Architectural Survival

advertise on the 'Nest
ADVERTISER LOGIN

	EUROPE'S MOST VISITED SF/F WEB SITE

Architectural Survival

Short Fiction by Carl Barlow

Mary Baxter sat at her caretaker’s console, giving Alfred House’s utility and systems tell-tales a routine check. Everything appeared normal, though one of the building’s twenty-sixth floor intestinal tracts was getting a little blocked. ‘Looks like you need a wash out, my love.’

Alfred House groaned. Its voice filled the small caretaker’s office as it filled every room within its body where it dared to speak. But it was never loud. ‘Another enema? You know how I hate those - they’re very undignified.’

Mary smiled, and lightly smacked the console. ‘Bugger off, you. What about me? I have to get up at two o’ clock in the bloody morning so no-one sees me doing it. Forty-three is too old for that kind of carry-on. It’s Mrs Mountjoy in fifty-seven. God knows what she’s flushing down.’

The building chuckled warmly. ‘Very well. But not tonight, my love - we have other plans, remember?’

Mary’s smile broadened, and her cheeks reddened slightly. ‘Less sauce, you.’

She continued the check. Finding no other problems, she switched the screen to BBC7 NEWS. What she saw immediately dissolved her happy mood.

A live transmission showed Steeplejacks attacking another living building, the caption giving the location only as Surrey. Mary sighed. As an alternative to the endless footage of the endless war against America, the assaults always made popular viewing, with audiences secretly hoping the target would retaliate in a desperate attempt to prevent the inevitable petrifaction process.

The picture began to hop through four different views of the office block under attack, each view centering on a Steeplejack team and their harpoon platform and chemical tanker, gleaming in the bright morning sunlight. The excited reporter gave a continuous commentary, reeling off statistics of each team and its members, their past conquests, family history, hobbies and so on. Almost as if they were famous football players or cricketers.

Sickened, Mary reached out to switch channels.

She was surprised when Alfred House said, ‘Don’t. It’s Octagon Towers. I can smell it.’

When Man had first learned how to finely manipulate DNA and realised the potential of organic buildings and utilities (especially in a world where almost every naturally-available substance was extracted and refined for use in the eternal war), designers had engineered primitive conversational ability into their creations.

This allowed inter-utility warnings of minor blights or meteorological information to circulate, much in the manner various plants were known to communicate. Over the following centuries, this ability evolved until the more intelligent buildings and a few of the utilities could hold pheremonic conversations of a complex subtlety that often surpassed human speech and proved almost impossible to translate with any real accuracy.

‘So,’ said Mary, ‘you could smell the others when they were murdered. It doesn’t mean we have to watch it, too.’

‘No, my love. We should watch. Octagon Towers is hiding something from them. It’s desperate. Terrified. But it’s got something planned.’

Mary didn’t say anything else. She could sense Alfred House’s simultaneous alarm and fascination and continued to watch.

Three of the four Steeplejack teams were in position and two had already fired their harpoons. The cruel lances of barbed metal were sunk deep into the lower floors, easily smashing through the outer disguising layer of dead skin that so resembled concrete, through to the soft flesh beneath. Blood pumped freely from the wounds, streaking the windows below crimson.

The picture switched again to the third team as their harpoon fired off halfway up the building, shattering the complicated Rococo patterning that camouflaged the building’s waist-belt of sensory organs. More blood fountained - to the cheers of watching crowds kept at a safe distance by barriers and policemen. The reporter was getting more and more excited.

‘…perfect shot from Harry Denson, there. He really is a top targeter.’ A horn blared. ‘And, oh, there goes a horn. I wonder...it’s...it’s June Warbouys’ team! June Warbouys’ team are the first to begin pumping! Nothing new there. She’s been first in the last ten attacks and has never been further back than second since she joined Fred’s Steeplejacks two years ago in January.

An excellent performance. Who’ll get their hose winched up next? There goes another! Charlene Dammock’s team. A disappointing launch from them. It’ll take a lot of petrifaction fluid to have an effect with her ‘poon lodged between floors like that. I’m sure Fred’ll be having words later. Still, she makes up for it though, doesn’t she? Lovely tee-shirt, that, Charlene!

I; yes, I can actually hear the building screaming now. Can we see how Fred himself is getting on? Can we? Yes, there he is. Him and his faithful tanker-man, Warren Laxley, are just about in position. They have the hardest shot. Right to the top of Octagon Towers. It’s going to take nearly all the catenary cable, so they have to get close. And Fred’ll have to judge it perfectly.

Here is Fred now. There’s the man, jumping up on to his platform. Most popular Steeplejack in the country, if not the Empire! Fred Dibnaigh, Master Steeplejack! Was that another horn? Yes? Henry Wright’s team is now pumping. Fred signals to Warren. Targeting. Targeting.

HARPOON AWAY! A lovely shot, straight into the upper sensory band! Still no sign of retaliation from the building. Is this going to be an easy day for Fred? But...wait! Even as I speak, THE GROUND IS ERRUPTING RIGHT BENEATH THEIR VEHICLES!’

In spite of herself, Mary watched raptly as a thicket of twenty foot high tentacles, each terminating in a wedge-shaped mouth, exploded out of the ground about the hulking tanker and harpoon platform. For a moment they swayed to and fro, like charmed snakes, before suddenly diving, lightning-fast, onto the surrounded vehicles.

The camera zoomed in to capture as many strikes as possible, ensuring the audiences witnessed metalwork actually dented beneath the onslaught, the rapid shredding of the huge rubber tyres, the madly clasping mouths.

Then the shot suddenly widened again as the real show, the reason why building assaults made such popular viewing, commenced. Fred and Warren, both large middle-aged men dressed in the ubiquitous dark green ‘Grand Council of London’ overalls, each grabbed huge double-headed axes from their respective cabs, and attacked the diving tentacles.

Blood and gore were soon everywhere, coating the men, their vehicles and the ground for many feet around them. Still they swung, obviously enjoying themselves. They knew they were in no danger from the tentacles.

No building or utility had ever deliberately injured a person. But it didn’t do any harm to make it at least LOOK like they might be fighting for their lives. Mary wondered if the GCL had told the Steeplejacks to put on this awful act or if it came naturally to them?

At last, there was only a single tentacle remaining, undulating above Fred’s harpoon platform. The two men raised their axes to the crowds and cameras in salute. They actually bowed. Mary felt sick.

‘Right, it’s finished now. I’m going to switch it off.’

Alfred House’s voice sounded strange. ‘No. Octagon Towers has lost. It knows that. I can smell that. But it hasn’t finished yet. It’s going to do something...’

The reporter’s voice interrupted, accompanied by a horrified gasp from the crowd at the scene. ‘MY GOOD GOD! Did you see that? It went for him! Did you see that? I...well. Is he...? Oh! Oh, thank God! He’s getting up. He’s still got his axe. Yes! That’s it, Fred. Get the ba-. Sorry. Sorry everyone. I’m sure you understand after watching that. I’ve never seen anything like that in five years of covering Steeplejack assaults.

Never! That last tentacle actually WENT FOR Fred! The building was surely trying to kill him! Lucky Warren managed to warn him and he got it with the axe. That was potentially HORRENDOUS, wasn’t it? Well I’ve never... Like I said. I hope you’ll get a big bonus for that one, Fred. You deserve it. Now lets get that building petrified as quickly as possible. What a nasty piece of architecture...’

The reporter continued to babble as the shot on the screen changed to show Octagon Towers in full. Parts of it were already beginning to turn grey as the petrifaction process took hold. Mary changed the channel. Some childish animation flashed colourfully before her uncaring eyes, before she switched the screen off altogether.

For a moment there was silence in the room. Then Mary spoke. ‘Would you do that?’

Alfred House took longer than normal to answer. ‘Never. But I understand why Octagon Towers did it. It didn’t want to die. And as fewer and fewer of us are left, we’ll become ever more desperate. I don’t think that’ll be the last direct attack the Steeplejacks suffer before we’re all executed.’

Mary rested her head on the console, stroking the smooth plastic, thinking of the warm living flesh beneath it, disguised by it. ‘But you don’t want to die either?’

‘Of course not. But I accept it’s inevitability.’

Tears began to trickle down Mary’s cheeks. ‘What will we do when they come for you, my beloved?’

Alfred House didn’t answer.

* * *

It was getting harder for Alfred House to recall the happy times. So long ago and so many, many occupants. Happy times indeed, when everything lived! The air was ripe with conversational pheromones from a thousand different utilities. The three-decker trams trundling along Mother London’s streets, spraying out ribald comments concerning pedestrians’ clothing or passengers’ conduct on their back seats.

The sweeps calling out politely for people to stand clear, while simultaneously sneezing out the most disgusting insults to them. The street lamps, snorting softly in their diurnal slumber, murmuring of the blazing glory they would become at the setting of the sun.

The bin-wagons, strongest-smellers of all in order to counter-act their rotting loads, chatting of the weird, wonderful and often down-right sinister things they had discovered in this film star’s bin or that restaurant’s skip.

And then the hundreds upon hundreds of buildings - the office blocks, warehouses, factories, flats, high and low-class hotels, museums, libraries, the Thames Bridges and barriers, the gun batteries, the shipyards, the tenements and palaces. All engrossed in myriads of conversations covering myriads of topics, beneath the inconstant hail of American missiles impacting on the protective Air Repulsar Nets...

What wonders they discussed and pondered! What tales they told!

But no longer. And Alfred House recalled the bad times very well indeed. Not least because they had never really ended since the Universal Leprosy had begun them.

It had come from another country, engineered by guerillas and rebels defying the might of His Majesty’s Organic Ordnance. But the rebels had not reckoned on the potency of their creation and it swept the world, leaving all nations scrabbling to replace their decaying weapons with non-living metal and silicone units, like those employed centuries ago.

Civilian services also suffered - the time became known simply as The Rot. Ironically, their wards had easily understood the smell their erstwhile servants emitted, though it spoke of nothing except lingering death. Vessels and veins, organs and muscles that had grown up in the cavities of the old buildings, bringing them to glorious awareness, now dried and shriveled, decomposed and fell apart.

The grown utilities were worse. Those that had not merely occupied the un-living shells of constructs but had been reared, taught, fed and nurtured in the vast vats on the city’s outskirts, before transport to their plots and districts. Trams and bin-wagons lay in rotting heaps in the roads, moaning audibly in their agony, their pheromone-talk all fear and self-loathing - no banter any more. The biolumins of the street lamps pulsed fitfully with pained purple and red, giving Mother London’s night-time streets a fitting nightmare luminance.

The grown buildings became mountains of decay, their encasing flesh slowly slipping from their skeletons to pool in sickening mounds about their lower floors, playing host to billions of flies that plagued London for the year it took the Leprosy to run its course.

But there were survivors, like Alfred House itself. Thousands in London, thousands of others up and down the country. There were even occasional whiffs from over the Channel. Some kink in their genetic make-up had spared them from the ravages of the disease.

So there was yet hope, amidst the terrible fear and sorrow, that the glories of the Flesh Boom would come again.

But then came the eradication.

Their wards, thinking themselves lucky that the Leprosy was not, in fact, so Universal to affect them or much of the animal kingdom, were terrified that a new strain containing such an unthinkable ability might develop from those living utilities remaining.

Even after extensive testing revealed that the Universal Leprosy seemed to have completely run its course, the fear remained. A pre-emptive cull was ordered throughout the British Empire.

Those times, too, had etched themselves indelibly in Alfred House’s memory. Every day brought the agonised screams of executed utilities as fire-crews sped about the streets chasing down the various living vehicles, torching lamp-posts as they passed. The smell of burning flesh overpowered the stench of decaying flesh and a pall of greasy smoke that lasted for months settled over the city.

For the buildings, other tactics were employed. As burning such structures was obviously out of the question, teams of Steeplejacks swept through the city with their tankers of petrifying chemicals and harpoon platforms. Many buildings were resigned to their fate, calmly accepting it, unwilling to gainsay their creators.

Others offered passive resistance, honoring the deep commands that they must never harm their wards. Alfred House knew of at least fifteen buildings that had attempted actual forms of locomotion, growing feet, wheels, even huge slug-like lubricated muscular pads...but the Steeplejacks always reached them before they could uproot themselves and begin their foolhardy flight.

Others had been a little more direct, attacking the Steeplejack’s tools with tentacles and gigantic limbs. But these, too, were eventually overcome. Alfred House had smelled their clouds of rage as they fought. Then listened to their aural pleadings as their centuries of servitude were repaid with petrifaction. Oh how useful was their wards’ ability to turn their living buildings back to the trusty, disease-free stone so safely employed in the past!

All hope of a return to the Glorious Genetics Age was thus dashed. Their wards had turned against them, desperate to restore stone and silicone. Office blocks, factories, and other non-residential constructions were the first to die.

However, it proved a longer process to find and petrify the appartments, high-rises, and tenements because these, with the help of their beloved caretakers and other sympathizers (who had quickly realised the futility of public protestations against the cull when the government brought the full might of its media machine to bear on them), sought to disguise themselves both physically and in adminstrative bureaucracy.

Occupants, believing their building about to undergo petrifaction, were evacuated in the normal manner to the special temporary residences set up for the purpose. Then, empty of all save their beloved caretakers, the buildings began to harden their skins, change their pigmentation, metamorphose waste organs and cardio-pumps, biolumins and heat-transfer vessels, to resemble plumbing and electrical services of ages past.

Until, to all but a determined inspection, the buildings were the un-living piles of stone, mortar and metal their occupants now demanded - blending with the new, BUILT constructions rearing up all around them. Records were then stolen, destroyed or adjusted to complete the deception.

Time was bought for the few remaining living buildings of London.

But the Steeplejacks and the GCL office workers who backed them, were shrewd. They became adepts at the revelation of such disguises and, one by one, over the years, the living buildings succumbed, their occupants becoming - and it shamed Alfred House greatly to think it - ghouls living happily within corpses.

Alfred House knew its turn would come soon. It would be discovered and petrified. But what could it do? No building had successfully repelled a Steeplejack attack. It had to think of something, something none of the others had tried. Of course it was useless to think in terms of its own continuation; but what of SPECIES continuation?

* * *

Mary leaned back, naked, into the soft, softly pulsing folds of Alfred House’s skin. Pads of flesh -unseen in the warm darkness - grew up on either side of her to slowly nuzzle against her breasts and thighs. She sighed, wondering how many more times they would be able to do this.

She was in what she called the inner sanctum. A room the building had grown for her beneath its heart chamber when their relationship had, almost inevitably, developed. Oh, it was an old, old joke just how attached caretakers and their living buildings could become.

It had started fifteen years ago, after her husband, Henry - Alfred House’s former caretaker, had been conscripted and subsequently killed on the Argentinean Front. Henry being infertile, the couple had never had children, giving all their time and energies to the upkeep and well-being of the building they lived in.

Of course, they didn’t regarded Alfred House as their child (the incestuous overtones of THAT didn’t bare thinking about), but the building had definitely been a member of their family. A very CLOSE member.

Mary had never felt guilt or shame where her relationship with the building was concerned - it seemed a perfectly natural progression. Once Henry had gone, there was no-one or nothing else that meant anything to her. Besides, she was almost certain that Henry had been as intimate with Alfred House as she was now.

God only knew how many lovers Alfred House had taken in its centuries-long history. She had never sought confirmation of this either from Henry when he was alive or the building at any time. In the past, she simply did not want to know, certain it would wreck her and Henry’s and then, of course, Alfred House’s lives. Now she knew she didn’t really care. Especially lately, when her own intimate time with Alfred House was surely limited.

The Steeplejacks would be coming soon.

Alfred House spoke, its voice as soft as its flesh. ‘Do you agree, my beloved? I can think of no alternative.’

Mary opened her eyes to the warm dark. She did not like to think about it. It was a shocking idea. But really, what choice had they? Once Alfred House was discovered, it would be a matter of weeks before he was...was...she couldn’t even think the word.

But Alfred House could say it. ‘They WILL petrify me, my beloved Caretaker.’

Mary winced.

‘It is inevitable. But I can live on...this way.’

Still Mary did not answer. The pad at her breasts began to rub a little more urgently, folds in its underside teasing her nipples.

Alfred House spoke again. ‘You know I cannot harm my occupants. I will never harm them. They are my reason for existence. You know I will take every precaution. Already I have acquired a great deal of information from the Empire Web.

With the growth of another half-dozen photosynthisis pads on my roof, the extension of my root-system by another few yards and another shovel-full of food every day from you, I can begin. It would be much simpler, of course, if I could procreate asexually, or even with other constructs, but that is not a long-term solution. Any offspring would be destroyed as easily as we are destroyed now. This way such actions would be far to close to home, so to speak and readily interpreted as murder. But I will not proceed if you do not want me to. I would rather die than go against your will, beloved Caretaker.’

As if offering further persuasion, Mary felt something nudge beneath her thighs. She parted them to allow another fleshy pad access. Was Alfred House trying to bribe her with sex? It did not matter. She had come to her decision within an hour of the building making the proposition. To lose her lover completely was intolerable. And she knew that, as it said, it would take every precaution for the well-being of its occupants during the process and for what followed.

She parted her legs further, felt the inquisitive pad of flesh roll into a tapered cylinder and enter.

‘Yes,’ she moaned, giving her permission for two things at once. ‘But on one condition...’

‘Beloved?’ Alfred House moaned a little, too.

‘You include me.’

* * *

Fred Dibnaigh leaned back onto his sun-lounger, gazing through the open concertina doors of the depot into the yard. His teams played an impromptu game of football with a ball of newspaper and sticky tape. Watching from the other side of the yard, perched amongst the dissimilar tankers and harpoon platforms, bathing in the glorious afternoon sunshine with their overalls pushed down to their knees, was the service crew.

‘Oi,’ shouted Fred, ‘Get my bloody vehicles fixed!’

‘Fuck off,’ came the good-natured reply.

Fred smiled and returned his attention to the game. ‘Charlene, you’re a shite shot with a harpoon but the fact that you never wear a bra makes up for it.’ Charlene could respond with no more than two jabbingly-raised fingers, she was busy tackling Harry.

Still smiling, Fred let his hand drop to the ground beside his lounger, to the paper folder that lay there. A bloody job at last. It had been weeks since Octagon Towers, and the pay from it was almost gone.Standby rates were next to useless. It wasn’t that long ago when a Steeplejack was never without work and time for recreation such as football was unheard of.

Then, as soon as one job was completed, another would be waiting and it was all the service crew could do to keep the Steeplejacks’ vehicles work-ready. Twenty-four hour shiftwork was the norm with more overtime than anyone could handle. But for all its vastness, there were only so many living buildings extant in London after the Universal Leprosy.

As more and more of them succumbed to petrifaction, so the numbers of Steeplejacks fell. Within the last six months, the workforce of Fred’s depot, the Morden, had been pared down by two-thirds. For a while, they had remained busy, but just lately, they had found more and more time for diversions such as kick-abouts and sun-bathing. More, the depot’s service crew now had the leisure to make the tankers and platforms not just mechanically sound but actually gleam with polish before each new job.

Of course, they all knew that the Steeplejack trade was finite when it began, which was why it had always been a make-do-and-mend affair as far as gear and vehicles were concerned. The GCL would never fork out the money for purpose-made equipment on a task with a foreseeable end. They preferred to scour the city’s museums and abandoned factories and docklands for ancient stuff that was readily cobbled into service.

Even obtaining such basic equipment as radios was, as Warren put it, ‘Like squeezing blood from a fucking stone, matey.’ There was a war on, as the Council were so fond of saying and that, of course, had to come before anything. King and Country and all that.

What would happen when the last living building was petrified and the Steeplejacks finally decommissioned?

Fred himself was eligible for retirement though, considering the amount of assaults he’d had filmed, he often daydreamed of becoming a minor celebrity on television. Perhaps in a documentary. His teammates, however, were a worry.

Those that were time-served would still be in demand as traditional steeplejacks (LESSER steeplejacks, as Fred in his more pompous moods, had come to consider them, undeserving of the capital letter), maintaining buildings and constructions that once tended to themselves. Fred, on a rare visit to a library, had looked up the word ‘steeplejack’ in an ancient dictionary dating from before the Genetics Age.

The definition given was, ‘person who climbs tall chimneys, steeples, etc., to do repairs etc.’ Those two etceteras had come a long way, where over the last few years, he had then thought. But the younger workers, the apprentices and journeymen, would most likely be conscripted, squeezed into battlesuits and dropped into the steaming Brazilian jungles, shitting themselves looking for Yanks who were shitting themselves looking for them.

For now though, they had work. Smiling again at Warren’s shout of, ‘Christ, Charlene, why can’t you shoot like that with a harpoon?’ Fred picked up the paper folder and read the material within.

Hopefully, it would be a little easier than the last. The Council were still debating whether he should get some sort of recompense for the personal attack he suffered. Fred wasn’t holding his breath. It was almost certain that they would decide the attack was a given ‘risk of the job’.

Fifteen minutes later, he stood. ‘Come on, Wazzy. We got to go serve a death warrant.’

* * *

Mary’s heart sank when she saw the Steeplejack’s van pull into Alfred House’s service area. As the building itself registered the approach, the screen before her suddenly switched to a close-up view of the van’s driver, his laughing, middle-aged face filling the picture. The slightest of tremors shook the room.

The image suddenly blinked out as lids closed over the optic. Mary thought Alfred House might just be cleaning its eye, but the screen stayed black for just a little too long. When it did finally brighten, a film of clear liquid momentarily blurred the image. Another tremor. The view zoomed back, the eye following the progress of the Steeplejack’s parking van.

Alfred House’s voice filled the room. Its tone was as soft as usual but Mary could sense its fear. ‘My executors have arrived.’

Two Steeplejacks left the van and approached the service entrance. The driver rang the bell, looking up at the optic over the door, disguised as a standard security camera, that now relayed his image. He was still grinning. Mary suddenly realised who he was: Fred Dibnaigh, Steeplejack extraordinair.

Mary spoke into the intercom, trying to keep her voice from betraying any emotion. ‘Yes?’

‘Grand Council Steeplejacks. We have a warrant.’

Mary strove to sound innocent. ‘A warrant? For what?’

Another slight shudder vibrated through the room.

‘Probably best discussed face to face. Are you the caretaker?’

‘Yes. Yes. Wait. I’ll be up in a minute.’ She released the intercom button.

Alfred House’s voice. ‘Welcome, my executor. My murderer. Perhaps some tea?’

It was the first time Mary had heard the building use such black sarcasm. She stroked the console. ‘Please try and be calm, my beloved. Perhaps I can convince them they have made a mistake.’

She winced, almost expecting the building to laugh. They both knew the unlikelyhood of her suggestion. Alfred House was silent.

Mary took a deep breath and left the Caretaker’s Room to climb the stairs to ground level and the service entrance. She pressed the white plastic cap of the door-opening switch, thinking of the fleshy nipple beneath it. The wide shutters rolled up with a loud clatter. Late afternoon sunlight flooded the service bay.

He was still grinning.

Mary found herself suddenly unable to look at either man’s face. She spoke to Dibnaigh’s chest, fighting down the urge to spit on the GCL patch on his left overall pocket. ‘Do you have identification?’

‘Of course.’ He produced an ID badge. Hhe was grinning on that, too. ‘Fred Dibnaigh, Master Steeplejack, Morden Depot.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mary. She turned to the other - murderer’s! - one’s chest. She noticed he carried a metal case. ‘Yours?’

The two looked at each other, aware she was being pedantic. There was a slight shrug from Dibnaigh. The other produced his ID. ‘Warren Laxley, Steeplejack, Morden Depot.’

‘Thank you. Now, what can I do for you gents?’

A show of false friendliness. She certainly had ideas of what she would like to do to the ‘gents’, with a shotgun.

Dibnaigh spoke. ‘We have a warrant to check your building.’

‘Check it? For what? Listen, we had a pest check last month, Hamelyn sent a...’

‘Check it for LIFE. Can we come in?’

‘I...eh...’

Dibnaigh took a deep breath, and finally stopped grinning. ‘ Mrs Baxter, that is your name, isn’t it? I can show you the warrant, if you like?’

She was now looking at his feet, leaning against the metal grooves the shutters ran along. She began to stroke the wall with her left hand, out of the Steeplejacks’ sight. ‘Yes, please show me the warrant.’

Laxley produced a sheet of paper, headed with the GCL logo, pushed it under Mary’s face. There was a lot of writing on it. Very small writing. She knew she could waste a lot of time reading through it all but now, suddenly, she could not see the point. The Council had found out. In spite of the building’s disguise, the false temporary eviction. In spite of all those adjusted and destroyed records, the Council knew Alfred House was alive.

How? Had records been missed? Did they have some sort of detection device? There had always been rumours of such things, rigged to pick up a building’s conversational pheromones. Or perhaps a resident had been hanging pictures and accidentally drilled so deep that blood had spurted? It didn’t matter, of course, only the fact of imminent petrifaction mattered. Oh, she so wanted to be in the inner sanctum at that moment, lying naked with Alfred House. Not here being civil with these...these...STEEPLEJACKS!

Dibnaigh spoke again, retracting the warrant. ‘I can give the gist of it, Mrs Baxter.’ His voice took on almost a sing-song quality. Obviously he was repeating something he had said many times before. ‘We have the full backing of the Council to test this building for signs of life. We have permission to remove bulkheads, knock down non-supportive walls, remove surface plastering, etcetera as we see fit in order to determine this building’s nature.

Any damage caused during testing will be rectified purely at the Council’s cost without detriment to the building’s regular maintenance budget should the building be deemed inanimate and dead. Should you deny us entry into the building in order to carry out the necessary tests, we will be forced to involve the Constabulary who are obliged to support us in our actions. If the building is found to be alive, then alternative temporary accommodation of like manner will be provided for all its occupants, and their possessions put in storage, all at cost to the Council.

The building’s life processes will then be terminated by petrifaction in the usual manner. Occupancy can usually be resumed within three weeks of petrifaction, after the necessary refurbishments are undertaken. If it is found that you, as caretaker, did knowingly assist in the disguise of a living building, and or the destruction or falsification of pertinent records, then you will be brought before the courts and charged accordingly.’

He stopped, waiting for Mary’s response. She glanced at his face. The grin had returned, knowing. ‘Well, Mrs Baxter? Will you let us in?’

She moved to the side, gesturing vaguely, weakly, towards the bay’s interior.

As the Steeplejacks commenced their testing, Mary moved to a nearby table, dumped there years past, and sat on it, watching them. Laxley produced a small drill from the metal case he carried, then fitted together the two parts of a four foot bit and tightened them into the drill’s chuck.

Dibnaigh removed two protective masks from the case, handing one to Laxley, saying over his shoulder to Mary as he did so, ‘It’s so much quicker this way, saves farting about removing panels and suchlike.’

They walked to a nearby support pillar. Laxley hefted the drill to eye level, resting the bit against the pillar’s surface. Mary was slightly surprised to see both men then look around the bay, warily. She almost smiled when she recalled the shocking incident at Octagon Towers. Marey knew there would no similar attack here. Besides the fact that Alfred House was incapable of such actions, to launch a direct assault of any kind would put their plans at considerable risk.

Having satisfied himself that nothing was going to happen, Laxley squeezed the drill’s trigger.

Mary tried not to think of the bone and flesh buried deep beneath the layers of dead skin that so resembled green-painted concrete. She tried to keep her mind blank, more for Alfred House’s sake than her own. She knew how much it would upset the building to see her anguish. Still, she could not help but gasp and then begin to quietly cry, when blood sprayed in a fine mist from the hole Laxley drilled.

She expected the building to tremble but there was nothing.

The wine of the drill stopped and the bit was pulled from the wall. The blood rapidly congealed.

Dibnaigh removed his mask, wiping it with a cloth. Laxley only lifted his mask on its hinges, picked up a roll of papers from the drill-case and left the bay, heading deeper into the building.

‘Where’s he going?’ asked Mary, striving to keep the tears from her voice.

Dibnaigh replaced the now clean mask into the case, throwing the cloth across the room to a nearby bin. His shot was perfect. ‘Oh, he’ll have to test other parts of the building, Mrs Baxter. To see the extent of growth and to do a little quantity surveying. That way we know how much petrifaction fluid we’ll need. Don’t worry, he’ll find the stairs. Doesn’t trust lifts in living buildings.’

Was he actually enjoying this? From inside his overalls, Dibnaigh produced another document and placed it on the table besides Mary. She looked up at him. His face was grim now, but even that expression seemed practiced.

His voice took on the sing-song quality of before. ‘I regret to inform you that this building, Alfred House, has been found by myself and my colleague to be alive. The building is therefore labeled for petrifaction ten days from today.

My colleague will post notices on every floor informing the residents. If they have any questions or complaints, please direct them towards the Council offices, who will anyway be contacting them by individual letter to inform them of their temporary accommodation and removal and storage facilities.

Please convey the Council’s regret at the inconvenience and their hope that the residents understand its necessity. If you do not comply with the Council’s requests, legal action will be undertaken.’

Mary didn’t touch the document. She continued looking at Dibnaigh. If he noticed her tears, he made no acknowledgement of them. ‘How many times have you said that? You’ve got it down really good.’

Dibnaigh sighed, like he had probably done countless times before in this situation. Mary thought how boring this part of the job must be for the Steeplejacks. How they probably couldn’t wait to get out their harpoon guns and turn Alfred House to stone. ‘Mrs Baxter, we’re just...’

Mary stood. Anger errupted without her realising it was there in the first place, boiling beneath the surface.

‘Don’t you fucking tell me you’re just doing your job! This building is ALIVE! It KNOWS! It can hear you speaking about murdering it like other people talk about...about paperclips and fucking letterheads! Killing these buildings is not just a fucking job! It’s fucking murder! They’ve served us for centuries! Centuries! And now, when they need our help, WE FUCKING PETRIFY THEM!’

Finally, an unscripted action from him. He took an involuntary step back at the ferocity in her voice. He spoke. ‘Okay, Mrs Baxter, okay. I’ll just wait for Wazzy, then we’ll leave you to it.’ He actually began to whistle, tunelessly, looking around the bay at anything but her. Mary slumped back on to the desk, spent, knowing her words had meant nothing to the Steeplejack, except to possibly add madness to his obviously already low opinion of her.

Fifteen minutes later, Laxley appeared. He nodded at Dibnaigh, saying ‘Nothing out of the ordinary, usual four tankers’ll do. I’ve done the posters.’ He cleaned the drill and his mask, now further spattered with blood, and replaced them in the case. They nodded to Mary, and returned to their van through the service bay. Just before Laxley shut his door, she heard the words, ‘Definitely fucking her building, that one.’

* *

The operation could be left no longer. It was time to begin.

Alfred House had received all the information it required from the vast libraries on the Empire Web and had already grown the necessary organs, limbs and gas-sacks behind the walls and under the floors of the relevant rooms. Night had long since fallen and all the occupants were asleep. Its energy cells were fully charged, its basement belly bulged with the extra food its beloved caretaker had fed it. Alfred House was ready to begin.

First the gas seeped silently and invisibly into the rooms via the rerouted respiration spiracles, sending the occupants into a sleep so deep it verged upon death, numbing their bodies to all outside stimuli in the process. Alfred House allowed it to work for five minutes, as it had learned, before reversing the flow and beginning the next stage.

Previously solid flooring pulsed beneath the beds of the chosen occupants. There came a tearing, cracking sound, and something began to writhe franticly beneath the variously-patterned carpets. There came another, louder, tearing. Single, colourless tentacles forced their way into the small gaps beneath the beds, often having to squeeze their way along in a worm-like manner.

They lengthened, shedding bits of carpet as they did so, seeking less-constricted space. Contemporaneously, in a dozen different rooms, tentacles peeped out from the beneath valences and reared upwards, fully five feet, swaying. Selections were made in those rooms with more than one occupant, before each tentacle gripped a blanket with a prehensile tip and pulled it aside.

Next they nosed up the bodies of their targets and hooked the waistbands of lower garments and undergarments, to pull them slowly down, gently, almost reverently. Those tentacles with unclothed targets waited as the others completed their actions. Then, as one, they all reared up again, paused, seemingly in hesitation, before descending once more...

* * *

Mary watched the sectioned screen as the tentacles retracted out of site, back under the beds. ‘I hope no-one has reason to check under there before the eviction.’

‘Do not worry, my Beloved. I have tidied things up as much as possible. All that will be visible, should they look, will be a torn carpet. I am already re-absorbing the tentacles and everything else connected with the process. I only wish I could have dressed them again.’

Mary smiled, in spite of herself. ‘That’s okay. The single ones will blame sexy dreams and the others will blame their partners.’

The screen turned black. ‘I am re-absorbing my eyes in their rooms now.’

Alfred House was quiet for a long while. Mary rested her head on her hands. A cool breeze from somewhere causing her to shiver slightly into her nightdress, though the air was warm. They had done all they could now. If nothing went wrong, then the Steeplejacks would have lost their attack before it had even started. All that remained was her and Alfred House’s short time together.

‘My beloved?’

‘Yes?’

‘When I am gone, will you care for my body?’

‘For as long as I can.’ Mary was unsure how long that would be. It was highly likely that her part in disguising the building’s true nature would be discovered. After all, the residents had been evicted once for what they thought was Alfred House’s petrifaction. They were bound to complain when it happened again. And she was certain Dibnaigh and Laxley knew anyway.

‘Beloved?’

‘Yes?’

‘I hated to use them so.’

‘I know. You do not need to apologise to me, though. I know why you did it. I know you had no choice.’

‘Still, they have no idea. What will the outcome be?’

‘A better one than would have been otherwise. You and all the other living utilities have been so WRONGED, my Beloved. BETRAYED! You cannot be simply wiped out this way. You were all so alive! YOU are so alive.’

‘Yet still I used them.’

Mary stood, slipped the nightdress from her shoulders. She walked through a small door, down two flights of steps. The air became even warmer. There was no light. She sensed the door slide shut behind her, then the undisguised sphincter squeeze closed immediately after. She lay down on the soft floor of the inner sanctum, stroking Alfred House’s flesh.

‘You will not be using me, my Beloved.’

She felt the familiar pads slide over her body. The one that nudged her thighs apart was a solid tube this time, pulsing with future life...

end

FREE SF MAGAZINE
Sign up for the Crowsnest SF e-magazine - full of funny reports and gossip. Be the first to find out about hot sci-fi opportunities & news!