Sis opened her eyes and quickly turned away. She’d been down in the tunnel for so long that the light scalded them, and besides, they had clearly developed some sort of abstruse technical fault, because as soon as she’d opened them she’d imagined seeing what looked like a scene from an old horror movies, with Boris Karloff and — who was the other one? Bela Lugosi? Something like that. Anyway, her eyes were clearly on the blink. She rested them for a moment —‘Igor? Igor! Don’t just stand there gawping. Get those people out of my laboratory.’

This time, Sis’s eyes opened wide, and to hell with the brightness of the light.

Igor?!

‘Oh bugger,’ mumbled Rumpelstiltskin, his nose poking through the thin gap between frame and door. ‘Back the way we came, quick.’

But Sis wasn’t moving. Instead she was staring at someone; not the Baron, in spite of his colourful language and impressive range of angry gestures; not at Igor, although he was hurrying towards her with a big hammer gripped in both hands. She looked straight past them, or through them, at the figure sitting up on the table.

‘Carl?’ she said.

‘Sis?’

‘Where the hell have you been?’ they both asked at once.

A lifetime devoted to the study of the art of inter-sibling bickering had given Sis instincts that could override even the most severe shock, so she got her reply in first. ‘Looking for you, moron,’ she said angrily. ‘I could’ve got killed, chasing round among all these loonies. Of all the thoughtless—’

‘Hold it.’ The Baron thumped the bench so hard that it shook. ‘Shut up, both of you. That’s better.’ He took a deep breath, then went on, ‘Do I take it that you two know each other?’

‘Of course,’ Sis replied, annoyed at the interruption, ‘he’s my brother. Who are you?’

‘Your brother…’

Sis nodded. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘People often don’t believe we’re related. I can understand that,’ she added, ‘because he’s got a face like a prune. Who did you say you were?’

‘I…’ The Baron’s jaw flopped open, like the gangplank of an exhausted car ferry. ‘Never mind who I am,’ he rallied, ‘who are you? You can’t be his brother, for pity’s sake, I’ve just built him. Out of bits.’ He stared at Carl for a moment, then back at the table. ‘Or at least,’ he amended thoughtfully, ‘I built something. But the one I just made had big clumpy boots and a bolt through his neck. This one…’ Words failed him, and he pointed. Sis nodded gravely.

‘Agreed, our Carl would look much better with a bolt through his windpipe,’ Sis replied, observing out of the corner of her eye that although Igor was (still) bustling towards them at a great rate with his hammer raised like a battleaxe, the amount of ground he was actually covering was negligible. ‘Real improvement, that’d be. If you could find some way of turning off the voice box, that’d be ideal.’

Carl stuck his tongue out, revealing the neat row of stitching that held it in place, and for the first time Sis realised that Carl didn’t look in the least like Carl; he looked, in fact, just like Boris Karloff. More so, in fact, than Mr Karloff himself ever did. But it was definitely Carl, no question. Whee-plink went the falling penny, and she realised.

‘Did you do this?’ she asked.

‘Me?’ Carl tried to look indignant, then grinned sheepishly. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It just sort of happened.’

‘Just sort of happened!’

Carl stopped being defensive and scowled, a time-honoured tactic he’d used since he was three. It meant he was in the wrong, of course, but where else would a younger brother ever be? ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘it just sort of happened. When you started messing about with things. It’s all your fault really.’

‘It is not my—’

‘And because you started mucking around, I got stuck, and the only way I could get unstuck was this. So I did. No thanks to you.’

‘But Boris Karloff—’

Carl pulled a face. ‘It’s a joke,’ he said. ‘Carl/Karloff. Joke. Funny. Ha Ha.’

‘Carl, your joke’s just about to brain us both with a big hammer.’

Carl clicked his tongue impatiently, turned round and glowered at Igor, who vanished.

When the Baron asked him what the devil he thought he was playing at, he vanished too.

‘Joke over,’ Carl said, and folded his arms. ‘Satisfied?’

Sis gulped, as if trying to swallow a very large live goldfish. ‘How did you do that?’ she asked.

Carl shrugged. ‘I can do anything I like,’ he said. ‘It’s only make-believe.’

‘What?’

‘Make-believe. Pretend. Like virtual reality or holo-suites in Star Trek. Just computer stuff, that’s all.’

Sis thought about that. ‘Then how come I can’t do it?’ she demanded.

‘Because you’re thick,’ Carl replied, with the air of Einstein crafting the inevitable solution of a quadratic equation. ‘And you’re only a girl. Girls don’t understand computers, everybody knows that.’

He could live another eighty years and earn his living defusing bombs, and still Carl would never be closer to death than he was at that particular moment. But it passed.

‘Oh, shut up,’ Sis replied wearily. ‘And get us out of here. I’ve had enough. And Mum’ll be worried sick.’

‘No she won’t,’ Carl replied, as he systematically erased the rest of the Baron’s laboratory until there was nothing left but four bare stone walls and a flagstone floor. ‘We haven’t been anywhere in real time,’ he explained, ‘only in cyberspace. I’d have thought even you’d have realised that.’

‘Excuse me.’

‘The day I understand your gibberings is the day I have my brain replaced,’ Sis replied haughtily, “cos then I’ll know I’ve gone as barking mad as you. And I don’t want to understand computers,’ she added quickly. ‘Only very sad people understand computers. Only very sad people who haven’t got a life—’

‘Excuse me.’

‘Shut up,’ Sis commanded, and Rumpelstiltskin immediately pulled his nose back through the trapdoor. Then Sis turned slowly round and stared in his direction. ‘Just a minute,’ she said. ‘Carl, did you do that?’

Carl frowned and shook his head. ‘Never seen him before,’ he replied. ‘I thought it must be your new boyfriend. You know, the one you don’t want Mum to know about…’ Sis made a strange, high-pitched noise, rather like brass foil shearing under enormous pressure. ‘You know who that is?’ she demanded. ‘That’s bloody Rumpelstiltskin. That’s a character from a fairytale!’

Carl shrugged. ‘So? For once you got lucky. Well, when I say lucky, compared to some of the freaks you’ve brought home—’

In order to explain her reasoning, Sis made use of the old dialectic technique of grabbing the other guy’s ear and twisting it. ‘He’s imaginary,’ she yelled. ‘Can’t you see that?’

‘So you got yourself another imaginary friend. Big deal. Hope he’s got a better appetite than the last one, because Mum got really pissed at having to cook dinner for him and none of it ever getting eaten. Ouch, that hurts!’

‘Carl. Listen to me. He’s a little pretend person from the Pink Fairy Book. Make him go away.’

With a well-judged jink and swerve, Carl pulled himself free and put an arm’s length between himself and his sister. ‘I didn’t make him up,’ he said, ‘you did. So you’ve got to make him go away. Nothing to do with me.’

‘Excuse me.’

Sis whirled round and pulled the trapdoor open, revealing Rumpelstiltskin cowering behind it. ‘I thought I told you to shut up,’ she said.

‘Yes, but—’

‘But?’

‘But,’ Rumpelstiltskin said, pointing, ‘I was just wondering, had you noticed? Sorry to have bothered you.’

‘What are you—?’ Sis looked over her shoulder. ‘Oh,’ she said.

The laboratory was slowly fading back in. The workbenches were already there, and the retorts, alembics, Bunsen burners, circuit boards, generators and other clutter were gradually taking shape. Everything was where it had been, right down to the pool of green fluid that had seeped out of the beaker Igor knocked over just before he disappeared.