The shed, just as before, was glowing. The central shed. This was, it went without saying, something else they had done. An organised and chemically-triggered glow. Mantik must have organised something similar. Treating objects he might steal. A slow release, empowered only in one closed area. The shed. No other answer made sense. Why, God knew. He was the errand boy, the pawn. Move him here, there. Decoy, bait, shadow, fall guy. Experiment?
Tonight, to start with, he did not properly scrutinise the illumination. His imagination had once more stepped in to try to block his intellect. It’s just the same. Carver. A vivid turquoise. Should be used to it by now, Except, tonight, it was in reality – if any of this were real – not just the same. Tonight, the sheen that bloomed like radiation from the shed – was green. Lime-green. Emerald infused by citrine, much sharper than the sting of vodka in juice. A colour that any minute might become solely the yellow of a mid-Urgency, doubtless escalating, Alert.
He sat in the dark, the shed’s light burning above him, his back to the trunk of a tree.
The thunder and lightning had rainlessly aborted. There was, in the inert warmth of the air, the taint of burnt wood from the party fires. There had also been some fireworks and Chinese Lanterns for a short while, lifting southward, towards the sea, maybe on the terrace from which the cyclist had taken flight.
Senseless. Even macabre, in an amateurish fashion.
Carver slept a little. And Anjeela had filled her mouth with him, sucking and caressing. But the sharp dream-pleasure woke him, and immediately died, gurning numbly down the darkness, leaving a sour ache; and even that died, losing its way.
The letters and numbers resumed their irritating constellations.
He registered that code, one of the less elusive, which worked the alphabet in two blocks of 1 to 9, and then one last block of 1 to 8 – the letter A counting as 1, B as 2, etc, with I as 9. Then resuming with J as 1 to R (9) and S to Z (1 – 8).
It was the code Mantik had used to warn of the disappearance of a member of the staff. Carver’s iPhone had given it as a games clue, Clue up being the signal, the 2nd Clue the code. That morning the second clue had read Always Justified Marketable Value. You took the first letter of each word, in this instance AJMV – and that gave you, conversely, on the 1 to 9, 1 to 9, 1 to 8 principle, the numbers/letters A – 1, J – 1 and M – 4, V – 4.
The code’s numbers and letters presented showed all the other alphabetical instances – while leaving out all remaining letters that themselves would be numbered 1 or 4. They were then S and D. The subject therefore had such initials. In other words, Silvia Dusa.
A very straightforward code, transparent enough, and one of hundreds Carver had had, over the years, to learn. Strange therefore, really, he had not, until now, picked up on its recent reissue – here, both on his mind-screen, and spoken aloud to him by the blue-eyed black woman who had had sex with him in the bed, and later, out in the woods, grown her fingernail, and finger, and one coil of hair, like an effect in a movie.
But ignore the effect – doubtless stage-managed and sensibly unbelievable. The main question now was another one. Anjeela Merville had stressed, many times and by differing means, the two first and second syllable letters of her name. And they made up the very same code clue as the others from Mantik. A and J and M and V left SD. So what – what – was this woman’s connection with Dusa, who had betrayed Mantik, and shopped Carver, and died as her reward?
Eighteen
Yellow.
Straight through and done with turquoise and lime. Yellow now: 4th Level Alert.
Carver had dropped asleep, drugged this time by silence and the surrounding wrap of the dark. He thought he had dreamed of Anjeela again, standing under a magenta maple tree that had burned through the greenness of the woods. “Drop your pants,” Anjeela said. As he had said it. But that was all.
The morning light was coming back now too. And above, the yellow glow in the shed was dissolving. Did he only imagine it had become fully yellow? Or did he imagine it was not yellow, or lime, that it was the same greenish blue as it had been before or did he–?
“Energies.” Croft’s voice, distinct as if physically heard. “Nostocaris. That fish. Shining Knife. Casts no giveaway shadow. Someone without a soul.”
Carver got up. His body felt stiff and unwieldy for a moment. But he was physically well enough trained this went off at once.
He was hungry and dry and his bladder angry. He pissed against the tree, thinking of late revellers going home from the pub through the village woods around and behind his house there, that house he had owned and lived in with Donna, and how the drunks peed on the trees, as if this counted for anything.
He considered Johnston also for the turn of one thought. What Johnston had been doing, and why, and what had happened (forget fake reassurances) to Johnston when Croft’s army, the nameless Us, arrived to grab Carver. And what had happened to Donna, Maggie. And who had really assisted, or themselves only facilitated Silvia Dusa’s blood-letting death.
By then he was walking directly south towards the up-and-down building. The unwieldy shape was soon clearly visible, some of its night lights still on, and the day returning in pale waves. There seemed a lot of smoke going up in a solid column on the far side. The smell of old burning was stronger now. A hundred large wooden things – logs, chairs, tables – thoroughly consumed, a thousand bacon sandwiches crisped to ashes in their flaming hearts.
Drawing nearer to the building, Carver found he went by and through small herds of people sleeping, or beginning fretfully to wake, on the ground. There was a scatter of campers’ tents, some of which, inadequately erected, had collapsed. The remnants of the fires lay on seared black mats of scorched turf. One or two had kept partly alight. He saw at least five that had at some point got out of hand and spread – marks of fire-extinguisher wet, damage to tree trunks and foliage, a blackened creeper.
To the south side, even so, at least from here, the smoke pillar actually seemed less; its stench hung low. All this was like the aftermath of a poorly run music festival. Along the edges of the gravel drive a couple of the rose urns had been broken. Flowers spilled, showing their thorns.
Now and then, as he passed, he had encountered a burst of random abuse, the sort you might get from an unknown drunk dissatisfied in the street. Up close to the building, Security was roaming about. The men looked as they had after Charlie Hemel’s death. They were untidy, as if dressed and assembled in unexpected haste, asked to act, and employ methods they were entirely unused to and had not ever practiced.
One man came shouldering over to Carver. The man’s hair had been slicked back impatiently, and flared up in misaligned quills.
“Where have you been?” he rapped.
“For a walk.”
“Where are you going?”
“Inside,” said Carver.
“Get in and stay in,” said the security man.
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Don’t fucking argue. Get in, go to your room, and stay put.”
“Sure,” said Carver.
He went past the man who, he was aware, turned to stare after him, making certain the returnee did as ordered.
Other people were milling around a side entrance when Carver reached it. They were quarrelling fiercely, dedicatedly. One of the men was in tears of frustration. “You think too much, you don’t listen–” Carver went by them. They seemed not to see him. But as he moved into the as yet still night-lit hall space beyond the door, one of the women ran after him. “Wait! Wait!” she cried. She flung her arms around him. He tried gently to ease her off but she would not let go. “Why have I had to wait so long for you?” she asked. There was less recrimination in her voice than sadness. He did not know her, could not recall even noticing her before. She was fairly ordinary, pretty, slender, average age and type. “Don’t leave me,” she said, piteously.
Drugs again, this time used on her, or by her on herself? Alcohol? She did not see
m particularly drunk or high. Only – upset.
“What’s the matter?” He could hear the caution in his tone .
So did she. “How can you be so cruel to me? After all this while – You and me. Everyone recognises that – why can’t you?”
She was insane. Something, or someone, had driven her mad. Just as the bicycle had driven Charlie Hemel to the cliff’s edge and over.
“OK,” Carver said. He patted her shoulder. “We need to talk, then.”
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “Yes.”
“I just have to see Croft,” said Carver – would she remember who Croft was, his apparent significance? It looked as if she did, thank Christ. “I’ll be about half an hour. Then I’ll meet you here.”
“Can’t I come with–”
“You know what he’s like.”
She appeared puzzled then, already losing the thread because it made sense and so, to her now, was meaningless.
“See you soon,” said Carver. He moved from her grip and she let her arms fall.
As he got into the first lift he could find, he did not glance back. She was crying now, like the guy outside. Like Van Sedden. (Donna, Sara.) Too many tears.
The lift went up three floors only. Carver got out on the third, tramped down an empty corridor that had coloured photographs on the walls of ships and castles, and no windows. Turning into another corridor, lights on and lined by closed doors, Carver picked up a low buzzing sound, some machine, and farther on several voices shouting, words lost. No other evidence of life. But there was a second lift. It would descend, judging by its placement, to a different area of the building than the hall-way where the mad girl waited. Carver got in the lift.
When the doors opened on the next floor down, another of the security men stood there, and beckoned Carver brusquely out.
“Daddy wants you,” he said jeeringly.
Croft? Presumably. Or someone else who claimed to be in charge.
This was a madhouse, Carver thought. Whatever organisation had nabbed him that night in the village, was more than merely a collection of watchers or rivals or, possibly, enemy agents at war with Mantik. Whatever these unnamed operatives were, or had in mind, entailed something (something) indecipherable.
Even should all this latest oddness prove to be some massive and choreographed set-piece of mind-fuck, meant solely to break and remodel Carver, they themselves would have to be genuinely crazy to waste so much theatre on him. There was definitely no purpose to it. Carver was not a “Star”. He knew nothing and had access to nothing of any true value. So – did they then mistake him for some other one who did or had? Scar, he thought. Three Scars. And I am what? Say maybe the Second Scar. But they think I am the First – or the Third – The one that really counts.
Nineteen
The beaming girl in the front office of Croft’s section was not beaming. She wore a cream kimono-ish dressing-gown and her bare feet were up on a desk while she sat drinking tea.
“What?” she asked, as the buttons by the metal door let Carver and the man in. “We’re not open yet, you know.”
“You’re open. Mr C wants this one.”
“No he doesn’t.”
The security man pointed out a chair for Carver to sit in. “Park yourself there and wait.”
Carver again obeyed. The guard shot a look at the girl. “Stupid bitch,” he said, in a tepidly analytical manner.
The girl ignored him. He went out.
The door shut.
The girl began to colour her toenails vivid phosphorescent crimson. From the polish the long room filled with an acid and chemical odour. It seemed to Carver nail varnish, as with hair lacquers, conditioners and similar things, had carried a less raucous smell in his childhood. This stuff was like paint-stripper.
“Do you fancy some sex?” the girl asked, squinting up, if remaining beamless.
Carver did not reply.
“Well?” she demanded.
“No thanks.”
“No. It’s too early isn’t it? Maybe later,” she added vaguely. “I’ll see how I feel then.”
From outside, and six, seven storeys down, there came a sudden rush of noise, a seawave smashing on the blinded windows.
Carver got to his feet, walked to the nearest window and slammed the blind upwards.
Beyond the pane, below, the generalised vista of grass slopes, trees, and – currently – the debris of the previous night’s celebrations. A large burned patch showed baldly off to the left. Between that spot and the building, a strip of the gravel margin and another urn in pieces, petals lying like torn out, freshly coloured toenails.
Small figures, dwarfed by distance, were fighting. Empty wine bottles were being used to bash heads in. Even as Carver scrutinised the scene, a man fell face down on the gravel. Another two men, laughingly, kicked him. A woman, unseen, was screaming. (“Cunt! Cunt!”)
“Is Croft up here?” Carver asked.
“Oh yes,” said the girl. “Why don’t you just go in? You can find your own bloody way. I’m sick of traipsing about after you all.”
A broken glass sound splashed from below. An object flew up also, very fast, flung towards the window, running on air but falling short; a woman’s high-heeled shoe.
Carver, having left the window, put his hand on the panel by Croft’s door.
The door undid itself and there was the inner room, the orderly chairs, and the desk, the large window behind it with its blind firmly down. Croft was standing by the window. In silhouette, but already moving away, coming out towards Carver.
“Thank God you’re here,” said Croft. “I thought they might have trouble locating you.”
His voice was calm, but heavy. His face, now daylight described it, the same. It was a fact, he did not look particularly English, but that meant nothing. Legally born and bred in Britain he could be citizen and patriot, until proven otherwise.
His hair was real. It had become dishevelled enough that had it been a piece, gaps would be discernible and were not.
“Did you have much trouble?” Croft asked.
“In what way?”
“Coming through the building, or – were you outside?”
“Yes.”
“Something has happened,” said Croft. “I don’t know what and getting any info through has become a nightmare. Communications – out or in – are no longer feasible. Most of the IT has gone down. The computers will only – what was it they said? – yes. They’ll only let you play games on them. Fantasy games. Kill the Giant, Rob the Wizard, virtually buy a virtual farm. That kind of enterprise. Nobody’s phone works. Mine certainly don’t. None of them.”
Carver waited, but Croft now paced across the room to the left, back to the centre, back to the left. He stood there, then, by a steel-fronted cabinet. He stared into the steel, clicking his teeth.
“Do you know,” Carver said, “what–”
“What’s caused it? No. Nobody does. Or, the ones that are still compost mentis don’t–” (Did he say that? Compost not compos?) “And the rest of them,” said Croft. “Well. You’ve seen. Something introduced,” Croft elaborated, “through the water system perhaps, although that is, of course, supposed to be inviolable. All Security is supposed to be. Or it’s something in the air, a gas, maybe... Nobody spotted so much as a hot-air balloon... But it has caused anyway trouble. You’ve seen. We’re in trouble. And getting worse. We have,” said Croft, “you and I, to get out of here, Car. Quick as we can.”
“All right.”
“Just us,” said Croft. “The rest – anyone who’s still in working order – will have to fend for selves. You and I. We’re important.”
Fantasy computer games, Carver thought. Escape from the Danger Zone. And how, precisely? He had noted there were no cars, no sort of real transport, anywhere visible – perhaps some big underground parking facility existed. He had not, of course, been shown.
“But it won’t be done without trouble,” said Croft.
Trouble. H
e had said the word three, four times now. “Just play it cool, Carver. We play it cool.”
“Sure.”
“Cool. You and I.”
The door opened and the unbeaming girl stamped in with a tray. There was a coffee-pot and a jug of water. The pot rattled emptily, and the slopping water did not have its courteous ice-and-slice. She set the tray on the desk.
“Thank you,” said Croft stonily, not as he had on that other occasion.
The girl now said nothing. She went out again, failing to shut the door.
Croft shut it. “We’ll take the lift down to the side terrace,” said Croft. “That part of the grounds has as a rule less traffic – with luck, not enough of them will be out there to cause immediate concerns. This is going to be tight shit, Carver. Can you handle that?”
Carver nodded once. He thought of Anjeela a moment, wondering where she was. But his brain was by now mainly exploring the abrupt new idea: that Croft could enable them – Carver – to leave the confines of the ‘Place’. For there was a boundary, a way out – there had to be – and Croft would know where it was and how to use it. Chaos had come. And as any of the gods in any proper fantasy game (even in the Bible) knew, from chaos might be created – anything.
Twenty
Croft and Carver travelled down in the lift that was corridor-attached to Croft’s room. Six – seven? – levels below, they emerged onto the terrace with steps and handrail. They descended the steps to the grass. No one was there. The whole area, including the lush wilderness ahead, seemed held in a unique pocket of unmotion and blurred quiet – though raucous shouts and other disturbances were audible, they sounded removed and irrelevant; noises off. On the slopes, and among the trees, no burning was to be seen, and nothing stirred in the windless, smoke-dried airlessness. Already the day was too warm. The sky had a glaring pallor. Nothing moved there, either. The gulls were gone.