Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [70]
“The war? You?”
“You remember—the ‘training exercise.’ I was a Bright Eyes, too.”
“Bullshit,” I shouted, angry and light-headed with disbelief, but Vinaldi just shook his head.
“I had them removed after I got back. It was very expensive and quite painful and I wouldn’t recommend it as an experience.”
I tried to get my mind round this, to understand how it changed things. In some ways it made all the sense in the world. Vinaldi’s weirdly distanced and confident slant on life was perfectly consistent with what he was telling me—plus he dealt Rapt, which, as discussed, is not everyone’s idea of fun. It also helped some other things fall into place.
“What’s the highest mountain in the world?” I asked.
He frowned, said “Everest,” and that’s when I finally accepted what was going on.
“I’ve just seen the birds.” I watched him as I said this. His eyes sprang open wide. For a moment he didn’t look like the most successful gangster in New Richmond, but like the scared boy he must once have been. Seeing that look made it harder to hate him; I knew the expression only too well, had seen it on my own face many years ago. It also made it impossible for me to doubt that he had been in The Gap. The birds are like little pockets of marsh gas—bright lights which show something invisible is gathering. Vinaldi couldn’t have understood this without having been there.
“Christ on a bike,” he said.
“You could put it like that. I also saw the forest. For a moment it was like I was actually there. And there’s been reports all over the news about someone discovering a mountain higher than Everest. Mount Fyi, which doesn’t exist. You heard of wall-diving, incidentally?”
“Yeah, a couple of days ago. People jump…” Vinaldi stopped suddenly, brow furrowed. “Wait a minute. People can’t just leap out of windows with a stick. That’s fucking ridiculous.”
“True, but I met someone yesterday who does it,” I said. “Or thinks he does.” Internally I clocked the fact that Golson lived next to an apartment where either Yhandim or his accomplice had murdered someone.
“It’s The Gap, isn’t it,” Vinaldi said. “It’s the fucking Gap. It’s got to be. It’s making people think things that aren’t true.”
I told him that it was true now. That it was seepage, stuff that should be unconscious becoming conscious. The planet’s dreams, seeping through the wall like hallucinations on the edge of sleep.
“Randall,” Vinaldi said, shaking his head, “you’ve been taking far too many drugs.”
“Worse than that,” I added, remembering the small creature I’d half-glimpsed the night before near Shelley Latoya’s apartment. “It’s changing stuff for real.” Then another fact presented itself; Blue Lights had access to narcotics. I’d seen him dealing. Maybe Shelley hadn’t overdosed herself, after all.
“Why is this happening? What’s going on?”
“You tell me,” I said. “And start with Jeq Yhandim.”
Vinaldi’s eyes flicked away, and before he replied he walked over to the rearWindow, which was showing a view of the mountains in the distance, relayed from a camera somewhere high on the north face of the city. The look in his eyes was one I’d seen before, as if he were staring with calm enmity at something a great distance away. The “ten-click glare,” we used to call it. I got the idea before he even started that he was about to reveal something he didn’t talk about very often. Maybe never at all.
“He was in my unit,” Vinaldi said eventually. “We lost him.”
“Lost him?”
He turned to me then, and the words came out in a rush.
“You know what it was like. We were very deep in-country, of course. We were fucked up beyond all recognition, naturally. Suddenly, they hit us and the Lieutenant’s completely lost what little mind he has and is Gone Away all the time, and so it’s down to me and I can’t even tell which way is up.”
I nodded to show I understood. I did—all too well.
“Everyone’s running all over the place getting cut into little pieces and I’m trying to do something about it but I can’t think what it should be except just turning and running like hell. So that