‘A praefect, actually,’ he mutters.
She ignores him. ‘Up until now, you have been entirely right to be afraid. However, I am here to tell you that the subornation process can be controlled, because I am living proof, and to offer you the gifts which that control brings. What would you like to be able to do? Fly? Read minds? Burn your enemies at a finger’s touch? I can dream an albatross into your soul, or a shaman, or a salamander from the fire-mountains of Isalo. I can put angels in your brain. The Marchant girl is far from being simply a goodwill gift; she remains the key to all of this. I’m offering her to you and much more besides. Turn around, Mr Maddox, and see.’
He turns around, away from the desolate fells, to look over the civilised land of fields and forests that the Wall protects. He sees greater walls than this; he sees strongholds, citadels, and fortresses rising tower upon tower; he sees cathedrals, their hazy spires lost in the very clouds of heaven; he sees thousands of leagues of road stretching from one end of the land to the other; he sees all of this, and he sees that it is his for the building. His for the mastery.
Then he sees the army that she is offering to help him build it, and his sense of duty makes one last feeble stab at resistance.
‘The Hegemony will never allow…’ he begins.
‘I am not negotiating with the Hegemonic Church, whatever its name in your world,’ she interrupts. ‘I am negotiating with you. They have no concept of what I am; neither do the DCS. There exists no protocol to deal with the likes of me. They will order you to destroy me, if you can, and your chance to build all of this,’ she sweeps her arm to encompass the vista before him, ‘will die too.’
The swirls of blue pigment on her body and the golden bands encircling her limbs are coming alive, writhing across her skin like snakes, and then lifting free to twist and float around her in ribbons of azure and gold like fronds of seaweed and sunset entwined. It is one of the most beautiful things he has ever seen.
‘Now wake up.’
Maddox snapped awake and found himself standing naked in the doorway of one of the Park’s sub-basement detention cells. His pass-card was in one hand, his gun in the other. He stared at them stupidly as the fog of his dream cleared. Had he been walking? Somewhere distant, alarms were hooting, and Morris’ voice was crackling with desperation over an intercom: Sir? What’s happening down there, sir? Can you confirm your status? but he ignored them both. Morris was an idiot. They were all idiots. He’d been an idiot, to think that Lilivet was just another Passenger. Could he confirm his status? It was laughable. His status was compromised. Honking great neon letters floating in the sky: COMPROMISED, Morris, put that on your clipboard and shove it up your ass. And there was nothing he could do about it.
The shadows inside the cell came alive as something like the gold and blue ribbons from his dream moved restlessly, then drifted out to meet him, darker but no less graceful as they stroked and caressed his skin, coiling around the stiffening length of him and teasing him inside. There he found his goddess; her araka flesh was even more beautiful in reality than it had been in his dream, and he let it enfold him in the bittersweet darkness.
5
Steve tried to keep a low profile. He really tried.
He spent most of the first twenty-fours asleep or lying in bed feeling like he had a hangover, even though he hadn’t touched any alcohol for over a week. He did the crossword. He went across the road to the newsagent and bought an entire book of crosswords and did those too. He watched hour after hour of daytime TV, forcing himself to switch the awful thing off only when he started to develop sympathy with the conspiracy nutjobs who believed that modern broadcast media was a mind-control tool designed to turn the public into drooling zombies – those people, and the ones who wanted to stalk and kill z-list celebs like Jeremy Kyle. He took himself out for walks in parks, and sat in strange pubs nursing pints at solitary tables, and realised that he was now the Lone Weirdo – the one that the other customers looked sideways at either in pity, or vague mistrust, or simply ignored altogether. Despite Ennias’ instructions, he tried calling him on the crappy little Nokia, and was unsurprised to find that Ennias’ number was no longer in service.
He managed to resist the urge to call Jackie, but on the third morning he wrapped himself up in a hoodie and baseball cap and lurked across the street from her place just to watch her getting the boys to school and herself to work. He reassured himself that she was okay but at the same time felt dirty about it, as well as paranoid that creatures from the Hegemony might be watching her too, and that they would easily notice his pathetic attempts at spookery. He half-expected something which was all teeth and sarcasm to be waiting for him back at the bedsit, but nothing was, so he must have got away with it.
Emboldened by this, he decided to make a quick visit to the Barber Institute. Just a quick glance at the Watts, he told himself, to remind himself of what all the fuss was about. Just one. Looking at himself in the mirror, he thought it highly unlikely that anybody he’d shared a shift with would recognise him; he’d lost weight, hadn’t shaved in days, and looked like he was dressing himself out of an Oxfam clothes bin. He might look like a vagrant – but then equally he could just as well pass for an Art student.
When he got there, the shock of finding that She Shall Be Called Woman was gone hit him almost like a physical blow.
The huge empty space left by its absence screamed at him. It was filled only by a vague notice of apology, something about the painting being returned to the Tate in London for ‘restoration’ work. Total bullshit. He was certain that its disappearance was connected to the events on the Cella, but there was no way he could find out for sure. When he phoned the Tate he was assured that she was still on loan to the Barber, and when he phoned the Barber anonymously he was given the same line: returned for restoration.
The feeling of impotence this left him with was maddening. Things were happening. Agendas were being pursued. The woman he could still see himself possibly having a future with despite how fucked up everything was might have been kidnapped – if not actually killed – and he’d been sidelined in that stinking fleapit of a B&B while Ennias danced around the sensibilities of his oh-so-precious contacts. If he hadn’t simply decided to cut Steve loose altogether, that was. What other conclusion was he supposed to draw from the fact that the man’s phone was disconnected? As he himself had so wisely pointed out: fuck that for a game of tiddly-winks. Steve decided to give Ennias until the following morning, after which he would be forced to admit that he’d been screwed over and probably end up doing something very unwise indeed.
That evening he got a text. It consisted simply of two words: Found her.
Chapter 27
A Walk in the Park
1
‘Funny story for you,’ said Ennias. ‘So there’s these two druids, right? It’s two thousand years BC, and they’re walking through the primeval forests of ancient Britain. One turns to the other and says “I don’t know, things just aren’t the same these days”, and the other says to him “I know what you mean. I remember when this was all fields.”’
‘That’s terrible,’ groaned Steve, ducking to avoid a low branch. Ennias was ahead of him on the narrow path, and not making any particular effort to prevent bits of tree from springing back into Steve’s face.
‘You don’t think it’s a poignant comment on humanity’s eternal and recursive nostalgia for a lost Golden Age?’
‘Not really. I think it sounds more like a shaggy dog story with not enough shag to it.’
‘Whatever.’ Ennias sniffed and forged ahead through the undergrowth.
Somewhere ahead of them, Steve could clearly make out the sounds of the ocean and screaming sea-birds. The problem was, he’d been hearing it for some time – ever since they’d left the car – but because of the closely grown vegetation he couldn’t see how close they were getting. Ennias had told him t
hat the non-existent village they were looking for was situated at the edge of a cliff, which was not so unusual since that described most of this part of the East Devon coastline, and he had visions of emerging from a bush into thin air and plunging fifty feet into the English Channel.
The path they were on had been disused for decades and was not very clear at all. They’d ignored one fence signposted with a warning that this section of the UNESCO Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site was currently protected for environmental reasons and off-limits for ramblers under pain of a £5000 fine; then another from Devon County Council Highways Office indicating that the path was temporarily closed due to the danger of sudden and unexpected cliff collapses (although the word ‘temporarily’ had to be taken with a truck-load of salt since the sign looked like it had been there since at least the 70s); and finally a rusted Ministry of Defense sign which read, quite tersely, “Restricted Area: Danger of Death”.
‘Okay, that one I believe,’ Steve had said, climbing through the barbed wire.
They’d driven south from the Midlands, avoiding motorways and major urban centres and taking hours to find the south coast by B-roads. At Lyme Regis, Ennias had bought him a coffee and a sticky bun at the tiny family-run Dinosaurland Fossil Museum, and under the shadow of extinct sea-monsters had tried to let him know what he was getting himself into.
‘It’s called the Park. Short for Park Royal Hotel, in a town called Lyncham, which was evacuated forty years ago, after half of it collapsed into the sea. The Hegemony took it over as a processing centre for Passengers.’
‘Processing centre,’ echoed Steve.
‘Yeah, and it’s even less pleasant than that sounds. They have very effective ways of detecting the existence of Passengers who arrive all confused and angry, and who lash out with powers that they didn’t know they had. I’ve heard it described as being like the wake of a boat that they can track, but I don’t know the details of how it works. They sniff us out and they take us to the Park to see if our talents can be used to help the Hegemony’s business. The animals are easy enough to control – it’s just carrot and stick stuff. The humans take a bit more psychology.’
‘What is their business, anyway?’
‘Don’t ask me, I’m just visiting, remember? To control the world? Who cares what they want. The point is that they will fuck your life up from one end to the other if they think you’ve got something they can use, and especially if they think you’re a threat. Sad to say, a lot of Passengers are happy enough to work for them at the end of the day.’
‘God, why?’
‘Put it this way. You’ve just woken up in a world which is worse than being totally alien because it’s so familiar, but you don’t know anybody and nobody knows who you are. Worse, they think you’re someone else, and they’re hurt, angry and confused when you try to explain. They think you’ve lost your mind. You may not even be fully in control of this body you’re in. You panic, hit out in frustration, and cause something freakish and weird to happen which scares the shit out of everyone, yourself included, so you run. You might be sleeping rough for a couple of weeks; you’re hungry, filthy, cold, terrified. Then one day a big black shiny car pulls up and a bloke says he knows what you’re going through, and he’ll offer you a bed, food, and maybe even the chance of finding a way home if you’ll come with him and just do a few little jobs, no questions asked. What would you do?’
‘Fair point. Naturally there is no finding a way home, is there?’
‘Of course not. From that point on you’re their bitch. You may even come to like the kinds of things they make you do. If you don’t, or you disobey orders, or – worse – you try to run away from them, they have a range of very inventive and painful ways of making you reconsider. And if you don’t learn your lesson, well, you’re already a missing person as far as the world is concerned, so who cares if you take a long walk off a short cliff?’
‘And you know this because?’
‘Because I, cunning bastard that I am, escaped.’
‘And this is where they’ve taken Vessa?’
Ennias nodded grimly.
Steve mulled this over awhile, looking around at the fossil exhibits which adorned the walls of the museum. Apparently this part of the world had all been one big tropical lagoon two hundred million years ago. Another few million before that it had been a desert. Who knew what it would be a few million hence? Nothing was certain, not even the very rocks beneath his feet. Maybe it wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine other lands lying alongside his own – not separated by a sea of water, or time, but maybe one of consciousness. Some barrier which was being breached frequently, and in secret. He thought of Lilivet’s words again and wondered if one day his world too would be drowned, and under what kind of ocean.
‘The woman that Vessa brought through,’ he said eventually. ‘The one who called herself Lilivet.’
‘What about her?’
‘She’s definitely not human.’
‘I think we can take that as a given.’
‘Will they have taken her to the Park too?’
Ennias shrugged. ‘Most likely. She looked like she wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere. Why do you care?’
‘She said something before I…’ ran away, he sneered at himself ‘…escaped. Something about how Vessa was going to help her rid her world of a great evil: mine. Do you have any idea what that means?’
‘I don’t know; does it sound like a good thing to you?’
‘Not really.’
‘Then finish your cake and we’ll get moving– but let’s just concentrate on getting Vessa out before we go interfering in anybody’s plans of world domination, shall we?’
‘Amen to that.’
2
Leaving Lyme Regis, they discovered without surprise that the left-hand turn onto the old cliff-top road to Lyncham was blocked by a large gated barrier which carried signs warning that the road was closed due to coastal erosion and currently undergoing reinforcement works. This seemed to be supported by a roadside portacabin inhabited by several men hanging around in hi-viz vests, but Ennias wasn’t convinced, pointing out the lack of any trucks, construction materials, or machinery. They drove past without stopping, left the car in a very pretty seaside town called Seaton and doubled back on foot, hiking up into the woods that masked the cliffs.
A few yards past the no-nonsense MoD sign, the path came out of the trees and turned sharply left at the very brink of the cliff. Steve staggered slightly under a sudden bluster of salt-laden wind and the expansion of his field of view from a few feet to what was quite literally the edge of the world. Directly below him the ground fell steeply away to a shoreline of sharp-edged limestone rocks against which the sea shoved its glossy green shoulders. Between him and it, seagulls wheeled. Vertigo threatened to unhinge his knees.
Ennias grabbed him by the shoulder, forcing his attention to the left, where the cliff curved back towards them slightly. A few hundred yards away they grew higher, and along the top he saw the shapes of buildings hard up against the almost vertical drop. One in the middle was taller than the rest, and he took that to be the old hotel where, if Ennias was right, Vessa was being held. The cliff-face directly below was buttressed in concrete and sheathed in heavy-duty rock netting. Lyncham, the village which had allegedly fallen into the ocean, looked like it was going nowhere its owners didn’t want it to go.
‘How well can you climb?’ asked Ennias.
‘That’s not funny,’ he replied.
‘Oh, getting down is the easy bit.’ Ennias pointed. Directly below them the sea seethed against white boulders, but further towards Lyncham, a narrow strip of shingle beach appeared. ‘Even getting over to that bit isn’t so bad. Rock to rock, like stepping stones, hands on the face of the cliff. It’s when you’re under the village itself that it gets really dangerous.’
‘What, and this isn
’t?’
‘They don’t patrol this bit. The worst thing that can happen to you here is that you slip and kill yourself. You’re lucky it’s low tide.’
‘No, seriously, you didn’t think to bring rope or anything?’
‘Fuck’s sake, McBride – do you know anything about abseiling? Can you tie any kind of knot which you can guarantee wouldn’t come loose? Because I bloody can’t.’
‘No,’ he admitted.
‘Then come on.’ He turned around and began to lower himself over the edge. Steve watched him closely. It looked like there were plenty of handholds amongst the outcropping stones and tree roots, and he did his best to memorise which ones Ennias was using before he began to gingerly pick his own way down.
His memory couldn’t have been that good because about halfway down the rock under his left hand gave way in a shower of earth. He panicked, pinwheeling, with two slim toeholds and a grip on a tree root which he could feel tearing under his weight, so he jammed his hand in the hole where the rock had come from, clawing for a grip, praying not to fall, not to die… and held.
He clung for an eternity, sweating and trembling, while the blustering wind plucked at his trousers and the sea muttered below.
‘Oy!’ shouted Ennias from below. ‘That bloody thing nearly killed me! Watch what you’re doing!’
Steve didn’t trust himself to spare the concentration for a reply and focussed instead on getting the rest of the way down in one piece.
The boulders at the cliff’s foot were green and slippery with weeds, and more often than not submerged, so that he and Ennias were soon drenched from the knees down. It didn’t seem to be bothering the Exile from Tourmaline – he was stepping ahead carefully like a chess-master playing hopscotch. Steve was still trembling from his near-fall and chilled by wind and water. He could see the thin margin of white shingle ahead, but that took his eyes from his feet and threatened to make him fall, so he just put one foot after another, trying to avoid the worst clots of weed which tried to tangle his ankles. His imagination played tricks on him; he saw tentacles in the fronds reaching for his legs, and the limbs and faces of half-human creatures in the churning green shadows between the boulders. What about fish, Ennias? he wondered. What makes you think that they haven’t found someone with an octopus inside them and set it to plug the gap you escaped through? But he made it to the strip of beach without being grabbed by anything and sat resting against the cliff-face for a moment, getting his breath back.
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