I ran down the steps, not wanting to go, but having to, now that I’d made the move, and came to the door. I opened it, ducked through and screamed.
At the top of the outer staircase a creature like a leathery, emaciated gryphon, bigger than a draught horse, was sitting on its hindquarters. At my appearance it turned its ugly, bony head with leisurely interest and stared at me from huge yellow cat’s eyes. It opened a long mouth, beaky at the edges but still full of teeth and gaped, like birds do in the heat. Its voice was almost incomprehensible, lost in guttural snarls, but I thought it said, “Greetings.”
Jalaeka appeared and put his arm around me. I tried not to be glad and comforted. “This is Hyperion,” he said. “I was going to introduce you more formally, but . . . Hyperion, this is Francine.”
“Hello,” I said. “Are . . . are you . . . ?”
“He is Forged,” Jalaeka said. “Human.”
“Oh. Oh right. Sorry,” I began apologizing to him; it was such bad manners to not even recognize your own species and I didn’t want him thinking I was Separatist.
“Glun-ah nratah!”
“He says it doesn’t matter. He’d talk to you properly, but you seem to have no Tab,” Jalaeka translated.
The gryphon, Hyperion, was wearing rudimentary scale and leather clothing, and decorations and jewellery—bone amulets and various beaded bindings and piercings shone dully. His large, wolfish ears turned constantly, listening to the forests that crowded this side of the Palace closely, encroaching on the garden.
“Does he . . . how do you know each other?” I asked, trying to figure out what Hyperion had been Forged for exactly. They all had a purpose, since they were abominably expensive to create.
“Hyperion found this place first. He is a mystic hunter.”
“Uh serghnant uh zhe gutt,” Hyperion growled.
“. . . a servant of the god . . .”
“. . . eeyagh ghorse . . .”
“. . . the higher force . . .”
“I didn’t even know they made Forged for . . . that . . .” I said, looking at the claws on Hyperion’s forefeet, which were much more like hands than I had realized. His joints were unusual and as I watched he got up from his resting position and became suddenly bipedal.
“The Pangeneses made him, not the Authority,” Jalaeka said. “He says there are lots of them, unregistered Forged, created at the whim of the father-mothers. He doesn’t mind telling you, because you are like him, he says.”
“What? How?”
The huge creature stretched like a cat, long arms wider than the two of us could have stretched together. As he yawned I saw all the way down his long purple mouth. He had teeth on his tongue.
“Wanderer,” Jalaeka said, eyes looking vaguely up and across as he listened to Hyperion inwardly. “Searcher. Ranger. Hunter. Made by the many hands of Tupac and Mougiddo to go beyond the veil. He says. The veil of illusion . . . the inner veil.” He glanced down at me and shrugged. “Don’t look at me. He thinks I’m a god.”
Hyperion barked, sounding exactly like a big dog. It was a laugh. “Hghlugh!” Love.
“He tells me that’s what I am. And he was made to find me. So he knows what he’s talking about. And now he’s going into the wild, so he can tell me more about who I am. Nice. Saves me the bother of analysis.”
I thought of Greg suddenly, and what he would make of all this. If it were true. Hyperion walked down the stairs in a few steps, careful on his huge hind paws. He vanished into the tree-line a hundred metres away. When I had watched him go I looked up at Jalaeka. “And are you?”
“The god of love? No. But I lived next door to him once.”
“Where?”
“Metropolis.”
“You were there?”
He nodded and looked down at the floor.
“I thought nobody got out.” I’d heard all the stories, read all the newsies.
“Just me.” He looked at me, as guiltily as I’d ever seen anyone look. Hunter and hunted, he’d said about Unity. “It would have been better for you if you’d never met me, never changed me. But now you have.” He was almost talking to himself.
I didn’t know how to tell him that, even though it blew my mind, it didn’t matter. “You know, I should take Katy’s anorak back when I go and fetch my stuff. Would you mind coming with me? I don’t really want to go there on my own. She’ll try to make me stay.”
“Fetch your stuff?”
“So I can bring it here, now I’m living with you.”
He looked at me, full of objections and all the other complicated, alien things rushing through his mind. His smile was shy. “Yes, of course I’ll come.”
I held my hand out to him, unable to suppress a shiver. “Freezing out here.”
“Of course it is,” he said, taking my hand and looping my arm around his waist. “What was your favourite story when you were little?”
“My . . . um . . . ‘The Snow Queen,’ ” I said, watching my breath mist in front of me as we turned into the building’s icy shadow. “But that couldn’t . . .”
“It’s our nature to be changed by dreams,” he said. “And I definitely didn’t get this from my last girlfriend.”
A spark of jealousy struck me hard. “Oh. What did you get from her?”
“Still not sure,” he said and unconsciously put his free hand to his chest, as though shutting something in.
11 / Greg
I left the University at eight-thirty, about three hours later than I wanted to, too late to meet up with Francine, who mailed me a lunchtime note to say she had been studying for pre-entry exams all day. I worried about her travelling home on her own as I delayed even longer to pick up food at the stores in the Low Massif. Katy said she hadn’t been home the last night, but I didn’t worry too much—I worried more than that . . . only Francine hadn’t been forthcoming about herself during our few days of getting to know one another and I hardly had the skill or the position to badger her for what was really going on. She worked hard all day on the days I saw her, a perfect student. Now she was gone and in order to catch up with her, I would have to go back to the Foundation’s loathsome apartments—since she was illegal I couldn’t register her for student accommodation.
Meanwhile my upper left vision was full of transparent, scrolling updates on the conversations of my colleagues as I kept up with their discussions on various topics but mostly today’s closure of Sankhara. During the time it took me to leave the office and do the shopping I got a lot of requests on my recent papers, some of them from TV research AIs surfing for background material they could use to fill out the hyperlinks on their permitted fifty-word byline, which was going to explain, very quietly, that Sankhara was no longer issuing visas of any kind and that all nonresidential permits were, as of this evening, revoked. We were under quarantine.
I wondered if it was because of Damien’s undiscovered space. I hadn’t reported it. I didn’t want anyone there before I had a chance to record it all. Even though he had led me there, it felt like it was mine, but anyone could stumble over it at any time. I wanted to take Damien and Francine there to help me get it done straightaway, even if I had to pay Damien a year’s salary. I called Katy to tell her I was coming.
“Good,” she said. “I need to talk to you on a very important matter. That appalling Stuffie you waste your money on is here too. We’re having an open night. Can’t you get rid of him? He puts people off. And Francine . . .”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said and cut the line, glad that Damien was already present, as it would speed things up.
When I got there Katy was outside the Foundation apartments, lying in wait for me.
“There you are,” she said, brushing a loose strand of hair back behind her ear with the same gesture I’d been watching for three years and never noticed until now that she used it as punctuation to give her an extra second to think of what she ought to say. “How are you?”
“Knackered, hungry, longing t
o talk about my inadequacies and get home before Engine Time.”
She glanced down. “I’m sorry you’re hurt but this is not about you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry too.” Stinging riposte, Greg. Well done.
Katy pushed her hands into her trouser pockets, tipped her head back and took a deep breath before fixing me with a firm stare, chin dropping to an angle of stern temperance. “It’s Francine,” she said and abruptly lost her sangfroid at the same instant I lost mine.
“You and Ludo should stay out of other people’s lives . . .” was my starting line.
“Now look, I know what you’re going to say . . .” was hers.
I finished, “. . . leave her, and me, alone.”
She finished, “. . . some really strange guy in there with her.”
“And what do you want me to do about it? You have fifty-odd assorted strange guys in there with you on a regular basis. Maybe she found a friend who hadn’t decided to sacrifice all personal loyalties in order to spread the joy of harmony around at anorexic levels.”
“He’s not one of us.”
“Thank heaven for that, then.” I stepped around her, wondering what she was so bothered about and determined to find out.
“Greg.” She caught my arm, her voice low in tone and volume. “I’m really worried about her. I know perfectly well how different she is. I’m not stupid. But she’s also a teenage girl with no Tab, and completely vulnerable, yes, to people like me who mean her well and to others who might not, so I’m saying, trying to say—you’re closer to her now. I accept that no matter how inappropriate I think it is, but whatever, she’s been okay so far, I know she’s working, she’s started studying. It’s all very positive. But the underlying issues that brought her here and made her rip the Tab out of her hand haven’t gone away. For gods’ sake, I just want to ask you to look out for her, okay? And we’re here, if you need us.”
“So, you’re not standing here implicitly blaming me for being too late to walk her home and directly causing her to pick up with someone you haven’t managed to vet?”
She let go of my sleeve. “You’re doing that yourself.”
Music started thumping out from the central room. I heard Ludo’s voice exhorting someone to try the Foundation out, just for a week, just for one week, and see if it didn’t make a difference. Straggling ones and twos of people wandered in and out past us. “Where is she?”
“In the kitchen.”
The Foundation kitchen was a huge, well-built community cooking centre, warm, tiled and by far the only usable room in the entire place. It was packed with members old and new, every seat taken and most of the standing room too. The long table was covered in plastic drinks cups and a dull roar of talk rebounded from all the shiny surfaces. I recognized a few faces, Unevolved and Genies, people with names like Slooky and Punch, Drifter, Bushwhack and Pippin, great collectives of lost characters in search of a story. I almost didn’t recognize Francine, only because she was standing next to Damien, who cut an exceptional figure in his forest green leathers, his every pocket and strap bristling with offensive-looking items, mostly weapons, and his face bearing its customary sardonic smile.
She was wearing beautiful clothes and talking with an animation I’d never seen her use before. Her face was alight with passion as she spoke with Bobsybob, a Stuffie drifter who looked rather like a young sea captain down on his luck. I made my way over to them.
It was only as I reached them and went through the Hi and Hellos that I noticed Damien grinning at me even more annoyingly than usual. “Hey, mate,” he said.
“What?”
“Damien!” Francine kicked his ankle and in doing so knocked over a ripped and battered old backpack at her feet which was half-full. She bent down to straighten it out of the way and I noticed for the first time that a man was sitting behind her on the work-top, his legs hanging down on either side of her. I was too surprised at not seeing him before to say anything as she stood up, leant to the side and said, “Greg, this is Jalaeka.”
He stretched out his hand to me. “Nice to meet you.”
I felt Katy move up beside me, elbowing her way around the crush. She nudged me in the ribs. I realized this was the Man In Question. He looked so ordinary I couldn’t understand what on earth was giving her a problem. His smile was warm and friendly, his handshake confident and his style of dress blissfully normal. Damien’s leer notwithstanding, I didn’t get the joke. I glanced at her and gave a micro shrug at which point I saw her staring at him with an expression that suggested something quite other than disapproval.
“So, Jalaeka,” Katy said in her breezy voice, the one that suggested everything was interesting, “tell us about yourself. Francine seems to have really attached to you so very quickly.”
Nine million points to you, Katy Pawluk, I thought, groaning inwardly and waiting for Francine to explode. Francine’s eyebrows did go up, but with pity. Behind her, the unremarkable Jalaeka put his arms around her, his knees on either side of her hips, and rested his chin on top of her head.
“I was made as the people’s champion on a pre-industrial world coming under the sway of a ruthless Unity-driven empire. After my capture and enslavement I became a Companion to the wealthy classes and learned the arts of seduction. I fled my position after several years, having become the favourite of the Empress’s son—a dubious position, too prone to assassination for my liking. To make my escape I had to betray one lover and tear my friend from his quiet life of peace. In the wild forests beyond civilization I learned I was not human. I did not manage to learn how my nature worked in time to save my friend from death by pneumonia and starvation. I fell into despair and went up a mountain to die . . .” He paused and smoothed down a stray piece of Francine’s hair with one hand.
“At that point I began to dream of time and space and to understand the motions of the stars and the particles of matter but I still did not understand how to alter their paths.
“I was found by someone who owed me a death. She was a mercenary fighter and had a thousand ways to kill me, none of which worked. We fought to exhaustion and fell in love. We became pirates, by sea and land. We flung ourselves headlong at the world. During one of our many temporary partings—we fought a lot, did I say that?—I was trapped by a sorceress and held to ransom for my powers. The sorceress wanted me to open a portal into another world. I could not do it, and I would have fallen there if my ordinary love had not found me and lain down upon my tomb and dreamed that she would give me a path out into another world.
“I was always vulnerable to dreams of those who loved me. When I awoke I was on Solar Earth, it was 1987, and I knew how to change the fabric of creation. And then some more stuff happened”—he held out one hand with fingers spread and waggled it to indicate glossing over a lot—“and I came here and Francine found me. And now here I am in your kitchen, until she decides it’s time to leave.” He kissed the top of Francine’s head protectively and glanced at Katy. It was a glance of fierce warning and at the sight of it I lost my eye-rolling contempt for his story and began to have serious doubt that maybe Katy was right to be worried.
Damien looked smug.
“Don’t worry,” Jalaeka said. “My days of carnage, treachery, murder and rape are long over.”
“Why, what happened?” Damien asked him, giving him a look that I found distastefully worshipful.
“I saw the light,” came the deadpan reply and, thrown away at the end of it like a tossed piece of trash, “going out all over.”
“You were never like that,” Francine said, squeezing his knee, as if they’d known each other for months and she had all the evidence that he was only being modest, or self-deprecating. Their familiarity and physical comfort was alarming if nothing else. They looked as if they belonged together.
“Depends on who was looking at it,” he said and glanced at me.
“No it doesn’t,” she said. “You never did any of those things on purpose.”
&nbs
p; “I did,” he said. “That’s the pity of it.”
“Circumstances,” she said.
He gazed at me and I felt myself minutely examined, as if at the bottom of a microscope. It took half a second, maybe less. Then he relaxed and I really saw him.
“I think you should stay here . . .” Katy was saying as I moved past her and grabbed Damien’s arm, dragging him forcibly towards the hall.
“Hey . . .” he objected but didn’t really fight me. He was light and easy to move. The door to the bathroom opened as we passed it and I ignored the queue and hauled him in with me, slamming the door shut.
“Dr. Saxton, I didn’t know you felt that way about me . . .”
“Cut it out. What is that?”
“That?” he said, shaking his long hair out with a strangely soft expression on his face, as if he’d just left a lover’s bed. “That is a god. Or as good as it gets. That is another Unity in action, in person. Behold. The master of your new domain.”
I stood a long time, fixed to the spot by my thoughts. “You,” I said finally, wagging my finger at him. “You put this together somehow . . . you . . . did you put her in his way?”
Damien was past me in a flash, to the door, his hand opening it effortlessly. “We all do what we have to in order to survive,” he hissed at me. “And to get the opportunity of a lifetime, which this is for you. He’s right there. Self-aware. Mucho mojo. In love with our Francine. And he talks, baby. He TALKS.” He whisked out.
A girl came in. “Oh,” she said, seeing me. “Are you done in here?”
“Yeah,” I said, standing there.
She waited. “Do you mind?”
“No.”
“Out . . . ?”
“Oh.” I went out.
Living Next Door to the God of Love Page 12
