Ruler of the Realm

by Herbie Brennan

  ‘Yes,’ Fogarty said. ‘I had a word just before we left.’ He was still lost in his memories, for he added incomprehensibly, ‘Churchill said jaw-jaw was better than war-war.’

  ‘Do you think she will?’

  Fogarty glared at him. ‘You asked me that.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But maybe we should be, you know, trying to make her.’

  Fogarty gave him the benefit of a cynical look. ‘Did you ever manage to make your sister do anything?’

  In point of fact he hadn’t, not even when she was little. He’d no doubt Blue loved him, but obedience wasn’t in her vocabulary. All the same, he didn’t like the way things were going.

  In answer to Mr Fogarty’s question he said, ‘No, I didn’t. But I think I know somebody who could persuade her.’

  ‘Henry?’ said Madame Cardui, and smiled. Pyrgus nodded. Madame Cardui said, ‘Does he know she’s in love with him?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Pyrgus grinned. He’d been feeling good about Blue and Henry for a while now. He liked Henry.

  Mr Fogarty stopped to stare at the distant horizon. ‘Glands,’ he muttered.

  ‘Don’t be so cynical, Alan,’ Madame Cardui told him crossly. ‘If you can’t fall in love at their age, when can you?’

  For some reason it warmed Mr Fogarty enough to make him grin a little. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  Pyrgus said quickly, ‘Do you want to send for him, Mr Fogarty? Or should I translate and get him?’ He quite fancied another trip to the Analogue World, even if he couldn’t spend much time there.

  But Mr Fogarty said, ‘Mightn’t need to.’ He glanced from Pyrgus to Madame Cardui. ‘You two got a minute?’

  Since he’d translated permanently to the Faerie Realm, Mr Fogarty had moved into Saram na Roinen, the House of the Gatekeeper, an official residence that comprised a large lodge and some outbuildings on the edge of the Purple Palace gardens. As Fogarty opened the door, Pyrgus noted he’d wasted no time in turning it into a tip, but he led them straight through and out the back, then down a short path to one of the outbuildings.

  The stone structure had once been an ornitherium, but the high latticed windows had been boarded up and all the external perches removed. Even the antique listening booth had been taken away. On the inside, only the vaulted ceiling remained of the original fittings. The rest had been gutted out and replaced by … replaced by …

  Pyrgus blinked. They’d been replaced by Mr Fogarty’s shed! Pyrgus remembered it from the time poor old Hodge mistook him for a mouse. But this was the original writ large. There was enough junk to fill a merchant’s store and the workbench in the centre was enormous. Pieces of machinery were strewn all over it.

  ‘It’s something I’ve been working on,’ Mr Fogarty said with enthusiasm. ‘Any of you lot ever seen Star Trek?’ He shook his head. ‘No, of course you haven’t – must be getting senile.’ He ushered them inside and closed the door. ‘It’s a television programme we have back home. You can explain television to them, Pyrgus – you’ve seen that. Star Trek’s about space travel. They have a star ship and a thing called a transporter. It’s just fiction, but that transporter got me thinking.’ He moved towards the bench. ‘The way it works is you beam people about the place, down to the planet, back to the ship, whatever, and the thing is, if you’re on the ship, you can lock on to them down on the planet and beam them aboard.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘You see what I’m getting at?’

  Pyrgus shook his head.

  Madame Cardui said, ‘No …’

  Kitterick said, ‘I presume, sir, you feel there may be something in the process analogous to our portal technology, but possibly improved.’

  Pyrgus blinked.

  ‘Exactly!’ exclaimed Fogarty. He focused on Kitterick. ‘It’s matter transmission, of course. You scan somebody down to his constituent pattern and beam the information to the destination where he can be reassembled using local atoms. The problem’s always been what to do with the body.’

  ‘What body?’

  ‘The body you scanned at this end. And you have to do something about the body, otherwise you’d be in two places at once. You can see why matter transmission never became a commercial proposition. Imagine an airline that had to kill off each of its passengers to get them to their destination. You’d be ceiling deep in corpses by the end of the first week.’

  ‘And no one else would wish to travel because of the smell,’ Kitterick said blandly.

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’ Fogarty frowned.

  ‘Indeed not, sir. Please go on.’

  Fogarty relaxed his frown as the earlier enthusiasm flooded back. ‘Thing is, if you introduce a portal you solve the body problem. You don’t have to beam information any more, you can beam the actual atoms. With the portal in place, that doesn’t require any more energy.’

  ‘Mr Fogarty,’ said Pyrgus, who hadn’t understood a word, ‘what does this have to do with Henry?’

  Fogarty nodded towards a small box on his workbench. ‘That thing there’s a prototype of a Mark II portable transporter. It doesn’t just open a portal like the ones I made before, it lets you lock in on a target and pull them through it.’

  ‘To here?’

  Fogarty frowned. ‘In theory.’

  ‘Does it work?’

  ‘I haven’t tested it yet.’

  After a moment, Pyrgus said, ‘You mean you could lock in on Henry and translate him to your ornither—to your shed? Here and now?’

  ‘Could give it a try,’ said Mr Fogarty.

  Twenty-one

  Henry’s legs were aching by the time he got to the end of his road, but his troubles didn’t really start until he reached home. His mother must have heard the sound of the key in the door, for she met him in the hall. She was dressed for work in one of her hideous tweedy suits, but her blouse was rumpled and there were dark circles under her eyes. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in months, but that did nothing to dampen her fury.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she demanded. ‘We were worried sick. Anaïs rang round all the hospitals and I’ve just reported you missing to the police. For heaven’s sake, Henry, couldn’t you just have rung? Why on earth do you think we got you a mobile phone? Don’t you ever, for a minute, think about anybody else but yourself in your whole … selfish … life?’ Then, to his intense embarrassment, she threw her arms around him and burst into tears. ‘Oh, Henry, we thought you’d been killed!’

  He’d never seen his mother cry before and he didn’t know how to cope with it. She was holding him so tightly he could hardly breathe and he could feel her tears dripping from his jaw to run down the side of his neck.

  ‘Where were you?’ she sobbed. ‘Where have you been?’

  He couldn’t answer that one either. At least not any way that was going to satisfy her. Where had he been? Walking all night and most of the morning, by the look of it. She was going to ask him why and he didn’t know why. He might have been hit by a car, but he didn’t feel like he’d been hit by a car. No bones broken, no headache, not so much as a bruise. His mind went back to an earlier thought. Maybe this blank in his memory was all part of his nervous breakdown, the business about seeing fairies and visiting fairyland.

  ‘Mum …’ Henry said.

  He’d been talking to Charlie about his nervous breakdown. And Charlie had said something about it, but he couldn’t remember what.

  ‘Mum …’ Henry said again, struggling a little.

  Actually he didn’t know why she was going on like this. He’d stayed out overnight before. Usually at Charlie’s, where arrangements were often last-minute. He’d always rung, of course, but there’d been times when Mum and Dad had gone to bed – how worried could they be? – and he’d had to leave a message on the answerphone, for cripe’s sake!

  Henry suddenly remembered he had left a message on the answerphone the night before. He hadn’t planned to stay out – he’d wanted a lift home. But nobody took his call, so he left a messa
ge. He could remember that quite clearly. Mum, I’ve missed my bus. Any chance you could come and get me? If you don’t pick up this message I’ll be walking home.

  It suddenly occurred to him why she was so upset! She hadn’t picked up the message. Not until this morning. And then she’d checked his bed and found he still wasn’t home. She wasn’t worried, she was guilty! That was so typical. She could never admit anything was actually her fault. She hadn’t been worried about him at all. She’d gone to bed and didn’t even think of him until this morning. Now she was making a fuss to cover up.

  ‘Mum,’ Henry said. He took her arms firmly and pulled away. ‘Mum, you don’t give a damn where I was.’

  Then, with his own welling tears, he ran upstairs to his room and locked the door.

  In its own small way, Henry’s room looked much like Mr Fogarty’s shed, except that strewn clothes took the place of tools and models of one sort or another stood in for the machinery. Henry sat on the edge of the bed thinking how childish those models looked. More than half the ships he’d made were plastic, could you believe that? And then there was that stupid cardboard model of a flying pig. Incredible to think that was the last model he’d made, and just a few weeks ago. Incredible to think how proud he’d been of it.

  She knocked on his door almost at once.

  ‘Go away, Mum,’ Henry said dully.

  A voice said, ‘It’s not Martha, Henry – it’s Anaïs.’

  After a long moment, Henry got up and unlocked the door.

  Twenty-two

  ‘May I come in?’ Anaïs asked quietly. She was dressed in sweater and jeans and designer runners. Henry shrugged and turned away. He walked back to sit on the bed, not looking at her.

  Anaïs closed the door and stood just inside the room. Out of the corner of his eye he could see she looked concerned, maybe even a bit frightened. But her voice was steady enough as she said, ‘Henry, we need to talk.’

  He could imagine his mother saying the same thing. What it usually meant was Henry, you need to listen. After which his mother would tell what he’d done wrong, why he should never do it again and how he could do a lot better in the future. But, of course, this wasn’t his mum. This was the other woman in the house.

  He shrugged again, staring at his feet, and said, ‘So talk.’

  ‘Do you think I might sit down?’ Anaïs asked lightly. She gave a little smile.

  ‘Nowhere to sit,’ Henry muttered. Which was true enough. The only chair in his room – an ancient sagging armchair – was so buried under junk it was scarcely visible.

  ‘I could sit beside you on the bed.’ Anaïs tilted her head to one side quizzically.

  ‘I don’t want you sitting beside me on the bed!’ Henry snapped. He suddenly felt furiously angry and fought to control it.

  The smile disappeared. Anaïs said, ‘All right, I’ll stand. And I’ll talk. At least until you feel like it. I mostly wanted to say I’m sorry.’

  It was the last thing he expected. He was so startled his anger disappeared and he actually looked at her.

  She licked her lips and went on, ‘Henry, I know how difficult this must be for you –’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Henry said quickly, his anger flaring again. ‘No you bloody, bloody don’t!’ He looked down at his feet again. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to cry.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Anaïs agreed. Part of the trouble was she looked so pretty. And so young. And she was so nice. That was the real problem. He wanted to hate her. He really, really wanted to hate her and she was so nice he just couldn’t. Nicer than his mother, that was for sure. He couldn’t imagine what Anaïs saw in her.

  ‘Of course, I don’t,’ Anaïs was saying. ‘But I do know you must be feeling awful. I wish you weren’t, but there’s not much I can do about that. But, Henry, running away isn’t the answer.’

  ‘I didn’t run away,’ Henry said. ‘I just stayed over at Charlie’s.’ He glared at her defiantly. ‘I’ve done it before.’

  ‘Henry,’ Anaïs said patiently, ‘you didn’t stay at Charlie’s. It was the first place we checked. She said you wanted to stay, but they had cousins or something and there wasn’t a spare bed. She was worried about you too.’

  Bet she was, Henry thought. He’d just told her he’d been seeing fairies. What he hated was the way Anaïs said we as if she and Mum were an item. Which they were, of course, but he didn’t need to have his nose rubbed in it.

  ‘Did you call Dad?’ he asked.

  Anaïs blinked. ‘Not right away,’ she admitted reluctantly.

  ‘Why not?’ Henry demanded. ‘Didn’t you even think I might be staying with him?’

  Anaïs said, ‘But you weren’t?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t, but that’s not the point. The point is you all got so worried and none of you, not Mum, not you, thought the first thing you should do was ring up Dad. Well, did you?’

  Now Anaïs was looking down at her feet. ‘No.’ She looked up suddenly. ‘That was wrong. You’re right, Henry: that was very wrong. But sometimes people just … do the wrong things. We were worried. We didn’t know what had happened. You were gone for three days and we were frantic. Your mother loves you, Henry. I love you –’

  ‘Don’t you say you –’ Henry began furiously, then stopped. ‘I wasn’t away for three days.’

  Anaïs moved across and sat beside him on the bed anyway. She looked into his eyes and reached over to take both his hands. ‘Yes, you were, Henry. That’s the whole point. We were out of our minds with worry – everybody was. Charlotte said you walked her home and then went off to go home yourself. She thought you caught the last bus. But that was Tuesday. Today’s Saturday.’

  ‘Today’s not Saturday,’ Henry whispered. For no reason he was suddenly feeling afraid.

  ‘What was it?’ Anaïs asked him quietly. ‘Were you doing drugs?’

  ‘I wasn’t doing drugs!’ Henry hissed. ‘I’ve never done drugs!’ He couldn’t have been away three days. It was just last night he’d missed the bus. Just last night.

  There was something wrong. Not just confusion. Henry blinked several times and shook his head to clear it. He felt as if he really had been doing drugs. Something was happening to reality. The whole room was swimming around him. He looked at his hands to try to steady himself. They were clasped in Anaïs’s small, well-groomed hands with bright red varnish on her nails. But his hands in her hands were disappearing.

  Henry watched with horrified fascination. His hands were crumbling into tiny sparkles like a special effect. He felt a growing nausea. He raised his eyes to look at Anaïs’s face. It was fading to white. And suddenly Henry was fading too.

  He thought he must be dying.

  Twenty-three

  The Imperial Suite was spacious and luxurious and Blue hated it. The chairs were too large, the bed was too soft, the tapestries were too rich.

  The memories were too painful.

  Everything reminded her of her father. She kept thinking she could catch a hint of his smell, the sound of his movements. Once, in the night, she thought she heard the low gurgle of his laughter.

  She could see the bloodstain on the carpet, even though the servants had scrubbed out every particle, then, at her insistence, replaced the floor covering completely. But tradition dictated the replacement was the same colour and pattern and the bloodstain was still there, spreading liquidly in her mind.

  The Queen must live in the Imperial Suite: that was tradition too. But she needed to think. How could she be expected to think when she saw her father everywhere she turned? She had to get away.

  On impulse she triggered the secret panel Comma discovered during the few days he played at being Emperor. It opened on to a passageway that had offered an emergency escape to Emperors down the generations. In the old days they’d been fleeing for their lives. She was running from a ghost. Blue stepped inside and the panel closed behind her.

  The passageway emerged on the edge of the Imperial Island beside the broad
sweep of the river. It was growing dark now and she sat on some rocks watching the lights come on across the city. Closer to hand, torchlit traffic was milling over Loman Bridge. There were tens of thousands of her subjects out there and she’d never felt so alone. A wrong decision could leave so many of them dead. What was she going to do? What was the right thing to do?

  A large patch of moss slipped off the rock beside her and splatted on the ground with an audible thump. ‘Damn!’ it muttered crossly.

  Blue was on her feet in an instant, one hand scrabbling in the folds of her dress for the lethal little stimlus she kept as her last line of defence. It was stupid, stupid, stupid not to have alerted the guards where she was going, but she still wasn’t accustomed to being Queen.

  ‘Is that you, Blue?’

  She strained her eyes in the half-light. The voice was terribly familiar. ‘Flapwazzle?’ She blinked. ‘Flapwazzle?’

  ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ Flapwazzle said truthfully. He began to undulate across the ground towards her.

  For some reason the burdens of State responsibility fell away and she felt a small bubble of delight welling in her stomach. ‘What are you doing out here?’

  ‘Gathering the omron.’ It was something endolgs did at sunset. Blue had never really understood it. Flapwazzle said, ‘When I was full, I fell asleep. Didn’t think I’d find you here. Or anybody, really.’

  Her problems came flooding back. ‘I was trying to make up my mind about something.’

  She thought he might ask her what – and wasn’t sure she could tell him – but he only said, ‘Must be tricky being Queen.’

  It was almost funny. That was the very word for it – tricky. Not one of her courtiers or advisors would have used it, but that was the word exactly. For the first time in days she actually grinned.

  ‘That’s it, Flapwazzle. As tricky as it gets.’ How did you decide what your uncle was up to? Tricky. How did you choose between war and peace? Tricky.

  A thought occurred to her and flared into a rising excitement. ‘Flapwazzle, would you do something for me?’ she blurted. She couldn’t order him – not that she would have anyway. Endolgs weren’t strictly speaking her subjects, which may have been why she hadn’t thought of something so obvious before.