Weave World

Part Twelve. Stalking Paradise

‘Western Wind, when wilt thou blow, The small ram down can rain'' Christ if my love were in my arms And I in my bed ogam!' Anon, 16th Century

I

A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS

1

If there was any pattern at all to the events of the day following, it was of reunions denied by chance, and of others just as capriciously granted.

Suzanna had decided the previous evening that she'd go up to Liverpool and re-establish contact with Cal. There was no use in circumspection now. Events were clearly approaching a crisis-point. Cal had to be warned, and plans made - the kind of plans that could only be made face to face - about how they could best protect Mimi's book, and their lives, in the coming storm. She tried calling him ‘til about midnight, but nobody answered.

In the morning she rang Apolline, fresh from Salisbury, to tell her what she'd seen and learned at the Shrine of the Mortalities. She was prepared for Apolline to reject the information Immacolata's spirit had offered, out of contempt for its source, but that proved not to be the case.

‘Why shouldn't we believe it?' she said. ‘If the dead can't be honest, who can? Besides, it only confirms what we already knew.'

Suzanna told her she planned to go to Liverpool, and talk with Cal.

‘You won't be alone up there,' Apolline informed her. ‘Some people went looking for raptures in your grandmother's house. You might want to find out if they had any luck.' ‘I'll do that. I'll call you when I've seen them.' ‘Don't expect me to be sober.'

Before setting out Suzanna tried calling Chariot Street once more. This time her call received the number disconnected tone; the operator could not tell her why. The morning news bulletin would have answered the question, had she switched on the radio; the television would even have shown her pictures of the patch of blasted ground where the Mooney house had once stood. But she tuned in too late for the news, only catching the weather-report, which promised snow, and more snow.

Attempting the journey by car was, she knew, a certain disaster. Instead she took a taxi to Euston, and the mid-morning train North. Just about the time she was settling down for the four-hour trip to Liverpool Lime Street - which in fact took six - Cal was half way to Birmingham on the eight-twenty train via Runcorn and Wolverhampton.

2

He'd called Gluck from a telephone box at the Pier Head, where he'd gone following the confrontation in the fog. There was no particular plan in this: he'd just felt the need to go to the river, and the last night bus before dawn had taken him there. He'd slipped the Scourge, at least for the time being; he even entertained the thought that the creature might be satisfied with the devastation it had wrought. But his gut knew differently. The Angel - Shadwell's flame of God — had an insatiable appetite for death. It would not be satisfied until they were all dust: Shadwell included, he hoped. Indeed the only comfort he drew from the night's horrors was the sense he'd had that he'd been viewing the Salesman's farewell performance.

The wind off the river was bitter; the snow in it pricked his skin like needles. But he leaned on the railings and watched the water until his fingers and face were numb; then, with the clocks on the Liver Building all offering times in the vicinity of six, he went in search of sustenance. He was in luck. A small cafe was open, serving breakfast to the early-run bus drivers. He bought himself a substantial meal, thawing out as he ate his eggs and toast, still trying to sort out what was for the best. Then, around six-thirty, he tried to get through to Gluck. He hadn't really expected any reply, but luck was with him, at least in this, for just as he was about to put the receiver down, the ‘phone at the other end was picked up.

‘Hello?' said a sleep-thickened voice. Though Cal knew Gluck scarcely at all, he'd seldom, if ever, been so happy to make contact with someone.

‘Mr Gluck? It's Cal Mooney. You probably won't remember me, but -'

‘- of course I remember. How are things on the Mersey?'

‘I have to talk to you. It's urgent.'

‘I'm all ears.'

‘I can't on the ‘phone.'

‘Well, come and see me. Do you have my address?'

‘Yes. I've still got your card.'

‘Then come. I'd enjoy the company.'

These welcoming words, coming after the losses of the night, were almost too much; Cal felt his eyes pricking.

‘I'll get the first train down,' he said.

‘I'll be here.'

Cal stepped out of the telephone box into the biting air. Daylight was still a while away; the snow-bound streets were almost deserted as he trudged up towards the station. A truck laboured through the gloom, spreading grit on the icy road; a newspaper vendor was laying out the early morning edition in the dubious shelter of a doorway; otherwise, he saw nobody. It was difficult to imagine, as he trudged, that there would ever be another spring in Spook City.

3

Suzanna stood at the end of Chariot Street and stared at the sight before her. There were too many people milling around for her to advance any further - her suspicion of uniforms had not mellowed; nor had that of Cuckoos in large numbers

- but she could see dearly from where she stood that the Mooney house no longer existed. It had been razed literally to the ground, and the fire that had consumed it had spread along the row in both directions. The Scourge had come visiting in the night.

Trembling, she left the scene, and made her way to Rue Street, fearing the worst. She found there nothing she hadn't anticipated. Mimi's house had been gutted.

What was she to do now? return to London and leave Cal - if he'd survived - to his own devices? She had no way of tracing him; she could only trust that somehow he'd find his way to her. Things were so damn chaotic, with the Kind spread across the country, and Cal missing, and the book?; she didn't dare think too hard about that. She just turned her back on the ruins of Mimi's house and walked away down Rue Street, what little store of optimism she'd possessed defeated by what she'd seen.

As she turned the corner, a kerb-crawler drew up alongside her, and a round face, wearing sun-glasses, leaned out of the window.

‘You're going to get cold,' he said.

‘Go to Hell,' she told him, and quickened her step. He kept pace with her.

‘I told you to go to Hell,' she said, throwing him a look intended to leave him limp. He slid his glasses down his nose, and stared at her. The eyes revealed beneath were bright gold.

‘Nimrod?'

‘Who else?'

Had it not been for the eyes she'd never have recognized him. His face had filled out, all but a hint of his good looks gone.

‘I need feeding,' he said. ‘How about you?'

4

His appetite seemed to have expanded in direct proportion to the direness of their jeopardy. She sat across the table of the Chinese restaurant where he took her, and watched him wade through the menu, devouring not only his food but most of hers too.

It didn't take long for them to provide each other with outlines of their recent investigations. Most of her news was stale stuff now: the Scourge was amongst them. But Nimrod had more current information, gleaned from conversations overheard and questions asked. At Chariot Street - he was able to report - no bodies had been found, so it might be safely assumed that Cal had not perished there. Remains had however been found in Rue Street.

‘I didn't know any of them personally,' he said. ‘But I'm afraid you did.'

‘Who?'

‘Balm de Bono.' ‘ - de Bono?'

‘He was at Rue Street last night.'

She fell silent, thinking of the brief time she'd spent with de Bono, and of their debates together. Now he was gone. And how soon would the rest of them follow?

‘What do we do, Nimrod?' she murmured. ‘Do we try and hide again? Another Weave?'

There aren't enough of us to fill a prayer mat,' Nimrod said mournfully.

‘Besides, we don't have the raptures. There's very little power left between us.'

‘So we sit back and wait for the Scourge to pick us off? Is that what you're saying?' Nimrod drew his hand over his face. ‘I've fought about as hard as I can ...' he said. ‘I think we all have.'

He fetched a tobacco tin from his pocket, and began to roll himself a cigarette. ‘I've made my mistakes,' he said. ‘I fell for Shadwell's lies ... I even fell in love.'

‘You did?'

He made a slight smile, which reminded Suzanna of the irrepressible creature he'd once been. ‘Oh yes...' he said. ‘... I've had my adventures in the Kingdom. But they didn't last long. There was always a part of me that never left the

Fugue. That still hasn't left.' He lit the match-thin cigarette he'd rolled. ‘I suppose that's ludicrousI he said, ‘given that the place doesn't exist any longer.'

He'd forsaken his dark glasses as soon as the waiter had retired. His eyes, their gold untarnished, were on her now, looking for some sliver of hope.

‘You can remember it?' she said.

‘The Fugue? Of course.'

‘So can I. Or at least I think I can. So maybe it isn't lost.'

He shook his head.

‘Don't be sentimental,' he chided. ‘Memories aren't enough.'

It was fruitless to argue the niceties of that: he was telling her that he was in pain; he didn't want platitudes or metaphysics.

She turned over in her head the problem of whether she should tell him what she knew: that she had reason to hope that all was not lost; that the Fugue might be again, one day. It was, she knew, a slender hope - but he needed a life-line, however tenuous.

‘It's not over,' she said.

‘Dream on,' he replied. ‘It's finished.'

‘I tell you the Fugue's not gone.'

He looked up from his cigarette.

‘What do you mean?'

‘In the Gyre ... I used the Loom.'

‘Used the Loom? What are you saying?'

‘Or it used me. Maybe a bit of both.'

‘How? Why?'

To keep everything from being lost.'

Nimrod was leaning across the table now.

‘I don't understand,' he said.

‘Neither do I, fully,' she replied. ‘But something happened. Some force

She sighed. She didn't have the words to describe those moments. Part of her wasn't even sure it had happened. But of one thing she was certain:

‘I don't believe in defeat, Nimrod. I don't care what this fucking Scourge is. I won't lie down and die because of it.'

‘You don't have to.,' he said. ‘You're a Cuckoo. You can walk the other way.'

‘You should know better than that,' she said, sharply. The Fugue belongs to anyone who'll die for it. Me ... Cal...'

He looked chastened.

‘I know,' he said. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘It's not just you who needs the Fugue, Nimrod. We all do.'

She glanced towards the window. Through the bamboo blinds she could see that the snow was coming down again with fresh vehemence. ‘I never believed in EdenI she said softly. ‘Not the way the Bible tells it. Original sin and all that crap. But maybe the story's got an echo somewhere in it.'

‘An echo?'

‘Of the way things really were. A place of miracles, where magic was made. And the Scourge ended up believing the Eden story, because it was a corrupted version of the truth.'

‘Does it matter?' Nimrod sighed. ‘Whether the Scourge is an Angel or not; whether it comes from Eden, or not, how does that alter anything? The point is, it believes it's Uriel. And that means it'll destroy us.'

The point was incontestable. When the world was coming to an end, what did names matter?

‘I think we should be together,' he said, after a pause, ‘instead of spread across the country. Perhaps we can muster something if we're all in one place.'

‘I see the sense in that.'

‘Better than the Scourge picking us off!'

‘But where?'

‘There was a place...' he said, ‘where it never came. I remember it vaguely. Apolline will tell us better.'

‘What kind of place?'

‘A hill, I think it was.' he said, his unblinking stare on the white paper tablecloth between them. ‘Some kind of hill...'

‘We'll go there then, shall we?'

‘It's as good a place to die as any.'

II

DUST AND ASHES

The saints on the facade of the Church of St Philomena and St Callixtus had long since lost their faces to the rain. They had no eyes to see the visitors that came to the door in the early evening of 21st December; nor did they have ears to hear the debate on the step. Even if they had heard, and seen - even if they'd stepped off their pedestals and gone out to warn England that it had an Angel in its midst - their alarms would have gone unheeded. England had no need of saints tonight, nor any night: it had martyrs enough.

Hobart stood on the threshold, the Scourge's light visible through the flesh of his throat and darting from the corners of his mouth. He had hold of Shadwell's arm, and would not let him step out of the snow.

This is a church ....' he said, not with Uriel's voice but with his own. Sometimes the Angel seemed to give him the right to self-government for a while, only to pull the leash tight again if its host grew fractious.

‘Yes, it's a church,' said Shadwell. ‘And we're here to destroy it.'

Hobart shook his head.

‘No,' he said. ‘I won't do that.'

Shadwell was too tired for argument. This was not the first of the day's visits. Since leaving Chariot Street the Angel had led them to several sites around the country, where it remembered the Seerkind taking refuge during the last holocaust. All had been wasted journeys: the places - when they were still recognizable - were devoid of magic or its makers. The weather had deteriorated by the hour. Snow now blanketed the country from one end to the other, and Shadwell was weary of both the trek and the chill. He'd become anxious too, as each pursuit ended in disappointment; anxious that Uriel would grow impatient, and his control of the creature would begin the slip. That was why he'd brought the Angel here, where he knew there was magic, or its leavings. This was where Immacolata had made the Rake: a place part shrine, part womb. Here Uriel's hunger for destruction would be assuaged, for tonight at least.

‘We have work to do inside,' he told Uriel's host. ‘The Scourge's work.'

But Hobart still refused to cross the threshold.

‘We can't destroy it...' he said,' ... God's house.'

There was irony aplenty in the fact that he, Shadwell - raised a Catholic - and Uriel, God's fire, should be ready to demolish this pitiful temple; while Hobart - whose only religion had been the Law - refused. This was the man who kept not the Bible close to his heart, but a book of faery-tales. So why this sudden fastidiousness? Did he sense that death was close, and it was time to repent his Godlessness? If so, Shadwell was unmoved.

‘You're the Dragon, Hobart,' he said. ‘You can do what you like.'

The man shook his head, and at his denial the light in his throat brightened.

‘You wanted fire, you've got it,' Shadwell went on.

‘I don't want it,' Hobart said, his words becoming choked. Take ... it ... away ...'

The last syllables were forced through chattering teeth. Smoke came too, up from his belly. And after it, Uriel's voice.

‘No more argument,' it demanded.

Though it seemed to have reclaimed the reins of Hobart's body, the man still fought to keep control for himself. The conflict made him shake violently, a display Shadwell was certain would draw unwelcome attention if they didn't soon step out of public view.

There are Seerkind inside,' he said. ‘Your enemies.'

His coaxing went unheard by either Uriel or Hobart. Either the Angel was losing its grip on its vessel, or Hobart had developed new powers of resistance, for Uriel was having to fight hard to regain total possession. One or other of them began to beat the body's fist against the portico, perhaps to distract its opponent. The flesh, caught between man and Angel, burst and bled.

Shadwell tried to avoid being spattered, but the Inspector's grip was fiercer than ever, holding him close. The wasted head turned in Shadwell's direction. From the smoky cavern between his teeth Hobart's voice emerged, barely decipherable.

‘Get... it... out of me,' he pleaded.

‘I can do nothing,' Shadwell said, wiping a fleck of blood from his upper lip with his free hand. ‘It's too late.'

‘He knows that,' came the reply. Not Hobart's voice this time, but Uriel's. ‘He's the Dragon forever.'

Hobart had begun to sob, his snot and tears boiling away as they reached the furnace of his mouth.

‘Don't be afraidI said Uriel, its tone a parody of Shadwell at his silkiest. ‘Do you hear me, Hobart?'

The head nodded loosely, as if the muscle of the neck it was carried on was half cut through.

‘Shall we go inside?' said Shadwell.

Again, that dislocated nodding. The body was free of twitches now; the face a blank. As final proof of the Angel's triumph, Hobart dropped his hold on Shadwell, then turned and went ahead of the Salesman into the church.

It was deserted, the candles cold, the smell of incense souring.

"There are raptures here,' said Uriel.

‘Indeed there are,' said Shadwell, following the creature down the aisle to the chancel rail. He had expected the crucifix above the altar to win some response from the Angel, but Uriel passed it by without a glance, and crossed to the baptistery door. It laid Hobart's broken hand upon the wood. The boards smouldered, the door flew open. It was the same procedure at the second door. With Uriel-in-Hobart leading the way they descended into the crypt.

They were not alone there; a light was burning at the far end of the passage along which Immacolata had come to meet Shadwell: from the Shrine, presumably. Without further word Uriel began along the corridor, ribbons of its hidden self flowing from Hobart's torso and grazing the caskets in the walls, pleasuring in their stillness, their silence. It was half way between stairs and Shrine when a priest stepped from an intersecting passageway and blocked the path. His face was pale, as if powdered, a streak of blue dirt -some sign of obsequience - daubed in the centre of his forehead.

‘Who are you?' he demanded.

‘Step aside,' said Shadwell.

‘You're trespassing,' the man retorted. ‘Get out of here!'

Uriel had stopped a yard or two from where the priest stood, and now threw its hand out and snatched hold of one of the casket ledges, its other hand taking hold of Hobart's hair and dragging the man's face towards the wall as if to beat its own skull open. This was not the Angel's doing, Shadwell realized, but Hobart's. Using the distraction of the priest's appearance, he was again attempting to seize control. The contested body immediately became epileptic, a throttled roar emerging from its throat, which may have been intended as a warning to the priest. If so, it went uncomprehended. The man stood his ground as Uriel twisted Hobart's head back in his direction -bone and cartilage audibly grinding upon each other. A moment passed: priest and Angel face to face. Then Uriel's flame erupted from Hobart's mouth.

The effect, in the confined space of the passage, was more impressive than anything Shadwell had witnessed in Rue Street. The shock-wave threw him backwards, but he was too much the voyeur to be denied the spectacle, and hauled himself upright to watch Uriel's lethal theorems proved on its victim. The priest's body was lifted against the ceiling and pinned there until the flames had devoured it.

It was over in seconds, and Shadwell squinted through the smoke to see Uriel moving off towards the Shrine, with Hobart loosing a sobbing howl of horror at what had been done. Shadwell followed, dwindling motes of fiery ash falling around him. The fire had not just caught the priest, but was eating at the very brick of the passageway, and consuming the caskets in the niches. The lead of their inner linings dripped from the ledges, and the bodies came with it, shrouds burning around their illustrious bones.

As he approached the door of the Shrine Shadwell's feet slowed. This had been Immacolata's domain. Here she'd been all-powerful, worshipped by unmanned men whose abeyance to Christ and his Mother had been a sham; men who'd believed her a Goddess. He'd never believed that himself. So why did he have this sudden fear upon him?: a desecrator's fear?

He stepped inside the Shrine, and there had his answer. As he surveyed the bones on the walls he knew as only a lover could know that the creature he'd lusted after, and finally betrayed, was still holding court here. Death had no hold on her. She was in the walls, or in the air: somewhere near.

‘Goddess...' he heard himself say.

There was no time to warn Uriel. A second priest, younger than his dead brother, appeared from the shadows and ran at the Angel, knife in hand. Hobart's cry stopped, and he turned his mutinous hands to the task of preventing a second slaughter, clamping them to his face to dam the coming fire. The device gave the attacker time to deliver a cut, the knife entering Hobart's side. But as the priest withdrew it for a second stab Uriel's benediction spurted between Hobart's fingers, then broke out entirely, taking the flesh and bone of his hands with it. The fire caught the priest head on and flung him across the Shrine. He danced against the bones for a heart-beat, then he, like his brother, was ash.

He'd done serious damage to Hobart, but it took Uriel less time to cauterize the wound with its glance than it had taken the knife to deliver it. The task done, it turned its gaze on Shadwell. For a breathless moment the Salesman thought it meant to burn him where he stood. But no.

‘Don't be afraid,' it said.

It had offered the same meagre comfort to Hobart mere minutes before. The sentiment had sounded hollow then, but more so now, in the light of the way it had maimed its host. Hobart's hands, which he'd once envisaged burning with righteous fire, had been reduced to withered claws in the act of trying to prevent that fire from doing its work. Hobart was sobbing again, as he or the Angel held the stumps up to be examined. Had Uriel left him with the burden of pain his nerve-endings must be suffering, or did he sob that his body was an instrument in these abominations?

The arms dropped, and Uriel turned his attention to the walls.

‘I like these bones,' it said, and wandered over to the most elaborate of the designs. Tendrils, thin as sewing-thread and lightning bright, skipped from its borrowed torso and face, and ran over the skulls and rib-cages.

There was a moment of hiatus, the fire roaring in the niches outside, the ashes of the second priest still hanging in the air. In that moment Shadwell heard Immacolata's voice. It was the most intimate of whispers, a lover's whisper.

‘What have you done?' she said.

He glanced across at Uriel, who was still entranced by the macabre symmetry of the wall. It made no sign of having heard the Incantatrix. Again, the question.

‘What have you done?' she said. ‘It knows no mercy.'

He did not need to voice his response. Thought was enough.

‘And you did?' he answered.

‘I didn't know myself,' Immacolata told him. ‘I think this Scourge is the same.'

‘It's called Uriel,' Shadwell reminded her, ‘it's an Angel.'

‘Whatever it is, you have no power over it.'

‘I freed it.' Shadwell responded. ‘It obeys me.'

‘Why lie?' Immacolata said. ‘I know when you're afraid.'

The din of destruction broke the exchange. Shadwell looked up from his thoughts to see Uriel, its tendrils extended across the wall, sweep all the bones from their places like so much crockery from a piled table. They fell around it in a dusty litter, the remains of fully half a hundred people.

Uriel laughed - another trick it had caught from Shadwell - the sound made more distressing by its artificiality. It had found a game it liked. Turning to the next wall it proceeded to vandalize that in the same manner; then on to the third.

Tell it to stop ...' Immacolata's ghost whispered, as bones large and small joined the myriad on the ground. ‘If you're not afraid: tell it to stop.'

But Shadwell simply watched as the Angel cleared the fourth wall at a stroke, then turned its attention to the ceiling.

‘You'll be next,' Immacolata said.

Shadwell flattened himself against the now naked brick as remains rained down.

‘No ...' he murmured.

The bones stopped falling; there were none left on either walls or ceiling. Slowly, the dust began to settle. Uriel turned to Shadwell.

‘Why do you whisper behind my back?' it enquired lightly.

Shadwell glanced towards the door. How far would he get if he tried to run now? A yard or two, probably. There was no escape. It knew; it heard.

‘Where is she?' Uriel demanded. The demolished chamber was hushed from one end to the other. ‘Make her show herself.'

‘She used me,' Shadwell began. ‘She'll tell you lies. Tell you I loved raptures. I didn't. You must believe me, I didn't.'

He felt the Angel's countless eyes upon him; their stare silenced him.

‘You can hide nothing from me,' the Angel pronounced. ‘I know what you've desired, in all its triviality, and you needn't fear me.'

‘No?'

‘No. I enjoy the dust you are, Shadwell. I enjoy your futility, your meaningless desires. But the other that's here - the woman whose raptures I can smell - she I want to kill. Tell her to show herself and be done with it.'

‘She's dead already.'

‘So why does she hide?'

‘I don't,' came Immacolata's voice, and the bones on the floor churned like a sea as the ghost rose from them. Not simply from them but of them, defying Uriel's destruction as her will made a new anatomy from the fragments. The result was far more than a sum of its parts. It was, Shadwell saw, not one but all of the sisters, or a projection of their collective spirit.

‘Why should I hide from you?' the monument said. Every shard in its body revolved as she spoke.

‘Are you happy now?' she asked.

‘What is happy?' Uriel wanted to know.

‘Don't bother to protest your innocence,' the phantom said. ‘You know you don't belong in this world.'

‘I came here before.'

‘And you left. Do so again.'

‘When I'm done.' Uriel replied. ‘When the rapture-makers are extinguished. That's my duty.'

‘Duty?' Immacolata said, and her bones laughed.

‘Why do I amuse you?' Uriel demanded.

‘You are so deceived. You think you're alone - ‘

‘I am alone.'

‘No. You've forgotten yourself; and so you've been forgotten.'

‘I am Uriel. I guard the gate.'

‘You are not alone. Nobody - nothing - is alone. You're part of something more.'

‘I am Uriel. I guard the gate.'

There's nothing left to guard,' Immacolata said. ‘But your duty.'

‘I am Uriel. I -'

‘Look at yourself. I dare you. Throw the man you're wearing away, and look at yourself.'

Uriel did not speak its reply, but shrieked it.

‘I WILL NOT!'

And with its words it unleashed its fury against the body of bones. The statue flew apart as the fire struck it, burning fragments shattering against the walls. Shadwell shielded his face as Uriel's flame ran back and forth across the chamber to eradicate the Incantatrix's image completely. It was not satisfied for a long while, scouring each corner of the Shrine until every last offending shard was chased to ash.

Only then did that same sudden tranquillity descend that Shadwell loathed so much. The Angel sat Hobart's wretched body on a pile of bones, and picked up a skull between the fire-blackened hands.

‘Might it not be cleaner...' the Angel said, its words measured,'... if we emptied the whole world of living things?'

The suggestion was floated so delicately, its tone so perfectly a copy of Shadwell's Reasonable Man, that it took him a moment to comprehend the ambition of what it proposed.

‘Well?' it said. ‘Might it not?'

It looked up at Shadwell. Though its features were still in essence Hobart's, all trace of the man had been banished from them. Uriel shone from every pore.

‘I asked a question,' it said. ‘Would that not be fine?'

Shadwell murmured that it would.

‘Then we should see such afire, shouldn't we?' it said, rising from its seat of bones. It went to the door, and stared off down the passageway, where the caskets still burned.

‘Oh...'it said with yearning in its voice.'... such afire.'

Then, eager not to delay its goal's consummation by a moment, it started back towards the stairs, and the sleeping Kingdom beyond.

IV

THE SECRET ISLE

1

The train was an hour late reaching Birmingham. When it finally arrived the snow was still falling, and taxis couldn't be had for love nor money. Cal asked for directions to Harborne, and waited in line for twenty-five minutes to board the bus, which then crawled from stop to stop, taking on further chilled passengers until it was so overburdened it could carry no more. Progress was slow. The city-centre was snarled with traffic, reducing everything to a snail's pace. Once out of the centre the roads were hazardous - dusk and snow conspiring to cut visibility - and the driver never risked more than ten miles an hour. Everyone sat in wilful cheerfulness, avoiding each others' eyes for fear of having to make conversation. The woman who'd seated herself beside Cal was nursing a small terrier, encased in a tartan coat, and a picture of misery. Several times he caught its doleful eyes regarding him, and returned its gaze with a consoling smile.

He'd eaten on the train, but he still felt lightheaded, utterly divorced from the dismal scenes their route had to offer. The wind slapped him from his reverie, however, once he stepped out of the bus on Harborne Hill. The woman with the tartan dog had given him directions to Waterloo Road, assuring him that it was a three-minute trot at the outside. In fact it took him almost half an hour to find, during which time the chill had clawed its way through his clothes and into his marrow. Gluck's house was a large, double-fronted building, its

facade dominated by a monkey-puzzle tree which rose to challenge the eaves. Twitching with cold, he rang the bell. He didn't hear it sound in the houseI so he knocked, hard, then harder. A light was turned on in the hallway, and after what seemed an age the door was opened, to reveal Gluck, the remains of a chewed cigar in his hand, grinning and instructing him to get in out of the cold before his balls froze. He didn't need a second invitation. Gluck closed the door after him, and threw a piece of carpet against it to keep out the draught, then led Cal down the hallway. It was a tight squeeze. The passage was all but choked by cardboard boxes, piled to well above head height.

‘Are you moving?' Cal asked, as Gluck ushered him into an idyllically warm kitchen which was similarly littered with boxes, bags and piles of paperwork.

‘Good God, no,' Gluck replied. Take off your wet stuff. I'll fetch you a towel.'

Cal skinned off his soaked jacket and equally sodden shirt, and was taking off his shoes, which oozed water like sponges, when Gluck returned with not only a towel but a sweater and a pair of balding corduroys.

‘Try these,' he said, slinging the clothes into Cal's lap. ‘I'll make some tea. You like tea?' He didn't wait for an answer. ‘I live on tea. Sweet tea and cigars.'

He filled the kettle and lit the antiquated gas cooker. That done he fetched a pair of hiker's socks from the radiator, and gave them to Cal.

‘Getting warmer?' he asked.

‘Much.'

‘I'd offer you something stronger,' he said, as he produced tea-caddy, sugar and a chipped mug from a cupboard. ‘But I don't touch it. My father died of drink.' He put several heaped spoons of tea into the pot. ‘I must tell you,' he said, wreathed in steam. ‘I never expected to hear from you again. Sugar?'

‘Please.'

"Pick up the milk, will you? We'll go through to the study.'

Taking the pot, sugar and mug, he led Cal out of the kitchen and upstairs to the first landing. It was in the same condition as the floor below: its decoration neglected, its lamps without shades, and heaped everywhere the same prodigious amount of paperwork, as though some mad bureaucrat had willed Gluck his life's work.

He pushed open one of the doors and Cal followed him into a large, cluttered room — more boxes, more files - which was hot enough to grow orchids in, and reeked of stale cigar smoke. Gluck set the tea down on one of the half-dozen tables, claiming his own mug from beside a heap of notes, then drew two armchairs up beside the electric fire.

‘Sit. Sit,' he exhorted Cal, whose gaze had been drawn to the contents of one of the boxes. It was full, to brimming, with dried frogs.

‘Ah,' said Gluck. ‘No doubt you're wondering ...'

‘Yes,' Cal confessed. ‘I am. Why frogs?'

‘Why indeed?' Gluck replied. ‘It's one of the countless questions we're trying to answer. It isn't just frogs, of course. We get cats; dogs; a lot of fish. We've had tortoises. Aeschylus was killed by a tortoise. That's one of the first recorded falls.'

‘Falls?'

‘From the heavens,' said Gluck. ‘How many sugars?'

‘Frogs? From the sky?'

‘It's very common. Sugars?'

‘Two.'

Cal peered into the box again, and took a trio of frogs out. Each was tagged; on the tag was written the date it fell, and where. One had come down in Utah, one in Dresden, a third in County Cork.

‘Are they dead on arrival?' he asked.

‘Not always,' said Gluck, handing Cal his tea. ‘Sometimes they arrive unharmed. Other times, in pieces. There's no pattern to it. Or rather, there is, but we've still to find it.' He sipped his tea noisily. ‘Now - ‘ he said,' - you're not here to talk about frogs.'

‘No, I'm not.'

‘What are you here to talk about?'

‘I don't know where to begin.'

‘Those are always the best tales,' Gluck declared, his face glowing. ‘Begin with the most preposterous.'

Cal smiled; here was a man ready for a story.

‘Well - ‘ he said, taking a deep breath. And he began.

He'd intended to keep the account short, but after ten minutes or so Gluck began to interrupt his story with discretionary questions. It consequently took several hours to tell the whole thing, during which Gluck smoked his way through an heroic cigar. At last, the narrative reached Gluck's doorstep, and it became shared memory. For two or three minutes Gluck said nothing, nor did he even look at Cal, but studied the debris of stubs and matches in the ashtray. It was Cal who broke the silence.

‘Do you believe me?' he said.

Gluck blinked, and frowned, as though he'd been stirred from thoughts of something entirely different.

‘Shall we make some more tea?' he said.

He tried to stand up, but Cal took fierce hold of his arm.

‘Do you believe me?' he demanded.

‘Of course,' said Gluck, with a trace of sadness in his voice. ‘I think I'm obliged to. You're sane. You're articulate. You're damnably particular. Yes, I believe you. But you must understand, Cal, that in doing so I deliver a mortal blow to several of my fondest illusions. You are looking at a man in mourning for his theories.' He stood up. ‘Ah well...' he picked up the pot from the table, then set it down again. ‘Come next doorI he said.

There were no curtains at the window of the next room. Through it Cal saw that the snow had thickened to near-blizzard proportions while he'd been talking. The garden at the back of the house, and the houses beyond, had become a white nowhere.

But Gluck hadn't brought him in to show him the view; it was the walls he was directing Cal's attention to. Every available inch was covered with maps, most of which looked to have been up there since the world was young. They were stained with an accrual of cigar smoke, scrawled over in a dozen different pens, and infested with countless coloured pins, each presumably marking a place where some anomalous phenomenon had occured. And on the fringes of these maps, tacked up in mind-boggling profusion, were photographs of the events: grainy, thumb-nail pictures, foot-wide enlargements, strips of sequential images lifted from a home movie. There were many he could make no sense of, and others that looked patently fake. But for every blurred or phony photograph there were two that pictured something genuinely startling, like the frumpy woman standing in a domestic garden up to her ankles in what seemed to be a trawler's deep-sea catch; or the policeman standing guard outside a three-storey house which had fallen over on its face, though not a single brick was out of place; or the car bonnet which bore the imprint of two human faces, side by side. Some of the pictures were comical in their casual weirdness, others had a grim authenticity about them - the witnesses sometimes distressed, sometimes shielding their faces - that was anything but amusing. But all, whether ludicrous or alarming, went to support the same thesis: that the world was stranger than most of Humankind ever assumed.

This is just the tip of the iceberg - ‘ said Gluck. ‘I've got thousands of these photographs. Tens of thousands of testimonies.'

Some of the pictures, Cal noted, were linked by threads of various colours to pins in the maps.

‘You think there's a pattern here?' said Cal.

‘I believe so. But now, after hearing what you've told me, I begin to think maybe I was looking in the wrong place for it. Some of my evidence, you see, overlaps with your account. For the last three weeks - while you were trying to contact me - Max and I were up in Scotland, looking at a site we just found in the Highlands. We picked up some very strange articles there. I'd assumed it was a landing place of some kind for our visitors. I think now I was wrong. It was probably the valley your unweaving took place in.'

‘What did you find?'

‘The usual debris. Coins, clothing, personal effects of one kind or another. We boxed them all up, and brought them back down with us to examine at leisure. We could have made them fit our pet theories, you know... but now I think much of that's in ruins.'

‘I'd like to see that stuff,' Cal said.

‘I'll unpack it for youI said Gluck. His expression, since Cal had told his story, had been that of a deeply perplexed man. Even now he surveyed the map room with something akin to despair. In the past few hours he'd seen his whole world-view thrown into disarray.

‘I'm sorry,' said Cal.

‘What for?' Gluck replied. ‘Telling me about miracles? Please don't be. I'll just as happily believe in your mystery as in mine. It'll just take a little time to adjust. All I ask is that the mystery be there.'

‘Oh it isI said Cal. ‘Believe me, it is. I just don't know where.'

His attention strayed from Gluck's face to the window, and the blank scene beyond. More and more he feared for his beloved exiles. The night, the Scourge and the snow all seemed to be conspiring to erase them.

He crossed to the window; the temperature plummeted as he approached the icy glass.

‘I have to find them,' he said. ‘I have to be with them.'

He'd successfully kept his sense of desolation at bay until now; but sobs suddenly wracked him. He heard Gluck come to his side, but he didn't have sufficient mastery of himself to control his tears: they kept falling. Gluck put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

‘It's good to see somebody so in need of the miraculousI he said. ‘We'll find your Seerkind, Mooney. Trust me. If there's a clue to their whereabouts, it's here.'

‘We have to be quick,' Cal said softly.

‘I know. But we'll find them. Not just for you, but for me. I want to meet your lost people.'

‘They're not mine.'

‘In a way they are. And you're theirs. I could see that on your face. That's why I believe you.'

2

‘Where do we begin?' that was Cal's question.

The house was packed with reports from basement to attic. Perhaps, as Gluck had said, there was somewhere amongst them a clue - a line in a report, a photograph - that would point to the Kind's location. But where! How many testimonies would they have to dig through before they uncovered some hint of the hiding place? That assumed, of course, that in this time of jeopardy they'd band together. If not - if they were spread across the Isles - then it was a completely lost cause, as opposed to one almost lost.

Cal chided himself for that thought. It was no use being defeatist. He had to believe that there was a chance of discovery; had to believe the task before them wasn't just a way to occupy the time before the cataclysm. He would take Gluck as his model. Gluck, who'd spent his life in pursuit of something he'd never really seen, not doubting for an instant the validity of that pursuit; Gluck, who even now was brewing tea and digging out files, behaving as though he believed to his core that the solution to their problem was close at hand.

They'd made a base in the study. Gluck had cleared the largest desk, and laid on it a map of Britain, so vast it hung over the top like a tablecloth.

The Spectred Isle,' he said to Cal. ‘Study it a while. See if any of the sites we've investigated down the years ring a bell.'

‘All right.'

‘I'll go sort through the reports; and break open the boxes we brought from Scotland.'

He got about his business, leaving Cal to peruse the map, which was even more heavily annotated than those in the next room, many of the symbols, crossed lines and dusters of dots, accompanied by cryptic acronyms. What the letters UFO signified needed no explanation, but what was a Suspected TMD7 or a Cirrus VS? He decided to ignore the notes, which were only distracting him, and simply examine the map systematically, quarter inch by quarter inch, beginning at Land's End and working his way back and forth across the country. He was grateful that he need only examine the land, because the seas around Britain - those regions whose names had always enchanted him on the weather reports: Fastnet, Viking, Forties, Tiree - those too had their share of miracles. It stood to reason. If there were squid falling on suburbia perhaps there were rains of tyres and chimney stacks on the North Sea. He had moved to and fro across the country half a dozen times when Gluck reappeared.

‘Any luck?' he wanted to know.

‘Not so far,' said Cal.

Gluck put a foot-high heap of reports on one of the chairs.

‘Maybe we'll find something here,' he said. ‘I've started with events in the neighbourhood of Spook City, and we'll spread out from there.'

‘Seems logical.'

‘You dig in. Anything that seems faintly familiar, set aside. As long as you keep reading, I'll keep supplying.'

Gluck pinned the map up on the wall beside the desk, and left Cal to wade through the first collection of reports.

The work required concentration, which Cal found hard to come by. It was ten-thirty, and he already wanted sleep. But as he leafed through this catalogue of neglected wonders his weary eyes and wearier brain forgot their fatigue, re-invigorated by the startling stuff before them.

Many of the incidents were variations on by now familiar themes: events in defiance of laws geographical, temporal and metrological. Misplaced menageries; excursions from distant stars; houses larger inside than out; radios that picked up the voices of the dead; ice in midsummer trees; and hives that hummed the Lord's Prayer. All these things had taken place not in the faraway, but in Preston and Healey Bridge, in Scunthorpe and Windermere; solid, stoical places, inhabited by pragmatists not prone to hysteria. This country, which Gluck had called the Spectred Isle, was alive from one end to the other with delirious visions. It too was Wonderland.

Gluck came and went, supplying fresh files and fresh tea at intervals, but otherwise doing as little as possible to disturb Cal's concentration. It was difficult, Cal found, not to be sidetracked by many of the more bizarre accounts, but by disciplining himself severely he sifted out the one in every hundred or so that contained some detail that might connect the event described with the Fugue or its inhabitants. Some he knew of already: the destruction of Shearman's house, for instance. But there were other reports - of words seen in the air, of a man whose pet monkey quoted the Psalms - which had occurred in places he'd never heard of. Perhaps the Kind were there now.

It was only when he decided to take a short break from his labours that Gluck mentioned he'd unpacked the boxes they'd brought from Scotland, and asked if Cal wanted to examine the contents. He followed Gluck back into the map room, and there - every item tagged and marked meticulously - was the litter events in the valley had left behind. There wasn't much; either the survivors had destroyed the bulk of it, or natural processes had done the job. But there were a few pitiful reminders of the disaster - personal belongings of no particular interest - and some weaponry. Into both categories, weapon and personal effects - fell the one item that made Cal's skin run with gooseflesh. There, laid across one of the boxes, was Shadwell's jacket. He stared at it nervously.

‘Something you recognize?' said Gluck.

Cal told him what, and from where.

‘My God,' said Gluck. That's the jacket?'

His incredulity was understandable; viewed by the light of a bare bulb there was nothing so remarkable about the garment. But it still took Cal a minute to pluck up the courage to pick it up. The lining, which had probably seduced hundreds in its time, seemed quite unexceptional. There was perhaps a gleam in the cloth that was not entirely explicable, but no more evidence than that of its powers. Perhaps they'd gone out of it, now that its owner had discarded it, but Cal wasn't willing to take the risk. He threw it down again, covering up the lining.

‘We should take it with us,' Gluck said. ‘When we go.'

‘Go where?'

To meet with the Seerkind.'

‘No. I don't think so.'

‘Surely it belongs with themI Gluck said.

‘MaybeI Cal replied, without conviction. ‘But we have to find them first.'

‘Back to work then.'

He returned to the reports. Taking a break had been an error; he found it difficult to re-establish his rhythm. But he pushed on, using as a spur the sad remains next door, and the thought that they might soon represent his last keepsakes of the Kind.

At three-forty-five in the morning he finished going through the reports. Gluck had taken the opportunity to sleep for a while in one of the armchairs. Cal stirred him, and presented him with the nine key files he'd selected.

‘Is this all?' said Gluck.

‘There were others I wasn't sure about. I kept them aside, but I thought they might be red herrings.'

"True enough,' said Gluck. He went over to the map, and put pins in the nine locations. Then he stood back and looked. There was no discernible pattern to the sites; they were spread irregularly over the country. Not one was within fifty miles of another.

‘Nothing,' said Cal.

‘Don't be so hasty,' Gluck told him. ‘Sometimes the connections take a little while to become apparent,'

‘We don't have a while,' Cal reminded him wearily. The long hours of sleeplessness were catching up with him; his shoulder, where Shadwell's bullet had wounded him, ached; indeed his whole body ached.

‘It's useless,' he said.

‘Let me study it,' said Gluck. ‘See if I can find the pattern,'

Cal threw up his hands in exasperation.

There is no pattern,' he said. ‘All I can do is go to those places one by one - ‘ (in this weather? he heard himself thinking, you ‘II be lucky if you can step out of the door tomorrow morning.) ‘Why don't you go lay your head down for a few hours. I prepared a bed in the spare room. It's up one more flight, second on your left.'

‘I feel so bloody useless.'

‘You'll be even more useless if you don't get some sleep. Go on.'

‘I think I'll have to. I'll get going first thing - ‘

He climbed the stairs. The upper landing was cold; his breath went before him. He didn't undress, but slung the blankets over him, and left it at that.

There were no curtains at the frost-encrusted window, and the snow outside cast a blue luminescence into the room, bright enough to read by. But it didn't keep him from sleep more than thirty seconds.

IV

PAST HOPE

They came at the summons, all of them; came in ones and twos sometimes, sometimes in families or groups of friends; they came with few suitcases (what did they have in the Kingdom worth weighing themselves down with?), the only possessions they cared about those they'd brought out of the Fugue, and carried upon their persons. Souvenirs of their lost world: stones, seeds, the keys of their houses.

And of course they brought their raptures, what few they had. Brought them to the place Nimrod had told Suzanna about, but had failed to name. Apolline had remembered it, however. It was a place, in the time before the Weave, that the Scourge had never found. It was called Payment's Hill.

Suzanna feared that the Cuckoos would have wrought some profound change on the area; dug it up or levelled it. But no. The Hill was untouched, and the copse below it, where the Families had spent that distant summer, had flourished, and become a wood.

She'd also questioned the wisdom of their taking refuge out of doors in such appalling weather - the pundits were already pronouncing this the bitterest December in living memory -but she was assured that beleaguered as they were the Kind had solutions to such simple problems.

They had been safe below Rayment's Hill once; perhaps they would be safe there again.

The sense of relief amongst them at being reunited was palpable. Though most had survived well enough in the Kingdom, circumstances had obviously required that they keep their grief hidden. Now, back amongst their own people, they could reminisce about the old country, and that was no small comfort. Nor were they entirely defenceless here. Though their powers were vastly reduced without the Fugue to fuel them, they still had one or two deceiving raptures to call into play. It was doubtful they'd keep the power that had destroyed Chariot Street at bay for long, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

And when they were finally gathered in the groves between the trees - their collective presence working a subtle transformation upon bush and branch - she felt the indisputable rightness of this decision. If the Scourge eventually found them, they'd at least be together at the end.

There were only two notable absentees. Cal was one, of course. The other was the book she'd given into his hands; a book whose living pages had contained echoes of this midwinter wood. She prayed they were both safe somewhere -the book and its keeper. Safe; and dreaming.

2

Perhaps it was the thought he'd been in the process of shaping when sleep came (that the snow-light was bright enough to read by) which prompted the dream he had.

He imagined that he woke, and reaching into the pocket of his jacket - which was unaccountably deep - took out the book which he'd saved from destruction back at Chariot Street. He tried to open it, but his fingers were numb and he fumbled like a fool. When eventually he got the trick, there was a shock waiting, for the pages were blank, every one of them, blank as the world outside the window. The stories and the illustrations had gone.

And the snow kept falling on the seas of Viking and Dogger Bank, and on the land too. It fell on Healey Bridge and Blackpool, on Bath and Devizes, burying the houses and streets, the factories and the cathedrals, filling the valleys until they were indistinguishable from the hills, blinding the rivers, smothering the trees, until at last the Spectred Isle was as blank as the pages of Suzanna's book.

All this made perfect sense to his dreaming self: for were they not part of the same story, the book and the world outside it? Warp and weft. One world, indivisible.

The sights made him afraid. Emptiness was inside and out; and he had no cure for it.

‘Suzanna...' he murmured in his sleep, longing to put his arms around her, to hug her close to him.

But she wasn't near. Even in dreams he could not pretend she was near, couldn't bring her to his side. All he could do was hope she was safe; hope she knew more than he did about keeping nullity at bay.

‘I don't remember being happy,' a voice out from the past whispered in his ear. He couldn't put a name to it, but he knew its owner was long gone. He pressed his dream into reverse, in pursuit of its identity. The words came again, more strongly.

‘I don't remember being happy.'

Memory gave him the name this time, and a face too. It was Lilia Pellicia; and she was standing at the bottom of the bed, only it wasn't the bed he'd gone to sleep in. It wasn't even the same room.

He looked round. There were others here too, conjured from the past. Freddy Cammell was peering at his reflection; Apolline was straddling a chair, a bottle to her lips. At her side stood Jerichau, nursing a golden-eyed child. He knew now where he was, and when. This was his room in Chariot Street, the night the fragment of the carpet had come unwoven.

Without prompting, Lilia spoke again; the same line that had brought him here.

‘I don't remember being happy.'

Why, of all the extraordinary sights he'd seen and conversations he'd heard since that night had his memory chosen to replay this moment?

Lilia looked at him. Her distress was all too apparent; it was as though her second-sight had predicted the night of snow he was dreaming through; had known, even then, that all was lost. He wanted to comfort her, wanted to tell her that happiness was possible, but he had neither the conviction nor the will to misrepresent the truth.

Apolline was speaking now.

‘What about the hill?' she said.

What about the hill? he thought. If he'd once known what she'd been talking about, he'd forgotten since.

‘What was it called?' she asked.'... where we stayed -'

Her words began to slide away.

Go on, he willed her. But the remembered warmth of the room was already fading. A chill from the present had crept over him, driving that balmy August night into retreat. He listened still, his heart beginning to thump in his head. His brain hadn't re-run this conversation arbitrarily: there was method in it. Some secret was about to be divulged, if he could only hold on long enough.

‘What was it called?' Apolline's faltering voice repeated, ‘... where we stayed, that last summer? I remember that as if it were yesterday...'

She looked across at Lilia for a reply. Cal looked too.

Answer her, he thought.

But the chill was getting worse, summoning him back from the past into the bleak present. He desperately wanted to take with him the clue that was hovering on Lilia's lips.

‘I remember that...' Apolline said again, her stridency growing thinner with every syllable, ‘... as if it were yesterday.'

He stared at Lilia, willing her to speak. She was already as transparent as cigarette smoke.

Please God answer her, he said.

As her image began to flicker out entirely, she opened her mouth to speak. For a moment, it seemed he'd lost her, but her reply came, so softly it hurt to listen for it.

‘Rayment's Hill...' she said.

Then she'd gone.

‘Rayment's Hill!'

He woke with the words on his lips. The blankets had slid off him as he slept, and he was so cold his fingers were numb. But he'd claimed the place from the past. That was all he needed.

He sat up. There was daylight at the window. The snow was still coming down.

‘Gluck!' he called. ‘Where are you?'

Kicking a box of notes downstairs in his haste, he went in search of the man, and found him slumped in the armchair where he'd sat to hear Cal tell his tale.

He shook Gluck's arm, telling him to wake up, but he was swimming in deep waters, and didn't surface until Cal said: ‘Virgil.' at which his eyes opened as though he'd been slapped.

‘What?' he said. He squinted up at Cal. ‘Oh, it's you. I thought I heard ... my father.' He ran his palm over his bleary features.

‘What time is it?'

‘I don't know. Morning sometime.'

‘Want some tea?'

‘Gluck, I think I know where they are.'

The words brought him round. He stood up.

‘Mooney! You mean it? Where?'

‘What do you know about a place called Rayment's Hill?'

‘Never heard of it.'

‘Then that's where they are.'