Eliza realized that her student would be long gone by now. She resolved to try to talk to him the next day, catch up with him before he headed into the forest.
She peered into the blackness, but it was so complete that her eyes couldn’t adjust at all. She turned to go.
After a few paces, she stopped, suddenly realizing what was wrong with what she had just seen. She stepped back to the gate. First of all, she examined the rusted hinges. They were covered in oil. Fresh oil. Then she knelt carefully on the rock and squinted at the padlock she’d half-glimpsed on the other side of the gate. She was right. It was brand new.
Eliza stood still for another minute or so, thinking. Then she took a pocket knife from her bag and, as she made her way back to the road, cut an X into the bark of about twenty trees, leaving a trail.
At dinner that night, she told Mike what she’d seen and heard.
“It may have nothing to do with him, and I may be worrying about nothing. But would you take a look?”
Mike looked across the table at his wife. If she was worried, there was bound to be a damn good reason for it. He squeezed her hand and smiled.
“It’s almost certainly nothing,” he said. “Dangerous mines are sometimes sealed up to stop folk from wandering in and never wandering out again.” He didn’t add the fact that the local sheriff’s department would have been notified if that had been the case.
“I’ll take a hike up there in the morning,” he said. “Now don’t you worry about it.”
She smiled in answer and he returned it, but he could see the concern in her eyes. He decided to take bolt cutters with him and put her mind at rest.
13
Mexico City
Present Day
Three days after his encounter with Mic, the bureaucratic alien, Seb sat at the keyboard in Mee’s tiny studio and tweaked a low pass filter on a big, spacey synth sound he was programming. He was trying to evoke something that would make the listener feel transported to a new world. He wanted to make people feel the way he had felt when he’d first heard the music at the beginning of Bladerunner—a sound that conveyed a vast, futuristic landscape. He had already added some deliberately lo-fi drums to Mee’s vocal and the result was a grainy, gritty, dystopian vision that had a great hook in the chorus, where she repeated, “the lights in the city are gone, one by one, like stars behind clouds, and there’s nowhere to run”. For someone with such an appetite for life, some of Mee’s lyrics could be a little on the dark side.
He played back the intro again, eyes closed, lost in the music. When he felt an urgent tug at his sleeve, he jumped so violently the headphones fell off and landed on the keyboard, adding an incongruous major third to the chord.
“Seb!” said Mee, “quickly.”
He followed her through to the other room, where the TV was showing live pictures of a fire in New York. The caption read, “Unfolding tragedy as family trapped at top of notorious slum landlord’s tenement.” Someone was being interviewed as flames climbed up the building in the background. The shocked-looking man speaking was a resident of the burning building. He said the building had no working smoke alarms and the fire-escape had collapsed months ago but hadn’t been replaced.
“We all knew something like this would happen one day,” he said. “We’ve gone without heating, without water sometimes. Vashtar don’t care about us. He wants to force us out, so he can hike the rent up.” He looked back at the building, cowering as there was an explosion. Glass blew out from a third-floor window.
“Folk still trapped up at the top,” he said. “Felicia and her kids. Someone’s gotta do something!” The cameras panned across the scene. Fire trucks were in attendance, but it was clear the fire was too fierce for anyone to try to enter the building.
Seb2 brought up Walking options as Seb looked at the screen. At the side of his vision, he saw a live image of the building on the TV screen, then his point of view shifted as he looked inside. There were dozens of burning rooms flicking across his vision, each room the same, then—suddenly—the same room, but without a fire. In that room, Seb could see a young woman cooking, a baby on her hip, while three other children watched TV in the corner.
“Parallel universes,” said Seb2. “Don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”
Mee looked up from the TV.
“Seb?” she said, “can you do—”. She stopped talking. Seb had gone.
Seb Walked to the rear of the building. He could make out the firefighters trying to find a way in, but even as he watched them, they backed away from the intense heat.
“Whole place has been subdivided inside,” shouted one to his boss. “Don’t know what materials they used, but it’s going up fast. Chopper coming out?”
“On its way,” shouted the other man.
“It’s going to be too late,” said Seb2. “Smoke inhalation will kill them first.”
Seb Walked to the undamaged apartment Seb2 had found. As he appeared, the infant riding his mom’s hip turned and saw him, smiling excitedly at the man who had appeared out of nowhere. No one else noticed him.
He Walked again, this time moving sideways, staying in the same apartment—but the scene was very different. Everything was burning. He felt no sense of heat as his clothes burned off and the outermost layers of skin on his body hardened and changed. As he moved, it felt like he was wearing some kind of plastic mesh, although his body looked no different. There was no sign of any life.
“They’re in the bathroom,” said Seb2. “The mother—Felicia—has soaked towels and put them at the bottom of the door.”
“Smart,” said Seb. “What can we do?”
“The fire crews can’t get close enough to extend the ladder at the back here,” said Seb2, “we need the fire escape.”
Seb ran to the window and yanked it up. The rush of oxygen caused a surge of heat in the room. There was a scream from the bathroom.
“Ayúndanos! Ayúndanos! Help us!”
“Stay calm, ma’am,” Seb shouted back as he looked down at the fire escape. “We’ll have you out of here in a moment.” There were metal stairs attached to the outside of the tenement block, but they stopped four floors below the floor where they were now needed. Rusted bolts on the brickwork showed where they had once supported a staircase, but at some stage they had been removed. He looked down eight stories at the mess in the yard below. Clearly visible were the iron stairs that should have been in place outside the window.
“What the-,” thought Seb.
“Slum landlords,” said Seb2. “Later.” Seb reached out his hand and let his mind become instantly still.
When he had first begun to use Manna, he had needed to sound pieces of music internally, so that his mind could reach the balanced point of silence which enabled him to manipulate the power. Bach worked best. But since absorbing the Roswell Manna, Seb had only to turn his attention inward and still his mind, his thoughts not disappearing as such, just becoming background noise, like clouds around a mountain. Now, as he looked at where the staircase ended on the fourth floor, his awareness expanded to include not just his own consciousness and body, but also the building itself; its bricks, mortar, glass, wood, the millions of insects living inside and out, the ivy, moss and fungi that had taken hold in the cracks. His fingers twitched and the stairs extended themselves toward him. Every second that passed saw new steps growing organically out of the existing staircase, climbing rapidly upward like a flower seeking the sun.
When the steps were half a floor away, Seb ran to the bathroom.
“I’m coming in,” he shouted. “Stand back from the door.”
He pushed against the door and it slid open, revealing a terrified woman hugging a baby and three children as they cowered against the tub. Her eyes widened in disbelief when she saw Seb.
“Oops,” said Seb2. “Naked.”
Seb glanced down, but even as he did so, a firefighter’s uniform grew out of his flesh, a visored helmet momentarily obscuring his vision. He lo
oked back at the woman, who had evidently decided she had just hallucinated a naked rescuer. Possibly a side effect of smoke inhalation.
“This way!” shouted Seb, “quickly.” He shielded the worst of the flames with his body as they followed him into the apartment. The heat would have burned them, but an invisible barrier extending five feet on either side of Seb, protected the family from the flames. When she realized they were heading for the window, the woman shook her head and pulled her children closer.
“No!” she said. “No stairs!” Seb saw something give way in her face as she accepted they’d lost all hope of getting out. She began to sit down, pulling the children with her. The baby began to wail, but stopped in a fit of coughing.
Seb put his hand under her chin.
“Felicia! Felicia!” he said. At the unexpected use of her name, she looked up slowly. The man above her was trying to say something. He wanted something of her. But she was so tired. He saw him look at the necklace she always wore. It was a cheap wooden thing, but she had worn it ever since her mother had passed. It was an angel. The man looked back at her and smiled. She couldn’t move. Then she saw it—wings began to unfurl on his shoulders. He stood up and let the beautiful white wings open out on either side of him, nearly touching the apartment walls. She began crying. A miracle. He held out a hand. She felt new strength fill her, and she placed her own hand in his.
When they reached the window, the stairs were in place; solid, safe, bolted securely to the side of the building. Felicia didn’t hesitate. She sent her eldest boy out first, followed by his brother and sister. Lastly, she climbed out with the baby. She looked back once as they made their way to safety. The angel was smiling. He turned and walked back into the burning building. She kissed the angel hanging on the chain around her neck and thanked God for sending her deliverer.
When the family walked to the front of the building, they were immediately surrounded by firefighters who hurried them to a waiting ambulance.
The chief fire officer, who—minutes earlier—had given up all hope of any more survivors after seeing the state of the fire escape, turned speechlessly to the rest of his crew. They looked at each other in disbelief as a roar behind them signaled the fact that the fire had finally consumed the interior of the building. No more than a blackened shell would be left within a few hours.
“An angel saved us—sent by God—an angel! It’s a miracle!” The chief thought he might not mention her explanation on his report, but as of now, he couldn’t think of a better one.
Cubby Vashtar looked at the lion’s head mounted on the wall of his study. It was his latest trophy, brought back after a safari in Nairobi the previous month. The poachers had been hard to find at first and they had been extremely reluctant to trust him, suspecting some kind of law enforcement sting was behind his request. But as usual, cold hard cash—and plenty of it—had persuaded them that Cubby had no interest in their illegal ivory trade. He just wanted to kill a lion. A really, really big one. A ferocious one. A really big, ferocious lion he could safely kill using a high-powered rifle with telescopic sights from a jeep a quarter mile away.
“Magnificent,” Cubby murmured as he raised a glass of champagne and toasted the golden shaggy head.
Cubby was an intelligent man and had made his life choices with his eyes well and truly open. His father had come to America with nothing but his dignity and had died without even that. Cubby was a believer in the American Dream. His father had believed in it, too, but had never found his true calling. He had entered the system, followed its rules, obeyed the law, paid his taxes and accepted the hardships that came along as an inevitable part of life. “Bad things happen,” Cubby’s father had said, as he lay dying from a disease that better health insurance could have treated. “It’s the immutable law of the universe.” Immutable my ass, thought Cubby.
His cellphone vibrated in his pocket. He opened his humidor and selected a fat Cohiba Behike Laguito cigar, rolling it between his fingers, bringing it to his nose to appreciate the subtle fragrance. The cell stopped, then immediately started vibrating again. He sighed and answered it.
“What?” he said, taking a last look at his trophies. The brown bear was spectacular, and he’d always had a soft spot for the silverback gorilla, possibly due to the insane amount of money it had cost him to hunt it, but the lion was definitely his new favorite. The king of the jungle. He walked outside onto the verandah as he listened to Sanjeev describe the evening’s events.
“Which building?” he said. “Oh, ok, it’s insured. It’s good news, actually. I’ll rebuild and get some bankers in there. It’s an up and coming area—don’t you read the New Yorker, Sanj?”
He chuckled as he sat down and took the cigar cutter from his pocket, neatly severing the end and lobbing it into the artificial lake he’d had built in the garden. As he listened to Sanjeev talk, he frowned.
“So, what’s the problem?” He put the unlit cigar onto a glass ashtray on the cast-iron table. He wouldn’t be able to enjoy it until he got rid of Sanjeev.
“Yes, I know, I know, the smoke alarms didn’t work, the fire escape collapsed, there was lead in the paint, blah, blah, blah. Sanj, little brother, if you’re ever going to learn how to run this business, you’re going to have to understand the importance of planning ahead. Never mind, you’ll see soon enough. Just stop nagging me, you old woman. Go away. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He ended the call, turned the cellphone off and threw it back into the house over his shoulder. It made no sound as it landed, so it must have hit the tiger skin rug.
“God, I’m such a cliché,” he said to himself, smiling. He lit the cigar, took a few initial puffs and leaned back on the cushioned chair, sighing contentedly.
Cubby had chosen crime as his route to pursuing the American Dream. Low-level stuff at first, a little drug dealing in school, which financed a protection racket, then a downpayment on a repossessed house a block away from where he’d grown up in Queens. He’d divided the house into five tiny apartments and rented the rooms to immigrant workers who didn’t mind paying a little over the normal rates to someone who didn’t ask many questions. The first time someone got behind on the rent, they had experienced a nasty fall, breaking a leg in three places, before being evicted. After that, his tenants were prompt with their payments.
Cubby worked, ate and slept, no more. No luxuries, no vacations, no women. He’d given himself five years to make his first million as a landlord in his father’s adopted city. He had got there in three. He did it by cutting corners, by overcharging, by ignoring maintenance requests, staying on the right side of the law by the narrowest possible margin. And on the occasions when he crossed the line, he had a very expensive lawyer who was worth every cent.
The fire in his apartment building tonight was arson, of that Cubby was quite sure. He was sure because he’d paid $20,000 to get the job done. Even better, the trail he’d carefully left made it look like a rival landlord might have been behind it. Despite Sanjeev’s misgivings, Cubby knew there would be no trouble with the City. Most of the building’s occupants would be too scared to testify against him. And as an insurance policy, he always kept a few tenants on the payroll. They would swear under oath that the smoke alarms had been regularly checked, the building was safe and the fire escape—if it could be proved to have collapsed—must have done so during the fire because it was definitely there that morning.
Cubby slowly blew a cloud of smoke into the night air. He wondered if there would be any fatalities this time. People dying meant paperwork, lawyers and expense, as he knew to his cost. Everything was more straightforward when the only damage was to property.
There was a movement in the bushes beside the lake. Cubby sat up straighter and felt under the table for the shotgun. It was there, securely cradled in its brackets. Oiled, loaded and ready to fire. Cubby’s house featured at least one concealed weapon in every room. Sanjeev thought he was paranoid. Cubby knew he was merely being realistic. He was
a ruthless crime-funded slum landlord, living like a prince while his tenants scraped by in conditions unfit for dogs. Who wouldn’t want to kill him? Cubby checked the safety was off and eased the weapon onto his lap.
“Don’t be shy,” he called. “Come on out. I would rather you had made an appointment, but if you’re so desperate to talk to me, let’s talk.” He put the cigar in the ashtray and had another sip of champagne. He’d had angry tenants try to break in before, but a high fence, razor wire and warnings of guard dogs were normally a sufficient deterrent. He didn’t actually own any dogs, just a movement-sensitive device that played recorded growling whenever it was triggered. He hadn’t heard it tonight, though. Strange.
The bushes rustled some more, then a figure stepped forward. It was a man in his fifties, Hispanic, tired-looking. Kind of familiar, although Cubby couldn’t think why. The man was wearing a janitor’s uniform exactly like the Supers in Cubby’s tenements. Cubby knew it was exactly like it because he’d bought a box of five hundred in that baby-shit yellow color no one else wanted to buy. They were dirt cheap, that was the main thing.
The man took a step forward. He had slicked down hair. The name badge over his pocket was close enough to read now. It said Hector. He was about ten feet away. Cubby lifted the shotgun off his lap and swiveled it around to point at the intruder.
“That’s close enough, Hector,” he said. “I guess you work in one of my buildings. What’s the problem?” Cubby didn’t want to have to shoot the guy—it made such a mess—but he was well within his rights. He was a trespasser, after all. More importantly, Cubby had a reputation to preserve. It wasn’t as if he could let the man walk away with no consequences. He decided to aim low. A kneecap shot was his best option; maximum pain, permanent debilitating damage and a clear signal to any other unhappy employees to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Before he could pull the trigger, the man spoke.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 44