Tidelands: I-Seven (13)
Man in Black. Barbecue.
Given the decisive brevity of the evening’s first two contests, or maybe just to heighten the anticipation, there is now a lull before the scheduled third and final bout, which the organisers fill with a diverse range of diversionary spectacle.
Fluorescent drones whirr and swoop in an intricately orchestrated dance to a fittingly orchestral score, boomed out across the bay by bass-heavy speakers that skip and hop the sand into strange geometric patterns. The arena’s screens replay highlights from the evening’s events so far, accompanied by the sort of plodding punditry and banal analysis that Squirrel is already familiar with from more conventional forms of sport on the Feeds (“Well, Clive, if that was me, I’d have gone for the head. Can’t fight without your head, can you?”). The food stalls and pop-up bars maintain a constant bustling trade, as do other less legitimate hawkers, who proffer the standard buffet of substances promising to chemically enhance your evenings’s enjoyment, while others equally discreetly offer themselves as alternative forms of sensory titillation.
But Denton remains both deaf and blind to these inducements, preferring instead the company of a man who has sidled up to him shortly after the end of the last bout, and with whom he has been head-down in earnest confab ever since. The man is garbed head to toe in black, sporting, despite the evening, dark wraparound shades, offset with a black skullcap and a seamless bodysuit of the most curious dark material, something so unreflective that, black-hole-like, it sucks in all available light. Squirrel stands next to Barnaby, both of them trying discreetly to listen in, but the men’s voices are too low, and Denton’s forbidding glare is its own forcefield, keeping all would-be eavesdroppers at an inaudible distance. Eventually, something is agreed, and the man nods once, turns and fades back into the night, leaving Denton to sigh expansively, scratching his leonine jaw as his eyes stray up toward the top of the leftmost headland.
“Need to see a man about a dog,” he says eventually – then, almost distractedly, his eyes still on the headland, “You should come too, I suppose.”
At which Barnaby begins to move toward him – but is stopped by Denton’s right hand, the flat of its palm held up in prohibition.
“Not you,” he growls. “Her.”
And motions his head at Squirrel.
Another drone guides them across the dunes, lighting their way along a foot-worn path that threads up through thickets of fern and gorse, ten minutes later depositing them among cowpats and rabbit droppings on the top of the headland, and from where they not only have a prime vantage of the arena but a full panorama of the bay. Squirrel catches up the last few steps that she’s fallen behind during their climb to find Denton stood, hands on hips, pausing to enjoy the majestic view (but more likely, just pretending to, as she doubts his workouts include much cardio – if in fact he does any). But it is spectacular, and they stand a silent moment in unlikely communion, taking in the natural majesty before them: the moon, like a painter, flecking the crests of the subdued waves, the outlines of the multifarious vessels, with highlights of silvery white, daubing in the sparse clouds with an impressionist’s bravura, before endowing the whole scene with a soft wash of ghostly luminescence. Aside from the distant boom and thump from the arena below, all is serene, just the occasional swish of mop-ear and bobtail chasing each other through the bracken, busy about making more of themselves. How many others have stood here? Or places like it, the limitless horizon an unmarked canvas for their own dreams of escape, freedom or adventure; but to her, presenting something more complicated, a reminder of an unremembered point of origin, of nameless dangers escaped from, even worse perhaps than those she has exchanged them for, the hateful devil she knows. And as Denton eyes the same prospect, she wonders what he sees.
The drone, which has patiently bobbed there while they take in the scenery, now urges them on, guiding them along the ridge toward the same viewing platform she’d spied from the beach, and they walk the rest of the way side by side.
“These are serious people, little Squirrel. Have you skinned, boned and barbecued, and no one would say peep. So,” he turns to reinforce his point with a superfluous glower, “best behaviour.”
She meekly nods.
“Do keep your ears open, though.” Another pointed look. “So to speak.”
The same man in black from earlier is stood beside the entrance, a door-shaped rectangle of equally opaque blackness with no visible handle; he turns as they approach to lead the way, simply walking through it like the surface of a night-black pool, as if reintegrating into the element that birthed him.
They emerge into a wide dome, atmospherically lit from judiciously positioned lanterns glowing with the evening’s now-familiar colour-theme of firefly orange, and into a hubbub of chatter, subdued music, and the same sports-style commentary accompanying projections popping up here and there along the walls, but reduced now to a lulling volume. The space is on two levels, the lower into which they have emerged hosting tables of assorted sparkling drinks and barbecued meats (triggering in her a reminder of Denton’s warning). Among the offerings sip and graze a sprinkling of beautiful, exotically attired young men and women, chatting and laughing with their less beautiful companions, or solitarily gazing out through the convex glass wall that curves outwards around the edges of the room. And all of whom move briskly off, flitting away like gazelle frighted from the watering hole, as the man in black leads Denton and Squirrel through. The upper level, with its better vantage, hosts a more select gathering, just a handful of seated figures, to which their guide makes his way, up a wide set of stairs whose individual steps float unaided by any visible means of support.
This upper level has the same convex wall of glass as the lower, but is bigger, wider, and tilted down at a slight angle so as better to accommodate the spectacle on the beach below, a semi-circle of comfortably padded seating curved before it. The man in black leans over and whispers something to a crisply-dressed middle-aged man sat nuzzled between two more exotically beautiful male and female creatures, turning his somewhat jowly head to listen. He glances in the direction of Denton and Squirrel as he receives the communication and murmurs something in reply, which causes the man in black to nod and rise, and turn back to motion with his head to join them. As they approach, the two young creatures stand and make their way back past them and down to the lower level, Squirrel noting as they do that both have actual tails, swishing and twisting lithely with an unsettlingly prehensile motion that reminds her of the nightmeerkats.
The seated man smiles as they near, but doesn’t get up, instead leaning back, reaching with one hand for a tall, delicately stemmed glass from a small nearby table as he gestures curtly with the other for them to sit along from him. The man in black retreats a few feet to lean against the window, a judicious point from which to both look down upon the activities on the beach, and cast occasional glances back at the seated man and his new guests.
The seated man sips his drink. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “What can they do with those tails?”
He laughs, and Denton gives a little shrug.
“So.” The man scrutinises Squirrel. “Is this her?”
Denton nods again.
“Not much to look at, is she?”, chewing his cheek.
And looks are everything to such as him. Squirrel knows nothing about the man, and little more of fashion, but still can appraise both in the way that she’s been taught: the smell of money in the gorgeous softness of the jacket her hand itches to reach out and smooth; the little cosmetic touches – nails, hands, hair, even eyebrows – that receive someone’s regular, perhaps daily attention; the accessories – cufflinks, rings, chains, a little badge on his lapel embossed with some sort of crest. But still – his jowliness, his waistline’s rebellious bulk – all the pampering and sumptuous attire insufficient to counter the effects of his own natural appetites.
“Are we to get a demonstration?” the man asks.
“The final,” Denton says.
“Ah!” The man raises his finely sculpted eyebrows. “High stakes!” But the eyes beneath them do not move from Squirrel’s face. “You know,” he continues, “I’ve always wondered what makes a Natural. I mean, is it genetic? A random mutation?” He shakes his head. “But if it is, we’ve not been able to identify it yet. Now that would be handy, wouldn’t it?” He takes a pensive sip of his drink. “But no, nothing so simple as genes, I suspect. Something else at work – whatever that is.” He sighs. “So I assume you’ll be wanting some sort of recompense, a finder’s fee? Shall we discuss terms?” He rises and gestures for them to retreat to the far-right side of the window. Squirrel moves to join them, at which the man in black steps swiftly, adroitly forward to mutely block her path with a dancer’s poise, and instead motions her over to the window’s other end.
She obeys, attempts to distract herself from her anxieties with the spectacular view, but which – the bots, drones and men mopping up blood and body parts, recombing the sand, before the final bout – has somewhat of the opposite effect.
“I do hope you’re not wasting my time.”
What’s that?
“But if she comes through?”
Clear, but barely a whisper.
“Then you get what you’ve asked for.”
It’s the window.
She looks up and sees Denton nodding at the man’s reply.
And then she remembers. Like down near the pier, that long curved wall at the back of the old open-air theatre, where she and Lily used to mess around. You could say something really quiet, and the other would hear it right over the other side. Like she’s hearing this conversation now.
“And if she doesn’t…?” the man continues.
“There’s definitely something there. Stake my life on it.”
“Careful what you’re willing to wager.” The man smiles grimly.
“Take her on trial, then. She works out, you pay me. She doesn’t, call it a gift.”
“To be frank, I’m not exactly short of livestock. And as I said,” – the man eyes her, and she hurriedly looks away, back down into the arena – “she’s not much to look at, is she? Too scrawny.”
Denton’s face disagrees – her eyes flicking briefly back up to register that grimace she has come to know too well.
“I think she’ll scrub up nice. Just needs to grow into herself a bit, you know? A few good meals?”
She can feel the man’s eyes weighing her up.
“Perhaps,” he says. “Still, a bit young looking.”
“There’s some have a taste for that.”
The man accedes to this point with a tilt of his head.
“Look, you can see right down into the stables,” says Lily’s ghost, stepping out of the ether to stand at Squirrel’s shoulder. She points down the cliff right below them, into where they house the mounts between bouts, the view a backstage perk for the eyried elite usually veiled from hoi polloi. “Told you, only thing that spoils it is the company.”
Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi & fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. Part 1 is free to read, but you can keep up with the story by signing up for exclusive access, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments as they appear.