Ink

by Hal Duncan

  “I can't go on,” says Seamus. “I'm done. I'm fookin finished.”

  “We haven't even begun,” says Jack.

  He picks up the top page of the book, lays it down in front of Reynard.

  “Now we start making the changes,” he says.

  five

  NATURE'S CHILDREN

  Harlequin in the House

  ell, Jack, I don't know how you did it, but this cat takes off his hat to you. Yessir, reports are coming in all over. We got airtrams burning, riots breaking out across the city. We got Pitt Street pigyard up inflames, explosions in St. Mungo's Shopping Centre, and—doesn't this sound like one of our friendly fire-starter's little games?—yes, Old Man Powell's wireliner just crashed right into Central Station. Oh, yeah! Looks like Jack is back to save the nation.”

  I gun the skybike through the gap between two buildings, and out into St. Mungo's Square, the ornithopter hot on my tail until I jam on the fore-jets in reverse and spin into a backilip, firing off a shot at my pursuer as I hit 180. At the full 360, I slam on the brakes and stop dead in the air to let the thopter overshoot me, hold just long enough to send a chi-beam lancing up the pilot's ass, then blow the ray tanks in three flumes of orgone vapor. The skybike drops like a murderer on a gibbet.

  “Io! Io! Followers of Harlequin, hear my call! Io! Io! Do you hear me?”

  Jack's voice echoes round the hall.

  “Who's there? What is this avian call?” I sing. “Where is its source?”

  “The son of Simile and Sooth. I call again. Io!”

  “My lord, oh lord, hail! Come to our company of revelers, lord of joy!”

  “Let the solid earth quake in its bedrock,” shouts Jack. “Let the nation shake with dread and shock to its foundations. Harlequin's awake!”

  Jack, in the wings, tips Don the wink. Don fires the ultrasonic boom and throws another lever; the set judders with a sickening subsonic crack of doom.

  Don's son et lumiere projects great cracks upon the very walls around the audience, the Duke and Princess rising in their seats. The whole place shudders, like the audience in its horror, as the polystyrene palace of Pierrot starts to lurch and fall.

  I smash through the glass roof of the St. Mungo Shopping Centre, feet-first and kicking away from the dead bike to somersault with all an Acapulco diver's timing, grab an overhanging pipe, which snaps loose from its joint and shrieks metallic murder, spewing steam as it warps down beneath my weight. As the skybike slam-crunches into marble floor and sends stone shrapnel shattering among the early-evening shoppers, I swing down from the bending pipe to land with ape agility on an ornamental fountain's basin's edge. Glass tinkles down around me.

  “Seems like Jack is busting out all over. Our old friend Captain Crimbo seems to think you have the supernatural ability to be everywhere and anywhere at once, like Jesus, Elvis or Jim Morrison. Is that what it is, or are some of Satan's Little Helpers out there raising Hell tonight? How do you do that houdou that you do so well? Ah well, one thing's for sure: That kid sure plays a mean pinball. OK, let's take another call. Hello, you're on the ether…”

  “The victory cry of Harlequin itself rises within these walls,” I sing. “He's here within this very house, the Harlequin! Get down!”

  I throw myself right off the stage and down onto the ground, as Don blasts everyone with his demonic box of tricks, vibrating hearts and stomachs, quivering organs with the decibels of his diabolic sounds.

  The Duke rises in panic from his throne, pointing toward an architrave of stone where a great column seems to shiver as it groans under the roof's weight, splits and sunders. He throws his arms up at the crumbling, tumbling, toppling-right-toward-him trick of light.

  Ah yes, the first scream of the night.

  Give the Halls of Pierrot to the Flames

  “Well, mis amigos, things are heating up out here on the edge of freedom. Your eye in the sky, the Hairy Scary Don Coyote, is looking down right now on—? don't know— what's the collective noun for every motherloving militiaman in the city? A horde? A mob? I'd say right now it's a thundercloud. What has our Jack been up to, mis amigos? Oh yes, there's a thundercloud of ornithopters and skybikes a-gathering, armed to the teeth and heading west over the City Centre. Looks like they're after someone, and, given the trail of destruction in his wake, my guess is it's our boy Jack.”

  They're running for the exits now.

  “Ignite the blazing torch with lightning's fire,” Jack calls, “and give the halls of Pierrot to the flame.”

  And Joey fires flash grenades—left, right and center—barbed points that embed in oaken doors with bulbs that burst in blinding light and spew out smoke. No charge as such, but just enough confusion added to a mix that, for some of our audience, already seems a tad too much. A maid-in-waiting faints into the arms of a young serving boy, to his surprise. The Duke's consul cowers beneath the throne, a look of utter terror in his eyes. The Duke himself, sword drawn, comes staggering blindly past me, sort of heading for the stage, but tripped and turned by fallen props of polystyrene, a bear stumbling around a cage.

  “Do you not see the flame?” I shout. “Do you not see the lightning blaze? There, at the sacred tomb of Simile, that flash the hurler of the bolt left on that day? Prostrate your trembling limbs, you maids. Get down upon the ground. Our king, the son of Sooth, the Harlequin, assaults and utterly confounds this house.”

  Shooting from the hip, I take out one of the mall security goons with a nifty chi-beam in the forehead, his mobile clattering across the marble floor tiles. Most of the shoppers scream and scatter, but a few reach into their jackets for guns, phones, whatever; informants or sleepers, my guess is, and I take them down— him, her, him—with the quick-draw precision of a latter-day cowboy. The sirens are going off already, so I reckon I have five minutes before the blackshirts arrive, ten if the wreckage on Argyle Street slows them down a bit. Time enough for fun.

  Jack enters in a flash of light, a bloom of smoke, a somersault onto a springboard hidden on the stage. He hits his mark and bounces up, arms wide, right over the Duke's head to land out in the hall, right by my side. His entrance is Don's cue to flip the frequencies, to bathe the room in ambient azure glow of open sky, and switch the mood music from low to high. The Duke's consul uncovers his eyes.

  And just as sudden as the panic first set in, it goes. There's still confusion but they're realizing, Wait a minute, yes, it's all part of the show.

  ‘Are you so struck with fear that you have fallen so?” says Jack.

  The audience turn to his words. He speaks to me but to the audience as well, these foreign dames, his voice so soft. Is he … amused or sad? He reaches down a hand to me, working his charm. The Princess lays her hand on the Duke's tensed sword arm.

  Jack pulls me gently to my feet.

  “You saw how Harlequin made the palace fall, or so it seems. But rise, be of good heart, and still the trembling of your limbs. Open your eyes. What is all this, all this you see, but broken dreams?”

  DANCING FUCKING MONKEYS

  “I'll tell you what, though; if you're one of those jailbirds thinking that you're snuggled up safe and sound in your Rookery nest, you better think again. Fly, little birdies, and be free, or face the music, because the left flank of that thundercloud is moving off and headed your way. Looks to me like they're trying to cut off Jack the Giant-Killer from his home-sweet-home, and I bet they won't be shy about making their presence known.”

  I race through the shopping mall of jewelers and haberdashers, high-street fashion emporiums, shoe shops and toy stores, and duck into an HMV outlet to strafe the shelves of fucking teenybop boyband R ‘n’ B and power ballads from mullet-headed spandexed geriatrics, all the sanitized and sanctioned anti-drugs pro-lifer post-punk whoredom of the music industry, the gutless, spineless, soulless, ball-less corporate pop-rock that would have every drugfucked songster from Robert Johnson through to Lord Mick Jagger spinning in their graves so hard that you could wire them up and li
ght the fucking planet if they could hear the crap these shit-merchants are peddling as music.

  I stop to take a breath.

  “If you can hear me, mis amigos, now's the time for all good men to batten down the hatches, strap yourselves into your gun emplacements—‘cause we know you got them, Fox—and enjoy the ride to Hell. My thoughts are with you, mis amigos. I just pray that guardian angel of the damned is watching over you tonight. So don't worry, Foxy baby, don't you fear, my saucy Jack. I'll be right here, keeping you posted on the action as it unfolds and playing the grooves to keep your peckers up and your sex guns loaded. From the White Album on the Black List, this is the Beatles with the only song that could be played right now. It's ‘Helter Skelter,’ and, by the looks of it, it's coming down fast.”

  Skybikes zip across the glass roof, this way and that, zigzagging up and down the mall's length as the riders try to spot me down below. Ornithopters flutter above them. They'll be surrounding the place right now, sealing off the entrances, so I really should keep moving but, hey, there's always time for a little music criticism.

  A shop assistant dives out of the way as I strafe the shelves behind him.

  Acid jazz with a neutral pH level, progressive rock resolutely facing backward, heavy metal soft and fluffy as a cloud, house music for the conservatory, garage for the garden, and Christian bloody rock—the fuckers have castrated everything the music ever was. Thank God for ambient rap and trip-hop techno-trance. Bastards can't take the chemicals out of those.

  One hand on my crotch, the other pointing the chi-gun at these shelves of pap, I channel all the lust for life from my zero chakra up and out, blasting this soundtrack to my death. Down the length of the mall, fleeing shoppers scream as the rockets start impacting in standard fascist tactics; airstrike a hundred innocent sheep if there's a rat's chance that you might get one wolf. They're trying to smoke me out, but I'll go when I'm good and ready. The chi-beam rips the shelves.

  Burn, baby, burn. Disco inferno.

  “Give me loud repetitive beats or give me death!” I roar, blasting a display of pop-tart concert videos into shards and ribbons. Dancing fucking monkeys.

  The assistant is grinning wide with glee as he unclips his name badge and steps away from the counter and the screaming manager.

  “Where's the Michael Jackson?” I ask.

  A service-sector wage slave with Spartacus in his eyes, the kid is only too happy to point me in the right direction.

  “Over there,” he says. “Whole fucking shelf … and no James Brown.”

  It's a sad indictment of society, I'm thinking. I blast the Wacko Jacko into streams of black ticker tape in the air.

  “Got a light?” I say, rifling through my pockets.

  He hands me a silver Zippo engraved with a skull-and-crossbones one side, encircled anarchist ?” on the other.

  “Keep it,” he says. “I'm sure you'll put it to good use.”

  I blow him a kiss, beautiful boy.

  This Poor Dumb Brute, This Bull

  I hold his hand.

  “We're saved,” I sing. “What joy it is to hear your voice ring out, to see you, in this lonely state of ours.”

  “Were you downcast,” says Jack, “when I was cast down through these gates into Pierrot's gloomy cells?”

  “Of course. Who would defend us, should you meet with an untimely fate? But how? Who freed you from this godforsaken Pierrot's own personal hell?”

  “My own hands worked my own salvation,” Jack says. “Did you like my tricks?”

  He twirls his flute above his head.

  “I thought I did it rather well.”

  “Did he not tie your hands with rope?”

  Jack shrugs.

  “I mocked him there as well. He thought he bound me, but he never really had me in his grasp. He groped at fantasies, things in his head. For, at the stall he brought me to as jail, he found a bull and tied its hoofs instead, sweat glistening on his body, nostrils flaring wide with fury, as he bit his bottom lip. And so he wrestled with this poor dumb brute, this bull, and all the while I sat watching the fool.”

  Jack leans back in a panto laugh, his hands upon his hips.

  “Meanwhile,” he says, “the Harlequin made Pierrot's house quake, and relit the fire at his mother's tomb.”

  Jack saunters round the room, picking this courtier or that to play to, subtly guiding them back to their seats; they back away from his advances, not even realizing that they're being herded as Jack dances here and there.

  “Pierrot saw the fumes,” says Jack. “He thought his palace was ablaze, so off he runs this way and that” [and Jack darts this way, that way, round a maid] “shouting for servants to bring water, shouting more and more, till every slave was busy at this pointless chore.”

  Now there are just the Princess and the Duke left standing out there on their own. Jack whirls behind them, pops his head between the two and gives a nod toward the throne. The Duke growls, but the Princess laughs and tugs her grizzled guardian back to his chair.

  ——

  “He left this useless labor,” Jack says, “once he realized I was loose, and barged into the palace with his sword out. There, in truth—or so it seemed to me—”

  Jack coughs into his hand, looks down.

  “ A man can only tell you what he sees—”

  He looks around as if to say you won't believe me, kicks the ground, milking the moment till his reticence gets a surly growl from our impatient host.

  “It seemed,” says Jack, “the Harlequin had made himself a ghost.”

  A puff of smoke and Jack's not there. He's back up on the stage.

  “Pierrot charged at it,” he cries. “In headlong haste, he stabbed the shimmering air, thought that it was his enemy that he laid waste.”

  Another puff of smoke and Jack's up on the wagon's roof. He whirls and jabs, enacts a mockery of a drunken swordfight with his flute. He twirls and stabs.

  “The Harlequin just gave him more disgrace.”

  He leaps for a rope on the lighting rig, tugs loose a knot, comes sailing down as the curtain dropped for the dream sequence rises on a scene of ruin.

  “He smashed Pierrot's palace to a pile of rubble on the ground,” says Jack. ‘And there it lies, a sight to make Pierrot rue the day he thought to have me bound.”

  Guy takes the rope out of Jack's hand to tie it fast.

  ‘At last,” says Jack, “Pierrot dropped his sword from sheer fatigue, fell in a faint, this frail ephemeral, daring to wage war on Harlequin the saint. In the meantime, well, I snuck out of his house and came to you, with little thought for Pierrot.”

  He reaches down a hand to pull me up on stage.

  “I suspect he'll show up soon. There is a sound of steps within. I wonder what he'll have to say, after all this?”

  Jack strokes his chin.

  “Well, even if his fury's never been so great, I'll grin and bear it. It's a wise man's way to keep his rage in check.”

  And Jack sits on a polystyrene stone of Pierrot's palace, lights a cigarette.

  SHEEP IN WOLVES’ CLOTHING

  “And hello… Guy. What have you got to say?”

  “Well, Don, I'm sure it's nothing that someone as… strong-willed as jack Flash has to worry about, but I heard a nasty rumor that the old boy has a rather nasty habit that he can't shake. Something that goes back a long way with him.”

  “That's old news, Guy. You talking about the absinthe or the hash?”

  “I was talking about another type of tranquilizer. Very expensive. Very dangerous. Killed a lot of people. He really should be careful.”

  “And where did you hear that, Guy?”

  “Oh, I wouldn't like to say. Just thought that someone ought to … point it out. After all, I'm sure Jack listens to your show. I'd bet even money that he's listening right now. And he may not even realize that he's got a… monkey on his back.”

  “Nice to know you care, Guy, but this is Jack Flash we're talking about. I
'm sure that he can cope with all narcotics known to man.”

  The destruction starts at the motorway where the line of hotels and offices—the Hilton and the Hospitality, the Abbey National and the NatWest, all of them in flames—stretches south from Charing Cross right down to Anderston. Illuminated name signs, dark or showering sparks, are broken, falling from collapsing roofs, a skyline jagged as a hammered set of teeth. Payback for the shipyards, Joey thinks, for the demolition of the Clyde industries, the smashing of the unions of welders and engineers. The spirit of Kentigern, Jack used to say. They'll never break the spirit of Kentigern. And then they did.

  There used to be a statue on Buchanan Street, Joey remembers, the ugliest piece of crap he ever saw; this molded lump of dull metal with flipperlike wings stretched up, twisted around, Christ, it looked like some fat mutant pigeon with its head buried in the ground. If the artist meant it to look dynamic, potent, then the artist must have been fucking off his trolley. But they called that sculpture “The Spirit of Kentigern,” and to Joey's mind the name fit: a crippled ugly thing.

  So now it's petty revenge dished out to banks and businesses and anyone who works for them, poor fuckers staying in the Marriott to attend some SECC convention of toilet salesmen, paper-shuffling temps in corporate nowhere jobs, all the dumb masses of mundane reality whose only crime is their complicity. But that was always one of the biggest crimes in Jack's book. Not that Joey feels any sympathy for them. But, then, he's not the hero of the people.

  The pilot brings them down the wasted canyon of Argyle Street, east toward the City Centre, flying low past dingy shops and pawnbrokers till they come to the Hielanman's Umbrella where the airdocks of Central Station bridge the road.