Outrageous Fortune

by Tim Scott

  We rounded the last corner and Sarah throttled to a halt outside a whitewashed block of apartments cascading greenery. My crash suit undid itself with a gentle brrr and I hopped off, suddenly aware of how strange it was to be wearing the clothes Sarah had brought me again. I hadn’t worn my leather jacket in years.

  She stood looking at me and I felt the emotion hidden behind her eyes. “Look at you! But I’m not going to make a scene, so don’t panic. But you do need to sort yourself out, Jonny. You’ll never find the perfect partner; she doesn’t exist. And we had a lot going for us you know.”

  I nodded, feeling it just wasn’t true. A host of bad memories I hadn’t noticed were in my head reared up—of evenings being told I should be doing this or doing that; of conversations about grasping futures that were full of cut-price deals and the latest bikes; of the two of us sharing sad, drunken nights in bars with couples who hated me, or resented me, or didn’t trust me, but mainly didn’t care or even know who I was. I’d tried to do it for a while. I’d tried to enjoy the world of dinner parties and conversations about vis-programs and zones development, but to me it was a dry, godforsaken desert that howled with a particularly desperate sort of meaninglessness. One that never led anywhere but to another round of shallow gossip, which they spread about liberally over their day-to-day lives to cover the trickling, unacknowledged fear that coursed through them.

  “Yeah,” I said simply, not wanting to get tangled up in things we couldn’t resolve. I kissed her on the cheek, half smiled, then headed on up the steps, purposefully not looking back. The roar of the bike echoed through the stairwell as she throttled away, and I felt relieved she had left, that we had not unpacked too much of the past. Because it’s never as easy to repack again, and it always takes up more space than it did before; just like those orange emergency survival bags we used in the mountains. They came packed the size of a tea bag, but once opened you might as well be carrying a bundled-up wedding tent in your rucksack for the amount of space they took.

  Sarah was kidding herself about us and about her and about the past, and probably about the future. She was still doing it; maybe she always would. Maybe she’d be one of those people who get stuck in their lives and forget how to move on, spending years in one place while everyone else walks on by. I should know; I had done it too.

  I skipped two steps at a time and felt my thighs burn as I rapped up the treads. When all this was over, I was really going to have to get properly fit somehow. But I vowed I wasn’t going to buy the Row-master Fitness Experience, which promised to make you an athlete on twenty-five seconds a day but should, by law, have stated clearly on the box that you would only use it twice and after that it was going to take up an inordinate amount of space in the cupboard under the stairs.

  I wondered briefly where I would find a fitness program that had a proviso for huge numbers of Long Island Iced Teas, but I was sure there had to be one out there somewhere. And if there wasn’t, then I felt I could make a sizeable fortune inventing it. I carried on up more slowly now, my boots tapping on the cool marble stairs, sending an echo out into the empty shade. Mat lived on the top floor, which, as he said, was “dark” (that meant “good” in Rave talk)—particularly as he had a roof garden created by the previous owner and a terrace that gave a view across the rooftops to the ocean.

  In summers gone by, we’d staggered out there bleary-eyed at five o’clock in the morning to see what the waves were doing. If the surf was up, we’d head off for a “dawny,” ripping up some rides for an hour or so before breakfast, then scrambling into work by nine. Mat used to design beards, but when he got bored of that, he joined the music company B Gets F.B.T. and ran the Confusing Paper Department. Basically, if anyone in any of the other sections got something that was in any way confusing or complicated, they sent it to Mat, who was an expert in knowing whether to just ignore it and throw it away.

  He reckoned he threw away ninety-five percent of the stuff he got, which saved a lot of people doing a lot of other work, so having an expert in charge of whether to chuck things could save a company like that a lot of money. He was quite dedicated to the whole thing, and I always wondered where that seriousness came from. I guess it was some sense of responsibility instilled into his upbringing that had stuck. It was also reflected in his minimalist flat, and especially his highly organized collection of omelette spatulas, which he claimed all had some different culinary use.

  So, apart from the inconvenience of actually having to be there when the surf was up—and as far as you can like a job—Mat liked working for B Gets F.B.T. He didn’t have any political aspirations, but I guess if he’d chosen, he could have worked his way up. Perhaps via the No Shit Department, which didn’t take any shit from anyone and was consulted when people thought they were being taken for a ride, or even the Complete Fabrications Board, who made up well-thought-out lies for the company when they were in a tight corner. In fact, it was the stuff produced by the Complete Fabrications Departments of a zillion other companies that Mat spent most of his time weeding out. I tapped up the last few stairs, which brought me facing Mat’s door square on, and I reached for the buzzer.

  “Don’t touch that!” screamed the buzzer.

  “What?”

  “He’s not here.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I said.

  “No, he went out about twenty minutes ago, didn’t say where. Got any ID?”

  “No,” I said, realizing I didn’t have any. “He knows me though, anyway.”

  “Yeah—you know what? They all say that. No ID? Everyone has ID. Even the rats around here have ID. I like you, I really do, but I’ll have to call Zone Securities if you hang about much longer.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. You’re out of here.”

  “He knows me. It’s really quite important.”

  “OK—freeze—hands in the air. I got a live one everyone! Stand back!”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “No kidding, buddy, I’m not giving you another warning. You’re going down.”

  “You’re just a buzzer. Shut up!”

  “Oy—apartment C buzzer, you see this one? He’s the sort I’ve been telling you about! I told you, didn’t I?”

  “Really, dear?” said the buzzer from across the hall. “He looks harmless enough to me. And Mat is in, dear. He’s been in all day.”

  “What? He’s in?”

  “Well, he may be in…possibly…”

  “Right. Unless you ring before I count up to three, I’m going to take out my gun and empty a complete—”

  “Ding-Dong!” chimed the buzzer through the flat. “Ding-Dong! Ding-Dong!”

  Clearly, the buzzer didn’t catch my bluff. I heard the muffled thump of footsteps through from the other side and the door finally eased open, revealing Mat. I guessed straightaway that he had a hangover. There was the faintest flicker of surprise on his face, then he embraced me.

  “Jonny X, I’m so glad you’re here! I’ve been having very weird dreams, indeed.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Only mine all seem to be real.”

  15

  I leaned on the low wall of the roof deck under the shade of a small, drooping palm tree and gazed out toward the sea, guessing the surf was still about three feet and clean.

  “It’s building. Supposed to jack up to about five feet this afternoon,” Mat said, coming over and handing me a Long Island Iced Tea. “But the wind is onshore and getting up too, and will blow it out slightly, but it’s not as if we can’t get some shelter somewhere. You should try out my new acquisition.”

  “What’s that?” I said, still turning over events in the back of my mind, like a forgotten concrete mixer.

  “My new longboard; it’s really sweet. You’d like it. You look stressed. You look like you need a chilled-out surf session, then about fifty-six Long Islands.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said, feeling the smoothness of the iced-cool glass. “Some very strange things h
ave been happening, Mat. There are some people chasing after me and they may want to kill me.”

  “Who?” said Mat, looking over with alarm. “Oh, you don’t mean Emma’s friends? Surely not. They don’t like you that much I guess, but I don’t think they’d kill you, would they? Even Charlotte’s not that mean.”

  “No, not Emma’s friends. I mean real, large, strange people with guns, who have been firing real stuff at me.”

  “Wow,” said Mat. “Why? What have you been doing?”

  “That’s the thing. I’ve no real idea. All I get are just these platefuls of random madness being pushed in my face, and I don’t know why.” I paused and looked over at the ocean. “Emma’s friends really don’t like me that much, do they?”

  “Well, they’re a funny lot. You know that.”

  “Great. That’s just great. That’s all I need to hear at the moment.”

  “Jonny?”

  “It’s really not been my best day, Mat. Everyone suddenly seems to have it in for me. Even your buzzer was giving me a hard time.”

  “Come on, Jonny, you’re feeling too sorry for yourself. My buzzer is the result of some kids messing about. They’ve hacked into it and fed it lots of police films, I think. It gives everyone a hard time. It accused my mom of being a class-A drug dealer the other day, which at first had her very worried, then very amused. I was going to get Teb to fix it. Look, who’s trying to kill you?”

  “No idea really. These four strange Riders…We need to see Teb; he might be able to help. I feel like those kids who did your doorbell have hacked into my life and connected it back all wrong. That’s not possible, is it?”

  “What are you talking about, Jonny? Are you all right? I don’t just mean: ‘Are you all right.’ I mean: ‘Are you all right?’” I sensed his growing comprehension that this was a bigger situation than he first thought.

  “I’m OK. Just. But I need some answers.” I drank the entire Long Island Iced Tea. “Do you have a cigarette?” I added, eyeing him hopefully, although Mat hardly ever smoked now.

  “Jonny,” said Mat, holding his hands up. “Jonny. Jonny. Jonny. I know things are bad, but no.”

  “Come on!” I said, suddenly with an aching for nicotine that seemed to inhabit every cell in my body. “I didn’t know my life was going to be put through the weird blender.”

  “No excuses, Jonny,” said Mat, and handed me another Long Island Iced Tea. I took it and smiled back ruefully. Mat had a single-minded intensity that was a pain in the ass sometimes. I had made him promise never to give me another cigarette one drunken night a few weeks before and now I wished he didn’t always stick by his word quite so stubbornly.

  “You’re a pain in the ass, Mat,” I reflected, pausing to knock back another gulp of the soothing drink, “but I guess that’s why we’re still friends.”

  “Let’s hear this whole thing. Who’s trying to kill you? And who’s brandishing the weird blender?”

  So I began to tell the entire story, from the fight with Emma to losing my house, to the Riders and Caroline rescuing me, and the shindig with Zone Securities. Mat took it all in and kept the supply of Long Island Iced Teas coming. I tried to give him as much detail as I could, dragging my mind back to describe the Riders and everything else as clearly as possible in case, somehow, something small turned out to be key. I had also hoped that by telling the whole thing straight out, I might get some flash of inspiration, or insight.

  But it didn’t happen.

  All I got was the feeling of a weight sitting in my stomach—a darkness that I couldn’t reach, couldn’t explain, and that scared the shit out of me. When I’d finished, I felt immensely tired, and as I sat back in the shade of the palm tree on Mat’s roof terrace, I began to fall asleep with the sound of the ocean peeling away in the distance. Part of me said life seemed all right again. I had been through so much and yet now here I was, in this oasis of calm.

  “Mat,” I said with my eyes closed, pulling myself back from the edges of sleep.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know when Jack died?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Has anything come back to you at all?”

  “No. Don’t go there, Jonny,” he said quietly. “Get some rest.”

  “It feels like it’s all tied in to this thing in a way I can’t explain. It feels like I’ve got to face up to what happened back then,” I said, almost inaudibly, but his reply came back as just a haze of sounds, because I had drifted into a sleep that was warm and peaceful, one where I dreamed with delicious clarity. The dreams fired through me with unnatural intensity, so that they seemed to occupy my whole mind.

  Habakkuk was calling me. I was lying in a crevasse and could see his face through a hole in the roof of the ice, looking down on me. He was smiling and I wasn’t sure why. Was he pleased to see me? Or was there something more to it than that? The ice was hard and unforgiving against my back, and I tried to push myself up with my arms. I could see he was shouting something and gesturing, but no words seemed to be coming out of his mouth. I tried to move again, but something seemed to be holding me back—some weight, some fear. I had to get out. I had to get out of here. Then he waved like he knew something and drew back from the hole but his laughter echoed around the crevasse, barreling down different fissures so it kept returning in waves.

  In that moment I was sure of one thing: Habakkuk knew more than I did.

  16

  I heard the pages fluttering in the warm breeze and knew straightaway that the noise came from a large, open book.

  The simple sound was gorgeously intoxicating so I just let it fill my head; let the gentle delicate rustling of wafer-thin pages, tumbling over each other, course through me with a tingle. And I realized the breeze must have stiffened, just as Mat said it would.

  The dream about Habakkuk lay fresh in my mind and I turned it over, wondering what it meant—wondering what my subconscious wanted me to see and why on earth Habakkuk should be tied in to any of this, or whether it was just some built-in anxiety about work.

  I lay there, letting the pleasant sensation of just being alive have a free run and feeling more rested than I had in what seemed like years. Then something occurred to me. Why was I hearing the sound of pages rustling? I cautiously opened my eyes, sensing something was seriously altered.

  I was right.

  There were maybe fifty volumes littered about the roof, piled in great heavy towers, and there was even one open volume on my lap.

  “Caroline?” I croaked, and saw Mat was asleep on a chair on the other side of the roof. “Caroline?” I cried, getting up and almost tripping up over the things.

  “What?” said Mat, stirring. “Whoaaa!” he added seeing the books. “What is this? Books?”

  “Yeah. The limpet encyclopedia saleswoman must have left them.”

  “Dark! This whole thing is genuinely out of control.”

  “Caroline!” I called, not really surprised when I didn’t get an answer. I scanned over the edge of the wall down to the street below but couldn’t see even a smidgen of a sign of her. “Well, I guess you could say this is a gentle hint. Why didn’t we wake up?”

  “That’s one reason,” Mat said, nodding toward the empty bottles of alcohol.

  “Yeah, I guess. Do you think I should buy these things now, anyway? I mean she did get me away from the Riders, didn’t she? Maybe I owe it to her.”

  “No way,” Mat said. “They have no right to your Medi-Data, and you don’t know anything about her anyway. You don’t know what it’s about.”

  “I know, but look at all this.” I gestured, then saw a note on top of a particularly large pile. I sighed. “‘Congratulations. Your twenty-four-hour deadline has passed and while we have not got a definite “yes” from you, we assume you are buying our highly valued encyclopedia collection that will become a treasured family possession enjoyed by you and your wife (separated). As a token of our goodwill, we are able to offer you a free hologram virus zapper, and a full-
sized framed poster of a Canadian moose. Best wishes Colonel Isaac A34.’”

  “This is totally dark,” said Mat. “Why would anyone want all these books, when it’s all on vis-media anyway? It makes no sense at all.”

  “I know, don’t look at me,” I breathed, catching sight for the first time of the huge frame containing the Canadian moose poster. “And why would they think I want that?”

  “Beats me. And do you know something else that’s slightly weird? I had such a whopping hangover today that I called in sick, and I didn’t even have a drink last night. What’s that about?”

  “Everything’s gone weird.”

  “Quite cool in a way.”

  “Do you think there’s something in one of these books that I’m supposed to find?”

  “What? Nah. Chill out, Jonny. If anyone wanted you to know something, they wouldn’t put it in here. It would take years to go through all of these. There’s reams of stuff. Look at it. ‘A D-one-one-three-four is an itch virus that is airborne and attracted to the shoulder blades of the human being. When scratched and dislodged, it floats around until it becomes attracted to the shoulder blades of another human being,’” he read randomly from a page in one of the volumes near him. “An itch isn’t a virus, is it? They’ve got to be kidding, haven’t they?”

  “Caroline E61 doesn’t kid about stuff. And yet there’s something inexplicable about her. Maybe underneath it all there is a—Do you know what I think?” I said, with a wave of unexpected decisiveness that I hadn’t seen coming. “I think this whole limpet saleswoman thing is just a con to cover something up. I’m being conned and they’ve gone to a huge length to do it, but I really don’t know why, or how they are tied in with the Riders or my house. If Teb could just trace the leak from my Medi-Data back to their place, we can find out where they operate from and pay them a visit.”