Hammerport

Mr. Alpha tugged at the cabin door to no avail. No keys. He wondered how easy it was to hot-wire a tower crane, not something in the standard Clothman skill set. He peered through the cabin glass; levers, collision detectors, load monitors… and a seat. He could have done with a little protection from the elements. The wind was howling up here and his jacket flapped around him like a superhero’s cape.

The fog was chewing on the ground, each successive bite removing another section from view. Soon it would be gone altogether, replaced with an illusion of void.

Mr. Alpha crept around the cabin and clambered up another set of steps that took him over the cabin and onto the jib itself. It stretched out in front of him, a sturdy, yellow shaft beguiling like a yellow brick road to nowhere. A red light pulsed on its side and cables snaked along its length. He climbed inside the jib where a crawlspace extended all the way to its tip.

As he crawled the metal grid beneath him shuddered. His thoughts were still off-kilter, emotions rampaging around, ripping up furnishings and upholstery. He tried to focus on Windermere than more… recent days. Despite the Keswick school suspending the operations of around thirty pairships for a local manhunt, Morgana was not found. The burden of tracking her down had then fallen to the idiots who could have stopped her, but failed to do so.

His career was on hold, thirteen Weave assignments and no more. It drove him insane – he would never make his twenty at this rate. Forever pubescent, the butt of jokes amongst the men of the Cloth. Would they ever find her? Would she allow herself to be found? Halfway along the jib’s length, he paused. Mr. Alpha tightened his grip on the mesh until the indentations it impressed on his skin became so painful that he growled through clenched teeth.

The crane conceded him no power, affirming only his impotence. He was just a pawn who could no more move backwards out of the situation than he could take the Queen. It had been a mistake to come here. He felt trapped in this beast machine and, instead of learning from the crane’s fearful beauty, he was actually in its gut, being digested.

He dropped his head to the metal mesh and stared through at the nothingness below.

He wasn’t going to think about it. He wasn’t going think about it, he wasn’t going to… the stain of sin stank at the back of his mind, demanding acknowledgement. The scum of it was buried deep under his fingernails. The passive smoke of it was absorbed in his lungs. The HIV of it was hooked into his bloodstream. Here was something that had been inevitable from the day that Morgana had escaped but there was no why. She had orchestrated a sequence of events that had no point.

Mr. Alpha smarted as a chilling wind blasted his face. He pulled himself forwards as the waves of bleak memory rolled over him, tossing him in their wake.

| fuck is she? Jesus fuck, where is she?’

Mr. Alpha opened his eyes and saw the sun straining through an overcast sky. The jittery silhouette of Mr. Omega jutted into his field of vision and then the sun became a light bulb and the white sky a featureless ceiling. Alarmed that time had passed, he sat upright, plunging into a vicious headache, and winced.

Morgana was no longer tied to the bed. She was no longer in the room.

‘I was only gone for a couple of minutes,’ Mr. Omega said. ‘How the fuck did she escape? How the fucking fuck did you let her overpower you? Didn’t you bind her tight and proper?’

Mr. Alpha was still disoriented and stuttered, ‘D-Don’t remember.’

Mr. Omega held his jaw, shaking his head as his gaze darted around the room. ‘This is fucking bad.’

Mr. Alpha felt woozy but tried standing up anyway. ‘I’m not sure…’ he opened and then started careening. Mr. Omega grabbed him before he fell.

Holding him up, the old man appeared to be wrestling with a decision – whether to take care of his damaged colleague or berate him for letting Ms. Judas Iscariot escape.

‘Look, just sit here on the bed,’ he said helping Mr. Alpha over to the bed.

The room was spinning and Mr. Alpha was at a loss to explain what had happened. He went over the events in his head in case he had missed something out. Morgana started singing. Then he was at a waterfall. Then Morgana was gone. Nonsense, complete nonsense. Reality was not a scratchy old record with a tendency to skip. She must have broken her bonds and knocked him out. Maybe Morgana had had a knife. Did they check her for weapons? Maybe that was the mistake.

‘How long were you out of the room?’ he asked the old man, starting to grasp the gravity of the situation.

Mr. Omega was on the mobile. ‘Oh now I’ve got a signal. Can you believe it? A signal. I was out of the room for only a few minutes, three at the most.’

Then he was talking to Supply. ‘This is Mr. Omega, Keswick South. Put through a priority call to the Keswick school. The renegade Morgana has managed to escape… that’s correct, I am contradicting the previously reported status… yes, of course I know it was just a few minutes ago, but she managed to down my partner… no, not dead.’

Mr. Alpha caught a scowl on Mr. Omega’s face when he said those last few words. Mr. Alpha then realised that all of the brownie points he’d acquired had been jettisoned through this incident. But what was the mistake? What had he done wrong? Was it really his knot skills? Why couldn’t he remember what had happened? And why the hell had Mr. Omega left him alone, a junior, with an experienced Clothman gone wrong? The situation had slipped out of his grasp and over the edge of a precipice. His chest tightened and, for an instant, he wondered whether a fit boy like himself could have a heart attack.

While Mr. Omega continued to spar with Supply on his mobile, Mr. Alpha observed the obese suitcase open on the bed. So she had been in a hurry to leave when they arrived, but where was she going? Frantic to find something of value, something to salvage from the fucked situation, he started going through the contents of the case. Apart from the clothes, he found a few folders stuffed with newspaper clippings, handwritten notes and photocopies; some cross-religion Cloth project she had been working on. No immediate clues and there was too much for him to go through right now.

To his surprise, wherever he touched Morgana’s documentation, dark red fingerprints were impressed like bloody footprints in snow. He was positive that he had washed his hands earlier, but they were wet with blood again. Focussing on something had eased the dizziness and he decided he could get up to wash again. But in the bathroom, the mirror gave him something he hadn’t bargained for – the blood was from his face. He had a bloody goatee just like Morgana had displayed, minutes earlier.

This time, instead of taking care not to knock any toiletries over, he whacked them all onto the floor in anger. He took his time washing, dabbing at his face with moistened toilet paper fragments, trying to find the origin of the blood, its painful source. When all of the blood was gone, he was perplexed. No injuries.

Suddenly, he realised where the blood had come from, and bent over the toilet, jamming a couple of fingers down his throat. Hot bile erupted, burning and scalding his mouth on its way out. The vomiting robbed him of the little energy he had. He coughed, trying to spit out the vomit that hadn’t made it out, cloying like some hideous, acidic rice pudding.

Mr. Alpha pulled himself up using the basin, unsteady, and his eyes stung from the involuntary tears. He leant down to pick up a hand soap dispenser that he had dismissed to the floor, moving in a lazy fashion like one of those funfair grabbers that never actually grab any of the prizes. He squirted all of its contents into his hand and stared at the off-white fluid, steeling himself.

Closing his eyes, he poured all of it into his mouth and started rinsing. He grimaced but bore the disgusting taste, sloshing the soap around. He used his tongue to ensure the soap reached into every nook and cranny.

Once he was convinced that he’d cleaned her away, he spat out the now yellow mixture into the sink. He held onto it for dear life; his legs were shuddering, unable to bear weight. Acrid fumes stinging his nasal passages, he whispered to himself, ‘Jesus.’

Morgana had kissed him.

knows this is the end. Reaching out, the spray of the waterfall catches him and he peers into the cascade. The dreaded characters of sculpted bone dangle there like meat hooks to snag his flesh.

The old man opens his mouth to scream and the skeleton cowers as the horror plunges and soaks them with death.

Mr. Alpha rose and headed into the bathroom, determined to get his hands clean. His pain strongbox was beginning to crack and some symptoms of his sickness were returning. You can’t keep a good cold down.

It was the kind of hotel bathroom he’d become accustomed to since he’d started working in the field. This particular style could be summarised as “Nothing Fancy”. Everything was a muddy white and the fatigued tiles and scratched taps would have been more at home in a disused asylum. An opaque shower curtain hung from a handful of brass rings on a rail, boasting repellent brush strokes of something brown across its surface that had resisted generations of cleaners; he had no intention of inspecting the bath that lay beyond it. Toiletries bullied one another over small plots of land on the tiny estate around the washbasin. Dull, weary light penetrated the room through a small square window above the toilet.

Cold. No one had taken a bath or shower in here today.

As he moved to wash his hands, he disturbed some of the bottles on the basin. A plastic bottle of Vitamin E enriched moisturiser slipped forwards and broke open against the edge of the basin, splurging its white, scented contents onto his crotch. He muttered a curse at his now Vitamin E enriched trousers. He tried to put the moisturiser back but it was like some nefarious Chinese puzzle, impossible to work out how everything had fitted around the basin in the first place. Puzzles weren’t his thing and he slung the broken bottle through the shower curtain.

He noticed two toothbrushes nuzzling against each other behind where the moisturiser had stood, their bristles entwined. So Mr. Omega wasn’t the only Clothman who thought pairships should share a room.

After washing his hands, he returned to the bedroom where Mr. Omega was still trying to contact Supply. Mr. Alpha dried his hands on a towel and started to wipe the mess from his crotch. Morgana started giggling. At first, it was a suppressed, embarrassed giggle but it soon grew into a shrieking laugh, like she was some hideous Australian banshee.

‘Mr. Omega,’ he said. ‘I don’t see anything funny. A Clothman is dead. Do you find anything amusing?’

Mr. Omega saw what Morgana was laughing at, frowned and then his expression froze. ‘Correct, Mr. Alpha. A Clothman is dead. Some people have no manners.’

‘Oh come on,’ she said, struggling through laughter. Tears were now sliding down her cheeks. ‘Fellas. Come on. Oh God, look! It’s just – just – look –’ She seemed unable to stop, like someone with food poisoning still trying to wretch even though |dust against the stone| there was nothing to bring up.

Mr. Alpha said, ‘Can’t we slip her the blade now? She most surely deserves it.’

Suddenly, her laughter stopped and she cocked her head to one side, looking at Mr. Alpha. ‘You can’t kill me,’ she said. ‘They want to know why.’ She nodded towards Mr. Omega as if she and Mr. Alpha were secret collaborators.

‘So tell me,’ Mr. Alpha said. ‘Tell me why. Then we can finish this. Tell me the fuck why.’ He felt hatred ripple under his skin, nerve endings electric, ready to expunge the sinner, this traitor, this blemish on the Weave.

Mr. Alpha stared into Morgana’s bruised and bloody face, daring her. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Mr. Omega step forward as if to intervene, but stop himself. They both wanted to know the answer to this question.

‘Do you believe I killed Mr. Mogdred? Are you fellas really interested in the truth?’ She closed her eyes and her head flopped forward as if one of her puppet strings had been severed, leaving her to dangle from the rope tied to the bedposts. ‘I’m not ready for you yet.’

‘Fuck this,’ Mr. Omega said. ‘I’m going to try to get a signal in the corridor. Watch her. And make sure she keeps her twat shut.’ He exited, slamming the door behind him.

Mr. Alpha wiped away the moisturiser and looked at Morgana’s open suitcase on the bed. It had been packed beyond capacity, a Jenga-like stack of clothes, weapons and folders ready for collapse. Maybe she had been rushing to get away, but the way she spoke… she didn’t seem to be in a panic at all. Something occurred to him.

‘Bitch. Are you working with anyone? Should we expect any surprise visitors?’

She looked up and offered a soft, sympathetic smile, the blood already drying around her mouth like misapplied lipstick. ‘No, mate, just li’l Morgana, that’s all. Is something |tongues curl and slaver| wrong? Is there something I can help you with?’

‘I don’t get this. You. This whole-’

She burst into song. ‘See the sky… the celebrated rainbow in your eye.’

He recognised the tune; it was a song by hippie band It’s a Beautiful Day. Her voice was serene, a surprising contrast to her ugly laughter.

‘The concentrated moon glow in your eye.’

‘Shut it,’ he shouted, but she continued |in shreds| regardless. He stepped forward |lusting and sexed| and raised a fist, ready to strike. He warned her one last |

Mr. Alpha crouched, imagining himself as a bomb of arms and legs primed to explode. They heard the noise of movement on the other side, then the clack of the lock turning. They hadn’t expected her to open the door just like that, so easily convinced that the receptionist had arrived to tell her the taxi was here. As the door began to swing open, Mr. Omega threw his weight against it.

There was a yell of pain as the door slammed into Morgana and hurled her to the floor. Mr. Alpha exploded across the room and dropped his weight onto the fallen figure, human shrapnel here to do harm. Before she could react, he struck her face several times with the flattened palm of a hand, jolting her head against the floor until she was dazed. He grabbed her hair and dragged her over to the bedstead; she tried to break his grip by flailing her arms at him but her co-ordination misfired. Mr. Omega closed the door then yanked out the rope that was tucked into the back of his trousers, still sopping from the swim across the lake like their suits, and tethered her wrists to the two bedposts as well as tying her ankles together.

‘Lovely,’ Mr. Omega said, standing up and getting out his mobile. ‘Weapons free. Good job, Mr. Alpha. Finish off the knots, would you?’

Mr. Alpha knelt down beside Morgana. He was surprised how easily they’d taken a fellow Clothman down. Ex-Clothman, he corrected himself. He observed their adversary.

From a distance, Morgana might have seemed to be a delicate, brittle creature, but Mr.Alpha’s closer examination revealed how dangerous she really was. A loose-fitting black suit obscured the body of a toned gymnast; short in height but lithe and dextrous. Quick in kill. She had an elfin, thirty-something face with a greasy, lard-like pallor. A frizzy, amorphous clot of black hair clung to her head, sweat pasting the curls of her fringe to her forehead and temples. Morgana and the late Mr. Mogdred could almost have been twins; maybe she had chosen him as her new partner for just that reason, a younger self to train.

Her eyes were only half-open as she was still dazed from the attack, but he could see dark irises recuperating beneath the eyelids; penetrating eyes that would have been useful in an interrogation. A bloody goatee dribbled down from her nose and around her mouth. She’ll bruise up sweet, Mr. Alpha thought.

‘I’m not great with knots,’ he said to Mr. Omega.

The old man was holding the mobile up to his ear. ‘Not great with knots? What are you talking about? It’s practically a Clothman pre-requisite.’

Unwilling to push his luck, Mr. Alpha said, ‘Yeah, whatever, I’ll give it a go.’

He got to work on the rope and did his best; he knew how to tie up shoelaces, so several of the knots were done up like bows.

‘How pretty, nice job,’ Morgana said. Her dark, penetrating eyes were now wide open like a pair of negative headlights that absorbed light. She smiled with teeth that would have been dazzling if blood hadn’t already stained them.

‘Shut up,’ Mr. Omega said, still waiting on the mobile.

She continued to stare at Mr. Alpha. He tried throwing back his own venomous stare, but it wasn’t working. Somehow all elder Clothmen were much better at fearsome expressions and it pissed him off, knowing that he wasn’t quite as unique as he liked to think he was.

Morgana said, ‘It’s because I touched him, ain’t it? I knew that was a bloody mistake.’ She spoke with an Australian accent and Mr. Alpha wondered which school had adopted her in the beginning.

‘Shut up,’ Mr. Omega repeated. ‘I don’t believe this. No fucking signal.’

Mr. Alpha withdrew from the staring contest |know that we are terminal| and finished off a couple more knots. As things were calming down, his headache started to return. He felt like he’d done a fucking fine job and was pleased that Mr. Omega had recognised that. The assignment had started off badly, but even though he wasn’t a mature Clothman, things had come to a sound and just conclusion. In no time at all, he’d make his twenty. Vanity was a sin, but self-confidence was not. Perhaps Mr. Omega would stop treating him like a kid barely off his tricycle.

He was disgusted to find some blood from his assault on Morgana was drying on his hands and tried rubbing it off on the bedspread.

‘Oi,’ the old man shouted. ‘This room has to be cleaned up. Could you try not to make the job any harder than it already is?’

The bound Morgana shouted at Mr. Alpha too, the smile gone. ‘Yeah, mate, wouldya watch it with the grubby paws everywhere?’

Mr. Alpha jumped when a small and slender black object like an oversized mussel shell bounced off her forehead with a thwack. She scrunched up her eyes and shuddered, hissing through bloody teeth.

Mr. Omega retrieved his mobile phone from the floor after its improvised performance as a missile.

‘Shut. The fuck. Up.’

Mr. Omega dashed forward and jumped into the lake, shouting, ‘Come on!’

With the Cloth regulations shackling them together, Mr. Alpha had no choice but to comply and he stormed into the water. As the cold hit his legs, he felt sharp knives skewering his head like a stunning magic act gone horribly wrong. But it got worse: as his face slid into the water, the sensation became one of the intense pressure, with cracks etching across his skull. He would have done anything to escape the swim but the old man was already a couple of dozen metres ahead of him and, on the other shore, a Clothman sat injured, perhaps dying. Maybe even…

The swim was a blur, a vibrant, rural landscape alternating with a cold, numb blackness as his head bobbed with every stroke. He knew the pain was still there and acknowledged its presence but the pedagogues had done far worse to him during school. They had made him suffer so that he could endure. A part of his consciousness receded, giving him the freedom to do what had to be done. It trapped the pain within it, keeping it contained and secure.

He thought only of his duty. This was what it meant to be a Clothman. Detached, focussed, effective. Each complaint he threw at Mr. Omega was just a pearl formed from the irritations of their relationship. Mr. Omega was nothing like the Clothman ideal he had grown to respect; they were supposed to be perfect. Belief is rock, stroke. Truth is ghost, stroke.

Once the water became shallow on the other side, Mr. Alpha stopped swimming and waded towards the shore. His water-logged suit was pulling him down but he kept moving at a steady pace. To his surprise, he felt refreshed by the exercise, as if cured of his cold. The symptoms were still locked away in a strongbox at the back of his mind.

Mr. Omega was standing before him in the water, shoulders sagging, still. He faced the bench while obscuring its secret from Mr. Alpha. Leaning to one side with his suit clinging to his lanky structure, grey hair flattened against his scalp, he looked like a mooring. There was sadness in his poise and it reminded him of the lonely pier, all ready for action, but no visitors to provide it with a purpose. Impotence.

Mr. Alpha sidestepped so that he could see the bench clearly.

Mr. Mogdred was as described, dark suit, black hair gelled flat, a little small for a Clothman. His inert body leant back against the bench, exposing a bloody smile carved out of his neck. Blood had drained down his shirt, onto the bench between his legs, and through the beams onto the grass beneath. His pale face was not distressed, as if the kill had been made in his sleep. His arms were stretched out onto the seat of the bench, his hands resting on two books. The one on the left was a copy of the Qur’an, the other, the Bible.

Mr. Alpha’s focus wavered and began to feel the icy chill of the water against his skin. He never expected to see a Clothman killed in such a way; they were supposed to be invincible. ‘Mr. Omega,’ he said. ‘Sweet fucking Jesus shitting Christ of Nike. Do you think Ms. Morgana is injured or dead as well?’

The senior Clothman shook his head slowly, responding to the situation and not the question. Without looking away from the mutilated body, he said, ‘Ms. Morgana did this. Morgana did this.’

‘You can’t be fucking serious, mate.’ The cold made Mr. Alpha shiver; at least he thought it was the cold. ‘How can you know that? How can you think that?’

‘Our assignment. Escort them to the Keswick school. Mr. Mogdred had flagged suspect behaviour. Had to be investigated.’

Mr. Alpha strode out of the water and knelt down in front of his late comrade. A whiff of something sweet drifted on the air.

It was a memorial bench, a marker pinned to the landscape to force any passing rambler to remember someone they never had a memory of in the first place. This one bore the commemorative message “For Trevor Elwyd Jones (1925-1998) who waits forever the ferry.” The bench now commemorated not just Trevor, but Mr. Mogdred.

He patted Mr. Mogdred’s right hand and whispered, ‘Take it easy, mate, eh? Take it easy now. Belief is rock, truth…’ His voice faltered but he was determined to see the blessing through. ‘Truth is ghost.’

One of the disadvantages of working in a secret organisation, Mr. Alpha thought, was that everything had to be secret. Let’s not hold the meeting in the local Starbucks, we’ll meet up where there aren’t any people. So no ferry terminals or toilets either. They still could have cut down the travel time if they’d hopped on a ferry to Lakeside but, of course, they weren’t meeting at a ferry-friendly time like 11am. Just in case anyone did take a fancy to the area, Supply had proposed 7am as the meeting time of choice. Mr. Omega had told him once that Clothman fatigue was a common problem. Whoa, big fucking surprise.

It hadn’t been possible to follow the western shore of Windermere all the way down; the occasional detour around thick undergrowth or Wray Castle had been essential. Mr. Omega had kept distance throughout and the journey had been made in silence. They were now at the rendezvous point, marked by a single bench on the opposite shore.

Mr. Alpha looked at his watch and checked the time. He groped around inside his jacket pocket and pulled out his mobile. It bore the same time as the watch. ‘So,’ he asked Mr. Omega, ‘what time do you make it?’

Mr. Omega was watching the trees around them for movement. ‘Seven thirty,’ he said.

He wished he was on the other side, sitting on the bench beneath tree-peppered hills. There was already a man in a black suit wearing a flashy red tie sitting there, his arms laying on the seat like he had not a single care. So much for secrecy. He bet the bastard was probably smiling too. In fact, he hated the Lake District and every rural area like it. Everyone was so friendly and talked to every stranger they met. Cloth jobs up here meant some social integration for the purposes of camouflage. London, where people kept their trap shut and minded their own business, was superior across the board. There wasn’t even a Starbucks in Ambleside, how backward was that? The presence of the Starbucks infection was how a modern country could identify that it was civilised.

‘So this is where we we’re supposed to meet Mr. Mogdred and Ms. Morgana?’ he asked.

‘That’s what I was told by Supply.’ Mr. Omega did not want to be distracted from the vital task of scanning the trees.

‘Why don’t you give them another call, just to check?’

There was a brief pause and Mr. Alpha knew that the old man was wondering whether his request had been genuine or a sarcastic suggestion that Alzheimer’s had set in. It had been genuine, but he also enjoyed the alternate meaning now that it had occurred to him. His enjoyment was marred by the congestive throbbing in his head. The pain, though, meant he needed no more leaves for the time being. He’d left a dirty trail of snotty breadcrumbs behind them.

Mr. Omega got out his mobile and called Supply, something Mr. Alpha lamented he was not able to do yet. Still hadn’t made his twenty assignments.

‘Supply, this is Mr. Omega, Keswick south sector.’ A pause. ‘I’d like to confirm the location and time of the rendezvous with Mr. Mogdred and Ms. Morgana.’ A longer pause; Mr. Omega listened intently while still watching the trees. ‘We appreciate your support. Belief is rock.’ He snapped the mobile shut and put it away.

‘Everything as we thought?’

‘Yes. I’m not senile yet.’

As Mr. Omega had lowered his guard a fraction, Mr. Alpha thought it would be a good time to bring up a well trodden topic. He asked, ‘Why do we have to sleep together?’

‘What, do you have memory loss or something? Till death do us part. Fifty metres apart and the Cloth will kill us, for fuck’s sakes. A double room makes it simple.’

‘A twin would be better.’ Shit, Mr. Alpha chastised himself, he needed to keep his contempt under lock and key a lot better than this. At school, he was sure that his partner would be brilliant, awe-inspiring, wisdom incarnate. Spending time with Mr. Omega was more like a wisdom teeth extraction.

Mr. Omega did not respond, finding the rustling trees a more appealing conversation partner.

A few minutes passed and Mr. Alpha couldn’t bear the silence any more. He envied the man on the bench, despite his tasteless tie. ‘What are we here for?’

‘I’m not at liberty to discuss it.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not at liberty to discuss it is what I said. Ask a question, make a bloody effort to listen to the answer.’

This was the last thing he expected to hear. It meant that the task they had been assigned was related to the second order Cloth codes that a probation charge like himself was not privy to. He guessed the Cloth wouldn’t have assigned something of this nature to a pairship-in-training if there had been any other option, so something serious was going on. At least this was going to be interesting.

‘Can you at least tell me, then, what Mr. Mogdred looks like? Or Ms. Morgana?’

‘Met them both at the Keswick meet last year. He’s a small bloke, short, black hair, gels it flat. He looked a bit wet behind the ears to me, but he’s made his twenty. Ms. Morgana chooses a classic black suit with a really bright white shirt, or is it a blouse?’ Mr. Omega chuckled. ‘It makes him look more pall-bearer than Men in Black.’

Mr. Alpha sneezed and the recoil made his head swim; everything was bright shiny colours for a second. He shook his head to clear the multicoloured mush from his vision but then, one problem in exchange for another, crushing congestion pain overwhelmed him. He had to say something important. He held his head and staggered to the edge of the lake, staring across at the man on the opposite bench, passing the day in comfortable silence. Sweat dribbled from Mr. Alpha’s forehead despite the cold wind that whipped him.

‘Cover your fucking mouth when you sneeze,’ the old man said. ‘Dirty.’

‘Fucking shitbandits,’ Mr. Alpha shouted through his private agony, the first time he had sworn in the presence of his partner. ‘Observation is root is it? Observe that!’ Still securing his fragile head with one hand, he pointed with the other towards the man on the bench and his bold red tie.

‘That’s not a tie,’ he said. ‘That’s not a red tie!’

Mr. Alpha said, ‘We should take a boat. Commandeer something.’ He moved the handkerchief to his face, something was brewing.

‘We don’t need a boat, boy. It’s a lovely day,’ Mr. Omega said.

They stood on the northern shore of the lake and although Waterhead pier was within reach, it was clear they weren’t going anywhere near it. The pier looked lonely at this time of the morning, dark and uninhabited, reaching out on wooden struts into Windermere to support ferry passengers that were yet to make an appearence. The lake’s choppy surface reflected the deep blue of a nude sky and hills splattered with greens of varying shades caressed its lateral shores into the distance. Ducks congregated near the Clothmen at the water’s edge, assuming they might receive nutritious gifts from the humans. The selfish bastards were already quacking disappointment that nothing had been offered yet.

‘Yes, it’s very blue, very cloudless and hence very cold. Have you heard of “wind chill factor”?’ Twitching inside his face; any moment now. His teeth chattered and he wanted to go back to the Ambleside hotel.

‘Whiney fucker. Call yourself a Clothman?’

‘You–‘ Mr. Alpha started and then sneezed.

Rather than offering ‘bless you’ or ‘gesundheit’, the old man took a step back and glowered. Don’t you even think about sneezing in this fucking direction.

Mr. Alpha blew his nose into an already sodden handkerchief. He could not grasp why, at the ripe age of 23, he had still not learnt to take a dozen handkerchiefs out with him instead of one when labouring under a cold. ‘We’re going to be late if we walk it,’ Mr. Alpha said, his voice nasal.

Mr. Omega clapped whilst maintaining his skilled scowl. ‘Bravo, bravo. Smart argument, boy. But considering the reason we’re fucking late already is that you couldn’t get your arse out of bed, I think the onus is on you to keep the pace up. Yeah?’

Mr. Alpha tightened a fist in response to the abuse. ‘Look, I needed a Lemsip before we left. This suit of yours is not the best for this sort of weather. I wouldn’t be in this state if you’d let me wear something decent.’

‘Will you just shut the fuck up about the coat? This was discussed ad infinitum yesterday.’ Mr. Omega scalded him with a fiery glare. Although Mr. Alpha had been popular at the school for his own fearful stare of despair, Mr. Omega’s gaze always raised goosebumps on his arms.

‘Okay,’ Mr. Alpha said, ‘let’s go.’ Another sneeze blasted its way out and the sudden throb of numbness around his beleaguered nose felt like his face had been blown off. He blew his nose again and something thick and massive invaded the hanky; for a second, he thought perhaps his nose really had come away.

As his hanky was already too far gone to be of any use he was stuck. Clutching the hanky to his face like he was some sort of amateur highwayman, a congested Dick Turpin, Mr. Alpha looked to his partner with a hand out expecting help.

Mr. Omega’s expression switched from glare to disgust, but said nothing.

‘Mate,’ Mr. Alpha said through his sodden highwayman disguise, ‘have you got a spare tissue or something?’

Mr. Omega walked away. Once he had put several metres between them, he shouted back, ‘Use some leaves. We’re in the countryside, shithead, improvise.’

After racing up the first few flights of steps he found himself out of breath. Climbing the metal stairwell within the crane was a lot harder than it appeared. The crane’s operator wouldn’t have treated it as a contest of speed, he knew that, but his impatience had got the better of him.

Mr. Alpha cast his eyes over what little progress he had made then looked up. Countless flights of steps crowded out the view of the cabin at the zenith, hanging over him within the crane’s dark blue stem like layers of overlapping metal cobwebs. Beyond the disciplined, straight edges of the mast, the yellow jib lunged out across the night, like the thrust of a great blade frozen in time. It was where he wanted to be right now.

He stopped and rested against an outer rail and his hands became numb against the cold iron. A fog was coalescing in the distance, smudging distant street lights into radiant orbs; Mr. Alpha hoped it would come to engulf them. The fog provoked a pleasant memory of flicking through photos of London smog in a library book when he was a youngster, prior to his enrolment into the Cloth. The people of London had had to dress up a la Elephant Man to survive it but he didn’t care about that. There was a smoky beauty to it, something romantic in its essence. It blurred the sharp edges of everyday, rendering reality opaque and dream-like. The tension in his shoulders diminished and his mind discharged some of its burden. Mr. Alpha realised, fifty metres rule or no fifty metres rule, he needed to get away from Mr. Omega now and again so he could have a bit of peace.

He wasn’t high enough to get a grand view of the city neighbourhood yet, but he could see the hotel where they were staying. His senior senile partner had not yet discovered his abandonment and the bedroom was still dark. He peered downwards and saw the chaos of a juvenile construction site.

Its destiny was not yet apparent. Diggers had been busy generating fresh craters across the site in a random fashion and bulldozers assisted by pushing the excavated debris into dirty mounds of indiscernible fragments of things. There were probably priceless Roman finds that Tony Robinson would squawk over on Time Team, but no one cared as the drive to build and reform overpowered. Progress always started with destruction but something new would be built from all this crap. Mr. Alpha spotted only a sliver of the future; a lattice of iron rods driven into the ground near the crane’s base, like a bed of crooked, headless flowers yearning for a night-time sun.

He shivered, wishing that he had put on that nauseating yellow tie to insulate his neck from the night chill. He didn’t want to catch another cold; it’d taken a few weeks to throw that one he’d had when they’d met Mr. Mogdred by Windermere.

Windermere. Complex memories reasserted themselves and attacked his mind like a sticky, poisonous smog, burning through his paper-thin composure, blurring the edges of thought. Nothing made sense when he was under their spell. He would go over the facts again and again and not come to a single conclusion.

The foetus in his left arm started to kick again.

He punched the rail with the edge of his left fist and it replied with a dull, hollow ring. The arm continued to shake. He clouted the rail a couple more times but it still didn’t help.

Things had been simple back in the school. Erect everything from the First Principle, the Cloth’s prime tenet: “God is not yet become.” From this, there was only one explanation for what had happened – bad luck. Why had he been paired with Mr. Omega? Bad fucking luck. Why had they ended up responding to the call from Mr. Mogdred? Bad fucking luck. How had Morgana escaped? Bad fucking luck… no. Nothing to do with knots or rope. The knots were a cover story for the inexplicable.

He resumed his ascent, ignoring the jerking in his arm, and thought about when it all started to turn to shit.

The pattern shifted. He saw Morgana, then a fat tie that twisted and flowed like a Dali clock, Morgana again and then a banana. The top of the banana was peeling, its shy, yellow flesh peering out at him. Mr. Alpha shut his eyes. He couldn’t work out what the ceiling’s tessellated design was in the half-light from the hotel alarm clock. He didn’t want to know anymore.

Eyes closed, he again found his attention concentrating on the foreign warmth reaching across the bed towards him. He hated having to share a bed with Mr. Omega. The Clothman directives stressed that pairship partners should remain within fifty metres of each other at all times or face expunction; it was Mr. Omega who had imposed this stronger principle of sleeping together. Apparently it was something he had picked up from the previous Mr. Alpha, whose formidable boots the new Mr. Alpha was still unfit to fill. Why couldn’t he have been paired with someone else? Pairships were for life and not just for Christmas. He would be stuck with Mr. Omega until fuckfart died of natural causes or, perish the thought, unnatural ones. Mr. Alpha wanted to ask how his predecessor had passed on. Just out of curiosity.

He snapped open his eyes again and glanced at the clock: 1 AM. Mr. Omega had been sleeping for at least a couple of hours already and was likely to jump out of bed with a head full of focus in five. Frustration burned; he wanted to punch something. Mr. Alpha slipped out of bed and sneaked across to the window.

His own reflection was faintly visible in the glass. He had preferred to sleep naked before being paired with Mr. Omega; now thick, creamy pyjamas smothered with pink puppy dog shapes were the order of the day. All of the puppies were blissful, swallowing bones, doing little tricks, licking themselves, having a fucking laugh. His own visage was a gloomy contrast, strong yet troubled. He looked a bit like a peacock, the hair at the back of his head sticking out having been mashed against stiff pillows for a few hours.

Mr.Alpha put his hands against the glass and looked beyond. From the seventh floor, he saw streets and alleyways cutting out shapes in the city jumble, street lights aglow like the candles on an urban cake. More interesting, though, was the crane towering above it all. Tiny pinpricks of light illuminated the giant metal claw to prove that it was neither dead nor abandoned; it slept. Night flights kept their distance, lest they wake the beast that dominated the night sky. The crane’s malevolent power enthralled him.

He knocked his head against the cold surface of the window and let it rest there, cooling. Could he be any more fucked?