He thought of Xanadu, a poem he knew by heart.
Visions of another Albion -”Where Alph the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea."
If there was indeed a sea down there, it was a frozen sea. It was death forever.
It was as much as he could do to keep upright, to prevent himself from sliding down the incline towards the unknown. The lighter flickered as an icy air blew it out.
"Shit," said Cameron as he was plunged into darkness. Whether the word alerted the trio outside, or whether God deserted him totally at that moment and invited them to open the door, he would never know. But as the door swung wide it pushed Cameron off his feet. Too numb and too frozen to prevent his fall he collapsed to the ice floor as the smell of the goat wafted into the room.
Cameron half turned. Voight's double was at the door, as was the chauffeur, and the third man in the Mercedes. He wore a coat apparently made of several goat-skins. The hooves and the horns still hung from it. The blood on its fur was brown and gummy.
"What are you doing here, Mr. Cameron?" asked the goat-coated man.
Cameron could barely speak. The only feeling left in his head was a pin-point of agony in the middle of his forehead.
"What the hell is going on?" he said, through lips almost too frozen to move.
"Precisely that, Mr. Cameron," the man replied. "H ell is going on."
As they ran past St Mary-le-Strand, Loyer glanced behind him, and stumbled. Joel, a full three metres behind the leaders, knew the man was giving up. So quickly too; there was something amiss. He slackened his pace, letting McCloud and Voight pass him. No great hurry. Kinderman was quite a way behind, unable to compete with these fast boys. He was the tortoise in this race, for sure. Loyer was overtaken by McCloud, then Voight, and finally Jones and Kinderman. His breath had suddenly deserted him, and his legs felt like lead. Worse, he was seeing the tarmac under his running shoes creaking and cracking, and fingers, like loveless children, seeking up out of the ground to touch him. Nobody else was seeing them, it seemed. The crowds just roared on, while these illusory hands broke out of their tarmac graves and secured a hold on him. He collapsed into their dead arms exhausted, his youth broken and his strength spent. The enquiring fingers of the dead continued to pluck at him, long after the doctors had removed him from the track, examined him and sedated him.
He knew why, of course, lying there on the hot tarmac while they had their pricking way with him. He'd looked behind him. That's what had made them come. He'd looked -”And after Loyer's sensational collapse, the race is open wide. Frank the Flash McCloud is setting the pace now, and he's really speeding away from the new boy, Voight. Joel Jones is even further behind, he doesn't seem to be keeping up with the leaders at all. What do you think, Jim?" "Well he's either pooped already, or he's really taking a chance that they'll exhaust themselves. Remember he's new over this distance -”
"Yes, Jim -”
"And that might make him careless. Certainly he's going to have to do a lot of work to improve on his present position in third place."
Joel felt giddy. For a moment, as he'd watched Loyer begin to lose his grip on the race, he'd heard the man praying out loud. Praying to God to save him. He'd been the only one who heard the words -”Yea, though I walk through the shadows of the Valley of Death I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they -”
The sun was hotter now, and Joel was beginning to feel the familiar voices of his tiring limbs. Running on tarmac was hard on the feet, hard on the joints. Not that that would make a man take to praying. He tried to put Loyer's desperation out of his mind, and concentrate on the matter in hand.
There was still a lot of running to do, the race was not even half over. Plenty of time to catch up with the heroes: plenty of time.
As he ran, his brain idly turned over the prayers his mother had taught him in case he should need one, but the years had eroded them: they were all but gone.
"My name," said the goat-coated man, “is Gregory Burgess. Member of Parliament. You wouldn't know me. I try to keep a low profile." "Lo! Dis; and lo! the place” "MP?" said Cameron.
"Yes. Independent. Very independent."
"Is that Voight's brother?"
Burgess glanced at Voight's other self. He was not even shivering in the intense cold, despite the fact that he was only wearing a thin singlet and shorts.
"Brother?" Burgess said. "No, no. He is my – what is the word? Familiar."
The word rang a bell, but Cameron wasn't well-read. What was a familiar?
"Show him," said Burgess magnanimously. Voight's face shook, the skin seeming to shrivel, the lips curling back from the teeth, the teeth melting into a white wax that poured down a gullet that was itself transfiguring into a column of shimmering silver. The face was no longer human, no longer even mammalian. It had become a fan of knives, their blades glistening in the candlelight through the door. Even as this bizarrerie became fixed, it started to change again, the knives melting and darkening, fur sprouting, eyes appearing and swelling to balloon size. Antennae leapt from this new head, mandibles were extruded from the pulp of transfiguration, and the head of a bee, huge and perfectly intricate, now sat on Voight's neck.
Burgess obviously enjoyed the display; he applauded with gloved hands.
"Familiars both," he said, gesturing to the chauffeur, who had removed the cap, and let a welter of auburn hair fall to her shoulders. She was ravishingly beautiful, a face to give your life for. But an illusion, like the other. No doubt capable of infinite personae.
"They're both mine, of course," said Burgess proudly.
"What?" was all Cameron could manage; he hoped it stood for all the questions in his head.
"I serve Hell, Mr. Cameron. And in its turn Hell serves me."
"Hell?"
"Behind you, one of the entrances to the Ninth Circle. You know your Dante, I presume?”
“Where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength."
"Why are you here?"
"To run this race. Or rather my third familiar is already running the race. He will not be beaten this time. This time it is Hell's event, Mr. Cameron, and we shall not be cheated of the prize."
"Hell," said Cameron again.
"You believe don't you? You're a good church-goer. Still pray before you eat, like any God-fearing soul. Afraid of choking on your dinner."
"How do you know I pray?"
"Your wife told me. Oh, your wife was very informative about you, Mr. Cameron, she really opened up to me. Very accommodating. A confirmed analyst, after my attentions. She gave me so much… information. You're a good Socialist, aren't you, like your father."
"Politics now -”
"Oh, politics is the hub of the issue, Mr. Cameron. Without politics we're lost in a wilderness, aren't we? Even Hell needs order. Nine great circles: a pecking order of punishments. Look down; see for yourself." Cameron could feel the hole at his back: he didn't need to look.
"We stand for order, you know. Not chaos. That's just heavenly propaganda. And you know what we'll win?" "It's a charity race."
"Charity is the least of it. We're not running this race to save the world from cancer. We're running it for government."
Cameron half-grasped the point.
"Government," he said.
"Once every century this race is run from St Paul's to the Palace of Westminster. Often it has been run at the dead of night, unheralded, unapplauded. Today it is run in full sunshine, watched by thousands. But whatever the circumstance, it is always the same race. Your athletes, against one of ours. If you win, another hundred years of democracy. If we win… as we will… the end of the world as you know it."
At his back Cameron felt a vibration. The expression on Burgess' face had abruptly changed; the confidence had become clouded, the smugness was instantly replaced by a look of nervous excitement.
"Well, well," he said, his hands flapping like birds. "It seems we are about
to be visited by higher powers. How flattering -”
Cameron turned, and peered over the edge of the hole. It didn't matter how curious he was now. They had him; he may as well see all there was to see.
A wave of icy air blew up from the sunless circle and in the darkness of the shaft he could see a shape approaching. Its movement was steady, and its face was thrown back to look at the world.
Cameron could hear its breathing, see the wound of its features open and close in the murk, oily bone locking and unlocking like the face of a crab.
Burgess was on his knees, the two familiars flat on the floor to either side of him, faces to the ground. Cameron knew he would have no other chance. He stood up, his limbs hardly in his control, and blundered towards Burgess, whose eyes were closed in reverent prayer. More by accident than intention his knee caught Burgess under the jaw as he passed, and the man was sent sprawling. Cameron's soles slid on the floor out of the ice-cavern and into the candlelit chamber beyond.
Behind him, the room was filling with smoke and sighs, and Cameron, like Lot's wife fleeing from the destruction of Sodom, glanced back just once to see the forbidden sight behind him.
It was emerging from the shaft, its grey bulk filling the hole, lit by some radiance from below. Its eyes, deep-set in the naked bone of its elephantine head, met Cameron's through the open door. They seemed to touch him like a kiss, entering his thoughts through his eyes.
He was not turned to salt. Pulling his curious glance away from the face, he skated across the ante-chamber and started to climb the stairs two and three at a time, falling and climbing, falling and climbing. The door was still ajar. Beyond it, daylight and the world.
He flung the door open and collapsed into the hallway, feeling the warmth already beginning to wake his frozen nerves. There was no noise on the stairs behind him: clearly they were too in awe of their fleshless visitor to follow him. He hauled himself along the wall of the hallway, his body wracked with shivers and chatterings. Still they didn't follow.
Outside the day was blindingly bright, and he began to feel the exhilaration of escape. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before. To have been so close, yet survived. God had been with him after all.
He staggered along the road back to his bicycle, determined to stop the race, to tell the world -His bike was untouched, its handlebars warm as his wife's arms.
As he hooked his leg over, the look he had exchanged with Hell caught fire. His body, ignorant of the heat in his brain, continued about its business for a moment, putting its feet on the pedals and starting to ride away. Cameron felt the ignition in his head and knew he was dead.
The look, the glance behind him -Lot's wife.
Like Lot's stupid wife -The lightning leapt between his ears: faster than thought.
His skull cracked, and the lightning, white-hot, shot out from the furnace of his brain. His eyes withered to black nuts in his sockets, he belched light from mouth and nostrils. The combustion turned him into a column of black flesh in a matter of seconds, without a flame or a wisp of smoke.
Cameron's body was completely incinerated by the time the bicycle careered off the road and crashed through the tailor's shop window, where it lay like a dummy, face down amongst the ashen suits. He, too, had looked back.
The crowds at Trafalgar Square were a seething mass of enthusiasm. Cheers, tears and flags. It was as though this little race had become something special for these people: a ritual the significance of which they could not know. Yet somewhere in them they understood the day was laden with sulphur, they sensed their lives stood on tiptoe to reach heaven. Especially the children. They ran along the route, shouting incoherent blessings, their faces squeezed up with their fears. Some called his name. "Joel! Joel!"
Or did he imagine that? Had he imagined, too, the prayer from Loyer's lips, and the signs in the radiant faces of the babies held high to watch the runners pass?
As they turned into Whitehall Frank McCloud glanced confidentially over his shoulder and Hell took him. It was sudden: it was simple.
He stumbled, an icy hand in his chest crushing the life out of him. Joel slowed as he approached the man. His face was purple: his lips foamy.
"McCloud," he said, and stopped to stare in his great rival's thin face.
McCloud looked up at him from behind a veil of smoke that had turned his grey eyes ochre. Joel reached down to help him.
"Don't touch me," McCloud growled. The filament vessels in his eyes bulged and bled.
"Cramp?" asked Joel. "Is it cramp?"
"Run, you bastard, run," McCloud was saying at him, as the hand in his innards seized his life out. He was oozing blood through the pores on his face now, weeping red tears. "Run. And don't look back. For Christ's sake, don't look back."
"What is it?"
"Run for your life!"
The words weren't requests but imperatives.
Run.
Not for gold or glory. Just to live.
Joel glanced up, suddenly aware that there was some huge-headed thing at his back, cold breath on his neck. He picked up his heels and ran.
"- Well, things aren't going so well for the runners here, Jim. After Loyer going down so sensationally, now Frank McCloud has stumbled too. I've never seen anything quite like it. But he seems to have had a few words with Joel Jones as he ran past, so he must be OK."
McCloud was dead by the time they put him in the ambulance, and putrefied by the following morning. Joel ran. Jesus, did he run. The sun had become ferocious in his face, washing the colour out of the cheering crowds, out of the faces, out of the flags. Everything was one sheet of noise, drained of humanity.
Joel knew the feeling that was coming over him, the sense of dislocation that accompanied fatigue and over oxygenation. He was running in a bubble of his own consciousness, thinking, sweating, suffering by himself, for himself, in the name of himself.
And it wasn't so bad, this being alone. Songs began to fill his head: snatches of hymns, sweet phrases from love songs, dirty rhymes. His self idled, and his dream-mind, unnamed and fearless, took over.
Ahead, washed by the same white rain of light, was Voight. That was the enemy, that was the thing to be surpassed. Voight, with his shining crucifix rocking in the sun. He could do it, as long as he didn't look, as long as he didn't look -Behind him.
Burgess opened the door of the Mercedes and climbed in. Time had been wasted: valuable time. He should be at the Houses of Parliament, at the finishing line, ready to welcome the runners home. There was a scene to play, in which he would pretend the mild and smiling face of democracy. And tomorrow? Not so mild.
His hands were clammy with excitement, and his pinstripe suit smelt of the goat-skin coat he was obliged to wear in the room. Still, nobody would notice; and even if they did what English-man would be so impolite to mention that he smelt goaty?
He hated the Lower Chamber, the perpetual ice, that damn yawning hole with its distant sound of loss. But all that was over now. He'd made his oblations, he'd shown his utter and ceaseless adoration of the pit; now it was time to reap the rewards.
As they drove, he thought of his many sacrifices to ambition. At first, minor stuff: kittens and cockerels. Later, he was to discover how ridiculous they thought such gestures were. But at the beginning he'd been innocent: not knowing what to give or how to give it. They began to make their requirements clear as the years went by, and he, in time, learnt to practice the etiquette of selling his soul. His self mortifications were studiously planned and immaculately staged, though they had left him without nipples or the hope of children. It was worth the pain, though: the power came to him by degrees. A triple first at Oxford, a wife endowed beyond the dreams of priapism, a seat in Parliament, and soon, soon enough, the country itself.
The cauterized stumps of his thumbs ached, as they often did when he was nervous. Idly, he sucked on one.
"- Well we're now in the closing stages of what really has been one hell of a race, eh, Jim?"
"Oh yes, it's really been a revelation, hasn't it? Voight is really the outsider of the field; and here he is streaking away from the competition without much effort. Of course, Jones made the unselfish gesture of checking with Frank McCloud that he was indeed all right after that bad fall of his, and that put him behind."
"It's lost the race for Jones really, hasn't it?"
"I think that's right. I think it lost the race for him."
"This is a charity race, of course."
"Absolutely. And in a situation like this it's not whether you win or lose -”
"It's how you play the game."
"Right."
"Right."
"Well they're both in sight of the Houses of Parliament now as they come round the bend of Whitehall. And the crowds are cheering their boy on, but I really think it's a lost cause -”
"Mind you, he brought something special out of the bag in Sweden."
"He did. He did."
"Maybe he'll do it again."
Joel ran, and the gap between himself and Voight was beginning to close. He concentrated on the man's back, his eyes boring into his shirt, learning his rhythm, looking for weaknesses.
There was a slowing there. The man was not as fast as he had been. An unevenness had crept into his stride, a sure sign of fatigue.
He could take him. With courage, he could take him.
And Kinderman. He'd forgotten about Kinderman. Without thinking, Joel glanced over his shoulder and looked behind him.
Kinderman was way back, still keeping his steady marathon runner's pace unchanged. But there was something else behind Joel: another runner, almost on his heels; ghostly, vast.
He averted his eyes and stared ahead, cursing his stupidity.
He was gaining on Voight with every pace. The man was really running out of steam, quite clearly. Joel knew he could take him for certain, if he worked at it. Forget his pursuer, whatever it was, forget everything except overtaking Voight.
But the sight at his back wouldn't leave his head.
"Don't look back': McCloud's words. Too late, he'd done it. Better to know then who this phantom was. He looked again.