Devil in the Wires

by Tim Lees

  “You’ve done all right,” I said, trying to sound congratulatory, not quite managing it.

  He smiled, indulgently. I didn’t recall his cheekbones being quite so prominent, or his jaw so strong. Had he had work done? He showed the palms of his hands, as if displaying his success. This is me. Here I am. Admire if you must.

  “And you, Chris. Still enjoying Field Ops? Or getting tired of that, now?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “Really.”

  We were driven south on Lake Shore, under a spring sky smudged with clouds. He pointed out the landmarks: Soldier Field, McCormick Place, the vague direction of Obama’s house. The lake was on our left. On our right, we passed the Science Museum, a great, pseudo-­classical construction with vast green domes and colonnaded entranceways, one of the last survivors of the 1893 Columbian Exposition; it looked like somebody had bussed it in from Rome or Prague or somewhere.

  “That,” said Shailer, “was our first choice.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Oh no.”

  I sat up straight now, staring at the place as it loomed into view. “Bit bloody public, isn’t it?”

  “It would have given us . . . the weight of history, let’s say. And they were keen, I tell you. What they didn’t have, alas, was space.”

  “You’ve got ­people living here.”

  “Not a problem. Not this time.”

  Now I did look at him. “You’re in the middle of a fucking city. Jesus—­”

  One hand came up, made gentle smoothing movements on the air.

  “Relax.” He pointed up ahead. “See there? On the beach? Park on one side, water on the other?”

  “Yeah?”

  “No one lives near that,” he said. “So lighten up, will you? Get with the plan.”

  He was grinning like he’d just said something really, really smart. He reached across, made to play-­punch me, then thought better of it.

  Me, I stared out of the window, trying to see how smart he was.

  There was a bay up there. The headland swept out in a long, low jetty, and in the crook of it, set on a grey half-­moon of sand, there stood a building. It was large and square, maybe a ­couple of stories high, and at the corners and on the lake-­facing wall there rose small towers, each topped with a green pyramid roof. It looked somehow very ancient, and seemed, at first sight, almost sunk into the sand around it, like some abandoned desert fort. We bore down on it at an extraordinary pace: rushing towards Shailer’s vision of a future world.

  I said, “What is it?”

  “Yours,” he said. “Where you’ll work, these next few months, however long it takes. I’m hoping, anyway. I could give you my little speech about peace, prosperity, clean and cheap energy for all—­but I think we’ll just take that as read, shall we?”

  There were guards. Bored, middle-­aged guys, who didn’t look like they were guarding much from anyone. Shailer called out greetings as we left the car. He gestured me towards the beach. “Look around, look around.” The wind tugged at my hair. I dug my hands into my pockets. It was just that little bit too cold to be comfortable. Too cold, and too close to Shailer.

  The sand here had been raked clear of debris, and it stretched before me like a plowed field. Beyond that lay the lake, its waters thick and milky-­looking. It was unsettling, somehow, like watching a scene on TV, or like some clever, fanciful illusion. After a time I realized what was wrong. It might look like the sea, move like the sea, but it didn’t smell like the sea. No salt, no ozone, and the crying of the seagulls didn’t much make up for that.

  “It’s not here yet,” I said. “The god.”

  “Not yet. I just wanted you to see the site. Right at the start.”

  “Before it all goes wrong.”

  His laugh was almost natural. “It won’t go wrong, Chris.”

  “It did before.”

  My phone buzzed. I glanced at it, saw who the text was from, and put it away.

  “That,” he said, “was always going to happen. I saw the reports. I did what I could—­”

  “And you were touting it as the greatest technological advance in history. Till you got there and you actually saw the place.”

  “Chris.” He put his hand upon my shoulder. “It won’t go wrong this time. Mistakes were made, and that’s how systems are improved. We know more now. Our technology is better. And besides all that,” his fingers squeezed, as if afraid I was about to bolt, “I’m hiring you to make sure that we get it right. Why else do you think you’re here?

  “You’ll be my eyes and ears,” he said. “Anything you don’t like, anything at all, whatever worries you, concerns you, whatever you think could be better done. You flag it, I will be here personally to put it right. OK?”

  “So you are assuming something’ll go wrong.”

  “No! No, damn it, I’m not. Get this straight. This is new. This is the future, and you can have a part of it or—­well. Your choice.”

  “My choice.”

  “Be part of history. Or be history.”

  I thought of what I’d said to Dayling, about wanting to be home, watching TV with my feet up.

  I still wanted to be home. But I remembered Seddon, and my job, and said, “Come on. Let’s hear the rest.”

  Chapter 21

  Life’s a Cycle

  “It’s like Gaia, Chris. Remember the theory? Kind of your era, that one, yeah? Well, it turns out that it’s true. Almost. There’s this web of energy, wrapped around the world.” He spread his fingers, poking at the air. “We’re part of it. Everything is part of it. That’s what we never understood before. This whole thing—­it’s self-­perpetuating. It’s renewable. It’s everything we ever dreamed it could be, everything we ever wanted in our energy production. I’ve been learning, Chris. I’ve talked to experts. I’ve been finding out . . .”

  “Experts,” I said.

  “I have a consultant. He’s very . . . clued in on this. Opened my eyes, I’ve got to say.”

  We strolled along the building front, its colonnade offering shelter from the wind. A sign on the wall advertised pizza and ice cream. At the corner, on the sand, restaurant chairs and tables had been stacked up as if waiting for a bonfire. Shailer kept talking. His hands made gestures that seemed lifted from his latest round of public speaking. I watched a plane, high overhead, flash silver in the sun.

  “Our whole approach was wrong, you know.” He made a half turn, as if rejecting some disgusting sight. “Burning them like coal, treating them as, well, as resources. Use ’em up, and throw ’em out. Indiana, storing them that way. All wrong, wrong, wrong. They’re territorial, Chris. Or more . . . it’s like they generate this field around themselves. Like magnets or . . . well. We didn’t know what we were dealing with. I’m the first to own up. We were wrong.”

  “Really?”

  “Totally. We were barbarians, Chris. Total barbarians.”

  This was new. I waited, wondering how he’d carry on.

  “They’re living things,” he said. “I’m not saying intelligent—­I’m not suggesting they have rights. But they’re living things, and part of our lives. Always were, and always will be.

  “The ancients got it right. The house of the gods must be a house of pilgrimage. To visit with them is a special thing. The pilgrims came to Indiana, even when we didn’t want them. Now we do. Gods and ­people. Life’s a cycle, Chris. Like, oh, like nitrogen. The nitrogen cycle, yeah?” He paused a moment, and I guessed that science hadn’t been his major. “Or, you know, water? Clouds, rain, evaporation . . . a god needs worshippers, Chris. That’s how it works.”

  “Worshippers?”

  “Uh-­huh.”

  He gave a tiny nod that brooked no levity at all. I said, “You’ll have a hard time selling that one.
And I remember you were keen to play down the religious side . . .”

  “Oh, we don’t call it that. God, Chris, of course we don’t! It’s not a church or anything. That’s why I wanted the museum. See—­think of it like this. Like it’s an everyday thing.

  “It’s Saturday. Guy takes his kid out, maybe to the ballpark, or the zoo—­or, he takes him here. How d’you think they’re going to feel? Faced with this—­this ancient, primal force? Yeah, yeah, that’s it,” he said, before I could make any response. “There’s awe. There’s fascination. There’s belief. And that’s a kind of worship, right? Right?”

  “Who’s your consultant, Adam?”

  My phone buzzed again. I switched it off.

  “That’s not important.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  Some gulls were tugging at a prize half buried in the sand, squawking and yammering at one another. Each one would flap into the air, then drop down, hoping to dislodge its fellows and gain prime position. You’d think that on a beach like this there’d be enough to go around, but they didn’t seem to think so.

  He said, “He’s reliable. That’s all you need to know. He’s . . . a very private man. He doesn’t want publicity.”

  I said, “They held the World’s Fair here. The Columbia Exposition. I read about it on the plane.”

  “Right, right. And ­people came here in the millions, didn’t they? This’ll be the same. Millions of them—­week after week, month after month, all building the power, all helping it grow. Then they go home, switch on the light, the TV—­”

  “First recorded serial killer, too,” I said.

  “You’re being . . . obstinate, Chris.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Yes.” He looked at me directly. “Yes, it does.”

  “Leave me alone a bit, will you?”

  “Chris—­”

  “Fuck sake. I want some time to think.”

  “Five minutes.” He grinned, pointed a finger at me. “I’ll be waiting, Chris. Don’t make me wait too long.”

  I walked across the raked sand. The raking didn’t go right to the water. Where it stopped, a little zone of debris had collected: rotting wood and strands of weed, a Kleenex wrapper, a soggy tennis shoe. The waves hissed at me. The gulls shrieked. The look of the sea, the sound of it, but not the scent. I missed that. I missed that smell.

  Flecks of moisture—­spray or rain—­hit my face. I switched my phone back on. There was a text from Seddon, wishing me good luck, and another from the phone company telling me my bill was due. Then there were two from the same address. The first said: U must be there now Chris. Is it good? Is it what u wanted?

  The second said: U go there bt u wont come here. Why not chris? U said youd come bt you dont. Why not?

  While I was reading that, a third came through. It said, Yr just a lying bastard like the rest of them. Arent u?

  I switched it off again. It was going to be one of those days. I turned, looking for Shailer, but I didn’t see him. I took a look around, but I wasn’t very earnest; I didn’t go back to the car or anything like that. In fact, I wasn’t in much hurry to run into him. Besides, I thought, How about a little snooping on my own, without the guided tour?

  And that’s exactly what I did.

  Chapter 22

  The Reading

  There is, I think, no point in hiding things. You put a stack of guards around a place, and ­people just get curious. It makes them want to know.

  On the other hand, there’s such a thing as making it too easy. The guards who’d waved us in were being—­well, “discreet” is a charitable way of putting it.

  Also, the first door that I tried came open. Simple as that. And I stepped inside.

  I don’t know what the place had looked like in its heyday. There had been parties, weddings and anniversaries celebrated here. But nobody was going to hire it now. Once, it must have been a largish hall, though a number of fake walls made the real size hard to guess. A great deal of machinery had been crammed into the area. None of it was working. I tapped a keyboard, toggled a few switches. Moving deeper, I began to get an edgy sense that I was somewhere I had been before. Not quite the same, but similar—­too similar. Last time I’d seen anything like this, I’d been about a hundred feet under the Indiana topsoil, and it hadn’t ended well. I got a nasty feeling that it wasn’t going to end well this time, either.

  I flicked a light switch. Nothing. The god wasn’t installed, the system wasn’t active. There was nothing here that should have bothered me at all. Only a feeling . . . I couldn’t define it. Maybe I was simply spooked. Too many bad memories.

  I ducked under a steel pipe hanging on brackets from the ceiling. Everything seemed frozen, as if all I had to do was look away, and the machines would slowly stumble into life, monitors starting to flicker, cooling units to vibrate, screens to flare with data.

  I pulled a sheaf of dockets from beneath a toolbox, riffling through them in the dim light. And in that moment, I grew aware of voices, somewhere to my left. I listened for a moment, but couldn’t make out words. “Adam?” I called.

  The sound stopped instantly.

  I moved through into the next partitioned section. Shadows shifted in the gloom, reflections of the traffic speeding by outside, or perhaps another aircraft passing overhead. Then there was only silence, stillness. A moment later, Shailer reappeared, though not from the direction I’d expected him. He was brushing dust from his lapels.

  “You shouldn’t be in here, really. Not safe.”

  “It looks like Indiana.”

  “No. This is different.”

  “Just like Indiana.”

  “Chris. Take my word -­”

  “I’m not sure that’s enough.”

  His shoulders hunched, suddenly irritable, but he held back. He spoke calmly, patiently, as to a slow student.

  “It’s smaller, for a start,” he said. “Anything here will be very carefully controlled.” He hesitated for a moment, then, coming closer, put a hand upon my shoulder, gently pressuring me back the way I’d come. “The Indiana site was—­it was total hubris. Let’s be honest. Tragedy, total, total tragedy, but . . . you know. It is what it is. We’re onto something new here.”

  “I want to look around,” I said.

  “And you will. Come on,” he beckoned. “Let’s take a trip upstairs. See what they’ve done up there, eh?”

  I sidestepped him. I turned back, picked my way across the darkened room. A packing case lay on the floor, sagging from its own weight. I moved through into the next chamber.

  “Chris—­”

  Metal pipes rose from the floor. A tangle of wiring had been pushed into a corner, like a nest for some untidy, feral creature. Again I felt a sense of presence. It was hard to say exactly what it was, or why it bothered me. My nerves were on edge. I pushed my way past a carpenter’s sawhorse, around a plywood false wall, straining my eyes against the gloom.

  On impulse, I took out my reader, switched on. The lights jumped, held. They weren’t high, but they were there. I looked round, searching the half-­light, trying to see -­

  Shailer told me, “Come on, Chris.”

  “Who else is here?”

  I remembered the Colonel, in his perfect English: “Who else is here? Who’s here with us?”

  Shailer said, “There’s no one here. You and me. That’s all.”

  “You’ve got residual. Did you check this place out? For God’s sake—­”

  I turned the reader slowly round the room, but already now, the lights were dropping. Down, then gone.

  I switched it off, switched on again.

  Nothing.

  “This isn’t right.”

  “Chris,” he said. “Relax, will you?”

  But Shailer himself was not relaxed. His eye twitched; under the sleek,
expensive suit, his body was as taut as if it had been pulled up on a wire. When a small thud of movement sounded, somewhere in the building, he jumped like he’d been shot.

  “You got me all wound up!” he said. “Look at me!” He gave an awkward laugh. “Come on. Let’s get some sunlight, huh?”

  “The site,” I said. “You’re telling me it’s clean?”

  “It’s clean. Of course it is.”

  “No activity here? No readings? Nothing here prior?”

  “What? Like, it’s built on an old Indian graveyard?”

  He chuckled to himself.

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  “Chris, it’s all checked out. Although, I must admit . . .” he put a hand to the back of his neck. “I’m disappointed with the work here. I thought we’d be a lot nearer completion, frankly . . .”

  “The god isn’t on-­site?”

  “Assur is in the holding lot in—­Jersey, I believe. Newark. What’s going on, Chris? Why you acting like this?”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “No one, Chris.”

  “I heard you.”

  The reader was dead. A flicker of background, right down at the foot of the column.

  “Just one of the guards. No one, really. Now, look. I want to show you—­”

  “Guards,” I said.

  But I didn’t see any guards, not anywhere about.

  “Yeah. Just bear with me, OK?” He nodded to the device in my hand. “It’s defective. Don’t worry. Or the battery’s gone. I’ll make sure you get a new one. Now—­follow me. I’m gonna show you the real deal on this.”

  “This was the courtyard here—­dining, dancing, wedding receptions. There’s going to be a roof now. Photochromic glass, like the stuff you get in lenses.” He tapped an imaginary pair of glasses. “It darkens as the light outside gets brighter. We don’t want, you know, greenhouse effects.”

  He paused. He seemed about to make some kind of ecological pun, but it eluded him.