The Quorum

by Kim Newman

  ‘Word, man,’ Superfly said in farewell.

  He put his arms in armholes and found it was a child’s coat. The drainpipe sleeves barely reached his elbows. A Streak decal was sewn onto the chest; no matter how much he picked at the stitches, it wouldn’t come off.

  * * *

  Ayesha telephoned to ask if he would be in the office today. He realised he’d skipped the regular Tuesday meeting. He told her he hoped to drop by sometime in the afternoon. He had important business.

  His magnum letter was up to twenty-one pages. Devastating stuff, scorching, blistering...

  Ayesha put April on; she outlined the guests and items lined up for the last Dixon’s On of the current series.

  Current. That was the word the Echo had maliciously excluded from its listing. Last of the current series. Not last of series. The show was recommissioned and would return in eight weeks. He scrolled to the end of the document as April wittered on, and typed out a postscript on the correct use of the word ‘current’ in relation to the word ‘series’ when writing of Dixon’s On.

  ‘Cloud 9 have asked us to have Pris Wilding on.’

  ‘Pris Who?’

  ‘Some Americano. She’s presenter-producing a show called What a Grunge! It’s in our slot for the next two months. A funny version of This is Your Life, they say.’

  ‘Gelatinous by me.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’

  April had tried a follow-up on the coma-sitting cat but the family of the sick little girl had withdrawn co-operation.

  ‘By the terms of their original waiver we should have unlimited access. We can get an injunction, but it’ll not look pretty, forcing our way into a hospital room with cameras.’

  ‘Who got to them, Ape? Was it Gary Gaunt?’

  April said nothing. In her silence, Michael read fearful confirmation. He thought he could still trust April - she wasn’t speaking out loud because people might be listening - but it was obvious the gray gaunts had infiltrated Top Hat. They might have anyone: Roily, Ayesha, the director, the runners?

  ‘Ape, listen very carefully,’ he began.

  ‘Yes, Michael.’

  ‘Remember Mr Whippy-Wobble-Willie?’

  ‘Of Crab-Apple, Abergavenny?’

  ‘The self-same. Don’t accept any orders not prefaced by a request from Mr Whippy-Wobble-Willie of Crab-Apple, Abergavenny. It’s a security measure. A state of war exists.’

  Silence. Good girl. She wasn’t giving anything away to the traitors in the office.

  ‘Ape, we shall prevail.’

  * * *

  New York was the best city in the world to be a success in. And the worst to be penniless.

  Now he had nothing left to lose, predators let him pass unhindered. He could probably go to ground in Central Park and watch the wildlife struggle for survival. Better still, he remembered passing a primordial patch in the Village, thickly-wooded behind railings. The size of a small city block, it was an Environmental Sculpture, maintained in the state the island of Manhattan had been in the fifteenth century, before the coming of the Europeans. Mickey thought he should seek it out and move in, then lose himself in the forest tall like Davy Crockett. Maybe there were wino Indians in the depths.

  Lunch was five chips - sorry, fries - and the grey corner of a Big Mac patty, salvaged from an abandoned McDonald’s carton. For dessert, he ate the carton.

  Every time he tried mentally to retrace his steps to work out how he had reached this career stage, he was struck with a buzzing, paralysing headache.

  He found a subway grate which regularly provided updraughts of hot air and plonked himself down on it in a prime position. His soles had toughened and melded with what was left of his socks, forming a seamy new skin.

  Up in the sky, he saw a streak.

  10

  15 JANUARY, 1993

  Nearly a week after Cardinal Wolsey Street, it was hard to imagine the Device as a literal thing. She still believed she’d seen Neil swallowed by a living machine the size of an ocean liner. But doubts accrued around the experience. That must be how miracles were assimilated. Witnesses delude themselves. In another week, she would not believe.

  She sat in a 100-yard square of ashes and rubble, on a park bench without a park. The Invader was bundled and happy, grateful for the occasional jog of movement as the stroller rolled six inches back-and-forth. Sally couldn’t presume on (or afford) Sonja much longer and so was going through a nurturing, responsible phase.

  Mummy, what are we looking for?

  Answers, dearhart.

  The only prominent vertical feature between here and the river was the Derek Leech International Building. It stood among levelled ruins like an image from a seventies album cover. No matter which turns she took in the maze of Docklands, she always came back to the black pyramid. It was in sight from the end of every derelict road.

  This was her second day of searching for Cardinal Wolsey Street. It wasn’t listed in the A to Z and none of the few remaining locals she’d questioned - mainly elderly Londoners or nervous immigrants - had more than a vague memory of the name. No one would admit to never having heard of the place; they all had strong ideas of how to get there, and shed followed insubstantial directions for hours at a time, always abandoning hope as the familiar black triangle hove into view.

  At least she had the stroller to lean on. Handy Gadget: doubles as a baby carriage and a Zimmer frame.

  A gap opened in overhanging cloud and a shaft of sunlight struck the face of the pyramid. The Invader gurgled with delight and said something that might have meant ‘pretty bright’. Sally, eyes assaulted by a painful flash, looked away and saw movement in the rubble. Something straggled towards her. Her first thought was rats but it turned out to be Mark Amphlett.

  * * *

  Because of the Quorum, shed had to leave her phone off the hook for days. If Mum or a prospective client or an ardent suitor wanted to get hold of her, that was tough luck. She couldn’t even leave the machine on: Mark and Michael filled the message tape with unbearable maunderings.

  Mark walked carefully towards her, a man in a minefield. His long coat flapped in the wind.

  Scary man, Mummy?

  She wanted to avoid this. Enough to risk the probable alienation of her parent or the loss of serious work.

  She watched Mark move across the wasteland. Since his spell in prison, he’d aged. He looked balder; the fly-away hair around his patch was wilder, ragged. His jacket and trousers came from irreconcilable suits. The shine was off his shoes.

  ‘Grow up like that and you’re disinherited,’ she told her baby.

  * * *

  He sat on the bench and got back his wind. Condensation plumed from his mouth and nose.

  ‘Don’t ask me to feel sorry for you,’ she said, pre-emptively.

  He had no answer.

  She was still angry with him, with the Quorum. She looked at him but saw Neil.

  ‘I tried,’ Mark said.

  The Invader waved non-judgemental arms at Mark, delighted by a new person.

  Funny man, Mummy?

  ‘To get out of the Deal,’ Mark said. ‘I was the one who tried.’

  She wasn’t impressed.

  ‘At first, the Deal was jus.... well, not a joke... but, you have to understand, an extension of the moves we’d always made. Three in, one out. Two sets of two. We had every permutation. A lot of times, it was me against the rest. Id sit in my room and chant hatred, then someone - Neil, usually - would coax me out.’

  He wasn’t talking to himself. For some desperate reason, he was compelled to explain to her. Mark seemed to think it in her power to give him absolution.

  ‘We’re still tied together, Neil as much as anyone. The Deal depends on him. Depended. In the end, we’d have brought him out of the cold. We had to.’

  Sally could imagine how awful that would have been. Neil hadn’t struck her as the type to be grateful for charity.

  Mark saw her unvoice
d objection. ‘We wouldn’t have been blatant, Sally. We could have made moves. Hed never have known it was us. He still doesn’t know it is us.’

  ‘Doesn’t he?’

  Panic slapped his face. Sally didn’t know either way but Mark took the suggestion seriously.

  ‘He can’t. We got too good at it. Anything we tried, we got good at.’

  She shrugged. He was probably right.

  ‘We didn’t really understand the Deal. That’s how it works. You sign away something you don’t know you have.’

  ‘You sacrificed Neil.’

  He shook his head, impassioned. ‘No, that’s the sting. We thought we sacrificed Neil. But we sacrificed ourselves. We are the Perfect Sacrifices.’

  ‘Perfect?’

  ‘We’ve been elevated. Look at us. We have everything. And we’re losing it. How much greater is our sacrifice.’

  ‘You sound like a Jehovah’s Witness.’

  A painful twitch of a smile acknowledged her point. ‘Biblical language is all we’ve got. Salvation, Damnation, Sacrifice. Heaven, Hell.’

  ‘You should write a book,’ she said, snidely. Damned in the ’90s’.

  ‘I’ll never write again,’ he said, swiftly. ‘I’ve lost that. I can’t share anything in my skull. That’s my reward. I can’t share anything.’

  He was shaking, impassioned. He was right. She really couldn’t understand what he was talking about. The Great Communicator mumbled to himself.

  ‘Why is it so much worse for me, Sally?’ Mark asked. ‘So much worse than for Mickey and Michael?’

  Without knowing much, Sally assumed both of the others would say exactly the same thing.

  But she had an answer for Mark. ‘Because you knew what you were doing.’

  Mark nodded to himself, accepting the judgement. He looked up at the clouds and howled. It was an animal noise, older than speech, older than communication. It was private and meaningless.

  Sally flinched and the Invader jammed mittens over rudimentary ears. There was nothing for an echo to resound off. The howl rose and dissipated and was lost. The sky swallowed Mark’s agony and ignored it.

  He reached for her. Without thinking, she jumped away, sliding off the end of the bench.

  ‘Mark,’ she said, firmly, ‘no.’

  She saw his ungloved hand hover in the air. Blue veins stood out like wool threads. Slowly, he made a fist and took it back, holding it against his coat.

  His watery eyes looked up. Inside her, disgust squirmed. And resentment. This was something she had been made to feel.

  Without especial intonation, he said, ‘Sally, I love you.’

  Razors of ice scraped her bones.

  She shook her head, annoyed, horrified. The Leech Pyramid shone black in its wilderness.

  ‘Sally...?’

  Inescapably, she was a component of the Device. Leech had included her in the design from the first. She was the instrument of Mark’s punishment.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  The anger fell from her. Without it, she was naked. She was not above this situation, she was trapped inside it. She felt sorry for everyone. Including herself.

  ‘Kid,’ she said to the Invader, ‘we’re getting out of here.’

  She left Mark alone on the bench and trundled the stroller across the uneven ground.

  11

  15-17 JANUARY, 1993

  On Broadway, surrounded by strangled Noo Yawk whines, he listened for accents. Nationality was his last redoubt. Young Americans purposefully strode along the sidewalk, jaws like bumpers, bags like weapons, eyes hard and glittering.

  Yank bastards.

  A brace of British girls goggled at theatre facades and glossy porno stores. Their voices were Northern. Mancunian, maybe. Flimsy polka-dot skirts over black wool leggings; hip-slung paisley trousers with flare extensions. Americans outpaced them, streaming around either side.

  ‘You English?’ he called out.

  The girls saw him. Before speaking, he’d been invisible. Tinier than Teensy Teen. Just another shred of street garbage.

  ‘Ignore him,’ one girl said to her friend. ‘He’s a street person.’

  ‘No,’ Mickey protested. ‘I’m English.’

  A week ago, he could have had both shag-hags. At the same time. A bit of flannel and a grin and a line cut with an Apex Suite cardkey. They’d have popped, and been pleased...

  Now, it was, ‘Well, good luck to you,’ and fuck off.

  Without hope, he leaned against a poster for Jelly’s Last Jam and watched the girls wander along Broadway. For them, America was a youth musical; for him, a neon noir nightmare.

  * * *

  Thirty pages. Twelve thousand words. Michael’s Open Letter to His Garygauntness was growing. He’d been at his word processor for five hours, since well before dawn. His kidneys ached. Still, he typed and corrected, typed and corrected. As new points came to mind, he interpolated them into the text, adding more evidence, supporting his case.

  Working on the Open Letter, he came better to understand his struggle. He was exploring the nature of Gary Gaunt. He no longer believed the albino was human. There was a cold alien malevolence there. Gary Gaunt, he had decided, was a philosophical condition, a pink-eyed worm in the apple of the universe.

  Today’s Echo hadn’t printed the letter from Tom Sharpe. How could a pissy local paper ignore a missive from the second-best comic novelist in the country? Michael chuckled. He knew Sharpe would be furious when he discovered how little his words counted in Basildon.

  There was nothing about Michael in the whole paper. They were getting perilously close to lawsuit territory. Michael had left messages with his lawyers. Once the Open Letter was published, he’d see about the judicial moves. He had the resources. In the end, only one man would walk out of the courtroom vindicated and he wouldn’t be a rabbit-eyed scribble.

  In reading the Echo from cover to cover, he discovered the nastiest of its strategems, a calculated attempt to set Michael against the staunchest of his allies. In tiny print, along with the register of infamy that was the paper’s masthead, was written ‘A Derek Leech Newspaper’. When the Sponsor discovered the putridity perpetrated in his name, his wrath would be devastating. His lawyers would join with Michael’s in smiting the Basildon Echo, indeed Basildon itself, off the map of the earth.

  Alleluya! He typed, invoking the name of Derek Leech. Each word was a tiny missile. Each sentence a salvo.

  Shocks shot from his palms through his wrists up to his shoulders. It was as if the muscles had been cut. He ignored pain and kept typing. Nothing would sway him from his purpose.

  * * *

  Around Neil, the Device was frenzied in motion. Gears ground, flame spurted, molten metal poured, valves pumped, furnaces roared. Energy was unconfined. He shared the exultation of the Device.

  * * *

  Mark pressed redial, listened to clicks, let the engaged tone sound for long seconds, broke the connection, pressed redial, listened to clicks, let the engaged tone sound for long seconds, broke the connection, pressed redial, listened to clicks, let the engaged tone sound for long seconds, broke the connection, pressed redial, listened to clicks, let the engaged tone sound for long seconds, broke the connection, pressed redial, listened to clicks, let the engaged tone sound for long seconds, broke the connection, pressed redial, listened to clicks, let the engaged tone sound for long seconds, broke the connection, pressed redial...

  * * *

  ‘You English?’

  ‘Fuck a baboon, buddy.’

  * * *

  Pris Wilding was an American with hair like white flame and matching lipstick. She had a red bunny bow in her hair and a larger one around her throat. Her voice was stridently perky, like a sexy cartoon animal. As she talked to camera, ignoring his eyeline completely, she seemed to be chewing.

  Michael asked her about Basildon and she insisted on talking about her cursed show. Through his earpiece, the wimp-out director told him to ‘drop Basildon’ b
ecause it was well past its laff-by date. Nobody even bothered to phone complaints any more.

  ‘Haven’t you ever watched This is Your Life and wished they’d haul out someone from a celebright’s past who really loathed the smug slime? A schoolkid he used to bully, an old girlfriend he knocked up and dumped, a work partner who got the royal shaft. Nobody gets a life worth showing on TV without treading on people, and on What a Grunge! we give the treadees the window to shout out of, to cry out “look at me, I’m a person too, I have worth”. If Mother Theresa made a porno flick early in her career we’d find out. The message is that famousoids deserve everything they get.’

  As Pris spoke, a cute but fanatical gleam behind her tinted contacts, Michael was fascinated. She wore a filmy top that went transparent under lights. Her brassiere was an intriguing work of engineering, restraining breasts the size of small planets. Fifty-one per cent of the viewing public would hate her but she was going to be very, very popular. There was no doubt she was a woman, but she talked and gestured like a transvestite.

  ‘We see ourselves as messengers from God, wagging the flexible finger at those naughty-naughties who abuse position, sticking the thermometer of truth into the armpit of deceit. Pervo politicians, beware! Rapacious rock stars, look out! Mendacious movie brats, shudder! Be on your best behaviour, lest you take the Grunge Plunge!’

  He asked the question that had nibbled at him since April presented Pris to him in the Green Room.

  ‘Lover-doll,’ he said, ‘are zhou an albino?’

  * * *

  Mark pressed redial, listened to clicks, let the engaged tone sound for long seconds, broke the connection, pressed redial, listened to clicks, let the engaged tone sound for long seconds, broke the connection, pressed redial, listened to clicks, let the engaged tone sound for long seconds, broke the connection...

  Before he could touch the redial button, the phone rang. He was startled. The bell was louder than he remembered. Louder than was possible.