Trafalgar Square, early. Quite why he had walked here, Richard did not know. The atmosphere around the fountains was odd, just a few homeless people – people like me – sleeping on the benches, roused and rousted by cleaning staff. Commuters were waiting at the bus stops and streaming toward their offices; down here it was too early for tourists. It was as if the old statues and monument had a viscosity that slowed their passage through time, as if their awakening came later than the streets. Wanting to be different from the others groaning awake on the benches, Richard pulled off his garish sweatshirt, quickly replacing his cap on his head. With luck, he looked like someone on his way to school, not a vagrant. But he wondered, as he saw the grime on the clothes of those who had slept here overnight, how long he could pass himself off as normal, how long before he became invisible like these others.
"I'm sorry," a turbaned worker was saying to someone, no, two people, "but you have to move on. Here, this'll get you breakfast."
"You're very kind, young man."
"Why don't you pop over to the station for a cuppa? They'll let you sit a while."
The vagrants he was addressing were a white-haired couple, their clothes frayed but not stained, fragile faces clean but not fresh. They were rosy-cheeked from sunlight, and they smiled at the man for his kindness. Richard could only stand and watch them walk away toward Charing Cross, where they might have an hour or two sitting on hard metal seats before someone moved them on. As they walked, the woman slipped her hand into the man's, and they continued on with the delicate, heartbreaking sweetness of aged love.
It's not supposed to be like this.
There are no comfortable places to sit – or lie down – in the external world of stone and concrete buildings. Indoors, there are few places of refuge for someone who has no money to pay. Already he was learning the hardness of the world. He felt like a swimmer far from shore, face dipped beneath the surface for longer and longer periods of time; soon enough he would be under and sinking.
"It's not right, is it?" It was the man in the turban, addressing him. "An old couple like that."
"Er… No, sir."
"Which is why you work hard in school, isn't it? My daughter is top of her class."
"Oh. Good."
The man's smile was disconcerting in its warmth, shaming Richard for not revealing his true nature: a runaway, and worse. I'm a criminal now. Inside that college, he'd handed over contraband – drugs or who knew what – and if he hadn't dodged the cameras as well as he'd intended, then the police would be hunting him down. Maybe he should try to get away from London. But nowhere was under tighter surveillance than the railways.
"Hallo, Richie-boy," said a familiar voice.
"Jayce!"
"Vodka Mary saw you head across Vauxhall Bridge. Thought I'd follow."
"Who's-? Never mind."
The expression on the turbaned man's face seemed to be melting downward. Richard's stomach lurched with shame.
"I get ya," said Jayce. "Come on."
They moved through well-dressed crowds, heading along the Strand. In shop doorways, the destitute sat awake or still slept, under shabby blankets or cardboard boxes. Soon they would have to move as the businesses opened. At least one form was so still that it could be dead; but no one was checking. Richard felt sick as he kept pace with Jayce, because he was like the rest, doing nothing to help. From some doorways came "Spare any change?" – directed to those who had money, not toward two homeless youths encroaching on choice territory. Hard looks sent a message even Richard could read, however confusing he found this new world.
In the shops, glowglass windows doubled as display screens, reporting the morning's headlines: WEST MIDLANDS FLASH FLOODS, 22
DEAD; VIOLENT CLASHES BETWEEN CHINESE CONGLOMERATES IN AFRICA; PM
BILLY CHURCH GAINS 43% LEAD IN POLLS… He tuned it out, for they were meaningless signals, no more relevant to finding something to eat than the weather on Jupiter or the beating of pulsars beyond the galactic rim.
He missed his books.
"Sod this," said Jayce. "It's better south of the river."
Everywhere people were hurrying to work. What did people actually do all day in offices? What did Father do? He was on the boards of companies, but for the first time Richard realised he had no idea what that meant.
"Is it always like this?"
Jayce might have shrugged, but Richard's attention shifted to the other side of the street, a couple with two children, well-dressed and laughing as they paused before the Apollo Theatre, pointing at the animated poster over the doors. Sourness rotated in his stomach. He watched as the parents hugged their kids, continuing their saunter down the Strand.
"Fuckin' plod's all over the place." Jayce nodded toward three police officers further down the street, and another trio beyond. "See what I mean?"
Before he became a criminal, Richard had thought of police as reassuring. Now he wanted to break into a run, but that would catch their attention.
"Can we get out of here?"
"Down this way."
Old steps sloped between two centuries-old buildings. At the bottom, Jayce turned left and Richard followed, continuing toward Waterloo Bridge. They climbed up to bridge level, made the long walk across – an ache throbbed in the back of Richard's legs – and descended an underpass to a round area below ground level, open to the sky, containing the black, shattered cylinder of the Imax Ruin. In the ramps and underpasses all around, Cardboard City was a packed confusion of makeshift shelters, grime-caked faces, tattered clothes, and a pervasive, heavy sourness that entered the nose and lungs and would not leave.
"'S crowded 'ere." Jayce had begun slurring. "Innit?"
Is he sick?
Or perhaps it was something to do with the green powder he'd taken last night. Whatever happened, Richard knew he had to steer clear of that stuff. Was there something he should do to help Jayce? The thought made his arms tremble, helplessness spreading inside him. And then Jayce was gone. Rubbing his eyes, Richard wove his gaze among the shabby figures, trying to spot… There. Jayce was wobbling his way through another underpass tunnel. What else could Richard do but follow? Among the fragrant stench of the lost, he made his way as best he could, only catching up Jayce when they were above ground, heading for the South Bank where the buildings shone and clean air blew off the Thames, the turbine vanes circling, and everything in its place.
Around the pillars and blocky sculptures, in the profusion of concrete architecture – Festival Hall, ramps, and walkways – were brightly-dressed figures who took Richard's breath away. Despite the early hour, they ran and vaulted over stairwells, rolled across concrete outdoor tables, threw themselves cartwheeling from walls, hit flagstones with a shoulder roll and came to their feet. Some used slideshoes, while others with boots and gauntlets spidered up buildings and took urban gymnastics to a level Richard had never seen.
"Who are they, Jayce?"
"Huh? Spidermen. Gekrunners."
"Will they talk to us?"
"Dunno, man. Tired."
"Jayce?"
But Jayce was sliding to the ground. He curled up sideways on the paving stones, shivered in hot sunlight, and fell into sleep.
What can I do?
He was too heavy to carry. Should he go to hospital? There were few pedestrians here – not so many offices for the commuters to rush to – and the whatsits, the gekrunners, were intent on their own thing. But a trio of police officers, bulky in their body armour, was heading this way. Trembling, Richard shook his head as if in disgust at the sight of Jayce, then walked on, head down, as if he had places to go, classes to attend. The more he realised this was a dream, the slower his paces became; and then there was a tap on his shoulder, and his bladder almost let go.
"You're his friend?" It was a girl's voice. "Jayce's friend?"
She was thin, about his height, wearing a helmet, gauntlets, and boots. Her sweatshirt flickered between two messages – Born to Jump and Head over Heels – beneath a moving graphic, a cartwheeling silhouette.
"Uh, yeah."
"You look straight. I'm Opal."
She held out her hand like an adult. It took Richard a moment to react.
"R-Richie."
The gauntlet, as he shook her hand, felt tough.
"You ain't been on the streets long."
"No." There was a crack of sound overhead. "Bloody hell."
A young man with dreadlocks clung spiderlike to sheer concrete, after a spectacular spinning leap from a table. He grinned at Opal and Richard, then twisted off and dropped, shoulder-rolling as he hit the ground, coming up into a skating motion, sliding away as if the flagstones were slick as ice.
"That's Kyle, and he's nuts. Good, though."
It was impossible to look away as Kyle vaulted over a stone plinth, cartwheeled, then skated onward.
"How does he do that?"
"Practice every day and you'll find out."
"But-" He stared up at the concrete wall. "I don't see how it's possible."
"Oh, that. Watch, and don't move a muscle." Opal curled the middle and ring fingers of her right hand, then opened them. "Totally still, now. Don't want to tear your skin."
She placed the palms of both gauntleted hands on his shoulders, then raised her arms a little. The fabric of Richard's shirt pulled upward. Then she crimped her fingers and the shirt dropped free.
"Gekkomere strips." She turned over her hand. "See? Sticks like magic."
"Fractal microtendrils." Richard peered at the strips. "Tap into the van der Waals forces between the molecules, the covalent bonds."
Opal looked at him.
"You so gotta talk to Brian. He's a right tech-head, too."
"Brian?" Then Richard remembered Jayce. "Oh, shit."
Looking back, he saw that the officers had hauled a wobbling Jayce to his feet.
"Let's hope they'll take him in this time," said Opal.
"You want them to arrest Jayce?"
"Stick him in a cell, inject him with anti-whatsit to clear his veins? Too right. It zaps the cravings for days. Give him another chance to go cold turkey."
Two of the officers, hands in Jayce's armpits, pretty much carried him along as they walked. The other officer was scanning everyone in sight. Richard turned away, feeling as if he were about to cry.
"Hey, what is it?"
"I just… don't know what to do. Where to go."
"Why don't you come with us?"
"Who's 'us'?"
"We are the Vauxhall Spidermen." Opal grinned. "Except I'm more Spidergirl myself."
Richard's eyes were blurring. He gave one sob, then caught himself. "Sorry."
"Come on. This way."
Technically the Spidermen lived in a squat, or a sequence of squats joined together. The street was part-derelict, but the local council had refurbished some of the houses: outer walls coated with cheap ceramic, rooftops shining with photoplastic. The gekrunners had possession of houses that were on the council's to-do list – or according to Opal, the won't-ever-get-aroundto list. The interiors were plain-painted, scraped back to brick in some places, decorated with movie posters looping through five-second clips. Several showed gekrunners performing daredevil acrobatics. Through the rear windows, Richard could see rows of photobulbs, soaking up sunlight. Inside, he counted twenty-eight different people before he gave up keeping track. Most were thin, some with lean muscle. Was everyone a gekrunner?
Laughter sounded from upstairs.
"Do all these people live here?" Richard looked at the varicoloured cushions scattered around the floor. "I mean, here or the other houses?"
Opal was about to answer, but a male voice forestalled her.
"Most do." The speaker was tall and white. "Me, I sleep over the shop most times."
"This is Brian," said Opal. "And this is Richie."
"Hey."
"Hey."
"Richie's a tech head. Richie, tell Brian about the Van Vols. You know."
"Say what?"
"In the gloves. Tell him."
"Uh…" Richard shook his head. "She means gekkomere tapping into van der Waals forces."
"Cool. You've got it."
"But Kyle's skating, how does that work?"
Brian gestured. "Show him your boot soles, Opal."
"OK." She put on hand on Richard's shoulder for balance, then raised one foot. "See?"
"Hyperglace gel strips." Brian pointed. "Like the gekkomere, flips between two modes. Just apply a tiny potential."
"And they're frictionless?"
"Coefficient damn near close to zero."
"At ambient temperature?"
"Unless the weather is-"
"You two." Opal lowered her foot, releasing Richard's shoulder. "Tech heads."
The absence of her hand felt… strange. Warm and strange.
"You hack code?" asked Brian. "Course you do. If you want to work, come over to the shop in the morning."
"Er…" Richard looked at Opal. "Work?"
"We aren't losers." Brian nodded toward the seated people. "Apart from maybe Kenny over there. He's a doctoral student at King's, and a total waste of space."
"I love you too, man." Kenny raised a hand to Richard. "Hey."
"Hey."
Richard looked down at the floor. It was cleaner than he'd expected. Of course he had to work, because that was what people did, or at least grown-ups. Fourteen year-olds did not pay tax, were outside the system that adults lived in, so whatever Brian meant it was surely illegal.
"It's what they call cash in hand," said Opal. "No ID required. No phone. Good place."
"Oh. And it's a shop?"
"You'll like it." Brian tapped Opal's gauntlet. "We sell stuff like this. Gekrunner tech, bikes with graphite memories, you name it. At least until July twentieth."
Richard's guts clenched. Knife blade, coming at me. But there was no knife, and he was safe, because Zajac was in school and that was another world. July twentieth was the day of the Knife Edge final, when Zajac had said he'd come for him. But he was away from that, and safe.
Safe from Zajac, anyhow.
"He's talking about the general election." Opal shrugged, distorting the cartwheeling logo on her shirt. "Politics."
"Matters more than you think, kid." Brian waved his phone. "If Fat Billy Church stays in office, they're threatening to make cash illegal. Pure phone-to-phone economy."
"That's impossible," said Opal.
"All they got to do is stop making coins and notes, then announce a cut-off date. Bring your cash into a bank for credit, or it drops to zero value, and you have bugger all."
Richard's stomach made a noise. He felt stricken; but Opal smiled.
"He needs feeding. Smell that? They're cooking chilli."
"Right," said Brian. "Let's get him fed."
But the food wasn't ready yet. It hurt to leave the steamy kitchen and step out into the back yard, where old mattresses lay in neat rows, plastic crates stood in a pyramid, and rusted poles supported a web of clotheslines. Eight or nine teenagers were practicing flips and rolls around the makeshift outdoor gym.
"He's going to mess that up," said Opal. "See?"
One of the youths rolled off a mattress, hitting the ground hard. He stood up, rubbing his ribs.
"Ouch," he said.
"You nearly nailed it," Opal told him.
From their left, a canine yap sounded. A Jack Russell on a lead formed of braided string wagged his tail. His owner was a girl around Richard's age; her sweatshirt was pink, bearing a picture of a flat-chested muscular man holding a knife. The heading read CARLSEN: THE FIREMAN RETURNS, while his blade dripped moving blood, animated droplets sliding down the sweatshirt fabric.
"That's Zoe," said Opal. "And this-"
Everything faded as Richard's hearing filled with the hiss of non-existent surf.
Blades and the whirring machines, peeling back the skin and slicing the skull, glistening folds of fatty brain, trickles of blood and no one noticing.
Richard felt choked by hands that did not exist, punched by invisible fists inside his chest.
"Jeez," said Zoe. "What's with the fucking kid?"
"I don't- Richie? You all right?"
A cramp pulled him over. Hot fluid spewed from his mouth.
"Oh, gross."
"Richie…"
"Sorry." He wiped his mouth. "I'm really sorry."
Zoe picked up her Jack Russell.
"Hey, Opal. You keep a pet, you gotta clean up after it, y'know?"
"Fuck you." Opal put her arm around Richard. "Just go away."
His world lurched again.
She's hugging me.
The world was so strange.
Next morning he walked with Brian through Brixton, past blocks of flats with piles of bin-bags stacked outside. Rotting rubbish emanated a stink; it felt as if the air had thickened, becoming heavier, and you had to push through it to get anywhere.
"No pick-ups for six weeks," said Brian. "And that shit Fat Billy is making like it's not his fault."
"Oh," said Richard.
"And like, the weird thing is people believe him. Like if he had more powers, he'd be able to sort out the mess."
Back in the squat, there had been a couple of people with shirts whose logos were the A-on-pentagram symbol of New Anarchism.
"You're an NAer?"
"Shit, no. They're stupid. OK, through here."
They passed along an alleyway, skirting more rotting refuse, and came out onto a grimy road. Opposite was a shop with a handpainted sign – Cal's Cycles – and ceramic sheeting protecting the window. The metal door was guarded by three locks; Brian pressed his thumb against one, and extended his keychain from his belt to open the others.
"Give us a hand with these, will you?"
"What do I do?"
There was a trick to jerking the ceramic shutters open. Richard tried to helpe push them up, into the slots over the windows, but Brian did all the work.
"Cal won't be in till ten, most likely. You'll recognise him by the tats."
"Tats?"
"Bare arms and tattoos, kind of old-fashioned, but at least the designs move."
Inside, the shop smelled of sawdust and oil, and the floorboards were grey with age, iron-hard. Racks hung from the ceiling; from them bicycles were suspended, looking insectile, like praying mantises, in the vertical position. Gauntlets and boots filled shelves and two glass display cases, one of which doubled as a sales counter. There was a phone pad for taking payments, and a stained coffee mug which someone had left standing overnight.
"If we don't clean that," said Brian, "it'll just stay there growing fungus, maybe evolve intelligence. Could do with the conversation round here."
"You want me to work on software?"
"Got a bunch of gauntlets out back. Whole batch has buggy controlware. You up for sorting it out?"
"I… don't know."
"So let's find out."
The workshop-storeroom was cluttered with electronics and mechanical components, the air tangy with oil and metal dust, sharper than out front. A large scratched wallscreen would serve as Richard's display, and a small graphite processor pad for the actual programming, instead of a phone. On one wall, triggered by Richard and Brian's entrance, a movie poster brightened into animation: a grey-haired man performing gekrunner-style moves but with bare hands and ordinary shoes, and beneath him the words: Le Mouvement, C'est Moi.
"Early parkour guy," said Brian. "French, coming to London to talk about the Tao of free-running. Old school, before your actual gekrunning, cause they didn't have these little doodads."
He handed over a gauntlet with a cracked-open casing.
"Looks like a car motive cell." Richard followed weblines with his finger. "Viral engineering, viruses carrying the electronic-You know."
Pain rotated inside his forehead.
"You all right, Richie?"
"Sorry, yeah." Richard rubbed his forehead. "No problem."
"OK, good. See, that control web is the kind of thing NAers don't get. Actually, just the fastenings on your clothes need a technical civilisation, stuff dug out of the ground with machinery, trucks for transport, factories, and shops, right? They don't get how complicated it all is."
Richard looked around the workshop, remembering the redwood-panelled rooms at home, clean and elegant but never welcoming, not comfortable like here.
"You're not rich, though. You, Opal, Jayce, and all the-"
"Him."Brian's expression closed down. "You want to stay with us, you do not nick from your friends."
"I wouldn't-Oh. Is that what Jayce did?"
"Uh-huh. Now, you know the first rule of hacking, right?"
"Er…"
"You start with a cup of coffee, refill every twenty minutes, repeat until task finished. I'll put the kettle on while you crank up the display. Give us a shout if nothing's in English."
Richard popped the service interface onto the wallscreen – the text was Korean – but he found a ReadMe and babelled the contents. By the time Brian put coffee down beside him, he was already deep in the code, sketching diagrams in the side panes as Mr Stanier had taught at school. When he surfaced back into day-to-day reality, his coffee was cold. He sipped from it anyway.
Mr Keele periodically said that optimum cognition requires frequent breaks, so Richard flipped open another pane to browse the news. Unable to help himself, he murmured a query into a bead microphone, and watched as the results blossomed inside the new pane, with FRIENDLY ENEMIES? as the headline, a picture of Father and someone else – someone familiar – dressed in tuxedos, and the caption: Philip Broomhall greets Zebediah Tyndall at City dinner.
He thumbed on the audio…
"Despite the hard-fought takeover battle between Tyndall Industries and BroomCon regarding Hixon Media, the corporate rivals appeared to put aside their differences before the Lady Mayor of London. However, appearances can be deceptive, since both men-"
…then silenced it.
Hands shaking, he made the pane disappear, then continued to stare at the screen where it had been. After some time, his attention drifted as if on gentle currents into the coding panes, and then he was back at work, forgetting everything, at home with himself once more.