Adornments of the Storm

by Paul Meloy

  Trevena never went back, never went home again. There were too many memories there, good ones he was better off keeping in his head, and some bad ones safely boxed away and repressed, too many people still around with no ambition or drive, drinking in the same pubs and shopping down the same aisles. Trevena shuddered. Sometimes the ghosts that haunted you most were the ones that were still alive.

  THEY WALKED THROUGH Dark Time-light. Chloe could feel it forever generating, self-sustaining, and they were at once a part of it, illuminated and eternal.

  Once she saw a shining thread stitch through the fabric of the air an astronomical distance away—a Gantry opening and closing, like a neuron firing— and she thought, John, and wished him well. Another, closer but still immeasurably distant, tore through the firmament, the jet stream from a twinkling, alien machine, and Chloe realized it was the great Looms that were weaving them.

  They walked a labyrinth of monumental brazen machines, an endless factory built for archangels. The floor they crossed was the rim of it, the cytoplasm of a cell, and the Looms were its organelles, shuttling, clacking, from edge to unimaginable edge, flying, jagged cathedrals weaving Gantries like protein strands.

  Bismuth, Index, Alex, Eliot.

  She could sense them the instant their Gantries opened, each a unique resonance that she felt like a gravity wave, sending ripples throughout the great Compartment. She felt pain, fear, exultation, and sadness. Their emotions were forces as powerful as anything nuclear, prayers offered up in darkness unknowing of the immensity of light through which they passed. It was faith, she realized, that flung these Looms, faith that fuelled them and knitted their equations.

  Chloe looked at Doctor Mocking. They were walking in silence, he following her lead as they negotiated the shining, golden boulevards. He had been here before, or in some region similar, and she wondered what he had seen. What had he intuited of this place? Of what might lie beyond it?

  Doctor Mocking smiled at her.

  “How are we doing?” he said.

  Chloe took his hand again. “Are you tired?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Are you going to die?”

  “No,” said Doctor Mocking. “Not here. Nothing dies here.”

  WHEN THINGS END, is that moment all that remains? An image blasted onto rock, everything that has passed over its surface before nothing more than the wind or water from a stream, fading forever as it moves away. All we have left to hold is a shoreline pebble stamped with fossils of loss, intaglios of grief, turning it inconsolably in our fingers, while we howl at the sky? Is the future built against such ever-mounting cairns, foundations pressing us towards the dark?

  And while he thought this with a cold and undirected fury, Index laid Bix’s body on the floor of the flower stall, amongst the sweet bouquets, with great tenderness, and stood aside as John Stainwright knelt and wept.

  Others knelt with him, so that he didn’t weep alone, Index amongst them.

  THEY WERE CONTENT as they walked. There was time here, but no sense of the duration of it. They might have been there forever. They might have just arrived, landing lightly from the Gantry on a shallow slope of brass, rolling laughing between the crags of two soaring Looms and into the labyrinth. Time was both a now and an always, issuing in pulses and ripples from every point simultaneously.

  Chloe stopped walking. Doctor Mocking stood beside her. They both looked left just as the ground trembled beneath them and there was the sound of thunder. A million servers clicking over, a million shuttles racing, flying, rods and lathes blurring as the power station cycled. And up it went: a Loom an aisle away. Firing into the air like a rocket bathed in desert sunlight, weaving a Gantry behind it.

  They watched, open-mouthed as it sped away, its wake staggering them, its noise deafening.

  Chloe squinted, watched it go.

  I don’t know you, she thought.

  They walked on.

  "LOOK,” SAID LESLEY. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her face was pale. She gently touched John’s arm.

  John looked up and saw that the boy was awake. He was sitting on the bench at the back of the flower stall. He was staring at the group of people clustered around the entrance to the stall with a look of fear.

  “Hey,” Lesley said. She stood up. The boy flinched, his white face trembling.

  “Don’t be afraid.” She took a step towards him.

  Lesley held out a hand. The boy looked at it, looked up into Lesley’s face. She smiled and he took her hand.

  As she turned to walk the boy out of the stall, Chapel came forward, his face as pale as the boy’s. The boy saw him and his grip tightened painfully on Lesley’s hand. She squatted next to him and put a palm softly on his cold cheek. “It’s ok,” she said.

  And then the boy let go of Lesley’s hand, pressed both of his own over his eyes and screamed.

  Chapel turned and blundered into Daniel. He tore at the jacket covering the jar and ripped it away. Daniel gasped and stumbled backwards, away from the group. Chapel had his hands around the jar and as Daniel stumbled, Chapel pushed and wrenched the jar from Daniel’s arms.

  Lesley was holding the boy, trying to comfort him. Bismuth moved, Index and Trevena behind him, but Chapel was already halfway down the arcade. He turned, suddenly indecisive, the jar molten in his arms, a fuel rod of sick light. Chapel’s eyes were black. He opened his mouth, said something, but could not be heard over the sound of the boy’s continuing screams.

  The air trembled around him. He took a step backwards and a Gantry opened and he was gone.

  The boy stopped screaming and fell sobbing into Lesley’s arms.

  CHLOE AND DOCTOR Mocking reached the end of the boulevard and turned left onto another. Doctor Mocking had the sense they were traversing the surface of a vast circuit board and the Looms were its valves and capacitors, plugged in and bristling with energy. The hum was perpetual, but choral, enchanting, and their ears had accustomed to it quickly and now they barely noticed it.

  “Were you married?” Chloe asked.

  The question didn’t seem to surprise Doctor Mocking.

  “Yes,” he said. “She left when the girls were young. She couldn’t accept what I was.”

  “Did it frighten her?”

  “I think it did. I loved her very much, but I understood. I threw myself into the work afterwards. It was Lesley who pulled me back. She wasn’t much older than you are now.”

  “And then you came here, to find Bismuth.”

  “Yes. I suppose I displaced my grief. Instead of letting it destroy me, I thought, if I could do something good, something useful—”

  Chloe pulled on Doctor Mocking’s hand.

  They stopped. “Listen,” said Chloe.

  Above the eternal sounds of the Compartment they could hear a sound at counterpoint to them, something arrhythmic, industrial.

  “It’s him,” Chloe said.

  INDEX LEFT THE group and went to the window of the café. He gestured through the window and Johnny appeared at the door, a dishcloth in his hands. He stepped out into the arcade. In the café, voices were raised as usual but there was an apprehensive tone to them. Pale faces peered through the steamy glass.

  Outside the café, Johnny spoke perfect English.

  “I saw the others, Jon, at a train shed in Quay-Fomalhaut. I gave Eliot breakfast. They seemed well.”

  “Can you take us back there, Johnny?”

  “Of course! Come inside and I’ll set the coordinates.” Johnny winked, conspiratorial.

  Index thanked him and went to gather the others.

  Lesley was still holding the boy. He was looking around with dark, startled eyes. She soothed him. Bismuth, Daniel, Steve and Trevena were talking in a huddle outside the flower stall. There was a lot of swearing. Trevena put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder and Daniel shook his head, raised his hands as if to say, how the fuck did that happen? Anna stood with Claire and Elizabeth inside the stall and tried to comfort John Stainwright.<
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  The boy disengaged from Lesley and stepped over to John. John was kneeling at Bix’s side, stroking the dog’s flank. He had tried to clean a lot of the dirt from Bix’s fur, but it was still matted in places. John was talking to the dog in a quiet voice.

  John looked up as the boy approached.

  The boy squatted and put a hand out. “I’m Andy,” he said. “What happened to your dog?”

  John took the boy’s hand and gave it a quick, loose shake.

  “John,” he said. “He was helping to rescue you. He got hurt and died.”

  “He’s not dead,” the boy said, and laughed. John stared at him. Lesley came over. “Andy, shhhh,” she said, a little astounded that the boy should be so insensitive. John’s lip curled.

  The boy turned to Lesley. Some of the others were standing around now, faces registering concern. Anna knelt and put an arm around John’s shoulder.

  “He’s not dead,” Andrew Chapel said again, “Not yet. I’ve spent a long time in the dark. I know what death is. Close your eyes.”

  John Stainwright placed both hands against Bix’s chest. He lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  They connected.

  JOHN STOOD AT the foot of a low mountain. The rock was red, darkening to purple as the sun set beyond the forest at his back. The earth around his feet was rich, loamy, and soft. It smelt of autumn. He heard something, and looked up.

  There was a small cave about thirty feet above his head. It made a dark, shaded indentation in the rock, a cool niche like an archway leading into the mountain. An aluminium extension ladder leaned against the rock face, its steps flaked with mud and leaves. John saw paw prints.

  He heard the sound again, a scratching and clatter of pebbles, and looked up to see Bix poke his head out of the entrance to the cave.

  “Hi John,” Bix said.

  “Hey, Bix. Should I come up?”

  Bix looked back over his shoulder. When he returned his attention to John, he said, “Better not. I’m okay here. Safe. Got someone to look after for a while.”

  John raised a hand.

  “Good to see you, fella. Do you need anything?”

  “I’m good. I love you, John.”

  “Love you, too, Bix.”

  JOHN OPENED HIS eyes and rubbed his face. He looked around at the concerned faces of his friends. He smiled.

  “Hey, Claire,” he said. “How long have you known you were pregnant?”

  Claire’s eyes grew very wide.

  Steve said, “What?”

  JOHN CARRIED BIX into the café. Johnny cleared some tables and indicated that John could make a bed for the dog in the corner. A couple of diners gave him their coats and an elegant-looking woman with a dramatic and tottering beehive of graying blonde hair took off her black mohair sweater and handed it to John with a shy smile. John nodded, “Merci, merci,” he said. He laid Bix on his bed and settled him, stroking his muzzle with gentle, trembling fingers.

  The group stood around and waited as Johnny went behind his counter and placed his hands flat on the blue Formica worktop.

  “Et maintenant,” he said, and clapped his hands.

  The café began to fold in on itself. It was disorienting and Trevena staggered and sat down on a spare stool. He leaned against the counter and watched as the window slid towards him. The customers all froze. Their faces slackened and their eyes unfocused. Index tottered over to where Trevena was sitting, like a sailor negotiating a deck in a rising storm. “Just fitting ourselves into the new place. It’s quite a bit smaller.”

  Trevena swallowed and gave Index a weak smile. The counter retracted and he lifted his arm, watching with apprehension as the urn at the end tilted beneath gas pipes that were kinking themselves into a more compact arrangement. The stool slid away from Index taking Trevena with it. Trevena shrugged and waved his fingers as he slid across the floor. Index roared with laughter.

  The stool rotated once and Trevena watched his reflection revolve through a speckled, steamy mirror fixed to a wall that wrenched suddenly away from him, crimping like foil. As the mirror slid through ninety degrees, Trevena saw Steve and Claire holding each other, their eyes tightly shut, in the middle of the room as chairs and tables rotated around them like rides on a carousel. Elizabeth was holding onto Bismuth’s arm, her face white, while Bismuth patted her hand and stared impassively out of the window.

  And then all was still. Trevena turned around and looked across the café. Johnny stood behind a much shorter counter. He clapped again. “C’est fait!” he said, and all around the customers began speaking again. Cutlery rattled on plates and in cups, chairs scraped as people adjusted themselves to the new dimensions. It was certainly more snug in there now. Trevena heard the radio come back on in a series of static bursts and faltering signals, the voice of the newscaster gaining strength and integrity as the café settled.

  Index went to the door and opened it.

  COLIN ZIPPED UP and turned to go back into the train shed.

  He heard something move on the cinders behind him, a gritting step, and he whirled around.

  The Despatrix stood between the rails, her hair hanging in a fringe across her eyes. Her full lips parted.

  “Take it out again. Let me see what you’ve got.”

  The Despatrix reached down between her thighs and loosened the thong of flesh covering her groin. She slid long fingers beneath the flap of skin and lifted it aside, revealing a discreet slit curving beneath the hairless mound. She took a step closer, her hand still pressed against her sex.

  Colin stared at her as she came across the tracks. He felt a sudden and long-forgotten pulse between his legs and was dismayed to discover he was getting an erection.

  “Oh bloody hell,” said Colin. “Not now.”

  The Despatrix kissed the air with her wide, wet lips, and flipped her fringe away from her eyes with a toss of her head. Colin staggered backwards, his hands raised, the mistimed bulge in his shorts subsiding the instant he saw those diseased sockets blazing from her otherwise perfect face.

  He turned and ran, his flip-flops smacking against the soles of his bony feet. He could hear the Despatrix following, treading more slowly up the tracks.

  “Alex!” Colin shouted, his voice hoarse with exertion. “Eliot!”

  The boys’ faces appeared as they leaned out of Railgrinder’s cab.

  They saw Colin running towards them with the Despatrix following, and both leaped from the cab. They came around the front of Railgrinder and went to help Colin the last few yards. He was red faced and panting. He clutched at the boys’ arms and let them drag him the rest of the way along the tracks and up the slope that led onto the platform.

  Eliot watched as the Despatrix approached. Her long hair fell in lush waves across her narrow, pale shoulders. Long thighs, slender ankles, naked feet picking their way over the cinders.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said, and there was an unmistakable note of regret in his voice.

  Colin was leaning forwards, his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. His ponytail had come loose and a loop of thin gray hair hung over his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” he said. “If you don’t have to look at the mantelpiece.”

  Alex went to the edge of the platform.

  “We can’t keep dodging it,” he said. “We’ll have to kill it ourselves.”

  “It’s too powerful.” Eliot said.

  The Despatrix had reached the front of Railgrinder’s engine. She stood gazing up at the boys, her head cocked, a hand cupped between her legs, fingers deep and kneading. She ran the palm of her other hand over the warming metal of the engine.

  And then the long muscles of her thighs tensed and her back arched. She uttered a guttural, drawn-out moan, and driven by the power of her revolting climax, she leaped from the tracks, arms outstretched, and plucked Alex from the edge of the platform.

  INDEX EMERGED FROM the café into the train shed in time to see Alex disappear over the edge of the platform. Eliot had al
ready made to leap down onto the tracks and had time to register that the others had arrived before momentum took him over and he landed on the cinders between the rails.

  They crowded the edge of the platform as Eliot—the stockier of the two and with more muscle developing in his arms and chest—piled into the Despatrix and wrestled her away from Alex. Alex looked stunned, but picked himself up and headed back into the fight.

  John Stainwright reached into his coat and pulled out the Instruments Bismuth had given him. He was about to step down onto the tracks but Index held out an arm.

  “Wait,” he said.

  John turned to look at the others but they all appeared to be heeding Index’s command, and were waiting, tense and poised, while the boys fought the creature.

  Colin put out a hand. “John,” he said. “Give me that lever.”

  John handed it over and Colin trotted over to Railgrinder’s cab and climbed in. He tapped the lever on his palm, thinking.