The Ice House Read online

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  If he minded Delphine’s staring, he hid it well. He set down glass coffee cups with silver scalloped handles shaped like butterfly wings, two silver cafetières frosted with condensation, hot croissants in a wicker basket, a glass butter dish, a silver toast rack, a lazy susan laden with miniature apricot, raspberry and plum jams, a plate piled with some sort of flatbread, and stacks of sweet, square cakes she did not recognise.

  The harka rolled his broad shoulders. His horns were marbled with swirls of pistachio. He reversed out of the room, dragging the trolley.

  Ms Rao pushed down one of the cafetière plungers with the heel of her palm. ‘Shall I be mother?’

  Mother would have said the coffee grounds represented repressed sexual desire. Frank dissections of Delphine and Algernon’s psyches had been one of her favourite breakfast table pastimes.

  Ms Rao poured the coffee. ‘Do you think your friend would like some?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Butler told me you’ve got a lanta.’

  ‘I haven’t got anyone. She’s not a pet. She’s a person.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Ms Rao held up her palms. ‘A bad choice of words. Look. I hope you can see we’ve plenty of secrets of our own, here. You’re both quite safe.’

  ‘You broke into my house in the middle of the night and had me kidnapped,’ said Delphine, stirring cream into her coffee.

  Ms Rao smiled. ‘Things got a bit out of hand, didn’t they? But you acquitted yourself excellently. Do you mind if I explain what we do here?’ She gestured at the food. ‘Please, eat. You must be ravenous.’

  Delphine’s stomach growled, clenching. Part of her wanted to hold out, as a show of displeasure. But Ms Rao was right. She was starving.

  She tore open a croissant and slathered it with butter and raspberry jam. Flakes of pastry stuck to her fingers, her shirt cuffs. She bit into it and washed it down with smooth, nutty coffee.

  ‘Speak,’ she said, through a mouthful of pastry.

  Ms Rao watched approvingly. This small concession visibly energised her. Delphine was minded of the old prohibitions against accepting the food and drink of the faery court if one were captured by the gentry below. Ms Rao popped one of the little cakes into her mouth, then turned in her swivel chair and shuffled the mouse. The two monitors blinked on. The left one was split into sixteen low-res CCTV images showing different parts of the estate – mostly corridors, but also the courtyard, and one which looked like the road leading up to the gatehouse. The other had an email inbox. Ms Rao clicked something and pulled up Delphine’s email.

  ‘So,’ she said, wiping her lower lip, ‘I’ve had some time to find out a little more about you. You haven’t left much of an online footprint.’

  ‘I don’t have a MySpace, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Your family get mentioned occasionally. Mother and father, was it, who lived here?’ She clicked through to a browser page with lots of green text against a black background. She squinted. ‘Gideon and Anne Venner?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Mostly absurd conspiracy theories. The most popular one seems to be that Lord Alderberen was killed by the Masons.’

  ‘I killed him.’

  Ms Rao chuckled lightly, then caught Delphine’s expression. Her laughter cut off.

  ‘Can you get me to Avalonia or can’t you?’ said Delphine.

  Ms Rao returned her attention to the computer. She was clicking through various images of scanned documents.

  ‘That entirely depends. What business do you have in such a dangerous, lawless, frightening place?’

  ‘It took my father. And a man who was like a father to me. And a dear friend.’

  ‘And now you want it to take you too, ah?’

  Delphine set her cup down in the saucer. She took a moment to compose herself. It had been a long few days.

  ‘What I want, Ms Rao, is to look for them.’

  Ms Rao paused, an index finger hovering over the mouse. She turned to face Delphine.

  ‘Avalonia is a land of many opportunities. But, with respect, it is not a place to seek closure.’

  ‘All the same, I would go.’

  ‘I’m keen to meet your lanta friend.’

  ‘Her name’s Martha.’

  ‘Martha. Yes.’ Ms Rao picked up a triangle of toast and began buttering it with brisk strokes. ‘Here’s the meat of it: we’ve a threshold here on the grounds.’

  ‘But we checked!’ Delphine punched the arm of the chair. ‘We came back time and time again and it was gone and . . . and buried.’

  ‘Good! That means our security measures are working as they should. Don’t be too hard on yourself. We’ve only had it functioning ten years.’ Ms Rao bit a crescent out of her toast and gestured at Delphine with the remainder. ‘We need a portal lanta.’

  Lanta like Martha had a strange affinity with the swirling black godstuff of thresholds. The fluid was like a wild animal they could tame and command. Without lanta actively guiding them, thresholds lay dead and inert. If there was a way to activate one without a lanta, Delphine had never heard of it.

  ‘We lost ours a few months ago,’ said Ms Rao. ‘We haven’t been able to make outward journeys since. If, uh . . . Martha is prepared to help us out, we can make a sortie to Fat Maw in the south before monsoon season starts in earnest.’

  ‘A sortie?’ Delphine refilled her coffee to the brim and took a second croissant. ‘You make it sound like you’re some kind of paramilitary group.’

  Ms Rao spat out a mouthful of crumbs. ‘Sorry!’ She patted her lips with a paper napkin. ‘No, that’s not quite right. We’re more of an . . . aid organisation. Look.’ She checked her watch. ‘In a quarter of an hour the residents will have finished breakfast. Let’s pay them a visit, then I can show you what we do.’

  The smoking room was unrecognisable – again Delphine had the sensation of being in a waking dream. She vaguely remembered heavy drapes, a sense of cloying damp. Instead, there were bright, expansive bay windows offering views of the lake.

  As the latch-tongued longcase clock gonged ten o’clock, residents began to filter in – some dressed in normal clothes, some still in their pyjamas. One elderly man with rounded spine and cabbage ears wore a pinstripe shirt, cufflinks and navy-blue braces. Other residents were wheeled in by orderlies and parked at tables. Ms Rao greeted each by name as they entered; most responded with a nod or a quiet hello.

  Ms Rao addressed the room: ‘Good morning, everybody. We have a guest with us today at SHaRD. I know you’ll all make Ms Venner feel very welcome.’

  Some residents smiled in greeting, or murmured. A large black gentleman sitting by the window wearing a grey suit and wide-brimmed straw hat clapped his big hands.

  ‘Shard?’ said Delphine.

  Ms Rao turned to her. ‘Sheltered Housing and Retirement Dormitories.’ She spoke in an undertone. ‘We don’t accept many visitors . . . for obvious reasons. Our residents are of varying capacities. Please don’t be offended if you don’t get much out of them. They’re used to their routine. It helps with memory.’

  The residents slumped in adjustable armchairs or complicated electric wheelchairs. There were about a dozen of them. Chins sagged into chests. A television blared. Delphine felt herself withdrawing, uncomfortable. The elderly still seemed a different species, even though most here were probably no more than a few years her senior. In a funny way, they were just as improbable to her as Butler. Monsters.

  ‘We’re part of an effort to establish peaceful relations with the other world,’ said Ms Rao. ‘The hidden nations, the new world. Bonmundi. Swargaloka. Gehenna. Naraku. I don’t know what your preferred term is.’

  ‘Avalonia?’

  ‘Is but one small island in a whole world of powers and competing interests. It’s a delicate business, obviously. Our teams make discreet diplomatic links and trade resources to fund our efforts.’

  ‘This is your
team?’

  Ms Rao leaned in uncomfortably close, almost parking her chin on Delphine’s shoulder. ‘Don’t be fooled. These are some of the most competent, self-reliant men and women in the country.’

  She took Delphine by the elbow and led her to a wheelchair parked in front of the plasma screen TV. BBC News 24 was on, the picture cutting between clips of North Korean troops marching in formation and President Obama addressing a press conference, while a headline ticker crawled along the bottom of the screen. Delphine tugged her arm away, more petulantly than she would have liked, and turned to the figure in the chair.

  He was a cadaver. Clear plastic tubing ran from swollen nostrils to an oxygen cylinder. Long rinds of ivory hair clung to a dappled scalp the colour of goat’s cheese. The head was slumped forward. It nodded and sank with each shallow breath. Rheumy eyes were underscored with thick sickles of red.

  ‘Ms Venner,’ said Ms Rao, ‘this is Judge Easter.’

  The figure in the chair did not stir.

  ‘Hello,’ said Delphine.

  ‘He can’t hear you. Deaf as the proverbial. Vision minimal. But he’s my most valuable attaché.’

  He made a soft gibbering noise. His lips parted just a fraction, clear strings of sputum hanging from his gums. He smelled faintly of talc and sour milk.

  ‘You might get to meet him properly, once you’re on the other side,’ said Ms Rao, leading Delphine away. ‘Once he’s in the field we can’t shut him up.’

  Delphine took a moment to process what she’d said. ‘You’re going to let me through?’

  ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  Delphine’s stick clipped the leg of a chair and she stumbled. Ms Rao caught her arm.

  Delphine stared at the floor, her heart pounding. To be free of this fucking body. To escape this crumbling world.

  ‘Yes.’ She brushed Ms Rao’s hand away, this time with a sort of dignified disdain. ‘Yes, I’m ready.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Ms Rao. ‘Shall we go there now, then?’

  The lift rattled as they descended through the floor of the house. Ms Rao leaned against the handrail. She was such a contrast to the residents – vigorous and full of appetite. Age had not demolished her features so much as vindicated them.

  They stepped out into a limey, musty tunnel. It was split into a crossroads. Delphine scrunched her toes within her brogues. Now this, she did remember.

  The western tunnel was sealed off with blast doors. She counted at least three security cameras. Industrial trolleys stood beside the wall. Plastic hazard signs were screwed into the rock, sandwiched between layers of Perspex – a black triangle against a yellow background, showing a lightning bolt arrow striking a prostrated human in the chest: DANGER OF DEATH. Another showed a skull and crossbones within a white diamond: TOXIC GAS. The sign next to it showed a man inside a red circle with a line through it: UNAUTHORISED ACCESS PROHIBITED. GAS MONITORS MUST BE USED. Finally, there was a yellow information sign depicting a faceless stickman in various states of discombobulation:

  TOXIC GAS IN THIS AREA

  EXPOSURE MAY CAUSE:

  HEADACHES (the stickman clutching his full stop head)

  NAUSEA (the stickman leaning over a bucket)

  DIZZINESS (lines radiating from his head)

  BREATHLESSNESS (hunched forward)

  COLLAPSE (crawling)

  LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS (on his back, head

  haloed with stars)

  ‘Persuasive, isn’t it?’ said Ms Rao. ‘Security theatre.’ She tapped a PIN into a keypad. ‘No one’s ever got this far, but you never know, uh? Ah!’ She pressed on a long metal handle and the blast door opened like a bank vault. She swung it back. It was a foot thick, studded with big rivets. She stepped through the hatch into the tunnel beyond. ‘Come.’

  Insulated cables and thick pipes ran along the roof, the passage lit by halogen lamps. Delphine’s knees ached and her calves were weighed down with a cold deadness. Just stiffness from all that time in the car.

  ‘I hope I’m not teaching my grandmother to suck eggs,’ said Ms Rao, ‘but do you know how a threshold works? For humans, I mean?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The truth was, despite a life devoted to studying all aspects of the channel, Delphine was realising how much of her knowledge was theoretical. Till meeting the residents in the smoking room, she had not truly appreciated the practical difficulties in finding humans who could make the journey. The explanations in the Prentice manual were characteristically fanciful and verbose.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’ Ms Rao patted her shoulder with an overfamiliar congeniality. ‘You will be perfectly safe. But best I refresh you on the basics so there are no unpleasant surprises. When you travel from Earth to Avalonia, your body will undergo radical changes. On the other side, your physical age will have decreased by around seventy years.’

  Delphine exhaled slowly. ‘Martha said it makes people younger.’

  ‘Humans. And only on the outbound trip. Vesperi, harka and lanta stay the same age.’

  ‘And humans who’ve received the honours,’ said Delphine.

  Ms Rao raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re well-informed, Ms Venner.’

  ‘Prentice says it’s because humans are the only species with a soul.’

  ‘Or perhaps somebody wanted to keep us out.’ She laughed, although the way she said it did not sound like a joke.

  ‘How did you arrive at seventy?’ said Delphine. ‘Seems a bit precise.’

  ‘Because anyone younger than that disappears.’

  ‘You’ve lost people?’

  ‘People have been lost.’ Ms Rao pursed her lips. ‘Same problem coming back. Avalonia to England, a human gains about seventy years.’

  Prentice offered a colourful account of a man ‘in his middle years’, born in the other world and foolish enough to attempt the journey to Earth. He had emerged ‘a wreck upon the shore of decrepitude’, before dying of heart failure.

  They stopped at a second blast door. This time, the only sign was on the door itself – a blue circle containing a white image of a masked figure. Two round sockets and a white muzzle. Delphine felt her breathing quicken. Underneath were the words: RESPIRATORS MUST BE WORN.

  Ms Rao stepped back and looked up at a security camera mounted in the corner. She waved.

  The grey lens of the camera regarded her mutely. Nothing happened.

  A clunk.

  The bulky door swung outwards. It was held by a harka with lush, auburn hair spilling from between recurved horns. In her other hand lay a huge pump-action shotgun.

  Again, that dizzying wash of unreality, her brain straining to make sense of the signals it was receiving. It tried to interpose safe interpretations on what she saw: costume, electronic puppet, animal. Anything but person.

  The harka was wearing a black stab jacket with white iPod earbuds hanging over the collar. She tilted her head back, trapezoid muscles standing out against her red-brown neck.

  ‘Ms Rao.’ She was chewing something between round white molars.

  Heat washed from the chamber, with a stench that turned Delphine’s guts to water: beer, peat, bitumen.

  Godstuff.

  The guard slapped a hand on her shotgun’s slide action. She moved aside.

  The door had a high lip along the bottom. Delphine had to grip the jamb for balance while she stepped through. On the other side, the floor was tiled, a handrail running along a wall covered in abstract mosaics of interlocking circles or tessellating triangles. Delphine followed Ms Rao down a short corridor vaulted with steel buttresses. Her breaths came sharper, shorter. She was sweating. She paused to wipe hair from her brow.

  They emerged in an expansive terracotta-tiled chamber – far larger than she remembered. The floor sank in a series of concentric circles like an open-cast mine. At the very bottom was a round pool with a raised edge – a well filled with inert black water.

  She wobbled. The air was so humid she could barely draw
breath.

  The descending circular levels were linked on the near side by steps with a handrail, and on the far by a zig-zagging succession of gentle ramps. Gutters carved in the tilework sloped down towards a plastic grate at the foot of the well. Recessed lamps set into the walls lit shifting veils of vapour. There was no trace of the old chamber at all.

  ‘It’s like a leisure centre.’

  ‘It’s practical,’ said Ms Rao. ‘Easy to clean. A common artefact of the transportation process is temporary incontinence – especially with first-timers.’

  Delphine watched currents of steam fold and warp. She blinked, trying to recall the stark stone effigies, white stripes of lime, dark and dripping rock.

  Did she feel cheated? The heart of her trauma had been sanitised. Her feelings wafted through the atmosphere, inchoate, a thousand tiny particulates.

  Ms Rao clapped and the sound rang flatly. ‘I’ll show you round.’

  Wooden doors with portholes led off the main chamber. One opened onto a room with a gurney and medical equipment, a second onto a lavatory and shower. A third room had racks lined with robes of various sizes, shelves of wooden clogs and sandals, loose canvas slacks, white cotton shirts, and a selection of eyeglasses. A fourth room was lined with wooden cots and hammocks.

  ‘Reception areas,’ said Ms Rao. ‘Takes a while to recover after transport.’

  The final room contained radio equipment. There were microphones on anglepoise stands, headphones, PC monitors, and several large hutches. She saw no animals but smelt the foetid-sweet, sawdusty scent she associated with guinea pigs. In a corner, a white mini-fridge hummed quietly.

  ‘Our broadcasting station,’ said Ms Rao. She sat in the black swivel chair and slotted a pair of headphones round her neck. ‘From here we can communicate with the base camp, the boats and our transponder in Fat Maw.’

  ‘Fat Maw,’ said Delphine. The name felt sticky in her mouth.

  ‘It’s a port city on the southwest coast of Avalonia. Biggest settlement on the continent – gateway to the entire world. Good staging post for operations.’

  Outside, they sat on a tiled bench built out of the wall, looking down at the pool. Ms Rao went to a fountain set in a recess and returned with two paper cones. She handed one to Delphine. Delphine sipped. The water was silky, cold, delicious.