Jonathan Barnes - The Domino Men

“Go!” shouted the prince, as he grappled with the Englishman. “For God’s sake, do what you have to!”

My hand touched the door handle but I felt fingers pulling at my shirt, the Irishman and the Scotsman dragging me backward into the melee. But I knew what was required of me and so I struggled free.

Too late for them to stop me now; I stepped inside and for a shaving of a second-

— I was back in 1986, eight years old again and walking onto set to deliver the laugh line. I could feel the heat of the studio lights, see the camera crew, glimpse Granddad patiently looking on, willing me to say the words he’d written.

Then the fiction fell away and it was just me and the CEO — a mass of teeth, tentacles and claws, its great eye, milky white, scored as though by chisel marks — Miss Morning’s vision made flesh.

I wanted to scream. All rational thought fled my mind and I felt faint, as close to passing out as I had on the day that I first met Dedlock. But somehow I stood firm. Somehow I managed to say something, the only sentence I could think of — a daft old joke nobody understood, written for me years ago and which had followed me around ever since. My line. The old line. The incantation at the heart of the Process.

“Don’t blame me…”

The creature, aware, too late, of what was happening, began to fight back, pitting its vast intelligence against my own puny equivalent. I could hear the blood pounding through my head as I channeled my last remaining strength into the final line…

“Blame Grandpa.”

The Process did its work — bending time, compressing matter, and I saw, as though from a great distance, my past laid out like train tracks beneath me, all leading to a single destination, a terminus chosen for me long ago. The Process had hollowed me out, reformed me for a single purpose — to hold the genie in the bottle, the spider in the jar.

I can only explain what happened next as a kind of drawing in, a sucking, an inhalation. I felt the beast, the great serpent, the tyrant of the seven heads, struggle against me, thrash and flail furiously against my gravity until at last I pulled it into me and bound it, deep inside, where my soul ought to have been.

The city survived, of course, as it always does.

The Directorate, on the other hand, is officially closed for business. Dedlock, Jasper, Barnaby and Steerforth are gone, the war is over and, mercifully, the secrets of the Blueprint Programme perished with the man whose real name (if I am to believe anything he told me) was Richard Price, at the moment when he slipped away, drugged up to the point of happy insensibility, in the honeymoon suite of one of London’s premiere hotels.

But I suspect that the Directorate is still not quite done. It has survived too long and against to fantastic odds for there not to be some glimmer of life there yet. Think of it what you will, but you have to admit that it’s an institution with the survival skills of a cockroach. And, so far as I am aware, poor, transformed Barbara remains at large.

Whilst the essence, the mental energy of Leviathan writhed and squirmed within me, its physical form, that fleshy, dead bulk, still wallowed in the Thames, cooling down and beginning to putrefy. There was fierce enthusiasm from a great number of professionals in dissecting and studying the creature, but in the end it was decided, in the interests of public safety, that the carcass should simply be burnt — the great serpent consigned to the flames, the mighty corporation of Leviathan, that market leader in storage and record retrieval, stuffed piece by piece into the furnace.

It took an unprecedented collaboration between the military and emergency services to haul the monster from the water, saw it up and cut it down in preparation for transportation, but even then this wasn’t done quickly enough. The meat began to spoil at an impossibly fast rate and the smell, I am told, lingered in the streets for weeks.

Those who had suckled at its teats were gone for good. A faintly mawkish memorial service was held in Trafalgar Square, presided over by the prime minister, who, although visibly aged by events, had fortunately been in Geneva at the time of the snowfall. A number of his cabinet had not been so lucky.

Anyone who hadn’t reached the river to gobble greedily on that liquid data recovered. There was much confusion, angry refutation, tearful acceptance and, ultimately, a good deal of a deep and queasy kind of grief. A lot of people came close to the brink that day but the majority were saved. In the end, everyone did the only thing they can do — take a deep breath, put their best foot forward and carry on with their lives, settling back in the old routine, the working week, the morning commute, the daily stampede into the center of the city.

And then there was me, of course. I was saved, too.

After the trap of the Process snapped shut, everything went black and I can remember only flashes of what happened next, a sequence of flash-bulb pictures — strong arms pulling me from the water, a warm, restorative liquid being poured down my throat, the sensation of being lowered onto something soft, the soporific motions of a long car journey.

Apparently, I was delirious when they found me, still chattering about the snow, the CEO, the information. The first thing I can really remember is waking up here, in bed, at Highgrove, where you’ve undone so much of the damage caused by the errors and misjudgments of your ancestors and been gracious enough to make me feel welcome.

I have taken great pleasure in getting to know you and your lovely wife and I would enjoy nothing more than to meet your son or daughter, whose arrival, as I write, is expected any day now.

There is a voice in my head. The first time that it spoke it uttered only nine words and then fell silent. Naturally, for a short while, I tried to convince myself that I had imagined it, that it was all some strange aftereffect, an auditory hallucination brought on by extreme fatigue.

But it has grown worse — much worse — in the past few days and it is high time that I accepted the truth. Leviathan is awake inside me and growing in strength.

What Estella held within her was merely a branch of Leviathan. What I have is its head office, its nerve center, its business brain. I’m afraid it will take a considerable sacrifice to bind it for good.

Actually, I think I know how it’s going to go. You might even have noticed it yourself. Over the past few days, my clothes have been getting bigger and baggier. My voice has seemed a little higher in pitch, often cracking and squeaky, sometimes child-like. But, strangely, I feel better than before. There are times when I even feel like laughing.

You may do what you like with this manuscript. Keep it in a locked drawer. Burn it. Publish it, even. Only words, after all.

One last thing. The truth about that voice which has split from my head and onto the page.

The first time I heard it, I had just woken on my first day here, and at the sound of it, I began to shake. It was more than just a voice, it was a chorus of voices speaking as one. It was the voice of Leviathan, the voices of the Englishman, the Irishman, the Scotsman, of the old Queen, the creature behind the jade door, the buzz of the drones and, buried deep in some murky quarter of its being, impossibly bitter but still cocksure, the voice of Mr. Streater.

This is not the end, it said. The wilderness is waiting.

At the time of writing, two nights have passed since I said goodbye to Henry Lamb. Until now, I have not found sufficient courage to set pen to paper. Indeed, I find that I am able to write only in the daylight, with my wife and daughter comfortably close by, with the lamps on full to chase away the shadows, and far from any mirror or reflective surface.