Forever Shores (17 page)

‘Why am I seeing the mushroom clouds, over and over?' he asked the book, as his fifth week in Melbourne began. His food was being delivered now. A knock on the door, a tray wheeled in, the busboy gone.

The food was very good, but he found no pleasure in it.

He stopped drinking the beer one night upon realising he'd become accidentally pole-axed, after cracking his head against the view of the gloomy city at the end of the world.

He barely recalled the ocean liner and the ocean.

The constant vision of mushroom clouds made him dwell upon the downbeat. The time three years ago when he thought he would lose the bookshop. When Fiona had not accepted his proposal. When the demon on Carnaby Street looked at him as though it had won, and for a second he'd believed the look. When he thought he was going to die at knifepoint on the liner and …

That other time.

The second attack.

A woman, the second time. A middle-aged woman with jet hair and thin lips. A mother and daughter had passed him by, once round the deck before bed, Americans, and they had been cold. They had been wearing long winter coats, huddled together and strolling against the wind, double clip-clop on the wood, and the coats were flapping back in the breeze and the woman had come out of the coat, or from behind the mother and daughter, or something, some camouflage spell with which he'd been unfamiliar and she had a dagger at his heart and she had said to him: ‘Give me your key before you die' as she came at him black and evil with a cruel and chilling wind.

The protective spell he had cast over his cabin which, theoretically, no sorcerer but himself could penetrate, would have a better chance at being dispelled if they had his key. He used the key every time he went back to his cabin, or departed the cabin, and thus it possessed an iconographic power another would need to attempt to break the spell. After all, he bent the spell, with his will, every time he used the key. It was an enemy's best chance, and if the key were given willingly, all the better.

He had been so stunned at the attack, which had come a month after the first one, that he had simply not been able to counter it. He had simply fallen backward in shock. But in a flash of sight as he fell, he saw something descend upon the black woman before she reached him. It was like a boulder, dropped from an upper deck. By the time he had scrambled to his feet, she had been crushed. There was blood everywhere. Her body had been reduced to a pulpy mass within the black garments. In fact, the garments in which the goo resided was his only sure indication that the mess had indeed once been his assailant. He had not known what to do, except return to his cabin.

It had been late.

No one had seen.

And nothing was mentioned.

A day later, when he braved resurfacing, this time in daylight, he walked the deck with the other passengers, squinting in the sunlight. He gathered the courage to return to the fore of the ship, where the attack had occurred. There were signs of blood in the cracks between the heavy wooden boards of the deck, but the awfulness had been cleaned up. He supposed someone had found it, and that a roster had been checked. That a stowaway had been assumed to have been crushed to a pulp late at night for no apparent reason. It was a mystery, the less said about it the better, until they docked in Melbourne. He supposed correctly, because in his panic he had read the minds of the crew and found the general consensus toward the incident.

He had not read the minds of anyone on board since he'd first assessed the passengers to see if anyone knew him, or about him, a mild and general telepathic scan. He'd done the same when he'd first arrived at the hotel, two months later. Scans of this nature were forbidden by the Supernatural Council, unless they expressly involved the safety of innocents through occult circumstances. His panic scan, that morning on the liner, had revealed to him his naivety; his two would-be assassins had not registered with him at all when he had made his initial assessment. Therefore, there might be others aboard.

So after that, he'd remained in his cabin for the most part of the final month of the voyage. He cast a general weave about the liner whenever he was out to make people forget he was there, to make himself insignificant.

And now here he was again, hiding in his room. Only now he was not hiding from an external assailant. This time his attacker was, via his mushroom cloud visions, in the room with him.

The book.

Time flew around and through him. The history of the city at the end of the world.

Tall ships and convicts and settlers and soldiers. Churches and hotels, God and ale …

Football.

The creation of the great tramways system.

Buildings and libraries and town halls and hospitals and cemeteries and schools and stock exchanges and houses and houses and houses of parliament and proclamations and elections … it seemed organic, the way the city grew and lived and breathed and produced and destroyed and harvested and expanded and expanded and …

All day, every night, punctuated by mushroom clouds.

He saw a mighty gambling house …

With the mushroom clouds he heard names of places farther away on the continent, like Maralinga and Emu Field and Christmas Island …

Maralinga took him back, further than he thought possible, to the native people, thousands and thousands of years … ceremony and seasons and hunting and laughter and weird tribal music and dancing and scarring—

He had to get out.

He had to get out of bed.

He had to get away from the book.

He looked at the sheets of the double bed. How long had he been lying there, sailing through history? The maid had changed them not half a day ago, but they were soaked. The look on her face … some brand of mild fear. The blankets were now strewn across the end of the bed and the nearby floor, the sheets wet with perspiration. He was cold, and feverish. The gloom remained outside, clouds over the city. Drizzle.

Showers.

He needed a shower. He had never had a shower until he came to the end of the world. Only baths. But showers were more instant. Everything would be more instant soon. He had seen it. The athletes were faster at the games in the future, the cars were sleeker, the buildings … dear God the buildings … so high. Televisions … he hadn't had much to do with them. They were omnipresent. He couldn't comprehend. He didn't go to the movies, but there were movies and television everywhere, in the home and sliding images, shifting illusions, and changing pictures and all shapes and sizes and sounds, sounds … typewriters that were thin and sleek and portable telephones the size of a cigarette packet.

He recalled as he removed his damp pyjamas that there had been no sound, no sound as it was today, no ambient noise, before the Industrial Age. Just quiet. But the noise had grown. Louder. To the incomprehensible level of the sub atomic.

The water hit him, hot. It burned.

He saw skin burning.

He shut off the shower with, as quickly as he wished he could, the vision.

But that had been good, Barker thought. Reviving.

He could order a plate of chips at the hotel bar. Eat them and have a drink. He had not had a cold beer for weeks, it seemed.

Barker dressed, taking his clothes from the trunk. In a short moment of panic he forgot that he had transferred the leather satchel into the wardrobe in the corner of the room several days ago, a fruitless attempt at distancing himself.

He wondered what day it was. What month.

As it turned out, it was American Independence Day.

He had been in Melbourne, in the hotel, for a month.

Barker knew this because there was always copy of the paper on the bar.

He ordered the plate of chips and accepted the beer and gulped twice. The bartender assessed him sympathetically.

‘Been a while,' he stated, open-endedly.

‘Yes,' Barker said. ‘How do I … do I look well?'

‘You look tired, mate. You a writer or something? Spending all ya time alone up there?'

‘How do you …?'

‘We take a stab at guessing every now and then. Y'know, mate. Passes the time. Elsie says there's no typewriter up there, but we reckon ya keep it in ya trunk, put it away before any of the staff come in for a gander. Watcha reckon?'

Barker sighed. This was normal. Normal life. People in the here and now gossiping and passing the time.

‘Yes,' Barker sipped, ‘that's right. That's what I'm doing. Did you have a wager?'

‘Five bob, mate.'

‘Pleased to be of service, then.'

‘Chip's 'r on me, mate. No worries.'

‘I need to eat. I feel weak. It's possible I have let my imagination run away with me.'

‘The visions? The ones you said? When Fred was here?'

‘You know Fred?'

‘Jeez, mate. Everyone knows Fred.'

The bartender chuckled as he moved away, then a strange expression crossed him. He was staring across the bar. ‘Christ, who's that?'

Barker turned, and tried to follow the bartender's line of sight through to the lobby.

‘He's waving at ya, mate.'

Barker tried, but saw nothing. ‘Where?'

‘By the palms …' the bartender muttered. ‘Weirdest bloke I've ever seen …'

Barker saw him. A tall man, almost a shadow. He was wearing a brown shirt and trousers, and a cloak that looked as though, from this distance, like …
bark
.

Barker was away, moving toward the man, but then he was gone. Like a flash, up the stairs to the lobby landing.

And then Barker knew. There was someone in his room. The bark man had tried to warn him.

Barker ran. The elevator would be too slow … his room was on the third floor, and he took the stairs two, three at a time. Dizzy, not much energy.

The door to his room was open, the spell broken.

The potted shrub was wilting, something toxic poured over it. The ancient chest had an addition, an even more ancient lock clamped over its latch, and a terrible thumping was resounding from within.

The concierge was opening the wardrobe, reaching for the leather satchel.

The concierge.

Barker floored him with an arm around his neck, too weak for sorcery. The satchel hit the floor. But the concierge back-flipped and was on his feet, leaving Barker on the floor with it. Barker was puffing; the race up the stairs had exhausted him. He grabbed the satchel, but the concierge had his hands on the bag as well, yanking it. Barker held on strong, all his remaining energy in his grip.

The bark man was at the door. He seemed withered, his face long and brown, sunburned and leathery. His expression projected helplessness. But he spoke. The same strange language that Barker had somehow understood on the liner. But now it was alien. Barker had no idea what the bark man was trying to tell him.

‘Listen to me,' the concierge uttered as they both held onto the satchel. ‘Listen to me, fool sorcerer. Do you know what this is?'

‘You can't have it.'

The concierge stared at him and it was like the demon on Carnaby Street again. The concierge knew he'd won. He could overpower Barker. But instead, he decided to talk. He was trying to convince Barker to give the book freely.

‘The world is growing smaller, Barker. Yet at the same time, it is coming apart. The older races have seen this since the Industrial Age; they've been departing in small numbers for centuries.'

‘The older races?' Barker grew angry. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘Elves and dwarves, Barker. At least, that's what we call them now.'

Barker yanked at the satchel, but the concierge grabbed back. Barker knew he couldn't keep hold much longer, much less gain full possession of it. So he decided to listen, to humour the madman in the hope of finding a solution in the meantime.

‘They're planning an exodus, Barker. A mass exodus! We have foreseen it, my order. We have seen a time when the Industrial Age will give way to the Age of Information, and that means the older races will be susceptible to discovery. To mass discovery, quickly! We don't know how, as yet, this Age of Information shall proceed …'

The phrase echoed through Barker's weary mind as he heard himself whisper.

‘Portable telephones, the size of cigarette packets …'

‘Is that right?' the concierge raised an eyebrow as his eyes widened. His grip on the satchel slacked a little. ‘The book has shown you that?'

‘You can't have it!'

‘It is! It really is the book!'

‘You can't have it you bloody blighter!' Barker wrenched it away.

The concierge simply leaned back, glancing over his shoulder at the bark man, the impotent observer, as though the revelation of the truth of the package had stunned him so greatly he really didn't know what to do.

‘What is the book?' Barker asked, grasping it to his chest as he backed away on his knees. ‘What does it contain that you would kill me for it?'

‘You don't know? They sent you to guard it and you don't know what it is?'

‘It's powerful, too powerful for the likes of you …'

‘The likes of me? Do you know who I am, Barker? Barker Moon, do you know how long I suffered in this hell hole hotel, as an elevator porter? Me? Waiting for the moment when you'd become weak enough for me to gain access. A decent spell, young sorcerer, but with the madness that book was putting you through, it could not hold forever … I could feel it from the lobby, the book. Your visions …'

‘Who are you?'

‘I am one of perhaps a dozen people in this little world who know what that book is, Barker. The dozen of whom, apparently, does not include your good self.'

‘Tell me then,' Barker spat. ‘Tell me what it is that I'll die for.'

‘In time, Barker. But you must listen.'

Yes, Barker knew now. The concierge wanted a convert. He wanted Barker as a black practitioner … and this explanation was supposed to cross him over to the dark side.