of family, I hit the control for the Bentley’s Overdrive. It’s a small red button on top of the gear stick. With an embossed tip, so the driver can find it by touch without looking. For if it’s dark, or you’re being shot at. You could tell everything in the Bentley had been designed by a man used to the pressures and demands of operating in the field. Where there’s nearly always someone, or something, trying to kill you.
I had no intention of driving all the way to the Lark Hill listening centre, along hours of congested motorways and minor back roads, not when there was a much quicker alternative to hand. The Bentley came with super-prescient sat-nav. It didn’t depend on information from satellites for global positioning; it just knew. The car’s onboard computers used quantum description to plot short cuts through adjoining dimensions and territories, to take the car straight to the required destination. The Armourer did try to explain the theory behind this to me once, and I had to beg him to stop. I was afraid my brains were about to start leaking out my ears. I know enough to drive the car; I don’t need to know how it all works.
I didn’t even need to input coordinates for the Big Ear; it seemed the Armourer had already done that for me. Which suggested he’d already decided to give me the car, some time before . . . My uncle Jack might be slowing down, but he was still several jumps ahead of everyone else. It was good to know there were still some things in life you could depend on. The Bentley’s computers calculated the quickest route to the Big Ear, through the smallest number of side dimensions, and then something on the dashboard chimed prettily to let me know we were ready to go.
(Don’t ask me where the Bentley keeps her extensive computer systems; everything under the bonnet is a mystery to me. Never meddle with the Armourer’s work. And besides, an old lady like the Bentley is entitled to keep a few secrets to herself.)
I braced myself as the whole car began to shake and shudder, and then she shot forward like a scalded cat. The Bentley accelerated so fast she broke the walls of Time and Space, and left the world behind. The surrounding countryside elongated into a long streak of distorted colours, as reality itself stretched and snapped, and just like that . . . we were somewhere else.
* * *
The world I knew was replaced by another, and then another and another in swift succession, as the Bentley drove sideways through dimensions. The familiar English countryside was replaced by a tropical jungle, complete with huge trees, dark shadows, and awful lurking things watching balefully from the gloom. Then the jungle was a desert, was a mountain pass, was a great stony waste. Day and night switched back and forth, flickering wildly, as worlds snapped by in a slipstream of motion. I drove under dark purple skies full of strange constellations, where the stars spun like Catherine wheels. The air was full of strange sounds and disturbing voices. A whole city sang a single great song, in harsh, dissonant harmonies. It snapped off abruptly as the world changed around me, replaced by a massive choir of whale songs, as I drove the Bentley through a great school of banana yellow whales, flying through the rain clouds. Followed by a terrible screaming of insane children plotting mass murder, and then one great Voice, impossibly distinct and utterly inhuman, speaking my name . . . until the Bentley accelerated even faster and left it all behind.
Different realities shot past like so many shop-window displays, Dopplering away behind me as I clung fiercely to the steering wheel with both hands. I knew better than to actually try to steer; the car knew where it was going. I just kept a careful eye on the view ahead of me in case we needed to defend ourselves. I didn’t even try to slow down when things loomed up suddenly before me; I trusted the Bentley to dodge anything that needed dodging and drive right over everything else. The faster we moved, the happier I was. There was always the chance Something might notice me, take an interest in me, and try to follow me home. It’s never a good idea to attract the attention of Forces from Outside. I have heard stories of what happens when