Hellraisers (26 page)

“Why?”

“Because…” He realized he had nothing to say. He studied the rack of weights, huge round iron ones that looked like they belonged in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from the seventies. “Because this is physics and stuff. I don't know.”

“The simplest way to think of it is like we are inside a video game. You play games, yes?”

“Yeah, of course,” said Marlow, feeling a sudden pang of homesickness at the thought of his Xbox. He wondered whether his mom was thinking of him, whether she was worried. He doubted it, he didn't come home for days sometimes, just crashed on Charlie's floor. She'd probably be so drunk she wouldn't even notice he was gone. “Yeah, Call of Duty and stuff, all the time.”

“Imagine you were playing this game and you wanted your character to have, say, a faster horse.”

“You're not much of a gamer, are you?” Marlow asked. Seth waved the comment away.

“Or a larger gun, perhaps, I don't know, anything you like. If you happen to be a coder, if you happen to speak the language in which the game is written, you simply wriggle inside and change it. You rewrite the program.”

“Yeah, but—”

“That is what the Engine does. It knows the code, it knows the secret language of our universe, the language that we ourselves have been written in. And it changes it. Go on, lift one, see for yourself.”

Marlow reached down and picked up a weight with
20KG
written on it. He wasn't sure how heavy it was supposed to be but when he hefted it up it was like lifting a sheet of paper. It was so surprising that he almost unbalanced himself, the weight flying up over his head. He let go and it crashed down with a
thunk
, narrowly missing his foot.

“I said lift it, not play shot put with it,” said Seth, chuckling.

Marlow tried again, but this time he lifted the entire stack—seven or eight weights in total, the lowest two weighing fifty kilos each. He felt it this time, but it was still no more difficult than hefting a small box from the ground. It couldn't be real, could it? They had to be made of plastic, hollow. But when he let go and they crashed back down into their case he felt the floor tremble with the force of it.

“By my reckoning that's a couple hundred kilos you just picked up without breaking a sweat,” Seth said. “Maybe a quarter ton. Not too shabby, young man. Come, this is not what I wanted you to see.”

He disappeared. Marlow looked at the weights, then at his hands, still refusing to believe it. He jogged after Seth, then stopped, seeing a heavy bag hanging from the ceiling. He jabbed at it and the punching bag ripped free from its mount and cartwheeled across the room, thumping into a treadmill hard enough to knock it over. Plaster dust rained down from the ceiling and Marlow backed away, walking swiftly through the door.

“What was that?” Seth asked.

“Nothing,” he replied, steering the old man away. “Definitely nothing. What did you want me to see?”

“This way,” said Seth, reaching the end of the corridor and opening the elevator. He pressed the button for the bullpen. “So you see, the Engine rewrites the physics of your particular pocket of existence. It hears what you want and reprograms the code accordingly, granting you any wish.”

“And the only price you have to pay is your soul,” said Marlow. Seth grinned.

“Yes, once upon a time that was true, for our friends the Knights. Originally you would have had to part with that piece of you, the very essence of your being. It was inevitable. There was no way you could crack your contract.”

“But why?” Marlow asked. “What can a soul do? Why is it worth anything?”

“Who knows. I certainly don't. Not one scientist on the planet could explain the nature of the soul, but few would deny we have one. It is one of the mysteries of the human condition. Perhaps one day we will unlock it.”

The elevator grumbled to a stop and Seth heaved open the gate, walking into the bullpen. Two of the Lawyers were still there, one of them startled out of sleep when he heard Seth's voice. He jumped to his feet, slapping his face gently to wake himself up. He was a young guy, twenties maybe, and his messy hair and Halo T-shirt made him look more like a surfer than a lawyer.

“Yo,” he said. “I wasn't sleeping, honest, just resting my eyes.”

“And practicing his nocturnal flatulence,” said the woman. She was his senior by at least a decade, dressed like an old-fashioned librarian. She peered over her glasses at Marlow. “I take it we're repairing some rookie mistakes?”

“Yes, Annie, we had an unfortunate wish, didn't we, Marlow?” Seth said, still smiling. “A certain, ah, unrequited desire.”

“You wished for the dish,” said the guy. “Happens all the time.”

He moved across the room to a storage locker and pulled out a pair of gloves and a helmet, connected to each other with wires. He chucked it to the woman called Annie, who just managed to snatch it out of the air.

“Tim, I really wish you wouldn't treat our equipment with such disregard,” said Seth. “You do know how expensive it is, don't you?”

“Sorry, boss,” he replied, donning a pair of gloves of his own and pulling the helmet over his head. It looked like a virtual reality set, or something Daft Punk might wear.

“This is quite something,” Seth said, pulling Marlow to the edge of the room. Tim snapped his fingers and the huge bank of computers along one side of the room roared to life, a noise like the pounding rush of a waterfall. He clicked his fingers again.

“We need section, um, 808-FR-403.2,” he said.

“Correction,” said Annie. “408.2.”

“Whatever,” muttered Tim. He waved his hands like he was a cop guiding traffic. Lights embedded in the walls blazed to life, beaming out lines of white laser as delicate as cobwebs, hundreds of them. They converged in the huge empty space in the middle of the room, taking on the shape of cogs and pistons, chains and gears and levers. It looked like a phantom version of the inside of the Engine and it took Marlow's breath away. Tim moved his hands again and the entire hologram shifted, pushed across the room, new sections appearing as the old ones vanished into the wall.

“It's an exact simulation of the Engine,” whispered Seth. “Well, the parts of it that we have documented. This section here, as far as we can tell, deals with what we shall call affairs of the heart.”

“We may have a slight irregularity in the eighth quadrant,” said Tim, spreading apart his hands and causing the hologram to enlarge. He zoomed in some more and Marlow saw a series of pins lined up together, some raised, some lowered. They reminded him of the arms and needles of a record player. Each one contained a small vial filled with a drop of dark liquid, swimming with flecks of light. “Four and five?” said Tim.

“No,” replied Annie. “I don't think so, go north.”

He swiped his hands and the floor moved, the hologram passing through Marlow, making him feel giddy. He ran his hands through the light, seeing it dance on his skin, wondering how on earth somebody had managed to think this up.

“There,” said Annie, pointing to a clutch of coiled springs, more needles attached to them. “Six, seven, eight … the ninth point has shifted.”

“Good spot,” said Tim.

“What are they doing?” Marlow whispered, not wanting to disturb them. Seth leaned in, speaking quietly.

“The Engine uses those filaments to write your contract. There are millions of them, billions, each one as small as a hair on your head. We're not sure how, but they have the power to rewrite the code, reprogram the universe. When they do, they change position, like that.”

“But how the hell do you know if they have?” Marlow asked. “There are so many of them.”

“Our computers pick up some discrepancies,” said Seth. “But the computer isn't as sharp as a human mind. These guys are genii, photographic memories. They can identify when something in the machine has changed. And when they do, they reset it, they cancel the contract.”

“Like Lawyers,” Marlow said, nodding.

“Oh come on,” said Annie, genuinely irritated. “Not you, too. We're not lawyers, we're quantum mathematicians. There's a big, big difference.”

“Sorry,” said Marlow, watching as she walked through the hologram toward the area they were discussing. She reached down, touching one of the filaments with her glove.

“Definitely the ninth,” she said. “Confirm.”

“Confirmed,” said Tim. “This is … section 808-FR-408.2, subsection fourteen, and filament nine. You ready?”

“I was born ready,” Annie said. She plucked the filament like it was a guitar string and it moved, popping up. There was a rumble beneath Marlow's feet, like continents were shifting deep beneath the surface. Something sharp stabbed him in the side of his head, as if he'd been bitten, and he slapped a hand to his temple.

“That is normal,” said Seth. “Especially the first time the Engine is cheated. It doesn't like it, not one bit.”

“What's happening?” he grunted.

“This display is connected to the actual Engine, to each and every filament. If they change position here, they change position inside the Engine.”

“So that's it then?” Marlow asked. “My contract's broken?”

Seth laughed again, but his eyes were full of a profound sadness.

“If it were that easy, then I would have had three fewer heart attacks and my hair would still be the same color as my eyebrows,” he said, shaking his head. “No, that is most certainly not it.”

Tim was swiping at the floor, faster now, giving the illusion that they were all sailing down a river of light.

“There, the eighteenth,” he said, and they flicked another filament. Something burrowed into Marlow's skull again and he winced. “If the eighteenth is gone, then we'd better check out thirty-six too.”

“Every contract is different,” said Seth. “Some involve perhaps several thousand filaments. More complicated contracts, such as Pan's last deal, have a total of hundreds of thousands. The more you wish for, the harder it is to locate and repair the filaments. To make it more complicated still, the filaments correspond to the individual. Two people wishing for the same thing would have a very different contract. Somebody of more advanced years, such as me, would unfortunately have a contract involving a million filaments. Which is why old farts cannot make a deal. And when too many people have a contract at one time, it becomes too muddled, impossible to differentiate, which is why we do not have an army at our disposal. Come, Marlow, we must leave them to their work.”

Tim and Annie burrowed their way deeper into the holographic Engine, shouting to each other as they navigated his contract. It looked almost as if they were playing some hi-tech sport, virtual tennis—only the prize they were playing for was his soul. He jogged after Seth, pulling the elevator gates shut behind him.

“How long does it take them?” he asked as they rumbled upward.

“For this? Not long. Several hours. It could be longer.” Seth saw his expression of disbelief. “Remember, the Engine does not want you to beat it. The contracts are designed to be unbreakable. It is only because of the technology we possess that we even stand a chance. The mathematics here, the equations involved in breaking the simplest of contracts, they are mind-boggling. Some contracts take the full twenty-seven days to crack.”

“Couldn't you just, y'know, make a contract to know how to break a contract?” Marlow asked, feeling like a genius himself for even suggesting it. Seth shook his head as the elevator came to a halt.

“We tried it,” he said sadly. “The Engine knew we would. It was an impossible contract to break. We lost an Engineer, right here. Would you, please? My strength is not what it was.”

Marlow opened the gates and Seth stepped out, walking to the third door along the corridor.

“This is where you will sleep,” he said. “It is not a five-star hotel, I am afraid, but it is comfortable. You should rest. If you do not feel tired, then by all means use our gymnasium, or sit in the recreation room. But whatever you do, please stay inside the complex. The Engine is powerful, but secrecy is our most important weapon. The fewer people who know about us, the less likely it is that the Circle will discover our location. We fly far beneath the radar, so close to the ground that our bellies are scratched by the trees.”

“Seriously?” Marlow said, raising an eyebrow. “Since I've met you guys you've blown up a hospital and taken out half a block in a city of eight million people. You don't so much fly under the radar as blow the hell out of it.”

Seth hissed out a dry wheeze of a laugh.

“Nothing to do with us,” he said, waving a hand and winking. “The events you talk of are terrorist attacks, gas explosions, terrible car accidents, catastrophic and tragic building collapses, midair collisions, riots and stampedes. These are the events that make the news, yes? And surely the news does not lie.”

“But—”

“Enough, Marlow. I must go, or you will be carrying me to my bed. Just remember, do not leave this place.”

He shuffled away to another door.

“Thank you, Seth,” Marlow called after him. The old man waved, then disappeared, the door closing behind him. Marlow stood there for a moment. He was tired, no doubt about it. He didn't think he'd ever been so tired. But he knew there was no way he could sleep, not now, not with so much power inside him. He set off toward the gym, wanting to test himself, wanting to see exactly what he was capable of. He was halfway there when Bullwinkle stepped out of the door, wiping his sweating face with a towel. They both almost jumped out of their skins when they saw each other, and Marlow was the first to recover.

“Not so tough now, eh?” he said.

Bullwinkle straightened, but he looked afraid. The guy was under contract—Marlow's arm still ached from where he'd been held by phantom telekinetic fingers—but he knew that if he punched him now the way he'd punched Hanson downstairs he could tear him in two. The thought made him feel sick and he unclenched a fist he didn't even know he'd made. Bullwinkle saw it and he took a step forward, lobbing the towel back into the gym.