Read Online Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text by Chris Beckett - Free Book Online Page B

Bowen?’ broke in Dave Rickets, as if to bring the conversation back onto less dangerous territory. ‘I told you his knowledge was encyclopaedic.’
    ‘It’s very strange,’ Cyril said, ‘that this should have happened today of all days, quite eerie in fact. I hadn’t thought about Tammy at all for ages, but this morning she’s kept coming into my mind.’
    He looked round at the others, realised they were all reluctant to meet his eyes, and turned instead to Charles.
    ‘I keep getting this vivid image of her,’ he said. ‘I can picture it quite clearly as I’m speaking to you: Tammy on her own in the middle of an empty field, under a dark grey sky and… and a bitter wind blowing.’
    ~*~
    In a field under a dark grey sky, Charles thought as he waited in an interview room for the social worker Jazamine Bright. It had been in his mind too: a field, a threatening sky, a biting wind and a dark, diffuse, all-pervading sense of dread. These things happened around shifters.
    He phoned his boss.
    ‘There’s way too much going on at once here, Roger, for me to able to deal with on my own. We’ve got two in custody who’ll disappear at any moment. We’ve got the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old girl. And on the top of that we’ve got the threat of some kind of violent incident instigated by another group of shifters. The deskies here don’t have a clue . All the signs were there to see that the Zone has been crawling with shifters for months but as usual they’re all completely in denial about the whole thing. I’m just not going to be able to deal with it all.’
    Roger was a bright man and an experienced manager but all his jobs until very recently had been in conventional immigration work, and he had no direct shifter experience.
    ‘I know you shouldn’t have to deal with this on your own, Charles. But – sod’s law I suppose – things are blowing across the whole region just now. Mike and James have been at Lockleaze all day, Judy’s turned up a hornet’s nest in Swindon, and Fran’s boarding school looks like it’s going to keep her busy for at least a couple more days. I’ll try and…’
    There was a knock on the door.
    ‘I’ll have to get back to you later,’ Charles said, as he rose to greet Jazmine Bright. ‘Just see what you can do, okay?’
    ~*~
    ‘Hey!’ she said. ‘I know you, don’t I?’
    Charles couldn’t place her straight away. He recognised her alright: those slightly African features and the hair tied up in little bows. He knew she meant something to him too. He knew she was associated in his mind with feelings both bitter and sweet. But just for a second, immersed and preoccupied as he was in what was happening here, he couldn’t find the context.
    ‘But you said you were an immigration officer!’ she protested.
    Of course! Susan’s party! And Jazamine was that hard-to-remember name.
    ‘Well I am an immigration officer. It’s just that I’ve moved on from dealing with the national boundary, to…’
    ‘…to guarding the universe itself,’ she interrupted. ‘Wow!’
    She had seen right through him! That was how Charles felt. She’d taken one look at him and summed him up. He thought of the silly, adolescent, self-dramatising thing he’d written that night after getting home from the party – what had he called it? Marcher – and he swore to himself that he’d destroy it as soon as he got home. Out loud, though, he defended his ground.
    ‘Well, it’s important. Imagine if everyone could escape at will from the consequences of their actions.’
    She smiled, amused by his intensity. It was a reaction he frequently encountered. Most of the world, it seemed to him, was in denial about the fact that shifters really existed. The remainder – and this included even the other members of his own Section - was in denial about the implications.
    ‘I think Tammy’s main problem was having to deal with the consequences of other people’s actions,’ Jazamine