B - Lost in the Big City

Soradina Eudoxia Mackinnon removed her glasses and used thumb and
forefinger to clean them with the hem of her blouse. She was a slender
woman in her early twenties, with chewed nails and a posture that
suggested unease. She lifted her free hand, pushed a knuckle into the
corner of her eye and rubbed. Her dark hair was in a state of disarray,
errant strands dancing in the breeze from passing De Jongh Shuttles and
settling across her forehead.

Behind her was St Luke's Mall. Hoards of floridly attired citizens were
pouring in and out of a great stone archway some thirty to forty metres
broad. It was topped by a gold Patriarchal cross and flanked by a pair
of silver cherubim, each about four metres tall, blowing thin,
shimmering bugles. Above the archway - and almost twice the size - was
an imposing vidboard, bracketed to the stonework by a series of
reinforced girders and supporting cables.

The screen was divided into three segments; in the top left corner
R.C.M. was emblazoned in iridescent capital letters. The bottom left
corner showed the time. It was half-past three in the afternoon. The
remaining and largest portion of the screen was devoted to a procession
of designer Patriarchal vestments, each accompanied by a price that
exploded dramatically as it reached the centre, replaced by a second,
lower price. Along the top of the vidboard in flashing letters was
displayed: 'TODAY ONLY: A CRAZY THIRD OFF ALL RIVET-CARMAC CASSOCKS AND
CHAUSIBLES - OFFER MUST END BY VESPERS!'

Soradina found the Empire's penchant for using canonical hours and
other esoteric Ecclesiarchy terms a little baffling at times. She had
only been here two days, and already the constant barrage of light and
sound exhorting her to buy and pray and stop and go was making her head
hurt. It was such an intense sensory experience compared to New
Plymouth. Everyone seemed to operate by a kind of institutionalised
shorthand. All the acronyms and abbreviations were almost
incomprehensible to a foreigner. Still, the people seemed amiable
enough. No one had minded being stopped and asked for directions, or
queried her unusual accent. All Gerald's talk of the Empire's rabid
xenophobia sounded like scaremongering, in hindsight.

She replaced her spectacles, and used her ring finger to push them up
the bridge of her nose. Next door to the mall was Hanover Harry's Jumbo
Grillhouse, a glittering three-story restaurant. The exterior was
composed of Caraspex hemispheres, each about a metre in diameter, so
that to Soradina's eye it resembled a giant glass raspberry. The air
was redolent with the smell of pork steaks sizzling on griddles.
Soradina inhaled through her nostrils, and found her mouth was
watering.

She unzipped her shoulder bag and retrieved the travel guide. She
brushed a piece of fluff off the screen and checked the GPS to see
where she was. If St John's Mall was to her right, and Hanover Harry's
to the right and in front of her, then&;#8230; well, it didn't help
in the slightest. She still didn't know the name of the building she
was supposed to be going to. She was about to put the travel guide away
again when she felt someone brush against her arm. She turned, and saw
it was a boy, about eleven or twelve years old.

"Err&;#8230; excuse me," she began. The boy looked a little
startled, and started backing away. "Sorry&;#8230; are you familiar
with this area?" The boy stopped, eyed her suspiciously. "I - I'm not
from around here."

"No kidding," he said, slowly and carefully. "Where d'you want to
go?"

"I need to get to the EBA - the Empire-wide Business Assembly? There's
a debate on at four I'm supposed to be attending. Do you know where
it's being held?" The boy smacked his lips and furrowed his brow. "I've
got a map."

The boy seemed interested. "Let's have a look&;#8230;" he said. "I
think I know where it is&;#8230; I just can't picture it in my head,
y'know?"

Soradina handed him the travel guide. "Could you mark it on there?" The
boy glanced at the screen and tutted sceptically. He blew out of the
corner of his mouth.

"Nope&;#8230; I can't quite see it&;#8230; I get screen-blind
when I look it these things. My Mum's the same&;#8230; must be
genetic or something. I have to kind of&;#8230;" He snapped his
fingers together suddenly. "I tell you what I could do&;#8230; I
could take you there&;#8230; that is, if that's all right."

"Yes, yes, that'd be great," said Soradina, nodding emphatically. "Is
that okay?"

"Well, I was supposed to be meeting a couple of my friends inside the
mall&;#8230;" He hesitated. "&;#8230; but I guess they'll wait.
Can't leave you wandering about all night." He grinned endearingly.
"Follow me." He turned and started marching off down the street.
Soradina zipped up her shoulder bag and scuttled after him.

The pavement was swarming with pedestrians, and she had a hard time
keeping the child in view as he wove in and out of temporary gaps. His
stature (or lack of it) gave him a huge advantage. He could dodge under
people's arms and squeeze between couples; she even thought she saw him
duck through one exceptionally tall man's legs. A Martin-Wallace blimp
hummed by overhead, projecting a dramatic dogfight onto the overcast
sky. Soradina was no expert, but the aircraft involved looked highly
improbable insofar as basic physics were concerned. Going from what
Gerald had told her, it was unsurprising really - all the patents for
craft past and present were owned and jealously guarded by the House of
De Jongh, the Empire's resident transportation cartel. A vidboard on
the blimp itself revealed the aerial spectacle was part of a teaser
campaign promoting the latest Ocean Studios production, Dark Tide. One
of the craft began belching thick, black smoke, and went into a steep
dive, orange and yellow flames licking out of the growing fissure in
its hull.

Soradina found herself buffeted to the left as someone barged past, and
shaken out of her reverie, realised the boy had disappeared. She looked
about frantically trying to spot him. She started to wade forward
through the throng, hoping he might have simply dipped out of view for
a moment, and would reappear in a similarly abrupt fashion. She could
see a cowled monk in brown and grey robes, a trio of keenly suited
businessmen having some sort of intense discussion, a teenage girl
wearing a bright blue Danny C crop-top, a fat man with stubble and
green overalls pushing past people and perspiring heavily, a slight,
elderly man wearing a silk cassock of faded purple that was several
sizes too big for him, looking rather bewildered by his
environment&;#8230; but her would-be tour guide had vanished.

She stopped to take stock. Technically, she was in no worse a position
than before. She was just lost in a different place. Soradina was about
to reach for the travel guide when the elderly man turned and spoke to
her.

"I'm sorry, dear," he said, his soft voice barely audible above the
surrounding hubbub. "You look a little lost." Soradina was caught
off-guard. She smiled sheepishly.

"Uhh&;#8230; yes, yes actually," she said, "I need to get to the
meeting, this afternoon, uhh, I thought it might be round here
somewhere&;#8230;" The old man grinned, revealing a perfect set of
lily-white teeth.

"Goodness," he said, shaking his head. "You've got some walk ahead of
you." Soradina felt her breath catch in her throat.

"Oh?" she said.

"Mmm hmm," the old man said. He pointed behind her. Soradina turned
round, and found herself dwarfed by a truly gargantuan cathedral that
rose from the street like a fortress, stretching up and up, testing her
neck muscles, melting into a many-hued aggregation of lofty, hastate
stone spires and tinted Caraspex window arches. The surface of the
building was carved in relief, depicting manifold abstruse religious
icons and a seemingly boundless montage of images, most of which she
didn't recognise from her reading. There were figures kneeling, figures
genuflecting, figures burning, figures being hung, figures drowning,
figures being decapitated, and figures run through on pikes. There were
characters she assumed were angels wielding flaming swords and long,
serrated javelins crested by holy auroras. There were throats of saints
disgorging droplets of blood the size of pears, each containing what
looked like an embryonic child. There was a great pair of hands wrapped
round the trunk of a mighty oak, whose roots in turn gripped a globe
beneath. There was a vast confusion of runes, passages in Sanskrit, and
Chinese characters, none of which made any sense to her. There were
ankhs, ying-yang symbols, and every permutation of cross conceivable,
including even the once-forbidden gammadion. The stained-glass windows
nearest to ground level were enormous. Their subjects were more readily
identifiable. In the one closest to her, a serene, corpulent Buddha
shimmered emerald and incarnadine within an ovoid of deepest cerulean,
a crest of golden light playing about his head. In the window to the
right of the entrance was Vishnu, carrying a slate-coloured mace, a
luminescent conch shell, a disc and a lotus in his four arms, seated on
the back of a fierce-looking eagle that she assumed was supposed to
represent Garuda.

Soradina felt out of breath and at the same time quite nauseous. The
old man clapped a hand on her shoulder.

"Big, isn't it?" he said.

"Very," gasped Soradina.

"You were so busy staring at your shoes you let it creep right by you."
She licked her lips. The roof of her mouth had gone dry. "Let me give
you a piece of advice." Soradina turned to look at him. "That is, if
you'll permit me to get all teacherly and presumptuous on you." She
blinked, unsure of how to respond. The man appeared to take this as a
yes. "You'd do well to concentrate on where you are, not on where you
want to be. No matter how hard you run, no matter how good your map,
you'll always be where you are. You can't get anywhere else, you can't
escape it - so you might as well learn to enjoy it."

Soradina nodded and smiled. "Thanks for your help - I, uhh&;#8230;
I'd better get moving. I'm late already."

The old man closed his eyes, and shook gently with silent
laughter.

"Yep, sounds like a good idea. The folk in there are trained to put
crazy ideas into strangers' heads. I'm just an amateur." He chuckled to
himself. "Heh, heh&;#8230; don't tell 'em I said that, will you?"
With that, he turned on his heel and shuffled off into the crowd, the
folds of his cassock trailing in the dust.

Soradina watched as layers of people gradually obscured him. She
glanced up at the nearest vidboard. It was advertising the Schumann
Lifestyle Enhancement Clinic, some two blocks east, showing various
examples of the treatments it offered. 'ALL FORMS OF PHYSICAL AND
PHYSIOLOGICAL AUGMENTATION AVAILABLE! JUST ASK FOR DETAILS!' Soradina
thought herself worldly enough to be able to guess what types of
'augmentation' were most popular at the SLEC without asking for
details. She glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. It was
16:48.

* * *

She hurried down a long corridor that curved to the right, her shoulder
bag banging against her hip as she searched for a door. The floor tiles
were checked black and white, like a chessboard, and clicked under her
shoes. This was the way the Guardsman had pointed - well, the general
direction, in any case. The hallway had forked a couple of times and
she had been forced to simply guess which path was correct. Rather
predictably, the interior of the cathedral was labyrinthine. There
didn't seem to be any signs either, just antique paintings in gilt
frames, and grandiose portraits of revered statesmen.

She was just beginning to confess to herself that she was lost when she
heard the sound of amplified voices coming from down the hall. The
meeting must have already started! She increased her pace to a canter
as the noise got closer, eventually reaching a door on the right wall,
unassuming and ajar. She glanced around to see if anyone official was
watching, then gingerly teased the door back and peered inside.

The air in the auditorium smelt of dust, sweat and fabric. The rows of
seats stretched round in a wide ellipse, sloping towards a balcony
rail. There was room, Soradina estimated, for about five thousand
spectators. She quickly stepped through and pulled the door closed
behind her. The auditorium was nearly full to capacity. She squeezed
into a seat at the back, and put her bag down next to her.

Beyond the balcony and beneath a thick Caraspex dome, the debate was in
full swing. The steep gradient of the seating meant Soradina had an
uninterrupted view. If she squinted, she could just make out minute
Flyspec cams hovering about the various speakers' heads. She imagined
her friends at home, watching it live on MWNN, then remembered the time
difference and realised they'd all be in bed.

If she had understood Gerald correctly, the EBA was where
representatives of the six Corporate Houses, laity and a few delegates
from the clergy gathered to discuss the state of the economy, minor
issues surrounding fiscal policy, and to review the latest proposals in
the world of business strategy. In his opinion, it was more about
aesthetics than genuine marketing innovations. All the important stuff
went on behind closed doors. She gazed down at the hall below, feeling
all the little hairs on the back of her neck stand endwise.

There were only seven speakers taking part. Gerald had been wrong -
misguided, Soradina checked herself - about so many other things that
it didn't really come as much of a surprise. She felt a pleasurable
tingle of pride in the small of her back, at the realisation that when
she got home, she would be the expert on the Empire. She would have the
ultimate stamp of authority in arguments.

The speakers sat at raised wooden podiums, arranged in a semicircle
with the largest and most elaborately decorated podium at its crux.
They were dressed in off-white cassocks and mitres. The finest and most
delicately embroidered garments were worn by the man at the centre.
Soradina took her ring-bound vellum notepad from the side pouch of her
shoulder bag, and dug into her trouser pocket for the fountain pen her
father had given her.

The man currently talking was slender, almost emaciated, but with a
resonant, stirring voice. Sat in the far right of the semicircle, he
clutched at the lip of his podium and stared at his contemporaries with
wild, bloodshot eyes. Soradina thought she recognised his face from
somewhere, but lacked the inclination to chase the possibility
further.

"Wherever there are borders there will be border conflicts," he was
saying, "wherever there is orthodoxy there will be&;#8230; refuters
and heretics, wherever, to borrow a somewhat&;#8230; archaic idiom,
wherever the rubber meets the road, there will be friction - but this
is not to be&;#8230; reviled, gentlemen." He gestured towards all of
them with a broad sweep of his arm. He began striking his palm with the
back of the opposite hand. "Rebellion, disquiet, unrest&;#8230;
these are all natural, endemic&;#8230; ingrained behaviours our
beloved Maker saw fit to arm us with. They act as a&;#8230;
barometer with which one can measure the populace's&;#8230;
contentment." He turned to address the figure seated at the central
podium. "To smash the&;#8230; intricate workings with a mailed fist
simply because one is displeased with the reading seems to
me&;#8230; to be more than a little rash."

A figure from the opposite side of the crescent, a younger, more
thickly-set man with a straighter posture, shook his head sceptically
and frowned.

"Uh - excuse me," he said, looking up towards the Caraspex roof,
"exactly what is my Right Reverend colleague suggesting, here? If I
didn't know him better, I'd say he were advocating that we encourage
the rabble to rise up against us!"

The man sitting at the central podium nodded. He was a portly man with
a lick of auburn hair that dangled across his forehead. He looked to
the figure who had spoken first.

"Boone," he said in a deep, gargling voice resembling that of a toad's,
"the Chancellor has explicitly requested our assistance in quelling
these civil ground swells before they develop into something more
serious. The question is not if but how. We have a duty to
perform."

"Of course, Your Grace," said Boone, dipping his head, "and with
respect, I don't feel my Right Reverend colleague&;#8230; summarised
the essential contention of my argument in quite the way I was
envisaging, had his&;#8230; contribution not&;#8230; pre-empted
me." Soradina looked across to the younger speaker, expecting a
response, but he remained silent, watching and stroking his cheek with
an index finger. "It is not my intention to&;#8230; endorse these
'ground swells' as you call them, merely to&;#8230; address the
importance of dealing with the why when tackling the how. Prevention is
better than cure, after all."

"Oh dear," exclaimed a woman with grey, curly hair that spilled out
from under her mitre. She was sat directly to the left of the middle
podium. "I thought my Right Reverend colleague was above trite clich?s
such as that." The younger man let out a derisive snort of concurrence.
"You cannot prevent petty disturbances, nor can you cure them. I would
appreciate it if my Right Reverend colleague employed accredited,
contemporary cultural paradigms when supporting his position, rather
than resorting to gaudy rhetorical devices. Society is managed - it is
not cured. It is a waste of the Synod's time to search for final,
incontrovertible solutions to what we must remember have been sporadic
and isolated outbursts of dissent."

Soradina frowned. This was awfully theological for business
strategy.

"If I may continue&;#8230;" Boone said. Soradina thought she could
detect a hint of irritation creeping into his voice.

The man on the central podium sighed. "Yes, Boone, but do get to the
point. Feymann, Elks," he said, nodding first at the young man, then at
the woman, "do him the courtesy of attending quietly. It reflects badly
on the Ecclesiarchy if we cannot conduct a civilised debate without
descending into petty bickering." He turned back to Boone. "Now, Boone.
I believe you claimed to have a point floating around somewhere in that
morass of eloquent verbiage."

Boone inhaled slowly through his nostrils and nodded. "Indeed so, Your
Grace. I simply wish to direct the Synod's attention to the question of
causality. Unless we are to&;#8230; conjecture that those involved
were all possessed by some&;#8230; agency of indeterminate origin,
then as formerly rational, peaceful citizens there must have been some
reason, some&;#8230; spark that so inflamed their passions. If the
New Church endeavours to&;#8230; extinguish said spark, then the
concomitant&;#8230; unpleasantness will fizzle out, leaving us no
more to do than sweep up the cold ashes."

Feymann craned his neck and leaned forward like a cockerel. "My Right
Reverend colleague is perfectly aware of the reasons cited by the
rioters for their actions. Is he implying now that we join their
cause?"

"Boone," said the fat central figure, sternly, "I strongly advice you
to qualify that statement. Your words are clumsily chosen&;#8230;
misinterpreted, they could be seen to flirt with heresy." Soradina
thought she saw something flicker in Boone's reddened eyes, but put it
down to the glint of a passing Flyspec manoeuvring for a
close-up.

"My apologies, Your Grace," said Boone quietly, "it was not my
intention to be&;#8230; oblique. I merely wished to express what I
feel to be right and expedient in the most&;#8230; accurate manner I
could. I desire a swift conclusion to this&;#8230; perturbing period
as much as any of my Right Reverend colleagues. I am merely attempting
to supply an as&;#8230; exhaustive account as possible of how we
might go about achieving such a&;#8230; result. It would be a source
of great&;#8230; vexation to me were my intentions
somehow&;#8230; misconstrued." He looked at Feymann as he uttered
the last word.

"It would help immensely if you refrained from enveloping your words in
a veil of obfuscation," said the central figure. "Your mastery of the
English language affords you no awe within this chamber, Bishop. Pare
ideas down to a hard, jagged nugget of truth. Listen to me. I speak in
essences. I say what I mean. None of us have time for your
superfluities."

Bishop Boone rapped his fingers against the surface of his podium.
Soradina noticed with some consternation that the little finger from
his right hand was missing.

"Be wary of wielding Occam's Razor with too much&;#8230; abandon,
Your Grace, lest in your&;#8230; fervour you deal yourself a mortal
wound." He stared across at the figure on the central podium, through
narrowed eyes. There were a few seconds of cold, stark silence. For the
second time that day, Soradina found that her mouth had dried up. "I
believe I have contributed all I can to this&;#8230; debate," Boone
said at last. "If I may, I wish to humbly&;#8230; withdraw my
earlier proposal. I feel my assertions will not&;#8230; find
purchase in the yet fallow soil present today." He gave a shallow bow.
"I defer to the&;#8230; superior wisdom of the Bishops around me on
this matter, and of course to you, Your Grace."

The other five Bishops looked at one another, then looked at the figure
perched upon the highest podium. He turned to Bishop Boone, brushing
the hair from his forehead.

"Very well, Boone," he said gravely. "I advise you sit and listen. With
any luck you may learn something."

It was then that Soradina felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Excuse me, miss." She looked up to see a Guardsman standing over her.
He had a black moustache that was greying at the tips, and a scar that
cleaved right through one of his eyebrows, splitting it in two.
Soradina realised she was staring, and blinked herself back into
reality.

"Yes?" she whispered, unsure of whether to smile amicably or assume an
expression of solemn attentiveness.

"You realise there are no laity permitted at the Synod?" Soradina
looked at him blankly. "It is not a public event."

"I - I'm here on business," she stammered. The Guardsman seemed
perplexed. She held up her notepad and pen as evidence.

"There are no laity permitted at the Synod," the Guardsman repeated.
"I'm afraid you'll have to leave." Soradina hesitated.

"Wait a minute," she said. "This is the EBA, right?"

The Guardsman looked unimpressed. "The Assembly is taking place three
blocks away. This is the Albion Synod. It is strictly clergy-only. Come
with me, please." Soradina said several swear words in her mind. She
picked up her shoulder bag and got to her feet, her cheeks
flushing.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I - I'm not from around here. I don't really
know my way around."

"This way, please," said the Guardsman, directing her through a set of
double-doors. Soradina put her fountain pen into the top pocket of her
blouse and wedged the vellum notepad into her trouser pocket. It didn't
fit properly, creasing the pages and pulling her trouser leg tight
around her knee, making her acquire a slight hobble as she followed the
Guardsman back down the corridor she had hurried through earlier. He
took her to a small room set back from the hallway, and sat down behind
a desk. "Please, take a seat."

Soradina sat down on a low-backed chair with plush velvet padding. The
walls were decorated with attractive brocade drapes. She assumed the
Guardsman had just chosen the nearest empty room. It looked better
suited to ecclesiastical duties than to police work, although in the
Empire it was hard to say where one finished and the other began.

"Look, I'm sorry about all this," she said. "It's totally my fault. I
got lost along the hallway and I heard talking and thought they'd
started early&;#8230;" She shook her head. "I just got in a panic.
I'm not used to all this complexity. You don't get it in New
Zealand."

"May I see your ID, please?"

"Of course," said Soradina, more quickly than she would have liked. She
placed her shoulder bag on her lap and undid the zip. "It's in here
somewhere&;#8230;" She delved in with a hand and started rummaging
through the contents of her back. There was a spectacles case, a couple
of fluffy talking ducks she had bought from a gift shop the previous
day, a cheddar and black olive sandwich swathed in Freshwrap, the
pendant she had forgotten to put on that morning and a stub from when
she'd eaten dinner at the Big H next door to her hotel. "Err&;#8230;
hang on." She made a second attempt. There was a sandwich leaking
zero-fat mayonnaise from its sides, a jade monkey pendant, a torn blue
stub with black ink, a scratched black spectacles case and two yellow
ducks from the RC Gift-Palace. "Damn&;#8230; it's in my wallet.
Sorry. Just give me a second." She decided to try one, final foray into
the depths of her shoulder bag. There was a stub showing she'd eaten
smoked red snapper, saut?ed charlotte potatoes, julienne carrots and
broccoli, a pendant with a gold chain that Mum and Dad had given her
for her last birthday, two ducks named Bobo and Bunbun, a triangular
sandwich made from granary bread, and a spectacles case with the
initials SEM elegantly engraved on the lid. But no wallet. No travel
guide either, for that matter.

"Oh no," said Soradina, feeling her stomach tighten. "I think I've been
robbed."