Neverwhere

The morning-star plunged toward Mr. Croup's head: Varney flung himself down, away from the knife-blade at his eye. Mr. Croup did not look up. He did not turn. He simply moved his head, obscenely fast, and the morning-star crashed past him, into the floor, where it threw up chips of brick and concrete. Mr. Vandemar picked Varney up with one hand. "Hurt him?" he asked his partner.

Mr. Croup shook his head: not yet. To Varney, he said, "Not bad. So, 'best bravo and guard,' we want you to get yourself to the market tonight. We want you to do whatever you have to, to become that certain young lady's personal bodyguard. Then, when you get the job, one thing you don't forget. You may guard her from the rest of the world, but when we want her, we take her. Got it?"

Varney ran his tongue over the wreck of his teeth. "Are you bribing me?" he asked.

Mr. Vandemar had picked up the morning-star. He was pulling the chain apart, with his free hand, link by link, and dropping the bits of twisted metal onto the floor. Chink. "No," said Mr. Vandemar. Chink. "We're intimidating you." Chink. "And if you don't do what Mister Croup says, we're . . . " chink " . . . hurting you . . . " chink " . . . very badly, before we're . . . " chink " . . . killing you."

"Ah," said Varney. "Then I'm working for you, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are," said Mr. Croup. "I'm afraid we don't have any redeeming features."

"That doesn't bother me," said Varney.

"Good," said Mr. Croup. "Welcome aboard."

It was a large but elegant mechanism, built of polished walnut and oak, of brass and glass, copper and mirrors and carved and inlaid ivory, of quartz prisms and brass gears and springs and cogs. The whole thing was rather larger than a wide-screen television, although the actual screen itself was no more than six inches across. A magnifying lens placed across it increased the size of the picture. There was a large brass horn coming out of the side—the kind you could find on an antique gramophone. The whole mechanism looked rather like a combined television and video player might look, if it had been invented and built three hundred years ago by Sir Isaac Newton. Which was, more or less, exactly what it was.

"Watch," said Door. She placed the wooden ball onto a platform. Lights shone through the machine and into the ball. It began to spin around and around,

A patrician face appeared on the small screen, vividly colored. Slightly out of time, a voice came from the horn, crackling in mid-speech. " . . . that two cities should be so near," said the voice, "and yet in all things so far; the possessors above us, and the dispossessed, we who live below and between, who live in the cracks."

Door stared at the screen, her face unreadable.

" . . . still," said her father, "I am of the opinion that what cripples us, who inhabit the Underside, is our petty factionalism. The system of baronies and fiefdoms is both divisive and foolish." The Lord Portico was wearing a threadbare old smoking jacket and a skullcap. His voice seemed to be coming to them across the centuries, not days or weeks. He coughed. "I am not alone in this belief. There are those who wish to see things the way they are. There are others who want the situation to worsen. There are those . . . "

"Can you speed it up?" asked the marquis. "Find the last entry?"

Door nodded. She touched an ivory lever at the side: the image ghosted, fragmented, re-formed.

Now Portico wore a long coat. His skullcap was gone. There was a scarlet gash down one side of his head. He was no longer sitting at his desk. He was talking urgently, quietly. "I do not know who will see this, who will find this. But whoever you are, please take this to my daughter, the Lady Door, if she lives . . . " A static burst wiped across the picture and the sound. Then, "Door? Girl, this is bad. I don't know how long I've got before they find this room. I think my poor Portia and your brother and sister are dead." The sound and picture quality began to degrade.

The marquis glanced at Door. Her face was wet: tears were brimming from her eyes, glistening down her cheeks. She seemed unaware that she was crying, made no attempt to wipe away the tears. She just stared at her father's image, listened to his words. Crackle. Wipe. Crackle. "Listen to me, girl," said her dead father. "Go to Islington . . . you can trust Islington . . . You must believe in Islington . . . " He ghosted. Blood dripped from his forehead into his eyes. He he wiped it off. "Door? Avenge us. Avenge your family."

A loud bang came from the gramophone horn. Portico turned his head to look offscreen, puzzled and nervous. "What?" he said, and he stepped out of frame. For a moment, the picture remained unchanged: the desk, the blank white wall behind it. Then an arc of vivid blood splashed across the wall. Door flicked a lever on the side, blanking the screen, and turned away.

"Here." The marquis passed her a handkerchief.

"Thanks." She wiped her face, blew her nose vigorously. Then she stared into space. Eventually, she said, "Islington."

"I've never had any dealings with Islington," said the marquis.

"I thought it was just a legend," she said.

"Not at all." He reached across the desk, picked up the gold pocket-watch, thumbed it open. "Nice workmanship," he observed.

She nodded. "It was my father's."

He closed the cover with a click. "Time to go to market. It starts soon. Mister Time is not our friend."

She blew her nose once more, put her hands deep into the pockets of her leather jacket. Then she turned to him, elfin face frowning, odd-colored eyes bright. "Do you honestly think we can find a bodyguard who will be able to deal with Croup and Vandemar?"

The marquis flashed his white teeth at her. "There's been no one since Hunter who'd even have a chance. No, I'll settle for someone who could give you the time you might need to get away." He fastened the fob of the watch chain to his waistcoat, slid the watch into his vest pocket.

"What are you doing?" asked Door. "That's my father's watch."

"He's not using it anymore, is he?" He adjusted the golden chain. "There. That looks rather elegant." He watched the emotions flicker across her face: quiet anger and, finally, resignation.

"We'd better go," was all she said.

"The Bridge isn't very far now," said Anaesthesia. Richard hoped that was true. They were now on their third candle. The walls flickered and oozed, the passageway seemed to stretch on forever. He was astonished that they were still under London: he was half-convinced that they had walked most of the way to Wales.

"I'm really scared," she continued. "I've never crossed the bridge before."

"I thought you said you'd been to this market already," he asked, mystified.

"It's the Floating Market, silly. I told you already. It moves. Different places. Last one I went to was held in that big clock tower. Big . . . someone. And the next was—"

"Big Ben?" he suggested.

"Maybe. We were inside where all the big wheels went around, and that was where I got this—" She held up her necklace. The candlelight glimmered yellow off the shiny quartz. She smiled, like a child. "Do you like it?" she asked.

"It's great. Was it expensive?"

"I swapped some stuff for it. That's how things work down here. We swap stuff." And then they turned a corner, and saw the bridge. It could have been one of the bridges over the Thames, five hundred years ago, thought Richard; a huge stone bridge spa