Ghost of a Smile (25 page)

JC cried out, and put his hands to his head. He thought he said,
Too much, too much
, but he couldn't be sure. His thoughts came painfully fast, idea upon idea, rushing through his mind, darting this way and that beyond his control, as he fought to understand and assimilate a dozen improbable things at once. Sudden sharp insights slammed into his head, insights into the nature of reality itself. Blindingly obvious . . . but he was never able to remember them afterwards. Or at least, not in any way that made sense. Except sometimes in dreams . . . from which he woke cold and sweating, crying out, gripped with a nameless horror.

He sat down suddenly, and Kim hovered over him uneasily. JC gritted his teeth together, and concentrated on being the master of his own mind, the captain of his soul. And slowly, piece by piece, he put his thoughts back together again. And when he opened his golden eyes, he was at last able to cope with what he saw.

And one of the first things he saw was Happy, pushing away Melody as she tried to stop him dry-swallowing a handful of pills from various containers. JC forced himself back up onto his feet and went over to Happy, who abruptly stopped what he was doing and let more pills fall from an open hand. He looked at JC and his eyes were wild, almost feral.

JC still stumbled doggedly towards him, Kim floating timidly at his side. Even with his renewed mental discipline, he was still seeing things. Great inhuman faces, with incomprehensible expressions, watching, watching. They seemed to come from all directions at once, and some things that weren't even directions. Strange things moved through the air, filling up the spaces between spaces, like the micro-organisms that roil and riot in a drop of water. They shot this way and that, passing through things and people and even each other. And then there were large forms, so big JC couldn't even guess at what they were, moving through the building and its contents as though they were the ghosts.

JC forced them all out of his gaze and his thoughts, and went on, step by step, refusing to be stopped or turned aside until finally he reached Happy and Melody, after what seemed like miles, or hours, or worse. Melody was trying to talk to Happy, but her words couldn't reach him. She didn't seem as bothered by the surroundings, perhaps because most of her attention was fixed on Happy. JC lurched forward and thrust his face right in front of Happy's. He whipped off his sunglasses, so that his golden eyes stared right into those of the telepath, filling his view. Happy met the golden gaze and slowly relaxed, as though someone had thrown him a lifeline. The golden glare kept everything else out. Happy breathed deeply, and sense returned to his eyes. He nodded jerkily, first to JC, then to Melody.

“All right. I'm back. I'm not sure where, and I don't think I like it, but I am quite definitely here. Can we go now?”

“Go where?” said JC, stepping back. “You see any way out of here? We're in the world of the New People now, and we have to start with them.”

He turned to face them, and everything else disappeared. Driven away, pushed aside, by the sheer presence of the New People. Only them, and the light they stood in. Or generated. And when they finally spoke, they all spoke at once, like a thunderous cloud or choir of voices. Just four motionless figures, in all their many dimensions, but when they spoke, there might have been four hundred or four thousand, as many aspects as there were dimensions.

“Do you know who's behind your creation?” said JC, forcing the words out. “Do you know about Patterson?”

“What do you want?” said JC.

“What if we don't want that?” said Happy, moving forward to stand with JC. “What if we'd rather choose our own way?”

“But will we still care about those questions, and those answers, when we're not human any more?” said Melody, stepping forward to be with JC. “Will we still care about any of the things we care about now, as poor, limited, human beings?”

“Will we still love?” said Kim, stepping in beside JC. “Will he still care for me, and I for him, as man for woman? Will we still have that?”

“That isn't answering the question,” said JC. “Would Kim and I, Happy and Melody, still share our simple human love for each other? Would the fundamental things still apply—care and compassion, honesty and honour, good and evil, life and death? Would they still matter to us? And if not, how could we still be us?”

“You see?” said JC. “You're the ones who don't understand. You'd have to destroy what makes us . . . us, to make us you. You've gone too far, progressed too far beyond us. The world isn't ready for you. Not yet. People aren't ready yet. You can't jump to the front of the queue, to the top of the evolutionary ladder. We have to get there on our own, achieve it on our own, or it won't mean anything. We have to earn it by our own efforts, one step at a time. Remember what you were. Who you were. What it felt like to be human. Small joys and small achievements are no less real for being small. Remember what you wanted out of life before chemical godhood gave it to you on a platter.”

“You think all our junk DNA being blocked off just . . . happened?” said JC. “No. It's there waiting, for the right time. For us to be ready for it. It'll awaken itself when conditions are right. And then, and only then . . . we'll all become like you. When the world needs us to be like you. Because by then, hopefully, we'll have earned it.”

The New People paused. They seemed to be talking among themselves, but it was not speech that JC or Happy or Melody or Kim could comprehend. Finally, they spoke again.

And they were gone. All of them, gone. The overpowering presence of the New People disappeared, snapped off, as they moved on into Future Time. Except . . . JC was always sure afterwards, that for a moment one of the New People, the terrible transformed living gods, dropped her godly mask to look back at him as the young woman she'd originally been . . . to give him just the ghost of a smile, before she left.

The four Ghost Finders, the three living people and the dead woman, looked slowly around them. They were standing in an empty floor at the top of an office building in London, and everything else they had seen there was already a fading memory. The world was back the way it should be, and full of only those things that belonged there. And the warm amber street light falling through the glass windows was like a benediction.

“That's it,” said Happy. “It's all over?”

“No,” said JC. “This is over, but we still don't know who or what Patterson represented. Why they wanted us, and what they hoped to achieve. Remember what those Crowley Project agents said, down under Oxford Circus Tube Station? That there are people operating behind the scenes, weakening the walls of the world, for purposes of their own . . . Nothing to do with the Project or the Carnacki Institute. We need to find out who these people are. Before they do something even worse than this.”

“Could we at least take a day off, first?” said Happy. “I am so tired I feel like I could go into reverse.”

“Of course!” said JC, smiling broadly on his people. “All work and no play makes Jack a pain in the arse. But still, you know, I have to wonder . . . what kind of world the New People might have made. Whether it might actually have been . . . something very like Heaven.”

NINE

Some hours later, outside Chimera House

 

The night was almost over. The sun was fighting its way up the sky, pushing back the dark with streaks of red and gold. The shadows were no longer as deep, or as menacing, and a few of the more optimistic birds had started singing. London's morning traffic was getting under way, the muted roar barely audible in the distance. It was still bloody cold, though.

The Carnacki Institute had turned out in force to mop up the mess left behind by its latest mission. Dozens of people were running this way and that, up and down the street before Chimera House, all kinds of people, representing all kinds of specialities, all of them moving like they had a plan. Or at the very least, all trying hard to look busy so they wouldn't get shouted at. Some were inside the lobby, taking readings with an impressive array of instruments. Others were already deeper in and further up, cleaning the place thoroughly, before the local authorities were allowed in. Removing all traces of the weird and uncanny, and any and all evidence that might give lesser mortals nightmares. Scientific equipment was being removed, computers wiped clean, and certain objects were being bagged up and taken away for examination, autopsy, or a quick trip to the incinerator.

Everyone was moving quickly, hard at work, because the area had already been sealed off and isolated for far too long. People might start asking questions. Though the Carnacki Institute would have already seen to it that they wouldn't get any answers. For their own good. The best way to keep a secret is to make sure no-one knows enough to understand which questions to ask.

JC, Happy, and Melody waited patiently outside Chimera House, being looked over by the Carnacki Institute's very own medical team. Which on such short notice, and at such an ungodly hour of the morning, consisted of one paramedic ambulance, with driver, and one bleary-eyed uniformed nurse. JC had already been checked out, and declared fine. He bestowed his most gracious smile on the nurse as he pulled his ice-cream white jacket back on.

“Of course I'm fine,” he said grandly. “I could have told you that. I am always fine.”

“Actually, you look like something big and determined kicked the crap out of you,” said Melody.

“Yes,” JC said patiently. “But apart from that, I'm fine.”

“Oh good,” murmured Kim. “I was getting a little worried, back there.”

No-one could see or hear her, for the moment. She had made herself invisible so as not to spook the late-comers—and because she was still quite shy around strangers. JC could feel her presence near him, like the smell of a wild rose or the warmth of an unfelt breath on his cheek.

Happy sat in the back of the ambulance, sipping hot chicken soup from a plastic mug bearing the legend
He's dead, Jim
. “I'm feeling better, too, if anybody cares. This is good soup. Good starter. Does anyone else feel like sending out for pizza? If we all club together and order the big size, we can get a stuffed crust . . .”

The nurse shut him up by thrusting a thermometer into his mouth. She'd already taken a blood sample and was shaking her head sadly. Happy raised an eyebrow.

“Don't believe everything you see on a chromatograph readout,” he said carefully, around the thermometer. “It was an emergency situation. I don't do the pills thing any more. Well, not as much, anyway.”

“It's a wonder to me you have any blood left in your chemical system,” snapped the nurse. “I've seen your file. We pass it around back at base when we want to freak out the new girls. When you die, we're going to put your organs on display, as a Horrible Warning to Others. Some people don't even want to wait till you die. If I were to take your blood pressure, would I regret it?”

“I don't know,” said Happy. “How good are your nerves?”

“Oh, get the hell out of my ambulance,” said the nurse, whipping the thermometer out of his mouth. She studied it for a moment, winced, and threw it away. “I haven't got the patience to deal with self-harmers.” She manhandled Happy out of the back of the ambulance and gestured impatiently to Melody. “Come on, science girl, get your geeky arse in here. Happy, JC, don't either of you go rushing off anywhere. I want to check you out with the Geiger counter before I sign off on you.”

“Amateur,” said Melody. “If I had my equipment here, I could test us for a dozen different kinds of radiation you've never even heard of.”

“Speaking of which,” said JC. “Look what's just turned up.”

Melody looked where JC was pointing, and immediately pushed the nurse aside to sprint off down the street to where two large men were straining to push her equipment along on a trolley.