Dream London

by Tony Ballantyne

  It was like that stepping into the High Road, Egg Market. I could hear flutes and drums, the shouts of street vendors, the sizzling of frying. Someone was singing nearby, the sort of self-indulgent introspection that is so valued in Dream London. Someone thrust a yellow and red striped root into my face.

  “Fresh in!” he said. “Peel it, slice it, fry it, serve it to your kids. This’ll make them behave themselves!”

  “No thank you!” said Margaret with a shudder, pulling me on my way.

  “I don’t remember this place from last night,” I said, looking around. The little shops beyond the market stalls had thrown open their doors, the light not penetrating their dim interiors. I saw tin pans and clocks and fur coats, and collections of coloured bottles of alcohol and ether and methanol and much worse things.

  “It looks different in the dark,” said Margaret. Across the way I recognised the white tiled shape of the Egg Market itself, the building from which the area gets its name.

  The Egg Market looks like a cross between an old fashioned cinema and a mosque. Four domes stand at its corners, the walls are covered in clean white tiles from Chinatown. People travel from all over Dream London to the Egg Market. I had visited the place myself, wandered the stalls inside its tiled halls. I had seen the wicker baskets filled with brown and white hens’ eggs; goose eggs; speckled plovers’ eggs like little stones. I had seen wrens’ eggs carefully wrapped in brown paper twists, and ostrich eggs tied around with string, a little loop in the top for carrying. And then there was the chilled hall, where the stalls were filled with ice on which stood bowls of fish roe and caviar. Through them were the more esoteric halls where you could buy leathery crocodile and alligator eggs, mixed bowls of snake eggs, fertilised and unfertilised. And then there was the amphibian room with its pools of frog spawn and then on to the tiny stands selling ant eggs and fly eggs and the eggs of all manner of insects. There was even the hall where only the women went, where jars full of menstrual blood and unfertilised eggs were arranged in lines on tables.

  London is very different to how it used to be.

  “Here we are.”

  We were standing outside a pub: the Laughing Dog. A Dalmatian wearing half moon spectacles and a serious expression looked down from the sign.

  “Take this,” said Margaret, pushing a leather purse into my hand. I could feel the weight of the coins inside. “It looks better if the man buys the drinks.”

  I followed her into the pub, looked around the dim, grubby interior.

  “This place is a dump,” I said.

  “I’ll have a port and lemon,” said Margaret. She placed a hand on my arm. “I’ll be sitting over there.”

  She pointed to a set of wooden booths. Most of them were already occupied by women, sitting alone for the most part, and I had an inkling of what sort of place this was. Now that I came to think of it, I’d been here before, on business.

  “Pint of lager and a port and lemon,” I said to the unshaven barman.

  “No lager,” he said, looking at me with contempt. “Bitter or mild.”

  “Bitter, then.”

  He poured me a flat pint and a glass of sticky port. I carried them across to the booth that Margaret had indicated and slid into the seat.

  “Is that for me lover? Cheers!”

  The woman sitting opposite was not Margaret. Red headed, she had one of the prettiest faces I had ever seen. She drained the drink and grimaced.

  “Strewth!” she said. “That was deadly!”

  What was wrong with her accent? It sounded like she had learned cockney from Dick Van Dyke.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was looking for my friend...”

  “I’ll be your friend, lover!”

  Again, that accent. It sounded so wrong. I rose from my seat, pint in hand.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll just...”

  She took hold of my wrist, jarring it. Thin beer slopped over my hand, onto the table.

  “Don’t be like that,” she said. “Come on, come with me upstairs...”

  Even in the confusion I noticed what a lovely hand she had, what clear eyes. Not at all like the whores of my usual acquaintance.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Really, there’s been a mistake.”

  At that she leant close to me, and for a moment I thought she was going to kiss me, but instead she whispered in my ear.

  “Don’t be a fool. It’s me, Bill Dickenson.”

  What made me pause was not the name, but her accent. It was an accent that used to be so common, but was now rarely heard in Dream London.

  “You’re an American,” I said.

  “Shut up!” she hissed

  “I’m sorry...”

  She straightened up.

  Then she called out in that faux cockney accent, “Like them, do you? Want to see more?”

  She led me by the hand to the back of the pub and up the stairs, conscious of the amused, resentful and just plain bored stares of the other customers.

  I wondered if I should play along, put my hands around her, but something made even Captain Jim Wedderburn pause.

  I recognised that Bill Dickenson was not to be trifled with.

  (A FEELING OF SETTING OUT ON A JOURNEY)

  BILL DICKENSON

  WHAT BETTER PLACE to meet with someone in private than a brothel?

  Bill Dickenson took me to a small room, the dirty white walls hung with badly executed pornographic paintings. Dusty purple cobwebs decorated the corners of the room like antimacassars.

  “Sit on the bed,” she said, rather unnecessarily. The only other item of furniture in the room was a chair, and she had already taken that. She hitched up her long skirts, and I caught a glimpse of her shapely, stocking-clad legs.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she said in a clear American accent. All the false cockney charm was gone. I wondered what she was doing, fiddling about in there. All became clear when she removed a leather folder from beneath her skirts. She caught me staring, so I turned on the Captain Wedderburn charm.

  “Hey, you can’t blame a man for admiring a nice figure.”

  “I can if he’s being a sexist asshole.”

  I stared at her coolly. Whore or not, nobody spoke to Jim Wedderburn like that.

  “You’re a long way from home, Missy,” I said. “You might do well to remember that fact. Especially if you want my help.”

  She held my gaze, equally cool.

  “Understand this now, James, I’m the one helping you. You might do well to remember that fact.”

  She opened the folder and removed a collection of paper. “Take a look at this,” she said, handing me a photograph from the pile. The glossy feel of the paper, that and her accent, sent more waves of homesickness crashing over me. I was remembering the old days.

  It was amazing how quickly you adapted to change. Dream London did something to the people here. It brutalised the men, made them both harder and more sentimental. It was softening the women, making them more submissive. Outwardly so, at least.

  I looked at the first photograph. All I saw was a collage of scenes. Countryside and city and water, all jumbled together in a pattern of green and grey and blue. Parts of the picture hadn’t reproduced at all; they faded away to a pink and orange blur.

  “What is it?” I said, turning it around in my hands. “It looks like the printer malfunctioned.”

  Bill was studying my face intently, judging my reaction to the photograph.

  “The printer’s fine. The missing sections are from where the satellite couldn’t get a focus on the scene. That’s London from 22,000 miles up, taken four days ago. At least, it’s the parts that intrude into our world.”

  Now she said it, it began to make a certain sense. Last night Alan had shown me a picture taken from an airship five months ago. There, the parts of London had been drifting out of true. Here the movement had accelerated, had become a curdling spiral of chaotic interference.

  “That’s the City,” I said, point
ing to an area half way between the centre of the picture and the right hand side. “The Square Mile. The towers have grown taller.”

  “Some of them are almost a mile high now. We’re certain that they’re the source of the changes.”

  “That’s what Margaret said,” I murmured, tracing the path of the Thames with my finger. The blue line twisted its way in a loose double spiral from the top left corner to the bottom right.

  “Here’s the River Roding,” I said. “It used to join the Thames near Barking...”

  “I know,” said Bill. “Now the confluence has drifted west, and the river has grown wider and deeper. It’s the major route for the ships from the other places that have found their way into Dream London. Look at this.”

  She flicked through the pile and found another photograph, passed it across. I looked down from the satellite at the rectangular blue shapes of London’s Docklands. The modern apartment buildings and city blocks had been consumed by the warehouses of old; their glass and steel designs didn’t stand a chance against the heavy brick of a century ago. The wharfs had cast loose the lines of the pleasure yachts and the waters had yawned deep and swallowed them up. Now the docks were once more stained with soot, strewn with litter, engrained with dirt, and most of all, busy. The wharfs were lined with working ships. Sailing ships, steam ships, rowing boats. Clippers, barques, cogs, dhows, ketches, snows, fluyts, all the myriad boats of yesteryear. I could just make out the busy throng of people at work loading and unloading the ships, the steam trains crowding into the sidings.

  “Look back at the first picture,” said Bill. “See how the city and docks are intertwined.”

  “Logistics,” I said, and my eyes widened as I understood the full import of what I had just said. Logistics was half of any battle, getting supplies to the right place at the right time. You couldn’t fight a war if you couldn’t feed your soldiers. Similarly, you couldn’t run a business if you couldn’t get your products to the market. Imagine how easy those things would be if you controlled the shape of the land?

  “What?” said Bill.

  “I just realised,” I said, “just how powerful the people behind these changes are.” I looked at her, at her pretty face and slim body. “Do you really think we can fight this?”

  She scowled. “Don’t be fooled by this dress,” she said. “I’m not a whore. At least, not yet.”

  Not yet. I knew what that meant. Dream London has a way of working on your mind. Bill must have known about that. Had there been other Americans here before her? Undoubtedly. What had happened to them? I made a mental note to contact Second Eddie when I left here; perhaps we could track some of them down. Help them out, as it were. You can always charge more for the exotic.

  “I know you’re not a whore,” I said, thoughtfully. “Listen. What do you want from me?”

  “How much do you know about the changes?”

  “I know they started in the Square Mile. After that, it’s all just rumour.”

  “Then tell me the rumours,” she said, impatiently.

  “What’s the point? Who can tell what the truth is when everything keeps changing? Tell me what you know.”

  She stared at me. I said nothing.

  “Okay,” she said, giving in. “Have you heard of a company called Davies-Innocent?”

  “No.”

  “They’re a multinational financial house. They have a presence mainly across Europe and the Far East. Virtually nothing in the States. They’re responsible for all this.”

  That was a huge accusation. The Egg Market? The growing spires? The flower market and the railway stations?

  “How could a financial house be responsible for all this?” I asked.

  She handed me another picture, this one a series of views of London, taken over time. In each view, the streets and buildings were highlighted in different colours.

  “The first was taken over a year ago, around the time the changes began. The Davies-Innocent building is the one in the middle. Take a closer look at it. What do you notice?”

  I gazed at the picture. It showed a typical London street in the Square Mile as it used to be. A narrow road that dog-legged between tall buildings crowded higgledy-piggledy together. The sight of the white vans and cars crammed up on the pavement, pedestrians squeezing by them, brought a lump to my throat. The buildings themselves were a collection of styles, modern glass and steel, old fashioned red brick. The Davies-Innocent building was clad in yellow stone, a restrained façade of tall, arched windows.

  “What am I supposed to see?” I asked.

  “Look at the windows.”

  Now I saw it. The windows in the middle of the building were taller than those at the sides. They were stretching themselves, beginning to grow. Now I knew what I was looking for, I noticed that the centre of the building seemed to bulge a little.

  “Now look at this,” said Bill.

  She passed me a satellite picture.

  “The buildings outlined in red are all owned by Davies-Innocent. Look closely and you can see the changes.”

  “That’s near Liverpool Street station,” I said. “Isn’t that Spitalfields Market?”

  “Yes.”

  She passed me the next picture. The Gherkin was highlighted in green.

  “That building was one of the next to succumb. It was bought by Davies-Innocent just after the changes began. Around that time, Davies-Innocent acquired a large amount of capital from sources unknown. It used that capital to buy up London, piece by piece. As the contracts were signed, the changes accelerated.”

  “Someone bought up the city? That’s what we heard, I suppose.” I shook my head. “Couldn’t someone have stopped them?”

  “It took us a while to spot the pattern. By then it was too late.”

  I remembered something then, old stories I had read as a child, back when I still read books.

  “Fairies,” I said. “They sold the city to the fairies.”

  “Others have had similar theories,” said Bill. “This city was sold to someone, or something, that’s for sure.”

  “Just this city?” I said. “You said Davies-Innocent had interests around the world.”

  Another photograph. This was a satellite picture of southern England, a little of Wales to the left hand side. For the most part it looked so normal, so much as I remembered. And there, to the bottom right, it all went wrong. There was the curdled mess, the spreading area around where London used to be.

  “Internationally, the effect is localised around London, for the most part. There’s a little in Paris, in Budapest, Prague and Tallinn, but the effect never spread to the same extent.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when the changes began in those places we had learned from your experience. We knew what to do. People were ordered to stop selling property at the first sign of infection.”

  “Infection?”

  “I’ve heard it described as infestation. But the effect elsewhere is minor. People have seen what’s happened to London. Better yet, they know what will happen to them if they do sell. Twenty years imprisonment, no questions asked. The death penalty in more serious cases...”

  “That still won’t be enough,” I said. “People are greedy.”

  “We’re holding the line. But there’s another reason too, we think. A bigger one. And that’s why you’re here.” The briefest of pauses. “And me.”

  She sagged on the chair, and just for a moment, sitting there in her frilled dress, her red hair on her bare shoulders, her green eyes downcast, she looked so pretty and vulnerable.

  “Stop that!” she shouted, and I got the impression the words weren’t directed solely at me. “Don’t you dare look at me like that! I’m not a piece of merchandise. I’m not a whore, Wedderburn. I’m a trained agent. Do you understand that?”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “I can assure you our relationship will be purely professional.”

  She lowered her voice.

  “You ever try anything with
me, Wedderburn, I will break your arms. Do you understand that? Do you understand that?”

  “How long have you been in Dream London?” I asked, changing the subject.

  She stared at me for a moment or two longer, and then relaxed again.

  “Two days. I caught the train here from Manchester. That’s where the British Parliament is now located. The real one, I mean.”

  I knew what she meant. I had been past the Dream London Parliament. It’s the same building that used to stand by the Thames, filled with a bunch of liars, incompetents and sociopaths. Feel free to fill in your own joke here, by the way. I’ve heard them all.

  Still, her words gave me pause. All this time in Dream London and I’d thought rarely, if ever, about what had happened to the rest of England. To think it had been doing its best to carry on as normal, struggling to cope with the loss of its capital city.

  “There’s talk about moving the Royal Family to Manchester from Balmoral,” said Bill. “Those who weren’t trapped here in Dream London, anyway.”

  Like I cared about the Royal Family. Another idea had taken hold of me.

  “You’re not the first agent here, are you?”

  “Not by any means. There have been people coming into Dream London to investigate since the changes began. The longest any of my predecessors reported back for is three weeks. After that we can only assume they go native.”

  “Hmmm. Why not get away after a week?”

  She gave me a withering gaze

  “Why don’t you get away, Jim? Why doesn’t anyone here get away? For most people, the trains only run one way.”

  “For most people?” I said.

  She brushed a stray hair from her eyes.

  “Have you ever thought about how the rest of the world fits around Dream London?” she asked.

  “Not until now.”

  “There’s still a train service running between London and the other cities.”

  She lowered her voice, remembering. “Two days ago I was in Manchester Piccadilly. You stand there on the platform in the twenty-first century. There are people there using mobile phones, drinking Starbucks coffee, and then you hear a shrieking whine and you see this train gliding into the station, sliding in between the normal trains. Something shaped like a dark green crocodile. All brass and sparks. There are two little round portholes at the front for the driver to look out of. All around you the station descends into silence. Everyone is looking, despite the fact this must happen every hour on the hour. The atmosphere there! Half terror, half fascination.”