The Merlin Conspiracy (4 page)

“How old is the Merlin?” I interrupted.

“Twenty-five. Older than he looks,” Grandad told me. “A powerful magic gift does that to some people. Roddy, do you mind taking Grundo and going off somewhere? We've got things to talk about here that aren't for children.”

Grandad is like that. He never likes to talk about the interesting things in front of me. Grundo and I drifted off.

“He's too old for Alicia, the Merlin,” I said to Grundo.

He was surprised. “Why should that stop her?” he asked.

I
thought it was a dream at first. It was really peculiar.

It happened when my dad took me with him to a writers' conference in London. Dad is Ted Mallory, and he is a writer. He does horror stories with demons in them, but this conference was for people who write detective stories. This is the strange thing about Dad. He reads detective stories all the time when he isn't writing himself, and he really admires the people who write them, far more than the people who write his kind of thing. He was all excited because his favorite author was going to be speaking at the conference.

I didn't want to go.

“Oh, yes, you do,” Dad said. “I'm still shuddering at what happened when I left you alone here last Easter.”

“It was my
friends
who drank all your whiskey,” I said.

“With you as a helpless onlooker while they broke the furniture and draped the kitchen in pasta, I know,” said Dad. “So here's what I'm going to do, Nick. I'm going to book you in with me, and I'm going to go, and when I go, I'm going to lock up this house with you outside it. If you don't choose to come with me, you can spend the weekend sitting in the street. Or the garden shed. I'll leave that unlocked for you, if you like.”

He really meant this. He can be a real swine when he puts his mind to it. I thought about overpowering him and locking
him
in the garden shed. I'm bigger than he is, even though I won't be fifteen until just before Christmas. But then I thought how he isn't really my dad and how we'd both sort of adopted one another after Mum was killed because—usually—we like one another, and where would either of us be if that fell through?

While I was thinking this, Dad said, “Come on. You may even enjoy it. And you'll be able to tell people later that you were present at one of the very rare appearances of Maxwell Hyde. This is only the third time he's spoken in public, and my sense is that he's a very interesting speaker.”

Maxwell Hyde is this favorite author of Dad's. I could see I would be spoiling his fun if I didn't let him take me along, so I gave in. He was ever so pleased and gave me one of this Maxwell Hyde's books to read.

I don't like detective stories. They're dead boring. But Maxwell Hyde was worse than boring because his books were set in an alternate world. This is what Dad likes about them. He goes on about the self-consistency and wealth of otherworld detail in Maxwell Hyde's Other-England—as far as I could see, this meant lots of boring description of the way things were different: how the King never stayed in one place and the parliament sat in Winchester and never did anything, and so forth—but what got to me was reading about another world that I couldn't
get
to. By the time I'd read two pages, I was so longing to get to this other world that it was like sheets of flame flaring through me.

There are lots of worlds. I know, because I've been to some. My real parents come from one. But I can't seem to get to any of them on my
own
. I always seem to have to have someone to
take
me. I've tried, and I keep trying, but it just doesn't seem to work for me, even though I want to do it so much that I
dream
I'm doing it. There must be something I'm doing wrong. And I'd decided that I'd spend the whole first week of the summer holidays trying until I'd cracked it. Now here was Dad hauling me away to this conference instead. That was why I didn't want to go. But I'd said I would, so I went.

It was even worse than I'd expected.

It was in a big, gloomy hotel full of soberly dressed people who all thought they were important—apart from the one or two who thought they were God or Shakespeare or something and went around with a crowd of power-dressed hangers-on to keep them from being talked to by ordinary people. There was a lecture every hour. Some of them were by police chiefs and lawyers, and I sat there trying so hard not to yawn that my eyes watered and my ears popped. But there was going to be one on the Sunday by a private detective. That was the only one I thought might be interesting.

None of the people had any time for a teenager like me. They kept giving my jeans disapproving looks and then glancing at my face as if they thought I must have got in there by mistake. But the thing that really got to me was how eager Dad was about it all. He had a big pile of various books he was trying to get signed, just as if he was a humble fan and not a world-famous writer himself. It really hurt my feelings when one of the God-or-Shakespeare ones flourished a pen over the book Dad eagerly spread out for her and said, “Who?”

Dad said in a modest voice, “Ted Mallory. I write a bit myself.”

Mrs. God-Shakespeare scrawled in the book, saying, “Do you write under another name? What have you written?”

“Horror stories mostly,” Dad admitted.

And she said, “Oh,” and pushed the book back to him as if it was contaminated.

Dad didn't seem to notice. He was enjoying himself. Maxwell Hyde was giving the big talk on the Saturday evening, and Dad kept saying he couldn't wait. Then he got really excited because one of the nicer writers—who wore jeans like me—said he knew Maxwell Hyde slightly and he'd introduce Dad to him if we hung around with him.

Dad was blissed out. By that time I was yawning every time Dad's back was turned and forcing my mouth shut when he looked at me. We went hurrying up and down corridors looking for Maxwell Hyde, pushing against crowds of people pushing the other way, and I kept thinking, If
only
I could just wheel round sideways and walk off into a different world! I was in a hotel when I did that the first time, which gave me the idea that hotels were probably a good place to step off from.

So I was daydreaming about that when we did at last catch up with Maxwell Hyde. By then it was just before his lecture, so he was in a hurry and people were streaming past us to get into the big hall, but he stopped quite politely when the nice writer said, “Oh, Maxwell, can you spare a moment for someone who's dying to meet you?”

I didn't really notice him much, except that he was one of those upright, silvery gentlemen, quite old-fashioned, with leather patches on his old tweed jacket. As he swung round to Dad, I could smell whiskey. I remember thinking, Hey! He gets as nervous as Dad does before he has to give a talk! And I could tell he had had a drink to give himself some courage.

I was being bumped about by all the other people in the corridor, and I had to keep shifting while Dad and Mr. Hyde were shaking hands. I was right off at one side of them when Mr. Hyde said, “Ted Mallory? Demons, isn't it?”

Just then one of the people bumping me—I didn't see who, except that it was a man—said quietly, “Off you go, then.” I stepped sideways again out of his way.

This was when I thought it was a dream.

I was outside, on an airfield of some kind. It must have been early morning, because it was chilly and dark, but getting lighter all the time, and there was pink mist across the stretch of grass I could see. But I couldn't see much, because there were things I thought were helicopters blocking my view one way—tall, dark brown things—and the other way was a crowd of men who all seemed pretty impatient about something. I was sort of squashed between the men and the helicopters. The man nearest me, who was wearing a dirty pale suede jacket and trousers and smoking a cigarette in long, impatient drags, turned round to throw his cigarette down on the grass and saw me.

“Oh,
there
you are!” he said. “Why didn't you
say
you'd got here?” He turned back to the rest of them and called out, “It's all right, messieurs! The novice finally got here. We can go.”

They all sort of groaned with relief and one of them began talking into a cell phone. “This is Perimeter Security, monsieur,” I heard him say, “reporting that our numbers are now complete. You can tell the Prince that it's safe to embark now.” And after the phone had done some angry quacking, he said, “Very good, monsieur. I'll pass that on to the culprit,” and then he waved at the rest of us.

Everyone began crowding up the ladder into the nearest helicopter-thing. The man who had spoken to me pushed me up ahead of him and swung onto the ladder after me. This must have put his face up against my legs, because he said angrily, “Didn't the academy tell you to wear your leathers for this?”

I thought I knew then. I was sure this was one of my dreams about getting into another world and that it had got mixed up with the sort of dream where you're on a bus with no clothes on, or talking to a girl you fancy with the front of your trousers missing. So I wasn't particularly bothered. I just said, “No, they didn't tell me anything.”

He made an irritated noise. “You're supposed to be skyclad for official workings. They should
know
that!” he said. “You didn't
eat
before you came, did you?” He sounded quite scandalized about it.

“No,” I said. Dad and I had been going to have supper after we'd listened to Maxwell Hyde. I was quite hungry, now I thought of it.

“Well, that's a relief!” he said, pushing me forward into the inside of the flier. “You have to be fasting for a major working like this. Yours is the pull-down seat at the back there.”

It would be! I thought. There were nice padded seats all round under the windows, but the one at the back was just a kind of slab. Everyone else was settling into the good seats and snapping seat belts around them, so I found the belts that went with the slab and did them up. I'd just got the buckles sussed when I looked up to find the man with the cell phone leaning over me.

“You,” he said, “were late. Top brass is not pleased. You kept the Prince waiting for nearly twenty minutes, and HRH is not a patient man.”

“Sorry,” I said. But he went on and on, leaning over me and bawling me out. I didn't need to listen to it much because the engines started then, roaring and clattering, and everything shook. Some of the noise was from the other fliers. I could see them sideways beyond his angry face, rising up into the air one after another, about six of them, and I wondered what made them fly. They didn't have wings or rotors.

Eventually a warning
ping
sounded. The bawling man gave me a menacing look and went to strap himself in beside his mates. They were all wearing some kind of uniform, sort of like soldiers, and the one who had bawled at me had colored stripes round his sleeves. I supposed he was the officer. The men nearest me, four of them, were all dressed in dirty pale suede. Skyclad, I thought. Whatever that meant.

Then we were rising into the air and roaring after the other fliers. I leaned over to the window and looked down, trying to see where this was. I saw the Thames winding underneath among crowds of houses, so I knew we were over London, but in a dreamlike way there was no London Eye, though I spotted the Tower and Tower Bridge, and where I thought St. Paul's ought to be there was a huge white church with three square towers and a steeple. After that we went tilting away southward, and I was looking down on misty green fields. Not long after that we were over the sea.

About then the noise seemed to get less—or maybe I got used to it—and I could hear what the men in suede were saying. Mostly it was just grumbles about having to get up so early and how they were hungry already, along with jokes I didn't understand, but I gathered that the one who had talked to me was Dave, and the big one with the foreign accent was Arnold. The other two were Chick and Pierre. None of them took any notice of me.

Dave was still irritated. He said angrily, “I can sympathize with his passion for cricket, but why does he have to play it in
Marseilles
, for the powers' sake?”

Pierre said, slightly shocked, “That's where England are playing. HRH
is
a world-class batsman, you know.”

“But,” Dave said, “until last night he wasn't going to be in the team.”

“He changed his mind. Royal privilege,” said Arnold with the foreign accent.

“That's our Geoff for you!” Chick said, laughing.

“I know. That worries me,” Dave answered. “What's he going to be like when he's King?”

“Oh, give him the right advisers, and he'll be all right,” Chick said soothingly. “His royal dad was just the same when he was Crown Prince, they say.”

This is a really mad dream, I thought. Cricket in France!

We droned on for ages. The sun came up and glared in through the left-hand windows. Pretty soon all the soldiers down the other end had their jackets off and were playing some sort of card game, in a slow, bored way. The men in suede didn't seem to be allowed to take their jackets off. They sweated. It got quite niffy down my end. And I'd been assuming that they weren't allowed to smoke in the flier, but that turned out to be wrong. The soldiers all lit up, and so did Dave. The air soon became thick with smoke on top of the smell of sweat. It got worse when Arnold lit up a thin, black thing that smelt like a wet bonfire.