chapter
TWELVE

I stumbled toward where she had stopped, still retching for breath, but I caught my arm on an air-conditioning unit so that the smoke canisters spilled from the box and scattered across the roof. One exploded in a scream of smoke. I left them lying there. When I reached her, she was standing by the parapet looking at the fire escape.

Or more precisely, where it should have been.

There were the rusted remains of fixings and a sign that had been posted. It read: “In case of emergency, break the glass and pull out the picture of the puppy. Then stare at it until calm.”

The other buildings on the block were too far away to access. “We have very little time,” she said. “Can you think of a plan?”

“No. And I don’t make plans.”

“What?”

“I don’t make plans.” I leaned against one of the large stone birds that adorned the parapet, still trying to get my heart rate down to something less than several hundred. The bird toppled from the roof. I watched it loop end-over-end until it blew apart into shards on the steps below, amid hordes of people.

“But it looks like jumping is out,” I said.

“Set off all the smoke canisters, then find me. I’m not shooting cops, no matter how annoying their mustaches are.”

I nodded and headed back through the night rain to where I had dropped the canisters. I fumbled with the wet tags and let them off one after the other so they formed a massive, impenetrable red cloud. I thought about giving myself up to the cops. There was no sense staying here, but I felt some misguided loyalty to this woman. She understood what was behind my eyes, and that seemed incredibly important.

I ran across the roof to where she was hitting something.

When I got to within a few feet, the smoke cleared and I saw she was trying to break a chain that held down a huge advertising balloon that loomed above.

“You’ll kill yourself,” I said.

“You came back to New Seattle to find something that would make you feel human, right?”

“I don’t know why I came back.”

“I do; it’s in your eyes. You’re about to feel a jolt of adrenaline that should make even a corpse feel human. Hold the chain.”

“You always live life like this?”

“With purpose, you mean? You forgotten what that’s like?”

I looked at her. And through the dingy half-light and pouring rain, I saw she had the kind of inner confidence I had once felt. And I tried to recall when that sense of being me had slipped away.

“I didn’t have you down for kidnapping and social care in one package,” I said.

She fired five or six rounds from the gun, and the chain snapped in a shower of sparks. I was dragged ruthlessly across the roof as the glum bulk of the advertising balloon began to wander off in the evening breeze.

We’re in The Last Chance Saloon now, I thought as my legs caught on one of the air-con units, although it has probably been turned into something with individual table lamps, and renamed The Last Chance Bistro, if an architect has gotten hold of it.

I felt her hands grab me. Then she began winding the free end of the chain firmly around my chest.

“If we get split up, I’ve a room at the Halcyon motel, okay? It’ll be safe for the night.”

“Who the hell are you?” I said.

“Nena,” she said and then pushed me off the roof and I hung, swinging, chained below the massive balloon. The thing began to drift, and a moment later she jumped, catching me around the waist, and her added weight sent us spiraling down through the cloud of red smoke until we broke clear into the evening lights. She was staring straight at me, and for a moment I smelled her perfume. Then she looked down into the cold rush and her face blanched.

I followed her gaze and the blurring images coalesced into something with hazy edges that made the scene below look like a Raoul Dufy painting. Maybe this was how Raoul Dufy got the idea for his painting style. Maybe he jumped off a lot of tall buildings and then remembered the hazy, undefined edges of the scene so he could paint it later when he had got out of the hospital…

We smashed into a man with a sandwich board.

Then we were spun and dragged into the crowd of hawkers and sellers. Their goods were sent flying around us as we skidded across the sidewalk. I tried desperately to get untangled from the chain, but I was snagged somehow, and snapshot images of people flashed before me, their faces made Technicolor by the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

Finally I was knocked free, brutally smashing apart a stall of fresh-cut flowers. The balloon dragged Nena on.

I fought my way to my feet, and suddenly saw it ascending again. She was still attached.

“The end of the world is so nigh there’s hardly any time to do anything!” cried the man with the sandwich board, knocking me out of the way so he could stagger back to his box. “It’s much more nigh than it was last Tuesday, and it was pretty nigh then. The end of the world is nigh! Who wants a sticker?”

I looked up again to see Nena float up to roof level.

Cops who must have spilled into the area fired through the dispersing red smoke. I heard the sickening crack and the crowd froze as one. Or maybe I just stopped hearing them. Nena dropped, looking inhumane and entirely wrong and landed half on the sidewalk, a little way away. I fought my way over to her.

“Nena,” I called. “Nena!”

“That your girlfriend, is it?” said someone, laughing. I pushed him out of the way and knelt down by her. “Nena,” I said, and turned her over.

It was a mannequin.

I stared at the inane smiling face. For a moment I froze, and then realized she must have grabbed it from one of the stalls and made a switch.

I scrambled back into the crowd as the cops began to inveigle their way through, but there was no sign of her. A fleet of drongles had been slowed to a halt as the confused crowd spilled onto the road.

I clattered into one and the door sprang open, revealing a group of nuns.

They stared out.

I shouted the name of the Halcyon motel into the horn and threw myself in.

The drongle moved off and nearly ran down a couple of cops who had run into the street. And then we gathered speed and were soon swamped by the traffic. Behind us, the partially collapsed balloon landed on the sidewalk again, causing chaos. I took a long breath and made eye contact with one of the nuns.

“What makes you so sure there is a God?” she said.

“What do you mean?” I replied.

“I mean, why on earth do you think there could be a God?”

“Sister Rachel is not well,” said another nun. “It came on overnight.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“She has a fever. You see how pale the poor girl is?”

“I mean, how could there be a God?” continued Sister Rachel. “Why would he allow smug names for different shades of paint? And why would any God not want us to swear? And would he really have invented knees? Or allowed the French to be so off-hand and do that shrugging thing with their shoulders? And why would he think women having mustaches was quite such a clever thing? And why would he decide that the natterjack toad should have sex—”

“That’s enough, Sister Rachel,” said another nun.

“Yes, Sister,” the nun said and composed herself.

I nodded, not quite being able to take all this in.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“She’ll be fine again soon, I’m sure.”

I took this as my cue to sink back in the seat and close my eyes. I could have died back there at least twice.

I tried to breathe away a thousand thoughts telling me I had been stupid.

Really dumb-assed stupid. But eventually my mind settled.

And I had a fleeting memory of the vivid images that had run through my mind during the head hack.

And I remembered how I had been walking the city streets but they had been empty of people. I opened my eyes, and the image stayed in my mind with a vibrancy that was unnerving.