Vaughn Parry dies.
Shem Shem Tsien twists around, draws his gun and fires at Simon Alleyn. Alleyn cries out, falls, clutching his side. He may live. He may die. It’s not decided. Not yet.
The Opium Khan turns back towards Joe Spork, pistol in hand, and Joe brings up the tommy gun and sets his feet.
“Go ahead,” Joe says. “Let’s see what happens.”
Shem Shem Tsien stares.
And stares.
And does not know the answer.
For a moment, a look of panic flickers across the matinée-idol face. It is so swiftly suppressed that you could miss it. You could see it and never know it for what it was. Unless you were waiting for it.
“You like to be in the driving seat, don’t you?” Joe Spork murmurs. “You don’t like to gamble. You don’t have faith, so you want to force God to talk to you. You can’t control death, so you kill, because if you become death maybe you won’t die. And just for insurance, you become a dead man, too …” He grins, wolfishly toothy. “This must be a real pisser. Staring down the barrel of this gun, knowing that even if you shoot me dead first time, I’ll fire this thing, and there is absolutely no way of controlling whether it kills you or not. One of us will die, maybe both of us. But we can’t know in advance.”
“Stalemate,” snaps the Opium Khan. “It hardly matters. Time is on my side.”
Polly Cradle’s laughter trills out, clear and unafraid. “Not by half, it’s not,” she says. She steps through the ranks of the Waiting Men to rest her hand on her lover’s shoulder. “It’s now, Joe. It’s all right. Do what you have to do.”
Joe Spork has fought and maybe killed already tonight. It is not impossible that the explosion of the Lovelace ended living men who might have been returned to themselves. He has, in combat, inflicted injuries which may prove to be fatal. All the same, he has never been a killer, not an executioner nor an assassin, not from a standing start. But on the other hand, here he is, and this is his life, and if he blinks or hesitates, the world ends. Staring across the gap which separates them, he sees that the Opium Khan already knows what he will say. He says it anyway, with a sense of growing certainty which comes not from outside, not from the Apprehension Engine or the bees, but from himself. With Polly beside him, this choice is easy. He fixes his eyes on Shem Shem Tsien.
“You took my home and murdered my friends. You tortured me to death, twice, and brought me back. You hounded my grandmother.
“You tried to kill Polly to spite me.
“You break things which are beautiful, because it pleases you.”
The Opium Khan opens his mouth to say something in return.
The tommy gun blazes white fire.
Crazy Joe Spork, finger on the trigger, riding the thunder. His shoulders push down on the gangster’s gun, his chest labours to hold it on target. He sweeps it back and forth across the space where Shem Shem Tsien was standing. He feels the sting of something against his cheek as he turns, feels something pluck at his coat, and realises these are bullets, and does not care. He fires until the magazine is empty, letting the gangster’s gun have its head, seeking to erase his enemy from the world. When the gun clicks empty, he steps forward through a cloud of gun smoke of his own making to use the weapon’s butt if he has to, to grab and tear. There’s blood on his shirt, and his ear is torn and burned. He’s been shot. Dull paths of pain are scored across his face, and one arm aches.
Shot, but not killed.
Through the smoke, he sees Shem Shem Tsien’s mouth contort in a sneer of utter contempt—a sneer which cuts off sharply as Bastion Banister shuffles painfully forward to snarl a reply directly into his face. Joe can see—can feel, immanently—the Opium Khan’s confusion. How can a pug nine inches high stand eye to eye with a god? Some ridiculous last-minute prank? A dog on stilts? A stratagem involving strings?
Shem Shem Tsien’s head rests where it has fallen, a yard or more behind his body. The line of bullets from the tommy gun has cut through his neck like a sword.
Comprehension arrives, whether from the Apprehension Engine or from his fading vision, or from the feel of stone under his ravaged flesh and bone. Shem Shem Tsien’s eyes open wide in inexpressible horror. His mouth opens, as if to speak.
And then it’s done.
Joe Spork waits for a moment to be sure that his enemy has died, then walks past the Opium Khan’s severed head towards the machine which will devour the world.
The beehive growls and stutters, black cables humming with power bursting from its smooth organic lines. The bees are in the air, but they are coiling and spiralling in a more and more perfect pattern, more and more like a grid. They look less and less like bees, and more like cogs turning, one over another. Joe wonders how long he has left.
It’s nearly over. Two minutes. Maybe less.
Joe moves to the Apprehension Engine as if through a flow tide, pulled and buffeted, and then abruptly he has passed into the eye of the storm. The blanketing certainty is gone; the Engine’s effect, this close to its heart, is muted. He contemplates briefly a future in which he fails, and is left alive as the only conscious creature on Earth. In the Universe, even.
He kneels, stares at the beehive. The frontpiece is gone. The shape of the casement has been changed. This is not the sequence as he learned it.
For a moment, he doesn’t know what to do.
And then his hands move. The wordless part of him, ignorant of fear and peril and the destruction all around, sees the job and knows the shape of the machine. Shem Shem Tsien has ruined the art, oh, yes, and that’s a weak and ugly thing to have done—but the schematic remains the same. Turn this. Now this. Now, very quickly, both of these switches.
A plate comes away, revealing the inner coils.
Joe glances over his shoulder at the room and sees fear. Hard men and women are weeping. He finds Polly, sees her face urging him on. A minute left, she’s saying. Joe, please. So much left undone. No escape, no anything, just a stripping of the gears of the soul. A disintegration.
I love you.
Please.
Joe wrenches his head around, back to the machine. It feels like a betrayal. If Polly’s going to die, if he fails, he should be looking at her when it happens.
So, having chosen to look away, he can’t fail. The gangster digs his heels in. The craftsman rolls up his sleeves.
In the heart of the Engine, around the activation switch, there is a combination dial. The markings around the rim are not numbers, but letters:
O, P, E, J, A, H, U, S.
It was not in Frankie’s list. Added at the last minute. Added by her, he recognises her style … Added, but why? What’s the point?
What is the stricture?
Truth? Is there a word with those letters meaning truth? Is it Greek? French?
His hand hovers, withdraws. No.
When did she add it?
Late. Very late. While Sholt was Keeper. Mathew was grown up. Edie had left. And there, etched in the metal, the year: FF, 1974. And her goose-foot colophon. A last line of security, to preserve the machine. To keep it running. To hold to the truth in the face of those who would switch it off.
Why? What was she protecting? Herself? The world?
Behind him, people are falling to their knees—not in prayer, mostly, but exhaustion. They have screamed. Now they’re just waiting. Seconds.
The machine is the maker. What was it all for? In the end, what was Frankie’s heart?
He knows.
Edie.
Daniel.
Mathew.
And Mathew’s son. Born that year. He wonders if she came to the hospital, peered, alone, through the glass.
He looks at the dial, and sees the letters of his name. And switches off the Apprehension Engine.
Overhead, the bees cease their wild swirling. The cloud becomes orderly, then sedate, and finally they drop to the ground and settle, returning to the hive in neat little lines. Around the world, if Frankie is to be tru
sted—and Joe no longer knows, mercifully: he has to trust—the same thing is happening.
He follows the procedure through to the end, sending the last signal, the one which will cause the other hives to burn and die, leaving only this last one.
He cuts the power and removes the calibration drum, then the book.
It is the first time he has held them both. They’re very light and small to be so dangerous. He puts them in his pocket.
Finally, Joe hefts a discarded sledgehammer. In the rows upon rows of magnetic tape and cinematic film; in the books and records and photographs of his repugnant life, the Opium Khan persists. The potential for his resurrection lurks in every line and grain of it. This is the full and original copy of the Recorded Man. Even what was destroyed at Happy Acres will surely have been incomplete. Shem Shem Tsien would not permit the thing out of his hands, would not countenance the possible creation of a second true Khan.
And nor will Joe.
He hefts the hammer, and strikes.
It takes a very, very long time. Or perhaps just moments. His shoulders ache and his back screams at him. He batters the archive over and over, rips at it with his hands, bleeds from cuts and splinters. When he tires, he drives himself with images of the dead, of Polly’s fear in the last moments. He uses everything to make himself go on.
At some point, there’s nothing big enough left to smash, and Joe piles all the remains together and runs the main electric current through the stack, so that the tapes spit and sparkle and the celluloid burns. When the blaze has caught properly, he lifts the corpse of Shem Shem Tsien and throws it onto the flames.
XIX
After.
Joe Spork is the most arrested man the world has ever known. He stands in front of Sharrow House, face shining in the glow of searchlights and news cameras, and lays down his father’s gun on the gravel. Lays it down very carefully, because it seems to him that every single member of CO19, every spare Marine and Special Air Serviceman, and even a few members of the Household Cavalry have turned out to shoot him dead.
Behind him, with great dignity, the small but righteous army of Crazy Joe does the same, and the hundreds and hundreds of rifles which are trained on all of them follow like a vast cloud of lethal geese, long metal necks swaying, beady eyes paying the closest attention.
There is, however, an issue of priority. Joe has broken so many laws that he represents something of a quandary. A knot of small bureaucratic men and women tussle in the midst of the arresting force. Issues of competence are thrashed out line by line with venomous politesse. All the while, the gooseguns do not waver. Joe supposes that is understandable.
And then, at the very back of this great tide of official disapproval, someone takes charge. Someone very grave, with a troubled, serious face and a sonorous voice which speaks of sepulchres and secret dooms.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. May I have your attention? Thank you so much. My name is Rodney Arthur Cornelius Titwhistle, of the old and venerable family of Titwhistles of this city, and I am the Warden in Chief of the Legacy Board! Thank you, Detective Sergeant Patchkind, your services will not be required. Mr. Cummerbund, will you be so kind as to explain the matter to the very charming Basil? Thank you.” And, indeed, a large man with a salmon tie does indeed bustle off the elfin Patchkind, who looks none too happy about it—but if it is the original Arvin Cummerbund, he has lost some considerable weight from his belly and transferred it to his shoulders.
“Now, where was I? Ah, yes, if I might just pass by, sir, good heavens, they grow them big where you come from, don’t they? And where would that be? Shropshire, of course, of course, very A. E. Housman. If I might all the same pass by, very good.
“Joshua Joseph Spork. By the power vested in me by Her Majesty’s Government, I hereby take you in charge for the crimes of Murder, Arson, Treason, Terrorism, Banditry, and Brigandage. I have always wanted to arrest someone for Brigandage, Mr. Spork, I feel it has a high tone, now if you will yield yourself up to this good fellow here … thank you. You will swing, sir, swing by your giblets from the mizzenmast of the ship of state, oh yes! Don’t imagine some clever lawyer will get you out of this, Mr. Spork, though I understand that your lawyer is in fact the cleverest one available to mortal man, a positive paragon of the profession, a sort of earthbound god of advocacy. Bring him on, Mr. Spork, I shall shatter him with one prosecutorial fist! And you, missy,” adds this terrifying personage to Polly Cradle, “you should be ashamed of yourself as well. A woman’s place is in the home, girl, darning the socks of her family and scouring the pots and pans, not out skulduggering! Shame!”
“Don’t push it,” Polly Cradle mutters as Titwhistle claps her in irons. The Warden in Chief leans away from her in alarm. “Wildcat! Witch! Be along with you! Wait? Where is the ghastly dog? Tell me it’s been incinerated! No? Blast. Well, he’s under arrest, too. And the rest of you felonious scoundrels should also consider yourselves charged with conspiracy, fortunately I have brought a bus, yes, over there, you will wish to shackle yourselves with the leg irons provided …”
It takes a few minutes, but very shortly, Joe’s entire company is aboard the black prison bus with tinted windows, and the men of the Legacy Board drive them away.
“Mercer,” Polly Cradle says, as the bus ducks down into a garage and everyone hurriedly disembarks, to travel home by other means, “that was utterly ridiculous.”
Mercer Cradle beams.
The day after, when the proper course of government has been resumed and—though dented by the spectacle—the institutions of law and order are once more working to their often impenetrable ends, a man in an old-fashioned flight suit stands in front of a Lancaster bomber. At a little after ten a.m., he hears the sound of an approaching engine and turns his head. A maroon Rolls-Royce, paint job somewhat marred by evidence of a recent gun battle and some species of explosion, comes to a halt a few yards off, and from it emerge a man and a woman. The pilot’s pudgy face loses its look of wariness and breaks into a broad smile.
“What ho! You’ve been busy,” the chairman of St. Andrews says.
“Yes,” Joe Spork replies, “I suppose we have.”
“I brought you a spare pair of socks. And some for the lady. Turns out I had a few extra in the cupboard. Thought after all that affray and arrest and such, you might need some.”
The ugliest canary yellow Argyles in the world.
“Thank you. That’s … that’s very kind.”
“And this is your girlfriend?”
“His lover,” Polly Cradle says firmly, “with emphasis on the love part. I have decided.”
“Oh, well,” the chairman says. “Congratulations! And this is the cargo?”
“Yes, that’s all of it.”
“I can’t help noticing that you seem to have a stuffed pug there.”
Bastion opens one eye and growls. The chairman recoils rapidly. Polly grins. “He likes you,” she says.
“Should I be concerned?”
“Very.”
“And these are bits of … it … I suppose?”
“Yes,” Joe says. “We didn’t think it was safe to leave them behind.”
“No. Absolutely not. Bloody idiots in government’ll have chaps crawling all over them with magnifying lenses trying to do it all again, but better. Arseholes, the lot of them. Nice plane you’ve stolen, by the way, how did you find the time?”
“I subcontracted.”
“Very good. Delegation. Excellent. Incidentally, you still seem to be rather wanted. I thought that would all go away. Not as if we didn’t know the truth, there at the end, is it?” The chairman shudders.
“No. But as soon as that was gone, the damage control started. I’m … convenient.”
“Well, your plummy friend has sorted a registration for us—nefarious little runt. Fond of long words, too. I rather liked him.”
“My brother,” Polly Cradle says.
“Poor you. You must be very proud. He�
��s not with you?”
“He’s meeting us out there.”
“Of course. Well, where are we bound?”
Joe Spork passes him a piece of paper with a line of numbers.
The chairman quirks his eyebrows. Somehow, this is a little disappointing. “Beach holiday?”
“Actually, we’re meeting some friends and going onward from there.”
“Really? By boat, then.”
“Submarine,” Polly Cradle tells him. The chairman looks at Joe Spork, not quite believing, and sees confirmation in the brief, feral gleam in his eyes.
A slow smile spreads across the pudgy face. “Well,” the chairman says, “that’s more like it.”
A few moments later, the Lancaster cuts a path eastwards, and fades from view.
Acknowledgements
Without my wife, Clare, this book would make a great deal less sense. Her grip on story and her finely-tuned drivel detector are assets no writer should be without—but I’m not sharing. Find your own.
My agent, Patrick Walsh, is a sort of portable, personable eye of the storm. Rumour has it he trains tigers in his spare time and can bend steel with only the power of his mind. I shouldn’t be in the least surprised; with a team like that, anything’s possible.
Edward Kastenmeier at Knopf and Jason Arthur at William Heinemann practiced the dark arts of the editor upon me, deployed the Blacksmith’s Word to push me in the right direction and occasionally the Rosetta Stone to understand me. This book, or perhaps its author, required some kicking around—but the end product is the story I wanted to tell. There’s no greater pleasure than being well-edited. (Yes, all right, that’s a lie. But: aside from the obvious exceptions, there’s no greater pleasure.)
Jason Booher’s gorgeous U.S. cover designs arrived unexpectedly on a rather grim day in early 2011 and made me feel the whole thing was real and wonderful. Glenn O’Neill’s effulgent U.K. jacket was unveiled a few months later, and it’s honestly impossible to pick a winner.
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