by Ivo Stourton
“What then? Come on then. What?”
“We knew this moment might come,” Miranda said. “We discussed with John the personnel files of the men in his command. We were looking for someone whose life had become unbearable to them. We needed someone in pain. Someone who would understand the true significance of forgetting.”
“Dead daughter? Drink problem? Starting to crack?” Charles said. “That’s our man!’”
John still couldn’t look him in the eye. “I’m sorry, Rob. I really thought… I know how much it hurt, when Anna passed on. I really thought that maybe it would help you.”
As they stood facing one another the sky outside the window flickered, and went out. At first, Oates thought that he had fainted, that the moment had proved too much for his damaged mind to take, and he had simply blacked out. Then Charles said, “oh!”, and the faint little cry provided him with some affirmation that the experience was shared.
Oates clung to that certainty. The room was plunged into absolute darkness. There was a scream from the courtyard, and the sound became strangely twisted as if it came from the bottom of a great chasm. None of them spoke, but Oates heard the sound of movement. He tried to move towards it, but it took all his courage to inch forward. The absence of light was so complete that the atmosphere around them seemed to have a physical weight. The external world was compressed to nothing more than the millimetres of air flowing around the hairs on his skin. Oates was blinking rapidly, and with each blink the continuing fact of his blindness instilled a mounting sense of panic.
This state of affairs lasted for perhaps thirty seconds, after which he became aware of a cold ring of dawn mounting from the ground visible through the window.
Slowly, rising from the earth, up the walls and along the great dome of the roof, the concentric circles of emergency lights began to wink on one set at a time. Dimly, first, but expanding rapidly, the light swelled to alleviate the claustrophobia. The relief however lasted only as long as it took Oates’s eyes to become accustomed to the new light. In place of the sunshine of a moment before, a halogen glare now bathed the room. He walked over to the window, threw the old lead casement back, and gazed out at the sky.
Without the visual baffle of the hologram on the dome’s interior, the sides were suddenly much nearer than he had imagined. Not only the sky had gone, but whole chunks of buildings which he had assumed were real, along with vistas of trees and distant spires and the hazy depths with their implied freedoms. In place of that pastoral vision rose the gunmetal walls of the dome itself. What remained of Avalon was almost more changed than that which had simply vanished. The warm sandstone of the older buildings, given a flesh-like softness by the summer sun, became suddenly grey and institutional in the cold new light. As that light now came from the entire circumference of the dome and from above, shadows were banished or cast in strange and conflicting multiples, and the river which had glittered moments before became a dead mineral vein in the earth. The starlings nesting in the eaves of the buildings rose as one from their roosts, and flew frantically in an escalating spiral around the walls.
“What the hell is going on?” John said.
Oates turned back to the room, and saw to his relief that even Charles looked shocked.
“I don’t know,” Charles said. “It has to be some kind of attack. The power supply hasn’t gone down, or we’d still be in the dark. Someone’s hacked into the weather programming.”
“How could that happen?” John asked.
“I don’t know! The Mortal Reformers, the perimeter fence is down in fifty places. If they could get a device through the outer shell of the building–”
There was a sound of screaming deep in the earth. The room shook, the burnished bronze lamp in the ceiling began to sway gently. Just as Oates had pictured Miranda that morning as a classical goddess sitting in this room, the associations echoed down to the present moment, and the scream made him think of the titan Atlas, shifting the world on his shoulders.
In the weird, flat light of the halogen rings, the calm strip of the river began to shake and churn. A couple who had been reclining in a punt at the beginning of the disaster clung to the edges of their craft as it rocked in the new turbulence. The sound from the earth reverberated from the metal walls, bouncing up and down the curved insides of the spa walls. It was not just the visual effect which had been disturbed, but whatever technology served to regulate the acoustics of the dome had also been corrupted. Rather than sounds being carried away into the open air, they collided weirdly within the hollow space, and, finding their escape blocked, returned to the ground. That was why the first scream in that initial moment of darkness had seemed so terrible. Charles’s eyes widened as he stared at the portion of the river visible from the headmaster’s study.
“The turbines… they’re turning the wrong way. They’ll flood the whole bloody school!”
“Where’s Miranda?” John said.
“She was just here…”
Oates knew who had made the noises in the darkness. Miranda had taken the opportunity to escape. She had slipped past them, and down the stairs. He strode over to the door, and looked down into the empty hall. There was no sign of her. Her disappearance made him irrationally afraid. Because she was not in his sight, he suddenly felt her everywhere. This was her world, and whilst she was invisible he was at her mercy.
The students had begun to exit their buildings, and to congregate in the middle of the grey courtyard, the late risers blinking sleep from their eyes. Oates could feel not fear, but indignance, fear’s precursor amongst a rich clientele. Indignance at a service paid for and not delivered. It was also outrage at the fact that they had made themselves ridiculous – Oates remembered the seductive effect of the sunshine and the cool water on his wrist.
“Right, you two, stay here.”
“I’m not in the business of taking orders from you, Inspector,” Charles said.
Oates strode back across the room, and punched Charles in the stomach. His fist sunk into the soft belly bulging over the trouser top, and caused the PR man to double over as the wind escaped him in a lunch-flavoured whoosh. As he bent coughing, Oates took his arm and wrenched it backwards. He unclipped the cuffs from his belt, and fastened one around Charles’s wrist. John looked at him, too shocked for the moment to react, and when Oates took his hand there was no resistance. The second after the tell-tale click, he wrenched it away, but by then it was too late. His fate and Charles’s were linked at the wrist.
“You can guard the suspect, sir.”
“Give me the keys, Detective Chief Inspector,” John said.
Oates turned his back on them, and made for the door.
“DCI Oates… Give me the fucking keys, you little prick,” John screamed, and lunged at him.
The Superintendent moved with a speed of which his physique gave no warning, and he would have taken Oates by surprise, had it not been for his tether. Charles was on his knees by the window, and the sudden yank of the metal handcuffs sent him sprawling on the floor. The torque popped something in the old policeman’s arm. Oates experienced an extraordinary moment of clarity as the enraged snarl of his superior’s face hurtled towards him, pulled up by a sudden pop.
It always makes a man look stupid, the second of incomprehension that precedes the recognition of pain, because the observer’s understanding has outrun that of the protagonist. Oates knew the moment he heard the sound that John’s shoulder was out, but it took a few seconds for John’s body to admit the disaster to his mind. It was that moment of superior understanding which freed Oates from any vestigal fear he might have felt in the usurpation of John’s authority. It gave him no pleasure, but here was absolute proof that he could know more about his boss than his boss knew about himself. John might be more clever, but in his moment of fear he had forgotten himself. Oates knew him more clearly. He knew him for a criminal.
When the screaming was under control, he relocated John’s shoulder. By this time Char
les had recovered, and he helped to hold the Superintendent down. Oates had originally intended to lock the two of them in the headmaster’s lodge, but when he looked out of the window he could see that Charles’s warning about the flooding had not been idle. Water was pouring into the court, not just from the doors adjacent to the river, but from every direction, as if the toilets and the drains all over the artificial school were backing up. Charles indicated he had to get to the control room to try to reverse the damage, or failing that to evacuate the guests in the induction facility. Oates refused to give them the keys, but allowed the two of them to leave cuffed together to see what good they could do fighting the chaos engulfing the spa. He set out to find Miranda.
HE SEARCHED THE rooms in the headmaster’s lodge. She had left no trace. He was coming back downstairs to the hall when he noticed the water leaking in under the old oaken door. The door had a step up that was at least eight inches above the level of the courtyard. He was standing there when his earpiece began to chirp in his breast pocket. He slipped it into his ear. The voice whispered, “Love of my life, love of my life.” It was Lori calling. At first he was nonplussed; the dome should have blocked out the signal. Then he realised that the jamming of radio waves must have been controlled by the same mechanism as the accoustic baffle and the imagery. The shell of the egg was becoming permeable to every brand of external influence.
“Hello my love. Is everything alright?”
“Yes, I’m just calling so you won’t worry.”
“Have you found a place to park up? Are things alright out there? It’s madness in here, I can tell you.”
“Oh, no we’re inside now. Some nice men came and picked us up.”
“Which men?”
“Some of those men in blue overalls, the groundskeepers. They said they’d been sent.”
“Where are you now?”
“Is everything alright Rob?”
“Everything’s fine. I just want to come and get you now.”
“Only your voice sounds funny.”
“I’m a bit out of breath, that’s all. Where are you?”
“We’re in that big gatehouse. Isn’t it strange, with the echoes? And there’s water coming in everywhere. I think we were best off outside.”
“Are you all together?”
“Yes. Well, Harry’s upstairs. He needed the toilet.”
“Is there anyone with him?”
“Your friend Miranda said she’d go with him and show him the way. They’ll be back down in a sec.”
“Have you still got the gun my love? Only I need to know where it is at all times. It’s not supposed to be out of my holster.”
“Oh Rob, I’m sorry, I didn’t think. The groundskeepers took it off me when we came in. They said it wouldn’t be allowed inside. It’s in a locker at reception, and they said we could pick it up on the way out. Rob?”
“I’m here.”
“I made sure to stay and see they locked it away. I’m sorry, I didn’t think.”
“Alright love.”
“Is that okay?”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. You stay put, I’ll come and get you.”
“Did you sort it out then?”
“What?”
“Rob! That bloke who murdered the financier.”
“Yeah, that’s all sorted.”
OATES STOOD FOR a moment with his gloved hand pressed to his mouth. Miranda had taken Harry, and he himself had been the agent of his family’s danger. He shook his head, and tried to reassure himself. Whatever reason Miranda might have for bringing them within the spa, she could not really mean to harm Harry. She was ruthless and amoral, he knew that from her own account of Prudence Egwu’s murder, but she displayed those qualities in the context and on the scale of commerce. The heads of major companies didn’t hurt little boys. Wherever she had taken Harry, she would still be wearing her business suit.
But he could not quite believe the words with which he comforted himself. A memory came back to him of meeting Miranda that morning in the upstairs rooms. What had she said to him? What about the deaths of those you love? It echoed back to him like a prophecy that offers no guidance, but reveals its truth in the wake of the disaster. Maybe the day before she had been a businesswoman, but the sudden falling away of the comforting illusions of the spa was both symptom and cause of a change in the old rules. In London he had seen the same thing, the city unmaking itself, the skin of civilisation peeled back to reveal the passions, raw and glistening. With her artificial world coming apart at the seams, Miranda might be capable of anything. He had to find them.
He pushed open the front door of the headmaster’s lodge, and a wave washed over his boots. The whole of the court was flooded. The water in the river was spilling over, flooding its banks and the school beyond. With the Victorian Gothic buildings, and the water rising above the height of the ground but not yet the stairs and doorways, St Margaret’s had become a sudden Venice, with placid little canals running under the stone archways.
Although the illusion of sky and distance had dissolved, and the sunshine with it, elements of the weather system persisted within the spa – a strong wind, almost tropical in its warmth, ruffled the rising surface of the water, and rain was falling on one half of the court, so that a clear line separated the new square lake, with one half bubbling under a rainstorm, and the other rippling under the zephyr. The rising water had found odd things to play with, and a bunch of balloons floated on the surface. From an open window on the second floor a regular fall of handwritten notes came fluttering down, blown by the breeze across the clear part of the water, then borne quickly down by the weight of the rain. The record Oates had heard on his way in was still playing somewhere, only the earthquake must have knocked the stylus into a scratch, as the saccharine chorus were singing over and over in a maddening chant.
The people in this landscape were a mixture of St Margaret’s original inhabitants and the crowds latterly gathered around the outside of the dome. Men and women in modern clothes were stumbling through the entrance to the courtyard, which meant Avalon’s perimeter had been well and truly breached. Whether they were rioters bent on smashing the spa, refugees seeking shelter, relatives hunting loved ones, agents of the Mortal Reformers come to complete their handiwork or a volatile combination of all these constituents, the moment they came through the gatehouse into the main square they stopped. Their intentions simply washed away in the rain. Like children from a warm land seeing snow for the first time, they stood overpowered by the strangeness of the scene.
The effect on those who had been staying in St Margaret’s was quite different. The management in its meticulous fostering of a youthful dependency had unmanned its guests. The initial shrill of complaint had been stifled with the rapid deterioration of circumstances. No waiter had come to cower beneath the recriminations of the customers, and with this proof of abandonment, the students were acting without any internal restraint.
Some of the guests had snapped back into command, and realising the dangers of being trapped in an overturned bowl filling with water, they were heading for the exit, where they met the press of invaders forcing their way in from outside. But a remarkable number of the guests were delighting in the chaos. They were playing in the warm rain, hanging out of the windows and hallooing in delight across the lake.
To his amazement, Oates saw a group of new-young which included a prominent actress and a footballer he recognised, but could not place, carry one of the punts from the river out through the door by the refectory, like a savage hunting party shouldering their canoe down to the banks of a jungle river. They were dressed only in their night things, boxer shorts and t-shirts. They dumped the boat in the waters of the court. Behind them came a new-young man with his arms full of wine bottles and a wheel of cheese, evidently looted from the kitchens, and the whole crew jumped into the punt and pushed off from the steps.
The scene before him in combination with his fear for Harry was almost more than Oate
s could bear. He felt his connection to reality, which had grown more tenuous with every moment of the last twenty-four hours, threaten to snap completely. He felt he might go mad.
He was familiar with the psychological effect of adrenaline shading into panic. Appearing first as an itch at the back of the mind, a spreading numbness would overtake the sense of self. You could do a terrible injury to your mind in that state, and not feel it until later. You could abandon a friend in trouble, run away from a battle or kill a man, and in the moment there would be no relationship between the action you took and the type of man you knew yourself to be. It was only later, when the panic receded, that you would be left to reconcile the thing you had done with the fact that you were the doer.
Oates had heard a friend describe it as feeling like you were an actor in a film, and that was half right; he would have said an extra in a film. You were not the leading man in these moments, but a bystander, rushed into the background to rhubarb whilst the real action took place somewhere else. In this respect, he almost found the state of panic to be closer to objective reality than normal life. After all, you couldn’t have seven billion actors all rightly believing they had been cast as the main part in the same movie. Someone must be wrong, and at that moment Oates felt it might be him.
The scene before him created a grotesque harmony with these sensations, for it looked like nothing so much as a film set. The visible struts in the ceiling with their glaring artificial lights were like a studio hanger, the gorgeous buildings a set, the weather effects and costumes like nothing so much as themselves. There was even the actress in the punt, playing the part of herself gone mad as a teenager. Only there was no director, and no one to shout cut. No beginning or end to the scene, only the endless, merciless imperative to perform. A voice broke out above him, like the word of God in its indifferent calm, coming from everywhere and nowhere, louder than any voice he had ever heard.
“This is an emergency announcement. Would all students and personnel please make their way to the evacuation points. This is not a drill. This is an emergency announcement…”