Book 1 - The Man With the Golden Torc (19 page)

"I often wonder what it is the professor sees, exactly, in his
dreams. We can only guess. And whisper the odd suggestion in his ear. He’s in a
very suggestive state. Though you have to be very careful what you ask for; very
specific. Did you know there used to be pyramids in Scotland? Oh, yes; a huge
tourist attraction, in fact. But the Red King dreamed them away, and now they’re
gone, and no one remembers them but us. Your family missed that one, which I
sometimes think is rather a shame…Still, enough small changes add up, when your
family doesn’t interfere. We’re so glad you’ve come to join us, Edwin."

"I haven’t decided anything yet," I said.

"But you will," said Nathanial. "You will."

Sister Eliza chuckled abruptly. The sound she made without a
tongue was ugly, disturbing. Even Nathanial flinched a little. The corridor
turned around suddenly and spilled us out into a small stone chamber, barely
twelve feet in diameter, gloomily lit just enough to be restful on the eyes. The
walls had been roughly painted to resemble night skies, with whorls of stars and
a procession of moons in all its phases. In the centre of the room stood a
marble pedestal, and on top of that, held in place by an ornate latticework of
copper wire, was a severed human head. Male, middle-aged, slack features. From
the look of the ragged stump of the neck, whoever had cut it off hadn’t had much
practice. Someone had placed a fresh laurel wreath around the heavily lined
brow. The head wasn’t breathing, but behind the closed eyelids the eyes darted
back and forth in the rapid eye movements of the dream state. Around the base of
the pedestal someone had drawn a traditional pentagram with mathematical
precision. And around that someone had traced a series of ceremonial circles
containing signs and pictograms from half a dozen forgotten cultures. Someone
had done their homework.

Nathanial gestured for me to examine the back of the head, so I
walked around to take a look. Thick rubber tubes had been plugged roughly into
the back of the man’s head, trailing away across the floor and out the door into
the corridor, presumably all the way back up to the chemical vats. I leaned
forward for a better look and winced at the crude holes where the tubes entered.
No surgeon had done this. Someone had just drilled into the back of the skull,
and then pushed the tubes through into the exposed brain. I came back around to
study the face. It didn’t look happy or unhappy. If not for the eye movements,
I’d never have known it was still alive.

"Why just a head?" I said finally.

"Well," said Nathanial, "it wasn’t as if we really needed the
rest of him, and keeping a whole body alive and preserved would have added
greatly to our expenses. We were quite a small operation, when we started out.
Just the professor and half a dozen of his finest students…The tubes keep the
head going, and the wires trickle a constant slow current across the frontal
lobes, ensuring that he remains asleep and deep in the dream state. The tubes
feed him certain preservatives and all the necessary drugs. He could last
forever, theoretically. Ah, yes, the drugs. We haven’t explained about those
yet, have we? We’re feeding the professor a rather special cocktail of powerful
psychotropic chemicals, everything from acid to taduki to datura. All according
to the professor’s own theories. The drugs push his mind up and out while he
dreams, blasting the doors of perception right off their hinges so he can see
what lies behind, and beyond."

"Who was he, originally?" I said. "How did he come to this?"

"Well, it was all his own idea, originally," Nathanial said,
smiling in a rather self-satisfied way. "He was our professor at Thames
University, back then. Remarkable mind; quite remarkable. He became our leader,
our inspiration. He gave us these fascinating lectures, you see; all about
shamanic drugs, and dream states, and how they could be combined to access
different levels of reality. He also talked a lot about something called
experimenter’s intent, where the scientist’s intent could actually change the
outcome of the experiment he was performing. It wasn’t that great a step to
combine those ideas…

"The professor was really quite surprised when we finally went
to him, all six of his favourite students, and told him we’d found a way to
translate his theories into a workable, practical solution to all the world’s
problems. He was even more surprised when we brought him down here, showed him
what we’d done, and explained to him that he had been granted the singular
honour of being our Red King. The man who would change the world and save us all
from the Devil. In fact, when we told him exactly what we intended to do, he
reacted very negatively. Actually started to cry when we showed him the bone saw
and held him down…

"But that was all long ago. He’s done such good work since,
sleeping and dreaming for all these years, without interruption. The longer you
sleep, you see, the more deeply you dream, and the further the drugs can take
you. He dreams very deeply and very powerfully these days. I just know he’d be
so proud of what we’ve done with his help…"

"I wouldn’t bet on it," I said. "After what you did to him, if
he ever does wake up, it’ll be the end of your world."

"You don’t know him like we did," said Nathanial. "He’d
understand. He was always telling us it was our duty to go out and change the
world. And how we always had to be prepared to make sacrifices for the greater
good. And we did. We sacrificed him. You know, we’re still struggling to
understand the significance of just what it is we’re doing here. We don’t just
sit on our laurels, oh no! I sometimes wonder if perhaps the whole world, and
everything in it, is just a dream. The Devil’s dream. And that’s why the
professor is able to access it and change bits of it. If that is the case, we
must be very careful not to disturb the Devil with our changes, in case we wake
him…"

"All right," I said. "That’s it. You’re a loony. You people
don’t know anything for sure, do you? It’s all theories and guesses and
half-baked stolen philosophy."

"We’re learning by doing," said Nathanial more than a little
smugly.

"Because anything has to be better than the world we’re forced
to live in. That’s why you have to join us, Edwin. Because we’re not the enemy
your family says we are. We’re the good guys. We’re humanity’s last hope."

"I don’t think so," I said. "I’ve read the family’s reports on
what you’ve done and tried to do. The changes you’ve tried to bring about. Every
single one of them was concerned with remaking the world in your image, not
God’s. Changes to further your beliefs, your wishes, your needs. To make the
Sceneshifters powerful and important and a mighty voice in the affairs of man."

"Of course," said Nathanial. "How else can we bring about real
change? Permanent change?"

"Your dreams are so small," I said. "So petty. No wonder you
never achieved anything that mattered. I’ll never join you."

"Of course you will," said Nathanial. "In fact, you already
have. All the time you were chatting so pleasantly with Bert, we were down here
murmuring in the professor’s ear, and the Red King dreamed his little dream and
made the change so smoothly you didn’t even feel it happening. You’re one of us,
Edwin. You’ve always been one of us."

I looked down, and I was wearing a long red robe, just like him.
Just like Sister Eliza. Of course I was wearing it. It was the same robe I
always wore when I came here to visit my dear friends in the Sceneshifters. I’d
been working for them for years, ever since I first came to London, their very
own mole in the Drood family. It was good to be back among my friends, in my old
familiar robes, in this familiar place. I smiled at Nathanial and Eliza, and
they smiled back at me. It was good to be home again.

The only thing that seemed out of place…was my wristwatch. I
looked at it stupidly. Something about it nagged at my mind. Nathanial spoke to
me, but I wasn’t listening. There was something about the watch, something
important, something…special about it that I was supposed to remember. My torc
burned coldly around my throat, as though trying to protect me, though I
couldn’t think from what. I touched the wristwatch with my right hand, trailing
my fingertips across it, ignoring Nathanial’s increasingly angry words. The
watch the Armourer gave me, before I left the Hall. The reverse watch, that
could rewind time…

I hit the button, and time stopped in its tracks and shifted
into reverse. Light and sound strobed painfully around me as the watch reversed
recent time, taking me back to just before Nathanial told me I’d been changed.
And in that moment, while the future was still pliable and in flux, I drew my
Colt Repeater and shot Professor Redmond right between the eyes.

The bullet slammed through his head, blowing bits of broken
tubing and spattered brains out the back of his skull. His eyes snapped open,
and for the first time in years the Red King was awake at last. His mouth
stretched wide in a soundless scream of rage and horror, and it was clear from
his face and from his eyes that he knew what had been done to him, and with him.
And in the last few moments of his unnaturally extended life, using power
brought back from some terrible other place, the professor set himself to wiping
out everything that had been done in his name. He looked at Brother Nathanial
with his awful eyes, and Nathanial disappeared. Winking out of existence, not
real, never had been. Sister Eliza turned to flee, but the professor looked at
her, and she was gone too.

I was already heading out the door when the dream chamber
started to disappear around me. The walls painted to look like the night skies
became transparent and faded away, and I could feel the professor’s power
following me as I sprinted up the long stone corridor. There was something
behind me, but I didn’t dare look back. I burst out into the room of chemical
vats, and Bert looked around sharply in surprise. He cried out in shock as the
great vats began to fade away, but I was already out of the room and scrambling
back up the spiral staircase. Behind me, Bert’s voice cut off abruptly.

The wooden steps began to feel increasingly soft and
insubstantial under my feet, but I made it to the top, gasping for breath. I
couldn’t spare the time it would take to call up my armour, and I didn’t believe
it could protect me from Professor Redmond’s wrath anyway. I just kept running,
through the library and on into the church. The medieval stained-glass windows
had already faded away to ordinary glass. The walls were disappearing too,
revealing something behind them too terrible to look at. There were great gaps
in the floor, and I jumped desperately over them, racing for the door.

I crashed through and out into the street, panting harshly for
breath, and only then turned and looked back. The church was gone; nothing left
but a hole between the two modern buildings, like a pulled tooth. The
Sceneshifters were gone, never had been. The Red King had woken at last from his
long sleep; and he had not woken up in a good mood.

My next stop was on Shaftesbury Avenue, deep in the busy heart
of London. I was looking for the legendary Middleman. Shaftesbury Avenue is a
long road in two parts. Walk one way and all you’ll see is posh restaurants,
top-rank hotels, and theatres with old and even famous names. (Sad to say, one
of these venerable establishments currently boasted a large banner proclaiming
their next big show. Jerry Springer, the Opera—On Ice. How are the mighty
fallen; but anything to bring in the tourists.) Walk the other way, and it’s all
cheap cafés, betting shops, and adult video stores with walk-in knocking shops
on the top floor. The kind of place where a card tacked on the door advertises
the friendly availability of the lovely Vera. It doesn’t tell you that there are
in fact three lovely Veras, working eight-hour shifts, which is why the bed is
always warm. Not to mention the basement clubs where underdressed and overly
made-up hostesses encourage you to buy overpriced "champagne" for the privilege
of enjoying their company. Though usually it’s just the foreign tourists who
fall for that one these days.

I’d never met the Middleman before, but everyone knew he could
be found right in the middle of Shaftesbury Avenue, where good meets bad, and
often combines into something deliciously sinful. I was pretty sure the
Middleman would know something useful, if I could get him to talk to me. The Man
had been around, on and off the scene, ever since the sixties, and he knew
everybody, good and bad and especially in between. His great skill and passion
was in putting people together for mutual profit. If you were planning a bigger
than usual heist, an underground conspiracy, or just to take over the world some
day, the Middleman could put you in contact with every kind of specialist you’d
need. He could arrange meetings, put together a team of like-minded
professionals, or organise every step of an assassination. For a percentage.
He’d never been known to get his hands dirty himself or take a risk that hadn’t
been calculated to the smallest degree. Whatever happened, you could be sure
there were always more than enough cutouts in place so that nothing ever came
back to lodge at his door. Word was, the Middleman was so unbelievably rich
these days, after so many industrious years, that he didn’t need to do it for
the money anymore. He did it strictly for the thrill and for the challenge.

You find the Middleman behind a sleazy, deliberately run-down
Thai restaurant. From the outside, it looks decidedly appallingly grimy and
off-putting, the kind of place only a truly desperate or naïve tourist would
try. In fact, the Thai language above the door supposedly translates as Piss
Off, Foreigner, and Take Your Stupid-Looking Eyes with You. I peered in through
the fly-specked window, past the indecipherable cardboard menu, and wasn’t
surprised to find the restaurant was completely empty at a time of the evening
when it should have been at its fullest. The rickety tables were covered in
Formica, the chairs were cheap plastic and none too clean, and the linoleum
floor was unspeakable. Somehow I just knew that if you were foolish or brave
enough to enter, you’d never get anything you ordered, and if you tried to eat
it anyway, the staff would lean out the kitchen door watching you, giggling and
elbowing each other and going, Look! He’s actually eating it!