The Rich Man’s House

by Andrew McGahan

  Hundreds of lights.

  A gym? she thought inanely, mouth agape. A basketball court? How had she got it so wrong? She remembered now that Clara and the others had told her that the Arena was bigger than that. Much bigger. But she’d had no conception …

  What she saw now, illuminated dimly by a ring of lights that seemed to curve off into infinity, was an open space so vast that for a moment she thought that she had stepped outside, that maybe the whole side of the Mount had fallen away here, leaving her exposed to the night sky. Her second thought was that by some magic she had walked onto the playing field of a great sports stadium.

  But the Arena was not quite either of those. She stood at the entry to an immense dome, carved from the solid rock of the Mount, perfect in its shape and staggering in its size. Rita had thought that the Entrance Hall was big, or the well of the Helix Staircase, or even the Cavern Pool with its watery sense of space. But this …

  She was walking forwards now, out across the expanse of the void, marvelling at the spectacle. As she did so she crossed the running track, springy underfoot and marked with ten lanes. Perhaps her impression of a sports stadium had not been so wrong, for she saw now that the track circled the entire rim of the dome’s floor, a full four-hundred-metre circuit. Olympic ready. And within its ring lay a huge expanse of artificial turf, a playing field, again full scale, white chalk lines marking it as a soccer pitch—or so it appeared to Rita’s unsporting eye; it could just as easily be for rugby, or perhaps US-style football.

  Incredible. Oh, the space wasn’t a true stadium, there were no grandstands, and the dome of the roof, astounding as it was, was still lower than would be the case if fifty thousand fans were intended to fit inside. But even so—a complete football pitch, a four-hundred-metre running track, and all of it hacked from the inside of a mountain!

  The labour of it! The expense! The indulgence of it too, the near obscenity. Of all the excesses Rita had witnessed in the Observatory, this wonder impressed and appalled her the most. To cut out so much rock, at such unthinkable cost, and why? Just for one man’s recreational needs! Just to create a chamber that might see a half-hour’s use each day. Just to provide Richman with a track to run around, and a field to kick a ball about, when a simple elevator ride down to the Base could give him the same anyway!

  There was even more to the place, Rita saw now, glancing behind her. To one side of the door by which she had entered, glass walls opened to a deep recess which contained the more conventional gym she had expected, with exercise machines of all sorts gleaming in the dimness; while on the other side of the door, an arch opened into a second, lesser cavern that was angular and dark, but which seemed to be a court for either basketball or tennis.

  Amazing.

  And outrageous.

  She had walked almost to the centre of the football pitch. The upper reach of the dome was now some fifty metres overhead. Huge banks of lights clung there, dark now, but presumably, when power was available, they could illuminate the playing field to daylight brightness. At other places, cables extended down, and dangling from their lower ends were various box shapes, speakers perhaps, so that music could be played while Richman ran his laps.

  She could only imagine the arena all lit up, and with sound booming. No wonder the others had been so eager for her to see it. For all its simplicity and functionality when compared to the more ornate sections of the Observatory, and for all its wastefulness, the sheer overkill of its existence, it was undoubtedly the triumph of the entire residence, the pinnacle of her father’s design.

  And here, she realised, her thoughts suddenly cold, in his own monstrous work of beauty and arrogance, her father had died.

  She lowered her gaze to the artificial turf; she was standing almost on the dot in the centreline. She had a strange sense of certainty that it had been right here, in the middle of the great space, that it had happened. Why did she think that? All she really knew was that he was somewhere in here, inspecting his work.

  Richman was the one who had found him and sounded the alarm, at dawn, when the billionaire came down for his regular morning run. So Clara had said. But that meant, surely, that her father had arrived here even earlier, in the middle of the night, or in the pre-dawn.

  Did that make sense? Why would he be making an inspection tour at such an hour?

  Rita turned slowly, the sensation suddenly very strong once more of being watched. No one was in sight on the playing field or on the running track, but in the shadowy depths of the tennis court or the gym, who could be sure? Alternatively, if Richman was in the Control Room after all, then no doubt there were more security cameras here in the Arena that he could be using right now to watch her.

  Or was it something else that made her skin crawl, not Richman at all?

  Someone else.

  To Rita’s unease, a persistent image was forming in her mind. An image of her father, here in this place of his death, unseen, but present and close somehow, perceiving her, observing her.

  But that was nonsense. She was no believer in ghosts, nor even in an afterlife. It was a truth that had often amazed her clients, back in the old days—that someone who communed regularly with unseen inhuman presences refused to credit the possibility of human spirits. But to Rita it had always been quite simple: presences existed as fact, she felt them as a tangible experience, whereas she had never experienced anything to suggest that ghosts were real, or that there was a nether-realm after death from which return was possible.

  And yet … she could not shake it, a sense of familiar proximity, of him. More than that, of an urgency in him, a need to communicate.

  Occasionally, in the old days, she had been asked to speak to ghosts that her clients were certain haunted their houses, and she had tried it once or twice, opening her mind on a cursory level, and felt nothing. But those purported hauntings had lacked any relevance to her. This was her own father. If it was really possible to send messages from beyond death, and if he indeed had such a message, then shouldn’t she at least make an effort to hear it?

  Rita closed her eyes and sought to calm her thoughts. She had taken none of the drugs that would usually aid her in this, but then, so otherworldly was her state right now, injured, alone, exhausted beyond measure, terrified, that she was already more or less in an altered reality anyway.

  Explicitly, she sought for no inhuman presence, in no way opened herself up to the machinations of the Wheel. Instead, she sought rather for something warmer and more familiar, for a vestige of an emotion that would be human, that was of warm flesh and blood, not of cold stone. She searched for her father as she had known him when she was a small girl, and he was a hero who could do no wrong.

  Nothing. Nothing. Or could she … On the very edge of sensation, as ambiguous as half-heard notes amid static, was there something there? An echo of trauma, of an experience that was not hers, but another’s? Of a mistake made, and of suffering, and of a dying word whispered in the dark?

  Of a warning, meant for her?

  A voice said, ‘Hello, Rita.’

  She shrieked, opened her eyes. The echoes of her own cry shimmered back at her from the walls, but there was no one else there.

  8

  THE VOICE OF GOD

  Laughter, soft and yet all-encompassing, sounded throughout the Arena. Rita spun about, staring. No one was there, and indeed the laughter did not sound as if it came from close to her; it came from above and all around, a voice from the heavens.

  Then, ‘It’s only me, Rita.’

  She drew a breath at last into frozen lungs. Not her father, nor any kind of voice from the beyond, but Richman, only Richman, his accent recognisable now, amplified as it was in the sepulchral air.

  ‘Don’t bother looking for me,’ the voice went on, in a tone of friendly advice. ‘I’m nowhere near; I’m just watching you on the cameras.’

  Rita could pinpoint the source of the voice now. It came from all about, yes, but in particular it came from the cl
osest of the boxes that hung down from the dome, hovering maybe twenty feet above her head. She had guessed right; they were speakers. But could she communicate in return?

  ‘Can you hear me?’ she said to the darkness above, and the box hanging there.

  ‘Indeed,’ came the reply. ‘The security system is wired for sound as well as images.’

  ‘You’re in the Control Room,’ she accused. ‘I knew it. I was on my way there.’

  Another laugh. ‘So I assumed, before you got lost. I was watching you all the while. I saw where you made your wrong turn. I can show you the right way, this minute, if you like. But the Control Room won’t do you any good. I’m not there. I’m not in the Observatory at all. I’m still in the Cottage.’

  ‘Bullshit. I looked everywhere up there.’

  ‘Not everywhere, you didn’t. I’m in the Cottage’s safe room. You’ve heard of such things, I assume? For protection against terrorists and kidnappers and the like? Well, one of the key security features of this safe room is that the entrance to it is very cleverly hidden. Even knowing the room exists now, you could come back up to the Cottage and search for days, and you’d still never find it.’

  Rita could only stare upwards, the strangeness of the whole situation overcoming her for a moment, as Richman’s smooth American tones sounded with perfect fidelity through the dim gulfs all about her. It was surreal. And safe room? Yes, she’d heard of such things in the homes of rich people, but wasn’t there usually another name used?

  Then anger came. ‘You left me. You left me in the Lightning Room with … with what was happening to Kennedy … and you ran away.’

  There was no apology in the amplified reply. ‘I took the wiser course of action, whatever you choose to call it. A business decision, really. At this point, everything aside from self-preservation is an illusion. Especially any notion of altruism. My intention is to wait this thing out in the one safe place left.’

  ‘And the rest of us can go to hell?’ Rita queried in disgust, realising even as she said it that there was no rest of us anymore. It was just her.

  ‘You think I should have invited you in?’ mused Richman lightly. ‘But why should I trust you? I’ve already seen that the Wheel can control you. For all I know, it would make you attack me.’

  She frowned up at the dome. ‘You don’t think the Wheel can control you?’

  ‘It hasn’t yet, so as far as I know it can’t. And even if it can, it doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘Why? What makes you think you’re so safe in your little prison cell?’ ‘Oh, it’s no cell. It’s a whole suite, very well appointed thank you; kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living area, plus a second fully equipped Control Room in which I’m sitting right now. There’s also food and water and other stores, enough to keep me comfortable for at least a month. And all of it is secure as hell, with just the one bombproof entry now locked behind me, and no exterior windows or doors.’

  She grinned, hoping there was a camera above her that would show the grin in all its contempt. ‘And none of that will mean a thing the next time you fall asleep, when the Wheel takes over your body and makes you open that bombproof door from the inside, and walk right out into the open.’

  Now came another laugh, satisfied, as if Richman had been waiting for this very point to be made. ‘Even then, I’m safe. It’s a final security feature of this place. Imagine if I was in here but terrorists outside were holding my staff or loved ones hostage, threatening to kill them if I didn’t come out. In that situation some misguided nobility might indeed get the better of me. But there’s a switch here that, once thrown, makes it impossible for anyone, even from the inside, to open the door for a pre-set time. I’ve thrown that switch, set for seventy-two hours. So Wheel or not, I’m not going anywhere for three days. And by then …’ for the first time the confidence in the amplified voice faltered a modicum before recovering, ‘… by then, this thing will be over, and someone will have come.’

  Panic room, Rita was thinking, yes, that was proper word, not safe room. And god yes, Richman had panicked indeed, if he was prepared to lock himself away for three days with no possibility of escape, even if rescue came this very minute.

  Only, was he right? In his cunning and cowardice, had he truly preserved himself against the Wheel? And if so, then Rita herself was now the only target remaining out in plain sight.

  An astonishing bitterness possessed her. Yes, yes, it would be just typical somehow, wouldn’t it? He might survive this indeed. The one man to blame for the entire disaster might be the only one to walk free of it, as people like him always did.

  As the rich always did.

  There it was. She had refrained as best she could, up until this point, from disliking Richman based purely on his wealth and privilege, from being biased against him simply because of her own relative poverty and powerlessness, but for once she could not resist the sheer hatred. Fuck him. Her life was in peril. Kennedy and Kushal and Madelaine and Clara were already dead, along with hundreds more down at Base, all of them innocent in this affair when compared to Richman, but he would walk away with no price paid other than the loss of money.

  Fuck him.

  With the air of moving on, the voice asked, ‘So, can you sense anything of him there?’

  She looked up, distracted. ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, your father, of course. You’re standing right where he died. I took it for granted that you were trying to make some connection with him.’

  Rita blinked. Yes, she had been doing exactly that, and the result had been … had been what? Only an enigmatic hint of … something.

  She said, ‘What was he doing here, when he died? The truth this time, not the story.’

  There came a hesitation from above, but then Richman seemed to breathe a sigh, as if none of this mattered anymore. ‘It’s the truth that his heart killed him. But you’re quite correct that he was not down there for any mundane reason. He was naked, for one thing, when I found him. His clothes were in a pile next to him. I think—I can’t be sure of this, mind—I think he was there trying something that you inspired him to do. I think he was trying to perform one of your lustrations. And had his heart attack in the attempt.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m guessing. But he’d been talking about you, and your book, and the concept of lustrations, in the days before he died. We’d been having so much trouble here, more than you know even now. And he’d come to believe, and had come close to convincing me as well, that there was truth in your beliefs after all, and that we needed to do something. He didn’t tell me that he was going to try it himself, but when I found him that morning, it was pretty clear.’

  Rita was lost for a response for an instant, grappling with disbelief and with a thousand implications. ‘But … even if he … why here, in the middle of this awful place?’

  ‘I can’t say. He was still alive when I found him, just, but he was no longer coherent, so I didn’t get an explanation as to his reasons.’

  There was evasion in the response, Rita sensed. Richman at least had his own guess as to why her father had come here to attempt a lustration. She could guess too: this huge chamber, of all the Observatory’s reshaping of the Mount, was the greatest insult to the native stone, the most unnecessary, the most likely to infuriate the Wheel. So where better to begin placating the Wheel than here in the Arena?

  But if that had indeed been her father’s reasoning, it was fatally flawed. The Wheel was in no mood for placating, and how easy would it have been to strike down a man with an already weak heart. She had a sudden vision of him clutching at his chest and falling to the cold grass, lying there alone, dying, and knowing it. And for the first time, grief—actual, immediate grief—keened in her.

  ‘Did he say anything at all,’ she asked of Richman, ‘at the end?’

  ‘Not that I understood, I’m afraid.’

  But here Rita felt rejection rise in her, a protest that seemed to come from some other source, almost as if som
eone else was listening to this exchange, and could stay silent no longer. Richman was lying. Her father had indeed spoken final words, and Richman had indeed heard and understood them perfectly well. And those words were … were …

  Damn it, she had been on the edge of it just moments ago, before Richman interrupted. She searched again, and yes, it was still there, a sub-aural ringing within the emptiness of the Arena, a whisper of a dying breath, a warning … no, not a warning, but a request, a plea … It’s too strong … don’t … I beg you … don’t call her … don’t bring Rita here.

  Oh god. It came in a rush of knowledge now, as if she had been right here, watching.

  Her father had tried to stop all this. He had failed in his attempt at a lustration, but in doing so he had experienced the savage strength of the Wheel, felt how deranged with hate it was, and knowing that he had planted the idea of summoning Rita in Richman’s mind, he had requested, with his dying breaths, that Richman not do it. He had begged.

  And the billionaire—fucking Walter Richman—hearing this, had flatly ignored him.

  Jesus. Rita felt sick. She couldn’t stand there a moment longer, not on the very place where it had happened, not while Richman was watching from above, gloating over the video screens in his private room. It was too claustrophobic suddenly, too airless. She went stumbling away across the artificial turf towards the exit and escape.

  Richman’s godlike voice pursued her effortlessly, coming from speakers ahead and behind her. ‘Why did he try it at all? I can only assume he hoped that your ability with presences was in some way hereditary, that as your father he might have a similar talent. I wish he had left well enough alone, however. He might be alive still. He was planning to invite you here, to tell you that he was sorry for all those years of not believing you. I only did what he was going to do, when I asked you here. Don’t forget that.’