Transition (50 page)

Madame d’Ortolan looked at Mrs Siankung, who watched Bisquitine with anxious concentration. Bisquitine appeared dishevelled
already; hair awry, her businesswoman’s jacket removed as an annoyance, her blouse hanging half out, buttons undone at the
bottom, tights laddered, shoes discarded. She brought her head back, and stuck her jaw out, lowering her voice to something
close to a man’s as she said, “Blinkenscoop, why, you silly man, what do you call this? A fine to-do, to do, to-do, to-do,
to-do-oo-oo. I can’t see with you in the way. Begone, you tea urchin!”

“She will need one of the other blockers to be sure,” Mrs Siankung announced.

Madame d’Ortolan and Mr Kleist exchanged glances. They were

out of character, in a sense. He was too young, wiry and blond, she too fat and awkward, with badly dyed grey-black hair and
a loud orange velour trouser suit. Mrs Siankung was similarly wrong, manifesting as a massive, robustly built woman in a voluminous
yellow dress who needed a three-pointed aluminium stick to walk. They’d had no time to find body types closer to their own,
especially as they’d all had to transition together with Bisquitine and her handlers, who had been similarly randomised in
physiques.

Madame d’Ortolan frowned. “A blocker? You’re sure?”

“I think you mean a spotter,” Mr Kleist suggested.

“No, a blocker,” Mrs Siankung said, reaching out to flick an unruly lock off her charge’s forehead. “And it has to be one
of those who was here earlier, with the first intervention team.”

Madame d’Ortolan glanced at Mr Kleist and nodded. He left the room. Bisquitine made as though to slap Mrs Siankung’s hand
away, then started pulling at her long, brown, still mostly gathered-up hair, tugging a thick length of it free and putting
the end of it in her mouth and starting to chew contentedly on it. She looked at a distant painting with an expression of
great concentration.

“What will happen to the blocker?” Madame d’Ortolan asked.

Mrs Siankung looked at her. “You know what will happen.”

Mr Kleist returned with one of the two blockers a few minutes later.

The young man had been dried off after his dunking in the canal beside the palace’s landing stage. His dark hair was slicked
down, he was dressed in a towelling robe and he was smoking a cigarette.

“Put that out,” Mrs Siankung told him.

“I work better with it,” he said, glancing to Madame d’Ortolan, who remained expressionless.

He sighed, took a final deep draw, found an ashtray on the broad desk and stubbed the cigarette out. He took a frowning look
at Bisquitine as he did so. She was in turn obviously fascinated by him, staring wide-eyed and still holding the hank of hair
to her mouth while she chewed noisily at it.

A slight, bald man hurried through the study doors, came up to Madame d’Ortolan and kissed her hand.

“Madame, I am at your disposal.”

“Professore Loscelles,” she replied, patting his hand. “A pleasure, as ever. I am so sorry your lovely home has been made
such a mess of.”

“Not at all, not at all,” he murmured.

“Please stay, will you?”

“Certainly.”

The Professore stood at the rear of Madame d’Ortolan’s chair.

The sheet-covered table was moved back and the young man who was employed as a blocker was sat on a chair immediately in front
of Bisquitine, almost knee to knee. He looked a little nervous. He pulled the robe tighter, cleared his throat.

“She will take your wrists,” Mrs Siankung told him.

He nodded, cleared his throat again. Bisquitine looked expectantly at Mrs Siankung, who nodded. The girl made a noise like
“Grooh!” and sat forward quickly, grabbing at the young man’s wrists and encircling them as best she could with her own smaller
hands while she thudded her head against his chest.

The reaction was immediate. The young man bowed his back, jackknifed forward and as though doing so deliberately vomited copiously
over Bisquitine’s head, hair and back before quivering as though suffering a fit and starting to slump backwards in the seat
and then slide forwards out of it, legs splaying as he lost control of his bladder and bowels at the same time.

“Dear fuck!” Madame d’Ortolan said, standing so suddenly that she knocked her chair over.

Professore Loscelles put a handkerchief to his mouth and nose and turned away, bowing his head.

Mr Kleist did not react at all, save to glance briefly, as though concerned, at Madame d’Ortolan. Then he walked over and
carefully set her chair upright again.

Mrs Siankung moved her feet away from the mess.

Bisquitine didn’t seem to have noticed, still cuddling into the young man and pulling him to her as he spasmed and jerked
and voided noisily from various orifices.

“Who’s a bad boy, then?” they heard Bisquitine say over the noises of evacuation coming from the young man, her voice muffled
as she hugged his shaking body and they collapsed together onto the floor. A thick, earthy stink filled the air. “Who’s a
bad boy? Where’s this? Where’s this, then? You tell me. Ay, Ferrovia, Ferrovia, al San Marco, Fondamenta Venier, Ay! Giacobbe,
is that you? No, it’s not me. Ponte Guglie; alora, Rio Tera De La Madalena. Strada Nova, al San Marco. Alora; il Quadri. Due
espressi, per favore, signori. Bozman, who said you could come along? Get back, get away, get thee to your own shop, if you
have one!… Euh, yucky.” Bisquitine seemed to notice the mess she was lying in. She let go of the young man, who flopped lifeless
on the rug, streaked with his own excrement. His eyes – wide, almost popping – stared up at the biblical scene depicted on the
ceiling.

Bisquitine got to her feet, smiling brightly. She stuck the length of hair in her mouth again, then made a sour face and spat
it out. She continued to spit for a few more moments before holding her arms out to Mrs Siankung as a child would, straight,
fingers spread. “Bath time!” she cried out.

Madame d’Ortolan looked to Professore Loscelles, who was dabbing at his lips with his handkerchief. He nodded. “It would sound,”
he said hoarsely, “as though the person is heading from Santa Lucia – the railway station – towards the Piazza San Marco. So it
would seem, given the names of the thoroughfares mentioned. Or they may already be there, at the Quadri. It is a café and
rather fine restaurant. Very good cake.”

Madame d’Ortolan looked at the other man standing nearby. “Mr Kleist?”

“I’ll see to it, ma’am.” He left the room.

Bisquitine stamped one foot, messily. “
Bath
time!” she said loudly.

Mrs Siankung looked to Madame d’Ortolan, who said, “Shower.” She glanced distastefully at Bisquitine. “And don’t tarry. We
may need her again, soon.”

The Transitionary

I make my way through the slow bustle of tourists on the main route leading towards the Rialto and beyond towards both the
Accademia and Piazza San Marco, moving as quickly as I can without actually throwing people aside or trampling small children.
“Scusi. Scusi, scusi, signora, excuse me, sorry, scusi, coming through. Scusi, scusi…”

At the same time I’m still trying to monitor what’s going on just across the Grand Canal. What a stew of conflicting talents
and abilities are massed around the Palazzo Chirezzia! There are blockers and trackers and inhibitors and foreseers and adepts
with skills I barely recognise, many of them recently arrived. I think I can identify individual presences now, too. That
one there would be Madame d’Ortolan, this one here might be Professore Loscelles. And at the centre of them all that bizarre
presence, that strange, guileless malignity.

One of the blockers seems to have gone. I remember the first blocker I’d Tasered, the young man who was smoking and fell into
the small canal at the side of the palace. He isn’t there any more. And some of the others are starting to move, quitting
the Chirezzia and streaming in this direction, heading for the Rialto, others clustering in what must be a launch—

“Jesus! Hey! Watch where you’re going! What the – I mean, Jesus.”

“Scusi, sorry, sorry, signore, I beg your pardon,” I tell the backpacker I’ve just knocked to his knees, helping him back
up to a surrounding chorus of tutting.

“Well, just—”

“Scusi!” Then I’m off again, sliding and dancing through the crowd like the people are flags on a slalom course, leading with
one shoulder then the other, sliding and swivelling on the balls of my feet. The boat with the half-dozen or so Concern people
in it is on its way down the Grand Canal. More – maybe a dozen – are on foot, heading over the Rialto now. I’m just a couple of
minutes away from there. If they turn left on its far side, they’ll pass right by me or we’ll bump into each other.

My phone goes. It’s Ade. A symbol on the display that wasn’t flashing before is flashing now. I suspect the battery is about
to give out.

“Fred?”

“Hello, Adrian.”

“Just landed at the Rialto, mate, just past the vaporetto sort of floating bus stop wotsit. On the bridge in one minute.”

“I’ll see you very shortly.”

I stop, walking into the doorway of a glove shop, breathing hard. I still can’t flit across to another person. I can feel
the squad of Concern people splitting up, most heading on down the main route for San Marco, three coming this way. I turn
to face the calle and close down as much as I can, calming myself, attempting, if it’s possible, to take all that I can of
my new abilities off-line. A minute or two passes, the street teems with people. I recognise somebody and my heart leaps,
then I realise they’re heading the other way and it’s just the backpacker I bowled into earlier. I try a quick toe-in reading
with my sense of where the Concern people are. All three of the nearest are still heading up the way I’ve just come.

I walk out and on and turn a corner, find myself facing the eastern end of the Rialto.

Madame d’Ortolan

“Cripes! Heads up, mateys! Here’s our boy! Whoop whoop! Last one in’s a scallop! I say, that ain’t politic. I ain’t even broke
my fast yet, dontcha know?”

“What? Where?” Madame d’Ortolan said. She glared at Mrs Siankung. “Is this something new?”

Mrs Siankung stared into Bisquitine’s eyes, letting one of the other handlers take over the job of towelling her hair dry.
“I think so,” she said. They were in one of the main bedroom suites of the palace. Mr Kleist and Professore Loscelles looked
on, as did Bisquitine’s handlers and a spotter in a schoolboy’s uniform who was keeping in continual touch with the intervention
teams heading for the San Marco and the smaller groups checking out the other places that Bisquitine had already mentioned.
Bisquitine sat on the bed in a white towelling robe like the one the unfortunate young blocker had been wearing. “This is
the bad man?” Mrs Siankung asked her gently.

Bisquitine nodded. “Dish it all, Chaplip, I’m hungry! I mean, jeepahs!”

Mrs Siankung took one of the girl’s hands in both of hers, stroking it as though it was a pet. “We shall eat, my love. Very
soon. You get dressed now and we go to eat, yes? Where is the bad man?”

“Sausinges would be nice. I says it like that cos it’s cute. Where’s my old ma, then? I ain’t seen her round the blinkin farmstead
in mumfs.”

“The bad man, my love.”

“He’s here, love-a-kins,” Bisquitine said, putting her face very close to Mrs Siankung’s. “Shalls we to go see da bad mun?”
she said, deep-voiced, as though talking to a baby. She shook her head. “Shalls we? Shalls we to go and see the bad mun? Shalls
we? Shalls we?”

“Yes,” Mrs Siankung said quietly, at the same time as Madame d’Ortolan shouted, “Enough of this!”

Bisquitine seemed to ignore them both. She stuck one finger sharply up into the air, narrowly missing the eye of the handler
towelling her hair. “To the Rialto, me hearties! Realty bound! Tally fucking prostimitute!”

Madame d’Ortolan looked at Professore Loscelles. “The Rialto. That’s close, isn’t it?”

“Five minutes away,” he told her.

Mrs Siankung patted Bisquitine’s hand. “We’ll get you dressed,” she started to say.

“No, we won’t,” Madame d’Ortolan said, standing. “Bring her as she is. It’s warm out.” She looked sourly round them all. Only
Professore Loscelles appeared like himself or well enough turned out to be presentable. “We can’t look any more ridiculous
than we do already.”

The Transitionary

It looks like all humanity is packing the Rialto; the bridge over the Grand Canal is compact but massive, sturdy yet elegant.
Two lines of small packed shops are separated by the broad central way whose surface is composed of flights of shallow grey-surfaced
steps edged with the same cream-coloured marble found throughout the city. Behind the shops two further walkways face up and
down the canal, linked to the pitched street of the central thoroughfare at either end and the centre. The walkway facing
south-west is the busier as it provides a longer, more open view down the Canal and the bustle of boats plying its milky blue-green
waters.

They’ve left the Palazzo Chirezzia. The thing, the person, the nexus of sheer terrifying weirdness is on the move, and so
is practically everybody else who was still there, including Madame herself and the Prof. They’re a minute away; they can
probably see the bridge by now.

My mobile phone goes and I start to answer it, seeing that it’s Adrian. The display blinks off. The phone won’t come back
to life. I shove it in a pocket and start up the slope of the Rialto with the rest of the tourist crowd.

Madame d’Ortolan

“When, sir? Why, sir. I’ll tell you when, then; between the Quilth of Octoldyou-so and the Nonce of Distember, THAT’S JOLLY
WELL WHEN!” Bisquitine’s shout echoed off the surrounding buildings.

“Hush, my dear,” Mrs Siankung said, conscious of the stares they were attracting.

They were on the Ruga Orefici, within sight of the Rialto. Bisquitine padded happily along in the midst of their motley collection
of ungainly bodies and unfortunate clothing styles. She wore the same towelling robe she’d been wrapped in after her shower
and had been persuaded into a pair of panties but had adamantly refused shoes or even slippers. She hugged the gown about
her, looked round at the various shops with their excitingly bright displays and tried unsuccessfully to whistle.