Existentially Challenged, page 3
Alison perked up, but the question at the top of her mind froze on its way down to her tongue. Even with Elizabeth putting on her approachable face, it was a question Alison wasn’t sure she had the courage to ask.
“What would you like to know?” prompted Elizabeth as the silence drew on, Alison’s jaw hanging like the handset of an old-fashioned phone left off the hook. “Ask anything.”
Alison took a deep breath, finally deciding that enough things had disappointed her that day, and she didn’t want to add herself to the list. “Ms. Lawrence,” she said, “what’s the history between you and Doctor Diablerie?”
Elizabeth’s approachable face froze, and her two index fingers unfolded from her clasped hands like the questing feelers of a spider. “Anything at all,” she said, tightly.
Alison rested the tips of her fingers on the edge of the desk, as if it were the first handhold of a long climb. “I know that you and he have been working for the Ministry since before anyone else. And I know you suspect him because . . . well, because he’s really suspicious, obviously, but I think you have other reasons.” She scrutinized Elizabeth’s unblinking face. “You did say anything.”
“I know, Alison, I know.” She broke eye contact as her index fingers tapped gently together. “But I may need more notice to prepare my answer to that question. In the meantime, is there any other information I could satisfy you with for now?”
“Oh,” said Alison, with a little start. She had been briefly mesmerized by the older woman’s rare display of uncertainty. “Um. How about the shadow thing?”
“Hm?”
“The thing ten years ago, when the skies went dark for a few days? They told everyone it was a volcanic ash cloud, but Adam told me it was actually—”
“Ah yes,” said Elizabeth, a fresh coat of unpleasant memories fluttering across her expression. “That would be easy. You should certainly be brought up to speed on that story. Anything else?”
As she mentally sorted her priorities, Alison’s gaze couldn’t help falling upon Elizabeth’s walking cane, still leaning against the armrest of her chair. Here came a question that Alison could only ever have asked now, while dizzy drunk on a heady mixture of imagined power, despair, curiosity, and encouragement. “I’ve been wondering . . . if I could ask . . . what happened to your leg.”
Elizabeth followed her gaze to the handle of the cane, and this time, allowed herself to smile properly. A small, sad smile, born partly of the relief that might be felt by an overworked mother when one of her children offers to carry one of the shopping bags from the car.
“That is even easier,” she said, before meeting Alison’s stare. “Because it’s the same story.”
She mulled things over for a few more seconds, jaw moving as if physically testing the words, then opened her mouth to speak again.
A hubbub suddenly rose in the corridor outside, and both women turned to look at the door. Through the frosted glass, they could see indistinct heads peering from cubicles like bubbles of marsh gas. Several phones started ringing. Something Nita Pavani shaped ran past, emitting a prolonged high-pitched squeal like a flatlining heart monitor.
Alison and Elizabeth exchanged a baffled look, and at that moment, Richard Danvers appeared, knocking twice on the door’s glass before opening it without waiting for a reply. He was wearing his typical workwear—no jacket, tie askew, sleeves rolled up, thin layer of sweat.
“It passed,” he said.
“It what?” said Elizabeth.
“It passed.”
“What passed?” asked Alison.
“It did,” said Richard and Elizabeth together.
Excerpt from the Extradimensional Appropriation Act:
2. False claim of extradimensional ability or effect
(1) It is an offense for any Person to attempt to profit from any false claim that they or any Entity they claim to own or associate with are in possession of extradimensional capabilities, or that any extradimensional incident or effect was caused or influenced by an unrelated Entity.
(2) In paragraph (1): “Person” refers to:
I. Any individual human, male, female, or gender neutral;
II. Any fluidic or other sentient nonhuman individual;
III. Any incorporated entity composed of multiple individuals, including corporations, partnerships, and hive minds.
(3) In paragraph (1): “Entity” refers to:
I. Any Person as defined by paragraph (2);
II. Any animate being, including animals, artificial intelligences, and enchanted furniture;
III. Any inanimate object;
IV. Any intangible matter, including: thoughts, dreams, noncorpo- real beings, or any Entity as defined above made intangible by virtue of being confined to extradimensional territories other than our own plane of existence (as defined in section 5), real or imagined.
(4) In paragraph (1): “Profit” refers to the acquisition of any kind of material or nonmaterial gain acquired in exchange for the alleged extradimensional service, entity, or any associated peace of mind or benefit, including:
I. Physical or digital currency;
II. Goods or services;
III. Any increase in reputation or esteem in the eyes of another Person as defined in paragraph (2), real or imagined;
IV. Any kind of legal defense or alibi;
V. Any promise of hypothetical future assets, such as firstborn children.
THE NEXT MORNING
04
Adam Hesketh was no stranger to death. In the years before declassification, when the Department of Extradimensional Affairs had still been a secret and called the Ministry of Occultism, he’d had to deal with many of his fellow agents dying at the hands of one magical being or another, and he and Victor had barely been out of high school, at first.
So as he entered the church where the funeral service of William Shaw was being held, and he felt the strange looks he was attracting from the collected mourners, he wondered—not for the first time—if his experiences had given him an unusual attitude about death. He had consciously made the effort to dress entirely in black, including his black jeans and blackest Slayer T-shirt, and he still felt he was blending in about as well as a giraffe in a crowded cinema.
He quietly took a seat in an unoccupied pew near the back and, after letting the droning voice of the skinny vicar wash over him for a few moments, decided to go over the case file on his phone again.
William Shaw had been found dead in someone’s front garden in Worcester, and despite being only twenty-six, he had had the body of a ninety-year-old, with the cause of death listed as old age. The local police strongly suspected extradimensional influence, but their small detachment of extradimensional investigators hadn’t been able to confirm that, mainly because they lacked any agents with the supernatural ability to sense magic.
Hence Adam’s presence. Adam had already switched on his “special vision,” and sure enough there were telltale pink wisps floating around the coffin, indicating as much as he would have expected—that the body within had been the victim of vampiric magic. If the body had been fresher, and if Adam could have gotten closer, he might have been able to divine some other details, and possibly even recognize the perpetrator’s handiwork if they struck again. But that wasn’t possible, because in the time it had taken for the local police to admit they needed help, and for Adam to get around to the case, the family had kicked up enough of a stink to get the body released from the morgue.
Adam switched to his messaging app and thumbed out a reply to Sumner, the member of the Investigations team who was in charge of this case. At funeral. Definite vampire traces. Need fresher body for more information.
While he waited for Sumner to reply, he thought about the vampires he and Victor had dealt with in the past. Mostly possessed animals, but not always. He thought of Rachel Grice, who had manifested vampiric powers in a big way before agents could get her to the Ministry’s magic training school in Devonshire, and who had ended up getting possessed. He had used his senses to track her down to an old farmyard, and Victor had blasted her until no trace remained but a slightly greasy sheen on a combine harvester.
She had been as hostile as they come, but he now had to wonder. If that had happened today, now that dual-consciousness persons had rights and official policy was no longer to kill or forcibly separate, maybe there would have been room for negotiation. Maybe a lot of people would be alive today, on account of not having been killed. By him.
He felt wretched. Then he felt good about feeling wretched, because that was definitely in line with how you were supposed to feel at funerals. He glanced around to see if anyone had noticed his developing funeral prowess.
Sadly, at that moment, Sumner replied to his text, and the alert sound drew a few more dirty looks. Adam had even made the effort to replace the default text alert sound with that of a sonorous bell ringing. It definitely felt as if everyone else in the world had gotten a different memo regarding this whole mourning thing.
That was all I needed, read Sumner’s text. Will come down to investigate tomorrow. You can come back. After a few moments of staring at the words, a second message popped up. Good job!
Adam pouted, letting his hands drop into his lap. There it was again. The feeling that he was being left out. The other members of the Investigations division were always very welcoming every time he entered the office, with the forced smiles and awkward stances of schoolchildren who have been asked to welcome a special-needs student.
And he knew exactly why. Because they didn’t see him as an equal. They saw him as the fragile receptacle for a mind-bogglingly useful magic power, and intended to handle him as gingerly as possible so they could keep enjoying the benefits.
He could hardly blame them. For almost his entire career, Adam’s role had been to act as a targeting system for the human drone strike that was Victor Casin. But he was determined to prove that he had a lot more to offer. He had no intention of coming straight back to the Investigations office yet. He was going to investigate.
To that end, he waited a dreary hour for the service to end, and then held back as a queue of mourners lined up at the church entrance to take turns saying a few comforting words to the two people who could only have been William Shaw’s parents. The father was tall and rigid, with a dusting of silver stubble on a face like a stone slab, standing with hands clasped loosely before him and offering only token nods to the mourners as they passed. The mother was short and round, and every hand she was offered to shake she clutched with trembling gratitude. She was holding a handkerchief to her pink face that she had been steadily loading with tears and mucus to the point that Adam was sure it would stay there if she took her hand away.
Inadvertently, Adam found himself swept up into the informal queue as the last few dregs of mourners were being filtered through the doors, and then being presented before the grieving parents ahead of a small pack of distant cousins or neighbors who were occupied with discussing their lunch plans. Before Adam knew what was happening, he felt a moist hand encasing his.
“Um, s-sorry for your loss,” he said, struggling a moment to recall the phrase.
“Bubba lubber gubber du woo,” acknowledged Mrs. Shaw, through wet, vibrating lips.
“Um!” added Adam as he felt himself being gently pushed along the human conveyor belt. “Actually. My name’s Adam Hesketh. I’m a . . . special agent for the Department of Extradimensional Affairs. Could I ask a couple of things about your son?”
“Buh hurber du gunnu huh?”
“We spoke to the police already,” said the father gruffly, laying out his words like bricks in an impassable wall. “We’ll tell you what we told them. We don’t know where he went that night, and last we saw him he weren’t ninety years old.”
“Okay,” said Adam. The next person in line was already extending a hand to shake. He was getting pushed along like a sack of oranges at the supermarket checkout. “Could I just ask . . . if . . . he’d made any new friends lately? Taken up any new interests?”
“Oh yeah,” said the father, now shouting at him over the heads of the group of mourners currently being acknowledged. “Go hassle them Internet Miracle types. Much good it’ll do.”
With those perplexing words, both parents very determinedly forgot about Adam’s existence entirely. He drifted out into the churchyard, where he joined the dissipating crowd of mourners that were still milling around, uncertain of how long they needed to remain visible before it would be socially acceptable to head off and get on with their day.
The various family and friend groups clumped together and closed ranks through a complex series of subtle unspoken movements, and Adam was gently shunned. Drifting through the swarm of indifference, he found himself naturally gravitating to the side of the other odd man out: the vicar. The two of them stood side by side, casting overseeing eyes upon the masses.
“Did I hear you say you’re from the Department of Extradimensional Affairs?” asked the vicar softly, steadily picking his way through the awkward string of syllables. He was a thin man with a prematurely white bristle of upward-pointing hair and eyebrows permanently raised in polite interest, giving him the air of a man who had been recently electrocuted but didn’t want to kick up too much of a fuss about it.
“Yes,” said Adam, glad of the human contact. “Special investigator. Did you know the deceased?”
“Oh, I’m afraid not. It seemed like a very grim business, though. It must be jolly interesting work.”
“I suppose,” muttered Adam gloomily.
“I was reading about the new law, the X-Appropriation Act?” Again, he took the time to make sure he pronounced every syllable, eyes searching Adam’s face for any sign of disapproval. “I think it’s a wonderful step.”
“Really,” said Adam, trying to not sound interested, apparently in vain.
“Oh, I know you think that sounds strange, hearing it from me.” He fiddled pointedly with his dog collar. “But you might be surprised by how up on current thinking the modern church is. I had a parishioner, Mrs. Klebold; she was totally taken in by one of those fake psychics. Paid thousands of pounds for energy crystals to save her from extradimensional forces. Turned out to be rock salt.”
“Salt does actually work on some things,” muttered Adam.
“Well, this is why we need experts like you, I suppose. It’s just nice to see something being done about those terrible people out there who want to frighten us into believing some nonsense so they can exploit people and tell them what to do. I really think the church could be doing so much more to help with that.”
Adam had been visually scanning the churchyard, looking for Shaw’s parents to see if he could grab them in a less distracted moment, but they were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had gone inside the church to do whatever the funeral equivalent of signing the marriage certificate was. Or they had snuck out the churchyard through the back to avoid the crowd. Either way, he resigned himself unhappily to the fact that he had done all the investigating he was likely to get done.
“Don’t suppose you know what ‘Internet Miracle types’ might be referring to?” he asked.
The vicar blinked a few times, his smile unchanging. “I’m not sure. But it really is a miracle, isn’t it? Just yesterday my nephew was showing me this delightful video of a young man attempting to eat seven Creme Eggs in less than a minute.” He shook his head happily. “Truly, the good Lord has blessed us with an age of wonders.”
THE FOLLOWING EVENING
05
Alison Arkin pushed open the door to the new Office of Skepticism, and took a moment to examine the room beyond. This did not take very long. Standing there in the entrance, she was using up about a quarter of the available floor space.
The office was buried in the middle of the ground floor of the building, in the bureaucratic no man’s land where the space designated for Extradimensional Affairs blurred with the borders of the Department of Business. The room was a windowless cube whose bright fluorescent ceiling light gave its solitary desk the air of a gallows platform at high noon.
Alison made a token effort to brush the dust off the desktop, but after one swipe her arm was so caked with it that she realized she wasn’t so much cleaning as taking the dust for a ride. She released a sigh and flopped into the hard metal chair.
It seemed that Elizabeth’s plan to isolate and frustrate Diablerie was still in action; even now the new law meant that the most she could do was deny him a nice chair in which to sit. The Department’s official skepticism officers now essentially had the power to arrest anyone they felt particularly skeptical about.
Alison had briefly been pleased that her and Diablerie’s new roles could actually be effective, until she had seen the dire look on Elizabeth’s face, and things never turned out well when Elizabeth’s emotions rose above the usual flat line. Even without knowing Diablerie’s history, Alison had a clear sense that he could be trusted with power as much as one could trust a naughty dog with a string of sausages.
It was possible that Diablerie didn’t know about any of the recent developments. The niceties of newly enacted parliamentary legislation might take a while to penetrate his weird bubble of delusion, which might at least limit the damage he could cause. She had only come here to confirm the meagerness of the facilities they had been assigned. There was nothing else to do until she could return with a vacuum cleaner. She opened the door to leave, and found Doctor Diablerie standing right there in the hallway.
Alison’s hope that he might not have learned the full extent of his new powers was immediately dashed. He was wearing his top hat at its most rakish angle, which was always a sign that he was in his best possible mood.
