by Unknown
“I told you I was coming,” he said. “Traffic was heavy and trouble parking as usual.”
He followed her through to the kitchen, leaving his coat on the end of the banister. She wouldn’t let him help prepare the meal—there were some things she would never accept help with—and so he sat and watched her, drinking a cup of tea, only half listening to her chatter about the neighbours.
After they had eaten, Tom insisted on doing the dishes while his mother wiped and put them away. Then they retired to her living room, fresh cups of tea in hand. The scent of pine resin—his mother always insisted on a real Christmas tree—reminded him strongly of childhood Christmases.
“Mam,” Tom started after they had settled in. “Have you thought any more about what we discussed?”
“What’s that, love?”
“You know. Selling this place and either moving closer to me or. . . .”
“Oh, Tom, you’re not going to go on about putting me in a home again, are you?”
Tom started, almost spilling his tea. “Mam, I wasn’t talking about a home!” He took a deep breath. “You don’t need to go into a nursing home. You’re not ill. I was talking about sheltered accommodation. You’ll be sixty in February. That’s old enough to go into sheltered . . . I’ve looked into it. You’ll have company. Other people to talk to. And there’s a warden in case you need help with anything.”
“But you help me, Tom.” Her voice had grown smaller and Tom had to fight to keep his voice level.
“I know, but I live twenty miles away and I work. If you fell or something . . . Oh, Mam, don’t get upset.”
She had taken a handkerchief from the sleeve of her jumper and dabbed at her eyes with it. Tom placed his cup and saucer on the occasional table next to his armchair and sat forward, clasping his hands between his knees.
“Look, Mam, why don’t you at least arrange to see the council? Find out a bit more about it before making up your mind. I’ll come with you, if you like. It’ll have to be in the Christmas holidays, though.”
Without lifting her head to look at him, she nodded. “Whatever you say.”
“Right. Okay. That’s what we’ll do then. I’ll ring the council on Monday during my lunch break and arrange an appointment.”
As Tom drove home later, it was with a heavy heart.
* * * * *
Across the world, almost five thousand people with silvery canisters left faint, barely-visible, powdery hand-prints and finger-prints on handrails, door handles, pedestrian crossing buttons, hand-dryer switches in restaurant and bar restrooms, sugar cubes in bowls, cruet sets on tables, napkins in holders, park benches, telephone handsets, books in libraries, knick-knacks in shops, taxi and train and tram seats and hand straps, cans and packets on supermarket shelves, trolley handles, electronic key pads, parking meter dials . . . the list could go on.
In churches in Italy and Spain and Greece and in countries across Latin America, powdery residue appeared on the feet of statues of saints and madonnas and Christ on the Cross, feet that would be kissed by the faithful.
Hand-prints of the famous in Hollywood (courtesy of one Diane Heidler) and Leicester Square in London bore faint dusty traces.
In Ireland, a woman braved the stomach-churning drop of Blarney Castle, thickly coating her lips with powder as the guide’s attention was elsewhere, before being helped upside down through the gap where she planted a full kiss on the Stone.
Across the world, unsuspecting people collected unnoticed particles of powder—Moondust as Troy Bishop now called it—on their fingers, palms, wrists, clothes, hair. In most cases, sooner or later, those particles would find their way into the person through their mouth or nose. There, in the moist warmth of throats and nasal passages, the particles activated.
And so it began.
* * * * *
In Sydney, in the same apartment block from which Troy Bishop had departed almost six hours earlier, Nicky Moran awoke on Saturday morning with a muzzy head and sore throat. He had slept solidly for nine hours, but didn’t feel any the better for it.
The previous day he had worked a fourteen-hour shift as a sous chef in the upmarket, waterfront restaurant, a stone’s throw from the opera house, where he had been employed for the past two years. Fourteen hours on his feet. It would be worth it if he was promoted to Head Chef when that lazy, grumpy bastard Maitland decided to retire. Or was given the push. If Nicky owned the restaurant, Maitland would have received his marching orders months ago.
Nicky wasn’t working the lunchtime shift today so, after a visit to the bathroom to empty his bladder and slurp some water to ease his raspy throat, he went back to bed. Before drifting back to sleep, he replayed the incident that had occurred when he’d returned to the apartment building last night. He had only the fuzziest recollection of standing in front of the lift, wanting only to get to his apartment and fall into bed, but having his way barred by that cobber from upstairs. The one who occupied the penthouse and dripped gold whenever Nicky saw him, yet never seemed to go out to work. The one who usually didn’t so much as glance at Nicky if they encountered each other in the lobby.
Strangely, Nicky seemed to recall that the man had greeted him like an old friend and had asked him to smell something. Something sweet. Something that was on his finger. Very strange. . . .
When Nicky awoke again, it was late afternoon and he had developed a tickling cough.
By the time he finished his shift in the restaurant that night, the cough had become a nagging, rasping bark and Nicky had unwittingly infected four waiters, two diners and three fellow chefs, including Head Chef Maitland. So Nicky’s wish for Maitland to cease to be Head Chef would come true much quicker than he had thought. Sadly, Nicky would not himself be around long enough to derive any satisfaction from the grumpy bastard’s demise.
Nicky Moran was the first person in the world to become infected by what would soon become known as the Millennium Bug, so christened by some wag on a current affairs programme during the first days before the scale of the problem had begun to be truly appreciated.
If it ever was.
* * * * *
Peter Ronstadt watched as the phone sizzled, crackled and popped, melting and blackening into running blobs of molten plastic and misshapen metal. Destroying the phone had cut off one possible method of them tracing him. If they attempted the other method, he would know about it.
Now that his decision was affirmed and accepted, he felt lighter, at ease with himself. He would play no part in what was to come. At the same time, a dark contradiction twisted inside him like a barbed hook. Although he would play no part, it would nevertheless happen; was probably already happening.
That knowledge sickened him.
He should not harbour such human feelings, but the ability to control his emotions had left him many years ago. And as that control had at first loosened and then let go, empathy and compassion had taken its place.
Peter sat back in the settee and reached inside his shirt. He drew out a heart-shaped locket attached to a fine silver chain. An onlooker might have considered the locket to belong to a woman, not a man of such muscular stature, and that onlooker would be correct to an extent: the locket had once belonged to a woman. Peter had removed it from her neck as he placed a tender kiss to her cooling lips.
He flicked open the locket with practised ease. Each interior half of the locket contained a protective cover of thin glass, held in place by two tiny metal clips on each side that could be swung aside to remove the glass.
Beneath the glass on the left was a photo: a sepia-tinged image of a middle-aged woman with greying hair pulled back into a tight bun; she wore a high-necked blouse with a frilly collar like a choir boy’s ruff. The photograph was necessarily small and cropped to fit into the locket, and thus details of the woman’s features and expression were only suggestions. Peter only needed suggestions. One glance at her image conjured up the complete woman in his mind, from the fresh-rosehip scent of her hair t
o the mountain-spring tinkle of her laughter. Another glance recalled the forest-pool depths of her green eyes and the ember-warmth of her embrace.
The other half of the locket contained a curled lock of fair hair. It was her hair, snipped when she was a teenager, held safely beneath the glass ever since. Peter had often felt the urge to remove the glass and stroke the lock of hair, but had resisted, afraid that it might disintegrate to dust under his caress.
“Sleep well, Megan,” Peter whispered, then clicked the locket shut. He concealed it once more beneath his shirt in the thick mat of curly black hair that lay within.
He turned his thoughts back to the present; to what he should do next. They would know that he had not fulfilled his part in the operation. At some point, he would have to face consequences. He did not think those consequences would be severe; at least, not fatal. All he was guilty of so far was a failure to act as he should. An omission. He did not think they would even bother coming after him. Not yet, anyway. They would be far too busy over the coming weeks and months to worry about one rotten apple. Maybe he could use that to his advantage. . . .
Looking deeper within himself, he began to wonder: how far was he prepared to go? He recognised that he was completely powerless to affect what was going on. The non-use of that one shiny canister nestling in the suitcase under his bed would make not a scrap of difference in the overall scheme. But later, when it was over, there might be things he could do that would influence the eventual outcome. Yes, certainly things he could do. The question was, what did he want the final outcome to be?
Despite being possessed of those alien emotions of empathy, of compassion, this was a question that Peter was not yet capable of answering.
* * * * *
The buzzer next to the front door sounded, announcing visitors. Milandra stood by it, already aware of the approach of the Deputies. She pressed the button that would release the magnetic catch on the front door to the brownstone apartment building.
She waited for them to cross the lobby, call the elevator and ride up to the sixth floor. As she sensed them approach, she unlocked the door and threw it wide.
Jason Grant strode in, grinned briefly in greeting and made for the kitchen. In his brawny arms he clutched four brown, bulging bags, bearing them effortlessly as though they contained popcorn.
Close behind Grant came the other Deputies: George Wallace, slighter than Grant, carrying a grocery bag under each arm and a flight bag over his shoulder; Lavinia Cram, the beauty of the group with her olive complexion, raven hair and smouldering eyes, also carrying a grocery bag and flight bag; Simone Furlong—the Chosen—burdened with two brown bags.
All three nodded at Milandra and headed wordlessly for the kitchen. Milandra closed and locked the door, and followed them.
Nobody spoke as they unpacked the brown bags and loaded the refrigerators with fresh produce: vegetables, fruit, dairy.
Grant broke the silence: “Wallace and I will head down to the markets at dawn and load up with meat and fish.”
Milandra nodded. “Get what you can carry, but don’t sweat it. We’ve plenty of canned stuff. Enough to last us months. We should only need it for weeks.”
Simone uttered a short, high-pitched titter. “Then there’ll be plenty of stuff just . . . lying about the place.”
Milandra glanced at the Chosen. “Indeed.” Milandra pushed aside the slight unease that Simone’s brief hilarity had stirred within her. “Anyway, to business. We must Commune. Then we’ll eat.”
“One moment,” said Wallace.
He reached for the flight bag he’d brought, hefted it onto a granite work surface and unzipped it. Lavinia did the same with the one she had carried in. An acrid smell of oil filled the air.
Wallace reached into the bag and withdrew an object, wrapped in a greasy cloth. He unwrapped the cloth to reveal a black, stubby weapon. He reached back into the bag and withdrew a magazine that he clipped smoothly into the barrel of the weapon.
“Uzi,” he said. “There’s one each. Er, except for you, Milandra.”
Milandra grimaced and held her hands up to her chest, palms outward. “I don’t even want to touch one. They make me nervous as hell.”
Lavinia reached into her bag and withdrew an automatic pistol. “One of these each, too,” she said. “Walther PPK. Like that James Bond guy.”
This drew another titter from Simone. Milandra glanced sharply at Grant, who raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘Search me’.
“Good,” said Milandra, addressing Wallace and Lavinia. “But let us hope that we never need to use them. Now, please, put them away.”
“But,” added Grant, “keep them close to hand.”
Wallace did not remove the clip from the gun, but checked that the safety was on before stashing it back in the flight bag. Lavinia did the same with the pistol. They hefted the bags once more and carried them to the front door, leaving them on the long, narrow table that stood next to it. They left the bags unzipped.
Milandra’s apartment was much larger than her needs. She tended to occupy only a small part of the living space. She had her armchair and television and computer desk all in one corner where the best of the afternoon and evening sunlight could be enjoyed through the picture window that overlooked the Park.
The larger, seldom-used portion of the living space was taken up by a six-seater oak dining table and chairs; nearby two low-slung, Oxford-green leather sofas faced each other over a smoked-glass coffee table. An armchair in the same leather was placed at the head of the table, between the two sofas.
Milandra sat in the armchair, making the leather creak under her weight. On the sofa to her right sat Grant and Lavinia; to her left, Wallace and Simone.
Lavinia glanced to the furthest side of the room where Milandra’s laptop still emitted the occasional ping.
“Replies still coming?” she asked.
“Yep,” said Milandra. “They’ve slowed somewhat, but are still pretty steady as you can hear.”
“So,” said Wallace. “It’s really happening.”
“Yes,” said Milandra. “But we still have to reach the others. The ones without internet access.”
“How many?” This came from Grant.
“Two hundred and forty-three,” Milandra replied, without having to think about it.
Simone sighed. “Who doesn’t have access to the internet these days?”
Milandra looked at her closely. Simone wasn’t looking back at her; she didn’t appear to be looking anywhere in particular, but gazed vacantly at a point somewhere above Grant’s head, chewing on a strand of her shoulder-length, not-quite-ginger hair. To Milandra, she resembled a slightly bored, slightly ditzy teenager. Again that sense of unease that this time she found harder to ignore. She resisted the impulse to probe: she needed all her mental energy for the task they were about to perform.
Grant answered the Chosen’s question. “Well, Simone, as I thought you knew, we have people in countries whose governments block, or make difficult, access to the outside world. Television, radio, the internet are state-controlled or disabled or made inaccessible. Countries like North Korea and Venezuela to name but two. And many areas of the world are too remote. We have people in the frozen wastes of Alaska, Canada, Siberia, both Poles. In deserts in Africa, Asia, Australia. In the Himalayas, the Urals, the Amazonian rainforest—”
“Why, Grant?” Simone interrupted.
“Huh?”
“Why do we have people in these far-out places?” Simone now regarded Grant, and Milandra, despite the unnerving naivety of Simone’s question, was relieved to see that the Chosen’s expression had lost some of its vacuity, had regained some vitality.
“Well. . . .” Grant kept his tone level, but Milandra sensed that he was struggling to keep his patience. “It’s obvious why we need insiders in places like Korea. It’s so isolationist that there would be no guarantee that our, um, little surprise would ever reach it. And as for the remote regions, well, again, they a
re too out of the way for us to reach them indirectly—the winds may not be strong enough or blowing in the right direction; the surprise may prove too effective so that no carriers ever make it to those regions. And many humans populate them, albeit sparsely. In aggregate, there may be too many to risk them coming together and forming some sort of rebellion. So, our people will make sure that can’t happen.”
“Provided they are told to act,” Milandra said. She leaned forward, making the leather creak again, and rubbed her hands briskly together. “Enough talk. It is time to Commune.” She glanced at each of them in turn. “Ready?”
They all nodded and closed their eyes. Milandra did the same . . . and probed.
Immediately she felt the power of the other four intellects and absorbed them into her own, melding them, forming one whole considerably more potent than the sum of its parts.
It was not necessary that she and the Deputies join hands or form a circle or recite incantations or chalk symbols on the floor. All that was required was the joining and the reaching out to two hundred and forty-three receptive minds dotted about the world.
Milandra reached . . . then sagged back into the armchair, her ample bosom heaving beneath the housecoat as she sucked in air.
The four Deputies leaned back in the sofas, also breathing hard. They remained that way for a few minutes, considerably longer than the thirty seconds or so that the Commune had lasted.
“Okay,” said Milandra when her breathing had grown more regular. “It is done. Now. . . .” She smiled at her Deputies. “I’m ravenous. Let’s eat.”
Chapter Five
Two hundred and forty-three people, in some of the most isolated or desolate or inhospitable regions of the world, abruptly stopped whatever it was they happened to be doing and their faces became blank as if their minds had, without warning, momentarily left them. Within seconds, though, awareness reappeared and they shook themselves like men and women awaking from a peculiar dream. Those who happened to be in company met the concerned or alarmed or curious looks of their companions with disarming smiles, forced in some cases, and comments such as, “Sorry, just drifted off there for a moment.”
