Urbis

Crispin, Charlie and Mina arrived the next morning in a seedy red light area of Sector Twelve. They approached the address they had been given, and Charlie hammered on the door with a meaty fist. Crispin’s heart was thumping. He was about to be reunited with Tana. He couldn’t quite believe it.

The door opened, and a bleary-eyed woman stood there, clasping a mug of coffee. “We’re not open yet,” she declared. “The girls have got to sleep some time, you know.”

Charlie pushed past her into the hallway, and the others followed. “We’re not here as customers,” he said. “We’re here for Tana.”

“Tana?” said the woman, momentarily perplexed. “Oh yes. Her. This way.” And she led them up a narrow staircase. At the landing she stopped. “You’re not Security, are you? Cause if you are, you’re wasting your time. We’ve got our permits, we’re up to date with our... er... payments.”

“We’re not Security,” said Crispin impatiently. “Where’s Tana?”

“Oooh, you talk funny too,” said the woman. “Are you related to her?”

“She’s my wife,” Crispin replied grimly. “Where is she?”

“Just here,” the woman answered, tapping on a door. “Tana, dear. Are you decent?”

She pushed open the door and they crowded into the room. The woman in the corner, clasping a robe around her, was tall and attractive, with long dark hair. But she was not Tana.

“Hello,” she said. “Which one of you is my husband?” Her speech was slurred.

Charlie looked at Crispin. “Let me guess,” he said. “This isn’t your wife?”

Crispin shook his head. “She fits the description I gave you, I suppose, but...”

Charlie ushered Crispin out of the room, with Mina close on their heels.

“From her speech,” said Mina, “I’d say she’s had a stroke. Which is probably bad for business when you’re in the sex industry.”

“So she heard about us looking for Tana, and decided to try her luck,” Charlie added as they clattered noisily down the stairs. “She must be a bit simple as well.”

“And we’re still back where we started,” Crispin observed grumpily.

’We’ll find her,” Charlie said. “We’ll find her.”

The stifling heat of the summer months in the city became a torment for Crispin. His libido became inflamed, and he burned with longing for Tana as a woman of flesh and blood, and the longing for her grew in intensity with every hour that passed. In vain he repressed his desire, immersed himself more deeply in his reader. Time and again he found a whole section of a book would pass before his eyes without a frame of it registering on his frontal lobes. The searing carnal want - the need for release - welled up from the depths of his being and refused to be pushed back down. Visions of Tana came to him. He recalled their wedding night: how seductive she had been, artfully coy in her demeanour, slowly peeling off layers of nuptual robes to reveal herself to him for the first time, seeming so hesitant to give herself to him, yet so ardent in her wish to please him. He recalled how she had looked emerging from a lake when they had gone swimming... and he saw her again as she had been on their last night together, pale in the lamplight, welcoming...

And then Josie would come breezing in, tantalising him, for she needed no words to tell him that she was available to him at any time that he might choose. He would inhale the scent of her, heady and musky, as she sat on the bed next to him, interested in what he was looking at, close and real, touching, brushing with her hair, lightly, casually. At the same time he would delight in her vitality and her engaging presence, and he would wish that she were gone, out of temptation’s reach.

And now there was seldom a day that he did not spend some part of in Josie’s company, practising hand-to-hand combat with her in the warehouse’s makeshift gymnasium, continuing to learn to read under her able tuition, and making rapid progress, or else just discussing the latest developments in city politics.

One evening he arrived in front of her apartment and announced himself on her intercom. A memory chip compared his voice with a sample it held and flashed a green light to Josie to indicate that this was the genuine article. She opened the door to him.

It took Crispin a moment to recover. She was wearing a skimpy singlet of a figure-hugging satiny material in electric blue, and matching brief shorts.

“Hello,” he managed to blurt out, handing her a packet of chocolates he had bought for her.

She delivered her most engaging smile. “You shouldn’t have bothered bringing goodies, but thank you.”

He followed her into the living room, down steps into a sunken area scattered with soft floor cushions. The lighting was a muted orange glow from concealed sources, and music was playing: pulsing, hypnotic music that seemed to have been woven around the rhythm of a heartbeat. The overall effect was womb-like.

“Go and catch the sunset on the balcony,” she said. “It’s quite gorgeous.”

It was indeed. The glazed towers of the cityscape were running with liquid amber, honey and molten copper as the sun crested the horizon, sinking in poetic splendour. The reflection off a passing helicopter dazzled like a newborn star. The air above a row of silvery steel tanks shimmered with heat haze as a day in the high thirties drew to its steamy close.

Josie emerged from the apartment and stood next to him on the cramped balcony. She handed him his beer and he drank deeply,savouring its refreshing coolness. He held the glass to his forehead like an ice pack, feeling the condensation trickle over his brow. “It’s so sultry,” she murmured huskily. “So airless. Come inside and we’ll let the aircon go to work.”

They withdrew, sealing out the susurrus of the city. Josie served up a form of paella and poured fume blanc from the chiller on the table. “Smoky wine from a smoky city,” said Josie, raising her beaker. They ate.

“Have you heard the news?” Josie said.

“No. What?” Crispin asked excitedly. Had they got another lead on Tana?

“You remember the convention?”

“How could I forget?”

“I broke up before Lyall’s nomination as Sector Three leader could be properly recorded and minuted and everything. Well, Dolores Brophy held a special meeting yesterday to ratify it. It’s official. Lyall is our new leader.”

“That’s great,” said Crispin, deflated.

The conversation was interspersed with long pauses that were filled with lingering eye contact until Crispin became self conscious and turned his head away.

“I know what you want,” said Josie.

Crispin looked up with a start. “What?”

“Another beer.” She got up and moved towards the kitchen.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I can get it.”

“No, no,” she insisted. “You go and make yourself comfy down there in the pit.” She gestured towards the sunken area. “I’ll bring it to you.”

He wondered if there was something in the etiquette of the city that said a host had always to serve the drink to the guest. He felt himself still to be ignorant in so many things.

He stood up from the table, feeling a certain languor, a certain drowsiness washing over him. He lost his footing on the steps and fell among the cushions on the floor. He lay prone, luxuriating in their deliciously yielding softness.

“Are you all right?” said Josie.

“I tripped,” he admitted sheepishly.

She handed him his beer and stretched out full length beside him on her stomach. He took in the sinuous sweep of her backbone and the twin taut mounds of her bottom.

Josie saw him looking at her with longing. “You miss your wife very much, don’t you?”

Crispin took a sip of his beer, trying not to let on that she had momentarily caught him with his guard down. “I do. I am determined to find her. And the others.”

“Do you know how many people there are in Urbis?” she quizzed him.

“I read the statistic, but I forget. It doesn’t matter.”

“Not far off forty million. The chances of finding her are infinitesimally small.”

“I don’t care. I will go on until I find her.” He hesitated perceptibly. “Or find out what has happened to her.”

“Crispin, look at me.” It was a command he was powerless to disobey. Josie’s eyes were a lodestone that drew his own helplessly to them. “Are you going to waste your life on a futile search?”

“It is not futile,” he said scornfully. “And it will not be a waste if I find her.” He drank again from his beer.

“Crispin,” she pleaded. “It was terrible to lose her, I know, and it was a wonderfully romantic thing to come here looking for her. But - see the city out there? See how hopeless a task it is. Now you’re here, do something useful. Stay with the Underground. Help us. We need someone with your skills, but you’re no use to us if you’re going to be chasing shadows all the time.”

Crispin turned over on his back. “Does it occur to you,” he said coldly, “that I might not care whether I’m any use to you or not?” He drained his glass.

In a trice she jumped up and threw her leg across him, sat down on his hips. “I don’t believe that for an instant. You’ve already risked your neck for us.” Crispin opened his mouth to protest. “I know,” she said. “You’re going to tell me that was part of the bargain you struck. But you can’t fool me. You’ve told me more than once that you feel sympathy for our cause. You do, because you’re a good man, and you care about things like justice and freedom.”

As she spoke, she tugged the zipper on his shirt, and it opened with a salacious zzzip. She began massaging his pectorals with the tips of her fingers.

“Please don’t do that,” said Crispin. She felt something twitch underneath her.

“Why not?” she said in mock innocence, tracing with her finger the line of hair that led down to his navel.

“Because... because I have a wife,” he protested lamely.

“She’s not here,” said Josie. She crossed her arms over herself and pulled the singlet over her head, arching her back to accentuate the statuesque beauty of her bared torso. “But I am.”

Crispin put his forearms across his face to block out the vision of her. She returned to caressing his chest.

“Josie, please,” he entreated. “Don’t.”

She ignored him and continued rubbing. When her hands moved lower he grasped her wrists tightly.

“Don’t.” His tone was of resentment tinged with malice.

She shrugged. “Okay. I won’t.” He probed her eyes with his own steely gaze. “I promise. Please let go of me.”

He released her.

She got to her feet. “You need another beer,” she said with enforced gaiety. She snatched up his glass.

“No,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“Of course you do,” she said firmly. And she disappeared into the kitchen.

There was something odd, Crispin decided, in her determination to get him another beer. He quietly got to his feet and tiptoed to the kitchen door. Again Josie had her back to him.

“Josie?” he said.

She spun round, a beer can in one hand, a partly consumed bottle of spirits in the other.

“So that’s it,” he snarled. “Getting me pissed so you can seduce me.”

Josie put the beer and the whisky down on a benchtop. “Oh, Crispin!” she sighed.

There was a wild gleam in his eye. He stepped forward and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, his fingernails gouging into her flesh until she yelped in pain.

“Well, it didn’t work, did it?” he raged. He picked up the whisky bottle and hurled it against a wall, where it smashed like a detonation. He slapped her fiercely across the face and stormed out of the apartment, leaving her watching dribbles of whisky trickle down the wall, and crying softly.

Back in his room he paced about like a caged animal, muttering to himself. Josie. Josie. Sweet, delectable Josie... With a howl he drove his fist at the wall, punching a hole in the ancient plasterboard.