Occupy Me Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Tricia Sullivan and Coming Soon from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  HD Waveform Launcher Instructions

  The Briefcase

  Invest in Futures

  Help Wanted

  Good Old Hindsight

  Quetzlcoatlus with the Very Big Teeth

  Fridged

  Get Smart

  Not One of Us

  I’d Prefer Your Kayak

  Tool

  Can’t Touch this with a Barge Pole

  The Cupboard Under the Stairs

  Teacake

  Colonel Mustard in the Library

  Notes on Upgrades

  A Prosaic Tearing Sound

  Lemme See you Walk

  Post-Event Adjacent Reality Launcher

  Not Nevis

  News from Mars

  You Can Hear the Dead

  Forth

  Come Back

  All Creatures Old and New

  Fucks Like a Gerbil

  Hilda Doolittle

  Plant

  Superunknown

  A Sample of Crude Oil and a Couple of Feathers

  Remembers the Future

  Turkey

  A Very Passable Glendronach

  Dino Battle Boom

  Speaking of Zoologists

  Gilligan’s Island

  Don’t Rot the Frog, Baby

  Save Early, Save Often

  What Oil Rig?

  Limping

  Love is in the Heavy Lifting

  I Didn’t Keep the Receipt

  The Veterinarian and the Oil Rig

  The Rockford Files

  How to Bring Back the Dead

  Not My Bad

  Meet Me Halfway

  The Six Billion Dollar Man

  All Flowers in Time

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  ‘An ingenious masterpiece of sci-fi’

  Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘A genre-defying battle hymn of a book. Science-fiction and fantasy all wrapped up in the form of one pissed-off, hijacked angel. Sullivan has given us cracking characters, a killing pace, and a story as sharp as a blade’

  Angela Slatter

  ‘Occupy Me keeps the pages turning and the wheels of thought whirring. It’s a psychedelic experience, a wacky tapestry of an idea’

  SFX

  ‘This is science-fiction at its most surreal . . . the premise is brilliant’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Sullivan uses the tired tropes of paranormal fantasy and high-tech SF to explore ideas of morality and identity, and has produced a work of startling originality’

  Guardian

  ‘Conspiracies galore, questions about the nature of identity, brilliant evocative writing never detract from the unceasing pace of Sullivan’s, a past Arthur C. Clarke Award winner, futuristic fantasy thriller. Heralds a major new series’

  Lovereading.co.uk

  ‘Occupy Me is very funny and highly unusual, not least of which is having a main character who isn’t just an angel, but a middle-aged, black lesbian. It’s highly imaginative’

  Fantasy Book Review

  Also by Tricia Sullivan and coming soon from Titan Books

  Sweet Dreams (July 2019)

  TRICIA SULLIVAN

  OCCUPY

  ME

  TITAN BOOKS

  Occupy Me

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785657986

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785657993

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  www.titanbooks.com

  First Titan edition: September 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  © 2016, 2018 Tricia Sullivan. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  For the care-givers

  with their eleventy-billion kinds of strength

  and for anyone

  who is a long way from

  Home

  HD waveform launcher instructions

  Appendix F

  Warning: Internal gravity subject to change. If device is to be moved we recommend engaging an optional anti-slip app available as freeware.

  Switching from scan to launch mode:

  1) Engage HD mode bio template

  2) Ensure docking port has been cleared to prevent leakage from host system (see section 3.8)

  3) Reset clock and localization parameters

  4) Remove launcher from host

  5) Reconfigure according to expected local conditions

  Notes on configuration:

  If rendering backward-compatible choose a configuration with a temporal range of 1–2% centred on the desired locale to avoid achronality errors. Commonplace personal items with practical application are usually the most effective. Eyeglasses, hand luggage, writing implements, and simple garments are easiest to make backward-compatible.

  Forward compatibility is not advised.

  The briefcase

  Out of the blue. That’s how the briefcase turned up in your life. The Audi’s security camera shows images of a man very much like you approaching the car. GPS records put the time at 4:37 this very morning in the parking lot of Short Hills Mall. The man opened the door using your own biometric signature. A hand very much like your hand placed the briefcase on the passenger seat gently enough to suggest that its contents were fragile.

  Or explosive.

  But you weren’t there.

  The Audi is now in the VIP parking area at IIF headquarters near Amagansett. Its records claim that you drove it to the mall at 3:53 – you have no memory of that, either – and then you drove here. Now you sit in the driver’s seat, yawning, trying to piece it together. You remember bringing a bottle of Kathryn Hall Cabernet home to Ayeisha in tacit apology for the long hours you’ve been putting in by Austen Stevens’ bedside; that’s all gone on far too long. But Ayeisha was on her way out to kendo class. She paused only long enough to remind you to check the kids’ spelling homework before you put them to bed.

  You accepted the snub the same way you accept the condescension of Stevens himself – with equanimity. Long ago you renounced the way of violence. You do not allow your will to collide head-on with others. Not anymore. There are better ways to live.

  Equanimity does not come easily at this moment. Why did you leave the house in the middle of the night? Whom did you meet at the mall? There are no records in your phone. You haven’t a clear memory of coming back to your senses after the fadeout – for that’s how the episodes feel. They aren’t blackouts, as such, because their edges are always indistinct. Usually you can feel yourself going for some time before the event; coming back is gradual.

  Evidently this person appearing to be you was driving east on the Long Island Expressway in a semi-conscious state when a pickup cut him off and activated the car’s emergency evasive routine. The jerk of the chassis roused you from microsleep. You took control of the vehicle, blinked a few times, and flailed for memories that would not give themselves up.

  This
isn’t the first time you have gone away from yourself, but it is the first time you have returned in possession of an object that you aren’t supposed to have.

  You noticed the briefcase when you pulled into your usual space at the IIF compound and opened the door. The interior light illuminated the thing on the passenger seat, big and awkward and too cheap-looking to be anything you would have purchased for yourself. The corners are brass, battered and scratched, and the faux-leather outer covering has begun to crack. It’s heavy enough not to have slid forward onto the floor when you braked suddenly on the expressway.

  You can’t bring yourself to open it.

  * * *

  You message Mort. He has a snot-laden bass voice that makes him sound old and fat; he is twenty-nine and willowy. There’s white noise in the background and he is panting through his morning workout.

  ‘Hey, Kisi! You in?’

  Still fuddled, you murmur, ‘I’m sorry? In?’

  ‘Climbing weekend? Vermont? It’s all I’m living for right now. Tell me you’re in.’

  ‘Oh . . . Well, OK, maybe. Depending on my patient.’

  ‘Your patient is tough as shit, I’ll give him that.’

  ‘Mort, I have a question for you. It’s quite sensitive. Are you alone?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I suspect I’ve got a neurological condition. I’ve been having memory lapses.’

  The white noise stops.

  ‘Just turning off the treadmill. Tell me more.’

  You tell him about the episodes. How they started several months ago, seemed to stop, and now have returned with a vengeance. Sometimes you lose five minutes. Sometimes hours. Mort asks questions and you omit nothing – except for the briefcase. Mort is a neurosurgeon, not a detective, so?

  ‘I can give you a referral,’ Mort rumbles. ‘You’ll need scans. But if you want to know what I think as your friend, I gotta tell you there’s every chance it’s stress.’

  ‘Stress?’ Your laugh sounds alien. You glance around the interior of the Audi in a haze of disassociation. You stare at the top-end phone in your hand. You think: stress is growing up with people around you dying of mysterious illnesses. Stress is being shot at. Stress is being twelve years old and bleeding out in the forest, alone. You laugh.

  ‘What stress?’

  ‘I mean, come on – when is the guy going to die, already?’

  ‘Soon,’ you say softly. ‘It will be soon.’

  ‘And you don’t see any conflict of interest between you taking care of Austen Stevens in his last days and your history with the company? No problem, huh?’

  A whiteness passes before your eyes. You hate talking about these matters. Everyone knows that. Mort is using the conversation as an excuse to wedge open a door, to air all his opinions about the choices you have made, professionally and morally. Choices that Mort, privileged scion of a New York City medical dynasty, could never begin to understand.

  ‘I am not stressed. I am not neurotic. Something else is going on. Could I . . . You don’t think this is part of a disease pathology?’

  ‘I can’t diagnose you over the phone, Kisi. Remember, my job is to cut people and fix their brains. I’m sending you the name of a friend at Mount Sinai.’

  ‘Not a psychiatrist.’

  ‘You say that like it’s a dirty word. No, not a psychiatrist. A clinical neurophysiologist. OK? And take a vacation. Not with the kids! Take Ayeisha to Barbados or something.’

  Ayeisha. You put your hand over your eyes.

  ‘I have to go,’ you say.

  ‘Cheer up, dude,’ Mort says, turning on the treadmill again. ‘Maybe your guy will kick it today.’

  That is what you hope every day. Every single day.

  You almost don’t bring the briefcase in with you. It is insanely heavy. Just as you are about to give up on dragging it out of the car it makes like a punch line and lightens. Its contents shift and it actually jerks in your clenched hand. As you stagger across the damp lawn of Austen Stevens’ estate you ask yourself what you will do if its contents turn out to be alive.

  Invest in futures

  When you get into the patient’s suite you set the briefcase beside the bed.

  ‘His hands and feet are cold,’ Maja says. ‘Mucus is building up in his throat. But he’s responsive. I can call the family if you think it’s appropriate.’

  ‘Go home. Ask Eloise to call them when she gets here.’

  Instead of reading the patient’s notes you find yourself studying the scar that stretches across your left palm from the finger webbing to the wrist. It looks like the outline of a flame.

  You have cheated death more than once. So has Austen Stevens. But today, surely, it will be over.

  Today. Today. Today.

  Your heart beats a demand for the death. If you had known what this job would be like, maybe you would have thought again. When he first asked you, the bonus on the table was a godsend. The chance to get funding to set up a teaching hospital back home. So what if this is the man who crippled your country in its infancy? Time has moved on. You have grown strong. You derive strength from overcoming the desires of your ego. Every day for weeks, as you have cared tenderly for the one who would have seen you dead, as you calibrated medications and discussed the finer points of treatment with the hospice team, every day you said to yourself: today. Today he will die.

  Austen Stevens should have been finished weeks ago. The family credit your assiduous work for this extended period of survival – a twisted, rusted-nail irony.

  The death must come soon now, and then you will be free.

  The thought tastes like wine.

  * * *

  In his sea-blue bed by a window within sight of the shimmer of the Atlantic, the husk of your employer’s body reclines with burning eyes. For weeks those eyes have watched the news feeds, tracking the markets while Stevens’ fingers continue to administer more of Invest In Futures than the Board cares to admit. Official word is that Stevens has handed over the reins to the new CEO, but this is not entirely so. He is still making plans, dealing. He’ll never stop.

  When Eloise, the day nurse, gently rearranges pillows, the old man displaces his breathing mask and says, ‘Do it now, Doc. Wait any longer and you’ll lose me.’

  ‘Do what, Mr Stevens?’

  The patient’s fingernail is dark blue as he points to the briefcase like he knows all about it.

  ‘Put me on the ship.’

  You jolt, physically. Eloise touches your arm.

  ‘Sometimes the dying see things differently,’ she murmurs. Eloise has been kind to you, even though they all must wonder why Austen Stevens has summoned an orthopaedic surgeon to watch over his final days. You nod and move away; her proximity has made you aware of the sweat breaking out on your forehead. A singing in the bones behind your ears makes you shake your head. You have never had a panic attack, not in all the bad years since the forest. Now of all times? No.

  You point.

  ‘It’s a briefcase. Not a ship. See?’

  Eloise says, ‘I’m going to check if the family are here yet.’

  The squeak of her rubber soles on the parquet makes your teeth scream. What is wrong with you?

  ‘Remember, I saved you.’ The old man’s voice sounds like distant gulls. ‘I didn’t have to. It was on my own conscience.’

  ‘Your conscience,’ you say, forcing a smile. ‘Where would your conscience have been if not for the eyes of the world?’

  Austen Stevens’ eyelids droop. You don’t often argue. The old man likes it too much.

  ‘I upheld my obligations. We paid compensation.’

  ‘A fraction of what you owed. My country is still waiting for most of the money, so many years later.’

  He tries to bark a laugh at your audacity but ends up making a series of damp, wheezing sounds instead. His marbled blue eyes fall closed and he sucks a deep breath on the oxygen mask, his slippers jostling one another with the effort.

  ‘That�
��s business, kid.’ The Brooklyn accent comes on strong. ‘Blame your government. I did more for you than compensation ever could. There was nothing for you in that village.’

  Because you took our way of life away.

  You do not say this. It’s a tired exchange.

  ‘You could have been a big man, rich and influential in your country. But you are a healer, a man of honour. You will build great things. I thought we respected each other. If I were such a terrible person I wouldn’t let you near me. I wouldn’t let you speak to me the way you do. But I know you are going to save me now. This deal is good for us both.’

  He’s living in a fantasy world now; it won’t be long. Speaking so many words has taken it out of Stevens. He lays there for a time, drawing on the oxygen mask, his breath rattling.

  ‘The ship,’ he gasps. ‘I want to see the thing you promised me.’

  It’s strange. Even when Stevens is making up lies from whole cloth, glossing over the horrors he was party to in the oil fields, still there is something compelling about this yellow-grey collection of sinew and hair and neck-wattle persistence. There is power. Invisible in a failing body, it is a power such that lands and peoples should fall before him and gods should be thrown from their homes and time should tear open on his command and Austen Stevens should lie there, like milk.

  ‘I can’t open it. There’s no key.’

  Stevens sighs. ‘Stop fighting me. It’s over.’

  Beneath his eyes there are lizard wrinkles like obscene smiles, purpling with pooled blood. You can’t help recalling the reflections in the pools of crude oil that lay open in the forest. You remember what you saw there: ancestors risen from the smoke of the burning oil, and sometimes other creatures, too. Spirits. The warnings they spoke to you.

  In summers during medical school, you worked security on the ships. As a trusted employee, you were assigned by Pace Industries to block weapons from reaching militia supporters, and you did your job – on paper. The reality was something else. The official security forces were such a joke that you used to amuse yourself by tricking them. Ships that were supposed to be empty came in full of guns. Ships that were supposed to carry skimmed barrels of crude oil away for the private use of Austen Stevens, these went light. You obtained some gratification from skimming a skimmer; much of the old man’s personal fortune came through gains that were illegal even by the shady standards of the industry.