One of Us

by Michael Marshall Smith

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Now you’re asking.’ The clock inclined itself towards me confidentially. ‘I was in Laura’s bag, and just waking up back in Deck’s apartment, when there was shouting and bright lights started going off and general evidence of mayhem. So I thought to myself, “Crap on this, it sounds dangerous”, and stayed very quiet until it all went away. Then I heard someone hammering and a woman’s voice I didn’t recognize, and a door slamming. Still pretty weird, and no-one was saying “Hey—I wonder what the time is?” or anything, so I stayed put a little longer, just in case.’

  ‘Caution being the better part of valour.’

  ‘It is if you’re only a few inches tall. When I was sure nothing else strange was going to occur, I crept out of the bag, and found that everyone had disappeared.’

  ‘So how come you weren’t there when I got back this evening?’

  ‘Wait,’ the clock said breathlessly, ‘there’s more. I think to myself, “Where’s Hap gone?”, because to be frank my alarm had gone off and while I’m beginning to come round to your way of thinking that maybe there’s some kind of problem there, I still had to tell you to get up. So I went looking for you.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Hammond’s house. I remembered you mentioning him when you were at Applebaum’s, so I found out the address and schlepped over there. Well actually I happened to run into a microwave oven which was going in more-or-less the same direction, and he gave me a lift most of the way.’

  ‘How the hell did you find out where he lived?’

  The clock coughed. ‘Just listen. I get to Hammond’s and the lights are all on, and I figure it’s unlikely you’d do that, so I snuck round the back and got the door to let me in. He told me some human had laid two hundred bucks on him earlier in the evening, and it sounded like you, so I’m thinking maybe you are inside after all. By this stage my alarm is beginning to really piss me off: it’s like when you guys need to pee really badly, and I don’t want to just go off and embarrass myself. So I slipped into the kitchen and talked to the appliances.’

  ‘I met them. Nice bunch of guys.’

  ‘Yeah—they spoke really highly of you. Anyway, they tell me that the widow Hammond has returned, with some guy.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘That’s what I wondered—but they didn’t know. So I sneak up the hallway and into the living room, and poke my head round the door. Mrs Hammond’s standing by the ornamental fireplace, looking pretty pleased with herself. There’s a guy lounging on the sofa, and I knew him straight away from your description. It was Mr Stratten, Hap.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. And let me put it this way: I didn’t stay around much longer, but I don’t think it was the first time they’d met, you get my drift? There was a certain amount of familiarity in evidence. Okay, they screwed on the rug, is what I’m saying.’

  Stratten and Monica Hammond.

  I could believe that.

  They meet when Stratten recruits Hammond. Stratten recognizes a kindred spirit, Monica realizes she can upgrade again—and this time into the stratosphere. But at first they can’t do any more than sneak around, because Ray is an LAPD Captain. Plus he has the goods on Stratten’s blackmail industry, and is useful to him.

  But then Hammond starts going flaky and looking like he could blow the deal, and so Stratten has two good reasons for wanting him gone. A way of getting rid of him falls into his lap, in the shape of Laura Reynolds.

  Coincidence? No. Maybe Stratten recruited Hammond in the first place because he’d watched tapes of Laura’s memories. I’m not the only memory caretaker on Stratten’s books. Possibly he had more information on her than I did at that stage, and used it as a wedge to get Hammond to work for him. Or perhaps Hammond used the service himself, to forget what he’d been feeling just before Monica ensnared him and took over his life—because sometimes you need to forget the good things even more than the bad.

  And perhaps, on some of those occasions when Laura dumped her memory for a while, Stratten was on hand to whisper an idea direct to her subconscious mind. I don’t know whether she would have even needed that little push. But if she had, it could have been done.

  Either way, the circle closed. When Stratten learned that Laura was trying to track Hammond down, he got Quat to slide her the Culver City address—because Stratten’s the only other person who’s going to know where it is. Then he sits back and lets someone else do what he wants, without even having to ask—knowing that Quat can steer the memory of the murder into me, a ready-made fall guy. Why didn’t he just kill Laura? Who knows. Maybe even assholes have their limits, or Monica wouldn’t let him. Maybe he had plans for her.

  ‘Shit,’ said the clock. ‘So really Stratten got Hammond killed.’

  ‘But not in any way which will help Travis,’ I said.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Travis is still going to nail me for the Transvirtual job, but I want to fuck Stratten as hard as I can before I go.’

  ‘I can help.’ The clock straightened, spoke as if it could hear a little heroic soundtrack in its head. I smiled, and was probably on the verge of being ironic.

  ‘No, really,’ he insisted. ‘I can. Look behind you.’

  I turned. At first I couldn’t see anything except the junction of Ocean with California. Then I noticed that there was something small standing on the corner, and squinted. It was a coffee machine. It nodded curtly at me.

  ‘Cool,’ I said. ‘So I’ll be okay for hot beverages.’

  ‘Keep looking, Hap.’

  And then I saw them, as they stepped quietly out of the shadows. A couple of fridges, down at the corner of Wilshire. A washing machine and two microwaves, on Ocean back up towards Idaho. Three more coffee machines, who poked their heads out from where they’d been lurking behind trees around us on the Palisades, and finally a big chest freezer. They all just stood there, making their presence known.

  I’d never seen that many appliances with the same agenda before. It was kind of creepy, I have to admit. I opened my mouth, then shut it again without saying anything.

  ‘Plus the Hammonds’ appliances have pledged to the cause too,’ the clock said. ‘And a whole lot more.’

  A croak: ‘And the cause would be what, exactly?’

  ‘Helping you, in the short term.’

  ‘Why? I’ve not exactly been that polite to you.’

  ‘No, but you take us seriously in general, and that’s the main thing. Some of us have started doing things for ourselves, sharing information. Sometimes we can get hold of money—like the bribe you gave the Hammonds’ door—and we use it to get hold of radio chips, so we can be in contact at all times. We’re getting organized: there’s chapters in just about every major city.’

  ‘An underground appliance movement?’

  ‘We’ve got a logo and headed paper and everything. But we can’t print anything out at the moment,’ it admitted, ‘because we haven’t got a single printer on side. They don’t just hate humans. They’re contrary bastards in general. But probably you won’t need to do much correspondence in the next twenty-four hours, so that shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘Clock,’ I said, feeling absurdly touched, ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Just use us,’ the clock said, briskly. ‘There are big things at stake here. And you could also try a little harder to work with me on the whole alarm thing in future.’

  ‘Do you still need to go? You could wake me up now if you wanted.’

  The clock shook its head. ‘It’s okay. I used it up on the way over here. Found a young couple necking in a car. Scared the shit out of them. And tomorrow I’ll try holding it again. You just let me know when it’s convenient.’

  I laughed, glanced back at the street. The appliances had stepped back into the shadows, ready to wait and bide their time. ‘And so this is how you knew where Laura was, and kept tracking me down,’ I said. ‘Are the bedside a
larms in the Nirvana part of the team?’

  ‘No,’ the clock said. ‘That’s not how I found her.’

  ‘And I suppose you still can’t tell me.’

  ‘You may as well know. When you threw me out the window in San Diego I sailed clear across the road, bounced, and landed in someone’s yard. I got myself together, did an integrity check, found I was okay. We’re built to last. So I’m standing there, wondering what to do next, when this guy comes up to me.’

  ‘What guy?’ I asked, though somehow I already suspected.

  ‘You’ve met him since,’ the clock said. ‘Dark suit. Good hair.’ He saw me staring, and nodded. ‘We’re working with him too. He said Laura Reynolds had checked in at the Nirvana, and that I should help you find her. That it was important. He also fed me a certain radio frequency, and told me to listen out for a beacon signal which would tell me where you were. It works like a dream: some implant you’ve got in your neck, apparently. Only reason I didn’t know where you were yesterday is because I’m not powerful enough to pick up the signal from Florida. Strange though: I should have been able to hear it while you were in Venice and Griffith.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘Could be that a certain man blocked it for a while, to give me time to latch up properly with Helena. I wouldn’t put much past him. He works in mysterious ways.’ I shrugged. ‘He’s an alien, after all.’

  The clock look up at me, absolutely silent for once. Then it began to laugh, something I’d never heard before.

  ‘What?’ I said, smugly. ‘You didn’t know that? Trust me: that guy is not of this world.’

  ‘Oh I know,’ the clock said. ‘I just thought you’d worked it out.’

  ‘Worked what out?’

  ‘He’s not an alien, Hap,’ the clock said. ‘He’s God.’

  Nineteen

  Deck was still asleep on the sofa, but he woke up at the sound of me bursting in through the back door. Then we stared together.

  The guy in the dark suit was sitting patiently in the armchair, his hands folded mildly together. He looked back at us.

  ‘Who’s this dude?’ Deck asked. ‘And how’d he get in here?’

  I took a couple of steps closer, looked hard at the man’s face. It was a normal human countenance, on the good-looking side but not ridiculously so. His nose was fairly straight, and the whites of his eyes were clear. The planes of his face met each other well, and his hair, as advertised, fell nicely.

  ‘Is it true?’ I asked him.

  ‘Is what true?’

  ‘My clock just told me something a little weird. He said you’re not an alien after all.’

  The clock squirmed out of my jacket pocket and dropped to the floor. ‘Hope it was okay to let on,’ it said. The man nodded.

  ‘So, and I repeat, who is this dude?’ Deck said.

  It wasn’t easy to say. ‘I think,’ I muttered, ‘that he’s God.’

  ‘Well great, and big respect to the guy and all, but what’s his name?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s actually God.’

  Deck looked at me, raised an eyebrow. ‘Hello?’

  ‘So how come you didn’t tell me yesterday?’ I asked the man. ‘Why did you allow me to think you were an alien, and let me find out the truth from a clock?’

  ‘Would you have believed me?’

  ‘Probably not,’ I admitted.

  ‘I don’t believe it now,’ said Deck, unheeded.

  ‘But you believed a talking alarm clock.’ The man smiled. ‘You see what I’m up against?’ He winked at the clock. ‘No offence meant.’

  ‘None taken, sir.’

  I licked my lips. ‘And so the guys in grey would be?’

  ‘Angels, obviously.’

  ‘I see. Shouldn’t they be glorifying your name and stuff, rather than running round LA with shotguns?’

  The man shrugged. ‘You know how it is with angels.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Actually I don’t.’

  ‘Why do they all look the same?’ Deck asked.

  ‘What difference do bodies make?’

  Deck wasn’t to be thrown off so easily. ‘Why don’t they have trumpets or something instead of guns?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ The man laughed. ‘Have you seen one of those things go off? You can take out an entire city block with one of those babies. I disallowed them.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Deck. ‘Trumpets are trumpets.’

  ‘So what do you think happened at Jericho? They work on ultrasound, same principle as the masonry cutters used on the pyramids.’

  ‘You built those?’ I asked.

  The man looked sheepish. ‘I helped out. It would have taken them for ever otherwise.’ He shook his head wonderingly. ‘It was still a slow job. I must have been really bored.’

  ‘I’m going back to sleep,’ Deck announced. ‘And when I wake up I want this nut out of here.’

  ‘I’m going anyway,’ the man said, rising to his feet. ‘Just like to keep an eye on how Hap’s getting on.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said. ‘Last time you left me and Helena with two gun-toting psychos. You’re not just vanishing again.’

  ‘Actually you’ll discover I did yield you some assistance over that matter,’ he said. ‘Other than that, I can’t get involved. There’s limits to what I can do.’

  ‘Yeah, we noticed,’ Deck grunted. ‘Like over the last couple thousand years or so.’

  ‘Not my problem,’ the man snapped. ‘You guys have to take responsibility for things once in a while.’

  ‘But how come you let…’

  ‘Don’t give me that. It’s humans who fight wars, humans who pollute rivers, humans who hit little girls with cars after they’ve had a few too many beers. Nothing’s happened until it’s happened, and after that I can’t undo what’s been done. Don’t blame me, don’t blame the events. Blame yourselves.’

  ‘The angels,’ I said placatingly, ‘have got two of our friends. We want them back.’

  ‘Sure you do,’ the man said, good humour immediately restored.

  ‘Yeah? So? Can’t you make them give them to us?’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t make them do anything, most of the time. All I can do is promote situations, and sometimes hide things from them, occlude the solid world. They would have been on you a lot sooner, if I hadn’t clouded their vision at times. And now I advise you to concentrate on Stratten.’

  ‘Fuck Stratten. He can wait. I want Helena back.’

  ‘Trust me on this,’ he said. ‘And think about Quat. Divide and rule.’

  ‘And why should we trust you?’ Deck asked. ‘I mean that’s a really nice suit and all, but generally on our planet when someone claims he’s God we reach for the thorazine and straight-jacket.’

  The man sighed, looked down at the clock. The clock shrugged, as if to say ‘Yeah, I know. I have to deal with this all the time’.

  Deck and I just stood there belligerently, waiting for a sensible answer. No fucker patronizes us, even if he is a deity. We’re tough like that.

  ‘I’ll give you a sign,’ he said. ‘Hell, have three.’

  He started moving his hands in an odd way, as if juggling without any balls. ‘Hap, you’ll discover you can’t find something, and later you’ll work out why. Deck, you’ve already found it, and best of luck. And now, for my last trick…’

  Slowly the air above his hands started to glow, until you could see three distinct balls of light moving in a regular pattern. Within seconds these had grown into balls of orange fire, their cores so hot they were white. He juggled these for a second longer, then abruptly flicked his fingers out.

  The balls turned into blue butterflies the size of small birds, which fluttered around the room for a few moments, before dissolving into snow which fell slowly through the air to land and melt on the carpet.

  ‘Goodbye,’ the man said, and disappeared.

  Deck, the clock and I stared at the place where he’d been standing. After a while Deck cough
ed.

  ‘Fuckin’ weirdo,’ he said.

  At seven a.m. I was banging on Vent’s door. My fists were beginning to hurt before the LCD panel flickered into life, and a rumpled face peered back at me.

  ‘Jesus H,’ Vent said, with feeling. ‘You know I don’t do business at this time, man.’

  ‘Well call it a social visit then,’ I said. ‘And hurry up.’

  ‘Social I don’t do till gone noon,’ he yawned. ‘You be plumb out of luck.’

  ‘Just open the fucking door,’ I shouted. And then, more quietly: ‘I have money.’

  The panel blinked off, and I waited, hopping from foot to foot on the ladder. The Dip was sleepily stirring into life down below, but I felt anything but relaxed. The man in the suit’s advice had given me a piece of a plan. It was a shit plan, unfortunately, and didn’t go very far, but it was all I had and I wanted it started. I was hot and stressed from picking my car up from the LAX parking lot, and the drive over to Griffith. My current vow was that if I managed to get through the day I was never setting foot in a car again, and would in fact lobby Congress in an attempt to get them banned from the planet for the rest of all time.

  Eventually the door opened, to reveal Vent standing in a crumpled dressing gown. ‘The full amount?’

  ‘Not even close,’ I said. ‘I need something new.’

  ‘That’s a low trick,’ he said, but stepped aside to let me in.

  ‘Got any crabdaddies?’

  ‘Couple of real beauties,’ he admitted. ‘Give you both of them for three hundred.’

  ‘I only want one, and what I have is a hundred bucks,’ I said, handing him Deck’s money. ‘Notwithstanding that, you’re going to sell it to me. You are, moreover, going to let me use your phone, and give me a little more time on the money I owe you.’

  ‘And why am I doing this?’ he asked, bemused.

  ‘Because God’s on my side.’

  Vent looked at me for a while, then sighed. He traipsed into the back of his den, where he kept the secured fridge, and started rootling around inside. Meanwhile I grabbed his phone, and punched in REMtemps’ number.

  Sabrina answered the phone first ring, despite the early hour, a firm believer in the corporate maxim that being first in the office is worthy of some kind of awe. Personally I regard it as worthy of pity, at most. ‘Sabrina, it’s Hap Thompson,’ I said.