EIGHT.

Jack had waited a long time under the bridge for Hal Gryden to return. Long enough to fear he had been forgotten, or that the old man had been playing some kind of joke on him all along; worse still, that maybe whatever he had planned had backfired.

'We can't rely on money,' Gryden had explained. 'I have credits, millions of them, but I don't dare access my accounts except in an emergency. The police are always watching.' Which left him with few options and fewer legal ones if he was to do what he had said he would.

At last, however, Jack heard a rustling sound. He pulled back into the shadows, just in case, but it was Gryden who emerged from the bushes further down the river bank. He was carrying a crumpled white plastic bag, which turned out to contain a grey jumpsuit. The price tag was still attached to it, though Gryden confessed with a wink that he knew how to disable the store's security chip.

Jack changed quickly and stuffed his own clothes into the bag, hiding it in the bushes in case he got the chance to come back for it.

'Time we moved on, Cap'n,' said Gryden. 'We should be less conspicuous now. I've a studio a few blocks from here. We'll put you on air and you can tell your stories to the world. Your enthusiasm is just what we need to see.'

Jack couldn't get over the change in him. He was standing taller and his voice was deeper and more confident. He seemed like a new man.

Gryden led the way up a flight of corroded iron steps half buried by the undergrowth into a gloomy alleyway behind a residential building. They emerged onto a street and had soon become part of the constant crowd.

'You must have quite an operation,' Jack remarked, keeping his voice low in case a pa.s.serby should overhear. 'I mean, if everything I've heard is true. How many programmes do you make?'

'As many as we can,' said Gryden.

'It can't be easy.'

'It wasn't. In the beginning, there were only a few of us. We started by publishing an underground magazine. Distribution was our main problem but the more people we reached, the more came onboard to help us and the more we could achieve. Now we can reach the whole world. Oh, I know we can't compete with the official channels technically we've so little experience, because no one has done anything like this before. And yes, our effects are primitive and our sets sometimes wobble. No one really minds. It's the stories they want to see.'

'What about the police? I told a few stories in a few pubs and they were right on to me. How do your actors and presenters cope? Aren't they recognised?'

'Did you recognise me in that shop doorway?'

'Well, actually,' confessed Jack, 'I've never seen Static.'

Gryden shot him a bemused look, as if he didn't quite believe him. 'Hiding is easier than you think,' he said, 'if you know what you're doing. We use makeup and costumes to change how our onscreen personalities look. We provide rooms in our studios so they don't have to go out in public any more than necessary. But our biggest ally is the fact that people don't look. They're so busy concentrating on their own sad lives, they don't want to think about what else there might be.'

'Yeah, well,' said Jack, 'we'll soon change that.'

'Anyway,' said Gryden with a smirk, 'I use a double. The Hal Gryden you see on TV, that's not me, Cap'n, that's an actor.'

Jack frowned. 'So you're lying to them too? To your public?'

'Why not?' Gryden clapped him cheerfully on the back. 'Isn't that what this is all about, the freedom to tell as many lies as we want?'

'Fair point.'

'Do you know what this world is called?' asked Gryden. 'Oh, I don't mean Colony World 4378blahblah, that's just a designation, a number on a list. I mean its name name, the one the s.p.a.ce pioneers gave it. This world is called Oneiros. Do you like it?'

'Catchy,' said Jack.

'It's Greek,' said Gryden, 'from their ancient mythology. The Oneiroi were the carriers of dreams. That's what this ball of rock meant to our ancestors. They brought their dreams here, they left them to us and they didn't do that so we could watch them die.'

They made their way to a rundown sector of town where the buildings were crumbling and many had been abandoned. Several boasted signs that promised forthcoming redevelopment. In the meantime, though, the windows were boarded up, gravel from the roadway speckled the pavements and litter had been left to clog the drains. A street light flashed on and off spasmodically, even in daylight, and the only infoscreen in view was broken.

The traffic was still regular, though: drivers looking for short cuts or just a respite from the congestion of the main streets. And people still pa.s.sed by on foot, albeit in small cl.u.s.ters of mostly young men, drifting without apparent aim.

No one spared them a glance as they slipped around the side of an old warehouse building. Gryden had been right about that much.

There was a row of small, semicircular windows at ground level. On one of them, the boarding had come loose and Gryden pulled it back like a hatchway to reveal a dark s.p.a.ce behind. He wriggled through the hole and dropped out of sight. Jack followed eagerly, without waiting for an invite.

Inside, the warehouse was dark and dusty. The window through which they had entered was above their heads now, and the only light came from this or crept in around the boards of the other windows. The light picked out silver cobwebs in the ceiling joists. Bulky shapes lurked around them, and as Jack's eyes adjusted he saw that they were wooden crates: hundreds of them, stacked haphazardly.

There were sheets and motheaten blankets strewn about, as if somebody had been sleeping down here. Jack's foot touched an empty bottle.

And there was a figure its face chalk white, its red lips pulled back into a sinister sneer. One of Gryden's staff? But then why hadn't he introduced himself? Why lurk in the shadows, so silent and still?

He was standing at Gryden's shoulder and Jack wasn't sure if the old man had seen him. His first instinct was to push Gryden aside, to protect him. But he realised now that the figure wasn't a man at all, just a crude effigy. A punching bag, with a clown's face on it. Jack gave it a shove, and it wobbled and returned to an upright position. The clown's grin appeared to be mocking him.

Many of the crates had been burst open and Jack dropped to his haunches to examine some of the contents.

They were toys. Brightly coloured pots of putty with intelligent memory, thoughtcontrolled Frisbees, model s.p.a.ceships.

'The last thing they took from us,' said Gryden. 'According to the history books, there was a furious debate. Some people thought our children, at least, should be able to enjoy their dreams while they could but the majority were afraid we were teaching them bad habits. And there were health and safety issues to do with exposing workers to dangerous ideas. In the end, the toys were banned but not burned like the storybooks had been. Then the government was disbanded.'

'And the toys were all sealed up and forgotten,' surmised Jack, 'left here to rot.' Except that, at some point, someone had obviously unearthed and explored this treasure trove. Good on them.

A board game had been laid out in the dust, apparently abandoned in midsession, its pieces and cards sent flying by escaping feet. Jack found the box and squinted at it in the gloom: 'NIGHTMARES. A game of life, where the object is to succeed without going fantasy crazy. Can you find a flat and a good job before your dreams catch up with you? Not suitable for ages 11+'.

He flung the box aside and it landed by chance in an open crate packed with yellow rubber ducks. The silence was shattered as six of the birds took flight, flapping and quacking about their heads. It took them a nervejangling minute to recapture and deactivate them all.

Gryden led the way deeper into the warehouse, deeper into the darkness, until they found a hydraulic platform big enough to carry two cars. It was stuck at shoulder height, leaving a rectangular hole in the ceiling. A few crates had been arranged around the platform like steps, allowing them to clamber onto it. From here, they could haul themselves up onto the ground floor of the building.

As Jack got to his feet, he noted that the dust around him lay thick, as if n.o.body had been this way in years. There were more crates, but these too were undisturbed. He knew there were more floors above them, but he'd expected some sign of habitation by now. Still, if this was only a backup studio, maybe Gryden had established it a while ago and hadn't had cause to use it before now.

The old man certainly didn't seem familiar with his surroundings; not as he had been below. He stumbled into crate after crate, finding a path through by touch alone. 'There'll be a staircase along here somewhere,' he muttered but suddenly he didn't sound so sure.

And then there were footsteps and shouting and light blue light and it was too late. The police had found them.

They'd come in through the warehouse's main doors. Presumably they had some kind of override code for the locks. Jack didn't know if he and Gryden had been followed, or if someone had noticed and reported them after all. It hardly mattered. All they could do, either way, was run.

They turned back the way they'd come, hoping the police didn't know about their secret entrance. They were thwarted by the sight of black uniforms already swarming onto the hydraulic platform below them, guns snapping up to take aim. They leaped back as blue energy b.a.l.l.s thudded into the ceiling, dislodging a shower of dust.

The lightshow pinpointed their location for the other cops and they closed in. Someone shouted that they were surrounded, that the only way out of this was to show themselves with their hands up. She was probably right.

Gryden was starting to panic, shaking and gasping for breath.

Jack took him firmly by the shoulders. 'The studio. If we're gonna go down, we'll do it live on TV. We can show everyone what's really going on on this world.'

Gryden nodded dumbly.

They played cat and mouse through the crates with their pursuers, using the cover to their best advantage, and Jack soon estimated that they'd broken through the police cordon. The cops, fortunately, were paying most attention to the exits, so the stairs, when they finally came into view, were unguarded.

But that was where their luck let them down. A warning cry was raised in a gruff voice and suddenly the air was thick with blaster fire. Gryden yelped as he was. .h.i.t in the side and Jack had to practically carry him into the enclosed stairwell. They had cover here, but it wouldn't last. They climbed as fast as they could, but Gryden was short of breath, clutching his bruise and gritting his teeth, and Jack was painfully aware of the ringing of booted footsteps gaining on them from below.

And of another sound. A whirring of motors.

'A lift! Why the h.e.l.l didn't you tell me there was a lift?'

'Needs a key card,' Gryden gasped. 'We couldn't have used it.'

'But the cops can. They're behind us, and now they're ahead of us too.'

'I... I think I need... I really need to lie down, Cap'n. Just for a minute. That shot... I was lucky. They missed the main nerve cl.u.s.ters, but... I can't feel my arm.'

Jack made a decision. He set off down the stairs again, to Gryden's visible alarm. At the nearest turn, he waited with his back to the wall, listening, counting down under his breath.

The first cop to appear was still taking in the sight of Gryden, slumped on the stairs above him, when Jack jumped him. There was a brief struggle, during which the cop's gun went off three times and Gryden tried to scramble for cover. But Jack managed to wrest the weapon from his opponent's hand. He took a step back and fired.

He'd aimed over the cop's head; he hadn't had time to check that the gun wasn't set to kill. The shot still had the desired effect. The cop disappeared back round the corner and Jack sent three more bolts thudding into the wall after him for good measure. Then he returned to Gryden, bundled him to his feet and dragged him along, onwards and upwards.

The lift had stopped moving a few floors above them.

'How much further?' asked Jack. 'Where's the studio?'

'F-fourth floor,' Gryden mumbled.

Another flight and a half. Jack wasn't sure he could make it, not with his companion's neardead weight slowing him down. He couldn't leave him behind, though.

Another turn of the stairs and he could see it: the doorway onto the fourth floor. But boots were clattering down from above, and the boots behind were nearer now too, though they seemed to be advancing more warily than before.

Circles of light played across the wall ahead. Flashlight beams. The police above were closer to the doorway; they would reach it before he and Gryden could. He looked at his gun. It was no more advanced than many he'd seen back home. It was a simple matter to overload its power pack: a remarkably common design flaw, and one that had its uses.

He hurled the weapon up the stairs, angling it so that it bounced into view of the cops on the next flight. He shouted to Gryden to get down, but belied his words by continuing to pull him along. By the time the cops realised that the gun wasn't about to explode, he and Gryden had beaten them to the doorway.

Jack thought about leaving the gun he couldn't retrieve it without sticking his head into the line of fire. It was all he had, though. It might only hold the cops off for a few more seconds, but each one would count. He dived for the weapon and scooped it up, coming away with the brief impression of a stairwell crowded with black uniforms, too surprised to react to his brief appearance, still picking themselves up after their bomb scare.

Jack felt a surge of elation as he raced through the doorway, into...

...emptiness. No studio, no crates just s.p.a.ce, stretching out before him.

He kept going, because he couldn't quite believe it. There had to be a secret room or a lift. Just something, somewhere, because if there wasn't...

If there wasn't...

He came to a helpless stop in the centre of the floor. He heard shuffling on the stairwell and automatically sent three shots in that direction to discourage pursuit, though there seemed little point now. He could see right through to the boardedup windows on all four sides of the building, and Gryden had dropped to his knees and was holding on to Jack's legs and giggling hysterically.

'Where is it?' asked Jack urgently, though he was sure he knew the answer by now. 'You said there was a studio here. Where is it?'

'It's here,' sn.i.g.g.e.red the tramp. 'It's all around us. Can't you see? There are the lights up there, and the cameras standing there, there and there. We're on air. The whole world is watching us, and you'll tell them,won't you, Cap'n? You'll tell them how things are, and they'll never be able to ignore us again because we'll be famous, won't we? We'll be famous!'

Jack laid down the gun with a sigh and kicked it away from him.

The police approached with caution, suspecting a trap, but still they approached. They formed a circle of raised guns around the two fugitives.

Captain Jack put up his hands. The man who had called himself Hal Gryden was no longer laughing.

As four officers came for them and pulled them apart from each other, the tramp began to panic again.

'Cap'n, don't let them do this! Why are you just standing there? You said it'd be OK. You said if I came with you, you could fix everything.'

Jack avoided his eye, staring stubbornly at the ground. He felt disgusted, and he couldn't face his betrayer, didn't want to tell him what he was thinking, because he knew it wasn't really the old man's fault. He was ill. So Jack could only feel disgust with himself, for not seeing it in time.

'You have the right to remain silent,' growled a voice in his ear. 'Anything you do say had better be the truth, or you're for it!'

They were spraycuffed and marched to the stairs, Jack maintaining a resigned silence as the tramp babbled in fear: 'Listen to me, you've got the wrong man, it's not my fault. It was this man... This man, he told me he was a captain of a s.p.a.ceship, and I thought... I could see he was fantasy crazy, but he made me come with him, he made me steal for him. He had a gun and he wouldn't let me go. He said he was going to spread fiction to the whole world, but I didn't listen to his stories, I didn't. You can't take me to the Big White House, I've done nothing wrong. I know what they do to you there, and I can't face that. I'd rather die, do you hear me? I'd rather die, and that's the truth!'

NINE.

Domnic had never met a girl like Rose Tyler. In his job he spoke to dozens of women every day, and most of them were the same: selfabsorbed, uninterested. His coworkers went straight from the office to a club, where they stood, not talking, swaying in time to an overbearing drumbeat. The music had no melody, no lyrics. Its only purpose was to drown out reality, when Domnic knew that music could do so much more.

He couldn't see the world their way and they ridiculed him for that. They called him a geek, and probably worse behind his back. Some of them and he could see this in their eyes when he approached them, hear it in the hush that so often presaged his appearance were scared of him, scared that one day he might freak out.

When he'd joined the reading group, he had hoped to find a soul mate, someone who shared his perspective.

At first, there had been Manda. Mad Mand, they had called her. She had never had the discipline to write her ideas down, but when the mood struck her she would take centre stage with a series of ad hoc and increasingly extravagant tales, losing herself so deeply in the fiction that her recitals left Domnic breathless.

He had found his tongue tied whenever she had spoken to him. She just seemed to know what he was still trying to learn. She seemed to get it.

But gradually her stories had lost any grounding in reality. They'd become longer and more rambling, lacking in structure aimless flights of fantasy that made sense to no one but herself. And now, when the others had called her 'mad', it had been with concern in their voices rather than admiration.

Mad Mand had smashed up a restaurant one day. She had threatened the customers with a table leg. The staff had tried to restrain her, but they'd said on the news channels later that she'd had the strength of ten. In the end, in desperation, the chef had reached for a knife.

Manda had still been laughing, in her baritone boom, as she was carried into the ambulance. She had died in a traffic jam, halfway to the hospital.

Domnic had shunned the reading group for a month. It had taken him that long to come to terms with what had happened. The media had seized on the incident, citing it as an example of the danger of fiction, but that wasn't right. It had been the danger that had seduced Manda to start with. She hadn't been interested in the stories for their own sake, just in the thrill of dicing with insanity. If fiction hadn't killed her, she would have found something else to do the job.

At least, that was how Domnic rationalised it to himself.

Later, thanks to the news channels, they had found out a lot about Mad Mand about her parents and a succession of bad boyfriends. They had come to see why it was that she had been so scared of reality.