The Gone-Away World

Chapter Sixteen

FEAR is an emotion with many shapes. It can be a thing of jolts and shudders, like an electric shock, or it can be like the tendril of cold night air which reaches you in your bed when all your doors and windows should be closed. It can come in the shape of a well-known footstep in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a foreign one in a familiar room. But all fear is connected, a susurrus which plays around you in the dark and brushes against your skin, pushes the hair back from your face like an uninvited guest, and slips away before you dare to open your eyes. Also, fear is sneaky. It establishes a foothold and sits, content. While you confront it, it is small and weak, and looks back at you with timorous eyes, so that you wonder how it could ever stir you for more than a moment. Turn your back, and it waxes, casting giant shadows and flickering in the corner of your eye, leaning lingeringly on the creaky floorboard. It inflates and bursts, propelling fragments of itself to the far corners of your mind, where they grow again until you are inundated, and you drown.

I am not afraid as I stare at Humbert Pestle. He is there, in front of me, and he does not see me. It’s like seeing the wolf padding through the forest: you know it is there, it’s just an animal, and it’s not coming your way. Good. I slip out, and down the corridor, and Elisabeth’s tratratra guides me to the grille. I am not afraid as we climb onto the roof and head back the way we came. I am not afraid in the moonlight as we winch ourselves back up, yard by yard, away from Pestle and his vacant gaze.

And then, once we are over the Jorgmund building, with its snake badge in silly neon, I make a mistake. I start to pick up the pace. I am impatient, and the longer we are exposed like this, the greater our risk. The consequences of discovery are very grave—no sense in taking more chances than we have to. I trot. He saw me. He will send men. They will follow, and they will catch Elisabeth, and it will be my fault. The trot becomes a run. Elisabeth is ahead of me, and they will take her and erase her and it will all be my fault. Then they will come for me, and do terrible things, and I will die and be gone, extinguished, after so little time to be at all. The sky yawns above me, and for a second it is a chasm into which I may fall, an impossible depth, and I am looking not up into it but down onto it, and the threads of gravity and atmosphere which tie me to it are very slender and I am very, very small.

Fear is not rational. A moment later the run becomes a sprint, and a panic, and I am afraid of everything I have ever been afraid of. I am afraid that I will be hauled up on charges for terrible crimes I have not committed, or that I have, and I will be an outcast and a pariah, and Old Man Lubitsch will shake his head and turn away, and be appalled. I am afraid that Elisabeth will despise me, leave me, attack me, and I will not know how to stop her without killing her and then I will be a murderer. I am afraid of falling, of fire, of torture and monsters and infestations of spiders and wild dogs and cancer and the End of the World (a proper one, without a sequel) and everything else I have imagined in the small hours between two and four, when unreasonable, improbable waking nightmares can attain solidity and bulk.

I overtake Elisabeth, grab her hand and drag her along with me, plunge and weave across the rooftops. She calls to me to stop, stop, and when I do it is because we have arrived, and I dive through the open door and into the pigeon loft and begin to pack. We cannot stay, cannot stop, not now, never again, until this is done. Fear has given way to horror. It is the animal in me, seeing the thing which is my foe, and that thing is not like me. The face of my enemy.

In the sea, there are creatures like this. Physalia physalis is an individual, but it is also a colony. It is a floating sack of gas composed of a million little polyps, of four different kinds. Some of them digest and some of them sting, and some of them are for breeding, and some for keeping the others from sinking down into the sea. I met a sailor once, a woman from Redyard, who had been stung by one. She said it was like being scraped with hot wire, and she screamed and drank down brine, but the worst part was being tangled in the tendrils of the monster, brushing against them and recoiling into more, and gasping, and swallowing them, being wrapped about and snuggled and invaded by something alien and awful which had no eyes and yet knew she was there.

The gas bag was barely as big as her head. It could no more consume her than it could get up and dance—but it was trying, oh yes, and if she sank, then she would die, and her assailant would devour her slowly, gram by gram. She had weals upon her arms and neck, livid scars like the marks of a whip or a brand, and she favoured one hand. The doctors said her survival was a miracle, that she must have a giant’s heart. She spoke as if she’d been smoking with every breath, her larynx coarsened by scars. When they pulled her out of the water, the thing came too, all blue-grey and appalling, half-liquid. On dry land it couldn’t move—no muscles at all. They unwrapped her from it and she spasmed away across the deck, but she wouldn’t let them throw it back. She made them keep it, and when she was well, weeks later, she burned it in her yard and vomited for two straight days. She didn’t drink; alcohol, she said, gave her dreams of polyp arms about her, and made her wake up screaming. Her husband put his thick, dry hands on her shoulders and stroked gently at the places where she was marked, and the revulsion faded from her as she relaxed against him.

Jorgmund is like that. It is one thing, made from many. It does not think; it exists and it reacts and it expands, and that is all. The people who work for it are like the polyps, neither entirely individual nor entirely subsumed. They carry the monster in their minds, and they cannot see the whole. They give themselves to it, time-share, and slip into the body of the beast when they prefer not to be human. The ninjas are the stinging cells, reaching out and destroying enemies, killing food. Of all of them, Humbert Pestle is the greatest and the worst. He has made himself one with the machine, the monster. He sees it, and it does not appall him. He carries it in his head all the time, to the point where it is impossible to say whether he still exists separate from the thing.

I feel as if I have overturned a stone, expecting insects, and discovered that the stone itself is nothing but a vast mass of bugs.

. . .

IN ACTION MOVIES the hero can explain the danger in a few cogent sentences, and (aside from a token person who later gets eaten or has to apologise) everyone immediately accepts the reality of what he says and understands its significance. Monkey reflex is churning in me: flee, seek advantage, fight. Hit small, soft things with your hands. If you want to kill something big and tough, you need a stick with a rock on the end, or a sharp piece of bone. And I want to kill it, just as badly as it wants to kill me—or the Bey, or the Found Thousand, or anyone who sees it for what it is. Everything must function in a way which is compatible with Jorgmund. Anything which does not, may not persist. Evolution is not fuzzy or kind; DNA does not negotiate. This thing is like that: too basic, too young, too simple of its type to permit difference.

Elisabeth Soames does not quibble. She gauges me with rapid glances. She hears the words which do not come out, apprehends the ideas foaming behind them. She tosses our belongings into a bag, turns out the lights in the pigeon loft and unplugs the electric fire, then leads me rapidly away. She does not look back at the place which has been her home for twenty months or more. She does not allow herself to miss it. Her hand tightens in mine, just a little, as we drop down below the roof level, and we leave the cosy, ramshackle building behind.

WE TAKE the main road, along the Pipe. I drive. We have left the Magic of Andromas under wraps in Haviland. It is conspicuous where Annabelle is anonymous, just another big, creaky truck. If we are lucky, they believe I am dead. They won’t find my body, but there are many reasons why that might be so. Perhaps jackals have devoured me, or starving children of the street. Perhaps I rolled or crawled, broken, to the road, and was flattened by a succession of buses. Maybe—and I am particularly proud of this one—my body has been washed into a storm drain and is slowly leaching into the city’s water.

“No,” says Elisabeth Soames, as I continue in this vein, “enough. Enough and more than enough.” Because I have been sharing these brilliant thoughts with her for several hours, and she has winced and gagged her way through quite some few of them in that time.

Humbert Pestle’s file had a map. Quite close to Haviland, innocuous and ordinary, there’s a side turning which looks like a farm track. Turn down it and follow it, and the track becomes a lane, and then a wide, lazy road. The buildings are signposted as a synthetic milk plant. This is Jorgmund Actual, where FOX is made (I haven’t told Elisabeth yet what I know about that, the darkest of Humbert Pestle’s secrets, the black coffins burning at Station 9), and the Pipe begins and ends. The head and tail of the serpent. It is where the Bey will be. It is more than that. It is where I must go, where everything will finish.

For the moment, though, we need a place which is known, where we can meet our allies, such as they are, and if they come. So I have called Flynn the Barman’s private number and rented a room (something I have never dared to do before, lest I overhear him and Mrs. Flynn romping on the pool table or making whoopee in the master suite) at the Nameless Bar.

The desert is very much the same as it was. Deserts do change, of course. They go through subtle alterations, become more arid or more lush, favour one sly, pink-eared animal or another. It’s just very hard to tell. Deserts are like a nearly bald man having a haircut. The difference is absolutely crucial from within, but to the rest of us it’s still a dusty scrubland with little in the way of plant life. Tonight it’s cold. There’s a fine mist and a wind off the mountains which smells of snow. By contrast, the smell of pigs, warm and bilious, wafts along the road to greet us.

THE NAMELESS BAR is quiet. Not silent, but not loud. There’s no chatter of conversation, no sound of glasses being clinked. The windows are clear and bright through the mist, but there’s little sign of people passing in front of them. I wonder whether it is empty. We made our calls on the way, from a rest stop by the main Pipe. The bar should be full. If no one has come, then this is over before it begins. Elisabeth presses lightly against me. I am not alone. She at least is here, and going nowhere. Two against an army. Fine. Then the door opens, and there are Sally and Jim. Then they fall back a little, and a smaller woman steps between them: Leah.

I couldn’t ask the Free Company to come here. I couldn’t tell them what was going on and expect them to believe me. So I wasn’t going to. Elisabeth Soames is made of tougher stuff. She knew exactly how to make it happen, who would listen to me, who owed me and would feel it. She called Leah, told her who she was, and that she was with me, and what was happening and what Gonzo was really doing and how he’d been set up. For good measure she told Ma Lubitsch the same story, and Ma Lubitsch has a soft spot for Elisabeth Soames, who she considers to be, despite the evidence that Elisabeth is an itinerant magician-revenger who lives in a pigeon loft, “a nice young girl from Crick-elvud Cowff and very vell brought up.” Ma Lubitsch bent Leah’s ear on one side and Elisabeth bent the other, and Old Man Lubitsch had to intervene so that Leah could say anything at all, and when she did it was very simple, and likely what she would have said before if she could have got a word in edgewise, which was: Yes.

So Sally and Jim were interrupted once again by visitors from our house—Gonzo’s house—though thankfully this time they were eating. Leah laid it out for them, and Jim rumbled and Sally stared, and then they got up and collected their emergency bags, the ones they have kept packed every day and night since Shangri-La, from just inside the bedroom door. Jim rubbed his bald, naked head and put a hat on, and all three of them went to round up Tommy Lapland and Samuel P., who were gadding about in some place very like Matchingham. These four dragged Tobemory Trent out of a wine-tasting, and Annie the Ox and Egon Schlender from a baby shower, and so it went on until they had the whole gang assembled and ready for the job at hand, although none of them knew precisely what that was.

Jim Hepsobah gives me a look from toe to top, and finds nothing to suggest that I am actually evil. If Leah trusts me; if Ma Lubitsch (who has had words with James V. Hepsobah on the subject of his tardiness regarding marriage) accepts me, that’s good enough for Jim. Sally is cooler. She is the backstop, the sniper, the plug-puller and the outer perimeter; being the deal-maker also makes her the deal-breaker in time of need. But even Sally nods to me shortly, and then the three of them bring me into the Nameless Bar, and I find myself in front of the people I know as well as I know anyone, and they have never met me before.

Annie the Ox is the first one I pick out of the crowd, her face serious and measured. She is actually holding a puppet head (I think it’s the elephant), which she does only on the most significant occasions. Seeing my gaze on the thing, she glances down and goes to hide it, then straightens and puts it firmly on the table in front of her. Make what you will, she says with her eyes, and I reply with mine very much the same.

Tobemory Trent, speaking of eyes, is watching from a bar stool. Long spider legs and rootish hands around a tankard, Trent looks more like himself than he ever has before. Or maybe I am just seeing him with my own eyes for the first time. And then the Free Company gives way to newer, stranger friends. Next to Trent is K (the shepherd, not the sarong-wearing original), who despite his tweeds might have been raised in the same house; he’s wearing an identical expression of patience and hanging thunder. Beyond K are several other Ks, well known and less so, and beyond them, a sea of mimish faces, expressionless beneath matching white make-up.

What the hell do you say? I ought to be getting better at it. “Hi, I’m . . . oh, bugger . . .” (Note to self: must get a name.) “And it’s really good to see you all here this evening, because . . .”

Lynch me now. It’ll be kinder. I clear my throat. Everyone looks at me. Whatever I was going to say sticks and then goes right out of my head. These people are going to risk everything for me, but I can’t give them as much as a greeting. I could weep, if I could make any sound at all.

The noise which saves me is quite possibly the most awful noise I have ever heard. It is a high scream of porcine affront, a vast, earsplitting yowl of shock and alarm which vibrates the glasses and rattles the windows. It sounds for all the world like murder in one of those old black-and-white mystery movies where the heroine’s chest was all covered up but could at least be brought to the viewer’s attention by some serious heaving, and many a career was made by impressive lungs.

Flynn the Barman leaps up and charges for the back door, which slams open to reveal a figure in a raincoat and a fanciful pirate’s hat.

“Sorry!” cries the apparition cheerfully. “K’s strong-eye dog has just terrorised your pigs and they seem to be running around in circles. The dogs are being hosed down; they got stuck in the wallow, which apparently upset the pigs even more. Still, no harm done, medals all round, not that pigs really care.”

Ike Thermite waves at everyone, even the mimes, who look back at him and think whatever thoughts mimes do think when considering the one of their number who is permitted speech. And behind Ike there is a small, disenchanted old man with leather skin and a fighter’s frame, weathered but undefeated, and possessed of a deep well of vile temper.

“Those are not pigs,” this person says firmly, “those are the gatekeepers of the Hell of Flying Shite. It is not enough that I have been dragged from acts of considerable obscenity in a place we shall not name with women whose sole object in life was to make my final years a great celebration of my dwindling sexual resources; I must also be showered in pig poo. Thus, we shall not discuss the charmingness of the day or the cool night breezes any more than we absolutely have to, Mr. Ike Thermite of the Matahuxee Mime Combine; we shall proceed to the main event, eftsoons and right speedily, with all due dispatch, lest I become bad-tempered and profane. Now,” he says, “where is this bumhole we’re so excited about?”

I step forward through the crowd, pushing people out of the way, and I hug him. His chest, beneath his flannel shirt, feels like metal plate covered in uncooked veal. Ronnie Cheung has aged well, but he has aged fully, and even stone is eroded by time and water. After a moment, he speaks.

“Bumhole,” he says, “you are standing on my corn.”

I HAVE made up my own five-step plan for public speaking, loosely adapted from Hellen Fust’s let’s-have-an-atrocity speech. It is intended to be brief, but as I start speaking I find that I have quite a lot to say and that all of it is relevant, so the story grows in the telling and the speech in the making, and Elisabeth spirits a glass of something sharp and wet from the bar to moisten my tongue.

I tell them who I am and where I come from; I tell them about Marcus Maximus Lubitsch and the foreign field, and Gonzo’s game and his sorrow, and about how he made a new friend. I tell them about getting shot. I do not look at Leah as I talk about the hard surface of the road. This is who I am, what I am. That’s all there is.

Then I go back in time and tell them things they already know about the Go Away War and the Reification, and how Zaher Bey gave shelter to a small group of desperate people, and fed them, and how we’d have died without him and his people, or maybe drowned in a sea of Stuff. We have a debt.

And because I cannot hold it in any longer, I tell them the last of Humbert Pestle’s awful secrets, the worm in the apple of the world. It goes like this:

Once upon a time there was a boy named Bobby Shank. Bobby was near-sighted and not too bright, but he had good intentions and an empty bank account, so it came to him that he might do worse than sign up for a tour with the forces. He was a lousy shot, but he had a strong back and a willing heart, and he was good-natured and maybe a bit too stupid to be scared. He dug earthworks in Addeh Katir and toiled and tramped and carried things back and forth until Riley Tench assigned him permanently to the medical corps. And finally he happened to be in a certain street in a combat zone mostly by accident when his own side started shelling the place and a big, improbable window shattered, and the fragments flew about like rainbow insects with scalpel wings.

One of those fragments hit Bobby Shank in the head. It was not thick, but it was long and very sharp, and because it struck dead on, the force of the blow was transmitted along the length of it and it behaved much as if it had been a spear. It penetrated Bobby’s skull and went into his brain, where it broke into several pieces which each performed distinct and unlikely surgery. The first one deflected upward and partially severed Bobby Shank’s higher functions from the rest of his brain. Bobby couldn’t actually see anything any more, not in real time. He could look at something and remember having seen it, tell you all about it. But he was not, for example, going to be playing any football anytime soon. Similarly, he couldn’t smell either, but he could recall smells from about a minute ago, and at the moment what he could mostly smell was blood, which he rightly deduced was his own. He tried to scream, but this proved impossible because the second piece had deflected off the skull and gone sort of up-left, arriving at Broca’s area, which deals with speech, and turning it instantly into porridge. Bobby’s mouth began making sounds, long strings of word-like noises. The third piece was either the cruellest or the kindest, depending on how bleak you take your mercy. It went into his brainstem, occasionally dropping Bobby Shank into total unconsciousness, and was working slowly inward so that he would eventually die. Bobby was a stretcherman. Tobemory Trent should probably have declared him dead-at-scene, but he didn’t because stretchermen didn’t get left behind, not ever.

After a few days they shipped Bobby Shank back home and he lay in a hospital, drifting in and out of the world. They tried using ultrasound on the third piece of glass, because otherwise he was going to die anyway, and they broke it up real good, along with the other pieces they’d sort of hoped to leave well alone. That turned out to be a mixed blessing, because the shards went into the part of him which had long term memories and took a lot of them away. Bobby Shank forgot that he had a name, he just lived in the last five minutes. In a way it was a success, because now he’d never been anything other than what he was, a kind of dream of white walls and nice smells, slowly decohering and fading away, until Bobby was a short circuit, just a brain registering what was in front of him, and not really being aware of itself at all. He smiled more and swore less, which was nice.

And then the lights went out, and half the city was swallowed by a very large Go Away Bomb, and the machines switched off, and Bobby Shank got hungry. He crawled out into the street. I figure it must have taken him about an hour to make it that far, maybe a little more if he got knocked out or distracted by the pretty patterns on the first-floor carpet. Where he thought he was going, or even if he understood that he was moving at all, I have no idea.

Bobby Shank, who didn’t know that he was Bobby Shank, crawled along Hornchurch Street, looking for pancakes. He could smell them, and while he didn’t remember them, some part of him knew that was what he wanted. A miracle, he found them. He crawled into the living room of a lady named Edith MacIntyre, and when she’d finished screaming at this hairy wreck of a human life and realised that he was a gentle, suffering thing, she fed him very slowly and rocked him, because her family were all missing and more than likely Gone Away.

Over time, Edith MacIntyre’s home became a hostel and a meeting place. Travellers drifted in and stayed for a few days, and talked to one another around Edith’s big old breakfast table, and they worked for their keep or paid in food. It was warm and safe, and what remained of Bobby Shank liked it very much indeed. He stayed—not that he was in any shape to run away—and he sat in a chair on the veranda and got monstrously fat.

The storms came to Edith MacIntyre’s place that winter, and a lot of people got turned into something strange, and a lot of houses were surrounded by chimeras and talking dogs. Half-imagined food stank in the gutters and spiders like fists skittered across roads made of gold and mud and ice. But nothing happened to Edith MacIntyre’s house. When the storms came down, the Stuff trickled through the roof and into the living room, and when it fell to the floor it was water, or dust. Anywhere near Bobby Shank, Stuff just became like whatever he was looking at. Because Bobby Shank couldn’t imagine anything else. He didn’t have desires or dreams. He just had what was in front of him, and precious little of that.

And then one morning a man with a most unfortunate name chanced to come by and rest up with Edith MacIntyre. When he saw Bobby Shank, it was like he was looking at the face of God. He was hearing the music, he said. Edith MacIntyre didn’t like this man very much, with his great bear shoulders and too-loud laugh. She’d had a husband like that, back in the day, and he’d been a bastard too.

A week later Humbert Pestle came back and stole Bobby Shank away, and Edith MacIntyre never saw him again. She worried about him, but after a little while she was too busy with the business of staying alive to think about it.

The station on the Jorgmund Pipe consisted of Humbert Pestle and Bobby Shank and an old sewage pump, working in a little place called Aldony. It didn’t take long before they were ready to expand. Bobby could turn as much Stuff into anti-Stuff (Humbert Pestle didn’t have a catchy name for it yet) as you could bring within a few feet of him. It didn’t have to be there for more than a second. It just touched Bobby’s tattered remnant of a mind and changed right away. And that was fine for a few months. He found the Clockwork Hand again—or they found him, the fifty or so who were still alive—and he had the beginnings of an empire. All good. Until Jorgmund got a bit bigger, and Humbert Pestle had to go looking for more like Bobby Shank. That was harder than it seemed. Very specific, strange things had happened to Bobby Shank. Humbert had to make do with approximations.

He found a woman in Bridgeport who’d been in a coma for twenty years. She was no use. Her brain didn’t do anything at all.

He found a kid from Belfistry who’d broken his neck. That was a disaster. The kid made monsters and houris and terrible, giant slugs. They flickered and raged and then vanished again; his mind was all over the place.

He found an elderly man from the Punjab who was afflicted with some manner of disease. This person was quite promising until blood came out of his nose and he died. Humbert Pestle had to keep looking, but wherever he looked, he couldn’t find another Bobby Shank. So he looked into his heart and listened to the music, and he knew what he had to do. He had to make people like Bobby Shank. After all, this was for the future of the human race.

At first he used bandits. There were plenty of them, ordinary people gone savage and angry, preying on those who’d stuck it out and living, like Ruth Kemner and her gang, in ghastly halls which stank of executions and stale beer. He got fifteen like that. Some of them he just locked away until the EEG readings went like Bobby’s. Others he did things to, sharp, messy things. They didn’t last long, not like Bobby, but they worked. They produced. But not fast enough. The new towns were springing up faster than he could increase his production.

That’s when he went to Heyerdahl Point with the whole of the Clockwork Hand, and turned it into Drowned Cross.

He took the people of Drowned Cross, and he worked on them until he had five hundred Bobby Shanks in five hundred black boxes with hoses coming out. They still didn’t last very long, but they lasted long enough. And when they were all used up, he took another town, and then another. Most recently, he took Templeton. Soon enough, he’ll take another one. That’s how Jorgmund saves the world. It uses people up. Feeds the princess to the dragon.

I tell them all this, and I tell them that I’m going to stop it. I don’t know how I can do it without them but I will, because I care about Gonzo and I care about the Bey and I care about those however many poor broken people in boxes. I don’t care if I am a monster, if what I am is the opposite of what they are. I won’t sit by. No, no, no, no, no.

My hand is hurting because I have been hitting the bar for emphasis. I don’t recall deciding to do that. I look down at it because it is throbbing. And then I look up at the sea of faces, and no one says a word. God. I’ve completely blown it. They think I’m totally insane. They despise me. It’s a bust. I’m sorry, everyone, I have completely screwed the pooch.

Ronnie Cheung raises one hand to shoulder height, and then he drops it, hard, onto the table next to him. The ashtray jumps. He raises his hand again, and brings it down. Ike Thermite follows suit, and Elisabeth, and Leah, and then Jim and Sally and Tobemory Trent, and Baptiste Vasille is shaking his fist and shouting something in French, and the thrumming roar of sound washes over me like an ocean. They do not hate me. They are not laughing.

They are applauding.

I did something right.

SAMUEL P. is lying on his stomach on my left side, and I can smell him. It’s surprisingly pleasant. Because he is wearing a frame of foliage on his body and pretending to be a small tree, Sam’s body odour is essentially grass and soil, with just a whiff of bracken. Beneath that, there’s a bass note of armpit, which I try to ignore. Any smell like that contains small bits of actual skin, and I don’t want to think about having Samuel P.’s pits in my lungs. But funky though he is, Sam is very good at this kind of thing—“this kind of thing” being your professional-grade sneaking.

On my other side is Elisabeth Soames, wearing her ninja outfit again, partly because it’s suited to sneaking and partly because it might afford the enemy some confusion if we get caught and she’s wearing one of their uniforms. I’m wearing mine, with a pair of decent shoes. The last-ditch plan is to pretend that we’re escorting a prisoner, then cause mayhem. Elisabeth Soames pointed out that this didn’t work well in Star Wars and can reasonably be expected to fail in the real world, which is somewhat more demanding in the field of cunning plans, and Samuel P. tried very hard to pretend he hadn’t been thinking of Star Wars when he proposed it. The trouble is that although it’s a lousy last-ditch plan, it is also our only last-ditch plan.

The rest of the plan is quite good, and if it works the way it is supposed to, we will do very well, and we won’t need the lousy part. On the other hand, it almost certainly won’t work like that, because plans don’t. It will twist, creep, change, swivel and mutate, until finally we’re flying on sheer bravado and chutzpah, and hoping the other guy thinks it’s all accounted for. You don’t make strategy so that there’s one path to victory; you make it so that as many paths as possible lead to something which isn’t loss. At least you do unless you want to die.

In broad-brush terms (because the minutiae are surprisingly boring), Jim Hepsobah and Annie the Ox will lead a small body of the Free Company (temporarily re-militarised, and therefore referred to by one and all as the Uncivil Freebooting Company) up to the main gate and blow it up. This will draw a considerable amount of negative attention in the form of people shooting at them (the guards here are soldiers rather than ninjas, although they may also be or include ninjas, because that’s rather the point about being a secret assassin; you don’t go around telling everyone) and cause those in charge of the facility to pay closer attention to the main entrance and somewhat less to a small area of fence at the side where Samuel P. and I, along with Elisabeth Soames, will be doing our sneaking. The frontal attack will withdraw into the treeline, sucking in pursuers who will run into certain obstacles and quite a lot more members of the Free Company. This diversionary force will then coax the enemy away from us and into a bizarre world which will almost certainly cause them to doubt their sanity.

On the far side from our position, K (the fat one) and his circus of history have deployed such of their son et lumière as can be used out of doors to create chaos and confusion, something K is by nature extremely good at. The forested hillside will be covered in wacky mirrors, enormous jack-in-the-boxes and automated pie-throwers loaded with bags of chilli powder (inhaled or just drifting into your eyes, this is almost guaranteed to cause agony and incapacitation). There will also be Indian runner ducks in vast quantity, and some recently acquired geese with foul tempers. The sheepdogs, Hbw and Mnwr, cannot be permitted to join the fun in case they get shot (also because Hbw would probably develop a taste for disembowelling and Mnwr would instantly defect). This is called “making full use of all resources,” and comes under the subheading “ludicrous crap which may or may not work, but which we know about and they don’t.” Amid the fun, however, there will be a wrinkled and foul-tempered unarmed combat instructor with years of experience in making people wish they were dead. Ronnie Cheung has specifically requested this assignment on the basis that it is a job for a mean-minded and obnoxious person of questionable moral character.

Less far-fetched, the panoramic backdrops from Ike Thermite’s stage show have been erected randomly around the place under cover of night, repainted and positioned to appear to be or to conceal local landmarks. The big generator (usually used to light the circus) has been set up to emit broad-spectrum squawks which will make radio triangulations almost impossible. Since there is no longer a GPS network (satellites did not respond well to the reallocation of mass and gravity occasioned by the Go Away War, and quite some number of them drifted away or fell to earth), this should blind our enemy quite effectively, at least for a while. K’s people and the mimes themselves will be several miles away at go-hour, providing medical support for anyone who can be got out to them, and creating the appearance that we are all elsewhere by means of sequential costume changes.

With Humbert Pestle’s security forces thus distracted, we will enter the compound, rendezvous with the remaining members of the Free Company (under the leadership of Tobemory Trent, Tommy Lapland and Baptiste Vasille) and free the remaining undamaged prisoners from Templeton (the file says there are seventy-one, a tiny fraction of the initial population, but that doesn’t make them not worth worrying about), locate the Bey and inform him of his peril, nab Gonzo and get them all out before Humbert Pestle can change into his evil pyjamas and come a-hunting. Ideally, when Humbert does shed his jolly japester-cum-corporate-silverback guise and get serious, he will have to come out of the building he is in, at which point Sally Culpepper will shoot him. This last was not Ronnie Cheung’s suggestion but mine, because for all that Master Wu might not approve, I don’t have the right to be squeamish about it when other people are risking their lives for me. Ronnie, however, made a sort of approving noise through his nose as if to say it was more sensible than he would have expected from a bumhole like me, especially an imaginary bumhole with a talent for seeing both sides of the fight.

It’s not a bad plan. It has the benefit of simplicity, coupled with some elements which are unconventional (ducks, for example, are not often part of a covert intrusion and extraction scenario, and nor are pie-throwers). I could wish for more, but this is what we have to work with. Improvised mayhem has a long and chequered heritage going back to the time when weapons did not come with user’s manuals, and a stick for herding goats was just as often a stick for beating your neighbour to death with if he looked at you funny. The fact that some of our weapons are weird and silly doesn’t mean they won’t work. We hope.

I look across at Elisabeth Soames. She looks back. I am afraid for her. I don’t want to see any of the things which may shortly happen happen to her. I have not insulted her by asking her to remain behind. Even if she weren’t at least as capable as I am, she loved Wu Shenyang very much, and while most people here are concentrating on the other awful things Humbert Pestle has done, I know that in her mind the destruction of that over-stuffed cosy house and all the amazing things in it—the wind-up gramophone, the ugly porcelain ornaments, the ancient Buddhas and the awful yet splendid weapons on the walls, the photographs, and worst of all Master Wu himself—is as high and fresh a crime as all the others.

She takes my hand and squeezes it.

There’s a pale, slender moon shining down on the buildings below, making them look clean and soft. Jorgmund Actual is huge. It’s adapted from one of Piper 90’s cousins and set deep into the ground. Down there is a well, a cauldron of FOX waiting to be pumped out under pressure, filled all the time from the manufactory a hundred yards to the west. (I can’t think about FOX any more without shuddering. Time was when it gave me a warm glow. Now I feel sick.) The Pipe emerges from the station like a huge worm, bending at right angles and burrowing immediately into the hillside. That’s not where we need to be. Our first stop is the main control centre, two buildings over (looks like a shoebox; even has the little rim a third of the way down the side). I look at Samuel P. and he nods, mouths a countdown. I look back at Elisabeth, and she smiles fiercely then apologetically lets go of my hand. I miss her immediately.

The night explodes.

. . .

I RUN low, like the hunchback. There are no bells to lament, but there are whistles, klaxons and people shouting, and also small-arms discharges and things going b-boom! Jorgmund Actual is on fire. Hah! Payback is good. I zigzag like Ben Carsville, and Elisabeth and Sam zigzag around me. We are a fishball, a confusing shadow. We are invisible. Then someone sends up a flare or uses some kind of phosporus weapon, and everything is like day. Disaster. We’re completely exposed, trying to disappear behind a shrub the size of a television set. I wait for the chatter of guns and the inevitable pain. I know, courtesy of Gonzo, what it is like to get shot. And now I am real enough to die. I wish I had had a chance to take Elisabeth to dinner and eat bruschetta. Please, dear Lord. Tomatoes and basil, and plenty of green olive oil. A prayer for the antipasti.

Nothing happens. There’s no one looking, or they’re stupid, or they were blinded by the flare. Maybe the ninja outfits are working in our favour. It doesn’t matter. We survive.

The fighting moves away from the main gate, and from us, and redoubles. There’s a loud sound, a joyful cry of “HELLO, THERRRE!” and then startled, undisciplined gunfire; the first jack-in-the-box has been set off and the guards are starting to realise that they are in for a very strange evening indeed. Another flare goes up, and I can see the jack peeping out of the trees and wobbling, to and fro, before someone hits it with a grenade. Then there are screams—not of serious injury, but of alarm and pain. Chilli powder in the wind. Somewhere, right about now, Ronnie Cheung is kicking someone sharply in the unmentionables, and the geese are being whipped into a frenzy.

In my head the map from Humbert Pestle’s file. This is Hut 1. It contains machine parts. As we pass by, I kick the door in. This is part of the plan: we won’t be able to avoid triggering alarms as we move through the compound, so we are going to trigger all of them. If you can’t be silent, you hide yourself in a forest of sound. I glance inside the hut: machine parts. So far, so good.

Samuel P. falls flat on his face. He becomes a bush amid the flowers (this is a corporate facility; at some point it has been landscaped just a little). Elisabeth and I flatten ourselves against the wall. A guard. Two. Professionals then, to ignore the grand kerfuffle going on beyond the fence on the other side of the enclosure (do they believe they are guarding a synthetic milk plant?) and carry on with their rounds. They are wary, but they are not looking for a commando rhododendron. They walk past Sam. He rises silently behind them. A man falls. The other turns, and Elisabeth hits him in the side of the neck, once, twice, three times, catches him as he goes down. She is gentle. I envy him just a little. We put them both in Hut 1, amid the spares. It’s fine if they wake up and make a ruckus, as long as they do it in three minutes, not right now. It’ll add to the fun.

Past Hut 7 and across the roundabout (more flowers). Jorgmund Actual is dressed up as the main office of Lactopolis Inc., glossy and dressed in pink and baby blue, with modern glass. Very corporate. Very ironic. I’m not laughing. The building is large—huge even. Parked boldly in front is a familiar maroon Rolls-Royce. The Bey. We look at one another, shift up another gear. The hardest part will be inside.

Ahead of us four guards, well-armed, armoured. They disappear as we draw close: Vasille’s team is faster than we are. He waves. Baptiste Vasille is totally delighted with this situation. Typical Frenchman. (In the hills around the plant another Jack goes up: “IIIIII’M JACK-OOOO!” and then a boom and more chilli powder, and furious ducks and geese. Strobe lights, shouting, confusion.)

The accommodation block, for visiting milk executives. The glass is armoured and the doors are locked (as expected). Vasille’s group has a circular saw to cover this situation. The noise is very loud, a shrieking, grinding wail. On the other side of the enclosure Tobemory Trent’s team sets something on fire and more alarms go off to cover us. Perfect synchrony. We go inside. A guard arrives at a run, and one of Vasille’s men shoots him in the head. He is the first person I know we have killed, and I feel bad about it. Gonzo wouldn’t. Gonzo is a secret soldier, a pro. Perhaps that’s part of what I was to him: the luxury of regret. The guard doesn’t bleed very much; the bullet is still in his head. He leaks.

Past the lobby everything is calmer. The floor is made of marble. There’s a fountain, and some very stylish seats in artful circles around coffee tables. A row of very old bonsai trees rest under glass. This place is expensive. Five-star. I feel underdressed—a terrible faux pas. At any moment the maître d’ will arrive and request that I retire to my room and change into something more suitable. Not relevant. I shake my head to clear it, follow Elisabeth. (I worry all the same: unease of any kind is a warning. No matter that the fear was spurious. The warning is not. Something is wrong.) Samuel P. leads us down a service corridor.

Hallways and stairs and endless lounges with upmarket carpets. The diversion is working—the guards are elsewhere or not paying attention, or other things less pleasant. First floor. Second. Third. (Something is wrong. I don’t know what it is. Something about the guards.) Guest accommodation. Vasille opens one door after another on the left, Samuel P. the right. No. Nothing. Keep moving—next set of doors. Find the Bey. No. No. No again. (Something missing. Something wrong. Guards but not guards. Booby traps? No. Not that. No pussy willow. Use your nose . . . no. Not that. But something is wrong.)

Samuel P. slams open a door and there are five of them, big lads with guns. Two of them are sitting. Vasille dives into the room, they all fall together in a huddle. His men pile in after, a Belgian and a Spaniard, all flying fists and arms. We follow. It’s a short fight. I don’t even hit anyone, just duck and then my opponent is gone. Not hard. Easy. (Too easy. These men are competent but no more. They are soldiers. Humbert Pestle has had no hand in their training. Too easy. I wait for the shoe to drop. It doesn’t.) I look at Elisabeth. She knows. Her eyes are lit with nervous energy. Not fear but anticipation. The hard part is yet to come. She knocks on the main door.

“Hello?”

The door opens a crack. Zaher Bey, greyer, leaner and warier, in a bathrobe. And then it flies open and he whoops, and does a little dance, and Vasille is shushing him and saying now’s not the time, mordieu! But the Bey is prancing around Vasille.

It’s been so long, so long, so long! How good to see you. Oh, yes, of course, quite right, I shall be totally silent, silent like the mouse, or better! Hah! The flea which whispers past the mouse’s eagle eye (if such a thing he can be said to possess, being a mouse and not an eagle): in either case the epitome of stealth. What? When? Immediately! Now! . . . Oh, yes, I see. Indeed. Shshsh . . .

He is quiet at last, or rather he is for a moment, then murmurs that we should probably go. I have made something of an error of judgement, yes, indeed. Of trust . . . And then his eye is upon me, and he peers, and sees . . . something. I extend my hand. He takes it, and there is familiarity for us both.

“Zaher Bey,” he says, probing.

“We’ve met,” I tell him, “but you wouldn’t remember; it was a long time ago.”

Zaher Bey holds on to my hand, feels the grip like a butcher with a joint, then his eyes take in my shoulders and my stance, my expression. He pushes against me, and I yield, soft-form style. “Ah!” he says. He draws me back the other way, turns his body, and I follow, butterfly-light. Our hands move a few inches, no more. He stares. “Yes. I see. I see, I see. I am an idiot that I didn’t see it before, when he came. You are he and he is you and neither of you is who you were . . .” He smiles at my dismay. “Years with the Found Thousand. One becomes used to recognising the new.”

Which is as far as we get before Vasille and Samuel P. slap an armoured coat upon him and remove his bathrobe (white is not a good colour for escaping). The Bey is revealed in a pair of strikingly elegant silk pyjamas, handily maroon (to match his Rolls-Royce, no doubt), which is the next best thing to black at night. In these rooms, with their lush mahoganies, he will blend in even better than we do. Success, stage one. (But still something is wrong.)

Back down to the main level (lots of stairs again, the Bey surprisingly spry, good for him; we’re all panting. Damn, you have to be in good shape for this stuff. I’m sweating. Samuel P. smells like one enormous groin. It’s the thing which limits his effectiveness in special operations: you can always find him if you know how. On the other hand, on longer missions he starts to smell like a jungle cat, carnivore breath and matted fur. He blends right in, as long as he’s in a jungle or on a plain. In an office block, less good.

“Where’s Gonzo?”

The Bey doesn’t know. He was brought here, then imprisoned. There was a big man with an easy laugh and eyes like a porcelain doll, perfect and empty. Pestle. (Where is Pestle? I can’t hear the fighting outside any longer—does that mean we’ve won? Or lost? Is Jim Hepsobah in a cell, or dead? I glance at my watch. Fourteen minutes to the hour. When the big hand hits twelve, the generator will be switched off; we will have radios for one minute. Preset signals will be exchanged to signify the state of play. Or they won’t, if we’re already screwed. (We’re not. Not yet. I don’t think. But we’re walking a ledge. Something, somewhere . . . Damn. Crispin Hoare told me that—among Pont’s other impossible tricks of genius—was the ability to remember great sequences of numbers, letters, words, playing cards, names . . . anything. And when he couldn’t remember, he didn’t say “I can’t remember,” he said “The information is coming to me now” and snapped his fingers, because that created positive reinforcement and you remembered. I try a variation. I know what’s wrong . . . Now. Except that, annoyingly, I don’t. Also, I have slapped myself on the forehead like a five-year-old. Everyone looks at me.)

“Nothing . . .”

Marvellous.

Swiftly down the main hall to the back, out of the fire doors. Open space and yes, there are fireworks still going off. I glance at the time: twelve minutes to the hour. Fine. Keep moving. The fire at the gate is out. The noise of geese is diminished. The ducks have apparently either run away or been shot. Samuel P. takes the Bey away—escape now, one objective achieved. The Bey argues but not much. This isn’t his show, it’s ours, and he’s not in a position to know the score. Good. One less thing to worry about.

We kick open the door and go into Generation Centre 1. And stop.

This is the house that Humbert built. It is a huge room filled with regular, dark shapes, and each of those shapes is an isolation cylinder, a special life-support system for one person who has been broken on the wheel of Humbert Pestle’s destiny. I look, and I see four rows of five, set apart from the rest. And then I look again, and I see that each dark shape in the middle distance is in fact a group like this one. Hoses and pumps, dials and buttons. This is a place where people feed the machine. In the great colony-organism that is Jorgmund, this is the gas bag that keeps the whole thing afloat, and strong. These are the Vanished, in boxes. This is the sacrifice which keeps the world the way we’d like it to be, allows us to ignore the changes we have wrought. It’s like tying a virgin to a rock. The dragon takes her and goes away, and set against the fate of a nation, what’s one virgin here or there? Nothing. A black box with a light on, and the slow, gasping wheeze of a ventilator for the ones who can’t breathe by themselves. Vvvv . . . gaahhh . . . Vvvv . . . gaahhh . . . Otherwise, it’s quiet.

This is not what we came for. We have to go through this. Six minutes to the hour. We walk. Vvv . . . gaahhh. Every so often there’s a shudder as one of the dreamers kicks and shakes—autonomic reaction, spasm of old muscle. Maybe a heart attack. None of them perceives the world any more. None of them knows anything other than the grey interior walls of their coffins. A big hose brings Stuff from a pool or a lake, or a reservoir. The Stuff rolls past them, and changes into FOX. And Royce Allen’s clients live the good life. We all do. Most of these people will die in the next six weeks. The remainder will carry on for as much as a year, then one day they’ll just shut down and Humbert will throw them away like so many used gearboxes.

“Don’t get too close,” Elisabeth murmurs. “That’s still Stuff in there.” If we get too close, we might upset the process, make something instead of FOX. Could be good, could be bad. Isn’t in the plan. Leave it. We’ll do something for these people, though. Something. If we can. (If I get close to the Stuff, will I make something which would show me what’s bothering me? Pass on. Not worth the risk. Pass on.)

I pass on.

We trot down the main avenue between the boxes full of people, and we emerge into a place which isn’t quite as bad. Metal doors, stone walls, strip lighting. Guards on the floor. Holding cells. Tommy Lap land applauds from a chair by the guards’ room.

“Did you get him?”

“We got the Bey.”

“Gonzo?”

“No.”

Tommy nods. Bad news, but expected. Gonzo is deeper in. Of course.

“Seventy people in the cells. Trent’s taking them out the way you came in.”

The radio pops to life. On the hour. Jim Hepsobah:

“Rustic.” That means Jim’s alive and well. “Flambeau.” All proceeding smoothly. “Islington.” No sign of Humbert Pestle. The others respond. All according to plan. (No sign of Pestle. No sign of Gonzo. I hope that’s coincidence. I doubt that it is.) Jim Hepsobah says “Dolphin,” which means “Find Gonzo or don’t, but get out soon.” And then the radio goes flat again. The generator is back online.

Baptiste Vasille shrugs. It’s very much a French shrug. It says “Well, what did you expect?” and it says it in a way which suggests the world is essentially English, and hence a bit awkward and silly.

“Control Centre,” Vasille says.

Yes. Of course. On the map it is marked as a second building like this one, with an operations room controlling every aspect of the facility and the super-secure offices of management. The holdfast within the fortress. Pestle’s file says the warehouse part is empty—not enough donors (this is the term he uses for his victims, very sanitary, very voluntary) to fill it right now.

In ten minutes Jim Hepsobah will switch off the generator and pull everyone out. Sally Culpepper will put away her long gun and give up on the Pestlehunt, and we will run and hide and claim to have been drunk in a bar all night, and it was two other fellas and anyway they hit me first. We have exactly that long to get in and out. Vasille and Tommy Lapland grin. It can’t be done. We’ve done it before. Just like old times.

We go do it.

THE BAD ELF of disaster is riding my shoulder as we get to the big doors. It is screaming in my ear as we go through them. Too easy, too fast, too inviting. I think of Professor Derek’s architectural traps at the old Project Albumen, and I wonder if we will just be frozen or melted, rendered down and sluiced away. It is dark inside, and quiet. Not quiet like empty. Not even trying. Quiet like expectant, like waiting for the show.

The lights come on.

And there, in front of me, is exactly what’s wrong.

Ninjas.

In all this time I haven’t seen a single ninja. Now I know why: they were all here. Waiting. Row upon row upon row. It never occurred to me there might be so many of them. In front of them is Humbert Pestle, in a pair of casual slacks and a white shirt looking every inch a gentleman. And yes, of course, beside him is Gonzo, proud, stupid and only now waking up to the possibility that something is seriously messed up. Only now, as two more ninjas bring in Zaher Bey, and behind us the refugees from Templeton are herded through the doors, sad and afraid and totally at a loss, to have salvation stolen away from them at this last instant. Idiot plan. Idiot me. All my fault. All Gonzo’s too, but he’s still catching up, so I can carry the can for us both. He turns to Humbert Pestle, and a brief conversation takes place which I cannot hear but which goes approximately like this:

Gonzo: What are they all doing here?

Humbert: Rescuing you, among other things. Sweet, isn’t it?

Gonzo: (heroic) I do not understand. I am a strong man and a stout warrior, but I am a bear of very little brain and long words confuse me.

Humbert: Idiot.

Gonzo: Release my friends and we’ll say no more about it.

Humbert: No. Look, you’re not getting this, are you? I am . . . evil! Yes! Eeee-vil! Bwah-hahaha!

Gonzo’s face at this moment is a picture. If the situation were not so dire, I would frame it. I want to nod. Yes, Gonzo. He is a monster. Yes, he has betrayed you. Yes, all of this and worse yet—everyone else saw it coming a hundred miles away. Then Humbert Pestle gestures, and they bring in Leah. She looks unharmed and not in mourning but very cross. Thus, a trick. Leah has been decoyed here. Gonzo needs you, come at once! Ma and Old Man Lubitsch left safe at home, saved up in case more leverage is needed.

If I were still inside Gonzo’s head, this tactic would work admirably. I would doubt and dither, and the moment would be lost. But Gonzo Lubitsch, in pure form, does not do stand-off. He moves straight from shock to attack, so quickly that even Pestle is surprised. Gonzo’s fists strike him, hard and fast, and they do not stop. Elbow, knee, knee, knee . . . It is a pounding, a ceaseless assault. Pestle gags. Gonzo strikes again, and again. The ninjas do not move. I don’t understand . . . I do understand. This too is part of the evening’s entertainment. They were expecting it. Leah was not brought to restrain Gonzo. She was brought to provoke him. And because, like the rest of us, she has defied the machine and must die.

Pestle’s head comes up sharply as if he has been woken from a sound sleep and only now realises that he’s being attacked. There’s blood on his face. Gonzo hits him in the nose, and it breaks, in as much as there’s anything left of it to break. Pestle shakes snot and spit, dyed red, from his mouth, and rolls the next punch off like a dog shedding a cobweb. Then he hits back. Gonzo blocks. He puts his whole body into it, hard style, turning as he does so. Wallop. They lock like that for a second, eye to eye, and then Gonzo bounces away as Pestle’s heavy hand reaches for his head. It’s his right hand, of course, so big that Humbert Pestle could actually grab Gonzo and hold him the way I’d hold an orange. Bambambam. More blows, Gonzo like a dervish, striking the upper body. Pestle grins again, smacks Gonzo in turn. Ow. Gonzo staggers back, kicks out, Pestle slips the kick, and around it goes. The ninjas watch without speaking. They’ve seen this dance before, and they’re not interested. Hard form versus hard form. Pestle is bigger and stronger. Sure, he’s old. He’s not that old.

The end comes a moment later. Gonzo and Pestle are bound up together, straining and barging. It looks much less scientific than it is. Then Gonzo breaks a bit too slowly, and Pestle yells with delight and brings his huge, clubbed hand around in a mighty arc for Gonzo’s head. Gonzo throws up his arms to ward it off, and turns into the punch to punish it.

Two sharp snaps, and Gonzo goes white. His arms are broken between the elbow and the wrist. Pestle kicks him and he sprawls away, gasping. Man down.

And then he turns to us. Me, Elisabeth, Tommy Lapland, Baptiste Vasille. A second later Vasille is wearing a row of spikes in his arms and legs. He sinks down, groaning. Tommy Lapland falls to the floor at the same moment. A thrown billy club clatters to the ground beside him. Leaving just us two.

Pestle walks towards us. The ninjas straighten a little, pay attention. We’re the main event. Killing us, in fact, is the main event. Pestle is fifteen feet away and grinning hungrily. He’s looking from me to Elisabeth as if he can’t decide where to start.

I smell something.

I feel better.

It’s ludicrous.

I’m going to die but I don’t mind because I smell something which reminds me of good times. What is that? Then Elisabeth smells it too—and her face goes absolutely still. And suddenly she grins, wide. A tiger’s grin. Humbert Pestle, stalking towards us, stops in his tracks.

Greasepaint.

The refugees behind us look a lot less grey and wan than they used to. They look almost avid. Around their eyes and lips they have traces of white make-up, and they are wearing black, in fact they are wearing black polo necks, with a few overcoats and things thrown in. Not refugees at all. Substitutes. Ringers. The Matahuxee Mime Combine. And then a figure steps from their midst, slender and sprightly.

“Hello,” says Ike Thermite. “My name is Ike Thermite.” He smiles. “And we,” he adds, “are the School of the Voiceless Dragon.”

HUMBERT PESTLE roars something furious which sounds like “No” and charges towards us. His huge, dreadful fist thunders at my head. And Ike Thermite’s narrow fingers brush it to one side and his shoulder hits Humbert Pestle and drives him back, and all around us the Matahuxee Mime Combine are making a fighting wedge, a slender knife where each person supports and protects the next, and the ninjas are having a really bad day. The students of Wu Shenyang have a great deal of pent-up aggression, and while they don’t generally believe in that sort of thing, they are prepared to make an exception today in honour of the Clockwork Hand and most especially those who burned Master Wu alive in his own home. Of course, no one knows exactly who those people were, so they’re content to assume that the person they are presently hitting very hard was solely responsible. Elisabeth Soames dives for the steps leading up to Leah Lubitsch, and a second later it rains unwary members of the Hand. I look for Gonzo. It’s like one of those movies where a hundred bad guys attack the hero one at a time; the only danger is that he may get out of breath hitting them. I am liquid. I am steel. I hit people.

There’s a guy with a pole. He thrusts it at me. I slide past it, and he tries to use the broad side. I roll under it. He twists. I twist too. He flies past me, and now I have the pole. I glower at him. Run away, little man. I am on a job here, saving a friend. If I weren’t, we’d be pursuing that conversation in terms you would not enjoy.

He decides to fight someone else. I glance around.

Down by the door, four ninjas pursuing Zaher Bey find themselves confronted with a prune-faced bloke aged about a hundred and nine. They laugh at him. Ronnie Cheung turns on his heel and drops his trousers to expose his ugly, wrinkled arse. The ninjas freeze. It isn’t just the sheer gall of this action; Ronnie Cheung’s arse is a startling sight, and where it cleaves there are suggestions of unspeakable mysteries, hirsute awfulnesses best left unexamined. Ronnie smiles over one shoulder at the ninjas, removes his left leg from his trousers, and kicks the nearest one in the throat. Then another. The third and fourth realise their mistake and rush him. Ronnie kicks up with his other leg, wraps his trousers around the head of the smaller one, and drags him down into the path of the other. Then his bare leg scythes onto the fallen guy’s head and it breaks open. The fourth ninja tries to run away, and Ronnie punches him in the back. The ninja lies on the ground, thrashing.

I decide I can safely leave Zaher Bey with Ronnie for the time being and turn back to the fight.

Ike Thermite is going toe to toe with Humbert Pestle. Pestle is impervious; Ike is untouchable. It’s a draw. Master Wu obviously didn’t teach him any Secret Internal Alchemies either. I had this crazy hope, for a moment.

Ike hits Humbert with a combination. It’s a blinder. Pestle takes it in his stride, and Ike has to dodge fast and low. He’s in terrific shape. He can’t do this for ever. Sooner or later, something has to give.

Something does. Humbert Pestle lashes out, and Ike Thermite is slow. He absorbs the blow, flies across the room and lands in a heap. Pestle follows, smashing through the fight around him as if it were a garden hedge. One mime and one ninja are clubbed to the ground. He doesn’t care. He wants Ike. He stands over him and slowly raises his left hand up, his right on Ike’s head. In a moment he will exchange the two, palm for fist, and Ike will break open and die. Pestle’s shoulders ripple as he begins the strike.

Someone hits him with a broom handle.

It’s a very ordinary broom handle. It’s light and strong and not a terribly frightening thing. It breaks on his head like balsa. Pestle drops Ike and turns around, wrath-of-God slow. Scary as hell.

It’s only as I glance down at the fractured broom in my hands that I realise who was dumb enough and brave enough to do the deed.

Oh bugger.

Dodge. Twist. I am air. I step, skip, shuffle. Elvis Walk (defensive, agile) becomes Lorenz Palace Step (random directions making up a usable pattern of attack), and on and on. My hands blur and slap, stroke and twist. Humbert Pestle lunges. I gouge his eye. He roars and strikes down. I savage the muscles in his arm. He kicks, and I punish the joint, lock it, stress it, let it go and whisper away into the space next door as he slams into where I was. I do all these things and it is not enough. Somewhere over there Ike Thermite is broken, out of the fight, and Ike was infinitely better at this than I am. Ike was a senior student. It’s not enough.

He hits me. It’s not a full strike, just a love tap. It picks me up and winds me. No time. I roll. I feel his foot stamp on the ground. Keep moving, don’t tense; breathe, live. I move. Blind Man’s Sword: a sequence to use when you cannot see, a system of deflections and evasions which appear to imply knowledge of the enemy’s movements. Bluff. It works. I move again. He is stalking me, moving smoothly and fast. He is too big to be that fast, or maybe too fast to be that big. I can see. I wish I couldn’t. A thumb fills my vision, and I duck, move away off-axis. It’s a feint. A kick lands in my chest, and I feel my ribs flex. All the air comes out of me. I see colours, black and white and grey and red all at once, then purple and yellow together, laid over each other, then other colours without names. I dodge the follow-up, turn my shoulder and shunt him back, just as Ike did.

I’m going to lose.

I stare up and around in desperation. Where is Sally Culpepper and her gun? Elisabeth is on the gallery. She has Leah behind her, safe for the moment. I meet her eyes.

And I see her.

I see Elisabeth Soames in every moment that I have known her. Every frame of every minute. Elisabeth with cake. Elisabeth stamping her foot. Elisabeth as Andromas. Elisabeth kissing me. Elisabeth, as revealed by a single, white, little-girl sock protruding from the end of a sofa. And I see her, a million years ago, in Master Wu’s house, asking about the Secrets. About the Iron Skin meditation.

There aren’t any of those.

But there are. I am fighting one. Therefore . . .

I will make one up.

And he does. It is a good secret. It is so good, it could almost be real.

I will make one up.

You sneaky, underhanded, cheeky old sod.

Align the chi . . . Feel the ocean . . . You will storm the strongest fortress.

I look at Humbert Pestle. He is unbeatable. He is impregnable.

He is mine.

In that moment I place my absolute trust in the hands of a dead man who wore sandals in winter and asserted a belief that the Chinese space programme was unfairly disadvantaged by the position of the Moon. This is perhaps a slender thread from which to hang the future of the world. Like spider silk, it is strong enough to do the job.

I slow down. It’s not about fast; it’s about where I need to be, and where he needs me not to be. I step lightly. It’s not about power; it’s about timing. Humbert Pestle chops at me, but I am not there. He strikes, but I am outside his centre line and the blow has no strength. Well, it snaps my head back and it hurts, but that’s all it does. I crack his hand as he withdraws it. He tenses. I slide past his guard and slap him. It doesn’t hurt him, but it is extremely embarrassing. I have just girly-slapped him in front of all his ninja kiddies. I have no respect. So nyah.

He slashes at me. He tries to catch me with a fist coming up as I go down, but I am already turning away, and he looks for a moment like some guy posing at the beach, arm bent and tensed, massive bicep straining. Hey, Pluto, where’s my spinach? Nyah nyah nyah. He breathes. I breathe with him. His elbow catches me on the way back and nearly stuns me, but the follow-up is in the wrong place, because I am in the right one. I stamp on his instep. Something snaps. He’s tough enough to ignore it, but it hurts anyway. The rhythm of his breathing is broken as he holds in a grunt of pain.

I touch Humbert Pestle, and I listen to him. I let my hands rest on him as I stroke aside his terrible punches. I taste the air as he exhales. I learn him. I understand the way he moves. I know where he is strong, and where he is not. He is a fortress. But he is not invulnerable. I breathe out. I breathe in. Humbert Pestle works through his pain. It is irrelevant. He breathes out. He breathes in.

Now we move in concert. I mirror him, step with him. I stick to him, slip and slide and duck and dive. His mace-hand goes over my head with a terrific woosh. It frustrates him. He stalks me some more, and finally he is following me. He does not know it. He thinks he is setting the pace, but he has fallen into a rhythm. It is syncopated and abrupt. It varies. But it is a pattern, and I know it intimately, at a level beyond mistake. I can break it. He cannot. He doesn’t realise he has to. I could strike now, hit him endlessly—but there’s no target. He has made himself into a weapon, an armoured monster. There’s no point. I breathe out. So does he. I breathe in. So does he. We are locked together.

We fight some more. We breathe. The thing is, I am a littler guy than Humbert Pestle, and I’m using a lot less energy. I don’t need as much oxygen. His heart rate is going up. He’s starting to feel tired, and he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t understand. I can see it in his face. He’s cross and just a little nervous—he should not be feeling this way. Not so soon. He does this kind of exercise every day. He’s pretty much the hardest bastard in the world. He may not be a young kid any more, but he’s in tip-top shape. He can’t be tired. Push through it. It’s the enemy.

I breathe. He breathes. He throws a combination so fast I can’t imagine being able to block it. I don’t have to. I was never going to be in its path. I was already leaving the target area when he decided to launch it. I slap him again because this man is trying to kill me, so I don’t feel bad about messing with him. His ninja kiddies look shocked and unhappy now. They’re watching him, all of them, even while they fend off the Voiceless Dragon School and keep this area clear. Come on, Humbert! Snap him like a twig! He is weak! What’s the hold-up?

No pressure.

Humbert Pestle is fifty-five. That means his maximum safe heart rate, notionally, is around one hundred and sixty-seven beats per minute. I can see the vein in his neck walloping away. He’s at around one seventy now. I breathe. He is still with me. We’re still in this weird mirror dance. He throws a couple more punches, but they’re weak and slow. There’s not enough oxygen in his blood. He should back off, but he won’t. It’s not who he is. Weakness is an enemy. Fight through it. I look at him. It’s time. I slip a punch and come round in front of him, and I look into his eyes and sigh.

I put everything I have into it. I give him my grief when I heard about Master Wu. I give him poor mad George Copsen’s horror at destroying the world, and every stupid death I saw in the Go Away War. I give him Micah Monroe and the soldiers who didn’t make it. I give him the foal-girl we buried in Addeh Katir. I give him the crazed cannibal dog in Cricklewood Cove and Ma Lubitsch’s endless mourning. I give him my broken heart when Leah shook my hand.

I breathe all the way out, long and slow, and the noise which comes from me is a sadness which could kill you. And Humbert Pestle breathes out with me. He takes my sorrow. He thinks that sigh is me giving up. He draws back his hand for one killer punch.

His heart tops one ninety.

I uncoil and hit him in the chest. I feel the force travel through him from sternum to spine. I know him. I could draw his organs on his skin.

His heart stutters, cramps and stops.

Humbert Pestle staggers. He clutches at his shirt in absolute horror and falls to the ground.

Ghost Palm of the Voiceless Dragon Style, fucker.

Humbert Pestle dies.

The ninja kiddies freeze. Each and every one of them has that Tupperware feeling.