Rendition: Part 2

Holland climbs the tower

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: DC Frank Holland is investigating a mission person, an aen’fa by the name of Hikkaido. His mother claims he was bundled into a van and taken away to places unknown. Holland makes a connection to previous cases and begins to suspect that something bigger is at work…

Early shift
On duty: DC Frank Holland (DC Marion Hobb absent)

London.
1973. August.

The Metropolitan Police’s base at Scotland Yard was considerably more luxurious than the SDC’s offices on the South Bank. Positioned in the heart of Whitehall, only a short walk from Westminster and parliament, it felt like a group of buildings always destined for grand purpose. It was only positioned there due to the enthusiasm in the early days of the Triverse opening for dimensional parity: so-called post-historians studied Max-Earth and attempted to replicate its timeline on Mid-Earth, only better. Things got out of hand with the assassination of Washington and the Committee of Five and Max-Earth implemented what it termed ‘information regulations’, but for a while back when the portals first opened there was an intriguing trend of imitation and improvement.

Holland passed through the security checks in the foyer and took the steps up to the fifth floor. There was a lift, but he would always take steps if it was an option. He didn’t like the idea of being trapped in a small space and having to have faith in an unknown engineer.

DCI James Miller did sometimes swing by the SDC building on Stamford Street, but he spent most of his time in the far fancier offices at Scotland Yard or schmoozing with the Commissioner and Joint Council bigwigs. Miller was a smarmy son of a bitch, but Holland had no quarrel with him. That trademark smarm helped keep the funding flowing for the department, which was good enough for Holland. Having a wage at the end of the month was useful.

The office door opened just before Holland had a chance to knock. “Frank!” came the exuberant welcome. “Sorry I haven’t been down to the bunker in a while. Paper work’s a bitch. Everything OK down there? How are you?” Miller waved him in, then gestured to a shelf of tumblers. “Get you a drink?”

“Maybe later,” Holland said.

“Ah,” Miller said, placing his hands on his hips and nodding. “Business, then.”

“Yeah. Business.” He dropped his jacket over the back of a chair. “Working a case. Missing person. One of many.”

“Too many.”

“Right. This kid, early twenties, aen’fa by the name of Hikkaido.”

Miller frowned. “Sounds familiar.”

“I had the same thought. Turns out there’s some revolutionary nutjob from Palinor goes by the same name. This kid ain’t him, though. The mother says her kid is all honey and roses. She also says that she knows of others who have gone missing, spoke about her son being bundled into a van. Word on the street is that it’s a government job. Going back through the missing persons cases, there’s a whole bunch of unsavoury types, troublemakers, who have just upped and vanished.”

“Sounds like a conspiracy.” Miller smiled, laughed.

“That’s what I thought. But I wondered if there’s something in it. No-one else here wants to talk to me about anything, but I thought you might know something. Might have heard about something.”

Miller sat on the corner of his desk and tapped a finger on the side of his head. “This wouldn’t be police. Not directly, anyway. Making people disappear is a complicated business. Too much of a headache. It would have to be a covert ops situation. Surveillance, seizure, interrogation probably.”

“MI5?”

“Perhaps. Unless it’s a foreign agency, which would be bad news.” Miller swivelled to face the desk and grabbed at a sheet of paper and a pen. “Listen, I don’t think I’m going to be useful here, but I could put you in touch with someone at the tower.”

Holland raised his eyebrows. “Joint Council? Really?”

“Say I sent you, and maybe it’ll grease some wheels. Open some doors. You heard of Lord Hutchinson?”

This was getting weird. Holland snorted. “I don’t really hang out with that kind of crowd, guv.”

“No, I suppose not. You’re not missing anything. I’ll call ahead, you go to the tower. I’m fairly certain he’ll talk to you.”

“Why him?”

“He’s a friend. Well, a colleague. He’s got his finger on the pulse, ear to the ground, and he’s got privileged access to parliament and the Joint Council. Above all, though, he’s a patriot. I think he’d help if he can, especially if you think something is going on.”

“I do. Just a gut feeling, but seems whatever’s been happening is getting sloppy, and not a little out of control. If what the mother said had even a grain of truth to it, anyway.”

“Tread carefully with these nobility types, Holland,” Miller said, handing him the piece of paper. “They seem friendly. They’re very good with manners. Not so good with morals, if you see what I mean. Lord Hutchinson, though, he’s one of the good guys.”

The Joint Council tower sat atop the portal station, looming over the Thames. It was a demonstration of power, in all its steel and glass glory, a phallic gesture to visitors from other countries and the other dimensions: this is the heart of the Triverse. London, at the centre of it all.

After going through a remarkable number of security checks, Holland was directed towards a bank of elevators. Taking the stairs wasn’t an option, given the height of the tower. The lift was clad in gold and mirrors, like Holland imagined a posh hotel might be. He felt a slight pressure in the soles of his feet as he began to ascend.

Miller had been unexpectedly useful. Had offered up this Lord Hutchinson almost as if he’d been expecting Holland’s visit. Perhaps he’d caught him on a good day. Maybe Miller was missing being at the SDC, working actual cases. He was the face of the department, the one they put on the news to be interviewed, but rarely did any actual policing. Holland would owe him a favour after this, that was for certain.

The doors opened onto a bright and airy floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows casting a stunning light throughout the open-plan offices. He was led by a friendly and attractive receptionist through to a conference room with a long table and many leather chairs.

A tall man stood by the window in a pin-striped suit, looking out over the city and smoking a long cigarette with an incongruously effeminate holder. He turned, clearly having waited in that particular pose for Holland to enter.

“My dear detective,” he said, transferring the cigarette holder to his right hand and extending his left. “DCI Miller speaks very highly of you. Very highly indeed. I’m Lord Hutchinson, it’s a shame we haven’t met before.”

No first names, then. Holland shook the offered hand.

“Your missing people, then,” Hutchinson said. “Miller filled me in. It may surprise you to know that I was already aware of the issue - though, not of the aen’fa boy that you’re investigating. That’s new to me. But it fits the pattern. Tell me, detective, have you ever heard of extraordinary rendition?”

“Extraordinary?”

“Yes, indeed.”

Holland felt as if he’d walked in on a conversation that was already underway. “Rendition, sure. Transfer of prisoners. It’s not a term we use, generally speaking.”

“Well, quite. It’s a Max-Earth term, really, that found its way over here, like so many of their phrases. A legal term, regardless.”

“And extraordinary rendition?”

“Let’s say a less-than-legal term. Forcible extraction of an individual, often to an external destination.”

“Forcible extraction? Kidnapping?” This was getting stranger by the minute. Holland couldn’t figure out Hutchinson’s play, or why he was offering up the information so readily.

“The same. The destination country is often chosen for its…flexibility, in terms of restrictions and regulations. Especially around interrogation tactics.”

“And this is what’s been happening?”

“I believe so. A bludgeoning method for dealing with oddballs and disturbed individuals. I got wind of it about a year ago. You hear a lot of things in these halls, if you know where to listen, detective.”

“This is a Joint Council thing?”

Hutchinson laughed and waved a hand. “Oh, not officially, no, of course not. Plausible deniability and all that. But it’s a convenient operation for dealing with anyone who might be, shall we say, problematic.”

“What’s your connection?”

“I’m not happy about it, detective, as, I suspect, neither are you. It’s a fundamental invasion of our rights as British citizens. It’s not just koth and aen’fa being disappeared, as you’re aware. More to the point, I don’t want any citizen of the kingdom, regardless of their species, being taken to foreign destinations for bad treatment. That’s simply not how we do things here.”

“Right. But you’re Joint Council.”

“I’m also a member of the House of Lords. Something like this undermines our very sovereignty, don’t you see? The subterfuge, the under-the-table arrangements that must have been made with the Palinese, and the Max-Earthers. It’s all too insidious for my liking.”

“So what can we do? I don’t much fancy being disappeared myself.”

“That won’t happen. I’ve not been able to make a move on this by myself. With the SDC and the Met on board, we can go public, trigger an investigation.” Hutchinson reached out and gripped Holland’s shoulder. “People like us, Detective Holland, we have to stick together.”

Holland looked out of the window. The city was spread out below, the lack of visible wall prompting a wave of nausea as he gazed down. The Joint Council’s tower cast a dark shadow across the river, onto the Houses of Parliament.

Thanks for reading. Did you spot the little Triverse comic I put out on Monday? In case you missed it, here’s a handy link:

A visual intro to Tales from the Triverse

I hope you’re all doing well. Please do share Triverse with anyone you think might be interested. Alternatively you can help out with a paid subscription, which also gets you access to extra author notes.

Author notes

Talked a lot about structure last week, so I’m going to ramble about character today. Specifically, the character of Frank Holland. Writing a character who you actively dislike is a very particular challenge.

There’s always a temptation to fill stories with aspirational characters. As a writer we have to hang around with these people for an extended period, so it’s natural to gravitate towards wanting to associate with pleasant people. They can still be messed up (like Chakraborty, or Clarke), but on the whole they’re not bad as human beings.

The problem with that is that a story can end up feeling rather one-note. Adding some less agreeable characters isn’t always simple though - and it’s very tempting to relegate them to ‘bad guy’ status. Nothing wrong with having a delicious bad guy, of course, but it can end up being rather reductive: if a character is so obviously coded as The Enemy, or the Big Bad, it rather absolves the author of responsibility. In fact, it even forgives the character, in a way - if they’re born to be The Baddie, then it’s hardly their fault when they do bad things, right?

It’s far more interesting to have a person be bad for reasons that (to them at least) make sense. To have an antagonist with genuine motivations. In more overtly adventurous stories, the memorable bad guys are always the ones who have a good point - the ones who make you pause and think “hm, I see what they’re getting at, even if their methods are awful.”

Now, Tales from the Triverse doesn’t really have Bad Guys in the traditional, pulpy sense. I’m aiming to make it a bit more complex than that. Frank Holland therefore isn’t a Bad Guy, but he is a bad guy. He holds views that I find abhorrent: he’s racist, misogynist and xenophobic. He’s rude, abrasive to be around.

I’ve also made a point of him being a good detective. He’s good at his job, in spite of his prejudices. back in the ‘Accusations’ storyline, he was the one to recognise that the koth was innocent, rather than letting his personal prejudices influence the direction of the case. It’d be easier if he was massively corrupt, or just bad at his job, because then we could properly dismiss him as a Bad Guy.

Writing him is uncomfortable. The narrative style I’m using with Triverse is a 3rd person subjective, so the point of view is always locked in on a specific character. It can jump around within the same chapter, but the prose always becomes infused with the character’s personality. Little snippets of Holland’s thoughts therefore slip through: his lewd observations of women, or dismissive or outright derogatory attitudes towards aen’fa and koth. It’s not a nice place to be while writing, and hopefully it’s uncomfortable to read - withotu being too heavy-handed.

There’s also that unknown element of how a story is going to land with different readers. From my point of view, I don’t like Holland. Some readers might be very different to me and see him in an alternative light, even a positive one. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Ambiguity in storytelling is a strength, but also a risk when it comes to unintended interpretations.

Holland’s been supporting character for most of Triverse but he’s going to be around a bit more in the upcoming mini-arc. Excited to explore that one. I think.