“If you destroy his cause you destroy him. You’ve got to understand that. What you’re doing today is destroying everything he cares about. Everything he loves.”
She looked very young suddenly, with her deep black-ringed eyes, her short hair. “Child,” she said. “I cannot harm him. Or any human being. I simply cannot. The nature of my nature is devotion.”
“No!” I shouted at her. Alison touched my arm, but I pushed her away. “You’re not a Devoted One. You’re Malignant. You killed my cousin. Paul Cabot. Paul Cabot. You killed him. Set your snakes on him.”
She said, “Something has disturbed you. There are enemies. Let me inside and I will free you.”
I took a step backwards and spit on the floor. My left hand slashed at the air. “I forbid you to enter me.”
“Why do you insist on this? I’ve never hurt you. I’ve never touched any Paul Cabot.”
“Your name,” I said, “is Lisa Black Dust 7.”
“You know very well my designation.”
“Now. Now you’re Margaret Light-at-the-End-of-the-Tunnel 23. But you were Lisa Black Dust 7 first. You ran a service in an office building. An agency for Malignant Ones who worked for the government. Paul worked there. In that building. And you ate him. Why won’t you remember?”
She shook her head. “No. This is your sickness. False stories about me will not help you, Ellen.”
Rubbing my hands together, I removed as much as I could of the paint and paste, then wiped the marks from my face. The Being said, “What are you doing?” When I glanced at Alison she was looking at me with narrowed eyes, concentrating. She nodded slightly and I realized once again how much I loved her.
“I’m exposing myself,” I said to Tunnel Light. “Can you read humans? Can you tell when a human is telling the truth? When a human knows the truth?” I opened my arms. “I want you to read me.”
She stepped close to look at my face. When she touched my cheek, I forced myself not to jump back. Her fingers felt—ordinary. Soft, and a little cold. She moved her fingers around my cheeks, my ears, underneath my jaw, and then held them for a while on the side of my neck.
She dropped her arms finally and stepped back. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I know my purpose. I know my function.”
“They brought you back. To serve their purpose. Arthur Channing and his crooked friends who didn’t want Alexander Timmerman investigating the banking system. They couldn’t use a Malignant One since Timmerman would just protect himself. So they let you change to Benign and sent you in to destroy him, his organization. That was your real purpose.”
She shook her head. She looked like a child, scared and confused. “But if I still can help? What does it matter if a human scheme brought me here? My purpose remains true. Why should—”
Down the hall an elevator door had opened and now three men in tubular masks were moving towards us. Two of the men held guns, the third carried a spray gun attached by hose to a heavy canister covered in markings and tied round with sanctified nylon cord hung with beads. Demon breaker.
One of the men said, “Ellen Pierson, Alison Birkett, you’re under arrest. Turn around and face the wall.”
Tunnel Light said, “These women are under my protection. I cannot allow—”
The agent in the middle was raising the nozzle. “Ferocious One,” he said, “I beg you—”
I shoved Tunnel Light aside before he could spray her. Grabbing Alison’s hand, I pushed the Being into the elevator she’d left open behind her. “Paul!” I shouted. “Close the door. Hurry.” I screamed as a bullet hit the wall behind us and ricocheted around the chamber. But then the door was closed and we were moving downwards. “Paul,” I said. “Take us between floors. And disable the other elevators.”
I turned Maggie Tunnel Light to face the steel column at the front of the elevator. Confused, she didn’t resist. “Look,” I said. “This is what you did to him. You killed him. And then the government and the Bright Beings stuck him here, in elevators.”
Whether the others saw or not, I don’t know—I’ve never asked Alison—but to me, Paul’s face appeared in the air at the top of the column, in front of the jewels and hair. He looked just as I remembered him from that last day, only—not so scared, more peaceful. “I love you,” I whispered, but I knew I couldn’t stay looking at him. Right now, our Friend had to get my attention.
She was changing, moving in and out of a different form, taller, with a fuller body. Lisa Black Dust 7, I thought. She’s changing back to the Ferocious One. I opened my mouth to tell Paul to get us out of there, take us downstairs, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even lift my arm to signal him. Next to me, Alison was pressed back against the wall, struggling against whatever invisible arm held her there.
The Being leaned forward with her mouth open, smiling like a delighted five year old. “Ellen Pierson,” she said, as if thrilled to see me again. “Are you ready for me to eat you?”
I backed away, reaching for Alison.
And then Alison and I fell down as Black Dust 7 vanished, taking the pressure with her. Margaret Tunnel Light stood there again, weeping in the dim light of the elevator. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I just wanted to feed you. That’s all. I just wanted to feed you.”
Exhausted finally, I couldn’t answer, just sat there watching her cry. Alison stood up and walked to her. “We can’t take your food,” she said. I don’t think I’d ever heard such kindness in her voice, not even when she was holding me after Paul’s death. “Humans can only feed each other. I know you tried, but it’s just part of our nature. We long for you to help us and feed us, but in the end our love for each other is the only food we can eat. I’m sorry. Really. I wish it was different. For all of us as well as for you.”
Margaret Light-At-The-End-Of-Tunnel 23 dropped her head. She began to rock back and forth, with her arms wrapped around her chest. I stood up and took Alison’s hand.
The Being straightened. She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them again, her face calm. Turning to me, she said, “Please ask your cousin to take us downstairs.”
I glanced at Alison who nodded. “Paul,” I said. The elevator moved. When we touched the ground floor, Tunnel Light said, “Bury your faces in your bodies.” It took us a moment to realize what she meant, but when the door opened Alison and I had safely pressed our eyes into each other’s shoulders as a flash of light filled the corridor. When we stepped out of the elevator five or six men and women were on the ground, groaning or pulling off their tube masks to press their hands against their eyes. Ignoring them, we followed Tunnel Light, who had already moved through the lobby and onto the trading floor.
You’ve probably seen something of what Alison and I found when we entered that room. For those who didn’t catch it on live television, the news programmes made sure to run the tapes several hundred times (with men in suits giving sombre warnings beforehand about the disturbing footage). But even if you saw the unedited live version, the bleeding bodies, the vomit and shit, the torn arms and ripped-open chests, the people naked or wearing layers of clothes, the people sitting and staring, the ones wandering or falling down, the cut and the dead, the ones lying face down on the floor, and all around them the smashed computers, the ripped-out wires and telephones, even if you saw all of it, the screen could never show what it was like to step into it. To climb over the bodies and feel limp hands brush against our legs, to step between the dead and the staring, watching out for live wires and glass and pieces of bodies. And the silence, the absence of any human noise, not even moans or weeping, so that the only things we could hear were the whisper of the cameras and the slight background hum of the loudspeakers, along with the cheerful whistle of the artbirds, still fluttering around Rebecca Rainbow’s impassive body. And the smell, that battering ram hit of emptied-out bodies, of come and blood and vomit, all mingled with burnt rubber and plastic, overlaid at the same time with a cloud of perfume, a smell of flowers as delicate as the song of the birds.