Dream Paris (43 page)

“Boast about what?”

“Alain likes to think he’s the premier lover of Paris. There are many woman in this city who would testify to his prowess. Why shouldn’t I have my chance to see if they are right?”

“Mother! I don’t want to hear this!”

“He’s well-mannered, assured, intellectual. He knows how to behave in company, he will pay for your meal, never be lost for conversation, and then in the bedroom, my dear, he will make your eyes roll so far back in your head…”

“Mother! I’ve heard enough!”

She laughed at that.

“Stop it!”

“Aren’t I allowed to enjoy myself?”

“No! Not after what you did to my father!”

That shut her up.

“Ah! So you know.”

I hadn’t known. Not for certain. But now, seeing her reaction I did. I knew. And she knew I knew.

“Kaolin hinted as much, back in the
Grande Tour
. You sold him out, didn’t you? You sold him out to the
Banca di Primavera
.”

All around us, people spoke a little louder. They turned their backs a little towards us. They filled their plates and ate and looked out of the windows and ignored our little scene.

My mother wore an odd expression. There was a little fear there, a little embarrassment, a little defiance. And yes, a little respect.

“So you figured that out. I knew you were clever. That’s what I was afraid of, I suppose. But yes, I sold him out. What else was I supposed to do? It was him or me.”

“But he was your husband! My father!”

“Oh, come on, Anna, you saw the state he was in at the end of Dream London. Barely capable of looking after himself. If I’d left him to sort things out, we’d all still be stuck in the workhouse. At least this way I’m free, you’ve got the potential to go home, and your father, well, he’s where he’d always have been.”

“You took a loan from the
Banca di Primavera
, didn’t you? That’s how you got free from the workhouse! You took out a loan and used my father, your husband, as security!”

“Not entirely. He took on most of the debt, but I took some too.”

“You betrayed him!”

“I know, but you have to understand how it happened. The
Banca di Primavera
offered us a loan to buy our debts from the workhouse. Your father and I talked about it, we knew the dangers of indebting ourselves to a
Banca
, but life in the workhouse was so bad…”

She shuddered.

“I dealt with the paperwork, and that’s when I spotted the opportunity. Remember what it was like back in Dream London? Women there were nothing but chattels. Men held all the titles and deeds. It was your father’s name on the paperwork, and when I saw that I thought, well… why not? What difference would it make if I signed myself away too? At least if I were free, I might be able to change things. I might be in a position to help your father, later on…”

Put like that, it all sounded so reasonable. Would I have done the same in her position? But…

“No! If that’s the case, where is he? Why haven’t you found him?”

“I told you, I don’t know where he is. Shortly after I was freed, he was transferred from the workhouse. He could be anywhere in the Dream World by now. Don’t think I haven’t looked for him.”

I believed her. I’m sure she had looked for him, in her efficient, businesslike way. I’m sure she’d written it into her schedule, assigned a portion of her valuable time to the task of tracking down a potentially valuable asset. I’m sure that the search was ongoing and subject to review.

We looked at each other. Our meeting was approaching its end. Across the room, Francis was chatting to Mme Ponge, nearly invisible wire trailing across the floor. Jean-Michel was looking down from the wide windows, no doubt discussing the future of Dream Paris with the ragged gentleman who stood beside him.

“What about Mr Twelvetrees?” I said, suddenly. “What was your relationship with him?”

“You’ve got it the wrong way round. Mr Twelvetrees wanted to establish a relationship with me. He came looking for me, following the trail your friend laid out behind him.”

“What did he really want?”

“You know what he wanted! Do you remember how the world reacted to Dream London?”

I did. The world had been terrified. Terrified at being swallowed up by the Dream World. So terrified they’d tried dropping nuclear bombs upon us. Tried unsuccessfully. The bombs turned to flowers as they fell.

“They were afraid…” I said.

“Of course they were afraid! But not just afraid. They were excited, too, weren’t they?”

Excited about the opportunities presented by the Dream World.

“And then you come walking in here with your little friend, dragging a great big
This Way!
sign behind you. And you didn’t expect to be followed? Anna, just how stupid were you?”

She was right, of course. She’d tried to stop me, tried to make me turn back. I guess she was innocent of this one.

“I wonder what happened to him?” I said. “To Mr Twelvetrees.”

“I don’t know. I suspect he’s back in London by now, planning his next move.”

I knew she was right. She saw the disappointment in my face.

“Really, Anna, what did you expect?”

“I know.”

We stood in silence for a while. This was it. We were going to say goodbye. Should we shake hands? Should we hug? I gazed at her, looked at the woman I would soon be leaving. Would I ever see her again? I wanted to drink her in as she was. So confident, so self-contained, so sure of herself. Convinced she was right about everything. How do people get to be like that? It was a mystery to me.

“Good luck with your studies,” she said. “I know you’ll do well at university. I hope you won’t be too disappointed afterwards.”

“Disappointed with what?”

“The world. The way things are. It will suck you in, too, you know.”

“Not me. I’m going to make a difference.”

“Really? You want to make a difference, become a teacher. Or become a nurse, or a mother, even.”

“I might do that eventually. After I’ve done my bit.”

“See? Everyone
says
they want to make the world a better place, but they don’t want to do what will really make a difference. There’s no glory in it. The only difference between us, Anna, is that I learned that
before
I was your age.”

I couldn’t think what to say. Anything I said would just start the argument again.

She held out her hand.

“Goodbye, Anna. Take care on the journey home.”

I took her hand and shook it. I was saying goodbye to my mother by shaking hands.

“I’ll be okay. Count von Breisach is flying us home. Part of the way, anyway.”

“Good. I’ll feel happier if I know you’re safely away from here.”

“Why’s that?”

“This won’t be the end. It never is.”

And it wasn’t.

THE REAL CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

N
OTHING WORKS PROPERLY
with Dream Numbers

There are no fractions, no irrational numbers, no transcendental numbers. What does that mean? It means that pi there is different from our world; it means that all the circles in the Dream World are deformed, which means that space curves differently. I don’t know whether it’s the numbers that deform space, or the space that deforms the numbers, but if you try and do maths in the Dream World, things go weird. Well, weirder than normal. The Dream Prussians tried doing maths with mechanical computers and they changed the world. Imagine what they could have done with a computer from our world, one calculating at 2.22 teraflops. You can’t imagine it?

Read on.

J
EAN-
M
ICHEL HIMSELF ACCOMPANIED
us to Montmartre the next morning.

“No offence,” he said, “but I want to make sure that you leave Dream Paris.”

“None taken,” I said. “I just want to get home.”

Francis didn’t say anything. His face was pale, his forehead sheened in sweat. He wouldn’t admit it, but it was obvious that he was in tremendous pain. We couldn’t reach home soon enough for him. Driving through Dream Paris, we seemed to encounter the ghostly grey wire on most of the streets. I hadn’t realised that we’d travelled so widely.

We drove uphill for most of the journey, passing through little squares where people piled pumpkins in the corners; they cut the carved fruit down from trees. We zig-zagged up narrow alleys where people worked to scrape and peel posters from the walls. The revolution had passed again. All hoped it would be a while before it returned.

Up above us we could see the yellow cigar of a Zeppelin, newly arrived that morning. That was our ship home, I told myself.

The car swerved often, avoiding the children playing in the streets. There seemed to be more than ever this morning. I suppose their parents had sent them all out to play in the sunshine, now that the city was safe once more.

Eventually we found ourselves at the base of Montmartre, a wide square set before a steep hill. A little funfair sat in the corner, a colourful carousel chugging round and round to the sound of a steam organ. Children in neat little suits and pretty dresses were going up and down on the horses. Life was returning to normal.

“Can we take the funicular?” asked Francis, looking at the steep steps to the white-domed Zeppelin station at the top of the hill.

“Of course we can,” I said. And that’s when it really struck home to me just how badly the backpack was affecting him. I began to wonder if he would make it home.

We waited at the little platform at the bottom of the green hill, looking back over Dream Paris, stretched out below us in the morning sun. The painted Eiffel Towers dotted the landscape. Who owned them now, I wondered? I suppose my mother would be looking into that.

“It looks so different from here,” I said. “The river, the roads, even the wall. This could be such a lovely place if only people ran it properly.”

You could say that of everywhere, of course. But this morning there was something especially beautiful about Dream Paris. The sky was a little bluer, a little less, well,
extreme
than was normal for the Dream World. The sun was bright but not unbearable. The sound of the children playing was delightful. I was almost sorry to be going.

“What’s that?” asked Francis. Something in his tone made me uneasy. I turned my gaze to where he was pointing. A silver speck was moving in the depths of the Dream sky.

“Is that an aeroplane?”

Francis pulled his binoculars from his backpack with some difficulty. Behind him, the children were using the wire as a skipping rope. He didn’t notice, he was too busy gazing upwards.

“That’s a C-130,” he said. “Royal Air Force markings. How did they get that here?”

“Your backpack,” I said. “Everyone is following your backpack.”

The plane looked so otherworldly, drawing a line across the blue sky. So peaceful and serene, so utterly removed from the noise and heat and smell of the little French fair.

“Anna,” said Francis, very slowly. “Get the children inside.”

I didn’t ask why. I felt it too, that deep-down sense of wrongness. I turned, spread my hands wide.

“Inside!” I called. What was the French for inside? “
Dans la maison
!
Allez
!
A tout vitesse
!”

My voice was drowned out by the music of the carousel. Not that it made much difference. The children had seen the plane themselves, they were stopping in their play, turning to face the sky, turning to watch the little silver bird. I suppose they’d never seen anything like it before.

“It’s lowering the rear ramp,” said Francis. “Oh, shit. They’re going to drop something.”

Twin brothers stood in front of me; I guessed they were about six years old. Each held an overlarge lollipop in one hand.

“
Allez
!” I said. I spread my arms wide, began to push them towards the little café at the edge of the fair. The boys shouted at me as they dodged away from my grasp. The whole playground was still, now, the faces of the children craning upwards. Even the children on the carousel turned to follow something in the sky – something falling, falling, falling…

“
Regardez
!
Il y a quelque chose qui tombe du ciel
!”

“Cover your eyes,” commanded Francis, turning, bending. Too late for me. Something was unfolding like a paper star beneath the silver plane. Like a Chinese lantern. Like a sheet of creamy card that had been folded in half and folded in half again, and again, over and over, and was now unfolding in the heavens. It was full of holes, a Sierpinski gasket, it was…

I can’t describe what it looked like. It pulled open the world and folded it into a new shape.

Francis took hold of me, pulled me to the ground. I heard the noise of the carousel, the excited chatter of the children…

The voices changed. How can I describe it? They became robotic, they became less discreet, more discrete. The back of my head and my hands stung with astringent itching. I heard a noise like water freezing, heard the creaking crackle of it, and then a sigh, and then everything stopped.