"Damn!" said Heather. "End of the line."
"Go back!" yelled Joanna. I couldn’t look. Max was speeding across the bridge straight towards the two cars forming the roadblock. Collision was inevitable. My life flashed in front of my eyes, but I wasn’t interested in looking at it. I’d seen it already. Joanna dug her nails into my arm. Someone screamed "Max!" in a tone that combined fear, anger and panic in one ear-splitting howl. I think it was me.
"Here we go!" shouted Max, his grip tightening on the wheel. "Hang on!"
We cleared the main superstructure of the bridge. Max spun the wheel and hauled on the handbrake, sending the minibus into a 180° spin. It tipped over dangerously on two wheels. Heather saved us there, moving to the high side and bringing the vehicle back on all fours. The back of the minibus swung round within two metres of the cop standing in front of the cars. He jumped out of the way. Max threw the gears into forward and accelerated back the way we had come.
"There," he said, a little breathlessly. "A simple demonstration of Newtonian dynamics. Piece of piss." In the seat beside him, David ground his teeth and said nothing.
"But we’re going the wrong way," said Joanna icily.
Not only that, the third police car, which had been chasing us all along, was now coming up fast. It swung towards us, probably trying to ram the rear end of the minibus. Max swerved to avoid it, scraping the metal crash barrier on the side of the road. The police car stopped and turned side on, jamming us in. The other two cars had now come up and joined the blockade. There was no room left to go around or between them. Max slammed on the brakes, the minibus screeching to a halt just before collision.
Police swarmed out of their cars, some of them drawing their guns and pointing them at us, the unfortunate Fraser hobbling on his injured foot.
"Oh well," I said for Max’s benefit. "We nearly made it."
"Step out of the vehicle!" shouted one of the police, his huge gun aimed straight at Max’s head. I felt disinclined to refuse the request, for his sake. I slid the side door of the minibus open, then stopped.
Something white had fluttered down onto the road.
It was close enough for me to see the writing on it, large black letters on white, a title that I recognised instantly, even without my glasses.
Social Commentary and Artistic Licence: Exaggeration in "Vanity Fair."
I paused, my hand still on the door handle.
"That’s my essay on Thackeray," I said quietly.
"Hurry up!" shouted the policeman. "Move it!"
No one did. He waggled his gun again, then even he stopped, staring at the white pages that had begun to flutter down from above. I looked up. Paper was appearing from nowhere about six metres above our heads, up near the first cross-girders of the bridge. Slipping quietly into existence, they fluttered down around us. Some I recognised as my half-finished Thackeray essay.
(And even in that moment a nasty thought crossed my mind that it was due tomorrow and I had forgotten to ask for an extension.)
Other paper was there too, manila folders and scraps of notepaper, all from my desk that had been taken with the rest of my house contents during the Great Removal. The Gap was returning them to me.
"What the hell?" said the policeman, staring up at the stationery pouring down around him. He stepped aside just as a pencil fell at his feet. Then a shower of paper clips started. I really should have cleaned my desk out more.
What happened next was not my fault, I swear. After all, I hadn’t asked for any of this to happen. But I don’t think the police saw it that way.
Something hard hit the bonnet of one of the police cars. There was a loud bang and a scatter of debris. It was like a bomb had gone off. The police ducked for cover. Even in the minibus there were shouts of surprise. I looked at the fragments that hit the road.
"My glass paperweight," I said. "This is all my stuff."
I slammed the door shut. "Get us out of here," I yelled at Max. One of the police pointed his gun, but whether or not he was going to shoot we would never know. Something hit his hand and he dropped the pistol. It was one of my textbooks.
More missiles were falling now, as Max put his foot down, scraping between two of the police cars and turning the minibus back onto the main part of the bridge. The police had ducked into their cars to avoid the rain of books, pens, scissors, rolls of tape and other crap that had once littered my study area. A compass, steel point straight down, bounced off the bitumen. A coffee cup, one of my favourites that I always drank from while studying, smashed into a thousand fragments close to us as we turned.
Max drove away. The police cars started to chase us, but then the heavy stuff began.
My desk lamp smashed through the windscreen of one vehicle. Then another had its bonnet caved in completely as my entire desk came into existence and slammed down. The third car was stopped by my computer hitting it in the middle of the roof. Bits of plastic and metal exploded outwards. There was a shatter of glass and a yell from Heather in the back seat. I turned to see her clutching her face, where blood was trickling between her fingers. The rear window behind her had a huge hole in it.
"Heather!" I shouted. "Are you ok?"
"Fine," she said. "Just a scratch. What’s that?"
She pointed to a plastic disc lying on the floor. The Maestro picked it up.
"It appears to be the hard drive from a computer," he said.
Joanna moved back to look at Heather’s face. "We have to go back and help those police," she said. "They might have been injured too."
"We can’t go back!" said Max.
"We have to!"
Max slammed on the brakes hard. Joanna almost fell to the floor. The minibus stopped and we looked back at the three police cars. The damage to the cars was quite extensive, but it looked as if the rain of objects had ceased. Two figures were stepping cautiously out of the cars. One noticed us, aimed his gun and started firing.
"Fuck!" yelled Max and hit the accelerator again. We sped off as more shots followed.
"I think they will be all right," said the Maestro. "İnşallah."
Joanna sneered at him and continued to wipe at Heather’s face.
The Maestro had no argument from me. There was no need to go back; the police had radios to summon an ambulance if necessary.
No further objects were appearing. Yet, as we sped away again, it crossed my mind how accurately the objects had fallen. If my possessions were at last returning to me, why were they doing so in this careful manner, crippling our pursuers’ vehicles and not ours?
Heather’s face was not too bad. Either the edge of the disc drive had caught her cheek as it crashed through the window, or else she had been hit by glass. The wound had stopped bleeding in a few minutes.
We left the bridge and passed through the inner southern suburbs. There was no further pursuit on the way to my house. The streets were still quiet, just the occasional car or group of people. We passed a few more police cars cruising along, keeping an eye on things, but they were not interested in us. More objects fell from the sky, however:
some cutlery
books
three cakes of soap
the TV guide
a carpet square from the hallway
two metres of electrical wiring
shoes
a tin of PussyChow
six buttons
Heather’s beach towel
the frying pan
string
the toilet brush
and some small, hard, yellow objects that we later realised was loose macaroni.
Max drove on through the fall of debris.
About a block away from my house, Max pulled over. "Your house is almost certainly being watched," he said. "In fact, I drove past a little while ago and noticed a large car parked across the street, with a couple of guys in it. Probably plain clothes, watching out for you."
"Wonderful," I said tightly, hardly able to breathe, squeezed in between Joanna and Heather. "So what do we do?"
"We can sneak round the back and go in through the kitchen," said Heather. "Although they’ll probably notice us in the house."
"No other choice," said David. "We have to get to the circle."
"Yes, and then what?" I asked. David looked at me. "Let’s face it," I said. "We really don’t know what we’re doing. You want me to communicate with this Thing? We don’t even know if we can."
I felt the Maestro’s hand on my shoulder. "It will be all right, Emily," he said in his quiet way. "You will find a way."
I started to feel very doubtful about this whole enterprise. The sky loomed darkly, growing, and something stirred inside it. I didn’t need to look at it to know this; I could feel it. Deep within the darkness of the Gap it grew darker and closer.
"We won’t do anything you don’t want to, Emily," said Joanna. "No one can make you go in the circle." She stared at Max when she said this. He said nothing, just tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.
"Of course it’s your choice," David said. "We could put Mike in there first and see what happens, perhaps. But the important thing is to try."
A dull thud on the road beside us. Something large and soft fell from the sky and hit the bitumen. It was a mattress.
"That’s mine," said Heather.
A few other things followed: one of my bras, some pine cones we had piled in a basket by way of decoration, and then – smashing loud and destructively onto the road – a large ceramic vase. Heather’s mother had given it to her as a Christmas present last year.
"That does it," said Heather. "We have to do this before someone gets killed. Time for another decoy. Let me out here."
"Heather," I said, "what are you doing? You’re in enough trouble."
But she opened the door and heaved herself out. "Don’t wait for me," she said. "I’ll keep them busy at the front. You climb over the back fence and get in. Do what you have to do."
"But what are you going to do?"
She pointed to her bleeding cheek. "I’m a poor woman injured by a looting street gang. I need urgent medical attention."
She headed off before I could argue further, walking quickly down the road towards the front door. I was starting to feel really bad: sturdy, independent Heather, the rock of our little band, putting herself on the line. Of course, I was the one who had to go into the circle, and so maybe she was getting off easily. But that didn’t make me feel any better.
"Let’s all get out," I suggested mournfully. "We can cut through the neighbour’s yards from here to the back fence."
We hurried along in single file, doubled up, keeping to the darkness of trees as much as possible. Halfway across one lawn a dog started barking furiously and didn’t stop even after we had climbed into the next yard. But soon we were behind my house.
All was dark. Nothing had apparently changed. We climbed the back fence and crossed the yard. At the top of the back steps was the kitchen and, beyond that, the living room. No further objects fell around us, but we kept glancing up, hoping to dodge anything really large, like the refrigerator or the armchairs. Or even the bath.
We ran up the back steps and I used my key to unlock the door. There had been no sound from the front of the house. Inside all was dark and still. We should have brought a torch, I realised, then jumped as a tight beam of light stabbed out beside me. David had a tiny flashlight attached to his key ring.
"Always hoped this would come in handy," he said. "I picked it up at a conference on wave mechanics three years ago."
I stared at him blankly.
"They were giving them away free if you bought a t-shirt," he added.
At least he wasn’t wearing that.
Max had followed him, with the Maestro and Joanna bringing up the rear. I led the way into the living room, and stopped.
Two things:
A glow, very faint, from the direction of the circle. Just a diffused white radiance, almost too pale to show even in the darkness of the room.
And a bulking shape next to it, low and menacing.
There was a pause. Then a voice:
"Stop right there!"
David’s torch swung around, illuminating enough to reveal the business end of a large shotgun pointed in our direction.
"Put the light down!" came the voice.
This was the second time that night I'd been on the business end of a gun, and I was a little sick of it by this time. Nevertheless, although actions may speak louder than words, guns speak louder than either of them.
David lowered the torch and we blinked as a lantern was turned on, a battery-operated job on the floor. In its glow we could see the owner of the gun.
I had thought I had enough problems. I was wrong.
"It’s me, Mr Sabatini," I said.
***
My landlord was not in a good mood. It was understandable, really. Not only had I emptied his house, created an inter-dimensional rift in his living room, been responsible for hundreds of sight-seers trampling his garden, and almost had him sucked into oblivion, I was also behind on the rent.
"Do you know how long I’ve been sitting here?" he asked.
He still had the shotgun raised, waving it within inches of my face. His finger was way too near the trigger for me to feel at all confident about my immediate safety. There was something wild about his eyes.
"Excuse me, Mr Sabatini?" I said. "What do you mean, sitting here?"
"Keeping guard." He waggled one hand at the circle. "All day. Making sure that Thing doesn’t come out of the circle."
We had sort of forgotten Mr Sabatini after he saved my life. Remiss of us, perhaps. But he had obviously taken it upon himself to stand watch on the circle, protecting what property he had left.
"Has anything appeared?" asked David. The shotgun swung onto him. David flinched involuntarily.
"Oh, it’s you," said Mr Sabatini. "No, nothing but this strange glow. But look at this!" He held out one brawny arm: it was completely hairless. "The other one, too!" he cried. "Whatever did this will pay."
"I’m sure the hair will grow back, sir," said David. "I have a similar problem."
Mr Sabatini waggled his thick moustache proudly. "As long as it does not take this from me, I do not care what it does!"
The glow from the circle was almost swamped by the lantern. We all glanced at it: a soft, delicate white illumination.
"Please put the gun down, Mr Sabatini," I said. "We just want to have a look at the circle."
He noticed the gun as if for the first time. "Sorry," he said, pointing it at the floor. "I just want to be ready in case that Thing decides to appear again."
"Of course," said David. "Commendable. But we’d just like to have a look at it first."
The front door opened suddenly. Mr Sabatini cried out, swung the shotgun round and aimed. It was Heather.
"There you are, Mr Sabatini!" she cried, completely ignoring the gun aimed at her head. "I was looking for you earlier, to explain what’s going on."
She walked over to him and held out her hand. "You certainly won’t be needing that," she said. "Not for me at any rate." She took the gun from his hands, expertly broke it and removed the shells. Was there anything she didn’t know how to do?
"Nasty things," she said, handing the gun back to him. "I called into your office after we took Emily to hospital, but they hadn’t seen you all day. I didn’t think to come back here."
Now she was no longer under threat of being shot, Joanna moved to the front door. "What happened to the stakeout?" she asked.
Heather shrugged. "Gone. They must have got bored. Or called away: there’s probably quite a bit of trouble around the city tonight. All hands to the wheel, as it were. Would have been more interesting if they’d known Mr Sabatini was in here armed to the teeth."
There was a thud on the roof. Something rolled over the tiles and fell into the back yard.
"More debris," said Max. "We’d better get a move on."
I looked at the circle, at the pale glow
within that illuminated nothing beyond the edges. I had a bad feeling inside me, a knot of nerves that had been quietly building up, waiting for the chance to say that this was a really bad idea. It voiced its opinion to my brain now.
David and Max had been looking at the glow. "Ionisation, I’d say," said David, "caused by the interaction of the circle’s energy field with the air molecules in the room."
Joanna had also been looking at it. "No, it’s an aura," she said.
“Oh, please,” said Max.
Whatever, it wasn’t going to help me.
"Let’s test it," said David. "Put Mike into the circle, see what happens."
There was some debate about this. Heather thought putting Mike in was a really bad idea. Joanna wasn’t too happy about it either. Their opinion was basically that if Mike and the Gap were connected, bringing the two together might make things worse. How, they could not say.
The Maestro thought it totally unnecessary to test things on Mike first, and was all for pushing me in without further delay. I edged out of reach before he could gleefully shove me into the unknown.
In the end, much to my personal relief, David and Max won, and Mike was pushed across the floor towards the circle.
The gravitational anomaly was still there. When he was within a metre of the outer circle, Mike started to slide across the floor of his own accord. He passed across the blue circle, lifted off the floor and hung there, as I had before, slowly turning upside down. Dirt trickled from his pot, but stopped short of the floor and started to form a small cloud underneath him.
"Still doing your old tricks," said Mr Sabatini. "What is the meaning of this?"
Then Mike vanished. Like the fake pizza man had done, like I had almost done. He was pulled by something unseen further into the dimensionless places within the circle.
And then nothing happened. We waited a few minutes, and nothing continued to happen.
"Interesting," said David. He almost sounded disappointed.
More bombardment on the roof. Some very heavy objects thumped down. Mr Sabatini cried out. "What is that?" he asked. "Someone throwing stones on my roof!" He hefted his unloaded shotgun and headed for the door. "I will show them!"
Plato's Cave Page 20
