Dream London

by Tony Ballantyne

  I turned and walked towards the lift. I pressed the button. The doors slid open and I stepped inside.

  “Goodbye,” said Miss Merchant as the doors slid shut. And then I was descending, and then I was walking through the large atrium, and then I was standing outside Angel Tower, ankle deep in yellow and white blossom, and the world continued to slowly twist itself in knots, just as it had done before I entered the building.

  All I had gained was my dignity.

  TWELVE

  AROUND ANGEL TOWER

  THERE WAS A different feel to the streets outside Angel Tower. The previous feeling of hurriedness and self importance had been replaced by a prickling uncertainty. There was an underlying sense of panic waiting just around the corner.

  The towers were emptying. Men were milling in the streets, tears in their eyes.

  I walked through the middle of this with no purpose of my own. A man, staggering aimlessly by, noticed me and seized my arm.

  “You! I recognise you. You’re someone important, aren’t you?” He looked at my green jacket and nodded. “You are. You’re a man who will recognise talent. Are you looking for a clerk? Hire me!”

  His words were enough to ignite the flames in the other men. Pale faces turned in my direction.

  “You want to hire a clerk? One moment, let me find my card!”

  “Don’t listen to these people. My CV speaks for itself...”

  “Hire me!”

  I found myself in the middle of an expanding crowd of people, all desperately trying to engage my attention, shouting their claim on a job I wasn’t offering them. White cuffs emerged from dark suits as hands reached towards me, brandishing business cards.

  “The Sheep Tower closed down! Just like that! They’re relocating the Head Office, they said. I need work, I need it now.”

  The man was in his fifties, he had tears in his eyes.

  “Inclement Tower has shed fifty per cent of its staff! They say that we’re surplus to requirements!”

  I wondered, was it the uniform, the old Captain Wedderburn charm, or could they see the new me? The man who had contracted himself to serve his fellow human beings? Whichever way it was, they kept pressing forward. A tall silver-haired gentlemen in an expensive suit shouldered his way through the crowd. The others stood back respectfully.

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out a card.

  “Sir Hugo Cameron,” he said, handing me the rectangular card. “Former MD for Ascension Tower. Shall we retire to your premises to discuss my future employment with you?”

  I stepped back. The crowd was pushing closer to me, and I tripped on the shoes of someone behind me.

  “Get back!” I said. “What’s the matter with you all?”

  “Give the man some space,” said Sir Hugo Cameron. “We have important business to discuss! This is not a hiring fair!”

  “Leave me alone!” I said. In between the legs of the businessmen, faces were emerging. The besuited beggars who had sheltered in the walls of the surrounding streets. “All of you! What’s the matter with you?”

  “We need work!”

  “We want to work!”

  “All the towers are laying off! The message went out just after the blossom fell! New premises are opening up in the parks!”

  “We’ll be sent to the workhouses!”

  Those words silenced them. Several of the men choked back sobs, they pulled white handkerchiefs from their pockets and pressed them to their noses. And I felt no pity for any of them. These were the people who had raised the rents and foreclosed the mortgages and cast innocent families onto the streets. It looked as if they were getting a chance to see what it was like on the other side. Let them all rot in the workhouses.

  “You want jobs?” I said, and I began to smile. This was so sweet. But then, up the street, I saw the rising bulk of Angel Tower, yellow and white blossom plastered down one side by the wind. And an idea occurred to me...

  “You want jobs?” I said, the smile draining from my face. Another expression took its place, and Captain Wedderburn, leader of men, asserted himself for maybe the last time.

  “You want jobs? You want something to do? You want to make a difference?”

  “Yes!”

  The crowd was looking at me expectantly. I had them now. I may have been a new person, but I could still talk, and I’d always been good at persuading people to do things that were bad for them. Well, now it was time to persuade them to do something for their own benefit. I raised my voice.

  “Listen,” I said. “Listen!”

  An expectant hush fell on the crowd.

  “I have a job for you all,” I said. “I have a task to the benefit of everyone in Dream London!”

  “What is it?” asked Sir Hugo Cameron.

  “I’m raising...” I paused, building the tension. I saw the crowd lean forward, eager to hear more. I had them now.

  “I’m raising... an army!”

  You could feel the disappointment. The crowd seemed to diminish.

  “An army?” said one nearby man with red hair.

  “Yes, an army!” I said. “Gentlemen, listen. Look behind you! Look over there at Angel Tower! That place is the source of all our troubles! That’s the place that has made Dream London what it is!”

  The crowd was silent.

  “Up there,” I said. “On the 853rd floor, lie the contracts that have tied our world to the others! If we were to storm Angel Tower, if we were to take those contracts and bring them here and tear them up, then perhaps London would return to normal!”

  The crowd was not impressed.

  “Perhaps,” said the man with the red hair. “But surely fighting is the job of the army?”

  “And we could be that army,” I said, faltering. I’d never encountered this sort of a response before. In the past, people would have been eating out of Captain Wedderburn’s hand by now. But it occurred to me that I was no longer Captain Wedderburn: I’d signed that name away up on the 853rd floor.

  “We could be that army,” I repeated, a little less confidently. “Surely it’s better to try than to just sit here and await our fate?”

  “Storm Angel Tower?” said Sir Hugo Cameron. “I’d see myself in more of a leadership position, guiding our forces. Besides, joining an army is hardly likely to help our job prospects, is it?”

  “That’s a fair point,” said red hair.

  “Also,” said Sir Hugo Cameron, warming to his theme and speaking in a biscuity tone, “Angel Tower is a valuable part of the Square Mile. If we were to attack it, it might relocate elsewhere. That wouldn’t be good for business, would it?”

  “True, true,” said the man with red hair. A few of the other people in the crowd were nodding wisely.

  “But Angel Tower is already relocating.”

  “Only partially,” said Hugo Cameron. “There are still jobs here. We’ve got to allow the people who work there to fuck things up as they choose for everyone living here otherwise they might pull out of the Square Mile entirely. That’s just good business sense.”

  “Good business sense...” muttered a few people.

  “But...” I began.

  A man in a grey jacket that stood out amongst the dark suits pushed his way forward through the crowd. He wore a ginger moustache and horn-rimmed spectacles and had the air of a freethinker.

  “Hold on,” he said. “This army. Does it pay?”

  “Does it pay?” I said. “No. But it will help to restore...”

  Ginger moustache waved me to silence.

  “Well, I have a wife and three children to support. I need money. What’s the use of a job that doesn’t pay? I could find that in the workhouse.”

  “Yes, but...”

  “Although,” said Sir Hugo Cameron, thoughtfully, “a private militia is an idea. There is talk of work out along the river. This is an idea we could take to some contacts that I have...”

  “No!” I said, “Not a private militia! Listen, people. If we were to attac
k Angel Tower right now...”

  “Not right now,” said a man nearby. “Not right now. These things need to be organised properly. We need to tender for contracts to supply the army, form committees to ensure that proper procedure is followed...”

  There was a commotion at the back of the crowd. A huge bulk was approaching, pumpkin head visible above the dark-suited men. One of the Quantifiers. I turned and ran without hesitation, pushing my way through the crowd behind me.

  The Quantifier ran too. It was gaining on me. I pulled my pistol from my jacket and held it out before me. The dark-suited men who blocked my way scattered. But still they straightened their ties, wiped at their eyes, held out cards.

  “Listen, I need to work. I’m offering you the chance to employ...”

  “Get out of the fucking way!” I screamed.

  I pushed the man aside and dodged through the crowds of people.

  Where was I to go, I wondered? Not to the Poison Yews. I’d had it with the Cartel. I needed to get to the Laughing Dog and Bill. Or to Amit. Maybe the Indians or the Americans could make use of my knowledge.

  “Apples! Get your apples here!”

  The shout rose up above the snuffling and bawling of the crowd.

  “Get your apples!”

  I stopped, ducked into the café where only yesterday I had breakfasted with Rudolf Donati.

  “Coffee, sir?” asked the waiter. “Take your mind off this past half hour? Things have been a bit funny ever since the crash.”

  “Yes, coffee,” I said, not really listening. “That would be good.”

  I sat down at a table and listened to the hiss of the machine as the waiter fixed me an espresso. Through the golden letters that decorated the window I saw someone tall wheel a barrow down the road, laden with beautiful red apples. One of the Quantifiers.

  My tongue was wriggling at the thought of coffee. Out there, soon, hundreds of businessmen would be eating apples. Soon they’d be feeling the same as me. The Daddio couldn’t attack the towers directly in the past. Now that all those men had been laid off, he hadn’t wasted any time in recruiting his own army.

  “Get your lovely apples! Take away those unemployment blues!”

  The hiss of the coffee machine, the lovely earthy scent filling the air.

  Look at all those people, I thought. Like children. Dream London has done that to them. I thought of Alan and the Executive Dining Room, of how Angel Tower took away from the people in there any sense of responsibility for their own lives.

  “Your coffee, sir.”

  My tongue leapt.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t stay.”

  I dropped some coins on the table.

  “Is there a back way out of here?” I asked.

  “Sorry, it’s not for customers.”

  “Do I have to pull out my pistol?”

  The waiter was a big man, but a sensible man. He shrugged.

  “Through there,” he said, pointing.

  I WALKED OUT of the café into a little alley out back. A pair of jewelled salamanders crouched there, licking at ants on the pavement. I wondered about capturing a thousand salamanders and letting them loose on the 854th floor. One of the salamanders looked at me and licked its lips.

  Mmmmm, it said.

  I HEADED BACK to the Laughing Dog. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Of all the people I knew in Dream London, Bill was the only one who seemed in control. Second Eddie had gone, Belltower End was off limits, Alan was losing it. I couldn’t run, I had to fight. Bill seemed to be the best placed to do that.

  The drifts of yellow and white blossom, the fallout from so many nuclear explosions, were piled everywhere in the streets The good citizens of Dream London trailed their feet through the drifts, they wiped their sleeves across their windows to make a space to see out. The children threw handfuls of blossom into the air and ran through it, laughing. It was another hot Dream London day. The big yellow sun squatted in the sky, wobbling in the heat haze. The blossom dazzled the eye.

  But for the most part, people were nervous. They were on edge. They felt the change in the air. They felt the sense of something coming. It wasn’t just the spreading panic caused by the lay-offs in the City. How many of them had been to the Spiral and seen Pandemonium reaching up towards them? How many of them had heard the stories about the parks?

  They pushed down that fear with noise and bravado. The football fans were out, dressed in chocolate and cream and burgundy and silver, ready for tonight’s big match. Handclaps and cheers sounded from the the streets.

  I walked through the blazing morning, a terrible thirst rising within me. I needed a drink.

  It was after midday by the time I came to Hayling Street, hot, tired and footsore, and so, so thirsty. The wind blew thin ribbons of blossom across the smooth white dome of the Egg Market, out across the blue sky.

  I walked down the bustling street towards the Laughing Dog, past the market stalls. People were stocking up on food, that much was obvious. They had come from the Egg Market carrying baskets loaded with eggs of all sizes, now they were stocking up on meat and vegetables. I wanted to eat, but my thirst was worse.

  There was someone sitting on the pavement outside the Laughing Dog. I didn’t recognise her until she spoke to me.

  “So, you came back then.”

  I looked down to see Anna leaning against the wall. She was sitting on a little rectangular case. I remembered the sound of the trumpet that I heard playing at night in the Poison Yews.

  “I came back,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “They came for Mother and Father first thing this morning. The workhouse.”

  “So quickly?”

  “They’re looking to beef up the labour force,” said Anna. “Things are beginning to move...”

  “Your father only lost his job last night!”

  “The bank came round at five o’clock this morning. They said that now my father didn’t have a job, they weren’t confident that he could pay the mortgage. He asked them to give him time to get another job. They said he could have one hour. You should have seen him, James. He said he would get one, that Shaqeel would sort it out. That the other members of the Cartel would help. He wanted to run out into the night there and then, still in his pyjamas.”

  “And did he?”

  “Mother wouldn’t let him. She said if they were going to do this, they would do it with dignity.”

  “I hope they did.”

  “Of course they didn’t. Mother opened a bottle and started drinking. Father just stared at the wall. At six o’clock the bank foreclosed on the mortgage. This horrible little rat of a bank manager who had been sitting in our lounge, said thank you, stood up, closed his briefcase, and said he would see himself out. Father and Mother looked at each other as he left the room, and we heard voices in the hall. Father burst into tears.”

  “Who was in the hall?”

  “The people from the workhouse. One man, one woman. Come to take Mother and Father away. They do everything respectfully, you know. No mixing of the sexes. That would be improper.”

  Anna spoke with a calm detachment. She remained seated on her instrument case, looking at up me with her clear gaze, recounting the morning’s events as if they were an ordinary occurrence. Which, come to think of it, they probably were in Dream London.

  “They’d brought uniforms for us,” she said, in the same matter-of-fact voice. “All our other clothes and possessions belonged to the bank now. Mother and Father changed without a fight. And that was it, they took them away. They didn’t even have time to say goodbye properly.”

  “What about you?” I said. “Why didn’t they take you?”

  “They wanted to. They had a uniform and everything. I told them no. They didn’t know what to do. They’re not used to people fighting back. Usually, by the time the bank has finished with people, all the fight has gone from them. It had certainly left Father. He walked away meekly, looking at the ground all the while, lost in
shame.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Why?” asked Anna, rather impatiently. “It’s not your fault.”

  She stared up at me.

  “Why are you waiting here?” I asked.

  “We can fight them,” said Anna, with quiet confidence.

  “Fight who?” She hadn’t answered my question, I noticed.

  “Them,” she said. “The people who are doing this to us.”

  “People?” I said. “Anna, it’s just a bunch of ants.”

  “The ants may be the source of the problem, Captain Wedderburn, but the real resistance know who the real enemy are. We’re ready to fight them.”

  The real resistance, she said. Not the vainglorious selfishness of the Cartel, but the real resistance who waited unnoticed in the shadows. The Poison Yews had been home to the resistance all along. I had just been looking in the wrong direction. Anna was part of it, young and clever and quietly brave. She deserved better than the mess people like her parents had made of her world. She didn’t deserve to die to pay for their mistakes.

  “Fight who?” I said.

  “The people who sold us to the ants. The people who let them go on owning us.”

  She looked so calm, so clearly unaware of what she was letting herself in for I felt I had to say something.

  “Don’t sacrifice yourself, Anna. It’s every man for themselves in the new world. It’s definitely every man for himself in Dream London. That’s the way they changed us.”

  Anna rose to her feet. She looked down to check that her cornet case was undisturbed.

  “You’re different, Captain,” she said. “You’re different to last night.”

  “It’s not Captain any more. I’m just plain James now.”

  “You are different.”

  She tilted her head to examine me for other signs of change.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I was going to see Bill. Perhaps she can help me raise an army. I hope she can...”

  “An army? To do what?”

  “To take on Angel Tower.”