Paul McAuley - Something Coming Through

One summer, fifteen years old, restless with self-pity and unexamined anger because she felt that the death of her mother, how her mother had died, had denied her any kind of ordinary life, Chloe had taken to cycling long distances. From Walthamstow into the City of London. Down the course of the River Lea, past the Olympic Park to Bow Creek, where she now worked. Across Epping Forest, through the banal suburban landscapes and strip malls of Enfield. She’d taken her bike on trains out to Kew and Richmond; once, one day close to midsummer, she’d ridden all the way to Amersham. And from Amersham she had cycled through a maze of B-roads into the Chilterns, and as the sun had begun to set she’d come out at the top of a ridge and seen a patchworked valley spread beyond: immemorial England parcelled into fields and stands of trees aglow in that magic hour when light is a property of the air. As if she had intruded on a secondary world, a fairyland where everything wore its True Name.

She felt that same vertiginous recognition now. A freezing pleasure, an emotion as deep and poignant as nostalgia for places she’d never before seen. And then she thought of Eddie Ackroyd, slouching like a malignant shadow through the displaced-persons camp, searching for Mangala Cowboy, and a sliding sense of urgency seized her and sent her hurrying through the late afternoon sunlight and the ordinary little park.

The stage and sound system had been cleared away, but a gang of little children were chasing each other across the dry grass and several pre-teen girls clustered around the bench under the chestnut tree, sharing images and clips on their phones. Chloe went up to them and got into a conversation with their leader, Niome, a sharp-faced girl dressed in pink shorts and a blue T-shirt, hair scraped up and exploding in an afroball at the top of her head. Chloe told her about Disruption Theory, asked about Mr Archer. Who’d just been this geezer until a couple of months ago, apparently. No bother to anyone, spent most of his time sitting outside his front door or in the café gossiping with other geezers. He carved stuff, Niome said, birds and shit like that from bits of wood. Sometimes gave them away, sometimes sold them in the local street market.

‘Then he started having meetings,’ Niome said. She was perched on the back of the bench, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her bright red sneakers planted on the seat. ‘Him and a few geezers at first. Then other people too. It was like they were in church. Like Mr Archer was giving a sermon, or they were singing hymns. But in this funny language.’

Chloe asked her if she or her friends had ever gone to these meetings.

‘ I didn’t,’ Niome said. ‘Get mixed up with that chump ranking? No way. But Bunny did. Her mum got caught up, and she took Bunny along. She played recorder today, didn’t you, Buns?’

Bunny was a shy plump girl who ducked her head and shrugged.

‘Tell her what it was like,’ Niome said.

Bunny shrugged again, pleased and embarrassed, said she couldn’t exactly explain.

Chloe showed the flyer to Niome, said that she was wondering who had made the picture.

‘Oh, that,’ Niome said. ‘That’s one of Freddie’s.’

Freddie Patel and his little sister, Rana, had come to live in the camp about three months ago. No sign of their parents, according to Niome, who didn’t seem to think it was anything unusual. Mr Archer was Freddie’s upstairs neighbour, she said, and the old man had taken a shine to him because of his drawings.

Chloe said, ‘Is he part of this thing of Mr Archer’s?’

‘He isn’t really part of anything.’

‘But he did the flyer for Mr Archer. And a poster they put up on Facebook.’

‘Yeah, but Freddie was never into Mr Archer’s church stuff. I mean, you never seen him there, did you, Buns?’

Bunny shook her head.

‘Freddie mostly keeps himself to himself,’ Niome said. ‘Man of mystery innit.’

‘Niome’s in love with Freddie,’ one of the other girls said, half-singing it in a teasing lilt, and Niome said, ‘I am so not. He’s lush, yeah, but he’s sort of weird, too.’

‘Weird in what way?’ Chloe said.

‘Like he’s lost in his head. You say hi to him, he say hi back. But otherwise it’s like he don’t see you.’

‘What about his sister?’

‘Oh, Rana’s just a cute little thing.’

‘A normal little girl.’

‘I guess.’

‘She doesn’t ever talk about ghosts, or anything similar?’

The stuff that encoded eidolons interacted with people’s optic nerves on some deep quantum level, generating weird, blurry images. Shadows and shapes. Ghosts and monsters.

Niome said, ‘I don’t think so. She’s just this little girl.’

Chloe said, ‘Have you seen anything weird, you and your friends?’

Niome laughed. ‘You mean like spooks and such?’

‘Or strange animals, strange noises, strange dreams.’

‘What kind of strange dreams?’

‘Dreams about the kind of places Freddie draws, for instance.’

Niome asked to see the flyer again. She studied it carefully, shook her head, showed it to her friends. ‘This mean anything to you?’

More head-shaking.

‘There’s this bunch of shiners who sit around the other end of the park,’ one of the girls said. ‘They see all kinds of stuff that isn’t there.’

‘She means ordinary people seeing, like, super-strange paranormal shit,’ Niome said, and smiled at Chloe. ‘If you want, we can ask around. Do some detecting.’

The girl was bright and bold and inquisitive, far more together than Chloe had been at her age. It occurred to her that Niome had never known a time when there hadn’t been aliens in the sky and a lottery for easy travel to other planets. It made her feel old.

She gave one of her cards to Niome, and a couple of five-pound coins for her help. Niome asked if that meant she was one of Disruption Theory’s informers now.

Chloe said, ‘Be sure to let me know if you hear about any super-strange stuff. Meanwhile, how about pointing me at Freddie’s home?’

It was in the nearest cluster of container flatlets. The steel boxes had big windows at either end and were stacked side by side in an L shape three storeys high, with steel-mesh walkways on the inner side. People sat on stairs, in open doorways. The mingled murmur of TVs and radios, a domestic hum and clatter.

Freddie Patel’s flatlet was in the middle of the second storey of the short arm of the L. Like most of its neighbours, its window and glass-panelled door were blanked with curtains. Freddie Patel twitched the heavy blue material aside when Chloe rapped on the glass, then cracked the door open to ask what she wanted.

He looked much younger than she’d expected, a slender teenager a good head taller than her, dressed in cargo shorts and an oversized T-shirt. When Chloe showed him the flyer and asked if he was the artist, his suspicious look darkened.

‘Who wants to know?’

Chloe introduced herself, speaking quickly before he could shut the door in her face. ‘The people I work for are interested in happenings, festivals, that kind of thing. Like the one here today? I was wondering if you could help me, answer a few standard questions for a survey. It will only take a couple of minutes, I promise. And there’ll be a small payment for your time and trouble.’

‘Mr Archer’s meeting? I wasn’t even there. You want to know about that, you should talk to him,’ Freddie Patel said.

He was looking past her, scanning the walkway as if expecting to see someone else. Over his shoulder, Chloe could see a wedge of wall tiled with a mosaic of mostly red drawings.

She said, ‘You helped Mr Archer with his flyer. His website, too.’