Spares

by Michael Marshall Smith

  In my own terms, a final statement on that night was made when I walked into a whorehouse on the 67th floor and placed three bullets in the head of the man who had ordered the attack on the restaurant. But perhaps there were later echoes in all the things I didn’t say to Henna, in the days I woke up not knowing where I was, in the fact that in the end not even Angela was enough to redeem my marriage or my life.

  The second intervention was the Vinaldi case, which took up most of the last year I spent as a cop. I was a Lieutenant by then, and not doing what I was supposed to. It’s kind of a habit of mine. I resisted because I needed something to be right about, something in which I could feel blessed by a touchstone of morality and rectitude that was missing in every other part of my life.

  Vinaldi was only an up-and-coming hood in those days, a long way from the godfather he became while I was on the Farm. His rise was inexplicably meteoric, I believed, unless a large proportion of the police were directly supporting him. I decided that I was going to reveal to everyone, to the whole city, exactly what was going on in New Richmond. By then I had come to distrust the city as much as I distrusted my own heart. Fhee had been dead for three years, and my marriage to Henna had petrified into politeness and warmth. Not so very bad, in other words, but not good enough for me. I could no longer remember what I’d thought I wanted, why I was unhappy with what I had. That’s when I knew I was really married.

  The campaign against Vinaldi was a life-substitute, nothing more, and I pursued it with the zealotry of the damned.

  In effect, I tried to set up a secret, secondary police force, operating covertly within the one which already existed. I recruited the few men I knew I could trust, Mal foremost among them. He was a Sergeant by then, primarily concerning himself with prostitute-related homicides in which there was bodily mutilation. He’d seen enough unpleasantness of that kind in The Gap not to be able to stand it in the real world, and was implacable in his pursuit of the guilty. He was also, once I turned him onto it, extremely good at finding out who in the force was helping Johnny Vinaldi make the transition from minor street thug to crime baron. The other men reported to Mal, and he reported to me. I didn’t report to anyone, in the department or anywhere else. I cleared enough homicides and kept the squad in sufficiently good order that no one poked their nose into what I was doing the rest of the time, especially as by then I was enough of a Rapt junkie for most of the brass to assume I was harmless.

  I’d taken Rapt on and off since The Gap, but in the last years it got worse and worse as I tried to find something that would clear my head, something real enough to take me back in time. So much of Rapt’s attraction for me is the fear it engenders, and I found that I needed more and more of it to keep me sane. A life without fear is no life at all, and at the core of my life, in Henna, there was nothing to be afraid of.

  The investigation created its own fears as it progressed, as it dawned on me that something very peculiar was going on. A small number of cops did turn out to be directly on the Vinaldi payroll, but nowhere near enough to account for his exorbitant success. As time went on, it became increasingly clear that his fan club must start near the very top of the NRPD, which I couldn’t understand. Things had gone on in the same old way in New Richmond for many, many years; I couldn’t work out what would make senior brass decide that it was worth throwing their lot in with one hood in particular.

  Mai and I kept on digging, and kept getting closer to the truth, until that final week five years ago. By then, through pure intuition, I could tell the investigation was going to break. Normally my intuitions aren’t worth the paper I wipe them on, but this time I knew it was different. I could feel it like a continual vibration under my fingers, and I spent virtually the whole of that week in the office or on the street, barely seeing Henna and Angela.

  On the last morning I left very early, but not too early for Angela, who came sprinting out of her bedroom as I was on my way to the door. She threw herself up at me and I caught her awkwardly, only then realizing how long it had been. Partly it was because I was away so much of the time, but it was also, I realized, because she was growing up and didn’t do it so often anymore. For a moment I was truly afraid. If I wasn’t careful I was going to miss the last of her childhood, and then what would I have left?

  I put her down with a kiss on the head, and called good bye to Henna as I walked out the door. Perhaps she came into the living room to give me a kiss, to wish me luck with my day. I’ll never know, because I never saw her alive again.

  Someone had discovered what I was doing, how close I’d come to the truth. They gave the order and that someone came to my apartment that day and dismantled the two women I loved. He did it in a way which said they knew all about me, about the kind of things I had seen in The Gap, about what fears still lived at the heart of my life. For the last five years I’d assumed it was someone hired by Vinaldi, but now I believed that it wasn’t.

  But somebody did it. They did it, and they helped destroy me, but perhaps it was me who added the most damning touch.

  At the time when Henna and Angela were being killed I wasn’t at work. I wasn’t even working. I could have been at home, but I wasn’t because I was with another woman, and I was fucking her. Her name was Phieta, and she was the one who eventually came and found me in the warehouse, where I’d run after finding my family’s bodies. At the moment Henna was killed I was kissing Phieta’s breasts; by the time Angela died I was perhaps down to her navel. I can’t be exactly sure about the timing, but it’s probably about right. I don’t suppose it really matters.

  How long do you wait for something which may never come? Do you keep on looking for Oz? In the end does it even exist, or is it just MaxWork, a way of passing the time?

  Five years on the Farm brought me no closer to understanding anything. Perhaps I’m not built for answers; perhaps I am just the product of wrong experiences and bad advice. I can remember one time, when I was fourteen, a rare expansive moment of my father’s. He was sitting in our tiny kitchen, slobbing his way through the dinner my mother had prepared. She was at the sink, washing up. I don’t recall which house this was in, because they all blur into one, but I remember my father watching my mother for a long while as she cleaned and scrubbed, running his eyes over her tired, slumped shoulders. He turned to me eventually and said these words:

  “Remember this, Jack. Masturbation is no substitute for all of the other women in the world.”

  And though I loved my mother, and hated my father more than anyone before or since, I fear it was his world view which I absorbed. It’s not necessarily the right things, the good things, which make the most impact on your mind. Every little thing, including your own weaknesses, contributes its own little line of code. Even bad things can be true, and even good advice can turn on you.

  I don’t eat ice cream very often anymore, but I’ve always tried to follow what the old man on the beach said. I’ve tried to mold my world and not settle for less than what I think I want. To write my own lines every now and then. The old man meant well, but what he didn’t tell me is that sometimes even the best sentiments, the most glorious acts, are not enough. He didn’t tell me that the world is simply stronger, and will bend you much more than you bend it; or that for much of the time you will help it

  He didn’t tell me that you may get confused, and lose your way, and that help may never come.

  I have made my life unavoidable. I did it to myself. While I was Gone Away I think I began to realize there might be something I could do to save it.

  I was Gone Away for a long time, at least several hours. I’d never been away that long before, and when I eventually got back I was exhausted, terrified, and alone. The return is like waking up from your seventy-fifth hangover in a row to find that you’ve run out of coffee and American Express has put a bounty on your head. I faded back into life with the vague feeling of having been summoned, and found myself standing in a thick section of forest which was clearly a very long
way from the village I’d fled.

  I felt guilty at having abandoned Vinaldi, but the truth of the matter was that I could have done no good by being caught. Splitting up was the right thing to do. People don’t just do it in horror films to make the movie longer—they do it because it means not everyone gets killed at once. Running had also been the best policy, bad though I was now feeling about it. Vinaldi had been captured, but I hadn’t—which meant I was still, technically at least, in a position to do something.

  When the guilt subsided I looked around in an attempt to discover where I was. Trees still marched off in all directions, but the ground was rougher than any I’d seen before in The Gap. Large rocks poked out of the leaves and there were hillocks and depressions in the ground. The light was a dim greeny-blue, filtered by the trees. The light made it look as if the forest was underwater.

  I had no idea where I was, or how to get back to the village. My bleary examination of the ground failed to reveal any sign of the leaves having been disturbed from any direction in particular; it appeared that I had just been beamed down out of nowhere.

  The first decision I had to make was whether to take any more Rapt. Or rather, since I was obviously going to take some more at some stage, whether I should take it there and then. I could feel a residual buzz in the back of my head and knew that the buzz would probably stay at that level for another hour or so, but there was no telling when I’d come up against something which would require me to be utterly off my face to survive. Decisions, decisions.

  “Soldier.”

  When I heard the voice I thought I was going to die. All my internal organs twitched at once, as if trying to leap out of a body which they clearly believed was not long for this world. I dropped to the ground in a crouch, darting glances around in as many directions as I could without actually disengaging my eyes from their sockets.

  “Soldier.”

  I almost didn’t hear it the second time, because my heart was beating so loudly. But then the word was repeated again. It was coming from behind me. Naturally.

  Using my hands to brace myself, I slowly turned to face the other way without standing up. There was no one there. All I could see was a collection of hillocks, covered in trees, shading off into the darkness like undulating dunes on the seabed.

  “Yes, soldier. Come to me.”

  I saw a flicker by one of the hillocks, and had a strange urge to get up, but stayed where the fuck I was. One of the things about Rapt is that you learn to heartily distrust your first impressions. Being in The Gap at all is ill-advised. The idea of walking voluntarily toward anyone you don’t know is stupid beyond belief.

  “Come, please,” said the voice then, and I saw that there was indeed something standing beside an outcrop of rock about twenty yards in front of me. At least I thought it was that far; the figure, if that’s what it was, seemed surprisingly small.

  I stared at it, trying to work out what to do. No point in running; if I’d been seen, I’d been seen. I’d managed to outrun Yhandim and Ghuaji mainly because they hadn’t been properly into space when I spotted them. Also because I can run like fuck when I’m scared shitless and have a head start. I was absolutely confident that whatever was standing by the rock now would be able to catch me within yards.

  I stood cautiously, took a couple of steps forward. The figure nodded in encouragement and remained by the rock, waiting.

  I decided I might as well walk forward into doom rather than catch it in the back.

  The thing was indeed small, but it was only when I was within a few yards of it that the flickering light settled into something recognizable. At first I didn’t see a figure, as such, but an area of space which was simply darker than its surroundings—as if its grip on the world was limited to casting a shadow upon it.

  Then it resolved into a little boy, about ten years old and dressed in the strange conglomeration of rags and straps that Gap children wore.

  He smiled and held out his hand. I just stared at it. Staring seemed to be about the limit of my powers at that moment. When I realized he was expecting me to take it I stepped backward, suddenly sure that this was a trap of some kind, or maybe a hallucination. Gap children aren’t insubstantial, like the villagers had been. They look real, or very nearly so. You can see them, and catch them, which is why… take it from me, you just can. For this one to look like it did there had to be something wrong with it.

  The child didn’t say anything, or make any move toward me. It simply stood patiently waiting for me to make my mind up. It was that which made me decide that it probably wasn’t a trap—or that if it was, it was too clever for me to resist. I put my hand out tentatively.

  At first I couldn’t tell when it met the boy’s, because his hand was thin and made of smoke; but then it seemed to gain a little solidity and grasped hold of mine. It was like holding a handful of water just above body temperature, and also reminded me, for some reason, of the first time I’d taken Suej’s hand to bring her out of the tunnel at the Farm.

  The boy turned away from me then, indicating with his head that I should follow. Breathing shallowly, wondering what I was letting myself in for and just how much it was going to hurt, I allowed myself to be led.

  While we walked I didn’t think of anything. I watched and waited for whatever was coming next. Gap children didn’t come to strangers, unless they had no choice. I couldn’t imagine why this one had come to me, or where we could be going.

  It turned out that we were simply moving to the other side of the hillock. There, the child stopped and looked at me. Making a small motion with one of his hands, he turned away again. I raised my eyes to follow his gaze.

  There must have been two hundred of them, maybe more. For the first few seconds they seemed limitless, stretching into the forest for miles like pebbles on a rock beach. Then I saw that they stopped more or less where the forest light faded into blackness fifty yards away.

  It was a group of Gap children, all standing motionless in blue light. Rank upon rank of them, shadowy and barely there, and all of them staring at me. I heard a soft rustling and slowly turned to see that another group had come silently up behind us, almost as many again.

  As far as I could see, in all directions, I was surrounded by silent children.

  You never saw more than three Gap children in a group; they came and went in small handfuls. During the war, we hadn’t even been absolutely sure they were younger versions of the villagers. Some people believed they were a different style of being altogether. I used to wonder if even the villagers weren’t people, as such, but just our way of interpreting some other phenomenon, symbols for thoughts in The Gap’s mind—and that the children were different, younger thoughts. They had represented youth of some kind, though; which was why what happened had been unacceptable. I believed that even in those days, as a drugged-out teenager. After Angela, I felt it even more strongly.

  The stillness was broken by a ripple that passed through the whole group. The ones nearest to me took little running steps forward, until they were right up against my legs. The ones behind pressed closer in, and I was about to scream when I realized what was happening. They were greeting me, and greeting me as a friend.

  Silent smiles broke out on gray faces, all directed at me, and small arms reached up to touch my coat and arms. Not a single sound came from any of them, though their mouths opened and shut as if they were speaking. It was like being surrounded by a cloud of moisture that kept resolving and dissolving into hands and arms and faces. There were girls, and boys—some in their early teens, others little older than babies. Coming so soon after the thoughts I’d had while being Gone Away, their apparent affection was so unexpected as to be almost unbearable. It was as if I’d been brought back from being Gone Away to be shown exactly what it was I was missing.

  Or, perhaps, that I could have it again.

  After a while the contact stopped, and the group parted in front of me. The original boy led me forward again. The rest of t
he group was turning that way, too, as if preparing to move off with us.

  Letting my other hand run briefly over the insubstantial gray hair of the nearest little girl, I took my mind off the hook and decided to follow them to wherever they wanted to go.

  At the time I strongly believed that the children would be the most surprising sight The Gap had to offer. Half an hour later I was proved wrong.

  We walked through the forest in silence, the boy steadfastly leading me and the others following behind. More than once I turned to check if they were still there and saw a column of them stretching back into the darkness. The ground remained rocky and uneven and, though it was difficult to tell, I reckoned we were gradually moving uphill. A heavy mist was collecting between the trees, white and soft and apparently lit from within.

  After a while I began to see objects on the ground, guns and empty ammunition cases. I assumed it was random debris left over from the war, but as we progressed I knew that couldn’t be so. Most of the weapons had the U.S. Army insignia stamped on them, but others were of unfamiliar design, and had clearly once belonged to fighters from The Gap itself. A few lay haphazardly, but the majority had been collected into piles round the bases of trees.

  Then larger pieces started to appear: moldy backpacks, broken radios, fragments of larger weapons lying tilted like gravestones in an abandoned churchyard. The children paid them no attention. Larger shapes loomed in the mist ahead, and as they resolved into recognizable forms I was forced to grind to a halt. The children didn’t seem to mind, and watched as I walked open-mouthed over to the nearest shape.

  It was a jeep, a U.S. Army light vehicle of the type which was very occasionally used during the war. Most of the time we had to travel on foot, because the majority of the forest was very heavily wooded and the position of trees tended to vary from one minute to the next, but there had been a few jeeps of exactly this type. Mostly they were reserved for brass, and the joke was that the only gear which worked was “reverse.” I ran my hand over the cold metal of the vehicle’s hood, wiping the moisture from it. It was crumpled and bent around a large hole. From the damage and the thick coating of carbon, it looked like it had taken a hit from some kind of rocket launcher.