The Minority Council (33 page)

“No,” we said.

“Hey hey hey hey.” A snap of his fingers and Alan started rummaging through a drawer, babbling as he went. “I’ve been working on, like, these new mods for it too, you know, like these subroutines we can upload to like, the central matrix, for like, feeding patterns, hunting patterns, advanced ambi-mystic regeneration patterns, serious mega stuff.”

Socks that were only a damp radiator away from evolving and walking off on their own went flying out of the drawer; dead batteries and crinkled magazines in torn plastic bags were turfed out onto the floor. I asked, “You do much of this? Summoning… things?”

“Yeah, you know, I dabble and shit. But some guys, you know, it’s all like, ‘elemental this’ or ‘demon that’ and I’m like, guys, I don’t know what kinda world you fucking live in, but me, I’ve gotta get on. I’ve got plans, I’ve got things to do, I mean, I’m gonna be twenty in like three
years or shit and I’m planning on being dead when I’m forty because it’s all downhill then and I can’t be bothered, you know yeah?”

“And the culicidae… how’d you get involved in summoning that?”

“Oh, you know,” he explained, finally producing from the back of the drawer a large green bag bulging with scrap metal. “I posted on a few forums, followed a few blogs, yeah, until I realised that, like, most people who talk about the magic shit on the internet are just losers with candles and stuff, because you know, magicians are so fifteenth century about technology, I mean, guys, Wikipedia, it’s there, like, what are you doing with the whole books in cowskin shit?”

“So I guess you’re proud of your work.”

“Man, there’s so much more I can do, I mean, the culicidae was just the start. Magic is life, yeah, I mean, life is magic, wherever there’s fucking life there’s like magic just waiting to happen and I, I am the guy, I mean, I’m Captain America, I’m the stretchy guy from the Fantastic Four, I’m like ‘Da Vinci? Who is this guy?’ I mean, what the hell was he on about, two guys with their arms sticking out in different directions, like what the fuck is that all about, hello? Here!” A broken bulb was held aloft in triumph, the glass smashed out at the top, and the filament glowing a gentle red. “Oh, man, when we plug this in it’s gonna be like, I mean it’s gonna be like… I don’t even know what it’s gonna be like but it’s gonna have, like, nitro!”

I put on my best smile. “Alan,” I said. “Don’t overreact here, because I can tell you’re committed to your work, but we might just have to put that on hold for a moment.”

His face began to fall.

“Alan,” I went on, all smiling firmness and thoughts of painkillers. “The culicidae. Very impressive, very good work, you should be proud, very grateful for all your efforts, and that. Now tell us how to destroy it.”

There was some shouting.

Then there was some wheedling.

Then there was a bit more shouting.

I leant my head against the wall, wrapped my arms around my ribs and let Templeman handle it. There was no winning an argument against Templeman; words washed over him like water over diamond.

I tuned out of the argument all the way to a cry of, “I don’t see why you need me anyway, yeah, I mean it’s not like I didn’t give you everything with a fucking manual for, like, dorks.”

“There’s been a complication,” said Templeman. “It’s not acting within its basic operational parameters.”

Stunned silence. Then a defensive flailing of hands and a cry of, “And I hope you’re not gonna try and, like, blame me because, sorry, what I made was ace and if there’s something wrong with the system, then I’m gonna tell you, it’s a wetware, not a software thing okay man?”

“Can we just go back to the part where you said that the Council could deal with the problem?”

Alan looked surprised to hear me speak, then blurted, “Well, yeah, because I, like, gave them the remote control and I mean, duh, it comes with an ‘off’ setting so I don’t see why they can’t just, like, fucking turn it off, you know.”

I looked at Templeman, eyebrows raised.

“Mr Mayor… we could turn the culicidae… I think
‘off’ is a little vague, but we could control it to a degree. But as your own encounter with the creature has demonstrated, its behaviour has been… erratic. It shouldn’t have attacked you, to begin with, and now…”

“Whoa there!” Alan was on his feet. “Did it, like, attack you?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re, like… how old?”

“Everyone’s old when you’re seventeen, and I’m not,” I snapped. I turned back to Templeman. “Define ‘erratic.’ ”

“In its dormant state, the culicidae doesn’t have a fully embodied physical form,” said Templeman. “It reverts to its constituent parts: glass and slate, mostly, allowing it to be stored in a couple of Dumpsters for deployment around the city.”

“And can I just say, yeah, that it was, like, pure fucking genius getting it to do that,” said Alan, adding, “It
attacked
you?”

“That’s right.”

“Way out! And you’re not dead—that’s like mega. You know, respect, man. Respect.”

“Let’s stick with how everything’s gone wrong, shall we? A couple of Dumpsters, dormant state, okay; what’s causing the problem?”

“When recalled,” went on Templeman, “the culicidae should return to a fixed location and decompose into its dormant state. Last night, after your… encounter… we called it back and it… didn’t return.”

“You sure you did it right?” asked Alan.

Templeman glowered. “We did it exactly as we have done every procedure so far. To be frank, recently there have been… a few glitches. The return to a dormant state
should, for example, according to your notes, render it completely inert. But even in its decomposed mode, the culicidae has been moving.”

Alan gave a shriek, hands going to his head. “Oh, my God, you guys are like… you’re like Dumbo on magic mushrooms, you’re like Bambi looking at the big bad wolf and going meow, you’re like… you know what you guys are like? You’re like thick, that’s what you are like.”

“I’m with Alan on this one,” I offered, as Templeman allowed himself to look exasperated. “Sorry.”

“I told you this might happen! Did I not, like, say,” shrilled Alan. “Don’t overfeed, don’t overexpose, go easy in the first few months, you know? What have you been doing to my baby?”

“I fed it on spectres,” I volunteered.

“Course you did!” exclaimed Alan.

“And it killed a kid.”

Alan’s look of shock darted from me to Templeman and back, daring us to call it a joke. Then he tried to insist, “Uh-uh. Doesn’t kill, no death, that’s not what it’s built for. There’ll be all sorta conflicts in the main matrix, it’ll be like… I mean it’ll be like, I don’t even know what it’ll be like, so let’s ignore any other shit and just focus on the bad. Big, big bad.”

“How big, how bad?” I asked.

“Like… like mega bad!” exclaimed Alan. “Life is magic, dumbos. I mean, you put enough of life into anything and sooner or later it’s gonna pop, too much of anything too much, too much vitamin C is like, poison, you know what I’m saying. Too much sunlight you get skin cancer and too much feeding on the rage of, like, screwed-up kids who don’t know how to, like, chill and
talk to girls, and you get… you get
boom
! The culicidae was supposed to have a cooling-off period, it was supposed to have time to discharge all that shit it’s feeding on. You overdose it on too much stuff and of course things are going to get bad, it’s gonna fuck around with the internal wiring, you hear what I’m saying? You feed it on rage and rage is what you’re gonna get, haven’t any of you guys seen
The Empire Strikes Back
?”

“With you so far on the academic theory—now, how do we fix it?”

Another sweeping gesture of ‘damned if I know.’ “Hey, I gave you, like, the full specs when you asked. If you went and screwed around with my baby, I can’t, like, be held responsible for your pig-brained acts, you know?”

I smiled faintly. “You don’t really get how this is going to work, do you?” For a moment, Alan’s eyes met ours, and his Adam’s apple rose and fell.

“Okay,” I went on with a cheery loudness I did not feel. “Let’s work on basic principles. The Neighbourhood Eye has been so brilliantly successful that they’ve overfed the culicidae on the drained brains of kids across the city, and now it’s got enough juice in its system to allow it independent action, free from its usual control systems, as well as, while we’re on the subject, making it mad enough to kill with claws. So I’m guessing that textbook solutions are out. The question now becomes: what is it going to take to destroy it?”

Alan cringed. “That’s kinda a serious ask…”

“I’m asking.”

“I’m just saying…”

“We’re
telling
. What do we need to kill it before it kills someone else?”

The boy’s face twisted. “I guess… you’d have to summon it first.”

“I’m good at that.”

“And then you’d need to, like, bind it…”

“Tried that, didn’t work.”

“Yeah, what’d you use?”

“Police warning.”

“Well,
duh
, obviously that wouldn’t hold it,” grunted Alan. “It’s like, designed to feed on the kinda stuff that makes kids ignore coppers, you know? Rage, fury, fear, these aren’t, like, major-rational things that’re gonna make you listen to a cop, I mean, you asking for trouble or what?”

“Then what would you recommend to use to bind?”

“I dunno, I was just saying, yeah, police warning—really crappy idea.”

“Let’s say,” interjected Templeman, “that we manage to bind it. How do we destroy it?”

“Oh man,” groaned Alan, “I mean, I built it really well, you know? I put a lot of mean mother cool shit into that baby, she’s not going down easy.”

“Hypothesise,” I growled.

“Man, I don’t even know what you’re fucking saying, but I guess, if you were serious about decommissioning my baby, and I’m like, you know, major overreaction or shit, but okay, if you were serious… I guess the only way to, like, guarantee it would be to find a way to, like, bind it, because she’s built on a separable organo-runic matrix so, like, chopping her up isn’t going to hack it, unless you’ve got time to bury each individual piece in like, concrete, I mean, duh, no… what was I saying?”

“If I was serious about killing it.”

“Oh yeah. I guess you’d have to, like, crack open the
casing, yeah, and like, wear really big gloves, yeah, and maybe, like, find a way to pull out her heart. ’Cos that’s where the spell got written, you know, I mean, that’s where my best work was at. The rest is just, like, show.”

“It’s got a heart.”

“Sure, yeah. All the best summonings gotta have a core, a focal point, something to make it all go
splat
.” Fingers waggled to explain ‘splat.’ “That’s what makes them great, you know. I mean, it’s also what makes them weak so I, like, buried the core in the middle of the thorax, you know, behind as much armour and glass as I could find so, you know, make it hard to kill. Sorry.” He tried a smile, charming as a shark.

“So your advice, just so I can make sure I’m absolutely clear about this, is to summon the culicidae somehow, bind it somehow, open it up somehow, reach inside a spinning mass of glass and death somehow, and pull out its heart.”

“Uh… yeah, basically.”

“Anything else?”

“Ohohoh! The heart’ll be kinda crispy. I mean, like, hot, you know? I tried to make it more energy-efficient, get a couple of new resonance points shipped over from the States to try out, but it’s always that payoff, you know, between mass and efficiency and, at the end of the day, I figured, let’s go mega-big awesome cool, and screw the environment, you know?” He grinned the hopeful grin of a child caught stealing candy. “Hey—look, if you don’t, like, get killed or something doing this, then can I, uh, can I have the heart?”

“What?”

“Seriously, man, it’s like major cool work and I’m
really, like, it’s like my really best thing and—oh and yeah! If it, like, fell into the wrong hands it could do major-league-shit damage, because I’m telling you, it’s like got ‘go boogie’ written all over it in, like, runic form okay, so uh… can I have it back?”

“Did the Minority Council pay you to summon this thing?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Then no, you can’t have the bloody heart back.”

His face fell. “Oh. Okay. Would you have given it to me if I hadn’t been paid?”

“If they hadn’t paid you I’d have given you a thick ear.”

“Dude, that is, like, so un-cool and, like, totally not the mature thing.”

I staggered up, leaning on the bed-head. “ ‘Dude’!” I exclaimed, dragging down a ragged breath. “You’re the guy who summoned a creature that sucks the brains out of kids your own age, and can I just take this moment to say that while I’m not exactly grammar 101 guy myself, you suck. I mean, you really do. I’ve been chased, kicked, clawed at and generally had a really shitty couple of days, and you’re calling me ‘dude’? Which part of me is so dude-like in your eyes? Is it the guy who stands above the coffins as they’re lowered into the ground, the sorcerer with blood on his hands, the friendly bloke being hunted by bloodhounds with teeth of acid and claws of crimson, the Midnight Mayor with a scar on his palm and the eyes of the dragon at his back, or the electric angels blazing fury in our blood? Just what are you so pally with? And you—you’re seventeen and the monster you’ve summoned has sucked the souls from we know not how many innocent kids, and you think you can speak to us at all?”