"Of course," I lied. The compass needle finally settled for pointing straight ahead. I looked at Molly. "Ready to run some more?"
She managed a quick grin. "I find the imminent prospect of being eaten alive tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully."
"I love it when you talk literary," I said.
And that was when a whole crowd of trolls burst out of a side tunnel just behind us, fighting and clawing at each other in their eagerness to get at us. Molly and I sprinted off again, following the needle, but neither of us were as fast as we had been. I’d got only one quick glimpse of the trolls behind us, but that was enough. I’d faced trolls before, and they hadn’t changed. Trolls are huge, stooped creatures, bone white in colour, with long, lanky frames. Jagged claws on bony hands, vicious talons on elongated feet. Spurs and thorns of bone protrude from their backs, arms, and legs. Their heads are long, horselike, with muzzles crammed full of thick, blocky teeth. Their eyes are big and black and unblinking. They run on all fours, leaning on their knuckles like the great apes. They weren’t bothering with the hooting and howling anymore, now they’d found their prey. Instead, from behind us came deep bass coughing sounds, urgent and hungry.
I didn’t look back. I knew how fast they could move. And what they would do if they caught us.
They were close, and getting closer. My breath burned in my heaving chest, and my bad arm and shoulder shrieked with pain. I could hear Molly straining for breath beside me. We were slowing down, even though we knew it was death to do so. So I armoured up, grabbed Molly in my strong golden arms, and sprinted through the dark tunnels at supernatural speed. Molly didn’t have the breath to make any protest, beyond one surprised squeak, and then she clung tightly to me as I flashed though the labyrinth of tunnels. She held the witchfire out before us, the light reflecting brightly off my golden armour.
The trolls couldn’t match my augmented speed, but they didn’t give up either. I could still hear them pounding along behind us. Cracked brick walls flashed past as I sped on, concentrating on the needle of the compass set flush into my golden palm. Molly suddenly cried out and pointed, and I skidded to a halt. Molly wriggled impatiently out of my arms as I set her down, and she ran over to a recess in a stone wall that looked just like all the others to me.
"This is it! This is the place! I recognise it…The door’s right here, Eddie! Right here…somewhere…"
She leaned in close, running her hands over the rough stone surface. I couldn’t see any door. I turned and looked back the way we’d come. I couldn’t see any trolls, but I could hear them coming for us, out of the dark. They sounded really angry. Molly cried out again, and I turned back to see her tracing the outline of a door in the dark grimy stone.
"This is definitely it! Leads straight to the Mole!"
"Then you might want to open it," I said. "The trolls will be here any minute."
"I can’t open this! Only the Mole can open it."
"Stand aside," I said. "I’ll smash it in."
"No, you bloody won’t," said Molly, grabbing me by one golden arm and glaring right into my mask. "The Mole values his privacy, and you can bet good money that door is protected by seriously heavy-duty security. You even look at it funny, and it could blow up this whole section. Let me talk to the Mole. There’s a speakerphone here somewhere…" She went back to the stone wall. "Mole! This is Molly Metcalf; remember me? I got you the complete set of Desperate Housewives DVDs…Look, I’ve got the new rogue Drood with me, and we really do need to come in and talk with you! Right now!"
There was a worryingly long pause. The trolls were getting closer. I could feel the vibrations of their pounding feet through the stone floor. I sealed the compass away inside my armour and started to reach for the Colt Repeater. The trolls burst out of the tunnel mouth behind us, long spiked arms reaching for us. Molly yelled for me to close my eyes, and I squeezed them shut just in time as she hit the trolls with the same incandescent flare she’d used up in Paddington station. The trolls slammed to a halt, falling over each other as they clawed in agony at their blinded, light-sensitive eyes. I stepped forward and killed the first half dozen with my golden fists, smashing in their heavy skulls with my armoured hands. I pushed the bodies back into the tunnel mouth, building a barricade to hold the other trolls back. More of the creatures pushed hard from the other side, and it was all I and my armour could do to hold them back.
"Eddie! The door’s open! Come on!"
I turned and ran for the narrow dark opening in the wall. Molly was already inside. She pulled me in, and then slammed the door shut in the trolls’ faces, right behind me. The door didn’t look like much, but it held firm, despite the pounding of heavy fists on the outside. The trolls hooted and howled, slamming against the closed door in frustrated rage.
"Should we brace ourselves for an explosion?" I said to Molly.
"The Mole knows what’s going on now," she said breathlessly. "He’s expecting us. Eddie, be nice to him. He’s not used to visitors."
I followed Molly down the narrow tunnel lit by naked electric lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals. I reluctantly armoured down. As a rogue himself, the last thing the Mole would want to see was a Drood in full armour coming straight at him. It did feel good not to be running anymore, to get my breath back. I massaged my aching left arm, but it didn’t help, so I just pushed the pain as far away as I could. I had more important things to think about. If the Mole was as crazy as Oddly John, he’d need careful handling.
The tunnel walls were strung with overlapping layers of multicoloured electrical cables interspersed with junction boxes and a whole bunch of technology that baffled me completely. Swivelling security cameras kept track of Molly and me as we made our way down the tunnel, and I did my best to smile back at them in a friendly and distinctly unthreatening manner.
"You’ve been here before," I said. "What’s his place like?"
"Ah," said Molly, carefully not looking at me. "I haven’t actually been here before. Not in person, that is. In fact, I don’t know anyone who has. You should be very flattered he let us in. The Mole doesn’t normally allow visitors. In fact, he tends to discourage them by killing anyone who turns up."
"Hold everything," I said. "You mean, there was a real chance he might not have opened that door for us? That he might very well have just left us out there to die?"
"Well, that was a possibility, yes. But I was pretty sure he’d be so curious about you that he’d let us in. Besides, he sort of likes me."
"He likes you."
"No, I mean, he likes me."
"How, if you’ve never been here before?"
"Oh, I’ve been in his lair lots of times, just not in the flesh. I’ve dreamwalked here a dozen times, astral travelling. That’s how I knew the way. And we talk on the phone a lot. He can be very chatty, as long as you keep your distance. I really was pretty sure he’d let us in."
"Because he likes you."
"Yes. I do him favours…"
"I’m almost afraid to ask. What kind of favours?"
"I find him these dodgy porn sites on the Net…"
"I was right. I didn’t want to know."
The tunnel opened up abruptly into a huge cavern carved out of the bedrock deep under London. It was vast, almost overpowering in its scale, but the Mole had clearly had a lot of time to make himself comfortable. The great open floor space was packed with every modern appliance, every conceivable luxury and convenience. Along with mountains of piled-up computer equipment. Huge flat plasma screens covered the walls, showing fifty different views at once, with the sound turned off. And in every gap and space there were computer monitors showing dozens of different sites all at once. Molly led me through the maze of equipment and into the centre of the Mole’s lair, and there in the very heart of the labyrinth sat the Mole himself in a great bright red leather swivel chair. He kept his back to us until the very last moment, and then he reluctantly swung the chair around to glare at us. He put up a h
and to stop us coming any closer, and we stopped a good dozen feet away. He looked us over, making no move to rise from his chair to greet us.
I’d expected the Mole to be a dumpy little guy with squinty eyes behind huge spectacles, and that was exactly what he was. He was very pale, with long flyaway hair around a podgy face, and he blinked and twitched quite a bit. He wore Bermuda shorts, grubby trainers, and a T-shirt bearing the legend Tarzan, Lord of the Geeks. He also wore a Buddhist charm on a chain around his neck: the All-Seeing Eye. And above that, the golden collar of the Droods. One plump hand rose to touch it as he looked at me and the torc around my throat, and finally he relaxed a little. He smiled briefly at me and nodded to Molly.
"Hello, my dear. So good to see you again. And in person, at last. Yes. But please, both of you, don’t come any closer. I’m not used to company anymore. No. No. Hello, Edwin. Fellow Drood, fellow rogue. Yes. I don’t normally allow visitors. They’re too hard on my nerves. But if I can’t trust a fellow rogue…So, welcome to my lair. Edwin, Molly. Yes."
"Nice chair," I said for want of anything else polite and nonthreatening to say.
"It is, isn’t it?" said the Mole, brightening a little. "I ordered it specially. Through a whole series of cutouts. I have to be very careful. The armrests hold coolers for soft drinks. Would you care for one?"
"Not just now," I said.
"Good, because I’m running a bit short just at the moment. I must put a new order in. Yes. I have very good people who smuggle all sorts of things down here to me, for a consideration, but of course it’s not easy, getting things delivered. No. No. I have to be…circumspect. About everything. I’m safe here, protected, and I intend to stay safe. Cut off from the world. It isn’t just the family who want me dead, after all. Oh, no."
"Really?" I said. "Who else is after you?"
"Pretty much everybody," the Mole said sadly. "I know so many secrets, you see. So many things that some people don’t want other people to know. Oh, the things I know! You’d be amazed! Really. Yes."
"How do you power all this equipment?" I asked, genuinely curious.
The Mole shrugged. "I tap all the energy I need from the Underground. And the city. They don’t notice. I have all the utilities down here, and I’ve never paid a bill. Though I could, if I chose. I’m really quite remarkably wealthy. Oh, yes. So, Edwin; you’re the new rogue. Let me look at you…I know you by reputation, of course. The only field agent to keep the family at arm’s length for almost ten years. Unprecedented! Always knew it couldn’t last…The family doesn’t trust anyone or anything it can’t control. I used to be Malcolm Drood, you know."
He said the name as though he expected me to recognise it, but I didn’t. We’re a big family. He studied my face intently, and then frowned and pouted as he realised the name meant nothing to me.
"So, I’ve been erased from the official family history. Scrubbed out. I suspected as much. Yes. You will have been wiped out too by now, Edwin. As far as the next few generations of the family are concerned, you will never have existed. All your history gone, oh, yes. Everything you ever did for the family, all your battles and successes and achievements, will be parcelled out and attributed to others. To agents who still toe the family line and bow down to family authority. Matthew will probably get most of it. He always was hard-core family, the humourless little prick. He’ll always be a good little soldier…Not like us, eh, Edwin? We have minds of our own. Souls of our own. Yes. Yes!"
"Can they really do that?" Molly said to me. "Just write you out of history, as though you never even existed?"
"Of course!" said the Mole. "It’s always been that way. As decided by the higher echelons of the family. Of which I was once a valued member."
"What is it you do down here, exactly?" I said bluntly. "And what, if anything, can you do to help me?"
He blinked and twitched at me for a while, not used to being so openly challenged in his own private kingdom. One hand reached for remote controls set into his armrest, and then he pulled the hand away again. He smiled nervously at me, and then at Molly. She gave him her best cheerful, reassuring smile, and he calmed down a little.
"I watch the world," said the Mole just a little smugly. He turned back and forth in his chair, indicating the many screens with one plump hand. "Down here I can see everything that goes on, or at least everything that matters. I have hidden cameras in places you wouldn’t believe. I spy, I eavesdrop, and I make notes. If you knew what Bill Gates was planning to do next, you’d shit yourselves. Yes. Yes…I live on the Net, you know. Studying conspiracy theories, searching for evidence of our family at work, and then passing the information on to whomever I think will make best use of it. Wherever it will do the most good, or the most harm to the family." He looked at me very solemnly. "Our family has to be stopped, Edwin. Broken, humbled, brought down. For everything that’s been done to you and me and all the others just like us. And I belong to a hundred different subversive organisations, under a hundred different identities. Oh, yes! Nothing happens, nothing is planned that I don’t get to know about in advance. I need to know everything, to make sense of what’s happening in the world. Yes…A difficult job. An endless job…But someone’s got to do it."
"Do you by any chance belong to a group called Manifest Destiny?" said Molly.
"Of course. Paranoid, xenophobic, and definitely in thrall to the cult of the personality, and downright sloppy when it comes to operations in the field…But I had great hopes of them originally. I mean, yes, they were and are complete and utter bastards in many ways, but at least they have an organisation that seems capable of taking on the Droods. I support them, from a distance, trying to encourage them into more practical pursuits on the grounds that anyone who opposes the family deserves supporting. Yes. Would you like to see the battle that’s going on between their people and the three Drood field agents in the streets above us?"
"That’s still happening?" said Molly.
"Oh, yes. Manifest Destiny are throwing everything they’ve got against the field agents. The poor fools. You’ll never bring down the family through direct conflict. No. No…"
"Show me," I said.
The Mole worked the remote controls on the arm of his chair, and the biggest plasma screen before us suddenly blared into new life, showing Manifest Destiny forces attacking three golden armoured figures right out in the open. The depth and definition of the image was outstanding, complete with full surround sound. It was just like being in the thick of the battle. I could almost smell the blood and smoke. Truman must have sent half an army to bring down the Drood field agents who’d dared defy him; and much good it had done him. Armoured cars, armoured soldiers, attack helicopters raining down fire from above…The street was full of thick black smoke from burning buildings, and burnt-out armoured cars, but still the three golden figures moved through the thick of it, untouched.
They slammed through the advancing soldiers with supernatural speed, killing with a touch and moving on. The dead and the dying lay in piles up and down the street. The golden figures overturned armoured cars with a single heave, moving unscathed through a hail of bullets and explosions. A black helicopter came in low for a strafing run, and one golden figure leapt straight up into the air, propelled by the strength in his golden legs. He clung onto the side of the helicopter, ripped the door off with one hand, and disappeared inside. He threw the crew out one at a time, and they fell screaming to their deaths. The agent stayed on board just long enough to aim the crashing helicopter at an armoured vehicle, and then he jumped free at the last moment, landing easily and gracefully as his armoured legs soaked up the impact. Manifest Destiny had every advantage of modern warfare on their side, and it didn’t do them a damned bit of good against three Drood field agents.
It almost made me proud to be a Drood, to see so few standing firm against so many. Almost.
"That last one had to be Matthew," said the Mole. "Always was a show-off."
"How the hell are they going to
hush this up?" said Molly, staring fascinated at the carnage. "This much death and destruction, a war zone, right in the middle of London?"
"Do you see any media people present?" said the Mole. "Any television crews or news photographers? Any paparazzi even? No. These days, if it doesn’t appear on the television news or in the tabloids, it didn’t happen. Any civilian witnesses will have their memories altered, all CCTV footage will disappear, and the damage will be blamed on whatever terrorists are the latest bogeymen. Or perhaps on a gas explosion. Or a plane falling out of the sky. Whatever the family decides. Yes. Oh, stories will get out; they always do. The Net does so love its urban legends. But no one will ever know the truth. The family’s had a lot of practice at burying the truth. Oh yes."
"How are we seeing this?" I said. "If there aren’t any camera crews there…"
"I have cameras everywhere, remember?" said the Mole, blinking proudly. "I can tap into any CCTV, any and all security systems, plus a whole bunch of assorted surveillance technology that my people have planted in unobtrusive places. I have eyes and ears in every major city in the world. Plus all those smaller places that the world doesn’t know are important. Though I’m still having trouble getting into Area 53…But nothing happens in London that I don’t know about sooner or later. Oh, no…I knew you’d come down here looking for me, even before you did. Oh, yes! I had plenty of time to think about whether I was going to let you in here, Edwin. It helped that you brought Molly with you. A double agent would never have hooked up with the infamous Molly Metcalf."
He ignored Molly’s bristling, intent on the mayhem filling the big screen. The Manifest Destiny soldiers were in full retreat, pursued by the three field agents. The Mole giggled.
"Good thing I’m recording this. I know people who’ll pay good money to see Drood field agents in action. And others who’ll pay even more to see Manifest Destiny getting their nasty arses kicked so convincingly. Oh, that reminds me. Excuse me a moment while I make sure the machines are recording all my soaps properly. I hate it when I miss an episode because the machines have recorded the wrong channel again."
The Man with the Golden Torc sh-1 Page 27
