“An old woman in the mountains.”
“Ah—she is dead?”
“Yes. She is dead. Old age took her.”
“You were her family?”
“No. I was sent as a courtesy. She said that she was the last of her people, and spoke a language that no one else knows. My employer likes to show respect.”
“I see!” Understanding bloomed in the mechanic’s face. “You are an anthropologist!”
The Harbinger of Death nodded and smiled, briefly relieved, and filed that excuse in the back of his mind in case he needed it later.
“Your T-shirt,” he said to the mechanic, as the girl laughed on the floor with her new best friend. “Local team?”
“Yes, just a small side, but we’re doing all right. Runners-up in Region VIII national division last year.”
“Where would I find the shirt?”
Chapter 5
“Problem about supporting Arsenal is they play great first half of the season, then blow it and finish fourth …”
“Cricket fans aren’t like your rugby lads …”
“The train will be delayed. This is due to a shortage of crew.”
“Do you have anything vegetarian?”
“Proud to announce my new transport policy, fairer prices for a more environmentally friendly and socially conscious London!”
“It’s now been four months of emergency powers. Four months. Remind you of any other great political coups in world history much?”
“Darling, you’re making a scene.”
“… humidity in the winter when you’re drying your clothes, and then you get the black mould and that’s really the one to look out for, the black one, it’s the one which can …”
“A man dies twice. Once when he dies, and once when he is forgotten.”
“How’s the new job? Oh, I see. So … not really like insurance at all?”
On the plane from Lima to LA, a woman sat next to Charlie in premium economy class (Death didn’t think it proper that his Harbinger travel economy, but neither did he believe in business class) and said, “Oh wow, oh Jesus! And you’ve been doing this job for how long?”
“A bit over a week.”
“And have you seen people die?”
“No.”
“You’re the Harbinger of Death and you haven’t seen people die?”
“No. I go before.”
“And isn’t that terrible? Isn’t that the worst thing ever, meeting all these people and knowing they’re going to die?”
Charlie thought about it for a while, airline wine rolling around the plastic cup in his hand, airline pretzels stuck between his teeth. Then he said, “So far, no. So far it’s been … I think it is … So far it’s been okay.”
Her jaw dropped, and then she turned away, and deliberately didn’t look at him for the rest of the flight. That made Charlie a little sad, but it was, he supposed, a not entirely unfair reaction, all things considered.
As must be, as was foretold, Death came unto Mama Sakinai. He sat by her side, and they talked a little while, and Death said,
Of course I’ve had many Harbingers in the past. It is appropriate that the Harbinger is mortal, a bridge between this world and the next. In the old days I used eagles, but people stopped paying attention to them after a while—just birds in the sky—and I went to this party in Ithaca where the eagles soared and the prophets spoke and the suitors thought they knew better. But Odysseus had been through some tough times and it seemed polite to lend him a hand, though to be honest, it was at Penelope’s bidding I came, though not her commandment that I obeyed. By the shores of Te Waipounamu the whales surfaced and rolled their bloody eyes before the coming storm—but the priestly classes, you see, the priestly classes always do feel the need to interpret a perfectly well-established sign the newest way, and never like speaking truth to power, and so these things strayed off message. Do you mind if I … Thank you. Terrible habit, I know, but … You’re very kind.
I switched to humans a few thousand years ago. One must move with the times. There were some good days. Egypt, the rain of blood, the frogs, the locusts—I was impressed, it was a spectacular piece of work. The four of us stood by the shores of the Red Sea and were just like, wow, seriously, that’s taking the job to the next level, but Pharaoh ignored it as always and so night fell and where there was not fresh blood by the door, I came, just like the guy said. When the Mongols rode west, my messenger came before on a black horse, and said, “When I say big, I mean really big,” but there’s a listening issue with the human race, who have never understood when such things are fair warning and when they’re merely courtesy before the storm.
One quit the job when they burned the books, saying that before it had only been people, and now it was all of humanity that died. Another refused to leave Nagasaki, saying it was apt that this was his end, and I suppose it was, and I was careful to ensure that he lodged at the centre of the blast, and stayed with him until he was ash on the wall. There was one who had a blue tattoo on her arm from the camps in the north, but people didn’t want to listen, didn’t understand what it was she had to say, and another who said, “The war will begin for greed, but it will become murder in the name of God,” and they laughed in her face and I don’t like that sort of behaviour, not when I am showing such … courtesy.
The desert can either preserve a body for millennia, or turn it quite to dust, depending on its condition. I am never sure which outcome I prefer, until the moment comes. Sometimes even I am surprised by who you meet again, when the sands move.
He took another drag on his cigarette, flicked ash into the tray and, stretching, said, I hope I don’t bore you with all of this, but as you asked …
“No,” croaked Mama Sakinai, her breath wheezing through her cracked and curling lips. “You aren’t boring me.”
Death nodded, his great red horns scraping the ceiling above his head, his bright scarlet face and spinning yellow eyes opening and closing into something that might have been a smile. She had not imagined that Death might smile upon her, but in all other respects he was the figure she had known would come, the god of the underworld, exactly as the stories had said he would be.
She said, “Your Harbinger—Charlie—gave me whiskey and talked about music.”
Ah, he is fond of music, yes. I’m told he also collects obscure football T-shirts.
“T-shirts?”
He likes the odd clubs, the fourth division of the Calabrian league kind of teams. I believe he used to support Aston Villa, mused Death, rolling the cigarette between a great talon of boiling bloody skin and shifting paint, dots of white rolling like maggots over and into his flesh, sometimes bursting into new patterns, sometimes vanishing altogether into the churning colours of his flesh.
Supporting Aston Villa can induce resentment in almost anyone, even a man as phlegmatic as Charlie. The game changes; one form dies and another is born. But the game goes on.
Mama Sakinai nodded slowly at this, her liver-spotted skull resting deep back into the pillows when the motion was finished, never to rise again, and with her last few breaths whispered, “He wanted to hear the songs of my people, but they are not the same when sung in a stranger’s mouth. It was good of you to send him ahead. I haven’t had much conversation … for a very long time.”
Death smiled again, and leant in close, holding the old woman’s hand gently within his taloned grasp, twisting his head to the side a little so that his mighty horns might not tear the window above her head. Then, in her language—in the ancient tongue of her peoples, the ones who had hunted until the settlers came, the ones who had died in the human hunts, the ones who had forgotten their names—he murmured in her ear, There is a place waiting for you behind the setting moon, Mama Sakinai. There are the spirits of your ancestors, living anew in the rivers of the sky. They call to you, they call to you, in your own tongue; they are waiting to tell the stories again, the stories that will never more be told in this land of burning
sun. They hear your footsteps on the golden way, they catch you as you fall. Your people all are dead, Mama Sakinai, and your language too, and your stories and your lives, but only the world of the living is changed, never the world of the dead.
So saying, he kissed her gently on the lips, to seal up the last of the language that would never again be heard on the surface of the Earth, and Mama Sakinai died, and her body was given to the vultures, to be buried in the sky.
Part 2
ICE
Chapter 6
“Scottish independence …”
“The needs of the Irish are not the same as …”
“Catalonia, ah, Catalonia!”
“The offside rule states that if a ball is passed to an attacker who is within the defensive line …”
“The unrest in Xinjiang province …”
“When I went to Tibet …”
“Don’t talk to me about Kashmir!”
“… as in already closer to the goal than the defenders …”
“Look, without wanting to be unreasonable …”
“Georgian separatists today declared …”
“Do you do it with soy?”
“Went there last year, lovely people, just such wonderful hosts …”
“The people of Crimea …”
“I’ve got some superglue for the soles of your shoes, if you like?”
“Bury my heart in the Falkland Islands …”
“The Governor, number one, the Island, the Street, the South Atlantic. Do you really need a postcode?”
“Argentina of course use this to great effect by pushing their defensive formation towards the halfway line, thus creating an offside situation for …”
“Prevents Alzheimer’s!”
“It really changed the way I think.”
Chapter 7
Four months after Charlie started as Harbinger of Death, his girlfriend dumped him.
It had been a long time coming, even before he started in the new job, and though he was a bit down about it, he understood why and knew, regretfully, that in a little while he’d feel okay. He wondered if that made him a bad person.
“It’s not just that you’re always travelling,” she explained, “and it’s not about the job, it’s not; I get it, like, I get it. But my next seat is in patent law and I really want to do well and there’s only a couple of positions coming up at the firm and I need to get this, like, I have plans, I know where I want to live and where I want to be, and all my friends are getting on and you’re getting on too, I know that, it’s just … Look, it’s been great, okay, but you’re not … I don’t think this …”
“It’s okay,” he replied. “I understand.”
Two months later, she was going out with someone from the office whose area of expertise was employment law. For a brief moment Charlie hoped they’d be very unhappy together; then he met them at a party held by a mutual friend, one of the very, very few he seemed to share these days, a fluke, he hadn’t thought he’d make it, and neither had the friend who’d invited him. And his ex and her new bloke were very happy together, and he was remarkably nice, for a lawyer.
“Has anyone sued Death?” he asked, a sudden thought striking from the dark, fuelled in no small part by cheap beer and chocolate brownies made with certain herbal additives.
“I think someone tried to, once.”
“What happened?”
“The cancer got him before the case went to court.”
“Oh. I see. Well. I suppose sometimes these things are beyond litigation.”
Ten days later, in a hospital room in Salisbury …
“He said that?”
“Yes. ‘Beyond litigation.’”
“Bless him.”
“Is that …”
“It’s only slightly a joke.”
“Sorry,” he muttered to the nun in her pale blue gown, oxygen pumped into her nose, fluids into her arms, neither enough to save her. “I’m talking about me, and you’re … It’s unforgivable.”
“Not at all,” tutted the old woman, last of her convent, no new blood joining, no old blood left. “I enjoy hearing about people.”
He smiled limply. “That’s what the woman in the mountains said, but I came here to honour you, not to bore you.”
“You don’t bore me. By my age, death is boring; life is wonderful. Tell me more. Tell me about living things.”
“Well. I’m thinking of trying internet dating.”
“Ah yes. I’ve heard of this.”
“It’s just, my line of work … the travel …”
“Always heard that air stewardesses had a lot of sex.”
Charlie’s jaw briefly dropped. The nun smiled faintly through the tape and tubes across her face. “What?” she wheezed. “Once the mother superior went, it’s only been me, God, the holy word and daytime TV.”
In a tower high above the scurrying streets …
In a city that never sleeps …
Plate-glass windows all around, a 360-degree view as the sun came up. An architect once remarked that buildings should have fewer windows, that natural light was a privilege to be enjoyed by the few, earned by the hard labour of the many. Men and women should work to have light in their lives, and if that principle was taken to heart, then Patrick Fuller was indeed a worker …
He leaned back in his chair and exhaled, puffing out his cheeks, then, not quite believing it, leant forward to read the email again, just in case he’d missed the point the first time.
Repetition did not alter meaning.
He called his assistant into the office. Every time she came through the door, he wondered if he’d chosen her for her appearance. He had made every effort not to, and had deliberately interviewed as many male as female candidates for the job. Maybe her beauty—her now rather distracting beauty—had influenced an animal part of his brain that he had mistakenly thought he’d overcome.
Maybe she was just damn good at her job, regardless of the genetic lottery.
“Is this a joke?” he asked.
“No, sir,” she replied. “We had it verified.”
He stared at it one more time, then said, “I want to know everything about this. Everything. Who sent it, who received it, what it means. Also, I want a full security check of this office, a bomb sweep, and get me an appointment with my cardiologist for tonight.” He thought about it a little longer, then added, “And get me a plane to Nuuk.”
And the world turns …
“You do what?”
“I’m the Harbinger of Death.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“You’re the actual Harbinger of Death?”
“Yes.”
“As in …”
“Yes.”
“That’s … that’s kinda weird, actually. I mean like, I know you said … your profile said ‘personal assistant.’”
“Well, in its way …”
“Yeah, but to Death.”
“I didn’t lie about anything on the site, just in the drop-down menu they didn’t have an option for …”
“You don’t look much like your picture.”
“I don’t?”
“No, I mean, not that it’s lying or nothing, just that … well, just in life, I mean, your face is different; it’s more … Look, I mean, I’m not, but … So do you like your work?”
“It’s a good job.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I like travelling. I like meeting people, going to places I wouldn’t ever go, seeing … things change.”
“Change?”
“Death isn’t just about dying.”
“That makes no sense. But you live in Dulwich—you weren’t lying about that, right?”
“No, but I’m not home very much.”
“So the online dating …”
“Ah. Yes. I mean, a serious relationship …”
“… whatever that means …”
“Meeting people …”
r /> “I think you should know I’ve just come out of an unhappy—”
“That’s fine.”
“And I’m weirded out by your job.”
“I guess … that’s okay, if you’re okay with it.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“I think you’re kinda wonderful. Sorry, that sounded … sorry, I was …”
“Do you know how many dates I’ve been on this month?”
“I … don’t really know what you’re meant to say. I thought I’d just tell the truth. Um … I’ve screwed this up, haven’t I?”
“No. I don’t think so. Like you said, you told the truth. Let’s have another drink. Let’s … talk some more.”
And in a frozen land …
… where the cracks spread beneath the snow …
A figure walked along the ice, and thought for a while that he didn’t walk alone.
Once, as a boy, he had walked along this ridge, only then it had looked different, less stone, more snow. In those days, he wore woollen gloves, and the wool froze to his hands and blood seeped through the fibre and then the blood froze too. Once, the man on the ice had guided a group of explorers down the Snorgisford, the most dangerous glacier in the world, they said, but it had melted and something else had taken its place, and besides, these things were only dangerous if you were a bloody idiot who decided to climb one, not if you left them alone; if you just left them alone it’d be fine, it’d be beautiful, not frightening, it would be …
“You know,” he said to the whiteness, “I didn’t think it would be this easy.”
The sky, the snow, the ice, the stone; there was no answer. There was no horizon either. There was no end to the sphere of white in which he was walking. There was no sun, there was no north, there was no magnet to point him home. He felt the weight of the bag upon his back and wondered why he’d packed so much in it. He threw it away, and felt young again, light on his feet; was tempted to run, resisted, wondered why. An old man, he thought to himself, you’ve become an old man wearing expensive boots. Live a little, surprise yourself, and he didn’t, and he kept on walking into the white.