Damnation For Beginners Part 5

By the time Jack reached Cog Island the restaurateurs and tea vendors were already setting up in the old market square, wiping dew from the chairs cl.u.s.tered outside their establishments, flopping down cus.h.i.+ons, and erecting parasols over the tables. The cathedral occupied one entire side of the square, its white spires and bell tower towering over the pastel facades of the other buildings. Henry Sill lived in the Margareta Hotel directly opposite-a great pink cake of a building with white icing window frames. It had been named after the pirate s.h.i.+p that had brought his ancestor here.

Jack walked through the main door of the hotel and into the foyer.

Reflections from a score of golden chandeliers and floor-standing candelabras glimmered in the green marble walls, imbuing the chamber with a faintly subaquatic ambience. Directly opposite the main entrance, a staircase snaked around the ironwork of an old cage elevator. A counter of dark wood enclosed the former reception area to Jack's left, where hundreds of keys still glittered on their wall pegs. As Jack wandered across the polished floor, the man behind reception looked up with an expression of alarm. He was thin and bent, with a pencil line moustache and a veneer of glossy black hair.

"We are not open to the public," he said.

Jack walked towards the elevator.

"Excuse me?" the man said, coming around the counter. "You can't go there."

Jack took out his handkerchief and used it to pull the cage door open, and then slam it closed behind him again. He glanced at the array of numbered b.u.t.tons. Sill lived in the penthouse. Jack pressed the uppermost b.u.t.ton.

And nothing happened.

He jabbed the b.u.t.ton again, but still the elevator didn't move. And then he noticed a small, but elaborately decorated bra.s.s and ivory keypad underneath the larger, floor selection b.u.t.tons. It consisted of nine numbers arrayed in groups of three, and a tenth b.u.t.ton underneath marked reset. Evidently this was some sort of security device. The elevator could not be operated without first typing in the correct code.

Jack hissed through his teeth.

The receptionist had been hurrying across the floor. Now he stopped and ran back towards his desk. "Stay where you are," he cried over his shoulder. "I'm calling security."

Jack studied the keypad. Nine numbers. He doubted the combination would be longer than three or four digits, but that still meant that it could be any sequence of numbers between 111 and 9999, and he didn't have time to try them all. What numbers would Henry Sill have chosen? Jack typed 123, then hit the top floor b.u.t.ton again.

Nothing.

He hit the rest b.u.t.ton, and tried 1234.

Nothing.

111.

Nothing.

999.

Nothing.

Jack clenched his hands his frustration. He had to think. Henry Sill had been living in this hotel for nearly thirty years. He would have used this elevator countless times, which meant he would have typed in the code countless times.

There was no other way to operate the thing. Jack crouched and examined the keypad closely, looking for signs of wear. Of all the nine b.u.t.tons, only the one marked '5' appeared to be significantly more worn than the others. The ivory looked a little more yellowed, the ink a little more scratched.

He typed in 555.

Somewhere above, the mechanism clunked into life. The elevator jerked once, and began to rise.

Alarm bells began to sound.

The elevator shuddered upwards in a great clamour of rattling iron, pa.s.sing landings where the staircase joined identical corridors of numbered doors. After six floors the landings stopped, but the elevator continued its ascent through a narrow wood-walled shaft. He could still hear the alarms, now muted, coming from below. The elevator slowed, then, with a final wheeze and a clunk, came to a stop before a large, bright antechamber.

Jack stepped out onto a gla.s.sy floor. Archways on either side of him opened into luxurious chambers. Through the rightmost opening he spied the edge of a four poster bed shrouded in gauzy drapes. The opposite chamber, to his left, looked more like a parlour, so he wandered over to the entrance of this room and peered inside. The sound of the alarms was much quieter here, and he could hear something else: a regular clacking, as if somebody nearby was using a typewriter.

Morning flooded in through tall windows overlooking the market square. It gleamed on enamelled lamp bases and bone-pale ceramic vases, and burst through the prisms of an enormous crystal chandelier, scattering rainbows across the many portraits adorning the walls. These were gilt framed images of old men in archaic clothing, presumably Henry Sill's ancestors. Chairs and couches of vermilion and cinnabar silk had been artfully positioned around low tables carved from onyx or blood-coloured wood or wrought entirely from gold. The floor reflected everything above it like a still pool. The chamber was empty. Jack realised the clacking sound was coming from the room across the hall.

The bedroom was as opulent as the lounge, rich in plum and raspberry silks and great sparkling mounds of gold cus.h.i.+ons. A riotous expanse of floral paper covered the back wall.

Constellations of gemstones studded the ceiling. The strange sound appeared to be emanating from the huge, gauze-entombed bed, behind whose drapes Jack could just perceive the form of a reclining figure. He slipped Marley's kitchen knife out of his pocket. Then he walked over to the bed and used the blade to peel back the drapes.

He stifled a cry.

Lying before him was the desiccated corpse of Henry Sill. The face, flung back in a rictus of death, stared up with sightless eye sockets. The skin had turned leathery and grey, and receded around the mouth, giving the visage a hideous, yellow-toothed grimace. The corpse had been dressed in a dusty old suit, and evidently treated with some chemical preservative. Jack covered his nose at the stench of it. But whoever had done this had not been content to simply r.e.t.a.r.d the process of decay, for the body itself had been altered in a ghastly fas.h.i.+on.

Henry Sill's hands had been removed entirely.

As if to compensate for this bizarre amputation, two empty leather gloves lay flat against the bed sheet. The clacking noise was much louder here. It seemed to be coming from the head of the bed. As Jack let the drapes fall back, he let his gaze wander towards the sound. And there he spied a small door in the wall nearby. It had been camouflaged with floral paper and wainscoting to resemble part of the wall itself.

Jack took out his handkerchief again.

The door led to a windowless chamber no larger than a closet. It was empty but for a darkly gleaming contraption set against the far wall. The machine consisted of a complex nest of interwoven gla.s.s tubes, each full of crimson fluid. These vessels appeared to both originate from and terminate at a central sphere, itself transparent and full of the same liquid. Beneath this lay an enormous roll of paper confined within a bra.s.s spool. Every few moments the spool would suddenly give a click, and turn fractionally around on its axle. And yet the source of the rapid clacking noise remained a mystery. The closet contained no typewriter, nor any parts moving quickly enough to account for the sound he heard. Jack walked up to the machine and examined it more closely. To his astonishment, he noticed that words were materialising on the roll of paper, one letter at a time, as though at the hands of an invisible typist. He started to read.

Increase tertiary interest by 0.3%, add acc.u.mulated change to quaternary in the second term, all savings accounts to be modified to incorporate hosting fees of nine guilders per annum, hosting fees to purchase shares in potentially loss-making business ventures, transferring risk to account holders, any profit from such shares must of course remain inaccessible to account holders-recommend funnelling through secondary high maintenance account using normal...

"Good morning, Mr Adams."

Jack turned to find Mr Younger and Mr Elder standing in the room behind him.

Elder turned to Younger. "He's carrying a knife, Mr Younger. Do you suppose he intended to harm Mr Sill?"

"I imagine so," Younger said. He grinned at Jack. "You are sixteen months too late, Mr Adams. Mr Sill, as you can see, is no longer with us in the flesh."

"He left this world to pursue a business venture in h.e.l.l," Elder said.

Younger nodded. "The company is expanding."

Jack gripped his knife and backed away as Elder sidled past him. The reclamation man stopped before the machine, and peered down at the spool of paper. "Fortunately for all of us, Mr Sill still maintains a tight rein on all his business operations back here. I see he's raising interest rates again."

"That's rather unfortunate for Mr Adams."

"But good for the bank," Elder said.

"Very good for the bank," Younger agreed.

Younger was blocking Jack's exit, while Elder now stood behind him. Jack flattened himself against the wall, but he couldn't keep the knife pointed at both reclamation men simultaneously.

"We expected to find you here eventually," Elder said.

"But not quite so soon," Younger added. "It's fair to say you didn't strike us as a particularly driven man. More of a planner than a doer, wouldn't you say, Mr Elder?"

"Definitely a planner, Mr Younger."

Jack said, "Were you at the harbour?"

Younger seemed to lose the arrogance from his expression for just an instant, but then it was back again. "The matter of your outstanding debt remains unresolved, Mr Adams. The courts have now authorised us to escort you to one of Mr Sill's mines, where you will be given employment at a diminished wage until-"

" Were you at the harbour?"

The two Reclamation Men exchanged a glance. Younger said, "Where you will be given employment at a diminished wage until such time as the outstanding sum is repaid in full."

Jack's rage exploded. He screamed and rushed at the man, hacking madly at the air with his knife. Younger recoiled, with an expression of disbelief on his face, as the blade plunged towards his shoulder. Jack felt the steel connect with flesh and then bone. He jerked it out and stabbed a second time, and a third, until his vision filled with blood.

Elder seized him from behind.

Jack wrenched his body around, striking out with the knife again. He heard a wheeze as it punctured Elder's side. The man's grip slackened. And then Jack was running, still screaming, slipping across the floor and through the arch and out into the antechamber.

He stumble inside the elevator cage door, and slammed it shut after him.

He jabbed the lowest b.u.t.ton with b.l.o.o.d.y fingers, but nothing happened.

Jack screamed again, hammering his finger against the keypad.

555.

This time the cage began to descend. As he slumped back against the wall, shuddering with fear and fury, he caught a glimpse of Younger's boots in the antechamber above. And then the elevator had descended below the level of the floor and was plunging ever deeper into that narrow shaft.

GOING DOWN.

HE OTHER COMPLAINANTS WAITED patiently in the glare of the afternoon sun. Every few minutes they would shuffle forwards another step. The complaint form in Jack's hand hadn't come from the Doc.u.ment Office. The Doc.u.ment Office wouldn't have issued Jack with one because he didn't have an account. He still wanted to complain, however, and Marley had come to his rescue with some unofficial paperwork.

Good old Marley. Jack owed him so much, and he still felt pangs of regret that he would never be able to repay the old man. Carol's funeral had cost more than Jack could have earned in months, but Marley had footed the bill-finally finding a good use for all the trapdoor wagers he'd won over the years, or so he'd claimed.

Think of it as a present from everyone who ever hit the dirt Jack.

And Marley had attended the ceremony in Jack's absence. He'd stood by her graveside and read a poem from Lovich's The Burning Sail, Carol's favourite play, and then he'd placed flowers upon the mound of earth while the Priest of Rys looked on.

Marley had given him Charles Rain's book, too, when he realised Jack could not be diverted from his plan. That had been two weeks ago, and he'd been memorising it furiously ever since.

Fear a stranger's knock upon your door, and you will immediately hear such a report, for he will be standing outside, and his intentions will be whatever you-in your worst nightmares-have imagined them to be.

Jack had shaved his hair down to the knuckle of his scalp. He'd already looped a noose around his neck, and hidden it under his s.h.i.+rt collar. The loose coils of rope he'd stuffed into his s.h.i.+rt gave him the appearance of a paunch.

The queue moved on another step.

"You know it's all a farce," said the elderly man waiting in the queue behind Jack. "They never resolve complaints, they just stamp your form and pa.s.s you on to Reclamation. My daughter, Lilly-"

"Then why bother coming here?" Jack said.

The man shrugged. "What choice do I have? You need to have some faith in human decency. Otherwise what's the point of struggling on?"

Jack made a gesture of non-committal. Henry Sill had no human decency. The dead banker was no longer human and yet no less human than he'd ever been.

He could see the embarkation platform and the top of the wheel now, the steward herding groups of complainants into the slowly rotating chambers, while the teeth of the ore processors chewed gold in the depths of the earth.

"Six to a cabin, quickly now."

Jack reached the platform. He had promised Marley not to use his friend's particular cabin, but now that he was here, he couldn't see how he was supposed to determine which one to avoid. He had little choice but to put his faith in the odds.

The steward barely glanced his way as he urged the group into the wheel's uppermost compartment. Boards crackled underfoot, and suddenly Jack found himself standing in the gloom on the opposite side of the grilles for the first time in his life. He cast his gaze around, and, to his overwhelming relief, did not spy Marley among the tellers on duty here. Recognising none of them, he chose one at random.

"Mr Aviso," the young man behind the grille said, reading Jack's complaint form. "I am obliged to inform you that we have about 90 seconds before this cabin reaches ground level, whereupon all customers must disembark. The Henry Sill Banking Corporation cannot be held liable for any injuries sustained by a customer who fails to disembark promptly."

Jack unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt collar and glanced up at the lamp hook in the ceiling.

"Now, according to this..." The bank teller stopped, frowning. He read a little more, then cupped his chin in one hand. His tongue flicked out, lizard-like, and retreated. He looked to the man sitting next to him for a.s.sistance, only to find that that particular colleague was already busy with another customer. Finally, he returned his attention to the form. "I think there's been some mistake," he said.

"No mistake," Jack, unb.u.t.toning his s.h.i.+rt.

The teller's frown remained fixed on the form. "But, it says here..."

"It says," Jack said, "that the Henry Sill Banking Corporation forced my wife into prost.i.tution, murdered her, and then dumped her body in the harbour ." Jack opened his s.h.i.+rt and the coils of rope tumble out. "That's what I want to complain about."

The teller's expression of bemus.e.m.e.nt turned to one of alarm, as he noticed the noose around Jack's neck.

Jack reached up, fed the loose rope through the ceiling hook, and pulled it until it was taut. "Do I need a reference number?" he said.

"Excuse me?"

The clock on the wall chimed.

"Do I need a reference number to take my complaint further?" Jack said, wrapping the excess rope around the ceiling hook. The cabin grew quieter as the other tellers, and most of the customers, noticed what he was doing. Those few who had remained engaged in conversations fell silent a moment later. Everyone was staring at him.

"Um," the teller said.

The clock on the wall chimed again.

"What's the matter, lad?" This remark came from the elderly man who had been in the queue behind Jack. He stood nearby, his brow furrowed with concern.

Jack felt tears beginning to well in his eyes, and he bit down the urge to sob. His heart was racing now, his breaths coming quick and shallow. "I'm giving them the chance to resolve my complaint," he said evenly. He tugged on the rope to make sure it was fixed securely above him. The noose bit savagely into his neck.

"Whatever happened," the elderly man said, "it isn't worth this."

Jack gave him a grim smile. "I just want my complaint resolved," he said.

The elderly man turned to the teller. "Do it."

"Um" the teller said.

"Help him."

The teller spread his hands. "I don't know... I don't know how."