Days

by James Lovegrove

  “Guards,” says Mr Bloom urgently. “Get guards there, now.”

  “But all the guards in the vicinity are at the maul.”

  “Then call them up from Orange and down from Green. Do it! And tell Mr Hubble to stay out of Books.”

  2.36 p.m.

  MR HUBBLE. THE screen-jockey sounds anxious, agitated. Mr Hubble, listen. She’s built a bomb.

  What? Who’s built a bomb?

  What’s-her-name. The Head of Books. I’m not shitting you. Mr Bloom says you’ve got to stay out of there.

  You’re absolutely certain it’s a bomb?

  Well, it sure as hell looks how a bomb ought to look.

  And where is she?

  Heading due east.

  Of course, thinks Frank. Computers.

  Mr Hubble? Guards are on their way.

  They won’t get here in time.

  Frank sets off for the connecting passageway to Books.

  2.36 p.m.

  “HE WOULDN’T LISTEN, sir,” says Hunt. “He’s going in.”

  “Tell him not to. Tell him I order him not to.”

  “He has a point, though, sir. Guards aren’t going to get there for at least another five minutes. If anyone’s in a position to stop her, it’s him.”

  Mr Bloom can see the sense in that. He sighs a sigh of resignation and slaps his hands against his thighs. “Yes, all right.”

  “Sir, something else. Shouldn’t we let the brothers know what’s going on?”

  “Yes,” says Mr Bloom. “Yes, you’re right, we should. Send them a priority e-memo.” He looks up again at the screens and murmurs softly to himself, “Frank, you bloody idiot. Be careful.”

  2.37 p.m.

  THE FIRST BOOK comes hurtling past Frank’s left ear, flapping like a panicked duck. Another follows almost immediately, and also misses him, but a third hits him squarely just below his breast pocket. He hears a glassy crunch, and guesses that his Sphinx, which took the brunt of the impact, has been broken.

  He reaches into his jacket and draws his gun. The green LED is still alight, the safety still off.

  “Tactical Security. I don’t want to have to hurt anyone.”

  There is a pause. Then someone shouts, “She said everyone, lads, so she meant everyone,” and books start flying at Frank from all sides.

  Shielding his face, he wades into the barrage. He glimpses, through the hail of printed matter, Bookworms ducking behind shelves and darting between bookcases. No clear shot. Salvoes of books – novels and memoirs, collections of essays and short stories, biographies and autobiographies, self-help manuals and scientific treatises – rain down on him, their pages riffling and clattering. A spiral-bound children’s puzzle compendium glances off his hand. All three parts of a grandiose sword and sorcery trilogy smite his body, one after another in quick succession, like blows from a dull axe. An epic family saga spanning several generations strikes him in the thigh, just missing a more vulnerable region. Slim volumes of verse buzz through the air at him, their narrow edges packing a fierce sting.

  Mr Hubble! Behind you!

  Frank whirls around to find a figure lunging at him, swinging the L-M volume of an encyclopaedia. He fires reflexively, without aiming. The shot punches the book out of the Bookworm’s grasp and sends it sailing away, trailing flecks of charred paper from a singed bullet-hole, to land on the floor with a loud clop. The shocked Bookworm stares at his empty hands. Frank’s eyesight still hasn’t cleared enough for him to be sure of a wounding shot, so he simply lowers his head and charges the Bookworm. Shoulder butts chin, and the Bookworm goes down.

  Left, Mr Hubble! To your left!

  The warning from the Eye comes a fraction too late this time. As Frank turns, a Complete Works of Shakespeare crunches into his arm, filling it with numbing, vibrating pain from biceps to fingertip. He fires at the Bookworm, aiming deliberately high. The Bookworm drops the Shakespeare and scurries for cover.

  A dictionary spirals out of nowhere to slam into the back of Frank’s skull. His teeth clack down on his tongue, and he tastes blood.

  That’s it. The next Bookworm who attacks him can expect a bullet wherever it goes. If shooting these buggers is the only way to get them off his back, so be it.

  He doesn’t see the bookcase behind him swaying and tottering until it is too late. Spilling the contents of its shelves in a great regurgitative rush, the bookcase falls, knocking him flat and burying him beneath several hundred kilograms of wood and woodpulp.

  The toppled bookcase settles, a last few loose books slip and slither to the floor, and all is still.

  38

  The Case of the Seven Bishops: seven bishops who protested against King James II’s Declaration of Indulgence.

  2.39 p.m.

  PERCH LEAVES HIS pantry office and heads through the clatter of the kitchen, out and along the corridor to the Boardroom.

  He judges his arrival perfectly, with an instinct born of decades of service. Just as he enters by the Boardroom’s double doors, the last morsels of a long lunch are being scraped up, knives are being set down on empty plates, glasses and coffee cups drained.

  Throughout the meal much laughter has been issuing from the Boardroom, echoing down the corridor to the kitchen, and the atmosphere as Perch comes in is markedly relaxed and convivial. The brothers have treated themselves to a couple of bottles of fine wine to accompany their veal escallope with potatoes au gratin and steamed mange touts followed by champagne mousse and a selection of cheeses and biscuits, but wine alone cannot account for the merriment. Perch suspects that the real reason is the absence of Master Sonny. There is always less tension in the Boardroom when he is not around.

  As Perch covers the distance between the doors and the table, another peal of laughter springs from six sibling throats. Perch is neither so self-conscious nor so naïve as to think that he is the object of the brothers’ amusement.

  “I trust the meal was acceptable?” he enquires as he gathers up the first of the empty cheese plates, Mungo’s.

  “More than acceptable, Perch,” says Chas.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any more of that champagne mousse, is there?” asks Wensley.

  The enquiry is greeted by barracking hoots and pig-like grunts from his brothers.

  “My blood-sugar level’s low,” Wensley protests.

  “Alas, Master Wensley, your third helping entirely depleted our stocks,” says Perch with an exaggerated archness which is calculated to evoke further chortles and jeers from Wensley’s brothers, and which succeeds.

  “Hey, Perch,” says Fred. “We were just discussing something. Perhaps you could help us.”

  “I shall endeavour to assist in any way I can,” replies Perch, adding Thurston’s empty plate to the stack balanced expertly on the spread fingertips of his left hand.

  “Do you think it’s true what they say about absolute power?”

  “Corrupting absolutely?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I cannot for the life of me imagine what could have precipitated such a discussion among the sons of Septimus Day.”

  “Let’s just say it’s an occupational hazard. Here you go.” Fred sets his plate on top of the stack. “Well? Do you have an opinion?”

  “It isn’t really my place to have opinions, sir, and those I do hold it is not my place to air.”

  Genial cries of “Come off it!” and “Nonsense!” are showered down on him.

  “Very well then,” says Perch, coming to a halt between Fred and Sato. “I shall offer my opinion, but only because it was solicited. Power, sirs, is open to abuse if it is not subject to a system of checks and balances, as when, for instance, it is wielded by a dictator who can use oppression to silence those who raise their voices against him and force to eliminate those who would attempt to overthrow him. But does this mean that power per se is a corrupting influence? Surely the corruption exists already within the dictator; the flaw is already there, and power merely exacerbates it. Power of one
person over another is created out of mankind’s willing need for guidance and rule. It would not exist were there not a demand for it, therefore we must assume that it is a good thing, a necessary thing, beneficial to all as long as those in authority remain answerable to those they have authority over. To draw an example from my immediate experience: you, sirs, might be said to have absolute power over this store and every customer and employee in it – and that is some considerable responsibility, given a gigastore’s importance to the economy and prestige of the nation it serves. But in order for your decisions to be beneficial to yourselves, they must also be beneficial to everyone under you. To put it at its crudest, any unwise policy you implement will lose you custom, therefore it is in your best interests to ensure that your policies are wise. Which, I hasten to add, they invariably are. In this sense, the absolute power you wield, far from corrupting you, encourages you to aspire to the highest nobility in thought and deed. In short, absolute power makes absolute sense.” He gives a small bow to indicate that he is done.

  “Bravo!” exclaims Fred. “Good man!” He leads a warm round of applause, which lasts for as long as it takes Perch to gather up Sato’s plate and proceed, solemnly and unsmilingly, around the table to Sonny’s place, where an untouched main course sits, cooled and congealed.

  “Am I to take it that Master Sonny will not be joining us?”

  A furtive look passes between Mungo and Chas, which Perch pretends not to have noticed. The other brothers appear oblivious, perhaps busy mulling over his sagacious and not uncomplimentary words.

  “It’s still possible,” says Mungo. “When Chas and I left him downstairs, he seemed open to the idea of some kind of solid sustenance for lunch.”

  “No doubt he was referring to ice cubes,” quips Fred.

  “I could have his meal reheated and take it down to him,” Perch offers.

  Another brief meeting of Mungo’s and Chas’s gazes. Perch is quick to perceive that some kind of deception is going on.

  “He seemed quite set on having lunch with us,” says Chas. “Something’s delayed him, obviously.”

  “Best leave it here,” Mungo tells Perch.

  “Very good, sir.”

  Perch has no sooner left the Boardroom than the terminal by Thurston’s elbow gives a long, loud beep.

  “Priority e-memo,” says Thurston. He removes his spectacles, huffs on the lenses, polishes them with his jacket sleeve, and returns them to the bridge of his nose, then hits a couple of keys.

  “Who’s it from?” Sato asks.

  “The Eye.” Thurston starts to read the message appearing on his screen.

  His brothers look on, silent and curious. Chas catches Mungo’s eye and mouths the word “Sonny?” Mungo shakes his head fractionally: the e-memo can’t possibly have anything to do with Sonny’s trip downstairs.

  “Shit,” says Thurston. He rests his thin wrists against the sides of the keyboard.

  “Is that a good news ‘shit’ or a bad news ‘shit’?” Fred asks. “They sound pretty much alike.”

  Thurston does not answer or take his gaze off the monitor. His eyes flick from left to right, rereading.

  “It’s a bad news ‘shit’,” Fred confirms. “Shit.”

  39

  Leases: in Britain, leases used to run for seven years or multiples thereof, a tradition said to hark back to the notion of “climacteric years”, those years in which life was supposed to be in particular peril.

  2.41 p.m.

  MISS DALLOWAY, WITH her trolley, pulls up beside the central sales counter in Computers, a huge square slab of black plastic perched on dozens of spidery steel legs in imitation of a microchip.

  “Well, look who we have here,” says Mr Armitage. If he is at all surprised to see Miss Dalloway in his department, he doesn’t show it. “Come to apologise, have we? Declare a truce?”

  “I come not to send peace, but a sword.”

  “Is that not a keg of beer I see?” Mr Armitage leans over the edge of the sales counter to peer into the trolley. “A keg of beer would seem to me to be a peace offering.”

  The word “beer” gets the attention of every Technoid within earshot. They cluster around the trolley, rubbing their polyester sleeves gleefully until they crackle with static.

  “Not beer,” says Miss Dalloway, as, with some difficulty, she clambers into the trolley and squats down facing the push-bar, with her legs straddling the keg. “Rather, I have here journey’s end. The poor man’s nearest friend. This fell sergeant. The cure of all diseases.”

  “I’m sorry?” Something about the gleam in her eye puts Mr Armitage on his guard.

  “Death, Mr Armitage. Pale Death, the grand physician. Pontifical Death, that doth the crevasse bridge/To the steep and trifid God. Death, a necessary end.”

  Miss Dalloway slips her arms around the keg, hugging it tight – a mother bird incubating a lethal metal egg.

  2.41 p.m.

  “MR HUBBLE? MR Hubble? Mr Hubble?” Hunt turns to Mr Bloom, batting aside his headset mic. “It’s no use, sir. Either his Eye-link’s busted, or he’s out cold, or –”

  “There is no third option,” Mr Bloom states firmly. “Where are those guards?”

  Hunt checks his chair-arm monitor. “On their way. The first of them should be arriving in Computers in a couple of minutes, lifts permitting.” He catches a neighbouring screen-jockey peeking over his shoulder, and sees him off with a snarled, “Nothing better to do, dickwit?”

  The other screen-jockey hurriedly returns his attention to his own screens, but the tension in Hunt’s corner has radiated out into the rest of the chamber. Something serious is going on upstairs, and everyone in the room is keeping a watchful eye on their colleague and the Head of Tactical Security.

  “Come on, Frank,” Mr Bloom mutters. “Be all right. Please be all right.”

  2.42 p.m.

  THE RUBBLE OF books stirs. An arm appears.

  Bracing his elbow against the canted bookcase, Frank wriggles out from underneath. He hauls himself up onto all fours. He stands unsteadily, his legs sluggishly remembering how they work. He swivels his head from side to side in order to uncrick his neck, then tenderly rubs his chin, which, when the bookcase fell on him, struck the floor, temporarily stunning him. He clears his throat to activate his Eye-link, but does not hear the click of connection in his ear. He tries again, but it is obvious that the Eye-link’s delicate circuitry has been knocked out of commission.

  A quick glance in front and behind shows Bookworms at either end of the aisle. They are surprised to find him standing, but overcome their confusion quickly enough, and arm themselves for a new assault by plucking books from shelves.

  Wearily Frank reaches for his gun, only to find his holster empty. Of course. He was holding the gun when the Bookworms tipped the bookcase over onto him. It is buried somewhere beneath the pile of books, but there is no time to go rooting around for it. The fallen bookcase has left a gap leading through to the next aisle. The Bookworms are closing in on him, thumping books into their open palms menacingly. Frank takes a step to the side, and leaps over the bookcase and through the gap. He sprints along the parallel aisle towards the connecting passageway that joins Books to Computers, hearing footfalls and shouts behind him as the Bookworms give chase.

  There are Bookworms clustered around the exit, but they are all peering intently into Computers and don’t hear him approach until he is almost upon them. He pushes past them easily, and is soon deep into Computers, heading for the main sales counter, the heart of the department.

  And there, sure enough, he finds the trolley, and sitting in it a figure he recognises, even through the haze that veils his vision, as Rebecca Dalloway.

  Miss Dalloway is addressing Roland Armitage and the assembled Technoids, delivering some kind of speech. It appears from the casual postures of those around her that no one else knows what the keg contains. Then she finishes speaking and hunches over the keg, and suddenly everyone is backing away. />
  2.43 p.m.

  “THOSE WHO HAVE ears to hear, let them hear,” Miss Dalloway intones. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I am the enemy you killed. The foe of tyrants. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  There might be more to her speech, but at that moment Frank shoulders past two desperately backpedalling Technoids, seizes the trolley push-bar, and starts to shove.

  “No!” shrieks Miss Dalloway.

  Frank scarcely hears her. He is scarcely aware of anything except the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. He is not thinking. Were he thinking, he would not be doing what he is doing. His head, as he steers the trolley in the direction of the Yellow Floor hoop, is not filled with notions of heroism or sacrifice, only with the urge to get the bomb as far away from people as possible. This, to him, seems an objective necessity rather than an act of suicidal bravery.

  Spitting and screeching in fury, Miss Dalloway hauls herself over the keg and launches herself at Frank, fingers outstretched, clawed for throttling. Frank jerks his head back. Her nails scrape his neck, her left hand catching the wire of his Eye-link. The Eye-link pops out of his ear and detaches itself from his collar, and Miss Dalloway collapses back into the trolley, clutching a coiling tangle of surgical pink wire and electronic hardware.

  The sound of the trolley’s wheels changes from a clatter to a clack, marking the transition from carpet to marble. They are out of Computers, out on the hoop. Frank avoids a pot plant and skirts around a group of startled customers. Miss Dalloway tosses the Eye-link aside and stretches over the keg again, groping for the push-bar. Her face is contorted, riven with vertical lines. She rakes her nails across the backs of Frank’s hands, ploughing ragged furrows in his skin. When Frank fails to let go as expected, she resorts to trying to pry his fingers free from the push-bar, but his fingers seem glued in place.