Part 6 (1/2)

I left the garage, locking the door behind me, and sure enough the taxi with no name was already there waiting for me. I walked over to it and got in, and never once looked back. It's an important part of a field agent's job: to be able to walk away from anyone or anything at a moment's notice and never look back.

The taxi took me back into London proper and dropped me off at the first Underground Tube station we came to. I rode up and down on the trains, switching from one line to another at random, until I was sure no one was following me. There was no way my family, or anyone else, could have tracked me down so quickly, but I needed to be sure. I got off at Oxford Street and went up and out into the open air. It was early evening now, and crowds of people surged up and down the street, in the course of their everyday lives, as though this was just another day. No one paid me any attention. That at least was normal, and rea.s.suring.

The first name on my list was the Chelsea Lovers. Very secretive, and very hard to find. They changed their location every twenty-four hours, and with good reason. The Chelsea Lovers were hated and feared, wors.h.i.+pped and adored, pet.i.tioned and despised. And the only way to find them was to read the cards. So I walked casually down Oxford Street till I reached the rows of public phone kiosks, and I checked out the display of tart cards plastering the interiors. Tart cards are business cards left in the kiosks by prost.i.tutes advertising their services. Sometimes there's a photo (which you can be sure will bear little or no resemblance to the real woman); more often a piece of suggestive art accompanied by a brief jaunty message and a phone number.

The cards have a long history, dating back to Victorian times, and down the years have developed a language all of their own. A girl who boasts an excellent knowledge of Greek, for example, will not possess actual academic qualifications; though a visit to her would almost certainly be an education in itself. But underneath all the euphemisms and double entendres there is another, more secret language, for those who can read it. A wholly different message, to be read in the placement of certain words and letters, telling you how to find the current locations for darker and more dangerous pleasures. I worked out that day's message and phoned the indicated number, and a voice at the other end, which might have been male or female, both or neither, gave me an address just beyond Covent Garden and told me to ask for the Kit Kat Club. Nice to know someone still had a sense of humour.

The place wasn't hard to find. From the outside it looked like just another building, behind a bland anonymous front. No advertising, no clues. Either you knew exactly what the place was, or you had no business being there. I studied the exterior thoughtfully, while people pa.s.sed me by, unknowing. The Kit Kat Club wasn't the sort of place you rushed into. You needed to gird your spiritual loins first.

The Chelsea Lovers were a group marriage of a.s.sorted mystical head cases, dedicated to the darker areas of tantric s.e.x magic, channelled through cutting-edge computer technology. They organised orgies that ran twenty-four hours a day, with partic.i.p.ants constantly coming and going. With the kind of mystical power they were capable of generating, they could have picked up the whole of London and spun it around a few times before dropping it again. Only they never did, because...well, apparently because they were concerned with something far more important. What that might be, no one knew for sure, and most were afraid to ask. The Chelsea Lovers had links to every necrotech, psycho fetish, and ceremonial s.e.x club in the city, and were famous for knowing things no one else knew, or would want to. They supported themselves by practicing entrapment and blackmail on significant people: celebrities, politicians, and the like.

Which was why the Chelsea Lovers had good reason to want Edwin Drood dead. A year or so back the family had sent me in to destroy the Chelsea Lovers' main computers, and all their files, after they'd made the mistake of trying to pressure someone sheltering under the family's protection. So I'd armoured up, forced my way in, and taken out their computers with a tailored logic bomb fired from one of the Armourer's special guns. The computers melted down so fast there was nothing left but a puddle of silicon on the floor.

They never saw my real face; only the golden mask. So they had no reason to suspect Shaman Bond. Except, of course, that the Chelsea Lovers were suspicious of everyone, and quite rightly too. They worried people.

I went up to the perfectly ordinary front door and knocked politely. A concealed sliding panel opened, and a pair of scowling eyes studied me silently. I gave them the pa.s.sword I'd received on the phone, and that was enough to gain me entry. The sliding panel slammed shut, and the door opened just enough to let me in. I had to turn sideways to squeeze through, and the door was immediately locked behind me.

The security man leaned over me. He was big as a wardrobe, with muscles on his muscles. I could tell this because he was entirely naked, apart from enough steel piercings in painful places to make him a danger to be near during thunderstorms. He wanted me to take my clothes off too (house rules), or at the very least submit to a thorough frisking. I gave him my best hard look, and he decided to pa.s.s the question upward. I told him I was here to see the founding quartet, and he raised a pierced eyebrow. I gave him their actual names, which impressed him, and after nodding slowly for a moment, he lumbered off to find them.

I stayed put, by the door. I hadn't been entirely sure what to expect. I mean, I've been around, comes with the job, but the Chelsea Lovers were a whole new area of depravity to me. The entire building had been hollowed out to form one large, open, and cavernous room. The Kit Kat Club was lit by rotating coloured lights, giving the scene a kaleidoscopic, trippy feel. Very fitting for a group whose origins lay in the sixties. Pretty much everywhere I looked there were naked people, or people dressed in the kinds of dramatic fetish gear that makes you look even more naked than naked. Leather and rubber, plastic and liquid latex, collar and chains, spikes and masks and every kind of restraint you'd rather not think about. There were no wallflowers here; everyone was involved with someone or something. They moved smoothly together, all across the huge room, flesh rising and falling, skin sliding over sweaty skin. There were no words, only moans and sighs and the sounds of a language older than civilisation. The faces I could see held a self-absorbed, animal look; all wide eyes and bared teeth.

Men and women everywhere, tangled together on the floor, up the walls, and on the ceiling, and even floating in midair. s.e.x beat on the air in an overpowering presence, hot and sweaty and pumped full of pheromones. I could smell sweat and perfumes and a whole bunch of psychotropic drugs. I wasn't worried. My torc would filter them out. Even quiescent around my throat, my armour still protected me.

So much nakedness, so much s.e.x, so much harnessed pa.s.sion; but I couldn't say I found it arousing. It was scary. They were working magic here, invoking strange and potent energies produced by people who had willingly driven themselves out of all control, people who would do anything, receive anything, and not give a d.a.m.n. There was no love here, no tenderness; nothing but indulgence and transgression.

The wide cavernous room seemed much larger than the building should have been able to contain. This was spatial magic, fuelled by the tantric energies. The room expanded to contain the pa.s.sion within. The walls, floor, and ceiling had taken on a puffy, organic look. All pinks and purples and b.l.o.o.d.y shades, patterned with long traceries of pulsing veins. The wall nearest me was sweating, as though turned on by the never-ending s.e.x. The Kit Kat Club was alive and part of the proceedings. Where men and women b.u.mped against the floor or walls or ceiling, they sank into the fleshy embrace as though into the arms of another partner.

I s.h.i.+fted my feet uncomfortably, and the floor beneath me gave subtly, as though I were standing on a water bed. People were drifting towards me, reaching out with inquiring hands. There was something in their faces that wasn't entirely human; or perhaps more than human. Transformed by an emotion or desire so extreme I had no name for it. I was way out of my depth. So of course I put on my most confident face, and even sneered a little, as though I'd seen it all before and hadn't been impressed then. I glared at anyone who came too close, and they turned away immediately, losing interest.

As my eyes adjusted to the flaring lights and colours, I began to recognise faces in the roiling throng: celebrities, footballers, politicians, even a few respectable businessmen from the City that dear prudish Matthew would probably have been horrified to discover in a place like this. I filed the faces away in my memory, for future thought. And perhaps a little blackmail, if money became tight.

The walking wardrobe returned with the four founding members of the Chelsea Lovers. They strolled with almost supernatural grace through the heaving crowds, which opened before them and closed after them without once stopping or even slowing what they were doing. The four founders walked on air, masters of their own s.p.a.ce, touching nothing but each other. Their hands wandered constantly over each other's bare flesh. They sank slowly down to hover before me, and the bouncer went back to his door. The four original Chelsea Lovers: Dave and Annie, Stuart and Lenny. Two men and two women, but far beyond anything so human now; instead they were as alien and other as anything I ever encountered from another dimension. They had to be in their late sixties, but they still had the smooth bodies of twenty-year-olds. Perfect as statues, lean and hungry, burning with unnatural energies, sustained by an endless appet.i.te that had nothing to do with food.

They looked much as they must have done when they first met in Chelsea, back in the swinging sixties, when London swung like a pendulum. Two young couples, then, out on the town and hungry for new experiences. They found something, or it found them, and they were never the same afterwards. They started their first club in a little place just off Carnaby Street, and what they did there shocked even the most hardened souls of the permissive generation. The Chelsea Lovers hadn't seen daylight since. They moved from location to location, known only to those in the know, travelling the secret subterranean routes beneath the city streets, flitting silently through the shadows of the undertown, with its ancient Roman arches, where all the bad things congregate, for fun and profit. Nothing ever touched the Chelsea Lovers. Even then, they were far too dangerous.

They stood before me, skin like chalk, eyes like p.i.s.sholes in the snow. Colourless flyaway hair, purple lips, and endless smiles that meant nothing, nothing at all. They were entirely naked, untouched by piercings or tattoos or any such trappings. Such lesser things were not for them. Just hanging on the air before me, silent and inviting, they were still the most blatantly s.e.xual things I had ever seen. They had all the impact of the first nude photos you ever saw, the first object of desire, the first boy or girl you ever wanted, and the first you ever lost. I wanted them and I was afraid of them, and G.o.d alone knows what I would have done if my torc hadn't been there to protect me from the worst of their influence.

I knew the four names, but not which was who. I don't think anyone does anymore. Perhaps not even them. One of the women spoke to me. Her voice sounded like she had ice in her veins and a fever in her head.

”What do you want here? What's your pleasure?”

I had to clear my throat before I could speak, and even then my voice wasn't as steady as I would have liked. ”I need to consult your computers. I need information, the kind only you might possess.”

”What do you offer in payment?” said one of the men. His voice was calm, cheerful, confidential, and about as human as a spider scuttling across your arm. ”Information in return, perhaps; or money, or your seed? You'd be surprised what we could make from your seed, freely given.”

”Information,” I said quickly. My mouth was very dry, and my legs were shaking. ”First, a secret location used by a Drood field agent, on the outskirts of London.” And I gave them the address of the garage I'd just abandoned. ”Second, the name of the Drood field agent who's just been declared rogue and is on the run here in London: Edwin Drood.”

All four of them actually s.h.i.+vered with delight at the prospect of getting their hands on a new rogue Drood, the first in years. They rose and fell on the air, laughing silently, their chalk white skin s.h.i.+mmering brightly. If they could seduce and corrupt the rogue to their cause, they would have access to secrets and information no one else had. They commanded me to follow them and floated off towards the centre of the room, descending slowly until they walked on the bodies that moved unstoppably beneath them. I struggled after them, my feet slipping and sliding on the sweat-covered bodies. I stared straight ahead. You can't keep glancing down and apologising. And finally, in the exact centre of the cavernous room, the four founding Chelsea Lovers impersonally levered people out of the way to reveal a large puckered orifice in the floor. They gestured, and it dilated open, revealing only darkness and a sudden pungent smell on the air, like supercharged cinnamon. One by one the four of them floated down into what lay below the floor, disappearing into darkness, until only I was left hesitating on the rim. In the end, I just shrugged and jumped in after them. This was what I'd come for, after all.

And found myself suddenly in a brightly lit, high-tech environment that was the complete ant.i.thesis of everything above. It was a circular room barely twenty feet in diameter, crowded with all the latest computer equipment. But the computers had burst open, their silicon contents spilling out like fruiting bodies, spreading themselves up the walls and across the ceiling like silver ivy, even dropping down in encrustations like silicon stalact.i.tes. The computers here were living things, growing things, fuelled by the s.e.xual energies from above. Self-centred, self-perpetuating. The air-conditioning gusted like heavy breathing, and the monitor screens all around me could have been eyes or mouths or other orifices. The four Chelsea Lovers stood together in the middle of it all, looking at me expectantly.

”Word is, there's a traitor inside the Drood family,” I said. ”I want to know everything you know about that.”

They nodded in eerie unison, and one of them ran a hand caressingly over a computer console. It was a slow, sensuous lover's touch. I could feel beads of sweat popping out on my forehead. Normal people weren't supposed to be exposed to things like the Chelsea Lovers. Just their presence was toxic to ordinary humans. The computers hummed thoughtfully to themselves. The Chelsea Lovers stood together, in the same stance, even breathing in unison. Their eyes didn't blink as they considered me. I could feel a presence, a pressure, forming in the room. A desire, a need, a physical imperative...

”What's it all for?” I said abruptly. ”I mean, all of this. The Chelsea Lovers. The Kit Kat Club. The s.e.x magic and the computers. What's the point of it all?”

”Apocalypse,” said one of the women, and they all smiled a little more widely. ”The real s.e.xual revolution, come at last. We want to turn the whole world on. Using s.e.x magic, computer magic, ritual and pa.s.sion, instinct and logic, flesh and silicon bonded together in unthought-of ways, to work a tidal change in reality itself. We will make the whole world s.e.xual. Fetis.h.i.+ze everything in it, the living and unliving, suffusing the whole world with a pa.s.sion and an appet.i.te that will never end. A great joyous s.e.xual apocalypse, the climax of history. The biggest bang of all. Endless sensation, endless pleasure...And we shall all wors.h.i.+p the new flesh, forever and ever and ever...”

She broke off as a face appeared on all the monitor screens at once. The computers had discovered the ident.i.ty of the new rogue Drood, and it was me. My face was on every wall, with my real name beneath it. The family had released my true ident.i.ty to the world. The Chelsea Lovers turned as one to orientate themselves on me. They weren't smiling anymore. They each thrust one hand out at me, and s.e.x hit me like a fist. I cried out, convulsing helplessly as pa.s.sion burned in me like a fever, like the nightmares you have when your temperature rises and your blood boils in your brain. I wanted to go to them, on my hands and knees if necessary, and wors.h.i.+p their flesh with my own. I would have begged, would have died, for their lightest touch, for the pleasure of their favour.

But there was still just enough Drood training and pride left in me to hold them off, just enough for me to be able to subvocalise the Words, and my armour flashed around me, golden and glorious, sealing me off from all attack. I staggered backwards, suddenly myself again, like a man who lurches back from the very edge of a cliff. The Chelsea Lovers cried out in one awful voice, full of rage at the sight of Drood armour. I jumped up, the strength of my legs amplified by my armour, and I went soaring up through the orifice and back into the Kit Kat Club above.

I erupted back into that fleshy, cavernous place, and people fell back from me, shouting and screaming. I had broken the mood, or the Chelsea Lovers had. I ran for the door, and all at once, in answer to some unheard signal, everyone in the room surged forward to attack me. Blows and kicks came from every direction, though I couldn't feel them through the armour, and naked people grabbed at my arms and legs, trying to pull me down. I ran on, kicking and pus.h.i.+ng people out of the way, and none of them could slow or stop me. They clutched at me with endless hands and crowded in before me, blocking the way to the door with their bare bodies. I focused on just moving forward, not striking out, though every instinct yelled in me to fight. With my armour's strength I could kill these people, and I didn't want to do that. Unlike some of my family, I still believed in (mostly) innocent bystanders.

I could see the door, up ahead. The huge bouncer came forward to stop me, his huge hands opening and closing eagerly. I hit him once, and he fell backwards, blood flying on the air, to be trampled underfoot by the packed crowds still pressing forward. Strange forces crackled on the air around me, s.e.x magic and computer energies from the room below, crawling over my armour, trying to force a way in. There were screaming faces all around me now, desperate people clutching at me, wrapping their arms around my legs, reaching down from the ceiling to clatter their hands uselessly against my golden head. Naked men and women crawled all over me, slowing me down by sheer weight and press of bodies.

I reached through my armoured side and drew my needle gun. I still had it. Strictly speaking, I should have handed it in to the Armourer, but what with one thing and another I never got around to it. There were only a few needles left. I aimed the gun at the nearest wall and shot a holy-water ice needle into the nearest pulsing vein. The whole room convulsed, like a great fleshy earthquake. Everywhere, naked men and women were falling away from me, clutching at their heads, crying out in shock and horror. They forgot all about me as the room shook, and I ran for the door.

I pulled the door wide open, and daylight poured in. More screams, as much fear as anger. I looked back. The whole place was convulsing now, with great cracks opening up in the drying-out walls. People dropped out of midair as the magics fell apart, no longer sustained by the endless orgy. Men and women cried and howled and hit out at each other. I'd broken the mood. I nodded, satisfied. I might not have learned anything useful here, but at least the word would go out: that even though I no longer had the support of my family, I was still a force to be reckoned with.

CHAPTER NINE.

Dream a Little Dream for Me S o I went back down into the Underground and took the Tube to Leicester Square station. No one wanted to sit next to me in the carriage; in fact, people actually got up to move farther away from me. It took me a while to realise I still stank of musk from the Kit Kat Club. Still, several women did smile at me. And a couple of men. I finally emerged from the station and wandered up St. Martin's Lane. The evening was drawing on now, and people were out on the town in happily chattering groups. No one paid me any attention, so I guessed the musk was wearing off in the open air. It felt good to be safely anonymous again.

St. Martin's Lane is in a nice enough area; all theatres and restaurants, pleasant stores and businesses. All very civilised, in fact. I followed the curving street around till I came to the next address on my list: the very secret home and lair of the Scenes.h.i.+fters. Probably the most dangerous group on the scene, in their own small way. And so tricky to deal with that I'd never been allowed to have any direct contact with them, even though they were quite definitely on my patch. The Scenes.h.i.+fters were the exclusive responsibility of a special group within the family; and I had been instructed very firmly to keep my distance.

But, things change.

Essentially, the Scenes.h.i.+fters work behind the scenes of reality, changing small details here and there, to turn the state of the world to their advantage. There are members of the Drood family whose full-time job it is to detect these changes and put them back the way they were. We a.s.sume we're winning, on the grounds that the Scenes.h.i.+fters don't actually rule the world yet. As far as we can tell...

From the outside, their address looked like just another building, part of a fairly modern row with bright white stone and oversized windows, but there was something about the place...something that raised the hackles on your neck and made you disinclined to linger. People pa.s.sing by increased their pace and averted their eyes without even realising they were doing it. I stood before the main entrance, scowling thoughtfully. A field agent learns to depend on his instincts, and every instinct I had was yelling at me to get the h.e.l.l away from this awful place. Just standing there, I felt...uneasy, disturbed, in peril of both body and soul. As though if I went inside, I might see things I couldn't stand to see, learn things I didn't want to know. Even with the torc around my throat, s.h.i.+elding me from outside influence, it still took all my willpower to hold my ground.

As I stared intently at the building, refusing to look away, the details began to slip and flow, like a melting painting. As though a top coat was being washed away, revealing the true image beneath. Just like the family reports said, the Scenes.h.i.+fters' headquarters was protected by an uncertainty spell. You had to be certain that what you were looking for was there, or it wouldn't be. It all came down to mental discipline. Which would be a shock for certain members of my family, who'd been known to say loudly in cla.s.srooms that I didn't possess any.

As I watched, scowling fiercely with concentration, the office building before me just faded away like a pa.s.sing thought to reveal the true structure beneath. An old church, with a ma.s.sive wood and plaster fronting, an arched doorway, and medieval stained-gla.s.s windows. It was half the size of the modern buildings towering on either side of it, but there was a basic strength and solidity to the place that was somehow rea.s.suring. My instincts were still p.r.i.c.kling, but at least I didn't feel like running anymore. I strode up to the front door and knocked like I had a reason to be there.

When you're dealing with people who change reality on a daily basis, there's not much point in trying to sneak in. They probably knew I was coming to see them before I did. And I certainly wasn't planning on throwing my weight around; there were very definite limits to what my armour could be expected to protect me from. When the door opened, I planned on being extremely polite and using all the reasonableness at my command. I also planned on smiling a lot, and running like a rabbit if my clothes started changing colour.

The door opened to reveal a cheerful-looking soul, a rea.s.suringly ordinary guy in grubby workman's overalls. He was about my age, a bit scruffy, with a pleasant face and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth that he didn't bother to take out when he was speaking. He nodded easily to me.

”h.e.l.lo, squire. Looking for the Scenes.h.i.+fters, are you? Thought so. I'm Bert. I do all the real work around here, while they're all off saving the world. Someone has to check the state of the tubing and mop up the spills. Fancy a nice cup of tea? I've got the kettle on...Well suit yourself. Don't say I didn't offer. Come on in, come on in...So, you're the new rogue Drood, are you? Edwin Drood? Nice to meet you. Sort of thought you'd be taller, somehow...Never mind. Come here looking for sanctuary, have you?”

”News does get around,” I said dryly as soon as I could get a word in edgeways. I stepped inside the church, and he shut the door behind me. I listened carefully, but I didn't hear him lock it. The interior was typical old-fas.h.i.+oned religious, a bit on the gloomy side, with brightly coloured light streaming in through the stained-gla.s.s windows. But there were no pews, no altar, and the only religious symbols were those originally carved into the old stone walls. It might be a church, but clearly no one had wors.h.i.+pped here for some time.

”Oh, we always know what's going on,” Bert said cheerfully. ”We hear everything the moment it happens, and sometimes several months before. I've always said we could make a fortune with a good gossip magazine (very upmarket, nothing sleazy), but I can't even get it on the committee agenda. Got their heads in the clouds, that lot. Come to join us, have you, Edwin? You should, you know; we're doing important work here, when we're not having endless arguments about what const.i.tutes a pivotal moment in history and which way we should tip the balance. I ask you, who really believes World War Two could have been averted by giving Hitler back his missing t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e? Still, tell you what, squire; you come along with me and I'll give you the basic tour while we're waiting for the others to show up. How would that be?”