The Gone-Away World (34 page)

Which is why this moment belongs to me. There is a very unsubtle, easy way to get loose from this prison. For all that he knows it's there, because he went to the same class I did on counter-restraint, it isn't the kind of thing Gonzo is liable to come up with. Gonzo is one of nature's winners, and this kind of victory is what you might call pyrrhic. It's not something you can ask Leah to do, and it's not something which would necessarily work for Jim Hepsobah or some of those other guys, because they've spent so much time bulking up and turning their hands into lethal weapons. It probably would work for Sally Culpepper, but it would also make her useless if we need a sniper somewhere down the line. So it's a perfect plan for me. The thing is that although it is easy, it isn't going to be any fun. And so I take a few breaths before I do it, and I send up, for the first time, a sort of prayer, although it's rather hazy around the edges.

Most people, when they pray, have a notion of where the words are going. They have in mind God the Bearded, God the Robed, God the Absent Father sitting on a cloud going through his postbag. My prayer is in a blank envelope, left sitting at a bus stop. Anyone who is interested can pick it up and open it. Anyone, in fact, who wants to be God—to me, at least—can slip their thumb between the flap and the body of the envelope and crack the seal, and discover my one, solemn wish:
Dear Lord, I want to go home.
All they have to do, to get into my personal pantheon, is deliver the appropriate miracle. In the meantime, though, I'm working on the basis that the letter will sit there and get brushed off the back of the bench and into the gutter, and then a rainstorm will wash it into the sewer system where it will get sodden and mouldy, and the ink will fade and the paper turn to sludge, and my prayer will just fade away unread, as they mostly seem to. So I rest my left hand against the wall, thumb outwards. Then I stretch as far away from it as I possibly can. And then I hurl myself hard against it, the bone of my hip crunching against the small ones which make up my hand. This hurts, but nothing breaks. It takes a few minutes and several repetitions of the operation, during which everyone turns to stare at me in absolute horror, before something substantial snaps and I am able (after a few seconds of vomiting) to pull my broken hand out of the cuff and remove myself from the rope.

The pain is transcendentally awful. The sickly knowledge that I did this to myself amplifies it, makes it special. It rebounds off the understanding that I cannot stop, that I must go on, or suffer more of the same. Belatedly, I remember that there is a set of internal chi gong exercises which can be used (in advance, of course) to deaden pain. They are called the Nine Little Nurses, which Master Wu always found vaguely erotic, so that, when he explained them, there was a kind of wistful, naughty expression on his face, suggesting that in his younger years he knew at least three of them very well indeed. Not that there are actual nurses. Apart from Leah and Egon. I consider the possibility that Leah and Egon are illusions I created, moments ago, to help me through the pain, and then realise that I have been standing there, lightly holding my hand while everyone hopes like hell I don't scream or pass out, for a minute and a half, and that I am in the grip of some kind of weird psychological fugue, and it's time to shake it and go.

I shake it, and look over at Jim Hepsobah, who has a kind of placid energy about him which I figure I can usefully borrow about now. I take the quiet of Jim; a rugged, mountainous refuge of the heart. The fog sort of clears, or at least I can move again.

There is now only the door to deal with. It's not much of a door. It is intended to keep people out of the booze, not to keep anyone prisoner inside. (The pain from my hand is moderately appalling. I cling to the sense of Jim Hepsobah in my mind, and I review the mountain I have envisaged to symbolise him. It has streams. Cold, clear streams. I dip my hand in one, and clothe myself in Hepsobahish strength. Hepsobahian? Hepsobahic? Or would there be a contraction? Hepsoban? Part of me carries on with this important line of reasoning, and I let it, because while it's doing that it can't feel the pain. So.) If I had a hairpin, and I knew anything about locks, I could probably crack us out. I could, in time, kick the thing open, although the noise would almost certainly bring unwanted company. I contemplate the possibilities until I realise that Leah is trying to attract my attention with a growing urgency and, rather unfairly, exasperation. I go over to her.

“Turn the handle!” she says, and I open my mouth to object that no one would fail to lock the door, and then just to be sure, I go over there and turn the handle. The door opens.

Not that unfairly, then. To my Hepsobahian strength, I add Leahian (there's another one ending in
h;
disaster!) perspicacity. Perspicaciousness.
Ow, ow, ow.
I look back at Leah. She grins fiercely, encouraging and imploring all at once, and I fall just a little bit more in love with her, then step out into the next room, which is the back of the airport bar. Around the corner I can hear someone mixing a cocktail. If it's a martini, he is butchering it. Barbarian. (Meaning “one who is bearded,” and curiously not in origin pejorative. The Romans knew that people with beards could be sharp as a
gladius,
they just liked to distinguish smoothly shaven from hirsute . . . That sounds pornographic, doesn't it? Shaven? Yes, indeed. Mmm.)

I clamp down on my thoughts and extend Leah's smarts towards the cocktailista in the bar. By the sound of his footsteps, it is a man. Almost before I look, I know that it is Carsville, the new, dangerous Carsville, with added suave. I peer at him around the edge of the doorway. He has his back to me and he's brutalising a cheap shaker, James Bond style, making the wateriest martini this airport has ever seen. His face is unmarked, and he doesn't move like a guy who just fought for his life. No twinges, no hesitations, no gasps. He finishes his mix, and pours it out, spilling a fair bit. Then I lunge down behind the wall as he hops on the bar, briefly turning my way, and swivels on his backside as if this were some expensive penthouse in the city. I'm in no danger of discovery. His attention is all for who's watching:
Hey there, my name's Ben. Hi, ladies
. . . There are no ladies. They are in his head. (Shaven, no doubt.
Ow, ow, ow.
Hepsobah. The mountain has forests, and bears. Big, powerful animals. Slumbering. Waiting. Yes.) He ambles away towards Kemner and the others at the far end of the room. Halfway down, two of Kemner's men are on guard. Still nervous, even here. The willies, yes. I duck down again, watching the drips of ice-water martini splatter onto the floor.

And then I realise that someone has opened my prayer envelope, and taken at least partial steps to help me out. Praise unto Ben Carsville, idiot and monster, for he is an angel of the Lord—even unawares. At eye level with me now, lying beside the cash register, there is a hammer. It briefly occurs to me to wonder whether this is for remonstrating with surly customers or correcting defects in the till, but even to me that is not the important thing. The important thing is that if I can get to it and get back out again without being spotted, it will be a useful study aid in my newly chosen specialist field of getting-the-fuck-out-of-here-ology. I crawl on my knees and my right hand along under the bar towards the hammer. Every shuffle makes a noise like a fire bell ringing and I can't imagine they don't hear, and every jolt sends a bright blue spike into my left eye, which for some reason is feeling the pain from my hand. I reach the hammer, and then I make an error of curiosity and open the fridge. Nine pairs of eyes stare back at me. The fridge stinks. Kemner is keeping her heads here so that she always has one ready to go on the throne. In the meantime, they rest on paper plates. UN soldiers, maybe a civilian doctor. I manage not to throw up, and close the fridge door softly. I find myself staring into my own eyes, reflected in the mirrored refrigerator. I look like hell, which is to be expected. I look like one of the poor bastards inside. Although there is a little mote in the surface of the fridge, a dint, which makes funny shapes if I move myself around it. And then I am not alone, which is a major shocker.

The face is above me, and it isn't really a face. It is a gasmask. It is poking through a hole in the ceiling. It isn't visible to the bad guys at the far end of the room because the bar has a canopy of stretched plastic with “KatiriCola” branded across it in probably actionable letters. The un-face sprouts from a pair of shoulders in an orange prisoner's jumpsuit, and in fact the wearer has the hood up as well. I am being spied on by an orange person! Orange-headed spies! I seem to recall a song about a man with an orange head. Sadly, I cannot remember the tune. I hum, very quietly so that Kemner's people do not come over and kill me. Laa dee dumm . . .
Ow, ow, ow.
The orange person—it is a male person, I can see stubble on his neck, and I can smell him—manages to convey a look of alarm, which is pretty good going for someone with no facial features. It must be posture. Good old mammalian body language, functioning upside down. Still, I stop humming. The Leah and the Hepsobah parts of me are pretty sure this is not a good moment to be doing that. The person behind the mask considers me, and I look at his lenses and feel that I'm not getting the best of the arrangement. (Then again, there's a tiny crust of blood where the mask meets the hood, and when he moves, it is stiffly; he's injured. Perhaps I'd rather not see what is underneath, after all.)

I stare at the orange head. Is it considering betraying me? Should I take steps to eliminate it? But no. This is Kemner's secret foe, the sneaky one they're all worrying about. Oh. Oh yes. The waving crazy person by the roadside—the one who wanted us not to come here. At least he isn't saying he told us so. Isn't saying anything, actually, silent orange waving upside down gasmask person. We look at one another. I hum, but only in my head. I smell him again, and this time I smell blood and something sweet. Gangrene then. The orange person looks at my nauseous expression and nods.
Dying soon.

After a moment the orange person traces with one gloved hand on the ceiling. Semicircle. Zigzag. He speaks in hieroglyphs. I understand nothing. Semicircle. Zigzag. A plan of attack? A clock. A pretty flower? He is Zorro. Yes. That's it! Zorro has come. The fox, with his mighty sword and whip, to smite the evildoers . . . Z for Zorro. I think about it. Ah. Semicircle. Zigzag. Not Z. U, N. He is a soldier. He was a prisoner. He will fight, because she keeps his friends in a drinks fridge.

Kemner has an orange enemy, or at least an orange not-friend. Which means that I have an orange maybe-friend. I wonder whether the face beneath the mask winked at me. It seems possible. I am tempted to get up and peer through the eyeholes. And then the figure shows me both hands (how it holds on up there is a mystery, perhaps it has orange friends? Or it is using its legs. Maybe it has long, orange toes. Ew.) and taps one wrist to indicate time, and then holds up both hands again, fingers spread. Ten. Ten minutes? Ten seconds? Ten o'clock? But if so, is that Zulu or local? The orange person slithers back up into the loft or the air duct or whatever it is up there, and I am alone with the hammer, and I realise that I can hear someone coming over to the bar. I have stared at the orange person for too long. Now I have to go fast, as if I weren't injured. Perhaps that was the point? Fast like a greyhound! Any time now. Yes. Right now.

And finally, because my internal Jim Hepsobah takes direct action, I move. It is agony like nothing else. My wrist is fine. Broken, but painless. My eye, which has nothing wrong with it, really hurts.
Ow, ow, ow.
It is made entirely of blue fire and my hand feels sort of muzzy as I round the corner to the lock-up. I have skittered, pell-mell, across the floor of the bar and around the corner, using the broken limb as if it weren't, and feeling the grating of bones and the general badness and not caring. And then I hand the hammer over to Jim Hepsobah (Gonzo looks hurt), who rips off his shirt to muffle the noise and proceeds to beat the rope out of the wall in about a minute. Everyone is free now, albeit unarmed and handcuffed. I explain about the orange person. Ten? Ten what? Gonzo thinks minutes. Tobemory Trent puts Egon down, and he and Leah set my hand as best they can and put it in a sling made from my shirt. Leah's fingers are warm on my chest, and I make her put her palm over my eye. It helps. A brief council of war is convened, during which everyone takes turns to hold Egon, because he is shaking and needs to be loved, and we are leaving no one behind, not physically and not spiritually, because we are who we are and that is how we're going to stay. Tobemory Trent moves around smashing handcuffs.

Assets: one wire-cord rope. One hammer. Two metal spikes. One irritated but unarmed SpecOps unit. Three medical specialists, a rearechelon officer, assorted grunts with basic skills like driving, small-scale construction and stabbing people. Gonzo gestures to the wall. He holds a spike against it, and Jim Hepsobah swings. Stone falls away. And again, and again . . . A little light shows through. This room was not intended to be secure. He gestures to Sally Culpepper to wedge the door with the other spike. She does so immediately. And now things are happening very fast. Gonzo peers through the hole and is satisfied. He and Jim demolish a low, narrow stretch, and we crawl out one by one, finding ourselves behind some crates and other junk.

Gonzo is not there when I arrive, hopalong style, but as Egon is passed through, he reappears carrying a recently deceased bad guy over one shoulder and a rifle in his free hand. The first thing he drops on the ground, the second he passes not to Jim but to Sally, and he dons the undersized jacket and looted helmet of the dead man, and saunters away again. He vanishes around the corner, and I can hear him hailing someone, making a genuinely friendly noise. Gonzo likes everyone. He would really prefer that this person immediately see his point of view. He knows that won't happen, and so he grins affably (I know he does, though I cannot see) and hugs his new pal, and somewhere in the hug the surprised hugee discovers that he cannot breathe, cannot shout, and is now totally in the power of this strange man, and then he knows nothing more. In this situation, because Gonzo is pressed for time and can't afford any mistakes, the hugee will not awaken. Gonzo tosses the next uniform to one of his guys, a weird, plump little man called Sam who suffers from emotional (if not physical) priapism. Sam is a hound dog. He'd make a pass at a shop dummy. He shrugs into his borrowed clothes and vanishes after Gonzo, silent and serious, knife tucked away behind his forearm. Sam on business. Veeery scary. There is a muffled slicing noise, and Sam returns. There's no blood on his uniform, and none on that of the man he has killed. There is blood on his knife. What has he done? Something clever. Something vile. He drops the corpse, jolly, ever-so-slightly fat Sam, because even heavy training can't entirely defeat biology, and Sam is basically a fat man. The dead guy's mouth opens, and leaks.