The Folded Man

by Matt Hill

  Where am I?

  Manchester.

  How is this Manchester?

  Another Manchester. We brought you here.

  We? How?

  Me, Colin, Constance. In the van.

  Colin’s not –

  No, not this one.

  Where’s my box?

  Juliet smiles. She points to the van.

  Come on, now. It’s not yours.

  Brian, dazed, simply nods.

  And he – Colin – isn’t dead?

  Not this version of him, no.

  You mean you keep copies?

  Sort of. Anything else?

  Are you from space?

  No. But another place. You’re our neighbours by five. This, this Manchester, this is the middle-point between yours and ours.

  So how do you get around?

  Juliet points to the van again.

  Brian puts his face in his hands.

  It’s okay, says Juliet. You aren’t expected to take it all in.

  But my box –

  The box was a trap. Bait. Whatever you want to call it. And not for you, either. Ian’s supposed to open it at his event, isn’t he. In that quiet room afterwards. You saw it, didn’t you?

  I was there.

  We were intervening. The why doesn’t bear mentioning.

  But you’d approached me before then. The house. The shoe-shop.

  Juliet nods. Well, I once asked if you believed in fate, she says.

  Aye.

  Well how d’you think we had this frame ready for you?

  I don’t follow.

  With some degree of variance, you were going to end up here.

  You can see the future?

  Enough as needs seeing. The past as well. When we realised you got involved it had to be checked out.

  Then you are a witch.

  No more than you’re a monster, she tells him.

  You let me suffer. You let this box affect me –

  Said this before as well, haven’t I. It’s not all about you.

  But the box. The box and the riots. The police station –

  I’m not sorry, says Juliet. You had plenty of opportunity. Would’ve been fine if you pair hadn’t stuck your noses so far in. And look – what’s in that box is part of something wider we still don’t fully understand. A by-product of slipping between worlds. Used properly, it seems to make its own distortions there and then. Used improperly . . . well of course we have to clean up the mess.

  I don’t follow. If you knew I’d take the box, you knew what would happen. You didn’t have to let it.

  Brian. We can’t just change things without serious consideration and planning. One small thing can be so enormous a day, a week, a decade later. So we planned on-the-fly – a way to get the box that wouldn’t mean altering too much, too suddenly. I can’t account for your will, your weakness. Nor Noah’s. Nobody can. Plus time is so flexible when you know how.

  People are dead. Diane –

  I know. And it’s . . . she . . . that was regrettable.

  You don’t know anything. You’re saying you could’ve stopped that. You could’ve stepped in sooner. You let me think Noah was too.

  I’ve had to grow a hard heart, Brian. We tried. We tried before Ian got to you. Before Noah could change. We watched to understand you – but first we had to find you. The right you – not a you from one slip, two slips across. Not a you on another path; some other string. So when I came to your house, I’d got the right person. But by the time you’d got the box, I’d been thrown off by a you who made a different decision altogether. Do you see?

  Then why Ian at all?

  We’re investigating him. His future interests. On the course he was taking, he’d become a big problem for a lot of people. Don’t mince my words, Brian. With that man, genocide wouldn’t be far off.

  Brian looks away.

  We can’t be too careful about what’s changed and what isn’t, Juliet says. The box was intended to help Ian . . . undo himself.

  I see, says Brian. But all this and you don’t even say who you work for.

  That’s because we work for everybody. You, me and everybody.

  The Wilbers say that and all, says Brian. Ian’s lot – the nationalists, skin-heads – they all say that. The council minders and the rich beggars in their towers. Everybody works for everybody. And everybody works for themselves.

  And you then. Who do you work for? What have you done for somebody, anybody?

  I left a boy to rot.

  You got Constance working for it, too, have you? He gestures at Tariq and Noah. Because she came for them two, didn’t she?

  What’s that got to do with anything? A distant her, yes. But like I say, it gets complicated. Logistics get tight. You make do. You have to fill in the holes any way you can. As and when they happen. Constance – the older Constance – had favours to pay off. It was necessary –

  Is this terminal? What I’m turning into? This cancer you’ve put through my bones?

  Brian looks over at Noah. The audience is rapt. His condition the way it is. He already knows it’s terminal. The vomit was sludge, inky. Its foul taste didn’t suggest something that might improve.

  Probably, yes.

  Then – and he pauses – I’d like to take our box back to Ian myself. It’ll be my trident. See what he finds in the bottom of himself.

  They’re pretending like it’s happy families on the roof. On top of this ghost that in Brian’s world turns to a pillar of light by night.

  Brian walks circles in his new frame, his servo-powered zimmer. How convenient all that other crap was – the chairs he lost during earlier nights. Seems a hollow victory – not least when you consider how Brian’s thoughts are tangled around revenge and redemption. His old buddy, his old pal, Noah, sitting there with hunched wings, obscene, playing rock paper scissors with a giddy little Constance. Colin, bearded skinny Colin, who died in another world and didn’t in this one. Tariq, the copper, an arrow-straight, upstanding copper. Juliet. This witch in a vest. Constance. The empress on her forty-seven-storey throne. And Brian, standing, walking, all on his own.

  Yet in some ways, Brian does not want for anything. Not weed, not beer, not cigarettes nor coke. Maybe a bath. A salt-water soak. But mostly, Ian’s head on a platter; hands tight round his throat.

  Now, Colin asks Brian for a quiet word. He motions to the van. A small favour, he says. To help us understand what’s going on.

  Across the roof, Colin can tell Brian is anxious about the van. So Colin gives him the facts. It has jets. Some kind of fission device to power it. Gravity manipulators and other fancy words. He says, Don’t look so upset. Where I’m from, we all use these.

  Brian listens. They walk on a little more. Or Brian does his best to.

  Brian asks, Did you know the you on that stage?

  Colin smiles.

  He came over from fifteen across, I think. Truthfully, I don’t tend to deal with myselves. Freaks you out. Juliet manages HR.

  So you’ve got all these versions of you selling ideas across the gaps?

  Colin nods. Smiles.

  The ones we could convince, I suppose. It’s a war, where we’re from, he says. Have to fund these things, don’t you?

  Brian squeezes his nose.

  And there are more? Doing what you’re doing?

  A fair few in the group now, aye. Some drift – lapse. Kind of hard to keep track when there are so many versions of everyone. Plus a few found better lives through the slip, and didn’t bother coming back. Hard to blame them really. So much to see, isn’t there. The little differences between one world and the very next. But likewise you can go on forever, till one day something makes you pause –

  Not much worth finding in ours, then, says Brian.

  Colin unzips a holdall. Inside there’s a flask, some kind of autoclave.

  The politics are interesting, he says, looking at Brian’s tail. And the box . . . the biology is absolutely fascinating –
<
br />   Brian grunts.

  The politics.

  Sure the politics. Everyone seems to want the old world, the old way, but can’t agree on the right road back there. And the more you look at that problem, the more you can’t see any way round it. I don’t understand who’s protesting for what in that country of yours. It’s like it’s just something for people to do.

  And what if it is? says Brian. Nowt else, is there.

  Probably best it burns. Here, let me just clean up –

  Colin squirts the air from a syringe. He swabs Brian’s forearm. He says, Really appreciate this. It’ll help us understand.

  The needle slides home. The syringe body fills with a navy blue. Colin’s eyes go wide. He taps the plastic; holds it against the light.

  Well look at that, goes Colin. You’re royalty.

  If the box posed a question about what he was for, Brian knows the answer now. Because the enormity of all this doesn’t really wash. The dizzying image of clean Manchester; Salford, there again; the low clouds putting a hat on the Pennines. Because it’s hollow. The kind of dream a full bladder will pull you away from.

  There’s a bloating woman hanging over his staircase. There’s a toothless boy in the town hall –

  On the roof, the highest point in this warped, fairytale version of Manchester, Juliet clears her throat. She asks something –

  The breeze catches an edge of the Beetham and drags out a note. Brian remembers the songs of this tower. In strong winds, the whole city could hear it hum.

  Juliet repeats the question. She says, And it’s safer here. This walker frame is yours to keep. You’ll have the support you want, the care you need –

  Brian says, No.

  Brian says, You have to take me back.

  And with that, his heart stops cracking.

  Because you love your country in spite of your country.

  Brian and Noah look out to Werneth Low from a tower that never fell. That was never bombed. Between them – between the point of the hill and the building’s base on Deansgate – lie ten miles of buildings and roads and parks and homes. Railways and bus routes. Corner shops and pub dinners –

  Like the olden days, says Brian. Pretty plain without your adverts and logos, mind. Hardly a tube of neon, is there.

  Not my cup of tea, says Noah. Wouldn’t be, though. Didn’t decorate any of it, did I?

  Brian shakes his head.

  So it’s a fresh palette. It’s a canvas for my best yet. An outrageous bloody playground for me to colour in. Starting with a pair of tits and a grin –

  Brian laughs. The walking suit shivers around him.

  And they aren’t a bad bunch, you know, says Noah. Juliet got me out of a hole, too.

  Well, I can’t thank any of you, says Brian.

  That’s all right, son. I don’t want that.

  Aye, but I want to. But your promises. Your lies –

  Well if you’re really leaving, I’ll at least come for the ride.

  I want that kid out of the town hall. You can come as far as there. It’ll be one last thing. Bring him here. Make sure he’s looked after. Besides, them things on your back make for a better Superman.

  Noah smiles.

  OK, he says, hand on heart. One last thing.

  21.

  Juliet brings them home in the Transit. She has directions and maps, a semi-auto pistol nestled in her lap.

  It works like this, the slip. You’re loaded in. You sit damn still. You strap up, shut up. Say your byes and keep that chin up.

  Brian closes his eyes on green fields and silver glass –

  The van slips. Explodes across every colour of the rainbow. He opens his eyes. They roll about in the swill of black limbo. Brian sees galaxies and belts of frozen stone, majestic comets off the stern that sail over, so close you can see colours, fine crystal, the treasures inside. It’s some private vision of heaven, without worldly things at all. His hands look funny, like mousse, a froth of pink on liquid bones. They float on a sea of absolutes. Brian closes his eyes. Brian hears his heartbeat swell –

  Opens his eyes to fire and hell.

  Juliet dials something in. Unbuckles and turns fully round.

  Welcome home, children. You might feel nauseous – can’t account for turbulence.

  Turbulence? asks Noah. Where are we?

  Same place. Just forty-seven floors over your memorial lamp.

  Stripes of orange mark the grid of Manchester’s plan. Juliet wrestles with yaw to position the Transit, swearing mildly.

  Okay, she says. You’re good. You’re set. Town hall’s a straight stone down.

  The whispers in the back: And you definitely want this?

  That was Noah.

  Brian nods. He smoothes the stubble on his head.

  You know they’re really bloody interested in your changes.

  Stands to reason, doesn’t it, goes Brian. To look at me. But yours too, Moth-boy. You can stay in touch.

  I look a damn sight worse than you, pal.

  You’re not wrong.

  What’s going to happen to the shoe shop? asks Brian.

  Only bricks and mortar.

  Got an answer for everything, haven’t you?

  The van doors open. Noah puts a wet finger out into the air, checking the wind.

  Of course, he says.

  I won’t miss you, Brian tells him.

  Noah drops, blowing a kiss.

  Already the tarmac has gone to weeds. They’ve crossed the dusk yards; the shapes of the Pennines sharpening ahead. Manchester is a smashed lava lamp in the Transit’s mirrors, an orange-yellow smudge bleeding into the cloud above it.

  It looks gorgeous, Brian’s city in flames.

  Juliet swings right at Flouch roundabout.

  She doesn’t say a word.

  22.

  Brian means to accept himself.

  The cloaksuit he asked for ghosts his hands, but not the noise. The walker frame, for all its precision-machined parts, for all its greased bearings, still clatters like a maraca tossed down a well. He throws the bolt cutters under a bush. He pockets the foot of sharpline he’s taken out of the fence.

  Birds scatter and chatter the second he pushes through the shrubbery and onto the back lawn.

  On the lawn and panting, sweating. The smell of fish and the smell of dew.

  After every sharp movement, pause for thought.

  He counts three lads on patrol. Same style Salford boys they met first time round. He locks the legs, these skinny legs on either side.

  If you’re on open ground, go forward a metre, wait a minute –

  The bandstand is just over there, its roof the shape of a deflated church bell. In the house, Ian’s fortress, all the lights are off. This early in the morning, there’s a dull sheen to everything; that cold filter that casts your skin in grey.

  If someone spots you, remember they haven’t. They can’t see you. And if they think they’ve seen you, keep still: they’ll soon think they haven’t.

  Brian ambles, totters, wheezing through exertion. It’s absolutely a shuffle, this – he isn’t quite used to the ­gyros, the rolling motion, the feeling he’s always at the edge of his balance. That’s because there’s a pivot at his waist, and his fused feet form the central leg. He’s a kind of biomechanical tripod, now, so when he’s got his meat forward, the two steel legs compensate behind. It makes for slow progress.

  But it’s progress.

  Under the bandstand, pondside, Brian steadies himself in the walker unit. He can smell the water now, can see the carp as they rise, scatter and regroup. A spirograph of orange and silver, black and mottled brown.

  Brian pours a lot of salt into the koi pond. He hears the filter grind, or thinks he does.

  At first the fish thrash and scatter – working faster than any temperature would make them. They dart here, rolling on themselves, crashing in blind panic.

  He watches the fish working harder.

  He watches and pours the salt.


  He keeps pouring. The fish rise to the surface, rolling about on their sides, their gills turned a deep red.

  He unstraps himself. Turns off the cloaksuit and has a word with the buckles. He unwraps his tail. He runs a hand around it, up and down. The scales here have turned to rainbow – pearlescent golds and purples caught in this scant light. He’s wearing nothing for a top, and his chest hair has long since come off.

  The fin on his back, the wound that’s flowered, unfurls as he leans away from the walking frame.

  Naked, he slips into the water – as elegant as he’s never been. He parts the dead and dying fish gently; brothers now, sisters now, family from another time. A shame they were not sharks, marine flounder, some other kind, else he’d have swam here with them. His tail reacts to the salt, gently rippling as the powerful muscles adjust.

  He raises his arms so that his shoulders crest the water line. He feels his gills begin to suck.

  He dips his head; breathes it in.

  A last breath, more out of tradition than necessity, and he’s under. Maritime man, with his gold-gilded tail.

  To wait.

  Through the floating fish, Brian sees the shimmer-silhouette above. The length of the man, warped, distorted by the surface, and outlined by the dawn light. He sees the frozen limbs of a baffled man, and it comforts him. He hears shouts, muffled, and lets a single bubble go with a grin. In his hands, that foot length of sharpline.

  He pulls it taut.

  Good strong wire for great, noble deeds. Because this is the final myth. It’s what a mermaid is for; what a mermaid does. He is the siren on the masthead, the fate of drowning lovers, the figure by the rockpools.

  If his mother could see –

  Ian leans in and bulges large; leans in to pick out his dead children from the pond. His head shimmies across the pond’s skin. The surface tension breaks.

  And Brian, clever Brian, rises to meet him. Not as half a man, but fully a mermaid.