Nemonymous Night (16 page)

*

Meanwhile, over the years, many had debated why the city needed two airports instead of one... now both derelict sites on the left and right arms of the city proper. This hadn’t come up in general conversations or newspaper reports for quite a while but one must be seen to address this issue nevertheless, even if it’s just for the sake of chasing some noumenon.

These airports were always benighted even in their respective hey-days. One theory was that they only served each other, i.e. short-haul flights between them taking place for their own sake, because it was easier to travel across the city by other means, even if one wanted to travel across the city at all. These airflights were later assumed to be merely acting as cover for their real flights—beneath the ground, with the main runways leading steeply down tunnels into the earth from each airport.

That extrapolation, however, was often taken too far and was nipped in the bud before it could actually take off. However, in even more recent days of the
Angevin
conspiracies, there was a renewal of its hypothetical undercurrents regarding the internal workings of the earth. More, perhaps, of that, in due course. What one has to take into account, meanwhile, is that nobody at all has been in control of hypotheses for a long time now, and any crazy brainstorming has indeed eventually become the norm—with even written documents (where one should normally have inferred a responsible writer of such documents or, at least, an editorial chief/steering-committee) being considered just as bad as pub talk. Equally, the inverse may be true, i.e. when something is written down it lends credence even to pub talk. It depends on one’s point of view.

The optimum, the fail-safe assumption, is to believe nobody is in control.

As a tangent, however, whilst these subjects are in the forefront of our minds, many documents since discovered have touched on ash clouds, dreams, lies, fictions (fixions), all of which seem to have become a form of sickness or disease, approximately in the same general time-zone as the bird plagues that killed off so many of us. Allied to the dreams etc. were ghosts (it has to be said), and many people actually began to believe in ghosts, to the extent that each person necessarily had to have his or her own ghost—implying that there were two of everyone. But, no. Not the person and that person’s ghost as the pair in question, but two ghosts, each a ghost of the other (with no real person involved at all). Symbiotic haunting seems a good term for this.

Which brings us straight back to the question of why there were two airports in the city, where even just one airport would have been redundant. So, with further extrapolation, not only did people or living creatures become tangled up in this two-ghost hypothesis but supposed inanimate things, too, such as aeroplanes, helicopters, other craft. In fact,
all
things under the sun, not just means of transport, but even buildings, household artefacts etc. were subject to this hypothesis.

Such a supposition would pre-suppose much inadvisable loose-thinking, of course. However, it would serve to explain the eerie sightings (during the days even when people were more down-to-earth) of ghostly craft skimming across the city from airport to airport, complete with scary droning just upon the hearing threshold. Simply to call them ‘scary’, however, doesn’t necessarily
make
them scary. You had to experience them to know how really scary they were.

As a boy, I used to wander around the Left Hand airport, the one that by then had become a disused golf-course. It was always dark there, it seemed, but I loved the den I built beneath a hedge where I and my friends played Cowboys and Indians or Doctors and Nurses. The Cowboys and Indians, Doctors and Nurses were delightfully, if sometimes chillingly, real—or, at least, seemed real because they were some of the ghosts that appeared to be attracted to the area as if it were a spectral magnet.

The slots in the turfy ground which had been passed off by the Authorities as stretched-mouth golf-holes gave some substance to the theory that history is bunk. But also gave substance to the possibility that under-flights took place from this erstwhile airport. At least, for me, they did.

I often saw with my own eyes grey shapes skimming above my head, leaving for the other side of the city. But I also saw similar shapes entering the ground as if taking advantage of inverse vents.

Those days are now long over. I’m not sure even if
I
exist any more, let alone the two of us that were once the ‘me’ I can now only vaguely recall, if at all.

*

The Drill’s corporate lounge windows—like the other windows where Beth, Edith and Clare had been left to have their mud baths and generally to while away the journey in feminine yellow-wallpapered cabins—revealed at first only just the same boring panoplies of passing slabs of earth, glistening with the suppurations of oil from the Drill’s gills. However, eventually, at the leading-edge of the Drill, where the lounge windows were situated, the vista became clearer as if the vanes were now managing better in clearing the forward (downward) thrust’s waste further back towards the tail-fins.

There is no description that can do justice to what wonderful, awe-inspiring and sometimes scary sights they saw—but the inference is that the words of the Captain conjured more than he actually said.

Captain Nemo
: Now what do you think of that?

Greg
: Wow!

CN
: Follow my finger—there are some of the things that exist down here. They are not what they seem—they are modelled on aircraft you’ve seen before, but these are their equivalents, better to call them earthcraft. They are crewed by some who’ve never been to the surface.

G
: It’s just like a real sky. There’s even a sun.

CN
: That’s the Core itself, of course. You must have guessed that. But there’s no real heat coming from it—as some have believed for centuries. That’s simply its colour you can see, not a symptom of a heat source. Scatter-orange I call it. And that, my friend, is the brightest scatter-orange you are ever likely to see. That’s why I made you wear those glasses. They’ve got a tint that makes the scatter-orange just about bearable. Makes it look more yellow or even beige, than orange doesn’t it?

G
: Well, it looks just like the real sun when you use smoked glass to look at an eclipse coming up.

CN
: Yup yup. The glasses also protect you from its jagged iciness, although that iciness is in fact an optical illusion, but one can’t be too careful.

G
: The earthcraft seem to be wheeling around each other—oh, look, I’m sure they’re using the blazing Corelight as a means of cover… sort of hiding from each other…

CN
: Yup yup. Not exactly friendly with each other, it has to be said. They sometimes fight or feint a fight more like and we have to be careful ourselves but up to now they’ve left us alone on each trip. But that won’t last forever, I fear.

G
: It’s all gone again. Back to the slabs.

CN
: That often happens when our vanes get clogged up with our off-detritus. We’ll probably see more later. You haven’t seen half of it yet! (Laughs.)

Greg sipped at his cocktail thoughtfully. This was turning out to be a wonderful holiday. But, like all holidays, it had its moments of stress, no doubt.

*

Dognahnyi gasped when he saw who was behind the veil.

Apparently, his new recruit had turned out to be none other than Amy herself, the woman who regularly cleaned his flat.

Dognahnyi
: I thought you were with your brother on holiday... and those others from the pub you use.

Amy
: How do you know Arthur is my brother? Everyone assumes that. I thought you were Beth’s husband…

D
: I am!

A
: I’ve been pretending to be a domestic cleaner and Arthur’s brother. I am really what you call a ‘brainwright’. Heard of that? Anyway, one of the reasons was to get closer to you and clinch an interview. I’ve managed to shoot the rapids. I’m here ….
and
I’m there. (Laughs.)

D
: You can’t be in two places at once.

A
: Can’t I?

D
: Well, if anybody can, you can, I suppose. I was very impressed how you just conducted the interview with me. You must be someone very special. Beautiful, too, if I may say so. Never realised before—in your cleaning overalls—quite how beautiful!

A
: Thank you. I bet, before tonight, you wouldn’t have been able to describe me at all. You always seemed to ignore me. Now this context, this setting, only proves what I am capable of. I am sick to the teeth of that Sudra taking the sexy role in all this. I am going to show how a real female ticks. Just let me show you what I can do. We’ll have all Angel Wine going through your processors and no other processors. Just trust me.

D
: You don’t like Sudra?

A
: (Chuckles.) I’ve got her favourite shoes. She’s not missed them yet.

D
: Well, enough of that. I do trust you. But how do we deal with the Megazanthus?

A
: Well, when I arrive at the Core, along with Mike & Co.... oh yes, he thinks he’s going to be the hawler (laughs)—they’ll all be like putty in my hands. It’s easier now that the genealogical strictures are in place. It was all rather gimmicky when everyone wanted to trace their family trees. But it put a lot of spanners in the works, when folk realised they weren’t who they thought they were! Now that sort of thing’s gone out the window, it leaves so many loopholes for someone like me to exploit. And what’s that? The Megazanthus? It is only an assumption that there is any Corekeeper at all, even if that is its name. Let’s address problems as they arise. Amy will be able to deal with them. Rest assured.

D
: I’m impressed.

Dognahnyi opened the curtains upon their silent runners and watched the gulls flopping from the sky like body snow.

*

It is difficult to imagine the world being better or worse than it actually is. However, without humanity to stain its pages, who knows what will then become imaginable or even real? There is a theory—to which I subscribe—that humanity “strobes” in and out of existence, selective collective-memory then forcing the ‘alight’ stage to forget the previous ‘switched-off’ one... time and time again. Mass consciousness flickering in and out of existence like a faulty lighthouse... or, indeed, a fully working lighthouse.

*

The Drill’s corporate lounge is empty and silent, except for the odd eerie shaking of the wall maps as its relentless path—through the ribbons of reality that is Inner Earth—continues towards the Core. There is now nobody, even Nemo, to watch the vista through the windows, as the vanes once more struggle to clear the Drill’s off-detritus to the rear from the leading-edge. There is what seems to be an old-style caravan stuck on a crag—above a deceptively real sea—and (in the Core’s scatter-orange light), a sign can just be discerned saying ‘The Angerfin Public House’ planted clumsily on its roof—but then it is gone. Must be a crazy dream. But whose?

*

The jolt has finally finished, if one can actually imagine a jolt (by definition) that endures for more than just a few seconds. The rearward cabin is empty—as can be seen when the light slowly wells back into it. The window still simply shows the passing crazy-paved slabs of earth. So, at least, that vista was not just the inhabitant’s imagination. A tortoiseshell hairbrush falls to the carpet, having sat as an object ill-becalmed for a while on the edge of the dressing-table following the initial jolt. Then silence again. And a mirror merely reflecting yellow wallpaper.

*

The city pub was empty. Merely that. The optics of the shorts gleamed as time threatened to begin another diurnal round with unforgiving dawnlight. The city started to thrum, but thrummed with what? It may never be known. A barstool clattered to the pub carpet (clattered, despite the carpet) and remained there, unlifted and artistically sacrosanct like a Turner prize. What caused it to topple was a short sharp jolt that nobody felt.

*

The top flat still retained its open curtain policy on silent runners. The empty Dry Dock could be seen, even in the dark. A tall tower-block in the distance winked like a gigantically based but underwhelming lighthouse light. A computer screen in the room blinked blankly in curious yellow. An empty veil fluttered on the carpet like a butterfly.

*

The covered market was at rest, no commuters changing for even the wrong routes, let alone the right ones. A route exchange, a root filling... and the container lorries neatly parked alongside—perhaps forever, until they dropped an inch or two upon tired wheels.

*

In the service tunnel—where the hawler and his party (now unknown, unnamed, forgotten or even nemonymous people) had been training for further encroachment towards the Core itself—there was still the rattle of buckets as if in automatic fire-drill climbing towards the surface on pulleys. There were a few discarded carpet coats and yellow clogs. One pair of clogs had spurs and silver toecaps, the spurs still slightly jingle-jangling as if someone had just taken them off in a pique of feminine tantrum.

*

The city zoo echoed with snorting squawks. After all, it was only humanity gone missing for the nonce. And a few (very few) residual clockwork toys in the insect enclosure were still pitifully trying to bury themselves.

*

“Dreams leak, books leak...”

Rachel Mildeyes

(from MY CULINARY AFFAIR WITH
BIRDS
WHITE SAUCE)

NEMONYMOUS NIGHT

Perhaps the carpet was not quite so ordinary, after all.

I shall remain nameless, as is fitting. And at that time, nobody, not even me, was around to act as an expert on carpets, so, now in hindsight, all that
could
be said about it was some reference to ordinariness. Yet, had we all known, we would have
indeed
known that the stains were signs of some incipient endgame. They were stains worthy of the word stains, not just years of wine and grime or mishandled vacuuming or the once careless knees of Amy and her brother’s friends as they scorched their shameful toys through the rough of tufts. And the less said about the odd tread of strangers, the better.