Ghost of a Smile
“It’s in my head!” Happy said suddenly. “The jungle’s in my head!”
JC shook his head slowly, sickly. He could feel the pressure of the wild, of the Beast, closing in around him. The smell of it in his nose and mouth, the damp sweat of it on his skin, and the deep, dark, atavistic temptation of it, in his head and in his heart. To let go of being human, to let the Beast loose . . . to be free of all restraint and conscience . . . JC shook his head hard, refusing to give in. His hands clenched into fists, and his teeth clenched so hard his jaw hurt. JC did not give in, whether the pressure came from outside or within. He didn’t do that.
He looked back to see how the others were doing. Happy and Melody were both crouching, almost on all fours. Happy’s face was wet with sweat. Melody saw JC looking at her and growled at him, from deep in her throat. Happy beat his knuckles against the floor.
“It’s changing us, JC! Changing us inside and out . . . The jungle . . . is its own world, with its own rules. You can’t be in the jungle and not be a part of it. Whatever you’re going to do, JC, do it now. Or Gog and Magog won’t be the only beasts here.”
Kim looked desperately at JC. She hadn’t changed because she was dead, and the call of life had no hold over her. JC gave her his best reassuring smile. From the look on her face, it wasn’t that successful. JC looked back at Gog and Magog.
“So,” he said. “You have a weapon. The jungle. Unfortunately for you, I have a better weapon. Ever seen anything like—this, before?”
He took a small withered object out of an inner pocket and held it up so they could all see it. A monkey’s paw, made into a Hand of Glory. The thin fingers had been soaked in wax from a dead man, and the fingertips made into wicks. Words had been spoken over the paw, and dread Power invested in it, and its presence alone was like a hammer-blow on the air, its very existence a rotten weight on the surface of the world. Gog and Magog stared at it, fascinated.
“Bloody hell!” said Happy, straightening up suddenly without even realising.
“I don’t like it,” said Kim. “It’s nasty. It’s looking at me . . .”
“Those things are strictly forbidden!” said Happy. “Even the Crowley Project won’t let its people use one of those in the field!”
“Only because their leaders are scared their field agents might use it against them,” said JC. “All right, I’ll admit having it is against all the rules, but if we were the kind of people who gave a damn about rules, we wouldn’t be field agents, would we?”
“Come on, JC,” said Happy. “Those things are seriously forbidden. Lots of places they’d hang you just for knowing such things were possible. Hell, they’d hang you for knowing someone who knew things like that were possible.”
“With good reason,” said Melody. “Some things should be forbidden. Because they’re too powerful.”
“They have their uses,” JC said easily. “The sight of it pushed the jungle right out of you, didn’t it?”
Happy and Melody looked at each other. They were both standing like people again.
“Where did you get it?” said Melody.
“eBay,” said JC. “You can find all kinds of stuff on eBay. Now hush, children, daddy’s working.”
He stepped forward, showing the monkey’s paw Hand of Glory to Gog and Magog, and the edge of the blood-red jungle retreated before him. The two beasts stirred uneasily. They couldn’t look at him or the Hand directly.
“A Hand of Glory can find any door, unlock any lock, reveal anything hidden,” said JC. “And a monkey’s paw can force a change on reality, on a small scale. So put those two things together, and I have the power to find what ReSet did to you and undo it.”
Gog and Magog looked at each other, then back at JC. Gog growled at him. “We can’t go back. We won’t go back. Not now we’ve tasted real freedom. We were never meant to be human! We might not be New People, but this is better than the small, insignificant things we were.”
“I’m sorry,” said JC, and part of him really was. “But I have no choice.”
Gog and Magog charged forward, crossing the intervening space with inhuman speed, claws outstretched for throat and heart. JC said a single activating Word, and flames blossomed at the paw’s fingertips. There was a flash of brilliant light, and when it subsided, the blood-red jungle was gone. Fluorescent light filled the whole empty floor, stretching away before JC. And at his feet, a naked man and woman lay very still. JC blew out the candle fingers, very carefully, and put the withered paw away. He knelt beside the man and woman and checked for pulses. He looked up at the others and shook his head.
“They’re dead,” he said shortly. He stood up slowly, brushing himself down here and there, checking that his marvellous ice-cream suit was hanging properly. A style is a style, after all. And it kept him from having to think things he didn’t want to think.
“Did the Hand kill them?” said Kim.
“Indirectly, perhaps,” said JC. “But you heard them. They didn’t want to live as people, any more.”
“Maybe they couldn’t,” said Happy. “After all the things they’d done as beasts.”
“They didn’t feel guilty,” said JC. “They just didn’t want to give it up.”
Happy looked at him, meaningfully. “If you had that awful thing with you all along, why didn’t you use it before? Did you really think it was that dangerous to us?”
“I had some concerns. But mostly—well, you don’t use a backpack nuke to crack a nut,” said JC. “Anytime you use something this powerful, it attracts attention. The wrong kind of attention. I’ve already been touched by forces of Good from Outside. I really don’t want to be noticed by the other side.”
“You have got to let me run some tests on that when we get back,” said Melody.
“Wouldn’t do you any good,” said JC. “As far as science is concerned, it’s only a preserved monkey’s paw. And you don’t want to try investigating it from the other side.”
“Why not?” Melody said immediately. “Knowledge is knowledge.”
“Because you don’t want to attract attention to yourself, either,” said JC. “Bad enough if Outside forces take an interest—can you imagine what the Boss would have to say if she found out? At best, she’d take it away. At worst . . .”
“There are still places where they hang you for knowing such things exist,” said Happy.
“Right,” said JC.
Happy shook his head. “Who looks at a monkey’s paw and thinks—That isn’t dangerous enough? I must make it into something even nastier?” He stopped abruptly and looked at JC. “Something this powerful . . . It worked against the Beasts. Would it work against the New People?”
“Only one way to find out,” said JC.
EIGHT
HUMAN IS
“No more stops, no more investigations, no more distractions,” JC said firmly. “I think we’ve all had more than enough of taking it floor by floor, and I don’t see that there’s anything more we need to know or learn. So, to hell with whatever may or may not be lurking on the remaining floors. I say we go straight to the top of this benighted building and cut to the damned chase. We need some serious face-to-face time with the New People.”
“Assuming they have faces,” Happy said gloomily. “If they’re as far above us as the Beasts were below . . .”
“You always have to look on the glum side,” said Melody. “Look at it this way—the sooner we crash the party on the top floor and put our case to the New People, the sooner we can all go home, and I can get back to doing disgusting things to you in the bedroom. We’re not even half-way through that book I showed you.”
“I’m quite looking forward to meeting the New People,” said Kim. “I’ll bet they’re all sparkly and glamorous and . . . and all the colours of the rainbow!”
Melody sniffed. “Somebody read far too many flower fairy books when they were little . . .”
“Oh I loved those!”
“Later, Kim,” said JC. “I think we
need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that these New People aren’t going to be anything we expect . . . or can accept.”
“What if they’re not superhuman?” Happy said doggedly. “What if they’re posthuman? What if they are gods?”
“Good question,” said JC. “In which case, presumably some kind of sacrifice will be required, and I will nominate you.”
“Are you really planning on using that Hand of Glory thing against the New People?” said Melody.
“Not if there’s any other option,” said JC. “The Hand is very definitely a last resort. If you see me draw it, start running.”
“Way ahead of you there,” said Happy.
“No-one said anything about taking on gods and monsters when I joined up with the Institute,” said Melody.
“Should have read the small print,” said JC. “Onwards and upwards, my children.”
They made their way slowly up the last remaining stairs, taking their time. They were all really tired, physically, mentally, and emotionally. They paused to glance at each set of swing doors they passed, straining their ears against the quiet, but they never saw or heard anything on any of the other floors. The only sounds were their feet scuffing on the steps and their own harsh and laboured breathing.
But the higher up the building they went, the heavier the atmosphere became. Every floor they passed brought them that much closer to the territory of the New People and added an extra weight to the body and the soul. JC struggled on, every step that little bit harder, calling for more strength, more nerve, more concentrated will. As though he was fighting a part of himself that didn’t want to go any further. That didn’t want to know who or what these New People might be. It is a terrible thing, to contemplate placing yourself in the hands of living gods. But JC lowered his head and bulled on because he was damned if he’d give in to any pressure, from outside or inside. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it. It was perhaps the only thing he really believed in.
“Can’t shake off a feeling we’re being watched,” said Melody. “Is anyone else feeling it?”
“We’re heading towards Something,” said Kim. “I can feel that.”
“They know we’re coming,” said JC. “The New People. They’re waiting for us. Smug bastards . . .”
“I am definitely not standing anywhere near you when we meet them,” said Happy. “What do you think they’ll look like?”
“Probably a lot like us,” said Melody. “I mean, come on—whatever changes or improvements ReSet has worked in these people, they’re mostly likely to be on the mental and psychic level. Even the Beasts, Gog and Magog, were still basically human in shape. Their mindsets had been affected the most, making them what they were. I think we’re building these New People up into far more than they can reasonably be.”
JC stopped abruptly, leaned heavily on the railing to get his breath, and looked back down the steps at the others. “If I’ve been counting off the floors correctly, and I have, the stairs around the corner above us will lead to the final set of doors, and the final floor of this building. Happy, are you picking up anything?”
“Something big and scary,” said Happy. He leaned heavily on Melody’s shoulder, his face wet with sweat, flushed a really unhealthy colour. “It’s taking all my shields to keep it outside my head. Don’t ask me what it is, JC. Or what’s causing it. I think . . . it’s the presence of the New People, weighing down on reality, overwhelming everything else. Just by being here, by existing . . . they’re the most important thing there is.”
JC frowned. “You haven’t started taking your little pills again?”
“I wish,” said Happy. “I would love to be able to float off on a soft pink cloud of medication. But I daren’t. I daren’t be that open, that vulnerable. Operating at anything less than one hundred per cent in this situation will get us all killed. You can put good money on it.”
“My little boy is growing up,” said JC. “I am so proud.”
“Up your arse with a bent banana,” said Happy.
Suddenly, a voice spoke to them from above. A very human, very familiar voice.
“Well done, thou good and faithful servants. I really wasn’t sure you’d get this far.”
They all stared intently at the corner above them, as slow and steady footsteps descended towards them. And then he came round the corner, and there he was, standing at the top of the stairs, smiling urbanely. Robert Patterson, sharp and immaculate as ever in his smart city suit, looking very pleased with himself. Tall, black, a shaven head and a noble brow, handsome features and a condescending smile—a high-up functionary in the Carnacki Institute who very definitely should not have been there. JC looked at him for a long moment.
“What the hell are you doing here, Patterson?”
“You’d forgotten all about me, hadn’t you?” said Patterson, extending one perfect white cuff and flicking an invisible piece of lint off his sleeve. “That’s all right. Everyone does. For all my high-ranking duties in the Institute, I’m really nothing more than a glorified messenger boy, sent here and there at the Boss’s whim, to carry out all the dreary day-to-day business that our dear Catherine Latimer can’t be bothered with. All the soul-destroying shitwork that makes the Institute run smoothly—Patterson will take care of that. But, unfortunately for all concerned, that hasn’t been true for some time. I don’t answer to the Carnacki Institute, or Catherine bloody Latimer, any more. I’m part of something bigger and far more important, now. An organisation, a cause, greater than anything you could hope to understand.”
Happy looked at JC triumphantly. “You see? You see! I told you there was something going on behind the scenes! I told you there were secret enemy forces, operating in the shadows, working to undermine us, while we were all kept distracted with everyday missions . . .”
“Try not to sound quite so pleased about it,” said Melody. “If I’m reading the situation right, Patterson’s presence here means we are in even deeper doo-doo than we thought . . .”
“Oh yes, you are all screwed,” said Patterson. “You are all quite monumentally screwed and shafted. You were out of your depth the moment you walked through the lobby doors.”
“How did you get up here ahead of us?” said JC. “I saw you leave, in that hideously overstretched limo.”
“I never really left,” said Patterson. “I had the driver stop the car once we were safely out of sight round the far corner, got out, came back here, and entered through the back door. Yes, I know you were told there wasn’t one. How remiss of me. And then . . . I used the elevator. That is what it’s for . . . I’ve been ahead of you all along.”
“Whom do you represent?” said JC.
“Like I’m going to tell you,” said Patterson. “You don’t need to know. You can all die like you’ve lived, in ignorance.”
“If you’re not going to hit him, make way for someone who will,” said Melody.
“Stay right where you are!” said JC, not looking back. His gaze was still fixed on Patterson, who didn’t seem that bothered by the golden glare behind JC’s sunglasses. JC chose his words carefully. “If you and your organisation, whatever it is, are responsible for funding the ReSet drug, then you’re responsible for everything that’s happened here.” His voice was cold and harsh enough to wipe the smile off Patterson’s dark face. JC moved up a step. “All the deaths and all the horror and all the things that might still happen. All down to you. Plus the deaths of the policemen and the security men called to investigate. Am I right?”
“Of course,” said Patterson, pulling his arrogance around him like a shield. “It wasn’t difficult. They all trusted an obvious authority figure like me, right up to the moment when it became clear that they really shouldn’t have. I killed them all because they were in the way, disposed of the bodies, and held their ghosts here, or what was left of them, to guard the lobby. I knew our revered Boss would be sending a team in soon. I should have known it would be you. You do have a reputation for crashi
ng in where you’re not wanted.”
“Hold it,” said Happy. “The Boss wanted us here? I thought MSI insisted we be sent in?”
“Oh please,” said Patterson. “MSI haven’t a clue about what’s been going on in their building. Haven’t known for ages. ReSet was our very own cuckoo’s egg, set in place to force everything else out of the nest. I only told you MSI insisted on your presence to throw you off the scent.”
“Are you also the one who’s been feeding us information through the building’s computers?” said Melody.
“Smart girl,” he said. “I’ve been telling you what you needed to know, or what I wanted you to know, so you wouldn’t go looking in places I didn’t want you looking. I’ve been leading you round by the nose, all along.”
“All right,” said JC. “ReSet was your baby. Let’s jump to the big question. Why?”
“Human is as human does,” said Patterson. “And frankly, that’s not good enough. What we’ve done with the world so far has been very disappointing. So events were arranged here to lead to the creation of something more than human, better than human. Something that would surpass Humanity and achieve all the things our limited and self-centred species has so signally failed to achieve. Remember poor misunderstood Nietzsche—Man is something to be overcome.”
“How come secret organisations never want to do anything nice?” Kim said wistfully.
“The clue is in the description,” said Happy.
“We’ve been planning this for a very long time,” said Patterson. “And we’re not about to let you butt in and screw it up now. The greatest minds of this generation have been considering a single fundamental question—What if Man was a mistake? What if we were supposed to be so much more, but we fell short of our true potential? We were never meant to be something as small and limited as Man! We were supposed to fly like angels! We were all supposed to be living gods and walk this world in majesty and glory! And it’s not too late. We can all blaze like suns. We can all shine like the stars!”