Archibald Lox and the Empress of Suanpan Read online

  Back where I started, I climb one of the twenty-metre monsters – a ladder is helpfully carved into it – and check out the view. Then I climb down, head for the beach and lie down close to the water’s edge. I think about going for a swim, but Inez told me that my clothes would dissolve if I took them off, and the last thing I want is to be standing here naked when she arrives.

  I feel peckish, so I veer inland, pick mushrooms and carry them down to the beach, where I have a feast. After that I go for another walk, counting pineapples – I give up after a hundred and sixty-two – and testing out various chairs and beds.

  Another long spell chilling on the beach. Then the sky darkens. I climb one of the taller pineapples to gaze at the empty night sky. It’s so strange with no moon or stars. After an hour or so of quiet reflection – I think a lot about Dave and why I agreed to come here instead of heading home – I retire to one of the beds, make myself comfy and slip into the land of dreams.

  I go for a run in the morning, before having breakfast back on the beach. A few hours later, bored and with nothing else to do, I begin building sandcastles, small structures at first, before growing more ambitious. It’s tricky without a bucket and spade, but by afternoon I’m hard at work on an entire complex, a huge castle at the centre, smaller houses scattered around.

  I’ve become so caught up in the construction that I’m unaware of anything else, and leap as if shot when someone says, “Aren’t you a bit old for sandcastles?”

  I spring away and look up, half-expecting Orlan Stiletto and Argate Axe, but it’s only Inez, smiling at me archly.

  “You’re back,” I pant, wiping my hands on my thighs. “I thought you’d be a few more days.”

  “I made better time than expected,” she says.

  “Where’s Cal?” There’s no sign of him and I start to worry that he came to harm in New York.

  “I sent him on ahead. He was sour at me for not letting him fight the SubMerged, so I figured a break would suit us both.” She nods at the sandcastles. “Did I disturb you in the middle of something important?”

  “Shut up,” I scowl.

  “I can come back later if you’re busy,” she trills.

  “If you don’t stop, I’ll grab one of those pineapples and stuff it up –”

  “Ah-ah!” she tuts, wagging a finger at me.

  “– your nose,” I finish, and we both laugh. “I am too old for sandcastles,” I admit, “but it’s boring here, nothing else to do. Why did you arrange for us to meet on an island of stupid pineapples?”

  She shrugs. “Not many people know about this place – Winston actually spent a few years here before he settled in the wrap zone – so I figured it would be as safe a spot as any to rendezvous.” Then her eyes narrow. “But you weren’t meant to meet me at all. You were supposed to ask Winston to come, then head home.”

  “There’s been a change of plan,” I tell her.

  “Is Winston alright?” she asks, concerned.

  “He’s fine, but…” I clear my throat, not sure how she’ll take the news. “He won’t help you. He was scared that he’d be caught and tortured again.”

  Inez looks grim. “I feared as much. It was good of you to pass on his answer. I’ll visit when this is over, as I promised, and if there’s anything –”

  She’s already started to turn away.

  “Wait,” I stop her. “There’s more.”

  Inez looks at me with a questioning, impatient smile.

  “Winston said I might be able to help you.”

  Her smile vanishes. “He told you about my mission?”

  “No, but he said you’d need help with a lock, and he thought I could…”

  I stop. Inez is staring at me as if I’ve told the biggest whopper ever.

  “If you don’t believe me,” I growl, “I’m more than happy to leave you to your own devices and –”

  “No,” Inez cries. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. I just can’t believe I had such an advanced locksmith under my nose and didn’t realise it.”

  I blush with pleasure. “I’m not that advanced,” I mumble, “but Winston thought I’d be able to deal with your lock.”

  Inez grabs me and whirls me round. “You’re a wonder, Archibald Lox!”

  “Stop it,” I grunt, but don’t try to break free.

  “I knew you had a gift,” Inez beams, “but I’d no idea…” Her smile fades and she stops whirling. Her hands drop and she curses softly.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I can’t involve you in this,” she says. “This isn’t your sphere, so it’s not your problem.”

  “But I want to help.”

  “It’s too dangerous. If you came with me, you’d be risking your life.”

  “I’ve already done that,” I remind her, “in the prison and on the boat.”

  “All the more reason to get out while you can,” Inez says. “The odds against me are crippling, especially now that Winston’s out of the equation. I can’t ask you to share that risk, for people who aren’t your own. This is a place for the dead, Archie, not the living. Go home.”

  “Home to what?” I ask hoarsely, then steel myself to talk about the subject I’ve never been able to discuss with anyone. “I had a foster brother. Dave. He drowned. We were walking by the Thames. He hopped up on a wall, pretending to be on a tightrope. He slipped and fell. I looked for something to fish him out with, but…”

  I’m crying and have to stop. Inez says nothing.

  “I should have dived in,” I moan. “I know you’re not supposed to, that the person in trouble can drag you under, that you should look for something to throw to them, but there was nothing nearby for me to use, and a current dragged him down and took him, and…”

  I break down in tears again.

  “I know it wasn’t my fault,” I say when I have my voice back, “but I feel guilty anyway. His parents don’t blame me or hate me, but they can’t look at me since it happened. We don’t talk. It’s a house of silence and suffering.”

  “Is that why you walked away from it so readily when you found an entrance to the Merge?” Inez asks softly.

  I nod miserably.

  “But you can’t keep walking away,” she says. “You have to go home eventually.”

  “I know,” I say with a weak smile. “And I want to. I’m ready to face George and Rachel – Dave’s parents – again. I don’t want to stay here to avoid them. I need to help you because…”

  I pause, getting the words clear inside my head before I commit to them.

  “When Dave died, I didn’t really believe in an afterlife. Then I came here and everything changed. I saw that my world isn’t the only one, that death isn’t the end. Dave’s soul has moved on. He’s trotting around somewhere in a nice new body, free to carry on growing and learning.

  “I understand that Dave’s not in the Merge,” I continue, “and we don’t know what the other spheres are like, but I’m guessing there are bad people where he is now, just as you have the SubMerged here.”

  “We can’t be sure of that,” Inez says. “There might be separate spheres for the good and bad after this one.”

  I shrug. “The point is, Dave’s in a sphere that’s maybe very similar to this one, and if millions of people’s lives were at risk in that place, and I could do something to save them, he’d want me to help. We’re all linked. What happens in my world affects what happens in the Merge, and maybe events here affect Dave’s sphere. I have to help you, because by helping the Merged, perhaps I’m helping Dave too. I failed him before. I won’t fail him again.”

  “That was quite a speech,” Inez says with a chuckle, giving my shoulder a comforting squeeze as I wipe away tears.

  “I meant every word of it,” I sniffle. “Will you accept my offer of help?”

  “Yes,” Inez smiles, and without any further debate, she takes my hand and guides me to a borehole and the start of the next
dangerous phase of her…

  No.

  …our mission.

  FOUR — THE ABACUSES

  7

  We cross realms to Sapphire, which doesn’t look much different to Diamond, and pass through several zones until we arrive at our destination — and I’m certain, as soon as we step through the borehole, that this is where we’re going to stop.

  We’re standing on a wooden platform in the branches of a wide tree perched on the edge of a mountain. Below us lies a quarry, and sitting in the middle of the quarry is a series of massive abacuses set back to back. Each frame must be the height of a thirty- or forty-storey building, and at least twice as wide as it’s tall. The frames are made of incredibly thick logs, with silver poles running between the upper and lower bars. The circular beads dotting the poles vary in size, but most look like they could easily contain a house, and some could hold several buildings. The beads are different colours, clustered together or spaced apart, varying from pole to pole, and some slowly slide up or down as I’m watching.

  I’m in the middle of counting the abacuses – I’m up to fourteen – when Inez claps my back. “Let’s fly.”

  “Fly?” I echo. “I thought from what King Lloyd said that there was no flight in the Merge.”

  “There are no planes here,” she says, “but we do have gliders.”

  She nods at a spot behind us, and when I turn, I see dozens of winged gliders stacked against a long wall which is also home to many boreholes.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I wheeze as she fetches a couple of the small gliders. I glance down at the abacuses again. As tall as they are, we’re still high above them, and a long way short of the first giant structure.

  “Put this on,” Inez says, trying to hand me one of the gliders.

  “No way,” I shout, batting it aside. “I wouldn’t know where to begin. I’d crash into an abacus or the quarry floor.”

  Inez squints at me, then laughs. “Look again at the space between this platform and the nearest abacus.”

  I move closer to the edge and study the gap. At first I don’t see anything, but then I notice thin wires running between our platform and the beads on the upper level of the abacus.

  “There are hooks on the gliders,” Inez says, pointing them out. “They clip onto the wires, and as long as we’re strapped in properly, it should be a smooth, straight run to Suanpan.”

  “That’s what the abacuses are called?” I ask.

  “It’s the name of the city,” she says.

  “What city?” I frown.

  She sighs and points towards the beads.

  Staring, I see windows and doorways in the beads, and realise they aren’t just large enough to hold buildings — they are buildings.

  Inez shakes a glider at me. This time I take it and let her manoeuvre my arms through the straps dangling from its slim but sturdy frame. She then connects another set of straps to my ankles.

  “Is this really safe?” I ask as she ties herself into her own glider.

  “People have been coming to Suanpan for more than a thousand years,” she says. “There’s an occasional accident, but no more than a handful per century.”

  “Couldn’t you have just said, ‘Yes, it’s perfectly safe?’” I moan.

  Inez chuckles wickedly. “I believe in full disclosure. Come on, it’s fun. Shuffle forward and I’ll clip you on. When you leap, your legs will rise behind you, and as long as you don’t fight it, you’ll fly like an arrow.”

  “I’ve never been a fan of heights,” I mutter, looking over the edge of the platform again, trying to judge how high up we are. “Isn’t there another way, a ladder we can climb down and a doorway through one of the ground level beads?”

  “There’s a path cut into the cliff,” Inez says, “but hardly anyone uses it. You can go that way if you’re determined, but it will take ages, and you’ll have to do it on your own, because I’m sticking with the glider.”

  I don’t like it, but I let Inez clip me onto the wires, then watch as she attaches herself, runs to the edge and slickly hurls herself off.

  I hold my breath and tiptoe to the edge of the platform. I rock back and forth for a few seconds, eyes shut, unable to believe that I’m really about to do this. Then I open my eyes, lean forward, stick my arms out, whoop with excitement and terror (mostly terror) and let gravity take me.

  My stomach drops as I swoop swiftly towards the gigantic abacus-shaped city. I look for Inez, but when I move my head, my body sways sickeningly and my legs jackknife behind me. With a low moan, I let my head hang straight and stare at the ground as I hurtle forwards.

  I suddenly realise that Inez never told me how to stop this thing.

  “Inez!” I roar without looking up. “How do I brake?”

  She must be too far ahead of me, because there’s no answering cry.

  I curse and raise my head, slowly this time, trying to see if there’s a cord that I can pull to slow the glider, but there doesn’t seem to be anything hanging from the frame apart from the straps holding me in place.

  I’m closing in on a bead. There’s a door ahead of me but it’s shut. I’m not sure what the beads are made of, but whatever the material is, going at this speed, I’ll splatter like a fly if I hit.

  “Help!” I scream. “Open the door! Tell me how to stop!”

  There’s no answer, and I’m almost upon the bead without slowing a notch. This is going to be ugly. The only thread of comfort I can cling to is that it will be over so abruptly that my brain will be smashed to a pulp before it can register any pain.

  I close my eyes and wait for the crash.

  There’s a jolt, followed by another, and another, then another.

  I feel myself slowing and my eyes open a crack. More jolts, and as I glance up, I see that there are ridges in the wires, calming bumps that serve to rein in the glider. I let out a shaky breath and wipe a hand across my forehead. It comes away wet with sweat. My heart is hammering so loudly that I can’t hear anything else, but as I come to a stop a few metres shy of the door, my heartbeat begins its return to normal, and I hear bells dinging inside the bead.

  “That was fun, wasn’t it?” Inez calls, and I spy her to my right, in front of a neighbouring door. She’s linked her hands behind her head and looks at ease.

  “Why didn’t you tell me… how it was going to stop?” I pant.

  “You didn’t ask,” she says, and I shoot her an evil look.

  “I thought I was going to hit the door and vaporise.”

  Inez tuts. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Archie. You need to start trusting me.”

  “Maybe I’d trust you more if you told me what’s going to happen before it happens,” I retort.

  Inez giggles. “That wouldn’t be as much fun.”

  I can’t help but laugh. Then I ask, “How long will we have to hang here?”

  “It shouldn’t be long,” Inez says. “The Suanpanners usually respond to the bells pretty quickly.”

  Confirming her prediction, both doors open at the same time and the gliders slide forward into the gloomy hollow of the bead.

  8

  Two women dressed in yellow uniforms are inside, operating a pulley system. The thick, vertical pole of the abacus runs through the centre of the bead, which is attached to it in a variety of places with arms and spokes.

  I come to rest above a short platform. There are several platforms inside the bead, at various levels, connected by ladders. The women wait until I stop swaying, then undo the straps and let me down.

  “Thanks,” I smile.

  The women don’t return my smile or make the greet. Instead one of them barks, “Reason for visiting Suanpan?”

  “Um…”

  “He’s with me,” Inez says from her adjoining platform, where she’s been released by a couple of other women.

  “And why are you here?” the woman who barked at me barks at Inez.

  “We
’re with Dermot’s thesps,” Inez says, and the woman rolls her eyes.

  “Thesps,” she spits, as if the word left a sour taste on her tongue.

  “Don’t mind her,” the other woman says with the thinnest sliver of a smile. “She has no imagination, but most of us love a good show. Do you know where to find them?”

  “Yes,” Inez says.

  “Then be on your way,” the woman says, and turns to the glider to take it down.

  There’s a door in the floor of the bead. We take a ladder to it, and Inez slides it open, to reveal that we’re nestled on top of another bead. There’s a knotted rope suspended from the bead that we’re in, and she climbs down this to a layer of planks running across the middle of the second bead.

  “What are thesps?” I ask.

  “Actors,” Inez says.

  I scratch my head. “We’re going into showbiz?”

  “Kind of,” she grins.

  We climb down to the base of the bead, where Inez opens another door. There’s a gap between this bead and the next, fifteen or twenty metres. There are small poles sticking out of the large, silver pole, and Inez climbs onto these. She pauses and pushes a lever up into a niche in the hull of the bead.

  “What does the lever do?” I ask, nervously climbing onto the pole as Inez descends.

  “Most pods can slide up and down,” Inez says, and I make a mental note to start calling the beads by their correct name. “The levers will hold them in place when we’re moving between pods, otherwise they could slide together and squash us.”

  I gulp. “How secure is that system?”

  “Almost foolproof,” Inez says.

  “Almost?” I squeak. “Couldn’t we wait for the pod below to rise?”

  “We could,” Inez says.

  “Then why don’t we?”

  “It’s not the Suanpan way,” Inez says, carrying on to the next pod, leaving me with no choice but to follow, hoping that the levers do their job and hold the pods in place, no desire at all to be flattened into an Archibald Lox sized pancake!

  We make it to the next pod in one piece. Inez slides the door open and presses a lever similar to the one above, then swings into the pod. I’m hot behind her.