“Good to meet you, Mister Bond,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Getting really quite tired of that line,” I said.
“With the name you chose, you must get it a lot,” she said, entirely unmoved. “So, Shaman Bond. I am Miz Smith. I know your name, of course, and the reputation that goes with it. One does hear things, after all.”
“Nothing good, I hope,” I said.
“Don’t waste your famous charm on me, Mister Bond. I don’t find humour funny.” And quite suddenly there was a small but really quite nasty gun in her hand, trained very professionally on me. “Please stand still, Mister Bond. It’s a security thing.”
I raised an eyebrow, and my hands. I wasn’t in any danger, of course, but I didn’t want Ms Smith to suspect that. The door behind me opened, and a large and very muscular gentleman came in and stood beside me. He was so big he could have made two of me, and his plain grey suit strained to hold it all in. He had the usual shaved head, and enough steel piercings in his face to make him a danger to stand next to during thunderstorms.
“Good evening, sir,” he said, in a flat basso profundo voice. “I will be your threatening presence for this meeting. Just think of me as Mister Genuine Muscle, here to facilitate the deal and ensure that everything goes smoothly. Or to dispose of the body, should it prove necessary. It is necessary that I frisk you now.”
“Not going to happen,” I said. “Not unless you like gumming hospital food.”
Ms Smith came out from behind her desk to better aim her gun at me, and flash me another of her bright professional smiles.
“It’s all standard business practice, Mister Bond. Please don’t take it personally. We do occasionally find it necessary to disappoint people, some of them very desperate and dangerous people, and we have to be prepared for when they become . . . upset. So please stand extremely still and allow yourself to be searched, or Mister Genuine Muscle will do it while you’re unconscious. And that might involve cavity searches.”
I shrugged resignedly, and raised my hands just a bit higher. Mister Genuine Muscle frisked me with professional thoroughness, and found nothing of any interest to him. He didn’t find any of my weapons or useful toys, because I kept all of those in my pocket dimension. And while the Merlin Glass was currently resting in my coat pocket, he didn’t find that either, because it evaded his hand with all its usual perversity. As I’d thought it would. And neither Mister Muscle nor Ms Smith could even see my torc. You’d have to be the seventh son of a seventh son, outside my family, and Family Planning has pretty much put an end to that.
Mister Muscle finally finished, and nodded briefly to Ms Smith, before stepping away from me. Ms Smith nodded back to him and he left, closing the door quietly behind him. Ms Smith put her gun away and sat down behind her desk again. She gestured to the visitor’s chair, and I sat down facing her. Projecting just a little injured pride, as befitted Shaman Bond.
“Was that really necessary?” I said.
She smiled again. It didn’t improve. “Think of it as professional courtesy, Mister Bond. Now, I need to take down your details. Starting with how did you hear about the Departure Lounge? We don’t exactly advertise.”
“Harry Fabulous told me,” I said.
She nodded immediately. Harry’s name was always going to be a safe enough bet. Everyone even remotely connected with our line of business either knows or knows of Harry Fabulous. Your special Go-to Guy, for absolutely everything unusual that’s bad for you. Knock-off Hyde, Martian Red Weed, smoked black centipede meat . . . Harry might have developed something of a conscience in recent years, after encountering something he still won’t talk about in the back room of a Members Only club in the Nightside. . . . But he’s still your main man to go to when you want something out of the ordinary. And everyone knows it. Harry would definitely have at least heard about the Departure Lounge. I find a lot of the business of being a good field agent lies in knowing just the right name to drop, and just the right moment to drop it.
“Sorry to have to ask these questions, Mister Bond,” said Ms Smith. “But we do have to be very careful.”
“I understand,” I said. “But that thing with the gun; don’t ever do that again.”
She looked at me sharply, hearing something in my voice, but elected to move on.
“Now why exactly do you need our very special services, Mister Bond? And what makes someone like you believe you can afford it?”
“I have stolen something,” I said flatly. “From the Droods. Yes, I thought that would get your attention. To be exact, I am now in possession of the legendary and quite priceless Merlin Glass.”
She reacted immediately to that name. She just couldn’t help herself. She sat up straight behind her desk, forgetting the paper she’d been filling out, and leaned forward suddenly, her eyes glowing with pure unadulterated greed.
“Details, please.”
“Trust me,” I said, “you don’t want to know exactly how I got it. Look . . . it was a mistake, all right? I didn’t realise what I was getting myself into, or that I’d end up with the whole damned Drood family chasing after me! I’ve already tried going to ground in a dozen different places, that I would have sworn were perfectly safe and secure. . . . But I’ve been chased or scared out of all of them. These people are inhuman! They know everything! They really are taking this far too personally . . . They want the Merlin Glass back, and they want my head. Not necessarily in that order. I’d give them the bloody Glass back, if I thought they’d just take it and let bygones be bygones. But they do seem to be very angry indeed. Look . . . I am prepared to give you people the Merlin Glass in return for one of your guaranteed one-way tickets to someplace where the Droods can’t find me!”
“I’m not sure where to recommend,” Ms Smith said slowly. “Is there such a place?”
“I have heard of one,” I said. “The Shifting Lands.”
Ms Smith looked at me sharply, and then sat back in her chair and regarded me thoughtfully with her cold grey eyes.
“It is supposed to be one of the few places outside of Drood jurisdiction,” I said after a while. “You do know about this place?”
She shook her head suddenly. “Sorry, Mister Bond, I think I’m going to have to pass this one further up the chain of command. So stay put. Don’t move from your chair and don’t touch anything while I’m gone. You are being watched.”
She all but ran out of the office, she was so keen to pass this hot potato on to someone else. She didn’t want to be the one who lost out on the Merlin Glass, but on the other hand, she really didn’t want to be the one who got the Droods mad at the Travel Bureau. I looked around the room for hidden surveillance cameras. There were only a couple, blindingly obvious to anyone with a torc. Hardly state-of-the-art equipment. I reached out to them through my armour and overwrote their signal so anyone watching would only see Shaman Bond sitting quietly in his chair. Standard operating procedure for any Drood in the field. How else do you suppose we stay hidden in this age of electronic surveillance? Just let everyone see what they expect to see, and they’re perfectly happy.
I got up out of my chair, and wandered around Ms Smith’s desk to take a look at her laptop. It was all very basic. I armoured up one hand, and sent golden filaments of strange matter burrowing into the computer. I soon had it purring like a contented tabby cat as I bypassed all its security protocols and had a good rummage through its files.
I knew I should have been patient, and taken no unnecessary risks. Just play the game and not risk the deal . . . but I couldn’t. Not while Molly was still missing. I had to believe Jack was right; that whoever it was and wherever they had taken her, Molly Metcalf was still perfectly capable of taking care of herself. But . . . I couldn’t help but remember the vicious beating Molly had taken at the hands of Crow Lee’s soldiers after she and I underestimated them. It doesn’t matter how go
od you are; there’s always going to be someone tougher, and nastier. Not knowing what was happening with Molly was driving me insane. I couldn’t just sit and do nothing while there was something I could be doing to hurry things along.
My armour opened up the laptop easily enough, but it had only limited access to company business. I was still surprised to discover just how many people had made use of the Departure Lounge in recent years. The Travel Bureau had done a lot of business, with hundreds of names, many of which I recognised. Nobody particularly big or important, but all of them known faces on the scene. Where I had occasionally wondered Whatever happened to . . . ?
I heard someone coming. I whipped the golden filaments out of the computer, armoured down, and settled myself comfortably in the visitor’s chair again. Looking innocent. Or at least as innocent as Shaman Bond could be expected to look.
A smooth salesman type came in, a cheerful young fellow, already prematurely balding, wearing a smart blue blazer over white slacks. With an Old School Tie from a very minor public school. Of course, that didn’t mean as much as it used to, not when you can find anything on eBay these days. The new arrival seemed very businesslike, all tanned and plausible, and he went out of his way to give me his most polished professional smile. I stood up just long enough to have my hand gripped in a brief professional handshake (quick and hearty and utterly uninvolved), and then we both sat down on either side of the desk, facing each other.
“Hello, Shaman!” he said cheerfully. “I am David Perrin, at your service. So pleased to meet you at last. I know your reputation, of course, but I never thought we’d ever actually meet in person. We do move in such different circles, after all!” He smiled again, to show that this was a joke, but he couldn’t quite keep the superiority out of his tone. I just stared back at him, and he moved quickly on. “Your reputation does rather precede you, Shaman, so I trust you’ll understand when I say I need to see the Merlin Glass for myself. Right here and now, in person. In the flesh, so to speak. Before we can go any further.”
I just nodded, reached into my coat pocket, and took out the Glass. I’d known they would insist on seeing it for themselves at some point, so before I even approached the Travel Bureau I removed the Merlin Glass from my pocket dimension. It wouldn’t do for anyone here to discover that Shaman Bond owned something like a pocket dimension. Questions would be asked . . . So I carefully wrapped the Glass in the cloth Jack had provided. (I’d hung on to the cloth, on the grounds that the old Armourer wouldn’t have chosen just any old cloth to wrap the Merlin Glass in. That it would be bound to have some useful properties . . .) And then I slipped the Glass into my coat pocket, and just hoped the Travel Bureau’s protections wouldn’t go ape-shit if they detected it.
David Perrin watched my every movement with hot and eager eyes, until I finally placed the silver-backed hand mirror on the desk between us. I was careful to handle the Merlin Glass as though I was very respectful, and not a little scared, of the thing. As Shaman Bond would be. (Hoping all the while that the bloody Glass wouldn’t play up again.) Perrin was actually breathing hard by the time I’d finished, his fingers twitching visibly. But he still had enough self-control, and enough self-preservation instincts left, not to touch the Glass himself. He just sat there and stared at it for a long moment; and then an old-fashioned eyepiece, like a jeweller’s loupe, suddenly appeared in his hand from out of nowhere. It jumped up into the air and screwed itself firmly into Perrin’s left eye socket, where it glowed a whole series of unnatural colours as he studied the Merlin Glass through the lens. Perrin leaned forward over the table, positioning his face right over the Glass until his nose was almost touching it. He examined the hand mirror from end to end, still careful to keep his hands well away; and even more careful not to look at his own face in the mirror’s reflection. Eventually, the eyepiece stopped glowing. Perrin slowly straightened up again, his back creaking loudly as he sat back in his chair. The loupe dropped out of his eye socket, fell down, and disappeared in mid-air. Neither of us mentioned it; we were, after all, professionals. There was a faint sheen of sweat on Perrin’s face. He looked . . . concerned, but determined.
“It is the real thing,” he said, his voice just a little strained. “And we do very definitely want it. How the hell did you get hold of a really powerful piece like this, Shaman?”
“It was an accident!” I said loudly. “I just happened to be somewhere, and helped myself to a certain sealed container that had been left just lying around, almost entirely unprotected. When I finally got the box open, I nearly had a heart attack! I wasn’t expecting the bloody Merlin Glass. I don’t want the damned thing . . . Or the whole Drood family coming after me! Look, you want it, it’s yours. If you can get me to somewhere safe. You can get me to safety, can’t you?”
“Easy, Shaman, easy,” murmured Perrin. “You have nothing to worry about here. We have the best protections in the business. And yes, we can send you somewhere safe.”
“It has to be now!” I said. “I’m pretty sure I shook the Droods off my trail, but you know as well as I do that they could turn up here any time. You know what they’re like. You don’t want them here, do you?”
“No,” said Perrin. “We very definitely don’t.” He looked thoughtfully at the Merlin Glass, and then at me. “Ms Smith said you wish to be sent to . . . the Shifting Lands. That’s . . . not somewhere most people have heard of. I have to ask, Shaman, how did you come to learn about the Shifting Lands?”
“I was at the Wulfshead Club,” I said. Which was safe enough. Everyone knows Shaman Bond drinks there regularly. “Janissary Jane was holding forth about this place so out on the edge that even the Droods can’t get there. She’d had a few, but . . . Look, if I haven’t even heard about this place, it must be well off the beaten track!”
Perrin nodded slowly. “That sounds . . . plausible. You’ve always known all the right, or more properly, wrong people. Very well, then, Shaman; I think we can accommodate you. A trip to the Shifting Lands, in return for the Merlin Glass.”
I snatched the Glass up off the desk even as Perrin reached for it. I sneered at him openly as I quickly wrapped the hand mirror in the cloth.
“You don’t even get to see this again, until right before I’m ready to leave. I’ll only hand the Glass over at the last possible moment. Nothing personal, you understand, but this is my only bargaining chip. And don’t think you or any of your people could just take it from me. The Merlin Glass has its own built-in protection and defences.”
“Of course it has,” said Perrin. “We expected this . . . behaviour. You are Shaman Bond, after all. Very well; come with me. And be prepared for the trip of a lifetime.”
* * *
He took me straight to the Departure Lounge, through a door at the back of the office, which I would have sworn wasn’t there before he indicated it. I was getting just a bit annoyed about that happening. I used to be able to spot hidden entrances and exits as a matter of course. But I kept my face carefully calm and neutral, and followed Perrin through into the Departure Lounge.
At first glance it was just another room, containing nothing but a single bog standard dimensional Door, standing alone and upright and entirely unsupported in the middle of the empty room. I’ve seen a lot of dimensional Doors in my time. But there was something very . . . wrong, about the room. I didn’t like the way it looked, or the way it looked back at me. The walls seemed to recede whenever I looked at them directly. Only to sweep back in again to a more respectable distance, when I looked away. The room seemed to grow and shrink in sudden spurts, as though its size and volume were just a matter of choice. I shook my head, and swallowed hard. Perrin nodded understandingly.
“Take a moment, Shaman. Get used to our Departure Lounge. We’re really very proud of it. You and I are actually standing inside a pocket dimension, created and maintained by the presence of this really quite remarkable Door. The room contains an awful l
ot of space, so you might say its physical dimensions have become somewhat . . . stretched, to contain it all. Concentrate on the Door, Shaman. That is what we’re here for.”
I nodded silently, and slowly approached the Door. A great slab of polished and veneered dark wood, with no hinges, no handle, and no knocker; just a combination dial set into the wood. After you turned the dial to choose the correct Space/Time coordinates, the Door would open onto whatever destination you’d selected. And yet this Door didn’t feel powerful enough to be able to do all the things Perrin claimed for it.
“We can deliver you anywhere,” said Perrin. “Strictly one-way, of course. That’s the point, so no one can track you, or follow you. And you can’t return, because the Door only exists from our side. We’ve sent all sorts of people to all sorts of places, and they must be happy there, because no one ever comes back to complain!”
He laughed easily, at the familiar company joke. And while he was busy doing that, I leaned in for a really close look at the Door, and its combination dial. With my back to Perrin, I was able to send a trickle of golden strange matter up to my face from my torc, to form a pair of golden sunglasses over my eyes. And then, I was able to study the Door’s true nature. It took me only a moment to determine that the Door was quite genuine, but the combination dial was a fake. It was jammed on one setting, one location. No one had moved it in ages. Which suggested . . . that the Travel Bureau people had been taking their clients’ money, opening the Door to the only place it could go, and then . . . pushing them through if need be and slamming the Door shut again after them.