The first I spotted, ten minutes later, was a very beautiful woman with old-looking eyes that I recognized as Angel Blue, once known as Mallory Hart. I drifted close enough to smell her and recoiled at the rotten stench of infection she gave off. Five minutes later I saw Oliver Spike, but I didn’t go near him because my danger sense reacted so sharply at the sight of him. I passed a heavyset man in a business suit talking in a loud voice to a group of starlets I recognized. He didn’t smell of infection, but the three girls he was speaking to smelled overwhelmingly of rotten meat.
I felt myself scrutinized, too, but it was the sort of occasion where people came to look and be looked at, and it meant nothing. I did feel embarrassed a couple of times when men and once a woman gave me frankly admiring looks that invited me to come up and talk to them, but I pretended not to see.
By the time I had been circulating for an hour, I had managed to identify only two more people who were infected, but I didn’t recognize either of them and could think of no way to learn their names save by asking. Most of the guests had bad essence smells, though, which suggested that their spirits were weak or corrupted; I wondered with a chill how many of them had been earmarked by Rayc for infection.
Then I saw Raoul, and my heart caught in my throat because Klara was introducing him to Aaron Rayc. Dita was with them, too, wearing a diaphanous ice-green dress that frothed about her shining limbs like foamy waves. Her glossy black hair was pulled back and dressed in an elaborate cluster of the palest pistachio-colored pearls and white flowers, and both she and Rayc were smiling brilliantly down at Raoul.
Dita reached out to stroke Raoul’s hand as she said something, and my skin crawled. Then she turned away and beckoned to a young man who emerged from the crowd dressed in cream moleskins and a pale suede jacket. He kissed her hand and cheek so intimately, and his hair shone so like hers, that I realized they must be related. He turned to Aaron Rayc and bowed rather than taking the older man’s hand, and I began to wish he would turn my way so that I could see his face.
Then Dita went to introduce him to Raoul, and I was shocked to the core—because I saw that it was Harlen Sanderson.
Without warning, Harlen whipped his head in my direction. Fortunately, despite my incredulity, I had the wit not to turn hastily away. Instead, I simply shifted my gaze slightly and tried to relax into the strange, deep stillness that had stopped him finding me the night before. I felt his eyes rake the crowd, skating over me, and then the pressure was gone. I waited another full minute before daring to think of him or glance in his direction again, and found that he had vanished. Aaron and Dita were still speaking with Raoul, so I could not go over to him. My heart pounded with fear at the thought that Harlen was somewhere nearby, trying to find who had been staring at him.
I had to get out of the tents, but how? Raoul had said it was permitted for guests of the gala to cross to the main venue, but he had the tickets and I dared not go and get mine from him now. The obvious answer was to just sneak out, but I couldn’t even think how to get away from the bracelet of tents with all the security around. Frightened of being out in the open any longer, I made my way to the toilets, following discreetly posted signs. My legs felt stiff and the boots awkward. The hair on my neck prickled the whole time I wove through the crowd at the thought that I might come face to face with Harlen at any moment. I told myself it was silly to feel so frightened because there would be nothing he could do to me among so many people. But the awful essence scents of so many of the people I passed—bad eggs, spoiled milk, burning gasoline—made me wonder if that was true.
I was sweating with tension and fear by the time I reached the toilets, which were deluxe portables in a side tent clamped onto the main tent. Unfortunately, there was no other way out of it. Once in a stall, I felt safer, and if there hadn’t been an attendant who had seen me enter, I might have been tempted to stay there. I replayed Harlen Sanderson kissing Dita Rayc and felt again my shocked realization that they must be mother and son. No wonder Dita had seemed familiar to me. But why was Harlen’s last name Sanderson when Dita’s previous husband had been Makiaros? Then I remembered that Makiaros had been her second husband. Harlen must be the son of her first marriage. I shuddered in revulsion at the thought that Rayc might have infected his stepson.
I had a moment of fright, thinking that Harlen must have seen Raoul at Davey’s. Then I remembered Harrison had said that only the bouncer had got out of the van, so Harlen would not have got a good look at him. Suddenly I remembered the cell Raoul had lent me. I fished it out of Gilly’s shoulder purse, but after typing out a text message, I noticed there was no signal. I thrust the phone back into my purse as someone knocked on the door. Then the attendant asked if I was all right, and I realized that I had groaned aloud.
“Fine,” I called out chirpily, flushed, and then opened the door. The attendant was a young woman only a little older than I was. She had returned to her position behind a table upon which rested bowls of perfumed water sprinkled with rose petals. She smiled at me, and when I smelled her fragrance of hot waffles, I had an idea.
“You don’t know when the bands are supposed to begin playing?” I asked in a girlish, confiding tone.
Her smile turned rueful. “You’re in the wrong place if you think you’re gonna hear any real music in here. The walls of the tents have been especially treated to make them soundproof.”
I stared at her. “But … why did these people come if they don’t get to hear the music?”
“Most of them are showbiz and arty types and socialites who come to be seen and to see what other people are wearing and who they’re with. The rest are money men and women who would probably have a heart attack if they heard the music they get rich from.”
“Wow, that’s pretty cynical,” I said, a little startled.
She sighed. “Sorry. This job sort of washes the stars from your eyes, you know? But how come you’re over here instead of over there, anyway? I mean, you’re not trapped behind a washbasin.”
“My uncle is in there hobnobbing,” I said glumly. “My boyfriend is in one of the lesser bands, but I can’t find a way to slip this mausoleum and go over to see him without being questioned by one of those goons in suits.”
She giggled. “They’re awful, aren’t they? But can’t you just ask your uncle? You can go over if one of the hostesses escorts you back to the main gate.”
“My uncle will insist I stay here.” I leaned closer. “He doesn’t approve of my boyfriend. I thought I’d be able to go over and see him and then sneak back.”
“Ohh,” she said. I smelled her curiosity when I mentioned my boyfriend.
“His name is Macoll, and he’s with Neo Tokyo.”
“I saw his picture,” she said to my surprise. “He’s hot, but isn’t he kind of old?”
“I’m into father figures,” I said with a straight face.
She hesitated and then suggested that I could try going through the catering tent. It was open at the back so chefs could go out for a smoke. I could then just go over the fields and through the performers’ trailers. There was sure to be a way, because the bouncers would be at the front gates.
I thanked her and went warily back into the main tent after getting directions.
Again I threaded through people, keeping my eyes peeled for Harlen. Conversations about the music industry, the publishing world, this or that gallery or agent swirled about me. The room boiled with conversation and loud bursts of laughter, and it seemed to have grown hotter and somehow tenser.
Then I saw that some huge screens had been unveiled or brought in, or maybe they had been there all along and I had not noticed them because there had been nothing on them. But now they were glowing with life and movement, and I realized they were offering a view of the enormous stage being watched by thousands of people a short walk away. It seemed weird that there were visuals but no music, only the harp and then the piano playing something light and vaguely classical, which bore out what the wash
room attendant had said about the people at the function not caring about the music, only the prestige of being special guests at the Big Sleep Gala Party.
I was almost to the catering section when I spotted Klara. Before I could turn away, she noticed me, so I stopped and told her to tell my uncle I was bored. I was as rude as I thought Tanya would have been.
Klara regarded me for a moment out of her wide beautiful eyes. Then she said, “You seem very strung out, Tanya. Are you on something?” It took me a thick second to figure she meant drugs. She was smiling approval.
“What’s it to you?” I asked, my mind racing.
She smiled a catlike smile of satisfaction. “Do you have what you need?” she asked. “I have a friend who might be able to help you if you don’t.”
“I’ve got my own friend over there listening to the music, if I could just figure out how to get out of this place,” I retorted, wondering if I could manipulate her into getting me over to the Big Sleep.
Klara’s wet red smile widened. “I’ll tell your uncle you would like to go and see the bands as soon as the formal part of this occasion is over, shall I?” Her eyes glimmered like fluorescent lights on pools of oil.
Cursing her inwardly for not offering to take me over at once, I shrugged ungraciously, and watched her vanish into the crowd. She would report to someone that Raoul’s niece took drugs, I was sure. That made me realize that such a gathering as this, with its endless supply of wine and food and its svelte army of Klaras slithering about and suggesting a refill or a little shot or a pill, would be a perfect way to gather information about people. Was that what this was all about? A gathering of intelligence to be used to manipulate people?
I shivered and followed the next waitress with an empty tray into the catering tent, refusing to stop when someone called out, certain I would be sent back if I did. As I had hoped, no one came after me; everyone was too frantically busy. I burst out of the back of the tent into the cool bite of the night. I looked up and saw that the sky must be totally clouded over because not a single star showed.
I set off at once through the darkness, making directly for the back of the huge stage. Oddly, I could hardly hear the music, although I could feel the ground pounding with the vibration of it. I supposed it must be that all of the music was pouring away from the tented area, and out into the audience and beyond.
It was hard to walk on the tufty, uneven grass, and after tripping twice on the rough clumps, I stopped and pulled off my boots, socks, and tights. When I got to the trailer city behind the main stage, I hesitated, wondering if it would be all that easy to go through to the main performance area. There would be dozens of bouncers guarding the fences to stop fans getting over to mob the Rak or other musicians.
As I walked along the makeshift street between the caravans, it gave me a little shock to realize that Da must be in one of them with Neo Tokyo. For one instant I wanted desperately to go and find him and tell him everything. I wanted to feel his arms around me and be enveloped in his reassuring warmth and his goodness and kindness. I wanted, I realized, to be his little girl, only somehow all that had happened had taken me out of the realm of childhood. I hadn’t realized it until that moment, and I felt a pang of almost unbearable grief.
“What are you doing back here?”
It was a bouncer, but a lower form of the breed than the suave and suited men back in the tent area. He grasped the back of my jacket and propelled me firmly where I wanted to go before I could stammer more than a few incoherent words.
From not being able to hear the music, I went to being nearly deafened by it, because the bouncer had pushed me out virtually in front of an enormous phalanx of speakers set up to the left of the stage. There were more speakers on the other side, and a wire fence ran between them to create a no-man’s-land between stage and audience. There were a lot of bouncers here, all wearing black T-shirts with “The Big Sleep” and a moon stencilled on them. The band onstage was the same one I had seen playing silently within the tent. The set must have been almost over, because the lead singer was beginning to smash his guitar to pieces.
I was watching in bemusement when a girl bumped into me. I turned to look at her, and she beamed at me vacantly, emanating a candy and new-plastic smell, tinged with something sharp and unpleasant. She was drunk or on drugs, I thought, and wondered if she had brought her own, or whether there were people busily distributing stuff to the eager crowd. This chilled me because of Sarry’s claim that drugs lowered your resistance to the sickness.
Suddenly I felt frightened, because what if this was not just a concert to raise funds or an occasion for directors to schmooze, or even a means of gathering information that could be used to serve the sickness, but a cover for the sickness to feed and spread? There had been a rapacious anticipation in the air back in the tents, which I had been too close to recognize when I was in the midst of it; an expectancy that electrified the air. And I had left Raoul back there!
I reminded myself that, like Da, his spirit was strong and unassailable. Besides, there was nothing I could do to help him now unless I fought my way to the main gate and made enough of a fuss that someone would fetch Klara to admit me. But that would only bring me back into danger. I had to trust Raoul’s intellect and capability.
I looked at my watch and was astonished to see that it was a quarter to ten. Raoul and I had agreed to leave before eleven, because of him wanting to avoid being seen by Da, so I ought to make my way out. But it had to be nearly time for Neo Tokyo’s set, and a bit of me wanted to stay and see them, in spite of everything. I wanted to see how Da would affect all of these thousands of people; whether he would do what he had done at the Urban Dingo gig. There was no chance of him spotting me from the stage, of course, but without cell-phone reception there was no way to let Raoul know I wanted to stay.
Someone tapped my shoulder, and I turned to find myself looking at Gary Soloman. As luck would have it, the guitar was totally obliterated at that moment, and the applause that swelled and broke all around us was loud but nowhere near as loud as the music had been.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” he shouted. I was a little startled to sense his admiration. “You here to see your dad?”
I nodded and asked what he was doing at the concert. He tapped his nose, and I knew I wouldn’t get anything out of him. “You do realize, there’s something wrong with all of this?” I tried anyway. “Something ugly and dangerous under the fun and music and people laughing.”
The journalist frowned. “Alyzon, you haven’t taken anything, have you? I know there’s a lot of stuff circulating. Booze and drugs and weird cocktails. I wouldn’t touch any of it.”
I wanted to laugh at the thought of doing anything so dumb, but it was a timely reminder that I couldn’t tell him the whole truth about what was happening—he didn’t know me at all.
Suddenly there was an ear-piercing spike of sound from the system, and everyone fell silent. An announcer began to scream that we were about to experience the incredible sound and talent of the Rak, who were the voice of their generation.
“The Rak!” he bellowed, and screams and applause rose in a thunderous wave; an apocalyptic storm of sound and adulation swelled, which would drown me if I did not find a way to rise above it. Then the music began. Earwig music full of hate and blood and violence. I clamped savagely on my senses, so that the air hissed with whispers and people became pale as ghosts, their screams no more than a faint wind.
I was only dimly aware of Gary Soloman bidding me farewell and pushing away through the frenzied gyrations around us. A guy in a T-shirt spoke to me. I couldn’t hear his words, but he seemed to be talking slowly and carefully as if he were underwater. The whites of his eyes were threaded with veins.
“Incredible,” I said when his mouth had stopped moving. He beamed and upended a water bottle into his mouth. I sidled away from him, smiling and mouthing apologies. There seemed to me to be a madness skittering over the faces of the people I saw,
tainting scents that ran the full gamut from sweet to horrible. But there was no smell of rot. No sickness. At one point, unable to move, I looked up at the stage. The Rak were clad in dark jeans and T-shirts with splattered blood prints over the front. Their faces were so pale they looked dead—even after I unclamped my senses by a fraction.
The lead singer began to make horribly realistic vomiting noises into the microphone. The people around me shrieked and stamped and cheered. He gave them the finger and closed his hand over his groin. His face was a vicious leer of triumph. He was the conquering hero of this roiling country of music and darkness.
“Isn’t he incredible?” a girl beside me screamed.
“Incredible,” I said softly, wondering if she would feel like this if she wasn’t in the midst of a crowd. I could smell the way the essence scents and the smells of excitement and madness were forming a single enormous crowd essence smell, which the Rak’s music was drawing up and shaping.
The Rak’s bass guitarist began to hammer out a screaming riff, and I cringed as if it were an attack. But everyone around me screamed and jumped up and down, begging for more. More, they screamed. More!
I tried to push sideways, but I was still caught in the press of bodies. Too late I realized that I ought to have worked my way along the stage to the other side, where the entrance gate was, in the lull between bands. The only way to move now was to dance, so I did, glad that I had taken my boots off.
I had given up the idea of waiting for Da; all I wanted to do now was escape and await Raoul at the car. He might even be there already, I realized, if Klara had let him know what I had said.
I had managed to work my way a little deeper back where the press of the crowd was not so tight, but I was sticky with sweat, my toes hurt from being stomped on, and the soles of my feet felt cold and abraded. I was now sorry I had taken off the boots, but there was no way to put them on again here; besides, if I tripped in them and fell into this sea of madness, I would be lost.