Faerie Wars 03 - Ruler of the Realm (13 page)

- must be getting senile.' He ushered them inside and closed the door. 'It's a television programme we have back home. You can explain television to them, Pyrgus

- you've seen
that. Star Trek's
about space travel. They have a star ship and a thing called a
transporter.
It's just fiction, but that transporter got me thinking.' He moved towards the bench. 'The way it works is you
beam
people about the place, down to the planet, back to the ship, whatever, and the thing is, if you're
on
the ship, you can
lock on
to them down on the planet and beam them aboard.' He looked from one to the other. 'You see what I'm getting at?'

Pyrgus shook his head.

Madame Cardui said, 'No

Kitterick said, 'I presume, sir, you feel there may be something in the process analogous to our portal technology, but possibly improved.'

Pyrgus blinked.

'Exactly!' exclaimed Fogarty. He focused on Kitterick. 'It's matter transmission, of course. You scan somebody down to his constituent pattern and beam the information to the destination where he can be reassembled using local atoms. The problem's always been what to do with the body.'

'What body?'

'The body you scanned at
this
end. And you
have
to do something about the body, otherwise you'd be in two places at once. You can see why matter transmission never became a commercial proposition. Imagine an airline that had to kill off each of its passengers to get them to their destination. You'd be ceiling deep in corpses by the end of the first week.'

'And no one else would wish to travel because of the smell,' Kitterick said blandly.

'Are you taking the piss?' Fogarty frowned.

'Indeed not, sir. Please go on.'

Fogarty relaxed his frown as the earlier enthusiasm flooded back. 'Thing is, if you introduce a portal you solve the body problem. You don't have to beam information any more, you can beam the actual atoms. With the portal in place, that doesn't require any more energy.'

'Mr Fogarty,' said Pyrgus, who hadn't understood a word, 'what does this have to do with Henry?'

Fogarty nodded towards a small box on his workbench. 'That thing there's a prototype of a Mark II portable transporter. It doesn't just open a portal like the ones I made before, it lets you lock in on a target and pull them through it.'

'To here?'

Fogarty frowned. 'In theory.'

'Does it work?'

'I haven't tested it yet.'

After a moment, Pyrgus said, 'You mean you could lock in on Henry and translate him to your ornither-- to your shed? Here and now?'

'Could give it a try,' said Mr Fogarty.

Henry's legs were aching by the time he got to the end of his road, but his troubles didn't really start until he reached home. His mother must have heard the sound of the key in the door, for she met him in the hall. She was dressed for work in one of her hideous tweedy suits, but her blouse was rumpled and there were dark circles under her eyes. She looked as if she hadn't slept in months, but that did nothing to dampen her fury.

'Where the
hell
have you been?' she demanded. 'We were worried
sick.
Anais rang round all the hospitals and I've just reported you missing to the
police.
For heaven's sake, Henry, couldn't you just have
rung?
Why on earth do you think we got you a mobile phone? Don't you
ever,
for a
minute,
think about anybody else but yourself in your whole ... selfish ... life?' Then, to his intense embarrassment, she threw her arms around him and burst into tears. 'Oh, Henry, we thought you'd been
killed!'

He'd never seen his mother cry before and he didn't know how to cope with it. She was holding him so tightly he could hardly breathe and he could feel her tears dripping from his jaw to run down the side of his neck.

'Where
were
you?' she sobbed. 'Where have you
been?'

He couldn't answer that one either. At least not any way that was going to satisfy her. Where had he been? Walking all night and most of the morning, by the look of it. She was going to ask him
why
and he didn't
know
why. He might have been hit by a car, but he didn't
feel
like he'd been hit by a car. No bones broken, no headache, not so much as a bruise. His mind went back to an earlier thought. Maybe this blank in his memory was all part of his nervous breakdown, the business about seeing fairies and visiting fairyland.

'Mum ...' Henry said.

He'd been talking to Charlie about his nervous breakdown. And Charlie had said something about it, but he couldn't remember what.

'Mum ...' Henry said again, struggling a little.

Actually he didn't know why she was going on like this. He'd stayed out overnight before. Usually at Charlie's, where arrangements were often last-minute. He'd always rung, of course, but there'd been times when Mum and Dad had gone to bed - how worried could they be? - and he'd had to leave a message on the
answerphone,
for cripe's sake!

Henry suddenly remembered he
had
left a message on the answerphone the night before. He hadn't planned to stay out - he'd wanted a lift home. But nobody took his call, so he left a message. He could remember that quite clearly.
Mum, I've missed my bus. Any chance you could come and get me? If you don't pick up this message I'll be walking home.

It suddenly occurred to him why she was so upset! She
hadn't
picked up the message. Not until this morning. And then she'd checked his bed and found he still wasn't home. She wasn't worried, she was
guilty
That was so typical. She could never admit anything was actually her fault. She hadn't been worried about him at all. She'd gone to bed and didn't even
think
of him until this morning. Now she was making a fuss to cover up.

'Mum,' Henry said. He took her arms firmly and pulled away. 'Mum, you don't give a
damn
where I was.'

Then, with his own welling tears, he ran upstairs to his room and locked the door.

In its own small way, Henry's room looked much like Mr Fogarty's shed, except that strewn clothes took the place of tools and models of one sort or another stood in for the machinery. Henry sat on the edge of the bed thinking how
childish
those models looked. More than half the ships he'd made were
plastic,
could you believe that? And then there was that stupid cardboard model of a flying
pig.
Incredible to think that was the last model he'd made, and just a few weeks ago. Incredible to think how proud he'd been of it.

She knocked on his door almost at once.

'Go away, Mum,' Henry said dully.

A voice said, 'It's not Martha, Henry - it's Anais.'

After a long moment, Henry got up and unlocked the door.

'May I come in?' Anais asked quietly. She was dressed in sweater and jeans and designer runners. Henry shrugged and turned away. He walked back to sit on the bed, not looking at her.

Anais closed the door and stood just inside the room. Out of the corner of his eye he could see she looked concerned, maybe even a bit frightened. But her voice was steady enough as she said, 'Henry, we need to talk.'

He could imagine his mother saying the same thing. What it usually meant was
Henry, you need to listen.
After which his mother would tell what he'd done wrong, why he should never do it again and how he could do a lot better in the future. But, of course, this wasn't his mum. This was the
other woman
in the house.

He shrugged again, staring at his feet, and said, 'So talk.'

'Do you think I might sit down?' Anais asked lightly. She gave a little smile.

'Nowhere to sit,' Henry muttered. Which was true enough. The only chair in his room - an ancient sagging armchair - was so buried under junk it was scarcely visible.

'I could sit beside you on the bed.' Anais tilted her head to one side quizzically.

'I don't want you sitting beside me on the bed!' Henry snapped. He suddenly felt furiously angry and fought to control it.

The smile disappeared. Anais said, 'All right, I'll stand. And
I'll
talk. At least until you feel like it. I mostly wanted to say I'm sorry.'

It was the last thing he expected. He was so startled his anger disappeared and he actually looked at her.

She licked her lips and went on, 'Henry, I know how difficult this must be for you -'

'No, you don't,' Henry said quickly, his anger flaring again. 'No you bloody, bloody
don't!'
He looked down at his feet again. If he wasn't careful, he was going to cry.

'No, I don't,' Anais agreed. Part of the trouble was she looked so pretty. And so young. And she was so
nice.
That was the real problem. He wanted to hate her. He really, really wanted to hate her and she was so nice he just couldn't. Nicer than his mother, that was for sure. He couldn't imagine what Anais saw in her.

'Of course, I don't,' Anais was saying. 'But I
do
know you must be feeling awful. I wish you weren't, but there's not much I can do about that. But, Henry, running away isn't the answer.'

'I didn't run away,' Henry said. 'I just stayed over at Charlie's.' He glared at her defiantly. 'I've done it before.'

'Henry,' Anais said patiently, 'you didn't stay at Charlie's. It was the first place we checked. She said you wanted to stay, but they had cousins or something and there wasn't a spare bed. She was worried about you too.'

Bet she was, Henry thought. He'd just told her he'd been seeing fairies. What he hated was the way Anais said
we
as if she and Mum were an item. Which they were, of course, but he didn't need to have his nose rubbed in it.

'Did you call Dad?' he asked.

Anais blinked. 'Not right away,' she admitted reluctantly.

'Why not?' Henry demanded. 'Didn't you even
think
I might be staying with him?' Anais said, 'But you weren't?'

'No, I wasn't, but that's not the point. The point is you all got so worried and none of you, not Mum, not you, thought the first thing you should do was ring up Dad. Well, did you?'

Now Anais was looking down at her feet. 'No.' She looked up suddenly. 'That was wrong. You're right, Henry: that was very wrong. But sometimes people just ... do the wrong things. We were worried. We didn't know what had happened. You were gone for three days and we were frantic. Your mother loves you, Henry. I love you -'

'Don't you say you -' Henry began furiously, then stopped. 'I wasn't away for three days.'

Anais moved across and sat beside him on the bed anyway. She looked into his eyes and reached over to take both his hands. 'Yes, you
were,
Henry. That's the whole point. We were out of our minds with worry -everybody was. Charlotte said you walked her home and then went off to go home yourself. She thought you caught the last bus. But that was Tuesday. Today's Saturday.'

'Today's not Saturday,' Henry whispered. For no reason he was suddenly feeling afraid.

'What was it?' Anais asked him quietly. 'Were you doing drugs?'

'I wasn't doing drugs!' Henry hissed. 'I've never done drugs!' He couldn't have been away three days. It was just last night he'd missed the bus. Just last night.

There was something wrong. Not just confusion. Henry blinked several times and shook his head to clear it. He felt as if he really had been doing drugs. Something was happening to reality. The whole room was swimming around him. He looked at his hands to try to steady himself. They were clasped in Anais's small, well-groomed hands with bright red varnish on her nails. But his hands in her hands were disappearing.