The Quorum (39 page)

The February debut of
Amazon Queen
was already on sale, stocked in depth. A special rack was given over to variant editions, sealed in plastic bags for collectors. Mickey looked for
The Nevergone Void
or
Choke Hold.
No luck. Edged out by the sudden explosion of Farhad Z-Rowe, it was as if he had never existed.

* * *

He made it on foot to Pyramid Plaza, without suffering the Effect again. Competing furies boiled.

It was a long while since he’d walked anywhere. His feet hurt inside his boots. The streets felt different from outside a limousine. People got in the way, shouting at him about the imminent arrival of a prophet, offering suspiciously generous terms on the instant purchase of video equipment or doing choreographed solo begging routines as they held out McDonald’s cups for small change.

Finally, he achieved the Plaza. He paused for breath by the fountains and felt faint spray. Inside was safety and a raft of explanation. The chanting of the Queer Nation protesters was somehow comforting. He walked through the crowd and made it to the front doors just as riot police appeared from nowhere and let off teargas. White bursts disgorged clouds of stinging smoke.

Coughing from his lungs, he collided with the revolving door, went round twice, and was shot out into the foyer. Water streaming from his eyes and slime from his nose, he was received by guards and wrestled down to the parquet.

He tried to tell them he wasn’t a protesting shirt-lifter.

‘My constitutional rights have been abridged,’ shouted a strident youth in a lemon-yellow T-shirt. ‘I claim my lawful right of assembly...’

There were scuffles throughout the lobby. Transvestites in Brazilian carnival costumes jammed into the revolving doors. Plumage pressed against the glass, orange and red frills squashing flat.

Mickey, still choking, tried to explain who he was. Mercifully, a receptionist recognised him and called off the goons.

‘Mr Yo, we deeply regret this mistake,’ she explained.

‘Yeo,’ he gasped.

‘Thank you, sir.’

His nostrils stung as if packed with nettles. She handed him a fistful of paper tissues and he unslimed his face. He saw through tears as if through a rain-lashed window.

The revolving door burst open and gorgeously coloured creatures invaded the Plaza, shrieking like angry parrots, laying about with placards.

The Effect struck...

* * *

The mural, a Mexican desertscape, exploded as melon-sized bullet-holes stitched across the wall. Fragments of coloured pottery pattered like hailstones around the reception area.

Mickey was barricaded behind an overturned desk.

The Vindicator, snarling scarred hate, hefted a complicated weapon which fit over his entire arm. A belt of ammo was sucked into a slot; bullets spurted out of the barrel.

Mr Bones, an elegant skull-face above perfect evening dress, conjured a flock of bats. They swirled and clustered around the cyborg, nipping at the joins between flesh and machine.

Mickey’s ears burst in agony with each shot. The Vindicator was firing at the ceiling now. Clouds of dust and clods of brickwork fell. The sprinkler system was set off...

* * *

Indoor rain drenched the transvestites, turning them into bedraggled hags, make-up running in streams.

The receptionist manoeuvered Mickey into the safety of the elevator.

‘You’re my heroine,’ he told her as the doors shuttered.

The elevator cage, a comforting coffin, rose.

* * *

It ground to a sudden halt. Mickey stumbled over his aching feet and sat down on the deep-pile carpet. It had happened again.

The doors were wrenched open by chubby fingers. The cage had stopped about three feet short of a floor. Instead of hauling Mickey out, the door-opener popped into the elevator.

‘Phew,’ he said, face flushed red.

The boy was an American Billy Bunter: a round-cheeked, big-bellied mid-teenager with a crew-cut, thick glasses and freckles. He wore a bow tie and a high school jacket like something out of
Archie.

‘Don’t tell anyone about this, mister,’ the boy said timidly, whipping off his glasses to reveal unusually determined eyes.

Mickey was confused.

The boy had two pinky rings, each with a Greek letter. He rubbed them together and muttered magic words. A painful violet light surrounded him and he transformed, his clothes shrunk into a skintight costume with a ‘BB’ chest motif. His body swelled, becoming almost spherical, and glowed with purple power.

‘You are sworn to silence to protect my secret identity,’ Blubber Boy told Mickey, his voice deep and resonant.

He flowed through the six-inch gap between the elevator doors and was off to combat the forces of evil. The doors closed with a clang and the elevator resumed its ascent.

* * *

He used his card at the entrance to the ZC office suite, and punched in his code number, 1812. Like the war, he remembered. The doors didn’t open, and his card was sucked into a slit-mouth. He rattled the locked doors, and a bike messenger on his way out let him in.

The ZC receptionist recognised him with a tiny smile of impatience and picked up her internal phone.

She poised in mid-number and looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, but what was your name again?’

‘Mickey Yeo,’ he said, heart petrifying.

‘Of course,’ she said. Then, into the phone, ‘Mr Yo is here again.’

She nodded, listening, ‘Uh huh.’

A framed
Newsweek
cover showed a scowling Farhad Z-Rowe ripping in half an eighties issue of
Circe.
The headline read ‘Comics Get Serious’.

The receptionist hung up. ‘If you’d wait, Mr Yo. Mr Chin’s assistant will be out soon.’

He knew what would come next but had to go through it. He even had a sort of understanding of what had happened. In the comic, he’d been wrong about the Nevergone Void. It didn’t suck people out of existence, it just revoked everything they’d ever done with their lives, leaving them stranded out of time, unrooted to reality.

He wasn’t even angry any more.

A plump catamite who could have been Blubber Boy’s older brother emerged and introduced himself as Timmy’s assistant. Mickey remembered him from the reception last week. The gunsel had wrung his hand for a full minute while gushing about his genius.

‘Mr Yo,’ he began, ‘is that an Asian-American name?’

Mickey shook his head and grumbled ‘British.’

‘Oh well, never mind,’ the assistant continued. ‘I’m afraid Timmy can’t see you without an appointment. He’s ultra busy with the new Amazon Queen. There’s scads of media interest. It’s been real exciting. If you want to leave samples of your work, we will get in touch with you. I can’t promise you when, but Timmy’s real conscientious. Hey, you can never tell where the next Farhad Z-Rowe is coming from.’

W
ithin the Device, Neil relived every moment of his life. Only this time, it turned out better. This time, even his dreams were happier. His lives multiplied, following myriad forking paths. In some lives, he wasn’t even Neil. It wasn’t real, but that didn’t matter. Reality was a poor second.

The Device allowed him simultaneously an infinity of experience. He enjoyed one-night stands, affairs, relationships, marriages, lives. With all the women: Victoria, Clare, Candy, Penny, Rachael, Pippa, Anne, Janet, Tanya, Sally. He found fulfilling careers. A writer, a businessman, an actor, a musician, a scientist, an explorer, a celebrity, a genius. He fathered adoring children. He created works of lasting merit. He amassed harmless fortunes. He commanded the destinies of nations. He stood by his friends. He ruined his enemies utterly. He made things better. He was rewarded for his suffering.

Part of him still knew his actual situation. It wasn’t without its own interest. People swarmed around the Device, tending to its - to
his
- needs, repairing its ruptures, greasing its gears, making offerings on its altars. A prosaic tile roof kept out the rain. A rank of net-curtained windows admitted shafts of grey light by day.

His consciousness explored the contraption with which he had become one. He had an idea of its size and purpose. He sensed the accumulated power and recognised it as his own. For years, it had been channelled into the machine and stored. An original ember had grown into a furnace.

The Device harboured other fires. Faintly surprised by his intuition, Neil recognised Mark, Michael and Mickey. In this contraption, they had more than a Quorum. His friends’ fires differed from his own; they were smaller, more concentrated, brighter. Filaments flaring for a last time. If he were not beyond feeling, he’d have worried about his friends, sensing a danger in the darkness encroaching on their bright lights.

All along, he’d known, even as he looked up from his rut at the shining paths of the others, that the four of them were bound together forever. Marling’s had put a mark on the boys for life.

There were still aspects he didn’t understand. He’d run through so many bright and equally real alternative lives, the dull original was fading. He knew how he had been transported from Cranley Gardens. He even knew he was physically somewhere in Docklands. Before that, the years blurred together a succession of fragments which might have been real or imagined.

The Device was, among many other purposes, a puzzle. It broke and reformed in new configurations, each part fitting insidiously and surprisingly into the whole.

Neil remembered saying ‘I give up’. More, he remembered meaning the words. It was as if he’d given the right answer on a quiz programme. A million pounds fluttered down from the eaves while brass bands struck up show tunes and a dozen spangled dancers high-kicked around him. All the prizes were his.

He should have given up years ago. At any time, he could have ended the curse. He could have seen off the Norwegian Neil Cullers. But who knew capitulation was the just course? His whole culture told him to keep on keeping on, never to give up the ship, to try and try again.

If at first you don’t succeed...

...then the Hell with it.

But did the Streak ever give up? Did Robert the Bruce? Did Horatio Nelson? Did Nelson Mandela? Did Jesus H. Christ? Even now, it was hard not to feel surrender was shameful. He might enjoy temporary raptures, but he would suffer later.

The Device reassured him with visions of endless contentment. He enjoyed irreconcilable happy unions with all his women, pursued vastly different but joyous lives.

He had had a real chance with Anne before he fucked it up. And if he had handled Tanya better, they could have helped each other. With any of the others he could have made a life, but Anne and Tanya had been his best bets. Before Sally.

The Device grew around him, cocooning his body with foam-rubber, feeding him intravenously, painlessly disposing of his bodily wastes.

He thought of Sally. She had come here with him and left. She was part of most of his lives.

His dreams continued, spiralling and expanding.

H
e hadn’t slept since leaving the police station. Periodic lapses into torpor replaced actual slumber. Mark couldn’t stop thinking. Always, his thoughts continued a low-level buzz. After two days, he wasn’t exactly exhausted. Mentally, he was as clear as adventurous, as on the coffee-and-benzedrine nights of
The Shape of the Now.
However, he noticed an increasing ineptitude with minor domestic tasks like opening cans or shutting the fridge door. If he could keep together for a few more days, he might achieve conceptual breakthrough, true knowledge.

He returned to
Dr Faustus.
One of his university books, the yellowing and crack-spined Methuen paperback, had lain in wait, dirt rind sealing its pages, on his shelves since the seventies. The dust irritated his eyes. It was hard to focus. Had his eyesight deteriorated recently?

Faustus’s Deal was for knowledge. ‘What a world of profit and delight, of power, of honour, of omnipotence, is promis’d to the studious artisan.’ At eighteen, when considerably stupider, Mark understood that with a fiery certainty. ‘Had I as many souls as there be stars, I’d give them all for Mephistophilis.’ He’d ended an essay ‘In Defence of Damnation’. At thirty-three - having lived four years longer than Christopher Marlowe managed before someone daggered his eye - he was, for the first time, forced to take seriously the last act. Brimstone and evisceration. Eternal torment. Suffering beyond imagining.

* * *

As Ring, he was supposed to look out for the others. After days of trying, he finally got through to Michael.

‘Hello,’ the distant voice said, guarded, defensive. Mark guessed Michael was afflicted too.

‘Michael,’ he said, ‘it’s Mark.’

There was a pause. He wondered if Michael’s mind were affected. Mark had been struck with an intense awareness of everything; possibly, Michael was taken the other way, smitten with forgetfulness.

‘Mark,’ the voice repeated. ‘Yes.’

‘What’s been happening?’ Mark asked.

‘Tumultuous business. This Gary Gaunt impossibility. It’s required a shitload of attention. All else is back-burnered.’

If Mark had ever heard of Gary Gaunt, he had forgotten.

‘I may be forced to go to blighted Basildon in person, Gods help me. It may come to zh-zhust that.’

Michael’s zh-zh shrilled down the phone line, worse than it had been since school.

‘Is the Deal off?’

‘The Deal?’

‘Michael, how bad is it?’

There was a long, drawn-out silence.

‘Pretty bad,’ Michael admitted.

‘I thought so.’

Michael hung up.

Among the people he’d been unable to reach were Leech in Docklands, Pippa in Scotland and Mickey in New York. His entire address book was inoperative. He’d left more than enough machine messages for Sally to phone him.

Damnation and Sally were his major concerns. Sally loomed enormously in his mind. He wasn’t sure if he loved or hated her. He wasn’t sure if he loved or hated himself. He used to be good at making up his mind. That was how you became a style guru, by making decisions and sticking by them.