Urbis

Tana’s new home was Shah’s apartment, which was enormous and sumptuous beyond belief. She was given a room of her own. A doctor came on her first day in Sector One and gave her an injection which, she was informed, would prevent her having any further children. Shah silenced her protests, making it quite clear that she had no say in the matter. She was Shah’s concubine, hailed from the master bedroom when the master was in the mood, screwed in a manner that was at once deft and perfunctory, and then dismissed when the master wished to sleep, as he preferred to sleep alone. Frequently, however, Shah would return late at night from a committee meeting or a lengthy sitting of the Presidium, and he would be either too tired or too intoxicated for sex.

After Brandt Tana found Shah an improvement. Not much, but an improvement nevertheless. He was a bully, but had wormed his way into a position of authority from which he could delegate his dirty work to those under him. He did not dirty his hands with violence as Brandt did, but employed others to do his dirty work. He was essentially a coward, she decided, and a weak man in a position of power: a dangerous mixture. His compensation for his weakness was his delight in dominating women.

“Tell me about the Leader,” said Tana, nestling closer against Shah’s chest and hoping that in post-coital euphoria he would be willing to talk about a subject which excited her curiosity if for no other reason than that everyone she had spoken to about the kingpin of the entire organisation of Urbis had professed ignorance.

“Oh, Edward Grant. A dynasty of Grants has held the reins of power through four generations, but it appears that he will be the last Grant to do so, as he has no heirs.” Shah paused. “It’s interesting that you should ask, Tana, because he has not been seen in public for some months now, and there are rumours in the Presidium that he is ill, and may be dying. When he does die, there is going to be internecine feuding between the rival factions hungry to place their own man on the throne.”

“How do you know he is not already dead?” said Tana.

“Because no one would gain by keeping his death a secret,” Shah explained. “Everyone knows there is going to be a struggle, and everyone is prepared for it. To prolong the waiting is pointless. There is a theory that once the Underground get wind of the Presidium’s squabbles they will launch an attack. But it makes no difference. We have been expecting something from them for a while now. They will be repulsed whenever they make their move.”

“Of course,” said Tana.

“In any case,” said Shah, “The Presidium continues to receive directives from the Leader which are not only endorsed with his personal stamp but also contain codes known to a very few people. So it seems evident that he is still alive and compos mentis.”

“I see,” said Tana.

“On a more personal note,” Shah added, a little coolly, “I hear he has been asking after you.”

“Did you tell him about me?” said Tana.

“Not at all,” said Shah. “I want to keep you for myself.”

“You don’t mean he would...?”

“Why not? One of the privileges of supreme power is that you can have anything - or anyone - you want.” Shah moved awkwardly, withdrawing his shoulder from behind Tana’s head. “But don’t worry about it. Even if he wants you, or thinks he does, I doubt if he’s still got the wherewithal to do anything about it.” He waved his hand at her. “Off you go to bed now. Sweet dreams.”

Tana reflected that she had delivered herself into Shah’s hands in order to manipulate him, and thus achieve power for herself. She was not blind to the injustices of the system which operated in Urbis, and had gradually developed in her mind the idea that she might infiltrate the system, not to feather her own nest, as every indigenous Urbian would expect her to do, but to turn the system around so that it might be used to serve the needs of those members of society who were voiceless. But she needed allies, people she knew she could trust. Clearly these would not be senior people: Hanbury’s views, she had quickly discovered, were entirely typical of them. He clearly had little time for the malcontents of the Underground or those who kicked up a fuss about democracy and complained about what they called `moral fascism’. The city supplied their every need, he insisted, and if anyone experienced poverty - which he doubted - it must surely have come about through their own laziness.

No, it would be the serving people, the minor clerks and fetchers and carriers. She would have to establish contact with them, without blowing her cover as a sympathiser with the status quo.

Sector One, Tana discovered, was a small city in itself, self-contained and to a large extent self-sufficient. It had a small hydroponics plant growing a proportion of its food, and a small power station which catered for its energy needs. Only water and sewage passed through an underwater pipeline connected to the rest of the city. Everything else came either by road, across the bridge, or by helicopter, to a landing pad on a rooftop close to the hub of the island. It had its own schools and its own medical facilities, and Sector One Security had an arsenal of weapons stored in the encircling wall.

“This place is like a fortress,” she observed to Hanbury after her first exploration.

“It is a fortress,” Hanbury concurred.

“Why?”

“Subversives,” said Hanbury. “This is the centre of power in the city, and every now and then they make an assault on it. They’re always poorly armed, though, and it’s invariably a rout, but they keep coming back for more.”

“Do you kill them?”

“Some. Enough to make the rest turn and run. Back to their little bolt holes.”

She was Shah’s companion at social functions, and for this she was schooled by Hanbury and Shah himself. She was assured that few people would enquire in much detail about her past, as her chief function, she was told, was to be decorative, an adornment on Shah’s arm, and it was certainly not expected that she should be intelligent. But to cover themselves, the two men concocted a background for her which they spent long hours drumming into her. She was from an average middle-class background in Sector Twelve, her father was a banker, she had gone to a good school. Shah employed a voice training specialist from Sector One’s public information system to expunge all traces of her accent, a task in which the specialist was largely successful. The harshness, the burr, was patiently smoothed out. She eventually learned how not to roll her ’r’s, and her vowels became, in time, more modulated. She began to feel as if Vale belonged to some previous existence.

With all this soundly inculcated, Shah began taking her to soirees, dinner parties and other gatherings of the Urbian creme de la creme. When she overcame an initial reticence, Tana found she could play the part well. She proved charming and witty, but was careful never to steal Shah’s limelight. She was above all that most popular partygoer: a good listener, especially when the speaker was some senior public servant made garrulous by a potent rum punch, who would corner her where he could take in her low-cut gown at his leisure. She also found it useful at times to act a little dumb; in this way she was able to pick up snippets of conversation which the speakers assumed she would not understand. Thus she quickly gained a grasp of the politics within Sector One and its effect on the rest of the city.

Tana soon discovered that, apart from the personal contacts she had already made, virtually everyone in sector one knew who she was. She began to realise she may have some considerable influence, and set out to test precisely what that could do.

If she told someone to do something, it was done. Assistants in the sector’s stores fell over themselves to satisfy her every whim. If she walked into a crowded cafe, a table with a view miraculously became vacant. She saw that such treatment could quickly become addictive, and accounted for most of the swollen heads she found around her. The obsequiousness of underlings became distasteful to her, but she knew that it was probably more distasteful still to them, and that they were obliged to practise it if they wished to keep their jobs.

She had taken Jameson’s words to heart, and was rising from the pit of depravity into which she had been flung. But over a period of months she became aware that in rising herself, she had within her the potential to improve the lot of the city’s underdogs, and resolved to put that potential to the test.

She began to intervene in small matters that were not her concern. Walking away from a coffee morning held by the wife of an assistant director in the Transportation Ministry, she was passed by a runner, the red light on his headset flickering, indicating that some urgent errand was being relayed to him. At an intersection of two corridors, the runner slammed into a man carrying a pile of viewdiscs and rolled-up charts, sending the man sprawling and the discs and the charts scattering across the corridor.

“Stupid cretin,” yelled the man, as the runner helped him to his feet. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”

The runner began gathering up the man’s belongings for him.

“What’s your name? I’m going to talk to your runner base about you.” The man grumbled as he accepted the bundle of charts the runner offered him.

Tana watched the scene grow ugly. “Leave him alone,” she said.

The man turned angrily, obviously about to tell her to mind her own business, but recognised her, and shut his mouth. Both men looked at her in bewilderment. Written all over their faces was the question: Why is the Security Minister’s consort coming to the aid of a runner, the lowest of the low in the Sector One hierarchy?

Tana was not about to tell them. “Off you go,” she said kindly to the runner, then stalked off in a different direction, leaving the other man red-faced, gathering up the last of his viewdiscs.

On another occasion she happened along just after a collision between a delivery buggy and a Security vehicle. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered, as the Security man was recording the particulars of the delivery man. Tana approached from the rear of the Security vehicle, and ascertained from its position that its driver had most probably been at fault. However, the delivery buggy was certainly the more seriously damaged.

As the crowd recognised her and parted to allow her to approach, she suddenly halted, recognising the voice of the Security man. She smiled with mischievous satisfaction.

“On your way, Brandt.”

At the sound of her voice, Brandt spun round in alarm. An array of emotions played themselves out across his features. Here was the woman he had witnessed at her moment of public degradation, the woman he had taken as a slave and as the reluctant mother of his child, the child he had ordered removed and destroyed. This woman was in a position to have him humiliated.

To the amazement of the delivery buggy driver, Brandt flipped open a docket book and filled out a sheet. “Here,” he said, handing it to the man. “Give this to Security Admin and they’ll reimburse you for the damage.” He even managed a mumbled apology as he reversed his car and drove away.

In a closed society like Sector One, word travels fast, and after a few similar incidents Tana had acquired a unique reputation among the lower orders as a high ranking consort who would stand up for the likes of them. No one could remember a woman in Tana’s position who had truly acknowledged their existence before, let alone taking their side.

The oppressed underlings had borne so much for so long, but none had dared make the first move towards revolt, knowing that his or her life would be automatically forfeit as the authorities moved to crush them. It was as if tinder dry fuel had lain waiting for a spark to ignite it into a conflagration. It was not long before Tana was recognised as that spark. Soon, her name was being whispered on lips pressed close to attentive ears in corridors, storerooms and stairwells. The gossip included speculation as to why she should behave the way she did, and there were those who feared she might prove to be an agent provocateur, acting as she did precisely in order to flush out dissidents, but the warning voices were drowned by the majority who cared little for the whys and wherefores of Tana’s actions, happy only that she was behaving as she was. And they seized on the impetus provided by her actions with the greatest alacrity.

A few days after the incident with the delivery man, Tana was sitting with another woman at a table in the window of a popular little bistro, sipping on a cappucino, when Cath walked briskly past, carrying on her back a sandy-haired baby in a papoose.

Tana made garbled apologies to her companion and rushed out through the door of the cafe in hot pursuit. She looked down a tiled corridor in time to see a door marked `Changing Room’ swinging shut.

Inside, she was relieved to find Cath was the only one present. She had laid the child on a changing table and was about to remove a soiled nappy. She glanced round as the door clicked shut behind Tana.

“Tana!” She flung her arms round her.

Tana gazed at the baby. She did not know what name had been given to her own daughter.

“Frances,” said Cath, nervously. “It’s my mother’s name. But if you don’t like it...”

“It’s a fine name,” said Tana, tenderly running her fingers through the baby’s red hair as Cath changed her. “The nearest name among my people would be Franka, but I like Frances. It’s softer.” She caressed the downy cheeks, and minute hands came up and grasped her finger tightly. “She has a firm grip,” Tana said, laughing. When Cath had pinned on a new nappy, Tana gathered Frances up in her arms, wondering how she could ever let her go. “Nearly three months,” she mused. “It’s gone quickly. She’s healthy? She certainly looks it.”

“Oh yes, she’s healthy,” said Cath with a smile.

Tana suddenly became conscious that she and Cath should not be seen together. “I seem to have become a big noise in this place. Everyone knows me.”

“That’s true,” said Cath. “I’ve heard it on the grapevine that the Underground is quite keen to get in touch with you.”

“I want to... I want to do something useful.”

Cath gave an approving nod of her head. “Good. Well, maybe I can be your go-between.”

Tana looked her in the eyes, and kissed her vigorously on the lips. “But we can’t be seen in public. Give me your address, so I can stay in touch.”

Tana held Frances for a short minute, then handed her back to Cath, who began fitting her into the papoose.

“Here,” said Tana, handing over a thousand unit disc, and then a thought struck her. “Have you seen Jameson at all?”

Cath’s eyes bulged. “Didn’t you know? I was brought over by two Sector One Security men, a couple of real pigs, the same day as you. They were just fishing his car out of the bay as we went past. An accident, they said...”

Tana began to make discreet personal contact with the Underground. When she was able to slip away when she was certain she was not being observed, she would go to apartments in quarters of Sector One not normally frequented by those of her status, and met briefly with one or two key Underground operatives to discuss how she might best assist their cause. They questioned her, probed her motives, pointed out to her the risks she ran if she were found out. She persuaded them that, in her unique situation, she had lost everything that was of any value to her, and that she really had nothing further to lose.

The Underground welcomed her, and gradually, by cautious degrees, extended its trust. She was permitted to sit in on larger gatherings of Underground people, and finally invited to address a meeting of some thirty of the most senior among them, held in a delivery buggy parking lot in the middle of the afternoon. Guards manned the gates and shooed away legitimate users of the lot while Tana and the others hammered out a strategy in the event of a general uprising, which all hoped would not be long in coming.

That night, Tana was lying in bed with Shah. He normally went to sleep immediately after sex, but on this occasion he was unusually talkative. Tana made a show of listening, but her mind was ranging far and wide. Shah was talking about the business with Brandt and how he had killed O’Rourke because she was not a virgin.

“Did I ever tell you I had a virgin once?” he said.

“Only once?” queried Tana.

“Most girls in the city lose it around twelve or thirteen. This one was seventeen. Well, that’s what they told me, and she looked about that.”

“Who was this `they’?” said Tana.

“The place where she worked. It was just after I became Minister, last summer, and they wanted to get in with me, get my custom. Place called the 144th. I paid a packet to lay that little lady, but I was too drunk to really notice. What a waste!”

“How did it happen,” said Tana icily, not remotely interested in Shah’s boasting of his exploits in the city’s whorehouses, “that this girl had managed to remain untouched for so long?”

Shah shrugged. “Don’t know. She wasn’t bad looking, as I recall. Long fair hair, she had. She was a bit skinny, but she was okay.”

Something began to click into place in Tana’s mind. Surely he couldn’t be talking about...?

“Did this girl have a name?” said Tana casually.

“Strange you should ask that. It was an unusual name. Began with a G. I can’t remember it now. It’s on the tip of my tongue, though.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tana said coldly. She did not wait to be dismissed, but got out of bed and went to her own room.

She turned out the light, but it was long hours before she fell asleep.