Summerland

5 A DAY AT THE SUMMER COURT, 9TH NOVEMBER 1938

When Peter Bloom awoke the next day, his house in Undermay in the Summer City had forgotten what it was supposed to be.

When he opened his eyes, he lay naked on the floor of a bare, twilit room with rough sandstone walls covered in chalk symbols and dark rusty stains. It looked like a torture chamber. The air smelled of sharp sooty smoke.

Peter swore. He must have fallen asleep, and the house had taken advantage of his slumber to revert to its previous existence.

Like everything permanent in Summerland, the house was made of souls. Each one of its bricks was a luz stone, an adamantine kernel that remained when a soul fully Faded and thought and memory were gone. Millennia ago, the Old Dead—the eschatologists’ name for the lost civilisation preceding the modern era—had gathered them and used them to create the Summer City. Then the ancient builders had disappeared. After the invention of the ectophone opened the afterlife for exploration at the turn of the century, England’s dead had arrived. Aethertects had reshaped the city, including Peter’s house, which had become a Victorian residence fit for a gentleman. But the bricks retained other memories, too, and if you didn’t show them who was the master, they leaked out.

Peter felt hollow and weak. He had been so depleted of vim that he had fallen into a brief torpor, allowing the house to run out of control. But why? With sudden horror, he realised his memories of the previous day were sparse, the first sign of Fading. He knew he had gone to Madrid. But had he learned key information he had already forgotten?

Fortunately, the Fountain was still in its place: a lamp-like stand with a brass nozzle surrounded by dials, connected to the wall by a tube. He turned a dial. Bright vim poured out, expanding into a sphere the size of a candle flame that lit up the room and radiated warmth.

Peter cupped his hands and a tendril of the liquid light flowed out of the bright sphere and into them. He drank it, and his thoughts turned its un-taste into honeyed porridge. As the distilled life essence filled him, his memory gradually returned, like photographs being developed. He ran through the previous day in his mind, and was relieved to find there were no gaps.

Tired from meeting Inez, he had nevertheless forced himself to write his usual two reports, one to his handler George in cipher, and one to C, the Chief, at the Summer Court. Usually, the two documents were identical, but Dzhugashvili’s presence in Spain warranted consulting with George before sending the report to C.

Peter had tried to thought-travel to one of their dead drops—a battery-powered ectophone for recording messages—but had found the beacon inactive. That was not unusual: the ectophone batteries lasted less than a week and had to be manually replaced. However, the beacons for the two fallback phones were dark as well. George had to be out of the country, and his operatives had neglected to maintain the dead drops. Completely drained by the thought-travel attempts, Peter had no choice but to ectomail his report to C uncensored. A reply arrived almost immediately by spirit courier, requesting his presence at 9 a.m. sharp. In death, the old spymaster never slept—unlike Peter, who had been overcome by his exertions.

Fully awake and filled with the luminescent power of the vim, Peter hurled a thought at the rough-hewn walls. The torture chamber wavered as if giving an embarrassed shrug and was replaced by a pleasant room with white wallpaper, a soft tan carpet and a curtained window. It was small and bare, modelled after his old rooms at Cambridge, with little in the way of personal items except for his ledger-sized diary on a writing desk, closed with a soul lock that only his own luz could open.

In a way, he felt sorry for the house, forced to wear a mask. What did it really matter what it looked like, when ultimately all was aether and souls? For decades, physicists had known that even what the living thought of as solid matter was only knotted vortices in the aether. In the four dimensions of Summerland, any knot could be undone, and thus a spirit could reshape reality with a thought—but maintaining any given configuration took energy.

The small aetheric clock on the desk showed 8.10 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. He could still make it to the Summer Court by 9 a.m.

He glanced at the hypermirror, a tall, silver-framed prism of polished luz that was his only other piece of furniture. A hyperlight reflection provided a three-dimensional image that could be studied from all sides. Inside the prism, there was a serious-looking naked boy of perhaps eleven years old, dark-haired, round-faced, with striking silver-grey eyes.

He stared at the image and concentrated. The boy grew up in an instant and became a young man with a more rounded paunch than he would have liked, a widow’s peak in his dark hair, and a thoughtful expression. Peter shaped himself clothes from the aether, a charcoal pinstriped suit, Oxford shoes, a tie in Trinity colours and a golden watch chain. With a flick of his wrist, he completed his wardrobe with a hat and a raincoat. Satisfied, he headed for the door and stepped on something hard and angular.

Thought-chaff had accumulated on the floor during his sleep. It could be dangerous to dream in Summerland, where the pliable aether might give your nightmares form. This time, the things his subconscious mind had birthed looked harmless enough: an abstract, spiralling ribbon, a few dead white-winged moths and a toy soldier.

On impulse, he picked the soldier up. It was crudely cast tin but lovingly painted in khaki and green. He put it in his pocket. It could sit on his desk at work, until it Faded away.

* * *

Rows of marble facades blushed pink in Summerland’s unchanging twilight glow as Peter walked down Ear Street.

The aethertects had done their jobs well. The Summer City housed millions of New Dead with Tickets in surroundings designed to evoke the best of what the British Empire had to offer, spun from aether and made solid by collective belief. When Peter first moved to Undermay, he could have mistaken the borough for Mayfair, if not for the lack of birdsong and the absence of nights and days.

Yet the longer you lived in Summerland, the stranger things became. Your hypersight grew more acute, and little by little, you developed an awareness of two additional directions that were invisible to the living.

One was the ana direction, or four-up. Towards ana lay the world of the living, in its own thin slice of the aether. It was the direction of the Unseen, the mysterious source of hyperlight and souls. Luz stones fell from ana, lodged themselves in dense aetheric configurations like brains at birth.

Upon death, the luz detached and fell below the plane of the living world in the kata direction—the equivalent of down in the fourth dimension. The soul-stone took the person’s memories with it to Summerland like mud stuck in the roots of an uprooted tree. It was only Fading that shed them away until only the luz remained.

Peter often wondered how most spirits were able to simply ignore the infinite kata beneath them. Even now, as he walked through the small but perfectly groomed Adelphi Park towards the fourtube station at the corner of Fortress Road and Echoes, he felt as if he were crossing a theatre set made of papier mâché, something he could rupture with one sharp poke.

Much like what would happen to his entire existence, if he made a single misstep with C.

It was peak commuting time. The fourtube stop was crowded, mostly affluent New Dead who worked in the ana-higher levels of the city. Some of the besuited men had been deceased long enough to have given up walking, moving instead in a peculiar gliding motion, polished shoes barely touching the cobblestones.

Peter took the steps down to the station and joined the orderly queue on the circular platform encircling the dome-shaped tunnel head. The fourtube car arrived—a large crystal hemisphere that shimmered into existence. Peter filed in with the rest of the commuters, grasped a bar fixed to the ceiling and held on tight as the vessel shot in the ana direction.

Thought-travel would have been faster, but public transport was a good way to conserve vim, and the hypersight views through the crystal gave you a glimpse of the four-dimensional nature of the city. In the fourth direction, buildings were stacked on top of each other like layers in a wedding cake. The attics and purely decorative chimneys merged with the basements of the adjacent ana or kata level, or kissed each other’s walls or roofs in Escher-ian angles. Not for the first time, Peter thought it resembled a honeycomb.

He glanced at the impassive faces of the commuters, who opened their newspapers with the rustle of dead insect wings. What would Inez think of this bourgeois afterlife, where the dead still repeated the routines of life like reanimated worker bees? Perhaps she would realise that her very struggle for something greater than herself was itself a kind of Heaven. As the train climbed ana-wards and the light of the Unseen brightened, Peter found himself fervently wishing that he would not have to take that away from her.

* * *

Peter got off at the Albert Park stop on the ana end of Fortress Road, a short walk from his destination.

The Summer Court headquarters was modelled after Blenheim Palace, its counterpart in the living world—a sprawling Baroque-style building with severe towering stone belvederes ornamenting the skyline. It housed thousands of spirits whose tasks ranged from agent-running, logistics and archiving to compiling and analysing signals intelligence, as well as providing secure communications for Her Majesty’s armed forces. Walking briskly towards it, Peter ran through the report in his mind one more time.

A Russian dissident wanting to take over the Spanish Republic. A source close to him. A likely aggressive response from the Soviets to the ectotank deployment. He could not escape the feeling that he had made a mistake, that C suspected something.

Peter ascended the broad stairs of the main entrance, and suddenly the distinctly Summerland character of the Summer Court became clear. It had too many walls and corners at impossible angles, and occasionally the entire building bent and wavered, mirage-like. The Court was a hypercube, with soul-stone walls protecting its secrets from all sides, even in ana and kata.

He signed the entrance book with an imprint of his luz and waited until an attendant spirit arrived to lead him to C’s office on the sixth ana floor. Even a Section head like Peter needed a guide. The building’s aethertecture was constantly changed to eliminate any fixed points that could be used for unauthorised thought-travel, resulting in a warren of corridors, passageways and mezzanines, hypermirrors and blind corners. It was like wandering through an optical illusion.

Peter’s anxiety grew as they approached C’s office. He tried to cling to the fact that none of the security measures were enough to protect the Court from within. But as he ascended the kaleidoscopic flights of stairs that occasionally took one sideways, kata-or ana-wards, his usual sense of superiority eluded him.

* * *

When Peter entered C’s office, at first he saw only the man’s silhouette, dominated by the jutting chin outlined against the blinding light of the Unseen from the window.

‘Bloom. Come in.’

Peter sat in the chair in front of the large desk. It took a few seconds to adjust to the light and he kept his face impassive. The Chief liked to have a moment to assess each visitor.

C turned and bent his round head with its thinning coppery hair over the paperwork on the desk and proceeded to ignore Peter for several minutes. Occasionally, his fine bow of a mouth twitched slightly, but whether in pleasure or displeasure, Peter could not tell. Soul-reading was only possible with the living or newly deceased spirits who had not yet mastered aether-weaving.

Finally, C leaned back in his chair and lifted a horn-rimmed monocle to his right eye, which was then magnified to ridiculous proportions. Yet the cyclopean stare was so piercing that an involuntary laugh died on Peter’s lips.

‘Well?’ C said.

‘Sir?’

C said nothing. Peter cleared his throat.

‘Sir, I thought you asked me here to discuss my report.’

‘No.’ C shook his head sharply and the monocle fell from his eye. Somehow, the pinched stare of his normal-sized eyes was even more intense.

‘No?’

‘No, I asked you here because I am going to need a new head of the Iberian Section.’ C’s mouth twitched again. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

Peter’s luz became a cold, dead lump in his chest. In the back of his mind, George’s voice whispered the litany for the moment of being exposed. Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter-allegations.

He straightened his back and looked at the Chief.

‘Sir, I am aware that the Section has faced some challenges recently and I take full responsibility. However, I do believe that the recruitment of CARRASCOS–’ the code name Peter had assigned to Inez ‘–was a breakthrough, and—’

‘Yes, I agree.’

‘You agree with what, sir?’

‘That it was a breakthrough. That is why I need your recommendation for a new Section head.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘My dear boy, it is very simple. Starting from now, you will be too busy to manage your Section. Your new job is in the recently formed Special Committee for the Iberian Problem. You are going to help me convince the prime minister that we need this Djugashvili chap to take over Spain.’

Convince the prime minister.

This time, Peter nearly lost control over his aetheric self. Suddenly, the hands resting on his pinstriped knees were a small boy’s, sticking out from oversized sleeves. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on his self-image. Something pressed painfully against his thigh in his pocket, and he remembered the toy soldier.

‘Bloom? Are you all right?’

He took a deep breath. ‘I’m quite all right, sir. Just … surprised.’

‘I can send for some vim if you want.’

Peter shook his head. C steepled his fingers and looked at him.

‘Bloom, I was expecting a slightly different reaction from you.’

‘Sir … I am honoured. Truly, I am. It’s just that … Sir, as you saw from my report, BRIAR moved too quickly with CARRASCOS, and it was through pure luck that I was able to find something that resonated with her. My recommendation would be to spend more time developing her before involving her in a major operation. And with all due respect, sir, right now I am best qualified to do that.’

Besides the overflowing paperwork, there were a number of small glass vials containing coloured liquids in a wooden rack on the edge of C’s desk. Supposedly, they were mementos of the invisible inks that the SIS had relied upon in the living world, in the days before the Summer Court. C picked one up and examined it carefully.

‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that one of the best inks we had early on was semen?’ The Chief smiled wryly. ‘No, really. It worked quite well, and the operator had, ah, a reliable supply. One of our lads in Russia tried to store it up in advance, and his letters stank to high heaven. We had to tell him that a fresh supply was needed for each communication. You may laugh, but I always thought it was rather poetic. Our soldiers bleed, but how many times are we asked to give that particular bodily fluid for Her Majesty? You never served, did you, Bloom?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then you may not fully understand the sacrifices we are sometimes asked to make.’

C leaned back and massaged his left leg absently. The Chief had passed over in a horrific car accident that also cost the life of his son—who hadn’t possessed a Ticket. C’s mangled leg had been stuck in the wreckage. He sawed it off with a penknife and crawled to the boy. Their bodies were found together, the father holding the son.

C had been back at work a month later.

‘I will be candid with you, Bloom. Your Section could have done its job more effectively, and we have a bloody mess on our hands. The Admiralty is baying for war. This is going to get worse before it gets better. The PM explicitly said he wants first-hand information, so your number’s up. We have some very difficult things to tell him. If hearing them from you makes it easier to stop a war, you will show up and talk until your face turns blue. BRIAR can handle your new source. Is that understood?’

Peter swallowed. ‘Yes, sir.’

C’s gruff voice was gentler this time. ‘You’ll do, Bloom,’ he said. ‘You’ll do.’

* * *

Peter left C’s office in a daze. His own office was on the fourth ana floor. He made his way through the Polish and Italian Sections and past the entrance to the Chimney—a luz tower that reached all the way to the aether of the living world and allowed you to make secure ectophone calls to Whitehall and Blenheim without leaving the confines of the Summer Court.

He closed the door, sat down at his desk and leaned back. Notes and diagrams for the Spanish operation, written in aether itself with a thought, floated everywhere like cobwebs. Inez’s picture from BRIAR was at the centre of it all, and if possible, her gaze looked even fiercer than he remembered. In frustration, Peter waved a hand. The rows of neat white writing, lines and boxes wavered and evaporated like smoke.

In theory, he should have been delighted. He would have unprecedented access to the highest levels of power in the Empire at a critical time when he could be extremely valuable to the Presence’s cause. George would be overjoyed.

So why was he utterly and completely terrified?

Peter took the tin soldier from his pocket and set it on his desk. It looked at him expectantly, rough, fingerless hands gripping the rifle. He remembered a game played on his parents’ living room floor a long time ago, a round-bellied man setting up armies of tiny troops, crawling on all fours, a red-faced Gulliver hovering over a Lilliputian nation.

The prime minister.

Suddenly, he felt the tight luz grip of the Summer Court’s walls all around him like a vice. He was supposed to work—C had told him to prepare an overview for the PM in two days’ time—but it was impossible to concentrate.

George. He had to see George. His handler must be told about Djugashvili and the opportunity. It was more than enough grounds for a face-to-face meeting in the world of the living.

For a moment, he even managed to convince himself that was the real reason he wanted to see George.

Peter took his coat and hat and headed back out.

* * *

Once he was safely outside the Court and on the wide walking avenue through the resplendent green of Albert Park, amber-tinted in the unchanging Unseen light, he considered his options. It was nearly a month before their next meeting was due. He would have to use the protocol for an emergency meeting, something he had never done before. George had emphasised that it was to be employed only for the gravest of reasons.

Peter concentrated, pictured a statue of a lion at the end of Fortress Road and thought-travelled.

Albert Park blurred into an orange haze as the image of the lion pulled him through the aether. Or perhaps he stayed still and the aether flowed around him and through him like cold water, taking vim with it until the distinction between the vision and reality disappeared.

Peter stood between the forepaws of a marble lion statue. He turned around, and in front of him loomed the enormous black half-pearl of the Fortress, the oldest structure in the city. The Fortress dwarfed all the fanciful aethertect creations near Albert Park. Its dark, hemispherical mass was present in all the levels of the city. There had been proposals to dismantle the ancient structure and use its uncountable luz stones elsewhere, but so far the Empire’s scientists had been unable to unravel the lost aetheric arts used to build it millennia ago.

A small crowd was gathered in the square. The Fortress attracted visitors, especially the newly dead taking in the sights of the city. Peter passed groups of deceased children whose undisciplined soul-sparks blazed with wonder and terror, and raucous soldiers whose aetheric bodies openly flaunted the horrific injuries that had ended their lives. He followed the rim of the Fortress until he found the Listener.

The Listener was a pale man who had Faded to the point where his luz was a bright star in his chest and his face was barely visible. He ran grey, smokelike fingers along the black tiles of the curving wall and whispered faintly to himself, echoing the inaudible whispers of the ancient soul-stones. His hat lay on the ground. A handful of luz shillings and pence gleamed inside it.

Peter gave him a look of genuine pity. Although in theory the National Death Service guaranteed a minimum supply of vim and accommodation in the ever-expanding Summer City to anyone with a Ticket, occasionally premature Fading meant that a spirit simply forgot to be a part of the system any longer. It was an unpredictable process. Many Faded retained a single memory or an obsession that defined their entire existence.

‘The old soul-stones speak,’ the Listener said in a reed-thin voice. ‘They tell your past and your future. One vim shilling to find out.’

Peter smiled and shook his head. ‘No, thank you. I prefer to find out the old-fashioned way.’

Peter wondered if the man truly served the Presence, or if he was an intermediary for another agent. Was the Listening simply an act, or had he sacrificed his memories, his very self, for the cause? Yet there was something familiar in the Listener’s utter dedication to things others could not see or hear.

Using a simple code agreed with George, Peter measured out the desired date of their meeting—tomorrow—in luz coins. As the bright discs clinked into the hat, the weight on his shoulders vanished.

His handler would know what to do.

The Listener ignored him and returned to his work. Peter walked on until he found a section of the wall with no one nearby. Then he pressed his ear against the smooth, cold surface, closed his eyes and listened.