Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text Part 9

'Now now, Laf,' remonstrated Gunnar, but the skull-faced man was in full swing.

'I'll tell you what, Slug,' he chortled, 'that has got to be one of the most expensive s.h.a.gs in history. How many seeds did you have there? Forty, fifty?'

But then the door opened again and another man came in.

'Good evening,' said the newcomer in a quiet, educated voice. 'I hope this isn't discord I'm hearing in our little community?'

'Erik, mate,' said Gunnar. 'This is the new recruit that Laf has brought in. You know? Like we agreed? His name is Carl.'

'Carl, eh? Good. That's a fine old Saxon name!'

Erik was a man of about forty, quite slight, wearing half-moon gla.s.ses and a badly pressed brown suit. He could have been a schoolmaster, or perhaps a bank manager down on his luck. He shook Carl's hand warmly.

'Welcome Carl! I'm glad you could make it.'

Carl looked at Laf and mouthed, 'Who the f.u.c.k?''

Laf frowned back warningly.

'A word of advice, Carl,' said Erik pleasantly, still holding Carl's hand. 'Laf has chosen to let you into our little secret. We do that from time to time, because, well, we're missionaries in a way. But if you were to reveal our secret to anyone else without our permission, I personally will kill you. And I must stress I mean that quite literally. I will kill you myself, and I will do so in the manner prescribed for sacrifices to the All-Father. With a noose and a spear.'

He laughed pleasantly as he finally released Carl's hand.

'Now, Slug,' he said, addressing the huddled figure in the corner without even looking at him, 'perhaps you'd like to fetch drinks for Carl and the rest of us and provide him with whatever his preference is in pharmaceuticals.'

Slug scrambled hastily to his feet.

Carl could not believe the gear they had up there. They let him snort and smoke and swallow pills until the walls wobbled like jelly and the ceiling pulsated above his head as if it was alive. And when at last Erik began to speak to him, it seemed to Carl as if they were at opposite ends of an enormous echoing hall.

'How much do you know about Dunner, Carl?' Erik asked him.

'Um, not much,' said Carl, who was lying flat out on the floor. His own voice sounded strangely remote, as if he too were somewhere far away. He began to giggle and had to struggle to control himself. 'I mean I know he's got a hammer and... Well, that's it to be honest. Not being funny or nothing.'

'Well your ignorance is regrettable,' said Erik, 'but it's hardly unusual. People have rather forgotten Dunner over the years. But he used to be big around here once: Dunner, or Thor as some call him. In fact the housing estate you come from is actually named after him, though I doubt very much if that was even known by those who chose the name. Thurston means Thor's town, just as Thursday means Thor's day.'

'Yeah, and Wednesday's named after Dunner's father,' added Laf.

'That's right,' said Erik. 'It's named after the all-father: Odin's day, or Woden's day. Wod's day as we'd say now.'

'Yeah?' said Carl in that giant hall with its jelly walls, trying not to start giggling again.

'"Yeah" indeed.' Erik repeated Carl's colloquialism in quote-marks, like a pedantic schoolmaster. '"Yeah" indeed. Dunner is the G.o.d of thunder and the strongest of all the G.o.ds. Your ancestors would have worshipped him. I don't know if you know this, but they would have sacrificed to him too, killing both animals and human beings in his temple, spilling their blood in his honour. So you can see they took him very seriously indeed.'

'You got a toilet here?' Carl asked. 'Only I'm f.u.c.king bursting for a p.i.s.s.'

'Outside this door, mate,' said Gunnar, 'and at the end of the corridor.'

'I do apologise in advance,' Erik purred, 'for the rather basic arrangements'

Carl struggled to his feet, forced himself to focus so that he could locate the door, and moved unsteadily towards it.

The toilet at the end of the cold concrete corridor wasn't hard to spot. The door was wide open and another naked light bulb revealed a chemical WC standing on a bare concrete floor. But as Carl headed towards it he became aware of a strange blue glow coming from a room next to the one he had just come from. Its door had been left just slightly ajar. Curious, Carl looked round to check no one was watching him, then pushed it open.

Inside, from floor to ceiling, small lights flickered and electronic devices hummed. There was a bank of what looked like CCTV screens on one side of the room and, below them, a single large monitor across which numbers streamed so quickly that they were hardly more than a blur. But it was an object at the far end of the room that caught his attention. A tall cylinder, about two metres high and resembling a gigantic hourgla.s.s, was the source of the pure blue light that illuminated the whole room. The light came from the lower chamber of the hourgla.s.s and was especially intense at the narrow neck, from which it shot upwards every few seconds into the upper chamber in narrow filaments that twisted and turned and quickly faded, to be followed by another burst of brilliant energy.

He heard a voice raised in the other room. Laf was goading Slug again, barking out his harsh derisive laughter. It was followed by Erik's soothing purr I shouldn't be seeing this, Carl thought. I wasn't meant to see this.

But he found it hard to turn away. The beautiful blue light and the constant movement inside the hourgla.s.s were strangely fascinating. They seemed to stir up something inside him, a powerful feeling, a sweet sad longing. He felt he could have stayed there for hours or even days, just watching. But he really didn't want to be found in here and he knew that the others would notice if he didn't return soon, so, after a few seconds, he made himself turn towards the door.

As he did so, he noticed something odd about the bank of screens. He had once worked for a few weeks as a security guard (it was the longest job he had ever had), and he knew that every screen in a bank of this kind would normally show a different scene, a different part of the property under surveillance. Here, though, on every single screen, there was a blue image of the room where the screens themselves were located, the room he was in, each one from the exact same angle. But here was the truly strange thing: the room and the camera angle might be identical in each one of those screens, but the image of Carl was not. In one screen he was facing the camera. In another he was looking at the shining cylinder. In a third he wasn't there at all, but then came tottering unsteadily through the door.

Carl thought at first that there was just some sort of time delay going on here perhaps, for some reason, each screen was showing a different part of the last few minutes? but then he noticed a screen in which he was already leaving the room.

'Oh s.h.i.t,' muttered Carl.

The beautiful blue light kept pouring up and up and up through the narrow neck of the giant hourgla.s.s ~*~.

'Do you think about the universe at all, Carl?' Erik asked, when Carl returned to the room with the G.o.ds and mirrors and had settle back down onto the floor.

'You mean... as in, like, the sun goes round the earth?' Carl offered. 'And stars and that?'

Erik gave a pleasant laugh.

'That's it, Carl, you've got it in one. "Stars and that." Very succinctly put. You have a most distinctive rhetorical style, if I may say so. "Stars and that" indeed. But listen and I'll tell you something. The whole of this universe of stars and s.p.a.ce is just one tiny twig in an enormous tree, one single tiny twig. And every second, every fraction of a second, it's branching and dividing, creating new worlds that proceed, from that moment on, to take their own quite separate courses.'

Carl laughed at first but then broke off because he suddenly found that he could see the very thing that Erik was describing to him, the world dividing and dividing and dividing again. It didn't look much like a tree to him, though, more like millions of black worms in the dark that kept on splitting in two and splitting in two and splitting in two. Like viruses or something, he thought, vaguely remembering some film he'd once seen, some video in a biology cla.s.s at school.

'There are millions of other Earths,' Erik said, 'millions of Englands, millions of Thurston Meadows Zones. And Laf and Gunnar and I, we don't come from this one.'

'Nor me neither,' said Slug in the background.

'Nor Slug either,' agreed Erik kindly, 'nor Slug either. As you will no doubt already have guessed, we're shifters, Carl. We come from other worlds and, anytime we want to, we can go to other worlds as well. Which means that we can do whatever we want here in this world whatever we want for no one is ever ever going to catch us. And that, of course, is why we are so very dangerous to cross.'

Lying on the floor with his eyes shut, Carl heard Erik moving about, somewhere out there in the remote region of s.p.a.ce that was the room.

'Have a look at these, Carl.'

Reluctantly, Carl opened his eyes. The light seemed almost too bright to bear, but he made out the silhouette of Erik against one of the mirrors and behind him, dimly, a series of reflections of Erik, each one holding out a bag. In the bag, in each of the bags, there were small blue glowing things. It seemed to him that Erik was holding a bag of stars, plucked away from their roots.

'These are seeds,' Erik said. 'This is slip. A very short word for what is undoubtedly the single biggest leap forward that our species has ever made.'

He laughed.

'Does it surprise you to hear me say that? Well consider the other alternatives. The discovery of metallurgy? Pah! What is metal but glorified stone? s.p.a.ce flight? A trifle! Where can that take you except another wretched little corner of this wretched little slither of s.p.a.ce-time? Information technology? At best a useful tool, at worst a grievous distraction. But slip, my dear Carl, is something else entirely. It bridges the illusory boundary between mind and matter, between body and soul, between one mind and another. It unravels time, it brings us into the presence of the archetypal sentiences that we, in our crude human way, call G.o.ds. And also of course, and most famously, it enables us to travel from one world to another. Think of that Carl. Think of that. Every single one of these little glowing things could take you to another world. Every single one.'

Carl nodded. He noticed that the seeds were the exact same blue as the light of the strange hourgla.s.s in the other room.

'Yeah,' piped up Slug, 'and you know what we're using them for? We're looking for Dunner's worlds.'

Laf laughed.

'Who's this we, ratface? Who's this we? You're the clown who let a fifteen-year-old nick all his seeds off of him, remember? How exactly do you plan to get anywhere?'

'Now, now Laf,' said Erik soothingly. 'Don't mock the afflicted.'

He turned his attention back to Carl.

'Do you know what our friend here means by Dunner's worlds Carl?' he asked.

'Not really.'

'They are worlds where the G.o.d Dunner rules,' Erik said. 'Worlds where the sham of so-called enlightened civilization has either been torn down, or never existed in the first place.'

Gunnar gave his mild little high-pitched laugh.

'I expect Carl's thinking he'd like to know a bit about what it's actually like there, Erik,' he said. 'Am I right, Carl? Am I right, my old mate?'

'Yeah, go on then. What's it like?'

Carl had his eyes closed again and was watching those black worms splitting and writhing in the dark. He wasn't deceived by Gunnar's mild manner. That fat b.a.s.t.a.r.d could beat me to a f.u.c.king pulp, was his appraisal of the situation. He'd beat me to a pulp, and talk to me all kind and gentle and regretful while he was doing it. You learnt to read such things, drinking in the Old England.

'Tell him, Erik,' Gunnar said. 'He don't know what we're talking about.'

'I was just about to, Gunnar,' said Erik tartly.

He clearly did not like to be told what to do. But he turned to Carl, and resumed his kind and friendly tone.

'Does the word civilisation mean anything to you Carl? Or democracy? Or human rights?'

'You what?'

Erik and Laf and Gunner all laughed. Even Slug sn.i.g.g.e.red grudgingly in his corner. Carl hadn't meant to make a joke, but he felt nevertheless that he'd said something clever, and was immensely pleased with himself.

'They don't mean s.h.i.t to me!' he said in his fake American accent, hoping to repeat his triumph. To his great satisfaction, they all laughed again.

'Of course they don't, Carl,' Erik said kindly. 'Of course they don't. And do you know why?'

'Because I don't give a monkey's a.s.s,' shouted Carl, trying for that rare third laugh.

But they were tired of the joke now and no one even smiled.

'The reason civilisation doesn't mean anything to you, Carl,' Erik resumed after a moment's silence, 'is that civilisation isn't there for your benefit. You're not part of civilisation. Civilisation is for the others out there across the Line. It's their civilisation. And they don't care what you think, and they don't care about what you can and can't do. They've given you a dreg estate to live in, a Social Inclusion Zone,' (he spat out the words). 'They've given you the Department of Social Inclusion to look after you, and what they ask of you in return is that you leave them alone. Just take the benefits and the subsidised housing and the pub and the dreamer store, and then keep out of their way: that's their earnest request of you. Just let them get on with their civilisation in peace.'

'Yeah?'

'Carl don't want to know all that, Erik mate,' said fat Gunnar in his friendly little voice. 'He wants to know about Dunner's worlds.'

'I was coming to that,' said Erik coldly. He really did not like being interrupted. 'You see Carl, in Dunner's worlds there is no civilisation, no democracy, no human rights. And there's no DSI either, no Social Inclusion Zones, no Line. A young chap like you doesn't have to go to the welfare people for money or a place to live. No. What you'd do in one of Dunner's worlds is find yourself a lord. A warlord, I mean, a great warrior, not one of these toffee-nosed do-gooders who go to the opera and sit on committees about social exclusion. You'd go to a lord and, if you promised to fight his enemies for him, he'd look after you and make sure you got everything you needed.'

'Yeah?'

'And Carl, mate,' said fat Gunnar, 'that wouldn't be like a deskie flat or nothing he'd give you. Don't think that. He'd have a big hall, with a blazing fire in the middle, and you'd live there with all your mates. You'd drink all the booze you wanted, and eat to your heart's content and, when it was time to sleep, well you'd just sleep there in the hall, with all your mates around you. So you wouldn't never have to think about money or nothing, and you wouldn't never have to be alone. How does that sound, my old mate?'

Carl laughed. 'That sounds like f.u.c.king heaven.'

'Yeah, and you wouldn't need to work or nothing,' said skull-faced Laf, 'All you got to do is fight! That would be your job. And there'd be no police or nothing to stop you.'

'Great!' said Carl dreamily from where he was lying on the floor.

'It'd be dangerous, mind you,' said Laf. 'You'd be allowed to kill but you could get yourself killed as well.'

Carl laughed.

'So? Who gives a s.h.i.t? When you're dead you're f.u.c.king dead.'

Erik clapped his hands together with an excited little neigh of laughter 'Oh well said, Carl! Well said! Spoken like a warrior! It looks as if you've found us a real fighter here, Laf, and something of a wordsmith as well. But actually it's even better than that, Carl my friend, it's even better than "when you're dead you're f.u.c.king dead", as you so very pithily put it. For if you die fighting, Wod will take you home to Valour-Hall, and you'll live again, feasting and fighting with Wod and Dunner as your lords, until the day comes eventually for that Last Battle at the end of time, when all of the trillion trillion words of the multiverse will converge again on a single point and all scores will be settled in one last glorious blood-letting.'

'So what do you say, then, Carl my old mate?' asked Gunnar kindly. 'Do you want to be a warrior?'

'Too f.u.c.king right I do.'

Carl had always believed that acts of courage would lead eventually to something new, and it seemed to him that he had finally proved it. Shane and Derek were still on their plastic thrones in the Old England, or perhaps staggering home by now through the alphabetised streets of Thurston Meadows Zone. But look at him, look where he'd got to!

'Good man,' said Erik. 'Good man. I look forward to having you aboard. But there is one further step you'll need to make first. A test, if you like, a sort of test that you'll have to pa.s.s.'

Carl was crestfallen.

'Oh. Well I'm sorry mate, but I'm no f.u.c.king good at tests. I can't really read or write or nothing like that.'

'Reading and writing?' Erik laughed kindly. 'Seriously overrated skills, Carl, seriously overrated! No Carl, Dunner doesn't set exams for people. He doesn't award marks out of a hundred. He doesn't write must try harder with a red pen. It's not that kind of test at all. It should be well within your capabilities.'

Carl felt so relieved that he didn't even ask what kind of test it was. Instead he lapsed into a dream of blood and fire and battle and silvery blades glinting in the flames of burning buildings. Violence and destruction had somehow been decoupled from pain and fear and been transformed instead into a kind of resting place, a kind of womb.

'You left the door of my laboratory unlocked, Slug you fool,' he heard Erik say sometime later, somewhere in the background to his thoughts.

'No, I'm sure I shut it,' Slug whined. 'It must ay been Gunnar.'

'Not been in there, Slug me old mate. Not been in there all day. You went in there earlier for the gear, remember? I haven't been out of the room since you came back with it.'

'You are beginning to seriously try my patience, Slug...'

But all this seemed a long way off to Carl. Far closer and more vivid was the strangely peaceful battle that was unfolding in his head in slow motion. Blades, blood, fire, severed limbs, eviscerated corpses, but no faces, no consequences, no pain.