The Faeman Quest

Twenty-Three

Henry had the taxi drop them off at Mr Fogarty’s old house. It was as good a base as any for their operations in the Analogue World; and better than most. Clearly nobody was using it and, situated as it was at the end of a cul-de-sac, it was not overlooked and there were no casual passers-by – all reasons, no doubt, why Mr Fogarty had bought it in the first place. After his experience with D. I. Tyneside, what Henry wanted, quite desperately now, was somewhere quiet where he could think and talk to Blue in private without interruption.

As they closed the kitchen door behind them, Blue asked, ‘Did he have some sort of living room? I find it a bit creepy in here.’

So, in fact, did Henry, although that was mainly old memories. ‘Yes, he did. It’s a bit cluttered – at least it used to be.’

It still was, mainly with piles of Mr Fogarty’s abandoned books, but there was room on the couch for them to sit down side by side. Henry reached for Blue’s hand. ‘What do you think?’

‘You know what I think: I told you at the site. I suppose Mella came to visit your mother.’

Henry pursed his lips. ‘You think she used a portal indoors and that’s what happened to the house?’

‘Yes.’

‘You think she’s all right?’ Henry took a deep breath and said it: ‘Still alive?’

Blue looked sober, but certain. ‘Yes.’

‘Any ideas about where she may have gone now?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Blue told him. ‘Obviously, the Realm. ‘

‘Yes, but the Realm’s a big place.’ It was, in fact, a whole planet.

‘I think we might be able to narrow it down a little,’ Blue said. ‘Where a portal opens up depends on how the controls are set. Well, you know I said she must have got hold of an old control?’

Henry nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t you wonder where she might have found one?’

‘Well, yes, I did, but I thought…’ He waved his hands vaguely in the air.

Blue waited a polite second for him to explain. When he didn’t, she said, ‘I thought she might have found one here.’

‘ Here here?’ Henry asked. ‘Here in this place? Mr Fogarty’s house?’

‘Unless you left one at your old home, there is nowhere else.’

‘No,’ Henry said thoughtfully, ‘I didn’t leave one at home.’ He’d managed to lose one at home years ago, but that was a different matter. If he couldn’t find it, Mella wasn’t going to stumble on it either. What Blue said was making sense. Where else would Mella get hold of a portal control in the Analogue World except at Mr Fogarty’s house? Their daughter must have come here first, before she went off to visit her grandmother. Which would make sense as well: he’d told her so much about Mr Fogarty the old boy must have felt like a hero to her. Besides, if she’d used any of the old node-to-node portals there was a node behind Mr Fogarty’s buddleia bush.

‘If it was a control that belonged to Mr Fogarty, it would probably be set to the Purple Palace,’ Blue said. ‘Or his old lodge in the grounds.’

Henry looked at her in admiration. She was absolutely right. Mr Fogarty only ever used portals to move from his home to the Palace and back again. A thought occurred to him. ‘She might have reset it.’

‘I don’t think she did,’ Blue said. ‘I don’t think she meant to use a portal at all. Why would she? She’s only just arrived in the Analogue World. She wants to meet your mother, and probably your mother’s girlfriend if I know our daughter. She wants to explore and see strange Analogue sights. She doesn’t want to go home yet. Besides, Mella knew how dangerous it was to use those old controls indoors. I think she triggered the control by accident and managed to blow up your mother’s home in the process. Fortunately there didn’t seem to be anybody else in there at the time.’

‘Oh my God,’ Henry exclaimed. How was he going to explain this to his mother? Then it suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t have to. He felt a delicious twinge of wicked guilt. He pulled his mind back to the important thing, which certainly wasn’t his mother. ‘You’re quite sure Mella wasn’t hurt when the house collapsed?’

‘I’m quite sure she wasn’t there when the house collapsed. The follower found no sign of bodies – I told you that. What it did find was Mella’s energy trace. So Mella had been there, but obviously wasn’t there when the house came down.’

‘I’m not getting this,’ Henry said. ‘What do you think happened?’

‘The house didn’t collapse when the portal opened – it collapsed when it closed. That’s the way it worked with the old controls. I think Mella must have opened it accidentally, then realised there was the danger of an explosion when it closed again. So she went through so she’d be on the right side if there was an explosion: she’s quite clever, our Mella. At least she knows how to look after herself.’

‘So she went back to the Realm, probably the Purple Palace?’

‘That would be my guess,’ Blue said.

‘So we go home now, find her and ground her for the next ten years?’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Wait a minute: if she only went through to be safe, wouldn’t she come right back again? Your follower devil said there was nobody in the wreckage, so she probably hasn’t met my mother the way she planned, so -’

‘There’s somebody at the back of the house.’ Blue looked up. ‘I saw them passing the window.’

‘It’ll be kids,’ Henry said dismissively. Kids sometimes came nosing round the place – he remembered from the old days when he’d come here to feed Hodge. ‘What do you think? Wouldn’t she come straight back? Anyway, she’d want to see if the place really had exploded – it didn’t always happen with the old controls.’

‘She might want to come straight back, but she mightn’t be able to,’ Blue said. ‘Sometimes closing the portal actually broke those old controls. She wouldn’t be able to come back until she got a new one. Or at least reached the House Iris portal. Except she won’t be able to use it because I’ve told Chief Portal Engineer Peacock not to let her.’

‘So,’ said Henry, ‘if the old control didn’t break she’s probably skulking somewhere near Mother’s house, what’s left of it. But if it did, she’s probably back home in the Purple Palace trying to get hold of another control.’ He frowned. ‘And we’re here, miles away from both.’ He turned to look at Blue. ‘Should we try portalling back to the Palace or -’

There was a loud, firm knock on the back door. The sound reverberated through the empty house. Henry felt Blue stiffen beside him. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked.

‘It’ll be an insurance salesman,’ Henry said. Insurance salesmen sometimes tried their luck door-to-door in this area. He remembered that too from his days feeding Hodge. ‘I’ll tell him to go away.’ He stood up and headed for the door, then stopped. ‘I’m not sure we should go back to the Palace. I mean, if that’s where she went, she could well have come back again by now and even if she is there, she’d certainly be headed back here again by the time we found her.’

The knocking came again. ‘Coming! Coming!’ Henry shouted. To Blue he said, ‘The other possibility if she has gone back is that Madame Cardui will catch her, but if that happens, Cynthia will let us know. So when you take everything into consideration, the sensible thing has to be for us to go back to my mother’s house, what’s left of it, and search for her there: you might even send your follower demon out again. And if she’s not there, we wait, because it most likely means she’s not there yet and will turn up eventually. What do you think?’

‘I think you have the most extraordinary mind,’ Blue said.

‘Do you really?’ Henry said, pleased.

‘Perhaps you’d better deal with the salesman,’ Blue said as the knocking repeated.

‘Yes,’ Henry said. ‘Yes.’ As he walked towards the kitchen, he called back over his shoulder, ‘At least we know what we have to do now. At least we have a plan of action. ’ He entered the kitchen and saw the outline of the salesman silhouetted through the frosted glass of the back door. ‘Coming!’ he called again, cheerfully. He twisted the Yale lock. ‘If it’s insurance, I’m afraid -’

The door smashed in, hurling him backwards off balance. ‘Get the Queen!’ someone snapped. Then a figure hurtled towards him and, surprised though he was, Henry punched it in the face.

‘Where is she?’ someone asked querulously.

‘Yipes!’ gasped the man Henry had hit. He was dressed in black and masked, like somebody who’d gone to a fancy-dress party as a ninja. Henry kicked him between the legs and he jackknifed forward, then fell heavily to his knees.

‘Come on, George.’ An old man stepped through the open doorway. Even at a glance Henry recognised him as Silas Brimstone. But Brimstone was locked up in some lunatic asylum, eating flies. Henry aimed another kick, at the idiot ninja’s head this time. The old man – Brimstone – raised a spell cone.

‘Get down!’ Blue’s voice called. Henry glanced behind him to find her wielding a modified stimlus, the type that didn’t need contact. It had an effective range of about twelve feet and he was directly in the line of fire. He dropped to the floor and rolled, but for some reason Blue was having difficulty firing.

‘He sucker-punched me!’ gasped the ninja and though his voice was overlaid with astonishment, Henry recognised it immediately. The voice belonged to Jasper Chalkhill.

Both Chalkhill and Henry climbed to their feet. Blue twisted her body violently and her stimlus, at long last, discharged a bolt of energy. It caught Chalkhill on the shoulder as he was reaching for Henry and spun him round, ripping off his mask. Brimstone cracked the spell cone and giggled as a filament net emerged like a plume of smoke. The thing enmeshed Blue at once, causing her to drop the stimlus, then reached for Henry. He jerked backwards, but it had his arm. His old allergy to magic cut in, so that he threw up on the floor. ‘Oh, Henry!’ he heard Blue say, whether in exasperation or sympathy he couldn’t be sure. Then the filaments drew them closer together so that he was pressed against Blue, which was nice but didn’t last long because he was having trouble breathing, then couldn’t breathe at all, then he was sliding, sliding into darkness…

… darkness, silent darkness.