The GoldenCity

“We all have busy lives these days, but sometimes we have to listen to our bodies.” Dr. Kamani checked the folder. “What exactly is your profession?”

“That has nothing to do with my leg.”

“You need to talk to a specialist.”

“I’ve had enough of this.” Maya’s sword was hidden in the carrying case lying on the table. She picked it up and slung the strap over her shoulder. “You’re bloody useless.”

Dr. Kamani stood a little straighter. Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared as if she were about to smash a tennis ball back across the net. “And you’re pregnant, Ms. Strand.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Well, it’s true. I ordered a full range of tests, and that was one of them. The pregnancy is probably why you feel sick to your stomach. “

Crazy thoughts pushed through her mind. Maya wanted to be surrounded by enemies at that moment so that she could draw the sword and slash her way out of the room.

“When did you last have sexual intercourse, Ms. Strand?”

Maya shook her head.

“Do you know who the father is?”

She felt paralyzed, frozen within that moment of revelation, but her mouth moved and sounds came out. “Yes. But he’s gone away.”

“Of course there are alternatives if you want to terminate the pregnancy. I usually ask patients to think it over for twenty-four hours before they make an appointment.”

Dr. Kamani reached into the door rack and pulled out a pamphlet with the words It’s Your Choice on the cover. “This pamphlet explains the various options. Are there any other questions I can answer?”

“No.” Maya checked the time on her mobile phone. “Right now, I’m late for an appointment.” She slid off the examination table, brushed past Dr. Kamani and hurried out of the clinic.

Alice Chen and one of the nuns from the island were arriving in London, and Linden had told Maya to meet them. She found an unregistered taxi parked across the street and climbed into the back..

“Euston Station,” she told the driver. “I’ve got to be there in ten minutes.”

As the car jerked forward and headed down Brick Lane, the moment in the examination room returned to her with all its power. She was pregnant with a Traveler’s child. At that moment, it felt like being in a plane crash-an instant of comprehension followed by confusion and pain. What should she do? Could she tell anyone? She was angry and sad, happy and defiant before the car reached Whitechapel Road.

If this had happened to Mother Blessing, the Irish Harlequin would have demanded an abortion that afternoon. She would have removed this accident growing inside her-destroyed it like a tumor. The Harlequins’ power came from the simplicity of their lives, the single-minded ferocity of their obligation. The body was a weapon that had to be maintained.

By now, Maya was late for the train, but she followed the rules she had learned from her father. For Thorn, a place like Euston Station was an “Argus trap”-a high-intensity surveillance area named after the guardian character in Greek myth that had a hundred eyes. Euston was a particularly dangerous location because it was on the northern boundary of the congestion tax zone, so cameras took continual images of car license plates. University College London and the bones of Jeremy Bentham were only a few hundred yards away from this central point. If the dead philosopher stepped out of his glass case and sauntered down the street, he would have been a prisoner of the electronic Panopticon.

Maya got out of the taxi, walked down Euston Road and entered Friends House, the Quaker religious center. Standing in the ground floor reading room, she could make an initial evaluation of the station. The front entrance had over a dozen cameras pointed at the bus area and the war memorial to the “The Glorious Dead.” In an emergency, she would have simply run the gauntlet and hoped that the Tabula mercenaries would be delayed in traffic. But there was usually a safe way in-even Argus had been defeated.

She went back outside and hurried up Barnaby Street on the east side of the station. The trash-covered sidewalk led her past King Arthur’s Pub, a betting parlor and a shop called Transformation that sold clothes to cross dressers. Two identical male mannequins were in the window, one with a suit and bowler hat and the other with a blond wig and a red silk cocktail dress. THIS COULD BE YOU, proclaimed a sign. Not bloody likely, Maya thought. An image flashed through her mind of different display: A pregnant young woman standing next to fierce looking twin with a flat belly.