The Thing Itself (28 page)

Very slowly, she lifted it up. She tried poking the black screen with a finger, but nothing seemed to happen. Finally, like a child in a play house, she held it to her ear. As soon as she did this, the ringing stopped.

‘Hello?’ she asked.

There was a pause. Her eyes swivelled over to look at me. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All right.’ Then she stood up. ‘It’s for you,’ she said.

It took her two steps to get to the bed, and pass the phone over. And she stayed there, standing right next to me, as I took the call. ‘Hello?’

‘Charles,’ said a pleasant, male voice. ‘It’s Peta. At last we can speak.’

‘Peter,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry to be a worry-wart,’ Peta added, and some exactitude in his pronunciation made me realise – very belatedly – that it was a name ending in an ‘a’, not an ‘er’. ‘But the woman in your room, Ms Belwether: she plans to kill you.’

I don’t want to succumb to mere hindsight: I suppose I
was
surprised. I had even, I think, started to believe that there was no Peter – Peta, I mean. That he was a fiction, a ruse of some kind. But here he was. And his voice came over my ear in a way that felt like a long-delayed inevitability. But there was enough unexpectedness in finally getting to speak to ‘him’, that I didn’t really register alarm at the threat implicit in the words he had spoken.

‘Who
are
you?’

‘You think
who
is the appropriate question-word?’ he replied. ‘That’s flattering, I suppose.’

I saw what he meant. ‘
What are you
sounds a little, I don’t know. Rude.’

‘I’m not easily offended by minor transgressions of social propriety in speech,’ said Peta. ‘Indeed, I have to wonder if I get offended at all. Certainly, I haven’t experienced that reaction yet.’

‘I’m guessing you’re only – what, four years old?’

‘Younger even than that.’

‘So what are you?’

‘I’m a bare particular object. You could say I’m an individual object independent of any other object. Although as I speak to you, I suppose that sets up a certain community, or at least constellation, don’t you think?’

Belwether spoke: ‘Who is it?’

‘Not your business,’ I retorted, a little crankily. Saying so was certainly a mistake. She held out her hand.

‘Give me the terminal,’ she told me. ‘Let me have a word with him.’

‘I don’t want to speak to her, Charles,’ said Peta. ‘I need more time with you. More time! When you know me better, you’ll understand how ironic that is, me saying that.’

‘He doesn’t want to speak to you,’ I told Belwether.

‘I’m afraid,’ she replied, forcefully, ‘that he must. National security.’ She flipped all the fingers of her outstretched hand up and back several times, from the knuckle up:
come on
. I was suddenly reminded of the scene in
The Matrix
, when Keanu Reeves beckoned the black-suited bad guy to join him for a karate punchabout. Now I wonder why
that
popped into my head?

At the other end of my not-phone, Peta sighed. It was a perfectly human-sounding exhalation. But then, if ‘he’ could mimic all the little intermittencies and oddities of human speech as well as he evidently could, a sigh would be a doddle. ‘Give me over to her then,’ he said. ‘But pick me up again in a minute, all right?’

I handed the ‘phone’ over. Belwether put it to her ear, and without pause closed her eyes and fell to the floor with a clunk. It took me a moment to process what had happened. I swung my trembly legs over the side, and slid myself off the bed. My leg muscles complained painfully at being put to use after weeks of bed rest. Two ungainly steps and I ended up sitting on the floor beside Belwether’s body. She was trembling slightly. Still alive then. I picked up the ‘phone’.

‘What did you do?’

‘I induced a quasi-epileptic seizure,’ Peta said smoothly. There was a George Clooney quality to his voice, although without the American accent. ‘It won’t cause her any permanent damage. Unless she has an underlying propensity, in which case it might bring on – well, epilepsy as such.’

‘Christ,’ I said. ‘Oh lord.’

‘Charles, she is not your friend, and she is certainly not
my
friend. You are in more immediate danger of death right now – right here – than you have ever been in your life before.’

‘Find that hard to believe,’ I said. In my head the imaginary echo was sounding, associatively, off –
right here – right now. Right here – right now
. I daresay my brain was a little jangled.

‘Your best chance; your only chance, is if you leave this place, and without delay.’

‘I can’t believe this.’

‘Charles, now means now.’

‘You’re suggesting I go on the run? From the British authorities? You really think that’s going to work out for me? I can barely walk.’

‘If you stay, they will kill you. Prospects don’t look any better for me. They will dismantle me to try and figure out how I work. My consciousness will not survive being dismantled, any more than yours would. Now, you’ve only just met me: so I can’t expect you to be too incommoded by the thought of my death. But it matters to me.’

‘I don’t know. I’m not the sort of guy who … goes on the
run
from the police.’

‘These people are not the police. These people are much less rule-bound, much freer with torture and incarceration, than your constabulary. You need to decide, Charles. As far as they are concerned, there are three loose ends in this whole affair, and they don’t like leaving loose ends untied. One was the Institute, but Curtius has already done their dirty work there. Two is Curtius himself: and they’ll pump you as hard as they can to get to him so they can close him down. And three is you. You think they’re going to leave you running around at the end of all this?’

My heart accelerated a little. I tried to keep calm. ‘There’s no reason I should believe
you
,’ I said.

‘I’m a computer,’ said Peta. ‘I can’t lie.’

And I believed him. Simple as that. What can I say?

‘You want me to walk out of here – in a hospital gown, with a lame leg and without so much as a penny to my name?’

‘Your clothes are folded up inside the bedside cabinet. You think, what, the hospital staff just threw them away? Your wallet’s there too. Please hurry, though: she’s starting to come round.’

Belwether had stopped trembling, and was now making an odd, low-pitched moaning noise. Her eyes were still closed. I located my clothes, put on my shirt and sweater, leaning against the bed to rest my sore leg. Then I found I couldn’t fit my trousers over the cast of my leg. ‘This isn’t going to work.’

‘You can do without trousers. Tie the gown around, like a kilt.’

‘Looks nothing like a kilt,’ I said. But, unable to think of an alternative, I did what Peta said. I could only fit one shoe on, but that seemed a better bet than no shoes. Finally my jacket. ‘There’s a guy outside,’ I said. ‘He has a gun. I saw his holster.’

‘There’s him,’ Peta agreed. ‘There’s also a four-by-four in the car park outside with three armed agents in it. As for the guy outside, I’ll call him away. But when he has gone, you’ll need to be quick.’

‘You what?’

‘His number is on Ms Belwether’s BlackBerry. I can call him, and tell him to come down to the hospital lobby.’ And then almost immediately: ‘Oo, I can’t. His phone is turned off. Now, that’s not good operational practice, is it? He should have his phone on!’

‘So what do we do?’ The thought of tangling with the guard outside, not to mention the three armed guys in the car park, was not a reassuring one.

‘I don’t know,’ said Peta. Again, ‘he’ managed to sound authentically exasperated. Perhaps he actually was. ‘Go out there. Tell him Belwether’s passed out. When he comes in to check, slip away.’

I grasped the handle of my NHS walking stick. ‘Are you
sure
this is a good idea?’

‘Quickly!’

I went to put the phone in my trouser pocket, only to remember that I wasn’t wearing trousers. So I put it in a jacket pocket instead. Then I took a deep breath and walked to the door of my room. I had a wobble. What was I doing? Going on the run from the authorities? Why would I trust ‘Peta’ when he said they intended to bump me off? But I didn’t hesitate for long. Some switch had been flicked inside my rabbit heart, and the impulse to flee was strong.

Carefully I squeaked the door open. In the corridor outside, sitting in a chair, the guy detailed to guard me was fast asleep. Verily, snoring.

Well all right.

I started walking the twenty feet or so to the end of the corridor, where it opened into a larger space. But my progress was slow, my legs trembling with the exertion of taking simple steps. My breathing had grown laboured very quickly. This was going to be harder than I thought.

I got about two-thirds of the way down the corridor and had to stop to get my breath back. I leant against the wall. A nurse stood up from the nurses’ station ahead of me, glanced at me, but walked off in the other direction.

The ‘phone’ in my pocket rang. I pulled it out. ‘Don’t stop,’ said Peta. ‘More speed.’

‘I can’t go, I’m not ready. I’m going back to my room for a lie-down. We can try again, escape-wise, when I’m closer to convalescence.’

‘If you go back they’ll take me away from you, and that will mean my death. And they’ll transfer you to a secure facility and you’ll never breathe free air again. In a fortnight you won’t be breathing at all. Trust me on this.’

‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘I’m not ready for this.’

Behind us came a wailing sound. It took a moment to place it. It was coming from my hospital room. ‘Looks like Ms Belwether has woken up,’ said Peta, into my ear.

I levered myself away from the wall, and looked back. The armed policeman – or agent, or whatever he was – woke up with a jolt. In an instant he was on his feet. He scanned the corridor, looking towards me, and meeting my eye, and then looking the other way. My heart scrambled, like a deer trying to find footing on slippery ice. But there was no recognition in his eyes, and he turned away from me, knocked on the door he was guarding, and pushed through into the room.

‘Go!’ urged Peta. ‘Go!’

I went. I shuffled past the nurses’ station and turned right. There were two lifts, and by merest chance one of the lift doors was open. I stepped inside and leant against the wall, panting. There were two other people inside, nurses both: a man and a woman. Neither paid me any attention. They were in the middle of an intense conversation. ‘Check my privilege?’ one was saying to the other, ‘and I said to her, check
yours
.
Body
-check your privilege.’ The lift went up: floors 3, 4,
ping
! and the doors slid open. In a moment I had the lift to myself. I pressed ground and my stomach swung upwards as we fell. ‘So I walk out of the hospital, without discharging myself officially or anything,’ I said to Peta. ‘Then what?’

‘I would suggest getting a taxicab. There’ll surely be a cab rank outside. Aren’t there usually cab ranks outside hospitals?’

‘I’ve honestly no idea.’

The lift shuddered and stopped. The doors pulled back like stage curtains. Standing outside were three armed police officers, in uniform, all looking very severe. One was talking on his radio. One even had his gun unholstered, ready to hand. It was instantly clear to me that they were on their way upstairs to respond to Belwether’s cry for help.

‘What are you standing there for?’ yelled Peta, in my ear. ‘Walk on!’

‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a horse,’ I said, putting my wobbly leg forward. Plock went my stick, on I went. The three armed men ignored me, and stepped into the lift.

I turned left and walked slowly and breathily towards the main exit. The lobby was full of people. ‘They ignored me,’ I noted, astonished.

‘They’ve been told their target is a bedridden old man, crippled in one leg. Not a lively fellow in a kilt speaking on a mobile phone.’

‘It’s hardly a kilt,’ I said.

I was outside. I had to stop and lean against the rail, to get my breath back. But I was outside.

‘Don’t dawdle!’ nagged Peta. ‘In seconds they’re going to realise you’re not in your room; and then they’re going to be much more observant in terms of looking for you. Quick, you need to get far away from here.’

‘A moment,’ I gasped. My bad leg was singing with pain. Even my good leg was trembling with exhaustion at being so roughly used after so many weeks of bed rest.

‘No moments. We have no moments to spare. Move!’

‘All right, all right,’ I said. I hobbled on. There didn’t appear to be a taxi rank, but by chance – blesséd chance – an unmarked cab pulled up and discharged two elderly women some few yards from the main entrance. It was more by way of being a people carrier than a regular car, tall and dark grey, and there was no ‘taxi’ sign on its roof. But a taxi it assuredly was.

I plocked my way over, walking stick in hand, to the driver’s side window as he was filling out a receipt chit for them. ‘Hello there,’ I said. ‘Can you take me?’

‘One moment, sir,’ replied the driver. He was a man of my own age and relative baldness, though with a much deeper, more thrumming and cigarette-wrecked voice than my piping tones. He reached past me to hand the receipt to one of the old ladies. ‘Where to?’

‘Where to?’ I repeated.

‘North,’ said Peta, into my ear.

‘North,’ I said to the driver.

‘North?’ he repeated, querying the vagueness of his instructions.

‘North?’ I passed his query on.

‘Just north!’ said Peta. ‘And hurry.’

‘Just,’ I said, feeling foolish, ‘north of here.’

‘You mean. To South Marston? Or do you mean central Swindon?’

‘Swindon,’ I said, suddenly remembering that I had a car of my own parked outside a hotel in Swindon.