The Doctor had extracted Silk"s letter from inside the envelope and was thoughtfully perusing it while Ace searched for more envelopes addressed in her hand. "You know what else might be helpful?" said Elina.
"What"s that dear?"
"Those ledgers. Those great big ledgers the Storrows keep."
The Doctor looked up from the letter. "Ledgers?"
"That"s right," said Albert excitedly. "Big huge volumes. The Storrows record details about business transactions, but also about their so-called clients. They have names, addresses, personal facts. . . "
"Some very very personal facts," added Elina, her fat cherubic face turning hot and red. personal facts," added Elina, her fat cherubic face turning hot and red.
"They"re like personal histories. I suspect the Storrows have some pretty unsavoury reasons for keeping them. In fact, I bet they use them to apply leverage."
"Leverage?" said the Doctor. "You mean blackmail?"
"I"m afraid so," said Albert. He went and stood beside Elina. The woman took his tiny hand in her huge one. "The Missus and I didn"t know what kind of people they were when we started working here. Then by the time we found out. . . "
"Don"t castigate yourselves," said the Doctor. "You"re making amends now.
And I would certainly like to see those ledgers."
"They"re upstairs in the office. I"ll go and get them," said Albert.
130."Oh but they"re heavy," said Elina. "And they"re up on that high shelf."
"I"m not a child, woman."
"They"re much too heavy for you to reach down." Elina rose ponderously from her chair. "I"ll come up and help you."
"Not with your veins you won"t," said Albert fiercely. "You know what those stairs do to your legs."
"I"ll help," said Ace. She rose from the love seat, leaving the Doctor to look through the envelopes as Albert led her from the room. The carpeted staircase rose upwards from the entrance hall into the cool, shadowy, quiet s.p.a.ce of the second floor. There was a sweet, dusty smell of dying flowers in the air.
"This is very good of you," said Albert. "I could probably wrestle those darn ledgers down by myself, but Elina"s right. They"re awfully big." He reached the top step and stood aside politely to let Ace go past. They were in a narrow corridor with framed photographs on the wall on either side. The photographs were similar to the ones in the alb.u.m downstairs. Glamour shots of celebrities, carefully staged studio shots with immaculate lighting. It was amusing to Ace to note how many of the sleek men and women were posed with cigarettes, as though tobacco was an essential part of their mystique.
Some of the photographs were more candid shots, taken informally indoors and outside. In some she recognised the chapel in the background. Several featured Albert and Elina posing with the celebrities. Ace had just begun to wonder why movie stars and famous athletes would want to pose with the caretaker and his wife, when she came on one photo depicting a beautiful oriental woman flanked by the couple. There was no question of the woman"s ident.i.ty. It was Lady Silk, and Albert and Elina were standing on either side of her.
That was weird.
Ace turned to Albert, who was following close behind her, to ask him about it. As she turned she saw Albert stepping away from her, pulling his arm sharply back, then lunging at her in a violent blur of movement. There was a look of vicious glee in his eyes. His fist slammed into her face, high on her right cheekbone, and Ace felt her head snap back. The pain was intense, as though the whole side of her face was collapsing, and the blow knocked her off her feet. She fell backwards, hitting the wall, dragging framed photographs down off it. One of the pictures, in a large heavy metal frame crashed down on her head and bounced off, the gla.s.s shattering. The blow from the heavy picture frame felt like it was pushing Ace down into deep, muddy water. She fought to retain consciousness.
All she could think was that she had to warn the Doctor. She opened her mouth and tried to scream, and Albert stepped forward and kicked her in the pit of the stomach. Ace heard the breath whoop out of her mouth and felt her 131body hinge forward at the waist, a broken toy. Consciousness began to melt away redly at the edges. She distantly felt Albert continuing to pummel her, but it was all irrelevant now.
She stared at her feet as she blacked out.
"Ace. Ace." The voice was a low, insistent whisper. It kept coming at her. It wouldn"t leave her alone. The voice was familiar, but that didn"t make her any more eager to listen to it. Ace tried to go back to sleep. She tried to roll over and pull the covers over her head. But she couldn"t move. There were no covers. She wasn"t in bed.
She was sitting in a chair with her hands tied behind the back of it. Ace raised her head and wearily opened her eyes. The Doctor was sitting opposite her, also tied to a chair. They were in a circular room with a spiral staircase descending through a well in the centre of the floor. There was a raised semi-circular platform at one end of the room with a telescope perched on a tripod upon it. The telescope was pointed at a wide curving window that revealed an expanse of sky, full of clouds stained with sunset colours. That was all Ace could take in. She shut her eyes again.
"Ace. Wake up. Please. You must wake up." The Doctor was persistent, pleading, wheedling but she just ignored him. What was the point waking up when you were tied to a chair in some kind of observatory with a telescope?
The only sensible thing to do was to go back to sleep and hope you"d wake up somewhere else.
"Ace!" The Doctor"s voice was imperative, relentless. It was like trying to sleep while your neighbours were drilling the walls. Ace opened her eyes again. She was staring at the floor now, at her feet. They were tied to the front legs of the chair. Staring at her feet reminded her of something.
The last thing she"d seen before she blacked out. Sitting there in the upstairs hall with her back against the wall, broken pictures all around her and Albert beating the h.e.l.l out of her. With the memory came fear and anger, but mostly anger.
"The little creep sucker-punched me," she said. Her voice sounded strangely quiet, rusty. Her mouth was dry.
"Good girl, Ace," said the Doctor fiercely. "You"re awake now. Stay awake."
"Oh G.o.d. I feel sick. My head hurts."
"They"ve been dosing you with chloroform every time you woke up."
"The toerags." Ace stared across the room at the Doctor. She tried to smile but her lips wouldn"t move. She could feel the swelling of a black eye on her right cheek. It felt tight and hot. Then something the Doctor had said began to alarm her. "Chloroform?"
132."Yes, although I think they might be using ether, too. In any case you"re all right now. Take deep breaths."
Ace looked at the window. The sun hadn"t sunk entirely yet. It seemed to be only a few minutes after she"d gone upstairs with Albert. "How long have I been out?"
"Almost twenty-four hours."
"Twenty-four hours?"
"Yes it"s the night of the following day."
"So I guess we missed Duke Ellington," said Ace.
The Doctor smiled. "I"m afraid so."
"Pity. Why have they been keeping me unconscious?"
"They obviously want us helpless while they decide what to do with us.
They"ve also been dosing me, though the chloroform hasn"t had the desired effect because of my somewhat different metabolism. I"ve been pretending to sleep and waiting for you to come round."
Ace shook her head, trying to disperse the thick clouds that seemed to clog it. "Albert and Elina. They"re not the Storrows" caretakers."
"No, they"re the Storrows themselves. We should have suspected something.
They were all too conveniently cooperative and eager to betray their employers. I should have suspected something." The Doctor smiled sadly. "I"m sorry I got you into this."
"It"s what I signed up for," said Ace. "So what do we do now?"
"Actually, there are quite a number of courses of action open to us. I was merely waiting for you to wake up, because your a.s.sistance is required in all of them. Do you feel ready?"
Ace shook her head again. The room seemed to pulse and ebb around her before stabilising. "As I"ll ever be."
"Then I suggest we work our way across the room. It"s possible to move in these chairs if we"re patient, by rocking from side to side. We will work our way to that telescope and then, with your help, we will tip it over. This is the critical part. We must break it, break its lens, but without making too much noise. Between the two of us I believe we can manage that."
"And once we break it. . . " Ace forced herself to concentrate. "We can use the broken gla.s.s. To cut the ropes."
"Yes. I suggest we begin immediately. Like this. . . " The Doctor started wiggling in his chair, causing it to edge slowly towards the raised section of the floor where the telescope stood.
Ace said, "That raised bit of the floor. . . "
"May cause us some difficulties, yes. But nothing insurmountable, I believe.
With your help I should be able to tip my chair and rock upwards onto it."
133.Ace forced a smile. "OK, let"s rock upwards." She began to wriggle back and forth in her chair. At first she moved in the wrong direction, but soon she got the hang of it. She and the Doctor started to move towards the telescope, painstakingly scuffing their chairs across the floor as though competing in some kind of bizarre party game.
They"d gone about eighteen inches when there was the sound of footsteps coming up the stairwell in the centre of the room. Ace and the Doctor froze.
A large shadow lumbered up the stairs, followed by the man casting it. The first they saw of him was his red beret rising through the hole in the floor.
"Ray!"
Cosmic Ray Morita came up the stairs into the room. He was carrying the square yellow record bag Ace had first seen at the Oppenheimers" party. His face had a mournful expression. He looked at Ace and the Doctor. "Oh man,"
he said. "I"m so sorry this happened, guys."
"Ray," said Ace. "What are you doing here?"
"Had to come to LA baby, to hear the Duke play. It meant going AWOL from the Hill but it was worth it. I can straighten things out when I get back. I had to hear Duke Ellington, live in concert. It was my last chance."
"But what are you doing here here," said Ace.
"Yes, Ray," said the Doctor coldly. "What are you doing here in the Chapel of the Red Apocalypse?"
Ray shook his head glumly. "I guess you know the answer to that. Otherwise you wouldn"t be here looking for me."
"As a matter of fact, we had no idea you"d he here," said the Doctor. "We didn"t even know you"d gone AWOL as you put it. As far as I knew my Mescalero friends had returned you to Los Alamos safe and sound."
"They did man, they did. Those Indian cats are all right. They don"t say a lot, but they"re OK. They dropped me back near the mesa and I drove the jeep up the Hill and returned it. But then I split for LA." Ray regarded the Doctor gloomily in silence for a moment, as if working up his nerve to ask a question.
Finally he said, "If you didn"t know I was here, why did you come, daddy-o?"
"We were looking for Lady Silk," said the Doctor. "So I suppose it should come as no surprise that you turned up as well."
"Oh, don"t put me in the same bag as them, man. That Lady Silk and Imperial Lee. They"re fanatics man, they"re fanatics."
"And what are you, Ray?"
"Just a lost soul," said Ray morosely. "A long way from home."
"That"s a very sad story, Ray," said Ace. "Why don"t you untie us while you tell us all about it."
"Sorry Ace baby. I can"t. I want to, but I can"t."
"Why not?"
134."Because Ray is doing the bidding of the people who are holding us prisoner."
The Doctor stared at him coldly. "Don"t expect him to think or act for himself."
"That"s not fair man. You make me sound like some kind of flunky. I"m no flunky."
"Then untie us," said Ace.
Ray shook his head sadly. "I"m sorry. I can"t help. I never should have come up here. But I had to take a look. To see if it was you cats. From what they were saying, it sounded like you. I was hoping it wasn"t, though." Ray turned and walked ponderously back towards the spiral staircase.
"Wait," said the Doctor.
"I told you, I can"t untie you, man."
"Don"t untie us then," said the Doctor in a calm, persuasive voice. "But just stay and talk to us."
Ray hesitated, his hand on the wrought-iron stair rail. "Just talk, man?"
"That"s right. Tell us about yourself. After all, you have nothing to hide now."
Ray turned and came back into the room and stood between the Doctor and Ace. "I"d offer you a chair," said the Doctor. "But there only seem to be two, and they"re currently occupied by Ace and myself." Ray shook his head and sat down on the raised section of floor beside the telescope. He took the record bag off his shoulder and carefully set it to one side.
"You want me to tell you about myself?"
"That"s right, Ray," said the Doctor soothingly. "We just want to know a little more about you."
"But you must know everything about me, man."
"Not at all."
"But didn"t they send you after me? From back home I mean. Didn"t they send you to try and stop me?"
The Doctor smiled. "Not exactly, Ray. For a start, there is no "they". Ace and myself are free agents. No one sent us. And we didn"t exactly come from back home. Or at least I didn"t. Ace did."
"What?" said Ace.
The Doctor turned to look at her. The angle of their chairs after their futile attempt to move across the room meant that he had to stare across his shoulder at an awkward angle. Nonetheless, he made an attempt to smile. "You come from the same place and time as Ray."
"But he comes from another dimension."
"So do you, Ace. The same dimension."
"But you said " Ace paused. She forced herself to think. The Doctor and Ray stared at her as she sat there, fiercely silent, trying to put it all together in her head. "No," she said slowly. "You didn"t. You never said that this was our own dimension. Our own universe. I just a.s.sumed it was."
135."So you guys dig the multiverse theory," said Ray. "That"s a relief. You understand there"s an infinite number of dimensions, all of them tiny variations on each other, man. And the possibilities are exhaustive, baby, exhaustive."