It was a drone. And it come so fast we didn’t even have time to blink. Its red eye was winking, meaning it was ready to stab out at us with a knife made out of hot light. We both of us froze stock-still. We didn’t even yell or let out a gasp. I think we was afraid that any move or any sound we made would be the end of us.
The drones in Mythen Rood would give a warning before they fired. They would tell you to disperse yourself, or else stay still, or if you was unlucky they would tell you to do both things at once. Then when they stopped talking they would finally shoot you. This drone didn’t say one word. It just watched us out of its red eye, bobbing a little in the air as if it was floating on water. It looked like the same drone we seen sitting by Paul Banner’s shoulder up in the crow’s nest.
And the devil comes when you whistle, as they say.
“What are you doing here?” Paul Banner said. He had come up behind us without even Cup hearing a sound, which I would of said was impossible.
He grabbed a hold of my arm and hauled me away from the stairs. I tried to pull my arm free, but he only tightened his grip. Now I knowed how a rabbit must feel in a snare, for my arm was held fast and I couldn’t move an inch. It hurt like a needle’s bite too. It felt like my hand would fall off if he squeezed me any tighter.
“We was lost,” I told him, “and trying to find our way back inside.” I was hurting so bad that my voice come out in gasps and gulps.
Paul bared his teeth like a dog does when it threatens. “Below decks is off-limits to you,” he said. “I thought I’d made that clear. Get back up here.”
These last words was to Cup, and she done as she was bid, though she come up slowly so as to prove that Paul didn’t scare her. “If your son hadn’t of gone off and left us,” she said, “we wouldn’t of gone near your below decks.”
Paul let go of me at last. He still was not pleased with us, and I guess Cup’s words didn’t do much to show we was sorry. “We gave you the freedom of the main tower,” he said. “Not the deck, and not the sub-deck spaces. I was explicit – but apparently not explicit enough. If you defy me again, I’ll make you wish you hadn’t. Come with me. Come!”
He tried to put a hand on Cup too, but she stepped back out of his reach, so he dragged me along and she followed. The drone followed behind us, turning in the air so its red light pointed first at me and then at Cup and then at me again. When we come at last to a tower, and then to a door, Paul turned to look at the drone. “Perimeter,” he said. The drone bobbed like it was giving him a courtesy. Then it tilted on one side and shot straight up out of our sight.
We went into another shaking room – or maybe the same one we was in before, I couldn’t say for sure – and then along a whole lot of hallways, until by and by we stopped at a door that was just like all the others. It opened to Paul’s touch.
Paul stood off to one side and waved with his hand to shoo Cup in. She give him a hard look, and didn’t move. “I’m fine right here,” she said.
“If you persist in defying me,” Paul said, “I’ll throw you back in your leaking boat. You can sail on for a hundred yards or so until you sink and drown.”
Cup stood her ground.
“Very well.” Paul shrugged. “It’s a pity though. Your friend is making great progress with the improvements to her diagnostic unit. She’ll be sad when I tell her our deal is now null and void.”
Cup went into the room and slammed the door shut behind her.
Paul put his hand on my shoulder and steered me on along the corridor. We was walking for quite a way before we stopped at another door and Paul opened it. Inside I seen the big mirror and some other things I remembered from that morning, so I knowed this was my room.
“In,” Paul said. And I done as I was bid.
“The drones patrol the corridors at night,” Paul said. “They’ll shoot on sight if they see anything they interpret as a threat. You’d be well advised not to leave your room.”
He closed the door on me. I stood in the dark for about the space of a couple of breaths. Then the lights come on again, and I was dazzled the same way I was before. The hard, yellow-white light was like a Summer day with no clouds.
I tried the door. It didn’t open. I thought on that, and on how far apart our rooms was. Also on what Paul said about the drones. It would be hard to find Cup’s room without no light, and I didn’t know where Ursala’s room was – or if she even had one. It seemed like a part of Paul’s purposing was to split us up so we couldn’t have no talk between the three of us.
I put my hand to my waist and brung out the DreamSleeve.
Okay then, I thought, but you missed your count. We’re not three, we’re four. I flicked the DreamSleeve’s switch with my thumb. The little window lit up at once with a smiling face and then a whole bunch of hearts flying out from the middle of it towards the edges.
“Monono,” I said, “are you okay?”
“I’m hunky dory, little dumpling. In fact, I’m all the Bowie albums from Space Oddity to Young Americans. The DreamSleeve is water-resistant down to twenty metres. Do me a favour though. Stop talking. Lie down on the bed as if you’re going to sleep, and throw your arm across your face. Don’t look all cute and puzzled and say which-what-why. Just trust me and do it. Make a big show of being tired.”
Well, I was not sure I’d heard her right, but she said to trust her and I did – more than anyone else in the world. So I give a yawn, stretching out my arms, then blinked a lot of times. I hung my head low, like a weariness had come on me of a sudden. I kicked off my shoes and climbed onto the bed.
“Nice,” said Monono, as I lay down. “You hammed it up a little bit, in places, but you got some good energy going. Put your arm up over your face now, dopey boy. Hide your mouth, but don’t look as if you’re hiding your mouth. Look as if the light’s getting in your eyes.”
“Like this?” I said, after I’d done it.
“Exactly like that. Okay, Koli-bou, welcome to the cone of silence. It’s like the induction field met Marcel Marceau and they had a baby.”
“I don’t know who that is,” I said. “That Marcy Marso. Was she in a band?”
“Nope. He was a mime. He could say anything he wanted to without making a sound – and so can we, because I’m doing full-spectrum phase-suppression. There’s a little invisible bubble all around us. When the vibrations from our voices hit the edge of the bubble, the sound gets scattered and diffused and peak-troughed out into nothing much at all. There could be cameras in here to spy on you while you sleep. If they can’t see your lips, they won’t know you’re talking.”
“They?”
“Mr and Mrs Creep-out Factor and their baby boy. I’m probably being paranoid, but I don’t want anyone on HMS Rabies to know I’m in the mix. Not until I figure out what’s going on here. It’s nothing good, that’s for sure. There’s something freaky about this whole set-up, and that goes double for the guy who just dropped you off.”
“Paul,” I said. “Paul Banner. He is kind of strange, isn’t he?”
“The craziest frog in the box,” Monono agreed. “But that’s not the half of it. He and the other one – Lorraine, is it? They’re not human.”