Ghost of a Smile (22 page)

“Are we not glorious?” said the female, Magog. “We're what happens when you strip away all the human limitations, physical and mental and spiritual . . . When you let the Beast out, and adore it. It's amazing what you can do, what you can achieve, without conscience or ethics or control to get in the way. We can do anything.”

“And we have,” said Gog. “And we will. Oh, the things we'll do . . .”

“What about the New People?” said JC. His mouth had gone dry, and he had to fight to keep his voice calm and apparently effortless. “You really think they're going to let you run wild?”

“You think they care about the world?” said Gog. “They're up there deciding what to do with it.”

“Making their minds up about what to make of it,” said Magog. “And when they're finished with the world, we won't recognise it at all.”

“They have no use for civilisation,” said Gog. “They don't need it.”

“I really think we need to get out of here,” Melody said quietly. “We are not equipped for big-game hunting.”

“Look at the size of those brutes,” said Happy, very quietly. “They'd run us down before we got anywhere near the doors. Keep them talking, JC. Give us time to think of something that doesn't involve wetting ourselves.”

“My plan exactly,” said JC. “Think hard. And quickly.” He raised his voice to address Gog and Magog again. “Do you know what the New People are planning? What their intentions are?”

“No,” said Gog. “I don't understand them, any more than you could. They don't think like people any more. They've risen above that. Perhaps they don't think at all. Perhaps they do something better than mere thinking . . .” He rolled his head slowly across his broad shoulders. And then he smiled, to better show off his teeth. “They're up there, at the top of the building, deciding the fate of the world . . . But whatever they finally settle on, you can be sure neither your kind nor mine will have any part in it. They don't need machines, or tools, to change their world, or a civilisation to protect them from it. They're the gods we were all supposed to become, before something went wrong in our DNA, and we all had to settle for being human.”

“Whatever kind of world the gods choose to live in,” said Magog, “odds are, we won't understand any part of it.”

“So what are you doing here?” said JC.

“A world within a world,” said Gog. “A playground for the cute little doggies to romp in.”

“The jungle is where we belong,” said Magog. “The New People set us here, to wait for you. Oh yes—they knew you were coming. They've always known. I don't think Time works the same way for them. They put us here to keep you from bothering them. Because we make such excellent guard dogs.”

“I don't believe you,” said JC.

“You think we care?” said Gog. “We don't care about anything. We don't have to, any more.”

JC turned his head slightly to look back at the others. “Anyone got any good ideas yet?”

“I vote for running,” said Happy. “Everything forward and trust in the Lord, separate and hope they don't get us all, and even I don't think this is a good idea.”

“Normally, I'd say we should at least go out fighting,” said Melody. “But look at the size of those things! They look like they could bench-press a blue whale.”

“They are the three-headed Cerberus, guarding the gates to Heaven and Hell,” said Kim. “We have to get past them to get to the New People. That's why the New People put them here. To test us, to see if we're worth talking to.”

“Don't suppose you feel like glowing?” Melody said to Kim.

“I've been trying to bring it on from the moment I saw those awful things,” said Kim. “Not even a glimmer.”

“Terrific,” said Happy. “We can't run, and we can't fight. What does that leave? Hoping we choke them when they eat us?”

JC turned back to Gog and Magog. “What do you want? What do you want, with us?”

“Maybe we just want to play with you,” said Gog. “Play tag, in and out of the jungle. You're It.”

“We're Outcasts,” said Magog. “No place for us in the glorious new world that's coming. So we might as well enjoy ourselves in the time that's left to us. And take out our frustrations on you.”

“You're good people,” said Gog. “We can tell. You stink of it. We will make you scream and suffer.”

“For our pleasure,” said Magog.”

“Told you,” said Happy. “Beasts, in body and soul. Hey wait a minute . . . Something's changed. Something just changed.”

“What?” said Kim, looking quickly about her. “Are there more of them?”

“It's not them,” said Happy. “It's the jungle. Look at the jungle . . .”

“Oh my God . . .” said Kim.

“What?” said JC. “What about the jungle?”

“It's growing,” said Melody. “Look at that . . . the jungle's moving forward.”

They all looked. The hot and steamy jungle world was closer than it had been. The blood-red edge was crawling forward, foot by foot. Vines and creepers hung down from the nearby ceiling, turning slowly, twitching at the group, as though stirred by dreaming thoughts. The buzz of insects was louder, the bird cries closer, and the heavy stench of rotting vegetation and corruption was all around them. The blood-red world had consumed all the rest of the floor, creeping up on the group like a silent predator, while their attention had been fixed on Gog and Magog. The two beasts laughed silently together.

“It's in my head!” Happy said suddenly. “The jungle's in my head!”

JC shook his head slowly, sickly. He could feel the pressure of the wild, of the Beast, closing in around him. The smell of it in his nose and mouth, the damp sweat of it on his skin, and the deep, dark, atavistic temptation of it, in his head and in his heart. To let go of being human, to let the Beast loose . . . to be free of all restraint and conscience . . . JC shook his head hard, refusing to give in. His hands clenched into fists, and his teeth clenched so hard his jaw hurt. JC did not give in, whether the pressure came from outside or within. He didn't do that.

He looked back to see how the others were doing. Happy and Melody were both crouching, almost on all fours. Happy's face was wet with sweat. Melody saw JC looking at her and growled at him, from deep in her throat. Happy beat his knuckles against the floor.

“It's changing us, JC! Changing us inside and out . . . The jungle . . . is its own world, with its own rules. You can't be in the jungle and not be a part of it. Whatever you're going to do, JC, do it now. Or Gog and Magog won't be the only beasts here.”

Kim looked desperately at JC. She hadn't changed because she was dead, and the call of life had no hold over her. JC gave her his best reassuring smile. From the look on her face, it wasn't that successful. JC looked back at Gog and Magog.

“So,” he said. “You have a weapon. The jungle. Unfortunately for you, I have a better weapon. Ever seen anything like—this, before?”

He took a small withered object out of an inner pocket and held it up so they could all see it. A monkey's paw, made into a Hand of Glory. The thin fingers had been soaked in wax from a dead man, and the fingertips made into wicks. Words had been spoken over the paw, and dread Power invested in it, and its presence alone was like a hammer-blow on the air, its very existence a rotten weight on the surface of the world. Gog and Magog stared at it, fascinated.

“Bloody hell!” said Happy, straightening up suddenly without even realising.

“I don't like it,” said Kim. “It's nasty. It's looking at me . . .”

“Those things are strictly forbidden!” said Happy. “Even the Crowley Project won't let its people use one of those in the field!”

“Only because their leaders are scared their field agents might use it against them,” said JC. “All right, I'll admit having it is against all the rules, but if we were the kind of people who gave a damn about rules, we wouldn't be field agents, would we?”

“Come on, JC,” said Happy. “Those things are seriously forbidden. Lots of places they'd hang you just for knowing such things were possible. Hell, they'd hang you for knowing someone who knew things like that were possible.”

“With good reason,” said Melody. “Some things should be forbidden. Because they're too powerful.”

“They have their uses,” JC said easily. “The sight of it pushed the jungle right out of you, didn't it?”

Happy and Melody looked at each other. They were both standing like people again.

“Where did you get it?” said Melody.

“eBay,” said JC. “You can find all kinds of stuff on eBay. Now hush, children, daddy's working.”

He stepped forward, showing the monkey's paw Hand of Glory to Gog and Magog, and the edge of the blood-red jungle retreated before him. The two beasts stirred uneasily. They couldn't look at him or the Hand directly.

“A Hand of Glory can find any door, unlock any lock, reveal anything hidden,” said JC. “And a monkey's paw can force a change on reality, on a small scale. So put those two things together, and I have the power to find what ReSet did to you and undo it.”

Gog and Magog looked at each other, then back at JC. Gog growled at him. “We can't go back. We won't go back. Not now we've tasted real freedom. We were never meant to be human! We might not be New People, but this is better than the small, insignificant things we were.”

“I'm sorry,” said JC, and part of him really was. “But I have no choice.”

Gog and Magog charged forward, crossing the intervening space with inhuman speed, claws outstretched for throat and heart. JC said a single activating Word, and flames blossomed at the paw's fingertips. There was a flash of brilliant light, and when it subsided, the blood-red jungle was gone. Fluorescent light filled the whole empty floor, stretching away before JC. And at his feet, a naked man and woman lay very still. JC blew out the candle fingers, very carefully, and put the withered paw away. He knelt beside the man and woman and checked for pulses. He looked up at the others and shook his head.

“They're dead,” he said shortly. He stood up slowly, brushing himself down here and there, checking that his marvellous ice-cream suit was hanging properly. A style is a style, after all. And it kept him from having to think things he didn't want to think.

“Did the Hand kill them?” said Kim.

“Indirectly, perhaps,” said JC. “But you heard them. They didn't want to live as people, any more.”

“Maybe they couldn't,” said Happy. “After all the things they'd done as beasts.”

“They didn't feel guilty,” said JC. “They just didn't want to give it up.”

Happy looked at him, meaningfully. “If you had that awful thing with you all along, why didn't you use it before? Did you really think it was that dangerous to us?”

“I had some concerns. But mostly—well, you don't use a backpack nuke to crack a nut,” said JC. “Anytime you use something this powerful, it attracts attention. The wrong kind of attention. I've already been touched by forces of Good from Outside. I really don't want to be noticed by the other side.”

“You have got to let me run some tests on that when we get back,” said Melody.

“Wouldn't do you any good,” said JC. “As far as science is concerned, it's only a preserved monkey's paw. And you don't want to try investigating it from the other side.”

“Why not?” Melody said immediately. “Knowledge is knowledge.”

“Because you don't want to attract attention to yourself, either,” said JC. “Bad enough if Outside forces take an interest—can you imagine what the Boss would have to say if she found out? At best, she'd take it away. At worst . . .”

“There are still places where they hang you for knowing such things exist,” said Happy.

“Right,” said JC.

Happy shook his head. “Who looks at a monkey's paw and thinks—
That isn't dangerous enough? I must make it into something even nastier?
” He stopped abruptly and looked at JC. “Something this powerful . . . It worked against the Beasts. Would it work against the New People?”

“Only one way to find out,” said JC.

EIGHT

“No more stops, no more investigations, no more distractions,” JC said firmly. “I think we've all had more than enough of taking it floor by floor, and I don't see that there's anything more we need to know or learn. So, to hell with whatever may or may not be lurking on the remaining floors. I say we go straight to the top of this benighted building and cut to the damned chase. We need some serious face-to-face time with the New People.”

“Assuming they have faces,” Happy said gloomily. “If they're as far above us as the Beasts were below . . .”

“You always have to look on the glum side,” said Melody. “Look at it this way—the sooner we crash the party on the top floor and put our case to the New People, the sooner we can all go home, and I can get back to doing disgusting things to you in the bedroom. We're not even half-way through that book I showed you.”

“I'm quite looking forward to meeting the New People,” said Kim. “I'll bet they're all sparkly and glamorous and . . . and all the colours of the rainbow!”

Melody sniffed. “Somebody read far too many flower fairy books when they were little . . .”

“Oh I loved those!”

“Later, Kim,” said JC. “I think we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that these New People aren't going to be anything we expect . . . or can accept.”