A Spy in Time Read online

  Praise for the work of Imraan Coovadia

  Also by Imraan Coovadia

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Marrakesh, 1955

  Jupiter 10^5

  Constitution Hill, 2271

  Rio, 1967

  The Underground, 2489

  The Day of the Dead: 11 March 2472

  About the Author

  Praise for the work of

  For A Spy In Time

  “Riveting and inventive, Coovadia delivers the goods in a rollicking tale across time and perception.”

  —Gary Phillips,

  Editor of The Obama Inheritance

  For The Wedding

  “Both hilarious and heartbreaking, this is a story of love and loathing at first sight.”

  —Booklist

  “As soon as one reads the first few pages of South African novelist Coovadia’s premier novel, the cadences of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy immediately come to mind.”

  —Library Journal

  For Tales of the Metric System

  “The collected stories structure recalls David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten, or Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. As a character says early on, ‘We get most of our energy from complications.’ These complications rapidly pile up, resulting in a layered, multifaceted narrative.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Using the transition to the metric system as both the catalyst and symbol for radical change, Coovadia places his characters in a historical context that explains their triumphs and shortcomings without offering excuses.”

  —World Literature Today

  The Wedding

  Tales of the Metric System

  Green-Eyed Thieves

  Institute for Taxi Poetry

  Transformations: Essays

  THIS IS A GENUINE CALIFORNIA COLDBLOOD BOOK

  A California Coldblood Book | Rare Bird Books

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

  Los Angeles, CA 90013

  rarebirdbooks.com

  californiacoldblood.com

  A Spy In Time © by Imraan Coovadia, 2018

  By Agreement with Pontas Literary & Film Agency

  FIRST TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL EDITION

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic.

  For more information, address:

  Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department,

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

  Set in Minion

  Cover design by Leonard Philbrick

  Credits: Sergey Gudz, Dale Halvorsen

  Printed in the United States

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Names: Coovadia, Imraan, author.

  Title: A Spy in time / Imraan Coovadia.

  Description: Los Angeles, CA: California Coldblood Books,

  an Imprint of Rare Bird Books, 2018.

  Identifiers: ISBN 978-1947856561

  Subjects: LCSH South Africa—Fiction. | Race relations--Fiction. | Apocalyptic fiction. | Time travel—Fiction. | Espionage—Fiction. | Science fiction. | BISAC FICTION / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic.

  Classification: LCC PR9369.3.C65 S69 2018 | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  For Daniyal

  Marina Penalva Halpin, Robert J. Peterson, Fourie Botha, Danny Herwitz, Claire Strombeck.

  I never set out to be anybody’s prophet. I didn’t see myself as a spy. I was twenty-five years old and I was ready for adventure.

  Before the checkup, I went to see my father to say my goodbyes. He was in a home on the other side of Nujoma Location. I found him absorbed in a game of chess, the board set next to him on the long divan in the common room. The room was full of sunshine.

  The game was automatic. When he completed his move, the crown on the black queen spun round at high speed while the board considered its position. I suspect it was more for show than because it needed the time. In a few seconds, in any case, it made up its mind. The black bishop slid into the corner, pressed by two knights. I could see checkmate against the machine.

  My father stopped the clock. He looked sideways at me, his hands running up and down his legs, shrunk to the bone by age.

  He spoke as sharply as ever. “You want a game, my friend? I’m running a tournament here. Seven players, six of which are the different personalities of this board.”

  “I don’t play so much.”

  “You looked as if you appreciated the brilliance of my last two moves. Ah, I thought I was dealing with a flesh-and-blood expert for once, a real flesh-and-blood expert.” His face fell. “Playing against a machine is never the same unless you have given them the freedom to consider all the assumptions.”

  I said, “I used to play as a child. I don’t play now.”

  “Then that explains it. I am very sorry to have troubled you.”

  He went back to his game, putting his head down. For a quarter of an hour I watched the pawns tread down the rows. It was futile. My father never returned to a subject once it was settled in his mind. I could have stayed on the armchair for the rest of the day and he would have continued to play his position without resuming our conversation, his forehead straining as he waited for the board to counter his moves. I don’t know what I expected. He wouldn’t have given me his blessing if I could have explained where I was going. He was an engineer and believed in the future over the past. The stars over our heads above the secrets of old time.

  On my way out, he turned to the door. I imagined he wanted to say something about what lay ahead. Instead, he pointed to the housekeeping cart and smiled, as if to indicate something about its construction. I smiled back, although I could feel the pressure at my temple.

  From the motorway, the tenements and squares of the new city were evident for a dozen miles in both directions. Nitrogen factories alternated with school buildings. Automatic warehouses rose above the tin roofs of barracks and refugee canteens. I shuddered to think of them—pale-faced women and children in their thousands—and tried to concentrate on the case files.

  I had watched the recording of the mission twice already. It was my first assignment as a case officer and I was keen to excel. We were scheduled to arrive at five twenty in the morning in Marrakesh, 16 June in the year of our Lord 1955. In Morocco, our task was to eavesdrop on a small industrial concern. Its proprietor went by the name of Keswyn Muller. We would produce a brief report on Muller to assist the consultants in making their determinations. I wasn’t used to watching myself on tape, and was impressed by the aplomb with which I handled conditions in the field. Nothing untoward had been registered on the recording. I looked calm, cool, and untouched by the stress.

  For her help in preparing me to go out, I could thank Shanumi Six, the senior member on the expedition. She would give me the space to prove myself. Plus, she wasn’t the kind of agent who punished herself when out in the field. She had selected two rooms in a luxury hotel in Marrakesh, the kind of decadence the old civilizations had perfected. If I felt any nervousness about being around fair-skinned men and women, in a world that they controlled, I was wise enough to keep it to myself. Shanumi didn’t need to hear about my misgivings.

  Our buildings were strung along a forested lane behind a number of hidden checkpoints. Security was discreet, but I knew that my profile and silhouette were being logged as I walked to the clinic.

  My destination was a converted trailer, designed to be hitched to a truck
and moved to a different location whenever necessary. The blinds were permanently pulled down so that no one could look in. The chimney belched white smoke which was soon lost amid the trees and bright sunshine. I had been through the first round of treatment and hated the experience. Once I had been through the second round, I would not be able to leave the perimeter established by the Agency. We couldn’t take the risk of transferring a virus to another place and time.

  I went through the doors and sat at the examination table where my blood pressure was taken by a pair of old-fashioned cuffs. It left bruises on my arm. Samples of blood and tissue were extracted and filed away, machines singing alerts to one another. The medical cart opened to receive my offering, revealing the purple bulb in its refrigerator compartment. Lights ran across the top of its body as it produced a teardrop of universal serum.

  The injection was the most uncomfortable part of the process. The medical cart had a way of lining you up, then stapling a cold pin under the skin of your inner arm, which left you with a sense of violation, as if the machine had come too close to your inner being.

  Afterwards I had a ringing sound in my head. Then came a sudden spell of dizziness. I lost my balance and couldn’t walk. I lay on a couch in the next room for the better part of an hour, attended by the cart, until the sensation passed. According to the consultants, I would be completely protected from any known agent of disease, manmade or artificial, for ten days. More importantly, I would not be a carrier of infection.

  When I had recovered enough to stand, I was taken behind a dense radiation curtain. I put my hands over my eyes while the walls shone a fierce white ray onto my person. I could feel the light penetrating to my bones. For some minutes thereafter, I saw no more than indistinct shapes. Slowly my vision returned, bringing back the inquisitive eyes of the cart. I had a clean bill of health on the system.

  On my way out, the clinic provided me with a printout of my silhouette. It was more than a memento. Later, I could compare it with my reflection for signs of exposure. Before the dangers of serving in a foreign time had been established, some unlucky souls had begun to lose their outlines. After a while they couldn’t recognize themselves in a mirror.

  But I didn’t have the luxury of indulging my fears of reflection sickness. There was no time to waste. I wanted to find my Six, although my head was swimming from the drugs. I hurried past the tennis courts, the clay baking uselessly in the heat. Sometimes you would see agents in white shorts and shirts, men and women you had never seen before and might never see again, practicing in the late afternoon.

  Then came the famous library which had long been associated with the Agency. It contained the complete records of everything that had been and everything that could be—the potentials of the past, present, and future. But it could never be deciphered down to the resolution of an individual life. Many had tried and failed to find the images of their lives in its infinite algebra. The library was a fixed point. Unlike the trailers, the library was set in the Earth to a depth of thirty floors.

  One day during a free hour, I had descended using the spiral staircase and discovered a room at the bottom. The librarians, their teardrop-shaped heads touching, were conspiring in almost complete darkness. They had rustled indignantly at my entrance, their faces as sharp as foxes, until one hurried me straight back to the surface.

  Since then I had never returned to the vaults, although I often stood in the atrium of the library and, as many had done and would come to do, counted the names carved into the wall of remembrance. The Agency had not made direct contact with the main enemy, but in the meanwhile—as we waited for the ultimate showdown—a stream of accidents and technical difficulties had covered yard after yard on the wall with the names of the fallen. Candles burn along the top of the wall, their flames standing as straight as pencils.

  I found my Six in the registration office. She had drafted the consent forms which were to be filed the night before departure. I sat next to Shanumi in the trailer, which was furnished with heavy armchairs and bookshelves, and signed the forms with the fountain pen she handed to me. She scrutinized the paperwork a second time when I gave it back, the ruby rings on her hands sparkling as she ran her finger down the lines. When she was satisfied that the forms were in order, she held them up to the terminal until they vanished into the aperture.

  Turning around, Shanumi put a hand on my shoulder. I could tell it was as much to keep me at a distance as to reassure me about the next day. She didn’t have a motherly bone in her body—she liked to make that clear.

  “As of now, until you return from the foreign location, your rights and responsibilities are determined by the Agency, not by the Constitution anymore. How does it feel, Agent Eleven?”

  I took a minute to consider the fact. “No different. Should it feel different?”

  “It is different. It is very different.” She sat down in one of the armchairs and invited me to join her, folding out her tough arms. “For the first time, you are no longer your own property and your own concern. If need be, you may be asked to sacrifice your life or even more.”

  I sat down. “And what could be even more?”

  Shanumi Six spoke in an unusually quiet voice. “Every person has something which is more important than mere life. He or she may not know what it is until the time comes to make a decision.”

  “I never thought about it in those terms.”

  “You are going to the old world where the assumptions we make about the Constitution don’t apply. You must remember, Agent Eleven, that this world, our world with its philosophy of humanity, with its attempt to care about every man, woman, and child, every last black-skinned fellow—and even the tragic albinos among us—is a recent construction. It is not so long ago that simply being born in a skin like ours would have been considered a crime. Sooner or later, whether it’s in Morocco or some other time zone, you will be faced with a choice between the different sets of assumptions.”

  Shanumi poured out two portions of absinthe from a bottle on the table and diluted them with soda water. She offered me one of the glasses. I couldn’t make out her expression as she peered into the radiant green water. In the many months I had been under her supervision, I had never managed to figure out what made her tick.

  It may have been that Shanumi Six liked to stay in character as much as possible, which made her difficult to understand in the present. At the Agency, she was noted for using the hyper-traditional methods of the case officer. Her handwriting, her accent, her very gestures were practiced daily in front of an ancient television set. She liked to prune the bonsai tree on her desk with one hand while studying her case files. It had been the gift of a famous Japanese painter of the Edo period.

  I brought the glass to my lips and hesitated. “I have a question for you, Shanumi. I watched the recording again.”

  “Why are we risking our own black skins when the Agency has observational devices in position?”

  “That’s not exactly my question. I agree that we cannot simply turn history over to the machines. Otherwise I would have chosen a different line of work.”

  “Otherwise, to be exact, we would have to rewire every machine in existence from top to down. Even the consultants, mighty as they are, have to work through us because of the safeguards.”

  I tried the contents of the glass and shivered at the aniseed taste. “But do they ever explain why in general?”

  “Why what, my young friend?”

  “What the bigger picture is, I mean. Why are we following this person rather than that one? How is watching a minor figure like Muller supposed to lead us to the main enemy?”

  I could see that my question had made Shanumi impatient. To my disappointment, she finished her drink and got up to go.

  “Everybody who survives focuses on their part of the task, no more and no less. Focus and concentrate. No grand fantasies, mind you, about finding the main
enemy on your first assignment. When the time is right for our adversaries to show themselves, I am sure they won’t neglect the opportunity. Now, if you don’t mind, I will excuse myself. I like to be alone the night before I go out.”

  I tried not to let the rebuff get to me. I finished my drink and remembered the legendary patience of S Natanson who had started the Agency in an underground laboratory near Kitwe where he’d framed many of the doctrines which guided us centuries later. I remembered the supernova so few had survived. Then I left the empty trailer. The heavy metal door closed silently behind me.

  In the evening I went straight to sleep in the dormitory, the fan turning on the ceiling above the row of empty beds.

  I had the sensation, when I was fast asleep, that my sister was sitting on the next bed and trying to attract my attention. She had a voice like a flute, just as I remembered. But I didn’t understand the words she was forming. They floated through my dream, unwilling to slow down and reveal their true contents. Nor did she reply when I asked her to explain. She continued to talk, a flow of sounds, then wrote on the palms of her hands. She raised them to me, demonstrating they were blank.

  The memory was with me at four in the morning when the alarm went off. As I made my way through the vacant halls, past the concrete reactor cone, and down the long shaft to the departure suite, I was still involved in my dream.

  My Six was in the nude, packing her toiletries in a travel bag without even a towel around her waist. I undressed in the corner, hung my clothes in the locker. The bar lights on the ceiling were harsh, as if somebody had doubled the voltage. Shanumi didn’t speak but led the way into the shower, her arms folded underneath her breasts, the muscles rippling on her ebony back.

  Many case officers liked to take a tablet to turn white, believing that it made the job easier. I think Shanumi Six was too proud of her skin to take half measures. She couldn’t imagine being an albino even for a day. I had adopted the same policy in tribute to her. And to be honest, I didn’t want to imagine what life was like when the mere fact of your pale complexion made you a secret object of fear and resentment.