Steal the Lightning

by Tim Lees

  “Heh. A girl can dream.”

  She was drunk. Not so surprising, I suppose. I wondered if I ought to leave, come back tomorrow. But I thought about the job again. Maybe I could get it over with. It wouldn’t really be unfair, just running through things with her, would it? Just to show her what we were about. I wouldn’t make her sign anything, I wouldn’t even ask for promises . . .

  I took the reader from my pocket.

  “See this?” At a glance, it looked like a mobile phone, but when I switched on, the screen lit up in columns, green, yellow, red, and blue, then died again, waiting instructions.

  She pulled a face, mimed disappointment.

  “It’s called a reader. We use them in the Registry, part of our work. You see the bars here?” I lit the screen again. “Gods release a form of energy, each with its own specific signature. Some are stronger than others. With this, we can tell how much power we could harness from it, if we caught the thing. It can also give a big clue to its origins—similarity to other documented specimens, and so on. Which means, if there’s a god in the vicinity—”

  She sniffed.

  “If there’s a god,” she said.

  “Well—yes. And I was wondering if, just for the record, if you’d let me take a reading here. I can do it right now, if you like. Just set the balance, program it . . . I promise, all it does is measure. Nothing else. But you’d find out what you bought. If you got your money’s worth or not.”

  “Oh. I think I can go one better than that.”

  Pushing on the chair arms with her hands, she levered herself up. It was hard to watch. Like seeing a paper doll unfold itself and try to walk. She moved across the room in a series of lurches, almost like controlled falls, catching herself with a hand on the magazine pile, then moving again, resting her knuckles on the sideboard, on the stack of clothes piled on the armchair. Then she bent, and, from beneath a bureau, produced a metal strongbox, just about big enough to hold a pair of shoes.

  She was breathing hard when she straightened up. I went over to her.

  “That’s it?”

  “You hold your horses. I got the key here, somewhere . . .”

  She rummaged for a while. She emptied out a coffee cup full of buttons, paper clips, old matchbooks and string. (Matchbooks, I thought: how long since people stopped handing out those?) She stirred the debris with a biro, and clicked her tongue. No key.

  She sifted through the drawers. She dug into a stack of empty gift boxes, the kind of things an upmarket store will place your purchase in, if you say it’s for a special occasion. She had me move a stack of papers, reach down and feel behind the bureau. We’d been at this a while before I realized it was all a gag.

  “You know where the key is, don’t you?”

  “Oh, of course I do.”

  On top of the bureau were a couple of cactus plants, stumpy, woody-looking things, and she reached up, felt about in the nearer pot, then held the key up, grinning.

  “See? There all the time.”

  Chapter 8

  Negotiating with the Damned

  “Come on, Christopher. Let an old girl have her fun . . .”

  She eased herself into the chair.

  I cleared a space on the table in front of her, and placed the box there.

  “I was just fooling with you, hey? You know I like doing that.” She grinned, showing a row of perfect, even teeth, unnaturally white. “It gives me a laugh,” she said.

  “OK.”

  But I was losing patience now.

  Her hands were stiff. She had some trouble with the lock, or she pretended to. At last, though, she turned the key.

  Then she folded her hands upon her lap, and looked at me.

  “Now then,” she said.

  I stood back. That made her smile. I kept at arm’s length, cautiously lifting the lid, then flipped it open. It fell back, clattering.

  And nothing happened.

  I looked inside.

  A piece of folded paper lay at one end of the box. At the time, I thought it could have been a letter, probably from Frugs.

  The god itself had rolled into the far corner.

  It didn’t move.

  I watched it for a while. It definitely didn’t move.

  It was the size of a walnut, a small, gray, pitted object, its outer surface shiny like a polished stone. After a few moments, other colors grew apparent in it, too, as if the act of concentration pulled them out: bruised blues, purples, a dark, smudgy maroon. The thing had a quality of being there and not-there, both at once. Stable, yet not really solid. When I moved my head, changing the angle of view, so the piece itself appeared to shift in shape, suggesting other forms, still hidden deep within, memories and reflections of its former states, past iterations captured in its central core.

  I got a chill, just watching it.

  I have seen gods in their incarnate states, diverse and strange, sometimes almost wholly mineral in type, others mimicking the shapes of animals and men. I have seen gods as light and heard them as vibrations in the air. But I had never seen a thing like this. Not a god, but a piece of a god. A fragment of it. Looked at from certain angles I could almost think that there was something moving deep inside, an embryo ready to break out of the shell; but I was half inclined to write this off as an illusion, a trick of the light—or the mind. Even so, I seemed to be perceiving it on several different levels, like something only partly in the world, and partly—well. I don’t know. Elsewhere . . .

  Melody, too, was focused on it.

  Her face thrust forward, and, without leaving her seat, she seemed to pitch herself towards it, like a diver ready for the high-dive. Her hands made claws on the arms of her chair, clinging on—but ready to let go.

  I pulled the reader out again, switched on.

  “You don’t mind if I . . . ?”

  I set the balance, adjusting for background, checked it a couple of times.

  “It won’t do any harm,” I assured her.

  She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “It better not,” and sounded like she meant it, too.

  “It’s like a thermometer,” I said. Which wasn’t even slightly true.

  I took the reading.

  “That’s pretty good, for just a fragment.”

  The thing was genuine. More than that: it was sound. It was strong. There was a theory that the old gods propagated this way, shedding chunks like buds. So maybe that was what it was. A new god being born . . . or just a fragment of an old one, far from home.

  “You talked about equipment.”

  I didn’t look at her, my eyes still on the god.

  “Retrieval gear,” I said. “We isolate it in an insulated flask. That keeps it safe. It’s a pretty routine process, usually. Sometimes not. And after that . . .”

  “You drain the power.”

  “Yeah. It’s a little different from the way it used to be—years back, they’d simply burn them up, like coal or something, and then that was that. Now the thinking is, keep them around, let them re-grow, take a little at a time. We’re a lot more forward-looking nowadays.”

  “Would I . . . you know. Still be allowed to see it, sometimes? Touch it?”

  “I won’t lie to you. I’ve never known that happen.”

  “Ah.” She nodded, considering. “And you need this equipment. This . . . gear,” she said. “But you don’t have it with you.”

  “Not now. It’s portable—a small unit, you’d put in a backpack—but, it’s heavy. You wouldn’t carry it for fun.” I smiled. It looked like I was making progress here. “Say the word, I’ll come tomorrow. We’ll get the whole thing sorted, then and there. Money’s authorized. Say yes, and it’s straight into your bank account.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  She reached out. Her skin was like a loose glove, slipped over her hand, creased and wrinkled in a thousand little lines.

  “I, ah, I wouldn’t touch it. Not if I were you.”

  “I always touch i
t. He wants me to touch it.”

  I caught the change of pronoun there. It worried me a little.

  “I’d advise you, really, not to do that—”

  “You pay for him, he’s yours. For now, he’s mine.”

  There’s a feeling I’m all too familiar with, when everything’s just running along swimmingly, just wonderfully well, then suddenly, in seconds, it all turns to shit.

  Well, that was this. And it struck me, too, that the person I was all alone with here was very possibly insane, and just as possibly dangerous, to boot.

  And sitting between me and the door.

  I put the reader in my pocket. I thanked her for letting me see the thing, suggested we might put it away now, perhaps? Lock the box and I’d set it back under the bureau for her?

  “That piece,” she said, “that little piece. He’s gotten me through so much.”

  “I’m sure. And I think you’ll find, um, that’s reflected in the payment that we’re offering.”

  “You’re saying not to touch him. But I like to touch him. When I touch him, when I hold him, the feelings just flow through me. It’s like my whole body’s a map. I’m a country, with roads, and hills, and everything’s spread out before me, and it’s me, you know? It’s mine. You understand?”

  I’m no negotiator. If I was, I wouldn’t be in Field Ops. But I said, very softly, “Melody. There’s no rush here. I just wanted to take a look, and get a reading, that’s all. No one’s going to take it from you. Not without your say-so. OK?”

  I don’t think I was telling her the truth. I had a feeling I was probably the velvet glove through which the iron fist would presently come punching if she wasn’t suitably persuaded. If they couldn’t get it from her by just issuing a writ—which they probably couldn’t—it would be all too easy to approach her landlord, drop him a line about the latent time-bomb she was keeping on his property.

  Strangely enough, that wasn’t how I wanted things to go.

  “OK?” I said again.

  She looked at me. “It’s been a very nice few days,” she said. “Thank you, Christopher. There were places that I wanted to see again, and thanks to you, I’ve seen them. You’ve been very kind.”

  I was busy telling her that it was nothing, I was happy to do it, when it struck me that she wasn’t listening to me. What’s more, there was something odd about her face. Frown lines made an X between her eyes. She raised a hand, froze briefly, caught between one moment and the next. Then she pushed her head forwards. Her hand darted out.

  It was a single, rapid movement, like a child stealing a toffee. She dipped the box, and then her hand was at her mouth. She looked at me. Her eyes were very wide. They rolled back in their sockets. Her cheeks were swelling. There was pressure in her face, under the skin, blowing up inside her. I made to grab her, and then stopped, not quite believing what I saw.

  She swallowed.

  I saw it happen. I heard it happen.

  For a moment, then, I thought she might be sick. She’d throw it up and everything would be OK. Except she didn’t. And it wasn’t. And for Melody Duchess Vanderlisle de Vere, it would never be OK again.

  Chapter 9

  Profanity

  “Melody,” I said. I kept my voice calm, level. “You need to spit that out. You need to spit it out right now.”

  She was sitting very upright. She looked like a wooden doll.

  “Make yourself sick,” I said. “Come on. You can do it. Quickly, now—”

  Her face suddenly scrunched up like an old rag. I said, “Melody—” and it hit her, every nerve-end firing, everything going off at once. Her head jerked forward. Her lower jaw churned side to side as if she were trying to free herself from something. Strings of flesh stretched in her neck. She kicked out. Her arms thrashed. An awful, high-pitched whine came from her throat.

  The stack of magazines went over. The lamp hit the floor, the shadows tumbled down the walls. She was slipping off the chair, twisting her body, arms and legs shaking in frenzy.

  “Oh—oh—oh—”

  “Melody!”

  I didn’t want to touch her. I didn’t want to form a link to what was going through her, but I reached out anyway and took her hand. It was icy cold. It was like all the heat had been drained from her body. I pulled her towards me. I leaned back in my chair. She sprawled across my knees. She was flailing so much I could hardly keep my grip. Her free arm did cartwheels. Her legs kicked. She was everywhere. But I got her across me and I slapped her hard on the back. She was so thin I was scared I’d break her, but I hit her again, and again, then thought, That’s what you do for somebody who’s choking. But she wasn’t choking. She’d swallowed the thing. Swallowed it. I’d seen the bob of her throat as it went down.

  She was light. Even in her seizure, I was able to gather her up, push her back against the row of shelves. I grabbed her under her arms and pulled her upright. Books and ornaments went spilling to the floor. It was happening very slowly. I could think it all through, see exactly what I had to do, and think, I can’t do this.

  Then I punched her in the gut.

  She folded. But she didn’t throw up.

  “Jesus, Melody.” I straightened her up again. She’d stopped thrashing so much. Her whole body was twitching, shivering. She seemed dazed, stunned. “Why the fuck—?”

  But why was obvious. That, too, I saw now with crystal clarity. She’d been planning it right from the start. All our nostalgic visits. She’d been saying goodbye. I’d been the transport on her farewell tour.

  I’d helped her commit suicide.

  “Throw up, can’t you?”

  “Chris . . . topher . . .”

  Her voice was wrung out, squeezed dry. It was barely audible.

  I hit her again. Her upper body shot forward, then she sagged against me. Christ, I thought, I’m beating up an old lady.

  I felt her spittle in my face. But still she wouldn’t puke.

  “Will you drink something? If I get it for you?”

  She wheezed, a sound like a broken bellows.

  I lowered her into the chair, as careful now as I’d been brutal earlier. I was thinking: salt and water, mustard powder. That was what you gave someone to make them throw up.

  But not with corrosives.

  Acid, bleach, stuff like that: you make them drink water, or milk, lots and lots of it, dilute the poison. If they bring it up, it’ll do as much harm coming back as going down . . .

  What was this? Not corrosive, anyway. I headed for the kitchen, phone in hand. I called the Registry in Jersey City. Their phone rang on and on. I found a cup. I found . . . garlic powder. Turmeric. Dried parsley. Sea salt. Chili powder . . .

  “Registry.”

  The voice was slow and half-asleep.

  I identified myself. I gave him codes. I told him it was an emergency. I said, “I need a flask here, right away. I mean now, got that? If you have anybody with a flask, Manhattan, Upper West Side, get them to this address, now, OK? This is urgent. This is life and death—”

  “Checking your codes, sir.”

  “Never mind the fucking codes! I’ve got someone dying here!”

  “Sir, unless you cease the profanity, I will terminate this conversation.”

  “For fuck sake! What are you, ten years old? Jesus—”

  “Sir, I am preparing to terminate—”

  “No! Don’t do that! For fuck—look, sorry, OK? Sorry! Do not hang up. Do not! Are you still there?”

  He seemed to take an age to answer. It was probably just seconds, but I heard something else crash in the living room and Melody groan and I stepped from foot to foot, and tried to get the little spice jars open with one hand, the phone held with my shoulder, my other hand turning the tap—

  “Your codes check out, sir.” The awful, interminable pause of an indrawn breath. “How may I help you?”

  So I went through it again. I poured salt and chili powder and God knows what else into the cup and filled it with water, looked rou
nd for a spoon to stir it with. I pulled open a drawer and it came loose from its runners, smashing to the floor. Napkins, napkin rings, teas towels . . .

  The man said, “There’s nobody on duty now, sir. I can forward to Emergency and they—”

  “Stop. Stop. You’re not hearing me. You know what we’re dealing with? Do you?”

  “Well, I can probably check—”

  Melody let out a wail. I said, “Do you want to be the man who let Manhattan be destroyed? Do you? You want that on your résumé, then?”

  He told me that he’d call me back. I dropped my phone somewhere and ran to the main room.

  She had slipped or fallen off the chair. She was on the floor, thin, brittle fingers clasping at the air.

  I bent down, cradled her head.

  “Melody?”

  Her eyes moved. She looked at me, puzzled for a moment. Then recognition came. Her lower lip quaked.

  “Christopher.”

  “I’m here.”

  “I’m scared . . .”

  “It’s going to be OK. I promise. Can you drink something for me? Can you do that?”

  “I didn’t know . . . I didn’t think . . . that it was like this . . .”

  I grabbed a couple of cushions from the chair and tried to prop her up on them. I put the cup to her lips.

  She said, “That’s filthy.”

  “I know. Just drink it anyway, will you?”

  She took a sip. Her face pruned up. She pushed the cup away.

  “Melody. I need you to drink this. Quick now. Do me a favor, eh?”

  “It’s eating me up. I didn’t . . . didn’t think it would be like this.”

  “Drink, please.”

  I put the cup to her lips again. She took some of the liquid in her mouth. I think she swallowed some of it. Not much.

  “Drink fast and you won’t taste it. Come on.”

  Her hand clutched at my shirtfront.

  “I can feel him . . . moving in me.”

  “Melody . . .”

  “My legs are gone. I suppose they’re his now. I have a god’s legs. I have . . .” She tried to laugh and coughed instead. Her body rattled in my arms, like a box full of loose puzzle pieces. “Left arm. He’s spreading out, the god. Taking over, inch by inch. Soon I won’t be here at all. He’ll have every part of me.” She gave a strained little smile. “Won’t that be grand, huh? Won’t it . . . ?” Her grip upon my shirtfront tightened, and she tried to pull me closer. “Chris,” she said. It was hardly more than a breath. “Chris . . .”