The Space Between (17 page)

As he walked, Keeble started to sing a Song.
Well, it wasn't a song really, but an attempt to recreate the noise
the door between the worlds had made. There were clicks and
whistles and buzzes, but no matter what he did, he couldn't get it
right. His mind kept pushing the song in another direction, as if
never quite coming to grips with what he was trying to do.

He gave up and continued to walk.

Three carriages later, Keeble was wondering
why he'd bothered. One row of seats looked much like the one
before, and though the people might have been interesting, he could
understand nothing of the conversations.

At the end of the carriage, Keeble
discovered he could go no further. With a grunt of disgust he chose
a seat and sat himself down. The large black dwarf beside him
looked him up and down for a moment.

“
[Heading to Nottingham? Or
further?]” the stranger asked.

Keeble shrugged and spoke in his own
language to demonstrate that conversation was going to be
impossible. The other dwarf shrugged as well and returned to
staring out the window.

It wasn't long before another dwarf tried
talking to him. This one emerged from the locked door. He wore a
grey uniform.

“
[Tickets, please,]” he
said. “[Tickets, please.]” He touched Keeble on the shoulder when
he didn't respond. “[Could I see your ticket please,
sir?]”

"Can't understand a word you're babbling,"
Keeble replied. He put on what he hoped was a pleasant smile.

“
[Can I see your ticket,
please?]” The dwarf in the uniform reached past him and took
something from the black dwarf. It was a little slip of paper. He
held it up for Keeble to see, then handed it back.

"You want to see my little bit of parchment?
What for?" He pointed back the way he'd come. "It's down that way,
about two carriages back. You want it, you can go get it
yourself."

“
[Do you have a ticket? If
you don't, you'll have to buy one or get off at the next
station.]”

"Why do you keep talking at me when it's
obvious I can't understand a word you're saying?" Keeble smiled
again and shrugged.

He watched the stranger pull what appeared
to be coinage from a shoulder bag he carried. “[Do you have any
money?]” he said, twiddling the silver disk between his
fingers.

Keeble thought he knew what the dwarf meant
there. He shook his head.

“
[Then I'm sorry, sir, but
you'll have to disembark at Hucknall Station.]”

Keeble shook his head again. "You really are
an idiot, aren't you?"

“
[Would you please come
with me, sir.]”

The stranger gripped Keeble's arm, but he
shook him off angrily.

“
[Are you going to leave
quietly?]”

Keeble didn't move, and the stranger had a
short conversation with one of the talking boxes. A moment later
another uniformed dwarf came from the other end of the carriage.
This one was larger and younger, and Keeble didn't bother resisting
as he was led from the train when it next stopped.

Meledrin wasn't going to be happy. Keeble
smiled as another dwarf in uniform escorted him from the station
and left him standing beside the road.

“
[Just think yourself lucky
you haven't been fined.]”

Keeble ignored him, looking one way and then
the other. "Maybe I should have taken them to talk to Kim."

But it was too late. And there was too much
for him to look at to remain worried for long. He set off after a
bicycle that had gears and what looked like a generator on the back
wheel to run its own little electric light. The bicycle and its
rider soon left him behind and he tried to follow a two-wheeled
motorized vehicle instead. When he stopped to rest, Keeble saw a
tiny car, hardly more than a foot long, racing along the raised
walking area beside the road. He was off again.

Keeble wandered around the city as the
afternoon waned, moving from one wonder to the next. Eventually he
made his way into a narrow alley to investigate a noise and
discovered a fabulous workshop.

Keeble watched from outside the workshop for
a long time. Sometimes he leaned with his back against the cool red
bricks of the building across the alley. Sometimes he sat on an old
wooden box, though it was in a horrid state of disrepair and looked
as though it might fall apart at any moment. Sometimes, when the
engineer disappeared into another part of the workshop, he even
went all of the way across to the doorway to have a look around.
There were so many things he wanted to examine. The strange
vehicles were everywhere inside with inspection panels opened,
parts removed. But he didn't go in. A workshop was a dwarf's life;
he'd never invade it without being invited.

When darkness descended and the engineer
locked his doors, Keeble stayed where he was. He found a corner and
sat himself down. He used a paperboard box as protection against
the wind. He was hungry and tired and cold, but he stayed where he
was, awake for hours as the strange moon marched shadows around the
alley.

In the morning he was awake and standing by
the little wooden door when the engineer returned to open up.
Keeble played nervously with the gears on his arm as the dwarf
looked at him sideways.

"
Hello,
" Keeble said. He'd learned at
least that much of the language.

The engineer was older than Keeble had first
thought. His beard was run through with flecks of grey, and his
face was creased with the weight of years. “[Hi, there. How you
doin'?]”

Keeble shrugged. He didn't understand but
smiled and nodded because he thought that might be a good response.
"Can I watch you work?" he asked, motioning into the workshop. He
wouldn't go in there without being invited, but surely he could ask
to be invited.

“
[Not a clue what you're
talking about there, buddy.]”

Keeble shrugged once more, then pointed to
his eyes, then to the other dwarf, and into the workshop.

“
[What? You want to watch
me work?]” The engineer paused for a moment, shrugged, then
motioned inside.

Keeble took that as his invitation. He
walked quickly in and sat on a barrel near the vehicle that
appeared to need the most work.

"Me Keeble." With a nod.

“
[What?]”

"Keeble." This time he simply pointed.

“
[Your name's
Keeble
? Jesus, what were
your parents thinking?]”

"Keeble."

“
[Yeah, Keeble, how you
doin'? Don't understand a goddamned thing, do ya? And you want to
watch me work? Oh well, whatever. Just don't touch nothin', you
understand? Jesus, course you don't understand. My name is Colin.
Colin.]”

Keeble nodded happily. "Colin." Then he had
to sit and wait for a couple of minutes while Colin took himself
off to another room. When he returned, he was pulling on a
one-piece set of clothes that covered his whole body. He already
had one arm in a sleeve, and he was using that hand to carry two
cups of steaming liquid.

“
[That's a weird lookin'
arm you got there, Keeble,]" Colin said as he handed over one of
the cups. “[Where you get that from?]”

Keeble nodded and smiled as he sniffed
suspiciously at the drink. It smelled wonderful.

“
[Know much about cars, do
you?]” Colin took a mouthful of drink, smacking his lip
appreciatively, then collected a hammer from a box full of tools
and started to pound on a part of the engine. Keeble watched
carefully. The old dwarf didn't seem very enthusiastic, so Keeble
jumped down from his perch and wandered across to get a better
look.

"That's a bolt," he said. "Why are you
hitting a bolt with a hammer?"

The engineer went to strike the offending
object again, but Keeble grabbed his hand before he could do so.
With a grunt, he took the hammer away, crossed to the tools and
selected the appropriate spanner. The bolt was tight but it took
him only a moment to work it loose. He handed the spanner to
Colin.

"You use a spanner to undo bolts."

“
[Strong little bugger,
ain't ya.]”

Keeble watched half the morning and Colin
didn't even fix one of the vehicles. After a while a dwife came in.
She babbled for a while, gave Keeble a strange look, then moved
quickly out of sight.

"You allow dwives in your
workshop?" Keeble asked. He suddenly understood why the engineer
was so slow. If he had to put up with women nattering inanities at
him all day he wasn't likely to get
anything
done.

When the strange bell started ringing,
Keeble was bored enough to go and have a look.

Down in the back corner of the workshop he
found a fading plywood door, and when he pushed it gently, he was
offered a view of a small office. The dwife, her floral dress
trying to compete with the drab but not having much luck, sat at a
desk with a black thing nestled between her shoulder and drooping
head. She was speaking into it rapidly and didn't see him
watching.

She talked, nodding and
punctuating long silences with "Uh huh, uh huh," as if she were
holding a conversation with the thing. As she talked, the dwife
wrote in a large notebook.
She
wrote.
Keeble was sure she was writing.
Random squiggles wouldn't be so uniform and neat. But how could
they let a dwife learn to write? Finally it was too much for him.
Allowing women to work was one thing — Ari had always wanted to
work, and he had reluctantly let her — but to let them write?
Keeble pushed the door the rest of the way open and marched across
the room. It wasn't a very big room, and his short legs covered the
ground quickly. The dwife didn't look up until the last moment.
When she saw him she surged back, and the thing fell away from her
ear.

“
[Get away from
me.]”

Keeble snatched the stylus from her, fending
away a weak blow with his metal arm. "Women aren't allowed to
write," he said, as if she'd understand. He was about to find Colin
and tell him what had happened when the engineer grabbed him on the
shoulder.

“
[What's going on here,
Mona?]”

“
[He barged in here and
grabbed my pen. I was talking on the phone and... Oh, God.]” The
dwife grabbed the black item off the floor. “[Mister Dennis? Mister
Dennis? God, I wouldn't be surprised if he is calling the police
right now.]”

Keeble used the stylus to gesture at the
book. "She was writing, Colin. I saw her." They ignored him.

“
[
Do
we need the police?]”

The dwife shook her head.
“[I don't
think
so. He's a bit soft in the head, isn't he? Not all
there?]”

“
[Can't rightly say. Seems
sensible and friendly enough for the most part, except for that
gobbligook he speaks.]”

“
[Well, sensible and
friendly don't mean right in the head.]”

"What?" Keeble asked, pointing at the black
thing.

“
[That's a telephone, lad.
Telephone. Christ, he doesn't even know what a phone is.]” Colin
took his arm and led him from the room. “[Come and watch me fix the
car.]” Over his shoulder he said, “[Mona, why don't you ring a
couple of hospitals, see if they know anything.]”

But Colin didn't work any quicker after
that, though he did name each part as he removed it, then again as
he put it back in. Sometimes, when Keeble asked, he would try to
explain the use of the parts with words and gestures.

By late morning, Keeble hadn't learned much
about cars. But he had learned how to make coffee, and he'd learned
what a cream biscuit was. Those discoveries were almost worth the
morning's frustration. With his latest brew in hand he moved away
from the engineer to look around the workshop. There was a wide
array of tools, some of which Keeble had never seen, and most of
which appeared to have been exactly where they were for a long
time. For the most part, Colin seemed to make do with an adjustable
spanner, two screwdrivers, and a hammer.

And then, wonder of wonders, he found a
book. Normally books didn't excite him much at all, but this one
contained pictures of a motor, with all the parts separated as if
they'd been dismantled. Sitting in a corner, his coffee forgotten
on the oil-stained concrete floor, Keeble searched the pages until
he found a picture of a part he knew, then worked out from there.
He examined each part, trying to imagine what it might do. The air
filter was connected to the carburetor. That was where air was
mixed with the fuel. Keeble asked Colin about the name of the next
part, and followed the steps until he reached the end. Then he
looked at the radiator.

Keeble ate fish and chips for lunch, sitting
at a table with Colin and Mona. He drank some more coffee,
listening to the two of them speak. He understood little of what
they said but wasn't worried. He had the book open by his side and
was still reading.

“
[Did you find anything out
from the hospitals?]”

“
[No. They don't seem to
know anything. And, with everything else going on, they don't
really care.]”

“
[Right. Excellent.]” Colin
turned in Keeble's direction for a moment, and he took the
opportunity to interrupt.

"Excuse," he said. "What?"

Colin looked at the picture he was pointing
at, but at that moment the telephone rang in the office.

“
[I'll get it, Mona,]” the
engineer said. “[You finish your lunch.]” He rushed into the
office, leaving Keeble and the dwife alone together.