by M T McGuire
Big Merv sucked the air through his teeth like a plumber about to deliver expensive news.
“Yeh but my bloke on the inside was a geezer called Bent Tony. He’s good, but everyone knows there’s no such thing as a hundred per cent right when your information’s coming from an informer—even the best stuff it up sometimes and I reckon he did. I reckon the box that bit of stuff came from were K’Barthan.”
“What if it wasn’t? What if the owner was a Grongle? What if they knew what it was? What if the cell has some sort of portal proofing?”
“’S a lot of what ifs,” said Big Merv, “only one way to find out.”
“Mmm, but what if the portal proofing proves fatal?”
“We ain’t gonna know much about it. An’ it won’t, they’ll want you alive, they’ll want that.” He gestured to the thimble.
The Pan heaved another sigh.
“Mmm. I suppose it’s better than letting him sit there. He’ll only get questioned and squeal, unless ...”
Big Merv looked at him quizzically.
“Unless we play safe and use your rubber face. You can do your impressive act and pretend he’s being transferred and that you’ve come to collect him.”
“’S not playing safe, ’s a lot more dangerous.”
“You think so?”
“Yeh.”
The Pan looked at the thimble in his hands and back up at Big Merv.
“Don’t bank on it.”
“Yeh? Well if I’m gonna have to schlepp out there at this time of night, you’re coming too, you lily-livered scrote. I’ll need a cover an’ I’ll need someone with me who knows their way around. No point in asking what cell the old git’s in if I ain’t got no clue where it is when they tell me.”
“You don’t have to know, you make them go and get him.”
“And if they won’t? I’ll need a bloke with me who knows their way round.”
“What makes you think I’ll have any more idea than you do, you great lummock?”
“Coz you practically lived there till I stepped in, that’s why, and we ’ave to get him back. I ain’t waving goodbye to one million Grongolian any more than you mate, ’specially if it’s all because some silly old tool-bit can’t cross a road. And you heard what the lady said. We’re skint and blacklisted, and chances are, it stays like that forever unless we spring ’im, and that’s a short forever an’ all.”
The Pan felt disappointed. Big Merv was right, they had no option, which was galling enough, but he was also correct in asserting that he couldn’t go alone. He shrugged.
“Yeh,” said The Big Thing, “I knew you’d see reason. Now let’s get in there and tell ’em we’re gonna go get the dippy old twonk.”
Chapter 56
A short time later, The Pan of Hamgee and Big Merv were standing, with an air of grudging resignation, in front of the Central Police Station. It was opposite the Security Headquarters, the ominous building where the secret police were based. The Pan had been in there, too, of course, but only once and he doubted he’d ever get out a second time. Big Merv wore his Grongolian major’s uniform complete with rubber face while The Pan was dressed as himself, complete with hat and cloak. It was against all of his better instincts but on Big Merv’s insistence. He also happened to be wearing a ball and chain – again, at Big Merv’s insistence – though to give The Big Thing his due it wasn’t locked and he’d carried it the whole way there because The Pan couldn’t.
The Grongolian sergeant at the desk greeted Big Merv with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. No surprise. It was nearly three o’clock in the morning. If he was on split shifts he’d be due to go home in a moment or two. Good. All the more chance he’d hand over the old man without any fuss, or more importantly, paperwork.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I’ve come to pick up a prisoner—an individual who was jaywalking shamelessly this afternoon.”
“Oh yeh, I know the one. Old bloke, well annoying,” said the desk sergeant, thawing a little. “You got a chitty?”
Smeck.
“No, I’m a major in the Grongolian Army and you’re a policeman, I don’t need a chitty,” snapped Big Merv, settling into his bolshy Grongolian persona.
“On the contrary, Major, sir,” said the desk sergeant, “that is exactly why you do need a chitty.”
“Can’t I just—” began Big Merv.
“No. Not without a chitty, sir; too much paperwork. It’s three am. I’m going off duty in a minute.”
“Well, I don’t have a chitty,” said Big Merv striding towards the desk. He grabbed the sergeant by the lapels and pulled him across the scratched wooden surface. “I’ll tell you what I do have though,” he growled, “I have a direct order from Lord Vernon, in person, to fetch that old man and deliver him over the square.” He jerked his head in the vague direction of the Security Headquarters opposite. “So we can do this the easy way or the hard way. I could go back over there and explain your stance. I’m sure our Lord Protector will be most understanding when I ask him to sign a chitty for you.” The Pan noted, with approval, how rather than outlining the consequences of angering Lord Vernon, Big Merv left the sentence unfinished and allowed the sergeant’s imagination do the explaining. “Or,” Big Merv carried on, “we can stuff the paperwork and you can go get him right now.”
Wow he was good! The desk sergeant’s green face paled visibly.
“Alright, alright! If you would like to put me down now, sir. I need to check which cell we put him in.” The Swamp Thing dropped him and he started tapping away at his computer. Almost immediately, he stopped and scratched his head. Something wasn’t right by the look of it.
“I can’t,” he said. Big Merv took a deep breath and hauled him back over the desk towards him, “Nooo, I really can’t,” said the desk sergeant, holding his hands up in the universal sign language for ‘calm down’. The Big Thing tensed and The Pan wondered if he was about to start shaking the guy.
“Why not?”
“One of your colleagues collected him an hour ago.”
“You certain?” asked Big Merv. With difficulty the desk sergeant nodded, “You’re not just telling me that so I leave you alone and you get to knock off when you’re s’posed to?” The desk sergeant shook his head.
“No, it must have been while I was on my break. Bert was covering for me—he’s out back—you can check with him if you don’t believe me,” he gabbled.
“’S OK. You can leave Bert where he is. I believe you,” said Big Merv, letting go of the sergeant’s lapels.
“It’s not like you boys to slip up,” said the sergeant as he smoothed down his tunic with shaking hands.
“No,” said Big Merv, “d’you know what they wanted him for?”
“It’s this security alert. Right pain in the arse if you ask me. He’s a repeat offender so they took him over there for questioning—you know, fingerprinting, usual routine stuff. Can’t see why we couldn’t do it here.”
The Big Thing glanced at The Pan.
“Me neither. I guess I’ll have to take this one on his own then.”
Oh brilliant.
“Night.” He gave a desultory salute, jerked The Pan’s chain and ushered him out into the street. For most of the walk over to the Security HQ they would be visible from the desk at the Central Police Station. Stopping and having a heated debate as to what to do next would arouse suspicion so The Pan and Big Merv began to walk slowly towards it.
Unlike the Central Police Station, the Security HQ was less of a headquarters, and more of a castle. It had thick walls, a drawbridge complete with portcullis and a moat of murky water, below the surface of which, so rumour went, there were spikes. Nobody knew if the spikes were really there or just made up to stop prisoners trying to leap from the battlements and swim to freedom. The Pan had only escaped by a fluke himself. An administrative error on the part of his captors which had classed him, correctly, as the petty thief he was, but incorrectly, as a non-blacklisted one �
�� and saved his life. They’d never even allocated him a cell, merely turned him around and marched him straight back over to the Central Police Station. He’d not found anyone else since, who had been inside the building as a prisoner and lived to come out again.
“What now?” asked Big Merv. “We’re not gonna go in there are we?”
“It depends. Do you want to be blacklisted forever?” asked The Pan.
“Do I look stupid to you?”
“Exactly. I don’t want to go in there either but I can’t see an alternative, can you?”
Big Merv shrugged.
“Nah. You got your whatchacallit?”
The Pan assumed he meant the thimble.
“Portal.”
“Yeh. Portal with you?”
“Yes. And you’re suggesting we use it to get in there are you? I don’t think so!” He paused, an idea was forming. Not a plan exactly but a viable starting point. “We may be able to use it once we get in, though.”
“Yeh?”
“Think about it. The place is impregnable. Even if a prisoner could slip their guards, where could they escape to? Nowhere. Why would the Grongles worry about stopping people moving about inside? No-one’s going to try because there’d be no point. Once we get past the squad on the gate you won’t have to ask anybody anything! All we need is to find a quiet corridor somewhere and then we step through into his cell, grab him and step back out again. As long as we come back to the same spot inside the building, so we can find our way back to the entrance, everything will be fine—we get to spring the old idiot without getting lost or asking too many revealing questions.”
“Gettin’ in ain’t that easy. I gotta be a pukka Grongle. All you’ve gotta do is stand there and look scared.”
The Pan had to agree that was his default setting, and decided it would do no harm to give Big Merv some encouragement. Anyway, if Big Merv thought getting in would be difficult, it was probably best to distract him from any thoughts about getting out.
“Trust me. You play Grongolian psychopath like a natural. You’re not mixed species are you?” No, no, The Pan hadn’t meant to say the second bit out loud. Arnold. Too late.
“That’s rich comin’ from you, you mongrel Hamgeean half-breed!” said Big Merv but he was laughing. “Blimey, you’ve a cheek. Go on like that an’ I’ll leave you in there.”
“You can’t, you’ll need me if we get out.”
“Not if I have the old man! I’ll have yer money an’ all.”
Oh dear.
“You didn’t mean that did you?” said The Pan, nervously.
“Course not, you big nonce. Learn to take it, mate, or don’t dish it out. And watch it, I’m gonna add realism.”
“You’re wha—” The Pan began as Big Merv yanked the chain attached to his ankle, almost pulling him over. Ah yes. The Security Headquarters was only a few hundred yards away now and relations between the two of them were supposed to be hostile.
Big Merv and The Pan stopped a short distance from the barrier in front of the drawbridge. Close up, the Security HQ was even more daunting.
“A good scrub up would improve it,” said Big Merv following The Pan’s gaze up the dingy walls. Before the Grongles it had been the centre of government and, as castles go, it might, once have been a reasonably welcoming building – in a forbidding, medieval kind of way – but not since somebody had elected to paint it black. Now, it was never going to look like anything other than the final resting place of hundreds of tortured political prisoners, which it was. The moat had that grey-yet-whitish tinge that indicates the water is polluted beyond repair and any fish found would soon be dead or were already floating lifeless on the surface. The tiny slit windows – all barred – and the building’s fearsome reputation didn’t help either. The only way in or out was across the drawbridge, which was bristling with exactly the wrong type of Grongolian guards; or, The Pan supposed, you could take a leap off the top of the battlements, though, judging by the look of the moat, it would most likely be fatal. Even if there weren’t the fabled spikes in the bottom, there was probably cholera.
“That reminds me. How are we gonna get out?” asked Big Merv, bringing The Pan sharply back from his reverie.
“Mmm?”
“You heard.”
“Same way we got in,” Big Merv gave him a cynical look, “only more difficult. Well, for you. All the old man and I have to do is look relieved and ecstatic.”
“Ha blummin’ ha.”
They approached the gate and waited. An officious guard stepped smartly out of the sentry post and saluted Big Merv; he was flanked by two others who pointed semi-automatic laser cannon at them. Big Merv saluted casually back.
“You!” He pointed to one of the accompanying guards before the sentry could say anything. “What’s the password?”
“Apple Six,” said the guard smartly.
How did he do that? The Pan wondered, the sheer brass neck of it all was amazing. And people always did what Big Merv said; they never argued or tried to thump him or did any of the things that would routinely have happened to him if he’d tried the same thing. Maybe it stemmed from an inexhaustible supply of self-belief. Whatever it was, The Pan was becoming gladder and gladder that The Big Thing was on his side. It was an unusual sensation after such a long time of feeling the exact reverse.
“Good!” said Big Merv. “Pleased to see you are on your toes. I have a prisoner to deliver.”
The sentry looked The Pan up and down.
“Him?” he asked doubtfully. He was wearing a helmet and a flak jacket, The Pan noticed. They all were.
“Yes, him,” said Big Merv, a hint of petulance creeping into his voice.
“He doesn’t look very high security to me, sir,” said the sentry doubtfully.
“Well I’ve been told he is. So are you going to let us in or do I have to put you on a charge for insubordination?” snapped Big Merv.
“Sorry, sir,” said the sentry, saluting again. The armed flankers lowered their weapons with a snap.
“Thank you,” they raised the barrier, “at ease,” said Big Merv, casually, as they passed.
As he made his way to the next checkpoint The Pan wondered why it’s so often the dumb and officious people who get put on sentry duty. They were so much easier to fool. Then again, he remembered Big Merv’s doormen at his nightclub – people with no imagination are difficult to reason with. Once over the drawbridge they breezed through the other checkpoints using the password Big Merv had so generously been given at the first, finally arriving at a large central quadrangle. The scene which met their eyes was entirely unexpected.
Chapter 57
No black walls or dingy concrete courtyard, but a lawn with colourful flower borders glowing in the dawn light. Even at this ungodly hour the Grongles were up and about in pristine uniforms, marching here and there with a sense of purpose, and in many cases, a clipboard. It was the garrison headquarters of the Grongolian armed forces in K’Barth but looked more like the quadrangles of the University of Hamgee. It had always been a special treat to be allowed to visit his father at the Department of Random Mathematics, even though The Pan usually got into trouble and ruined it. What with all those provoking signs sternly warning him not to, he could never resist the urge to walk on the grass, to his father’s initial delight – he’d said it showed independent thought in a youngster – and later embarrassment.
“Place is overstaffed,” said Big Merv, quietly.
“How can you tell?”
“Nobody looks that busy or purposeful unless they’re pretending, and the clipboards give ’em away. Take a shufty next time you’ve a chance, half’s got nothing on them.” A Grongolian private scuttled past with a sheet of paper and a serious expression.
“See?” The sheet of paper he’d been carrying was blank.
“It might be written in invisible ink,” said The Pan.
“Don’t make me laugh.”
They crossed the courtyard, being caref
ul to follow the path and not to walk on the grass or the flowerbeds.
“Where next?” asked Big Merv.
“Search me. The furthest I’ve been was the special area for admissions, and by the looks of it, we’ve missed a turn. I’ve never seen this bit before.” He took the thimble from his pocket. “Shall we find an out-of-the-way corner and get on with this?”
They found a door which led into a service corridor which, in turn, led to an airing cupboard full of table linen.
“This’ll do,” said The Pan. He thought about the old man and put the open end of the thimble to his eye. Yep, there he was in a similar cell with a similar cellmate, but both were different to where he’d been before. Good, he was probably somewhere downstairs then. He took off the shackle round his ankle and Big Merv hid it on the top shelf, where hopefully it wouldn’t be found, before taking a good look round the airing cupboard. It would be a pity if he imagined the wrong place when they made their way back. “Hold my hand.” Big Merv gave him a sideways look but complied as, with a flourish, The Pan held up the thimble and put his thumb in.
Everything happened as it should; there was a loud sucking sound, a pop and the pair of them rolled onto the floor of the old man’s cell and came to rest in an unruly pile against one wall.
“Sorry, I think I’ll have to practise my landing technique,” said The Pan as they disentangled themselves from each other and stood up.
“Not ’alf,” said Big Merv as he brushed the rank straw off his uniform. “I’m s’posed to look pukka tidy you great spanner! How am I gonna do that covered in this crud?”
“I’ve every faith you’ll find a way,” said The Pan.
The old man stood up and was waiting with an expectant expression while they finished bickering.
“Well, well, well, my boy. I wondered when you’d turn up.”
When. Not if. A touching display of faith in humanity. Flattering, if misguided.
“Had you known how to cross a road we wouldn’t have needed to,” said The Pan acidly.
“Ah but a little rebellion is an essential tonic to the soul,” said the old boy with a mischievous smile, “not to mention society. I don’t need to be told when it’s safe to cross a road, when the simple answer is patently, when it is clear of traffic.”