by Kim Newman
Jamie found a parking space in the thin shadow of the tower, which shifted within minutes. Inside the van, stale air began to boil again. Even with the windows down, there was no relief.
‘Gather, darkness,’ he muttered. He hadn’t Dad’s knack with shadows, but he could at least whip up some healthy gloom. The sky was cloudless, but a meagre cloud-shadow formed around the van. It was too much effort to maintain, and he let it go. In revenge, the sun got hotter.
‘Jamie Chambers,’ said a girl.
He looked out at her. She was dressed for veldt or desert: leather open-toe sandals, fawn culottes, baggy safari jacket, utility belt with pouches, burnt orange sunglasses the size of saucers, leopard-pattern headscarf, Australian bush hat. In a summer when Zenith the Albino sported a nut-brown suntan, her exposed lower face, forearms and calves were pale to the point of colourlessness. People always said Jamie – as instinctively nocturnal as his father – should get out in the sun more, but this girl made him look like an advert for Air Malta. He would have guessed she was about his own age.
‘Call me Gené,’ she said. ‘I know your aunt Jenny. And your mother, a bit. We worked together a long time ago, when she was Kentish Glory.’
Mum had stopped wearing a moth-mask and film-winged leotards decades before Jamie was born. Gené was much older than nineteen.
He got out of the van, and found he was several inches taller than her.
‘I’m from the Diogenes Club,’ she said, holding up an envelope. ‘You’re our ride to Somerset. I’ve got maps and money here. And the rest of the new bugs.’
Three assorted types, all less noticeable than Gené, were loitering.
‘Keith, Susan and… Sewell, isn’t it?’
A middle-aged, bald-headed man stepped forward and nodded. He wore an old, multi-stained overcoat, fingerless Albert Steptoe gloves and a tightly wound woolly scarf as if he expected a sudden winter. His face was unlined, as if he rarely used it, but sticky marks around his mouth marked him as a sweet-addict. He held a paper bag, and was chain-chewing liquorice allsorts.
‘Sewell Head,’ said Gené, tapping her temple. ‘He’s one of the clever ones. And one of theirs. Derek Leech fetched him out of a sweet shop. Ask him anything, and he’ll know.’
‘What’s Transhumance?’ asked Jamie.
‘A form vertical livestock rotation, practised especially in Switzerland,’ said Sewell Head, popping a pink coconut wheel into his mouth. ‘Also a London-based popular music group which has never released a record or played to an audience of more than fifty people.’
‘Fifty is a record for some venues, pal.’
‘I told you he’d know,’ said Gené. ‘Does he look evil to you? Or is Hannah Arendt right about banality? He’s behaved himself so far. No decapitated kittens. The others are undecideds, not ours, not theirs. Wavering.’
‘I’m not wavering,’ said the other girl, Susan. ‘I’m neutral.’
She wore jeans and a purple T-shirt, and hid behind her long brown hair. She tanned like most other people and had pinkish sunburn scabs on her arms. Jamie wondered if he’d seen her before. She must be a year or two older than him, but gave off a studenty vibe.
‘Susan Rodway,’ explained Gené. ‘You might remember her from a few years ago. She was on television, and there was a book about her. She was a spoon-bender. Until she stopped.’
‘It wore off,’ said the girl, shrugging.
‘That’s her story, and she’s sticking to it. According to tests, she’s off the ESP charts. Psychokinesis, pyrokinesis, psychometry, telepathy, levitation, clairvoyance, clairaudience. She has senses they don’t even have Latin names for yet. Can hard-boil an egg with a nasty look.’
Susan waved her hands comically, and nothing happened.
‘She’s pretending to be normal,’ said Gené. ‘Probably reading your mind right now.’
Irritated, Susan snapped. ‘One mind I can’t read, Gené, is yours. So we’ll have to fall back on the fount of all factoids. Mr Head, what can you tell us about Geneviève Dieudonné?’
Sewell Head paused in mid-chew, as if collecting a ledger from a shelf in his mental attic, took a deep breath, and began, ‘Born in 1416, in the Duchy of Burgundy, Geneviève Dieudonné is mentioned in—’
‘That’s quite enough of that,’ said Gené, shutting him off.
Jamie couldn’t help noticing how sharp the woman’s teeth were. Did she have the ghost of a French accent?
‘I’m Keith Marion,’ said the kid in the group, smiling nervously. It didn’t take ESP to see he was trying to smooth over an awkward moment. ‘Undecided.’
He stuck out his hand, which Jamie shook. He had a plastic tag around his wrist. Even looking straight at Keith, Jamie couldn’t fix a face in his mind. The tag was the only thing about him he could remember.
‘We have Keith on day-release,’ said Gené, proudly. ‘He has a condition. It’s named after him. Keith Marion Syndrome.’
Jamie let go of the boy’s hand.
‘I don’t mind being out,’ said Keith. ‘I was sitting around waiting for my O-level results. Or CSEs. Or call-up papers. Or…’
He shrugged, and shut up.
‘We make decisions all the time, which send us on varying paths,’ said Gené. ‘Keith can see his other paths. The ones he might have taken. Apparently, it’s like being haunted by ghosts of yourself. All those doppelgangers.’
‘If I concentrate, I can anchor myself here,’ said Keith. ‘Assuming this is the real here. It might not be. Other heres feel just as real. And they bleed through more than I’d like.’
Sewell Head was interested for a moment, as if filing some fact nugget away for a future Brain of Britain quiz. Then he was chewing Bertie Bassett’s liquorice cud again.
‘He’s seen two other entirely different lives for me,’ said Gené.
‘I’m having enough trouble with just this one,’ commented Susan.
‘So’s everybody,’ said the pale girl. ‘That’s why we’ve been called – the good, the bad and the undecided.’
She opened her envelope and gave Jamie a map.
‘We’re heading west. Keith knows the territory. He was born in Somerset.’
Jamie opened the rear doors of the van. He had tidied up a bit, and distributed cushions to make the space marginally more comfortable.
Susan borrowed 50p from him and the foursome tossed to see who got to sit up front with the driver. Keith called, ‘Owl,’ then admitted to Gené his mind had slipped into a reality with different coins. Head droned statistics and probabilities but couldn’t decide what to call, and lost to Susan by default. In the final, Gené called tails. The seven-edged coin spun surprisingly high – and slower than usual – then landed heads-up in Susan’s palm.
‘Should have known not to toss up with a telekinetic,’ said Gené, in good humour. ‘It’s into the back of the van with the boys for me.’
She clambered in and pulled the door shut. There was some kicking and complaining as they got sorted out.
Susan gave the coin back to Jamie. It was bent at a right-angle.
‘Oops,’ she said, arching her thick eyebrows attractively.
‘You said it wore off.’
‘It did. Mostly.’
They got into the front of the van. Jamie gave Susan the map and appointed her navigator.
‘She can do it with her eyes closed,’ said Gené, poking her head through between the high-backed front seats.
‘Just follow the Roman road,’ said Keith.
Susan held the map up the wrong way, and chewed a strand of her hair. ‘I hate to break it to you, but I’m not that good at orienteering. I can tell you about the three people – no, four – who have owned this map since it was printed. Including some interesting details about Little Miss Burgundy. But I don’t know if we’re best off with the A303.’
Gené took the map away and playfully swatted Susan with it.
‘Mr Head,’ she began, ‘what’s the best route from the Pos
t Office Tower, in London, to Alder, in Somerset?’
‘Shortest or quickest?’
‘Quickest.’
Sewell Head swallowed an allsort and recited directions off the top of his head.
‘I hope someone’s writing this down.’
‘No need, Jamie,’ said Gené. ‘Tell him, Susan.’
‘It’s called eidetic memory,’ said Susan. ‘Like photographic, but for sounds and the spoken word. I can replay what he said in snippets over the next few hours. I don’t even need to understand what he means. Now, “turn left into New Cavendish Street, and drive towards Marylebone High Street…”’
Relaying Sewell Head’s directions, Susan imitated his monotone. She sounded like a machine.
‘One day all cars will have gadgets that do this,’ said Keith.
Jamie doubted that, but started driving anyway.
V.
An hour or so into Professor Cleaver’s rhotacist monologue, Richard began tuning out. Was hypothermia setting in? Despite thermals and furs, he was freezing. His upper arms ached as if they’d been hit with hammers. His jaws hurt from clenching to prevent teeth-chattering. He no longer had feeling in his fingers and toes. Frozen exhalation made ice droplets in his moustache.
Cold didn’t bother Clever Dick. He was one of those mad geniuses who never outgrew a need for an audience. Being clever didn’t count unless the people he was cleverer than knew it. The Professor walked around the room, excited, impassioned, frankly barking. He touched ice-coated surfaces with bare hands Richard assumed were freezer-burned to nervelessness. He puffed out clouds of frost and delighted in tiny falls of indoor hail. He constantly fiddled with his specs – taking them off to scrape away thin film of iced condensation with bitten-to-the-quick thumbnails, putting them back on until they misted up and froze over again. And he kept talking. Talking, talking, talking.
As a child, Dick Cleaver had been indulged – and listened to – far too often. He’d been an adventurer, in the company of immature grown-ups who didn’t take the trouble to teach him how to be a real boy. When that career ended, it had been a mind-breaking shock for Clever Dick. Richard had read Catriona Kaye’s notes on the Case of the Splendid Six. Her pity for the little boy was plain as purple ink, though she also loathed him. An addendum (initialled by Edwin Winthrop) wickedly noted that Clever Dick suffered such extreme adolescent acne that he become known as ‘Spotted Dick’. Angry pockmarks still marred the Professor’s chubby cheeks. As an adult, he had become a champion among bores and deliberately entered a profession which required talking at length about the most tedious (yet inescapable) subject in Great British conversation – the weather. Turned out nice again, eh what? Lovely weather for ducks. Bit nippy round the allotments. Cleaver’s best-selling book was impossible to read to the end, which was why many took The Coming Ice Age for a warning. It was actually a threat, a plan of action, a promise. To Professor Cleaver, the grip of glaciation was a consummation devoutly to be wished for.
Behind his glasses, Cleaver’s eyes gleamed. He might as well have traced hearts on frozen glass with a fingertip. He was a man in love. Perhaps for the first time. A late, great, literally all-consuming love.
Derek Leech, who rarely made the mistake of explaining his evil plans at length, had missed the point when he funded Cleaver’s research. That alarmed Richard – Leech might be many things, but he was not easily fooled. Cleaver came across as a ranting, immature idiot with a freak IQ, but had serious connections. If anything could trump a Great Enchanter, it was the Cold.
‘The Cold was here first,’ continued Cleaver. ‘Before the dawn of man, she weigned over evewything. She was the planet’s first evolved intelligence, a giant bwain consisting of a near-infinite number of ice cwystals. A gweat white blanket, sewene and undying. When the glaciers weceded, she went to her west. She hid in a place out of weach until now. Humanity is just a blip. She’d have come back eventually, even without me. She was not dead, but only sleeping.’
‘Lot of that about,’ said Leech. ‘King Arthur, Barbarossa, Great Cthulhu, the terra-cotta warriors, Gary Glitter. They’ll all be back.’
Cleaver sputtered with anger. He didn’t like being interrupted when he was rhapsodising.
‘You won’t laugh when blood fweezes in your veins, Mr Leech. When your eyes pop out on ice-stalks.’
Leech flapped his arms and contorted his face in mock panic.
‘How many apocalypses have come and gone and fizzled in this century, Jeperson?’ Leech asked, airily. ‘Four? Five? Worm War, Wizard War, Water War, Weird War, World War… and that’s not counting Princess Cuckoo of Faerie, Little Rosie Farrar as the Whore of Babylon, the Scotch Streak and the Go-Codes, the Seamouth Warp, six alien invasions counting two the Diogenes Club doesn’t think I know about, two of my youthful indiscretions you don’t think I know you know about, and the ongoing Duel of the Seven Stars.’
‘Don’t the Water War, the Scotch Streak and the Egyptian Stars count as alien invasions?’ asked Richard. ‘I mean, technically, the Deep Ones are terrestrial, but your Great Squidhead Person is from outer outer space. And the other two bothers were down to unwelcome meteorites.’
‘You’ve a point. Make that eight alien invasions. The Water War was a local skirmish, though. Extra-dimensional, rather than extra-terrestrial…’
Cleaver hopped from one foot to the other. The little boy in him was furious that grown-ups were talking over his head. If he hadn’t been chucked off his course in life – by Catriona, as he saw it – he might have been in on the secret history. The Mystic Maharajah, oldest of the Splendid Six, had carried a spear (well, an athamé) in the Worm War. Captain Rattray (Blackfist), another Splendid, emerged from disgrace to play a minor role in the Wizard War. Teenage Clever Dick was too busy squeezing pus-filled blemishes to get involved in that set-to. Child sleuths, like child actors, seldom grew up to be stars. Richard was named after Richard Riddle, the famous boy detective of the turn of the century (so was Cleaver, probably). Few knew what, if anything, happened to Riddle in later life.
‘You won’t listen, you won’t listen!’
‘Have you considered that the Cold might be extra-dimensional rather than antediluvian?’ asked Leech, offhandedly. ‘Seems to me a bright young man of my acquaintance reported something similar in a continuum several path-forks away from our own. It cropped up there in 1963 or so, during the Big Freeze. Didn’t do much harm.’
‘You can’t say anything about her,’ insisted Cleaver, almost squeaking.
‘Interesting that you see the Cold as a her,’ continued Leech. ‘Then again, I suppose women have been “cold” to you all your life. You made a poor impression on Miss Kaye, from all accounts. And she’s always been generous in her feelings.’
Cleaver’s face tried to burn. Blood rose in his blueing cheeks, forming purplish patches. He might break out again.
‘I know what you’re twying to do, you wotter!’
Leech laughed out loud. Richard couldn’t help but join in.
‘I’m a “wotter”, am I? A wotten wetched wight woyal wascally wotter, perhaps?’
‘You’re twying to get me angwy!’
‘Angwy? Are you succumbing to woawing wed wage?’
Cleaver couldn’t help sounding like a toffee-nosed Elmer Fudd. It was cruel of Leech to taunt him, Fourth Form fashion. Richard remembered bullies at his schools. With him, it had been his darker skin, his literal lack of background, the numbers tattooed on his wrist, his longer-than-regulation hair, his eyelashes, for heaven’s sake. He had learned early on to control his temper. If he didn’t, people got hurt.
‘You missed one off your list of apocalypses,’ said Cleaver, trying to be sly again. ‘Perfidious Albion. That was an extwadimensional thweat. An entire weality out to oblitewate the world. And we stopped it. In 1926! Not your Diogenes Club or those Undertaker fellows, but us! The Splendid Six! Clever Dick, yes. They first called me that to poke fun, but I pwoved it was a wightful name. I stood with the
gwown-ups. Blackfist and Lord Piltdown and the Blue Stweak…’
‘…and Aviatrix and the Mystic Maharajah,’ footnoted Richard.
‘Should never have let girls and foweigners in,’ muttered Cleaver. ‘That’s where the wot started.’
‘Chandra Nguyen Seth turned out to be Sid Ramsbottom, from Stepney,’ said Richard. ‘As British as corned-beef fritters and London fog. Used boot polish on his face for years. He might have been mystic, but he was no maharajah.’
Cleaver didn’t take this in – he was a ranter, not a listener. ‘Seth and the girl helped,’ he admitted. ‘The Splendids saved the day. Beat back the Knights of Perfidious Albion. Saved evewyone and evewything. Without us, you’d all be cwawling subjects of Queen Morgaine. I was given a medal, by the pwoper King. I was witten up in Bwitish Pluck, for months and months. I had an arch-nemesis. Wicked William, my own cousin. I bested the bounder time after time. Made him cwy and cwy and cwy. There was a Clever Dick Club, and ten thousand boys were members. No g-girls allowed! I was in the Lord Mayor’s Show and invited to tea at the palace twice. I could have been in your wotten old wars. Won them, even. In half the time. Dark Ones, Deep Ones, Wet Ones, Weird Ones. I could have thwashed the lot of ’em and been home before bedtime. But you couldn’t leave me alone, could you? No woom in the Gwown-Ups’ Club for Clever Dick. Not for any of the Splendids. That w-w-woman had to bwing us down to her level.’
‘He means your club now,’ said Leech. ‘In some circumstances, I’d agree with him.’
‘You’d both have to climb a mountain to be on a level with Catriona Kaye.’
‘Touché,’ said Leech.
‘You’re both just twying to change the subject.’
‘Oh dearie me,’ said Leech. ‘Let’s talk about the weather again, shall we? It’s an endless topic of fascination. I was getting bored with writing heatwave headlines…’