Maxie’s Demon Read Online Free

‘Look, er – there wouldn’t happen to be another way out of here, would there? Rather, er, unobtrusive. Then I can just blame the crash on a joyrider, and …’
    He really was laughing now, silently. And there was a disturbing shade of pity in his voice. ‘Listen. I’d better explain something to you. I wasn’t even going to try, but you – well, you’re very welleducated, aren’t you? A bright lad, for a – never mind. So listen, listen hard and try to use those brains of yours, because you’ve dropped into something a lot bigger than you can imagine. What do you think of this place?’ He waved his hand about. ‘Don’t bother answering. It’s real, isn’t it? Completely real. Could be, oh, Elizabethan, seventeenth century, eighteenth, maybe even early nineteenth,where the Industrial Revolution hadn’t reached yet.’
    I wasn’t going to say anything. He was trying to sell me something.
    ‘Well, it isn’t.It’s all of the above, and a lot more besides. You see, they built it at a crossroads, this inn – logical enough. But then other roads were built, all around this area, and suddenly fewer people stopped here. They drove by, and the trees grew up and hid it,and nobody bothered to cut them back. Roads crossed and recrossed around it, more and more of them, in a little shallow circle. That has an effect, you know, in space and time – junctions, and journeys. Things, places, they recede, they fall away, they become harder to reach, except in certain ways and at certain times. They – drift away, you could call it, not physically, but in time. Away intoa wider region, or realm. A strange kind of place some people call the Spiral.’
    ‘Fascinating,’ I said. ‘And that’s where the flying saucers come from, is it?’
    I’d worked once as a placeman for a pro psychic, the spoon-bending variety – one of my more reputable jobs. I’d got used to dealing with nutters and true believers of every kind. But it was this character who looked like the sceptic, amused,detached, not unkindly. ‘As a matter of fact, no. They’re dreamed up by utter nutters. But they may well be out there somewhere all the same, because everything is. Everything man can imagine or dream up, and more.’
    I looked amused right back at him. ‘Heard that idea before somewhere. Interesting, but, well, it’s just philosophy, isn’t it? Sort of carrying on from that bloke Giordano Bruno orsomebody. They may exist or not, these worlds, but it’s never going to make much—’
    ‘Oh, theyexist,’ he interrupted calmly. ‘And they can make quite a lot of difference to us. Though whether we shape them, or they shape us, that’s a question. With me, well it sort of went both ways. It may for you, too.’
    ‘Me? Why should I ever—’
    ‘Because you are already. Involved, I mean. There are places wherespace and time mingle, and this – here, now – this is one of them. You’re in it. And the more you know about it, the better. Listen and remember. You don’t have to believe, not now – just remember, so you’ll know, if … When.’
    At least it wasn’t cop-calling time. I shrugged, and hoped he wouldn’t bite me. ‘I can’t stop you, sunshine.’
    ‘Damn right you can’t. Places like this, they’re sort of amargin, a borderland – caught on the edge of the Spiral. Its influence reaches out right through them and beyond, right into the everyday world at times – night more than day, and most of all at dawn and evening. And everywhere it touches, things can happen. Pretty strange things. But they also open a gate the other way, these places. OK, you can quote Beaumarchais, but did you ever do any science?’

    ‘Some. Not to college level – that was modern languages. But—’
    ‘Right. Ever hear of Maxwell’s Demon?’
    I felt a silly sense of panic, the way you do watching a TV quiz with an answer chasing itself around your subconscious. Then it bubbled up. ‘Hey … yes. Sort of a paradox, wasn’t