Dream London Read Online Free PDF

was.
    “No, I don’t think so. Thank you for your offer, but I don’t think I’m cut out to be a hero. I’ll bid you good night.”
    “Good night,” said Alan. “I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed.”
    I turned and walked from the room. Mother Clap held the door open for me as I left.
     
     
    S O I RETURNED to the street, still unaware of the time, though now, at least, feeling a little fuller.
    ... and I stood there, thinking about what Alan had told me, wondering if I’d been too hasty. I was tempted to head back up the stairs to Mother Clap’s to find out more. Was I missing the boat? Alan had said I had to act before sunrise, but it’s a basic rule of doing business: never let other people impose deadlines on you. Besides, I thought about the sort of people in the Cartel; the sort of people who claimed to be acting for the common good, but all the time were just feathering their own nests. People just like me. They couldn’t be trusted. I snorted suddenly. Alan had said I could be the Hero of Dream London. Did they really think I cared about that sort of thing?
    I began to walk. Not back to my room, but out, instead, out into Dream London. The stars were so heavy that the purple sky bulged in the middle, sagging down to pierce itself on the city spires. I walked from the seedy tiredness of Belltower End into the more prosperous shadows of Mandolin Vale. The buildings here were shiny with black gloss tiles, the windows reflecting dark shadows of other places.
    Captain Jim Wedderburn is afraid of nothing. But James Wedderburn heard a sound that sent a chill through his body. Drifting through the night like an icy wind, weaving its way in and out of the lamp posts, he heard the sound of accordions.
    Accordions: the sound of evil.
    Accordions are like chameleons. They’re just a little bit too unusual even for this world; the mechanism that makes them work is not quite discernible. Have you ever seen the interior of an accordion? It’s not as if they contain microchips or anything that would explain the noise that they make. They wheeze out their sounds without any seeming regard for the laws of science. And now, when we inhabit a world where microchips are just so much pretty patterns in sand, accordions seem more sinister than ever. Their shiny cases, like the shells of insects. The way they seem to breathe in and out whilst their keys shine like white teeth in the night.
    I should have turned and walked away, but something about their sound drew me in. I turned the corner and I saw them: three accordion players standing under the lamps in the middle of a little square, their music echoing with the tinny reverb of the lost hours. A year ago there had been cars parked all around the railed gardens in the middle of the square, but now the cars had slipped away to the periphery of Dream London, and the houses had crept inwards, huddling the square down to size, looming over the dark locked garden at its heart, blocking off the starlight that sought to illuminate it.
    The people who lived in the surrounding houses should have been cursing the musicians who must surely be keeping them awake. Should have, but they wouldn’t have been. Musicians are another one of the groups who have done well from the changes. They don’t pay taxes. They have the right, if not the duty, to perform where they will. But most of all, they get respect. Even the most tone-deaf sixteen-year-old who manages to coax three chords from a guitar whilst singing songs of whingeing self-justification is accorded a respect, an adulation even, that was once reserved for those who might have discovered penicillin or clothed the poor.
    Still the music drew me on. The upper storeys of the houses around the square seemed to lean forward, and I felt as if I had stepped into a bowl of music. That unnatural accordion vibrato swirled in currents around me, streams of melody tangling my head. The three accordionists looked into the distance as I