Hunters & Collectors

by M. Suddain

  … Now let’s move on up the stairs, and down the halls of history.

  Gladys went first for once, stepping quickly, the bulge of her auto-pistol visible through her skirt, and we followed. We travelled up and through the dreamy lounges and arcades, following the silky apparitions who stepped out of doors and under arches to enact these scenes of love and carnage. There were other ghosts there, too. The odorous spirits of abandoned meals and glasses of wine wandered confused around the halls. I think this massacre must have started around dinner time. The Exocet I’d taken was starting to wear off. But the drinks were kicking in. I could hardly feel the lumps on the front and back of my head.

  This is the famous, and infamous, Wild Lake Lounge, a lounge for lovers, home to some of the priceless furniture salvaged from the original hunting palace.

  The furniture had been covered in sheets, forming red-specked islands of white on a sea-green carpet. An open bottle of Cariona 41 was softly dying on a drink stand. They had begun the job of clearing away the bodies. On a baggage trolley roughly a dozen stomachs had been piled in a vague pyramid shape. Several had burst, spilling yesterday’s meals. None of this was part of the tour. I couldn’t feel sick any more. It was all too much.

  ‘They covered the furniture,’ I said.

  ‘Hmmmmm?’ Beast swilled the last of his drink around his mouth.

  ‘The furniture. They covered it before the massacre.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe they’re painting the place.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe they didn’t want their furniture getting bloody. Which would mean this was all premeditated. See the stomach pyramid? Something unwholesome about that.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Beast was quickly learning to look without seeing. He was also naturally short-sighted, but too vain to wear glasses, and this helped.

  We moved on down the corridor, following the voice.

  … During the Third Great War this establishment was used by Eastern forces as an operational base, as well as a repository for mountains of stolen art. The base was eventually taken in a daring raid by Western Alliance forces.

  We reflexively ducked for cover as the hall was filled with noise and muzzle flashes. Soldiers fought room to room. Bullets passed right through us. When the smoke and noise and corpses faded away we were left standing stooped and rigid.

  This way is the famous Grand Ballroom. To your right is a fresco displaying scenes from the legend of the Wild Hunt. In depictions of the Wild Hunt the figures can be gods, or spirits, or lost souls.

  A clique of spectral huntsman charged across the ballroom on foam-mouthed horses in pursuit of a mythical beast, accompanied by a pack of giant, slathering hounds. It was a majestically terrifying sight.

  ‘I don’t understand why we’re doing this, Boss,’ said Beast as the sound of hooves and barking faded. ‘Explain the point to me.’

  ‘Because we have to,’ said Gladys quietly as she stared vacantly into the twilit hall after the vanishing pack. We both turned to look at her.

  ‘Yes. The past needs no explaining, Beast. It exists, like all great things, as its own justification. Another drink, Gladys?’ I drained mine, cast my glass against the meticulous fresco. The thrill of doing this was indescribable. She looked at me. I looked at Ron.

  ‘We will need to procure more glassware, sir.’

  ‘Quite right. Good thinking, Ron. You’re clearly smart as well as handsome. Well then, let’s go to this so-called Mirror Lounge.’ I was keen to visit the venue I’d known from the only existing photo of the hotel, and also to see if the ‘admirer’ who sent me a note that morning would show up.

  … Our largest kitchen can cook over seven hundred ribs of beef at a time.

  … Our refuse is converted into a fine powder and used as plant food.

  … We have reservations in our restaurant for the next two decades.

  … Our ballrooms can have as many as three thousand guests dancing at once. The floors are specially reinforced.

  NOTES ON THE MIRROR LOUNGE

  It is decked in mirrors. What else to say? Walls, ceilings, bar tops, tables, every surface in the spacious lounge is mirrored, except the floor, which is carpeted in deep blue. You’re immediately confronted with your own image replicated million-fold and sculpted by the light from the trapezoidal chandeliers. ‘So, you’ve managed to find my lair, Ron. But which is the real John Tamberlain?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Nothing. You don’t read detective novels? Nor do I, Ron. Too predictable. Oh, a dozen strangers in a mansion, and one of them dead in a room locked from the inside? How gripping. Who could it possibly be? His embittered ex-wife? The man whose wife he’s daggering? Or is it the gardener, who bears a striking resemblance to his jealous half-brother, Vlodav?’

  ‘I have no idea, sir. Shall I ask at the desks?’

  ‘So who’s the fiendish mastermind behind all this, Ron? I’m not really interested. But humour me.’

  ‘Sir?’ Our drinksman raised both brows in a signal of surrender.

  ‘Come on, man. I want the guy who yanks the levers. I want the number of the beast.’

  ‘Sir?’ Now he looked genuinely not unfrightened.

  ‘Leave the guy alone, John.’ G stole the last drink from the tray before I could, drained it like it was oasis water.

  ‘I just try to do my job, sir. Get on as best I can. Hopefully make my way up. Save some money for an apartment one day.’

  ‘Wise plan, Ron. Best get in while this political uncertainty has prices down. Suppose you have a girl waiting. Some ruddy-cheeked young beauty with a sack full of eggs and eyes full of hope.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Sure you do. She’ll defy her parents, drop out of art college. You’ll move into a snug little apartment near the docks. You’ll have a job as a desk clerk. She’ll work in a sugar factory, paint your picture by lamplight. When she gets pregnant you’ll step up your shifts, she’ll make extra coin painting tourists’ pictures at the docks. You’ll get by. But you’ll grow estranged. You won’t quite be able to put your finger on it. It’s something in the friendliness she gives to other men, but withholds from you. There’s this boy who sells flowers at the docks. Flowers, Ron. This kid with his hard young body and face full of hope rides in on his bike each day. His basket throbbing with tulips. At first you think it’s cute. Just a kid. Then one morning you’re watching out the window, you see him ride up, you see the way her face lights up, the way they laugh, the way you used to. She rests her hand on his basket. She smells his tulips. And then you see him touch her on the shoulder, Ron, and she doesn’t even flinch. She brushes the hair from her eyes, Ron, and the brush is just sitting there in her hand, the picture half finished. And he gives her a tulip. A fucking tulip, Ron. And they look into each other’s eyes for a few seconds. And then he cycles away, and you watch him go, and you watch her watch him go, and before you know it, Ron, you just snap!’

  There was a crack so loud it made everyone except Gladys jump. Her hand went straight to her thigh. It took the rest of us a few seconds to realise what had happened: that Ron had folded his silver tray in half with a mere flip of his hands: the way a person might sharply close a book. He had crushed the empty crystal glasses to sugar. A small stream of liquor dribbled out the ends and onto his shoes. But his face still had that same innocent, astonished look. It was as if his brain hadn’t been aware of what his hands had done. The tray fell from his hands. And we all stood there, dumb, until the boy said, ‘Please have a seat anywhere, sir. Someone will attend you presently.’

  He left. ‘What the hell was that about?’ said Gladys, her shoulders relaxing back to their natural state.

  ‘Not sure. Just testing the limits.’

  ‘Well, maybe … don’t?’

  I moved off to the bar. The lamp which had sat on the bar in the photo was gone. There were no bodies in this place, strangely. But there were strange and tiny arrangements of horror here and there. There was a small pile of false teeth
on the bar. They had been collected just like the pile of stomachs in the Wild Lake Lounge, and like the pyramid of heads in the elevator atrium. But there were no decapitated corpses, and no bloody weapons on the ground. Just a silver drinks tray folded clean in half like a fortune cookie.

  Oh, and in a booth on the far side sat my admirer: a woman in a white dress.

  NOTES ON A BEAUTIFUL STRANGER IN A WHITE DRESS

  G saw her first. As we approached, a high husky voice said: ‘Don’t speak to me, take the booth beyond the next.’ Did as instructed. Sat facing Beast, Gladys beside me. Woman now behind me. Could smell her perfume: Vertigo,26 applied liberally, expensive hand cream, probably Gravitas.27 The voice had a whisper as husky as falling scraps of paper: ‘Don’t refer to me, don’t look at me; when the bartender comes with your order, tell her to leave and that you don’t want to be disturbed again.’ We waited. Our bartender, Roxy, came. She has deathly pale skin, a set of gleaming teeth, a certain Gladys-like sullenness. She took orders, didn’t seem to register the woman, came back with our drinks and a tray of fortune biscuits, then slouched off with my instructions not to return until called. G watched her go.

  When the stranger in the white dress sat down opposite, next to Woodbine, the image I had sketched in my head vanished. It was a man, early thirties, maybe younger. Hard to tell with all that make-up. He resplended in his white silk evening dress; his ears were hung with drops of pearl. A very handsome man. Made Beast look like a last-placer in the Mr Potato Farmer pageant. He placed his pint of ale carefully on a mat with his silk-gloved hand. Then he said, in his normal, manly voice: ‘You’re Tamberlain?’

  Beast shook his head, jerked a thumb at me.

  ‘So you’re the muscle?’ Beast shook his head again, jerked a thumb at G. He had a mouthful of biscuit.

  ‘What are you, COMDIPO?’28

  ‘She’s a Water Bear. Was,’ said Beast. My Water Bear made a small salute with her left fist, while with her other hand she took a dainty sip of her drink.

  ‘No way. They wouldn’t let a Water Bear in here. Even a retired one. Nuh-uh.’ G shrugged coyly at her reflection in the tabletop. ‘Well, anyway, you need to tell your boss not to wind these people up. They’re unstable.’

  ‘He doesn’t take direction well.’ She smiled. She smiled.

  ‘I’m right here,’ I said. ‘What’s your story, anyway? Miss your spot at the cabaret?’

  He looked me over. ‘I’m Special Investigator Hunter. I’m with Intersec.29 Occult Division.’

  ‘Occult? Well, you’ve dressed the part.’

  He flexed his powdered jaw. ‘My birds tell me you had a little trouble at the Fair, Mr Tamberlain.’

  ‘Your birds? Most people read it in the papers.’

  ‘I hear it was all made up. I hear you did it as an insurance scam.’

  ‘Wish I’d thought of that. And you’re one to talk about being “all made up”.’ He smiled, took a sip of ale. ‘What’s the tax office doing here anyway?’

  ‘Like I said, I’m with Occult. We investigate transnormal accountancy methods: quantum bookkeeping, multi-state declarations, dark-space tax shelters. I can send you a brochure, but right now I’m pressed for time.’ He turned his attention back to Gladys. ‘The system tags you if you stay around somewhere for a statistically unlikely period. It’s mega-complex.’ He took another sip of beer. ‘Slow on the take sometimes. Doesn’t like surprises. Like when people show up early. What’s your dig?’

  G drew her hands back into fists, gazing at him from under her fringe. ‘Closed-system ASI, indeterminancy XTN, or similar.’ A little breathless.

  ‘That’s my guess, too. A massively distributed ASI.’ He smiled.

  ‘Artificial Super-Intelligence,’ Beast whispered to me with a patronising squint.

  ‘Right, thanks, Beast.’

  ‘Boss doesn’t do computers.’

  ‘No shit? Well, you’re doing one now.’

  ‘It’s a problem-solving neural swarm. Like the Navy hubs,’ said G, still to him.

  ‘Sure. It’s fifteen years ahead of what the Navy has, though. Even the Bears couldn’t get in here.’

  G smiled at her reflection.

  ‘So what set this off anyway?’ I said. ‘Someone complain about the soup?’

  ‘No idea.’ Still talking to G. ‘A glitch in the security protocols. A loop they couldn’t close. Maybe unclosed security routines have ripple effects, create new problems –’

  ‘Feedback loops,’ said G.

  ‘… Sure. Loops within loops. Tell me if we’re going too fast, Tamberlain.’

  ‘I’ve never been outrun by a man in heels.’

  Turns out our man Hunter is one of Intersec’s top sleepers. He was posing as a rich dipshit, living fast and loose on a pretend milk-carton inheritance. He only got here a day or so before the massacre, on a black Royal Emblat card – no limit, you could practically buy a city. Makes me damp.

  ‘I was at the Atlantic Baths. I like it there because the staff don’t visit. Something about the fog messes with their heads. I was just leaving when the massacre started. It was around dinner time. I thought it was a party kicking off. I heard screeching, glass breaking. The usual. Then I saw a porter strangling a female guest to death with a velvet barrier rope. Not the usual. The other guests at the pool rushed out to help her. I tried to warn them off, but I couldn’t shout or they’d have seen me too. I stayed in the fog, stayed real quiet. Staff appeared from nowhere, flocked around the mob in their bathers. I watched it all. Someone had to see it. I saw an old man in a purple swimsuit chased down and gutted like a hog. He squealed like one, too. I thought if I got back to my room I’d be safe. I saw some stuff on the way. In Concordia Pagodas two porters and a gardener were setting about a man on the ground. They weren’t just butchering him, you know. They seemed to be enjoying it. It seemed like they were trying to make it last. I could hear the screams from far and wide. I had to walk close to that group, and as I did the man shot out a hand, grabbed my trouser leg and said, “Help me!” I broke his grip and walked away. Near the arched entrance to the garden I saw a small girl, and I couldn’t believe it. She was calmly watching her dad get murdered. I don’t think she could move, and that probably saved her. I leaned down, gently turned her head towards me, said: “Do not make a sound.” Then I heard a voice say, “Sir?” I turned and saw one of the porters had broken away from the man bleeding out on the fake grass. “Sir, your trousers.” I looked down and saw the bloody handprint on the fabric. Fuck. “Shall I tend to those for you, sir?” I almost died right there. “No need,” I said, “I’ll have laundry see to it,” and I grabbed the girl and we set off down the corridors to the elevators. We couldn’t run, obviously. I saw the porter following, blood dripping from the blade of his hoe. “Sir? Let me deal with you, sir.” I could hear the girl begin to sob in my ear. I said, “Don’t cry. If you cry, they’ll kill us.”’

  By now my associates were leaning in so close across the table that their lips almost rested on the rims of their glasses. I could see the fog of Gladys’s breath tiding in and out on the mirrored tabletop.

  ‘What happened then?’ said Beast.

  ‘I knew I couldn’t get back to my apartment. I saw the way they were trying to lure people out of their rooms. At a junction I saw a sign for the Paradise Cinema. These ghosts can’t function well in the dark. There were corpses strewn across the concourse leading to the cinema. It was all quiet, except … God, I don’t even want to think about this.’

  ‘Tell us. Please.’ Now Beast had his clenched fist paused near his mouth, which was slack and wet with spittle.

  ‘I could hear a sound as we approached. Like a … Snick. Snick. Snick. Like someone trimming roses. And I could see the shape of someone up ahead. The shadow was moving from corpse to corpse. And every corpse it stopped at I heard, snick. Snick. Snick. Ten times, then it moved to the next.’

  ‘Gods no.’

  ‘She had a basket and a pair of shears.�
�

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Snick. Snick. Snick. As we passed she was crouched over the body of a woman. I saw her raise her head, like she was sniffing the air. But she didn’t see us. No one in the ticket booth, no one at the door to the cinema. There was no one inside the cinema. We watched the matinee three times, huddled together. The music blocked out the sounds of people dying. Later I went out for clean clothes. Changing outfits makes you harder to track. I couldn’t get all the way back to my suite. Too dangerous. I couldn’t even get to 128 to see if the girl’s mother survived. I doubt she could have.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘128, you said?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Anyway. We’ve set up a temporary command centre at the Atlantic Baths. Her name is Daphne. Gladys, you should visit. I think she’d like another female to talk to. And I wouldn’t mind too much either.’ G blushed a little. ‘I can give you the materials I’ve collected. Someone has to blow this open. Who better than the Water Bears?’

  ‘I’m retired.’ She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear.

  ‘Yes, we won’t be doing that, Mr Hunter. We don’t want any more trouble than we have. All we want to do is ride things out so I can make my visit to the Undersea.’

  ‘The Undersea? … Why?’

  ‘… So I can have my meal.’