The City & the City by China Miéville Page B

much of an effort with their decor. There were two rooms, two and a half at generous count, full of cabinets and shelves stacked with files and books. In one corner wall space had been cleared and cleaned, it looked like, for backdrop, and a webcam pointed at it and an empty chair.
    “Broadcasts,” Drodin said. He saw where I was looking. “Online.” He started to tell me a web address until I shook my head.
    “Everyone else left when I came in,” Corwi told me.
    Drodin sat down behind his desk in the back room. There were two other chairs in there. He did not offer them, but Corwi and I sat anyway. More mess of books, a dirty computer. On a wall a large-scale map of Besźel and Ul Qoma. To avoid prosecution the lines and shades of division were there—total, alter, and crosshatched—but ostentatiously subtle, distinctions of greyscale. We sat looking at each other a while.
    “Look,” Drodin said. “I know … you understand I’m not used to … You guys don’t like me, and that’s fine, that’s understood.” We said nothing. He played with some of the things on his desktop. “And I’m no snitch either.”
    “Jesus, Drodin,” Corwi said, “if it’s absolution you’re after, get a priest.” But he continued.
    “It’s just… If this has something to do with what she was into, then you’re all going to think it has something to do with us and maybe it even might have something to do with us and I’m giving no one any excuses to come down on us. You know? You know?”
    “Alright enough,” Corwi said. “Cut the shit.” She looked around the room. “I know you think you’re clever, but seriously, how many misdemeanours do you think I’m looking at right now? Your map, for a start—You reckon it’s careful, but it wouldn’t take a particularly patriotic prosecutor to interpret it in a way that’ll leave you inside. What else? You want me to go through your books? How manyare on the proscribed list? Want me to go through your papers? This place has Insulting Besź Sovereignty in the Second Degree flashing over it like neon.”
    “Like the Ul Qoma club districts,” I said. “Ul Qoma neon. Would you like that, Drodin? Prefer it to the local variety?”
    “So while we appreciate your help, Mr. Drodin, let’s not kid ourselves as to why you’re doing it.”
    “You don’t understand.” He muttered it. “I have to protect my people. There’s weird shit out there. There’s weird shit going on.”
    “Alright,” Corwi said. “Whatever. What’s the story, Drodin?” She took the photograph of Fulana and put it in front of him. “Tell my boss what you started telling me.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “That’s her.” Corwi and I leaned forward. Perfect synchronised timing.
    I said, “What’s her name?”
    “What she said, she said her name was Byela Mar.” Drodin shrugged. “It’s what she said. I know, but what can I tell you?”
    It was an obvious, and elegantly punning, pseudonym. Byela is a unisex Besź name; Mar is at least plausible as a surname. Together their phonemes approximate the phrase byé lai mar , literally “only the baitfish,” a fishing phrase to say “nothing worth noting.”
    “It isn’t unusual. Lots of our contacts and members go by handles.”
    “ Noms ,” I said, “de unification.” I could not tell if he understood. “Tell us about Byela.” Byela, Fulana, Marya was accruing names.
    “She was here I don’t know, three years ago or so? Bit less? I hadn’t seen her since then. She was obviously foreign.”
    “From Ul Qoma?”
    “No. Spoke okay Illitan but not fluent. She’d talk in Besź or Illitan—or, well, the root. I never heard her talk anything else—she wouldn’t tell me where she came from. From her accent I’d say American or English maybe. I don’t know what she was doing. It’s not… it’s kind of rude to ask too much about people in this line.”
    “So, what, she came to meetings? She was an organiser?” Corwi turned to me