by Kim Newman
Salim was sitting nearby. Silently he took a cup of tea. Ferg dumped his teabag into a plastic rubbish bag, and passed the spoon to Salim.
‘The Toad went with her,’ Jessica added.
Ferg raised the mug to his mouth. He let hot water lap against his lips but did not swallow. It smelled all right, but he knew the extra ingredient would be tasteless, odourless, undetectable. Salim gulped the tea so fast there was hot sweat on his forehead before he’d finished. It was a shame, but there was no way Ferg could have warned the Pakistani boy. Now it was too late. If he had been all right before, he was tainted now. Tainted by the Iron Insect.
‘There might be music tonight,’ Jessica said. ‘The programme doesn’t start officially until the day after tomorrow, but there are enough people with guitars and things to get something together.’
Ferg turned half away while the others weren’t looking and spilled some of his tea. It sloshed on the ground where Syreeta had thrown the water, and sank into the earth, unnoticed. He felt a twinge of excitement. There was a pleasure in each of his little victories.
Earlier, he had seen the man from last night, the monster’s attendant, wandering around the site, looking for him. That had made him duck into the tent in the first place. The man was gone now. Ferg would have to be careful of him. He was more dangerous than the others. Jessica and Syreeta would be easy to fool because they thought they knew him. The man had been there when he saw the Iron Insect. He knew he knew.
‘How’s your tea?’ Jessica asked, ringing with fake innocence.
He held up his mug and smacked his lips, but didn’t drink. Jessica turned away, and he spilled more tea.
‘Never tasted better,’ he said.
High in the sky, a white helicopter made a slow pass. Everyone looked up, and he dribbled the last of the tea away. The sleek machine purred as it passed. Ferg had been seeing white helicopters ever since he came to Alder, but only now was he noticing them, realizing what they were for, from whom they came.
‘Police,’ Jessica said. ‘Spying.’
‘No,’ said Salim. ‘It’ll be the BBC, getting film for the news.’
‘Aren’t we near the helicopter air base?’ Syreeta asked. ‘Yeovilton?’
He shrugged. It was impossible to read any markings on the white helicopter. Not that he’d have believed them. The police, the BBC, the Air Force. They’d all be supporters of the Iron Insect.
He touched the empty mug to his mouth and tipped it. A drop of brown moisture ran against his lips, but he rubbed it off against the rim. He put the mug down, and Syreeta collected it. People saw what they wanted to see, what they expected to see. Syreeta and Jessica had seen him drink their cup of tea, and now they’d think they had him.
It was strange to think They were fooled exactly as They fooled everyone else. How long would it be before one of Them made a mistake, talking to him as if he were in on it, assuming knowledge of the Iron Insect’s purposes and plans?
The white helicopter lazily disappeared towards the horizon. Its blades hadn’t even whipped up a breeze.
Syreeta rinsed the cups out with bottled water and stowed them away. Jessica sat on one of Dolar’s wonky folding chairs and picked up a fashion magazine, riffling through the pages as she compared thousand-pound frocks. Dolar pretended to sleep again.
When it started, there must have been few of Them, and vast numbers of ordinary, uninfected, free people. He wondered how far it had gone. Everyone couldn’t have gone over, or they’d jump and take him by force. There must be others like him, as he had been, unsuspecting among the Iron Insect’s followers. How many of Them were there? One in ten? One in five? Was it up to fifty-fifty?
Ferg was thirsty, throat parched, skin warm and damp. But he couldn’t give himself away by getting a drink. He sat down and lit up. The hot smoke didn’t help his throat, but he usually smoked a cig after a cup of tea. He couldn’t afford to break with routine. Never forget They were watching. He held the smoke in his dry mouth and felt pain in his lungs. Even if he could get a drink, where could he be certain it wasn’t doctored? The bottled water was in the van, where Syreeta or one of the others could get at it any time he wasn’t around. If he went to one of the stalls selling warm beer and Coke at inflated prices, he had no way of knowing the stuff hadn’t been tampered with. Canned drinks should be safe. But he couldn’t be certain. They could have taken over factories and be doctoring drinks at source. Maybe drinks had always been doctored. Maybe he wouldn’t know the taste of a drink that hadn’t been.
The Iron Insect had had three triple-jointed legs, and a body shaped like a wasp’s nest. There had been something obscene about it. More than a machine, It had been alive, its metal a hard kind of flesh, the wires and workings arteries and organs. The Thing was like a queen ant, and the people who served It, buzzing around with one mind and one purpose, were workers, drones. Maybe They were usually invisible. Maybe now he wasn’t drinking doped tea, he’d start seeing Them everywhere. They might be always striding down Charing Cross Road, scuttling up the Post Office Tower, screwing noisily in Oxford Circus, waiting patiently outside the Houses of Parliament. Unseen masters, attended always by white helicopter catspaws.
He pulled the neck of his T-shirt and a waft of hot, body-scented air rushed up past him. It was getting hotter, and shade was shrinking. He used his hand as a cap-peak and peered up at the sky. It was cloudless blue, the sun an agonizing white blip, impossible to look at. Around him, young people were tanning. A girl walked by wearing only shorts, her chest a Caribbean brown, no strap marks on her back and shoulders. She licked her lips at him, and he knew she was one of Them. He was supposed to look at her dark nipples, not her empty eyes, and be fooled. They thought They could lead him by his dick. His bare forearms prickled in the sun. He kept watching the skies.
3
Things are going to be different from now on,’ he told his son. ‘No more crying, no more bed-wetting, no more nonsense about the dark. No more Evil Dwarf. Do you understand?’ Jeremy looked up, tears swimming in his eyes, and nodded with shuddery eagerness.
Maskell took the breadknife away from the boy’s throat and said, ‘I’m proud of you, Jerm. Proud.’
Sue-Clare was in the corner, hugging Hannah as if the girl were a teddy bear.
‘See,’ he explained to her, ‘it’s simple when you put things simply. No problem.’ He smiled at his obedient son. ‘No problem at all. Is there, Jerm?’
Jeremy nodded vigorously, hair flopping. The jagged red line on his throat where the knife had been was vanishing quickly. But the memory would remain, and Jeremy would never again be funked of the dark, or blub like a baby in the playground, or pee the sheets.
Maskell felt better this morning, as if he could shrug off the heat, absorbing its goodness through his skin. His lands seen to, he could take care of his family.
‘Come here, women,’ he said, stretching out his arms. ‘Come,’ he said, voice deeper.
Sue-Clare stood, unsteadily, and Hannah escaped from her mother. The girl ran to him. He picked her up, rubbing his face against hers.
‘Ouch, Daddy,’ she said, in a mock scold, ‘your face scrapes.’
He laughed as Hannah put her fat little hand into his hair, smoothing back the moss that grew there.
‘Look,’ she said, pulling, ‘a flower.’
‘For you, my Princess Precious,’ he said.
Hannah hugged, body warm against his, cradled to him in one arm. The other he stretched out towards his wife, fine tendrils twisting from his hand. Sue-Clare took a step away from the wall, and paused.
‘What’s the matter, Suki?’
She was hovering, as if dizzy. There was a bruise on her forehead, a cut scabbed over, from when he’d had to put her in her place. That was over and done. She’d learned and now she’d have a treat.
‘We can be a family again,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’
He snapped his fingers, sap leaking from the knuckles, and whistled for Jeth
ro. The dog lurched unsteadily out of his basket, trailing his blanket. Maskell had been neglecting Jethro, and needed to make amends. The dog was limping, head swollen and discoloured like a large fungus.
‘Here, boy,’ Maskell said.
Hannah laughed as the dog zigzagged towards them. He tried to yap happily, but his throat was furred inside. The dog was ailing, and Maskell needed to succour him. Balancing Hannah on his hip, he knelt and patted Jethro. Amber eyes opened in the yellow fuzz of the dog’s face as his hand curved around Jethro’s head, twig fingers sinking into overripe softness.
‘That’s better,’ he said.
His hand sank into the doughy mass, filling the head. He punched through between Jethro’s shoulders and sprouted into the dog’s body. Maskell’s arm grew, fingers splaying inside Jethro. The dog gurgled happily as Maskell gave comfort, tail erect, legs tucked in. He stood again, lifting the weight of Jethro. A tiny branch poked out of Jethro’s anus, displacing the dog’s tail, and spread into a green hand with flexible fingers. Maskell felt a tingling as the dog collapsed, incorporated into his arm. Jethro was little more than a fur sleeve now, eyes lodged unblinking in Maskell’s shoulder. The tail hung from his wrist.
‘Good boy,’ Maskell said.
His bicep was ringed with Jethro’s teeth, inset like stones in a mosaic. His hand was swollen out again, his arm supple and strong. He tickled Hannah’s nose with Jethro’s tail, and she giggled.
‘Oh, Daddy,’ she said. ‘Sorry, Maurice.’
‘No, Precious Princess,’ he breathed at her, ‘Daddy is all right. Daddy is right.’
Pressing Hannah’s head to his cheek, he looked across the room at his woman. He stretched his arm, its new fur rippling, and beckoned with a four-jointed, bud-tipped forefinger. Swallowing air, Sue-Clare walked to him, hands in full view. When she was within reach, he curled his arm around her, pulling her close. He kissed her cheek, feeling her shudder.
‘My family,’ he said, ‘my oak and staff.’
At this moment, everything was perfect. Everything was connected. Cobweb-thin tendrils grew out of him, gently puncturing Hannah and Sue-Clare, feeding his seed into them. His family, his lands and his body were all one, growing together in nature.
‘We plough the fields and scaaaatter,’ he hummed, ‘the good seed on the land…’
Hannah took up his hymn, ‘but it is fed and waaaaatered by God’s Almighty Hand…’
She sang on, mixing up the words, but getting the meaning.
‘He sends the snow in winter,’ he breathed, ‘the warmth to swell the grain…’
Sue-Clare gasped and shook as she was threaded through, but Hannah—good girl, Daddy’s princess—accepted, and appreciated with her child’s innocence the miracle of life. Sue-Clare twisted, struggling as she sometimes did to make it more exciting, hands playfully thumping his chest, yellow fluid leaking from his tendrils on to her neck and shirt. He kissed her mouth, mashing tongue against teeth. His knob stood out again, poking through his ruptured fly, a hardwood spear with a creamy tear at its eyehole. His balls were swollen too, grapefruit heavy with seed.
‘Suki,’ he said, ‘now…’
He saw her eyes widen as he pressed her down on the rug, pulling her jeans. Hannah was part of this, part of their cocoon, a serene bubble unto herself. She shifted until she was riding him, hanging on his back, arms around his neck, knees clamped to his sides. Maskell remembered making love while Sue-Clare was pregnant, feeling one flesh with his child as well as his wife. Sue-Clare did not fight him as he angled his knob against her, sliding himself in.
‘Maurice,’ she whispered, ‘Jeremy’s here… Maurice, don’t…’
Maskell lowered his weight, slipping deeper into his wife, his connection to her swelling as tendrils sprouted between them. Sue-Clare bit her underlip and shut her eyes tight, tears pressed in silence through the cracks. Maskell was fully covering her now, barked elbows against the rug. He didn’t need to push with his hips. His knob thrust and swelled, withdrew and shrank, by itself.
He craned his neck, and twisted to look at his children. It was important they learn the facts of life. Growing up on a farm should be educational. Hannah was warmly nestled, stubby fingers working into his fruity flesh. Jeremy stood by the door, eyes wide.
‘Come here, son,’ he said, ‘join us, and be a man…’
Jeremy was panicked. It struck some that way, Maskell knew. He had a problem boy.
‘It’s natural,’ he assured the child.
Sue-Clare was with him, riding herself to a peak. Her eyes were open now, clear as pools. Shoots pressed against the scarf that held her hair, and her tan was beginning to crack like young bark, showing green lines. Where their bellies pressed together, they were joined by a sweet-smelling gum that tickled as they squirmed.
‘Join,’ Maskell said to Jeremy, again, ‘then we can watch a video. You’ll enjoy that.’
His knob burst, and Sue-Clare received a frothy gush of seed. They were grown together. Father, mother, daughter. Jethro, even. All fertile, all ready to sprout. Jeremy made a decision and stepped towards them. Maskell had a rush of love for his family, for his fields. Everything would be perfect. Then Jeremy turned and shouldered through the door, clattering across the kitchen, out into the open. Doors banged behind him.
Maskell stood up delicately. His knob, now supple and snaky, came easily out of Sue-Clare. Hannah detached from his back as painlessly and neatly as a ripe apple falls. His wife hugged herself on the floor, pulling the rug around her. There were gummy golden tears like syrup on her cheeks, breasts and stomach. Hannah slept, white threads on her face, limbs and stomach swollen like peaches, juice dribbling from her mouth.
He still wore the remains of his clothes, although his boots had long since burst and been thrown away. He picked at the strands of his shirt, matted to him by dirt and natural secretions, and slowly peeled himself. His skin was the brown of healthy soil, his broad chest dotted with green spots where the shoots would come. He tore his jeans with strong fingers and dropped the denim strips on the floor. He was able to stand more naturally now, knees bending properly both ways, the coconutty fur on his calves sprouting nicely.
Naked and perfect, he was ready to follow his errant son, to bring him back to the fold. He kissed Sue-Clare’s forehead, patted Hannah and tweaked her nose, and walked through the kitchen out into the farmyard. The honest, enriching smells of earth and shit filled his tunnellike nostrils.
He couldn’t see Jeremy, but the boy was his seed and he had a dowsing rod between his legs. His manhood dangled freely, not stiff with the need to fertilize but loose and comfortable. He held it extended horizontally away from his body, and waited. He snorted warm air. His knob twitched towards the barn. The office. It had once been a loft, now it was an office. The conversion had been a mistake, made during his time of ignorance. Computers and books had no place on a farm. Plastic and paper had no smell. The loft was for bales of warm hay, not dry and dead numbers and records; for prickly coupling with ripe farm girls, not futile wrestling with sums and screens.
Jeremy was up there. Maskell’s knob twitched again, a little turgid, slightly painful. He let the rod hang free and strode across his yard.
‘Here I come, Jerm,’ he shouted, ‘ready or not.’
4
Stepping out of the Gate House with Susan, Lytton was surrounded immediately by demands. Derek was in the forefront with news of a parking disaster. The wrong fields had filled up first, creating a logjam unable to get to the overflow areas. There was a Road Runner-like background beeping from gridlocked traffic. A driver from a hire firm was trying to get a receipt signature for a load of public-address equipment. Sister Karen wanted approval for a test bundle of wet-ink programme sheets before going ahead with full-scale printing and distribution. Kids he’d given positions of minor authority reported back with missions accomplished, neglected or fouled up. There was even a local journo with questions about last night’s mysterious fire. Everyone
was talking at once.
He sorted the crowd into an orderly queue, and took the easiest problems first, giving orders to surplus people. He told a kid to rustle up personnel and help Derek clear the parking throughways. He glanced over the lorry driver’s manifest and initialled it. The equipment was already being assembled by brought-in techies into an ear-abusing pyramid of power. He fobbed off the reporter by claiming that all press statements would be issued by Marie-Laure Quilter, sending him away with his hand-held cassette recorder. As far as Lytton could remember, Sister Marie-Laure hadn’t spoken to an outsider in years, and was unlikely to start now.
Karen’s programmes looked fine to him. From experience, he knew everything would start an hour later than scheduled, but the timetable was a start. Susan, who was in charge of printing, commended Karen on a good job and they scurried off to the printshop, which was part of what had been the Manor House’s warren of garages and stables, to begin mass production. Susan looked back and saluted, mouthing ‘later’ at him. What Susan said had affected him, but he was back in his snakeskin. Until he received further orders, he should keep on with things as normal. His morning off—essentially, a morning wasted—had probably allowed chaos to descend on the site. More chaos.
As the festival had grown, Lytton had become more important to it. Jago almost never did anything personally except take part in ceremonies of blessing, so someone had to liaise between the Agapemone and the hordes of show-business characters—not to mention stallholders, haulage people, ticket distributors and troublemakers—necessary to keep the show running. A committee, on which Mick Barlowe represented Jago, decided on the line-up and sorted out niceties like scheduling and local accommodation for the performers. Once they’d done their bit, it was down to Lytton to put the plan into action. The festival gave him more leeway than any other Agapemone activity. Complicated, challenging and interesting, it kept him half in the real world, out of the mondo bizarro side of the community.
