Chapter 10 - Funland

STEPHANOPOULIS PUT her hand on my shoulder and pulled me back to the base of the stairs.

“Call your boss,” she said.

Larry’s bladders had inflated for a third time but whether it was to plead for death or remind us that delicious snacks were available at the concession stand we never found out—as soon as we were more than a yard away his mouth closed and the bladders deflated with an unpleasant whistling sound.

“Peter,” said Stephanopoulis. “Call your boss.”

I tried my airwave—amazingly it got a signal—and called the Folly. Nightingale picked up and I described the situation.

“I’m on my way,” he said. “Don’t go any farther in—don’t let anything out.”

I told him I understood and he hung up.

“You all right down there, guv?” called a voice from upstairs. The constable with the headscarf—Somali ninja girl.

“I’m going to sort things out upstairs,” said Stephanopoulis. “Will you be okay down here?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll be as happy as Larry.”

“Good man,” she said, patted me on the shoulder, and up she went.

“Try and get some lights down here,” I called after her.

“As soon as I can,” she called back.

I kept my torch on and angled slightly downward to give me a reassuring wash of light as far as Larry’s cabinet. Larry’s face, thank God, was reduced to shadow. There was a glint of light from the darkness beyond. I shone my torch and caught a line of bottles along the back of the bar. I thought I heard breathing but when I turned the torch back on Larry both he and his bladders were still.

Nightingale had said not to let anything out. I really wished he hadn’t said that, or at least had said what it was he thought might be in there.

I wondered how long magic could preserve dead flesh. Or had Larry’s head been pickled and stuffed like a hunting trophy? Was there a brain inside? And if there was, how was it being supplied with nutrients? Dr. Walid had once taken cell swabs and blood samples from Nightingale, but they had grown in culture exactly as you’d expect cells from a forty-year-old man to grow. When I asked whether he’d gotten cultures from any of the river gods he laughed and told me that I was welcome to try to obtain some whenever I wanted. Neither of us even considered getting Molly to donate. Dr. Walid’s theory was that, however it worked, it worked at the level of the whole body. So once cells became physically detached from the body they no longer retained whatever quality it was that was keeping them young.

“Or reducing replication errors,” Dr. Walid had said. “Or reversing entropy for all I know. It’s frustrating.”