The Glass God (17 page)

hello, putting you through now caller…

          … yes, I’m trying to find…

                    … 745 Aldywch…

please hold while I connect you to

               BEEP!

          an operator

               will be with you to

beeeeeeeeeepp…

transferring!

     hello?

          hello?!

                    HELLO?

     beeeeeeeeee freeeeeeeeeeee

“Ms Li,” hissed Rhys. “You’re going invisible again!”

At the sound of his voice, and with a shake like a shaggy dog throwing off water, she shimmered back into full solidity. 8ft stared at her, a hard, fascinated stare, which she met and held until he looked away.

At the bottom of the passage, by the door itself, two figures sat guard beneath the glow of a single bulb: a boy and a girl, barely more than fifteen years old. Their faces were only lightly scarred, with bands of metal through their ears, lips, noses. The girl carried a fresh red pair of scars lightly incised above each eyebrow, a sign, Rhys realised, of seniority. They rose from where they’d been crouched, dog-like in the gloom, as 8ft approached, and glared at Sharon and Rhys with defiance and doubt.

“dis is Gold Mnkey n Hobo Grlz,” explained 8ft. “dey fnd im.”

“Found… the Midnight Mayor?” asked Sharon, eyeing up the locked metal door. There was a taint on the air, a sharp iron smell, and when Gold Mnkey and Hobo Grlz glanced towards the door, fear stirred across their features.

“yeh.” 8ft glowered at the two teenagers, and barked, “dis is a fckin shaman n 1 who nos da truf so u fckin bow u heds!”

To Rhys’s surprise and Sharon’s astonishment, the two teenagers bobbed their heads respectfully at her, shuffling a little further back from the door. A sudden crackling, as of metal tearing in two, muffled behind the thick walls at their back, made both Tribesmen jump. 8ft lashed out at Hobo Grlz, catching her hard across the skull, sending the girl staggering, catching her balance badly against the wall. “no fear!” he barked. “lok @ me!” She did, flushed face locking with fury onto 8ft’s own. “u is a Tribesman now,” he hissed. “fear is lies, jus lik beauty.”

The girl nodded, once, chin tilting up high. Another sound came from behind the door, a high-pitched, slow shriek of tortured metal. The door creaked, and brilliant blue light flashed with ultra-violet intensity around its edges; and with it came another sound cutting through the twisting of metal. A human sound, but only in that there was breath and air somewhere in its composition; a voice, shrieking in key with the tortured room.

“Okay,” murmured Sharon, eyeing up the door. “So I’m guessing Swift’s in there?”

“no,” muttered 8ft, “dats da prblm.”

Chapter 28

Don’t Let It Get You Down

They didn’t open the door.

Though no one would say it, they didn’t dare.

Sharon took Rhys by the arm and said, “You – with me.”

“Oh, but, Ms Li, do you think…⁠?”

She didn’t give him time to finish, but walked straight through the door.

A room on the other side.

Banks of machinery, old, cracked, dusty, lined every wall. Once, nimble-fingered operators had sat in this place, and moved jacks between sockets, transferring calls from one place to another, and sparks had flown and numbers had tripped through the system with the sound of knitting-needle clatter. Now it was dark, silent, the door sealed tight, the chairs gone, the wires gnawed, the numbers long since faded into obscurity. The machines had been left behind, simply because no one could think of anything better to do with them, and the lights had long since burnt out.

Yet as Sharon and Rhys shimmered back into the real world, there was illumination. A clear blue glow spilt out from the centre of the room and up the walls, spreading and fading with the regularity of a beating heart. Its source was hidden from view, tucked away behind a bank of shattered terminal boxes. But as Sharon shifted her weight, broken copper fragments crackled beneath her feet; and with that tiny sound, the room seemed to shudder and stretch, the light flaring up and a voice calling out wordlessly in unison with the noises of the metal, as if tongue and cable had fused into one.

Rhys pinched the bridge of his nose, and declared, “Aaaaa… Aaaaattttcc… aaattcchhh…⁠”

“One moment,” requested Sharon, and before he could complete his sneeze she once again vanished from view.

A moment later she reappeared, hauling the startled 8ft by the arm through the thick door. He staggered back into visible perception with a gasp, clutching at the walls, and stammered, “i-i-i-i saw da da da…⁠”

“The truth of things, yup; happens like that,” exclaimed Sharon. “You see things in the spirit talk that you don’t usually see elsewhere, and frankly that’s probably for the best because you know what, reality is tricky and perception kinda helps make things easier, but maybe that’s a conversation for another time when there’s not scary pulsing blue light and the sound of someone screaming.”

8ft stared at her. His mouth hung open to reveal gummy ridges where there hung a few metal-clad teeth. “how do u bare it?” he breathed. “seein wat u see?”

“Evening classes,” she replied. “And lotsa positive thinking. That said…⁠” Another burst of brightness, and with it there was a perceptible flash of heat, a hair-curling, skin-cracking warmth that passed almost as quickly as it had appeared. “⁠… the sounds of mystic pain are really putting me off.”

Somewhere in the blue-lit gloom, a gasp dissolved into a groan, which spread out in both sound and illumination. Sharon hopped back with a yelp as blue sparks flashed across the wrecked cables over the floor, and burst into splotches of light where they hit the wall, or wriggled in puddles of electric flame as they dug their way down into the earth. “Right!” she squeaked. “No point delaying!”

Rhys could think of lots of good reasons for delaying, but one look at Sharon’s face suggested that now might not be the time to air them. With a determined stride, the shaman marched towards the brightest part of the pulsing blue light. 8ft glanced at Rhys, and Rhys smiled helplessly, hoping that 8ft would take the initiative in terms of manly pursuit. The Tribesman shuffled forward reluctantly.

Sharon climbed over a fallen mess of cable tray, stepped past a burst pile of rusted metal trunking, and looked up to see…

She supposed that “man” just about covered it. But even in the most liberal of biological senses, the individual pinned by a mess of copper to the tallest telephone exchange was having an evolutionarily tricky day. Certainly, he still possessed two arms, two legs and all the bits above and in between; but as his fingers opened and closed, great bursts of ragged blue flame spread outwards and back across his flesh, rippling over the blood-soaked rags of his clothes, and his hair stood on end, bursting with static. His bright blue eyes opened and closed erratically, and his lips worked at words that would not form; and as he writhed, great copper cables, lashed across his legs, wrists, shoulders, chest and neck, spat white electric chaos onto the floor.

He was – or at least, had been – a man Sharon knew. Sorcerer, protector of the city, not-quite-human with the consciousness of an angel or, more to the point, of the blue electric angels, spawn of the telephone wires and about as holy as cauliflower: Matthew Swift, the Midnight Mayor, and, as if all that weren’t bad enough, the man who she was supposed to think of as the boss. Tacked to the shattered remnants of a telephone exchange by a cage of copper, he now twisted and screamed; and when his eyes opened, there was no white in them, but only burning, mad electric blue.

His eyes opened now, and locked onto Sharon. His body arched, spilling more sparks across the floor, as if muscle could no longer contain the energy bursting from the inside out. For a moment it seemed that there was recognition in his face.

Then the man who should have been Matthew Swift raised his head, and screamed.

“dwn!” roared 8ft, knocking Sharon to the floor as he dived for shelter. From his place on the wall, Swift’s whole body arched with the force of air passing from his lungs, and kept on arching, until the skin seemed to stretch thin across his bones, unable to contain them. Cracks broke out on his forehead, his neck, his hands, his arms, through his clothes, great ragged fault lines bursting out from inside him. But where there should have been blood, there was only fire, brilliant burning blue; and, as he screamed, the fire flared up, burst into roaring light and sound, and rippled outwards in a sheet of flame that sheared through the dead machines, lit up the torn copper cables, snapped pipes from across the ceiling and sent arcs of electricity dancing from every metal surface and every nail.

Sharon looked up from the floor, socks steaming on her feet; beside her 8ft lay awkwardly sprawled.

Swift’s head hung motionless on his chest. The cracks in his skin, which should have been enough to reveal bone beneath, were closing up as quickly as they had formed, and from them red blood now ran, only wriggling and shimmering blue a little as they ceased dripping from his flesh. His chest rose and fell slowly, and with each breath the blue light still playing around him pulsed in and out with the slower beating of his heart.

“it’l b stil a whil now,” murmured 8ft, easing himself up. “den it’l wak, n screm agin.”

Sharon saw Rhys a few feet away, patting at the smoking ends of his hair. She staggered to her feet, brushing the worst of the soot and seared dust off her clothes, and stared into the now-empty face of the Midnight Mayor.

“Is he… a prisoner?” she asked, as the cables around him stretched and contracted with each breath.

8ft shook his head. “we culdnt hld it if we wnted 2. it com 2 us, mak dis cag 4 itself. i fink it wer tryin 2 prtect us, n itself, frm wat it wer bcom.”

Sharon nodded, eyes still fixed on Swift’s slowly breathing form. She took a step closer, and at once 8ft reached after her, then froze, afraid to touch. “it is dangrous,” he breathed. “it is a tru dangr. it is angel. it is devil. it is god.”

“No,” murmured Sharon, moving another step away from 8ft, and closer to the dangling man. “It’s none of that.” She reached up gingerly towards the still-glowing flesh; the blue light shimmered over her skin like silk. “It’s the blue electric angels.”

Her fingers brushed the man’s skin. For a second her face twisted in pain as it came, all of it, the truth all at once, a deafening, roaring cry of:

     weee beeeee!!

          weeeee beeeeee!!

               WEEE BEE LIGHT WE BEEEEEE

LIFE!!

               WE BE FIRE!!

She snatched her hand away, and a little of the blue glow travelled with it, spilling over her skin, then tumbling away. “Jesus,” she breathed. “He’s not there any more.”

Weeee beeeeee…
 

A sound that began with the dialling tone in the telephone wire, a voice that came out of the nothing. And there it was, waiting to be heard; she didn’t even need to touch him, it was so strong: a cry, a shriek, a scream tumbling silently off Swift’s flesh, and it said,

Weeee be light, we be life, we be fire!
 

We sing electric flame, we dance underground wind, we touch heaven!
 

Come beeee we and beeee free!
 

Weeeee beeee…
 

“Blue electric angels,” she whispered. “Swift’s gone. There’s nothing there.”

Swift – or rather, not-Swift, the body that should-have-been-Swift, gave a sudden shudder, as of a restless sleeper, and the flames flickered with renewed heat across his skin.

“we shuld go b4 he waks again,” hissed 8ft. “we shuld go now!” Sharon nodded, then hesitated, and reached forward again for Swift. “shaman!” he hissed, desperation edging into his voice.

She ignored him, easing the scorched, smoking remnant of Swift’s shirt up from his middle. Blood had soaked through the cloth in a thin line, and though the cracks on Swift’s skin had healed as quickly as they had come, there was still a shallow wound across his side, just above his lowest rib, where the blood was clotting black. She let the tatty shirt fall, and turning, scrambled away from the sorcerer.

“Ms Li?” asked Rhys, as they scuttled for the door. “Is he going to be all right?”

“You know what,” she murmured. “I’m kinda starting to doubt it.”

Chapter 29

Persevere and You Shall Succeed

Rhys and Sharon were not the only people pulling overtime that night.

In the offices of Harlun and Phelps, financiers to the very obscure and legally dubious, a light burnt above a lone desk. The desk itself was immaculate. The in-tray was empty, the out-tray was neatly stacked, labelled and colour-coded for dispatch in the morning, when the rest of the world would arrive to receive its gifts. Where most people liked to have one, or, at most, two screens on which to work, the owner of this computer had felt the urge to have three, and rather than, as was traditionally the case, keep his third monitor clear for playing cards and updating Twitter with such witty remarks as:

#workinglatetonight
 

or:

#feelinghungry
 

… or other such matters of great import and moment, the owner of this machine had split the screen down even further to provide rolling data on stock markets across the globe, local and international news, a live CCTV feed from the security cameras around the building, and an internet forum for Scryers Incorporated – 24/7 updates on mystic activity near YOU!

As if this wasn’t enough, the man sat in immaculate, stiff black behind the desk, and was drinking coffee from a mug labelled –
KEEP CALM AND DON’T PANIC
, quite possibly without irony.

Miles lays his cup of coffee down to one side, and for a moment is the living embodiment of exactly these words. He stares at the second of his three available screens, considers the information on it, then smiles and reaches for his mobile phone.