The Man with the Golden Torc

CHAPTER NINE Dream a Little Dream for Me

So I went back down into the Underground and took the Tube to Leicester Square station. No one wanted to sit next to me in the carriage; in fact, people actually got up to move farther away from me. It took me a while to realise I still stank of musk from the Kit Kat Club. Still, several women did smile at me. And a couple of men. I finally emerged from the station and wandered up St. Martin’s Lane. The evening was drawing on now, and people were out on the town in happily chattering groups. No one paid me any attention, so I guessed the musk was wearing off in the open air. It felt good to be safely anonymous again.

St. Martin’s Lane is in a nice enough area; all theatres and restaurants, pleasant stores and businesses. All very civilised, in fact. I followed the curving street around till I came to the next address on my list: the very secret home and lair of the Sceneshifters. Probably the most dangerous group on the scene, in their own small way. And so tricky to deal with that I’d never been allowed to have any direct contact with them, even though they were quite definitely on my patch. The Sceneshifters were the exclusive responsibility of a special group within the family; and I had been instructed very firmly to keep my distance.

But, things change.

Essentially, the Sceneshifters work behind the scenes of reality, changing small details here and there, to turn the state of the world to their advantage. There are members of the Drood family whose full-time job it is to detect these changes and put them back the way they were. We assume we’re winning, on the grounds that the Sceneshifters don’t actually rule the world yet. As far as we can tell…

From the outside, their address looked like just another building, part of a fairly modern row with bright white stone and oversized windows, but there was something about the place…something that raised the hackles on your neck and made you disinclined to linger. People passing by increased their pace and averted their eyes without even realising they were doing it. I stood before the main entrance, scowling thoughtfully. A field agent learns to depend on his instincts, and every instinct I had was yelling at me to get the hell away from this awful place. Just standing there, I felt…uneasy, disturbed, in peril of both body and soul. As though if I went inside, I might see things I couldn’t stand to see, learn things I didn’t want to know. Even with the torc around my throat, shielding me from outside influence, it still took all my willpower to hold my ground.

As I stared intently at the building, refusing to look away, the details began to slip and flow, like a melting painting. As though a top coat was being washed away, revealing the true image beneath. Just like the family reports said, the Sceneshifters’ headquarters was protected by an uncertainty spell. You had to be certain that what you were looking for was there, or it wouldn’t be. It all came down to mental discipline. Which would be a shock for certain members of my family, who’d been known to say loudly in classrooms that I didn’t possess any.

As I watched, scowling fiercely with concentration, the office building before me just faded away like a passing thought to reveal the true structure beneath. An old church, with a massive wood and plaster fronting, an arched doorway, and medieval stained-glass windows. It was half the size of the modern buildings towering on either side of it, but there was a basic strength and solidity to the place that was somehow reassuring. My instincts were still prickling, but at least I didn’t feel like running anymore. I strode up to the front door and knocked like I had a reason to be there.

When you’re dealing with people who change reality on a daily basis, there’s not much point in trying to sneak in. They probably knew I was coming to see them before I did. And I certainly wasn’t planning on throwing my weight around; there were very definite limits to what my armour could be expected to protect me from. When the door opened, I planned on being extremely polite and using all the reasonableness at my command. I also planned on smiling a lot, and running like a rabbit if my clothes started changing colour.

The door opened to reveal a cheerful-looking soul, a reassuringly ordinary guy in grubby workman’s overalls. He was about my age, a bit scruffy, with a pleasant face and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth that he didn’t bother to take out when he was speaking. He nodded easily to me.

"Hello, squire. Looking for the Sceneshifters, are you? Thought so. I’m Bert. I do all the real work around here, while they’re all off saving the world. Someone has to check the state of the tubing and mop up the spills. Fancy a nice cup of tea? I’ve got the kettle on…Well suit yourself. Don’t say I didn’t offer. Come on in, come on in…So, you’re the new rogue Drood, are you? Edwin Drood? Nice to meet you. Sort of thought you’d be taller, somehow…Never mind. Come here looking for sanctuary, have you?"

"News does get around," I said dryly as soon as I could get a word in edgeways. I stepped inside the church, and he shut the door behind me. I listened carefully, but I didn’t hear him lock it. The interior was typical old-fashioned religious, a bit on the gloomy side, with brightly coloured light streaming in through the stained-glass windows. But there were no pews, no altar, and the only religious symbols were those originally carved into the old stone walls. It might be a church, but clearly no one had worshipped here for some time.

"Oh, we always know what’s going on," Bert said cheerfully. "We hear everything the moment it happens, and sometimes several months before. I’ve always said we could make a fortune with a good gossip magazine (very upmarket, nothing sleazy), but I can’t even get it on the committee agenda. Got their heads in the clouds, that lot. Come to join us, have you, Edwin? You should, you know; we’re doing important work here, when we’re not having endless arguments about what constitutes a pivotal moment in history and which way we should tip the balance. I ask you, who really believes World War Two could have been averted by giving Hitler back his missing testicle? Still, tell you what, squire; you come along with me and I’ll give you the basic tour while we’re waiting for the others to show up. How would that be?"

"Won’t the others mind, us starting without them?" I said cautiously. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find here, but Bert sure as hell wasn’t it.

"Course they won’t mind! You’re expected, squire; we’ve all been looking forward to you turning up here. The things we could achieve with a Drood on our side! And we could use some new blood in the group, to be honest. Not to mention someone with a propensity for actually getting things done, instead of just sitting around talking about it. I swear we’d be ruling this world by now if the committee could just get their heads out of their arses once in a while."

He headed for the back of the church, his hands in his overall pockets and his cigarette still protruding jauntily from one corner of his mouth. I followed along, keeping a wary eye out for sneak attacks or mutating realities, but it all seemed very calm and peaceful.

"So," I said casually, "what is this important work that you’re doing here, Bert?"

"We’re defeating the Devil, one day at a time." For the first time Bert sounded entirely serious. "He rules this world, you know. Not God. He hasn’t been in charge for ages. I mean, you only have to look around you to see that for yourself. The world wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not this…mess. We were supposed to live in paradise. But something happened long ago, and the Devil’s been playing games with humanity ever since, the bastard. Telling us lies, driving us to despair, torturing us every day with false hopes, impossible ambitions, and chances snatched away at the last moment. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do bad guys thrive? Because the guy in charge gets a kick out of it, that’s why. He’s making a Hell out of this world, just for the fun of it. Some say the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to make us believe love was real…"

"Oh," I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, except perhaps Have you stopped taking any medication recently?

"But bit by bit we’re changing the world the Devil made," Bert said cheerfully. "Rewriting reality and transforming the world into something finer and fairer. We’re stealing back the world, inch by inch, and making it something fit for people to live in. We’re all going home, to paradise. That’s why the founding members chose this place for our HQ. Centuries of accumulated faith and sanctity help keep the Devil from noticing we’re here."

"So the Devil hasn’t always ruled the world?" I said carefully. "God was in charge, once?"

"Oh, yes…Word is the Devil snatched control of the world away from God after he persuaded the Romans to crucify the Christ. The Son of God was never supposed to die! He was supposed to stay with us forever, teaching us how to live proper lives. But with him gone, the Devil sneaked in and stole creation away from the Creator. And we’ve been stuck with the bastard ever since. Screwing up everyone’s lives, in his own private torture chamber, just for a giggle. This way, squire. Mind the step."

Bert led me out the back of the church and into a large antechamber packed with men and women sitting around long tables. They all wore bright red robes, complete with hoods. They were reading newspapers, magazines, and books, and making careful notes in their laptops. A few looked up and nodded to Bert before returning to their work. All four walls were lined with bookshelves crammed full of books and bound magazines from floor to ceiling.

"Here is where we study the world," Bert said grandly. "Through its media, its history books, and every up-to-date commentary. There’s another room where they do nothing but watch every single news channel, all day long. We have to rotate those people on a regular basis, or they start developing conspiracy theories, and next thing you know you’ve got a schism on your hands. And of course there’s our wide-ranging net of supporters and fellow travellers tucked away in governments and religions and big businesses all across the world, keeping us aware of what’s really going on. If you knew what Bill Gates was planning to do next, you’d shit yourself. We’re always looking for that crucial factor, that pivotal moment, when tipping over one small domino will set all the others toppling…Come on, come on; lots more to see."

He led the way down a long wooden spiral stairway that creaked alarmingly under our weight and finally gave out onto a low-ceilinged stone chamber deep beneath the church, full of bubbling chemical vats almost as tall as I was and a lot broader. Garishly coloured liquids surged up out of the vats and along through what seemed like miles of thick rubber tubing stapled to the walls and ceiling. All around there were gauges and valves and wheels and some fairly primitive filtering systems. I’d seen stills that were more complicated. Bert darted back and forth across the chamber, fussing over the equipment, adjusting a valve here and turning a wheel there. He tapped one gauge with a knuckle, sniffed at the reading, and then turned to smile proudly at me.

"It’s a very delicate setup," he said, patting a nearby vat affectionately. "Needs constant monitoring, of course. The founders put all this together, years ago, and they won’t let me change anything. Even though they’re far too intellectual to actually come down here and get their hands dirty on a regular basis. Not that I want them messing about with things, now that I’ve got everything running just right."

He looked at me, inviting me to say something. I hadn’t a clue what to say about his precious setup, so I retreated to something else that had been bothering me.

"If the church’s sanctity is enough to hide you from the Devil, why do you need the uncertainty spell as well?"

Bert looked distinctly disappointed in me but soldiered on with his answer. "That’s not exactly a spell, as such. More what you’d call a side effect, really. Comes from the Red King, down in the dream chamber. Or Professor Redmond, as he was. We call him the Red King after the character in Through the Looking-Glass. Remember him? He was fast asleep and dreaming, and everyone was afraid to wake him, because they believed he was dreaming the world and everything in it. So if he did wake up, they’d all cease to exist. Would you like to meet him? We don’t normally show him off to visitors, but then you’re special, aren’t you?"

I was still trying to form an answer to that one when we were interrupted by the arrival of a man and a woman through the door on the far side of the chamber. They were both wearing the ubiquitous long red robes, and they both carried a definite air of authority about them. They were middle-aged, with long, ascetic faces and severe expressions. Bert just nodded to them, conspicuously unimpressed.

"Thank you, Bert," said the man. "We’ll take it from here." He gave me a cold smile. "I’m Brother Nathanial, and this is Sister Eliza. Welcome to the Sceneshifters, Edwin Drood."

I nodded coolly in return. I didn’t like his eyes, or hers. They both had that look; that certainty beyond any doubt, inhumanly focused, merciless in their logic. Fanatic’s eyes.

"I’m here looking for some answers," I said.

"Aren’t we all?" said Nathanial. "Come; ask us anything. We shall conceal nothing from you. Bert, there’s been a spillage in the secondary systems. If you wouldn’t mind…"

"All right, all right, I’ll go and clean up your mess while you give Edwin the old pep talk." He nodded easily to me. "Have fun with the Red King, and his dreams. Don’t have nightmares afterwards." He gave me one last cocky wink and left the room.

"Marvellous fellow," said Nathanial. "An invaluable member of our staff, though I’d never tell him that. He might want paying more. Now then, Edwin; Sister Eliza and I run things here, in as much as anyone does. We like to think of ourselves as a cooperative. Don’t expect dear Eliza to say anything. She has no tongue anymore. Sometimes the small changes we make have the most unexpected repercussions…"

"Bert said something about founding members," I said, just to be saying something.

"Oh, yes, that’s us. There were six, originally, but now there’s seven. Another side effect…"

"How many people are there in the Sceneshifters?" I said, trying for a question that might possess even a slim chance of having a definite answer.

"Oh, more than you’d think," said Nathanial, smiling coolly. "Certainly far more than your family thinks. You’d be surprised, Edwin. Our ranks are growing all the time, as we open people’s eyes to the terrible truth. We’re the real salvation army, fighting a holy war against the Devil and all his works. Bert has filled you in on the basics, hasn’t he? Good, good…I think it’s time for you to meet the centre of our operations, our very own Red King, Professor Redmond. We’re all very proud of him. This way, please…"

"But there are questions I need to ask you," I said. "About my family, and why I was declared a rogue…"

"Yes, yes," said Nathanial. "All in good time. You really can’t appreciate what we’re doing here until you’ve met the Red King."

He and the silent Sister Eliza ushered me politely but firmly through the maze of chemical vats and looping tubes to a door at the back of the chamber, and then through it into a long stone corridor that stretched away before us, sloping down into the earth. Thick pulsing tubing was stapled to the rough stone walls, while from the ceiling hung a series of bare electric bulbs. We followed the tubes down the corridor, descending for some time, until I lost track of just how deep we were under the church and the London streets. The air was chill and damp, and water ran down the walls.

"Don’t you have any security down here?" I said after a while, just to break the silence.

Nathanial shrugged easily. "The uncertainty effect keeps out the riffraff, while the church’s sanctity hides us from the Devil and his disciples. And the Red King dreams he’s safe, so he is…"

"How does this all work?" I said just a little desperately. "This whole…sceneshifting business?"

"It’s really very simple," said Nathanial in that smug kind of way that tells you it isn’t going to be at all simple. "While the Red King sleeps, he dreams. Constantly. And while in that state he is able to see behind the scenes of reality, as it were. How things really work, and how they’re put together. We can influence his dreams and persuade him to make small changes. And the alterations he makes there, affect things here. In reality. We only deal in small changes, never big ones, no matter how tempting. They might be noticed by…You Know Who.

"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.