‘Is the girl dead?’
It was hard to read Juno Meltzer’s transparent face, but A.A. Catto thought she detected a trace of disappointment.
‘Of course not. She’s fully conscious. All we did was to have her pre-frontals radiated out. She does exactly what she is told without a thought. Bruno and his gang will have a great time with her once all the food’s been consumed.’
The two women parted and began to circulate, making the small talk with people they really didn’t want to know that was the traditional preliminary to every party. A Hostess-1 presented A.A. Catto with a blue glass opium pipe, and when she finished it she felt ready to move into second gear. She sought out Juno Meltzer.
‘When does the fun begin, darling? I hope the human plate wasn’t the big surprise.’
Juno Meltzer shook her head most mysteriously.
‘Any moment now the entertainment will start.’
The end section of the floor became rigid, and formed a low semi-circular stage. Some Hostess-1s politely persuaded Bruno Mudstrap and his cohorts that maybe they’d like to move back and watch the show.
A.A. Catto slowly descended the marble staircase and sank into a reclining position on the soft part of the velvet floor. De Roulet Glick spotted her, and hurried to her side.
‘A.A. Catto, it’s so wonderful to see you. I wonder …’
‘Get lost, Glick. I find you loathsome.’
‘But …’
‘Loathsome, Glick.’
De Roulet Glick slunk away like a whipped puppy.
Hostesses moved among the guests with drinks and opium, and then the music faded and the lights dimmed. A troup of tiny people appeared from a concealed door and the lights focused on the impromptu stage.
They were L-4s who had been reduced to a height of not more than sixty centimetres by some kind of DNA adjustments. They played miniature instruments, sang and did acrobatics. A.A. Catto yawned. What kind of cornball idea was this? The transparency treatment must have damaged Juno Meltzer’s brain.
The Hostess-1s moved among the guests again and, along with the others, A.A. Catto found herself handed an ornate, leaf-blade knife. The midgets continued with their absurd pantomime.
Gradually A.A. Catto found her mood was changing, she was becoming irritable. The irritability turned to anger, and the anger to a cold hate. She realized that there was a wideband alphaset being used. Juno Meltzer’s surprise was about to be sprung. It was the midgets that cracked first. One of them, a comparatively tall male, cried out in a high trilling voice.
‘Now, brothers and sisters! Slay the oppressor!’
Squeaking, they rushed at their audience. Before A.A. Catto could get to her feet a tiny woman had struck at her with a small sword. As the blow fell it became clear that the sword was only painted balsa wood. It snapped and A. A. Catto swung her own inlaid steel blade at the L-4 and cut her practically in two. Leaping to her feet she hacked at the little people, cutting off heads and limbs in a savage fury. The rest of the guests were joining in with relish. In five minutes it was all over. The L-4s had all been slaughtered.
A.A. Catto felt her emotions change. Someone had adjusted the alphaset, and a feeling of wellbeing crept through the Velvet Rooms. A team of Hostess-2s cleared away the tiny corpses and removed the blood. A.A. Catto sank back to the floor.
She felt positively good. So good, in fact, that she was actively pleased when her brother Valdo pushed up her black skirt and began to caress her thighs.
***
Reave, Billy and the Rainman clung desperately together. There were no words to describe what they were going through. Disruption patterns filled the sky, and glowing things flashed past them.
Their sense of down kept shifting, and in their minds they seemed to be falling in constantly changing directions. In a similar way to when they had walked through the nothings, the idea of time became warped and twisted. One moment they floated through a curving, ribbed pink tube, and the next they were dropping past glowing perspective lines. The paradox was that although they seemed to slip rapidly from one plane to the next, while they were actually experiencing a phenomenon it was as though it had been going on for ever.
After what seemed like both an eternity and a few moments, they hit something. Billy fell heavily and twisted his shoulder. Painfully, he picked himself up and looked for the others. Reave and the Rainman were sprawled beside him, but there was no sign of the strange woman in black.
The three of them climbed to their feet and looked around. They were in a narrow stone-flagged alley, on each side of which were high, windowless granite walls. The place had a hard, forbidding atmosphere.
‘So where are we?’
‘Somewhere, and that’s a comfort in itself.’
‘Think we ought to take a look round? It’s a gloomy kind of place.’
Grey seemed to be the key note of everything they could see. The sky was the colour of slate, the granite buildings and flags echoed the same theme, and dark, dirty water trickled down a gutter in the middle of the alley. Reave shivered.
‘It’s none too warm.’
Billy nodded.
‘This place gives me the creeps.’
The Rainman shrugged.
‘We ain’t going to improve matters by standing round complaining.’
He flipped a coin to see which way they should go. It came up tails, and they started down the alley. They’d only gone a few paces when men appeared at both ends of the alley. Calling them men was rather stretching the point. They had coarse, ape-like features and their arms hung nearly to their knees. They wore black tunics and leggings, and leather helmets with an iron strip that hung down to protect the nose. On the front of the tunics was a design that consisted of an eye surrounded by stylized flames. In their hands they held dull iron tubes that Billy assumed were guns of some kind.
‘Halt!’
Billy started to run, but there was a deafening bang and a hail of nuts, bolts, nails and assorted lumps of metal whistled over his head. Billy stopped, and stood very still. A group of the men surrounded him. They were shorter than either Billy, Reave or the Rainman, but they had massive chests, shoulders and arms. A hand covered in warts and thick bristles was thrust under Billy’s nose.
‘Papers!’
‘Papers?’
‘Papers, snaga, papers!’
‘I don’t have any papers.’
‘No papers? No papers? Everyone has papers, filth.’
‘I don’t have any papers. I just fell out of the nothings.’
One of the creatures punched Billy hard in the mouth, and Billy was knocked to the paving stones. The creature who had hit him roared down at him, showing sharp yellow teeth.
‘The nothings are forbidden, worm. You are a prisoner of the Shirik.’
Billy was hauled roughly to his feet, his arms were dragged behind him, and a pair of manacles snapped round his wrists. Reave and the Rainman received similar treatment, and surrounded by the creatures who called themselves the Shirik, they were marched down the alley.
They turned into a wider street that was paved with the same granite as the alley and surrounded by the same high, menacing buildings. It was Billy’s first chance really to look at the sinister new city. As far as he could see it was built from the same sombre grey stone, topped by steeply sloping roofs of darker grey slate. The total lack of colour touched Billy with an edge of fear. Another feature that seemed to be absent from the high dour buildings was windows. Billy could see no openings near the ground, and it was only high up under the roofs that he could make out some narrow slits. The most frightening thing about the city was that it was completely silent. Apart from the strange apemen that surrounded him, there was nobody in the streets, no birds fluttered round the roof tops, and the city looked totally deserted.