The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

Girl in Pieces by Graham Edwards

I was changing the filter on the coffee machine when two tons of wet clay crashed through my office door. The clay was wearing a yellow municipal jacket and dragging a garbage can. The clay was eight feet tall and bright like a Satsuma. The clay was a golem.

"I thought you apes took the garbage out," I said, clipping the coffee filter back.

"You a private detective?" said the golem.

"That's what it says on the door."

"You gotta help me." The golem held up the hand that wasn't holding the garbage can. It was holding a blood-streaked axe.

Rain gusted in, driving flecks of orange clay off the golem's legs. The carpet round his feet went dark.

"Don't they give you waterproofs?" I said.

"There ain't enough to go round. You gotta fight for them. Little guys like me-we don't stand a chance."

I started backing up: I don't like golems. "I'll take your word for it. Now, say your piece and get out."

"But you gotta help me."

"No, I don't."

"But I got no place else to go."

I'd backed up to the filing cabinet. I reached round and pulled open the second drawer. Rummaging blind, I found what I was looking for. I yanked it out and aimed it at the golem.

"What's that?" said the golem. The clay of his brow sagged to make a frown.

"Water pistol," I said.

"You what?"

"Don't be fooled by the size. The cops use these for crowd control. The clip's got a wormhole feed from the Styx. I pull this trigger, it unloads sixteen tons of river water in about three seconds."

"Won't that make a mess on your carpet?"

"That mess will be you, pal. Now get out of my office before I turn you in."

The golem stood there, still frowning. The rain poured through the door.

I heard police sirens.

The golem brought the axe handle down on the garbage can lid. The can rang like a gong. "They found me!"

I flipped the safety off the water pistol.

The golem's gigantic head swung from side to side as he searched for an escape route. The cop cars rounded the intersection, sirens screaming.

My finger tightened on the trigger.

And that's when the golem dropped to his knees.

"Please, mister! I ain't done nothing wrong. I know what you people think of us golems. But I ain't like the others. You gotta believe me. You're my last chance. Someone done a terrible wrong and the cops think it's me, but it ain't. And if they take me away, whoever done it… they'll get clean away. And that ain't right. That ain't right at all. So, you see, you gotta help. You gotta find out who done it. You gotta put it right. And if you won't do it for me, you gotta do it for her!"

The golem stood up again. He flicked the lid off the garbage can. It crossed the room like a frisbee. Then the golem picked up the can and emptied its contents on the floor.

A girl came out. She was in pieces: sliced arms and diced legs, chunks of muscle and slops of gore that might have been lungs or liver or lights; spears of white bone like blank signposts poking out of the whole hideous mess. Handfuls of soft pale flesh slimed with crimson. Worst of all: a pretty face, unmarked except around its ragged edge, floating in a lake of blood.

I put my hand to my mouth. I'm no pussy when it comes to dead bodies, but this was messier than autopsy school.

Outside, six cop cars pulled up with screeching tyres.

The golem looked down at the girl's remains. At first I thought his face was melting. Then I saw he was crying.

Each cop car pumped four armed officers into the rain.

And, so help me, I put the water pistol down.

"Shut the door," I said.

"What?"

"You heard me."

The cops had drawn their weapons. They looked a lot nastier than my water pistol. The golem kicked the door shut with a heel the size of a labrador.

"Deadlocks!" I said.

The door obeyed. The room shook as the singularity bolts engaged.

"Will that keep them out?" said the golem.

"Not for ever," I replied. "Just long enough."

"Long enough for what?"

"For you to put down that axe and tell me what the hell is going on."

"I guess you don't like golems. Not many folks do. But we ain't all the same. There's different moulds."

The golem rocked from one foot to the other, twisting his muddy hands like a schoolgirl. His vast bulk obscured the mess on the carpet. That was no bad thing.

"Last time I ran into a golem," I said, "he grabbed my ankles and held me upside down over a cloud of toxic gas. Any wonder I'm cagey?"

"Lots of golems are like that. Bad clay. I should know-I have to work with them every day."

It figured. The yellow jacket and the garbage can were a giveaway: this golem was a municipal refuse collector. Garbage golems are dangerous like unstable cliffs: they're fine if you keep clear; get too close-they'll bury you. Literally.

"So what's different about you?"

"I got a name."

"A name?"

"It's Byron."

"Golems don't have names. They have numbers."

"I got something else too."

"What?"

"I got a soul."

A word about golems.

First, golems aren't born-they're manufactured, like crockery. Most anyone can knock up a golem: you just take a couple of tons of river silt and compress it into a mould. Then you scribble out a chunk of Hebrew binary code on a square of parchment and bury it in the golem's chest. Bingo: instant walking mountain. Golems are grumpy, slow-witted, and obedient. They have phenomenal memories and no conscience at all. They're ultra-loyal and ultra-violent in equal measure. They make great bodyguards and even better tax collectors.

But underneath they're just machines. Wet machines, but machines all the same.

So when a golem tells you he's got a soul, it's kind of hard to take.

Now, you ask a hundred different folk what a soul is, you get a hundred different answers. But there's one thing everyone agrees on: whatever a soul is, it's what a golem ain't got.

Except here's this golem, big as life, says he's just like me. Bigger collar size maybe. Thing is, if this golem thinks he's different, maybe they'll all start thinking they're different. Thinking they don't want to do the crappy jobs any more. Thinking they've got rights. Who knows-maybe they do.

But if all the golems in the city start thinking that… that's a whole heap of angry clay to have on the loose.

I stood at the window and watched the cops pile sandbags in the rain. I'd silvered the glass so they couldn't see in.

"Let's forget the soul thing for now," I said. "Tell me about the garbage can. Tell me about the girl."

The golem-it was hard for me to think of him as

Byron-sat on the couch. The couch broke. "I was on the morning shift. Down on the east side-you know, those old tenements?"

I nodded. I knew that part of town pretty well. Even the daylight keeps its distance. The tenements are old and mostly ruined. Some have fallen right over, but it doesn't stop folk living in them. Even the ones still boarded up from last year's plague.

"I didn't think the city bothered collecting garbage from the east side."

"We do it once a year. Looks good on the annual report."

"Figures."

"So there I was, collecting garbage, dragging it back to the truck. I like to go out ahead. The other golems stick together but I… well, I guess I'm a loner. So, I get to this big old brownstone. It's a dive, but there's still a garbage can out front. Funny-even trash throws out the trash." Byron paused. With one massive hand he smoothed his cheeks where the tears had melted them. The golem equivalent of drying his eyes. "So I pick up the can. Only I'm clumsy and the lid comes off. That's when I see what's inside."

"The girl? In pieces?"

"The girl in pieces, right. And the axe lying on top. All at once I'm scared. I dunno what to do. I pick up the axe-dunno why. Then the garbage truck is there, and there's the other golems. They ask me what's wrong. That's when I realise I've been standing there a couple of minutes, just frozen."

"What happened next?"

"Four-Oh-Seven-One-he's shift supervisor-he looks at the axe. Then he looks in the garbage can. He says, "What did you do to her, you freak?" Then they all back off and Two-Two-Eight-Six says, "I'm calling the cops!" and that's when I ran."

"Why run if you didn't do anything?"

"I dunno. I panicked. Anyway, I just ran."

"Why didn't you drop the garbage can? Or the axe, for that matter?"

"It's evidence, ain't it? I need it to prove my innocence."

I looked out at the cops. They'd finished piling the sandbags; now they were hunkered down, waiting. I looked at Byron the golem sitting forlorn in the wreckage of my couch. Whichever way you sliced it, this was a doozy of a mess. Best thing I could do was open the door and let the cops do their thing.

I poured myself another coffee.

I forced myself to look at the girl's torn-up remains.

"This tenement on the east side," I said. "Where was it exactly?"

" Crucifix Lane. Does this mean you believe me? You're gonna help?"

"Don't get excited. I'm just curious. I think you and me should take a little stroll."

"But how are we gonna get out? We'll never get past the cops."

"The front door isn't the only door."

Byron looked at the four blank walls. He scratched his crotch. There was a lot of clay down there.

"You got a back door?"

Everyone knows there's eleven dimensions. Most places you go, you only see three or four. Maybe five if it's late and the bar's still open. But there's some places where the dimensions… well, they get kind of crowded up together.

Think of a ball of yarn. However neat it looks, you start unravelling it, sooner or later you'll get a knot. Yarn gets snarled up-it's in its nature. Same with dimensions.

Take this city. It was built right on top of one mother of a cosmic knot. Mostly it looks like a city, but underneath it's got way too many dimensions for its own good. That's why it works the way it does. It's why the cops are all zombies and all the big crime lords are Titans. It's why time runs slower uptown than downtown and the mayor is a gangster-turned-goddess called Pallas Athene. It's why the skies are full of thunderbirds and the sewers have minds of their own. It's why nothing makes sense but everything hangs together. This city's like a knot all right, a knot in the middle of a great spider's web. Only the web's not made of silk, it's made of cosmic string. And whenever the string vibrates it sends all these echoes down into the web, into the knot, into this city. That's what this city is: it's all the sounds of the cosmos, all rolled into one.

Leastways, that's what it says on the tourist leaflet. Me, I just call it home.

The thing is, you also get knots within knots. Something to do with fractals-don't ask me, ask Mandelbrot. Which means that some places in this city get more tangled up than others. This block, for instance. Specifically, this office. This office is just full of dimensions.

And where you get lots of dimensions, you get lots of doors.

Behind the bookcase there's a trapdoor. I pulled it open and shoved Byron down the cellar steps.

"You got a secret passage?" said the golem. He sounded like a small child with a large voice.

"Eighty-nine of them," I replied, "at the last count."

"It's dark. I don't like the dark."

"Stay there while I get my coat."

I went back up the stairs, grabbed my coat from the hook. I glanced outside and saw two unmarked automobiles scuttle up behind the barricade. Unlike the regular wheeled cop cars, these were the walking variety.

The first auto was a plain brown rust-bucket with stiff steel legs and a lamp hanging off. A wide-shouldered zombie climbed out of it holding a bull-roarer. A negotiator. So, as far as the cops were concerned, this was a siege.

The second was a Cadillac. It wasn't plain and it wasn't brown. It kissed the far kerb on expensive millipede feet. It was sleek as a whale and at least as big. A car for a giant. The screens were mirrored but the driver's window was open a crack. Through the crack, a pair of huge pink eyes stared right at me.

The zombie negotiator lifted the bull-roarer to what was left of his lips.

"SEND OUT THE MACERATOR! WE KNOW HE'S IN THERE! JUST CO-OPERATE AND YOU'LL BE FREE TO GO!"

Free to go. Right. Like I'd believe someone who has to hold his guts in with gaffer tape.

All the same: the Macerator. It explained why the cops were so keen to collar the golem.

This city's seen its share of serial killers: Josey Doe, Doctor Eviscerate, the Scalpish Brothers. But they all had short careers. Serial killers get caught pretty quick here: zombies might suck at deduction (their brains are mostly soup) but they're hot on homicide forensics. Show a zombie a corpse, the first thing he does is sniff it. Next, he gives you the name and address of the killer.

But they couldn't catch the Macerator.

The first Macerator killing showed up behind the railhead last year. A male of debatable race was found spread over roughly three square miles of open ground. Since then, the Macerator's struck twenty more times. Each time the victim resembles casserole. And, no matter how much they sniff, the cops are in the dark.

I thought again about turning Byron in. Maybe the golem's story was candyfloss-maybe he was the Macerator. But golems only kill if they're programmed to. Which raised the question: Who wrote Byron's code?

I shook my head. Detective or not, I'm not much better at deduction than your average zombie cop.

Difference is, I play a mean hunch.

I turned my coat inside-out three times until it was made of rubber and used it to scoop the remains of the girl back in the garbage can. I've done messier work, but nothing so pitiful. The worst part was picking up that peeled face. Her dead eyes looked like eggs. And it felt like they were watching me.

Soon there was nothing left but a crimson stain on the carpet. It's got a lot of stains, that carpet, and each one's got a story to tell.

I turned my blood-splattered coat inside-out five times until it was clean, then once more so it was back to moleskin. Then I hauled the garbage can down the cellar steps and took Byron's hand.

"It's still dark," he said. "What's that you dragged down here?"

"Never mind," I said. "Hold tight, big fella."

I squeezed the clay of Byron's hand until it squished between my fingers. Then I teased open a local spatial anomaly, rolled the golem into a ball the size of a tangerine and dropped him in my pocket. I made an origami scarf of the garbage can and threw it round my neck. Then I picked myself up, folded myself in half, and posted myself through the gap between the furnace and the coal chute.

There were the usual howls as I sliced my way through a pack of boundary wolves (you fold yourself in half, you get a sharp edge) but I soon left them behind. Boundary wolves think they're the protectors of the cosmos but they're just dumb animals. Soon I was between the strings. Time stopped for everything but me and for an instant-just an instant-I heard the distant silence of the still point.

"Jimmy," I whispered. "Are you there?"

Then the boundary was rushing at me again. I cut through another wolf-pack and slipped sideways through a fresh crack in reality's wall, all the while with a golem in my pocket and a girl in pieces round my neck.

I landed with a crash on a dust-covered floor and smelt rat droppings.

Why have you entered my domain?

The voice came from the corner. It wasn't a room, just a dark place with corners. The corners moved. The voice bounced off a ceiling that wasn't a ceiling, just something soft and unspeakable hanging over our heads. The words were punctuated by wet thuds. Something dripping that sounded like jelly, but wasn't.

"I need a favour," I said into the darkness. Beside me, Byron trembled like a sack of plaster.

Favour? Who are you that I owe you a favour?

"Last summer, remember? The missing kid? Pornographic ransom notes and severed fingers in the mail? Cops thought it was you. I convinced them it wasn't."

Ah, that favour. Tell me, was the poor little dear where I said he would be?

"You know he was. Funny how you knew where to find all the pieces."

I explained that at the time. I am not a killer. I am simply… attuned to those who kill.

"Yeah, I know."

You shudder?

"A creep's a creep, innocent or not."

Is it with such flattery that you seek a favour? I should turn you from here with your skin burned off and your tongue split in two!

I felt Byron's clammy breath on my ear.

"What is this place," he whispered. "Who're you talking to?"

"Her name is… " I began. Then I addressed the voice. "Say, why don't you introduce yourself?"

The dark place got brighter. I saw the ceiling and wished I hadn't: it was made of rat-tails all woven together. Most still had the rats attached. It was like some crazy rodent jigsaw: tails strangling necks, tails plaited with drawn intestines, tails threaded through empty eye sockets. The mutilated rats dripped blood and pus on the dusty floor. And they squirmed.

A hunched figure stepped into the light. She was gaunt and yellow, wrapped in red rags. Filthy hair made syrupy trails down her sunken chest. She grinned and cackled, showing black crone's teeth; her breath was so rotten it ran down her chin like blackberry juice.

She scratched her cheek with nails like sewing needles.

Greetings. My name is Arachne.

The golem took a step forward. "Uh, pleased to meet you, Arachne. My name's Byron." Then, so help me, he stuck out his hand.

"Let's not waste time," I said, stepping in front of him. "Arachne, there's something I need you to do." Glancing at Byron, I hissed, "Don't let her touch you."

"Why not?" said Byron.

"Venom."

Very well, said Arachne. Call in your favour and begone! Your company is already tiresome. Although, I am curious… this man of clay… does he grow hard when fired?

I dragged the garbage can forward. Arachne stretched her scrawny neck and peered inside.

Dead already. So sad. If she still breathed, I might help you find her killer. But you have left it too late.

"No," I said. "There's something you can do. You know that."

Arachne's face turned black with surprise. She ran needle-claws through lank hair; giant fleas jumped like field-mice before the scythe.

I am a weaver of silk, not miracles.

"You telling me you can't do it?"

I did not say that. But if I do what you ask, it is you who will owe me a favour.

I thought about it. Arachne's not someone you want to be in debt to. On the other hand, she tends to stay home. I figured so long as I kept my distance, I'd never have to make good on the promise.

Of course, it didn't quite work out like that.

"All right," I said. "Do this and I'll owe you one."

"Do what?" said Byron.

"So what's her story?" whispered Byron. "She gives me the creeps."

We'd retreated to a safe corner. Well, as safe as any corners are in Arachne's domain.

"Dirty tricks in the underwear underworld," I said. "Arachne used to run an illegal pantyhose sweatshop down by the river. The sweatshop was in direct competition with the shiny new factory Pallas Athene set up in the Diana's Glade Business Park. Now, as you know, Pallas Athene used to be queen of black market lingerie before she turned respectable and became mayor. These days, all PA's businesses are strictly legit. But Arachne never cleaned up her act. So, anyway, story goes Arachne was trying to undercut Pallas Athene on this wholesale lingerie deal. PA caught Arachne in the middle of the night handing over a truckload of bootleg silk teddies under the Green Knight Bridge. Now, PA might look like a doll and she might be mayor but she's got one hell of a temper. There's not many cross her and live to tell the tale. Arachne's one of the few."

"What did Pallas Athene do?"

"Turned Arachne into a spider, banished her into a self-reticulating semi-dimensional oubliette and revoked her weaver's licence."

"But… she don't look like a spider."

"That's just the oubliette at work. As long we're here our perceptions are regulated by Arachne's personal reality grid. Arachne is a spider but she still thinks of herself as a woman. So that's what we see."

Byron shuddered. "Don't like spiders."

"Who does?"

Arachne was waving her hands over the top of the garbage can. Her hands moved fast; as they moved, those needle-claws got longer. Soon the needles were longer than the fingers that held them.

Arachne plunged her hands in the garbage can. Her shoulders worked like pistons. Blood sprayed from the can, painting her face. Arachne's claws knitted the air with streaks of silver light; she looked like a crazed washer-woman up to her elbows in some ghastly laundry basket. The garbage can sang like a steel band. And all the while the patchwork rats looked down with sad eyes, because they knew exactly what was going on.

At last it was over. Arachne pulled her arms out. Her needle-claws were back to normal. Her arms were as red as the rags she wore. Her chin was black with condensed breath.

And the garbage can was shaking.

I took a cautious step towards the can. This time it was Byron who held me back.

"Don't wanna see," he whimpered.

Arachne lifted one scrawny leg and kicked the garbage can over. For the second time that day, the girl spilled out. Only this time she was all in one piece. Above my head, all the rats sighed in unison. Behind me, I heard a colossal thump as Byron fainted.

I had to admit, Arachne had done a beautiful job. Everything was in place, and the girl was a real peach: long legs and a tiny waist, and everything else responding nicely to gravity as she picked herself up. Not a drop of blood on her. Trouble was, good though the needlework was, you could see all the joins.

Eleven thousand, three hundred and ninety-five discrete pieces, said Arachne. A triumph, even for me.

I wondered if the girl would see it that way. It's one thing coming back from the dead. It's another finding you look like a patchwork quilt. I wondered if I'd done the right thing.

"I'm alive," said the girl. She held up her arm, examined the red, cross-stitched scars. She looked down at the rest of her naked body. It looked like a road atlas, each highway drawn in herringbone weave. "That's pretty neat," she said. "I always figured I'd get tattoos one day. A girl like me can earn ten times as much with tattoos. I just hate needles. But now it's done, and I didn't feel a thing. How cool is that?"

I shrugged off my coat, threw it round the girl's shoulders. Pretty as she was, I couldn't bear looking at those scars. At least on her face there was just the one-even if it did run all the way round the edge.

I kicked Byron until he woke up. When he saw the girl he nearly fainted again.

"Time to go, big fella," I said.

The girl turned to Arachne and beamed. "Thanks a bunch, old woman. What do I owe you?"

Arachne smiled too, but not at the girl.

You don't owe me anything, young lady.

"Come on," I muttered, grabbing a handful of clay and a handful of needlework, "let's get out of here."

Not so fast, gumshoe.

Something slapped the back of my neck. I tried to bat it away but my hand stuck fast. I heard a scraping sound. I looked down: it was my shoes sliding across the floor.

With a glue-tipped rope of pure spider silk, Arachne reeled me in.

Three seconds later I was cocooned. Silk rigging upended me and buried my feet in the rat-tail ceiling. The rats gave way, squeaking in fury. And there I hung, blood filling up my head, watching Arachne stride towards me.

I like my debts paid promptly, she said, grinning to show her rotten teeth.

"All right." At least the cocoon didn't cover my mouth. "You got me. But let them go."

They are free to leave whenever they please.

"Uh," said Byron, "we don't know how."

"Come here," I said. Arachne watched with interest as the golem edged up to where I was hanging. "Collar pocket. There's a zipper."

Byron rummaged in my shirt and took out a grey cube the size of a craps die.

"What's this?"

"Spare dimensions. I keep them for emergencies. You got six to play with there-one per side. It's a one-shot thing though: you only get to use each side once."

"This will get us out of here?"

"Isn't that what I just said?"

"What about you?"

"I'll figure something out."

"No, I mean, how will we solve the case without you?"

"For a minute I thought you cared. Look, you got the girl back. Quiz her. Ask her what happened. Then… maybe you'll figure something out."

Byron stared at the dimension-die. It looked tiny in his huge, clay hands.

"Thanks," he said. His cheeks were going soft again. "I mean it. And I'll look after her."

"Get out of here, big fella," I said.

That's when Arachne set me spinning like a kebab. Through the blur, I saw Byron take the girl's hand. He rolled the die. There was a hollow pop and they were gone.

She let me spin long enough so I threw up. Trust me, when you're upside down, vomit lingers.

How does it feel to be a prisoner? Arachne said when I'd stopped spinning. I groaned. My sinuses had taken an acid bath and the whole world was doing the Peppermint Twist.

"Just… tell me… what you want," I managed to croak.

It's very simple, gumshoe. I want out of this place.

I closed my eyes. This was going to be bad.

"You know I can't do that. Only Pallas Athene can authorise your release. My hands are tied."

In case you hadn't noticed, you're all tied. But that is academic. You can do it. You know you can. And… we made a deal.

"So the only way to keep you sweet is by getting PA pissed? Where's the incentive? I'd rather cross you than her. No offence."

None taken. Nevertheless, what you are failing to recognise is that 'getting PA pissed,' as you so delicately put it, is exactly the end result I wish to achieve. It is time someone taught our so-called mayor a lesson. Pallas Athene may think she's respectable now she wears that fancy shield, but I remember when she was a snot-nosed brat burning kittens with a magnifying glass. No wonder she thought it was a step up the career ladder when she started turning tricks in the back alley of the Hyperion Casino! How she became a public servant I shall never know! All I can say is, behind that porcelain skin and regal gaze lurks the mind of a monster!

Arachne shivered, composed herself.

All of which means that I understand completely your reluctance to set yourself up in opposition to a woman even the Titans cross the street to avoid. So let me put this simply…

Arachne leaned close. The rags she wore fell away, exposing flesh like over-ripe Stilton. Instead of breasts, Arachne had a pair of twitching spinnerets. Silk oozed from them in milky strings. Crimson spider-legs dangled from her waist; they caressed her human thighs like eager schoolboys. The stench of her was unbearable.

You will use your dimensional talents to release me from my prison. In return, I will give you my protection. From your point of view, it is a calculated risk. In making your calculation, I urge you to consider the alternative.

Arachne stroked her spinnerets with her needle-claws. They spurted in unison. Clots of silk rolled down her belly like silver tumbleweeds. She squeezed the spinnerets harder and suddenly the silk was squirting into my face, my eyes. The silk crawled up my nose and into my tear ducts, scoured its way through to the skin of my brain where it latched on, and squeezed.

I felt a billion tiny spider eggs hose into my skull. I felt the eggs hatch. I felt Arachne's babies weave themselves into a living facsimile of my brain, each spiderling a synapse in the gestalt spider-mind. And every single thought the spider-mind had was a hot spear of pain. Then the spiderlings had babies, and the babies had more babies, and my brain swelled up until it was all that was left of me, and it was all made of spiders. But somewhere inside it was still me, and I was just one vast chattering web of pain.

Arachne pressed her spinnerets flat. The silk leaped back out of my head. My sinuses felt like they'd been shot-blasted. It was better when they were full of vomit. I swung there, retching. The rats gnawed at my shoes, lashing their tails in excitement.

So, said Arachne, what is it to be? Will you risk the wrath of Pallas Athene? Or will you consign yourself to being a living host for the insane children of the spider woman?

"Do I get a third option?"

Arachne gathered up her rags and stalked into the shadows.

You have ten minutes to decide.

I wished I hadn't given my coat to the girl. That coat's got teeth. As soon as Arachne's silk hit the hem, the coat would have turned it to confetti. Still, someone had to cover her up.

But thinking about the coat gave me an idea.

I closed my eyes and tried an inter-brane trance. I'm not usually good at psychic connections, but this was my coat we were talking about. We went way back, my coat and me. It had to work.

At first all I could hear was the baying of the boundary wolves, forcing me back. I tried just running for it, but I couldn't get past them-Arachne's silk straight-jacket stopped me doing the moves. I was stuck here all right, just like Arachne.

But even though my body was trapped, some piece of my mind must have slipped through. Because suddenly I could hear a familiar sound. It started faint, in the distance, then it got loud and close.

The gurgle of a coffee pot. My coffee pot.

I tried opening my eyes. But I didn't have any.

I was a coat.

I couldn't see, but I could smell…

… hot java, brewed just how I like it.

And I could touch…

… warm, soft, skin laced through with thousands of tiny ribbed carriageways. I felt a human pulse beating under pliable flesh, felt myself ride across intimate curves and bury myself in tantalising creases, felt the smooth slithering of me over a living, naked skin, which was her skin, of course: the skin of the resurrected girl.

I'm a coat, I thought.

And I was.

I let the sensations rule me. Inter-brane trances are fragile. You just have to relax. The more you immerse yourself, the stronger the link becomes. So I clung to the girl. It wasn't so bad.

And I could hear…

… their voices, Byron's and the girl's. The girl's name was Nancy. They were deep in discussion. I let my velvet lining slide over Nancy 's scarred and sensual collarbone and listened in…

"I was born on the east side," Nancy said. "I don't go back there much now. But this job came up and I knew the neighbourhood. It doesn't scare me down there, so I went."

"So what do you actually do?" said Byron.

"I work for Godiva Couriers. It's regular courier work, only I go on horseback and don't wear any clothes. I've got a licence."

"Oh. I see. Isn't that… dangerous?"

"I have several swords."

"Where do you hide them?"

"That would be telling."

"Oh. So, what happened then? When you made this delivery."

I felt Nancy shiver beneath me. "Well, I got a call to collect a package from this address on Crucifix Lane. Documents or something. The package was going all the way up to the mountain and the client wanted to make an impression. That's usually why people want to use Godiva."

"You sure do make an impression," mumbled Byron.

"Why, thank you. Anyway, I got to the address, railed my horse and knocked on the door. Nobody answered, so I pushed it open and went inside. Inside… it was odd. The building had, I don't know, maybe twelve floors. Or rather, it used to. Someone had gutted it, taken out all the floors so it was just one big space, floor to ceiling. Just a shell. It was wild, like walking into a giant's house. It was dark so I couldn't see if anyone was in there with me. So I called out. And that's when… "

"When what?"

"When something came out of the darkness and sliced me into a thousand pieces."

"Something? Or someone?"

"I don't know. But whatever it was, it was big and it had pink eyes… "

Nancy 's voice grew faint. Suddenly I couldn't feel her under me any more. I was flapping like laundry on the line. Only the line was a silk thread, reeling me in. It dragged me back between the strings, back through the boundary where the cosmic wolves howl, back to where I was hanging upside-down from a ceiling made of rats.

I had time for one thought: that golem makes a fair detective. Then I hit my body like a slam-dunk and passed out.

When I came to, Arachne was doing the spinneret thing again. I tried not to look.

"All right," I said. "I'll do it. I'll get you out of here. But on one condition."

Another bargain? Is this to be our relationship, gumshoe? An ever-escalating sequence of deals and debts? Where will it end?

"It ends here and now. This is the last deal I'll ever make with you. Take it or leave it."

Arachne closed her rags over her spinnerets and scowled.

What is it you want?

"The girl."

The spider woman changed. Suddenly she wasn't a crone any more. She straightened up and smoothed out. Got beautiful. Her rags became a tiny red dress so tight it showed her pores. She looked like a loaded gun in a crimson holster.

Well, she said, seeing my surprise, I'll need to look good if I'm going to be seen outside.

"So that's a yes?"

Arachne started unslitting the cocoon.

You know the girl won't hold together. She was butchered, gumshoe. My needlework is good, but it cannot repair her soul. Her soul is in shreds and there is nothing I can do about that. Oh, sewing her up like that is a good trick… but it is just a trick. Give the girl a day or two, and she will start to come apart at the seams. Literally.

"You think I don't know that?" I said.

I just wanted to make sure you understand the small print.

The last of the cocoon gave way. I dropped to the floor. Above me, the rat-ceiling sighed.

"I understand it," I said, massaging my arms. "So where d'you want to go?"

"Hold your fire!" I shouted. "We're coming out!"

I unlatched the singularity bolts and led them out into the rain: Byron the golem, Nancy the stitched-up courier, and Arachne. Twenty-four zombie cops trained their guns on us. The zombie with the bull-roarer said:

"PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS!"

"We're not carrying," I said.

"PUT UP YOUR HANDS!"

"No need," I said. "The girl's okay. See for yourself."

Nancy came forward. When she stepped over the cellar vent, a jet of steam briefly lifted the coat above her shoulders. One of the zombie negotiator's eyes popped out and hit the street with a splat.

"MA'AM? ER, ARE YOU THE SAME NANCY LEE DONAHUE, FORMER EMPLOYEE OF GODIVA COURIERS, WHO WAS BRUTALLY HACKED TO PIECES AND HIDDEN IN A GARBAGE CAN OUTSIDE NUMBER EIGHT-EIGHT-SEVEN CRUCIFIX LANE, EAST SIDE?"

"One and the same," said Nancy. "Say-how come you know who I am? You never exactly got a chance to ID my body."

This confused the zombie. He lowered the bull-roarer and glanced across the street. Straight at the whale-sized Cadillac. The rest of the cops looked that way too. We all looked that way.

The door of the Cadillac swung open. A pair of shapely calves came out, each as big as a man. The calves belonged to a thirty-nine-foot goddess wearing a golden cloak. Hanging from her hip was a machete the size of a small ship's rudder. Her skin was white and her eyes were pink. On her breast was a shield with a gorgon's head in the middle.

Her flower-decked crown bore the initials:

PA.

"Pallas Athene!" said Byron.

The goddess pulled the lens caps off the gorgon's eyes. Twenty-five zombies turned to stone. The rest of us were lucky: just as the gorgon's eyes came on Arachne jumped in front of us and dropped her disguise. A gigantic red spider burst out of that tiny dress like an eight-legged life-raft. It was so big it blotted out everything up to the skyline.

The spider advanced.

Pallas Athene snarled and puffed out her chest. Two of Arachne's legs had already turned to stone, but the gorgon shield was heavy and had a narrow angle of fire. Arachne was over the sandbags and ripping the shield from Pallas Athene's breast before the goddess could correct her aim. The shield landed two hundred yards down the street, facing up; seconds later it was crushed beneath a stone thunderbird with a surprised look on its face.

Then it was just a grappling match. Pallas Athene clawed Arachne's eyes-she had eight to choose from; Arachne wrapped her opponent's legs in silk and pulled them out from under her. To begin with, Pallas Athene was on top. But Arachne was mad-the kind of mad you only get from stewing in a self-reticulating semi-dimensional oubliette for seven years. She waved her spinnerets like a samurai waves his katana. Soon flowers were flying from Pallas Athene's crown. Once the goddess had dropped her machete she didn't stand a chance.

Last I saw, Arachne was headed for the docks with Pallas Athene cocooned on her back. Word is she's still down there, holed up in a derelict warehouse. One thing's for sure, she won't run short of food. When you string up a goddess by her feet and liquefy her insides, you get enough ambrosia for about a billion years.

As for me, I was just glad the debt was cleared.

Then I looked at Nancy, and remembered things weren't so good after all.

"I feel peculiar," said Nancy. She sank to her knees, clamped her hands across her belly.

"Get her inside," I said to Byron. While he picked her up, I checked the street. The petrified zombies stared through the rain like museum exhibits. The stone thunderbird tipped over and broke a wing. Nothing else moved.

"What's wrong with her?" said Byron when I got back inside. He'd laid Nancy on the carpet. She was turning blue.

"I'm fine," groaned Nancy. "What the hell was that all about? Was I really murdered by the biggest goddess on the block?"

"Yeah. I put it together just before I brought Arachne out of the oubliette. But it was Byron who asked you all the right questions."

"I did?"

"How do you know what questions he asked me?" said Nancy. She winced, bit her lip, drew blood. But her eyes were bright: the girl was a fighter.

I figured she'd need to be.

"Long story," I said. "I'll tell it when there's more time. But you're right, Pallas Athene was the Macerator. She's always had a violent streak. Comes from her gangster roots-she used to go round wearing a Titan's skin, you know that? Anyway, going respectable must have cramped her style. When you're mayor you can't go around hacking people up any more. So she got herself a hobby."

"A hobby?"

"Some folk surf. Some paint toy soldiers. Pallas Athene-she took up serial killing."

"How come she never got caught?"

"When you're mayor, the cops tend to do what you say. Especially when you've got a gorgon on your chest."

Byron scratched his massive head. "But… if they knew it was her all along, why did they bother coming after me?"

"Who knows? Maybe PA figured it was time the Macerator retired. Maybe it was all a set-up-she did plant that axe with the body, after all. Probably knew a garbage collector would end up taking the heat. Nobody cares if a golem goes down. Tough but true. I figure you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Either way," said Nancy, "that bitch got what she deserved."

"Amen," said Byron.

Then Nancy started screaming. She writhed, tore off my coat, clutched at the scars on her arms and legs. It didn't take a medic to see what was up. Like Arachne said: the poor girl was coming apart at the seams.

"Didn't last as long as Arachne thought," I said.

"What?!" said Byron. "You mean… you knew this would happen? You got her all sewed up and you knew she'd come to pieces again?"

"If it's any consolation," I said, "I wish I hadn't. Seems you can stitch the body but you can't stitch the soul. Still, it got you off the hook."

"I'd rather be on the hook! What can we do?"

Nancy shrieked and snapped her back like a trout. She flipped on her front, landing exactly where she'd first landed when Byron poured her out of the garbage can. That time she'd been in pieces. Any minute now, she'd be in pieces again.

"There's something," I said. "But it's risky. And I've never seen it done. It's… well, call it a hunch."

"What is it!" said Byron. "I'll do anything!"

"You might not want to do this."

He didn't hesitate. He didn't even ask me why. He just lay down and told me to get on with it.

Golems-you think you got them figured, but they just keep pulling surprises.

I'd grabbed Pallas Athene's machete from the street. I used it to cut a deep gouge in Byron's chest. It wasn't hard: there was nothing in there but orange river clay. I groped through silt and grit. I found a pretty shell, left it where it was. At last I found what I'd been looking for. I pulled it out.

A muddy square of parchment. Written on it, in Hebrew binary, was the code that made Byron tick.

"Do… it… quick… " croaked Byron. Without his code, his eyes were rolling. The floor shook as his system crashed.

I tore the parchment in half. Byron convulsed.

I put one half of the parchment back in Byron's open chest. His body went limp. I rolled Nancy on her back. She was blue all over; black fluid leaked from her scars. We were nearly out of time.

I bent over her, latched my fingers into one of the big scars on her chest. Then I peeled her open.

I didn't look inside. The stench of decay was appalling. That and the awful, liquid feel of her. She was going to pieces, fast. Eyes shut, I thrust the second half of the parchment under what was left of her ribs. Her lungs billowed over my knuckles; her heart drummed like a scared rabbit against my wrist. I let go the parchment, pulled my hands out, pressed the edges of the scar together. I opened my eyes, held my breath.

Nancy lay still. Her skin was one big bruise. Her scars looked like a black spider's web.

Then she convulsed, coughed up white froth, started breathing. Pink heat flooded her skin, she opened her eyes and pushed my hands away.

"Get your hands off my chest, pervert!" she said.

I looked over at Byron. He was resculpting his pectorals.

"You okay?" I said.

"I feel… just the same," he said.

"That's the thing with golem binary code," I said. "Ripping it up doesn't hurt it. It's neat technology. Especially since it shouldn't work at all, on account of the Hebrew numerical system not having any zeroes."

"Come again?"

"No zeroes. So they have to make the code nullatorily recursive."

"Huh?"

"It's simple: every phrase in the code points down to a smaller phrase buried in the previous line. And that smaller phrase points down to a smaller phrase still. The recursion is infinite, so even though there's no zeroes you get an infinite number of holes where a zero could fit. So the programmers just write the rest of the code around those holes and the SGOS-that's the standard golem operating system-fills in the gaps. It interpolates the places where the programmers want the zeroes to be and bingo-you get Hebrew binary. All of which is irrelevant."

"It is?"

"Yeah. But the side-effect isn't."

"What side-effect?"

"All that recursion means a golem's code parchment is like one big hologram. Every piece holds all the information contained by the whole. So you can rip a parchment in half and still have two complete pieces of golem code. It's a fractal thing-don't ask me, ask Mandelbrot."

"So… Nancy's running my code?"

"You got it."

"Doesn't mean we're engaged or anything," said Nancy. Then she fell, sobbing, into Byron's enormous clay arms.

They left hand in hand, like unmatched bookends. Without any books. I watched them disappear into the rain and tried to puzzle it out.

Did the shared code mean they were brother and sister now? Soul mates? Clones? But Nancy still had her memories, her personality. And Byron had his. They hadn't changed.

Which made me think back to what Arachne had said about Nancy:

My needlework is good, but it cannot repair her soul.

So if I'd managed to fix Nancy up with golem code, that could only mean one thing: by opening up Byron's chest I hadn't got my hands on a scrap of parchment at all.

I'd got my hands on a soul.

Byron was right after all.

I spent a while scrubbing the stains on the floor. The silt washed out okay. The gore took longer. Neither went completely. I wondered if I should get a new carpet. But, like I said, that old carpet's got a lot of stories to tell. And it goes with the drapes.

I closed the trapdoor, fixed myself a coffee. I slipped the dimension-die back in my collar. Good job I'd remembered to get it back. You never know when you'll need a spare dimension. Shame there were only five sides left.

Outside, a municipal garbage truck had arrived to clear away the petrified zombies. I watched the golems work in their yellow municipal jackets. They trudged and, where the rain lashed them, they went soft round the edges.

I wondered if I should tell them what I knew.

One of the golems bent to pick up something from the gutter. It was a flower from Pallas Athene's crown. The golem straightened the petals and tucked the flower in his jacket pocket. Then he went back to work.

I closed the drapes. They'd figure it out for themselves, sooner or later.