by Heide Goody
“I hope this isn’t a food preparation area,” Rod said. “A poor food hygiene rating can shut a restaurant overnight.”
Ugly ‘tache turned to the waiter. “Scha’pheri bha fur ghurri spayn’ogn?”
“Rho-lergisko’l. Rho-lergisko’l,” said the waiter. “Des Kaxeos ma Yo. Fnah-Yo.”
Rod’s grasp of conversational Venislarn was on a par with his Pashto and his Arabic: limited to inventive swearing and pleading for his life. He didn’t know what the two men were saying but he was prepared to wager that they were deciding what to do with him.
“If it helps, I am a remarkably generous tipper for a Yorkshireman,” he said.
“Hoh’ch me rhu ap Yo-Zildrohar. Aklo byach, so-khor,” said Ugly ‘tache indifferently.
“You do know who I am?” said Rod.
Cleaver tucked his weapon into his belt, went to the edge of the square pit and lowered a length of wire like a plumb-line into the hole.
“You do know why I am here?” said Rod.
The waiter approached him. “We know,” he said. “You have come to steal the wisdom of Lord Kaxeos.”
“Steal? We know the Venislarn. They know us. We come as ambassadors and, mate, to be honest, this…” He attempted to gesture about him with bound hands. “This is seriously not on.”
“We are servants of Lord Kaxeos, Mr Policeman, and Lord Kaxeos does as he pleases.”
“He does. But you. I don’t know you,” he said, holding down the anger inside him. “I haven’t seen any of your faces on registration papers and that means you answer to me.”
Cleaver pulled up his line. On the end was a cylindrical container now dripping with pale brown slime that might have been mucous or ichor or…
“I always wondered what was in the chef’s special sauce,” said Rod.
Ugly ‘tache laughed. “Perrhe’ri tamade dras’n-orgh, muda khi ummaq.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Rod. “You think you’ll be laughing when Kaxeos finds out what you’ve been doing to his guest?”
The waiter twitched his head as though he had an itch behind his ear that he didn’t want to scratch.
“Lord Kaxeos knows all,” he said.
“Well, I’m certainly not happy about all this,” Rod said and then addressed Ugly ‘tache. “And don’t think I don’t know what some of those words meant, you adn-bhul muda khi ummaq.”
Cleaver whispered something to the waiter. The waiter peered at the cylinder full of slime and nodded. Cleaver put the cylinder and line aside, picked up his cleaver and took hold of Rod’s hand.
“Don’t you bloody dare!” Rod said through gritted teeth.
It took him a moment to realise that Cleaver was trying to unfold his fingers. Rod fought against him.
“Whe’dhna oyi,” said Cleaver.
Ugly ‘tache smacked Rod across the bridge of his nose with the butt of his own gun. In that instant of white pain, Cleaver stretched out Rod’s fingers and pressed them flat against the counter.
“You evil bastards,” Rod grunted. His vision swam and he struggled to focus on the waiter. “I’m going to scream this bloody house down.”
The waiter nodded, understanding, patient and sad. “Soundproofing,” he said simply.
Cleaver adjusted his grip and brought the blade down at speed. Rod didn’t know if he started screaming before or after the cleaver struck. He didn’t truly feel anything until he saw Cleaver hold something up, pink and bloody and the size of a cocktail sausage.
Rod grunted, yelled and thrashed. His hand hurt – of course, it bloody hurt – but more than that, he felt the wrongness in his hand. He fought down the urge to vomit, channelling his anger and fear and nausea into some lengthy and loud swearing which featured the invention of the previously unheard-of ‘ankle-grabbing cockbadgers!’
Cleaver inspected the ruined tip of Rod’s finger and then dropped it down the square shaft. Almost instantly, there was a deep rumbling from far below. Like the roar of a trapped beast or the rumbling of a stomach bigger than worlds.
“Did you hear that?” said Nina.
Morag cocked an ear. “A train?”
“Trains don’t run past here. Maybe it was an earthquake.”
“In Birmingham?”
“We have them. There was one when I was kid. Registered five point oh on the wotsit scale. I don’t remember it really. I do remember the tornado.”
“The one Vivian mentioned? That was in, what, 2005?” said Morag.
“Mmm. It was at the beginning of the summer holidays,” said Nina. “I was at my auntie’s house off the Ladypool Road when the tornado came by, tearing up trees and flinging cars across the road. It ripped tiles off the roof of the house and blew out of the upstairs windows.”
“That must have been terrifying,” said Morag.
Nina shrugged and stuffed the last of the poppadoms in her mouth. “Of course, if what Vivian says is true then it was a god. Or godling. Or godlings, plural. The Winds of Kaxeos.”
“Vivian seems quite knowledgeable on such things,” said Morag.
“Well, if you had been alive since, like, World War One, then you’d know a lot too.”
The waiter came to their table pushing a two-tiered wooden trolley. He unloaded three deep metal bowls of reddish-brown curry and two oval platters of pilau rice.
“It is very hot,” he said.
“Thanks,” said Morag.
The waiter backed away, blinking nervously, as though he had just deposited live bombs on the table. Nina swiped a portion of rice onto her plate and scraped half her Balti on top.
“So, you settling in all right?” she asked.
“To the job? To Birmingham?”
“Either. Both.”
“It’s been a manic few days,” said Morag. “I left Edinburgh on Sunday. I’ve only had one full night’s sleep in my own bed since then. It’s Thursday now, isn’t it?”
“Time be time, man,” said Nina.
“The flat they’ve put me up in is nice. I’m sandwiched between a crazy old cat lady and a man who posted pizza through my letterbox last night.”
“It’s nice they’ve put you up somewhere at all. When I started with the mission…” Nina paused. “That first week, I was completely petrified.”
“They throw you in at the deep end?” said Morag, serving herself some food.
“No. Not that. Um, Vivian. She’s fucking terrifying.”
“I can see that.”
“Vaughn just didn’t speak to me for the first month.”
“Not met him yet. Not even sure he really exists.”
Nina laughed. “And even Rod,” she said.
“Rod’s nice,” said Morag.
“Sure. Once you get to know him. But, on first impressions he’s like some scary Navy SEAL drill instructor. Greg was nice. He was the boss back then. You never got to meet him. He was the nicest of them all. But, still, I was the newbie and they were all so… old. I mean that’s not such a problem for you.”
“Gee, thanks. I’m not quite at retirement age yet.”
“I know,” said Nina. “But I mean, you and Vivian. At least, you two can talk about your menopauses or whatever.”
“How bloody old do you think I am? Shut up before I slap you down, squirt,” said Morag, but she was smiling. She toyed with her food. It smelled good; rich, fatty and fresh. “I admit it,” she said, “I think Vivian’s scary.”
“God, she is.”
“She’s Mrs Vivian Grey, isn’t she?”
“I think Mr Grey was one of our lot.”
“Was, huh?” said Morag.
“Maybe that’s why she turned into such an ice queen.”
“No,” said Morag after some thought. “I think she was always like that.”
“Uh-huh,” said Nina and shovelled a forkful of food into her mouth.
“I see it like this,” said Morag. “Most of us, when the world doesn’t conform to our expectations, we get angry or depressed. I think Vivian just gives life a
hard stare and waits for it to get its act together. Bet she was like that when she was a toddler. ‘No, mother, this birthday cake just won’t do. Go back and do it properly.’” She stopped. Nina’s face had turned an interesting colour. “Are you okay?”
“Hot,” Nina coughed.
“He did say.”
“Really hot,” she whispered.
Morag took a little of the Balti on her fork and ate it. The chilli zing took a good few seconds to kick in but, when it did, it sent a violent warmth down her throat and up to her brain.
“Mmm, spicy,” said Morag and took another mouthful. This was perhaps a mistake as the first mouthful had not yet done its work. Chilli-infused energies wrapped around the inside of her mouth and all but paralysed it. “Yes. Hot,” she said hoarsely and reached for her pint. The act of drinking felt good but the beer did nothing to dampen the heat. “Where’s Rod?” she said. “There’s no reason why we should suffer alone.”
Nina looked in the general direction of the toilets. “I dunno. He’s probably just fallen in.”
Rod concentrated on breathing and tried to think straight. They’d left him, still strapped to the counter. The waiter had tied a napkin around Rod’s injured hand. Rod couldn’t angle his head to see if he’d done a good job of it or not. The counter was wet beneath Rod’s wrist. His hand was a ball of pain, a football-sized sphere of scalding misery.
The pain was interfering with his thought processes but Rod had been forged by nearly two decades of pain and death, mostly other people’s, and he wasn’t about to lie down and feel sorry for himself.
“Right. Right. What have we got? What have we got?”
The room was mostly featureless. There was another counter across from him. There was nothing on it but the rusted remains of some butchery machine, maybe a bacon slicer. The door at his feet had a metal pull handle, like a walk-in freezer. The door looked stout. There were rivets in its metal surface. Rod tried to angle his foot across to reach the door. They had bound him well. His foot could barely move and the door handle was a good two feet away.
“Not that,” he said. “What else? What else?”
Two parallel pipes ran across the wall above the door. Gas pipes? Water pipes? He wasn’t sure and there was no reaching them.
“What else have you got?”
The straps about him were leather and had buckles with double rows of eyelets. If he was to escape, he was going to need to undo them or cut through them or wait for Cleaver to chop him up and escape piece by piece.
Rod took a personal inventory. Ugly ‘tache had taken his gun. That left him with, on his left hand, a survival escape ring (containing a coiled hacksaw blade); in his left trouser pocket, a Leatherman multi-tool, assorted coins and two powerful magnets disguised as coins; in the secret compartment in his left boot heel, a pair of powerful lenses which could be assembled into a rudimentary telescope; in his right trouser pocket, his key ring including two skeleton keys, an hourglass key fob engraved with ‘Greetings from Skegness’ that, mixed in with the sand, contained two grams of explosive francium held in a vacuum; on his right wrist his watch with in-built compass, depth gauge, altimeter, laser pointer, GPS beacon, high tide indicator and sunrise/sunset sweep arm plus his survival bracelet woven from paracord with the additional interweave of monofilament wire he had recently added; in his right jacket pocket, a tobacco tin containing fishing wire, wax-headed matches, needle and thread, superglue, water-purifying tablets, a square of Kendal mint cake and a condom (for carrying water supplies or, in extremis, contraception) plus his wallet which held cordite-infused dollars (the company didn’t do any other currency) and a credit card survival tool containing a magnesium alloy fire starter and an LED torch; in his left jacket pocket, his mobile phone, a pen with a one-shot Taser built into the nib, a propelling pencil with a sharpened steel lead, a fold-out sheet of idiot-proof Venislarn ideograms, wards and sigils and a nub of chalk to draw them with; finally, on his person, his tie (threaded with steel wire for zip line escapes), his tie clip lock picks and a waistcoat that could be pulled apart to make a hammock or an impromptu fishing net.
The ideal tool was the escape ring with hacksaw on his left hand but his fingers, caught in the radius of pain, were not responding to his command. With his right hand, he unclipped his watch — he had spent many an evening practising this wrist-snapping feat — and, because he could, activated the GPS beacon. He then reached further back and tugged at his survival bracelet with his longest fingers.
“Come on, mate. Come on.”
His fingers brushed against the end of the monofilament and he pulled on it.
“So, how long have you been with Birmingham mission?” Morag asked.
She ate another forkful of the curry. It was quite extraordinarily hot but it was – and she had no idea what she meant or felt when she thought this – it was a good hot. The heat filled her cheeks and her belly and her head and, though she was probably imagining this, brought a rosy sharpness to her vision.
“Two years,” said Nina. “It’s been good. I really enjoy it. Apart from the end of the world stuff, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“But even then I just like the fact that I know the Big Secret. I know. My mum doesn’t know. My sister doesn’t know. My old teachers and all those spoddy girls at school who made fun of me because I thought that Mick Jagger was prime minister during World War Two.”
“Mick Jagger? That well known politician?”
“Shush, you. Point is, I know the Big Secret.”
“Even though it’s a deeply horrible secret.”
“Ah, but that too has benefits.”
“I’m all ears,” said Morag. “The benefits of knowing that our world is being consumed by omnipotent alien gods and that, at some undisclosed future point, we will be plunged into a literal and eternal hell. Go for it.”
“Simple,” said Nina. “My sister worries about being able to buy a house and get on the property ladder. I don’t, ‘cos alien gods are going to eat the world. My friends worry that they’re getting old and fat. I don’t ‘cos alien gods are going to eat the world. Credit card bills? Alien gods. International terrorism? Alien gods. Turning up to work on time? Alien gods.”
“You’re right,” said Morag. “I don’t worry about any of those things.”
“See? Benefits.”
“So, two years in and you’re already in the response team. That’s… surprising.”
“Oh?” said Nina heavily. “Don’t I strike you as the right sort?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No?” Nina emptied the rest of her Balti onto her plate. “I can’t feel my lips anymore. Should I worry?”
“It’s good stuff this.”
“Chef’s special sauce.”
“Yeah. You can say that as much as you like, still doesn’t sound right.”
Nina drank beer and mushed her lips together experimentally. “I know what you mean though,” she said. “Response teams, it’s mostly eggheads and soldier boys and… whatever you are.”
“Thanks,” said Morag. “So, how did you wind up in this role?”
“I bring something unique to the mission, apart from the stone-cold-bitch-and-sex-kitten vibe.”
“What’s that?”
“An Abyssal Rating of ten.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s true. This girl isn’t scared of nothing.”
“Except Vivian.”
“Except Vivian,” Nina agreed. “I came to their attention after I’d signed up to take part in a series of dangerous experiments for a deeply dodgy Birmingham academic.”
“Professor Sheikh Omar?”
“That tit, yes,” said Nina. “He was paying. I like money. I didn’t stop to think. Picture a chair, restraints, loads of things – electrodes – all over my head and then a slideshow of the ugliest psychosis-inducing Venislarn buttfaces you ever did see.”
“I’m surprised you came out the other end, sane
or alive.”
“There were six of us who signed up for that experiment,” said Nina and said it in such a way that there was no need for further questions. Nina raised her pint. “I have no mouth.”
“And I must scream,” said Morag.
Nina lowered her glass and then raised her hand again. Up and down.
“I’m getting trail blur,” she said.
“You’re getting what?”
Nina waggled her fingers as she waved her hand. “You know, like when you’ve taken too many shrooms.”
“Not really,” said Morag.
She scraped out the last of her bowl onto her rice. Morag studied her own hand. She wasn’t getting any kind of blurring to her vision. Far from it. She looked at her plate and saw the one hundred and thirty-seven grains of rice remaining on it. She looked around and saw the room in a rich, fiery red and pinpoint clarity. “I think I can see in infrared,” she said.
“That’s not normal,” said Nina.
“No,” said Morag slowly. “It’s not. Have you eaten here before?”
“Nope.” Nina chased the remains of her food around her plate. “But it’s good, isn’t it?”
“Very good. Rod brought us here to find something out.”
“Where is Rod?” said Nina.
Morag felt a fuzziness in her head and shook her head as though she could physically dislodge it.
“He’s been gone a while,” said Nina.
“Nineteen minutes and six seconds,” said Morag automatically and then, “I shouldn’t know something like that. I thought we came here to question someone but…”
“The knowledge is in the curry,” said Nina.
“This really hot curry.”
“But it’s a good hot, isn’t it?”
“Chef’s special sauce. I remember reading…” She closed her eyes and reached for the memory. “I remember reading a book, when I was six, about how Indian monks would burn or freeze themselves to attain enlightenment.”
“Knowledge through pain.”
Morag took a deep cleansing breath. “I didn’t even know I still had that memory.” On one level, Morag felt drunk. The world was passing her by and her mind couldn’t alight on one thing for more than a moment. But, on another level, she was experiencing a clarity and certainty unlike any she had known. Facts and knowledge rolled over her and she felt that she could simply reach out with her mind and pluck any truth she wished from the air.