A Sterkarm Kiss (28 page)

21

21st Side: Back Again

The journey from the Bedesdale Tower to the Tube was one of anger and exasperation, and Andrea ended it feeling that her nerves had been rubbed down with sandpaper. The trip was made in an MPV, jolting and lurching over the difficult ground, with Patterson driving and, beside him in the passenger seat, a man Patterson called Plug, who carried some kind of big gun. Andrea thought it was a machine gun of sorts, but guns weren't one of her interests.

“Sent home in disgrace, eh?” was one of the first things Patterson said. “Really blotted your copybook, haven't you, girlie?”

Plug sniggered. He sniggered at anything Patterson said.

Andrea said nothing. All she wanted to do was reach the Tube and go through it. There wasn't any point, that she could see, in arguing with Patterson.

“Old Jimmy Windsor ain't going to be very pleased with you, is he?”

Andrea thought of asking Patterson whether he called Windsor “Old Jimmy” to his face, but she kept quiet, even when Plug looked at her and sniggered.

“I shall be going to see him, soon as we get in.” Patterson looked at her in the mirror. “You can come with me. I'll fill him in on how helpful you've been.”

Right on cue, Plug sniggered. Andrea almost wished that a party of Grannams would appear, to give him something to snigger about—but then hastily took back even that almost wish. No Grannams appeared anyway, and the MPV ground and shuddered and swayed on its way, and Patterson made his spiteful jibes, and Plug sniggered, until Andrea felt that another minute would force her to lie on the floor and scream.

They came, at long last, to the place where the wedding feast had been held. There were the Elvish inflatables, now limp and deflated. Some of the huts in the shantytown surrounding the Elvish buildings had been pulled down, others burned down. Debris lay scattered over the grass—cushions, torn drapes, food, ropes. There were many bundles of clothing cast down on the grass—until Andrea realized that they were bodies, just left, lying there. Something scuttled away, low to the ground. A fox. She looked away before she saw anything that she wouldn't forget.

Patterson saw her in the mirror and laughed. “The foxes and crows, they think all their Christmases and birthdays have come at once!”

Plug sniggered. She gritted her teeth. They weren't far from the Tube now.

They drove through the electronic gates into the Tube's compound, and saw the Tube's great concrete pipe waiting for them beside the little prefab office on its stilts. Both looked weird against the wild hills behind. Patterson steered the MPV up the ramp that led to the Tube, halted it on the platform, and turned the engine off. Plug wound his window down.

A security guard stepped out of the office, stooped, and looked into the car. Patterson held up his pass. “Fine,” said the guard, and went back into the office. Andrea leaned forward until she could see the panel of lights hung above the Tube's entrance. The red one was on. Soon it would turn to green and they would go through. The light changed. Patterson started the engine and the car crept forward. The plastic screening rattled against the windshield, and then they were in the Tube itself. A few seconds and five hundred years later, they drove out of the Tube's other end, in the 21st century.

Patterson halted the car on the platform just outside the Tube. Another guard popped out of the office, checked his pass, and waved them on. Slowly the car drove down the ramp onto 21st-century gravel. Andrea looked out, with admiration, on neat 21st-century lawns, trees, and flower beds.

Patterson drove the car slowly around the grand country house to the parking lot at the front and parked it alongside the other big, square, tall vehicles that were used for driving to the office and supermarket. The only difference between these and the one that had just driven across 16th-century moorland was that theirs was muddier. Andrea could see her own little blue car a few places away.

Patterson switched off the engine, took the gun from Plug, and said to him, “Okay, lose yourself for a few hours—but keep your bloody cell phone switched on!”

Plug sniggered, climbed out of the car, and walked off.

Patterson got out too and put the gun into the car's boot. Andrea climbed out slowly. She knew what she was going to do next—or what she wanted to do next. The trouble was she had no idea, as yet, of how she was going to do it.

“Come on,” Patterson said, and strode off toward the hall's beautiful entrance, with its pillars and steps. Andrea grabbed her rucksack from the car's backseat and followed him. The car, losing contact with the coder in Patterson's pocket, locked itself.

In reception it was all gleaming wood, shining glass, and a scent of polish. Patterson showed his pass to the bored girls behind the desk and said, “Buzz me through.” Andrea fumbled in her rucksack and produced her pass. One of the girls pressed a button beneath her desk, a buzzer sounded, and Patterson pushed open the heavy wooden door into the main building, making straight for the lifts.

Patterson said nothing as they rode up in the lift but smirked at her in an annoying way when she glanced at him. They got out on the top floor and walked along a wide corridor with a floor of polished wood. Patterson turned through an open door into Windsor's outer office where Windsor's secretary, Beryl, sat behind a small desk, in front of a computer. Andrea stood back as Patterson spoke with the secretary.

“If you'll take a seat,” Beryl said, “I'll tell Mr. Windsor. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”

Patterson said no, went over to an armchair, and sat down, his boots planted firmly about a foot apart. He didn't pick up a magazine but stared at the wall. “No, thank you,” Andrea said, and took a chair at a distance from him. She did pick up a magazine and turned its pages, but her mind was on other things. Beryl calmly finished what she was doing, then rose, knocked on the door of the inner office, and went in.

For a minute or two Andrea could hear voices speaking quietly in the next room; then the door opened again and Windsor came out, dressed in his usual smart dark suit and white shirt, smiling and holding out his hand. “Tom! Come right in, right in!” As Patterson preceded him into his office, Windsor smirked at Andrea. “Be patient for a few minutes longer, Andrea. Perhaps Beryl can rustle you up a few cookies?”

The door of the office closed behind the men, and the murmuring voices began again. Beryl smiled sympathetically at Andrea and returned to her seat. She looked up after a moment. “If you change your mind about a drink—?”

Smiling, Andrea said, “I'm fine, thanks.”

Beryl went back to her work, and Andrea went back to staring blankly at glossy advertisements in the magazine she held. There was a silence, which Andrea felt to be uncomfortable, though Beryl seemed entirely at ease. A clatter startled Andrea, and she looked up. Beryl had started the printer. Now she rose and, in silence, left the office.

Listlessly Andrea turned more pages. She finished the magazine and took up another, in which she was equally uninterested. Still she was alone in the office. A soft rustle made her look across the room. The printed pages had piled up, and were now slithering onto the floor.

That always happens, Andrea thought. And you have to pick them all up and sort them all out. With a fellow feeling for Beryl, who was also fat and plain and sneered at by Windsor, she rose from her chair and went to pick the papers up.

They were authorization passes for going through the Tube. She shuffled through the pages. They all were. Blank forms, all ready to be filled in, issued only from this office. A large party was shortly going to be sent through the Tube. She looked up, staring at the opposite wall, and took a deep breath, deliberately calming herself.

Beryl came back through the office door and, seeing Andrea standing by the printer with her hands full of papers, stopped short and stared. Andrea felt as if a great chord of music had been struck in her head, almost deafening her. “It's okay,” she gabbled. “It's okay! I—well—I was just picking these up for you! It's a nuisance, isn't it, how they go all over the floor?” Shuffling the papers together, she put them down on Beryl's desk but picked one off the top. “I'll just be off now. A lot to do. You know how it is—loads!” Darting across to her chair, she grabbed her bag and made for the door.

“Um,” Beryl said, turning to watch her go and vaguely pointing at the paper in Andrea's hand.

“Have a nice day!” Andrea said and, gaily waving the paper in farewell, almost ran out into the corridor.

Beryl remained in the center of the room, uncertain of what she ought to do. Andrea certainly shouldn't have taken one of those papers—she really should have minded her own business and not even picked them up from the floor, but—what was Beryl supposed to do? Rugby tackle her? And Andrea was a nice young woman. Conscientious. Polite. She probably didn't mean any harm. When you got to the bottom of it, it was most likely all to do with her anthropological studies—which sounded most interesting—and nothing suspicious at all. Slowly Beryl returned to her seat and continued with her work. She felt uneasy but didn't want to make a fuss. It would cause a lot of trouble and probably only make her look a fool.

The buzzer sounded on the intercom, and Windsor's voice said, “Can you send Miss Mitchell in now, please, Beryl?”

Beryl hesitated, then answered, “Just a moment, Mr. Windsor.”

She looked across the office, as if hoping Andrea might be sitting in the armchair, waiting. She wasn't. Sighing, Beryl rose and knocked on the door of Windsor's office, going in immediately.

“Oh—Beryl,” Windsor said, looking up from his “cozy corner,” where he was sitting with that Patterson man, whom Beryl didn't like at all. Smarmy, she thought him, and under the smarminess aggressive.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Windsor: Miss Mitchell has left.”

“Left? How can she have left? Where's she gone?”

“She said something about—er—having a lot to do and—errands to run.”

Windsor and Patterson looked at each other. “Did Miss Mitchell deign to say when she might be back?” Windsor asked.

“Ah …” Tightening her hand on the door handle, Beryl coughed and said, “I think I ought to mention … I hope I'm not telling tales or—making a fuss about nothing—”

“Oh, spit it out, Beryl!”

“I—er—left the office for a few moments and—erm—when I came back—well, the printer had spilled some papers on the floor—”

“What are you chuntering on about?”

Beryl felt her face grow slightly hotter. “I was printing off those forms. Passes for the Tube.”

“Yes. So?”

“Miss Mitchell picked them up off the floor. When she left, she, er, took one with her.”

Both Windsor and Patterson got to their feet. Both came briskly across the office and pushed past her at the door. Windsor looked around the outer office, as if making sure that Beryl had been telling the truth and Andrea had really gone.

Patterson said, “You know where she's gone. Isn't hard to figure.”

“Surely not,” Windsor said. “Not even Andrea, surely—?” He reached for the telephone on the desk and dialed. “Hello? James Windsor. Can you tell me—has anyone gone through recently? Ah. Thank you.” He put the receiver down and looked at Patterson. “She bloody has. Fuck it!”

Beryl quietly returned to her desk and, head down, began typing again.

“So,” Patterson said, folding his arms. “We'll get after her.”

“She's taken her car through too. The car that I got her.”

“Won't do her any good,” Patterson said. “We can take our time, get organized, and go through ten minutes before her. We can be waiting for her.”

“No,” Windsor said.

“She'll run straight into our arms.”

“Can't be done,” Windsor said. “The time streams. They'd cross, get confused—it'd be a nightmare.”

“Okay. Go back a day before her, then. So we sit on our arses for—”

“Are you deaf? Or stupid?”

Patterson scowled.

“It can't be done. But we can go through one second after her.”

Patterson grinned. “How far can she run in one second?”

“Not built for running, our Andrea.” Windsor glanced at Beryl, took Patterson by the arm, and drew him back into his inner office. Shutting the door after him, he looked at Patterson. “There's going to be a lot of confusion over there.”

Patterson nodded.

“So there might be an incident of friendly fire.”

Patterson, his arms folded, nodded and smiled. “Right, boss.”

22

21st Side “See You!”

Andrea didn't wait for the lift but ran down the stairs to reception. One of the girls was speaking on the phone. She asked the other, “What's the number of Tube Control, do you know?”

The girl lifted a receiver. “I can get them for you.”

“No, no, I need it for later and I've mislaid the number.” Looking disappointed, the girl wrote the number down on a sheet of paper.

Andrea forced herself to walk out of reception in a slow, dignified manner, but once on the gravel outside she ran around the corner, thinking: I'm getting away with it! So far—which wasn't very far— anyway. She looked around for approaching security men.

The coder for her car was buried somewhere deep in her rucksack, and the car beeped and unlocked itself as she neared it. With relief she opened the door, threw her rucksack inside, climbed in after it, and locked herself inside. Then she delved in her rucksack until she found her cell phone. After taking a few deep breaths to calm herself, she punched in the number.

“Tube Control,” said a woman's voice. “Kylie here. How may I help you?”

“Ah, hello. This is James Windsor's office. We're sending along a Miss Andrea Mitchell very shortly. We want her sent through straightaway, to 16th-side A. That's A for alpha. Would that be possible?”

“To
16 A
? Did you say 16
A
?”

“Yes, A, alpha. This is urgent. Will it be possible?”

“Just a moment. Will there be a vehicle?”

“Yes.”

“And will Miss Mitchell be alone or with a party?”

“Alone.” Andrea gulped and hoped it hadn't been audible.

“And she's going through to 16
A
—is that correct?”

“Yes!” Andrea snapped. “16 A. I said this is urgent!”

“Just a moment.”

Andrea gripped the phone tightly, holding it to her ear and staring through the windshield at the lawns, flower beds, and trees. Come on, come on—

“Hello?”

“Yes? Hello?”

“We're preparing the Tube now. Can Miss Mitchell be here in ten minutes?”

“Oh yes! Thank you. Good-bye.”

She clicked the phone off and found it hard to breathe, so stifled was she with excitement, fear, triumph, and many other emotions harder to identify. Another hunt through her rucksack uncovered a pen, and leaning on her steering wheel, she filled in the pass. She scribbled something at the bottom that might pass for an official signature, if no one looked too closely—well, it hardly mattered. If anyone at the Tube looked at this business closely, or double-checked on her, or asked questions, she was caught. She had to rely on them treating it all as routine.

She reached for the ignition button but drew her hand back. No. Don't give them ten minutes to see how nervous you are, and grow suspicious. Turn up in ten minutes' time and rush through, shouting, “Urgent!” She leaned back in her seat. Ten minutes to wait. Ten minutes could seem a long, long time. Oh well. She could phone Mick and ask how he was. She would say she loved him and hang up with “See you!” She wouldn't say “good-bye.”

Andrea drove her car up the ramp and braked on the platform in front of the Tube's mouth. Leaning over, she wound down the passenger-side window, and when a security guard came out of the office, she flourished her pass at him. Bending down, he examined it and squinted through the window at her. He looked at the laminated employee pass pinned to her chest and studied her face.

“You're expecting me, I think,” she said, trying not to sound as breathless and scared as she felt. “I'm Andrea Mitchell.”

He looked at her face again, as if he was memorizing it. Do guards always do this? she wondered. Perhaps I just never noticed before. If he's caught on to me, what happens next? Police? Interviews? I could handle that. But no—Windsor was never going to bring in the police.

“That's fine,” the guard said, handing her back the paper. “Wait for the signal and then go through.”

“Oh, thanks.” Andrea took such a deep breath, from relief, that she felt dizzy. The guard went back into the office, closing the door behind him. The mouth of the Tube towered over her, and she almost panicked. She glanced over her shoulder. No one was running toward her, yelling. For a moment she wished someone would. Someone should stop her. She was going through, on her own, to 16th-side A—the dimension where FUP had angered the natives and had been thrown out. She'd be entirely on her own. No safety net.

The light above her turned green. Her heart thumping under her collarbone, she engaged first gear and drove forward. The nose of the car brushed aside the plastic strips, and still no one shouted.

It was like driving through a tiled underground walkway—except it was eerily clean, without litter or graffiti. The whining hum was loud enough, for a while, to make her wish she could put her fingers in her ears, but the sound soon passed out of hearing. I don't want to do this, she thought; why am I doing this? But she kept driving. Was that the center point? Had the Tube done its stuff—was she in the 16th now? In seconds, she'd reached the other end and was certainly in the 16th. The car brushed aside the screening.

She drove straight down the ramp—she hadn't time to stop and admire the scenery. She knew that even if days passed before it was guessed what she'd done, all the might of FUP could be less than a second behind her. But she glimpsed the wide, wide space of wet green hills and cloud-heavy gray sky. There was even more space than usual, because there was no office here, no compound. This was 16 A, which FUP had largely abandoned.

It was a little tricky at the foot of the ramp, because it didn't meet the ground, since it hadn't been measured and set up for this dimension. There was a drop which, from behind the wheel, looked quite terrifying, though it was probably a foot and a half or less. No matter: She hadn't time to worry about it. These MPVs were tough little things, built like miniature tanks. The car took the drop, crashed, bounced, shook, but then drove on. There was a second, teeth-jarring crash as the rear wheels dropped from the ramp, and Andrea held her breath—but the car jolted on across the rough ground as if nothing much had happened.

She glanced in the rearview mirror. Behind her was hillside and sky. The Tube had vanished. Fear gripped at her heart: She'd never felt so alone. She'd never
been
so alone.

Drive,
she ordered herself. Drive fast, and thank God you're alone. She moved up a gear and pressed down on the accelerator. The car bounced and swayed alarmingly. If there are any gods up there, she thought, anybody at all, look after me now, and you can put your order in for as much devotion and kneeling and praying as you like. Just keep me upright and moving forward.

The car jolted onto a broad ride that led across the moor—but though it was more or less flat and grassy, it was still only a track made by horses and sheep, and it was uneven and stony. She started along it as fast as she dared and then saw something move from the corner of her eye. Looking to her left, she saw that the Tube had appeared again, and issuing from its mouth were horses. Men and horses.

She shoved her right foot to the floor, and with a growl, a leap, and a swaying jolt, her car shot forward.