The Man From the Diogenes Club Read online

  Richard tried to stride towards Leech, but wind held him back. He forced himself, inch by inch, out into the open, struggling against pellets of ice to take the few crucial steps.

  Queen Bee-Alice creaked, head turning like the world before the BBC TV news. The novelty bumblebees bounced over her, a crown or a halo. She had giant, wrecking-ball fists. Sharon Kellett, junior meteorologist. Two years out of a polytechnic, with a boyfriend in the Navy and a plan to be national weather girl on the television station Derek Leech wanted to start up. She was among the first casualties of the Winter War. Dead, but not yet fallen. Richard ached at the life lost.

  Leech shucked his snug-at-the-crotch, flappy-at-the-ankles trousers. He wore mint-green Y-fronts with electric blue piping.

  Richard got to the Great Enchanter and crooked an arm around his neck.

  ‘I won’t let you do this,’ he shouted in his ear.

  ‘You don’t understand, Jeperson,’ he shouted back. At this volume, attempted sincerity sounded just like whining. ‘I have to. For the greater good. I’m willing to sacrifice my – or anyone’s – life to end this.’

  Richard was taken aback, then laughed.

  ‘Nice try, Derek,’ he said. ‘But it won’t wash.’

  ‘It won’t, will it?’ replied Leech, laughing too.

  ‘Not on your nellie.’

  ‘I still have to go through with this, though. You understand, Jeperson? I can’t pass up the opportunity!’

  Leech twisted as if greased in Richard’s grip, and shot a tight, knuckly fist into his stomach. Even through layers of protective gear, Richard felt the piledriver blow. He lost his hold on Leech and the Great Enchanter followed the sucker-punch with a solid right to the jaw, a kick to the knee, and another to the goolies. Richard went down, and took an extra kick – for luck – in his side.

  ‘“You rearn now, Grasshopper,”’ said Leech, fingers pulling the corners of his eyes, ‘“not to charrenge master of ancient and noble art of dirty fighting!”’

  Leech couldn’t help gloating. Stripped to his underpants, whipped by sleet, skin scaled by gooseflesh, his expression was a mask of ugly victory. His exultant, grin showed at least a hundred and sixty-eight teeth. Was this the Great Enchanter’s true face?

  ‘Really think you can make a deal with the Cold?’

  Leech wagged his finger. ‘You’re not getting me like that, Grasshopper. I’m no Clever Dick. I’m not going to explain my wicked plan and give you a chance to get in the way. I’m just going to do what I’m going to do.’

  Richard had a lump in his fist, an ice-chunk embedded with frozen gravel. His eyes held Leech’s gaze, but his hand was busy with the chunk, which he rolled in the snow.

  ‘You didn’t go to public school, did you, Derek?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘You might have missed a trick.’

  Richard sat up and, with practised accuracy, threw the heavy-cored snowball at Leech’s forehead. The collision made a satisfying sound. Richard’s heart surged with immature glee and he recalled earlier victories: as an untried Third Form bowler, smashing the centre-stump and putting out the astonished captain of the first XI; on an autumn playground, wielding a horse chestnut fresh from the branch to split the vinegar-hardened champion conker of the odious Weems-Deverell II.

  A third eye of blood opened above Leech’s raised brows. His regular eyes showed white and he collapsed, stunned. He lay, twitching, on the snow.

  Queen Bee-Alice made no move. Richard hoped she was impartial.

  Unable to leave even Derek Leech to freeze, Richard picked him up in a fireman’s lift and tossed him inside the building – slamming the doors after him. He didn’t know how much time he had before Leech’s wits crept back.

  He took off his furs. Cold bit, deeper with each layer removed. He went further than Leech, and eventually stood naked in the blizzard. Everything that could shrivel, turn blue or catch frost did so. When the shivering stopped, when sub-zero (if not sub-absolute zero) wind-blast seemed slightly warm, he recognised the beginnings of hypothermia. There was no more pain, just a faint pricking all over his body. Snow packed his ears and deafened him. He was calm, light-headed. Flashes popped in his vision, as the cold did something to his optic nerves he didn’t want to think about. He shut his eyes, not needing the distraction. There were still flashes, but easier to ignore.

  He knelt before Queen Bee-Alice. Some feeling came from his shins as they sank into the snow – like mild acid, burning gently to the bone. His extremities were far distant countries, sending only the occasional report, always bad news. Cleaver had lain face down, but indoors – with no snowfall. Richard lay back, face up, flakes landing on his cheeks and forehead, knowing his whole body was gradually being covered by layer after layer. His hands were swollen and useless. With his arms he shovelled snow over himself. Snow didn’t melt on his skin – any body warmth was gone. He fought the urge to sit up and struggle free, and he fought the disorienting effects that came with a lowering of the temperature of his brain. He was buried quickly, as the Cold made a special effort to clump around him, form a drift, smooth over the bump, swallow him.

  As his body temperature lowered, he had to avoid surrendering to the sleep that presaged clinical death. His blood slowed, and his heartbeats became less and less frequent. He was using a meagre repertoire of yogic techniques, but couldn’t be distracted by the business of keeping the meat machine running.

  He opened up, physically, mentally, spiritually.

  In the darkness, he was not alone.

  Richard felt the Cold. It was hugely alive, and more alien than the few extra-terrestrials he’d come across. Newly awake, it stretched out, irritated by moving things and tiny obstructions. It could barely distinguish between piles of stone and people. Both were against the nature it had known. It had an impulse to clean itself by covering these imperfections. It preferred people wrapped in snow, not moving by themselves. But was this its genuine preference, or something learned from Clever Dick Cleaver?

  ‘Hello,’ shouted Richard, with his mind. ‘Permit me to introduce myself. I am Richard, and I speak for mankind.’

  Snow pressed around his face, like ice-fingers on his eyes.

  He felt tiny crystals forming inside his brain – not a killing flash-freeze, but the barest pinheads. The Cold was inside him.

  ‘You are not Man.’

  It wasn’t a voice. It wasn’t even words. Just snowflake hexagons in the dark of his skull, accompanied by a whisper of arctic winds. But he understood. Meaning was imprinted directly into his brain.

  To talk with the Cold, it had to become part of him. This was an interior monologue.

  ‘I am Richard,’ he tried to reply. It was awkward. He was losing his sense of self, of the concept of Richard. ‘I am not Man.’ Man was what the Cold called Cleaver. ‘I am another Man.’

  To the Cold, the idea of ‘other’ was still fresh, a shock which had come with its awakening. It had only just got used to Man/Cleaver. It was not yet ready for the independent existence of three billion more unique and individual intelligences. As Richard had guessed, it hadn’t previously had use for numbers beyond One/Self. The corpse-cores of its snowmen weren’t like Man/Cleaver. They were tools, empty of consciousness. Had Cleaver killed his staff because he knew more voices would confuse his ice mistress? Probably.

  What would Leech have said to the Cold? He would try to make a deal, to his own best advantage. Richard couldn’t even blame him. It was what he did. In this position, the Great Enchanter might become a senior partner, stifle the Cold’s rudimentary mind and colonise it, use it. Leech/Cold would grip the world, in a different, ultimately crueller way. He wanted slaves, not corpses; a treadmill to the inferno, not peace and quiet.

  What should Richard say?

  ‘Please,’ he projected. ‘Please don’t k— us.’

  There were no snowflakes for ‘kill’ or ‘death’ or ‘dead’. He shuffled through the tiny vocabulary, and tried again. ‘P
lease don’t stop/cover/freeze us.’

  The Cold’s mind was changing: not in the sense of altering its intention, but of restructuring its internal architecture. So far, in millennia, it had only needed to make declarative statements, and – until the last few days – only to itself. It had been like a goldfish, memory wiped every few seconds, constantly reaffirming, ‘This is me, this is my bowl, this is water, this is me, this is my bowl, this is water.’ Now, the Cold needed to keep track, to impose its will on others. It needed a more complicated thought process. It was on the point of inventing a crucial mode of address, of communication. It was about to ask its first question.

  Richard had got his point over. The Cold now understood that its actions would lead to the ending of Man/Richard. It had a sense Man/Richard was merely one among unimagined and unimaginable numbers of others. For it, ‘three’ was already equivalent to a schoolboy’s ‘gajillion-quajillion-infinitillion to the power of for ever’. The Cold understood Man/Richard was asking to be allowed to continue. The life of others was in the Cold’s gift.

  ‘Please don’t kill us,’ Richard repeated. There was a hexagram for ‘kill/end’ now. ‘Please don’t.’

  The Cold paused, and asked, ‘Why not?’

  X.

  It was getting dark, which didn’t bother Jamie. He lifted his goggles and saw in more detail. He also felt the cold less. Most of his team-mates were more spooked as shadows spread, but Gené was another night-bird. You’d never know she’d come close to having a dirty great icicle shoved all the way through her chest. Perhaps she had a little of the Shade in her. She’d said she knew Auntie Jenny.

  Regular Keith was bewildered about what had happened while he was away, and Susan was trying to fill him in. Sewell Head was quoting weather statistics since before records began. It was snowing even harder, and the slog to Alder wasn’t going to be possible without losing one or more of the happy little band. Finding shelter was a high priority. They were in the lee of Sutton Mallet chapel – which was small, but had a tower. The place was securely chained.

  ‘Can’t you break these?’ Jamie asked Gené.

  ‘Normal chains, yes. Chapel chains, I have a bit of a mental block about. Try the spoon-bender.’

  Susan stepped up and laid hands on the metal. She frowned, and links began to buckle.

  ‘Where’s Head?’ asked Keith.

  Captain Cleverclogs wasn’t with them. Jamie couldn’t understand why anyone would wander off. Had the last snowman got him?

  ‘Here are his tracks,’ said Gené.

  ‘I can’t see any,’ said Keith.

  ‘Trust me.’

  Jamie saw them too. Sewell Head had gone into a thicket of trees, just beyond what passed for the centre of Sutton Mallet. There were buildings on the other side.

  ‘I’ll fetch him back,’ he said.

  ‘We’re not being that stupid, Jamie,’ said Susan, dropping mangled but unbroken chains. ‘You go, we all go. No sense splitting up and getting picked off one by one.’

  She had a point. He was thinking like Dad, who preferred to work alone.

  Beyond the trees were ugly buildings. A concrete shed, temporary cabins.

  ‘This is Derek Leech’s weather research station,’ said Gené. ‘Almost certainly where all the trouble started.’

  Derek Leech was in the public eye as a smiling businessman, but Jamie’s dad called him ‘a human void’. Jamie had thought Dad a bit cracked on the subject of Derek Leech – like everyone else’s parents were cracked about long hair or short hair or the Common Market or some other bloody thing. He was coming round to thinking more of what his old man said.

  ‘Shouldn’t we stay away from here?’ cautioned Keith. ‘Aren’t we supposed to join up with folks more qualified than us?’

  ‘You mean grown-ups?’ asked Jamie.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Poor old Swellhead’ll be an ice lolly by the time you fetch a teacher.’

  Beside the building was a towering snowman. Bugs, grown to Kitten Kong proportions. The front doors were blown inward and jammed open by snowdrifts. It was a fair guess Head had gone inside. If he could get past the snow-giant, they had a good chance.

  ‘Susan,’ he said. ‘Can you concentrate on the snowman? At the first sign of hassle, melt the big bastard.’

  The woman snapped off a salute. ‘Since you ask so nicely,’ she said, ‘I’ll give it a whirl.’

  ‘Okay, gang,’ he said. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  They sprinted from the thicket to the doors. Bugs didn’t make a move, but Keith tripped and Gené had to help him up and drag him.

  Inside the building, which was an ice-palace, the wind was less of a problem, and they were protected from the worst of the snow. Overhead lights buzzed and flickered, bothering Jamie’s eyes. He slipped his goggles back on.

  They found Sewell Head in a room which might have been a mess hall. He was acting as a valet, helping a man dress in arctic gear. Jamie recognised the bloke from the telly. He was the one who said, ‘If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t own it.’ He must love lots of things, because he owned a shedload of them.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Derek. You must be the new Dr Shade.’

  Yes, Jamie realised. He must be.

  Leech’s smile jangled his shadow-senses. The dark in him was something more than night.

  ‘I’m a big fan of your father’s,’ said Leech. ‘I learned to read from tear-sheets of the newspaper strip they ran about his adventures. Ahh, “the Whooping Horror”, “the Piccadilly Gestapo”. How I longed for my own autogyro! I have a car just like Dr Shade’s. A ShadowShark.’

  Jamie remembered that there had been two Rollses in the snow. Whose was the other one?

  ‘Leech,’ said Gené, acknowledging him.

  ‘Geneviève Dieudonné,’ said Leech, cordially. ‘I thought you’d aged hundreds of years and died.’

  ‘I got better.’

  ‘Well done. Though live through the night before you pat yourself on the back too much. Where’s the rest of the army? The heavy mob. Ariadne, Jago, Mrs Michaelsmith, Little Rose? The Cold’s already got Jeperson. We need to go all-out on the attack if we’re to have a chance of stopping it.’

  ‘We’re it, right now,’ said Jamie.

  ‘You’ll have to do, then.’

  Jamie boiled inside at that. He didn’t even know the people Leech had listed. Whoever they might be, he doubted they’d have done as well against the snowmen.

  ‘Who might you be, my dear?’ Leech said to Susan.

  ‘I might be Susan Rodway. Or Susan Ames. Mum got remarried, and I have a choice.’

  ‘I know exactly who you are,’ said Leech. ‘Shade, why didn’t you say you had her? She’s not Rose Farrar or an Elder of the Kind, but she’s a bloody good start.’

  Susan began primping a bit at the attention. Jamie couldn’t believe she’d let this hand-kissing creep smarm her up like that. He’d never understand birds.

  ‘Now, Sewell,’ said Leech, addressing his instant orderly. ‘Get on the blower and tell Miss Kaye to pull her finger out. The telephone kit is in the laboratory down the hall. The room with the tied-up-and-gagged idiot in it. It’s simple to use. You’ll have the specs for it in your head somewhere.’

  Head meekly trotted out of the room. He was taking orders without question.

  Leech looked over the four of them – Jamie, Gené, Susan, Keith.

  ‘Susan,’ he said, ‘can you do something about the room temperature?’

  Susan, bizarrely, seemed smitten. ‘I can try,’ she said, and shut her eyes.

  A little warmth radiated from her. Some icicles started dripping. Jamie felt his face pricking, as feeling returned.

  ‘Good girl,’ said Leech. ‘You, young fellow-me-lad. Any chance of getting some tea going?’

  ‘Give it a try, sir,’ said Keith, hunting a kettle.

  Jamie already resented Derek Leech. For a start, he had released all those triple LPs of moaning woodwind hip
pies which got played over and over in student common rooms. Even if he weren’t the literal Devil, that alone made him a man not to be trusted. But he was magnetic in person, and Jamie felt a terrible tug – it would be easier to go along with Leech, to take orders, to not be responsible for the others. Dad could be like that too, but he always drummed it into Jamie that he should become his own man. Dad didn’t even disapprove of him being in a band rather than joining the night-wars – though he realised he’d done that anyway, as well. If he was the new Dr Shade, he was also a different Shade.

  It was Leech’s world too. If this big freeze was spreading, it was in his interest to side with the angels. If everyone was dead, no one would make a deal with him. No one would buy his crappy music or read his raggy papers.

  Jamie saw that Gené was sceptical of anything Leech-related, but Susan and Keith were already sucked in. Keith had found his grown-up, his teacher. Susan had found something she needed too. Jamie had been revising his impression of her all day. Leech saw at once that she was the most useful Talent in their crowd. Jamie hadn’t even noticed her at first, and he had been around Talents all his life. Susan Rodway was not only Shade-level or better in her abilities, but extremely good at keeping it to herself. She kept talking about the things she couldn’t do, or making light of the things she could.

  Leech had been briefly interested in Jamie, in Dr Shade – but he had instantly passed over him, and latched onto Susan.

  He realised – with a tiny shock – that he was jealous. But of whom? Susan, for going to the head of the class? Or Leech, for getting the girl’s attention? There wasn’t time for this.

  ‘What did you say about Richard Jeperson?’ Gené asked Leech.

  Jamie knew Jeperson was Fred and Vanessa’s guv’nor at the Diogenes Club. He tied in with Gené too.

  ‘Mad, definitely,’ said Leech, with just a hint of pleasure. ‘Dead, probably. The Cold took him – it’s a thinking thing, not just bad weather – and he went outside, naked. He lay down and let himself be buried. I tried to stop him, but he fought like a tiger, knocked me out… gave me this.’

  Leech indicated a fresh wound on his forehead.