by Tom Holt
‘It was just a thought,’ Gordon said. ‘Not that I believe in all this garbage you keep spouting, you understand.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s just that if by some disgustingly improbable chance there is a grain of truth buried under all the bullshit, now would be a very good time indeed to dig it out.’
Neville smirked. ‘I knew you’d believe me, sooner or later.’
‘Now just a—’
‘Unfortunately,’ Neville went on, ‘all I can see with my third eye right now is lots and lots more of these blasted corridors. ’
‘That’s all.’
‘Well, not quite all. I can also see several thousand lines of computer code, about a million phone messages, the repeat of this lunchtime’s Home and Away and the shipping forecast in seventeen languages.’
‘Ah.’
Neville nodded sadly. ‘In case you were fretting, by the way, Marilyn is thinking seriously about moving back in with Donald, and there’s force three winds expected off Rockall. Funny,’ he added, ‘I haven’t thought about the weather in ages. It used to be the only thing I ever did think about.’
‘Really.’ Gordon clicked his tongue. ‘Somehow,’ he said, ‘that doesn’t surprise me. Look, concentrate on that forecast. Can you tell where it’s coming from? Which direction?’
‘Not really. Why?’
‘Because we know where it’s broadcast from, idiot. We can use it to navigate by, like using the stars. At least we’ll know whether we’re going round in circles or not.’
Neville looked impressed. ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ he said. ‘All right, shut up for a moment and I’ll see what I can do.’
Neville concentrating was a fairly awesome sight, especially if you happened to like a little broad comedy with your awe. Hours spent in meetings with producers had left Gordon with an almost superhuman ability not to burst out laughing at inconvenient moments, but he had to call on all his hard-won skills to keep a straight face on this occasion. Neville’s face, by contrast, was about as straight as a country lane. At times his mental agony made him look like a constipated sword-swallower; at other times he beamed with an almost spiritual joy, eyes tightly shut, as if an archangel had come to him in a vision and given him Drew Barrymore’s phone number. Since Neville’s face was pretty damn funny at the best of times, the sight of Neville pulling funny faces was almost more than Gordon could bear, and would have been classed as an act of war in a Trappist monastery.
‘Got it,’ he said. ‘It’s pink. Problem is, there’s about six different pink ones, and it’s a bitch trying to tell them apart. This way.’
Gordon frowned. ‘What, you mean through the wall?’
‘You know,’ Neville sighed, ‘with a sense of humour like yours, I’m surprised you didn’t make your career in light entertainment rather than weather. There’s all sorts of things you could have done in light entertainment - changed fuses, held things for people, made the tea. No, I don’t mean through the wall, I mean in this general direction. I suggest that we go back down the corridor till we find a turning that goes that way, and follow it. All right?’
As Gordon had suspected all along, the building was playing games with them. When they’d been coming up the corridor, there had been scores of turnings off, leading in every conceivable direction. Now that they were heading back, the corridor ran straight as a Roman road without any turnings whatsoever. How the building managed to do this, Gordon could only speculate. The likeliest explanation was that it was a living, breathing creature. That was an intriguing concept in itself; maybe it had started off the size of a garden shed and grown, with the help of regular watering and tanker-loads of Baby Bio, into the best-of-show-winning monstrosity they were now trapped inside. If so, the potential of the discovery was staggering; so much so that Gordon promised himself that if ever he got out of this mess he’d pack in broadcasting, buy a strip of land somewhere and plant a crop of late-flowering maisonettes.
‘This one’ll do,’ Neville said, jerking him out of his dreams of avarice and pointing down a spur leading off the main corridor. ‘Keep your eyes open for one going sharp left.’
‘What? Oh, yes, will do.’ A thought occurred to him, and he slowed down. ‘Neville,’ he said, ‘I just want to make the point that I’m only letting you lead the way because nobody, not even you, could make a worse mess of it than I’ve been doing. It’s absolutely not because I really believe you’ve actually got a third eye. Is that clear?’
Neville sighed. ‘As crystal. Secretly, though, I know you believe. You just can’t face admitting it to yourself. Actually,’ he went on, ‘faith is an amazingly broad, flexible thing. For instance there’s a small religious community somewhere in North Wales that believes that when we die, we’ll be reunited on the other side with all the used paper hankies we’ve discarded over the years. If they can believe something like that, it’s not going to kill you to believe in something as mild and inoffensive as a dragon. Hell’s teeth, people have been believing in them for thousands of years; it’s only this last century or so we’ve come over all snotty and decided there couldn’t possibly be such thing . . . Hello.’ He stopped dead in his tracks. ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a fire door,’ Gordon said. ‘What about it?’
‘Yes, but what’s it doing here? We’ve been yomping down these damned corridors for hours, and this is the first fire door we’ve seen.’ He took a step back and looked the door over carefully. ‘It’s like the old riddle,’ he said. ‘When is a fire door not a fire door? When it’s a trap.’
Now that Neville mentioned it, Gordon did start to wonder about that. One fire door on its own is a bit like a single curtain hook or a lone whitebait. But, since Neville had made the observation and Neville was a nutcase who believed in dragons, he dismissed it as trivial. ‘Don’t be so damned melodramatic,’ he said. ‘This is a government building. You don’t have traps in government buildings. You don’t need traps in government buildings. Open the damned door and let’s get going.’
‘You open it.’
‘You’re the leader.’
‘Oh, I am, am I? Then I’m ordering you to open that door.’
‘Get stuffed.’
Neville frowned. ‘That’s a bad attitude,’ he said. ‘When Captain Kirk tells the little guy in the red pullover to open a door, he doesn’t get spoken to like that.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he added, ‘bad example. But I still think you should open the door.’
‘You think so? Fine.’ Gordon took a step backwards, too. ‘I’ll open the door. Just give me a moment to catch my breath.’
Neville grinned. ‘You’re scared,’ he said.
‘Of course I’m scared.’ Gordon replied irritably. ‘I’m so scared I can hardly keep my bowels clenched. I’m scared of men in black uniforms with guns, I’m scared of lunatics who want to start a new world war, I’m scared of nutters who want to sacrifice me to the Queen and the Duke of Kent, I’m scared of maniacs who kidnap me and tie me up and make me listen to talking goldfish and I’m scared of dying of starvation in an endless maze of corridors. About the only thing on earth I’m not scared of,’ he added, ‘is this door. I just need a second or two to focus, that’s all.’
Neville counted to five under his breath. ‘Ready yet?’
‘Nearly. If you want to go on ahead, I’ll catch you up.’
‘If it’s any help,’ Neville said, ‘I can see a damn’ great pink line going straight through this door. This is definitely the direction we want to be headed in.’
‘Hey. Just now, you were the one saying this door’s a trap.’
‘That was before you started acting so scared of it.’
‘I’m ready,’ Gordon said. ‘Here goes.’
He went back five or six paces, started running and burst his way through the door like a rugby forward. The door swung open. Nothing happened.
‘Told you,’ he said, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily. ‘Perfectly safe. Don’t know what all the fuss was about, really.’
> Neville walked through the door and came to a halt beside him. ‘Nor me,’ he said. ‘You know, we’d better get a grip on ourselves, or we’ll never get out of here. Now then, where’s that damned pink line got to?’
Gordon shook his head. ‘Does it really have to be pink?’ he asked. ‘The Yellow Brick Road was bad enough, but entrusting my life to the ability of a known basket case to follow an imaginary pink trail - dammit, it’s worse than finding your way round the Barbican.’
‘Almost that bad, I’ll admit,’ Neville replied. ‘This way.’
They’d gone no more than a couple of hundred yards when they came to another fire door. They stopped.
‘Properly speaking,’ Gordon said, ‘this should make me feel better.’
‘Yes,’ Neville agreed.
‘Your turn.’
‘It’s not a question of whose turn it is. This isn’t a children’s party, we’re trying to escape.’
‘All right. Now open the door.’
‘You open the frigging door.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because you’re braver than me.’
Put like that, there wasn’t much Gordon could say. Trying to look as if he did this sort of thing every day of the week (which he did; there were seven fire doors between the lift and his office) he gave it a fairly robust shove with the heel of his left hand and walked through. Nothing happened.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, breathing out through his nose. ‘It’s a fire door. Well, what are you standing about for?’
Neville had the grace to look slightly ashamed of himself. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Keep straight on down the corridor. We’ll need to take a left at some point, but there’s no hurry.’
The third, fourth and fifth fire doors turned out to be as prosaic as the first pair. They hardly noticed the sixth. They were so relaxed about the seventh that they almost walked straight into it, remembering just in time the tiresome formality of opening it first. When they reached the eighth, Neville muttered ‘Fire door’ under his breath and Gordon replied ‘Yup,’ as he shoved it open without slowing down or breaking step.
The ninth fire door was locked.
‘Bugger,’ Gordon observed.
‘We could try and break it down,’ Neville suggested optimistically. ‘You could take a really long run-up and shoulder-charge it. Big, hefty bloke like you—’
‘Has enough on his plate right now without a dislocated shoulder.’ Gordon kicked at the door in a half-hearted way; it scarcely budged. ‘I ask you,’ he said. ‘What sort of idiot locks a fire door? Damn’ thing shouldn’t even have a lock on it in the first place.’
Neville sighed. ‘You know what this means,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to go back.’
‘Oh no,’ Gordon whined. ‘All that way—’
‘You got a better idea?’
Gordon shrugged his shoulders. ‘No,’ he admitted.
‘Well, then. If I’m remembering this right, there was a left-hand branch about two hundred yards before we got to the first door. If we take that, we might be able to work our way along parallel to this. No guarantees there’s even a corridor there, but I don’t see as how we’ve got much choice.’
‘Suppose not,’ Gordon grunted. ‘All right, let’s get going.’
They turned round and trudged back up the corridor. When they encountered the eighth fire door, Gordon relieved his feelings to a certain limited extent by opening it with a vicious kick.
That was when all hell broke loose. Sirens wailed, lights flashed, bells rang, and the wall vents started to exude a foul yellow cloud, probably some kind of anaesthetic gas. Fortunately, all this was happening on the far side of the door.
‘Oh God,’ Neville shrieked. ‘What do we do?’
With a squeal and a clunk, the door in front of them swung back and locked itself. Through the glass panel, they could see that the corridor beyond was now full of the yellow gas; just as well, in fact, that the door was apparently airtight.
‘Let’s run away,’ Gordon suggested.
‘As far as the other locked fire door, you mean? Brilliant.’
‘All right, then, let’s stay here. I really don’t care any more.’ Gordon sat down on the ground and closed his eyes. ‘You stupid bloody twat, this is all your fault. If it wasn’t for you I’d be sitting in my nice friendly office right now, drinking coffee and reading the paper. In about ten minutes’ time I’d be sauntering down to the canteen to ask if anybody’d found out what happened to that aggravating little nerd Neville, and they’d say no, but who the fuck cares? And I’d say yes, good point, only if nobody else wants it I was thinking of nicking his waste-paper basket, it’s bigger than mine.’ He sighed. ‘Instead . . .’
‘Shut up,’ Neville interrupted. ‘I’m trying to think.’
Gordon shook his head. ‘After forty-odd years, why start now? It’s hardly the time and place for learning new skills.’
‘Shut up.’ Neville glowered at him, like a tortoise filled with hatred. ‘That’s better. Now, let’s try and figure this out. These doors seem like they’re rigged to go apeshit when someone goes through them that way, agreed?’
Gordon took a deep breath and made himself loosen up. ‘I suppose so, yes,’ he said.
‘Implying they don’t want people going that way.’
‘Possibly.’
‘And,’ Neville went on, ‘my guess is that wherever they don’t want us going is the way we don’t want to go.’
Gordon woke up. ‘Huh? I don’t get that.’
‘Use your brain.’ Neville was on his feet again, looking round. ‘Whatever it is they’re really doing in here that they want to keep secret, that’s what the self-locking doors and sirens and gas and so on are designed to protect. From intruders.’ He thumped the wall with his small fist. ‘People coming in. Agreed?’
Gordon frowned. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Which means,’ Neville continued, ‘that they’re figuring on people coming in going that way. The direction we’ve just come from.’
‘Ah.’ Gordon looked up at him.
‘And the opposite of coming in is going out,’ Neville went on excitedly, ‘which suggests to me that Out has to be in the opposite direction—’
‘The way we were going when we ran into the locked fire door.’ Gordon nodded. ‘That’s fine. Now we know that we were going in the right direction when we met the impassable obstacle. That gives me a warm glow of satisfaction in the pit of my stomach, but it’s not going to open that door. Face it, Neville, we’re buggered. We might just as well wait here till they come and round us up. That way, we’re less likely to walk into a lethal booby-trap or grab hold of a door handle with five million volts running through it.’
Neville rounded on him angrily. ‘That’s it, is it? You’re just going to sit there on your bum and give up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Suit yourself. I’m not.’
‘That is, of course, your right as an idiot.’ Gordon sighed.
‘I’ve had enough of this. I mean, let’s be sensible, shall we? All this—’ He made an all-encompassing gesture. ‘It’s just fooling about, isn’t it? This is real life, for Christ’s sake. In real life, crazy things like this don’t happen. In real life, innocent weathermen, even psychotic loons like you, don’t just get scooped up by faceless government agencies, shipped off to vast labyrinthine secret installations and squalidly killed by out-of-control megalomaniacs. This is England, dammit. You don’t get weird stuff like that in England, it’s not that kind of country. It’s too—’
‘Boring?’
‘Exactly. Too boring. What you’re imagining is what happens in hot desert countries inhabited by excitable, volatile Latin types or Americans. No.’ He shook his head. ‘Sooner or later, someone’s going to come and tell us it’s all been a terrible mistake, or that really it was one of those games shows with Noel Edmonds or Chris Tarrant, and we’ll all be jolly good sport
s about it and get given a free radio alarm clock. You’ll see.’
Neville thought about that for a moment. ‘In other words,’ he said, ‘you’re relying on the British traditions of justice, individual liberty, common sense and fair play?’
‘Yes.’
They looked at each other for two, maybe three seconds.
‘Like I was saying,’ Gordon said eventually. ‘Let’s start running.’
‘SHOT!’ the dragon yelled.
The scientist cringed and put her hands over her ears. Things weren’t going entirely to plan.
‘Did you see that?’ the dragon said. ‘Three-ball plant off the side cushion to pot the last red, perfect position on the yellow. Come on, Stevie, my son!’
The scientist raised a pained eyebrow. ‘How do you know that’s the yellow ball?’ she asked. ‘It’s a black-and-white TV.’
The dragon chuckled. ‘To you, maybe. But of course, you don’t have a third eye, you helpless, snivelling little - oh, for crying out loud, he missed it. How the hell could he miss that? There’s no way a blind man with a prosthetic arm could have missed that, in the dark, facing the other way. Pull your finger out, you moron!’ he bellowed at the screen. ‘Ye gods and little goldfish, he was one ball away from having the goddamn’ title sewn up!’
The scientist closed her eyes. She wasn’t to know. The odds against the dragon falling instantly in love with the game of snooker were astronomical, so bizarrely improbable as to defy calculation—’
As is usually the case with the statistical probabilities governing true love, she wryly reflected. Not that love, true, false or the more usual mixture of the two, was something she regarded herself as qualified to pontificate about. She’d always been too busy for that sort of thing, and apart from one rather nebulous and wholly impractical encounter in the late 1980s, the hit-and-run sniper with the pink wings and the armour-piercing arrows had let her pretty much alone. And that—
—Was entirely beside the point. Things were going yellow on her. Instead of a dragon bored past all endurance and begging piteously for mercy, she now had a happy, revitalised dragon who was rapidly turning into a snooker freak. Life, she reflected, can be so unfair.