‘This is sick.’
‘Only to a nice girl. To the chosen ones, it was an act of supreme beauty and humanity. We would cross the borderline, between numbers and reality. We would become one with the information.’
‘You found a woman to… perform… this?’
‘We had a woman already.’
‘Susan Prentice?’
‘Yes. Prentice. She was also wired to the maze. I was monitoring the operation.’
‘My father? What was he doing?’
‘He was… merely an observer, Daisy. He has no blame for what followed.’
‘What happened?’
‘They laid together on this bed, Georgie and Susan. We had candles for them, and music and diagrams, and the best, most heady wine. It was so beautiful…’
‘Something went wrong?’
Hackle breathed in heavily. The sound of it, to Daisy, the room itself was breathing, and then closing in, tighter, tighter…
‘Yes. Paul had insisted upon going in as well, to witness the initiation from the inside, as he said. I could see no problem with this. None at all… I should have known otherwise.’
‘Go on.’
‘I recall the maze exploded with numbers as the act was performed. Susan was screaming with pleasure. Georgie had a unique talent indeed. The wanderers were fired by it, becoming an orgy. Imagine, Daisy! An orgy of information, mating with itself, incessantly, powerfully. I was overwhelmed by the results, so much so that I didn’t notice what was really happening.’
‘Let me guess. Malthorpe joined in, from the inside?’
‘How could he resist? Maybe he was jealous of the effect the ritual was having. I cannot tell. I don’t like to think of it. I can remember looking up from the equipment one time, and seeing them there, Georgie and the woman, caught in the most rigorous copulation I have ever encountered. It was like a two-person orgy, if such a thing is possible. I had the strangest feeling, watching them, that a third person was involved, in some invisible way. A ghost at the feast, if you will. I turned back to the monitor. The wanderers were participating in the pleasure, one especially: the double-six creature. Malthorpe. Seducer, Chancer, Backslider… Warrior. He was rampaging around the maze, attacking the double-zero. When I turned around again, Malthorpe was there… on the bed with them. No ghost. Real.’
‘He killed George? This is what happened?’
Hackle moved away from the bed. All the dark sexuality seemed to have drained away from his body, returning the man to his frailty. ‘I don’t know,’ he was whispering. ‘I still don’t know. He was using Georgie’s belt…’
‘Hitting him?’
‘Strangling him. Shouting out, “Play to win! Play to win!” It was a sexual thing. You know about such practices?’
Daisy shook her head, slowly, feeling sick.
‘The tightening of the windpipe, at the moment of orgasm… it can lead to the most intense of pleasures. It was a quirk of Malthorpe’s. The pleasure… the pain… this is what we fed into the system at that moment. Sex and death… the oldest equation.’ Suddenly, Hackle was laughing wildly, his parched voice echoing around the circle.
‘Malthorpe killed him?’
‘We all did. We all killed him. This is what broke the group.’
‘You’re mad!’ cried Daisy. ‘I can’t… I can’t believe this. I can’t.’
‘Believe it. I beg you. Georgie found the centre.’
Hackle picked up the torch. He shone it directly on to the bed.
‘A winner, not a loser.’
A small pallet bed, covered with a dirty, torn woollen blanket, broken wires trailing from it to the dead computer on the workbench.
A ghost of numbers.
Play to lose
A car, somewhere on a road leading out of Manchester. In the car, a man. We don’t know his name, not yet. The winner of the prize, the double-blank. He had thrown the domino into a ditch somewhere, hoping to lead the Joker Bone astray, but knowing inside that all was hopeless. The car was stolen, another ruse to escape. Hopeless case. There was no escape. Even his personal blurbfly had deserted him.
Night. Rain hitting the windscreen. The moors. Shapes in the night. Whisperings. Wipers, back and forth, back and forth. The man, wiping his eyes, trying to stay awake. Never wanting to dream, not ever again, but growing more and more tired. He should pull over, rest awhile. There was no rest.
A figure appears by the side of the road, thumbing a lift. A thin, skeletal figure, bleached white by the rain. As white as bone. A lone blurbfly, nested on his jutting shoulder.
The driver, slowly, slowly, against his wishes… brings the car to a halt.