The Quorum

by Kim Newman

  ‘You are sworn to silence to protect my secret identity,’ Blubber Boy told Mickey, his voice deep and resonant.

  He flowed through the six-inch gap between the elevator doors and was off to combat the forces of evil. The doors closed with a clang and the elevator resumed its ascent.

  * * *

  He used his card at the entrance to the ZC office suite, and punched in his code number, 1812. Like the war, he remembered. The doors didn’t open, and his card was sucked into a slit-mouth. He rattled the locked doors, and a bike messenger on his way out let him in.

  The ZC receptionist recognised him with a tiny smile of impatience and picked up her internal phone.

  She poised in mid-number and looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, but what was your name again?’

  ‘Mickey Yeo,’ he said, heart petrifying.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. Then, into the phone, ‘Mr Yo is here again.’

  She nodded, listening, ‘Uh huh.’

  A framed Newsweek cover showed a scowling Farhad Z-Rowe ripping in half an eighties issue of Circe. The headline read ‘Comics Get Serious’.

  The receptionist hung up. ‘If you’d wait, Mr Yo. Mr Chin’s assistant will be out soon.’

  He knew what would come next but had to go through it. He even had a sort of understanding of what had happened. In the comic, he’d been wrong about the Nevergone Void. It didn’t suck people out of existence, it just revoked everything they’d ever done with their lives, leaving them stranded out of time, unrooted to reality.

  He wasn’t even angry any more.

  A plump catamite who could have been Blubber Boy’s older brother emerged and introduced himself as Timmy’s assistant. Mickey remembered him from the reception last week. The gunsel had wrung his hand for a full minute while gushing about his genius.

  ‘Mr Yo,’ he began, ‘is that an Asian-American name?’

  Mickey shook his head and grumbled ‘British.’

  ‘Oh well, never mind,’ the assistant continued. ‘I’m afraid Timmy can’t see you without an appointment. He’s ultra busy with the new Amazon Queen. There’s scads of media interest. It’s been real exciting. If you want to leave samples of your work, we will get in touch with you. I can’t promise you when, but Timmy’s real conscientious. Hey, you can never tell where the next Farhad Z-Rowe is coming from.’

  7

  13 JANUARY, 1993

  Within the Device, Neil relived every moment of his life. Only this time, it turned out better. This time, even his dreams were happier. His lives multiplied, following myriad forking paths. In some lives, he wasn’t even Neil. It wasn’t real, but that didn’t matter. Reality was a poor second.

  The Device allowed him simultaneously an infinity of experience. He enjoyed one-night stands, affairs, relationships, marriages, lives. With all the women: Victoria, Clare, Candy, Penny, Rachael, Pippa, Anne, Janet, Tanya, Sally. He found fulfilling careers. A writer, a businessman, an actor, a musician, a scientist, an explorer, a celebrity, a genius. He fathered adoring children. He created works of lasting merit. He amassed harmless fortunes. He commanded the destinies of nations. He stood by his friends. He ruined his enemies utterly. He made things better. He was rewarded for his suffering.

  Part of him still knew his actual situation. It wasn’t without its own interest. People swarmed around the Device, tending to its - to his - needs, repairing its ruptures, greasing its gears, making offerings on its altars. A prosaic tile roof kept out the rain. A rank of net-curtained windows admitted shafts of grey light by day.

  His consciousness explored the contraption with which he had become one. He had an idea of its size and purpose. He sensed the accumulated power and recognised it as his own. For years, it had been channelled into the machine and stored. An original ember had grown into a furnace.

  The Device harboured other fires. Faintly surprised by his intuition, Neil recognised Mark, Michael and Mickey. In this contraption, they had more than a Quorum. His friends’ fires differed from his own; they were smaller, more concentrated, brighter. Filaments flaring for a last time. If he were not beyond feeling, he’d have worried about his friends, sensing a danger in the darkness encroaching on their bright lights.

  All along, he’d known, even as he looked up from his rut at the shining paths of the others, that the four of them were bound together forever. Marling’s had put a mark on the boys for life.

  There were still aspects he didn’t understand. He’d run through so many bright and equally real alternative lives, the dull original was fading. He knew how he had been transported from Cranley Gardens. He even knew he was physically somewhere in Docklands. Before that, the years blurred together a succession of fragments which might have been real or imagined.

  The Device was, among many other purposes, a puzzle. It broke and reformed in new configurations, each part fitting insidiously and surprisingly into the whole.

  Neil remembered saying ‘I give up’. More, he remembered meaning the words. It was as if he’d given the right answer on a quiz programme. A million pounds fluttered down from the eaves while brass bands struck up show tunes and a dozen spangled dancers high-kicked around him. All the prizes were his.

  He should have given up years ago. At any time, he could have ended the curse. He could have seen off the Norwegian Neil Cullers. But who knew capitulation was the just course? His whole culture told him to keep on keeping on, never to give up the ship, to try and try again.

  If at first you don’t succeed...

  ...then the Hell with it.

  But did the Streak ever give up? Did Robert the Bruce? Did Horatio Nelson? Did Nelson Mandela? Did Jesus H. Christ? Even now, it was hard not to feel surrender was shameful. He might enjoy temporary raptures, but he would suffer later.

  The Device reassured him with visions of endless contentment. He enjoyed irreconcilable happy unions with all his women, pursued vastly different but joyous lives.

  He had had a real chance with Anne before he fucked it up. And if he had handled Tanya better, they could have helped each other. With any of the others he could have made a life, but Anne and Tanya had been his best bets. Before Sally.

  The Device grew around him, cocooning his body with foam-rubber, feeding him intravenously, painlessly disposing of his bodily wastes.

  He thought of Sally. She had come here with him and left. She was part of most of his lives.

  His dreams continued, spiralling and expanding.

  8

  13 JANUARY, 1993

  He hadn’t slept since leaving the police station. Periodic lapses into torpor replaced actual slumber. Mark couldn’t stop thinking. Always, his thoughts continued a low-level buzz. After two days, he wasn’t exactly exhausted. Mentally, he was as clear as adventurous, as on the coffee-and-benzedrine nights of The Shape of the Now. However, he noticed an increasing ineptitude with minor domestic tasks like opening cans or shutting the fridge door. If he could keep together for a few more days, he might achieve conceptual breakthrough, true knowledge.

  He returned to Dr Faustus. One of his university books, the yellowing and crack-spined Methuen paperback, had lain in wait, dirt rind sealing its pages, on his shelves since the seventies. The dust irritated his eyes. It was hard to focus. Had his eyesight deteriorated recently?

  Faustus’s Deal was for knowledge. ‘What a world of profit and delight, of power, of honour, of omnipotence, is promis’d to the studious artisan.’ At eighteen, when considerably stupider, Mark understood that with a fiery certainty. ‘Had I as many souls as there be stars, I’d give them all for Mephistophilis.’ He’d ended an essay ‘In Defence of Damnation’. At thirty-three - having lived four years longer than Christopher Marlowe managed before someone daggered his eye - he was, for the first time, forced to take seriously the last act. Brimstone and evisceration. Eternal torment. Suffering beyond imagining.

  * * *

  As Ring, he was supposed to look out for the others. After days of trying, he finally got through to
Michael.

  ‘Hello,’ the distant voice said, guarded, defensive. Mark guessed Michael was afflicted too.

  ‘Michael,’ he said, ‘it’s Mark.’

  There was a pause. He wondered if Michael’s mind were affected. Mark had been struck with an intense awareness of everything; possibly, Michael was taken the other way, smitten with forgetfulness.

  ‘Mark,’ the voice repeated. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s been happening?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Tumultuous business. This Gary Gaunt impossibility. It’s required a shitload of attention. All else is back-burnered.’

  If Mark had ever heard of Gary Gaunt, he had forgotten.

  ‘I may be forced to go to blighted Basildon in person, Gods help me. It may come to zh-zhust that.’

  Michael’s zh-zh shrilled down the phone line, worse than it had been since school.

  ‘Is the Deal off?’

  ‘The Deal?’

  ‘Michael, how bad is it?’

  There was a long, drawn-out silence.

  ‘Pretty bad,’ Michael admitted.

  ‘I thought so.’

  Michael hung up.

  Among the people he’d been unable to reach were Leech in Docklands, Pippa in Scotland and Mickey in New York. His entire address book was inoperative. He’d left more than enough machine messages for Sally to phone him.

  Damnation and Sally were his major concerns. Sally loomed enormously in his mind. He wasn’t sure if he loved or hated her. He wasn’t sure if he loved or hated himself. He used to be good at making up his mind. That was how you became a style guru, by making decisions and sticking by them.

  He sat in his dressing-gown in his living-room, not sure which of his suits to wear. They all had points worth considering.

  * * *

  Sally? Why Sally?

  It was hard to say. Of all the people he knew, Sally was the only one who seemed outside the Deal.

  Seemed.

  He was unable to impute base motives to the woman. She alone had the clarity of vision. She had made Mark see his life from the outside, and he was still suffering from the aftershocks.

  If she could be persuaded...

  If she could forgive him, might he not be redeemed?

  He found himself saying her name at odd moments, like an invocation, like a prayer.

  Sally, Sally, Sally.

  Je vous salue, Sally...

  She was out there somewhere, judging him. He had to plead his case with her. He had to give her an explanation.

  * * *

  The office hadn’t tried to get in touch, so The Shape must be getting by without him. He should have let Laura-Leigh run the magazine months ago. He would have called, but he didn’t think he was in any condition to have anything to contribute. Besides, Laura-Leigh had (deliberately?) let him rot in jail. There might have been an editorial coup.

  Should he have the main light on or off? It was dim in the room but not too dark to see. The central heating had failed, or been turned off and neglected. He was used to cold. It was his constant companion. He considered he deserved it.

  A thin blank spine stood out on his bookshelves. Its whiteness - a negative gleam that would delight Melville - attracted his eye from across the room and he got up, tripping on the edge of a coffee-table, to examine the artefact. He hauled the volume free and discovered a white-covered book of empty pages. Scrawled in fading ink across a bare first page was a personal dedication from Mickey.

  ‘This word “damnation” terrifies not him...’

  He sorted through his CD racks and found, still in its cellophane, a Mothers of Pain LP Mickey had performed on. The City Hammer soundtrack album. Mark had never played it. After several scrabbling attempts to slit the shrinkwrap with a blunt thumbnail, he stripped the outer layer and shoved the disc into the player.

  It was horrible, of course. He didn’t know the first track -‘And the Horse You Rode In On’ - well enough to be precise, but something was missing. For a start, it was an instrumental and he was sure it had been recorded as a song. Mickey’s droning death-head lyrics should have resounded. No matter how he played with the balance of the speakers, the sound was lopsided. The guitars kept fading, making room for keyboards that were no longer in the mix.

  He couldn’t find Mickey’s name on the cover. A credits block for the film described it as ‘Written and Directed by Allan Keyes’. There was a photograph of the band dressed as postholocaust warriors, grouped around an empty space where no one stood. The final track - ‘Look Upon My Works, Ye Wankheads, And Despair’ - was entirely blank.

  Mark could imagine Mickey’s situation. His own predicament was more subtly terrible. It was hard to articulate just what was wrong, even to himself. But things had changed forever.

  * * *

  He telephoned Sally again. This time, she answered. He found he had nothing to say.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘hello...’

  He held the receiver close, imagining her at the other end, face puzzled. His voice wouldn’t work. Nothing physically wrong with him beyond fatigue and a lack of appetite, but he was unable to speak.

  ‘Is this Mark Amphlett?’ she asked, disapproving.

  He made a noise between a croak and a hiccough.

  ‘Mark?’

  What inflexion did her voice have? Contempt? Pity?

  ‘Help me,’ he said, simply.

  ‘No.’

  The connection was cut.

  * * *

  It could have been a fault on the line. She might not have hung up. With the buzzing phone in one hand, she would be paging through an address book. Maybe she’d memorised his number - something a detective should be good at - and didn’t need to look it up.

  He recited his own number in his mind, imagining Sally pushing buttons on her phone. He calculated the time it should take for the connection to be made and put out his hand to answer.

  His telephone didn’t ring.

  Perhaps his number was written on a scrap of paper not easy to find on her untidy desk. He thought again of his number slowly this time. She could be finding the paper and making the return call. The phone should start ringing... now.

  She did not call. She was not calling. She would not call.

  He waited minutes, then snatched the phone and pressed the redial button. Sally’s number was connected. Her phone rang once and a machine cut in.

  ‘Sally,’ he said, interrupting her polite, cheerful message. Alarmed by the feeble sound of his own voice, he cleared his throat and waited. At the beep, he began again, ‘Sally, it’s Mark...’

  She would pick up when she heard it was him. There must be things she wanted to talk about. Even if she could never forgive him, there were aspects of the Deal she must ache to understand. He knew her well enough to appreciate her need to know. She said that was why she was a detective.

  ‘Sally, please pick up...’

  She could have left the house. She could have been on her way out when he called the first time. She could...

  There was a jiggle and the connection was cut. The dial tone sounded. It could be a fault. Another fault. More likely, the same fault. A faulty connection, always cutting off after a half-minute. Sally had not necessarily cut him off.

  He pressed redial again. An engaged tone. She was calling him back. He hung up and waited for the phone to ring.

  * * *

  After half an hour he called the operator and reported a fault on Sally’s line. He was informed that it was at her end. The party must have left the phone off the hook. He was thanked for his concern. Implicitly, he was called an interfering loon and told to fuck off.

  Uncaring, he dressed. If his clothes matched, he didn’t notice. Even a newly cleaned and pressed suit felt as if it had been worn for days and slept in.

  He couldn’t remember sleep.

  He called Pippa in Edinburgh. Now it didn’t matter, he had the number easily to hand. Her mother answered, surprised to hear from him, and asked how he had been.
He hung up.

  Where was Pippa?

  He called Mickey’s New York hotel and was told there was no Mr Yeo registered. He had to spell out the name.

  He called Derek Leech’s emergency number. A private line only a handful of intimates were granted access to, a portable phone always by Leech’s hand. A recorded message told him the number was discontinued.

  He called Sally again. Still engaged.

  Engaged.

  It occurred to him he knew little about Sally. She might be married with kids. She was in her mid-thirties, he judged. If anything, a little older than him. It was impossible to get that far in life without forming attachments. The first time she talked with him on the phone, there’d been a child. A baby.

  No, in her line of work, she was on her own. Divorced, maybe. She had agreed she was like a child minder. The baby might not be her own.

  Could she be gay? No.

  He called again. Still engaged.

  Should he go around and see her? He didn’t want another scene. Maybe he should leave her alone for a few days.

  He had to explain himself to her. If she could forgive him, he might have a chance.

  A chance for what?

  * * *

  Pain cut through his open-eyed doze. Either his knuckle had expanded or the ring of office had shrunk. A cheesewire noose of hot agony constricted around his finger, needles transfixing the bone, tiny explosions rupturing the joint.

  He slipped the ring off easily. The pain stayed in his finger. There was no apparent swelling or abrasion. The hurt was inside, nestled and entrenched.

  He put the ring in a drawer.

  * * *

  Over and over, he reread Faustus’s final soliloquy, like a contract lawyer looking for a loophole. But... ‘the stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike. The Devil will come and Faustus must be damned’.

  At the very end, Faustus tries to go back on the Deal. ‘Ugly hell, gape out! Come not, Lucifer; I’ll burn my books...’