Recursion

air reeking of raspberry-scented gasoline into the cool antiseptic atmosphere of the retail area. She thought it was funny, the way the cleanest places in the city were responsible for the greatest proportion of its pollution. She staggered to the pharmacy shelf and looked for something to take the throbbing pain from her head. It was all that she could do not to laugh at the irony of her purchase.

Eva found a yellow-and-red-striped pack of tablets and took it to the counter, along with a pink can of cola. She felt in her pocket for her e-card as the young man behind the counter scanned the pack of pills. He frowned at his screen.

“It says here you’ve been going through quite a few of these lately. I’ve got to ask you when you finished the last pack.” He blushed as he spoke, the flesh-toned cream he used to hide his acne contrasting nicely with his reddening skin. Eva reckoned he couldn’t be aged more than thirteen. Only just old enough to hold down a part-time job.

“I finished the last pack last weekend. I was having a very heavy period. Does it mention that there, too?” The boy turned a deeper crimson and tapped at a button.

“I’ve got to ask if you have any alcohol at home.”

“I gave that up months ago. The computer must know that. It monitors everything that goes into my apartment, and it counts every empty package and bottle that comes out.”

“Sorry, Eva,” apologized the boy.

“Call me Ms. Rye. You don’t know me.”

“Sorry, Ms. Rye.” He placed her e-card on the counter and held out the painkillers. “Your account has been debited.”

Eva snatched the package from his hand, popped the top of the cola can and took a deep swallow. She slid two pills from the package into her mouth and then chased them down with another gulp of cola.

“That’s better,” she said.

“Good morning, Ms. Rye.”

She ignored him and pushed her way back out into the raspberry-stinking air. As she strode toward the middle of South Street, she ran over what she had to do in the next few hours.

The most important thing was to continue acting normally. If there were any hints that she was deviating from her normal routine, they would spot it. She had learned that lesson the hard way, when they had killed her brother. Her phone vibrated in her back pocket.

She hit the answer button. “Hello.”

“Hello there, Eva. What would you think about one hundred and fifty credits for ten minutes’ work?”

The voice was colorless and sexless. Their voices always were. She thought quickly: she couldn’t afford to lose time from her schedule on this day of all days; at the same time she didn’t want to attract suspicion. She made her voice sound tired and listless.

“I’ve got a splitting headache. Ask someone else.”

“Three hundred credits, Eva. All we’re asking is that you take a detour down Keppel Road on your way to the shops. Three hundred credits could pay for a new washing machine.”

“I don’t need a new washing machine.”

“You will in about three weeks. Built-in obsolescence is a pretty exact science these days.”

Eva was about to agree, she didn’t have time to argue. But she stopped herself. She had to act normally. What would the normal Eva have done? Bargain, of course.

“Five hundred credits,” she said.

“Done,” said the voice. “Near the station end of Keppel Road there is a hawthorn tree. Hawthorn trees have twisty brown trunks and small ragged green-”

“I know what a hawthorn tree looks like.”

“Of course you do. There may be some small pieces of metal stuck in and around the base of that tree. We would like you to tidy up the mess. It should take you no more than twenty minutes.”

“You said ten.”

“That’s right, we did. When you’ve collected the metal, place it in a mail tube. We’ll let you know the address you need to send it to later. Bye.”

The line went dead just as Eva reached the end of Keppel Road. She turned down it, heading toward the Lite Station. She guessed that some stealth plane had suffered minor damage over the city the previous night and she had been detailed to collect the wreckage. The thought put DeForest in her mind again. Like all company people, he had denied the existence of stealth ordnance, and like all young people with ideals, Eva had teased him mercilessly about his denial.

She remembered a January afternoon. The last one they would ever spend together, though Eva hadn’t known that at the time. They had sat snug in her flat, the heating turned up full, the lights turned on against the grey day, while they drank red wine and watched old movies. DeForest was flying back that evening, back to his wife and his other life in Connecticut. Eva hated the early evening flights; the day would drag by without either of them being able to settle to anything. On the screen before them the hero was being dragged into the shelter of a doorway by his mystery female protector.

“All that sweat and not a hair out of place,” said Eva scornfully. “I wish I knew where she got her clothes from, too. She’s been completely drenched in oil and they still look good on her.”

“I’m impressed by the way she’s avoiding the search planes. All that infrared detection equipment on board, and she fools them by setting fire to a few newspapers.” DeForest took another drink of wine and gave Eva a little squeeze. She wriggled herself into a more comfortable position.

“There are one or two things about those planes I’d take issue with,” said Eva, sliding her eyes sideways to look at DeForest’s expression. “For a start, how come they’re visible?”

DeForest gave a tolerant laugh. “Oh, here we go again. Ms. Conspiracy Theory 2047. The Earth is monitored by a fleet of invisible airplanes all reporting back to the evil Artificial Intelligence that evolved in the Internet.”

Eva elbowed him in the stomach.

“Oh sorry, Mr. Free Enterprise 1987. I forgot that the world is actually run by a series of multinational companies that put the needs of the poor and the environment before their own profits.”

“My company gave several million credits to charity last year. And we sponsored the Llangollen dam project.”

“And I bet you spied out the territory using invisible planes, just so your competitors didn’t try and muscle in on your plans.”

“Why should we do that? The dam is a nonprofit-making project.”

Eva grinned at him.

“…and we don’t have any stealth planes, anyway,” he added smoothly.

“Too slow.” She laughed and raised her arms to acknowledge imaginary applause. “Thank you! Thank you, people. I was right and DeForest was wrong!”

“No, you weren’t.” DeForest grinned and pinched her backside.

“OW!!!” squealed Eva, pinching him back. They began to pinch at each other some more and then to kiss and then…

And then, later on, DeForest had flown back to his other home and had never contacted Eva again. When she attempted to reach him, her calls were intercepted by the company. First she was told that he had been relocated to Korea, then that his wife had had a baby and he had decided to concentrate on his real family. Finally she had been told to stop contacting the company, and a block had been placed on her comm lines.

Eva reached the hawthorn tree. Crataegus monogyna. The Latin name rose in her mind unbidden, and she wondered where she had once read it. The hawthorn was one of the trees that lined the road on both sides, its brown trunk twisted out of a dusty grey square of earth and gravel at the edge of the pavement. Its roots had forced up the old paving slabs bordering it to form a mound. She walked around the tree to see three feathered darts stuck in its trunk. She pulled them out and looked around. A fourth dart was buried in a nearby gate; she pulled that out too. Eva felt as if the two rows of terraced houses that bordered the road were watching her with their blank windows. Her phone vibrated and she jumped.

“What is it?” she said.

“There are two more darts. Can you see them?”

“No. Where should I be looking?”