hard his jaw hurt. JC did not give in, whether the pressure came from outside or within. He didn’t do that.
He looked back to see how the others were doing. Happy and Melody were both crouching, almost on all fours. Happy’s face was wet with sweat. Melody saw JC looking at her and growled at him, from deep in her throat. Happy beat his knuckles against the floor.
“It’s changing us, JC! Changing us inside and out… The jungle
… is its own world, with its own rules. You can’t be in the jungle and not be a part of it. Whatever you’re going to do, JC, do it now. Or Gog and Magog won’t be the only beasts here.”
Kim looked desperately at JC. She hadn’t changed because she was dead, and the call of life had no hold over her. JC gave her his best reassuring smile. From the look on her face, it wasn’t that successful. JC looked back at Gog and Magog.
“So,” he said. “You have a weapon. The jungle. Unfortunately for you, I have a better weapon. Ever seen anything like-this, before?”
He took a small withered object out of an inner pocket and held it up so they could all see it. A monkey’s paw, made into a Hand of Glory. The thin fingers had been soaked in wax from a dead man, and the fingertips made into wicks. Words had been spoken over the paw, and dread Power invested in it, and its presence alone was like a hammer-blow on the air, its very existence a rotten weight on the surface of the world. Gog and Magog stared at it, fascinated.
“Bloody hell!” said Happy, straightening up suddenly without even realising.
“I don’t like it,” said Kim. “It’s nasty. It’s looking at me.. .”
“Those things are strictly forbidden!” said Happy. “Even the Crowley Project won’t let its people use one of those in the field!”
“Only because their leaders are scared their field agents might use it against them,” said JC. “All right, I’ll admit having it is against all the rules, but if we were the kind of people who gave a damn about rules, we wouldn’t be field agents, would we?”
“Come on, JC,” said Happy. “Those things are seriously forbidden. Lots of places they’d hang you just for knowing such things were possible. Hell, they’d hang you for knowing someone who knew things like that were possible.”
“With good reason,” said Melody. “Some things should be forbidden. Because they’re too powerful.”
“They have their uses,” JC said easily. “The sight of it pushed the jungle right out of you, didn’t it?”
Happy and Melody looked at each other. They were both standing like people again.
“Where did you get it?” said Melody.
“eBay,” said JC. “You can find all kinds of stuff on eBay. Now hush, children, daddy’s working.”
He stepped forward, showing the monkey’s paw Hand of Glory to Gog and Magog, and the edge of the blood- red jungle retreated before him. The two beasts stirred uneasily. They couldn’t look at him or the Hand directly.
“A Hand of Glory can find any door, unlock any lock, reveal anything hidden,” said JC. “And a monkey’s paw can force a change on reality, on a small scale. So put those two things together, and I have the power to find what ReSet did to you and undo it.”
Gog and Magog looked at each other, then back at JC. Gog growled at him. “We can’t go back. We won’t go back. Not now we’ve tasted real freedom. We were never meant to be human! We might not be New People, but this is better than the small, insignificant things we were.”
“I’m sorry,” said JC, and part of him really was. “But I have no choice.”
Gog and Magog charged forward, crossing the intervening space with inhuman speed, claws outstretched for throat and heart. JC said a single activating Word, and flames blossomed at the paw’s fingertips. There was a flash of brilliant light, and when it subsided, the blood-red jungle was gone. Fluorescent light filled the whole empty floor, stretching away before JC. And at his feet, a naked man and woman lay very still. JC blew out the candle fingers, very carefully, and put the withered paw away. He knelt beside the man and woman and checked for pulses. He looked up at the others and shook his head.
“They’re dead,” he said shortly. He stood up slowly, brushing himself down here and there, checking that his marvellous ice-cream suit was hanging properly. A style is a style, after all. And it kept him from having to think things he didn’t want to think.
“Did the Hand kill them?” said Kim.
“Indirectly, perhaps,” said JC. “But you heard them. They didn’t want to live as people, any more.”
“Maybe they couldn’t,” said Happy. “After all the things they’d done as beasts.”
“They didn’t feel guilty,” said JC. “They just didn’t want to give it up.”
Happy looked at him, meaningfully. “If you had that awful thing with you all along, why didn’t you use it before? Did you really think it was that dangerous to us?”
“I had some concerns. But mostly-well, you don’t use a backpack nuke to crack a nut,” said JC. “Anytime you use something this powerful, it attracts attention. The wrong kind of attention. I’ve already been touched by forces of Good from Outside. I really don’t want to be noticed by the other side.”
“You have got to let me run some tests on that when we get back,” said Melody.
“Wouldn’t do you any good,” said JC. “As far as science is concerned, it’s only a preserved monkey’s paw. And you don’t want to try investigating it from the other side.”
“Why not?” Melody said immediately. “Knowledge is knowledge.”
“Because you don’t want to attract attention to yourself, either,” said JC. “Bad enough if Outside forces take an interest-can you imagine what the Boss would have to say if she found out? At best, she’d take it away. At worst…”
“There are still places where they hang you for knowing such things exist,” said Happy.
“Right,” said JC.
Happy shook his head. “Who looks at a monkey’s paw and thinks- That isn’t dangerous enough? I must make it into something even nastier? ” He stopped abruptly and looked at JC. “Something this powerful… It worked against the Beasts. Would it work against the New People?”
“Only one way to find out,” said JC.
EIGHT
“No more stops, no more investigations, no more distractions,” JC said firmly. “I think we’ve all had more than enough of taking it floor by floor, and I don’t see that there’s anything more we need to know or learn. So, to hell with whatever may or may not be lurking on the remaining floors. I say we go straight to the top of this benighted building and cut to the damned chase. We need some serious face-to-face time with the New People.”
“Assuming they have faces,” Happy said gloomily. “If they’re as far above us as the Beasts were below…”
“You always have to look on the glum side,” said Melody. “Look at it this way-the sooner we crash the party on the top floor and put our case to the New People, the sooner we can all go home, and I can get back to doing disgusting things to you in the bedroom. We’re not even half-way through that book I showed you.”
“I’m quite looking forward to meeting the New People,” said Kim. “I’ll bet they’re all sparkly and glamorous and… and all the colours of the rainbow!”
Melody sniffed. “Somebody read far too many flower fairy books when they were little…”
“Oh I loved those!”
“Later, Kim,” said JC. “I think we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that these New People aren’t going to be anything we expect… or can accept.”
“What if they’re not superhuman?” Happy said doggedly. “What if they’re posthuman? What if they are gods?”
“Good question,” said JC. “In which case, presumably some kind of sacrifice will be required, and I will
