The constant worker

Snow fell from the sky like leaves from the trees; heavy wet flakes that seemed too large, and that splatted onto people, melting in seconds.  The pavement had disappeared in minutes, and the roads were starting to slush up as well, slowing the traffic down and forcing the cars and buses to keep their windscreen wipers on.  Shops and businesses were still lit up and open, though a few offices had started letting their staff go home early.

Jamie paused for a moment, his long grey woollen coat pulled around him, and its felt collar stood up.  The snow still crept down his neck now and then, but mostly he was warm and dry.  He looked up into the blank greyness of the sky, watching the flakes – silhouetted black against the clouds – spin and fall to the earth.  He stepped aside to avoid one that seemed intent on his face, and heard a squeal.  He looked round, and then down; a woman had fallen over and was kicking her high heels at his ankles, her face twisted into a bitter snarl.  His hand, inside the pocket of his coat, squeezed around the grip of his gun, and he started to draw it.  Then he thought better of it, and instead opened up the coat to allow him access to his belt.  He pulled the taser from there and aimed it at her.

Her eyes widened as she realised what he was doing, and her mouth, spoiled by purplish lipstick and wine-stained teeth, formed an O-shape, probably the last syllable of a drawn-out No.  She lifted a black-gloved hand and he noticed the fur edging on its wrist.  Then he pulled the trigger and two tiny silver darts sprang from the gun and punched into the skin of her neck, just below and off to one side of her chin.  For a moment she looked stunned, as though she couldn’t believe that he’d actually pulled the trigger, and then the darts delivered their charge; short-lasting but intense.  She spasmed and her head jerked to one side.  She skidded across the snow-covered pavement like a fish flapping around freshly out of water, and she knocked into several other pedestrians.  Two of them caught their balance, and looked round, but a third, and then a fourth, toppled as well and fell on top of her.

Jamie put the taser back and buttoned his coat back up, and then tied the belt tightly around his waist.  She would no doubt tell everyone about what had happened, and she’d have the little darts as evidence, but they’d do her no good.  When the police checked the serial numbers on the darts the case would be stalled and stopped until she stopped protesting.  Or, if she was stupid enough to protest more anyway, she would get a visit from the re-education department.  The gulags had plenty of room for more dissidents.

He walked on down the Boulevard des Champignons.  The buildings around him were facades over steel and glass.  The original stonework, three hundred years old in some places, had been carefully suspended in place and down adorned thoroughly modern and strong cores, so that it might feel like he was walking through a street from three centuries ago, but in fact the cutting edge of technology was employed behind the blank windows and locked doors.  Even the street name had been deliberately kept so as not to give any clue as to what was going on here.

He stopped at number 168 and rapped on the door.  A small panel slid back, slightly lower than eye height, and he stooped to peer in.  Someone stood next to him might have spotted the blue light that caressed his eyes, but they’d have needed good vision and to know that they were supposed to be watching for it.  There was a moment’s pause and then the door clicked, and he pushed it open.

Beyond the door was a small steel hallway with two turnstiles; one for people entering and one for people departing.  The temperature inside was noticeably warm and Jamie immediately undid his belt and unbuttoned his coat.  He walked through the turnstile, his fingerprints and pulse being read by the gate as he pushed through it, and on the far side approached a glass automatic door.  He had to wait there for a few moments longer while the computer analysed his gait towards it, and then it slid open.

“Good morning,” said a metallic voice.  “You are authorised for the third, fourth and seventh floors.”  He didn’t bother looking round; the speakers were concealed, and he was reasonably certain that the ones used for the voice were randomised every time anyway.

“I tased someone,” he said.

There was another pause while the computer located a human operative and put them on the line.

“Agent?” This voice was male and didn’t sound happy.  ‘You tased someone?  Again?”  Ah, so they’d already accessed his file.

“Yes,” he said.  He considered explaining, and then decided that he wouldn’t unless asked.

“Noted.”  There was a sigh to conclude the word.  “Please remember that your weapon-carrying certification can be reviewed at any time, not just at the designated quarter-year sessions.”

“Thank-you,” said Jamie, comfortably aware that they would never take his weapons-clearance away from him.

“Report to the eighth floor,” said the voice.  “I have a message that the Tailor would like to talk to you.”

Jamie halted then, and only resumed walking a second later.  The Tailor wanted to see him?  Now that was something different.

Retourné

Snow fell from a gun-metal grey sky and the taxi pulled up at the corner of the street.  The buildings, tall, beige stone constructions from last century narrowed the view of the sky from street level, and the snowflakes seemed to fall more heavily when you looked up.  The street Martin wanted was cordoned off with blue-and-white police tape; a little further along there was black-and-striped yellow tape as well, just to hint that the police might be dealing with something dangerous.  Martin shivered; his coat still wasn’t warm enough for the weather, and though he’d paused at his locker to put a jumper on it wasn’t making as much difference as he’d hoped.  He paid the taxi driver, who frowned at the precision with which Martin counted the money out and then sped away without offering a receipt.  Martin shrugged, dislodging snowflakes from his black jacket, and then he lifted the police tape to step under it.

A police ghosted forward out of a nearby doorway and laid a hand on top of Martin’s head, pressing down gently.  Martin tried to move from under it, but the hand stayed firm on his skull.

“This is a restricted area, Sir,” said the policeman.  His voice was neutral but his grip was like iron.

“I’m aware,” said Martin.  “I’m allowed to be here.”

“No.”  The policeman pushed down harder now, and Martin retreated back under the tape rather than be forced ungracefully to the ground.  Once he was on the other side the policeman let go, and Martin could look him in the eye at last.  The man was younger than Martin, which annoyed him instantly, and looked more muscular too.  He was also wearing a heavy overcoat that looked like wool and definitely looked warm.

Martin smiled thinly, his lips pressed tightly together, and very slowly, telegraphing his moves, unzipped his jacket and opened it out to reveal the inside pocket, then pulled a thin leather document holder, about the size of a passport, from it.  He held it out to the policeman, who took it expressionlessly and opened it. He spent nearly a minute reading it, going through the different papers in there, and at one point lifting his head and scrutinising Martin’s face intently – Martin knew then that the man had reached the physical description and photo-id.  Finally the policeman closed the wallet up and handed it back.  Martin put it away, and lifted the tape again; the policeman made no move to stop him.

“Where do I find your boss?” asked Martin.  The policeman didn’t shift his gaze, but pointed upwards and behind him.  Martin looked up, having now to shade his eyes from the rapidly-falling snow, and saw another policeman standing on a tiny balcony – were they called Juliet balconies, he wondered for a moment – with a peaked cap shading his face, watching.

“Thanks,” said Martin, annoyed that he couldn’t even worry this young man.  He set off down the street towards the black-and-yellow tape and the apartment that he’d been in with Edward.  Beneath his feet the snow squeaked as it compressed, and his footprints blurred in twenty seconds; by the time he’d reached the front door of the apartment block the ones by the policeman’s post were invisible unless you were looking for them.

Two more policemen were stood in the entry hall of the building, and Martin had to hold his wallet up to the window and tap on it before they’d even come to the window to see who he was.  When they opened the door they made him stand outside while they went through his documents even more meticulously, and when they finally let him in he was shivering uncontrollably.

“First floor first,” said one of the policeman, who had a scar on the side of his neck; white lines where the flesh had been slashed apart and only slowly knitted back together.  “You report to Commander Baume; he tells you what you can do and where you can go.”

Martin pressed down the desire to ask the man if he knew what Martin’s job was – he’d read the documents, clearly he did – and reminded himself that this was an action to try and catch the Tailor ultimately.  If they didn’t do things like the book then people like Edward got in.

He swallowed, suddenly feeling obscurely grateful that these men were being so meticulous, and pushed the lift button.

“Stairs only,” said the other policeman, pointing.

Words that hurt

Water was pouring over his face.  Cold water.  Reflexively he tried to breath and got a mouthful of mixed water and air.  He started coughing, and crunched up.  Finding he was free to move he kicked out with both feet, and felt them connect with someone.  There was the noise of something falling over, and then he got his head out from under the water, and his feet underneath.  He crouched, using one hand to wipe his eyes clear and the other ready to strike.

He was in a small bathroom with a peach-coloured bathroom suite.  There was a bath-mat hanging on a towel rail and two toothbrushes in a small ceramic pot stood on the corner of a basin, where the groove for the soap was.  Edward had fallen backwards into the bath and was struggling to get out.  Behind him was a shower cubicle with the water running.  It took him a moment to realise that that must have been where he was a moment ago.  He grabbed Edward’s hand and hauled him out of the bath.

“Where is he?” he said.  The bathroom door was closed.  “Did he run out?”

“Who?” Edward’s voice was slightly choked.

“The guy who was waterboarding me.  And what were you doing while he was doing that?  Practising swimming in the bath?”

“No-one was waterboarding you!” Edward sounded indignant.  “You passed out when I opened the door, and I dragged you in here to wake you up.   Only then you attacked me and pushed me in the bath.”  He bent down and rubbed his shins.  “That hurts!”

“I passed out?”  Martin paused, and thought back.  There was a hazy in his memories that felt somehow familiar.  The door had been opened, Edward wasn’t being anywhere near cautious enough.  There had been a girl, sitting at a desk… had she said something? Everything fuzzed then.

“Yes!  You just staggered forwards, your hands at your ears, and fell on the carpet.  God knows what you’ve done to the scene out there!”

“There was a girl…,”

“Yes, handcuffed to a desk.  She’s still there, she can’t go anywhere.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Three minutes?”  Edward checked his watch, which Martin noted was a slim Rolex.  “Four minutes and eight seconds now.”

“Right.  Right.  The girl – was she speaking when we came in?  Talking to someone?”

“Reciting,” said Edward.  “I’ve put a sticking plaster over her mouth to stop her.  She was reciting numbers in Odnose B.”  Martin stared at him.

“Didn’t you do your background reading?” he said at last.

“What do you mean?  Of course I did!  I wrote the background reading!”

“On me.”

“What?  No, you’re just another goof-up sent to ‘help’ me with a retrieval job because you messed some other job up.  Why would I care what you did wrong last time?”

“Because my last time would have been surviving five minutes of Odnose B.”

The two men stared at each other across the tiny bathroom, Martin’s gaze fiery and direct; Edward’s cold and piercing.  Neither man broke eye contact, but Edward said,

“That’s longer than I’ve ever heard anything managing.”

“That’s why you should have done your reading.”

They held their stare for another few seconds before Edward looked down.  “Can you take her out to the car?” he said.  “I still need to get the books and we’ve lost a lot of time.”

“So long as she can’t speak now, shouldn’t be a problem,” said Martin.  “Looks like I’ve been sensitised to the language.”

Edward opened the bathroom door, and then stopped.  He sighed.

“What?” Martin considered pushing past him, but then decided that no-one could know that he was in the bathroom at that moment.  That might be an edge.

“She’s gone.”  Edward walked out into the grubby living room and pointed at the desk.  Blood had sprayed all over it, and the handcuffs were still there, still around her wrists, which dripped dark blood onto the carpet.  The torn flesh was ragged and long strips of skin dangled, floating slightly in currents in the air.

“Sweet Mary,” said Martin looking at it.  “Who rips someone’s hands off just to get them out faster?”

“They did it near silently,” said Edward.  Martin snorted.

“The shower is still running,” he said.  “You’ve been listening to it for so long you don’t notice it anymore.  We gave them all the noise-cover they needed.  Where are these books you came for?  Let’s get something out of this mess.”

The numbers station

It was cold in the car; Edward refused to let him turn the heater on in case it drained the battery.  Martin rubbed his gloved hands together and pushed himself further back into the passenger seat, trying to get warm.  His coat was supposedly rated for Arctic conditions but he was rapidly losing faith.  His ears hurt, both the tips from the cold and the insides from the after-effects of listening to Odnose-B.  Next to him, dressed in a parka that Martin had laughed at when he first saw it, wearing thin leather gloves and a pained expression, was Edward Demarche.

Edward was nominally in charge of this situation, but both he and Martin knew that Martin had much more practical experience, while Edward was essentially a theorist who felt like getting his hands dirty now and then.  Even so, Edward had insisted on picking out the rental car, and had gone for something so nondescript that it wasn’t a reliable starter and had dodgy tracking.  Martin, who would have picked something newer, smaller, and more corporate had held his tongue and waited to see what would happen.  What had happened was that they’d driven to this building and then sat outside it, in sub-zero temperatures, for over ninety minutes.

“Where did you get that coat?” asked Edward.  His breath produced a rapidly dispersing white cloud in the air.

“High street,” replied Martin.  It had been a couple of days ago and he’d gone into the first outdoors-and-camping store that he’d seen and asked for a coat for cold conditions.

“Huh.  They never sell anything that really keeps the cold out.  You should go to army surplus.  If your soldiers freeze they can’t fight.  The army gets it right.”  This was the longest speech Edward had made since Martin had met him, and he waited to see if he’d continue.  When he didn’t the silence dragged out further and further.

“Movement,” said Edward, his head flicking to the side like a startled bird.

“Third-floor, daughter of the couple in 18,” said Martin, whose head didn’t move.  “Should be going off to see her school-friends at this time.”

Edward shot him a glance, clearly annoyed by Martin’s casual know-it-all attitude.  “She’s carrying a bag,” he said.

“Most likely a change of clothes; she tells her parents that she’s studying and then she goes out with her friends.  To lots of places.”

“You read the background material then.”  It wasn’t a question, just a blunt statement.  Martin nodded still not looking over.  He seemed entranced by the end of the street.  “You wrote it,” he said.

They waited another twenty minutes before a short man wearing a trenchcoat and an oversized fedora left the building.  Edward sat up and leaned forward immediately.

“Good to go!” he said hoarsely.

“Not yet,” said Martin, tapping a tooth with one of his fingers and listening to the slightly hollow sound it made.  “Give him a chance to remember he’s forgotten something and come back.”

“That doesn’t happen,” said Edward, frowning.

“More than you’d think,” said Martin.

Only after another five minutes had passed did Martin agree to leave the car.  He and Edward checked the street and then crossed to the building.  The front doors weren’t locked, and led into a lobby with a set of wooden postboxes, each numbered in brass, and a single pass-card controlled elevator.  Edward produced a pass-card from his pocket, and called the lift.  When it arrived it also needed the card before any of the floor buttons would light up.

“Third floor, second door on the right,” said Edward as the lift ascended.

“Do we have a key?”

“Yes.”

“Booby-traps?”

“As in, do we have any?”

“As in, are we expecting any?”

“Not exactly,” said Edward.  “There’s been no evidence that he has to disarm anything when he comes back.”

“Hah.”  Martin said nothing else until they were stood outside the apartment door: number 13.  Edward produced a key, but Martin held up a hand and listened at the door first.  After a moment he produced a slim rod and pushed it into the lock.  When he was satisfied the lock wasn’t booby trapped he pressed his ear against that and listened again.  His whole head throbbed.

“Voices,” he said.  “Definitely someone talking in there, maybe two or three.”

“You’ve got a gun.”  Not a question, just a flat statement.  Martin stared at him.

“Yes, but we don’t want a shoot-out.  The gun’s insurance, a way of making sure we can get our own way.  We don’t want everyone firing and bringing in the neighbours and police.”

“Then why bring it at all?”

“In case.”  Martin felt the Edward’s reluctance to talk was rubbing off on him.  “What are we expecting in here?  Apart from the guys having a chat?”

“Books,” said Edward.  “Important books.”  He slipped the key in the lock and turned it before Martin could say anything, and then flung the door open.  Straight in front of them was a spacious living room, with a small desk set up in the middle of it.  Sat at the desk, manacled at the wrists and ankles was a young-girl with rat’s-tailed hair and blood from old nosebleeds crusted around her nostrils and across her face.  In front of her was a microphone and a notebook, and with sudden shock Martin realised that what he was hearing wasn’t conversation at all, but numbers being recited in Odnose-B.  The entire room seemed to swim before his eyes, and he collapsed, falling to his knees and then forwards onto his face.  He was dimly aware that Edward was doing something, but the words were ringing in his head and drowning out all conscious thought.

The low form

Cecily picked up the piece of paper using a pair of tweezers, and shook it at Martin.  “Where did you get this?  Exactly?”  She laid it down on her desk again, a large wooden bench with a laptop at one end and a set of labelled petri dishes pushed to the back.  This was her laboratory, which she shared with five other scientists, none of whom had fewer than two Ph.Ds.  Martin, perched on an uncomfortable lab stood, swallowed hard and looked at her.  His hearing was still a little fuzzy and his ears ached in any temperature below 25C.  He was carrying a pair of ear-warmers in his hands, having taken them off when he came into the lab.

“The Tailor put it in front of me after he turned the radio on,” he said.  The memories were hazy as though someone had spilled acid over them and they’d been partly eaten away.  He could remember the Tailor turning the radio on, and then the next thing he remembered was a smile full of yellowed teeth and the piece of paper.  Then there was a kind of greyness when he knew he was there and hurting, and after that there were people around him again, talking to him in ways that didn’t make him want to curl up and die.  He remembered flashing lights, but he couldn’t remember if there’d been an ambulance or not.  He remembered a fast, bumpy journey while he was lying down, but not where he’d been while he was lying.  His first memories that felt like his again were of waking up in a narrow, hard bed with pristine white sheets and seeing a middle-aged woman with curlers in her hair sat at the end of the bed, watching him.

“Did he say anything to you about it?”

“I couldn’t hear him, the radio was on,” said Martin.  He shuddered; he could remember the first words, if that was really the right word to describe the noise, that had come out of the radio, and he really wished he couldn’t.  No-one should have to vomit a language out of their throat to get rid of it.

“Before he turned the radio on, did he say anything to you about this paper?  About Odnose B?”

Martin flinched so hard he fell off the stool and landed on the floor; the stool caught in his legs as he fell and ended up on top of him.  Cecily raised an eyebrow, and waited to him to untangle himself and get back up.

“You can stand if you wish,” she said.  Martin shook his head, and sat back on the stool, positioning it so he could lean on one arm on her bench.  She frowned but said nothing.

“He said… he said something about the intent of the number station,” he said.  “He said… he said I should ask what the intent of the numbers station was.  I think.  The memories are, I don’t know how to describe it.  Like when you drop a mirror.”

“Crazed,” said Cecily nodding.  “Yes, Odnose B does very strange things to the mind.  It wouldn’t be surprising if your memories were all hazed and cracked like a mirror really.  The agents say you were in there with the radio on for at least six minutes.”

“Was it that short?”  Martin looked astonished when Cecily laughed.  It was a modest chuckle at first that turned into a full roar of laughter as she saw his expression.

“Didn’t anyone–?  Really?  Oh.  Well, in our animal experiments the rabbits and mice die after about 90 seconds, and the primates don’t do a whole lot better.  We’re trying to get hold of a gorilla but it’s not easy.  It might be easier now we can show that human subjects have lasted six minutes without death though.  Six minutes of Odnose B is a fairly accurate description of eternity as I understand it.

Look Martin, did you read this note?  Do you know who wrote it?  It says here that there are high and low forms of Odnose B and that what you were listening to is the low form, and that’s why you’re here.  I really, really want to know everything you know about this note.”

Martin swallowed.  “Look, I think the Tailor wrote it, and I can remember a smile, it might have been his.  I don’t know anything else about it though, he just put the note in front of me and I had to really concentrate to try and read it.”

“The agents said it was clenched so tightly in your hands that they had to give you a muscle relaxant to get it away from you,” said Cecily.  “It sounds like you knew it was important at least; did the Tailor say anything to make you realise that?”

“I don’t think so,” said Martin.  He blinked, his eyes slightly unfocused.  “No, he didn’t say anything about the note being important.  I think he just left.”

“How?”

“Huh?”

“No-one saw him leave the building, Martin.  We don’t know where he went, or how he got out.”

“But we had it surrounded!”

Cecily said nothing, but put the note into a little plastic sleeve using her tweezers.

“We’ve suspected that there’s something odd about Odnose B for a while,” she said.  “The texts we have disagree in places where we think we understand what’s being said, and there are substitutions that aren’t regular or maintained.  If there really are two forms of the language, then that might help us work out which is which.  But, and it’s big but for us, why are there two forms?”

“Two different kinds of speakers?” said Martin.  “I dunno, posh people talking and common people?”

“Speaking a language that kills the speakers and the people who hear it?”

Martin stared at her.

“We can’t even figure out how this language developed,” said Cecily.  “Or rather, our answers so far are almost as disturbing as the wretched language itself.”

The Tailor

The shop was on a busy street, sandwiched between a music superstore and a small electronic shop with lots of coloured lights on display in the window.  The Tailor’s shop had a couple of dusky mannequins in the window wearing pinstriped suits, and a desultory display of ties on a hanger behind them.  The door pushed open and a bell jingled and the carpet just inside the door was threadbare and the brown of a mongrel dog.  Martin Lewhide looked around, wondering where the Tailor was.

“I’ll be with you in just a moment, Sir,” came a voice from the other side of what looked like a cupboard door.  It was quiet, slightly refined, and the words were crisp and clearly enunciated as though the speaker was used to being on stage.

“No hurry,” said Martin.  He looked around at the short racks of suits with a sign at one end: For display purposes only.  All suits made to measure.  Behind a small counter was another rack holding other suits that looked… well, tailored for want of a better word.  Martin walked over to have a closer look, wondering for a moment if he’d got the wrong shop.

“Please don’t touch,” said the voice, halting Martin’s steps.  His hand fell back to his side and he felt inexplicably guilty.  He turned; there behind him, closing the cupboard door with one hand and holding a wicked looking pair of cloth-shears in the other was a short man, well-dressed in a shirt, waistcoat and expensive-looking dark trousers.  His shoes were probably leather and shinier than any Martin had ever owned.  “Those are awaiting collection and as such, are already sold.  I doubt you want a bill for dry-cleaning.”

“You’re the Tailor,” said Martin, his eyes scanning the Tailor’s face.  It was plain, simple, nothing stood out.  His eyes were grey and looked like they saw a joke that Martin didn’t.  His nose was small, pointed and unremarkable.  His lips were thin, his chin was slightly dimpled.  Everything about him rang a bell, but all because he looked like the generic description people gave when they actually hadn’t been paying attention.

“That’s very observant,” said the Tailor.  “You must be the customer.  What are you looking for today?”  Eyes flicked up and down him.  “Everything?  A wedding perhaps?”

“You.  I’m looking for you,” said Martin.  “I know who you are.”

“I’m a tailor, Sir, yes.  And though I might suggest that I’m very good as discerning a man’s intentions when dealing with his suit preferences, I am not a mind-reader.  Could you perhaps be more specific why you’re looking for me?”

Martin paused, uncertain again.  The man was as nondescript as he’d been told, and this was definitely the right shop.  Could he be making a mistake?

“Do you have a partner?” he said.

“Someone I work with?  No, this is a sole-proprietor enterprise, which is possible by the bespoke nature of my business.  If you mean a romantic partner, then I’m afraid you’re simply not my type, but I am, naturally, flattered.”

“Then you’re the Tailor,” said Martin, wishing that he felt more confident.  “You’re running the numbers station.”

“What on earth is a numbers station?”

“A list of numbers, recited, at regular intervals,” said Martin.  “Why am I telling you though, you already know.  We’ve tracked the signal to here, you’re definitely running the numbers station.  And you have to be the Tailor, because the Tailor is the only person who would run a numbers station in Odnose B.”

“What’s an odd nose got to do with this?  This is very interesting by the way, but if a genuine customer should come in I’ll have to ask to leave, I’m afraid.”

“You don’t have any real customers!  This is all just a front.  You’re well aware that Odnose B is a language, a dead one, that probably killed off all its speakers.  You’re the only person in the world who’d pick it for a numbers station, and that’s just one of the things that’s going to have to stop.”  Martin pulled a gun from the inside pocket of his mac; the pockets there were tailored specifically for him to provide him with quick access to his weapons and other little tools that helped him with his tradework.

“Oh dear,” said the Tailor, sounding unconcerned.  “Is this is a robbery?”

“Dammit, stop pretending!  I know you’re the Tailor, I’ve been looking for you for the last three weeks.  People are dying because of your numbers station, you know!  Do you know how many people have died because of you?”

“Fewer, by an order of magnitude, than the number of its citizens that your country remanded into special custody to Guantánamo-like camps in the last calendar year.”

Martin stared at the Tailor.  The Tailor nodded.  “Oh yes.  Have you been doing this for so long now that you think you’re one of the good guys?  You’re not; everything I do is for the good guys, the improvement of the situation of the people I’m working for.  I never sit down and ask myself how I can be evil today, only what I can do to make life better for people.  Do you ever sit down and ask yourself anything?”

“I am too a good guy!” Martin stumbled over his words in his rush to get them out.  “You’re the one with a lethal numbers station!”

“You should really think about the intent of that,” said the Tailor.  “You might surprise yourself and understand something.  And while we’re at it, your government designated me an enemy combatant over eight years ago.  What did I do to deserve that?”

“I… I don’t know, I wasn’t working for the – for my employer then.”  Martin felt his face flush as he almost admitted who he was working for.

“Then you should have done your homework,” said the Tailor.

“I did!  We’ve been after you for six years, and you keep getting away.  But that’s not going to happen this time – we have this shop surrounded, front and back.  We’ve been watching it for three weeks now, and we broke in a couple of nights ago to check for hidden exits and secret passages.  There’s no way out this time, Tailor.  We have you, and I think you should just come quietly and make it easy on yourself.”

“Is there a book of clichés somewhere that they make you read and memorise?  You sound like a parody of yourself, you really do.”

“Just give up, Tailor!”  Martin felt quite proud of himself, sure now that he had the right guy and that he was going to walk out of here with the Tailor in handcuffs.  He’d be a hero, having finally caught the man they’d been after for so long.  “Hey, what are you doing?”  The Tailor had walked behind the counter.

“Turning the radio on,” said the Tailor, smiling faintly.  A tinny voice suddenly came out of the speaker system saying something utterly horrible.  It sounded like the word had stuck in the speaker’s throat and had had to be vomited out.  Syllables cracked where they should have resonated, phonemes seemed to melt and acidify in Martin’s ears.  He slapped his hands over his ears reflexively, but the Tailor just turned another dial and increased the volume.

As Martin sank to his knees, unable to pull his hands away from his head, and feeling his brain pulse with the intensity of a migraine as the words spoken in Odnose B echoed around the room.  The Tailor placed a piece of paper in front of him, and the writing on it swam before his eyes until he made himself blink and bring them in focus.  There are High and Low forms of Odnose B, read the note.  Be grateful that the numbers station is only using the Low form.  Martin blinked again and his vision turned red.  With a sudden cold feeling in the pit of his stomach he realised that his eyes had started bleeding, and he tried to get to his feet.  His feet, and his knees, wouldn’t obey him, and he just slowly fell over to one side.  He remained there until his team came in, wearing ear-protectors normally used on building site and shot both the radio and the PA system to put a stop to the words.  They had to carry him out between them.