Maxie’s Demon (3 page)

He gave a polite half-nod. His voice was surprisingly deep, his accent BBC neutral. ‘Evening. You the chap who came off at the junction, are you?’ He didn’t wait for me to deny it, shaking his head. ‘Willum told me you’d come this way. Bad
smash, that. You’re lucky to be here.’

That was a matter of opinion, but I mumbled something into my beer, trying to look dazed and delicate. I wished he’d take those bloody eyes away, but he just tilted his head back. ‘Sad, too. Nice motor,
very
nice. Ferrari Testarossa, wasn’t it? Don’t see too many of those these days. Never ever, in fact, eh? Worth – God, I don’t know, what would you say?
Two hundred big ones at least. At least,’ he repeated.

I tried not to wince, but I could
see where every step was leading. ‘Sure. I wouldn’t know. It was the old man’s.’ It could easily have been, after all. And I’d probably have screwed it up just the same way. Too much Testarosterone.

He looked a little surprised, maybe at my accent, but he didn’t give up twisting the screw. ‘And the insurance!
A classic boy racer like that, third-party cover alone’d come to, I don’t know, how much? I mean, even my Morgans cost me into the high hundreds. Each. Something like that, at least a couple more big ones a year, whew! You must be a very lucky guy.’

I ground my teeth. This close I was seeing more about him, the kind of things I make a habit of noticing. Casual buckskin shoes, ordinary enough
except there was no maker’s mark on the sole, and the fit was perfect. Casual cord trousers, not new but heavy and uncreased, with a soft, thick belt, and above them a casual shirt in a subtle heathery shade you don’t just find in the shops. But it was the blouson jacket that bugged my eyes; that nubbly designer Donegal stuff with the coloured flecks would have cost serious money in wool, but this
was raw silk, thick and close woven. And I’d caught a glimpse of a hand-painted lining, some kind of sailing scene.

I knew that kind of stuff. A bit more luck and sense, and I’d still have been wearing something almost as good. They put this smug son of a bitch in the millionaire class. Even his bloody stick looked like a personality concept, the wood probably something Peruvian or whatever.
And extinct.

Not a cop, then; but dangerous.
Power. The kind of power that might go with owning that stately home or theme park. Or – sickening thought – owning a Ferrari. He’d certainly identify with the owner; Morgans were pricey enough. Power. One word, one move, and you could bet I’d have all these loyal arsekissers on my back.

‘Well,’ he remarked, ‘since you had the car in the first place
I suppose you can afford all that. Lucky, as I said.’

And he was looking at my clothes, too; cheap Levis, leather bomber whose shoddy thinness showed through the tears and scorches, chain-store shirt fraying at the collar, stained trainers. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. ‘Yah. My people have the cash. Can’t take any credit for it – I was born, that was all. Like in
Figaro.
Silver spoon,
consider the lilies, that kind of thing.’

That shook him, and so it should. It was near as dammit the truth, and these days I was finding that more and more of a luxury. The eyes narrowed, all the same, and he lounged even further back on the settle.

‘There are problems, though, aren’t there, with owning a car like that? Like thieves – oh, not just your ordinary joyrider, but the kind of organised
thief who steals with a ready resale market in mind. Sometimes to order, even with a target and an information dossier supplied by the dealer. Classic cars for export, to countries where they don’t ask too many questions before they register, that kind of thing.’

‘Yeah,’ I said
savagely, ‘they keep me awake at nights sometimes. Listen, I’d better go get to a phone, hadn’t I? Obviously they don’t
have one here!’

‘Not right now,’ he said mildly. ‘And my mobile’s in the car. Back at the junction, though—’

‘I don’t want to go that way,’ I said, thinking quickly. ‘The, uh, the beer – I shouldn’t have had that. If they breathalyse me – well, one more spot on the licence and I turn into a pumpkin, eh?’

I was surprised to see something very much like laughter in those implacable eyes, and
the twinge of hope was so sudden it hurt. ‘Look, er – there wouldn’t happen to be another way out of here, would there? Rather, er, unobtrusive. Then I can just blame the crash on a joyrider, and …’

He really was laughing now, silently. And there was a disturbing shade of pity in his voice. ‘Listen. I’d better explain something to you. I wasn’t even going to try, but you – well, you’re very well
educated, aren’t you? A bright lad, for a – never mind. So listen, listen hard and try to use those brains of yours, because you’ve dropped into something a lot bigger than you can imagine. What do you think of this place?’ He waved his hand about. ‘Don’t bother answering. It’s real, isn’t it? Completely real. Could be, oh, Elizabethan, seventeenth century, eighteenth, maybe even early nineteenth,
where the Industrial Revolution hadn’t reached yet.’

I wasn’t going to say anything. He was trying to sell me something.

‘Well, it isn’t.
It’s all of the above, and a lot more besides. You see, they built it at a crossroads, this inn – logical enough. But then other roads were built, all around this area, and suddenly fewer people stopped here. They drove by, and the trees grew up and hid it,
and nobody bothered to cut them back. Roads crossed and recrossed around it, more and more of them, in a little shallow circle. That has an effect, you know, in space and time – junctions, and journeys. Things, places, they recede, they fall away, they become harder to reach, except in certain ways and at certain times. They – drift away, you could call it, not physically, but in time. Away into
a wider region, or realm. A strange kind of place some people call the Spiral.’

‘Fascinating,’ I said. ‘And that’s where the flying saucers come from, is it?’

I’d worked once as a placeman for a pro psychic, the spoon-bending variety – one of my more reputable jobs. I’d got used to dealing with nutters and true believers of every kind. But it was this character who looked like the sceptic, amused,
detached, not unkindly. ‘As a matter of fact, no. They’re dreamed up by utter nutters. But they may well be out there somewhere all the same, because everything is. Everything man can imagine or dream up, and more.’

I looked amused right back at him. ‘Heard that idea before somewhere. Interesting, but, well, it’s just philosophy, isn’t it? Sort of carrying on from that bloke Giordano Bruno or
somebody. They may exist or not, these worlds, but it’s never going to make much—’

‘Oh, they
exist,’ he interrupted calmly. ‘And they can make quite a lot of difference to us. Though whether we shape them, or they shape us, that’s a question. With me, well it sort of went both ways. It may for you, too.’

‘Me? Why should I ever—’

‘Because you are already. Involved, I mean. There are places where
space and time mingle, and this – here, now – this is one of them. You’re in it. And the more you know about it, the better. Listen and remember. You don’t have to believe, not now – just remember, so you’ll know, if … When.’

At least it wasn’t cop-calling time. I shrugged, and hoped he wouldn’t bite me. ‘I can’t stop you, sunshine.’

‘Damn right you can’t. Places like this, they’re sort of a
margin, a borderland – caught on the edge of the Spiral. Its influence reaches out right through them and beyond, right into the everyday world at times – night more than day, and most of all at dawn and evening. And everywhere it touches, things can happen. Pretty strange things. But they also open a gate the other way, these places. OK, you can quote Beaumarchais, but did you ever do any science?’

‘Some. Not to college level – that was modern languages. But—’

‘Right. Ever hear of Maxwell’s Demon?’

I felt a silly sense of panic, the way you do watching a TV quiz with an answer chasing itself around your subconscious. Then it bubbled up. ‘Hey … yes. Sort of a paradox, wasn’t it? In thermodynamics?’

His immaculate
eyebrows shifted maybe a millimetre. ‘I’m impressed. Yes, a joke really,
by a nineteenth-century boffin called Clerk Maxwell. A discriminating gate that only let molecules through one way – a potential perpetual motion machine, among other things. If it worked, it’d violate entropy; and we still have a hell of a job proving it wouldn’t. They hadn’t quite got round to computers, so he had it worked by a demon. Well, I often think of the Spiral the same way, only with probabilities
instead of molecules. The wilder probabilities pass outward, but they power the centre, which keeps on generating more. And there are lots of gates. They open on to all these … worlds, realms, regions if you like. You can reach them – a lot too easily, sometimes. You can steer your way between them, if you’re the right kind of natural navigator, pass into pasts and futures and times that
never were at all. Myths, legends, ideals, dreams, even delusions if they’re self-consistent enough – all the shadows cast by our everyday, mundane world.’

He caressed the head of his stick. The lanterns flickered in the draught. ‘Everywhere has a shadow of that kind. Every country, every region or city creates its archetype, its shadow self, where its past and present – and future, sometimes
– mingle with its mythical existence. Even people cast shadows, the mythical counterparts that grow up around a real person, like Robin Hood, or King Arthur. Or the George Washington who really did throw a dollar across the Potomac – and probably cut down that goddamned cherry tree, for all I know. And out on the Spiral they all come together, these shadow worlds, drifting and shifting around us
as if we live at the hub of a wheel.’

He downed an
impressive swig of beer, and sighed happily. ‘Which is another name for the Spiral, in fact. Hence the name of the inn.’

I shrugged. ‘I’d have thought the Pub at the Hub would have been better.’ But despite myself, I was impressed. This citizen was the best value since the late Marquis of Bath, an authentic visionary. And he had the money to
kit out his own private fantasy, that was evident. I wished I had some of what he smoked.

He shook his head, a little grimly. ‘You still don’t understand. This isn’t the Core – or the Hub – any more. This is the Spiral. And out here the rules are all changed. It’s a jungle; it has paths, but there’s a pitfall every few feet, and wild things lurking in the bush around. Anything’s possible – literally
anything you can think of. Even … I suppose you’d call it magic. Anywhere in the Spiral, along its margins even – reaching out into our world, as I told you. It can get powerful – horribly powerful. Maybe Maxwell spoke truer than he knew.’ He smiled at something, definitely not me, and I didn’t like that smile one bit. Then he shrugged. ‘Of course you don’t believe me. I don’t expect you to
do that – just to be careful.’

‘Thanks, I’m sure. Don’t get het up on my account. It’s what I’m good at.’

‘Is it? Is it really? The best, the safest thing you could do is head back to that junction, right now. But here’s something to think about. When you were standing in that field, by the wreck, didn’t the junction look farther away than it should? In every direction?’

‘A mere
trick of the
setting sun—’

Suddenly he looked really dangerous. ‘Don’t piss me about, boy. How far would you have to have flown in that thing? A hundred yards? Two hundred? Then why didn’t the landing reduce you to instant corned beef? Don’t waste your snappy answers on me. Save them for yourself. You’ll need them.’

‘Sure,’ I said. Neutrally, because that flash of anger had put the frighteners on me. ‘Er
– but the other ways—’

‘Out the door, turn right and down the village street, straight over the crossroads.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, trying to get up as if I wasn’t running away. Then I remembered something awkward, and fumbled in my pocket. If they were all pretending to be Elizabethan or whatever, would they take my money?

‘Don’t sweat it,’ he grunted, seeing me hesitate. ‘I’ll pay.’

I almost
accepted, as usual. I’d hardly any cash, I might need it all, but something inside me twisted into a tiny knot of defiance. Maybe it was the weary contempt in his voice, maybe it was Poppy’s kindness. ‘I’d rather,’ I said stubbornly, lobbing back the sneer.

He looked up, surprised. ‘All right. I’d say a pound would cover it, with a tip.’

‘So they
take our money in the …’

‘
On
the Spiral. Here
they do; a very good rate, too. Not further in.’ He watched me put the money down. ‘Since you won’t listen to reason, chew on this – a long time back, when I first wandered out on to the Spiral, a very wise friend of mine told me that how you manage out here often seems to depend on how you first get in, good way or bad. I was lucky. You – well, what would you say? I needed help. You may, even more.
You can leave word for me here. My name’s Steve.’

‘Mine’s Hugh,’ I said, because it isn’t. ‘Thanks, but I wouldn’t hold your breath or anything. And thank the girl for the salve!’

I tried to head for the door at a civilised pace, not bolt. But the sheer relief when I slammed it behind me, and heard the latch drop, was almost dizzying. There was this old eccentric who used to sit in railway carriages,
wearing dark glasses and grinning and beckoning at anyone about to come in. Somehow he always got a compartment to himself. And that would be what this citizen had been trying to do to me. Scare me back to the junction, sure – which’d be lousy with blue pointed heads by now, every cop in the county probably, all busy taking statements and causing five-mile tailbacks. Sod that for a game
of soldiers! And him pissing himself with laughter at the thought, no doubt. The only safe way for me was the other way, wherever it led.

Last time it had been an open prison, fraudsters and embezzlers for company – a better class of felon, just like the old man’s friends. This time it’d be somewhere harder; so there wasn’t going to be a this time.

Maxie’s word
on it, and Maxie is never wrong;
well, not since the 3.45 at Kempton Park, anyhow. Odds-on favourite, too.