Weaveworld (42 page)

‘You’ll wake again soon,’ he said, understanding the melancholy that had come upon her. ‘It’ll only be a few days.’

He tried to sound confident, but doubted that he was succeeding. He knew all too little of what the night had brought. Was Shadwell still alive; and the sisters? And if so
where
?

‘I’m going to help you,’ he said. ‘That I
do
know. I’m part of this place now.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said with great gravity. ‘That you are. But
Cal –’ She looked at him, her hand taking his, and he felt a bond between them, an intimacy even, which seemed out of all proportion to the meagre time they’d known each other. ‘Cal. Future history is full of tricks.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Things can be so easily erased,’ she said. ‘And
forever.
Believe me. Forever. Entire lives gone, as if they’d never been lived.’

‘Am I missing something?’ he said.

‘Just don’t assume everything’s guaranteed.’

‘I don’t,’ he told her.

‘Good. Good.’ She seemed a little cheered by this. ‘You’re a fine man, Calhoun. But you’ll forget.’

‘Forget what?’

‘All this. The Fugue.’

He laughed. ‘Never,’ he said.

‘Oh but you will. Indeed maybe you have to. Have to, or your heart would break.’

He thought of Lemuel again, and his parting words.
Remember
, he’d said. Was it really so difficult?

If there were any further words to be said on the subject, they went unvoiced, for at this point Floris brought the rickshaw to an abrupt halt.

‘What’s the problem?’ Chloe wanted to know.

The rickshaw driver pointed dead ahead. No more than a hundred yards from where the rickshaw stood the landscape and all it contained was losing itself to the Weave, solid matter becoming clouds of colour, from which the threads of the carpet would be drawn.

‘So soon,’ said Chloe. ‘Get out. Calhoun. We can take you no further.’

The line of the Weave was approaching like a forest fire, eating up everything in its path. It was an awesome scene. Though he knew perfectly well what procedures were under way here – and knew them to be benevolent – the sight was almost chilling. A world was dissolving before his very eyes.

‘You’re on your own from here,’ said Chloe. ‘About turn, Floris! And
fly
!’

The rickshaw was turned.

‘What happens to me?’ said Cal.

‘You’re a Cuckoo,’ Chloe shouted back at him, as Floris hauled the rickshaw away. ‘You can simply walk out the other side!’

She shouted something else, which he failed to catch.

He hoped to God it wasn’t a prayer.

XII

A VANISHING BREED

1

espite Chloe’s words, the spectacle ahead offered little comfort. The devouring line was approaching at considerable speed, and it left nothing unchanged. His gut feeling was to flee before it, but he knew that would be a vain manœuvre. This same transfiguring tide would be eating in from all compass points: sooner or later there would be nowhere left to run.

Instead of standing still and letting it come to fetch him, he elected to walk towards it, and brave its touch.

The air began to itch around him as he took his first hesitant steps. The ground squirmed and shook beneath his feet. A few more yards and the region he was walking through actually began to shift. Loose pebbles were snatched into the flux; leaves plucked from bush and tree.

‘This is going to hurt,’ he thought.

The frontier was no more than ten yards from him now, and he could see with astonishing clarity the processes at work: the raptures of the Loom dividing the matter of the Fugue into strands, then drawing these up into the air and knotting them – those knots in their turn filling the air like countless insects, until the final rapture called them into the carpet.

He could afford to wonder at this sight for seconds only before he and it met each other, strands leaping up around him like rainbow fountains. There was no time for farewells: the Fugue simply vanished from sight, leaving him immersed in the working of the Loom. The rising threads gave him the
sensation of falling, as though the knots were destined for heaven, and he a damned soul. But it wasn’t heaven above him: it was
pattern.
A kaleidoscope that defeated eye and mind, its motifs configuring and re-configuring as they found their place beside their fellows. Even now he was certain he’d be similarly metamorphosed; his flesh and bone become symbol, and he be woven into the grand design.

But Chloe’s prayer, if that it had been, afforded him protection. The Loom rejected his Cuckoo-stuff and passed him by. One minute he was in the midst of the Weave. The next the glories of the Fugue were behind him, and he was left standing in a bare field.

2

He wasn’t alone there. Several dozen Seerkind had chosen to step out into the Kingdom. Some stood alone watching their home consumed by the Weave, others were in small groups, debating feverishly; yet others were already heading off into the gloom before the Adamaticals came looking for them.

Among them, lit by the blaze of the Weave, a face he recognized: that of Apolline Dubois. He went to her. She saw him coming, but offered no welcome.

‘Have you seen Suzanna?’ he asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve been cremating Frederick, and setting my affairs to rights,’ she said.

She got no further. An elegant individual, his cheeks rouged, now appeared at her side. He looked every inch a pimp.

‘We should go. Moth,’ he said. ‘Before the beasts are upon us.’

‘I know,’ Apolline said to him. Then to Cal: ‘We’re going to make our fortunes. Teaching you Cuckoos the meaning of desire.’

Her companion offered a less than wholesome grin. More than half his teeth were gold.

‘There are high times ahead,’ she said, and patted Cal’s cheek. ‘So you come see me one of these days,’ she said. ‘We’ll treat you well.’

She took the pimp’s arm.

‘Bon chance,’
she said, and the pair hurried away.

The line of the Weave was by now a good distance from where Cal stood, and the numbers of Seerkind who’d emerged was well into three figures. He went amongst them, still looking for Suzanna. His presence was largely ignored; they had more pressing concerns, these people, delivered into the late twentieth century with only magic to keep them from harm. He didn’t envy them.

Amongst the refugees he caught sight of three of the Buyers, standing dazed and dusty, their faces blank. What would they make of tonight’s experiences he wondered. Would they pour the whole story out to their friends, and endure the disbelief and contempt heaped on their heads; or would they let the tale fester untold? The latter, he suspected.

Dawn was close. The weaker stars had already disappeared, and even the brightest were uncertain of themselves.

‘It’s over …’ he heard somebody murmur.

He looked back towards the Weave; the brilliance of its making had almost flickered out.

But suddenly, a shout in the night, and a beat later Cal saw three lights – members of the Amadou – rising from the embers of the Weave at enormous speed. They drew together as they rose, until, high above the streets and fields, they collided.

The blaze of their meeting illuminated the landscape as far as the eye could see. By it Cal glimpsed Seerkind running in all directions, averting their eyes from the brilliance.

Then the light died, and the pre-dawn gloom that followed seemed so impenetrable by contrast that Cal was effectively blind for a minute or more. As, by slow degrees, the world re-established itself about him, he realized that there had been nothing arbitrary about the fireworks or their effect.

The Seerkind had disappeared. Where, ninety seconds ago, there had been scraggling figures all around him, there was now emptiness. Under the cover of light, they’d made their escape.

XIII

A PROPOSAL

1

obart had seen the blaze of the Amadou too, though he was still two and a half miles from the spot. The night had brought disaster upon disaster. Richardson, still jittery after events at Headquarters, had twice driven the car into the back of stationary vehicles, and their route, which had taken them all over the Wirral, had been a series of cul-de-sacs.

But at last, here it was: a sign that their quarry was close.

‘What was that?’ said Richardson. ‘Looked like something exploding.’

‘God knows,’ said Hobart. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past these people. Especially the woman.’

‘Should we call in some back-up, sir? We don’t know their numbers.’

‘Even if we could –’ Hobart said, switching off the white noise which had swallowed Downey hours ago, ‘– I want to keep this quiet until we know what’s what. Kill the headlights.’

The driver did so, and they drove on in the murk that preceded daybreak. Hobart thought he could see figures moving in the mist beyond the grey foliage that lined the road. There was no time to investigate however; he would have to trust his instinct that the woman was somewhere up ahead.

Suddenly there was somebody in the road ahead of them. Cursing, Richardson threw the wheel over, but the figure seemed to leap up and over the car.

The vehicle mounted the pavement, and ran a few yards before Richardson brought it under control again.

‘Shit.
Did you see that?’

Hobart had, and felt the same aching unease he’d felt back at Headquarters. These people were holding weapons that worked on a man’s sense of what was real, and he loved reality more than his balls.

‘Did you see?’
said Richardson. ‘The fucker just
flew.’

‘No.’ Hobart said firmly. ‘There was no flying. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Don’t trust your eyes. Trust me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And if anything else gets in your way,
run it down.’

2

The light that had blinded Cal blinded Shadwell too. He fell from the back of his human horse, and scrabbled around in the dirt until the world began to come back into focus. When it did two sights greeted him. One, that of Norris, lying on the ground sobbing like an infant. The other, Suzanna, accompanied by two of the Kind, emerging from the rubble of Shearman’s house.