Something Coming Through

5. Midnight Flit

London | 5 July

The Jackaroo avatar stood on a dais made from an upturned plastic milk crate and a circle of silver-painted plywood, confronting a cluster of tourists taking turns to be photographed with it. Black suit, white shirt; black tie, white gloves; a Hallowe’en mask of gold-tinted plastic gleaming under a bowler hat. When one of the tourists dropped a coin in the cardboard box in front of the dais, the avatar gave a stiff robotic parody of a bow.

Other costume artists stood along the path at the edge of St James’s Park. Mickey Mouse. Superman. Batman. Super Mario. A generic Disney Princess.

Phone and tablet flashes stuttered as the avatar removed his bowler hat to reveal a shaven head painted gold and a headband with two springy antennae that terminated in gold-painted ping-pong balls.

Chloe walked on through the shade of a row of young gingkos, replacements for plane trees blasted and burned by the Trafalgar Square nuke. A photograph of the trees all aflame was one of the iconic images of the atrocity, like the refrigerated trucks packed with the dead and parked nose to tail along South Carriage Drive in Hyde Park, or the Union Jack fluttering from the jib of a crane elevated above smoking ruins. Chloe hadn’t seen any of that at the time. She’d been in school in Walthamstow, had been evacuated with her classmates and everyone else in the long transect of East London threatened by the radiation plume, had ended up in a holding camp outside the ring of the M25. That was where her brother had found her a week later. She remembered that she’d flinched away from him when he had stooped into the tent she shared with five other girls. This strange gaunt unshaven stranger suddenly becoming her brother, gathering her up into his arms and both of them howling. Neil had hitchhiked down from York, where he’d been at university, walking the last ten miles cross-country to avoid army patrols and checkpoints. His first and last big adventure.

Now Chloe wanted to ask him for a favour. They’d arranged to meet after work in a café on top of the construction-coral dyke that held back the Thames, close to the asymmetric apartment block that occupied the site of old New Scotland Yard. The dark red dyke was topped by a broad promenade where gravel paths wound between lush islands of palmettos and bamboos and flowering bushes, and gave spectacular views across the mud-brown flood of the Thames. High above, a sky-whale black with sequestered carbon drifted on the summer breeze, accompanied by a small school of freshly budded juveniles.

Neil was nursing a bottle of beer at a table at the edge of the crowded outdoor café. Her tall handsome brother, rising to hug her. He was dressed in Lycra shorts and a red jersey. A rucksack containing his suit sat at his feet; the bicycle he used to commute from Walthamstow every day, summer and winter, rain or shine, was no doubt chained to one of the racks at the foot of the dyke. Chloe bought an iced coffee and they sat in the sunshine and caught up with each other’s lives. Neil said that he was glad she had stopped dyeing her hair blonde, it had never really suited her; Chloe asked about his wife and his daughter, her niece, nine years old now, hard to believe.

‘You should come visit,’ Neil said.

‘Please don’t make me feel guilty.’

‘The last time was Ellie’s birthday.’

‘That’s what I mean about that guilt thing.’

Neil knew exactly how to push her buttons. After he and Chloe had been allowed to return to the little house in Walthamstow, he’d given up his university course and joined the civil service and put Chloe through school with the help of their aunt and uncle; their grandparents on their mother’s side were dead, and their father had abandoned them long before and was raising a new family in St Andrews, where he lectured on medieval history. Neil was stable and stolid and utterly conventional. He’d taken refuge from their mother’s death and the arrival of the Jackaroo in a life as ordinary as possible in a world grown wild and strange. Chloe had embraced that strangeness; Neil had turned his back on it. They were, their aunt Beth said, two sides of the same coin.

They talked about their work, his in the Ministry of Transport, hers with Disruption Theory. Neil asked if she was ready for her big day tomorrow, in front of the select committee. ‘You look as if you’ve dressed for it,’ he said.

‘That’s what I thought.’

Chloe was wearing black trousers, a white shirt that an old boyfriend had left behind, and her black denim jacket, little tin badges printed with the faces of dead cosmonauts pinned to one lapel. She’d found them on a stall in the Reef run by a Russian guy who’d assured her that they were genuine antiques. Well, maybe. But even if they were fakes, they were powerful juju, the faces touchingly noble, romantic. Lost boys from a forgotten heroic age.

She said, ‘According to the high-powered lawyer who’s been preparing us, this isn’t quite the thing. She’s going to lend me something appropriate. I dread to think.’

‘Because it’ll be something an actual grown-up would wear?’

‘If this is what being a grown-up is like, big brother, you can keep it.’

Chloe had spent most of the afternoon shut in the conference room with the rest of Disruption Theory, being briefed by Helena Nichols and her two startlingly young and capable assistants, taking part in a group discussion that was supposed to analyse their strengths and weaknesses. After the lawyer finally wrapped things up, Daniel Rosenblaum had given another pep talk, telling them that he was immensely proud of their work and was certain that their abilities and enthusiasm would carry the day.

‘I can promise you,’ he’d said, ‘that we’ll be getting the best kind of support. So go home, rest up, relax. This is a big challenge, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.’

Neil told several gossipy stories about the antics of the Human Decency League and their supporters. Like all civil servants, he had a healthy cynicism about politics and politicians.

‘Last month one of their swivel-eyed MPs made a speech in the Commons about how the UN lottery was blatantly rigged,’ he said. ‘How it favoured people from the Third World, how they were flitting off to enjoy and exploit the riches of the new worlds and leaving behind the mess they’d made, because everyone knew the Spasm had started in Pakistan and India. When Robin Mountjoy was asked about it, he claimed that it was an example of the kind of robust discussion that made his party so strong. The fact is, they’re an unstable amalgamation of every far-right prejudice and crackpot theory. The only thing they have in common is a visceral hatred of the Jackaroo.’

Helena Nichols had told the same story during a background briefing. ‘I know I should care about the select committee, but I really don’t,’ Chloe said, and diverted the conversation to the little cult and its breakout.

She pulled up some of Mangala Cowboy’s pictures on her tablet. Neil, flicking through them, said, ‘They look like covers for old sci-fi paperbacks.’

He couldn’t see what she saw, either.

Chloe said, ‘I think they’re authentic. Pictures of a real place. Some undiscovered ruin on one of the fifteen worlds, or maybe on a world we haven’t been given access to. I think the guy who made these was exposed to an active artefact. Something that got inside him and compelled him to draw these pictures. And it affected his neighbours, too. They had a breakout on Saturday. And on Sunday, our artist did a midnight flit.’

She had returned to the displaced-persons camp yesterday evening, after Niome’s phone call. The girl had been waiting for her on the bench by the chestnut tree, told her that Freddie and his sister had moved out. ‘Here yesterday, gone today. Happens a lot in this place.’

She hadn’t seen them leave, shrugged when Chloe had described Eddie Ackroyd. ‘I only found out about it when I come back from school. But this boy I know, he said he saw Freddie and a couple of heads stuffing cardboard boxes and clothes and shit in the boot of a car parked over by the gates. This was about eleven, twelve last night.’

‘I don’t suppose your friend would remember the number of the car?’

‘He was so blasted I’m amazed he recognised Freddie. So, what’s this hot news worth?’

Chloe gave Niome another five-pound coin, told her to keep watching the skies. No one answered when Chloe rapped on the door of Freddie Patel’s flatlet. She went upstairs, hoping to talk to Mr Archer, but the old man’s wife answered the door and said that her husband was resting and didn’t want to be disturbed.

‘I saw his performance yesterday,’ Chloe said. ‘It was impressive. In fact, that’s sort of why I’m here.’

‘Do you know your Bible?’ Mrs Archer said.

She had sharp blue eyes, this thin old woman with a cap of white hair, clutching a cardigan draped over her bony shoulders.

‘A little,’ Chloe said.

For two years after the Spasm, she had gone to church with Neil and their aunt and uncle every Sunday, but at age fourteen she’d rebelled. Apart from weddings and christenings that had been that, for her and religion.

Mrs Archer said, ‘Perhaps you remember the passage that describes how the holy dove descended on the apostles, and they could understand every language.’

‘Your downstairs neighbour, Freddie Patel. Does he have that gift?’

Mrs Archer’s smile went away. ‘Someone else came here yesterday, asking the same questions. As I told him, I really don’t know anything about the boy.’

Chloe had a falling sensation. She was losing her edge. She’d let Eddie Ackroyd beat her to the prize. She said, ‘Was that a man wearing a hat and an old leather jacket, smells funny and won’t look you in the eye? He isn’t any friend of mine. Was he causing trouble? Did he have something to do with Freddie leaving?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Mrs Archer said, and started to close the door.

Chloe said quickly, ‘Do you have a relative or a friend who won the emigration lottery?’

‘Not today, thank you,’ Mrs Archer said, and the door snicked shut.

Her neighbours didn’t know anything about Freddie Patel or weren’t prepared to tell Chloe. Several had the shiny-eyed look of the meme-struck.

‘Either he did a deal with one of my rivals,’ Chloe told Neil, ‘or he got spooked by the breakout, or by my interest in his pictures…He was definitely nervous when I talked to him. And when I called the letting agents, I found out that his real name is Fahad Chauhan. They had a photocopy of his ID card in the lease documents. Fahad Chauhan, eighteen years old.’

She’d pretended to be from the immigration services, but there was no need to tell her brother that, he’d only get upset.

‘I’m pretty sure he’s hiding from someone,’ she said. ‘On the run from some kind of trouble.’

‘Perhaps you should talk with this rival of yours, ask him what he knows,’ Neil said.

‘Even if he knew anything about it, he’d probably lie.’ Chloe didn’t want to say Eddie Ackroyd’s name. If she did, he might appear in a puff of stale kif smoke. ‘There’s something else, too. Apart from his tumblr, Fahad seems to be totally off grid. I did the usual Googling and found plenty of Fahad Chauhans, but none of them seem to be the one I’m looking for. There’s a pop star in Pakistan called Fahad Chauhan. A film director in India…They’re either too old or too young, or living in the wrong place. My guy doesn’t do Facebook or Friendster or Snapchat. He isn’t listed on TownSquare or AsianCafé. Maybe he’s on one of the walled networks, or maybe he lurks in the darknets, but as far as his public profile goes he doesn’t have one. It’s as if he’s purged every reference to him. There are worms that do that. Erase your profile, or improve it by hunting down and deleting those embarrassing selfies you took when you were a teenager.’

‘Isn’t that illegal?’

‘Only if you try to use it on a government site, attack your police records. The kid’s a ghost. But I did find something about his family, and his history. To begin with, his father is some kind of biochemist, moved here from Pakistan seven years ago.’

Gail Ann Jones had pointed her towards a news snippet buried in an industry newsletter. A brief paragraph about Professor S. A. Chauhan, formerly of the University of the Punjab, taking up a new job at the GlaxoSmithKline R&D site in Uxbridge.

‘And you know this Professor Chauhan is your man’s father because?’ Neil was smiling: he liked to read thrillers, derived vicarious pleasure from Chloe’s stories about tracking down alien artefacts.

Chloe said, ‘Because about a year after Professor Chauhan moved here, there was an article in the Hillingdon Times about a tropical garden that his wife created. And one of the article’s photos showed Professor and Mrs Chauhan and their son Fahad. It’s one of those sad stories with a sweet ending. In their home country, the father was caught up in a government campaign against universities. Labs and libraries burned down, denunciations, student strikes…A bit like the anti-intellectual riots we had here, but with assassinations and mass arrests. Anyway, Professor Chauhan was arrested, Mrs Chauhan and Fahad came here, and the family was reunited some years later, after the new government released the Professor from prison. So one of my questions is, if Fahad and his sister are on the run, where are their parents?’

‘Oh dear. I think I can see where this is going.’

‘You’ve done it before.’

‘And the last time I did it we agreed it would be the last time.’

‘Fahad and his little sister are in bad, serious trouble. They’re on the run because something has got hold of them. Some Elder Culture thing. An active artefact, an eidolon…It’s already caused a breakout. Next time it could be something that puts them in real danger. All you have to do,’ Chloe said, ‘is search the DVLA database for their father and mother. A quick peek. In and out.’

‘Suppose they don’t have driving licences?’

‘There was a photo of the front of the house, with two cars in the drive.’

‘Just one quick look.’

‘You’re a star. Just one other thing—’

‘Just the one thing, Chloe. Otherwise I might find myself having to answer some hard questions.’

‘This isn’t about the DVLA. I’m wondering how Fahad got hold of an artefact. I’ve already checked the emigration lottery winner lists, no luck there. So I thought,’ Chloe said, ‘you could ask your old university pal David, over in the Foreign Office, if he could check the lists of shuttle passengers whose tickets were bought by companies and governments. See if Professor Chauhan was sent up and out by his employers.’