Web Site Story (18 page)

'Oh I see,' said Mr Pokey. 'Of course. I only have
limited
access to your file.'

'Let me make this clear,' said Kelly. 'Ours is to be a strictly professional relationship. You will tell me what I need to know, when I need to know it. Do I make myself understood?'

'Of course,' said Mr Pokey, drawing back in his chair.

'Good,' said Kelly, slicing steak and feeding it into her mouth.

'You're a very cool customer,' said Mr Pokey and leaning forward once more, he spoke in a low and confidential tone. 'You know how things are,' he said. '.We live in a state of perpetual fear at Mute Corp, never knowing who will be next. Who will be chosen? Every time I touch the keypad, or move the mouse, I know that it could be me next. We all know that.
You
know that.
It
can take you whenever
it
wants to. Anything that you touch could have a Mute-chip in it. Anything. Terrifying thought isn't it? But that's how we live when we know, isn't it? We know that once it has entered into us, we belong to it, and it can infect anyone we touch. Our loved ones. Our children. As
it
chooses. As
it
wishes. And that's why we worship
it,
isn't it? To beg
it
to spare us. And the fear never stops. Fear is part of the package. It keeps us on the straight and narrow path, doesn't it?'

Kelly wiped her garlic bread about her plate and then she munched upon it. 'I have to make a call,' she said. 'And then I have to go. Thank you for the lunch.'

'You wouldn't fancy a pudding?'

'I do fancy the pudding. But I have too much to do. I will see you tomorrow.'

'Oh,' said Mr Pokey. 'Goodbye then.'

'Goodbye.' Kelly smiled, rose from the table and vanished into the lunchtime cityfolk crowd.

'Cool, very cool indeed,' said Mr Pokey.

In a cubicle in the women's toilet, Kelly felt anything but cool. She leaned over the toilet bowl and was violently sick.

Derek might have been rather sick too, if he'd known just what lay in store for him over the next few days. But content in the inaccurate knowledge that he had just pulled off the beginnings of a major financial coup and was already ahead by at least five thousand pounds,
and
it was still only lunchtime on his very first day at this game, he smiled a very broad smile and ordered himself a double rum to follow the single he'd just downed to seal the deal with Leo.

Derek now sat all alone in the Shrunken Head. Lunchtime business here was definitely falling off. Perhaps the God-fearing Brentonians had all given up drinking now and were kneeling in their homes, hands clasped in prayer, awaiting their turns to be Raptured.

'Whatever,' said Derek. 'Well I've done my bit for
the Company,
today. I think I'll take the afternoon off.'

And with that said he left the bar and wandered out into the sunshine.

It was another blissful afternoon. There was no getting away from that. Odd things were occurring and big trouble might lie in store when the locals got wind of Mute Corp's plans for the borough. But the old currant bun really was shining down like a good'n and on such an afternoon as this and in such a place as this, to wit, Brentford, jewel of the suburbs, who truly could worry about what lay ahead?

You couldn't, could you? It was all too beautiful.

Derek took great draughts of healthy Brentford air up his hooter, thrust out his chest, rubbed his palms together, patted his dosh-filled pocket and grinned a foolish grin. Blissful. That's what it was.

The streets slept in the sunlight. There was no-one about. Siesta time. Shop awnings down, that cat slept as usual upon the window sill of the Flying Swan. Shimmering heat haze rising from the tarmac in the distance along the Baling Road. The smell of baking bread issuing from an open kitchen window.

Blissful.

Derek took a big step forward into the blissfulness.

And then he stopped himself short.

He was going to play his part in screwing up all this. In doing something dreadful to this blissful borough. He was going to sell it out. Sell it out to line his own pockets. That wasn't nice was it? That really wasn't nice. That wasn't decent, nor was it honest. Kelly wouldn't be pleased with him at all.

Derek made a puzzled face.

Why had he thought of her?

She was trouble, that one. She'd got him into all kinds of trouble. Derek stroked at his bruising. That one was bad medicine.

So why had he thought of her?

Derek shrugged. 'She needn't know,' he told himself. Til not tell her. I'll let her think I'm following the policy of inertia. Pretending to help Mute Corp, but doing nothing. Then I'll be as outraged as she is when the fences go up. And when the rubbernecking tourists arrive in full force. She needn't know. It will be OK.

'It will be OK,' said Derek and he took another step forward. 'But why
did
I think of her?'

Derek stopped once more and scratched at his head, his chest and finally his groin. 'Oh no,' he said. 'Don't tell me that. Don't tell me that.'

Derek shook his head. He had done that thing last night, hadn't he? Recited that poem. That poem dedicated to her. He had done it. He really had. And \vhy had he done it? Why?

'No,' said Derek, shaking his head once more. 'I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.'

A sparrow on a rooftop asked, 'Why not?' in Sparrowese.

'I'm not in love,' whispered Derek. 'I'm not in love with her. Not with that dreadful woman. I know she's young and so beautiful. So incredibly beautiful. Her eyes. Her hair. Her bosoms. God her bosoms. Imagine just touching them. And oh God, that mouth. Imagine kissing that mouth. But I'm not. I'm not. I'm not in love with her. I'm not.'

Derek took another deep breath. Through the mouth this time. 'I bloody well am,' said he. 'Oh damn.'

The object of Derek's affection had left the cubicle, the women's toilet and the pub and was moving at speed away from the Mute Corp building.

Kelly's face was pale and drawn. Her stomach ached and her shapely legs could hardly hold her up. Kelly felt wretched and frightened and sick, very sick indeed. Keeping up all the pretence was in itself quite bad enough. But it was what she had done to Mr Bashful that hurt most. She had pushed his hand down onto that computer mouse. Allowed the virus to enter his body. Forced him into the go mango game from which he would never emerge alive. She had condemned him to death. She had effectively killed him herself.

It was all too much. All too very much.

Through the sunlit London streets went Kelly. Elegant shoppers to left and to right of her. To forward and behind, dressed in the height of summer fashion. Frocks of dextropolipropelinehexocitachloride, tottering upon Doveston holistic footwear, smiling- and speaking Runese.

Who'd be next among them?

Next to play go mango?

Next to die at the invisible hands of a mad computer virus that thought it was a God?

And who was she, Kelly Anna Sirjan, to think that in some way she was capable of stopping this from happening?

What was she to do? Take it on? Play it at its own game? Defeat the system that encircled the globe? That could take her any time it wished. The moment she touched something, anything that contained a Mute-chip.

What? The cashpoint? Her mobile phone? The automated ticket machine on the bus? A pocket calculator? Any computer terminal?

Kelly stopped short and clung to a lamppost for support. And then she tore her hands away. That was connected to the National Grid, wasn't it? And the National Grid had Mute-chips incorporated into it. 'Debugging' the Millennium Bug. There was no escape from this thing. It could take her at any time it wished. Any time that it considered that she was a threat to it.

Kelly gagged and coughed. Her throat was dry. Ahead was a Coca-Cola machine. No. And Kelly shook her golden head. She didn't dare touch that.

She'd go mad. Was she going mad already?

'I have to get back,' said Kelly to no-one but herself. 'Back to Brentford. It's safer than anywhere else. There's less computer technology there than anywhere else. Except perhaps Mute Corp Keynes and there's no way I'm going there at the moment. I have to get back.'

A cab drew up alongside of her. 'Looking for a ride beautiful lady?' called the cabbie.

Kelly looked at him. And at the cab. Computerized satellite tracking system. Computerized fare system. Computerized radio system. The cabbie waved his hand. On his wrist was a computerized watch, one of those chunky Mute Corp retro jobs.

'No,' said Kelly, shaking her head. Tm walking. Go away.'

'Please yourself,' said the cabbie, driving off.

And so Kelly walked. She walked for nearly ten miles. From the West End of London to Brentford. It was five of the glorious evening clock by the time she crossed over the bridge that used to cross over the railway, turned several corners and put her passkey into Mrs Gormenghast's front door.

'Hello,' called Kelly. But the house was empty.

Kelly opened the door reserved for tradesmen and others of a bygone lower order and let herself out into the back garden. She limped up the garden path, for her holistic shoes hurt more than a little, and she passed behind the trellis and opened the pucely painted shed door.

'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'I meant to be back much earlier. You must be starving. It's only that I've learned so much. And I've done something terrible and I need someone to talk to and I hope that somehow, impossible though it might be, you have managed to get through this thing and cure yourself. Because if not I don't know what I'm going to do. I might have to kill you to prevent you passing on the infection to somebody else. And I couldn't bear that, I really couldn't.'

And Kelly drew away the coal sacks.

To find the floor beneath them empty.

Big Bob Charker had vanished once again.

Derek was a little drunk.

He'd left the Shrunken Head and wandered up to the Flying Swan. From there he'd wandered across to the Four Horsemen and from there to the Hands of Orlac. From there his wanderings became a tad confused. He'd wandered into the coin-operated laundry at the top of Abbadon Street, thinking it to be one of those postmodern cocktail bar kind of jobbies that the toffs up West seem so taken with.

Vileda Wilcox (daughter of the embarrassing Harkly 'Here's another good'n' Wilcox and sister to Studs, the Mississippi riverboat gambler, and named, incidentally, after the kitchen cloth of legend) had thrown Derek out on his ear, calling him a filthy drunken pig of a person.

'I only asked for a
sex on the beach,'
said the baffled Derek, and received a drop kick to the groin that sent him sprawling.

'That's all you men ever think about,' said Vileda, which was basically correct.

'The thing about love,' slurred Derek to himself as he wandered uncertainly and not a tad unpainfully towards the Tudor Tearooms in the High Street, which in his particular state of mind
did
bear an uncanny resemblance to an Alpine apres-ski kind of bar. 'The thing about love is, that it scans the social bandicoots. No, that's, spans the social boundaries. Kelly is definitely posh. Anyone can see that.
You
can see that. Can't you?' he asked.

Mad John was shouting at Volvos today. 'What?' he shouted at Derek. 'Speak up. What?'

'Mad John,' said Derek, putting his arm about the loony's ragged shoulder. 'You're my friend aren't you?'

'I'm no friend of Volvos,' shouted Mad John. 'Hatchback or the estate, they're both the same to me. I hate 'em.'

'Yes,' said Derek, or 'yesh', because it's 'yesh' that you say at such times. 'Yesh, you're right old friend of mine. But I love the woman. And I'm a bit posh.'

'You're a bit pissed,' Mad John shouted. And 'You'll get yours, come the revolution,' to a passing Volvo fast-back, with the cross-body spoiler and the legendary cage of steel.

'But money can make you posh, can't it?' said Derek. 'It made Posh Spice posh. Or did it just make her rich? Same thing anyway. Posh is just rich with good manners, everyone knows that, although the posh ones won't admit it. And having a posh voice, that helps, doesn't it? Would you say that I had a posh voice?'

'Listen,' said Mad John softly, removing Derek's hand from his shoulder. Tmjust doing my job, mate. I'm paid to shout at shoes on Sundays and Volvos on Thursdays. The rest of the week, my time is my own. Mostly I spend it watching old Richard and Judy reruns on UK Gold. I'm not a philosopher, or an agony uncle. Why don't you just go home to your mum, Derek, and sleep it off?'

'But if I had money,' said Derek. 'Say I had lots of money. Then a chap with lots of money can get himself a posh woman, can't he?'

'A man with lots of money can get himself pretty much any woman,' said Mad John. 'So why have a posh one? They're really high maintenance and most of them are rubbish in bed. Believe me, I've had loads. If I had a quid for every posh woman who's taken pity on me, invited me back to her home, given me a bath and then, as if for the first time, noticed how ruggedly handsome I am, and then given me a right seeing-to on her four-poster bed, before filling my pockets with cash, I'd be a rich man myself by now and able to get myself pretty much any woman I wanted.'

Derek stared lopsidedly at Mad John. 'Is all that true?' he asked.

'Gawd, you are drunk, aren't you? Come on, I'll help you home. It's knocking-off time for me anyway.'

And so Mad John helped Derek home. Derek's mum thanked Mad John for his trouble, then told him that she felt a terrible guilt that such nice people as Mad John had to sleep on the streets with no roof over their heads and would Mad John care to come in and have a bath?

'Why thank you very much, madam,' said Not-so-Mad John. 'Let's get your lad up to his bed first, shall we?'

And so Derek had an early night.

Mad John didn't, but that's another story. And as it's a rude one, propriety forbids its telling here.

Two streets north of Derek's mum's abode, and just one from the rather posh house where Mad John lived, but where no-one saw him sneak into at night, was the pinkly-painted terraced dwelling of one Big Bob Charker.

At a little after eight of the delicious Brentford evening clock, Minky Charker answered the knock at her front door to find Kelly Anna Sirjan, freshly showered and looking radiant, standing on the doorstep of pink stone.

'Oh,' said Minky, wife of Bob the Big and missing. 'You are the very last-but-one person I expected to find upon my doorstep.'

Kelly didn't ask. She just said, 'Can I come in?'

'Ming the Merciless,' said Minky Charker. 'In case you had been thinking to ask, but were too shy to do so. Do come in then, I'll put the kettle on.'

Kelly went in and Minky put on the kettle.

'Do you think it suits me?' she asked.

'It's the right shade of pink,' said Kelly. 'But I came here to ask about your husband. I don't suppose you've seen him today, have you?'

'Gracious me, no,' said Minky, taking off the kettle and hugging it to her ample bosoms, as one might a puppy or a small dwarf named Dave that one has taken a sudden liking to. 'I thought that he'd been Raptured. Or at least I think that's what I thought.'

'I see you have a lot of candles burning,' said Kelly.

'You can never have too many candles burning,' said Minky, giving the kettle the kind of stroke that you might give to a really friendly otter. Or a hamster, or perhaps a quill-less porcupine that you had taken pity on. 'You can never have too many candles burning, or too many bottles of nail varnish, or too many different brands of kitchen cleaner under your sink.'

'Or toilet rolls,' said Kelly. 'You can never have too many of those.'

'Exacdy,' said Minky. 'Although I never keep them under my sink. There's no room.'

'So you haven't seen your husband?'

'No,' said Minky and she tickled the kettle under the spout. 'But I wouldn't be expecting to, what with him being Raptured and everything. But I'll see him when my time comes to be carried off to glory. And then I'll have some words to say to him, you can be assured of that.'

'If he did turn up here,' said Kelly. 'Say he returned from Heaven for some other reason, to pick up a change of underwear or something. Could you phone me?' Kelly paused. 'No, not phone me, come round and tell me. I'm staying at Mrs Gormenghast's.'

'Madam Puce,' said Minky. 'What an eccentric, that •woman, eh?'

'I'd really appreciate it,' said Kelly. 'It's, er, just that I have some money for him. A great deal of money. It's a surprise. I don't want you to mention it to him. But it's
a great deal
of money.'

'I'll take that then,' said Minky.

'No,
he
has to sign for it.'

'I can forge his signature.' Minky stroked the kettle's lid. 'It's something all wives have to do. You'll understand when you marry yourself.'

'Why would I marry
myself?'

'Because then you can be assured of getting
everything
when you get divorced.'

'Oh, I see,' said Kelly. 'All these things are so simple, once they're explained.'

'Except for logarithms,' said Minky. 'They're not simple. Or advanced calculus, quantum theory, or Fermat's last theorem. Not to mention the trans-perambulation of pseudo-cosmic antimatter.'

'The transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic antimatter?'

Minky Charker shook her head and patted the kettle.

'Go on then,' said Kelly. 'Say it.'

'Shan't,' said Minky.

'Oh go on, you know you want to.'

'Oh all right. I told you not to mention
that.'

Kelly left the house of Big Bob Charker, not to mention Minky, and took to some wanderings of her own. She felt that she ought to speak to Derek. Warn him. Tell him all that she knew. He was her friend now after all and she didn't want any harm to come to him. He really should be warned to keep his hands away from anything that might contain a Mute-chip. And anything meant nearly everything.

Kelly went around to Derek's. She knocked and waited and knocked and waited some more. She felt certain that she heard moans of pleasure coming from an open upstairs window. But nobody came to answer the door, so Kelly wrote out a note for Derek to contact her as soon as he got home, but not by phone, in person. And that it was very very urgent. And then she folded it up and popped it through the letter box, where it fell upon the welcome mat, which, like that of Derek's Aunty Uzi, had long worn out its welcome.

And then Kelly wandered on and knowing that she needed a drink and with it something substantial to eat, she made for the Flying Swan.

The Swan was not exactly heaving. A couple of old duffers sat at the bar counter. A pair of wandering bishops played darts against two skinners of mule. A battered fireman sat hunched at a corner table, bewailing his lot to a long-legged nurse with a ginger beard, who sipped at a pint of hand-drawn ale, but longed for a
sex
on the beach.

Kelly ordered a red wine and the full surf and turf, which the barman informed her contained something really special tonight. Haunch of wildebeest and perineum of octopus, served on a bed of Nepalese radish and wolf-bean-coated rice, cooked in the Tierra del Fuego style. With a side order of lime juice that could be either used as a garnish, or dabbed upon the wrists to discourage mosquitoes.

Kelly took her red wine to a window table and sat down to gaze out at the summer evening and marshal her thoughts into a plan of campaign.

As you do.

Five minutes hadn't passed, however (it was nearer to four), when a young man approached her table, wearing a sheepish grin.

Kelly looked up at the young man.

The young man looked down at Kelly, grinning sheepishly.

'Is this chair vacant?' he asked, pointing to a vacant chair.

Kelly glanced towards the chair, then back to the questioning young man. He was a personable young man. A sheath of blondie hair clothed his scalp. A sleeveless T-shirt clothed his muscular physique. A pair of too-tight leather trousers clothed all manner of things.

Kelly shook her head. She really wasn't in the mood. 'The chair
is
vacant,' she said. 'And given the ample selection of other vacant chairs in this establishment tonight, it is my hope that it will remain so.'

'I'll stand then,' said the young man, his sheepish grin transforming itself into a dogged expression.

'But elsewhere, please,' said Kelly.

The young man looked momentarily foxed for an answer.

But he wasn't.

'You'll have to go to Mute Corp Keynes,' he said. 'That's where the answer lies.'

Kelly's blue eyes widened and her hand found its way into her hair. 'Who are you?' she asked.

The young man seated himself in the vacant chair, availing himself of its vacancy. 'Shibboleth,' he said. 'Shibboleth…' and he pronounced the unpronounceable name. 'Brother of Malkuth. You've heard of him.' Shibboleth extended his hand. Kelly did not shake it.

'Good,' said Shibboleth. 'You know better than that, then. You know a lot, don't you? I know quite a lot too.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' said Kelly.

'You do,' said Shibboleth. 'Because you're doing what I'm doing, but for different reasons. I've been trying to find out what happened to my brother. And my mother. It has led me to you.
You
know what happened to them. I know that you do.'

Kelly shook her head. 'Forget it,' she said. 'You're Mute Corp security, aren't you? Come out to check me out. Crude, very crude.'

'There's nothing crude about me,' said Shibboleth. 'Except perhaps my taste in trousers. But I do have extremely good thighs and although man-made fibres stretch in all the right places, they'll never be leather, will they?'

'I won't tell you anything,' said Kelly. 'Please go away.'

‘I’ll tell
you
two things,' said Shibboleth. 'Firstly you have a tattoo of an Om upon your stomach and secondly you should really turn your face away from the window, you've been under surveillance ever since you left the Mute Corp building today. The fat man across the road, leaning on the lamppost. He's been following you and I'll bet he really wished you'd taken a cab. He's watching you through macrovision spectacles, he can read your lips.'

Kelly turned her face away from the window. 'And how do you know about the tattoo?' she asked.

'You just met your first well-poisoner,' said Shibboleth. 'I'm working with my brother's set-up. It's hacked into the Mute Corp CCTV system, amongst other things. I witnessed your medical. It was disgusting, but strangely compelling. I'm sorry.'

'And I am embarrassed,' said Kelly. 'Something I do not enjoy being.'

'But I am telling the truth. I'm surprised you haven't noticed the fat man.'

'I don't look twice at fat people,' said Kelly. 'It's probably on my file somewhere.'

'We could work together on this.'

'I have no idea what you're talking about,' said Kelly. 'I work for Mute Corp. I will have no hesitation in informing them of your criminal activities first thing in the morning.'

'Yeah, right,' said Shibboleth. 'But it's a tricky one this, isn't it? You don't know if you can trust me and I don't really know if I can trust you. You might be high-ranking Mute Corp security, as Mr Pokey thinks you are. Although he isn't certain, which is why the fat man is following you. Or you might be someone who wants to put a stop to it. All of it. So where does that leave us? Both distrusting each other. But both needing someone to trust.'

'Surf and turf,' said the barman, arriving with Kelly's meal and placing it upon the table with a great show of politeness. 'And I've thrown in a side order of Gambian Bugaboo fish entrecote uambe at no extra cost. Although you are free to tip generously should the mood take you. And I really hope that it does, because I'm saving up for a tightrope of my very own, so I can run away with the circus.'