CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘Hello, you two,’ said Amelia Carrington.

Immaculate in a simple grey business suit and almost austerely formal black court shoes, she stepped through the Door, followed by Colin Gomez, with a black eye and his arm in a sling. The Door closed behind them, fell off the wall and rolled itself up. Colin Gomez pounced on it, snatched it up with his good hand and stuffed it in his inside pocket.

Surprisingly, Frank was the first to recover from the shock. He tried to grab Colin, but Emily stopped him by stamping on his foot. ‘Don’t,’ she said urgently. ‘They’re dangerous.’

Amelia beamed at her. ‘She’s right, of course,’ she said. ‘Oh, I know you but you don’t know me. Amelia Carrington. And you’re Frank Carpenter,’ she added, with a subtle blend of curiosity and distaste. ‘I know ever such a lot about you.’

‘Dangerous in what way?’ Frank asked. Then he stopped abruptly, as a pain in his head made everything impossible. It only lasted two seconds, but that was long enough.

‘Colin,’ Amelia said, and without any apparent hesitation Colin Gomez handed her the Door. She produced its cardboard tube out of thin air, tucked it away and handed it back.

‘Now then,’ Amelia said. ‘Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.’

Emily backed away, dragging Frank with her; not that there was anywhere to go. There was a sort of irony in that; your deadly enemy’s got the Portable Door, and you honestly believe that running away might help?

‘The story so far,’ Amelia said, in the manner of someone making a private joke for her own amusement. ‘In about ten minutes’ time, you two misfits will walk through my office wall. She’ll be waving around a magic sword, in the naive belief that I’ll be scared of it. You’ll try and force me to tell you my evil cunning plan for world domination, and after that you’re going to stop me doing it by taking me back through time and marooning me in-‘ her upper lip curled in involuntary disgust ‘- 1963. That’s because neither of you have got the guts to kill me, but you really think I ought to be got out of the way, for the sake of the planet.’

Emily looked at her. ‘That’s what we’re going to do?’

Amelia nodded. ‘It was his idea.’

‘Oh.’

‘Quite. Of course, it won’t work. While you’re dithering about being humane, I flatten you both against the wall with Schrodinger’s Ferret, and Colin-I’ve forgiven him, by the way, he’s too pathetic to squash, and he does earn the firm a great deal of money-Colin’s been hiding behind the filing cabinet all this time, just in case I can’t handle you myself, and Erskine comes rushing in from the interview room, and they jump on you.’ Amelia frowned. ‘At this point, things go slightly wrong. Well, Colin messes them up, actually. Don’t you, Colin?’

Gomez nodded sadly. Not that his feelings mattered a damn, but he did seem very unhappy about the whole business.

‘Colin,’ Amelia went on briskly, ‘sees you-‘ stern glance at Frank, who winced ‘- picking up a hole-punch, presumably to throw at me. He overreacts-well, you did, you stupid man-and throws a thunderbolt. Only he misses,’ Amelia added, frowning. ‘And hits Erskine. Nothing left but a smell of burned hair and a brown patch on the wall. Which is why,’ she went on, with a faint sigh, ‘we’re all here. You see, I’m rather fond of Erskine.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. He’s my dog.’ Short pause, while Emily realised that this wasn’t a metaphor. ‘Your dog?’

Nod. ‘Cross between a Jack Russell and a King Charles spaniel; as unlikely a match as-well, you two, but their union was blessed, and my dad gave it to me for my tenth birthday. You can get attached to a dog,’ Amelia added, slightly guiltily. ‘And besides, he’s been very useful. He found you, for instance,’ she said, looking at Frank. ‘Wonderful nose, he can follow a scent even through a transdimensional vortex. Looking for the Door, of course. I’ve always wanted it, ever since I was little. I always put it at the top of my Christmas list, but I kept getting ponies instead. Not that a pony can’t be made useful—’

Sudden insight illuminated Emily’s mind. ‘Sally Esteban in Accounts,’ she said.

Amelia nodded. ‘And Jack Grimminger, at the St Petersburg office. He used to be a dear little Welsh cob, about thirteen-two, and now he’s in charge of Corporate Finance in one of the quickest-growing markets in the sector. Gelding, of course, but that just means one less distraction. Anyway, back to Erskine. When all this started I set him to sniff out the Door, and when it opened-you were running one of your errands for poor George Sprague-he nipped through and started following you around. Led me straight to you, bless him. And now silly old Colin’s gone and blasted him into his component molecules, and I don’t think I could bear to be parted from him, even though he’s a complete moron when he’s human. So,’ she went on, with a cheerful smile, ‘I decided to take a leaf out of young Frank’s book, use the Door and make the whole ambush incident never happen. Stroke of luck for you, of course.’

Emily frowned. ‘Is it?’

‘Oh yes. Sorry, forgot. Colin’s second thunderbolt took out the pair of you. In about-‘ glance at watch ‘- in roughly six minutes’ time, so we’d better get a move on, you two will be extremely dead. Or you will have been, only I want my dog back. So instead,’ Amelia said grimly, ‘I’m going to do to you what you had planned for me. Nineteen sixty-three,’ she added, with relish. ‘Really, I don’t know which of you diabolical geniuses was responsible for choosing the date, but for sheer inventive nastiness, it deserves some kind of award. But that’s all right, since I get to reap the benefit of your ingenuity.’ She smiled, and gave Emily an appraising look. ‘You’re going to look so cute in tall white vinyl lace-up boots,’ she said. ‘Just think of me every time you wear them.’

Emily said a rude word. Amelia grinned. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Colin, get Erskine in here. He’s going with you,’ she said casually, ‘to make sure that you behave. He’ll be coming back later, of course, but you won’t.’

Colin was on the phone. A sudden rush, Emily thought, while she’s off guard. Their last chance, probably. Heroism. But she’d been in pest control long enough to know that heroism, like true love, usually only makes things different, rather than better. The Sixties, though. Dear God.

‘He’s on his way up,’ Colin said. ‘Oh, and Dennis Tanner’s downstairs. He insists on seeing you.’

‘Tell them I’ll be down in a minute,’ Amelia replied. ‘He’s going to be terribly put out when he finds out what I’ve done to him. All in all, a good, busy day. Well, come on, you two. Colin, stand by in case they try something stupid. Erskine, there you are at last.’

In he bustled, and although in his human form he didn’t have a tail to wag Emily found herself wondering how she’d failed to realise that he was a dog all along. It was so blindingly obvious when you looked at him.

‘Door, Erskine.’

Immediately, he took a familiar-looking cardboard tube from his pocket, fished out the rolled-up plastic and spread it on the wall. Which was odd, Emily couldn’t help thinking, because last time she’d seen it the Door had been in Colin’s hand, just before he stowed it away in his pocket.

‘Fetch.’

Erskine darted forward, grabbed Emily by the arm and hustled her towards the Door. Frank tensed himself to intervene, then thought of the brown mark on Ms Carrington’s office wall. Play for time, he thought; so he said: ‘What have you done with George Sprague?’

Amelia shrugged. ‘He’s in Holding,’ she said. ‘Down in the cellars somewhere, I imagine. When he wakes up, of course, it’ll be in his own bed and he won’t remember a thing. Oh, it’s all right, you don’t have to worry about him. It’d be far too much bother to break in a new insurance account manager. I only needed him to give you a pretext for making up to her.’

Frank discovered the germ of an uncomfortable thought lodged under the dental plate of his mind. ‘That was all part of the plan, was it? Us two getting together.’

Amelia nodded. ‘So you’d come into my parlour, and bring me the Door. Economy of effort, you see, birds-to-stone ratios. I never begrudge a little added complexity if it means I can eliminate a superfluous ingredient or two.’

‘Whatever.’ Frank looked at her. At a time like this, he thought, troll’s blood would be quite welcome. ‘And Emily and me,’ he went on, anger just about overriding embarrassment. ‘Only, my father told me about love potions and stuff. You didn’t—’

‘Oh, I see.’ Amelia giggled. ‘No, that wasn’t me. Just a bonus, though I suppose it was always on the cards. Put two sad people together in close proximity and add excitement and pressure … It won’t last, of course,’ she added pleasantly. ‘I give it six weeks at the outside, and then you’ll be wondering what the hell you ever saw in each other. I mean, really. About all you’ve got in common is that, way back, you’re both descended from monkeys.’

Frank nodded. ‘Thank you so much,’ he said. ‘We’ll be going now.’

‘Splendid. Oh, and if you were thinking that when you get there, you could go round to Daddy’s house and murder me in my cot, don’t waste your time. You’ll only get caught and thrown in prison, if you’re lucky, and what kind of a life would that be? Well, goodbye. It’s been such fun.’

Frank felt Erskine’s grip on his shoulder; surprisingly strong. Six weeks, he thought: well, we’ll see about that. Amelia Carrington may be able to undo the future, but that’s no reason to assume that she can predict the past. A hand shoved him between the shoulder blades and he stumbled forward, through the Door.

It swung to behind him, clicked shut, and vanished.

Perhaps it would’ve given Frank and Emily a small degree of satisfaction to hear Amelia’s scream of baffled rage as the Door turned into a blank, featureless wall. But they didn’t. By then, they were decades away.

The dragon woke up with a start, and yawned.

A drop of no more than a quarter of a degree in the temperature of the cavern: you’d have needed pretty sophisticated instruments to record it, but it was enough to smash a hole through the dragon’s dream and leave it with an uncomfortable hind-brainful of splintered images.

One of the good things about caverns deep underground is that their temperature stays constant: no sun, no wind or rain, roof insulation beyond the dreams of ecology. A quarter-degree fluctuation therefore can only mean that someone up-tunnel has just opened a door.

The dragon’s ears went forward. It listened carefully. It heard a pin drop.

Tinkle, went the pin on the tunnel floor. Bump bump bump went the grenade, like Winnie the Pooh going downstairs. The grenadier had done his calculations pretty well. As soon as the grenade skittered into the cavern, it went off.

The roar of the explosion echoed round the cavern for a good three seconds. Not just your ordinary run-of-the-Mills-bomb pineapple; this one had been specially loaded to exacting specifications by Hewitt and Lane of Curzon Street, bespoke munitions makers to the London magic trade. If the blast and shrapnel didn’t do the trick, the shock wave, in a confined space like an underground cavern, was guaranteed to break every high-tensile bone in a dragon’s body. It had been awarded an unprecedented five stars in Which Grenade, June 2005.

The dragon havered. Ever such a lot of dust had come down from the roof. It did its best, but finally it had to give in and sneeze; fortuitously, just as the assault party poked their heads round the tunnel mouth to see if the grenade had done the job.

The dragon turned round three times and went back to sleep.

‘Uncle Dennis,’ Amelia said. ‘How nice to see you again so soon.’

Dennis Tanner sat down without being asked, and put his feet up on the edge of her desk. That made her smile. Defeat has different effects on different people. Some it crushes; others put on an exaggerated show of stroppiness. Amelia had seen defeated men across that same desk enough times to read the body language at a glance.

‘It was that bloody Door thing, right?’

She nodded. ‘You’re terribly clever, Uncle Dennis. Not clever enough,’ she added sweetly, ‘but don’t feel bad about it.’ She pushed a box of cigars, which hadn’t been there a moment ago, across the desk at him. He picked one out, sniffed it and put it back. ‘How did you figure it out?’

‘The Carpenter boy came to see me,’ Dennis replied. ‘Told me about the Mousetrap you’d set for your pest-control girl. Didn’t take me long to work out you’re the only one who’d be in a position to do that. I knew about the insurance scam that Carpenter was working. What I couldn’t get was why you’d want to knock off one of your own employees. Oh, on general principles, yes,’ he added. ‘When I was at JWW there were times I’d have cheerfully exterminated the lot of ‘em. But just the one, and a Mousetrap—’ He grinned. ‘And then it just sort of clicked. Bait. To make the Door come to you.’

‘Very good.’ Amelia nodded. ‘So, did you come all this way just to—?’

‘Properly speaking, of course,’ Dennis went on, ‘the Door belongs to me. On account of the fact that Frank Carpenter’s dad found it in a drawer in his desk at JWW, so it was the firm’s property and, since I’m the only surviving partner, it’s mine.’ He paused. ‘But I don’t suppose you see it like that, somehow.’

‘No.’

‘Well, quite. We could have a lawsuit about it, maybe.’

‘We could,’ Amelia conceded. ‘Of course, that’d mean a lot of lawyers getting turned into frogs, but I’m game if you are. Whether they’d still be able to charge you Ł500 an hour for sitting on lily pads catching flies with their tongues is a moot point, but knowing your luck—’

Dennis grinned. ‘Alternatively,’ he said, ‘we could forget the whole thing, and you could cut me in for the share you promised me in the big bauxite strike.’

‘No.’

‘Pretty please? Go on, be a sport.’

‘No.’

Nod. ‘I was hoping you’d say that. I wasn’t going to give you a chance, but Mum insisted. Well, thanks for your time.’

Dennis stood up, then stopped. For a moment or so, he seemed to be trying to drag his feet off the floor, like a man trapped in deep mud. Then he sat down again.

‘That’s just showing off,’ he said. ‘Uncle Dennis,’ Amelia said. ‘You didn’t come here just to make me an offer that I can’t accept. What’re you up to?’ Dennis smiled at her. ‘You’re not going to let me go till I tell you, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Fine.’ He reached for the cigar box, only to find that it was now empty. He snapped his fingers, lit the result and blew smoke across the desk. It stopped in mid-air and vanished. ‘You know about the Wayatumba strike, of course.’

‘Naturally. Until word gets out about what we’ve found, it’s still officially the biggest bauxite deposit in the world. You gave it to Frank Carpenter’s dad.’

‘That’s right. And now I’ve got it back.’

Amelia’s eyebrows rose. ‘Really? How did you manage that?’

‘Bought it.’

‘Ah. Borrowed money, of course.’

Shrug.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Amelia went on. ‘Borrowed family money. Goblins.’

‘Sound enough investment,’ Dennis replied blandly. ‘And, being a naturally subterranean species, we reckon we know a bit about mining and minerals.’

‘Indeed,’ Amelia said. ‘I’m sure they went into it with their beady little red eyes wide open. Presumably this is some sort of declaration of war.’

Dennis nodded. ‘Price war,’ he said. ‘We plan on digging the stuff out in vast quantities and practically giving it away. Which means you’ll have to do the same. It’ll be a case of who can stand the loss longest, you or us, and then the winner buys out the loser’s stake for pennies from the liquidators.’

Amelia sighed. ‘Dear Uncle Dennis,’ she said. ‘You know, sometimes you can be very sweet. But I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.’

‘You reckon.’

‘I know for a fact. We sold all our rights in the new strike this morning.’

Dennis Tanner sat still and quiet long enough for his cigar to burn a neglected quarter-inch. ‘That’s interesting,’ he said eventually.

‘Yes. Well, do give my regards to your mother. I must say, she’s marvellous for her age. You can get up now, if you want to.’

Dennis shot to his feet, staggered and steadied himself on the back of the chair. ‘This whatever-it-is you’re up to,’ he said. ‘Is it connected to the Door, or just sort of running in parallel?’

‘That’d be telling,’ Amelia said cheerfully. ‘Talk to you soon.’

As soon as he’d gone, she relieved her feelings by taking the phone off its cradle and bashing it against the side of the desk until the plastic smashed. Of course, Uncle Dennis couldn’t have known that something had gone wrong and the Door had slipped through her fingers. No way. Just talking about it, though, hearing it mentioned, made her want to howl with rage.

For the hundredth time since it had happened, Amelia tried to figure it out.

She hadn’t, of course, been entirely honest with Carpenter and the Spitzer girl. Getting Erskine back hadn’t been the only reason. She’d have done it anyway: the attempted ambush had forced her hand, but it shouldn’t have mattered. As far as she’d been able to tell at the time, it had all worked out just fine. Except that now she was short one Portable Door.

Erskine would be back soon, she reminded herself, and then it wouldn’t matter. Then at least she’d have one Door, though two would’ve been nicer. Where was he, by the way? Bad dog.

Amelia ran through the calculations in her mind.

According to Pereira’s Last Theorem, if you used the Door to go back through time and open a Doorway in a wall at precisely the moment when, in the past, the Door was being applied to that same wall, you ought to achieve the Pereira Effect: the Door in the future would interface with its past and self-replicate, leaving you with two Doors.

Done that, Amelia reflected. And the look on Carpenter’s face when she’d walked through had been worth it on its own. For a short while, then, she’d had two Doors: the one she’d taken from Carpenter after he’d been thunderbolted during the ambush, and its ten-minutes-earlier past self. But, when Erskine had shoved the troublesome pair through the Door (a Door) into the Sixties, and she’d looked in the cardboard tube just in case, there’d been nothing inside it except a little stale air. Infuriating.

So: maybe Pereira had been wrong. His work was, necessarily, entirely theoretical, and perhaps there was a flaw in the maths somewhere. Sums, Amelia was prepared to admit, weren’t her strongest suit. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help thinking that she’d been cheated somehow.

Anyhow; no use crying over vanished Doors. She comforted herself with the thought of Uncle Dennis explaining to the goblins that he’d just lost all their money. It was possible, of course, that they’d be terribly nice and understanding about it, point out that they’d known the risks when they’d decided to make the investment and urge him not to feel bad about it, because after all, it’s only money, isn’t it, and family’s so much more important; oh, and look out, low-flying pigs operate in this area. Or they might tear him into little bits and jump on them.

Poor Uncle Dennis.

The Door opened.

‘Look out!’ Frank yelled, and he lunged forward and shoved Erskine aside, just in time to stop him being flattened by a speeding, brand new Triumph Herald.

‘Oh God,’ he heard Emily say, somewhere behind him. ‘It’s true. She really did it.’

Frank looked up and down the street. They weren’t in Cheapside any more. The wall they’d just stepped out of stood in a leafy suburban street, all very mock Tudor and privet-hedged. At first glance it wasn’t so very different, until he registered the stuff that wasn’t there: no satellite dishes, not many TV aerials, only a few parked cars instead of a continuous bumper-to-bumper line. Smoke curled up from many of the chimneys. Not so very different; but, he had an unpleasant feeling, different enough.

‘Emily,’ he said. ‘Did they have cashpoint machines in the Sixties?’

‘No.’

‘Fine. So our plastic’s useless, and— Bloody hell, I guess they’re probably still using the old money. You know, shillings and things.’

‘Very interesting, but what’s that got to do with—?’

‘It means we’re penniless, that’s all. No money we can actually use. Not our biggest problem, maybe, but—’

‘You don’t seriously imagine we’re going to stay here, do you?’

Frank pulled a face. ‘What did you have in mind?’

Emily pushed past him. ‘We’re going to bash Dog Boy here to a pulp, take the Door and go back,’ she said. ‘I assume that’s all right with you.’ She advanced a step or two, then stopped as Erskine made a deep growling noise that seemed to root her to the spot. It wasn’t a specific threat of any kind, but suddenly she felt extremely reluctant to move.

‘Sorry,’ Erskine said.

That just seemed to try Emily’s patience. ‘No, you bloody well aren’t,’ she said. ‘If you were sorry, you’d give us the bloody Door.’

Erskine shook his head miserably. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I have to do as I’m told, or She’ll be angry.’

‘Oh, screw you,’ Emily replied. ‘Frank, get him.’

There’s something about the way a dog growls. Even if it’s just one of those little yappy self-propelled-toilet-brush jobs with no visible legs, it makes you stop and think, if only for a split second. Erskine, of course, was an unknown quantity. If he’d been human, the two of them rushing him would’ve probably been a justifiable business risk. But he wasn’t, was he? Human beings can’t make a noise like that.

‘You’re pathetic,’ Emily said, sounding rather unconvinced. ‘You’re not scared of a stupid dog, are you?’

‘I’m not if you’re not.’

She had the grace not to reply. Erskine shifted slightly. The Door, of course, was still there on the wall, slightly ajar. If Frank peered past Erskine’s shoulder, he could just about catch a glimpse of forty-five years into the future.

‘I really am very sorry,’ Erskine said.

‘Are you?’ Emily scowled at him, but stayed where she was. ‘Fine way you’ve got of showing it.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Erskine practically whimpered. ‘I’m not enjoying this, you know. I like to be nice to people, I want to be friends with everybody. But I can’t not do what She told me to. I just can’t.’

Frank looked at him. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘That dog that kept following me around. That was you.’

Erskine couldn’t help smiling as he nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I had a great time, too.’

‘Did you?’

‘Oh yes. We went to all different places, with lots of really great smells. You even bought me a little ball that squeaked.’

‘Did I? Oh, right, yes. And I saved your life just now,’ Frank added sternly.

‘Yes. You did.’

‘How many times do I have to tell you, don’t run out in front of the cars.’

No tail to put between his legs, but Erskine managed to convey the same thing by facial expression alone. ‘Sorry.’

‘I should’ve guessed earlier,’ Emily was saying. ‘I mean, it was pretty bloody obvious, now I come to think of it. I told you, didn’t I, about not being able to hear him.’ She gave Erskine an extra-special scowl, and he slumped a little.

‘And you were nice to me too,’ he said.

‘Was I?’

‘Oh yes. We went to see the spiders together, and then we met that nice troll sort of person, and you let me carry the suitcase and everything.’

‘True,’ Emily said carefully.

‘And in the taxi, you let me sit on the seat.’

‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ Emily replied, in a slightly strained voice. ‘That’s got to count for something surely. In terms of pack loyalty, I mean.’

‘Yes, but—’

Frank was about to ask her what she was talking about, but she shushed him. ‘Really,’ she went on, ‘there are times when a person’s got to think about stuff like that, and decide for himself exactly whose dog he really is. Isn’t that right, Frank?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Just think about it,’ she went on quickly. ‘We didn’t turn you into a human and leave you to fend for yourself.’

‘Damn straight,’ Frank said. ‘That’s cruelty, if you ask me. A dog is for life, not just for—’

‘We didn’t send you off trailing someone on your own, not even caring if you came back or not. Surely that’s part of the deal. You fetch the stick, we’re there to take it when you come back, it’s the basic ethical contract between the species. But I don’t think she sees it like that, somehow.’

‘Bet she never bought you a squeaky rabbit,’ Frank added scathingly.

‘Ball.’

‘Whatever. It’s the thought that counts.’

‘But I can’t,’ Erskine wailed. ‘She told me, I’ve got to leave you here and bring the Door back. I’ve got to do what She says, or I’ll end up in the place where bad dogs go. I don’t want to go there, it’s scary.’

Emily took a deep breath. ‘You could come with us,’ she said. ‘You could be our-Jesus fucking Christ, I can’t believe I’m saying this-you could be our dog. We’d look after you. Your own basket by the radiator. Chicken. We’d let you drink dirty rainwater from puddles.’

It was tearing Erskine apart. ‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Could I sleep on the bed?’

‘No.’ Both of them together, like a well-trained chorus. ‘But you can roll in all the smelly stuff you like, and we won’t make you have a bath.’

There were big fat tears in Erskine’s eyes now, and Emily thought, While he’s distracted we could probably jump him. Probably. Possibly. Possibly not. ‘I’m sorry,’ Erskine said with a sniff like tearing calico. ‘I really, really am. I do like you, both of you, very much.’

‘We like you too,’ Emily snarled. ‘Really we do.’

‘But I can’t.’ Erskine stepped back and put his hand on the knob of the Door. Oh well, Emily thought, and tensed herself for a flying tackle. She was just about to let herself go when Erskine said, ‘I could give you the other Door, I suppose, if that’d be any help.’

It was one of those moments when everything seems to stop dead. Nothing moved, no bird sang and the only noise was the faint whine of the Everley Brothers from a distant wireless.

‘The other Door,’ Emily said.

Erskine nodded. ‘Mr Gomez gave it to me when She wasn’t looking. I was going to ask him why but he sort of scowled at me, so I didn’t.’

‘But there can’t be another Door,’ Frank objected. ‘You told me, everybody knows there’s only the—’

‘Quiet, Frank.’ Emily pulled herself together so smoothly that for a moment Frank forgot all about the context and was lost in admiration. ‘I think that’d be all right, don’t you, Frank? I mean, she didn’t say anything at all about the other Door, did she?’

‘Nope,’ Frank managed to say.

‘She just said, take them to nineteen sixty-three and bring the Door back. Not both Doors. Just the Door.’

‘Absolutely,’ Frank put in. ‘I heard her say it.’

‘I’m sure she’d have said both Doors,’ Emily went on pleasantly, ‘if it’d been important.’

Erskine frowned. There was something wrong there, he couldn’t help thinking. Maybe, he thought, She hadn’t known about Mr Gomez giving him the other Door. But no, that couldn’t be right. She was, well, Her. It went without saying, She knew everything.

‘I suppose it’d be all right,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I mean, I’d still be doing as I was told.’

‘Of course you would,’ Emily said, trying hard to keep the hunger out of her voice. ‘In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s what she wants you to do, or else she’d have said bring back both Doors, instead of bring back the Door.’

‘But maybe She didn’t know that Mr Gomez had given me the other one.’

Emily managed to synthesise a look of shocked amazement. ‘But Colin Gomez is on her side,’ she said. ‘So, naturally, he wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want him to do. You must see that, surely.’

Despairingly, Erskine looked at Frank, who gave him a slight nod. That decided him. After all, Mr Arkenstone was a nice man, he’d given him the squeaky ball.

All in all, Erskine wished that he could be a dog again. Being human was very exciting, and obviously it was a great honour to be promoted and allowed to walk on his hind legs and wear clothes and everything. But being human was so difficult. People made demands of you, and forced you to make awkward choices, and some of them told you one thing and some of them said another, and he couldn’t remember the last time anybody had thrown a stick for him or taken him for a walk. Perhaps the simple truth was that he wasn’t worthy of promotion.

‘All right,’ he said miserably, and from his pocket he took the roll of plasticky stuff. A voice at the back of his mind told him that he ought to carry it over in his mouth and lay it at Mr Arkenstone’s feet, but he decided to keep it simple, for now. He held it out, and Ms Spitzer snatched it out of his hand.

‘Good boy,’ she said. ‘Good boy.’

Now that he’d actually done it, Erskine felt much better. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and turned to walk through the Doorway in the wall behind him. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ he said. ‘See you.’

‘Just a moment.’ Emily held out an arm to stop him. ‘When you get back, I wouldn’t bother mentioning giving us the spare Door.’

That didn’t sound right either. ‘Really? Are you sure?’

‘Better not.’

‘Oh.’ Erskine wondered about that. ‘Why not?’

Ms Spitzer seemed lost for words, but Mr Arkenstone said, ‘Well, you know how busy she is. And she doesn’t need to be told all the fiddly little details. Just tell her you did as she said, and that’ll do fine.’

‘Oh. All right, then.’ Erskine was still thinking about it as he stepped over the Door’s threshold and came out in the twenty-first century.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ She asked, sitting upright in her chair with her hand over the mouthpiece of her phone. ‘Never mind. Sit still while I finish this call.’

So Erskine sat, while She uncovered the phone and said, ‘Sorry about that, now where we? Oh yes. Right. All right, this is what we’re going to do.’

Colin Gomez stirred in his chair. For more years than he cared to remember, he’d been happy in that chair. When he was sitting in it, it was like being the captain of a starship, that same balance of being in control and facing a whole galaxy of uncertain but wonderful possibilities, never knowing what extraordinary opportunities the next day might bring. It could be just another day at the office-the bread-and-butter work, the reliable bedrock customers; it could just as easily be the day he made first contact with strange new clients, sought out new work and new ways of charging for it. To that chair for their orders came his loyal crew, hand-picked, dependable, almost as essential to his well-being as the punters themselves, but ready (whether they knew it or not) to be sacrificed for the greater good without a moment’s hesitation. As for himself: he liked to tell himself that it was better to be a captain than the admiral of the fleet, anchored to the big desk instead of skirmishing the galaxy questing for new people to do business with. And if he didn’t actually believe that, the self-deception was his own precious secret, something to take out and love when nobody was looking—

Now everything had changed. Colin reckoned (though with Amelia Carrington you never knew) that he’d got away with it so far. By turning in his unexpected and unwanted allies, he’d clawed back a little bit of her trust. Letting them have the other Door (assuming that Erskine could be relied on; which was a bit like putting your weight on a spun-glass stepladder) meant they’d be back again to help him, any moment now. At which point he’d have to do it: stage his coup, overthrow the government and get himself crowned as the God-emperor of Carringtons.

It wasn’t what he’d wanted, except in the safe privacy of his daydream. For one thing, he wasn’t entirely sure he was up to the job. Oh, he knew how to win clients and keep them happy, and surely that was all there was to it. But supposing it wasn’t? He was dimly aware that there was rather more to it than just doing a good job and finding ways of charging twice as much as it was worth without letting the client find out he’d been scalped. There was-well, politics: diplomatic relations with other firms, industrial relations inside the firm itself, all manner of things that called for approaches more cynical and brutal than he was comfortable with. More to the point, he had to get there first; and that would mean bloodshed.

All in all, a bit of a pickle; which was why, for the first time that Colin Gomez could remember, his chair didn’t feel right. It sort of caught him in the small of the back.

To distract his mind he turned on his screen and scrolled through the latest news update. The headlines hit him right between the eyes like a stone from a slingshot.

Biggest-ever bauxite find shut down by dragon infestation.

Dennis Tanner was reading the same headline.

He took it well. Instead of falling off his chair or screaming, he stayed perfectly still, as if the screen was a predator who’d pounce on him at the slightest sign of movement.

The bitch, he thought. The clever bitch.

The screen told him how the vast new bauxite deposit recently discovered at an undisclosed location on New Zealand’s South Island had attracted the unwanted attention of a dragon also, by some strange coincidence, the largest of its kind ever recorded-bringing the whole project to a standstill. Because of the location’s unique geology, access to the deposit was only possible through a large natural cavern, in which the dragon had made its nest. Pest-control teams from leading firms had so far failed to deal with the problem and a halt had been called to further attempts in view of the high attrition rate (follow the hypertext link to find out more about job vacancies in this exciting sector). The implications for the market—

Dennis thumbed off the screen. He didn’t need to be told about them.

First, the wonderful investment opportunity into which he’d persuaded his wealthy but vindictive relatives to pour their money now had a bloody great big lizard sitting on it. Wonderful. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it was inevitable that the world bauxite market (in which his relatives were already catastrophically committed) was poised to dive like a cormorant. A vast new source of the stuff had been discovered, threatening to flood the market, but for the time being it couldn’t be got at; so, until the dragon was dead, only a gibbering idiot would touch bauxite with a ten-foot lance, since there was no way of knowing when the new strike would finally be unlocked. Dennis turned the screen back on and checked out the latest prices in Jakarta and Brisbane. As he’d thought: for the price of a pie and a pint, anybody stupid enough to want to do so could buy himself the bauxite mine of his choice.

He closed his eyes. Dennis wasn’t a natural clairvoyant (unlike his Uncle Garforth, banned from every bookmaker’s in the Western hemisphere) but he was prepared to predict that by close of trading someone would’ve been round buying up all those worthless and unwanted mining shares, giving that same someone the next best thing to a world bauxite monopoly and, with it, effective control over that useful commodity’s selling price. After that, he had a shrewd suspicion, the dragon’s life would be very short. But by then his uncles and aunts and cousins and nephews and nieces would’ve sold out and be too busy disembowelling Our Dennis to notice they’d been had—

Bloody woman, he thought. And then, in a moment of perfect clarity, the screen inside his mind cleared, and he understood.

He jumped up out of his chair, scuttled across the room and hauled down a dusty old book from the top shelf of his bookcase. Index: dragons, prophecies concerning—

Dennis snapped the book shut, filled his lungs with air and yelled (as all good boys eventually must) for his mother.

At least thirty seconds, possibly forty-five, had passed since Erskine had walked through the wall, but neither Frank nor Emily had spoken. There was too much to say, and not enough of the right kind of words to say it with. Also, as far as Frank was concerned, there was a problem with saying things to her that he couldn’t actually hear himself. Hard to pick exactly the right words, under such circumstances—

‘Well,’ Emily said eventually.

Frank nodded.

‘I don’t like it here.’ She looked round. To Frank, there didn’t seem all that much to take exception to. It was just a suburban street, no big deal. But, he reflected, I’m used to being out of my time. Some of my favourite places are in the past: Renaissance Tuscany, Edwardian London, fin de siecle Paris. Of course, you wouldn’t want to live there.

‘Stuff it,’ Emily said. ‘Let’s go home.’

She used the word assuming that Frank knew what it meant. But as far as he was concerned she might just as well have said, ‘Let’s go to the Hundred Acre Wood and see Pooh and Piglet’; because home was one of those places you grew up believing in, until you slowly came to realise it was just a pretty story. He opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it, fished in his pocket and took out a slightly grubby envelope and a pen.

OK, that’s When, he wrote. How about Where?

‘Frank, why are you writing - oh,’ she added. ‘I see. That’s—’

No offence. Two fs in offence? But right now I’d rather you didn’t.

Emily frowned. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘whatever you like. But—’

Thanks for being so under—

‘But,’ she repeated firmly, ‘it’s-well, it’s hardly a vote of bloody confidence, is it? I mean, what are you thinking that you don’t want me to hear?’

Interesting question; and Frank could think of a lot of other questions that’d crop up sooner or later, if they spent their lives together: Do you really like my hair this way? You don’t mind if I switch over and watch the film, do you? Are you sure you don’t mind going to stay at my mother’s for the bank holiday?

Do you still love me?

He wrote: Where shall we go?

Another frown. ‘Well, the office, naturally. We’ve got to catch up with bloody Amelia Carrington and help Colin with his Glorious Revolution. Well, haven’t we?’

No, Frank thought. ‘I guess so,’ he wrote. So much easier, on paper. Then a thought struck him. He crossed out what he’d just written

‘Look,’ Emily said impatiently, ‘how long are you going to keep this up for? Because for one thing, it’s bloody inconvenient.’

- and under it, wrote: Or we could get some allies first. Dennis Tanner.

‘Who? Oh, right, you told me about him. Your dad’s old boss. But why would he want to get involved? It’s none of his business.’

‘I don’t know any other magicians. Besides, I owe him money. If I can make him think we’re going to make a fortune out of this and I can pay him back out of the proceeds—

‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘But we don’t need him. I know loads of magicians.’

Frank scowled, turned the envelope over and wrote on the back: Yes. At Carringtons.

‘All right, good point,’ Emily agreed reluctantly. ‘But I still don’t see what—’

You’ve never met his mother, have you?

‘What, Dennis Tanner’s mother, you mean? No. At least, I don’t think—’

He hesitated, then wrote: Trust me.

‘Sorry, but your handwriting—’

He frowned, crossed it out and wrote it again, this time in capitals: TRUST ME.

‘Oh.’ She shrugged. ‘Fine. And in return, you can bloody well stop writing and talk to me. Agreed?’ Frank nodded, and flexed his cramped fingers.

‘Agreed,’ he said.

Emily glowered at him. ‘Do you really want us to run away together and start a new life in Vancouver?’

‘Oh for crying out—’

‘Sorry. I was just a bit puzzled. I mean, why Vancouver?’

‘First place that came to mind. And yes,’ he added, ‘I think that’d be a very good idea, but we’ve already been into all this, and you don’t want to run away, and I respect your reasons for not wanting to, and—’

‘Yes, all right. It’d bad enough just one of you talking quickly.’ Emily shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But this means something to me, that’s all. So do you,’ she added, and it wasn’t an afterthought. ‘But the two aren’t-well, mutually exclusive.’ She paused. ‘Please?’ she added.

Frank was quite shocked at what a difference that word made.

‘All right,’ he said.

She grinned. ‘Can I have that in writing?’

‘Look, if you’re going to—’

‘Sorry. Not the right time. So, if we’re going, let’s go.’

Frank nodded, and spread the Door against the wall. ‘Mostly,’ he said, as the lines appeared and spread, ‘I want to see if he can clear up a question that’s been bothering me.’

She reached for the handle. ‘Right. What’s that?’

‘How did the Door come to be in that bank vault when you killed the dragon?’ Right on the threshold, Emily stopped. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘that’s a good question.’

‘Isn’t it, though. Do you know the answer?’

‘No.’

‘Fine. In that case—’ Frank turned the handle. ‘We’re off to see the wizard. Well, are you coming, or what?’

He thought Mr Tanner’s office and stepped over the threshold. At the precise moment when he had one foot in Sixties suburbia and the other in south London forty-five years later, he called back, ‘Please just come on and walk through the Door, will you?’

And he heard Emily’s voice behind him saying, ‘Which one?’ ‘What do you mean, which—?’ he said, and then something bashed him on the head and he went to sleep.