Quantum of nightmares, p.19
Quantum of Nightmares, page 19
“You’re being horrid,” Emily announced, completely forgetting that she was on a temper tantrum strike.
“Damn right I’m horrid,” Mary reassured her. Fuck it, I give up, I can’t do this Poppins shit and why do I care anyway? It’s just another hustle. She whisked her small charges along a darkened passageway with two bends in it that formed a light trap, then out into a nighttime desert wonderland with fake sand dunes and stars twinkling like holes in the black cardboard sky. The horizon was dominated by the silhouettes of distant palm trees. “Oh look, what’s that? Is it the Big Dipper?” she asked, pointing at a constellation of LEDs about three meters overhead.
“It’s the aliens! They’re coming to take you and probe you—” (The desolate screams were ear-piercing in the confined space.)
“Shut your yap, Robert Banks, or I will gag you, so help me,” Mary snarled, and perhaps the venom in her voice silenced the little boy—or maybe he was simply savoring the fruits of a job well done. Overhead the lights began to blink and separate, as if they were navigation beacons on the underside of something really large that was descending inexorably towards them. Distant voices rose in a wailing song, keeping time with a hand drum. Emily subsided, clutching the lapels of Mary’s coat and staring in wonder.
A deep male voice-over with a transatlantic twang began to narrate. “Long, long ago, in a far-off land along the banks of the river Nile, an ancient civilization arose. The empire of the Pharaohs was old before Rome was a twinkling in Odysseus’s eye, wise before China had been discovered, and over and done with before our founding fathers came down from Mount Olympus to give us the Bible and the US Constitution—”
Flashing lights rippled in a circle overhead, rotating like a digital Catherine wheel. The backing singers began to wail a five-note progression scripted in the 1970s by John Williams for an early Moog synthesizer.
“—Yet how did they know to preserve their dead for thousands of years without cryonic suspension? And how did they build their giant pyramids, made out of stone blocks bigger and heavier than shipping containers, quarried from mountains hundreds of miles from the Valley of the Kings?” Obviously, Mary noted, empires that endured for thousands of years couldn’t possibly have achieved anything notable without the helpful guidance of interstellar white saviors—
“Ooh, look!” Mary swung round just in time to see Ethan stretch his hands above his head, his rapt face upturned, and focus his undivided attention on the animatronic flying saucer descending on its invisible wires.
“Ethan, no!”
She was too late. The twanging wires overhead made a plangent counterpoint to the Dolby Audio brown note that emerged from the guts of the alien mother ship as its descent stabilized. Drive systems energized, antigrav fields powered up for real, the starship’s running lights cast knife-edged shadows across the plastic sand dunes. Ethan had a new toy, and it was much, much bigger than the Airfix model kits his elder brother had built for him—it had to be two or three meters in diameter, and the gun ports around its rim were opening up—
Mary ducked as the Spielbergian nightmare thundered overhead, buzzing towards the Close Encounters lobby and a close encounter of its own with the walls above the entrance. She grabbed at her head, but the backwash had already sent her hat flying.
“Scientists today have uncovered the mysteries of the Nazca Plateau spaceport, the beauty treatments of the Sphinx, and the origins of our alien friends from PSR B1620–26b. Here we see a diorama of the first contact between Pharaoh Kardashian6 of the Fourth Dynasty, more than forty-six hundred years ago, and the mystery visitors known to the Ancient Egyptians as the gods of the Old Kingdom, led by Amun and Isis, the captain and navigator of the starship—”
Mary caught her hat on the rebound, yanked out a pin, and nailed it viciously to her bun. “Ethan!” Entirely predictably, Ethan had bolted after the starship. But where was little Emily? Mary’s eyes widened as she spotted the wavering silhouettes of the palm trees against the horizon. Relax, it’s only a diorama. Isn’t it? With a painted backdrop behind—Really? If it was entirely trompe l’oeil, then why had Emily wrapped her hands around a tree trunk, and why were its fronds waving and stretching like—
“Emily, no!”
Her blood ran cold as she realized that Robert and Lyssa had vanished between here and the next exhibit—a hallway helpfully captioned, UFOs and terrible lizards: Did Ancient Astronauts ride Tyrannosaurs?
“I’m not being paid enough for this shit,” she swore, gripping her messenger bag as she stumped forward. She was just in time to be deafened by a colon-emptying roar, quickly followed by a girlish giggle of delight and a chorus of terrified bystander screams. Emily, enabled by Ethan’s powers of animation, had found something even worse than a unicorn to play with, and Mary would just have to deal. She swallowed and groped inside her bag for a T. rex stopper. At first she nearly dropped what the bag gave her—the science fiction movie prop gun was nearly as tall as she was—but she tightened her grip. It’s not a real Tyrannosaur, she told herself. Then she took a deep breath, set her shoulders, and advanced towards the chaos.
* * *
Only Sybil got any sleep that night, curled up and shivering in the bed she’d made up for Lady Skaro’s maidservant. Eve and Jeremy took it in turns to nap in Rupert’s office—or rather, to try to nap as the wind howled and drummed across the flat roof. Eve woke her brother before dawn and got him to stand guard while she took a brisk, comfortless shower and dressed in yesterday’s officewear. She was careful to repair her war paint: if Mr. Cunningham tried to resist their departure, she’d need to project control. Underneath, she felt small and scared. Castle Skaro was a stone machine, a contrivance of gears and crushing weights designed by Rupert to grind her down if she defied his seigneurial commands.
Eve phoned Gammon Number Two at six thirty, an hour and a half before dawn. “What’s the status on the chopper?” she demanded. “I need picking up as soon as possible. One extra passenger going home, three total.”
“Let me check, ma’am.” Gammon Number Two sounded as if he’d had as little sleep as she had. “Uh, pilot’s compliments and she says the weather’s improved a lot, but she needs daylight to land safely on Skaro, so she can’t pick you up before 0840 hours. If you’re ready and waiting we can have you back in London before ten?”
Eve tapped her toe thoughtfully. “It’ll have to do,” she said, and ended the call. She returned to Rupert’s playroom and nudged her brother, who was snoring incontinently atop a crimson leather chaise. “Wake up, we’ve got a problem.”
Imp jackknifed upright. “Whaaaup?”
“The chopper’s coming in a little less than two hours. I need you to get Mrs. Cunningham onto the landing pad without her husband—or anyone else—noticing.” Eve gave him the kind of glare that usually got employees moving as if their feet were on fire, but Imp was largely immune to her. Also, it was possible his brain hadn’t noticed he was awake yet. “It’s important,” she emphasized.
He yawned cavernously. “Can’t you, like, do the scary big sister thing at them until they faint from fear? Or maybe shoot them?”
Eve considered this for a moment. “I could,” she said thoughtfully, “but I want to come back later with reinforcements. Without being shot down, that is.”
“You say that like you mean—” Imp blinked—“no shit, literally?”
“These people are cultists,” she snarled. “We do not fuck around with cultists. Have you forgotten everything Dad taught us? Or what happened to Mum?”
Cultists were one step down from Nazis: and Rupert had been a cultist. The realization made her skin crawl. She’d known there was hinky stuff going on in the sublevels of the London town house, in the weird little chapel tucked away behind the home cinema room, but her attention had always spider-skittered sideways whenever she was about to notice it properly. She’d only begun to recognize how thoroughly she’d been cozened since Rupert’s death. He’d been running cult rituals in the town house basement as well as Castle Skaro, and he’d successfully kept her from realizing, kept her trapped in a tightening web of deception until he was ready to—
Record scratch
—“Sybil knows Skaro and she’s motivated: I want her on the mainland for debriefing. But you heard what she said, her husband won’t let her leave. So here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to wait here with her while I find Mr. Cunningham and distract him. I’ll have my phone with me. As soon as the pilot tells me they’re on their way, I’ll text you. Precisely ten minutes after you get my message, you take my briefcase and Mrs. Cunningham and head down to the landing pad in the courtyard. Use Rupert’s private elevator, not the front entrance. I’m relying on you to get her into the chopper as soon as it lands, then hang around the pad to mess with Anthony’s head if he notices her. Then we can dust off and be back in London well before lunch. Got it?”
“I think you’ve watched Apocalypse Now one time too many, sis.” He frowned pensively. “When do I get to eat?”
“I’ll have Gammon Number Two pick up a couple of breakfast burgers for you to munch on the flight home.”
At first the plan appeared to work. Imp woke Sybil Cunningham and shepherded her into the bathroom while Eve repacked her briefcase. She rang the bell-pull at seven thirty and opened the door to intercept the butler: “I’m flying out this morning,” she announced. “Is breakfast—”
“—Served in the dining room, starting at seven precisely,” Cunningham answered smoothly. “Would My Lady prefer tea or coffee?” He paused. “And your brother’s preference…?”
“I take coffee. Imp sleeps in, he never eats breakfast.” Not precisely a lie. “I’ll phone him when it’s time to depart.”
The dining room was somewhat less gloomy by day. The shutters were flung back, shedding the dawn light across a buffet straight out of a historical novel: kippers, of all things—Eve wrinkled her nose, who the hell ate kippers in the twenty-first century?—racks of stone-cold toast, boiled eggs in a nest of white linen, artery-clogging sausages and bacon. She took a mug of stale filter coffee with a splash of skimmed milk, resigned herself to drinking it half-cold, then sat at the head of the table. Cunningham loitered near the empty fireplace like a dyspeptic emperor penguin, weary-eyed and disapproving. “Can I get My Lady anything?” he asked when he noticed her watching him.
“A thermos of coffee to go would be good,” Eve said; then, before she had time for second thoughts, she added, “and a running order for the Dark Matins next Tuesday, if you please.”
Cunningham’s eyes bulged slightly. “That should never be discussed in public! The heathen might be listening—”
Eve gave him a flat stare: “We are alone,” she pointed out, “and in my husband’s absence I am his proxy. I will officiate. Is that understood?”
Cunningham tried to push back. “If My Lady absolutely insists, then she may attend, but it is not given to a woman to lead the service, especially when a sacrifice—”
Eve went full gorgon. Her hiss of displeasure would have set his hair on fire, if he still had any: “I will be the judge of that! Fetch me the running order and the book of prayer and I will seek counsel from the Shadow Conclave—” whose postulated existence was an outrageous bluff, but right on the nail if Cunningham’s expression of naked terror was any guide—“and I will either conduct the service myself or bring in a pastor to do so on behalf of my husband. As Lady of Skaro I am chatelaine here, and I will not permit the altar of our Mute Lord to be neglected in my husband’s absence!” She stalked towards him. “I will return on Tuesday with my brother, and my staff—those who are initiates—is that understood?”
Cunningham backed down, although he clearly disapproved. “Milady. If you will excuse me—”
“Go!” She waved him off, just as her mobile phone vibrated. “Thermos of coffee, milk, no sugar, and don’t forget the dark liturgy!”
As the butler stalked away in a huff she checked her messages and saw chopper ready to depart eta 0940. She called Imp. “Get Mrs. Cunningham down to the helipad in twenty minutes. We’re on our way.”
Eve waited for Cunningham to return with the promised flask of coffee and the prayer book, then made her way to the helipad. The executive chopper was approaching as she closed the castle side-door behind her. Imp, with Eve’s briefcase in hand, waited with Sybil beside the helipad. Eve’s phone vibrated with an incoming call. “Starkey here.” Her gaze tracked the helicopter as it slid overhead and began to descend: “Right, right. We’re ready to go.”
The AW109E touched down on the pad and settled on its wheels, engines still roaring, and the passenger compartment door opened. Gammon Number Two ducked out, glanced at the cockpit window, then beckoned Eve forward. She gestured to Imp and Sybil in turn, just as the side-door opened and a very angry butler popped out. “Oi! Where do you think you’re going?” he shouted at Sybil.
Eve moved to intercept him. “That’s my wife!” he shouted.
Eve stood her ground. “She’s coming with me.”
“You can’t take her! The husband is head of the household, and I say she can’t—”
Imp materialized at her shoulder: “It’s only a shopping trip,” he soothed.
“Exactly right,” Eve agreed. “The Lady of Skaro’s rooms leave a lot to be desired—they haven’t been redecorated since the nineteen fifties. I’m taking her to Harrods to select new furnishings. I’ll bring her back next Tuesday.”
“Next Tuesday,” Imp repeated, his voice cloying and overwhelmingly sticky, like molasses flooding from a ruptured storage tank.
“But you can’t take her without my permission—”
“As your liege, I can and I am,” Eve said firmly.
“She can and she is—”
“But … but…”
“Shopping trip,” said Imp, peering into the butler’s eyes, “wallpaper, fresh bed linens, lamps and lingerie and carpet and furniture and toilette—you know her ladyship’s room needs it and it needs it now and who better to choose it than your wife—it is your duty to say yes.” Behind Imp’s back, the helicopter throbbed like a vast bumblebee, rotors thundering. “Time is a-wasting, time to fly! Say goodbye for now, and au revoir! Go on, say it!”
“Au—” Cunningham shook his head as Imp slowly backed towards the helicopter door, tugging Eve after him.
Gammon Number Two had already secured Mrs. Cunningham. As the door closed behind Eve, she noticed the woman looked petrified, although Eve couldn’t tell whether she was more scared of her husband or the helicopter. “Headset,” she mimed, gesturing at the racked sets overhead. Gammon Number Two slid the earpieces and mike over Sybil’s tightly curled perm. “Can you hear me? There’s nothing to worry about, we’re perfectly safe,” Eve told the woman as the engines spooled up and the chopper slowly lifted from the pad. “Safe as houses!”
“Houses that dangle from invisible skyhooks,” Imp said helpfully. “Ouch, no need for that, mate!” He gave Gammon Number Two a reproachful look.
“Oh Lord who art in Hell, unhallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy name be screamed by the tongueless, thy will be done—” Sybil screwed her eyes shut as she leaned against her seat belt, praying as if it could save her from her own personal inferno.
“Shopping trip,” Eve said, giving her brother a baleful look.
“Harrods,” he retaliated with relish.
“A momentary slip of the tongue,” she said defensively. “I meant to say Harvey Nicks. Harrods is for nouveau riche tax-exiles with more money than taste.”
“Like Rupe—” He stopped.
“I”—her finger tapped her chin—“am not Rupert: I have taste.”
“Okay, point taken. Does this mean I can borrow the company credit card?”
“Jeremy.” He made puppy eyes at her. Eve sighed. It was clearly going to be one of those flights. Terrified cultist housekeeper, check; brother drooling in anticipation of a shopping binge on her business account, check; bodyguard fixedly staring out the window while mentally drafting his resignation notice: check. There was nothing to be done about any of it until they landed. So Eve pulled out the slim clothbound book the butler had given her, and began to read the liturgy for next Tuesday’s Dark Matins.
* * *
Robert was enjoying himself immensely.
The New Nanny—who had appeared on their doorstep like magic, right after the previous one had the usual nervous breakdown and ran away—seemed boring at first. But first appearances were deceptive, and she was turning out to be way more fun than her predecessors. She smoked and she swore when she thought the Banks children couldn’t hear her, and she dressed like Missy from Doctor Who and carried a bag full of the best toys, even better than that time when Ethan had animated a one-sixth-scale Optimus Prime. They’d gone to a toy shop and got to eat at McDonald’s, and now they were on a magical mystery tour by the seaside, and sure it was rainy and dark, but: the sea! And just as it was threatening to get boring again, there was a theme park with aliens and dinosaurs!
“It’s the aliens! They’re coming to take you away and probe you.” He taunted Em because she believed him (because when Robert made predictions like this they had a bad habit of coming true). So now she began to screech.
Nan overheard him. “Shut your yap, Robert Banks, or I will gag you, so help me,” she snarled, which was horrid but also unlikely because she hadn’t once threatened him with her Uzi so she couldn’t mean it really. (And what kind of Nan carried a machine gun, anyway? The best kind, of course!)
He giggled happily. “It’s true, Nan, the gray aliens in the flying saucers come and they cut up all the cows and then, my mum says, if you’ve been bad they strap you down and probe you—” But Nan wasn’t listening to him any more. A boring voice-over was explaining some shit about history, and Ethan had finally noticed the alien mother ship and was staring at it. Robert’s gooseflesh crawled the way it always did when Ethan used his power, so he reached out to hold up the flying saucer until Ethan had it working properly—something that large, it would take some time to bring it to life—it had flashing lights and all. Rob could feel with that part of his mind that did the heavy lifting that it was quite heavy, like a car. He wondered if there would be xenomorphs when it landed. Something that big would thin the walls between the worlds a lot more than usual, and maybe he could bring them through even if there weren’t any aboard it yet—
