Devil in the Wires (29 page)

 

Chapter 75

The Beating

T
here was pressure in the room. I felt it in my skull. My cheekbones ached. Little spots of brightness danced across my eyes, and I blinked, trying to clear my sight. I fastened one more cable. By then, an awful sound had started up behind me, at first a rustling, hissing, then a kind of insect drone that grew and grew until it sounded like a landslide, as if the whole building were falling down around me. I shivered and arched my back against the noise.

It receded suddenly—­not quieting so much as retreating, vanishing into the distance. Stars twinkled in my vision and would not be blinked away. A dozen tiny silver points, wriggling like fish across my sight. I tumbled forwards, and my hands slid on the tiled floor, and the floor itself appeared to bend and melt, then gave way suddenly so that I plunged headlong, the stars exploding all around me, vanishing, swallowed by the dark.

I can't have been out long. When I came to, my head was pressed against the floor. I couldn't lift it. Something was pressing on it, crushing it.

I waved my arms. I slapped my hand against the tiles. I yelled out.

Gotowski's tennis shoe was right in front of me.

His knee was on my head. I felt the weight change as he slowly shifted position, crushing me, holding me.

There was noise still—­that dreadful, background susurrus—­but he leaned close, and spoke into my ear.

“You're waiting for them, right?”

“What? What—­” I raised my hand, catching at his clothes, straining to push him off. But he'd planned it well: I couldn't get the grip, I couldn't get the leverage. With no trouble at all he seized my arm and pushed it to the floor.

“Your friends. You're wondering when they're coming back. Why they've been gone so long. Right?”

I heard the switchblade flick, a nasty, intimate little sound.

“Well,” he said. “This is the thing. They're outside now. They're right outside. They're stepping through the shrubbery.”

He pressed the cold edge of the blade against my neck.

“There is just one snag.” He stroked the point up, over my chin, across my lips. He drew patterns with it on my cheek, and I remembered the cuts on Dayling's arms, the curves and crosses carved there. “The way things are, see—­there being a god here, on
my
side . . . it might take 'em, oh, a day or two to get inside. Time's flowing different, here and there . . .” The knife point suddenly dug down. I yelled, I jerked. “And by then—­well. I'll be honest with you, Mr. Field Op, I think you'll be past caring, right? Past saving, anyhow.”

Again I struggled, pushed at him. I tried to get my head from under his knee. I felt my hair rip. I felt my ear bend backwards. Blood was running down my face now, hot against my skin. He took my arm, the injured one, got a firm grip, almost as if he were choosing firewood. Then he wrenched it, twisted it.

I screamed.

I couldn't help myself. The pain ran through me and it took out everything else. I threshed and bucked in its grip, and there was nothing else in life except that pain, that agony—­

He let me go.

I fell back, gasping, my whole arm on fire. I knew I had to get away. With my other hand, I slapped the floor. I scrabbled onto all fours, tried to gain my feet, fell—­

Gotowski reared over me. He sang, a cracked falsetto:

Nowhere to run to, baby

Nowhere to hi-­ide—­

He snapped his fingers, swung his long, thin body back and forth in time.

There were others with him now. The big, bald man. The longhair from the butcher's room. Both of them, stepping up behind him. And the god Assur, who arched up over all of us, swelling and stretching from some point at the rear of the hall.

The air swam. I could hardly focus. Shadows without objects slipped across the walls, the floor, threatening at any moment to solidify into—­what? Something grotesque, terrifying, beautiful. I cringed. Back in the Beach House I had seen him in intelligible forms: the lion, the scorpion, the throat with teeth. He'd pantomimed for me, he'd mimicked my own fantasies, he'd let me see him in a way that I could understand. Just fragments, fractions of a whole. Here, though, there was no such obligation. Simply to look at him was like having a tidal wave cascade into my brain. It was devastating, utterly disabling. The information was too dense, too strange. I tried to hide my face from it. Again, I caught the stink of cat, but mingled now with other smells, pungent, chemical airs that stung my nose, inflamed my sinuses. A constant chittering and buzzing filled my ears, growing louder as I fixed on it. But
noticing
it offered it a hold in my mind. A rapid drumming sound, initially dysrhythmic, but soon developing a complex and repeated pulse, a beat as of some huge, alien bloodstream, even now flowing around me, unseen within the air itself . . . He was growing. Growing inside himself, ever more complex, more involved . . . evolving, right before my eyes.

Snowflakes flurried, caught up in its currents. Waves of air rushed over me, the icy wind pricking my skin, making it burn . . . Blood spattered my shirtsleeve. Whichever way I moved, I hurt. I lay there and the wind passed over me and the god looked down and the man with the shaved head ran up and his boot went
thunk
into my belly and I doubled over and my guts heaved up and I tasted burning in my throat and puked over the tiles—­

Gotwski spurred him on.

“Again!” he said. “Again!”

The big man kicked. He kicked and kicked. I curled up, turning round and round, struggling to protect my face, my gut, my genitals.

Then that, too, stopped, just as the assault from Gotowski had.

I saw the pattern of it then. Brutal beating, brief reprieve, the victim helpless, torturer entranced . . .

I took a breath and it was like a knife blade dug itself between my ribs. I pressed my hands against the floor. I pushed with my feet. I looked up, and I saw the bald man, and it was like a fire blazed through him, every nerve alight, and even though I knew this must be an illusion, or a trick of perception, I watched the fire racing through him, lighting up his limbs, pulsing in his chest, then slowly fading, sinking back into the flesh, the bone, and softly dying . . .

Every blow he'd struck against me. Every time I'd screamed or moaned. Every time I suffered, that flame would brighten, burn.

I pushed myself away. I used my hands, my legs. I rolled. I fell against the wall.

And the third of them was on me.

I could smell the bad-­meat stink of him, sour and sick. He came up hard and fast, but now I'd got the wall behind me. I blocked him with my good arm. I didn't have much time. I knew that. My strength was draining out of me. I folded up. He kicked and caught me just below the knee. My whole leg shook. The pain went jolting through me, almost unbearable. He swung back for a second blow and this time, with my good leg, I pushed myself off the wall. I flung myself at him. I wrapped both arms around his ankle and I rolled, quickly.

He went down. He smacked against the tiles. I heard the breath go out of him. Gotowski was back. I saw him coming, but now a fury filled me. I was on my feet. The rage gave me strength, determination—­hatred. This sleazy little wife beater, this scum, this no one, elevated by the power of a god. I practically fell on him. We grappled. I hit him. I clung to him, used him to hold myself up. I drove the heel of my hand into his nose and felt the hot blood spurt. We clung, almost like lovers. Then he kicked my feet from under me. Someone punched me in the gut. They were all three at me, coming from every direction. I lashed out. I crumpled, dropped to the floor. They kept hitting me. I folded, I curled in on myself. And something strange began to happen.

The anger died in me. A great calm came over me. I felt the first few blows, but after that, the pain seemed to recede, and I felt like I was watching from a long way off. Things slowed, the long succession of the moments gradually winding down, until each second, each split second, became a thing all of its own, separate and self-­contained. There was no more urgency. There was no cause, no consequence. There was pain, yes, but I was far removed from it. It was like watching something in the weather, a physical process, the movement of the clouds, ice cracking in a sudden thaw.

I was dying. I saw this. I could not sustain such punishment and still hope to survive.

And in that moment, the beating stopped.

I looked up. I looked around. And I knew that it had always stopped, that there had always been a point in time at which the beating ended, but till now it had been somewhere in the future, up ahead of me, a place I couldn't reach. The world began to move again. I felt myself sink into it. Everything moved faster. The moments seemed to flow, one into another, fusing at last into a constant stream. I felt the floor beneath me. I felt the pain. I blew out spit and snot and blood onto the tiles. I tried to stand. My muscles flexed at random: shoulder, fingers, leg, arm. I saw Gotowski. His eyes were slits, the flame just pouring through him. The other two, the same. This was what they'd done. One by one, they'd render their victim helpless. Toy with him or her. Spin it out. Use feet, or fists, or implements. They crippled them. Use them up. Catch the energy as it came out.

A shadow passed across my eyes. And then a new voice, a familiar voice, said, “Well, Chris. This hasn't gone too well, so far. Wouldn't you say?”

 

Chapter 76

An Evolving Power

I
t was my voice. Not the way I heard it in my head, but the way it sounded on recordings, the way it sounded on my voice mail.

It was Benedict.

I saw him against the last light from the hospital doors. Then someone stepped in front of him. She came to me. She knelt.

It was Angel. I read emotion on her face, but read it like a thing almost forgotten: eyes wide, lips open . . . I was still too distant, too caught in the god-­trance, but in my mind I named what I saw. Fear, concern . . . and anger, too.

“Angie . . .”

“Listen, Chris. Listen. There's only me. The others can't get through. I'm the only one he brought in. You understand?”

I tried to hold her. I wanted to comfort her, to make things better for her, somehow.

My hand flopped loosely, tapping at her shoulder.

“We've got power, Chris. We've got the power line—­”

Benedict said, “A minute, probably less, these three will revive. If you'd still prefer I didn't touch them—­”

“Chris.” She frowned then. “What's happening here? I don't—­”

She looked past me. She looked up. And caught her breath.

I don't believe she'd seen it until then, not
really
seen it. The mind blanks things out, deliberately misreads them. Skates over stuff it doesn't understand.

Assur coiled and uncoiled, folding inwards on itself, over and over, the folds always smaller and more intricate, and yet, as with fractals, each part seemed to contain the whole, all the multitude of forms the god might have assumed over thousands, millions of years. He reared up, drank in the light, drank in the dark. In places, the structure had become so delicate that it was marked out only by the snow that gathered on it, like a ghost outlined in light.

I saw her look away, consciously refusing to be drawn in. And then she said something which, even in my weakened state, impressed me.

She said, “The circuit's not complete.”

“Time's running out,” said Benedict, clicking his tongue like an impatient schoolmaster. “You're slow. You're very slow.”

Gotowski stirred. His gaze lit on Angel; a moment of surprise, and then a twitch of the lip, almost a smile.

“Are you still,” said Benedict, “determined for me not to get involved?”

Angel crouched. I saw her calculating, measuring. Judging the distances.

Benedict said, “I can keep these ­people busy. The Old One, too, I can pacify, for just a little while.”

Gotowski shook himself. He looked at me, at Benedict. “You're—­what? His twin brother?”

“Angie—­” I reached out, touched her. I wanted to say,
don't do this
. I wanted to say,
get out, run
. I wanted to say,
find someone else. It's not your job. Just go
.

She'd slung a ­couple of the cable bags over her shoulders, a flask around her neck. I saw the curve of her back. I saw her rise up on her toes and fingers, like a sprinter ready for the off.

What I did say—­I said, “Start by the desk. The line should be OK to there. Bring it back this way. Try for an S-­shape. Fold double, if you can. Put the flask—­oh, shit, shit.” I saw the way the god stretched out, no longer fettered by the fields. “Put it in the open floor, near the middle as you can. But don't go near the god, Angie. Don't look at it. It'll get into your head. Try not to think about it—­”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “You give me all the easy jobs.”

Again, Benedict said, “I can keep them busy,” and for the first time, it struck me—­was he asking for permission? Was he asking my approval?

“Twin bro,” Gotowski said.

I told Angel, “Go! Go on!”

I thought that I was talking just to Angel. But maybe I was saying it to Benedict, as well.

Gotowski squared up. But then something happened. He was looking straight at Benedict, who simply lounged back and returned his gaze.

Gotowski's mouth grew slack. He blinked. Then he stepped away, beckoned the bald man up.

“Here—­here.” With his hand, he urged the guy up closer. “He's yours, bro. I'm giving him to you. OK?”

Angel was off, across the floor, running. She'd the bag in one hand, the flask around her neck. Her feet slipped. She skidded. The flask went clattering across the floor. She went down, somehow turned, rolling on her belly, stretching for the loose cables I'd left there. I pulled myself into a sitting position. The big guy made a grab for Benedict, and locked his arms around him in a bear hug. I was trying to see the other cables, trying to check the circuit. I had barely trained her, just shown her the ropes, that's all. I said her name under my breath. I pushed myself against the wall, tried to pull myself onto my feet—­

The god Assur turned slowly over us. A constant motion, growing all the time, folding in upon itself in endless convolutions, on and on. I watched it for a moment and I had to look away; already I could feel it pull me in, a maze in which my own thoughts, my very sense of self, might be lost and disappear forever.

Benedict stood. The bald man clung to him. His head was thrown back. His eyes and mouth gaped helplessly. I saw the muscle tense in Benedict's cheek, the wind rippling his hair. There was a sound of something ripping—­a sound like an old sofa bursting, I remember thinking. Angel was on her knees, linking the cables. The god was much too close to her. Much, much too close. Gotowski yelled. He was screaming at the long-­haired man, telling him to go and stop her, but he wouldn't. Frost covered my clothes. White piping formed along my shirt, on the edges of my shoes. I strained my eyes, trying to check the cables, the connections. I could barely keep my feet. Things went hazy and I blinked, blinked again. There was pain in my chest. I wanted to just drop onto the floor, curl up, be gone.

I couldn't do that.

I needed just a few more minutes. A few more . . .

A long, rubber-­covered cable snaked across the floor near my feet. Its other end was outside, somewhere, out through the hospital doors, out into that other world, where it was summer still, where there was help that now I knew would never get here.

I dropped back to my knees. I threw myself forward, caught the cable, pushed myself to the control box.

It wasn't that hard. In normal circumstances. I'd done a hundred, a thousand of the things. I'd done retrievals year on year on year.

I couldn't get the cable in.

My hands wouldn't work. I could see it—­I could actually
see
it going wrong, right in front of me, three times, four times.

Gotowski came at me. He must have known what I was doing. I saw him and I hunched up, over the control box. He came at me and suddenly I saw Angel, right behind him. She had the flask in both hands, and she raised it up, and swung it like a baseball bat.

T
here was a long, long moment, wondering if it would work. Angel plugged the line in, the system powered up, and I made the few adjustments I was able to. It was such an ad hoc thing, so jerry-­rigged; yet outside, time began to flow again: Woollard and Shailer, moving as if underwater, pushed their way towards the big glass doors. Their mouths opened with almost comic slowness, like a long sequence of yawns. I turned to the control box and I rammed the sliders up to full.

Nothing happened. The god reared over us. Angel's hand seized mine. Then—­slowly at first, like a flame catching a newspaper—­a weird nimbus began to creep along the creature's outer edge, a purplish light moving faster and faster, deeper and deeper, eating down into the substance of the thing, and the flask began to rattle on the floor where she'd placed it, and I heard her shout—­a single, great, exultant cry.

Time flowed again. The flask was full. The monitors were high.

The god was gone.