“if you weren’t already thrice damned and stuck on a spit, it would almost be human that you tried.”
We didn’t know what to say, couldn’t think of anything except a sudden awareness of all the air inside our chest, that slipped over our tongue without being able to take anything but the feeblest of shapes.
Too much thinking, too much trouble.
Our solution for everything.
We kept walking, and said not a word.
And there it was.
It crept out of a corner and announced with a blaring self-confidence, “Voilà! Here I am and buggered if you’ll find a way round me!” It lay between two red-brick railway lines racing south towards more exciting, less smelly destinations, and on the chain-link fence someone had stuck up a sign in crude paint saying:!!!SEAL’S SCRAP, WASTE & REFUSE SERVICE!!!
!!WASTE NOT WANT NOT!!
VAT NOT INCLUDED
Oda looked at the metal fence and said, “If this is a symptom of your sense of humour . . .”
“You make it sound like a disease. And no, it’s not. This is where the blue van went. It’s somewhere in there.”
I nodded through an iron gate.
Beyond it, a long way beyond it, and in it, and over it, and just generally doing its impression of the endless horizon, was rubbish. Every possible kind of decay had been placed within the boundaries of SEAL’S SCRAP, as if iron and steel might, after ten thousand years’ compression, have mulched down into rich black oil to be tapped. Dead cars, shattered and crushed in the vices of lingering, sleepy cranes; dead washing machines, dead fridges, pipes broken and the chemicals spilt onto earth and air, broken baths, old shattered trolleys, torn-up pipes, ruined engines with the plugs pulled out, tumbled old tiles shattered and cracked, skips of twisted plywood blackened in some flame, bricks turned to dust and piled upon bin bags split into shreds, shattered glass and cracked plastic, white polystyrene spilt across the tarmac, cardboard boxes in which the weeds had begun to grow. It seemed to stretch for miles, oozing into every corner between the railway lines, locked away behind its see-through fence and a small cabin for the delivery men to sit in and have their tea.
Oda said, “Where’s back-up?”
I looked for the Aldermen, and saw none.
“Don’t know.”
“We could . . .”
“I’ve seen enough American TV to know what happens to people who go in without back-up.”
“Jack Bauer manages.”
“You’ve watched 24? Did you denounce that too?”
She pursed her lips. “There’s a forum on the subject, but so far, no.”
“Is this why you’re a psycho-bitch with a gun?” I asked carefully. “You saw too many thrillers?”
“I think we both know that isn’t true, and I think we both want to avoid discussion on the matter.”
No smiles now. Perhaps we’d imagined it after all.
We waited. It started to rain. This is what usually happens when you’re outside and not too busy to notice.
Oda had an umbrella in her sports pack, along with a rifle and a sword. She didn’t offer to share.
I rang Earle.
“H-H-Harlun and—”
“Ask Earle where this fabled back-up of his is.”
The stuttering boy asked Earle.
Earle said, “Swift? What do you mean? They should have been there an hour ago.”
His voice was big enough that Oda could hear it over the phone. She looked at me, I looked at her.
We both looked at the scrapyard.
“Earle,” I said, “if I should die, I want you to know that the phones will scream their vengeance at you when you sleep.”
I hung up. I figured he’d work out the problem all by himself.
Oda said, “What do we do now?”
“Did you denounce Alien?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just a film.”
I wagged a finger at the scrapyard, half lost now in the falling rain. I felt dirty just looking at it, and the seeping through my clothes of heavy London drizzle didn’t help. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that back-up has been and gone and it ended badly. The biggest mistake made in Alien . . .”
“Was going in after the monster?”
“Yes.”
“Then we should walk away.”
“But that’s the point, isn’t it? A blue van drove into the scrapyard with a kid inside who should hold the key to this entire farcical cock-up of a disaster. It didn’t come out. Now, if we go in there . . .”
“The kid is probably dead.”
“Then why not kill him at Raleigh Court?”
“You want him to be alive.”
“Yes! Of course I do! For so many, many reasons, and only one of them is mine! And if he is, and we just walk away then how stupid will