The Rasta standing on Abigail Voud's right-a thickset, bearded six-footer in a combat coat and camouflage pants, with his locks tucked into a red, green, and black wool cap, whose name was Montgomery, and who was reputed to control a sizable chunk of the West London wholesale ganja market-nodded in agreement.
"You can't be doing shit like that round here, Windemere. We got enough rasclat troubles without all this nonsense, see?"
The tension in the room was downright dangerous. Cadiz and O'Neal were still holding the weapons that they'd grabbed when the disturbance had first started. Gibson, barefoot and bleary-eyed, in the shirt and pants that he had thrown on when people had begun streaming into the house, felt himself at a distinct disadvantage. Christobelle had removed the Balinese headdress and wrapped herself in a floral-print robe, but the bangles and beads of her odalisque outfit still clanked and jingled on her wrists and ankles. Even Rita stood angrily at the back of the room in a pink housecoat and with her hair in rollers, muttering about no-account rude boys and ready to join in any fray that might develop. Only the streamheat remained pin-neat and apparently unconcerned.
Windemere was adamantly shaking his head. "You're pushing me too far, Abigail. I mean, look at it from where I'm standing, I didn't ask to take charge of Joe Gibson. The Nine dumped him on me and now the Nine, through you, are complaining about the way I'm handling things. Either you let me do things in my own way, or you get Gibson out of here and stash him someplace else."
Abigail Voud raised a thin, blue-veined hand. "Calm down, Gideon, please. I'm not here to criticize you. None of us were aware that matters would escalate so quickly. We, the Nine, made the original mistake in assuming that the attacks on Gibson were a purely localized, New York threat. Nobody expected either Yancey Slide or a UFO."
Windemere's mouth twisted into a half smile. "Nobody ever expects Yancey Slide or a UFO." He had, however, calmed down quite considerably.
The authority that seemed to be contained in the old lady's tiny body amazed Gibson. Wrapped in a heavily embroidered purple sari that made her look like a cross between Indira Gandhi and the Witch of Gagool, she seemed easily to assume control of the whole room. Nobody had taken time out from this latest crisis to fill Gibson in about what it was in her background that qualified her for a place in the Nine, but from the look of her Gibson could only assume that she was extensively traveled in whatever secret labyrinth linked the occult undergrounds of Europe, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. Gibson knew that during colonial days, strange crossovers had taken place and links had undoubtedly been forged that had lasted to the present, and he wondered what she must have been like when she was young. Perhaps she had been one of those mysteriously seductive dragon-women who, according to legend, film, and fable, moved, fingernails clicking and eyes flashing, through the dark intrigues of the twenties and thirties, spreading chaos and disorder as they played off British military intelligence against the Abwehr and Manchu warlords against the Imperial Japanese Secret Service in that long-gone twilight zone of steamship voyages, romance behind bamboo shutters, and secret assignations in Cairo or Shanghai,
Madame Voud's spectacles flashed as she quickly agreed with Windemere. "Exactly. It's simply that none of us foresaw how the situation would build."
Montgomery glanced over his shoulder. "Seems you got a situation building on the street right now, mon,"
"Oh, Jesus." Windemere quickly crossed to the window and inched back the curtain. "Damn it to hell."
Gibson moved to look for himself. "What is it?"
"You see those two white vans parked across the way there?"
"Cops?"
"SPG. That's all we needed."
"What's the SPG?"
Montgomery supplied the answer. "Special Patrol Group, the heavy mob. They keep them bastards in cages and feed 'em on raw meat, vodka, and copies of Mein Kampf. Only let 'em out when heads gotta be broke."
Smith stood up. "I can deal with the local law enforcement. May I use the phone?"
Gibson continued to peer out of the window. Ever since Voud and her Rastas had come beating on the door, a small silent crowd had been standing on the sidewalk staring at the house as though waiting for a sign. The majority of them were wearing dreadlocks or sculpted hip-hop hairdos, but there was also a sprinkling of leftover hippies and other local weirdos. Three teddy boys even stood with hands thrust into the pockets of their long drape jackets. This was a little odd, given the average ted's extreme and overt racism. The uniformed figures inside the white Ford Transit vans, with the screens over the windows and the riot-control cowcatchers on the front, were now watching the crowd on the sidewalk, and a good many of the crowd were looking right back at them with challenging hostility. For decades, the Ladbroke Grove area had been famous for its riots, and all the ingredients for another one were rapidly gathering right outside the house.
Montgomery seemed to sense this, and he squinted at Smith. "I hope you can pull this off, lady. It's like Windemere say, we don't need the aggravation."
Smith appeared to be on hold. Abigail Voud glanced up at Montgomery. "Can't you get your people to go home?"
The big Rastafarian shook his head. "No chance. Too much blood between jah man and pig rasclat SPG. Pride, see? You know what I'm talking about?"
Smith was now talking fast into the phone. Christobelle glanced at French. "Can she really get the SPG pulled out?"
French nodded. "We maintain close ties with the locals in all the major cities in which we operate."
Gibson caught the remark. The more he learned of the streamheat, the more they started to resemble an interdimensional CIA, and he was feeling more and more that he trusted them about as much as he would trust the domestic version.
Smith put down the phone. "It's done. The SPG are being removed."
Montgomery looked at her disbelievingly. "How you do that?"
Smith shrugged as though it was the easiest thing in the world. "All under the blanket of national security."
Sure enough, within a matter of minutes, the headlights of the first of the two white Transits came on and it pulled away from the curb, quickly followed by the second. A ragged cheer came from the crowd outside as though they thought the official retreat had been a result of their own hostile stares and intractable attitudes.
Gibson turned away from the window. "They've gone."
Abigail Voud brought the meeting back to order. "Now we have to decide what's to be done with Joseph Gibson."
Every eye in the room turned in his direction, and Gibson felt profoundly uncomfortable. "I'm getting a little tired of listening to people discuss what's to be done with me."
Everyone ignored the remark except Montgomery, who glared at him. "You gotta go, mon, before you cause any more bother."
Gibson stood his ground.
"And doubtless someone's going to tell me where I'm going to be shipped off to next and what drug I'm going to be filled with to keep me quiet on the trip."
Smith's face was cold, as if, as far as she was concerned, he was little more than a recalcitrant package. "It's my opinion that we should take you out of this dimension entirely. "
Gibson's jaw dropped. "Say what?"
"I think the only answer is to transport you out of this dimension entirely. While I'm not totally convinced that all the phenomena that are showing up are solely attracted by you, I think the situation has become far too unpredictable for you to remain."
Abigail Voud was nodding in agreement. "This is also the opinion of the Nine. Although I don't share some of my colleagues' absolute faith in our extradimensional friends, I believe that, in this instance, they are right,"