After a quick glance over her shoulder, she nudged open the door and sidled through, her beam wavering in sync with her qualms. Perhaps it would have been best not to advertise her presence after all. She paused, nervously scanning the rows of seats. As before, the torch fell short of adequate, its light swallowed by the rococo folds of darkness. There was a stale, yeasty smell to the air; a morning-after smell. Her sense of walls breathing, cramped limbs stretching, was very strong, and into her imagination came a brazen rumble of laughter. Told you before, better know what you're doin'. The past, sugar, never lies down meekly.
Laura moved forward towards the top step, the memory of those haunting, silenced faces never more substantial. She'd glimpsed them in dreams, sometimes. Sometimes she'd caught sight of them from the corner of her eye. But over the years she'd become adept at ignoring what she didn't want to think about, didn't want to remember. Sometimes.
Max wouldn't end up like the boy they'd found in the factory.
Perhaps because she was afraid-or just perhaps-she was suddenly seized with the desire to thumb her nose at this stupid theatre and this stupid world and all the stupid, insane, incomprehensible, pointless deaths stretching generation upon generation back to a troupe of flea-bitten apes. She descended several steps, aimed the torch at the blank screen, and with her right hand in the shaft of light, formed a deliciously grotesque shadow puppet.
'So there!' She giggled, waggling the hooked nose.
A large bird swooped from above to peck at the nose. It missed and struck Laura's temple, a hot, sharp, staggering blow. With a cry she dropped the torch, which rolled out of sight. Not that it would be missed: to the stinging slap of a saltwater breeze, the raw smell of gutted fish and rancid blubber, the screen came to terrifying life. Keep telling him. In a split second Laura's thoughts crossed the stimulus barrier to forever, vivid images of Zach flashing before her eyes.
* * *
They faced each other in the gloom of the projection booth, where Fabio had tracked Zach. Any equipment had been stripped out long ago, leaving truncated cables, split tubing, and jagged holes to attest to haste rather than regard. Despite the observation window, oppressive dark red walls and a low ceiling shrunk the proportions of the room, though it was in fact much larger than standard for a time when cinema owners were anxious to cram in as many viewers as possible into an auditorium. Flakes of paint and chunks of plaster lay in untrodden dust, the way an ancient burial chamber is no longer of interest once plundered. Several times Zach eyed the overhead projector ducts, unable to shake off the feeling of being watched through mammoth binoculars, and made no objection when Fabio switched his pencil torch to full power.
'Where's Max?' Zach asked angrily after hearing out Fabio's brief explanation.
'At my flat gorging on pizza and crisps and some arcane delicacies like marshmallow almond-crunch liquorice ice cream, if I've got that right. All the stuff his mum won't buy. I set him loose in the aisles-virtual, mind you-of my favourite online grocery.'
'You're out of your fucking skull! There was no reason to stage this farce.'
'It's worked, hasn't it?' Fabio grinned his grin. 'Come on, a few hours of anxiety are a small price to pay for the formula. I wish it could always be this easy.' He sneezed once, then twice more. 'Jesus, this room is dusty. And look at you, nearly naked and shivering. Let's find Laura and get out of here before you catch a chill. Has she got the formula, or have you left it in a pocket?'
Hugging himself, Zach rubbed one bare foot along his calf, but the friction generated little warmth. Of a sudden the streaks of dirt on his leg, the clump of dust hanging from his big toe, the sartorial elegance of his paisley silk boxers-the irony of Fabio's machinations-struck him as supremely funny, and he thumped his foot to the ground and began to laugh. 'Formula? What formula?'
'What do you mean?' Despite the note of confusion in Fabio's voice, there was something, the sideways flicker of his eyes, the timing maybe, something Zach couldn't put a name to, but something, which stirred his disquiet. Then he caught the flash of light in the observation window, OK, Fabio had merely seen it first.
'That's a torch,' Fabio said. 'Laura must be down there.'
They crowded before the dingy pane of glass, almost opaque with dirt and fly specks. Distastefully Fabio brushed the desiccated corpses from the narrow sill. 'Where do they all come from?'
An instant later he was shoved aside. Zach drew back and made a fist. The glass shattered as much from the impact of his cry as his blow. 'No! Laura!' Then, knuckles bleeding, he catapulted from the room. Fabio moved to the broken window and gazed down at the scene below, a smile on his lips. By the time Zach reached the auditorium, the future would have vanished without a trace. And even if he'd glimpsed a figure, he'd have seen what his mind told him to see-an attacker with a large backpack, maybe a cape. Yet no marks or wounds, the kind of puzzle Zach himself might have appreciated under other circumstances. In preparation for an emergency call, Fabio removed his mobile from a pocket and turned to leave. He didn't want Zach wondering at the delay, though there was really no need to hurry.
* * *
Laura watches as Zach kneels by her sprawled body. How beautiful he is, those magic eyes, that hair, the tender arc of his back, she finds it hard to breathe. Watches as Fabio comes dashing up. Watches as Zach tries to find a pulse. 'She's not breathing. Oh god, she's not breathing.' Watches as Fabio shakes his head. 'I'm sorry . . . so fucking sorry . . . What happened? All I saw was a flash of light.' Watches as he flips open his mobile and keys in a number, touches Zach's shoulder, speaks. Watches as Zach bends to begin artificial respiration.
'Come on, Laura,' Zach says, 'breathe. Just breathe. We're getting help.'
Laura is still watching when she feels the first feathery touch on her face. She holds out an arm. It's beginning to snow, light snowflakes which soon thicken and obscure the screen.
Chapter 48
'You are here to become that Corvus,' the birdman says.
Zach shrugs off his hood, the wind slicing through his jaggedly shorn hair as though determined to bareblade him. He misses Stella terribly; get real, she'd have told this creature with an earthy laugh. It's easy to picture the flash of her scissors, clipping the overzealous wings.
Pani thrusts his chin forward like a stolid little wooden nutcracker, the Christmas ornament sort. 'Mr Bird,' he says, 'what's an avatar?'
'Pay no-' Zach says, but the birdman interrupts. 'One of your spirit selves. Come, I'll show you.' At a flick of his wrist, the dragon pillar reproduces a solemn, mussed-hair, chipped-tooth likeness of Max, vivid as ever despite the amnesiac snow. Zach grabs for Pani, who wriggles free to run across the circle and press his face against the ice. Surprised, 'It's not cold at all.' And then, excitedly, 'I can hear him!'
'Pani, don't,' Zach says. 'He's not real, it's a trick.' Moving to draw the boy away, he stops, not at the whisper of a remembered voice, not at the unfurling of wings, not even at the birdman's raised hand, but at the change in Pani himself.
'He's calling me,' Pani says.
'No!' Hastily Zach steps backwards, hoping that this will reverse whatever has been set in motion. But as the air around him glitters, Pani continues to fade. 'Pani, look at me! Pani!'
For a moment it seems to work. Transparent as frost on glass, Pani throws a glance over his shoulder, then fetches halfway round. Ice can carry sound with astonishing clarity, even over great distances.
Play your music, Zach.
A gust of wind blows loose snow across Zach's face, obscuring his vision with the dazzle and sting of a prism ground to fine powder. Through a prickle of tears he sees the snow rime to Pani, rendering him as delicate as wind chimes, as fine-blown as a crystal bauble. Indistinct now except for his fiery, speaking eyes, he makes no attempt to speak, but the supplicating notes of a clarinet tremble in Zach's ear.
'Don't-' Zach breaks off, fearful, as he's always been fearful, of a future riven by fearful symmetry. After a moment he ventures a hesitant 'Pani,' then falters once more. He's right to fear. Pani is shaking his head, colour and texture returning to his skin, while Max, a grieving and lonely and vulnerable Max, is beginning to waver, waver and dim.
Let It Be
'Weigh your choices carefully,' the birdman says.
Oh yes, carefully. Fulgur uploads carefully selected participants in the rehabilitation trials, each a volunteer with full parental consent. All other individuals a facilitator will encounter are modules carefully designed and programmed for verisimilitude.
Zach chooses not to wring the birdman's neck, most carefully. After brushing phantom hair from his eyes with a small, bitter laugh, he scoops up a handful of snow for one last snowball, but the crystals are too cold to compact. Without taking his eyes from Pani, he lets the snow trickle from his hand. He lets it trickle until the boy is gone, leaving only a memory to shimmer against the outspread wings.
* * *
Zach learned early on that adults wield secrets like swords, a will to power. The real childhood secret, the thing to do, is not to play the game. He reminds himself of this dictum at the sound of wings, the wind plunging its cold steel into his gut as he cranes his head to watch the figures vanish into the clouds. Their spokesman, however, remains behind as if Pani's death-and it certainly feels like a death-is just a practice drill with wasters.
'Not curious what they're up to?' the birdman asks.
'Not particularly.'
'Not even if I tell you they're meeting with Lev?'
'Not even if you tell me they're meeting with Laura.'
'There's no need for that. You may not believe me, but I'm on your side.'
'Then prove it. Find her.'
'Lev didn't tell you?'
'Tell me what?'
The birdman spreads his wings, and for a moment Zach thinks that he's about to take flight, leaving him, Zach, to . . . to do what exactly? Wander aimlessly, hopelessly, till he stumbles and falls into a lead and drowns, till he throws himself into one, till in any case, and inevitably, the ice gets him. But under the transept of those vaulted wings, the birdman shakes his head in an unmistakable, and possibly universal, signal of denial. 'I regret-' His wings flutter, fold, and he begins again. 'Look, whatever Lev may have said, or not said, no qliworld is deathproof.'
Zach says nothing. The air smells of insomnia, nights and nights of brutal, shivering sleeplessness.
'Those Levellers.' The wind makes it difficult for Zach to tell if the birdman has sighed. 'Though we sometimes cooperate, they have their own agenda.'
'Everyone has an agenda. At least Lev is no murderer.'
'We may kill, but we don't murder.'
'Oh really? You must have an interesting definition of murder.'
'What we do, we do for good reason-very good reason.'
'I've already heard your so-called reason for murdering-pardon me, killing-Laura. It was, you, wasn't it, who killed Stella? And six-six, damn you!-of her companions. Was that one reason or seven separate ones?'
'The derelict cinema.'
'I promise you, if I ever get the chance, I'll burn it to the ground.'
'You'll get the chance, much sooner than you think, and I promise you, you won't.' Laura's chain reappears in the birdman's hand. He tosses it up a few times, where it catches the light. 'As I said, we prefer to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Sometimes the well-meaning do great harm. Yes, Stella was a friend of yours, and yes, she was a friend to certain Janus, but ultimately she'd have had no place in her belief system for Corvus.'
'So you killed her.'
'Yes.'
'And the others?'
'A splinter group in the making.'
'Nonsense! Simus don't obstruct each other.'
Now the sigh is audible, deliberately so. 'Just a few seconds ago you said it yourself: everyone has an agenda. Even cognoscens girls don't like to be spurned. And especially not for a sapiens.'
'Jessica? Surely you can't mean Jessica?'
'A shame that someone so gifted would chose to manipulate shamelessly. Stella had no idea what was happening.'
'You should have let me deal with it!' Zach turns and faces into the wind, its steely edge carving his anger into a monument to his own failings. The birdman seems impervious to the cold.
'Hardly impervious. There are worlds and worlds on which I shiver.'
'No ice in your veins? Tell me, what did you do with the bodies?'
'We're not barbarians.' He dangles the pendant, swinging it back and forth, back and forth, almost nervously, almost-if the notion weren't ridiculous-to calm himself. 'Look into your own nature, look deep within, before claiming that a cognoscens is incapable of killing.'
The wind flings itself against the crow-embossed column, which rings as though the ficta were inscribed as accidentals in the ice.
Of course. 'You're cognoscens, aren't you?'
The birdman encloses the pendant in the palm of his hand, then removes his mask and the two of them study each other.
'I'm not ready for wings,' Zach says.
'There are other ways to cross the ice.'
'Which ice?'
'The ice of time?' The birdman's tone is mocking, yet gently so, and Zach is reminded of Pani probing the frozen surface of the polynya with his harpoon.
'Who doesn't regret his terrible mistakes? Who doesn't want to go back and make things right? If your wings can do that, then I'll accept their weight. Only tell me how to find Laura.'
Zach's eyes follow the trajectory of the necklace, flinching at the burst of radiance as it enters the column. On a plain dark, waste, and wild, it would blind him; here in the white forever of the Arctic, he bows his head and shivers; shivers like a sail drawing strength from the wind.
