You'll Never Believe A Man Can Fly: Chapter Three by Lee Barnett

Chapter Three

The Guardian, 1st October 2003
The president of a group campaigning for minimal government was misquoted in an article yesterday. Jason Sorens (Free Staters pick New Hampshire to liberate, page 16) said he hoped to create an “autonomous territory”. We printed “autocratic territory”. Apologies.

At precisely four o’clock, Dr Betty Grable knocked on Toster’s door. She had with her four small files and one large one, containing summaries of her work on the material that she’d sent out this morning. She was puzzled when she got a call from her contact at March & March asking why it hadn’t arrived but following this morning’s discussion, she had made the quite logical, though incorrect, assumption that Toster had recalled the package and that was why she was being taken to task. It hadn’t even occurred to her to contemplate that the package hadn’t arrived for another reason.

“Come in,” she heard and opened the door. To her surprise, Toster wasn’t alone. With him was a dark man in a darker suit. He walked to her, extending a hand in greeting. “Dr Grable? I’m Jez Docherty, from HMG.”

“Really?” asked Grable, shaking the proffered hand, “Which department?”

Docherty smiled a deliberately insincere smile and answered “The Post Office.”

Toster didn’t even bother to be discreet. “So what do you have for me?”

She addressed herself to the current situation, knowing that leaving the matter unresolved, though almost preferable, was not an option. “Dr Toster,” she replied, “let me bring you up to date on…”

“Sorry?” interrupted Toster. “Are you under the mistaken impression that I’m unaware of the scale of this monumental snafu?”

Now that shook her. She wasn’t prepared for that.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Dr Grable,” continued Toster. “But let me just confirm that I’ve got the situation straight. You, on your personal authority, sent out by courier delivery material recovered from… the site. Yes?”

“Well, yes, but…” attempted Grable, but Toster had more to say.

“And, you’ll forgive me if I’m unclear about a couple of details, but…” he went on.

Cocky bastard, thought Grable.

Toster paused, almost as if he’d heard her thoughts. “Yes, I am,” he said, “and with good reason.” He raised a finger to forestall Grable’s next comments. “It’s not me who’s made a cock-up the size of this one. Continuing… it was also you who chose to send the material to another lab for them to confirm your tentative findings on the material, without checking it with anyone else, yes?”

There was a pause of a few seconds.

“You may now speak,” he said, in what he undoubtedly considered a magnanimous tone.

“The material was mutagenic,” Grable exclaimed, “I don’t deny that. But I’d shown that only under a specific set of circumstances could those mutagenic effects come anywhere close to being activated. Without those, the material was completely inert.”

“Yes, yes, yes, I read your reports, Dr Grable. Now,” he said, with ominous care, “remind me what they were again.” He and Docherty shared a glance, but not one Grable was able to interpret.

There was a warning buzz at the back of Grable’s mind, but she ploughed on regardless. “First of all massive trauma to the material, a sudden application of force…”

“Like sudden deceleration, perhaps?” asked Docherty.

Grable paused for a moment, and considered. “Yes, that would do it, why?”

“Nothing, nothing, please continue,” Docherty said.

“The trauma needs to be followed by exposure to rapid heat expansion…”

“Oh, say, like a petroleum explosion?” interjected Toster.

This time Grable paused for a lot longer before answering. “Yes… why do you ask?”

A wave of the hand led her to continue.

“And finally, close exposure to recently deceased tissue.”

“Hmm,” Toster murmured. He looked at Docherty, who nodded slowly, twice, then stood up, moving away from the wall he’d been leaning against.

“Dr Grable,” asked Docherty. “Let’s suppose that this material did go through the process you hypothesise. Would the material be harmful to human life?”

“Of course it would,” she exclaimed. “Are you an idiot?”

“Dr Grable, please,” Docherty protested mildly. “I’m just trying to sort out what has happened here. You say it would be harmful to human life. How harmful?”

“Oh, deadly. Anyone within twenty metres of direct exposure would die. Simple as that. There’d be some genetic malformations, at the cellular level, and they’d die.”

“Hmm…” said Toster again.

“Luckily,” said Grable, “the effects would be short lived.”

“Well, if the victims are shorter lived, that doesn’t strike me as particularly lucky,” Docherty said.

“No,” replied Grable, shaking her head, “I mean that the contamination area is small, no more than fifteen or twenty metres, and any contamination within that area must take place within less than a minute. Otherwise it metabolises and evaporates.”

“A hypothesis, if you please, Dr Grable,” said Docherty, his hands in his trousers.

“Sure,” she nodded.

“Let’s just say that exactly your scenario is met. Rapid deceleration, breach of secure holding, exposure to a petroleum explosion, contact with dead tissue and contamination at, say, exactly twenty metres. What would happen to the person so contaminated?”

Grable laughed out loud. “I’ve no idea,” she said, “The idea’s so ludicrous. You’re talking about odds of tens of millions to one.”

Docherty turned away from her, opened his briefcase and took out a newspaper. Grable could see from the masthead that it was the first edition of the evening newspaper. He threw it gently onto the desk in front of her, and it lay there, open at the front page story, “CHEMICAL BLAST NEAR BANK INFERNO”.

“Checked your lottery numbers lately, Dr Grable?”

The office was a nice one. Davies had been in it many times, often to get praise from the senior director for some deal that he’d secured or some campaign that had gone well. In all those many times, he always knew that he had the respect of the director, that the director had looked upon him as a valued employee. The fact that Davies had added sufficient value to the organisation to ensure that the director’s hefty bonuses had become almost obscene was, Davies was convinced, not entirely unrelated to the bonhomie which usually greeted his presence there.

On one occasion, he recalled, he’d been summoned for a rebuke. It had been far too light-handed to be accurately called that, but that’s what it had been. Even on that occasion, when the senior director had looked at him with slight puzzlement, there had been no mistaking the respect which Davies felt coming from the man.

This time was different. If there was any puzzlement in the room, it emanated from Davies, since the one feeling that was palpable in the room, and it came from the three other men there, was fear.

Davies could quite understand it, since he was scared shitless himself. He’d been telling himself for two hours that it was just a joke, that he’d been set up, that the table was a trick table. But there was no mistaking the memory of that loud crack as his hand had broken the sound barrier on the way down to the table’s surface. And the physical evidence in the floor of the boardroom was jammed in through the carpet solidly. He lifted his hand up and looked at it. It didn’t look anything special, other than the previously noticed healthiness of it. Something caught his eye and he looked a little closer at the fingernails. They were perfectly smooth, with no whiteness, just monotonous healthy pink. A thought struck him and he pulled at the skin around the base of his thumb

It seemed as pliable as always. Certainly it still felt like skin, but it occurred to him that even if he had been responsible for the rapid travelling from table to floor of that hand-sized piece of wood, there should have been bruising of some sort, but there wasn’t any. He noticed that there was a hangnail by the little finger. Quickly, before he could change his mind, he pincered it between his other thumb and forefinger, and pulled… hard. A split second of pain signalled the hangnail’s removal and there was instantly a small red dot in its place, which started to well. Then, to his utter shock, he saw the blood dissolve back into his skin and in seconds you couldn’t have told that he’d had a hangnail there moments earlier. The skin had completely healed.

This shouldn’t have been as big a shock to him as it was, he realised, remembering both the disappearing shaving cut and the vanished scar on his forearm. What the hell had been in that stuff?

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a cough. Looking up, he saw the senior director, Peter Monkton, and two other directors sitting, gazing politely at him. Monkton was a large man, but his body was in complete proportion. You didn’t get the impression, looking at him sitting, that he was much larger than the average man. Until he stood up. And carried on standing up for some time. When he’d finished, he was about six feet ten inches tall and was about three feet wide. Many people had thought to mock him over this, until Monkton loomed menacingly over them. He was very good at looming menacingly, and had considered taking it up professionally at one time until he realised that he’d never take to the discipline of the police force. Despite his wealth and ostensible old-school style, he on occasion betrayed his origins as a market trader who’d decided at 17 that he could earn a lot more in an office than in a street market.

But at the moment, he was sitting with his colleagues, looking hesitantly at Davies, as if expecting him to say something. Davies realised that he’d been so consumed in his own thoughts that he’d ignored whatever it was that Monkton had asked him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “what did you ask?”

Monkton looked as if he’d rather be anywhere other than in front of Davies.

“What I asked, young Mr Davies,” Monkton said, “was whether you had any idea how this, this, this…” he paused for a moment and then gathering his fortitude, he continued, “this vandalism occurred? And once again, I ask you. Have you?”

Davies was tempted to merely reply “yes, I hit it,” but he didn’t think that would help the situation. Instead, he leaned forward in his chair, noticing as he did so, how the three men on the other side of the desk leaned away from him.

“No,”, he said slowly, judging his words carefully. “No, I don’t have any idea. I mean, the spider was there, I hit it and…” He stopped, knowing that what he was about to say was just plain daft, but then the whole day had been weird so far. Why stop now? “I hit it,” he repeated, “and… well, you saw what happened.”

“Indeed,” said Monkton and looked at his fellow directors. They nodded, and Davies realised that whatever they were about to say had been decided upon before he’d entered the office.

“Mr Davies,” said Monkton, standing up as he did so. “I think it would be wisest if you were to take the remainder of the day off.”

Davies couldn’t help himself. “With respect, Mr Monkton, it’s five-twenty.”

“Your point being…?” asked Monkton, as if Davies had made a crucial interjection, but one of which Monkton couldn’t understand the relevance.

Davies shook his head. “Nothing, forget it.”

“Very well,” continued Monkton, “as I was saying, take the rest of the day off, and we’ll reconvene tomorrow to see if we can, together, understand the events of this afternoon.” He sat again, and smiled not unkindly at Davies. “Look, Ian, it’s obvious to me that you didn’t plan it. So why don’t you sleep on it and see if you can devise some form of explanation. Because, frankly, if you can’t, you’re buggered, old son.”

With that, he stood again and offered his hand. Davies shook it and left, still shaken at the implied threat to his future prospects in the agency.

After Davies left the room, Monkton walked over to a cabinet and opened it. The bar revealed within the cabinet had a wide selection of drinks, but he went straight for the bottle of scotch and poured three large ones without asking his colleagues. He walked back to the desk and offered a glass to each of his fellow directors who’d now moved from behind the desk to in front of it.

He sat in his chair and asked, “Well?”

He was pretty sure of the response he’d get from Lester Williams, a man he personally detested, but professionally admired. Williams was genuinely of the old school. Two of them to be precise, Eton and Harrow, before a double first at Oxford. “A first class brain inside a first class shit,” Monkton had heard him described as, and it was, Monkton thought, a superb analysis of the man. He was the best reader of people Monkton had ever come across and not a single deal went through the agency until Williams had met the client and decided, simply, whether or not they were right for the company of Doncaster and Monkton.

Williams took a sip of the scotch and then a large swallow. “Well, in my opinion, he hasn’t a clue what happened. But I’ll tell you something for nothing: that isn’t the same man I interviewed for the agency three years ago or worked with on the PHJ account last month.”

Monkton started. “I beg your pardon? I’ve worked with Davies on half a dozen projects since he joined us. Of course he’s the same man.”

Williams shook his head. “No, I don’t mean that someone’s taken his identity. There’s something very, very different about him. The way he sits, the look in his eyes, even the way that he fidgets. There’s something that’s changed.”

The third man in the room leaned forward interested. A relatively new addition to the agency, Andrew Patt was a non-executive director, added to the board to give it some weight in the City’s eyes. He had retired from a long and successful military career in counter-espionage, and it was with some surprise that he’d found he’d enjoyed the more cerebral aspects of his new employment. “Are you saying that he’s playing a role of some sort?”

Williams rolled his eyes. “Don’t be an idiot, Andy. No, whatever’s happened to Davies isn’t a role. But…” he paused and looked at Patt, sitting ramrod straight, even when leaning forward. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that he’d spent some time in the forces. He sits like you do, straight. And, it could be a consequence of that, but he looks as if he’s grown an inch or two.”

Patt laughed at that, but stopped laughing when Monkton admitted, “yes, I didn’t know whether I’d imagined that, but I’d noticed it as well.” Monkton looked at the pair of them, and then at Patt. “Andrew, my dear fellow, have you still maintained your contacts with your previous employers?”

“Yes,” said Patt cautiously, knowing what was coming.

“I wonder if you could get any of the science section to come and take a look at the table. I don’t think it would be a bad idea to get that table looked at, do you?”

Patt was relieved. It had saved him making the suggestion. “Certainly, Peter. I’d be happy to.”

“Soon as you can, Andy, eh? I’ve a feeling that this can’t wait.”

Davies had walked back to his office and when he got there, he took off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair. He sat in front of the computer and reached his hand out for the mouse while looking at the screen, reading the headlines on the scrolling strip at the bottom of the screen. The mouse was under his hand and he was already using it when he stopped as the penny dropped.

He lifted his hand and stared at the mouse. He’d got it too fast. He had a habit of doing just that, he knew: reading the headlines on the screen while he fumbled for the mouse. But this time he’d reached for the device and it had been there immediately. On any other day, he’d have written it off as just a coincidence, but today wasn’t any other day. Today was a day when any number of strange and unexplainable things had occurred.

It’s nuts, he thought. Completely impossible. Then he thought of the table upstairs and realised that he was changing his opinion quite rapidly today as to what was and wasn’t impossible. He took the mouse and placed it on the far side of his desk. Then he reached out and said, to the open air, “Come here.”

The mouse stayed where it was.

Davies reached out his hand again and said, harder this time, “Mouse – come here!”

Again the mouse stayed where it was.

Then he realised he was doing it wrong. He couldn’t tell his fingers to form a fist by telling them verbally to do so. He just wanted to form a fist and it duly formed. Davies followed though the thought and suddenly reached out his hand, palm down, picturing the mouse resting beneath it.

This time, the mouse didn’t stay where it was at all. It moved, speedily and accurately, and half a second later, it was below his hand.

“Holy shit,” Davies said, and then realised that someone may have heard him, as the door into his office was partly open. He looked up and in front of his eyes, the door closed with a click. A thought struck him, sparked by a movie he’d seen in the Christmas holidays last year. He glanced at his desk and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them and snapped his fingers twice. Before him, the surface of his desk, never tidy at the best of times, tidied itself up. Papers organised themselves and were duly paper clipped together, and his phone and hole punch moved to their respective corners of his desk.

He opened his drawers. The same had happened in them – each was neat and better organised than he’d left them.

“Oh, great,” he said, “I’m Mary Poppins.”

This week's artist: Sean Azzopardi
Azzopardi is a London based comic artist and illustrator. His self published comics include Grey Sky and Twelve Hour Shift. He has also contributed to numerous anthologies the most recent being Devil Child. For artwork go to PhatCatz.Org.Uk. For a detailed interview go to Sequential Tart.