“We could be that army,” I repeated, a little less confidently. “Surely it’s better to try than to just sit here and await our fate?”
“Storm Angel Tower?” said Sir Hugo Cameron. “I’d see myself in more of a leadership position, guiding our forces. Besides, joining an army is hardly likely to help our job prospects, is it?”
“That’s a fair point,” said red hair.
“Also,” said Sir Hugo Cameron, warming to his theme and speaking in a biscuity tone, “Angel Tower is a valuable part of the Square Mile. If we were to attack it, it might relocate elsewhere. That wouldn’t be good for business, would it?”
“True, true,” said the man with red hair. A few of the other people in the crowd were nodding wisely.
“But Angel Tower is already relocating.”
“Only partially,” said Hugo Cameron. “There are still jobs here. We’ve got to allow the people who work there to fuck things up as they choose for everyone living here otherwise they might pull out of the Square Mile entirely. That’s just good business sense.”
“Good business sense...” muttered a few people.
“But...” I began.
A man in a grey jacket that stood out amongst the dark suits pushed his way forward through the crowd. He wore a ginger moustache and horn-rimmed spectacles and had the air of a freethinker.
“Hold on,” he said. “This army. Does it pay?”
“Does it pay?” I said. “No. But it will help to restore...”
Ginger moustache waved me to silence.
“Well, I have a wife and three children to support. I need money. What’s the use of a job that doesn’t pay? I could find that in the workhouse.”
“Yes, but...”
“Although,” said Sir Hugo Cameron, thoughtfully, “a private militia is an idea. There is talk of work out along the river. This is an idea we could take to some contacts that I have...”
“No!” I said, “Not a private militia! Listen, people. If we were to attack Angel Tower right now...”
“Not right now,” said a man nearby. “Not right now. These things need to be organised properly. We need to tender for contracts to supply the army, form committees to ensure that proper procedure is followed...”
There was a commotion at the back of the crowd. A huge bulk was approaching, pumpkin head visible above the dark-suited men. One of the Quantifiers. I turned and ran without hesitation, pushing my way through the crowd behind me.
The Quantifier ran too. It was gaining on me. I pulled my pistol from my jacket and held it out before me. The dark-suited men who blocked my way scattered. But still they straightened their ties, wiped at their eyes, held out cards.
“Listen, I need to work. I’m offering you the chance to employ...”
“Get out of the fucking way!” I screamed.
I pushed the man aside and dodged through the crowds of people.
Where was I to go, I wondered? Not to the Poison Yews. I’d had it with the Cartel. I needed to get to the Laughing Dog and Bill. Or to Amit. Maybe the Indians or the Americans could make use of my knowledge.
“Apples! Get your apples here!”
The shout rose up above the snuffling and bawling of the crowd.
“Get your apples!”
I stopped, ducked into the café where only yesterday I had breakfasted with Rudolf Donati.
“Coffee, sir?” asked the waiter. “Take your mind off this past half hour? Things have been a bit funny ever since the crash.”
“Yes, coffee,” I said, not really listening. “That would be good.”
I sat down at a table and listened to the hiss of the machine as the waiter fixed me an espresso. Through the golden letters that decorated the window I saw someone tall wheel a barrow down the road, laden with beautiful red apples. One of the Quantifiers.
My tongue was wriggling at the thought of coffee. Out there, soon, hundreds of businessmen would be eating apples. Soon they’d be feeling the same as me. The Daddio couldn’t attack the towers directly in the past. Now that all those men had been laid off, he hadn’t wasted any time in recruiting his own army.
“Get your lovely apples! Take away those unemployment blues!”
The hiss of the coffee machine, the lovely earthy scent filling the air.
Look at all those people,
I thought.
Like children. Dream London has done that to them.
I thought of Alan and the Executive Dining Room, of how Angel Tower took away from the people in there any sense of responsibility for their own lives.
“Your coffee, sir.”
My tongue leapt.
“I’m sorry. I can’t stay.”
I dropped some coins on the table.
“Is there a back way out of here?” I asked.
“Sorry, it’s not for customers.”
“Do I have to pull out my pistol?”
The waiter was a big man, but a sensible man. He shrugged.
“Through there,” he said, pointing.
I
WALKED OUT
of the café into a little alley out back. A pair of jewelled salamanders crouched there, licking at ants on the pavement. I wondered about capturing a thousand salamanders and letting them loose on the 854
th
floor. One of the salamanders looked at me and licked its lips.
Mmmmm,
it said.
I
HEADED BACK
to the Laughing Dog. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Of all the people I knew in Dream London, Bill was the only one who seemed in control. Second Eddie had gone, Belltower End was off limits, Alan was losing it. I couldn’t run, I had to fight. Bill seemed to be the best placed to do that.
The drifts of yellow and white blossom, the fallout from so many nuclear explosions, were piled everywhere in the streets The good citizens of Dream London trailed their feet through the drifts, they wiped their sleeves across their windows to make a space to see out. The children threw handfuls of blossom into the air and ran through it, laughing. It was another hot Dream London day. The big yellow sun squatted in the sky, wobbling in the heat haze. The blossom dazzled the eye.
But for the most part, people were nervous. They were on edge. They felt the change in the air. They felt the sense of something coming. It wasn’t just the spreading panic caused by the lay-offs in the City. How many of them had been to the Spiral and seen Pandemonium reaching up towards them? How many of them had heard the stories about the parks?
They pushed down that fear with noise and bravado. The football fans were out, dressed in chocolate and cream and burgundy and silver, ready for tonight’s big match. Handclaps and cheers sounded from the the streets.
I walked through the blazing morning, a terrible thirst rising within me. I needed a drink.
It was after midday by the time I came to Hayling Street, hot, tired and footsore, and so, so thirsty. The wind blew thin ribbons of blossom across the smooth white dome of the Egg Market, out across the blue sky.
I walked down the bustling street towards the Laughing Dog, past the market stalls. People were stocking up on food, that much was obvious. They had come from the Egg Market carrying baskets loaded with eggs of all sizes, now they were stocking up on meat and vegetables. I wanted to eat, but my thirst was worse.
There was someone sitting on the pavement outside the Laughing Dog. I didn’t recognise her until she spoke to me.
“So, you came back then.”
I looked down to see Anna leaning against the wall. She was sitting on a little rectangular case. I remembered the sound of the trumpet that I heard playing at night in the Poison Yews.
“I came back,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“They came for Mother and Father first thing this morning. The workhouse.”
“So quickly?”
“They’re looking to beef up the labour force,” said Anna. “Things are beginning to move...”
“Your father only lost his job last night!”
“The bank came round at five o’clock this morning. They said that now my father didn’t have a job, they weren’t confident that he could pay the mortgage. He asked them to give him time to get another job. They said he could have one hour. You should have seen him, James. He said he would get one, that Shaqeel would sort it out. That the other members of the Cartel would help. He wanted to run out into the night there and then, still in his pyjamas.”
“And did he?”
“Mother wouldn’t let him. She said if they were going to do this, they would do it with dignity.”
“I hope they did.”
“Of course they didn’t. Mother opened a bottle and started drinking. Father just stared at the wall. At six o’clock the bank foreclosed on the mortgage. This horrible little rat of a bank manager who had been sitting in our lounge, said thank you, stood up, closed his briefcase, and said he would see himself out. Father and Mother looked at each other as he left the room, and we heard voices in the hall. Father burst into tears.”
“Who was in the hall?”
“The people from the workhouse. One man, one woman. Come to take Mother and Father away. They do everything respectfully, you know. No mixing of the sexes. That would be improper.”
Anna spoke with a calm detachment. She remained seated on her instrument case, looking at up me with her clear gaze, recounting the morning’s events as if they were an ordinary occurrence. Which, come to think of it, they probably were in Dream London.
“They’d brought uniforms for us,” she said, in the same matter-of-fact voice. “All our other clothes and possessions belonged to the bank now. Mother and Father changed without a fight. And that was it, they took them away. They didn’t even have time to say goodbye properly.”
“What about you?” I said. “Why didn’t they take you?”
“They wanted to. They had a uniform and everything. I told them no. They didn’t know what to do. They’re not used to people fighting back. Usually, by the time the bank has finished with people, all the fight has gone from them. It had certainly left Father. He walked away meekly, looking at the ground all the while, lost in shame.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Why?” asked Anna, rather impatiently. “It’s not your fault.”
She stared up at me.
“Why are you waiting here?” I asked.
“We can fight them,” said Anna, with quiet confidence.
“Fight who?” She hadn’t answered my question, I noticed.
“Them,” she said. “The people who are doing this to us.”
“People?” I said. “Anna, it’s just a bunch of ants.”
“The ants may be the source of the problem, Captain Wedderburn, but the real resistance know who the real enemy are. We’re ready to fight them.”
The real resistance,
she said. Not the vainglorious selfishness of the Cartel, but the real resistance who waited unnoticed in the shadows. The Poison Yews had been home to the resistance all along. I had just been looking in the wrong direction. Anna was part of it, young and clever and quietly brave. She deserved better than the mess people like her parents had made of her world. She didn’t deserve to die to pay for their mistakes.
“Fight who?” I said.
“The people who sold us to the ants. The people who let them go on owning us.”
She looked so calm, so clearly unaware of what she was letting herself in for I felt I had to say something.
“Don’t sacrifice yourself, Anna. It’s every man for themselves in the new world. It’s
definitely
every man for himself in Dream London. That’s the way they changed us.”
Anna rose to her feet. She looked down to check that her cornet case was undisturbed.
“You’re different, Captain,” she said. “You’re different to last night.”
“It’s not Captain any more. I’m just plain James now.”
“You
are
different.”
She tilted her head to examine me for other signs of change.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I was going to see Bill. Perhaps she can help me raise an army. I hope she can...”
“An army? To do what?”
“To take on Angel Tower.”
I waited for her to say something. She just nodded.
“About time,” she said. “We were waiting for something like this.”
“Who is we, Anna?” I asked.
She absently patted her cornet case.
“Well done, Mr Wedderburn. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Had what in me?”
“The willingness to stand and fight.”
“I’m only fighting because I can’t run away,” I said, with absolute honesty.
“Even so.”
She straightened the skirt of her school uniform and then bent and picked up her case.
“Well, Mr Wedderburn. It’s been a pleasure to witness your transformation, but I think that it’s time for me to leave.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Leave? Where are you going?”
Anna checked her reflection in the grubby window of the Laughing Dog.
“I’m going to get the others, Mr Wedderburn. It’s time.”
“Time? Time for what?”
She raised a hand in goodbye.
“If you do manage to raise an army,” she said, “bring it to Snakes and Ladders Square. That’s the place to be.”
“Snakes and Ladders Square?” I said.
“That’s the one. Even if you don’t manage to raise an army, be there by sunset. That’s when it will all happen, I think.”
“All what will happen?”
She smiled at me.
“I might see you before the end,” she said. She walked away down the road, through the bustle of the street market, gently swinging the case at her side.
I
PUSHED MY
way into the Laughing Dog, and I paused, blinking, as my eyes slowly adjusted to the dimness of the interior.
I made out the dirty trails of blossom on the floor, the shadowed shapes of the customers, the sud-stained glasses left on the uncleared tables.
I made my way across to the bar.
“Where’s Bill?” I asked the landlord.
“Bill? Who’s Bill?”
“Red headed girl,” I said. Recognition dawned on his fat face.
“Oh yeah. Bill. You’ll have to wait your turn. She’s upstairs.”
“Right.”
“Hey, you can’t go up there!”
I stopped, looked him straight in the eye.
“Look, do we have to do this every time I come in here?”
“Do what?”
“Threaten you with physical violence. Oh, here...”