warehouse ended, or started. The weariness of the returnees dissipated with the hospitality, but the faces of those who were leaving were pitiful, and many lingered for a last bite or riposte, or a whispered conversation with a friend.
As midnight approached, the dinner began to crawl to a conclusion. Caroline excused herself to the hairy Enlightened One on her left, and leaned over to Aubrey. ‘I’m going to see if the airwaves have anything for us.’
‘Do you think the Directorate might be transmitting tonight?’
‘It’s coming up to optimum reception time. It’s best to make sure.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘You get some sleep. I hardly have enough room in that booth for me and my equipment as it is.’
‘We could try,’ Aubrey said. His self-consciousness had obviously been lulled into a soporific state by the dinner, for the words were out of his mouth before he knew it. ‘Sorry,’ he said, but he was delighted when Caroline tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Not tonight. It’s too important.’
She left him staring into the air.
38
At first, when Aubrey woke, he was sure someone was standing by the bed. The tiny cubicle was pitch black but he had that half-awake certainty of another presence. He sat up and lit a match, ready to apply it to the candle on the floor, but the flare of light showed that he was alone.
He scratched at his forearm and that was when he realised that magic was in the vicinity. His skin was alive with the sensation of acidity, a sour lemon tang setting his teeth on edge. Odd crawling sensations muddled his vision for a moment and he realised that he was seeing a high-pitched whine.
He tilted his head, listening: in the distance, the thumping pom-pom-pom of artillery, while a barge was chugging up the nearby canal.
Aubrey climbed out from under the blankets and tugged on a pair of trousers, slipping his braces over his bare shoulders. He lit the candle this time, then pulled aside the curtain that separated the sleeping cubicles from the rest of the basement. He held the candle high as he tried to work out where the magic was coming from.
On the opposite side of the basement, the door to Caroline’s telegraph cubicle was ajar.
He hurried across the floor, stepping lightly, weaving his way through the maze of mattresses that the Enlightened Ones had thrown down, but when he reached halfway across the basement, he stopped and looked upward.
The source of the magic was directly above. He spun, paused, then – in an agony of indecision – actually rocked from one foot to the other, unsure which way to go. He wanted to check the telegraph cubicle, but the magical emanations from above were growing stronger.
With a glance at the stairs, Aubrey vaulted over the sleeping Enlightened Ones and pushed the door of the telegraph cubicle open.
The station was empty. Aubrey froze, taking in the scene. Caroline’s headphones were sprawled untidily on the bench next to her transmitter key. A writing tablet was nearby, next to the coding machine, and a pencil lay on the floor. Aside from the desk lamp being extinguished, nothing showed the precision that was Caroline’s mode of operation. It was plain that she’d left hastily.
He picked up the headphones and nearly dropped them again as magic leaped from the earpieces. His fingers prickled and he placed the headphones carefully on the bench before he wiped his hands on the rear of his trousers.
Then he bolted for the stairs, taking them two at a time.
He flung open the hatch that led to the flat roof, and poked his head out. For an instant, he had the strangest feeling: he was like a camera, taking a series of quick snapshots, one after the other.
First impression: the flat roof extended before him. The hatch was at one end of the roof, with the far end some seventy or eighty feet away. The antenna array Caroline had so carefully constructed took up most of that space, eight wires stretched fifty feet from one side of the roof to the other, each separated by ten feet of space.
Second impression: the night was overcast, with the clouds adding a thin pallor to the sky.
Third impression: artillery fire away to the north-east, drumbeats of doom.
Fourth and overwhelming impression: the roof was ablaze with magic and electrical discharges.
Aubrey went to drag himself onto the roof and was nearly driven back by one of the dozens of huge electrical eruptions that were fizzing along the antenna wires. The sparks were enormous, leaping feet into the air, hissing with malignant glee as they slid backward and forward, crashing together at speed and showering the roof with a rain of smaller sparklets.
Cursing, Aubrey squinted, momentarily dazzled. These weren’t just electrical discharges – serious though that would be. These had magic about them, and it was the sort of magic that made him very, very wary.
Carefully, he climbed out of the hatch, holding a hand up in front of his face and keeping his back to the utilities shed. ‘Caroline!’ he shouted, then he reeled back as one of the giant sparks skated in his direction.
Are they arms?
Then Caroline threw a chair at him.
He ducked, already believing that Caroline had, at last, seen through him and was expressing her opinion by hurling convenient furniture at him.
‘Aubrey!’ she cried. ‘Look out!’
His heart surged at her warning. He abandoned his misgivings as the chair flashed through the giant spark and smashed on the brick wall behind him. Aubrey ducked, then took a step toward where Caroline was backing away, scrambling under antenna wire in her haste.
Aubrey drew close to one of the wires, close enough for him to reach out and touch. He was about to call out to Caroline when, from the corner of his eye, he saw a giant spark humming toward him, arms extended.
He didn’t have time to worry about how bizarre that notion was. He let out a yelp and threw himself away from its reach. Landing on a shoulder and rolling to his feet, he had to shield his eyes and back away as the magically imbued electrical phenomenon reached for him.
Aubrey’s mind worked in two separate and distinct modes. One part was on the verge of gibbering as the spark grew in size, rapidly towering ten feet from the wire on which it balanced. The other part coolly noted how small sparklets were racing along the wire and merging with it to make a roughly human shape. It pawed unsuccessfully at him, then swayed and stretched. Half a dozen smaller sparklets skated along to join it, flowing right up its fingerless hand and making the entire creature swell, growing another foot or two in height, an electrical demon that leered with antic glee.
Aubrey swallowed and took another step away. He looked to Caroline, but she was trapped on the other side of the roof, with eight antenna wires between her and Aubrey – eight wires populated by a growing horde of demonic sparks that sped up and down, crashing into each other and growing in size, electrical demon shapes that capered and lunged at her.
Aubrey ducked as a chair leg slammed into the brick wall to his left.
‘Sorry!’ Caroline called.
The largest of the sparks, the one that had been menacing Aubrey, swivelled at the sound of Caroline’s voice. As fast as thought, it skimmed along the wire until it reached the edge of the roof, then it extended a limb until it touched the next wire in the array, one wire closer to Caroline. Once it had grasped this wire, it performed a complicated manoeuvre, stretching and vaulting across, then reshaping itself until it once again had its four-limbed, demonic form. Joined by a rabble of smaller sparklets, it sped to the opposite end of the second wire and then repeated the process, vaulting across to the third – and again coming closer to Caroline.
Caroline hurdled a wire, keeping her distance, moving toward the far end of the roof, but Aubrey could see that she didn’t have far to go before she’d be trapped.
Caroline had realised the danger she was in. Not wanting to come up against the parapet, she’d moved to her right until she reached the end of the wire – but was once more trapped by the edge of the roof on that side.
