Angelmaker (84 page)

The bees descend into the chamber, a humming cloud of confusion and dismay, and abruptly the whole scene is glossed. Each man has a life, a history, apparent and real and immanently understood. At this moment, Joe Spork suspects, Frankie imagined that war would be forever impossible, just as the theorists of poison gas and the atomic bomb fondly cherished a notion of mankind which made such weapons unusable and which would understand the stricture of them, that war is wasteful and pointless.

The fight continues, if anything more bitter.

Amid a haze of golden bees zinging to and fro, the botched and butchered remnant of the Apprehension Engine is running, deepening, and every answer is more and more fractal, more complete. It
cannot be long now before everything is too late. Joe knows immediately exactly how long, can feel the measurement of time not in seconds or minutes but with the perfect timekeeping of atoms. But in minutes, yes, he’s right: not more than five to the end.

Joe charges forward through the tumbling, struggling figures, seeking Shem Shem Tsien. He slams his fist into a man’s face, ducks a counter, and laughs as he tips his foe over on his back and stamps on him. Laughs, because he can see his victory reflected in the other’s movements before it happens. He wades through the fight, knowing exactly where he is going, and where he needs to be. Briefly, he is beset by too many, even for him, but then a man cries out in alarm and horror and clutches at his leg, now missing a chunk of calf where Bastion’s narwhal tusk has torn into him. Joe ducks through the gap, weaves, engages and retreats. The dog vanishes into the melee, and his progress is audible in shrieks and curses.

Joe howls a berserker laugh, spreads his arms wide and springs forward to carry men down to the ground, rolls past them and onto his feet. He feels fingers underfoot, stamps and hears a curse, slips away. His path is a shifting ripple in the room, but he walks it with perfect certainty and his hands are full of power. He lets himself understand the pattern, knows his destination, can feel it drawing ever closer. And then, in the very middle of the swirl, they are face to face.

The Opium Khan and his enemy, in perfect balance. They are the fulcrum. What happens here will determine everything.

They know it to be true.

Shem Shem Tsien raises his hand: stop. Joe does the same.

And there is stillness, of a sort, over the moaning of the broken.

At the edges of the room, Ruskinites appear from the shadows, robes torn and bathed in smoke. Shem Shem Tsien smirks. “It is genuinely satisfying, Joe Spork, to have you here. To have an enemy to destroy while one ascends to godhead.”

Joe does not reply. He waits.

The Ruskinites reach up and draw back their hoods, revealing the faces of Simon Alleyn and the Waiting Men. The Opium Khan stares at them for a moment, bewildered, and then his face cracks into a broad smile. “You found the Waiting Men! You found them and brought them along as a special surprise! Oh, Joe. It’s too good. Did you think that would bring poor Vaughn back to life? Scare me with the terrible undertakers and up he pops, my old, buried soul? A
struggle for dominance inside my own head, a master stroke? You
did
! Let me just take a moment to savour it. It’s splendid. And don’t you worry, Brother Simon. I’ll be with you directly.

“Do you know, Mr. Spork, I honestly think that under other circumstances, you and I—”

Joe Spork sighs. “Windbag,” he says. He rolls his neck to loosen it, tosses his hat to the floor, then screams his fury and his hate, and leaps …

Except, he doesn’t, because instantly he begins the motion, he knows infallibly what will happen if he follows through. He can feel the Apprehension Engine working inside his head, intimately and perfectly perceives action and consequence from every angle:

Joe leaps, huge hands grasping. Shem Shem Tsien receives him and they fall, together, rolling over and over. Joe bites off a piece of his enemy’s ear. The Opium Khan breaks two of Joe’s fingers. They tear one another apart; skill and savagery, evenly matched, so back and forth they go. On and on and on until, suddenly, nothing. The world stops. Finis
.

Seeing him freeze, understanding in the same way the same causality, Shem Shem Tsien laughs and steps forward, raises his narrow sword, then stops:

The Opium Khan lunges. Joe twists to one side, the blade scoring a line along his hip. He brings up his gun and fires; a bullet bites the Opium Khan’s arm. They close
.

“I’m very sorry, Brother Vaughn. It’s time.”

Simon Alleyn has covered the distance between them so fast it seems that he must have flown. He rises up behind Vaughn Parry, strong limbs reaching. His left arm folds across Parry’s throat, fingers reaching to catch the crook of his other elbow in a wrestler’s lock. He pushes Parry’s head forward from above, and slowly, slowly, the veterbrae separate, and the spinal cord snaps
.

Vaughn Parry dies
.

Shem Shem Tsien twists around, draws his gun and fires at Simon Alleyn. Alleyn cries out, falls, clutching his side. He may live. He may die. It’s not decided. Not yet.

The Opium Khan turns back towards Joe Spork, pistol in hand, and Joe brings up the tommy gun and sets his feet.

“Go ahead,” Joe says. “Let’s see what happens.”

Shem Shem Tsien stares.

And stares.

And does not know the answer.

For a moment, a look of panic flickers across the matinée-idol face. It is so swiftly suppressed that you could miss it. You could see it and never know it for what it was. Unless you were waiting for it.

“You like to be in the driving seat, don’t you?” Joe Spork murmurs. “You don’t like to gamble. You don’t have faith, so you want to force God to talk to you. You can’t control death, so you kill, because if you become death maybe you won’t die. And just for insurance, you become a dead man, too …” He grins, wolfishly toothy. “This must be a real pisser. Staring down the barrel of this gun, knowing that even if you shoot me dead first time, I’ll fire this thing, and there is absolutely no way of controlling whether it kills you or not. One of us will die, maybe both of us. But we can’t know in advance.”

“Stalemate,” snaps the Opium Khan. “It hardly matters. Time is on my side.”

Polly Cradle’s laughter trills out, clear and unafraid. “Not by half, it’s not,” she says. She steps through the ranks of the Waiting Men to rest her hand on her lover’s shoulder. “It’s now, Joe. It’s all right. Do what you have to do.”

Joe Spork has fought and maybe killed already tonight. It is not impossible that the explosion of the
Lovelace
ended living men who might have been returned to themselves. He has, in combat, inflicted injuries which may prove to be fatal. All the same, he has never been a killer, not an executioner nor an assassin, not from a standing start. But on the other hand, here he is, and this is his life, and if he blinks or hesitates, the world ends. Staring across the gap which separates them, he sees that the Opium Khan already knows what he will say. He says it anyway, with a sense of growing certainty which comes not from outside, not from the Apprehension Engine or the bees, but from himself. With Polly beside him, this choice is easy. He fixes his eyes on Shem Shem Tsien.

“You took my home and murdered my friends. You tortured me to death, twice, and brought me back. You hounded my grandmother.

“You tried to kill Polly to spite me.

“You break things which are beautiful, because it pleases you.”

The Opium Khan opens his mouth to say something in return.

The tommy gun blazes white fire.

Crazy Joe Spork, finger on the trigger, riding the thunder. His shoulders push down on the gangster’s gun, his chest labours to hold it on target. He sweeps it back and forth across the space where Shem Shem Tsien was standing. He feels the sting of something against his cheek as he turns, feels something pluck at his coat, and realises these are bullets, and does not care. He fires until the magazine is empty, letting the gangster’s gun have its head, seeking to erase his enemy from the world. When the gun clicks empty, he steps forward through a cloud of gun smoke of his own making to use the weapon’s butt if he has to, to grab and tear. There’s blood on his shirt, and his ear is torn and burned. He’s been shot. Dull paths of pain are scored across his face, and one arm aches.

Shot, but not killed.

Through the smoke, he sees Shem Shem Tsien’s mouth contort in a sneer of utter contempt—a sneer which cuts off sharply as Bastion Banister shuffles painfully forward to snarl a reply directly into his face. Joe can see—can feel, immanently—the Opium Khan’s confusion. How can a pug nine inches high stand eye to eye with a god? Some ridiculous last-minute prank? A dog on stilts? A stratagem involving strings?

Shem Shem Tsien’s head rests where it has fallen, a yard or more behind his body. The line of bullets from the tommy gun has cut through his neck like a sword.

Comprehension arrives, whether from the Apprehension Engine or from his fading vision, or from the feel of stone under his ravaged flesh and bone. Shem Shem Tsien’s eyes open wide in inexpressible horror. His mouth opens, as if to speak.

And then it’s done.

Joe Spork waits for a moment to be sure that his enemy has died,
then walks past the Opium Khan’s severed head towards the machine which will devour the world.