by Clive Barker
Mr. Klein hesitated, then signaled a general withdrawal.
Gomm's eyes glittered. "Nicely done," he whispered.
"Why don't you lead the way?" Vanessa suggested. Gomm did as he was instructed, and her small party snaked their way out past the massed clocks and telephones and video screens. Every step they took Vanessa expected a bullet to find her, but Mr. Klein was clearly too concerned for the health of the ancients to risk calling her bluff. They reached the open air without incident.
The guards were in evidence outside, though attempting to stay out of sight. Vanessa kept the rifle trained on the four captives as they headed through the yards to where her car was parked. The gates had been opened. "Gomm," she whispered. "Open the car doors."
Gomm did so. He had said that age had shrunk them all, and perhaps that was true, but there were five of them to fit into the small vehicle, and it was tightly packed. Vanessa was the last to get in. As she ducked to slide into the driving seat a shot rang out, and she felt a blow to her shoulder. She dropped the rifle.
"Bastards," said Gomm.
"Leave her," somebody piped up in the back, but Gomm was already out of the car and bundling her into the back beside Floyd. He then slid into the driving seat himself and started the engine.
"Can you drive?" Ireniya demanded.
"Of course I can bloody drive!" he retorted, and the car jerked forward through the gates, the gears grating. Vanessa had never been shot before, and hoped – if she survived this episode – to avoid it happening again. The wound in her shoulder was bleeding badly. Floyd did his best to staunch the wound, but Gomm's driving made any really constructive help practically impossible.
There's a track -” she managed to tell him, “off that way."
"Which way's that way? Gomm yelled.
"Right! Right!" she yelled back.
Gomm took both hands off the wheel and looked at them.
"Which is right?
"For Christ's sake-”
Ireniya, in the seat beside him, pressed his hands back onto the wheel. The car performed a tarantella. Vanessa groaned with every bump.
"I see it!" said Gomm. "I see the track!" He revved the car up, and put his foot on the accelerator. One of the back doors, which had been inadequately secured, flipped open and Vanessa almost fell out. Mottershead, reaching over Floyd, yanked her back to safety, but before they could close the door it met the boulder that marked the convergence of the two tracks. The car bucked as the door was torn off its hinges.
"We needed more air in here," said Gomm, and drove on.
Theirs was not the only engine disturbing the Aegean night. There were lights behind them, and the sound of hectic pursuit. With Guillemot's rifle left in the convent, they had no sudden death to bargain with, and Klein knew it. "Step on it!" Floyd said, grinning from ear to ear. "They're coming after us."
"I'm going as fast as I can," Gomm insisted.
Turn off the lights," Ireniya suggested. "It'll make us less of a target."
Then I won't be able to see the track," Gomm complained over the roar of the engine.
"So what? You're not driving on it anyhow."
Mottershead laughed, and so – against her better instincts – did Vanessa. Maybe the loss of blood was making her irresponsible, but she couldn't help herself. Four Methuselahs and herself in a three-door car driving around in the dark: only a madman would have taken this seriously. And there was the final and incontestable proof that these people weren't the lunatics Klein had marked them as, for they saw the humour in it too. Gomm had even taken to singing as he drove: snatches of Verdi, and a falsetto rendering of "Over the Rainbow'.
And if – as her dizzied mind had concluded – these were creatures as sane as herself, then what of the tale that Gomm had told?; was that true too? W as it possible that Armageddon had been kept at bay by these few giggling geriatrics? They're gaining on us!" Floyd said. He was on his knees on the back seat, peering out of the window. "We're not going to make it," Mottershead observed, his laughter barely abating. "We're all going to die." "There!" Ireniya yelled. There's another track! Try that! Try that!"
Gomm swung the wheel, and the car almost tipped over as it swung off the main track and followed this new route. With the lights extinguished it was impossible to see more than a glimmer of the road ahead, but Gomm's style was not about to be cramped by such minor considerations. He revved the car until the engine fairly screeched. Dust was flung up and through the gap where the door had been; a goat fled from the path ahead seconds before losing its life. "Where are we going?" Vanessa yelled.
"Haven't a clue," Gomm returned. "Have you?
Wherever they were heading, they were going at a fair speed. This track was flatter than the one they'd left, and Gomm was taking full advantage of the fact. Again, he'd taken to singing.
Mottershead was leaning out of the window on the far side of the car, his hair streaming, watching for their pursuers. "We're losing them!" he howled triumphantly. "We're losing them!"
A common exhilaration seized all the travelers now, and they began to sing along with H.G. They were singing so loudly that Gomm couldn't hear Mottershead inform him that the road ahead seemed to disappear. Indeed H.G. was not aware that he had driven the car over the cliff until the vehicle took a nose-dive, and the sea came up to meet them.
"Mrs. Jape? Mrs. Jape?"
Vanessa woke unwillingly. Her head hurt, her arm hurt. There had been some terrible times recently, though it took her a while to remember the substance of them. Then the memories came back. The car pitching over the cliff; the cold sea rushing in through the open door; the frantic cries around her as the vehicle sank. She had struggled free, only half conscious, vaguely aware that Floyd was floating up beside her. She had said his name, but he had not answered. She said it again, now.
"Dead," said Mr. Klein. They're all dead."
"Oh my God," she murmured. She was looking not at his face but at a chocolate stain on his waistcoat. "Never mind them now," he insisted.
"Never mind?"
"There's more important business, Mrs. Jape. You must get up, and quickly."
The urgency in Klein's voice brought Vanessa to her feet. "Is it morning?" she said. There were no windows in the room they occupied. This was the Boudoir, to judge by its concrete walls.
"Yes, it's morning," Klein replied, impatiently. "Now, will you come with me? I have something to show you." He opened the door and they stepped out into the grim corridor. A little way ahead it sounded as if a major argument was going on; dozens of raised voices, imprecations and pleadings.
"What's happening?"
They're warming up for the Apocalypse," he replied, and led the way into the room where Vanessa had last seen the mud-wrestlers. Now all of the video-screens were buzzing, and each displayed a different interior. There were war rooms and presidential suites, Cabinet Offices and Halls of Congress. In every one of them, somebody was shouting. "You've been unconscious two full days," Klein told her, as if this went some way to explaining the cacophony. Her head ached already. She looked from screen to screen: from Washington to Hamburg to Sydney to Rio de Janeiro. Everywhere around the globe the mighty were waiting for news. But the oracles were dead.
They're just performers," Klein said, gesturing at the shouting screens. They couldn't run a three-legged race, never mind the world. They're getting hysterical, and they're button-fingers are starting to itch."
"What am I supposed to do about it?" Vanessa returned. This tour of Babel depressed her. "I'm no strategist." "Neither were Gomm and the others. They might have been, once upon a time, but things soon fell apart." "Systems decay," she said.
"Isn't that the truth. By the time I came here half the committee were already dead. And the rest had lost all interest in their duties -”
"But they still provided judgements, as H.G. said?"
"Oh yes."
They ruled the world?"
"After a fashion," Klein replied.
"What do you mean: after a fashion?"
Klein looked at the screens. His eyes seemed to be on the verge of spilling tears.
"Didn't he explain,? They played games, Mrs. Jape. When they became bored with sweet reason and the sound of their own voices, they gave up debate and took to flipping coins."
"No."
"And racing frogs of course. That was always a favourite."
"But the governments -” she protested," – surely they didn't just accept -”
"You think they care?" Klein said, "As long as they're in the public eye what does it matter to them what verbiage they're spouting, or how it was arrived at?"
Her head spun. "All chance?" she said.
"Why not? It has a very respectable tradition. Nations have fallen on decisions divined from the entrails of sheep." "It's preposterous."
"I agree. But I ask you, in all honesty, is it many more terrifying than leaving the power in their hands?" He pointed to the rows of irate faces. Democrats sweating that the morrow find them without causes to espouse or applause to win; despots in terror that without instruction their cruelties would lose favour and be overturned. One premier seemed to have suffered a bronchial attack and was being supported by two of his aides; another clutched a revolver and was pointing it at the screen, demanding satisfaction; a third was chewing his toupe. Were these the finest fruit of the political tree?; babbling, bullying, cajoling idiots, driven to apoplexy because nobody would tell them which way to jump? There wasn't a man or woman amongst them Vanessa would have trusted to guide her across the road. "Better the frogs," she murmured, bitter thought that it was.
The light in the courtyard, after the dead illumination of the bunker, was dazzlingly bright, but Vanessa was pleased to be out of earshot of the stridency within. They would find a new committee very soon, Klein had told her as they made their way out into the open air: it would be a matter of weeks only before equilibrium was restored. In the meanwhile, the earth could be blown to smithereens by the desperate creatures she had just seen. They needed judgements, and quickly.
"Goldberg is still alive," Klein said. "And he will go on with the games; but it takes two to play." "Why not you?"
"Because he hates me. Hates all of us. He says that he'll only play with you."
Goldberg was sitting under the laurel trees, playing patience. It was a slow business. His shortsightedness required him to bring each card to within three inches of his nose to read it, and by the time he had got to the end of the line he had forgotten those cards at the beginning.
"She's agreed," said Klein. Goldberg didn't look up from his game. "I said: she's agreed."
"I'm blind, not deaf," Goldberg told Klein, still perusing the cards. When he eventually looked up it was to squint at Vanessa. "I told them it would end badly…" he said softly, and Vanessa knew that beneath this show of fatalism he felt the loss of his companions acutely."… I said from the beginning, we were here to stay. No use to escape." He shrugged, and returned to the cards. "What's to escape to? The world's changed. I know. We changed it." "It wasn't so bad," Vanessa said.
"The world?"
They way they died."
"Ah."
"We were enjoying ourselves, until the last minute."
"Gomm was such a sentimentalist," Goldberg said. "We never much liked each other."
A large frog jumped into Vanessa's path. The movement caught Goldberg's eye.
"Who is it?" he said.
The creature regarded Vanessa's foot balefully. "Just a frog," she replied.
"What does it look like?"
"It's fat," she said. "With three red dots on its back."
"That's Israel," he told her. "Don't tread on him."
"Could we have some decisions by noon?" Klein butted in. "Particularly the Gulf situation, and the Mexican dispute, and -”
"Yes, yes, yes," said Goldberg. "Now go away."
" – We could have another Bay of Pigs -”
"You're telling me nothing I don't know. Go! You're disturbing the nations." He peered at Vanessa. "Well, are you going to sit down or not?"
She sat.
"I'll leave you to it." Klein said, and retreated.
Goldberg had begun to make a sound in his throat -”kek-kek-kek' -imitating the voice of a frog. In response, there came a croaking from every corner of the courtyard. Hearing the sound, Vanessa stifled a smile. Farce, she had told herself once before, had to be played with a straight face, as though you believed every outrageous word. Only tragedy demanded laughter; and that, with the aid of the frogs, they might yet prevent.
XXV: IN THE FLESH
When Cleveland Smith returned to his cell after the interview with the Landing Officer, his new bunk mate was already in residence, staring at the dust-infested sunlight through the reinforced glass window. It was a short display; for less than half an hour each afternoon (clouds permitting) the sun found its way between the wall and the administration building and edged its way along the side of B Wing, not to appear again until the following day. "You're Tait?" Cleve said.
The prisoner looked away from the sun. Mayflower had said the new boy was twenty-two, but Tait looked five years younger. He had the face of a lost dog. An ugly dog, at that; a dog left by its owners to play in traffic. Eyes too skinned, mouth too soft, arms too slender: a born victim. Cleve was irritated to have been lumbered with the boy. Tait was dead weight, and he had no energies to expend on the boy's protection, despite Mayflower's pep-talk about extending a welcoming hand.
"Yes," the dog replied. "William."
"People call you William?"
"No," the boy said. "They call me Billy."
"Billy." Cleve nodded, and stepped into the cell. The regime at Pentonville was relatively enlightened; cells were left open for two hours in the mornings, and often two in the afternoon, allowing the cons some freedom of movement. The arrangement had its disadvantages, however, which was where Mayflower's talk came in. "I've been told to give you some advice."
"Oh?" the boy replied.
"You've not done time before?"
"No."
"Not even borstal?"
Tait's eyes flickered. "A little."
"So you know what the score is. You know you're easy meat."
"Sure."
"Seems I've been volunteered," Cleve said without appetite, “to keep you from getting mauled." Tait stared at Cleve with eyes the blue of which was milky, as though the sun was still in them. "Don't put yourself out," the boy said. "You don't owe me anything."
"Damn right I don't. But it seems I got a social responsibility." Cleve said sourly. "And you're it."
Cleve was two months into his sentence for handling marijuana; his third visit to Pentonville. At thirty years of age he was far from obsolete. His body was solid, his face lean and refined; in his court suit he could have passed for a lawyer at ten yards. A little closer, and the viewer might catch the scar on his neck, the result of an attack by a penniless addict, and a certain wariness in his gait, as if with every step forward he was keeping the option of a speedy retreat.
You're still a young man, the last judge had told him, you still have time to change your spots. He hadn't disagreed out loud, but Cleve knew in his heart he was a leopard born and bred. Crime was easy, work was not. Until somebody proved otherwise he would do what he did best, and take the consequences if caught. Doing time wasn't so unpalatable, if you had the right attitude to it. The food was edible, the company select; as long as he had something to keep his mind occupied he was content enough. At present he was reading about sin. Now there was a subject. In his time he'd heard so many explanations of how it had come into the world; from probation officers and lawyers and priests. Theories sociological, theological, ideological. Some were worthy of a few minutes' consideration. Most were so absurd (sin from the womb; sin from the state) he laughed in their apologists' faces. None held water for long.
It was a good bone to chew over, though. He needed a problem to occupy the days. And
nights; he slept badly in prison. It wasn't his guilt that kept him awake, but that of others. He was, after all, just a hash-pusher, supplying wherever there was a demand: a minor cog in the consumerist machine; he had nothing to feel guilty about. But there were others here, many others it seemed, whose dreams were not so benevolent, nor nights so peaceful. They would cry, they would complain; they would curse judges local and celestial. Their din would have kept the dead awake.
"Is it always like this?" Billy asked Cleve after a week or so. A new inmate was making a ruckus down the landing: one moment tears, the next obscenities.
"Yes. Most of the time," said Cleve. "Some of them need to yell a bit. It keeps their minds from curdling." "Not you," observed the unmusical voice from the bunk below, “you just read your books and keep out of harm's way. I've watched you. It doesn't bother you, does it?"
"I can live with it," Cleve replied. "I got no wife to come here every week and remind me what I'm missing." "You been in before?"
Twice."
The boy hesitated an instant before saying, "I suppose you know your way around the place, do you?" "Well, I'm not writing a guidebook, but I got the general lay-out by now." It seemed an odd comment for the boy to make. "Why?"
"I just wondered," said Billy.
"You got a question?"
Tait didn't answer for several seconds, then said: "I heard they used to… used to hang people here." Whatever Cleve had been expecting the boy to come out with, that wasn't it. But then he had decided several days back that Billy Tait was a strange one. Sly, side-long glances from those milky-blue eyes; a way he had of staring at the wall or at the window like a detective at a murder-scene, desperate for clues.
Cleve said, "There used to be a hanging shed, I think."
Again, silence; and then another enquiry, dropped as lightly as the boy could contrive. "Is it still standing?" "The shed? I don't know. They don't hang people any more, Billy, or hadn't you heard?" There was no reply from below. "What's it to you, anyhow?"
"Just curious."
Billy was right; curious he was. So odd, with his vacant stares and his solitary manner, that most of the men kept clear of him. Only Lowell took any interest in him, and his motives for that were unequivocal. "You want to lend me your lady for the afternoon?" he asked Cleve while they waited in line for breakfast. Tait, who stood within earshot, said nothing; neither did Cleve.