Free Dream London by Tony Ballantyne Page B

above me, high up in the towers of Dream London, someone was pulling at my strings, and I danced through the streets like a marionette.
    I came to a sudden halt at the realisation. Someone was playing games with me. I looked back again. No sign of Honey Peppers. I dodged sideways down an alley and rounded a corner. A pile of broken glass panes lay outside a door, right next to what looked like a brand new gold plush armchair.
    Why was there a chair there? I didn’t consider this at the time, I simply dropped into the armchair, gasping, and sat there a while, getting my breath back. It was true, I realised: someone was playing with me.
    I was sitting on something. Something in my pocket. I shifted a little and remembered Christine’s scroll. Someone else trying to control me, I thought.
    I pulled out the scroll, unrolled it, and began to read.
     
    You will meet a Stranger
    You will be offered a job
    You will be offered a second job
    Go to the inn to meet a friend, one who will betray you
    Go to the docks and meet your greatest friend, the one you will betray...
     
    Go to the docks. Did Honey Peppers know about the piece of paper in my pocket?
    I didn’t believe in fortunes any more than I did in Christine’s list of possible husbands, but...
    I lived in a city where the buildings changed every night, where people had eyes in their tongues, where women turned into whores over three weeks. Was a scroll that told my fortune so fantastic?
    Everything on the scroll had come true so far, hadn’t it? I shook my head. Not necessarily. Meet a friend in an inn? What was so unusual about that? One who will betray you...
    Okay. I’d met Bill in the inn. Would she betray me? I had no hesitation in answering that question. Like a shot! She was in the military. My own country would have no hesitation in betraying me, why should another country be any more concerned about my wellbeing?
    But it was the next line that gave me pause...
    Go to the docks and meet your greatest friend, the one you will betray...
    Daddio Clarke had sent me to the docks. Honey Peppers had something about new friends waiting for me there...
    Why was everyone taking an interest in Captain Jim Wedderburn all of a sudden? I read the prediction again:
    Go to the docks and meet your greatest friend, the one you will betray...
    That struck a chord. That sounded like me. Meet my greatest friend and betray him. That was the sort of thing Jim Wedderburn would do. And frankly, I was sick of it. I had had enough of that in my life by now. I wanted to be better than I was. With Christine I thought I was beginning to improve, but she had dropped me and my old life had resumed in earnest. And now I was following the instructions of her prophecy scroll, things were taking another downwards turn.
    What was I to do?
    Certainly not head for the docks. Maybe it was time to return to the Poison Yews.
    Curiosity gripped me and I began to unroll the rest of the scroll, to see the remainder of the predictions, but at that moment I heard a child’s voice.
    “Captain Wedderburn?”
    I looked up and there, beside me, stood Honey Peppers, golden curls tilted.
    “I think you were running away from me, Captain Wedderburn.”
    “Not at all, Honey.”
    “And yet here I find you in one of the Daddio’s traps.”
    She meant the chair.
    “I was just eager to do the Daddio’s work,” I said.
    Her pink and white dress remained spotless, I noticed.
    “I hope so,” said Honey. “If not, I would have to push ground glass into your prick, and that might mean I get my dress dirty. Now, we have to hurry.”
    “Of course,” I said. I stood up from the armchair, pushing the scroll back in my pocket as I did so. “Lead the way!”
    She took me by the hand and led me down to the docks.
     
     
    T HE DOCKS HAVE grown and twisted since the changes began. The waterways have crept deep into the city streets, so that you might look out of your window and see a ship sailing by, following a canal