Oddjobs 5: The Long Bad Friday

by Heide Goody

  “Um – and I can’t emphasise this enough – what the fuck?”

  Brigit spoke with slow patience. “This isn’t happening. We’re not really sitting here. We – that is I – am curled up inside Yo-Morgantus’s loving embrace. This is all illusion.”

  “I suspected as much,” said Morag, “but this… There’s still two of us.”

  “Morag was a member of the consular mission to the Venislarn,” said Brigit, “but Yo-Morgantus decided to take her – me – for himself. We’ve concocted this notion of “Brigit” as a way of separating the past life from the present. Brigit lives with her god, while we pretend Morag still walks free in the city. Think about it. Have you ever seen Morag and Brigit in the same place at the same time?”

  Morag thought about it far longer than it deserved. “Yes. Obviously, yes. I mean, literally, yes.” She looked up at the glowing pink ceiling to address Morgantus directly. “Okay, this one’s just stupid. Are you running out of mind games?”

  An extrusion of flesh grabbed Morag. She jerked back instinctively.

  * * *

  Yo-Morgantus rifled through Morag’s thoughts and memories. He plucked out ones that might entertain him and brought Morag out of consciousness to play with them. From the dull darkness of deep sleep within his grip, Morag began to build up a creeping awareness of what he was doing. He was sneaking into her library of memories to read them, but now she was beginning to notice things: a metaphorical bookmark in the wrong place, a figurative volume misplaced or left out in plain sight. His rummagings became more obvious and she was able to observe them.

  But now, he was starting to take her library of memories more seriously. In his idle search for diversion from his abruptly altered status, he started to come across disquieting fragments. He compiled. He made a stack of books. He cross-referenced—

  * * *

  Brigit slammed her hand on the table in the imaginary wine bar. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  Morag blinked wearily. “What’s going on? I feel like I’ve had a herd of elephants trampling through my head.”

  “Something is going on,” insisted Brigit.

  “The end of the world?”

  “I mean this…” Brigit touched Morag and Morag was plunged into a memory.

  * * *

  Morag was in the lobby of the Library with Vivian and Sheikh Omar, a few short hours ago.

  “He stated that the objects might exist because they had been comprehensively described in the Bloody Big Book,” said Vivian, “and the describing of them made them real.”

  Memory-Morag nodded, though she didn’t know what Vivian was on about.

  “The cosmologist, Max Tegmark,” Vivian continued, “expressed the view that all structures which mathematically exist also exist as physical structures. The complexity of the concept is indistinguishable from the reality.”

  Omar gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Sounds like flimflam to me.”

  Vivian glared at him.

  “Oh, I’m all in favour of flimflammery,” said Omar.

  * * *

  Morag was back at the table, her hands held in Brigit’s.

  “What does it mean?” said Brigit.

  “Flimflam?” suggested Morag.

  Brigit’s lip curled into snarl. “And this…”

  * * *

  Another memory. Morag was in the Think Tank with Omar, while Kathy explored a virtual reality Birmingham.

  “—you are only now wondering if these off-cuts from another reality are capable of feeling pain, if they can suffer,” Omar was saying.

  Memory-Morag was preoccupied with the fake human souls in the petri dishes. “Yes. Precisely,” she said.

  “What a lovely philosophical question,” said Omar genially.

  “It’s not lovely. It’s worrying.”

  Omar briefly checked the computer equipment before looking at Morag. “If you create something so sophisticated and detailed that it becomes indistinguishable from the thing it is trying to mimic, does it become that thing? When does the map become the landscape it represents?”

  * * *

  Morag looked across the table at Brigit. She fought a rising nausea within her. Leaping from one mental state to another felt not dissimilar to being thrown about on a rickety fairground ride. She wondered if she could get memory whiplash.

  “They’re up to something, aren’t they?” said Brigit.

  “Who?”

  “Vivian Grey and Professor Omar.”

  “The professor is dead.”

  “Like that would stop him! And then this!”

  “Wait—” she said, but it was too late. They flipped into another memory.

  * * *

  Memory-Morag stood beside Omar in a lift in the Cube.

  “This,” she said, pointing upwards. “A deal with Morgantus. Do we stand a chance?”

  Professor Omar smiled and squeezed her hand. She had known few acts of physical affection from him. “Not a hope in hell, my dear,” he said softly.

  “Then why?” she said. “What was the point?”

  “Misdirection.”

  “What?”

  There was twinkle in Omar’s eyes. “If Morgantus is watching us, then his eyes are not where they should be.”

  “You mean Mr Grey’s ritual?”

  “No. Not that either.”

  * * *

  Brigit’s hands were almost crushing Morag’s with the urgency of her grip. “See? See!”

  “I don’t see,” said Morag.

  And they plunged under again.

  * * *

  In the laboratory within the Think Tank, Professor Sheikh Omar looked Morag in the eye.

  “And we must ask, is the universe contained within that book any less real or valid than the one we stand in? Are we, too, mere markings on a page?”

  * * *

  Morag returned to pain. Her fingers were white and pink with the pressure on them.

  “Let me go!” she said, hissing at the agony.

  “They are doing something! With the book!” Brigit yelled.

  “I don’t know!” Morag yelled back.

  Brigit roared, but it wasn’t really Brigit. In a body without a mouth, Yo-Morgantus cried out in rage and alarm to any Venislarn who might hear him. He no longer wallowed in self-pity. A far greater emotion had taken over, and it took Morag a long moment to realise what it was.

  Yo-Morgantus was afraid.

  * * *

  Prudence looked up as a great noise passed over the cathedral. It was not one of the usual explosive booms, fiery roars or huge throaty calls that she’d heard much of her life. This was a creaking, a stretching, a pulling apart of all things. Something outside was taking the world in its impossible claws and dragging it, finding weaknesses in its surface and ripping them open.

  “Will they ever be happy?” she said.

  “Happiness is a human concept,” said Vivian. “It is the absence of things which give our life meaning: pain, loss and misery.”

  Prudence thought about this. “Do you get invited to many birthday parties?”

  “Are you being deliberately insulting?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Prudence. “Am I?”

  Vivian put her pen aside. “We will have to draw a protective circle around ourselves. Venislarn creatures might find their way in soon. We can use those candles to draw it.”

  Prudence hurried to get the items. She collected some of the votive candles which had fallen on the floor. “Am I drawing it, or you?” she asked.

  “Are you good at following instructions?”

  “Depends if I like the instruction,” said Prudence.

  Vivian grunted, amused by her honesty.

  “No, I do not get invited to many birthday parties,” said Vivian. “But I don’t particularly approve of birthday celebrations anyway. Mine especially.”

  “Don’t like to think about getting old?”

  “That does not bother me at all,” she said. “Birthda
ys just seem to be an excuse for other people to interrupt my busy schedule with their nonsense. People can be so thoughtless.”

  “You can come to my next birthday party,” said Prudence. “If I have one.”

  “Very well,” said Vivian. “Now, I want you to draw a big circle around this pew and table. One line, uninterrupted…”

  09:51am

  Rod had not been trained in driving the Warrior personnel carrier, but gave it his best go. He worked on the assumption that, having driven cars, trains and tractors, there would have to be some commonality between the controls of this vehicle and more familiar ones. The engine started and, with only mild gear-crunching, wall-demolishing consternation, he managed to reverse it out onto the road.

  Among the supplies strapped to the vehicle’s exterior, he found a box of personal radios. He set them up and handed them out, to Nina, Yang, Pupfish and Steve.

  “Ggh! How am I meant to wear this?” said Pupfish, ably demonstrating that headsets were not built for samakha ears or skulls.

  “You have to put it on one side,” said Rod, angling it partly over Pupfish’s head, so the earpiece was in an approximately correct position. “You look like you’re DJing in a club.”

  “DJ Pupfish would be a remarkably cool name,” agreed Nina.

  “A little help, gobbet!” shouted Steve. The miniscule cloth thing was trying to work out how to wear or carry the radio system.

  “You’ve just got to stay back,” said Rod. “Here.” He attached it to the nearest donkey’s bridle, speaking to both Steve and the King in Crimson. “You are the baggage train. Stay with the donkeys. Keep them safe.”

  “There is no glory in donkeys,” said Steve.

  “I was never happy including these beasts in the play,” said the King.

  Rod turned to the vehicle and banged the side, indicating to Yang she should man the thirty mil auto-cannon. She was already in position.

  “Right,” said Rod. “We proceed across Pigeon Park, across to—”

  “Proceed?” said Nina.

  “Aye?”

  “Not just ‘go’ then? We’re proceeding?”

  “I’m just speaking … formally. Are you going to give me lip, soldier?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Right— Down to Corporation Street and then down the hill to the station. I’ll be driving. Yang’s in the turret.” There was a bang from inside as confirmation.

  “We’re not going in the tank?” said Pupfish.

  “It’s not a tank and, no, we travel as a loose group. You’re the eyes and ears, and if we get bogged down in battle, you and Nina can progress as a separate covert unit.”

  “Sneak ninja attack force, yeah,” said Pupfish.

  “I would make a superior ninja attack force,” argued Steve.

  “You’re armed with a pencil,” Nina pointed out.

  “I had a knife earlier, but lost it,” said Steve.

  “And now you’re on donkey duty,” said Pupfish.

  Rod climbed back to the Warrior’s driver’s hatch. “That’s it. Stay close. Stay in constant communication. You see something, call out.”

  Rod settled into the seat, glanced over the simple controls arrayed before him, and started up the Rolls Royce engine.

  * * *

  Yo-Morgantus rolled through the spaces and halls inside the shopping centre above the train station. Preoccupied with a threat Morag did not yet understand, Morgantus’s thoughts were unfiltered and open to her.

  He flowed down the escalators and through the dancing hort’ech dolls. He touched them and spread his message of alarm. They reeled and ran.

  He pushed through along the pedestrian walkways and, finding a trio of croyi-takk, spread his message to them too: Find Vivian Grey. Stop her.

  The croyi-takk flew out, chittering and screeching.

  Tud-burzu swarmed about him. There came the cry of Esk’ehlad brethren as they picked up the message. A Voor-D’yoi Lak loped into view. The cry had gone out and was heard.

  Yo-Morgantus emerged from the station on Stephenson Street, by the tramlines. He had been hiding, after losing his castle and throne. His gods, the Nid Cahaodril, had utterly ignored him. Now, he flowed out, the herald of a new battle.

  Away in the sky, Kaxeos and his children boiled and twisted. The unholy colours of Ammi-Usub swam in, infecting all things. Flying down from an impossible distance and of monstrous size, Yoth Mammon descended in response to the call. A rustling roar of a thousand voices announced Yoth Thorani’s temporary halt in hostilities and the march of her army of trees. Even buried within Yo-Morgantus, Morag felt the editing gaze of the Cha’dhu Forrikler pass through her (disassembling her key parts, inspecting them, and reassembling her in microseconds). It left her undeleted for the time being. Slicing in from across the city, visible only to the eye as pencil-line thick tendrils of blackness, came the spiralling vortex of Yo Khazpapalanaka. Time itself had joined the search.

  09:55am

  One moment, Mr Seth was collecting bowls to take to the kitchen for washing, then there was stutter: a whirlpool of spider-web lines passing across his vision. The next moment he was walking through a bombed-out street beneath a threatening sky that was no sky at all. Crazed patterns ran across it, like someone had smashed a colour television and all the images had poured out, spooling into crazy patterns.

  “Don’t look at it!” said Mrs Seth, pulling on his arm to yank his attention away. Her tone suggested it wasn’t the first time she had said it.

  “What are we doing here?” he asked, confused.

  Behind them, stretching in a long line, maybe a hundred long, were the men, women and … other things they had collected in their group. Most walked with heads bowed. Some, those who had looked up for perhaps too long, had separated themselves from the line and were starting to root themselves to the ground, taking on new and terrible forms.

  “Keep your heads down!” Mrs Seth called back sternly to their followers.

  Mr Seth stumbled on beside her. They seemed to be heading somewhere with a purpose, but he wasn’t sure where. “I’m a little unsure what’s going on,” he admitted.

  Mrs Seth pointed up without looking. “You said it was the unholy colours of something-something.”

  “Did I?” he said, impressed with himself.

  “You were right about the building, so I assumed you knew something.”

  “What building?”

  A frown passed across her face and she put her hand to his brow. “You shouldn’t have looked up. It’s affected your brain.”

  “Nice to know I’ve got one,” he said, an automatic piece of silly humour.

  * * *

  Mr Seth was suddenly in the Chinese supermarket again. His arm was wheeling round, directing people towards the door. The people sitting around on the floor and restaurant seating were less than willing to move.

  “Got to go. Got to leave,” he said.

  “But why?” said a large ginger woman whose green crepe sarong creased into folds around her ample frame.

  “Um…” said Mr Seth, who didn’t know.

  “Fix her up good and proper,” said one of the fishmen with the careful pronunciation of one who was reciting an unknown foreign phrase. “Beph-al ng’ah,”

  “The roof’s going to fall in,” added a dust covered brunette.

  “Is it?” said Mr Seth.

  By the kitchen, Mrs Seth was gathering together the most useful utensils and food stuffs into a sturdy carrier bag. She gave him a frank look. “You said that!”

  “I did?” He tried to remember what he’d been doing, and what he’d said. He found nothing.

  “You certainly did,” said Chad, encouraging people to stand. “You sounded very certain of the fact.”

  “Well, it must be the case then!” Mr Seth declared. “Everybody out!”

  * * *

  They found the canal.

  Mr Seth had just been urging people to leave the shelter of the supermarket, and now, here
they were beside the canal. The lack of landmarks made it nearly impossible to tell where they were, but the colour of the rubble and the split in the canal over there made Mr Seth think they were perhaps somewhere near where the National Indoor Arena had once stood.

  He pointed across the water. “There used to be a pub there. Bill Clinton, the American president, dropped in for a pint.”

  “You already said,” said Mrs Seth.

  “Did I?”

  “We’re at the canal,” she said. “Now what?”

  “Now what what?” he said.

  “You told us.”

  “Told you what?”

  “That there was a way out. We were off to Selly Face or somewhere.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think— I’m not sure I’m feeling very well.”

  “You said there’d be a boat,” said Chad, prompting him.

  Mr Seth looked back along the water’s edge. Most of the things in the water were not boats, they were parts of the surrounding buildings. The crowd of people who had followed them, arriving in dribs and drabs, were starting to fill out along the towpath. He couldn’t recall how he and his wife had become the leaders of this wandering tribe. He wasn’t sure he wanted the responsibility.

  “Maybe this was a mistake,” he suggested softly.

  “No, you said,” said Mrs Seth. She marched on along the canal and he walked with her.

  “What is that?” He saw something up ahead. It was the right shape for a boat, but it was huge and dark, a little unsettling to look at. It listed heavily in the water as it drifted along the canal’s edge.

  “Hello!” called Mrs Seth.

  Mrs Seth rapped the side of the boat as they approached.

  A doughy man dressed in leather jumped down onto the towpath from the other end of the barge. He winced as he landed and rubbed his knee. He looked at the crowd of strangely-clad redheads and back at Mrs Seth.