The Somnambulist

Chapter 16

No man alive knew the city better than Thomas Cribb. Like an old and faithful lover, he knew her every curve and crevice, her every aperture and inlet, all the intimate places of her body. He was custodian of her secret and hidden terrain. In a few hours he was able to find any individual in London from the lowliest street-sweeper to a peer of the realm, regardless of how well they believed themselves to be hidden. He boasted that on numerous occasions he had assisted the police in precisely this manner, bringing to justice dozens of wanted criminals who, in their vanity, had believed themselves disappeared for good.

But Ned Love was a different matter. It was almost as though the city were hiding him. No one had ever proved as elusive — not even in the far-flung future when (Cribb assured me) the metropolis would be still more densely populated than it is today.

Consequently, it was late in the afternoon on the following day when Moon and the Somnambulist received word from the ugly man, and by the time they found themselves standing on the threshold of their quarry’s singular residence, light was already fading.

Ned Love lived in a low, mean district of the city. His house, with its boarded-up windows, its doors heavily bolted and barred, had the appearance of being utterly abandoned, so much so that the Somnambulist angrily scribbled that Cribb might have sold them a pup and led them on a fruitless expedition for some mischievous purpose of his own. Ignoring the suggestion, Moon knocked as loudly as he was able. “Mr. Love!”

The giant looked carefully about, checking to make sure they were unobserved. In such an area as this, surely it did not pay to draw attention to themselves.

Moon was about to shout again when the letter box creaked open. Suspicious eyes peered out. “Go away,” a voice croaked.

“Mr. Love?”

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Edward Moon. This is my associate, the Somnambulist.”

“Don’t like visitors. Got no time for guests.”

Moon looked at the house, derelict and shuttered-up as if awaiting demolition. It astonished even him (no stranger to unconventional accommodation) that anyone could seriously conceive of living there.

“It’s vital that we speak to you,” Moon said urgently. “Many lives could be at stake.”

“Go away. You can’t get in. Shan’t let you.”

“I have… questions. Concerning the poet.”

“Poet? Don’t know any poets.”

“You knew him when you were a boy,” Moon snapped, his patience already wearing thin. “I’ve no time for games. If my sources are correct, we’ve little more than twenty-four hours before the city is attacked.”

“Is it come, then, at last?” He muttered something, to quiet for anyone else to hear, then: “I feared it must be close.”

Moon bent down to address the letter box. “Mr. Love. This is not the most comfortable position in which to conduct this conversation. Please let us in. We need your help.”

“Wait.” The face vanished, the letter box snapped shut and groans and clankings ensued as an improbably number of locks and bolts were undone. All this took far longer than it ought — Barabbas himself had not been so secure within Newgate’s walls as was Ned Love at home. In the event of a fire he would assuredly perish before he could open his own front door. Moon made a mental note not to inform Mr. Skimpole of the fact — given the man’s predilection for arson, it might put some nasty ideas in his head.

At last the door swung open and a very old man ventured out to greet them. His face was lined and weathered like a piece of fruit left in the sun too long; he was dressed in an ancient brown suit which showed unmistakable signs of having been habitually slept in, and clutched in his left hand a half-finished bottle of noxiously cheap whisky. “I am Love,” he said grandly. “But you may call me Ned.”

They followed him inside and he led them down a corridor which smelt of mildew and animal hair, into what must once have been a sizeable morning room. If gas had ever been laid on, it had long since been disconnected and the place was lit by a dozen or so candles, flickering half-heartedly against the gloom, their wax puddling onto the floor. A mass of blankets had been pushed up against the wall, a small stove sat in the center of the room and the remnants of several rough meals lay scattered about on the ground. Surely a magnet to vermin, thought the Somnambulist (his instinct for cleanliness and hygiene cultivated over the years by the meticulous house-sense of Mrs. Grossmith).

“Take a seat, gentlemen, please.” Love scuttled about them, stepping nimbly over the debris with a dexterity that belied his advanced years. “Might I offer you a drink?”

“I’ll have whatever you’re drinking.”

Love produced a grubby glass and poured the conjuror a tot of whisky. “And for your friend?”

MILK

“Milk?” He looked astonished. “My, what a curious request. Well, never let it be said that Ned Love doesn’t do his best for his visitors. Invited or otherwise.” After hunting around under blankets and pillows, sending up great clouds of dust and feathers in the process, Love emerged with a filthy milk bottle, a quarter full of a grey-green liquid. He passed it to the Somnambulist. “You’re welcome to this,” he said doubtfully. “Though I can’t vouch for its quality.”

The giant took the bottle, sniffed it with barely concealed disdain, then placed it discreetly to one side.

“Well, then,” Love began once they were all seated. “What can I do for you? I ought not to have admitted you but you did seem so very keen. Should I be flattered? The fact you’ve found me at all, you know, speaks volumes for your tenacity.”

“Why do you live like this?”

“I know it must strike you as strange. I often think so myself when I am awakened in the morning, usually by some small creature or other nibbling at my toes for its breakfast, roving about my cuticles for its aggs and b. Ned, I say, Ned old man, why do you live like this? Good God, I think. This isn’t worthy of you. You’d planned so much more than this.”

Moon arched an eyebrow. “Quite.”

“It was always my intention, you see, after I was removed, that I should shut myself away from the world entirely. I had a fancy to become a hermit, here in the midst of the city. An anchorite in the old tradition. I decided to abjure the material world in favor of a meditative life. I had discovered the eternal truth that one cannot serve God and Mammon both. I’d hoped never to see or speak to a human soul again. Though perhaps I didn’t think the matter through all that thoroughly. I have to make frequent excursions outside. For provisions, you understand. Oh, only for the most absolute essentials. I’m not the kind of hermit who goes dashing out every time he fancies a loaf. Absolutely not. No, no, I’m terribly strict with myself. Try to limit my forays to once a week or so. Still, that does mean I’m not quite the ideal anchorite. Not that that’s my only sin. I get visitors, too. Men like yourselves. By rights, I oughtn’t to speak at all. I’ve started to wonder recently whether I’m really cut out to be a recluse. But despite it all I continue to aspire. Saint Simeon, you know, spent thirty-seven years up a pillar. Best years of his life, he said. Remarkable, don’t you think? Absolutely remarkable.”

“Mr. Love,” Moon said gently, “I need to ask you some specific questions. You mentioned that you were ‘removed’. May we assume that this was from the corporation Love, Love, Love and Love?”

The man paused to take a noisy swig from his liquor bottle. “So you know about the firm? My, you have been diligent. What else do you know? Or should I say…” — he wiped his mouth with a grubby sleeve of his jacket — “what do you think you know?”

“I know that the city is in imminent danger from a plot masterminded by Love in collusion with a religious group known as the Church of the Summer Kingdom. I know that this same firm is responsible for the deaths of Cyril Honeyman and Philip Dunbar, for the disappearances of those men’s mothers., for the execution of Barabbas and for the assassination attempt upon the heads of the Directorate. I know that they are utterly without scruple and that they will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. The only thing I do not know is the nature of their plan.”

“Or why,” Love breathed softly. “You don’t know that.”

“You don’t deny it, then?”

“Deny what?”

“That the firm which bears your name is behind the bloodshed.”

“I’d hoped and prayed they wouldn’t stoop to this. You must believe me when I say that the company in its present form represents the most monstrous perversion of its original conception.” He paused for breath. “You’ve guessed no doubt that I am the founder of Love, Love, Love and Love.”

“We had assumed as much.”

“You will know, too, then, that the firm was established according to the stipulations of a will made by Samuel Coleridge. To enable you to understand his motives in making such a curious request, I shall have to explain it from the beginning.”

“Pray be as precise as you can.”

The old man took another long swig of whisky. “You were quite correct, of course, when you said that I knew the poet when I was a child. In the last years of his life he dwelt in Highgate with a kindly medical man — one Dr. Gillman. In fact, the doctor’s young daughter lives there still. Bit of a looker. She might be able to furnish you with more facts about the old days. My memory has grown a little hazy.”

“It was she who told us of you.”

Love seemed not to have heard. “I was a lad of eight or nine when I met him, from a humble family, a harum-scarum youth, no great shakes at my studies and always with an eye on making money. The Gillmans took me on from time to time as an errand boy — odd jobs, little chores and suchlike.” Another swig of whisky. “I’d worked there a month before I met the poet. He lived upstairs in the garret room and more often than not he kept to his bed. You have to appreciate that by this time he was almost completely addicted to opium. Gillman had done everything in his power to curb the craving, but so far as I could see it never came to anything. The old man was completely in thrall to the stuff, and it was his need for the poison which first drew me to him. I’d been carrying out some minor task or other for the doctor’s wife when Coleridge called me upstairs. He had an errand for me, he said, and would pay handsomely for it. He ordered me to hurry down to the shop and buy what he referred to as his ‘prescription.’ He’d never call it by its real name, you understand. He was almost superstitious about that. Anyway, I did as I was asked. Gillman turned a blind eye, the old man got what he wanted and we all of us were happy. It became a regular arrangement, and over time the poet and I grew friendly, became pals. He loved to talk, you see — he was a great man for a chat — and I was his favorite audience.” Love sighed. “The things he told me. When I knew him he was close to death, but still he enraptured. How he must have been at the height of his powers I cannot imagine.” Another retreat to the whisky bottle.

“He spoke of the adventures of his youth, of his disastrous spell in the army, of his time at university where he conjured up the ghost of Thomas Gray. Oh, he could spin a yarn. Of course, I knew they were exaggerated like as not, embroidered for effect, but still I lapped them up. What boy wouldn’t? He even took me on holiday. We walked together on the beach at Ramsgate. But what he spoke of most of all was an old dream, something he had imagined as a young man with his best and closest friends. Pantisocracy. That was what they called it. No doubt you’ve heard the name?”

Moon inclined his head to suggest that he had not.

“It was a scheme of enormous audacity, an experiment, he said, in human perfectability. There were twelve of them, fresh from the university. They planned to create the perfect society, to quit England and live in America on the banks of the Susquehanna in absolute self-sufficiency. It was to be a utopia based equally upon agriculture and poetry. They thought they’d discuss metaphysics as they chopped wood, criticize verse as they hunted buffalo, write sonnets whilst they followed the plough.” Love laughed, all but clapping his hands in glee. “Wonderful! Quite, quite perfect.”

“It sounds admirable,” Moon said briskly. “If a little idealistic.”

“Ah, well, there you have it. That’s the rub. It could never have worked. They fell out over money, weren’t able to raise enough capital to make the trip. The whole project was abandoned.”

“I’m afraid I have yet to see a connection with the firm.”

“The abject failure of Pantisocracy had become the old man’s greatest regret, and toward the end it came to dominate his thoughts above all other things. He felt he had squandered his only opportunity to change the world for the better. And as we grew closer, the old man somehow got hold of the notion that I was his successor, that I’d be the one to succeed where he had failed — that I would revive Pantisocracy. I knew he was dying, of course, so I did the decent thing and told him what he wanted to hear — that I would do everything I could to carry out the plan, that I’d move to America and live out his fantasy. All bunkum as far as I was concerned but if it made a dying man happy I reckoned it could do no harm. What I didn’t realize was this: Coleridge was not a rich man, but most of what he possessed was placed in my care for me to do with as I would when I eventually came of age. It’s only due to the old man’s generosity that I was able to go to one of the universities. The remainder, he said, should go to the formation of a company dedicated to the resurrection of his Pantisocratic dream. In his will he insisted that I name it after myself. I can see you wondering, Mr. Moon. There are four Loves in the title. Time was, I had sons of my own.” At this mention of his family, he reached again for the bottle.

“I graduated with a good degree and found, much to my astonishment, that I had a way with figures. I did as I’d been told and established the company according to Mr. Coleridge’s instructions. But I could muster little interest in Pantisocracy, and whilst the firm ostensibly remained loyal to his intentions, I was able to make a good deal of money over the years by investing in property and playing the markets. At the peak of our success, I employed nearly a hundred staff and enjoyed considerable profits.”

“You betrayed the ideals of your benefactor for the sake of money.”

Love seemed upset. “Harsh words, Mr. Moon. Very harsh. You have to understand that the old man was very ill when he died. Some might say not quite in his right mind. I did what I was able with my inheritance and doubled it — doubled it dozens of times over. I’m not a selfish or avaricious man. I was generous with our earnings. There was a time when I was one of the most prominent philanthropists in London. I did feel guilty. But a few thousand a year will help a man forget his duty.”

“So what happened?”

“Five years ago, the golden times had passed. I’d got too old to run the company, and, like me, it had grown somewhat decrepit. None of my boys showed any real interest in succeeding me, and I was at my wits’ end as to what to do when I was approached by a consortium. They were men of God, they said, representatives of an organization called the Church of the Summer Kingdom. I see you recognize the name. So did I, as it happens, since I had donated money to their cause on more than one occasion. Their names were most improbable — Donald McDonald and the Reverend Doctor Tan. They said they were devotees of Mr. Coleridge, said they venerated the man and were almost embarrassing in their effusive deference to me — one of the last men alive, they said, who had actually known the poet personally. They knew all about the will, about the old man’s plans for the company, and they made me an offer. They promised to keep the firm operating exactly as it was, to retain all my staff and instate me as Chairman Emeritus on the one condition that we return to Coleridge’s original intentions. They actually planned in the fullness of time to live as Pantisocrats. It was an old man’s weakness and no doubt you’ll think me foolish, but I took them at their word. I see now that they were silver-tongued rogues, but I had wearied of the place and I felt guilty, so I allowed them some measure of power. It seemed the right thing to do.”

“Let me guess,” Moon said. “The church took absolute control of the company and ousted you.”

“They threw me out onto the street. I thought the only path left to me was one of meditation and repentance. And so you find me like this, an unsuccessful anchorite.”

“Could you not appeal? Surely the company still belonged to you?”

“They had clever lawyers. In my stupidity I had signed documents which gave them complete control. I admit it — I was thoroughly gulled. Cuckoos, Mr. Moon. Cuckoos in the nest. And my boys were under their spell. I was told they took part in my downfall, though I can’t bring myself to believe it. Can you blame me for hiding myself here?” He reached again for the whisky bottle. And drained it dry.

“Courage, Mr. Love. What changes did they make in the firm? This McDonald, this Reverend Tan?”

“Those are not their real names, are they?” Love asked, rather sadly.

“Aliases, I’m sure of it. But tell me — what happened to Love, Love, Love and Love?”

“From the start, they went against their word. They fired most of my staff and brought in their own men — and women, if you can credit it. Oh, they were a queer lot and no mistake. Peculiar creatures, all of them. Some looked like they’d been plucked straight from the gutter. Knowing Tan, I wouldn’t even put that past him. Then they started building. Underground. Lodgings, they said, for the staff. By the time I left, most of them were living there. Names, too. They began to frown on names, of all things, starting insisting everyone take a number. Sinister. Sinister and most unchristian. I only wish I might have stopped it.”

“I have an associate on the inside at the firm and it would seem that since your departure matters have got very much worse.”

“Worse?”

“The place sounds more like a commune than a business. They’ve all been numbered. Branded like cattle. They seem to be waiting for something. Like an army before a battle, so I hear. Tell me, Mr. Love — what are they planning?”

Love seemed exhausted by the effort of talking for so long and the drink had finally begun to work upon him. He slumped back, confused. “I’m not entirely certain. Once, in his cups, Tan made insinuations about his real plans. The old man would not have approved. You can take my word on that. I may not have done as he wished but I would never go so far as the church. Something terrible is afoot. But tell me, who is this ally of yours inside the firm?”

“My sister.”

“Your sister?” Appalled, Love struggled to his feet only to lose his balance and collapse onto the ground. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”

“Explain.”

Love shook his head. “How could you send your own sister in there? You’ll have to get her out immediately. She’s in terrible danger.”

“Danger?”

“They have a way of… turning you. They’re extremely persuasive. She’s not safe. You must fetch her at once.”

“Are you sure?”

“Ho now, gentlemen. I shall wait for you here.”

Moon stood up and gestured for the Somnambulist to join him. “We’ll come back.”

“Please go. I couldn’t bear it if something awful happened.” Love’s speech had become slurred and when he’d finished speaking he rolled slowly onto his back, like a turtle, close to passing out.

Moon and the Somnambulist left him there, and at something approaching a run they headed back toward the old city and the black gates of Love.

The Archivist was filing a series of reports on the notorious Finchley Cannibal of 1864 and thinking about retiring early for the night when she was disturbed by a sudden sound: the telltale clump and clatter of visitors feeling their way into the gloom of the Stacks.

“Archivist?” The voice was familiar.

“Mr. Skimpole? Is that you?”

More graceless sound and fury. Strange. This one was usually so quiet, practically feline in his stealth. “It’s me.”

“You have someone with you?”

“My son,” the voice admitted.

The Archivist was annoyed. “You know the rules. Visitors not admitted under any circumstances. I might also add that it’s very late and that you haven’t made an appointment.”

“I need your help.”

Something was different about his voice. There was a hoarse quality to it, a strained sound and a huskiness which had never been there before.

“My apologies. I may have put your life in danger even coming here.”

“You’re not making sense, Mr. Skimpole.”

“The Directorate is in danger. Dedlock and I… We’re targets. Someone’s put a killer on our trail. An assassin they call the Mongoose.”

The old woman tried not to smile.

“Worst of all, I’m… I’m not feeling my best. I should have seen you yesterday. But I was so very tired.”

“How can I help?” the Archivist asked finally, sensing the true seriousness of the situation.

“Desperate measures, I fear. I need to contact them.”

“Who?”

“I shan’t speak their names here, but you know who I mean.”

“I suppose I do.”

“I need the Directory.”

“Things are really that bad?”

“Worse.”

The Archivist tried to warn him. “You’re not the first to have made this mistake, Mr. Skimpole. Those creatures… They say they are for hire. Offer their services as mercenaries or killers or solvers of problems. But you won’t be able to control them. And you’ll never be able to afford their fee.”

“I’ve heard they carry out certain worthy tasks for free.”

“Oh, Skimpole. Nothing is for free. And the cost of hiring them is always far too great.”

“I’m begging you.”

“They’re impossibly dangerous, Mr. Skimpole. They’re agents of chaos and destruction. No man has ever employed them and escaped unscathed.”

Someone coughed. The child.

“Please,” Skimpole pleaded. “My son is not well.”

The old woman sighed. “Come with me.” She moved away into the permanent dusk of the Stacks. “I keep it locked up. It’s on the Home Office’s forbidden list, you know. A black book. I my opinion, even here it’s dangerous.” She reached a glass-fronted cabinet, unlocked it with the key she kept hung about her neck and took out a slim, leather-bound book. “I had hoped never to touch this again.”

Skimpole grabbed it from her eagerly. “I’m grateful.”

“All you need is there. But be careful. They will lie and do their best to trick you. Whatever you wish to ask of them, they will twist it to their advantage.”

But her warning fell on deaf ears. The albino and his son hurried away, stumbled noisily up the steps and out of the Stacks. As the Archivist locked the cabinet she felt an icy pang of certainty that she had just spoken to Mr. Skimpole for the last time.

Vast, grand and marble-floored, the foyer of Love, Love, Love and Love was approximately the size and shape of a ballroom filled with echoes and empty space. An elaborate design was set into the center of the floor — Moon and the Somnambulist lacked the perspective to appreciate it, but had they viewed it from a better vantage point, from the ubiquitous, hypothetical bird’s eye, they would have recognized the pattern immediately: styled in marble and stone, a black five-petaled flower. On the far side of the room, otherwise deserted and devoid of the whirling masses for which it had been intended, a small, dark pinprick of a man sat upright behind his desk.

The receptionist looked up as they walked in and gave them only the briefest of glances before dismissing them with that uninterested sneer which typifies his breed. Moon and the Somnambulist walked toward him, the tap-tap of their shoes ringing out accusingly like gunfire. The receptionist tutted audibly.

“My name is Edward Moon.”

“Really?” the man asked, polite — scrupulously so — but somehow managing to convey an utter contempt for anyone who had ever stood on the wrong side of his desk.

“I wish to see a member of your staff.”

“Oh?” The incredulity of the man’s tone suggested that Moon had asked for an audience at the Vatican. “Does sir have an appointment?”

“I do not.”

“Then I’m afraid I am quite unable to help you.”

“It’s my sister-”

“Here at Love, sir, one needs an appointment even to visit one’s sister.” All this delivered in the same infuriatingly cool, automaton tone — impossibly bland but with just the barest hint of amusement.

Moon persisted. “Can I make an appointment?”

“Of course, sir.” With a crisp flourish, the man produced a sheet of foolscap. “If sir would be so kind as to complete this form… I should add that no one will be available to see you until next Wednesday at the earliest.” He leant forward as if about to confide some great secret. “This is our busiest time of the year.”

Moon was beginning to sound agitated. “I need to see her today. Her name is Charlotte Moon.”

“I’m terribly sorry, sir. We’ve no one here of that name.”

“I know she works here, man. Don’t be obstructive.”

“I assure you, sir, I have never heard the name before in my life and I am intimately acquainted with all nine hundred and ninety-eight of my colleagues. Beside, as you may be aware, here at Love, Love, Love and Love we have dispensed with the cumbersome necessity of surnames. Here we all share the same glorious appellation. I myself am Love two hundred and forty-five. Though I permit my closest intimates to call me 245.”

“My sister is Love nine hundred and ninety-nine.”

The receptionist smiled. “Sir must be mistaken. Love nine hundred and ninety-nine is a writer of sentimental dramas for the stage, formerly known as “Squib’ Wilson.”

“Were you born this aggravating or did you learn it here?”

“I like to think a little of both.”

“Where’s my sister? I’m quite prepared to beat it out of you.”

Love 245 looked pained. “There’s no need for sir to lower himself to threats. I have only to call for attention and a dozen of my colleagues will leap to my aid. You’ll be charged and prosecuted for trespass and threatening an employee. Consequently, we’ll be quite within our legal rights to take punitive action. The last man who asked the wrong questions at my desk spent nine months in a mental hospital. Even now he’s convinced his mother’s Labrador plots to kill him.”

“I wish to see my sister.”

“Sir must be mistaken. Sir’s sister is not here.”

“Is she downstairs, is that it? In those catacombs you’ve got down there?”

The receptionist looked at the Somnambulist. “Is your friend quite well?”

The giant glared back.

“One hesitates to suggest such a thing, of course, but one has to ask — has sir been drinking?”

With an enormous effort of will, Moon swallowed his rage and turned back toward the door. “I shall return,” he called out as he walked away. “I swear I’ll uncover what’s going on here.”

“Goodbye, sir. So sorry I wasn’t able to be more helpful.”

As Moon and the Somnambulist reached the exit, a man walked in from the street, shoving past them in his haste to reach reception. Shiny and smart, a briefcase clutched in one hand, he resembled a black beetle forced upright and dressed by Savile Row. Every inch the Love employee — but not, as it happened, a stranger.

Moon shouted his name. “Speight!”

The man turned back to reveal a face no longer unkempt but clean-shaven, even handsome, the grime of the doorstep wiped away. He stared at the conjuror and the giant as though they were a couple of acquaintances he hadn’t seen for years, their faces faintly familiar but their names impossible to recall. “Can I help you?”

“I shouldn’t trouble yourself, sir,” muttered the receptionist.

“No trouble.”

“Speight!” Moon cried again. “It is you.”

The man walked back toward them. “Mr Moon, isn’t it? And the Somnambulist.”

“Surely you remember us.”

“I’d rather you call me nine hundred and three,” Speight said flatly.

“I prefer Speight.”

“Then we have an impasse.”

The Somnambulist scribbled on his board.

WHY YOU HERE

“I’m working,” the man said tersely. “This is a busy time for the corporation.”

“So I’m told. But what I don’t understand is why.”

“Good day, gentlemen. Pleasant though it is to stand here and chatter, I’m afraid I am required elsewhere.”

“Tell me what you’re planning.”

“Be careful,” he hissed, his blank face momentarily replaced by something approximating the Speight of old. “A great tide is about to break upon the city. Stand aside, sir. Or be drowned.” And with this, the ex-tramp strode away, vanishing into the depths of the building.

Moon walked out into the street, utterly bemused by what had just taken place.

WHAT NOW

“Back to Ned. There are questions I need answered. After that… You’ve no objection to breaking the law, I take it?”

The Somnambulist shook his head.

“Well, then. Tonight we break into Love.”

Something had changed when they arrived back at Ned Love’s hermitage. Everything seemed the same — the windows were still boarded up, the place tightly sealed, locked and barred — but with one notable exception: the front door gaped wide open.

“I suppose he might have gone out,” Moon said doubtfully.

The Somnambulist shot him a cynical look and pushed past into the house. If there was to be danger, the giant always insisted on being the first to face it.

The place seemed undisturbed at first, but as they moved back along the corridor, Moon felt a growing conviction that something was not as it ought to be.

Consequently, neither man was surprised when they found the body.

Poor Ned Love, an empty whisky bottle in his hand, lay slumped against the wall, crooked, ugly and unnatural in death. Moon thought he heard movement when he entered the room. It was only later he realized that this almost certainly denoted the scurrying departure of those rats and other vermin which had come already to nibble on the corpse.

“Mr. Love?” Moon crouched down beside the body. “Ned?” For tradition’s sake he checked the body’s pulse.

DEAD

“Afraid so.”

FROTTLED

Moon tried hard not to sound impressed. “How can you tell?”

The Somnambulist gestured toward the pinkish marks at the man’s throat, fading but still visible.

“Wouldn’t have been difficult given the amount he’d drunk. Evidently he said too much.”

LOVE

“I’d put money on it.”

Leaving poor Ned where he lay, they strode back out into the open air. “This is it,” said Moon once they were outside, perversely sounding almost cheerful. “Time for the end-game.”

Beneath the city, the old man dreams, turning uncomfortably on his steel cot, drifting out of sleep and into a strange half-wakefulness, an unhappy hallucinatory consciousness. Faintly, he becomes aware of movement around him, of faces glimpsed through the murk of sleep, lips forming his name, eyes watching. Often he feels that he is being scrutinized and observed and that the manner of those who watch him is weirdly reverential — pilgrims at the foot of his bed come like the Magi to pay homage and to worship.

As before, his dreams are filled with the boy Ned, with glimpses from his past, but now they seem to darken, showing him old mistakes come back to him in evil new shapes. Old hopes, too, the paradise of Pantisocracy turned sulphurous and rank. He sees a feverish mob of Pantisocrats careering through the streets, eager for blood, slaughtering all who stand in their path. And others with them, strange, incongruous figures, monsters in the skin of schoolboys who turn upon the dreamers and rip them to shreds. A world he barely recognizes congealing into bloodshed.

Pity the dreamer! If only he had known what was unraveling above him. If only he had known what Mr. Skimpole was about to set into motion, of the serpent who had entwined himself around poor Grossmith, of the dark path down which Moon and the Somnambulist were traveling. Had he but known the scope of what awaited him, I have little doubt but that he would have remained safely underground, away from the corruption of the surface. He would have stayed asleep. He would have stayed, blissfully, in Love.