A single deafening note played out through the alarm speakers. I could feel it vibrating my insides, firm, steady and everywhere.
“Middle C,” the doctor shouted over the noise. “It’s too big for them, blasts them out of the–”
The note stopped.
“–tunnels,” the doctor yelled, caught off-guard by the silence.
“It blasts them out of the tunnels,” he said again, quietly, aiming for composure.
I nodded, taking my fingers off the keys.
The doctor checked his screen, tapped a few keys. “There. I think that’s done it.”
“Excellent,” I tried, not wanting to sound as confused as I was.
Fidorous looked at me for a moment then turned his attention back to his monitor and started typing. I stood by the keyboard where he’d put me, gradually beginning to realise our conversation was over; he wasn’t going to say anything else to me at all. It was as if the emergency made it possible for Fidorous to put whatever issues he had with me, with the First Eric Sanderson, to one side. Now it had passed, we were back to square one, and this time without Scout to keep things moving. An awkward silence began, building itself up slowly, a fat tension in the air as if the room were a submarine going, down, down, down to where the hull starts to buckle. The doctor typed, turned to another keyboard, typed some more, all without looking up. I shifted on my feet, watched him and wished I was somewhere else.
“So, what’s all this equipment for?”
I felt stupid asking. For a second, I didn’t think he’d answer.
“It’s my work.” Tap tap taptaptap tap. “This is where I release the language viruses I create.”
“Language viruses?”
Tap tap taptap tap tap taptaptaptaptap–
Fidorous sighed theatrically and looked up. I saw the anger and frustration–thoughts of shouting or just ignoring me warrening around his elastic-band face like mice through a maze then all disappearing into his hair and sideburns. He straightened up slowly and came out with that polite schoolteacher voice again.
“All this machinery reroutes emails, websites, voicemail messages, radio programmes even. I feed my viruses into them and send them back so I can monitor the effects. ‘At the end of the day.’ That’s one of mine which is particularly virulent in the UK at the moment.”
“You mean, you invent phrases?”
“Phrases, words, alternative spellings, abbreviations, corruptions. And not just invent; manage. Look. Look here.”
I fought my way around the side of the desk, clambered, hopped, stepped over machinery, wires and tubing to get a better look.
On a table next to the one Fidorous had been working at, a small TV played news footage of a tropical storm into a microphone connected to a computer. The computer had one of those dictation programs installed and it seemed to be trying to interpret the weather sounds into words, creating row after row of text, words beginning with ‘s’ or ‘sh’ mostly, with blocks of ‘p’s and ‘b’s appearing in time with the crashing waves. There was a thunderclap and the word BACKGAMMON printed itself up large on the screen.
“But. What’s it for?” As soon as I’d said it I wished I hadn’t. It was okay though, the doctor was in full flow, too involved in his own ideas to even think of taking offence.
“What’s it for? What’s it for? Hmmm.” Fidorous sat down on a dismantled hard drive and stared at the monitor. “I construct language viruses so I might better understand real, naturally occurring ones. My work helps me to recognise the early warning signs and protect against future dangerous epidemics. Languages can get sick and die, you know. Extinctions happen, and then there are the migrations.” Fidorous gave the storm text screen a last look then moved to the next desk along where a similar computer processed the sounds of a sombre state funeral. He tinkered for a while with the settings. “Have you noticed how the American ‘can I get’ has all but completely replaced the English ‘can I have’ in most environments in this country? Far be it from me to inhibit a successful evolutionary development when one emerges, but it is always sad to see an old form become isolated and die out.”
“Like the red squirrel,” I said vaguely.
“Yes, like the red squirrel.”
“So, is this–you’re not saying you invent creatures like the Ludovician here, are you?”
“No, of course not. Ludovicians, Franciscans, Luxogones,”–the doctor was back fiddling with the keyboard–“all the conceptual fish evolved naturally. I’ve developed a number of artificial memes but they’re no more than single-celled animals really, and they rarely survive more than a few hours in any real Darwinian environment. That said, they’re tremendously useful tools when it comes to trying to understand the larger, more complex organisms.”
I nodded at this. “And do you? Understand them, I mean.”
“To a degree, yes. Some of them.”
“I see.” A surprise now or never impulse kicked in, pushing the bottom line up into the back of my throat. “Doctor Fidorous, listen,” a stupid opening, “I mean, I’m sorry I have to be here. I didn’t–whatever happened between you and the First Eric Sanderson to make you feel like this about me now, God, I don’t know you, I don’t even know him but I had to come here. I need to ask you if there’s a way to stop the Ludovician.”
Fidorous left the computer alone and looked straight at me.
“Is there?” I said after a painful couple of seconds. “I’m asking you because you’re the only person I can ask.”
Heat crept up into the doctor’s face.
“‘I’m the only person you can ask?’ You don’t have a clue, do you?”
I felt the earth tilt half a degree under my feet.
“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Fidorous turned back to his console. “It’s none of my business. I’m not your father, Eric, and I’ve got a lot to do here. Tests to run, diagnostic checks and quite frankly you’re going to get in the way. You should go back to the lounge.”
“No.” Something hot, a fist made itself out of my stomach. “No. It’s taken me months to get here and I’m not leaving this room until you answer me a simple fucking question–is there a way to stop the shark?”
The doctor’s back said, “Why ask me? Ask your girlfriend.”
“What?”
I could see his shoulders rising and falling; a progression of deep breaths. Eventually he turned around. “Alright then. Here it is if you want to really know: imagine you’re running from something huge. Imagine you’re running from a creature with one enormous mind inhabiting hundreds of bodies.”
“What? Is this–Mycroft Ward?”
“Yes, Mycroft Ward. Imagine you’re running from Mycroft Ward in fear of your life. You want to stop running, don’t you? You want to fight back. But Mycroft Ward is a gigantic collective self, a self which generates years of thoughts, plans and memories every single day. So what do you do? The question you’ve somehow avoided asking yourself is what sort of weapon could be any use against a creature like that?”
At first I didn’t know where he was going. Then…
“A Ludovician.” The word shock-fizzed as I said it.
“Precisely. Bringing a giant collective self like Mycroft Ward and a self-eating shark like a Ludovician together, well, it would be like matter and anti-matter. Bang. No more Ward, no more Ludovician.”
But that means…Oh, no.
“So, in answer to your question–yes, there is a way to stop the shark. Are you happier now you know that? Has it set your mind at ease?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why did Scout bring you here, Eric?”
“Because I paid her to. She offered to be my guide.”
“No. Try again.”
“Stop it.”
“Try again.”
“Stop it.”
“Alright, I’ll tell you, shall I? Scout brought you here because she needs the Ludovician. Beyond that, you’re i
rrelevant. The fact is, she’s been trying to persuade me to help her use a Ludovician shark against Ward for months now.”
“No.”
“For God’s sake, think–have you never wondered why she knows so much about the creature? She’s been preparing for this for a long, long time.”
“No,” I said again. “She brought me here because I asked her to.” I hated the way my voice sounded–“We–we’re together. She’s helping me.” It sounded weak and stupid and gullible. Even as I said the words, I knew. I knew the truth. I felt everything warm and real inside me begin to drain away.
25
Hakuun and Kuzan (All the Stars are Bleeding)
I’d been sitting in the room with the wingback chairs for about fifteen minutes when Scout finally came back, crawling in from the other side of the bookcase just like I’d done with Fidorous.
“Hey,” she said, smiling and getting to her feet. “So, can you believe that? Two days in un-space and somehow it’s my job to get out there and check all his tunnels are sealed and clean because it’s migration season or whatever? Where is he anyway?” She looked at the empty carrier still in the middle of the room. “Where’s Ian?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s up? Are you alright?”
But I spotted it once I knew what to look for. I saw it in the tension at the edges of her mouth, heard it in the little breaks between her words. I knew what she was hiding. I sat looking at her, not saying anything.
A beat of confusion, then Scout’s eyes widening in slow millimetres. I watched the pulse in her neck, that quick little thump. The honesty of it, the truth it gave away broke my heart. She looked away, swallowed, looked down. “Oh, shit,” she said.
And that was when I finally believed what Fidorous had said. I felt like I’d swallowed glass.
“Oh, shit,” I said, copying. “It’s all been lies, hasn’t it?”
All the clocks stopped. Time hung. An escaped band of shiny black hair curved down in front of Scout’s face, tucking itself in under her chin. She didn’t make any effort to move it. She just stood, head down, staring at a spot on the floor.
“I didn’t tell you any lies,” she said eventually, not looking up.
“How can you say that?” I could feel myself shuddering, the insides of my throat, my hands, weak and shaking with all the strength taken out. “Because you played some careful word game with yourself so there wouldn’t technically be any lying? The fact is you didn’t tell me why you were really bringing me here. You let me think you were helping me for fuck’s sake.”
“I am helping you.”
“So, you showed up at that hospital out of the goodness of your heart, did you? No, Scout, you’re helping yourself. You were using me from the second we met.”
She stared at the floor.
This is what I wanted: I wanted her to explode and say “How could you think that?” I wanted her to scream at me. I wanted her to tell me what a stupid mistake I’d made. I wanted her to storm out of the room in a rage. More than anything, I wanted to be wrong. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t wrong. She just stared at the floor.
“We had sex,” I said. “No, not just that, we were holding hands and I thought–why did you do that? I was following you here anyway. You’d already got what you wanted, why did you need to make me think you actually–liked me too?”
“I did like you. I do like you,” she said. “But you’re not going to believe that.”
“How can I believe anything that comes out of your mouth now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t expect you to.”
“What, so you’re giving me permission? Well, thank you.”
She looked up at me for a second. “I’m not going to be able to say anything, am I?”
“All this time you’ve just been using me to get what you wanted.”
“Eric. Christ. Do you want me to try to explain this?”
I didn’t say anything.
“It’s not–” she started. “All this with us, it’s important. It is, I mean that. But you need to understand what’s at stake for me, I couldn’t take any risks and there was no reason for you to trust me. So–”
“So, even after we fucked, you just carry on lying?”
“Alright.” Scout’s eyes were hot, bright, wet now. It hit me that something vital was leaking out of her, something limited and tiny and which couldn’t be replaced. I wanted to hold her and stop it from spilling out but I wanted her to suffer too, suffer for who she secretly was, suffer for her cruelty in making me feel a part of something, of making me feel warm, wanted and cared about, like I didn’t really have to be alone in this dead and empty world, all just for the sake of some cold, logical plan.
I looked at her and a voice inside me said, we only see starlight because all the stars are bleeding.
“Alright,” Scout said again. “Yes, yes, yes. Is that what you want to hear? Yes, I did lie to you. Yes, I did manipulate you. Yes, I did use you. No, I didn’t fuck you to get you here, but if you want to believe that too then fine, go ahead and believe whatever the hell you want about me. I do whatever I have to do to survive. I’m not proud of it, sometimes I hate myself for it if you really want the truth. I hate myself. Now, I don’t expect you to like what I did, or accept it or forgive it, but I’m surprised that you of all people can’t even fucking understand it.”
All the stars are bleeding.
“You could have trusted me.”
She wiped her wet eyes, hand up and brushing away quickly.
She looked at me straight on.
“No, Eric, I couldn’t. I need that shark.”
“Right.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”
I poured myself a whisky from the decanter next to my chair. My hands were shaking; little ripples vibrated across the liquid surface as I brought the glass up to drink. Don’t notice that my hands are shaking. “So, when was I supposed to find out why you really came looking for me?”
“Do you really want to know all this?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Everything you’ve been doing, all this research and travelling has been about finding Fidorous.” It was as if some sort of bullet-proof shield were sliding down around her. The girl in front of me becoming hard, unfamiliar. “So, I knew you’d listen if he told you there was a way to use Mycroft Ward and the Ludovician against each other. On the other hand, there was a chance you wouldn’t trust a plan like that coming from a stranger, especially after your run-in with Mr Nobody.”
“But I did trust you. I always trusted you.”
“I couldn’t take that risk.”
“What about the risks I took? You should’ve been honest with me.”
“I know I’ve hurt you, but think about what you’re saying.”
I sat quietly for a moment. “No, I would have. I would have told you everything, right from the beginning.”
“Would you?” she said. “You sure about that? You’d really have bet your life, and my life too, on the chance that I’d make a single uninformed leap of faith? This plan takes care of the shark as well as Ward. I was helping you, even if you didn’t know it.”
“Oh, come on,” I took another mouthful of whisky, “don’t twist this around, you’re helping me by accident, aren’t you? All this is a side-effect of Scout saving Scout. You even said so. And yes, I would have told you because it was the right thing to do.”
“Well, you’re entitled to believe whatever you want to believe.”
Don’t notice, I thought, squeezing the glass to my chest, don’t notice that my hands are shaking.
“Alright. So.” I wanted to know everything, I wanted to grab hold of every red hot burning part of all this and hold it tight, feel the hiss and sting of every single moment. Not knowing everything would be a hundred times worse. “You decided to stick with your plan, bring me to Fidorous and let me think he’d come up with this way for us to use Ward and the Ludovician against each other. And then
what? You’d be all Oh my God, that’s an amazing idea?”
Behind the bullet-proof glass, Scout’s eyes were unreadable, full of odd lights and reflections that could have meant anything. “Something like that, yeah.”
“Jesus. And you didn’t think I’d be at all suspicious about that?”
She shook her head, pushing her way out of the conversation. “Look, I never expected you to forgive me for any this, but, yes, deep down I hoped you might if you want the truth. Whatever happened, I didn’t think you’d react like this.”
“Like what?”
“Forget it.”
“No, come on, react like what?”
“Like such a child.”
A sour, bile-wave of anger rushed up and I bit my teeth together hard until the swell of it subsided. “I trusted you, Scout. Blind trust. You’re right, how childish is that?” And when she didn’t react more stinging words heaped up into my throat wanting desperately to smash that stupid impassive shield of hers. “Well, don’t worry, I’m not going to make a mistake like that again.”
Scout looked out from her thick layer of glass. I couldn’t see, couldn’t tell anything.
“Okay,” she said, quietly and evenly. “Then that’s that.”
A slick greasy fire roared inside me, shock and shame and a horrible sadness taking away my insides.
“Okay, that’s that,” I tried to look still, blank. “But we’re stuck together anyway, aren’t we? The Ludovician to destroy Ward and Ward to destroy the Ludovician. Whatever you’re going to do, I’m going to have to help you. You win, Scout.”
“I think this is a long way from winning, don’t you?”
I shook my head, pushing the question away. “What’s your plan?”
26
It’s a Poor Sort of Memory that Only Works Backwards
Just like the four-turn win in chess, Scout’s plan was simple and obvious–obvious afterwards, if you only realised what it was you should have been looking for. Like Dorothy, she’d brought the ruby slippers with her. Unlike Dorothy, of course, Scout knew it.
Nobody’s laptop. Nobody’s laptop was the key to the whole thing.