The Fall of Koli Read online

  He swivelled the pipe a touch more, squinted with one eye and pulled on a little lever. A line of light shot out of the end of the pipe, straight up into the sky. In the bright sunlight it was hard to see, but I knowed it was there because it made the air shine like it was polished smooth.

  Stanley was aiming for the bird, but he missed because right then it tucked its wings in against its sides and went into a dive. Maybe it had seen us, or seen the ship at least, and thought there might be something on it that was good to eat. It come right down on Sword of Albion, like a housemartin swooping on a big fat bluefly. Stanley swung the pipe around to track it, but the bird was turning in circles as it come, so quick it was hard to follow.

  Then, as it got closer and closer to us and to the deck, something amazing happened. It flung out its wings again, that had been flat to its body. They unfolded in layer on layer like sheets being shook out on wash-day, stretched out wide to catch the air and slow the bird’s fall. And they was so thin you could see the sunlight through them, only the sunlight was broke up into shades of red and yellow and green and purple, as bright as splashed paint. I don’t remember when I ever saw anything more beautiful.

  “Dandrake’s balls!” Cup whispered.

  The bird hung in the air right over us, then it wheeled away and gun to climb again – but it did not get far. Stanley swung the pipe hard around. The light sliced the bird in two and set both halves of it on fire. They shot past us and over the side of the ship, tumbling in circles through the air. A moment or two later, black feathers rained down out of the sky like beans at a wedding. One of them hit me on the shoulder, bounced off and landed at my feet. When I looked down, I seen there was burned meat clinging to it.

  Stanley give a whoop. “Yes!” he yelled. “The boy never misses! He just does not know how to miss!”

  I was slow in figuring out what it was I’d just seen, and I think Cup was too. Both of us had hunted for food a thousand times. We was used to seeing almost anything that could run or fly or crawl as good for eating unless it had poison in it. But I’d never seen nothing killed the way that bird was, just for the cleverness of being able to kill it and the smugness of being able to tell it afterwards. I seen the look of surprise and disgust on Cup’s face, and I guess there was the same look on mine.

  Stanley didn’t see it, or else he seen it and didn’t care. “You want to try?” he asked us. “We could go first to ten.”

  Cup stepped away from the pipe, that I knowed now was a gun, and from the boy. “No thanks,” she said. I didn’t say nothing at all, but only shaked my head.

  “Please yourselves,” Stanley said, with a shrug of his shoulders. “I guess I’ll just try to beat my record then.” He gripped the gun again and looked up at the sky, his eyes darting as he tried to spot another bird up there. That was too much for Cup.

  “If you don’t come away from that thing,” she said, “I’ll take you off of it by the scruff of your damn neck.”

  Stanley let go of the gun and turned round to her. There was wonder on his face that turned quickly into a scowl and then a mean laugh. “Well, fuck it and run,” he said. “Are you talking tall to me, cave-girl?”

  Cup clenched both of her hands into fists. “You heard me,” she said. “Leave the birds alone. They’re not doing you no harm, so you let them be.”

  Stanley took a step towards her. Then another step. He was still smiling, and I didn’t like the look of it. “I don’t think we want to fight,” I said quickly. “Let’s just go do something else.”

  “Fight?” Stanley repeated. His face and Cup’s face was less than a handspan apart now. “I don’t need to fight. You know what would happen if you touched me? Maybe I should let you find out. Maybe I should let you throw a punch. You look like you want to.”

  “Cup, don’t,” I said. For I just knowed something bad was going to happen if she did. I think Cup knowed it too. She didn’t make no move to hit Stanley, nor even to push him away from the gun, but just stood there. By and by, he shouldered past her and went back down the stairs.

  “Guess you’re not as stupid as you look,” he called out as he went.

  Cup and me glanced each to other. We was both of us troubled by what we just had seen. “If I could work this thing,” Cup said, nodding towards the gun, “I’d blow that little turd into pieces.”

  I shaked my head. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to try, any more than it would of been a good idea to punch Stanley in the head. Magic wasn’t a thing I believed in mostly, but there was lots of things about Sword of Albion that seemed somewhat like magic. This was a place as big as a village made all out of metal, that floated on the water like it was made out of cork. It was a place where doors opened by their own selves – at least sometimes – and where even tech like the DreamSleeve could be made to do things it wasn’t meant to. I thought we should keep our heads down until we knowed a little more about what was going on here.

  There was a story a boy named Dog Runner told me once, when we was sitting around a fire in Many Fishes village late at night. It was about a fisherman who was catched out in a heavy storm and blowed out of the lagoon into the deep ocean. His boat turned over and he fell into the water and sunk down and down. When he was come to the very bottom, he found a village there that was just exactly like his own. Everyone he knowed was there, including his own wife and their two children. The onliest difference was that the people there had big round eyes like fishes’ eyes, that didn’t ever blink.

  “Am I here too?” the man asked his wife. “Is there another one of me, like there’s another one of everyone else?”

  “There was one like you,” his wife said. “But he’s gone up to live in your world. And you got to live down here with us now for aye and ever.” And she hugged him close, and the children come and sit on the bed beside the two of them, and the man knowed it was true. His skin crawled at the thought of one of these fish-eye people coming back home to his house and his wife opening the door all unknowing.

  “Let me speak to your chief,” the man said. “For mercy’s sake, let me speak with him and beg him to let me go.”

  “Our chief is the wizard Stannabanna,” the wife said, “that some call a demon. And the onliest way you get to speak to him is by being dead.”

  Then the three of them et the fisherman, flesh and bone and hair.

  I thought of that story now, as I stood on Sword of Albion’s deck and watched Stanley walking away from us, with his shoulders hunched over and his hands in his pockets. In thinking of it, I seen for the first time how saying Stanley’s name – his full name of Stanley Banner – was almost the same as saying Stannabanna. The boy wasn’t no wizard or demon, or at least he didn’t show like one. But this place was like that village in the sea – a place where real things was turned upside down and inside out, and there wasn’t no easy way of getting home again to what we knowed.

  8

  By the time we come down off the platform, Stanley was a long way across the deck and we had got to run to catch him up. When we did, he didn’t slow down or even bother to look at us. It seemed like he was sick of the sight of us.

  “Oh hey,” he said. “It’s Saint Francis of Assissi and Robin the Girl Wonder. How’s business, guys? Still looking out for all god’s creatures?”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, except that he was making fun of us again, so there didn’t seem no point in saying anything back.

  We come to the doors of the shaking room, that I knowed now was kind of like a bucket in a well, drawed up and down to take people from one level of the big ship to another. There was a silver plate next to the door down here, just like the one I seen up at the top. Stanley stepped in front of the plate and touched his hand to it. The doors opened but he didn’t go in. He turned back to face us again. Then he looked past us and give a kind of a gasp. He pointed with his finger to some place off behind us.

  “Oh no,” he said. “Someone just tossed a bag of kittens over the rail.”

  When we turned to look, Stanley stepped backward at a fast lick, inside the shaking room.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Oldest trick in the book.”

  The doors slid closed.

  Cup seen it happen and jumped forward to stop it, but she was just too late. “Hey!” she yelled. She banged on the doors with her hand, but they stayed shut. “Hey, dead god damn it! We’re stuck out here!”

  “He’s probably gone by now,” I said. “The room goes up and down.”

  “I know it, Koli. I figured that the same time you did. But I bet that little needle-fart is right on the other side of this door right now, laughing at us.”

  “Then let’s not give him no more to laugh at,” I said. I walked away from the doors, out into the open space in the middle of the deck. “There’s got to be other ways to get back inside.”

  I turned in a slow circle, looking all around. The towers mostly looked the same, except for the ones that was burned or fallen down. We was too far away to be able to see whether any of them had doors at the bottom, but it seemed like a good bet that they would.

  We went to the nearest one and then to the next, and on and on, looking for a way in. Some had no doors that we could find. The ones we did find wouldn’t open to us, either when we walked up to them or when we knocked. It was getting on towards evening now and the wind, which had been fierce cold this whole time, was getting even more of a bite to it.

  “We got to find some shelter,” Cup said, “or we’re like to freeze out here.”

  Just then, I seen another door up ahead of us and across on the other side of the boat. It was not a way into one of the towers but a trapdoor set into the deck its own self. I nudged Cup and pointed, and we both set off towards it. Even if it wasn’t nothing but a store space, I thought we could climb down inside and close the hatch over us.

  When we got closer, we seen that the trapdoor’s cover was open all the way. It had a big bolt on it, and the bolt was on the inside, so it could not be no cupboard under there. A few steps more brung us to the top of a big, wide flight of stairs going down under the deck.

  We stopped and looked each to other. It was really dark down there. After the first three or four steps, there wasn’t anything you could see at all. It was like looking down a well.

  But then Cup set her foot on the top step and lights come on all at once, all the way down.

  “You think this is a good idea?” I said. “If we get lost down there, we might not ever get found again.”

  “Better than getting frost-bit out here,” Cup said, and started down. I was just about to set off after her when I heard a kind of a whining sound like a bluefly might make. Something shot down out of the sky to stand right in front of us about three feet off the ground.

  It was a drone. And it come so fast we didn’t even have time to blink. Its red eye was winking, meaning it was ready to stab out at us with a knife made out of hot light. We both of us froze stock-still. We didn’t even yell or let out a gasp. I think we was afraid that any move or any sound we made would be the end of us.

  The drones in Mythen Rood would give a warning before they fired. They would tell you to disperse yourself, or else stay still, or if you was unlucky they would tell you to do both things at once. Then when they stopped talking they would finally shoot you. This drone didn’t say one word. It just watched us out of its red eye, bobbing a little in the air as if it was floating on water. It looked like the same drone we seen sitting by Paul Banner’s shoulder up in the crow’s nest.

  And the devil comes when you whistle, as they say.

  “What are you doing here?” Paul Banner said. He had come up behind us without even Cup hearing a sound, which I would of said was impossible.

  He grabbed a hold of my arm and hauled me away from the stairs. I tried to pull my arm free, but he only tightened his grip. Now I knowed how a rabbit must feel in a snare, for my arm was held fast and I couldn’t move an inch. It hurt like a needle’s bite too. It felt like my hand would fall off if he squeezed me any tighter.

  “We was lost,” I told him, “and trying to find our way back inside.” I was hurting so bad that my voice come out in gasps and gulps.

  Paul bared his teeth like a dog does when it threatens. “Below decks is off-limits to you,” he said. “I thought I’d made that clear. Get back up here.”

  These last words was to Cup, and she done as she was bid, though she come up slowly so as to prove that Paul didn’t scare her. “If your son hadn’t of gone off and left us,” she said, “we wouldn’t of gone near your below decks.”

  Paul let go of me at last. He still was not pleased with us, and I guess Cup’s words didn’t do much to show we was sorry. “We gave you the freedom of the main tower,” he said. “Not the deck, and not the sub-deck spaces. I was explicit – but apparently not explicit enough. If you defy me again, I’ll make you wish you hadn’t. Come with me. Come!”

  He tried to put a hand on Cup too, but she stepped back out of his reach, so he dragged me along and she followed. The drone followed behind us, turning in the air so its red light pointed first at me and then at Cup and then at me again. When we come at last to a tower, and then to a door, Paul turned to look at the drone. “Perimeter,” he said. The drone bobbed like it was giving him a courtesy. Then it tilted on one side and shot straight up out of our sight.

  We went into another shaking room – or maybe the same one we was in before, I couldn’t say for sure – and then along a whole lot of hallways, until by and by we stopped at a door that was just like all the others. It opened to Paul’s touch.

  Paul stood off to one side and waved with his hand to shoo Cup in. She give him a hard look, and didn’t move. “I’m fine right here,” she said.

  “If you persist in defying me,” Paul said, “I’ll throw you back in your leaking boat. You can sail on for a hundred yards or so until you sink and drown.”

  Cup stood her ground.

  “Very well.” Paul shrugged. “It’s a pity though. Your friend is making great progress with the improvements to her diagnostic unit. She’ll be sad when I tell her our deal is now null and void.”

  Cup went into the room and slammed the door shut behind her.

  Paul put his hand on my shoulder and steered me on along the corridor. We was walking for quite a way before we stopped at another door and Paul opened it. Inside I seen the big mirror and some other things I remembered from that morning, so I knowed this was my room.

  “In,” Paul said. And I done as I was bid.

  “The drones patrol the corridors at night,” Paul said. “They’ll shoot on sight if they see anything they interpret as a threat. You’d be well advised not to leave your room.”

  He closed the door on me. I stood in the dark for about the space of a couple of breaths. Then the lights come on again, and I was dazzled the same way I was before. The hard, yellow-white light was like a Summer day with no clouds.

  I tried the door. It didn’t open. I thought on that, and on how far apart our rooms was. Also on what Paul said about the drones. It would be hard to find Cup’s room without no light, and I didn’t know where Ursala’s room was – or if she even had one. It seemed like a part of Paul’s purposing was to split us up so we couldn’t have no talk between the three of us.

  I put my hand to my waist and brung out the DreamSleeve.

  Okay then, I thought, but you missed your count. We’re not three, we’re four. I flicked the DreamSleeve’s switch with my thumb. The little window lit up at once with a smiling face and then a whole bunch of hearts flying out from the middle of it towards the edges.

  “Monono,” I said, “are you okay?”

  “I’m hunky dory, little dumpling. In fact, I’m all the Bowie albums from Space Oddity to Young Americans. The DreamSleeve is water-resistant down to twenty metres. Do me a favour though. Stop talking. Lie down on the bed as if you’re going to sleep, and throw your arm across your face. Don’t look all cute and puzzled and say which-what-why. Just trust me and do it. Make a big show of being tired.”

  Well, I was not sure I’d heard her right, but she said to trust her and I did – more than anyone else in the world. So I give a yawn, stretching out my arms, then blinked a lot of times. I hung my head low, like a weariness had come on me of a sudden. I kicked off my shoes and climbed onto the bed.

  “Nice,” said Monono, as I lay down. “You hammed it up a little bit, in places, but you got some good energy going. Put your arm up over your face now, dopey boy. Hide your mouth, but don’t look as if you’re hiding your mouth. Look as if the light’s getting in your eyes.”

  “Like this?” I said, after I’d done it.

  “Exactly like that. Okay, Koli-bou, welcome to the cone of silence. It’s like the induction field met Marcel Marceau and they had a baby.”

  “I don’t know who that is,” I said. “That Marcy Marso. Was she in a band?”

  “Nope. He was a mime. He could say anything he wanted to without making a sound – and so can we, because I’m doing full-spectrum phase-suppression. There’s a little invisible bubble all around us. When the vibrations from our voices hit the edge of the bubble, the sound gets scattered and diffused and peak-troughed out into nothing much at all. There could be cameras in here to spy on you while you sleep. If they can’t see your lips, they won’t know you’re talking.”

  “They?”

  “Mr and Mrs Creep-out Factor and their baby boy. I’m probably being paranoid, but I don’t want anyone on HMS Rabies to know I’m in the mix. Not until I figure out what’s going on here. It’s nothing good, that’s for sure. There’s something freaky about this whole set-up, and that goes double for the guy who just dropped you off.”

  “Paul,” I said. “Paul Banner. He is kind of strange, isn’t he?”