Dream Paris (33 page)

“You’ll have problems getting into the Public Records Office.”

“We went there yesterday, no trouble.”

“You didn’t have the
Banca di Primavera
looking for you yesterday,” said M Duruflé. “They’re very… tenacious when trying to recover a debt.”

“The Germans will be following her too,” said Paul.

“The Germans aren’t following me.”

“Not on the ground, no. They can track everything from their Zeppelins. They’ll have seen your every move since you came to this city.”

I looked at Francis, who nodded.

“Why? Why would they be interested in me?” My brief flush of triumph at knowing my mother’s location had quickly passed.

“They’re not interested in
you
, Miss Anna,” said Mr Monagan, gently. “They’re interested in what you represent. Dream Paris and Dream Prussia have been at war with each other for hundreds of years. And with Dream London, too, for that matter.”

“No! Dream London only appeared last year!”

“Your London touched the Dream World last year.” said M Duruflé. “It has touched many times in the past…”

Francis spoke up.

“They all speak English here, Anna. Think about it.”

I hadn’t spotted that. And I should have. The Dream World had been around for a lot longer than I’d suspected. No, that wasn’t true. I’d known that the Dream World had touched ours many times in the past. I’d known that back in Dream London. I’d known about the strange cities lost in the Indian rainforest…

And I remembered Mr Twelvetrees and Therese Delacroix and I realised that their interest in Dream Paris ran far deeper than simply rescuing a few hostages.

What was I doing?

“If you’re going back to the Public Records Office, you’ll have to wear a disguise,” said Paul.

“What about Francis?” asked M Duruflé.

We looked at Francis, wire trailing behind him.

“Is there no way you can take off that backpack?” I said.

He gave a tired smile. He looked so grey.

“Do you think I’d be wearing it if I could?”

I looked at M Duruflé “Can’t you help?”

“Me?” he said, in some surprise. “Fight a Dream Spider? I’m a logician, an accountant,
Une Immortel de l’Académie Française
. I’m not a fool.”

But I was, because I’d never suspected for an instant. But now that M Durufle had said the words it was obvious. Just for a moment, I saw a black creature on Francis’s back, eight pink eyes looking at me, four pairs of legs wrapped around his shoulders and waist.

And then the moment had gone, and I was looking at a backpack again. Black webbing, black stitching, zips and pockets. That wire…

“Why can’t I see it all of the time?” I said, slowly.

“The fly never sees the spider, nor the web,” said M Duruflé.

“What’s a Dream Spider?” asked Francis, his voice flat and expressionless.

“They stretch the fabric of the Dream World to make their webs. They can make a ten-centimetre strand of silk span an entire country. They can swallow armies whole, and then they can make you forget they were ever there.”

“Who can make you forget they were ever there?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” said M Duruflé

“We were talking about how we were going to disguise Francis,” I said. “He can’t remove his backpack.”

“In that case, perhaps you should go on your own?” suggested Paul.

“Oh, no,” said Francis. “I stay with Anna. I have to protect her.”

“I don’t need protecting.”

No one spoke.

“So,” said Mme Joubert, eventually. “A disguise for both Anna and Francis. I’m sure you will think of something, Paul.”

“I have an idea,” he said, and he rose and left the room.

Dominique re-entered the room with a fresh tray. Pretty little Dominique, there to bring more coffee when called. More coffee and bread and anything else that the men desired.

M Duruflé drank a little coffee, patted his neat moustache with a napkin.

“So, Paul will find a way to take you to the Public Records Office. And once you have met your mother, Anna. What then?”

“Like I said, I’ll return home. With or without her.”

“And what about us? Do you think all will be as it was before? The pathway between the worlds will be open. Neither London nor Dream Paris can ignore that. Nor Dream Friedrichshafen, nor Dream Troy, nor Dream Moscow.”

“I didn’t ask for this to happen! I’ve done my bit already! I marched into the parks! I am not responsible for everyone!”

“She’s right,” said Francis. “What’s the problem, M Duruflé? What do you expect her to do?”

“I expect her to think. She’s allowing things to happen to her, rather than controlling events.”

“Why should you care?”

“I don’t. But you should. She’s not helping you.”

“She doesn’t like me.”

I was shocked to hear Francis say that. I mean, it was sort of true, but to just come out and say it.

“I don’t…” I began.

“Anna, it doesn’t matter. I’m here to protect you. You don’t have to like me.”

“Even so,” continued M Duruflé. “She’s not helping you. She allowed you to become trapped by that backpack.”

“That’s not fair! I didn’t know it would do that!”

“That’s because you’re not thinking. You were in Dream London. Now you’re here. You say that you study physics, you say you’re logical.”

“I am!”

“Really? Haven’t you taken the time to think about the logic behind this world?”

“What? And go mad?”

“Only if you allow yourself to. Start thinking. How big is pi?”

I knew pi to twenty places.

“Three point one four one five nine two seven…”

“But there are no decimals in Dream Paris. There are only whole numbers. So how big is pi?”

There are only whole numbers. I knew that from Dream London. All the numbers were wrong in the Dream World. I knew that. But I didn’t want to think about it. No one wanted to think about it.

“Come on, Anna. What’s pi?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do. Pi is (a feeling of fulfilment). It’s an emotion.”

I didn’t want to remember this! There were no fractions in the Dream World, all the numbers got squashed in your brain into too small a space and the fractions popped out as something else. They became colours, or emotions, or…
no!

“Numbers are emotions in the Dream World, Anna. You must remember that from Dream London. Can’t you count?”

I counted in my head, all the extra numbers that filled this world: one, red, two, blue, (a feeling of setting out on a journey), three, (a feeling of fulfilment)…

M Duruflé was speaking. I had to focus on what he was saying, I was lost in the numbers…

“Here there are whole numbers. Nothing but whole numbers. Do you know that the circumference of a circle is equal to (a feeling of fulfilment) times the diameter.”

“How many is that?”

“You know how many, and it’s a whole number. The circumference of a circle is always a whole number. So is the area. Don’t you see that that changes the shape of things? Circles are always a little bigger, or a little smaller than in your world. Geometry is always different here.
Always
different.
Nothing
here is the same as your world.”

I was reeling. I was trying not to think about the numbers, I was trying not think of the way that Francis’s pack seemed to be looking at me. I forced myself to speak.

“Does this place seem normal to you, M Duruflé?”

He beamed at my question.

“When you allow yourself to think, you really are a clever young lady, aren’t you?”

“I’m clever, full stop,” I snapped.

“I apologise for my figure of speech. But you’ve seized the essentials of the matter. I grew up here.Surely this place seems normal to me? After all, you live in a world where you expect time to remain a constant. So shouldn’t I think it normal that all circles have a whole number area?”

He rubbed his elegant grey beard.

“And this, of course, is the problem. This is why I became a logician. Because this world does not make sense! It’s internally inconsistent. This is why when, as a child, I heard of the existence of worlds such as your own, I could only deduce that they were the reality, and this world the illusion. Because, as a logician, an internally consistent world makes more sense than one which is not.”

“You deduced this from pure logic?”

“There are no fractions here, no decimals. No transcendental numbers. It’s funny, isn’t it? I can understand the concept even though they don’t exist in this world. That’s what makes me think that your world is real. But I try not to think too hard on this matter. One can get lost in the numbers.”

“Back in Dream London, the mathematicians committed suicide.”

“They will have become lost in infinity. There are no irrational numbers in this world. Everything is countable, and a mind can get lost on the path to infinity. Better to jump from a building than to follow that path…”

I looked closer at him, but I said nothing for the moment. M Duruflé wasn’t telling the full story. M Duruflé worked for the
Révolution
, he worked for the
Banca
. Could he work for other people as well? And then I had it. All this talk of logical deduction was
another
misdirection. M Duruflé’s shirts came from Jermyn Street. He’d told me as much. He’d been to our world. How else could he know about numbers that didn’t exist in the Dream World?

And something else occurred to me.

Someone had stolen an Integer Bomb from the Germans. I didn’t know what an Integer Bomb was, but I now had an idea how it worked. And so did M Duruflé.

I knew that he knew. And he knew that I knew he knew.

W
E FINISHED BREAKFAST.
Francis watched Dominique as she cleared the table, and Mme Joubert suggested we take a little fresh air while Paul worked out our route to the Public Records Office and my mother.

Francis followed me outside to the
Place de la Révolution
. The busy market was thronged with would-be revolutionaries doing their shopping. These were the people who would have been students and intellectuals, had the Sorbonne not been burned down. They wore revolutionary dress that contrived to be more authentic than mere denim trousers, jackets and hats. They held revolutionary conversations in front of the revolutionary bookshop, and I was struck with their sense that this was how a revolution should be run, free of the demands and petty concerns of the ordinary people.

I watched as a young woman proffered money to a man wearing a stack of straw bonnets on his head. The man took one off the top and handed it across with a smile.

I walked to a stall selling cheese and examined the orange and yellow wheels. Francis was there beside me, wire stretched out behind him.

“Why are you here?” I said. “Don’t you want some time to yourself? We’ve been constantly together these past few days.”

I felt on edge. He’d guessed that I didn’t like him. Okay, maybe that wasn’t as true as it had been, but I felt embarrassed by the fact that he knew it. He was going to talk about it, I didn’t want to do that.

“Anna, about that meeting.”

“Never mind.”

“It’s important. Why did you tell them where your mother was?”

“They’re going to help me find her.”

“
Everyone
wants to help you find her! I don’t know what your mother has done, but she’s obviously important, and now you’ve gone and told the revolutionaries where she is.”

“Well, aren’t the revolutionaries the good guys?”

“Not always.”

“Thus speaks the soldier.”

For a moment he looked so angry I thought he was going to hit me. Something about his expression made me want to push him further, to really annoy him. But the moment passed. He shook his head.

“What was M Duruflé talking about? All the numbers. Did you understand that?”

“Yes.”

We continued around the square, looking at the different stalls. We came across Mr Monagan polishing the chrome of his coffee truck. When he saw us, he threw down his yellow cloth and eagerly invited us to try samples of his coffee blends

“This one is especially strong, Miss Anna! Be so careful drinking it!”

They were all insipid. How he was making a living in Dream Paris, I had no idea. I tossed them back, thanked him and moved on. I found myself outside the book shop
Charlotte: Meilleur Librairie
. There was something unusual about the books on display…

“English, yes? I have some books in English inside.”

I guessed this was the eponymous Charlotte.

“Thank you. If you don’t mind, these books all look so… different.” I ran my finger down an ivory spine.

Charlotte smiled.

“They’re all covered in human skin.”

I snatched my finger away.

“Why?”

“Because there are people who like to cover books in human skin, and there are people who like to buy them, and I found a way to make money by bringing the two together.”

“Okay. But what’s revolutionary about that?”

“Nothing. But where you find revolutions you will find opportunities to make money. In any revolution there are always far more business people than revolutionaries.”

She must have sensed my disappointment, she softened a little.

“Well, it might not be true at the start, but it certainly is at the end. Take a look around inside.”

And so I did. I walked around the dim shelves, and saw books covered in the skins of hanged men, a book about virginity covered in a young girl’s skin, books about slavery covered in a patchwork of skins sampled from the workhouse. I saw books about animals covered in the skin of the man who had hunted them, a book of songs covered in the skin of the singer.

And I felt nothing. All those dead people, nothing but containers for paper.

Francis took the book I was holding from my hands.

“Tattoo art,” he read, looking at the tattooed skin of the binding. “I knew this guy. That was Dale Jackson. He fought in Dream London with me. He was listed missing in action.”

“Looks like he found his way to Dream Paris.”

“Looks like a lot of people did,” said Francis.