“So what's this, then – bring your kids to espionage day? Baby's first sedition? I know my balls are on the line here, and maybe I'm still being a little picky, but I didn't expect kids,” the man said.
“And we didn't expect a tramp.”
“Firstly, I happen to like my hair like this. Secondly, it's called a disguise, okay. I thought I might need one.”
“In the ever-dark?”
“I never said it was a good idea.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial hush. “I'm a scientist, you see, I'm not used to any of this.”
“Scientist where?”
“Trinity Park. Where else?”
“Talking to the press sounds like a death sentence.”
“I already have one of those, love, might as well collect the set. Joint Director, you see, but old grey balls Sykes is popping over to Corelious this after to convince him I shouldn't be. We both know how that ends. Also, we have a couple of very nice guests that are going to be in an awful lot of shit – excuse the language – if I'm removed from my position.”
“How are they?” Erica asked. “Poor Harry must be terrified.”
“I'm sorry, bit of a loss here. Who are you and how do you know that name?”
“I'm Erica and this is my sister Sarah.”
“Hubert,” Danielle added.
“Oh,” the man said. “Oh, bollocks. Nathaniel Geddis. Oh, bollocks,” he repeated. Geddis looked out of the window and into the great black void – it was an apt metaphor. “I know your father, you know. Long time ago now. And believe it or not, I even met you once when you were little, Erica.”
“Then you know it's all rubbish,” Sarah said.
“Undeniable bollocks.”
“Why would they do this, Mr. Geddis?”
“That's a big question. One that definitely won't be answered by this very large and deeply incriminating pile of paper.” Geddis put his hand inside his ratty old jacket, produced a folded wad of paper and set it down in the middle of the table. The jacket itched, was slightly too small, and very definitely smelled of something unpleasant yet mercifully unidentifiable. He immensely regretted trading his own to the tramp on the edge of the ever-dark. “I'm going to assume your old dad never mentioned something about Cadia.”
“What does this have to do with aliens and dog-people?” Danielle asked.
“What’s a Cadia?” Sarah asked.
“One question at a time, eh? It’s the land of milk and honey, love. The great future of the human race once we've finished buggering up this place. The paper there is your answer, though you'll not understand it. Because we're all friends now, I don't mind admitting to you that I don't understand basically any of it, but I know it works; it's called a Hubert Gate. Your dad is many things, but self-effacing ain’t one of them.”
Sarah greedily snatched up the wad of papers and opened them out in front of her. The documents had been hastily photocopied and folded before the ink could dry, leaving dirty smudges on each page. This didn't prove a great hurdle for Sarah, as she realised very quickly that Geddis was right; she didn't understand any of it, so it was immaterial if it was barely legible in places or not. “So, how are things? I haven't seen your mam since forever. We go way back as well, went to university together. Of course, I mostly drank my way through it.”
“She's gone, Doctor Geddis.”
“Then I am truly sorry. Even old Sykes would crack a smile around her, and I thought the only way to get him to smile was to get a stonemason to carve one. I hate to ask, but your dad?”
“Missing.”
“How does this Hubert Gate come into it, Geddis?”
“A Hubert Gate is kind of like a window to other places, you see. I don't want to say world or dimension or some bollocks like that, because we don't actually know. For all we know, it leads to some far off continent. What we do know is that it allows us to open a passageway straight to where their friends are from. And yes, dog-people, to answer your previous question. Not aliens, though. Sykes said he saw two young girls dicking about near the Gate when they brought your friends in. He was in a right state. There are people out looking for you.”
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“Do you think he knows?” Erica asked.
“That you're Sebastian's daughters? Yeah, no doubt there. That'll be why he's so keen to find you. Sebastian cost him a lot. Your dad is a brilliant man but also a complete idiot, no disrespect. He created this boggling piece of tech knowing what kind of people he was surrounded by, yet still expected better of them. When he finally caught up with everyone else and realised what Sykes and Parnell wanted to use it for, he and your mam made the choice you had to live with; they sabotaged the Gate good and proper, and let it close behind them. It took Sykes the best part of a decade to pick his way through the mess Sebastian left behind and get the Gate most of the way to operational again. And believe me, when I say a lot of people died in the process, I mean a lot.”
“You can't expect me to believe any of this? It's insane, Geddis. I was right first time – you're a crank.”
“I'm a crank, am I? And what about the girls – are they cranks? Did we get together beforehand and just decide to take the piss out of you because, frankly, a second-rate reporter working for a third-rate publication is important enough to waste all this effort on? There are two very good people that are going to die if you don't help me, and that's not including myself or the girls when that old bastard finds them. You want a story, this is your story.”
“Please, Danielle,” Sarah pleaded. “He's not lying. We need your help.”
“And we need it quickly. They're meeting at noon, so we have until half-past to get you and your friends back through the Gate before something unbelievably bad happens. I'm sure we all have more questions, but we don't have to be sitting on our arses here to ask them, as nice as the coffee is. Right then, are we using your car? What? I never said I was the master of subterfuge – I needed a lift, all right.”
Danielle sighed and stood up, then began the fiddly process of picking her way back across the uneven floor – this time she deviated slightly to pass the counter. None of the others knew the safest route back to the door, so the three of them snaked behind her like a conga line held against their will. She swiped her card through the reader on the counter and inwardly died when the price flashed up on the display.
“You're going to laugh when I tell you this, but I might have left my wallet in my other jacket, the one that I gave to the tramp – that one. If this goes well and nobody dies, I'll pay you back, Scout's honour. Strictly speaking, I was never in the Scouts. Quite fancied it, though.”
Looks couldn’t kill, but it didn’t stop Danielle committing attempted murder. In the half-light of the diner, the effect was slightly lost on Geddis and he assumed she'd just had a stroke. They wended their way back to the doorway, where they stood bathed in the sort of warm neon glow that some people came for rather than the food. They’d have been quite content to stand there until the cows became extant and all decided to go home, as would many other people. To remedy this, the Blackout employed a very large tattooed man just to shoo people out of the doorway, which he did. He was a thug, but he was a very up-market thug – the kind that had piety and spite tattooed on his knuckles, so he didn’t threaten their legs even once.
“You can sit next to me,” Sarah said. “You can help me fight the seat-belt.”
“I mean, yeah, I can do that. I just thought it would be adults up front and, you know, kids in the back. No offence.”
Danielle nodded. “Geddis is right. Erica, get in the front.”
“I probably deserved that, but because I'm a child, I'm going to kick the back of your seat all the way to yours. Also, I need you to stop off by a tramp first. On the bright side, he probably still has my ID.”
***
“There's one thing I don't get,” Danielle said as she pulled the sunshade down as the car broke into the burnt-orange. “Why blame Hubert for Windstadt?”
“Why not? Sebastian was a big name in the government, he was seen as one of the boys. Untouchable, you could say. What better way is there to show your government is honest and trustworthy than to offer up one of their own? It didn't hurt that High Lord Parnell had majorly dropped a bollock and needed someone to blame.”
“No prizes for guessing whose idea that was.”
“He has some bloody stupid ideas at times, but Corelious is the only one having any at all. What's that expression? In the land of the dumb arses, the thicko is king? Speaking of dumb ideas – alien invasion, eh?”
“I've been thinking about that myself,” said Erica. “Why did they even say anything?” Geddis unclasped his seat-belt and leant between the gap in front seats. He didn't fear being flung through the windscreen in the event of a sudden stop, he feared the car disintegrating around him and there not being a windscreen to be thrown through. For her part, Sarah had reached an accord with the seat-belt, and it was only slightly cutting off the circulation to her lower limbs. “You may not know this, but we're at capacity here. To raise an army, we'd need to pull troops back from whatever bloody war we're in this week and, ideally not start another one next week. Without a truce, that's not happening. So what do we do?”
“Well,” Erica said. “You give them something bigger to worry about.”
“And that's where your friends – well, our friends, quite frankly – are in trouble, love. To get that truce, they're going to need a metric arse-tonne of evidence to parade around. And I hate to say it, but that'll include-” Geddis cupped his hands and whispered. -Bodies.”
“It bloody well won’t come to that. I assume you have a plan, Doctor Geddis.”
“It's a pretty simple plan. Really clever, too.” Danielle ugly-snorted. “All right, you. So, the plan is I just walk in and walk out with your friends. I'm still the bloody joint Director until some time this after. Wait until Sykes pops out to see Lardreliarse, easy. If I can keep away from his hangers-on, it'll be a right breeze.”
“Okay,” Danielle said. “And why do you need my help?”
“You’re basically the last honest-ish member of the media to exist, and I need you to get the story out there. Once they’re all back home and the Gate has mysteriously fallen to pieces behind them, Sykes and myself are going to be in a shitload of trouble. You put out a story about the Gate and the fake aliens and whathaveyou, and you let Sykes cop the blame. Maybe throw an aside in about what a horrid little, embezzling prick he is. I become full Director, this never happens again. Bingo bango.”
“That simple?”
“That simple.”
