Dead Lies Dreaming

by Charles Stross

  “Is that a new band?” Rebecca’s brow wrinkled for a moment before she elbowed Wendy in the ribs: “Just kidding.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, you got a point.”

  “Look. Just give me your phone. Uh, and my hands?” Rebecca released her, and handed over a cheap Android. Probably a burner, a little corner of Wendy’s mind that wasn’t quite as irrevocably compromised as the rest noted. She dialed her own phone, waited for it to ring, then disconnected: “Look in your call log, that’s my number.”

  “Uh, okay—”

  “Listen.” She stared into Rebecca’s eyes, unsure whether she was talking to Rebecca, a woman she really fancied, or the mad-eyed Deliverator storming around the M25 motorway at more than two miles a minute in a fiery Porsche: “When you go home to wherever the hell your mates live, tell them I need to see them, right? Their lives are in danger. I’m not going to arrest them. I might try to convince them to come in for a job interview—I’ll get a kickback if they hire you—but that’s all. You know how to call me, I’ve shown you where I live, now it’s your turn.” She squeezed Rebecca’s hand as she gave her back her phone. “Call me.”

  * * *

  Imp was just about frantic with worry when Del walked in the door.

  “Where’ve you been?” he demanded, casting around behind her. “Why weren’t you answering your phone?”

  “Was busy.” Del dismissed his concerns like lint flicked from her sleeve. “Went for a drive.”

  “Are you nuts?” Imp closed the door and bolted it behind her, staring. “You went back to the Porsche? Are you trying to get caught?”

  “Chillax, I’m down with Wendy.”

  “Wendy?”

  “The rentacop from the bank.” Imp began to choke. Del held it for two seconds, then broke into a huge grin. “Gotcha! We ate ice cream, then went for a drive.” She kissed her fingertips with scarcely feigned bliss. “Wendy just wanted to see what I could do, so I showed her. Then we went back to her place and made out.” She peered at Imp, concerned. “Can you breathe, man? One blink for no, two for yes?”

  Imp finally took a shuddering gasp. “Are you insane?”

  “Nah.” Del strolled past him and looked around, then made a beeline for the kitchen. “Any beer?”

  Imp stalked after her, more anxious than angry. “Becca, I am over you fucking with me—”

  “Wendy says some corporation paid her employers to take her off our case. Guess that’d be your sister?” After a second, Imp nodded reluctantly. “She’s not a cop, she says we’re cool, she wants to hang out with me, I’m going to say no? I didn’t lead her back to us, bro, I’m not an idiot.” She reached inside the fridge for a can of Special Brew. “So what’s new?”

  Imp’s shoulders sagged, an armature of tension that had been holding them tense gradually unwinding. “Give me one of those.” He wriggled his fingers until Del stuck a chilly can in his hand. “Sláinte.” He shuffled back towards the games room. “We were waiting for you to come home before we had a council of war to discuss the options, but Doc and GeeBee are—” he shrugged elaborately—“indisposed. Cheers.”

  He raised his can ironically and chugged a mouthful, then grimaced. “Awful, simply dreadful. The only thing worse than drinking this horse piss is not drinking it.”

  Del drank. “Back atcha. What do you mean they’re indisposed?” Imp pointed at the ceiling in silence. “Oh. Did they say when they’d be back?”

  “Not. A. Clue.” Imp collapsed onto the sofa. “But Doc said something about ram-raiding the wardrobe department for props, so I don’t think they’ll be too long.” He fixed Del with a steely stare. “Spill it. Who’s Wendy really, and what’s her angle?”

  “She’s a thief-taker. Turns out Hamleys are sore losers, and so are Pennine Bank. She was there to interview the manager when you and Doc walked in, but she’s off the case now. Your sister offered more to HiveCo to stop investigating than the insurers were paying. And like I said, she isn’t a cop. She doesn’t enforce the law.”

  “Fucksake.” Imp face-palmed. “You know all this because she told you while you were making out together? I’m talking hot lesbian cop-on-getaway-driver make-out sex here, am I right? Were handcuffs involved?”

  “Essentially yes except for the handcuffs. Well, maybe.” Del froze, then punched the sofa right beside his head. “And fucking stop pushing, you do not get the details. We did not end up in bed—”

  “—Not this time—”

  “—Fuck you, Imp, just fuck off already, okay?”

  He raised his hands, then cackled wickedly: “Becca’s got a girlfriend! Becca’s got a girlfriend!—” He stopped abruptly, shocked sober as it actually sank in. “She was waiting for you.”

  “Yeah, I did say that, didn’t I? She wants to talk to us.”

  “Jesus, Del.” Imp grimaced, face contorting in almost physical pain.

  “She says her boss is hiring people like us. Some kind of pilot project at HiveCo.”

  “Are you insane?” Imp glared at her. “They’ll make you wear a suit and work office hours and piss in a jar—are you trying to grow up or something? One taste of cop quim and you’re eager to go down on the Man—”

  Del exploded: “Fuck you, Imp, just fucking fuck you!” He expected her to storm out at that point, but she surprised him yet again—this was turning out to be a day for unpleasant surprises from people he thought he knew—and dropped to the sofa instead. “Fuck you,” she groused, a final aftershock from the temblor shaking down the walls, “it’s not like that!”

  “Then tell me,” he said with studied insouciance, “what it’s like, what it’s really, really like.”

  “I’m out of the caper party,” she told him. “Shit got too real. We nearly got caught yesterday. Not just Wendy, the asswipes with guns you told me about? And before that, the toy shop. They’re paying thief-takers now, turns the heat up under us, know what I mean? Wendy’s boss is off our case but—”

  “A quarter of a million is what’s up.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Whaa—”

  “That’s what I went to see sis about. I was going to turn her down, y’know? Because you’re right, it’s getting dangerous. Don’t wanna play double or quits when the stake is a stainless steel one stuck through the base of my skull. But that was before she pulled HiveCo off our ass. We’ve got top cover on this, Del, no more thief-takers, no more goons with guns, and a whole lot more money. And she figured out what we need to do, it’s just a treasure map—”

  The next thing he knew, Del was on top of him with a death grip on his collar, snarling mouth inches away from his nose: “What aren’t you fucking telling me, you bastard?”

  “The map—” Imp was choking—“the map starts—” Del relaxed her choke hold slightly—“upstairs. ’S’not a street map, it’s a set of directions. Through the magic door, then down an’ out onto the street. The book, the book it leads to is a book of magic spells. Don’t have to worry about the men in black any more, but the book—”

  She let him go and sat down heavily. “Is that all it is to you?” she asked plaintively. “A means to a quarter of a million quid so you can make your movie? Is that all we are to you?”

  “No, no—” He shook his head—“no!”

  “Get on with you! I shouldn’t have fucking come back here, you arsewipe—”

  Imp took a deep breath: “Let me tell you about my family,” he said.

  * * *

  “What is this?” Game Boy complained, as Doc handed him another dress from the back of the closet.

  “Mad props resource.” Doc rummaged. “Don’t think any of these’d fit Becca, though.”

  Game Boy looked at the dress critically. Blue with polka dots, 1950s-style full skirt, but the waist—“You’re right, it’s tiny.” The Deliverator had muscles as well as attitude, and was over a hundred and eighty centimeters tall. The dress was the sort of thing his parents would have put him in when he was twelve: they’d have added bows and pigtails and M
ary Janes and told him he was adorable. He shuddered, then carried it out of the bedroom and up the corridor towards the growing heap in the drawing room on the way to the stairs. When he came back he asked, “Why are we even bothering? Imp wants cyberpunk.”

  “Imp wants cyberpunk now but just you wait for the next draft of the script,” Doc muttered, handing over a cocktail dress. “I think we’re done here.” They’d already emptied the drawers of unmentionables from the room further down the hall.

  “What’s the point if none of it fits—”

  Doc turned. “One, inspiration. Imp runs on ideas. Two, you don’t know, I don’t know, who Imp’s going to hire to act in it, right? Who knows, maybe he’s got a petite leading lady on speed dial with his silver tongue—” Game Boy winced and Doc pretended not to see it—“worst case, we can cart it down to a secondhand shop and sell it as vintage. C’mon now, let’s drop this lot on the landing, then go check out the Red Route, I’ve got a good feeling about it.”

  The Red Route, so named because of the red ochre walls, was a corridor about a third of a kilometer away. Down two flights of stairs, it was illuminated by skylights and gas mantles that hissed softly when Doc held a lighter to them. It had several plain wooden doors leading to bedrooms that clearly hadn’t been explored for over a century.

  “Look.” Doc opened the first door he came to: “An oil lamp!” The brass body of the lamp was dull with age and dust, but the glass chimney and shroud were intact. He picked it up from the dressing table and nearly dropped it. “Hey, it’s heavy.” He sniffed it suspiciously. “Smells like … fish?”

  Game Boy gagged. “Oh ick, that’s got to be whale oil.” Rancid whale oil at that.

  Doc put it down gingerly. “Um, all right then. What else have we got?”

  “I don’t—” Game Boy’s forehead wrinkled. “Is this Victorian?”

  “Looks that way, but I’m not sure.” Doc pulled out a drawer from the dark wooden cabinet. “Wing collars? When did they go out?”

  “Check this out.” Game Boy was into the wardrobe side of the chest, where a dove gray morning suit hung in pride of place: obviously somebody’s long-forgotten Sunday best. “What do you think?” He held it up against his chest, looking past it at the fly-specked mirror: “Think it’s about my size?”

  Doc pondered. Game Boy was slightly built for a twenty-first-century man, but the suit looked about right. “Try the jacket first,” he suggested, then left Game Boy and moved on to the next room. It looked like a lady’s boudoir out of the late nineteenth century, though he had no idea which year (or even decade) the dresses came from: it might even be early twentieth, for all he knew. Big hats, floor-sweeping skirts.

  He was assembling an armload to cart back for analysis when Game Boy strolled in. “What do you think?” Gee Bee twirled. “Is this dapper or what?”

  “Needs a top hat and cane. Doesn’t go with your Converse. How does it hang?”

  Game Boy shot his cuffs back. “The sleeves are a little long. And the trousers need a belt, but I couldn’t find any loops.” The trousers in question came halfway up his chest and were falling down.

  “That’s because they were worn with suspenders and a waistcoat.” Doc knew that much. “Okay, you should definitely keep it. You never know, Imp might want us to flash mob a wedding party or cosplay Downton Abbey.”

  “Great!” Game Boy bounced out again to rummage for matching accessories. Doc nibbled the end of his pen, then jotted down some notes about where and what he’d found: metadata for the map of the dream palace they were exploring.

  “What period do you think this is from?” Doc yelled down the hall.

  “Late nineteenth century, probably 1880s, I think? Do the dresses have bustles?”

  Doc scratched his head. “Dunno,” he admitted. “What’s a bustle?”

  “It’s a fashion thing: let’s just say that from the 1870s to the 1890s, a well-dressed woman would never need to ask ‘does my arse look big in that.’” Game Boy came back in, clutching an armful of stuff. Top hat, shirt, waistcoat with a cravat spilling out of one pocket. “Why do I even know this stuff? Thanks, Mum, for trying to turn me into a lay-dee.” He rolled his eyes, then dumped his loot on the bed before turning to the wardrobe. “Grab that—no, wait, that one—it’s big enough it might fit a modern woman—and that, and that. Yeah, and that, and we’re done. Let’s head back; betcha twenty quid you can’t persuade Del to model it for you.”

  “Think she’s back yet? From wherever she went?”

  Game Boy froze at the foot of the stairs leading back up to the same level as reality. “Oh shit, if the cops caught her and followed her back to the house we could be stuck here—”

  Doc dumped his armful of stuff and held out his arms: “Hugs?” The weirdest things could trigger Game Boy, and it looked like he’d just discovered a new one. “Here?” Game Boy grabbed him and burrowed his face against Doc’s shoulder, panting. “Slow down.” Doc rubbed his back. “Hyperventilating will make it worse. Let me in? I can help.” He reached for calm, then pushed at Game Boy, hosing down his fiery anxiety with a spray of tranquility.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God…” Game Boy’s breathing slowly returned to normal. “We’re doomed. They’ll send me back to my parents, or, or, the door with the air raid sirens, or—”

  “There are other ways out,” Doc told him. “Different periods, don’t you get it? The laundry room on this level has a staircase, too. Other doors leading to other times.”

  “But look, look—” Game Boy let him go so he could point at the pile of clothes—“don’t you know anything about history?” His voice rose, almost to a wail: “History is shit! You can die from an infected hangnail! History is a place where there are no computers, no games, no burgers, no television, no central heating—where they put people like me in lunatic asylums because they don’t understand or, or—”

  “None of that is going to happen to you,” Doc said firmly, determined to head off the next panic attack before it could build up a full head of steam and pull out of the station. “We’re going downstairs—carefully, just in case—and Imp will shout at us for not being around for a read-through of his revised script, and Del will be bitchy, and—”

  “Something is wrong,” Game Boy insisted weakly. He reached up and pulled his dusty top hat down, concealing his crimson crop. “Something bad is coming, I know it is, don’t ask me how.”

  “C’mon.” Doc picked up the bundle of clothes, squished it tight, and offered Game Boy his free hand as he turned back towards the corridor leading to their top floor roost. “If it’s coming that means it isn’t here now, and that’s the main thing.”

  * * *

  When he was a child, Imp—then Jerm—had a family.

  There was Imp, who of course the world revolved around: tousle-headed with a devilish dimpled grin for which he’d earned his nickname (before it stretched to encompass the bulky resario suffix, before he’d realized what he was in this world to accomplish). Jerm had a dog, a big dumb Alsatian called Nono: it wasn’t her real name, but what everybody screamed at her when she did something wrong, which was all the time. Jerm also had a big sister, Evie, who was blonde and curly-haired and just a bit chubby, five years older and conscientious about keeping him out of trouble and wiping his nose when he needed it. Evie cared, too much for her own good. She cared when their next door neighbor’s cat was hit by a car, she cared for Grandma when they visited her in the home, she cared when Jerm fell out of the apple tree in the garden and hurt his arm (a greenstick fracture, it turned out), and she memorized and cared deeply about everything Mum told her she needed to care about in order to be a good little girl. Evie was eager to please everyone, and Jerm took advantage of this trait at every opportunity, because Jerm was a whiny little shit, and more than a little bit spoiled when he was small.

  All that changed later.

  Dad was an accountant, dignified in his suit and tie when he left for the office every weekday morning. He wa
sn’t dull, though. He read to Jerm before bed in the evenings, at least until Jerm mastered the skill for himself, and even after that for a while. Dad read through all the childhood classics, from Dr. Seuss to The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, and Peter and Wendy, this latter one slightly out of sequence and with certain omissions that Imp only spotted when he read it for himself as an adult. Dad was a voracious consumer of fiction, escaping from reality whenever he could: their house had bookcases the way the other kids at school’s parents had cabinets full of video cassettes. Their television was small and dull and didn’t have a VCR, and their home computer was the word processing kind, with a green screen and a printer but no games, a leftover from the 1980s. Dad said they couldn’t afford to replace it, and indeed they didn’t until Jerm needed one for secondary school. Even though Dad was an accountant, they weren’t rich.

  Partly this was because they lived in a cramped semi near Croydon, with all the drawbacks of London house prices and none of the perks of actually being in the capital. Partly it was because Mum didn’t go out to work: she was a homemaker, she said, with an odd, tight-lipped expression when Jerm asked her. She’d been programming minicomputers when she met his father in the late seventies. (Dad had wanted to have at least three kids, Imp later learned. Mum made sure that didn’t happen—they’d have been destitute—but later became melancholy, finding her consolation in religion.) One income, two children, London house prices, and Grandma in a nursing home: Dad in a suit and a Ford Granada (later upgraded to a BMW 315), Mum driving a ten-year-old Ford Escort.