by M. Suddain
“What two o’clock?”
“The meeting. The one at two o’clock.”
“Who is the meeting with?”
“I don’t know, but they said you shouldn’t be late.”
“Or what?”
“Or they’ll slit me open.”
“OK then.”’
‘… The room had white walls, floor and ceiling, and a steel table with three chairs. At the table was a very large man in a very good suit, a crimson tie. His face and head were perfectly bald, and his eyes were so bright they startled. He had a scar down one side of his face. There was a second, younger man who wore dark glasses and had a steel case. He never talked. He just smiled and I never learned his name before he died. The bald man said, “Hello, Rubin. I am Lepold.”
He smiled, too. Nothing more. Only smiles. We sat that way for a long time. I tapped my feet against the hard floor just so there’d be a noise. Then I asked, “How many people are at this exhibition, do you think?” The men looked at one another, but didn’t answer me. So I said, “I like the spiral dome in the conference centre.” Nothing. “Did you know our spiral galaxy defies physics? The angular speed of rotation of the galactic disc varies with distance from the centre, so the radial arms should become curved as it rotates.” They didn’t answer. Then finally the bald man asked, “How is your work progressing, Doctor? Are you happy?” I said it was fine, and I was happy enough, though the factory is dark and cold, and the children seem sad, “and anyway, what about you, are you happy with your work?” He said he was, so I asked what work he did.
“I’m in the hotel business.”
And when I asked why he was calling me Doctor, since I had no doctorate, the smiling man produced a large envelope from his case and pushed it across the steel table towards me, and Lepold said: “Congratulations, Doctor.”
Inside was the certificate which hangs on the wall of my office.
“I’ve had my eye on you since you were very young. We took a gamble on you. But we now see your work as central to our project.”
“I still don’t understand what this project is.”
“Like I said, I’m a hotelier. We’re in the hotel business.”
I explained that I didn’t want to be in the hotel business. He pretended to be astonished. “You don’t? Well, what kind of business do you want to be in?” I could only shrug. “A hotel is a wonderful place, Rubin. Have you never stayed in one? No? It’s a safe place. A sanctuary. It always has been. A respite for pilgrims harassed by wolves and bandits; a retreat for women repressed by the norms of society.” He was smiling. I wished they’d both stop smiling at me. I didn’t know what he was talking about. To me, there is still nothing normal about society. “We want a place people can feel safe. You like to feel safe, don’t you?” I said I did. “Do you know the story of the Great Deluge, Rubin?”
I said I did not.
“The gods warned of a great catastrophe which would wipe out all humanity. So a man decided to build a very big boat, and put all the animals in the world on the boat. Why would he do that, Rubin? Why would he save all the animals, and leave most of the people to drown?”
I shrugged. “Because he’s an animal lover. Or a people hater. I’d need more data.”
“We’re building a kind of boat too, Rubin. For people. We want everyone who goes there to feel safe. We want our clients to be young and happy forever. The happier they are in life the better. We want to reassure them that if they have a dark memory, or a destructive impulse, it will be banished. We want our people to have none of the flaws nature gave them. Your work can make this happen. You’re going to be very rich.”
I said I didn’t want to be rich. I said I wanted my work to be for the good of all humanity.
“For the good of humanity?”
“Yes. Now I want to leave. I want to go back to my factory. Please don’t try to resist me.”
Lepold smiled at me. “The factory is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes. We cleansed it. We learned that a group called the Water Bears had discovered our operation and possibly infiltrated it. Have you heard of them?” I said I hadn’t. “We need to stay one step ahead of our enemies. Sometimes that means destroying what we love.”
“Murial.”
“Dead. Now listen. There is no such thing as ‘good’, Rubin. A good person knows it. Let me tell you my story. And then we can talk about ‘good’. I once had parents I loved. They were doctors, too. Like your parents. Like you. They could have been wealthy, but they chose the good path. They chose to run a clinic in a very poor place. They wanted to help people. When they died I had to eat people’s organs just to survive. Was that good? Yes. It was good because those organs were full of life. They gave me the power to survive. I survived. I eventually got a new family. I got to live in a grand hotel. I got to see how the rich live. I had work I cared about. I had everything I needed to be happy. And then a kind of monster decided she was going to take it all away again. You know about the Great Butcher. She killed billions of people. She destroyed most of the beautiful things our society had made. She ordered her top scientists to perfect a way for her to impregnate men. She outlawed hospitals and declared that in future every disease and ailment would be cured by the ‘will of the people’. She had thousands of doctors taken to a coliseum and executed to the tune of ‘It’s Not Over ’Til it’s Over’. She declared that no one could receive a licence to practise any profession until they could recite all 10,000 of her ‘Principles of the State’. I had to learn all of them. ‘3,211. That a Famine is not a Famine but a Banquet of Enlightenment. That where the Belly is empty, Truth flows in.’ These are terrible things. But in her mind she thought she was doing a good thing. And our powerful friends in the West, who had enjoyed our hospitality for so many years, wouldn’t intervene. So I wrote a polite letter to our new ruler, explaining how much I loved the old hotel. I told her how happy it made people. I told her all about my adoptive family, my sisters, all the great people who went there. I told her if she let us keep our little paradise she would have my family’s undying loyalty. So the Butcher did come to visit us. She was so friendly. I was relieved. It turns out that she is as obsessed with the cine-movies as I was. She knew all the people in all the photos on our walls. Mrs Kharnovar, my adoptive mother, took her to her wardrobe to show her all the famous dresses she’d been given. There was one the actress they call the Matrioshka had worn in The Silent Ones. That dress was priceless. The Butcher was almost reduced to tears. We turned on a banquet in our private quarters. It was such a banquet. The Butcher was polite. She laughed and joked with us through dinner and dessert, and after dessert came coffee. She excused herself to use the restroom. When she returned we were all shocked to see she was wearing the Matrioshka’s dress, and some of my mother’s pearls. While she calmly drank her coffee she ordered her soldiers to kill my parents while I watched. She had my sisters raped, then killed. When it was done she had all the staff gathered in the ballroom. And then she gassed them. So by the time the coffee had gone cold all my friends and all my family had vanished. I was the only one left. And the Butcher said to me then, ‘Write me a letter from the camps when you’ve worked out why I did this. If you can tell me, I’ll set you free, and give you a new job.’ Is any of that good?”
I had no reply.
“I was in the camps for years. I once had to eat my own toes to survive – which is why I walk with a cane.”
Then he picked up his cane and brought it down so hard on the steel table I rose a foot from my chair. The other man didn’t jump at all. He was still smiling at me. Lepold stood and hobbled around as he spoke.
“I wrote to the Butcher every week, Rubin, telling her why I thought she’d killed my family. I wrote hundreds of letters, saying it was because I’d insulted her, or because the Kharnovars represented decadent imperial interests. Finally one day, just a few hours after I’d had to eat my own frozen toes – which I had to let thaw in my mouth before I could
chew them – I had an inspiration. I wrote: Because undying loyalty isn’t something you can offer. Such a revelation! I felt like a new man. And sure enough, the next week the order came to release me. And where do you think I was sent? To my hotel! Because the Butcher hadn’t destroyed it like she had so many others. She’d turned it into her secret retreat. She had decided I should be her private clerk. Can you imagine what it was like to see her every day, Rubin? In that empty palace? To come when this malformed monster called, and answer any stupid question she had about the people who used to visit our establishment, or the clothes they wore? She would bring out dresses, and I would have to tell her who’d worn it, and where. I was her pet. At least she thought so.
“Eventually, pleased with me, she gave me the Kharnovars’ factories to run. She needed to make munitions, uniforms. I don’t think you could imagine how miserable things were in those factories. It was like visiting hell. As bad as the camps, at least. It was a shock for me to see the state of the people in those places, and to realise that the people I’d loved were monsters too. What’s worse, Rubin: to slaughter millions of people, or to keep them their whole lives in the worst misery? I hadn’t been able to see this because I loved them. I loved them, Rubin. More than anything in the world!”
He swung the heavy cane around with astonishing strength, a full arc before it smashed into the back of the smiling man’s head. It made a sickening crunch. Blood sprayed across the table, over my face and over my new shirt, the one Murial had bought for me. The man who’d received the blow was still smiling as he slowly tipped forward.
“Is that good? Is it good to know the people you loved are monsters? I did what I could with the factories. I at least stopped the men and women and children who worked there from starving to death, and dying from disease while they pieced together toys for wealthier children, or put into fortune cookies fortunes for people more fortunate than them. But I survived all these experiences because I was strong!” He swung his cane above his head and down, again that sickening sound. “And patient!” Now bits of brain and bone littered the table and the front of my shirt, and my face. “And because I was strong and patient I eventually got the thing I wanted most in the world. And that’s how I’m going to get the other thing I want most in the world. Ask me what it is.”
“What is it?”
“Revenge.” He put his bloody cane on the table, took his seat again.
“So you feel like you’ve lost everything. Poor boy. Because of me, you’ve lost nothing. I will never see the people I knew again. But you will, because they’re all stored magically away in computers, waiting for you to bring them back to life, and to give them a new home. Even Murial. We had your data copied, encrypted and hidden. Your work is safe. Those children didn’t die for nothing. And I’ll give you back everything you built, piece by piece. So long as you work with us. We’ll make a fantastic team. We’ll burn anyone who crosses us. We’ll catch one of those Bears. We’ll find a way. And when we do we’ll tear open her skull and learn all her secrets.” He took out a lavender handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed the sweat from his brow. The only sound in the room was his heavy breaths. “We would like to have our grand opening this spring, in time for Harvest.”
“You’re the devil!” I stood and shouted at the man.
“Oh! The devil, am I? But I’m only your humble servant, Rubin. If I’m the devil, and I serve you, what does that make you?”
I was struck dumb with horror. I thought about running from the room, but I wasn’t sure my legs would even work.
“You don’t slay a monster by being more moral than the monster, Rubin. Evil exists. It exists in our age more than any. But true evil isn’t scared of angels. Real evil can only be defeated by the worthiest scoundrel.”’
NOTES ON DEVELOPING EVENTS
I was dreaming. A nightmare about an immunity-deficient troll forced into the service of a powerfully deranged monster and made to conduct horrible experiments on children. And now the monster wanted Gladys. He wanted a Water Bear. And there she was, standing near the handsome-looking veneer cabinet containing a state-of-the-art Boschenform high-fidelity Exophonic music system with quadrangular, carbon-insulated phonic tubes. Wearing a genuine Gavage vintage evening dress of pale green silk. Yes, a dream. Said, ‘Yes, I know this one. I turn around and suddenly you have my mother’s head and you’re holding a dead baby.’
‘You’re awake,’ said Gladys. ‘I need to get out of here.’
‘Agreed. These people are insane. There are no words.’ I cast Doctor Rubin’s book aside. ‘But how? They won’t let us leave while they’re still unpacking the Franz Affair. What’s the plan? Shoot our way out?’
‘I mean we should go for a drink.’
‘What? No. Absolutely not.’ Nudged Beast, who started awake in the chair next to me, cried, ‘Don’t want to!’ Then saw G. Said, ‘Fuck.’ Granted, the dress was slightly rumpled, the accessories were mismatched, and the effect was spoiled by the shape of the auto-pistol she had strapped to her thigh. But still.
‘Gladys, where the fuck did you get a Gavage?’
‘It’s Grandmama’s’
‘It’s Grandmama’s?’
‘She left it to me. In her will. What’s your brisket, John?’
‘No brisket.’ I wasn’t about to ask her how a woman cloned in a sack by a corporation could have a grandmama. That was her business. ‘I’ve just never seen you dress acceptably.’
‘Well, you’ve never taken me anywhere nice.’ Not true. I’ve taken her many nice places. She usually sits at the bar, scanning the clientele for ‘aggression indicators’. ‘So come on. Let’s find a bar. I’m fucking wound up. We could check out the Rainbow Danger Club.’
‘Gladys, as you know, I like a drink as much as the next man – at least.’ I glanced at Beast, who nodded. ‘But leaving here is mad. We’ve been given our final FINAL warning. I’ve had it in writing. Right, Beast?’
‘Huh? Yeah. Final warning.’
‘So? Fuck it. One drink. Two, max. We’ll be back before they know we’re gone.’
Speaking to me in my native tongue. She does it when she’s truly trying to work me over.
‘Out of the question. You’re supposed to stop us doing this kind of stuff, Gladys. What’s Beast going to lose on this adventure? A foot? Because he needs both for dancing.’
‘I do, Gladys.’
‘They’re not gonna hurt us. They want something.’
‘Exactly. Look, this is painful to say, Gladys. But I don’t think this is all about me. A part of this might be about you.’
‘I know. They think I have Water Bear shit they can steal.’
‘And do you? Have “Water Bear shit”?’
Shrugs. ‘Maybe. Makes no difference, they won’t get it. Unless I go full-sleep. And I won’t have to do that for at least another week. Right now I’m all dressed up, and I’m thirsty.’
‘I know what you’re thirsty for, Gladys. You think Hunter is still alive.’
‘Whatever. I’m going out. You can stay here and help Beast wax his balls if you want.’
‘We don’t have time for Beast’s balls, Gladys. This is serious.’
‘Sorry, what about my balls?’
‘Just one drink.’
‘I can’t lose my balls.’
‘Gladys, you don’t know what we’re dealing with. This is an asylum run by psychopaths. They stole the minds of factory children, turned them into killer robots. If we go out there again it’s to make a mad run for the last life-pod. That’s our plan. No more fucking escapades. No more messing with fire extinguishers. Right, Beast?’
‘We could go for one drink, Boss. Wet the noodle.’
How had this happened? How had things spun out of control so fast that I was now the sane one? The one who would say, ‘No! Absolutely not. I’m putting my foot down. We are not going on a late-night fucking rampage to the Rainbow Danger Club!’
NOTES ON THE RAINBOW DANGER CLUB
&n
bsp; In the Rainbow Danger Club, long-silent beasts from unknown and unknowable places had us surrounded. The club is a museum to the elite’s community of dedicated mega-safari enthusiasts. Beasts, some over thirty feet high, crouched in fearsome combat poses which belied the fact that most of them had very likely been ambushed on an ordinary morning while taking an ordinary morning shit. Their heads adorned the walls, their horns and tusks protruded from the wood-panelled walls. Our bartender, Nightgay, was sombrely explaining the constitution of the hotel’s signature cocktail, the White Oyster.
‘It is simply John Barleycorn, sir. Almost. It contains the faintest traces of an aromatised wine flavoured with botanicals, so little of it that it should not affect the nature of the gin in the slightest. And yet …’
‘This is the best gods-damned thing I’ve ever damned-well gods-damned tasted.’ Woodbine had an insane look in his eyes. His ears were red with pleasure.
‘Thank you, sir. This recipe has been passed down through the generations. We have perfected it, we think. We have a formula known only to our staff.’ He placed a tray of fortune biscuits beside our drinks and went back to polishing glasses.
‘Well, have you written it down? Put it in a safe somewhere? Where do you keep it?’
‘Easy, Beast.’
‘We have not committed it to paper. With respect, Mr Beast, that would be foolish. But we have it here.’ He touched the side of his sandy head with the hand that held the polishing rag. ‘And we would never tell, even under torture. But I can tell you that the gin must be chilled to a precise temperature. The amount of aromatised wine is measured to a tolerance of one-millionth of an ounce. We use a diamond-encrusted shaker so that the ice is pulverised, and the cold gin is infused with microscopic shards. It adds magic to the gin.’ His eyes sparkled with pleasure. ‘If any bartender tells you that this drink should be stirred, you should shake him vigorously.’
