He stared at me for a moment, then smiled.

‘Bring them all back,’ he said, ‘bring them home.’

‘Okay—but how?’

‘I think you already know. Good luck, Charlie.’

Whump

Don Hector was knocked violently from the pile of rocks and to the ground, where he lay quite still. I turned around to find Aurora holding a Thumper. She didn’t look very happy. No, wait, scrub that: she looked seriously pissed off.

‘Think I’ve never been in the Dreamspace before? Think you can outwit me? I have over fourteen hundred hours’ dreamtime, Wonky, and I’ve prised bigger secrets from stronger people’s heads than yours.’

I wasn’t worried. I’d escaped from her once, I could escape from her again.

‘You killed Don Hector out in the real world, didn’t you?’

‘He’d lost sight of the good work we were doing,’ said Aurora with a half-smile, ‘and we felt he had swung from asset to liability. Asset good, liability bad,’ she added, in case I’d missed the main thrust of her argument.

‘Nightwalker retrieval was only the beginning,’ I said. ‘He’d perfected a risk-free Morphenox that could be synthesised cheaply and easily. He was going to go public. No secrets, Morphenox a universal right. Sub-beta, the Ottoman, the emerging Southern Alliance – everyone. A global hibernating village, equal in sleep, equal in dignity.’

She stared at me for a few seconds before speaking.

‘So what? With no one to tell, it’s the same as you never finding out. Now, where’s the cylinder?’

I concentrated hard and shifted again – this time to the abandoned Morpheleum, all mould and decay, stone arches, dirt and windblown leaves. Webster was in his orderly’s outfit, and Don Hector, back again, looked at me oddly, as though I shouldn’t be there. In truth, I wasn’t. I was actually on my own; all this was my invention. I was dreaming the dream, dancing my own steps. First person Active Control but no longer tied to a target dream. Freestyle.

‘Hullo, Wonky,’ said Webster cheerfully, ‘I hear you’ve been helping out Birgitta.’

‘I could have done a better job.’

‘You and me both.’

He suddenly looked around, saw Don Hector, and a look of panic crossed his face.

‘No, no, no,’ said Webster. ‘This is just what Aurora wants. Connecting Don Hector to me. Move somewhere else or wake up. Go, now, go!’

But I was too late. Aurora was standing in the shaft of light that emerged through the roof above the altar, and looked oddly magisterial.

‘So it was Webster after all,’ said Aurora, looking at them both, then me. I tried to shift again, but Aurora had grabbed me by the arm and twisted it around so she had my wrist in a swan-neck. It was a trick to keep someone anchored, I guessed – flood their mind with pain so they couldn’t concentrate.