The Absolute Book

by Elizabeth Knox

  The house was constructed of huge slabs of stone, evenly shaped but rough in texture and covered in lichen of many colours, from a soft green-grey to an orange as bright as rust. It had balconies that were really only extensions of its rooms. None of these had a wall or a rail. They’d be lethal to small children.

  There were windows, but Taryn could see no glass in them. The pasture surrounding the house was full of flowers and browsing bees, but as Taryn came close she could see all the insects were passing around or over the house. Not one seemed to want or expect to be able to go in through the windows.

  Because the stream had divided, its rush softened. When Taryn came upon the nearest doorway, to the room with the waterwheel flush to its exterior wall, she heard a whir and clap and ratcheting, a noise a little like the combined sounds of a loom and spinning wheel. Given everything she’d seen so far—the young man’s homespun clothes, his horn cups, copper plates, gold and silver containers, his furniture, none of it mass-produced—Taryn expected to look into the room and find a weaver and a spinner. But what she saw first was a woman, wiry, with cropped grey hair and tanned, suede-soft skin.

  The woman wore a calf-length linen dress, a leather apron and wooden clogs. She was standing side-on to the door, holding up a sheet of paper to the light and eyeing it critically. Behind her a crankshaft came in through the wall. Attached to it was a waterwheel-powered printing press. The press was still moving, gently clapping the typeface to the paper tray, not quite touching, its movement arrested several inches from closure by some adjustment in the cogs and wheels of the machine. This movement was slow enough that two people working in coordination might have time to refresh the ink in the plate and position a sheet of paper.

  The woman turned to Taryn, startled. Her eyes grew wide. Taryn realised that she had blood on her summer dress and streaking her bare legs.

  ‘The blood isn’t mine,’ she said, quickly. She hoped the woman spoke English. That seemed a very remote possibility, given everything.

  ‘Whose is it?’ the woman asked, in English, with what Taryn thought was an old Yankee accent—which is to say she sounded like Katharine Hepburn.

  ‘It’s the young man in the round hut, by the lake. He was shot. With an antique fowling piece loaded with iron pellets. I’m meant not to forget to say it’s iron.’ Taryn realised she’d passed over the matter of who had done the shooting. She wasn’t ready to offer any explanations on matters she could barely comprehend herself. Her mind kept making periodic nervous darts at it. Demons. Possession. It was terrifying—but she felt so well now. She felt ten years younger than she had only a few hours before.

  The woman let the page float to the floor. She seized Taryn’s wrist, left the printing press doing its slow clap to the empty room, and hustled Taryn out the door and around the far side of the house. They climbed to the waist of the sprawling building and stepped up onto a shelving balcony.

  This huge slab of stone was continuous with the floor of a very big room. It was all one stone; Taryn could see no joins. The room had unglazed windows on three sides and receded into a cavelike rear, in the gloom of which Taryn saw a tiled platform with copper vaults beneath it, one showing a small heap of live coals. A raised, heated floor. On the platform was one made-up bed, and stacks of flat and rolled futons and bolsters and blankets in a mixture of linen, wool, silk and heavily furred animal skins.

  A woman rose from the bed and came forward into the light. Her gait and gestures were languid.

  A child sat up from a kind of nest at the foot of the bed and rubbed its knuckles into its eyes. It stayed back in the darkness, small, drooping, drugged by sleep.

  The printer launched into a kind of report—facts and opinions it seemed, from its length and the alteration partway through in the woman’s expression. The printer was speaking a language unfamiliar to Taryn, only one word of which she recognised. Shift. The word occurred several times.

  Shivers of heat and cold were trickling down through Taryn’s frame, from the top of her skull to the soles of her feet, as if something were flowing out of her. She kept trying to take in the woman in parts, because the sum of her was too terrible. Her measured voice as she answered the printer—melodious, something quizzical in it, as if she were hearing something she hadn’t heard said before, something she would have to think through before accepting. The reservation or doubt was deep in that voice, innate, as though everything might be in question. The woman was slender, not thin, and her skin was very smooth and seemed to have light added to its cells. Her hair was beige blond, consistent in tone and texture through all its length and volume. Her eyes were round, with perfect half-round lids and high arching brows. They were dark olive and had too much confidence and ease in them, too much savvy, too little understanding and feeling.

  Taryn stood stiffly in the middle of the room, like a small cat making a brave show before a much bigger one, with something like her life running out of her in wormy little shivers. She knew she was looking at a different species. At someone who only looked human.

  The woman walked past Taryn and glanced into her eyes. The glance was amused. She called for others—for help or attendance; Taryn didn’t know. Other people came into the room—but most of them weren’t people.

  The printer took Taryn’s arm and directed her to a seat, a long bolster which, once Taryn sat, was like sinking into a thoughtful beanbag. Taryn sat knock-kneed. Her legs began to quake. She could only manage to look at the feet of the people in the room. The anklets and bejewelled toe-rings. The people were standing on one leg to pull on embroidered felt boots. Someone squatted on the floor to unwrap and check the inventory in a leather pouch filled with scissors and knives—surgical implements, none of them made of surgical steel. The scissors appeared to be silver, and the knives were stone—chert, the hard flakes of stone used by early hunters to make arrow heads. Taryn remembered reading that chert was as sharp as surgical steel if fractured skilfully. The pouch was passed to the printer, who thrust it into a sling bag. She swung the bag onto her shoulder. ‘Come on,’ she said to Taryn. ‘There’s no time to waste. And I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything to eat or drink until I’ve talked to Shift.’

  Shift was the young man’s name, it seemed.

  The printer had another thought, and frowned. ‘You didn’t drink from the stream on your way down?’

  ‘No. Drinking from wilderness streams isn’t a habit I have. Because hikers are careless, and giardia is everywhere.’

  ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘An amoebic infection.’

  The printer shook her head. Taryn heard herself say, ‘But I don’t suppose you have those. No self-respecting microbe would come trying to peddle its pots and pans at the door of this house.’

  The printer laughed. She drew Taryn to her, and walked beside her out of the house.

  In the end only three of the terrible people came with them. The tall woman moving at the head of the column, and two men following after. One carried a basket of provisions in stoneware bottles and bundles of white cloth. The other bore bandages and bedding, possibly—folded squares of linen and silk, mostly white, some soft green and amber.

  Taryn only registered her tiredness and thirst once she reached the top of the shale steps. The sun was twenty degrees above the horizon and shining on the far slope of the hollow. It was hot. As they went around the lake the sunlight crept down towards the hut, touched its rough dun roof and made the leaves of the orchard sparkle.

  Berger came partway around the lake to meet them. Once he was close, he stalled, his face draining then filling with colour and consciousness. By the time the party reached his side he’d chosen to focus his gaze only on Taryn. She stopped beside him and let the others go on. The printer glanced at Berger and gave him a polite nod as she went by. But even she didn’t do the expected thing and ask him for an update on the injured man.

  ‘How are you holding up?’ Taryn said. It seemed a ridiculously ordinary thi
ng to ask.

  Berger took her arm and encouraged her to sit for a moment. He said, ‘If I had any hope of sterile instruments I’d wait my turn and ask someone to remove these few pellets.’

  ‘Have you had anything to eat or drink?’

  ‘Shift says I shouldn’t. On pain of something. He’s feigning suffering in order to have time to figure out what to tell people and what to keep to himself. I’m not taking it personally. I think possibly he is preparing for them.’ He nodded in the direction of the receding party. Then, ‘His name is Shift.’

  ‘That older woman said I mustn’t eat or drink until she’s had a chance to consult Shift.’ Taryn paused then said, ‘Who has a name like Shift?’

  ‘Someone shifty.’ Berger propped his arms on his knees, his head on his fists, and gazed out over the lake. The sun was illuminating the air above its surface. Dragonflies zipped and hovered, bright above the dark ruffled water.

  ‘All right,’ Berger said. ‘What do we know about not partaking of food or drink offered by certain hosts?’

  Taryn gazed at him, surprised he’d come so far. He met her eyes and said, ‘I mean—some things we’ve learnt might not make any kind of sense according to what we’re used to seeing as sense, but they might work with the bits and pieces of knowledge we have. All the obscurities that have been driving me crazy. For instance, Shift got me to tell him everything I know about Khalef and Tahan—two polished conspirators who dispensed with themselves, with their bodies, like drug dealers ditching burner phones.’

  Taryn thought about this.

  ‘Which is not something people do,’ Berger added.

  ‘Their bodies weren’t themselves,’ Taryn said. ‘The bodies were possessed too. Whoever they were.’ She looked at Berger warily. ‘Raymond Price is really keeping you informed, isn’t he?’

  Berger picked up a stone and threw it into the lake. The dragonflies jolted away as if the air in which they hung had fractured along a plane and, all of a piece, jumped neatly sideways.

  There was activity beside the hut. The men had the bearskin blanket gathered like a sling. They carried Shift into the shade of a peach tree. The tall woman had tossed a filmy white silk awning up over its branches to filter and even out the light.

  ‘I don’t want to go over there,’ Taryn said.

  Berger was still chewing on the little he knew. ‘If Khalef and Tahan were possessed, was there any sign in them of their human selves? You were possessed and you still made your little sallies of independent thought.’

  Taryn stared at him in blank tiredness.

  ‘Big sallies, then,’ he said, as if he thought he’d offended her. ‘Mustang sallies.’

  She laughed.

  Berger went on. ‘Were Khalef and Tahan possessed cyberterrorists? Or were they demons up to something that only looks like cyberterrorism to MI5?’

  ‘Good luck trying to make that distinction to Price.’

  Berger put his hands over his face and scrubbed vigorously. His voice was muffled. ‘We have to hope Price loses interest in both of us.’ He got up. ‘Come on.’

  Taryn was obliged to follow him. She didn’t want to be alone with the landscape, looking at what was going on across the lake and trying to interpret it from a distance. But, before they got within earshot of the others, she said, ‘On the Welsh border, where my mother’s family are from, they’re called the Tylwyth Teg.’ Then, in a fierce whisper, because they were too close now to the small gathering, ‘I can’t even look at her.’

  The men were rolling Shift to the edge of the bearskin. They unfolded a white linen sheet under him then eased him back onto it. The tall woman and the printer knelt on the ground to inspect his wounds. The printer wiped away the blood. It seemed that none of the holes was still bleeding. Some were scabbed over, some pouting, puffy and red.

  The tall woman hadn’t touched Shift. Her consultation didn’t involve any physical contact.

  The printer unwrapped her instruments and selected a pair of silver tweezers. She began to probe one of the more shallow wounds. The tweezers pecked and emerged with a bloody metal peppercorn. The tall woman covered her mouth, rose to her feet and drew back. The printer dropped the pellet on the sheet. It rolled towards Shift’s body, leaving a snail’s trail of blood.

  As soon as Taryn and Berger entered Shift’s field of vision he waved them over. ‘You need to go home, Jacob,’ he said. Then, to the tall woman, ‘Neve, would you please take Jacob to the gate for me?’

  Neve said something in her own language that caused Shift to blush and the printer to look at him sharply.

  ‘Speak English,’ said Berger. ‘If we are the subject of your remark please share it with us.’

  ‘I said I thought Shift had got himself a breeding pair,’ Neve said.

  ‘Jacob is here by accident,’ Shift said. He gritted his teeth and air hissed through his nostrils as the printer fished and probed.

  ‘Are they not a pair?’ Neve said. ‘They look like a pair.’

  ‘DI Berger has me under investigation,’ Taryn said. ‘That’s our only connection.’

  Neve ignored Taryn completely.

  ‘Don’t you people use painkillers?’ Berger was disgusted.

  ‘Please remove him,’ Shift said to Neve. ‘And his pointless concern.’

  ‘Come with me, little soldier,’ Neve said to Berger.

  Taryn seized Berger’s hand again and stood hip to hip with him. Shift shook his head at her. ‘You have to stay. Your passenger would take at the most only days to find you again. And it wouldn’t be the same as the first time it latched on. Its return would be much more brutal.’

  ‘Passenger?’ said Neve.

  Shift grabbed the printer’s hand. ‘You’ve been probing in that place for ages.’

  ‘I think you’ve one lodged in your rib,’ she said.

  ‘Leave it then.’

  ‘I can’t leave it. It’ll cripple you.’

  ‘I’ll have it seen to it later. Elsewhere,’ he said.

  ‘Neve could take you to Quarry House,’ said the printer.

  ‘No,’ said Neve.

  And, ‘No,’ said Shift.

  The printer wiped the blood away from the bruised, stretched and ragged hole, and went on to another wound. ‘You have too few friends to be so choosy,’ she said.

  Taryn said, ‘I’ll just see Berger out. I won’t go with him.’

  Shift nodded. His eyes were glazed and he was trembling with pain.

  Neve smiled at him—or possibly with pleasure at his condition. She walked away uphill.

  Taryn pulled Berger along after Neve.

  ‘You can’t stay here,’ Berger whispered. ‘I can’t just leave you.’

  ‘You have to. Just pick up where you left off with—whatever else you have on your plate.’

  ‘I have my cold case. Timothy Webber,’ Berger said, pointedly. Then, a little wild, ‘But that’s just a fragment of a floor that has fallen away under me.’

  ‘You’ll have to pretend. It strikes me you’re good at that.’

  ‘My difficulties are nothing compared to yours. Sooner or later someone will offer you something to eat. If the stories are true, your soul becomes theirs. Or your life. Or something.’

  ‘My life has been saved,’ Taryn said. As to her soul—now that she understood she had a soul she saw that she had already put it in peril. Not because she’d secured Webber’s death, but because she’d let someone else kill him for her. Khalef and Tahan, whomever they once had been, must have made the same kind of error. Sin must be a prerequisite for the attentions of a demon. But there were sinners everywhere and very few demoniacs, so it wasn’t just that she had sinned. Her demon hadn’t meant to ‘appal the faithful’—Shift’s words—it had meant to discover what she knew.

  She squeezed Berger’s arm and made him slow down a little more. Neve was well ahead of them, apparently not at all interested in anything they had to say to each other. When Taryn made Berger pause Neve continued at t
he same pace, stepping high through the pasture, her silky caramel-coloured hair rippling on her back.

  Berger leaned close and whispered, ‘I hope Price keeps copying me in on whatever information he can. Because Khalef and Tahan are related to this’—he gestured around them—‘somehow. I don’t know exactly what measures the Security Services are taking, but Price mentioned they were waiting on some time on a drone. There were political considerations—Pakistan being a sovereign state whose government co-operates with ours. And Dynamic Systems being a tax-paying company with a portfolio and venture capital.’

  ‘Price must like you,’ Taryn said.

  Neve had stopped. They were so engrossed in their conversation that they’d nearly walked into her. She looked surprised by this carelessness—to have been disregarded, if only for a moment.

  They stared at her and fell still, like nestlings under the shadow of a bird of prey. They were at the end of the vestigial pathway they’d followed up the hill—the kind made by very little foot traffic over a very long time. A slot in the heath, of plants that didn’t mind being trodden on. The path simply terminated. The heath went on beyond that termination to the rampart-like rim of encircling hills.

  ‘This is the gate,’ Neve said.

  ‘Don’t you need Shift’s gold claws?’ Taryn asked. She was determined to give Berger as much information as she could—even if it was only a useless torment to him afterwards. She was grateful to him just for being there. The information was a gift. She got the feeling information was something he valued and enjoyed.