Occupy Me Read online

  It was a biting sort of gratification. For more than a generation Pace Industries cornered your people and attacked your land, and a succession of militias fought back, and the government men stole everything they could. Every year brought violence. As a boy you were ‘rescued’ from the local militia at the age of twelve when company engineers found you dying in the forest after you stepped on a land mine. Because you were a child and the company were keen to improve their public image, they rehabilitated you, educated you, made you a poster boy for their beneficence. But the word for how you feel about this is not ‘grateful’. There is no word for your feeling. You remember your friends who died. You remember the fires.

  You say: ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

  Stevens produces a weak smile. ‘Do you believe in the future?’

  You feel your heart moving inside your ribcage like a disturbed animal.

  There is a moment, a beat of nothingness when it feels like anything at all might happen. Time hangs there, densely packed with possibilities.

  And then it begins.

  There is a sudden heat in your nose; blood is trickling on to your upper lip. Annoyed at the sign of weakness, you throw your head back, grabbing a linen napkin left over from the patient’s untouched breakfast to blot away the blood. This is no panic attack. Next comes a seismic cracking sensation at the base of your skull, as if you’ve been struck from the inside. Your teeth loosen, or maybe it’s your knees, and you go slack as a plastic bag.

  Someone steps into you from deep within. It is as if you are nothing more than an extra set of clothes. For a moment you and the other person are superpositioned, neural patterns rearranging themselves and ligaments jockeying for control. You reel sideways and have to catch yourself on the frame of the window. Outside, the sea tilts.

  The intercom announces the arrival of the family.

  You try to say, ‘Give us a moment, Eloise,’ but you no longer have control. Your marrow reconfigures its molecules. That illicit cheeseburger fat melts to oblivion, and your gimpy left leg straightens. The pale scar tissue on your left hand dissolves as if you’ve never been hurt. And oh, you feel brightly alive, a wild being from a place of saturated colour and loud music.

  The braying voice of Rachel Stevens ripples through the wall.

  You want to put the cloth to your face again. It’s an automatic gesture, born of embarrassment at the family walking in when you are in this condition. You compute medical possibilities. Not a stroke. Not a seizure. Not a panic attack – surely, dear god, Mort could not be right about this one—

  The thing in your hand is not a linen napkin. It’s a pistol, icy cold.

  You can hear yourself breathing fast, shallow.

  There is a soft knock and Eloise is holding the door open for Mr Stevens’ middle-aged daughter Rachel and her bald husband. His third wife comes in, too; she’s younger than Rachel. They bring a chilly breeze from the air-conditioned hallway. The wife is holding an eco-friendly thermal coffee cup in her manicured hand. Rachel is talking in Mandarin through a discreet headset; she doesn’t even look at her father, just stands by the piano, conversing nasally. She would be the one who insisted on barging through without waiting to be invited.

  Your hand slides the gun into your jacket pocket. You have nothing to do with this. The jacket feels tight across your chest and back; you have more muscle tissue now.

  ‘Thank you, Eloise,’ your voice says. It sounds soft and furry like a late-night radio DJ. Breathing under control now. Someone else’s control.

  Eloise shuts the door and stations herself near Rachel, hands behind her back.

  ‘You may go, Eloise,’ your voice says. She gives you a strange look.

  ‘That’s OK, Dr Sorle,’ she says.

  ‘You should go now.’

  ‘Can he hear us?’ It is the young wife. She looks down on her husband, who has subsided into silence, eyes shut, the breathing mask lying unused on his chest.

  ‘Dad, can you hear me?’ Rachel shouts. ‘The gold mine is a lock. We sign tomorrow.’

  Rachel’s bald husband shifts his weight and looks at the ceiling as though wishing himself somewhere else. Not getting a response from her dying father, Rachel turns to you.

  ‘It’s a good deal for your country,’ she informs you brightly. ‘Wei Xha will do wonders for your revenue.’

  Your voice says, ‘In fact, it will be the children of my country down the mines and your children putting our wealth up their nose at parties.’

  Then the gun shoots her.

  The gun has a silencer. The greater noise comes from Rachel herself, collapsing on the exposed keyboard of the Bösendorfer. Eloise drops to a crouch; Rachel’s husband makes a dive for the hall door and is caught with three bullets. But it’s the wife who attacks you, charges at you like a weedy Vivienne-Westwood-clad linebacker.

  You feel the muscles in your legs loading, your back stiffening as your left hand shoots out and seizes her by the throat before she can get close. Your right hand, holding the gun, hits her across the face and then flings her off. She hits the floor under the piano, which is still resounding; then she goes still. Eloise is sobbing and calling you crazy as she begins performing first aid. The bullet has lodged in Rachel’s right femur. It’s serious, but not fatal.

  ‘Keep quiet,’ your voice commands. ‘I have no quarrel with you.’

  I have no quarrel . . . It’s an antiquated turn of phrase. You are trying to divine who or what has taken control. It feels like being on the brink of drowning. You can just about snatch enough consciousness to build an inner narrative, but you are beginning to doubt sequences. Matters are getting scrambled.

  You find yourself standing over Stevens. He is in a wild rage, struggling to get out of bed, flailing at you with his wretched little arms and legs.

  ‘My daughter,’ he gurgles. ‘I’ll kill you.’

  ‘I think not,’ says your voice in the same old-fashioned way. ‘If you had been satisfied with my earlier proofs, none of this would have been necessary. I told you I didn’t want to come here again myself. It’s a difficult, costly journey.’

  The old man subsides on the bed, but only from exhaustion. He sucks on the mask.

  ‘I saw the angel.’

  ‘So you did. The money was to have been transferred after that sighting. It was not.’ An undercurrent of menace. ‘Stop dicking the good doctor around.’

  ‘I had to make sure. I put in safeguards. For all I know someone drugged me and I was hallucinating. You want to do business? I’m running out of time. Dear god, my daughter.’

  ‘She may yet be saved. I expect the money to be shifted now.’

  Stevens gestures for his stylus and pad. His hands tremble. ‘It’s done. I sent the details to your phone. Get them to my guy in the UK before the deadline and the funds will move.’

  You check your phone. An address in Edinburgh. A couple of apps and a series of what must be passwords.

  ‘Not good enough,’ your voice tells him. ‘This is another delaying tactic.’

  ‘Rachel needs an ambulance, Dr Sorle,’ Eloise says in a ghost voice. ‘Are you going to shoot me, too?’

  So many seasons of spiritual effort that you stockpiled, they are ruined in a moment.

  The blue nails are clawing at your arm. The voice comes after a series of gargling coughs.

  ‘It’s how we set it up. Liam holds the purse strings. Doc, I’m afraid. Put me on the ship.’

  The being inside you puts your hand on the briefcase. ‘The ship is right here. As we discussed.’ You are fighting the thing that has possessed you, and it grinds your teeth. Surprising that they make no sparks in your mouth. ‘It is a receptacle for your waveform. It will carry you where you need to go.’

  When your hands settle on the briefcase this time, the latch responds. The case falls open and where its insides should be there is an absence.

  It is in such an absence that time snaps apart, clean and sweet. Time itself.

  Au
sten Stevens leans forward a little, pausing for oxygen. He waves a ropey, palsied hand at the briefcase. It’s as though he has forgotten how to speak.

  ‘What now?’ he says at last, and turns supplicant eyes up to the man who shot his daughter.

  ‘Get in.’

  Stevens licks his lips. ‘Help me.’

  You wonder what would your mother say, to see you now? She drives a water taxi and gives away the money you send because she says she doesn’t need it. Would she berate you or would she say, ‘Yes, my son, do this thing to clean up the world of this evil’?

  It is unwise to think of the judgements of mothers at times like these.

  A curious sound begins. It seems to originate in your bones. You feel your heart going dubstep. Your awareness divides like an embryo increasing its own provenance from within. The sound skirls over your skin and raises your hairs. Artwork rattles on the walls.

  Your voice says, ‘Eloise, help Mr Stevens out of bed.’

  Eloise gets up and walks unsteadily towards you. She steps across the body of the dead husband and comes to the bedside. She smells of urine. You throw the blankets back from your patient’s emaciated legs, scattering pillows. Austen Stevens with his pot belly and stick limbs weighs no more than a large dog. Your gun points toward the briefcase.

  ‘Put him in there. Carefully.’

  The briefcase emits the noise of a thousand traffic jams, the wailing of birds, a bass drone worthy of a cruise ship’s horn as if somewhere deep in the tacky naugahide the Love Boat is about to sail. There’s a smell of oil burning. But the inside cannot be seen. It’s a void. Not black, not even white. Eyes just can’t process whatever is there.

  Eloise lifts the old man and sets him upright on the rug beside the briefcase, holding the oxygen tank for Stevens while he takes one last hit. He wavers like a reflection on ruffled water.

  ‘You must step in, Mr Stevens,’ your voice says. Pent anxiety ripples through you. Stevens stands upright, gasping, and pushes Eloise away.

  ‘Don’t let him fall.’

  ‘I got this.’ Panting with effort, the old man lifts one Abercrombie & Fitch clad leg by six inches and, with shaky control, lets it down it into the open space of the briefcase. The foot and then the leg disappear, and then he seems to fold like a paper airplane until he is holding the top edge of the briefcase and lowering himself in entire. It’s like a magic act where the girl disappears. The oxygen tank comes last; there is a burst of noise, a gout of smoke – and the case falls closed.

  Your fingers snap the locks shut and seize the handle of the briefcase. You try to lift it, but it weighs as though filled with rocks inside rocks, exponentially increasing functions of rocks all pressed inside like gravity trying to hide up its own back end. You can feel the radiation of its efforts as a kind of pulse in your clenched fist.

  Eloise is panting. Furious.

  ‘I’m going to help Rachel,’ she says. ‘If you want to shoot me, do it now.’

  The pistol comes up, cocked. You step around her. You are fighting a strong, strong impulse to pull the trigger on Rachel again. Your hand has aimed the gun at her head but you won’t let your finger pull back on the trigger. You won’t.

  You go out the door and the gun discharges into the azaleas, harmlessly. Silently you give thanks for this.

  You hear Eloise calling 911 as your legs take you through the sliding glass door and out across the lawn. Then the sound of the lawn sprinklers overpowers her faint voice.

  * * *

  The Audi comes to meet you in the private parking lot. The door slides open and you lower yourself, depositing the briefcase in the passenger seat as smoothly as if you rehearsed. The car accelerates through the automated barrier. You are away.

  While the car drives, you book a flight on the false passport you never knew you had. You call Ayeisha, but you don’t sound anything like yourself.

  ‘I have to take him to London.’

  There is an unhappy pause. Then she says, ‘This is wrong. It should have been over by now. How can he go to London? What are you doing for him to make him hang on like this?’

  Her voice calls you back to yourself. The scar on your hand bubbles into existence and the six-pack melts to lard under your seat belt. You swallow against the lump in your throat.

  In your own voice you say, ‘I’ll call you when I get there. Kiss the girls for me.’

  ‘You can kiss my ass,’ she says, and hangs up.

  Help wanted

  resistance.web/deployment

  VACANCY – TEMPORARY

  Transatlantic flight attendant

  In addition to usual duties we require handling of sensitive information and classified passengers. There will be very occasional opportunity for physical and mental intervention, and the successful candidate will be required to respond instantly to transmitted cues. We require a high level of empathy coupled with mature judgement and absolute discretion.

  Applications welcome from experienced angels with minimum Level 3 clearance. You will hold flight attendant qualifications as well as advanced life-saving training. Patience and physical endurance essential. Reply code RKL39J.

  Good old hindsight

  In the very moment when I was throwing the hijacker off the plane I found myself remembering what the other angels had said when Marquita lined me up for this job.

  They said, ‘It will be perfect for you.’

  They said, ‘It has a great dental plan.’

  They said, ‘You’d be surprised how many angels work as cabin crew for commercial airlines.’

  And then they quoted me a lot of statistics.

  I’m sure they were partly right. It’s no coincidence that most airlines have an angel somewhere on staff. People need us up here. Folks on planes are scared, for all kinds of reasons. Scared of flying, scared of crashing, scared of terrorists. Some of them are leaving home and moving to new countries. Some are running away from oppressive governments, from bad love affairs, from angry creditors. Or just escaping the daily grind, moving towards hope of a reprieve. An airline flight is a conditional space, a great equaliser. Everybody’s up here together, strangers. In between destinations. All vulnerable. Sure, you have your jaded business travellers who never look up from their tablets long enough to notice the sun rise, or the unfolding of clouds, or the white-speckled waves below where the whole mystery of the ocean is spread out like a magic carpet. But those people are usually in business class. I never work there if I can help it.

  Most of the cabin-class passengers are aware that they’re doing something extraordinary by flying. Even if they only let out a fleeting smile when looking out the window, or utter a silent prayer on landing, most of them sense that they are close to heaven. And heaven isn’t what you think it is. Heaven, even glimpsed side-on, is awesome. While folks are hurtling along at angel-altitude, their souls are open. Their hearts are accessible. Their minds can be touched. I’d like to think that a little nudge from me at the right moment on a flight can bring about long-term changes on Earth.

  So I was on a flight from New York to London. It’s not my usual run, but I was asked to fill in at the last minute. Sometimes this means the Resistance is involved, sometimes not. I’m the kind of person who is ready for anything, even when I’m going down the aisle on the starboard side of cabin class with my coffee pot.

  ‘Coffee? More coffee for you, madam? Coffee?’

  On the port side, Rory was moving the opposite way with his teapot. The two of us sounded like a little musical number, my deep contralto and his reedy tenor calling and answering. Coffee, tea. Tea, coffee, coffee?

  As I moved, I spread higher dimensional wings over them all. I touched them with invisible feathers. I soothed an insomniac grandmother with liver trouble and her Xanax-popping granddaughter. The baby on the Xanax-popper’s lap stopped crying when my unseen feather brushed the top of her head. I gave the respite of sleep to the university student returning to school after a funeral, who stared at the blurry p
hotograph in his hands with bloodshot eyes. I shone compassion on the shuttered windows of a London cabbie’s angry mind, softening the edges of his vision. Nudging open a little space in the wall of his anger so he could maybe see things differently. Feel something. Realise how close he was to home, just that moment.

  And then I clocked 72B. And there he was. After all this time. My hijacker. He was hot. Hot like eye candy, hot like stolen goods, hot like radioactive. Hot. Like fucking fire, fly too close to the sun, melt your wax, hot goddamn it.

  Hot because I hated him. Because I needed him. Because I didn’t know who he really was. Because after jerking me around two times, he now had the nerve to sit on my flight like nothing ever happened? Really? Because I’m twice his size and I bend iron bars for breakfast.

  Over a year had passed since he had hijacked my waveform launcher from within. He’d used my own hardware to launch me into this odd corner of spacetime before stealing the launcher and leaving me stranded here. I’d only seen him once before in the flesh, but I never forget a waveform – especially one that’s been messing with my business.

  He used me. He lied to me. He stole my insides, then offered to sell them back to me in exchange for my help – and then he abandoned me. Here I was, working as a soldier of the Resistance, serving coffee and soothing babies. Me.

  Pissed off doesn’t begin to cover my feelings about this.

  He was a small man, and what there was of him was immaculate and contained. He was the kind of person artists would fight over – not exactly beautiful, but surprising: interesting to look at. He was wearing a leather jacket and had his iPod in his ears as he gripped a news magazine in lovely, long-fingered hands. His hair was immaculately braided. He had sculpted cheekbones and a wide, flat nose with the kind of nostrils that would flare and flicker during sexual exertion. Don’t even get me started on his lips.