Fairyland

by Paul J McAuley

  ‘My sisters and I were treated with neuron growth substance while we were in our host mothers. Increased neuronal connectivity—that’s what they gave me, although it was effected by very crude chemical interference. What I’ve brought along will do the job much more efficiently. Anyway, we were brought up in seclusion, given a hyperconnected education that started before we could crawl, and tested continually. Test after test after test. Most of my sisters suffered spectacular psychoses. They built their own worlds inside their own heads, and retreated into them. The rest turned out to be no more intelligent than average.

  ‘I’m the only one left, Alex, and sometimes I think that I’m mad, too. Mad, but functional. What they don’t know is that I’m smarter than the company psychologists suspect. I long ago worked out how to manipulate their tests. I control those around me. Nanny Greystoke especially.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re mad,’ Alex says, but he then remembers his fugue.

  The White Room. The woman in the White Room, standing empty-eyed amongst the toys. Perhaps it wasn’t a fugue after all. Perhaps it was real.

  He tells Milena, hoping he doesn’t sound afraid, ‘We wouldn’t have come this far if you were crazy. But you shouldn’t have tried to exploit me the way you did.’

  ‘You’re smarter than I thought, Alex. I’m glad I chose you to be my Merlin.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  Milena is silent for a while. Alex turns off Commercial Street, threads through back streets until he’s pretty sure he isn’t being followed. When they come out on to Cable Street, heading towards the Rotherhithe Tunnel, Milena asks what he plans to do. And when he tells her, she laughs and says she may or may not be crazy, but he certainly is.

  Alex parks the van at the end of one of the narrow streets by the river, in the shadow of an abandoned block of flats built in the Legoland style of the boom-and-bust 1980s. As they walk towards the Surrey Docks and Billy Rock’s party, Alex and Milena see thin lines of white laser light crossing and recrossing, making a kind of tent in the twilight air. It begins to speckle with rain, fat, greasy drops that pock and patter on Alex’s scalp. Milena puts her pink jacket over her head and carefully tucks her silvery bag under her arm.

  The gate to the building site is lit by spotlights that make the yellow brick facade of the faux warehouse block of fiats across the road shine like butter. Chauffeured BMWs, Mercedes and Jaguars are unloading passengers. Armed, uniformed flunkies check tickets. As Alex and Milena join the queue, Howard Perse walks up to them.

  Perse’s face is white and unshaven, his eyes sunken and ringed with shadow. He says, ‘What the fuck are you doing here, Sharkey?’

  Alex feels a curious calm. ‘Hello, Mr Perse. This is my cousin, Milena. I’m taking her to the party.’

  Milena gives the policeman a bright sappy grin, but Perse barely glances at her. ‘You’re in with him. Aren’t you, Sharkey? Is that why you’re here?’

  People in the queue glance around.

  Alex says, ‘Should you be here, Mr Perse?’

  Perse crowds close, reeking of whisky. ‘A spot of surveillance, that’s all. We’re gathering useful information. You watch your fat arse, Sharkey.’

  ‘He’s out of control,’ Milena says thoughtfully, as Perse reels away, pushing through a knot of men in dinner jackets.

  A security guard runs Alex’s invitation through a scanner to read its embedded chip, and then ushers Alex and Milena through a metal detector. A covered walkway runs past the excavated pit to the warehouse, where there’s a bower of real tropical foliage in which a welcoming line of dolls, dressed in black pyjamas and coolie hats, bow as the guests move past.

  Inside the warehouse, Ray Aziz’s sound and light system pulses and thunders. Threads of laser light sweep above the heads of the crowd. Men in black tie and dinner jackets; women in cocktail dresses—randomly slashed crushed velvet is popular, but a fair number wear diaphanous head-to-heel chadors over body stockings or graphic film or nothing at all. Alex recognizes the TV star who plays the matriarch in a long-running soap, a bouffant-hairstyled VJ he remembers from when he watched MTV as a kid. A Cabinet minister with a girl on either arm is being interviewed by a TV crew. The lead singer and the keyboard player of the trash asthetique band du jour, Liquid Television, are sharing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s over by the bar. Hard-eyed Chinese men in hired dinner jackets, the foot soldiers of Billy Rock’s family, move amongst the glitterati. Alex doesn’t doubt that at least half the women are working girls.

  Dolls, dressed as waiters and bearing silver salvers piled with delicacies, trot through the crowd in tireless criss-cross trajectories. Alex picks up a disc of moist black bread speckled with white caviar, peppery nuggets of squid in a glaze of aspic, a puree of seaweed coiled and peppered on a Bath Oliver. Milena watches him consume these delicacies with a mixture of amusement and disdain. The dolls are coming from somewhere behind the arena at the far side of the warehouse space, and Alex makes his way towards it.

  Big liquid crystal screens slant down from the high roof, showing people in baggy orange coveralls and black flak jackets running through light and shadow and falling rain, ducking and weaving amongst wrecked cars and torn-up sections of wall. They are chasing dolls in black pyjamas. A doll caught by crossfire spasms as bullets smack home; the cameras zoom in as a head shot spatters blood and brains.

  Hardly anyone in the party is watching the screens.

  Alex holds on to Milena’s hand as he steers her through the crowd towards the arena. He is half-way there when he sees Doggy Dog. For a moment their eyes lock. Then a waiter moves between them, and Doggy Dog is gone. Chills snarl Alex’s spine. He bulls his way through the crowd, with Milena holding tight to his hand and telling him to slow down.

  Billy Rock is sitting in the upper row of the seats that rise above the arena, flanked by two of his sober-suited uncles. Billy Rock is dressed entirely in black, from a snap-brimmed Homburg to cobra-hide cowboy boots. Mirror-shades mask half his face. Below him, an eager crowd fills the tiers of benches, their heads limned by the glare of spotlights aimed into the arena.

  Milena surprises Alex by running ahead of him up the steps and bowing to Billy Rock, to his uncles. Billy Rock is as high as a kite, and grins and claps his hands pointing past Alex at the arena.

  At opposite sides of the sawdust-strewn ground, two handlers in heavily padded overalls, thick gloves and helmets with grilled face-shields are each holding back a fighting doll. A quick flicker runs through the crowd as money changes hands. A bell rings, barely audible above the stuttering pulse of the soundsystem, and at once the handlers let go of their charges.

  The fighting dolls meet with a rush in the centre of the arena. They roll over and over, clawing at each other with hands and feet. The crowd is on its feet, screaming with one voice. Suddenly, one doll is on top, and rips out the other’s throat with a quick jerk of its massive jaws. It is spattered by a sudden spurt of rich red blood before loops of braided wire drop over its gnarled head and it is dragged away by both handlers.

  Billy Rock claps loudly, then gestures up at the screens. ‘You try it, Alex. Go outside and kill yourself a doll. Isn’t difficult, and very safe. This is some party, huh? You never forget it.’

  ‘I certainly won’t.’

  Billy Rock says, ‘Who’s your girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s my niece,’ Alex says.

  He is acutely aware of the level, unfathomable stares of Billy Rock’s uncles. They both bear a remarkable similarity to ancient toads, with black hair greased back from age-spotted foreheads.

  Billy Rock laughs. ‘If you say so, Alex, Let her try it too. It’s for all the family.’ He leers at Milena. ‘You come along with me, little girl, and have some fun.’

  The right-hand uncle catches Billy Rock’s arm and murmurs something, but Billy Rock shakes off the old man’s restraining hand and says loudly, ‘I show my friend here a good time. It is not a problem. Come on, Alex. You come along with
me, you and your little niece.’

  Behind a tall screen of bamboo and black lacquered paper at the back of the arena is a long, brightly lit space with racks of overalls and helmets and guns down one side. The dead fighting doll is wheeled past on a steel gurney. Three of its live fellows, excited by the smell of its blood, dash at the thick steel bars of their individual cages. Beyond, unmodified dolls in black pyjamas squat apathetically in a holding pen. The odour of animal musk and sawdust reminds Alex of the time he went to a tattered circus which set up its tent in Southwark Park: the aged, dignified elephant which ponderously followed its routine, quite unaware of applause; the half-hearted clowns; the perfunctory trapeze show whose participants doubled not only as tumblers but also as a knife-throwing act. That had been before the turn of the century, strange to think, before the park was taken over by an organized tribe of the homeless.

  Milena wanders over to the cages as a fighting doll is dragged out by a handler in padded overalls. The black pyjamaed dolls in the holding pen turn to look at her. All have exactly the same prognathous jaw, the same close-set brown eyes peering under a craggy brow.

  The handler, his mask pushed up, collars the doll with a wire loop around its neck and opens the cage door by tapping out a code on the lock’s keypad. A second handler, standing by with a pistol at the ready, politely tells Milena to keep away. She smiles brightly at the man and says, ‘But they’re so cute!’

  Alex watches this with an anxious ache in his gut. He is no longer angry. Anger has carried him this far, and then left him stranded, with Perse waiting at the gate and Doggy Dog out there in the crowd.

  Billy Rock is allowing an attendant to fasten a set of orange overalls over his clothes. He has taken off his black Homburg and his mirror-shades. He takes a deep sniff from a small bottle half-full of a clear liquid, smiles starrily, and tells Alex to hurry up, he’ll miss the fun. His pupils are shrunken to pinpricks.

  ‘I just came to say hello, Billy. Really.’

  ‘You’ll have fun,’ Billy Rock says, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. ‘You never have fun, hiding away in that dingy dreary weary lockup.’

  Then, quick as a weasel, he darts forward and claps a hand over Alex’s mouth, shoves the bottle under his nostrils.

  Alex tries to shake him off and takes a breath and it’s as if a light has exploded in his head. For a moment he can’t see. He blinks tears and snorts out what seems like half a litre of snot. He’s suddenly foolishly happy, happier than he’s ever been in his life.

  Billy Rock makes an imperious gesture, and an attendant sits Alex down, zips him into a set of coveralls, buckles on a black flakjacket. Alex feels he should protest, but he’d rather concentrate on the dizzy feeling of well-being that’s trembling all the way-out to his fingertips.

  Billy Rock has a gun now. He giggles, and aims it at Alex, at the fighting dolls inside their cages, at the people who, already in coveralls and flakjackets, are waiting to enter the game area.

  Billy laughs and Alex laughs too.

  ‘It’s for fun!’ Billy Rock yells, and raises both arms above his head like a winning boxer. An attendant, seizing the moment, fits a flakjacket over Billy’s head.

  Alex’s attendant fastens a holstered pistol around his waist and explains mechanically, ‘Your weapon will only discharge inside the game area, sir, and only if it is pointed at a target with a skin temperature of forty-two degrees centigrade. That is the skin temperature of the dolls. It will not fire at anyone wearing a protective vest. Squeeze the trigger slowly and regularly when you fire; the rate is controlled at one round per five seconds. The dolls are armed with low energy laser pistols. If you are tagged three times your gun will cease operation. It is most sporting that way, sir. Here is your helmet. The visor is armoured for your full protection, but allow me to reassure you that the bullets are gel, and there is no chance at all of fragmentation or ricochet injuries. Do enjoy your game, sir, and good hunting.’

  Alex laughs, because it makes no sense at all. The attendant slaps Alex on the back and turns to the next customer, a man with a bodybuilder’s physique who’s stripped to black jockey underpants.

  Suddenly Milena is in front of Alex. She glances at Billy Rock and shouts, ‘They don’t have coveralls my size.’

  Things keep coming at Alex from different angles. He just sits there happily, staring at her. His heart is pumping at the same rate as the sound system’s music and the jerky flicker of the fans of red and green laser beams overhead.

  Milena catches his arm and leans close to whisper, ‘I fixed the locks of the cages, so sober up and get ready,’ and skips away before he can reply.

  Billy Rock, waving his gun and whooping, is jogging towards the people waiting their turn to enter the game area. Alex takes a step and falls on his hands and knees and starts laughing. Some remote part of him observes that he’s truly fucked in every sense of the word. There’s a sudden crash. Alex rolls over to see what it is.

  A fighting doll has slammed open the door of its cage.

  The creature steps out and looks around. It shakes its massive head, opens its heavy, malformed jaws in a careless yawn. Ropes of saliva glisten between the spiky racks of its teeth. Attendants and customers shrink back against the racks of coveralls and flakjackets but the fighting doll doesn’t even glance at them; it simply turns and runs straight into the main part of the warehouse. A woman starts to laugh. Maybe she’s on the same stuff that Billy Rock used on Alex.

  Now two more fighting dolls are shouldering out of their cages. A handler lumbers towards them, awkward in his padded suit. The fighting dolls look at him as he raises his pistol and snaps off three quick shots. One of the dolls is knocked backwards; the other runs straight at Billy Rock, who grins and woozily aims his pistol.

  He snaps the trigger, snaps it again, but of course nothing happens.

  The fighting doll knocks him down and takes most of his face off in a single bite, bounces up and runs straight at the people waiting to get into the game area. Screams, panic. The handler takes aim and fires twice. The fighting doll tumbles forward and kicks out with both bandy legs and is still. Billy Rock lies face down. Blood is soaking into the sawdust beneath him.

  ‘Come on,’ Milena says.

  She grabs Alex’s hand. Behind her is a doll from the holding pen. It is exactly her own height. She leads them both out through a firedoor into the open air.

  It is still raining. Alex tips his face and lets it get wet, breathes in wet warm air, breathes it in and breathes it in. His heart is galloping but he feels calmer. People are running towards the gate. Tines of laser light claw the teeming sky above them. Security guards, pistols drawn, battle through the crowd towards the warehouse. In the distance is the thready whoop of sirens.

  Milena says, ‘Now you’ve got what you want, what are you going to do with it?’

  The doll stands behind her, its eyes dull under its ridged brow.

  Alex starts to unbuckle his heavy flakjacket. ‘I’ll tell you later. Will it follow us?’

  ‘Of course. Its control chip understands basic commands.’

  Alex drops the flakjacket and, still in the loose orange coveralls, goes to the doll, sinks on one knee and pulls off its black pyjamas. It doesn’t try to resist—it is like handling a sleepy child. Its blue skin is hot against his fingers: forty-two degrees centigrade. Its breath, like that of a diabetic, is edged with acetone. It has a flat chest and a smooth crotch, and the blurred, androgynous build of a small child.

  ‘Tag,’ Milena says to it, and the doll obediently pads along on long-toed flat feet as Alex and Milena push through the crowd to the gate.

  Outside, expensive cars crowd the street in a tangle of headlights and angry horns. A fighting doll suddenly jumps on to the roof of a limo, stamping and flinging its arms around. Flecks of foam fly from its muzzle. A shot stars the limo’s windscreen and its horn starts to blare. The doll is gone. Someone flings open the door of the limo and the dead driver falls from h
is seat on to the tarmac.

  Alex and Milena and the doll walk straight past this into the rainy night.

  ‘What we need,’ Alex says, ‘are bicycles,’ but Milena doesn’t get it.

  He feels a faint trembling under his skin, the reaction to the endorphin blast evoked by Billy Rock’s drug. In the rainy half-darkness, stroked by the headlights of cars fleeing the party, he starts to feel afraid. He is in the twilight zone, alone with two aliens.

  Alex half expects the van to have gone, but it is still there, at the end of the little street. Dimmed by rain, the lights of Wapping glitter across the river. He’s actually beginning to think that they might have made it when the van’s headlights come on.

  Howard Perse opens the door and gets out, taking his time. He’s close to being drop-down drunk. ‘You’re fucked,’ he tells Alex.

  ‘Go home, Mr Perse.’

  ‘Interfering with a police operation. That’ll do for starters.’

  ‘Billy Rock is dead.’

  Perse blinks at him owlishly, then starts to laugh. He takes a swig from a flat, quarter-litre bottle of whisky and says, ‘I still want you, Sharkey. I want to know what you’re up to.’

  ‘I did what you asked. That’s all.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I want to find out.’

  ‘You can’t do this to me, Mr Perse. We’re finished.’

  ‘Damn right,’ another voice says, and Doggy Dog comes around the back of the van. He grins at Alex and shows him his pistol and says, ‘Time for you to deliver, motherfucker.’

  Perse suddenly doesn’t seem drunk. He straightens his back and looks Doggy Dog in the eye and says, ‘Put the weapon down, son.’

  ‘I know you,’ Doggy Dog says.

  ‘Exactly. So put away the weapon before you get into trouble.’

  Doggy Dog laughs and Perse takes a step forward. There’s a loud flat crack that echoes off the abandoned block of flats. Perse is howling, hopping on his right foot while clutching his left in both hands. Blood drips between his fingers.