by Tim Lees
A flunky had retrieved our bag from the hotel. He set it down before us. Here was our gear: the flasks, the cables, the control boxes.
“You’re going to bottle it for transportation. Clear?”
“It’s called retrieval, what you’re asking.”
“I don’t care what it’s called. You’re going to do it.”
Ballington’s cheeks were red with blusher. His lips were pink. His eyebrows had been darkened and his lashes thickened with mascara. Even as he spoke, he beckoned to the makeup woman. “Lips,” he said, impatiently. “Accentuate the curve.” He leaned close, breathed into her ear. “Make me smile,” he said.
Silverman kept filming, all this time.
I said, “It won’t be easy.”
“There’s three of you. What’s the problem?”
“Three . . . ?”
He leaned close, and I could feel the heat from him. “I don’t just count in billions, Mr. Copeland.” He looked to me. To Angel. “One. Two.” To McAvoy. “Three.”
“Come on—”
He jabbed me in the chest with his finger.
“Are you a doer—or a loser?” He drew himself up, put his head back, did his best to look down his nose at me, which was tricky, given he was half a head shorter than I was. “Two choices in my book,” he said. “What’s it to be?”
“You know your father’s crazy, don’t you?”
“He’s just being Dad-o.”
I had cornered Eddie, hoping for an ally.
His smile did not convince.
“Your pet god’s got its hooks in him. I told you that, remember?”
“I guess . . . sure. Sure. He’s been kind of extreme of late. But you don’t know him. This is a guy—he makes the big decisions, takes the big moves. Nothing he does is small. That’s how he works.”
“He buys a property, then fucking invades it? That’s normal? Really?”
“Chris. You just don’t get it. I told you, right? There is no normal with a guy like this! He doesn’t do normal! He’s like nobody you ever met before. He’s bigger than all that, he’s—”
“Do you like him?”
“He’s my Dad-o!”
“Love him?”
“He’s not normal people, Chris! You can’t judge him like—like you do just anyone—”
“I get the idea. But listen: I gave you that number for the Registry, yeah? And you gave it to Ghirelli?”
“Yeah . . . ?”
“Well, this could be the time to use it. Don’t you think?”
Angel said, “We doing this?”
“Is there a choice?”
“But not just, how he wants? We’re not just going to give it to him, are we?”
“Be nice not to,” I said. “Any ideas how?”
Chapter 60
The Most Terrifying Thing
I asked for floor plans. I got them, and a side room, too, to do some planning in.
The god was on the thirteenth floor. Hence the lack of floor number.
Angel said, “I guess that’s meant to be significant.”
“Hot-shit voodoo.”
The humor wasn’t much, but at least it took the pressure off. Just for a moment.
So we checked over the plans, remembering what we’d seen. There was the big room where the god was housed. A bunch of smaller rooms were designated “storage” which probably meant, “Everyone’s too scared to go there.” A stairwell ran beside the elevator shaft. That was good. An angry god invokes the same rules as a fire: don’t use the elevators.
I’d had some vague hope that, once I got the plans, there’d be a chance of running a perimeter outside the god room, and not going in at all. But that wasn’t going to work, unless I fancied crawling round the window ledges.
Silverman was filming all this time.
“Great shots?” I said. “Great cinema?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “It isn’t like you think, you know.”
“Yeah. We both heard. Ghirelli put a bug in my phone. What you know, we know. And here we are, eh?”
Angel cautioned, “Chris . . .”
“You’re still, um,” said Silverman. “Still mad at me, I think.”
“You’re near at hand.” But then I let myself relax; the anger just fell out of me. “Sorry. You want the truth, I’m angry at myself. And Edward bloody Ballington, as well.”
“He’s something else.”
“Oh, he’s that, all right.” I rolled up the thirteenth floor, put it on one side. “I’ll say this. He played me. I might as well have volunteered, the moment I set eyes on him. Both of us looking for this bloody Johnny Appleseed, and neither of us had his real name. But he’d got to be Registry. He even said he was, to Ballington. But Ballington’s not got the contacts in the Registry, or not like he wants. Then I come knocking. And what does he do? Hands me his biggest clue, the CCTV, and lets me do the work for him. Assumes I won’t cooperate, so he takes out some insurance, courtesy of his security guy. And just like that, I do exactly what he wants. For free, what’s more.”
“Sucks.”
“I’ll tell you the worst thing. He told me. Spelled it out. Everybody works for me, whether they know it or they don’t. And here I am—still bloody working for him.” I ran my eyes over the twelfth floor plans. Hotel rooms. Lots of them. “So how’d he drag you into it?”
“Usual. Trying to raise the money. Wasn’t looking good. And suddenly, out of the blue, I get a call. Plane ticket, hotel room. Be there.”
“Royal command.”
“That’s it. I’ll be honest, I’m still trying to work out what I walked into. I got here last night. This morning, it’s, come on down, see my hotel. And I walk into a war zone. Professionally speaking, it was . . . kind of a challenge.”
“I bet.”
“It never stops.” Silverman glanced back at the door, as if expecting to be called away at any moment. “He wants everything on camera. Not like Eddie-boy—he just didn’t care. The old man’s into it. I swear, he’s walking through his own fucking epic. In his mind, this is How I Saved America. He makes speeches to the camera, and—Jesus. The things he says. ‘We are winning back the nation. This is the Second American Revolution.’ He’s serious. He believes this stuff.”
“Tell him to tip my tea into the harbor and I’ll go home.”
“I’m starting to think this whole thing is actually, um, pretty scary.”
“You weren’t worried by a bunch of guys dressed up as soldier-boys?”
“I thought it was a stunt at first. And then, you know, I just did my job, and . . .”
“‘Dad-o gets impatient, these days.’”
I put the twelfth floor aside. I’d hoped for better options there, but we’d just have to make do.
“And the makeup!” Silverman said. “Every five minutes, it’s More makeup, more makeup! What’s with that?”
“I’ve got theories.” I looked at the schematics for the fourteenth floor. Some big suites. Easier to handle. Could I take the thing without even wiring the thirteenth? Squeeze it between twelve and fourteen? Was that even possible? I talked it over with Angel for a moment. Then, to Silverman, I said, “You want to help out? Like before?”
“Big Hollow . . . ?”
“Yeah. Good fun, eh? Enjoyed yourself?”
“Chris,” he said, “I think it was the single most completely terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my whole life.”
“Till now,” I said.
Chapter 61
Holes in Reality
I went up alone to fourteen. I had to think, to get the feel of it—something that’s hard to rationalize in a report, but can make all the difference between a smooth ride and a total balls-up.
Inspiration, empathy.
Gut-instinct.
I set the control box in the elevator lobby, then spooled the cable out along the corridor. There were guest rooms either side, some recently vacated—I found suitcases under the beds, clothes in the wa
rdrobes, toothbrushes in holders on the sinks. It baffled me how anybody could have slept there, stayed there. How or why. The place was jumping. I could feel it, like someone scraping fingernails around the inside of my skull. I was conscious of the god on the floor below—not just a shiver in the air here, but a potent, willful presence, and if I let it, it would twist my thoughts till I lost track of where I was, what I was trying to do, all sense of purpose and identity.
Was that why people came here? Because their own lives were so bad, they wanted to forget them? Lose all memory, all consciousness of who they were? To be absolved, in some way? Shriven?
I’d been up there maybe twenty minutes when I realized what was happening to me. That’s why some guys work in pairs, or groups. It’s safer. The trouble is, you miss things, doing that. Just having someone else around, you lose your focus. Sometimes you need to be alone. To know exactly what you’re dealing with, to face it, full on.
The first thing was, the floor dissolved.
I didn’t see it quite like that, though. It was slow, and subtle.
The carpet had a pattern of long, colored stripes, running lengthwise down the hall. I started to get careful where I put my feet. I didn’t even notice I was doing it at first. But I’d stick to all the brighter-colored lines—the yellows, pinks, mint-greens. Keep off the purples and the browns. It didn’t strike me as unusual. The dark colors began to look like shadows. Then like gaps—places where the floor just didn’t cover. Spaces in reality. I could sense the abyss down there, an emptiness that would drop and drop forever, the same void that had been under me my whole life. The space beneath the world . . .
I was in the hallway. I was reeling out the cable. And at the same time, I was high up, perched above the abyss, terrified to fall.
I jerked back into consciousness. I saw the corridor, stretched out ahead of me. How long had I been standing there?
Hours? Minutes?
I’d laid just twenty feet of cable.
There was carpet under me. Solid floor.
I picked one of the darker bands of color, a deep, rich purple, felt a little thrill of trepidation as I put my foot on it, rested my weight there, risked the fall.
No fall.
I pushed down, hard.
I grinned. I danced a little, two steps forwards, two steps back.
Then I went back to my work, unspooling cable, room to room.
Soon after that, I saw a man.
He was waiting there, in one of the guest rooms. I didn’t see him when I first walked in, but looking up, I realized he must have been there all the time, sitting in the armchair—a small, portly fellow, with white hair and a goatee; he looked a bit like Colonel Sanders. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t make out what he said. His gaze passed over me.
I started to apologize, then stopped myself. There was a reason why I hadn’t seen him. He’d not been here. It was my arrival triggered him. I’d brought him into being. He gripped the chair arms, much as old men do, and pulled himself onto his feet. He shuffled to the door, and as he did so, a second figure rose up from the same chair, almost an after-image, following the same path; and a third, and fourth, each within a moment of the last. They passed into a patch of sunlight, and they instantly winked out. Beyond that, there were only shadows, odd shapes that flickered without definition.
Warily, I laid the cable, and I left.
I covered, close as I could, the area that matched the god’s room on the floor below.
Then I heard Angel calling, “Chris?”
“I’m here. I’m fine.”
“You’re overdue.”
“Yeah. Don’t worry.”
She was waiting for me by the elevators, looking round, as if she’d missed something; like somebody who hears a wasp nearby, but can’t tell where it is.
“You feel it, don’t you?”
She had a flask and a second control box.
“I thought you might want these.”
“How’s things downstairs?”
“Ballington & Son? Same as before. Young one thinks it’s all a laugh. Old one’s strutting round like Mussolini, and Paul just films it all, like it’s some weird family sitcom.”
“Run that past HBO.”
I took a power lead, linked it to the new box.
“I don’t get Ballington. I thought he’d burn out, but he just gets stronger, from what I can see.” I picked up an auxiliary cable, screwed it into place. “You asked me how I knew he’d got the god in him. You see it now?”
“He’s manic.”
“He’s winding up. Whatever’s in him, it’s just driving him on, and on. I bet he hasn’t slept for weeks.”
“He’s got these crazy notions, taking over the country—”
“I’m not sure that’s the god talking. But it’s the god giving him drive, and power. What interests me,” I said, “is what’ll happen when he meets our guy on thirteen.”
“Dangerous?”
“Like two cats. Maybe they’ll get on. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll just tear the stuffing out of one another. I could bet on which . . .”
I linked the flask in. but I wasn’t sure of its position yet. I had a notion, nothing more.
We could hear things. Movement, down there on the thirteenth floor. Scraping, dragging.
Together, we moved towards the stairwell.
“The makeup,” I said. “Any theories? Or just trying to look good for the camera?”
I pulled open the door. We moved into the stairwell. I think we both expected something to happen. But the air was still. The thing had calmed again.
Our footsteps echoed on the stairs.
After a time, she said, “He still looks human. From the outside, anyway.”
“True.”
“Maybe doesn’t feel it, though.”
“No.”
“He wants his human face painted back on. So he can still pretend.”
Chapter 62
Words in the Walls
The twelfth floor was a different matter. I didn’t really care about the twelfth floor. but I took McAvoy along, just to get him on his own a while.
I could feel the god. The air was thick with it. The atmosphere would seem to part before me, flow, and close behind. There were mild hallucinations, a sense of being watched—twice in the few minutes after stepping from the stairwell, I looked round, certain there was someone else there. Of course, there wasn’t. But that didn’t shake the feeling, or make it any easier, being there.
To McAvoy, I said, “You scared?”
He didn’t answer right away. I was sorry that I’d got annoyed with him before; not because he didn’t deserve it, but because I wanted information. It would have just been so much easier to have him trust me.
Too late now, perhaps.
He said, “Why should I be?”
“Dunno. ’Cause you look it?”
I spread the cables out. I wasn’t bothered with a flask here. All I wanted was a block, cutting off an exit route.
I told him, “I’m scared.” I reeled out a dozen yards of wiring. I said, “I’m scared of this thing upstairs. And I’m scared of Ballington because he’s fucking crazy, and he’s got more power right now than any crazy person ought to have. And you know why he’s got it, too, don’t you?”
I couldn’t make him trust me. But maybe I could make him talk, if I kept on.
He was facing the wall, running his fingers back and forth over the wallpaper, like there was something special in it, something that took all his concentration.
“Somebody,” I said, “sold him a god. But they didn’t shield it properly. So how did that happen?”
“I did what I was asked,” he said.
“Not very well.”
There was a pause. He shrugged one shoulder.
He was still watching at the wall.
“I’ve been to Ballington’s place.” I laid cable round the room, not really thinking much about positioning. “Nice, eh?” He wouldn’t answer.
“Cameras everywhere, though. Worse than here. That’s how we got you. Anyway—that whole house—the lower floors are swarming with activity. All geared round old man Ballington. I’d say he’s got a piece of god lodged in him right this minute. And why? ’Cause someone couldn’t do their fucking job.”
I had expected arrogance. Evasion. I’d expected him to blame somebody else, deny the whole thing, perhaps.
That wasn’t what I got.
He said, “You want me to feel guilty.”
It was the voice of a resentful child.
“Feel as guilty as you want,” I said.
“That’s all you people do. Denigrate, put down—”
I cut him short.
“Look. Not only do I not care how you feel, you are now so totally irrelevant to this whole thing, it doesn’t even matter what you think, do or say. You understand? So unless you’ve something helpful to contribute, you might as well shut up. OK?”
It took a minute. I could see the muscles in his face twitching and shifting.
He sniffed. He sniffed again, and the sniff became a little, sneering laugh.
Arrogance. We’d got to it at last.
I said, “Just tell me something, will you? ’Cause I’m puzzled, all right?” I waved my hand across him, full length. “What exactly are you meant to be? I mean, singer? Guitarist? Something like that?”
He didn’t answer.
“You look—oh, I’d say, mid-period Stones, maybe. Except, well. Talentless.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know incompetence.” I dropped the cables, stood up straight. I looked him in the eye. “I know amateur. I know bad work.”
His mouth opened. I didn’t give him chance to speak.
“You walk out on the street here, you can see it. Spilling over everywhere. You did containment? Honestly? It’s like a fucking sieve.”
His fingers traced the patterns on the wall.
“Still—what do I know? You’re the one dressed like a rock star. Making your money, living large. That the plan? Well,” I said, “if you’re going to fail, fail big, that’s what I always say.”
