The Quorum by Kim Newman Page A

above the roofs. The future would rise like a reef of black coral, structures clustering upon each other, inhabited bubbles spreading across the map, blotting out chalk marks on wet asphalt. Leech’s nameless city would be a sprawling cathedral, an act of worship in stone and steel and glass, a culmination that would endure centuries.
    On the floor in front of him, in a cage too small for them, a dozen long-tailed mice crawled over each other, squeaking and shitting and gnawing. More servants for the Device, as ignorant and dedicated as the Quorum, as tiny in the scheme, as vital to the working of the purpose.
    The approach to the traffic-lights was strewn with rubble and potholes, but the wheels effortlessly bypassed perils that would halt another vehicle. The Rolls braked at lights before turning into Cardinal Wolsey Street. Nobody crossed the road as the light was red. Nobody had crossed here for months. The amber light was smashed, so there was just a filament glow between red and green.
    Leech considered a communication from Zurich, confirming matters discussed at the meeting seven hours ago. A sum the size of the GNP of a mid-ranking South American country had just been placed at his disposal. The surplus money was almost an irritation; like most truly rich men, he had no interest whatsoever in cold figures. He gauged success in other measures, some comprehensible in an infants’ playground, some beyond explanation.
    The lights changed and the car made the turn-off. Entering Cardinal Wolsey Street was like passing from the snows of Tibet into the Valley of Shangri-La. The quality of light changed, the climate became temperate, a street-shaped shaft of sun sliced through cloud cover. Here, it only rained pleasantly between the hours of one and five in the morning, leaving the street clean and the plants watered every dawn.
    On one side of the road was a well-kept park, boundaried by shining railings, neatly trimmed green grass shading into blighted wasteland. Families walked on the civilised zone, throwing frisbees with dogs and children. A uniformed keeper spiked leaves with a stick. Near the wrought iron gates, a stall sold eel pies and pickled herrings. A small band clustered in a gazebo, playing a selection of Gilbert & Sullivan to ranks of deckchairs. The tune was taken up and whistled by everyone in earshot. ‘The Ghosts’ High Noon’.
    The residential side was a Victorian terrace of back-to-back, two-up/two-down dwellings, front steps polished to a shine, front gardens postcard perfect, front doors brightly painted, old-fashioned house numbers proudly displayed. A postman cheerfully delivered letters at dusk on a Bank Holiday. Sparkling-clean milk bottles waited by knife-sharp bootscrapers for tomorrow’s collection and delivery.
    Fast-food containers did not accumulate in the gutter, dogs did not deposit faeces on pavement or park, cars were not abandoned or vandalised, graffiti did not mar red brickwork, the corner shop had no iron shutter.
    As the car proceeded down Cardinal Wolsey Street, residents took note. The postman, leaning his bike against a wall, touched fingers to his peaked cap. A black woman wearing a Mother Hubbard, looked up from scrubbing a doorstep and grinned a welcome. A little boy in shorts stopped driving his hoop and gazed in adoration at the Rolls, almost falling on his cleanly scabbed knees to worship the demigod of the road.
    There was only one lock-up garage in the street, at the far end, opposite the pub. The Rolls cruised towards it. As the car passed, people turned to wave or bow to its opaque windows. They were deferential, but made a point of not being creepy about it. This was the world as it should be; everyone sure of their place and comfortable in their station.
    The garage door slid up into the roof, a maw-like dark opening. Suspension countered the bump as the car rolled up off the road across the pavement. If he had been holding a drink from the wet bar, the miniscus