Urbis

Harvey Dashwood, a lean, tall, spindle-legged man in his late fifties, with iron grey hair that flopped willfully about his temples and a leathery dewlap under his chin, sat in mute contemplation of Donald Shah. Shah was in turn watching him with doleful eyes. Shah, Dashwood reflected, had the kind of face that was admirably suited both to poker and to the larger game of politics. He could tell the grossest lies with breathtaking aplomb, and was without peer in the art of currying favour from those of higher rank. He was suave, sophisticated, one of the Urbian urbane. He had as yet kept concealed his true colours in the matter of the upcoming leadership tussle, appearing to favour all parties and none, no mean achievement when so much frenetic backroom canvassing was already going on.

In life, as in poker, Donald Shah played his cards close to his chest. He could be bought, Dashwood knew. What he had not yet established was his price. Once that was known, interested parties could decide whether he was worth it.

Shah drew a card and sat looking at it for a moment. He tugged at his lower lip, hard pressed to keep from smiling. Before him he held a top straight: ace of clubs, king of diamonds, queen of spades, Jack of spades, ten of clubs. And he knew for sure that whatever else Dashwood had, he didn’t have an ace.

“I’ll raise you,” he said.

“The stake?” Dashwood enquired.

“My woman, Tana. You betting?”

“I am,” said Dashwood. “I will pick up your Presidium Club tabs for a year.” He smiled, knowing Shah’s bills from the bar to be astronomical.

Shah was convinced Dashwood was bluffing. “Showdown,” he said, already relishing drinking at Dashwood’s expense. He laid his cards on the table, and looked at Dashwood’s as the latter did the same. He had been right about one thing. Dashwood did not have an ace. He had the queen, ten, seven and four of hearts. And the joker.

“Bad luck, feller,” said Dashwood. “Beaten by the queen of hearts and a joker. Care for a drink? You look a little flushed.”

Shah had always disliked puns. That dislike grew more intense now. “Thanks, but no thanks. It’s getting late. I trust you won’t object if I go home and enjoy the woman one last time?”

“Not at all,” Dashwood smiled engagingly. “Just give her your security clearance number and send her up here tomorrow evening.”

Shah left. As the door closed behind him, another connecting an adjoining room opened.

“He’s a sore loser, isn’t he?” The Leader of the Presidium stepped into view.

Dashwood spun round. “Leader! You gave me a start.”

“You did well, Dashwood.”

Dashwood pulled a pair of tweezers from his pocket and removed a micro-receiver from his ear canal. “Not without some assistance,” he smiled.

The Leader walked to the intricately detailed kinetic sculpture positioned behind the chair Shah had occupied and examined closely its moving parts of glass and metal. “It’s very impressive. You can scarcely pick out which is the camera even at close range.”

“The Leader will see you now,” Dashwood smiled. The connecting door opened, and Tana walked gracefully through.

The room beyond was a combination of bedroom and study, well appointed but not ostentatiously so. It was in the shape of an arc, with a curve of slender fluted columns running across the middle, which appeared to be more decorative than functional. Above them, large skylights combined with massive picture windows to create an atmosphere of light and space. In front of one of these windows stood the Leader of the Presidium, staring out over the city, a surprisingly slight figure, Tana thought at once, for one who carried such an awesome burden of responsibility.

“Leader?” said Tana.

The Leader of the Presidium turned. Tana was startled to be facing a woman with a pinched face, steely blue eyes and close-cropped iron grey hair of almost the exact same shade as the severe two-piece trouser suit she wore. She flashed a smile, but the upward curve of her mouth was contradicted by the cold concentration of her eyes. Here, Tana saw, was authority made flesh.

She was taken aback. Rapidly she glanced around the room. There was no one else present. “Oh,” she said. “I was expecting...”

“You were expecting my brother Edward,” the woman before her interrupted in deep measured tones that seemed to suggest that politeness was something that only lesser mortals needed to concern themselves with, “who has been in his grave for a month. My name is Elizabeth Grant, but as far as the outside world is concerned, I am Edward. At least for the time being.” She stepped up close to Tana, sizing her up. “You do understand, don’t you, dear?” Tana nodded mutely. “But we’re not here to talk politics. We’re here to get to know each other.”

With busy dexterity, and presumption that left the younger woman gasping, Elizabeth’s fingers were already releasing the catches on Tana’s gown.

*****

The Underground was mobilising, moving on to a war footing, in readiness for the signal from sector one that the time was ripe. The lines of communication were all open, and hundreds of bicycles had been commandeered. Simone, and others like her in every sector, had been working round the clock making armour on a production line basis, beating scrap metal into breastplates and coating them in chrometex to reflect laser weapons, and applying the same material to construction site hard hats and bike helmets.

The front line troops for the assault were the city’s derelicts. Once they heard of what was happening, they volunteered in droves, arguing that they had least to lose and most to gain from the coming revolution. And they had strength in numbers, as they were estimated to total around half a million men and women. The Underground welcomed them, and sought to equip as many as it could.

The biggest problem remained the lack of arms. Security Commission weapons were manufactured in a munitions works in sector seven, then transported by rail to a depot close to the bridge, where they were transferred to trucks to be taken across to sector one. In the past, the Underground had managed to monitor messages about armaments shipments, even unscrambling scrambled conversations, but the Security Commission had got wise to the leaks in its telecommunications, and was now using some other method of contacting the factory. But what that was remained a mystery.

The mystery was solved when Crispin and his friends received a message from one of Tana’s aides that sector one was now using hoverbike couriers to carry essential information to and from the armourers. A microdot showed pictures of the riders and their machines, and maps of the various routes they used.

It became clear that as soon as one munitions train was hit, all hell would break loose. That action would be the beginning of the end. A later communication from Tana herself, announcing that she was now in a position of `supreme influence’ within the sector one hierarchy, expressed agreement. She would prepare her people to do their part when the guns had been secured.

*****

The opportunity came in Warmwind, on a hot sticky night when the moon was close to full.

It was a relatively simple matter for Underground commandos led by Sector Five chief Brian Endsleigh to track a Security dispatch rider to a point where he could be taken out without inconvenient witnesses. Leaked passwords made it almost as simple to break into his memo pad. The message read: “Utmost secrecy. Re shipment 8/22, decoy departs 20.30 route 4. Shipment itself departs 21.30 route 2. DS.”

“Three days away,” said Endsleigh. “Shit, that doesn’t give us a lot of time. We’d better get word back to Dolores.”

As he spoke, one of his men was already preparing to don the dispatch rider’s uniform and take his secret message to its destination.

Later that evening, Captain Lars Svenson sat at his desk in the heart of the huge Sector Seven armoury, tapping his fingers on the memo pad. He was smiling: he had seen through the supposed dispatch rider instantly. The temerity of the Underground scum! Thinking they could pose as Security, sloppy, undisciplined rabble. He had been bursting to kill the worm there and then, but he had had to let the man go: it was necessary that the Underground believe that their charade had worked.