“I remember everything.” Jimmy’s teeth clacked when he talked. “It’s a curse. I remember we got out just before the end. Right after Zeus threw Hyperion through that sub-dimensional anomaly. He landed smack on his head and started crying like a baby. That’s the thing with Titans. Not as tough as they look.”
“So what did you do?” I said, keen to change the subject. “When the shooting was over.”
Jimmy waved a skeletal hand. “Bought myself this business. Private detective. I’d made contacts in the war, learned a bunch of new skills. How to track. How to ask questions. When not to. It worked out well enough, for a time.”
He drank down his coffee. It trickled down his naked spine, sloshed through his pelvis on to the chair.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said, “but you don’t look so good, Jimmy.”
Jimmy shuddered. All in a rush, the flesh came back on to his bones. For a second he looked close to normal. Then his head expanded to the size of an armchair. His hands and feet turned to flippers. His skin turned green. He dropped to the floor, started flopping like a seal.
“I lost a bet,” he barked.
Little whirlwinds were spilling out from the ends of his flippers. They found a hole in the wall, sucked out a mouse. The mouse started growing tusks.
“What kind of bet?”
Jimmy flattened out like a skate. The mouse filled up with gas and floated to the ceiling.
“Happened last week,” he said. “Cronos came to me. He’s just gone into business with Hyperion. They’re setting up a casino. You heard about it?”
“Yeah. They want to call it the Tartarus Club.”
“Right. It figures, because after the war, gambling was the only permit Zeus would grant the Titans. Zeus is retired now, you know. Found himself a private semi-dimensional oubliette, handed over control of the Mountain to the Thanes. Says they’re welcome to it.”
This much I knew. “You were telling me about Cronos.”
“What? Oh, yeah. I get distracted.” The mouse hit the ceiling and burst. Jimmy grew a brain on his back, then reverted to something mostly human. Except for the spines. “So, Cronos—yeah, he wanted me to check out Hyperion’s bank accounts. Hyperion was always one for double-crossing his sibs. Cronos wanted to make sure he wasn’t being ripped off.”
“And?”
“And zip. Hyperion was clean. For once. But when I sent Cronos the bill, he refused to pay. Offered me interest-free credit at the casino instead.”
“Bum deal.”
“You’re telling me. But what can you do? You know Titans.”
“You took the credit?”
“Biggest mistake I ever made. I threw craps for a whole evening, got carried away, ended up owing the house. Owing it big. Unfortunately I was broke. That’s when Cronos offered to play chess. Said if I won, he’d clear the debt.”
“And if Cronos won?”
“I’d pay a forfeit.”
While he’d been talking, Jimmy had slowly melted back to his regular human shape. Now he looked just like he always had—the Jimmy I’d grown up with.
“And you lost?”
“I lost.”
“And the forfeit was?”
“Cronos scrambled my temporal proteins. Cut me loose on the timeline. Now I can’t stay in any one time zone more than a few minutes. I get old, I get young. I flip back and forth, get stretched between now and then and maybe. I tell you, buddy, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.” He sighed, scratched his head. Clumps of hair came out and started growing into worms. “Worse than that, I evolve. Or devolve.”
The remains of the mouse peeled off the ceiling and splattered on the floor. Jimmy looked sadly at the mess.
“The proteins sweat out,” he explained, “So I’m surrounded by temporal fallout. Don’t get too close, buddy. You’ll end up wearing skins and banging flints together.”
“It sounds bad,” I said.
“Could be worse. Makes it hard to run a business though. That’s why I’m selling up. I need someone to buy this place off me. You interested?”
I finished my coffee, stood up. “Thanks, Jimmy. I’m sorry what happened to you. But the answer’s no. I’ve got too much trouble to take on any more.”
“This isn’t trouble. Trust me. The foundations of this office are knitted right into the heart of the city. This building has three hundred and seventeen discreet dimensional doorways. And a cellar. You know how you are with dimensions—you’d love it.”
I hesitated. I like dimensions the way some folk like jazz. Or kissing a fine woman. Don’t get me wrong, I like jazz and fine women too. It’s just that dimensions get me in the soft parts. I’d say all stringwalkers are like that, but I’m the only one I know.
“All the same,” I said, “This isn’t a good time. My wife... she died, Jimmy.”
“I know.”
“What? How d’you know? I only just...”
He leaned close. Beneath the skin of his cheeks was a kind of shimmering light. It was like the whole inside of him was moving. Years later I’d meet a mechanical man that would remind me of the exact way Jimmy looked in that moment.
“I know because I’m everywhere, buddy,” Jimmy said softly. “I’m here and now, then and gone. I’m yesterday, today and tomorrow, and I’m all the moments between. I’m everything folded together. I know exactly where you’ve been and exactly where you’re going. I wish I didn’t, but I do. I knew you’d be here today, and why. And I know exactly what you’ll say when I ask you to buy this two-bit business out from under me. When I ask you if you want to become a private investigator.”
“What? What will I say?”
Jimmy said nothing, just smiled. His teeth turned yellow, sharpened of their own accord. He grew three extra arms. Two of them were tipped with lobster claws. One was holding a big iron key.
“There’s a crate in the cellar,” he said through suddenly alien teeth. “It’s full of gadgets. Some of them might even be useful. The tokamak’s just been serviced and there’s a bunk for when you don’t want to go home. Now, shall I show you all the doorways, or are you going to find them for yourself?”
81
THE PAST TURNED to rain. All those old memories washed away: Jimmy, the office, that whole distant day. The rain stayed though. That’s what woke me up: the cold, hard rain of the present day, pounding against my face.
I was lying on my back, staring straight up with the rain pouring into my eyes. Above me, a pair of cinderblock walls held up a purple sky that looked almost ready to spit out a new dawn.
I tried to sit up. Someone lit firecrackers in my head and I slumped down again, moaning. Something scuttled across my chest, squeaking. I rolled on my side, peered through darkness at a heap of small squirming bodies. I blinked away the rain. The bodies were rats, fighting over a garbage can.
Slowly I clambered to my feet. The firecrackers turned to A-bombs. My teeth ached. My mouth was a desert. I opened it to let the rain in. It was cold and shocking.
I was in an alley, surrounded by trash. At the end of the alley, a streetlamp burned, too bright for my aching eyes. Beside me on the cobbles was the bottle of bourbon I’d emptied down my throat during the night. I couldn’t remember how I’d got here. Had I gone back to my office at some point? I couldn’t be sure. All that was left of the night was the stale sting of the liquor in the back of my throat.
Slowly, painfully, a memory surfaced. Someone had fallen out of my life. I fought to remember. A girl? A skinny girl? What was her name?
It was too hard. I slid down the wall and collapsed.
Through the explosions in my head, I heard footsteps. Someone was walking down the alley toward me, feet splashing the puddles. It occurred to me I should sit up again. I tried, gave up, closed my eyes. If they wanted to kill me, so be it. Whoever I was.
The footsteps stopped. The rain eased. Someone was standing over me. Let them. What was it to me?
The intruder didn’t go away. Now I was a
ngry. This was my alley. Why didn’t they just scram? I opened my eyes, peered up through the darkness and saw a tall figure, shapely, a woman. The light from the end of the alley poured round her. It was like she was sketched in fire. She was holding something over me, sheltering me from the rain. A parasol?
No. Wings.
“What are you?” I croaked. My tongue felt twice its usual size. “My guardian angel?”
“If you like,” said the woman with the wings. “But I prefer it when you call me Deliciosa.”
82
SHE FLEW ME the way she’d flown me before, with her arms wrapped tight around me. Her decaying flesh was cold, but I hugged it all the same. I pressed my aching head back against her sagging breasts. A gentle rhythm soothed my headache. At first I thought it was her heartbeat. Then I remembered she was one of the undead. The thumping was the beat of her wings.
The wind was bad. It whipped us every which way, spinning us miles off course. Deliciosa flew for hours where it should have taken her minutes. Most of the way I kept my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see the city. Occasionally I peeked though. Sometimes you can’t help yourself, you know?
Seeing what was becoming of String City sobered me up, fast.
The first time I peeked we were over the refugee camp—or what was left of it. A pair of thunderbirds had crash-landed in the night, slicing through the lines of tents with the razor edges of their golden wings. They’d come to a stop with their once-majestic heads drowned in the waters of the River Lethe, leaving a trail of destruction worthy of an asteroid strike.
The second time, the wind had carried us all the way out over the wildwood. Small camp fires glowed between the trees. The surviving refugees had fled the camp and taken to the forest. The trees were closing in round their fires, roots spread like claws, making ready to pounce. Out of the frying pan.
Then we were over the railhead, getting blown out west. A column of people was stumbling along the rusted tracks, heading for nowhere. The night swallowed them—the line had no end—and I wondered how many had reached the Gates of Gehenna, the next station down the line. Gehenna’s all right if you book in advance. I guessed most of these pilgrims hadn’t even checked the opening times.
We passed the crater where the Birdhouse used to be. At the bottom was the Fool, picking everything slowly apart.
The wind tossed us this way and that. Everywhere I saw the same desolation. No doubt about it: String City was coming unraveled, one strand at a time. Yet something was holding it together. Literally. I saw a kind of net, draped between the highest skyscrapers. To begin with, I figured I’d fallen into another dream. Then Deliciosa flew closer and I saw the net was real. It covered everything, fine as silk, almost invisible.
“Somebody’s spinning,” I said. I was woozy again. The A-bombs were back. I nestled my head between Deliciosa’s cold breasts and imagined she was warm and alive.
At last I remembered the name of the skinny girl.
“Zephyr!” I shouted.
“Hush,” said the angel, stroking my hair. “Hush now.”
83
AS THE SUN rose, I had Deliciosa stop off at Tony Marscapone’s. I wanted to see the room Zephyr had rented. Partly for clues as to where she might have gone, but mostly I just wanted to see it. But Tony’s tenement was just a heap of rubble. I found a note pinned on what used to be the door. It read:
CLOSD. LEFT TOWNE. TM.
Poor Tony. He’d never been the same since that business with the banshees. He’d bought the brownstone cheap at auction, rented out the rooms and retired to the cellar to breed amphibians. Perfect hobby for a place like that: those old tenement cellars are damp as Heracles’s armpit.
Now Tony was gone.
Looking up the street I saw everyone was gone: Persephone’s Pizzas had dropped through a hole in the street; only the roof was visible, poking above the kerbstones. Next door, the loan shark’s aquarium had sprung a leak and emptied its water down the storm drain. The corner where the hamadryads used to hustle was a mess of broken asphalt. The only thing still standing was a small brownstone with a rain-stippled dung façade: my office. It jutted from the debris like the last tooth in a hobo’s mouth.
Once we got inside, Deliciosa poured hot coffee into me. The ache drained out of my head and into my arms and legs. My clothes were soaked. Deliciosa stripped them off and brought up fresh from the cellar. I hardly noticed what she was doing. All I could think about was Zephyr.
“She’s gone,” I said when my mouth finally started working properly.
“The girl?” said Deliciosa. She’d arranged herself on the couch, torn wings draped demurely over fractured flesh.
“We argued. She walked.”
Angel eyes bored into mine. “Do you love her?” I didn’t answer. “Why didn’t you go after her?”
“I tried.” I frowned. My memories of the night were gradually coming back. “After she left, I got myself tipsy and walked the streets a while. The more I walked, the more I wanted to find her. I thought, ‘I’ll track her down and bring her back and we’ll fight and argue and then we’ll make up and things will go on okay.’ So I searched and searched. When I couldn’t find her out in the world, I came back to the office and set to searching in earnest. But, as hard as I looked, she wasn’t there.”
“What do you mean, she wasn’t there? Wasn’t where?”
“I mean she wasn’t anywhere. Wherever I searched, I drew a blank. I used every trick I knew: laid out all the maps I have, spun all the globes, fired up all the scanners and trackers and pointers I’ve got—and believe me, I’ve got plenty. Nothing. Trust me, if Zephyr was anywhere, I’d have found her.”
“But there must be some places you can’t see.”
“A few. Took me another half bottle of bourbon to realise that. That’s when I called the Scrutator.”
“One of those mechanical men?”
“Right. We were partners for a time, then the robot jumped ship. Long story. Thing is, the Scrutator’s special. Its workings are knitted from cosmic string. The upshot of that is it hears every sound in the cosmos. So I called the robot up, asked it to listen out for Zephyr.”
“And?”
“It couldn’t hear her at all. So I went back outside, walked until I found me an alley and just carried on drinking. Didn’t seem like there was much else to do.”
Deliciosa stroked my cheek with the back of her hand. “Oh, my dear,” she said. “Mightn’t this mean that she’s... dead?”
“Scrutator tells me it would hear that too.”
That startled her. Startles me too, still, whenever I think about it.
“Then where is she?” said Deliciosa, bemused.
“I don’t know. But there’s a big wheel turning here, bigger than any of us can see. And I want to know who’s cranking the handle.”
“Does any of this matter, if this really is the end of the world?”
“It matters to Zephyr. And it matters to me.” I staggered to the front wall, which was caked dry, like mud. I punched it, over and again. Chunks of dung piled up at my feet. Soon I’d made a window. I stared through it, at the night and the rain. I longed to hear a siren, even a scream, but the city was silent.
“I don’t know how to say this,” said Deliciosa. “I know it’s the wrong time, and I know you want to do something about Zephyr. But... there’s a reason I came looking for you.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “What’s that?”
“I’ve got a problem that needs solving, and I don’t know where else to turn. I know the apocalypse has nearly run its course, and I know you’ve lost the woman you were just starting to fall in love with, but I think I’ve got a case for you. Will you take it?”
84
I BLINKED. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“A case? You think I’m still in business after...? Have you seen what’s out there? The whole city is strung up in the biggest spider’s web this side of the Magogs. Folk are running for hills that aren�
�t even there. You dip even a toe in the dimensions now, the boundary wolves’ll snap it right off before chewing their way up to the top of your head. I tell you, the reaper’s come to town, and boy is he bringing in the sheaves.”
“But this is a real mystery.”
“Forget it! There are no mysteries left. The last tornado’s coming, and it’s coming now. The only thing left to do is hunker down and wait for it to be over.”
“Some tornadoes pass you by.”
“This one won’t. String City’s already dead, don’t you see? It’s just that nobody’s turned off the life support yet.”
“Death isn’t always the end.”
“Says you.”
Now it was her turn to be angry, just for a second. When you’re an angel, one second is more than enough.
She rose up to her full height: twice mine. She opened her arms, her wings. Unworldly light blazed through the rips in her skin. Her worm-ridden hair caught fire. In each eye a pulsating star went nova. Deliciosa walked toward me, shedding flesh. By the time she reached me everything about her was gone but the light.
“This is what I was!” she said. Her voice was new, big, hot. “This is what I gave up. Look at me!”
I looked. She was beyond beauty.
“They sent me down,” she said, “to experience a world. I came to String City and fell in love with it. I didn’t ever want to go back. But everywhere I went, people saw only an angel’s face, and an angel’s body. Men fell at my feet, women too. In heaven I was ordinary; in the world I had power beyond reason.
“I hated it so much I took a job underground, far away from these mortal people with whom I couldn’t communicate. I worked in the Birdhouse, deep in the subterranean vaults. But even there my beauty betrayed me. I was supposed to be an escort, there to accompany visitors who delved a little too deep into the vaults. It was my job to seduce them, then make sure they never left. The management told me they weren’t exploiting me—they were just making the most of my skillset. Can you believe I fell for that? Heaven is radiant, no question, but there’s so much they don’t teach you about the real world. That’s why I came here, of course. To learn.”
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