by Kim Newman
Dr Groome palmed the tankslab and played with some readings. ‘We can’t drag him out of his Dream, Ms Bishopric, but we can introduce you into it. That would change the whole frame of reference.’
Juliet looked her in the eyes. ‘You kill him, Susan. If he dies in the Dream, the Dream dies with him.’
‘The marshal is right,’ said the doctor. ‘Daine is playing in his own mental backyard. That’s relatively small right now, but it’s growing in the Yggdrasil file like a virus. Subjectively, it’s city-sized at the moment. In a week, he may have made himself a continent. Then a world, then a universe, whatever. We could hook up an army and send them in, and they’d never find him. It has to be now.’
‘And it has to be you,’ said Trefusis. ‘Once you’re inside you should be at least as powerful as he is. You’re a Dreamer. You have more experience than him. We think you can shape his Dream, pull it apart around him.’
‘That would be another experience for your list, Governor. Even Daine doesn’t know what it’s like to be a deicide.’
‘That’s the spirit.’
‘To kill God. That sounds dangerous.’
Dr Groome gave a list a check. ‘There are risks. We don’t want to conceal them. You are free to refuse.’
‘Because this is a free society, right? The Gunmint just has my best interests at heart?’
Dr Groome looked down at her list. Juliet turned her head and adjusted her hair. Governor Trefusis outstared her. ‘In a free society, every citizen is obliged to protect their freedom. The Gunmint can be persuasive.’
Susan turned away from the officials, looking for an ex. There wasn’t one, but she would have felt bad if she hadn’t at least looked. She flash-forwarded a newsclip. There was Orin Tredway in a purple tuxedo, holding up a Rodney statuette and mouthing sincerities. ‘Susie can’t be with us tonight as you all know, but as her personal friend I’m honoured to accept this for her…’ Susan shivered, unable to tell, as usual, the difference between fantasy and premonition.
‘One more question,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘Who’s in the other tank?’
PART II
THE BARD OF THE BOULEVARD
7
In Chinatown, the streets were narrower, cluttered with produce stalls – open even this late – and mysterious tents. I had an idea I could hide out there for a while, maybe rest up, maybe make a connection who could get me out of the City. The cops would be watching the bus station and the railroad terminal, but maybe I could bribe my way aboard a tramp steamer for Macao or Shanghai. I knew that I had money. Some of the Genie of the Bank had attached to my clothing.
In an alley beside the Keye Luke Cabana, under a string of apparently waterproof paper lanterns, I peeled the bills off my trench coat and pants. I had forty or fifty thousand in hundreds. The bills weren’t sequentially numbered or marked in any of the large variety of ways I could imagine. I wadded one into my shoulder holster as an ace in the hole, packing it down with the gun. Then I made a fist-sized roll of the rest and shoved it into my deepest pocket. You were never entirely safe from prying fingers in Chinatown, but I had to give it my best shot. A wolfpack of ragged children swarmed through the streets, snatching at whatever was insufficiently guarded. The merchants occasionally killed one, but that didn’t seem discouragement enough; there were always new recruits.
‘Tell you fortune, Mist’ Americano, tell you fortune.’
A decrepit old man, supported by a young boy in a huge coolie hat, was tapping his way down the alley, patterned robes trailing in the rainwater. His face and hands were white and very wrinkled, but any signs of extreme age stopped just below his jawline and just above his wrists. He had huge empty eye sockets wadded with cotton, a scraggly Fu Manchu moustache and a long grey pigtail. A sign hung around his neck, covered with a scrawl of ideographs and a single attempted English word, BLIDN. I had the idea he was a European in disguise. His withered claw reached out and attached itself to my lapel.
‘Tell you fortune,’ he jabbered. ‘Fortune velly good. China girl in bathhouse wait you. She miss you velly much a long time. Much money in stars belonging you. Much good is fortune. Much.’
I shoved a hundred into his hand to get rid of him. He held the bill to his ear and slid it between his fingers. In his grin, several teeth were blacked. He shook with excitement. I realised my mistake; he’d remember such generosity, and his boy would be able to describe me. Hell, under all that gook on his eyelids, he was probably no blinder than a hawk. That made two unwanted witnesses to point the finger at me.
‘Much thanking, Mist’ Americano, much thanking.’ He whispered a long coil of Chinese phrases to his boy helper, and the child looked up at me, almond eyes shining in a brim-shadowed face. The hat nodded up and down in gratitude.
A rattling commotion alerted me to the patrol well before it reached the alley. I shrank back while the fortune teller tottered towards the main street. Merchants folded their stalls and made a run for it, their goods wrapped in voluminous sleeves. A grey guava rolled to my feet. I picked it up and bit deeply. It tasted dry, like pasteboard, but it was food and I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten. With what I hoped was an air of raffish nonchalance, I sauntered to the mouth of the alley, munching on the increasingly inedible fruit.
A battered Model T Ford, mounted with a shining machine gun, flying an unrecognisable flag, was lumbering down the street, pushing people and stalls before it. A Chinese officer in a uniform more than adequately equipped with polished belts, straps and full holsters stood up in the front passenger seat of the car like George Washington crossing the Delaware, shouting dictatorially. A tethered goat went down under one iron-rimmed wheel, and the vehicle jolted as the animal was crushed. The officer steadied himself by grasping the windshield, but didn’t miss a beat in his spiel. Three glum soldiers sat in the back of the car, greedily eyeing the machine gun, while a very fat civilian in a dragon-decorated garment did the driving. The car finally ground to a halt against the remains of a silk stall, a knot of scarves caught around one axle.
The officer belaboured the driver about the head with a pair of white gloves, and stepped down to the street. A turbanned, one-legged beggar raised his bowl to him, and he knocked it out of his hands. Small children scrambled for the scattered coins before they washed down the drains. The officer picked up the beggar by his neck. The missing leg dropped down and kicked, and the officer threw the con man away, chattering at him in some dialect. He drew one of his several revolvers and fired a shot in the air. The fake beggar ran off, turban unspooling from his head as he made pretty good time for someone unused to having two legs under him. I stayed back in the shadows. The patrol probably wasn’t looking for me – there were too many fugitives in Chinatown to concentrate on just one – but they’d be more than willing to take me in if they tripped over me.
The officer barked an order, and the soldiers jumped into action. They grabbed the blind fortune teller and flung him brutally against the wall of a josh-house. One soldier held up his head, and clawed at his face. He showed a handful of greasepaint and rubber to the officer, who strode over and asked a question. The fortune teller, half his moustache still attached, shook his head, and with a single shot the officer summarily executed him. The dead man fell backwards, his head cracking against the lap of a stone buddha.
I threw away the guava core, and it too was torn to pieces by the children. A small form whipped past me into the alley and tried to squeeze between my back and the wall I was leaning against. It was the fortune teller’s boy. I turned to push him away, and his hat slipped between us. Long black hair tumbled from the top of the boy’s head. He was a girl, with a lovely oval face. Anna May Wong. She looked up at me in silent supplication. I knew I should throw her to the patrol and make my own getaway, but she appealed to the chink in my armour. Widows, orphans, lost children, small dogs. They all get me into trouble. I never learn.
I took her in my arms and we ki
ssed. She was very enthusiastic. I held her by her wrists to keep her delicate fingers out of my pockets. I lost track of what was going on outside the alley until the officer tapped her shoulder with his revolver and waved it in my face. She let my mouth go and pressed the length of her body against my side. The officer smiled unpleasantly, silver teeth shining. There was more decoration on his cap than on the average gypsy caravan, and he had a pair of samurai swords strung criss-cross on his back.
‘Papers, please?’
I made the pretence of patting my pockets and looking like a total cretin. ‘I’m so sorry, General Yen, I seem to have left them at my hotel. I’m sure you’ll understand.’
‘That is most unfortunate,’ he said in Oxford-accented English. ‘We hate to detain our most welcome guests, especially when they have…’ he looked Anna May up and down as if his mind could do with a good Chinese laundering ‘…other urgent business to attend to.’
The soldiers were getting impatient. Obviously, if they didn’t shoot someone every ten minutes they got on edge.
‘Hold on a minute,’ I said, ‘there’s one pocket I haven’t tried.’ I fished out my bankroll. ‘Ah yes, here are my papers.’ I peeled off five hundreds and gave them to the officer. ‘I hope they’re in order.’
‘Most certainly. An internationally accepted passport. Excellent. May I see your driver’s licence?’
I handed him another five bills.
‘Work permit?’
More money.
‘Birth certificate?’
Not much left now.
‘Draft notice?’
‘Here.’ I gave him the rest of it. ‘This is my Eagle Scout badge, and some baseball cards. That’s my lot.’
‘Excellent. That is all in order.’ He wadded the money up tight and shoved it into one of the pouches on his Sam Browne belt. ‘You may go on your way now, Mr…?’
‘Doe. John Doe.’
‘Mr Doe. The good wishes of Buddha go with you.’ He turned away and addressed his men in Chinese. Then, to me, ‘Have a pleasant evening.’
He climbed back into his car, and hit his driver again. The fat boy had unwound the scarves.
‘He told them to wait a minute and shoot us down,’ Anna May whispered into my ear, ‘like dogs.’
‘Oh, really,’ I told her. ‘Thank you, darling.’ I signalled to the least intelligent-seeming of the soldiers. ‘Excuse me, do you have a cigarette?’
He shook his head. I made smoking gestures, and walked over towards them. ‘Cigarettes?’ I said, puffing furiously at empty air and flicking an imaginary lighter. The dime dropped, and one of them grinned, tucked his riffle under his arm and reached into his uniform. I grabbed his wrist and broke it, spinning him round and holding him up. I heard the guns go off. Luckily, my shield was heavily built. The bullets didn’t go through him. I heaved him at the other two and they went down, firing wild into the air.
If they had had pistols, they’d have been able to get a better aim. The officer, in his car, was well out of range for an accurate shot with his cheap revolver. Still, he came a lot closer than I had expected. I dived behind a handcart and came up with my automatic in my hand. I wasn’t any better at this kind of messy shoot-out than they were, but I put a hole or two in the car’s windscreen, and put one of the soldiers out for the count. Then the sidewalk three yards to the left of me started exploding, and an earthquake line of stone chips advanced towards the cart. The noise of the machine gun was deafening.
I pushed myself back out of the line of fire as the wooden cart splintered into an abstract sculpture. Little darts stuck into my legs from the knee down. I fired in the general direction of the officer’s head, and missed. I saw him grinning ferally as he worked the gun with both hands, spent cartridges flying into the air. He was jitterbugging with the recoil, and the gun’s momentum kept his first sweep going for a couple of yards even after he realised he’d missed me. He swung the gun upwards on his mount and was obviously set to cut me in half with his next pass when the knife hilt appeared in his chest, lodged deep between two bandoliers. He staggered back, brushing at the black stains seeping from his wound, and fell off her car. His uniform would be ruined. The surviving soldier gaped and, in the sudden silence, I shot near his head. He ran off.
I looked back at the alley. The girl was there, waving sweetly. Her topcoat was open, and I saw the belt of knives – with one missing – strung from shoulder to waist. Why hadn’t I felt them when we were pressed together? Perhaps she only had them when she needed them. Anna May buttoned her coat and scampered away, swarming like a monkey over the wall at the back of the alley and vanishing into the night. By the time I got to the officer, the children had practically stripped him. His swords were gone, and his boots, hat, revolvers and belts. My money was gone too, of course. And the girl’s throwing knife.
Two urchins were struggling to detach the machine gun from its mount. One six-year-old Our Gang refugee stood solemnly by the car, too-long pants concertinaed around his feet, holding up the officer’s revolver in both hands, covering the fat driver. The machine gun came free, and the children staggered off under the weight, certain of a huge price on the black market. The junior gunman ran off after them.
The fat driver giggled, then burst into full laughter, the rolls under his robes quivering like jellies. His egg-shaped body shook with his mirth, and the Model T rocked from side to side. He slapped his enormous thighs and laughed some more. I left him there, and headed for the next block.
‘Mist’ Americano…’ The voice was feeble, cracked and fluttering. It came from the fortune teller.
I couldn’t see how he could be alive, but I went to him. His face was a mess, with a black bullethole and a tangle of rubber. His wrinkled nose had come off, and one smooth Caucasian cheek showed through his withered Chinese mask.
‘Mr Tunney,’ he gasped – mistaking me for someone else? – as he reached for me with a flailing hand. ‘Mr Tunney, don’t forget who you are. It’s important. Mr…’
He fell back onto the Buddha, dead again.
Tunney. The name meant something to me. It was as familiar almost as my own, but I couldn’t pin a face to it. I had a few nagging associations, a snatch of a song (‘Beautiful Dreamer’), a girl’s name (Lissa), and a big white room like a hospital ward.
The driver was still laughing. Chinatown was too hot even for me. I swore I’d never go back.
8
The bard was striding along the Boulevard, cloak wrapped tight against the rain, iron-tipped stick striking sparks from the sidewalk.
He had woken from his walking death a while before, in the middle of a quote from Coriolanus. It was his habit to patrol the streets of the City, declaiming the Gospel according to Shakespeare to passers-by, emoting his way through the great speeches in the hope of earning a few drinks. In his time, he had been a poet, a preacher, a cowhand, a scientist, an adventurer, a hobo. Now he was the Bard of the Boulevard. He was known in every bar and diner in town, and tolerated in most.
Like everyone in the City, he had been as one dead. His creator had fashioned him from clockwork and set him to go through the motions of living without giving him the actual breath of life. He had followed his script, fulfilled his stereotyped purpose, but never really acted of his own accord. He had been one of the supporting players of the City, a Harmless Eccentric.
‘He wants nothing of a God but eternity and a Heaven to throne in,’ he shouted at Gail Russell, frightening the girl off the street. Good job too, a young thing like her oughtn’t to be out late on a pestilential night like this.
It struck him like fire, and the scales were lifted from his eyes. Surrounded by enslaved automatons, he was a free man. For the first time, he felt – really felt – the rain in his face, the weight of his stick, the pull of his waterlogged cloak.
He stopped reciting, he stopped walking. He nearly stopped breathing. Given unexpected control of his lungs, he spluttered and drew breaths until his body took over. He be
nt double, hugging his thin chest inside his cloak, then drew himself up to his full height.
His heart beat, and his wet hands ached.
It came to him as a Revelation, descending upon his mind in all its complex glory, that there was a man in the City in need of his help, and that the man – his name didn’t matter – would free everyone as this awakening had freed him.
In an instant he had decided. He would find this man, help this man. The City would be free, whether it wanted to be or not.
With an added purpose in his step, he continued on his way, returning to Coriolanus with renewed vigour.
Above him, in the night, eyes twinkled.
9
Thelma Ritter, the woman behind the counter in Kelly’s, looked at me sideways when I paid for doughnuts and coffee with a wet hundred-dollar bill. But she still made change. On the jukebox, the Ink Spots were crooning ‘Don’t Get Around Much Any More.’ The song reminded me of my ex-wife, only the group were trying for wistful melancholy and my associations were screaming nightmare.
‘How d’you like your java?’ Thelma asked, a Brooklyn croak in her voice.
‘As it comes.’
She sloshed coffee into an uncracked cup and disinterred two doughnuts from their sugared resting place under glass. I sipped the black brew, my body tense, waiting for the tug at my arm. Flashing that kind of money in this kind of joint could lead to either of two things, a uniformed policeman or a chippie. The doughnuts were okay, and the coffee helped with the fog in my brain. I bought a pack of cigarettes – the brand an indistinguishable smear – and lit one up. Outside in the street, a few cars cruised. From my stool, I’d be able to see anyone coming into the diner. I prayed that Kelly’s wasn’t a popular cop hang-out.
