Empress of the Sun Read online

  ‘Really?’

  That make-up made her eyes very big.

  ‘I think so.’

  Everett M had been kidnapped to the moon, rebuilt by the Thryn Sentiency, turned into a secret agent and thrown through gate after Heisenberg Gate, and been sent to face the Nahn on Earth 1, but he had never felt so completely out of his depth as he did here, on a leather sofa with Vietnamese coffees and Noomi Wong beside him. This was not a homework date. This was just a date.

  ‘Little Lion Man’ played on the cafe sound system.

  ‘I know this one,’ Everett M said. Noomi had been nodding or tapping a foot along with every song.

  ‘You like Mumford & Sons?’

  ‘I said I know it, not I like it.’

  ‘Points. So what do you like?’

  ‘Oh, guy stuff,’ Everett M said and he told her all the bands he liked, some of which Noomi didn’t know because those bands didn’t exist in this universe, or had broken up a long time ago, and then he was talking about why he liked what he liked and how it made him feel and which bits he would play over and over just for that one moment when it all came together and lifted you and made you feel like a god, and how that was a thing you got in classical music, which some people thought was all meandering and no real tunes, but it was saving the real tune for just one moment of perfection, because if you did the real tune over and over again it would stop being special and be just like everything else and the cafe sound system seemed to have hacked into his head because now it was playing all the things he was talking about (but not the classical – there were limits) and then he saw the dreadlocked guy slipping behind the bar every so often to press buttons and Everett M realised he was quietly DJ’ing Everett M and Noomi which in any other place at any other time Everett M would have found creepy but here in the warm with hot sweet Vietnamese coffee (where had the second one come from?) and the cold dark outside and the rain hard against the window it was wonderful and Everett M was talking talking talking the words just pouring out of him like he hadn’t talked to anyone on this world and he realised that Noomi hadn’t really said anything at all but just sank deeper into the sofa and pulled her legs up closer to her curling up and cosy and he said I’m sorry I’m doing all the talking and she nodded and said, Yah, you are. Guy talk.

  The sudden yell broke everything apart. Dreadlock guy burst from the kitchen shouting, ‘Go on, get out of here!’ and Everett M saw a rat run from under one of the sofas, make a break for the front door just as new customers opened it and escape into the rain. ‘Bloody rats! Sorry about that. Coffees on the house.’

  *

  Vietnamese coffee and the memory of Noomi’s cute little cat-paw goodbye wave fuelled Everett M home through the dreary rain. On Burma Road he stopped to check the Everett’s Hot Ass page. Twelve hundred likes. Then he noticed the recent comments.

  U LOOK GAY HA HA BATTY BOY.

  PAKI TWAT BNP ARE GOING TO BURN YOUR HOUSE AND FAMILY PAKI.

  SEE WHAT YOU THINK OF YOURSELF EVERETT SINGH WELL I’M HERE TO TELL YOU YOU’RE NOTHING SPECIAL I WOULDN’T GO OUT WITH YOU IF YOU WERE THE LAST BOY ON EARTH.

  SHIT GOALKEEPER.

  GETS HIS KIT IN CASH CONVERTERS.

  HIS DAD RAN OFF BECAUSE HE’S LIVING WITH BIG TURK GAYLORD IN DALSTON.

  Everett M felt like he had been hit in the stomach. The cold sickness was not fear but anger. Cold became heat, stronger than any Thryn technology. He drew back his hand to throw the phone at a shop shutter, smash it and stomp it and smash it. He held himself back. It was a good phone. It was only a phone. It was people who were poisonous. People hiding behind made-up names so they could be vile. Any of these people he could take in a straight fight: smash them open, make them weep with despair and then scream in fear for their lives. But his powers were powerless here. These people hid behind pseudonyms and said whatever they wanted to say, knowing no one would ever touch them.

  The internet was like the world. With all the powers and weapons he had been given, he still couldn’t touch any of the forces that directed his life. Charlotte Villiers and her creepy alter were whole universes away, but they still pulled the strings. Charlotte Villiers had his family. His real family. Real power wasn’t finger-lasers and EM pulse guns. Real power was controlling people.

  He thought about Noomi. He thought about the furry animal-ear hat she had pulled on as they left the coffee shop. He thought about that little wave, fingers curled like tiny claws. Miaow miaow.

  The world seemed a little warmer.

  *

  He heard the sound as he opened the front door. It cut off immediately but there was no mistaking it. Crying. Adult crying. A terrible sound. Everett M looked into the living room. His mum was sitting upright on the sofa. The television blared an early-evening game show. Laura pretended to be absorbed but Everett M could see her chest tremble with each breath.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She turned and pretended to be surprised to see him.

  ‘Oh Everett, I didn’t hear you. I’m fine, love.’

  Everett M turned up his Thryn hearing. He could not pick out Victory-Rose’s voice from the soundscape of house-noises.

  ‘Where’s Victory-Rose?’

  ‘Nana Braiden took her out to feed ducks.’ Laura looked at Everett M, then her face softened and she chewed back tears. ‘Oh I’m not, Evvie, I’m not at all.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He had seen his mum like this, choking back from crying because she knew that if she started she would not stop. He had seen his mum break down helplessly. It had been at the funeral when Colette from the university read verses from the Bhagavad Gita. Everett M had stood beside her, not knowing what to do, if it was right for a fourteen-year-old son to put an arm around his mother, afraid that if he did he would start crying too and not be able to stop, afraid that everyone would look and mutter and feel embarrassed for him if he did, afraid that everyone would look and mutter and feel embarrassed for him if he did not. The boy who wouldn’t hug his mother. He wished he had, more than anything. He wished he had almost as much as he wished his dad hadn’t set out on the bike that morning.

  ‘Oh Everett, it’s everything. Come and sit with me, love.’

  Laura patted the sofa. Everett M sat at the far end.

  ‘I miss him, Everett. Oh I miss him so much. Why? It’s stupid, isn’t it? We’re not even together any more, but knowing he’s not there at all … Oh I know you shouldn’t ask why, but you can’t help asking yourself, was there anything I did? I go over it again and again and again.’

  Everett M quietly reached for the remote control and turned off the sound.

  ‘You know, I don’t think it would be so bad if he was dead. God forgive me for saying that, but at least I would know. But to be just gone – vanished – there one moment, away the next – well, you have to hope, don’t you? And it’s the hoping that kills you, isn’t it?’

  ‘I know he’s alive,’ Everett M said.

  ‘Oh bless you, love. I wish I could be as sure.’

  But he didn’t know, not for sure. Charlotte Villiers had briefed him on everything about this world’s Tejendra Singh, from the maths underlying the Infundibulum to the kidnapping on the Mall and corrupting the police to make it look as if his alter was a liar, to the moment in the Tyrone Tower on Earth 3 when Tejendra Singh had pushed his son out of the focus of the jumpgun to be banished to a random parallel universe. The word ‘random’ was the killer here. A million million differences could kill you – too hot, too cold, too high, too low, no earth at all. But a billion billion similarities … that could save you, Everett M thought.

  He shifted closer to Laura.

  ‘And when you went away … oh, I’m sorry, Evvie – I know they said you’d talk about it when you were good and ready. But no one’s listened to me, no one’s asked me how I felt. To lose two people you love, so soon, so quickly. You just went out to Ryun’s house and didn’t come back … You ask yourself, is it something I’ve d
one? You tell yourself, it has to be something I’ve done, because no one could be that unlucky.’

  ‘I came back,’ Everett M said.

  Laura smiled. ‘You came back.’

  She rested her arm on Everett M’s arm. He moved close to her. Side by side. Bright people moved across bright sets on the television.

  But I didn’t, Everett M shouted inside. I’m a fake. I’m a cuckoo in the nest. I’m not your son. I’m not even my mum’s son now. The Thryn have made me into something I can’t think about too much. But I know what it’s like when an ordinary day turns into the worst day of all. There’s no warning, no clues or signs. It just comes out of nowhere and happens.

  ‘It’s a bloody horrible month, January,’ Laura said. ‘It never ends. All the dark stuff. You’re a good boy, Everett.’

  I wish I could be, Everett M thought.

  ‘When’s Nana B bringing Vee-Arr back?’ he said.

  ‘She said they might go to McD’s.’

  ‘Do you want me to fix you something, food-wise? You just stay there. You don’t have to do anything.’

  ‘Would you? You’re a better cook than me, Everett.’

  My alter is.

  ‘You stay there.’

  As he hunted through the kitchen for things he could cook, Everett M heard the crying start again. You’re not my enemy now, he thought. Not you, not Victory-Rose. Not even him. The alter. Everett.

  Everett M jumped as he looked up from the fridge to see the rat on the window ledge. Its black eyes fixed his. Everett M rapped the glass. The rat looked at him.

  ‘Cheeky …’

  Everett M opened the back door and lunged at the rat. It leaped down from the window ledge and ran a few metres down the garden. It stopped on the path and looked long and hard at Everett M. He chased it, it retreated another few metres. And again.

  ‘This is stupid,’ Everett M said, then ran with a yell at the rat. It fled and dived out through the cat-hole in the rear gate. Everett M followed it out into the back alley. And stopped.

  Rats. On the trash bins. On the walls. On the discarded washing machines and rotting sofas and old kiddie trikes that the people of Roding Road had left out for collection. On the cracked flower pots and planters. On the scabby concrete. Rats. Dozens of black eyes, watching Everett M. The eyes … Everett M thought power into his Thryn weapons. He felt the seals in his skin unbind, a sick sensation of coming apart he knew he would never get used to. He clenched his fists. In a blink, the rats vanished, as only rats can.

  17

  He waited beneath the diplodocus. The Central Hall was huge, and cold draughts blew in from odd directions. Ten minutes to closing and the place still thronged with visitors. Schoolchildren with enormous backpacks snaked towards the gift shop, looking up at the wonderful things over their heads. Bones and dead things. Long-armed skeletons swung from the roof beams: gibbons or some other tree-swinging monkey, he reckoned. Looking up and round eventually brought you to the diplodocus, the centre and heart of the hall. Its head was really, really small, he decided. He checked the time. Five minutes since he last checked. The public address announced that the museum would be closing in five minutes. Could all visitors make their way to the exits?

  It had taken all his courage to make the call. Picking up the phone, cold-calling the university, asking to be put through to Doctor Colette Harte. Her phone had rung and rung and rung. He had ditched the introduction he had prepared and worked out a new one for the message service when a real live human voice answered and both the new script and the old one went out of his head. He stammered. He jabbered.

  ‘Who is this?’ Colette Harte sounded fierce.

  ‘Ryun Spinetti. I’m a friend of Everett’s. Everett Singh. Like you were. Are.’

  A long pause.

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘I need to see you. There’s things that don’t make sense.’

  A longer pause.

  ‘All right. Central Hall at the Natural History Museum. Closing time.’

  ‘Where?’ he had asked, but Colette had disconnected.

  When he got there, the answer to the question was obvious.

  ‘It’s not real, you know.’ The sudden voice startled Ryun, gazing up at the tiny head on the elegant curved neck. ‘There are at least a dozen other replicas in museums around the world.’

  Colette Harte. Taller and younger than he had imagined, but his imagination could not have predicted the purple hair. New Rock boots. She offered a hand and an introduction. Her grip was strong.

  ‘Okay, Ryun, we’re going to go somewhere else. This is a bit déjà vu because I met Everett right here, just before Christmas.’

  ‘I know. You went for sushi. You gave him a memory stick.’

  ‘You like sushi?’

  ‘I like sushi a lot.’

  In the taxi she asked him testing and detailed questions about Everett, the kind that only a best friend would know. She requested a booth at the sushi place, and Ryun left his shoes by the sliding door. He wiggled his feet to hide the hole in his sock, right over the big toe. The booth was warm but small and Ryun felt self-conscious so close to this woman who was only one step away from being a stranger. She ordered tea and a round of smoked-eel nigiri. Ryun went for the crab roll.

  ‘Did you see what was on the memory stick?’ Colette asked.

  ‘Everett showed me it, yes.’

  ‘I wish he hadn’t done that.’

  ‘Parallel universes exist.’

  ‘They do. They’re real. You didn’t take a copy of the files on that memory stick, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s good. That’s about the only thing that is good.’

  Ryun sipped tea from the bowl. His heart was fluttering, he could hardly breathe, hardly lift the tea bowl to his lips. His hands shook. He had been scared making the call, scared when Colette had agreed to meet him, scared when he told his mum and dad a lie about where he was going after school, scared all the way down on the train and the tube, scared going up the steps to the imposing front of the Natural History Museum. Scared in the taxi, scared in this paper booth. He had thought that maybe there was a place beyond scared, like the calm and cool and peace at the eye of a hurricane. There wasn’t. Beyond scared was only more scared.

  ‘When Everett disappeared, he went to one of those parallel universes.’

  ‘Where did you get that idea from?’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said his dad was heading up some inter-universe defence force, protecting the Ten Worlds of the Plenitude. He said like his dad was in some of witness protection scheme, and that he – Everett – he’d been assigned like a special protection team – like navy SEALS but with an airship. If he opened an app on his phone, they’d jump in from some other universe. But.’

  ‘But.’

  ‘But I don’t believe it.’

  Colette Harte closed her eyes and let out a shallow sigh.

  ‘From the curiosity of teenage males, good Lord deliver us. Ryun, why did you call me?’

  ‘Because you worked with Everett’s dad. I thought you might know the truth.’

  ‘Do you think Everett’s not telling you the truth?’

  ‘Yes. No.’

  ‘If I knew the truth, do you think I would tell you?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘What if I said everything he said is true?’

  ‘Well, then, that’s good. But …’

  ‘Your “buts” are spooking me, Ryun.’

  ‘But then there’s the text message.’

  He held out his phone.

  ‘Get this 2 Mum: am OK. Dad OK. See u soon,’ Colette read.

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘But …?’

  Another round of sushi arrived, and fresh tea, and kombucha for Ryun.

  ‘First thing: why would Everett send that to me if he was coming back the very next day?’

  ‘There’s a seco
nd thing?’

  ‘The second thing is: when I showed it to Everett, he said he hadn’t sent it. Then he said he didn’t remember sending it. Then he said he’d lost his phone. Why would he send that text and then say he’d lost his phone? Doesn’t make sense. But there’s a third thing. Well, third and a fourth. Third thing is: in the showers? At school? In the changing room? Well, he never used to go into the showers with everyone else because he was shy that way, but then he did, and he had all these scars, like lines along his arms and legs. I never saw those before. They made me feel weird. And that’s also the fourth thing, because since he came back, well, there’s things he does he never did before, and things he doesn’t do that he used to. Sometimes I don’t know him at all. He’s like a totally different person.’

  ‘What do you think I can do, Ryun?’ Colette asked.

  ‘Well, I think you know what’s happening.’

  ‘Ryun, do you think you can trust me? You’ve met a complete stranger and she’s taken you for sushi, and you’ve gone with her, without checking, without asking, without thinking. You know nothing about me, Ryun – who I am, what I do, who I work for. I could be a very dangerous person. I might be about to have you abducted or killed. Have you told anyone where you are?’

  Suddenly Colette was the fierce voice he had heard on the phone and Ryun realised that he had lived his life among people who were basically good and true and honest and reliable, or at least harmless – even in school – and had assumed that everyone else was like that too. The world didn’t have to be like that.

  ‘Everett trusted you, and you trusted him, so I will.’

  ‘Then I will tell the truth. The truth is that if I told you the truth, the whole truth, you would be in danger. Very great danger. Me and Everett’s dad were members of a research group exploring the possibility of the existence of parallel worlds, and communicating with them. We first made contact with a plane we call Earth 2.’

  ‘That was the one you sent the drone to?’

  ‘Earth 2 is a member of a federation of parallel universes called the Plenitude of Known Worlds. There are nine alternative earths. We are in the process of becoming number ten. I’ve become involved in the accession process – it’s long and it’s complicated and it’s politics and stuff I don’t get and I don’t like. But it involves me in a lot of jumping around between parallel universes. You’ve dropped your sushi, Ryun.’