In the Flesh (19 page)

Ireniya smiled. She had left her teeth in her bedroom. 'You're not just a pretty face,' she said to Gomm.

  'He's right,' said Floyd, beaming now. "They wouldn't dare risk us. They'll have to let us go.'

  'You're out of your minds,' Goldberg muttered. 'There's nothing out there for us . . .' He returned into his room and slammed the door. Even as he did so the corridor was blocked off at either end by a mass of guards. Gomm took hold of Vanessa's rifle and raised it to point at his heart.

  'Be gentle,' he hissed, and threw her a kiss.

  'Put down the weapon, Mrs Jape,' said a familiar voice. Mr Klein had appeared amongst the throng of guards. Take it from me, you are completely surrounded.'

  'I'll kill them all,' Vanessa said, a little hesitantly. Then again, this time with more feeling: 'I'm warning you. I'm desperate. I'll kill them all before you shoot me.'

  'I see . . .' said Klein quietly. 'And why should you assume that I give a damn whether you kill them or not? They're insane. I told you that: all lunatics, killers . . .'

  'We both know that isn't true,' said Vanessa, gaining confidence from the anxiety on Klein's face. 'I want the front gates opened, and the key in the ignition of my car. If you try anything stupid, Mr Klein, I will systematically shoot these hostages. Now dismiss your bully-boys and do as I say.'

Mr Klein hesitated, then signalled a general withdrawal.

Gomm's eyes glittered. 'Nicely done,' he whispered.

  'Why don't you lead the way?' Vanessa suggested. Gomm did as he was instructed, and her small party snaked their way out past the massed clocks and telephones and video screens. Every step they took Vanessa expected a bullet to find her, but Mr Klein was clearly too concerned for the health of the ancients to risk calling her bluff. They reached the open air without incident.

  The guards were in evidence outside, though attempting to stay out of sight. Vanessa kept the rifle trained on the four captives as they headed through the yards to where her car was parked. The gates had been opened.

  'Gomm,' she whispered. 'Open the car doors.'

Gomm did so. He had said that age had shrunk them all, and perhaps that was true, but there were five of them to fit into the small vehicle, and it was tightly packed. Vanessa was the last to get in. As she ducked to slide into the driving seat a shot rang out, and she felt a blow to her shoulder. She dropped the rifle.

  'Bastards,' said Gomm.

  'Leave her,' somebody piped up in the back, but Gomm was already out of the car and bundling her into the back beside Floyd. He then slid into the driving seat himself and started the engine.

  'Can you drive?' Ireniya demanded.

  'Of course I can bloody drive!' he retorted, and the car jerked forward through the gates, the gears grating.

  Vanessa had never been shot before, and hoped - if she survived this episode - to avoid it happening again. The wound in her shoulder was bleeding badly. Floyd did his best to staunch the wound, but Gomm's driving made any really constructive help practically impossible.

  There's a track -' she managed to tell him, 'off that way.'

'Which way's that way? Gomm yelled.

'Right! Right!' she yelled back.

Gomm took both hands off the wheel and looked at them.

  'Which is right?

  'For Christ's sake-'

Ireniya, in the seat beside him, pressed his hands back onto the wheel. The car performed a tarantella. Vanessa groaned with every bump.

  'I see it!' said Gomm. 'I see the track!' He revved the car up, and put his foot on the accelerator.

  One of the back doors, which had been inadequately secured, flipped open and Vanessa almost fell out. Mottershead, reaching over Floyd, yanked her back to safety, but before they could close the door it met the boulder that marked the convergence of the two tracks. The car bucked as the door was torn off its hinges.

  'We needed more air in here,' said Gomm, and drove on.

  Theirs was not the only engine disturbing the Aegean night. There were lights behind them, and the

sound of hectic pursuit. With Guillemot's rifle left in the convent, they had no sudden death to bargain with, and Klein knew it.

  'Step on it!' Floyd said, grinning from ear to ear. 'They're coming after us.'

  'I'm going as fast as I can,' Gomm insisted.

  Turn off the lights,' Ireniya suggested. 'It'll make us less of a target.'

  Then I won't be able to see the track,' Gomm complained over the roar of the engine.

'So what? You're not driving on it anyhow.'

Mottershead laughed, and so - against her better instincts - did Vanessa. Maybe the loss of blood was making her irresponsible, but she couldn't help herself. Four Methuselahs and herself in a three-door car driving around in the dark: only a madman would have taken this seriously. And there was the final and incontestible proof that these people weren't the lunatics Klein had marked them as, for they saw the humour in it too. Gomm had even taken to singing as he drove: snatches of Verdi, and a falsetto rendering of 'Over the Rainbow'.

  And if - as her dizzied mind had concluded - these were creatures as sane as herself, then what of the tale that Gomm had told?; was that true too? Was it possible that Armageddon had been kept at bay by these few giggling geriatrics?

  They're gaining on us!' Floyd said. He was on his knees on the back seat, peering out of the window.

  'We're not going to make it,' Mottershead observed, his laughter barely abating. 'We're all going to die.'

  'There!' Ireniya yelled. There's another track! Try that! Try that!'

Gomm swung the wheel, and the car almost tipped over as it swung off the main track and followed this new route. With the lights extinguished it was impossible to see more than a glimmer of the road ahead, but Gomm's style was not about to be cramped by such minor considerations. He revved the car until the engine fairly screeched. Dust was flung up and through the gap where the door had been; a goat fled from the path ahead seconds before losing its life.

  'Where are we going?' Vanessa yelled.

  'Haven't a clue,' Gomm returned. 'Have you?

  Wherever they were heading, they were going at a fair speed. This track was flatter than the one they'd left, and Gomm was taking full advantage of the fact. Again, he'd taken to singing.

Mottershead was leaning out of the window on the far side of the car, his hair streaming, watching for their pursuers.

  'We're losing them!' he howled triumphantly. 'We're losing them!'

  A common exhilaration seized all the travellers now, and they began to sing along with H.G. They were singing so loudly that Gomm couldn't hear Mottershead inform him that the road ahead seemed to

disappear. Indeed H.G. was not aware that he had driven the car over the cliff until the vehicle took a nose-dive, and the sea came up to meet them.

  'Mrs Jape? Mrs Jape?'

  Vanessa woke unwillingly. Her head hurt, her arm hurt. There had been some terrible times recently, though it took her a while to remember the substance of them. Then the memories came back. The car pitching over the cliff; the cold sea rushing in through the open door; the frantic cries around her as the vehicle sank. She had struggled free, only half conscious, vaguely aware that Floyd was floating up beside her. She had said his name, but he had not answered. She said it again, now.

  'Dead,' said Mr Klein. They're all dead.'

  'Oh my God,' she murmured. She was looking not at his face but at a chocolate stain on his waistcoat.

  'Never mind them now,' he insisted.

'Never mind?'

  'There's more important business, Mrs Jape. You must get up, and quickly.'

  The urgency in Klein's voice brought Vanessa to her feet. 'Is it morning?' she said. There were no windows in the room they occupied. This was the Boudoir, to judge by its concrete walls.

  'Yes, it's morning,' Klein replied, impatiently. 'Now, will you come with me? I have something to show you.' He opened the door and they stepped out into the grim corridor. A little way ahead it sounded as if a major argument was going on; dozens of raised voices, imprecations and pleadings.

  'What's happening?'

  They're warming up for the Apocalypse,' he replied, and led the way into the room where Vanessa had last seen the mud-wrestlers. Now all of the video-screens were buzzing, and each displayed a different interior. There were war-rooms and presidential suites, Cabinet Offices and Halls of Congress. In every one of them, somebody was shouting.

  'You've been unconscious two full days,' Klein told her, as if this went some way to explaining the cacophony. Her head ached already. She looked from screen to screen: from Washington to Hamburg to Sydney to Rio de Janeiro. Everywhere around the globe the mighty were waiting for news. But the oracles were dead.

  They're just performers,' Klein said, gesturing at the shouting screens. They couldn't run a three-legged race, never mind the world. They're getting hysterical, and they're button-fingers are starting to itch.'

  'What am I supposed to do about it?' Vanessa returned. This tour of Babel depressed her. 'I'm no strategist.'

  'Neither were Gomm and the others. They might have been, once upon a time, but things soon fell apart.'

  'Systems decay,' she said.

  'Isn't that the truth. By the time I came here half the committee were already dead. And the rest had lost all interest in their duties - '

  'But they still provided judgements, as H.G. said?'

  'Oh yes.'

  They ruled the world?'

  'After a fashion,' Klein replied.

  'What do you mean: after a fashion?'

  Klein looked at the screens. His eyes seemed to be on the verge of spilling tears.

  'Didn't he explain,? They played games, Mrs Jape. When they became bored with sweet reason and the sound of their own voices, they gave up debate and took to flipping coins.'

  'No.'

'And racing frogs of course. That was always a favourite.'

  'But the governments - ' she protested,' - surely they didn't just accept -'

  'You think they care?' Klein said, 'As long as they're in the public eye what does it matter to them what verbiage they're spouting, or how it was arrived at?'

  Her head spun. 'All chance?' she said.

'Why not? It has a very respectable tradition. Nations have fallen on decisions divined from the entrails of sheep.'

  'It's preposterous.'

  'I agree. But I ask you, in all honesty, is it many more terrifying than leaving the power in their hands?' He pointed to the rows of irate faces. Democrats sweating that the morrow find them without causes to espouse or applause to win; despots in terror that without instruction their cruelties would lose favour and be overturned. One premier seemed to have suffered a bronchial attack and was being supported by two of his aides; another clutched a revolver and was pointing it at the screen, demanding satisfaction; a third was chewing his toupe. Were these the finest fruit of the political tree?; babbling, bullying, cajoling idiots, driven to apoplexy because nobody would tell them which way to jump? There wasn't a man or woman amongst them Vanessa would have trusted to guide her across the road.

  'Better the frogs,' she murmured, bitter thought that it was.

  The light in the courtyard, after the dead illumination of the bunker, was dazzlingly bright, but Vanessa was pleased to be out of earshot of the stridency within. They would find a new committee very soon,

Klein had told her as they made their way out into the open air: it would be a matter of weeks only before equilibrium was restored. In the meanwhile, the earth could be blown to smithereens by the desperate creatures she had just seen. They needed judgements, and quickly.

  'Goldberg is still alive,' Klein said. 'And he will go on with the games; but it takes two to play.'

'Why not you?'

'Because he hates me. Hates all of us. He says that he'll only play with you.'

  Goldberg was sitting under the laurel trees, playing patience. It was a slow business. His shortsightedness required him to bring each card to within three inches of his nose to read it, and by the time he had got to the end of the line he had forgotten those cards at the beginning.

  'She's agreed,' said Klein. Goldberg didn't look up from his game. 'I said: she's agreed.'