Edward Moon looked at me in horror. “What have you done?”
I admit that I was surprised by this development. The amniotic fluid which had revivified the old man must have had some special properties I had not forseen. Nowadays, I find myself unable to recall its precise constituents. Perhaps it is for the best — I would not wish for anyone else to repeat these vile experiments.
When I had dug the old man from the ground, his left hand had been severely damaged and I felt I had no choice but to amputate, attaching in its place a hand which had once belonged to one of his closest friends and colleagues, Robert Southey.
But now I noticed that my stitching was coming undone and that the hand had begun to dangle like a child’s mitten from the stump of the old man’s wrist. One by one the stitches popped out and I saw oozing slime where blood and cartilage should have been.
It was around this time that I first began to worry that things were no longer going according to plan.
Since the old man’s rage seemed fueled as much by pain as anger, I became concerned that other stitching may have undone itself on the old man’s person. Sick of the sight of the fighting below, he left the parapet and windmilled his way toward Moon. Unwisely, the conjuror attempted to block his path, the gesture as fruitless as trying to halt a speeding locomotive by standing in its way.
“Wait,” he said. “Please.”
With a single swipe of his good right hand, the Chairman battered Moon aside, displaying far more strength than ought to have been possible. Like a boxer woozy from the fight but determined to beat the bell, Moon stumbled to his feet only for the old man to hit him again, a flicker of green playing across his hand as he did so. This time Moon crumpled to the ground and lay still.
Clearly the amniotic fluid had given the old man far more than mere life, and I considered myself fortunate that it was a comparatively mild-mannered poet whom I had succeeded in resurrecting. Even now I shudder to think of the consequences had I gifted such weird power upon, say, Lord Byron or mad Blake or that oikish fraud Chatterton.
Moon was down, unconscious or worse, and the old man marched away, disappearing back into the Monument, heading toward the streets, imbued with awesome power and purpose. Leaving Moon for dead, I saw no choice but to follow, my dreams in tatters around me.
I moved down through the spiral heart of the building, eldritch light emanating from the Chairman as he descended below me, casting strange green shadows on the walls.
At least, I think that is what I saw. I fear I may not have been in my perfect mind.
What happened next was a series of horrible coincidences.
You needn’t worry yourself about Moon (as if you care). He was merely unconscious. Having betrayed me once that day, then goaded the Chairman into madness, a knock on the head was the very least he deserved. Personally, I should like to have seen him eviscerated.
We’ll leave him lying there for the time being, lost to the world. He’s done enough for now.
At around the time that the Chairman had begun to display the earliest signs of his disintegration, Mr. Maurice Trotman re-enters our story. He had run through the streets for more than an hour, his umbrella clutched fearfully in one hand, his heart clenching and unclenching itself frantically inside him. His supply of courage had been used up, had leaked from him during his long flight like air from a punctured tyre.
It was his bad luck that when he made his escape from the Prefects he ran toward the center of the city, into what he hoped might be the sanctuary of the business district. It was his bad luck that the day he chose to make such a flight was also the day that we at Love finally showed our hand. But it wall of our bad luck that he brought the Prefects with him.
Trotman finally came to a halt halfway down Cannon Street. As he struggled through crowds of flustered clerks and maddened bankers he wondered whether he might not inadvertently have stumbled into a nightmare. People were fighting around him, brawling and scrapping and — good God — was that a body in the street? Like Cyril Honeyman before the end, he toyed with the idea that the events of the morning might have been nothing more than an unusually vivid dream. He wondered, too, if the hysterical warnings of the Directorate could have had some truth in them after all and, for the first time in a life otherwise unimpeded by any color or interest, even considered the possibility that he might be going mad.
Whimpering, his dressing-gown gaping open, he hunkered down onto the pavement, curling up into a fetal ball. He hoped that if he crouched there long enough, he might be ignored and neglected by the mob. No such luck, of course.
Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. Refusing to turn around, hoping to deny the inevitable, he squeezed shut his eyes and hugged himself tighter.
“Come on, sir. Play up, play up and play the game.”
Trotman opened his eyes. Hawker and Boon loomed before him, evincing not the slightest sign of fatigue from the long pursuit.
“What ho, Maurice,” said Boon.
“Thanks for the run, old thing. Rather exhilarating.”
Boon snatched the umbrella and Maurice Trotman sobbed.
“Oh, be a man,” chided the smaller of the killers. “Face up to it like one of the chaps.” With this, he held the umbrella high above his head — a commuter’s sword of Damocles.
“Why?” asked the Civil Servant feebly. “Just tell me that.”
“We’re doing it as a favor.”
“Old chum of ours.”
“Real brick.”
“P’raps you know him.”
“Funny little chap.”
“All white and queer-looking.”
“Skimpole?” Trotman managed as, moments before his extinction, understanding flooded too late into his brain.
“Quite right,” said Hawker.
Had he lived longer, Trotman might have protested at the injustice of it all, at the unfairness of being hunted down and murdered for nothing more than doing his job. As it happened, he had no time left to think. Book brought the umbrella down hard upon his chest and its spike entered his body, neatly perforating his heart with a crisp snap. It was, at least, over quickly.
Cackling with delight, Boon pushed the umbrella fully through the body of his victim and force the thing open. Trotman cut a strange, undignified sight, all but naked, an unfurled umbrella sprouting from his chest like a fancy cocktail stick skewering an olive. The Prefects stood back and admired their handiwork.
Hawker clapped politely. “Bravo.”
Boon rummaged around in the pockets of his blazer and drew forth a couple of lollipops. He passed one to his friend and they stood sucking contemplatively for a time, gazing at the carnage unfolding around them with the mild anticipation of men waiting for a late bus.
Hawker pulled the lolly from his mouth, making a slurping noise as he did so. “Looks like a proper scrap.”
Boon crunched and swallowed. “Fancy causing a ruckus? Bit of mischief?”
A fat man came wheezing past them, an axe clutched in one hand, the arterial spray of two dozen prominent bankers congealing on his suit. You may remember his as Donald McDonald, my oldest and most faithful lieutenant.
“I say. “’Scuse me, sir.”
McDonald careered to a stop.
“Could you tell us what the deuce is going on?”
“We’re taking back the city,” my friend gasped. “Reclaiming it from the moneymen. The age of Pantisocracy is here.”
Boon yawned. “Politics.”
“Pantisocracy?” Hawker asked, only mildly interested. “What’s that, then?”
“Freedom, food and poetry for all,” McDonald replied. “The death of commerce. A new Eden at the heart of the city.”
Hawker smirked. “It’ll never work.”
McDonald began to frame some objection but it was too late. He had already bored them.