Summerland

13 ASSET DEVELOPMENT, 16TH NOVEMBER 1938

At the top of the Marconi Tower, Rachel White looked at London through the November rain and steeled herself for her new career as a Soviet source.

Bloom had suggested having the call there early in the evening, after she finished work. ‘Talking on an ectophone is rather dull,’ he wrote in his ectomail. ‘I would rather go for a walk with you, somewhere we can look at the world from different perspectives.’

Rachel buttoned her raincoat tightly against the wind-tossed droplets and wished she had not agreed so readily. Spirit spies did not get colds. She sniffed and waited for the ectophone in her purse to ring. Bloom was late.

The Tower stood near the Embankment. One of Gustave Eiffel’s posthumous projects, it was a triple-pronged radio mast, a monstrosity of wrought iron and steel that smelled of rust. It had started to rain the very moment she began to climb the steps in the central spire. All the tourists and visitors came clambering down in the opposite direction, holding umbrellas and leaflets over their heads. Rachel gritted her teeth, forced her way up to the central gondola and showed her SIS identity card to the watchman, who touched his cap and returned to his glass-walled booth and a cup of tea.

It was a perfectly logical meeting place, of course. The Tower was a hub of spirit messenger and ectomail activity, a giant instrument attuned to the aetheric signals that tied the worlds of the living and the dead together, and meeting there was the Summerland equivalent of a discreet encounter in a crowded, public space. Bloom was being careful.

Below, the Thames was a pitch-black, flowing fracture that bisected London into two lobes of a brain made of street lights, people and electricity. Momentary vertigo grabbed her and she clutched the railing with one gloved hand, struggling to hold her umbrella with the other.

At that very moment, her phone gave a tinkle. She let go of the umbrella. The wind seized it and it blew away, rising upwards in a chaotic, tumbling motion. Her hat and face were instantly wet. She fumbled with the earbuds and the tuning dial until she heard Bloom’s voice through the hiss of static and the rain.

‘Tell me, Rachel,’ he said, ‘what do you see?’

She sniffed. ‘Rain. London. And an abyss that will allow me to join you over there if I take just one more step.’

Bloom laughed, a soft, whisper-like sound. ‘I apologise. I should have checked the weather forecast. One tends to forget.’

‘I understand.’

‘If you prefer, we can go somewhere else.’

The wind had eased a bit. ‘I am fine for now,’ Rachel said. ‘I climbed all the way up here so we might as well enjoy the view. What is it that you see, Peter?’

‘Over here, the Tower is like a giant firecracker and we are right in the heart of it. It’s noisy. There are spirits everywhere, flitting back and forth, carrying letters and messages.’

Max was nearby in Summerland, too, watching. She tried to sweep the thought from her mind, in case Bloom noticed anything. Right now, it was easy enough to focus on the chill and the discomfort, and the view below.

‘And you can see the souls of London from here, moving like impulses through nerves. It really is like one vast creature, alive and sentient.’

‘Does death turn everybody into poets, or just you?’

Bloom laughed. ‘My apologies. Poetry does not keep you warm, does it?’

‘Not that kind, anyway. Tell me, then—what can I do for the Summer Court?’

‘I would rather discuss what the Summer Court can do for you. You have had quite a career, Rachel. The Registry, the Irish Section, Counter-subversion. And you even married into the secret world. That happens often, of course, although usually it’s the secretaries, no offence. Your husband used to be a liaison officer for the RAF?’

‘Formerly,’ Rachel said. ‘He has some health issues.’

‘Ah. I was wondering why he was not at the party. I am sorry to hear that.’ There was genuine concern in his voice. The idea that her private darkness was visible to him made Rachel angry. That was good. She seized the emotion and brought it out in her voice, just like she had practised with Max.

‘I did not think we were here to discuss my husband.’

‘Of course not. It is just that I am aware of your pension and Ticket issues.’

Rachel said nothing. The rain had nearly stopped. The tiny raindrops that remained felt almost pleasant on her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ Bloom said. ‘I did not mean to overstep.’

‘You did not. Things are … complicated at the moment.’ She paused. ‘Can you tell me more about what you see? What is it like over there?’

‘Well, it is more or less as they describe in the books. I believe your mother is in a Summer Home?’

‘Peter. I don’t want to hear about four-dimensional captains and three-dimensional ships, or any other broken metaphor. Tell me stuff I can’t read about in books. What is the worst thing over there?’

Bloom considered. ‘That would have to be the Fading. It’s terrifying. One does not notice it at first. Vim—aetheric energy—stops it, for a time. Thought-travel and aether-shaping make it worse. The aetherologists claim that the aetherbeasts used to be human spirits, too, only they forgot their true natures aeons ago.’

‘That sounds terrible. I have heard the word but did not realise what it meant.’

‘The National Death Service does not advertise it. But with enough vim, it is barely noticeable, a tiny memory here and there over the years, and it does not happen to everybody. There are beautiful things, too. The Summer City sings to itself sometimes. It sounds like musical rain. There is a man, a Faded person, who tells fortunes near the Fortress. He listens to the luz bricks. I thought he was mad at first, but if you listen closely, you can hear the soul-stones mutter in the walls.’

‘So it sounds like being dead is no simpler than being alive. Good and bad.’ In spite of herself, Rachel was fascinated. Spirits rarely discussed Summerland—they were always hungry to hear more about the living. She chided herself for getting too distracted: she was no longer a little girl who believed in magic kingdoms.

The rain had stopped. The clouds were a mixture of red and grey, reflecting the city lights. Near the horizon, a solitary star winked over the skyline.

‘The longer I spend in the Summer City, the more I notice the bad,’ Bloom said. ‘Some parts are not pleasant. There are whole Circles of Faded that are like madhouses, and no one gives them vim. Then there are the soul-mines, deep in kata. The whole city is built on the labour of the miners, but they get little recognition for it.’

‘You sound like a Communist,’ Rachel said. It was a trap: he was probing for Leftist sympathies and she had no real way to deceive him. Max had told her to expect it.

‘It used to be somewhat fashionable, once.’

‘Well, the Dimensionists always had Socialist ideas,’ Rachel said. That was true enough: Herbert Blanco West had spun the political party out of the Fabian Society, back in the day, and some of that heritage still remained, no matter how much they emphasised liberalism, reason and science in their rhetoric. ‘I joined the Service during wartime. We did not think too much about politics back then.’ She paused. ‘This is a very strange sort of interview, Peter.’

‘You are a strange sort of person.’

‘Should I take that as a compliment?’

‘Absolutely. It is a rare individual who follows an unconventional path as far as you have. And I do share some of your concerns. See how hard it is for us to understand each other’s worlds? No wonder we have inter-Court rivalry. We have no idea what goes on over there, and you cannot comprehend what it is like to be dead. Yet we should be the right and left hands of the Empire, dexter and sinister.’

‘So you would like me to keep tabs on the Winter Court for you, is that it?’ She thought of Roger Hollis, and there was nothing fake about her indignation.

‘You do not sound very enthusiastic.’

‘I am angry at some of my colleagues, yes. It does not mean that I will betray them.’

‘Really, Rachel, I said absolutely nothing about betrayal. But tell me—why are you angry at the Winter Court?’

‘Because I am not appreciated. I am given menial tasks a schoolgirl could do in her sleep. Yet I have nowhere to go. If I leave, I lose my pension and my Ticket, and then my destination is to become one of your Faded. My husband is unwell, and—’ She seized the iron railing with both hands. ‘I am trapped,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘Do you have any idea how that feels?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ He paused. Then: ‘I was a student. There was a group of us who liked to scale college rooftops at night. We did not really have anything better to do. We all knew it was dangerous, but no one cared: Summerland awaited us all anyway.

‘Then a boy I knew, Cedric, fell to his death while trying to climb to the King’s College Chapel’s spires. No one thought it was a big deal. We carried an ectophone—you know, one of those big, old Marconi models—to the chapel roof and held a party there in his memory, while he was laughing with us on the Other Side.

‘That was when I realised everything would go on exactly the same, forever. Our fathers—our parents—mostly on the other side already, ran their businesses and would keep running them. It did not matter what we did, not in the slightest. I was destined to be … I don’t know what, a civil servant, forever. A nothing.’

Rachel was certain this was not the whole truth. Was Bloom turned at Cambridge? That meant the Soviets were on the lookout for talent years before the candidates even joined the Service. It required a four-dimensional mind to take a long view like that.

‘You seem sceptical, Rachel.’

Rachel swore. It was too easy to forget that to Bloom, her head was a glass vessel, with coloured emotions visible inside.

‘I am merely cold.’ Her breath had begun to steam. ‘I am afraid I will have to go soon. How did you escape your dreadful fate?’

‘I found something to believe in.’

Rachel sighed. ‘The Service. I see. Something bigger than yourself, something truly immortal. I used to think like that, but I am tired, Peter. My faith is weak. Maybe it always was. The Service is not what I hoped it would be, especially if you are a woman.’

‘What would you do to make it better?’

Rachel gritted her teeth. ‘I would see men like Harker … well, humiliated. Revealed for the fools they are.’

‘Revenge?’

‘Fair play.’

‘Rachel, here is what I propose. Keep a diary and share it with me. Include what you want in it, leave out whatever you wish. Write about your colleagues. Observe them. We will sort out some unofficial means of compensation and take it from there. How does that sound?’

‘It sounds like a good first step.’

‘Every journey begins with one, Rachel. Goodbye. We will speak again soon.’

* * *

‘That was completely useless,’ Rachel told Max Chevalier. She walked briskly along the Embankment, still shivering, keeping an eye on the road for cabs. ‘The only thing I got out of this was a cold.’

Max’s voice on the ectophone was calm. ‘It’s all going according to the plan. He found commonalities, built some trust, asked for a small thing that is not difficult for you to provide—but which is sufficiently dubious for you to keep it a secret. You need to think like a naturalist: you establish certain behaviours, make them natural, and then—’

‘Then the frog cooks, is that it?’

‘Exactly. The next time, or the one after that, he is going to ask for something more substantial, and we are going to give it to him.’

‘We can’t give him anything. That would be treason! And we can’t keep this up for much longer. He is in the Iberian Section, for God’s sake. The newspapers are speculating that West could send troops there if things get worse. We can’t put our boys in harm’s way.’

‘Mrs White, every castle that defends this kingdom of ours is built out of a thousand little treasons, you should know that by now.’

Rachel stopped and looked back at the Marconi Tower, looming over the river. Like a firecracker, Bloom had said. She imagined it burning and falling like a flaming tree, crushing buildings beneath it.

‘We will get him, don’t worry. You have done a fine job, a fine job indeed. He was more aggressive than I expected. I wonder if he is under pressure. Until now, he has been so very flighty, our little Bloom bird.’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But if it ever looks like we are going to risk the lives of good Englishmen, we will have to rethink this.’

‘Of course.’

‘In any case, it is easy for you to talk, Mr Chevalier. What have you been doing in this enterprise so far?’

‘Oh, just what I do best,’ Max said. ‘Watching. Watching and listening.’ He made a little trilling sound, like a bird. ‘Speaking of which, there is a spirit not far away, watching us. Quite a solid self-image—and a family resemblance, I’ll wager.’

Rachel sighed. The spirit Watchers of the Summer Court had nothing on Henrietta Forbes-Smith. ‘That would be my mother. I will deal with it.’

Rachel pressed the preset button that activated the beacon for her mother. Then she used the alphabet rotors to spell out a message.

MOTHER. NOT A GOOD TIME. WORKING. DO NOT SPEND VIM. WILL CALL SOON.

In a few moments, the phone rattled and the rotors spun back a response.

WEAR RUBBER BOOTS, BBC SAYS RAIN.