The Portal (15 page)

‘These things are virtually indestructible,' he said. ‘At least while the force-field's turned on.' He thrust the controls into Daniel's hands. ‘Go on, give it a whirl!'

The controls took a little mastering – it was all a matter of where you pointed the tube and how hard you gripped it with which fingers – but Daniel had the machine running in the end and even did a bombing run that launched two torpedoes neatly through the bathroom window.

‘I've been collecting Starfleet warships for nearly twenty years now,' said Mr Forrester to William as they watched. ‘I knew your dad came across these things sometimes so I asked him to keep an eye out for me. I never thought he'd find something this good, though!'

Mrs Duggan came out then with some tea, and they all sat round the big slatted table on the terrace for scones with cream and jam. As they ate, Mr Forrester told them how, on his home world, collectors would meet and re-enact some of the great battles of the Years of Chaos, with
whole fleets of model ships racing around the sky firing at each other. Then Amy told him that Daniel had a collection of skulls and Mr Forrester said he would like to see it, so Daniel brought some of them down to show him.

William had to go and do the bricks at that point and, when he came back, he found Mr Forrester alone on the terrace. He had taken off his jacket and was sitting in his shirtsleeves in the late afternoon sun, quietly whistling to himself, while the
Don't Mess With Me
floated gently in the air in front of him.

‘Mrs Duggan had to go and do something to a sheep,' he said when he saw William, ‘and your brother and his friend have gone down to the river. They said we could join them if we wanted.'

‘I'm sorry,' said William, ‘but it's time to go now.'

‘Goodness, already? Right.' Mr Forrester picked up his jacket and then turned off the
Don't Mess With Me.
‘I've promised to bring your brother the skull of a bilkrat, next time I come through,' he said. ‘They have five interlocking jaws. I think he'd like it.'

‘That's very kind of you,' said William. ‘I'm sure he would.'

‘And of course you'll thank your father for this,' Mr Forrester said, tucking the
Don't Mess With
Me
carefully under one arm, ‘when he gets back from wherever it is he's gone?'

‘Yes, of course,' said William.

Down in the station, before stepping on to the Portal, Mr Forrester turned and shook hands. ‘Well, thank you again. For everything. It's been a very pleasant stopover. Really very pleasant indeed!'

‘It was a pleasure,' said William, and the curious thing was that he meant it. For reasons he didn't entirely understand there was something very rewarding about watching someone like Mr Forrester arrive, tense and irritable, and seeing him leave, as he did now, relaxed and smiling.

It gave him the sort of buzz that Daniel might get from finding the skull of a kestrel, or Amy from trying on a designer dress. For some reason, it felt…
right
.

What didn't feel right was the way the weeks continued to pass without any news of his parents. The Federation Security Forces still delivered reports saying they had investigated this avenue or that, and Uncle Larry would explain when he visited that he was having someone analyse the contents of Mr Seward's personal files in Emma, or that they were trying to find a match with any similar disappearances on other worlds… but none of it ever seemed to lead anywhere.

His parents had disappeared, literally without a trace. Not only did nobody know what had happened to them, no one had any idea what
might
have happened or where they could look. It was only a week or so now until the end of the summer holidays and there had been discussions about what they might do if there was still no news by the time William had to go back to school.

The prospect alarmed William, not because he didn't like school, but because he still could not believe that so many weeks could have gone by without anyone being even a step closer to solving the mystery.

And, afterwards, he sometimes wondered if it might not have gone on like that forever, if it hadn't been for Lady Dubb.

Lady Dubb's first claim to fame was that she had survived the wreck of the
Corinthian
. The huge passenger liner, pride of the Vangarian fleet, had disappeared on its maiden voyage somewhere in the Crab Nebula, and the only trace of her existence that had ever been found was the three-year-old Lady Dubb in a life pod.

Since that day, she had regarded it as her duty to live as full a life as possible and she had certainly fulfilled her promise. Lady Dubb had made and lost several fortunes, married and divorced three Federation Presidents and given birth to thirty-seven children. She was, as they say, a bit of a character and even William, who barely glanced at the Federation news, had heard of her.

She was a short, dumpy woman, but filled with an unstoppable energy. William reckoned that if you put a couple of jump leads on her fingers Lady Dubb could start a bus, and she was certainly not one of the passengers who left you wondering what it was they really wanted. If Lady Dubb wanted something, she told you, in the sort of voice that left you in no doubt that you were expected to go and get it.

‘You're not Jack,' she said as she stepped out of the Portal. ‘Where's Mr Seward?'

‘My father's not here,' said William, ‘but if there's anything you want –'

‘What I want, young man,' said Lady Dubb, ‘is a game of Monopoly. Your father promised me one the next time I came through. Where is he?'

William explained that his parents were away, but that a game of Monopoly would not be a problem. He would get the board and set it up in the sitting room.

‘I'm going to be the battleship,' said Lady Dubb, ‘and I'll tell you now you're not going to win as easily as your father did.' She followed William into the sitting room. ‘And let's have some music. Last time I was here we had something by… what was his name… began with a W…'

‘Mozart,' said William, who had checked with
Emma on what Lady Dubb had enjoyed in previous visits.

‘That's the fellow!' She settled herself on the sofa with a smile. ‘Let's have some of him.'

The game took a long time to play, partly because Lady Dubb took a break in the middle to go for a walk with Daniel, but mostly because, from the moment she arrived, Lady Dubb talked more or less continually. She talked about where she was going and why, about things that had happened to her in the past and that she hoped would happen in the future – and she asked a lot of questions.

‘There's a story going round that you shot Aventa Barnes and her cousins,' she said. ‘Is it true?'

William, blushing slightly, admitted that it was, and then had to describe what had happened.

‘You got an apology out of Silas, did you?' said Lady Dubb with a chuckle when he'd finished. ‘That's quite an achievement. But he was lucky you didn't hand her straight over to Security. When I see him, I'll tell him he got off lightly.'

‘You know him?'

‘Oh, everybody knows Silas!' Lady Dubb threw the dice and landed in jail again. ‘Lovely man. Useless father, though. What Aventa needed was someone like your dad to sort her out. Where is he, by the way?'

William found himself telling her the whole story. He described the day he had come home and found the house empty, how Uncle Larry had arrived and searched everywhere and then how all the efforts to find out where his parents had gone had failed. As a result, four hours after she had arrived, they were still only halfway through the game when Lady Dubb leant back in her chair and asked for something to eat.

‘I'm feeling a bit light-headed,' she said. ‘Do you think you could make me a sandwich? And something to drink,' she added as William went off to the kitchen.

William made a toasted cheese sandwich and put it on a tray with a bottle of beer – according to Emma they were Lady Dubb's favourites – and carried them back to the sitting room. But as soon as he walked through the door, he knew that Lady Dubb would not be needing any food or drink. She was lying back on the sofa, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, and she was, very obviously, dead.

William placed one of the patches from the medipac on Lady Dubb's arm and another on her forehead.

‘Diagnosis: the patient has experienced myocardial infarction,' said the voice from the box,
‘and is deceased. Please consult your surgeon immediately.'

‘There isn't a surgeon,' said William. ‘There's only me.'

‘Do you require Life Support until a surgeon can be found?' asked the medipac.

Life support… A memory stirred in William's brain of Mrs Duggan describing how his father had used Life Support on Timber when he carried the dog through the Portal to the hospital on Q'Vaar.

‘Would Life Support mean she'd be OK till I got her to a hospital?' he asked.

‘Reparative surgery would still be possible within the next hour,' said the medipac.

An hour, William thought… Lady Dubb wouldn't be able to travel through the Portal for two hours, but maybe Brin could send a doctor over from Q'Vaar who would know what to do. And it might be a good idea to have some help even before that…

‘Emma?' he called to the station computer. ‘Could you ask Mrs Duggan to come down here? Tell her it's an emergency.'

‘Placing the call now,' said Emma.

‘And I need to get a message to Q'Vaar, to tell Brin what's happened. Can you do that?'

‘Message sent,' said Emma after a brief pause.

William turned back to the medipac. ‘So what do I have to do?'

The Life Support system was very simple. It was a silver rectangular box that William had to hang round his neck, and then he had to hold on to Lady Dubb.

‘Any skin contact will do,' said the medipac, ‘but holding hands provides the simplest connection.'

William reached out to take Lady Dubb's hands and what happened next took him completely by surprise. As he touched her skin, he found he was no longer in the sitting room at the station but standing on a hill, looking down along a valley covered in purple grass that swayed in a gentle breeze. In the distance, a range of turquoise mountains stretched up towards an orange sky, and he wondered where on earth he was.

‘This isn't Earth,' said a voice that he recognized as Lady Dubb's. ‘It's where I was born. I grew up in that house down there.' She was standing beside him, and pointed down the valley to a farmhouse, surrounded by fields.

‘Why are we here?' asked William.

‘Well, I'm here because I'm remembering my childhood,' said Lady Dubb, ‘but I've no idea what you're doing. You should be in your own memories, shouldn't you?'

‘I don't know,' said William. He thought for a moment. ‘I think I'm supposed to be giving you Life Support.'

‘Life Support?' Lady Dubb frowned. ‘You mean I died?'

‘Yes,' said William, ‘but the medipac says I can keep you alive till we get help from Q'Vaar.'

‘I see… Well… Thank you very much…'

‘That's all right,' said William, and wondered what he was supposed to do next.

‘You need to get back to your own body,' said Lady Dubb.

‘Yes…' William looked vaguely round the landscape for his body but there was no sign of it. ‘How do I do that?'

‘I'll give you a hand,' said Lady Dubb, and the next thing William knew something was pushing him sideways and he was rushing through rooms, and places, and wars and towns, and great towering cities and crowds of people, and then suddenly he was back in his own mind, wading through a sea of memories. Memories of himself as a baby, memories of his father taking him swimming and his mother driving him to school, thousands of memories, and he wanted to stop and look at them but behind him Lady Dubb's voice was urging him on, pushing him forwards, telling him to keep going, and somehow he forced himself
to wade through the memories until, with a faint popping in his ears, he found he was back in the sitting room, back on the sofa, back in his body, holding the hands of a lifeless Lady Dubb.

In front of him, peering anxiously down, was Mrs Duggan, and beside her was Brin, the station manager from Q'Vaar, looking equally worried.

‘William?' he was saying. ‘William, are you there? Can you hear me? William, are you all right?'

William managed to nod. It wasn't easy. Any sort of movement seemed to take a lot of energy and most of his energy seemed to be somewhere else.

‘Thank goodness for that!' Brin smiled with relief. ‘OK, first thing, you'll notice I've tied your hands together…'

With an effort, William moved his head to look down and saw that a bandage had been wrapped round his hands, binding them to Lady Dubb's.

‘It's important not to break the connection, you see. We need to take you through the Portal. We have to get Lady Dubb to the med station on Q'Vaar. That's where all the equipment is.'

‘Can't…' William's tongue felt slightly too large for his mouth and speaking was even more difficult than moving. ‘Can't go for two hours.'

‘It's all right.' Brin was smiling again. ‘The
techies have worked it all out. She'll be fine. You just sit there and let us do the work, OK?'

He didn't have much choice about just sitting there, William thought. Even blinking seemed to take a great effort of will, and he waited while Brin and Mrs Duggan bustled around him with a stretcher. It was a clever device and Brin shortened it and widened it before lifting William's legs and sliding it beneath him. The next thing he knew, the stretcher was floating both him and Lady Dubb gently upwards and all he had to do was sit there while Brin manoeuvred them carefully out into the lobby.