by Heide Goody
Vivian had Kathy drive round the Mammon-Mammonson Investment building twice, which was hard because the roadwork diversions associated with the redevelopment of Chamberlain Square meant that circling the building involved circling the Town Hall, the Council House and the crane-filled demolition site of the old Central Library. After they’d parked up, Cameron led them, black pen nib in hand, back along the road and round the building on foot to confirm.
“It’s in there,” said Cameron, having to raise his voice over the noise of traffic from the dual carriageway next to them as they looked up at the former stock exchange building. “All the missing pages as far as this samoha dowsing method can detect.”
Vivian looked at her two candidates. “Mammonites have the missing pages from the Big Bloody Book. Speculate.”
“It’s very valuable,” said Kathy. “They could have stolen it simply for its value.”
“No,” said Cameron. “The Mammonites are not law-breakers. They operate entirely within the laws and treaties that govern the local Venislarn.”
“Then they bought it from the thieves.”
“The recovery of lost Kal Frexo runes might suggest the book has been used in that research.”
Kathy’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. The woman really ought to do something to get them under control, thought Vivian.
“A thought, Dr Kaur?” said Vivian.
“Yoth Mammon is currently residing in Kal Frexo leng-space.”
And there it was, thought Vivian. The candidates were now on the same page as her. It had taken them long enough.
“The lost runes of Kal Frexo are summoning runes,” said Cameron.
“But we’ve only seen seventeen out of the twenty,” said Kathy.
“Doesn’t mean the Mammonites haven’t seen the others,” Cameron replied. “And those OOPArts in the Vault that might have been brought into existence by someone uncovering truths in the missing pages…”
“What of them?” said Vivian.
“A vase of creation. The cube of Prein. The keys of Trek-lehn. They all have association with summonings, creations, openings. It may be no coincidence.”
“They are going to bring Yoth Mammon back,” said Kathy.
“Yoth Mammon the corruptor, the defiler of souls, the dredger in the lake of desires,” said Cameron.
“You’re smiling,” said Kathy.
“What? No.”
She was right. Vivian could see the man’s eyes positively glittering.
“It’s just… exhilarating,” said Cameron. “A goddess no one alive today has ever glimpsed.”
“A shapeless space-worm that’s all teeth and spikes. As big as… as big as…. well, she’s just bloody huge.”
“Exactly,” said Cameron, failing to keep the excitement from his face. “I mean it’s terrible, really terrible and we should do everything we can to stop it. But – jebor vas ur! – it’s still very thrilling.”
Vivian gestured to the building behind them. “So, what do we do now?”
“We go in,” said Cameron. “We have probable cause. We talk to whoever’s in charge and we ask them their intentions.”
Kathy had a deeply perturbed look on her face. “Can’t we just call for backup? I don’t think this is our job.”
Vivian brought up the contacts on her phone and selected Morag Murray.
“Indeed, Dr Kaur. It’s not your job, is it?”
The clean-up job on the blasted body parts of nearly a dozen lu’crik oyh was passed down the line from the response team to the police, back to the response team and then down to the school caretakers. The band of indentured human workers took a look at the mass of spider-fish bits in the sports hall and set about digging a pit on the back field.
Morag Senior, Morag Junior, Nina and Rod stood at the police cordon at the end of the school drive where Rod had now relocated his car. The show was over here. There would have to be a thorough inspection of Mammonite back gardens for any overlooked beasts but, apart from that, matters were back in Mammonite hands. The rogue occultist Jeffney Ray had given them the slip in the chaos and their search for him would have to begin afresh.
As Morag Senior’s phone started to ring, Rod gestured questioningly at the soft toy she carried in her hand.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” she said, passing it over. “This is one of ours.”
“Ours?” said Rod.
Senior answered the call. “Hello?”
“Ms Murray,” said Vivian, “I would like an update on your meeting with Yo-Morgantus.”
“Um, yes.”
“You were going to brief the Venislarn court on our concerns with Mammon-Mammonson Investments and their tiresome complaints against us.”
“That’s exactly right. That was the plan.”
“I think it’s important to go back and inform him that we have compelling evidence they have, in their possession, a stolen section of the Wittgenstein Volume.”
“What?”
There was a sigh. “Please don’t feign deafness as a stand-in for surprise, Ms Murray. You heard me well enough. I am going to speak to Rod Campbell next and advise him to come down to the Mammon-Mammonson building to join me while I speak to the managing director.”
“I’m sure I can tell Rod that for you,” said Senior. Rod frowned at her. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to come down to Mammon-Mammonson and help you question the boss.”
Rod looked to the heavens in tedium and nodded.
“Oh, I don’t need his help,” said Vivian. “The man’s conversational skills are functional at best. I just need an armed escort in case – in case – the Mammonites decide to attempt anything unwise.”
“I’ll make sure he comes armed.”
“With what?” mouthed Rod, pulling the trio of claims forms from his pocket.
“Speak later,” said Senior and ended the call. “Looks like my meeting with Yo-Morgantus is a bit overdue.”
Nina put her fingers between her lips and produced a wonderfully unladylike whistle. Chief Inspector Ricky Lee, talking to a uniformed colleague, looked round and waved.
“Ricky and I will give you a lift to the Cube,” Nina said to Senior.
“Thanks.”
“On the understanding that we’re stopping for fish and chips on the way.”
Morag Junior paused in the seemingly impossible task of trying to clean the lu’crik oyh slime from Steve the Destroyer. “Where the hell are you going to find a chippy open in the middle of Thursday afternoon?”
“Ask and you shall find answers,” said Nina, getting out her phone.
On the corner of Margaret Street and Great Charles Street, Vivian stood with the two remaining candidates for the tech support role. The day had not gone as she had anticipated but it had given her a superb idea for future recruitment. She made several short notes in her pad and was already mentally drafting a proposal document to present to Personnel.
“When will the successful applicant be informed?” asked Kathy Kaur.
“I should think it will be today,” said Vivian.
“And the final decision will be made by…?”
“The most qualified person to do so.”
“Er, ladies,” said Cameron and nodded behind them.
Three Mammonite suits approached. The middle one smiled. His teeth were brighter than his shirt.
“Mrs Vivian Grey,” he said. “A pleasure to find you here. A happy accident, you being in the vicinity?”
“Yes, Mr Lodge-Mammonson.” She nodded politely. “Let’s say that.”
“And I don’t believe we’ve met your colleagues before,” said the Mammonite.
“Only one colleague.”
“Oh. Which…” He looked from one to the other.
“That remains to be seen,” said Vivian.
“Mr Mammon-Mammonson has asked me to escort you in for your meeting.”
“We had no meeting scheduled.”
“Really?” said Lodge-Mammonson. The surprise on his face was en
tirely false. “But you had intended to speak to him today, surely.”
The Mammonites that flanked Lodge-Mammonson were silent and impassive. One looked like his skin was several sizes too large. The other had tombstone looks and might have been more at home on a slab somewhere.
“Yes,” said Vivian. It did no good to lie to Mammonites. “But I am waiting for my other colleagues to arrive first.”
“And yet, it shames one to say, Mr Mammon-Mammonson was quite insistent the meeting be brought forward.”
“I am sure we will be with him soon enough.”
“As I say,” said Lodge-Mammonson with what appeared to be genuine regret, “he was quite insistent.”
The two other Mammonites had knives in their hands. There was no menace in their body language; they held their blades as carpenters would hold their saws, painters their brushes.
“Are you threatening us in public?” said Vivian, voice raised in pique.
Lodge-Mammonson leaned a little closer.
“We can do it in private if you wish, Mrs Grey. Business is all about putting the customer at ease.”
Morag Senior unbuckled her seatbelt as Ricky Lee pulled the police car in on Wharfside Street in the shadow of the Cube.
“Are you coming in, Nina?” she said.
“Nah,” said Nina from the front passenger seat.
“Why? Scared?”
“I don’t want any of them stealing my chips. Want one?” Nina offered the mass of chip papers through the gap to Senior.
In the ten minutes since she’d bought them, Nina had eaten most of the chips and all the batter off the fish, leaving a scraggly piece of cod.
Senior shook her head.
“You know, you shouldn’t encourage her,” Senior said to Ricky.
The chief inspector gave her a hopelessly happy look. “Does she need encouragement?”
“I will be as quick as I can,” said Senior and got out.
The cube was twenty-five storeys of apartments, businesses and retail spaces and most of it was occupied by humans who had no idea that they were living in the basement of the gods. The concierge, a human servant of the Venislarn whose body had taken a relaxed attitude to which bits should be sporting hair and which should not, directed Senior with a hairy finger to the lift.
Yo-Morgantus would be expecting her and, she was sure, one day he would kill her. It was odd, she thought as she went up, to be ascending into hell, not descending.
The lift door opened. There was no one there to greet her. The only sound was the constant moan of a heating vent.
Senior checked herself. There was a drying grey stain where the slime-soaked pabash kaj doll had struck her jacket. Senior debated for a second what to do and then simply took the jacket off and bundled it up beside a waste bin. There was no putting things off.
She pushed open the only set of doors leading off from the lobby and entered the court of the Venislarn.
There were gods. Small g. The Venislarn. Vastly intelligent or dribblingly insane; it was hard to tell. Hideous and angelic. Strange and formless. As familiar as childhood terrors. Hungry. It was impossible to say where or when they had come from but the place they had come to was here.
The hall was higher than it architecturally had any right to be. It was dressed in black and steel and mirrors and monsters. Draybbea hung from rafters and observed Senior coolly. Presz’lings clustered at their dark tables and barely looked up to acknowledge her. A stone Skrendul loomed large and still in the corner, waiting out the days, months or years until the Venislarn Soulgate closed around the earth and it could romp through the playground of the eternal hell that would follow. Off to her right, a trio of August Handmaidens of Prein, raised themselves up on their jointed legs, massive shells rotating across their bodies to present the frozen faces of screaming babies to Senior. There were allegedly twelve Handmaidens of Prein. Were. That number was down to ten now and Senior admitted she was at least partly responsible. She wasn’t sure why they hadn’t already exacted their bloody revenge.
There were courts like this across the world. Senior imagined that they all looked pretty much like this one except in perhaps two small regards. Firstly, long vine-like fronds hung down from the hot vents in the high ceiling: those were Yo-Morgantus’s tendrils, his presence in the room. The other key difference was the sheer number of naked ginger men and women in the room.
Yo-Morgantus liked redheads. And he liked them naked because being a redhead was not degrading enough. They mingled with the gods and goddesses and the things that aspired to godhood, playing in secluded mud pools, chatting amiably like friends at dinner; but they were definitely Yo-Morgantus’s playthings. Occasionally, one of the tendrils would descend a few feet to touch a ginger head and the human would immediately move off on a new course of action.
A middle-aged man with heavy moobs and an apron of stomach fat that nearly covered his genitals waddled up to Senior.
“Our lord is waiting,” he said. “This way.”
He turned, absently scratching his bum, and led her through a door, along a corridor and through to another hall, more realistic in dimensions and (although as dark as the first hall) not decorated by someone who thought shiny was the hallmark of superior design. This hall was empty, but for the usual tendrils hanging from the ceiling and a naked young woman at its centre. Senior recognised her as the woman who had been watching the Black Barge in Gas Street Basin.
Senior looked up at the ceiling, toward the mass of amorphous flesh that resided in the spaces beyond. “Greetings, my Lord Morgantus,” she called.
She approached the woman but kept a respectful distance. Senior liked to keep her distance from casually naked people; it was a little rule of hers.
“Good afternoon. We’ve not been formally introduced.”
“I am Brigit,” said the young woman coldly. Senior reckoned that someone with a body like that could afford a few manners, but such was life.
So, this was Brigit, Yo-Morgantus’s favourite mouthpiece. The one time Morag had previously been brought to court, Morgantus had spoken through a man, Drew, a man Morag had unwisely taken to her bed and then seen murdered by the August Handmaiden of Prein she had obviously slighted.
“You have come to explain yourself,” said Brigit.
“Does Lord Morgantus need me to explain myself?”
“We have had… troubling reports about the consular mission. Getting ideas above our station, are we?”
A streamer-tendril lolled across the woman’s shoulder. Yo-Morgantus could make her thoughts his, put an idea into anyone he touched. Where this emissary ended and the most powerful god in the city began was a debatable point. All Senior could be certain of was that one of them was talking like a complete douche.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard but we have – as always – acted in accordance with your wishes.”
“Oh,” said Brigit haughtily, “you presume to know our wishes.”
Senior stepped forward, naked lady or no naked lady.
“Do you want to tell me what we’ve supposedly done? I can then put you straight on what you –”
“What,” said Brigit loudly, cutting across Senior and pointing at Senior’s throat, “is that?”
Senior put her hand to the pendant necklace, the swirl of translucent impossibleness that Cameron had given to her – had given to Junior first before it was passed onto her.
“It’s just a necklace. It’s glass. Cquluman’i I think.”
“That’s a claim marker, from a shodu-bon.”
“Is it?” said Senior. “Lovely.” Shodu-bon. The name was vaguely familiar. One of the deep sea Venislarn? A vassal species?
“You cannot give yourself to them.”
“It was just a gift.”
“No.”
Senior saw the tendril descend and tried to step out of its reach but wasn’t fast enough. It brushed her scalp –
Green. The ocean was green but the surface was thousands of feet over
head and there was no light. The ocean was the green of alien night. The life-extinguishing pressure of these depths weighed down on all things. Motes of dirt, crumbs of stone and slivers of rotten flesh all hung in the water, unable to rise, unable to sink. This was a place of the unliving. Below, dark arches, fallen columns and abandoned temples appeared as only silhouettes: the city of Cary’yeh, a necropolis of sunken gods.
Cameron Barnes hung in the water, in the bulky shell of his Newtsuit atmospheric diving suit.
– Morag Senior had not known what a Newtsuit was but the information arrived in her consciousness, like a lost memory regained –
An umbilical line and a faint stream of super-compressed bubbles ran up toward the distant surface. There was an electronic commlink in the helmet but Cameron had turned it off. He enjoyed the silence. The weightlessness, the silence and the enshrouding dark; it was a fragment of oblivion.
Chagulameya swam up from the black silent city, fading into existence. Cameron watched the yon-bun dweller approach, her papillae undulating, her tube feet paddling. She made straight for him at speed, her feeding tentacles already distending hungrily from her calcarate mouth.
Four times more massive than the human diver, Chagulameya wrapped herself around Cameron and prised the plates of his Newtsuit apart, shelling him like a nut. The pressure of the deep ocean should have squished him like a tomato under a tyre but she kept him whole, wrapped in her lucid frills. And now she could hold back no longer. He reached out his arms toward her cylindrical body. Chagulameya disgorged her upper intestine over his chest and head to consume him.
No, not consume him. She placed her mucosal tentacles upon his thighs and worked the claim marker into his chest while he worked his tongue against her milky tentacles.
Morag Senior fought her way back to her own consciousness and her own body and batted Yo-Morgantus’s tendril away. She shuddered and ripped the necklace from around her neck.
She spat. She physically spat.
“He was… was canoodling with that thing.”
“Canoodling,” said Brigit, tasting the word. “Yes.”
Cameron Barnes. The one that got away. Yep, she was definitely over him now. She threw the pendant aside where it bounced across the floor.
