by Jule Owen
“It appears we have a project, Mathew Erlang.”
Eva invites Mathew into her world. He gets the demigod tour rather than the human pedestrian perspective, to give him a sense of the scale of it. As he sits in the comfort of his Darkroom seat, his brain is stimulated by the skullcap, and his senses are assaulted and fooled by the complex coordinated technologies in the Darkroom. Eva takes his hand and flies him over fields, great empty plains, forests, deserts, seas, lakes, mountains, ancient dead snow-topped and active volcanoes. They dive under water and skim the colour-shock of coral reefs. Finally, she brings him to rest on a mountainside. They are staring across a valley, a deep gorge cut into the landscape, velveteen with green and studded with trees. Fluffy white clouds cast shadows moving ship-like across the land.
He’s done this kind of thing before. Eva’s world isn’t unique, but there is something different, something pristine and innocent, plus, if he wants it, he’ll have a version all to himself
8 O’Malley Escapes
Number nineteen and number twenty-one Pickervance Road are houses nestling against one another. They are part of two rows of Victorian terraces with elaborate bay windows and tiled porches, set back from the road, with short redbrick paths, flower borders, and garden walls.
Their front doors are right next to one another, making it all the more surprising that Mathew’s parents had never got to know Mr Lestrange. It also means that when Mathew puts his acoustic amplifier to the party wall between his and Mr Lestrange’s house, he’s recording whatever is going on in the hallway of the house next door, which appears to be nothing very much at all.
Mathew tries several places, upstairs and down, in the hope he might catch Mr Lestrange having an e-Pin conversation whilst wandering in his house, but he is greeted with nothing but silence.
He sits on the staircase with his amplifier on his knees. It’s possible Lestrange has soundproofed the party walls. He goes upstairs. The corner of his bedroom is only a couple of feet away from Mr Lestrange’s bay window. What if he attaches his amplifier to the wall? Then he’d be able to listen directly into the room.
The window in Mathew’s bedroom hasn’t opened in years. Given the climate and the permanent need for either air conditioning or heating, hardly anyone opens their windows these days. Mathew climbs onto a chair he fetches from the kitchen and manages to force the window ajar. He has fashioned a kind of hook attached to the wire he wraps round the amplifier, intending this to fasten to the pipe clips on the drainpipe running between their two houses. Leaning precariously, he manages to fix the amplifier in place, but as he gets back in through the window, trying to thread the wire with him, he slips, the stool going from under his feet. Grabbing the window ledge before he falls, he dislodges the precariously attached amplifier and sends the whole thing hurtling into the olive tree growing next to the front room windows.
“Damn!” He drops to the floorboards and jogs downstairs, taking his stool with him.
First he goes into the garden to try and retrieve the amplifier from the tree, but he can’t reach it. It’s stuck in the crook of two branches growing against the side of the house. He realises he would be able to get at it if he stretched from the window in the front room.
Downstairs, he thumps the window open. It was as stuck as the one upstairs, but he manages to force it and leans across to grab the amplifier. As he does, O’Malley, whom he’s totally forgotten about, bounds off the window ledge onto his shoulder and out through the window. Mathew drops the amplifier.
“Damn cat!” he says.
He opens the front door and goes into the street. As always, the heat hits him like a wall.
O’Malley has disappeared.
In the garden he starts searching on his hands and knees under the juniper and rosemary bushes.
“O’Malley? O’Malley!” he calls, increasingly loudly, half-expecting the entire neighbourhood to come and tell him to get indoors. It crosses his mind that he may be breaking the terms of the All-Day Curfew. “O’Malley?” he says again. O’Malley’s distinct mew calls back to him, more half-strangled duck than cat. “Good boy, come here. Come on.”
“Mew,” says O’Malley, but he doesn’t appear.
Mathew thinks the meow is coming from Gen Lacey’s garden, and he peers over the fence separating their properties.
“O’Malley, come here,” he says, aiming his voice at the garden.
“Mao,” O’Malley says, but this time Mathew catches something moving in the bushes on the far side of Gen’s path.
His bare feet burn on the pavement as he heads for Gen’s garden gate. Wondering if he should knock before he searches through her shrubbery, he decides he doesn’t have time and will explain if she comes. He gets on his hands and knees and starts lifting branches. In the corner of the wall, under a laurel bush, O’Malley’s turquoise eyes glimmer. Mathew pats the soil in front of him, “Come on, come on.” Finding a broken twig, he starts waving it in front of the cat. O’Malley obligingly responds and swats at the stick with his paw. Mathew slowly draws the waving stick towards him, and O’Malley edges forward.
“Don’t move or I’ll blow your bloody brains out!”
Somehow Mathew is now face down, with his cheek ignominiously pressed onto a hot paving stone, his arm painfully pinned behind his back, a heavy weight pressing on his spine and something hard, metal, and definitely life-threatening pushed into the side of his head.
“ID!” barks what Mathew assumes to be the man kneeling on him.
“What?” Mathew says, struggling to breathe.
“Where is your ID card?” the man punctuates each word with additional pressure from his knee, so Mathew involuntarily finds himself groaning.
“It’s in the house.”
“What’s it doing there? All citizens must carry their ID at all times with them during the All-Day Curfew.”
“I didn’t think I’d need it to hunt for my cat.”
“Your what?”
“My cat escaped.”
“There’s no cat.”
“He’s under there.” Mathew tries to lift his arm to point but the man slams him against the paving stone hard.
“What on earth is going on?”
This is another voice. A woman. A voice of reason.
Mathew’s eyes, at ground level, see a pair of women’s shoes.
“Why on earth are you kneeling on my neighbour’s son and pointing a gun at his head? Are you mad?” It’s Gen Lacey.
“Please stand back. This boy is wandering around without ID during a government curfew, a criminal offence under the Special Measures Act 2042. This same boy I observed wearing Lenzes and spying on my client yesterday, which is not only highly suspicious behaviour, it is also a criminal offence under the Personal Privacy Act 2035.”
Gen says, “He’s Mathew Erlang, an educational apprentice to Hermes Link and son of Hoshi Mori, senior researcher at Panacea. I don’t think anyone would be especially happy if you arrested him.”
“I am making an arrest until his identity is vouched for.”
“I am vouching for his identity. I have told you who he is. Please listen. I live here. You have seen me each day for the last year. So you should be able to vouch for my identity, at least.”
“Please don’t abuse me, madam. I am authorised to use my weapon.”
“I’m not abusing you. I’m helping you. You are assaulting a sixteen-year-old boy out searching for his cat, and I am trying to get you to stop before you do something you will regret.”
“Maow,” O’Malley says.
“What was that?” the guard asks.
“My cat,” Mathew says.
Mathew still can’t turn his head but hears a third voice, a strange but calm, soothing voice. It says, “I think we should stop this now.”
The metal is lifted from the side of Mathew’s head. The knee is removed from his chest. He turns on the pavement, onto his back, and gapes up. Briefly registering Clara staring imperiously down at
him, his eyes are drawn to Mr Lestrange. He has the muzzle of the machine gun in his hand and is gently handing it back to the guard, who now has a puzzled but soft look on his face. Mr Lestrange actually takes the guard’s hand in his and places the muzzle of the gun there, wrapping his fingers around it. “I think you should go back to your car now. Come back at five o’clock to collect Clara.”
“Right.” The guard hesitates for a moment and then retreats to the car, glancing over his shoulder, bemused. They watch from Gen’s garden as the car drives away.
Gen hurries to Mathew and helps him to his feet. “Are you okay?” she asks.
O’Malley comes from under the bushes and rubs against his ankles. Mathew bends and picks him up. “I’m fine,” he says.
O’Malley starts to purr loudly.
Mr Lestrange is tall and thin, dressed conservatively but not oddly. His face is long, his skin pale, almost translucent, the skin of someone rarely touched by the sun. He is clean-shaven and of an indeterminate age. His eyes are dark and framed by extraordinarily long, thick eyelashes.
Mathew realises too late that he is staring open-mouthed.
Mr Lestrange has something in his hand. Mathew doesn’t know where it came from because he didn’t notice it when he was talking to the guard. It’s his acoustic amplifier and a tangle of wire. Mr Lestrange hands it to him silently, with the faintest hint of a smile.
Gen Lacey has opened the front door and is guiding Clara through it.
“Mathew, come in for a minute. I’ll make you some hot tea. You must be in shock.”
Mathew is still staring at Mr Lestrange. Indiscernibly, he urges Mathew forward, so he finds himself walking towards Gen Lacey’s beckoning hand without consciously planning to.
“This is my fault. I’m sorry. But I think it will be alright,” Mr Lestrange says as if talking to himself.
Mathew is distracted by Gen, who’s ushering him into the house and helping him with his complicated burden of the cat and a bundle of wires.
He turns back again, but Mr Lestrange has disappeared through his own front door.
Clara and Mathew are in Gen Lacey’s large front room. Gen doesn’t have a HomeAngel – she says the Royal College of Music doesn’t have the budget – so she has gone off to make the tea herself. They are sitting on either end of the sofa, something Mathew is grateful for because as they walked in, he realised Clara is taller than him.
They are both staring at the grand piano. He glances across at her. She has a long nose and freckles, three dark moles on her cheek.
“So you were watching me?” she asks.
Mathew feels unwell. “No.”
“Why did the guard say you were watching me then?”
“The man’s a psycho. You saw him.”
“He takes care of me when I travel and is nothing but nice to me.”
“Your nice man had me pinned to the floor with a gun to my head.”
“It was quite extreme,” Clara admits.
“Yes, it felt quite extreme.”
“But he must have had a reason. What were you doing sneaking around like that?”
“I was searching for him,” he says nodding in the direction of O’Malley, who jumps onto the piano stool. He explores the room, his legs retracted to short stumps in fear, his neck extended in curiosity, starting back as he encounters each new thing. Mathew gets up and retrieves him before he jumps onto the piano.
“It’s a pretty cat,” Clara says. “Is it a Siamese?”
“His name is O’Malley, and he’s half-Siamese,” Mathew says.
“Oh, it’s a he. Isn’t he allowed into the garden?”
“Used to be, but he has to stay in now because of the birds.”
“The birds?”
“The government passed a law making it illegal to kill birds and included a house cat clause. So he’s now shut away in the house all the time and doesn’t understand, and he’s always trying to run away.”
O’Malley is straining to get at Clara. She extends one of her long hands and strokes him. Mathew is holding O’Malley back.
“It’s okay, I love animals,” she says.
Released, the cat climbs onto her lap and starts to purr like he has a motor.
“He likes you,” Mathew says, wanting to tell her how much he enjoys listening to her playing, but he doesn’t know how to begin.
She says, “You’re the weirdo.”
“What?”
“Yesterday the guard said someone was watching me, and it was you. He called you a weirdo.”
“I happened to be at my window when you arrived. I wasn’t watching you. Alright?”
“Why would he say that then?”
Mathew hesitates. “It might have appeared like I was watching you.”
She raises an eyebrow and assesses him sceptically. “Right,” she says. “Whatever you do that makes him think that, can you stop, please? I’m too spooked out by everything going on at the moment with the government. My parents are on some frickin watch list, and the last thing I need is a teenaged stalker.”
Mathew’s face colours purple. “I am not watching you, but if you want to know the truth, the man who lives next door to me, the one you just met, has been at his window each time you came and went ever since I’ve been home from school, and your awesome guard hasn’t even noticed.”
“You’re making it up.”
“If you don’t believe me, come and see. When you’ve finished your lesson here, come round and I’ll show you.” He stands.
Gen comes through the door with a tray of tea. She glances between the two of them curiously. “Everything alright here?” she says.
“Fine,” Clara says, smiling brightly.
“How are you?” Gen asks, frowning at Mathew with concern. “Why don’t you sit down?”
“I’m fine,” Mathew says. “I should be going.”
“Stay and have some tea, at least.”
Mathew shakes his head. “I’ve disturbed your lesson. I should leave.”
“I should call your mother,” Gen says.
“No, please don’t. She’s so busy. She’d worry and come home, and there’s nothing she can do.”
“I’ll make a complaint. That guard was crazy,” Gen says.
“There’s no need,” Mathew says.
“When I was young, the police weren’t thugs,” Gen says. “They didn’t have guns, and the whole country understood why. These days, I’m sure they hire a lot of these men straight from the criminal courts. Convicted criminals get the choice of joining the army or the security services rather than prison time.”
“Do you think Mr Lestrange works for the police?” Mathew asks Gen.
“Mr Lestrange?! Why on earth do you ask that?”
“Because he is always watching people.”
“Like you, you mean?” Clara says.
Gen says, “Clara, I am sure Mathew wasn’t watching you. Not intentionally, anyway. And Mr Lestrange isn’t a policeman. He’s some kind of historian.”
“That’s what my mum says.”
“He’s got an impressive library, you know, of old-fashioned paper books.”
“How do you know? Were you in his house?”
“Yes. Once. When I was doing my stint as neighbourhood watch organiser. You know, it rotates around all the adults in the street. Even your mum has done it. The local police were doing a sweep of houses, the usual thing, people harbouring illegal immigrants, and I had to accompany the police around the houses to make sure they didn’t damage anything while they searched.”
“What was his house like?”
“Like this one. Actually, no, more like yours. He has a Darkroom, I don’t. But his front room is this wonderful library, full of beautifully bound books. History books, he said.”
“But there was nothing odd? No strange equipment?”
“I didn’t notice anything, no. I think he’s fairly ordinary. People always think people living on their own and who keep to themselves, are suspect
, but he’s harmless.”
“I don’t think he’s harmless at all.”
“Why?”
“Because of the way the guard reacted to him. When you spoke to him, the guard was getting angrier. When Mr Lestrange spoke to him, he immediately backed down.”
“Perhaps it was a man thing?”
“Perhaps . . . but I don’t think so. It was odd.”
“The entire thing was odd,” Gen says. “How did O’Malley escape, anyway?”
“Through the living room window. I had dropped . . . something in the tree. It’s a long story . . .”
“Is that the thing you dropped?” Clara asks, pointing to the amplifier and the wire bundle in Mathew’s arms.
“Yes,” he says.
“What is it?”
“It’s an amplifier.”
“Mathew is a science scholar,” Gen explains to Clara.
“I’d really better go,” he says. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. Come on, O’Malley,” he says to the cat. O’Malley is happily curled on Clara’s lap and doesn’t want to move. Mathew isn’t sure how to retrieve him. Clara scoops him into her arms and offers him to Mathew.
“Thank you,” Mathew says. She doesn’t meet his eyes.
Gen stands and shows Mathew to the door. “Don’t let go of him until you get in the house.”
“I won’t,” he says. “I’m hanging on for dear life.”
Back in his room, Mathew finds Mr Lestrange playing on his mind as he works on the amplifier. He decides it’s too much trouble to fix the amplifier so finds a new design with hooks built in. While it’s printing, he starts to search on the Nexus for Mr Lestrange.
The Nexus is so ubiquitous, even the most tech-averse person is on it somewhere. But Mr Lestrange is not on the electoral register. He’s not a member of any social network. Lestrange the historian hasn’t published any academic papers. There’s no Professor Lestrange registered as teaching at any school or university, in London or internationally. There are no random photos, either, taken by a colleague, friend, or family member and tagged. It’s impossible that someone hasn’t captured him on camera or film or commented on him somewhere. Mathew tries every variation of Lestrange’s name he can think of, tries searching for his address, but as far as the Nexus is concerned, Lestrange doesn’t exist.