Extraordinaires 1 (4 page)

L
ight flared at the back of the control compartment. Damona tore away the steel cover plate too late.

The machine exploded.

Later. Damona on her back, looking up. Pain. She choked on the smoke. She rolled, stood, coughed, winced at the pain in her hip. Her hair had come undone. It hung over her face. She heard shouting.

A draught. The smoke began to move. Damona grunted. Someone had opened the steel doors at either end of the workshop. Good thinking.

The smoke cleared. She squinted, batted it away. She peered up past the gantry crane and its rails to the ventilator shaft. She swore. The screw turbine had shattered. No more air from above until it was fixed. She shuddered. Metal shards must have sprayed through the whole workshop. She'd been lucky.

She grunted again. Death wasn't for her. Not yet.

The smoke had gone. She screwed up her nose at the smell of charred insulation. She laced both hands in the middle of her lower back. The old hip injury was flaring, too. She felt every one of her two hundred years. She growled and studied the remains of the machine she'd been working on.

It was a wreck.

She plucked a screwdriver from the bench as she passed. Then: careful stalking towards the wreck. Big steps over casing panels that had been blown aside.

She prodded at the steel and brass machine. What had she been doing just before the explosion? After months of work, what had gone wrong? The principles were right. She knew it. Implementation was at fault.

Was she becoming less dextrous? Age catching up with her?

She stood back, hands flexing, taking stock. The original lines of the extractor were still there. She'd avoided straight lines and corners. The flanks of the wagon-sized machine curved like wave-worn rock. Both sides rolled around to grip the control panel at the end. She shook her head. The control panel that was now a mess of melted glass and metal. The top third of the extractor had been sheared off by the explosion. The contours she'd been so satisfied with were no more.

She stood on tiptoe and nearly cried. Inside, the machine was ruined. She tried to remember where she'd left the plans, her notes, her grand scheme.

‘Hurt?'

Damona didn't look around. Could she salvage that thermal bridge? ‘No, Gustave.'

‘What happened?'

‘Phlogiston uptake error.'

‘Dangerous, that.'

Damona almost laughed. Phlogiston was more than dangerous. It was treacherous. But without it, their existence would be even more precarious than it was. ‘Sometimes dangers are necessary.'

‘Put dangers aside. Be at ease. Stop your work.'

She turned, then. Gustave was stocky, even for a True Person. A youngster, broad in the shoulders, thick of limb. He had heavy khaki overalls and steel-tipped boots of his own design. He wore his coarse red hair and beard long.

Damona sighed. She'd have to wait for the remains to cool down before she'd be able to investigate properly. ‘How can I save the True People if I stop working?'

‘An honourable goal, eldest.' Gustave coughed. He shifted, uneasily.

‘What is it?'

He didn't look at her. ‘An Assembly has been called. You have been summoned.'

Damona sat on the dais at the front of the assembly chamber. She rested her chin in her hand, waited for the rest of the True People to file in. They were old. So few younglings.

She knuckled her brow.
Even fewer after Signe died
.

It had been a year since her only great-granddaughter had passed. She still mourned.

The Assembly was a shock. She hadn't heard a thing. No-one had dropped a hint. No-one had muttered a warning in her ear.

I'm getting old, too.
She ran her gaze over the crowd. The chamber was filling up, past the fourth set of pillars.
Or distracted. Or both.

A distant rumbling. She cocked her head. She took out her pocket watch. It was a sturdy steel model she'd made years ago. She nodded. The noise above was the Circle line train on its way to Cannon Street Station. Right on time.

The assembly chamber was four hundred years old. It was the first large space carved by the True People when they'd congregated under London. It was now at the heart of a complex that had grown into a maze. Families had added chambers, corridors and extensions wherever they were needed. When the Invaders had been digging tunnels for their underground railway it had been a worrying time, but the spaces the True People had opened out were deep. Far deeper than the puny delvings of the Invaders. Their efforts were scratchings and finished far overhead. Noise of the trains reminded the True People that their enemy was close. Damona thought this was a good thing. She didn't mind the closeness of the Invaders. It meant that none of the True People would forget what they had done.

She climbed to her feet, ignored the twinge from her back. The three hundred True People, the last Neanderthals in the world, hushed.

‘I am Damona,' she said. Ritual demanded no less. ‘As Eldest, I am your leader. An Assembly has been called. Speak, those who will.'

It was Gustave who stood. Nervous, he was pushed forward by others. He would not meet Damona's eyes.

‘Eldest,' he said. Damona saw sweat on his brow. ‘Each of the True People has the right to pursue a life undisturbed by the others.'

‘That is our way. As it has always been.'

‘Except if their life harms another.'

‘Go on.'

‘Your work, Eldest, is dangerous. You have been purchasing materials. You have been contacting the outside world. You jeopardise our security. You cannot continue this without the agreement of the Assembly.'

Murmurs of approval ran through the rows of True People. No animosity, Damona thought, just concern. Gustave stroked his beard, sat down.

Damona let out a long, tired breath. She had led the True People for more than five decades. A hard labour. Individuals never liked being told what to do.

The history of the True People had ever been thus. They united only in extremity. An outside foe, a natural disaster, a threat. Large projects were almost unheard of. Standards meant nothing. It was one of the few things that Damona admired about the Invaders. In their world nails were nails and bricks were bricks, no matter where they were made. For the True People, bricks by different makers were different. Sizes, shapes unlikely to sit together at all.

She had always thought to bring her grand plan to the Assembly. Was it now the time?

She flexed her shoulders. Her right arm hurt after the explosion.

‘Speak!' someone cried from the back of the chamber. ‘Explain yourself!'

Damona stood. She began by breaking a taboo. ‘The True People are dying,' she said. Everyone assembled in front of her gasped.

The plight of the True People was never spoken aloud. Everyone knew the truth, but to speak it was forbidden. As if ignoring it would make it go away.

Damona was only stating the obvious. Their numbers had dwindled generation after generation. First they were shunned by the Invaders. Then they were hunted by them. Communities of True People scattered, lost track of each other, falling silent, falling away.

Heads bowed at Damona's words. Others shrugged and Damona was angered. Apathy was bad. Resignation would only speed their end.

‘Long ago, our ancestors fought the Invaders.' Her anger rose and she swallowed it. ‘Look at us now. Once we were fierce. We were warriors. Now we go to our doom. Meek. Quiet. Sheep.'

Heads lifted at this. A few angry shouts. Damona was pleased. She would speak truths, here and now, while she still could.

‘Look around you. Has our hiding helped us? Is this the world we deserve, deep underground, huddled like animals?'

A shout came from the rear of the chamber: ‘No!' Others followed. Support. Damona smiled. She settled. She unclenched fists that had curled tight of their own accord. ‘I have begun a grand enterprise. It is one that will require us all to work together.'

Laughter. Work together? True People? True People worked for themselves, their family!

‘To what end?' Gustave called out.

‘To save the True People from extinction.' Damona paused. A great silence filled the chamber. She had them. ‘If we unite, if we dedicate ourselves to my project, we can wipe out the Invaders. We can reclaim the world as our own.'

A low mutter. Growling. Nods. They were with her. Good.

‘We are the supreme artificers,' she said. ‘We build. We create. We master. We will use our skills to rebuild our world.'

The question came just when Damona wanted it. ‘How?' Gustave cried.

‘First: we build a better phlogiston extractor. Second: we build a time machine.'

Bewilderment. She went on. ‘We will build a time machine. We will send warriors back to wipe out the ancestors of the Invaders while they are few. They will never grow. Never spread. Never dominate the world. The True People will triumph.'

Damona exulted in the uproar. She hoped her prisoner would hear it. He might tell her what she needed to know.

M
idnight was approaching and Kingsley was yawning when the train rolled into Waterloo Station. With some difficulty because of the crowds of international visitors milling about the station looking for their Olympic billets, they caught a cab. The traffic was light as they crossed Westminster Bridge and rounded the Palace, where a few lonely windows were lit. Hyde Park, past Marble Arch and then into Bayswater Road.

Kingsley was trapped in his thoughts and started when Evadne touched his hand. ‘I think someone's following us.' She tapped her spectacles. In the light of a streetlamp Kingsley saw that they were tinted yellow. ‘That hansom back there has had the same passenger since the station.'

‘Are you normally this suspicious?'

‘I'd call it alert rather than suspicious.'

Kingsley directed the cab into Porchester Terrace. The houses on either side – three- and four-storey stuccoed villas, for the most part – made the street darker than the relative openness of Bayswater Road. The streetlamps were lonely splashes of light stretching away from them, illuminated stepping stones in a river of blackness.

Kingsley flung some money at the driver and bounded from the cab. As soon as Evadne alighted, the cab hurried off.

A light shone through the fan window over the front door. ‘Brown said he'd wait up for me, with Mrs Walters,' Kingsley said. ‘The housekeeper,' he explained.

‘There should be more lights on, then,' Evadne said.

‘That's what I thought.' Kingsley glanced up and down the street. ‘Wait here.'

‘I think not.' Evadne reached into the pocket of her coat. Light glinted on metal.

Kingsley had to look twice at the brass and wood device she held. ‘It that a pistol?'

‘It's a distant relative.'

‘Where did you get it?'

‘I made it.'

Kingsley had trouble imagining Evadne Stephens as a weapon maker and optometrist, but the alternative was to imagine her as a bald-faced liar – and he had more pressing concerns. ‘Follow me, then.'

It had been nearly six months since Kingsley had left home. With some reluctance, he'd decided that if he had no real past – for his foster father was loath to talk about how he came to be responsible for the foundling Kingsley – he'd at least make a real future for himself on the stage.

Once inside, Kingsley loosened his tie and left his jacket on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. He avoided the fourth stair from the top, knowing its penchant for creaking, and paused on the landing, signalling so Evadne would avoid the noisy stair. The landscape on the wall was even more depressing than usual. The storm threatening the lusty farm workers looked actively malign.

‘My goodness,' Evadne whispered, ‘you can move quietly.'

Kingsley didn't reply. He glanced through the window at the landing, the one overlooking the street. Gaslight filtered through the plane trees. Kingsley put a hand against the panelling and listened, hard, then he sniffed. His hackles rose at what he smelled, and it was only by clenching his jaw that he prevented a low growl escaping from his throat.

‘I can see a light up there,' Evadne whispered.

‘It's coming from the study.' Kingsley sniffed again.

‘What can you smell? Gas?'

‘No, but it's coming from the study, too.' Kingsley glanced over his shoulder, then crouched, hissing.

Evadne flattened herself against the wall. ‘What?'

‘That man. The one we saw at the theatre. He's out there.'

Evadne inched to the window. ‘He's not being very secretive about it, standing in the middle of the road like that.'

Kingsley licked his lips. His wolfishness was on the rise – he could feel it in his shoulders, the long muscles of his legs. Threats, real or imagined, tended to do that. Grimly, he imagined helping someone write a pithy monograph titled ‘The Wolf at Bay: Some Personal Insights'.

He was torn. The man out there or the study? He shifted from one foot to the other in mute demonstration of his indecision until Evadne rolled her eyes. ‘You go on. I'll see what our theatre-lover wants.'

She left, silently, and Kingsley recommenced his ascent. He stood at the head of the stairs for a moment and, in the shadows, he had the unsettling impression that everything he'd grown up with had been taken away and replaced by duplicates. The carpet, the slightly worn spots outside each door, the side table with the nick in one leg from where he'd swung a golf club a little too carelessly, it was all there but with a layer of unfamiliarity that made his soul ache.

He closed his eyes, willing the awful sensation to go away, and when he opened them his surroundings were once again familiar – but he could still hear noises coming from the study. They were the furtive, muffled sounds of someone who didn't want to be heard.

Kingsley paused outside the door to the study. It was open a crack. Light spilled from it. ‘Mrs Walters?'

Nothing.

Kingsley swallowed. He pushed the door back.

Afterwards, he was never sure how long he stood on the threshold, unwilling to enter, assaulted by the sight, the smell, the disarray. Books had been dragged down from the shelves and strewn about. Chairs had been overturned. The two prints of farm scenes had been ripped from the walls.

Torn apart by wild beasts.
The phrase repeated itself in Kingsley's head again and again as he gazed at Mrs Walters' remains. She'd been good to him, indulgent even, tolerating the mess he'd made when his magical practice went wrong.
Torn apart by wild beasts.

All the blood, pooled and spattered, was the source of the awful smell he'd been aware of ever since he'd stepped inside. It caught and held him so much that he barely saw the two hulking figures with their backs to him, pawing at his foster father's bookshelves.

One of the brutes looked back over his shoulder. He grunted, slapped his partner on the back, and confronted Kingsley, who was grimly aware that he'd let out a sob.

The intruder was even larger than Kingsley had thought, a nightmarish, troll-like creature with a flat face and heavy brows. Not tall, but he had the build of two wrestlers pressed into one body. His arms bulged with muscle under his leather jacket. Wild red hair stuck out from his head, complemented by a bushy red beard that surrounded a face that was broad and hard. He chuckled and it sounded like a bag full of stones. He reached for Kingsley with a meaty hand.

Kingsley slapped it away.

The intruder's eyes narrowed. He grunted at his partner, who was piling books into a wooden crate, then he advanced on Kingsley again.

Overwhelmed – the blood, the loss, the chaos of the night – Kingsley couldn't control himself. His wild self burst free, snarled, lashed out and kicked the intruder in his vast stomach.

The intruder staggered back a step or two, then laughed, which only added to Kingsley's rage. His wild self was truly roused. It knew what to do with an outsider who had brought death to the pack. It had to be taken down and dealt with.

Kingsley's hands curled into claws. His chest heaved. He wanted to cast himself on the brute and take his throat, to throw him to the ground, to make him cry for mercy that wouldn't come.

He bared his teeth.

The intruder paused. For a moment, they were both still. Kingsley was looking for an opening – did the brute favour his left side? – and then the intruder backed away.

Kingsley was astonished, but then he saw the intruder's partner was almost out of the window, a crate of books under one arm. Kingsley lunged, but the first brute smashed him with a fist, a mighty buffet that caught his arm and spun him aside. He slipped on the blood, fell against the firescreen, and rolled to collide with the body of poor Mrs Walters.

The intruder bounded for the window and followed his partner. Horrified and bloody, Kingsley was up, but he knew from experience and the heavy sound of feet that the intruders had landed on the roof of the old stable that led to the lane at the back of the property.

Kingsley bolted out of the room and down the stairs. He flung himself out of the front door and immediately cannoned into two police officers.

Kingsley tumbled into the garden bed amid the anemones and foxgloves. Growling with frustration and rage, he picked himself up to see one of the young police officers stretched out, unconscious, his head against the stairs leading to the gate. The second constable was backing away, eyes wide as he groped for his whistle. ‘Don't move!' His voice was shrill with fear. ‘Just stay where you are!'

Dimly, Kingsley realised what the police officer was seeing – a bloody young man, clothing askew, wild-faced and growling, a tabloid newspaper image of a murderer.

The knowledge cut through his wildness, sobering him immediately. Kingsley was suddenly calm as his wild self fled, but before he could explain, the constable found his whistle. He blew it long and hard, and was rewarded by a similar blast not far away.

Evadne ghosted to Kingsley's side.

‘Be careful, miss!' the constable cried. ‘He's a dangerous one, just look at him!'

‘I don't think so,' Evadne said. With no fuss, she raised her pistol and shot the constable.

Kingsley gaped. The police officer crumpled and joined his comrade on the stairs. ‘What did you do that for?'

‘Don't worry. I've rendered him unconscious, that's all.' She held up her pistol. ‘Sleep-inducing darts.'

‘I –' Kingsley swallowed. ‘Up there. Monsters. Mrs Walters. Dead.'

Evadne grimaced. ‘The Neanderthals killed someone?'

‘Neanderthals?'

‘I saw them escaping over the rooftops.'

‘But . . . I . . .' Kingsley sagged. He wanted to sit, or lie down, or for this horrible nightmare to go away.
Cavemen? In Bayswater?

‘Yes, Neanderthals. Most people think they died out a few hundred thousand years ago, but a few survived, hidden away and keeping to themselves.' Evadne pocketed her pistol. ‘Look at you. I think it best to let things calm down before we see the police again. You might like to choose the occasion that happens, preferably when you're presentable and flanked by a pet barrister. I'd recommend a QC.' She cocked her head at him. ‘Your family has a trusty law firm on the books?'

‘Leaving is a capital idea.' At the gate, a figure stepped into the pool of light cast by the nearest gas lamp. His round spectacles glinted and he touched the brim of his hat. ‘I have a motor car nearby.'

It was the man from the theatre – short, slight, with rounded shoulders, a tiny moustache and an air of precise watchfulness. Evadne's eyes widened and she lowered the pistol she'd raised at the stranger's approach. ‘I know you,' she said to him. ‘You're that writer, Kipling, aren't you?

The man gave a hasty smile. ‘I am indeed Rudyard Kipling, and I hope to be at your service immediately.'