Edited by, p.57
Edited By, page 57
Shay was drawing nearer, walking steadily, perfectly straight. Sir David peered at it. Were its eyes silver? If they were, it would be too late. All bets off, end of story. But the sun was too bright, Sir David’s own sight was not what it once was. He couldn’t tell if Shay’s eyes were silver.
“Shay Risborough Gabardine,” whispered Sir David. Ludicrous words, but proven by trial and error, trial by combat, death by error. The name it apparently gave itself, a station on the Great Western Line, and a type of fabric. Not words you’d ever expect to find together, there was its safety, the cleverness of Isambard Kingdom Brunel showing through. Though not as clever as how IKB had got Shay to respond to the words in the first place. So clever that no one else had worked out how it had been done, not in the three different attempts over more than a hundred years. Attempts to try to change or expand the creature’s lexicon, each attempt another litany of mistakes and many deaths. And after each such trial, the fear that had led to it being shut away. Locked underground the last time, and then the chance rediscovery in 1953 and the foolishness that had led it to being put away here, parked and forgotten.
Except by Sir David.
Shay was getting very close now. Its face looked innocuous enough. A little vacant, a man not too bright perhaps, or very short of sleep. Its skin was pale today, matching Sir David’s own, but he knew it could change that in an instant. Skin colour, height, apparent age, gender…all of these could be changed by Shay, though it mostly appeared as it was right now.
Small and innocuous, old and tired. Excellent camouflage among humans.
Ten paces, nine paces, eight paces…the timing had to be right. The command had to be said in front of its face, without error, clear and precise—
“Shay Risborough Gabardine,” barked Sir David, shivering in place, his whole body tensed to receive a killing blow.
Shay’s eyes flashed silver. He took half a step forward, putting him inches away from Sir David, and stopped. There was a terrible stillness, the world perched on the brink. Then it turned on its heel, crossed the road and went back into its house. The old house, opposite Sir David’s, that no one but Shay had set foot in for thirty years.
Sir David stood where he was for several minutes, shaking. Finally he quelled his shivering enough to march back inside his own house, where he ignored the phone on the hall table, choosing instead to open a drawer in his study to lift out a chunkier, older thing that had no dial of any kind, push-button or rotary. He held the handset to his head and waited.
There were a series of clicks and whines and beeps, the sound of disparate connections working out how they might after all get together. Finally a sharp, quick male voice answered on the other end.
“Yes.”
“Case Shay Zulu,” said Sir David. There was a pause. He could hear the flipping of pages, as the operator searched through the ready book.
“Is there more?” asked the operator.
“What!” exploded Sir David. “Case Shay Zulu!”
“How do you spell it?”
Sir David’s lip curled almost up to his nose, but he pulled it back.
“S-H-A-Y,” he spelled out. “Z-U-L-U.”
“I can spell Zulu,” said the operator, affronted. “There’s still nothing.”
“Look up my workname,” said Sir David. “Arthur Brooks.”
There was tapping now, the sound of a keyboard. He’d heard they were using computers more and more throughout the Department, not just for the boffins in the back rooms.
“Ah, I see… I’ve got you now, sir,” said the operator. At least there was a “sir,” now.
“Get someone competent to look up Shay Zulu and report my communication at once to the duty officer with instruction to relay it to the Chief,” ordered Sir David. “I want a call back in five minutes.”
The call came in ten minutes, ten minutes Sir David spent looking out his study window, watching the house across the road. It was eleven a.m., too late for Shay to go to the supermarket like it had done every day for the last thirty years. Sir David wouldn’t know if it had returned to its previous safe routine until 10:30am tomorrow. Or earlier, if Shay was departing on some different course…
The insistent ringing recalled him to the phone.
“Yes.”
“Sir David? My name is Angela Terris, I’m the duty officer at present. We’re a bit at sea here. We can’t find Shay Zulu in the system at all—what was that?”
Sir David had let out a muffled cry, his knuckles jammed against his mouth.
“Nothing, nothing,” he said, trying to think. “The paper files, the old records to 1977, you can look there. But the important thing is the book, we… I must have the notebook from the Chief’s safe, a small green leather book embossed on the cover with the gold initials IKB.”
“The Chief’s not here right now,” said Angela brightly. “This Falklands thing, you know. He’s briefing the cabinet. Is it urgent?”
“Of course it’s urgent!” barked Sir David, regretting it even as he spoke, remembering when old Admiral Puller had called up long after retirement, concerned about a suspicious new postman, and how they had laughed on the Seventh Floor. “Look, find Case Shay Zulu and you’ll see what I mean.”
“Is it something to do with the Soviets, Sir David? Because we’re really getting on reasonably well with them at the moment—”
“No, no, it’s nothing to do with the Soviets,” said Sir David. He could hear the tone in her voice, he remembered using it himself when he had taken Admiral Fuller’s call. It was the calming voice that meant no immediate action, a routine request to some functionary to investigate further in days, or even weeks, purely as a courtesy to the old man. He had to do something that would make her act, there had to some lever.
“I’m afraid it’s something to do with the Service itself,” he said. “Could be very, very embarrassing. Even now. I need that book to deal with it.”
“Embarrassing as in likely to be of media interest, Sir David?” asked Angela.
“Very much so,” said Sir David heavily.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Angela.
“We were really rather surprised to find the Department owns a safe house that isn’t on the register,” said the young, nattily dressed and borderline rude young man who came that afternoon. His name, or at least the one he had supplied, was Redmond. “Finance were absolutely delighted, it must be worth close to half a million pounds now, a huge place like that. Fill a few black holes with that once we sell it. On the quiet, of course, as you say it would be very embarrassing if the media get hold of this little real estate venture.”
“Sell it?” asked Sir David. “Sell it! Did you only find the imprest accounts, not the actual file? Don’t you understand? The only thing that stops Shay from running amok is routine, a routine that is firmly embedded in and around that house! Sell the house and you unleash the…the beast!”
“Beast, Sir David?” asked Redmond. He suppressed a yawn and added, “Sounds rather Biblical. I expect we can find a place for this Shea up at Exile House. I daresay they’ll dig his file up eventually, qualify him as a former employee.”
They could find a place for Sir David too, were the unspoken words. Exile House, last stop for those with total disability suffered on active service, crippled by torture, driven insane from stress, shot through both knees and elbows. There were many ways to arrive at Exile House.
“Did you talk to the Chief?” asked Sir David. “Did you ask about the book marked ‘IKB’?”
“Chief’s very busy,” said Redmond. “There’s a war on you know. Even if it is only a little one. Look, why don’t I go over and have a chat to old Shea, get a feel for the place, see if there’s anything else that might need sorting?”
“If you go over there you introduce another variable,” said Sir David, as patiently as he could. “Right now, I’ve got Shay to return to its last state, which may or may not last until ten thirty tomorrow morning, when it goes and gets its bread and milk, as it has done for the last thirty years. But if you disrupt it again, then who knows what will happen.”
“I see, I see,” said Redmond. He nodded as if he had completely understood. “Bit of a mental case, hey? Well, I did bring a couple of the boys in blue along just in case.”
“Boys in blue!”
Sir David was almost apoplectic. He clutched at Redmond’s sleeve, but the young man effortlessly withdrew himself and sauntered away.
“Back in half a ’mo,” he called out cheerfully.
Sir David tried to chase him down, but by the time he got to the front door it was shut in his face. He scrabbled at the weapon cache, pushing hard on a panel till he realized it was the wrong one. By the time he had the revolver in his hand and had wrestled the door open, Redmond was already across the road, waving to the two policemen in the panda car to follow him. They got out quickly, large men in blue, putting their hats on as they strode after the young agent.
“Not even Special Branch,” muttered Sir David. He let the revolver hang by his side. What could he do with it anyway? He couldn’t shoot Redmond, or the policemen.
Perhaps, he thought bleakly, he could shoot himself. That would bring them back, delay the knock on the door opposite…but it would only be a delay. And if he was killed, and if they couldn’t find Brunel’s book, then the other command words would be lost.
Redmond went up the front steps two at a time, past the faded sign that said, “Hawkers and Salesmen Not Welcome. Beware of the Vicious Dog” and the one underneath it that had been added a year after the first, “No Liability for Injury or Death, You Have Been Warned.”
Sir David blinked, narrowing his eyes against the sunshine that was still streaming down, flooding the street. It was just like the afternoon, that afternoon in ’43 when the sun had broken through after days of fog and ice, but even though it washed across him on the bridge of his frigate he couldn’t feel it, he could only see the light, he was so frozen from the cold Atlantic days the sunshine couldn’t touch him, there was no warmth that could reach him…
He felt colder now. Redmond was knocking on the door. Hammering on the door. Sir David choked a little on his own spit, apprehension rising. There was a chance Shay wouldn’t answer, and the door was very heavy, those two policemen couldn’t kick it down, there would be more delay—
The door opened. There was the flash of silver, and Redmond fell down the steps, blood geysering from his neck as if some newfangled watering system had suddenly switched on beside him, drawing water from a rusted tank.
A blur of movement followed. The closer policeman spun about, as if suddenly inspired to dance, only his head was tumbling from his shoulders to dance apart from him. The surviving policeman, that is the policeman who had survived the first three seconds of contact with Shay, staggered backwards and started to turn around to run.
He took one step before he too was pierced through with a silver spike, his feet taking him only to the gutter where he lay down to die.
Sir David went back inside, leaving the door open. He went to his phone in the hall and called his daughter. She answered on the fourth ring. Sir David’s hand was so sweaty he had to grip the plastic tightly, so the phone didn’t slip from his grip.
“Mary? I want you to call Peter and your girls and tell them to get across the Channel now. France, Belgium, doesn’t matter. No, wait, Terence is in Newcastle, isn’t he? Tell him…listen to me…he can get the ferry to Stavanger. Listen! There is going to be a disaster here. It doesn’t matter what kind! I haven’t gone crazy, you know who I know. They have to get out of the country and across the water! Just go!”
Sir David hung up. He wasn’t sure Mary would do as he said. He wasn’t even sure that the sea would stop Shay. That was one of the theories, never tested, that it wouldn’t or couldn’t cross a large body of water. Brunel almost certainly knew, but his more detailed papers had been lost. Only the code book had survived. At least until recently.
He went to the picture window in his study. It had been installed on his retirement, when he’d moved here to keep an eye on Shay. It was a big window, taking up the place of two old Georgian multi-paned affairs, and it had an excellent view of the street.
There were four bodies in full view now. The latest addition was a very young man. Had been a young man. The proverbial innocent bystander, in the wrong place at the wrong time. A car sped by, jerking suddenly into the other lane as the driver saw the corpses and the blood.
Shay walked into the street and looked up at Sir David’s window.
Its eyes were silver.
The secure phone behind Sir David rang. He retreated, still watching Shay, and picked it up.
“Yes.”
“Sir David? Angela Terris here. The police are reporting multiple 999 calls, apparently there are people—”
“Yes. Redmond and the two officers are dead. I told him not to go, but he did. Shay is active now. I tried to tell you.”
Shay was moving, crossing the road.
“Sir David!”
“Find the book,” said Sir David wearily. “That’s the only thing that can help you now. Find the leather book marked “IKB.” It’s in the Chief’s safe.”
Shay was on Sir David’s side of the street, moving left, out of sight.
“The Chief’s office was remodeled last year,” said Angela Terris. “The old safe… I don’t know—”
Sir David laughed bitter laughter and dropped the phone.
There was the sound of footsteps in the hall.
Footsteps that didn’t sound quite right.
Sir David stood at attention and straightened his tie. Time to find out if the other command did what it was supposed to do. It would be out of his hands then. If it worked, Shay would kill him and then await further instructions for twenty-four hours. Either they’d find the book or they wouldn’t, but he would have done his best.
As always.
Shay came into the room. It didn’t look much like an old man now. It was taller, and straighter, and its head was bigger. So was its mouth.
“Shay Corsham Worsted,” said Sir David.
Shay Corsham Worsted
Fearful Symmetries is an un-themed anthology kickstarted in partnership with the publisher. As I’ve said previously, unthemed anthologies are a hard sell. Some of the stories in this 2014 book have become my favorites, including the one reprinted here: “Shay Corsham Worsted” by Garth Nix. The story was a finalist for the Aurealis Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. The book itself won the Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson awards.
Seventy-Two Letters
by Ted Chiang
(From Vanishing Acts, 2002)
When he was a child, Robert’s favorite toy was a simple one, a clay doll that could do nothing but walk forward. While his parents entertained their guests in the garden outside, discussing Victoria’s ascension to the throne or the Chartist reforms, Robert would follow the doll as it marched down the corridors of the family home, turning it around corners or back where it came from. The doll didn’t obey commands or exhibit any sense at all; if it met a wall, the diminutive clay figure would keep marching until it gradually mashed its arms and legs into misshapen flippers. Sometimes Robert would let it do that, strictly for his own amusement. Once the doll’s limbs were thoroughly distorted, he’d pick the toy up and pull the name out, stopping its motion in mid-stride. Then he’d knead the body back into a smooth lump, flatten it out into a plank, and cut out a different figure: a body with one leg crooked, or longer than the other. He would stick the name back into it, and the doll would promptly topple over and push itself around in a little circle.
It wasn’t the sculpting that Robert enjoyed; it was mapping out the limits of the name. He liked to see how much variation he could impart to the body before the name could no longer animate it. To save time with the sculpting, he rarely added decorative details; he refined the bodies only as was needed to test the name.
Another of his dolls walked on four legs. The body was a nice one, a finely detailed porcelain horse, but Robert was more interested in experimenting with its name. This name obeyed commands to start and stop and knew enough to avoid obstacles, and Robert tried inserting it into bodies of his own making. But this name had more exacting body requirements, and he was never able to form a clay body it could animate. He formed the legs separately and then attached them to the body, but he wasn’t able to erase the seams fully; the name didn’t recognize the body as a single continuous piece.
He scrutinized the names themselves, looking for some simple substitutions that might distinguish two-leggedness from four-leggedness, or make the body obey simple commands. But the names looked entirely different; on each scrap of parchment were inscribed seventy-two tiny Hebrew letters, arranged in twelve rows of six, and so far as he could tell, the order of the letters was utterly random.
Robert Stratton and his fourth-form classmates sat quietly as Master Trevelyan paced between the rows of desks.
“Langdale, what is the doctrine of names?”
“All things are reflections of God, and, um, all—”
“Spare us your bumbling. Thorburn, can you tell us the doctrine of names?”
“As all things are reflections of God, so are all names reflections of the divine name.”
“And what is an object’s true name?”
“That name which reflects the divine name in the same manner as the object reflects God.”
“And what is the action of a true name?”
“To endow its object with a reflection of divine power.”
