Be My Enemy

by Ian McDonald

“How would I know?”

  “Suppose so.”

  These were easy lies. Everett thought back to the black car that Charlotte Villiers had aimed at him deliberately to turn him into her weapon. What he was telling Ryun were hardly lies at all.

  “You sound, I dunno, different.”

  Everett M's heart beat hard.

  “Like I said, there's things I don't remember. It wasn't a good time. Can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure, sure. So, are you coming over?”

  “What? Where?” Never had Everett M so wanted the bell to ring for the start of class.

  “My place, after school. I know it's stupid, but my Mum, well, she was really worried about you. And she wonders if you might be able to help her find something she lost, rings or something. Didn't you get my text?”

  “I lost my phone.”

  Ryun frowned. “I sent it this morning.”

  “I forget where I lost it, but I haven't had it for days.”

  “I replied to your text.”

  “What?” His heart skipped another beat, and there was a tight fear rising inside his chest. Ryun slid out his Blackberry, tapped open the SMS. Get this 2 Mum: am OK. Dad OK. CU soon.

  “I don't remember sending that.”

  “It's definitely you. That's your number.”

  “Like I said, I lost my phone.”

  “But the date, that's today.”

  Lie. Lie fast. Lie hard. Lie the best you have ever lied.

  “Well, yeah, but sometimes it takes time for a message to go through.”

  “Yeah. I suppose.” Everett M could hear that Ryun was far from convinced. “I suppose that what's the ‘Get this 2 Mum: am OK’ bit meant. But…what does that bit mean? ‘Dad OK’?”

  “I don't know!” Only anger would stop the questions now. “I don't remember. It wasn't a good time. I don't want to talk about it anymore.”

  Ryun stepped back from the heat of Everett M's anger.

  “I'm sorry, sorry. Enough, enough. So, are you coming over?”

  “I'll see you.”

  The bell was ringing. Dark figures began to move across the snow, funneling toward the doors.

  “You coming?”

  “I'm just going for a pee,” Everett M said. “I'll see you in a moment.”

  The cubicle in the toilets smelled of cigarette smoke. Mrs. Abrahams had put in smoke alarms, and just like in his world, the school kids of E10 had gleefully vandalized them. Everett M took out his phone, his real phone, the one Charlotte Villiers had given him. His thumb hovered over the call button. No, he couldn't bear to hear Paul McCabe's whining, nasally Northern Ireland accent. A text was enough for him.

  He's here.

  Send.

  The viral went around as the classes emptied. It leaped from phone to phone, tablet to netbook to iPad: Cool! Must see! The pupils of Bourne Green heard their phones beep or felt them buzz. The moment they were through the gates, outside school jurisdiction, they rushed to open up the message. Sick video! Is this for real? The Bourne Green Harajuku girls were clustered around a screen. Everett M wondered how they could wear such short skirts with snow freezing in the gutters. Goose pimples above the so-cute knee socks. Everett M shivered and turned his collar up. His breath hung in clouds. The late afternoon sky was a deep blue with a yellow horizon to the west. That kind of sky said that the cold would be staying and that a deeper cold would come.

  “Hey Everett! Everett!” The boys who had dealt out the welcome-back snowballing that morning were huddled over a Blackberry. “Is it?”

  “Is what?” Everett M asked.

  “Is it real?”

  “Everything's real.”

  “Yeah smartass. I mean, the thing in the video.”

  “What video?”

  “You didn't get—”

  “I lost my phone,” Everett M cut in quickly.

  The footage was a cell-phone shot, the picture jerky, the zoom crazy, the sound crackly and thin. White Hart Lane football ground—the same in this world as in Everett M's home. There was a blimp hovering over it. Everett M had seen advertising blimps before. This was a monster. It was longer than the stadium. And advertising blimps were a bit saggy and carried advertising. This had the killer lines of a shark, and the only artwork Everett M could see was a huge heraldic coat of arms painted on the upper surface of the mean, lean nose. And advertising blimps were tethered like balloons on the end of a string. This had engines. This was a proper sky-faring airship. Everett M knew what it was and where it had come from.

  “I mean, it's got to be CG,” Abbas, the owner of the phone said. “Some dude wants to get himself a job in some special effects company.”

  “Noah says he seen it with his own eyes,” Wayne said. “Real. Honest. It's still there, right over White Hart Lane.”

  “It's some advertising stunt, innit?” Nilesh Virdi, the last of the three, said. “Maybe not Spurs, maybe like Nike or something. Remember all that shite for the Olympics?” They all looked at Everett M.

  “It's obviously a commercial freight airship from a parallel universe,” Everett M said. “Parallel universes always have airships. There's been some quantum leakage between universes and it's slipped through. Probably in its own universe this is all like airship docks and stuff. It's obvious.”

  Abbas, Wayne, and Nilesh all stared.

  “You sure you didn't get hit by something?” Abbas asked.

  “You can believe me or not, but that's what it is.”

  Everett M left them gaping at the screen. I tell them the truth but it's so incredible they don't believe it. He hides an entire airship in exactly the same way by making everyone think it's a stunt or a trick. You're clever, alter-Everett. At the entrance to the park, away from all the people he had lied to, he took out his own cell phone. He hated the thought of Paul McCabe's simpering voice, but a text would not do now.

  “Hello, Paul. Everett Singh. He's coming, he's close.”

  “Everett, you hold on there. I can get you back up.”

  “I can take care of this myself.” Everett M cut the call, then said to the dead phone, “It's personal.”

  Where the river made its great bend toward the sea at Woolwich, Everett put the hedgehopper into a turn. He looked down at the snow-covered dome of the O2 arena. He had gone with his dad to see Led Zeppelin there. Tejendra had got up at dawn the day the application went online, clicking away, refresh refresh refresh, until he made it onto the draw. When the tickets came, Tejendra had played the albums on repeat over and over. Everett had loved the music and the sight of middle-aged men with their eyes closed, deep in rock rapture. He hadn't smelled so much skunk since the night of Abbas's party, when the gatecrashers did three thousand pounds worth of damage. The great dome hadn't looked real then. Now, in the slanting golden light of a January afternoon, it looked even less real. Snow made everything new and strange. Snow was a new skin on a city's bones. But it was more than just snow making his London look alien to Everett as he cut across the Thames toward the Isle of Dogs. Beneath the skin of snow, beneath the bones of the city he knew, he could see another London, the smoky, electric-sparking London of Sen's world, of airships and stone angels in the architecture. In that world the river turned in the same place in the same direction, as dark as lead on the snow; some of the streets and buildings were the same; most were not. Beyond that London were yet other Londons, the one he had glimpsed on the secret memory stick Colette had given him, Ibrim Hoj Kerim's London. There the Isle of Dogs wasn't buried under corporate towers and conference centers and glass and chrome business units but was a green place of parks and palaces, pools and pleasure gardens. And another London: the abandoned London he had glimpsed when he accidentally opened the Heisenberg Gate and almost flooded the secret Channel Tunnel test drill. And beyond that, the other Londons of the Plenitude of Worlds, and the billion billion Londons of the Panoply. His father was in one of them. Cutting in across the Blackwall Basin, Everett felt that if he looked down bene
ath his feet, looked with all his heart, he could see through all those other Londons as if they were glass, see all the way to his dad.

  I'm coming. I have a promise to keep.

  Everett glanced over his shoulder. Sen, muffled in goggles and scarf and fur-trimmed parka hood, flew close behind his right wing. Everett lifted a gloved hand and beckoned her to follow him. Let's go. He pulled down the throttle cable and aimed the hedgehopper square at the three towers of Canary Wharf. He heard Sen squeal with delight as she drifted into position beside him, grinning with pure pleasure. Everett's heart leaped.

  He recalled their flight preparations. Sen squinting at the light reflecting from the white landscape as the cargo hatch opened and lowered them toward the sacred turf of White Hart lane. She sniffed the air. Her eyes opened wide as she took a deep, full breath.

  “Omi, how can you breathe that? It's so clean it's like it's not there at all.”

  And every breath of your smoky, coal-polluted air felt like claws scratching the back of my throat, Everett thought. Frowning, Sen said, “What is that meese noise?” Everett couldn't hear it at first. A car alarm, blues-and-twos from an ambulance or police car, maybe a plane coming down into London City Airport. Then he realized that it was no one thing. Sen was hearing was all these things, and more: car horns, truck brakes, buses and vans and cars and motorbikes. She was hearing the breath and heartbeat of London, the traffic that circulated day and night. In her world, vehicles ran on rails or on soft tires, and they were powered by silent electricity. This was the roar of a million gasoline and diesel engines; billions of tiny explosions of hydrocarbons in engine cylinders. One huge, endless rolling thunder.

  “Come and I'll show you,” Everett said, strapping himself into the hedgehopper. The power dial showed two hours of flying time. His plan had originally been to fly fast and fly straight, leave the hedgehoppers hidden in Abney Park Cemetery, find his mum and Victory-Rose, get back to the cemetery, and call Everness for a pick up. Captain Anastasia had forbidden him to take either the jumpgun or Dr. Quantum, but he had his smartphone. And in this universe, his smartphone was smart. Then he realized that his world was as strange and wonderful to Sen as her world had been to him. He remembered the feeling in his stomach when it had first dawned on him that he was farther from home than any human from his world had ever been. It had been scary, like looking at your toes hanging over the edge of an unexpected drop and fighting the dark little voice that whispered step off. Along with anxiety, there had been an excitement so huge that it became something like joy, and something physical that he didn't have a name for, something that had felt like he imagined sex did. He wanted Sen to know that feeling, too. Victory-Rose would be at Bebe Ajeet's; Laura would be at work. The house would be empty. There was time to take Sen up to the top of his London. “Come on,” he said—him, Everett Singh, who had been the follower in Sen's world—and stepped off the edge of the freight platform into the winter air.

  Everett pushed the steering bar forward and took the hedgehopper down from tower-top height. He steered for clear air between the three skyscrapers. With a whoop, Sen followed. Glass flashed golden winter sun and the plazas and squares were pinkish white with black footways tracked across them. The water in the old docks was deep black. Everett glanced at the offices behind the gleaming windows, wondering whether the workers inside were watching him fly past. Were they thinking, What was that? Was it a bird, was it a plane? No, he thought, it was a planesrunner.

  Over the river now, and following it into the heart of the city. On his right wingtip, Limehouse and Wapping, where pirates had been hanged in chains from Execution Dock. On his left wingtip, the ugly tower blocks of Rotherhithe and Bermondsey. Beneath his feet a tour boat powered downstream to Greenwich. Everett touched the control bar and sent the hedgehopper lower still. His feet almost brushed the glass roof of the cabin. A few brave tourists, wrapped up for unexpected snow, were outside on the observation deck. They looked up and pointed as Everett flew over their heads. A little girl waved. They probably thought it was for a movie. Everett gained height and steered straight upriver. A police boat pushed a moustache of white water before its bow. A cargo lighter, low and heavy, ran down to the sea with the tide. Ahead, Tower Bridge stood across the river. To Everett it had always been the gate of London. Who seeks entry? He glanced behind him. Sen was on his right wing, slightly above him. Everett gestured with his hand: we're going through. Sen grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. He opened up the throttle, gained a little height, and aimed the hedgehopper at the rectangle of airspace between the road bed and the high pedestrian walkway. And through. The afternoon traffic ground along beneath Everett's feet, churning snow into black slush. The city was open to him now. On his right, the Tower of London wore caps of snow on its roofs and tower tops. To the left was the glass egg of City Hall. He skimmed the radio masts of HMS Belfast. Snow was drifted against the battleship-grey bulkheads in precise lines along the tops of the gun barrels. Over London Bridge, trains crossing the river into Cannon Street, their windows lit yellow as the January evening unfolded behind the London skyline. Snow blanketed the roof gardens on Cannon Street Station. Block by block, the street lights came to life along the embankments and up the huge blade of the Shard on the south bank. Over Southwark Bridge, then down to skim the elegant ribbon of the Millennium footbridge. Joggers, walkers, art lovers going to or coming from the Tate Modern stopped and stared and turned to follow with their eyes the two incredible, impossible, magical flying things as they flew over their heads.

  “Weeee!” Sen shouted. Everett raised a hand in greeting to the people on the bridge as he banked the hedgehopper to the right over the parallel rail and road bridges at Blackfriars. Sen threw up her hands in a gesture of puzzlement. Where are we going? Everett jabbed a finger. There. Rising above the crowd of lower, lesser buildings, the great dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. Everett pulled back on the steering bar. The ducted fans answered. The two hedgehoppers climbed over the traffic, wheeling around the interchange at Queen Victoria Street, high above the rooftops of St. Paul's Churchyard. The city seemed more muted under snow. The slush softened the rumble of wheels and the grumble of engines. Snow had drifted in the lees of the great dome's ribs and had gathered at the feet of the columns and in the details of the ornamental stonework. Snow had piled on the tops of the railings and balustrades. Everett circled the dome like a London seagull looking for pickings. He tilted the steering bar, turned, and came down as light as a thought on the very topmost lintel of the lantern. A tap on the harness released the hedgehopper. It climbed to the limit of its safety line. Everett stood at the top of the city. Above him was only the great golden cross. At his feet, beneath the curve of the dome, lay London.

  Down Ludgate Hill and along Fleet Street, where the City of London became Westminster. Along the Strand, the way west was lit by a ribbon of light. Evening had filled up the streets and lights were lit, though the sun reached the lantern of the dome and set the great golden cross afire. The only other resident of High London was Justice on top of the Old Bailey, her scales and sword burning in those same rays of winter sun. But she was blindfolded. She had never seen—could never see—what Everett Singh saw from his perch high on top of St. Paul's. London was a city of lights, sparkled from the refreezing snow. A cold mist was settling in the streets and on the darkening river. To the south, the tower of the Tate Modern, lit at the very top like the Eye of Sauron, guarded the south side of the river. Trains crossed the Thames, lines of moving light. To the southwest the Houses of Parliament shone, floodlit; across the river the London Eye was a wheel of light. To the east was the city proper, the dark shafts of the NatWest Tower and the chaos of the Lloyds building. There was no mistaking the Gherkin, like a friendly rocket to Mars. Across the river the lights of the Shard rose like a steeple, higher than imagining. And beneath him, under his feet, the greatest of London's churches, St Paul's. Did anyone see him? Had any one soul among the thousands streaming around the cathedral o
n its island in the traffic looked up and seen something up there? Had any of those stopped and looked harder, wondering, is that someone up there? He hoped so. He hoped that for one moment, one glimpse, he had put a little wonder into the life of one of those pedestrians winding home on wet feet through the cold and snow to a steamy bus or a smelly tube train. A moment that said, there is still magic in this city.

  “Fantabulosa,” a voice whispered beneath him. Everett hadn't seen Sen land. She crouched on the corner of the next lintel around the lantern, gloved fingers gripping the edge of the stone.

  “You took me up to the top of your city, so I'm returning the gesture.”

  “Nah, that was just getting away from the Iddler and his fruit-boys.”

  “No, I mean when we rode the zip-line, from the ship down to the Tyrone Tower.” Everett picked out the shaft of the Telecom Tower out in the west, in far Bloomsbury. In Sen's world, the headquarters of the Panoply of Known Worlds had occupied the same spot. A true Dark Tower that, with Heisenberg Gates to other worlds hidden inside.

  “Dear, yeah! That was bonaroo fun! Seems like years ago, but…” Sen's tone changed. “Oh, I's sorry Everett Singh.”

  “What about?”

  “About your dad.”

  “I'll find him,” Everett said. It was not just this London spread at his feet. It was all the Londons, all the worlds. He had mastery of them all. His enemies were many, and they were subtle, powerful, and clever, and Everett did not doubt that he had only seen a fraction of what they could achieve, but he had the thing they did not: he had the Infundibulum, the jump gate, and the ability to work them both. He was the Planesrunner. Now he understood the sudden impulse to perch at the very top of St. Paul's Cathedral. He wanted to show Sen something magical and moving, and he wanted to show himself that he had no fear of heights and perils, but most of all, he wanted to show the city—and all the world—that he had power.

  “First we get my mum and Victory-Rose.” It was all clear, all simple. “Remember when they found us back there, on the ice? Every time we make a jump, every time someone opens a Heisenberg Gate, every time someone uses a jumpgun, it leaves a trace. They followed the trace and sent the hovercraft. When Charlotte Villiers shot my dad, it'll have left a trace. I don't know how the jumpgun works…but the people who made it do. And I have an idea where they are. I'll find that trace, I'll find my dad. I'll get us all back together again.”