‘Indeed, but it is just that since—’
Rachel was dimly aware of Gertrude making a discreet retreat in the background.
‘I know,’ she said, then took Joe’s hand and led him upstairs to the bedroom.
* * *
They had not made love for six months. It was long enough to make it clumsy at first. Joe alternated between being too rough and too gentle, first squeezing and biting and grunting, then barely daring to touch her, caressing her thighs and belly with spidery fingers, a sensation she hated.
Eventually, they found an old rhythm, half-sitting, him inside her. He had the sweaty smell of a day spent in bed and his mouth tasted of tobacco. She did not care, breathed it in, lapped at his lips teasingly, tore at his greying chest fuzz with her fingers. Joe groaned. He was skinnier than she remembered. Old burn scars were prominent on his chest and wiry arms. His hands were cold.
She was close to her climax when it happened.
Joe’s eyes became white pools. Tendrils of ectoplasm poured out of his mouth and onto her skin, milky and cold. He made mumbling, chattering sounds, his voice shifting registers as if many people were trying to speak through him at once. Then the coldness was inside her, swelling.
Rachel screamed. She beat at Joe’s frigid, sweaty chest. Then she bit his shoulder as hard as she could, tasting blood.
He jolted and toppled. She rolled to the side and out of the bed.
‘Joe! Joe, come back!’
The ectoplasm floated around him for a moment like a white halo and then evaporated. She stood up, breathing heavily. Then Joe’s eyes were his own again. He stared at her and then at his hands in horror.
‘I am so sorry, Rachel. Are you all right? I am so sorry.’
She nodded. It was cold in the room and the sweat chilled on her skin. Gingerly, she climbed back into the bed and drew most of the blanket to her. Joe sat up but kept himself away from her.
‘I shouldn’t have,’ he said. ‘After … after I was decommissioned, they said most of the … ability would be gone. I’m so sorry, Rachel. It has been getting worse. I didn’t want to worry you. Especially after—’ He paused.
‘After the baby,’ Rachel said.
Joe nodded. The old guilt rose up in Rachel, colder than ectoplasm.
‘Maybe I should sleep in the guest bedroom,’ Joe said.
‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘Lie down with me.’ She pulled him next to her and pressed her face against his neck. His skin was still like ice, but she forced herself to bear it, holding him tight. After a while, his breathing grew steady and he slept.
Rachel lay awake and pulled away from the chill of him, into a warm place, her India, imagined the humid heat, the smell of spices, and when the image was firm in her mind, she started making plans.
The November wind whipped up leaves in the nondescriptly opulent Chelsea Square. Peter Bloom shivered in his borrowed flesh and nervously rubbed his numb hands together. It had been a while since he last walked amongst the living and it had not occurred to him to bring an overcoat. But the autumn air was not the only thing that chilled him.
The windows of the safe house were dark. That meant George was late, and he was never late.
There were times when George had shown up drunk, or decided to lecture on avant-garde poetry instead of debriefing Peter. But the Russian never strayed from the best practices of tradecraft. Was it possible that he had not received the message in time? Or perhaps the Listener had proved to be as erratic a messenger as his appearance had promised.
The steady ticking of the spirit crown’s control unit over his heart reminded Peter that he had less than six hours left. The device’s aetheric field anchored his soul into the medium’s rented skull, but at midnight the timer would switch the circuit off and banish him to Summerland.
It sounded like a fairy tale, but the transaction with the medium, a licensed charter-body named Pendlebury whom Peter favoured due to a slight resemblance, had been extremely prosaic. For an hourly fee equivalent to that of a high-class barrister, the medium quieted the vibrations of his own soul-spark and allowed a deceased visitor to take control. It was not quite the same as being alive again—fine motor control was difficult, for example—but more than worth the price. Naturally, the use of an amnesia-inducing anaesthetic that ensured the medium retained no memories of the spirit’s actions cost extra.
Peter entered the small, barren garden in the centre of the square. Mud squelched under his polished Oxford shoes. The key was hidden under a rock, and as he picked it up he was overcome by the tang of dead leaves and earth. It took him back to the first time he met George, three years ago.
It had been autumn then, too, and Peter was still alive. He had little idea of what to expect: a fanatic, perhaps, or an unforgiving taskmaster. When George opened the door, he embraced Peter like an affectionate bear. They sat by the fireplace, in a small circle of warm light in the empty house, with its scarred wallpaper where the electric wiring had been removed, and got drunk on cheap red wine.
Towards the end of the evening, the Russian asked Peter why he’d turned. Flustered, Peter muttered platitudes about inequality and war and world peace. George seized him by the shoulders and told him to pull his head out of his backside. George’s job was to help Peter, to safeguard him, to defend him from both the British and George’s own masters who sometimes did not see clearly. He could not do that if Peter was not honest. Did Peter understand?
After that, Peter did his best to explain what had happened to him at Cambridge. George laughed so hard he started coughing, and Peter had to pound him on the back to make it stop.
Peter realised he was now kneeling in the mud. His memories always became more intense while re-embodied. In Summerland, one’s senses were muted, especially smell—not surprising since all sensory impressions were memories imprinted in the aether. Maybe that, in part, led to Fading: losing the keys that unlocked one’s past.
He stood up, brushed off his wet knees and went to the door. Before opening it, he ran his fingers along the hinges.
The pencil lead George always placed there when leaving was missing. The safe house was compromised.
Panic washed over Peter. His rented heart missed a beat. Pendlebury’s sedated soul stirred and clawed at the inside of his skull like a trapped rat.
His leg muscles spasmed. He leaned on the door and fumbled for the spirit crown’s control unit in his pocket. His hands felt like oversized mittens, but he managed to twist the crown’s tuning dial. Feedback screamed in his head, and then he was in control again.
He tried to breathe the chilly air steadily as he replaced the key in its hiding place. He risked one last glance at the safe house. Its curtainless, blank windows had a haunted look. Turning his back on it felt like a betrayal.
Peter tried a brisk walking pace but managed only a wretched limp, his leg muscles still twitching. He cursed himself for not following a more rigorous surveillance-detection route from Pendlebury’s flat in Marylebone. For all he knew, the house was under observation and he had just blown his cover.
Briefly, he considered going directly to the Soviet Embassy, simply walking in and asking for asylum. It was tempting in the manner of the strange compulsion to leap one felt when standing near a cliff’s edge. But it meant abandoning all the progress he had made so far.
No, the thing to do was assume he was under observation and calmly act according to his cover story—which meant attending the soirée at the Harrises’, a couple who hosted a regular social event for the intelligence community. Later, he would check George’s dead drops for messages.