Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

‘He certainly is,’ Beth muttered.

‘Oooo! I know!’ Maude said, grinning and clapping her hands. Beth was watching the young goth with suspicion. ‘Makeover!’

Uday’s eyes widened with glee. Beth suspected it was more out of pleasure at her discomfort than sharing Maude’s genuine enthusiasm.

‘Maude, what a marvellous idea! It’ll be like a gruff Yorkshire Pygmalion !’

Beth shifted defensively, like she was getting ready for fight or flight.

‘I will beat up both of you,’ she warned. Mostly joking.

‘Darling, not everyone can be as pant-creamingly beautiful as the likes of Maude and I,’ Uday began. Maude smiled graciously at Uday, who gave her a mock bow in return. ‘But with some effort even the dowdiest caterpillar can become a beautiful butterfly.’ Uday considered his own statement while studying Beth. ‘Well, a beautiful moth anyway.’

Uday was enjoying Beth’s discomfort but Beth didn’t like where it was taking her. She had never liked the way she looked. Neither had anyone else, so it seemed, so she had made it unimportant to her.

‘Look, the whole being-pretty thing, it’s really not me. That was more Talia’s kind of thing,’ she said, then turned away, taking a mouthful of her drink. Uday looked awkward, apologetic, Maude concerned. Then Maude smiled again.

‘I think you’re pretty,’ she said. Her apparent sincerity almost made Beth believe her.

‘And I concur. There is beauty there, no doubt, though we may need to dig deep to find it.’ Beth gave him the finger this time. ‘But I am, after all, the archaeologist of gorgeousness.’

From all over the pub came the sound of bleeping as people received text messages almost simultaneously. Uday’s phone sounded. He took it out of his pocket, a look of concern on his face. He opened the text. In the distance they could hear the sound of sirens.

‘What is it?’ Beth asked as Uday read the message, his face darkening as he did so.

‘Someone’s just blown up Weightless,’ he said. Horror crept over Maude’s face.

‘Weightless?’ Beth asked.

‘It’s a club on Guildhall Walk,’ Uday said quietly. ‘We’ll know people who were there tonight.’ A pall was settling over the pub.

‘It’s happened again, hasn’t it?’ Maude said. Beth looked at her. ‘It’s like what happened to Talia.’

‘Maude, we don’t know. Anything could have happened.’

‘How do I get there?’ Beth asked.

There was rubble and a hole in the shadow of the neoclassical Guildhall where a building used to be. The hole was illuminated by the multiple flashing lights of numerous emergency vehicles and inhabited by police, ambulance people and fire officers, all of them vastly underqualified to deal with the situation.

Was this how it started? du Bois wondered. One small morsel at a time. No, this was too localised, too specific . He tried to murder the feeling of hope; he wanted to connect this to the prodigal. It was too much of a coincidence for there to be two incursions in such a short period of time.

He supposed he should do something. Find out who was in charge and throw some weight around. At least get them away from the hole before they dosed themselves with lethal levels of cosmic radiation, though it was probably too late. They were in there because they were hoping for survivors, trying to help people. Sometimes we seem worth saving , he thought.

Control would start putting the cover story in place. Another terrorist incident. He felt sorry for whichever community was the scapegoat this time around. There would be response teams on their way from Porton Down to seal the area. He already knew what they would find.

If Natalie wasn’t dead, then he needed to find her. He looked around the street. There were a number of CCTV cameras. Du Bois sent instructions to his phone. If the CCTVs were attached to the net in any way, he would be able to download the footage and run it through sophisticated intelligent facial-recognition software. Moments later he received a message saying that nobody fitting Natalie Luckwicke’s description had been anywhere near the club for the last week. Du Bois sighed, though he had known that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

He turned to look at the crowd. Many of them were drunk or high, clubbers evacuated from the clubs along Guildhall Walk. A lot of them were sailors, du Bois guessed. Something caught his eye – someone backing into a narrow alleyway between one of the pubs and a Chinese restaurant. He wouldn’t have thought anything of it except the figure moved furtively, suspiciously, and there was something off about it. Something about the glimpsed figure suggested that it was misshapen in some way.

Du Bois ran to the alley, drawing looks from some of the assembled police. The passage ran for about twenty feet, ending in a high fence with a gate in it. The fence was topped with broken glass. Du Bois tried the gate. It was locked. Feeling slightly absurd, he drew his pistol and kicked the gate in. It led into a small courtyard at the back of the restaurant. Some of the restaurant’s employees came out of the open back door to look at him but said nothing when they saw the gun.

Du Bois shook his head and returned to the street. Scanning the crowd again. Disconcerted. Then he found at least one face in the crowd that he recognised.

Uday and Maude had gone home. Maude hadn’t wanted to add to the chaos at the scene. They would use social networking sites to try and find out if the people they knew were okay.

Beth had circled the taped-off police perimeter trying to get the best view. She’d ended up leaning on one of the lion statues on the steps that led up to the Guildhall itself. She’d watched the blond man run into the alleyway and then reappear moments later with a gun in his hand. The man had been scanning the crowd. He stopped as he looked in her direction. Beth felt like he was staring at her, though she thought she was too far away for him to make out her features. Nevertheless she ducked behind the statue of the lion.

‘I think your sister’s been here, don’t you?’ The bag lady’s face was inches from Beth’s. Sweat, piss, stale smoke and cheap alcohol emanated from her. Beth’s face crumpled in disgust. It was the same woman she’d seen on Pretoria Street.

‘What do you mean? My sister’s d—’

The bag lady blew smoke all over her. Beth coughed, her eyes watering, and turned away. By the time the smoke had cleared, the woman was nowhere to be seen.

Beth sat down hard on the steps. It was just a weird coincidence, she told herself, the ramblings of someone with mental health problems. Her sister was dead. This had nothing to do with her. She could work hard, get on with her life and be normal. At the back of her mind, the question What if Talia is alive? just wouldn’t leave her in peace.

‘Well?’ Baron Albedo asked. Both of them had their hoods up. They liked the look and were only peripherally aware that it would draw attention to them rather than away.

‘Our journey might not be quite the waste of time that the pimp made it out to be,’ King Jeremy mused. The pair watched the response to the destruction of Weightless. It was kind of cool because it was like a disaster movie, but a bit lame because it was British, which made it look low-budget.

The flickering black wound in Red Space at the bridge point to Pythia looked soothing to Vic. Scab had made as much of the hull transparent as he could. Vic wouldn’t have minded so much but Scab had retracted the walls to Vic’s room to make the ship as open plan as possible. Vic’s psychotic partner reclined in one of the smart chairs. The light of Red Space made his naked form look like he was covered in blood.