by Paul Cornell
‘They’re scared,’ he said, as they headed towards the main hall, joining a drift of others in the same direction. ‘This lot have a bit of money now, not much by mainstream standards, but that makes them different in their community. They’ve adapted to it more quickly than the others, which seems to be down to Tock. They’re worried about how they’re seen. Tock makes them feel better about that, having made a packet pretty quickly.’
‘Yeah, every third word that lady said was about rules and tradition. This lot talk so much about that because they’re worried they’ve stepped outside it. All of which sounds like the sort of thing organized crime families go on about.’
‘I think there’s a bit of that to Tock as well. From what the woman at Greenwich said, it sounds like he’s connected that world to this one. Hard to see how he made all this cash otherwise.’
They entered the dark, civilized expanse of the hall, with raggedly garbed audience members filling it up from the back, rather than rushing to the front. They found seats somewhere in the middle. At 9 a.m. exactly, to a smattering of applause, Tock walked onstage and went to a lectern. He was wearing, Ross realized, a reasonably normal tweed jacket. It was a look that, unlike that of anyone else here, wouldn’t have caused raised eyebrows in the street.
He made a few words of introduction, then swiftly came to the point of the gathering. ‘We know,’ he said, ‘there used to be law for our lot, but we know next to nothing about what it was. That troubles many of us. Well, me too. I don’t like the idea of there being any law over people like us, but I like even bloody less the idea that there was some such authority and it went away without us knowing about it, somehow.’ That last word he underlined. It caused widespread mutterings and wry laughter. That question was obviously an issue of great and possibly angry debate in this community. ‘That’s part of why I chose the theme of this year’s event. This is the eight hundred and twenty-fifth annual Circle of Hands Convention, but, I think we can safely say, the fourth since whatever happened . . . happened.’
Ross realized, worryingly, that the event they were attending might be about the disappearance of the Continuing Projects Team, the lack of any memory of them, and the void that had been left. Maybe they could learn something, but she felt like sticking her hand up and saying she and her mates were doing their best to be the law in London now. She had a terrible feeling now that some of the panel discussions she’d read about might be about them. If there was a slideshow of how to recognize them, or something, they’d be buggered. She and Costain had agreed that they weren’t here undercover, as such, but they weren’t going to admit what their job was unless there was some emergency. They didn’t want to end up as obvious targets at a convention full of people who traditionally hated the police.
‘The other big thing that seems to have changed,’ Tock continued, ‘is the nature of sacrifice to London. Does it really feel different now? I think so. I know a great many of you do, and I know that was a realization that took a long time to sink in.’ This lot knew, in their gut, about the Smiling Man’s takeover of sacrifice in London, though they weren’t aware, from what Ross and her colleagues had seen so far, of the Smiling Man himself. ‘I know, for me, like for most of you, even discussing change is . . . anathema. We’re in the middle of it now, though, having been infected by filthy lucre.’ It was only half a joke, and got half a laugh from the crowd in response.
‘Listen. Either we deal, in every sense of the word, or we fall.’ There were a handful of boos. ‘I know, some of you lot disagree. That’s all right – you’re allowed. At the moment.’ He was too hard a man for the audience to take that ironically, though that was probably how he’d meant it. ‘I’ve had to change more than most of you. I’ve had to reach out to powers our forefathers had no dealings with. Earthly powers, I mean.’ Another slight laugh, nowhere near what he’d probably been hoping for. This lot were too worried for that. ‘Today’s sessions will start to explore the nature of whatever’s out there, getting in the way of, responding to, accepting the sacrifice of, summoning. Those sessions will lead to the themed central summoning tonight, as we attempt to contact and re-establish the pantheon.’
As he started to go into detail, Ross made eye contact with Costain. She hadn’t expected there to be a practical element to today’s events. What if they summoned the Smiling Man himself? Would this lot have any way to deal with him?
‘Doing this without Mags . . .’ Tock had suddenly become emotional, and from the expressions on the faces of those nearby, Ross could see it was an emotion the audience shared, ‘it’s always difficult. She’d want us to do this, though. She’d want us to find a way through, bring everyone into the tent and get ’em all pissed together.’ He said a few more things about cheap lunches being laid on, where the toilets were and how children weren’t encouraged, and then departed the stage, not even making eye contact with the woman in a ragged fur coat who tottered on to present the first main hall item.
Ross got up. ‘I want to have a word,’ she said.
‘Is going straight for it really the best idea?’ Costain was following her.
She put a hand on his arm to restrain him. ‘I don’t care.’
She caught up with Tock in the hallway. He turned and his face immediately registered a kind of smiling, resigned aggression, as if to say, Yeah, the world did get as shit as this, and you can only smile at it. ‘I know why you’re here,’ he said. ‘The answer is no.’
‘You don’t know what I’m going to say.’
‘I know what you have to offer, ’cos I heard it all at the auction. It’s not enough. Nothing could be enough. OK? Does that satisfy you sufficiently to leave me alone now?’
He couldn’t know she was with the police. He just saw her as someone pursuing an obsession. ‘It’s my future happiness. That’s what you’ve got—’
He held up a hand and marched off. Not listening. She tried to keep her expression neutral. She’d been dangerously out of control there. What had she hoped for? That he’d simply give it to her? She’d just needed to look him in the eye, to appeal to a shared humanity that didn’t seem to be there.
Costain arrived by her side. ‘Hard case,’ he said.
Nobody was in earshot. ‘So. Do we . . . do we start thinking about finding some way to steal it?’
‘That would be a criminal act that could end your career.’
‘I know.’
‘Besides, he’ll be so prepared for that.’
Ross found, as she often did, that her brain had been thinking without her. Something she’d heard in the conference room had now connected with something else. ‘When the Continuing Projects Team’s headquarters was destroyed, nobody felt it at the time, did they? Like he said onstage, they just slowly realized over the next few years that something had changed.’
‘I guess.’
‘But when Sherlock Holmes was killed, Sefton was shocked by it, saw it in a dream, like a signal went out. Have you heard anything from this lot about the death of Sherlock Holmes?’
‘Not yet.’
‘If this lot knew about that, wouldn’t it be big news? Someone would have said something. There’d be a bloody panel discussion. I think maybe that signal, about Holmes dying, was sent straight to Sefton. Straight to us.’
TWENTY-THREE
The morning and afternoon of the Circle of Hands Conference consisted of panels, debates and what this lot called workings. Some of them were on such a small scale that, having put her nose round the door, Ross got the feeling they were done more out of group habit than anything else.
In one of them, three people were sitting in a small conference room, chanting over an old London bus-route map. Ross had considered the ghost bus they’d encountered, and had stayed for a few minutes, but nothing practical was revealed, and she’d eventually decided she had to get a taste of as much of the programme as possible.
She’d let Costain go and nose around in his own way. She’d found a lot of formal sacrifices
being performed. Phials were sterilized before the taking of blood, with rules read out at the start of panels about bringing one’s own instruments to extract it. She saw many acts of self-inflicted injury, performed offhandedly. To her surprise, through open doorways, she saw acts of what should have been sexual ecstasy from which all passion had been drained, orgasms for both sexes performed while holding a conversation about something else, or reading a book.
Several of the panels featured people talking about stuff that was familiar. There was one about Mora Losley that she couldn’t resist sitting in on. The panel was mostly about how Losley was a fake who shouldn’t feature in the ancient annals of true practitioners of the craft. It made Ross so angry she had to leave before she said something. We risked our lives against that ‘wannabe’, mate!
These attendees had paid a lot to be here, but they still lived pretty frugally. Lunch was about taking one sandwich, one packet of crisps and one can of drink, with a real-ale bar made of a table with two barrels on it and plastic glasses. She really fancied a pint, but she was, if not officially, on duty in her own way. Once again, she felt like she’d like to be a part of them, was hurt by the distance she had to maintain. Wouldn’t it be good to all explore the unknown together?
At dinner time, Ross found Costain in the bar, drinking water, and got a Diet Coke. ‘What have you found?’
He produced a piece of paper, the writing on it the product of an ancient typewriter. ‘The schedule for tonight’s summoning. There’s a mass event; then they’re going to split up and work into the early hours trying to contact them separately. They don’t know who’s in the pantheon: several of these have question marks beside them.’ Ross ran her finger down the list:
Bard
Boadicea
Brutus
Consumption (?)
Dick
Eros
Gap
Lud
Morningstar (?)
Other (?)
Rat King
Rat Queen (?)
Trickster
‘Sefton has met three of those,’ said Ross, surprised. ‘Do you reckon this is a complete list?’
‘You’ve met one too, or one who says he is. I don’t know.
It’d be unlike this lot to have a complete list of anything.’ ‘It’s unlike them to have question marks, if everything’s stayed the same. There must have been a meeting about the question marks.’
The ‘mass summoning’ event was in the main hall, and nothing was scheduled opposite it. ‘They’ve been in this hotel for decades,’ Costain said as they headed in, having had dinner at the hotel and talked little and awkwardly. ‘From what I’ve read, they regard this hall a bit like . . . a major sporting auditorium. It has history to it, things have happened here, and if you’ve got the Sight . . .’
Ross was about to say she hadn’t felt anything much in here earlier, but now, as she entered, she felt it, suddenly, big time. It came on as she opened the door to the venue, as if that door was made of lead shielding. It was the feeling of being a child at the cinema, magnified a hundredfold. The curtains behind the stage, the sheer tallness of those curtains, the careful pools of light by the lectern, the smell and feel of the seats, the details of the ceiling . . . here was where the saints had trod. They knew some way to muffle it in the daytime, but now they’d let it out. It grabbed her heart and made her ache. Such community, and she hated that she wasn’t a part of it.
A young man and a young woman in waistcoats and bowler hats pushed onto the stage a pile of wood. A bonfire. ‘All contributions prized and recognized!’ they called together. People started coming forwards from the gathering audience, lining up down the aisles with wallets open, bags pulled from pockets. This was to be a giant sacrifice. Thank God nobody got their cock out this time. All Ross had was money, which this lot seemed OK about burning, judging by the coins that were being thrown onto the pyre. Not a lot of notes. Costain reached in his pocket too, and she gave him hers. He went up, and when his turn came, threw the cash into the pile.
Onto the stage had come a large, middle-aged woman in a long, flowing white dress. She looked solemn, determined. The two acolytes grabbed her and hauled her towards the bonfire. She fought them, or rather she pretend-fought them, making a lot of flailing gestures but not actually trying to escape. Ross was suddenly afraid. She looked to Costain and saw him watching the stage too. This could be, given how calm this lot were about the extraordinary, absolutely what it looked like.
One of the acolytes was now dowsing the bonfire with petrol, as the other made to bind the woman’s wrists to a stake that had been brought onstage so late in the proceedings that Ross thought that had probably been a mistake. The bonds looked like they were made of . . . That was newspaper, wasn’t it? The woman stood on the bonfire, the petrol being sloshed carefully away from her feet, and suddenly red lights played on the stage, missing their target initially, then illuminating the woman properly. She cried out, the stage faded a little too slowly to black, and Ross could see her being freed and helped off. The bonfire was lit and proved to be just a low fire, not some huge blaze. Ross could feel it being kept in check and the smoke being led away, presumably to avoid setting off the fire alarms. The audience rather dutifully applauded.
‘Health and safety nightmare,’ sighed a man in a top hat a couple of seats along the row.
‘They like their gestures,’ said Costain.
Onto the stage walked a series of figures, thirteen in all, each clad in a robe of different colours. The seventh, in the middle, was Tock, dressed all in black, no, with little silver highlights. Ross looked at the list and wondered if they could be in alphabetical order. ‘Gap’ said to her the Underground, as in ‘Mind the gap’, but Tock’s costume reminded her of the livery of a London black cab.
‘Maybe he bought it at the Gap,’ said Costain. Some of the other colour schemes seemed to fit the list. The first figure looked like she was dressed in red leather, like a bound edition of plays, for ‘Bard’, and yeah, gold and silver like armour fitted ‘Boadicea’. ‘Brutus’ was thus pure white with a slash of purple, which fitted Sefton’s description of the toga that god had worn, ‘Consumption’ was glittery blue, ‘Dick’ was felt black – and that could have been worse – ‘Eros’ a shabby bronze, ‘Lud’ a dull brown, ‘Morningstar’ silver on deep blue, which seemed logical, ‘Other’ a bright green, ‘Rat King’ russet, ‘Rat Queen’ a silvery grey and ‘Trickster’, worn by someone who really didn’t fit that part, if they were indeed playing parts, a rather dull grey. That seemed odd until he turned, at the moment they all did, and Ross caught a glimpse of a bright red lining.
It occurred to Ross that all these symbols were just a rather desperate attempt at control, a search to impose meaning, or find it. They were being honest with the theme of their event; this lot really did need something to rely on. Didn’t they all? The bonfire was now blazing. The acolytes would every now and then make a discreet hand gesture to rein it in. All the robed figures started making gestures too, complicated ones, at odds with each other, a chaotic anti-dance in which, nevertheless, sudden patterns would emerge and then vanish again.
Ross looked round and saw the audience were taking part. She felt the gravity of the Sight surging around her, pulsing like the smallest, most precise underwater currents, around the auditorium, between the seats, then straight at the stage. It was building and building. She looked to Costain. He was clearly worried. He didn’t know how to take part any more than she did. Nobody was paying them any attention, thank God.
Onstage, some of the robed figures were wavering, as if the air between them and the audience had become warmed by the bonfire, no, much more than that. Sefton might have had words for what was happening. The shape of the room and everything inside it were being changed. Ross felt as if she was standing at the edge of a cliff, but also, she’d never felt more in London. It was like the metropolis had been taken out of context and put on the stage, at a sudden, scary distanc
e. The room was warping around the call that was being broadcast from the stage.
‘I think they’re trying to summon all of them, at once,’ whispered Costain.
It didn’t feel like they all wanted to come. There was resistance in the air. Ross found herself hoping they didn’t come, or not all of them. The shape that had been Tock was particularly worrying, something like a black hole. One of what was being summoned definitely wasn’t coming. The man representing ‘Morningstar’ was gesturing pointlessly, looking frustrated, while all the other robed figures were transforming. Ross was interested to see what ‘Trickster’ would appear. That figure was blurred, but seemed to have only got so far, a formless cloud that showed no sign of becoming clear. ‘Other’ was quickly settling into a seated shape. The vision of her suddenly leaped forwards, and Ross was teetering above her, feeling like she was about to fall, her arms flailing, held up only by the trivial forces of physics. ‘Other’ had become a black woman in a wheelchair, only a fine sheen of hair on her head, her ears opened by rings, a stud in her nose, her eyes those of . . . Ross had been about to say an animal’s, but it was Ross who was the animal and she was something more. For a moment, she was different, green with purple spots. ‘You have to do something,’ she said, her voice clear and angry. She was saying this to the whole room, Ross realized, not just to her. ‘You have to do something before it’s too late.’
There was somehow a feeling of agreement from the rest of the swirling mass. ‘Other’ raised a hand, a stump, and suddenly the vision leaped back and to the right, and they were all craning their necks towards the gravitational heave of . . . the top of St Paul’s Cathedral, she was sure it was, that familiar dome. It was suddenly clear, in the room with them now. Every other building in London, every spire, every skyscraper, was leaning precariously towards it. On the steps of the cathedral stood a figure, the Smiling Man. This was a vision of him in the future. He was laughing: a bellowing, vomiting laugh. From the sky was falling . . . snow? No. It was a fine white dust, and it was in her mouth and nose, and she coughed it, and thought for a moment it must be ashes, but no, it smelt of . . . electricity, straight into her head. It was cocaine. It was raining cocaine.
