destination you’d selected. And yet this Door didn’t feel powerful enough to be able to do all the things Perrin claimed for it.
“We can deliver you anywhere,” said Perrin. “Strictly one-way, of course. That’s the point, so no one can track you, or follow you. And you can’t return, because the Door only exists from our side. We’ve sent all sorts of people to all sorts of places, and they must be happy there, because no one ever comes back to complain!”
He laughed easily, at the familiar company joke. And while he was busy doing that, I leaned in for a really close look at the Door, and its combination dial. With my back to Perrin, I was able to send a trickle of golden strange matter up to my face from my torc, to form a pair of golden sunglasses over my eyes. And then, I was able to study the Door’s true nature. It took me only a moment to determine that the Door was quite genuine, but the combination dial was a fake. It was jammed on one setting, one location. No one had moved it in ages. Which suggested . . . that the Travel Bureau people had been taking their clients’ money, opening the Door to the only place it could go, and then . . . pushing them through if need be and slamming the Door shut again after them.
It was a con job. Of course it was a con. First rule of the confidence trick: if it seems to be too good to be true, it is too good to be true.
I subvocalised my activating Words, and my armour leapt out of my torc and surrounded me in a moment. I spun round to face Perrin, and he cried out in shock to see a Drood in his armour suddenly appear before him. I moved steadily forward, and Perrin screamed like a little girl. He turned to run for the exit door. I grabbed him by one shoulder, my golden fingers sinking deep into his flesh, and he cried out again. He fought me like a cornered rat, shouting and crying and striking at my armour with his bare hands. Hurt him far more than it hurt me. I let him get it out of his system, and then shook him hard, once. He stopped fighting, sniffed back tears, and called me a bastard. I dragged him over to the dimensional Door. When he saw where I was taking him, he started crying again, and kicked and struggled all the way.
I slammed him up against the closed Door, with enough force to shut him up. The Door didn’t react at all. I thrust my blank golden face into Perrin’s, and when he saw his own terrified face in the reflection, he almost passed out. Anyone else, and I might have felt a little ashamed of myself. But if what I suspected had happened here was right, he deserved far worse.
“What did you do?” I said, not even trying to hide the anger in my voice. “What did you do with all the people who trusted you? That Door only goes to one place, so none of them ended up where they thought they were going. Where did you send them really?”
Perrin swallowed hard. “I don’t know! No one here knows. We acquired the Door at an auction. Blind bid; no details, no history. That’s why we were able to afford it. But it works! We send people through and we never hear from them again. We’ve been sending people through the Door for years. Can’t be that bad a place; no one ever comes back to complain . . . And none of them are the sort of people who’ll be missed, so . . .”
“You have no idea at all where they’ve gone?” I said. “Or what might have happened to them? You took everything they had, took advantage of them when they were at their most vulnerable, and then just . . . threw them away! Justify yourself!”
“Justify myself?” said Perrin. “To Shaman Bond?”
“I’m Eddie Drood,” I said. “I just borrowed Shaman’s identity to get in here. You didn’t really think the Droods would leave a valuable item like the Merlin Glass just hanging around, did you? Now talk to me! Justify what you’ve done here!”
“I’m a businessman!” Perrin said loudly. “Providing a service! They all wanted to get away, and never be seen or found again, and we made that