by Holt, Tom
Right. He’d see about that. If Ricky was the traitor, did that mean he still had the Door? Unlikely; Judy’d have taken possession of it for herself. No matter; he had the rest of Uncle Ernie’s magic set, objects so powerful that they’d made Mr Tanner’s mum turn pale. True, what Paul really wanted right now was some kind of very powerful but simple and easy-to-use weapon, and none of Ernie’s bits and bobs really seemed to fit that description – well, maybe the Sea Scout badge, but he’d contrived to lose that right at the start. But he had the rest of the stuff; screwdriver, watch, chalks ( memo to self: must burn chalks. But how?). As far as weapons went, he could pick up a tyre lever or a length of lead pipe along the way. Simplicity was the way to go where the fundamentals were concerned. He was, God help him, a hero, whether he liked it or not; he’d been born and trained to it, and in the opinion of JWW he’d passed his indentures and qualified. Fine. If they wanted a hero, they’d just got one, and the best possible sort: a thoroughly bad-tempered, pissed-off, grudge-laden hero. Their look-out.
Paul patted the jacket pocket containing the watch, the chalks and the screwdriver, ate a slightly dilapidated Polo mint for luck, and reached for the door handle. On the point of leaving the room he stopped, dithered, then pulled down the photo album he’d just been looking at. It fell open at the picture of the fat kid with the ice cream. He looked at it again, both with and without the wyvern stone. There had been something about it, but he couldn’t quite figure out what.
It was a pretty bad picture – a bit dark, slightly blurred, the kid looked fatally constipated, with a strained expression and bulging eyes turned red by the glare of the flash; and the photographer, an adherent of the Boadicea school of composition, had cut him off at the ankles. Paul wondered who the brat was, and at once the wyvern stone provided him with handy subtitles: Derek Carpenter, age ten, Richmond Park. He ransacked his memories of endless dreary teatimes-with-visitors and dredged up an Uncle Derek who wasn’t really an uncle at all, just some species of cousin. He considered the data and concluded that whatever the big deal was, he hadn’t figured it out yet. The hell with it; he threw the album back on the shelf and went to war.
All very well saying that. But, as Paul emerged into the corridor, he was painfully aware that he had no idea what to do next. His only fragment of a plan of campaign was to find the Fey dormitory and wake up the dreamers; but that was like putting Bring about world peace on the top of his Things-to-do list fixed by a small magnet to the fridge door – fine in principle but a tad vague as far as the practical aspects were concerned.
All right: step one, burn the chalks. Even that was something of an ask, slap bang in the middle of the City of London, not exactly known for its plethora of unguarded open fires. Finally, with great reluctance, he decided that if anybody might know where a fire was, it’d be Mr Tanner’s mum. He set his course for reception.
‘Fire,’ Mr Tanner’s mum repeated, frowning. ‘What d’you want a fire for?’
‘To burn something,’ Paul replied.
‘No kidding.’ Mr Tanner’s mum narrowed her eyes. ‘Well, there’s a couple of whatsits, Bunsen burners in the lab. They might do the trick, depending on what you want to torch.’
Paul looked at her. ‘There’s a lab in the building?’
‘They call it that,’ replied Mr Tanner’s mum. ‘But really it’s just a converted bathroom, up on the third floor. It’s where Theo van Spee and a few of the others go to play about with chemicals when they’re brewing the love philtre and stuff like that. They used to have one of those really big propane furnaces,’ she remembered, ‘so they could melt down Rings of Power without having to leave the office, but they had to throw it out. Fire regulations, or something.’
‘The Bunsen burners sound like they’ll do just fine,’ Paul told her. ‘Where on the third floor did you say it was?’
He found it eventually. It looked more like a kitchen than a laboratory: worktop along two walls, a third lined with what looked like MFI’s most basic range of pine-effect melamine cupboards, a fridge and a stainless steel sink. But there was no cooker, and two Bunsens sat in the corner next to the sink, partly hidden behind a stack of perspex dishes with a dog-eared box of Swan Vestas perched on top. There was also a bolt on the inside of the door, which pleased him; privacy, he felt, was likely of the essence.
In the event, the chalks burned quite easily once Paul had fiddled with the collars to get the Bunsens up to maximum heat. He had a feeling that real chalk didn’t flare up like that, suggesting that Uncle Ernie had modified them somehow to serve a more demanding role than writing on blackboards or keeping score in darts tournaments. Once the last one had resolved itself into smoke and residue, however, he was back where he’d been just a short while ago: planless, clueless and alone. For want of anything better to do, he perched on a lab stool and turned the empty chalk packet over in his hands. Go find Countess Judy’s source. Easy-peasy.
Well, it had to be somewhere, didn’t it? Unfortunately, the world is made up of billions of contiguous somewheres, and any single one of them could be anywhere at all. Indeed, given the tricky nature of the Fey, it could just as easily be in Montana or Burkina Faso as in England, which would make getting there as much of a challenge as finding it. Unless, of course, he had a Portable Door, or something very similar.
Yeah, right, Paul told himself. In your dreams.
In my —
When he was a kid, there used to be a poster, with a picture of some suntanned female sitting on a golden beach, and a caption: In your dreams, you’ve been to Tunisia. Weird thing to remember after all these years, but the point was a valid one. In a dream, you can go anywhere. Unfortunately, as a mode of transport, dreams share one regrettable common feature with Ryanair and South-West Trains: you have no control over where you’re likely to end up, or what state you’ll be in when you get there. Hitherto, Paul had always assumed that was because dreams are just mental indigestion, stray thoughts from the waking day glopping up into the unconscious mind like gas in a swamp. Now, of course, he knew better. If he had a dream about Blackpool, it was because some freeloading Fey wanted to go there. Trying to use dreams to get where he wanted to go was about as likely to work as disguising yourself as an airliner and sitting on a runway, hoping someone would come along and fly you to your chosen destination.
Unless—
Well, it was worth a try, given that he had no alternative whatsoever; and if it went wrong, the worst that could happen – no, bad line of argument, the worst that could happen would be dying in his sleep, harvested by Countess Judy and her terrifying associates. Better to dwell on the no-alternative-whatsoever aspect, with a healthy wodge of semi-hysterical prayer to fall back on as a contingency plan.
Paul sat down in the corner of the room, head resting against a cupboard door, and tried to picture her as she’d been, that time he’d seen her. It was hard: her face slipped through the meshes of his mind like whitebait in a cod-fishing net, morphing into other faces, more immediate but less helpful. Finally, once he’d got what he reckoned was the best fix he was likely to get, he opened the cupboard door next to him and looked inside for something suitable. In the end he had to settle for a big, chunky, old-fashioned brass microscope: rather heavier than he’d have liked, but the only artefact he’d come across that looked capable of doing the job. He took a sheet of plain white copier paper from a pile by the sink and laid it on the worktop, with one edge projecting slightly. Then he put the microscope on the paper, and sat down on the floor directly underneath.
Here goes nothing, Paul said to himself, and tugged the paper as hard as he could.
The paper slid out, jarring the microscope over; it toppled and dropped off the worktop directly onto Paul’s head. Ouch, he remembered thinking just for a split second; and then he was sprawled on the floor, bleeding freely from a long but superficial scalp wound, fast asleep.
Once he knew he was asleep, he looked round frantically. Hello? he called wordlessly. Are
you there?
A very long and distressing pause; and then, quite suddenly, there she was. As before, pale golden light glowed all around her, fuzzy and hazy as the fur on furry pink slippers. Where her short, flaxen hair ended and the pale glow began was hard to say, but the way it reflected off her golden skin was really quite— Paul pulled himself together. No time for any of that stuff now.
‘You’re strange,’ said the Girl of His Dreams. ‘Did you summon me here to watch you knock yourself out with obsolescent scientific equipment?’
‘You’re her, aren’t you? My dream girl.’
‘You say the sweetest things.’
‘Yes, but you’re her, aren’t you? The one that came persecuting – came to talk to me a week or so back. You told me to buck my ideas up and get involved and stuff.’
She nodded. ‘You were wearing red paisley pyjamas,’ she said, with a very faint grin.
‘You’re her,’ Paul said, with a sigh of relief. ‘Right, please listen carefully, because we need to get this right—’
‘We? Am I part of this? What are we doing, then? Will it be like that time when you had three glasses of red wine on an empty stomach, and you had this dream where we were on this tigerskin rug on the beach at Mustique—’
‘No,’ Paul said with a faint quaver in his voice (and he was thinking: Some dreams I wish I could remember when I wake up ). ‘Look, you’re a Fey, right? A good Fey.’
She frowned. ‘Depends on what you mean by good. If you mean it like in the phrase a good Catholic, then no, probably not.’
Paul shook his head; just as well it was only a dream, since his real head would’ve hurt like hell. ‘There’re two sides in this civil war thing, yes? Good Fey and Bad—’
‘Ah.’ She smiled. ‘You mean good as a synonym for on the losing side. Yes,’ she added before he could interrupt. ‘I’m a Fey and I’m on our side. What of it?’
Paul breathed out. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘could you possibly give me a lift to somewhere?’
She frowned. ‘Depends. Where?’
‘Don’t know.’ Not the best answer. ‘What I meant to say was, there’s somewhere I need to go, but I don’t know how to find it or how to get there. I’m not even sure it’s possible to get in there if you’re awake. Can you help me?’
Her frown turned itself inside out and became a smile. ‘You’re out of your tiny mind, you know that? Do you seriously want to go back to Countess Judy’s castle?’
‘Of course I don’t want to,’ Paul growled. ‘But I think it may be the only option. I need to find out where she stores her Source – you know, the poor bastard who’s dreaming her.’
‘Find him, right. Then what?’
‘Then,’ Paul muttered, ‘wake him up.’
The Girl of His Dreams let out a low whistle. ‘What’s come over you all of a sudden?’ she asked curiously. ‘All the time I’ve known you, you’ve been this timid little wimp. Now you’re talking about storming the enemy stronghold and killing the queen. Have you been on one of those self-assertiveness weekends or something?’
Paul shook his head. ‘It’s her or me,’ he said. ‘She’s going to kill me if I don’t get her first. Look, if I get through this ghastly mess in one piece, I promise I’ll go back to being a spineless piece of cheese, if that’s what you want—’
‘No, not at all. Besides, it probably didn’t occur to you, but if you get the snuff, I die too. Helping you would probably be a good move for me at this point.’
‘Fine,’ Paul said, ‘great. Can you do it? Get me there, I mean?’
‘Oh, I can get you there,’ she replied. ‘That’s easy. Keeping you alive for more than two seconds once we’ve got there is going to be the challenging part, particularly now you’re so brave and resolute and all. There’re no half measures with you, are there? Straight from not saying boo to geese to strangling lions with your bare hands.’
Paul looked her steadily in the eye. ‘Please,’ he said.
‘Oh, all right. Just this once – it’s entirely against my better judgement and it’ll all end in tears, but why the hell not?’ She raised her right arm in a graceful, dramatic sweep, then paused. ‘Just one thing,’ she said. ‘You do realise, don’t you, that when we’re over there, your physical body’ll still be here?’
Paul shrugged. ‘I hadn’t, actually,’ he said. ‘Will that make much of a difference?’
‘Think about it,’ she replied, not unkindly. ‘For a start, supposing you find this Source. How are you planning on waking him up?’
‘Oh,’ Paul said.
‘That’s all? Oh?’
‘All right: oh dear, that’s not going to work, then, sorry to have bothered you. Is that any better?’
‘There’s no need to get all snotty with me,’ she said. ‘I’m not the one who never thinks things through. What you need,’ she went on, ever so slightly patronising, ‘is a dream telescope.’
‘A what?’ Paul was about to ask; but he was interrupted by a sharp blow to his groin. He yelled.
‘Baby,’ said the Girl of His Dreams mockingly. ‘Well go on, look at it.’
The cause of his profound discomfort proved to be a long brass tube with bits of glass in each end. ‘For looking at the stars,’ she explained. ‘When we get there, look for the Great Bear, third from the right. It usually works.’
Paul knew that he had that bewildered-half-to-death expression on his face, but he couldn’t help it. ‘Excuse me?’ he said.
‘Idiot,’ she said. ‘When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true, right? To a certain extent, anyway. And please be careful with that thing; it’s old and fragile, and I had to sign for it when I checked it out of the stores. I take it you know how to find the Great Bear?’
‘I think so.’
‘He thinks so. Fine, just crane your neck back as far as it’ll go and search for something that looks like L. S. Lowry’s idea of a rotary cultivator.’
‘Third from the right?’
‘And straight on till morning. Sorry, forget I said that, it’ll only confuse the issue. Ready?’
‘I’ve had a better idea,’ Paul said, as she raised her arm again. ‘How’d it be if you drew me a map of how to get there, and I just—’
The light that surrounded her flared out and smothered him. At the same moment, he fell upwards, like a suddenly weightless Australian. The world exploded, then closed around his head like a plastic bag.
‘—Got the bus or something.’ Paul wobbled, waved his arms for balance, steadied himself. He was in total darkness, apparently alone. The telescope was still in his left hand.
Crane your neck back, she’d said, as far as it’ll go. He did that, then slowly lifted the telescope to his eye. Through it, he could see a sprinkling of white dots, like dandruff on God’s collar. To begin with they were just a random scattering but he concentrated until the shape of the Great Bear emerged from the jumble. He counted, three from the right. ‘Wish,’ he said, ‘wish wish wish ...’
Something hit Paul so hard in the small of the back that he fell over onto his knees. It was only when the lights abruptly snapped on that he realised it was his own body, catching him up and embracing him like a large, friendly dog.
The disturbing thing was, he recognised the place. He’d been there before, in dreams. Mostly it looked like a hospital ward, a huge one with lines of beds stretching away out of sight in all directions, each bed with a chart and a name tag clipped to the end rail, and someone asleep between the cold, crisp white sheets. But it put him in mind of other things, too: a morgue, a battery-chicken farm, and also the stockroom at the back of a shoe shop. There was something industrial about the sparse cleanliness, the silence, the order. Somebody used this place to store valuable stock-in-trade, and wasn’t making any false economies when it came to upkeep.
At least he hadn’t triggered any alarms, or any that he could hear; but what would the Fey need with electronics, anyhow? It was inevitable that they were monitoring Paul, and su
rely they’d be here any minute to whisk him off to the dungeons of Grendel’s Aunt – the real ones this time, not the prettified imitation he’d found himself in before. Maybe if he was really lucky he might have thirty seconds in which to identify and find Judy di Castel’Bianco’s dreamer and wake him up. He glanced up and down the rows. He’d never been much good at quantity surveying; his mental counter only went up to six, and anything over that was just lots. At a guess, though, there were somewhere between thirty thousand and a million billion of the poor bastards. Even if they had the names of the parasites they were playing host to printed neatly on their clipboards, thirty seconds wasn’t really long enough, was it?
Idiot.
Yes, well. While he was here, he might as well do something. If he could wake just one of them up, that’d be a Fey colonist switched off at the mains for ever. Paul doubted whether it’d do the woken Source any good, but you can’t have every damn thing in this imperfect world.