He managed a tired smile. “Because Sir Alec put the secret into secret agent, Bibs.” Muscles complaining, he pushed to his feet. “I’ll go and see what he’s up to. You three stay put. And don’t try anything thaumaturgical, all right? We’ve got enough trouble to contend with as it is.”
The fact that not one of them had a go at him for saying something so blatantly provocative was a depressing reminder of how much trouble they were in.
Bloody hell, Gerald. Where are you?
When he couldn’t find Sir Alec anywhere in the house, he looked outside. Finally ran the man to ground out the back, in the old stable yard, where he was sitting on the rim of a large ornamental flower pot smoking a cigarette. Its tip glowed a bright and oddly comforting orange in the moonless night’s star-pricked darkness. The scent of burning tobacco tinted the cold air.
“Here’s some unsolicited advice, Mr. Markham,” said Sir Alec, not turning. Lamplight from the open mud- room door brushed him with warm soft strokes, like an antique oil painting. In profile his face was remote and severely economical. “Never start smoking. The damned things are too tempting when the world’s gone and turned itself ass over elbows.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said, halting a few paces distant. “I’ll try to remember that.”
Sir Alec inhaled, then blew out another thin stream of smoke. “So. Have you given any thought as to Mr. Dunwoody’s whereabouts?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “We reckon the other Gerald’s kidnapped him.”
“Do you?” Sir Alec slid him a sideways look. “Interesting.”
“You don’t?”
“Did I say that?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then.”
Bemused, he watched intensely enigmatic Sir Alec smoke a little more of his cigarette. “Ah-Sir Alec-”
“Yes, Mr. Markham?”
“Did you know?”
Sighing, Sir Alec stubbed out the cigarette on the side of the flower pot and carefully placed it on its weed- choked dirt. “About the existence of parallel worlds?”
“Yes. Did you know?”
“The notion is hardly groundbreaking, Mr. Markham. I’d be surprised if you’d not bandied it about yourself.” Sir Alec snorted. “I’d be surprised to find one thaumaturgical undergraduate who hasn’t. It’s a popular theme in certain types of literature, I believe.”
Oh, this bloody man. He stamped his feet a little against the creeping cold. “Sure, yeah, but-that’s just theory. That’s just mucking about, you know, playing what if. What I want to know is whether anyone in the government knew for sure there are-other realities mirroring ours. I want to know whether anyone knows that they’re dangerous.”
That earned him a wry look. “You’re under the impression thaumaturgics are safe? My, my, Mr. Markham. It seems I’ve overestimated you.”
In his pockets his fingers clenched to fists. “Just answer me, would you? Does anyone know? ”
“I think,” said Sir Alec, after a long silence, “that what you’re really asking me, Mr. Markham, is whether anyone in the government is working on ways to access these parallel worlds.”
Somewhere in the neighborhood a cat yowled and a dog barked. The waning night was so still and quiet the squabbling animals sounded quite close, even though they were probably streets and streets away.
“Well?” he said, his heart erratically thumping. “Are they?”
“Mr. Markham…” Sir Alec turned up his coat collar, his only concession to the cold. “At the risk of inflating your already highly-evolved sense of worth, I’ll say this: if the Ott government was working on such a project you would know all about it because you would be heading it. When it comes to experimental thaumaturgics there is Monk Debinger Aloysius Markham… and then there’s everyone else, eating his dust.”
Monk felt his face warm. “Oh. Sir Alec, I-”
“Which is why,” Sir Alec added, ruthlessly severe, “your thoughtless rompings are so frowned upon, young man. If we worry about the wrong people getting their hands on Mr. Dunwoody, you can believe we worry no less about you.” He shook his head, exasperated. “Dear God, you invented an interdimensional portal opener! By accident. Young man, you are lethal.”
“Um…” He cleared his throat. “Well. You know. Not on purpose.”
Sir Alec’s lips twitched. “The answer, incidentally, is no, Mr. Markham. The existence of parallel worlds is held to be nothing more than a fanciful, far-fetched theory.”
“Yeah,” he said. “All right. Only… there’s a dead man upstairs that proves the theory’s a fact.”
“Indeed there is, Mr. Markham,” said Sir Alec, most pensive. “But I suggest we tackle one hurdle at a time.” He rubbed the side of his nose. “I suppose the appalling bird is demanding that you all go charging off to rescue Mr. Dunwoody?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Although, to be fair, Reg isn’t the only one afraid of sitting around doing nothing. We all want to get Gerald back home safe and sound. I’m assuming you do too.”
Sir Alec reached inside his coat and pulled out one of the confiscated portal openers. Tossed it sideways without looking. “Catch.”
He snatched the innocuous stone mid-flight and wrapped his fingers tightly around it. Felt the sizzling tingle of powerful thaumics embedded deep in its igneous heart.
“So whose is that one?” said Sir Alec, contemplating the distant, twinkling constellations. “Yours? Or his?”
The trick, Gerald had told him once, was never to let Sir Alec get the upper hand. “Can’t you tell?”
Sir Alec’s lips twitched again, in what might have been a dry smile. “Pretend that’s the case.”
“His,” he said, and felt a funny little catch in the back of his throat.
“And how can you tell?”
Blowing out a breath, watching it mist the air, he rubbed his fingers over the other Monk’s extraordinary invention. “There’s a-a twist in the thaumics,” he murmured. “The operating incant’s matrix, it’s-different. More complex. Same principles as what I did with mine, only-expanded. And a lot trickier.”
Sir Alec nodded. “Could you get it to work, do you think?”
“Oh, yes. Absolutely. I mean, it’s keyed to my-I mean his-thaumic signature. Which is, y’know, my thaumic signature. Why? Did you want me to-”
“No, no,” said Sir Alec. “That’s quite all right. I believe you, Mr. Markham.”
“Fine, only if we are going to rescue Gerald then-”
Sir Alec stabbed him with a look. “ I said no, Mr. Markham. First things first, understood?”
He swallowed. “Yes, sir. Understood.”
“I wonder,” said Sir Alec, his voice soft again, one pale brown eyebrow quizzically raised. “How long would it have been, d’you think, before you put the same thaumic twist into your own unsanctioned interdimensional portal opener?”
He felt his fingers fist again. “I can’t help it, you know. I mean, it’s not like I sit around twiddling my thumbs and thinking of ways to get up the Department’s nose. I don’t go out of my way to flout authority.”
“No?” Sir Alec slid his hand back inside his coat, withdrew a slim silver case and a lighter and took a moment to extract then ignite a fresh cigarette. With case and lighter returned to his coat, he inhaled deeply, then exhaled fresh smoke. “And if we went upstairs to your attic right now, Mr. Markham? What would we find?”
“Look,” he said, feeling another hot rush of blood to his face. “You don’t understand. Ideas come to me. I can’t stop them. Even while I’m sleeping, they fill up my skull. They never leave me alone. And if I don’t-if I don’t do something with them, if I don’t turn them from dream to reality, it’s like-” Frustrated, he yanked his hands out of his pockets and folded his arms. “I suppose you’re going to tell Uncle Ralph?”
Sir Alec looked at him, cigarette idly balanced between the first and second fingers of his left hand. His chilly gray eyes were lazily intent. “Just as a matter of interest, idle curiosity, no more than that-what are you working on, up in your attic?”
And now he knew how a rabbit felt, frozen in the middle of the road with a car bearing down on it…
If I tell him he’ll make me pull the plug. But if I don’t tell him he’ll “Relax, Mr. Markham,” said Sir Alec, his
