2184

by Martin Parish

  “I know where it is.”

  “You do. Good. So you'll head down the Finsbury Park station - I can loan you a torch – and call out Marengo. No one else'd call that out.”

  “I can do that,” I said slowly, although I was less than thrilled with the idea of exploring the long-abandoned Underground.

  “Here, I'll be back in a sec,” Martin said, shuffling through the doorway – the wolvo stood aside with the ready obedience common to its breed – and returning a minute later with a torch, one of the small rechargeable models. “Just take this and - What's that noise?” he added with a frown. I listened but heard only a gentle scratching like a metal instrument tapping on pasteboard. “Where's that coming from, I didn't hear that when I left.” As abruptly as it began, the sound receded into silence.

  “An insect. Nothing.”

  Martin cupped his hand to his ear and listened studiously for a moment in silence. Finally he gave up. “Suppose I'm just nervous, really. Ever since they were arrested. Never mind.”

  “There's one other thing I wanted to ask. Is there anyone else that knew about Marengo that you know of? Besides Bob? I got the impression from Shelley they were scattered and she didn't know where everyone was.”

  “No, it's not like that,” he said. “Two of them were killed and they got Shelley. Only Bob escaped. Almost as if he knew it was coming.”

  “And they didn't arrest you, obviously.”

  Martin shrugged. “I was surprised they never took me in to run me through the mindscan, but I wasn't about to offer them anything. That's why, like I said, I don't really want to know anything about what she was working on. I'd rather not know. It's safer.”

  “That's fine, I understand.”

  “Now there's one other thing I should tell you. When you get to the Seven Sisters entrance – it's probably better if you go down just before dark. You don't want to draw any attention or anything. What you could do -” Suddenly his lips contorted into a grimace like an African tribal mask. “Kill it, kill it!” A cockroach skittered across the floor with a steady motion like a battery-powered toy car. The cockroach had a shiny metallic sheen to it, as if it were made of burnished copper plate.

  On reflex I stamped on it and ground it beneath my heel. It didn't squash; instead, it struggled and cracked like the shell of a nut breaking.

  “My God, my God,” Martin said, shaking his head. “I don't believe it. I'm finished. I don't believe it.”

  “What – It's a cockroach.”

  “You think that was a cockroach?” He held his head in his hands. “No, it's a biorobot. Part biological, part electronic. It'll only take a thing like that a split second to send an entire recorded conversation. It was headed for the door; it wanted to get a clearer transmission.”

  Puzzled, I lifted my foot from the remains of the roach. Its shattered exoskeleton revealed a clump of thin silver wires like electronic intestines. I turned pale as I realized how narrowly we'd avoided disaster. “Did it already transmit?”

  “If it'd already made a transmission it wouldn't have bothered to head for the door. So I think we're still safe. If not I'll find out in five minutes.”

  “Hell.”

  “Now see here's the thing. There's three possibilities. Either they had that thing trailing me and that's why they never arrested me, or they had it trailing you, or it hooked onto us by chance. They have spies like that that just monitor random people, that's probably all it is - Either way there's – No, no,” he stammered. “This is no good. You're both leaving. Right now.”

  “All right then,” I said, nettled by his peremptory tone. “I've got the idea. We'll leave in just a minute.”

  “No. Right now.” The wolvo started to its feet, expectant like a bouncer keeping tabs on an unruly guest.

  “Fine,” I said, edging my way towards the wolvo with Kamal following me. “Just call off your mutt here.”

  “Come on, Vixen,” Martin called out, and the wolvo slunk out of the doorway. I waited until we were outside to put my impression into words. Vivid words, I admit, but apt enough.

  “Fucking coward.”

  Kamal shrugged as we retraced our steps towards the high street. “I can see why he'd push us out the door. He's finished. We just screwed him over.”

  “How?”

  “When that biorobot stops transmitting, they'll know he destroyed it. They might want to know how and why.”

  “That's true. Didn't think about that,” I said, my anger waning as I thought through Martin's unenviable predicament. “I wonder why they didn't arrest him in the first place if they were monitoring him.”

  “They probably hoped he'd be a magnet for anyone else that was left out of the group. Like a decoy to lure any of the others into a trap.”

  “At least we know where to find Shelley's husband,” I mused out loud. “If he's still there.”

  We followed the Seven Sisters road and reached the side entrance to the Finsbury Park station by late afternoon. A man walking on the other side of the street cast us a curious glance as we made our way inside. The Underground trains hadn't run for more than fifteen years.

  The interior was permanently twilit; a long passage led into the station towards a T-junction where an old ticket gate barred the way – the gates had all been left open. It had been many years since any passengers walked these silent passageways, but the old ghosts seemed to linger in the darkness, as if the station preserved a memory of another age. Beyond the ticket gate we turned right at the T to where stairs descended to the platforms and into absolute darkness, as black as empty space. The tunnels exhaled a gentle breath of air, as if a slow breeze wafted through the caverns of the Underground. I shone the flashlight around the first flight of stairs, the old signs ghostly in the pale beam of the torch. “Piccadilly Line. Victoria Line. Way out.”

  “Nothing for it,” I said. “Guess we'd better head down to the platforms.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don't know. We'll try all of them if we have to.” I felt my way down with the pool of torchlight for a guide. I tried to tread softly but the patient stillness magnified my footsteps like splashes down a well. At last we reached the foot of the stairs. I felt reluctant to go any further. The torchlight beam played across a debris-strewn floor: a shoe, an empty suitcase, a plastic bag, mementos of forgotten lives. It struck me that to take refuge in this eternal night a fugitive must be completely desperate – so desperate they cared little about themselves.

  “So where do we go from here?” Kamal said in hushed tones like a patron in a library.

  “I really don't know. Martin could've told us more than this if he'd wanted to, the stupid bastard.”

  “If he's down the tube station – if this is where he is – he should be right around here. Maybe even listening to us.”

  “I feel like an absolute idiot doing this,” I whispered. “Here goes. Marengo!” I called out, and the sound echoed in the concrete cave. “Marengo!” I called it out again and waited.

  It was a minute before I heard an answer approaching us from one of the other platforms.

  Footsteps. Soft, flabby footsteps like naked feet. Heavy panting, like a lumbering dog on the run.

  “Get out,” I shouted. Kamal turned, tripped over the first step and recovered himself. I shone the torch on the stairs to light the way as Kamal and I dashed back up, energized by fear, the small case I'd carried from Reading swinging in my hand. At each step I expected an invisible hand to clutch my feet and drag me back into the blackness. From the stairs we sprinted down the tunnel towards the Seven Sisters exit. There was no doubt about it now:flabby footsteps had gained on us. The ticket gates puzzled our enemy, because the sound halted for a moment then the loping patter resumed.

  “Stop,” I called out to Kamal, catching my breath as we reached the safety of daylight. Our pursuer halted also. I shone the torch down the passage to reveal a face like a leering mask. A pair of ruby-coloured eyes shone back at me like cat's eyes.
>
  The creature waited in the passage because it was nocturnal. The black rubbery skin melted into the shadows as it retreated, walking on all four long arms with sabre-sharp claws protruding from its twelve fingers. Its gorilla chest and wiry limbs were reminiscent of an ape, but no ape has a long protruding jaw bristling with serrated teeth. It was a stray orzillo, a genetically engineered predator, either escaped or deliberately set free by the Mods to clean up any Mongrels hiding down in the Underground. Probably it lived in the station and came up to prowl at night.

  “Well,” I said slowly as the beast backed out of the light, “I think I know what happened to Shelley's husband.” An orzillo could easily outrun a human. In my mind's eye I saw a vivid image of a man crouching in the darkness, the flabby footsteps approaching him, waiting a second too many to run, his last scream echoing down the deserted Tube.

  “Almost happened to us,” Kamal said.

  An unpleasant idea occurred to me. “You don't think what Martin told us was just crap? Do you think he told us that just to get rid of us? You know, send us down there and-”

  “Don't let's get paranoid,” Kamal said. “I don't think he knew either. I mean, I didn't know any of those were down in the Tube or the sewers and I live in London.”

  “He must not have been down there very long then. I'd heard there were orzillos loose in the subway or something but I never believed it. That explains a few things. In my neighbourhood, anyway. Homeless people vanishing, cats disappearing, stuff like that.”

  “That's terrible” Kamal said, deeply shocked. “That's absolutely terrible.”

  “What, the cats?” I laughed. I'd been badly frightened but it was over and we were alive. “So it's more terrible about the cats than Shelley's husband?”

  “Well, that's terrible too. I'm just saying, you know, you think of something like that chasing down a cat and that's really awful, you know, like-”

  “Yeah, it is. Listen,” I said, recovering my self-possession. “I live over in Islington. We might as well go by my place for tonight, then tomorrow morning we can do the rest of this with Marengo.”

  “Is that the-”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. I couldn't figure out what you and Martin were talking about at first when you said Marengo.”

  “You thought I was just calling that out for tan Shll of it.”

  “You know, I wasn't sure.” We walked northwards from the station along Upper Street. The calm of the upper world seemed superficial by contrast with the creatures of the Underground. I wondered how many of the passer-by knew about the orzillo living in the station – or if there were more than one. Perhaps the whole Tube was infested; perhaps the Mods meant to deny us the Underground in the event of another war.

  But conjecture aside, we had a more immediate problem. In an instant all my plans had collapsed. Up until then, I'd assumed I could find Shelley's husband and leave the execution of the plot to him – or whatever members of the terror cell remained. But now the attack would be mine to carry out from first to last. I would have to figure out how to activate and use the virus myself. Formerly I was only a messenger drafted by chance; now I would have to change roles. How could I carry out a terrorist attack? what would it entail?

  “See, here's the trouble,” I said slowly. “I'll have to figure out how to print this thing and use it myself. Shelley's husband is dead, Martin's probably finished and even if he's not he's useless. But I don't know how I'm going to do this. I don't even know what I'll have to do.”

  “We can figure it out. I'll help you.”

  His remark seemed incongruous and I turned to him, baffled. “You know what? Kamal. I don't understand. Why you want to help. I mean, you could just mosey off and forget all about this. Shelley didn't tell you, she told me.”

  “It's very simple.” He shrugged. “I owe you one. And I don't really have anything else I've got to do. So why not? And I mean, once you do this, London's going to be completely different. Who knows what'll happen?”

  “Yes, but you're a Heavenward, you're neutral-”

  Kamal grimaced. “No, no, it's not like that. See, you don't understand. You keep on talking about Heavenward as if there's some sort of huge cult. Of course I believe God meant there to be an Mod elite. But it's not the Mods or Mongrels that're important. We're just part of the plan.”

  The plan? I said to myself. What plan? Whose? “But what does that actually mean? I don't understand.”

  “Whether we win or they win is the same thing. It's not them or us that's important. It's individuals.”

  “But, see, that's just it. If you really don't care either way, if you're happy with things the way they are, why would you even bother to-”

  “Because I want to help you, so I will. It has nothing to do with us or them. And if we keep on talking about it like this we'll get recorded by one of these hidden monitors and we'll have some friends come to join us,” he added in an undertone. “So keep it down. We're back in London now.”

  I didn't understand. For a moment I wondered whether hehad an ulterior motive but I dismissed that idea. It would have to be a powerful ulterior motive that would induce him to run these kinds of risks. If the Mods arrested us they would condemn both of us to the same fate. I gave up puzzling over the riddle of Kamal's acquiescence in Marengo; it was welcome enough, I wanted his help, and there's no point looking a gift horse in the mouth.

  Unless it's also a Trojan horse.

  Stop it, I told myself, you're turning paranoid. After tomorrow I might have a struggle to survive. It was essential I keep clear-headed and focus on the present, as single-minded as a martial artist fighting a bout. There was no need to suspect Kamal, any more than to suspect Martin. Or Shelley.

  And so selfish is the human psyche that – truth be told – I felt a little pleased we hadn't found Shelley's husband. Now I'd have a chance to see Becky. To explain Marengo and what was about to happen. To resolve all my nagging fears. And of course she wouldn't be expecting me. She would have no idea I was coming.

  Then she would be all the more surprised to see me, I thought, and my heart leapt as I imagined the look that would cross her face. I hadn't seen her in more than four months. If nothing else those four months had taught me just how much she meant to me.

  I stepped off the pavement to cross and Kamal followed suit; a bell tinkling announced a cyclist turning the corner. I knew all these streets like the back of my hand. It wouldn't be far now.

  We left the main road and turned down a familiar lane: the same brick houses, the poorly-mended fences, the grass growing through the cracks in the asphalt. I didn't notice how shabby or poorly-tended it looked. It was different to me simply because it was hers, as if she had altered and made it more beautiful simply by being there.

  “Here we go, it's this one over on the right.”

  “It's a TA?” he said, using the common abbreviation for tenant's association.

  “Yeah, unfortunately.” I leapt up the stairs two at a time and hesitated before I knocked, like delaying a pleasure so you can savour it in advance. I imagined the look on her face when she saw me; the things she'd say; but I didn't want to say anything just then, only to kiss her. I paused a moment and at last I knocked twice and waited.

  There was no answer.

  Surprised, I tried the door handle and it turned. It was unlocked. I opened the door, feeling disoriented like a child lost in a strange house. The bedsit was empty. Everything that could be removed had been stripped, down to the Venetian blinds we'd stolen from a disused flat. Had I knocked at the wrong door? Had I made some mistake? No, the address was right. It was our flat; but Becky wasn't there. For a moment I was dazed with disappointment.

  “What the hell?” I said. “I don't understand.”

  “The neighbours might know.”

  I brushed past Kamal back down the stairs and crossed over to the place on the first story. A couple I knew with a young child lived there. I beat frantically on the door. There was
no one at home. I'd have to – what could I do?

  "My God, it's Mark. You scared me. I thought someone was trying to break in. You don't have to knock so hard as all that. What's the matter?" She was in her late twenties, her short hair brown carelessly arranged. She still had the fresh plumpness of a young girl, a look that most people mistake for beauty but quickly fades into a flabby middle age.

  "Do you know where Becky is?" I asked, breathing hard as if I'd just run a race. She raised her eyebrows in surprise.

  "Well, she's been gone a month and a half now. I thought you'd've known."

  "Gone? Gone where?"

  "I think it was some place in South London, I don't know where, really. It was quite a long time ago.”

  "South London?” I asked, incredulous. “She moved to south London?” Kamal had caught up with me by that time and waited politely at a short distance.

  "That general area, yeah. She didn't have all that much to move anyway, and another fellow helped her move her stuff. He had a bicycle and one of those little trailers, you know, so I guess he could make it over there and back quicker than I could. She gave away some other stuff that was too big for them, I think."

  "Why-" I started to stammer something stupid, but then I realized it was no use. "And you don't know which street or anything?”

  "I wish I knew anything else, but that's it, really. But listen, I haven't seen you in forever. Becky wasn't sure what'd happened to you, and I thought-”

  "Thank you," I said, and turned away. I didn't want to hear anything else, I didn't want to tell her how I'd been. It was rude, but I was too unnerved to sham a politeness I didn't feel.