Part 9 (1/2)

Her lips were warm. She wiped blood from them. Outside it was evening, and the rain had stopped. A man across the street was selling newspapers. A couple of cabs rolled briskly by. Two gentlemen strolled past in the other direction, talking business. One glanced at her and tut-tutted.

When she returned, Mr Borel's daughter Sophia, who was sweeping the steps, gave her a disapproving look. Josephine patted at her hair and found it a dreadful mess. Well, there was nothing she could do about that now. She said good night to Sophia and babbled a few words of explanation, not quite knowing what she said.

She went up to her room, and sat on the bed, shaking. She felt terrible, as if she'd been drinking to excess or had swallowed poison.

She desperately wanted to tell someone. She wanted to never speak of it again.

It had been no sham.

Madness. Stranger than any vision her mother had suffered. But Atwood and the rest had seen it too.

That beautiful, terrible, wounded creature.

She was still awake hours later, pacing up and down, when someone started banging on the door below. She threw open the window to see a large tramp in the street, reeling away from the door, bellowing her name. It took her a moment to realise that it was Arthur. He appeared to have been in a fire.

Chapter Nine.

That night Arthur had stayed late in Room 13, explaining to Mr Dimmick at chucking-out time that he thought there were certain errors in the Work he'd done that afternoon, and it was a b.l.o.o.d.y nuisance but he simply had to fix them. Dimmick thought this was improbable but since Gracewell wasn't there to appeal to, and Dimmick certainly didn't understand the Work, he'd grudgingly permitted it. In fact, Arthur was hoping to snoop on the night-time operations of the Engine. Mr Vaz had remained for the same purpose. Two other workers-Harriot, and a clerk named Malone-had insisted on staying, apparently out of a determination that n.o.body in the room should show themselves more diligent or ambitious than they. Arthur was waiting for them to go away.

They sat in silence, pretending to work. Now that the room was nearly empty, it had gone cold. The light-bulb hissed. There was hardly a sound from the other rooms; only a skeleton staff remained at night to continue the Engine's operations.

The first sign of the fire was distant shouting, from the direction of the lower-numbered rooms. That gave Arthur a chill, but it hardly surprised him; not after what had happened to Simon.

He said, ”Another one gone.”

”Poor fellow,” Vaz agreed.

”Ah well,” Malone said.

The shouting continued and the sound of men running in the corridors joined it. Vaz closed his ledger and looked around, smiling rather nervously. Harriot and Malone bent closer over their desks. Arthur stood. The bell at the front of the room began to ring, yanked by the rope that stretched up into the ceiling and thence to who knows where. At the same time the telephone rang.

If it was meant to convey a message, Arthur didn't know what it was, or where it originated. His understanding was that the bells of each room were connected, but their signals were meant only for the foremen-Mr Irving and his ilk. Meanwhile, the noise of running feet subsided.

The telephone continued to ring. Harriot and Malone lowered their pens and stared at the telephone. Like the bell, the telephone was for Mr Irving's use, and no one but him ever answered it. This was a message the men of Room 13 were not prepared for, and did not know how to answer. It was as if, during a suburban seance, the table had begun to rap, rap, rap, the noise of the spirit-world echoing through the dark room but no medium there to interpret.

Arthur said, ”What nonsense!” walked to the front of the room, and answered the phone. He held the glistening black trumpet to his ear and waited for someone to speak but heard only ghostly crackling.

Many of the men in Room 13 had never seen a telephone before they came there, and most had never listened to one, so the thing was widely regarded with a sort of superst.i.tious awe. As if there weren't enough that was strange about Gracewell's enterprise, without inventing superst.i.tions!

Vaz said, ”What?”

”There's no one speaking,” Arthur said. ”Nothing.”

”Sit down,” Harriot said. ”That's Irving's business. You'll make trouble. What if we miss a day's instructions because you're fooling about with the telephone; and then a whole day's work gets-”

Vaz shrugged. ”We are paid the same for idleness as for the Work.”

Harriot banged his fist on his desk. ”Shut up, you! Shut up.”

Arthur lowered the telephone back into its cradle.

There was most certainly a smell of smoke in the room.

The light-bulb went out. The room went utterly dark.

”b.u.g.g.e.r it,” said Malone as he lit a match. He was a sickly looking fellow at the best of times, and the shaking light did not flatter him.

The room was on the edge of panic. Arthur supposed that it fell to him to lead them. G.o.d help them all, he thought.

”Smoke,” Vaz said. ”Fire.”

”What did you say?” said Malone. ”What did he say, Shaw? What did he say?”

Vaz got up and walked to the door on the right-hand side of the room, and looked down the corridor. He uttered a string of obscenities. Arthur understood very few of them.

The air was singed and acrid. The light-bulbs were out and the corridor was dark, except for a frightening red light from the open doorway of one of the nearby rooms.

”Fire,” Vaz said. ”Fire!” He slapped Arthur on the shoulder and ran past him into the corridor, where he stood, looking from side to side, then set off to the left.

”Fire?” Malone said.

Arthur shouted, ”Yes! Fire!” then ran in after Vaz. Harriot and Malone followed.

They ran past closed doors leaking smoke and light from their cracks. They stumbled past open doors through which they could see the fire at work, crawling up the bell-ropes, playing across the desk-tops, and eating red holes in the walls. Somewhere along the line they acquired three other men, strangers from a distant room. They doubled back when their route was blocked by flames and fallen timbers. They cut across the rooms into another corridor, and then another, where three young and terrified women joined them. They left the doors to the Rooms wide open as they ran, and the fire took advantage, rus.h.i.+ng in to fill the open s.p.a.ces of the Rooms, hurrying joyfully down the paths laid out for it.

”Down,” Vaz kept saying, ”down!” He meant that they should stoop low, to avoid breathing the smoke, which pooled blackly on the ceiling everywhere they went. Arthur was dizzy, and his eyes stung as if they were being tormented by devils.

Gracewell's building was something of a labyrinth, and they were all quickly lost. The building had only one exit, and the fire had forced them in quite the wrong direction to escape that way. The question, then, was where to find a window. The building had a few, though not many.

Arthur said, ”Stop! Stop. We have to get our bearings.” At least, he meant to-it came out as a wordless roar, then a splutter.

He stopped by a closed door. He leaned with his hand against the wall and he peered closely at the number on the door, blinking away tears and attempting to read the number. It was more than ten, and less than twenty. That was all he could make out before the door swung open, and Dimmick came charging out.

Dimmick looked wild and in pain. His eyes darted furiously from side to side before settling on Arthur.

Arthur said, ”Dimm-”

Dimmick seized Arthur by his collar and shoved him against the wall. His ugly face was war-painted with soot and hideous red scars. His hair was patchy, his eyebrows gone.

”b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,” he said. ”Who did this?”

”Dimmi-”

”Who did this? Eh?”