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  “I’m here, I’m here.”

  “What’s going to happen to me then?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  My phone began to ring. I eased Melody onto the floor and put a cushion under her head. Then I ran back to the kitchen for my phone. It had slid across the floor, under the kitchen island. I dropped onto my knees and grabbed for it.

  The guy was more awake now. It must have finally hit home that there was something serious going on.

  He sounded very pleased with himself.

  “We have someone in Chelsea. He’s not Field Ops but he has a flask. His name is Paul Silverman. He thinks it’ll take him ten, fifteen minutes. He’s on a bicycle.”

  “Tell me you mean motorbike.”

  “Bicycle,” he said again.

  “Jesus . . . I mean . . . just tell him to hurry, OK?”

  “He’s already set off.”

  I went back to Melody. Still on the phone, I gave a thumbs-up, mouthed, “Help’s coming.”

  “Mr. Copeland,” said the man in the office. “We’re also obliged to call 911.”

  “Well, call. Don’t ask me, I’m busy.”

  “Mr. Copeland—”

  I hit end call. Fifteen minutes. Would she last that long? She was breathing heavily. Her brow shone like oil. I brought the cup to her again and she said, “You’re trying to make me sick, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Won’t work.” She took a breath. It strained. She had been cold, icy cold, but now I felt the heat radiating off her. “Listen,” she said. “Listen . . .” I leaned closer. “He’s all through me. Everywhere. Thing you gotta do—you gotta amputate.”

  “What?”

  “You gotta amputate—from the neck down—”

  She began to laugh and when that turned into choking she rolled on her side and I slapped her back again. She rolled back, sucking in air, gasping for it. She said my name again. I took her hand. Then I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped her brow.

  I felt the heat right through the cloth. It was like the thing was cooking her, every system on overdrive.

  “It hurts . . .”

  “We’ll get you out of this. There’s someone coming. Help’s on the way. Special equipment. We’ll put things right. Don’t worry. Don’t . . .”

  If only I’d had a pack with me. The flask, the cables . . . But you don’t expect to do a retrieval, just like that, do you? Here in New York City?

  She tried to drink again. The liquid trickled down her chin, soaking her blouse front. Her lips moved, but when I leaned close, she made no sense. Random syllables, nonsense words. Glossolalia. Talking in tongues. There was a smell in the air, a taste in my throat like bad avocado.

  Then her skin began to ripple.

  I saw it in her face and hands, little movements, like a flickering of light. I hesitated before touching her again. Her skin was very soft, almost like velvet. It stilled where I touched it, but the movement went on all around, and continued when I took my hand away. It was like a breeze skimming across her. Her breathing was now very harsh. Her mouth was open. It sounded like the air was tearing out her throat.

  I talked to her. I tried to calm her, soothe her.

  I wasn’t very good at it.

  Several centuries went by.

  And then a buzzer sounded, and I looked up.

  Someone was at the door.

  Chapter 10

  The Cable Guy

  Paul Silverman was thirtyish, a stocky, unshaven white guy in an army shirt and jogging pants. He had two bulging plastic bags from D’Agostino’s. I hoped they weren’t both full of groceries.

  He was sweating. He was red in the face. When he bent to put the bags down I could see the moisture shining in a kind of surf-mark, just under his hairline.

  “I could have given you my shopping list,” I said.

  I opened the bags. The first was full of cables, neatly coiled and tied. There was a console in there, too, a kind I hadn’t used since my apprentice days. In the other was the flask. Again, it was an old design—ten years, at least.

  “Does this stuff work?”

  He shrugged.

  I said, “Got a screwdriver?”

  He was dragging his bike in through the door but he paused, reached in his pocket and produced a wallet with a half a dozen little screwdrivers. The guy was prepped, at least.

  “I don’t leave home without them.”

  “Good. Take the plug off the TV, or anything else. Put it on this.” I showed him the power lead for the console.

  Melody suddenly shuddered, gave a long, sobbing howl. Silverman stiffened. I don’t think he’d even realized she was there. “Jeez.” He went across to her. “Have you called 911? She’s hot, she needs ice, what’s wrong with her?”

  “Hey,” I said. “Just fix the plug, OK?”

  He looked at me, his face scrunched up, confused, scared, maybe even hostile.

  I said, “Don’t touch her. Do exactly what I say. This is her only chance of getting through.”

  He bit his lip, nodded quickly.

  I said, “What department are you?”

  “Department . . . ?”

  “Registry, right?”

  “What makes you think I’m Registry?”

  My turn to frown. But I told him, “Come on. Let’s move.”

  I started laying out the cables. There wasn’t much finesse in it. I had to tighten up a few connections. Everything seemed to be there, at least. I pushed the furniture aside. Melody was breathing now in little, tiny gasps. They sounded like hiccups. I talked while I worked. “I’m going to run a charge through the cables. I’m going to drive the god out. This is my job, this is what I do. I’ve done it loads of times. The god goes in the flask. I close the flask . . .” I knew she wasn’t following it. I hoped the sound of my voice was comforting to her. Or maybe I was trying to reassure myself. I don’t know which.

  I wrapped her in the cables till she looked like a Christmas tree. I put the flask between her knees because I didn’t know where else to put it.

  Like I said: no finesse.

  Silverman had the plug on the power lead. Good. I started linking it all up: flask to cables, cables to console, console to mains.

  “This thing’s a hundred years old. Jesus.”

  Silverman, wisely, said nothing. But he was watching with an odd sort of intensity, like a lecher at a strip club. It really was an odd kind of a look.

  The socket sparked when I plugged in. I went over to the console, switched on.

  I’ll be honest: I was half expecting that the damn thing would be dead. But it wasn’t. The lights flashed on. A faint hum filled the room.

  Business.

  “You’re, um, you’re Field Ops, right?” said Silverman. There was a kind of frightened fascination in his eyes.

  I nodded.

  “You’ve done this before?”

  He gave a tight smile.

  “Not like this,” I said.

  “Ah. Um.”

  “You can leave if you want.”

  “No, I’ll—um. I’ll stay.”

  The principle is simple. You run a charge through the cables. The god is sensitive, and moves away from it. But of course, the cable is a loop, so there’s actually no escaping. Or not unless you’re seriously unlucky. And within the first loop is a second loop, so you run a charge through that, and on and on, driving it inwards, till your little god drops straight into the flask, like a lobster in a pot. The practice can be quite a bit more complex, but the theory’s as easy as they come.

  Usually, I’d work in a church or temple or on ancient, sacred ground. Once, in the ruins of an old Iraqi city, where I got the Russian mafia on my tail, just to make life interesting. I’ve known retrievals done in sacred groves, and wishing wells, and even in a London railway station.

  But to take a god out of a human being?

  Never.

  I could kill her, just by trying. And if I didn’t try . . . then
she was dead for sure.

  I hit the first charge, to contain the thing, to let it know that I was there, and there was no point settling down for the night.

  Melody jolted. She folded stick-like arms around herself. Her feet came off the floor.

  I hit the second charge and she shook and shuddered and an awful, trembling wail burst from her throat.

  Someone was beating on the door. It had been going on a while before I noticed it. I told Silverman, “You see to that, will you?”

  There were cables all over her. It was ridiculous. I hoped her heart would hold out. I hoped—

  The flask went over, fallen on its side. That shouldn’t be a problem. I ran another charge. She yelled. She shrieked. The sound rose into frequencies I didn’t think the human voice could reach. Furniture shook. Ornaments started to dance off the sideboard, dropping on the floor with sharp little thuds.

  The skin on her face was moving. Something was making patterns in her flesh, whorls and twists and swirls, all just below the surface, like some kind of violent weather system, racing through her body.

  There were voices at the door. I had been moving slowly, trying not to cause her too much pain, but now I knew I’d have to take the risk. I hit three short bursts in quick succession, fast as I dared. Her body arched, bounced, and her tongue lolled out of her mouth. Her false teeth had come loose.

  A couple of paramedics appeared. Silverman was trying to take the flak for me. I was grateful. Someone started shouting and I yelled back, “Five minutes!” and I ran another charge. I could feel it, burning, tingling in the air, and I thought, maybe this one, maybe this’ll do it—

  And the lights went out. The equipment died. The power just drained away. And in the pitch dark Melody Duchess screamed and screamed until her voice was no more than a gasp and wheeze like air escaping from a leaky tire.

  Somebody pushed me out the way. There was a flashlight shining and a lot of shouting, then someone found the electric panel and reset the circuit breakers. The lights came on.

  I said, “This isn’t what you think—”

  But my part in it all was over then, and everybody knew it.

  Well, except for me.

  Chapter 11

  Indiana Jones

  They wouldn’t let me in the ambulance. No surprise, perhaps. They left me in that dingy, over-stuffed apartment. Silverman wanted to talk, only I hurried him outside and shut the door. After that, I simply stood there in the wreckage, wondering what to do. It was the most desolate feeling. There was debris all around me—thirty-year-old magazines, and a child’s doll, and photographs of people that I didn’t know and likely no one else did either, and a souvenir sombrero pinned up on the wall as if it were an antique shield . . .

  And for no particular reason, I looked round for the strongbox. It had been kicked across the room, against a sofa piled with clothes, all neatly stored in plastic bags—the fashions of a bygone age. I went over, nudged it with my foot, and saw the paper tucked inside.

  I suppose it was just superstition, but I felt a real fear as I reached down and snatched it out. The god was gone, but it seemed a kind of residue remained, a trepidation I could not shake off.

  I took the paper and unfolded it.

  It was a photocopy. A cartoon, printed off-center, in thick, black, grainy lines. No words. An ugly, in-your-face kind of thing, and not at all the sort of picture I’d imagined Melody would like.

  A boy—a teenager, perhaps—was staring out at me, over his shoulder, holding up an apple with a bite chomped out of it. His brows made a V and his mouth made a V, and his whole face had been scrunched into a wicked, grinning leer. It was vulgar and defiant and in some way challenging, and I felt that my reactions to it were too strong, over-wrought by what I’d just been through, and by the former presence of a god.

  I put the paper in my pocket. I looked around for anything that might have some connection with the job that might explain things or else give me a clue to what was going on here. But there was nothing. I picked the flask up, shoved the cables in an empty bag, then went downstairs, and called a taxi.

  I was ready to drop. But the night was far from over.

  They had the kind of lights that drain the life out of you. Even if you’re well, they still make you look sick.

  I was in the ER waiting room. I was there with the victims and the worried families and the old Hispanic man who started praying very loudly and whom everyone was too polite to interrupt.

  I’d been sitting about ten minutes when Silverman arrived, red-faced and sweaty. He dropped into the seat beside me, ran his hand over his thinning hair.

  “State of the traffic, bike’s as good as a car in this town.” He drew a breath. “You’ve got the cables, by the way.”

  I’d stuffed the plastic bag under my seat.

  “Flask, too,” he said.

  “You can have the cables. The flask, I’ll keep. In case we got something.”

  “Ah.” He sat back. “So we might have done it?”

  He seemed genuinely thrilled.

  “Don’t know. Not hopeful, to be honest.”

  “Oh. Shit.”

  “They said she was alive when she came in. That’s if they’re telling me the truth.”

  I did not trust doctors. I did not trust nurses. And receptionists, I trusted even less than that.

  Silverman clicked his tongue. Then he reached under my chair, pulling out the cables bag. He began to disentangle the mess, the wires pooling round his feet. This brought some odd looks from the others in the waiting room.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’m grateful for your help. You were actually pretty good back there, you know? But if you’re not Registry, how’ve you got the gear?”

  “Oh—that.” He was stretching out the cable like a yarn of wool, winding it between his hand and elbow. He broke off to reach into his pocket and pass me a card.

  I read: Paul Silverman, filmmaker, educational consultant, museum displays, film and photography, design, text

  There was a quote from Aristotle (at least, he got the credit for it):

  Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

  “Hall of Science,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Flushing Meadows?”

  “What about them?”

  “Museum, you know? It’s an exhibition. ‘We Got the Power.’ Shitty title. Anyway. I’m working on it. Part of a team. Design, installations. All that.”

  “And the Registry’s just . . . handing out equipment?”

  “They’re financing the thing. Well, mostly them. The city’s putting in, and a couple of private trusts—”

  “Oh, I get it. In my country, we call that, ‘advertising’.”

  He smiled. “Sponsorship,” he countered.

  “And it’s going to be fair and unbiased and well-researched and tell you that the Registry offers the safest and most viable source of electric power, sustainable, clean, and all the rest?”

  He nodded.

  “Thought it might.”

  He paused a moment. Then he said, “You don’t believe it?”

  “Oh, I believe it. Couldn’t not, could I? Besides,” I said, “you don’t want Fukoshima in your backyard, do you?” I shrugged. “You’ll need to find a new flask, by the way.”

  “You said. Newark, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where it’s decanted.”

  “You’ve got the terms. It’s funny, though. Only a few years back we were trying to keep it all hush-hush. Thought if people knew what we were up to, there’d be trouble. Specially over here . . .”

  “You’re kind of an old hand at this, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  “Seen some changes.”

  The inner doors opened, and I looked up, thinking it might be something about Melody; but the man in the white coat just whispered to the receptionist, then disappeared again.

  “You know,” said Silve
rman, “if we could get together sometime? I know this is not—I mean, it’s a stressful time, but, you know, I’ve heard all the official stuff, and to get it from a Field Op—that perspective . . .”

  I wondered how he managed to stay so fired up, at this ungodly hour of the night.

  He said, “I hear you guys can be pretty . . . unconventional, yeah?”

  “We’re that, all right.”

  “You don’t toe the party line. I was actually . . . warned about you. Kind of. Told if any of you turned up, you probably weren’t reliable.”

  A young woman in a wheelchair glided by, pushed by a guy in scrubs. None of the staff here was old. I wondered what the burnout rate was. How long you could handle it. And whether it was any easier than my job.

  Silverman said, “That sort of piqued my interest . . . ?”

  He waited for me to say something. I didn’t, and he went on, “See, this is my third month doing this, and you’re the first, the only Field Op I have had the chance to sit and talk with.”

  “We move around a lot.”

  “Yeah. Always moving on, right?” He put a hand up to his brow, to hair that was already too far gone to need brushing from his face. “It’s kind of like . . . meeting Indiana Jones, you know?”

  “Is it?”

  “Kidding, kidding.”

  “Yeah,” I told him. “Funny joke . . .”

  Chapter 12

  Death and Breakfast

  She didn’t make it.

  Melody.

  That’s when the joking stopped.

  I kept looking around under the sickly lighting, wanting to move on, go somewhere, anywhere.

  But there was nowhere left to go.

  I felt like somebody had punched a hole straight through me.

  I’d seen her take a fragment of a god, roll it in her fingers, then slip it in her mouth . . . and any time, I could have stopped her. I could have reached out, snatched it from her. If I’d read her right. If I’d have guessed.