I reached the outskirts of London without incident, though I sat
tense and hunched behind the wheel most of the way, in anticipation of a
challenge or an attack that never actually materialised. The battered and
bullet-holed Hirondel drew many stares, but no one said or did anything. This
was England, after all. I headed into the respected residential area, and my
very respectable neighbours watched openmouthed as I brought the car to a halt
before my rented garage. I nodded and smiled to one and all, and they quickly
looked the other way. I’d ruined my reputation here, but it didn’t matter. I’d
never be coming back. I opened the garage door with a palm print, a retina scan,
and a muttered Word, and then drove the Hirondel inside. I got out and sealed
the door behind me, and only then finally allowed myself to relax.
I spent a good ten minutes just sitting on the bonnet, hugging
myself tightly, too worn out even to move. I was tired, bone-deep tired, and
weary of spirit. So much had happened in such a short time, and nearly all of it
bad. But in the end I forced myself up and onto my feet again. I couldn’t allow
myself the luxury of a rest, or even a good brood. My family would already have
people out looking for me. Clever people, talented people. Dangerous people. I
was the enemy now, and I had good reason to know how the Droods treat their
enemies.
I peeled off my bloodstained jacket and shirt, to check my
shoulder wound. The first aid blob had almost dried up, a shrivelled and
puckered thing that only just covered the wound. I peeled it carefully away and
found the hole was now sealed behind a new knot of scar tissue. The blob had
used up its pseudolife to heal and repair me, and now it was just a lump of
undifferentiated protoplasm. I dropped it on the floor and said the right Word,
and it dissolved into a greasy stain on the bare concrete. First rule of an
agent: leave no evidence behind. Useful things, those blobs. I’d have felt
easier if I’d had a few more, but if you’re going to start wishing for things…I
flexed my shoulder cautiously. It was stiff, and it still ached dully, but it
seemed sound enough. My hands drifted up to touch the golden collar around my
throat. My armour was no longer invulnerable. The protection and security I had
taken so casually all my life had been stripped away from me, all in a moment. I
wondered if I’d ever feel safe and confident again.
I sat down before the computer in the corner, fired it up, and
pulled together a list of addresses and general locations of various old enemies
who might know something about what was happening. Some of them might agree to
help me, for the right consideration. Or intimidation. There’s never any
shortage of bad guys in and around London, but only a select few would have
access to the kind of information I was after. And most of them were very
powerful people, often with good reason to kill me on sight, once I revealed who
I was. I worked on the list, crossing out a name here and there where the risk
was just too great, and finally ended up with a dozen possibles. I printed out
the revised list, shut down the computer, and then just sat there for a while,
gathering my courage. Even with my armour operating at full strength, these were
still very dangerous people. Daniel walking into the lions’ den had nothing on
what I was going to have to do.
But I had to get moving. My very respectable neighbours were
bound to have called the police by now. So I called a certain notorious taxi
firm on my mobile phone; anonymous black cabs whose drivers would take anyone
anywhere and never ask awkward questions. You learn how to find firms like that,
in my game. They were reliable but expensive, and I realised for the first time
that money was going to be a problem. The family would have put a stop on all my
credit by now and flagged my name everywhere else. All I had was the cash in my
wallet. Fortunately, I’ve always been paranoid, and I think ahead. A small metal
safe at the back of the garage held half a dozen fake IDs and ten thousand
pounds in used notes. Enough to keep me going for a while.
I changed into a new set of clothes. They smelled a bit musty
from hanging in the garage for so long, but they were nicely anonymous. So
typical and average, in fact, that any witnesses would be hard-pressed to find
anything specific about them to describe. I piled my old bloodstained clothes on
the floor, and then broke an acid capsule over them. Shame. I’d really liked
that jacket. One more stain on the floor.
I looked sadly at the Hirondel. I could never drive that
marvellous old car again. It had become too visible, too remembered; and I
couldn’t let such a car, with all the Armourer’s additions, fall into mundane
hands. I smiled grimly. Even after all that had happened, I was still protecting
family security. Saying good-bye to the Hirondel was like leaving an old friend,
or a faithful steed, but it had to be done. I patted the discoloured bonnet
once, and then said the Words that would trigger the car’s auto-destruct.
Nothing so blunt and capricious as an explosion, of course; just a controlled
elemental incendiary that would leave nothing useful behind and scour the garage
clean of all evidence. Police forensics could work their fingers to the bone and
still find nothing they could trace back to me.
I’m paranoid, I think ahead, and I’m very thorough.
I left the garage, locking the door behind me, and sure enough
the taxi with no name was already there waiting for me. I walked over to it and
got in, and never once looked back. It’s an important part of a field agent’s
job: to be able to walk away from anyone or anything at a moment’s notice and
never look back.
The taxi took me back into London proper and dropped me off at
the first Underground Tube station we came to. I rode up and down on the trains,
switching from one line to another at random, until I was sure no one was
following me. There was no way my family, or anyone else, could have tracked me
down so quickly, but I needed to be sure. I got off at Oxford Street and went up
and out into the open air. It was early evening now, and crowds of people surged
up and down the street, in the course of their everyday lives, as though this
was just another day. No one paid me any attention. That at least was normal,
and reassuring.
The first name on my list was the Chelsea Lovers. Very
secretive, and very hard to find. They changed their location every twenty-four
hours, and with good reason. The Chelsea Lovers were hated and feared,
worshipped and adored, petitioned and despised. And the only way to find them
was to read the cards. So I walked casually down Oxford Street till I reached
the rows of public phone kiosks, and I checked out the display of tart cards
plastering the interiors. Tart cards are business cards left in the kiosks by
prostitutes advertising their services. Sometimes there’s a photo (which you can
be sure will bear little or no resemblance to the real woman); more often a
piece of suggestive art accompanied by a brief jaunty message and a phone
number.
The cards have a long history, dating back to Victorian times,
and down the years have developed a language all of their own. A girl who boasts
an excellent knowledge of Greek, for example, will not possess actual academic
qualifications; though a visit to her would almost certainly be an education in
itself. But underneath all the euphemisms and double entendres there is another,
more secret language, for those who can read it. A wholly different message, to
be read in the placement of certain words and letters, telling you how to find
the current locations for darker and more dangerous pleasures. I worked out that
day’s message and phoned the indicated number, and a voice at the other end,
which might have been male or female, both or neither, gave me an address just
beyond Covent Garden and told me to ask for the Kit Kat Club. Nice to know
someone still had a sense of humour.
The place wasn’t hard to find. From the outside it looked like
just another building, behind a bland anonymous front. No advertising, no clues.
Either you knew exactly what the place was, or you had no business being there.
I studied the exterior thoughtfully, while people passed me by, unknowing. The
Kit Kat Club wasn’t the sort of place you rushed into. You needed to gird your
spiritual loins first.
The Chelsea Lovers were a group marriage of assorted mystical
head cases, dedicated to the darker areas of tantric sex magic, channelled
through cutting-edge computer technology. They organised orgies that ran
twenty-four hours a day, with participants constantly coming and going. With the
kind of mystical power they were capable of generating, they could have picked
up the whole of London and spun it around a few times before dropping it again.
Only they never did, because…well, apparently because they were concerned with
something far more important. What that might be, no one knew for sure, and most
were afraid to ask. The Chelsea Lovers had links to every necrotech, psycho
fetish, and ceremonial sex club in the city, and were famous for knowing things
no one else knew, or would want to. They supported themselves by practicing
entrapment and blackmail on significant people: celebrities, politicians, and
the like.
Which was why the Chelsea Lovers had good reason to want Edwin
Drood dead. A year or so back the family had sent me in to destroy the Chelsea
Lovers’ main computers, and all their files, after they’d made the mistake of
trying to pressure someone sheltering under the family’s protection. So I’d
armoured up, forced my way in, and taken out their computers with a tailored
logic bomb fired from one of the Armourer’s special guns. The computers melted
down so fast there was nothing left but a puddle of silicon on the floor.
They never saw my real face; only the golden mask. So they had
no reason to suspect Shaman Bond. Except, of course, that the Chelsea Lovers
were suspicious of everyone, and quite rightly too. They worried people.
I went up to the perfectly ordinary front door and knocked
politely. A concealed sliding panel opened, and a pair of scowling eyes studied
me silently. I gave them the password I’d received on the phone, and that was
enough to gain me entry. The sliding panel slammed shut, and the door opened
just enough to let me in. I had to turn sideways to squeeze through, and the
door was immediately locked behind me.
The security man leaned over me. He was big as a wardrobe, with
muscles on his muscles. I could tell this because he was entirely naked, apart
from enough steel piercings in painful places to make him a danger to be near
during thunderstorms. He wanted me to take my clothes off too (house rules), or
at the very least submit to a thorough frisking. I gave him my best hard look,
and he decided to pass the question upward. I told him I was here to see the
founding quartet, and he raised a pierced eyebrow. I gave him their actual
names, which impressed him, and after nodding slowly for a moment, he lumbered
off to find them.
I stayed put, by the door. I hadn’t been entirely sure what to
expect. I mean, I’ve been around, comes with the job, but the Chelsea Lovers
were a whole new area of depravity to me. The entire building had been hollowed
out to form one large, open, and cavernous room. The Kit Kat Club was lit by
rotating coloured lights, giving the scene a kaleidoscopic, trippy feel. Very
fitting for a group whose origins lay in the sixties. Pretty much everywhere I
looked there were naked people, or people dressed in the kinds of dramatic
fetish gear that makes you look even more naked than naked. Leather and rubber,
plastic and liquid latex, collar and chains, spikes and masks and every kind of
restraint you’d rather not think about. There were no wallflowers here; everyone
was involved with someone or something. They moved smoothly together, all across
the huge room, flesh rising and falling, skin sliding over sweaty skin. There
were no words, only moans and sighs and the sounds of a language older than
civilisation. The faces I could see held a self-absorbed, animal look; all wide
eyes and bared teeth.
Men and women everywhere, tangled together on the floor, up the
walls, and on the ceiling, and even floating in midair. Sex beat on the air in
an overpowering presence, hot and sweaty and pumped full of pheromones. I could
smell sweat and perfumes and a whole bunch of psychotropic drugs. I wasn’t
worried. My torc would filter them out. Even quiescent around my throat, my
armour still protected me.
So much nakedness, so much sex, so much harnessed passion; but I
couldn’t say I found it arousing. It was scary. They were working magic here,
invoking strange and potent energies produced by people who had willingly driven
themselves out of all control, people who would do anything, receive anything,
and not give a damn. There was no love here, no tenderness; nothing but
indulgence and transgression.
The wide cavernous room seemed much larger than the building
should have been able to contain. This was spatial magic, fuelled by the tantric
energies. The room expanded to contain the passion within. The walls, floor, and
ceiling had taken on a puffy, organic look. All pinks and purples and bloody
shades, patterned with long traceries of pulsing veins. The wall nearest me was
sweating, as though turned on by the never-ending sex. The Kit Kat Club was
alive and part of the proceedings. Where men and women bumped against the floor
or walls or ceiling, they sank into the fleshy embrace as though into the arms
of another partner.
I shifted my feet uncomfortably, and the floor beneath me gave
subtly, as though I were standing on a water bed. People were drifting towards
me, reaching out with inquiring hands. There was something in their faces that
wasn’t entirely human; or perhaps more than human. Transformed by an emotion or
desire so extreme I had no name for it. I was way out of my depth. So of course
I put on my most confident face, and even sneered a little, as though I’d seen
it all before and hadn’t been impressed then. I glared at anyone who came too
close, and they turned away immediately, losing interest.