Corvus

  Several of the birdmen move to encircle Pani, and one kneels to examine him with worrying care, then nods at the spokesman. No words are exchanged. An image of powerful white wings and a whip-like neck, a vicious beak, surfaces from Zach's memory. He's never learned the full story behind Max's swan, though he has his suspicions—now stronger than ever.

  'Primitive,' the man says, 'but a beginning. It will take upwards of a century for transgenic organisms to become truly viable. Intelligent transgenic organisms.' Eyes that knowing ought to be hidden behind goggles. 'The crow, for obvious reasons, will be of particular interest; pivotal, a Leveller would say.'

  All arrogance, the birdman doesn't wait to see if he's unsettled Zach, but wheels towards the iglu, spreads his wings, and fans the air, feathers gleaming like iridescent onyx. As if on command, the others take up position in a semicircle, the one in charge of Pani carrying him gently—almost tenderly.

  'Who are you?' Zach asks.

  The spokesman doesn't trouble to answer, his attention focused on the area inside the formation. Again he raises an arm, and the ice wavers and shifts, not precisely melting; terraforming in a swirl of snow to a shallow, milky bowl. Pani's caretaker steps forwards and sets the boy down in the centre, then joins his cohorts, who proceed to close the circle. The spokesman, wings now folded, strides into their midst.

  'What are you doing with him?' Zach's voice cracks, sign of his struggle to hold himself in check.

  'Your self-control is admirable, but in fact I'd like you to join me.'

  As Zach reaches Pani's side, columns of ice begin to appear inside the ranged guards, proportioned as before but etched like petroglyphs, each with a different carving. On one there are pterodactyls and a Spinosaurus; on another, a troupe of apes; a Neanderthal woman; a simplified Vitruvian man; a crow. Some bear symbols which seem to be mathematical, some a script or alphabet. Zach wonders if the sign for infinity could possibly be universal. The glyph which disturbs him most, however, is the two-headed Fulgur dragon. And there's no representation of the birdmen.

  Play, Zach.

  Zach whirls round, half expecting—hoping—to find Lev, only to stiffen at the shameless laugh which strips the fraying insulation from his temper. He snaps, 'So, what are you then, a flock of telepathic robots?'

  Something in this finally gets to the creature. 'Corvus is reputed to be a lot smarter than you're acting. Potentially all humans are telepaths.'

  'Except you're obviously not human.'

  The man shoots a hand towards Pani, then after a hesitation lowers it again. 'Perhaps we've made a mistake. If you're not Corvus . . .' He indicates the column engraved with the Fulgur dragon. Only a cognoscens would be able to detect this beam of light; whether anyone else can see the image it reveals becomes superfluous as soon as Zach cries out. At the sound of Laura's name the column reverts to icy inscrutability.

  'So . . . as I thought,' the man says. 'We've killed the right girl.'

  'Zach—' If Pani weren't beginning to stir, Zach would be at the birdman's throat. 'Zach, my head hurts.'

  He crouches, helps Pani to sit up. 'It's OK, just take it easy for a moment.'

  'He'll be fine. The pain fades quickly. Unless further treatment—sedation—is required.'

  Zach looks up. 'Let him go. It's me you want, isn't it?'

  'Rather over fond of an avatar, aren't you?'

  'He's no'—shivering now—'say that again about Laura.'

  'It's really very simple. Most things are, in the end.' The birdman sweeps a hand round so that each column in turn emits a different gonglike tone, the last three deep within the cognoscens register. 'She died to bring you here.'

  Would that the casings of self were wound from steel. Zach feels the way a violin string might feel, if it could feel and articulate the feeling, the instant before it snaps from over-tightening. Too much tension in the string can damage the integrity of the instrument itself.

  'Why? God damn you, why?'

  'Zach—' Pani tugs at Zach's sleeve. 'Your spirit skin, it's orange again. Almost red, like flames.'

  Play, Zach.

  'In ice and in fire: so the beginning. And sentient life multiplied to fill the world until the world was desolate, the cities burning and the land laid waste. Hunger walked the face of the earth, thirst dredged in its bowels. Rank were the once sweet waters and the salt. The two-headed dragon with claws of steel and scales of gold and heart of ice grew fat on the children of men. Who would slay him? Who would rise up and lead us? Who renew our strength so we would mount up with wings like ravens, renew our spirit so that we would rejoice in song, renew our minds so that we would sunder the barriers of time and space forever?'

  'What kind of answer is that?' Zach asks.

  'The incipit from the Book of Corvus.'

  Silence falls, a belljar silence in which each breath is audible, a silence so glassy it seems to magnify the collective tension.

  'I am not that Corvus,' Zach says.

  Play.

  Chapter 47

  At Stella's name, Zach closed his eyes against and against, lashes trembling. He made no sound except the sound of a laboured bellows, as if he had to remind himself to breathe. Is there ever a right time for such news? His scar glinted with the veneer of healing, a pearly sheen, and a small dark shape scuttled along the alley, but Laura was unable to fix her gaze on anything for long. They were both shivering, and the air smelled of snow. Zach needed shelter more than the anaesthesia of cold. Whatever else was waiting for them inside the Rex, it wasn't an impending snowstorm. If the door was bolted, Zach might be persuaded to leave. If the door was bolted, Max might already be wedged into a threadbare seat. Gloveless, she gripped the metal handle, and gripped. The cold cut into her palm.

  'Why haven't you told me this before? I've been trying to find out what's happened to her. To all of them.'

  The door to the cinema swung open smoothly—too smoothly. Could someone have oiled the hinges? She slipped inside, Zach followed and shut the door behind them.

  'Why haven't you told me?'

  'I—'

  Laura found herself repeating the account of her first visit, elaborating it, filling in details, drawing attention to each face, each shaky step she'd taken. Though unfeigned, her nervousness served like a magician's practised patter to misdirect Zach from the gaps in her story—those images on the screen. He'd never believe her; she wasn't quite sure she believed it herself. Sometimes it seemed as if she'd hallucinated the whole episode—not the bodies, not that, but she'd been so desperate to find Zach . . .

  'I don't know, exactly,' she answered. 'I guess I was afraid.'

  'Of me?'

  When she said nothing, Zach's face darkened. At first she thought he was angry, and she stepped backwards towards the exit, stepped backwards without, at least, flinching. He lowered the torch, which cast his features into waxen, high-contrast relief. Almost imperceptibly the skin surrounding his eyes took on the tautness of a mask as though she'd said something vicious and hurtful, and then she realised that she had, in her silence even more than in her words. But she didn't know how to explain, and this was hardly the moment for it anyway. An inkling of a disturbing possibility crossed her mind: was she in some way afraid of Zach?

  'I've been doing a little reading,' he said softly, 'Abuse victims often spend their lives self-destructing, driven by their desires, consumed by them, which are raw and ugly and conjoined to the abuse itself. Is that what I am to you?'

  'Zach—' She swallowed, longing for a glass of water. 'Zach, you're the most beautiful thing that's ever happened to me.' She glanced the length of the dark corridor ahead of them, the end of which remained shadowy despite the beam from their torch. She couldn't remember the passage being quite so long. 'Look, we're both on edge, and you're way too whacked to be anywhere except in bed.' Again she searched the corridor. 'I don't like this. Something feels wrong, really wrong. Maybe we ought to leave while we still can.'

  'You're absolutely ce
rtain everyone was dead? Stella?'

  'I didn't imagine it!'

  'That's not what I'm suggesting. They could have been drugged or in a coma.'

  'They were dead,' she said flatly.

  In response Zach took her by the arm, drew her away from the exit, and handed her the torch. Then, to her astonishment, he began to undress.

  'What are you doing?' she asked.

  He gave her a sardonic grin, Fabio's influence all too apparent. 'We'll celebrate after we get Max to safety.' He was already down to his boxers. 'Stay here with my stuff. I want them to see straight off that I'm unarmed. If I'm not back in half an hour, ring for a taxi and go home.'

  'Yeah, right. And do what? Make popcorn?'

  'Your dad will probably have to contact the police.' Now barefoot, he stopped to listen for a short period before laying his hands on her shoulders. 'I mean it, Laura. No tricks. I'll hear you if you try to follow.'

  'Then why am I here? As a clothes rack?'

  He gazed at her a moment longer. 'To keep me from giving up halfway across the city.' This time his grin didn't quite make it to his lips. 'I'm nowhere near as brave or as admirable as you conjecture.'

  'But a deal more foolhardy.'

  He kissed her, gripping her shoulders tightly. When she ran her fingertips over his tattoo, it felt like a ghastly goodbye. Zach felt it too; he muttered an oath and tore away, leaving her with the torch for scant cheer. She watched while he disappeared through the swing door to the theatre proper. Senses alert, she pulled out her mobile and gave him precisely one minute. She'd planned on waiting two, but the pressure in her chest was threatening to erupt into tattered gasps, lungs like a ripped mainsail flapping futilely in a squall. With as little noise as possible, she let herself out into the night. Once the door was shut, she raced round the building to the other emergency exit, the one she hadn't mentioned to Zach; the one she'd used for her last escape. Let it be unlocked, a ragged voice chanted in her head, please let it be unlocked. If she were at all religious (or did she mean superstitious?), she'd have taken it as an omen—good or bad yet to be determined—that the building was prepared to re-admit her.

  She navigated the corridor without stumbling, a reef of stacked theatre seats the only hazard. It looked as if someone were stripping the cinema. Her eyes fell on an antique steamer trunk bellied and staved like the one her mum had inherited from a stage-magician uncle or great-uncle or something. Flush against the wall and half hidden by the seats, it aroused Laura's curiosity, particularly in an unlocked building, but she didn't stop to investigate its contents. As she flitted towards the lobby, a few grisly possibilities crossed her mind, and she wondered whether she'd have had the nerve to lift the lid.

  The door to the lobby was gaping, the ornate but dilapidated décor of the cinema reminiscent of an ageing film star with a heavy encrustation of jewellery. And then a memory, as memories will: a gamy, gaping, ghoulish mouth. All her grandmother's teeth, in her last illness, had been removed along with the tumour. It had been terrifying to see her yawn, terrifying the required kiss—fleshy gums, the gangplank tongue, the black pit of the throat with its red plushy walls, the lips crimson in a parody of youth and health while the lipstick bled into the surrounding wrinkles, the glistening milky pearls on the sunken neck. But a child's frantic pleading, then sobbing, has no effect on a certain type of mother.

  Fury at the years of powerlessness and fear—is that what they mean by courage?

  She played the torch about the foyer, shrugging at the cobwebs on the plasterwork but lingering over the dark rise of the staircase to the upper level, lingering too over the magnificent teardrop chandelier which, uselessly, still glittered overhead—grimy but indomitable, refusing to relinquish its stellar role. There was a small amount of light from the street seeping through the crisscross of boards across the main entrance, whose glass was intact in places. A passer-by might catch sight of the beam. After a short hesitation she switched it off and waited while her eyes adjusted.

  Max, she thought, if you're here, listen carefully. Zach doesn't believe me, but there's someone who may be able to help us. I don't know if he's a simu or not, I don't even know what he is at all, but he seems to be able to talk inside my head, the only one who ever has, and to appear at strange moments. And it's somehow related to Zach. Call for him, or whatever it is you do. I'm going to picture him as best I can. Maybe that will make it easier for you.

  Gingerly she made her way across the lobby to the counter from which drinks and popcorn had once been sold, now listing and buckling like a riprap of pavement slabs under the onslaught of giant roots. The doomers liked to rant on about the claws of wind time and jaws of wolf time wresting the world from its human trespassers. No one took them seriously, yet you couldn't help wondering who would walk the planet in a few thousand years, which was nothing in earth time. Likely Fabio had been right: if anybody, it would be the simus. All at once it wasn't difficult to picture a Neanderthal girl falling in love with one of Laura's own distant ancestors, only to be banished from her tribe for her transgression.

  Laura laid both torch and mobile on the counter, then removed Max's old water pistol from her pocket. Made of lightweight plastic, it was a fairish replica though unlikely to fool anyone for long, even in the dark. Still, imitation firearms were banned from all public venues for a reason. She was also carrying a keyring pepper spray, which she'd armed herself with after the police attack on Zach—not much use against more than one person, but she'd seen what Zach could accomplish given the opportunity. One man down was one man less to deal with. If it came to it.

  For all Zach's tribal loyalty, simus could be just as unpredictable as the rabble.

  She listened attentively but there were no voices and no sounds she could detect, aside from the wind wrestling to invade this once majestic palace—this theatre as absurd as any in which her grandfather preached (and he'd preached in some impressive ones). Resting her forearms on the rickety countertop, she closed her eyes and repeated her message to Max, struggling to intersperse it with an image of that smiling, blue-eyed, crystal-toting figure. Her memory was sketchy at best, for she'd only seen him in brief flashes, but even a well-known face wouldn't have made it any easier. Odd how a person like Zach could be so vivid, so present, so utterly the breath and cell and pulse of you, yet impossible to project onto the screen of your mind.

  I don't have a single photo of him, she suddenly thought. And then for one canted moment saw him as she'd first seen him—late for class, leaning into the wind, indifferent to the sheeting rain as if it were no more than planes of grainy light, unsmiling. He lifted his head and his eyes passed over her. 'Look at that,' Olivia breathed, clutching Laura's arm. He stopped—she now realised that he must have been able to hear—and regarded them. Olivia preened at the library window, too self-absorbed to catch the sudden lash of sleet in his eyes before the shutter closed.

  In the long weeks and weeks to come it would have devastated Laura to see their colour darken almost to crow-black, clouded by pain.

  'Still playing with toys?'

  Laura cried out and snatched for the water pistol, but only succeeded in knocking her entire arsenal to the floor. As she backed up against the counter, her heartbeat louder than the final clatters, Fabio bent to pick up the scattered objects. He replaced the torch and mobile, weighed Max's toy in the palm of his hand. 'Not even any water,' he intoned mournfully.

  'You're supposed to be dead!'

  'Is that so?'

  Halfway to the pepper spray, she jammed to a halt. Afterwards, she promised herself, once he explains; by then her hands would have stopped shaking. Fabio, however, studied his wrister, made an adjustment, and with predictable insouciance merely smiled, handed her the water pistol, and walked off, apparently expecting her to follow. She stared at his retreating back for a second or two before hissing, 'You're insufferable.' At his low laugh she switched on the torch and waited to see if he'd demur, then stuffed her mobile into a pocket
when he continued crossing the lobby without a backward glance, though beckoning over his shoulder.

  'Fabio! Where's Max? I'm not moving a step till I know he's OK.'

  He took no notice, and with that the last of her fear burst into rage. 'How dare you! How dare you, after losing a brother yourself! Or was that another of your lies, your little games?'

  Fabio stopped and slowly turned round. There was no smile on his face now, and the protean silence carried the voice of Mateus, and the ashen voices of Nicola and Eliot, and voices lost, and voices stolen, and above all the one voice which would call to her, and always call, as if nothing ever changed or died, and forever called.

  'I think you'd better tell me what's going on,' she said.

  Still he gazed at her.

  'Are you a simu?'

  'No.'

  'Then who—or what?'

  'It's your Ophelia who says it best: we know what we are, but know not what we may be.'

  'And I must be madder than Ophelia to expect a reasonable answer from you!'

  He stared at her a moment longer, the ghost of a smile beginning to lighten his face.

  'It's not funny,' she said severely.

  'No . . . no, I suppose you'll need a few more years to see the black humour in death. The young are so very earnest. It's one of the first similarities I observed amongst the sentient races.'

  Gooseflesh threatening, Laura cracked the lid on first one, then another scenario, not keen to examine any of them closely. She resorted to a familiar stratagem. 'You're a very bizarre sort of ghost. Don't they let jesters and stand-up comedians into the afterworld?'

  Fabio laughed softly again, then came back to stand in front of her. 'Shall I kiss you to prove I'm real? I'll be happy to oblige once you've given me the formula.'