In Your Dreams (40 page)

Paul nodded. He didn't really want to hear about how nice the Fey were really. ‘Can I ask you something?' he said.

‘Of course.'

‘Thanks.' He took a moment to pull himself together. ‘Are you really dead?'

‘Oh yes.' Uncle Ernie grinned. ‘As dead as dead can be. I made very sure of that. Otherwise, I couldn't have come here. And of course, this is the only place where I'm safe.'

‘I thought so,' Paul said. ‘You died and had yourself put away in a safety deposit box in the Bank, just so as to escape from the Fey.'

‘One of my better ideas, though I say it myself. It's a bit dull being inside a cardboard box, but compared to the alternative, what'd happen to me if they got hold of me, it really isn't so bad. And of course,' Uncle Ernie added softly, ‘I have one last trick up my sleeve.' He paused, then sniffed like a tracker dog. ‘And so have you, apparently, you clever boy. Did you work it out all by yourself?'

Paul shook his head. ‘Actually, it was an accident,' he said. ‘I was down here doing the banking – JWW has an account with the Bank, you see—'

Uncle Ernie nodded. ‘I know,' he said. ‘Go on.'

‘Well,' Paul continued, ‘I was here on business like I said, and I happened to get a nosebleed. Which meant that I left some of my blood behind, when I went back Topside. Which means, doesn't it—'

‘Quite right,' Uncle Ernie said, with more than a hint of pride in his voice. ‘Very well done. You left a drop of your blood behind, just enough to keep you alive as far as the door in the cashier's office. Exactly what I did, though in my case I pricked my finger with a needle. Here it is in my box, look.' He pointed at a small bottle with a tiny red dot inside. ‘Mr Dao will give you yours when you ask him for it. A splendid fellow, Mr Dao, I knew him before he died. It's so good to know there's someone you can rely on.'

Paul thought about that. ‘No offence, but how did Mr Dao get hold of my blood? I thought it just fell on the ground.'

‘It did,' Uncle Ernie answered. ‘And there it lay, for about as long as a fifty-pound note would be left lying around if you dropped it in the middle of Oxford Circus station at the height of the rush hour. Obviously, one of the Dead found it – by smell, probably, or else they felt the heat – found it, slurped it up before anybody else could, and ran away laughing all the way to the Bank. Blood is currency here, you see; that's why you have to perform a blood sacrifice each time you want to pay in or draw money out.'

Paul had to think about that for a moment. ‘Bank charges.'

‘Essentially, yes. And if one of the inmates gets hold of even the tiniest drop of blood, they pay it into the Bank and have it credited to their account. If they manage to save up enough, they can buy a whole second of being alive again. You simply can't imagine what that means to them, once they've been down here for a while. And, clearly, the Bank's the only place safe enough to store something so indescribably valuable.' Ernie grinned unexpectedly. ‘It's what you might call their life savings.'

Don't react
, Paul told himself,
it only encourages them.
‘But what makes you think Mr Dao'll give it to me?'

‘Oh, he will. Because it's your blood, you see. Even that little drop will be enough to keep you alive long enough to return to your side of the line; and once you're there, of course, you'll be extremely grateful and send him a present. He likes presents very much; and it won't cost you anything, in real terms.'

‘It won't?'

Uncle Ernie smiled. ‘All my life I've been hopeless at cooking; can't even make toast without burning it. I've scraped enough charcoal off charred bread to smelt a ton of iron ore. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I arrived here, and found that my current account at the Bank stood at over eleven thousand slices of bread. Down here, that makes me Mohammed Al Fayed. A moment's carelessness with a grilled sausage or a slice of bacon will more than repay Mr Dao for his assistance.'

‘Oh,' Paul said, slightly stunned. ‘All right, then, fine. That's a weight off my mind, anyhow. But—'

‘But you didn't go to all the trouble of coming here just so you could figure out – very cleverly, I might add – how to get back again.' Uncle Ernie nodded seriously. ‘You came here to see me, because you need my help. Am I right?'

‘Yes.'

‘Splendid. And you need my help because when I was alive I was one of a tiny handful of humans who knew almost as much about effective magic as the Fey, and because I'm your uncle.'

Paul nodded grimly. ‘Partly.'

‘Partly?'

‘Yup. Mostly, though, because it was you who landed me in this shit in the first place.'

For a moment, Uncle Ernie looked startled; then his face relaxed into a slight frown. ‘You certainly are perceptive,' he said. ‘More so than I gave you credit for. Or did someone tell you?'

‘Countess Judy.'

‘Ah.' Uncle Ernie pursed his lips. ‘That does seem to be the sort of thing she would do. A remarkable woman and extraordinarily talented, but with an unfortunate malicious streak; she does rather tend to regard cruelty as an end in itself.'

Beside the point
. Paul glared at him. ‘So it really is true, then,' he said. ‘My parents sold me to the firm.'

‘Yes.'

‘And it was you who told the partners about me, which was why they made the offer in the first place.'

Uncle Ernie shrugged. ‘Simple heredity,' he said. ‘You could work it out on your fingers, if you wanted to. And, of course, I needed you. Both of you,' he added, looking away for a moment. ‘The Fey have got to be stopped, you see, before they start doing serious damage. As soon as I realised that I was essentially on my own – there was even a traitor inside JWW itself – I knew that I couldn't do what had to be done all by myself. I needed to get out of harm's way for a while, and I needed someone to carry on the work while I was – indisposed. So,' he added, ‘after a certain amount of heart-searching and misgivings, I involved you. Then I left.'

‘You died,' Paul said.

‘As you say, I died. You must understand, I was at the end of my resources. The orthodox Fey, led by Countess Judy, were certain to kill me very soon. The dissident movement that I'd started among the more conscientious Fey had foundered; they weren't prepared to follow me any longer, and I can't say I blame them. I'm a reasonably talented magician, though I do say it myself, but I lack the quality most needed in an inspirational leader: courage. I'm a coward, Paul, I admit it freely. Certainly no hero. You, on the other hand—'

There is only so much a person can take. ‘What is it with you people?' Paul said. ‘First I'm a natural magician, then I'm a born bauxite-scryer, now I'm the last, best hope of humanity against whoever these Fey are supposed to be. All right, maybe that's true. But for the last time—' He was almost shouting by now. ‘For the last fucking time, I am
not
a hero. All I did was fill in forms and sit on a poxy little dragon. I can't do the job and I don't want it. What part of that are you having problems with?'

‘You,' Uncle Ernie went on imperturbably, ‘on the other hand, are a textbook archetype; if I was still teaching, I'd take you along to lectures and point at you so the class could take notes. You're the accidental hero, the dear little chap with furry feet and glasses who sneaks under the gap in the fence that's too small for the musclebound swordsmen to get through. You should be, after all. I bred you that way.'

Just when you think you've heard it all – ‘You what?'

‘Bred you.' Uncle Ernie nodded serenely. ‘Hell of a job. Our family – your father's side – have all the magic and no balls; your mother's side have the hearts of lions and the brains of plankton. You have no idea how much effort went into persuading your mother even to go out with your father, let alone marry him. Thank God for JWW's patent love philtre, is all I can say; and even then, it wasn't easy. In the end I had to pump both of them so full of the stuff it's a wonder they didn't float down the aisle like a couple of Poohsticks. But that wasn't what you wanted to talk to me about, was it?'

For two and a quarter minutes, Paul couldn't say a word. The cumulative effect was too overpowering. He desperately wanted not to believe a word of it; he'd have given anything for a tiny drop of scepticism, the slightest grounds for doubt. Unfortunately, deep down it was like finally remembering something that's been on the tip of your tongue all day – a name or the missing middle bit of a song lyric – he'd known all this, somehow, and forgotten it a very long time ago. He knew for certain that it was true, though how he knew was another matter entirely. ‘You bastard,' he said eventually. ‘You complete bastard. How could you?'

Uncle Ernie raised an eyebrow at him, Spockwise. ‘I'm going to let you in on a little secret,' he said, ‘something that very few people in the whole world know, but it's very important and likely to prove extremely useful to you in later life, assuming you have any. In all human history,' he went on, ‘there have been exactly two recorded and verified instances of a genuine coincidence; and there's a considerable body of influential academic opinion that reckons one of them's a fix. Accordingly, whenever you run into something that looks like a coincidence, the first questions you should ask yourself are: who's buggering me about this time, and why are they doing it? There now,' he added, ‘I've just given you a gift whose value is beyond rubies, and all you can do is stare at me with your mouth open, like a bad-mannered koi carp. You still haven't told me what it is you want, and time's getting on. We do have time down here, you know, lots of it; quantitatively speaking, the difference between here and Topside is like the difference between the Pacific Ocean and a paddling pool. Even so, I wouldn't leave it too long, if I were you. It'd be an awful bore if Judy figured out what you've done before you get back to life.' He gave Paul a jagged grin, like a rip in the canvas of a smiling portrait. ‘You
do
want to go back, don't you?'

‘I suppose so,' Paul said weakly. ‘Though it's not nearly the same clear-cut issue it would've been a few days ago. All right,' he said with an effort, ‘I suppose I've got to do it, whatever it is you want me to do. But—' If he'd been listening to himself at that moment, he'd have been impressed, or thought it was somebody else talking; somebody brave and firm and forceful, a non-taker of crap from anybody; a hero, even. ‘But if I manage to get this bloody horrible job done, that's it, all right? No more pulling my strings and secret destinies and little odd jobs that'll kill me and that nobody else can do. The rest of my life's my own. Understood?'

Uncle Ernie laughed. ‘You remind me of your father when he was young,' he said, ‘only without the colossal stupidity and total lack of charm. Yes, understood. After this is over, any messes you get into will be entirely your own fault. Will that do?'

Paul thought about it, then nodded. ‘Fine,' he said, ‘I'll settle for that. So, what've I got to do?'

Brief, uncomfortable silence. ‘Why are you asking me?' Uncle Ernie said.

‘Huh?'

‘Why are you asking me? I don't know what's going on Topside, do I? I've been dead for months. You're the one who came down here to ask me questions.'

‘Oh,' Paul said. ‘But I thought—'

‘You were supposed,' Uncle Ernie added sternly, ‘to have a Plan.'

‘Ah.'
Also
, Paul added to himself,
fuck.
‘Well, I did have a plan, but I seem to have lost it somewhere. Or your friend Judy wiped it out of my mind while I was asleep.'

‘You mean—' Uncle Ernie stared at him for a moment as if he'd come across a winged chip snuggled up next to his battered cod. ‘You went to all this trouble,
died
, and you've forgotten what it was you needed to ask me?'

‘Yes,' Paul said; and if he'd been a really heroic hero, he'd probably have scowled and asked his uncle if he wanted to make anything of it. But he didn't.

‘Wonderful. Absolutely bloody marvellous.' Uncle Ernie rolled his eyes. ‘In that case, my young apprentice, I have a nasty feeling we're screwed.'

That wasn't really what Paul wanted to hear. ‘Hang on,' he said desperately. ‘What if I had another look in that stone thing—?'

‘How?' Uncle Ernie snapped. ‘What with? You're dead. You can't see, and you can't take it with you. I take back what I said just now; you're
exactly
like your father, except possibly not quite as bright. Dear God, how could anybody be so pathetically—?'

‘All
right.
' The hero voice again. ‘Don't go all to pieces at me now, I can't cope. We'll just have to do the best we can, that's all.'

Under other circumstances, it'd have been interesting watching Uncle Ernie pulling himself together; you could practically hear the nuts and bolts tightening. ‘Let's do that, shall we?' he said, with just the faintest of sighs. ‘Start at the beginning. You've got my box.'

‘Box.'

‘
Box.
' Uncle Ernie managed to keep his balance on the edge of hysteria, but only just. ‘Cardboard box. I left it with some lawyers. You
did
get it, didn't you?'

‘Yes.'

Visible relief. ‘Thank God for that.'

‘They had the nerve to charge me a hundred . . .'

‘Quiet.' Paul had the good grace to shut up. ‘Now then, in the box you should have found my personal shield.'

Paul nodded. ‘Sea Scout badge.'

‘That's right. Now, so long as you've got that, you really haven't got anything to worry about, because—'

‘They've got it.'