Jago (31 page)

He wandered, slightly dazed, among the festival folk. Some were kids out for a good time, away from parents and holiday jobs for a week or so. They had clean faces, casual clothes and clustered in chatting groups, like guests at a freshers’ party. Others were travellers, a semi-medieval nomad community complete with ragged urchins, the filthiest imaginable dogs and vehicles with home-made post-apocalypse armour. They were the ones building cooking fires and scavenging for supplies. Alliances and subgroups were forming. Paul knew travellers frequently clashed with festival stewards and security staff, feeling they were the rightful keepers of the flame for this lifestyle, that their seniority should be recognized.

Many attendees were caught in time warps. Superannuated hippies or bikers congregated in knots, telling old stories. Festival veterans—survivors of Pilton, Reading and Castle Donington—spoke of Stonehenge before the police moved in and the Isle of Wight in the acid haze as if those were the Great Days of Empire. There were isolated examples of every style cult that had ever been, from goatee-bearded beatnik and fuzz-faced folkie through dreadlocked white Rasta and fancy-dress new romantic to squiggle-clothed acid householder and stripe-clothed skunker. Some were the right age for their fashions, flowers in grey-streaked hair or punk spikes over thinning thirties scalps, but most were teenagers who had pick-and-matched personae from the past. That was post modernism for you.

They were all loitering, waiting for the party to begin. Badge-wearing stewards recruited for various jobs, and the big stages were aswarm with roadies. As a helicopter overran the site, rumours spread around that a megastar was touring preliminary to a surprise appearance. The guessing was inclined towards Mick Jagger or Peter Gabriel, but someone suggested it was Jim Morrison back from the dead. The chopper circled once and took off again.

Paul began to get heatstroke. He had come out without sunglasses, and his eyes were paining him. He scanned the crowd, looking for a red mohican. Hazel said the kids had a Dormobile, so he paid especial attention to them. Even that lead did not help. More vehicles arrived all the time. A cheer went up from the field being used as a car park. An open car had just lurched in on four wheel rims. Its slow progress had caused a mammoth tailback. As it was dragged away, the cork was out and traffic moved again. The two youths in the crippled car were arguing, interspersing insults with shoves, and the stewards were trying to pull them apart.

Tempers frayed all around. Two little kids, faces smeared with chocolate ice cream, were having a screaming match while a mother tried to separate them. Marijuana drifted past on a lazy breeze, and a stern youth with a badge and an armband began telling off a dope-smoker not for flaunting the joint but for dropping it on the dry grass without making sure it was out. A skinny naked girl was lying face down on a blanket between two caravans, face covered by dark glasses, trying to ignore the small crowd of peepers. After a while, she gave up and pulled on shorts and a top. Dogs fought viciously, and someone with a guitar struggled through ‘House of the Rising Sun’.

He wasn’t doing any good here. He decided to return to the Pottery. Hazel might be back, and he wanted to talk to her, to patch something up that would last until autumn. It was hard to get out of the field because there was a clog of people around the gate. Having arrived and set up camp, they were restless from long journeys and wanted to walk around, visit the pub or just see the area.

A ten-year-old in Iron Age clothing came up and said, ‘Spare change?’ Paul turned his pockets out and found nothing but doorkeys. The child stuck out its lower lip and walked on to the next prospect, clinking its take of the day in a grubby fist, like Captain Queeg clacking his ball bearings.

He looked up at the Manor House, nestled on its hill. Most houses are schematic faces, front stairs for teeth, drive for a lolling tongue, big door for a nose, windows for eyes, and eaves for a hat brim. The Agapemone was too big to be like that, with a rack of windows suggesting a spider’s row of eyes, and swatches of crinkly, dry ivy like a veil. It wasn’t a face, but it suggested an expression. The Martian war machine hadn’t been like a face either, but it had had a similar impersonally nasty look. One of the gabled attic windows caught the sun and flashed. Paul flinched, expecting a heat ray.

Nothing happened.

He looked again, and just saw a nice old house, not particularly well kept. The gate was free, and he escaped from the field. He walked away from the Agapemone, back into the village.

I
t was important not to let on that he knew. After last night They must suspect he’d seen something, but Ferg let Them believe he thought the Iron Insect was just a dope dream. It was almost exciting, having a secret he couldn’t, didn’t dare, share.

He sat in the stuffy blue pupa of his tent, pretending to meditate. Outside, a mass of people milled about, shadows shifting on the translucent but opaque walls. Twenty-five different ghetto blasters competed in a guerrilla war. There were voices in the din, just beyond earshot, speaking with each other, conspiring.

Ferg didn’t like to be out in crowds. There were too many of Them, watching. They looked like ordinary people, but he’d seen Their true shape. Having glimpsed the truth, he was changed for ever. He couldn’t ever be ignorant again. He didn’t know what It was or where It had come from. But It was here. It could take human form, or could enslave humans. From now on, he’d have to watch out. He didn’t know whom he could trust. He thought Jessica was all right but couldn’t be sure. With her mood swings, it was hard to tell. Mike Toad was one of Them. He was surprised he’d ever been taken in. Mike was off with Pam, the new girl, so she must be with Them too. Syreeta was the type to be part of it all, the hostility between her and the Toad a put-on to cover their plotting. Dolar might be innocent, but Syreeta had him under her control. He didn’t know about Salim, Pam’s boyfriend. Everyone else, the locals, the strangers, the festival people, he could never be sure of, either way. It was safest to act as if they were all in it together. So, it was him—possibly Jessica, just maybe Salim—against the rest.

Behind him there was a mechanical rasp. He flinched, knowing Iron Insect’s three-pronged claw was reaching for his neck. Then a human hand touched him. He turned around. It was Jessica. The noise had been the tent’s zip being pulled up.

‘What’re you doing in here?’

He didn’t answer, didn’t dare give a story that could be picked apart. Jessica wriggled in, smiling, and knelt in front of him.

‘It’s sweltering.’

That was true. Despite the shade, it was like a sauna in the tent. Drops of sweat ran on Ferg’s shorn scalp. He’d been breathing his own body odour. Jessica unstuck her T-shirt from her chest and fanned air between her boobs.

‘Headache,’ he said, venturing an excuse.

‘Awwww, poor wickle Fergie,’ she cooed, pouting, rubbing his forehead.

The press of her against him made him shrink. She kissed him and giggled. He was suddenly not sure of Jessica. She was changing. She pulled him out of the tent, and he felt like an astronaut being pulled out of a sinking capsule in the Pacific, eyes hammered by the sun. They were in the middle of a field of tents. A mini-city had formed overnight, with beaten-down grass pathways, a Mayfair with bright new-painted vans and pavilion-size marquees in neat rows, and an Old Kent Road of patched one-and two-person tents jammed in higgledy-piggledy.

‘Isn’t that better?’

Mike Toad’s empty tent was next door, and Dolar was sleeping in a shacklike shade he’d built against the side of his van. Syreeta was balancing a dented saucepan over a Calor Gas stove.

‘We’re making tea,’ Jessica said. ‘Do you want some?’

Ferg bit his lip. If he refused, They’d immediately be suspicious. But if he accepted, he’d have to put something inside himself that came from Them. It was possible there was something in the tea to make him change as Jessica had changed. Two days ago, she’d been a sulk; now she was fawning all over him, trying to pretend nothing was wrong. It could have been something in the tea. Water boiled in Syreeta’s saucepan, tiny bubbles agitating around the sides, large burps in the centre.

‘Tea?’ she asked him.

He nodded a yes.

Dolar was snoring. Or maybe pretend snoring. He had an old straw hat over his face, but could be looking out, eyes alert, through the cracks in the brim. Syreeta slurped hot water into a row of mugs and threw the rest away. It hissed on the ground like acid. Jessica brought him a cup of milky water with a teabag floating in it. He held it, ignoring the scalding heat, and waited his turn with the spoon.

‘Pam’s off looking for her sister,’ Syreeta said.

Salim was sitting nearby. Silently he took a cup of tea. Ferg dumped his teabag into a plastic rubbish bag, and passed the spoon to Salim.

‘The Toad went with her,’ Jessica added.

Ferg raised the mug to his mouth. He let hot water lap against his lips but did not swallow. It smelled all right, but he knew the extra ingredient would be tasteless, odourless, undetectable. Salim gulped the tea so fast there was hot sweat on his forehead before he’d finished. It was a shame, but there was no way Ferg could have warned the Pakistani boy. Now it was too late. If he had been all right before, he was tainted now. Tainted by the Iron Insect.

‘There might be music tonight,’ Jessica said. ‘The programme doesn’t start officially until the day after tomorrow, but there are enough people with guitars and things to get something together.’

Ferg turned half away while the others weren’t looking and spilled some of his tea. It sloshed on the ground where Syreeta had thrown the water, and sank into the earth, unnoticed. He felt a twinge of excitement. There was a pleasure in each of his little victories.

Earlier, he had seen the man from last night, the monster’s attendant, wandering around the site, looking for him. That had made him duck into the tent in the first place. The man was gone now. Ferg would have to be careful of him. He was more dangerous than the others. Jessica and Syreeta would be easy to fool because they thought they knew him. The man had been there when he saw the Iron Insect. He knew he knew.

‘How’s your tea?’ Jessica asked, ringing with fake innocence.

He held up his mug and smacked his lips, but didn’t drink. Jessica turned away, and he spilled more tea.

‘Never tasted better,’ he said.

High in the sky, a white helicopter made a slow pass. Everyone looked up, and he dribbled the last of the tea away. The sleek machine purred as it passed. Ferg had been seeing white helicopters ever since he came to Alder, but only now was he noticing them, realizing what they were for, from whom they came.

‘Police,’ Jessica said. ‘Spying.’

‘No,’ said Salim. ‘It’ll be the BBC, getting film for the news.’

‘Aren’t we near the helicopter air base?’ Syreeta asked. ‘Yeovilton?’

He shrugged. It was impossible to read any markings on the white helicopter. Not that he’d have believed them. The police, the BBC, the Air Force. They’d all be supporters of the Iron Insect.

He touched the empty mug to his mouth and tipped it. A drop of brown moisture ran against his lips, but he rubbed it off against the rim. He put the mug down, and Syreeta collected it. People saw what they wanted to see, what they expected to see. Syreeta and Jessica had seen him drink their cup of tea, and now they’d think they had him.

It was strange to think They were fooled exactly as They fooled everyone else. How long would it be before one of Them made a mistake, talking to him as if he were in on it, assuming knowledge of the Iron Insect’s purposes and plans?

The white helicopter lazily disappeared towards the horizon. Its blades hadn’t even whipped up a breeze.

Syreeta rinsed the cups out with bottled water and stowed them away. Jessica sat on one of Dolar’s wonky folding chairs and picked up a fashion magazine, riffling through the pages as she compared thousand-pound frocks. Dolar pretended to sleep again.

When it started, there must have been few of Them, and vast numbers of ordinary, uninfected, free people. He wondered how far it had gone. Everyone couldn’t have gone over, or they’d jump and take him by force. There must be others like him, as he had been, unsuspecting among the Iron Insect’s followers. How many of Them were there? One in ten? One in five? Was it up to fifty-fifty?

Ferg was thirsty, throat parched, skin warm and damp. But he couldn’t give himself away by getting a drink. He sat down and lit up. The hot smoke didn’t help his throat, but he usually smoked a cig after a cup of tea. He couldn’t afford to break with routine. Never forget They were watching. He held the smoke in his dry mouth and felt pain in his lungs. Even if he could get a drink, where could he be certain it wasn’t doctored? The bottled water was in the van, where Syreeta or one of the others could get at it any time he wasn’t around. If he went to one of the stalls selling warm beer and Coke at inflated prices, he had no way of knowing the stuff hadn’t been tampered with. Canned drinks should be safe. But he couldn’t be certain. They could have taken over factories and be doctoring drinks at source. Maybe drinks had always been doctored. Maybe he wouldn’t know the taste of a drink that hadn’t been.

The Iron Insect had had three triple-jointed legs, and a body shaped like a wasp’s nest. There had been something obscene about it. More than a machine, It had been alive, its metal a hard kind of flesh, the wires and workings arteries and organs. The Thing was like a queen ant, and the people who served It, buzzing around with one mind and one purpose, were workers, drones. Maybe They were usually invisible. Maybe now he wasn’t drinking doped tea, he’d start seeing Them everywhere. They might be always striding down Charing Cross Road, scuttling up the Post Office Tower, screwing noisily in Oxford Circus, waiting patiently outside the Houses of Parliament. Unseen masters, attended always by white helicopter catspaws.

He pulled the neck of his T-shirt and a waft of hot, body-scented air rushed up past him. It was getting hotter, and shade was shrinking. He used his hand as a cap-peak and peered up at the sky. It was cloudless blue, the sun an agonizing white blip, impossible to look at. Around him, young people were tanning. A girl walked by wearing only shorts, her chest a Caribbean brown, no strap marks on her back and shoulders. She licked her lips at him, and he knew she was one of Them. He was supposed to look at her dark nipples, not her empty eyes, and be fooled. They thought They could lead him by his dick. His bare forearms prickled in the sun. He kept watching the skies.