Every face that he could focus on, however, had stayed fixed toward the shed. Those to the north looked upward to the south, those to the south looked upward to the north.
It was like – what in God’s name? – yes, some emphatic Biblical movie. The Tribes of Israel turning as one to stare at the mountain as Moses descended to them with the Tablets of the Laws of God. Or the Sermon on the Mount, for Christ’s sake, the multitude gazing up at Jesus.
The imagery, its symbol – of need, savage belief, utter attachment and expectancy, and – if only momentary – total dependence – was repellent and frightening.
How long had they stayed like that?
As long, it might be, as he had slept.
Carver’s guts griped harshly. Not only in distaste and alarm. The everyday processes of elimination were asserting themselves, demanding to be attended to.
It would be wiser and more prudent to crap and piss inside the shed. But the woman – less through embarrassment and social reluctance, more some curious protective impulse – made him bolt and bar bowels and bladder against compliance.
Instead he went to the central door, unlocked it, stepped out and locked it shut again.
He had gone to the windows and met their faces and their eyes, and they had withdrawn. What now would they do? Rush up and tear him in pieces, perhaps. Or only sit and watch their too human saviour as he squatted by some tree? He was the theatre finally, they the audience.
Carver moved out and down the slope of the hill. Southward first. What did it matter? They could kill him, or only sit there, or someone else would come – some crazy leftover security man, or crazy woman who thought he had got her pregnant or had knocked her daughter about – No. Irrelevant.
Irrelevantly then, the crowd on the hillside began to climb to their feet, some clutching out at others, some calling out in thin lost voices – and they started to scatter away from him, Carver, the single advancing figure, to run now, some screaming, some falling and pulling others over, but most scrambling up again and plunging on, down the slope between the trees and their stumbling roots, through the knots of soaking grass. Running away. It was not Carver, after all, apparently, who was afraid. They were afraid. They fled him, or what they thought he was, or what he really was. He did not have to proceed very far. When, after no vast distance, he stopped, still they poured on, shouting and crying, away. He watched them drain down the hill, like more spilled water.
When even the nearer tumbling figures had grown very small, he walked back up the rise, past the shed, next repeating the manoeuvre on the northern side. It was not very different. Seeing him approach, panic and headlong flight. More fell though that side. A few very certainly did not get up. They were trampled, he believed, by others. But by now he felt nothing, they were not anything to him he could empathise with. No one, nothing, surely – was. Ever had... been.
He relieved himself in privacy among the bushes, cleaning up afterwards in the prescribed pastoral manner the rule books suggested. The collected rain was very helpfully cleansing. Lavishly it went on dripping and streaming down from foliage and branches, up out of the grass, enough to clean off the shit of a whole squadron of desperate men.
The sky was paling also. Perfect on its cue: sunrise. A lovely new late summer, early autumn, late fall, God-knew-what- season day. And in the intensifying flare of predawn, little things were glittering, catching the gleams: a slender silver broken bracelet, a broken shoe, part of a sleeve, a thick chunk of hair torn out by a low bough in the panic-flight; pale indeterminate hair, dawn colour, with one High Level Red Alert of blood along its strands.
Carver reached the shed. He stood with his face against the windowless western end of it. He felt nothing at all, but he wept. Or it was only the rain that had somehow filled him too and now, like the excrement, and the humanity, must leave him.
Twenty-Three
She had woken and was sitting on the floor. She looked clean and fresh, even her lustrous hair – not like the piece caught outside on the tree – brushed. But she dealt either in true physical transformation, or delusion. She could, demonstrably, cope with all things, put anything personally physical right. Probably she would not even need a toilet. It seemed not. She appeared at ease, and did not mention any necessary excursion from the shed.
He had locked her in – to protect her? Maybe. He did not analyse the fact. Coming back in and finding her, he left the door unlocked.
“They’ve gone,” she said, “yes?”
“They ran away. When I went out to them.”
“Yes. That could happen. Drawn near to you, or scared off. An animal with a campfire.”
Carver did not ask her why, or deny what she said. That was over. He crossed to the remainder of the food, took a roll with ham and began to eat it. At this she too reached out and selected the last of the salad. She ate it with her fingers. There was nothing left to drink.
He was not thirsty, the air was lush with moisture. She perhaps did not need to drink. Or eat, come to that. She did such stuff only as camouflage. Passing for human...
The flamboyantly ridiculous idea hopped about his brain, glad not to be either challenged or confirmed.
He stood, leaning back on the shed wall. He finished the dry bread and ham.
“Well,” he said. “What next, Silvia?”
She looked sidelong up at him. So you have noticed, her look seemed to say.
“Or,” Carver said, unemphatic and banal, “I suppose you could explain why you now look like her. Sound like her. Silvia Dusa, I mean. She’s dead. You’re aware of that, you told me you were. So is this some sort of memorial tribute? The way ordinary people might send a card, or leave a flower or a teddy bear? Like that?”
“Or,” she said, “while you slept Anjeela Merville slunk out of this shed, and Silvia Dusa took her place.”
“That’s a chance, certainly,” he said. “You looked this way when I first saw you earlier this morning. So you two swapped over. But she’s still dead. So I take it, Ms Dusa, you are a fucking corpse.” His tone was only conversationally interested, as if to be civil.
Equally everyday she replied, “But how do you know Silvia Dusa is dead, Car?”
“I saw her.” As he said it, surprising him – he had thought himself past such an inevitable hurdle – a coldness sank through his brain and spine.
“I believe, Car, you saw a picture of her. On a computer screen.”
“I saw the picture of her dead. She’d cut through the vein of her left arm.”
“No. She appeared to have done so.”
“It wasn’t some make-up job – some cosmetic mock-up for a film effect, CGI – it–” Carver broke off.
As the young woman rose and moved towards him, he retreated a step. But his back was already to the wall.
Silvia Dusa rolled up her left sleeve, and held out her left forearm.
“Don’t” he said. His voice vibrated with fury and threat.
But she shook her head, a delicate party-girl quivering. And on the creamy honey her skin now was, the vein in her arm seared up blue and unzipped itself with the swift ease of a party dress –
The blood ran. It was red. Red. It was red.
Then the blood stopped. The vein puckered, gaped, (emptied), a river-bed in drought, blistered and ruined.
“I can cry at will. Bleed at will. I can do this, Car. And while I do bleed, I can also apply an internal tourniquet to safeguard my life – invisibly. Plus, if you wish, I can turn my face and body, every inch, to the look-alike of a dead woman on a mortuary slab. I can reduce my breathing and heart-rate to match. And I can hold that persona, that pose, for anything up to thirteen minutes, while the authentication is accurately collected.”
Carver made a sound. He sprang forward. He took her by the throat, with a killer’s clutch. Glaring into her face, her eyes – But here, with and in her, someone was at home. Oh yes. Behind the face and eyes of dead Silvia Dusa, a very living creature watched him. Her eyes were
black, gold, bronze. His hands turned to putty and dropped from her. His legs gave way. It was she who caught him, eased him down. They kneeled together now on the floor. She put both her arms – each of them alike, whole and unmarked – around him.
“Car,” she said. “Again, I am so sorry. But you have to know. There’s only one way now, for any of us. Lies don’t help. Lies are over, at least between us.”
Twenty-Four
One, two of them, buzzing across the open sky, giant insects with firm grey bodies and long tails and a windmill each of spinning wings above their backs. The first chopper was bigger, heavier.
Carver stood out on the hillside, watching them circle, far above the trees.
Below, once only, he saw what he guessed must be people running, the way startled antelope or zebra might out on the African plains. No one else was near, accept for the woman. She had stayed farther up the hill, beside the sheds. In full daylight, a softly lambent late summer’s morning, nothing looked particularly unusual here. Just the helicopters. And a quarter mile off, through the vegetation, the black jagged stain over the up-and-down building.
She had said, the woman, they should remain on the rise, and wait. The new arrivals would deal with the rest of it. His work, her work, had been accomplished.
(He thought he had asked her questions, as they kneeled together in the shed and she held him in her arms. But, as before, very possibly he had not. She must only have told him other – things, elucidating what she had already said. There were bits of information seemingly pushed randomly into compartments of his mind... Mantik and Croft’s outfit were rivals, Croft’s people not the guards that guarded the guards, but an undermining force set to spy on, corrupt and ruin Mantik’s function of guardianship. Life-Long Enemies for sure. Yet Croft’s force had not been active for the assistance of enemy foreign governments, instead they operated on behalf of the more obscure interior interests – commercial, political, religious – inherent in the Free Democracy of the sprawled British Composite – these words, Carver seemed to recall, the woman who was now Silvia Dusa had stressed were not her own; she was quoting them from the manuals of Mantik.)
The chugging helicopter rasp grew louder. The bigger one was descending, shaking the air in chunks off its windmill blades. The smaller aircraft stayed high, sedately going on in its repetitive circle.
(She had said also, he thought, that she had had to appear to die. Her death would confirm Mantik’s enemies’ belief that she had sold Mantik out. Meanwhile the other personality, Anjeela, had already been partly established with Croft’s people. Sloughing her – by then ‘dead’ – Silvia-persona, Anjeela was next absorbed into the stronghold by the sea. She was in reality to be Carver’s back-up and liaison. (Or overseer.) And since she was a shape-shifter, of course, of course, her disguise was absolute, no giveaway anywhere.)
Yes, the bigger chopper was going to land – Carver altered his position – that solid flat roof, probably, there, and more towards the eastern blocks of the building.
(And she had digressed briefly on what she could do, her changing – surely she had spoken again of this? Comparing her ability to what happened anyway, to anything that was born and went on living. The child expanding from baby to adult, which adult might grow its hair or gain a tan, fatten or become thin – eventually aging, backbone diminishing, flesh sagging, hair – long or short – losing colour. And what she did, Silvia-Anjeela, that was just the same. Merely accomplished faster. And they had, she said, none of their kind, (his, hers) at least those of them who had been found out in their talents, no choice. There was nothing to gain in struggling against such masters as Mantik. But they, she, he, were more than valuable, they were priceless, and precious. They would be – providing they complied, obeyed – protected. But they must grasp and accept both their powers and, with equal clarity, the use to which all this would be put. That was their only hope. The three of them. She, the other unknown man, and Carver.)
The chopper had landed, a locust-wasp of grey metal. Its rotor blades were slowing, coming visible. Men were gliding out of its womb. Or insectoid lava, they might from this distance be simply larvae –
The mission had gone to plan. All it needed now was a bucket and mop to clean up the mess – They were pouring down the side of the building now, touching earth, racing forward, outward, and in. About a hundred, one hundred and twenty, men, Carver estimated .
How many of Croft’s people were still alive, or even physically able? No need for an army to cope with what was left.
It would be very easy, perhaps, finally to mop them up. To stamp on them.
(He could not care. But he had never got close to anyone. Not Sara. None of the women. No men. Nor to himself. How prudent. His instinctive and only protection.)
(She had held him in her arms there on the shed floor. Close as her lover. But they were not lovers. Nothing. All this was nothing.)
About twenty more minutes passed during which vague veils of shouting rose from below and, once only, the note of guns – improved by the amphitheatre acoustics of the terrain. Then the other helicopter began faultlessly to descend, sunlight smoothly passing over its carapace. Everything was so simple.
Not long after, one of the military units reached the top of the rise. They were polite. In plain uncamouflaged ‘camouflage’, twelve dog soldiers panned out around the sheds, coordinated as dancers, just as when they had swarmed up the hill. Their leader saluted Silvia Dusa. (Carver was not surprised. Surprise was over.)
“You’re well, ma’am?”
“We’re well,” she said. “However, there is a dead man in the central shed.”
“Very good, ma’am.” The tall young officer turned and barked, and five of the others sprang in against the shed. After staring through the windows, two men immediately kicked in the middle door. No, it had not taken very much to break it down. Splinters rained outward, scattering the light. Into the shed the two soldiers glided, catlike and fast, the light now glinting on their weapons.
A few invisibly abrasive yet mostly inexplicit sounds resulted.
One man came out.
“Dead as a turd,” he said, “sir.”
“That’s Peter Croft,” said Silvia Dusa.
“Yes, we reckoned so,” said the captain. He turned to Silvia, “Mr Stuart thought that would be Croft’s way. He’s not the only one.”
Both soldiers had come out of the shed. One was talking via his ear-piece, asking for a “bob” for a grade A corpse. The second man added, to nobody particularly, “At least Crofty got it right.”
“Yes,” said the captain to Silvia. “Some of the others of ‘em mucked it up good and fucking proper, ma’am.”
Presently he and three of his men escorted Silvia and Carver down the rise and through the woods, back towards the lower grounds and the building.
There was a large room, perhaps used for conferences, or widescreen shows of planned future events – a vast black screen was positioned at one end. The area had been tidied up, made pristine. Nor was there any smell of the burnt smoke permeating, it seemed, the rest of the building. This room stank of perfumed disinfectants. The sun beamed in at tall and currently blindless windows. Outside, the green lawns were empty of anyone except the occasional unit of dog troops patrolling, or standing in alert ease along the gravel drive. (A single urn had survived. Just the flowers were torn out, and even those had now been cleared away.)
Latham sat far up the room at the screen end, at a long table surrounded by chairs. He was his normal self, or seemed to be, in a light suit and silk tie, drinking coffee from a freshly-brewed pot. A couple of chairs away sat another man, ample, unyoung, casual, slightly flushed. He was contentedly drinking from a magnum bottle of red French wine which, as they entered, he decanted for himself into a plastic coffee mug. For a moment Carver could not identify him. Then he did. It was Alex Avondale, the sentimental old glutton with the estate, in Scotland. He and Carver had had that dinner at Rattles in London. The ni
ght Carver went home so late and Donna went so entirely mad. (Or seemed to; she had already been mad, of course, for years. Carver had done that to her. As to so many others.)
Avondale smiled warmly at Carver and Silvia Dusa as they walked up the pristine, disinfected room. Latham did not smile. But he had on his benign and porcine face. At some point it would, as ever, alter to his other face, the lizard-like mask. Ah, now it did, as his eyes focussed on Carver. And then the lizard recoiled again inside Latham. And in his most plummy tone, he called, “Welcome, Carver, Silvia. Come and sit down. You’ve had a heavy night.” And he half rose.
They sat. Silvia close to Latham, obliquely facing Avondale. Carver did not sit.
“What will you have, Silvia?” Latham inquired.
“Coffee, thank you.”
Latham selected another white plastic beaker, filled it with coffee, carefully pushed it over to her with a sachet of brown sugar. She accepted both. He knew her taste in coffee, then. Or thought he did, and she obliged.
“And Carver – coffee, yes?”
“No,” Carver said.
He leaned across, took a beaker from the remaining stack, and picking up Avondale’s wine bottle, poured the beaker full, about two glasses worth. Carver, still standing, drank all the wine straight down. (It had an odd flavour, from the plastic probably, the mellow flintiness sweetened wrongly.) When the beaker was void, he refilled it about half way, and went with it along the table to the farther end. There he sat. They had turned their heads to watch him, and now resumed facing forward at each other.
As if nothing uncharacteristic had happened, Latham said, “You’ve both done superlatively well. Jack Stuart said I should be sure to tell you how impressed and appreciative he is. And how satisfied Mantik is. You’ll be in line for some very splendid perks, when we all get back to base. Incidentally, we should be able to leave here inside a few more hours. I regret any delay. Can’t hurry things.”