"Ask him," her father says, and she turns to find him, dressed as she's imagined him to have dressed on that morning, his good overcoat open over his business suit, right hand extended, and in it, the black cylinder of a Curta calculator. "The dead can't help you, and the boy's no good."
Gray eyes framed with thin wires of gold. Become the color of that sky.
"Father—"
And managing to speak, wakes, awash with grief and terror and some sense of a decision made, though she knows not what, nor yet by whom, nor if indeed she ever will.
She has to turn on the light, to be sure that this is Damiens. She wishes Damien were here. She wishes anyone were here.
- /
Hi, Voytek.
When is Negemi going to visit Baranov? I need to talk with Baranov.
Send.
She uncables the printer from Damien's Cube, cables it to her iBook, hoping she has the right driver. She does. She watches the T-shaped city emerge in inkjet on a sheet of glossy. She'll need this, she thinks, without wanting to know exactly why.
Checking her mail.
Timing out, empty.
Sleep no longer an issue.
She looks at the printout. The squares and avenues. The overlay of numbers.
Checking her mail. One.
Casey he is going this morning, train from Waterloo to Bournemouth 8:10. He is spelled Ngemi. His friend there loans him a car to drive to Baranov. Why are you awake now! Voytek
Time in the upper-right corner of her screen: four thirty-three.
Why are you awake yourself? Can you get in touch with Ngemi and ask if I can go with him? I can't explain but it's very important.
His almost instant reply:
I am working on ZX 81 project. He wakes early. I will call him, call you.
She sends him thanks and the number of the Blue Ant cell.
Showers.
Does not think.
THE train from Camden High Street reaches Waterloo at seven-fifteen. Ancient escalators carry her to the concourse, beneath a few pigeons and a four-faced Victorian clock, above schedule boards and travelers wheeling black ballistic nylon toward the Chunnel trains. Off to Belgium perhaps: Bigendland.
She has been told to meet Ngemi beneath this clock, but is early, so she buys a tabloid, a bacon sandwich locked in rigid plastic, and a Fanta. Coffee contraindicated now, as she hopes to nap on the train.
Stands chewing her sandwich, beneath the clock, while the Sunday morning station moves around her. Vast incomprehensible voices chant and gargle above the crowd, as if trying to push crucial information through the dusty tin of hundred-year-old gramophone speakers.
The Fanta has a nasty, synthetic edge. She wonders why she bought it. The tabloid doesn't go down any better, seemingly composed in equal measure of shame and rage, as though some inflamed national subtext were being ritually, painfully massaged, for whatever temporary and paradoxical relief this might afford.
She bins both, as she sees Ngemi approaching, large and black, zipped into his tight black jacket and carrying a sort of carpetbag in some African-looking hand-weave.
Good morning," he says, looking mildly puzzled. "Voytek tells me that you wish to visit Baranov."
"I do. May I go with you?" It is a peculiar request. He is not a man whose personality can be said to improve. All of his moods are unpleasant. Have you purchased a ticket?"
"Not yet."
"Come with me, then."
TWO hours to Bournemouth, according to Ngemi, though previously, he explains, it had been a quicker journey, the "high-speed" train running now on aging, unreplaced rails.
She finds him a surprisingly comforting presence, with his creaking leather and professorial gravitas.
"Last night you said that Baranov had been bidding on an auction, and had lost, and wouldn't be happy," she opens, as a man in a polyester blazer pushes a cart of very mirror-world morning snacks past them down the aisle: crustless white egg-salad sandwiches in rigid triangular packaging, cans of lager, miniatures of whiskey and vodka.
"Indeed," says Ngemi. "He would be angry enough to have lost that calculator to anyone, but he has lost it to Lucian Greenaway, of Bond Street."
"Who is… ? "
"The dealer. Most recently, exclusively of clocks, and much resented by collectors in that field. Last year he began to go after Curtas. The market is not yet entirely rationalized, you see."
"Rationalized?"
"Not yet established as a global specialist environment. As has long been the case, for instance, with rare stamps, or coins. Or, to almost that degree, with the clocks Greenaway deals in. Values are only just being established, for Curta calculators. One still finds the odd example gathering dust on a shelf, perhaps for relatively little. All such markets are being rationalized by the Internet, of course."
"Are they?"
"Absolutely. Hobbs himself," and Cayce has to struggle for a second before remembering that this is Baranov's given name, "is responsible for that, to some degree."
"How?"
