Ник Харкуэй: Angelmaker

For a moment, he doesn’t know what to do.

And then his hands move. The wordless part of him, ignorant of fear and peril and the destruction all around, sees the job and knows the shape of the machine. Shem Shem Tsien has ruined the art, oh, yes, and that’s a weak and ugly thing to have done—but the schematic remains the same. Turn this. Now this. Now, very quickly, both of these switches.

A plate comes away, revealing the inner coils.

Joe glances over his shoulder at the room and sees fear. Hard men and women are weeping. He finds Polly, sees her face urging him on. A minute left , she’s saying. Joe, please . So much left undone. No escape, no anything, just a stripping of the gears of the soul. A disintegration.

I love you .

Please .

Joe wrenches his head around, back to the machine. It feels like a betrayal. If Polly’s going to die, if he fails, he should be looking at her when it happens.

So, having chosen to look away, he can’t fail. The gangster digs his heels in. The craftsman rolls up his sleeves.

In the heart of the Engine, around the activation switch, there is a combination dial. The markings around the rim are not numbers, but letters:

O, P, E, J, A, H, U, S.

It was not in Frankie’s list. Added at the last minute. Added by her, he recognises her style… Added, but why? What’s the point?

What is the stricture?

Truth? Is there a word with those letters meaning truth? Is it Greek? French?

His hand hovers, withdraws. No.

When did she add it?

Late. Very late. While Sholt was Keeper. Mathew was grown up. Edie had left. And there, etched in the metal, the year: FF, 1974. And her goose-foot colophon. A last line of security, to preserve the machine. To keep it running. To hold to the truth in the face of those who would switch it off.

Why? What was she protecting? Herself? The world?

Behind him, people are falling to their knees—not in prayer, mostly, but exhaustion. They have screamed. Now they’re just waiting. Seconds.

The machine is the maker. What was it all for? In the end, what was Frankie’s heart?

He knows.

Edie.

Daniel.

Mathew.

And Mathew’s son. Born that year. He wonders if she came to the hospital, peered, alone, through the glass.

He looks at the dial, and sees the letters of his name. And switches off the Apprehension Engine.

Overhead, the bees cease their wild swirling. The cloud becomes orderly, then sedate, and finally they drop to the ground and settle, returning to the hive in neat little lines. Around the world, if Frankie is to be trusted—and Joe no longer knows, mercifully: he has to trust—the same thing is happening.

He follows the procedure through to the end, sending the last signal, the one which will cause the other hives to burn and die, leaving only this last one.

He cuts the power and removes the calibration drum, then the book.

It is the first time he has held them both. They’re very light and small to be so dangerous. He puts them in his pocket.

Finally, Joe hefts a discarded sledgehammer. In the rows upon rows of magnetic tape and cinematic film; in the books and records and photographs of his repugnant life, the Opium Khan persists. The potential for his resurrection lurks in every line and grain of it. This is the full and original copy of the Recorded Man. Even what was destroyed at Happy Acres will surely have been incomplete. Shem Shem Tsien would not permit the thing out of his hands, would not countenance the possible creation of a second true Khan.

And nor will Joe.

He hefts the hammer, and strikes.

It takes a very, very long time. Or perhaps just moments. His shoulders ache and his back screams at him. He batters the archive over and over, rips at it with his hands, bleeds from cuts and splinters. When he tires, he drives himself with images of the dead, of Polly’s fear in the last moments. He uses everything to make himself go on.

At some point, there’s nothing big enough left to smash, and Joe piles all the remains together and runs the main electric current through the stack, so that the tapes spit and sparkle and the celluloid burns. When the blaze has caught properly, he lifts the corpse of Shem Shem Tsien and throws it onto the flames.

Joe Spork is the most arrested man the world has ever known. He stands in front of Sharrow House, face shining in the glow of searchlights and news cameras, and lays down his father’s gun on the gravel. Lays it down very carefully, because it seems to him that every single member of CO19, every spare Marine and Special Air Serviceman, and even a few members of the Household Cavalry have turned out to shoot him dead.

Behind him, with great dignity, the small but righteous army of Crazy Joe does the same, and the hundreds and hundreds of rifles which are trained on all of them follow like a vast cloud of lethal geese, long metal necks swaying, beady eyes paying the closest attention.

There is, however, an issue of priority. Joe has broken so many laws that he represents something of a quandary. A knot of small bureaucratic men and women tussle in the midst of the arresting force. Issues of competence are thrashed out line by line with venomous politesse. All the while, the gooseguns do not waver. Joe supposes that is understandable.

And then, at the very back of this great tide of official disapproval, someone takes charge. Someone very grave, with a troubled, serious face and a sonorous voice which speaks of sepulchres and secret dooms.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. May I have your attention? Thank you so much. My name is Rodney Arthur Cornelius Titwhistle, of the old and venerable family of Titwhistles of this city, and I am the Warden in Chief of the Legacy Board! Thank you, Detective Sergeant Patchkind, your services will not be required. Mr. Cummerbund, will you be so kind as to explain the matter to the very charming Basil? Thank you.” And, indeed, a large man with a salmon tie does indeed bustle off the elfin Patchkind, who looks none too happy about it—but if it is the original Arvin Cummerbund, he has lost some considerable weight from his belly and transferred it to his shoulders.

“Now, where was I? Ah, yes, if I might just pass by, sir, good heavens, they grow them big where you come from, don’t they? And where would that be? Shropshire, of course, of course, very A. E. Housman. If I might all the same pass by, very good.

“Joshua Joseph Spork. By the power vested in me by Her Majesty’s Government, I hereby take you in charge for the crimes of Murder, Arson, Treason, Terrorism, Banditry, and Brigandage. I have always wanted to arrest someone for Brigandage, Mr. Spork, I feel it has a high tone, now if you will yield yourself up to this good fellow here… thank you. You will swing, sir, swing by your giblets from the mizzenmast of the ship of state, oh yes! Don’t imagine some clever lawyer will get you out of this, Mr. Spork, though I understand that your lawyer is in fact the cleverest one available to mortal man, a positive paragon of the profession, a sort of earthbound god of advocacy. Bring him on, Mr. Spork, I shall shatter him with one prosecutorial fist! And you, missy,” adds this terrifying personage to Polly Cradle, “you should be ashamed of yourself as well. A woman’s place is in the home, girl, darning the socks of her family and scouring the pots and pans, not out skulduggering! Shame!”