Evolution's Shore (Chaga) by Ian McDonald

Author:Ian McDonald [McDonald, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781857988758
Publisher: Victor Gollancz; Cassell Group
Published: 1995-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

37

In the anonymous hired Toyota pick-up, Gaby McAslan watched the figure in the red onepiece turn out of the gateway and run along the grass verge. Fifty-five minutes. She waited until the woman turned on to Ondaatje Avenue and got out of the truck.

God, what if she has got a new code for the alarm? Gaby McAslan thought as she walked down the brick drive to the front door.

Three. Eight. Four. Four. Two. Seven. Four. Nine.

And pray.

And turn.

The door opened with the silence of aged mahogany on well-oiled hinges. It was in here. Miriam Sondhai was the icon of many virtues, but not the Madonna of memory. Her attention was turned to loftier things than the numbers that define modern life. She got her cashcard swallowed every week. As she jogged across the Dental Hospital car park toward Mandella Highway, she would have the door code tucked into the tongue pocket of her running shoes. Gaby’s entire scheme rested on the theory that Miriam was similarly lax with her passwords to the Global Aids Policy Unit system.

Where to look? The filofax on the table. Too obvious. She had a bad memory but she was not stupid. Same for the PDU. The handbag, hanging from the teak and antelope horn coat rack.

All truth is in the handbag.

She would be past the new Sirikwa Hotel now, waiting at the keepie-leftie for a gap in the traffic. Forty-five minutes.

Lip gloss. Small change. Stamps. Card for the hospital car park. Keys. Other people’s things. An envelope with a Somali stamp, franked Mogadishu. Silver propelling pencil. Paracetamol. Madonnas do not need paracetamol, or feminine hygiene products. A little flat address book, corners reinforced with Scotch tape. On the cover a brown man with kohl and a curling black moustache groped under the dress of a brown woman with kohl and no moustache. Indian Erotic Art Birthday Book.

Madonnas certainly do not have Indian Erotic Art Birthday Books.

She took the book to the coffee table, flicked through the pages of exquisite tantric couplings and anniversaries. Don’t Forget above a miniature of a green-skinned woman having her vulva licked by a man with his little fingers crooked in a spiritual attitude. Underneath, long codes of letters and digits.

Thirty-six minutes. She would be coming up on the big intersection at the bottom of University Road.

Gaby pulled up the PDU’s rollscreen and hooked it to its frame. The liquid crystal-impregnated plastic blinked start-up icons at her. She stroked the touch panel and opened up the directory. The call connection to the Kenyatta Hospital was made in seconds. A cigarette would be desperately good, Gaby thought. For a fatal instant she almost succumbed. She clicked for the Global Aids Policy Unit. Password queries interrogated her. She typed in the first of the codes in the birthday book. She went straight through to the Virology Department. Jesus, Miriam, take more care. It’s a sharp-toothed world that you’re running through in your red lycra suit. Another interrogative. Try the next on the list.

Invalid password.

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