with these fast boys. He was the tortoise in this race, for sure. Loyer was overtaken by McCloud, then Voight, and finally Jones and Kinderman. His breath had suddenly deserted him, and his legs felt like lead. Worse, he was seeing the tarmac under his running shoes creaking and cracking, and fingers, like loveless children, seeking up out of the ground to touch him. Nobody else was seeing them, it seemed. The crowds just roared on, while these illusory hands broke out of their tarmac graves and secured a hold on him. He collapsed into their dead arms exhausted, his youth broken and his strength spent. The enquiring fingers of the dead continued to pluck at him, long after the doctors had removed him from the track, examined him and sedated him.
He knew why, of course, lying there on the hot tarmac while they had their pricking way with him. He'd looked behind him. That's what had made them come. He'd looked — 'And after Loyer's sensational collapse, the race is open wide. Frank the Flash McCloud is setting the pace now, and he's really speeding away from the new boy, Voight. Joel Jones is even further behind, he doesn't seem to be keeping up with the leaders at all. What do you think, Jim?'
'Well he's either pooped already, or he's really taking a chance that they'll exhaust themselves. Remember he's new over this distance —'
'Yes, Jim —'
'And that might make him careless. Certainly he's going to have to do a lot of work to improve on his present position in third place.'
Joel felt giddy. For a moment, as he'd watched Loyer begin to lose his grip on the race, he'd heard the man praying out loud. Praying to God to save him. He'd been the only one who heard the words — 'Yea, though I walk through the shadows of the Valley of Death I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they —'
The sun was hotter now, and Joel was beginning to feel the familiar voices of his tiring limbs. Running on tarmac was hard on the feet, hard on the joints. Not that that would make a man take to praying. He tried to put Loyer's desperation out of his mind, and concentrate on the matter in hand.
There was still a lot of running to do, the race was not even half over. Plenty of time to catch up with the heroes: plenty of time.
As he ran, his brain idly turned over the prayers his mother had taught him in case he should need one, but the years had eroded them: they were all but gone.
'My name,' said the goat-coated man, 'is Gregory Burgess. Member of Parliament. You wouldn't know me. I try to keep a low profile.'
'MP?' said Cameron.
'Yes. Independent. Very independent.'
'Is that Voight's brother?'
Burgess glanced at Voight's other self. He was not even shivering in the intense cold, despite the fact that he was only wearing a thin singlet and shorts.
'Brother?' Burgess said. 'No, no. He is my — what is the word? Familiar.'
The word rang a bell, but Cameron wasn't well-read. What was a familiar?
'Show him,' said Burgess magnanimously. Voight's face shook, the skin seeming to shrivel, the lips curling back from the teeth, the teeth melting into a white wax that poured down a gullet that was itself transfiguring into a column of shimmering silver. The face was no longer human, no longer even mammalian. It had become a fan of knives, their blades glistening in the candlelight through the door. Even as this bizarrerie became fixed, it started to change again, the knives melting and darkening, fur sprouting, eyes appearing and swelling to balloon size. Antennae leapt from this new head, mandibles were extruded from the pulp of transfiguration, and the head of a bee, huge and perfectly intricate, now sat on Voight's neck.
Burgess obviously enjoyed the display; he applauded with gloved hands.
'Familiars both,' he said, gesturing to the chauffeur, who had removed the cap, and let a welter of auburn hair fall to her shoulders. She was ravishingly beautiful, a face to give your life for. But an illusion, like the other. No doubt capable of infinite personae.
'They're both mine, of course,' said Burgess proudly.
'What?' was all Cameron could manage; he hoped it stood for all the questions in his head.
'I serve Hell, Mr Cameron. And in its turn Hell serves me.'
'Hell?'
'Behind you, one of the entrances to the Ninth Circle. You know your Dante, I presume?
'Lo! Dis; and lo! the place where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength.'
'Why are you here?'
'To run this race. Or rather my third familiar is already running the race. He will not be beaten this time. This time it is Hell's event, Mr Cameron, and we shall not be cheated of the prize.'
'Hell,' said Cameron again.
'You believe don't you? You're a good church-goer. Still pray before you eat, like any God-fearing soul. Afraid of choking on your dinner.'
'How do you know I pray?'
'Your wife told me. Oh, your wife was very informative about you, Mr Cameron, she really opened up to me. Very accommodating. A confirmed analyst, after my attentions. She gave me so much... information. You're a good Socialist, aren't you, like your father.'
'Politics now —'
'Oh, politics is the hub of the issue, Mr Cameron. Without politics We're lost in a wilderness, aren't we? Even Hell needs order. Nine great circles: a pecking order of punishments. Look down; see for yourself.'
Cameron could feel the hole at his back: he didn't need to look.
'We stand for order, you know. Not chaos. That's just heavenly propaganda. And you know what we'll win?'
'It's a charity race.'
'Charity is the least of it. We're not running this race to save the world from cancer. We're running it for government.'
Cameron half-grasped the point.
'Government,' he said.
'Once every century this race is run from St Paul's to the Palace of Westminster. Often it has been run at the dead of night, unheralded, unapplauded. Today it is run in full sunshine, watched by thousands. But whatever the circumstance, it is always the same race. Your athletes, against one of ours. If you win, another hundred years of democracy. If we win... as we will... the end of the world as you know it.'
At his back Cameron felt a vibration. The expression on Burgess' face had abruptly changed; the confidence had become clouded, the smugness was instantly replaced by a look of nervous excitement.
'Well, well,' he said, his hands flapping like birds. 'It seems we are about to be visited by higher powers. How flattering —'
Cameron turned, and peered over the edge of the hole. It didn't matter how curious he was now. They had him; he may as well see all there was to see.
A wave of icy air blew up from the sunless circle and in the darkness of the shaft he could see a shape approaching. Its movement was steady, and its face was thrown back to look at the world.
Cameron could hear its breathing, see the wound of its features open and close in the murk, oily bone locking and unlocking like the face of a crab.
Burgess was on his knees, the two familiars flat on the floor to either side of him, faces to the ground.
Cameron knew he would have no other chance. He stood up, his limbs hardly in his control, and blundered towards Burgess, whose eyes were closed in reverent prayer. More by accident than intention his knee caught Burgess under the jaw as he passed, and the man was sent sprawling. Cameron's soles slid on the floor out of the ice-cavern and into the candlelit chamber beyond.
Behind him, the room was filling with smoke and sighs, and Cameron, like Lot's wife fleeing from the destruction of Sodom, glanced back just once to see the forbidden sight behind him.
