“We could go see Torquil instead,” Awful suggested as they passed the disco. “You could explain about Dad.”
“Only if we can’t find Hathaway,” said Howard. He turned out of Bishop’s Lane, toward Palace Lane. He knew that was old and quiet and respectable because the bishop lived there, in the palace at the top—which was more like a large house than a palace.
But when they turned into that lane, they saw it winding uphill ahead, chock-full of lighted signs, blue, green, orange, red, purple, advertising every kind of place of amusement. At the top, where Howard knew the bishop lived, a huge red sign was blinking on and off. “MITRE CLUB,” it said. “GAMBLING.”
“This is wrong,” said Awful. “It’s usually all gray.”
Howard was suddenly alarmed. He seized Awful by her wrist and turned to go back.
Behind him, someone shouted, “Hey! That’s them! Get them!” Running feet padded softly and swiftly on both sides of the lane. Before Howard could drag Awful more than a yard or so, they were surrounded by Hind’s gang and backed up against a shopfront. Twenty or so jeering faces looked into theirs. “Bit of luck at last!” said the boy with the ginger hair. “Lost your nursemaid, have you?”
Howard stowed Awful behind him and talked fast. He did not think anything would stop them from being beaten up, but it was worth a try. “Of course, we’ve lost him,” he said. “We had to lose him. You lot never came near us with him around. We were looking for you.”
Hind’s gang shouted with laughter. “What are you going to do with us now you’ve got us?” someone called.
“Get you to take us to Shine,” said Howard. “We want to see Shine.”
They laughed even more at that. “Hey! He wants to see Shine!”
“Your wish is granted,” said the ginger boy. “Bring them along.”
Hands reached out and grabbed Howard, four to an arm, and as many more grabbed Awful. Feet shuffled and padded, and the hands tugged. Hind’s gang ran, and Howard and Awful were forced to run, too, or be dragged over on their faces. Hind’s gang ran all around them, barging and shoving and tugging, hustling them back down Palace Lane in the most uncomfortable possible way. Everyone’s face turned blue, then green, then red as they turned into the next lane. At least they weren’t being beaten up yet, Howard thought. But he had a feeling he had only put that off.
Somewhere in the lane after that they came level with a small door next to a fried chicken shop. There was a small red-lit sign over this door.
THE ORIENT
MEDITATION TAUGHT
Someone’s foot banged this door open. Hind’s gang stormed in through it, dragging Howard and Awful, jamming the two of them in anyhow among themselves, so that they all could trample together down the dark passage beyond. Bruised and breathless, Howard and Awful were dragged out into a quiet yard.
Even the gang went quiet here. People really were meditating. Howard blinked. It was quite light in the yard. The lighted signs in the street outside had made him think it was dark. Here, in a gentle sunset light, bearded men and women with long hair sat against the walls wearing yellow robes and staring into the distance. None of them took the slightest notice of the crowd of boys with Howard and Awful in their midst.
“Shine?” asked the ginger boy loudly.
Nobody answered. But after a second one of the men sitting against the far wall silently stood up. He opened a door in the wall beside him and went away through it. Nobody else moved. Howard was just thinking that nothing else was going to happen when the door opened and the man in the yellow robe came out again. He sat down against the wall without a word. But he left the door open.
“Come on,” said the ginger boy. Howard and Awful were tugged over to the door. It seemed to be dark inside. “Do you want us as well, Shine?” called the ginger boy.
“No,” said a voice from inside. “Wait in the yard.” It was a voice as rich as Mr. Mountjoy’s, but not so deep.
“Go on in,” said the ginger boy. He looked jeeringly at Howard. The rest of the gang stood around the door in a cluster. There was not much Howard could do but take Awful’s wrist again and fumble his way into the dim space beyond. It smelled of dust and oil, and it was big. Howard’s first thought was that the whole family seemed to like a lot of space.
Almost the only light in there came from rows of black and white television screens over in the left-hand wall. At first it was hard to see anything else in their bluish glimmer. And their eyes were drawn to the screens anyway, because something was going on in all of them. Fights were going on in two of them. In several others, people were meeting and passing one another packages or money. Some were street scenes, with cars and people going back and forth. One was a view of the yard outside, where the gang were standing looking bored and the people by the walls were still meditating away. And in one, a thief was in the act of climbing up a house to break in through the open bedroom window. Howard and Awful were fascinated by that one. The thief was inching his way up a drainpipe, past a big metal box labeled “Burglar Alarm,” and the drainpipe was loose. The man was having to be very careful. Awful could not take her eyes off him. But Howard managed to tear his eyes away as soon as the burglar’s hands were safely grasping the bedroom windowsill, in order to look at the rest of the place.
The low blue light glinted off things on the walls, hung there by orderly hundreds: guns of all kinds, drills and different lengths of crowbar, racks of blackjacks and knives, lines of explosives, gas cylinders, and heavy cutting equipment. Lower in the distance, several cars glimmered. People were quietly moving around down there, working on the cars. It was just as well that Howard and Awful had been too interested in the screens to move. This part of the room was only a concrete platform a few feet wide. Shine was sitting on the edge of this platform cleaning a gun, almost beside Howard’s feet.
She looked up when she felt Howard notice her. “Have you quite finished goggling?” she asked sarcastically. She was the opposite of Dillian in almost every way. Her hair was dark, and she was vastly fat. She was dressed entirely in black leather, which made her look fatter still since the leather stretched and strained in all directions in order to get around her. Howard could hear it creaking as she looked up at him. Shine’s face, in spite of its two chins, was quite like Archer’s except that, as far as Howard could see, her eyes were dark like Torquil’s. “Enjoying my little den?” she asked in her deep voice, jerking her chins at the rest of the room.
“What I can see of it,” Howard said.
“Good,” said Shine. “Because you’ll be getting to know it rather well. I’m not going to let you go in a hurry now I’ve got you.”
This caused Awful to lose interest in the burglar on the screen. “Now you want Dad to do you two thousand words,” she said.
“More than that.” Shine went back to carefully cleaning her gun. “I’ll want him to go on doing them,” she said. “I know a good thing when I see it even if Archer doesn’t. Your dad’s going to be so scared about you two that he’s going to fall over his own fingers to write words for me. I can’t think why Archer didn’t realize that.”
Howard and Awful looked at one another’s subdued blue faces. Being beaten up would have been better after all. “Why do you keep blaming Archer?” Awful said. “It wasn’t him getting the words. It was Hathaway.”
Shine polished her gun carefully with a soft cloth. “So they both say,” she said. “I admit Hathaway’s sneaky enough, but I’m not convinced. And I always blame Archer if I can. It keeps him annoyed and muddled and out of my hair.”
“Are you next eldest, after Archer?” Awful asked.
“Yes. Want to make anything of it?” Shine asked. Her leather creaked strenuously as she polished.
“I just asked,” Awful said hurriedly. “I do that with Howard, too.”
Shine glanced up at Howard. “He must be a fool to let you, just like Archer. Sit down, boy. And you, girl. You’ll be here a long time. Take the weight off your feet.” That
amused her. She gave a vast, booming guffaw. “By the time you leave you may even be my size!”
Howard lowered himself into a sort of squat on the cold concrete. Shine bulked beside him like a huge leather walrus. “Dad won’t write any words,” he said. “He’s gone obstinate. The more you lot bully him, the worse he gets.”
“Huh,” grunted Shine. She laid the cleaned gun down and picked up another. “He’ll think again when we start sending pieces of you in parcels.” The leather on her beefy arms strained as she broke open the new gun. “Better hope he doesn’t stay obstinate,” she said.
Howard did hope so, fervently. He looked up at the screen that showed the view of the yard. The gang was still waiting there, the other people still meditating. He did not think there was any way he and Awful could run for it—or not at the moment. The best thing seemed to be to try to keep Shine in a good mood. “So if you don’t think it’s Hathaway,” he said conversationally, “which one do you think it really is?”
“Which one of us hasn’t been after your father?” Shine countered. “You tell me.”
“I think it’s you,” Awful muttered.
Perhaps it was lucky Shine did not hear her. A buzzer sounded sharply. Shine looked up at the viewscreens. “Dave!” she shouted. “Dave! Time to go! The folks are coming back.” In the screen which had so fascinated Awful, the face of the burglar appeared anxiously at the bedroom window. “Not that way!” Shine yelled. “Gor, love a duck! You haven’t time! Go out the back door, you fool. Get out while they’re coming in the front!” She turned to Awful. “Honestly some of these burglars are so stupid! That’s the trouble with farming crime. Every idiot thinks he can steal. I’m thinking of asking for their grades in future—I might get some with a clue that way. What were we talking about?”
Howard shrugged and pretended to forget. He did not see why he should tell Shine that Venturus and Erskine were the other two who had not been after Quentin. He squatted on the concrete, watching Shine clean guns, and left the talking to Awful.
“Are you wanting to farm the world, too?” Awful asked.
Shine chuckled. “Only as much of it as I can manage. That’s more than this one little town, I can tell you, but I think I’ll leave Archer to farm the world. Glad to. I’ll even help him get there if he wants. You see, girlie, unlike Archer, I know how much I can do. People can hang on to only as much as they know how to hold. What I know is crime. I always did have this way of having to do things against someone else. I prefer to be against Archer. So he can have the world; I’ll take the world’s crime.”
Awful nodded and went on asking things. Shine did not seem to mind. She went on cleaning guns and answering quite equably. She told Awful that the cars were bulletproof ones, for when Shine went out on a job personally. She explained how guns worked. And she said she had already gone a long way, even without being able to move from town, toward taking over the crime in various countries.
“Though it’s not the same if a person can’t be on the spot,” Shine said. “That’s bugged me for thirteen years now, and I’m getting really fed up. Take last week now. I could have had India. If I’d been able to go there, I could have had the whole setup for a song. Man there went bankrupt. But it went to a Swede because I’m stuck here, thanks to your daddy’s words.”
There were various interruptions to Awful’s questions. Once Hind’s gang got bored, and Shine had to shout to them to leave the meditators alone. Once she roared at one of the fights on the screens, “That’ll do, boys! I want him jelly, not pulp!” And once the man in the yellow robe let in two annoyed young men, who told Shine angrily that they couldn’t cut through to that safe whatever they tried. “Told you so,” Shine said. “I said you’d need the heavy laser. Go get it.” A square of light fell suddenly on the part of the wall where the laser was. “Wait!” Shine said, as the men jumped crossly down off the platform to get it. “You’ll need to steal a van to carry all that lot in.” She turned, in a great creaking of leather, and looked at the screens. She pointed. “Take that one, on the corner of Bishop’s Lane.”
The men looked. “But it’s a police van!” one said.
“Right,” said Shine. “I feel like annoying my little sister. Take it.”
“Did you make all the lights in the lanes?” Awful asked while the men were getting the laser.
“Most of them,” said Shine. “Round here’s Shine Town, and I wanted you to know it. Screens picked you up when you came down Chorister Lane.”
“Shine Town!” Awful said, laughing.
Howard had been sitting all this time with his chin on his knees and his behind freezing on the cold concrete, turning over in his mind about ninety impossible ways of escaping from Shine—everything from grabbing the equipment the two young men were crossly lugging outside to simply jumping up and running—but he came back to reality when Awful laughed. It seemed to him that Awful and Shine were getting on rather too well. Perhaps it was not so surprising if you knew Awful.
“I wish I farmed crime,” Awful said wistfully.
Shine gave her deep chuckle. “How about you?” she asked Howard. “Fancy a life of crime, laddie?”
A week ago Howard would have nodded. But criminals were people who took what they wanted or tried to make you give it to them if they couldn’t take it. He had spent a week now being one of the people they tried to take things from. It made you think. He shook his head and tried to smile politely. All the same, Shine did seem to lead an exciting life.... Howard shook his head again, almost angrily. Thoughts of riches and splendid car chases flooded into his head. And the marvelous idea that he might get to be Shine’s trusted lieutenant. She would send him out to take over India for her, and he had always wanted to see India.
“Think about it, laddie,” said Shine, and bent, creaking, over the latest gun.
“I’m thinking about it,” said Awful, kneeling beside Shine.
“Sure you are, girlie,” said Shine.
She knows we both are! Howard thought. It went through him like a shock. Shine was trying to recruit them both.
“Sure I am,” Shine said frankly, just as if Howard had spoken. “Get you on my side, and I don’t need to keep you here. I can send you home to get around your Daddy for me. It’s better than turning him obstinate. I go for results.”
Poor Dad! Howard thought. Fifi onto him for Archer, Mum onto him for Torquil, and now us for Shine! As well as all the rest! Wonderful notions from Shine came pouring through his mind. India. Flying out to India in a private jet. Ordering gangsters about. The marvelous excitement of planning a robbery. The even more marvelous excitement of carrying the crime out. Waiting in the getaway car, holding your breath. The others coming flying up, guns smoking, and dumping gold ingots in the trunk. Then you tramp on the gas and scream away with six police cars after you. Oh, no, Howard thought. She doesn’t mean it. She just wants us to get around Dad. He set himself to resist, to refuse to attend to Shine. It was ten times more difficult than resisting Torquil’s wand. Shine just went on pressing ideas into Howard’s head—lovely ideas, that was the trouble—harder and harder. Howard tried to press back. It was rather like arm wrestling. And anyone, he thought frantically, who tried to arm wrestle Shine was a flaming idiot! Look at the size of her arms! And her mind was even stronger. As you do in arm wrestling, Howard felt himself going, going.
There was a way, he told himself desperately. There was something you did with your mind. You switched it around into a new shape. He almost knew. It was like the way he almost knew how to wriggle his ears. But he could not find the right movement to switch with, any more than he could quite find his ear muscles. And Shine was pressing harder still. Howard’s mind was bowed right down, almost to the ground. He found it.
Howard bounced back. But there was nothing pressing him. It was so sudden and he was bouncing so hard that he almost knocked himself out.
“Shine, darling,” said Dillian’s voice.
Dizzily Howard looked up and saw a
ll the viewscreens showing Dillian’s lovely face. Shine was creaking like an armchair as she climbed angrily to her feet. She had forgotten Howard for the moment. “Get off my screens, goodie-goodie!” she said. “I don’t want to look at you!”
“Then you shouldn’t pinch my police vans,” Dillian said. “That was awfully silly of you, Shine, dear. It made me notice what you were up to.”
“So I’m robbing one of Archer’s banks! Why should you care?” said Shine. “Go and tell your sugary little tales to Archer. Goodie-goodie!”
“Oh, no, dear,” said Dillian. “I never interfere between you and Archer. That’s not what I meant. I’m talking about Quentin Sykes’s little children, whom you have there with you.”
Shine puffed out a bad word. “What about them?” She began loading the gun she had been cleaning.
“You do puff these days, Shine, dear,” said Dillian. “You really should be careful. You’re so overweight!”
“I said, what about those kids?” Shine snarled, snapping in cartridges.
“You’re not to harm them, dear,” said Dillian. “And if you try to use them against Quentin Sykes in any way, you’ll be raided again, and this time I may be forced to put you in prison.”
“Oh, go to heaven, you golden goose!” Shine shouted, and fired her gun at the screens.
One screen exploded. The others went blank. Howard clapped his hands over his ears. Even so, through the bang and the crash, the choking smoke and the roaring of Shine, he could still hear Dillian’s silvery laughter. Shine was bellowing, “Repair squad! Screens!” and strings of bad words which gave Awful the giggles.
“Where were we?” Shine said when the smoke was clearing. A number of people in overalls ran toward the screens. “Take number 14 out,” said Shine. “Put a spare in quick. I want to see that raid. And stop laughing,” she said to Awful. “You’ve seen what happens when I lose my temper. What were we talking about before I did?”