Paul Cornell - London Falling

Was this a moment he’d talk about in the future, saying, ‘And then a little voice said to me. .’? Because this thing was pretty bloody concrete, more of a big foghorn than a little voice.

He had wanted to talk to someone, he realized. He’d wanted, ever since Quill appeared in the service station, to convince someone of. . of what? His innocence? But he wasn’t innocent. He wanted to tell his story. . only, since he’d woken up in that car, it had felt as if the thing was already starting to be left behind him now, was instead. . enormous, implacable, not to be bargained with.

Okay, so, let’s get this straight: leaving London now would be tantamount to running away. It would make him look guilty of something. It would deprive him of the kudos derived from the successful op. And it would also stop him cashing in on his endgame. He’d prepared that for an emergency exit, and then left it hidden, back in London. He would be leaving all that behind if he ran now. And, though his training and his inclination made running very much part of his world, he fucking hated doing it.

He forced himself to breathe more easily. None of this is either/or, Tone . How about a middle way? Call in sick tomorrow, maybe go to see a doctor, figure out if this feeling was. . fuck. . brain damage or something. Or maybe an optician thing? He looked around carefully, and then stared into the dark distance. Nothing out there struck him as weird. . but how could you tell?

So, okay, Tony, how about you get some more data and then make a genuine decision? He started the engine and set off again, making deliberate decisions about which turns he took now, watching himself, undercover, in his own head. At every turn he took, he still felt that urge to head away from London. He went east instead and started feeling it more precisely, now he was looking for it, almost as an actual pressure on his left shoulder. He passed through increasingly rural countryside, forests and parks. He was now in what used to be called Truncheon Valley, where the needs of the Met, house prices and salaries all conspired to produce a belt of police officers’ homes. He saw a sign saying Biggin Hill , and turned right on a whim. . and there it went, London was right behind him now, making him relax more with every mile.

This was a pretty bloody clear message, wasn’t it? The sense of threat would recede completely if he went in this direction for a while. So maybe this was just himself letting go of the tension, simply relaxing with the therapy of a long drive? Because, come on, he’d seen enough shit outside London, too; it wasn’t as if the city had a monopoly on oppression. He pulled the car to a halt, made a three-point turn, and headed back the other way.

He felt it coming, ahead of him, after only a minute.

Fuck.

So he turned again, fled again. He passed a sign beside a bit of parkland that said Westerham Heights: Greater London’s Highest Point . He turned at the junction, parked up, the only car on the gravel, and cautiously made his way on foot along a path between the trees, the only sound nearby being the night wind sighing through the branches. He had to get his eyeballs on to this thing, find out if he could see it as well as feel it, once he was looking at it directly.

He felt it hidden now by the rise ahead of him. Something demanding. Something threatening. Like an enormous. . audience. He went through a gate and crested the hill, and the wind was suddenly buffeting him directly, the sound of it turbulent in his ears. He was on the side of downlands, facing north towards London. To the north-west there lay Biggin Hill airport, the lit-up lines of the runway, and to the north the lights of London itself illuminated the clouds. But that was just what his eyes were telling him. Underneath that there was much more. So much that he dropped onto the grass, although it was wet with dew that would soon become frost.

There was something in the sky above Biggin Hill. Something he could see that transcended mere sight.

He stared at it, shocked. It was right on the edge of vision and. . and of hearing . . a dream of vapour trails and the bursts of ack-ack guns firing — he could hear them clearly — and beautiful parachutes and aircraft shapes spinning and interlacing in airborne fights that meant. . everything.

It meant everything to that great weight out there. But not to him. It — this force he’d been feeling — was trying to tell him how he should feel the importance of whatever was up there. That was a familiar feeling, he suddenly realized, and something he always felt being forced on him. It was something he didn’t quite own naturally, but was meant to. Something he was missing. It was especially beautiful when seen like this, a feeling of longing and purity and of enjoying sadness. It was stamped in the sky, and it wouldn’t fade. Or, at least, not for a long time. A shared thing that he didn’t share. And then he found he hated it, even though he also wanted terribly to have it. Or something instead of it that was his very own. That would be the best thing; it would be so easy to lie back and join in with it. He felt that the great weight beyond it was made up of that particular sensation. There was something real underneath it all that made him ache even more. He stared ahead, amazed at these specific thoughts, which were being put in his head by what he was now seeing. He wasn’t in control of his emotions right now, he realized. This power in London, whatever it was, was doing this to him somehow.

He himself was so nearly nothing, compared to the size of that power. He looked away from the ache in the sky, and towards London beyond. He could see strange things there, too. Or feel rather than see. He felt he had an extra sense hovering between all the others, which he didn’t yet understand enough, which needed fine tuning. He saw, or felt, lots of tiny individual meanings there in London. They added up to that enormous feeling emanating from the city itself. And it was just from the metropolis, and nowhere else. Costain looked to his left and right. There were other towns nearby, including Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells somewhere behind him. But from them there came nothing, not even faintly. This was purely a London thing.

Costain considered it for a while, this London thing: this British thing that had been poured into London and solidified there. He found he wanted to apologize to it. But he also wanted it to apologize to him.

He would never before have imagined a London thing. If he was experiencing a psychotic episode, something the drugs had done to his brain over the years. . that’d be about everything he saw and felt, wouldn’t it? Not this one, precise thing. Yeah, he knew a threat when he saw one. And this was real .

He sat there for a while longer, letting himself relax, feeling no threat in the woods around him, only beauty in the downlands beyond, but he looked every now and then at where the bad stuff — if it was bad stuff — was. And it was only there. What was over Biggin Hill was like a question posed in the sky. It was a constellation in a suddenly genuine astrology, perhaps significant to him, perhaps not — not good or bad, just real.

For a while, he’d thought he was in on a successful operation, that finally he had something to celebrate. Instead he’d found this.

It was what it was. And he had to face it.

Okay, then.

After a while, he got to his feet, went back to his car, and headed back into London.

Quill had three more pints with Harry. He gradually started to tune out the running commentary from Harry’s dad. The more he drank, the more he accepted what was in front of him. Maybe he could even use it. ‘Harry,’ he said finally, ‘are you jealous of me?’