The Way to Babylon (Different Kingdoms)
Also by Paul Kearney
D
IFFERENT
K
INGDOMS
A Different Kingdom
The Way to Babylon
Riding the Unicorn
(coming soon)
T
HE
M
ONARCHIES OF
G
OD
Hawkwood's Voyage
The Heretic Kings
The Iron Wars
The Second Empire
Ships From The West
T
HE
M
ONARCHIES OF
G
OD
O
MNIBUS
E
DITIONS
The Monarchies of God, Volume 1:
Hawkwood and the Kings
The Monarchies of God, Volume 2:
Century of the Soldier
T
HE
M
ACHT
The Ten Thousand
Corvus
Kings of Morning
T
HE
S
EA
B
EGGARS
The Mark of Ran
This Forsaken Earth
This edition published 2014 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
First published in the United Kingdom
in 1992 by Gollancz
ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-672-5
ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-673-2
Copyright © 1992, 2014 Paul Kearney
Cover art by Pye Parr
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
For my father
Acknowledgements to:
John Wilkinson for a lot of hard work
and encouragement, Martin and Suzie
for many excellent dinners and my family
for their unfailing support.
ONE
H
E FOUND IT
hard to believe, looking back; hard to believe in that older, sunnier time when his mind and his body were whole. Before the world came crashing down on him. In a single screaming instant, he had seen all he loved taken away from him. And now he was alone.
Yes, someone up there really has a bastard sense of humour. Well, I hope you’re amused at my antics—at the smashed bones and the red pain and the months of putting the bits together. And the anxious friends. Christ; that’s the most hilarious part—the agonies they had, debating when to tell me she was dead. Crushed. Because of a rope I had stretched one too many times. It was always too expensive to replace. Now that must be funny.
So die laughing.
The sun was warm on his face. He opened his eyes and saw the familiar stretch of river and woods, separated from him by a wide lawn. The figures in dressing gowns seemed totally out of place. And the white-clad nurses. It was a world away from the heather and the eagles. And the mountains.
You don’t get much more civilised than Berkshire.
His fingers rubbed the armrest of his wheelchair absently. They were so bloody old here. Old men and old women who were on their way to a deck chair in Bournemouth but who needed an MOT first. So they wouldn’t keel over and spill their ice cream. A gentle retirement.
That’s what I need. A quiet slide into oblivion with slippers and a golden labrador, and perhaps a walk on Sundays. He almost laughed, but the twitch in his jaw sent lights splashing through his skull. He cursed fervently and silently instead, touching with a ginger hand the metal rods implanted in his face like some hideously inept form of acupuncture. Man in the Iron Mask, that’s me.
The pain sank, and there was only the sun on his face.
I’m lucky, of course. Should be dead, by rights, after falling two hundred feet. She was. Very dead, by all accounts. Real-life ugly dead. It shouldn’t happen to people in that way. They ought to have time for a dying wish and the rest. A last kiss—
Oh, hell; here we go again. You stupid bastard.
He gouged his eyes until they were dry, until his head ached again.
Well, I’d rather have the bloody headache anyway. Life’s a bitch.
And a thousand years away a laughing, silver voice rejoined: ‘And then you marry one!’ .
His right hand worked at the control knob, and with a jerk and a whine he was off down the patio, zigzagging to avoid chairbound patients.
Hold on to your bedpans, you retired bankers!
Then a white body right in front of him; a tray of bottles and pills that erupted into the air; a collision and a woman’s startled shout.
Oh, shit. He sped away, deaf as well as dumb, with pills caught in the folds of his blanket and syrupy medicine down his neck.
‘Mr Riven, come back here! What do you think you are doing?’
I must get this thing souped up. It’s still not as good as a pair of pins.
The engine sank to a halt and he waited patiently as a burly nurse stalked towards him.
Jesus. With legs like those, she could be an oil rig.
‘Mr Riven, I have told you before about speeding with your chair. Don’t you ever listen? There are other patients in this centre, Mr Riven, and most of them are old and frail. Don’t you care about the accident you could have been responsible for if you had hit one of them instead of me?’
Talk to me about accidents then, you fat cow. Talk to me about responsibility.
‘I’ll push you out on to the lawn. There you can’t get up to any mischief. Be good and sit in the sun while it lasts. You ought to be grateful for the chance to get out of doors, Mr Riven. I understand you are an outdoor sort of person...’