The Somnambulist

Chapter 19

Maurice Trotman was eating breakfast when destiny came knocking at his door. Mr. Trotman, you will recall, was the man from the Ministry, the Civil Servant who had succeeded, where so many others before him had failed, in closing down the Directorate. He was a precise, punctilious man, typical of his breed — those passionless, blank-faced automata who tirelessly maintain the grim machinery of state. His ambitions were limited, his vistas modest and he saw life prosaically, as a ladder, a career, a comfortingly regular sequence of promotions and preferments.

He was midway through a poached egg when he heard a determined rap at his front door. Still a bachelor, despite his half-hearted wooing of a colleague’s daughter, he had no servants and lived and ate alone. Consequently, still clad in his fawn-colored dressing gown, it was Maurice himself who opened the door onto death.

“What do you want?” he asked sharply. Like any proper gentleman, he was rarely at his best before eight o’clock.

His visitors made an outre pair. Grown men, one burly, the other slight, both clad in flannel shorts, their legs knobbly and ridiculous.

“Morning,” said Boon.

“What ho,” said Hawker.

“Awfully sorry to bother you so early.”

“Couldn’t be helped.”

“I’m afraid we’re something of a deus ex machina.”

“Don’t chatter on in Latin, old man. You know it’s all Greek to me.”

Boon chortled dutifully. “Hawker’s got a wizard new penknife. Corkscrews and bottle-openers and a how-do-ye-do to get stones out of horses’ hooves. Would you like to see it?”

In the course of their unfeasibly long and bloodstained career, the Prefects had rarely been surprised by much. Strange, then, that they should have been so easily outwitted by a glorified clerk.

Maurice Trotman had not clambered so far up the Service ladder without learning a good deal of guile along the way. He had recognized the Prefects from the first, and as they stood there trolling through their usual blather, their carefully scripted cross-talk and banter, he was formulating a plan of escape. No good fleeing back into the house, of course. There they’d have him cornered, track him down and finish him off in moments. But out in the open he might still have a chance.

While Hawker and Boon talked on (something about conkers), Trotman carefully snaked his left arm around the door and toward the umbrella stand where he skillfully extracted a family heirloom — a slender black umbrella three generations old, passed down from father to son through sixty proud years of Civil Service.

He looked back at the Prefects. Hawker had drawn his knife and was advancing noiselessly upon him when, with surprising dexterity, Trotman produced the umbrella from behind his back and struck the knife from the creature’s hand. Taking advantage of their momentary surprise, he thrust past the Prefects and out into the street where, barely believing his luck, he ran frantically into the center of the city, toward what he mistakenly believed to be safety.

Whilst Hawker howled in surprise and frustration, Boon merely simmered with rage.

“By the living jingo!” Hawker cried. “He’s done a bunk. Rotter’s gone and scarpered. What’ll we do now?”

Boon set his face in an expression of grim determination. “We follow. And when we catch him, we clobber the brute to death with that blasted umbrella.”

The Prefects turned in pursuit and loped silently after their prey, determined as bloodhounds on a scent, implacable as fate.

I suppose I had better tell you what happened to Moon. For all I know you’ve ignored my warnings and gone and got attached to the man, so it’s just possible you might care.

No doubt he was feeling mightily pleased with himself as he left the headquarters of Love and sauntered back to the surface by way of King William Street Station. Oh, he must have thought he had me fooled with that play-acting of his, that fraudulent Damascene conversion. But as we have already seen, he had not counted upon the perspicacity of his sister.

Above-ground again, he hailed the first cab he saw and instructed the driver to deliver him directly to the Yard, promising a sovereign if the fellow could get him there in a quarter of an hour. In the event it took almost double that time, the detective drumming his fingers impatiently all the while. Once he arrived he dashed straight to the office of an old friend, flung open the door without knocking and cried: “Merryweather!”

The inspector looked up from his desk, surprised. “Edward. What is it?”

Desperate to get out his story but uncertain where to begin, Moon sounded like a human telegram, his message fragmented and nonsensical: “Conspiracy… underground… Love assembled… the dreamer… Somnambulist…”

“Calm down. Tell me slowly what happened.”

Moon took a deep breath. “Underground, a man calling himself the Reverend Doctor Tan has assembled an army. He has some crackpot scheme to destroy the city, to reduce it to ashes and begin again.”

I suppose I should feel some slight at the ‘crackpot’ description. But I’m a bigger man than that. Prophets, after all, are never recognized in their own country.

As Moon finished speaking, a bulky shadow stepped from the corner of the room. “So it’s begun,” he stated flatly.

Merryweather rose to his feet. Moon was later to say that this was one of the very few occasions that he had spent any length of time with the inspector when he had not seen him laugh or smile or crack some faintly inappropriate joke. In the face of brutal crimes and fearful murders, assassinations, bloody riots and deliriously horrible killing sprees, Detective Inspector Merryweather had never once lost his sense of humor. That today he was unable to manage even the ghost of a smile was perhaps some measure of the situation’s gravity.

He introduced the stranger. “This is Mr. Dedlock.”

The scarred man made a nominal inclination of his head. “I work with Skimpole.”

Moon stared and seemed to sniff the air, like a fox sensing the approach of the hunt. “You’re Directorate,” he spat. “What are you doing here?”

“Ex-Directorate,” Merryweather murmured.

“The agency has been closed down,” Dedlock admitted. “This morning an attempt was made upon my life. Skimpole’s gone missing. I’ve had to come to the police for assistance.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste.”

“Love has outwitted you,” Moon said (and I confess to feeling some pride at the casual certainty with which he made the claim). “They’re ready to make their move. Two weeks from now they’ll burst from underground to destroy everything in their path. The city’s in terrible danger.”

“Sounds incredible,” Merryweather said. He was interrupted by a brisk tap at the door. A police constable, flushed and out of breath, peered nervously into the room. “Sorry to bother you, sir.”

“What is it?”

“We’ve had reports of a… disturbance in the financial district. Fighting in the streets. Fires and rioting. It sounds like-” The boy swallowed hard. “It sounds like an invasion.”

Rather unfairly, Dedlock rounded on Moon. “You’ve been tricked. Two weeks! You bloody fool. It starts today.”

Merryweather shouted orders. “Get every man we have down there at once. Everyone.”

Moon was appalled. “You don’t understand the scale of it. These people are armed to the teeth. You’re sending truncheons and whistles against an army.”

The inspector swore. “We should have been prepared.” He turned to Dedlock. “How many men can you raise?”

“Twenty. Thirty, maybe, who might still be loyal.”

“Twenty or thirty!” Moon exclaimed. “My God, they’ll be slaughtered.”

Dedlock looked afraid. “I’m sorry…” he whispered. “I’ve no power any more.”

The detective turned toward the door. “Do what you can. I’m going back.”

Merryweather stepped in his way. “Edward, you can’t stop this on your own.”

“The Somnambulist is with them. My sister, too. I owe it to them both to try.” He clasped the inspector’s hand, then pushed past him. “Good luck.”

He left the Yard at a run, heading back toward the heart of the city.

No cab would take him anywhere near the scene. He was forced to hire the temporary use of a hansom and drive there himself, careering lunatically through the streets, little caring what damage he caused as he drove. As he drew closer, his path became blocked by fleeing and panicked crowds and he could go no further. Abandoning the cab he ran on, racing ever closer to disaster.

When I emerged from King William Street Station, the Chairman by my side, I saw a sight very few of us are ever privileged enough to witness — my dearest dreams given form, my hopes made real before me.

Fires had been lit and the sky was illuminated by bursts of scarlet, iridescent even against the watery light of the morning, an anarchist’s Guy Fawkes display. The foot soldiers of Love, the faithful of the Church of the Summer Kingdom, poured through the streets, dispensing justice wherever they could, reveling in their freedom, in the epochal change they were to induce upon the city.

The morning was frosty, our breath fogged up the air like smoke, and to my astonishment I saw that my companion’s exhalations appeared to be tinted a vivid green — a phenomenon I unwisely dismissed at the time as a trick of the light or mild hallucination, brought on by excitement and overwork. The old man looked blearily about him, bewildered by all the sound and fury. “Ned?” he asked hopefully.

“Yes,” I lied. “I’m here.”

“What’s happening?”

“Come with me. We need a better view.”

I took him by the hand and led him to the Monument, up its corkscrew staircase to the top. Lithe and gazelle-like, I scampered up the stairs, but I was often forced to a halt in order to let the old man recover himself. I all but carried him the final leg of the journey. Eventually we emerged into the open air, to witness a Monday morning unlike any other, unique amongst all the centuries of the city’s long life.

“Behold,” I cried (surely you can forgive me some grandiloquence under the circumstances), “the dawn of the Summer Kingdom.”

And from our eyrie, our Wren’s nest, we saw it all. Smoke rose up in mighty plumes. The sounds of war clashed about us and the air was filled with the screams of the dying. Dying? I’m afraid so. When opposing ideologies meet upon the battlefield, some bloodshed is inevitable. No doubt you think such a view harsh but there are people devoid of any potential for redemption. If the city were to be reclaimed I had no choice but to put them to the sword.

The working day had barely begun before it was abruptly and bloodily curtailed. The bankers, the brokers and the clerks, the businessmen, the dealers, the accountants and the moneylenders — all were dragged screaming from their rooms and offices. A few were spared, most were executed. I would like to assure you that their deaths were swift and painless, that they were treated with some measure of dignity at the end, but in truth I doubt that this was so. An orgy of cruelty unfolded below us, a frenzy of murder and bloody reprisal for generations of injustice as the destitute shareholders in Love, my cockney bacchants, reclaimed the streets at last.

As for the bankers and their kind — some of these unfortunates were beaten to death, some cut down by axes, picks and scythes. Others were thrown in the river to drown, and I saw at least one choke to death as members of my flock stuffed his mouth with bag after swollen bag of silver coins.

Of course, I anticipate your objections. But why should these men have been granted mercy when they showed none to their innumerable victims? They had abused the city for far too long. Their time was past, a new age was upon us, and around them London’s topography seemed to reconstitute itself in sympathy.

The great temples to avarice and greed were set alight. The banks were torched to the ground, the too-expensive restaurants and wine bars, the gentlemen’s barbershops and outfitters — all were impregnated with cleansing flame. The gold reserves in the Bank of England were looted and my people hurled their contents carelessly into the blackness of the Thames or threw them deep into the dank recesses of the sewers. One prominent city man was thrashed to death with a shiny ingot of the stuff. The air was thick with the stench of burning currency.

The old man’s voice was hoarse and weak; he gurgled as though he were speaking underwater, but still he managed to murmur a few lines of verse — not his own, alas, but words not entirely without relevance. “The king was in his counting-house, counting out his money. The queen was in the parlor, eating bread and honey.”

I squeezed his hand, he squeezed mine (“Ned,” he murmured), and below us the terror raged on.

Moon struggled through the crowd, fending off attacks from the faithful, stepping where he had to over the bloodied corpses of the fallen. He never once stopped to help but strode onward, searching for a single person amid the melee. “Charlotte!” he shouted. “Charlotte!”

He found her eventually, standing demurely by as the chief executive of a large firm of stockbrokers had his arms torn from their sockets. Moon left the man to his fate and grabbed at his sister. “Charlotte. What are you doing?”

She gave him another of her wonderful smiles. “Hello, Edward.” She paused. “You ought not to have lied to us, you know.”

“What’s happened to you?”

“You don’t understand.”

“You’re right. I don’t.”

Behind them the broker gave a final, feeble moan before he expired in a spreading pool of crimson. Charlotte seemed enthused by the sight. “This is the start of something wonderful. A new age. A second chance.”

Moon pointed to the dead man. “There’ll be no second chance for him.”

“But there will be for you,” Charlotte insisted. “You can still be saved.”

Moon pushed her aside in disgust. “Where’s the Somnambulist?”

“Underground. We bound him.”

Moon was defiant. “You know I’ll rescue him.”

She shrugged. “You’re welcome to try. It scarcely matters now.”

“Where’s Tan?”

Charlotte pointed upwards to the Monument, at the pinnacle of which the Chairman and I stood silhouetted against the skyline, emperors of Pantisocracy. Moon left his sister and ran toward us, intent, it seemed, upon a further confrontation.

He emerged minutes later, wheezing, hissing, gasping for breath. He glared at me, fury blazing in his eyes.

“Edward!” I waved. “You’re just in time.” The Chairman and I peered over the parapet. “It seems the cavalry has arrived.”

Below us, help had come to the moneymen’s aid. Several dozen policemen led by the redoubtable Detective Inspector Merryweather and accompanied by a handful of the Directorate’s false Chinamen poured into the financial district.

Now, I saw ‘poured,’ though the description is not entirely an apt one. My men — the troops of Love, Love, Love and Love — now they ‘poured’ onto the streets. They were a great tide breaking at long last upon the city, a dam bursting, spilling open after years of miserable and unnatural confinement. But the police force, the men from the Directorate, they didn’t really ‘pour’ so much as seep and trickle into the fray, dripping over the cobblestones like water from a leaky tap.

But then Moon was complaining again, self-righteous all of a sudden. “Those men don’t stand a chance.”

“By my estimation they are outnumbered approximately ten to one,” I said mildly. “You’re right. They’ll be slaughtered.”

Below us a blue-coated policeman was dragged under a seething tide of Love. His screams carried up to us, 202 feet above ground. Moon was of course tiresomely sententious about the incident. “This blood is on your hands.”

“On the contrary. It was you who betrayed me.”

“I can’t stand by and let you inflict this atrocity upon the city.”

“This is a natural process,” I chided. “Is it not written that the sheep are to be separated from the goats? The meek, the weak, the despised and the forgotten — we’ve been suppressed too long. This is our revenge.”

“Why does it have to be like this?”

Behind us, the old man murmured, “About, about. In reel and rout the death-fires danced at night. The water, like a witch’s oils, burnt green and blue and white.”

“Do you recognize it?” I asked, something of the proud father in my manner. “It’s his own work.”

Moon turned on me. “Do you think he approves? Do you think he’s flattered by what you’ve done?”

“Ask him,” I said simply.

Moon tugged the Chairman away from the parapet, pulled him roughly across to me and pushed his face into mine. I recoiled from the old man’s rank, electric halitosis.

“This thing is not alive,” said Moon. “It’s a corpse, barely animated by your perverted science.”

“He’s still just a child at present. He’s confused.”

Moon forced the old man to look down at the carnage and sneered: “Tell me, sir. Do you approve? Is this a fitting tribute?”

The dreamer gazed glassily, perplexedly at the street. “The many men, so beautiful. And they all dead did lie. And a thousand thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I.”

“All this,” Moon persisted, “is being done for you.”

For the first time the old man seemed to notice us, to show some real awareness of his surroundings. It was as though he had finally woken up. “For me?” he murmured. “Me?”

Teary-eyed, I flung myself at his feet. “Yes!” I sobbed. “All this for you. For Pantisocracy.”

“Consider well,” Moon said. “Everything that is unfolding beneath us, all this suffering and agony, is being done in your name.”

“The Chairman shook his head. “No, no,” he muttered. “No, no, no. Not like this.”

“Please, sir. You have the power. Stop this.”

The old man seemed to grow in stature before us, becoming taller and broader as though at the mercy of some invisible rack.

“Chairman!” I cried.

He looked at me as if I were a stranger. “I am not your Chairman.” Enraged by Moon’s words, his anger seemed to revitalize him. “No,” he shouted (really shouted, too, not the senile mutterings he had managed till then). “This is not my fault.”

“But it is,” Moon whispered, like Claudius pouring poison into the ear of a better man. “This will be blamed on you.”

And it was then that something extraordinary happened. Given that the day hadn’t been exactly routine so far, you’ll understand that I do not use the word lightly.

The Chairman roared with fury, and as his anger grew, a change began to manifest itself in his body, a fresh transfiguration. Gangrenous streaks of green appeared on his face and hands as though all of his veins were suddenly visible to us, pulsing not with the healthy ruby of life but with something hideous, diseased and dying, his face lit up with phosphorescence.

Edward Moon looked at me in horror. “What have you done?”

I admit that I was surprised by this development. The amniotic fluid which had revivified the old man must have had some special properties I had not forseen. Nowadays, I find myself unable to recall its precise constituents. Perhaps it is for the best — I would not wish for anyone else to repeat these vile experiments.

When I had dug the old man from the ground, his left hand had been severely damaged and I felt I had no choice but to amputate, attaching in its place a hand which had once belonged to one of his closest friends and colleagues, Robert Southey.

But now I noticed that my stitching was coming undone and that the hand had begun to dangle like a child’s mitten from the stump of the old man’s wrist. One by one the stitches popped out and I saw oozing slime where blood and cartilage should have been.

It was around this time that I first began to worry that things were no longer going according to plan.

Since the old man’s rage seemed fueled as much by pain as anger, I became concerned that other stitching may have undone itself on the old man’s person. Sick of the sight of the fighting below, he left the parapet and windmilled his way toward Moon. Unwisely, the conjuror attempted to block his path, the gesture as fruitless as trying to halt a speeding locomotive by standing in its way.

“Wait,” he said. “Please.”

With a single swipe of his good right hand, the Chairman battered Moon aside, displaying far more strength than ought to have been possible. Like a boxer woozy from the fight but determined to beat the bell, Moon stumbled to his feet only for the old man to hit him again, a flicker of green playing across his hand as he did so. This time Moon crumpled to the ground and lay still.

Clearly the amniotic fluid had given the old man far more than mere life, and I considered myself fortunate that it was a comparatively mild-mannered poet whom I had succeeded in resurrecting. Even now I shudder to think of the consequences had I gifted such weird power upon, say, Lord Byron or mad Blake or that oikish fraud Chatterton.

Moon was down, unconscious or worse, and the old man marched away, disappearing back into the Monument, heading toward the streets, imbued with awesome power and purpose. Leaving Moon for dead, I saw no choice but to follow, my dreams in tatters around me.

I moved down through the spiral heart of the building, eldritch light emanating from the Chairman as he descended below me, casting strange green shadows on the walls.

At least, I think that is what I saw. I fear I may not have been in my perfect mind.

What happened next was a series of horrible coincidences.

You needn’t worry yourself about Moon (as if you care). He was merely unconscious. Having betrayed me once that day, then goaded the Chairman into madness, a knock on the head was the very least he deserved. Personally, I should like to have seen him eviscerated.

We’ll leave him lying there for the time being, lost to the world. He’s done enough for now.

At around the time that the Chairman had begun to display the earliest signs of his disintegration, Mr. Maurice Trotman re-enters our story. He had run through the streets for more than an hour, his umbrella clutched fearfully in one hand, his heart clenching and unclenching itself frantically inside him. His supply of courage had been used up, had leaked from him during his long flight like air from a punctured tyre.

It was his bad luck that when he made his escape from the Prefects he ran toward the center of the city, into what he hoped might be the sanctuary of the business district. It was his bad luck that the day he chose to make such a flight was also the day that we at Love finally showed our hand. But it wall of our bad luck that he brought the Prefects with him.

Trotman finally came to a halt halfway down Cannon Street. As he struggled through crowds of flustered clerks and maddened bankers he wondered whether he might not inadvertently have stumbled into a nightmare. People were fighting around him, brawling and scrapping and — good God — was that a body in the street? Like Cyril Honeyman before the end, he toyed with the idea that the events of the morning might have been nothing more than an unusually vivid dream. He wondered, too, if the hysterical warnings of the Directorate could have had some truth in them after all and, for the first time in a life otherwise unimpeded by any color or interest, even considered the possibility that he might be going mad.

Whimpering, his dressing-gown gaping open, he hunkered down onto the pavement, curling up into a fetal ball. He hoped that if he crouched there long enough, he might be ignored and neglected by the mob. No such luck, of course.

Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. Refusing to turn around, hoping to deny the inevitable, he squeezed shut his eyes and hugged himself tighter.

“Come on, sir. Play up, play up and play the game.”

Trotman opened his eyes. Hawker and Boon loomed before him, evincing not the slightest sign of fatigue from the long pursuit.

“What ho, Maurice,” said Boon.

“Thanks for the run, old thing. Rather exhilarating.”

Boon snatched the umbrella and Maurice Trotman sobbed.

“Oh, be a man,” chided the smaller of the killers. “Face up to it like one of the chaps.” With this, he held the umbrella high above his head — a commuter’s sword of Damocles.

“Why?” asked the Civil Servant feebly. “Just tell me that.”

“We’re doing it as a favor.”

“Old chum of ours.”

“Real brick.”

“P’raps you know him.”

“Funny little chap.”

“All white and queer-looking.”

“Skimpole?” Trotman managed as, moments before his extinction, understanding flooded too late into his brain.

“Quite right,” said Hawker.

Had he lived longer, Trotman might have protested at the injustice of it all, at the unfairness of being hunted down and murdered for nothing more than doing his job. As it happened, he had no time left to think. Book brought the umbrella down hard upon his chest and its spike entered his body, neatly perforating his heart with a crisp snap. It was, at least, over quickly.

Cackling with delight, Boon pushed the umbrella fully through the body of his victim and force the thing open. Trotman cut a strange, undignified sight, all but naked, an unfurled umbrella sprouting from his chest like a fancy cocktail stick skewering an olive. The Prefects stood back and admired their handiwork.

Hawker clapped politely. “Bravo.”

Boon rummaged around in the pockets of his blazer and drew forth a couple of lollipops. He passed one to his friend and they stood sucking contemplatively for a time, gazing at the carnage unfolding around them with the mild anticipation of men waiting for a late bus.

Hawker pulled the lolly from his mouth, making a slurping noise as he did so. “Looks like a proper scrap.”

Boon crunched and swallowed. “Fancy causing a ruckus? Bit of mischief?”

A fat man came wheezing past them, an axe clutched in one hand, the arterial spray of two dozen prominent bankers congealing on his suit. You may remember his as Donald McDonald, my oldest and most faithful lieutenant.

“I say. “’Scuse me, sir.”

McDonald careered to a stop.

“Could you tell us what the deuce is going on?”

“We’re taking back the city,” my friend gasped. “Reclaiming it from the moneymen. The age of Pantisocracy is here.”

Boon yawned. “Politics.”

“Pantisocracy?” Hawker asked, only mildly interested. “What’s that, then?”

“Freedom, food and poetry for all,” McDonald replied. “The death of commerce. A new Eden at the heart of the city.”

Hawker smirked. “It’ll never work.”

McDonald began to frame some objection but it was too late. He had already bored them.

“Your turn,” Boon said. The big man turned to McDonald, grabbed him roughly by the throat and with a desultory twitch of his hand — exerting no more force than you or I might employ to open an especially recalcitrant bottle top — snapped the unfortunate fellow’s neck.

“Another?” Hawker asked.

“Why not? Might kill an hour or two.”

They set off into the heart of the fighting, toward the Monument, killing indiscriminately as they went — police, bankers, Love, Directorate men — wild cards gleefully disrupting the game, spreading fear and disaster wherever they trod.

Like I said: a series of horrible coincidences.

Please don’t think I’ve forgotten about the Somnambulist. We left him underground, you’ll remember, deep in the vaults of Love and pinioned to the floor by twenty-four swords. You’ll have realized, of course, that something like this was never going to stop him for long. By the time the Chairman had left me, the giant had already freed himself from a half dozen of the things, tugging them out of himself one by one, like a porcupine pulling out its own quills. He worked steadily, certain that the city was in danger, knowing it was his duty to protect it.

I, meanwhile, was following the Chairman. Puffed-up, bloated and enraged, the old man was wading through the battle, knocking combatants aside regardless of their allegiance. He proved easy to follow, since he left in his wake a trail of body parts (fingers, an ear, lumps of flesh and skin) as well as a lurid green track, like a giant upright snail.

Those members of Love who encountered him were appalled by the sight of a roaring monster in place of their leader and inspiration, and as his rampage continued I could sense, palpable as smoke, the spread of dissent amongst my followers, the crumbling of their collective faith.

It now became my priority to return him to his tank in the underworld, where I harbored hopes that he might yet be saved, revivified, restored. The day may not have gone as I had planned but there was still hope for the future. And so I followed, hoping to shepherd him back underground.

“Sir,” I cried. “Sir, it’s Ned here.”

He stopped what he was doing and let out a gargantuan groan. “Ned?”

“That’s right.”

“Is that you?”

“Come with me, sir. I can take you somewhere safe.”

To my great relief, he decided to do as he was told.

Moon regained consciousness some ten minutes after we had departed. Doing his best to ignore the pain, he left the Monument and ran as hurriedly as he was able back onto the street.

The fighting had thinned out — the moneymen were either dead or had escaped into another part of the city — and the battle had become a two-way affair, the forces of Love, the police and the Directorate joined against the Prefects.

Hawker and Boon had burst onto the scene, a hurricane of pen-knives and inky fingers, dead arms and Chinese burns. They had already butchered several hundred men, felling them like skittles. As it gradually dawned upon the assembled troops that the Prefects meant to destroy whatever was closest to them without discrimination, several strange alliances were joined. Mr. Speight, for example, was seen to fight side by side with an ersatz Chinaman. Dedlock took up arms with Mina, the bearded whore.

Detective Inspector Merryweather had withdrawn from the fray and was trying to marshall his men into a concerted attack when he saw Moon appear at the foot of the Monument. “Edward!” he shouted above the din and chaos. “Over here!”

Moon ran across to join them. “What’s happening?” he gasped. “What are those things?”

“No one seems sure. I’ve heard… rumors.”

A voice called out: “I know.”

They turned to see a squat, wizened figure walking toward them. His flesh was tugged tight about his face, his eyes hollows of pain, his skin covered with a multitude of fierce sores and lesions. Mr. Skimpole was very close to death, his life seeping almost visibly away. “They’re the Prefects,” he rasped. “And they’re my fault.” Without acknowledging either man further, the albino stumbled on toward the center of the melee, for the eye of the storm, for Hawker and for Boon.

“Where’s my sister?” Moon snapped. “Where’s the Somnambulist?”

“She’s in the thick of it,” Merryweather said bemusedly. “But I’ve not seen the giant. Shouldn’t worry, though. Practically indestructible, isn’t he?”

“Have you seen the Chairman?”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” Moon set off toward the fighting, following the green trail of the poet.

I was only a few minutes ahead of him at the time, trying to manhandle the old man back underground. It was tough and unforgiving work as parts kept dropping from his body without warning. We reached the mouth of King William Street Station and I led him inside, down past the ticket booths, along the platform, onto the track and toward the headquarters of Love. I tried not to think about how badly things had gone wrong, how my schemes and dreams had been undone, but simply did my best to concentrate on saving the Chairman, on preserving the cornerstone of my vision. I didn’t know it at the time, but as I grappled with the old man, the Somnambulist, with a look of intense concentration on his face, was pulling the final swords from his body, almost free at last.

Like most schoolboys, the Prefects were easily bored. Half an hour was all it took to rout the combined forces of the Directorate, the Metropolitan Police Force and Love, Love, Love and Love. The streets around them were upholstered with corpses; the gutters ran red with the blood of the fallen. Hawker and Boon were in the midst of removing a man’s eye with the horseshoe attachment on their penknife when they caught sight of Mr. Skimpole tottering uncertainly toward them.

“Skimpers!’ shouted Boon. “What the devil are you doing here? Hawker, look. It’s Mr. S.”

Stepping over a dozen or so dead bodies with fastidious care, the albino finally reached their side. “What have you done?” he hissed.

“Pretty much what you asked, haven’t we, Boon?”

The other man nodded in fervent agreement. “The Mongoose is down, Maurice Trotman’s snuffed it and we’ve tidied this lot up as a bonus. Practically done your job for you, I’d say.”

“Please go,” Skimpole gasped. “You’ve done enough.”

“Well, I like that.”

“Dashed ungrateful’s what I call it.”

“What…” Skimpole stopped, his face screwed up in pain, until he managed at last a feeble: “What do I owe you?”

“Owe us, sir? Jolly decent of you to ask about a payment at a time like this.”

“You don’t owe us a bean, sir.”

“Not any more.”

“What?” Skimpole wheezed.

“Point of fact, we’ve taken what you owe already.”

“Shouldn’t worry, sir. It’s quite within your means.”

“Rather a bargain, I’d have said.”

Boon ruffled his hair affectionately. “I’d get home, though, sir, if I was you. He doesn’t look at all well, does he, Hawker?”

“Positively peaky.”

“If you’re going to die, sir I’d do it at home, Keeling over round here’s just going to look like you’re following the crowd. No, no, place to do it’s back in Wimbledon. Mortality’s unusual there. Out of the ordinary. People might take a spot of notice.”

A voice floated across to them. “Stop!”

Amused, the Prefects craned their heads to look. “Oh, I say, who’s that?”

“Isn't’ he the fat johnny from the club?”

“Could be.”

Dedlock stepped forward, a revolver clasped tightly in his hand. “Let him go.”

“You don’t understand,” the albino murmured.

Hawker moved toward Dedlock.

“Don’t move. I know what you are.”

Boon grinned. “I doubt that.”

“It’s all right,” Skimpole muttered. “They’re working for me.”

“For you?”

Stifling a yawn, Hawker sauntered across to the scarred man and knocked the gun from his hand. “Name’s Hawker. Don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” And he gripped the older man’s hand in a parody of a handshake.

At once, Dedlock felt a terrific burning sensation which began at his fingertips and rushed over his entire body, a broiling, intense, pulsating heat. He fainted almost immediately.

Hawker shrugged and let him fall to the ground. “Just a little gift,” he explained. “No extra charge.”

“What’s happened to that funny green fellow?” asked Boon.

“Did a bunk down the tube, I think,” Hawker replied.

“Shall we have a look-see?”

“Why not?”

“I’m too tired to walk.”

“Agreed.”

They turned back to Skimpole.

“Ta-at, then, sir.”

“Tinkety-tonk.”

The Prefects linked hands, looking for an instant oddly innocent, like real children. Boon crumpled his brow, apparently deep in concentration.

I expect by now your disbelief is not so much suspended as dangling from the highest plateau of credulity. Even so, I regret that this next incident requires a further extension of that capacity.

The two men seemed to shimmer slightly, flickering like a reflection in rippling water. This effect lasted for no longer than a few seconds before they disappeared. Oh yes, disappeared. I can’t put it any more plainly than that. One moment they were there, the next they had been erased from existence. The sole sign that they had ever stood in that spot, their only residue, was a pungent smell of fireworks and the lingering aftertaste of sherbet dip.

They left maybe three dozen people alive. The living were outnumbered by the dead.

This, then, was the final horrible coincidence of the day, as all the strands knitted together to ensure the total failure of my plans. It is as well that I am a good and patient man and not prone to bitterness — somebody with a greater propensity toward self-pity than I might justifiably consider themselves a second Job.

I hurried the Chairman along the tunnel, back toward the sphere. He was degenerating fast, half his face gone, his body oozing and excreting spurts of that terrible green liquid. I tried to keep clear of the stuff but inevitably a little of it reached my skin, fizzing and sizzling like acid. Where it touched me, my body smelt like burning sausages.

We reached Love at last and I tried to get the old man inside. Behind us, I could hear someone running in our direction. Then a faint cry: “Tan!” It was Moon, of course, looking for revenge or some such. I bundled the Chairman through the green door and into the main hall.

What happened then was confused and difficult to follow. Even today I have great difficulty arranging events in their correct order.

The Chairman recognized the great hall as soon as he saw it, and I must say that his reaction was not one of grateful homecoming. Presumably he associated it with his long incarceration, with the tank and the amniotic fluid. In consequence, he became suddenly frantic to leave and return to the surface.

He roared something which I imagine was intended to be “No,” but, so thoroughly had his innards been eaten away by that viscous green slime which still oozed from his every pore, the words that emerged from his ravaged throat sounded more like animal roars than human speech.

Heroically, I tried to reason with him. “Mr. Chairman, please. I can repair you. Believe, me, it’s for the best.”

“Sur-face,” he growled, more coherent now. “SURFACE.”

“Stay. I beg of you.”

He seemed to calm down a little at this and I stepped closer, hoping to lead him by the hand and return him to the tank. Very probably, it was the worst move I could have made. With one swipe of what was left of his right hand (technically now more of a stump) he hit me hard across the face and sent me sprawling to the ground. I still carry the legacy of that blow today — a purple mark on my left cheek, around the size and shape of an apple, often mistaken for a birthmark.

I lay there, unable and unwilling to move, as the Chairman, dripping with poisonous green fluid, turned back toward the door and the outside world. How much indiscriminate havoc would he wreak before he was stopped? Given that his slightest touch was potentially lethal, I fancied the cost would be high indeed.

What I hadn’t bargained on, however, was another man, just as deadly as he.

Later, I reasoned that I must have reached the main hall just as the Somnambulist had removed the final sword from his belly. As I was thrown to the floor, he stood up, dusted himself down and looked over toward us.

The Chairman gaped at the Somnambulist. He pointed and screamed something which sounded at the time like “My God,” though it has since been put to me that it was something else entirely.

Spewing green acid, the Chairman staggered forward and flung himself at the giant. The Somnambulist, weakened by his ordeal, was taken aback at first, but soon fought back, and furiously.

There was a crash and a stumble behind me. Edward Moon appeared by my side, intending no doubt to challenge me to a duel or bring me to justice. Mercifully, we were both distracted by a far more terrible sight.

Surprisingly, the green fluid seemed to affect the Somnambulist just as badly as it had me, and his face contorted in pain. Moon and I could do nothing but watch. It was like seeing two lions fight for dominance of the pack — no, more than that, grander — like two ancient reptiles, megalosaurs clashing on some primeval killing ground, twin gods, colossi grappling of the fate of worlds.

Another sight distracted us even from this awful vision, at first nothing more than a wispiness, then a faint disturbance in the air, then a swirling, shimmering rush of color. A foot or so from where the conjuror and I stood transfixed, the Prefects flickered into existence. In their hands they carried four absurd sticks of dynamite — the kind you see in newspaper cartoons, great red sticks of the stuff, their enormous fuses spitting sparks.

Oh, you’ll say they couldn’t possibly work. Explosives don’t actually look like that, those are just comical representations intended for the amusement of children.

Of course you’re entitled to your opinion, but I was there and I can assure you of their efficacy. Hawker or Boon (one of them — I get confused) flung the dynamite into the center of the great hall.

Leaving the red sticks spitting on the floor, the Prefects fled from the hall, peals of cackling laughter in their wake.

Moon stumbled forward, hoping, I imagine, to help his friend, but it was already too late. The first piece of dynamite exploded in the far corner of the room, bring half the roof down with an ear-splitting roar. I could hear the whole of the building’s structure creak and groan in protest and begin to fall in upon itself. Thick clouds of dust all but obscured or vision, but from what I was able to make out the giant and the dreamer ignored it all and fought on.

I have no shame in admitting that I picked myself up and ran, back through the tunnels and out into the street. I have many faults, but at least I know when to cut my losses.

The last thing I saw as I glanced back was the Chairman and the Somnambulist — monsters locked in conflict, an emerald miasma hanging about them, whilst Moon, not knowing what to do, gazed helplessly on.

He ran away in the end, just like me, though he stayed, I believe, to see the second explosion. He was later to claim that, before the great hall fell utterly in upon itself, the Chairman’s acid had begun to eat its way through the rock itself and that the adversaries had begun to sink into the earth, swallowed up as if by quicksand. He called out for the Somnambulist but the giant fought wordlessly on, and Moon had no choice but to flee. I wonder sometimes what he might have shouted before everything fell down, what final words he might have had, and I wonder, too, if the Somnambulist called back, if — at long last — he spoke.

All I know is that Moon escaped just before the last explosion. Behind him I saw the headquarters of Love, all that I had worked for, buried forever by rubble. I was glad not to be there to see that.

For the second time that day I emerged panting back onto the street. The fighting was over; police, medics and other professional busybodies were arguing over what to do with all the mess and corpses. Even the press had started to sniff about.

On seeing all of this commotion, I felt a sudden surge of hope. I thought I might still escape and slip away in the midst of the confusion. No such luck. I felt a revolver pressed hard against the back of my head.

“The Somnambulist is dead.”

“Edward?” I asked feebly.

He spun me around, placed the gun at my forehead. “The Somnambulist is dead,” he repeated in a flat, toneless voice.

I wondered how I could possibly apologize without sounding insincere. “Sorry,” I said eventually, and shrugged. “Thought he was indestructible.”

I doubt you’d have done any better under the circumstances.

Moon placed the gun harder against my head and seemed on the cusp of pulling the trigger when he was interrupted by a familiar voice.

“You must be Edward Moon.”

“What do you want?” Moon hissed.

“My name is Thomas Cribb.” I realized that the ugly man was standing behind me, facing the detective. “I would offer to shake hands but I can see you’re a little tied up.”

“What?”

“You’re about to make a considerable mistake.”

“I thought you’d joined Love.”

“Me? Well, I suppose I may do. But that will happen tomorrow.”

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot him.”

“Only this.” Cribb smiled. “You don’t. I’ve seen the future and the Reverend Doctor here is languishing in a prison cell.”

Out of the corner of my eyes I could see the approach of several policemen and the inspector. They hung back, waiting to see how the situation would play itself out. I suppose I’ve no right to be angry but I rather think it was their duty to save me, not stand by and watch my murder.

“Does he die?” Moon asked, sounding — I have to say — unnecessarily bloodthirsty. “Is he executed?”

Cribb pulled a face. “They won’t hang him.”

“No justice, then?”

“I can promise you this: He gets punishment enough. He suffers. Please. Put down the gun.”

For a moment, Moon looked as though he still might go through with it.

“Please,” the ugly man said again. Moon seemed to relent and started to return the gun to his pocket. But at the last second he brought the gun back up toward my face.

“No!” shouted Cribb.

Moon, distracted by the sound, pulled the trigger too soon. The bullet went wild, missed me (though I fancy I felt it brush my cheek) and hit the ugly man instead. The damage can’t have been all that serious but he fell to the ground nonetheless, whimpering like a soccer player hoping for sympathy, clutching at his left hand and muttering to himself.

The police finally appeared (not before time) and I was wrenched roughly to my feet. Handcuffs were slapped on me with little or no consideration as to how they might chafe. I was led away and Moon said nothing.

As I walked, however, I heard him call out to someone. Cribb? Perhaps, but I have always felt a strange certainty that he was addressing someone else entirely. “The Somnambulist is dead,” he cried, then more quietly: “The Somnambulist is dead.”