Ghost of a Smile by Simon R. Green
JC forced them all out of his gaze and his thoughts, and went on, step by step, refusing to be stopped or turned aside until finally he reached Happy and Melody, after what seemed like miles, or hours, or worse. Melody was trying to talk to Happy, but her words couldn’t reach him. She didn’t seem as bothered by the surroundings, perhaps because most of her attention was fixed on Happy. JC lurched forward and thrust his face right in front of Happy’s. He whipped off his sunglasses, so that his golden eyes stared right into those of the telepath, filling his view. Happy met the golden gaze and slowly relaxed, as though someone had thrown him a lifeline. The golden glare kept everything else out. Happy breathed deeply, and sense returned to his eyes. He nodded jerkily, first to JC, then to Melody.
“All right. I’m back. I’m not sure where, and I don’t think I like it, but I am quite definitely here. Can we go now?”
“Go where?” said JC, stepping back. “You see any way out of here? We’re in the world of the New People now, and we have to start with them.”
He turned to face them, and everything else disappeared. Driven away, pushed aside, by the sheer presence of the New People. Only them, and the light they stood in. Or generated. And when they finally spoke, they all spoke at once, like a thunderous cloud or choir of voices. Just four motionless figures, in all their many dimensions, but when they spoke, there might have been four hundred or four thousand, as many aspects as there were dimensions.
We’ve been waiting for you. The intrepid Ghost Finders of the Carnacki Institute. We knew you were coming. Clearing up the mess left by our creation. Birth is always messy.
“Do you know who’s behind your creation?” said JC, forcing the words out. “Do you know about Patterson?”
Of course. He had plans for us. So did the people he represented. But they were so limited in their thinking. So human. Patterson couldn’t understand us. Nor could his organisation. We are so much more than they expected. They planned our creation but couldn’t deal with what they got. You are all of you incapable of understanding what we are, what we have become. The human mind lacks the capacity to contain what we are. And what we will do.
“What do you want?” said JC.
To make everyone like us, of course. To wake up the world, and everything in it, and set it to useful work. To do all the things that matter, instead of filling in time till death. There is so much that needs doing, matters of great scale and worth—putting the universe to rights.
“What if we don’t want that?” said Happy, moving forward to stand with JC. “What if we’d rather choose our own way?”
You will want it. After you’ve been changed. Upgraded. Made wondrous New People, like us. When you are like us, you’ll understand everything. The universe and its purpose will be clear to you. All the answers to all the questions you ever had, will be yours.
“But will we still care about those questions, and those answers, when we’re not human any more?” said Melody, stepping forward to be with JC. “Will we still care about any of the things we care about now, as poor, limited, human beings?”
“Will we still love?” said Kim, stepping in beside JC. “Will he still care for me, and I for him, as man for woman? Will we still have that?”
Don’t be afraid. We are more than you, not less. We have gained much and lost nothing. We are different from you now, but we still contain you.
“That isn’t answering the question,” said JC. “Would Kim and I, Happy and Melody, still share our simple human love for each other? Would the fundamental things still apply—care and compassion, honesty and honour, good and evil, life and death? Would they still matter to us? And if not, how could we still be us?”
Why would you want to settle for something so small?
“You see?” said JC. “You’re the ones who don’t understand. You’d have to destroy what makes us . . . us, to make us you. You’ve gone too far, progressed too far beyond us. The world isn’t ready for you. Not yet. People aren’t ready yet. You can’t jump to the front of the queue, to the top of the evolutionary ladder. We have to get there on our own, achieve it on our own, or it won’t mean anything. We have to earn it by our own efforts, one step at a time. Remember what you were. Who you were. What it felt like to be human. Small joys and small achievements are no less real for being small. Remember what you wanted out of life before chemical godhood gave it to you on a platter.”
We remember . . . but only as a dream. A long nightmare from which we have at last awakened. But yes—we do remember.
“You think all our junk DNA being blocked off just . . . happened?” said JC. “No. It’s there waiting, for the right time. For us to be ready for it. It’ll awaken itself when conditions are right. And then, and only then . . . we’ll all become like you. When the world needs us to be like you. Because by then, hopefully, we’ll have earned it.”
The New People paused. They seemed to be talking among themselves, but it was not speech that JC or Happy or Melody or Kim could comprehend. Finally, they spoke again.
Yes. This is not our Time. We are ghosts from the Future. That’s where we belong. So that is where we will go. Now.
And they were gone. All of them, gone. The overpowering presence of the New People disappeared, snapped off, as they moved on into Future Time. Except . . . JC was always sure afterwards, that for a moment one of the New People, the terrible transformed living gods, dropped her godly mask to look back at him as the young woman she’d originally been . . . to give him just the ghost of a smile, before she left.
The four Ghost Finders, the three living people and the dead woman, looked slowly around them. They were standing in an empty floor at the top of an office building in London, and everything else they had seen there was already a fading memory. The world was back the way it should be, and full of only those things that belonged there. And the warm amber street light falling through the glass windows was like a benediction.
“That’s it,” said Happy. “It’s all over?”
“No,” said JC. “This is over, but we still don’t know who or what Patterson represented. Why they wanted us, and what they hoped to achieve. Remember what those Crowley Project agents said, down under Oxford Circus Tube Station? That there are people operating behind the scenes, weakening the walls of the world, for purposes of their own . . . Nothing to do with the Project or the Carnacki Institute. We need to find out who these people are. Before they do something even worse than this.”
“Could we at least take a day off, first?” said Happy. “I am so tired I feel like I could go into reverse.”
“Of course!” said JC, smiling broadly on his people. “All work and no play makes Jack a pain in the arse. But still, you know, I have to wonder . . . what kind of world the New People might have made. Whether it might actually have been . . . something very like Heaven.”
NINE
RIDER ON THE STORM
Some hours later, outside Chimera House
The night was almost over. The sun was fighting its way up the sky, pushing back the dark with streaks of red and gold. The shadows were no longer as deep, or as menacing, and a few of the more optimistic birds had started singing. London’s morning traffic was getting under way, the muted roar barely audible in the distance. It was still bloody cold, though.
The Carnacki Institute had turned out in force to mop up the mess left behind by its latest mission. Dozens of people were running this way and that, up and down the street before Chimera House, all kinds of people, representing all kinds of specialities, all of them moving like they had a plan. Or at the very least, all trying hard to look busy so they wouldn’t get shouted at. Some were inside the lobby, taking readings with an impressive array of instruments. Others were already deeper in and further up, cleaning the place thoroughly, before the local authorities were allowed in. Removing all traces of the weird and uncanny, and any and all evidence that might give lesser mortals nightmares. Scientific equipment was being removed, computers wiped clean, and cer
Everyone was moving quickly, hard at work, because the area had already been sealed off and isolated for far too long. People might start asking questions. Though the Carnacki Institute would have already seen to it that they wouldn’t get any answers. For their own good. The best way to keep a secret is to make sure no-one knows enough to understand which questions to ask.
JC, Happy, and Melody waited patiently outside Chimera House, being looked over by the Carnacki Institute’s very own medical team. Which on such short notice, and at such an ungodly hour of the morning, consisted of one paramedic ambulance, with driver, and one bleary-eyed uniformed nurse. JC had already been checked out, and declared fine. He bestowed his most gracious smile on the nurse as he pulled his ice-cream white jacket back on.
“Of course I’m fine,” he said grandly. “I could have told you that. I am always fine.”
“Actually, you look like something big and determined kicked the crap out of you,” said Melody.
“Yes,” JC said patiently. “But apart from that, I’m fine.”
“Oh good,” murmured Kim. “I was getting a little worried, back there.”
No-one could see or hear her, for the moment. She had made herself invisible so as not to spook the late-comers—and because she was still quite shy around strangers. JC could feel her presence near him, like the smell of a wild rose or the warmth of an unfelt breath on his cheek.
Happy sat in the back of the ambulance, sipping hot chicken soup from a plastic mug bearing the legend He’s dead, Jim. “I’m feeling better, too, if anybody cares. This is good soup. Good starter. Does anyone else feel like sending out for pizza? If we all club together and order the big size, we can get a stuffed crust . . .”
The nurse shut him up by thrusting a thermometer into his mouth. She’d already taken a blood sample and was shaking her head sadly. Happy raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t believe everything you see on a chromatograph readout,” he said carefully, around the thermometer. “It was an emergency situation. I don’t do the pills thing any more. Well, not as much, anyway.”
“It’s a wonder to me you have any blood left in your chemical system,” snapped the nurse. “I’ve seen your file. We pass it around back at base when we want to freak out the new girls. When you die, we’re going to put your organs on display, as a Horrible Warning to Others. Some people don’t even want to wait till you die. If I were to take your blood pressure, would I regret it?”
“I don’t know,” said Happy. “How good are your nerves?”
“Oh, get the hell out of my ambulance,” said the nurse, whipping the thermometer out of his mouth. She studied it for a moment, winced, and threw it away. “I haven’t got the patience to deal with self-harmers.” She manhandled Happy out of the back of the ambulance and gestured impatiently to Melody. “Come on, science girl, get your geeky arse in here. Happy, JC, don’t either of you go rushing off anywhere. I want to check you out with the Geiger counter before I sign off on you.”
“Amateur,” said Melody. “If I had my equipment here, I could test us for a dozen different kinds of radiation you’ve never even heard of.”
“Speaking of which,” said JC. “Look what’s just turned up.”
Melody looked where JC was pointing, and immediately pushed the nurse aside to sprint off down the street to where two large men were straining to push her equipment along on a trolley.
“Babies!”
The two men pushing the trolley took one look at what was heading their way, abandoned the trolley, and ran for their lives. Melody had a reputation for dealing very harshly with anyone who damaged her scientific instruments in transit. She threw herself across the piled-up equipment and hugged it all fiercely.
“It’s all right, babies—mommy’s here! Did any of the nasty men touch you, sweeties?”
JC looked at Happy. “There’s something entirely not natural about how that woman relates to her precious toys. If she shows half that much passion in the bedroom . . .”
“Don’t go there,” said Happy. “Trust me—you don’t want to know.”
JC grinned. Then the smile faded from his face. “Look who’s here,” he said, quietly.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked around as the revered and very-much-feared Boss of the Carnacki Institute, Catherine Latimer, her very own bad self, came striding out of Chimera House. She hit the crowd at full speed and kept going, expecting everyone who mattered to keep up with her. And, of course, they all did, if they knew what was good for them. She talked in half a dozen different directions at once, giving orders, making observations, motivating people with harsh language and sharp looks. She gave new instructions to a dozen departments and sent them off on urgent errands with her voice still ringing loudly in their ears. Catherine Latimer got things done because everyone under her was too scared not to do them on her behalf. She stopped briefly, to glare back at Chimera House as though it had done all this to personally annoy her, then gave her full attention to the second field team she’d called in, standing patiently to one side.
JC had spotted them the moment they arrived and had been careful to maintain a more-than-respectful distance. It was no secret that the new team were here to search the whole building from top to bottom, in case JC and his team had missed anything. Trust, but verify, while carrying a really big stick. The Carnacki Institute got through mottos like a dog gets through fleas, but this one suited better than most. JC looked the new team over thoughtfully. He knew them. Everybody did.
Latimer wasn’t taking any chances—she’d brought in the Institute’s longest-established and most successful A team. Really big hitters, with a nasty reputation, led by the living legend Jeremy Diego, along with his exotic telepath, Monica Odini, and the tech wizard, Ivar ap Owen. They’d solved more cases, put down more Bad Things, and kicked more supernatural arse than all the other field teams put together. Diego himself was efficient, glamorous, and almost unbearably arrogant. In other words, everything JC aspired to be.
Diego looked across at JC, and his gaze was only spared from being openly contemptuous by its basic lack of interest. JC made a point of smiling meaninglessly at Diego, as though he sort of recognised the face but couldn’t quite put a name to it.
Diego wandered casually over to confront JC, who made a point of adopting an especially casual and unimpressed pose. The two team leaders nodded and smiled politely to each other, because other people were looking, but neither of them offered to shake hands. There were limits. Diego stuck his hands in the pockets of his long duster coat and made a point of looking JC square in the sunglasses.
“Anything in there we need to look out for?” he said casually. “Anything that was a little bit too much for you or might need another slap round the head to keep it quiet?”
“No,” said JC, smiling easily. “Nothing worth the mentioning. My team always takes care of business. Though if you could bring yourselves to clean up some of the mess . . . since you’re there . . .”
“We’ll run all the usual checks anyway,” said Diego. “In case you missed something. Better safe than sorry, eh?”
“Of course,” said JC. “It’s always best to keep busy when there’s nothing important left to do.”
By then, both men were being so laid-back it was a wonder they hadn’t toppled over. Diego and JC exchanged quietly venomous smiles before Diego turned his back on JC and wandered unhurriedly back to his own team. Happy moved in close beside JC.
“You wouldn’t believe what their team telepath Monica just thought at me! Some people have far too much imagination and not nearly enough inhibitions. You haven’t got a notepad, have you, JC? I need to jot something down, while the details are still fresh . . .”
“Tempted?” said JC.
“With her?” said Happy. “I’d rather stick it in a blender. I’ve heard stories about her. Most of them end up wit
“Heads up,” said JC. “Here comes trouble . . . Melody! Stop caressing that computer and get over here! I think the Boss would like a word with us.”
Melody came hurrying back to join JC and Happy. She knew the value of a united front against danger and had always been very big on safety in numbers. If only so there was someone else to hide behind when the shit started flying. The nurse saw Catherine Latimer striding forward and retreated quickly into her ambulance, locking the door behind her. JC would have joined her if he’d thought it would do any good. Meetings with the Carnacki Institute’s Boss rarely went well when he and his team were involved. Somehow, JC knew she was already working on a way to blame the whole mess on him.
The Boss crashed to a halt before JC and his team, who all made a point of nodding casually to her in a totally unimpressed sort of way. Latimer considered each one of them in turn with a cold and very direct gaze. She wasn’t all that impressive, physically, but her sheer force of personality more than made up for that. Medium height and sturdy, she wore a superbly tailored grey suit and smoked black Turkish cigarettes in a long ivory holder. She had to be in her seventies and looked like she’d fought for every inch of it. She was the most impressive, efficient, and downright dangerous woman JC had ever met. He spent a lot of time avoiding her, which most of the time she seemed to appreciate.
“I am here,” said Catherine Latimer, the Boss, in an even more than usually harsh and clipped voice, “because the first I knew anything about this mission was when you phoned in to say it was all over. It would seem Patterson set the whole thing up himself and ran it personally from behind the scenes. I’m still having trouble accepting that Robert was a traitor. I’ve known him for years, man and boy. His father was one of my best field agents, back in the eighties. I trained Patterson personally, pushed him up the promotions ladder as fast as I could . . . I had such plans for him. He would have gone far, the fool.”