When I was ready I got a job in a bar in St. Augustine, and one quiet night I was standing there serving beer and wine when I saw a news report on the flatscreen hanging down at the other end of the bar. An unspecified medical facility in Vermont had been attacked by a lone terrorist. Nobody knew who he or she was, and all they’d done was kidnap one of the “patients” and disappear.
At first I just smiled, and then I laughed so loud and so long that people moved away and left me standing there alone.
I wished Suej and David luck, and hoped that someday I’d see them both again.
Nearly arrived yesterday afternoon. I was sitting by the old, empty pool round the back of the condo, remembering when there was water in it, when she marched right up behind me and cracked me on top of the head. Very hard.
She was still extremely pissed at me, but she was also strangely determined. Suej had come to her in a dream, she claimed, and told her that she could find me here. When New Richmond put down temporarily in Seattle she’d jumped ship, and come a long way to give me a hard time. I stood there while she shouted and raved, and when she ran out of breath I took her hand and led her down the old wooden walkway to the beach.
We walked along the shore until the light began to fade. There were no lights in the old buildings we passed, looming abandoned back up behind the dunes, but birds ran along the waterline as they always had, and a group of pelicans flew first one way, and then back, above our heads.
Howie was doing well, I heard, as was Vinaldi, and the MegaMall was still on the move. Each time New Richmond landed somewhere, people tried to tether it down so they could get inside; but Ratchet was having none of it and just kept taking off again. The people inside didn’t seem to mind; they were happy to be flying at last.
The gaps are closing.
I would never know how much of what happened was directly Ratchet’s idea, whether something had affected him a long time ago, when he’d been in The Gap, whether he’d struck some deal with the children even then; but I believed that if anyone was going to be running New Richmond, then its inhabitants could do a lot worse than the small, clear chip which now labored somewhere deep inside it. Sometimes you have to accept presents, and Ratchet was one of those. If we are to hand ourselves over to someone unseen, I trust him more than most.
Time will tell what will happen. It always does.
Nearly still beats me up occasionally, but she’s smiling now when she does it. A couple of nights ago we found ourselves sitting on the beach at midnight, full of wine and peace.
“So,” she said, leaning into me, the skin of her shoulder soft against my cheek. “What are we going to do now?”
I kissed her softly on the corner of the mouth, and slipped my arm around her.
“That’s all very well,” Nearly said, with a little cat smile, “but are you sure you can afford it?”
“Well, I don’t have a credit card,” I admitted, shaking my head sadly, playing along.
She pouted. “You must.”
“I gave it away.”
She looked at me for a moment, and then pursed her lips. “I’ll take cash.”
“If I had some, it would be yours.”
She sighed, and rolled her eyes. “All right,” she said eventually, putting her arms round my shoulders and bringing her face right up to mine. “I’ll settle for an interesting insight on the human condition.”
I shrugged. “Hope springs eternal?”
“Good enough for me,” she said.
A week ago Nearly bought me an old book from a secondhand store in St. Augustine. It’s about plants, and tells you what they’re called and where they’re from. I’m working through it, memorizing the names. When we’re out walking I look to see if I can find any of them.
When I do, I name them: for Henna, for Nearly, and for me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH is an award-winning author who lives in London.
Spares
, his American debut, has been optioned by DreamWorks SKG. He is at work on his next novel,
One of Us
, which has been optioned by Warner Bros.
If you enjoyed SPARES—
turn the page for a preview of
an electrifying new thriller
from Michael Marshall Smith
ONE OF US
by Michael Marshall Smith
Look for it in hardcover
at your favorite bookstore in
August 1998
Night. A crossroads, somewhere in deadzone LA. I don’t know the area, but it’s nowhere you want to be. Just two roads, wide and flat, stretching out four ways into the world: uphill struggles to places that aren’t any better, via places which are probably worse.
Dead buildings squat in mist at each corner, full of sleep and quietness. It seems like they lean over above us like some evil cartoon village, but that can’t be right. Two-story concrete can’t loom. It’s not in its nature. The city feels like a grid of emptiness, as if the structures we have introduced to it are dwarfed by the spaces which have remained untouched, as if what is not there is far more real than what we see.
A dog shivers out the end of its life meanwhile, huddled in the doorway of a 24-hour liquor store. The light inside is so yellow it looks like the old guy asleep behind the counter is floating in formaldehyde. When she was younger, the woman might have done something to help the dog. Now she finds she doesn’t really care. The emotion’s too old, buried too deep—and the dog’s going to die anyway.
I don’t know how long we wait, standing in the shadowed doorway, hiding deep in her expensive coat. She gets through half a pack of Kims, but she’s smoking fast and not wearing a watch. It feels like an eternity, as if this corner in the wasteland is all I’ve known or ever will see; as if time has stopped, meandered to a halt, and sees no compelling reason to start flowing again.
Eventually the sound of a car peels itself off from the backdrop of distant noise, and enters this little world. She looks, and sees a sweep of headlights up the street, hears the rustle of tires on asphalt, the hum of an engine happy with its job. Her heart beats a little more slowly as we watch the car approach, her mind cold and dense. It isn’t even hatred she feels, not tonight or any more. When the cancer of misery has a greater mass than the body it inhabits, it’s the tumour’s voice you hear all the time. She’s stopped fighting it now.
The car pulls up thirty yards along the street, alongside an address she spent two months tracking down, and ended up paying a hacker to find. The engine dies, and for the first time she glimpses the man’s face through the dirty windshield. Shadowed features, oblivious in their own world of turning things off and unfastening the seatbelt. Seeing him isn’t climactic, and comes with no roll of drums. It just makes us feel tired and old.
He takes an age to get out of the car, leaning across to gather a pack of cigarettes from off the dash. I don’t know for sure that’s what he’s doing, but that’s what she decides. It seems to be important to her, and what she feels about this man is far too complex for me to interpret. She is calm, mind whirling in circles so small you can’t really see them at all, but her heart is beating a little faster now, and as he finally opens the door and gets out of the car, we start to walk towards him.
He doesn’t notice, at first, still fumbling with his keys. She stops a few yards from the car, and he looks up blearily. Drunk, perhaps—though she doesn’t think so. He was always too much in control. Probably just tired, and letting it show while there’s no one around to see. He’s older, greyer than she was expecting, but with the same slightly hooded eyes. He looks early fifties to me, trim, a little sad. He doesn’t recognise her, but smiles anyway. It’s a good smile, and may once have been quite something, but it doesn’t reach the eyes any more.