“Quem são você?”
The words came rasping out of the darkness. Matt turned, angry with himself, and saw a guard looming over him, inches away. He had been so fixed on the horror on the other side of the glass, he hadn’t heard him coming and now it was too late. The man was about to raise the alarm and even with his powers, Matt doubted that he could get past the dogs, the drug lord, the men with machine guns. Why had he even concerned himself with a boy he had barely met? His job – his one responsibility – was to get out of here in one piece.
The man opened his mouth to call out, then stared at Matt, his eyes widening, reflecting the light from the operating theatre. He pitched forward, a knife jutting out of his back. It had been thrown in almost total darkness, twisting twice in the air before it had found its target.
Lohan ran forward on soundless feet. “Matt?” he whispered.
“Yes…”
“I thought I saw you round the other side. What are you doing here?”
“I was just checking up on someone.”
Lohan followed Matt’s eyes back through the glass and saw what was happening. He showed no emotion at all and Matt realized that he had smuggled drugs all over Asia and Europe in his time with the Triads. He had probably used children himself. He might even have cut them up if it suited his plans. Lohan was eight years older than Matt, a few inches taller, slim and strangely detached. It was only the thin scar that ran diagonally across his lips that stood out, a reminder of his criminal past. And that was what he was. A criminal. The man he had just killed meant nothing to him. There had almost certainly been dozens of others.
“These people are bastards.” Lohan muttered the words matter-of-factly. “Do you want to do anything about it?”
“Yes. But we should leave.”
“I agree. I have a jeep outside. I’ve seen to the rest of their vehicles. Let’s go.”
The two of them set off together, leaving the dead guard and the dull glow of the operating theatre behind them. Most of the guards were still grouped around the generator and nobody stopped them as they approached a cluster of vehicles parked near the main entrance. The clouds had parted, allowing a little moonlight to steal through. Matt was grateful for it. They would need it as they navigated their way back through the jungle. Lohan pointed at a jeep and Matt hurried forward, almost tripping over a pair of legs stretched out on the ground beside it. They belonged to another guard, who was lying there with a thin strip of cord around his neck. After spending so long with Richard, Matt still found it hard to get used to a companion who killed people with such ease.
They climbed into the jeep, quietly closing the doors behind them. Lohan started the engine and at once another guard appeared, blocking the way ahead of them, already swinging his machine gun around. Lohan stamped on the accelerator. The jeep leapt forward and the man dived out of the way. Somebody shouted. But then they were through the gate and off down the track. Matt remembered what Lohan had said. Somehow, without being seen, he had managed to disable all the other cars. They weren’t going to be followed.
They drove slowly, the stunted trees and bushes sweeping past on both sides. Lohan pointed in the back. “I got you some bread, cheese and water,” he said.
“Thank you.” Matt reached behind him. He hadn’t eaten for twenty hours and his stomach was growling.
“It was expensive. It’s a shame we couldn’t get more for you at the market. Your value is going down.”
“Maybe we should sell you next time,” Matt suggested.
It had been Lohan’s idea. The two them were going to need money if they had any chance of travelling across Brazil and there was only one easy way to earn it. Lohan had so far sold Matt three times in three different villages, each time pocketing almost two hundred dollars. Then he had come after him and rescued him. The first two times it had been easy. Matt had been chosen for manual labour on farms with hardly any security. But this latest adventure had reminded them both that there were far more unpleasant things happening in Brazil, worse even than human slavery. They might have six hundred dollars in their pockets but the risks were getting too great.
“How did you get here?” Matt asked, chewing a piece of bread.
“I travelled with you. On the top of the truck.”
So Lohan had travelled on the roof! Matt hadn’t heard him climb or jump down. But he wasn’t surprised. Lohan could walk into a crowded room in broad daylight without anyone noticing. It was just one of the skills he had been taught.
“How much fuel do we have?”
“The jeep’s full and we’ve got another hundred litres in tanks. The good news is they carried you south when they took you to Fernandinho.”
“Who’s Fernandinho?”
“The drug lord who just bought you. They call him Fat Freddy – but not to his face. Anyway, the compound is one hundred and sixty kilometres south of Laua.” Laua was the name of the village where the slave market had taken place. “So if you still want to go to Salvador, we’re on our way.”
“Can you think of a better plan?”
“No. But six hundred dollars isn’t going to be enough if we want to get tickets on a plane.”
They drove for two hours in silence, following a road that must have been a major thoroughfare at one stage: the concrete was still in good repair and there were even painted lines down the middle. Lohan had brought maps and a compass with them. That was typical of him. No matter where they were, he had the ability to find anything they needed, disappearing for half an hour and then returning with food, medicine, supplies … whatever. Matt was careful not to ask too many questions. He had never met anyone who could be so cold-blooded about their own survival.
At last they pulled to one side, driving behind a clump of bushes where the jeep would be concealed. Lohan wasn’t worried that anyone had followed them from the compound but if other drivers happened to pass, he didn’t want to be a target. There were any number of people who would cut their throats to steal their transport.
It was about half past three, the night heavy and close. Matt had just about got used to the mosquitoes, but the darkness – the way the jungle stretched out with no seeming end – still unnerved him. Lohan drank some water and helped himself to what was left of the food while Matt climbed into the back and tried to make himself comfortable on the seat. He had spent many nights like this and knew he could sleep with the window open and wake up covered in bites or he could close the window, turning the back into a hot, airless oven – in which case he would barely sleep at all. It wasn’t much of a choice.
“Did you ever use children?” Matt said. It was what he had been thinking earlier. Suddenly he wanted to know.
“Children?”
“To carry drugs.”
Matt hadn’t asked Lohan about his life in Hong Kong before the two of them had met. The more he learnt about the Triad leader, the more difficult it might be to travel with him. But he knew he wasn’t going to sleep while the image of the Brazilian boy remained in his head. He looked over the front seat and saw Lohan’s eyes reflected in the driver’s mirror. They were dark and cruel, and Matt knew that they had seen more violence and death than he could begin to imagine.
“Yes.” Lohan answered the question as if it were obvious, as if it were nothing to be ashamed of.
“Why?”
“Sometimes it was easier. Especially in airports. When the customs officers see a little boy clutching a teddy bear, they probably won’t want to look inside the bear.”
“Or inside the boy.”
“We had people who swallowed drugs and carried them for us inside their stomachs. But they were paid. It was their choice. What you saw today – that we would never do.”
“But you still smuggled drugs.” Matt hadn’t meant to throw out the accusation and regretted it immediately. But Lohan didn’t seem to mind.
“It was part of our business, yes.” The voice – reasonable, considered – floated out of the darkness. “Does it b
other you, Matt?”
“Drugs have killed a lot of people.”
“Cars have killed more. So have cigarettes and alcohol.”
“But they’re all legal.”
“Who decides what is legal or not legal? Politicians! And do you think that politicians are always right, that they always know what is best? People all over the world wanted drugs and it was part of my work to supply them. I think this was reasonable. Supply and demand. It is at the very heart of capitalism. Unfortunately, a politician in some room decided to interfere and because of this I found myself operating outside the law. I was a criminal. I am not ashamed of this. To be honest with you, I would rather be a criminal than a politician. Certainly, I have done less harm.”
“Why are you helping me? Why did you help Scarlett?”
“I had no choice. My father saw very quickly that the Old Ones were our enemies. They killed thousands of people in Hong Kong, threatening first our livelihoods and later our lives. I have never thought of myself as evil, Matt. I am in my own way a businessman. But what you saw tonight in that compound, that was evil. And you and I must fight it together.”
“I have to find the others,” Matt said. “I need to know why the doors have stopped working.”
“I thought you were looking for your friends while you were asleep.”
“I am. There’s no sign of them. Maybe it’s because we’re all in different time zones now. We’re never asleep at the same time. But I’ve had another idea. There’s someone else I know.”
“In your dreamworld?”
“Yes.”
Lohan nodded. His eyes were still fixed on Matt. “We are in the middle of Brazil with a few litres of fuel, six hundred dollars and limited supplies of food. The Old Ones will be looking for you already, I expect. So I suggest you stop asking me foolish questions and close your eyes and sleep. Go back to the dreamworld, Matt. Find what you are looking for. Right now we need all the help we can get.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Matt hadn’t wanted to go back to the library. The truth was that it frightened him. It was like walking into a cemetery in the certain knowledge that he would find his name on one of the graves.
What was it doing there anyway?
Matt had been visiting the dreamworld just about all his life. As far as he was concerned, it was a grim, empty place that had been created as much to keep him prisoner as to help him. It was a world without colour. The sea, the sky and the dust that made up much of the land were all different shades of grey. Nothing grew there. Even the wind had no life to it. To begin with, he had been trapped on an island surrounded by waves that crashed onto the beach, warning him to keep back. But he had seen the other Gatekeepers – Pedro, Scarlett, Scott and Jamie – on the shore and eventually he had reached them. The dreamworld had brought them together and seemed to want to help them with strange warnings, signs and symbols of what would take place.
It had come as a shock to stumble upon a building – and one so large that it was actually the size of a city. The library must have been there for thousands of years, growing all the time, so that there were parts of it that looked ancient – massive stone towers and battlements – and parts of it that were positively futuristic, with titanium-clad walls bending like waves, solar panels, and triple-height windows. Every country and culture in the world had been drawn into its design so that when Matt had looked at it for the first time, it was as if a hundred famous buildings had somehow got jumbled up together, with the onion domes of the Kremlin, the pure white minarets of the Taj Mahal, the pillars of the Parthenon, the metalwork of the Eiffel Tower and even the clock face of Big Ben. They were all tied together by arches, staircases, bridges and passageways, like the dream of a mad architect.
Not only was there a library – there was a librarian. Matt had met him; a man with vaguely Arab looks, long grey hair, a hooked nose and the sort of eyes that might contain all the knowledge in the universe but did their best to keep it hidden. Was he even a man at all? The trouble with the dreamworld was that it was hard to tell what was real and what was not and certainly the Librarian looked as if he had dressed up for the part, with his loose-fitting jacket – pastel shades of mauve, orange and green – his baggy trousers and sandals instead of shoes. He hadn’t been unfriendly but he spoke in riddles. He seemed to know Matt from the past. He knew all the Gatekeepers. But how? He had refused to say.
Why didn’t Matt want to go back? Almost every night, while he had been in Brazil, he had returned to the dreamworld but had spent his time there searching for the others, retracing his footsteps all the way to the sea and the island where they had first met. He had persuaded himself that he would find them there again and had felt a crushing sense of disappointment to see the black rock jagged and empty, lashed by sea spray, abandoned. Part of him knew that this was all his fault. He had led them through the door in Hong Kong and he had lost them – not just in one world but in two.
The library was his only hope. He would find all the answers to his questions there – after all, that was what libraries were for. Where were the others? Why were the doors no longer working? What did he have to do to win the struggle against the Old Ones … especially when everything seemed so hopeless and, with a whole decade on their side, it seemed they had already won? All he had to do was ask. The Librarian had been helpful enough. Surrounded by thousands – millions – of books, he seemed to know everything about the past and the future. But Matt was certain that the information would come at a price. He had already been offered the chance to read his own future and had turned it down. Had that been another mistake?
He had looked for the others and he couldn’t find them. Maybe he had been doing nothing more than putting off the inevitable. At the end of the day, he knew there was no real choice. He couldn’t afford to waste any more time.
And so he made the decision and turned round. Retracing his steps back to the library was surprisingly easy. They were etched out in the dust, footprints like the ones left by the astronauts on the moon, winding all the way back to the horizon. He had been walking for days, or even weeks, but of course it took him only a few minutes to get back … that was exactly the sort of timetrick that the dreamworld liked to play. Ahead of him, the ground rose up slightly – a sand dune but one that was grey not yellow. He might have covered a hundred kilometres or more but his legs weren’t even tired as he reached the top and stood there, willing himself to continue down the other side.
The library was spread out in front of him, sprawling across the landscape in every direction. It was still impossible to believe that it was actually a single building as there were so many sections – annexes, vestibules, covered walkways and bridges added over the centuries as each part of it became too small to house the collection of books that it contained. Every human life that had ever been lived had been given its own volume, meaning that there had to be billions of them just to cover the world of the present day. Add thousands of years of history, whole populations growing up and dying, and you arrived at a figure with too many zeros to make sense.
Matt’s own life was somewhere among them. He had held it in his own hands but he had refused to open it and read. He still didn’t want to. Was that really so unreasonable? Would anyone?
He climbed down the sand dune. After a while, he felt smooth marble under his feet and realized that this was the same path that he had taken before. The main entrance, a spectacular arched doorway with stone carvings of plants and animals, loomed over him. The front wall soared upwards, blotting out the sky. If it had been constructed to make him feel tiny and insignificant, then it was working. Keeping his head down, forcing himself on, Matt walked into the entrance hall, taking in the great pillars and a vaulted ceiling. And there was the Librarian waiting for him – as if he had never left. He wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t particularly pleased. He was just there.
“Hello, Matt,” he said.
“Hello.”
The Librarian had never told Ma
tt his name. Indeed, Matt had the impression that he didn’t have one.
“I thought you’d come back eventually. How can I help you?”
“You know what I want. Why ask?”
“You sound tired. Would you like some tea?”
The Librarian had been sitting behind a desk, studying a page of a manuscript with a magnifying glass. Matt almost smiled. Had somebody been vandalizing the books? And what would have happened to the unfortunate person who had had a page torn out of his life? The Librarian put down his things and, gesturing at Matt to follow him, walked through an archway partly concealed behind an ornamental screen. There was a smaller, more welcoming room on the other side. Staff quarters? Two low sofas had been set facing each other with a table on a thick rug between them. A copper teapot, two glasses and a small bowl of dates had already been laid out. Again, the set-up seemed vaguely Arabian to Matt. It reminded him of the inside of a Bedouin tent.
He sat down and waited while the Librarian poured two glasses of tea, the liquid pale green and steaming hot.
“Please, help yourself…”
Matt picked up his glass, holding it between the very tips of his fingers so as not to burn himself. In the dreamworld, nothing had any colour. There was never any temperature or taste. But the tea was different. Matt could smell the fresh, aromatic scent of peppermint. He sipped the tea. It was delicious.
“I’m afraid things haven’t been going well for you,” the Librarian said.
“We’ve lost,” Matt said. The words fell heavily from his lips but even as he spoke them he knew that they were true. “The whole world has changed. We jumped forward ten years and it was as if every warning we were ever given had suddenly come true. Global warming. Floods. Famine. Wars. It’s all happened at once.”
“The Old Ones have been busy.”
“What can we do to stop them? Can we do anything? When we arrived in Belém, half the city was under water and there were dead bodies floating in the streets. There are slave markets! People are so desperate, they’re selling their own kids. And we’ve heard things are almost as bad in America. Whole countries have been wiped out. It’s like the end of the world. Even if we managed to beat the Old Ones, there’s hardly anything left.”