by Kim Newman
‘No distance at all,’ she said, not believing it.
Kydd gave Stacy the rope, then took the reel away, unspooling until he was back at the ATV. The reel fitted into a catch on the vehicle and fastened tight. The aircrewman cleated the rope to prevent further unspooling. He signalled and Stacy let the rope go. It twanged and bit into the cliff-edge, carving its own groove.
A big gust of wind came, staggering Stacy sideways. She heard an explosion.
Looking over, she saw the carton had burst. Milk splattered against the door, and dribbled in runnels. The rope caught in its groove, and whipped about.
‘Never mind,’ said Kydd. ‘We’ll weight it down.’
That wasn’t a comfort. Stacy imagined a red splatter against the cliff.
‘I’ll go first, miss.’
‘I’d rather you were up here keeping the rope secure,’ she said.
‘Fair enough.’
Kydd fetched bolt-cutters from the ATV. Stacy hooked them over her waistband.
She wished he’d argued more.
Ten feet below the edge of the cliff, she decided her gloves and boots weren’t thick enough. The bolt-cutters shifted, pressing an ice-cold metal handle against her thigh.
Twenty feet below the edge of the cliff, she remembered the Blowhole’s stone grinders and wondered if any sections of rock face were devices like that. She kept kicking at stones which fell.
Thirty feet below the edge of the cliff, she needed a rest and found a ledge. Rope wound around her arm, she leaned against wet rock. It was raining again. The wind aimed marble-sized drops at her eyes. Her beret was snatched away, which meant her face was now also lashed by her own wet hair. She’d liked that beret.
Forty feet below the edge of the cliff, with fifteen feet of rope flapping below the section pinched off between her boot-insteps, she remembered an old school exercise about judging height by counting seconds as something fell and multiplying by ten. She clawed a rock free, held it out, and dropped it. After six seconds (sixty feet?), it bounced off an outcrop. If it splashed down, she couldn’t make out the individual noise amid the roar of surf. So she was no wiser.
Fifty feet below the edge of the cliff, with hands on fire and (she thought) ripped bloody inside her gloves, it occurred to her that the door might be locked as well as chained. With burglar tools it wasn’t especially legal for a policewoman to carry, she could crack most household locks. They’d done a seminar on it at Hendon. However, one-handed, in darkness, lashed by wind and rain, clinging to a precipice and pretty bloody fed up, she wasn’t confident that she could use what was in her pockets (tube of mints, some tissues, flat-keys, coral lipstick, mobile) to effect an entry.
Fifty-five feet below the edge of the cliff, she found she was still not level with the door. She didn’t know how that was possible, but here she was – toes scraping the upper edge of the metal.
She tried shouting to Kydd, but couldn’t hear herself.
Looking up, she saw his face peering over, waving encouragingly. From his angle, he might not be able to see her problem.
Off to the side, beyond the light, she had a sense of other faces looking over the cliff at her, white-bearded, evil-eyed and horned. She decided she really hated goats.
All she needed was for Kydd to uncleat the rope and give her five more feet.
She waited, hoping the penny would drop. No such luck.
Her choices were: a) climb all the way back up and ask politely for a longer rope, then hope the door didn’t sneakily work its way down the cliff another five or ten feet; or b) go off-rope and make her own way down to the ledge, trusting her luck not to lose grip, rely unwisely on an unsafe hold or be plucked from the cliff by the elements and thoroughly battered against rock on her plunge to be sucked under whirling waves and marr-i-ed to a mer-my-id at the bottom of the deep blue sea. Neither appealed. Climbing down had been hard and, with no feeling at all in her hands, climbing up would be much harder. The thought of going untethered opened a cold wet anemone in the pit of her stomach which she recognised as stark terror.
She gave Kydd another wave, pointing down, shouting ‘more rope’.
Kydd’s face disappeared as he stood up.
She thanked a power higher than the Chief Constable that her message had been received. She wound herself around the rope, entwining it with both arms, gripping with thighs, knees and heels.
A little give came and she lurched downwards.
Her cheek pressed against metal.
She lurched down again, way too fast, and scraped over rock. Her feet scrabbled for perches. The cliff sloped out a little and she stopped falling. The rope was loose above her.
Had something happened to Kydd?
She tugged the rope. Yards of it came free.
If something had happened to Kydd, that something’s attention would be on her next.
She relaxed her grip on the rope, still keeping it between her and the cliff, and experimentally reached upwards. Her hand crested a ledge – the door-ledge! – and she got a reasonable hold. She raised her other hand and let her whole weight hang from the ledge.
The bloody bolt-cutters shifted again, handle twisting her knickers, business-end pressed into her belly. She thought for a moment she was gutted and bleeding, but it was just the freezing metal against her soft tummy.
Her first attempt at lifting herself was pathetic. Her elbows wouldn’t bend. She just succeeded in fraying pebbles from the ledge.
She couldn’t think of Kydd.
Ordering herself to do better, she hefted herself up, getting her torso over the ledge, then her bottom. She was sitting, looking out at the dark sea, getting another faceful of rain.
A dim white circle foamed on the waters. The Kjempestrupe. Never mind that, anyone who braved this cliff was a worthy consort for the Droning of Skerra. Not that she fancied Persephone Gill.
The rope was free. It whipped away, well out of reach.
She was on her own. The business of getting both feet firmly on the ledge was tricky enough, but then she had to stand up and turn around to face the door. She took a hold of the chain, which crumbled to rust-flakes and fell apart. Angrily, she extracted the bolt-cutters from her underwear, minded to toss the bloody tool into the sea.
Then, sense prevailed. She might need them as a bludgeon. Or nail-clippers.
The door had a handle, like an old-fashioned freezer. She expected it to come off in her grip, but it was firm. There was no keyhole, so even if she’d had a full set of picks they’d be no use. She wrenched the handle, feeling a catch go free, and pushed.
The door didn’t move.
She pushed again and realised the door opened outwards. It wasn’t a convenient set-up. In order to pull, she had to lean away from the cliff and risk the fall. In opening, the door swept the ledge she was standing on. She had to ease herself around it, dangling for horrible seconds. Hinges strained and complained. A blast of warm air shot out at her.
If the hinges broke, she was dead.
Clumsily and in a tangle, she managed it.
She wound up inside a dark place, looking out, with solid floor under her.
Peeling off her gloves, she found slight weals across her palms, but not the churning open wounds she expected. She pulled her shirt out of her waistband and bent to wipe rain out of her eyes. She ran her fingers through her hair, wiping runnels of cold water back across her skull and down her neck and spine.
She was inside, not exactly safe.
What about Kydd? She yelled his name.
No response.
Frustrated, she clanged on the metal door with the bolt-cutters, as if sounding a dinner gong.
She poked her head out and looked up.
All she got was wet again.
The fringe of light still shone, marking the cliff-edge. Then, it shut off.
There was no reason for Kydd to turn out the lights.
Angry, guilty and scared, she knew she had to go further into this dark place and find
Jeperson and the others.
The prospect did not appeal.
II.
‘Traditionally, I should explain everything to you,’ said Swellhead. ‘But I am not one of those inadequates who needs the respect of his enemies. I don’t mind toiling in the dark. My achievements are their own satisfaction. I don’t demand that the whole world recognise how clever I am. Indeed, in the end, no one will know what I’ve done. Possibly, when the story is rewritten I will myself be unaware of how much I have accomplished. That’s still undetermined. Mr Jeperson, how’s your memory? Giving you a headache?’
Swellhead was right.
It was increasingly hard to concentrate.
The gaps were filling in, but not comfortably. Now, Richard remembered…
…a briefing from Edwin Winthrop, in 1973, about the interest the Diogenes Club was being forced to take in Sewell Head Industries.
…a woman in a leotard and mask, leaping from the revolving restaurant of the Post Office Tower to a SHI advertising blimp, absconding with vital components of a communications satellite relay.
…a game of chess at a Surrey estate, played with real people and electrified board squares.
…Fred Regent’s headless body dumped on Richard’s Chelsea doorstep, with a note, ‘He lost his head over a girl.’
…wearing a white jumpsuit and faceplate, mingling with minions.
…black-clad SAS men abseiling down the Blowhole.
…a firefight around the Big Dish.
…duels, deaths…
It was fragmentary and did not fit facts he was sure of. Fred Regent was not dead. The revolving restaurant shut down in 1971 after a bomb attack by the Angry Brigade. There had never been a Sewell Head Industries.
These were not his memories, but those of another Richard Jeperson.
Somewhen where Sewell Head was an industrial giant/diabolical mastermind (not a counter clerk in a sweet shop), Richard had been responsible for undoing his colossal schemes. At great personal cost.
Scalpels of pain slid behind his eyes.
The overlaps and contradictions hurt. From remembering too little, he switched to remembering too much. He was not struck by memories from two lives, but dozens…
…the ‘Horst Wessel Lied’ played over and over as German athletes won gold medal after gold medal at a 1956 London Olympiad.
…tracking a psychic assassin through the crowds at the Glastonbury Festival in 1969, saving the life of a future prime minister.
…arguing through an interpreter with an Okhrana man about screening the guests at a Royal wedding in St Petersburg in 1972.
…an embassy siege in 1980, negotiating with vampire terrorists demanding Transylvania as a homeland.
…a kidnapped London mayor replaced by a perfidious impostor in 1999.
…under torture in 2001, compelled by arachnid overlords to betray a human resistance cell in Highgate.
…biplanes battling over a London of 2003, the city radiating out not from Buckingham Palace (which was missing) but from the Tower…
In all the lives he had led, that other Richard Jepersons had led, there were no memories before 1945. The blank that had been with him all his adult life was a constant.
‘Come back, Mr Jeperson,’ said Sewell Head, chuckling.
For a terrifying moment, he was not sure which Richard he was, which world this was…
‘With concentration, I found I could compartmentalise continua. Of course, I have eighth-stage Asperger’s. As syndromes go, it’s one of the more useful ones. Your partial amnesia is not going to be an effective substitute.’
‘What is all this nonsense?’ demanded Onions, getting annoyed again. He had been in shock since Yoland’s death, hankie blotting his messy scalp-wound, sulking about the turn his expedition had taken, warily eyeing the mask-faced Miss Kill. Now, he was ready to reassert himself.
‘You’re not part of the backstory, Onions,’ said Swellhead, pronouncing the name like the vegetable.
‘O-nye-ons,’ corrected Onions, automatically.
‘Do your feet suffer from bo-nye-ons?’ snapped Swellhead. ‘As anyone who’s faced me in a pub quiz damn well understands, I know my onions!’
The little bald man was transformed. His forehead bulged, as if extra brains packed his cranial cavity. He still chewed, popping Belgian chocolates like a pep pill addict. He radiated the sort of confidence you get when you know fanatical devotees are on hand, prepared to murder at your whim or die to protect you.
Miss Kill and de Maltby were solid presences, as were some of the whitesuits – Vernon and his team? – but there were phantoms as well, coalescing, gaining substance. The complex was coming to life, each section getting noisier, busier as its inhabitants grew corporeal, purposeful. From Swellhead’s swollen head flowed a conviction that gave his world hard edges.
‘I’m not sure where you fit in,’ Swellhead told Onions. ‘But unless you give me reason to have you eliminated, it’ll be interesting to find out. As the world rearranges, everyone in it will be affected. Maybe you’ll fade, become one of the ghosts you’ve been chasing. That’d be an appreciable irony.’
Onions tried to stand, but Miss Kill laid a slim hand on his shoulder.
Richard could not see Persephone Gill any more. Just the woman in the mask whose fingers and feet were weapons as deadly as de Maltby’s silver-knived hand attachment.
He remembered Miss Kill…
…thrown off balance by that revolving restaurant, he’d realised the thief hadn’t trapped herself by fleeing to the top of the tower, that she had a prepared exit.
And, later…
…a struggle in the sculpture garden, taking blows to the chest and face, twisting on the AstroTurf to roll out of the way of a stabbing spike-heel aimed at his eye, an accurately thrown knife.
Did she remember? She would not leave that opening twice. And he was thirty years older, slower. Even a simple break-fall would probably throw out his back and leave him flapping like a fish, easy to skewer with a deliberate stab of a stiletto.
‘Just for the record, Onions,’ said Swellhead. ‘There are no ghosts.’
The pain in Richard’s head kinked, then shut off.
‘That’s not strictly true,’ he said. ‘This whole complex is a ghost, not of a person but a thought. An idea you had, Mr Head. Maybe you had it in another place, where you were an international mastermind with a cadre of loyalist goons at your command. Maybe you had it while you stood behind the confectionery counter, your wonderful brain switched onto another track by years of breathing in chocolate dust. Dreams can come true. That’s what magic does. And you’re not one of “Pronounced ‘Eyesight’”’s Talents. You’re a natural-born magician. Onions would say it was all down to chemicals in your brain. Others would give you a pointy hat and call you a wizard. We both know it doesn’t matter what you are.’
Swellhead clapped, slowly.
‘Quite right, Mr Jeperson. What matters is what I can do.’
‘Which is?’ demanded Onions.
Swellhead nibbled the corner of a bon-bon, almost flirtatiously. ‘Ah, wouldn’t you like to know?’
‘Will you get someone to write you a theme song?’ Richard asked. ‘“Swellhead, Swellhead, on sweeties fed, he’ll leave you dead…” Or how about: “You should have stayed in bed, it’s got to be said, you’ll fear to tread, after… the man with the swollen head.”’
‘You know, that’s not a bad idea. Miss Kill, who should I hire? John Barry? Burt Bacharach? Stephen Sondheim?’
Swellhead took music seriously. Richard remembered Ken Dodd, slaughtered and mounted for hogging the number-one spot with a dreadful ballad.
‘Percy is twenty-one years old,’ he said. ‘She’d want N’Sync or Robbie Williams or Eminem.’
Swellhead’s brows contracted, then relaxed.
‘Trivia Man, are you still in there?’ Richard asked. ‘Your Specialist Subject is Popular Music Since 1973…’
‘Soon, all that will
be forgotten. In my reality, we have proper music.’
‘You can hear the lyrics and hum the tunes, eh?’
Swellhead looked almost offended. ‘Yes, why not?’
‘Don’t ask me. I’m probably sixty-five. I haven’t liked a chart-topper since Mary Hopkin. That’s the point of pop music. It’s irrelevant to us oldies, just as we’re irrelevant to it. No matter what you do to the world, you won’t change that.’
Swellhead was a little flustered.
De Maltby’s silver hand began to whirr. Revolving needles protruded from the knuckles.
Swellhead calmed down and wagged a finger.
‘Very clever, but you can’t distract me.’
He snapped his fingers. The muzak billowed: ‘These Boots Were Made for Walking’.
Miss Kill danced, mask making her seem like a robot.
She wound around the impassive Swellhead, then de Maltby, then took a solo spot. She was very good, had all the moves, and each air-kick had a force that could have broken bones. At the end of every chorus, she broke something: arm crushing through a wrought-iron table, heel battering a chair out of shape.
One of these days, these boots are gonna…
Richard’s old wounds ached just to watch her.
…walk all over you!
She finished her routine. Swellhead applauded. So did de Maltby, very carefully.
Sincerely, Richard joined in.
‘I think it’s time to go up and visit the Big Dish,’ said Swellhead. ‘What do you think?’
Richard nodded.
End game. With people-pieces.
III.
The complex had changed while she was topside.
Now, it was fully operational. If Stacy touched the walls, she felt vibration. As she’d guessed, vast machines buried below Skerra were turning over. Energy thrummed throughout Head Office.
And there were staff.
She pressed into an alcove as white-suited soldiers jogged by.
Ghosts? Or woken from deep-freeze?
She was in an area of the complex they hadn’t toured earlier. Corridors curved but had no corners. Through glass doors, she saw illuminated rooms where scientific processes were being carried out. Most involved large, bubbling tanks of different-coloured liquids.
