Planesrunner (Everness Book One) (8 page)

R
ock-Star-Blonde woman didn't look any less elegant for having been woken in the dark before dawn. Or any less deadly. Supervillains like her probably never slept anyway. She'd swapped the Renault for an S-Class Merc. Tasteful. No need to blend in with the background now. And Skinhead-in-a-Suit didn't look any less like a thug. His chauffeur cap added an unsuspected hint of stupid. Everett watched him slide up into the disabled parking bay outside the coffee shop. He opened the rear door. He had the boots and britches, the high-collared jacket, the string-back driving gloves. The lot. Rock-Star-Blonde set one black high heel onto the curb, then the other. She was tall. She moved like a golden silk scarf falling through water. Her skirt was calf-length and tight, her jacket nipped at the waist, flared at shoulder and hips. She wore a little round pillbox hat at a stylish angle, with a scrap of veil. She looked killer.

But I have something you need, Everett thought.

The slacker students, the coffee-shop coolios, the hip kids, the guy with the Mac writing his Oscar-winning screenplay all looked up and could not look away as the woman entered and stalked up to Everett's table.

“Everett.” Her lips were glossy red.

“I'm him.” Everett stood up. Tejendra's family had been very strong on good manners, but he would have felt compelled to stand anyway. The woman commanded by her presence. The tightest smile played across the woman's lips.

“I am Charlotte Villiers. I am plenipotentiary of the world designated E3. We have a matter to discuss. Shall we?” She nodded very slightly towards the car and the waiting chauffeur. Everett was very glad he had sneaked away from the general post-morning-assembly milling around and changed clothes in the toilets before slipping out and away from school. You could not credibly play this wearing a school uniform. Charlotte Villiers flared her nostrils at the glowtubes attached to his waterproof. Everett scooped up his backpack and left a few pounds of coins on the table. He'd always wanted to do that, like they did in Tarantino movies—just throw some money down and walk.

“Sit with me, Everett,” Charlotte Villiers said. The central locking clicked. The car moved off into the traffic. And all Everett's bravery faltered. Plans made in the dark before dawn look cheap and rickety in the morning light. Get the Infundibulum to the gate. The rest he would make up as he went along. He had always prided himself that he could see the ball coming. What if this time he couldn't? What if there were people as good as him? Better than him? His stomach lurched in fear. But they weren't better than him. They weren't even as good as him. He'd woven together the Infundibulum. None of them had, in ten Earths full of people, not the Moorish Britain of E2, not the identical-twin E4 where something had happened to the moon, not the E1 they didn't talk about, not the E3 of the elegant Charlotte Villiers. Only Everett Singh—and his father Tejendra Singh.

Charlotte Villiers—she was one of those people who could only be known by both her names—looked out of the rain-streaked window. Her scarlet lip was curled in disdain at the street people in their heavy winter coats and hoodies and bum-freezer jackets. This is my home, these are my people, Everett thought. You don't look at them like a tourist.

The car headed north through rain and heavy traffic, following blue signs for the M25.

“We're not going to the university?”

“That's correct,” Charlotte Villiers said. She opened her small handbag and surveyed her face in a compact mirror. Everett glimpsed dark metal, an ivory handle, an engraved barrel. A gun. Satisfied with her appearance, Charlotte Villiers put away the compact and clicked the little bag loudly shut. You only did that little act so I could see what you have in there, Everett thought.

Out on the orbital motorway Skinhead-in-a-Suit—Skinhead-in-a-Chauffeur-Cap now, Everett supposed—could open up the S-Class. Charlotte Villiers smiled at the surge of acceleration. Everett had seen this model track-tested on
Top Gear
. He knew the nought-to-sixty, the HP, and the top speed.
You watching that boys' rubbish again?
Laura would shout.
Homework!
The memory caught in his throat. She'd be waiting for him. She'd have something cooked for him. She'd call him. She'd call Ryun. She'd call the police. Sorry, Mum, I have to do it.

The Merc was well over the speed limit, blazing along the outside lane; Skinhead-in-a-Chauffeur-Cap sending hatchbacks and Ford Mondeos scuttling out of his way with flashes of the headlights. Plenipotentiary. That was like an ambassador, but more. Überambassador. In the days before phone and internet, when messages took months to get from one side of the planet to another, a plenipotentiary
was
the State. An agreement made with her was binding on her government. Inter-plane diplomacy must be strong.

Over the Dartford river crossing. South.

“Where have you got my dad?”

“You father is working at a secure research facility.”

“A Plenitude Research Facility?”

“In some areas your technology surpasses ours; in others, we surpass yours. We've been familiar with what you call the Heisenberg Gate for decades. It's only natural we would bring the talent to the technology.”

So he's on your world, Everett thought. He asked, “Working or being held?”

Charlotte Villiers sighed softly.

“Mr. Singh, all this cloak-and-dagger paranoia. This is not how the grown-up world works. This is a sensitive business. There are security concerns. It's no different from your father working in one of your nuclear weapons facilities.”

The Mercedes peeled off into a big clover-leaf junction; M25 to M20. Signs directed to Channel ports and tunnel. Skinhead-in-a-Chauffeur-Cap hurled the Mercedes past long lines of coast-bound trucks. They had left the rain behind at Maidstone; clouds raced them on a westerly wind. Winter sun shone on a dripping landscape. Already the roads were drying. The car slipped between relentless traffic into a lane heading for the Eurotunnel shuttle terminal.

“I don't have my passport with me,” Everett said.

“You won't need a passport,” Charlotte Villiers said.

Half a kilometre from the check-in booths the car turned left onto a service road that led out of the valley where the tracks and shuttle trains came out of the tunnel, up onto the chalk downs. The road climbed up the ridge, dipped down into a shallow bourne and skirted a field of half-drowned winter wheat. Water stood in the furrows. In the centre of the field was a fenced-off enclosure, a hundred metres on a side. No building, no radio mast, no structure of any kind. The fence was the most remarkable thing about it. Skinhead-in-a-Chauffeur-Cap turned onto a side road that cut through the waterlogged field to the enclosure. The road was pitted and crumbled at the edge from under-use. Patches of grass and tough winter weeds pushed through the eroding blacktop. A gate opened at the car's approach. CCTV cameras swivelled and tracked. Now Everett saw that the road dived steeply into a cut in the ground formed by a concrete-walled bunker, invisible from car-level. At the end of the sloping concrete approach were two heavy black steel doors. The doors parted. The car drove down into darkness. A creak of tracks and gears made Everett look around. The doors closed on an ever-narrowing rectangle of light until they shut it out altogether. They were in a tunnel. The headlights picked out dead light fittings, ducts, sagging cabling, ventilation fans, steel doors with faded numbers stencilled on them. Ahead was a patch of white light. It seemed to take the Mercedes a long time to reach it. Distances and speeds, time and space were distorted in this tunnel. Ms. Villiers sat up, straightened her posture and her gloves, checked her face again in the small compact mirror. Two strokes with the lip gloss and she was all killer once more.

Everett could see Paul McCabe waiting in the white light. He looked rumpled and unironed, as if he'd been wearing these clothes when Everett's call woke him. Beside him was a short man with olive skin and an elaborately styled beard and moustache, as elegant and groomed as McCabe was unkempt, wearing a round-collared suit of ivory and grey brocade. Beside him was Colette Harte.

The car stopped. A woman in black military fatigues and a SWAT team cap stepped out of the darkness to open the door. Everett blinked, dazzled by the light pouring from the four batteries of floodlights on tripods. But he did notice the assault rifle slung across her back.

“Everett! Excellent, excellent!” Paul McCabe pumped Everett's hand. “Your trip was good, yes? We sent the good car for you, you know. VIP treatment and all that, yes yes. I'm only here five minutes myself. Bit of an early call, you know?”

Charlotte Villiers stepped out of the car. Everett thought he saw Paul McCabe bow to her—the smallest, briefest dip of the head, but a mark of subservience.

The man in the elegant suit touched his right hand to his heart.

“Mr. Singh, an honour. I am Ibrim Hoj Kerrim, plenipotentiary of E2.”

It took all Everett's control not to say,
I know, I recognise your not quite-Spanish, not quite-Moroccan accent, I've heard your voice on the radio. I've flown over the rooftops of your London
.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kerrim.”

The plenipotentiary smiled. It was the kind of smile that transforms faces. He had bright eyes and very good teeth. I would like to be able to trust you, Everett thought. I need people to trust.

“I understand you possess a jewel of great price,” Ibrim Kerrim said.

“The map of the Panoply,” Everett said. A murmur rang around the ring of people. “Yes. I worked it out.”

“A remarkable feat,” Ibrim Kerrim said. “You are a precocious talent.” Everett noticed a little jewelled hook behind the E2 plenipotentiary's left ear, like an enamelled hearing aid. He'd said something in one of the clips about language implants. Was this little ear-gem feeding him English?

“Well, my dad—,” Everett started

“An extraordinary man, extraordinary,” Paul McCabe said quickly. “Should have had a Fields Medal. Maths must be in the DNA.” For a moment Everett thought he might ruffle his hair. Everett would have had to hit him, armed soldiers or no armed soldiers.

“I'd like to see evidence of this device,” Charlotte Villiers said. You know it's in my bag, Everett thought. This was the dangerous time. Show her the Infundibulum and she might take it off him. He was surrounded by people with guns. He'd glimpsed what Charlotte Villiers kept in her smart little purse.

“It's better if I show you it working,” Everett said. “You do have the Heisenberg Gate here?”

Paul McCabe and Charlotte Villiers exchanged glances. Ibrim Kerrim said quickly, “I would like to see that. Professor McCabe?”

“As you wish, Plenipotentiary.”

A Person-in-Black opened a hatch in the tunnel wall. Beyond it was a smaller, less finished tunnel hacked into raw chalk. Lighting cables swagged along the roof, neon to neon. Heavier-duty power ducting ran along the foot of the wall. The air smelled of damp and dust and electricity. Two Persons-in-Black took the lead, then Everett with Paul McCabe, immediately behind them Colette Harte. Next came the two plenipotentiaries, last of all two more Persons-in-Black. The floor of the tunnel was gritty under Everett's feet. It sloped down to a distant hatch. Everett froze at a growing rumble that shook drops of condensation from the light-fittings, chips of chalk from the ceiling.

“We're almost exactly parallel to the Eurotunnel,” Paul McCabe said. “You'd be amazed how close we are to the tracks. Amazed. The vibration is irritating: we've had to mount the entire gate chamber on springs to damp it down. But I think the privacy's worth it—and so handy to transport links.”

“What is this?”

“Long before you were even thought of, Everett. In 1974 there was a serious plan to build a Channel Tunnel. They even did a test drilling. The economics didn't work, the political climate changed, the plan wasn't feasible—whatever, they just stopped digging. Years later they incorporated it into the main tunnel. The service shaft, however; that they shut up and left and forgot about. But it's perfect for us—until such a time as we can go public. Which reminds me.”

Paul McCabe dropped back to whisper with the plenipotentiaries. Colette Harte fell in beside Everett.

What are you doing?
she mouthed to him.

I have an idea
, he mouthed back and then said, to divert attention, “This is like
Doctor Who.”

One of the guards laughed.

The hatch at the end of the tunnel was iris-locked. Woman-in-Black bent to the reader. The laser scanned her eyeball. The door opened.

“I think you'll find, Everett, this is more what you mean,” Paul McCabe said. Lights flicked on as he stepped through the hatch. “Welcome to Earthgate Ten.”

The chamber was a dome hacked out of raw rock, ten metres in diameter, its apex lost above the ring of floodlights that poured white glare on the object that stood in the centre of the steel mesh floor: a slab of circuitry and wirings the height of a house. At the centre of the slab, an empty circle, three metres across. A ramp led up to the empty circle. No ramp led down on the other side. Heavy power cables swagged away from the pierced slab to shadowy, glossy units ranged around the chamber walls. The air hummed with power. Cables coiled, glistening in the sharp light, beneath the mesh floor. The slab was surrounded by the familiar ring of desk, computers, monitors, laptops.