Weaveworld

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 Speared 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 TMD? 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 Speared 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 them,’ Gluck said.

‘Maybe,’ 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’ll 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.