecture defined by the Oversight Committee in its various historic incarnations. It sat across a considerable chunk of land in both cities. Its inside was complicated-corridors might start mostly total, Besel or Ul Qoma, become progressively crosshatched along their length, with rooms in one or other city along them, and numbers also of those strange rooms and areas that were in neither or both cities, that were in Copula Hall only Copula Hall only, and of which the Oversight Committee and its bodies were the only government. Legended diagrams of the buildings inside were pretty but daunting meshes of colours.

At ground level, though, where the wide road jutted into the first set of gates and wire, where the Bes Border Patrol waved arrivals to a stop in their separated lines-pedestrians, handcarts, and animal-drawn trailers, squat Bes cars, vans, sub-lines for various kinds of pa.s.ses, all moving at different speeds, the gates rising and lowering out of any phase-the situation was simpler. An unofficial but ancient market where Copula Hall vents into Besel, within sight of the gates. Illegal but tolerated street hawkers walked the lines of waiting cars with roasted nuts and paper toys.

Beyond the Besel gates, below the main ma.s.s of Copula Hall, a no-man's-land. The tarmac was unpainted: this was neither a Bes nor an Ul Qoman thoroughfare, so what system of road markings would be used? Beyond towards the other end of the hall the second set of gates, which we on the Besel side could not but notice were better kept than our own, with weapon-wielding Ul Qoman guards staring, most of them away from us at their own efficiently shepherded lines of visitors to Besel. Ul Qoman border guards are not a separate wing of government, as they are in Besel: they are militsya militsya, police, like the policzai policzai.

It is bigger than a coliseum, but Copula Hall's traffic chamber is not complicated-an emptiness walled by antiquity. From the Besel threshold you can see over the crowds and crawling vehicles to daylight filtering in from Ul Qoma, beyond. You can see the bobbing heads of Ul Qoman visitors or returning fellow countrymen approaching, the ridges of Ul Qoman razorwire beyond the hall's midpoint, beyond that empty stretch between checkpoints. You can just make out the architecture of Ul Qoma itself through the enormous gateway hundreds of metres off. People strain to see, across that junction.

On our way there I had had the driver take us, to his raised eyebrows, a long way round to the Besel entrance on a route that took us on KarnStrasz. In Besel it is an unremarkable shopping street in the Old Town, but it is crosshatched, somewhat in Ul Qoma's weight, the majority of buildings in our neighbour, and in Ul Qoma its topolganger is the historic, famous Ul Maidin Avenue, into which Copula Hall vents. We drove as if coincidentally by the Copula Hall exit into Ul Qoma.

I had unseen it as we took KarnStrasz, at least ostensibly, but of course grosstopically present near us were the lines of Ul Qomans entering, the trickle of visitor-badge-wearing Bes emerging into the same physical s.p.a.ce they may have walked an hour previously, but now looking around in astonishment at the architecture of Ul Qoma it would have been breach to see before.

Near the Ul Qoma exit is the Temple of Inevitable Light. I had seen photos many times, and though I had unseen it dutifully when we pa.s.sed I was aware of its sumptuous crenellations, and had almost said to Dyegesztan that I was looking forward to seeing it soon. Now light, foreign light, swallowed me as I emerged, at speed, from Copula Hall. I looked everywhere. From the rear of Dhatt's car, I stared at the temple. I was, suddenly, rather astonishingly and at last, in the same city as it.

"First time in Ul Qoma?"

"No, but first time in a long time."

IT WAS YEARS since I had first taken the tests: my pa.s.smark was long expired and in a defunct pa.s.sport. This time I had undergone an accelerated orientation, two days. It had only been me and the various tutors, Ul Qomans from their Bes emba.s.sy. Illitan immersion, the reading of various doc.u.ments of Ul Qoman history and civic geography, key issues of local law. Mostly, as with our own equivalents, the course was concerned to help a Bes citizen through the potentially traumatic fact of actually since I had first taken the tests: my pa.s.smark was long expired and in a defunct pa.s.sport. This time I had undergone an accelerated orientation, two days. It had only been me and the various tutors, Ul Qomans from their Bes emba.s.sy. Illitan immersion, the reading of various doc.u.ments of Ul Qoman history and civic geography, key issues of local law. Mostly, as with our own equivalents, the course was concerned to help a Bes citizen through the potentially traumatic fact of actually being in being in Ul Qoma, unseeing all their familiar environs, where we lived the rest of our life, and seeing the buildings beside us that we had spent decades making sure not to notice. Ul Qoma, unseeing all their familiar environs, where we lived the rest of our life, and seeing the buildings beside us that we had spent decades making sure not to notice.

"Acclimatisation pedagogy's come a long way with computers," said one of the teachers, a young woman who praised my Illitan constantly. "We've got so much more sophisticated ways of dealing with stuff now; we work with neuroscientists, all sorts of stuff." I got spoiled because I was policzai policzai. Everyday travellers would undergo more conventional training, and would take considerably longer to qualify.

They sat me in what they called an Ul Qoma simulator, a booth with screens for inside walls, on which they projected images and videos of Besel with the Bes buildings highlighted and their Ul Qoman neighbours minimised with lighting and focus. Over long seconds, again and again, they would reverse the visual stress, so that for the same vista Besel would recede and Ul Qoma shine.

How could one not think of the stories we all grew up on, that surely the Ul Qomans grew up on too? Ul Qoman man and Bes maid, meeting in the middle of Copula Hall, returning to their homes to realise that they live, grosstopically, next door to each other, spending their lives faithful and alone, rising at the same time, walking crosshatched streets close like a couple, each in their own city, never breaching, never quite touching, never speaking a word across the border. There were folktales of renegades who breach and avoid Breach to live between the cities, not exiles but insiles, evading justice and retribution by consummate ignorability. Pahlaniuk's novel Diary of an Insile Diary of an Insile had been illegal in Besel (and, I was sure, in Ul Qoma), but like most people I had skimmed a pirated edition. had been illegal in Besel (and, I was sure, in Ul Qoma), but like most people I had skimmed a pirated edition.

I did the tests, pointing with a cursor at an Ul Qoman temple, an Ul Qoman citizen, an Ul Qoman lorry delivering vegetables, as quick as I could. It was faintly insulting stuff, designed to catch me inadvertently seeing Besel. There had been nothing like this the first time I had done such studies. Not very long ago the equivalent tests would have involved being asked about the different national character of Ul Qomans, and judging who from various pictures with stereotyped physiognomies was Ul Qoman, Bes, or "Other" (Jewish, Muslim, Russian, Greek, whatever, depending on the ethnic anxieties of the time).

"Seen the temple?" Dhatt said. "And that there used to be a college. Those are apartment blocks." He jabbed his finger at buildings as we pa.s.sed, told his driver, to whom he had not introduced me, to go various routes.

"Weird?" he said to me. "Guess it must be strange."

Yes. I looked at what Dhatt showed me. Unseeing, of course, but I could not fail to be aware of all the familiar places I pa.s.sed grosstopically, the streets at home I regularly walked, now a whole city away, particular cafes I frequented that we pa.s.sed, but in another country. I had them in the background now, hardly any more present than Ul Qoma was when I was at home. I held my breath. I was unseeing Besel. I had forgotten what this was like; I had tried and failed to imagine it. I was seeing Ul Qoma.

Day, so the light was that of the overcast cold sky, not the twists of neon I had seen in so many programmes about the neighbouring country, which the producers evidently thought it easier for us to visualise in its garish night. But that ashy daylight illuminated more and more vivid colours than in my old Besel. The Old Town of Ul Qoma was at least half trans.m.u.ted these days into a financial district, curlicued wooden rooflines next to mirrored steel. The local street hawkers wore gowns and patched-up shirts and trousers, sold rice and skewers of meat to smart men and a few women (past whom my nondescript compatriots, I tried to unsee, walked on their way to Besel's more quiet destinations) in the doorways of gla.s.s blocks.

After mild censure from UNESCO, a finger-wag tied to some European investment, Ul Qoma had recently pa.s.sed zoning laws to stop the worst of the architectural vandalism its boomtime occasioned. Some of the ugliest recent works had even been demolished, but still the traditional baroque curlicues of Ul Qoma's heritage sights were made almost pitiful by their giant young neighbours. Like all Besel dwellers, I had become used to shopping in the foreign shadows of foreign success.

Illitan everywhere, in Dhatt's running commentary, from the vendors, taxi drivers and insult-hurling local traffic. I realised how much invective I had been unhearing on crosshatched roads at home. Each city in the world has its own road-grammar, and though we were not in any total Ul Qoma areas yet, so these streets shared the dimensions and shapes of those I knew, they felt in the sharp turns we took more intricate. It was as strange as I had expected it would be, seeing and unseeing, being in Ul Qoma. We went by narrow byways less frequented in Besel (deserted there though bustling in Ul Qoma), or which were pedestrian-only in Besel. Our horn was constant.

"Hotel?" Dhatt said. "Probably want to get cleaned up and have something to eat, right? Where then? I know you must have some ideas. You speak good Illitan, Borlu. Better than my Bes." He laughed.

"I've got a few thoughts. Places I'd like to go." I held my notebook. "You got the dossier I sent?"

"Sure did, Borlu. That's the lot of it, right? That's where you're at? I'll fill you in about what we've been up to but"-he held up his hands in mock surrender-"truth is there's not that much to tell. We thought Breach was going to be invoked. Why didn't you give them it? You like making work for yourself?" Laugh. "Anyway, I only got a.s.signed all this in the last couple of days, so don't expect too much. But we're on it now."

"Any idea where she was killed yet?"

"Not so much. There's only CCTV of that van coming through Copula Hall; we don't know where it went then. No leads. Anyway, things ..."

A visiting Bes van, one might a.s.sume, would be memorable in Ul Qoma, as an Ul Qoman one would be in Besel. The truth is that unless someone saw the sign in the windscreen, people's a.s.sumption would be that such a foreign vehicle was not in their home city, and accordingly it would remain unseen. Potential witnesses would generally not know there was anything to witness.

"That's the main thing I want to track down."

"Absolutely. Tyador, or is it Tyad? Got a preference?"

"And I'd like to talk to her advisors, her friends. Can you take me to Bol Ye'an?"

"Dhatt, Quss, whichever's fine by me. Listen, just to get this out of the way, avoid confusions, I know your commissar commissar told you this"-he relished the foreign word-"but while you're here this is an Ul Qoman investigation, and you don't have police powers. Don't get me wrong-we're totally grateful for the cooperation, and we're going to work out what we do together, but I've got to be the officer here. You're a consultant, I guess." told you this"-he relished the foreign word-"but while you're here this is an Ul Qoman investigation, and you don't have police powers. Don't get me wrong-we're totally grateful for the cooperation, and we're going to work out what we do together, but I've got to be the officer here. You're a consultant, I guess."

"Of course."

"Sorry, I know turf bulls.h.i.t is bulls.h.i.t. I was told-did you speak to my boss yet? Colonel Muasi?-anyway, he wanted to make sure we were cool before we talked. Of course you're an honoured guest of the Ul Qoman militsya." militsya."

"I'm not restricted to ... I can travel?"

"You've got your permit and stamp and all that." A single-entry trip, a month renewable. "Sure if you have to, if you want take a tourist day or two, but you're strictly a tourist when you're on your own. Cool? It might be better if you didn't. I mean s.h.i.t, no one's going to stop you, but we all know it's harder to cross over without a guide; you could breach without meaning to, and then what?"

"So. What would you do next?"

"Well look." Dhatt turned in his seat to look at me. "We'll be at the hotel soon. Anyway listen: like I'm trying to tell you, things are getting ... I guess you haven't heard about the other one ... No, we don't even know if there's anything there and we only just got sniff ourselves. Look, there may be a complication."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"We're here, sir," the driver said. I looked out but stayed in the car. We were by the Hilton in Asyan, just outside the Ul Qoma Old Town. It was at the edge of a total street of low, modern concrete Ul Qoman residences, at the corner of a plaza of Bes brick terraces and Ul Qoman faux paG.o.das. Between them was an ugly fountain. I had never visited it: the buildings and pavements at its rim were crosshatched, but the central square itself was total Ul Qoma.

"We don't know for sure yet. Obviously we've been up to the dig, talked to Iz Nancy, all Geary's supervisors, all her cla.s.smates and that. No one knew anything; they just thought she'd f.u.c.ked off for a couple of days. Then they heard what had happened. Anyway, the point is that after we spoke to a bunch of the students, we got a phone call from one of them. It was only yesterday. About Geary's best friend-we saw her the day we went in to tell them, another student. Yolanda Rodriguez. She was totally in shock. We didn't get much out of her. She was collapsing all over the place. She said she had to go, I said did she want any help, blah blah, she said she had someone to look after her. Local boy, one of the others said. Once you've tried Ul Qoman ..." He reached over and opened my door. I did not get out.

"So she called?"

"No, that's what I'm saying, the kid who called wouldn't give us his name, but he was calling about about Rodriguez. It seems like-and he was saying he's not sure, could be nothing, et cetera et cetera. Anyway. No one's seen her for a little while. Rodriguez. No one can get her on her phone." Rodriguez. It seems like-and he was saying he's not sure, could be nothing, et cetera et cetera. Anyway. No one's seen her for a little while. Rodriguez. No one can get her on her phone."

"She's disappeared?"

"Holy Light, Tyad, that's melodramatic. She might just be sick, she might have turned her phone off. I'm not saying we don't go looking, but don't let's panic yet, right? We don't know that she's disappeared ..."

"Yeah we do. Whatever's happened, whether anything's happened to her at all, no one can find her. That's pretty definitional. She's disappeared."

Dhatt glanced at me in the mirror and then at his driver.

"Alright, Inspector," he said. "Yolanda Rodriguez has disappeared."

Chapter Thirteen.

"WHAT'S IT LIKE, BOSS?" There was a lag on the hotel's line to Besel, and Corwi and I were stutteringly trying not to overlap each other.

"Too early to say. Weird to be here."

"You saw her rooms?"

"Nothing helpful. Just student digs, with a bunch of others in a building leased by the university."

"Nothing of hers?"

"Couple of cheap prints, some books complete with scribbled margin notes, of which none are interesting. A few clothes. A computer which either has really industrial-strength encryption or nothing germane on it. And on that I have to say I trust Ul Qoman geeks more than ours. Lots of Hi Mom love you Hi Mom love you emails, a few essays. She probably used proxies and a cleaner-upper online too, because there was b.u.g.g.e.r-all of interest in her cache." emails, a few essays. She probably used proxies and a cleaner-upper online too, because there was b.u.g.g.e.r-all of interest in her cache."

"You have no idea what you're saying, do you, boss?"

"None at all. I had the techies write it all out phonetically for me." Perhaps one day we would be finished with I-don't-understand-the-internet jokes. "On which topic she hadn't updated her Mys.p.a.ce since moving to Ul Qoma."

"So you didn't figure her all out?"

"Sadly no, the force was not with me." It really had been a star-tlingly bland and uninformative room. Yolanda's, by contrast, a corridor over, into which we had also peered, had been crammed with hipster toys, novels and DVDs, moderately flamboyant shoes. Her computer was gone.

I had gone carefully through Mahalia's room, referring often to the photographs of how it had been when the militsya militsya entered, before the books and few bits and pieces had been tagged and processed. The room was cordoned, and officers kept the students away, but when I glanced out of the door over the little pile of wreaths I could see Mahalia's cla.s.smates in knots at either end of the corridor, young women and men with little visitors' marks discreetly on their clothes. They whispered to each other. I saw more than one weeping. entered, before the books and few bits and pieces had been tagged and processed. The room was cordoned, and officers kept the students away, but when I glanced out of the door over the little pile of wreaths I could see Mahalia's cla.s.smates in knots at either end of the corridor, young women and men with little visitors' marks discreetly on their clothes. They whispered to each other. I saw more than one weeping.

We found no notebooks and no diaries. Dhatt had acquiesced to my request for copies of Mahalia's textbooks, the copious annotations of which appeared to be her preferred study method. They were on my table: whoever had photocopied them had been rushed, and the print and handwriting yawed. As I spoke to Corwi I read a few cramped lines of Mahalia's telegraphic arguments with herself in A People's History of Ul Qoma A People's History of Ul Qoma.

"What's your contact like?" Corwi said. "Your Ul Qoman me?"

"Actually I think I'm his you." The phrase was not best chosen but she laughed.

"What's their office like?"

"Like ours with better stationery. They took my gun."

In fact the police station had been rather different from our own. It did have better fittings, but it was large and open-plan, full of whiteboards and cubicles over which neighbouring officers debated and bickered. Though I am sure most of the local militsya militsya must have been informed that I was coming, I left a wake of unabashed curiosity as I followed Dhatt past his own office-he was ranked enough to get a little room-to his boss's. Colonel Muasi had greeted me boredly with something about what a good sign of the changing relationships between our countries, herald of future cooperation, any help at all I needed, and had made me surrender my weapon. That had not been agreed beforehand, and I had tried to argue it but had given in quickly rather than sour things so early. must have been informed that I was coming, I left a wake of unabashed curiosity as I followed Dhatt past his own office-he was ranked enough to get a little room-to his boss's. Colonel Muasi had greeted me boredly with something about what a good sign of the changing relationships between our countries, herald of future cooperation, any help at all I needed, and had made me surrender my weapon. That had not been agreed beforehand, and I had tried to argue it but had given in quickly rather than sour things so early.

When we had left it had been to another roomful of not-very-friendly stares. "Dhatt," someone had greeted him in pa.s.sing, in a pointed way. "Ruffling feathers, am I?" I had asked, and Dhatt had said, "Touchy touchy. You're Bes, what did you expect?"

"f.u.c.kers!" said Corwi. "They did not."

"No valid Ul Qoman licence, here in advisory role, et cetera." I went through the bedside cupboard. There was not even a Gideon Bible. I did not know whether that was because Ul Qoma is secular, or because of lobbying by its disestablished but respected Lux Templars.

"f.u.c.kers. So nothing to report?"

"I'll let you know." I glanced over the list of code phrases we had agreed to, but none of them-I miss Bes dumplings = am in trouble, Working on a theory = know who did it-were remotely germane. "I feel f.u.c.king stupid," she had said as we came up with them. "I agree," I had said. "I do too. Still." Still, we could not a.s.sume that our communications would not be listened to, by whatever power it was that had outmanoeuvred us in Besel. Is it more foolish and childish to a.s.sume there is a conspiracy, or that there is not?

"Same weather over here as back home," I said. She laughed. That cliche witticism we had arranged meant nothing to report nothing to report.

"What next?" she said.

"We're going to Bol Ye'an."

"What, now?"

"No. Sadly. I wanted to go earlier today, but they didn't get it together and it's too late now." After I had showered and eaten, and wandered around the drab little room, wondering if I would recognise a listening device if I saw one, I had called the number Dhatt gave me three times before getting through to him.

"Tyador," he had said. "Sorry, did you try to call? Been flat out, got caught tying up some stuff here. What can I do for you?"

"It's getting on. I wanted to check about the dig site ..."

"Oh, s.h.i.t, yeah. Listen, Tyador, it's not going to happen tonight."

"Didn't you tell people to expect us?"

"I told them to probably probably expect us. Look, they'll be glad to go home, and we'll go first thing in the morning." expect us. Look, they'll be glad to go home, and we'll go first thing in the morning."

"What about What's-her-name Rodriguez?"

"I'm still not convinced she's actually ... no, I'm not allowed to say that, am I? I'm not convinced that the fact that she's missing is suspicious, how's that? It's hardly been very long. But if she's still gone tomorrow, and not answering her email or her messages or anything, then it's looking worse, I grant you. We'll get Missing Persons on it." So ...

"So look. I'm not going to get a chance to come over tonight. Can you ...? You've got stuff you can do, right? I'm sorry about this. I'm couriering over a bunch of stuff, copies of our notes, and that info you wanted, about Bol Ye'an and the university campuses and all that. Do you have a computer? Can you go online?"

"... Yeah." A departmental laptop, a hotel Ethernet connection at ten dinar a night.

"Alright then. And I'm sure they've got video-on-demand. So you won't be lonely." He laughed.

I READ Between the City and the City Between the City and the City for a while, but stalled. The combination of textual and historic minutiae and tendentious for a while, but stalled. The combination of textual and historic minutiae and tendentious therefores therefores was wearing. I watched Ul Qoman television. There were more feature films than on Bes TV, it seemed, and more and louder game shows, all a channel-hop or two from newsreaders listing the successes of President Ul Mak and the New Reform packages: visits to China and Turkey, trade missions to Europe, praise from some in the IMF, whatever Washington's sulk. Ul Qomans were obsessed with economics. Who could blame them? was wearing. I watched Ul Qoman television. There were more feature films than on Bes TV, it seemed, and more and louder game shows, all a channel-hop or two from newsreaders listing the successes of President Ul Mak and the New Reform packages: visits to China and Turkey, trade missions to Europe, praise from some in the IMF, whatever Washington's sulk. Ul Qomans were obsessed with economics. Who could blame them?

"Why not, Corwi?" I took a map and made sure all of my papers, my policzai policzai ID, my pa.s.sport and my visa were in my inside pocket. I pinned my visitor's badge to my lapels and went into the cold. ID, my pa.s.sport and my visa were in my inside pocket. I pinned my visitor's badge to my lapels and went into the cold.

Now there was the neon. All around me in knots and coils, effacing the weak lights of my far-off home. The animated yammering in Illitan. It was a busier city than Besel at night: now I could look at the figures at business in the dark that had been unseeable shades until now. I could see the homeless dossing down in side streets, the Ul Qoman rough sleepers that we in Besel had had to become used to as protubs to pick our unseeing ways over and around.

I crossed Wahid Bridge, trains pa.s.sing to my left. I watched the river, that was here the Shach-Ein. Water-does it crosshatch with itself? If I were in Besel, as these unseen pa.s.sersby were, I would be looking at the River Colinin. It was quite a way from the Hilton to Bol Ye'an, an hour along Ban Yi Way. Aware that I was crisscrossing Besel streets I knew well, streets mostly of very different character than their Ul Qoman topolgangers. I unsaw them but knew that the alleys off Ul Qoma's Modra.s.s Street were in Besel only, and that the furtive men entering and emerging from them were customers of the cheapest Bes prost.i.tutes, who if I failed to unsee them I might have made out as miniskirted phantoms in that Besel darkness. Where were Ul Qoma's brothels, near what Besel neighbourhoods? I policed a music festival once, early in my career, in a crosshatched park, where the attendees got high in such numbers that there was much public fornication. My partner at the time and I had not been able to forebear amus.e.m.e.nt at the Ul Qoman pa.s.sersby we tried not to see in their own iteration of the park, stepping daintily over f.u.c.king couples they a.s.siduously unsaw.

I considered taking the subway, which I never had (there is nothing like it in Besel), but it was a good thing to walk. I tested my Illitan on conversations I overheard; I saw the groups of Ul Qomans unsee me because of my clothes and the way I held myself, double-take and see my visitor's mark, see me. There were groups of young Ul Qomans outside amus.e.m.e.nt arcades that rang with sound. I looked at, could see, gasrooms, small vertically oriented blimps contained within integuments of girders: once urban crow's nests to guard against attack, for many decades now architectural nostalgias, kitsch, these days used to dangle advertis.e.m.e.nts.

There was a siren I quickly unheard, of a Bes policzai policzai car, that pa.s.sed. I focused instead on the locals moving quickly and without expression to get out of its way: that was the worst kind of protub. I had marked Bol Ye'an on my street map. Before coming to Ul Qoma I had considered travelling to its topolganger, the physically corresponding area of Besel, to accidentally glimpse that unseen dig, but I would not risk it. I did not even travel to the edges where the ruins and park trip over tinily into Besel itself. Unimpressive, people said, like most of our antique sites: the large majority of the great remnants were on Ul Qoman soil. car, that pa.s.sed. I focused instead on the locals moving quickly and without expression to get out of its way: that was the worst kind of protub. I had marked Bol Ye'an on my street map. Before coming to Ul Qoma I had considered travelling to its topolganger, the physically corresponding area of Besel, to accidentally glimpse that unseen dig, but I would not risk it. I did not even travel to the edges where the ruins and park trip over tinily into Besel itself. Unimpressive, people said, like most of our antique sites: the large majority of the great remnants were on Ul Qoman soil.

Past an old Ul Qoman edifice, though of European style, I-having planned this route-stared down a slope the length of Tyan Ulma Street, heard distantly (across a border, before I thought to un-hear) the bell of a tram crossing the street in Besel a half mile in front of me in the country of my birth, and I saw filling the plateau at the street's end under the half-moon the parkland, and ruins of Bol Ye'an.