"Wait," I say. "We have to do this properly."
"Properly?"
"Don't you want to know how much I charge?"
He nuzzles his head close to my face and bites my earlobe. "You dirty bitch. Go on then, how much?"
"A hundred."
"Your prices have gone up. What do I get for that?"
"You get to fuck me. As hard as you want."
"I got that for twenty quid last time."
"OK. So what's worth a hundred to you?"
"You know what I want."
Yeah. And he got it for free last time. "Money first," I say.
He takes out five twenties, cash-machine-clean, and gives them to me.
"Now take off your top and pull down your jeans," he says.
I do it.
"Now put your hands behind your back."
He takes something out of his pocket and ties my hands together. And I'm thinking that whatever he does next doesn't matter. It's only my body. I don't mind how fucked my body gets as long as my mind's OK. And my body is up for this, anyway. However scared I am; however much I want to be driving away from the blond men and the KIDS—my body recognizes this feeling and wants more of it. It wants the familiar pain that's coming.
"Bend over," says Patrick. He takes some of the pink soap from the dispenser and smears it on his cock.
It takes about a minute and a half for him to come.
I get to Hertfordshire at around eleven. I have a plan of sorts. I figure that the only possible chance I've got of getting to Burlem is through his daughter. He's her ancestor, after all, and Apollo Smintheus's instructions did say that you could reach people's ancestors via Pedesis. So I'm going to check in to a bed-and-breakfast near her school and then get into the Troposphere and see if I can find Apollo Smintheus and ask him exactly how I would go about this. If I'm near her school, then I'm near her. And if I'm near her, then it should be easy enough to find her in the Troposphere. That's my guess.
The school is in a tiny village a few miles outside Hitchin. I drive around for about five minutes after locating it. There don't seem to be any hotels or boardinghouses here. I drive around again. There's a large pub. I park outside it and go in. There's no one inside, just a thin, sleazy-looking guy drying glasses behind the bar.
"Hi," I say.
"Hello," he says back. "Not an escapee, are you?"
"What?"
"Not from the school?"
Surely I don't look that young? "No," I say. "Maybe about twenty years ago ... Have you got rooms here?"
"Bed-and-breakfast?"
"Yeah."
"Hang on. I'll get the book."
I haven't seen another human being since I drove into the village. I can't believe that this place is going to be full up, but I wait while he flicks to the right page and then runs his fingernail down it.
"Yeah. We can do tonight," he says. "Just you, is it?"
"Yes."
"It'll be seventy-five pounds."
Jesus. For a room in a pub? "Have you got anything cheaper?"
"No, love. I've got one more apart from this one but that's eighty-five. It's up to you."
I sigh. "Is there anywhere else around here that might be cheaper?"
"You can go back into Hitchin," he says. "You might get something there."
Hitchin was about ten miles away. I have to be close to the school.
"Thanks. I'll take it," I say. "Oh—can I smoke in there?"
"Do what you want in there, love," he says. "Do you want to settle up now?"
He doesn't trust me.
"OK," I say. I give him the cash.
The room's better than I expected. The bed is soft and plump, with a red eiderdown. There are two bedside tables, each with an antique lamp. There's an en suite bathroom with soft but worn white towels. I need to have a bath, but I don't have much time. Can I get to the Troposphere from the bath? Would I drown? I need to make the best use of the time I've got here. What are my priorities? Food, then Troposphere. Maybe I'll ring down for something and have a bath while I'm waiting for it to arrive. A quick bath, just to warm up. Can I even order food here? Yes, there's a menu by the bed. Room service seems to consist mostly of dead stuff and chips. I need something substantial to eat. They do soup; I doubt it's homemade. I call down and find out that it's pea soup today and that it is homemade. I order a bowl of that and two portions of chips. Then I have a bath. After my bath I put on a clean pair of knickers, a clean pair of jeans, a thick black thermal top, and a jumper. It's warm in here, warmer than the priory. I dip chips in my soup and reread the document I wrote out last night. I still have so many questions for Apollo Smintheus.
I miss having the book. I miss The End of Mr. Y.
When I search my bag for the vial of fluid, it isn't there. Even when I dump the whole contents onto the bed: nothing. All I've got is the black dot on the piece of card. How am I going to go into the Troposphere? Shall I cry this time? Or maybe I'll just lie back on the bed and look at the dot and focus on the feeling of the jellyfish lights and the tunnel. Do I even need the fluid? Maybe there's some in my system already, because the tunnel is suddenly real, and...
The Troposphere looks roughly the same as the first time I entered it. I'm on another thin city street and it's still nighttime. Is there no sun here? I look around at the neon signs and the broken shop fronts. Is this what the inside of my mind looks like? Why would that be? I walk past a sex shop with big purple dildoes in the window. Another sex shop? Then I realize that this is how I see sleazy men. This place must represent the man downstairs, the one who gave me the room. So is it my mind that makes these images? It seems like it. Next door to the sex shop there's a pet beautician's with a blue door. Where's my mind got that from? Then there's a greengrocer's with plastic-looking fruit in baskets outside.
Console?
It appears. You now have thirty choices, it tells me.
OK. That's not big enough for a school population. I'm obviously not that close.
Can I play the Apollo Smintheus card?
The Apollo Smintheus card has expired.
Apollo Smintheus?
Nothing.
I keep going. Obviously I am going to have to do this on my own. So how would I best get to the school? In the physical world it's about a hundred yards down the road. But in this world-of-minds? I keep going. I wonder for a second how direction works here. Do I have to go the "same way" to find something here as I would in the physical world? It's very confusing. For a moment I think back to Lumas's story "The Blue Room." Would it be possible to go somewhere in my mind that doesn't work in four-dimensional space-time? Could I get trapped in here?
This road doesn't make any sense. The jumble of small shops has now turned into a boulevard of exclusive-looking department stores and jewellers. The window displays repulse me. In one fluorescently bright space, mannequins in glittery evening dresses stand around ignoring one another. In the next, a mannequin takes a metallic dog for a walk. Another window has two male mannequins fucking one thin, fragile-looking female mannequin. I prefer that: At least it was unexpected. I walk on, past a mirrored building on my right and an office block on my left. The road narrows again and now there are houses everywhere. But these aren't normal houses: They're life-sized doll's houses, all with the fronts taken off and placed to one side, each with a hinge dangling just below the roof. They are all painted in pastel colors: lilac, powder blue, lemon, rose. This represents the girls' school. It must do.
Console?
You now have four hundred and fifty-one choices.
OK. I'm not sure quite how this is going to work, but I approach one of the closest doll's houses and walk inside, straight from the street into the sitting room.