The Gone-Away World (57 page)

Strange, slender arms surround me. They are strong and warm. The black wings of a theatrical cloak wrap around me to keep me warm. Dr. Andromas. The arms rock me, and the gloved hands soothe my hair, and I rest my face against the odd goggled head. Dr. Andromas is a lumpy person to hug, but very giving. Oh yes. Comrade Cow is Dr. Andromas. Gives good hug. But why did you cry on me, Doctor? Do you cry for all your patients?

Dr. Andromas rocks me, and my wounds begin to heal. Again.

“I'm sorry,” I tell Dr. Andromas's upper arm. “I'm sorry.”

Perhaps, from within the gauze, there is a whispered “shush.” The narrow shoulders stretch and the hands crawl a little farther across my back, settle again to hold me tighter. The only person who can do this for me, right now, is a stranger.

I
HAVE
decided that I need to go to Haviland alone. Gonzo has gone to Haviland. Dickwash came from there. The
enemy plan
is there, whether that is where it nests or just a place along its route. I must go, and go quietly. I cannot do this if I am being followed around by a small army of neo-Marceauists in berets. I need to ask questions in discreet rooms. The Matahuxee Mime Combine is not a covert operation. It is, especially for a completely silent group of people, stunningly loud. And so I have suggested to Ike that—for the moment—we must part company. I'm a little surprised at how hard this was. Ike has become a friend.

Ike, though, is not the problem.

Dr. Andromas turns to peer at me, then looks back at Ike. Ike shrugs. Andromas makes a sort of irritable wiggle, as if to say I'm an idiot but that doesn't change anything. What it apparently doesn't change is the doctor's intention to come with me to Haviland City.

“It's no good,” Ike Thermite says. “Don't look at me.”

“He works for you.”

Andromas rolls his eyes at Ike, who sighs.

“Andromas,” Ike says, “works for Andromas.”

“I'm going alone.” Ike nods. Andromas doesn't. Andromas just stares into space, like a cat being told to get off the bed. He gazes at the horizon as if I'm talking about someone else. I wave my hand in front of his goggles.

“Hey! Alone!”

Andromas nods. Yes. I am going alone. Andromas is just going in the same direction at the same time. He is not following. We are fellow travellers. Coincidence is wonderful, Hesperus is Phosphorus, no cause for alarm. I glance back at Ike. Ike is wearing the same face: this isn't his problem, there's nothing he can do about it, why am I talking to him? I'm surrounded by a benevolent conspiracy of idiots.

Andromas fluffs his cloak and cocks one arm with the elbow, so that the fabric covers the lower part of his face (already covered, of course, by his gauzy mask, and when did I stop finding that alarming and weird?), and stalks forward. Then he stalks off to the left and makes a full circle around us. Then he cocks the other hand and stalks back the way he came. He will disguise himself. He will be invisible, like the wind in the trees and the shadow of a tiger in the moonlight. No one will notice him.

Apart from
everyone in the world who isn't actually blind.

Perhaps I can lose him on the road.

“Don't get in the way,” I tell him. Andromas nods happily and bounces off to warm up his truck. Annabelle—trucks should have proper names, not silly ones like
Magic of Andromas
—is waiting. I look back at Ike.

“I'm sorry,” I tell him. “I just think I should do this myself.”

Ike grins.

“I'm a mime artist,” he says, “not a superman. What could we possibly do but get in the way? But if you need us, Andromas will know how to find us. And K, of course.”

My shock troops. I can't lose.

“And Andromas might surprise you.”

Yes. That much is almost certain.

There's a fruity noise somewhere between a klaxon and a trumpet. Andromas—who isn't coming with me, wouldn't dream of it, just going in that direction—is eager to be off. I climb into the cab. The Matahuxee Mime Combine stand in a long line outside the Lubitsch house and wave, each a little out of synch with the next. From the porch Gonzo's parents look on. We have already said our goodbyes, and the physical evidence is sitting next to me on Annabelle's bench: a bundle of clothes, a Tupperware container and an envelope. The clothes are a mixture—cast-offs of Gonzo's and a few of those mysterious items which accumulate in a big house over the years (the canary waistcoat is my favourite; I cannot conceive of any circumstance under which I would wear it) and two pieces of slick black fabric—a ninja outfit in my approximate size for the confusion of my enemies. It smells ever so slightly of bees. I put it down sharply and open the envelope. Money. Not a fortune but some, and thus infinitely more than I had before:
facilitating
money. And last a card, with two words written on it in Old Man Lubitsch's awful scrawl—the name of one of the executives who came to take Gonzo away for his important new job. A familiar name.
Richard Washburn.

Hello there, Dickwash.

The Tupperware tub is simpler. It is the old kind, a milky basin and a tight-fitting lid, the latter moulded with a flimsy tab at one corner to help you get it off again. The tub contains a sandwich—home-made bread jammed with more chicken, bacon, lettuce, tomato, egg, cheese and mayonnaise than any right-thinking loaf would ever willingly attempt to contain—and a bottle of home-made fizzy pop. There is even an apple and a little pot of honey.

Ma Lubitsch has made me lunch, and with it she has packed her love.

Chapter Fourteen

Working the System;
the paper trail and Mr. Crabtree;
I get my arse kicked.

T
HE PLAIN WHITE
,” Libby Lloyd says definitively. She flicks her hair. Libby Lloyd's shop is in the glitzy part of Haviland, which is all of it except the bits which most Havilanders don't think of as the city proper, like the slums and the outer metropolitan area. It wasn't hard to find. I ditched Annabelle at a truck stop after the drive and took a bus into the centre, then asked the nearest tourist where the best shops were. She consulted a little guidebook and said that the good deals were over to the west of the square. I thanked her and went east. Andromas pottered along behind me for a while, then ducked into a doorway to look at glittering rows of rings and necklaces. I expected him to pop up again, but he didn't. Perhaps he's invisible, or perhaps he has a short attention span. In either case, he's not bothering me. I look back at Libby Lloyd.

“I like the stripes.”

“The stripes are very popular among the senior executives.” Subtext: surely you aren't one.

“Ideal,” I tell her briskly. Subtext: then why on Earth are you showing me this other crap?

Libby Lloyd reassesses. She does not know me, so she has assumed that I am not important. On the other hand, I'm in her insane little shop in Haviland Square buying unpleasantly tight sports gear. More, I'm buying top of the line, and I'm not scared of the Big Dogs. A new customer. A new executive. Possibly unmarried. She tosses her head. It's a full-service effort. One hand goes to her fringe, catches it lightly. The other rests on her stomach, emphasising its flatness and drawing attention to the elegant curve of her bust. She twists her neck sharply. Blonde hair spreads like a parachute and spins around her, light and feathery and infinitely strokable. It falls around her in a haze, and she fires a smouldering look at me for just a heartbeat before smoothing it into something professional and cool; you'd swear you hadn't seen it. Libby Lloyd makes more money in a week than I have ever seen in one place. Money is not the issue. The issue is
access.
Running the most exclusive sports boutique in Haviland is still being a shopkeeper. It's not being part of the System, and Libby Lloyd wants In. I know this because in Haviland everybody who isn't In wants In, and everybody who is In wants to keep them Out. Pencilneck Heaven. A brief conversation via the electric telephone with K (the original and still the best) filled in my sketchy understanding of life here. Essentially, K said, the more ludicrously you behave, the more they will assume you have the right to.

I pay cash. Subtext: your pathetic bill means
nothing
to me!
Bwahahaha!
Libby Lloyd flutters. It's a large bill; if this is just walkingaround money where I come from, then she really does need to know me better. I hesitate going out of the door. Libby Lloyd preens. This is where I ask her if she's busy later, because I'm going to this party and I don't know anyone in town.

“I wonder,” I say brightly.

“Yes?” Subtext: anything at all.

“Who makes the best suits in Haviland these days?”

Disappointment tempered by patience. Subtext: you will be mine.

“Royce Allen,” she says firmly. “He's just across the street. Come in and see me when you pick it up.” She smiles and bats her lashes at me. I swear I feel a breeze.

T
HE BAG FROM
Libby Lloyd's is a passport to greatness. It has a gold colophon on a shiny white background, and with it under my arm scruffy clothes are simply not an issue. I have already bought. I am spending. I have money. Respectable clothing is what I will come
out
of Royce Allen's with, not what I need going
in.
The door across the road opens before I can knock.

I spend five minutes pottering around admiring Royce Allen's off-the-peg stuff while his nervous assistant follows me to and fro, nodding when I make little noises of discontent and explaining that (while everything I see is of the highest quality in all respects) the bespoke work is vastly superior. I try on a shirt. It makes me look like a god. I suggest that it's a little tight under the arms. Yes. Definitely pulling . . . what sort of thread does Royce Allen use in his seams? It feels coarse. The assistant assures me that the thread is the finest baby hair and angora rabbit, the softest known to man. I sigh. It must be the fabric then. A pity. No, no, the fabric is a cotton picked by child slave labourers who wash and moisturise their hands every hour so as to prevent their fingers from roughing the fibres. They bleed, of course, but their blood contains chemicals (owing to a strictly controlled diet) which actually add to the luxuriant mellowness of the weave. The blood is as a matter of course hygenically bleached out with a mineral cleaning agent made from crushed diamond and virgin's saliva, which adds lustre and radiance, and also gives the finished shirt the toughness of ballistic nylon.

I explain sorrowfully that all this discussion has left me with a dry throat. It is now my intention to return later, or possibly next week, having refreshed my mucous membranes. I am politely disinclined to discuss the matter further. I am so polite as to be almost rude. I cough gently, to remind Royce Allen's assistant that the absolute last thing I want is further chat, because—possibly owing to the amount of time I spend on the phone firing people and arranging the fate of millions—my larynx is in such terrible agony. He summons a minion (Royce Allen's shop is awash with minions coming and going clutching swatches and fabrics, and occasionally, from the fitting rooms, there comes the voice of the great man himself: “Freddie! Get the blue flannel for Mr. Custer-Price, please, he needs to see it against the checks,” and Freddie—or Tom, or Phylis, or Betsy, or someone—scurries over and looks the other way so that Mr. Custer-Price is not embarrassed in his partial nudity) and the minion brings a tray of drinks. I hover over the expensive Scotch and then the Armagnac, but finally settle on a glass of rich red claret. I put it near my nose and nearly pass out. It smells of old houses and aged wood and dark secrets, but also of hard, hot sunshine through ancient shutters and long, wicked afternoons in a four-poster bed. It's not a wine, it's a life, right there in the glass. I sip it. Fire and fruit wash over my tongue.

“Oh, that's actually not bad.” Calumny. I sit. The assistant relaxes a little and asks if I would mind waiting while he fetches Mr. Royce Allen, in person. I decide that I wouldn't. I sip again. I really wouldn't.

Royce Allen is a hearty fellow with sausage fingers and the obligatory tape measure around his neck. He is not so much unctuous as balsamic. He eels out of the fitting rooms and gladhands me and confides that he's been hoping I'd come by ever since he heard I was coming to Haviland. He was concerned that I'd been seduced by that clothbutcher, Daniel Prang. I swear that the false glamour of Prang never appealed even for a second, and he adjudges me not just a powerful man but also—and this is rare, sir, very rare—a man of taste. Daniel Prang (confides Royce Allen) began as a very excellent cobbler; had he stuck to gentlemen's shoes and boots, all would have been well. The original Prang shoe was a splendid thing, a brogue with fine slim lines and a steel and silver slash across the back of the heel, with a unique crest designed for each customer so that a gentleman's footprints were instantly recognisable to his friends. Sadly, after a few months, the cleats tended to come loose, and one was forever stopping to
examine one's sole
(ahaha, just my little joke, sir, but you see, yes, well of course you do).

In those good old days Royce Allen himself bought shoes at Prang's, and his crest was a camel passing through the eye of the needle, very droll indeed. Alas, Mr. Prang has upset the natural balance of things by venturing to make gentlemen's clothing, and it is not a task for which life has equipped him. Royce Allen is delighted that I have the natural acuity and good sense to reject the Prang suit with its modern lines, and determines that I shall have only his best work. He thus dispenses with all the moderate fabrics (read: cheap) and whisks me straight to the last table by his den where he keeps the ones which empty banks and consume the wealth of nations. I ponder, he measures. I cannot decide between the alpaca and cuttlefish (honestly) and the Mylar-silk (very good in summertime), and—since I'm never going to wear them—I order one of each. Royce Allen licks his lips and applauds my boldness. The first fitting will be in three weeks. Royce Allen's assistant brings me another glass of the red lest my throat should again be giving me trouble after this exertion, and hovers with the bottle in case I need to make any more difficult choices regarding shirts. While we're in the mood, I toss a couple of the superb off-the-peg jackets on the pile (for casual wear, Mr. Allen) along with some
At Work By Allen
jeans and some slacks and a pair of
Foot By Allen
shoes. Royce Allen is so delighted that he throws in a pair of socks. I give him my entirely fictitious address in the nice part of the city and ask if I can pop back in later to pick up the off-the-peg stuff. I've got squash in an hour at the Club (I don't know which club yet, but everyone else obviously does, they nod and bob reverently) and Royce Allen says of course. We shake hands, for which I put down the glass on the sales counter, and the assistant moves forward to grasp it before it can become a hazard. Alas, alack, how
do
these things happen? I have stepped back into the space he was intending to occupy. Silly me. Perhaps I am clumsy, or supremely confident, or drunk. Certainly, I couldn't have intended this outcome: the remainder of the bottle (I will linger in the oenophile's Hell of Corked Vintages for a thousand years) glugs massively over my shirt and down my back.

There is absolute silence. I worry for a moment that the assistant has actually died or gone mad; he's frozen in place. Then he straightens, murmurs “I'm most terribly sorry” and walks into the back room to gather his things. He does not wait to be told that he's fired. I hope it's a drill. I hope he's going to go and sit in a bar until Royce Allen calls him and tells him to come back to work, the client is gone. I doubt it.

Royce Allen sighs.

“What a muddle,” he says. “Going to the Brandon Club, you said?”

“Yes,” I tell him sadly, “I was.”

“Well, you can't go like that,” says Royce Allen. He shrugs. “Take the casual now,” he says. “You can pay for it when you come for the first fitting. If you don't like it, we'll shove it on the dummy and you can call it a loan, all right?”

I couldn't possibly, but you must, no, Mr. Allen, sir, I insist, blah blah. We out-polite one another for a while until he puts his foot down and I walk out of his shop wearing a fortune and carrying a change of clothes, and with two glasses of his wine inside me. I'd feel guilty, but he'll be fine, and he'll make an extra 5 per cent this year just telling the story to gentlemen in the fitting room. How I Was Took by a Felon, by Royce Allen, and I'd do it again, sir, because that's how we are in this shop. Oh, no, sir, to be honest, I think we'll have to go up a grade, that fabric doesn't do you justice.

I get in a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Brandon Club.

B
UDDY
K
EENE
lends me a racquet. He has five, in a thick sack, and he uses a different one depending on mood. His name (Bartholomew Keene) is printed in gold on the bag. Tom Link and Roy Massaman put me on to him by the water fountain: Buddy has too many damn racquets, man he'll set you up. And he will, because Royce Allen's craft is all over me, and that's as much a passport as Libby Lloyd's whites. The stripes cause a bit of a murmur when they come out.

I stand in the gallery and watch, and chat. The Brandon Club gallery, overlooking the courts, has ferns and fig trees in little pots at inconvenient intervals, and supremely uncomfortable chairs made from bamboo. Anyone spending any significant amount of time here will develop expensive back pain, and the club has a health spa which is particularly good at dealing with injuries sustained from sitting all day in a lounger. The walls are painted off-white (because true white makes the guests look ill) and there's a great deal of glass. The point appears to be that you could only possibly pay what you pay to be a member here if you are very rich, because anyone with less money would demand better service at the price.

From Buddy and his friends—who rotate on and off the court, so that one of them is always talking to me in a somewhat wheezy voice and mopping his underarms—I learn that Haviland City is filled with excellent bars; that it is (like ancient Rome) constructed on a string of hills, the precise number of which no one can quite recall. I learn that the market (this being the stock market, not the local produce market, although in fact the produce market is of course a subset of the other) is low at the moment owing to a string of vanishings and the recent fire on the Pipe (Old J.P.), but that certain people confidently expect it to rise shortly when these matters are resolved. (Resolved how? Just
resolved.
) I learn that Haviland City is now the centre of operations for Jorgmund, although the old head office remains out along the Pipe (the Silver) a way, where it all began. These things are moderately interesting, but not what I came here for. I wait. Sooner or later, they have to ask me to join the game. And they do. Buddy Keene, red from the neck up and dripping sweat from his earlobe, gets down on one knee. Would I like a shot at the title? I give Buddy a bit of polite surprise. Oh no. No, I'm waiting for Someone. Buddy catches hold of the capital S. His eyes light up. Is it a babe? Babes who play Brandon Racquets (the club's own variant, which has few or no rules about physical contact) are hot. They are hot racquet babes. They get physical. Yeah!

“No,” I murmur, infinitely bored, “I'm here to see Richard.”