The Alembic Valise (15 page)

11 Months Later

The architects had grandly called the structure the Titanium Halo. The newspapers however had unkindly dubbed it the Led Donut. The multiplex stadium was built on the site of an old greyhound-racing track that had closed in the late seventies and lay derelict until Russian spiv oligarch money had flooded into the country. The yelps of the dogs and the shouts of the punters from that gentle era had long departed. Here everybody seemed to be possessed by a cranked intensity; and it was only a midweek program, newcomers mainly. But Baba and Hammerfall Productions knew how to put on a high-energy show anytime. The lights around the arena were being dimmed, the thunderous music was replaced with a subsonic drone and three girls wearing only torn flesh-coloured body stockings were disappearing up ropes into the shadows.

Banks of spotlights pulsed from purple to green in time to the music. The hydroponics system that fed the hanging foliage imparted a weird rubbery smell but down in the cage this odour was overlaid with Lysol and sweat: The smell of fear thought Lorna - and pain. But wait, there would be no pain, the adrenalin would cloak that

“Let’s go,” said the referee.

Lorna Z ran over the events leading to this moment. First was the discovery of Joel in the allotment shed. Buster had led them to the gate, Agim had picked the lock somehow and there was Joel eating bacon and eggs with a huge guy who turned out to be Vern.

She remembered the startled expression on Vern’s face as moments later the gate to the allotment was smashed off its rusty hinges and a group of burly men burst through. She recalled her own bewilderment quickly followed by understanding as she saw one of the intruders embrace Agim. No one had noticed as Buster slunk quietly into the weeds.

“I said let’s GO,” roared the referee, glaring at her angrily. “Touch gloves and keep it clean.”

Lorna obeyed but her opponent delivered a double-handed punch to her sternum. That, you will pay for
,
she thought as she returned to her corner.

Over the months that had passed on the other side many things has become apparent. They were not to be constrained or incarcerated in any way: The reason being that on that morning of their arrival she had watched in horror as two men with sledgehammers had reduced the limestone arch in the churchyard to dust.

Their previous lives and connections were also metaphorically reduced to a handful of dust too. At the pier by Hammersmith Bridge Joel’s beloved Alembic Valise had been replaced by a seagull-shit covered refuse barge, and the site where her mansion flat once stood was now occupied by a steel and glass gymnasium. None of the people they knew seemed to exist and their mobile phones could not connect to any network.

Lorna’s coach was shouting last minute instructions through the cage. She scanned the ringside for a familiar face, but saw none. The bell rang: Round one. A flying scissor kick followed by an attempted takedown was Lorna’s preferred opening strategy but the girl spun around and danced across the ring staying out of range. The energy of Lorna’s kick dissipated into empty air.

Lorna also remembered the moment she had wanted to become a Grid Girl. They had had nothing, her and Joel, and little Buster, who had come out of the undergrowth, when the men with sledgehammers had gone. No money, no home, no friends. They had stayed in Vern’s shed at first and made forays out into the world trying to locate vestiges of their old lives: Each time returning disappointed. Her father seemed not to exist. No Dave or Sophie, no Deacon or Jim and worst of all for Joel no Mai; he had hitchhiked down to Dover and then somehow taken the ferry, all this with no passport. When he returned he was a broken man; sleeping amongst the trees by the pond during the day and at night going to the night shelter. He had become a vagrant.

Marina took pity on Lorna and gave her a room and got her a cleaning job at the clinic where she was a nurse. Then one day they had gone together after work to the gym, ironically the one built on the spot where her flat had been, and seen a group of women athletes training. Lorna had heard the boy on the cross-trainer next to hers whisper excitedly to his friend and jerk his head in the direction of a tall beautiful woman crossing the gym with a lime green towel over her shoulder. Jada was the name he had mouthed. Lorna’s double take must have caught her eye and she gave Lorna a long appraising look before leaving the room.

Now her opponent was charging her, but coming in high, a high-risk move. Attempting to grab her head and knee her in the face. You’ll be sorry thought Lorna, suddenly dropping and grabbing her opponent’s left leg and pulling it from under her, sending the surprised girl sprawling onto the canvas. Lorna followed her down and snaked her legs around her victim’s throat.

The crowd began to release wave after wave of screams up into the dark recesses of the Donut. She tightened her grip, the referee moved in closer. It would soon be over.

After her victory Lorna had warmed down and was now in the dressing room with her hands in a bucket of iced water. Hers had been the first fight and several other girls who had been coolly indifferent to her earlier that evening had enthusiastically congratulated her on the result.

“Where did you learn that?” one asked.

“What, the Double Anaconda? I saw it in the Gaines, Martinez fight.” Lorna already had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the sport and all the other disciplines that fed into it.

“Way to go! That was a killer strike,” said the other girl.

They then returned to serious business of warming up for their own fights. She felt supremely elated and not in the least tired, so picking up her towel she headed to the shower. When she returned she found Marina waiting for her, looking uncomfortable in her nurses uniform.

“I watched on the monitors in the foyer. It was completely terrifying.”

She reached out and touched Lorna’s on the forehead where there was a swelling. Lorna saw the other girls looking. They must think we are lesbians thought Lorna. She knew that quite a few of the Grid Girls were; she had no problem with it in fact. Probably the smart option she thought recalling her infatuation with Agim. The thought of her foolishness made her wince and Marina withdrew her hand quickly thinking her touch had caused it.

“Thanks for coming,” said Lorna Z, suddenly giving her only friend a spontaneous hug.

A week later after an hour of speed weight circuits Lorna was swigging water from a two-litre bottle and staring out of the gym window at an empty bay in the car park below where she had calculated her bedroom had been, when one of trainers handed her a blue vellum envelope. It was addressed to her; there was no stamp. She put it into her gym bag noting as she did so the logo embossed on the reverse side, a stylised axe with a flattened blade.

The letter was written by one of Baba’s flunkeys and instructed her to present herself at the Hammerfall Productions HQ the following Tuesday morning at 9.30 am in order to learn something that may be judged as being to her advantage.

The tyres of the 209 bus taking Lorna back to Mortlake began to make a hollow roaring sound as it crossed Hammersmith bridge. She put the letter back in her bag and looked through the glass. Another window, another past, she thought. At first it had been wearing to be constantly confronted by everything that was missing from her present life, but she had in part adapted. Missed her dad of course; but most other things she viewed as part of a childhood that was now gone. The bus trundled to a halt; more people got off than got on. Will I soon be a Grid Girl? She wondered. Pretty much the only way to get to that level in the sport was to have professional management, and Hammerfall was the only game in town. But she could not do it. She may have adapted to this new world but any complicity with the activities of the Blake Organisation was out of the question.

Marina’s flat was in darkness, she was either working a night shift or had gone Ceroc dancing with Vern. Lorna began to sort out her sports kit. The doorbell rang. The light in the passage outside the front door had blown weeks ago and the caretaker still had not replaced it therefore she could not see who was on threshold.

Joel had travelled downwards; the narrowing road, the tightening curve, the twisting within his heart: It all came to the same thing; lead to the same place, emptiness, and not just any emptiness but one of dislocation and despair. Lorna had tried to explain, and he had filed that information away. Kept it in readiness for a time when he could process and understand what had happened to him. Before, he had never been able to quite believe his good luck. And now it was gone. I am fucking doomed, he thought.

Lorna’s explanation did make some kind of sense; his ability to see what animated the world of shadows, to intuit the conspiracy beneath the surface of the system and see the structure of the worlds within worlds that underpinned his storytelling. But when he had seen the empty berth by Hammersmith Bridge he knew that Alembic Valise would never return. That ship had sailed. And now like an old sailor stranded in an unfamiliar port he would forever wander the seafront dreaming of a distant and lost homeland, too scared to venture down the dusty avenues leading inland. Too fearful to seek a hearth or a home or a heart, lest they should eclipse his remembered self. And yet, and yet these wanderings had brought him here today, to this grassy knoll enclosed by a circle of silver birch saplings on the Common, where he now sat with Buster at his side to enjoy the sunshine. And on this occasion the ceaseless to and fro within his mind seemed to be less intense. Buster was almost invisible, laid in the long grass.

“Shall we perhaps today find our way home?” he said to the dog. But Buster was asleep.

It was the last day of March, the clocks had already gone forward an hour; there was blossom on the trees and daffodils on the ground. Spring was not Joel’s favourite time of year but he could not help but be affected by this cardinal intersection of the earth’s dynamic cycle. It was a gateway, a threshold moment of the kind that Joel was searching for within his own trajectory. How to get back to his own life?

He had never met Buster’s owner but Lorna had told him all about him. And what he had said. Especially the part about Joel’s gift of hyper-sentience; especially the part about the Blake Organisation bringing him here to silence his voice; a voice that could not be tolerated because it told a story that was too close to the truth; a story that was perhaps the complete and utter truth.

They had brought him here because no one would listen; because here they already controlled everything; because here he had no voice. This much Joel knew, but how could they be so sure he would not find a way back? Joel stretched out and closed his eyes.

His drowsy mind took him beneath the reflective surface of the humdrum day and into a state of lucid-dreaming, in which he observed a patchwork terrain lit by chain lightning. All the transition points within collapsing worlds were being stretched through infinite timeframes. But he felt their adjacency, felt the pull of their immanence, cradled their symmetry within himself. And finally embraced the truth, which was that he himself, was the distant fulcrum between warring worlds.

Opening his eyes he saw a robin on a low branch a yard from where he lay. It looked at Joel with beady eyes, flew downwards and momentarily landed on his head. Then was gone. When the robin landed on his head it was a Damascene moment. He was like a blind man who upon cresting the top point of a roller coaster regains his vision. Joel knew what he had to do – reconstruct an Alembic Valise in this new world, the home of the all-subjugating Black Snake Cult.

The old guys called it Danga; they knew it from the old country, Colombia, where it had a bad reputation because of its use by criminal gangs. The old guys Joel had spoken with met everyday in the park to drink matte tea and play chess. There were enough of them to form a community because of the Housing Departments insistence of clustering ethnic groups together in a single housing project. They had also told him that in the neighbouring country of Ecuador the plant from which the drug was derived was the subject of poetry and myth and able, according to legend, to impart prescience to whomsoever should fall asleep under its leaves.

Now the subject had come up again whilst talking to Vern. Joel felt he had maybe missed something concerning his arrival; probably in part to being beaten, drugged and bitten. He could still see that bloody dog and his hooded assailants in his minds eye. Big Vern was from Grimsby and he called Danga, “crazy voodoo shit”.

“Why, do you want me to get you some?” he asked Joel as they stood looking at the motorcycle and sidecar that had been concealed under a dusty green tarp in the lean-too behind the pigpen.

“No no, I was just curious,” said Joel, not really wanting to start talking about alternate realities. And not because he thought Vern may not understand and think him crazy but rather because he had a favour to ask him. “Will she start?” he said kicking a flaccid tyre.

The next morning at sun up Joel was clear of the city and had already hammered up fifty miles of motorway when he saw the black Mercedes approaching in the Dneiper’s blurry but functional rear view mirror.

The driver must have had to brake hard in order to slow down to a speed where he could sit on Joel’s tail. The ex-military bike could only manage sixty five at top whack but Joel was cruising at a stately fifty five in order to conserve fuel and had calculated that he, and the ever adaptable Buster – who was on a blanket in the foot-well of the open topped sidecar – would reach their intended destination by mid afternoon. He slowed the bike slightly and moments later the car behind pulled into the centre lane, drew level then accelerated away. Joel could see nobody through the tinted windows. Soon it was a dot on the road ahead then it was gone.

Joel knew that the motorways were risky because all the exits could easily be monitored; he had a plan however. Acting on intelligence from Vern he would at the next service area follow an access road that led from the lorry park into a nearby industrial estate. The gritting trucks used this route in the winter and Joel could here exit the motorway system undetected and he and Buster would then continue their journey using only B roads.

It was time to get away from London. Yesterday had been spent fixing up the old bike; replacing cables, changing the oil, greasing bearings and scrapping the accrued cack from every nook and cranny. It could not gleam because all parts were finished in matt green military paint, but it had glowed in the soft evening light when he and Vern were done, and they finally stepped back to admire their work. Then they had been up half the night poring over maps and drinking strong tea laced with rum.

Other than Vern only Marina and Lorna knew of his plan and they had agreed to stay away so as not to draw attention. Finally at five AM after a breakfast of scrambled eggs and pancakes he and Vern had wheeled the bike along the ancient alleys of Mortlake for a quarter of a mile before emerging onto the road. The engine had started on the first kick and had not missed a beat; the big twin cylinders were now still burbling away happily as he scanned the road up ahead for his covert exit point.

Joel realised that for the last few weeks since his epiphany moment under the silver birch he had been on tenterhooks. Every time a bud of hope had appeared he had snipped it off, like a psychopathic gardener. He had his plan, and he would execute it. And that was as far as he was prepared to allow his mind to travel.

Upwards and onwards: He gritted his teeth and increased the revs, not caring about conserving fuel anymore and now suddenly anxious to leave this endless blacktop that snaked ever onwards into the jaws of Christ-knows what.

The traffic seemed sparse for a weekday. At first this puzzled Joel, and then he realised that today was Good Friday. Easter in Beta World. The idea forming in his mind was one of a binary universe. Twin worlds, one not all that different from the other on an objective level, and although the Blake Organisation seemed to cast a shadow over this place, were they really very different from the shits who controlled things wherever you might end up? ‘Hi, we are the Sirius shit squad; here to cornhole your gullible ass! Bad things for good people: We deliver’.

Now is perhaps the time to resign myself to inevitable fate, he thought. Maybe I’ve already had my time in the sun and from now on I will have to struggle like everyone else. Not breeze easily over life, but dig in and fight tooth and nail for the good of all. I have a gift but so far I have used it selfishly; here in Beta World I shall repurpose that gift. Maybe I am troubled and maybe I am fleeing from some real or imagined danger. Maybe I am mired in paranoia and suspicion. And yet I feel supremely alive. He remembered the sensation of the robin on his head. He remembered his plan. He saw the sign up ahead: SERVICES 1 MILE.

Joel decreased his speed as he crossed the broken white line onto the slip road, almost immediately a high hedge screened him from the highway; no one was following. He bypassed the main services car park, and the petrol forecourt until he saw a sign saying – Overnight Lorry Park.

There were no lorries here just a row of trailers at one end. The surface was pitted with potholes. There was a crow sat on a fence post but otherwise the area was deserted. Buster had sat up in the sidecar, suddenly alert too. Joel cut the engine and put the bike into neutral, there was a slight gradient that allowed them coast to a halt in front of a pair of high metal gates, that were padlocked shut. Joel stiffly dismounted; the only sound was the ticking of the bikes engine casing as it cooled in the fresh morning breeze.

Ten minutes later he was covered in sweat. Vern’s bolt cutters were simply not up to the job, the shank of the padlock was of hardened steel and the chain that it secured was covered in a rubbery sheath that gummed up the cutters blades. Finally he took a dirty hessian bag from the foot-well of the sidecar and selected a smaller pair of cutters, then began cutting a hole in the actual wire mesh of the gate. It was painstaking work. Joel snipped away; Buster watched.

After twenty minutes he had almost completed a two-meter wide hole when he heard the crunch of gravel beneath tyre. Glancing over his shoulder he saw a dark saloon enter the lorry park, suddenly panicking Joel began kicking at the mesh portal he had cut, but still a few strands remained, holding it secure. His knuckles were bleeding and as he turned, still clutching the bolt cutters he saw, emerging from the car a familiar face. It was Agim.

“How do you know what I think,” said Joel pointlessly. Buster was wagging his tail and licking Agim’s hand. “Well Lorna thinks you betrayed her, us, and that you work for the Blake Organisation. Isn’t that enough?”

“What might
you
have that I could possibly want?” said Joel shaking his head to indicate that the answer to his own question was a fat zero of nothingness. Agim held out a blue plastic memory stick.

There was plenty to talk about and Joel was sick of the lorry park so together they got the gates open and then drove down the service road to the nearest eatery: A burger van in a lay-by. They ate their bacon sandwiches sitting on the plastic garden chairs their host had thoughtfully provided.

“So why two worlds?” asked Joel.

“Dunno, overpopulation?” answered Agim. Brown sauce was dripping from his bap.

“So right, you know less than me. That makes me feel better.” Agim did not answer. The brown sauce missed his Diesels and plopped onto the tarmac. Buster licked it up and then made a retching sound.

“Must be the vinegar, dogs don’t like it.” Joel paused and rubbed the top of Buster’s head before continuing “So, I came here unwillingly, Lorna and Buster,” Buster pricked his ears at the mention of his name, “came to rescue me, and you came … why exactly?”

Agim wiped his hands on a paper napkin, took a drink of tea, stood up and patted his pockets in order to locate his cigarettes, took one out lit it and then sat back down and crossed his legs.

You know the song “Over the Rainbow”. Joel nodded.

“Well at the beginning there is a spoken part where Dorothy expresses her wish to go to a place that is - Beyond the Rain.” He blew out a lungful of smoke. “My mother, who disappeared shortly after I was born wrote a brief goodbye note. In it she used the same words. It’s haunted me, that phrase, since I found out: Beyond the Rain. It’s a tragic thing.” Joel reached out and took a cigarette from the packet on the table, it was the last; he lit up.

“I think she came here,” Agim continued.

Joel looked away, looked at the sky, took off his shades, scratched his head, squinted at the unpromising surroundings, of a lay-by somewhere in central England, and then finally replied.

“He lived in Haiti in his teens then went to the States. Became a professional wrestler, called himself The Turtle, wore a green mask like a Mexican dude then disappeared off the radar.”

Joel let these new facts wash over him without attempting to turn them into components of a game or puzzle; he was beyond that mode of thinking. If everything is a message or a clue or a portent then we are not at the oceans edge retrieving the odd artefact that gets discarded at the margins; we are swimming in the ocean itself. He also remembered the seemingly unrelated fact that the object that caused the most fatalities on the countries entire road system was the ubiquitous and seemingly helpful road sign. Can we sometimes be too busy looking for signs that we stop looking at the road, he wondered.

Agim was still speaking. “He then came to England, married a reclusive heiress, and used her fortune to fund Cuthbert’s business expansion in the early nineties. It would seem that he has or has had several identities.”

“I am but,” he took out the blue memory stick, that he had earlier offered to Joel, and held it up between thumb and forefinger, “but with this we can fight back.”

“How the fuck can that even be possible?” said Joel, deeply sceptical. “Tell me you’re not full of shit.”

Agim had sat back down and discovered that Joel had smoked the last cigarette. He stalked off to his car and returned moments later with a new pack. He sat down and lit one.

“It uses geo-locational satellite bands and augmented reality technologies: Boffins in the security services came up with it. Their R and D department really is geek central. I have no idea how it works but Vale was using a proto-type to post his Reality Wars Blog on both sides.”

“Vale was posting his subversive rants here and …” Joel broke off and stood up, walked over to the motorcycle rig that was parked in the shade of an oak tree, and returned with a bottle of water and bowl which he put it on the ground. He sloshed water into it for Buster, who started to steadily lap his drink. All the while Joel’s mind was processing. Then he spoke, changing tack.

“Do you know that twin stars in a binary system have a spiral orbits? The mobius gravitational tides produce positional flip-flop. Each twin is oscillating between dual realities.”

“You mean like Sirius A and B?” said Agim, going with Joel’s flow.

“Yes, that’s right.” Joel looked down at the grizzled little Jack Russell at their feet. “The Dog star, eh Buster?” he said. Buster had now drunk all the water and the metal bowl was clanking on the tarmac as he carried on trying to Hoover up the final molecules. Joel poured the rest of the bottle into Buster’s bowl.

Agim again held out the memory stick. When Joel hesitated to take it he began to speak; there was enthusiasm in his voice. “Take it. Use it. Just plug it into your laptop. It is actually a dongle that provides encrypted access to a secure server. Click on the icon that will appear on the desktop, log on and upload your stuff. Use an eleven character passwords, with upper and lowercase plus some numbers. It’s called Skyshine.”

Joel turned the the unlikely looking key to their future over in his hand saying, “I’ve heard that word but in some other context.”

Agim stood up and brushed ash and crumbs off his jacket. He looked down at Joel as if the older man was simply prevaricating, when he should be taking action.