Fairyland by Paul McAuley

Author:Paul McAuley [McAuley, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575086586
Publisher: Hachette Group

The Wild Hunt

Claude the Cook has a well-established beat, swinging in from the Bidonvilles beyond the ribbon arcologies, through the half-abandoned suburbs to the centre of the city, and then back out again. Most of the aid workers know where to find him on any given day. Today his Cook-Out Collective is set up in a tree-shaded corner of the Jardin des Plantes, at the foot of the hillock crowned by the cedar of Jussieu, which that gentleman brought to Paris from London as a seedling nestled in his three-cornered hat.

Claude is supervising the cooking pot, a big round iron cauldron smoking in the cold morning air over a wood fire. As always, it contains red beans and rice. About twenty men and women are eating breakfast from paper plates. Most hardly spare Morag a glance, but Claude greets her cheerfully.

He is always cheerful, a strong pot-bellied man with a wide smile creasing his weather-beaten face. He lost his left arm in the American civil war, and the sleeve of his flannel checked shirt is pinned to his chest. He isn’t French, but a Cajun from the Louisiana bayous, and his name probably isn’t Claude. Everyone in the Mobile Aid Team knows Claude the Cook, and he knows more about the fringe than anyone else in and around Paris.

Claude is especially happy today, because he’s hustled a tonne of day-old bread. He’s expecting a lot of people later on, after the bread is trucked over. Morag tells him who she’s looking for, and while he thinks it over, she takes a turn at stirring the mess of beans and rice with a heavy, metre-long wooden paddle that’s charred black along its edge.

At last, Claude says, ‘I don’t know the fellow, but Justin over there, he was in the Legion. He could know.’

Justin is a very young, very shy man, with raw wrists poking from the frayed cuffs of his filthy puffer jacket. He tells Morag that he used to hang out with a few guys from the Legion, and yes, one of them was called Armand.

‘But I haven’t seen him for a year now, a year at least.’

‘You don’t know where he went.’

Justin shrugs. ‘Maybe he’s dead. Maybe not. He left the Legion before it was ready for him to leave, so he has good reason to hide out.’

Morag asks if Justin can tell her anything else, and Justin thinks it over. ‘I remember his combat tag. What he was known by when he was in action.’

‘Like a nickname?’

‘More than that. Do you know how it is, in the Legion? They put in a chip loaded with what they call a partial personality. It learns off you until it can take over in combat. Then the officers can boot your ware, turn you wolf. So, see, it isn’t you fighting, doing that stuff you need to do to survive in intense situations. It’s the partial.’

Justin wraps his arms around himself and rocks back and forth on his heels. He suddenly has a thousand metre stare.

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