Transmission: Ragnarok: Book Two Page 7

  Roger understood that.

  ‘I’ll wait in the city,’ he told Jed. ‘Just in case.’

  Catching a glimpse or echo of a single darkness-controlled individual in a teeming sky-city was unlikely; but if he left, the chances dropped to zero. Plus Alisha was here.

  Still sitting in the Orange Blossom, he ordered a pair of smartlenses – his tu-ring indicating that he had a substantial cash reserve: monies deposited by Dad and earning interest – and when they rose through the tabletop, he unwrapped them and popped them onto his eyes.

  There. No longer a Pilot standing out from everybody else.

  Conjuring a holospace, he created a virtual sketch –for his eyes only, invisible to other diners –and outlined Dr Petra Helsen’s features. Once he had approximated the colour of her eyes and hair, he collapsed the image in cache; then he set about ordering food.

  He believed someone in Barbour was infected by the darkness, hence the auditory phenomenon. Perhaps it was not Helsen, but someone local, a stranger. He did not know which to hope for: a profusion of darkness-controlled individuals, or Helsen’s escaping the catastrophe she had caused.

  I’ll find you, bitch. If it is you.

  He forced himself to eat, his thoughts still of Helsen. It took a while to realize that a woman with silver-and violet-striped hair was staring at him from another table.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she said. ‘I beg your pardon, Pilot. Don’t let me distract you.’

  Her voice was wonderful. She was older than he was, though by how many years, he could not guess.

  ‘How did you know I’m a Pilot?’

  ‘I saw you’ –smiling, her chin dipping – ‘put the lenses in. I assume you want to blend in, so I shouldn’t call you Pilot, should I?’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘I’m Leeja,’ she said. ‘Leeja Rigelle. Would you like me to join you? I can tell you about places to go and all.’

  Everything was serious and confusing. He had no time for making friends with anyone, no matter how charming, or how intelligent the dance of light in their eyes might be.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he added.

  A second chair morphed into place as she came over.

  ‘I’m Roger Blackstone,’ he found himself saying.

  Her hand – man-meeting-woman implied a handshake rather than touching fists – felt soft when he took it. Her eyes widened; perhaps his did likewise.

  ‘Um … Shall I order food?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve pretty much finished,’ said Leeja. ‘I’ll have a drink with you, though. Is that the remains of a citrola?’

  ‘Er, yes.’

  Two fresh citrolas rose through the tabletop.

  ‘You want to take a walk afterwards along the main thoroughfares?’ said Leeja. ‘I’ll show you how to read the morph-plan annotations.’

  ‘Annotations on what exactly?’

  ‘On holomaps. If you live on board a quickglass sky-city, you’re amid architecture that’s always morphing. Main routes change slowly, but even the overall city-shape changes over time. There are fifty-three levels of authorization to determine who’s allowed to cause what alterations.’

  ‘That’s … different,’ said Roger.

  ‘For you.’ Leeja gave a sort of mature simper (for even her facial expressions were new to Roger). ‘We live with, well, fluidity. Static surroundings make me feel edgy. Have you ever been to Earth?’

  ‘Er, no.’

  ‘It was interesting – I went there on holiday – but I was very glad to get back home.’

  ‘So …’ Roger tried for an intelligent question. ‘Does that mean you can alter your own dwelling’s layout, but not this place, for instance?’

  ‘Actually, I’ve a one-hundredth share in the Orange Blossom’s ownership. But the main hall outside’ – Leeja gestured – ‘requires city council oversight for every amendment. There’s a core principle of keeping the centre of mass well-defined and sensibly located.’

  ‘So you can’t shift all the quickglass mass to one end of the city?’

  ‘Exactly. Have you finished your citrola?’

  ‘Er, almost.’ He swigged down the last of it. ‘All done.’

  ‘Then I’ll show you my city,’ she said.

  At some point as they walked, Roger smothered a laugh at the sight of orange pennants outside a confectionery shop: on Fulgor, such pennants had signified porn stores offering off-Skein perversions. He felt no need to share that information. But Leeja, her arm tucked in his, said: ‘I don’t like it when I don’t know what you’re thinking.’

  It was a strange thing to say to a virtual stranger rather than someone known intimately for years; but then, he was not sure exactly when she had slipped her arm in his, or when they had begun to walk in step, their bodies close.

  ‘I’m just responding to the exotic feel of the place,’ he said. ‘Does an exotic feel sound good to you?’

  ‘Bad boy.’ She pulled her elbow in to squeeze his arm. ‘Very bad boy.’

  In slow synchrony, they walked on. Pace by pace, Roger felt ever closer to her. Eventually, at the high intersection of seven main halls, she stopped and took his hand.

  ‘That one,’ she said, ‘is Vertebral Longway, which runs along most of Barbour’s longitudinal axis. The smaller one, over there, leads to where I live.’

  Roger swallowed warm saliva.

  ‘The smaller one, then,’ he said.

  Her smile promised softness and abandon.

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  Once inside her apartment, she cupped his face in her hands, then pressed herself against him as they kissed in an explosion of warmth. Then she was clasping his groin, and his excitement leapt, strong and furious.

  Incredible.

  They kissed and ran their hands over each other. He unfastened her clothing, revealed a sweet breast – she moaned at his light touch – then took her cherry nipple in his mouth.

  ‘Oh. Oh.’

  Finally, she stepped back from him.

  ‘We don’t …’ she stopped. ‘We’ve only just … It’s fast. I don’t want to rush you.’

  ‘Whew.’ His exhalation was shaky. ‘Yes. Fast.’

  They stared at each other, she with her beautiful breast still exposed.

  He had no words.

  So beautiful.

  He undid his clothing to the waist. Leeja said nothing.

  Then they were tangled in each other, pulling clothes, licking and caressing, using their whole bodies as instruments of pleasure, lost together in the maelstrom of warmth and lust, of freedom and love, enjoying each other in a way that seemed as new to her as to him.

  The crescendo of orgasm was merely a beginning.

  TEN

  EARTH, 1941 AD

  The Victorian manor house at Bletchley Park was everything it should be. Around the extended grounds, huts were being painted. Gavriela understood, from her briefing with Rupert, that there were eight thousand people stationed on site, and more arriving by the day; yet the place had the air of an underpopulated school for the privileged élite, however plain the huts, however great the contrast with the lustrous panelling inside the house.

  Not that she expected to be working in here. Codebreakers kept to the huts. What surprised Gavriela was the number of women: fully half the figures in civilian clothing, along with the majority of the uniformed staff: WRENs fighting the war to as much effect (if less danger) than their husbands and lovers overseas.

  On the other side of the ornamental pond, a serious-faced man ran past, dressed in vest and shorts, his eyes intent.

  ‘That’s AMT,’ said a young WREN beside Gavriela. ‘Turing, right? Last week, he ran from here to London for a meeting.’

  ‘But that’s’ – Gavriela did the conversion from kilometres – ‘forty miles, isn’t it?’

  ‘What I mean, he’s nuts.’ She grinned. ‘One of the real geniuses, I reckon. I’m Rosie.’

  ‘Gabby.’ She was still using the cover name that Rupert had given
her. ‘Gabby Woods.’

  Rosie’s handshake was straightforward and strong.

  ‘I guess you’re one of the boffins, then,’ she said. ‘Nice that it’s not only blokes, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘Just what I was thinking,’ said Gavriela.

  ‘It’s mostly us girls. But they’re nearly all posh, like. Cheltenham Ladies’ College kind of people.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The Received English of the educated classes was something like Hochdeutsch in its crispness; but there was a whole dimension of the language orthogonal to locality that Gavriela was still getting to grips with.

  ‘Anyway, Frank will see you now. He’s nice.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gavriela again. ‘I hadn’t realized you were here to fetch me.’

  ‘This way.’

  Rosie’s heels clacked Morse code-like along parquet flooring – dot-dash, dot-dash – as she led the way to an unlabelled door, knocked, opened, stood aside. She winked.

  As Gavriela went in, a long figure unfolded from a chair, and held out his bony hand to shake.

  ‘Frank Longfield-Jones,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you, and do call me Frank.’

  ‘I’m Gabby Woods.’

  ‘Of course you are, dear girl. Now sit down, please, and when Rosie brings the tea and biscuits – ah, there we are.’

  He took a small tray off Rosie, who closed the door. Then he handed a cup to Gavriela, took one for himself, and sat back. It was a ritual designed to settle her nerves. With surprise, Gavriela realized it was working.

  ‘Welcome to Station X.’ Frank’s grin spread his moustache. ‘Lovely name, but we’re the Government Codes and Ciphers School, if you want to know the organization you’re working for. Well done on the crossword, by the way.’

  ‘Sir? Oh. When I can do the same for The Times, then I’ll be happy.’

  Her initial interview included attempting a crossword taken, she assumed, from one of the better German newspapers before the war. It had taken her eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds to complete.

  ‘Right now,’ said Frank, ‘it’s your facility with technical German, particularly with respect to physics, that’s useful. You’ll find we’re mostly linguists and mathematicians, and some who are both, along with some rather eccentric polymaths.’

  If an Englishman was calling his colleagues eccentric, they must be odd.

  ‘Gabby Woods is a cover name,’ he said. ‘Have I got that right?’

  He crossed his narrow legs, in what Gavriela had come to recognize as the languid pose of the public schoolboy.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My real name is—’

  ‘No, no, old thing. I don’t need to know that. My point is, most of us are using our real names as worknames, but not everybody. Part of the subterfuge is to pretend that all names used here are real. Do you get my point?’

  ‘It’s secret work. I understand that. I’m here to learn about codes?’

  ‘Our organization name, GC & CS, is rather, what, disingenuous. You’ll find we’re not exactly a school, and the work we’re doing is the most important in the war. That’s not just my opinion – it’s his.’

  Frank gestured to a photograph of Winston Churchill on the wall.

  ‘Incidentally,’ Frank went on, ‘our name is due to change by the year’s end. We will then be known as GCHQ, that’s Government Communications Headquarters. Rather more of a give-away, but never mind.’

  The point of secret war work was that everything was covert. Throughout her recruitment, which had started with Rupert Forrester chatting to her over sherry in an Oxford pub, she had gained no clues as to the nature of the job they wanted her to do.

  ‘I’m still not sure of my role,’ she said.

  ‘That’s rather a good thing, don’t you think?’ Frank’s smile showed longish, tobacco-stained teeth. ‘Our victories are private, you see. Everything we do, it’s just among ourselves.’

  ‘I don’t feel the need to share things with people.’

  ‘No, we gathered as much. That makes you ideal. There aren’t many actual Germans here, by the way, though some of German parentage, and rather too many Frenchmen.’

  ‘The Nazis took my parents and killed them. At least’ – this was hard to say – ‘I hope they’re dead.’

  ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘My brother moved to Amsterdam to get away from the regime. I don’t know what happened to him.’

  It went without saying that Erik had not travelled far enough. The Wehrmacht had rolled over the Netherlands like an avalanche, a vicious cascade, burying resistance.

  ‘Your loyalty to England, or at least hatred of that fidget Herr Hitler,’ said Frank, ‘is beyond question, or you wouldn’t be here. Now, what I’m about to tell you must sink in, do you understand?’

  Despite the cosy room, she understood that this was both a briefing and a test: if she failed now, she would go no further.

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘GCHQ is the largest and most professional secret organization in the world, and consists of this: layer upon layer of subterfuge. All right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Our first layer of defence is that we don’t exist. Our second layer is compartmentalisation. Many of the people here on site – it’s eighty per cent women, by the way – know little of what happens outside their immediate function. For example, the strategic meaning of decrypted intercepts passing through their hands.’

  Gavriela nodded. This was why she was here: to wage a secret war. Also, she had underestimated the percentage of female staff, which was interesting.

  ‘Our third layer,’ Frank went on, ‘is the illusion of ephemerality, something knocked together in the usual haphazard English way in response to the Nazis.’

  He smiled, drank tea, then looked at Gavriela.

  ‘The truth is,’ he said, ‘GCHQ is in its fourth decade of operation. You could say its raison d’être was confirmed in its fifth year, when the first captured German naval codebooks were handed over by Frenchmen to the Royal Navy, enabling thorough decryption of the most vital signals. The rendezvous took place in 1914, and the receiving British officer’ – he pointed to the photograph – ‘was a gentleman called Winston Churchill.’

  Her spine tingled.

  ‘If enemy agents penetrate that far into our secret layers’ – Frank’s voice hardened, all languor gone – ‘then the next subterfuge is that we work solely on something called the Enigma code, which you will be briefed on later. There are four other main areas of ciphers and intercepts that we work on. At least two of them outweigh Enigma by a considerable margin, in their importance to the war effort.’

  Frank rubbed his moustache.

  ‘One of those areas is subdivided into three sub-projects, one of which you’ll be working on. What they have in common, the sub-projects, is their concern with German teletype codes. Recent intercepts include,’ he added, ‘signals to and from the Führer himself. So far we’ve not been able to break anything at the time of sending. Nevertheless, three-week-old news is rather better than none at all.’

  Gavriela swallowed. Already she was party to privileged information she could never hint at.

  ‘You don’t need to know what the other areas are,’ Frank finished. ‘At least for now.’

  ‘Do you issue cyanide capsules?’ she asked, not knowing if she meant it.

  ‘We’d rather you don’t get exposed to the possibility of capture,’ said Frank. ‘Parachute drops into occupied territory are for the SIS boys – and they are based here at BP, alongside ourselves – plus SOE. But not us.’

  That was just as well, because Gavriela could be more effective with pencil and paper than with physical action.

  ‘But that brings me,’ Frank continued, ‘to the last layer of subterfuge.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Given our somewhat academic background, anyone who learns of GCHQ’s existence is likely to think of us as boffins and nothing more. Naive and ditheri
ng, the stereotype of the English academic. It provides useful cover. But the truth is, everyone needs to learn a little tradecraft.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Gavriela.

  ‘We’re going to train you to notice everything. Any hint of enemy surveillance beyond these grounds, we expect you to pick up on instantly. The slightest thing out of kilter when you’re travelling, you’ll learn to escape and evade and go to ground.’

  Gavriela nodded, her throat tight.

  ‘You won’t be a commando, but you’ll have go through the course that includes learning how to kill’ – Frank held up a fountain-pen – ‘with this into someone’s throat, for example. If that’s what’s required to get clear. Frankly, we don’t train long enough for it to become reflex, and we’re certainly not silent-killing types. But you never know.’

  ‘I … all right.’

  ‘The main thing is spotting if someone is following you. If you suspect someone is a fifth columnist or simply too nosey about your work, no matter where you are, you’ll have a telephone number to call. The result is the party in question will disappear.’

  A privilege with consequences.

  ‘We’re serious here,’ Frank added. ‘The question is, are you on board?’

  ‘I am.’

  Frank held out his hand.

  This is commitment.

  A solemn oath, their handshake.

  ‘Civilization,’ Frank said, ‘is fragile, requiring protection.’

  ‘I’ll give my life if I have to,’ said Gavriela.

  After eight weeks of training and helping out in Hut 6, she began the new year by moving to the virtual Hut 27 – of no fixed physical location, but temporarily in Section F – where the new team introduced themselves.

  Clive was a mathematician, a musician, and something of a wet drip according to Harry and Fred. A perpetual underlying odour of chilblain ointment emanated from his desk, and he always found something to moan about while they toiled in a safe hut warmed by endless cups of tea, while around the world thousands were dying by the day.

  ‘We’re an offshoot of Bill Tutte’s team,’ he told Gavriela. ‘Young Bill worked out how the Tunny machines operate purely on the basis of intercepts. It’s at least as impressive as anything AMT has done’ – he meant Turing – ‘and the Tunny signals are orders of magnitude more important than Enigma, whatever they might have told you in Hut 6.’