by John Luxton
“Shall we perhaps today find our way home?” he said to the dog. But Buster was asleep.
It was the last day of March, the clocks had already gone forward an hour; there was blossom on the trees and daffodils on the ground. Spring was not Joel’s favourite time of year but he could not help but be affected by this cardinal intersection of the earth’s dynamic cycle. It was a gateway, a threshold moment of the kind that Joel was searching for within his own trajectory. How to get back to his own life?
He had never met Buster’s owner but Lorna had told him all about him. And what he had said. Especially the part about Joel’s gift of hyper-sentience; especially the part about the Blake Organisation bringing him here to silence his voice; a voice that could not be tolerated because it told a story that was too close to the truth; a story that was perhaps the complete and utter truth.
They had brought him here because no one would listen; because here they already controlled everything; because here he had no voice. This much Joel knew, but how could they be so sure he would not find a way back? Joel stretched out and closed his eyes.
His drowsy mind took him beneath the reflective surface of the humdrum day and into a state of lucid-dreaming, in which he observed a patchwork terrain lit by chain lightning. All the transition points within collapsing worlds were being stretched through infinite timeframes. But he felt their adjacency, felt the pull of their immanence, cradled their symmetry within himself. And finally embraced the truth, which was that he himself, was the distant fulcrum between warring worlds.
Opening his eyes he saw a robin on a low branch a yard from where he lay. It looked at Joel with beady eyes, flew downwards and momentarily landed on his head. Then was gone. When the robin landed on his head it was a Damascene moment. He was like a blind man who upon cresting the top point of a roller coaster regains his vision. Joel knew what he had to do – reconstruct an Alembic Valise in this new world, the home of the all-subjugating Black Snake Cult.
Chapter 36
The old guys called it Danga; they knew it from the old country, Colombia, where it had a bad reputation because of its use by criminal gangs. The old guys Joel had spoken with met everyday in the park to drink matte tea and play chess. There were enough of them to form a community because of the Housing Departments insistence of clustering ethnic groups together in a single housing project. They had also told him that in the neighbouring country of Ecuador the plant from which the drug was derived was the subject of poetry and myth and able, according to legend, to impart prescience to whomsoever should fall asleep under its leaves.
Now the subject had come up again whilst talking to Vern. Joel felt he had maybe missed something concerning his arrival; probably in part to being beaten, drugged and bitten. He could still see that bloody dog and his hooded assailants in his minds eye. Big Vern was from Grimsby and he called Danga, “crazy voodoo shit”.
“Why, do you want me to get you some?” he asked Joel as they stood looking at the motorcycle and sidecar that had been concealed under a dusty green tarp in the lean-too behind the pigpen.
“No no, I was just curious,” said Joel, not really wanting to start talking about alternate realities. And not because he thought Vern may not understand and think him crazy but rather because he had a favour to ask him. “Will she start?” he said kicking a flaccid tyre.
The next morning at sun up Joel was clear of the city and had already hammered up fifty miles of motorway when he saw the black Mercedes approaching in the Dneiper’s blurry but functional rear view mirror.
The driver must have had to brake hard in order to slow down to a speed where he could sit on Joel’s tail. The ex-military bike could only manage sixty five at top whack but Joel was cruising at a stately fifty five in order to conserve fuel and had calculated that he, and the ever adaptable Buster – who was on a blanket in the foot-well of the open topped side-car – would reach their intended destination by mid afternoon. He slowed the bike slightly and moments later the car behind pulled into the centre lane, drew level then accelerated away. Joel could see nobody through the tinted windows. Soon it was a dot on the road ahead then it was gone.
Joel knew that the motorways were risky because all the exits could easily be monitored; he had a plan however. Acting on intelligence from Vern he would at the next service area follow an access road that led from the lorry park into a nearby industrial estate. The gritting trucks used this route in the winter and Joel could here exit the motorway system undetected and he and Buster would then continue their journey using only B roads.
It was time to get away from London. Yesterday had been spent fixing up the old bike; replacing cables, changing the oil, greasing bearings and scrapping the accrued cack from every nook and cranny. It could not gleam because all parts were finished in matt green military paint, but it had glowed in the soft evening light when he and Vern were done, and they finally stepped back to admire their work. Then they had been up half the night poring over maps and drinking strong tea laced with rum.
Other than Vern only Marina and Lorna knew of his plan and they had agreed to stay away so as not to draw attention. Finally at five AM after a breakfast of scrambled eggs and pancakes he and Vern had wheeled the bike along the ancient alleys of Mortlake for a quarter of a mile before emerging onto the road. The engine had started on the first kick and had not missed a beat; the big twin cylinders were now still burbling away happily as he scanned the road up ahead for his covert exit point.
Joel realised that for the last few weeks since his epiphany moment under the silver birch he had been on tenterhooks. Every time a bud of hope had appeared he had snipped it off, like a psychopathic gardener. He had his plan, and he would execute it. And that was as far as he was prepared to allow his mind to travel.
Upwards and onwards: He gritted his teeth and increased the revs, not caring about conserving fuel anymore and now suddenly anxious to leave this endless blacktop that snaked ever onwards into the jaws of Christ-knows what.
The traffic seemed sparse for a weekday. At first this puzzled Joel, and then he realised that today was Good Friday. Easter in Beta World. The idea forming in his mind was one of a binary universe. Twin worlds, one not all that different from the other on an objective level, and although the Blake Organisation seemed to cast a shadow over this place, were they really very different from the shits who controlled things wherever you might end up? ‘Hi, we are the Sirius shit squad; here to cornhole your gullible ass! Bad things for good people: We deliver’.
Now is perhaps the time to resign myself to inevitable fate, he thought. Maybe I’ve already had my time in the sun and from now on I will have to struggle like everyone else. Not breeze easily over life, but dig in and fight tooth and nail for the good of all. I have a gift but so far I have used it selfishly; here in Beta World I shall repurpose that gift. Maybe I am troubled and maybe I am fleeing from some real or imagined danger. Maybe I am mired in paranoia and suspicion. And yet I feel supremely alive. He remembered the sensation of the robin on his head. He remembered his plan. He saw the sign up ahead: SERVICES 1 MILE.
Joel decreased his speed as he crossed the broken white line onto the slip road, almost immediately a high hedge screened him from the highway; no one was following. He bypassed the main services car park, and the petrol forecourt until he saw a sign saying – Overnight Lorry Park.
There were no lorries here just a row of trailers at one end. The surface was pitted with potholes. There was a crow sat on a fence post but otherwise the area was deserted. Buster had sat up in the sidecar, suddenly alert too. Joel cut the engine and put the bike into neutral, there was a slight gradient that allowed them coast to a halt in front of a pair of high metal gates, that were padlocked shut. Joel stiffly dismounted; the only sound was the ticking of the bikes engine casing as it cooled in the fresh morning breeze.
Ten minutes later he was covered in sweat. Vern’s bolt cutters were simply not up to the job, the shank of the padlock was of hardened
steel and the chain that it secured was covered in a rubbery sheath that gummed up the cutters blades. Finally he took a dirty hessian bag from the foot-well of the sidecar and selected a smaller pair of cutters, then began cutting a hole in the actual wire mesh of the gate. It was painstaking work. Joel snipped away; Buster watched.
After twenty minutes he had almost completed a two-meter wide hole when he heard the crunch of gravel beneath tyre. Glancing over his shoulder he saw a dark saloon enter the lorry park, suddenly panicking Joel began kicking at the mesh portal he had cut, but still a few strands remained, holding it secure. His knuckles were bleeding and as he turned, still clutching the bolt cutters he saw, emerging from the car a familiar face. It was Agim.
“You fucking fucker!” Joel shouted as he advanced.
He had not seen Agim for many months, but Lorna had spoken in detail of his act of supreme treachery.
“Wait, it’s not what you think.”
“How do you know what I think,” said Joel pointlessly. Buster was wagging his tail and licking Agim’s hand. “Well Lorna thinks you betrayed her, us, and that you work for the Blake Organisation. Isn’t that enough?”
“I’ve seen Lorna and explained, I had to find a way to get to this side, but I don’t work for them.”
“So you say, “ said Joel. “So why are you following me?”
“I have something for you.”
“What might you have that I could possibly want?” said Joel shaking his head to indicate that the answer to his own question was a fat zero of nothingness. Agim held out a blue plastic memory stick.
There was plenty to talk about and Joel was sick of the lorry park so together they got the gates open and then drove down the service road to the nearest eatery: A burger van in a lay-by. They ate their bacon sandwiches sitting on the plastic garden chairs their host had thoughtfully provided.
“So why two worlds?” asked Joel.
“Dunno, overpopulation?” answered Agim. Brown sauce was dripping from his bap.
“So right, you know less than me. That makes me feel better.” Agim did not answer. The brown sauce missed his Diesels and plopped onto the tarmac. Buster licked it up and then made a retching sound.
“Must be the vinegar, dogs don’t like it.” Joel paused and rubbed the top of Buster’s head before continuing “So, I came here unwillingly, Lorna and Buster,” Buster pricked his ears at the mention of his name, “came to rescue me, and you came … why exactly?”
Agim wiped his hands on a paper napkin, took a drink of tea, stood up and patted his pockets in order to locate his cigarettes, took one out lit it and then sat back down and crossed his legs.
You know the song “Over the Rainbow”. Joel nodded.
“Well at the beginning there is a spoken part where Dorothy expresses her wish to go to a place that is - Beyond the Rain.” He blew out a lungful of smoke. “My mother, who disappeared shortly after I was born wrote a brief goodbye note. In it she used the same words. It’s haunted me, that phrase, since I found out: Beyond the Rain. It’s a tragic thing.” Joel reached out and took a cigarette from the packet on the table, it was the last; he lit up.
“I think she came here,” Agim continued.
Joel looked away, looked at the sky, took off his shades, scratched his head, squinted at the unpromising surroundings, of a lay-by somewhere in central England, and then finally replied.
“I don’t like to seem insensitive, but how? Took a wrong turn and just kept on going, like in the song. And why?”
“She followed someone,” said Agim, with what seemed to Joel like forced certainty.
“She followed someone,” Joel reiterated. “Who?”
“Baba Zum. Except maybe back then that was not his name?”
“And you came here to look for her?” asked Joel slowly. Agim did not answer
“So what do you know about him, Baba Zum or whatever he calls himself?”
“He lived in Haiti in his teens then went to the States. Became a professional wrestler, called himself The Turtle, wore a green mask like a Mexican dude then disappeared off the radar.”
Joel let these new facts wash over him without attempting to turn them into components of a game or puzzle; he was beyond that mode of thinking. If everything is a message or a clue or a portent then we are not at the oceans edge retrieving the odd artefact that gets discarded at the margins; we are swimming in the ocean itself. He also remembered the seemingly unrelated fact that the object that caused the most fatalities on the countries entire road system was the ubiquitous and seemingly helpful road sign. Can we sometimes be too busy looking for signs that we stop looking at the road, he wondered.
Agim was still speaking. “He then came to England, married a reclusive heiress, and used her fortune to fund Cuthbert’s business expansion in the early nineties. It would seem that he has or has had several identities.”
“You told Lorna this?”
“Not exactly, I told her I had infiltrated the Blake Organisation, and that I work for the security services.”
“And do you?”
“Kind of, Seraphim does, and I am in deep cover.”
“But aren’t you stuck here, just like rest me?”
“I am but,” he took out the blue memory stick, that he had earlier offered to Joel, and held it up between thumb and forefinger, “but with this we can fight back.”
“How the fuck can that even be possible?” said Joel, deeply sceptical. “Tell me you’re not full of shit.”
Agim had sat back down and discovered that Joel had smoked the last cigarette. He stalked off to his car and returned moments later with a new pack. He sat down and lit one.
“It uses geo-locational satellite bands and augmented reality technologies: Boffins in the security services came up with it. Their R and D department really is geek central. I have no idea how it works but Vale was using a proto-type to post his Reality Wars Blog on both sides.”
“Vale was posting his subversive rants here and …” Joel broke off and stood up, walked over to the motorcycle rig that was parked in the shade of an oak tree, and returned with a bottle of water and bowl which he put it on the ground. He sloshed water into it for Buster, who started to steadily lap his drink. All the while Joel’s mind was processing. Then he spoke, changing tack.
“Do you know that twin stars in a binary system have a spiral orbits? The mobius gravitational tides produce positional flip-flop. Each twin is oscillating between dual realities.”
“You mean like Sirius A and B?” said Agim, going with Joel’s flow.
“Yes, that’s right.” Joel looked down at the grizzled little Jack Russell at their feet. “The Dog star, eh Buster?” he said. Buster had now drunk all the water and the metal bowl was clanking on the tarmac as he carried on trying to Hoover up the final molecules. Joel poured the rest of the bottle into Buster’s bowl.
Agim again held out the memory stick. When Joel hesitated to take it he began to speak; there was enthusiasm in his voice. “Take it. Use it. Just plug it into your laptop. It is actually a dongle that provides encrypted access to a secure server. Click on the icon that will appear on the desktop, log on and upload your stuff. Use an eleven character passwords, with upper and lowercase plus some numbers. It’s called Skyshine.”
Joel turned the the unlikely looking key to their future over in his hand saying, “I’ve heard that word but in some other context.”
Agim stood up and brushed ash and crumbs off his jacket. He looked down at Joel as if the older man was simply prevaricating, when he should be taking action.
“When radiation is released, either by a nuclear explosion or a leak at a atomic power installation the particles bounce off the air molecules in the upper atmosphere and thus increase the radiation levels back on the ground. That’s the original meaning,” said Agim, now adjusting his belt
“Sounds like a cleaning product - I use Skyshine and my windows sparkle.”
“Just use it to make your prose sparkle.�
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“Was Lorna …erm receptive to all this?” asked Joel now smiling up at Agim.
“Listen, she told me your idea. To write a new book and try and get it published here. Believe me that will be impossible. But what you can do is publish online, in instalments. People will be able to download or stream the content from various websites and our tech geeks will virally promote the piss out of it. Just write your story, upload the chapters and we will do the rest.”
Joel put the blue piece of plastic in his pocket. Then stood up and held out his hand. Joe wanted to look into the eyes of the man before him, but they were both wearing sunglasses. “We are all looking for something,” he said. “I hope you find…” he trailed off in mid-sentence. A thought had intruded on the flow of his intended platitude but now was not the time to voice it. He continued to look searchingly at Agim. The moment passed. They shook hands.
“Thanks,” said Agim, “but first we have to bring down the Blake Organisation. Then … who knows? Lorna said an interesting thing, that fantasy is the literature of subversion. If your writing can covertly expose this conspiracy then maybe we can turn the tide. It’s up to you now.”