Here Comes the Sun (19 page)

Jane made a contrite sort of breathless gasping noise, and they continued their climb in silence, or at least without words, for a while. Eventually, Jane bit her lip.

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘And I do appreciate you coming along to introduce me. Thanks.'

Ganger smiled. ‘Think nothing of it,' he said. ‘That's fine.'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘I said that's fine.'

‘I'm sorry,' Jane shouted back, ‘I can't hear you for the blood pumping in my ears.'

‘It's not important.'

‘Sorry?'

‘I said it's . . . Nothing.'

‘Are we there yet?'

Ganger opened his mouth, thought better of it, and nodded. In front of them, its drawbridge lowered over nothing at all and resting on even less, was the gatehouse of the Castle in the Air.

Over the keystone of the arch there was a board of wood.Wind at barometric pressure had long since scoured it of varnish, but still faintly visible were the words:
painted in faded white. Jane raised an eyebrow.

‘We tried calling it that for a while,' Ganger explained, ‘but it never seemed to catch on somehow. You wait there while I knock.'

He advanced up to the massive gate and lifted the knocker, using both hands and putting his back into it. He managed to raise it a full inch before he had to let go.

‘It's not a real knocker, you see,' he said, rubbing his arms gingerly. ‘Or at least it's real, but it's an ideal knocker. You know, the way knockers should be in an ideal universe. And in an ideal universe, people take a lot more exercise than we do.'

‘Um.'

‘So,' Ganger went on, ‘I guess we'll have to do the next best thing.'

He stooped slightly and walked down under the gate. Jane followed, her belief not so much suspended as dangling by a thread.

‘Mind how you go from now on,' Ganger called out to her as they emerged into the outer yard. ‘The whole of this place is an Excluded Liability Zone.'

Jane blinked. ‘Excuse me?' she said.

‘Excluded Liability Zone,' Ganger repeated. ‘Absolutely necessary, in view of the sort of work they do here.
You see, if we could be held accountable for any of the information that we pass on from here - in perfectly good faith, you understand - we'd be in court so fast our feet wouldn't touch. Talking of which, look out for tripwires.'

‘Tripwires.'

Ganger nodded. ‘And dogs, of course. It's part of the training programme, you see.'

‘Dogs I can understand,' Jane said, thinking of postmen again. ‘But why tripwires?'

‘We deliver supernatural promptings to some of the best-defended people in the cosmos,' Ganger replied with a hint of pride. ‘You know the sort of thing. Merchant princes who won't clinch a deal unless they get an okay from their astrologer. Lunatic third-world dictators who take their policy guidelines from the spirits of their ancestors. Identical twin brothers of Latin American drug barons. When you're on a job like that, tripwires come as light relief. And the worst part of it is,' Ganger continued, grinning, ‘you have to keep whistling. It's the Code, you see.'

‘Um.'

‘Whistling, scattering rubber bands everywhere and never turning up with a Recorded Delivery unless you're sure the recipient is out. It's a point of honour. They're very strict about it.'

Directly under their feet the sun chugged past, twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Was it Jane's imagination, or did the pilot wave? Ganger stopped and straightened his tie.

‘Right,' he said, ‘we're here. Now then, I have a strange feeling you're going to do all right here.'

‘Funny you should mention that,' Jane replied. ‘So have I.'

‘Naturally,' Ganger said. ‘Think about it.'

Bjorn hesitated.

Some hard things have been said about him recently, so the record should be set straight. He had his failings, true, but when it came to balls, he had more of them than Dunlop and Slazenger put together. Equipped with an axe, a home-made grappling hook and Great-grandmama's washing-line, he was getting ready to burgle the Portals of the Sunset.

He reminded himself to stay cool, but it wasn't really necessary. Slowly and methodically, he checked his equipment, pulled his mask (one of Old Gretchen's black legwarmers with two eye-holes cut in it) over his face and crept forwards.

About here, somewhere, there should be an invisible electric fence.

He knew all about the fence. A long time ago, when he was working on Security, he and Thick Mick and Kevin the Pisser had had the job of installing it, one wet Friday afternoon. As he had anticipated, it did not detain him long.

The searchlights mounted on Number Three and Number Four observation towers would have been a serious hazard, if it wasn't for the fact that keeping the bearings oiled and in good repair had been the responsibility of Old Nobby from Maintenance ever since the Fall of Man. Nobby had long since worked out what axle grease was for. He ate it.

So far, so good. There were three machine-gun nests in Number Five observation tower; but what with the cutbacks and everything, the gunners were never issued with more than five rounds of ammunition each per year, and they were under strict orders to save those for the twenty-one-gun salute for the Commandant's birthday. Given this limitation, the gunners (probably still Daft Terry and Gormless Dave, even after all these years)
tended to spend their watch in the guardhouse playing endless games of dominoes, which somehow or other neither of them ever seemed to win.

Having penetrated as far as the outer perimeter fence, Bjorn stopped and assessed the task now facing him. This was where the fun started.

For reasons which need not concern us here, nobody in the village had ever seen the need to spend good money on a pair of wirecutters. Bjorn, who had spent his meagre savings playing the Speak Your Weight machines at the Wolfhound bus depot on his way out, was therefore going to have to improvise. Over it, or through it.

He decided against over it. If memory served him correctly, the posts holding it up were put in by some friends of his from the Department of Works, and so the chances of it bearing his weight were not high. Through it, however, meant cutting a hole through the wire mesh without waking the entire guard. He frowned, and checked through his rucksack for inspiration.

Having rejected the spare pair of underpants, the roll of extra strong mints, the broken watch and the July 1985 edition of
StreetBike
, he was left with a tin opener, a leaky felt-tip pen and a Zambian Army Knife. The latter item had one overwhelming advantage over its Swiss rival which outweighed its various drawbacks in Bjorn's estimation. It was given away free with litre cans of lawnmower gearbox oil. He took it out of the rucksack and fumbled for the sawblade attachment.

It says something about the quality of Departmental fencing wire that Bjorn was through and out the other side in three minutes flat. (For the record, when the Zambian Army wants a fence cut, they don't hang around breaking their fingernails trying to get the sawblade out; they get on the radio for a squadron of MiGs.)

According to the periphery defences' design specification, there are seventeen acres of minefield between the inner and outer perimeter fences. According to the latest Security Department stock audit, the Department possesses five mines, at least three of which were in working order when last inspected. Bjorn gritted his teeth and ran for it. There are times in a man's life when he just has to ride his luck.

Which brought him, breathless but unscathed, to the foot of the inner perimeter fence. This was rather more of a challenge, since it hadn't been installed by the Department but taken over without substantial modification from the chicken farm which had been on the site before the Department requisitioned it. Here Bjorn suffered his first major setback. He tore the right leg of his trousers, about an inch below the knee.

 

‘The thing to remember in this job,' said the Dream-Master General, ‘is never to turn your back on small dogs.'

Jane nodded. ‘Right,' she said. ‘I think I can remember that. And all the rest of it,' she added, ‘such as finding the recipient, climbing in through locked and barred windows, all that sort of stuff; I suppose that just comes by light of nature.'

The Dream-Master gave her a disapproving look. ‘All right, Miss Clever,' he said, ‘we'll come on to the various procedures in due course. We can't run before we can walk, you know. I was just telling you, for your own good, you look out for small dogs.'

‘I always have,' Jane replied, with feeling. ‘Especially when sitting down in a strange house. Look, I didn't mean to sound cocky, it's just that I want to get on with it. The practical side, I mean.'

The Dream-Master nodded. ‘All in good time,' he said. ‘Now, first you'll do your basic training. That's effecting
entry, recipient identification drill, and elementary brain infiltration. That's the easy part.'

‘Um.'

‘The tricky part,' the Dream-Master went on, ‘is getting out again afterwards.'

 

Behind the rail of Number Nine observation tower, Trooper 2314 Starspear identified his target and took careful aim. He sighted along the broad barrel, checked that his feet were braced and his arm was high and rigid, breathed deeply in and smoothly out, and . . .

‘Unlucky,' observed Trooper 8345 Moonblade. He walked over to the board, pulled out the darts, and placed his feet on the chalk line.

‘Double six for game,' he remarked confidently.

At the bottom of the tower, Bjorn paused and unwound ten feet of washing-line from inside his anorak. It was a long time since he'd done anything like this - in fact, the most recent occasion he could remember was when it was his turn to raid the Canteen at Destiny for digestive biscuits - but there are some things you just don't forget. He flexed his fingers and deftly attached the grappling-hook to the line with three superimposed granny-knots.

Far above his head - and below his feet too, for that matter, but let's not confuse the issue - the stars twinkled. A stray photon or so glanced harmlessly off the tines of the hook as he whirled it three times round his head and let fly.

There are, of course, other things that you
do
forget, and the art of throwing grappling-hooks is one of them. After a few minutes of serious thought, Bjorn picked himself up, rubbed the back of his head vigorously, and set about rewinding the rope round his forearm in long, slack loops.

‘Double two for game,' said Trooper 8345 Moonblade
grimly. He steadied himself, threw his weight forward on to the front foot in the approved manner, and . . .

. . . And watched incredulously as a big black hook appeared over the rail of the tower, buried one of its talons in the dartboard, and whisked it off the wall and away into the darkness.

Far below, he could just hear a soft thud, followed by a faint cry.

‘I think we'll have to call that a draw, Dave,' said Trooper 2314 Starspear, just managing to force the words out of his mouth before the whoop of triumphant relief beat them to it. Seven kreuzers had been riding on the outcome, and he had been on double one for the last six throws.

‘Some bastard nicked our dartboard,' replied Trooper 8345 Moonblade furiously. ‘Did you see that, Nev? Some bastard just . . .'

There was a whooshing sound, and the hook reappeared, hovered in the air for, say, a two-fiftieth of a second, and fell on to the rail. As it retreated, one of the tines caught and held firm.

‘I think there's something in the rules about it,' persevered Trooper 2314 Starspear. ‘I think what it actually says is if the dartboard gets eaten by a passing column of soldier ants, but it's the same thing really . . .'

‘Nev,' whispered his colleague urgently, ‘there's someone climbing up the tower.'

They looked at each other.

‘We're being invaded, Dave,' said Trooper 2314 Starspear. ‘Look, don't we have to do something, or . . . ?'

Trooper 8345 Moonblade gave him a long stare. ‘Yeah,' he said, ‘sure we do. We report it.'

Below them they could hear grunts and soft oaths, such as might be made by (for example) a large man climbing painfully up a thin nylon rope without wearing gloves.

‘Report it?' repeated Trooper 2314 Starspear. ‘You sure? I mean, don't we just, like . . . ?' He pointed to his rifle, which was leaning against the corner of the far rail. His colleague shook his head vigorously, dislodging various items.

‘Don't talk bloody soft, Nev, for crying out loud,' whispered Trooper 8345 Moonblade urgently. ‘For all we know, if we . . . start anything, it could be a thing. You know, diplomatic implement. We could really be in trouble. Just hold your water, wait till they've gone and report it, right?'

‘But.' Inside Trooper 2314 Starspear's head, everyday civilian logic battled with military logic. ‘But what if they, like, attack us, Dave?'

Trooper 8345 Moonblade stared past him to the rail, where a large hand was reaching up and scrabbling for a hold. He swallowed hard.

‘Use your brain, son,' he hissed. ‘We hide, right?'

Breathing hard, Bjorn hauled himself up to chin level, swung a leg over the rail, and flopped on to the floor of the tower. He lay for a few moments where he had fallen, catching his breath and swearing. Then he raised himself on his elbows and looked about him.

Nobody here. Well, he'd guessed that from the fact that he'd got this far without being shot. The odd thing was, though, that the only thing that gave you the impression of the place being deserted was the actual absence of people. Everything else pointed to active occupation; the still-warm mugs of tea, the glowing single-bar electric fire, the two rifles leaning against the rail, the forage caps hung on the radio aerial, the two pairs of shoes visible under the blackout curtain . . .