"What is the book?"
I shake my head. "No. Sorry. Herr Doktor's orders."
I can't understand all the voices in my head. One's telling me not to explain but another one's telling me that I should go and get the book now. And—ouch—not even sell it myself but give it to the nice man when he asks for it....
A doorway, kind of churchy, flickers around Adam's body. Switch! I command. Switch! I have to find out what's been going on. I start to blur, just as I have done before, but instead of blurring into Adam's head I seem to be falling, but not downwards. Before I can work out what's happening, or how it's possible to fall in a direction other than down, I land just outside the music shop. I'm back in the Troposphere, lying on the tarmac, looking up at the flickering neon signs and a black, starless sky. It's as if someone's switched everything off: the throbbing of Wolf's head, the smell of damp in the concrete passageway, the cold, the traffic sounds from the street outside the flats. As before, it's almost completely silent in the Troposphere. There are no noises at all: no birds, no traffic, no people. The only sound I've ever heard in the Troposphere is the sound of my own footsteps. Did the lifts make a sound? I can't even remember.
I have to get out of here now and find Adam.
Why would men with guns be looking for the book? I don't know Adam very well, but it was clear that he believed what he was saying and that he was trying to help me. Has he led the men to me—the men in the car? Or am I somehow dreaming all this? I'm bothered by what Adam said about the girl in the bookshop. He obviously didn't know what had happened, or why, but I can work it out. It's logical: If you want The End of Mr. Y, you keep searching for it; I know that. These guys must have Googled it and found an intriguing new link—a girl saying she sold it in a secondhand bookshop. So they find the shop, go there, and ask her about whom she sold it to. She remembers nothing, I'm guessing, except that I'm a young woman doing a Ph.D. at the university. So what happens next? The men go on the university Web site and search for "Lumas." And they find it there under my research interests on the "Staff" pages. And they realize I'm the one who bought the book. So they come looking for me.... And I'm not hard to find. No one based in a university is hard to find. You could come at it from all sorts of different angles, and there I'd be: Ariel Manto—my alias, my pen name, the name I gave myself when I was only eighteen and I didn't want to be me anymore. Ariel Manto. Research interests: Derrida, Science, and Literature, Thomas E. Lumas.
The Ariel part is real at least. And yes, it was the poetry, not the play.
The syrupy stillness of the Troposphere won't let me panic, so I calmly get up off the pavement and turn towards the exit, part of me just wanting to just stay here, where they can't get me. A city all to myself seems better than men with guns. But then I think of myself as I must be in the real world, so zonked out on my sofa that I can't even hear the door. Come on, Ariel. Get out and run. Talk to Adam and do whatever you have to do, but if there are men with guns involved you'd better run. Get out and run. Get out and run. Get out and...
There's a tinkling behind me.
And a creaking: a long, high-pitched arc of a sound. I turn around. This is all wrong. I should be on my own in here. I should be...
It's a door. It's a door opening. The door to the music shop. Oh fuck. And one—no, two—two men are coming out, walking into the Troposphere like aliens walking off a spaceship. They're just as Adam described: one man in a gray suit and one in black. They both have blond hair. But there's something slightly cartoonish about them. As if they've been chroma-keyed onto the background. They've got—huh?—children with them as well. Two young boys, both with the same blond hair as the men, perhaps lighter.
"There she is," says one of the men, the gray suit, his mouth not quite moving at the same time that his words come out. "She's already figured out how to get in."
American accent. Shit. Can I run, and lose them in the alleyways? Something tells me this isn't a good course of action.
"Don't worry about it," says the other one. "We can deal with this one fairly easily." Then he says to me: "Get out of the way. Come on. This isn't anything to worry about. We're just going to let the kids fuck you up a bit; find out where you put the book. It won't hurt while they're doing it."
The kids dance forwards like two marionettes. Their skin is the refrigerator-pink of raw meat. One is dressed in a cowboy suit; the other is wearing a blue cape.
"Let us in," sing-songs one of them, like he's an extra in a Dickens adaptation.
"We want to play," says the other one.
They both have sarcastic eyes, so pale they're almost white.
"Get out of the way," says the black suit again. "Let the kids have their fun."
Get out of the way? I don't think so. But I don't want these freaks—the men or the kids—near me, either. I'm walking backwards, as all four of them walk towards me. I stumble over something: I think it's one of the stand-up signs from outside one of the shops, but it actually turns out to be a rack of newspapers and postcards. I find my balance again quickly and kick the rack into their path. The children see it and jump over it. But the men don't seem to see what I've done.
"Whatever you think you're doing," the gray one says, "it's over. Come on. Move now. We just need to get past. Ouch! Shit, what the hell's that? Come on. You're just going to make it all worse. It doesn't have to be difficult, you know."
They want to get into my mind...? How? Think, Ariel. Where are they now? OK. They're in the Troposphere, just like I am. Come on. Work it out. To go back into myself, I walk down that road behind me until I get to the tunnel. So I have to stop them going there. It might not be correct, but it's the best I can do.
Help me, I think. But nothing happens. Or maybe something does. There's now a steel bar lying on the tarmac. I bend down and pick it up.
"Who are you?" I ask them.
They keep walking towards me, taking up most of the thin street between them.
"We're just here to get the book," the gray one says.
"You just need to cooperate a little," says the other one.
"Although if you don't ... Well, we don't really care what we have to do to get the book. You know how you've been lurking in your friend's mind, just watching? That's Level One. Once the kids are in your mind they're going to turn it into spaghetti."
"On top of old Smoky ..." sings the first kid.
"Get away from me," I say. "Fucking hell. Get away from me..."
I swing the steel bar at the gray-suited man, the one closest to me. He doesn't react until it thwangs him hard across the side of his head: It's as if he can't see the steel bar at all. Just like the newspaper rack.
"You little cunt," he says to me, swaying and clutching his head. Then: "Martin—she's got a weapon."
"You know what to do," says the other guy. "We may as well finish her here and then we'll go to her apartment and get the book. I'll bet you anything it's just there sitting on a bookshelf or something."
One of the little boys is picking his nose and, presumably, watching to see what the adults do next. The other boy, maybe slightly older, looks at me.
"When I do get into your mind, I'm going to wee on your memories," he says. "And then I'm going to poop all your other thoughts out of your eye sockets. I don't have any empathy. So you can't stop me."
I see myself in some asylum, dribbling. What happened to her, then? Oh, she went mad. First she thought she could practice telepathy, and then, for no reason, her brains just packed up. Turned to spaghetti, just like that. It's sad. She was working on a Ph.D. before it happened. And I'll never, ever, be able to tell anyone what happened to me. I'll have no memory. I'll ... OK. Now I am afraid.
Console?
The thing appears. Now the two men and the boys are highlighted red. Danger. Yeah—I think I got that by myself. The small crowded street behind them appears in a kind of grayed-out black and white. That's new.
You have no choices, says the woman's voice.
/> How can I have no choice?
Nowhere is open now.
OK. Tell me what I can do. Are there any options?
You can quit by exiting.
I don't want to quit. These psychos will enter my mind if I do.
You have no choices.
So is that it then? Basically quit, and then die?
You can choose to play the Apollo Smintheus card.
What?
Danger approaching...
The console is right. The black-suited man is approaching me with ... Ouch. Oh shit. I thought you couldn't feel pain in here. Oh fuck. It's like period pain in my head. It's toothache of the brain ... I fall to my knees. OK, I tell the console. Play the Apollo Smintheus card. Do it now. Do it now. Oh God.
Chapter Fifteen
How much time has passed? I don't know. But the men and the two horrible little kids haven't moved forwards any more, and now there's something, or someone, standing next to me. I'm still down on my knees on the black tarmac, holding my head in my hands, pressing in my fingers, trying to make the pain go away. I was so wrong about the Troposphere. I thought you couldn't feel anything here, but the pain here is more intense than anything in the real world. It's the worst form of pain as well: not the sharp sting of a knife, a tattoo, a cat scratch. Are headaches ever nice? I don't think so. And this is the worst headache I've ever had; something's wringing out my brain as if it's a wet dishcloth. I don't seem to be able to close my eyes, although the flickering neon in the street is making me dizzy. In fact, the flickering neon is now breaking up around me. Everything's breaking up and turning into some kind of gray static: the shops, the apartment blocks, the street itself. The Troposphere is fizzing and popping as though it's being broadcast on the wrong frequency.
The silence around me is already too loud, and so when the fizzing and popping actually turns into a crackling noise, like fire in a dry forest, and the two men start saying things like What the fuck is that thing? I just want to die quickly so I can't feel this anymore. The "thing," still standing next to me, is wearing a long red robe and black boots, but I can see that under the robe he is an animal: a mouse-hybrid of some sort, with gray fur on his legs. I can't do more than register that before the image begins to break up like everything else. Now all I want is for this to happen quickly, for everything to shut up and go away.
Apollo Smintheus, if that is who this is, says something in a language I don't understand, and the pain goes and the static goes, as though my channel has been retuned, crisp and clear. I stand up, wobbling slightly. Apollo Smintheus is taller than me: He must be eight feet tall, standing on his hind legs. He has a quiver full of arrows slung across his shoulder. His pointed mouse-face is covered in gray fur, and he has whiskers. He's probably the most bizarre entity I have ever seen. But when he speaks now, it's English with an American accent.
"Well," he says. "I've never seen this before. Who are these people?"
"I don't know," I say.
"They are the bad guys, though?"
"Yes. If you can help me..." I feel like crying. "Please..."
"OK. Don't worry."
He starts speaking in the other language again. At the same time, he takes his bow and loads it up with an arrow from his quiver. He fires one arrow at the gray-suited guy, who seems to deflect it somehow. I can't understand all of what happens next. The kids hide behind the legs of the men; then something seems to come towards Apollo Smintheus—some ball of yellow light—but he simply raises his arm and reflects it back towards the man in black. He falls to the floor now, clutching his head the way I was before. The two kids look at him, and then each other, and then turn and run away down the street. Now Apollo Smintheus loads up another arrow and fires it again at the man in gray. It sticks in his neck, but no blood spurts as the man stumbles, sees what's happened, and then takes hold of the arrow with both his hands and pulls it out, leaving a gaping hole with skin-flaps, like some piece of gross-out porn from the Internet.
As he starts speaking, I can see his voice box move.
"You fucker," he says, thickly. "Why are you fighting for her?"
"Oh, she asked me if I would," Apollo Smintheus says.
"What on Christ's earth did she do to get the attention of a god?"
"She did it the old-fashioned way. She helped a mouse," Apollo Smintheus says, loading his bow again. "Now, as they say in Illinois: Go to hell, fuckface."
Illinois? A god? This must be a dream. Nothing like this happened to Mr. Y. This must be the effect of TV and cinema and—not that I've played them often—video games on my weak mind. This is truly crazy. But I have to say I quite enjoy it now as Apollo Smintheus fires arrows into the two blond men as if they're 2D practice targets pinned up in an archery range. They're not dead, yet, but they are down. What do you have to do to kill someone in here? Apollo Smintheus now walks over to them and, after pulling a coiled rope from under his robe, binds them tightly together. Then he walks back towards me, muttering something. And, as he mutters in this odd language, a cage starts to form around the two men: like a bell-shaped birdcage made out of silvery wire. By the time he returns to my side and turns around, the men are imprisoned and unconscious, like something from a fairy tale.
"There," he says.
"Thank you," I say. "Thank you so much. I..." I look down the street. There's no sign of the caped-kid or the cowboy-kid. "What about those children?"
"You don't need to worry about them. Coffee?" says Apollo Smintheus. "We can go to my place and I'll explain. Sorry. I'm being rude. I can bring my place here, obviously. But perhaps you want to conjure yours up?"
I don't know what he's talking about so I just nod. "Your place," I say.
Apollo Smintheus starts incanting again and, between the music shop down the street and what seems to be a pool hall (which I never noticed before), an archway opens up. It's like an adult, live-action version of the mouse-hole from Tom and Jerry cartoons. I'm not sure I can take much more of this. If this is all going on in my imagination then I'm much more warped than I ever would have thought. I may need medication.
"This way."
We walk through the archway into what can only be described as a mouse burrow fused with a minimalist Manhattan apartment. The space is white, and it would be light and airy if it was ever daytime here, and if there weren't coarse brown blankets tacked over the large windows in the back wall. There are thick pine shelf units around the walls, but they're all empty. There's nothing on any of the tables. The floor seems to be tiled with polished dark parquet blocks, but you can hardly see it for all the sawdust. In the corner of the room there's a nest: lots of white fluff rolled into a ball. Apollo Smintheus leads me through this room and into another one. This one is more like an eighteenth-century parlor, with an open fire and two rocking chairs.
"Please, sit," he says. "I'll make coffee."
I expect him to take an old-fashioned kettle and hang it over the fire, but he doesn't do anything at all. Nevertheless, when I look down on the table, there's a mug of steaming black coffee sitting there on a wicker mat.
"So," he says. "You're not a god."
"I don't think so," I say. I want to smile but I'm still feeling shaken and freaked-out after my encounter with the two men—and the fucked-up children. "Those guys..." I say. "They're not dead, are they?"
"No. You can't kill things in here."
"How long will they stay there in the cage?"
Apollo Smintheus rocks in his chair. "As long as I've got the energy to keep them there. And, also, as long as I want to keep them there. What did they do to you? Why were you fighting?"
"They said they were going to go into my mind and fuck it up," I say. "Or I think they were going to send those boys."
"Oh dear."
"Yeah. I ... I think you saved my life."
"They can't really do anything to you in here," Apollo Smintheus says. "But I assume they were on their way to your..." Now he says a word in the strange language again.
&
nbsp; "My what?"
"What would you call it? My Illinois friends obviously don't have a word for this. The portal into your consciousness. Do you have a word for that?"
I shake my head. "No. This is all absolutely new to me. I'm still not sure I'm not dreaming."
"Well, you know the thing I mean."
"Yes. And that's what I was trying to defend. I think. It's all so confusing."
"So. How did you all get here?" he says. "You're not supposed to be here."
"Sorry?"
"You're not a god. You're a physical being. How did you get here?"
"I read a book. It had instructions ... That's what those men want, by the way. The book."
It should be warm in here with the fire, but I don't feel anything above or below body temperature. I pick up my coffee and the outside of the mug does feel hot, but somehow the heat doesn't travel into my hands. I take a sip. It's the most delicious coffee I've ever tasted but when I swallow it, it doesn't actually go anywhere. I don't feel anything in my stomach at all.
Apollo Smintheus frowns. "Why do they want this book?"
I take another sip of coffee. "I don't know. I mean, they obviously already know how to get in here, so they can't want the instructions. It doesn't make any sense."
"They don't want you to have it. They want to stop people from coming. Hmm. I'd guess that'll be it. Not a bad idea. It's not good for people to come here. You're the first I've actually seen, but you're not the first I've heard of. I do approve of you coming and helping mice, obviously. That's why you got whatever you got that enabled you to call me."
"It was a business card."
"Oh." He smiles. "Very classy."
"I have to ask. Why shouldn't people come here?"
"This dimension ... I think that word is right. It's not something you can ever understand. Tell me what you see in front of you now."
"Um, a table and a chair with you sitting on it. A fire. A..."
"None of those things are there," he says. "Apart from me. And I don't see any of what you see."