Graham Masterton - The Doorkeepers

“Fair enough. So long as you make it worth my while.”

Josh took off his gold-plated Polo wristwatch and handed it over. “How about this, for a down payment?”

Simon held it to his ear. “It ain’t going to croak on me, is it? Some of them do, and you can’t wind them up.”

“The batteries probably ran out. I’ll bring you some spares.”

Simon stood up and climbed through the junk like a mountain goat. He noisily dragged the top drawer out of an antique bureau, and carried it over to the table in the center of the room. “You must tell me how this works,” he said, and produced a Nokia mobile phone. “I know it’s a telephone, of sorts, but I can’t get a squeak out of it.”

Josh shook his head. “It won’t work here. It needs a communications satellite, and I don’t suppose you have communications satellites, do you?”

Simon looked baffled. Josh pointed to the ceiling and said, “In orbit? In space? You’ve never sent up rockets or anything like that? You’ve never sent men to the moon?”

Nancy was sifting through the contents of the drawer. “Look at this stuff, Josh. How many missing people do you think this represents?”

The drawer was crammed with credit cards, driving licenses, checkbooks, passports, letters, pens, diaries, theater tickets, restaurant receipts, combs, buttons and photographs of children. Josh picked up an ID card from the University of Michigan. A podgy, bespectacled face stared up at him. David L. Burger, Professor of Applied Physics. How had he wandered into this parallel London, and where was he now?

Josh held the passport up so that Simon could see it. “When did this guy come through?”

Simon shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“Roughly when?”

“I don’t know, six months ago, something like that.”

“He came through the Star Yard door?”

Simon looked shifty, and shrugged again.

“Come on, Simon. You must know which door he came through. Jesus, you were waiting there to jump on him!”

“We wasn’t. We bumped into him round the back of Oxford Street, that’s all. We didn’t even know he was a Purgatorial, until we rooked him.”

“So you don’t know how he got here, or how long he’d been here, or which door he used?”

“No, guvnor.”

Josh carefully laid the ID card back in the drawer, as if he were laying Professor Burger to rest. “So what happened to him afterwards? After you ‘rooked’ him?”

“How should I know? He hit his head on the curb and there was lots of ketchup. I never heard no more about him. The Hoodies got him, more than likely.”

“How come they hadn’t got him before?”

“I can’t guess, guvnor.”

In the kitchen, San was busy chopping and frying, and the flat was filled with the aromatic smell of chicken and garlic and lime leaves.

Nancy picked up Professor Burger’s passport, too. “What are you getting at, Josh?”

“How does a professor in applied physics from the University of Michigan find out how to pass through to a parallel world in London, England? And when he does find out, why does he do it? And when did he do it?”

“What does ‘when’ matter?”

“If he’s been here only a matter of minutes, or hours, then he’s simply been lucky, and the Hooded Men haven’t caught up with him yet. But what if he’s been here longer? Like days, or weeks, or even longer than that? Supposing he’s been here ten months, like Julia? How come the Hooded Men haven’t picked him up? How come they didn’t pick her up?”

“I still don’t understand what you’re driving at.”

“Suppose he’s been here for months, how does he survive? What does he live on? If he’s openly walking around Oxford Street, presumably he’s not too worried about being caught. He must be here by arrangement, like Julia. He must have a job of some kind. My guess is that some people stray here by accident, or because they find out about the Mother Goose rhyme, the way we did. But other people come here by invitation, like Julia. And maybe like Professor Burger, too. For all we know, there could be hundreds of people from the ‘real’ London living here. People who just wanted to escape, the same way Julia did. People looking for another chance.”

San cleared a space on the coffee table and set out four plates of Burmesc fried chicken and rice, with chunks of canned pineapple and dandelion-leaf salad with a chili dressing. They all sat cross-legged on the floor and ate with an assortment of spoons. Josh’s had a horn handle and a silver Scottish crest on it. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he actually started to eat.

Nancy said, “This parallel world could explain so much. It could explain where people disappear to. You know, like those schoolgirls in Picnic at Hanging Rock.”

“That was in Australia.”

“Sure … but who’s to say that there aren’t hundreds of doors, all over the world? I’ll bet you if you look into every single mythology there’s some kind of reference to parallel worlds, and how to get through to them. There are so many references to ‘spirit gates’ and ‘ways through’ in Modoc legend; and the Irish have their land of the fairies, don’t they?”

Josh helped himself to more rice. “I don’t know what to think. Right now I feel like I’m right on the edge of going crazy. If I wasn’t sitting here, eating this chicken, I wouldn’t believe it, any of it.”

Nancy said, “You’ve cooked a great meal, San.”

“Thank you,” said San, bowing his head politely. “My mother taught me. She believed that every man who calls himself a man should learn to cook.”

“My compliments to your mother. Is she still out in Burma?”

San nodded. “My family, too. My sisters, my cousins. But I don’t hear from them any more.”

“Is there some kind of trouble in Burma?” Josh asked him. “Where we come from, Burma isn’t called Burma any more. It’s called Myanmar, and it’s run by a bunch of generals.”

“Burma is still Burma, but Burma is British. The Puritans tried to convert the Buddhists to Christianity, and there was bad fighting. Much ketchup. Many Burmese martyrs. That was why I came here, to London. I thought that I could talk to the Puritans. I thought that I could persuade them to change their minds, and let us worship Buddha in our own way.”

“And?”

“And he nearly got skinned alive for being an impertinent wog and he ended up with me,” Simon explained.

“So what now?” said Josh.

“Nothing in particular,” said Simon. “If he goes back to Burma, he’ll be hung up by his heels and his tongue cut out. If he stays here, he’ll have to keep away from the Hoodies and go on scavenging for a living with yours truly. Not a pretty choice. But I think he’d rather scavenge than swing, wouldn’t you, San?”

San smiled, and nodded. He had such grace that Josh found it hard to believe that anybody would want to persecute him.

“I’ll tell you something,” said Simon. “He’s got the lightest fingers that I’ve ever seen. He could be halfway to Holland Park with your best braces before your trousers fell down.”

“You must miss your family so badly,” said Nancy.

“Love always brings pain,” San told her, with candle flames shining in his dark brown eyes. “If a thing doesn’t hurt, then what is its value?”

By the time they had finished their meal, it was growing dark outside, and the small square of sky that Josh could see from the kitchen window was the color of royal blue ink. San washed the plates and Nancy dried them, while Josh and Simon talked about tomorrow. Josh was worried that once they had gone back through the door to find themselves some suitable clothes, they wouldn’t be able to find their way back again.