Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith Page B

whispering in their ear while clamping your hand over their mouth it scares the living shit out of them when they wake up, not surprisingly, and some of them make a hell of a racket thrashing about. One guy I tried waking that way made so much noise I had to knock him unconscious, and then wait two and half hours for him to come to. When he did he made even more noise, and in the end I had to knock him out again and carry him away, which was not ideal. The best way I've found, and there's no patent on this so you should feel absolutely free to use it, is to sit by the bed and smoke.
    There's a little bit of the brain that stays awake when you're asleep, keeping half an eye open, making sure everything's ticking over nicely and that your feet aren't on fire or anything. After you've been sitting a while a few smoke molecules drift down into the guy's lungs. The brain doesn't notice for a while, and then suddenly it thinks, 'Now hang on: I'm asleep. I'm not smoking. Bloody hell, I'm not even a smoker. Something's going on.'
    There's nothing to panic about yet, so it just prods the rest of the brain gently awake, giving it the option to react if it sees the need. The person very quietly and comfortably drifts to fifty per cent awakeness, drowsily checks out the situation, and then goes back to sleep if there's nothing wrong. If there's a strange man dressed entirely in black holding a gun sitting smoking by the bed, however, they wake up very quickly and absolutely silently. Believe me, it works every time.
    While I waited I thought. I hadn't really had the time in the last couple of days to apply myself to most of the points on my internal memo. Sure, I'd bought batteries for the Gravbenda®, useless bastard of a thing that it is, but I hadn't sat down and worked out what it was that the Centre alone could supply that would move a gang to the lengths this one had gone to. I had to hand it to them, actually: not only had they snatched Alkland and spirited themselves in here, but now they were here they were playing it pretty cool. Despite the fact that I was now sitting by the bed where my quarry was, I was no closer to understanding what exactly was going on. If I could get us both out and back to the Centre in one piece it didn't really matter of course, but I like to know these things.
    After a minute or two Alkland began to stir in his sleep. I put my thoughts on hold and waited for him to drift awake, slipping the gun beneath my jacket so he didn't have too much to deal with at once. Then I realised that he wasn't waking at all, but dreaming, and I leant forward to watch his face. Beneath the lids his eyes were rapidly moving back and forth, and his body began to stir more frequently, his head slowly moving back and forth.
    Suddenly he gasped in his sleep and whipped his head over to one side, face frowning, and then he quite clearly flinched, an arm groping up from under the covers to cover his face. When it fell away again his eyes were screwed tightly shut and his face was rigid with fear.
    As I watched him I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise, and my chest cooled as if ice water was dripping slowly through my lungs.
    I know about nightmares, you see. By that I don't just mean I have them myself: I mean I know about them. I watched the twitching of his eyeballs and the muscles in his face and I could almost read what was happening to him. I knew that he was not having an ordinary bad dream, and that's the point this whole thing changed, though I didn't really realise it then.
    A moment later his eyes flew open and saw me. I smiled reassuringly, waited for him to get to one hundred per cent awake, and then spoke quietly.
    'It's all right. I'm one of the good guys. I guess.'
    Alkland blinked, and raised himself awkwardly up onto his elbows.
    'What are you doing here?' he mumbled, rubbing an eye.
    'I've come to take you home,' I said quietly. 'Come on: time to get up.'
    He didn't have a chance to react to that before