And then the eighties came; just-for-fun heisting and games of tag with the coppers were out, and shoulder pads and cocaine were in. Mathew Spork was on a list of people that Lily Law proposed to take down, one way or another.
“I’m sorry, mucker,” Mercer says, “but there’s no help for it.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s five, Joe.”
“I slept the whole day? Fuck! What’s happening?”
“No. It’s five in the morning. You’ve slept an hour. We need to talk about all this. There’s no time, Joe, I’m sorry.”
“Fuck,” says Joshua Joseph Spork again, through the haze, and drinks his coffee. The f-word has become devalued. It doesn’t remotely express how he feels. He remembers his mother, very upset the first time she heard it from his lips, despite the fact she used it on a regular basis to Mathew. These days he can say what he likes unless it’s blasphemy. If he says “Christ” she prays, then weeps. And (Christ) what am I going to tell her?
Mercer lays a small digital recorder on the table.
“From the beginning, Joseph, please.”
“Mercer, I’m tired—”
“You can sleep later. I’m sorry, Joe. Splash some water on your face. If you need more coffee, or some other stimulant, it can be had for you, but we cannot wait for you to nap. It is not nap time. It is talk-with-your-lawyer time, because at this moment I do not know enough to keep you safe.”
Joe scowls. “Just make it go away. Don’t get into it. I’m nothing. I didn’t do anything. I never do. It’s a bad rap.”
“Joseph, I have done several things since you went to sleep. I have initiated all manner of false-arrest proceedings and discovery petitions which will create a paper trail and cause dismay and gnashing of teeth in the House of Titwhistle. I have started researches into the dealings of Billy Friend and his acquaintances unto many generations so that shortly I shall no doubt know more about cadavers and the theft of antiques than I ever dreamed I should. However, these are sideshows, and you know it, and I very much suspect that this is about to get political. If that is the case—if this is national-level statecraft—then the efficacy of Cradle’s to get between you and the villains of the piece will be vastly reduced, because they have recently acquired a nasty habit of ignoring the law. So please, for your own good and the sake of my sanity, tell me what has passed and what is going on. Because, not to put too fine a point on it, I have stepped in the path of Behemoth on your behalf and I must know more if we are to avoid being squished by his horny-toed feet!”
Joe Spork shrugs yes, and Mercer tuts.
“Billy called you. You went to meet him.”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“He had a job. Clean up and install. I cleaned it, I looked at it, and it was… different.”
“Define ‘different,’ please. For those of us who weren’t there.”
“Unique. Special. Skilled. Complex. Unfathomable.”
“All right.”
“We went down to Cornwall. The book—Billy called it a doodah—was part of a big mobile sculpture thing. There was a mad bloke who looked after it. I plugged it in. Bees came out.”
“Does the mad bloke have a name?”
“Ted. Ted Sholt. Or he called himself Keeper, like a title.”
Mercer nods. “And bees came out of the sculpture?”
“Mechanical simulacra of bees. There were actual bees as well. Ted keeps them. For company, I think.”
“Did they strike you as in any way remarkable?”
“They existed, that was pretty remarkable. They were expensive. I mean Cartier-bespoke expensive, all right? You remember the Woven Gold?”
“Your grandfather’s thing.”
“They were like that. Stunning. But they didn’t speak in tongues or turn water into wine or fly off into the sunset. They just…” Joe stops talking.
“What?”
“There was a moment when I thought they had. Obviously, they hadn’t.”
“Turned water into wine?”
“Flown away. They’re too heavy. It was the real ones.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“… They were clockwork. Made of gold!”
“So, in fact, you assume.”
“Mercer…”
“Joe, much as I am loath to believe anything I hear through men like Rodney Titwhistle, there is some very significant ordure hitting the fan here. If this really is an old government science project, we have to acknowledge your bees may be more than they appear. Maybe they are nuclear bees or plague bees or some other bloody thing. Certainly, they could be magnetic or rocket-propelled bees. We don’t know.”
Joe shudders. He will have nightmares about French philosophers and Ruskinites—whatever they are, with their alarming birdlike walk—but most of all about not knowing, about not ever knowing anything for sure. And to be honest, he supposes it could have been the metal bees, after all. He would just prefer very much that it wasn’t.
Mercer nods. “Yes. I refer you to the usual pithy folk wisdom regarding assuming anything. So what do we know about your machine?”
“Titwhistle said it was a sort of evil lie-detector.” Joe tries to make this sound risible, but Mercer isn’t in a laughing mood.
“Don’t parse, Joe, please. Don’t paraphrase. His words, as far as you can remember them.”
“He said that it might be a way for the human mind to recognise truth, perfectly. That someone built a machine to make it possible.”
Mercer makes an uncertain gesture with his hand, this way, that way. “Hm.”
“What ‘hm’? What does ‘hm’ mean?”
“Well, I can see why he’s worried. I’m amazed they let you go, after telling you that.”
Joe Spork smiles a feral smile, out of nowhere; a savage, biting grin. For a moment, he looks dangerous. “You mean the nice man lied to me?”
Mercer stares at him. “Maybe,” he says watchfully, “or maybe he told you something because he didn’t expect you to see the light of day again. It was touch and go, there, when we came to pick you.” He studies his friend’s face for signs of… something. But the unnerving smile has vanished as swiftly as it came. Joe continues.
“Sholt said—”
“Sholt? Oh, this ‘Keeper.’”
“A sort of a hermit. I liked him.”
“You would.”
“He said the world would change. He said it was…”
“He said it was what? Come on, Joe!”
“He called it ‘Angelmaker’. I nearly told them everything, when I realised what that could mean.”
Mercer Cradle stares at him, then picks up the phone and speaks very clearly and rapidly. “Bethany? Would you please be so kind as to add the following to your researches: ‘Ted Sholt’—I don’t know whether that’s Edward or Theodore or what, so do them all, and try ‘Keeper’ as well, could be a name or a title; Wistithiel; and the word ‘angelmaker’ and all related terms. And cross-reference with Daniel, Mathew, and J. Joseph Spork and everything we have on whatever Rodney Titwhistle does when he isn’t incubating a brood of vipers or eating his own young. Thank you.”
“Mercer, he was crazy.”
“Which makes it all the more imperative to recall things he said which might imply that this item you have resurrected for him is some kind of weapon of mass destruction.”