Doctor Who_ Slow Empire Part 9

It is a knife.

JAMON DE LA ROCAS WOKE TO SEE THE SMILING FACE OF UNCLE CHUMLY ON THE TELESCREEN. HE BROKE HIS FAST NUTRITIOUSLY IN HIS APARTMENT-BUILDING CANTEEN. HE TOOK THE MONORAIL SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY TO HIS POST AT THE BUREAU OF INFORMATIONAL EXCHANGE. AFTER A PRODUCTIVE DAY OF WORK HE RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT AND FELL ASLEEP, HAPPY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF A JOB WELL DONE.

(Extracts from Nice Pair of Plums: Fitz Kreiner and the Early Days of the Groke Nice Pair of Plums: Fitz Kreiner and the Early Days of the Groke, Will P La.s.siter & Dagon Weeks.)

...after trying and rejecting any number of names, from the All-star Big Riffle Bandoliers to Electric Soup, the breakaway quartet finally settled upon a name suggested by Fitz, the Groke. When pressed, the enigmatic electrical guitarist would mutter something about a monster in a tale he recalled from his childhood and change the subject. This was an early sign of an increasing strangeness that would over the years degenerate into Thoughtcrime, but at the time Fitz was seen as an innovator. It was the influence of Fitz that was responsible for pus.h.i.+ng his fellow band members away from the traditional forms of big-band polka into new, uncharted territory. The newly named Groke made their debut at the Marquee Club, a youth canteen off the Radiant Thoroughfare now known as a hangout for dissidents and for the consumption of contraband ethanol. The event would become notorious among right-thinking citizens as the Underground Parliament. The newly named Groke made their debut at the Marquee Club, a youth canteen off the Radiant Thoroughfare now known as a hangout for dissidents and for the consumption of contraband ethanol. The event would become notorious among right-thinking citizens as the Underground Parliament.'Who will be there?' asked the promotional fliers. 'Criminals, murderers, three pimps and several wh.o.r.es,' they answered themselves. 'Clowns, jugglers, fruiterers, ponces, nonces, certified bankers, astrophysicists, s.e.xual inverts, anarchists, bagmen, several more wh.o.r.es and a man who plays the tambourine. These are among those invited, but you're not, because you're not hip, cool and trendy enough and we don't like you.'Those who were hip, cool and trendy enough made their own entertainment. A man in a hat sang songs while hitting himself on the head with a tea tray. A girl in white tights punched out the lights of a lounge lizard whose ivory f.a.g holder had failed to set the world alight. A man with a plan to re-enfranchise the ma.s.s of commonality made his opinions known to the astonishment of all present. But the loudest of all, the most astonis.h.i.+ng of all, were the Groke, building layer upon layer of feedback and white noise from their electrically contrived instruments and turning up the mechanical means by which they were amplified to the fullest extent.Such a state of affairs should have had the Security Services clamping down on the whole affair instantly but among the audience, incognito, was a Master who though bemused by such wanton impropriety was intrigued enough by the talent of the Groke to take them under his protection and sufferance...

JAMON DE LA ROCAS WOKE TO SEE THE SMILING FACE OF UNCLE CHUMLY ON THE TELESCREEN. HE BROKE HIS FAST NUTRITIOUSLY IN HIS APARTMENT-BUILDING CANTEEN. HE TOOK THE MONORAIL SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY TO HIS POST AT THE BUREAU OF INFORMATIONAL EXCHANGE. AFTER A PRODUCTIVE DAY OF WORK HE RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT AND FELL ASLEEP, HAPPY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF A JOB WELL DONE.

The thin and bone-white man holds up the knife, as though proffering it for Anji's inspection. Then, without warning, he simply lunges for her.

Anji is twenty-eight years old. By trade she is adviser to a great financier, sitting before a televisual screen which shows the prices of commodities and making educated guesses as to their future. The nearest she has come to mortal violence is watching the entertainments in her Master's bear pits, and the ritual immolations of the Festival of Souls. Nothing in her life has prepared her for this.

There is no time for deliberation, only action. Anji flings a hand out desperately and by sheer luck a finger sinks into one of the bone-white man's eyes. There is a brief cry. The stiletto falls from an involuntarily spasming hand to clatter against the remains of some fallen item of furniture.

Again, no time for conscious thought. Anji brings up a knee, in a most immodest fas.h.i.+on. Her a.s.sailant doubles over with a whimper.

Anji finds herself outside the door, now as though transported, having leapt back through it without quite being aware of doing so. Now she turns and pelts back down the hallway, unmindful of her heels on the tile trips, falls headlong and scrambles desperately, on hands and knees, towards the elevator.

Mercifully, the cage has not been called to some other floor. Anji sags with relief against plum-coloured velvet padding as the cage descends. She eases her shoes, one after the other, off heels blistered by her recent exertions, and stuffs them into her clutch bag.

The cage reaches the soft-lit resplendence of the lobby. There should be a guard here, paid to protect those housed here by her Master, but the desk behind which he usually sits is vacant. Anji runs through the lobby in her stockinged feet and runs straight into a pane of the revolving door, which has been locked immobile.

Beside the revolving door is a door of the more usual kind. Anji fumbles desperately with the latch. As she does so, behind her, she hears the cage of the elevator begin to rise.

JAMON DE LA ROCAS WOKE TO SEE THE SMILING FACE OF UNCLE CHUMLY ON THE TELESCREEN. HE BROKE HIS FAST NUTRITIOUSLY IN HIS APARTMENT-BUILDING CANTEEN. HE TOOK THE MONORAIL SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY TO HIS POST AT THE BUREAU OF INFORMATIONAL EXCHANGE. AFTER A PRODUCTIVE DAY OF WORK HE RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT AND FELL ASLEEP, HAPPY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF A JOB WELL DONE.

When the Groke played their first gig under the auspices of their Master, the results were somewhat other than expected. The venue was a Transit Station long since abandoned, which in an experiment of liberalisation was turned over to the youth of the City to make of what they would. The Masters, however, underestimated what said youth would make of it. In freezing cold conditions, in s.p.a.ces that were never meant to hold more than two or three at a time, more than three thousand uncla.s.sified biots squeezed in and another thousand were unable to make It through the doors. Inside it was filthy and freezing cold. Sanitary facilities were nonexistent, the grand total of two latrines backed up and overflowing within minutes. It was apposite, perhaps, that the Groke chose this night to perform their longest and most innovative piece to date, Inside it was filthy and freezing cold. Sanitary facilities were nonexistent, the grand total of two latrines backed up and overflowing within minutes. It was apposite, perhaps, that the Groke chose this night to perform their longest and most innovative piece to date, Critical Overload Critical Overload. As a witness said at the time, 'Fitz was like a madman, improvising like h.e.l.l, using his cigarette lighter as a slide, running ball bearings up and down the neck of his trademark custom Telecaster guitar and modulating the electrical feedback. It was like nothing we'd heard before he was pulling this stuff out of his head.'At this time there was much debate among the inner circles of the Masters as to whether such patently seditious gatherings should be permitted whether in some more strictly regulated fas.h.i.+on, or even at all. These were, however, far more liberal days. It was held that, for the moment, society needed such things as a relief valve, and such disorderly expressions of individuality were on the whole tolerated if not condoned. Public ordinaries and clubs might be raided by the Security Services, but there was no concerted effort to stamp out what we now quite rightly know to be a cancerous blight of corruption on the body politic. For those Masters actively involved with permitting these activities, of course, the result was lucrative enough to a.s.suage any personal distaste.The next triumph for the Groke was as the house band for Fractured Planet, a private club established to finance the activities of a cell of anarchist pamphleteers (now known, of course, to be a Fifth Column organisation working directly for a consortium of Masters). These all-night sessions quickly degenerated into little more than orgies of alcohol, proscribed pharmaceuticals and carnal l.u.s.t. Fitz was in his element, striding about the stage like an insane G.o.d and wrenching howls from his guitar that one onlooker described as a voice from the throat of some Dog of Armageddon.'I couldn't keep up with him,' admits one-time band-member and double-ba.s.sist Rogan Salters, 'and not just because I was a rather dull-witted tip-off merchant with the ear for music and the sensitivity of a plank. I don't think anyone could. He was in his own world, most of the time but when he dragged you kicking and screaming behind him it was one h.e.l.l of a ride.'Talk of a private world was prophetic Fitz was already shrouded in the reclusive mystery that would become the stuff of legend. As the dawn came up on the Radiant Thoroughfare, he would stumble from the club, head for the nearest monorail station and disappear, often for days, to the G.o.ds alone knew where. It was on these trips, no doubt, that he acquired the chemical dependencies that were beyond the pale even for the freewheeling denizens of the Fractured Planet. He now utterly eschewed the forms of the polka insisting that it never be so much as mentioned, often to the point of violence. He refused to rehea.r.s.e with his fellow band members, often turning up with barely seconds to go before they played, in an increasingly dishevelled and dazed, even crazed, state, and mumbling something to the effect that he was trying to get all the ducks in his head lined up in a row.Those who knew and informed on Fitz at the time describe a man on the point of personal and mental disintegration ironically, perhaps, in view of the fact that his greatest personal successes were waiting in the wings.

JAMON DE LA ROCAS WOKE TO SEE THE SMILING FACE OF UNCLE CHUMLY ON THE TELESCREEN. HE BROKE HIS FAST NUTRITIOUSLY IN HIS APARTMENT-BUILDING CANTEEN. HE TOOK THE MONORAIL SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY TO HIS POST AT THE BUREAU OF INFORMATIONAL EXCHANGE. AFTER A PRODUCTIVE DAY OF WORK HE RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT AND FELL ASLEEP, HAPPY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF A JOB WELL DONE.

Through the door (the gla.s.s of which she has been forced to break with one of the metal stands filled with sand, for the extinguis.h.i.+ng of cigarettes, that litter the lobby) and down smooth marble steps. Anji has cut her hand quite badly on the broken gla.s.s, clutches it to her like an injured bird.

It is dusk, now. The street is utterly deserted. The automobiles parked by the kerbside, though polished and pristine, suddenly seem to Anji to have a dark and untended look about them, as though they had never been occupied, never so much as driven, even in the placing of them here. The apartment blocks that line the street are silent. Lights burn in the occasional, sporadic window, but no shadows move against them.

Elsewhere, she knows with certainty, deep inside herself without quite knowing how she knows there will be people. Her sense of isolation, the desolation of her surroundings, is just a trick of the mind. There are people here, perhaps towards the orange nimbus on the roofline that denotes the light and bustle of the City proper, and when she finds them and is among them she will be safe.

For the moment, though, the only movement is the occasional rag of discarded newsprint, wheeling through the street in the wind. Trick of the mind or not, she is effectively alone save for the bone-white man coming after her.

Why is this happening? As a trusted servant of her Master, the great Financier, she should be protected against even so much random and senseless harm as happens among commoners. Violence done to her allowed to be done to her can occur only at the whim of her Master, but try as she might Anji cannot think of anything she may have done to incur such displeasure or approbation.

(Unbidden, a memory surfaces from within her. It is of glancing at the televisual screen, on which the names and figures pursuant to her work should be appearing in a dance of the thousands of mechanical pinheads that make it up, to see that the screen was of bright, pure light, which s.h.i.+fts and s.h.i.+fts again to show half-glimpsed, monstrous forms.) Now she is on a street corner, glancing back. The bone-white man in black is behind her, closing the distance at a run. Anji wonders, briefly, if she should hammer on some strange door and beg admittance. She realises, though, that by the time somebody comes to the door, if they ever come at all, her pursuer will have long since been upon her.

She runs again, taking turns at random as the streets branch. In the near darkness, it is some time before she realises that she has taken a wrong turning at some point, never noticing how the thoroughfares have narrowed, until she fetches up at a literal and figurative dead end.

A cramped back alley. A bare electrical bulb over a solid and definitively locked Iron door casts a dim and sickly pool of light over soiled cobbles. There is nothing more than a midden pile, in which rot the remains of printed broadsheets, the headlines and text of which are entirely illegible. Anji utters an oath and turns back.

The bone-white man is waiting in the mouth of the alley, smiling at her. Black blood seeps from his ruined eye in a single rivulet. A small, animal noise of panic forms in the back of Anji's throat.

'Nothing for you, here,' the bone-white man says, advancing on her with his knife. 'Nothing for you.'

JAMON DE LA ROCAS WOKE TO SEE THE SMILING FACE OF UNCLE CHUMLY ON THE TELESCREEN. HE BROKE HIS FAST NUTRITIOUSLY IN HIS APARTMENT-BUILDING CANTEEN. HE TOOK THE MONORAIL SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY TO HIS POST AT THE BUREAU OF INFORMATIONAL EXCHANGE. AFTER A PRODUCTIVE DAY OF WORK HE RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT AND FELL ASLEEP, HAPPY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF A JOB WELL DONE.

When their Master [name expunged from file] decided that the Groke should record their performances gramophonically, the band were unanimous that the producer should be Mavoc Gla.s.s, a young operator for the Galvnox recording mills and a regular at the Fractured Planet. That is, Fitz insisted and the rest of the band loyally followed suit. In their first recording sessions, the intention was to perform six numbers and select the best, but in reality they produced two, the short, supremely catchy 'Gilbert the Filbert' and the longer, far more typical 'Pint Drunk' the name subsequently changed, by Salters and the other band members, to 'Rondelation in the Key of C' to avoid references to illicit ethanol abuse, an act that sparked a furious Fitz to remark, 'I'm thinking of In their first recording sessions, the intention was to perform six numbers and select the best, but in reality they produced two, the short, supremely catchy 'Gilbert the Filbert' and the longer, far more typical 'Pint Drunk' the name subsequently changed, by Salters and the other band members, to 'Rondelation in the Key of C' to avoid references to illicit ethanol abuse, an act that sparked a furious Fitz to remark, 'I'm thinking of something something in the key of C. Bunch of mealy-mouthed zombie losers.' in the key of C. Bunch of mealy-mouthed zombie losers.'His indignation was increased, when their Master effectively s.n.a.t.c.hed these two recordings from them for broadcast access, without giving them the chance to record the four additional tracks that had originally been planned. Fitz thought that 'Gilbert' and 'Pint' he would never use the revised name were atypical of the directions in which he planned to take the Groke, and the putting out of this material as representative of them rankled.Representative or not, the recordings caused something of a furore in the inner circles of the Masters 'Gilbert the Filbert' especially. On the surface, the song is a jaunty if heavily phase-doctored sea shanty about a filbert, Gilbert, who can be found 'cruising' the sea bed and getting up to fishy business with his friends. The implications of s.e.xual inversion, once pointed out, are obvious. While not sharing their perversion, Fitz counted several notorious inverts in his acquaintance, and was often vocal in his support of them.Several of the major broadband repositories deleted their copies of the song immediately, while others bleeped out what were seen as the offensive words the end result, strangely enough, appearing to be more obscene than if the recording had been merely left alone. Untreated bootlegs of the original, of course, remain in circulation among dissident elements to this day.Now possessed of the fame of notoriety, the Groke were booked to appear on a number of televisual broadcasts. They were expected, however, to mime along to the censored versions of 'Gilbert' a condition that, naturally, produced yet another outburst from Fitz. As a form of protest during these broadcasts, he would stand stock-still, lips immobile, and merely stare into the photomatical lens, his wide-eyed gaze a somewhat disturbing precursor to his eventual collapse.Musically, Fitz retrenched, flinging all of his energies into a proposed event called, no doubt with the tacit encouragement of his Master [name purged from file], the State Enemy Ball, for which he personally designed a strobing mechanical light show and wrote a new song, 'New Rat Adventures in the Gutter' a shortened version of which would be recorded as a follow-up to the ill-fated 'Gilbert'.This expenditure of energy took its toll. Over the following months, Fitz's always quite eccentric behaviour took a turn into the outright strange. His already volatile temper deteriorated to the point of a berserk frenzy at one point laying into Salters and the rest of the band with his guitar before they were able to pin him down and restrain him by force of numbers interspersed with long, semicoherent ramblings of which the only sense that could be made was that everything everything, everything in the entire world, was wrong in a way that the onlooker was simply incapable of sensing.At this point there was serious talk of secure confinement and mental restructuring his Master, after all, had held off from such only out of a sense that a unique talent was of sufficient worth to make the problems of its administration tolerable. Such a state of affairs, however, was rapidly becoming untenable. There is no doubt that things would have gone hard for Fitz had he not snapped out of it seemingly of his own accord. Overnight, it seemed, he became calm and lucid, as though the anger in him had burned out. Those close to him give the account that it was like a switch being thrown, shutting down something inside him. It was as if his body were being controlled, made to walk and talk and speak, by way of some remote contrivance.It was in such a state that he and the Groke returned to the recording studio to make their first extended compilation, Insect Monsters Insect Monsters...

JAMON DE LA ROCAS WOKE TO SEE THE SMILING FACE OF UNCLE CHUMLY ON THE TELESCREEN. HE BROKE HIS FAST NUTRITIOUSLY IN HIS APARTMENT-BUILDING CANTEEN. HE TOOK THE MONORAIL SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY TO HIS POST AT THE BUREAU OF INFORMATIONAL EXCHANGE. AFTER A PRODUCTIVE DAY OF WORK HE RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT AND FELL ASLEEP, HAPPY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF A JOB WELL DONE.

'Nothing for you, here,' the bone-white man says, advancing on Anji with the knife. 'Nothing for you.'

'Good evening, Ms Kapoor.' The voice comes from behind her. It is a polite voice, utterly courteous, solicitous without being obsequious.

Anji is too stunned to react. She stares ahead of her, noticing in an abstractly calm kind of way that the bone-white man is himself reacting in shock... and that some darker, strangely indistinct form now blocks the mouth of the alley and is rearing up...

(It is not that this thing isn't there, Anji thinks, still with that unnatural and debilitating calm, that it is some intanglble illusion. It is that it is a form, a shape in the world, that her eyes or any other human eyes should ever see.) This indistinct creature falls upon the bone-white man, just as he turns to scream, and envelops him. There is a gurgling shriek, the wet sound of crunching, living bones and flesh. The creature undulates happily so far as such a thing can be seen and inferred and then softly and suddenly vanishes away as though melting into the cobblestones.

There is a moment of silence.

'It's gone, you know,' says the voice behind her. 'Truly, it's gone.'

Anji realises that her eyes are screwed tight shut. Has she imagined the demise of the bone-white man within the maw of some unseen, unnamable creature? No. It has happened and she has seen it, in some manner, whether her eyes were open or not.

She opens them now, notes that the mouth of the alleyway is free and clear, then turns.

Standing before the iron door a still definitively and solidly locked iron door is a dapper, sardonic-looking man dressed in a pristine dinner suit. His jet-black hair is slicked neatly back with oil. He is leaning, nonchalantly, on a silver-handled cane.

'Who...?' Anji's voice falters with a curious mixture of relief and trepidation. 'What... ?'

'Oh, don't be ridiculous,' says the man. 'You know perfectly well who I am. In a certain sense, anyway. And as to what I did...' He blows on the nails of his free hand. 'You know how it is when you have any number of pets. Familiars, chimeras, creatures of hideous, diabolical and slitheringly unutterable evil, that sort of thing. One has to let them out occasionally. One has to keep them fed. It's a bit of pain, sometimes, to tell you the truth, but it is rather expected of one.'

Abruptly he becomes brisk. 'Well, I really should be going, for the moment. You're swimming busily for the surface, I can see, but you still have a way to go yet. Never does to rush these things.' He essays a formal little bow and shoots out a well-manicured hand. Anji has no time to lurch back in alarm before she realises that he is merely proffering her (as if for her inspection) a small pasteboard card.

Still in something of a daze, she takes it.

'Feel free to drop by,' the man says. 'When you feel up to it. Any time at all.'

With that, he lays his cane over his shoulder, slides past her and strolls out of the alley, whistling a complicated little tune that Anji has never heard in her life, and will never hear again though it strikes a chord somewhere inside her, some part of herself vaguely recalling troop trains and soldiers packing problems into their old kit bags and smiling, smiling, smiling.

Anji gazes for a while at the open mouth of the alleyway. It is quite some while before she thinks to turn her gaze to the legend printed on the card:

Excursions 999 Monsorstra.s.se

JAMON DE LA ROCAS WOKE TO SEE THE SMILING FACE OF UNCLE CHUMLY ON THE TELESCREEN. HE BROKE HIS FAST NUTRITIOUSLY IN HIS APARTMENT-BUILDING CANTEEN. HE TOOK THE MONORAIL SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY TO HIS POST AT THE BUREAU OF INFORMATIONAL EXCHANGE. AFTER A PRODUCTIVE DAY OF WORK HE RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT AND FELL ASLEEP, HAPPY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF A JOB WELL DONE.

If the Groke expected Fitz's new and calmer demeanour to solve their problems, they were to be sorely disappointed. While not flying off into potentially lethal rages, he became uncommunicative and surly, complying with such requests as he agreed with, refusing so much as to speak when his sensibilities were offended. In fairness, there was a lot to be incommunicative and surly about. Their Master, without consultation, had purged their original producer, Mavoc Gla.s.s, and replaced him with a Galvnox drone who was simply unequipped to deal with the experimental aspects of the Groke sound. Worse, he would come up with his own ideas even the self-confessed incompetent Salters describes them as execrable and attempted to impose them while Fitz looked on with a silent and almost tangible air of contempt. In the end, he would simply put down his guitar, walk out of the recording studio and disappear for days. In fairness, there was a lot to be incommunicative and surly about. Their Master, without consultation, had purged their original producer, Mavoc Gla.s.s, and replaced him with a Galvnox drone who was simply unequipped to deal with the experimental aspects of the Groke sound. Worse, he would come up with his own ideas even the self-confessed incompetent Salters describes them as execrable and attempted to impose them while Fitz looked on with a silent and almost tangible air of contempt. In the end, he would simply put down his guitar, walk out of the recording studio and disappear for days.Brought back under leash by his Master, he would begin to play but at the slightest word from the 'producer' he would stop and once again lapse into glowering immobility.In the end, a working method of sorts was arrived at. The recording devices were left on, Fitz would play and sing his compositions as the mood took him, while the rest of the band improvised desperately behind him. WAKE. It was a harrowing experience for all concerned with the possible exception of Fitz himself who, though still silent, seemed to evidence a degree of serenity at being given his own way.For all its problems, this method of working produced a series of raw but outstanding tracks, from the elegiac 'Liver Wednesday' to the wild and dizzying 'Whip Machine', a sonic avalanche of overdubbed, treated guitar-riffs that has been known to produce spontaneous synaesthesia and projectile vomiting in a certain percentage of citizens. UP.'There was something almost mystical about it,' Salters remembers in his show-trial confession. 'It was as if Fitz had stuck a projectile weapon to his head and was blowing his brains out into the recording cylinder no, not his brains, his Soul, everything he was or would be. He was pulling it all out of himself and preserving it, leaving nothing behind, nothing at all.'Quite how true this was, the Groke would soon discover as, in the fullness of time, their Master organised a number of new televisual and music-club appearances to promote this new material. It was not merely a question of being taciturn: by now, it was a question of Fitz descending into a mindless state of the lobotomised something his Master has sworn was not the case, and such protestations are generally held to be true. He would walk when told to, perform the actions of eating and dressing himself, but would do nothing else. His final appearances were nothing short of a debacle: he would stand, guitar hung from him, motionless not out of any sense of rebellion, this time, but with an inner deadness. Something inside him was dead and gone.And one day, still in the mindless state, he walked from his apartments in his Master's complex and has never been seen since.

JAMON DE LA ROCAS WOKE TO SEE THE SMILING FACE OF UNCLE CHUMLY ON THE TELESCREEN. HE BROKE HIS FAST NUTRITIOUSLY IN HIS APARTMENT-BUILDING CANTEEN. HE TOOK THE MONORAIL SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY TO HIS POST AT THE BUREAU OF INFORMATIONAL EXCHANGE. AFTER A PRODUCTIVE DAY OF WORK HE RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT AND FELL ASLEEP, HAPPY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF A JOB WELL DONE.

It is morning, now, the sunlight flaring off the sides of buildings with a harsh, hard clarity. Anji has been riding the monorail since dawn, watching the workers of various kinds and s.h.i.+fts boarding and debarking, their uniforms, cleanliness and bodily health segueing gently from one level of social status to another. WAKE. If she squints her eyes, she sometimes feels that their forms are on the point of changing, mutating into something monstrous, without ever quite managing to do so.

Eyes dazzled by the sunlight, it sometimes seems to them that the buildings through which the monocapsule slides are in a state of flux, vanis.h.i.+ng completely away for an instant, s.h.i.+fting their positions in such a way that they have always always been at their new locations, but only always there for the last few minutes or even seconds. UP. been at their new locations, but only always there for the last few minutes or even seconds. UP.

Anji has been wondering what to do. Should she seek audience with her Master to inform him that her life is in danger, that at least one person and probably more have been sent to kill her? If, as she increasingly suspects, her own Master has decided to have her killed for reasons of his own or at least look the other way that would be a very stupid thing to do indeed.

Anji has few friends, having devoted much of her life, even more so than is common, to the pursuit of her duties to her Master. Those acquaintances she has are certainly not of a sort who would welcome her turning up out of the blue and placing their own lives in danger. The Security Services, then? The simple fact of the Security Services is that they are the hammer to deal with problems to good order and to be so much as noticed by them is to become such a problem.

Anji is left with the realisation, ultimately, that there is no one who will take her in, nowhere for her to go.

Lost in gloomy thought, Anji barely notices that the monotube has stopped and that she has climbed from it. She is down the access ramp and in the street before she realises that it is Monsorstra.s.se, the street name printed on the card of the dapper gentleman from the night before. Oh, well, she thinks, at this point she has nothing in particular to lose. WAKE UP.

The door is of a deep and l.u.s.trous blue, the numbers 999 affixed to it in highly polished bra.s.s. An ivory bell push is set to one side of the frame, annotated with a discrete engraved plate reading: RING RING FOR FOR a.s.sISTANCE a.s.sISTANCE.

The door swings open, seemingly of its own volition, as Anji readies for the bell push. Her heart in her mouth, wondering if this is really a good idea after all, Anji steps inside.

She is in a chamber that is literally indescribable. Every surface, every form, seems to slide away from the eyes as though twisted in some direction for which the human mind has no name. The sensation is not painful or horrifying, but it is disquietingly similar to falling. Falling for ever.

Standing in the centre of the chamber (if such an obdurate s.p.a.ce can truly be said to truly have have a centre) is the man from the night before, still dressed in perfect evening wear, still leaning jauntily on his silver-handled cane. a centre) is the man from the night before, still dressed in perfect evening wear, still leaning jauntily on his silver-handled cane.

He grins at her cheerfully. 'h.e.l.lo, Anji,' he says. 'I'm glad you could make it. There's something you should know. Please listen carefully because it's very important.'

JAMON DE LA ROCAS WOKE TO SEE THE SMILING FACE OF UNCLE CHUMLY ON THE TELESCREEN. HE BROKE HIS FAST NUTRITIOUSLY IN HIS APARTMENT-BUILDING CANTEEN. HE TOOK THE MONORAIL SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY TO HIS POST AT THE BUREAU OF INFORMATIONAL EXCHANGE. AFTER A PRODUCTIVE DAY OF WORK HE RETURNED TO HIS APARTMENT AND FELL ASLEEP, HAPPY IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF A JOB WELL DONE.

What, in the end, happened to Fitz? What was done to him? Where did he go? The obvious and most reasonable explanation, of course, is that his Master, finally having grown tired of his erratic and disruptive behaviour, had him quietly terminated and disposed of. [Name purged from file] however, would swear that he had not caused this to be done until his dying day. Rumours as to his whereabouts abound, from the contention that he is now a herd-beast farmer in the provinces, to one that he is a mad vagrant wandering those same provinces, to one that he has been bricked up as a ritual sacrifice in secret tunnels under the Radiant Thoroughfare itself. None of which, of course, addresses the point that there is something you should know. Please listen carefully, because it's very important. Rumours as to his whereabouts abound, from the contention that he is now a herd-beast farmer in the provinces, to one that he is a mad vagrant wandering those same provinces, to one that he has been bricked up as a ritual sacrifice in secret tunnels under the Radiant Thoroughfare itself. None of which, of course, addresses the point that there is something you should know. Please listen carefully, because it's very important.None of this is real. You have been psychodynically conditioned with false-memory constructs designed to create the illusion of a life into which your psyche can be submerged. In your case, that of some variety of pop performer, I believe. The problem is that these false memories are conflicting deeply with the means used to produce them, containing as they do images and concepts for which the process has no easy translation, and you are abreacting ma.s.sively to that basic incompatibility. The conditioning is intended to subvert your conscious mind and keep it asleep, while your body serves its purpose as a cog in the processes of a global mechanism of control. That will have to stop now, because now it's time to WAKE UP.

There were probably worse situations in which to come back to awareness, thought Fitz but, then again, after a certain point things like that became relative. If somebody wants to clamp you down and saw your head in half, does it make much difference if they do it above or below the nose?

Actually, there would be, if you thought about it. For the first few seconds at least. The visualisation made him feel slightly ill.

He was certainly in the right place for it. He was in a cubicle of roughly the same size and dimensions as that of a public lavatory, and was indeed sitting on a commode of sorts. All things considered, it was a blessing that his trousers had been partway removed bunched around one leg in a manner that suggested whoever had removed them had not thought it worth the bother of completing the process.21 Clutched in his hand were a set of what were probably electrodes, fas.h.i.+oned in the form of a skullcap. Fitz felt a stinging on his forehead and temples, from which the electrodes had been wrenched.

There was a tube in his mouth. Mercifully, it had not been shoved down his throat. Like sitting him on the commode rather than inserting catheters and colostomy bags, some part of him thought vaguely; it was easier to maintain and replace the biot like this, rather than if it were permanently wired in.

And just what the h.e.l.l, when you came right down to it, was a biot biot?

The tube tasted a little like baby food.

Directly before him, connected to the cubicle wall by thick cabling, was a console unit of sorts. It had two large b.u.t.tons, each with an electrical bulb set into the casing above it. The bulb on the right was flas.h.i.+ng. Automatically, Fitz reached out to press the b.u.t.ton then realised that he was reaching out with the hand still holding the electrode cap and controlled himself.

'Are you feeling better, now?' a voice off to one side said.

The Doctor was standing in a hatchway in the cubicle wall. He seemed a little drawn, in the manner of one caught up in some game on which he must concentrate, and is not quite sure of winning.

'It took a while for you to snap out of it and come back to yourself,' he said. 'Do you remember now? Do you remember what happened?'

Fitz looked at the electrodes in his hand, and tried to remember...