Dream London

by Tony Ballantyne

  IT WAS AFTER midnight in the dining room of the Poison Yews.

  The spies and plotters and criminals and outcasts of Dream London were seated around the Sinfields’ dining table.

  Alan sat at the head of the table, a dazed expression on his face. Margaret sat by him, holding his hand. Bill was at the opposite end of the table, Amit Singh by her side, incongruous in a bright green turban. Two of Amit’s men sat on the other side of Bill.

  Mister Monagan sat in the middle of the table, a bowl of freshly peeled eggs before him. As I watched he placed two eggs in his mouth at once and chewed them with a rapturous look on his face. Anna stood by the door, as inscrutable as ever.

  “Captain Wedderburn,” she announced, as I entered the room.

  I took a seat by Mister Monagan.

  “Captain,” said Bill. “Mister Monagan has told us where you’ve been.”

  I couldn’t meet Bill’s gaze. “It wasn’t how it looked,” I muttered. “She was putting on a show.” I shuddered. “She still forced me to eat an apple though.”

  Amit Singh rose from his chair and came to my side.

  “Let me see your mouth.”

  I look at the ceiling, closed my eyes and opened my mouth. I felt warm fingers touch my jaw.

  “Hmmm.”

  “Well?” asked Bill.

  “It’s taken,” said Amit.

  “What’s taken?” I asked.

  “The worm,” said Amit. “One bite was all it took.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t feel as concerned as I thought I might have done.

  “How do you feel?” asked Amit.

  I smacked my lips. “Can I have some water? I’m thirsty.”

  “Sorry,” said Amit. “No food or drink for you. It will only feed the thing that’s taking the place of your tongue.”

  “How long has he got?” asked Bill from the far end of the table. She sounded as if she were asking about the warranty on her car.

  “About six hours if he eats or drinks. Until he dies of thirst, otherwise. I can’t remove it,” Amit said to me, apologetically. “I have no power over it.”

  “I feel the same as I did yesterday,” I said.

  “Perhaps Honey Peppers and the rest do as well,” said Bill. “Maybe you can’t tell the difference in yourself. Remember that.”

  She paused to allow that to sink in. The bitch.

  “For what it’s worth, you seem the same to me at the moment.”

  I was gripped by a raging thirst.

  “I need to drink,” I said. “I have to eat and drink sometime.”

  “Try and hold out for as long as you can,” said Amit. “I’ve got some people scouring the new libraries. They might come up with something.”

  “But they probably won’t,” I said. I rubbed my chin and looked down at Bill.

  “I might as well go out in a blaze of glory then. Get me a gun. I’m going after the Daddio.”

  “A gun!” said Alan suddenly. “Where will we get the money to buy a gun from? I’m ruined. Shaqeel betrayed me!”

  Margaret stared at him dispassionately

  There was no sympathy to be found there.

  “Sit down,” Bill snapped at me. “You’re not going after the Daddio. And Alan, we’ll sort something out about money.”

  “Oh no,” said Alan, shaking his head. “You don’t know what it’s like here. I used to work on repossessions. They don’t want you to have money, you know. They want you in the workhouse...”

  “You selfish bastard,” said Margaret. “You never gave a toss about signing off someone else’s bankruptcy, but now it’s going to happen to you, it’s all different.”

  “Why did I trust Shaqeel?” asked Alan of the room in general.

  “Be quiet!” said Bill.

  Silence descended. Bill turned to me.

  “Never mind the Daddio,” she said. “We’ve got a better use for you.”

  “Uh huh,” I said. “Captain Wedderburn has had enough of acting for other people. Captain Wedderburn is back to looking after number one.”

  “Oh, stop being so pompous,” said Bill.

  “Pompous?” I said. “Do you have any better suggestions as to what I do?”

  “Do the job you were supposed to do. Get up to the Contract Floor.”

  “And what good would that do?” I waved a hand at Alan, tearful at the other end of the room. “This plan was doomed from the outset. The Cartel is a joke. We’re never going to achieve anything.”

  “Of course the Cartel was never going to achieve anything,” said Amit, smoothly. “They were simply playing another role in Dream London. But they were our route into Angel Tower.”

  “How?”

  Amit smiled.

  “Angel Tower has been summoning the rogues and gangsters to itself since the very beginning.” He laughed. “The biggest crooks were the first to be assimilated! All those money men in the City! See how quickly they worked for their new bosses, acquiring land and property throughout London!”

  “But...” I paused. It made sense.

  “All those lawyers and accountants, selling their services to the highest bidder. But Dream London didn’t stop there. After it had them it went after the estate agents, the landlords, all those people who earn a living off the sweat of someone else’s brow. Dream London bought and sold them all.”

  “The bastards,” I said.

  Amit smiled at that.

  “Ah, but we are all bastards to varying degrees, aren’t we? Because what about the black economy? Dream London hadn’t forgotten that. All those business leaders who would turn a blind eye to a shady deal, and then those who turn both eyes full upon it. The out-and-out criminals. One by one we were summoned to Angel Tower and offered a new deal. And so the corruption reached lower and lower through the strata of Dream London society.” He laughed. “The trickle down effect, I believe it’s called.”

  And at that point Bill interrupted.

  “All the high ranking criminals,” she said with a nasty smile. “Then those in the middle. And then the little Napoleons. All those nasty little people who feed on the misery of others, who bring others down to make themselves seem better in their own eyes.”

  She was talking about me. She leant across the table, eyes blazing.

  “One by one they were summoned to the tower. That was our opening, we realised. We just had to stake out some of the bottom feeders. We had someone working in Angel Tower to tell us who was next to be summoned.”

  She looked at Alan, slumped at the other end of the table. He turned away from me, he couldn’t meet my eye.

  “Standard procedure. Move in on some poor unsuspecting schmuck who’s about to be offered work there anyway, and convince him that he was working for the good guys. Get him to go into the tower to collect information for us. Clever, eh?”

  I’d heard all this before. But I wasn’t going to let them tar me with the same brush.

  “Very neat,” I said. “Apart from one thing. I’m not some low level criminal. I just do what I do to get by.”

  “You pimp a stable of whores, Captain Wedderburn. You’re scum.”

  “Hey! I will not sit here whilst you insult Mister James like that!”

  Mr Monagan had been sitting listening to the conversation in silence. Now he leapt to his feet, the carved chair clattering to the floor behind him.

  “Mister James has been the soul of consideration to me from the moment that I arrived here! He has given me a job and somewhere to live!”

  “I bet you’re paying a pretty penny for it,” said Amit.

  “Why shouldn’t I pay?” said Mr Monagan. “I’m sorry, but I have seen Belltower End. The girls there were happy and looked after! It’s not his fault that the Daddio attacked.”

  Those seated around the table stared at the orange man. Slowly, he sat down again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “You’re a good friend, Mister Monagan.”

  Bill laughed at th
at.

  “Could you say the same, Captain Wedderburn?”

  I scowled at her.

  “Can you give one reason why I should stay in here?” I asked.

  “The Daddio,” said Bill. “He’ll be looking for you.”

  “Don’t you threaten Mister James!”

  “Thank you, Mister Monagan.” I placed my hand on the orange man’s arm, then turned back to Bill.

  “Who is the Daddio, anyway?” I asked. “What’s he got to do with Angel Tower?”

  Amit spoke up.

  “As far as we know, Captain, nothing. But once you open up a road, all sorts of things come walking down it. Dream London is open for business, and many creatures are making steps to exploit it.”

  I thought about the Spiral, and the city at the bottom of the hole that was growing towards us. I thought about the parks, growing in the centre of Dream London.

  “Oh hell,” I said. “What have we done to ourselves?”

  “Never mind that,” said Bill. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Me?” I said. “I’m not going to do anything. I’m just a small time crook who likes to use people, remember? What can I possibly do?”

  “You can stop acting like a child,” said Bill. “Listen to me. You want to do something worthwhile? You get yourself up to the Contract Floor, and then come back here and tell us what you’ve seen.”

  “What use would that be?”

  “We would know if the Contract Floor was worth anything, for starters. Where should we be concentrating our attention: the park or the towers?”

  “How would I decide that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been up into the tower. But just imagine what might be there. The original contracts that signed the city over to Angel Tower. What if we could get our hands on them? And even if we couldn’t, at least we’d know if they are worth destroying...”

  I stared at her, remembering our conversation of the previous evening.

  “You’d bomb it,” I said. “You’d drop a nuclear bomb on it!”

  “If we had to,” said Bill.

  “What do you think about that?” I said, turning to Amit. He shrugged.

  “The Indian government would do the same,” he said. “If they thought it would stop Dream London from spreading.”

  “Why not drop the bomb anyway, by that logic?”

  “What if it doesn’t work?” said Bill. “Worse, what if it only works once, what if Dream London only needs to see it at work once to find a way to neutralise subsequent bombs?”

  “Exactly,” said Amit. “For that reason it would be terrible if we were to bomb the wrong place.”

  I nodded. It made sense.

  “So what’s in all this for me?” I said. “I risk my life going up to the Contract Floor. If I succeed, I may get killed in a nuclear explosion. If I don’t get killed by the bomb, I die of thirst in a week’s time.”

  “Or you could become one of the Daddio’s men,” pointed out Mr Monagan, helpfully.

  He caught my expression.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not going to do it. I’m not staying here any longer.”

  “Then where are you going?” asked Bill. Bill who was going to betray me, I remembered. I was right. I had no loyalty to her.

  “Out,” I said. “Out of Dream London.”

  “There is no way out of Dream London.”

  “I’ll find one.”

  “Really?” Bill curled her lip. “Is that your solution to every problem? To run away?”

  “There is no solution to this problem,” I said. I rose to my feet. “I’m leaving, now.”

  Mister Monagan stood up, too.

  “Where are we going, Mister James?”

  “We are going nowhere,” I said. “I am going to the station and I am going to find a train out of here, no matter what it takes.”

  “What about me?”

  “I need you to stay here,” I said. “Keep an eye on what’s left of Belltower End.”

  And if I keep you away from me, I can’t betray you, I thought. I’d heard some bad things about myself that night. Not that I believed them, but I didn’t want to add anything else to the debit side of the ledger.

  “So long,” I said, and I walked to the the door.

  “James.”

  Bill waited until I had my hand on the handle before she spoke.

  “What?”

  “If you change your mind, I’ll be at the Laughing Dog.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  I pushed open the door, and walked into the hall. But I hadn’t made it out of the house yet. Anna was waiting for me in the hallway, as cool and inscrutable as ever.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “You’re doing exactly what Dream London wants you to do,” she said.

  I gave her a flat smile.

  “No, I’m doing what I want to do,” I replied. I shouldered her aside and pulled open the front door. Anna didn’t get upset, she didn’t scold me. She just spoke in a calm voice.

  “Exactly,” she said. “Dream London wants us all to be individuals.”

  I stopped where I was. “What the fuck do you know about it? You’re only seventeen.”

  “I’m old enough to see what’s going on. Dream London divides and conquers. It’s instinctive. The only thing that Dream London fears is that we might ever join together to fight it.”

  “You make it sound like it can think.”

  “It doesn’t think any more than a patch of weeds thinks, but like a patch of weeds it affects its environment. Why do you think Dream London messes up the geography? It’s keeping us all from staying in contact with each other. It wants to turn us in on ourselves, rather than having us reach out to each other.”

  “All we need is love?” I said. “Together we are strong? Sentimental bullshit, Anna. You sound like a seventeen-year-old.”

  “So what do you suggest, Captain Wedderburn? Because I’m really interested in the opinion of a pimp.”

  I gazed at her.

  “Don’t think that because you’re only seventeen I won’t hit you. Move out of my way.”

  Wordlessly, she stepped to the side.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She murmured something.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “I said you don’t have to be like this,” she said. “You want to be a better person. I can tell.”

  “I’ve got no choice,” I said, and I finally accepted something that Christine had understood right at the start. “It’s written.”

  I pushed out into the night.

  TEN

  NECROPOLIS

  I AIMED FOR Euston Station first. A train from there would take me straight to Manchester. That’s how it had worked in the old days, anyway.

  I slipped through the streets towards Egg Market station, eyes peeled for Honey Peppers and the Quantifiers: they were bound to head back here looking for me. Or were they? I wasn’t sure they’d yet made the connection with the Poison Yews.

  I was in luck: the streets were empty. Better yet, there was a train waiting in Egg Market station, the yellow destination boards on its side declaring it was bound for Hampstead. Euston Station lay in the direction of Hampstead, or at least it used to. I looked up and down the platform, searching for Macon Wailers. I saw no one suspicious, but the sight of a man eating an orange brought the thirst up inside me. How carelessly he peeled the fruit, juice squirting over his fingers, dropping moist and zesty pieces of peel onto the station platform.

  I boarded the train and sat down by a window with a metal frame that was turning to wood. A notice opposite advertised the new Ford Focus, and I wondered why the Writing Floor of Angel Tower hadn’t managed to get it rewritten yet.

  A figure moved past the window and I felt something grip my heart. Golden curls, a pink dress... but it wasn’t Honey Peppers. Just another little girl coming home from a day out with her Daddy.


  A whistle blew, there was a bump, and the train began to move. I relaxed a little. I was going somewhere at last. I was heading out of Dream London, leaving all my worries behind me.

  We glided from the station and out over the city, heading towards Belltower End, and I slipped down a little in my seat. If the Daddio had any sense, he’d be watching the station.

  I saw the broken top of the Belltower in the distance. The top of the tower had collapsed, leaving only a broken chimney that belched dark smoke into the deep purple night sky. My piece of Dream London, now destroyed. Mr Monagan had come to fetch me... Mr Monagan.

  At least by running away I’d never have the opportunity to betray him.

  Because I would have done so. I knew it deep in my heart. I’d known it from the moment I met him. Captain Wedderburn puts himself first, and everyone else can go to hell. Anna’s words in the hallway came back to me: Dream London liked individuals.

  No wonder Angel Tower wanted me for a sunbeam.

  I sighed and leant against the window. Maybe the best thing I could do was to drink some water, let my tongue wake up, put an end to it all. Surely things wouldn’t be so bad as one of the Macon Wailers? Join their ranks, open my mouth and sing along with them, my tongue razzing the world whilst I wailed and wailed.

  The train should have been approaching Belltower End station now, but it seemed to be taking a different track. I could see the tower sliding by, but from this angle it looked unusual. I didn’t think I’d ever seen it from this side before.

  The view from the train looked unfamiliar, too, now that I came to look at it. There was the side of a warehouse, the name of the veneer of the week painted on its side. I had seen that before, but I’d never seen the little pink house surrounded by sunflowers that sat at its side, their petals shining soft sunshine in the night, illuminating the camomile lawn.

  The train was slowing now, pulling into a station. Another train was waiting there. Blue as a whale, with silver destination boards on its side that read... Euston Station.

  My train juddered to a halt and I rose to my feet, gripped by indecision.

  What should I do? My train was heading in the right direction, but the one across the way was going directly to Euston. My course of action should have been obvious, you might think... but this was how Dream London played with you. I knew the game, we all did, all of us who had tried to escape from the clutches of the city.