No Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  “Hello, girls,” says Clyde.

  “Hello, pet,” says the leftmost Sheila, the one farthest from us.

  “Morning, love,” says the closest one.

  “All right,” says the one in the middle.

  And thereby we arrive at the appropriate point for me to say that it’s very nice to meet them all and that I have a couple of questions if they don’t mind too much, and generally do all the things that ten plus years on the force has prepared me to do. What I actually do, of course, is my goldfish impression. Open mouth. Close mouth. Open again. No sound.

  “This is Arthur,” says Clyde. Then, after I open my mouth a few more times, “He’s new.”

  “Barely shows,” one of them says.

  “Wallace,” I manage. “Arthur Wallace.”

  “All right, Arthur,” says one, then another, then another.

  The middle Sheila extends a hand. I shake it. It grounds me. This is a real person. This is a real thing happening. I am being a real arse.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “It’s been a rough couple of days.” I shrug apologetically. “Not my best excuse, I realize. But, well, my mum taught me honesty is the best—”

  “Shaw make you read the book?” asks the rightmost Sheila, cutting off my babbling. It’s a mercy killing.

  “Yeah.” I nod. “Still a bit shaken up over the whole aliens going to devour me sort of thing.”

  “Clyde pissed himself after he read that,” says the middle one.

  “Sheila...” Clyde’s protest either lacks conviction or backbone. Or both.

  “You bloody did.”

  “True. Yes. But it wasn’t really the validity of the fact that I was objecting to.”

  He’s comfortable here, I realize. He’s not exactly confident but he is comfortable. Maybe there’s a way for us to work that. If I can fake confidence we might not totally half-arse this.

  I pull out my notepad from my pocket, check the line Shaw gave us. I go over it a couple of times. I want to get this right. It’s been a long time since I was the new guy. I need to use my police officer props until I hit my stride.

  “Director Shaw gave us a line,” I say. “Something Ophelia said.”

  “Business already?” says a Sheila.

  “Enough of this social foreplay already?”

  “Get stuck in, is it?”

  They wink as one. I attempt a grin but I’m still on my back foot and my blush reflex decides to kick at the least opportune moment, so I just stare down at my notepad and read the nonsense statement a few extra times until my brain kicks in again.

  One of the Sheilas laughs. “He’s cute, this one,” she says.

  “You can bring him again,” says another.

  More notepad reading. And they’re nice girls, they really are, and I think I’d probably love to come round here and share a pint and have a laugh, but today is totally not the day for it.

  “Beware the painted man’s false promises until he shows his second face,” I manage to elbow into a moment when they all seem to be taking a breath at the same time.

  “Come again?” says a Sheila.

  “Beware the painted man’s false promises until he shows his second face,” I repeat.

  “Well, that’s marvelous to know, pet,” says one Sheila, pushing her bangs back out of her eyes. “Never know when that’ll come in handy.”

  “What if he’s just been gone at with a crayon? Does that still count?”

  The middle Sheila brays at this. The noodles hanging from her lips fly wildly and I am uncomfortably reminded of the Progeny in the dead man’s brains.

  “Come on, girls,” Clyde says softly. “It’s his first day.”

  And I could almost hug Clyde, except now I feel even more awkward. Some leader I am.

  “Look.” I push my hair back and use the hand to force my head back so I actually make eye contact. “I’m really sorry. I just... I’m kind of feeling the pressure on this one. What, you know, with things not looking so awesome for Ophelia. Not really used to being the frontline on that sort of thing. I’m just trying to get off on the right foot is all.”

  There is silence for a moment.

  Finally the Sheila in the middle swallows her noodles and speaks. “Bloody buzz kill, you are,” she says.

  “Sorry.”

  “Nah,” says the one nearest me. “It’s fair play to you. Down to business.”

  “Well, painted man,” says the one furthest away, “could be literal. Someone in a painting.”

  “They’re not usually literal,” says another.

  “Poetic licence is what they have,” says the third.

  “Could be tats. Painted skin.”

  “That could be it.”

  “I like that,” says the Sheila with the TV remote.

  They all look at me, as if seeking some sort of approval.

  I don’t have a bloody clue. I sort of imagined something involving the word “scrying” and possibly rabbit guts, or at least a tarot card or two. I mean, I don’t want to doubt Shaw or Clyde, but just making random guesses seems a little... prosaic.

  I glance at Clyde, and apparently I’m not doing such a fabulous job of keeping that thought off my face because he chips in with, “The Sheilas have an excellent record for accurate interpretation. Far above chance. In excess of ninety percent, actually.”

  “You’re going to bring up the chicken thing, aren’t you?” says the rightmost Sheila.

  “I wasn’t,” Clyde protests.

  “Welsh loonies,” says the middle Sheila.

  “I mean,” says the leftmost Sheila, “if you come to us with the phrase ‘bird of terror,’ then, I’m sorry, but we’re just not going to go to chicken.”

  “Welsh loonies,” says the middle one again.

  “Seriously,” continues the leftmost Sheila, “how are we meant to know about some cabal of chicken-phobic apocalypse cultists operating out of Cardiff? We’re conjoined, not bloody psychic.”

  “Welsh loonies.”

  Conjoined. Not Siamese. That’s the PC term. Conjoined triplets.

  Which is a thought as off-topic as we are. Again, lovely girls, but it’s a bit like trying to herd conjoined cats.

  “So, painted man is probably a tattooed chap,” I say, trying to bring things back on course.

  “Most def,” says the middle Sheila.

  “Maybe it means you, Clyde,” says the leftmost one.

  The middle Sheila brays again while I raise an eyebrow. Tabitha, the Pakistani goth back at the briefing—she I can picture with tattoos. Probably because she has them. But Clyde? Really?

  “Technically speaking,” Clyde says, pulling his head down between his shoulders like a retreating tortoise, “they’re not exactly tattoos.”

  “What’s your girlfriend think of them, Clyde?” asks one of the Sheilas. “How’d you explain that one?”

  I don’t know if I’m more surprised that Clyde has tattoos or that he has a girlfriend.

  “You seen his tattoos?” asks the leftmost Sheila.

  “The painted man has false promises?” I ask, completely ignoring her questions, which is basically an arsehole move that I hate pulling, but, well, Ophelia, universe-destroying aliens, etc.

  “All business with you, isn’t it?” The rightmost Sheila doesn’t sound offended exactly, but she’s disappointed. I don’t have to be a detective to work that out.

  “False promises,” repeats the middle Sheila.

  “Pretty bloody obvious,” says the leftmost one.

  “A tattooed bloke is going to lie to you,” says the middle Sheila.

  Again my mind flicks back to the goth, Tabitha. But she is, most definitely, not a bloke.

  “Until he shows his second face,” adds the leftmost Sheila.

  “Which is?” I ask.

  “Erm...”

  The three Sheilas look at each other.

  “A mask?” says one.

  “He takes off the tattoos?” says another.


  Everyone else in the room creases their brow.

  “Guess not then.” She shrugs, and the motion ripples down the conjoined torso.

  “Not sure,” says the leftmost Sheila.

  There’s a moment’s pause while I wait to see if there will be more, but the Sheilas seem to be done. I glance over at Clyde, trying to gauge what exactly we’ve gained here, how exactly we wrap this up, if we should push for more. He sees my glance.

  “That sounds like that’s all then,” he says, clapping his hands. “You’ve all been marvelous, of course. As ever.” He leans forward, starts shaking hands. “Definitely going to be on the look out for tattooed men with an above average number of faces.”

  The Sheilas all smile. Broad smiles. They like Clyde. This is his world. As for me... I’m still perched out on the periphery. Just like I am with this farewell. Nodding and hand waving around Clyde’s goodbyes. An observer looking in. And I worry again about Shaw’s decisionmaking abilities.

  We’re at the door when the leftmost Sheila says, “Of course, if it’s tattoos you’re after, you know who you should be talking to.” She gives Clyde a significant look. I follow it up with a questioning one for good measure.

  Clyde slaps his head. “Oh bollocks.”

  The Sheilas all nod together.

  “What?” I say.

  “You’re too easy on him,” says the rightmost Sheila.

  “Who?” I say.

  “Should’ve flushed the bloody key,” says the middle one.

  “Who?” I ask again.

  “Bollocks,” Clyde says again.

  7

  “Maximilian Lewis,” Clyde says as a momentary lull in the Oxford traffic allows him to stomp on the accelerator for about half a nanosecond before a cyclist makes a kamikaze run at us.

  “Who?” I say, my head bouncing against the Mini’s headrest.

  “Owns a tattoo parlor on Cowley,” Clyde says.

  Cowley Road—the start of Oxford’s student slums. Cheap housing, cheap restaurants, cheap bars. And a cheap tattoo parlor strategically placed to catch them as they stumble back to the aforementioned cheap housing from the aforementioned cheap bars.

  “A chap called Maximilian owns a tattoo parlor?” For some reason I sort of assumed all the owners were called Terry or Steve. Silly idea really.

  “I think he goes by Max,” Clyde says. Which makes more sense, I suppose. Good to know some things still do.

  “And he... is involved with the Progeny?”

  “No.” Clyde shakes his head. “Well... no. Probably not. Not knowingly. Don’t think so. Unless he’s infected. But he wasn’t infected last time...” He shakes his head. “Can’t think why they’d do it. He’s just a nuisance really. Likely still is. We’ve had to take him off the streets more than once. He’s more than willing to give tattoos with metallic ink, you see?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh.” Clyde chews his lip. “Probably should have seen that coming,” he says. “It all goes back to electricity, you see.”

  “I’m lost.” I think it’s going to be best if I’m honest every time that happens, even if it means asking a lot of annoying questions.

  “Well, electricity is the universal lubricant between realities,” Clyde says, as if telling me that the sky is blue.

  “Erm?”

  Clyde tries again. “Any sort of cross-reality breach requires electricity.”

  “Can we try words of one syllable?” I ask. “And maybe diagrams?”

  “OK.” He nods. “Fair point. Well made. First principles then. There’s more than one reality.”

  “Well established,” I say

  “The Feeders are not in our reality, but they want to be, right?”

  “So I’m told.”

  “So, QED and all that, it must be possible for things to travel between realities.”

  I think about it while Clyde swings us around the fifteenth traffic circle we’ve hit in quarter of a mile. “I suppose,” I say.

  “So how do you do it?” he asks.

  I look at him, and apparently it’s a serious question. “Haven’t the slightest of clues, I’m afraid.”

  “Electricity,” he says. “Universal lubricant. I’ve mentioned that. Remember it.”

  “Oh,” I say, because he’s right, but when he said it last time there wasn’t really meaning attached to it, so I’m not sure if he’s really right, but I’m also not sure if I’m pedantic enough to point it out.

  Clyde nods, briefly manages to make it all the way to fifteen miles per hour but then has to go over a speed bump. “So, you can use electricity to get things between realities. Bigger the thing, the more power you need. Small things are the easiest.” He looks away “Well, the essence of things are the easiest. Say, for example, there’s fire in another reality and you want to bring it here. You could use a decent chunk of electricity to bring over the flame, or you could use a little bit to bring over the essence of the fire—in this case its heat. Bring enough heat over and you’ll probably start a fire anyway.

  “Now to get something as enormous as a Feeder through,” he continues, “would take an absurd amount of power. And then that power would need to be focused. It’s not really feasible. Which is why,” he takes his eyes off the road to give me a significant look, “the Progeny, who probably came here pretty easily, being small and mostly incorporeal, are now having such a hard time doing it.”

  “You focus the power?” Up until now I’ve been buying this, possibly more eagerly than I should be. Any cynicism I possessed has rather had its legs cut out from under it these past few days, but the idea of focusing magical power is beginning to seem a little too New Age mysticism to be real to me.

  “Yes!” Clyde nods enthusiastically. “Hence the tattoos. QED again.”

  “Wait, what? Q E what?”

  “Bugger,” Clyde says. “Sorry. I’m not very good at this. OK. So, the power is electricity. So it flows down the path of greatest conductivity. Now, the body’s a natural conductor so you don’t have to do what I did, but...”

  “What you did?” I ask. For a moment I have an image of Clyde in the middle of some group of death cultists in various states of undress. Possibly accompanied by sacrificial guinea pigs and the like. It doesn’t seem to really match him though. “And this is to do with the tattoos?” I ask.

  “Yes!” Clyde’s head bobs up and down in a few swift nods. “See, different parts of the body are more powerful for doing magic than others. Your chakras, as it happens. So to get the most juice out of, well, the juice, you want it to be concentrated at those points. The tattoos provide the path of least resistance to the chakras. Except, well... like I said, they’re not exactly tattoos. Here, look.”

  His hands come off the wheel, but at this speed it doesn’t really matter. It’s not like we could really do anything any harm. He pushes up a sleeve. There is a fine black line running down the center of his forearm. Occasionally black threads break off from the main line and form small spirals.

  “Holy McPants,” I say, “how did you explain those to your girlfriend?”

  “What?” Clyde says. “Devon? Oh I’m not really sure. I think she thinks it’s a security system for work.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure how it happened.” He shakes his head. “Devon has a creative mind.”

  “But how would a tattoo be a security device?”

  “Well.” Clyde hmmms. “It’s not actually ink, you see. It’s copper wire beneath the skin,” he says, finally grabbing the steering wheel in order to dodge a student on a bicycle. “Following the main ley lines of my body. The spirals mark various chakras. And that’s what focuses the power. That and words. Words are important.”

  “Words? What words?”

  “Well, you know.” Clyde oscillates between enthusiasm and sheepishness again. “Once you’ve got the juice to breach realities, then you need to make sure you’re breaching the right ones, that the energy does what you want. You have t
o shape it. Human will and all that. So there are words to help you do that. All sorts of nonsense. Help you think in the right ways, so you don’t end up blowing off your nether regions instead of turning someone into a toad or some such.”

  “Wait a minute,” I say, the penny dropping, “are you talking about spells?”

  Clyde shrugs several times in rapid suggestions. “Erm... well... in lay terms, I suppose, yes.”

  Spells. Magic spells. OK, that’s cool.

  TWENTY MINUTES AND ONE MILE LATER

  With a certain deftness I hadn’t credited him with, Clyde pilots the Mini into a parking space about the same size as a grapefruit. Quite a feat to behold, actually. Kayla stands by the curb watching events with disdain. As we unfold ourselves from the confines of the car she thrusts out a hand. I flinch but all she does is open her fist to reveal two tan-colored earplugs sitting in her palm. I stare at them, nonplussed. Clyde takes one and hands the other to me.

  “Tabitha,” he says, in a moment of surprising conciseness.

  He pushes the bud into his ear and I follow suit.

  “Warning next time,” says a tinny little voice in my ear. “Little bit. Before a bloody field operation. Be nice.” It’s good to know Tabitha is still in intimate contact with her inner misanthrope.

  “Hello! Tabitha!” Clyde sounds far happier than I imagine is usual when there’s someone telling you how much you screwed over their day. “On location. Cowley Road. The sights, the smells, down among the people. Terribly exciting to be out of the office for so long.”

  “Shut up, Clyde,” says Tabitha. For some reason he beams. Something’s going on there but I’m not sure exactly what.

  “Erm... I...” I say, thus cementing my role as a keen and decisive leader.

  “All right,” Tabitha says. “Arthur. New boy. I’m in your ear. You tell me problems. I do research. I fix your shit. So you be my eyes. Don’t want to listen to Clyde mumbling over batteries.”

  “Batteries?” I look over at Clyde who pulls two flat silver-cadmium batteries from his pocket and tucks them into his cheeks, gerbil-like.

  “Erm?” I say again, just in case anyone missed the benefit of my incisive intellect the last time around.