Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text Part 18

A spate of apparently motiveless murders across the country had been blamed on various combinations of s.h.i.+fters and people from the Zones. In the press the two categories, s.h.i.+fters and dreggies, were increasingly being conflated and some newspapers were now demanding that the Zones be 'sealed off' or placed under military control.

'Shut it all away, that's what it comes down to,' Jaz was suddenly full of rage. 'Shove all the trouble and misery into a box and close the lid. And then nice middle cla.s.s folk in the suburbs can get back to taking their kids to their violin lessons and going to their book groups, and planning their holidays in their little cottages in France where it's all so wonderful because they welcome children in restaurants. Who cares about the poor whites and the Arabs and the Africans tearing each other apart in their Zones d'a.s.sistance? When you're in a foreign country you don't even have to know the dreggies are there.'

Charles laughed.

'Where did all that come from?'

Jaz didn't answer at first. She just took out her tobacco tin and rolled herself a cigarette.

'I'm a cuckoo in the nest,' she said. 'My natural family were... Well, dreggies. I grew up in one world, but I belong to the other.'

She broke off, saw that she'd made him feel excluded, and reached out her hand.

'But you're between two worlds too!' she said. 'That's what we have in common.'

'Do you really think so?'

'I really do,' she said, drawing him to her and kissing him on the lips. 'We're two of a kind. I sensed that the first time I saw you, standing in front of that mirror you gave to Susan. You looked so beautiful and so alone, not knowing who to talk to.'

She kissed him again.

'Maybe it's bedtime now. What do you think?'

'What exactly does slip look like?' Jazamine asked later, after they'd had s.e.x and were lying side by side.

'It's... Well, it comes in little transparent spheres and...'

Charles broke off. He'd just remembered that there were seeds in a folded envelope at the bottom of his sock drawer, only a couple of metres away. It had come as quite a shock.

'What?' Jaz demanded. 'Why are you staring at me in that weird way?'

'Would you like to see some seeds?'

She sat up.

'What?'

'I've actually got some right here in my chest of drawers. Would you like me to show them to you?'

'You're just winding me up.'

'Honestly, I'm not.'

He got out of bed and pulled out the envelope from under his socks.

'Hold out your hand.'

He emptied the envelope into her palm. She was completely naked except for the rings on her fingers and thumbs, and the seeds in her open hand seemed like fallen stars in the hand of some beautiful pagan G.o.ddess.

'You're not going to tell me you are allowed to keep these, Charles? In an unlocked drawer in your bedroom?'

He hesitated. Never having shared this, never having spoken about it even to himself in his own mind, he had never quite grasped until now just how bizarre his behaviour had been. Bizarre to have stolen the seeds in the first place. Bizarre to have all but forgotten about them. Bizarre to have suddenly decided to show them to Jaz.

'No,' he confessed. 'I stole them. If anyone found out I would be instantly dismissed from the civil service, and I'd probably go to jail.'

She poked them round in her hand.

'Twelve of them,' she said. 'Twelve different worlds.'

'No. I only took ten.'

'There are twelve,' she said. 'Look! See for yourself!'

He couldn't deny it. There were indeed twelve and yet he quite distinctly remembered counting them out: five from the stash of Joseph Ha.s.san, five from Wayne Furnish.

'So it's actually true,' he murmured.

'What is?'

'That seeds reproduce themselves.'

'Oh come on!' She turned her hand this way and that so she could watch the little glowing spheres rolling back and forth. 'I've heard people say that, I must admit, but surely it has to be one of those silly myths?'

'That's what most people think. My agency has impounded literally thousands of the things. We count them up, lock them away in safes, and then we take them and count them again, and there are never, ever any more of them. The opposite in fact: over the years, the number slowly goes down.'

'Well that seems a whole lot more plausible. Ice cubes melt, mothb.a.l.l.s evaporate, lots of things vanish over time. But who ever heard of an inanimate object that could reproduce itself? I mean how could it? How would that possibly work?'

'I know. How could it, without any means of obtaining matter or energy from its environment? But that sort of question comes from thinking about these things in the wrong way. They might look a bit like pills, but they're really not that at all.'

'So what on Earth are they then?'

'No one knows.'

Jaz peered down at the little blue spheres in her palm.

'How weird,' she said at last, 'to hold something right here in my hand that's such a complete mystery.'

Charles nodded.

'There are so many things about them that are mysterious. Where did they come from? Who made them? How do they manage to keep on glowing indefinitely? How do they disappear after a while when someone swallows one, yet can't be broken by force and can't be dissolved by any known chemical substance? You've got to ask yourself if they are really made of matter at all.'

'And yet I can see them, and touch them.'

'For what it's worth, I think they're made of some kind of primal stuff that's prior to time and s.p.a.ce, prior to matter and mind.'

He looked down at the little spheres.

's.h.i.+fters have their own explanation as to why our impounded seeds don't divide and theirs do. They say it's because seeds have to be in the right environment.'

'Surely you just miscounted,' said Jazamine. 'That's the simplest explanation. I mean you just said yourself that impounded seeds never increase in number.'

'I'm sure I didn't miscount Jaz. I really am sure. They have reproduced. What I don't get is why it's happened here.'

'Well, if it happens at all, why not here?'

'Because, like I said, the s.h.i.+fters claim the environment has to be right. They divide in a s.h.i.+fter's pocket, but they diminish in a government safe.'

'So the right environment is...?'

'That's the bit that's puzzling me. You know what fizz is, don't you? That kind of emotional force field that s.h.i.+fters seem to create around themselves? '

'Yes, of course. You've often talked about it.'

'Well s.h.i.+fters say it's fizz that activates the seeds and makes them divide. It's the presence of fizz.'

'Okay, and...?'

'Well these were in my sock drawer for G.o.d's sake! My sock drawer! I've never had a s.h.i.+fter in this place.'

'Or so you thought,' Jaz said.

'What do you mean, so I thought? I've never had a break-in, and if s.h.i.+fters had broken in, believe me they'd have found and taken these. No, the only people who've been here are you and a few friends, and I can a.s.sure you I'd know at once if any of them were s.h.i.+fters.'

'Me, a few friends, and you.'

He stared at her.

'What are you suggesting? That I'm a s.h.i.+fter?'

She smiled, the mysterious naked G.o.ddess with her hand full of stars, but she didn't answer.

'Oh come on, Jaz! What a weird thing to say! Self-evidently I'm not a s.h.i.+fter! Self-evidently! Not only have I never done a s.h.i.+ft but I'm opposed to everything s.h.i.+fters stand for. You know that. I mean, for Christ's sake, I've given up most of my life these past few years, my working life and most of my private life as well, to the cause of trying to stop s.h.i.+fters and take this stuff out of circulation.'

Jaz regarded him silently for a few seconds.

'Well...' she began, then stopped.

'Well what?'

'Well... I've still got to get my head around the idea of seeds full stop,' she said, though he could tell it wasn't what she'd been about to say, 'never mind whether they can breed or not.'

She looked down again at the little s.h.i.+ning things in her hand.

'Is it really true that if we took some of these, we'd end up in another world?'

'Definitely. And pa.s.s through many more on our way there.'

'Would we both end up in the same world?'

'Yes, if we held onto each other.'

'Well come on then, Charles,' she whispered.

'Come on what?'

'Come and kiss me,' she said laughing. 'What did you think I meant?'

And she closed her hand tightly around the seeds.

That same night, Gunnar and Laf picked Carl up in the white van and took him across the Line and through the wintry city to the suburb of Westbury where Cyril Burkitt lived. It was yet another part of his own home town which Carl had never seen or heard of.

Laf stopped several streets away from Cyril's house.

'It's along there, Carl,' said Gunnar, referring to his Bristol A-Z. 'You take the first right and the second left, then the first right again, and there you are in Canterbury Close. It's number twenty-three. 23 Canterbury Close. So don't get lost, will you?'

'f.u.c.k off. Of course I won't.'

Carl opened the door and was climbing out when Gunnar stopped him.

'Hang on a minute, Carl!' Laughing, the fat man reached down to pull a knapsack out from under his seat. 'I think you'll need this won't you, my old mate?'

'd.i.c.khead,' said skull-faced Laf. 'Get back in the car.'

As Carl got back in again, Gunnar opened the knapsack to reveal an automatic pistol in a transparent plastic bag.

'This is the safety catch, and this is a silencer so there won't be any loud bangs or nothing.'

He ripped open the plastic bag and tipped the naked gun back into the knapsack.

'There's ten bullets in there,' Laf told him, 'so when he's down, empty the lot into the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, know what I mean? Into his head, yeah? Only don't stand too close, or you'll end up a right mess.'

'No sweat, mate,' said Carl, though he was sweating profusely. 'No worries at all.'

'And after that, remember, just calmly walk out like we told you, Carl,' said Gunnar. 'Calm as you like. Close the door behind you and walk back here. All right my old mate? Remember all that? The best of luck with it then, mate.'

'No worries.'

Laf pa.s.sed him a spliff.

'I don't need no wacky baccy to give me the bottle for this job, mate,' said Carl. 'It's no problem. No problem at all.'

'Oh no, Carl,' interceded Gunnar. 'Laf isn't being funny or nothing! We just thought a bit of a puff might make it a bit more of an occasion for you, Carl. Make it something to remember.'

Carl took a couple of drags. Then he hung the knapsack over his shoulder and walked off down the quiet suburban street, the bare twigs of cherry trees making frosty haloes around the orange street lights. As he took the first right turning, a car pulling out of a driveway paused to let him pa.s.s.