The City's son st-1

by Tom Pollock

  ‘The day I take bathing advice from you, petrol-sweat,’ she countered, ‘is the day I kill myself.’ Her reflection wavered dimly on the oily surface. She could make out the outline of her head, but the face set into it was a blank.

  ‘So,’ she said. Her voice was steady, but her heart was hammering.

  ‘So,’ he replied.

  ‘Better get on with it, I guess.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Just wasting time here.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘No going back now.’

  The synod symmetrically shook their heads, and Beth felt a jolt in her chest. It was like hearing a heavy door slam behind you in a dark house.

  She sat down on the bank of the pool, kicked off her trainers and pulled off her socks. Oily black mud chilled the skin between her toes. Tentatively she stuck one foot into the filthy water ‘Ow!’ she cried, and yanked it back. The skin had blistered red. She looked up at Fil.

  ‘I did tell you it could hurt.’

  ‘ Right,’ she muttered under her breath and stood up. She poised herself on the dead grass at the edge and bent like a diver, ready to get in. If she plunged in as fast as possible, she figured, she’d at least get the shock over with.

  The blood thundered in her ears like trains, like traffic, like hollow pipes in the basements of tower blocks, like tides of the river itself.

  Do you really want to be like me?

  She tensed her muscles.

  ‘Beth,’ Fil said. ‘I’m proud-’

  She dived.

  CHAPTER 28

  Beth involuntarily screwed up her eyes and clamped her mouth shut. She exhaled hard through her nose as the thick meniscus of the pool slid over her face. Then the water swallowed her.

  Liquid rushed into her ears, roared in, drowning out her heartbeat. She felt her T-shirt billowing as the water covered her stomach, prickling it like insect feet. Blisters erupted on her neck, inside her ears, between her fingers, stinging her lips.

  Don’t breathe in, don’t breathe in.

  She pushed more breath out of her nostrils. She couldn’t imagine the pain of having the toxins flood her sinuses, but the pressure built up steadily in her chest. She held her mouth shut.

  Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe. Don’t panic.

  When you have to tell yourself that, a voice in her head countered dryly, you’re already screwed.

  The water savaged her skin. She could feel warm blood pouring out through her pores.

  The pressure grew as the liquid squeezed her until every beat of her pulse felt fit to crack open her head. There was a vacuum in her chest like a black hole. The water seeped into the corners of her mouth, burning her gums, making her teeth fizz horribly in her mouth. It levered at her jaw, straining to be let in.

  Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe. Don’t panic.

  The breath died from her nostrils. The bubbles rippling over her face ceased.

  Breathe. Breathe. Don’t panic.

  I watch as she goes limp, spread out in the water like a black star. It would be a lie to say I’d thought this was without risk. We both knew this could kill her, and as good as she was at hiding it, Beth was horribly afraid of her death.

  So was I.

  I want to dive in after her, but instead I bite my lip and taste the petrol. This is a war, and that makes us soldiers — and what kind of soldier backs out because a friend of his might get hurt? It’s a fifty-fifty shot, better than Reach would give her. ‘This is my fight now,’ she said, and I will myself to respect that.

  Six shadows fall across the water and I look up sharply. The synod have stepped in, buttoning their jackets in identical time. They bend over the pool like the petals of a black flower. Too late, I notice the absence of sound. They aren’t snapping their lighters. Beth is still and they are still and there is an all-swallowing silence.

  Each holds a flame in their outstretched hands. As one, they turn and grin at me.

  ‘Johnny!’ I shriek — and six flames fall towards the petrol-slicked water.

  Dimly Beth heard the whumphh as the fire blossomed above her. Even without opening her eyes she knew what must have happened; now the surface of the pool was capped in flame. No way back out. At first the liquid ameliorated the heat, rendered it to warmth, but as she hung there she felt the pool heat up around her. Her skin began to hurt less; perhaps the nerve endings were burning out, perhaps she was dying. The beat of the blood in her head was the loudest thing. The loudest thing she could ever dream…

  Pressure in her temples obliterated the thought. A slow current tugged at her and she allowed herself to turn, rolling in the water like a crocodile.

  The pressure battered furiously, unbearably, at her throat and chest and jaw. She realised with sadness, rather than fear, that she was going to open her mouth and let the poisoned water enter her. She was too weak for this test and it would kill her.

  The light of the fire touched her eyelids. And because she didn’t want to die blind, she opened them.

  ‘Johnny! Let me- Beth! Beth! ’

  But the Chemical Synod hold me, woven in a symmetrical web of their arms. Their skins are too slippery for me to pull them off, but their grip on me is vice-like.

  ‘BETH! BETH! ’ I scream at the top of my voice. ‘Let me go!’ But they grin their horrid grins and hold me tighter. I’m panicking now, and I don’t understand. We had a deal. Deals are sacred!

  In my pain and confusion, I barely register the change in the water, but then I notice the flames flickering, reflected in the surface — the surface which is no longer oily black.

  It has turned silver.

  Silver. Why in Thames’ name does it look silver? Beth gazed around her. The liquid was warm against her eyeballs, but it didn’t sting them, and she could see the fire, raging through the silver water like a close-up sun. Her skin was ragged and torn, but the water seeped into it and the pain ebbed away. The water was healing her flesh, smoothing her blisters to a finer grain the texture of concrete.

  ‘ How in Thames’-? ’ The thought tailed away. It didn’t sound like her; it sounded like him.

  An image struck her: rain pouring over the city, water flooding down sewers, through gutters, seeping through the earth, teasing up tiny particles of London and carrying them here.

  Liquid chaos, and other more exotic ingredients.

  Here, into her.

  The heat of the fire forced droplets of sweat from her and she felt them clinging to her skin, insulating her from the heat. A petrol tang touched her lips.

  She remembered Fil putting his hand on the Lampgirl’s arm. The heat should have been agonising, but he’d shown no sign of pain.

  She kicked towards the flames.

  The synod’s grip on me slackens and I spring forward, my heels spurning the earth as I run towards the fire. One second of pain, that’s all it’ll take, and I can reach her, pull her clear. At least they won’t get her body.

  A shape bursts from the water as I reach the bank, the flames in its hair sputter out and it collapses in front of me, coughing up great lungfuls of rancid water.

  I damn near fall over her as I drag her onto her back. Her chest is still and I grab her arms and shake her idiotically, yelling her name two inches from her face: ‘Beth! Beth! ’

  There’s no response, and a sickening certainty grips me: she can’t respond. Sudden death.

  Mad, frantic, I begin to push at her chest, but there’s no sign of life. I slump over on her, my ear to her ribcage, and still I hear nothing. ‘Oh, Thames,’ I whisper, and at last, I feel a faint flicker through her hoodie. I flail about, almost smacking her in the side of the head in my haste to jam my fingers into her mouth and pull it open. I draw in chemical-heavy air, ready to breathe it into her.

  ‘You about to snog me, Phyllis?’ She wheezes the words, her lips an atom’s breadth from mine, trembling, but slowly creasing into a smile.

  I sit back, gazing at her. Her skin is grey, the silver-grey of the water
she just climbed out of: the colour of steel and concrete. The colour of mine.

  A thin shadow falls across my shoulder. ‘Filius.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Confusion and leftover terror pound through me like a jackhammer. ‘You burned her.’

  Johnny Naphtha bathes me in his eternal grin. ‘This is a special conflagration,’ he says, ‘purchassed at great expensse. It cleanssess and corusscatess, maimss and makess anew. That iss what you assked for, after all,’ he adds with a certain pride. ‘The ssynod always does what is assked.’

  He and his oil-slick brothers turn and walk back towards the factory, their feet falling in perfect time. ‘Filiuss,’ Johnny says, without turning, ‘inform your friendss: the form of our agreement iss now fixed. Forgetting would not be forgiven.’

  My stomach plummets for a second. Symmetry: every deal has a cost as well as a benefit. The chemists’ equations always balance.

  ‘Exit by your own endeavourss,’ he says before they turn away.

  Beth lies there, eyes shut, chest slowly rising and falling, now and then spluttering up a little more oily water. It’s a joy just to watch her being alive. When the synod have retreated back into their cloister I collapse down beside her. Exhaustion drags my eyelids together. I press my arm along Beth’s and we lie there, absorbing the sunlight.

  CHAPTER 29

  Fire. Strands of black-oil stretched between grinning lips. A lighter-flame, neat and symmetrical as a daggerpoint. ‘It coruscates, and cleanses,’ a slick voice was saying. ‘It maims and makes anew.’

  Beth opened her eyes slowly and then winced. The daylight hurt her eyes. The warmth of the sun made her want to sleep.

  She could feel the ground under her, the city rubbing up against her skin. She could feel the charge that built up between them. Urbosynthesis, she thought. A smile split her face, so wide it made her mouth ache.

  She sat up. Fil was lying beside her — he looked exhausted.

  Maybe I should let him sleep. She considered the idea for a second, then shouted, ‘Oi, Phyllis, wake up!’

  He popped one eyelid. ‘This is an uncivilised bleedin’ hour,’ he grunted. ‘I’d kind’ve hoped that you’d see the merit of kipping in the daytime now.’

  ‘Kip? How can I kip when I’ve got this — when we’ve got this-’ She flailed for the right words; she was buzzing. The energy of the city was in her and she could feel it charging her. It felt like Christmas when she was little, when Mum would stomp around, scowling good-temperedly down the stairs with bundles of newspaper-wrapped presents she’d bought with their meagre…

  Bought.

  The word brought Beth up short. ‘Fil?’ she said, suddenly worried, ‘what did this cost? What did the synod want for changing me like this?’

  He sat up, groaning, and scratched himself with his spear. ‘Not a lot, given what we asked ’em for.’ He yawned like a giant contented cat. ‘I told ’em to make you as close to a child of Mater Viae as they could. All they wanted in exchange was some poxy ingredient their stores were missing that I happened to have. Long as I live, not something I’m goin’ to use. But they were dead keen on it.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Beth was dubious. ‘That sounds… cheap.’

  He shrugged. ‘There’s no predicting the stuff the synod are going to prize. Like Petris said, they’ll make a commodity out of anything.’

  By the time he clambered to his feet Beth was jigging with pent-up nervous energy. He dusted himself off and picked up his railing. ‘All right, all right.’ He spoke with the knackered kind of good humour she’d overheard dads using to their toddlers in the park. ‘What do you want to do?’

  There was only one answer to that. She shivered with pleasure as she said, ‘I want to run.’

  *

  Beth led the way, her gait impossibly smooth, as Fil stumbled behind her, missing his footing, groggy in the daylight.

  She ducked inside the back door of the factory and raced between its mouldy walls, which echoed back their voices as they shouted with laughter.

  The factory passed in an eye-blink and then they were back out into the sun. He was at her shoulder now, his face lined in concentration, his feet blurring as he ate up her lead. Exhilaration built in her chest as the urban scrub gave way to tarmac and they pounded along a main road. Horns screamed as traffic vanished in a smear behind them.

  She caught a flash of his grinning face as he overtook her and she gritted her teeth and pushed herself harder. She understood now how he could run so fast: each footfall drew more power from the asphalt, each step charged the next. Their sprint was growing ever faster.

  Beth crowed gleefully into the wind; Fil whooped in answer. Her feet were learning the city: every time her bare soles hit the ground she knew she would never forget that piece of slate, that patch of tarmac, the texture. She could find every inch again with her eyes shut.

  Gradually, Beth pulled level. On the first day she met him she’d collapsed, breathless, in his wake. Now, children of the city, they raced side by side through their home.

  A small marina opened up before them, a couple of hundred yards off the river, anchored boats bobbing in the murky water, sails furled tight around their masts. Without pausing, Fil sprang onto a sailboat, then his momentum bore him into the nearby rigging until he was swinging from yard-arm to yard-arm.

  Beth stormed up to the marina’s edge.

  Go round, a nervous voice in her head urged, go round.

  And a louder voice overrode it. Screw that, she thought, and leaped. Her stomach lurched as she swung from a crossbeam, but her grip held. She let her new instincts carry her through the forest of masts to the far side of the marina where Fil waited, his arm pointing upwards to Canary Wharf.

  Her eyes followed his finger, and widened.

  ‘Enjoy the climb? How about one of them, then?’

  The three giant skyscrapers reared overhead, lights glowing in the oncoming evening gloom. They were only a few hundred yards away.

  Beth swallowed hard. The middle one, Canada Tower, was the tallest in the city. The glass-and-steel edifice soared over the capital, the silver pyramid that capped it piercing the underbelly of the clouds.

  He winked. ‘I’ll race you.’

  The bricks smeared past. Beth’s blood, her new blood, pounded in her veins. Was it still red, she wondered, or tar-black? The few people skating on the ice-rink in Canada Square barely saw the grey-and-black pair blur past them.

  He shinned rapidly up a steel pillar beside one of the skyscraper’s revolving doors and hauled himself up to the first floor. He started scuttling crabwise up the side of the building, squeezing himself flat into the dark spaces between the brightly lit windows. Somehow his fingers and toes found invisible crevices in the smooth metal on the outside of the building.

  Beth skidded to a halt. Her feet felt suddenly heavy, lead instead of quicksilver. She found herself shaking her head. He’s scaling sheer steel.

  She couldn’t She couldn’t do that.

  She began to pace back and forth, squinting critically at the sheer metal escarpment, embarrassed that she couldn’t keep up with him.

  A tendril of metal caught her eye: a cable running all the way up the side of the tower. It was supporting a window-washing platform. She grabbed it, and found it a perfect fit for the rough new texture of her hand. She lifted her feet off the ground and dangled, relishing the feeling of so easily supporting her own weight.

  With a wide grin she set her shoulders and began to haul herself up, hand over hand, gripping the cable with fingers and toes. Her reflection slithered over the metal as the wind whipped her hood into her face, billowed her clothes out like balloons. She looked down only once, and laughed at the toy-like city beneath her.

  She could see his wiry silhouette on top of the tower, waiting for her.

  ‘You took your time,’ he said as she pulled herself over the lip of the roof.

  Beth lay back against the slope of the roof, the breath in her chest b
urning. ‘We can’t all climb like bloody squirrels, y’know.’

  ‘Really? You think I’m like a squirrel?’ He sounded proud.

  ‘I wouldn’t get too excited. Squirrels are just rats with a blow-dry.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with rats?’

  Beth didn’t bother to answer. She rolled away from the edge. The silver pyramid rose steeply above them. A light flashed on and off, a warning to low-flying aircraft. Steam snaked from the air-conditioning vents, diffusing the beacon’s light, and directly below it She felt her jaw drop.

  ‘Um, Fil?’ she croaked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is that a throne?’

  Cut into the western face of the pyramid was a seat with high sloping arms. It was vast — nothing could possibly be big enough to fill it. But even as the words left her mouth, Beth knew whose throne it was, because cut into the chair’s high back was the tower block crown.

  He glanced upwards, snorted in amusement. ‘Nah,’ he said in a deadpan tone, ‘it’s the Maharajah of Madras’ diamond left buttock.’

  He paused, then said, ‘Well identified, Beth: it is, in fact, a throne. Congrats. Your power to observe the bleedin’ obvious is a credit to the human race.’ He looked out over the view and whistled appreciatively.

  ‘It is quite something, though, don’t you reckon? I can never get over it when I come up here. You’ve gotta hand it to old Rubbleface, he can build.’

  ‘Rubbleface?’ Beth looked at him in astonishment. ‘You mean Reach?’

  He looked at her. ‘Okay,’ he said slowly, ‘so maybe your grasp of the obvious isn’t quite as good as I thought. All skyscrapers are Reach’s children, Beth. Think you can build one of these things without cranes? Canary Wharf was his biggest, baddest accomplishment. A mirror to his ruptured face that the whole city could see — and Mater Viae took it, and sat on it.’

  He chuckled. ‘You’d better believe that sent a message. No more petty heresies. Friar Archibald and his Apostates of Stone went awful quiet. No one said a bad word about the Old Girl for a good decade.’

  The beacon flashed and lit his wicked grin. ‘Wanna try it out?’