A huge black woman in an ancient-style dress – white silk with green sleeves – was already hurrying across the hall towards the customers. She had chocolate-coloured skin and grey dreads that reminded Grim uncomfortably of the Ganjaberserks he had left down below.

  ‘What shall I get you?’ she asked in a surprisingly low man’s voice.

  Looking at her more closely, Grim saw that her big breasts weren’t real – they were stuffed forms projecting from the silver-embroidered bodice. He was looking at a man.

  ‘The usual, Gben,’ Damilola said lazily. ‘Everything as usual, my old mate.’

  The elderly black man gaped at Damilola in bewilderment – but polite bewilderment.

  ‘The same as last time,’ said Damilola, trying again.

  The black man assumed an air of extremely polite incomprehension. The silence was getting oppressive.

  ‘Menu number seven,’ said Damilola, exasperated.

  ‘And for the kids?’ the black man asked.

  ‘The same,’ Damilola said morosely.

  ‘So that’s three number sevens?’

  ‘No,’ said Damilola. ‘Two. The girl won’t be eating.’

  The black man gave Kaya a dubious look, then looked back at Damilola – and smiled as if he wanted to show that the very last thought in his head was that the man in front of him was a cheapskate father who was starving his daughter to death. He nodded politely and invited his customers to take a seat. Damilola chose a table with a view of the river. He was looking glum and Grim suddenly felt a bit sorry for him.

  But he was so overwhelmed by the panorama that he immediately forgot about everything else.

  Soaring up outside the window were grey and brown towers with lacy stonework, lancet windows, steeples and even a flag on a tall mast – a genuine fairy-tale palace.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Grim.

  ‘The parliament,’ Damilola replied.

  That must be what they used to call this kind of castle.

  Beyond the parliament he could see a bridge over the river and, further off, the ancient stonework brows of immense grey buildings rose up out of the mist. He could even make out the different-coloured boxes of motorenwagens and the tiny dots of people strolling along the streets. Grim drank in the rays of sombre grey light coming in through the window and just couldn’t get enough of this view.

  Directly in front of him the dark forms of architectural decorations were suspended over the city – massive spheres of stone set in gold mounts, with crosses, crowns and ornate details that looked like flowers. Grim wanted to ask if they were metal or stone painted to look like gold, but he immediately realised just how pointless the question was.

  The black man with the false breasts came over to their table and set down a tray of drinks on it.

  ‘Gben Mabutu is an excellent cook,’ Damilola said when the man left. ‘But, between you and me, he injects too many anabolic steroids – in order to maintain his muscle mass. That’s why he’s not quite right in the head. Do you like African food, Grim?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Grim replied. ‘I’ve never tried it. What is it?’

  ‘Well, there’s date bread,’ said Damilola, ‘couscous, babaganoush, Berber sauce … You’ll like it, it’s like Orkish cuisine in parts.’

  Grim had no clear idea of what Orkish cuisine was, so he didn’t say anything.

  ‘And where do the rich Orks live?’ he asked.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Damilola asked in surprise.

  ‘Well, this is London, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘I heard that our rich men live here.’

  Damilola laughed.

  ‘Grim,’ he said, ‘in our time London is just a view from the window. There hasn’t been any other London for hundreds of years already. If rich Orks live here – and they really do live here – it means only one thing. They see the same 3D projection outside the window. Almost the same, that is. And they meet in restaurants with a view of the area.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Grim. ‘Then anyone at all can put up a projection like that outside their window.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Damilola replied. ‘It’s forbidden by law. The view from the window is an integral part of a residence and is paid for together with it. If you have a lot of money, you can choose. But it can only be changed without payment by decision of a court and with the agreement of the municipality authority. That’s why the view from a window is called municipal.’

  ‘Why was it done that way?’

  ‘Business,’ Damilola sighed. ‘The real estate owners have a powerful lobby. They pushed that law through a long, long time ago, long before I was born. At first glance, of course, it seems absurd. But actually it does make sense.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We have very little space. If you set aside the very richest people, everyone lives in similar box units, with so much technology crammed into every cubic millimetre that an unemployed person’s home is hardly any different from a rich man’s. The view from the window is one of the few parameters that make it possible to maintain a semblance of social stratification. It determines the size of the rent. For instance, you have the hills of Tuscany. That’s expensive, and you can only afford a view like that because you’ve inherited it from Bernard-Henri … Tuscany’s very chic. But this London here is mostly bought by Orks.’

  ‘Is London cheaper?’

  ‘London’s a lot more expensive,’ Damilola laughed.

  ‘But can you put a fake view in a window?’ asked Grim.

  ‘Yes, for a while. It will look even better than the municipal one – their programmes are old, they’ve got lots of bugs in them, and they’re always malfunctioning. But cybersecurity will spot a fake at the first scan. The fine is massive. And then, a fake in your window means lifelong disgrace.’

  ‘Why disgrace?’

  ‘Well, imagine someone pretends that he lives in Paris. The party’s in full swing, and suddenly a siren sounds and a message in huge red letters appears across the Eiffel Tower – “ILLEGAL CONTENT”. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.’

  Grim fell silent, thinking over what he had heard. Then something nudged gently against his foot.

  He looked up.

  Kaya was looking at him.

  ‘Grim,’ she asked, ‘do you believe in love at first sight?’

  Damilola laughed quietly.

  He didn’t seem to be at all annoyed by Kaya’s strange behaviour – he was actually taking pleasure in her antics. Grim frowned in surprise. It wasn’t clear to him why Kaya had brought up this subject. But she looked serious.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Grim. ‘I believe in death at first sight. I know for certain that that happens. But I’ve only read about love at first sight.’

  ‘And in your opinion, what is love?’ Kaya asked.

  ‘Probably when you feel good when you’re with someone.’

  ‘But who should feel good? You, or the person you love?’

  Grim shrugged.

  The question was too abstract. Down below, everyone felt bad – the ones who loved, and the ones who were loved. Not to mention the fact that no one really loved anyone – Orks were simply scoured against each other by the daily grind.

  ‘And what do you think yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘Probably,’ said Kaya, ‘love is when you want to save the one you love. Especially when it’s very hard to do. And the harder it is, the stronger the love is.’

  Grim pondered that.

  He felt absolutely no urge at all to save Chloe. In the first place, she was doing perfectly well anyway. In the second place, Chloe herself could save anyone at all. Take him, for example – she’d gone and dragged him all the way to London. Only it wasn’t very likely that she’d done it out of love. It had just turned out that way – it was easier to drag him here than leave him down below. And then, it was by no means certain that he’d really been saved at all.

  Anyway, he didn’t know what answer to give. But Kaya didn’t seem to be expecting an answer – she was already looking out through the window at the fretwork towers of the parliament.

  Gben Mabutu appeared in the far corner of the hall, holding a huge tray with bowls and dishes standing on it.

  ‘And what view do you have from your window?’ Grim asked to change the subject.

  ‘Come and visit,’ said Damilola. ‘Bring Chloe with you. You’ll see everything for yourself. Kaya will order some food. She orders really good food – it’s absolutely delicious. And you can take a look at my collection too.’

  CHAPTER 17

  At first Chloe refused to go visiting, citing her heavy schedule of auditions. The argument that they needed to maintain good relations with the neighbours had no effect on her. But for some reason she was convinced when Grim reminded her that Damilola lived right next door.

  This time Chloe and Kaya turned out to be dressed differently – and they finally noticed each other. After the introductions, they found something to make small talk about (apparently the cut of Orkish army singlets) and Grim and his host went off to look at the residence.

  The layout of the apartment was exactly the same as at Grim’s place. The only difference was the colour of the walls and the pictures hanging on them. While at Grim’s place their content was abstract, here almost all the paintings expressed a kind of rebellious love of freedom.

  The subject of a smashed manitou was repeated frequently – in one case it was a shattered retro-receiver with a vacuum tube, in another, a flat panel with several bullet holes in it. There was also a picture that was strange and sad: a rounded shadow that somehow resembled Damilola, smashing down a manitou with bullet holes in it onto the head of a fragile girl with a distant resemblance to Kaya. In the manner typical of Byzantine painting, a caption was written above the picture:

  FLYING BUFFS VS MEWLING MUFFS

  Damilola had two large pieces of Orkish art in his home, which was apparently what he called ‘my collection’. They were a hairy red letter ‘O’ on a steel plinth, and a massive stone slab hacked out of a cliff face, with an ancient pictogram on it.

  They weren’t 3D copies – Damilola touched them with his hand to show that both objects were real.

  According to what he said, the hairy red ‘O’ used to stand in the market square in Slava, only it was many times larger. Grim immediately recalled that he had actually caught a glimpse of the red oval, overgrown with ancient green moss, rising up over the market square in an old snuff – but he hadn’t realised what it was. The sculpture turned out to be called ‘Great Mother of the Urks’ and had been made under the first Losses, but it hadn’t survived to our time and now only existed in copies.

  ‘The fact that it’s not a “U”, but an “O”,’ said Damilola, ‘personifies for me the age-old aspiration of your people to freedom and civilisation …’

  Grim realised that this ‘O’ wasn’t really very likely to personify anything for Damilola, who simply wanted to say something pleasant to him. But he was grateful for that at least.

  The pictogram on the stone slab looked extremely simple – at the bottom was a crudely chiselled circle, with a triangle above it, and another triangle higher up. Damilola explained that this artefact came from far more ancient times than the hairy ‘O’ and belonged to the late Barbed-Wire Age, when the original indigenous Gulag Culture was falling into decline. In all probability, the pictogram had some connection with the archaic ‘taking a pipe under the roof’ rite – the specialists dated it to the so-called ‘fighting roofs’ period. But what the actual meaning of the rite could have possibly been was, of course, something that by now no one could explain.

  Grim felt ashamed that Damilola knew far more about the history of his people than he did. But he confessed that he didn’t really feel any special interest in Orkish antiquity.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Damilola.

  ‘I can see what it led to,’ said Grim.

  Damilola sighed and nodded several times, as if he wanted to show that he understood Grim very well. And then he led his guest over to a small picture that showed Slava from altitude. Only instead of jungles and rice fields, it was surrounded by a dead lunar landscape, edited in on a manitou. On the moon there was a small column of text in fine handwriting:

  One can render a long, soundly argued account of how the moon has been flying along some bizarre trajectory for many centuries now, and references to its terrible dead history will be entirely appropriate. But an unspoken prohibition on mentioning other heavenly bodies will render the narrative somewhat incomplete – at least in tracing the linkages of cause and effect.

  BHMM – to his friend Damilola

  ‘Is this Bernard-Henri?’ Grim asked.

  Damilola nodded.

  ‘A present,’ he said. ‘He and I were partners for a long time. A complicated man. Some things about him were impossible to accept. But he’s one of the most brilliant minds I have ever come across in my life. And he often spoke out loud about things that others prefer to ignore. Although mostly in a private setting, it’s true. But sometimes on camera too – for those occasions he was advised by two lawyers … And this one I made myself after his death. In memory of my comrade-in-arms …’

  Damilola pointed to the next picture.

  It was a photograph of a piece of cheap Orkish craftwork – a portrait burned into wood, like the ones they sell in souvenir shops as keepsakes of a visit to some Manitou-forsaken dump. Grim saw a long-haired folk hero with an aquiline nose, wearing fairy-tale armour, amulets and bead bracelets – the kind of character that Orkish artists draw when they don’t have the vaguest idea of what the ancestor they are portraying looked like.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Grim.

  ‘The leader of the Eastern Pacific Orks, Ivan the Right-Hand Wheel,’ said Damilola. ‘Probably no such person ever existed. He’s simply an epic-poem hero. I snapped him during a sortie over the market. There wasn’t any text – I added it myself …’

  Grim noticed that Ivan the Right-Hand Wheel was the spitting image of the late Bernard-Henri. This homage to memory was actually rather touching.

  Below the long-haired warrior was a caption, skilfully stylised to look like pokerwork on wood:

  Like a rocket with multiple re-entry vehicles, a hostile discoursemonger is most expediently destroyed at the launching stage. Instead of investigating the fiery essence of his syllogisms and applying them to one’s own life and destiny, one should first of all inquire into his sources of funding and the goals he is addressing – in other words, the question of who he is and why he is here. This is practically always enough, for the appearance of a body opening its mouth in front of a camera is never a spontaneous quantum effect. Just as the camera itself is never such an effect, even if it has the most sophisticated camouflage.

  BHMM

  ‘Actually, Bernard-Henri was no quantum effect himself,’ Damilola chuckled. ‘I say that as an observer. As for who he was – he was a very lonely man. I mean in the intellectual sense. He was always complaining that he had no one he could cross swords with, and really go all out. Because all his Orkish opponents were incredible dolts, and I got to them too quick … I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Grim replied.

  ‘Hence the harsh self-criticism of his own culture in Old French. But that doesn’t mean, Grim, that he wasn’t a Big Byz patriot. He was.’

  ‘I know,’ said Grim. ‘I saw that myself.’

  Damilola’s bedroom was smaller than the one in Bernard-Henri’s home. The space was divided into two parts. Through the half-open door that led into the little room partitioned off from the main section, a strange contraption was visible; it looked like an exercise machine with a pile of cushions heaped up on it. Grim saw a cavalry saddle, rendered black and mirror-bright from long polishing by buttocks – something like an inclined couchette with a complicated control handlebar and several different-sized manitous.

  The saddle was standing in such a way that if you sat on it you could slump forward, to lower your chest onto the cushions and take hold of the handlebar. There were stirrups attached to the bottom of the saddle with spring bearings – absolutely genuine stirrups of ancient, dull silver – and lying on a stand beside the control handlebar was a pair of opaque goggles with whisker-thin earphones. There was a large cup of coffee standing there too.

  Beside the control manitou, Grim just had time to spot a second couchette and a woodcut print of horsemen on the wall – before Damilola unceremoniously slammed the door shut. Apparently he wasn’t planning to show this part of his home.

  ‘You were asking about the view,’ he reminded Grim.

  Grim looked out the window – and only now realised what the opening view was.

  Damilola’s windows looked out over a city of pompous slums, standing on the shore of a sea bay. The colours outside the window were very bright – so bright that they reminded him of a screen with a damaged contrast control. The sky and the sea (only the very edge of it was visible) were intensely blue, the shallow slopes of a mountain in the distance were mildewed with little houses, and the harbour was so overcrowded with boats that it looked a graveyard of decaying white fish. Taken all together, it aroused a complex sensation of heat, poverty, stench and optimism.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Naples,’ Damilola replied. ‘A most ancient city. The world was once ruled from the shores of that bay. But there is no city now, and no bay. I like this view, because it …’

  ‘Comes with a discount,’ put in Kaya, who had come up to them surreptitiously. ‘It looks kind of expensive – the sea and a bay. But actually it’s cheap. You see that boat there? Sailing into the harbour? If you stand here for ten minutes it will sail as far as the quayside and moor, then disappear and start sailing into the harbour again. Day and night, right round the clock. It’s a bug. It could be upgraded, but we’re economising.’