“Hi,” said the newcomer easily. “I’m Glen Jensen. I run things here, as much as anyone does. We’re more of a cooperative really, these days, working together on whatever interests us. We had word from the afterworlds that you’d be coming. Been a long time since you last honoured us with a visit, Lady. I’m sure you’ll be impressed by the improvements we’ve made.”
“Don’t put money on it,” said Gayle. “This is all still just a step up from rooting around inside a sheep’s guts and making guesses according to which way the liver’s pointing.”
Toby was rather surprised at her tone. There was a genuine edge of anger in her voice that he hadn’t heard before. If Jensen was at all intimidated, he hid it well. He just nodded to Gayle, then beamed happily as he stepped forward to shake Toby firmly by the hand.
“Not often we get visitors down here. Usually it’s all need-to-know, and all that security nonsense. Still, any friend of the Lady … And we’re always glad of a chance to show off our latest toys.”
“Really?” said Toby, his voice a little uncertain; he’d just noticed that Jensen was carrying a gun in a shoulder-holster under his lab coat. “Gayle’s told me so little about you. What exactly do you people do, down here?”
“We are death-walkers,” Jensen said proudly. “Explorers of the unknown, scientists dedicated to uncovering the secrets of the last great frontier. Going where no living man has dared to go before, and doing our very best to come back to talk about it afterwards. It’s a dangerous business, venturing out into the afterworlds. There are all kinds of hazards. Some of us don’t come back. Quite a lot, actually. Membership drives are a real problem, and you wouldn’t believe the difficulties we have collecting dues. But the rewards can be … exhilarating.”
“Yes,” said Toby. “But what do you do, precisely?”
“We die,” said Jensen. “We let our spirits leave our bodies, allow them to explore, for a designated time, and then our resident necromancer draws the spirit back into the body, before it can move on, and he then revives the body. A whole new Near-Death Experience, scientifically evaluated. It’s such fun, and terribly exciting. We’re learning all kinds of things, all the time.”
Toby felt seriously out of his depth. He looked plaintively at Gayle, who shrugged.
“Don’t get too impressed. These people are just the philosophical equivalent of bungee jumpers and skydivers. A Really Dangerous Sports Club for complete headbangers. They say they’re doing it for Science and Knowledge, but mostly it’s just for the kicks.”
“Facing our fears is what makes us strong,” Jensen said easily. “And fear of death is the greatest fear of all. We have moved far beyond that, here.”
“You’ve moved far beyond sanity,” said Gayle.
“And yet still here you are, coming to us for what you can’t find anywhere else.” Jensen turned pointedly to Toby. “Come with me, and let me show you how we overcome that old devil, Death, every day. Just for the hell of it. We are taking Science into areas where even Einstein and Hawking never dared to go.”
He led Toby around the chamber, ignoring Gayle, naming and explaining the various pieces of high-tech equipment, while Toby smiled and nodded and did his best to look as though he understood more than one word in ten. He could work a word processor and find his way around the internet, but after that he was pretty much lost. One thing was increasingly clear, though: this was all major-league equipment. Nothing off-the-shelf here. It had the look of cutting-edge technology, where you couldn’t even explain what it was for without speaking fluent maths. Still, Toby felt he ought to say something, since Gayle was manifestly so uninterested and unimpressed by any of it.
“Who pays for all this stuff, Glen? You didn’t get any of this equipment through mail order.”
“Various corporations,” Jensen said smoothly. “You’d be surprised how many top-rank firms are ready to ship us anything we might want, under the counter, in return for access to whatever information the equipment might produce. None of them wants to be left behind, in case we come up with anything interesting, or useful. Corporations are technically immortal entities, these days, so they’re more prepared to take the long view. But, even with all this help, the nature of our business still remains … highly experimental.”
“Translation,” said Gayle, “they don’t know what they’re doing.”
“We learn by doing,” said Jensen. “Our limitations arise out of the limits of the human mind. Our explorers into the infinite can only retain and bring back the merest scraps and fragments of information. What we see when we die is apparently so big, so overwhelming, so conceptually alien, that it’s hard for the human mind to comprehend it, once it has returned to the material word. What we get mostly are impressions, guesses and dream-like memories. Through extensive correlation and cross-checking, we have been able to obtain a few nuggets of hard information … Unfortunately, they often tend to contradict one another.
“It’s possible that the nature of the afterworlds is, at least at first, determined by the thoughts and beliefs of the observer; the human mind translating unfamiliar information into acceptable metaphors. It’s all very quantum, really. As below, so above. And of course so much of what we get is meaningless without a context or useful frame of reference. But we persevere! Every scrap of information our volunteers drag back with them is fed into our computers, there to be sorted like with like, in order to build up a clearer, larger picture.
“The death-walkers have been compiling information for centuries, but recent advances in computer technology have made our lives a lot easier. We’re currently comparing and contrasting our compiled data with all existing religious texts, searching for useful correlations and insights. The living human mind may be too small and limited to encompass the afterlife experience, but computer models are theoretically infinite in application. We fully expect to have detailed maps of all the afterworlds, within our lifetime.”
“How long have you people been down here, doing this?” said Toby.
“We have written records going all the way back to the Roman Conquest. Of course, methods then were much cruder. We really peaked during the reign of Elizabeth I, after we’d finally broken away from the Catholic Church and its inflexible doctrines. Of course, we did tend to lose a lot more people in those days. They relied mostly on the terminally ill as subjects, in return for a promise to look after their families. Nowadays, we use volunteers.”
“And what exactly have you learned for sure, after all these centuries,” asked Gayle, “even with your precious computers? What can you tell us for a fact, about where people go when they die?”
“Not a lot that makes sense,” Jensen admitted reluctantly. “Some of our people have reported quite lengthy encounters with the recently deceased and departed, but either the newly dead lie a lot, or they’ve got a really weird sense of humour.”
“The more I hear, the less I like this,” Toby said frankly. “You’re trying to know things we’re not meant to know. Aren’t you afraid someone’s going to turn up and shut you down?”
“No one’s turned up yet,” said Jensen. “Actually, we’d rather like it if Someone did. There are all sorts of questions we’d just love to put to Him. Or Her. Or Them. We try to be open-minded around here. Though of course we have to be careful. Keep your mind too open, and you never know what might walk in.”
“Show me a door,” said Toby. “Right now.”
“We were all terribly excited to hear of Angel’s arrival in town,” said Jensen. “An actual one-time occupant of Heaven or Hell! The things she could tell us … Unfortunately, she didn’t take too kindly to the emissary we sent, asking for her cooperation.”
“What happened?” said Gayle.
“She sent back his lungs,” said Jensen unhappily. “Gift-wrapped. We think she ate the rest. We did try to make contact with the poor man’s soul, but we couldn’t find a trace of it anywhere. Presumably he was too traumatised to hang around, or just possibly she ate
that, too. There’s a lot we don’t understand about the nature of the soul. Still, that’s why we’re here! Learning something new every day.”
“I’m here for information,” said Gayle. “Much as it pains me to admit it. I need to talk to the recently deceased. Do you think we could make a start, please?”
“Of course, dear Lady,” said Jensen magnanimously. “I quite understand your embarrassment, having to come to us for what you can’t do yourself, for all your power. But try not to be too uncomfortable. We’re happy to help anyone who comes to us in need, even those who have insulted and belittled our efforts in times past. Come with me, and we’ll get things moving. I’m sure we can help you out with whatever little problem is currently troubling you.”
He headed for an open doorway on the other side of the room without looking back, and Gayle and Toby trailed after him. Gayle was scowling dangerously. Toby leaned close to her.
“If he lays it on any thicker, we’ll end up drowning in it. Can we trust these people?”
“They really can do a lot of what he says they can,” Gayle said quietly. “Whether we get anything useful out of it is open to question. I need you to be brave, Toby.”
Toby was about to ask why, when they passed through the doorway and into the adjoining chamber and he was immediately struck dumb. This new cavern was even bigger, some fifty or sixty feet wide, much of the floor taken up with basic cots, placed side by side in long rows. And on those cots lay still bodies, corpses; men and women with staring eyes and their death wounds still bloody on them. Toby’s gorge rose in his throat as he moved slowly forward, looking quickly from one corpse to another. We die, Jensen had said, but that hadn’t prepared Toby for the awful reality. These people had died in a variety of ways, none of them easy or natural. There were bullet holes and stab wounds, blood still pooling and drying around some of the cots. Some had cut wrists or throats. Several had cords pulled tight around their necks. One had a plastic bag over his head. Toby’s head swam sickly and he felt suddenly faint. Gayle was at his side in a moment, holding him up with firm hands.
“Be brave, Toby. I need you to be strong for me.”
Toby made himself breathe deeply, and his head slowly cleared. He glared furiously at Jensen. “This is sick! What the hell is going on here?”
“I told you,” Jensen said calmly. “People die here and go forth to explore the worlds to come. Only we can’t just stand around waiting for people to die, so we kill them. No faked, technical near-death here; our volunteers go much further than that. They have to, to get the results we need. It can get a bit messy sometimes, I admit, but our resident necromancer is quite capable of repairing all tissue damage. And you have to understand, Toby; nothing happens here that our volunteers don’t agree to in advance. You see, when you die, over and over, when you get used to dying, you get bored with doing it the same old way. The thrill goes out of it. So our people are constantly experimenting with new and more unusual, more violent ways of dying. Some of them have become quite inventive.”
“I told you,” said Gale. “Bungee jumpers, all looking for the next big kick.”
“You’re crazy,” said Toby, looking with loathing at Jensen. “You’re all bloody crazy.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” said a thick, slurred voice from the far side of the chamber. “Stupid bloody sensation-seekers. I’d have the lot of them committed, put on industrial-strength Prozac and locked up in rubber rooms; but no one ever listens to me.”
They all got something of a shock as a figure that had been lying on a cot at the back sat up slowly, took a long drink from the bottle in its hand and then lurched to its feet. Toby distinctly heard Jensen sigh heavily as the new figure shuffled across the chamber to join them. As he drew nearer, he turned out to be fat, middle-aged and shifty-looking, with a great bushy beard and a shiny bald head. He wore an old sweater with fresh food stains on it, over battered khaki shorts that had seen better days. There was a cigar sticking out of one corner of the beard that waggled when he talked or when he took a swig from the dark bottle of rum that never left his hand. He staggered to a halt far too close to the others, sneered at Jensen, leered at Gayle and sniffed suspiciously at Toby.
“I hate visitors. Who the hell are you, boy?”
“I’m Toby Dexter. Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Trash. Child prodigy, eccentric dancer and necromancer-in-waiting to the Court of St James, the bastards. I do all the real work around here. I count them all out, and I count them all back. I hold their hands, mop their fevered brows and help them into nice new jackets that tie up at the back. It’s my magic that makes this appalling proposition possible. Not that you’d know it from the way I get treated around here. It’s a disgrace. I should have been a girl, like Mother wanted.”
Toby looked at Jensen. “You have a sorcerer named Trash?”
“Hey!” Trash said indignantly. “I am a necromancer! If you’re going to insult me, at least have the common decency to be accurate. And I like the name. Chose it myself. It’s got style, charisma, it’s … me. And for some reason, people never seem to have any trouble remembering it.” He took a good swig from his bottle, blew nasty-smelling cigar smoke into Jensen’s face and farted loudly. Trash giggled. “Quick, get a match! We’ll catch the next one!”
“You’re drunk!” said Toby.
“Too bloody right I am,” snarled Trash, lurching even closer so that he could glare at Toby more efficiently. “You don’t think I could deal with all this shit sober, do you? Place is full of dead people! And crazy dead people, at that. Depressing situation for a man of my refined sensibilities. And it stinks like an abattoir.”
Toby had been trying very hard not to notice the smell. “Do I take it you’ve never done this yourself?”
“Do I look crazy? Anyone tries to kill me, I’ll send him home crying with his balls in his hands. I am strictly managerial. I’m only here because someone has to look out for these poor bloody psychos.”
“And because we pay you an entirely extortionate amount as a weekly retainer,” said Jensen calmly.
“That does help,” Trash admitted. “Never be a necromancer, Toby Dexter. The hours stink, the conditions are appalling and you have to deal with complete loony tunes. I was much happier as an undertaker. Till I got found out.” He took another drink and looked expectantly at Gayle. “What are you doing down here, Lady? Come to shut them down at last?”
Gayle had been looking sadly at the dead men and women on their cots. Some of them were quite young. But when she answered Trash, her voice was calm and businesslike. “Everyone has the right to go to Hell in their own way. I don’t interfere. No matter how much I may … disagree.” She looked at Jensen. “Do your lives mean so little to you, that you’d risk them so lightly? Are your lives so empty that only death can fascinate you? This is the antithesis of everything I believe in and stand for.”
“Life is not enough,” said Jensen, almost condescendingly. “We don’t accept any limitations to our search for knowledge. Life is only the beginning; death is for ever. We want to know where we’re going, if only so we can prepare properly to get the most out of it. Science has always been about pushing back the boundaries. Here, we are taking the first faltering steps into a much larger world. Our volunteers may be doing it mostly for the thrills, but the driving force in the death-walkers has always been a love of knowledge, first and foremost.”
“I don’t like being here,” said Gayle, cutting Jensen off abruptly. “And I don’t like having to ask for favours, but it seems I have no choice.”
“Ask us anything, dear Lady,” Jensen said amiably. “Only too happy to help; to prove our worth.”
“What the hell are we doing here, Gayle?” said Toby. “This place is seriously freaking me out.”
“We’re here to find out what you want to know,” Gayle said sharply. “Namely, what precisely it is that makes you so important. Now be quiet and let me handle things. And don’t question me. I know what
I’m doing.” She took a deep breath and turned back to Jensen, still smiling his condescending smile. He could tell Gayle was uncomfortable and was being especially friendly and helpful just to rub it in. She wasn’t fooled. “I need to talk to the recently dead, Jensen. To be specific, I have questions for those members of the underground railway who were murdered at the station last night, Nicholas Hob’s victims. I need information from them.”
Jensen shrugged. “Shouldn’t be too difficult. Their spirits won’t have gone far yet.”
He looked at Trash, who belched loudly. “No problem. I’ve got a girl ready to go out. She’s talked to the dead before. Doesn’t freak her. Though I’d be hard-pressed to think of anything that would. She’s a hard case, even for this place. You can piggyback her, she won’t mind. She’s died lots of times. Can’t keep her away. Knows her way round the afterworlds, and never has any trouble finding her way home. We’ll send you off together, and she’ll hold the spirits in place so you can ask your questions.”
“You know I can’t go,” Gayle said flatly. “My nature makes it impossible. It has to be Toby.”
“What?” Toby span round to glare at Gayle, who looked steadily back at him. Toby was so angry he could hardly get the words out. “Me go? Are you out of your mind? Let one of these crazy bastards kill me, in the hope they’ll be able to bring me back? There is no way in hell I am doing this! Shit! You had this in mind all along, didn’t you?”
“I told you,” said Gayle. “I need you to be brave, Toby.”
“It’s not that dangerous,” said Jensen. “Not these days. All right, we lose a few, now and then; well, more than a few, actually. I think they just don’t want to come back, which is understandable really.”