NECROM

"After what I've seen, I don't trust anyone. I may be in a lot of trouble but I've been in trouble before and got myself out of it."

French sneered. "From what I've heard, you've mainly drunk your way out of it."

"So? At least everyone can be assured that a drunk isn't a cosmic danger."

Smith sighed. "And where exactly would you walk to?"

Gibson smiled for the first time since he'd been dragged out of bed by the hammering on the door. "I'd walk out of here and that'd be that. You wouldn't have to worry about me anymore. I wouldn't be your problem. The one thing that you're all forgetting is that I'm Joe Gibson. I know people in London. People you wouldn't even imagine. I'll make it."

"You think so?"

"Like I said, you don't have to worry about it."

"You wouldn't last through tomorrow morning."

It was Gibson's turn to sneer. "You think I'm completely helpless?"

Smith turned and faced him. "I think after the police get a call from me, they'll pick you up pretty quickly."

Gibson's eyebrows shot up. "For what?"

"For being an illegal immigrant."

"What are you talking about?"

"There's no record of you entering the country."

"It was all arranged with the State Department. Casillas told me that."

"I think you'll find that those arrangements have been quite forgotten. You entered the country as J. Edgar Hoover. Try convincing the London bobbies that you're the late director of the FBI."

Light dawned on Gibson. "Now you're blackmailing me."

"It's an ugly word."

"You really think I couldn't go to ground in London?"

"Without money and without papers? You might manage it, but would you like it?"

Gibson shrugged. "So what's the worst that could happen to me? I could be deported back to the U.S., right?"

"I imagine that there might be a couple of agents from the IRS Criminal Investigation Division waiting to arrest you when you got to JFK."

"Another phone call?"

Smith nodded. "Another phone call."

Gibson looked helplessly round the room. "None of this makes any sense. Remember me? Worthless Joe Gibson, the no-account, burned-out drunk. How come you streamheat are suddenly so keen to whisk me off to another dimension? "

Christobelle, who had been sitting quietly since Madame Voud had used her as a guinea pig, leaned forward in her chair. "Joe's got a point. You streamheat have done nothing but call him a drunk and treat him as an unwanted burden. Now you're all but putting a gun to his head to force him to go with you. Would you care to explain?"

Now everyone in the room was looking at the three streamheat. For the slightest fraction of an instant, Klein glanced at Smith to see what she was going to say, and, in that same fraction of an instant, Gibson knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that for some mysterious reason of their own, the streamheat wanted him; they had wanted him all along, and they'd been lying to him ever since they had all left New York on the private jet. It was like a weight being lifted. He still didn't know what they intended to do with him, but at least they'd shown a part of their hand and given him some slight idea of how to play his own sorry collection of cards. Smith's response to Christobelle only confirmed what Gibson was thinking.

"We haven't put a gun to his head yet."

Gibson almost smiled. "But you would if you had to?"

Smith realized she'd blundered by being too glib and hastily spun into damage control. "You have to face it, Gibson, what with the aura that Madame Voud showed you and all the things that have been happening, your best chance is with us."

Now Gibson did smile. "That's bullshit and you know it. For some reasons of your own that I can't even get near, you want to take me out of this dimension."

Silence filled the room like physical pressure, and the sightless eye sockets of the rattlesnake skull in the glass dome on the mantel seemed to stare into space as everyone waited to see what the streamheat were going to say or do next. Smith had the look of a woman backed up into a corner, and after being cornered so often himself Gibson couldn't help but relish the spectacle.

Finally she let out a careful breath. "Yes, you're right. It's our mission to remove you to another dimension. We received our orders while we were at Greene Street."

Gibson stood up and faced Smith. He allowed a few seconds to pass before he spoke. "So let me ask you one more time, what is it about me? Why am I so important?"

"I can't tell you that."

Gibson sighed. "Here we go again."

"I can't tell you that because I don't know."

Gibson's face was hard. "I don't believe you."

Smith was on the defensive. "All I know is that you are a key figure in one of our future projections. Because of that, we were ordered to get you to safety even if it meant transporting you to another dimension."

"You're just following orders?"

"Exactly."

Windemere coughed. "That phrase has unfortunate connotations in this dimension."

Gibson abruptly sat down again. "Does anyone have a cigarette?"

Montgomery pulled out a pack of Silk Cut and offered him one. "I think you getting screwed, mon."

Gibson looked up at the big Rasta and grinned. "So do you want to take me in and look after me?"

Montgomery shook his head. "Fuck, no. You too much trouble for jah man."

Gibson scanned the room. He'd miss it when he was gone. Despite the problems, the mysteries, and the dangers, he'd begun to really enjoy the company of Windemere and Christobelle. "So it looks as though I'm going to another dimension."

"I have a question." Madame Voud had apparently been deep in thought, but now she was looking at Smith. "Was it you that caused the psych attack on Gibson in New York?"

Once again there was a split moment of hesitation on the part of Smith. "Of course not. Why should we do a thing like that?"

"Perhaps you thought you had to convince Casillas and the others at Greene Street that Gibson needed your special protection."

"And we staged it? That's an outrageous suggestion, particularly coming from someone who's supposed to be an ally."

"Allies sometimes play games with each other. It's hardly unknown."

Smith took refuge in anger. "I suppose we also arranged for the UFO to follow our plane?"

Abigail Voud smiled from behind her glasses. "It was just a thought." Without pausing, she looked up at Montgomery. "I think we can leave now. Gibson will be going with the streamheat, so what we came here for has been accomplished."

To Gibson, this sounded too much like a dismissal. "So the Nine are washing their hands of me?"

As Montgomery helped the old woman to her feet, she looked sadly at Gibson. "These are troubled times, Joe Gibson. None of us is exempt."

Madame Voud and her Rasta escort had left the room with Windemere and his two bodyguards going along to show her out. Gibson and Christobelle went to the window to watch them go. When the old woman emerged from the house with her Rastafarians on either side, the crowd outside immediately surrounded them and, en masse, they headed up Ladbroke Grove on foot.

Christobelle put a hand on Gibson's arm. "Are you scared?"

Gibson glanced back at the three streamheat. They seemed to be locked in a muttered conversation in a language that wasn't English. "I'm not crazy about going anywhere with that bunch, let alone to another dimension,"

"You'll make it through."

Gibson raised an eyebrow. "You know something I don't?"

"Just a feeling that you're not the total fuck-up that you pretend to be."

Windemere came back into the room alone, brisk and businesslike, cutting short both convocations.

"So you're out of here, Joe."

Gibson nodded. "So it would seem."

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more to look out for you."