Live and Let Drood

family. I couldn’t risk losing them twice. Molly turned her head abruptly to look at me.
    “Eddie, I have to wonder…What happened to the other Eddie? Their Eddie? I don’t think he was there when the Hall was attacked.”
    “Seems like he was declared rogue,” I said. “Much like me. Only I met you and came back. He never did. He might not even know this has happened yet.”
    “How terrible,” said Molly. “An Eddie Drood out there in the world, all on his own. An Eddie who never met me.”
    “Yes,” I said. “How terrible.”
    We shared a smile and kept on walking. There was still something we needed to do, but we weren’t ready to do it just yet.
    “Or,” I said, “he could be where we are right now; standing in thegrounds of his world, wondering what the hell happened to his Hall. There could be nothing but a bloody big hole in the ground where his Hall used to be.”
    “Or,” said Molly, “there might be another Hall. A third Hall, rotated into place to replace his…”
    “Please,” I said. “Let’s not complicate this more than we have to. Instead let’s talk about who could be responsible for all this. Our enemy. It isn’t the Immortals here; I was there when we wiped them out. The Spawn of Frankenstein occupy their castle now, and the few survivors are on the run, keeping their heads well down and hoping not to be noticed. No way any of them could be responsible for . . . this. But who is powerful enough to seize control of Alpha Red Alpha from a distance and use it against us? And strong enough that once it started happening, my family couldn’t wrestle control away from him and stop it from happening?”
    “I have another question,” said Molly, determined to be difficult, as always. “Once your family realised what had happened, that they’d been rotated out of our world and dumped somewhere else, why didn’t the Armourer just fire up Alpha Red Alpha again and bring everyone home?”
    “I’ve been wondering that,” I said. “It could be that controlling the machine from a distance was enough to damage it. Or at the very least, scramble its coordinates. The Armourer would have more sense than to just activate the machine at random, over and over again, hoping to get home. Remember the alien Earth the first experimenters ended up in? Uncle Jack was very open about the fact that he had only limited control over Alpha Red Alpha in the first place. And on top of that, who knows what kind of Earth they were rotated into? Could be somewhere even worse than a jungle full of nasty killer plants. My family could be fighting for their lives right now, right here, somewhere else…even as we speak.”
    “Easy, Eddie,” Molly said immediately. “Take it easy. We can’t worry about every possibility. It’s just as likely they arrived in some paradise world and they aren’t in any hurry to come home. For all we know, theycould all be sprawling on a nice beach somewhere, working on their tans and sipping cold drinks. We can’t know anything for sure, so let’s concentrate on what we can do. We are your family’s only hope, Eddie. We owe it to them to think it through and not just rush into things.”
    “The wild witch of the woods, her own bad self, Molly Metcalf, preaching patience and self-restraint,” I said, smiling. “Maybe I am in some other world, after all. You’re right, as always. I’m not going to give up hope, not after just getting it back again. They’re out there somewhere and I will find them and bring them home. But we have to start with: Who could have done this to them?”
    “Run through the usual unusual suspects,” said Molly. “Have there been attacks on the Hall before? And, no, I don’t mean the bloody Chinese nuke back in the sixties that your family won’t stop talking about, which leads me to suspect they got a damned sight closer than your family is willing to admit.”
    “Breathe, Molly. Breathe. There were a whole series of attacks on the Hall just before I met you. This awful cancer creature broke into the Sanctity and attacked the Heart. Killed several Droods before we drove it off. We never did find out who sent it, or why; or who was behind the other, earlier attacks. I’d pretty much decided it was down to the traitor in the family, the original traitor who brought in the Loathly Ones, back in World War II. And who’s been working against us in secret ever since.”
    “If there is a traitor inside the Hall, he probably