Live and Let Drood

hands together. “How are we going to do this, Eddie?”
    “Actually,” I said, “I’m still working on that. As a wise man once said, ‘I’m making this up as I go along.…’ We start with the Merlin Glass.”
    I took out the Glass, and the Regent and Patrick and Diana all crowded in for a good look. I turned the silver-backed hand mirror back and forth, and it gleamed innocently in the sunlight.
    “I sort of thought it would be bigger,” the Regent said finally.
    “It will be,” I said.
    I tossed the hand mirror into the air before me, and it immediately shook itself out to the size of a door, hovering just above the grass. The Regent and his agents made pleased and impressed noises, but I had a suspicion they were just being polite. Where the mirror reflection should have been, the Glass was now showing a blank, colourless emptiness that actually hurt the eye if you looked at it too long.
    “I thought…it was supposed to show a silvery tunnel or passage,” said the Armourer Patrick. “That’s the usual sign of an interdimensional interface. Not that there is a tunnel, of course, silver or otherwise; it’s just an image your brain supplies because the mind is too limited to cope with what’s actually there.”
    “It’s not showing anything at the moment because it’s between settings,” I said, trying hard to sound like I knew what I was talking about. “I haven’t supplied the Glass with the correct arrival coordinates yet. And for that I need this: Crow Lee’s remote control.”
    “Space…and time,” Molly said suddenly. “Hold on, go back, go previous. I’ve just had an idea.”
    “Oh, that’s always dangerous,” I said.
    “Hush, you. Could you set the Glass to send us back into the past? Then we could arrive in the other world, immediately after the Hall and your family arrive there!”
    “I have thought about that,” I said. “But this is going to be a difficult enough jump as it is. I have no idea how this remote control works or even exactly what information it holds. So I really don’t want to add any unnecessary complications. Except for this.”
    I showed them the Drood compass I’d acquired from the tomb in Egypt.
    “A compass?” the Regent said, politely.
    “Preprogrammed to point to Droods, wherever they might be,” I said. “This will point the way, and the remote will supply the exact arrival coordinates. Between the two of them, they should get us there.”
    “Are you sure about that?” said the Regent.
    I smiled as convincingly as I could. “The remote knows where the Hall is, so we follow the remote. And the compass. And if you know any good prayers or deities, now would be a good time to lean heavily on them.”
    I hefted the control in my hand. Just a simple box with a whole bunch of coloured buttons, none of which I felt like messing with. I pitched the compass through the Merlin Glass, which swallowed it up immediately, and then the remote. The grey nothingness pulsed quickly in a way that made me feel oddly seasick for a moment, and then it became the standard silver tunnel. I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding and relaxed just a little. If that hadn’t worked…
    At least now we had a destination. The Regent turned to Patrick and Diana and nodded briskly, and they both grinned widely. Suddenly they were both holding really big guns that had appeared out of nowhere. High-energy weapons clearly derived from alien tech.
    “Where did you get weapons like those?” I said sharply to the Regent.
    “Oh, you know how it is. Some of my chaps just picked them up,” the Regent said vaguely. “It’s amazing what some people leaving lying around. Behind locked doors in secret laboratories. They clearly didn’t appreciate them.…And whilst the Shadows, and now the Uncanny, are quite definitely mostly information-gathering organisations, sometimes, you just have to be ready to lay down the law.”
    “Ready to rock and roll!” Patrick said cheerfully.
    “Ready to kick bottom!” said Diana. She smiled suddenly at me. “You’re not the only one with access to pocket dimensions and really useful toys.”
    “Told you,” the Regent said to Molly and me. “Let us go now, and let the bad guys beware.”
    Patrick smiled fondly at Diana. “Just like old times, isn’t it, dear?”
    “Ah, the good old days,” said Diana. “Was there always an evil mastermind to overcome in some secret lair, a monster to destroy and a conspiracy