Dead Lies Dreaming

by Charles Stross

  The front door of Chez Bigge opened directly onto the pavement. From the outside it resembled any other Georgian house of a certain vintage, although the windows to either side were blocked by Venetian blinds. A featureless stone wall extending on either side of the house enclosed the grounds, broken only by a garage door. It was so unwelcoming that Imp put a deliberate spring in his step as he bounced up to the front step and mashed his thumb on the doorbell. He eased up only when someone finally came to open it. “Yes?” demanded the impeccably groomed butler.

  Imp grinned cheekily. “I have an appointment with Evelyn Starkey.”

  He thrust out a hand. The butler ignored it. “Who should I say is calling?”

  “Ebeneezer Goode—nah, it’s her brother Jeremy, and we’re good, mate.”

  At the word brother the butler’s face turned an intriguing shade of gray. “I’ll see if she’s available, sir,” he muttered, backing into the hallway. He maintained a wary eye contact while he retreated, as if he feared Imp might attack if he turned his back.

  The interior was decorated pretty much as Imp expected of one of the snooty residences in this neck of the woods: boringly valuable antique furniture, a vestibule for a modern office at one side of the entrance (in what had clearly been a morning room, once upon a time), a security checkpoint and alarm panel opening off the other side. Someone with more money than taste had shoehorned a cramped elevator into the wall beside a closed door—at a guess, the former drawing room had been truncated to provide access to one of the subterranean minotaur-labyrinths where the oligarchs stored their treasure chests. Imp loved it to bits: I could totally use this as a set for Bad Guy Central, he thought, discreetly studying the decor as the butler conferred with the ornamental blonde at the receptionist’s workstation.

  The receptionist nodded at him, the rigidity of her posture telegraphing apprehension; then she tapped a button on her desk phone. Imp didn’t need to be a lip-reader to figure out her words. “Miss Starkey, your brother is in the lobby.” Please get him out of here.

  A few seconds later, the butler strolled towards him. “Follow me, sir.” Imp nodded, deliberately ignoring the whine of motors as the front door eased shut behind him. The butler ushered him directly to the elevator. “In here, please,” he said, as the doors slid open to reveal a small mirror-walled cubicle floored in Italian marble. “Your sister will meet you below.”

  It did not escape Imp’s attention that the lift had three different security cameras and no visible control panel.

  The lift slowly descended. When it stopped, the doors revealed a bland corporate lobby area. Only the decorative cornices distinguished it from a modern office building.

  “Hello, Jeremy. Appropriately attired as ever. It’s been, what, two and a half years?”

  “Closer to four,” Imp corrected. “You’ve changed,” he said, staring stupidly at his sister.

  “Follow me.” Eve turned and clicked away on sky-high stilettos, Imp trailing behind.

  “I like what you’ve done with your hair,” he snarked. It was very blonde and pinned in a tight bun. You had pink dreads and wore flower-printed DMs and hippie dresses when I was a kid.

  “Come in,” she said as the door opened for her. She walked around a gigantic desk, then sat, very primly, in a huge and complicated office chair. She stared at him as the door hissed shut. There were no windows, just cameras in every corner, discreetly embedded in the cornices and skirting boards. “Sit down,” she suggested. Imp sat. “The doors are all remote-controlled. The building security computer monitors visitor movements. Face recognition technology, you know.”

  Imp couldn’t stop himself. “What happens to non-approved visitors?”

  Evelyn’s smile was warm enough to boil liquid nitrogen. “If I had a stroke right now, you could starve to death in here.”

  “Then please don’t die? You’re the only sister I’ve got.” Arguably, he added silently. This polished, hard-shell version of his sister was unpleasantly distant, almost a stranger to him. “What do you do here?”

  “Oh, this and that.” She lost the false smile. Without the mask she almost looked human, like the Evie he’d grown up with. Five years his elder, she’d always been the responsible one, somewhere between an elder sister and a younger aunt when he was a child. Now he studied her and realized something was wrong with her face: some aspect of her cheekbones, or maybe it was her chin or her nose, didn’t look quite right. It was almost as if she’d undergone a face transplant, leaving the underlying bone structure intact but blending her features with those of another woman. “I work for Mr. de Montfort Bigge, Jeremy. This is his London residence, and I’m his executive assistant.”

  “Lovely.” Imp flung one knee across the other, leaned back, and forced himself to beam at her. A secretary, he thought disappointedly. For all her dedication she’s just a secretary? “What does Mr. Bigge do, exactly?”

  “Oh, a bit of this and that. Investments and imports and exports, that sort of thing.” Her eyes narrowed.

  “And what happened to you?” Imp looked at her. “This is hardcore, Eve. You’ve changed so much.” Too much.

  “Now is not the time.” She sounded more irritated than offended.

  “Really?” He stared. “What happened?”

  “Reality happened. School of hard knocks, I suppose.” She gleamed like a Photoshop-retouched version of herself, flawless and glossy and inhumanly perfect. Her silk blouse probably cost more than Del’s entire wardrobe. She’d had dental work, evidently taken care of by the kind of orthodontist who serviced Hollywood stars and corporate sharks. “Or maybe I just had to grow up. It’s different for boys, I don’t expect you to understand.” She looked down her long, perfectly flawless nose at him.

  Imp refused to be intimidated. “Don’t push it, sis. Anyway, you’ve only got five years on me.”

  “True. But I still know how to deal with you, just like old times.” She smiled alarmingly and burst into rhyme, shocking Imp with half-forgotten memories: “Speak roughly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes; he only does it to annoy—”

  “—Because he knows it teases, yes, yes, I get it, sis, no need to rub it in!” Lewis Carroll had been a shared love of theirs, and evidently she hadn’t quite forgotten. “What’s this all about then?”

  “It’ll take a bit of explaining. Do you still take your coffee the same way?”

  “Um.” Rattled, Imp tried hard to get a grip, but ultimately failed. “Maybe?”

  “No problem.” Eve glanced towards the sideboard that took up the far wall of her office. There was a jug of water there, a couple of mugs, and a small built-in fridge. “Allow me to serve you.” A stream of water snaked up and out of the jug, looped across to one of the mugs and dived in. Then the lid rose from a jar. The odor of roast coffee filled the room as a gritty cloud of grounds rose to join the water.

  Imp watched Eve closely. Her face was a mask of tension as she wrestled with her materials by force of will alone. “There’s no need to—”

  “Yes there is,” she grated, then ignored him. The mug began to steam. The airbrushed perfection of her forehead was very slightly shiny: Is that sweat? he wondered. Fine bubbles began to surface in the mug. “Ninety degrees is the correct temperature for fresh brewed coffee,” she noted. “Boiling water scalds the grounds.”

  “You really don’t have to—”

  Imp trailed off. A dripping mass of brown sludge rose from the mug and drifted towards the small rubbish bin on the sideboard. Next, the fridge door opened. The rising stream of milk didn’t surprise Imp now: he was, however, impressed despite himself when the mug of freshly brewed coffee rose from the sideboard and floated towards him.

  “Take it,” Eve gasped.

  Imp grabbed the mug out of the air. “Thank you,” he said, raising it in toast to her, his mind spinning. “I didn’t know you could do—” his eyes tracked to the sideboard—“that.” Making coffee as a superpower? He wondered: Am I meant to be im
pressed? Then he worked through the exact sequence of actions his sister had just carried out by force of will alone, and his mouth dried up.

  “I’m so glad we understand one another.” She smiled winningly as he took a sip; on the sideboard, a second mug was underway. It was, Imp decided, a very good cup of coffee. And a warning. A very pointed warning. He swallowed carelessly and burned the roof of his mouth.

  “Good coffee. Technically impressive. Much precision, very superpower, wow.”

  “The family aptitude for esoterica apparently extends to more than … you know.” Her smile vanished. “I only discovered I could do this a couple of years ago. The re-emergence of magic has made all sorts of things possible for people like us.”

  “You say opportunity, I say threat: the family tragedy redux.” Imp, now brooding, put his mug down on the edge of her desk. “How did you find me?”

  “My position gives me certain privileges. I’ve had people watching you for a while.”

  Somehow Imp did not find this revelation in any way surprising—or reassuring. “Why?”

  She shrugged, but the gesture was swallowed by her jacket’s tailoring. “In case I ever needed you. In case you ever needed me.”

  “Come to the Dark Side, Luke…” Imp took another sip. “Have you seen Mum recently?”

  The mug of coffee steeping on the sideboard shattered, leaving a boiling brown jellyfish hanging in the air above the French-polished walnut. Eve scowled. “You did not just say that!” Her discarded drink extended a liquid pseudopod towards the mouth of the bin.

  “I’ve been visiting her whenever I could.” Imp slid the knife in. “How about you?”

  “I visit the nursing home regularly.” Eve narrowed her eyes at him: “I’ve got a very important job. Lots of people depend on me. I’m very busy.”

  “I’m sure you are. You’re so busy you ignore your brother for four years.” It was an unfair accusation, intended to hurt: in truth he’d been avoiding her for four years, they had good reason for avoiding one another. But he wanted her to give some sign that she shared his pain. A bolus of coffee bulged along the tentacle and dripped into the waste. “But it’s okay because you have people to monitor your relatives for you.”

  Eve’s face went mannequin-still, and for a gut-curdling second Imp thought he’d pushed her too far. But somewhere beneath the glossy, lacquered surface, there still beat the shrivelled remains of his sister’s heart. “Yes, I do,” she said very softly, “because I am very busy. I’m not a nice person these days; ten-years-ago-me would have been horrified if she could see nowadays-me. No question about it. But the people I have to do business with are much, much worse than you can possibly imagine. The distance I maintain is for your own safety: I cut you out of my life because I care about you, not just because of the family curse.”

  Imp put his mug down. He folded his hands to stop them shaking. “Is it really that bad?” Can’t you leave? he wanted to ask.

  “Oh, you have no idea.” Her cheek twitched, the glaze cracking for a moment. “I didn’t want to drag you into this. But I’ve been given a job—ordinarily, a straightforward job—with a tight deadline, and I’m afraid I need your and your team’s skills. I have to get my hands on a rare book that’s up for auction, but unfortunately my acquisitions agent, the only person I know who knows how to contact the seller, has been murdered—” she rolled over Imp’s startle reflex implacably—“and I’m concerned that there might be a leak within the organization. Some of the very bad people I alluded to may also be after the book. So I need your help. I’m willing to pay whatever it takes. Not just money. I can make your problems go away. I can get you whatever resources you need to make your film. I just need you to get me the book.”

  Imp leaned forward in his chair. “I want you to stop threatening my friends,” he said, in a semblance of a calm voice.

  “Of course.” She gave him a slight moue of amusement. “They’re your friends. If I actually did anything to damage them, you’d never forgive me.”

  He sighed. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

  A flicker of a smile. “Why would I?”

  “Because—” Imp met her gaze, and gently pushed. “Tell me what’s going on? What’s the catch?”

  Something was wrong and he barely noticed at first, but then his sister beamed at him, blood-red lips pulling back from polished ivory teeth like fangs, and there was a buzzing in his ears and a tingling in his hands and feet as everything went very far away for a few seconds. “Ah, some fighting spirit at last!” Her smile broadened. “I’m warded,” she explained. “Good try, but don’t do it again—you’ll hurt yourself.”

  Imp gasped and dropped the connection. The relief came as instantly as letting go of a live wire. “Damn that’s a sharp one.”

  “We have the best of everything here. Best coffee, best cars, best occult defenses.” She smirked as he shook his head roughly. “At least as good as the toys the New Management hands out to its favored minions.”

  He gulped. “Are you—”

  “No! I work for Mr. Bigge, not the Prime Minister. But,” she side-eyed the surveillance cameras, “unanticipated State Level Actors are popping out of the woodwork everywhere. New ones, and not-so-new: Advanced Persistent Threats, the security people call them. Like your little found family of waifs and strays, for instance.”

  “What? We’re not a—”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, Jeremy, false modesty is unbecoming. Also, don’t underestimate your team: the whole is greater than the sum, et cetera. So great, in fact, that it’s just your damn good luck that the first Very Important Person you’ve come to the attention of is your ever-loving elder sister, rather than, say, the Baroness Sanguinary, or the Thief-Taker General.”

  Imp’s skin crawled. “You’re threatening me again.”

  “No I’m not. I’d happily leave your friends alone. But if you want to protect them from the Black Pharaoh’s agents, you’ll need to do a lot more.” She hesitated. “Do this one thing for me and I’ll teach you how to protect yourselves. Not just you, I mean all of you. How not to attract the things that hide in shadows. I hope I’m not going to regret this offer,” she added with evident foreboding.

  This reticence did more to convince Imp that she was on the up-and-up than all her previous offers combined. That, and the blood they shared: all the heartache and resentment and loss that only a family’s shared experiences could inflict. “Tell me what you need and when you need it by,” he said. “I can’t promise anything until I’ve had a chance to talk to the gang.” Eve reached into her drawer and withdrew a slim envelope. She slid it across the desktop and Imp took it. Going by feel, it contained something small and hard. “A memory stick?”

  She nodded. “And some other stuff: a bank card, some paperwork. There’s an explanation in the README.”

  Imp tucked it into his breast pocket. “Okay. And how long have we got?”

  She squared her shoulders. “Five days.”

  “What—”

  “That’s when the boss gets home. He’ll expect results, and he gets annoyed when he’s thwarted.”

  Imp drained his coffee mug, and rose. “I’d better get going, hadn’t I?”

  Eve nodded, then stood and walked over to the door, which opened at her approach. “Follow me.” She led him back to the lobby. The butler and receptionist cringed at her approach, as if she were royalty, or at least minor nobility. Secretary, indeed. Imp smiled at them in passing and they flinched, avoiding eye contact.

  “Good luck,” Eve said as they parted company on the doorstep. But he couldn’t help noticing that at no point in the encounter did she try to hug him.

  * * *

  Game Boy had slept badly, tossing and turning in his sleeping bag on the floor of the games room, his feet warmed by the toasty exhaust from his PC, and his head chilled by the draft from the sash windows behind the cardboard Ames room cutouts. He suffered from claustrophobia dreams, albeit less
frequently since he’d moved in with Doc and Imp.

  The commonest, least malignant version resonated with their explorations the day before. He opened a room in a new home, one his parents had just moved into, and discovered rooms and rooms and more endless rooms, an infinite manifold of branching spaces populated with charity-shop furniture and secondhand G Plan suites, windows opening onto impossible light wells between tight-packed buildings. The dream echoed stories his grandmother had told him of life in Hong Kong before reunification with the motherland. It was like a bizarre procedural animation, an infinite dungeon generator populated with 1960s castoffs, Dwarf Fortress in the grip of a hostile takeover by the Gnomes of IKEA.

  The dreams themselves weren’t unpleasant, but waking from them on an acquaintance’s sofa, or in a hostel bunk—or, worse, in his cramped bedroom in his parents’ house—invariably crushed him.

  (Less frequently, but more distressingly, Game Boy dreamed of being claustrophobically crammed into feminine mode, tucked and laced into an outgrown little girl’s identity, deadnamed and shamed and shouted at for wanting to live as himself. And the worst dreams were the ones where he was back in the Church-run gender boot camp his parents had sent him to—they called it a cure for trans kids, not talking about the ones who killed themselves—lost in a maze of ever-branching, ever-narrower corridors, unable to escape the suffocating burden of his parents’ rigid expectations.)

  What he’d dreamed of this night perplexed him, but left him with an edgy and unusual sense of agoraphobia. He’d been upstairs, exploring the new space they’d found, getting increasingly uneasy because it wasn’t the same dream. His recurring nocturnal real estate visitation was temporally and spatially consistent, unlike this one. He wasn’t accustomed to drilling down into the twilight of history, through layers of furnishings at first quaint and then antique, with doors that opened onto giant rooms that paid no heed to the floor plan. The further in he went the wronger it felt, wrongness piling atop mind-warping geometry. He’d been lost. He’d unwisely ignored Doc’s advice about string and markers, wandering ever-deeper until he realized he’d lost count of the twists and turns and had no idea how to get back to lived reality. He cast around, opening doors, never finding familiar ground; and whenever he glanced at a mirror from the corner of his eye, he saw a female mirror-image staring back at him in horrified dismay. Breaking into a run, he chased through endless rooms and passages until he came to an austere institutional kitchen lit by high, steel-barred windows, like the one in the camp. The wan daylight illuminated a row of refrigerators lined up against one wall like a display of coffins in a showroom. And if he opened them he’d find her inside—