In Your Dreams

by Holt, Tom

  All right, then, one sleeper chosen at random. Out of all these. Um .

  Most of them, Paul noted idly, were women; young women, mostly, which made sense, since presumably the main quality you’d be looking for in your Source would be durability. Women live longer than men, and the younger you catch them, the longer they’re likely to last. If he’d been there doing scientific research, he might have speculated as to whether a male human could only dream a male Fey, or whether it didn’t matter a damn. As it was, he resolved his decision-making problem by closing his eyes and pointing.

  The specimen he discovered he’d chosen was a little thin wisp of a thing: dark, wiry hair, a pointed face, thin lips that moved as she breathed, just as Sophie’s did. In fact, the resemblance was striking, except that Sophie, though as thin as a politician’s excuse, wasn’t that scrawny. Rather, she looked as Sophie might have done if she hadn’t eaten for a week—

  Christ, Paul thought. For quite a while, he couldn’t move at all, even though every heartbeat that rocked his body reminded him of the passing of that painfully finite resource, time. When he unfroze, he came close and peered down at the girl. Definitely; but so starved and drawn it made him ill to look at her. Then he noticed the IV drip plastered to her arm; just enough to keep her alive, presumably, but too weak to wake up. Thorough, the Fey, and quite methodical.

  ‘Sophie.’ His voice echoed disastrously, like a fart in a cathedral. ‘Sophie, it’s me. For God’s sake wake up. Please. Now.’

  A tiny little grunt, like the sound of a far-distant pig; then she stirred slightly and rolled over. She was lying on her left arm. She often did that, and then woke up with pins and needles and a really bad temper for the rest of the day. Sowing the seeds of carpal tunnel syndrome, too. After all, what’d be the point of rescuing her from this place, this fate that might even be genuinely worse than death, if she ended up with permanent cramp in her little finger?

  ‘Sophie,’ he repeated, trying to make his voice loud, but it wouldn’t cooperate. Every inherent instinct was against it ( Paul, keep quiet; Paul, don’t you dare make a sound or I’ll take you straight home again ). ‘Please,’ he added, just in case she was ignoring him because he was being bossy and overbearing. ‘Fucking hell, Sophie, what’ve they done to you? Please wake up, they’ll be here any minute, I haven’t got time—’

  And then it occurred to Paul to wonder: whose Source was she, anyway? Who was in her dreams right now, drawing off her life like beer from the wood? Not that it mattered, but ...

  ‘Mr Carpenter.’ The voice made Paul spin round, almost losing his balance as his feet lost traction on the hard, tiled floor. ‘Please step away from the bed immediately.’

  ‘You,’ was all he could find to say, even though it was scarcely original, not to mention a disrespectful mode of address to use to a partner, to her face. ‘You did this to her.’

  Countess Judy nodded, her face grave and still. ‘Ms Pettingell was assigned to my department,’ she said. ‘Also, she is, like yourself, the property of the firm. She’s my personal assistant. And that,’ she added severely, ‘is none of your concern. Please step away from the bed.’

  ‘She’s dreaming you. She’s your Source.’

  ‘Correct.’ Countess Judy took a step forward and, just for a moment, looked down at the sleeping girl. ‘She looks so fragile, doesn’t she? Waiflike, vulnerable, almost beautiful in a vague, pre-Raphaelite way. Pity she has such a vile temper.’

  ‘There you go,’ Paul said grimly. ‘Sweet and sour Source.’

  Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that. ‘If you don’t step away this instant,’ Judy growled, ‘I shall have no alternative but to call security and have you restrained.’

  ‘But why?’ Stupid question. ‘I mean, what did you need her for? You must’ve had a dreamer already, or how could you have been there before we joined?’

  Countess Judy clicked her tongue, a suffering-fools-gladly sort of noise. ‘My previous Source died,’ she said, in a bored voice. ‘She was a hundred and six, after all. Most fortunately, her last illness was diagnosed early, so I had enough time to find a replacement. Ms Pettingell should ensure me at least eighty more years before I have to go through that particular chore again. I will give you one last chance, Mr Carpenter. Otherwise—’

  But Paul shook his head. ‘You don’t dare,’ he said. ‘If you could touch me, you’d have done it already. But you can’t – you’re scared she’ll wake up. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Absurd,’ Countess Judy replied, but her voice had risen a semitone or so. ‘I am simply trying to spare you the consequences of your stupidity. You can’t possibly understand the issues involved. And even if you did succeed in waking Ms Pettingell up, the consequences for you would be most regrettable.’ She shook her head, as though in disappointment. ‘I can see – it hasn’t even crossed your mind that she wouldn’t want to be woken up. For a human, the sheer joy of dreaming one of us is – well, quite beyond the power of language to describe. You would destroy her, Mr Carpenter, and yourself as well.’

  ‘Balls,’ Paul said. ‘You’re the one who’s going to die when she wakes up.’ Without breaking eye contact, he groped down at the bed until he connected with something: Sophie’s nose, by the feel of it. He closed his fingers and squeezed hard, then let go a little. ‘She breathes through her nose when she’s asleep,’ he said (and if there was no more than a fifty-fifty chance that he was right about that, since he hadn’t actually noticed, he was betting Judy didn’t know that). ‘If I do this, she’ll wake up.’

  ‘Actually,’ Judy said with a slight yawn, ‘she’ll suffocate. Is that what you want? Are you prepared to kill her in order to injure me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Liar, liar, pants on fire; but could she see that in his face or hear it in his voice? ‘I’m a hero, remember? You had your traitor train me, remember? That’s the sort of thing heroes do; and then they spend the rest of the series beating themselves up over it, but by then it’s too late.’

  ‘My traitor.’ Judy smiled wryly. ‘What a talent you have for melodrama, Mr Carpenter. What you obviously consider betrayal was merely his job, nothing more. After all, we all work for the same firm, don’t we? In order to carry out my duties and bring in very substantial fee income, I do need to be alive. The rest of the partners authorised this, of course. I would never do anything without the knowledge and approval of my colleagues.’

  ‘Like it matters,’ Paul said.

  ‘Mr Carpenter.’ Her eyes were as cold as winter. ‘I have refrained up till now from calling security because if I do they will take you, shred your mind and then kill you. Since you too are the firm’s property, representing a not insignificant financial outlay, I would prefer to resolve this matter another way. However, I must insist that you do as you are told immediately. Otherwise, I will not be responsible for the consequences.’

  ‘Piss off,’ Paul tried to say, but it came out as ‘Pppsf ’. He shuffled closer to the bed, grabbed Sophie’s shoulder and started shaking it as hard as he could. She flopped about, alarmingly easy to move; the drip feed came out of her arm, and that panicked him even more. But she didn’t wake up.

  ‘It’s pointless,’ Countess Judy said. ‘She won’t wake up, not without the right medication; and if you carry on like that, you’ll do her an injury. I’m sorry,’ she added, ‘but I did warn you.’

  Whether they came out of the shadows or whether they’d been there all the time Paul couldn’t tell, but there were ever so many of them: silvery grey, like snow clouds, hard to see and harder to keep an eye on, as they merged into the grey walls. But their faces were hard and smooth and their eyes were cold, like those of deep-frozen children, and it seemed like a fair bet that they weren’t crowding in on him to shake his hand or teach him card tricks. He dug his nails into Sophie’s shoulder, begged her, ‘Sophie, please wake up’; but her head lay flopped on the pillow, and the only sound she made was a very faint snore. The closest of the grey shadows was almost within
arm’s reach now; as he stretched out, the sleeve of his robe fell away from his hand, revealing a set of broad, bitten fingernails—

  ( Odd, Paul couldn’t help thinking, in a small backwater of his mind that even then had nothing better to occupy its time with. Bitten fingernails. But why would a dream bite its nails?)

  – Which closed, disconcertingly, around his ear lobe, and twisted it. Paul yowled with pain and shrank back, at which the grey shape wobbled, and suddenly appeared to break in two at the waist. The upper half toppled forward, let go of Paul’s ear, and crashed to the ground, slipping out from under the robe in the process. ‘Idiot,’ it said. ‘Clown,’ it added, as the stilts it’d been standing on clattered to the floor.

  ‘Benny!’ shrieked Countess Judy, in sheer fury. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Benny? Benny Shumway?

  Which explained the need for stilts, Benny being a dwarf. But what was he doing here, disguised as one of the henchmen of the Queen of the Fey? We ransomed him, didn’t we? And why, not that it really mattered an awful lot, was Countess Judy calling him by his first name? Paul had never heard her use first names with anybody—

  ‘Sorry,’ Benny said, scrambling to his feet in such a way that he stood between Paul and the grey shapes. ‘It’s been fun, Judy. But I quit.’

  The look of fury on Countess Judy’s face was extraordinary; not just because of its ferocious intensity, but because it was there at all. Also, what did he mean, ‘quit’? This was hardly the time to be concerned about whether he had a job to go back to at JWW.

  ‘Bastard,’ Judy spat. ‘You pathetic, deceitful, small bastard.’

  She gestured with her hands and the grey shapes all took a step forward, perfectly in time, like soldiers on parade. Benny growled like a dog, then pulled something out of his pocket and shoved it in the face of the closest of them, who rocked back and staggered as though he’d had an aerosol squirted in his eyes. The rest of them hesitated, and Benny swung whatever it was in a wide arc; they cowered out of the way, one or two of them tripping over their feet or the hems of their colleagues’ robes. Judy was screeching something, either at them or at Benny. As his arm swung back the other way, Paul caught a glint of light off the mystery object in his hand, and recognised it. The Sea Scout badge, which he’d last seen nailed to the wall in the great hall in the top drawer of Melze’s filing cabinet—

  ‘Benny?’ he said, but Benny was too busy with other concerns.

  Which was great, in fact, because the grey shapes didn’t like the Sea Scout badge one little bit. Judy could swear and scream at them till she was blue in the face; the badge was worse, and they were starting to give ground, edging back a few inches at a time. How long Benny would be able to keep swinging the badge around, however, was another matter; not indefinitely, in any event. Just to drive the self-evident point home, Benny tilted his head as far sideways as he could without taking his eyes off the enemy, and hissed, ‘Piss off, Paul, for crying out loud.’

  Good advice, profoundly shrewd reasoning; except that Paul couldn’t leave without Sophie. In which case, he was going to have to take her with him, which in turn would involve picking her up and carrying her, and how exactly are you supposed to go about lifting a completely inert body? Firemen are trained to do it, and so presumably are ballet dancers and film stars; but if they’d covered it at school, it must’ve been on one of the days when he was off sick.

  ‘Paul, you dipstick,’ Benny yelled, flailing his arms like a short windmill. ‘Get out of here, now.’

  Fine. With a quick, jerky movement, like someone plunging his hand into very hot water, Paul grabbed the bedclothes and dragged them off; then he bent over Sophie, awkwardly slid one hand behind her back and the other into the crook of her knees, and tried to lift. Various components in his spine and shoulders shrieked abuse at him and for a moment it was touch and go whether he was going to fall over; but her weight shifted in his arms, he straightened his back and staggered backwards a step or two. He had her. Now, provided he didn’t drop her and he could find his way out of this place—

  ‘Oh, you’re pathetic,’ Judy snarled. ‘Get out of my way.’ She was elbowing past the grey figures, and from somewhere or other she’d produced a knife with a thin blade, sharply curved. ‘Put that thing down, Benny,’ she said, ‘or so help me—’

  One of the grey shapes suddenly squealed; Judy had inadvertently stuck it in the thigh with the tip of the knife. Paul couldn’t quite see what was going on over the top of Sophie’s head (he kept bumping his chin on it and biting his tongue, and her hair in his nose made him want to sneeze) but the slight accident must’ve given Benny an opportunity to make a strategic withdrawal; fast as a rat up a drainpipe, he ducked under the neighbouring bed, scuttled its width like a spider, and straightened up running. Three of the grey shapes fell over each other trying to follow him, and the elbow of one of them landed in Judy’s solar plexus just as she was in mid-yell. Under other circumstances, it’d have been a sound to stop and relish.

  ‘Well, are you coming or not?’ Benny panted at him, grabbing Paul’s elbow with his free hand. ‘This way’s the quickest, but mind you don’t drop her, for fuck’s sake. Now come on, will you?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Paul mumbled; by that time, Benny was yards away and making good ground, while the grey shadows were streaming towards him. Bugger, Paul thought. His arms felt like they were being wrenched messily out of their sockets: how the hell could he be expected to run, lumbered with all this weight? On the other hand, he was back in no-choice mode. He ran.

  Benny stopped dead, balled his left fist and thumped it into the wall. Immediately a panel shot back, revealing the entrance to a tunnel or cave. ‘Move, can’t you?’ he roared, as Paul shot past him into the opening. Then something scraped back into place, and all the lights went out.

  ‘I’ve shot the bolt, that’ll hold them for a bit.’ He heard Benny’s voice in the dark. ‘But not for long, it’s just a door, not a hardened-steel gate. Carry on straight ahead,’ Benny added. ‘I’ll follow on with the shield. Just carry on up the passage, and mind where you’re putting your feet. You mustn’t drop her, understand?’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to drop—’ Paul stumbled over something; his fingers lost their grip, he juggled, caught Sophie again just in time. ‘Look, slow down, can’t you?’ he muttered. ‘I’m having problems, all right?’

  The click of Benny’s tongue echoed off the roof and walls like a rifle shot. ‘God, you’re feeble,’ he said. ‘Look, this is no bloody good, give her to me.’

  Yes, Paul thought; and then, No. ‘Actually,’ he said, with what little breath he had left, ‘I think I won’t do that. I mean, I can manage, it’s okay.’

  ‘No, it bloody well—’ Something was crashing against the door behind them; maybe it drowned out Benny’s next words, or maybe he decided not to finish his sentence. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but be careful. If she wakes up—’

  ‘Yes?’ Paul said. ‘What’ll happen if she wakes up?’

  Benny didn’t reply, and for what seemed like a very long time Paul heard nothing except his own breathless wheezing and the pounding of his heart. Eventually, however, they came to a fork in the tunnel. He wouldn’t have known it was there, but Benny warned him in plenty of time. By this point, Paul wasn’t all that surprised to discover that Benny was so well informed about the geography of the place.

  ‘Up the left-hand spur,’ Benny told him. ‘It’s only about three hundred yards, and then we go right. It’ll bring us out at the top of some stairs. You’ve got to let me carry her then, you won’t be able to manage. Believe me.’

  ‘Sure,’ Paul said, ‘I believe you.’

  He had a lot to think about after that, quite apart from the practicalities of not falling over or passing out from sheer exhaustion. They were inappropriate thoughts for someone who’d just been rescued, but they wouldn’t go away until a more convenient occasion; they dug thei
r little heels in and growled at him when he tried to shoo them off.

  Benny was absolutely right with his directions; when he abruptly called out ‘Stop!’ Paul did as he was told; a moment later, he could feel a faint draught coming up at him, as though from a stairwell. ‘You know your way pretty well, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Whatsisname, eidetic memory,’ Benny grunted. ‘Now, give her here.’

  Paul hesitated; but even if he was right, there was no reason not to. ‘Right,’ he said; and a moment later the weight had gone from his poor abused arms and shoulders. ‘You got her?’

  ‘No problem,’ Benny replied. ‘Take care on the stairs, they’re a bit slippery and there’s no handrail or any of that mimsy health-and-safety stuff.’

  ‘Fine,’ Paul said. ‘And how many stairs are there?’

  ‘A hundred and seventy-three.’

  You’d know that, of course, Paul thought. He counted them as he went down, more to give him something to do than because he needed the corroboration. ‘Actually,’ he said, as his feet found the level again, ‘you were one out. Hundred and seventy-four.’

  ‘Nobody’s perfect. Now, a hundred and fifty yards straight ahead, then we follow on round to the left, and that should bring us out directly under a manhole cover.’

  Paul kept quiet. Only sensible. After all, without Benny he’d be completely lost; indeed, if Benny hadn’t shown up like that ...

  But.

  Benny had to hand Sophie back to Paul while he climbed up the short ladder and pushed open the manhole cover. Light cascaded in like water flooding a submarine. Benny came down the ladder again, put Sophie over his shoulder as though she was a camera case or other small accessory, and shinned back up again. He even reached out a hand to help Paul up.