The World House (32 page)

  This was enough for the pack's sense of selfpreservation to kick in. The animals fled back into the cold, the lingering smell of a singed pelt all they left behind. The whole attack had lasted no more than a few seconds.

  "They came so quickly," said Carruthers. "Forgive me – I tried to hold them off but my aim… the shot was more powerful than I imagined."

  "The recoil sends your arm up unless you're used to it," Ashe said. "Should have warned you, they make guns more potent in my time."

  "You OK?" Miles asked Penelope.

  "I'm fine," she said, "no damage at all… I…" Her eyes had fallen on the cover of a book that had spilled from Ashe's coat during the attack. "That's your book from the library," she said to Miles, "and Carruthers' and…" She stared at Ashe. "What are you doing with that?" The name on the third cover chilled her more than the pack of wolves had done.

  Ashe looked down at the book, opened his mouth and then closed it again, unable to think of an excuse.

  "What is it?" Miles asked.

  "He's got Chester's book!" Penelope replied.

  "
My
book actually," Ashe corrected her. "I might not have been telling the whole truth when I said my name was Ashe – first name that came to me, read a bunch of his books."

  "Chester?" Carruthers asked, staring at the cover. "It doesn't say Chester."

  "Chester was his nickname," explained Penelope, "after the president. His real name's–"

  "Alan Arthur," Ashe interjected. "Wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you."

 

 

 

"Did you think we wouldn't find you?"

  The renegade looks up from his coffee, trying to place the two gentlemen standing by his table. They are of a particularly bland type, the only thing of note being their varying heights, one tall and thin, the other short and fat. They can only have been paired by someone with a sense of humour. After a moment's reflection, it is their complete lack of distinction that gives the renegade a moment's concern. He has always adopted the most nondescript of faces to hide behind, something soft and curved to hide all his sharp edges, and there is no guarantee that these people have not done the same. "Do I know you?" he asks, making a point of sipping his drink slowly, glancing casually at them over the rim of his cup.

  "We know you, that is enough."

  "I somehow doubt that, gentlemen." He smiles and reaches for his pack of cigarettes. He has taken the habit up recently and is enjoying consuming as many as possible in a day. He pulls out a cigarette, puts it in his mouth and digs in his coat pocket for a lighter. There is no need: the tip obligingly ignites itself, or at least appears to.

  "Still enjoying the native life?" the tall man asks, smiling at his little trick. He reaches over and plucks the cigarette from between the renegade's lips. He sucks on it, drawing the entire tube of tobacco into his mouth in one inhalation. Letting the smoke emerge from his nostrils he drops the filter on the ground. "Fascinating, I'm sure. How clever to have mastered inhaling smoke. What are they going to do next? Ingest liquids? You're wallowing so far down the evolutionary ladder it's an effort to even communicate with you."

  The renegade is trying to put a name to the terrible sickness he is feeling; it's a new sensation and he doesn't like it. It makes his stomach churn, the hair follicles on his skin tighten, his muscles tense. It is terribly uncomfortable. He has an idea it might be fear. Deciding to act on it rather than simply endure it, he shoves the table away and runs down the street, managing a few steps before the ground beneath him loses its solidity and he is left to thrash around in a grey taffy of road surface.

  "What is the name of this place?" asks the tall man as the couple draw alongside him.

  "Stalingrad," the renegade answers breathlessly, "and if you think it's boring now then hang around twenty-four hours, we're about to have a bit of fun."

  "We are aware of what you consider fun. How many are to die this time?"

"About two million."

  The tall man stretches his inherited bones. "I find it astonishing they can be so active in these meat sacks of theirs." He cricks his neck, grimacing in discomfort. "But then they do have a great deal of encouragement, do they not?"

  "A little cheering from the sidelines, nothing too vulgar."

  "It's all vulgar, you ridiculous specimen."

  "Each to his own."

  The tall man pokes at the renegade with his foot, pushing him back down into the sticky mess of tar. "Your philosophy is utterly contaminated… you are an embarrassment, a disgrace."

  "To you, perhaps, but here I am a God. These things are relative."

  "A God? I can't even pretend to know what one is… no matter, we know what you are: you're a renegade and as such will not be tolerated."

  The small man drops to his haunches and opens his mouth. There is a cracking noise as his jaw dislocates, his lips parting until his whole face is nothing but mouth. With workmanlike patience, he eats the renegade whole.

 

 

 

Sophie wakes to the sound of an explosion. It shakes her in the dark and she is scared. Explosions are Never Right. They are loud and dangerous. They break things. They can never be anything but Bad. She told her mother and father this when they tried to take her to see fireworks. Fireworks were just colourful explosions. Fireworks were bad. She screamed and screamed and screamed until they stopped. They never took her again.

  This was not a firework, it did not sound the same. Still it made her scream until Alan came and told her it was all right. She does not know how Alan can think explosions are all right but she knows Alan is a man of facts so she has no choice but to believe him.

  He opens the curtains so Sophie can see what she already knows: she is not in the water, she is in a room. The room is small and dark and made of wood. She thinks the room must be a shed. She knows sheds. She has been in sheds before.

  "The noise was Jonah freeing the anchor," Alan is saying, though the words mean nothing to her and she worries that she has forgotten how words work. "He climbs up the ropes and sets a small charge on the roof to blow the harpoons loose, hell of a sight." Sophie is really worried now, Alan is making no sense at all. Maybe he's gone mad?

  "Sorry," he says, "you probably have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" Sophie shakes her head, glad that Alan is once more a man of facts.

  Alan tells her that they are now not in the water, they are on a ship. Sophie thinks about this. It would explain why the shed is moving up and down and creaking. She thought it was just angry with her for screaming but maybe this is how it is supposed to be. Ships go on water and they were on water so maybe they are now on water in a ship. This doesn't sound too wrong so maybe it is right.

  Alan tells her about everything he has seen while she was asleep. She is thinking about sheds for a lot of it so she misses most of what he says. She picks up some things. The names of some people which don't mean anything as names are no good without faces. He says something about people made from water but she must have missed the important part of that as men are Not Made From Water so it doesn't make sense. In fact, she decides, most of what he says doesn't make sense so she gives up listening and thinks about clothes. She left her clothes in a very neat pile on the bench. She is hoping Alan has brought those clothes with them. She cannot walk around in her bra and pants, that is a rule. It's all right in the water or going between the dry land and the water (as long as it's not far) or when going to bed or when going between bed and the water. Probably. She's never done it. She doesn't think it's all right on a ship. So has Alan brought her clothes? She gets out of bed to look for them but can't find them. This makes her very sad. She left them so neatly. What if something comes along and makes a mess of them while she's gone? What if they move her socks, her perfect, walking, empty feet? She sits on the bed and starts to empty herself, her humming sounding very loud in the small shed. She wonders if Alan will worry about this. She thinks that he sometimes needs to empty himself so maybe he will understand. She opens her eyes once she feels better and Alan is still there. This is good. He is holding up some clothes for her and she wonders if he has read her mind. They are not her clothes. They are big clothes for a man but he says they will be all right and he speaks facts so they will be. He leaves her to put them on and she does so. They are too big but they are funny. Floppy shirt and trousers that she has to turn up so she can walk. She will wear them until she can get her proper clothes back.

  She joins Alan and they leave what isn't a shed but a room. They walk up to the deck of the ship. It is very strange there. It is like outside but it is not outside. It is just a very big inside. This is like the jungle that was not a jungle but a very big inside. She has seen this before so it is not so Wrong. The water still looks like it is very happy with her, though Alan says it is dangerous and she must be Very Careful. She already knows you have to be Very Careful with water but Alan seems to think it is Important so she adds it to her list.

  Very Careful now includes:

 

 

  Alan introduces her to all the Strange Men on the ship and, because she has remembered they are on the Very Careful list, she is on her guard. They do not seem too strange though. Except for the blind man, the grumpy man, and the young man that giggles all the time. She changes her mind: they are very strange. She likes the woman. The woman is Very Strange Indeed but nobody said anything about being careful with strange women so she likes her. She has good hair. She helps her with her clothes and does not touch more than Sophie likes. She is good. The captain is good too. Though he has far too much hair. Maybe she will tell him this when she knows him better. People don't like it when you tell them things about how silly they look unless you know them a lot.

  She watches the strange men make the boat work. It is nice. It is soft and soft things are good. It is good being on the water but not in the water as you get to have the softness without the wetness. She sits down and watches them for a long time. They talk about going home. Sophie would like to go home though she hasn't got to understand everything here yet so maybe she should do that first. She will see.

  Alan seems happy but Sophie knows that Alan is one of those people that can pretend to be happy when they're not so she is not sure if it's true. She watches him as the strange men teach him how to make the boat work. He seems to want to help make the boat work A Lot so maybe he is happy. Maybe he likes pulling and climbing and lifting. Her father used to like pulling and climbing and lifting. He had a place he would do it in. The place was called Jim. Which is a wrong name for a place but her father liked it so she tried not to think about it.

  After a while she gets bored watching the men make the ship work so she goes down inside the ship and gets to know all the little rooms that are like sheds but not sheds. She goes into each of them, walking around the edges in the way that lets you understand a room properly. This is difficult in some of the rooms as they are very untidy and it is hard to walk. She decides she will be nice to the strange men and put their things in good piles. They will like her for this and maybe they won't be strange any more. In the bigger of the bedrooms she finds a bottle of brown drink that makes her think of her father. It smells like his face when he kisses goodnight. She holds it to her face. Yes, it is nearly the same. But not quite the same.

  Once the piles have been made it is much easier to understand the rooms and she goes all around them again. Three times. Three is a good number.

  This has taken a long time but there was nothing else she was supposed to do and the strange men will be pleased. That is good. She goes back to look at the men and the water. They have not changed. The men are still pulling and climbing or lifting. The sea is still doing what seas do. This is good. But she does not know what her place is so she is restless. You cannot walk far on a boat and soon she has understood the ship three times. There is nothing more to understand.

  She spends an hour hanging over the side, counting the different coloured tiles she can spy beneath the waves. She then realises this is making her very sick so she has to stop. She does not like being sick. It is messy. It is uncontrolled. It is food going the wrong way. It is bad.

  She sits down on the deck and tries to make her belly stop feeling bad. This is not easy as she has let it feel Very Bad Indeed. She really won't be able to bear it if she is sick. She breathes slowly and deeply, counting to three over and over again in her mind. This is doing all the things possible to stop the bad things happening. It is enough. She is not sick.

  In a way this has been good, it has passed some time and made her forget she is bored. Now she must think of something else to do.

  She decides to go below again and make the kitchen work. The kitchen has so many things in the wrong place. This is good, it gives her a really big problem to solve. She will make it a good room again. She clears everything from the floor. There is food and knifes and packaging and a book and a sock and a teacup and some hair. She thinks the hair is from where someone has cut their beard sitting at the table. She does not know why anyone would do this. She does not know why anyone would have a beard. She does not know where to put all these things so she walks back up to the deck and throws them over the side of the boat. This is not good but she closes her eyes and pretends it didn't just happen. At least the floor now has nothing more on it than should be on it: tables and chairs are supposed to be left on floors, this is not mess, this is normal. She begins to tidy the other parts of the kitchen. In the cupboards she finds bowls and plates and things. She arranges these according to size until they look nice. They never look nice. It is hard to make a bowl look nice. She tries arranging them according to colour but that goes wrong straightaway so she puts things back to how they were and stares at them until she likes them. She moves on to the cutlery, making sure that there are forks then knives then spoons (this is the order in which you use them unless you have soup but soup has its own type of spoon, not like these, so it's still all right). She makes the forks and spoons sit inside each other so they are one stack of each. She cannot do this for the knives but she can make sure that all the blades are pointing the same way. This makes them look better. They are not all the same type of fork, knife and spoon so it will never be perfect but it will Just Have to Do. She is not always good at Just Have to Do (however much her mother tried to teach her how it worked) but she does her best. She realises that this means that her trying to make Just Have to Do work is a good example of Just Have to Do. Life is funny like that. She understands it a bit better for the realisation. Sometimes nearly is the best you can get. Yes. This is an important thing. Just Have to Do. A wise thing.