switch and button on the dashboard, including the cigarette lighter that actually worked the flame-throwers, but nothing happened. And then all the lights on the beech-wood panel went out and didn’t come back on again. Even the ones I hadn’t touched. All the Bentley’s systems had been overridden by the Outside Force. I told Kate, and then she was quiet for a worryingly long moment.
“We’ve had the Bentley’s operating manual brought up from the Library to Operations,” she said finally. “We’re working our way through it as quickly as we can, but it is, after all, a very large book. With no index. Apparently . . . whatever it is that’s happening was never meant to happen. Was never supposed to be possible . . . You wouldn’t believe some of the protections the Armourer put in place . . .”
“I was worried Something Big and Nasty might take an interest in me, and try to follow me home,” I said. “But it looks more like Something Really Powerful has taken a liking to me and is transporting me to its home. Either to adopt me or to put me in a petting zoo.”
“You have an appalling imagination, Eddie,” said Kate.
“Comes from working in the field so long,” I said. “Where the worst possible scenario comes as standard.”
“As long as you stay inside the Bentley, you should be safe enough,” said Kate. “The operating manual is very firm on that. The car creates and maintains its own reality to protect and preserve the driver.”
“I know that!”
“No, Eddie, please listen! This means something! The Bentley imposes its own scientific laws of reality on its immediate surroundings. A bubble of normal Space and Time, wherever you are. The car contains traditional cause and effect, and linear Time, no matter what’s going on around it. So whatever happens, Eddie, don’t leave the car.”
“Got it,” I said.
And then I was rocked savagely back and forth in my seat, the belts cutting into me, as the Bentley’s speed suddenly dropped away. As though we were crashing through a series of invisible barriers. I clung on grimly to the steering wheel with both hands, sudden lurches slamming the breath out of my body, until quite suddenly the world returned. Through the windshield, I could see perfectly normal Earth-style conditions ahead of me. The steering wheel was suddenly responsive under my hands again, and I hit the brake, slowing us down some more.
I was driving under a dark sky full of unfamiliar constellations and a really big full moon. I turned on the Bentley’s headlights, and a blast of pure white light illuminated the scenery ahead. I was driving across endless open moorland, in the middle of nowhere. It all seemed very normal, ordinary, sane. Just another place. Had I really come so far just for this? The ground was bumpy and uneven, rocking the Bentley from side to side, but it seemed firm enough. I slowed down even more, so I could get a good look at my new surroundings. But there was only the moor, and the night, for as far as I could see in any direction.
“Hello? Kate?” I said. “Can you still hear me?”
“Yes, Eddie, I’m right here. But Operations can’t track you any longer, and Ethel says she can only See you very dimly, from a distance.”
“Am I out of the subtle realms now? I mean, back in the spatial dimensions at least? Because it all looks . . . solid enough.”
“I’m afraid not, Eddie. Which means you can’t trust anything you see.”
“Can you find me a way home?”
“Ethel says . . . not. You’re going to have to track down whoever brought you to wherever you are and persuade them to send you home again.”
“So I’m on my own, then,” I said. “No chance of backup, no one to turn to. Situation entirely normal, for a field agent.”
I drove on, across the moor. There was a lot of light in the night, from the stars and the full moon, while a strange glow suffused the drifting mists, but even so I couldn’t see a horizon anywhere. The moor just seemed to go on forever. It did all seem very real, and comfortingly solid, after everything I’d passed through on the way here. And it certainly didn’t look anything like the chaotic realms I’d been warned about. My computers were back, so I tried the Bentley’s short-range sensors, but they just basically threw up their electronic hands and indicated that the whole