Vail (6 page)

What a wonderful anti-law device! Poor HUCK and MUTCH! They truly believed they were in danger of catching something nasty from a social status group C2DE, which was what we clearly were, judging by our accents, clothes and the vehicle we drove. Probably zoom straight to HQ, strip, scrub themselves raw under the shower and burn their uniforms. Poor saps!

(It didn't strike me at the time that they might be right: I was too euphoric, having outsmarted them.)

Next stop Sandbach (Road Chef). I adopted the same procedure as before and parked on the edge of the perimeter. Mira said, ‘Can you get Bev a drink of some kind? I don't want to move her.'

‘What are you doing?'

‘I'll stay here.'

‘With him?'

‘Why not?'

‘I'm harmless enough,' said Urban Brown with a snide grin.

(Not so long ago you couldn't get the bastard to grin for love nor money; now you couldn't stop him, – all the time grin-grin-grin.)

I stepped over bodies lying in the entrance hall with their sleeping bags, primus stoves and bundles of possessions and joined the single line of people filing upstairs to the first-floor cafeteria,
necessitated by the stairway having been taken over for living, eating and sleeping purposes until only a narrow central channel remained for the passage of those using the stat for legitimate reasons. Why, I wondered, didn't the authorities do something? Kick the buggers out. Fine them for public obstruction under Code 11. They'd no right to be here. I hadn't paid any taxes in years but I still felt affronted. What was the country coming to?

The Cafeteria wasn't much better, even though the strays and slags had been disbarred entry, because here the queue stretched right round the room and tailed off outside the door in a disgruntled spiral. A cup of coffee could take two hours of your time minimum. What to do? Bev was burning up and needing liquid, poor sod, but there was no way I was going to become one of the waiting undead.

I pushed and squirmed until I got to the lavatory and held my breath at the acrid stink of standing urine. The drain holes were blocked with fag ends or the flushing system wasn't working or something, and the yellow steaming liquid sloshed brim-full in the stainless steel troughs. I took my shirt off, leaving my white T-shirt on, and rinsed my face and neck, keeping my shirt jammed between my knees so that it wouldn't get stolen. I shimmied across to the towel machine and wiped my hands on the wet bedraggled tail of towel hanging to the floor. This gave me an idea. I wadded my shirt into a tight sausage and wedged it into a back pocket of my jeans. I opened the broken lid of the towel machine, removed the towel on its metal spindle, and wound up the flapping tail. I put the towel on my shoulder and strode purposively into the swarming corridor, calling out the usual phrases such as, ‘Mind your back! Out we go! Down and at 'em! To your left! Easy over! Up your arse!' and the one that seemed to work best of all, ‘BACK PASSAGE!!!' – parting them like the Red Sea as I sailed blithely through and into the kitchen unscathed. The cooks and servers in their soiled white hats were too busy to take any notice and I kept up the pretence of meaningful activity, cutting a swathe through the kitchen, lithely swaying my hips to avoid perspiring personnel, protruding handles of pans, stuck-out trays of mashed
potato and green peas, so on and so forth, all the while sizing up what was where and how best to get it.

Dumping the soggy towel in a corner behind a pile of rubbish cascading from a rubber dustbin, I went straight for a large metal tray and with the same unconscious aplomb began collecting various soft drinks and sundry portable foodstuffs as if to an order from the Almighty Himself, or at the very least the Catering Manager. No one stopped me, glanced in my direction, turned a hair.

Tray full, I hoisted it above my head and renegotiated my gliding smoothly-coordinated way to the door and out.

A pathway appeared as if by magic (a loaded tray held aloft is as good as a security clearance card) and I waltzed along the corridor and down the stairs, nimble as Nureyev, tip-tap-toe.

‘What time does the cafeteria close?' an anxious soul asked me, sweat-dried face upturned beseechingly.

‘We never close, sir,' I told him sternly. ‘Or madam.'

‘Thank you so much,' came the humble response.

Conjecturing that a tray being carried out to the parking area might be noticed and remarked upon, I scouted round for a cardboard box or similar receptacle. There was plenty of rubbish lying about but it all belonged to somebody. One box filled with boots and shoes would do admirably, and I approached the owner.

‘Your empty box for a packet of sweet digestives,' I bartered.

‘What else have you got?' said the woman greedily, raising herself up to look at my tray of goodies.

‘You can have a packet of biscuits
or
a can of Coke. I just want the box. You can keep the shoes.'

‘I'll have those shortcakes.' She tipped the box and emptied it.

The man next to her on the floor, knees drawn up inside a circle of territorially arranged possessions, face the colour of old cheese, said eagerly,
‘Two
empty boxes for a packet of biscuits, any kind.'

‘I don't need two boxes,' I said. ‘This one will do.'

‘Keep your nose out,' the woman warned him. ‘We've done a deal.'

‘Fuck off, you old lesbian,' the man retorted.

An old woman behind me said, ‘This coat for that packet of egg sandwiches. The collar's real fur, feel it.'

‘In this weather?' I said. ‘I don't need a coat with a real fur collar.' I took the box and transferred the food and drink to it.

‘Anything else you need?' asked the woman who had done the deal.

I shook my head.

‘I have a bracelet. Platinum …'

The man said, ‘You've got yours, ratbag, give somebody else a chance. How about a cashmere scarf?' he said to me, rummaging for the item in question. ‘Hardly worn, sir. Good as new.'

Somebody thrust a pair of tan brogue shoes under my nose. ‘Two packets of sandwiches and that can of orange squash. Look at them! They're your size.'

I struggled to stand up, holding my box protectively under my arm. I could hardly move for the press of bodies. Somebody got hold of my T-shirt and I yanked free.

‘All right then,
one
packet of sandwiches and a can of orange.'

‘I don't want your shoes.' I tried to get out and tripped over legs and feet.

‘Real platinum …'

‘Cashmere …'

‘Hardly worn …'

‘Get-that-box,' said another, younger, harder voice.

Head down I went for the door, the pack after me, stepping on things and people in a mad headlong rush. Somebody got a hand on my box and I kicked backwards with my heel. I collided with some people coming in through the swing doors and there was a general mêlée of confusion: curses, shouts, screams and shocks.

Outside in the sunshine I ran a few paces and then slowed to get my breath back and not attract attention. Petrol.

I got my hose and two-gallon can and did a casual walkabout on the outskirts of the parking area. A car with DISABLED
DRIVER NO HAND SIGNALS in the back window looked promising. If the driver was thalidomide with rudimentary limbs and knobbly stumps for fingers it could mean that his petrol cap was of the press-on non-locking type. So it proved. In went the hose, a quick suck on the end to draw the petrol below the level of the tank, and gravity and the law of fluid displacement did the rest. Easy-peasy. Just as I was removing the hose a thin boy, – a youth I suppose you'd call him, – sidled round the back of the car and stared at me from the corner of his bloodshot eye. He wore a holey yellow T-shirt with the legend NUKE ARGIE SCUM on a mushroom cloud printed across the chest and denims cut down to shorts with frayed bottoms. Grimy bare feet in laceless Adidas training shoes with the stitching coming undone. I clenched my fists to hit him.

‘Heading for the Smoke, squire?' he inquired softly. His teeth had never heard of Pepsodent.

‘No, Timbuktu.'

‘Where's that?'

‘Just south of Leicester.'

‘Got a
melyn cribo
?'

This was underground argot for a yellow card. ‘No, why, do I need one?'

‘If you're going to the Smoke you do. No
melyn cribo
, no work.'

‘I'm not looking for work.'

‘How about a Resident Alien permit?'

‘You sell those too?'

‘Anything you need, sunshine.'

A Resident Alien permit would be useful. Without one I wouldn't be able to get medical treatment for Bev. Hospitals were strict about who they admitted these days. ‘How much?'

‘What have you got?' The boy or youth motioned with a scrawny undernourished hand that we ought to move away from the car in case the owner lurched up. His forearms, I noticed, were hard and shiny and lumpy with old puncture marks and scar tissue.

‘Not a lot of anything,' I said. ‘Petrol any good to you?' The boy or youth shook his head. ‘What then?'

‘Wife? Daughter?'

‘Both.'

‘A double-header for a Resident Alien permit while you watch.'

‘Suck my cock instead,' I said.

‘Suck mine for a
melyn cribo
.'

‘It's probably pox-ridden.'

‘No blood, just a clear discharge. You could rinse your mouth out with petrol after.'

I toyed with the idea of battering him senseless and taking everything he had. Dump his body along the motorway somewhere and let the crows have him. Was he too smart to carry the stuff on him?

‘I'll do without it,' I said. ‘You'll give them both a dose.'

He shrugged. ‘A guy's gotta live.' He grinned with his melyn teeth. ‘I've got something else you need even more if you're travelling past Watford Gap.'

‘What's down there?'

‘Trouble.'

‘In the form of, – ?'

‘You'll see.' He pulled out a foil strip enclosing tablets or capsules in individual blisters on which the brand name
Temporal
in tiny letters was overprinted a hundred times. ‘This does the trick. Take one each an hour before you hit the Gap and you won't feel a thing.' He aquaplaned his flat hand up into the air like a jet taking off. ‘Like sliding on cream.'

‘What does it do?' The mêlée in the entrance hall had spilled onto the forecourt. People beaten and trampled. Some blood too. Few curdling screams.

‘Operates like the fast-forward on a video recorder,' the boy or youth said, holding up the foil strip enticingly between thumb and forefinger. ‘Shrinks time subjectively from two hours into five minutes. On this stuff you could be in London in less than twenty minutes, half-an-hour at most.'

‘Subjectively.'

‘Yep.'

‘Where would I be objectively?'

‘Same place, buddy-boy. The Smoke.'

I wasn't sure I was following this. I asked, ‘And how exactly is it going to keep us out of trouble at Watford Gap?'

‘You'll go past it like
that
.' He snapped his fingers, pitifully frail.

‘In no time at all.'

‘Ri-i-ight!
In no time at all
. You said it.'

‘I don't …' I frowned.

‘Never heard of Einstein? Everything is subjectively relative. Five minutes in a dentist's waiting-room seems like three hours. This stuff operates in reverse. If you lived on
Temporal
every day of your life you'd die of old age within a week. You want some, don't you?' he grinned knowingly.

‘Not if it's the same deal as before.' I put the can of petrol down, which was getting heavy. The sun was low in the sky, striking pointed shadows across the asphalt. A tremor of unease shook me as I thought about the impending curfew. What would it be like to be stopped by the police while flying on
Temporal?
Perhaps they'd be talking to someone who'd already gone.

‘I'll make you another proposition,' the boy or youth said. ‘Contact a friend of mine in London called Fully Olbin. He'll ask you to do him a favour. Do the favour in exchange for the
Temporal
.'

‘Sounds reasonable.' I didn't smile. ‘How do I meet him?'

‘You'll meet him, don't worry.'

‘How will you know I've kept to my side of the bargain?'

‘You'll have used the
Temporal
.'

‘But suppose I change my mind when I get to London?'

‘You won't have used the
Temporal
.'

‘I will if I've used it already.'

‘You won't have used it if you don't follow through with the favour,' the boy or youth said.

‘You mean if I do the favour I'll have used the
Temporal
and if I
decide not to do the favour I won't have used the
Temporal
.'

‘Got it in one,' he smiled yellowly.

‘But the favour follows the
Temporal
,' I said, ‘not the other way round. You give me the
Temporal
now and you won't know whether I follow through with the favour in London till later.'

The boy or youth sighed wearily. ‘Where have you been living? Never heard of Heisenberg?'

‘A new Bavarian lager?'

‘Cause can precede effect and effect can precede cause at one and the same time. What you do later affects what you do now, – it's all the same.'

‘Not in my world,' I said, shifting feet.

‘Sure. Remember what Max Born said: ‘I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy'.'

Two in one day. First a terrorist loonie and now a mad quantum mechanic. Which of us was going off our rocker, the world or me?

‘Suppose I say I'm not going to do the favour, – will you still give me the
Temporal
?'