by Adam Roberts
Smurpheus came blundering through. ‘Terrible news,’ he announced. ‘Syon Lane is under attack! The EMIs are digging a new tunnel, from Richmond, under the dried-out river bed.’
‘Digging a new tunnel?’
‘They’ll be in Syon Lane in six hours.’
‘My,’ said Nemo. ‘That’s a sudden development.’
‘I know! We’ve been fighting them in their system for many years – decades – since the memory of man goeth not to the contrary,’ said Smurpheus. ‘And yet now, for no apparent reason, they start digging out of their system.’
‘It certainly puts us under a degree of pressure,’ said Nemo.
‘That’s right. We can’t wait: we have to get to the Designer straight away . . . by midnight thousands of SQUIDS will be ransacking Syon House.’
‘That would be a pity,’ agreed Nemo, his mind full of Thinity. ‘We’d better get on our way.’
Everybody assembled in the chair compartment, and Tonkatoi set them up. ‘Good luck, guys,’ he said.
!
They zoomed into the McAtrix.
The three of them, Smurpheus, Thinity and Nemo, trotted through the crowded streets of London, heading for a towering bone-white building that loomed ahead of them. ‘That’s the EMIs’ central location inside the McAtrix,’ said Smurpheus. ‘Inside there we will find the Frurnchman.’
They approached the building cautiously; but there seemed to be no gents in the area. But as they made their way towards the door, a tramp of unusually dishevelled appearance lurched towards them. ‘Wait,’ he croaked. ‘Wait.’
The three of them turned as one: the creature that was hobbling towards them was dressed in a ragged overcoat. His head was covered with a tangled mass of straggly hair, and nothing could be seen of his face underneath except the twitching of an equally straggly beard. His hands were obscured by arm hair so thick and copious it burst from the cuffs of the overcoat like an explosion in a sofa-stuffing factory.
‘They modelled me,’ this creature moaned. ‘They modelled me. I’m a copy of celebrity – God forgive me. Smurpheus!’
‘How do you know my name?’ snapped Smurpheus.
‘My God,’ said Thinity, looking closer. ‘It’s Judas.’
‘They modelled me,’ the figure continued, ‘on Cousin It. It’s a travesty. Blake Carrington, they promised me. But look at me! Smurpheus, Thinity, I’m sorry I betrayed you. Can you forgive me? Can you?’
‘Judas, what are you doing here?’
‘There are gents around,’ said Judas, shuffling about. ‘I’m warning you. I know that nothing I can do will make up for my betrayal—’
‘Gents,’ hissed Smurpheus, scanning the street.
‘I’ll distract them,’ said Judas, his voice muffled by the immense mass of repulsive hair that covered every part of him. ‘I’ll fight them back, and lead them up Shaftesbury Avenue. It should give you enough time to – do what you need to do.’
‘Judas,’ said Smurpheus. ‘Thank you.’
‘I hope they kill me,’ said Judas miserably, shuffling around again and dragging his fringe along the floor like a bridal dress. ‘I thought I’d be so cool, with hair. Oh God, but I preferred being bald! I tried shaving it all off, you know, when I realised how the EMIs had double-crossed me . . . but it all grew back! In seconds! It was like Tintin and the Land of Black Gold. Oh, they have cursed me.’
‘We must be on our way,’ said Thinity. ‘We can’t loiter.’
‘One more thing,’ said Judas, reaching out a raincoat arm seemingly stuffed with hair and laying it on Smurpheus’s elbow. ‘One more thing they did. They showed me – a certain truth. A truth!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The truth we’ve all forgotten! We all knew it once, but we’ve become blinded to it! But I know it again, and it makes me want to die! To die!’ He lurched away, and started shambling up the street.
‘Judas,’ Smurpheus called after him. ‘What do you mean?’
But he had gone, his hair trailing after him like a grubby comet.
^^
They hurried up the steps of the great white building and walked boldly into the lobby.
Asking at reception, they were directed towards the first-floor restaurant. ‘He is expecting you,’ they were told.
‘Is he?’ Thinity asked, as they got into a lift. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘Perhaps the Orifice has prepared the way,’ suggested Smurpheus.
‘Perhaps,’ said Thinity dubiously.
The restaurant had tabletops made out of mirrors. At the longest table, by the far wall, sat a couple gazing imperiously over the assembled diners. The woman was very beautiful. The man was not. His face was dominated by an elongated and protuberant nose that depended so markedly from his head it looked as though it were made of a huge lump of melted and reset wax. His eyes were piggy, which is to say they were pink, fat and had a squirl of laughter lines at the furthest extremity of each like a tail.
Smurpheus, Nemo and Thinity approached the table.
‘You,’ said Smurpheus, folding his arms behind his back in his weirdly double-jointed way, ‘are the Frurnchman.’
The narrow-faced man looked up at him. He flared a nostril, inhaling firmly. Then he let his eye linger on Thinity. He sat back a little in his chair. He exuded, Nemo thought to himself, an unmistakable aura of selfconfidence. ‘Zmurpheus,’ he said.
‘We have been sent,’ said Smurpheus, ‘from the Orifice.’
An acidic little smile troubled the Frurnchman’s lips. ‘Zoot alors,’ he said. And suddenly he was speaking very rapidly: ‘Zis is indeed an honeur, ’ow-you-zay, capar-exemple, good moaning to ze famous Zmurpheus, and you must be Thinity ma chérie comme une pomme d’amour, ’ow-you-zay, and Nemo aussi, tiens, please, please to join and sit-you. Alors! Formidable! Magnifique! Plume de ma tante. Tant pis. Fromage. Je m’appelle. Estce que vous avez une chambre pour la nuit? Avec une salle de bain mais sans le presse de pantalons. Encore une tasse de café. Le singe est dans l’arbre.’
He stroked his cheek, and smiled more broadly.
‘You have,’ said Smurpheus, a little nonplussed, ‘the device of the plot? The Orifice said that we—’
‘Naturally, naturellement,’ interrupted the Frurnchman, ‘’ow-you-zay, I am not actually Frensh, I am highly mentally skilled, and could speak in Eenglish if ’ow-youzay I want to, but je prefer the French language. Hoh-heyhoh, fromage and frottage, comme-ci comme-ça, avezvous-vu-le-nouveau-chapeau-de-coco. You know, ’ow-youzay, why I prefer the French language?’
‘Why?’ asked Thinity.
‘Because it iz ze best language in which to swear, like viping your nose on silk, attendez, I will show.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Gorbliemis! Straikalait! Clic-clac-boum-c’estphoto!’ He grinned, and tipped his head.
‘That’s terribly good,’ said Nemo, impressed despite himself. ‘What was that last one?’ He had half a mind to memorise it and drop it into his future conversations.
‘Do you have much occasion,’ asked Thinity, ‘to swear?’
But the Frurnchman did not respond. He seemed to be staring directly at Thinity.
An awkward silence stretched from seconds to half a minute. Finally his wife sighed. ‘You must excuse my ’usband,’ she said. ‘He likes to show off in front of strangers.’
The Frurnchman was sitting perfectly motionless, his grin looking more and more alarming. Nemo blinked, and peered more closely at him.
‘Oh sacred blue,’ muttered his wife. ‘Tan-Tan and Obelix, but this is infuriating! He has crashed again.’ She prodded her husband’s shoulder and he wobbled in his chair like a cardboard figure. He looked as if his whole body had been starched. A bead of sweat was frozen on his forehead like a diamond stud. His weird unblinking eyes and wide grin acquired, with each passing motionless moment, a greater and more unsettling intensity.
‘He,’ asked Nemo, unbelieving, ‘has crashed?’
‘It ’appens when he
gets overexcited. ’E was showing off, I am sorry to say it, in front of strangers, and got over’eated.’ She clucked disapprovingly and shook her head. Nemo could not help noticing that when she shook her head her ample bosom trembled slightly with equal and opposite momentum exchange. It was a tremendous bosom, cradled in tight cream-coloured plastic. Nemo told himself not to stare. He nagged himself inside his head. He thought of Thinity, standing beside him; of her disapproval, of the degraded spectacle he was making of himself. He ordered his eyes to disengage. They obeyed only sluggishly.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Smurpheus. ‘How can he crash?’
‘’E is an old-style program,’ she explained. ‘Ze new McAtrix is largely compatible, you know, but sometimes the older programs aren’t assimilated too well. They can get overloaded. Ah well. I should reset ’im, I suppose.’ She got up, moved behind her husband’s chair, and dragged his rigid form, chair and all, away from the table. Then she grabbed his left ear with one hand, his right little finger with the other, and gave both a simultaneous yank. The Frurnchman yelped, sat straight up and looked about him crossly.
‘Oo are you?’ he demanded. ‘What ze ’ell you loooking at?’
Nemo turned to the wife. ‘You say you’re old-style programs?’
‘Four point zero,’ said the wife. She pronounced this last word in the continental manner.
‘I did not fall asleep in ze proper manner,’ announced the Frurnchman in stentorian tones. ‘I may ’av a virus, peut-être ze flu. Do you want me to check my internal organs for signs of any such infection? Yes, no, cancel? Checking . . .’ His eyes glazed over.
‘He’ll take a minute to come round,’ explained the woman.
‘Why point zero?’ asked Nemo. ‘What’s point zero?’
‘Four is the generation,’ said the woman. ‘Ze rest expresses ze chance of glitch-free operation, you see. A point-one program, for instance, ’as a point one chance zat it will run without hiccoughs. A point-zero, on ze udder ’and . . .’ She shrugged.
The Frurnchman was swivelling his eyes very slowly from left to right. When he had, by this method, taken in the whole of the room, he made a ‘ping!’ noise, like a microwave oven. Then he sat up. ‘Where am I?’
‘We have come,’ said Smurpheus again, ‘for the device.’
‘Aha! Ze device for plotting ze way to the Designer, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Bien! Très bon. I am delighted to offer it to you. ’Ere.’ He fished in his pocket and brought out a small scouting compass. ‘Zis will lead you directly to the Designer.’
Smurpheus took the compass. ‘And you’re just going to give this to us?’
‘Of course. Bien sûr. Why would I not? You are welcome. We are, is-it-not-so, ze same, you and I? Ze same kind of beings? All in it togezzer?’
Smurpheus’s face assumed an expression of distaste at this idea, but he did not contradict it. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Vous avez le device, ’ow-you-zay, crotte-du-diable! Merci-Dieu-C’est-Vendredi! Pong! And may we accompany you?’
Smurpheus looked at Thinity, and then at Nemo. ‘I suppose so,’ he said.
‘We would like to confront zis Designer ourselves. But we have not been fortunate in accessing ’im. Perhaps you will be more, ’ow-you-zay, lucky, lucky-lucky-lucky.’ He stood, and so did his impressively proportioned wife.
Nemo chided his eyes a second time.
Smurpheus, following the instructions of the device, led the party out of the restaurant and up a series of stairways. The Frurnchman and his wife followed, accompanied by four stern-looking bodyguards. They looked like four grown-up clones of the Milky Bar Kid, except that instead of cowboy hats they were sporting four identical, ratstail, sad-act, white-guys-can’t-do-dreadlocks, Vanilla-Icehad-more-style, honestly-you’re-fooling-nobody, Lenny-Kravitz-dipped-in-pancake-batter hairstyles. There was a blank cruelty in their eyes, and their forearms were large. They made Nemo more than a little nervous.
‘There is no mystery,’ said the wife of the Frurnchman. ‘Ze door to the Designer’s office is just around this corner.’
The party trooped off the stairs and trotted down a corridor; but turning the corner brought them to a dead end. Nemo could see Thinity stiffening, as if preparing for a fight.
‘And where is this door you mentioned?’ she demanded.
‘It’s all right,’ said Smurpheus, consulting the device in his hand. ‘According to this, the Designer is indeed on the other side of that blank wall.’
‘It’s hardly a door,’ said Thinity.
‘A door without hinges, handle or crack,’ confirmed the Frurnchman’s wife. ‘We have tried everyzing to get to ze uzzer side. Dynamite, guns, getting burly men to run at it with their shoulders foremost, everyzing.’
‘But,’ the Frurnchman confirmed, ‘wizzout success. Alors! Perhaps you ’ave, ’ow-you-zay, a better way? A secret trick-up-ze-sleef?’
Smurpheus folded his arms behind his back. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But let me ask: why are you trying to get to the Designer?’
‘We ’ave certain matters to discuss wiz ’im,’ said the Frurnchman, drawing a slim silver pistol from his coat pocket. At this gesture, as if on cue, the four bodyguards pulled chrome-barrelled shotguns from their coats. The Frurnchman’s wife slipped a snub-nosed gun from inside the mass of her hair. Before they could react, Smurpheus, Thinity and Nemo were faced with six guns pointed directly at them.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Thinity.
‘Did you sink,’ said the Frurnchman, ‘that we would, ’ow-you-zay, merely give you ze device, and let you go off to ze Designer tout-seul? Pah, non-non-non, folie-bergère, do-you-’ave-a-rheum, no! We have a long-standing quarrel with ze Designer. His McAtrix is not properly compatible with our programming – and he must change it. Alors! Quoi! Pneu!’
‘What do you want us to do about this?’ said Smurpheus.
‘You obviously have a way inside ze Designer’s door,’ said the Frurnchman’s wife. ‘Or you would not ’ave come ’ere.’ She was looking knowingly at Nemo. Nemo felt the blush quotient of his cheeks increasing.
‘What?’ he said. ‘Why are you looking at me?’
‘I do not know,’ she replied, smiling. ‘Per’aps you are ze No One, of ’oom we ’ave all ’eard so much? Peut-être? Oo can walk zrou walls? Non?’
‘Let us say,’ the Frurnchman added, ‘that you, Nemo, slip inside ze door. Let us say, you leave your friends ’ere as ’ostages, oui? Let us say – celui-de-votre-chance – that you open ze door from ze inside within five minutes.’
‘Four,’ corrected his wife.
‘Ah! Much better! Four minutes, or else we will blamblam your friends with ze bullets and ze shootings, until zey are dead. Ça va?’
‘You monsters!’ cried Thinity.
‘It is a difficult situation in which we find ourselves,’ Smurpheus said to Nemo. ‘We have no choice but to cooperate with them. Do you think you can do it?’
Nemo stepped towards the blank wall. ‘You say you’ve tried dynamite, and everything?’
‘We ’ave.’
‘Doesn’t look like it.’
‘Oh, we ’ave ’ad it repainted since then.’
‘And you’re sure that there is a handle on the inside of the door? I mean, when I’m inside, will I be able to open it?’
‘We are sure of nothink,’ said the woman. ‘We ’ave never been inside the Designer’s room. But there must be somezing, for ’ow else would he get out if he needed to get out?’
‘To go to ze lavatory, for instance?’ added the Frurnchman.
‘Very well,’ said Nemo, pulling himself up to his full height. ‘I’ll go in there, and open the door. And then you’ll promise not to harm my companions?’
‘We promise,’ confirmed the Frurnchman.
‘Both of you?’
‘I promise too,’ said the Frurnchman’s wife.
‘Fine. Back in a jiffy, then.’
<
br /> Nemo took a deep breath and emptied his mind. He was, he told himself, nothing: a blank, a zero, the No One who could slip through the interstices of the programming of this world. He was invisible, intangible.
He took one last look at the people behind him: Smurpheus and Thinity standing warily; the Frurnchman and his companions aiming their guns. It was satisfying to Nemo to think that these latter individuals could no longer see him – that as far as they were concerned he had slipped out of existence completely. As a parting shot, he stuck his tongue out at them.
He turned back to the door, and rushed forward. The next thing he knew he was on the floor, pressing his right hand to his nose, and going ‘ouch’.
‘What ’appened?’ asked the puzzled-sounding Frurnchman.
‘Ow,’ said Nemo again, looking up at the blank wall with surprise and chagrin. ‘Bloody thing.’
‘Is zis ze best you can do?’
‘Hang on,’ said Nemo, getting up, ‘hang on. I wasn’t quite ready. Let’s have another go.’
This time he decided to test the wall with his hand rather than his face. It still felt solid under his fingers. ‘Um,’ he said. ‘OK, let me think.’ He could feel sweat starting tracks through the thicket of his scalp. He was acutely conscious of everybody’s eyes being on him; and Thinity’s in particular. ‘OK,’ he said again, ‘right, I’ve got a plan.’ But he had no plan, and his inside voice was wailing, I’m a failure again, and She’s watching me make a fool of myself again. It was useless. He saw himself with Thinity’s eyes. It was no wonder she didn’t love him. He was a worm. ‘I don’t think it’s going to work,’ he said miserably.
And as he spoke those words, his hand slipped into the material of the wall as if into a still pool of milk. He was so surprised he almost fell. He stumbled forward, and the next thing of which he was aware was a blazing light all around him, cold as starlight though bright as fireworks, and
Part 3