‘Challanco,’ he murmured, and Doctor Arkadin, by his silence, confirmed it.
It was three times the size of a normal human head. There were no lines or joins visible on its skin, but its eyes and toothless mouth were round, hollow sockets. It was antique and smeared with preserving grease, which had congealed into a caul half-wrapped over its bald dome. Esteban thought he caught the doctor’s own likeness in its silently howling features, but that might have been a trick of the half-light. Doctor Arkadin himself gazed at his creation, and traces of pride and revulsion and sorrow could be read from his face.
‘Does it speak?’ Esteban asked.
‘No. It doesn’t speak. You must remember it was built in an age when its purpose could not be fully described. Had I known of the Lady Lovelace and her machine-muse, I might perhaps have thought of it, but no. The idea of giving it a tongue or a voice was preposterous. What could it possibly say that we’d understand? It observes. It orders. It computes. I conceived it after the Oracle of Delphi, as my gift to the city. This and the officer corps and the grand designs.’
Esteban had assumed it was meant to be a man, but that no longer seemed clear.
Through layers behind Esteban’s eyes, Kay realised challanco was exactly how she’d imagined God when she was a child, before she was old enough to understand what that meant. God was bald and empty and terrifying. Even then, she hadn’t believed in Him.
She wore Esteban like a suit of ice. She wanted to move his fingers to touch challanco’s skin and find out if it was as chilly as she imagined, but he stayed locked in his dream and his hand hung warily at his side. ‘Did challanco summon me?’
Doctor Arkadin’s head tilted slowly from side to side. ‘It causes things to be moved and sorted. It has been assembling a dossier on the current crisis. You must take its findings and do with them as you see fit.’
‘Me? Just me?’
‘That’s up to you. I notice you seem unconcerned by the idea of crisis.’
‘Candida swallows threats. They are its meat and drink, so the witches say. It gobbled you up, doctor, if Flower-of-the-Lady is to be believed.’
The doctor’s eyes were glossy brown, the same shade as his brass creature. ‘Please reach into challanco’s mouth and remove what you find there. You may still decline.’
Esteban rolled up his sleeve and sank his arm into the head. He expected a soft, tight hollow with damp, fleshy-walls, but there was just rust and cool metal. His fingers touched the edge of the package. With a little difficulty, he pulled it free.
‘The problem is,’ Doctor Arkadin began. He broke off, suddenly uncertain, then resumed: ‘The problem is the officer corps. It attracts men and women with ambition and designs. Some of you still hope for the kind of power and order I once imagined. Some of you may have found allies outside the city who have their own reasons to encourage your folly. As an officer, you will have to infiltrate the conspiracy and turn it whatever way you see fit.’
Esteban was aware of Doctor Arkadin’s unsympathetic eyes measuring him. The doctor was a gambler, not certain of his captain’s honesty or his loyalty. Esteban stood uncomfortably still, trying to create an air of sincerity. He still held challanco’s sagging envelope; it was limp and unwieldy in his hands, and he let the awkwardness show, enough to help the impression.
Doctor Arkadin stepped back slightly, accepting what he saw. Esteban tore the envelope open. Kay, his impotent rider, felt what the doctor couldn’t; the seams of ambition and pride and lust that challanco’s offer had teased out of him. Not greed though. It wasn’t power for its own sake that coiled inside him. It was –
She loses him. She doesn’t know what he’s thinking. She isn’t sure that he knows his own mind. It depends on the contents of the envelope, and he opens it again now in the bedroom. The spectre of Doctor Arkadin has gone, absorbed by the opened memory. He isn’t sure he was ever there. This is a dream. Challanco was a dream. This envelope is a dream, and it certainly won’t be there when I wake, when he wakes, when Kay wakes. He sneaks another glance down at her, tucked up inside the folds of the bed.
The contents of the envelope tumble out onto the floor. Photographs. Lots of photographs of varying sizes, some eight-by-tens, some thumbnails, a few Polaroids, many ordinary domestic snaps. There is only one other item, the nameless book that he removes carefully. He’s read some of it, but the relevance escapes him.
He gathers up the photographs and goes through them one by one. It’s the same person in each, he guesses; the same woman, the same girl. They’re mismatched and scrambled out of order, but they build into the chronicle of a life. There are shots of her as a student, at weddings and family gatherings, at Christmas, at work. The older pictures are harder to tell, as the long slab of her adult features hasn’t unfolded from her scrunched, round football face, but the bright hair and the freckles are unmistakable and she has always been very tall. One minute she’s a four-year-old posed up to her ankles in a paddling pool, the next she’s stoic and full-grown at a funeral. She’s an unrecognisable baby, more doll than human, then she’s a slouching teen with a cigarette perched surreptitiously in the crook of her fingers. Even as a girl, she was fierce. There is one where she’s asleep and naked, with the bedclothes pulled back by the photographer’s half-glimpsed hand. There’s a livid red pubic V at the top of her thighs, she wears freckles like a tattoo, and her navel is a pin-prick on her otherwise flat stomach.
She’s in this room.
Esteban looks at Kay’s sleeping body, image and reality, sick with shame. Seeing herself through Esteban’s eyes, Kay finally guesses why he’s spent so much time at her house.
He held Kay’s naked photograph in front of him, then turned away from Doctor Arkadin and from challanco to preserve her modesty. It was indecent, a violation of her trust and privacy. He recognised her straightaway. He couldn’t put it down. The doctor was glancing at a selection of the more innocuous images.
‘Challanco clearly thinks this woman is important,’ Doctor Arkadin mused. ‘Do you have any idea who she is?’
Yes.
Yes. Her name is Kay. She’s an Appeared. I saw her yesterday.
Yes. I know her.
Doctor Arkadin was lost in his thoughts, and his body was fading into the forge shadows.
‘No,’ Esteban said, casually shaking his head, ‘I’ll have to find out.’
She moved her chalk across the wall, but each new line took her further away from the crumbling mental image of Doctor Arkadin. She tried closing her eyes, drawing by instinct, and made a scrawl. Her fingers were stiff, the skin broken and bruised from the long grind of the day’s work, and the chalk dust stung on raw flesh.
The dream had almost faded by the time Kay returned to the old free house. The sense of it had drifted away from her the moment she woke. Like all dreams, it was full of nonsense and disconnected thoughts that melted in the morning light. Esteban, slumped over his desk with his head half-resting on a dull yellow cushion, was seedily real, like his city. She’d slept heavily and late, so she ran back to the house, forgetting with every step.
Forgetting it all, except for Doctor Arkadin. He lodged in her consciousness like a numb headache, tangibly there but unfelt. She decided to draw him as a reminder, something that wouldn’t fade. It was important, though she quickly forgot why, the true secret of the dream, you’re being watched.
‘Look at what I’ve got.’
Azure glided into their cell in a single graceful movement. She was riding a bike, not just any bike, but her bike, still a little bashed and dented in places but healed and working again. She was beaming, with her eyes and her mouth, with her whole body. She’d dressed in her full, imposing grasshopper regalia, except for the headpieces (‘I won’t need them much longer’), and her bike’s skinny skeleton was slung with bags and pouches and instruments like a pack-animal. Azure pu
lled the gear stick and the wheels purred. The bike tilted to one side, and she stopped herself falling with a foot planted carefully on the floor. The carpet rucked beneath her boots and wheels, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered. She looked triumphantly innocent, Quixote on wheels.
‘I wish I’d got my camera,’ Kay said. A memory flickered, vanished.
‘It’s good again. Esteban – I still think he’s a lazy bastard, but right now I am in my place, I’m happy and I’d forgive anyone anything. It’s good.’
She kicked playfully and wrong-way at the pedals, setting the chain spinning. A judder passed through the bike and through her as if they were the same, seamless animal.
‘Do you ever wonder what it’s like to ride a dragon?’ asked Doctor Arkadin.
‘Is that a trick question?’ Kay replied. ‘Yes, thought so. The way I imagine dragons, they’re so big, you couldn’t ride one, you couldn’t tame one. The only way you get on its back is to become part of it, the smallest part, like a flea riding a dog. The dragon rides you. Yes? No?’
‘I saw Esteban last night,’ Kay remarked. She patted her hands, dusting off chalk. ‘He didn’t say anything about it. I forgot to mention it; sorry.’
‘Just by being there you might have made the difference. You’ve got this way, you know? You can be frightening.’
Mention of Esteban made her look to the window, though she couldn’t say why. Evening was drawing in again, but for the moment anyone with the right, high vantage point could spy into the heart of the room, and certainly she shuddered.
Paranoia. She put the chalk down absently and went to close the shutters. The invisible country stays invisible.
‘So do I scare you?’ she asked. Her roommate nodded cheerfully. Azure had dismounted, parking her bike carefully against the wall.
‘Yeah, you’re big and scary. I like this in a friend.’
‘You’re buttering me up.’
‘This is true. The most important thing ever is going to happen to me now, and I can’t do it on my own, I need someone I can trust to be there for me, to be my second, to lift me. Please,’ she said.
Kay was distracted by the chalk marks that she’d made on the tightening walls. They were a failed face. She reached out and smudged them with the flat of her palm.
Azure’s squeaky voice was pressing, irritating, insectile. Kay looked back. ‘What?’ she said.
Chapter Four: Becoming a Bird
‘The bastard’s getting bigger. I swear it’s going to keep growing till it covers the world.’
Xan was a charismatic. His eyes had their own gravity. His hands, even when tucked in his pockets, seemed to beckon. He could have been on stage, he could have been a politician, he could have been in the movies. He held his arms wide open, to embrace the whole of Candida. Kay wondered how his naked ribs must look under his clothes, whether or not he was really as wiry as he seemed.
Candida spread out before them into the distance, spilling out of Xan’s grasp. It was late and the city was pocking with lights beneath the bland, greying sky. He had taken her to the flat roof of the clubhouse. He gobbed over the edge, and they watched his spit glisten in the gloom and disintegrate. ‘Candyland,’ he declared, not quite sneering. It frightened him too much, the city; it had his respect.
He’d put hooks in her flesh. He’d reeled her in. He’d been waiting for her at the doors to the Displaced Club. ‘I thought you’d never get here,’ he said. He called her Red.
Flags of the world decorated the Club’s porch, from Europe, Asia, North America and beyond. They were hung too low to catch the wind, and Kay had to push through them, as though they were curtains or damp washing on a line. The building itself was a grim brick mausoleum, one of the Follies. It had been a factory once, Xan explained, for manufacturing heat. The walls were permanently stained and warped by steam. The air was cool and damp; it clung to her skin like fever.
The club’s secretary had twilight-blue skin, a crushing handshake and a never-smiling mouth. He introduced himself as the Nigerian, and Kay never learned if he had a name. He seemed proud to be the only Appeared from his homeland, or at least the only one to have sought sanctuary with the Club. He asked for her passport, but she was unprepared. This wasn’t a club then but an embassy – or a perfect sober parody of one.
She gave her name. It conjured Xan.
How to explain Xan?
She couldn’t. Simply she couldn’t. She was drawn to him, on those intangible hooks through her body, on those invisible lines, but she couldn’t say why. That irritated Kay, who liked her thoughts to be transparent, at least to herself. Her irritation buzzed into excitement as he stepped out of hiding to greet her. He was attractive enough. She could sleep with him readily enough. She would. Since their last meeting, she’d known as simple fact that he would screw her and she would let him. Her body betrayed her; it filled her with fizzing moods when she thought of him, when she met him.
He wore a fraying grey suit, slightly too big and too old for him. It was heavy around his shoulders and he hadn’t a tie. Hand-me down fashion, Candida fashion, worn because there was nothing else close to his size. He had Mod spectacles, which he removed, mildly ashamed, when he saw her. He fiddled with them, wrapped them in tissue. He hadn’t seen her in glasses. Would he like her in glasses? She’d stopped wearing glasses a week back, finding her eyesight sharper than it had been for years.
His mouth split open as he saw her, the smile of a carrion-eater.
‘I’ve been busy,’ she replied, dull-voiced. ‘They work me hard.’
‘I bet.’ He had tatty, slept-on hair. He smoothed it down with the palm of his hand. ‘Too many slip through the gaps, but I hoped we’d get through to you. You’re special, and I don’t mean that in a face-up-against-the-window-and-licking way. You’re important. You’re Prospero’s very own daughter, and I’m charmed to meet you. Again,’ he finished, mock-absently.
She held out her hand. Her kissed her fingers, lightly. They were dry and soft as the flesh below shed skin. She wished he’d draw them into her mouth, even right now with the Nigerian looking on. She wished he’d suck them. She hated herself for wishing it. There were hooks through her breasts and her stomach and the lines were tightening.
Temporary membership of the Displaced Club was a formality. Xan and the Nigerian sorted out the paperwork, and she spent those idle minutes in the Club’s anteroom. Electric light glared off whitewashed walls, and the room smelled like dry brown cabbage. They had tried to decorate it with abstract pictures and white-skinned scented furniture. It was industrial, not comfortable, and Kay sat cross-legged and numb-arsed on a wooden bench, deliberately absorbing the cold, hard ethos of her surroundings. She could take it.
Xan returned, and her puritan resolve slipped away.
‘Would you like a personal tour? I’m not busy. No, I am busy, but you’re my business.’
‘Prospero,’ she insisted, trying to be efficient.
‘Has grown since you last heard of him. He’s shot up like a real boy. I love these stupid metaphors, all these stupid codenames, don’t you? Here.’
She took his hands and let him lift her to her feet. The backs of her legs were still thick and unfeeling. She staggered. She got close to him. There was warmth. No scent.
‘Prospero is still my account.’ Bland words, not quite a question, not quite a statement.
‘Prospero’s got bigger than you Red, sorry to say. Your people see Candida as a honeypot to break open. Let’s raid the sticky goodness. Winnie-the-Pooh!’ He laughed. ‘That isn’t enough for me. This is about more than doling out goodies to your shareholders. This is about dignity. This is a war of ideas.’
‘The account –’
‘Is still yours, but it’s a lot more ambitious now. If you join the Club – if – you’ll find your time devoted to Prospero and it
will be everything you were promised. We’re going to build this city. You’ll like the Club. We still use proper money here, for the sake of appearances. Don’t you miss euros and dollars? Did you ever tape some to your skin in case you got mugged? Itches like mad, but it’s secure and that’s the best feeling you’ll ever get.’
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I never did that.’
He took her into the club. She wanted him to touch her; he didn’t touch her. She was pleased, in a way, that he didn’t touch her. He would lose her respect if he tried, and worse. The time she’d spent among the courtesans had left her with a bristling, self-conscious body, all too aware of how little there was separating her from the mass of humanity. Xan came close, into her space – his upper body cheerfully twisted and angled around like a new-born exploring its surroundings – but never made contact. He kept his arms folded or close to his sides. There was nothing about him to suggest he recognised her hidden attraction or responded in kind, nothing open, nothing but the insolent smirk and the jaunty spring in his step.
Kay knew that men found her attractive – physically attractive – for only one reason, because she was forceful. Some of those men saw her as a challenge, others as a vice, and so she was disappointed and disappointing in love. Xan betrayed no signs of belonging to either type.
They were alone in white corridors. She didn’t stop him with a hand on his shoulder. She didn’t remove her coat or her top, didn’t roll the hem upwards to display her breasts, didn’t let him take one in each hand to test the weight. No, there was no hot, embarrassed rash in her skin. No, he was not kissing her and his mouth wasn’t dry and airless. No, she didn’t trot after him like a schoolgirl virgin lost in foolish fantasies. No.
Xan knew exactly what she was thinking, and turned to her and almost-winked.
He spent the morning showing her round a building full of cobwebbed space and bursts of life. They started on the ground and worked their way up, but Kay had to fight her impression of descent. The lingering taste of dried steam was joined in these rooms by fresh cigarette smoke (which made her stomach ache in sympathy) and coffee fumes (which, for the first time in her adult life, smelled over-rich and ashen). They felt like gangster rooms, full of secret energy devoted to known but unspoken activity. What should have seemed utterly ordinary – and would have done in London or New York or Buenos Aires – was turned seedy and suspicious by its surroundings. She estimated she saw at least two dozen people at work.
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