The Quorum (35 page)

The next stroke hurt more.

‘This’ll teach you to kill me,’ she said.

He tried to sit up again but all the strength had gone out of his arms and back.

* * *

Afterwards, he escaped. Bruised and tingling, remembering real pain and pretend pleasure, he staggered alone to the elevator. Heather, changing, agreed to leave him be for a few hours. Having gone through the charade, she was almost embarrassed. In the end, despite a burst of willing on his part, she’d finished herself off with the whip-handle. It was hard for mortals to keep up with superheroines.

He leaned against the wall of the Apex elevator and chanted the name Priscilla over and over. If everything else went, he would remember Amazon Queen’s sister.

Did all Pyramid employees get their own superhero costumes?

The Apex elevator halted and the doors opened. In the antechamber he fumbled his own cardkey out of his jeans and passed it through the slot. Nothing happened. He tried again, experimenting with different sides of the card. Still, the inner door wouldn’t open.

Fuck.

He turned to the elevator to find it had gone down. Private for the Apex Suite, it was no use to anyone else. He stabbed the button, but it didn’t return. His knees felt like giving out. He tried the cardkey again. He ran it through the slot several times rapidly, as if trying to strike a damp match. No joy.

A tiny cut on his back was dribbling into his shirt, sticking the fabric to his skin. Heather getting enthusiastic.

He tried the elevator button again. The indicator which could only indicate the first floor - the ground floor in English - and the Apex Suite, said the cage had descended to the lobby. It was staying there for the foreseeable future.

There were stairs. He could go down a floor to the Presidential Suite and grab one of their elevators, or go down even further and find Heather. Maybe this time she’d let him sleep in her bed.

He tried the door once more.
Bastard!

Incredibly, the Apex Suite had a private staircase too, winding infinitely, never connecting with the rest of the hotel. He staggered, hand weakly on the banister, down through numberless, featureless levels.

His ankles ached in his boots. Cold seminal fluid scabbed inside his foreskin. Drawing pins behind his eyes jammed into the sockets. Down and down he went. This Monday was different.

Finally he came out of the staircase in a sub-basement bowel and had to make his way past deserted function rooms and a disused kitchen. Wandering into a sunken ballroom that listed strangely as if on the
Titanic
, he thought he saw a man in black by the orchestra dais. The shadow turned out to be a long fold of curtain trapped on a music stand. The ballroom was as cold inside as a fridge and he left quickly, looking for stairs.

He emerged into the lobby. Musak tinkled in the gloom. Grattan was gone, luggage and groupie with him. Late afternoon sun spilled in from the revolving doors but was squashed after a dozen feet.

There was a new desk clerk, another efficient young man in a blue blazer. Before he took his problem to the clerk, he’d sit down on one of the couches for a few minutes and get his breath back. Maybe he could subtly take his boots off.

Grattan had looked like a wino and nobody had bothered him, except the pre-pube shag-hag. He took the rocker’s old post and sank into slightly warm upholstery. He did not fall asleep exactly, just switched off.

S
he hadn’t left the flat in two days. She regularly fed the Invader but not herself. She slept in spells of a couple of hours, mainly with the baby. For the first time since the hospital, she couldn’t bear to let her child go. The warm unquestioning loving bundle fit perfectly against her body. Together, they stayed in her bed.

It was possible she’d cracked up.

The telephone rang and her own voice - younger, brighter, stupider - told the caller to leave a message. It was Ayesha McPherson, asking her to call Top Hat. She shuddered, cold. Just now, she never wanted any more to do with any of them. The Quorum. Neil. Leech.

The Invader gurgled warm fluid over her neck. With her left hand, she extracted a man-size kleenex from the bedside dispenser. After easing the baby aside, she wiped herself off. Then she applied a spit-damped tissue corner to the soft, tiny face. It’d be walking soon. Then the long, slippery slope that leads to leaving.

‘Mother, I feel it’s my duty as a citizen to report you to the Secret Police...’

How would she feel when her baby grew up and joined the English Liberation Front? Or was responsible for the repopularising of Barry Manilow? Or struck a Deal with whoever Derek Leech was in the next century? Maybe next time, he’d ask someone to make a Perfect Sacrifice of their mother, their child...

She shook with hatred.

The Invader bawled and she was overcome with a rush of guilty love. Cooing and humming, she jollied the baby back to sleep. The offspring was sensitive to Mummy’s Moods.

The telephone rang again.

‘Ms Rhodes, this is Michael Dixon. Could you call me, at the office or at home? It’s the Gary Gaunt situation. I’d like to take action.’

He didn’t sound different. He didn’t sound like a man who’d spent fifteen years wrecking a friend’s life.

Outside, darkness was accumulating. Upstairs, music was playing. She had a cramp from so much lying in bed. Her dressing-gown was starting to smell of more than baby-sick.

Neil Martin had collaborated, then given up. There was no reason for her not to go along with him.

Mummy, are there really monsters?

She’d always known creatures like Leech were in the world. She’d met them. She could hardly even pretend to be surprised or disgusted. In person, he embodied a dark purity that could even seem admirable.

It was the Quorum. She tried to stretch her mind around what they’d done. It was disturbingly easy to imagine, a fascinating game. So many details of Neil Martin’s life, puzzle-knots she’d combed against, now made sense. And so many things she’d picked up from her meetings with Mark and Michael. All the clues had been there.

The Deal must have been an enormous challenge, especially at first, when they were students. If it could be done with no financial resources and few contacts, how much easier was it for the men they became? Men with influence and power and friends and money. She’d done her time as a footsoldier. How many moves had been prompted or abetted by her reports?

Then you worked it out, Mummy? Like a proper detective?

She’d been hired between New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day. The dates bounded the Deal. The Quorum had only six weeks to make moves. Time enough. In under two weeks, the persecution had achieved its ultimate end.

Was it over? Had the Quorum won?

If Neil was out of the game, where did that leave the others? Where did it leave her?

Another person might turn on her masters, undo the Device, pull the Deal apart. See cosmic justice done. She half-thought Leech wanted that of her. But if serving the Quorum left her wrung-dry and dead, how would she feel if she became Leech’s footsoldier?

She held her baby.

What did you do next, Mummy?

Good question, kid.

‘I
’ve got a plate in my skull,’ Dolar said, for the twelfth time, ‘a silver plate from like Vietnam, only I got it coming off a bike at Reading. I get interference from secret government stations. It’s why I’m here, man. I’m locked up cause I like know too much. It’s Mars. They’re all going to Mars, the pigs, the Royal Family, the gunmint. We’re like left gasping when the Earth’s air farts away through the ozone layer, but they’re gonna terraform this alien world and make it Earth II. There’re no aliens, like extraterrestrials, in UFOs, they’re gunmint spies, setting up this Exodus of the Establishment. It’s been coming a long time. Lenin knew all about the ecosphere, that’s why they killed him. The Nazis were part of it, and Aleister Crowley. Kennedy said he’d get to the bottom of it before Castro had him shot.’

‘And Elvis?’ Mark said, pointedly. The cell was a ten-foot cube; sharing it with Dolar was like being buried alive with a hyperactive stoat.

‘Elvis?’ the hippie said. ‘What’s Elvis got to do with anything? We’re into important issues like the survival of humanity, and you’re talking rock ’n’ roll icons.’

Mark didn’t know where they were and no one, not even kindly WPC Cotterill, would deign to tell him. There’d been an overflow in Muswell Hill (not enough cells for the ‘rioters’) and some were bussed out to other holding facilities. Since he was lumped with Dolar, who addressed constables as ‘Earthling Pig’, not much sympathy was directed his way.

In the next cell, ELF bruisers struck up an ‘oi’ chant of ‘Rule Britannia, Britannia Kicks Coon Arse’ as a black policeman walked by. Mark understood the Metropolitan Police underrepresented minorities; he suspected they’d drafted in a token black face to wander the cell corridor and irritate the arrested Neo-Nazis.

He’d been in his clothes for what seemed a week. His chin was sandpapery when he twitched his lower lip across it. There was a toilet but he wasn’t able to use it in comfort when Dolar was awake. Several times, he’d unzipped and pointed, desperate to empty his strained bladder, but found himself unable to get a flow started. It was not pleasant.

‘The world, man,’ Dolar said. ‘It’s gone. Welcome to the Planet Shit.’

* * *

Lying face-up in the road, he was sure his arm was under the front wheel of the Rolls-Royce. When it drove off, his elbow would be crushed. If he sat up, he’d leave his forearm and hand stuck to the asphalt. But the car shifted its shadow, exposing him to the light, and he was unharmed. At least, unharmed by wheels.

He could blink and breathe but nothing else. He was a passenger in his own body. It was as if he’d been injected with ice. People ran past. Someone trod on his hand. He heard glass breaking, shouts, sirens. The white sky blurred, black smoke drifting across it.

Hands gripped him roughly and rolled him over. His face bumped the kerb. He felt his back pocket ripping away. That was his wallet gone. Seven credit cards and some cash. A picture of Pippa.

A bruise was coming on his forehead. The shock of pain gave him back some control. He propped himself up. Cranley Gardens was burning. A thick cloud of stinging smoke wafted past him.

He got slowly to his feet. He looked around for Sally but couldn’t see her. Michael was gone. Neil was lost in the melee. He was half-possessed, an inept
dybbuk
in his mental driving seat. He was still in control but had to issue irritatingly literal orders to himself, as if dealing with a primitive computer.

Walk, don’t run. Leave.

Police vans poured into the road. Constables in hastily assembled combat gear piled out, huddled behind shields, brandishing batons. They charged.

He found railings and clung to them, still feeling as if he’d been zapped in the heart with a stungun. His train of thought kept dissolving in bursts of mental static.

The house where Neil lived was seriously on fire. Distant fire engines clanged.

Where was Sally?

It was important he find the private detective.

‘You,’ a policeman said, ‘on your knees.’

‘Pardon,’ Mark thought, fuddled. ‘Fuck off,’ the
dybbuk
controlling his mouth said aloud, tentative but audible. ‘Fuck off and die?’

A baton lashed his kneecaps and he sank in a prayer of agony. More hands grasped and patted him.

‘Clear,’ a policeman said.

‘Bin ’im.’

He was wrestled along the pavement. Two policemen had him jammed in a wedge of perspex shields. He was shoved towards the open back of a van.

* * *

Without a wallet, he had no identification. He gave WPC Cotterill, the policewoman who was processing him, numbers for the town house and the country cottage. She tried - he was there as she made the calls - and got only machines. Pippa was either not back or out. There wouldn’t be anyone at
The Shape
until Monday morning, so no one there could identify him. She said they’d have to check the electoral roll, to prove he was who he said he was and lived where he said he did. Stupid people still give false names to the police though every record could be accessed by computers. He didn’t say anything but had a horrible feeling he wasn’t on the roll: at the last election he’d turned up at the polling station to find Pippa had erroneously filled in a form, disenfranchising him at both addresses. WPC Cotterill didn’t treat him - as did her Gestapo riot squad colleagues - as if he were solely responsible for the affray and arson in Cranley Gardens. Her approach was that his arrest was probably a mistake and she’d do her best to sort it out. In the meantime, he had to be photographed and fingerprinted. The ink would not wash off easily.

They took his belt, scarf and bootlaces and stuck him in with Dolar, owner of Planet Janet. Their cell had a tiny, unattainable window-slit near the ceiling and was tiled, floor and ceiling as well as walls, like a shower bath. There was a bunk bed. Dolar greeted him as if he were a comrade from the barricades.

* * *

After a couple of hours, it came out that Mark was the author of
The Shape of the Now.
In his chapter on ‘Bad Influences’, he was highly critical of William S. Burroughs, whom Dolar regarded as the premier creative genius of the century. Ten years on, Mark hated debating anything in
The Shape of the Now.
That book was so closely argued and thoroughly thought-through that nothing anyone could say would make him concede a point. Unless someone had been through the process of researching and writing the book, they weren’t even qualified to enter the debate. Anyone who tried, always turned out to be the kind of addled half-clever kook he was stuck with now.

Dolar’s three-hour harangue operated from a premise Mark could not accept: that Burroughs was worth more than the footnote he’d given him. At the end of the rant, he did revise his personal literary pantheon, out of spite. That niche where he’d once placed Burroughs, in the Gallery of the Hippie Hold-Outs between Vonnegut and Salinger, now seemed about right for Enid Blyton.