by Kim Newman
She practised, becoming familiar with the sudden, nauseating headache that came when it worked. She bent, broke or melted a succession of metal and plastic things. Once, alone, she stood in the garage with her hands clasped behind her and tied the car aerial into a knot. It couldn’t be kept secret. Her friends told their families and someone told her parents. She had to do the spoon act in the living room for them. Her stepfather, the bank manager, had nothing apt in his repertoire of reactions, and so kept quiet. Her mother found it highly embarrassing, but couldn’t think of a way out. Susan knew—not felt, knew—her mother had dreaded for years the day her daughter would embarrass the family. She’d expected Susan to get pregnant, marry a black man or become a drug addict. Being a mutant was no better and no worse than anything else, so Susan was inclined to be proud of it. There were twelve-year-olds in Russia who could beat her hollow at chess, but no one she’d ever heard of could pick up an unattached lightbulb and make it come on by thinking electricity into it.
Then came newspapers, magazines, radio, television. Even before she was out of school, she was semifamous. She didn’t need a career option, didn’t need her O and A levels, didn’t need any of the university places offered her. She hadn’t even had to go on Opportunity Knocks. She’d been given something to do with her life. Somewhere along the way, it stopped being fun. Nett’s family moved away from Guildford, and Susan didn’t have anyone to talk things through with. Most of the other girls found boyfriends, but her celebrity isolated her. People were afraid of her again. She looked into her bottom drawer for David’s card but it had been thrown out with other rubbish years before.
Then Roger Breecher took over. Much older than her, Roger was one of the first to latch on to the story. He quit the local paper to guide her through the personality jungle. Unlike everyone else, he wasn’t interested in explaining her or proving her a fake. He positively encouraged her to believe in what she was. He kept her away from scientists, warning her against rat mazes and electric shocks. Her parents didn’t like him but by then she’d had enough of them and wasn’t inclined to pay attention. If her parents had liked Roger, she mightn’t have been stupid enough to hook up with him. He set her up in the London flat, which she was expected to share with him, and went round the publishing houses until a contract was offered. He did most of the writing of The Mind Beyond.
* * *
On television, Roger—bright orange with a green bar over his eyes—was smiling and confident, tackling the presenter’s questions with calculated humour.
‘It’s too early to make promises, Michael, but who knows… maybe Susan is the alternative form of energy we’re all looking for.’
The studio audience laughed appreciatively. It was the Blitz spirit coming out again. Plucky little Britain gasping for petrol, workforce idle four days a week, getting by with a smile and a song and a cup of tea. It made her wish, not for the first time, she’d been born Italian.
She was talking now, reticent and nervy. Her hair had been done this morning and looked surprisingly all right. People said she was pretty, but she only saw slightly misaligned eyes and bad posture. Whenever she saw herself on television or in magazine photographs, she thought she looked younger than she felt. She was eighteen. She wasn’t supposed to feel old. But she was the first to admit she wasn’t normal.
She wasn’t embarrassed this time, because it was deliberate. She’d set out to make a bad impression. They edited out some pauses and unended sentences, cutting in shots they’d filmed earlier of the presenter nodding and listening. She still came over as vague and unsympathetic. One long, pointless anecdote was totally gone. The editor would want to get to the good stuff as quickly as possible.
They left in the bit where she got the title of their book wrong, saying The Mind Behind. The good stuff came. A pretty plastic girl in a knee-length lavender dress came on with a tray and put it on the low table in front of Susan. The camera zoomed in. She saw herself looking down at spoons and spinning tops. She picked a stainless-steel dessert spoon and said something stupid. She got a laugh. She balanced the spoon on her extended forefinger. It wobbled. Her hand was shaking, and she couldn’t get the balance right for long seconds.
Off camera, Roger said something soothing and inane. The spoon was balanced now. The TV people had dubbed in spooky music. Her other hand came into the frame. With the right forefinger she gently rubbed the neck of the spoon like a sore spot. Under the creepy music, there were coughs from the audience. Suddenly, her fingers twitched. The spoon clattered out of sight. She reached down. The camera pulled back, losing focus, then came forward again. She was holding the spoon, slightly bent. It was a pathetic kink. ‘You bent it,’ said an expert sitting between her and Roger. He was there as a sceptic.
The audience laughed. Roger’s orange shaded red. Susan sat quietly, hands (and spoon) in her lap. The prerecorded piece was over, and the presenter was back live, leaning forward to take the viewing audience into his confidence. ‘Let’s take another look at that, shall we?’ It was better than she’d expected. They’d been filming her from several different angles, and they could slow down and/or expand the image like a football action replay. One camera caught her hand under the table, jabbing the spoon crooked against the studio floor.
They had a bit more of her talking, babbling an apology. Then the sceptic was sarcastic. Then it was all over. The presenter made an embarrassed comment, and the newsreader came on to talk about serious things. President Nixon’s tapes, power-sharing for Northern Ireland.
The TV went off, and the lights went out. Roger’s voice was hard in the dark. ‘Another bloody power cut!’
He swiped at her, but she knew it was coming. She pushed herself out of the sofa and moved silently to a corner. Roger was up, too, but he stepped into the coffee table. Something broke.
She was cosy in the dark. She knew where things were. She knew where he was now, where he would be soon. He came for her, animal noises escaping from his mouth. She reached behind him into the kitchen, to the four unmatched mugs hanging from hooks over the draining board and, one by one, made them pop into pieces.
It came now, as it hadn’t in the studio. The sickening lurch behind her eyes, like ice cream going to her head, that always accompanied the push. Her hands clenched tight by her sides, she reached out her mentacles for Roger, to stop him long enough for her to get out of the flat. He would be in trouble. The advance was spent. Deals had been made. He’d bought tickets to New York.
It would be a simple disappearance. Rodway was her stepfather’s name. On her birth certificate, in the Gideon Bible they had given her at school and on her UCCA form, she was Susan Ames. If Susan Rodway was Witch Susan, Susan Ames was damn nearly Susan Anonymous. In September, she could pick a university and read Eng Lit and be safely Susan Anonymous for the rest of her life. Superman had the right idea. If you were going to go through life with powers beyond the ordinary, the first thing you needed was a secret identity to keep the cash-in artists and psychos off your neck.
Outside, she’d know her way in the dark.
PART
IV
1
Alder had changed overnight. The scenery was still out of The Archers or Straw Dogs, but the country folk were outnumbered by invaders, and the place had turned into a cross between Woodstock, Hollywood Boulevard and Harvest Home.
Looking across from the Pottery, Paul saw the garage crowded with late thirty-somethings in punitive-in-this-heat leather, crushing beer cans and comparing bikes with the enthusiasm of schoolboys seeing whose erection was longest. Allison’s facially impaired boyfriend was mingling with them, slapping gauntlets with Demon Scumsuckers from Hell who were probably accountants the rest of the year. Biker women sat on the low wall in front of the forecourt, pulling off boots and jackets to let their bodies breathe. Big breasts flopped under death’s-head T-shirts. Without goggles, the women had dusty cheeks and chins like survivors of a First World War dogfight.
Outside the V
aliant Soldier, a young man in a flowered waistcoat, open suitcase balanced on his knees like an usherette’s tray, offered to sell a selection of controlled substances, liquorice lumps of cannabis resin, an assortment of pills and tabs, vials of suspiciously baking-powdery cocaine. There was nothing in the pharmacy for toothache. Paul told the dealer to ring up no sale, and the slick-haired hustler shrugged, turning his attention to the next prospective customer, a hairy youth with shorts, flip-flops, a headband and a back pocket full of disposable income.
Even before the official start, camp sites were thronging. Finding one kid in the crowd was impossible. Paul spotted a few lads, even a girl, with mohican haircuts—fifteen years after the Sex Pistols’ time in the sun—but none was the boy from the woods. The severely spooked kid could have bolted home. Paul wouldn’t blame him. Down by the festival site, at the edge of the Agapemone estate, there was already a holiday air. There were tents and vans in rows, and queues for the prefab toilets. Food stalls were open, and a fish-and-chip van from Achelzoy was doing excellent business. Litter was already underfoot.
He wandered, slightly dazed, among the festival folk. Some were kids out for a good time, away from parents and holiday jobs for a week or so. They had clean faces, casual clothes and clustered in chatting groups, like guests at a freshers’ party. Others were travellers, a semi-medieval nomad community complete with ragged urchins, the filthiest imaginable dogs and vehicles with home-made post-apocalypse armour. They were the ones building cooking fires and scavenging for supplies. Alliances and subgroups were forming. Paul knew travellers frequently clashed with festival stewards and security staff, feeling they were the rightful keepers of the flame for this lifestyle, that their seniority should be recognized.
Many attendees were caught in time warps. Superannuated hippies or bikers congregated in knots, telling old stories. Festival veterans—survivors of Pilton, Reading and Castle Donington—spoke of Stonehenge before the police moved in and the Isle of Wight in the acid haze as if those were the Great Days of Empire. There were isolated examples of every style cult that had ever been, from goatee-bearded beatnik and fuzz-faced folkie through dreadlocked white Rasta and fancy-dress new romantic to squiggle-clothed acid householder and stripe-clothed skunker. Some were the right age for their fashions, flowers in grey-streaked hair or punk spikes over thinning thirties scalps, but most were teenagers who had pick-and-matched personae from the past. That was post modernism for you.
They were all loitering, waiting for the party to begin. Badge-wearing stewards recruited for various jobs, and the big stages were aswarm with roadies. As a helicopter overran the site, rumours spread around that a megastar was touring preliminary to a surprise appearance. The guessing was inclined towards Mick Jagger or Peter Gabriel, but someone suggested it was Jim Morrison back from the dead. The chopper circled once and took off again.
Paul began to get heatstroke. He had come out without sunglasses, and his eyes were paining him. He scanned the crowd, looking for a red mohican. Hazel said the kids had a Dormobile, so he paid especial attention to them. Even that lead did not help. More vehicles arrived all the time. A cheer went up from the field being used as a car park. An open car had just lurched in on four wheel rims. Its slow progress had caused a mammoth tailback. As it was dragged away, the cork was out and traffic moved again. The two youths in the crippled car were arguing, interspersing insults with shoves, and the stewards were trying to pull them apart.
Tempers frayed all around. Two little kids, faces smeared with chocolate ice cream, were having a screaming match while a mother tried to separate them. Marijuana drifted past on a lazy breeze, and a stern youth with a badge and an armband began telling off a dope-smoker not for flaunting the joint but for dropping it on the dry grass without making sure it was out. A skinny naked girl was lying face down on a blanket between two caravans, face covered by dark glasses, trying to ignore the small crowd of peepers. After a while, she gave up and pulled on shorts and a top. Dogs fought viciously, and someone with a guitar struggled through ‘House of the Rising Sun’.
He wasn’t doing any good here. He decided to return to the Pottery. Hazel might be back, and he wanted to talk to her, to patch something up that would last until autumn. It was hard to get out of the field because there was a clog of people around the gate. Having arrived and set up camp, they were restless from long journeys and wanted to walk around, visit the pub or just see the area.
A ten-year-old in Iron Age clothing came up and said, ‘Spare change?’ Paul turned his pockets out and found nothing but doorkeys. The child stuck out its lower lip and walked on to the next prospect, clinking its take of the day in a grubby fist, like Captain Queeg clacking his ball bearings.
He looked up at the Manor House, nestled on its hill. Most houses are schematic faces, front stairs for teeth, drive for a lolling tongue, big door for a nose, windows for eyes, and eaves for a hat brim. The Agapemone was too big to be like that, with a rack of windows suggesting a spider’s row of eyes, and swatches of crinkly, dry ivy like a veil. It wasn’t a face, but it suggested an expression. The Martian war machine hadn’t been like a face either, but it had had a similar impersonally nasty look. One of the gabled attic windows caught the sun and flashed. Paul flinched, expecting a heat ray.
Nothing happened.
He looked again, and just saw a nice old house, not particularly well kept. The gate was free, and he escaped from the field. He walked away from the Agapemone, back into the village.
2
It was important not to let on that he knew. After last night They must suspect he’d seen something, but Ferg let Them believe he thought the Iron Insect was just a dope dream. It was almost exciting, having a secret he couldn’t, didn’t dare, share.
He sat in the stuffy blue pupa of his tent, pretending to meditate. Outside, a mass of people milled about, shadows shifting on the translucent but opaque walls. Twenty-five different ghetto blasters competed in a guerrilla war. There were voices in the din, just beyond earshot, speaking with each other, conspiring.
Ferg didn’t like to be out in crowds. There were too many of Them, watching. They looked like ordinary people, but he’d seen Their true shape. Having glimpsed the truth, he was changed for ever. He couldn’t ever be ignorant again. He didn’t know what It was or where It had come from. But It was here. It could take human form, or could enslave humans. From now on, he’d have to watch out. He didn’t know whom he could trust. He thought Jessica was all right but couldn’t be sure. With her mood swings, it was hard to tell. Mike Toad was one of Them. He was surprised he’d ever been taken in. Mike was off with Pam, the new girl, so she must be with Them too. Syreeta was the type to be part of it all, the hostility between her and the Toad a put-on to cover their plotting. Dolar might be innocent, but Syreeta had him under her control. He didn’t know about Salim, Pam’s boyfriend. Everyone else, the locals, the strangers, the festival people, he could never be sure of, either way. It was safest to act as if they were all in it together. So, it was him—possibly Jessica, just maybe Salim—against the rest.
Behind him there was a mechanical rasp. He flinched, knowing Iron Insect’s three-pronged claw was reaching for his neck. Then a human hand touched him. He turned around. It was Jessica. The noise had been the tent’s zip being pulled up.
‘What’re you doing in here?’
He didn’t answer, didn’t dare give a story that could be picked apart. Jessica wriggled in, smiling, and knelt in front of him.
‘It’s sweltering.’
That was true. Despite the shade, it was like a sauna in the tent. Drops of sweat ran on Ferg’s shorn scalp. He’d been breathing his own body odour. Jessica unstuck her T-shirt from her chest and fanned air between her boobs.
‘Headache,’ he said, venturing an excuse.
‘Awwww, poor wickle Fergie,’ she cooed, pouting, rubbing his forehead.
The press of her against him made him shrink. She kissed him and giggled. He was suddenly not
sure of Jessica. She was changing. She pulled him out of the tent, and he felt like an astronaut being pulled out of a sinking capsule in the Pacific, eyes hammered by the sun. They were in the middle of a field of tents. A mini-city had formed overnight, with beaten-down grass pathways, a Mayfair with bright new-painted vans and pavilion-size marquees in neat rows, and an Old Kent Road of patched one-and two-person tents jammed in higgledy-piggledy.
‘Isn’t that better?’
Mike Toad’s empty tent was next door, and Dolar was sleeping in a shacklike shade he’d built against the side of his van. Syreeta was balancing a dented saucepan over a Calor Gas stove.
‘We’re making tea,’ Jessica said. ‘Do you want some?’
Ferg bit his lip. If he refused, They’d immediately be suspicious. But if he accepted, he’d have to put something inside himself that came from Them. It was possible there was something in the tea to make him change as Jessica had changed. Two days ago, she’d been a sulk; now she was fawning all over him, trying to pretend nothing was wrong. It could have been something in the tea. Water boiled in Syreeta’s saucepan, tiny bubbles agitating around the sides, large burps in the centre.
‘Tea?’ she asked him.
He nodded a yes.
Dolar was snoring. Or maybe pretend snoring. He had an old straw hat over his face, but could be looking out, eyes alert, through the cracks in the brim. Syreeta slurped hot water into a row of mugs and threw the rest away. It hissed on the ground like acid. Jessica brought him a cup of milky water with a teabag floating in it. He held it, ignoring the scalding heat, and waited his turn with the spoon.
‘Pam’s off looking for her sister,’ Syreeta said.
