whole bunch of them came hurrying forward from all sides at once. They crowded round the Bentley, making excited noises and muttering barbed comments they only thought I couldn’t hear. They soon had the car up on the hydraulic ramp, so Sandra could check the underside for damage. I stood back and let them get on with it. I have all the mechanical aptitude of King Kong in boxing gloves. I can break things just by looking at them wrong.
Sandra darted back and forth underneath the Bentley, shining a hand torch into all kinds of nooks and crannies I hadn’t even known were there. The first thing she found was a long-stemmed rose, wrapped round and round the rear axle. She put on a pair of really heavy leather gloves, took a firm hold on the thorny stem, and pulled the thing free with a series of harsh, vicious jerks. I leaned in close for a better look, curious to see what I’d picked up. You’re bound to acquire the odd hitchhiker when you take short cuts through the side dimensions. Sandra made a pleased, satisfied sound as she pulled the rose free, and then said something really unpleasant as the thorn-covered stem lashed out at her. It whipped tightly round her arm and did its best to force jagged thorns through her reinforced sleeve. The blood-red rose hissed loudly at Sandra, its thick, pulpy petals curling back to show vicious teeth. Sandra glared right back at it, entirely unimpressed. She took a firm hold on the stem with her other hand, unwound the thing one curl at a time, and then broke its neck just below the flower. The long stem stopped thrashing immediately, and the rose screamed shrilly. Sandra threw the flower on the floor and stamped on it, hard. The rose went quiet, and Sandra nodded stiffly.
“I’ve seen worse,” she said. “Let’s see what else you picked up along the way, Eddie.”
“It’s not like I offered it a lift,” I said.
She ignored me. Further inspection turned up an extra exhaust pipe that had no business being where it was. Sandra looked at it thoughtfully, and gestured for two of her people to pry the thing loose with long-handled screwdrivers. It took them a while, because it really didn’t want to budge; but when the pipe finally came away it immediately changed shape, becoming a long metallic snake that shot straight for the throat of the nearest mechanic. Sandra stabbed it neatly through the head with her screwdriver, piercing it in mid-air, and then threw it down and pinned it to the hard stone floor. The metallic snake refused to die, whipping back and forth, but it couldn’t escape . . . as long as the cold iron of the screwdriver held it firmly in place.
“Another hitchhiker,” said Sandra. She wasn’t even breathing hard. “Just pretending to be a length of pipe, hoping not to be noticed, until it got a chance to drop quietly off and make a run for it. Hugh! Denny! Get the blueprints for the Bentley! We’re going to have to go over this car inch by inch to make sure everything is what and where it’s supposed to be.”
While they were waiting for the blueprints to turn up, Sandra had her people spray the metallic snake with freezing nitrogen. The snake fought the foam’s effects till the last moment, turning into half a dozen increasingly impossible things, until the terrible cold finally knocked all the fight out of it. Sandra then pulled her screwdriver free, and her people moved quickly in to deposit the snake in a reinforced container with a lead-lined interior, before taking it away for further study. Sandra then turned back to me, and glared at me accusingly.
“Where the hell have you been, Eddie?”
“The subtle realms,” I said.
“Then you’ve only yourself to blame. Some places should be declared permanently off-limits to all sane and rational beings. Hello, what have we here?”
Everyone else surrounding the Bentley took several steps back, upon hearing those words. Sandra crouched down, looking closely at the mud dripping off the underside of the car. Not to be outdone, I crouched down beside her. Bits of mud on the floor were writhing and seething, humping slowly and deliberately away from the car.
“Interesting . . . ,” said Sandra. “Psychegeography; living materials, from a world where every part of it is alive and conscious . . . Usually with bad intent. You do get around, don’t you, Eddie?