by Tim Scott
He was efficient though, and he’d placate my clients so that things would carry on. That’s why we all put up with him, I guess; he could be bothered, a lot more than the rest of us, about all the dull stuff.
Abruptly, we curved off the road and pulled up. My head cracked the back of the crash suit sharply, reminding me of the bruises I had courtesy of the Odysseus Hat.
I glanced around.
Beside us was a rusting hulk of a steel-framed building. Its panels hung off in the breeze and a sizeable mountain ash was growing out of the first-floor window ledge. Around it, everything felt hopelessly run-down. An old café called Sapid Snacks was boarded up, with a huge sign proclaiming it to be OPEN, FOR HOT SNACKS AND RIOTOUS CAKES, and a Litter Beagle lay slumped over, not showing any signs of life and giving the impression it had not broken down but merely lost hope.
This was an unusual area of Klick Track, at odds with the faceless, calm normality of the zone, and it was a wonder they had allowed things to reach this kind of state. The slopes rose behind the buildings, partly covered in the pine forest that had once colonized this whole place.
My crash suit jammed halfway as I slid it open, and I fought with it while Mat connected up his Jab-Tab to pay.
“Yeah, does that sometimes,” said the woman Rider languidly in my direction, without offering me any assistance, or any clue as to how to free the thing. In the end, I clasped my fingers around the edge of the open gap, gave it a massive wrench, and it grated open.
“Argonaut Logistics,” she said, with a nod toward the shattered structure, not showing any sign of surprise at its condition. “You have a power day, d’you hear?” she called and was gone with a flare of fumes into the traffic. I turned away and stood there, looking at this building rise up into the midblue sky of the warm evening, too tired to be annoyed with her about the power day thing.
“Looks like business has not been good for them,” said Mat, gazing up at the rusting fabric skeleton.
“Yeah,” I said, automatically searching for a packet of cigarettes that I knew full well I didn’t have. We shambled into what was left of the ground floor, which was completely open to the elements now, and all we could see were the naked rusting girders, propping up the bulk of the building above us. There was no sign of any stairs, or any other means to gain entrance to the upper floors, which from the outside appeared derelict but more intact.
“Ripped the stairs out to stop anyone having raves up there, I expect,” said Mat. “It would make a pretty dark venue.” A chopper thwocked close by overhead, its blades echoing off the hills and through the shell around us, so the whole place seemed to vibrate like a giant purring cat.
“Guess it would,” I said, stopping myself from my ridiculous cigarette search. “I really thought we’d get answers here. Not just this dead end.” And we both stood looking vaguely around in the cold silence.
“Come on, head out to East Cliff and catch some waves with me, Jonny. Let’s try and get some distance on this thing. You can try out my new longy. It’s sweet.”
“Wait,” I said, as something stirred inside my head. “What happened to that chopper?”
“It flew off, like they do. They’re good at that. Come on.”
“No, it was overhead just now and it stopped. Don’t look at me like that,” I added as I saw Mat’s expression.
“There’s an echo in here like an opera singer’s stomach. And I’m telling you, I can smell that surf. The wind has dropped, so it’s going to be clean.” He headed out into the evening sunlight again and I followed.
“What about if it landed on the roof?” I said, feeling like I was going on about it—but, hey, crazier things had happened to me in the last hours by a factor of about six billion. Mat looked at me and he seemed to be thinking it through, weighing up just how crazy it was—weighing up whether he could bear to leave the surf.
“Tell me something, Jonny. Are you sure Sarah isn’t tied into all this? Because there’s something bugging me about her and it just sits there in my head.”
“Sarah. No. She’s mad at me, but she’s not crazy.”
“Yeah, but there’s some kind of weird brittleness about who she is—a sense she’s a fake, like she’s in the wrong compartment, and when I try and picture you two together, I get a strange image in my head that won’t settle down properly.”
“Mat, I’m open to any ideas, but I don’t think Sarah is the one. She’s just…Sarah. But what about the roof thing?”
“Yeah, OK, OK. We might as well check it out now that we’re here. If we make the second floor, there’ll probably be some stairs up from there. Then we’ll see if she’s an empty shell or not.”
I wondered whether that last comment was prompted more by the thought of Sarah than the building, but I didn’t say anything. The only small chance of finding any answers was to go up. Mat trampled over the uneven, rubbish-strewn ground, grasped one of the girders with both hands and, lying right back off it, began walking his feet up. He made it look easy, raising his hands one after the other, then his feet, slowly and gracefully gaining height, until I had to crane my neck to watch. He looked down, and said, “Got a really vivid flashback to Clouds Rest. Scary.”
I was still looking up at him as he made the window, but the mention of Clouds Rest had triggered a memory that crushed all my other thoughts and dragged me away. Maybe my head craved a break from all the present stuff, because I seemed to be swimming in the intensity of the memory far too easily.
The fresh mountains of Yosemite. The anticipation snapping around us like a thousand firecrackers on a blinding, crisp, clean, blue-skied winter’s day. We made an attempt on the north face of Clouds Rest, ignoring the fact it should have been way too technical for us—just going for it without fear, and testing our limits—which was stupid really. But we were young and we didn’t understand how Bad Things can have consequences for so long afterward.
The snow lay snugly on the pine trees, weighing down their branches, so when the sun melted the ice in little patches, they suddenly sprung up with excitement. The ice on the climb was satisfyingly hard, and you could tell just from the deep, solid clunk it made when you swung with a climbing ax that nothing was going to flake off. The air was thinner near the top and Mat, who led a lot of the way, got slower; but finally, in the late afternoon, he dragged Jack and me up the last pitch and we all stood gasping on the ridge of the arête.
It was no more than the width of a sidewalk, falling sharply away on both sides to the valley floor, four thousand crazy feet below. We spent twenty minutes there celebrating the view and reveling in our achievement, while all around us the peaks poked their way up through the wisps of cloud and melted into a soft, hazy horizon. The evening sank slowly into such a deep blue it felt like you could jump into it without caring, and an intense stillness bathed the sky so your ears seemed like they could hear anything for ten thousand miles.
Then finally, when a chill ate into the air, we stomped down the footpath toward Half Dome, following the ridge, and camped in the forest by the stream, listening for bears and drinking the cheap brandy I had hauled up while Mat talked of high mountains and Prague and toasted a packet of marshmallows. It had been a trip that fed the soul, and it was good to remember a time before Jack had died. And suddenly, I had a deep, unsettling feeling about that tragic day that lurked just beneath the surface of my memory. Something I had blocked out that needed to be unpacked and faced.
“Jonny? What’s happening?” Mat’s voice filtered down from above.
“Sorry. Just thinking about Clouds Rest,” I said, and saw that Mat was leaning from one of the blown-out windows.
“Yeah,” he said, softly.
I looked up and took a breath that must have sounded like a sigh because he called down, “It’s just a layback,” in encouragement.
I felt the abrasive surface of the rusty steel and I made my way up. It wasn’t too difficult, but my arms didn’t have a lot of strength and I was relieved to grab
Mat’s huge hand and let him pull me over the window ledge. I fell haphazardly on the hard floor.
“I would swap my soul for a cigarette right now.” I coughed, lying in a heap, breathing much harder from the effort than I would have liked. “Just one drag, in fact. What is the point of giving up smoking again?”
“It’ll make you happier, you’ll meet the perfect woman and become President of Azerbaijan. Now, come on.”
I pushed myself to my feet and walked over, trying to loosen the desire for a cigarette from my head, pleased that it felt like I was doing something positive about the craziness that had swept my life sideways.
The stairs were concrete, covered in a stained green carpet. We made our way up steadily as the late-evening sun slanted gamely in, flopping over the remnants of office stuff that littered most levels—the felled filing cabinets still disgorging their contents; the wires traipsing across the floors; the desks scattered at incomprehensible angles. A lot of the windows were blown, so shattered glass lay in small piles, and the stained fawn curtains flapped in the breeze like dirty prayer flags. One or two of the levels were completely empty, with just the odd piece of paper, discarded and marooned on the exhausted carpet.
We climbed maybe twenty flights, doglegging on every floor, only to be faced by another set of stairs looking much like the last. And with every one of these flights, a nagging doubt grew in the back of my head. Why would anyone run a company selling encyclopedias from the top of a disused building? Cheap rent? To stop people like me from coming after them? It seemed possible, but wildly extreme. Mat was almost certainly right; the chopper had flown off and there was nothing up here. Still, this address was all we had, and since we were here, it felt like we should see it through. We turned the corner on another floor, but a small flash of white light sent my pulse ranting excitedly.
“Mat,” I whispered. “See that light in the far corner, behind my right shoulder?”
Mat turned. “A screen is up! Dark!”
“Yeah. It is.” My curiosity was deadened by a sense of alarm, that someone was just toying with me for their own amusement, knowing we would be here.
The floor was empty, with just a few desks and a couple of consoles gathering dirt, so we carefully picked our way over sheaves of strewn wires to the screen, which flickered uncertainly as though on the verge of oblivion. I wiped the grime from the console with the tips of my fingers and saw that the big green letters read: “Hello.” I felt stupid, right down to my shoes, because I was so out of my depth here with no fucking clue as to what was going on. I simply scuffed away more of the dirt and the thing woke up like a startled squirrel.
“Be bop a loo la! She’s my baby!” it sang deafeningly, and I nearly hit the ceiling. “Be bop a loo la, I don’t mean maybe!” it went on, and began displaying a picture of what looked like a cartoon duck. “Be bop a—” The machine abruptly flickered, made a crunching sound, and died with a soft sigh. My heart was going for the world record of beats to the minute by this time, and I smiled grimly.
“That was extraordinarily unhelpful,” I said.
“Weird.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “And yet, it doesn’t even get in the top ten weird events of the day. It probably comes in at about number thirty-four.” I played with the machine a bit, but it was totally dead, and so we gave in and headed on up the building.
We had made maybe forty flights when we turned a corner exactly like all those before, except this time there was just an empty level. There were no more stairs.
We had reached the top.
“Nothing. Nothing.”
“Yup,” said Mat. The space was pretty much deserted although nearly all the windows were smashed and the glass lay in jagged piles where it had fallen. There was a hatstand lying near one wall and a small plasi-poster hung askew proclaiming:
PERSONNEL ARE FORBIDDEN TO SNEER.
“What the fuck is going on with my life?” I said. “Why does nothing have any kind of answers?”
“Beats me,” said Mat. “If it had been Teb, I’d have understood more, but why would anyone come after you? Unless it’s those guys we trounced at pool.”
“Yeah, but even if I did fluke the black, this seems a bit harsh.”
We stood in this grimy, stained old office listening to the wind murmur through the empty frames and the distant noise of the bikes herding down the freeway.
“This would actually make a dark place for rave,” said Mat. “I think I’ll let the crew know. It almost feels like…like we’ve…but that makes no sense.”
19
Not surprisingly, I have never had a fully grown rhino jump on me from an acacia tree. But if I had, I expect it would have felt rather like the sensation I suddenly experienced. I squirmed feverishly on the office floor, felled by this weight, wondering where it had come from. I was confused to find it was Mat. But before I could say anything, a chopper appeared inches from the window, the noise of its blades whipping off the walls with a giant bluster of oil-smoke and gasoline fumes. I froze and watched the cockpit rise slowly out of sight, and as we lay utterly still, poleaxed on the floor, it settled somewhere above us. Its engine wound down from a squeal to a gentle purr, and finally to empty silence.
“Not the top after all, eh?” Mat said with a smile as he dusted himself off. I knew what he was getting at. There could easily be at least one floor above us. Mat edged over to one of the windows and peered around tentatively. Then looking up and holding on to the frame, pulled himself halfway out.
“Mat! Mat!” I called, in an overloud whisper. “Mat.” I patted him on the back and he drew himself back inside.
“What?”
I was going to say, “Too risky. There’ll be another way,” but I didn’t. Instead I paused, knowing this was one of those pivotal moments when different futures run off ahead, almost visibly, like two raindrops snaking down a window.
“I’ll take a quick look. OK?”
He nodded.
This was my mess, and even though the thought of going out there didn’t fill me with joy, I knew it had to be me. I sat on the window frame with my back facing the outside and tilted my head up; there seemed to be two floors above us, judging by the number of windows. Just up and to the left was a satellite dish. The fixing looked good and above that was an air-con unit. Not that technical; just very, very scary, bearing in mind we were at least forty floors up. I really do not like free climbing, but there are moments when I surprise even myself with the risks I will take when my mind is up for it.
I perched on the window ledge, reached above my head for a small cable fixing, and hooked my fingers over it. I gingerly stood up on the window ledge, very slowly turning my head sideways and keeping flat against the building. A gust of wind whipped my face with amusement. I looked down. Heights don’t scare me, but this one was interesting, to say the least, and I became very aware of the fact that the hold I had with my right hand was all that was keeping me alive, so I put a lot of concentration into not letting it go. I swept my left arm up along the building until it felt the satellite dish fixing and grabbed it with relief. It was a good solid hold, and I leaned back slightly to rest my arms. That’s when it gave way, and my heart walloped my chest cavity with panic. I scrabbled for the edge of the air-conditioning unit with a massive lunge, and caught it as the satellite dish pulled away and dangled down, limp on its wiring.
“Service is overdue by twelve years, two months, and six days,” said the air-con unit, abruptly. “The cover fixings will loosen automatically. Please clean filters marked with a red tab.”
I swung crazily off the thing, hanging with my hands and kicking my legs frantically. “The dry-bulb outside air temperature is fifty-three degrees. The wet-bulb outside air temperature is fifty-seven degrees…no, make that fifty-five,” it continued.
“Please be quiet,” I managed to say, as my legs scrabbled against the wall.
“A course of twelve lessons on air-conditioning service maintenance—and gene
ral enjoyment of our units—is available at the Institute of Air-Conditioning in Maine. Price available on request.” I heaved myself up on the top of the unit. It must have been ancient, because it wasn’t a human replicator, just a voice, blathering on automatically. “A shorter course, entitled ‘Air-conditioning is cool,’ is available for children under sixteen, though an adult must be within one statute mile. Prices available on request.”
I got my breath back sitting there, marooned on a small box bolted to the side of the building. The view was awesome and I felt a burst of relief coalesce into excitement. The plate where the duct entered the building was rusty as hell, so I gave it one tug and it came away in my hands. Inside was a small service room, jammed with more ducts and wires, and at the far end was a closed door that led into the building. I was about to head inside and investigate when I heard Mat’s voice from below:
“Jonny! Catch,” he called, as a loop of something spiraled into the sky. I made a grab for it. It was several strands of cable flex twisted together. Not the sort of stuff most offices bother with now, but this place clearly hadn’t been functioning for years.
I shook my head with a smile at Mat’s ingenuity and squeezed through the hole into the service room, landing on my haunches on the floor below. I made the end of the flex secure on a massive piece of machinery, leaned out of the hole in the wall, and looked down. Mat was craning his neck to see what was going on, now wearing a ridiculous white knitted hat he must have had in his pocket.
“OK, Jonny?” he called in a loud whisper. I nodded. Then, in one catlike movement, he sprang up out of the window and pulled himself up on top of the air-con unit. He smiled, then tilted his head with surprise.
“Service is overdue by twelve years, two months, and six days,” sang the air-con unit, as it jolted into life again. “The cover fixings will loosen automatically. Please clean filters marked with a red tab.”
There was a sharp hissing sound from inside the unit and Mat glanced down at it quizzically, then hurriedly launched himself toward me. Another hissing noise and a hard crack as the cover sliced off into the sky, cutting away from us and down toward the ground, like a manic, leaping dog.
