The night was close with lies about an Indian summer and hollow threats or promises of an immanent thunderstorm. Vague breezes quickly got snarled into isolated eddies; the gridlocked air resisted being drawn into lungs, or even walked through. The small of Alex's back, where the bag hung, was slicked with perspiration to the point that she could no longer feel the dampness, and she sought out puddles to jump in to cool her feet. It was easy enough to look in place in this district, and by the time she got sufficiently far down that her facade could be seen for what it was they knew whose protection she was under. Some of the crazier ones even knew whose protection she was really under, which was more than she did.
The Lane was an abandoned railway line, long since declared an uneconomic link, its track torn up and reused. Three miles of overlooked greenery, tunnels and bridges; too deep and too narrow to be worth developing in this unprosperous neighbourhood. Alex left the mottled lighting of the street for the pure darkness of an alley, cut midway along a terrace, and unable to decide whether it should smell of garbage, urine, or dog shit. It branched to either side, running behind the yards, and bounded on the other side by a brick wall, crumbling with poor construction and an age of city air. Two steps down the right hand leg, Alex felt for the first foothold, chest high in the wall, a missing brick. Then the declivities in the mortar of the outhouse opposite, two stretches up which allowed her to make a precarious straddle across to the wall, using her bag as a counter-balance, and from there up, over, and down to the top of the cutting at the northern end of The Lane. Across on the other side, where the rails still ran, an up train whistled out of the tunnel, ghostly in its illuminated emptiness. Alex scrambled down the bank, veering left towards the abandoned half of the tunnel entrance, and once the grass had given over to chippings she took her torch out.
The tunnel was about four hundred metres long, but Alex wasn't quite sure, and had never been able to find out where it emerged in relation to any other landmark. Its unexpected size and soot-darkened interior ate the torchlight, and it was hard to tell whether the subtle curvature of the trackbed was to the left or to the right. Wherever it came out, it was deep in a tangle of transport systems, a well sided with brick and girder rail bridges, a fragile-looking aqueduct crossing an even more decrepit canal, and somewhere high above, refusing to shed the modern glory of their light into this pit, the streets. Alex flashed the torch around but, as ever, it showed nothing but the grass beneath her feet, the blackened brick and the rusted ironwork. Patchwork had once told her "Graffiti is an expression of the surface. Here, we are too deep for it." She turned the light off to give her eyes a chance to accommodate. A minute passed, and she could see well enough not to stumble when she walked, when a voice behind her said, "You don't belong here." She didn't recognise it, and turned slowly. The figure might have been mistaken for part of the tunnel entrance.
"Maybe not, but do you think I'm here by accident?"
"I guess not." There might have been a smile in the voice. He took a step away from the wall, through a dim shaft of light. Young, male, as the voice had suggested, long, probably dark hair, and maybe missing his left eye. The mismatched sleeves of his coat indicated that she was in the right company, even before he said "Follow me," and headed for the familiar scramble of girders.
The route re-established itself on her movements like instinct, a memory not consciously recalled. She had never known a train to run across the bridge whose steel exoskeleton they traversed, but for all that it might still be in use during daylight hours. At one point she had to look down, thankful that the ground, or maybe water, disappeared into shadow, to check that her foot was secure on a finger-width of ledge on a sloping beam, and when she raised her head her guide had disappeared from sight. She could just hear the metallic thumps of his movement, but their direction was lost in echoes and vibrations. No matter, she knew where she was going, and was nearly there. A nest, wrapped up in a jackstraws heap of girders and pipes, with a scavanged wooden floor and enough space to make standing up possible and not too precarious. Alex had never found a way of seeing out of this chamber, so assumed there was no way of seeing in. She sat on a girder, back braced against another, feet resting on a pipe, and massaged her calves to keep the incipient cramp away until she'd made it back down to The Lane. There was a soft wooden thud, followed by the flare of a candle, and there was Patchwork, crouched opposite her, dark eyes staring into the flame between them. His coat spread across the floor around him, a crazed marquee with him as tent pole, or a drop of vivid liquid starting to wet the dull surface on which it sat with its own brilliance. As ever, the colours and the patterns, if there were patterns, eluded Alex's eye.
"Well, then." He flicked a lock of greasy hair away from his mouth. "How goes it?"
"Fair. Book's with my agent, who doesn't think much of this one but reckons it will sell anyway. Musician friend of Martin's came round and we had a quick skim through the first movement. It'll sound even better with the proper instruments." She smiled slightly. Patchwork grinned, showing teeth which might have been stained to tan, or might be pure white in shadows and candlelight. He reached with his right hand somewhere into the voluminous folds of an inside pocket and drew out a sheaf of manuscript, folded lengthwise and tied with a ratty piece of garden twine. He transfered it to his left hand, and slid it across the floor, its brief passage past the candle highlighting torn edges and water stains. Alex stood up and onto the floor, dumping the contents of her bag next to it. On top of the pile of clothes, a garish assortment from rags to nearly new, landed a fresh pad of staved paper, slightly creased after its journey. She began folding the bag in on itelf, apparently superfluous zippers fastening it into a more compact form.
"Back when so-called civilised explorers started trading with natives, they would exchange worthless trinkets, glass beads, for essentials to survival. Now look at us. Here am I, obviously the native, and you the sophisticated envoy of civilisation, yet you provide what I need, and I repay you with trinkets."
Alex grew serious, despite Patchwork's continuing grin. "Maybe they're not worthless, though. Maybe what makes civilisation is precisely the kind of trinket you supply. Maybe it means something to someone."
"Ah! And maybe the natives had a use for the glass beads, no?" The grin threatened to turn into laughter. Alex stooped to pick the folded manuscipt up and place it in her bag, now only just big enough to hold it. The grin fell. "There is more."
Alex stood, turned to go, to say 'no.' Turned back, instead, to face Patchwork, eyes intently on her. She let her breath out in what might have been a sigh. "This musician friend. He thinks he's got problems with the authorities. Big problems. He's scared shitless; can only cope with playing his gig 'cause he's in the public eye there." The words cut off abruptly, and there was a moment's silence.
"I could hide him, certainly," said Patchwork, quietly, breath not disturbing the candle before him. "But there must be a better solution. I know who you mean. I'll watch out for him until that better solution presents itself. Meantime, worry, but not too much." End of conversation, end of meeting. Alex scrambled back the way she had come, leaving Patchwork staring thoughtfully into his candle.