Travelogue V: the approach to the plateau

The wind howls around the mountain like a banshee, and like the banshee it never has any good tidings to bring. Up above us -- and not a very long way above us at all -- are dull clouds that look heavy with snow or hail. The last of the sunlight is still falling on the mountainside below, but it's a little too late now to turn back and try to pitch a tent to wait the weather out. It would take us at least an hour to find a surface we could secure ourselves too.

Ahead of me, Jordan is hammering pitons into the rock and behind him David is passing rope through his belt and then throwing it down to me. It's a scant comfort, but at least we'll be trying to hang on with more than just our hands and feet if the wind grows stronger and the clouds decide to drop their burden on our heads.

We begin our ascent again, slower now than before because of the need to hammer in the pitons ahead of us, and I retrieve them as a pass over them. It's hard to pull them out again, but I know that if Jordan didn't make them properly secure we'd all regret it.

Below me the mountain cascades down to a high pasture where rare cattle are summered and bred, and a small group of people make the kind of living rich Westerners pay holiday money to go and pretend to do. The mountain seems haphazard, almost careless, like a woman who has lost her sense of style and dresses in the morning with her eyes closed. The people in the high pastures wouldn't talk to us, and when it became apparent that we were planning on climbing the mountain they wouldn't even look at us. I'd heard rumours that the mountain was considered sacred, and perhaps, to these people, it is.

We've spent two years planning this ascent, researching the mountain as much as we could. There's not a lot written about it, and it's debatable if anyone's ever reached the top. Some of the books that had the most information were unobtainable; there are apparently only four copies of De Vermiis Mysteriis left in the whole world and a mountain-climber doesn't have the clout to get access to a copy. It might not have helped anyway, my Latin is barely remembered from my schooldays. I casually asked the British Museum why they didn't make more copies of the book and, before the assistant was hurried away by a senior-looking man in a very sharp suit, was told that they couldn't afford the staff attrition.

There's a cry from up ahead and Jordan waves, makes sure he has my attention, and points. The next plateau is visible now, maybe only a cautious half-hour's climb away, and we might even get there before the clouds descend on us. We shout a brief conversation and decide to be a little less cautious and try to beat the weather to the top.

What awaited us on the plateau was a scene of horror.

Opening the way

Police tape stretched across the end of Holbein Street, closing it off to traffic and pedestrians alike. The street turned a corner half-way along stopping Grimmerie from seeing if the other end were similarly closed, but he expected it would be. There was a smell of rain to come in the air, and the breeze had stiffened in the last few minutes into an adolescent wind; going around now, up past the clock-tower meant that he might get caught in it all. He sighed, and looked about for the police officer who would be manning the tape to stop people from just slipping under it, and saw none. He paused, wondering what the real danger was, and then decided to walk round anyway, just in case.

He'd just drawn level with the clock-tower, a wedding-cake ornament of a building commissioned by the council in a fit of civic pride, when the first fat drops of rain starting splashing down around him. Cursing furiously under his breath he stepped into the porch of the tower for shelter, hoping that this was just a passing squall.

While he waited he looked around. The tower was steel and glass like so many modern buildings, but the porch here at the bottom was brick, and old-looking brick at that. He tried to remember if he knew what had been here before the site was cleared but his memory was dragging its heels again -- it seemed to do that more and more these days -- and he couldn't quite think of what it was. The door at the back of the porch appeared wooden but when he touched it it was freezing cold. He tapped on it lightly with his fingernails, wondering what metal it was. It sounded slightly hollow, but then someone on the other side tapped back.

Grimmerie tapped again, wondering if he hadn't just heard an echo. Someone tapped back in a different cadence, and then the thunder roared overhead and the rain started hammering down. Water splashed back up when it hit the street and there was a film of running water covering it in just thirty seconds. The sky lightened briefly, and two seconds later the thunder crashed again, echoing around the shops and houses. Grimmerie stared out at it, mesmerised by the ferocity of the weather, until the wind started driving the rain into his face in sporadic gusts. Then he pulled his coat collar up, and turned back to the door to see if it would open.

As he placed his hand against it and pushed he felt a familiar warmth against his chest. The amulet that permitted him access to the ways, to the places where he hunted teddy bears in their natural habitat, had activated. A ghost of the door swung inwards under the weight of his hand, and he stepped through it. For a long moment he was stood both in a ghostly clock-tower and at a meeting point of the ways, staring at a familiar middle-aged woman who was staring back at him. He noted almost idly that the ghost of the clock-tower looked almost exactly like the real clock-tower, and less idly that this was the woman who'd come into his shop to take an amulet from him. Then one world faded and the myriad paths of the ways opened up before him.

He loosened the Brinchev Kris in its little sheathe inside his jacket. He didn't have far to go, but a careless hunter quickly became a dead hunter. Sure that he was prepared, he picked a path he knew, and headed home.

Behind him, trapped inside the clock-tower, the woman who'd seen a ghostly Grimmerie walk through a locked door and then disappear listened to the rage of the storm and wondered how much more there was that she didn't know about the ways.

A day at the zoo

I looked around the zoo cafeteria while I sipped my coffee. The coffee was actually nice, there was a decent depth of flavour to it and it hadn't been boiled or microwaved to death. I sighed, very quietly, to myself with pleasure, and watched the small queue snake its way through the pasta bakes and packaged sandwich chillers to the till.
Terry sat down opposite me with a much louder sigh and a styrofoam cup of instant coffee he'd coaxed out of a vending machine. He looked at me, and his usually sad face looked slightly more miserable than normal.
"The penguins are loose," he said, staring into his little styrofoam cup. "They're all over the zoo."
"How did that happen then?"
"I don't know, but I bet it's got something to do with mum."
"What's got something to do with me?" Terry's mum bustled up holding a plastic cafeteria tray in both hands. On the tray was a china cup of tea, a small metal jug of milk and a baby penguin.
"That's a penguin, Mrs. Mossbrook," I said, pointing at it.
"Yes dear, it is. And it's outrageous too, they didn't have a button for it on the cash register so they said they couldn't let me have it! I said, 'Well, if you've not got a button for it then it must be free.' They didn't like that one bit."
"You're not going to eat it, are you mum?" Terry looked horrified.
"Of course not, but I thought it'd make a nice souvenir from the zoo. We can put it in the bath to begin with, and then set the paddling pool up outside and put it in there eventually. It's only one little penguin after all, and I believe it'll make a good little guard-dog."
"I thought penguins prefer cold climates?" I said, almost as though I were talking to myself. I knew better than to upset Terry's mum.
"We'll use ice water for the swimming pool, dear, don't you worry about that. And I think Gladys at the WI has some contacts in the fishmongers, so I can probably get the fish quite cheap too."
Terry had reached over and was stroking the penguin with a far-away look in his eyes.
"See?" said Terry's mum to me. "It'll be good for him to have a pet. He's been moping around ever since we lost that exchange student."
"Er... lost?" I said, not knowing what to think.
"Yes, he passed away quite unexpectedly. A great shame, and I don't know how Terry's going to tell the student's mother. Especially since she doesn't speak any English."
"Right, right you are Mrs. Mossbrook," I said sitting back and wondering for the first time if I'd been blind to all these machinations when Terry and I were just kids.
"It's quite alright dear, now be a love and go and close the cafeteria doors."
I looked at her quizzically.
"There are penguins everywhere," she said. "I let the tigers out to clean them up."

A visit to the toystore

Little bones clacked together as the woman lifted the skeletal teddy bear down from the shelf. Grimmerie, the toy-maker, smiled and nodded.
"Ah yes," he said, "that's the remains of a teddy-bear. Suitable for a lost childhood, or perhaps just a child with a morbid disposition. If they wear black too much, like to play in the graveyard, and recite lists of demons instead of nursery rhymes, then that's the toy for them."
The woman jiggled the teddy bear, listening to the bones clack against each other, watching the yellowed skull loll indolently. "It's got a odd kind of attraction to it," she said at last, one hand slipping towards her handbag. "How do you make it? The bones are quite convincing."
Grimmerie laughed, a melancholic sound with an odd reverberation. "They're plaster of Paris," he muttered, sounding embarrassed and ducking his head.
"They're not." The woman sounded pleasant but her eyes were hard and her mouth was a thin blue-lipped line in her alabaster face. Grimmerie started.
"I can assure you--" he started.
"I am a forensic pathologist, and I am very certain that these are real bones. They are the wrong weight for plaster of Paris, they have the wrong sound when they jiggle together, and they have tiny imperfections where tendons and muscles have attached in the past. These are real bones, but they are not the bones of any human or creature that I recognise. I want to know how you achieve this."
Grimmerie was silent for a long time, so long that the woman finally slipped her hand into her handbag and started to draw something from it.
"That's a knife, isn't it," said Grimmerie softly, his eyes glistening with unshed tears.
She nodded.
"It's a Brinchev Kris, I suppose?" he said.
"Of course not. I have done my research, toy-maker. It is a Sukhev Da."
"I see. Then I have no choice do I? The bones are real because they are real. I trap and kill teddy-bears in their natural habitat. Then I skin them and stuff the skins and sell them as high-quality collector's bears, and occasionally I wire up a skeleton and sell it as a curio."
"And how do I find their natural habitat?"
"I have amulets that will open doors. I assume you'll be wanting one?"
"Naturally." She smiled, showing some pointed teeth. "And where are the doors?"
"The amulet will find them. You'll see them change when you look at them."
"Then give me an amulet."
Grimmerie opened a drawer and removed a seven pointed star carved from chalcedony and suspended on a brass chain. He placed it silently, reverently, on the counter and nodded towards it. She took it, weighing it thoughtfully in her hand for a moment, and then slipping it over her head. She tucked it inside her blouse.
"Thank-you," she said.
"I'd find yourself a Brinchev Kris if you're going after what I think you're going after," said Grimmerie. "Brinchev was trusted by many factions, most of whom survived to regret it."
She looked at him with an expression he couldn't puzzle out, and left, taking the amulet and skeletal teddy bear with her.

More from the desert

I woke this morning and Julie was gone. The wardrobe doors were open and her clothes were gone from the hangers; the drawers spilled only my clothes from their half-open mouths, and the bathroom was blissfully free from millions of cans, tins and bottles. Downstairs was a similar tale; her DVDs were gone from the organiser, the curtains that she'd found in Morocco and had imported were gone and when I walked into the kitchen, her cup was sitting in seven pieces on a note on the table.
I'm leaving you, read the note, and I tsked to myself, that much was obvious. I've taken what's mine that I can carry, I'll be back with a van for the apothecary table and the spice collection. Please don't be here then. We'll talk much later, right now I can't even find the words to write this note.
"Not a problem," I murmured to myself under my breath and rubbed my temples. A headache was building, but it was clear that she'd drugged my coffee last night to ensure I wouldn't wake up, and that was probably the cause. I put the kettle on and wandered out through the connecting door to the garage. Near the door is my travelling trunk -- I've never taken it travelling, but I've put all the things I've brought back in it. To my surprise, there were fresh scratches near both padlocks. I checked the rest of the trunk and there were scratches by the hinges too, and a small crowbar discarded behind the trunk. So Julie had tried to get into it. There was nothing of hers in there. That explained more than her note did though.
The padlocks are just for show. I pressed in a couple of places on the trunk and a thin steel panel in the lid slid back, revealing a recessed combination lock. I entered the combination, wincing only slightly at the memories it evoked, and listened to the steel bolts clunk back. I opened it, cast an appraising glance over the contents, and picked out a soft leather bag of desert sand. The trunk locked automatically when I closed the lid.
I made coffee from the now-boiling water in the kettle and spilled the sand over the kitchen table. It shimmered and sparkled as though still under a desert sun.
I had been in the desert for eight days when I discovered an oasis of sand. There was no surface water and I was running low in the bottles I carried, but the sand here shimmered and sparkled like the sea from a distance, and trees grew around it thickly and with vibrant greenery. I stopped at the edge and looked at it, shading myself under a palm tree. It was undeniably beautiful. There was no breeze, but the sand grains rattled across one another, little currents visible in the larger sea, and the shimmer seemed to create hazy mirages above it. Without quite knowing why I did it, I knelt down and let one hand dip into the shifting, sandy sea.
The rattle of grains became louder and the mass of sand shifted rapidly, dying away to stillness just seconds later. The whole expanse of sand was still and patterned, and in the pattern I recognised myself, stood drinking water near some rocks.
I swept sand into a leather bag I'd been using to carry food when I had some so far, and backed away from the sand. So far I'd learned that there are strange things in the desert, and psychotropic sand seemed like something I should keep, but not walk into. I carried on past, and to my slight surprise, I found the rocks shown in the sand just a couple of hours later. Within the rocks was a small, cold and fresh spring at which I refilled my water, and slaked my thirst.

Sat now at the table, I laid my hand on the sand, and waited. There is only a little sand, so the images come one at a time and are sometimes harder to work out than a cryptic crossword clue. First came Julie's face, then mine looking sad and worried, and now... an ambulance....

Monsanto Labs

"Virgil?"
"Yes mate?"
"Who are you disguised as?"
"Saint Thomas of India, mate."
"Who?"
"Saint Thomas of India, mate. Patron saint of architects, innit?"
"...Virgil?"
"Yes mate?"
"Why?"
"I liked the cape, mate. You don't get many disguises with capes, innit?"
"..."
Damian sighed and resisted the urge to rub his face with both hands. That would smudge the make-up he'd spent an hour applying as part of his disguise. He was crouched in the bushes outside the private offices of Dr. Monsanto with Virgil Mackey crouched next to him, waiting for the clouds to close up again and hide the moon. Damian was disguised as a maintenance engineer, and the makeup made his skin appear sallow, his eyes appear bigger and his mouth wider. If he was caught on surveillance camera, he wanted to be sure that the police, and particularly Dr. Monsanto's private guards, were looking for entirely the wrong man.
And Virgil was... disguised as Saint Thomas of India, who would surely attract attention even if it were the middle of the day and he were there on legitimate business. What the hell had Virgil been thinking?
"What the hell were you thinking, Virgil?"
"What do you mean, mate?"
"How is Saint Thomas of India being discreet? Who's going to fail to notice Saint bloody Thomas of bloody India on a surveillance tape?"
"Who's going to believe it, mate? They'll look it and go, 'that can't be right, mate, no way is Saint Thomas of India running around here at night,'"
"Yes, Virgil. Which is why they'll know it wasn't bloody Thomas, and they won't be looking for him. They'll be looking for the guy who hired the disguise. Where did you find it anyway?"
"Nicked it from the kid's school. They're doing some Bible story for Easter."
"...Virgil?"
"Yes mate?"
"Who let you have a kid with them? Could they not run away?"
"Leave it out mate, I've been married twice. Got kids from both marriages."
"God help us all, Virgil, but please tell me you're not responsible for bringing them up?"
The bushes around them darkened, and Damian looked up while Virgil looked hurt.
"Forget it Verge, the moon's covered. Let's mosey."
The two men raised up into a crouch and scurried through the bushes to the fire door, and Damian produced a small keyring with three keys on it. His contact on the inside knew that one of the keys would open the door, but not which one, so it was a case of trying all three. Damian swallowed hard; this was it. Through the door, up the stairs on the left, and into the Monsanto labs. Where there would be prizes for the taking.

Keeping the secret

"We need strong cryptography to protect our secrets, particularly email and our online EPMS. As it stands, we've got a single password protecting most of our files, and if you can get onto the CONserver you can read just about anything anyway. We need to update, and swiftly."
Sylvestra looked up from Vogue and made a moue. "Whatever you like, Doc.," she said, marking her place on the page with a long finger. "I thought the password was pretty secure though."
"It's only secure at all because we let the Green Lightbulb choose it," Dr. Septopus said, clacking his beak to show his irritation.
"Hah! Then you mean it's only secure because no normal person would think of it!"
"I honestly doubt a normal person could even spell it. Do you think that maybe his kind of illiteracy is part of his superpower?"
"I try not to think about him. Ever." Sylvestra screwed her face up in distaste, and returned to her magazine.
"Fine," said Dr. Septopus, carefully not voicing his agreement with her. "Well then, I shall organise the crytographic protocols tonights and issue you all with your individual and unique passphrases tomorrow."
"I think you mean parrot-harnesses," said the Green Lightbulb from the doorway. He came in as the other two looked up, and sat down at the round table in the centre of the Chamber of Nastiness where the Council met.
"Do I?" said Dr. Septopus, looking perplexed.
"Well yes," said the Green Lightbulb. "I've ordered parrots for everybody. They're like a kind of secure experiental storage faculty."
"...experimental?" said Dr. Septopus quietly, his face wrinkled in thought.
"...external storage facility, I hope," said Sylvestra, laying down her magazine. "How are they secure? Surely they can just fly away."
"They will bond with their owners," said the Green Lightbulb. "That's why we need parrot-harnesses. And then you tell them things that need to be kept secret, and they remember them for you, and repeat it back to you when you need it."
"I thought parrots repeated back things to anybody?" Sylvestra hid a smirk behind a hand.
"No, Sylvestra, we train them to only talk to their owners. And friends of course, so you can send messages to your friends by parrot. Like instant massaging, only cooler."
"Please let him mean messaging," muttered Dr. Septopus.
"How do you stop other people from overhearing what the parrot's saying?" said Sylvestra.
"Stop baiting him!" Dr. Septopus sighed and attempted to get the conversation back on track. "I meant passphrases, Green, for the increased security measures for email, the EPMS and the CONServer."
"I shall probably give up email in favour of parroting," said the Green Lightbulb prissily. "What EPMS? Or a CONserver?"
"EPMS is our Evil Plan Management System, and the CONServer is the Council of Nastiness's Server. It's hosted in the Cayman Islands, you know. The passphrases will all be about 2000 characters long, and there'll be a small... procedure to put it somewhere safe."
Both Sylvestra and the Green Lightbulb blanched at the word procedure.
"What?" said Dr. Septopus seeing the fear around the table.
"What kind of procedure?" said Sylvestra, closing her magazine. "This isn't going to be another... insertion, is it?"
"Oh no, nothing like that! You'll need the passphrase somewhere where you can read it, but no-one else can get at it. It'll be tattooed on the inside of your eyelids. That way, when you die we can just cut your eyelids off and still be able to access all your legacy data."
"That sounds painful," said the Green Lightbulb.
"What do you mean, when I die?" said Sylvestra.
Silence fell around the table for a few moments, finally broken by the Green Lightbulb.
"Can I kill the tattooist?"
"After he's done all the tattoos."