London Falling

TWENTY-SIX

It was early morning when Kevin Sefton parked in a space which only someone with a permit was entitled to occupy, put his job logbook in the car window, to keep the traffic wardens at bay, and stepped out into the tidy streets where he had grown up. An old lady walking her dog looked him up and down, noting the way he was dressed, then his face. She’d soon be on the phone to the Neighbourhood Watch, he thought.

He walked along the wide pavements, down the tree-lined avenues leading to the main road. He saw school kids walking past, and he stopped himself thinking about his own childhood. He was either about to escape who he was or about to fall victim to it. Dwelling on it wouldn’t help either way.

He went to the deserted bus stop, and looked straight down the road. He tried to focus every aspect of the Sight into the distance, where the low sun glinted off pools of water in the potholes. He could hear it now: the distant sound of an engine that was different to those of the cars and lorries passing by. It slowly came into view, for just him. The number 7 to Russell Square, running on its Sunday timetable, with those silhouettes inside it, the darkness pulsing from within it.

He suddenly had doubts. Was he now committing suicide? He steeled himself, having never deliberately walked into anything worse than this. But he knew he could do it. The kids who’d spat at him, at a place just like this, would never have imagined that. They didn’t understand what they were creating when they made him.

This was his sacrifice.

He stuck out his hand. The bus slowed and came to a stop right in front of him. It waited, its engine idling. It was full of darkness. He knew, absolutely, in that instant, what waited inside for him. But, in a moment it would move off again if he didn’t act now.

He made himself put one foot in front of the other. He stepped onto the platform at the rear. He couldn’t see inside, and it was cold in there. Of course it was. He was about to enter a ghost. He took a deep breath and stepped forward into the darkness.

It was like being squeezed into something awful inside his own head. It reminded him, for a moment, of the horror they’d all been suspended over in the attic. And then he was through that, and into-

It rushed at him. Oh God, oh God, he’d stepped straight into Hell! He’d deliberately stepped into Hell! Because he hadn’t believed in it! Every inch of the bus was full of them, and it was more of a bus than any real bus could be; it was his school bus and every other sort of bus that had ever transported things that fought. They were on him, a mass of children, bigger than him, and yet he was still an adult. They put their fingers into his eyes and mouth, and down his trousers and up his arse, and they told him all that was wrong with him, pushed it into him like shoving wads of wet paper into his ears and brain until he knew it. They made him eat the whole bus, pushing it down into his throat until his body bulged and his muscles locked and cramped around it, until he curled himself up round it. And all the while the laughter directed at him was like white noise, them above him and pissing down on him like continual British rain.

This was going to go on, he realized, forever. And he’d deliberately sought it out! He put his hands up to shield his head, and then they started on his hands instead. Tiny nails scrabbling into every pore. Was he only trying to punish himself?

No, absolutely not. I’m not doing this to myself. You’re doing this to me.

He felt a slight give in the pressure around him. He conjured up another thought of what he could compare this to: the act of being born. The ultimate violence. The ultimate passage from comfort to horror. It hadn’t been the pain that he’d needed to go through; he had to face the fear. Understanding that now made him realize he could hear a real engine noise under the horror that was controlling his body. If he fought his way backwards, and he could, then he could reach the rear platform, and let go of the rail and just escape. The choice was clear.

But no. No. He’d come here for a reason. He’d come here because this bus went somewhere beyond anything he knew, and because getting on it would be a sacrifice that was just a tiny way towards what Losley had suffered. He pushed forward instead of back. He’d made use of this knowledge before, hadn’t he? He remembered the bookshop. This wasn’t just his school bus, this was an old London bus too. What did London buses have that his school bus hadn’t?

He kept his eyes open even as things spiked into the corners of them. . made himself see past the pain that left pools of blood in them. . made out a figure amid the purple blotches. There, among the hazy shapes of seats ahead, was the shape of a ticket inspector. Sefton brought him closer, closer again, trying to ignore all the pain. And closer still, until the figure turned and saw him, and paid attention.

A cold shadow fell across the bundle of struggling flesh that was now more clearly defined, but yet somehow all himself. Sefton was a shape made up of fighting children that were pricking and consuming him. Sefton realized that he couldn’t look up at that figure. He could just see what might be a hand thrust demandingly close to his face. He’d been caught out. He was on this bus under an arrogant assumption. Even if he could make it the right sort of bus, he still didn’t have a ticket. He didn’t deserve to be here. He had to be his UC self now, quickly and, bluff his way through-

No, here he had to be honest.

What would his mother have said? What did all the stories say?

He knew. He put a hand into his pocket that he made exist, and took out a pound coin that he made the bodies struggling among him not steal from him.

One coin, not two, not small change. You have to pay the ferryman. He still couldn’t make himself look at what this force amounted to, standing before him. And this was just something arising on the way to wherever he was going to end up. That was what this manifestation was saying to him: This is only the beginning. He reached out and put the coin into something cold and deep.

And then the ‘ticket collector’ was gone. And he was sitting on a frozen seat in something which felt and smelt like a frozen London bus, and it was only him sitting here, and all his tormentors fled in a flapping of flesh into the surrounding structure, and there was just him in here, kept safe from pure hot darkness outside.

Sefton lowered his hands slowly to the seat and felt its protective cold. Again he breathed. Again he was free to do that. The colours outside the window suddenly changed. A real light streamed in over him. The tone of the engine changed, too. The sense of motion slowed. The bus was coming to a stop.

Sefton got unsteadily to his feet. Everything now seemed to be waiting for him. He could simply stay onboard, he realized, rather than go into the frightening unknown yet again. He could return home the same way. Again the choice, but what would be the point of that now, after he had done so much to get this far? He made his way along to the back of the bus. He could see light beyond the step. But nothing more.

He moved quickly and stepped off into nothing.

Sefton landed on his feet on a paved road with a sufficiently high camber to make him stumble towards the mud to one side of it. He turned to look around: with a roar of its engine that too quickly became inaudible, the bus had gone. He glanced at his surroundings. It was the same sort of day he’d come from, morning becoming afternoon. On his left stood the pillared front of a building whose top was obviously open to the sky, because clouds of vapour were rising from it. The pillars looked old, brown, weathered. A row of low wooden buildings, houses and shops, ran down both sides of the street. There was obviously a large town made up of such buildings all around him. The street went off into the distance in both directions until it reached a higher-level city wall. Signs in. . that was Latin? Gaudy daubs of paint brightened everything up: traders’ lures and graffiti. Had he. . gone back in time? It didn’t feel as if he had, somehow. But how could he know that? This didn’t feel like anywhere real. It was like a computer game, only the world around him appeared perfect, every bit as detailed as the world he’d come from. He bent down and felt the soil. It felt like soil. So why that sense of unreality?

He took a few steps in the direction of where he’d got off the bus. Right, there was nobody about. Not a single person. No smells of cooking or fire, just mud and brick and distant agriculture, and clean air above it. Utter silence. Not even the sound of birds or animals. No, wait a sec — from ahead of him there sounded a gentle trickling. A river was running along a cut between the buildings, fording the road, which had a few larger stones placed in it to allow passage. He stepped over. The water looked murky. He walked ahead for a while, looking carefully around him, waiting for the trap but not sensing it. There was a turning into an open square on his left now, and across the square stood a long, low building, again with that weathered stone and the columns. He could hear a noise coming from it, the sound of someone. . singing. That was where he was meant to go, then. He walked up the building’s muddy steps, noticing no other footprints, and pushed open the enormous doors.

It was like being inside a church. The dim interior was lit by candles and torches to enhance the low light filtering through the high, narrow windows. Two rows of pillars defined a central aisle, while the stone floor was covered with dried plants, rushes or grasses that crunched under his feet. At the other end of the hall was a raised area, and there sat a man, and it was he who’d been singing, something sad and passionate in Latin. And now he’d suddenly stopped, and was looking at Sefton with keen interest. He was dressed in a toga, and had his hair brushed down over his forehead, in that Roman way. He slowly smiled.

Sefton felt he should say something, but didn’t know what. The man stepped down from his raised chair, and walked towards him, studying his face intently. Sefton then realized that he recognized the man but, like in a dream, still didn’t know who he was.

‘Are you an actor?’ he said.

The man reached out a hand and laid it on the side of Sefton’s face. Then he leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. .

Until Sefton took a step back. He wasn’t comfortable with that. He wanted to know what that gesture meant here.

The man chuckled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose I am.’ And his voice was English and upper class. Of course. ‘I’m Brutus.’

‘Brutus?’ Sefton was thinking how this was absolutely the last person he’d expected to encounter on this journey. ‘As in. .?’

‘Marcus Junius Brutus. Or Brutus of Troy. Or Brutus Greenshield.’

Sefton tried to remember what he’d seen on telly about Roman history. ‘What, you’re the bloke who killed Julius Caesar? Was he-?’

‘From Troy? No. Those three names I gave you are those of three different people.’

‘Do you mean that you aren’t. . real?’

Brutus sighed. ‘You’ve probably realized there’s an element, to all this, of you finding what you set out to find-’

‘I’ve never even heard of Brutus Greenshield!’

‘-and there’s also an element that was chosen by me. I need you to realize that this isn’t entirely an expedition into your own mind. The Romans never had any difficulty in seeing omens. In fact the call from outside themselves was something they welcomed. But people from your time do have this tendency to regard everything as internalized. You think you’re making the world yourselves, at every moment. Sorry, but no.’

‘I didn’t think that at all,’ Sefton said carefully. ‘In fact I came here to find out things I don’t know.’

‘Excellent. So where do you think you are?’

‘London. Roman London?’

‘Correct. Well, to the extent that it’s what this place is pretending to be at the moment: the city I founded in the country I founded. Britain, the country of Brutus! Did you know that was what people once thought? I thought it would be enjoyable to make the place look like that for you. But really, this is one of many. . yes, places — let’s call them that, since there’s some truth to that — places that orbit London. They affect London, they make it the way it is because of their proximity.’ He looked playful all of a sudden. ‘Did you notice that while you’re here you’ve lost the Sight?’

With a jolt, Sefton realized that it was true. It was why he’d felt no threat from this place. To be told he’d lost one of his senses made him feel — instead of the relief he’d been anticipating — suddenly vulnerable.

‘The definition of the Sight is being able to sense something that has a connection to, that takes power from, one of these other worlds I spoke of — like this one — while you’re in your own world. That’s meaningless here because we’re actually in one of those other worlds.’

‘So this is, like, another dimension?’

Brutus put a finger to Sefton’s lips. ‘You only get one question, so don’t waste it on physics.’

Sefton closed his mouth.

‘You were very brave to come here without understanding where you were going. You’ve obviously realized that the quest isn’t a matter of tramping over hill and dale, but that it’s within you. Your world — I mean the planet — is getting smaller and smaller with so many people living on it, slower and slower as everything runs out, also hotter and hotter, and that’s your own fault. You may have to start to find new adventures to aspire to, to find new shapes for stories. To overcome the inertia of history will be tremendously difficult for you. And there are those who are meanwhile taking advantage of this time of transformation and opportunity and horror — who are trying to turn the wheel in their own direction.’ He put a hand to Sefton’s face again, turning his head left and right, as if examining a horse. Sefton let him do so. ‘You know what Hell is?’

‘I don’t believe in it.’

‘Good. It is time that defines whether something is real or not. Time is what makes what people experience a tragedy or a love story or a triumph. Hell is where time has stopped, where there’s no more innovation. No horizon. No change. I sometimes think Hell would suit the British down to the ground, and that, given the chance, they’d vote for it. You’d better make sure they never get the chance, eh?’

Sefton took the hand from his face. It felt cool to the touch. He took care not to frame what he wanted to say now as a question. ‘I wish you’d just tell me who you are. So far, you keep contradicting yourself. You’re pleased I don’t believe in Hell, but then you tell me all about it. You’re playing with words. .’

‘I am a word.’ Brutus leaned forward and kissed him full on the lips again. This time Sefton let him. The kiss continued, long and hard, and Sefton started to wonder if this was going to be a significant part of whatever this out-of-body experience was. But, as he started to connect emotionally with the man he was kissing, to think about what Joe might have to say about this, to let his guard down, he thought he glimpsed something in his mind’s eye: the answer to who this was!

He stepped back, staring and panting. But he couldn’t afford to ask the question.

The man’s voice turned gentle, supremely careful. ‘As the song goes, I am what I am. At the moment, just for where we are now, I’m that Roman chap who killed his friend for the sake of the law, to save the people and to let their will prevail. I have all those memories, of a complete life spent in Rome, including its end. But, clearly, that particular Brutus didn’t talk as I do, and he had all sorts of dimensions to him that I don’t represent. Because I’m also something else that has continued further, and that goes back further. I also remember being that other Brutus, the Trojan, making that first footprint on that muddy British shore, with my expedition of Romans behind me, all following me, their noble foreign captain, as we arrived in a new land for the first time. And, in yet another direction, I also remember my father, King Efrawg of the Britons, who raised me in Britain, in the British tradition, to carry a green shield. Do you see what I’m being here, what I’ve decided to be, in order to meet you safely? I’m the son of the British, and the father of them, and also someone entirely separate from them.’

‘Are you saying that you’re. .?’ Sefton stopped himself. That had nearly been a question, and he didn’t want that to be his permitted question, because he didn’t want to hear the answer. This was crashing against things he knew to be good. ‘I won’t. . I won’t believe in some sort of higher power, you know. . ever.’

Brutus drew closer again. He smelt clean. Sefton could see the smallest pores in his face, the hard line of his jaw, the depths in his eyes. He so wanted to feel that connection again, to feel that love. But he was angry at it, too. He didn’t know how you could avoid being angry with something so much bigger than you were. Not a lot of difference between this thing and Losley, not at his present size.

‘Kevin,’ said Brutus, ‘I wouldn’t expect anything more or less of you. This information you’re taking in while you’re here, it’s rough stuff. It’s being pulled screaming out of nature only because of what you’ve undergone to get here. I’m just something that intervenes sometimes to make it all a bit easier. For you, I’m a slippery stepping stone in a very choppy river, not a bridge you have to cross.’ He gestured around him. ‘Things are complicated. Not everything is known. . and not everything will pass through this conduit. Although I’ve tried to make this communication as easy as I can, by giving you a place in which to have it, a person to have it with, some of it was always going to be garbled, incoherent, contradictory. Now, come on, you’re ready. So ask your question.’

Sefton wondered if he should ask something about the nature of the smiling man or, more practically, about Losley’s location. But, no, he hadn’t come here with any grand desire for illumination, and finding her was the only objective on the Ops Board they might be able to accomplish on their own. He’d come here with a specific purpose. He’d come here to save Quill’s child. ‘How,’ he asked, ‘do we defeat Mora Losley?’

Brutus inclined his head in approval. ‘You remember the bookshop? What you felt there?’

‘What about it?’

‘That’s another question.’

‘Tell me! Just bloody tell me!’

Brutus wandered away, shaking his head and laughing. But it was good laughter. He was laughing at Sefton’s courage, the policeman realized. ‘If you want to find me again, you’ll have to find another way. It must get harder every time, because otherwise, what would be the point of wisdom? You’re now an initiate. You have an instinctive understanding of these things. Now you must work.’

‘But I don’t know if I’ve understood. . almost anything here.’

‘You were brave,’ said Brutus. ‘That’s always a good beginning.’

Sefton woke up with a start. He jumped to his feet and looked around. He was at the bus stop, he’d never left the bus stop, he’d leaned back against the wall of the shelter and fallen asleep!

No, he was actually somewhere different. He was leaning against the metal edge of a bus stop, but. . it was a completely different one. The sounds and smells of London flooded back. People were walking past, all around him, glancing at him, wondering what was up with him. He took a few faltering steps and saw that he was just along from Cannon Street tube station, near a mobile phone shop and a business that called itself ‘London Stone’.

Well, maybe that was someone’s way of saying that what he’d just experienced had been real. But he felt disappointed, unfulfilled. He didn’t know if he’d discovered anything that could help Quill. He felt the Sight back inside his head, but there was a difference now. Just a slight one. He felt more confident about it, as if he’d calibrated something inside his head by. . switching it off and turning it back on again.

He’d gone down into the hole and he’d faced his fear and he’d come out changed. He’d taken a first step. Already a lot of what he’d experienced felt like a story, something that had happened to someone else. He took his special notebook from his pocket, and started to write down all he could remember. But he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to show it to anybody.