by Heide Goody
The supply teacher looked like she wanted to say something but she didn’t. Nina didn’t miss the relevance of the Yang girl’s finger hovering over her tablet. It didn’t matter; Nina already had a solid idea whose satchel it was.
Morag smiled at Colin’s tone.
“Downton Abbey?” he said, pressing manfully ahead.
“Yes.”
“No,” said the engineer. “You must have misheard me.”
“Back me up here, Rod,” said Morag.
Rod kept his eyes on the tunnel ahead.
“If the feller’s not willing to admit his love for a bit of gentle period drama, I’m not going to argue with him.”
“It’s not that I’m not willing, mate,” said Colin. “I don’t like it. My good lady watches it. And the Strictly and the Bake Off too – well not since it went to Channel 4 – and I might be in the room but I don’t enjoy it.”
The canteen and the dead Dinh’r were some distance behind them now. They had shoved the Venislarn critter into a corner before waking Colin.
That solitary Dinh’r had, probably, been the only resident of the defunct bunker but there were still unanswered questions regarding the empty egg sacs (which that creature had either laid or, conceivably, emerged from) and the unfeasibly neat pile of sliced ‘n’ diced flesh. And so, along cable-lined tunnels, from one blast door to the next, the three of them had progressed.
And now, as Rod was on the cusp of delivering his own verdict on dancing and baking shows, they came across something that, whilst not providing any answers, cast the questions in a new light.
“This shouldn’t be here,” said Colin.
And yet it was, and looked like it had been there for a good long time. The tunnel descended by a series of wide steps into a round and vaguely conical cavern, at least fifty yards across. The sound of dripping water echoed from low-arched tunnels cut into the bottommost steps.
“It’s like an amphitheatre,” said Morag.
“Like the Colosseum,” said Rod. “Ah.”
And several pieces of the visual jigsaw fell into place. The dark patches in the earth at the centre of amphitheatre. The shadowed cages on the far side of the chamber. Even the out-of-place stained wheelbarrow down in the centre of the pit.
“Like throwing Christians to the lions,” said Morag.
“Because the Dinh’r don’t eat people but they might –”
“Rip them apart for the entertainment of their masters,” said Morag.
“But this shouldn’t be here,” said Colin. “It’s impossible. Look, all that cabling’s been rerouted. Neatly too. Like one of our lads did it. And the water pipes. Look.”
“Someone’s been mucking about with local space-time,” said Morag.
She made her away around the huge chamber, walking along one of the circling step-seats. Instinctively, Morag did not want to cross the arena floor. To do so felt like an invitation to cause trouble.
When they were halfway round, the lights went off again. Colin and Rod were reduced to points of torchlight. There was a scrape of movement ahead, from the cages. Caged Dinh’r, kept cooped up until they were needed to fight? Morag played her torch over the cages as they neared. At the furthest edge, just outside the cage, a bell hung from the ceiling, a battered open-ended tin box like a cowbell for the world’s biggest cow. Below that, something shifted in a cage, ragged and bloody.
“That’s a person,” said Rod.
As he said it, a hand grasped the bar of the cage. Morag ran forward.
It was a young woman, filthy, and wide-eyed with shock. In her other hand, the woman held something. At first, Morag thought it was a walking stick or a staff and then she saw the wide, blood-caked end. It was a broom.
“Are you okay?” said Morag.
“I clean. I clean,” said the woman.
“She’s foreign,” said Colin. “Told you. Immigrants.”
“Shut up,” said Rod.
“I clean,” the woman repeated, like a broken robot.
“Of course, you do,” said Morag gently.
The woman stared. She didn’t blink.
“They don’t even pay me minimum wage.”
Morag gestured to the bars. “Possibly not the worst thing about your current situation,” she said and began looking for a way to open the cage.
Vivian had mixed opinions regarding the Mammonites.
It was true that they were utterly alien, their superficial resemblance to humans thoroughly deceptive. It was also true that they were ruthless, rapacious and relentlessly acquisitive. They killed without remorse, assassinating rivals in business, removing parents who had aged beyond their usefulness and even despatching their own children if they failed to live up to expectations. They worshipped wealth and status, not for what it would bring but for its own sake. They were the questing mouths of their mother goddess and would devour the entire world if the stars would allow it.
On the other hand, they were honest. Honest of purpose at least. They were what they were and wore their personalities on their sleeves. Their near-human appearance wasn’t a deliberate deception. Humanity was a mould. They had no more chosen their form in our world than a puddle chooses its shape. They spoke plainly. Within the confines of their incomprehensible goals, they acted logically and dealt reasonably. They knew the value of everything and knew the value of giving value. Their love of money was, as far as Vivian could tell, the love of a numerical system which could be accurately and coherently applied to nearly all things. Humans dishonestly insisted they could never put a price on love or a child’s safety or peace of mind when it was patently clear that people could and did. That’s how smoke alarm manufacturers made money. Mammonites knew the value of love, safety and peace of mind. And they drove a hard bargain.
Xerxes Mammon-Mammonson, chair of the school governors, had a calculating gaze. Vivian felt he was constantly evaluating her, adjusting his estimation second by second. His undeniably handsome face had a certain simian aspect to it and his skin was a fascinating blend of craggy, rubbery and leathery, as though he was a veteran Hollywood icon appearing in the latest adaptation of Planet of the Apes and had walked out halfway through having his makeup done.
Vivian had been brought before him in a staff meeting room resembling a corporate boardroom. Two other Mammonites sat beside him. He had made her wait while he unhurriedly finished his conversation with them before turning his attention to her. He did not invite her to sit and she didn’t ask.
“Do you think I can’t see what you’re up to?” he said.
“I don’t think that, Mr Mammon-Mammonson,” she said honestly, having never given the hypothetical, cryptic and meaningless notion any thought. “What am I up to?”
Xerxes’s gaze ran up and down her as he made a silent tally of her worth.
“You come here. Into this place. Onto this land. And you seek to disrupt the education of our young with your fake stories of missing school children and murder most foul.”
“We are conducting an investigation. I do not concoct stories. I do not have the talent for it.”
Xerxes chuckled.
“I can see through you. You know it. Don’t feel stupid or insecure. I’m just more intelligent than you. It’s not your fault.”
“Thank you,” she said because there was nothing meaningful to be said. “Perhaps then, given that you are so intelligent, you could help me understand. We found some remains and some belongings. You know where?”
He nodded with ponderous and magnanimous slowness. “In the Anchor facility, the chambers dug for our mother when she last incarnated in this city.”
“And which Yoth Mammon – schluri’o bento frei,” she added reverently – “vacated decades ago. Those tunnels should be empty.”
Xerxes smiled. It was a broad self-indulgent smile, like that of a flatulent infant.
“We have re-opened them. We are putting them to good use and making them ready for her return.”
“With the greatest respect, they are no
t yours to re-open or use.”
The school bell rang for the end of day. Xerxes held her gaze and his tongue until it had stopped.
“With the greatest respect?” he said. “I won’t tolerate any employee talking to me in such tones.”
“How fortunate that I am not one of your employees then,” she replied.
He shook his head.
“You work for the consular mission. The consular mission works for the em-shadt Venislarn. Ergo.”
He opened the leather-bound document wallet on the table in front of him. A polished zombie knife, all spikes and sculpted curves sat inside it. He picked it up reflectively, looping his elongated fingers around the haft.
“You are mine,” he said. “But I don’t think you are worth keeping.”
When the bell had rung for the end of the school day, Nina observed the class as it broke up and left. Nina understood people. She understood the meaning of a passing gaze, the power of a single word. She could spot a conniving bitch or a cheating boyfriend across a crowded room. In this room, power and influence circled around the pig-tailed Yang girl. As she packed away her pencil case and tucked some sort of misshapen Venislarn plush toy under her arm, others watched and waited. But Yang’s attention, subtle though it was, was fixed on the boy, Croesus.
So, when the class departed, Nina surreptitiously drifted out into the playground with the flow of sharp little Mammonite children and kept an eye on those blonde pigtails. But Yang did not go with the greater mass of students towards the front gates. She turned right, towards the rear playing fields. There were a couple of other students with her and – ah – her arm laid possessively across the shoulder of Croesus Smith-Mammonson. It was not the arm of friendship nor juvenile romance. This was the guiding arm of an arresting officer, of a gangster leading an incompetent underling into a basement where only baseball bats and concrete boots awaited.
Nina kept her distance, hugging the cover of the all-weather pitch fence as she followed the four youngsters. They were making towards the edge of the woodland that backed onto the school. While she waited for them to move on, she hunkered down beneath a tree (it didn’t have conkers or acorns or apples on it so she had no idea what kind of tree it was) and texted Vivian to let her know what she was up to. She also took a selfie, posted it on Snapchat and sent Rod a picture of a cute spider in a hat before picking herself up and making towards the break in the fence the children had gone through.
One of the spiked uprights on the fence had been unscrewed and tilted aside, to create a space large enough for a child, or an uber-petite sex kitten, to squeeze through. For a moment, Nina considered that it was unlike the super-professional Mammonites to allow such vandalism to go unrepaired but, then again, they weren’t the kind to wrap their offspring in cotton wool. If one of them was stupid enough to go wandering the dark woods, that was their lookout.
There was a faintly discernible path, a shoe-thin line of brown earth between the ferns and brambles. The thin, slick-barked trees (no conkers, acorns or apples here either) created a broad and almost total canopy that reduced the light level to a wintry gloom.
Nina listened and heard voices some distance ahead. She crept forward, her attention split equally between the voices and making sure she didn’t step on any noisy twigs (if cinema had taught her anything, it was that forests were full of treacherously noisy twigs). What she wasn’t looking for and failed to notice were two youths in army cammos. The first she knew was when something sharp jabbed into the small of her back.
She turned and nearly disembowelled herself on the lad’s bayonet.
“Don’t move, you adn-bhul shaska.”
Nina blinked.
“You kiss your mom with that mouth?”
The Mammonite girl raised her rifle, placing her bayonet inches from Nina’s chest.
“Our mum isn’t here.”
“Yeah. If I was your mum, I’d abandon you in the woods too.”
The lad put two fingers in his mouth and unleashed a migraine-inducing whistle. There was a rustle in the foliage and Yang, Croesus and two other adolescent Mammonites appeared. All four were smiling. The threatening power dynamic Nina had seen between Yang and Croesus in the playground had vanished. They stood shoulder to shoulder now as friends. It had been a lie, just for Nina. And she’d fallen for it.
“I should imagine that you’re all wondering why I’ve summoned you here?” she ventured.
“Summoned? Us?” sneered Yang.
“Absolutely,” said Nina. “I’m doing the old detective thing. You know, like Miss Marbles, where I reveal who did it. And, um, what it was they did.”
“She’s adn-bhul crazy,” said the army cadet boy.
“And I’ve already spoken to you about your language, you bhul-tamade pabbe-sucker.” She gave them her best stone-cold bitch stare. “You think this was a trap? You think I’ve fallen into your trap? Nah, this is where I point the finger and you get to plead for forgiveness.”
It wasn’t working. She could see from their faces it wasn’t working.
“That wasn’t Croesus’s satchel we found, was it?” she said. “It was your teacher’s. Your old teacher. What was it? Did she give you too much homework? Did she forget to give you a gold star? That’s why you killed her.”
Yang shook her head.
“Kim. Sperr felai p’at umlaq.”
Nina tried to duck but the army cadet girl was quicker, reversing her rifle and slamming the stock into Nina’s temple. It hurt. It really bloody well hurt.
The chair of Thatcher Academy school governors stood, knife in hand. And Vivian stood her ground. In her pocket, her phone buzzed.
“You are not going to kill me, Mr Mammon-Mammonson,” she said.
“That’s wishful and delusional thinking, Mrs Grey,” he grinned.
“Not at all,” she replied. “And I will give you three reasons if you are prepared to listen.”
“Three reasons,” he said.
It was a simple ploy on Vivian’s part. He could kill her if he wanted. He was notionally within his rights. But Mammonites liked numbers and they liked order. They couldn’t resist a list.
“One,” she said, “I no more work for you than Miss Cook-Mammonson works for me.”
“I don’t work for you,” said the headteacher defensively.
“Of course, you don’t,” said Vivian, “even though my taxes pay your salary and you are ultimately employed by the government that I voted into power.”
“Hardly relevant,” said Xerxes.
“Two,” she continued, “I am extraordinarily valuable to you.”
He arched an eyebrow at her.
“If I can be this calm, collected and authoritative in the face of death,” she said, “just imagine how effective I will be when I’m pleading for your life.”
He paused at that. Xerxes said nothing but spread his arms wide for Vivian to go on, to explain herself or to hang herself with her own words.
“By contract, the children of Yoth Mammon have been given the village of Dickens Heath. Boundary lines have been drawn, the extent of your power set,” she said.
“You don’t tell us what to do,” said Xerxes.
“Quite right. I don’t. Yo-Morgantus does.” She saw doubt flicker in his eyes. “My colleagues are currently seeking out and destroying any Dinh’r currently residing in the Anchor tunnels. You knew that was where we found the remains. That probably means that you – collectively you,” she said, drawing the headteacher and the two silent governors into her accusation, “are responsible or at least complicit in them being there. I could speculate. A ritual? Death as sport? Maybe just a way of disposing of those who simply don’t cut the mustard.”
“How we treat our own kind or any humans we come across is our business, Mrs Grey,” said the headteacher. “The Anchor facility is not under your jurisdiction.”
“Nor yours. As I said, your authority extends to the boundaries of this village and it is Yo-Morgantus who holds power
in the Venislarn court. He rules this city and I do wonder how he will respond to the discovery that you have been breeding Dinh’r and engaging in unauthorised activities beneath his city streets.”
“Yo-Morgantus is nothing,” blurted one of the governors.
“Nothing?”
“A petty princeling beside our royal mother.”
“Yes, but she’s not here,” said Vivian. “I’m not overly certain where Kal Frexo leng-space is, but I think it is quite a long way away. And even if Yo-Morgantus is, and I quote and will recite when asked, ‘a petty princeling’ and we humans mere peasants, you are still nothing more than, what, knights or barons in his court.”
Xerxes Mammon-Mammonite inhaled deeply and made a deeply dissatisfied noise in his throat that was probably meant to sound like a growl but which sounded more like an asthmatic vacuum cleaner.
“Not peasants. Livestock,” he corrected her.
“Fair enough, if that is our place in the order of things. But, to return to the all-important point three, this particular piece of livestock is the only one who might dissuade her colleagues from telling your current master what you have been up to.” She took her phone out of her pocket. There was a fatuous text from Nina. “Ah, a communication from one of my colleagues now.”
“You lie,” said Xerxes.
“Not at all,” she said truthfully.
“When our holy mother returns…” warned one of the governors.
“Is that going to be in the next twenty minutes?” Vivian asked. “I would guess that is approximately how long you have.”
Xerxes approached her, the knife still raised. The jagged blade looked foolishly impractical but Vivian did not doubt its ability to inflict life-ending injuries. Xerxes, reeking of cologne, twisted it to catch the light.
There was a knock at the door behind Vivian and a Mammonite woman entered.
“Sorry,” she said bashfully. “I was just tidying up. You wanted to see me. I didn’t know if you wanted me to…” She looked at Vivian and the knife. “Maybe you’re busy.”
“Ah, Miss Carter-Mammonson,” said Xerxes, suddenly full of avuncular cheer. “This has direct relevance for you.”
