The Neon Court (48 page)

“What three?”

“A theatre, an opera house, and a small pottery workshop in Suffolk.”

“Does a pottery workshop count as a cultural institution?”

“The fact that you ask suggests you don’t have the capacity to appreciate the answer,” he replied.

“Didn’t you bequeath them something in your will?”

“I never actually wrote a will,” he sighed.

“You are joking me.”

“It seemed like an expression of giving in to do so.”

“My God, even in death you manage to screw over the little guy.”

“I do admit that my sponsorship of the pottery workshop was something of a whim,” he conceded. “But I suppose we might ask – what price art?”

“No!” I blurted as we crossed over St Martin’s Lane, the balconies of the theatres dripping and the lights out. “No! We don’t ask ‘what price art?’, because your currency started with the blood of the innocent and didn’t account for inflation!”

“Here speaks a child of the banking crisis.”

I scowled, marched a little bit faster down a wide alley of darkened restaurants and purveyors of leather coats. This was Theatreland, where the lights were meant to never go out, and the air was thick with the buzz of illusion. Posters lined the walls, showing various productions with well-known faces caught doing dramatic things. Bakker suddenly exclaimed, “Good God, is
he
playing Hamlet too?”

“Not now,” I growled.

“Matthew, if you just looked beyond your preoccupations, you might find yourself on the verge of having fun.”

“You know, if it had been anyone else who knew anything about Blackout,” I grumbled, turning past a greasy pizza shop and down towards the smell of the river, “I might have enjoyed this experience. I really might. A chance to chat with a peer, to get to know the life and times of an interesting practitioner of the art, share knowledge and experience. But oh no, it had to be you; you just couldn’t leave well alone, could you?”

“So now you’re blaming me for being dead?” suggested Bakker.

“Maybe there is a God. And if he’s up there …” I turned my head up to the sky, shook my Minnie Mouse umbrella and shouted, “… enough already! Give a guy a break will you? I mean how much more testing are you looking for?”

The words died away.

And I heard it.

The sound, just there, just beyond the rain, of footsteps.

Bakker coughed politely. “Now, Matthew …” he began. I gestured him to bewildered silence, listened.

Footsteps muffled by the rain, now splashing through a puddle, now pausing, now back on hard paving stones. Walking, slow and steady. Coming closer. I started to walk faster, turned past a spaghetti house and down towards Trafalgar Square. Our hand ached, we could smell the river, more than just a washing coolness to the wind, a power, rich and vivid and flowing, that would always be the last thing in London to stop.

“Scarf!” exclaimed Bakker as I passed a shop window. I paused long enough to look into a newsagent which ran a sideline in hats, scarves and thin black gloves. The lock on the door parted without bothering to argue at our touch, I grabbed a scarf off the shelf, price tag still dangling, and marched on.

The footsteps were louder now, all around, not from any one direction. Just one set of footsteps, but they bounced off the walls, spun down the side streets and echoed off glass, everywhere all around, behind and in front, growing, getting louder. And with them came a voice.

“Sorcerer!”

It rolled rich and bright and merry through the darkness.

“Sorcerer! You next!”

I crossed the zebra crossing outside the National Portrait Gallery out of habit, not reason, headed down towards the long slope of Trafalgar Square. Memory dictated what was there, not sight, sight was up to little more than grey shapes on the edge of my bubble of illumination. Memory of Nelson’s Column at the heart of the square, a giant off-white spike holding a very little man adorned with admiral’s hat and a good deal of bird droppings. Great black lions, four of them, guarding wide shallow pools of greenish-blue water in which, so it should have been, fountains played. There should have been children running, beggars begging, teenagers ignoring the “do not climb” signs and scrambling over every statue and monument. There should have been protestors campaigning against racism and for the environment, tourists turning their maps this way and that as they tried to work out
which was the exit for Parliament, which for Buckingham Palace; music, Caribbean steel drums and Scottish bagpipes, policemen and snipers hidden on the roofs of the embassies.

None of that tonight.

Just footsteps.

I scuttled down the steps into the bowl of Trafalgar Square, and they were everywhere, snapping feet on stone, the sound of Oda’s – of not-Oda’s – laughter. Bakker hissed, “Hurry!”

I dropped my umbrella and fumbled at the scarf I’d stolen, wrapped it unevenly round my eyes, looping it twice round and tying it off at the back of my head. I let the bubble of yellow light go out and all was darkness.

True, eyelid-sealing darkness.

The memory of Trafalgar Square suddenly didn’t matter. No amount of reason, of knowing the layout, compensated. I staggered forward and bumped into my own fallen umbrella. I fumbled, bending at the knees, until I found its handle, picked it back up, shaking out the rain, folded it up and pushed it out in front of me like a blind man’s walking stick. I thought I could hear laughter behind me, a change in the rhythm of the footsteps, as of feet on stairs. Then they stopped. I kept walking forward, one shuffling step at a time, swaying unevenly. My fingers found rough curving stone. I traced its shape down until they hit water, then deeper; I plunged my arm in to the elbow until I could feel pipe, and tile, and the little copper coins thrown by travellers into the pool.

Then, “Sorcerer?”

It was right behind me. I turned, splashing water and nearly slipping on the stones, clinging on the edge of the stone fountain at my back like it was the wall of Jericho.

Footsteps. They moved around me, from left to right, then right to left, describing a small arc. I stammered, “Hi, Oda.”

The footsteps stopped.

“Not Oda,” she replied. “Much more.”

“Sorry. My fault. Hi, Blackout. How’s the woman you’re wearing?”

Something brushed the top of my head. We flinched back, fighting with every breath not to let the fire flood to our fingers, turning our face away and bending over the line of the fountain.

“What is this?” asked not-Oda, brushing the scarf around my eyes.

“Um … a scarf?”

“And why are you wearing it” – fingers pressed along the line of my eyes – “… on your head?”

“You know … protection against blindness, bleeding eyes, runny nose, brain damage and death,” I mumbled. “The usual.” Her hands moved towards the knot at the back of my head. We caught her wrists. We could feel cuts, sticky drying blood on her skin. She didn’t seem to feel the pain. “Uh-uh,” I said. “My sensory deprivation.”

Slowly, she drew her hands back, freed her wrists.

Not touching her was worse, much worse, than feeling where she was.

Footsteps.

They swept left, they swept right. They stopped. They paced again. Then, “Look at us.”

“Can’t, sorry.”

“Look at us!”

Sparks crackled from our skin, we couldn’t help ourself, couldn’t push it away.

“Not today, no.”

“Look at us!”

She screamed it, the words hitting us like a bag of bricks; we buckled and bent double and, as we unfolded again, the static built up around us snapped, sliced through the air around us and went outwards. We heard a crack as it hit Oda and a thump, further off, as she hit the ground. We smelt ozone and felt the moisture of the water on the surface of the fountain turning to steam. I slid onto the ground, fumbling my way along it, shaking with fatigue, my fingers passing over the handle of the umbrella, and stone.

I heard Oda get up, and froze, on hands and knees.

“Lady Neon begged,” she said softly.

I leant back onto my knees, resting my hands on my legs and hauling down ragged breaths.

“The other one, the Tribe man, he fought a bit. And begged at the end. It’ll go faster if you beg first.”

“Oda …” I began.

Something hard and fast and hot burst across my back, knocking me
to the ground. I hadn’t heard the move, and Oda’s voice, when it came again, seemed as calm and stationary as before.

“We heard that the blue electric angels are too proud to be human. That they think they’re gods, somehow better, above the rest. What a fall for the mighty.”

“I’m not a god,” I groaned, hauling myself back up.

“But they are!”

Something hot burst across our belly, we doubled over, crying empty animal sounds at the pain. I could feel blood between my fingers.

“Are you better now?” asked Oda. “Are you bigger, faster, stronger, brighter, wiser, better? Are you more than everyone else?”

“We … we are …
more
than you,” we hissed. “We are … we are the sum of everything you are, we are the creatures you made, all that everything you poured into the telephone lines, all that knowledge, all that feeling, all those secrets, all that everything you are, digitised and sent into the wire, we are all of that. Yes. We are faster, brighter, better. We are glorious. You are tiny. But we are me.”

“And what are you?”

“It is only because we are me that we are alive.”

I heard her move right in front of me, felt her breath on my cheek. “Yes,” she encouraged. “But what
are
you?”

“Just me,” I said. “That’s all.”

The palm of her hand slammed into the side of our face, knocking us down. We tried to crawl up. She hit again. We stayed down. I could hear the rush of her breath. “
Sorcerer
,” she hissed. “What pleasure you must have, walking among mortal men, knowing what you are.”

“I have it on good authority,” I mumbled through the taste of blood, “that I am at best, a very average sorcerer.”

Her fingers crawled round the back of my neck, grabbed a clump of hair, dragged me back onto my knees, tilting my head to stare at the place where her bloodied face ought to be. “Which one are you now?” she asked.

“Uh …”

“Which one? Human or angel, human or angel, which one?!”

“Doesn’t work like that.”

“Human angel human angel human angel human angel?!”

She shook us. We were not made of stone. We shook.

Through rattling teeth I stammered, “Both!”

The shaking stopped. The pressure at the back of my head relaxed. I flopped onto my hands and knees again, too dizzy to deal with the pain. I felt something move near me and blurted, “Which one are you?”

Stopped. It stopped, and there was rain. Then she said, “I …” and stopped again, the word sticking. Then, “I …”

“Oda?” I breathed.

“I … I did not …”

“Come on, did not what?”

“I … we did … I did … we …”

“Oda Ajaja-Brown, raised in God help us of all places, Reading. Psycho-bitch, remember me? I ran out of fingers for the number of times you could’ve killed me. I’ve been chatting with Satan lately, we’ve been doing the crossword together. I said ‘seven letters’, he said ‘got any?’, I said ‘third letter “p”, I think it’s an anagram’, he said ‘in your dreams’ and waltzed off with a swish of his tail to order another round of martinis. Remember that hysterically entertaining time some nutter shot me? And you helped me back up? Or that nasty little incident with the dead guy walking underneath Holborn, and you dragged me out of the dust. Remember Balham, remember growing electric wings, remember flying? I thought that was particularly Satanic, that incident. I could practically hear the hoofs over the sound of the Underground.”

Something soft and warm wrapped itself around my windpipe and became a lot less of both fast. I fumbled, felt wrist, sleeve, scrambled at her fingers, couldn’t pull them away. I could hear the blood in my ears, every breath was like trying to push cricket balls through a sieve.

“I hate you,” she breathed.

I made the sound of sandpaper running over blackboard, the only sound I could make.

“I
hate
you. I hate you, Matthew, I hate you.”

The wasp orchestra was back in my brain now, playing its final tango.

“Why didn’t you … why didn’t you … why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you when I told you to? Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Sorry,” I wheezed.

“You never listen!”

“Sorry.”

It didn’t seem a good enough answer: Oda shook us. “Why do you never listen?!”

“Sorry!”

“Why didn’t you save her?!” She screamed the words, even as static rose up in front of our eyes, and with a final shake pushed us backwards, letting go and sending us to the ground. I curled up instinctively, hands over my head, knees up to my chin, waiting for it to get worse. It didn’t. I heard …

… what might almost have been a woman crying …

I whispered, “Sorry, Oda. I tried.”

“Not good enough!” The voice that shrieked the words wasn’t Oda, not entirely, and the sound of it went straight through our ears and out the other side, turned our stomach to water, filled our nostrils with hot blood, tingled on our tongue with the taste of iron, burnt across the surface of our skin.

“Oda!” A voice, somewhere, that might have been mine. “Stop it! Oda! Stop! Look at yourself!”

It stopped.

For a while, all we could do was breathe, and that by an act of will that would have crippled Hercules.

Silence.

I didn’t even know if she was still there.

“Oda?” I asked between my hands. “Oda?”

Then, “We want … I need …”

I tried getting onto my feet, and gave up.

“I can’t … please I can’t …”

“Get up, Matthew.” Bakker’s voice, inside my head.

“I can’t.” Oda’s voice, somewhere just outside.

“Get up!”

“I can’t go …”

“The blue electric angels do not die like this!”

We tried again. No heroic task could demand more care than we took in trying to move. We could feel blood, sticky, ugly human blood, hot and wet, between our fingers, taste its sickly taste on our lips, feel it rolling down the inside of our nose, pooling in our ear. The sense nearly knocked us down again, nearly crippled us before we had time
to conquer it. We thought of Robert Bakker, arrogance and vanity. Of Penny, the air around her catching fire. The way Theydon had clawed at his own face; the way Toxik had blown smoke into the air; the touch of Lady Neon’s lips, the way Leslie Dees had looked when she died, the way JG’s head had bounced when it hit the earth.