The Song of the Underground

by Wendy Reakes

  The man named Cannes removed himself as quickly as he had pinned him to the floor. Then he reached out, took Mark’s hand and pulled him to his feet. His shoulder was aching, and the snake bite was now throbbing with a dull ache.

  Wren came forward and held onto Mark’s arm. She confronted Cannes, with her chin defiantly thrust forward. “I have brought him here. It is alright. We can trust him.”

  Cannes looked at Mark as if he had two heads. “He is an upsider. Your father has to approve all visitors, Princess. And you know he forbids those from upside entering the city without due cause.”

  “Yes, I know, but there wasn’t time. He had a snake bite and it must be treated. I had no choice.”

  To confirm her story, Mark turned and pulled up his sweater at the back, as he tugged down the waistband of his jeans with his other hand. The swelling had abated but the area was still red and showed two tiny dark perforations in its centre.

  Wren was pleading now. “Cannes, I will speak to my father straight away. I will leave Mark Buzzard here with you and I will return after the rains.”

  Cannes looked unsure. “Very well. I will take him to my home. He shouldn’t be seen until you have spoken to the king. He won’t think well of me, Princess.”

  “It will be all right. I will make it right,” Wren said. She was no defenseless bird. The girl who had stolen his heart in a single beat was a feisty, determined woman. She was wonderful. “Go with Cannes, Mark. I will return later,” she said.

  “After the rains,” he retorted. He’d already picked up on that. “Only...how the hel..cough...how does it rain inside a cave exactly?”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she answered. “It only lasts for a moment.”

  His words were left unheard as Wren took flight and ran down the stone steps to the canal. There she scaled each boat and finally took the one that the man called Cannes had arrived in. She pulled a lever on the rear and just as steam began to fire through the brass cylinders in the centre of the boat, she released an extension, which held her boat to the next. Then, waving to Mark and Cannes, Wren sailed off into the heart of the city.

  Chapter 13

  So where’s the entrance?” Ben Mason asked for the final time. The Colonel’s car was heading east along the river and he still wasn’t giving much away.

  “Blackfriars Bridge.”. It was a reluctant response. Barnes was one big secret, as far as Ben was concerned.

  He looked out of the window, where he saw a girl walking by who looked just like Charlotte. “My wife is pregnant.” As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted them. Barnes wasn’t exactly the type of guy one confided in. He didn’t know why he’d said it. What would it matter to the colonel? Especially since he seemed to loathe Charlotte for her position in the media.

  “Congratulations.”

  Ben sensed his response was one of total disregard or interest. “We’re supposed to be getting divorced.”

  “Ah!” The colonel grinned as he turned his face away to the embankment on the right, running the length of the river Thames.

  “Look, Barnes. If you and I are going to work this project together, you’re going to have to give me more information. Are you going to fill me in or do I have to contact Alice Burton and tell her you’re being extremely unresponsive?”

  The colonel puckered his lips. He did that a lot. It indicated to the recipient that he was in agreement with whatever was being said, but in fact it was the opposite. As far as Ben was concerned, it meant the colonel was planning his next move and he was using the moment to figure it out. “There’s nothing much to tell. As we’ve already discussed, Sous Llyndum is part of the government’s plan to increase living space in central London. There’s nothing sinister about it.”

  “Before you said that, I hadn’t considered it to sinister at all.” He pondered Alice Burton’s increased housing policy. He remembered the PM’s pre-election speech when she talked about her party’s intention to solve the overcrowding issue in the capital. ‘We plan to initiate an innovative enterprise that will knock the people’s socks off’. That’s why the British public liked her and voted. They considered her tendency to use catchy, homespun phrases as a good reflection of the person she was. A people’s politician!

  “So, go on?” Ben said.

  “So...Sous Llyndum is their solution. They’re going down instead of up. It’s going to be an incredible part of London’s infrastructure. We’ve told you all this…housing for five thousand, shops, swimming pools...which you know we can’t get the best use out of in this country, with the British weather and all. It’s extremely warm down there. And sheltered. The Londoners are going to love it.”

  “The rich Londoners!” Ben said.

  “Of course!”

  “So, what about the thirty-five hundred people who live there now?”

  The colonel was clearly considering his response. “What about them?”

  Ben did an involuntary guffaw. The colonel knew exactly what Ben was asking “Where are they going to be moved to when we take the city? I’m assuming they’ve agreed to these plans.”

  “I told you not to assume so much,” he snapped in controlled fury. “Some of them will be provided with suitable quarters and others will go to Burlington.”

  Burlington? Ben considered the implication of a few thousand people living one hundred feet beneath Corsham. Burlington was an enormous subterranean bunker, built in the late fifties during the cold war. It had been designed to house up to four thousand central government personnel in the event of a nuclear strike. Ben had been there once. It was a fascinating place; un-modernised and still housing an old telephone exchange, industrial kitchens, hospitals, and even a school room. “I thought we were closing down Burlington.”

  “We were, but now we have other plans for it.”

  “We?”

  He was as evasive as ever. “The government!”

  “I’m the government.”

  “You work for the government. You’re not privy to everything because your wife is anti-conservative. Anti everything in fact, and she’s got a big mouth.”

  “Barnes…”

  “We don’t want the press getting hold of the issues surrounding the Sous Llyndum project, especially not a communist columnist like Charlotte Croft.”

  Ben went silent. He had no idea that Charlotte’s views affected his job. The Prime Minister must surely know he would never divulge classified information to anyone. Not even his wife. “Your evasiveness is starting to irritate the hell out of me, Barnes.”

  “Ah. We’re here.”

  Chapter 14

  On-line he was known as ICE, a pseudonym that not only protected his identity, but also acted as a front for his business that had often, infamously, made the front pages. He was Charlie Croft, a loner, and the internet his only home. The internet was where he lived and breathed, where he made friends and enemies, and the internet was where he made money, lots of it. Charlie never read newspapers; he caught the news on-line. He never went to college; he did an Open University course and graduated with honours. He never married; he had an internet relationship with a girl from the States (an ocean parted them, but the Skype sex was great). Charlie had no children, no dependants; his clients were his cyber offspring. His clients were the ones he cherished, the reason why he existed, and his clients were the children he protected with every skill at his fingertips. For money!

  A knock on the door stole Charlie’s attention from the five, 22 inch LED computer screens on his desk. He turned his head and saw the image of Charlotte reflected on the inside of the door. It was one of his inventions; a built-in camera, posing as a security spy hole in the centre of the door, which took the image of the person beyond the door and projected it onto a panel inside.

  Charlie sprung out of his chair, leaving it rotating behind him and took three easy strides to the door. He took a quick look at his clock. It was nine p.m. He hadn’t even got dressed yet and there it was, night-time. He was wearing s
triped boxer shorts and a grey sweatshirt with the hood up over his head. ICE was emblazoned on the front in bold grey and white letters with an image of snow dripping off them.

  There was a deflector at the bottom of the door so that the shadow of his feet couldn’t be seen. He already knew it was Charlotte outside, but he just needed to check it wasn’t a trick. Charlie remained silent. He had many enemies and he wouldn’t put anything past them.

  “I know you can see me,” the voice shouted. “Open the goddamn door.”

  He grinned, pulled the hood from his head and unlocked the four chains. He pushed away the iron bar that ran horizontally across the middle of the barricaded door that was fixed to two steel columns on each side. Then he threw the bolts on the top and bottom and pulled it open.

  “Hey, Char. What’s happening?”

  She barged her way in. She was certainly looking miffed. He watched her stride into the room. She crossed over to the chair she always sat in and stood still, at its side, silently fuming. He rushed over and removed the cardboard box he had placed on the seat just before he’d answered the door. It was full of CD ROMs and printed documents he had yet to file.

  “Take a load off,” he said.

  She brushed the old torn red velvet chair with her fingertips and sat down, prim-like. Charlie went past her and took his own seat. It was covered with one of those beaded contraptions that cabbies used. He'd painted it black so that it didn't disturb the Karma in the room. The beads helped his back, seeing as how he spent eighteen hours a day sitting on that chair.

  He swung around to the five screens on the perfectly formed solid wood desk. He'd designed the desk himself and had it commissioned. It had a slot for everything. All his cables were out of sight and there were parts built in. He liked that. It looked really cool when the drawer to his hard drive popped out from the wooden surround. In front of him was the keyboard he'd made himself, copied from someone on the internet who made steam punk items; outlandish contraptions and inventions from the Victorian era. Charlie had stripped a modern keyboard and built it again using old polished black typewriter keys. The base was propped up by brass brackets. It was funky and stylish and completely unique. He was crazy about it.

  Steam punk! It was his passion. His one-room flat looked as if it had come straight out of Captain Nemo’s submarine. The bed had a dark-red velvet coverlet thrown over it and the matching curtains were adorned with heavy gold fringes. They were simply a decoration. His windows were permanently shuttered with a metal barricade, but they were hidden from view by the elegant drapes.

  Charlie shut down four of the screens. “What’s up, sis? You look like crap.” He put his hands behind his head and smoothed the long ponytail that hung there.

  “Thanks.” She took a swig of water from his plastic Evian bottle. “I’m supposed to be glowing.”

  “Huh?”

  She remained silent as she sat there with an exasperated look on her face.

  Charlie’s penny finally dropped. “Ha! No way!”

  She shrugged.

  “Well what do you know? An uncle, huh! What do you know!” Charlie couldn’t remember the last time he was so moved. He loved kids and he…“Hey, wait,” he said. “I can’t be an uncle. I never leave this place. Unless you want me to…”

  She exploded then. It was as if the top of her head was venting steam. “Earghhh, is everyone I talk to a moron? What about me? I’m married to a total loser who screws everything with legs. I’m only thirty-six…” She got up and paced the floor. It was only two or three steps, so she went back and forth several times. “I’m in my goddamn prime, and I have a job where the men think you’re a frigging fifties slut if you get yourself knocked up under forty-five.” She plonked herself back into the chair. “Give me some gin.”

  “I haven’t got any.”

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He waited for the room to calm into its normal placid, peaceful, hide-away mode. “So what does Mase say?”

  “He’s a bastard, who cares what he says?”

  Suddenly an alarm sounded from his intricate surround-sound system. Charlie dived for the keyboard on the right by rolling along the floor on the casters of his chair. He switched the screen on. There it was in bold print. A message; ‘Give it your best shot, prick’

  “Charming,” Charlotte murmured.

  Charlie looked at her and frowned. “Look, sis, if you’re staying, I’ve got to do this, so try and keep an open mind for once.”

  “I know who you are Charlie. Or should I say ICE.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah well, as long as you keep that little piece of intel to yourself, I’ll stay alive long enough to watch my nephew enter the world head first.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  Charlie turned back to the screen. Okay, so he’d given them the standard three warnings. One: give the guy his money back. Two: last chance to give the guy his money back and three: you haven’t given the guy his money back so I’m gonna have to take you out.

  “Doesn’t he know what you can do?” Now Charlotte seemed more interested in Charlie’s job than her own predicament.

  “I get this all the time. They think their firewalls are impenetrable. They never learn.”

  “I saw you on the news last night. It said you were challenging the IRS for some guy in the States.”

  “Too right! The bastards are screwing him for every last penny he has and the man has got six kids. I hate that.”

  “So what about this one? Who is he…the one with the oh-so-charming diction?”

  “The purchasing manager of an online baby merchandise company.

  “What did he do?”

  “My client ordered two cots for her unborn twins. She lost one of the babies at birth, but this shit won't refund her the money for the one she doesn't need any more. He said it went over the thirty-day return period.”

  "What a shit."

  "Yeah, that's what I thought."

  “So what happens now?” Charlotte was dragging her chair forward towards the screen, where the message still glared at them.

  “Hey, no heavy lifting.” Charlie had an overly-serious expression on his face.

  She laughed and slapped his shoulder. “Shut up. Come on. Let’s see ICE do his stuff.”

  “Are you sure? It’s not a pretty sight.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Okay.” He pulled his seat closer to his desk. “As long as you’re not squeamish.”

  Charlie Croft tapped something on his designer steam punk keyboard and then he slammed a memory chip into a small slot on the desk. They watched the screen. It showed the homepage of the internet site, Who’s your Baby?

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a tiny cartoon figure, dressed as an English policeman, walked across the page and the sound of his footsteps echoed around the room. He was in full uniform with ICE emblazoned on his helmet.

  “I use cops in the States and the gendarme in France. My little guy looks mean as hell in his all-black outfit and knee-length leather boots.” Charlie tilted his head. He was like a proud father.

  The figure, ICE, stopped in the middle of the screen and turned towards them. He pulled out his gun from his holster. He paused for a moment and then he smiled. As his eyes fixed like daggers on the recipient of his murderous wrath, he pulled the trigger. A 3-D silver bullet fired from his gun, spinning in slow-motion towards his victim. Then, just as it got bigger, it exploded and careered off screen.

  A message followed. This is Internet Control Enforcement. You have just been taken out. Eat that dipshit.

  The room went silent as Charlie sat back in his chair with a satisfied grin on his face.

  “Is that it?” Charlotte looked unimpressed.

  “Sweetheart, I’ve just brought down the entire network of a multi-million pound business. They have lost everything stored on their computers all over the country and they can’t operate again until I remove ICE or they change all their systems and start over.


  She shook her head. “All because they wouldn't take back a cot?”

  “No. Because he wouldn’t listen to the mother’s pleas and admit he was wrong.”

  Charlotte was incredulous, even though she had a wry grin on her pretty red painted lips. “How much do your clients pay you for doing this stuff?”

  Charlie indicated the corner of the room by inclining his head. Propped up against the wall were the dismantled parts of a cream-coloured cot.

  “You’re kidding me? You’ve landed yourself with a cot!”

  He was tapping his keyboard, finalising the transaction. “She didn’t have any money!” He stopped typing. He had an idea. “Hey you can have it.”

  She scoffed. “No thanks. I won’t need one.”

  “Don’t get me wrong...” Charlie continued typing. “I make good money outta this shit. Danger money mostly! Some of my clients will pay anything to get their revenge. The ones on Ebay are the worst. Man, give some geezer bad feedback and he’s knocking on my cyber door with his PayPal account at my disposal.”