Alyzon Whitestarr

  I roused myself to say that the woman in the bus shelter had mentioned a Shaletown gang.

  “That could still be a rumor,” Raoul said. “I wonder if it would be possible to track down a teacher who worked at the academy. It shouldn’t be that difficult. I have a friend in the education department.”

  It wasn’t until we were close to home that Raoul mentioned the journal, saying he had read part of it but wanted to finish it, if I would let him keep it for a while longer. He suggested that I come to his place for dinner with the others the following night, and he would return it then.

  “Just one thing puzzles me. Who is Professor Kirke?”

  That made me smile, and when I told him I’d addressed my journal to a fictional character, he laughed.

  Raoul insisted on dropping me at my door. I had told him I would be fine catching the bus, but getting out of the car into the wet, cold evening, I was very glad to know that a warm kitchen and a hot shower were only a few steps away.

  * * *

  There was no one in the kitchen when I entered, although the room smelled of cooking. I went upstairs, glad there was no one around to wonder why I wasn’t in school uniform. Ten minutes later I had filled the bath and was neck-deep in hot water. I sank down into it and indulged in sheer mindless pleasure for a while.

  But eventually I found myself thinking about Shaletown Boys Academy. A chill crept into the bath as I realized what a perfect place a school for delinquent boys must have been for a sickness that preyed on wounded spirits. And then along had come the music teacher, lifting those boys up, inspiring them. If the sickness had led Harlen to get his friends to burn down Gilly’s house just because she had gotten in the way of his pursuit of me, what might it do to remove someone like the music teacher? Could it have prompted Harlen to get the teacher permanently out of the way?

  I told myself I was going too far. After all, the explosion had closed the school down. The sickness could not have wanted that.

  Suddenly Mirandah hammered on the door, saying that dinner was nearly ready. I got out and scurried to the bedroom to dress. Serenity was laid out on her bed, but she didn’t look at me or in any way acknowledge that I was in the room. I wanted badly to tell her what I suspected the poetry group intended for her. But what could I say that would not make me sound like a nutcase?

  I went downstairs, thinking that I could do nothing until I had proof of some kind.

  Mirandah and I were serving the spinach quiche Jesse had made when the phone rang. It was one of the members of Mirandah’s jazz group. Jesse took over serving and passed me Luke’s bowl of mush. I spooned it to him absently, making faces to distract him when he looked to be getting bored with the concept of dinner. I had just finished feeding him when Da came in the back door, shaking his head a little. I thought he looked tired.

  “Bad pupil?” Jesse asked.

  Da laughed. “Brilliant pupil. No talent.” He sighed. “It ought to be that when a person works hard and is dedicated, he receives his just reward. But talent is capricious, and it can appear in the lazy as well as the dedicated. How do you tell someone prepared to give his soul that it won’t be enough?”

  There was a knock at the back door, and before Da could turn back to open it, Rhona Wojcek burst in, clad in painfully bright fluorescent orange and green stripes, complaining bitterly about the wet path, as if we had watered it just to spoil her lime suede boots. Da sent Mirandah up to get Mum and poured Rhona a glass of red wine. She grimaced after tasting it, but still drank it pretty fast.

  I retreated upstairs, feeling only slightly guilty because Rhona really was bad for digestion. I was lying back drowsing when I heard her leave, but I was too warm and lazy to go down. I roused myself enough to peel off my jeans and slide under the covers.

  * * *

  I dreamed of Davey the mechanic, riding on the back of a dog the size of a small elephant. As in the previous dream, the slow gentleness of his expression had given way to an alertness that made him look like a different person, despite the fact that in all other ways he looked like Davey. He called to me to climb up behind, saying that I could travel with him, but I told him rather sharply that I couldn’t. He quirked his brow sardonically and said I could do more than I knew, and then he laughed.

  By the time I got downstairs the next morning, Serenity had left and Mirandah was feeding Luke. Da came in from his run, saying that it was wet as hell everywhere, but at least the rain had stopped. Mirandah lifted Luke from his chair and put him into Da’s arms, and Da put him right back in the chair.

  The physical handover of Luke was a tradition dating back to a time when he had been left on the grass in his bouncy chair for over two hours, with each of us thinking that someone else was taking care of him. Luckily he had been in the shade, but we were all horrified when Da came in with him crying his eyes out. These days, the rule was that you physically handed Luke to the person who was to be in charge of him next. That way you could never be in doubt about who was supposed to be watching over him.

  Mirandah dashed out in a flurry. I was about to leave, too, when I remembered to tell Da I was going to dinner at Raoul’s that night. “Can I get a lift home after?”

  “I’ve got a late rehearsal tonight for a gig, but maybe Jesse can do it.” Da looked at Jesse, who had just come downstairs, and he nodded.

  “A gig with Losing the Rope?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s with those two guys I met at that last gig. Neo Tokyo. They’ve asked me to guest with them in a show called the Big Sleep. Funny name for a gig, but it’s supposed to be quite big.”

  “Jeez, Da,” Jesse said. “Even I’ve heard of the Big Sleep. It’s going to be huge. More than two thousand people in a field with a gigantic stage that will be especially built for it.”

  “Two thousand. Can that be right?” Da asked.

  Jesse shrugged. “The same crew did a similar thing last year called the Big Eat. Two thousand expected, but three thousand turned up. There’s more than one band, and it’s for charity, right?”

  Da nodded. “Aaron Rayc said there would be a number of bands. We’ll play one of the last slots before the night winds up. I didn’t realize it would be so big an audience, though. Well, it doesn’t make any difference really.”

  “Neo Tokyo are rap, you said,” Jesse commented, reaching out to take Luke from Da. “I didn’t think that was your thing.”

  “Rap’s not as attractive as some other music is to me,” Da admitted. “But these Neo Tokyo guys have an interesting approach, and they’re superb musicians.”

  I had to ask. “Da, how come Aaron Rayc keeps organizing things for you? I mean, what does he get out of it?”

  Da studied my face. “Alyzon, I’m afraid I’ve given you the wrong impression of Aaron Rayc. I had a good talk with him and I realized that he only suggested working with other bands so that I could stretch myself as a musician. He doesn’t get anything out of helping me or anyone else, except that he likes doing it. And that’s a good thing in a world where just about everything is for sale. You know how rare it is that someone like this comes along in the life of a musician? Someone who can really make a difference?”

  Make a difference how? I wanted to ask darkly, but didn’t. “I think he likes manipulating people,” I said rather primly.

  Da smiled. “And you think he’s playing chess with me? To what end?”

  “Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?” I said, thinking of what Harrison had once said. “Maybe he just likes the power.”

  Da shook his head. “Oh, Alyzon, that might be the motivation of a character in a book or in some Hollywood movie, but real people’s motives are far more complex. There are always layers to our decisions and actions that even we can’t read. And think about this: There were artists of all kinds I met during the three days I’ve just done, and none of them had a bad word to say about Aaron. They all talked about how helpful he had been. Many of them only got a break because of him using his in
fluence on their behalf.”

  “It sounds too good to be true,” Jesse said.

  Da grinned. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Besides, it wasn’t Aaron’s idea that I do this job. The Neo Tokyo guys asked me off their own bat. Aaron doesn’t really have a lot to do with the Big Sleep. His focus will be on a private invitation-only parallel event. The great thing is that we’ll get paid that night, and the fee will cover Zambia’s gallery opening and leave enough for me to finally get some emergency money socked away.”

  “I thought that was what the last gig was for,” I said.

  “That money won’t come in for a bit.”

  * * *

  I barely managed to get to the bus stop in time, and dropped into a seat clutching my side and puffing hard. Serenity had got on, too. I wondered how Mirandah had made the earlier bus, when Serenity had missed it. Maybe she had gone for a walk. Of course, I couldn’t ask; anyway, she had taken a seat at the very back of the bus. I felt her eyes on me and wished I could just go back and speak with her. But the gulf between us was a great deal more than could be bridged by a walk from one end of the bus to the other.

  The school day dragged as if every minute was shaped out of treacle. What made it worse was that Gilly had not come to school again. I wanted to call her at lunchtime, but the class before ended up with a long detention and when I raced to the public phone in the few minutes remaining after ward, I found someone had cut the cord. Then when I got back to school, the hall monitor spotted me, wrote me up for going offgrounds, and gave me a detention. It was that kind of day.

  The only good thing was that I managed again to successfully avoid Harlen by hiding shamelessly in classrooms, avoiding the lockers, and taking cover in detention.

  * * *

  “You’re late,” Harrison said when I arrived at Raoul’s place.

  “Detention,” I said wearily. “Is Gilly here?”

  “She was here when I got here,” Harrison said, and ushered me to the kitchen, where Gilly and Raoul were sitting with their hands wrapped around mugs of hot chocolate. Gilly looked pale, and her eyes were red.

  “Gilly, what’s wrong?” I asked. She got to her feet, and her lovely sea scent enveloped me as she hugged me.

  “I couldn’t go today,” she said. “Harrison told me what you think about Harlen and the fire.”

  “I felt like she ought tae know,” Harrison said to me apologetically.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told Gilly, feeling my eyes prick with tears.

  “No!” she said, sniffing hard. “You are not to be sorry, because how could this be your fault? In a way it’s not even Harlen’s fault. It’s this thing inside him. This sickness. That’s the enemy.”

  Raoul set his mug down firmly and said, “There is something I need to show you, Alyzon.”

  He turned his chair and wheeled out of the kitchen, leaving us to follow him. Gilly and Harrison exchanged puzzled looks that told me they had no idea what we were to see either. Instead of going right to the back of the house, Raoul wheeled through the last door before the end of the hall, into an enormous living room lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The only furnishings on the cream-colored tile were two long, pale curves of modular sofa and a big square coffee table made of white wood. On the few bits of wall without books, there were black-and-white photographs of winter-bare trees framed in the same wood as the coffee table. The books and blue cushions set at regular intervals along a deeply recessed windowsill provided the only color in the room. Through the window I could see a Japanese maple growing out of an intricate swirl of bricks.

  Raoul had wheeled to a desk set up in the midst of the bookshelves, where there were another computer and a few other pieces of equipment. I went over to stand behind him with the others as he booted up the computer, then turned his chair to look at us. “I received a message from Rayc Inc. this morning, inviting me to an ORBA fund-raising event at the Castledean Estate. I responded by e-mail. Confirmation came back almost at once, with the same logo as on the invitation, and I don’t know why, but I started fiddling to see if I could decode the image.”

  He turned back to the screen and opened a file on the desktop, and then we were looking at the digitized logo I had first seen on Aaron Rayc’s card. “Now watch,” Raoul said, and he tapped at the keyboard. “This is a simulation of what I did with the image, without all the dead ends.”

  The logo began to shimmer and shiver, the dots moving closer together in tiny rigid jerks, subtly rearranging themselves and overlapping until an image came into focus.

  “What is it?” Gilly asked with a grimace of distaste.

  “It’s a swastika with yellow snakes,” Harrison said in a stunned voice, and I felt his eyes on my face. “It’s the symbol that was at the back of Serenity’s book, isnae it?”

  I nodded. “And supposedly it’s the emblem of a gang in Shaletown. But what does it mean?” I stared at the image on the screen again, feeling stupid with astonishment.

  “It’s the sickness,” Gilly said. “It has to be.”

  “But Aaron Rayc doesn’t smell of the sickness,” I protested.

  “Neither does Sarry,” Raoul reminded me.

  “You think Aaron Rayc is infected but fighting it?” I demanded.

  Raoul shook his head and said, almost dreamily, “Actually I’ve been thinking in a different direction completely. What would ultimately happen to a person who was infected and didn’t resist? Maybe it’s like when an animal dies and rots. Bacteria begin to break the organism down, and there is an awful stink while that’s happening. But once the process has run its course, there is no smell. In Aaron Rayc’s case he might smell of nothing because there is nothing left to be corrupted. Of course, it’s not a physical sickness, so he doesn’t die. His body and mind go on, but what was essentially him is gone.”

  His soul, I thought.

  “And you think he’s trying tae infect her da?” Harrison asked.

  Raoul shook his head. “I’d say he’s gone beyond the capacity to infect.”

  “Then why is he always coming around?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Alyzon, but try this for a theory. He can’t infect anyone, but he still has the same voracious drive to perpetuate the virus, so his desire to infect evolves or mutates into a desire to enable infection.” He pointed to the logo still glowing on the computer screen. “I decided to check out a hunch once I saw that, and it wasn’t hard to find out that Rayc Inc. owns a printing press in Shaletown.”

  “You think he’s printing those books?” Gilly whispered.

  “I’d bet my life on it,” Raoul said calmly. “I bet he’s behind them, and the poetry group, which lures in discontented and spiritually wounded people who might be made vulnerable, somehow, to infection.”

  “But how could Aaron Rayc do all that and not know he’s infected?” I asked.

  “I think he would know he was infected by this stage, because in a way all that would remain would be the virus in a human receptacle,” Raoul said.

  “How does Alyzon’s da fit in, and all these artists and musicians whose lives Rayc messed with? Do you think they’re all infected?” Harrison asked.

  “I think the arts might be a good trawling ground for victims. A lot of painters and writers and musicians create out of the wounds to their spirit.”

  “You think he set up the poetry group and published those books and arranges charity functions and patronizes artists to give the virus more targets?” Gilly said doubtfully.

  “There’s no reason to suppose Rayc would not be as ambitious and creative and diverse in serving the virus as he would be as a successful businessman.”

  “Maybe it’s not your da he’s interested in, Alyzon,” Gilly said. “Maybe he comes around to keep an eye on Serenity.”

  It made a kind of sense, especially when I remembered how eagerly Aaron Rayc had said her name the first time he came to the house.

  “What I’d like to know is how he met Harlen Sanderson,??
? Harrison said. “Do you think Rayc infected him before he stopped being able tae infect anyone?”

  “I think it must have happened like that,” Raoul said. “Harlen went to school in Shaletown and Aaron Rayc was courting a wealthy widow there, so there is certainly a possibility that they might have met.”

  Raoul broke off and insisted we eat then, even though it was clear that no one had much appetite. It felt so sane and good to wash and shred lettuce and chop spring onions, and I realized Raoul had suggested eating as a way of drawing us out of the nightmare dimension we were creating with our speculations. Maybe that was why, when the lasagna and garlic bread came out of the oven, they smelled so wonderful. Once again, we ate at the jungle table. Raoul even insisted we light candles, and that reminded me of Gilly’s gran, talking about making things beautiful as a sort of response to all the ugliness in the world.

  As we loaded the dishwasher, Raoul told us the names of the directors of ORBA were listed on the confirmation e-mail, and Aaron Rayc’s name was among them.

  “I’d say that is why ORBA ended up funding residencies and running events at the Castledean Estate.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Gilly asked suddenly. “We have to do something about Alyzon’s sister.”

  Raoul nodded. “Obviously we can’t warn her that a boy at her school is trying to infect her with a sickness of the spirit. Which leaves us with only one option—watching over her. Alyzon, do you know where she is now?”

  I nodded. “She’s with my mother tonight, sitting for a painting.”

  “Good. She’s safe for now. But in the future, she must not be left alone if there is any chance she will go out. And when she does, one of us must follow her.”

  I bit my lip. Keeping tabs on Serenity would mean dealing with her fury if she spotted me trailing around after her. But it had to be done; Raoul was right.

  “It is possible that infection isn’t something that happens all at once,” Gilly said hesitantly. “Could there be something happening in those poetry groups—a slow process of infection?”