I shook my head a little, bewildered, sick. There had to be something more to it than that, but I couldn’t get my thoughts straight …
The blond type leaned down off the tank. ‘You think we take advantage
of you? ’Cause you sick?’ He snapped his fingers in front of my face. ‘You don’t need to be. Not ever again. Heal yous’self!’
A red spark flashed
between his fingers. Gingerly I raised a hand and copied him. Another spark, a spark that seemed to burst like a firework. Flame raced down my arm and flooded into my chest, filled my stomach, burst into my other arm and down my legs, chasing pain and
weakness before it, tingling along my nerves, thudding through my veins and last of all bubbling up into my aching neck, filling my mouth and nose and blossoming like a flower into my brain. I felt my hair had to be standing on end, writhing, sparking with the power that filled me.
It seemed to inflate me, stiffen me like a sagging tyre. Or a wilting flower watered with strong fertiliser. Suddenly
I was fitter, stronger than I’d ever felt, clearer-headed, more decisive, more in control of my own destiny. I could feel every inch of my body, awash with the healing fire.
They watched me, all of them, avidly. It was the most powerful argument they could have made. They knew it; and I was close to my choice.
‘There’s just one thing,’ I said, and my voice sounded oddly more resonant in my own
ears. ‘If I’m to join you, I’d like to see you – all of you, all together. There’s more of you, aren’t there? A few, always at the back, always shadows – I don’t know how many …’
‘Dey are older guys,’ shrugged the thug. ‘Less of dem to see. Dey fade closer back to de centre, become more like unity. Dat’s all.’
‘Yeah, the
centre,’ I mimicked him. ‘What’s that, then? Or should I say who? There’s
someone in charge, isn’t there? Someone who runs you all – who’d run me, too. Like a bloody puppet …’
The women touched my arms. ‘But Maxie …’
I shook them off. ‘I’m not joining anybody, not blind like that. Not without seeing you all. You can go find some other idiot.’
The Oriental smiled. ‘You are the best we have found for many a day, Maxie. Few others could live as you could. So at last
we have you – and we are not intending, not now, to let you go.’
The women’s hands closed again, and clamped tight. I was hurled flat on my back, pinned down on the dusty road. Their hair flew, their eyes glittered down on me. Over their heads the other bandit faces appeared, shaking their heads ruefully. The Oriental bowed slightly. ‘You wish to see all of us? That may present difficulties.’
‘I don’t care! Do it, anything you need to, or sod off and leave me alone!’
The women’s eyes sparkled. ‘As you wish – so be it!’
The tank engines bellowed and hammered, shattering the air with explosive violence. Bitter diesel smoke, half burned, rolled over me, catching at eyes and nose and throat. The bandits, Oriental, buccaneer, thug and women, all had vanished somehow, like bursting bubbles,
yet I was still pinned down. Slowly, infinitely slowly, the tracks clanked into motion, the massive metal mountain ground forward towards me, on top of me, blotting out the light as if it reared up over some invisible obstacle, to come crashing down on me in instant, tearing obliteration. The hand I tore free looked ridiculous against it.
‘So be it!’ hissed the Oriental in my ear. ‘We grow weary
of the chase!’
‘Join
with us!’ whispered the straggle-haired woman. ‘Be one with us!’
‘See with our eyes!’ growled the buccaneer.
‘Feel wit’ our hands!’ rumbled the blond giant. ‘Flex our arms!’
‘Remember our memories!’ murmured the black man. ‘Breathe our breath!’
‘Throw yourself upon the waters of our minds!’ said the Oriental quietly. ‘Swim as we do, one to another! Dwell where you will, in one or many!’
‘Your heart falters!’ cried the women. ‘Your breath draws thin! Your past is ours, our present yours! See us,
senor
Maxie!
We are here!
’
The motors thundered, the treads cascaded down like steel waterfalls. The roaring bulk lurched forward. I screamed—
And just as suddenly I was sitting up, staring at blackness. It took me a moment to realise it was Dee’s robe, that had swept across my face like an outstretched wing. He stood between me and the tank, arms raised like a great bat, looking twice his height. The tank engine faded to a sinister, idling throb.
‘Did I ever call you angels?’ he demanded, quite softly. ‘Did I ever reverence you, or
seek to understand? Pursuit, coercion, terror and deceit, to the frustration of free will and open choice – is that not how demons should behave? Yet whatever you are, I counsel you now – if you take the guise of evil, you must also bear its punishment!’
From somewhere
or other the bandits were back, clinging to the turret sides, and they laughed down at him like fierce animals, snarling, predatory.
The long-haired woman cracked her whip around Dee’s staff, and he staggered.
Then there was a bang, a popping explosion and a sudden wash of stinging fire on the road. Another, and this time I saw it, a bottle with a flame at its spout, a petrol bomb sailing through the air. This time it hit the tank directly, and the bandits whirled around, startled, as the fire lashed about them. The road seemed
to be full of young people, shouting, gesturing, singing – the same harsh song I’d heard five centuries before. It was a long time afterwards I found out what the words meant.
Slyste, sylste, rytieri bozi!
Pripravtese jiz k boji!
Hear ye, hear ye, knights of God!
Prepare yourself for battle!
The tank roared this way and that on its treads, like a baited bull. Of bandits, of Dee, there wasn’t
a sign.
I took my chance, scrambled up and ran. There was the bookshop, the window shattered by the concussion, the bright books scattered about like dead butterflies. There was the manhole. I dived for it, missed the ladder and fell screaming into the dark.
‘Well,’ I thought, ‘bugger this for a game of soldiers.’
Save yourself—
Light
flared. I hung there in the blackness, cradled in the light
that still shone through me, glowing like a beacon out of hands, feet, every inch of skin and bone I could see. It was amazing, Maxie the human Christmas tree. The whole of my ragged ensemble lit up like something really bizarre in home electrics, a glow bursting through every tear and rent, even the toes of my shoes. A thought struck me, and I investigated. Wow. I was sorry I couldn’t show it
to Jane Dee. Luminous condoms had nothing on this. Then I wished I hadn’t thought about Jane, because I had trouble zipping up again.
I felt inspired. I felt as if I’d had six months at a health farm with a gourmet restaurant. I rubbed what passed for my chin and discovered I’d grown a neat beard in the last six seconds. Pity I hadn’t grown a chin, too—
That was another thought I hastily cancelled.
You could carry that sort of thing too far. The glow dimmed suddenly; it was because the rents in my clothes had closed up. They were clean, too, even my shoes, intact soles and all. As brand new as ever. Well, whee. The only trouble was I had to go tramping back into that muck down there all over again.
Or did I? Power was a wonderful thing. I could do what I wanted. Let there be light, for
a start; and there was. It smelt terrible – OK, let’s have something nicer. Roses, the obvious thing; but in that concentration they smelt nearly as bad. I tried frying onions, Armagnac – then settled for Aramis aftershave. There was frenzied squeaking below. The rats didn’t seem to approve.
Me, I was having a ball. Did I even have to trail through the sewers at all?
I waved a
commanding hand.
‘Home, James!’
In the barest instant the light swelled, wheeled, whirled about me like a hurricane spout. I floated in a vortex of fearful energy, untouched, giddy with sheer delight.
I hardly even registered the mocking little voices at the back of my mind, the merest memories of a darkened street.
Use it. Enjoy it. Get the feel of it. Get to like it. And when you’re ready—
We’ll be there.
Blackness.
B
LACKNESS
, and silence.
Except for the
faint ringing in my ears, that was, and my panting breath. I was standing on something solid, and that was as much as I could say. The gloom that closed in around me was more than physical. I knew the feeling only too well. I was sliding down off the foamy crest into the black trough, from the manic springboard into the depressive
deep end. Sweaty, drained, slightly unnerved by the memory of that synthetic rush, and yet hungry to dive back into it again – just the same feeling. Only this time it wasn’t anything chemical; it was power, pure power. It wasn’t something that just exploded inside my skull and left the world outside the same as ever. This had really happened – hadn’t it?
Home,
I’d told it, and it had taken me
… where?
No home I remembered. Not unless it had gone too far, and taken me back to the womb. I wished I hadn’t thought of that. OK, I wanted a fresh start, but you could end up
really
neurotic that way. Talk about birth trauma …
I
quietened my breath, and listened. There was the sound of a fat droplet plopping into water; and a suffocating wave of Aramis. Oh, great; still in the sewers, then.
Maybe they were my natural home. Maybe it was the rat genes showing through.
They were one place you didn’t take a step without meaning it, though. I hovered there uneasily, leaking exhilaration, trying to get my bearings. After a while I realised there was just a little light filtering down from above, enough to show me the profile of yet another arch of rough masonry, a rubble slope. That didn’t
look too promising, but I couldn’t stand here for ever. I decided I might as well begin to climb.
Then I stopped and swore, aloud and heartfelt. Bitterness gurgled up out of my own personal sewer. Screwed again, Maxie.
That power. I’d never really been using it myself. They’d just handed me it to play with, like a kid, while they kept an unseen finger on it. Home I’d wanted, home I’d got – the
home that suited them. That scuffed slot in the slope, that and the imprint above it. That was where I’d slipped coming down here. I was right back where I’d started.
I should have known. I could do almost anything, as long as it suited them. I could shuffle the pack as much as I liked, I’d still only be playing the hands they dealt me. I could have any colour I wanted, as long as it was black.
It was like being God Almighty, with trainer wheels.
They couldn’t afford to let me lose myself in my own time, far from the Spiral. They’d rather have me here, alone and helpless. Where they had more power – and I’d have to depend on it. And if that didn’t draw me in, there was always Kelley.
Thinking
of that cued in something I’d been hearing for a minute or two – the slight scuffling above,
the sound of somebody trying to move slowly and quietly. I shrank back into the shadows, looking up at the dim little patch of light. Another pebble came bounding down the slope, a little fall of gravel – and a silhouette there was no mistaking. Tally-ho, there goes the bastard now.
He’d made the same deduction as Dee, of course, and come to look for me here – figuring, probably, that I wouldn’t
get very far, and would come back. Or maybe he’d tried scrying. Either way, you could see he’d come to a pretty firm conclusion. The needle gleam in his hand was his drawn rapier.
He seemed to be hesitating at the top of the slope, casting around very carefully, as if he was listening. I heard him sniffing; the aftershave had evidently disconcerted him. And alerted him, maybe, to what I might
be able to do. I struggled to muffle my breath, wondering why he didn’t come down. Most likely he was afraid I’d give him the slip in the dark; and that was not at all a bad idea. Unless – unless I just waved a hand and plastered him halfway across Prague, in a very thin layer.
It was tempting. God, it was tempting. He’d have done it, in a moment; and maybe that was what stopped me, long enough.
I caught myself flexing my fingers with the sheer, shivering delight of the idea. Just to know you could do that, all at once, explosively, or just slowly – this was being Alive! Better than sex, than cars, even—
I bit my lip,
hard. I really had gone too far. Who was this talking? Not me. Not even the me that drives like hell. I never really wanted to hurt anyone, not even cops. Well, not seriously.
I just am not the type. So what was making me do this? Sewers full of Aramis, for God’s sake! What would I be like if I really had that much power to play with, on impulse? How far from aftershave in a sewer to hot lead in somebody’s veins?
Not as far as you’d think. Do that once, and you’d never be the same person again. And that would be just what they wanted. That was why they’d dragged me
back – to confront me with Kelley. Giving me enough rein. So I’d use the power. And the more freely I used it, the more I’d be tempted to go for the easy, the complete, the final solution. The moment I let go enough to kill, they’d have me.
It made me sick. The idea I’d ever touched their power was Huey and Ralph material. The aftershave aroma curling around me seemed like a bad joke. Honest
crap would smell better – well, maybe not, but it wouldn’t remind me of how I’d given in. I’d change it back. I flexed my fingers so hard the joints cracked, and a corona of sparks crackled between them, sending a spurt of white light across the dark slope.
‘Ah-
hah!
’ snarled Kelley, and sprang forward, sword raised. I gestured frantically, and the loose slope loosened a bit further. The earth
creaked and groaned beneath him, and he began to slide. Out of control, arms flailing, he skidded down, right past me, hit a rock, bounced and flipped right over the edge and into the newly stinking sludge beyond.
Not far enough,
unfortunately; and he still had his sword. He reared up like somebody Dante
really
disliked, and slashed at my legs as I tried to climb the slope. He didn’t quite reach
me, and I scrabbled up towards the light.