The Glass God (31 page)

“Um?”

“Don’t all stand there looking like dead sardines!” exclaimed the medic. “The living human consciousness that should be in this body, who’s nabbed it?”

“Uh… we were kinda hoping you’d tell us?”

Dr Seah threw her arms up in righteous indignation. “Terrific. You’ve lost the brain.”

Rhys raised a hand in hopeful enquiry. “Dr Seah? When you say we’ve lost the brain, do you mean as in the actual squishy pink bit with all the neurons, or more as in the essence of intelligence which should inhabit the squishy pink bit?”

Dr Seah glowered. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know, Dr Seah,” he confessed. “I don’t think druids have an unguent for a missing brain.”

“I’m guessing you mean the consciousness, right?” Sharon cut in. “I don’t suppose you know
how
Swift’s consciousness got detached from the pink squishy bit?”

“If I said ‘duh, magic’ that’d be like, totally unprofessional, right?”

“No, no!” exclaimed Sharon. “It’s good to have these basic instincts confirmed, I mean, to get reassurance that this is in fact the case. But the thing is, while ‘duh, magic’ is an entirely appropriate reply, I was kinda hoping for something… more… specific?”

Dr Seah sighed and directed her indignant glare away from Sharon’s optimistic expression, back down at the sleeping form of the Midnight Mayor. “Well, if I had to speculate – which I totally hate doing, by the way, because usually I’m like ‘just hit with drugs’ but that’s how you get resistant strains, mutating viruses and the lycanthrope outbreak in Enfield – but if I
had
to speculate I’d say you were looking at a six-, seven-man summoning team minimum? And a mutually resonant casting catalyst to coax the consciousness out, and then maybe, just maybe, you’re talking about a storage facility for the brain that’d be, like,
this
big!” – she swayed with the effort of stretching her arms wide – “⁠… which seriously narrows it down; I mean, your computers don’t have the processing power, and your genie bottles totally don’t have the processing power; you’d get brain damage and it’d be like, ‘pop’, hello dopey sorcerer. So I’m guessing we’re talking something really big, like the gutted belly of a dead god or maybe the hollowed-out nexus where five train lines met, and even then you’d have to line it with asbestos and…⁠”

“Telephones.” Sharon spoke so quickly, even Dr Seah paused to check that she’d heard. “If I get what you’re saying, then to keep Swift’s mind alive – I mean, alive but not in his body – you’d need to put it somewhere big, right? Like, able-to-store-consciousness big. How about telephones?”

“Yeah…⁠” There was a drag on the word which did not bode well. “I guess you could
try
and put his mind into the telephones. But it’d be really tricky; I mean, you’d need a sympathetic catalyst…⁠”

“He’s the blue electric angels,” Sharon replied. “That sympathetic enough?”

“I gotta tell you, that’d probably do it, but!” Dr Seah had the grace to look taken aback. “But putting a human mind into the telephones is, like,
way
out there. I mean, there’d be transference issues, and addressing issues, and disintegration issues. Like, I get that the guy’s been sharing his body with the gods of the telephone and that, but seriously? One tiny human brain bouncing round the telephone wires? It’d be like – well, put it like this, there’d be psychological things I’d be worried about. Like,
beyond
prescription-drugs kinda things.” Few more frightening fates could be presented to Dr Seah, it appeared, than a problem which didn’t have a chemical solution.

“Is Mr Swift in danger?” Kelly demanded. “I mean… more than having his mind trapped in the telephone wires?”

“Uh…
yeah
?” insisted Dr Seah.

“Mortal danger?”

“Depends how you see ‘mortal’. Don’t give me that look, it’s, like, a serious question! Technically the guy ain’t dead… technically he’s just on this wacky extra-sensory field trip. Only, the longer he spends in the telephone wires, the more likely it is that his brain gets splattered, with bits of his mind in, like, Hong Kong, and other bits in Harare, and all chatting to each other over Facebook and that. So, technically, yeah, he’d be dead in the sense that once his consciousness gets split apart like that, there’s no putting it back together. But can we call this mortal danger, really? I know it’s unprofessional to say this, but damned if I know.”

Kelly had gone pale. So, for that matter, had Miles. “Dr Seah…⁠” the Alderman’s voice was low and grey. “If Swift’s mind is broken apart in the telephone wires, but he isn’t actually dead… what would happen to the power of the Midnight Mayor?”

A pause. Then a shrug.

“You know,” Dr Seah mused, “I guess that depends on how ancient primal powers look at death, too. If there’s a possibility that the power might stay attached to what’s left of Swift’s mind in the telephone wires, going round and round the world forever… then, yeah, I’d guess there’s that chance.” Seeing the fallen faces around her, she clapped her hands together and exclaimed, “But don’t worry! It’s probably, like, a really really small chance. I’m sure everything will be totally okay, and we’re all getting worked up about nothing. I mean, look!” She prodded the sleeping body of Swift with her toe. “He’s got a woolly hat with rabbit ears on!”

Four mortified faces were as frozen solid as the walls themselves. Sharon cleared her throat. “Um… Dr Seah,” she said, “I know that you hate speculating, and that this is kinda a bit of an ask, considering your area of professional expertise and that, but do you know how we can stop this? How we get Swift back?”

“Sure. You need to call him.”

“We need to…⁠”

“Sweetie, he’s in the telephone lines. And how do you get into the telephone lines?”

“You… pick up a phone?”

“Exactly! Or someone picks up a phone for you, the detail’s not that important. What matters is that at some point, somehow, your missing guy must have stood near an open telephone line and got sucked into it, and for the line to be active it must have had a number assigned to it. Dialling code, area code, you know, all that crap. Find the telephone…⁠”

“⁠… find Swift. Gotcha.”

“Only try and do it before his mind disintegrates, yeah?” added the doctor, with a twitch of furrowed brow. “Cos that’ll be some serious shit if left untreated.”

Sharon stared down at the curled-up body of Swift, sleeping peacefully in its woolly hat. “Yeah. That’s all we need.”

Chapter 53

Cool and Calm Discussion Is the Sensible Response

They sat round a boardroom table.

Someone brought them biscuits.

Sharon ran her hands over the surface of the table, and felt dismayed. The thing was in the shape of an oval, green-tinted on top, black underneath. It could have easily sat twenty people; as it was, for now, it sat five, who’d managed to spread themselves just far enough apart to make conversation difficult. It was, as boardroom tables went, very managerial, very elegant, and just a bit sinister.

The biscuits, when they arrived, were expensive, sweet and too complicated for the shaman’s taste. Rhys frowned at them, too, not sure how to cope with a snack that wasn’t from the local supermarket’s own brand, or which chose dried apricot pieces instead of ancient, withered raisins to add texture. Nor was he comfortable with someone else making the tea, thus undermining his own role in the managerial structure.

Then Kelly said, “We cannot permit the Midnight Mayor not to die.”

As opening statements went, this was startling enough to make the druid utter a faint “uh?” and fumble instinctively in his pocket. Dr Seah had slipped him a fresh packet of tablets on her way out, and though she’d sworn they were the greatest antihistamines man could produce, the lack of any label had left him alarmed. ‘Fuck it, you’ll work it out!’ was not, he’d felt, adequate medical advice.

“We can’t permit him…
not
to die?” squeaked Sharon.

“Please don’t get me wrong,” added the Alderman. “I want Mr Swift to live, as much as anyone here. His survival and wellbeing are of the highest concern to us all, and as his personal assistant I would feel so ashamed if I let his mind dissolve to the nether reaches of the telephone network. Absolutely our main priority has to be to get his mind back into his body, as quickly as possible.

“However…⁠” And on that however, how the sound stretched. “If we
can’t
, then we do have to consider the possibility that the power of the Midnight Mayor, the force that has guarded this city for nearly two thousand years, may, for the first time in London’s history, also cease to be. Or, rather, cease to be transferred onto a successor, which is tantamount to the same thing. And obviously as a PA I’m horrified at the thought that any harm might come to my employer, but we must remember that it’s the Midnight Mayor who employs us, as much as any man who wields the spells.”

“So what do you want to do?” asked Sharon.

“For now,” murmured Kelly, “I think we proceed with trying to find Swift’s, uh… mind. Do you have any – and how exciting it is to use this word! – any leads, Ms Li?”

Sharon squirmed. Her sleep deprivation, which cold, anxiety, burns and coffee had temporarily driven back, was kicking in again as she looked round the large, well-heated room. “Uh, yeah…⁠” she muttered, trying to think what the hell they might be. “There’s, uh… there’s Old Man Bone, who’s coming back from the dead, well, the undead, well, the sorta-with-the-dead-but-not-dead… There’s all the shoes, which should be keeping him happy, but ain’t. Then there’s the Tribe kid who died from the Black Death, for pinching the umbrella, probably. And there’s this dead woman, Bridget, who I think was killed by Swift in Deptford, and her phone said she was going to…
she
was going to this place called Scylla Workshops, because that was her last maps search, so I guess that’s important. And there’s this Hacq dude who emailed Swift about the umbrella, which lured him to Deptford but then also sent a viral hex which kinda stinks. And there was this phone call I got on the dream walk which, thinking about it, was really Swift kinda trying to get help which is a really positive thing, because it totally means he knows he’s got a problem, and is still hanging on in there. And he gave me a bit of a telephone number although there’s probably millions of people whose numbers begin with that, but it’s worth checking out.

“And, uh… yeah, if you ignore the threat of plague and the walking dead things and the shoes hanging off stuff and the missing sacrificial blade and the waking god and the trapped sorcerer and the screaming blue angel in the basement, then I’d say there’s lots of really good things we can work with here.”

Into the silence that followed, “Great!” exclaimed Kelly. “It’s so good to hear that we’re making progress!”

There was a polite chorus of “um” and “yeah”.

“Someone said something about Scylla Workshops?” added Sharon, turning to where Miles sat. “Something kinda not totally ‘whoo-hoo’?”

Miles wasn’t a man to squirm. But Rhys, scrutinising him for comforting signs of vulnerability, did detect an instant of unease as the Alderman adjusted his posture. “They’re… very fine enchanters,” he said. “There are three of them, sisters, who run the workshop and they are… very fine.”

Sharon’s eyes narrowed. “Okay,” she murmured. “So, I don’t want to go all knower of truth on you here, but I’m kinda feeling that you’re skipping something. What’s the bad stuff here?”

This time, the squirm was unambiguous. “There are… those who suggest that having monstrous writhing heads upon hideously bloated bodies from which scaled limbs protrude isn’t necessarily a good marketing device…⁠”

Sharon’s mouth dropped. “You mean… when you say that it’s the Scylla Workshops…⁠”

“Quite.”

“As in… actual scyllas? Like… half-women, half-tentacled killing machines, with a taste for human flesh and really nasty teeth, kinda scyllas?”

“I wouldn’t want to speculate on previous culinary inclinations.”

“But that’s… that’s kinda cool, isn’t it?” She turned to the room for support. “I mean, come on!” She stretched her arms wide. “We’re Magicals Anonymous; we’re all about people with social issues, and it sounds to me like there’s nothing like being a… monster-headed, bloated-bodied, scaly fiend from Chelsea to cause discrimination! We could totally help!”

“If they want our help, Ms Li,” offered Rhys.

“Yes, if they want it of course, but I’m just saying, community outreach, getting to know people, this could be…⁠” – her eyes glinted – “⁠… an
opportunity
.”

This time, the chorus of assent and approval was even weaker. Sharon slapped her hand on the table. “You guys are so prejudiced! I mean, the worst part is, you don’t even know how prejudiced you are, and that makes you, like, even more prejudiced, because you’re not even thinking about it. But I know you mean well, and once you guys have noticed the problem, I know you’ll all try and deal with it, in your own groovy way.”

At length, “Amazing!” said Kelly. “You know, I hadn’t even thought about it. Now you point it out, the idea of having tea with a creature capable of rending me limb from limb had been something that bothered me. But now I think about it, that’s just a social stereotype, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, my God, and I always thought I had such an open mind!”

Sharon and Kelly shared a wide, grateful smile of women surprised to discover comradeship in a difficult time. Elsewhere round the table, Miles, 8ft and Rhys did their best not to notice this moment of feminine unity.

Miles cleared his throat.

“There is also the question of appeasing Old Man Bone…⁠”

“Yeah,” said Sharon, “he’s past the sit-down and a cuppa tea stage.”

“It can’t be easy being the living god of the dead,” suggested Rhys, trying to maintain the spirit of open-mindedness.

“Well, quite. Gotta feel it for the guy. Although the whole human sacrifice thing is dodgy.”

“Nevertheless,” prompted Miles, “without the blade…⁠”

Sharon threw her hands up in frustration. “I know: plague, death, bad smells, I see where you’re going. But I’m guessing it’s not too much to say that whoever pinched the knife – or got B-Man to pinch the knife, whatever – whoever has the knife that was pinched is almost certainly the same guy who ensorcelled the living mind of Swift into the telephone wires, in an effort to get rid of the Midnight Mayor, yeah?”