The Man from the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 01]
Page 53
She looked around, hoping to see a plug she could pull.
Doors shushed open and Sewell Head walked in. No, someone who looked like Sewell Head walked in. This man had a different presence.
Jeperson and Onions were with him, and de Maltby and the Droning. The first two were prisoners, the latter guards. The Viscount had a strange shining mechanical glove. Persephone Gill wore a wax mask. They weren’t completely changed (like Head), but they were different—redressed and redirected.
She didn’t risk signalling Jeperson, but he looked directly at her.
She remembered he could sometimes tell what she was thinking.
What the... ?! she thought, hard.
Meet Swellhead, thought Jeperson, clearly in her mind. And watch out for Miss Kill.
Stacy had a panic stab that Persephone—Miss Kill!—was staring straight through her faceplate, but it passed.
Sewell Head—Swellhead—climbed into his favourite chair.
13:34:01.
Whatever was due to happen at 00:00:00 was unlikely to be good.
She had flashes of the possibilities: all the world’s nuclear arsenals activated at once, space weapons searing every patch of arable land on the planet, the activation of super-anthrax engineered to wipe out all non “H”-logoed life-forms, fomented tidal waves and cyclones washing over continents. War, famine, pestilence and death.
12:43:00.
Swellhead fisted his forehead.
All the drones returned salute—de Maltby even raising his unwieldy prosthetic. Stacy was a moment out of sync, and mashed the rim of her faceplate painfully against her nut.
“Friends,” began Swellhead. “We are on the brink of a great venture. In less than a quarter of an hour, the world will be neat and tidy. I should like you all to take a moment to pray ...”
She wasn’t surprised he turned out to be some species of religious crank.
“... to me.”
Good grief! she thought.
It’s worse than that, came Jeperson’s mind-voice.
The drones all took off their helmets and bowed their heads.
Stacy had no choice but to follow suit and hope not to be noticed. The unfamiliar helmet arrangement didn’t unscrew easily. She made a comical bumble of the business of getting loose, then got her hair in her eyes.
The other whitesuits had colourless faces and hair. Ghosts.
“Detective Sergeant,” said Swellhead, “so kind of you to join us. You are our final guest.”
11:50:01.
Hands, unghostly, gripped her arms.
Jeperson looked at her, with sympathy.
If you get a chance, he thought, kill him.
* * * *
8
If you can, Richard added, damping the thought so Stacy would not pick it up. It was horribly possible that Swellhead had such control over the situation that any holes in him would heal instantly.
11:34:00.
He felt something cold against his palm. No, he was feeling through Stacy, something cold against her palm.
A blade.
Such a small thing.
“Isn’t this about the time when you call up the Prime Minister or the President of the United States or the Secret Ruling Council of the League of Pata-Nations to make your demands?”
“This isn’t extortion, Mr. Jeperson. This is inevitability.”
Richard was worried. The many memories that had plagued him earlier were like dreams, almost forgotten on waking, leaving only incoherent images and impressions. He had no idea what Fred Regent looked like as an older man.
The past was a blank.
Only this countdown was real.
The Muzak began to play “Welcome to My World,” the Jim Reeves recording with psychedelia mixed in.
10:56:00.
“Listen, Head,” he said, trying to get through, “even you aren’t big enough to do this. I’ve no doubt you can rearrange all of us here, perhaps even all over the world, but you’ll be spread too thin. Where you are, in your mind empire, it’ll be a satisfying illusion, cartoonish but still convincing. But the farther away from you, the sketchier the effect will be. No one can encompass the universe in his skull. You know a great deal in theory, but you can’t really imagine, say, the life of a South American tribesman or a market-trader in Kuala Lumpur or a teenage girl in California. The vast bulk of humanity will be milling extras, barely templates, low-resolution, badly painted backdrops. Most of your world won’t be real enough.” 09:34.00.
“I know best,” said Swellhead, almost benignly.
“Penny in the slot, Trivia Man,” said Richard. “Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile...”
“1221 to 1284.”
“That’s the fellow. Most famous saying of...?”
“‘If I had been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better arrangement of the Universe.’“
“Alfonso wasn’t being the Wise when he said that; he was being the Funny. Alfonso the Wise-Cracker. It’s supposed to be a joke, to expose hubris.”
“That’s not fact; that’s opinion. Too debatable for a quiz question.”
08:57:01.
“Not in nine minutes it won’t be. There’ll be only one opinion. Do you really want to live in that world?”
“So long as it’s the right opinion.”
“Yours.”
“Absolutely.”
“You’ll be on your own. Despite all these masks and ghosts and puppets, completely alone.”
A tiny glimpse of Sewell Head came through.
“I’m used to it,” he said.
08:02:01.
So much for Reason. His only backup plan was Violence.
Stacy, he thought, loud enough for all the ghosts to hear, now!
* * * *
9
07:54:01.
She pulled off her transparent gauntlet and gripped the knife.
As she shrugged, ghost fingers sank through her arms, giving her a bone-scraping tingle she hoped never to feel again.
She hadn’t followed Jeperson’s argument.
And she wasn’t sold on being an assassin. That hadn’t been what Fred Regent hauled her off shift for. She’d never signed up for that. Whenever it came up at the Police Federation, she voted against ordinary coppers carrying firearms or even stun-guns. That wasn’t how she wanted the world to be.
But no one was listening to her now.
07:36:00.
She waded through ghosts. They moved slowly. Guns spat floating, easily-dodgeable globules.
Then a regular-speed kick winded her.
Her knife skittered off on the floor.
She bent double, trying not to retch.
Miss Kill, the masked Persephone Gill, walked around her. She wore a long dress slit to the thighs, and the gold spike-heeled pumps modelled by a well-dressed skeleton. Above her mask, her hair was done in a topknot with a flowing tail.
Stacy tensed, anticipating the kick at her side.
Miss Kill looked to Swellhead. For applause?
Stacy braced both hands against the floor and swept-kicked Miss Kill’s legs out from under her. A simple, textbook self-defence move.
The masked girl went up arse over tit.
In midair, she flipped, regained balance on her points. She wheeled round, ponytail whipping out.
Stacy was on her feet now.
A lot of her pupils expectedCrouching Tiger business, which she always patiently explained required a team of effects experts and hidden wires—hardly practical when a yob shoves you against a wall by a cash machine.
Miss Kill might actually have been on wires. She tucked one foot against her knee and flew straight at Stacy’s face like Peter Pan, arm stretched out, fingers pyramided into a killing point.
06:32:01.
Stacy ducked and thumped upwards at Miss Kill’s silk-covered stomach. She couldn’t get the leverage for a forceful blow, but had the satisfaction of connecting.
Miss Kill to
uched down and slapped Stacy, open-handed, contemptuous.
It smarted and kinked her head almost off her neck. She responded with rib-punches that had no effect.
The mask made it impossible to tell whether Miss Kill was hurt.
Stacy tasted her own blood.
She got close to Miss Kill, pressing her body against her opponent— it’s hard to hit someone who’s practically hugging you—and getting a hold on her hair, which she yanked hard. Any woman who remembered playground scraps knew how effective a solid hair-pull could be at disabling a troublemaker. She always advised her pupils that it was better to be mugged by someone with crustylocks than a baldie (for skinheads, she recommended a nail file across the scalp—those cuts bleed like fountains).
Miss Kill’s head went back as Stacy pulled, but no scream came through the mask.
Pincer-grips came at Stacy’s sides, long-nailed thumbs stabbing between ribs, vise-pressure fingertips digging into her back. She was lifted off her feet and held out at arm’s length.
She tried battering Miss Kill’s hands, but only bruised her own fists.
06:00:00.
She was sure Miss Kill’s thumbs were knuckle-deep in her torso.
She looked down at the impassive pretty-doll face. Red and black blotches swarmed across her vision. Whatever happened at 00:00:00, she wouldn’t be here to go through it.
Probably a mercy.
Miss Kill’s stiff lips might have smiled.
Furious, using a move she only ever recommended with caution (“tends to hurt you as much as him”), she executed the classic Glasgow kiss, known in London as “nutting.” She rammed her forehead against the bridge of Miss Kill’s nose. The argument for this is that bony skull bests nose cartilage as often as paper wraps stone. It might not apply to a mask.
An almighty crack! sounded through her head.
She was let go, and Miss Kill staggered back. Stacy had blood in her eyes, mostly her own.
Miss Kill held her mask to her face. It was split across.
“Percy,” shouted Jeperson.
The mask fell away. Persephone Gill looked as if she’d woken suddenly from a bad dream. Her bloody face wasn’t a mask, but mobile with an incipient scream.
05:32:00.
“Congratulations,” said Jeperson. “The iron crown is yours.”
Having defeated Persephone Gill in single combat, Stacy supposed she had the right, for the next five and a half minutes, to call herself the Droning of Skerra.
She didn’t feel like a Princess.
* * * *
10
05:31:01.
Though Swellhead looked unconcerned, Richard saw a crack.
De Maltby, silver fist whirring with knives, stepped past Miss Gill and squared up to Stacy.
Stand down, Richard thought.
Stacy—good girl!—held her empty hands out and backed off.
De Maltby lowered his deadly gauntlet.
Swellhead settled in his chair and tapped a series of buttons. He smiled serenely as a helmet descended from the ceiling on a thick rope of wires and settled around his dome. A rim of lights on the helmet began to flash.
04:52:01.
Richard gathered Swellhead was charging the machine. His brain was a key component. Anything powerful enough to will a moon base into existence ought to be subject to the strictest international controls.
Whatever happened, Richard did not intend this apported apparatus, or this unmatched Talent, to be put at the disposal of Really-a-Good-Bloke Rory and the Deputy Minister for Heritage and Sport. Their overwhelming opinion, shaped by focus groups and policy studies and target figures and budget assessments, would probably make for a worse world than the supervillain fantasy hatching inside Swellhead’s egg-dome skull.
04:26.00.
Adam Onions had been close to boiling over for hours. Now, he stepped forward.
“Really, Mr. Head, what do you think you’re doing?”
Swellhead swivelled his chair to look at Onions, umbilical wires stretching.
“Sod this for a game of tin soldiers,” said the man from I-Psi-T, turning to leave the control room. “I’m radioing in from the helicopter.”
Onions walked across the room.
Swellhead flipped a tiny switch.
The floor opened up under Onions. With a look of resigned irritation, he fell into the chasm. A splash, thrashing, screams.
“I enjoyed that,” said Swellhead.
03:46.01.
The hatch sprung closed.
Richard walked onto the trapdoor section of the floor.
“Stacy, if you’d help me,” he said. “I need to sit down.”
She was by his side, holding his arm as he sank. His back spasmed, and he felt his joints creak. She helped him to the floor.
“This will be tricky. I need to lotus.”
She pulled off his boots—he wore wasp-striped socks—and helped him tuck his feet into the crooks of his knees. He pressed his palms together and settled, trying to find a focus.
Swellhead observed all this, almost with interest.
02:55:00.
“What do you plan now, Mr. Jeperson? Have you reached the stage of acceptance?”
Richard chuckled.
“No, I intend to out-think you.”
Richard subvocalised a mantra. Not very fashionable these days, but still effective.
He thought of a spiral, let it whirl around him.
Pains and aches faded, a pleasant side effect. The whitesuits were wispier, more ghostly. He could tell which ones had Captain Vernon’s team inside, and which were made up from whole cloth.
He gained a precise sense of where he was in relation to the complex, to the living and half-living things all around.
He had a Talent too.
02:02:01.
He was nothing compared to Swellhead, but at least knew what he was doing. If the late Adam Onions had put the possibly late Sewell Head through the full battery of tests, or let the Americans or Tibetans have a crack at him, then Swellhead might have had even more control. As it was, Richard’s earlier criticism held: the illusion didn’t have enough detail.
Too many ghosts.
A comparatively weak lever can unseat a monument.
02:00:00.
But maybe not within two minutes.
He finished chanting.
Everything was clear.
“Sewell,” he asked, “why did you choose to be a diabolical mastermind?”
Swellhead had no answer.
“Villains have more fun, I suppose?” ventured Richard. “But you must have seen the flaw? Remember the coat? It’s what brought us all here. Our blood was on it, and this place was a ruin. This happened before, and you were thwarted. Good word, that. ‘Thwarted.’ Has the old melodramatic tone. Like ‘foiled,’ ‘bested,’ ‘vanquished.’“
01:39:01.
The faintest line of concern appeared between Swellhead’s brows. His helmet lights flashed faster, in more complex patterns.
“That was somewhen else,” Swellhead said.
He gestured.
De Maltby, deadly hand raised to swipe off Richard’s head, stepped forward.
At the same time, just to make doubly sure, or perhaps through a split-second indecision, Swellhead flicked his switch.
A wasteful gesture. Counterproductive.
The floor opened. De Maltby tumbled into the darkness.
Cold wafted up, but Richard hung suspended in the air.
01:02:01.
“Didn’t I mention I could do this?”
It was not easy. Richard felt a strain in his back-brain far worse than anything he had put his spine through.
He unlotused in midair, letting his legs dangle, extending his arms crucifashion.
Beneath him, there was a whirring and screeching. De Maltby’s prosthetic killing arm outlived him by seconds, cutting through something from the inside, parting black slime, spilling knotty gut. The rising stench was dreadful.
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