I almost burst out laughing, the idea was so simple; and yet it ought to tie anyone coming after that thing in knots. I’d planned to stop off at my new offices in the C-Tran regional headquarters, anyway. When I got there it was late afternoon, almost everyone had gone home, and when I wandered into the service department, as I often did, it was almost empty. Then, with the spear neatly stowed, all I needed was a few minutes with my desk terminal to set it all up via the central computer. As simply as that, the spear was off my hands. I spent a few minutes more carefully doctoring the records to remove any traces of what I’d done, and touched the on-screen button to log off. But instead of the usual prompt panel an error message flashed up, and I swore. Then I saw what it was.
**URGENT**IN IMMINENT EVENT SYSTEM WIPEOUT*INTERFACE PORT S WITH PORT G**URGENT**
‘Oh, my God!’ I groaned, with the awful feeling that I, Chairman of the Board, Herr Ratspräsident himself, was about to crash the entire network and throw the business into total chaos. Then I remembered a couple of things, and swore again, violently. Firstly, this software had failsafes on its failsafes, for obvious reasons; I ought to know, I’d insisted on them. Secondly, I was using a smart terminal that didn’t have anything as plebeian as i/o ports, S, G or Z for that matter; and thirdly, this was totally different software from the stuff in my little portable, a different operating system, even, and yet here was the message in the same format. So it must be a virus, probably originating within the company; somebody playing sillybuggers, right enough. They might have made it funnier; then they’d have something to laugh about in the dole queue, when I caught up with them. But that could wait.
I logged off again without a trace of trouble, and sat back with a sigh, staring at the great skyscape on the wall opposite, copied from the one I’d commissioned with microscopic care for my original office. A vast blue skyscape, an archipelago of moonlit cloud and rising above it a great cloud-arch like a frozen wave, and sailing through it, to the stars beyond, a tall square-rigged merchantman with moonlight silvering its sails. It always used to puzzle my visitors; I told them it was an allegory of the romance of commerce. But for me it could have been painted from the life. I got up wearily; it set all kinds of longings stirring, that painting, but right now I just wanted to go home.
I heard the sirens as I was shutting things down. When I turned off the lights I saw the distant glow through the slats of the blinds. I went over to the window and peered out; it looked bad, a fire slap in the middle of the business district, office country. One more reason to be glad I’d resisted locating us there. I locked up and made my way down along the corridors, deserted now except for a few cleaners and the odd nighthawk still ploughing through the day’s workload. I waved as I went past, and they waved back, but there was always a touch of hesitancy, of awe maybe; I didn’t like that, though I knew it was inevitable. I did want to be open, accessible, able to communicate directly with staff at all levels …
I snorted. I was thinking in management jargon. I just wanted to be able to talk to people, that was all, and have them talk to me. It had been that way at the old firm, a friendly place even when it got somewhat tough; I’d always been able to tell Barry to get out of my office when I had work to do, and when I took over I tried to foster the same spirit. Almost everybody had known me on the way up, after all, but here that just wasn’t possible. Right from day one I was the Old Man, I had too much power over pay and promotion and prospects. It isolated me at every level. That research chief in the marketing department, Angela something, she wasn’t at all bad-looking, she was bright, reasonably unattached or so it seemed; I liked what I’d seen of her, I had a fair idea she liked me. Suppose I dated her, though? Just asking her out was a hundred times more difficult when I was the captain of her ship, the master of her fate, and not just one of the guys from the office. Would she feel she couldn’t say no? Would she feel she could take advantage? Suppose we ended up in bed? That took on all kinds of dodgy connotations, and the same questions applied. Okay, they’d never worry a lot of bosses I knew, but I was learning. It was another reason I didn’t go for Lutz’s kind of temptations, or any of the others you run into on the international circuit. The trouble was that the glow of virtue didn’t warm the bed any, and I hate electric blankets.
I stepped out of the lift to the night porter’s desk and logged off my security tag, just like the lowliest typist. With the porters, at least, I could exchange the odd casual word.
‘Evening, Macallister! Any idea what’s going on in town?’
The head porter rubbed his short-cut Navy beard. ‘Aye, Mr Fisher – o’ course you’d not’ve heard, you bein’ away at the fair and that. It’d be some sort of protest march, from all they say. God knows what kind o’ crap they’re on aboot, but it wis peaceful enough at first. Seems some rough lots tagged along, hard-line anarchists or whatever they call themselves this year. It’s they startit some fights. That’s all I hear so far, but it must be gettin’ worse, by they sirens – eh?’ As if to underline it, another one went by, an ambulance this time.
‘Sounds like it. Right. I’ll be watching my way home, then. Put a board up, will you? Warn people – and if they need taxis to get them home, get them on the firm’s account, all right? Cleaners and everyone. No, don’t bring the car round, I’ll manage myself. Night!’
I could see the glow in the sky quite clearly as I turned out of the car park. My usual route home led right past there, but it would probably be blocked with emergency vehicles and TV crew and general rubberneckers; I’d better try going around the side, though that meant a much longer and fiddlier drive. So I went zigzagging round the back-streets, and sat drumming my fingers at innumerable traffic lights; and all the time the noise grew louder. At last I was past the centre, and turned back towards the old dockland area, now heavily residential, where I lived. But as I turned out onto the broad downhill road that was the main route there, I jammed my foot hard on the brake. The wide street was a rolling mass of smoke, shining a hellish red, and through the air something came flying like a minor meteor to burst on the roadway in front of me. There was a sudden ball of flame, and I locked the brakes, skidded across the junction and fetched up smack against the roundabout in the centre. Normally a concrete tub of rather grubby flowering shrubs, now it was a mass of little fires, smoking and spitting.
Another petrol bomb came whizzing out of the redlit mirk and burst nearby; it didn’t go off, but the petrol ran down the gutter and touched the rest, and suddenly the street opening I’d come out of was a sheet of fire. There was a roar, a siren wail, and I barely managed to get the car in gear and pull away before a huge fire engine came racing past, right across where I’d been. I saw with a sense of dizzying unbelief that it was on fire itself, trailing flames from one flank. A trail of yelling, jeering forms ran and capered after it, grotesque against the leaping firewall. But it outdistanced them; and then they saw me.
I threw the car about; it was fast, but its turning circle was on the wide side, and I had to swing it around more or less under their noses. Stones bounced off the long bonnet, smashed one headlight – and suddenly there were more of them, running out in my path, cutting me off from escape downhill. I couldn’t drive through them, not without building up speed. I kept on turning till I was facing uphill, and accelerated suddenly away as another petrol bomb exploded just behind. I was heading closer to that louring glare, and as I drew closer I saw the fire that shed it: it figured, the Sixties hotel and shopping complex, thoroughly in flames – and, beside it, no fire engines, but the burnt-out skeleton of an ambulance. Debris was falling into the empty road, and the smoke was becoming choking; going back downhill didn’t look like a good idea any more. There was a handy side-road just a little way up, if I could reach it – but as I slowed down, a figure dashed across and sprang up on the running board.
‘Get me up top!’ he shouted. ‘To the main street!’
I was about to throw him off when I recognized his dark coveralls
as police riot gear, with shoulder stripes. ‘You’ll be lucky!’ I yelled back. ‘How about Ramsay Lane?’
‘Don’t be daft, man, there’s a nest of them down there broken into the pub! We’re regrouping up there, we’ll get you behind our lines!’
‘Regrouping?’ I steered us through a chicane of smouldering cars. ‘You mean they broke you?’
‘What’s it bloody look like?’ he snarled.
‘But protesters—’
‘These aren’t ordinary protesters! They half killed a couple of marchers who tried to reason with ’em! We were in the shopping centre, supposed to cut off anyone escaping through there. Escape! They bloody attacked in force. There were thirty of us in there. I don’t know if anyone else got out—’
I braked again, so hard he almost fell off. A ragged line of dark shapes was drawn up across the road, facing away from us; plastic riot shields glinted red. Some of them swung around sharply as they heard the car, but the policeman jumped down and hailed them. There was a swift muttered to-and-fro under raised visors, a crackling radio conversation, then he turned back to me. ‘You’d best head back down the hill. There’s trouble up here.’
‘That’s where I came from. Petrol bombs.’
He swore again. ‘Better leave the car, then. Go down by the theatre there, cut through the buildings, down the steps – shit!’ A pop, a flash and the line broke, with men slapping at themselves as patches of flame blossomed on their coveralls, and one man, unforgettably, scrabbling under his visor and screaming. Somebody shouted through a loudhailer, and the whole line seemed to take one deep breath and surge forward, shouting, into the main street. Petrol bombs whizzed through the air; shouts and shrieks carried. My policeman scooped up a fallen shield and a metal bar from a shattered bus shelter, and loped after them. Sweating, I began to turn the car; but the road was narrower here, and I was reversing for the last time when I was suddenly surrounded by yelling, capering figures. As quickly as that I felt the car lift under me, tip sideways; sticks and stones and bare hands battered at my head as I fell sideways.
It was my suitcases that saved me, toppling out with a thump; the crowd on that side jumped back and I was able to roll out before the car crashed onto its side. Somebody aimed a boot at me, I grabbed it and twisted and he fell over, and in the smoky confusion the others started kicking him; I scrambled back in time to see somebody strike a match and flick it away. They must have poured petrol first; the car caught with a roar, and its sudden flare exposed their faces as they jumped back, gloating, manic masks of men and women, square, ugly, heavy. Momentarily forgotten, I grabbed the nearest by the shoulder and punched him right on his flattened nose. He reeled back against the burning car, shrieked horribly and ran off with his clothes alight, trailing sparks; the others ran after him, shouting, leaving me alone with the car. There was nothing I could do to put it out; large parts of a Morgan’s frame are ash wood, and the tank was almost full. I’d barely made the nearest side turning when it went off with a tremendous roar, sending me staggering into the dark.
This wasn’t an area I knew very well, and to my shocked mind, in the smoke and stark furnace light, with all the streetlamps and window lights out, it could have been the circles of Hell. Demons roamed it, little knots of them all over the place, doing what they liked with nobody to stop them. The power was off, telephones dead; the few times any kind of emergency vehicle appeared they came flocking up out of nowhere and barraged it with stones and petrol bombs. Slinking from doorway to doorway, staying in the shadows cast by the flickering fires, I began to realize what had happened. This part of town was cut off; the rioters controlled it now. That wouldn’t last, of course, but while it did they could do an incredible amount of harm. And they seemed determined to, singing, shouting, smashing windows and looting – or so it looked.
But when one lot broke the window of a furniture store, I saw them tear out the tables and chairs and cabinets on display and smash them all over the pavement; they didn’t take anything. Nor, more surprisingly, did another lot from the electronics store down the road: TVs, games computers, expensive hi-fi all went spilling across to the gutter. Not one of them so much as put a games cartridge or a Walkman in their pocket, let alone slipped off home with a TV or other expensive prize. They acted drunk, but they weren’t; they had crowbars, bolt cutters, garden machetes and heavy knives, and they went through that window, security grille and all, with methodical speed. Suddenly, in the midst of it all, they dropped everything, and went racing off down the street as if they’d been summoned. I moved after them, but more slowly, careful to stay out of sight. I jumped like a startled rabbit when I darted into one doorway, and something squirmed at my feet. I grabbed, hard, and somebody hit me, not too efficiently. We stumbled into the light, and I found myself looking at a young type in crumpled denims, covered with political buttons and the remains of a painted slogan. He was shaking violently, but still trying to punch me; somebody was hitting my legs, feebly. I held him off and looked down. Another figure, sprawled in the doorway – a mess. The young man had the remains of a rich nosebleed and a scraped forehead.
‘I won’t do anything if you don’t!’ I said quickly, and he sagged. ‘Who’s this?’
It was a young woman, though I only saw that because her clothes were in rags; her scalp was split, her face a mask of matted hair and blood. I didn’t like the sound of her breathing.
‘You were on this demonstration?’
‘It was nothing to do with us!’ he wailed, and then caught a grip on himself. ‘Okay, one or two wild men joined in the stramash at first, but it was the others, they had knives – and then the cops, and we ran – then we met up with this lot who were breaking up a café and we tried to tell them – and that’s what they did to her and they kept on doing it and I couldn’t stop them …’
‘Nobody could,’ I said, knowing it wasn’t guilt getting to him, just a helplessness he’d never experienced before. ‘That’s the way the world is, sometimes. At least she’s still alive. Maybe we can keep her that way.’ Her skull felt intact, and her spine, but her leg was oddly crooked – dislocated hip, I guessed. I was about to try reseating it when I felt the grate of bone; her pelvis was probably fractured. I looked around. Rape, robbery, arson – there might be people behind these windows, many of them, but they sure as hell weren’t going to be answering their doors.
‘I had to run away,’ he trailed on, ‘they held me and they were going to – and then when they were gone I came back and … and …’
I picked up the girl – a hell of a dangerous thing to do, but he’d moved her already and neither of us had any choice. She stirred feebly, moaning. ‘You did the right thing. The only thing. You couldn’t fight this lot on your own. I’ve run too, at times, with less excuse. Come on.’
Across the street and down, scanning the doors till I found one with multiple bell pushes – more likely there’d be someone there. The boy jabbed them at random, but of course there was no answer. I kicked the lock, hard; so did he, and at the third kick something cracked and the door flew in. We piled into the stone flagged hall, only to stop short. There were people on the stairs, a knot of them, and in the beam of a flashlight a double gun barrel gleamed.
‘You stop right there, mister! Or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off—’
‘Oh, shut up!’ I barked. ‘We’ve got a girl here, hurt bad. She needs somewhere safe—’
That broke the ice a bit. People grumbled, argued, kvetched as they always do; but soon enough she was stowed away upstairs, with one woman who was a nurse looking after her as best she could. The shotgun wielder and I set about fixing the door.
‘There must be people like you all over the neighbourhood,’ I told him. ‘Just lurking behind their doors while there’s robbery, rape and murder all around them.’
‘Well, what else’d we do?’ he demanded, a burly truck-driver type of about my age. ‘Just wait till the cops get in, eh?’
‘That could take hours.
They probably don’t even know all this is going on yet – they’re not psychic, are they? And there’s no way to tell them, with no phones, no power.’
He considered. ‘There’s Sean down the street. His van’s got a CB radio. Don’t think he’ll be answering his door either.’
‘How’s your kicking foot, then?’ demanded the young protester type, clattering down the stairs behind us with a couple of others in his wake. They were carrying sticks, and one had a fearsome-looking fire axe.
‘How is she?’
‘Okay, I think. For now. But if you hadn’t got us in—’
‘Aye, well, I get the point,’ grunted the trucker type. ‘We’ll fix this door solid again, then head down there. Let’s hope Sean’s not too quick on the trigger, either.’
But shouting through the letterbox got us in this time. Sean turned out to be a fearsome creature, a bearded builder shaped like the original brick outhouse; his CB was a horrible thing, full of dangling wires and covered in cement dust and paint, but it worked. He nudged me, when we got a response. ‘You tell ’em, you’ve got the posh accent.’
We’d reached a cab company on the other side of town, but they had a direct hook-up to the police. The cops had already got the general idea, and thanked us for the more detailed report; they were bussing in reinforcements, and hoped to have the streets under control in another hour or two. That was all they could tell us.
Cloud Castles Page 9