“What’s he going to do?” said Billy. “Not want the world’s only working phaser? They say you just have to port one thing. So who wrote this note? Simon didn’t want a giant squid. Whoever dangled this gun in front of him’s our mystery player. They’re the ones who’ve got your god.”
PART THREE. LONDONMANCY
Chapter Forty
BILLY STARED AT SIMON’S ANGRY DEAD SELVES. DID SIMON FEEL the guilt they laid on him, the culpability for countless unintentional suicides? What an original sin.
At last Wati returned into a statuette of an Argelian dancer. “Open the door,” he said. Outside, a harassed-looking woman waited carrying a coiling ram’s horn.
“Dane,” she said, entered. “God almighty, what’s been going on here?”
“Mo’s the best I know,” Wati said. “And no one knows her…”
“Are you an exorcist?” Billy said. The woman rolled her eyes.
“She’s a rabbi, you moron,” said Wati. “Simon couldn’t give a shit one way or the other.”
“I’ve seen legion possession before,” Mo said. “But never… God almighty they’re all him.” She walked through the ghost corona and murmured to Simon gently. “I can try something,” she said. “But I’ve got to get him back to the temple.” She shook the shofar. “This won’t cut it.”
Dark came early and stayed full of lights and the shouts of children. Wati was on watch, circling through figures a mile around. Dane, Billy and Mo watched the moaned malice of Simon’s haunters.
“We have to go,” Wati said suddenly from a foot-high McCoy.
“Too early,” Dane said. “It’s not even midnight…”
“Now,” Wati said. “They’re coming.”
“Who do you…?”
“Christ, Dane! Move! Goss and fucking Subby!”
And everyone moved.
“TATTOO’S THOUGHT LIKE US,” WATI SAID AS THEY GRABBED THEIR stuff and hauled poor Simon in his ghost-cloud. “He’s tracked Simon down. His knuckleheads are coming. And Goss and Subby are with them.
“Some are in the main stairs. The rest are close. Goss and Subby are close.”
“Any other way out?” Dane said. Wati was gone, back.
“If there is there’s no statues by it.”
“Must be one at the back,” Billy said. “A fire escape.”
“Take a figure,” Wati said. “I’m going to get Goss and Subby off you.”
“Wait,” Dane said, but Wati was gone. Billy grabbed the phaser, the auction catalogue, a plastic Kirk. There was no one in the corridor. Dane hustled them round corners. Mo and Billy dragged Simon in a blanket that inadequately hid his tormentors. They heard the lift arriving. Dane raised his speargun and motioned Billy and Mo away.
“Down,” he said, pointing at the fire escape. “Mo, don’t let them see you. Billy, don’t let them see her.” He ran toward the lift.
“HUFF HUFF HUFF, EH SUBBY?”
Goss was jogging. Not very intensely, and with an exaggerated comic wobble of the head. Behind him came Subby with the same motion, unselfconsciously.
“The rest of the bears are just over the stream,” Goss said. “Once we cross the magic bridge we can help ourselves to all the honey. Huff huff huff.” There were two or three more turns between him and the base of the tower. Goss looked the length of the dark street. At a junction with a cul-de-sac were a band of battered dustbins. A moment of hard wind sent a full bin-bag falling, sent the bins wobbling, jostling among themselves, as if they were trying to shift away from Goss’s attention.
“Remember when Darling Bear and Sugar Bear came home with the Princess of Flower Picnics?” Goss said. He clenched and unclenched his fingers. He smiled, pulling back his lips from his teeth carefully and completely and biting the air. Subby stared at him.
“Billy, shift.”
At those faint words Goss stopped.
“Shut it, Dane.”
Whispered London voices. They were just off the street, in one of the darknesses that abutted it.
“He’s nearby,” said a voice. And from farther away came an answer, Shhh.
“Subby Subby Subby,” whispered Goss. “Keep those little bells on your slippers as quiet as you can. Sparklehorse and Starpink have managed to creep out of Apple Palace past all the monkeyfish, but if we’re silent as tiny goblins we can surprise them and then all frolic together in the Meadow of Happy Kites.”
He put his finger to his lips and creep-creeped out of the main road into the alley where the voices were. Subby followed him in the same tippy-toe, into the shadow where someone was muttering.
THE LIFT DOORS OPENED, AND BILLY, LOOKING BACK FROM THE FIRE escape, saw three dark-dressed figures in motorcycle helmets. Dane had his weapon up. There was a percussion.
“Go,” said Wati-Kirk from Billy’s pocket, and “Go,” said Dane without looking back. Billy and Mo dragged Simon down the stairs.
“What about Dane?” Billy kept saying. But Wati was gone again.
It was many floors down. Adrenalin was all that stopped Mo and Billy collapsing under Simon’s weight. They heard scuffles, muffled by walls, above them. Billy felt a horrid crawl of ghosts on his skin as Simon’s tormentors swept through him. When at last they reached the ground floor Billy was gasping, almost retching.
“Don’t fucking stand there,” said the little Kirk in his pocket. “Move.” A random man at his front door stared at the ghosts of Simon in bewilderment so great he was not even scared. Billy and Mo barrelled toward the elevator shaft and the front door beyond it, but it opened and there were two of Tattoo’s men. Grey cam gear, dark-visored helmets, reaching for weapons.
Mo cried out and threw up her hands. Billy stood in front of her and fired the phaser.
He didn’t panic. He had time to reflect for an instant on how calm he was, that he was raising the weapon and pressing the firing stud.
There was no recoil. There was that kitsch sound, that line of light, punching into the chest of the man at the front and flaring in a bruise of light across him as he flew back. The second man was running at Billy in expert zigzag, and Billy shot several times and missed, scorching the walls.
Mo was screaming. Billy threw out his hand. The man stopped hard as if he had run into something. He bounced against nothing visible. The man butted the nothing with his helmet, with an audible percussion.
Billy did not hear the lift arrive or its doors open. He only saw Dane step out behind the Tattoo’s man and swing his empty speargun hard at that featureless motorcycle helmet, in a curve like a batsman’s. The man went down, his pistol skittering away. His helmet flew off.
His head was a head-sized fist. It clenched and unclenched.
It opened. Its huge palm was face-forward. As the man rose it clenched again. Dane punched him hard on the back of his hand-head. The attacker fell again.
“Come on,” Dane said.
They ran a twisting route to Mo’s car, and they helped her lay the shivering ghost-delirious Simon inside. Tribble whickered. “I can’t promise.”
“See what you can do,” Dane said. “We’ll find you. Did they see you?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “And they don’t know me. Even if…” She looked uncertain. There had been no eyes.
“Go, then. Go.” Dane patted the roof of her car as if releasing it. When she had gone he felt the handles of car doors near them until he found by finger-intuition one he liked, and had it open.
“What are they?” Billy said. “Those men?”
“The knuckleheads?” Dane started the car. There were screams behind them. “Takes a certain sort.” He was exhilarated. “There are advantages. You’ve got to like fighting. You should see them naked. Well, you shouldn’t.”
“How do they see?” They sped into night. Dane glanced at Billy. Grinned and jiggled in his seat and shook his head.
“God, Billy,” he said. “The way your mind works.”