Something Rotten 'I tried to imagine the whole room full of Shakespeare clones clattering away at their typewriters. . .' (page 299) Jasper Fforde Something Rotten Hodder & Stoughton Copyright © 2004 by Jasper Fforde First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline The right of Jasper Fforde to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 13579 10 8642 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN o 340 83827 2 Typeset in Bembo by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Polmont, Stirlingshire Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic Hodder Headline's policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin Hodder and Stoughton Ltd A division of Hodder Headline 338 Euston Road London nwi JBH For Maddy, Rosie, Jordan & Alexander With all my love April 2004 KAINE PUBLISHING Wxnlno: TM* book may become *ub|»etto «trtwp«eflv% book-bumW8 taflWition. To comtdy *)» Ktlm IHrtctlv* CS8O-81JB**. tlM HMMtMory Comtui««>att» Monurtloii of thit ttowrt h« bHn cikuWKt *» toflowt: Energy Content: 19,180 Btu Combustibility: Medium Flash Poinf: 451 °F The Thursday Next series in chronological order: The Eyre Affair Lost in a Good Book The Well of Lost Plots Contents Dramatis Personae 1. A Cretan Minotaur in Nebraska i 2. No Place Like Home 21 3. Evade the Question Time 45 4. A Town Like Swindon 57 5. Ham(let) and Cheese 71 6. SpecOps 81 7. TTze Literary Detectives 89 8. 77me Waits for No Man 95 9. Eradications Anonymous 101 10. Mr5 Tiggy- Winkle 109 11. T/ie Greatness of St Zvlkx 115 12. Spj'fee <3M(/ Cindy 125 13. Milton 132 14. T/ie Goliath Apologarium 133 15. Meeting the CEO 143 16. T/jaf Evening 153 17. Emperor Zhark 159 18. Emperor Zhark Again 165 19. Cloned Will Hunting 169 20. Chimeras and Neanderthals 179 21. Victory on the Victory 189 vii 22. Roger Kapok 195 23 Granny Next 203 24. Home Again 207 25 Practical Difficulties Regarding Uneradications 221 26. Breakfast with Mycrofi 229 27 Weird Shit on the M4 239 28. Dauntsey Services 251 29. The Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire 261 30. Neanderthal Nation 271 3i Planning Meeting 281 32. Area 21: The Elan 289 33 Shgakespeafe 297 34 St Zvlkx and Cindy 305 35 What Thursday Did Next 315 36. Kaine versus Next 323 37 Before the Match 333 38. WCL Superhoop '88 345 39 Sudden Death 355 40. Second First Person 359 4i Death Becomes Her 365 42. Explanations 373 43 Recovery 379 44 Final Curtain 385 Credits 395 Vlll Dramatis Personae Thursday Next: Ex-operative from Swindon's literary detective office of SpecOps 2j and currently head ofjurisfiction, the policing agency that operates within fiction to safeguard the stability of the written word. Friday Next: Thursday's son, aged two. Granny Next: Resident of Goliath Twilight Homes, Swindon. Aged no and cannot die until she has read the ten most boring classics. Wednesday Next: Thursday's mother. Resides in Swindon. Landen Parke-Laine: Husband of Thursday who hasn't existed since he was eradicated in 1947 by the Goliath Corporation, eager to blackmail Miss Next. Mycroft Next: Inventor uncle of Thursday's and last heard of living in peaceful retirement within the backstory of the Sherlock Holmes series. Designer of Prose Portal and sarcasm early warning device, among many other things. Husband to Polly. Colonel Next: A time-travelling knight errant, he was eradicated by the ChronoGuard, a sort of temporal policing agency. Despite this, he is still about and meets Thursday from time to time. Cat, formerly known as Cheshire: The ex-Wonderland Uberlibrarian at the Great Library. And Jurisfiction agent. Pickwick: A pet dodo of very little brain. Bowden Cable: Colleague of Thursday's at the Swindon Literary Detectives. Victor Analogy: Head of Swindon Literary Detectives. Braxton Hicks: Overall commander of the Swindon Special Operations network. Daphne Farquitt: Romance writer whose talent is inversely proportional to her sales. The Goliath Corporation: Vast, unscrupulous multinational corporation keen on spiritual and global domination. IX Commander Trafford Bradshaw: Popular hero in 1920s ripping adventure stories for boys, now out of print and notable Jurisfiction agent. Melanie Bradshaw (Mrs): A gorilla, married to Commander Bradshaw. Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Emperor Zhark, The Red Queen, Falstaff, Vernham Deane: AH Jurisfiction operatives, highly trained. Yorrick Kaine: Whig politician and publishing media tycoon. Also right wing Chancellor of England, soon to be made dictator. Fictional, and sworn enemy of Thursday Next. President George Formby: Octogenarian President of England and deeply opposed to Yorrick Kaine and all that he stands for. Wales: A socialist republic. Lady Emma Hamilton: Consort of Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson and lush. Upset when her husband inexplicably died at the beginning of the battle of Trafalgar. Lives in Mrs Next's spare room. Hamlet: A Danish prince with a propensity for prevarication. SpecOps: Short for Special Operations, the governmental departments that deal with anything too rigorous for the ordinary police to handle. Everything from time travel to good taste. Bartholomew Stiggins: Commonly known as 'Stig'. Neanderthal reengineered from extinction, he heads SpecOps 13 (Swindon), the policing agency responsible for re-engineered species such as mammoths, dodos, sabre-toothed tigers and chimeras. Chimera: Any unlicensed 'non-evolved life form' created by a hobby genetic sequencer. Illegal and destroyed without mercy. St Zvlkx: A thirteenth-century saint whose 'Revealments' have an uncanny knack of coming true. Superhoop: The World Croquet League final. Usually violent, always controversial. Lola Vavoom: An actress who does not feature in this novel but has to appear in the dramatis personae owing to a contractual obligation. Minotaur: Half-man, half-bull son of Pasiphae, the Queep of Crete. Escaped from custody and consequently a PageRunner. Whereabouts unknown. This book has been bundled with Special Features including: 'The Making of documentary, deleted scenes from all four books, out-takes and much more. To access all these free bonus features, log on to: www.jasperfforde.co1n/specialtn4.html and enter the code word as directed. Acknowledgements Frederick Warne & Co. is the owner of all rights, copyrights and trademarks in the Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations. ¦=Mt I A Cretan Minotaur in Nebraska 'Jurisfiction is the name given to the policing agency inside books. Working with the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Text Grand Central, the many Prose Resource Operatives at Jurisfiction work tirelessly to maintain the continuity of the narrative within the pages of all the books ever written, a sometimes thankless task. Jurisfiction agents live mostly on their wits as they attempt to reconcile the author's original wishes and readers' expectations within a strict and largely pointless set of bureaucratic guidelines laid down by the Council of Genres. I headed Jurisfiction for over two years and was always astounded by the variety of the work: one day I might be attempting to coax the impossibly shy Darcy from the toilets and the next I would be thwarting the Martians' latest attempt to invade Bamaby Rudge. It was challenging and full of bizarre twists. But when the peculiar and downright weird become commonplace you begin to yearn for the banal.' Thursday next - The Jurisfiction Chronicles The Minotaur had been causing trouble far in excess of his literary importance. First by escaping from the fantasy-genre PrisonBook Sword of the Zenobians, then by leading us on a merry chase across most of fiction and thwarting all attempts to recapture him. The mythological half-man, half-bull son of Queen Pasiphae of Crete had been sighted within Riders of the Purple Sage only a month after his escape. We were still keen on taking him alive at this point so we had darted him with a small dose of Slapstick. Theoretically, we needed only to track outbreaks of custard-pie-in-face routines and walking-into-lamp-post gags within fiction to be led to the cannibalistic man-beast. It was an experimental idea and, sadly, also a dismal failure. Aside from Lafeu's celebrated mention of custard in All's Well that Ends Well and the ludicrous four-wheeled chaise sequence in Pickwick Papers, little was noticed. The Slapstick either hadn't been strong enough or had been diluted by the BookWorld's natural aversion to visual jokes. In any event we were still searching for him two years later in the Western genre, among the cattle drives that the Minotaur found most relaxing. And it was for this reason that Commander Bradshaw and I arrived at the top of page seventy-three of an obscure pulp from the thirties entitled Death at Double-X Ranch. 'What do you think, old girl?' asked Bradshaw, whose pith helmet and safari suit were ideally suited to the hot Nebraskan summer. He was shorter than me by almost a head but led agewise by four decades; his sun-dried skin and snowy-white moustache were a legacy of his many years in Colonial African Fiction: he had been the lead character in the twenty-three 'Commander Bradshaw' novels, last published in 1932 and last read in 1963. Many characters in fiction define themselves by their popularity, but not Commander Bradshaw. Having spent an adventurous and entirely fictional life defending British East Africa against a host of unlikely foes, and killing almost every animal it was possible to kill, he now enjoyed his retirement and was much in demand at Jurisfiction, where his fearlessness under fire and knowledge of the BookWorld made him one of the agency's greatest assets. He was pointing at a weathered board that told us the small township not more than half a mile ahead hailed by the optimistic name of Providence and had a population of 2,387. I shielded my eyes against the sun and looked around. A carpet of sage stretched all the way to the mountains less than five miles distant. The vegetation had a repetitive pattern that belied its fictional roots. The chaotic nature of the real world that gave us spft undulating hills and random patterns of forest and hedges was replaced within fiction by a landscape that relied on ordered repetitions of the author's initial description. In the make-believe world where I had made my home, a forest has only eight different trees, a beach five different pebbles, a sky twelve different clouds. A hedgerow repeated itself every eight feet, a mountain range every sixth peak. It hadn't bothered me that much to begin with but after two years living inside fiction I had begun to yearn for a world where every tree and rock and hill and cloud had its own unique shape and identity. And the sunsets. I missed them most of all. Even the best-described ones couldn't hold a candle to a real one. I yearned to witness once again the delicate hues of the sky as the sun dipped below the horizon. From red to orange, to pink, to blue, to navy, to black. Bradshaw looked across at me and raised an eyebrow quizzically. As 'The Bellman' -- the head of Jurisfiction -- I shouldn't really be out on assignment at all, but I was never much of a desk jockey and capturing the Minotaur was important. He had killed one of our own, and that made it unfinished business. During the past week we had searched unsuccessfully through six civil war epics, three frontier stories, twenty-eight high-quality Westerns and ninety-seven dubiously penned novellas before finding ourselves within Death at Doubk-X Ranch, right on the outer rim of what might be described as acceptably written prose. We had drawn a blank in every single book. No minotaur, nor even the merest whiff of one, and believe me, they can whiff. 'A possibility?' asked Bradshaw, pointing at the Providence sign. 'We'll give it a try,' I replied, slipping on a pair of dark glasses and consulting my list of potential minotaur hiding places. 'If we draw a blank we'll stop for lunch before heading off into The Oklahoma Kid.' Bradshaw nodded, opened the breech of the hunting rifle he was carrying and slipped in a cartridge. It was a conventional weapon but loaded with unconventional ammunition. Our position as the policing agency within fiction gave us licensed access to abstract technology. One blast from the eraserhead in Bradshaw's rifle and the Minotaur would be reduced to the building blocks of his fictional existence: text and a bluish mist - all that is left when the bonds that link text to meaning are severed. Charges of cruelty failed to have any meaning when at the last Beast Census there 3 were over a million almost identical minotaurs, all safely within the hundreds of books, graphic novels and urns that featured him. Ours was different - an escapee. A PageRunner. As we walked closer the sounds of a busy Nebraskan frontier town reached our ears. A new building was being erected and the hammering of nails into lumber punctuated the clop of horses' hoofs, the clink of harnesses and the rumble of cartwheels on compacted earth. The metallic ring of the blacksmith's hammer mixed with the distant tones of a choir from the clapboard church, and all about was the general conversational hubbub of busy townsfolk. We reached the corner of Eckley's Livery Stables and peered cautiously down the main street. Providence as we now saw it was happily enjoying the uninterrupted backstory, patiently awaiting the protagonist's arrival in two pages' time. Blundering into the main narrative thread and finding ourselves included within the story was not something we cared to do, and since the Minotaur avoided the primary storyline for fear of discovery we were likely to stumble across him only in places like this. But if, for any reason, the story did come anywhere near, I would be warned - I had a Narrative Proximity Device in my pocket that would sound an alarm if the thread came too close. We could hide ourselves until it passed by. A horse trotted past as we stepped up on to the creaky decking that ran along the front of the saloon. I stopped Bradshaw when we got to the swing-doors just as the town drunk was thrown out into the road. The bartender walked out after him, wiping his hands on a linen cloth. 'And don't come back till you can pay your way!' he yelled, glancing at us both suspiciously. I showed the barkeeper my Jurisfiction badge as Bradshaw kept a vigilant lookout. The whole Western genre had far, too many gunslingers for its own good; there had been some confusion over the numbers required on the order form when the genre was inaugurated. Working in Westerns could sometimes entail up to twentynine gunfights an hour. 'Jurisfiction,' I told him. 'This is Bradshaw, I'm Next. We're looking for the Minotaur.' The barkeeper stared at me coldly. 'Think you's in the wrong genre, pardner,' he said. All characters or Generics within a book are graded A to D, one through ten. A-grades are the Gatsbys and Jane Eyres, Dgrades the grunts who make up street scenes and crowded rooms. The barkeeper had lines so he was probably a C-2. Smart enough to get answers from but not smart enough to have much character latitude. 'He might be using the alias Norman Johnson,' I went on, showing him a photo. 'Tall, body of a man, head of a bull, likes to eat people?' 'Can't help you,' he said, shaking his head slowly as he peered at the photo. 'How about any outbreaks of Slapstick?' asked Bradshaw. 'Boxing glove popping out of a box, sixteen-ton weights dropping on people, that sort of thing?' The barkeeper laughed. 'Ain't seen no weights droppin' on nobody, but I heard tell the sheriff got hit in the face with a frying pan last Toosday.' Bradshaw and I exchanged glances. 'Where do we find the sheriff?' I asked. We followed the barkeeper's directions and walked along the wooden decking past a barber shop and two grizzled prospectors who were talking animatedly in authentic frontier gibberish. I stopped Bradshaw when we got to an alleyway. There was a gunfight in progress. Or at least, there would have been a gunfight had not some dispute arisen over the times allocated for their respective showdowns. Both sets of gunmen -- two dressed in light coloured clothes, two in dark, with low-slung gunbelts decorated with rows of shiny cartridges - were arguing over their gunfight time slots as two identical ladyfolk looked on anxiously. The town mayor intervened and told them that if there was any more arguments they would both lose their slot times and would have to come back tomorrow, so they reluctantly agreed to toss a coin. The winners of the toss scampered into the main street as everyone dutifully ran for cover. They squared up to one another, hands hovering over their Colt .45s at twenty paces. There was a flurry of action, two loud detonations and one of the gunmen in black hit the dirt while the victor looked on grimly, his opponent's shot having dramatically only removed his hat. His lady rushed up to hug him as he reholstered his revolver with a flourish. 'What a load of tripe,' muttered Bradshaw. 'The real West wasn't like this!' Death at Double-X Ranch was set in 1875 and written in 1908. Close enough to be historically accurate, you would have thought, but no. Most Westerns tended to show a glamorised version of the old West that hadn't really existed. In the real West a gunfight was a rarity, hitting someone with a short-barrelled Colt .45 at anything other than close range a virtual impossibility: 1870s gunpowder generated a huge amount of smoke; two shots in a crowded bar and you would be coughing — and almost blind. 'That's not the point,' I replied as the dead gunslinger was dragged away. 'Legend is always far more readable, and don't forget we're in pulp at present — poor prose is far more common than good prose and it would be too much to hope that our bullish friend would be hiding out in Zane Grey or Owen Wister.' We continued on past the Majestic Hotel as a stagecoach rumbled by in a cloud of dust, the driver cracking his long whip above the horses' heads. 'Over there,' said Bradshaw, pointing at a building opposite that differentiated itself from the rest of the clapboard town by being made of brick. It had 'Sheriff' painted above the door. We walked quickly across the road, our non-Western garb somewhat out of place among the long dresses, bonnets and breeches, jackets, dusters, vests, gunbelts and bootlace ties. Only permanently billeted Jurisfiction officers troubled to dress up, and many of the agents actively policing the Westerns are characters from the books they patrol - so don't need to dress up anyway. We knocked and entered. It was dark inside after the bright exterior and we blinked for few moments as we accustomed ourselves to the gloom. On the wall to our right was a noticeboard liberally covered with Wanted posters - pertaining not only to Nebraska but to the BookWorld in general; a yellowed example offered $300 for information leading to the whereabouts of Big Martin. Below this was a chipped enamelled coffee pot sitting atop a cast-iron stove, and on the wall to the left was a gun cabinet. A tabby cat sprawled upon a large bureau. The far wall was the barred frontage to the cells, one of which held a drunk fast asleep and snoring loudly on a bunk bed. In the middle of the room was a large desk which was stacked high with paperwork - circulars from the Nebraska State Legislature, a few Council of Genres Narrative Law amendments, a campanology society newsletter and a Sears/Roebuck catalogue open at the 'fancy goods' section. Also on the desk were a pair of worn leather boots, and inside these were a pair of feet attached, in turn, to the sheriff. His clothes were predominantly black and could have done with a good wash. A tin star was pinned to his vest and all we could see of his face were the ends of a large grey moustache that poked out from beneath his downturned Stetson. He was fast asleep, and balanced precariously on the rear two legs of a chair which creaked as he snored. 'Sheriff?' No answer. 'SHERIFF!' He awoke with a start, began to get up, overbalanced and tipped over backward. He crashed heavily to the floor and knocked against the bureau, which just happened to have a jug of water resting upon it. The jug tipped over and its contents drenched the sheriff, who roared with shock. The noise upset the cat, which awoke with a cry and leapt up the curtains, which collapsed with a crash on to the cast-iron stove, spilling the coffee and setting fire to the tinder-dry linen drapes. I ran to put it out and knocked against the desk, dislodging the lawman's loaded revolver, which fell to the floor, discharging a single shot which cut the cord of a hanging stuffed moose's head which fell upon Bradshaw. So there were the three of us; me trying to put out the fire, the sheriff covered in water and Bradshaw walking into furniture as he tried to get the moose's head off. It was precisely what we were looking for: an outbreak of unconstrained and wholly inappropriate Slapstick. 'Sheriff, I'm so sorry about this,' I muttered apologetically, having doused the fire, de-moosed Bradshaw and helped a very damp lawman to his feet. He was over six foot tall, had a weather beaten face and deep blue eyes. I produced my badge. 'Thursday Next, head of Jurisfiction. This is my partner, Commander Bradshaw.' The sheriff relaxed and even managed a thin smile. 'Thought you was more of them Baxters,' he said, brushing himself down and drying his hair with a 'Cathouses of Dawson City' tea cloth. 'I'm mighty glad you're not. Jurisfiction, hey? Ain't seen none of yous around these parts for longer than I care to remember -- quit it, Howell.' The drunk, Howell, had awoken and was demanding a tipple 'to set him straight'. 'We're looking for the Minotaur,' I explained, showing the sheriff the photograph. He rubbed his stubble thoughtfully and shook his head. 'Don't recall ever seeing this critter, Missy Next.' 'We have reason to believe he passed through your office not long ago - he's been marked with Slapstick.' 'Ah!' said the sheriff. 'I was a-wonderin' 'bout all that. Me and Howell here have been trippin' and a-stumblin' for a whiles now -- ain't we, Howell?' 'You're darn tootin',' said the drunk. 'He could be in disguise and operating under an alias,' I ventured. 'Does the name Norman Johnson mean anything to You?' 'Can't say it does, Missy. We have twenty-six Johnsons here but all are C-7S - not 'portant 'nuff to have fust names.' I sketched a Stetson on to the photograph of the Minotaur, then a duster, vest and gunbelt. ¦ifc 'Oh!' said the sheriff with a sudden look of recognition. 'That Mr Johnson.' 'You know where he is?' 'Sure do. Had him in the cells only last week on charges of eatin' a cattle rustler.' 'What happened?' 'Paid his bail and wuz released. Ain't nothing in the statutes of Nebraska that says you can't eat rustlers. One moment.' There had been a shot outside followed by several yells from startled townsfolk. The sheriff checked his Colt, opened the door and walked out. Alone on the street and facing him was a young man with an earnest expression, hand quivering around his gun, the elegantly tooled holster of which I noticed had been tied down -- a sure sign of yet another potential gunfight. 'Go home, Abe!' the sheriff called out. 'Today's not a good day for dyin'.' 'You killed my pappy,' said the youth, 'and my pappy's pappy. And his pappy's pappy. And my brothers Jethro, Hank, Hoss, Red, Peregrine, Marsh, Junior, Dizzy, Luke, Peregrine, George an' all the others. I'm callin' you out, lawman.' 'You said Peregrine twice.' 'He wuz special.' 'Abel Baxter,' whispered the sheriff out of the corner of his mouth, 'one of them Baxter boys. They turn up regular as clockwork, and I kill 'em same ways as regular.' 'How many have you killed?' I whispered back. 'Last count, 'bout sixty. Go home, Abe, I won't tell yer again!' The youth caught sight of Bradshaw and me and said: 'New deputies, Sheriff? Yer gonna need 'em!' And it was then that we saw that Abel Baxter wasn't alone. Stepping out from the stables opposite were four disreputable looking characters. I frowned. They seemed somehow out of place in Death at Double-X Ranch. For a start, none of them wore black, nor did they have tooled-leather double gunbelts with nickel-plated revolvers. Their spurs didn't clink as they walked and their holsters were plain and worn high on the hip - the weapon these men had chosen was the Winchester rifle. I noticed with a shudder that one of the men had a button missing on his frayed vest and the sole on the toe of his boot had come adrift. Flies buzzed around their unwashed and grimy faces and the sweat marks on their hats had stained halfway to the crown. These weren't C-2 generic gunfighters from pulp, but well-described A-7S from a novel of high descriptive quality - and if they could shoot as well as they had been realised by the author, we were in trouble. The sheriff sensed it too. 'Where yo' friends from, Abe?' One of the men hooked his Winchester into the crook of his arm and answered in a low Southern drawl: 'Mr Johnson sent us.' And they opened fire. No waiting, no drama, no narrative pace. Bradshaw and I had already begun to move -- squaring up in front of a gunman with a rifle might seem terribly macho but for survival purposes it was a non-starter. Sadly, the sheriff didn't realise this until it was too late. If he had survived until page 164, as he was meant to, he would have taken a slug, rolled twice in the dust after a two-page build-up and lived long enough to say a pithy final goodbye to his sweetheart who would have cradled him in his bloodless dying moments. Not to be. Realistic violent death was to make an unwelcome entry into Death at Double-X. The heavy lead shot entered the sheriff's chest and came out the other side, leaving an exit wound the size of a saucer. He collapsed inelegantly on to his face and lay perfectly still, one arm sprawled outward in a manner unattainable in life and the other hooked beneath him. He didn't collapse flat, either. He ended up bent over on his knees with his backside in the air. The gunmen stopped firing as soon as there was no target -- but Bradshaw, his hunting instincts alerted, had already drawn a bead on the sheriff's killer and fired. There was an almighty detonation, a brief flash and a large cloud of smoke. The eraserhead hit home and the gunman disintegrated mid-stride into a brief chysanthemum 10 M 'The gunman disintegrated mid-stride into a brief chysanthemum of text which scattered across the main street . . .' II of text which scattered across the main street, the meaning of the words billowing out into a blue haze which hung near the ground for a moment or two before evaporating. 'What are you doing?' I asked, annoyed at his impetuosity. 'Him or us, Thursday,' replied Bradshaw grimly, pulling the lever down on his Martini-Henry to reload, 'him or us.' 'Did you see how much text he was composed of?' I replied angrily. 'He was almost a paragraph long. Only featured characters get that kind of description - somewhere there's going to be a book one character short!' 'But,' replied Bradshaw in an aggrieved tone, 'I didn't know that before I shot him, now, did I?' I shook my head. Perhaps Bradshaw hadn't noticed the missing button, the sweat stains and the battered shoes, but I had. Erasure of a featured part meant more paperwork than I really wanted to deal with. From form F36/34 (discharge of an eraserhead) and form B9/32 (replacement of featured part) to the P13/36 (narrative damage assessment), I could be bogged down for two whole days. I had thought bureaucracy was bad in the real world, but here in the paper world it was everything. 'So what do we do?' asked Bradshaw. 'Ask politely for them to surrender?' 'I'm thinking,' I replied, pulling out my footnoterphone and pressing the button marked Cat. In fiction, the commonest form of communication was by footnote, but way out here . . . 'Blast!' I muttered again. 'No signal.' 'Nearest repeater station is in The Virginian,' observed Bradshaw as he replaced the spent cartridge and closed the breech before peering outside. 'And we can't bookjump direct from pulp to classic' He was right. We had been crossing from book to book for almost six days, and although we could escape in an emergency, such a course of action would give the Minotaur more than enough time to escape. Things weren't good, but they weren't bad either -- yet. 'Hey!' I yelled from the sheriff's office. 'We want to talk!' 12 'Is that a fact?' came a clear voice from outside. 'Mr Johnson says he's all done talkin' -- less you be in mind to offer amnesty.' 'We can talk about that!' I replied. There was a beeping noise from my pocket. 'Blast,' I mumbled, consulting the Narrative Proximity Device. 'Bradshaw, we've got a story thread inbound from the east, two hundred and fifty yards and closing. Page seventy-four, line six.' Bradshaw quickly opened his copy of Death at Double-X Ranch and ran a finger along the line: '. . . McNeil rode into the town of Providence, Nebraska, with fifty cents in his pocket and murder on his mind . . .' I peered cautiously out of the window. Sure enough, a cowboy on a bay horse was riding slowly into town. Strictly speaking it didn't matter if we changed the story a little as the novella had been read only sixteen times in the past ten years, but the code by which we worked was fairly unequivocal. 'Keep the story as the author intended!' was a phrase bashed into me early on during my training. I had broken it once and suffered the consequences - I didn't want to do it again. 'I need to speak to Mr Johnson,' I yelled, keeping an eye on McNeil, who was still some way distant. 'No one speaks to Mr Johnson less Mr Johnson says so,' replied the voice, 'but if you'll be offerin' an amnesty, he'll take it and promise not to eat no more people.' 'Was that a double negative?' whispered Bradshaw with disdain. 'I do so hate them.' 'No deal unless I meet Mr Johnson first!' I yelled back. 'Then there's no deal!' came the reply. I looked out again and saw three more gunmen appear. The Minotaur had clearly made a lot of friends during his stay in the Western genre. 'We need back-up,' I murmured. Bradshaw clearly thought the same. He opened his TravelBook and pulled out something that looked a little like a flare gun. This was a textmarker, which could be used to signal to other Jurisfiction 13 agents. The TravelBook was dimensionally ambivalent; the device was actually larger than the book that contained it. 'Jurisfiction know we're in Western Pulp; they just don't know where. I'll send them a signal.' He dialled in the sort of textmark he was going to place using a knob on the back of the gun, then moved to the door, aimed the marker into the air and fired. There was a dull thud and the projectile soared into the sky. It exploded noiselessly high above us and for an instant I could see the text of the page in a light grey against the blue of the sky. The words were back to front, of course, and as I looked at Bradshaw's copy of Death at Double-X Ranch I noticed the written word 'ProVIDence' had been partially capitalised. Help would soon arrive - a show of force would deal with the gunman. The problem was, would the Minotaur make a run for it or fight it out to the end? 'Purty fireworks don't scare us, missy,' said the voice again. 'You comin' out, or do wes have to come in and get yer?' I looked across at Bradshaw, who was smiling. 'What?' 'This is all quite a caper, don't you think?' said the commander, chuckling like a schoolboy who had just been caught scrumping apples. 'Much more fun than hunting elephant, wrestling lions to the ground and returning tribal knick-knacks stolen by unscrupulous foreigners.' 'I used to think so,' I said under my breath. Two years of assignments like these had been enjoyable and challenging, but not without their moments of terror, uncertainty and panic -- and I had a twoyearold son who needed more attention than I could give him. The pressure of running Jurisfiction had been building for a long time now and I needed a break in the real world - a long one. I had felt it about six months before, just after the adventure that came to be known as The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco, but had shrugged it off. Now the feeling was back - and stronger. A low, deep rumble began somewhere overhead. The windows rattled in their frames and dust fell from the rafters. A crack opened 14 up in the plaster and a cup vibrated off the table to break on the floor. One of the windows shattered and a shadow fell across the street. The deep rumble grew in volume, drowned out the Narrative Proximity Device that was wailing plaintively, then became so loud it didn't seem like a sound at all - just a vibration that shook the sheriff's office so strongly my sight blurred. Then, as the clock fell from the wall and smashed into pieces, I realised what was going on. 'Oh . . . NOV I howled with annoyance as the noise waned to a dull roar. 'Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut!' 'Emperor Zhark?' queried Bradshaw. 'Who else would dare pilot a Zharkian Battle Cruiser into Western Pulp?' tl We looked outside as the vast spaceship passed overhead, its '« vectored thrusters swivelling downward with a hot rush of concen "i trated power that blew up a gale of dust and debris and set the A livery stables on fire. The huge bulk of the battle cruiser hovered for a moment as the landing gear unfolded, then made a delicate touchdown -- right on top of McNeil and his horse, who were 1 squashed to the thickness of a ha'penny. My shoulders sagged as I watched my paperwork increase exponentially. The townsfolk ran around in panic and horses bolted as the A-7 gunmen fired pointlessly at the ship's armoured hull. Within a few moments the interstellar battle cruiser had disgorged a small army of foot-soldiers carrying the very latest Zharkian weaponry. I groaned. It was not unusual for the emperor to go overboard at moments like this. Undisputed villain of the eight 'Emperor Zhark' books, the most feared Tyrannical God-Emperor of the known Galaxy just didn't seem to comprehend the meaning of restraint. In a few minutes it was all over. The A-7S had either been killed or escaped to their own books, and the Zharkian Marine Corps had been dispatched to find the Minotaur. I could have saved them the trouble. He would be long gone. The A-7S and McNeil would have to be sourced and replaced, the whole book rejigged to remove the twenty-sixth-century battle cruiser that had arrived 15 uninvited into 1875 Nebraska. It was a flagrant breach of the AntiCrossGenre Code that we attempted to uphold within fiction. I wouldn't have minded so much if this had been an isolated incident, but Zhark did this too often to be ignored. I could hardly control myself as the emperor descended from his starship with an odd entourage of aliens and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, who also worked for Jurisfiction. 'WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE PLAYING AT?!?' 'Oh!' said the emperor, taken aback at my annoyance, 'I thought you'd be pleased to see us!' 'The situation was bad but not irredeemable,' I told him, sweeping my arm in the direction of the town. 'Now look what you've done!' He looked around. The confused townsfolk had started to emerge from the remains of the buildings. Nothing so odd as this had happened in Western since an alien brain-sucker had escaped from SF and been caught inside Wild Horse Mesa. 'You do this to me every time! Have you no conception of stealth and subtlety?' 'Not really,' said the emperor, looking at his hands nervously. 'Sorry.' His alien entourage, not wanting to hang around in case they also got an earful, walked, slimed or hovered back into Zhark's ship. 'You sent a textmarker--' 'So what if we did? Can't you enter a book without destroying everything in sight?' 'Steady on, Thursday,' said Bradshaw, laying a calming hand on my arm, 'we did ask for assistance, and if old Zharky here was the closest, you can't blame him for wanting to help. After all, when you consider that he usually lays waste to entire galaxies, torching just the town of ProVIDence and not the whole of Nebraska was actually quite an achievement . . .' His voice trailed off before he added: '. . . for him.' 16 'AHHHF I yelled in frustration, holding my head. 'Sometimes I think I'm--' I stopped. I lost my temper now and again, but rarely with my colleagues, and when that happens, things are getting bad. When I started this job it was great fun, as it still was for Bradshaw. But just lately the enjoyment had waned. It was no good. I'd had enough. I needed to go home. 'Thursday?' asked Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, concerned by my sudden silence. 'Are you okay?' She came too close and spined me with one her quills. I yelped and rubbed my arm while she jumped back and hid a blush. Sixfoothigh hedgehogs have their own brand of etiquette. 'I'm fine,' I replied, dusting myself down. 'It's just that things have a way of, well, spiralling out of control.' 'What do you mean?' 'What do I mean? What do I mean? Well, this morning I was tracking a mythological beast using a trail of custard pie incidents across the old West, and this afternoon a battle cruiser from the twenty-sixth century lands in ProVIDence, Nebraska. Doesn't that sound sort of crazy?' 'This is fiction,' replied Zhark in all innocence, 'odd things are meant to happen.' 'Not to me,' I said with finality. 'I want to see some sort of semblance of. . . of reality in my life.' 'Reality?' echoed Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. 'You mean a place where hedgehogs don't talk or do washing?' 'But who'll run Jurisfiction?' demanded the emperor. 'You were the best we ever had!' I shook my head, threw up my hands and walked over to where the ground was peppered with the A-7 gunman's text. I picked up a 'D' and turned it over in my hands. 'Please reconsider,' said Commander Bradshaw, who had followed me. 'I think you'll find, old girl, that reality is much overrated.' 'Not overrated enough, Bradshaw,' I replied with a shrug. 'Sometimes the top job isn't the easiest one.' 17 'Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,' murmured Bradshaw, who probably understood me better than most. He and his wife were the best friends I had in the BookWorld; Mrs Bradshaw and my son were almost inseparable. 'I knew you wouldn't stay for good,' continued Bradshaw, lowering his voice so the others didn't hear. 'When will you go?' I shrugged. 'Soon as I can. Tomorrow.' I looked around at the destruction that Zhark had wrought upon Death at Double-X. There would be a lot of clearing up, a mountain of paperwork - and there might be the possibility of disciplinary action if the Council of Genres got wind of what had happened. 'I suppose I should complete the paperwork on this debacle first,' I said slowly. 'Let's say three days.' 'You promised to stand in for Joan of Arc while she attended a martyrs refresher course,' added Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, who had tiptoed closer. I'd forgotten about that. 'A week, then. I'll be off in a week.' We all stood in silence, I pondering my return to Swindon, and all of them considering the consequences of my departure - except Emperor Zhark, who was probably thinking about invading the Planet Thraal, for fun. 'Your mind is made up?' asked Bradshaw. I nodded slowly. There were other reasons for me to return to the real world, more pressing than Zhark's gung-ho lunacy. I had a husband who didn't exist, and a son who couldn't spend his life cocooned inside books. I had retreated into the old Thursday, the one who preferred the black-and-white certainties of policing fiction to the ambiguous mid-tone greys of emotion. 'Yes, my mind's made up,' I said, smiling. I looked at^radshaw, the emperor and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. For all their faults, I'd enjoyed working with them. It hadn't been all bad. Whilst at Jurisfiction I had seen and done things I wouldn't have believed. I'd watched grammasites in flight over the pleasure domes of Xanadu, felt the 18 strangeness of listeners glittering on the dark stair. I had cantered bareback on unicorns through the leafy forests of Zenobia and played chess with Ozymandias, the King of Kings. I had flown with Biggies on the Western Front, locked cutlasses with Long John Silver and explored the path not taken to walk upon England's mountains green. But despite all these moments of wonder and delight, my heart belonged back home in Swindon and to a man named Landen Parke-Laine. He was my husband, the father of my son, he didn't exist, and I loved him. 19 i 2 No Place Like Home 'Swindon, Wessex, England, was the place I was born and where I lived until I left to join the literary detectives in London. I returned ten years later and married my former boyfriend, Landen Parke-Laine. He was subsequently murdered at the age of two by the Goliath Corporation, who had decided to blackmail me. It worked, I helped them -- but I didn't get my husband back. Oddly, I kept his son, my son, Friday -- it was one of those quirky time-travel paradoxical things that my father understands but I don't. Two years farther on Landen was still dead, and unless I did something about it soon, he might remain that way for ever.' Thursday next -- Thursday Next, a Life in SpecQps It was a bright and clear morning in mid-July two weeks later when I found myself on the corner of Broome Manor Lane in Swindon, on the opposite side of the road to my mother's house, with a toddler in a pushchair, two dodos, the Prince of Denmark, an apprehensive heart and hair cut way too short. The Council of Genres hadn't taken the news of my resignation very well. In fact, they refused to accept it at all and gave me instead unlimited leave, in the somewhat deluded hope that I might return if actualising my husband 'didn't work out'. They also suggested I might like to deal with escaped fictionaut Yorrick Kaine, someone with whom I had crossed swords twice in the past. Hamlet had been a late addition to my plans. Increasingly concerned over reports that he was being misrepresented as something of a 'ditherer' in the Outland, he had requested leave to see for himself. This was unusual in that fictional characters are rarely troubled by public perception, but Hamlet would worry about having nothing to worry about if he had nothing to worry about, 21 and since he was the indisputable star of the Shakespeare canon and had lost the 'Most Troubled Romantic Lead' crown to Heathcliff once again at this year's Book World awards, the Council of Genres thought they should do something to appease him. Besides, Jurisfiction had been trying to persuade him to police Elizabethan drama since Sir John Falstaff retired on grounds of'good health', and a trip to the Outland, it was thought, might persuade him. "Tis very strange!' he murmured, staring at the sun, trees, houses and traffic in turn. 'It would take a rhapsody of wild and whirling words to do justice to all that I witness!' 'You're going to have to speak English out here.' 'All this,' explained Hamlet, waving his hands at the fairly innocuous Swindon street, 'would take millions of words to describe correctly!' 'You're right. It would. That's the magic of the book ImaginoTransference technology,' I told him. 'A few dozen words conjure up an entire picture. But in all honesty the reader does most of the work.' 'The reader? What's it got to do with them?' 'Well, each interpretation of an event, setting or character is unique to the person who reads it because they clothe the author's description with the memory of their own experiences. Every character they read is actually a complex amalgam of people that they've met, read or seen before - far more real than it can ever be just from the text on the page. Because every reader's experiences are different, each book is unique for each reader.' 'So,' replied the Dane, thinking hard, 'what you're saying is that the more complex and apparently contradictory the character, the greater the possible interpretations?' 'Yes. In fact, I'd argue that every time a book is read by the same person it is different again - because the reader's experiences are changed, or they are in a different frame of mind.' 'Well, that explains why no one can figure me out. After four hundred years nobody's quite decided what, exactly, my inner motivations are.' He paused for a moment and sighed mournfully. 22 'Including me. You'd have thought I was religious, wouldn't you, with all that not wanting to kill Uncle Claudius when at prayer and suchlike?' 'Of course.' 'I thought so too. So why do I use the atheistic line there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so? What's that all about?' 'You mean you don't know?' 'Listen, I'm as confused as anyone.' I stared at Hamlet and he shrugged. I had been hoping to get some answers from him regarding the inconsistencies within his play, but now I wasn't so sure. 'Perhaps,' I said thoughtfully, 'that's why we like it. To each our own Hamlet.' 'Well,' snorted the Dane unhappily, 'it's a mystery to me. Do you think therapy would help?' 'I'm not sure. Listen, we're almost home. Remember: to anyone but family you're . . . who are you?' 'Cousin Eddie.' 'Good. Come on.' Mum's house was a detached property of good proportions in the south of the town but of no great charm other than that which my long association had conferred upon it. I had spent the first eighteen years of my life growing up here, and everything about the old house was familiar. From the tree I had fallen out of, cracking a collar bone, to the garden path where I had learned to ride my bicycle. I hadn't really noticed it before but empathy for the familiar grows stronger with age. The old house felt warmer to me now than it ever had before. I took a deep breath, picked up my suitcase and trundled the pushchair across the road. My pet dodo Pickwick followed with her unruly son Alan padding grumpily after her. I rang Mum's doorbell and after about a minute a slightly overweight vicar with short brown hair and spectacles answered the door. 23 and since he was the indisputable star of the Shakespeare canon and had lost the 'Most Troubled Romantic Lead' crown to Heathcliff once again at this year's BookWorld awards, the Council of Genres thought they should do something to appease him. Besides, Jurisfiction had been trying to persuade him to police Elizabethan drama since Sir John Falstaff retired on grounds of 'good health', and a trip to the Outland, it was thought, might persuade him. "Tis very strange!' he murmured, staring at the sun, trees, houses and traffic in turn. 'It would take a rhapsody of wild and whirling words to do justice to all that I witness!' 'You're going to have to speak English out here.' 'AH this,' explained Hamlet, waving his hands at the fairly innocuous Swindon street, 'would take millions of words to describe correctly!' 'You're right. It would. That's the magic of the book ImaginoTransference technology,' I told him. 'A few dozen words conjure up an entire picture. But in all honesty the reader does most of the work.' 'The reader? What's it got to do with them?' 'Well, each interpretation of an event, setting or character is unique to the person who reads it because they clothe the author's description with the memory of their own experiences. Every character they read is actually a complex amalgam of people that they've met, read or seen before - far more real than it can ever be just from the text on the page. Because every reader's experiences are different, each book is unique for each reader.' 'So,' replied the Dane, thinking hard, 'what you're saying is that the more complex and apparently contradictory the character, the greater the possible interpretations?' 'Yes. In fact, I'd argue that every time a book is read by the same person it is different again - because the reader's experiences are changed, or they are in a different frame of mind.' 'Well, that explains why no one can figure me out. After four hundred years nobody's quite decided what, exactly, my inner motivations are.' He paused for a moment and sighed mournfully. 22 'Including me. You'd have thought I was religious, wouldn't you, with all that not wanting to kill Uncle Claudius when at prayer and suchlike?' 'Of course.' 'I thought so too. So why do I use the atheistic line there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it sol What's that all about?' 'You mean you don't know?' 'Listen, I'm as confused as anyone.' I stared at Hamlet and he shrugged. I had been hoping to get some answers from him regarding the inconsistencies within his play, but now I wasn't so sure. 'Perhaps,' I said thoughtfully, 'that's why we like it. To each our own Hamlet.' 'Well,' snorted the Dane unhappily, 'it's a mystery to me. Do you think therapy would help?' 'I'm not sure. Listen, we're almost home. Remember: to anyone but family you're . . . who are you?' 'Cousin Eddie.' 'Good. Come on.' Mum's house was a detached property of good proportions in the south of the town but of no great charm other than that which my long association had conferred upon it. I had spent the first eighteen years of my life growing up here, and everything about the old house was familiar. From the tree I had fallen out of, cracking a collar bone, to the garden path where I had learned to ride my bicycle. I hadn't really noticed it before but empathy for the familiar grows stronger with age. The old house felt warmer to me now than it ever had before. I took a deep breath, picked up my suitcase and trundled the pushchair across the road. My pet dodo Pickwick followed with her unruly son Alan padding grumpily after her. I rang Mum's doorbell and after about a minute a slightly overweight vicar with short brown hair and spectacles answered the door. 23 'Is that Doofus--?' he said when he saw me, suddenly breaking into a broad grin. 'By the GSD, it is Doofus!' 'Hi, Joffy. Long time no see.' Joffy was my brother. He was a minister of the Global Standard Deity religion, and although we had had differences in the past, they were long forgotten. I was pleased to see him, and he me. 'Whoa!' he said. 'What's that?' 'That's Friday,' I explained. 'Your nephew.' 'Wow!' replied Joffy, undoing Friday's harness and lifting him out. 'Does his hair always stick up like that?' 'Probably leftovers from breakfast.' Friday stared at Joffy for a moment, took his fingers out of his mouth, rubbed them on his face, put them in again and offered Joffy his polar bear, Poley. 'Kind of cute, isn't he?' said Joffy, jiggling Friday up and down and letting him tug at his nose. 'But a bit, well, sticky. Does he talk?' 'Not a lot. Thinks a great deal, though.' 'Like Mycroft. What happened to your head?' 'You mean my haircut?' 'So that's what it was!' murmured Joffy. 'I thought you'd had your ears lowered or something. Bit, er . . . bit extreme, isn't it?' 'I had to stand in for Joan of Arc. It's always tricky to find a replacement.' 'I can see why,' exclaimed Joffy, still staring incredulously at my pudding-bowl haircut. 'Why don't you just have the whole lot off and start again?' 'This is Hamlet,' I said, introducing him before he began to feel awkward, 'but he's here incognito so I'm telling everyone he's my cousin Eddie.' 'Joffy,' said Joffy, 'brother of Thursday.' » 'Hamlet,' said Hamlet, 'Prince of Denmark.' 'Danish?' said Joffy with a start. 'I shouldn't spread that around if I were you.' 'Why?' 24 'Darling!' said my mother, appearing behind Joffy. 'You're back! Goodness! Your hair!' 'It's a Joan of Arc thing,' explained Joffy, 'very fashionable right now. Martyrs are big on the catwalk, y'know - remember the Edith Cavell/Tolpuddle look in last month's Femole?' 'He's talking rubbish again, isn't he?' 'Yes,' said Joffy and I in unison. 'Hello, Mum,' I said, giving her a hug, 'remember your grandson?' She picked him up and remarked how much he had grown. It was unlikely in the extreme that he had shrunk but I smiled dutifully nonetheless. I tried to visit the real world as often as I could but hadn't been able to manage it for at least six months. When she had nearly fainted by hyperventilating with 'Ooohs' and 'Aaaahs' and Friday had stopped looking at her dubiously, she invited us indoors. 'You stay out here,' I said to Pickwick, 'and don't let Alan misbehave himself.' It was too late. Alan, small size notwithstanding, had already terrorised Mordecai and the other dodos into submission. They all shivered in fright beneath the hydrangeas. 'Are you staying for long?' enquired my mother. 'Your room is just how you left it.' This meant just how I left it when I was nineteen, but I thought it rude to say so. I explained that I'd like to stay at least until I got an apartment sorted out, introduced Hamlet and asked whether he could stay for a few days too. 'Of course! Lady Hamilton's in the spare room and that nice Mr Bismarck is in the attic, so he can have the boxroom.' My mother grasped Hamlet's hand and shook it heartily. 'How are you, Mr Hamlet? Where did you say you were the prince of again?' 'Denmark.' 'Ah! No visitors after seven p.m. and breakfast stops at nine a.m. prompt. I do expect guests to make their own bed and if you need washing done you can put it in the wicker basket on the 25 landing Pleased to meet you. I'm Mrs Next, Thursday's mother.' 'I have a mother,' replied Hamlet gloomily as he bowed politely and kissed my mother's hand. 'She shares my uncle's bed.' 'They should buy another one in that case,' my mother replied, practical as ever. 'They do a very good deal at IKEA, I'm told. Don't use it myself because I don't like all that self-assembly -- I mean, what's the point of paying for something you have to build yourself? But it's popular with men for exactly that same reason. Do you like Battenberg?' 'Wittenberg?' 'No, no. Battenberg.' 'On the River Eder?' asked Hamlet, confused over my mother's conversational leap from self-assembly furniture to cake. 'No, silly, on a doily - covered with marzipan.' Hamlet leaned closer to me. 'I think your mother may be insane -- and I should know.' 'You'll get the hang of what she's talking about,' I said, giving him a reassuring pat on the arm. We walked through the hall to the living room where, after managing to extract Friday's fingers from Muni's beads, we managed to sit down. 'So tell me all your news!' she exclaimed as my eyes flicked around the room, trying to take in all the many potential hazards for the two-year-old. 'Where do you want me to begin?' I asked, removing the vase of flowers from the top of the TV before Friday had a chance to pull them over on himself. 'I had a flurry of things to do before I left. Two days ago I was in Camelot trying to sort out some marital strife and the day before - sweetheart, don't touch that - I was negotiating a pay dispute with the Union of Ores.' 'Goodness!' replied my mother. 'You must be simply* dying for a cup of tea.' 'Please. The BookWorld might be the cat's pyjamas for characterisation and explosive narrative, but you can't get a decent cup of tea for all the bourbon in Hemingway.' 26 'I'll do it!' said Joffy. 'C'mon, Hamlet, tell me about yourself. Got a girlfriend?' 'Yes -- but she's bonkers.' 'In a good way or a bad way?' Hamlet shrugged. 'Neither - just bonkers. But her brother - hell's teeth! Talk about sprung-loaded . . . I' Their conversation faded as they disappeared into the kitchen. 'Don't forget the Battenberg,' my mother called after them. I opened my suitcase and took out a few rattly toys Mrs Bradshaw had given me. Melanie had looked after Friday a lot as she and Commander Bradshaw had no children of their own, what with Melanie being a mountain gorilla, so she had doted on Friday. It had its upsides -- he always ate his greens and loved fruit -- but I had my suspicions that they climbed on the furniture when I wasn't about, and once I found Friday trying to peel a banana with his feet. 'How's life treating you?' I asked. 'Better for seeing you. It's quite lonely with Mycroft and Polly away at the fourteenth annual Mad Scientists Conference. If it wasn't for Joffy and his partner Miles popping round every day, Bismarck and Emma, Mrs Beatty next door, Eradications Anonymous, my panel-beating class and that frightful Mrs Daniels, I'd be completely alone. Should Friday be in that cupboard?' I turned, jumped up, grabbed Friday by the straps of his dungarees and gently took the two crystal wineglasses from his inquisitive grasp. I showed him his toys and sat him down in the middle of the room. He stayed put for about three seconds before tottering off in the direction of DH82, Mum's bone-idle Thylacine, who was asleep on a nearby chair. DH82 yelped as Friday tugged playfully at his whiskers. The Thylacine then got up, yawned, and went to find his supper dish. Friday followed. And I followed Friday. '--in the ear?' said Joffy as I walked into the kitchen. 'Does that work?' 27 'Apparently,' replied the prince, 'we found him stone dead in the orchard.' I scooped up Friday, who was about to tuck into DH82*s food, and took him back to the living room. 'Sorry,' I explained, 'he's into everything at the moment. Tell me about Swindon. Much changed?' 'Not really. The Christmas lights have improved tremendously, there's a Skyrail line straight through the Brunei Centre and Swindon now has twenty-six different supermarkets.' 'Can the residents eat that much?' 'We're giving it our best shot.' Joffy walked back in with Hamlet and placed a tray of tea things in front of us. 'That small dodo of yours is a terror. Tried to peck me when I wasn't looking.' 'You probably startled him. How's Dad?' Joffy, to whom this was a touchy subject, decided not to join us but play with Friday instead. 'C'mon, young lad,' he said, 'let's get drunk and shoot some pool.' 'Your father has been wanting to get hold of you for a while,' said my mother as soon as Joffy and Friday had gone. 'As you probably guessed he's been having trouble with Nelson again. He often comes home simply reeking of cordite, and I'm really not keen on him hanging around with that Emma Hamilton woman.' My father was a sort of time-travelling knight errant. He used to be a member of SO-12, the agency charged with policing the timelines: the ChronoGuard. He resigned owing to differences over the way the historical timeline was managed and went rogue. The ChronoGuard decided that he was too dangerous and eradicated him by a well-timed knock at the door during the night of his conception; my aunt April was born instead. » 'So Nelson died at the Battle of Trafalgar?' I asked, recalling Dad's previous problems in the timeline. 'Yes,' she replied, 'but I'm not sure he was meant to. That's why your father says he has to work so closely with Emma.' 28 Emma, of course, was Lady Emma Hamilton, Nelson's consort. It was she who had alerted my father to Nelson's eradication. One moment she had been married to Lord Nelson for over ten years, the next she was a bankrupt lush living in Calais. Must have been quite a shock. My mother leaned closer. 'Between the two of us I'm beginning to think Emma's a bit of a tram-- Emma! How nice of you to join us!' At the doorway was a tall, red-faced woman wearing a brocade dress that had seen better days. Despite the rigours of a lengthy and damaging acquaintance with the bottle, there were the remains of great beauty and charm about her. She must have been dazzling in her youth. 'Hello, Lady Hamilton,' I said, getting up to shake her hand, 'how's the husband?' 'Still dead.' 'Mine too.' 'Bummer.' 'Ah!' I exclaimed, wondering quite where Lady Hamilton picked up the word, although on reflection she probably knew a few worse. 'This is Hamlet.' 'Emma Hamilton,' she cooed, casting an eye in the direction of the unquestionably handsome Dane and giving him her hand, 'Lady.' 'Hamlet,' he replied, kissing her proffered hand, 'Prince.' Her eyelashes fluttered momentarily. 'A prince? Of anywhere I'd know?' 'Denmark, as it happens.' 'My. . . late boyfriend bombarded Copenhagen quite mercilessly in 1801. He said the Danes put up a good fight.' 'We Danes like a tussle, Lady Hamilton,' replied the prince with a great deal of charm, 'although I'm not from Copenhagen myself. A little town up the coast - Elsinore. We have a castle there. Not very large. Barely sixty rooms and a garrison of under two hundred. A bit bleak in the winter.' 'Haunted?' 29 'One that I know of. What did your late boyfriend do when he wasn't bombarding Danes?' 'Oh, nothing much,' she said offhandedly, 'fighting the French and the Spanish, leaving body parts around Europe -- it was quite de rigueur at the time.' There was a pause as they stared at one another. Emma started to fan herself. 'Goodness!' she murmured. 'All this talk of body parts has made me quite hot!' 'Right!' said my mother, jumping to her feet. 'That's it! I'm not having this sort of smutty innuendo in my house!' Hamlet and Emma looked startled by her outburst but I managed to pull her aside and whispered: 'Mother! Don't be so judgemental - after all, they're both single, and Hamlet's interest in Emma might take her mind off someone else.' 'Someone . . . else?' You could almost hear the cogs going around in her head. After a long pause she took a deep breath, turned back to them and smiled broadly. 'My dears, why don't you have a walk in the garden? There is a gentle cooling breeze and the niche d'amour in the rose garden is very attractive this time of year.' 'A good time for a drink, perhaps?' asked Emma hopefully. 'Perhaps,' replied my mother, who was obviously trying to keep Lady Hamilton away from the bottle. Emma didn't reply. She just offered her arm to Hamlet, who took it graciously and was going to steer her out of the open doors to the patio when Emma stopped him with a murmur of 'Not the French windows' and took him out by way of the kitchen. 'As I was saying,' said my mother as she sat down, 'Emma's a lovely girl. Cake?' » 'Please.' 'Here,' she said, handing me the knife, 'help yourself 'Tell me,' I began, as I cut the Battenberg carefully, 'did Landen come back?' 30 'That's your eradicated husband, isn't it?' she replied kindly. 'No, I'm afraid he didn't.' She smiled encouragingly. 'You should come to one of my Eradications Anonymous evenings - we're meeting tomorrow night.' In common with my mother, I had a husband whose reality had been scrubbed from the here and now. Unlike my mother, whose husband still returned every now and then from the timestream, I had a husband, Landen, who only existed in my dreams and recollections. No one else had any memories or knowledge of him at all. Mum knew about Landen only because I'd told her. To anyone else, Landen's parents included, I was suffering some bizarre delusion. But Friday's father was Landen, despite his non-existence, just as my brothers and I had been born despite my father not existing. Time travel is like that. Full of unexplainable paradoxes. 'I'll get him back,' I mumbled. 'Who?' 'Landen.' Joffy reappeared from the garden with Friday, who, in common with most toddlers, didn't see why adults couldn't give aeroplane rides all day. I gave him a slice of Battenberg, which he dropped in his eagerness to devour it. The usually torpid DH82 opened an eye, ate the cake and was asleep again in under three seconds. 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!' Friday cried indignantly. 'Yes, it was impressive, wasn't it?' I agreed. 'Bet you never saw Pickwick move that fast -- even for a marshmallow.' 'Nostrud laboris nisi et commodo consequat,' replied Friday with great indignation. 'Excepteur sint cupidatat non proident!' 'Serves you right,' I told him. 'Here, have a cucumber sandwich.' 'What did my grandson say?' asked my mother, staring at Friday, who was trying to eat the sandwich all in one go and making a nauseating spectacle of himself. 'Oh, that's just him jabbering away in Lorem Ipsum. He speaks nothing else.' 3i 'Lorem . . . what?' 'Lorem Ipsum. It's dummy text used by the printing and typesetting industry to demonstrate layout. I don't know where he picked it up. Comes from living inside books, I should imagine.' 'I see,' said my mother, not seeing at all. 'How are the cousins?' I asked. 'Wilbur and Orville both run MycroTech these days,' answered Jorfy as he passed me a cup of tea. 'They made a few mistakes while Uncle Mycroft was away, but I think he's got them on a short leash now.' Wilbur and Orville were my aunt and uncle's two sons. Despite having two of the most brilliant parents around, they were almost solid mahogany from the neck up. 'Pass the sugar, would you? A few mistakes?' 'Quite a lot actually. Remember Mycroft's memory erasure machine?' 'Yes and no.' 'Well, they opened a chain of high-street erasure centres called Mem-U-Gon. You could go in and have unpleasant memories removed.' 'Lucrative, I should imagine.' 'Extremely lucrative - right up to the moment they made their first mistake. Which was, considering those two, not an if but a when.' 'Dare I ask what happened?' 'I think that it was the equivalent of setting a vacuum cleaner to "blow" by accident. A certain Mrs Worthing went into the Swindon branch of Mem~U-Gon to remove every single recollection of her failed first marriage.' 'And--?' 'Well, she was accidentally uploaded with the unwanted memories of seventy-two one-night stands, numerous drunken arguments, fifteen wasted lives and almost a thousand episodes of Name That Fruit! She was going to sue but settled instead for the name and 32 address of one of the men whose exploits are now lodged in her memory. As far as I know, they married.' 'I like a story with a happy ending,' put in my mother. 'In any event,' continued Jofry, 'Mycroft forbade them from using it again and gave them the Chameleocar to market. It should be in the showrooms quite soon - if Goliath haven't pinched the idea first.' 'Ah!' I muttered, taking another bite of cake. 'And how is my least-favourite multinational?' Joffy rolled his eyes. 'Up to no good as usual. They're attempting to switch to a faith based corporate management system.' 'Becoming a ... religion?' 'Announced only last month on the suggestion of their own corporate precog, Sister Bettina of Stroud. They aim to switch the corporate hierarchy to a multi-deity plan with their own gods, demigods, priests, places of worship and official prayerbook. In the new Goliath, employees will not be paid with anything as unspiritual as money, but faith -- in the form of coupons which can be exchanged for goods and services at any Goliath-owned store. Anyone holding Goliath shares will have these exchanged on favourable terms with these "Foupons" and everyone gets to worship the Goliath upper echelons.' 'And what do the "devotees" get in return?' 'Well, a warm sense of belonging, protection from the world's evils and a reward in the afterlife - oh, and I think there's a Tshirt in it somewhere, too.' 'That sounds very Goliath-like.' 'Doesn't it just?'Joffy smiled. 'Worshipping in the hallowed halls of consumerland. The more you spend, the closer to their "god" you become.' 'Hideous!' I exclaimed. 'Is there any good news?' 'Of course! The Swindon Mallets are going to beat the Reading Whackers to win the Superhoop this year.' 'You've got to be kidding!' 33 'Not at all. Swindon winning the 1988 Superhoop is the subject of the incomplete seventh Revealment of St Zvlkx. It goes like this: There will be a home win on the playing fields of Swindonne in nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and in consequence of. . . The rest is missing, but it's pretty unequivocal.' St Zvlkx was Swindon's very own saint, and no child educated here could fail to know about him, including me. His Revealments had been the subject of much conjecture over the years, for good reason - they were uncannily accurate. Even so, I was sceptical especially if it meant the Swindon Mallets winning the Superhoop. The city's team, despite a surprise appearance at the Superhoop finals a few years back and the undeniable talents of team captain Roger Kapok, were probably the worst side in the country. 'That's a bit of a long shot, isn't it? I mean, St Zvlkx vanished in, what - 1292?' But Jofiy and my mother didn't think it very funny. 'Yes,' said Jofiy, 'but we can ask him to confirm it.' 'You can? How?' 'According to his sixth Revealment he's due for spontaneous resurrection at ten past nine the day after tomorrow.' 'But that's remarkable!' 'Remarkable but not unprecedented,' replied Jofiy. 'Thirteenth century seers have been popping up all over the place. Eighteen in the last six months. Zvlkx will be of interest to the faithful and us at the Friends, but the TV networks probably won't cover it. The ratings of Brother Velobius's second coming last week didn't even come close to beating Bonzo the Wonder Hound reruns on the other channel.' I thought about this for a moment in silence. 'That's enough about Swindon,' said my mother, who had a nose for gossip - especially mine. 'What's been happening to you?' 'How long have you got? What I've been getting up to would fill several books.' 'Then . . . let's start with why you're back.' So I explained about the pressures of being the head ofjurisfiction, 34 and just how annoying books could be sometimes, and Friday, and Landen, and Yorrick Kaine's fictional roots. On hearing this Jofry jumped. 'Kaine is ... fictional?' I nodded. 'Why the interest? Last time I was here he was a washed-up ex member of the Whig Party.' 'He's not now. Which book is he from?' I shrugged. 'I wish I knew. Why? What's going on?' Jofry and Mum exchanged nervous glances. When my mother gets interested in politics, it really means things are bad. 'Something is rotten in the state of England,' murmured my mother. 'And that something is the English Chancellor Yorrick Kaine,' added Jofiy, 'but don't take our word for it. He's appearing on Toad News Network's Evade the Question Time here in Swindon at eight tonight. We'll go and see him for ourselves.' I told them more about Jurisfiction and Jofiy, in return, cheerfully reported that attendance at the Global Standard Deity church was up since he had accepted sponsorship from the Toast Marketing Board, a company that seemed to have doubled in size and influence since I was here last. They had spread their net beyond hot bread and now included jams, croissants and pastries in their portfolio of holdings. My mother, not to be outdone, told me she received a little bit of sponsorship money herself from Mr Rudyard's cakes, although she privately admitted that the Battenberg she had served up was actually her own. She then told me in great detail about her aged friends' medical operations, which I can't say I was overjoyed to hear about, and as she drew breath in between Mrs Stripling's appendectomy and Mr Walsh's 'plumbing' problems, a tall and imposing figure walked into the room. He was dressed in a fine morning coat of eighteenth-century vintage, wore an impressive moustache that would have put Commander Bradshaw's to shame, and had an imperiousness and sense of purpose that reminded 35 'Not at all. Swindon winning the 1988 Superhoop is the subject of the incomplete seventh Revealment of St Zvlkx. It goes like this: There will be a home win on the playing fields of Swindonne in nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and in consequence of. . . The rest is missing, but it's pretty unequivocal.' St Zvlkx was Swindon's very own saint, and no child educated here could fail to know about him, including me. His Revealments had been the subject of much conjecture over the years, for good reason -- they were uncannily accurate. Even so, I was sceptical -- especially if it meant the Swindon Mallets winning the Superhoop. The city's team, despite a surprise appearance at the Superhoop finals a few years back and the undeniable talents of team captain Roger Kapok, were probably the worst side in the country. 'That's a bit of a long shot, isn't it? I mean, St Zvlkx vanished in, what - 1292?' But Joffy and my mother didn't think it very funny. 'Yes,' said JofTy, 'but we can ask him to confirm it.' 'You can? How?' 'According to his sixth Revealment he's due for spontaneous resurrection at ten past nine the day after tomorrow.' 'But that's remarkable!' 'Remarkable but not unprecedented,' replied Joffy. 'Thirteenth century seers have been popping up all over the place. Eighteen in the last six months. Zvlkx will be of interest to the faithful and us at the Friends, but the TV networks probably won't cover it. The ratings of Brother Velobius's second coming last week didn't even come close to beating Bonzo the Wonder Hound reruns on the other channel.' I thought about this for a moment in silence. 'That's enough about Swindon,' said my mother, who had a nose for gossip - especially mine. 'What's been happening to you?' 'How long have you got? What I've been getting up to would fill several books.' 'Then . . . let's start with why you're back.' So I explained about the pressures of being the head ofjurisfiction, 34 and just how annoying books could be sometimes, and Friday, and Landen, and Yorrick Kaine's fictional roots. On hearing this Joffy jumped. 'Kaine is ... fictional?' I nodded. 'Why the interest? Last time I was here he was a washed-up ex member of the Whig Party.' 'He's not now. Which book is he from?' I shrugged. 'I wish I knew. Why? What's going on?' Joffy and Mum exchanged nervous glances. When my mother gets interested in politics, it really means things are bad. 'Something is rotten in the state of England,' murmured my mother. 'And that something is the English Chancellor Yorrick Kaine,' added Joffy, 'but don't take our word for it. He's appearing on Toad News Network's Evade the Question Time here in Swindon at eight tonight. We'll go and see him for ourselves.' I told them more about Jurisfiction and Joffy, in return, cheerfully reported that attendance at the Global Standard Deity church was up since he had accepted sponsorship from the Toast Marketing Board, a company that seemed to have doubled in size and influence since I was here last. They had spread their net beyond hot bread and now included jams, croissants and pastries in their portfolio of holdings. My mother, not to be outdone, told me she received a little bit of sponsorship money herself from Mr Rudyard's cakes, although she privately admitted that the Battenberg she had served up was actually her own. She then told me in great detail about her aged friends' medical operations, which I can't say I was overjoyed to hear about, and as she drew breath in between Mrs Stripling's appendectomy and Mr Walsh's 'plumbing' problems, a tall and imposing figure walked into the room. He was dressed in st a fine morning coat of eighteenth-century vintage, wore an impres y sive moustache that would have put Commander Bradshaw's to shame, and had an imperiousness and sense of purpose that reminded 35 me of Emperor Zhark. 'Thursday,' announced my mother in a breathless tone, 'this is the Prussian Chancellor, Herr Otto Bismarck -- your father and I are trying to sort out the SchleswigHolstein question of 1863-4; he's gone to fetch Bismarck's opposite number from Denmark so they can talk. Otto ... I mean, Herr Bismarck, this is my daughter, Thursday.' Bismarck clicked his heels and kissed my hand in an icily polite manner. 'Fraulein Next, the pleasure is all mine,' he intoned in a heavy German accent. My mother's curious and usually long-dead house guests should have surprised me, but they didn't. Not any more. Not since Alexander the Great turned up when I was nine. Nice enough fellow -- but shocking table manners. 'So, how are you enjoying 1988, Herr Bismarck?' 'I am especially taken with the concept of dry cleaning,' replied the Prussian, 'and I see big things ahead for the gasoline engine.' He turned back to my mother. 'But I am most eager to speak to the Danish prime minister. Where might he be?' 'I think we're having a teensy-weensy bit of trouble locating him,' replied my mother, waving the cake knife. 'Would you care for a slice of Battenberg instead?' 'Ah!' replied Bismarck, his demeanour softening. He stepped delicately over DH82 to sit next to my mother. 'The finest Battenberg I have ever tasted!' 'Oh, Herr B,' flustered my mother, 'you do flatter me so!' She made 'shooing' motions at us out of vision of Bismarck and, obedient children that we are, we ¦withdrew from the living room. 'Well!' said Joffy as we shut the door. 'How about that? Mum's after a bit of Teutonic slap and tickle!' I raised an eyebrow and stared at him. » 'I hardly think so, Joff. Dad doesn't turn up that often and intelligent male company can be hard to find.' Joffy chuckled. 'Just good friends, eh? Okay. Here's the deal: I'll bet you a 36 tenner Mum and the Iron Chancellor are doing the wild thing by this time next week.' 'Done.' We shook hands and, with Emma, Hamlet, Bismarck and my mother thus engaged, I asked Jofry to look after Friday so I could slip out of the house to get some air. I turned left and wandered up Marlborough Road, looking about at the changes that two years' absence had wrought. I had walked this way to school for almost eight years, and every wall and tree and house was as familiar to me as an old friend. A new hotel had gone up on Piper's Way and a few shops in the Old Town had either changed hands or been updated. It all felt very familiar, and I wondered whether the feeling of wanting to belong somewhere would stay with me, or fade, like my fondness for Caversham Heights, the book in which I had made my home these past few years. I walked down Bath Road, took a right and found myself in the street where Landen and I had lived, before he was eradicated. I had returned home one afternoon to find his mother and father in residence. Since they hadn't known who I was and considered - not unreasonably - that I was dangerously insane, I decided to play it safe today and just walk past slowly on the other side of the street. Nothing looked very different. A tub of withered Tickia orologica was still on the porch next to an old pogo stick and the curtains in the windows were certainly his mother's. I walked on, then retraced my steps, my resolve to get him back mixed with a certain fatalism, a feeling that perhaps ultimately I wouldn't and I should prepare myself. After all, he had died when he was two years old, and I had no memories of how it had been, only of how things might have turned out had he lived. I shrugged my shoulders and chastised myself on the morbidity of my own thoughts, then walked towards the Goliath Twilight Homes where my gran was staying these days. 37 Granny Next was in her room watching a nature documentary called Walking with Ducks when I was shown in by the nurse. Gran was wearing a blue gingham nightie, had wispy grey hair and looked all of her no years. She had got it into her head that she couldn't shuffle off this mortal coil until she had read the ten most boring books, but since 'boring' was about as impossible to quantify as 'not boring' it was difficult to know how to help. 'Shhh!' she muttered as soon as I walked in. 'This programme's fascinating!' She was staring at the TV screen earnestly. 'Just think,' she went on, 'by analysing the bones of the extinct duck Anas platyrhynchos they can actually figure out how it walked.' I stared at the small screen, where an odd animated bird waddled strangely in a backward direction as the narrator explained just how they had managed to deduce such a thing. 'How could they know that just by looking at a few old bones?' I asked doubtfully, having learned long ago that an 'expert' was usually anything but. 'Scoff not, young Thursday,' replied Gran, 'a panel of expert avian palaeontologists have even deduced that a duck's call might have sounded something like this: "Quock, quock".' '"Quock?" Hardly seems likely.' 'Perhaps you're right,' she replied, switching off the TV and tossing the remote aside. 'What do experts know?' Like me, Gran was able to jump inside fiction. I wasn't sure how either of us did it but I was very glad that she could - it was she who helped me to not forget my husband, something at one time I was in clear and real danger of doing thanks to Aornis, the mnemonomorph, of course. But Gran had left me about a year ago, announcing that I could fend for myself and she wouldn't waste any more time labouring for me hand and foot, which was a bit of cheek really, as I generally looked after her. But r*o matter. She was my gran and I loved her a great deal. 'Goodness!' I said, looking at her soft and wrinkled skin, which put me oddly in mind of a baby echidna I had once seen in National Geographic. 38 A 'What?' she asked sharply. 'Nothing.' 'Nothing? You were thinking of how old I was looking, weren't you?' It was hard to deny it. Every time I saw her I felt she couldn't look any older, but the next time, with startling regularity, she did. 'When did you get back?' 'This morning.' 'And how are you finding things?' I brought her up to date with current events. She made 'tut tutting' noises when I told her about Hamlet and Lady Hamilton, then even louder 'tut-tut' noises when I mentioned my mother and Bismarck. 'Risky business, that.' 'Mum and Bismarck?' 'Emma and Hamlet.' 'He's fictional and she's historical -- what could be wrong about that?' 'I was thinking,' she said slowly, raising an eyebrow, 'about what would happen if Ophelia found out.' I hadn't thought of that, and she was right. Hamlet could be difficult but Ophelia was impossible. 'I always thought the reason Sir John Falstaff retired from policing Elizabethan drama was to get away from Ophelia's sometimes unreasonable demands,' I mused, 'such as having petting animals and a goodly supply of mineral water and fresh sushi on hand at Elsinore whenever she was working. Do you think I should insist Hamlet return to HamletV 'Perhaps not right away,' said Gran, coughing into her hanky. 'Let him see what the real world is like. Might do him good to realise it needn't take five acts to make up one's mind.' She started coughing again so I called the nurse, who told me I should probably leave her. I kissed her goodbye and walked out of the rest home deep in thought, trying to work up a strategy for the next few days. I dreaded to think what my overdraft was like and 39 if I was to catch Kaine I'd be better off inside SpecOps than outside. There were no two ways about it: I needed my old job back. I'd attempt that tomorrow and take it from there. Kaine certainly needed dealing with, and I'd play it by ear at the TV studios tonight. I'd probably have to find a speech therapist for Friday to try to wean him off the Lorem Ipsum, and then, of course, there was Landen. How could I even begin to get someone returned to the here-and now after they were deleted from the there-and-then by a chronupt official from the supposedly incorruptible ChronoGuard? I was jolted from my thoughts as I approached Mum's house. There appeared to be someone partially hidden from view in the alleyway opposite. I nipped into the nearest front garden, ran between the houses, across two back gardens, and then stood on a dustbin to peek cautiously over a high wall. I was right. There was someone watching my mother's house. He was dressed too warmly for summer and was half hidden in the buddleia. My foot slipped on the dustbin and I made a noise. The lurker looked round, saw me and took flight. I jumped over the wall and gave chase. It was easier than I thought. He wasn't terribly fit and I caught up with him as he tried rather pathetically to climb a wall. Pulling the man down, I upset his small duffel bag and out poured an array of battered notebooks, a camera, a small pair of binoculars and several copies of the SpecOps 27 gazette, much annotated in red pen. 'Ow, ow, ow, get off!' he said. 'You're hurting!' I twisted his arm round and he dropped to his knees. I was just patting his pockets for a weapon when another man, dressed not unlike the first, came charging out from behind an abandoned car, holding aloft a tree branch. I spun, dodged the blow and, as the second man's momentum carried him on, I pushed him hard with my foot and he slammed head first into a wall and collapsed unconscious. The first man was unarmed so I made sure his unconscious friend was also unarmed - and wasn't going to choke on his blood or teeth or something. 40 'I know you're not SpecOps,' I observed, 'because you're both way too crap. Goliath?' The first man got slowly to his feet. He was looking curiously at me, rubbing his arm where I had twisted it. He was a large man but not an unkindly looking one. He had short dark hair and a large mole on his chin. I had broken his spectacles; he didn't look Goliath but I had been wrong before. 'I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Next. I've been waiting for you for a long, long time.' 'I've been away.' 'Since January 1986. I've waited nearly two and a half years to see you.' 'And why would you do a thing like that?' 'Because,' said the man, producing an identity badge from his pocket and handing it over, 'I am your officially sanctioned stalker.' I looked at the badge. It was true enough, he was allocated to me. All 100 per cent legit, and I didn't have a say in it. The whole stalker thing was licensed by SpecOps 33, the Entertainments Facilitation Department, which had drawn up specific rules with the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers as to who was allowed to stalk who. It helped to regulate a historically dark business and also graded stalkers according to skill and perseverance. My stalker was an impressive Grade 1, the sort who are permitted to stalk the really big celebrities. And that made me suspicious. 'A Grade 1?' I queried. 'Should I be flattered? I don't suppose I'm anything above a Grade 8.' 'Not nearly that high,' agreed my stalker, 'more like a Grade 12. But I've got a hunch you're going to get bigger. I latched on to Lola Vavoom in the sixties when she was just a bit part in The Streets of Wootton Bassett and stalked her for nineteen years, man and boy. I only gave her up to move on to Buck Stallion. When she heard she sent me a glass tankard with " Thank you for a great stalk, Lola" etched on it. Have you ever met her?' 'Once, Mr. . .' I looked at the pass before handing it back. '. . . de Floss. Interesting name. Any relation to Candice?' 4i 'The author? In my dreams,' replied the stalker, rolling his eyes. 'But since I'd like us to be friends, do please call me Millon.' 'Millon it is, then.' And we shook hands. The man on the ground moaned and sat up, rubbing his head. 'Who's your friend?' 'He's not my friend,' said Millon, 'he's my stalker. And a pain in the arse he is too.' 'Wait - you're a stalker and you have a stalker?' 'Of course!' Millon laughed. 'Ever since I published my autobiography, A Stalk on the Wild Side, I've become a bit of a celebrity myself. I even have a sponsorship deal with Compass Rose™ dufFel coats. It is my celebrity status that enables Adam here to stalk me. Come to think of it, he's a Grade 3 stalker so it's possible he's got a stalker of his own - haven't you heard the poem?' Before I could stop him he started to recite: '. . . And so the tabloids do but say, that stalkers on other stalkers prey, and these have smaller stalkers to stalk 'em and so proceed, ad infinitum . . .' 'No, I hadn't heard that one,' I mused as the second stalker placed a handkerchief on his bleeding lip. 'Miss Next, this is Adam Gnusense. Adam, Miss Next.' He waved weakly at me, looked at the bloodied handkerchief and sighed mournfully. I felt rather remorseful all of a sudden. 'Sorry to have hit you, Mr Gnusense,' I said apologetically, 'I didn't know what either of you was up to.' 'Occupational hazard, Miss Next.' 'Hey, Adam,' said Millon, suddenly sounding enthusiastic, 'do you have your own stalker yet?' » 'Somewhere,' said Gnusense, looking around, 'a Grade 34 loser. The sad bastard was rummaging through my bins last night. Passe or what!' 'Kids - tsk,' said Millon. 'It might have been de rigueur in the 42 sixties but the modern stalker is much more subtle. Long vigils, copious notes, timed entry and exits, telephoto lenses.' 'We live in sad times,' agreed Adam, shaking his head sadly. 'Must be off. I said I'd keep a close eye on Adrian Lush for a friend.' He stood up and shambled slowly away down the alley, stumbling on discarded beer cans. 'Not a great talker is old Adam,' said Millon in a whisper, 'but sticks to his target like a limpet. You wouldn't catch him rummaging through dustbins -- unless he was giving a masterclass for a few of the young pups, of course. Tell me, Miss Next, where have you been for the past two and a half years? It's been a bit dull here after the first eighteen months of you not showing up, I'd reduced my stalking to only three nights a week.' 'You'd never believe me.' 'You'd be surprised what I can believe. Aside from stalking I've just finished my first book: A Short History of the Special Operations Network. I'm also editor of Conspiracy Theorist magazine. In between pieces on the very tangible link between Goliath and Yorrick Kaine and the existence of a mysterious beast known only as "Guinzilla", we've run several articles devoted entirely to you and that Jane Eyre thing. We'd love to do a piece on your uncle Mycroft's work, too. Even though we know almost nothing, the conspiracy network is alive with healthy half-truths, lies and supposition. Did he really build an LCD cloaking device for cars?' 'Sort of 'And translating carbon paper?' 'He called it rossetionery.' 'And what about the ovinator? Conspiracy Theorist devotes several pages of unsubstantiated rumours to this one invention alone.' 'I don't know. Some sort of machine for cooking eggs, perhaps? Is there anything you don't know about my family?' 'Not a lot. I'm thinking of writing a biography of you. How about: Thursday Next - A Biography?' 'The title? Way too imaginative.' 'So I have your permission?' 43 'No, but if you can put a dossier together on Yorrick Kaine I'll tell you all about Aornis Hades.' 'Acheron's little sister? It's a deal! Are you sure I can't write your biography? I've already made a start.' 'Positive - if you find anything, knock on my door.' 'I can't. There's a blanket restraining order on all members of the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers. We're not allowed within a hundred yards of your place of residence.' I sighed. 'All right, just wave when I come out.' De Floss readily agreed to that plan and I left him rearranging his notebook, binoculars and camera and starting to make copious notes on his first encounter with me. I couldn't get rid of the poor deluded fool but a stalker just might - might -- be an ally. 44 Evade the Question Time PERFIDIOUS DANES 'HISTORICALLY OUR ENEMY', CLAIMS INSANE HISTORIAN 'Quite frankly, I was yim-pimpim appalled,' said England's leading mad history scholar yesterday. 'The eighth-century Danish attack on our flibble-flobble sceptred isle is a story of invasion, subjugation, plunder and exploitation that would remain bleep-bleepbaaaaa unequalled until we tried it ourselves many years later.' The confused and barely coherent historian's work has been authenticated by another equally feebleminded academic, who told us yesterday: 'The Danish invasion began in 786 when the Danes set up a kingdom in East Anglia. They didn't even use their own names either. They preferred to do their brutal work cowardly hiding beneath the pseudonyms of Angles, Bruts, and Flynns.' Further research has shown that the Danes stayed for over four hundred years and were only driven home by the crusading help of our new close friends the French. «»!??«. .-ONS,.,.,* Article in the New Oppressor, the official mouthpiece of the Whig Party 'How did Kaine rise so quickly to power?' I asked incredulously as Jofry and I queued patiently outside Swindon's Toad News Network studios that evening. 'When I was here last Kaine and the Whig Party were all but washed up after the Cardenio debacle.' Joffy looked grim and nodded towards a large crowd of uniformed Kaine followers who were waiting in silence for their glorious leader. 'Things haven't been good back here, Thurs. Kaine regained his seat after Samuel Pring was assassinated. The Whigs formed an alliance with the Liberals and elected Kaine as their leader. He has some sort W 45 of magnetism, and the numbers that attend his rallies increase all the time. His 'British Unification' stance has had much support - mostly among stupid people who can't be bothered to think for themselves.' 'War with Wales?' 'He hasn't said as such but a leopard doesn't change its spots. He won by a landslide after the previous government collapsed over the "cash for llamas" scandal. As soon as he was in power he proclaimed himself Chancellor. His Unreform Act last year restricted the vote to people with property.' 'How did he get Parliament to agree to that?' I muttered, aghast at the thought of it. 'We're not sure,' said Joffy sadly. 'Sometimes Parliament does the funniest things. But he's not happy just being Chancellor. He's arguing that committees and accountants only slow things down and if people really want trains to run on time and shopping trolleys to run straight, it can only be done by one man wielding unquestionable executive power -- a dictator.' 'So what's stopping him?' 'The President,' replied Joffy quietly. 'Formby has told Kaine that if he pushes for a dictatorial election he will stand against him, and Yorrick knows full well that Formby would win - he's as popular now as he ever was.' I thought for a moment. 'How old is President Formby?' 'That's the problem. He was eighty-four last May.' We fell silent for a moment, and shuffled with the queue up to the stage door, had our identities checked by two ugly men from SO-6 and were then ushered in. We took our seats at the back and waited patiently for the show to begin. It seemed hard to believe that Kaine had managed to inveigle his way to the top of English politics but, I reflected, anything can happen to a fictional character - a trait that Yorrick obviously exploited to the full. 'See that nasty-looking man on the edge of the stage?' asked Joffy. 'Yes,' I replied, following the line of Joffy's finger to a stocky man with short hair and no visible neck. 46 'Colonel Fawsten Gayle, Kaine's head of security. Not a man to trifle with. It's rumoured he was expelled from school for nailing his head to a park bench for a bet.' Standing next to Gayle was a cadaverous man with pinched features and small round spectacles. He was holding a battered red briefcase and was dressed in a rumpled sports jacket and corduroy trousers. 'Who's that?' 'Ernst Stricknene. Kaine's personal adviser.' I stared at them both for a while and noticed that, despite being barely two feet from one another, they didn't exchange a single 'word or look. Things in the Kaine camp were far from settled. If I could get close I'd just grab Yorrick and jump him straight to one of Jurisfiction's many prison books and that would be that. It looked as though I had got back home just in time. I consulted the complimentary copy of The New Oppressor I had found on my seat. 'Why is Kaine blaming the nation's woes on the Danish?' I asked. 'Because economically we're in a serious mess after losing to Russia in the Crimean War. They didn't just get Tunbridge Wells as war reparations but a huge chunk of cash, too. The country is near bankruptcy, Kaine wants to stay in power, so--' '--misdirection.' 'Bingo. He blames someone else.' 'But the Danish?' 'Shows how desperate he is, doesn't it? As a nation we've been blaming the Welsh and the French for far too long, and with the Russians out of the frame he's come up with Denmark as public enemy number one. He's using the Viking raids of ad 800 and the Danish Rule of England in the eleventh century as an excuse to whip up some misinformed xenophobia.' 'Ludicrous!' 'Agreed. The papers have been full of anti-Danish propaganda this past month. All Bang & Olufsen entertainment systems have been withdrawn owing to "safety" concerns and Lego has been banned pending "choking hazard" investigations. The list of outlawed 47 Danish writers is becoming longer by the second. Kierkegaard's works have already been declared illegal under the Undesirable Danish Literature Act and will be burned. Hans Christian Andersen will be next, we're told - and after that, maybe even Karen Blixen.' 'They can pull my copy of Out of Africa from my cold dead fingers.' 'Mine too. You'd better make sure Hamlet doesn't tell anyone where he's from. Shhh. I think something's happening.' Something was happening. The floor manager had walked out on to the set and was explaining to us exactly what we should do. After a protracted series of technical checks, the host of the show walked on to applause from the audience. This was Tudor Webastow of The Owl, who had made a career out of being just inquisitive enough to be considered a realistic political foil for the press but not so inquisitive that he would be found in the Thames ¦wearing concrete overshoes. He sat down at the middle of a table with two empty chairs either side of him and sorted his notes. Unusually for Evade the Question Time the show had two speakers instead of four, but tonight was special: Yorrick Kaine would be facing his political opposition, Mr Redmond van de Poste, of the Commonsense Party. Mr Webastow cleared his throat and began. 'Good evening and welcome to Evade the Question Time, the nation's premier topical talk show. Tonight, as every night, a panel of distinguished public figures generally evade answering the audience's questions and instead tow the party line.' There was applause at this, and Webastow continued: 'The show tonight comes from Swindon in Wessex. Sometimes called the third capital of England or the "Venice on the M4", the Swindon of today is a financial and manufacturing powerhouse, its citizens a cross-section of professionals and artists who are politically indicative of the country as a whole. I'd also like to mention at this point that Evade the Question Time is brought to you by Neat-Fit® Exhaust Systems, the tailpipe of choice.' He paused for a moment and shuffled his papers. 'We are honoured to have with us tonight two very different 48 speakers from opposite ends of the political spectrum. First I would like to introduce a man who was politically dead two years ago but has managed to pull himself up to the second-highest political office in the nation with a devoted following of many millions, not all of whom are deranged. Ladies and gentlemen, Chancellor Yorrick Kaine!' There was a mixed reception as Kaine walked on to the stage, and he grinned and nodded his head for the benefit of the crowd. I leaned forward in my seat. He didn't appear to have aged at all in the two years since I had last seen him, which is what I would expect from a fictioneer. Still looking to be in his late twenties with black hair swept neatly to the side, he might have been a male model from a knitting pattern. I knew he wasn't. I'd checked. 'Thank you very much,' said Kaine, sitting at the table and clasping his hands in front of him. 'May I say that I always regard Swindon as a home away from home.' There was a brief twitter of delight from the front of the audience, mostly little old ladies who looked upon Kaine as the son they never had. Webastow went on: 'And opposing him we are also honoured to welcome Mr Redmond van de Poste of the opposition Commonsense Party.' There was notably less applause as van de Poste walked in. He was older than Kaine by almost thirty years, looked tired and gaunt, wore round horn-rimmed spectacles and had a high-domed forehead that shone when it caught the light. He looked about furtively before sitting down stiffly. I guessed the reason. He was wearing a heavy flak vest beneath his suit - and with good reason. The last three Commonsense leaders had all met with mysterious deaths. The previous incumbent had been Mrs Fay Bentoss, who had died after being hit by a car. Not so unusual, you might think - except she had been in her front room when it happened. 'Thank you, gentlemen, and welcome. The first question comes from Miss Pupkin.' A small woman stood up and said shyly: 'Hello. A Terrible Thing was done by Somebody this week, and I'd like to ask the panel if they condemn this.' 49 'A very good question,' responded Webastow. 'Mr Kaine, perhaps you'd like to start the ball rolling?' 'Thank you, Tudor. Yes, I condemn utterly and completely the Terrible Thing in the strongest possible terms. We in the Whig Party are appalled by the way in which Terrible Things are done in this great nation of ours with no retribution against the Somebody who did them. I would also like to point out that the current spate of Terrible Things being undertaken in our towns and cities is a burden we inherited from the Commonsense Party, and I would like to point out that in real terms the occurrence of Terrible Things has dropped by over twenty-eight per cent since we took office.' There was applause at this. Webastow then asked van de Poste for his comments. 'Well,' said Redmond with a sigh, 'quite clearly my learned friend has got his facts mixed up. According to the way we massage the figures, Terrible Things are actually on the increase. But I'd like to stop playing party politics for a moment and state for the record that although this is of course a great personal tragedy for those involved, condemning out of hand these acts does not allow us to understand why they occur and more needs to be done to get to the root cause of--' 'Yet again,' interrupted Kaine, 'yet again we see the Commonsense Party shying away from its responsibilities and failing to act toughly on unspecified difficulties. I hope all the unnamed people who have suffered unclearly defined problems will understand--' 'I did say we condemned the Terrible Thing,' put in van de Poste, 'and I might add that we have been conducting a study into the entire range of Terrible Things all the way from Just Annoying to Outrageously Awful and will act on these findings - if we gain power.' 'Trust the Commonsensers to do things by half measures!' scoffed Kaine, who obviously enjoyed these sorts of discussions> 'By going only so far as "Outrageously Awful" Mr van de Poste is selling his own nation short. We in the Whig Party have been looking at the Terrible Things problem and propose a zero-tolerance attitude to offences as low as Mildly Inappropriate. Only in this way can the 5O Somebodies who commit Terrible Things be stopped before they move on to acts that are Obscenely Perverse.' There was another smattering of applause, presumably as the audience tried to figure out whether 'Just Annoying' was worse than 'Mildly Inappropriate'. 'Succinctly put,' announced Webastow. 'At the end of the first round I will award three points to Mr Kaine for an excellent nonspecific condemnation, plus one bonus point for blaming the previous government, and another for successfully mutating the question to promote the party line. Mr van de Poste gets a point for a firm rebuttal, but only two points for his condemnation as he tried to inject an impartial and intelligent observation. So at the end of the first round, it's Kaine leading with five points, and van de Poste on three.' There was more applause as the numbers came up on the scoreboard. 'On to the next stage of the show, which we call the "not answering the question" round. We have a question from Miss Ives.' A middle-aged woman put up her hand and asked: 'Does the panel think that sugar should be added to rhubarb pie or the sweetness deficit made up by an additive, such as custard?' 'Thank you, Miss Ives. Mr van de Poste, would you care to not answer this question first?' 'Well,' said Redmond, eyeing the audience for any possible assassins, 'this question goes straight to the heart of government, and I'd like first to point out that the Commonsense Party, when we were in power, tried more ways of doing things than any other party in living memory, and in consequence came closer to the right way of doing something, even if we didn't know it at the time.' There was applause and Joffy and I exchanged looks. 'Does it get any better?' I whispered. 'Wait until they get on to Denmark.' 'I utterly refute,' began Kaine, 'the implication that we aren't doing things the right way. To demonstrate this I'd like to wander completely off the point and talk about the Health Service Overhaul 5i that we will launch next year. We want to replace the outdated "preventative" style of healthcare this country has relentlessly pursued with a "wait until it gets really bad" system which will target those most in need of medical treatment - the sick. Yearly health screenings for all citizens will end and will be replaced by a "tertiary" diagnostic regime which will save money and resources.' Again, there was applause. 'Okay,' announced Webastow, 'I'm going to give van de Poste three points for successfully not answering that question at all, but five points to Kaine, who not only ignored the question but instead used it as a platform for his own political agenda. So with six rounds still to go, we have Kaine with ten points, and van de Poste with six. Next question please.' A young man with dyed red hair sitting in our row put his hand up. 'I would like to suggest that the Danish are not our enemy, and this is nothing more than a cynical move by the Whigs to blame someone else for our own economic troubles.' 'Ah!' said Webstow. 'The controversial Danish question. I'm going to let Mr van de Poste avoid this question first.' Van de Poste looked unwell all of a sudden and glanced nervously towards where Stricknene and Gayle were glaring at him. 'I think,' he began slowly, 'that if the Danish are as Mr Kaine describes, I will offer my support to his policies.' He dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief as Yorrick began: 'When I came to power England was a nation in the grip of economic decline and social ills. No one realised it at the time and I took it upon myself to demonstrate by any means in my power the depths to which this great nation had fallen. With the support of my followers, I have managed to demonstrate reasonably clearly that things aren't as good as we thought* they were, and what we imagined was peace and coexistence with our neighbours was actually a fool's paradise of delusion and paranoia. Anyone who thinks . . .' I leaned over to Jofry. 52 'Do people believe this garbage?' 'I'm afraid so. I think he's working on the "people will far more readily believe a big lie than a small one" principle. Still surprises me, though.' '. . .whoever disturbs this mission,' rattled on Kaine, 'is an enemy of the people, whether they be Danish or Welsh sympathisers eager to overthrow our nation, or ill-informed lunatics who do not deserve the vote, or a voice.' There was applause but a few boos, too. I saw Colonel Gayle make notes on a scrap of paper of who was shouting them, counting out the seat numbers as he did so. 'But why the Danish?' continued the man with the red hair. 'They have a notoriously fair system of parliament, an impeccable record of human rights and a deserved reputation for upstanding charitable works in Third World nations - I think these are lies, Mr Kaine!' There were gasps and intakes of breath but a few headnoddings, too. Even, I think, from van de Poste. 'For the moment at least,' began Kaine in a conciliatory tone, 'everyone is permitted an opinion, and I thank our friend for his candour. However, I would like to bring the audience's attention to an unrelated yet emotive issue that will turn the discussion away from the embarrassing shortcomings of my administration and back into the arena of populist politics. Namely: the disgraceful record of puppy and kitten death when the Commonsense Party were in power.' At the mention of puppies and kittens dying there were cries of alarm from the elder members of the audience. Confident that he had turned the discussion, Kaine went on: 'As things stand at the moment, over one thousand unwanted puppies and kittens are destroyed each year by lethal injection which is freely available to veterinarians in Denmark. As committed humanitarians, the Whig Party has always condemned unwanted pet extermination.' 'Mr van de Poste?' asked Webastow. 'How do you react to Mr Kaine's diversionary tactics regarding kitten death?' 'Clearly,' began van de Poste, 'kitten and puppy death is regrettable, 53 but we in the Commonsense Party must bring it to everyone's attention that unwanted pets have to be destroyed in this manner. If people were more responsible with their pets, then this sort of thing wouldn't happen.' 'Typical of the Commonsense approach!' barked Kaine. 'Blaming the population as though they were feeble-minded fools with little personal responsibility! We in the Whig Party would never condone such an accusation, and are appalled by Mr van de Poste's outburst. I will personally pledge to you now that I will make the puppy home deficit problem my primary concern when I am made dictator.' There were loud cheers at this and I shook my head sadly. 'Well,' said Webastow happily, 'I think I will give Mr Kaine a full five points for his masterful misdirection, plus a bonus two points for obscuring the Danish issue rather than facing up to it. Mr van de Poste, I'm sorry that I can only offer you a single point. Not only did you tacitly agree with Mr Kaine's outrageous foreign policy, but you answered the unwanted pet problem with an honest reply. So at the end of round three Kaine is galloping ahead with seventeen points, and van de Poste bringing up the rear with seven. Our next question comes from Mr Wedgwood.' 'Yes,' said a very old man in the third row, 'I should like to know if the panel supports the Goliath Corporation's change to a faith-based corporate management system.' And so it dragged on for nearly an hour, Kaine making outrageous claims and most of the audience failing to notice or, even worse, care. I was extremely glad when the programme drew to a close with Kaine leading thirty-eight points to van de Poste's sixteen, and we filed out of the door. 'What now?' asked Jofiy. I took my Jurisfiction TravelBook from my pocket and opened it at the page that offered a paragraph of The Sword of th$ Zenobians, one of the many unpublished works Jurisfiction used as a prison. All I had to do was grab Kaine's hand and read. 'I'm going to take Kaine back to the BookWorld with me. He's far too dangerous to leave out here.' 54 'I agree,' said Joffy, leading me round to where two large limousines were waiting for the Chancellor. 'He'll want to meet his "adoring" public so you should have a chance.' We found the crowd waiting for him and pushed our way to the front. Most of the TV audience had turned up to see Kaine but not for the same purpose as me. There was excited chatter as Kaine appeared. He smiled serenely and walked down the line, shook hands and was presented with flowers and babies to kiss. Close by his side was Colonel Gayle with a phalanx of guards who stared into the crowd to make sure no one tried anything. Behind them all I could see was Stricknene still clinging on to the red briefcase. I partially hid myself behind an enthusiastic Kaine acolyte waving a Whig Party flag so Kaine didn't see me. We had crossed swords once before and he knew what I was capable of, much as I knew what he was capable of- the last time we met he had tried to have us all eaten by the Glatisant, a sort of hell-beast from the depths of mankind's most depraved imagination. If he could conjure up fictional beasts at will, I would have to be careful. But then, as the small group moved closer, I started to feel a curious impulse not to trap Kaine but to join in with the infectious enthusiasm. The atmosphere was electric, and being swept along with the crowd was something that just suddenly seemed right. Joffy had fallen under the spell already and was waving and whistling his support. I fought down a strong urge to stop what I was doing and perhaps give Yorrick the benefit of the doubt. He and his entourage were now upon us. His hand came out towards the crowd. I steadied myself, glanced at the opening lines ofZenobians and waited for the right moment. I would have to hold on tight as I read our way into the BookWorld but that didn't bother me as I'd done it many times before. What did worry me was the fact that my resolve was softening fast. Before the Kaine magnetism could take me over any further I took a deep breath, grabbed the outstretched hand and muttered quickly: 'It was a time of peace within the land of the Zenobians . . I It didn't take long for me to jump into the BookWorld. Within 55 a few moments the bustling night-time crowd in the car park of the Toad News Network's studios had vanished from view to be replaced by a warm verdant valley where herds of unicorns grazed peacefully under the summer sun. Grammasites wheeled in the blue skies, riding the thermals that rose from the warm grassland. 'So!' I said, turning to Kaine and receiving something of a shock. Beside me was not Yorrick but a middle-aged man holding a Whig Party flag and staring at the crystal-clear waters babbling through a gap in the rocks. I must have grabbed the wrong hand. 'Where am I?' asked the man, who was understandably confused. 'It's a near death experience,' I told him hastily, 'what do you think?' 'It's beautiful!' 'Good. Don't get too fond of it, I'm taking you back.' I grasped him again, muttered the password under my breath and jumped out of fiction, something I had a lot less trouble with. We arrived behind some dustbins just as Kaine and his entourage were driving off. I ran up to Joffy, who was still waving goodbye, and told him to snap out of it. 'Sorry,' he said, shaking his head. 'What happened to you?' 'Don't ask. C'mon, let's go home.' We left the scene as a very excited and confused middle-aged man tried to tell anyone who would listen about his 'near death' experience. I went to bed past midnight, my head spinning from my experience of Kaine's almost hypnotic hold on the populace. Still, I wasn't out of ideas. I could try to grab him again and, failing that, use the eraserhead I had smuggled out of the BookWorld. Destroying him didn't bother me. I'd be no more guilty of murder than an author with a delete key. But while Formby opposed him K^aine would not become dictator, so I had a bit of time to work up a strategy. I could observe, and plan. 'Time spent doing renaissance,' Mrs Malaprop used to tell me, 'is never wasted.' 56 4 A Town Like Swindon FORMBY DENIES KAINE President-for-life George Formby dential palace in Wigan, told vetoed Chancellor Kaine's attempts reporters: 'Eece, I wouldn't have a to make himself dictator of ***** like that run a grocer's, let England yesterday during one of alone a country!' Chancellor Kaine, the most heated exchanges this angered by the President's remark, nation has ever seen. Kaine's declared Formby 'too old to have Ultimate Executive Power Bill, a say in this nations future', 'out of already passed by Parliament, touch' and 'a poor singer', the last requires only the presidential of which he was forced to retract signature to become law. President after a public outcry.' Formby, speaking from the presi .«5Sa*K!;*a VsSMPi*^®*' Article in The Toad, 13 July 1988 It was the morning following Evade the Question Time and I had slept badly, waking up before Friday, which was unusual. I stared at the ceiling and thought about Kaine. I'd have to follow him to his next public engagement before he discovered that I had returned. I was just thinking about why Joffy and I had nearly been sucked into the whole Yorrick circus when Friday awoke and blinked at me in a breakfast sort of way. I dressed quickly and took him downstairs. 'Welcome to Swindon Breakfast with Toad,' announced the TV presenter as we walked in, 'with myself, Warwick Fridge, and the lovely Leigh Onzolent--' 'Hello--' '--bringing you two hours of news and views, fun and competitions to see you into the day. Breakfast with Toad is sponsored by Arkwright's Doorknobs, the finest door furniture in Wessex.' 57 Warwick turned to Leigh, who was looking way too glamorous for eight in the morning. She smiled and continued: 'This morning we'll be speaking to croquet captain Roger Kapok about Swindon's chances in Superhoop '88, and also to a man who claims to have seen unicorns in a near death experience. Network Toad's resident dodo whisperer will be on hand for your pet's psychiatric problems and our Othello backwards-reading competition reaches the quarter-finals. Later on we talk to Mr Jofry Next about tomorrow's potential resurrection with St Zvlkx, but first, the news. The CEO of Goliath has announced contrition targets to be attainable within--' 'Morning, daughter,' said my mother, who had just walked into the kitchen, 'I never thought of you as an early riser.' 'I wasn't until Junior turned up,' I replied, pointing at Friday, who was eyeing the porridge pot expectantly, 'but if there's one thing he knows how to do, it's eat.' 'It's what you did best when you were his age. Oh,' added my mother absently, 'I have to give you something, by the way.' She hurried from the room and returned with a sheath of official looking papers. 'Mr Hicks left them for you.' Braxton Hicks was my old boss back at Swindon SpecOps. I had left abruptly, and from the look of his opening letter it didn't look as if he was very happy about it. I had been demoted to 'Literary Detective Researcher', and the letter demanded my gun and badge back. The second letter was an outstanding warrant of arrest relating to a trumped-up charge of possession of a small amount of illegally owned bootleg cheese. 'Is cheese still overpriced?' I asked my mother. 'Criminal!' she muttered. 'Over five hundred per cent duty. And it's not just cheese, either. They've extended the duty t£> cover all dairy products - even yogurt.' I sighed. I would probably have to go into SpecOps and explain myself. I could beg forgiveness, go to the stressperts and plead posttraumatic stress disorder or Xplkqulkiccasia or something and ask 58 for my old job back. Perhaps if I were to get handy with a nine iron it might swing things with my golf-mad boss. Outside SpecOps was not a good place to be if I wanted to hunt Yorrick Kaine or lobby the ChronoGuard for my husband back; it would help to have access to all the SpecOps and police databases. I looked through the papers. I had apparently been found guilty of the cheese transgression and fined ,£5,000 plus costs. 'Did you pay this?' I asked my mother, showing her the court demand. 'Yes.' 'Then I should pay you back.' 'No need,' she replied, adding before I could thank her: 'I paid it out of your overdraft -- which is quite big, now.' 'How . . . thoughtful of you.' 'Don't mention it. Bacon and eggs?' 'Please.' 'Coming up. Would you get the milk?' I went to the front door to fetch the milk and as I bent down to pick it up there was a whang-thop noise as a bullet zipped past my ear and thudded into the door frame next to me. I was about to slam the door and grab my automatic when an unaccountable stillness took hold, like a sudden becalming. Above me a pigeon hung frozen in the air, its wingtip feathers splayed as it reached the bottom of a downstroke. A motorcyclist on the road was balancing, impossibly still, and passers-by were now as stiff and unmoving as statues -- even Pickwick had stopped in mid-waddle. Time, for the moment at least, had frozen. I knew only one person who had a face that could stop the clock like this -- my father. The question was - where was he? I looked up and down the road. Nothing. Since I was about to be assassinated I thought it might help to know who was doing the kt assassinating, so I walked down the garden path and across the road f- to the alley where de Floss had hidden himself so badly the previous day. It was here that I found my father looking at a small and very pretty blonde woman no more than five foot high who was time frozen halfway through the process of disassembling a sniper's rifle. 59 She was probably in her late twenties and her hair was pulled back into a pony tail held tight with a flower hair tie. I noted with a certain detached amusement that there was a lucky gonk attached to the trigger guard and that the stock was covered with pink fur. Dad looked younger than me but he was instantly recognisable. The odd nature of the time business tended to make operatives live nonlinear lives - every time I met him he was a different age. 'Hello, Dad.' 'You were correct,' he said, comparing the woman's frozen features with those on a series of photographs, 'it's an assassin all right.' 'Never mind that for the moment!' I cried happily. 'How are you? I haven't seen you for years!' He turned and stared at me. 'My dear girl, we spoke only a few hours ago!' 'No we didn't.' 'We did, actually.' 'We did not.' He stared at me for a moment and looked at his watch, shook it and listened to it, then shook it again. 'Here,' I said, handing him the chronograph I was wearing, 'take mine.' 'Very nice - thank you. Ah! I stand corrected. Three hours from now. It's an easy mistake to make. Did you have any thoughts about that matter we discussed?' 'No, Dad,' I said in an exasperated tone, 'it hasn't happened yet, remember?' 'You're always so linear,' he muttered, returning to comparing the pictures with the assassin. 'I think you ought to try and expand your horizons a bit - bingo!' He had found a picture that matched my assassin and read the label on the back. » 'Expensive hit-woman working in the Wiltshire-Oxford area. Looks petite and bijou but is as deadly as the best of them. She trades under the name the Windowmaker.' He paused. 'Should be Widowmaker, shouldn't it?' 60 'But I heard the Windowmaker was lethal,' I pointed out. 'A contract with her and you're deader than corduroy.' 'I heard that too,' replied my father thoughtfully. 'Sixty-seven victims; sixty-eight if she was the one that did Samuel Pring. She must have meant to miss. It's the only explanation. In any event, her real name is Cindy Stoker.' This was unexpected. Cindy was married to Spike Stoker, an operative over at SO-17 whom I had worked with a couple of times. I had even given him advice on how best to tell Cindy that he hunted down werewolves for a living - not the choicest profession for a potential husband. 'Cindy is my assassin? Cindy is the Windowmaker?' 'You know her?' ' Of her. Wife of a good friend.' 'Well, don't get too chummy. She tries and fails to kill you three times. The second time with a bomb under your car on Monday, then next Friday at eleven in the morning - but she fails and you, ultimately, choose for her to die. I shouldn't really be telling you this, but as we discussed, we've got bigger fish to fry.' 'What bigger fish to fry?' 'Sweetpea,' he said, giving me his stern 'father knows best' voice, 'I'm really not going to go through it all again. Now I have to get back to work - there's a TimePhoon brewing in the Dark Ages and if we don't sort it out we'll be picking anachronisms out of the timeline for a century.' 'Wait -- you're working at the ChronoGuard?' 'I've told you all about this already! Do try and keep up - you're going to need all your wits about you over the next week. Now, get back to the house and I'll start the world up again.' He wasn't in a very chatty mood, but since I would be seeing him later and would find out then what we had just discussed, there didn't seem a lot of point in talking anyway, so I bade him goodbye, and as I walked up the garden path time returned to normal with a snap. The pigeon flew on, the traffic continued to move and everything carried on as usual. Time had stopped so completely 61 that everything my father and I had talked about occupied no time at all. Still, at least this meant I wouldn't have to be constantly looking over my shoulder as I knew when she would try to get rid of me. Mind you, I wasn't looking forward to her death at my hands. Spike would be severely pissed off. I returned to the kitchen, where Mum was still hard at work cooking my bacon and eggs. To her and Friday I had been gone less than twenty seconds. 'What was that noise when you were at the door, Thursday?' 'Probably a car backfiring.' 'Funny,' she said, 'I could have sworn it was a high-velocity bullet striking wood. Two eggs or one?' 'Two, please.' I picked up the newspaper, which was running a five-page expose revealing that 'Danish pastries' were actually brought to Denmark by displaced Viennese bakers in the sixteenth century. 'In what other ways,' thundered the article, 'have the dishonest Danes made fools of us?' I shook my head sadly and turned to another page. Mum said she could look after Friday until teatime, something I got her to promise before she had fully realised the implications of nappy changing and saw just how bad his manners were at breakfast. He yelled, 'Ut enim ad veniam!'', which might have meant: 'Look how far I can throw my porridge!' as a spoonful of oatmeal flew across the kitchen, much to the delight of DH82, who had learned pretty quickly that hanging around messy toddlers at mealtimes was an extremely productive pastime. Hamlet came down to breakfast, followed, after a prudent gap, by Emma. They bade each other good morning in such an obvious way that only their serious demeanour kept me from laughing out loud. 'Did you sleep well, Lady Hamilton?' asked Hamlet. 'I did, thank you. My room faces east for the morning light, you know.' 'Ah!' replied Hamlet. 'Mine doesn't. I believe it was once the 62 boxroom. It has pretty pink wallpaper and a bedside light shaped like Tweetie-pie. Not that I noticed much, of course, being fast asleep - on my own.' 'Of course.' 'Let me show you something,' said Mum after breakfast. I followed her down to Mycroft's workshop. Alan had kept Mum's dodos trapped in the potting shed all night and even now threatened to peck anyone who so much as looked at him 'in a funny way'. 'Pickwick!' I said sternly. 'Are you going to let your son bully those dodos?' Pickwick looked the other way and pretended to have an itchy foot. To be honest she couldn't control Alan any more than I could. Only half an hour previously he had chased the postman out of the garden with an angry plink-plink-plink noise, something even the postman had to admit 'was a first'. Mum opened the side door to the large workshop and we entered. This was where my Uncle Mycroft did all his inventing. It was here that he had demonstrated, among many other things, translating carbon paper, a sarcasm early warning device, Nextian geometry and, most important to me, the Prose Portal - the method by which I first entered fiction. Mother was always nervous in Mycroft's lab. Many years ago he had developed some four-dimensional paper, the idea being that you could print on the same sheet of paper again and again, isolating the different over-printings in marginally different time zones that could be read by the use of temporal spectacles. By going to the nanosecond level, a million sheets of text or pictures could be stored on one sheet of paper in a single second. Brilliant - but the paper looked identical to a standard sheet of A4, and it had been a long, contentious family argument that my mother used the irreplaceable prototype to line the compost bucket. It was no **t wonder she was careful near his inventions. * 'What did you want to show me?' She smiled and led me to the end of the workshop. There, next 63 to my stuff, which she had rescued from my apartment, was the unmistakable shape of my Porsche 356 Speedster hidden beneath a dustsheet. 'I've run the engine every month and kept it MOTed for you. I even took it for a spin a couple of times.' She pulled the sheet off with a flourish. The car still looked slightly shabby after our various encounters, but just the way I liked it. I gently touched the bullet holes that had been made by Hades all those years ago, and the bent front wing where I had slid it into the River Severn. I opened the garage doors. 'Thanks, Mum. Sure you're all right with the boy Friday?' 'Until four this afternoon. But you have to promise me something.' 'What's that?' 'That you'll come to my Eradications Anonymous group this evening.' 'Mum--!' 'It will do you good. You might enjoy it. Might meet someone. Might make you forget Linden.' 'Landen. His name's Landen. And I don't need or want to forget him.' 'Then the group will support you. Besides, you might learn something. Oh, and would you take Hamlet with you? Mr Bismarck has a bee in his bonnet about Danes because of that whole silly Schleswig-Holstein thingummy.' I narrowed my eyes. Could Joffy be right? 'What about Emma? Do you want me to take her, too?' 'No. Why?' 'Er, no reason.' I picked up Friday and gave him a kiss. 'Be good, Friday. You're staying with Nana for the* day.' Friday looked at me, looked at Mum, stuck his finger up his nose and said: 'Sunt in culpa qui qfflcia id est laborum?' I ruffled his hair and he showed me a bogey he had found. I declined the present, wiped his hand with a hanky, then went to 64 look for Hamlet. I found him in the front garden demonstrating a thrust-and-parry sword fight to Emma and Pickwick. Even Alan had left off bullying the other dodos and was watching in silence. I called out to Hamlet and he came running. 'Sorry,' said the prince as I opened the garage doors, just demonstrating how that damn fool Laertes gets his comeuppance.' I showed him how to get into the Porsche, dropped in myself, started the engine and drove off down the hill towards the Brunei Centre. 'You seem to be getting on very well with Emma.' 'Who?' asked Hamlet, unconvincingly vague. 'Lady Hamilton.' 'Oh, her. Nice girl. We have a lot in common.' 'Such as--?' 'Well,' said Hamlet, thinking hard, 'we both have a good friend called Horatio.' We motored on down past the magic roundabout and I pointed out the new stadium with its four floodlighting towers standing tall among the low housing. 'That's our croquet stadium,' 1 said, 'thirty thousand seats. Home of the Swindon Mallets croquet team.' 'Croquet is a national sport out here?' 'Oh yes,' I replied, knowing a thing or two about it since I used to play myself. 'It has evolved a lot since the early days. For a start the teams are bigger - ten a side in World Croquet League. The players have to get their balls through the hoops in the quickest possible time, so it can be quite rough. A stray ball can pack a wallop and a flailing mallet is potentially lethal. The WCL insist on body armour and perspex barriers for the spectators.' I turned left into Manchester Road and parked behind a Griffin6 Lowrider. 'What now?' 'Haircut. You don't think I'm going to spend the next few weeks looking like Joan of Arc, do you?' 'Ah!' said Hamlet. 'You hadn't mentioned it for a while so I'd 65 stopped noticing. If it's all right with you, I'll just stay here and write a letter to Horatio. Does "pirate" have one "t" or two?' 'One.' I walked into Mum's hairdresser. The stylists looked at my hair with a sort of shocked numbness until Lady Volescamper, who along with her increasingly eccentric mayoral husband constituted Swindon's most visible aristocracy, suddenly pointed at me and said in a strident tone that could shatter glass: 'That's the style I want. Something new. Something retro -- something to cause a sensation at the Swindon Mansion House Ball!' Mrs Barnet, who was both the chief stylist and official gossip laureate of Swindon, kept her look of horror to herself and then said diplomatically: 'Of course. And may I say that Her Grace's boldness matches her sense of style.' Lady Volescamper returned to her Femok magazine, appearing not to recognise me, which was just as well - the last time I went to Vole Towers a hell beast from the darkest depths of the human imagination trashed the entrance lobby. 'Hello, Thursday,' said Mrs Barnet, wrapping a sheet around me with an expert flourish, 'haven't seen you for a while.' 'I've been away.' 'In prison?' 'No --just away.' 'Ah. How would you like it? I have it on good authority that the "Joan of Arc" look is set to be quite popular this summer.' 'You know I'm not a fashion person, Gladys. Just get rid of the dopey haircut, would you?' 'As madame wishes.' She hummed to herself for a moment, then asked: 'Been on holiday this year?' I got back to the car a half-hour later to find Hamlet talking to a traffic warden, who seemed so engrossed in whatever he was telling her that she wasn't writing me a ticket. 'And that,' said Hamlet as soon as I came within earshot, making 66 a thrusting motion with his hand, 'was when I cried: "A rat, a rat!" and killed the unseen old man. Hello, Thursday - goodness, that's short, isn't it?' 'It's better than it was. C'mon, I've got to go and get my job back.' 'Job?' asked Hamlet as we drove off, leaving a very indignant traffic warden, who wanted to know what happened next. 'Yes. Out here you need money to live.' 'I've got lots,' said Hamlet generously. 'You should have some of mine.' 'Somehow I don't think fictional kroner from an unspecified century will cut the mustard down at the First Goliath - and put the skull away. They aren't generally considered a fashion accessory here in the Outland.' 'They're all the rage where I come from.' 'Well, not here. Put it in this Tesco's bag.' 'STOP!' I screeched to a halt. 'What?' 'That, over there. It's me/' Before I could say anything Hamlet had jumped out of the car and run across the road to a coin-operated machine on the corner of the street. I parked the Speedster and walked over to join him. He was staring with delight at the simple box, the top half of which was glazed; inside was a suitably attired mannequin visible from the waist up. 'It's called a Will-Speak machine,' I said, passing him a carrier bag. 'Here - put the skull in the bag like I asked.' 'What does it do?' 'Officially it's called a Shakespeare Soliloquy Vending Automaton,' I explained. 'You put in two shillings and get a short snippet from Shakespeare.' 'Of me?' 'Yes,' I said, 'of you.' For it was, of course, a Hamlet Will-Speak machine, and the mannequin Hamlet sat looking blankly out at the flesh-and-blood Hamlet standing next to me. 67 ^«a 'For it was, of course, a Hamlet Will-Speak machine, and the mannequin Hamlet sat looking blankly out at the flesh-and-blood Hamlet standing next to me . . .' 68 A 'Can we hear a bit?' asked Hamlet excitedly. 'If you want. Here.' I dug out a coin and placed it in the machine. There was a whirring and clicking as the dummy came to life. 'To be, or not to be,' began the mannequin in a hollow metallic voice. The machine had been built in the thirties and was now pretty much worn out. 'That is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind--' Hamlet was fascinated, like a child listening to a tape recording of their own voice for the first time. 'Is that really me?' he asked. 'The words are yours - but actors do it a lot better.' '--or to take arms against a sea of troubles--' 'Actors?' 'Yes. Actors, playing Hamlet.' He looked confused. '--That flesh is heir to--' 'I don't understand.' 'Well,' I began, looking around to check that no one was listening, 'you know that you are Hamlet, from Shakespeare's HamletT 'Yes?' '--To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream--' 'Well, that's a play, and out here in the Outland, people act out that play.' 'With me?' 'Of you. Pretending to be you.' 'But I'm the real me?' '--Who would fardels bear--' 'In a manner of speaking.' 'Ahhh,' he said after a few moments of deep thought, 'I see. Like the whole Murder of Gonzago thing. I wondered how it all worked. Can we go and see me some time?' 'I ... suppose,' I answered uneasily. 'Do you really want to?' '---from whose bourn No traveller returns--' 'Of course. I've heard that some people in the Outland think I 69 am a dithering twit unable to make up his mind rather than a dynamic leader of men, and these "play" things you describe will prove it to me one way or the other.' I tried to think of the movie in which he prevaricates the least. 'We could get the Zeffirelli version out on video for you to look at.' 'Who plays me?' 'Mel Gibson.' '--Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all--' Hamlet stared at me, mouth open. 'But that's incredibleY he said ecstatically. 'I'm Mel's biggest fan!' He thought for a moment. 'So. . . Horatio must be played by Danny Glover, yes?' '--sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought--' 'No, no. Listen: the Lethal Weapon series is nothing like Hamlet.' 'Well,' replied the prince reflectively, 'in that I think you might be mistaken. The Martin Riggs character begins with self-doubt and contemplates suicide over the loss of a loved one, but eventually turns into a decisive man of action and kills all the bad guys.' He paused for a moment. 'Same as the Mad Max series, really. Is Ophelia played by Patsy Kensit?' 'No,' I replied, trying to be patient, 'Helena Bonham Carter.' He perked up when he heard this. 'This gets better and better! When I tell Ophelia, she'll flip - if she hasn't already.' 'Perhaps,' I said thoughtfully, 'you'd better see the Olivier version instead. Come on, we've work to do.' '--their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.' The Will-Speak Hamlet stopped clicking and whirring and sat silent once more, waiting for the next florin. 70 5 Ham(let) and Cheese 'seven wonders of swindon' naming bureaucracy unveiled After five years of careful consideration, Swindon City Council has unveiled the naming procedure for the city's much-vaunted 'Seven Wonders' tourism plan. The twenty-seven-point procedure is the most costly and complicated piece of bureaucracy the city has ever devised and might even be included as one of the wonders itself. The plan will be undertaken by the Swindon Special Com mittee for Wonders which will consider applications prepared by the Seven Wonders Working Party from six separate name selection subcommittees. Once chosen, the Wonders will be further scrutinised by eight different oversight committees before being adopted. The byzantine and needlessly expensive system is already tipped to win the coveted 'Red Tape' award from Bureaucracy Today. *%M!fc« *WS*>?m**°??*-- **1^ Article in Swindon Globe News, 12 June 1988 I drove to the car park above the Brunei Centre and bought a payanddisplay ticket, noting how they had almost tripled in price since I was here last. I looked in my purse. I had fifteen pounds, three shillings and an old Skyrail ticket. 'Short of cash?' asked Hamlet as we walked down the stairs to the street-level concourse. 'Let's just say I'm very "receipt rich" at present.' Money had never been a problem in the BookWorld. All the details of life were taken care of by something called 'Narrative Assumption'. A reader would assume you had gone shopping, or gone to the toilet, or brushed your hair, so a writer never needed to outline it - which was just as well, really. I'd forgotten all about 7i the real-world trivialities, but I was actually quite enjoying them, in a mind-dulling sort of way. 'It says here,' said Hamlet, who had been reading the newspaper, 'that Denmark invaded England and put hundreds of innocent English citizens to death without trial!' 'It was the Vikings in 786, Hamlet. I hardly think that warrants the headline: "Bloodthirsty Danes Go on Rampage". Besides, at the time they were no more Danish than we were English.' 'So we're not the historical enemies of England?' 'Not at all.' 'And eating rollmop herrings won't lead to erectile dysfunction?' 'No. And keep your voice down. All these people are real, not D-7 generic crowd types. Out here, you only exist in a play.' 'Okay,' he said, stopping at an electronics shop and staring at the TVs. 'Who's she?' 'Lola Vavoom. An actress.' 'Really? Has she ever played Ophelia?' 'Many times.' 'Was she better than Helena Bonham Carter?' 'Both good -just different.' 'Different? What do you mean?' 'They both brought different things to the role.' Hamlet laughed. 'I think you're confusing the matter, Thursday. Ophelia is just Ophelia.' 'Not out here. Listen, I'm just going to see how bad my overdraft is.' 'How you Outlanders complicate matters!' he murmured. 'If we were in a book right now you'd be accosted by a solicitor who tells you a wealthy aunt has died and left you lots of money - and then we'd just start the next chapter with you in London making your way to Kaine's office disguised as a cleaning woman.' 'Excuse me--!' said a suited gentleman who looked suspiciously like a solicitor. 'But are you Thursday Next?' I glanced nervously at Hamlet. 72 'Perhaps.' 'Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mr Wentworth of Wentworth, Wentworth and Wentworth, Solicitors. I'm the second Wentworth, if you're interested.' 'And?' 'And ... I wonder if I could have your autograph? I followed your Jane Eyre escapade with a great deal of interest.' I breathed a sigh of relief and signed his autograph book. Mr Wentworth thanked me and hurried off. 'You had me worried for a moment there,' said Hamlet. 'I thought I was meant to be the fictitious one.' I smiled. 'You are, and don't you forget it.' 'Twenty-two thousand pounds?' I said to the cashier. 'Are you sure?' The cashier looked at me with unblinking eyes, then at Hamlet, who was standing over me a bit indelicately. 'Quite sure. Twenty-two thousand, three hundred and eight pounds and four shillings three pence ha'penny - overdrawn,' she added, in case I had missed it. 'Your landlord sued you for dodo related tenancy violations and won five thousand pounds. Since you weren't here we upped your credit limit when he demanded payment. Then we raised the limit again to pay for the additional interest.' 'How very thoughtful of you.' 'Thank you. Goliath First National Friendly always aim to please.' 'Are you sure you wouldn't rather go with the "wealthy aunt" scenario?' asked Hamlet, being no help at all. 'No. Shhh.' 'We haven't had a single deposit from you for nearly two and a half years,' continued the bank clerk. 'I've been away.' 'Prison?' 'No. So the rest of my overdraft is--?' 'Interest on the money we lent you, interest on the interest we 73 lent you, letters asking for money that we know you haven't got, letters asking for an address that we knew wouldn't reach you, letters asking whether you got the letters we knew you hadn't received, further letters asking for a response because we have an odd sense of humour -- you know how it all adds up! Can we expect a cheque in the near future?' 'Not really. Um -- any chance of raising my credit limit?' The cashier arched an eyebrow. 'I can get you an appointment to see the manager. Do you have an address to which we can send expensive letters demanding money?' I gave them Mum's address and made an appointment to see the manager. We walked past the statue of Brunei and the Booktastic shop, which I noted was still open, despite several closing-down sales - one of which I had witnessed with Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham. How I had missed her guidance in my first few months heading Jurisfiction. With her I might have avoided that whole stupid sock episode in Lake Wobegon Days. 'Okay, I give up,' said Hamlet quite suddenly. 'How does it all turn out?' 'How does what all turn out?' He spread his arms out wide. 'All this. You, your husband, Miss Hamilton, the small dodo, that Superhoop thing and the big company - what's it called again?' 'Goliath?' 'Right. How does it all turn out?' 'I haven't the slightest idea. Out here our lives are pretty much an unknown quantity.' Hamlet seemed shocked by the concept. 'How do you live here not knowing what the future might bring?' » 'That's part of the fun. The pleasure of anticipation.' 'There is no pleasure in anticipation,' said Hamlet glumly. 'Except perhaps,' he added, 'in killing that old fool Polonius.' 'My point exactly,' I replied. 'Where you come from events are 74 preordained and everything that happens to you has some sort of relevance farther on in the story.' 'It's clear you haven't read Hamlet for a-- LOOK OUT!' Hamlet pushed me out of the way as a small steamroller - of the size that works on sidewalks and paths - bore rapidly down on us and crashed past into the window of the shop we had been standing outside. The roller stopped amongst a large display of electrical goods, the rear wheels still rotating. 'Are you okay?' asked Hamlet, helping me to my feet. 'I'm fine - thanks to you.' 'Goodness!' said a workman, running up to us and turning a valve to shut off the roller. 'Are you all right?' 'Not hurt in the least. What happened?' 'I don't know,' replied the workman, scratching his head. 'Are you sure you're okay?' 'Really, I'm fine.' We walked off as a crowd began to gather. The owner of the shop didn't look that upset; doubtless he was thinking about what else he could charge to insurance. 'You see?' I said to Hamlet as we walked away. 'What?' 'This is exactly what I mean. A lot happens in the real world for no good reason. If this were fiction, this little incident would have relevance thirty or so chapters from now; as it is it means nothing -- after all, not every incident in life has a meaning.' 'Tell that to the scholars who study me,' Hamlet snorted disdainfully, then thought for a moment before adding: 'If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Over-long, detailed to the point of distraction - and ultimately without a major resolution.' 'Perhaps,' I said thoughtfully, 'that's exactly what we like about it.' .n' We reached the SpecOps building. It was of a sensible Germanic ^ design, built during the occupation, and it was here that I, along with Bowden Cable and Victor Analogy, dealt with Acheron Hades' 75 plot to kidnap Jane Eyre out of Jane Eyre. Hades had failed and died in the attempt. I wondered how many of the old gang would still be around. I had sudden doubts and decided to think for a moment before going in. Perhaps I should have a plan of action instead of charging in Zharklike. 'Fancy a coffee, Hamlet?' 'Please.' We walked into the Cafe Goliathe opposite. The same one, in fact, that I had last seen Landen walking towards an hour before he was eradicated. 'Hey!' said the man behind the counter, who seemed somehow familiar. 'We don't serve that kind in here!' 'What kind?' 'The Danish kind.' Goliath were obviously working with Kaine on this particular nonsense. 'He's not Danish. He's my cousin Eddie from Wolverhampton.' 'Really? Then why is he dressed like Hamlet?' I thought quickly. 'Because . . . he's insane. Isn't that right, Cousin Eddie?' 'Yes,' said Hamlet, to whom feigning madness was not much of a problem. 'When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.' 'See?' 'Well, that's all right, then.' I started as I realised why he seemed familiar. It was Mr Cheese, one of the Goliath corporate bullies that Brik Schitt-Hawse had employed. He and his partner Mr Chalk had made my life difficult before I left. He didn't have his goatee any more but it was definitely him. Undercover? I doubted it - his name was on his Cafe Goliathe badge with, I noted, two gold stars - one for washing up and the other for latte frothing. But he didn't show any sign of recognising me. 'What will you have, Ham-- I mean, Cousin Eddie?' 'What is there?' 76 'Espresso, Mocha, Latte, White Mocha, Hot Chocolate, Decaff, RecafF, Nocaff, Somecaff, Extracaff, Goliachino™ . . . what's the matter?' Hamlet had started to tremble, a look of pain and hopelessness on his face as he stared wild-eyed at the huge choice laid out in front of him. 'To espresso or to latte, that is the question,' he muttered, his free will evaporating rapidly. I had asked Hamlet for something he couldn't easily supply: a decision. 'Whether 'tis tastier on the palette to choose white mocha over plain,' he continued in a rapid garble, 'or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and by opposing the endless choice, end one's heartache--' 'Cousin Eddie!' I said sharply. 'Cut it out!' 'To froth, to sprinkle, perchance to drink, and in that--' 'He'll have a mocha with extra cream, please.' Hamlet stopped abruptly once the burden of decision was taken from him. 'Sorry,' he said, rubbing his temples, 'I don't know what came over me. All of a sudden I had this overwhelming desire to talk for a very long time without actually doing anything. Is that normal?' 'Not for me. I'll have a latte, Mr Cheese,' I said, watching his reaction carefully. He still didn't seem to recognise me. He rang up the cost and then started making the coffees. 'Do you remember me?' He narrowed his eyes and stared at me carefully for a moment or two. 'No.' 'Thursday Next?' His face broke into a broad grin and he put out a large hand for me to shake, welcoming me as an old workmate rather than a ¦*&:¦ past nemesis. I faltered, then shook his hand slowly. 'Miss Next! Where have you been? Prison?' 'Away.' 77 'Ah! But you're well?' 'I'm okay,' I said suspiciously, retrieving my hand. 'How are you?' 'Not bad!' He laughed, looking at me sideways for a moment and narrowing his eyes. 'You've changed. What is it?' 'Almost no hair?' 'That's it. We were looking for you everywhere. You spent almost eighteen months in the Goliath "top ten most wanted" although you never made it to the number-one slot.' 'I'm devastated.' 'No one has ever spent ten months on the list,' carried on Cheese with a sort of dreamy nostalgic look, 'the next longest was three weeks. We looked everywhere for you!' 'But you gave up?' 'Goodness me no,' replied Cheese. 'Perseverance is what Goliath do best. There was a restructuring of corporate policy and we were reallocated.' 'You mean fired.' 'No one is ever fired from Goliath,' said Cheese in a shocked tone. 'Cots to coffins. You've heard the adverts.' 'So, just moved on from bullying and terrifying and into lattes and mochas? 'Haven't you heard?' said Cheese, frothing up some milk. 'Goliath has moved its corporate image away from the "overbearing bully" and more towards "peace, love and understanding".' 'I heard something about it last night,' I replied, 'but you'll forgive me if I'm not convinced.' 'Forgive is what Goliath do best, Miss Next. Faith is a difficult commodity to imbue - and that's why violent and ruthless bullies like me have to be reallocated. Our corporate seer Sister Bettina foresaw a necessity for us to change to a faith-based corporate management system, but the rules concerning new religions are quite strict - we have to make changes to the corporation that are meaningful and genuine. That's why the old Goliath Internal Security Service is now known as Goliath Is Seriously Sorry - you 78 see, we even kept the old initials so we didn't have to divert money away from good causes to buy new headed notepaper.' 'Or have to change it back when this charade has been played out.' 'You know,' said Cheese, waving a finger at me, 'you always were just that teensy-weensy bit cynical. You should learn to be more trusting.' 'Trusting. Right. And you think the public will believe this touchy-feely good-Lord-we're-sorry-forgive-us-please crap after four decades of rampant exploitation?' 'Rampant exploitation?' echoed Cheese in a dismayed tone. 'I don't think so. "Proactive greater goodification" was more what we had in mind -- and it's five decades, not four. Are you sure your cousin Eddie isn't Danish?' 'Definitely not.' I thought about Brik Schitt-Hawse, the odious Goliath agent who had my husband eradicated in the first place. 'What about Schitt-Hawse? Where does he work these days?' 'I think he moved into some post in Goliathopolis. I really don't move in those circles any more. Mind you, we should all get together for a reunion and have a drink! What do you think?' 'I think I'd rather have my husband back,' I replied darkly. 'Oh!' said Cheese, suddenly remembering just what particular unpleasantness he and Goliath had done to me, then adding slowly: 'You must hate us!' 'Just a lot.' 'We can't have that. Repent is what Goliath do best. Have you applied for a Goliath Unfair Treatment Reversal?' I stared at him and raised an eyebrow. 'Well,' he began, 'Goliath have been allowing disgruntled citizens to apply to have reversed any unfair or unduly harsh measures taken against them - sort of a big apology, really. If Goliath is to become the opiate of the masses, we must first atone for our sins. We like to right any wrongs, and then have a good strong hug to show we really mean it.' 'Hence your demotion to coffee shop attendant.' 79 'Exactly so!' 'How do I apply?' 'We've opened an Apologarium in Goliathopolis; you can take the free shuttle from the Tarbuck Graviport. They'll tell you what to do.' 'Harmonious peace, eh?' 'Peace is what Goliath do best, Miss Next. Just fill out a form and see one of our trained apologists. I'm sure they can get your husband back in a jiffy!' I took the mocha-with-extra-cream and latte and sat by the window, staring at the SpecOps building in silence. Hamlet sensed my disquiet and busied himself with a list of things he wanted to tell Ophelia but didn't think he would be able to, then another list of things he should tell her, but wouldn't. Then a list of all the different lists he had written about Ophelia, and finally a letter of appreciation to Sir John Gielgud. 'I'm going to sort out a few things,' I said after a while. 'Don't move from here and don't tell anyone who you really are. Understand?' 'Yes.' 'Who are you?' 'Hamlet, Prince of. . .just kidding. I'm your cousin Eddie.' 'Good. And you have cream on your nose.' 80 6 SpecOps 'The Special Operations Network was the agency that looked after areas too specialised to be undertaken by the regular police. There were over thirty SpecOps divisions. SO-i policed us all, SO-12 were the ChronoGuard and SO-13 dealt with reengineered species. SO-17 were the "Vampire and Werewolf Disposal Operations" and SO-32 the Horticultural Enforcement Agency. I had been in SO-27, the Literary Detectives. Ten years authenticating Milton and tracking down forged Shakespeareana. After my work actually within fiction it all seemed a bit tame. At Jurisfiction I could catch a horse as it bolted -- in the Literary Detectives it was like wandering around a very large field armed with only a halter and a photograph of a carrot.' Thursday next - Private Journals I pushed open the door to the station and walked in. The building was shared with Swindon's regular force and seemed slightly shabbier than I remembered. The walls were the same dismal shade of green and I could smell the faint aroma of boiled cabbage from the canteen on the second floor. In truth, my stay here in late '85 had not actually been that long - most of my SpecOps career had been undertaken in London. I walked over to the main desk, expecting to see Sergeant Ross. He had been replaced by someone who seemed too young to be a police officer, much less a desk sergeant. 'I'm here to get my old job back,' I announced. 'Which was?' 'Literary Detective.' He chuckled. Unkindly, I thought. 'You'll need to see the commander,' he replied without taking 81 his gaze from the book he was scribbling in. 'Name?' 'Thursday Next.' A hush descended slowly on the room, beginning with those closest to me and moving outwards with my whispered name like ripples in a pool. Within a few moments I was being stared at in silence by at least two dozen assorted police and SpecOps officers, a couple of Gaskell impersonators and an ersatz Coleridge. I gave an embarrassed smile and looked from blank face to blank face, trying to figure out whether to run, or to fight, or what. My heart beat faster as a young officer quite close to me reached into his breast pocket and pulled out... a notebook. 'Please,' he said, 'I wonder if I might have your autograph?' 'Well, of course.1 I breathed a sigh of relief, and pretty soon I was having my back slapped and being congratulated on the whole Jane Eyre adventure. I'd forgotten the celebrity thing but also noticed that there were officers in the room who were interested in me for another reason - SO-i, probably. 'I need to see Bowden Cable,' I said to the desk sergeant, realising that if anyone could help, it was my old partner. He smiled, picked up a phone, announced me and wrote out a visitor's pass, then told me to go to interview suite sixteen on the third floor. I thanked my new-found acquaintances, made my way to the elevators and ascended to the third floor. When the lift doors rattled open I walked with a hurried step towards room sixteen. Halfway there I was accosted by Bowden, who slid his arm in mine and steered me into an empty office. 'Bowden!' I said happily. 'How are you?' He hadn't changed much in the past two years. Fastidiously neat, he was wearing the usual pinstripe suit but without a jacket, so he must have been in a hurry to meet me. » 'I'm good, Thursday, real good. But where the hell have you been?' 'I've been--' 'You can tell me later. Thank the GSD I got to you first! We 82 don't have a lot of time. Goodness! What have you done to your hair?' 'Well, Joan of--' 'You can tell me later. Ever heard of Yorrick Kaine?' 'Of course! I'm here to--' 'No time for explanations. He's not fond of you at all. He has a personal adviser named Ernst Stricknene who calls us every day to ask if you've returned. But this morning - he didn't callF 'So?' 'So he knows you're back. Why is the Chancellor interested in you, anyway?' 'Because he's fictional and I want to take him back to the BookWorld where he belongs.' 'Coming from anyone but you I'd laugh. Is that really true?' 'As true as I'm standing here.' 'Well, your life is in danger, that's all I know. Ever heard of the assassin known as the--' ' Windo wmaker?' 'How did you know?' 'I have my sources. Any idea who took out the contract?' 'Well, they've killed sixty-seven people - sixty-eight if they did Samuel Pring - and they definitely did the number on Gordon DufFRolecks, whose death really only benefited--' 'Kaine.' 'Exactly. You need to take particular care. More than that, we need you back as a full serving member of the Literary Detectives. We've got one or two problems that need ironing out in our department.' 'So what do we do?' 'Well, you're AWOL at best and a cheese smuggler at worst. So we've concocted a cover story of such bizarre complexity and outrageous daring that it can only be true. Here it is: in a parallel universe ruled entirely by lobsters you--' But at that moment the door opened and a familiar figure walked in. I say familiar but he was not exactly welcome. It was Commander Braxton Hicks, head of SpecOps here in Swindon. 83 I could almost hear Bowden's heart fall - mine too. Hicks still had a job because of me but I didn't expect that to count for much. He was a company man, a bean counter -- more fond of his precious budget than anything else. He had never given me any quarter and I didn't expect any now. 'Ah, found you!' said the commander in a serious tone. 'Miss Next. They told me you'd arrived. Been giving us the run-around, haven't you?' 'She's been--' began Bowden. 'I'm sure Miss Next can explain for herself, hmm?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Good. Close the door behind you, eh?' Bowden gave a sickly smile and slunk out of the interview room. Braxton sat, opened my file and stroked his large moustache thoughtfully. 'Absent without leave for over two years, demoted eighteen months ago, non-return of SpecOps weapon, badge and ruler, pencil, eight pens and a dictionary.' 'I can explain--' 'Then there is the question of the illegal cheese we found under a Hispano-Suiza at your picnic two and a half years ago. I have sworn affidavits from everyone present that you were alone, met them up there and the cheese was yours.' 'Yes, but--' 'And the traffic police said they saw you aiding and abetting a known serial dangerous driver on the A419 north of Swindon.' 'That's--' 'But what's worse was that you lied to me systematically from the moment you came under my command. You said you would learn to play golf and you never so much as picked up a putter.' 'But--' 'I have proof of your lies, too. I personally visited every single golf club and not one of them had ever let someone of your descrip 84 tion play golf there - not even on the practice ranges. How do you explain that, eh?' 'Well--' 'You vanish from sight two and a half years ago. Not a word. Had to demote you. Star employee. Newspapers had a field day. Upset my swing for weeks.' 'I'm sorry if it upset your golf, sir.' 'You're rather in the soup, young lady.' He stared at me in exactly the sort of way my English teacher used to at school, and I had that sudden and dangerously overpowering urge to laugh out loud. Luckily, I didn't. 'What have you got to say for yourself?' 'I can explain, if you'll let me.' 'My girl, I've been trying to get you to tell me for five--' The door opened again and in walked Colonel Flanker of SOi with another officer. Flanker ran Internal Affairs, the SpecOps police. About as welcome as worms and another old bete noire of mine. If Hicks was bad, Flanker was worse. Braxton only wanted me to undergo some sort of disciplinary nonsense - Flanker would want to lock me up for good, after I had led them to my father. 'So!' he said as soon as he saw me. 'It's true. Thank you, Braxton, my prisoner. Officer Jodrell, cuff her.' Jodrell walked over to me, took one of my wrists and placed it behind my back. There didn't seem to be much point in running; I could see at least three other SO-i agents hovering near the door. I thought of Friday. If only Bowden had got to me a few minutes earlier--! 'Just a minute, Mr Flanker,' said Braxton, closing my file. 'What do you think you're doing?' 'Arresting Miss Next on charges of being AWOL, dereliction of duty and illegal possession of bootleg cheese -- for starters.' 'She was on assignment for SO-23,' said Braxton, staring at him evenly, 'undercover for the Cheese Squad.' I couldn't believe my ears. Braxton lying? For me? 'The Cheese Squad?' echoed Flanker with some surprise. 85 'Yes,' replied Braxton, who once started clearly found the subterfuge and reckless use of his authority somewhat exciting. 'She's been in deep cover in Wales for two years on a clandestine espionage operation monitoring illegal cheese factories. The cheese with her fingerprints on was part of an illegal cross-border shipment that she helped seize.' 'Really?' said Flanker, his confidence rattled. 'On my word. She's not under arrest, she's being debriefed. It seems that the operation was under the control of Joe Martlet. Full details will be available from him.' 'You know as well as I do that Joe was shot dead by the cheese mafia two weeks ago.' 'It was a tragedy,' admitted Braxton. 'Fine man, Martlet - one of the best. Could play a three under par with ease and never swore when he drove into the rough and hence Miss Next's reappearance,' he added without a pause. I'd never seen anyone lie so well before. Not even me. Not even Friday when I found he'd raided the cookie jar with Pickwick's help. 'Is this true?' asked Flanker. 'Two years undercover in Wales?' ' Ydy, and dydy hi ddim wedi bwrw glaw pob dyddf I replied in my best Welsh. Flanker narrowed his eyes and stared at me for a moment without speaking. 'I was just reassigning her to the Literary Detectives when you walked in the door,' added Braxton. Flanker looked at Braxton, then at me, then at Braxton again. He nodded at Jodrell, who released me. 'Very well. But I want a full report on my desk Tuesday.' 'You can have it Friday, Mr Flanker. I'm a very busy man.' Flanker glared at me for a moment, then addressed Braxton: 'Since Miss Next is back with the Literary Detectives perhaps you would be good enough to appoint her as SO-14 Danish Book Seizure Liaison Officer. My boys are pretty good at the seizure stuff but to be honest none of them can tell a Mark Twain from a Samuel Clemens.' 86 'I'm not sure I want--' I began. 'I think you should be happy to assist me, Miss Next, don't you? A chance to make amends for past transgressions, yes?' Braxton answered for me. 'I'm sure Miss Next would be happy to assist in any way she can, Mr Flanker.' Flanker gave a rare smile. 'Good. I'll have the divisional head of SO-14 get in touch with you.' He turned to Braxton. 'But I'll still need that report on Tuesday.' 'You'll get it,' replied Braxton, 'on Friday.' Flanker glared at us both and without another word strode from the room, his minions at his heels. When the door closed I breathed a sigh of relief, oir, l 'I don't want to hear anything more about it,' replied Braxton sharply, gathering up his papers. 'I retire in two months' time and wanted to do something that made my whole pen-pushing, playitsafe, shiny-arse career actually be worth it. I don't know what's going to happen to the LiteraTec division with all this insane Danish book-burning stuff, but what I do know is that people like you need to stay in it. Lead them on a merry goose-chase, young lady - I can keep Flanker wrapped up in red tape pretty much for ever.' 'Braxton,' I said, giving him a spontaneous hug, 'you're a darling!' 'Nonsense!' he said gruffly, and a tad embarrassed. 'But I do expect a little something in return.' 'And that is?' 'Well,' he said slowly, his eyes dropping to the ground, 'I wonder if you and I might--' 'Might what?' 'Might. . . play golf on Sunday. A few holes.' His eyes gleamed. 'Just for you to get the taste. Believe me, as soon as you grasp the handle of a golf club you'll be hooked for ever! Mrs Hicks need never know. How about it?' 'I'll be there at nine,' I told him, laughing. 87 'You'll be a long time waiting - I get there at eleven.' 'Eleven it is.' I shook his hand and walked out of the door a free woman. Sometimes help arrives from the last place you expect it. i 7 The Literary Detectives GOLIATH CORPORATION PUBLISH BROAD DENIAL The Goliath Corporation yesterday attempted to head off annoying and time-wasting speculation by issuing the broadest denial to date. 'Quite simply, we deny everything,' said Mr Toedee, the Goliath head PR operative, 'including any story that you might have heard now or in the future.' Goliath's shock tactics reflected the growing unease with Goliath's unaccountability, especially over its advanced weapons division. 'It's very simple,' continued Mr Toedee, 'until we have been elevated to a faith when everything can be denied using the "Goliath work in mysterious ways" excuse, we expressly deny possessing, or any involvement with, the Ovinator, anti-smote technology, "Speed grow" tomatoes or Diatrymas running wild in the New Forest. In fact, we don't know what any of these things are.' To cries of 'What is an Ovinator?' and 'Tomatoes?', Mr Toedee declared the press conference over, blessed everyone and departed. Article in The Toad on Sunday, 3 July 1988 I found Bowden fretting in the LiteraTec office and related what had happened. 'Well, well,' he said at last, 'I think old Braxton's got a crush.' 'Oh, stop it!' The office we were sitting in resembled a large library in a country house somewhere. It was two storeys high, with shelves crammed full of books covering every square inch of wall space. A spiral staircase led to a catwalk which ran around the wall, enabling access to the upper galleries. It was neat and methodical -- but somehow less busy than I remembered. 89 'Where is everyone?' 'When you were here last we had a staff of eight. Now it's only Victor, me and Malin. All the rest were reassigned or laid off.' 'All SpecOps departments?' Bowden laughed. 'Of course not! The bully boys at SO-14 are alive and well and answer to Yorrick Kaine's every order. SO-i haven't seen many cuts, either--' 'Thursday, what a delightful surprise!' It was Victor Analogy, my old boss here at the Swindon LiteraTecs. He was an elderly gentleman with large mutton-chop sideburns, dressed in a neat tweed suit and bow tie. He had taken off his jacket owing to the summer heat but still managed to cut a very dashing figure, despite his advanced age. 'Victor, you're looking very well!' 'And you, dear girl. What devilry have you been up to since last we met?' 'It's a long story.' 'The best sort. Let me guess: inside fiction?' 'In one.' 'What's it like?' 'It's quite good, really. Confusing at times and subject to moments of extreme imaginative overload, but varied and the weather's generally pretty good. Can we talk safely in here?' Victor nodded and we sat down. I told them about Jurisfiction, the Council of Genres and everything else that had happened to me during my tenure as Bellman. I even told them loosely about my involvement in The Solution of Edwin Drood, which amused them both no end. 'I've always wondered about that,' mused Victor thoughtfully. 'But you're sure about Yorrick Kaine being fictional?' » I told him that I was. He stood up and walked to the window. 'You'll have a hard time getting close,' said Victor thoughtfully. 'Does he know you're back?' 90 'Definitely,' said Bowden. 'Then you could be threatening his position as absolute ruler of England almost as much as President Formby. I should keep on your toes, my girl. Is there anything we can do to help?' I thought for a moment. 'There is, actually. We can't find which book Yorrick Kaine has escaped from. He could be using a false name and we should contact any readers who might recognise the Chancellor's somewhat crazed antics from an obscure character they might have encountered somewhere. We at Jurisfiction have been going through the Great Library at our end but we've still drawn a blank - every character in fiction has been accounted for.' 'We'll do what we can, Thursday -- when can you rejoin us?' T don't know,' I answered slowly, 'I have to get my husband back. Remember I told you he was eradicated by the ChronoGuard?' 'Yes; Lindane, wasn't it?' 'Landen. If it wasn't for him I'd probably stay inside fiction.' We all fell silent for a moment. 'So,' I said cheerfully, 'what's been happening in the world of the LiteraTecs?' Victor frowned. 'We don't hold with the book-burning lark of Kaine's. You heard about the order to start incinerating Danish literature?' I nodded. 'Kierkegaard's works are being rounded up as we speak. I told Braxton that if we were asked to do any of it we'd resign.' 'Oh - ah.' 'I'm not sure I like the way you said that,' said Bowden. I winced. 'I agreed to be the SO-14 Danish Book Seizure Liaison Officer for Flanker - sorry. I didn't have much of a choice.' 'I see that as good news,' put in Bowden. 'You can have them searching in places where they won't find any Danish books. Just be careful. Flanker has been suspicious ever since we said we were 9i too busy to find out who was planning to smuggle copies of The Concept of Dread to Wales for safekeeping.' Bowden laughed and lowered his voice. 'It wasn't an excuse.' He chuckled. 'We actually were too busy gathering copies of banned books ready for transportation to Wales!' Victor grimaced. 'I really don't want to hear this, Bowden. If you get caught we'll all be for the high jump!' 'Some things are worth going to jail for, Victor,' replied Bowden in an even tone. 'As LiteraTecs we swore to uphold and defend the written word -- not indulge a crazed politician's worst paranoic fantasies.' 'Just be careful.' 'Of course,' replied Bowden, 'it might come to nothing if we can't find a way to get the books out of England - the Welsh border shouldn't be a problem since Wales aligned itself with Denmark. I don't suppose you have any ideas how to get across the English border post?' 'I'm not sure,' I replied. 'How many copies of banned books do you want to smuggle anyway?' 'About four truckloads.' I whistled. Things -- like cheese, for instance -- were usually smuggled in to England. I didn't know how I'd get banned books out. 'I'll give it a shot. What else is going on?' 'Usual stuff,' replied Bowden. 'Faked Milton, Jonson, Swift. . . Montague and Capulet street gangs. . . someone discovered a first draft of The Mill on the Floss entitled The Sploshing of the Weirs. Also, the Daphne Farquitt Specialist Bookshop went up in smoke.' 'Insurance scam?' 'No -- probably anti-Farquitt protesters again.' » Farquitt had penned her first bodice-ripping novel in 1932 and had been writing pretty much the same one over and over again ever since. Loved by many and hated by a vitriolic minority, Farquitt was England's leading romantic novelist. 92 'There's also been a huge increase in the use of performance enhancing drugs by novelists,' added Victor. 'Last year's Booker speed-writing winner was stripped of his award when he tested positive for Cartlandromin. And only last week Handley Paige only narrowly missed a two-year writing ban for failing a random dope test.' 'Sometimes I wonder if we don't have too many rules,' murmured Victor pensively, and we all three sat in silence, nodding thoughtfully for a moment. Bowden broke the silence. He produced a piece of stained paper wrapped in a cellophane evidence bag and passed it across to me. 'What do you make of this?' I read it, not recognising the words but recognising the style. It was a sonnet by Shakespeare - and a pretty good one, too. 'Shakespeare - but it's not Elizabethan; the mention of Basil Brush would seem to indicate that - but it feels like his. What did the Verse Metre Analyser say about it?' 'Ninety-one per cent probability of Will as the author,' replied Victor. 'Where did you get it?' 'Off the body of a down-and-out by the name of Shaxtper killed on Tuesday evening. We think someone has been cloning Shakespeares.' 'Cloning Shakespeares? Are you sure? Couldn't it just be a ChronoGuard "temporal kidnap" sort of thing?' 'No. Blood analysis tells us they were all vaccinated at birth against rubella, mumps and so forth.' 'Wait - you've got more than one?' 'Three,' said Bowden. 'There's been something of a spate recently.' 'When can you come back to work, Thursday?' asked Victor solemnly. 'As you can see, we need you.' I paused for a moment. 'I'm going to need a week to get my life into gear first, sir. There are a few pressing matters that I have to attend to.' 93 'What, may I ask,' said Victor, 'is more important than Montague and Capulet street gangs, cloned Shakespeares, smuggling Kierkegaard out of the country and authors using banned substances?' 'Finding reliable childcare.' 'Goodness!' said Victor. 'Congratulations! You must bring the little squawker in some time. Mustn't she, Bowden?' 'Absolutely.' 'Bit of a problem, that,' murmured Victor. 'Can't have you dashing around the place only to have to get home at five to make Junior's tea. Perhaps we'd better handle all this on our own.' 'No,' I said with an assertiveness that made them both jump. 'No, I'm coming back to work. I just need to sort a few things out. Does SpecOps have a creche?' 'No.' 'Ah. Well, I suspect I shall think of something. If I get my husband back there won't be a problem. I'll call you tomorrow.' There was a pause. 'Well, we have to respect that, I suppose,' said Victor solemnly. 'We're just glad that you're back. Aren't we, Bowden?' 'Yes,' replied my ex-partner, 'very glad indeed.' 94 8 Time Waits for No Man 'SpecOps-12 are the ChronoGuard, the governmental department dealing with temporal stability. It is their job to maintain the integrity of the Standard History Eventline (SHE) and police the timestream against any unauthorised changes or usage. Their most brilliant work is never noticed, as changes in the past always seem to have been that way. It is not unusual in any one ChronoGuard work shift for history to flex dramatically before settling back down to the SHE. Planet-destroying cataclysms generally happen twice a week but are carefully re-routed by skilled ChronoGuard operatives. The citizenry never notice a thing - which is just as well, really.' colonel next, qt, CG (nonexst.) -- Upstream/Downstream (unpublished) I wasn't done with SpecOps yet. I still needed to figure out what my father had told me at our first meeting. Finding a time travif. ¦ eller can be fraught with difficulties, but since I passed the ChronoGuard office almost exactly three hours after our last meeting, it seemed the obvious place to look. I knocked at their door and, hearing no answer, walked in. When I was last working at SpecOps we rarely heard anything from the mildly eccentric members of the time-travelling elite, but when you work in the time business, you don't waste it by nattering - it's much too precious. My father always argued that time was far and away the most valuable commodity we had and that temporal profligacy should be a criminal offence - which kind of makes watching Celebrity Kidney Swap or reading Daphne Farquitt novels a crime straight away. The room was empty and, from appearances, had been so for a number of years. At least, that's what it looked like when I first peered 95 in -- a second later some painters were decorating it for the first time, the second after that it was derelict, then full, then empty again. It continued like this as I watched, the room jumping to various different stages in its history but never lingering for more than a few seconds in any one particular time. The ChronoGuard operatives were merely smears of light that moved and whirled about, momentarily visible to me as they jumped from past to future and future to past. If I had been a trained member of the ChronoGuard perhaps I could have made more sense of it, but I wasn't, and couldn't. There was one piece of furniture that remained unchanged whilst all about raced, moved and blurred in a never-ending jumble. It was a small table with an old candlestick telephone upon it. I stepped into the room and lifted the receiver. 'Hello?' 'Hello,' said a pre-recorded voice, 'you're through to the Swindon ChronoGuard. To assist with your enquiry we have a number of choices. If you have been the victim of temporal flexation, dial one. If you wish to report a temporal anomaly, dial two. If you feel you might have been involved in a time crime . . .' It gave me several more choices, but nothing that told me how to contact my father. Finally, at the end of the long list, it gave me the option for meeting an operative, so I dialled that. In an instant the blurred movement in the room stopped and everything fell into place - but with furniture and fittings more suited to the sixties. There was an agent sitting at the desk, a tall and undeniably handsome man in the blue uniform of the ChronoGuard, emblazoned at the shoulder with the pips of a captain. As he himself had predicted, it was my father, three hours later and three hours younger. At first, he didn't recognise me. 'Hello,' he said, 'can I help you?' 'It's me, Thursday.' » 'Thursday?' he echoed, eyes wide open as he stood up. 'My daughter Thursday?' I nodded and he moved closer. 'My goodness!' he exclaimed, scrutinising me with great interest. 96 'How wonderful to see you again! How long's it been? Six centuries?' 'Two years,' I told him, not wanting to confuse a confusing matter even further by mentioning our conversation this morning, 'but why are you working for the ChronoGuard again? I thought you went rogue?' 'Ah!' he said, beckoning me closer and lowering his voice. 'There was a change of administration and they said they would look very closely at my grievances if I'd come and work for them at the Historical Preservation Corps. I had to take demotion and I won't be reactualised until the paperwork is done, but it's working out quite well otherwise. Is your husband still eradicated?' 'I'm afraid so. Any chance . . . ?' He winced. 'I'd love to, Sweetpea, but I've really got to watch my Ps and Qs for a few decades. Do you like the office?' I looked at the sixties decor in the tiny room. 'Bit small, isn't it?' My father, who was clearly in an ebullient mood, grinned. 'Oh yes, and over seven hundred of us work here. Since we could not all be here at one time, we simply stretch the usage out across the timestream like a long piece of elastic' He stretched his arms wide as if to demonstrate. 'We call it a timeshare.' He rubbed his chin and looked around. 'What's the time out there?' 'It's 14 July 1988.' 'That's a stroke of good fortune,' he said, lowering his voice still further. 'It's a good job you've turned up. They've blamed me for the 1864 war between Germany and Denmark.' 'Was it your fault?' 'No - it was that clot Bismarck. But it doesn't matter. They've transferred me to another division inside the Historical Preservation Corps for a second chance. My first assignment occurs in July 1988, so local knowledge right now is a godsend. Have you heard of anyone named Yorrick Kaine?' 97 'He's Chancellor of England.' 'That figures. Did St Zvlkx return tomorrow?' 'He might.' 'Okay. Who won the Superhoop?' 'That's Saturday week,' I explained. 'It hasn't happened yet.' 'Not strictly true, Sweetpea. Everything that we do actually happened a long, long time ago -- even this conversation. The future is already there. The pioneers that ploughed the first furrows of history into virgin timeline died aeons ago - all we do now is try and keep it pretty much the way it should be. Have you heard of someone named Winston Churchill, by the way?' I thought for a moment. 'He was an English statesman who seriously blotted his copybook in the Great War, then was run over by a cab and killed in 1932.' 'So, no one of any consequence?' 'Not really. Why?' 'Ah, no reason. Just a little pet theory of mine. Anyway, everything has already happened -- if it hadn't, there'd be no need for people like me. But things go wrong. In the normal course of events, time flies back and forth from the end of then until the beginning of now like a shuttle on a loom, weaving the threads of history together. If it encounters an obstacle then it might just flex slightly and no change will be noticed. But if that obstacle is big enough -- and Kaine is plenty big enough, believe me - then history will veer off at a tangent. And that's when we have to sort it out. I've been transferred to the Armageddon Avoidance Division, and we've got an apocalyptic disaster of life-extinguishing capability, Level III, heading your way.' There was a moment's silence. 'Does your mother know you wear your hair this short?' 'Is it meant to happen?' » 'Your hair?' 'No, the Armageddon.' 'Not at all. This one has an Ultimate Likelihood Index rating of only twenty-two per cent: "not very likely".' 98 'Nothing like that incident with the Dream Topping, then,' I observed. 'What incident?' 'Nothing.' 'Right. Well, since I'm on probation -- sort of - they thought they'd start me on the small stuff.' 'I still don't understand.' 'It's simple,' began my father. 'Two days after the Superhoop President Formby will die of natural causes. The following day Yorrick Kaine proclaims himself dictator of England. Two weeks after that, following the traditional suspension of the press and summary executions of former associates, Kaine will declare war on Wales. Two days after a prolonged tank battle on the Welsh Marches, the United Clans of Scotland launch an attack upon Berwick-upon-Tweed. In a fit of pique Kaine carpet-bombs Glasgow and the Swedish empire enter on Scotland's side. Russia joins Kaine after their colonial outpost of Fetlar is sacked - and the war moves to mainland Europe. It soon escalates into an apocalyptic shoot-out between the African and American superpowers. In less than three months the earth will be nothing but a steaming radioactive cinder. Of course,' he added, 'that is a worst-case scenario. It'll probably never happen, and if you and I do our jobs properly, it won't.' 'Can't you just kill Kaine?' 'Not that easy. Time is the glue of the cosmos, Sweetpea, and it has to be eased apart -- you'd be surprised how strongly the historical timeline tends to look after despots. Why do you think dictators like Pol Pot, Bokassa and Idi Amin live such long lives and people like Mozart, Jim Henson and Mother Teresa are plucked from us when relatively young?' 'I don't think Mother Teresa could be thought of as young.' 'On the contrary - she was meant to live to a hundred and twenty eight.' ...^ There was a pause. 'Okay, Dad -- so what's the plan?' 'Right. It's incredibly complex and also unbelievably simple. To 99 stop Kaine gaining power we have to seriously disrupt his sponsor, the Goliath Corporation. Without them, his power is zero. To do that we need to ensure . . . that Swindon wins the Superhoop.' 'How is that going to work?' 'It's a causality thing. Small events have large consequences. You'll see.' 'No, I mean, how am I going to get Swindon to win? Apart from Kapok and Aubrey Jambe and perhaps "Biffo" Mandible, the players are, well, crap -- not to put too fine a point on it. Especially when you compare them to their Superhoop opponents, the Reading Whackers.' 'I'm sure you'll think of something, but keep an eye on Kapok -- they'll try to get to him first. You'll have to do this on your own, Sweetpea, I've got my own problems. It seems Nelson getting killed at the beginning of the battle of Trafalgar wasn't French History Revisionists after all. I talked to someone I know over at the ChronoGendarmerie and they thought it amusing that the Revisionists should even attempt such a thing; advanced timestream models with Napoleon emperor of all Europe bode very poorly for France -- they're much better in the long run with things as they are meant to be.' 'So who is killing Nelson?' 'Well, it's Nelson himself. Don't ask me why. Now, what did you want to see me about?' I had to think carefully. 'Well. . . nothing, really. I met you three hours ago and you said we'd spoken so I came here to find you, then I suppose I should ask you to figure out who's trying to kill me this morning, which you wouldn't have been able to do if I hadn't met you this morning, and I only met you this morning because I've just told you right now I might be assassinated . . .' Dad laughed. » 'It's a bit like having a tumble dryer in your head, Sweetpea. Sometimes I don't know whether I'm thening or nowing. But I'd better check this assassin out, just in case.' 'Yes,' I said, more confused than ever, 'I suppose you should.' too Eradications Anonymous GOLIATH BACK KAINE AND WHIG PARTY The Goliath Corporation yesterday renewed its support for Chancellor Kaine at a party to honour England's leader. At a glittering dinner attended by over 500 heads of commerce and governmental departments, Goliath pledged to continue its support of the Chancellor. In reply Mr Kaine gratefully acknowledged their support and announced a package of measures designed to assist Goliath in the difficult yet highly desirable change to faith-based corporate status, as well as funding for several ongoing weapons programmes, details of which have been classified. ^wdi id^***1**11* Article in The Toad, 13 July % Hamlet and I arrived home to find a TV news crew from Swindon 5 waiting for me outside the house. 'Miss Next,' said the reporter, 'can you tell us where you've been these past two years?' 'No comment.' 'You can interview me,' said Hamlet, realising he was something of a celebrity out here. 'And who are you?' asked the reporter, mystified. I stared at him and his face fell. 'I'm . . . I'm . . . her cousin Eddie.' 'Well, Cousin Eddie, can you tell us where Miss Next has been for the past two years?' 'No comment.' And we walked up the garden path to the front door. 101 'Where have you been?' demanded my mother as we walked in the door. 'Sorry I'm late, Mum - how's the little chap?' 'Tiring. He says that his Aunt Mel is a gorilla who can peel bananas with her feet while hanging from the light fixtures.' 'He talkedV Friday was using the time-honoured international child signal to be picked up - raising his arms in the air - and when I did so he gave me a wet kiss and started to chatter away unintelligibly. 'Well, he didn't exactly say as much,' admitted Mum, 'but he drew me a picture of Aunt Mel which is pretty conclusive.' 'Aunt Mel a gorilla?' I laughed, looking at the picture, which was unequivocally of ... well, a gorilla. 'Quite an imagination, hasn't he?' 'I'd say. I found him standing on the sideboard ready to swing on the curtains. When I told him it wasn't allowed he pointed to the picture of Aunt Mel, which I took to mean that she used to let him.' 'Does she, now. I mean, did he, now.' Pickwick walked in looking very disgruntled and wearing a bonnet made of card and held together with sticky tape. 'Pickwick's a very tolerant playmate,' said my mother, who was obviously not that skilled at reading dodo expressions. 'I really need to get him into a playgroup. Did you change his nappy?' 'Three times. It just goes straight through, doesn't it?' I sniffed at the leg of his dungarees. 'Yup. Straight through.' 'Well, I've got my panel-beating group to attend to,' she said, putting on her hat and taking her handbag and welding goggles from the peg, 'but you'd better sort out some more reliable childcare, my dear. I can do the odd hour here and there but not whole days -- and I certainly don't want to do any more nappies.' 'Do you think Lady Hamilton would look after him?' 102 'It's possible,' said my mother in the sort of voice that means the reverse, 'you could always ask.' She opened the door and was plinked at angrily by Alan, who was in a bit of a strop and was pulling up flowers in the front garden. With unbelievable speed she grabbed him by the neck and with a lot of angry plinking and scrabbling deposited him unceremoniously inside the potting shed and locked the door. 'Miserable bird!' said my mother, giving me and Friday a kiss. 'Have I got my purse?' 'It's in your bag.' 'Am I wearing my hat?' 'Yes.' She smiled, told me that Bismarck was not to be disturbed and that I mustn't buy anything from a door-to-door salesman unless it was truly a bargain, and was gone. I changed Friday, then let him toddle off to find something to do. I made a cup of tea for myself and Hamlet, who had switched on the TV and was watching MOLE-TV's Shakespeare channel. I sat on the sofa and stared out of the windows into the garden. It had been destroyed by a mammoth when I was last here and I noted that my mother had replanted it with plants that were not very palatable to the Proboscidea tongue -- quite wise, considering the migrations. As I watched, Pickwick waddled past, possibly wondering where Alan had gone. In terms of the day's work I had done very little. I was still a Literary Detective but ^20,000 in debt and no nearer getting Landen back. J|.- My mother returned at about eight and the first of her Eradications Jte ¦ Anonymous friends began to appear at nine. There were ten of them, and they started to chatter about what they described as their 'lost ones' as soon as they got through the door. Emma Hamilton and I weren't alone in having husbands with an existence problem. But although it seemed my Landen and Emma's Horatio were strong in our memories, many people were not so lucky. Some had only vague feelings about someone who they felt should be 103 there but wasn't. To be honest I really didn't want to be there, but I had promised my mother and I was living in her house, so that was the end of it. 'Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,' said my mother, clapping her hands, 'and if you'd all like to take a seat we can allow this meeting to begin.' Everyone sat down, tea and Battenberg cake in hand, and looked expectant. 'Firstly I would like to welcome a new member to the group. As you know, my daughter has been away for a couple of years not in prison, I'd like to make that clear!' 'Thank you, Mother,' I murmured under my breath as there was polite laughter from the group, who instantly assumed that's exactly where I had been. 'And she has kindly agreed to join our group and say a few words. Thursday?' I took a deep breath, stood up and said quickly: 'Hello, everyone. My name's Thursday Next and my husband doesn't exist.' There was applause at this and someone said: 'Way to go, Thursday,' but I couldn't think of anything to add, nor wanted to, so sat down again. There was silence as everyone stared at me, politely waiting for me to carry on. 'That's it. End of story.' 'I'll drink to that!' said Emma, gazing forlornly at the locked drinks cabinet. 'You're very brave,' said Mrs Beatty, who was sitting next to me. She patted my hand in a kindly manner. 'What was his name?' 'Landen. Landen Parke-Laine. He was murdered by the ChronoGuard in 1947. I'm going to the Goliath Apologarium tomorrow to try to get his eradication reversed.' » There was a murmuring. 'What's the matter?' 'You must understand,' said a tall and painfully thin man who up until now had remained silent, 'that for you to progress in this 104 ¦m n THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT walcot East Park N. & s. Green bridge Croquet Stadium i +. .* 'Wt «t3 'You mean to tell me, Mr Holmes, that we are in the wrong book?' 105 group you must begin to accept that this is a problem of the memory -- there is no Landen; you just think there is.' 'It's very dry in here, isn't it?' muttered Emma unsubtly, still staring at the drinks cabinet. 'I was like you once,' said Mrs Beatty, who had stopped patting my hand and returned to her knitting. 'I had a wonderful life with Edgar and then, one morning, I wake up in a different house with Gerald lying next to me. He didn't believe me when I explained the problem, and I was on medication for ten years until I came here. It is only now, in the company of your good selves, that I am coming to the realisation that it is only a malady of the head.' I was horrified. 'Mother?' 'It's something that we must try and face, my dear.' 'But Dad visits you, doesn't he?' 'Well, I believe he does,' she said, thinking hard, 'but of course when he's gone it's only a memory. There isn't any real proof that he ever existed.' 'What about me? And Joffy? Or even Anton? How were we born without Dad?' She shrugged at the impossibility of the paradox. 'Perhaps it was, after all, youthful indiscretions that I have expunged from my mind.' 'And Emma? And Herr Bismarck? How do you explain them being here?' 'Well,' said my mother, thinking hard, 'I'm sure there's a rational explanation for it... somewhere.' 'Is this what this group teaches you?' I replied angrily. 'To deny the memories of your loved ones?' I looked around at the gathering whose members had, it seemed, given up in the face of the hopeless paradox that they iived every minute of their lives. I opened my mouth to try to describe eloquently just how I knew Landen had once been married to me when I realised I was wasting my time. There was nothing, but nothing, to suggest it was anything other than in my mind. I sighed. 106 To be truthful, it was in my mind. It hadn't happened. I just had memories of how it might have turned out. The tall thin man, the realist, was beginning to convince everyone they were not victims of a timeslip, but delusional. 'You want proof--' I was interrupted by an excited knock at the front door. Whoever it was didn't waste any time; they just walked straight into the house and into the front room. It was a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who was holding the hand of a confused and acutely embarrassed-looking man. 'Hello, group!' she said happily. 'It's Ralph! I got him back!' 'Ah!' said Emma. 'This calls for a celebration!' Everyone ignored her. 'I'm sorry,' said my mother, 'have you got the right house? Or the right self-help group?' 'Yes, yes,' the woman asserted. 'It's Julie, Julie Aseizer. I've been coming to this group every week for the past three years!' There was silence in the group. All you could hear was the quiet click of Mrs Beatty's knitting needles. 'Well, I haven't seen you,' announced the tall thin man. He looked around at the group. 'Does anyone recognise this person?' The group members shook their heads blankly. 'I expect you think this is really funny, don't you?' said the thin man angrily. 'This is a self-help group for people with severe memory aberrations and I really don't think it is either amusing or constructive for pranksters to make fun of us! Now, please leave!' The woman stood for a moment, biting her lip, but it was her husband who spoke. 'Come on, darling, I'm taking you home.' 'But wait--!' she said. 'Now he's back everything is as it was and I wouldn't have needed to come to your group, so I didn't -- yet I remember--' Her voice trailed off and her husband gave her a hug as she started to sob. He led her out, apologising profusely all the while. As soon as they had gone the thin man sat down indignantly. 107 'A sorry state of affairs!' he grumbled. 'Everyone thinks it's funny to do that old joke,' added Mrs Beatty, 'that's the second time this month.' 'It gave me a powerful thirst,' added Emma. 'Anyone else?' 'Maybe,' I suggested, 'they should start a self-help group for themselves -- they could call it Eradications Anonymous Anonymous.' No one thought it was funny and I hid a smile. Perhaps there would be a chance for me and Landen after all. I didn't contribute much to the group after that, and indeed the conversation soon threaded away from eradications and on to more mundane matters, such as the latest crop of TV shows that seemed to have flourished in my absence. Celebrity Name That Fruit! hosted by Frankie Saveloy was a ratings topper these days, as was Toasters from Hell and You've Been Stapled!, a collection of England's funniest stationery incidents. Emma had given up all attempts at subtlety by now and was prising the lock off the drinks cabinet with a screwdriver when Friday wailed one of those ultrasonic cries that only parents can hear - makes you understand how sheep can know whose lamb is whose -- and I mercifully excused myself. He was standing up in his cot rattling the bars, so I took him out and read to him until we were both fast asleep. 108 10 Mrs Tiggy- Winkle KIERKEGAARD BOOK - BURNING CEREMONY PROVES DANISH PHILOSOPHER'S UNPOPULARITY Chancellor Yorrick Kaine last night officiated at the first burning of Danish literature with the incineration of eight copies of Fear and Trembling,, a quantity that fell far short of the expected 'thirty or forty tons'. When asked to comment on the apparent lack of enthusiasm among the public for torching their Danish philosophy, Kaine explained that 'Kierkegaard is clearly less popular than we thought, and rightly so - next stop Hans Christian Andersen!' Kierkegaard himself was unavailable for comment, having inconsiderately allowed himself to be dead for a number of years. Article in The Toad, 14 July 1988 I was dreaming that a large chainsaw-wielding elephant was sitting on me when I awoke at two in the morning. I was still fully dressed with a snoring Friday fast asleep on my chest. I put him back in his cot and turned the bedside lamp to the wall to soften the light. My mother, for reasons known only to herself, had kept my bedroom pretty much as it was at the time I had left home. It was nostalgic but also deeply disturbing to see just what had interested me in my late teens. It seemed that it had been boys, music, Jane Austen and law enforcement, but not particularly in that order. I undressed and slipped on a long T-shirt and stared at Friday's sleeping form, his lips making gentle sucky motions. 'Psss!' said a voice close at hand. I turned. There, in the semi dark, was a very large hedgehog dressed in a pinafore and bonnet. She was keeping a close lookout at the door and after giving me a wan smile crept to the window and peeked out. 109 'Whoa!' she breathed in wonderment. 'Street lights are orange. Never would have thought thatV 'Mrs Tiggy-Winkle,' I said, 'I've only been gone two days!' 'Sorry to bother you,' she said, curtsying quickly and absently folding my shirt, which I had tossed over a chair-back, 'but there are one or two things going on that I thought you should know about -- and you did say that if I had any questions to ask.' 'Okay - but not here; we'll wake Friday.' So we crept downstairs to the kitchen. I pulled down the blinds before turning the lights on as a six-foot hedgehog in a shawl and bonnet might have caused a few eyebrows to be raised in the neighbourhood -- no one wore bonnets in Swindon these days. I offered Mrs Tiggy-Winkle a seat at the table. Although she, Emperor Zhark and Bradshaw had been put in charge of running Jurisfiction in my absence, none of them had the leadership skills necessary to do the job on their own. And while the Council of Genres refused to concede that my absence was anything but 'compassionate leave', a new Bellman was yet to be elected in my place. 'So what's up?' I asked. 'Oh, Miss Next!' she wailed, her spines bristling with vexation. 'Please come back!' 'I have things to deal with out here,' I explained, 'you all know that!' She sighed. 'I know, but Emperor Zhark threw a tantrum when I suggested he spend a little less time conquering the universe and a little more time at Jurisfiction - the Red Queen won't do anything post-1867 and Vernham Deane is tied up with the latest Daphne Farquitt novel. Commander Bradshaw does his own thing, which leaves me in charge - and someone left a saucer of bread and milk on my desk this morning.' 'It was probably just a joke.' » 'Well, I'm not laughing,' replied Mrs Tiggy-Winkle indignantly. 'By the way,' I said as a thought suddenly struck me, 'did you find out which book Yorrick Kaine escaped from?' 'I'm afraid not. The Cat is searching unpublished novels in the no Well of Lost Plots at the moment, but it might take a little time. You know how chaotic things are down there.' 'Only too well.' I sighed, thinking about my old home in unpublished fiction with a mixture of fondness and relief. The Well is where books are actually constructed, where plotsmiths create the stories that authors think they write. You can buy plot devices at discount rates and verbs by the pint. An odd place, to be sure. 'Okay,' I said finally, 'you'd better tell me what's going on.' ^i 'Well,' said Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, counting the points out on her i" paw, 'this morning a rumour of potential change in the copyright 3$ laws swept through the BookWorld.' f- 'I don't know how these rumours get started,' I replied wearily. |j» 'Was there any truth in it?' 'Not in the least.' This was a contentious subject to the residents of the BookWorld. The jump to copyright-free Public Domain Status had always been a fearful prospect for a book character, and even with support groups and training courses to soften the blow, the 'Narrative Menopause' could take some getting used to. The problem was, copyright laws tend to vary around the world and sometimes characters are in the public domain in one market and not in another, which is confusing. Then there is the possibility that the law might change and characters who had adjusted themselves to Public Domain Status would find themselves in copyright again or vice versa. Unrest in the BookWorld about these matters is palpable; it only takes a small spark to set off a riot. 'So all was well?' 'Pretty much.' 'Good. Anything else?' 'Starbucks want to open another coffee shop in the Hardy Boys series.' 'Another one?' I asked with some surprise. 'There's already sixteen. How much coffee do they think they can drink? Tell them they can open another in Mrs Dalloway and two more in The Age of Reason. After that, no more. What else?' in 'Whoa!' she breathed in wonderment. 'Street lights are orange. Never would have thought thatl' 'Mrs Tiggy-Winkle,' I said, 'I've only been gone two days!' 'Sorry to bother you,' she said, curtsying quickly and absently folding my shirt, which I had tossed over a chair-back, 'but there are one or two things going on that I thought you should know about - and you did say that if I had any questions to ask.' 'Okay -- but not here; we'll wake Friday.' So we crept downstairs to the kitchen. I pulled down the blinds before turning the lights on as a six-foot hedgehog in a shawl and bonnet might have caused a few eyebrows to be raised in the neighbourhood -- no one wore bonnets in Swindon these days. I offered Mrs Tiggy-Winkle a seat at the table. Although she, Emperor Zhark and Bradshaw had been put in charge of running Jurisfiction in my absence, none of them had the leadership skills necessary to do the job on their own. And while the Council of Genres refused to concede that my absence was anything but 'compassionate leave', a new Bellman was yet to be elected in my place. 'So what's up?' I asked. 'Oh, Miss Next!' she wailed, her spines bristling with vexation. 'Please come back!' 'I have things to deal with out here,' I explained, 'you all know that!' She sighed. 'I know, but Emperor Zhark threw a tantrum when I suggested he spend a little less time conquering the universe and a little more time at Jurisfiction - the Red Queen won't do anything post-1867 and Vernham Deane is tied up with the latest Daphne Farquitt novel. Commander Bradshaw does his own thing, which leaves me in charge - and someone left a saucer of bread and milk on my desk this morning.' 'It was probably just a joke.' * 'Well, I'm not laughing,' replied Mrs Tiggy-Winkle indignantly. 'By the way,' I said as a thought suddenly struck me, 'did you find out which book Yorrick Kaine escaped from?' 'I'm afraid not. The Cat is searching unpublished novels in the no Well of Lost Plots at the moment, but it might take a little time. You know how chaotic things are down there.' 'Only too well.' I sighed, thinking about my old home in unpublished fiction with a mixture of fondness and relief. The Well is where books are actually constructed, where plotsmiths create the stories that authors think they write. You can buy plot devices at discount rates and verbs by the pint. An odd place, to be sure. 'Okay,' I said finally, 'you'd better tell me what's going on.' 'Well,' said Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, counting the points out on her paw, 'this morning a rumour of potential change in the copyright laws swept through the BookWorld.' 'I don't know how these rumours get started,' I replied wearily. 'Was there any truth in it?' 'Not in the least.' This was a contentious subject to the residents of the BookWorld. The jump to copyright-free Public Domain Status had always been a fearful prospect for a book character, and even with support groups and training courses to soften the blow, the 'Narrative Menopause' could take some getting used to. The problem was, copyright laws tend to vary around the world and sometimes characters are in the public domain in one market and not in another, which is confusing. Then there is the possibility that the law might change and characters who had adjusted themselves to Public Domain Status would find themselves in copyright again or vice versa. Unrest in the BookWorld about these matters is palpable; it only takes a small spark to set off a riot. 'So all was well?' 'Pretty much.' 'Good. Anything else?' 'Starbucks want to open another coffee shop in the Hardy Boys series.' 'Another one?' I asked with some surprise. 'There's already sixteen. How much coffee do they think they can drink? Tell them ~f*. they can open another in Mrs Dalloway and two more in The Age of Reason. After that, no more. What else?' in 'The Tailor of Gloucester needs three yards of cherry-coloured silk to finish the mayor's embroidered coat -- but he's got a cold and can't go out.' 'Who are we? Interlink? Tell him to send his cat, Simpkin.' 'Okay.' There was a pause. 'You didn't come all this way to tell me bad news about Kaine, copyright panics and cherry-coloured twist, now, did you?' She looked at me and sighed. 'There's a bit of a problem with Hamlet.' 'I know. But he's doing a favour for my mother at the moment. I'll send him back in a few days.' 'Um,' replied the hedgehog nervously, 'it's a bit more complex than that. I think it might be a good idea if you kept him out here for a bit longer.' 'What's going on?' I asked suspiciously. 'It wasn't my fault!' she burst out, reaching for her pocket handkerchief. 'I thought the Internal Plot Adjustment request was to sort out the seasonal anomalies! All that death in the orchard, then winter, then flowers--' 'What happened?' I asked. Mrs Tiggy-Winkle looked miserable. 'Well, you know there has been much grumbling within Hamlet ever since Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got their own play?' 'Yes?' 'Just after you left, Ophelia attempted a coup d'etat in Hamlet's absence. She imported a B-6 Hamlet from Lamb's Shakespeare and convinced him to re-enact some of the key scenes with a proOphelia bias.' 'And?' 'Well,' said Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, 'they retitled it Ths Tragedy of the Fair Ophelia, driven mad by the callous Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.' 'She's always up to something, isn't she? I'll give her "Hey nonny, nonny". Tell her to get back into line or we'll slap a Class II fiction infraction on her so fast it'll make her head spin.' 112 'We tried that but Laertes returned from Paris and lent his voice to the revolution. Together they made some more changes and called it: The Tragedy of the Noble Laertes, who avenges his sister the fair Ophelia, driven mad by the callous and murderous Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.' I ran my fingers through what remained of my hair. 'So ... arrest them both?' 'Too late. Their father Polonius was in a "have a go" mood and joined in. He also made changes and together they renamed it The tragedy of the very witty and not remotely boring Polonius, father of the noble Laertes, who avenges his fair sister Ophelia, driven mad by the callous, murderous and outrageously disrespectful Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.' 'What was it like?' 'With Polonius? Very . . . wordy. We could replace them all,' carried on Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, 'but changing so many major players in one swoop might cause irreparable damage. The last thing we need right now is Hamlet coming back and sticking his oar in -- you know how mad he gets when anybody even suggests a word change.' 'Right,' I said, 'here's the plan. This is all happening in the 1623 folio edition, yes?' Mrs Tiggy-Winkle nodded her head. 'Okay. Move Hamlet -- or whatever it is called at present -- to a disused Storycode engine and fire up The Penguin Modern Hamlet so that is the one everyone in the Outland will read. It will give us some breathing space without anyone seeing the Polonised version. It won't be at its best, but it'll have to do. Horatio must still be on Hamlet's side, surely?' 'Most definitely.' 'Then deputise him to Jurisfiction and try to get him to convince the Polonius family to attend an arbitration session. Keep me posted. I'll try and keep Hamlet amused out here.' She made a note. 'Is that all?' I asked. "3 'Unless you need some washing done.' 'I have a mother who will fight you for that. Now please, please, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, you must leave me to sort out Kaine and get my husband back!' 'You're right,' she said after a short pause. 'We're going to handle this all on our own.' 'Good.' 'Right.' 'Well. . . goodnight, then.' 'Yes,' said the hedgehog, 'goodnight.' She stood there on the kitchen linoleum, tapping her paws together and staring at the ceiling. 'Tiggy, what is it?' 'It's Mr Tiggy-Winkle!' she burst out at last. 'He came home late last night in a state of shock and smelling of car exhaust and I'm so worried!' It was about three in the morning when I was finally left alone with my thoughts, a sleeping son and a pocket handkerchief drenched with hedgehog tears. 114 II The Greatness of St Zvlkx GOLIATH CORPORATION IMPLEMENT 'DISTRACTION REDUCTION' PROGRAMME Accusations were growing yesterday that the corporation's drive to increase productivity would result in the loss of civil liberties. This was strongly denied by Goliath, who commented: 'We don't see bricking up the million or so windows in our 10,000 work facilities as anything less than a positive step forward. By removing windows we aim to help the worker who might be suffering from interest in work deficit disorder to higher levels of self-help and greater productivity. We also think that it will save thousands of gallons of Windolene and the estimated six hundred deaths suffered by window cleaners every year.' Accusations that the corporation were 'nothing short of bullies' were met with a three-hundred-page writ for defamation, delivered personally by very big men with tattoos.' Article in The Toad on Sunday, 3 July 1988 k From humble beginnings in 1289 to a fiery end in the autumn of 1536, the towering beauty of the Great Cathedral of Swindon was once the equal of Canterbury or York, but no longer. Built over at least four times since then, the site of the cathedral is now occupied by a temple of another kind: Tesco's. Where monks once moved silently to prayer beneath vaulted cloisters, you can now buy Lola Vavoom workout videos, and where the exquisite stained glass east window once brought forth tears from the coldest heart, there is now a refrigerated display boasting five different types of smoked sausage. I took my seat and placed Friday on my lap. He wriggled while I looked around. The car park was full of eager spectators. Some, 115 like myself, were sitting on the especially constructed tiered seating, the rest standing behind barriers on the asphalt. But everyone, sitting or standing, was facing a small fenced-off area sandwiched between the shopping trolley return point and the cashpoint machines. This small area contained a weathered arched doorway, the only visible remnant of Swindon's once great monastic settlement. 'How are you doing?' asked JofFy, who, as well as being a minister for the GSD and several other smaller denominations, was also head of the Idolatry Friends of St Zvlkx. 'Fine. Isn't that Lydia Startright?' I was pointing at a well-dressed female reporter readying herself for a broadcast. 'She's about to interview me. How do I look?' 'Very . . . ecclesiastical.' 'Good. Excuse me.' He straightened his dog collar and walked over to join Lydia. She was standing next to her producer, a small and curiously unappealing man who was so unoriginal of thought that he still considered it cool and desirable for people in the media to wear black. 'What time is old Zvlkxy due to appear?' the producer asked Joffy. 'In about five minutes.' 'Good. Lyds, we'd better go live.' Lydia composed herself, took one more look at her notes, awaited the count-in of the producer, gave a welcoming smile and began. 'Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, this is Lydia Startright for Toad News Network reporting live from Swindon. In under five minutes St Zvlkx, the obscure and sometimes controversial thirteenth-century saint, is due to be resurrected here, live on regional TV.' » She turned to indicate the weathered pieces of stone, previously ignored by thousands of shoppers but now the centre of attention. 'On this spot once stood the towering Great Cathedral of Swindon, founded by St Zvlkx in the thirteenth century. Where the wet-fish 116 counter now stands was where St Zvlkx penned his "Book of Revealments" containing seven sets of prophecies, five of which have already come true. To help us through the quagmire of claims and counter-claims I have with me the Very Irrev. Jofry Next, head of the Church of the Global Standard Deity here in Swindon, speaker at the Idolatry Friends of St Zvlkx and something of an expert in things Zvlkxian. Hello, Jofry, welcome to the show.' 'Thank you, Lydia,' said Joffy, 'we're all big fans of yours at the GSD.' 'Thank you. So tell me, what exactly are the Revealments?' 'Well,' he began, 'details are understandably vague, but St Zvlkx wrote a number of predictions in a small book before he vanished in a "cleansing fire" in 1292. An incomplete copy of the Revealments is in the Swindon City Library, but unlike those of most of the other seers who make vague and sweeping generalisations that are open to interpretation, St Zvlkx's predictions are refreshingly specific' 'Perhaps you could give us an example?' 'Of course. Part of Zvlkx's Revealment the First tells us that: A lowly butcher's son from the town of Ipswich will rise to be Lord Chancellor. His name shall be Tommy Wolsey, and he will be inaugurated the day before Christmas, and shall get only one present, not two, as should be his right. . .' 'That's uncannily accurate!' breathed Lydia. 'Indeed -- existing letters from Cardinal Wolsey indicate most strongly that he was "vexed and annoyed" at having to make do with only one present, something he often spoke about and which might have contributed, many years later, to his failure to persuade the Pope to grant Henry VIII an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.' 'Remarkable,' said Lydia. 'What else?' 'Well,' continued Joffy, 'Zvlkx's Revealment the Second told us that: . . . It shall be known as the "Sail of the Century" -- an armada of over a hundred ships smelling of paella shall cross the Channel. Fire and wind will conspire to destroy them, England will remain free. . .' 117 'Not quite so good,' said Lydia. 'I agree,' replied Joffy. 'Paella wasn't invented until after the Spanish Armada. There are the odd mistakes, but even so his accuracy is astonishing. Not only do his Revealments include names and dates but also, on one occasion, a reliable phone number for a good time in Leeds. By the end of the sixteenth century St Zvlkx had been afforded that rare hallmark of unbridled Elizabethan success -- the commemorative plate. By the time of his next Revealment a century and a half later his supporters and followers had dwindled to only a handful. But when it arrived, this Revealment the Third catapulted Zvlkx back into the world's headlines: . . . In 17j6, a George King numbered three will lose his mind, his largest colony, and his socks. The colony will grow to be the greatest power in the world but his mind and his socks will stay lost 'And the fourth?' '. . . a man named after a form of waterproof shoe will trounce a short Frenchman in Belgium . . .' 'Clearly Waterloo - and the fifth?' '. . . The evil yet nattily dressed aggressors known as Nasis, fear of whom has polarised the nation, will be ejected from these islands by -- and I know this sounds really weird -- the colony that was mentioned in prediction three. And Denis Compton will score 3,816 runs for Middlesex in a single season . . .' 'Uncanny,' murmured Lydia. 'How would a thirteenth-century monk know that Compton batted for Middlesex?' 'He was, and indeed might be again, the greatest of seers,' replied Joffy. 'We know that his Revealment the Sixth was a prediction of his own second coming, but it is the sports fans of Swindon who will really be bowled over by his Revealment the Seventh.' 'Exactly so,' replied Joffy. 'According to the incomplete Codex Zvlkxus, it will be: There will be a home win on the playing fields of Swindonne in nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and in consequence of . . . There is more, but it's been lost. We can ask him about it when he reappears.' 118 'Fascinating stuff, Irrev. Next! Just one question. Where is he?' I looked at my watch as Friday stood on my lap and stared that unnerving sort of two-year-old stare at the couple behind us. St Zvlkx was already three minutes late, and I saw Joffy bite his lip nervously. They had made much of the Great Man's predictions, and for him not to turn up would be just plain embarrassing -- not to mention costly. Joffy had spent a great deal of Mum's savings learning #H> CnsltSl) at the local adult education centre. 'Tell me, Irrev. Next,' continued Lydia, trying to pad out the interview, 'I understand the Toast Marketing Board has secured a sponsorship deal with St Zvlkx?' 'Indeed,' replied Joffy, 'we at the Idolatry Friends of St Zvlkx have secured on his behalf a very favourable deal with Toast, who wanted to have exclusive rights to his likeness and wisdom, if he has any.' 'Nevertheless, I understand the Goliath Corporation were said to be interested?' 'Not really. Goliath have been less than enthusiastic since their sportswear division paid over a quarter of a million for an exclusive sponsorship deal with St Bernadette of Lincoln. But since her return six months ago she has done nothing except brick herself up in a room and pray in silent retrospection, something that doesn't lend itself to selling running shoes. The Toast Marketing Board, on the other hand, made no such demands - they are happy just to see what Zvlkx himself would like to do for them.' Lydia turned back to the camera. 'Astonishing. If you've just joined us this is a live telecast of the second coming of the thirteenth-century saint, Thomas Zvlkx.' I looked at my watch again. Zvlkx was now five minutes late. Lydia carried on with her live broadcast, interviewing several other people to soak up time. The crowd grew slightly impatient and a low murmuring started to emerge from the expectant silence. Lydia had just asked a style guru about the sort of clothes they might be expecting Zvlkx to be wearing when she was interrupted by a shout. Something was happening just outside 119 Tesco's between the child's coin-in-the-slot flying elephant ride and the letterbox. Joffy vaulted over the press enclosure and ran towards where a column of smoke was rising from a crack that had opened up in the mother-and-child parking area. The sky grew dark, birds stopped singing and shoppers coming out of the revolving doors stared in astonishment as a bolt of lightning struck the weathered stone arch and split it asunder. There was a collective cry of alarm as a wind sprang up from nowhere. Pennants advertising new Saver product lines which were hanging limply on the flagpoles came loose with a crack and a whirling mass of dust and waste paper spread across the car park, making several people cough. Within a few moments it was all over. Sitting on the ground and dressed in a rough habit tied with a rope at the waist was a grubby man with a scraggy beard and exceptionally bad teeth. He blinked and looked curiously around at his new surroundings. 'Welcome,' said Joffy, the first on the scene, '3 represent tfje 3fbolatrp jfricnbss of i£>t Znlkx anb offer pou protection anb guibance.' The thirteenth-century monk looked at him with his dark eyes, then at the crowd which had gathered closer to him, everyone talking and pointing and asking him whether they could have their pictures taken with him. '§9our attent i& not bab,' replied St Zvlkx slowly. '3s this 1968V '3t is, stir. 3'be brokereb a sponsorship beal for pou toith the {Coast Jllarketing poarb.' 'Cash?' Joffy nodded. 'tChank ?*&£@ for that,' said Zvlkx. '3|aS the ale improtieb Since 3f'be been atoap?' 'J^ot much. Put the choice is better.' 'Can't toait. ^ubba-hubba! Is^ho's the moppet in the tight blouse?' 'Mr Next,' interjected Lydia, who had managed to push her way to the front, 'perhaps you would be good enough to tell us what Mr Zvlkx is saying?' 'I -- um -- welcomed him to the twentieth century and said we 120 had much to learn from him as regards beekeeping and the lost art of brewing mead. He - um -- said just then that he is tired after his journey and wants only world peace, bridges between nations and a good home for orphans, kittens and puppies.' The crowd suddenly parted to make way for the Mayor of Swindon. St Zvlkx knew power when he saw it and smiled a greeting to Lord Volescamper, who walked briskly up and shook the monk's grimy hand. 'Look here, welcome to the twentieth century, old salt,' said Volescamper, wiping his hand on his handkerchief. 'How are you finding it?' 'Welcome to our age,' translated Joffy, 'hotn are pou enjoying pour Stap?' 'Cushtp, me oto cocker babe,' replied the saint simply. 'He says very well, thank you.' 'Tell the worthy saint that we have a welcome pack awaiting him in the presidential suite at the Finis Hotel. Knowing his aversion to comfort we took the liberty of removing all carpets, drapes, sheets and towels and replaced the bedclothes with hemp sacks stuffed with rocks.' 'W\)at bib the olo fart sap?' 'Hou bon't toant to knoto.' 'What about the incomplete seventh Revealment?' asked Lydia. 'Can St Zvlkx tell us anything about that?' Joffy swiftly translated and St Zvlkx rummaged in the folds of his blanket and produced a small leather-bound book. The crowd fell silent as he licked a grubby finger, turned to the requisite page and read: '©here toill be a home toin on the plaping fielbs of Utoinbonne in nineteen hunbreb anb eightp-eight, anb in consequence of this; anb onlp in consequence of this, a great tprant anb the companp nameb (Soliathe toill fall.' All eyes switched to Jofry, who translated. There was a sharp intake of breath and a clamour of questions. 'Mr Zvlkx,' said a reporter from The Mole, who up until that 121 moment had been bored out of his skull, 'do you mean to say that Goliath will be lost if Swindon wins the Superhoop?' 'That is exactly what he says,' replied Jofry. There was a further clamour of questions from the assembled journalists as I carefully tried to figure out the repercussions of this new piece of intelligence. Dad had said that a Superhoop win for Swindon would avert an armageddon and, if what Zvlkx was saying came true, a triumph on Saturday would do precisely this. The question was, how? There was no connection as far as I could see. I was still trying to think how a croquet final could unseat a near dictator and destroy one of the most powerful multinationals on the planet when Lord Volescamper intervened and silenced the noisy crowd of newsmen with a wave of his hand. 'Mr Next, thank the gracious saint for his words. There is time enough to muse on his Revealment but right now I would like him to meet members of the Swindon Chamber of Commerce, which, I might add, is sponsored by St Biddulph's® Hundreds and Thousands, the cake decoration of choice. After that we might take some tea and carrot cake. Would he be agreeable to that?' Jofry translated every word and Zvlkx smiled happily. 'Look here, St Zvlkx,' said Volescamper as they walked towards the marquee for tea and scones, 'what was the thirteenth century like?' 'tKIje mapor toants to knoto totjat tfje tljtrteentf) century toasi like anb no Up, sunshine.' 'Jftlujp, bamp, biSease-ribben anb pestilential.' 'He said it was like London, Your Grace.' St Zvlkx looked at the weathered arch, the only visible evidence of his once great cathedral, and asked: 'W\)&t Ijappeneb to mj> catfjebral?' , 'purneb buring tl)e bissolution of tfje monasteries.' '?|ot bamn,' he muttered, eyebrows raised, 'Sfjoulb Fjatoe Seen tfjat coming.' 122 'Duis ante dolor in fugiat nulla pariatur,' murmured Friday, pointing at St Zvlkx's retreating form, rapidly vanishing in a crowd of well wishers and newsmen. 'I have no idea, sweetheart - but I've a feeling things are just beginning to get interesting.' 'Well,' said Lydia to the camera, 'a Revealment that could spell potential disaster for the Goliath Corporation and--' Her producer was gesticulating wildly for her not to connect 'tyrant' with 'Kaine' live on air. '--an as yet unnamed tyrant. This is Lydia Startright, bringing you a miraculous event live for Toad News. And now, a word from our sponsors, Goliath Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Haerrmarelief.' 123 12 Spike and Cindy 'Operative Spike Stoker was with SO-17, the Vampire and Werewolf disposal operation, undeniably the most lonely of the SpecOps divisions. SO-17 operatives worked in the twilight world of the semi-dead, changelings, vampires, lycanthropes and those of a generally evil disposition. Spike had been decorated more times than I had read Three Men in a Boat, but then he was the only staker in the South-west and no one in their right mind would do what he did on a SpecOps wage, except me. And only then when I was desperate for the cash.' Thursday next - My Life in SpecOps I pushed Friday back towards my car, deep in thought. The stakes had just been raised and any chance that I might somehow influence the outcome of the Superhoop were suddenly made that much more impossible. With Goliath and Kaine both having a vested interest in making sure the Swindon Mallets lost, chances of our victory had dropped from 'highly unlikely' to 'nigh impossible'. 'It explains,' said a voice, 'why Goliath are changing to a faith based corporate management system.' I turned to find my stalker, Millon de Floss, walking close behind me. It must have been important for him to contravene the blanket restraining order. I stopped for a moment. 'Why do you think that?' 'Once they are a religion they won't be a company named Goliathe, as stated in Zvlkx's prophecy,' observed Millon, 'and they can avoid the Revealment coming true. Sister Bettina, their own corporate precog, must have foreseen something like this and alerted them.' 'Does that mean,' I asked slowly, 'that they're taking St Zvlkx seriously?' 125 'He's too accurate not to be, Miss Next, however unlikely it may seem. Now that they know the complete seventh Revealment, they'll try and do anything to stop Swindon winning - and continue with the religion thing as a back-up just in case.' It made sense -- sort of. Dad must have known this or something very like it. None of it boded very well, but my father had said the likelihood of this armageddon was only 22 per cent, so the answer must be somewhere. 'I'm going to visit Goliathopolis this afternoon,' I said thoughtfully. 'Have you found out anything about Kaine?' Millon rummaged in his pocket for a notepad, found it and flicked through the pages, which seemed to be full of numbers. 'It's here somewhere,' he said apologetically. 'I like to collect vacumn-cleaner serial numbers and was investigating a rare Hoover XB-23E when I got the call. Here it is. This Kaine fellow is a conspiracist's delight. He arrived on the scene five years ago with no past, no parents, nothing. His national insurance number was only given to him in 1982, and it seems the only jobs he has ever held was with his publishing company and then as MP.' 'Not a lot to go on, then.' 'Not yet, but I'll keep on digging. You might be interested to know that he has been seen on several occasions with Lola Vavoom.' 'Who hasn't?' 'Agreed. You wanted to know about Mr Schitt-Hawse? He heads the Goliath tech division.' 'You sure?' Millon looked dubious for a moment. 'In the conspiracy industry the word "sure" has a certain plasticity about it, but yes. We have a mole at Goliathopolis. Admittedly they only serve in the canteen, but you'd be surprised the sensitive information that one can overhear giving out shortbread fingers. Apparently Schitt-Hawse has been engaged in something called "The Ovitron Project". We're not sure but it might be a development of your uncle's ovinator. Could it be something along the lines of The Midwich CuckoosV 126 'I sincerely hope not.' I made a few notes, thanked Millon for his time and continued heading back to my car, my head full of potential futures, ovinators and Kaine. Ten minutes later we were in my Speedster, heading north towards Cricklade. My father had told me that Cindy would fail to kill me three times before she died herself, but there was a chance the future didn't have to turn out that way -- after all, I had once been shot dead by a SpecOps marksman in an alternative future, and I was still very much alive. I hadn't seen Spike for over two years but had been gratified to learn he had moved out of his dingy apartment to a new address in Cricklade. I soon found his street -- it was a newly built estate of Cotswold stone which shone a warm glow of ochre in the sunlight. As we drove slowly down the road checking door numbers, Friday helpfully pointed out things of interest. 'Ipsurn,'1 he said, pointing at a car. I was hoping that Spike wasn't there so I could speak to Cindy on her own, but I was out of luck. I parked behind his SpecOps 4^ black-and-white and climbed out. Spike himself was sitting in a Jr- deckchair on the front lawn, and my heart fell when I saw that not only had he married Cindy but they had also had a child -- a girl of about one was sitting on the grass next to him playing under a parasol. I cursed inwardly as Friday hid behind my leg. I was going to have to make Cindy play ball - the alternative wouldn't be good for her and would be worse for Spike and their daughter. 'Yo!' yelled Spike, telling the person on the other end of the phone to hold it one moment and getting up to give me a hug. 'How you doing, Next?' 'I'm good, Spike. You?' He spread his arms, indicating the trappings of middle England suburbia. The UPVC double glazing, the well-kept lawn, the drive, the wrought-iron sunrise gate. 127 'Look at all this, sister! Isn't it the best?' 'Ipsum,' said Friday, pointing at a plant pot. 'Cute kid. Go on in. I'll be with you in a moment.' I walked into the house and found Cindy in the kitchen. She had a pinny on and her hair tied up. 'Hello,' I said, trying to sound as normal as possible, 'you must be Cindy.' She looked me straight in the eye. She didn't look like a professional assassin who had killed sixty-seven times - sixty-eight if she did Samuel Pring - yet the really good ones never do. 'Well, well, Thursday Next,' she said slowly, crouching down to pull some damp clothes out of the washing machine and tweaking Friday's ear. 'Spike holds you in very high regard.' 'Then you know why I'm here?' She put down the washing, picked up a Fisher-Price Webster that was threatening to trip someone up, and passed it to Friday, who sat down to scrutinise it carefully. 'I can guess. Handsome lad. How old is he?' 'He was two last month. And I'd like to thank you for missing yesterday.' She gave a wan smile and walked out of the back door. I caught up with her as she started to hang the washing on the line. 'Is it Kaine trying to have me killed?' 'I always respect client confidentiality,' she said quietly, 'and I can't miss for ever.' 'Then stop it right now,' I said. 'Why do you even need to do it at all?' She pegged a blue Babygro on the line. 'Two reasons: first, I'm not going to give up work just because I'm married with a kid, and second, I always complete a contract, no matter what. When I don't deliver the goods the cjients want refunds. And the Windowmaker doesn't do refunds.' 'Yes.' I replied, 'I was curious about that. Why the Window maker?' She glared at me coldly. 128 'The printers made a mistake on the notepaper and it would have cost too much to redo. Don't laugh.' She hung up a pillowcase. 'I'll contract you out, Miss Next, but I won't try today -- which gives you some time to get yourself together and leave town for good. Somewhere where I can't find you. And hide well - I'm very good at what I do.' She glanced towards the kitchen. I hung a large SO-17 Tshirt on the line. 'He doesn't know, does he?' I said. 'Spike is a fine man,' replied Cindy, just a little slow on the uptake. You're not going to tell him and he's never going to know. Grab the other end of that sheet, will you?' I took the end of a dry sheet and we folded it together. 'I'm not going anywhere, Cindy,' I told her, 'and I'll protect myself in any way I can.' We stared at one another for a moment. It seemed like such a waste. 'Retire!' 'Never!' 'Why?' 'Because I like it and I'm good sit it - would you like some tea, Thursday?' Spike had entered the garden carrying the baby. 'So, how are my two favourite ladies?' 'Thursday was helping me with the washing, Spikey,' said Cindy, her hard-as-nails professionalism replaced by a silly sort of girlie ditsiness. 'I'll put the kettle on - two sugars, Thursday?' 'One.' She skipped into the house. 'What do you think?' asked Spike in a low tone. 'Isn't she just the cutest thing ever?' ^y. He was like a fifteen-year-old in love for the first time. 'She's lovely, Spike, you're a lucky man.' 'This is Betty,' said Spike, waving the tiny arm of the infant 129 with his huge hand. 'One year old. You were right about being honest with Cindy -- she didn't mind me doing all that vampire sh-- I mean stuff. In fact I think she's kinda proud.' 'You're a lucky man,' I repeated, wondering just how I was going to avoid making him a widower and the gurgling child motherless. We walked back into the house, where Cindy was busying herself in the kitchen. 'Where have you been?' asked Spike, depositing Betty next to Friday. They looked at one another suspiciously. 'Prison?' 'No. Somewhere weird. Somewhere other.1 'Will you be returning there?' asked Cindy innocently. 'She's only just got back!' exclaimed Spike. 'We don't want to be shot of her quite yet.' 'Shot of her -- of course not,' replied Cindy, placing a mug of tea on the table. 'Have a seat. There are Hobnobs in that novelty dodo biscuit tin over there.' 'Thank you. So,' I continued, 'how's the vampire business?' 'So-so. Been quiet recently. Werewolves the same. I dealt with a few zombies in the city centre the other night but Supreme Evil Being containment work has almost completely dried up. There's been a report of a few ghouls, bogeys and phantoms in Winchester but it's not really my area of expertise. There's talk of disbanding the division and then taking me on freelance when they need something done.' 'Is that bad?' 'Not really. I can charge what I want with vampires on the prowl, but in slack times I'd be a bit stuffed - wouldn't want to send Cindy out to work full time, now, would I?' He laughed and Cindy laughed with him, handing Betty a rusk. She gave it an almighty toothless bite and then looked puzzled when there was no effect. Friday took it away from her ai^d showed how it was done. 'So what are you up to at present?' asked Spike. 'Not much. I just dropped in before I go off up to Goliathopolis - my husband still isn't back.' 130 'Did you hear about Zvlkx's Revealment?' 'I was there.' 'Then Goliath will want all the forgiveness they can get - you won't find a better time for forcing them to bring him back.' We chatted for ten minutes or more until it was time for me to leave. I didn't manage to speak to Cindy on her own again, but I had said what I wanted to say - I just hoped she would take notice, but somehow I doubted it. 'If I ever have any freelance jobs to do, will you join me?' asked Spike as he was seeing me out of the door, Friday having eaten nearly all the rusks. I thought of my overdraft. 'Please.' 'Good,' replied Spike, 'I'll be in touch.' I drove down to the M4 to Saknussum International, where I had to run to catch the Gravitube to the James Tarbuck Graviport in Liverpool. Friday and I had a brief lunch before hopping on the shuttle to Goliathopolis. Goliath had taken my husband from me, and they could bring him back. And when you have a grievance with a company, you go -straight to the top. 131 The Goliath Apologarium™ DANISH CAR 'A DEATHTRAP' CLAIMS KAINIAN MINISTER Robert Edsel, the Kainian minister of road safety, hit out at Danish car manufacturer Volvo yesterday, claiming the boxy and unsightly vehicles previously considered one of the safest cars on the market to be the complete reverse - a deathtrap for anyone stupid enough to buy one. 'The Volvo fared very poorly in the rocket-propelled grenade test,' claimed Mr Edsel in a press release yesterday, 'and owners and their children risk permanent spinal injury when dropped in the car from heights as low as sixty feet.' Mr Edsel continued to pour scorn on the pride of the Danish motoring industry by revealing that the Volvo's air filters offered 'scant protection' against pyroclastic flows, poisonous fumes and other forms of common volcanic phenomena. "I would very much recommend that anyone thinking of buying this poor Danish product should think again,' said Mr Edsel. When the Danish foreign minister pointed out that Volvos were, in fact, Swedish, Mr Edsel accused the Danes of once again attempting to blame their neighbours for their own manufacturing weaknesses. iS!il»iiiJ<**r!'***'<'*ll'*?*»'fli»i{twml Article in The Toad on Sunday, 16 July 1988 The Isle of Man had been an independent corporate state within England since it was appropriated for the greater fiscal good in 1963. The surrounding Irish Sea was heavily mined to deter unwanted visitors and the skies above protected by the most technologically advanced anti-aircraft system known to man. It had hospitals and schools, a university, its own fusion reactor and also, leading from Douglas to Kennedy Graviport in New York, the 133 world's only privately run Gravitube. The island was home to almost 200,000 people who did nothing but support, or support the support of, the one enterprise that dominated the small island: the Goliath Corporation. The old Manx town of Laxey was renamed Goliathopolis and was now the Hong Kong of the British archipelago, a forest of glassy towers striding up the hillside towards Snaefell. The largest of these skyscrapers rose higher even than the mountain peak behind it and could be seen glinting in the sunlight all the way from Blackpool, weather permitting. In this building was housed the inner sanctum of the whole vast multinational, the cream of Goliath's corporate engineers. An employee could spend a lifetime on the island and never even get past the front desk. And it was on the ground floor of this building, right at the heart of the corporation, that I found the Goliath apologarium. I joined a small queue in front of a modern glass-topped table where two smiling Goliath employees were giving out questionnaires and numbered tickets. 'Hello!' said one of the clerks, a youngish girl with a lopsided smile. 'Welcome to the Goliath Corporation's Apology Emporium. Sorry you had to wait. How can we help you?' 'The Goliath Corporation murdered my husband.' 'How simply dreadful!' she responded in a lame and insincere display of sympathy. 'I'm so sorry to hear that. Goliath, as part of their move to a faith-based corporate management system, are committed to reversing all the unpleasant matters we may previously have been engaged in. You need to fill in this form, and this form - and section D of this one - and then take a seat. We'll get one of our highly trained apologists to see you just as soon as they can.' She handed me several long forms and a numbered ticket, then indicated a door to one side. I opened it and walked into the apologarium. It was a large hall with floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a serene view of the Irish Sea. On one side was a row of perhaps twenty cubicles containing suited apologists, who all sat 134 listening intently to what they were being told with the same sad and contrite expression. On the other side were rows upon rows of wooden seating that held eager and once bullied citizens, anxiously clasping their numbered tickets and patiently waiting their turn. I looked at my ticket. It was number 6,174. I glanced up at the board, which told me that number 836 was now being interviewed. 'Dear, sweet people!' said a voice through a Tannoy. 'Goliath is deeply sorry for all the harm it may inadvertently have caused you in the past. Here at the Goliath Apologarium™ we are only too happy to assist in your problem, no matter how small. . .' 'You!' I said to a man who was hobbling past me towards the exit. 'Have Goliath repented to your satisfaction?' 'Well, they didn't really need to,' he replied blandly. 'It was I who was at fault - in fact, / apologised for wasting their valuable time!' 'What did they do?' 'They bathed my neighbourhood with ionising radiation, then denied it for seventeen years, even after people's teeth fell out and I grew a third foot.' 'And you forgave them?' 'Of course. I can see now that it was a genuine accident and the public have to accept risks if we are to have abundant clean energy, limitless food and household electrodefragmentisers.' He was carrying a sheath of papers; not the application forms that I had to fill out but leaflets on how to join New Goliath. Not as a consumer, but as a worshipper. I had always been deeply distrustful of Goliath but this whole 'repentance' thing smelt worse than anything I had so far witnessed. I turned, tore up my numbered ticket and headed for the exit. 'Miss Next!' called out a familiar voice. 'I say, Miss Next!' A short man with pinched features and a rounded head covered with the fuzz of an aggresively short crew cut ¦was facing me. He Was wearing a dark suit and heavy gold jewellery and was arguably _ the person I liked least - this was Jack Schitt, once Goliath's top fc*dvanced weapons guru and ex-convict of The Raven. This was the 135 man who had tried to prolong the Crimean War so he could make a fortune out of Goliath's latest super-weapon, the plasma rifle. Anger rose quickly within me. I turned Friday in the other direction so as not to give his young mind any wrong ideas about the use of violence and then grasped Schitt by the throat. He took a step back, stumbled and collapsed beneath me with a yelp. Sensing I had been in this position before, I released him and placed my hand on the butt of my automatic, expecting to be attacked by a host of Jack's minders. But there was nothing. Just sad citizens looking on sorrowfully. 'There is no one here to help me,' said Jack Schitt, slowly getting to his feet. 'I have been assaulted eight times today -- I count myself fortunate. Yesterday it was twenty-three.' I looked at him and noticed, for the first time, that he had a black eye and a cut on his lip. 'No minders?' I echoed. 'Why?' 'It is my absolution to face those I have bullied and harangued in the past, Miss Next. When we last met I was head of Goliath's Advanced Weapons Division and corporate laddernumber 329.' He sighed. 'Now, thanks to your well-publicised denouncement of the failings of our plasma rifle, the corporation has decided to demote me. I am an Apology Facilitation Operative second class, ladder number 12,398,219. The mighty have fallen, Miss Next.' 'On the contrary,' I replied, 'you have merely been moved to a level more fitting to your competence. It's a shame. You deserved much worse than this.' His eyes twitched as he grew angry. The old Jack, the homicidal one, returned for a moment. But the feelings were short-lived and his shoulders fell as he realised that without the Goliath Security Service to back him up, his power over me was minimal. 'Maybe you're right,' he said simply. 'You will not h,ave to wait your turn, Miss Next, I will deal with your case personally. Is this your son?' He bent down to look closer. 'Cute fellow, isn't he?' 'Eiusmod tempor incididunt adipisicing elit,' said Friday, glaring at Jack suspiciously. 136 'What did he say?' 'He said: "If you touch me my mum will break your nose.'" Jack stood up quickly. 'I see. Goliath and myself offer a full, frank and unreserved apology.' 'What for?' 'I don't know. Have it on account. Would you care to come to my office?' He beckoned me out of the door and we crossed a courtyard with a large fountain in the middle, past a few suited Goliath officials chattering in a corner, then through another doorway and down a wide corridor full of clerks moving backwards and forwards with folders tucked under their arms. Jack opened a door, ushered me in, offered me a chair and then sat himself. It was a miserable little office, devoid of any decoration except a shabby Lola Vavoom calendar on the wall and a dead plant in a pot. The only window looked out on to a wall. He arranged some papers on his desk and spoke into the intercom. 'Mr Higgs, would you bring the Thursday Next file in, please?' He looked at me earnestly and set his head at a slight angle, as though trying to affect some sort of apologetic demeanour. 'None of us quite realised,' he began in the sort of soft voice that undertakers use when attempting to persuade you to buy the deluxe coffin, just how appalling we had been until we started asking people if they were at all unhappy with our conduct.' 'Why don't we cut the cr--' I looked at Friday, who looked back at me. '--cut the, cut the . . . nonsense and go straight to the place where you atone for your crimes.' He sighed and stared at me for a moment, then said: 'Very well. What did we do wrong again?' 'You can't remember?' 'I do lots of wrong things, Miss Next, you'll excuse me if I can't remember details.' 'You eradicated my husband,' I said through gritted teeth. 'Of course! And what was the name of the eradicatee?' 137 'Landen,' I replied coldly, 'Landen ParkeLaine.' At that moment a clerk arrived with a file marked 'most secret' and laid it on his desk. Jack opened it and leafed through. 'The record shows that at the time you say your husband was eradicated your case officer was Operative Schitt-Hawse. It says here that he pressured you to release Operative Schitt - that's me - from within the pages of The Raven by utilising an unnamed ChronoGuard operative who volunteered his services. It says that you complied but our promise was revoked owing to an unforeseen and commercially necessary overriding blackmail continuance situation.' 'You mean corporate greed, don't you?' 'Don't underestimate greed, Miss Next -- it's commerce's greatest motive force. In this context it was probably due to our plans to use the BookWorld to dump nuclear waste and sell our extremely high-quality goods and services to characters in fiction. You were then imprisoned in our most inaccessible vault from which you escaped, methodology unknown.' He closed the file. 'What this means, Miss Next, is that we kidnapped you, tried to kill you, and then had you on our shoot-on-sight list for over a year. You may be in line for a generous cash settlement.' 'I don't want cash, Jack. You had someone go back in time to kill Landen, now you can just get someone to go back again and unkill him!' Jack Schitt paused and drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. 'That's not how it works,' he replied testily. 'The apology and restitution rules are very clear -- for us to repent we must agree as to what we have done wrong, and there's no mention of any Goliath-led illegal time-related jiggery-pokery in our report. Since Goliath's records are time-audited on a regular basis, I think that proves conclusively that if there was any timefoolery it was instigated by the ChronoGuard -- Goliath's chronological record is above reproach.' 138 I thumped the table with my fist and Jack jumped. Without his henchmen around him he was a coward, and every time he flinched, I grew stronger. 'This is complete and utter sh--' I looked at Friday again. '--rubbish, Jack. Goliath and the ChronoGuard eradicated my husband. You had the power to remove him -- you can be the ones that put him back.' 'That's not possible.' 'GIVE ME BACK MY HUSBAND!' The anger in Jack returned. He also rose and pointed an accusing finger at me. 'Have you even the slightest idea how much it costs to bribe the ChronoGuard? More money than we care to spend on the sort of miserable half-hearted forgiveness you can offer us. And another thing, I ... excuse me.' The phone had rung and he picked it up, his eyes flicking instantly to me as he listened. 'Yes, it is... Yes, she is ... Yes, we do ... Yes, I will.' His eyes opened wide. 'This is indeed an honour, sir ... No, that would not be a problem at all, sir... Yes, I'm sure I can persuade her about that, sir ... no, it's what we all want. . . And a very good day to you, sir. Thank you.' He put the receiver down and fetched an empty cardboard box from the cupboard with a renewed spring in his step. 'Good news!' he exclaimed, taking some junk out of his desk and placing it in the box. 'The CEO of New Goliath has taken a special interest in your case and will personally guarantee the return of your husband.' 'I thought you said that timefoolery had nothing to do with you?' 'Apparently I was misinformed. We would be very happy to reactualise Libner.' 'Landen.' 'Right.' 'What's the catch?' I asked suspiciously. 139 'No catch,' replied Jack, picking up his desk nameplate and depositing it in the box along with the calendar, 'we just want you to forgive us and like us.' 'Like you?' 'Yes. Or pretend to, anyway. Not so very hard, now, is it? Just sign this Standard Forgiveness Release Form at the bottom here, and we'll reactualise your hubby. Simple, isn't it?' I was still suspicious. 'I don't believe you have any intention of getting Landen back.' 'All right, then,' said Jack, taking some files out of the filing cabinet and dumping them in his cardboard box, 'don't sign and you'll never know. As you say, Miss Next -- we got rid of him so we can get him back.' 'You stiffed me once before, Jack. How do I know you won't do it again?' Jack paused in his packing and looked slightly apprehensive. 'Are you going to sign?' 'No.' Jack sighed and started to take everything back out of the cardboard box and return it to its place. 'Well,' he muttered, 'there goes my promotion. But listen: whether you sign or not you walk out of here a free woman. New Goliath have no argument with you any longer. Besides, what do you have to lose?' 'All I want,' I replied, 'is to get my husband back. I'm not signing anything.' Jack took his nameplate out of the cardboard box and put it back on his desk. The phone rang again. 'Yes, sir ... No, she won't, sir ... I tried that, sir... very well, sir.' » He put the receiver down and picked up his nameplate again; it hovered over his box. 'That was the CEO. He wants to apologise to you personally. Will you go?' 140 I paused. Seeing the head honcho of Goliath was an almost unprecedented event for a non-Goliath official. If anyone could get Landen back, it was him. 'Okay.' Jack smiled, dropped the nameplate in his box and then hurriedly threw everything else back in. 'Well,' he continued, 'must dash -- I've just been promoted up three laddernumbers. Go to the main reception desk and someone will meet you. Don't forget your Standard Forgiveness Release Form, and if you could mention my name I'd be really grateful.' He handed me my unsigned forms as the door opened and another Goliath operative walked in, also holding a cardboard box ~ full of possessions. 'What if I don't get him back, Mr Schitt?' 'Well,' he said, looking at his watch, 'if you have any grievances about the quality of our contrition you had better take it up with your appointed Goliath apologist. I don't work here any more.' And he smiled a supercilious smile, put on his hat and was gone. 4 'Well!' said the new apologist as he skirted the desk and started "¦'* to arrange his possessions around his new office. 'Is there anything you'd like us to apologise for?' 'Your corporation,' I muttered. 'Full, frank and unreservedly,' replied the apologist in the sincerest of tones. 141 tfj I 15 Meeting the CEO '. . . Fifty years ago we were only a small multinational with barely 7,000 employees. Today we have over 38,000,000 employees in 14,000 companies dealing in over 12,000,000 different products and services. The size of Goliath is what gives us the stability to be able to say confidently that we will be looking after you for many years to come. By 1980 our turnover was equal to the combined GNP of 72 per cent of the planet's nations. This year we see the corporation take the next great leap forward - to fully recognised religion with our own gods, demigods, priests, places of worship and prayerbook. Goliath shares will be exchanged for entry into our new faith-based corporate management system, where you (the devotees) will worship us (the gods) in exchange for protection from the world's evils and a reward in the afterlife. I know you will join me in this endeavour as you have in all our past endeavours. A comprehensive leaflet explaining how you can help further the corporation's interest in this matter will J be available shortly. New Goliath. For all you'll ever need. For all you'll ever want. Ever.' Extract from the Goliath Corporation CEO's 1988 conference speech i } I walked to the main desk and gave my name to the receptionist, I* who, raising her eyebrows at my request, called the noth floor, registered some surprise and then asked me to wait. I pushed Friday towards the waiting area and gave him a banana I had in my bag. I sat and watched the Goliath officials walking briskly backwards and forwards across the polished marble floors, all looking busy but seemingly doing nothing. 'Miss Next?' There were two individuals standing in front of me. One was H3 dressed in the dark Goliath blue of an executive; the other was a footman in full livery, holding a polished silver tray. 'Yes?' I said, standing up. 'My name is Mr Godfrey, the CEO's personal assistant's assitant. If you would be so kind?' He indicated the tray. I understood his request, unholstered my automatic and laid it on the salver. The footman paused politely. I got the message and placed my two spare clips on it as well. He bowed and silently withdrew, and the Goliath executive led me silently towards a roped-off elevator at the far end of the concourse. I wheeled Friday in and the doors hissed shut behind us. It was a glass elevator that rose on the outside of the building and from our vantage point as we were whisked noiselessly heavenward I could see all of Goliathopolis's buildings reaching almost all the way down the coast to Douglas. The size of the corporation's holdings was never more so demonstrably immense - all these buildings simply administered the thousands of companies and millions of employees around the world. If I had been in a charitable frame of mind I might have been impressed by the scale and grandeur of Goliath's establishment. As it was, I saw only ill gotten gains. The smaller buildings were soon left behind as we continued upward, until even the other skyscrapers were dwarfed. I was staring with fascination at the spectacular view when without warning the exterior was suddenly obscured by a white haze. Water droplets formed on the outside of the elevator and I could see nothing until a few seconds later we burst clear of the cloud and into bright sunshine and a deep blue sky. I stared across the top of the clouds, which stretched away unbroken into the distance. I was so enthralled by the spectacle that I didn't realise the elevator had sjtopped. 'Ipsum,' said Friday, who was also impressed, and he pointed in case I had missed the view. 'Miss Next?' I turned. To say the boardroom of the Goliath Corporation was 144 impressive would not be doing it the justice it deserves. I was on the top floor of the building. The walls and roof were all tinted glass, and from here on a clear day you must be able to look down upon the world from the viewpoint of a god. Today it looked as though we were afloat on a cotton-wool sea. The building and its position, high above the planet both geographically and morally, perfectly reflected the corporation's dominance and power. In the middle of the room was a long table with perhaps thirty suited Goliath board members all standing next to their seats, watching me in silence. No one said anything, and I was about to ask who the boss was when I noticed a large man staring out of the window "with his hands clasped behind his back. 'Ipsum!' said Friday. 'Allow me,' began my escort, 'to introduce the Chief Executive Officer of the Goliath Corporation, John Henry Goliath V, greatgreatgrandson of our founder, John Henry Goliath.' The figure staring out of the window turned to meet me. He must have been over six foot eight and was large with it. Broad, imposing and dominating. He was not yet fifty, had piercing green eyes that seemed to look straight through me, and gave me such a warm smile that I was instantly put at my ease. 'Miss Next?' he said in a voice like distant thunder. 'I've wanted to meet you for some time.' His handshake was warm and friendly; it was easy to forget just who he was and what he had done. 'They are standing for you,' he announced, indicating the board members. 'You have personally cost us over a billion pounds in cash and at least four times that in lost revenues. Such an adversary is to be admired rather than reviled.' The board members applauded for about ten seconds, then sat back down at their places. I noticed Brik Schitt-Hawse among them; he inclined his head to me in recognition. 'If I didn't already know the answer I would offer you a position on our board,' said the CEO with a smile. 'We're just finishing a board meeting, Miss Next. In a few minutes I shall be at your US disposal. Please ask Mr Godfrey if you require any refreshments for yourself or your son.' 'Thank you.' I asked Godfrey for an orange juice in a beaker for Friday, took him out of his pushchair and sat with him on a nearby armchair to watch the proceedings. 'Item seventy-six,' said a small man wearing a Goliath-issue cobalt-blue suit, 'Antarctica. There has been a degree of opposition to our purchase of the continent by a small minority of dogooders who believe our use is anything but benevolent.' 'And this, Mr Jarvis, is a problem because--?' demanded John Henry Goliath V. 'Not a problem but an observation, sir. I propose that to offset any possible negative publicity we let it be known that we merely acquired the continent to generate new ecotourism-related jobs in an area traditionally considered poor in employment opportunities.' 'It shall be so,' boomed the CEO. 'What else?' 'Well, since we will take the role of "eco-custodians" very seriously, I propose sending a fleet often warships to protect the continent against vandals who seek to harm the penguin population, illegally remove ice and snow and create general "mischief".' 'Warships eat heavily into profit margins,' said another member of the board. But Mr Jarvis had already thought of that. 'Not if we subcontract the security issue to a foreign power eager to do business with us. I have formulated a plan whereby the United Caribbean Nations will patrol the continent in exchange for all the ice and snow they want. With the purchase of Antarctica we can undercut snow exports from all the countries in the Northern Alliance. Their unsold snow will be bought by us at four pence a ton, melted and exchanged for building sand with Morocco. This will be exported to sand-deficient nations at an overall profit of twelve per cent. You'll find it all in my report.' There was a murmur of assent around the table. The CEO nodded his head thoughtfully. 146 i 'Thank you, Mr Jarvis, your idea finds favour with the board. But tell me, what about the vast natural resource that we bought Antarctica to exploit in the first place?' Jarvis snapped his fingers and the elevator doors opened to reveal a chef, who wheeled in a trolley with a covered silver dish on it. He stopped next to the CEO's chair, took off the cover and laid a small plate with what looked like sliced pork on it on the table. A footman laid a knife and a fork next to the plate along with a crisp napkin, then withdrew. The CEO took a small forkful and put it in his mouth. His eyes opened wide in shock and he spat it out. The footman passed him a glass of water. 'Disgusting!' |: 'I agree, sir,' replied Jarvis, 'almost completely inedible.' # 'Blast! Do you mean to tell me we've bought an entire conti m nent with a potential food yield of ten million penguin units per ^ year only to find we can't eat any of them?' 'Only a minor setback, sir. If you would all turn to page seventy two of your agenda . . .' All the board members simultaneously opened their files. Jarvis picked his report up and walked to the window to read it. 'The problem of selling penguins as the Sunday roast of choice can be split into two parts: one, penguins taste like creosote, and two, many people have a misguided idea that penguins are somewhat "cute" and "cuddly" and "endangered". To take the first point first, I propose that as part of the launch of this abundant new foodstuff there should be a special penguin cookery show on GoliathChannel 16, as well as a highly amusing advertising campaign with the catchy phrase: "P-p-p-prepare a p-ppenguin".' The CEO nodded thoughtfully. 'I further suggest,' continued Jarvis, 'that we finance an independent study into the health-imbuing qualities of seabirds in general. The findings of this independent and wholly impartial study will be that the recommended weekly intake of penguin per person should be ... one penguin.' 147 'And point two?' asked another board member. 'The public's positive and non-eatworthy perception of penguins in general?' 'Not insurmountable, sir. If you recall, we had a similar problem marketing baby seal burgers, and they are now one of our most popular lines. I suggest we depict penguins as callous and unfeeling creatures who insist on bringing up their children in what is little more than a large chest freezer. Furthermore, the "endangered" marketing problem can be used to our advantage by an advertising strategy along the lines of "Eat them quick before they're all gone!'" 'Or,' said another board member, '"Place a penguin in your kitchen - have a snack before extinction.'" 'Doesn't rhyme very well, does it?' said a third. 'What about: "For a taste that's more distinct, eat a bird before it's extinct?'" 'I preferred mine.' Jarvis sat down and awaited the CEO's thoughts. 'It shall be so. Why not "Antarctica -- the new Arctic" as a byline? Have our people in advertising put a campaign together. The meeting is over.' The board members closed their folders in one single synchronised movement and then filed in orderly fashion to the far end of the room, where a curved staircase led down. Within a few minutes only the CEO and Brik Schitt-Hawse remained. He placed his red leather briefcase on the desk in front of me and looked at me dispassionately, saying nothing. For someone like Schitt-Hawse who loved the sound of his own voice, it was clear the CEO called every shot. 'What did you think?' asked Goliath. 'Think?' I replied. 'How about "morally reprehensible"?' 'I believe you will find there is no moral good or bad, Miss Next. Morality can only be asserted from the safe retrospection of twenty years or more. Parliaments have far too short a life to do any long-term good. It is up to corporations to do what is best for everyone. The tenure of an administration may be five years -- for us it can be several centuries, and none of that tiresome accountability to get in the way. The leap to Goliath as a religion is the next logical step.' 148 'I'm not convinced, Mr Goliath,' I told him. 'I thought you were becoming a religion to evade the seventh Revealment of St Zvlkx.' He gazed at me with his piercing green eyes. 'It's avoid, not evade, Miss Next. A trifling textual change but legally with great implications. We can legally attempt to avoid the future but not evade it. As long as we can demonstrate a forty nine per cent chance that our future-altering attempts might fail, we are legally safe. The ChronoGuard are very strict on the rules and we'd be fools to try and break them.' 'You didn't ask me up here to argue legal definitions, Mr Goliath.' 'No, Miss Next. I wanted to have this opportunity to explain ourselves to you, one of our most vociferous opponents. I have doubts too, and if I can make you understand then I will have convinced myself that what we are doing is right, and good. Have a seat.' I sat, rather too obediently. Mr Goliath had a strong personality. 'Humans are moulded by evolution to be short-termists, Miss Next,' he continued. His voice rumbled deeply and seemed to echo inside my head. 'We need only to see our children to reproductive age to be successful in a biological sense. We have to move beyond that. If we see ourselves as residents on this planet for the long term we need to plan for the long term. Goliath has a thousand-year plan for itself. The responsibility for this planet is far too important to leave to a fragmented group of governments, constantly bickering over borders and only looking towards their own self interest. We at Goliath see ourselves not as a corporation or a government but as a force for good. A force for good in waiting. We have thirty-eight million employees at present; it isn't difficult to see the benefit of having three billion. Imagine everyone on the planet working towards a single goal - the banishment of all governments and the creation of one business whose sole function it is to run the planet, by people on the planet, for the people on the planet, equally and sustainable for all - not Goliath but Earth, Inc. A 149 company with every member of the world holding a single, equal share.' 'Is that why you're becoming a religion?' 'Let's just say that your friend Mr Zvlkx has goaded us into a course of action that is long overdue. You used the word religion but we see it more as a single, unifying faith to bring all mankind together. One world, one nation, one people, one aim. Surely you can see the sense in that?' The strange thing was, I almost could. Without nations there would be no border disputes. The Crimean War alone had lasted for nearly 132 years, and there were at least a hundred smaller conflicts going on around the planet. Suddenly, Goliath seemed not so bad after all, and was indeed our friend. I was a fool not to realise it before. I rubbed my temples. 'So,' continued the CEO in a soft rumble, 'I'd like to offer an olive branch to you right now and uneradicate your husband.' 'In return,' added Schitt-Hawse, speaking for the first time, 'we would like for you to accept our full, frank and unreserved apology and sign our Standard Forgiveness Release Form.' I looked at them both in turn, then at the contract they had placed in front of me, then at Friday, who had put his fingers in his mouth and was looking up at me with an inquisitive air. I had to get my husband back, and Friday his father. There didn't seem any good reason not to sign. 'I want your word you'll get him back.' 'You have it,' replied the CEO. I took the offered pen and signed the form at the bottom. 'Excellent!' muttered the CEO. 'We'll reactualise your husband as soon as possible. Good day, Miss Next, it was a very great pleasure to meet you.' » 'And you,' I replied, smiling and shaking both their hands. 'I must say I'm very pleased with what I've heard here today. You can count on my support when you become a religion.' They gave me some leaflets on how to join New Goliath, which 150 I eagerly accepted. I was shown out a few minutes later, the shuttle to Tarbuck Graviport having been held on my account. By the time I had reached Tarbuck the inane grin had subsided from my face; by the time I had arrived at Saknussum I was confused; on the drive back to Swindon I was suspicious that something wasn't quite right; by the time I had reached Mum's home I was furious. I had been duped by Goliath - again. 151 *.. 1 t 3i' i6 That Evening TOAST MAY BE INJURIOUS TO HEALTH That was the shock statement put out by a joint Kaine/Goliath research project undertaken last Tuesday morning. 'In our research we have found that in certain circumstances eating toast may make the consumer writhe around in unspeakable agony, foaming at the mouth before death mercifully overcomes them.' The scientists went on to report that although these findings were by no means complete, more work needed to be done before toast had a clean bill of health. The Toast Marketing Board reacted angrily and pointed out that die 'at risk' slice of toast in the experiment had been spread with the deadly poison strychnine and these 'scientific' trials were just another attempt to besmirch the board's good name and that of their sponsee, opposition leader Redmond van de Poste. Article in Tlie Mole, 16 July 1988 'How was your day?' asked Mum, handing me a large cup of tea. Friday had been tuckered out by the long day and had fallen asleep into his cheesy bean dips. I had bathed him and put him to bed before having something to eat myself. Hamlet and Emma were out at the movies or something, Bismarck was listening to Wagner on his Walkman, so Mum and I had a moment to ourselves. 'Not good,' I replied slowly. 'I can't dissuade an assassin from trying to kill me, Hamlet isn't safe here but I can't send him back and if I don't get Swindon to win the Superhoop then the world will end. Goliath somehow duped me into forgiving them, I have my own stalker and also have to figure out how to get the banned books I should be hunting for out of the country. And Landen's still not back.' 153 'Really?' she said, not having listened to me at all. 'I think I've got a plan for dealing with that annoying offspring of Pickwick's.' 'Lethal injection?' 'Not funny. No, my friend Mrs Beatty knows a dodo whisperer who can work wonders with unruly dodos.' 'You're kidding me, right?' 'Not at all.' 'I'll try anything, I suppose. I can't understand why he's so difficult - Pickers is a real sweetheart.' We fell silent for a moment. 'Mum?' I said at last. 'Yes?' 'What do you think of Herr Bismarck?' 'Otto? Well, most people remember him for his "blood and iron" rhetoric, unification arguments and the wars - but few give him credit for devising the first social security system in Europe.' 'No, I mean . . . that is to say . . . you wouldn't--' But at that moment we heard some oaths and a slammed door. After a few thumps and bumps Hamlet burst into the living room with Emma in tow. He stopped, composed himself, rubbed his forehead, looked heavenward, sighed deeply and then said: 'O! that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!'1 'Is everything all right?' I asked. 'Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self slaughter!'2 'I'll make a cup of tea,' said my mother, who had an instinct for these sorts of things. 'Would you like a slice of Battenberg, Mr Hamlet?' 'O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable -- yes, please -- Seem to me all the uses of this world!'3 « 1. 'Oh, how I wish my worthless body would melt into a liquid and then evaporate.' 2. 'Or that God had not decreed suicide a complete no-no.' 3. 'Oh God, oh God! How tired, stale and boring life seems to me.' 154 She nodded and moved off. 'What's up?' I asked Emma as Hamlet strutted around the living room, beating his head in frustration and grief. 'Well, we went to see Hamlet at the Alhambra.' 'Crumbs!' I muttered. 'It - er - didn't go down too well, I take it?' 'Well,' reflected Emma, as Hamlet continued his histrionics around the living room, 'the play was okay apart from Hamlet shouting out a couple of times that Polonius wasn't meant to be funny and Laertes wasn't remotely handsome. The management weren't particularly put out - there were at least twelve "Hamlets" in the audience and they all had something to say about it.' 'Fie on't! O fie!' continued Hamlet, "tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely--!'4 'No,' continued Emma, 'it was when we and the twelve other Hamlets went to have a quiet drink with the play's company afterwards that things turned sour. Piarno Keyes -- who was playing Hamlet - took umbrage at Hamlet's criticisms of his performance; Hamlet said his portrayal was far too indecisive. Mr Keyes said Hamlet was mistaken, that Hamlet was a man racked by uncertainty. Then Hamlet said he was Hamlet so should know a thing or two about it; one of the other "Hamlets" disagreed and said he was Hamlet and thought Mr Keyes was excellent. Several of the "Hamlets" agreed and it might have ended there but Hamlet said that if Mr Keyes insisted on playing Hamlet he should look at how Mel Gibson did it and improve his performance in the light of that.' 'Oh dear.' 'Yes,' said Emma, 'oh dear. Mr Keyes flew right off the handle. 4. 'Oh, damn and double blast! I feel like a garden that's left to seed and overtaken by all those really annoying weeds, like Japanese knotweed or nettles, both of which can be destroyed by using a recommended herbicide, available fromjekyll Garden Centres. Footnoterphone simultaneous translation sponsored by Jekyll Garden Centres. 155 "Mel Gibson?" he roared. "Mel ****ing Gibson? That's all I ever ****ing hear these days!" and he then tried to punch Hamlet on the nose. Hamlet was too quick, of course, and had his bodkin at Keyes' throat before you could blink, so one of the other "Hamlets" suggested a Hamlet contest. The rules were simple: they all had to perform the "To be or not to be" soliloquy and the drinkers in the tavern gave them points out often.' 'And--?' 'Hamlet came last.' 'Last? How could he come last?' 'Well, he insisted on playing the soliloquy less like an existential question about life and death and the possibility of an afterlife, and more as if it were about a post-apocalyptic dystopia where crossbow-wielding punks on motorbikes try to kill people for their gasoline.' I looked across at Hamlet, who had quietened down a bit and was looking through my mother's video collection for Olivier's Hamlet to see whether it was better than Gibson's. 'No wonder he's hacked off.' 'Here we go!' said my mother, returning with a large tray of tea things. 'There's nothing like a nice cup of tea when things look bad!' 'Humph,' grunted Hamlet, staring at his feet. 'I don't suppose you've got any of that cake, have you?' 'Especially for you!' My mother smiled, producing the Battenberg with a flourish. She was right, too. After a few cups and a slice of cake, Hamlet was almost human again. I left Emma and Hamlet arguing with my mother over whether they should watch Olivier's Hamlet or Great Croquet Sporting Moments on the television and went to sort some washing in the kitchen. I stood there trying to figure out just what sort of brairvscrubbing technique Goliath had used on me to get me to sign their forgiveness release. Oddly, I was still getting pro-Goliath flashbacks. In absent moments I felt they weren't so bad, then had to consciously remind myself that they were. On the plus side there was a possibility 156 that Landen might be reactualised, but I didn't know when it would happen, or how. I was just getting round to wondering whether a cold soak might remove ketchup stains better than a hot wash when there was a light crackling sound in the air like crumpled cellophane. It grew louder and green tendrils of electricity started to envelop the Kenwood mixer, then grew stronger until a greenish glow like St Elmo's fire was dancing around the microwave. There was a bright light and a rumble of thunder as three figures started to materialise into the kitchen. Two of them were dressed in body armour and holding ridiculously large blaster-type weapons; the other figure was tall and dressed in jet-black high-collared robes which hung to the floor on one side and buttoned tightly up to his throat on the other. He had a pale complexion, high cheekbones and a small and very precise goatee. He stood with his arms crossed and was staring at me with one eyebrow raised imperiously. This was truly a tyrant among tyrants, a cruel galactic leader who had murdered billions in his never-ending and inadequately explained quest for total galactic domination. This. . . was Emperor Zhark. 157 17 Emperor Zhark 'The eight "Emperor Zhark" novels were written in the seventies by Handley Paige, an author whose previous works included Spacestation Z-5 and Revenge of the Thraals. With Zhark he hit upon a pastiche of everything a bad SF novel should ever be: weird worlds, tentacled aliens, space travel and square-jawed fighter aces doing battle with a pantomime emperor who lived for no other reason than to cause evil and disharmony in the galaxy. His usual nemesis in the books was Colonel Brandt of the Space Corps, assisted by his alien partner Ashley. There have been two Zhark films starring Buck Stallion, Zhark the Destroyer and Bad Day at Big Rock, neither of which was any good.' millon de floss - The Books of H. 'Do you have to do that?' I asked. 'Do what?' replied the emperor. 'Make such a pointlessly dramatic entrance. And what are those two goons doing here?' 'Who said that?' said a muffled voice from inside the opaque helmet of one of his minders. 'I can't see a sodding thing in here.' 'Who's a goon?' said the other. Zhark laughed, ignoring them both. 'It's a contractual thing. I've got a new agent who knows how to properly handle a character of my quality. I have to be given a minimum of eighty words' description at least once in any featured book, and at least twice in a book a chapter has to end with my appearance.' 'Do you get book title billing?' 'We gave that one away in exchange for chapter heading status. If this were a novel you'd have to start a new chapter as soon as I appeared.' 159 'Well, it's a good thing it's not,' I replied. 'If my mother was here she'd probably have had a heart attack.' 'Oh!' replied the emperor, looking around. 'Do you live with your mother too?' 'What's up? Problems at Jurisfiction?' 'Take five, lads,' said Zhark to the two guards, who felt around the kitchen until they found chairs and sat down. 'Mrs TiggyWinkle sent me,' he breathed. 'She's busy at the Beatrix Potter Characters AGM but wanted to give you an update on what's happening at Jurisfiction.' 'Who's that, darling?' called my mother from the living room. 'It's a homicidal maniac intent on galactic domination,' I called back. 'That's nice, dear.' I turned back to Zhark. 'So, what's the news?' 'Max de Winter from Rebecca,' said Zhark thoughtfully. 'The BookWorld Justice Department has rearrested him.' 'I thought Snell got him off the murder charge?' 'He did. The department are still gunning for him, though. They've arrested him for - get this - insurance fraud. Remember the boat he sank with his wife in it?' I nodded. 'Well, apparently he claimed the insurance on the boat, so they think they might be able to get him on that.' It was not an untypical turn of events in the BookWorld. Our mandate from the Council of Genres was to keep fictional narrative as stable as possible. As long as it was how the author intended, murderers walked free and tyrants stayed in power - that was what we did. Minor infringements that weren't obvious to the reading public we tended to overlook. However, in a master stroke of inspired bureaucracy, the Council of Genres also empowered a Justice Department to look into individual transgressions. The conviction of David Copperfield for murdering his first wife was their biggest cause celebre - before my time, I hasten to add - and 160 Jurisfiction, unable to save him, could do little except train another character to take Copperfield's place. They had tried to get Max de Winter before but we had always managed to outmanoeuvre them. Insurance fraud. I could scarcely believe it. 'Have you alerted the Gryphon?' 'He's working on Fagin's umpteenth appeal.' 'Get him on it. We can't leave this to amateurs. What about Hamlet? Can I send him back?' 'Not... as such,' replied Zhark hesitantly. 'He's becoming something of a nuisance,' I admitted, 'and Danes are liable to be arrested. I can't keep him amused watching Mel Gibson's films for ever.' 'I'd like Mel Gibson to play me,' said Zhark thoughtfully. 'I don't think Gibson does bad guys,' I told him. 'You'd probably be played by Geoffrey Rush or someone.' 'That wouldn't be so bad. Is that cake going begging?' 'Help yourself Zhark cut a large slice of Battenberg, took a bite and continued: 'Okay, here's the deal: we managed to get the Polonius family to attend arbitration over their unauthorised rewriting of Hamlet.' 'How did you achieve that?' 'Promised Ophelia her own book. All back to normal -- no problem.' 'So ... I can send Hamlet back?' 'Not quite yet,' replied Zhark, trying to hide his unease by pretending to find a small piece of fluff on his cape. 'You see, Ophelia has now got her knickers in a twist about one of Hamlet's infidelities - someone she thinks is called Henna Appleton. Have you heard anything about this?' 'No. Nothing. Nothing at all. Not a thing. Don't even know anyone called Henna Appleton Why?' 'I was hoping you could tell me. Well, she went completely nuts and threatened to drown herself in the first act rather than the fourth. We think we've got her straightened out. But while we were doing this there was a hostile takeover.' 161 I cursed aloud and Zhark jumped. Nothing was ever straightforward in the BookWorld. Book mergers, where one book joined another to increase the collective narrative advantage of their own mundane plotlines, were thankfully rare but not unheard of. The most famous merger in Shakespeare was the conjoinment of the two plays Daughters of Lear and Sons of Gloucester into King Lear. Other potential mergers such as Much Ado about Verona and A Midsummer Night's Shrew were denied at the planning stage and hadn't taken place. It could take months to extricate the plots, if indeed it was possible at all. King Lear resisted unravelling so strongly we just let it stand. 'So what merged with Hamlet?' 'Well, it's now called The Merry Wives of Elsinore, and features Gertrude being chased around the castle by FalstafF while being outwitted by Mistress Page, Ford and Ophelia. Laertes is the king of the fairies and Hamlet is relegated to a sixteen-line subplot where he is convinced Dr Caius and Fenton have conspired to kill his father for seven hundred pounds.' I groaned. 'What's it like?' 'It takes a long time to get funny and when it does everyone dies.' 'Okay,' I conceded, 'I'll try and keep Hamlet amused. How long do you need to unravel the play?' Zhark winced and sucked in air through his teeth in the way heating engineers do when quoting on a new boiler. 'Well, that's the problem, Thursday. I'm not sure that we can do it all. If this had happened anywhere but the original we could have just deleted it. You know the trouble we had with King Lear? Well, I don't see that we're going to have any better luck with Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.' % I sat down and put my head in my hands. No Hamlet. The loss was almost too vast to comprehend. 'How long have we got before Hamlet starts to change?' I asked without looking up. 162 'About five days, six at the outside,' replied Zhark quietly. 'After that the breakdown will accelerate. In two weeks' time the play as we know it will have ceased to exist.' 'There must be something we can do.' 'We've tried pretty much everything. We're stuffed - unless you've got a spare William Shakespeare up your sleeve.' I sat up. 'What?' 'We're stuffed?' 'After that.' 'A spare William Shakespeare up your sleeve?' 'Yes. How will that help?' 'Well,' said Zhark thoughtfully, 'since no original manuscripts of either Hamlet or Wives exist, a freshly penned script by the author would thus become the original manuscript - and we can use those to reboot the storycode engines from scratch. It's quite simple, really.' I smiled but Zhark looked at me with bewilderment. 'Thursday, Shakespeare died in 1616!' I stood up and patted him on the arm. 'You get back to the office and make sure things don't get any worse. Leave the Shakespeare up to me. Now, has anyone figured out which book Yorrick Kaine is from?' 'We've got all available resources working on it,' replied Zhark, still a bit confused, 'but there are a lot of novels to go through. Can you give us any pointers?' 'Well, he's not very multi-dimensional so I shouldn't go looking into anything too literary. I'd start at Political Thrillers and work your way towards Spy.' Zhark made a note. 'Good. Any other problems?' 'Yes,' replied the emperor, 'Simpkin is being a bit of a pest in The Tailor of Gloucester. Apparently the tailor let all his mice escape and now Simpkin won't let him have the cherry-coloured twist. If the mayor's coat isn't ready for Christmas there'll be hell to pay.' 163 'Get the mice to make the waistcoat. They're not doing anything.' He sighed. 'Okay, I'll give it a whirl.' He looked at his watch. 'Well, better be off. I've got to annihilate the planet Thraal at four and I'm already late. Do you think I should use my trusty Zharkian Death Ray and fry them alive in a millisecond or nudge an asteroid into their orbit, thus unleashing at least six chapters of drama as they try to find an ingenious solution to defeat me?' 'The asteroid sounds a good bet.' 'I thought so too. Well, see you later.' I waved goodbye as he and his two guards were beamed out of my world and back into theirs, which was certainly the best place for them. We had quite enough tyrants in the real world as it was. I was just wondering what The Merry Wives of Elsinore might be like when there was another buzzing noise and the kitchen was filled with light once more. There, imperious stare, high collar, etc., etc., was Emperor Zhark. 164 i8 Emperor Zhark Again PRESIDENT GEORGE FORMBY OPENS MOTORCYCLE FACTORY The President opened the new Brough-Vincent-Norton motorcycle factory yesterday in Liverpool, bringing much-welcomed jobs to the area. The highly modernised factory, which aims to produce up to a thousand quality touring and racing machines every week, was described by the President as 'cracking stuff' The President, a long-time advocate of motorcycling, rode one of the ,, --», ,.r, ,11--Hll.,, » .¦--¦"trif.inn company's new Vincent 'Super Shadow' racers around the test track, reportedly hitting over 120 mph, much to his retinue's obvious concern for the octogenarian President's health. Our George then gave a cheerful rendering of 'Riding in the TT Races', reminding his audience of the time he won the Manx Tourist Trophy on a prototype Rainbow motorcycle. ^^¦^¦"''Wlpvmif Article in The Toad, 9 July 1988 'Forget something?' I asked. 'Yes. What was that cake of your mother's?' 'It's called Battenberg.' He got a pen and made a note on his cuff. 'Right. Well, that's it, then.' 'Good.' 'Right.' 'Is there something else?' 'Yes.' 'And--?' 'It's. . . it's . . .' 'What?' 165 Emperor Zhark bit his lip, looked around nervously and drew closer. Although I had had good reason for reprimanding him in the past - and had even suspended his Jurisfiction badge for 'gross incompetence' on two occasions - I actually liked him a great deal. Within the amnesty of his own books he was a sadistic monster who murdered millions with staggering ruthlessness, but out here he had his own fair share of worries, demons and peculiar habits - many of which seemed to have stemmed from the strict upbringing undertaken by his mother, the Empress Zharkeena. 'Well,' he said, unsure of quite how to put it, 'you know the sixth in the Emperor Zhark series is being written as we speak?' 'Zhark: End of Empire? Yes, I'd heard that. What's the problem?' 'I've just read the advanced plotline and it seems that I'm going to be vanquished by the Galactic Freedom Alliance.' 'I'm sorry, Emperor, I'm not sure I see your point -- are you concerned about losing your empire?' He moved closer. 'If the story calls for it, I guess not. But it's what happens to me at the end that I have a few problems ¦with. I don't mind being cast adrift in space on the imperial yacht or left marooned on an empty planet, but my writer has planned ... a public execution.' He stared at me, shocked by the enormity of it all. 'If that's what he has planned--' 'Thursday, you don't understand. I'm going to be killed off written out! I'm not sure I can take that kind of rejection.' 'Emperor,' I said, 'if a character has run its course, then it's run its course. What do you want me to do? Go and talk the author out of it?' 'Would you?' replied Zhark, opening his eyes wide. 'Would you really do that?' 'No. You can't have characters trying to tell their authors what to write in their books. Besides, within your books you are truly evil, and need to be punished.' Zhark pulled himself up to his full height. 'I see,' he said at length. 'Well, I might decide to take drastic 166 action if you don't at least attempt to persuade Mr Paige. And besides, I'm not really evil, I'm just written that way.' 'If I hear any more of this nonsense,' I replied, beginning to get annoyed, 'I will have you placed under book arrest and charged with incitement to mutiny for what you've just told me.' 'Oh, crumbs,' he said, suddenly deflated, 'you can, can't you?' 'I can. I won't because I can't be bothered. But if I hear anything more about this I will take steps - do you understand?' 'Yes,' replied Zhark meekly, and without another word he vanished. 167 19 Cloned Will Hunting OPPOSITION LEADER MILDLY CRITICISES KAINE Opposition leader Mr Redmond van de Poste lightly attacked Yorrick Kaine's government yesterday over its possible failure to adequately address the nation's economic woes. Mr van de Poste suggested that the Danish were 'no more guilty of attacking this country than the Swedes' and then went on to question Kaine's independence given his close sponsorship ties with the Goliath Corporation. In reply, Chancellor Kainc thanked van de Poste for alerting him to the Swedes, who were 'doubtless up to something', and pointed out that Mr van de Poste himself was sponsored by the Toast Marketing Board. Article in the Gadfly, 17 July 1988 Sunday was meant to be a day off but it didn't really seem like it. I played golf with Braxton in the morning and outside work he was as amiable a gent as I could possibly hope to meet. He delighted in showing me the rudiments of golf and once or twice I hit the ball quite well -- when it made the thwack noise and flew away as straight as a die I suddenly realised what all the fuss was about. It wasn't all fun and games, though -- Braxton had been leaned on by Flanker, who, I assume, had been leaned on by somebody else higher up. In between putting practice and attempting to get my ball out of a bunker, Braxton confided that he couldn't hold off Flanker for ever with his empty promise of a report into my alleged Welsh cheese activities, and if I knew what was good for me I would have to at least try to look for banned books with SO-14. I promised I would and then joined him for a drink at the nineteenth hole, where we were regaled with stories by a large man with a red nose who was, apparently, the Oldest Member. 169 I was awoken on Monday morning by a burbling noise from Friday. He was standing up in his cot and trying to grasp the curtain, which was out of his reach. He said that now that I was awake I could do a lot worse than take him downstairs where he could play whilst I made some breakfast. Well, he didn't use those precise words, of course -- he said something more along the lines of 'Reprehenderit in voluptate velit id est mollif, but I knew what he meant. I couldn't think of any good reason not to, so I pulled on my dressing gown and took the little fellow downstairs, pondering on quite who, if anyone, was going to look after him today. Given that I had nearly got into a fight with Jack Schitt, I wasn't sure he should witness all that his mum got up to. My mother was already up. 'Good morning, Mother,' I said, cheerfully, 'and how are you today?' 'I'm afraid not during the morning,' she said, divining my unasked question instantly, 'but I can probably manage from teatime onwards.' 'I'd appreciate it,' I replied, looking at The Mole as I put on the porridge. Kaine had issued an ultimatum to the Danish: either the government in Denmark ended all its efforts to destabilise England and undermine our economy, or England would have no choice but to recall its ambassador. The Danish had replied that they didn't know what Kaine was talking about and demanded that the trade ban on Danish goods be lifted. Kaine responded angrily, made all sorts of counter-claims, imposed a 200 per cent tariff on Danish bacon imports and closed all avenues of communication. 'Duis ante irure dolor est!' yelled Friday. 'Keep your hair on,' I replied, 'it's coming.' 'Plink!' said Alan angrily, gesturing towards his suppendish indignantly. 'Wait your turn,' I told him. 'Plink, PLINFO.' he replied, taking a step closer and opening his beak in a menacing manner. 170 'Try and bite me,' I told him, 'and you'll be finding a new owner from the front window of Pete & Dave's!' Alan figured out that this was a threat and closed his beak. Pete & Dave's was the local re-engineered pet store, and I was serious. He'd already tried to bite my mother and even the local dogs were giving the house a wide berth. At that moment Jofry opened the back door and walked in. But he wasn't alone. He was with something that I can only describe as an untidy bag of thin bones covered in dirty skin and a rough blanket. 'Ah!' said Jofry. 'Mum and Sis. Just the ticket. This is St Zvlkx. Your Grace, this is my mother, Mrs Next, and my sister, Thursday.' St Zvlkx looked at me suspiciously from behind a heavy curtain of oily black hair. 'Welcome to Swindon, Mr Zvlkx,' said my mother, curtsying politely. 'Would you like some breakfast?' 'He only speaks olb (English,' put in Jofry. 'Here, let me translate.' '©t, iPtg-face - are pou going to eat, or toljat?' '31)1)!' said the monk, and sat down at the table. Friday stared at him a little dubiously, then started to jabber Lorem Ipsum at him while the monk stared at him dubiously. 'How's it all going?' I asked. 'Pretty good,' replied Jofry, pouring some coffee for himself and St Zvlkx. 'He's shooting a commercial this morning for the Toast Marketing Board and will be on The Adrian Lush Show at four. He's also guest speaker at the Swindon Dermatologists Convention at the Finis; apparently some of his skin complaints are unknown to science. I thought I'd bring him round to see you -- he's full of wisdom, you know.' 'It's barely eight in the morning!' said Mum. 'St Zvlkx rises with the dawn as a penance,' Jofry explained. 'He spent all of Sunday pushing a peanut around the Brunei Centre with his nose.' 'I spent it playing golf with Braxton Hicks.' 'How did you do?' 171 'Okay, I think. My croquet-playing skills stopped me making a complete arse of myself. Did you know that Braxton had six kids?' 'Well, how about some wisdom, then?' said my mother brightly. 'I'm very big on thirteenth-century sagacity.' 'Okay,' said Joffy. '<©t! Jflake pourself useful anb gibe us some toisbom, pou olb fart.' ';Poke it up pour arse.' 'What did he say?' 'Er -- he said he would meditate upon it.' 'Well,' said my mother, who was nothing if not hospitable and could just about make breakfast without consulting the recipe book, 'since you are our guest, Mr Zvlkx, what would you like for breakfast?' St Zvlkx stared at her. 'Eat,' repeated my mother, making biting gestures. This seemed to do the trick. '§0our mother has firm breasts for a mtbble-ageb tooman, orb-like anb befptng grabttp. 3 shoulb like to plap totth them, as a baker plaps toith bough.' 'What did he say?' 'He says he'd be very grateful for bacon and eggs,' replied Joffy quickly, turning to St Zvlkx and saying: 'S3np more trap out of pou, Sunshine, anb 3'U lock pou in the cellar tomorroto night as toell.' 'What did you say to him?' 'I thanked him for his attendance in your home.' 'Ah.' Mum put the big frying pan on the cooker and broke some eggs into it, followed by large rashers of bacon. Pretty soon the smell of bacon pervaded the house, something that attracted not only a sleepwalking DH82 but also Hamlet and Lady Hamilton, who had given up pretending they weren't sleeping together. '$|ubba, hubba,' said St Zvlkx as soon as Emma entered, 'toho'S the bunnp tenth the strummp hooters?' 'He wishes you -- um -- both good morrow,' said Joffy, visibly shaken. 'g>t Ztolkx, this is Habp Hamilton anb Camlet, prince of ©enmark.' 172 '3f pou're gibing atoap one of those puppies,' continued St Zvlkx, staring at Emma's cleavage, '3TH habe the one tenth tfje brotoin nose.' 'Good morning,' said Hamlet without smiling. *Any more bad language in front of the good Lady Hamilton and I'll take you outside and with a bare bodkin your quietus make.' 'Wl}at bib tlje prince Sap?' asked St Zvlkx. 'Yes,' said Joffy, 'what did he say?' 'It's Courier Bold,' I told him, 'the traditional language of the BookWorld. He said that he would be failing in his duty as a gentleman if he allowed Zvlkx to show any disrespect to Lady Hamilton.' lWl)&t bib pour Sister Sap?' asked St Zvlkx. 'i£>he saib tfjat if pou insult gantlet's biro again pour nose bull be ttoo foot taiibe across pour face.' '(©I).' 'Well,' said my mother, 'this is turning out to be a very pleasant morning!' 'In that case,' said Joffy, sensing the time was just right, 'could St Zvlkx stay here until midday? I've got to give a sermon to the Sisters of Eternal Punctuality at ten and if I'm late they throw their prayer books at me.' 'No can do, o son my son,' said my mother, flipping the bacon. 'Why not take St Zvlkx with you? I'm sure the nuns will be impressed by his piety.' 'Mib Someone mention nuns?' asked St Zvlkx, looking around eagerly. 'J|oto pou got to be a saint 3J habe no ibea,' chidedjoffy. 'Another peep out of pou anb 31*11 personallp kick pour bulgar arse all the toap back to the thirteenth centurp.' St Zvlkx shrugged, wolfed down his bacon and eggs with his hands and then burped loudly. Friday did the same and collapsed into a fit of giggles. They all left soon after. Joffy wouldn't look after Friday and Zvlkx certainly couldn't, so there was nothing for it. As soon as Mum had 173 found her hat, coat and keys and gone out, I rushed upstairs, dressed, then read myself into Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser to ask Melanie whether she would look after Friday until teatime. Mum had said she would be out the whole day, and since Hamlet already knew that Melanie was a gorilla and neither Emma nor Bismarck could exactly complain since they were long-dead historical figures themselves, I thought it a safe bet. It was against regulations, but with Hamlet and the world facing an uncertain future, I was past caring. Melanie happily agreed, and once she had changed into a yellow polka-dot dress I brought her out of the BookWorld to my mother's front room, which she thought very smart, especially the festoon curtains. She was pulling the cord to watch the curtains rise and fall when Emma walked in. 'Lady Hamilton,' I announced, 'this is Melanie Bradshaw.' Mel put out a large hand and Emma shook it nervously, as though expecting Melanie to bite her or something. 'H-how do you do?' she stammered. 'I've never been introduced to a monkey before.' 'Ape,' corrected Melanie helpfully. 'Monkeys generally have tails, are truly arboreal and belong to the families Hylobatidae, cebidae and Cercopitheddae. You and I and all the Great Apes are Pongidae. I'm a gorilla. Well, strictly speaking I'm a mountain gorilla -- Gorilla gorilla beringei -- which live on the slopes of the Virunga volcanoes -- we used to call it British East Africa but I'm not sure what it is now. Have you ever been there?' 'No.' 'Charming place. That's where TrafFord - my husband -- and I met. He was with his gun bearers hacking his way through the undergrowth during the backstory to Bradshaw Hunts Big Game (Collins, 1878, 4./6d, illustrated) and he slipped from the path and fell twenty feet into the ravine below where I was taking a bath.' She picked Friday up in her massive arms and he chortled with delight. 'Well, I was most dreadfully embarrassed. I mean, I was sitting there in the running water without a stitch on, but - and I'll always 174 remember this - TrafFord politely apologised and turned his back so I could nip into the bushes and get dressed. I came out to ask him if he might want directions back to civilisation -- Africa was quite unexplored then, you know - and we got to chatting. Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it he had asked me out to dinner. We've been together ever since. Does that sound silly to you?' Emma thought about how her relationship with Admiral Lord Nelson was lampooned mercilessly in the press. 'No, I think that sounds really quite romantic' 'Right,' I said, clapping my hands, 'I'll be back at three. Don't go out and if anyone calls, get Hamlet or Emma to answer the door. Okay?' 'Certainly,' replied Melanie, 'don't go out, don't answer the door. Simple.' 'And no swinging on the curtains or lamp fixtures - they won't stand it.' 'Are you saying I'm a bit large?' 'Not at all,' I replied hastily, 'things are just different in the real world. There is lots of fruit in the bowl and fresh bananas in the refrigerator. Okay?' 'No problemo. Have a nice day.' I drove into town and, avoiding several newspapermen who were still eager to interview me, entered the SpecOps building, which I noted had been freshly repainted since my last visit. It looked a bit more cheery in mauve, but not much. 'Agent Next?' said a young and extremely keen SO-14 agent in a well-starched black outfit, complete with Kevlar vest, combat boots and highly visible weaponry. 'Yes?' He saluted. 'My name is Major Drabb, SO-14. I understand you have been assigned to us to track down more of this pernicious Danish literature.' He was so keen to fulfil his duties I felt chilled. To his credit he 175 would be as enthusiastic helping flood victims; he was just following orders unquestioningly. Worse acts than destroying Danish literature had been perpetrated by men like this. Luckily, I was prepared. 'Good to see you, Major. I had a tip-oflfthat this address might hold a few copies of the banned books.' I passed him a scrap of paper and he read it eagerly. 'The Albert Schweitzer Memorial Library? We'll be on to it right away.' And he saluted smartly once again, turned on his heel and was gone. I made my way up to the LiteraTecs' office and found Bowden in the process of packing Karen Blixen's various collections of stories into a cardboard box. 'Hi!' he said, tying up the box with string. 'How are things with you?' 'Pretty good. I'm back at work.' Bowden smiled, put down the scissors and string and shook my hand. 'That's very good news indeed! Heard the latest? Daphne Farquitt has been added to the list of banned Danish writers.' 'But. . . Farquitt isn't Danish!' 'Her father's name was Farquittsen, so it's Danish enough for Kaine and his idiots.' It was an interesting development. Farquitt's books were pretty dreadful but burning was still a step too far. Just. 'Have you found a way to get all these banned books out of England?' asked Bowden, running some tape across a box of Out of Africas. 'With Farquitt's books and all the rest of the stuff that's coming in, I think we'll need closer to ten trucks.' 'It's certainly on my mind,' I replied, having not done anything about it at all. » 'Excellent! We'd like to take a convoy through as soon as you give the word. Now, what do you want me to brief you on first? The latest Capulet versus Montague drive-by shooting or which authors are next up for a random dope test?' 176 'Neither,' I replied. 'Tell me everything you know about cloned Shakespeares.' 'We've had to put that on "low priority". It's intriguing, to be sure, but ultimately pointless from a law-and-order point of view -- anyone involved in their sequencing will be too dead or too old to go for trial.' 'It's more of a BookWorld thing,' I responded, 'but important, I promise.' 'Well, in that case,' began Bowden, who knew me too well to think I'd waste his time or my own, 'we have three Shakespeares on the slab at the moment, all aged between fifty and sixty - put those Hans Christian Andersen books in that box, would you? If they were cloned it was way back in the poorly regulated days of the thirties, when there was all sorts of nonsense going on, when people thought they could engineer Olympic runners with four legs, swimmers with real fins, that sort of thing. I've had a brief trawl through the records. The first confirmed WillClone surfaced in 1952 with the accidental shooting of a Mr Shakstpear in Tenbury Wells. Then there's the unexplained death of a Mr Shaxzparin 1958, Mr Shagxtspar in 1962 and a Mr Shogtspore in 1969. There are others, too--' 'Any theories as to why?' 'I think,' said Bowden slowly, 'that perhaps someone was trying to synthesise the great man so they could have him write some more great plays. Illegal and morally reprehensible, of course, but potentially of huge benefit to Shakespearean scholars everywhere. The lack of any young Shakespeares turning up makes me think this was an experiment long since abandoned.' There was a pause as I mulled this over. Genetic cloning of entire humans was strictly forbidden -- no commercial bioengineering company would dare try it, and yet no one but a large bioengineering company would have the facilities to undertake it. But if these Shakespeare clones had survived, chances were there were more. And with the real one long dead, his reengineered other self was the only way we could unravel The Merry Wives of Elsinore. 177 'Doesn't this come under the jurisdiction of SO-13?' I said at last. 'Officially, yes,' conceded Bowden, 'but SO-13 is as underfunded as we are and Agent Stiggins is far too busy dealing with mammoth migrations and chimeras to have anything to do with cloned Elizabethan playwrights.' Stiggins was the Neanderthal head of the cloning police. Legally re-engineered by Goliath, he was the ideal person to run SO-13. 'Have you spoken to him?' I asked. 'He's a Neanderthal,' he replied, 'they don't talk at all unless it's absolutely necessary. I've tried a couple of times but he just stares at me in a funny way and eats live beetles from a paper bag -- yuk.' 'He'll talk to me,' I said. He would, too. I still owed him a favour for when he got me out of a jam with Flanker. 'Let's see if he's about.' I picked up the phone, consulted the internal directory and dialled a number. I watched as Bowden boxed up more banned books. If he was caught he'd be finished. The irony of a LiteraTec being jailed for protecting Farquitt's Canon of Love -- I liked him all the more for it. No one in the Literary Detectives would knowingly harm a book. We'd all resign before torching a single copy of anything. 'Right,' I said, replacing the receiver, 'his office said there was a chimera alert in the Brunei Centre -- we should be able to find him there.' 'Whereabouts in the centre?' 'If it's a chimera alert, we just follow the screams.' 178 20 Chimeras and Neanderthals 'The Neanderthal experiment was conceived in order to create the euphemistically entitled "medical test vessels", living creatures that were as close as possible to humans without actually being human within the context of the law. The experiment was an unparalleled success - and failure. The Neanderthal was everything that could be hoped for. A close cousin but not human, physiologically almost identical - and legally with less rights than a dormouse. But sadly for Goliath, even the hardiest of medical technicians balked at experiments conducted upon intelligent and speaking entities, so the first batch of Neanderthals were trained instead as "expendable combat units", a project that was shelved as soon as the lack of aggressive instincts in the Neanderthals was noted. They were subsequently released into the community as cheap labour and became a celebrated tax write-off. It was Homo sapiens at his least sapient.' Gerhard VON SQUID - Neanderthals -- Back after a Short Absence Brunei Centre was packed, as usual. Busy shoppers moved chain store to chain store, trying to find bargains in places identical goods were price fixed by head office several s in advance. It didn't stop them trying, though. why the interest in Xeroxed bards?' asked Bowden as we * the canal. ^c've got a crisis in the BookWorld.' titlined what was happening within the play previously known »let and he opened his eyes wide. ooa!' he said after a pause. 'And I thought our work was dr s didn't have to wait long to find Mr Stiggins. Within a few 179 moments there was a blood-curdling cry of terror from a startled shopper. A second scream followed, and all of a sudden there was a mad rush of people moving away from the junction of Canal Walk and Bridge Street. We moved against the flow, stepping over discarded shopping and the odd shoe. The cause of the panic was soon evident. Rifling through a rubbish bin for a tasty snack was a bizarre hybrid of a creature - in SO-13 slang, a chimera. The genetic revolution that gave us unlimited replacement organs and the power to create dodos and other extinctees from home cloning kits had a downside: perverse pastiches of animals who were not borne on the shoulders of evolution, but by hobby gene splicers who didn't know any better than to try to play God in the comfort of their own potting sheds. As the crowds rapidly departed, Bowden and I stared at the strange creature that lurched and slavered as it rooted through the waste bin. It was about the size of a goat and had the rear legs of one, but not much else. The tail and the forelegs were lizard, the head almost feline. It had several tentacles, and it sucked noisily on a chip-soaked newspaper, the saliva from its toothless mouth dribbling copiously on to the pavement. In general, hybrid birds were the most common product of illegal gene splicing, as birds were closely enough related to come out pretty well no matter how ham-fisted the amateur splicer. You could even create a passable dogfoxwolf or a domestic catleopard with no greater knowledge than a biology GCSE. No, it was the cross-class abominations which led to the total ban on home cloning, the lizard/mammal switcheroos that really pushed the limits on what was socially acceptable. It didn't stop the sport; just pushed it underground. The creature rummaged with its one good arm in the bin, found the remains of a SmileyBurger, stared at it with its five eyes, then pushed it into its mouth. It then flopped to the ground and moved, half shuffling and half slithering, to the next bin, all the while hissing like a cat and slapping its tentacles together. 'Oh my God,' said Bowden, 'it's got a human arm!' And so it had. It was when there were bits of recognisable human 180 f%?\'~ [>*?-- ] 'The cause of panic was soon evident. Rifling through a rubbish bin for a tasty snack was a bizarre hybrid of a character -- in SO-13 slang, a chimera . . .' 181 in them that chimeras were most repellent - a failed attempt to replace a deceased loved one, or a hobby gene splicer trying to make themselves a son. 'Repulsive?' said a voice close at hand. 'The creature, or the creator?' I turned to find myself looking at a squat, beetlebrowed Neanderthal in a pale suit and with a Homburg hat perched high on his domed head. I had met him several times before. This was Bartholomew Stiggins, head of SO-13 here in Wessex. 'Both,' I replied. Stiggins nodded almost imperceptibly as a blue SO-13 Land Rover pulled up with a squeal of brakes. A uniformed officer jumped out and started to try to push us back. Stiggins said: 'We are together.' The Neanderthal took a few steps forward and we joined him at the creature, which was close enough to touch. 'Reptile, goat, cat, human,' murmured the Neanderthal, crouching down and staring intently at the creature as it ran a thin pink-forked tongue across a crisp packet. 'The eyes look insectoid,' observed the SO-13 agent, dart gun in the crook of his arm. 'Too big. More like the eyes we found on the chimera up at the bandstand. You remember, the one that looked like a giant hamster?' 'Same splicer?' The Neanderthal shrugged. 'Same eyes. You know how they like to trade.' 'We'll take a sample and compare. Might lead us to them. That looks like a human arm, doesn't it?' The creature's arm was red and mottled and no bigger than a child's. To grasp anything the fingers grabbed and twisted randomly until it found something and then it clung on tight. 'Gives it an age,' said Stiggins, 'perhaps five years.' 'Do you want to take it alive, sir?' asked the SO-13 agent, breeching the barrel of his gun and pausing. The Neanderthal shook his head. 'No. Send him home.' 182 The agent inserted a dart and snapped the breech shut. He took careful aim and fired into the creature. The chimera didn't flinch -- a fully functioning nervous system is a complicated piece of design * and well beyond the capabilities of even the most gifted of amateur ¦"¥ splicers - but it stopped trying to chew the bark off a tree and twitched several times before lying down and breathing more slowly. The Neanderthal moved closer and held the creature's grubby ; hand as its life ebbed away. 'Sometimes,' said the Neanderthal softly, 'sometimes, the innocent must suffer.' 'DENNIS!' came a panicked voice from the gathering crowd, ;;; which had fallen silent as the creature's breathing grew slower. ' 'Dennis, Daddy's worried! Where are you?' The whole sad, sorry scene had just got a lot worse. A man in a beard and sleeveless white shirt had run into the empty circle around the rapidly dying creature and stared at us with a look of numb horror on his face. 'Dennis?' He dropped to his knees next to his creation, which was now breathing in short gasps. The man opened his mouth and emitted such a wail of heartbroken grief that it made me feel quite odd inside. Such an outpouring cannot be feigned; it comes from the soul, one's very being. 'You didn't have to kill him,' he wailed, wrapping his arms around the dying beast, 'you didn't have to kill him . . . I' '¦¦ The uniformed agent moved to pull Dennis's creator away but \ the Neanderthal stopped him. -;t 'No,' he said gravely, 'leave him for a moment.' ;5 The agent shrugged and walked to the Land Rover to fetch a bodybag. 'Every time we do this it's like killing one of our own,' said Stiggins softly. 'Where have you been, Miss Next? In prison?' 'Why does everyone think I've been in prison?' 'Because you were heading towards death or prison when we last met -- and you are not dead.' 183 Dennis's maker was rocking backwards and forwards, bemoaning the loss of his creation. The agent returned with a bodybag and a female colleague, who gently prised the man from the creature and told his unhearing ears his rights. 'Only one signature on a piece of paper keeps Neanderthals from being destroyed, the same as him,' said Stiggins, indicating the creature. 'We can be added to the list of banned creatures and designated a chimera without even an Act of Parliament.' We turned from the scene as the other two agents laid out the bodybag and then rolled the corpse of the chimera on to it. 'You remember Bowden Cable?' I asked. 'My partner at the LiteraTecs.' 'Of course,' replied Stiggins, 'we met at your reception.' 'How have you been?' asked Bowden. Stiggins stared back at him. It was a pointless human pleasantry that Neanderthals never troubled themselves with. 'We have been fine,' replied Stig, forcing the standard answer from his lips. Bowden didn't know it but he was only rubbing Stiggins's nose deeper in sapien-dominated society. 'He means nothing by it,' I said matter-of-factly, which is how Neanderthals like all their speech. 'We need your help, Stig.' 'Then we will be happy to give it, Miss Next.' 'Mean nothing by what?' asked Bowden as we walked across to a bench. 'Tell you later.' Stig sat down and watched as another SO-13 Land Rover turned up, followed by two police cars to disperse the now curious crowd. He pulled out a carefully wrapped package of grease-proof paper and unfolded it to reveal his lunch -- two windfall apples, a small bag of live bugs and a chunk of raw meat. » 'Bug?' 'No thanks.' 'So what can we do for the Literary Detectives?' he asked, attempting to eat a beetle that didn't really want him to and was 184 chased twice around Stig's hand until caught and devoured. 'What do you make of this?' I asked as Bowden handed him a picture of the Shaxtper cadaver. 'It is a dead human,' replied Stig. 'Are you sure you won't have a beetle? They're very crunchy.' 'No thanks. What about this?' Bowden handed him a picture of one of the other dead clones, and then a third. 'The same dead human from a different viewpoint?' 'They're all different corpses, Stig.' He stopped chewing the uncooked lamb chop and stared at me, then wiped his hands on a large handkerchief and looked more carefully at the photographs. 'How many?' 'Eighteen that we know of 'Cloning entire humans has always been illegal,' murmured Stig. 'Can we see the real thing?' The Swindon morgue was a short walk from the SpecOps office. It was an old Victorian building which in a more enlightened age would have been condemned. It smelt of formaldehyde and damp and the morgue technicians all looked unhappy and probably had odd hobbies that I would be happier not knowing about. The lugubrious head pathologist, Mr Rumplunkett, looked avariciously at Mr Stiggins. Since killing a Neanderthal wasn't technically a crime no autopsy was ever performed on one -- and Mr Rumplunkett was by nature a curious man. He said nothing but Stiggins knew precisely what he was thinking. 'We're pretty much the same inside as you, Mr Rumplunkett. That was, after all, the reason we were brought into being in the first place.' 'I'm sorry--' began the embarrassed chief pathologist. 'No, you're not,' responded Stig, 'your interest is purely professional and in the pursuit of knowledge. We take no offence.' 'We're here to look at Mr Shaxtper,' said Bowden. 185 We were led to the main autopsy room, where several bodies ¦were lying under sheets with tags on their toes. 'Overcrowding,' said Mr Rumplunkett, 'but they don't seem to complain too much. This the one?' He threw back a sheet. The cadaver had a high-domed head, deep-set eyes, a small moustache and goatee. It looked a lot like William Shakespeare from the Droeshout engraving on the title page of the first folio. 'What do you think?' 'Okay,' I said slowly, 'he looks like Shakespeare, but if Victor wore his hair like that, so would he.' Bowden nodded. It was a fair point. 'And this one wrote the Basil Brush sonnet?' 'No; that particular sonnet was written by this one.' With a flourish Bowden pulled back the sheet from another cadaver to reveal a corpse identical to the first, only a year or two younger. I stared at them both as Bowden revealed yet another. 'So how many Shakespeares did you say you had?' 'Officially, none. We've got a Shaxtper, a Shakespoor and a Shagsper. Only two of them had any writing on them, all have ink-stained fingers, all are genetically identical, and all died of disease or hypothermia brought on by self-neglect.' 'D o wn-and-outs?' 'Hermits is probably nearer the mark.' 'Aside from the fact that they all have left eyes and one size of toe,' said Stig, who had been examining the cadavers at length, 'they are very good indeed. We haven't seen this sort of craftsmanship for years.' 'They're copies of a playwright named William Shakes--' 'We know of Shakespeare, Mr Cable,' interrupted Stig. 'We are particularly fond of Caliban from The Tempest. This is a deep recovery job. Brought back from a piece of dried skin or a hair in a death mask or something.' 'When and where, Stig?' He thought for a moment. 186 'They were probably built in the mid-thirties,' he announced. 'At the time there were perhaps only ten biolabs in the world that could have done this. We think we can safely say we are looking I- at one of the three biggest genetic engineering labs in England.' H 'Not possible,' said Bowden. 'The manufacturing records of York, M Bognor Regis and Scunthorpe are in the public domain; it would ¦i" be inconceivable that a project of this magnitude could have been Jt kept secret.' J** 'And yet they exist,' replied Stig, pointing to the corpses and bringing Bowden's argument to a rapid close. 'Do you have the * genome logs and trace element spectroscopic evaluations?' he added. H 'More careful study might reveal something.' If 'That's not standard autopsy procedure,' replied Rumplunkett. ¦J^L T have my budget to think of «? 'If you do a molar cross-section as well we will donate our body -' to this department when we die.' ' 'I'll do them for you while you wait,' said Mr Rumplunkett. |sj Stig turned back to us. 'M 'We'll need forty-eight hours to have a look at them - shall we meet again at my house? We would be honoured by your presence.' He looked me in the eye. He would know if I lied. 'I'd like that very much.' 'We, too. Wednesday at midday?' 'I'll be there.' The Neanderthal raised his hat, gave a small grunt and moved off. 'Well,' said Bowden as soon as Stig was out of earshot, 'I hope you like eating beetles and dock leaves.' 'You and me both, Bowden -- you're coming too. If he wanted me and me alone, he would have asked me in private -- but I'm sure he'll make something more palatable for us.' I frowned as we walked blinking back out into the sunlight. 'Bowden?' 'Yup?' 187 'Did Stig say anything that seemed unusual to you?' 'Not really. Do you want to hear my plans for infil--' Bowden stopped talking in mid-sentence as the world ground to a halt. Time had ceased to exist. I was trapped between one moment and the next. It could only be my father. 'Hello, Sweetpea,' he said cheerfully, giving me a hug, 'how did the Superhoop turn out?' 'That's next Saturday.' 'Oh!' he said, looking at his watch and frowning. 'You won't let me down, will you?' 'How will I not let you down? What's the connection between the Superhoop and Kaine?' 'I can't tell you. Events must unfold naturally or there'll be hell to pay. You'll just have to trust me.' 'Did you come all this way just to not tell me anything?' 'Not at all. It's a Trafalgar thing. I've been trying all sorts of plans but Nelson stubbornly resists surviving. I think I've figured it out, but I need your help.' 'Will this take long?' I asked. Tve got a lot to do and I have to get home before my mother finds I've left a gorilla in charge of Friday.' 'I think I am right in saying,' replied my father with a smile, 'that this will take no time at all - if you'd prefer, even less!' 188 \"~Wi; 21 Victory on the Victory RAUNCHY ADMIRAL IN LOVE CHILD SHOCK Our sources can reveal exclusively in this paper that Admiral Lord Nelson, the nation's darling and much-decorated war hero, is the father of a daughter with Lady Emma Hamilton, wife of Sir William Hamilton. The affair has been going on for some time, apparently with the full knowledge of both Sir William and Lady Nelson, from whom the hero of the Nile is now estranged. Full story, page two; leader, page three; lurid engravings, pages four, seven, and nine; hypocritical moralistic comment, page ten; bawdy cartoon featuring an overweight Lady Hamilton, pages twelve and thirteen. Also in this issue: reports of the French and Spanish defeat at Cape Trafalgar, page thirty-two, column four. uiium --r-i^*--"** Article in the Portsmouth Penny Dreadful, 28 October 1805 There was a succession of flickering lights and we were on the deck of a fully rigged battleship that heaved in a long swell as the wind gathered in its sails. The deck was scrubbed for action and a sense of expectancy hung over the vessel. We were sailing abreast with two other men-of-war, and to landward a column of French ships sailed on a course that would bring us into conflict. Men shouted, the ship creaked, the sails heaved and pennants fluttered in the breeze. We were on board Nelson's flagship, the Victory. I looked around. High on the quarterdeck stood a group of men, uniformed officers in navy blue jackets, cream breeches and cockade hats. Among them was a smaller man with one arm of his uniform tucked neatly into a jacket festooned with medals and decorations. He couldn't have been a better target if he'd tried. 189 'It would be hard to miss him,' I breathed. 'We keep telling him that but he's pretty pig-headed about it and won't budge -- just says they are military orders and he does not fear to show them to the enemy. Would you like a gobstopper?' He offered me a small paper bag which I declined. The vessel heeled over again and we watched in silence as the distance between the two ships steadily closed. 'I never get bored of this. See them?' I followed his gaze to where three people were huddled on the other side of a large coil of rope. One was dressed in the uniform of the ChronoGuard, another was holding a clipboard and the third had what looked like a TV camera on his shoulder. 'Documentary-makers from the twenty-second century,' explained my father, hailing the other ChronoGuard operative. 'Hello, Malcolm, how's it going?' 'Well, thanks!' replied the agent. 'Got into the soup a bit when I lost that cameraman at Pompeii. Wanted an extra close-up or something.' 'Hard cheese, old man, hard cheese. Golf after work?' 'Right-o!' replied Malcolm, returning to his charges. 'It's nice being back at work, actually,' confessed my father, turning back to me. 'Sure you won't have a gobstopper?' 'No, thanks.' There was a flash and a burst of smoke from the closest French warship. A second later two cannon shots plopped harmlessly in the water. The balls didn't move as fast as I had supposed they would -- I could actually see them in flight. 'Now what?' I asked. 'Take out the snipers so they can't shoot Nelson?' 'We'd never get them all. No, we must cheat a little. But not yet. Time is of the essence at moments like this.' » So we waited patiently on the main deck while the battle heated up. Within minutes, seven or eight warships were firing at the Victory, the cannon balls tearing into the sails and rigging. One even cut a man in half on the quarterdeck, and another dispatched a 190 small gang of what I took to be marines, who dispersed rapidly. All through this the diminutive admiral, his captain and a small retinue paced the quarterdeck as the smoke from the guns billowed around, the heat of the muzzle flashes hot on our faces, the concussion almost deafening. The ship's wheel disintegrated as a shot went through it, and as the battle progressed we moved about the deck, following the safest path in the light of my father's superior and infinitely precise knowledge of the battle. We moved to one side as a cannon ball flew past, moved to another area of the deck as a heavy piece of wood fell from the rigging, then to a third place when some musket balls whizzed past where we had been crouching. 'You know the battle very well!' I shouted above the noise. 'I should do,' he shouted back, 'I've been here over sixty times.' The French and British warships drew nearer and nearer until the Victory was so close to the Bucentaure that I could see the faces of the staff in the staterooms as we passed. There was a deafening broadside from the guns and the stern of the French ship was torn apart as the British cannon balls ripped through it and down the length of the gun deck. In the lull, as the cannon crews reloaded, I could hear the multilingual cries of injured men. I had seen warfare in the Crimea but nothing like this. Such close fighting with such devastating weapons reduced men to nothing more than tatters in an instant, the plight of the survivors made worse by the almost certain knowledge that the medical attention they would receive was of the most rudimentary and brutal kind. I nearly fell over as the Victory collided with a French ship just astern of the Bucentaure, and as I recovered my balance I realised just how close the ships were to one another in these sort of battles. It wasn't a cable's length -- they were actually touching. The smoke of the guns swirled about us and made me cough, and the wheeezip of musket shot close by made me realise that the danger here was very real. There was another deafening concussion as the Victory's guns exploded and the French ship seemed to tremble in the water. My father leaned back to allow a large metal splinter to pass between us, then handed me a pair of binoculars. 191 'Dad?' He was reaching into his pocket and pulling out, of all things, a catapult. He loaded it with a lead ball that was rolling across the deck and pulled it back tight, aiming through the swirling smoke at Nelson. 'See the sharpshooter on the most for'ard platform in the French rigging?' 'Yes?' 'As soon as he puts his finger on the trigger, count two and then say fire.' I stared up at French rigging, found the sharpshooter and kept a close eye on him. He was less than fifty feet from Nelson. It was the easiest shot in the world. I saw his finger touch the trigger, and-- 'Fire!' The lead ball flew from the catapult and caught Nelson painfully on the knee; he collapsed on the deck while the shot that would have killed him buried itself harmlessly in the deck behind him. Captain Hardy ordered his men to take Nelson below, where he would be detained for the rest of the battle. Hardy would face his wrath come the morning and would not serve with him again for disobeying orders. My father saluted Captain Hardy, and Captain Hardy saluted him back. Hardy had marred his career, but saved his admiral. It was a good trade. 'Well,' said my father, placing the catapult back in his pocket, 'we all know how this turns out - come on!' He took my hand as we started to accelerate through time. The battle quickly ended and the ship's deck was scrubbed clean; day rapidly followed night as we sailed swiftly back to England to a riotous welcome from crowds lining the docks. Then the boat moved again, but this time to Chatham, where it mouldered, lost its rigging, regained it and then moved again - but this time to Portsmouth, whose buildings rose around us as we moved into the twentieth century at breakneck speed. When we decelerated we were back in the present but still in 192 m the same position on the deck, the ship now in dry dock and crowded with schoolchildren holding exercise books and in the process of being led around by a guide. 'And it was at this spot,' said the guide, pointing to a plaque on the deck, 'that Admiral Nelson was hit on the leg by a ricochet that probably saved his life.' 'Well, that's that job taken care of,' said Dad, standing up and dusting off his hands. He looked at his watch. 'I've got to go. Thanks for helping out, Sweetpea. Remember: Goliath may try to nobble the Swindon Mallets, especially the team captain, to rig the outcome of the Superhoop, so be on your toes. Tell Emma - I mean Lady Hamilton - that I'll pick her up at eight thirty her time tomorrow - and send my love to your mother.' He smiled, there was another rapid flash of light and I was back outside the pathology lab with Bowden, who was just finishing the sentence he had begun when Dad arrived. '--trating the Montagues?' 'Sorry?' 'I said, do you want to hear my plans for infiltrating the Montagues?' He wrinkled his nose. 'Is that you smelling of cordite?' 'I'm afraid so. Listen, you'll have to excuse me - I think Goliath may try to nobble Roger Kapok and without him we have even less chance of winning the Superhoop.' He laughed. 'Xeroxed bards, Swindon Mallets, eradicated husbands. You like impossible assignments, don't you?' 193 22 Roger Kapok CONTRITION RATES NOT HIGH ENOUGH TO MEET TARGETS That was the shock report from Mr Tork Armada, the spokesman for OFGOD, the religious institution licensing authority. 'Despite continual and concerted efforts by Goliath to meet the levels of repentance demanded by this authority,' said Mr Armada at a press conference yesterday, 'they have not managed to reach even halfway to the minimum divinity requirements of this office.' Mr Armada's report was greeted with surprise by Goliath, who had hoped their application would be swift and unopposed. 'We are changing tactics to target those to whom Goliath is anathema,' said Mr Schitt-Hawse, a Goliath spokesman. 'We have recently secured forgiveness from someone who had despised us deeply, something that counts twenty-fold in OFGOD's own contrition target rules. More like her will soon follow.' Mr Armada was clearly not impressed and simply said: 'Well, we'll see.' Report in Goliath Today!, 17 July 1988 I trotted up the road to the 30,000-seater croquet stadium, deep in thought. Goliath's contrition rate had been published that morning and thanks to me and the 'Crimean Mass Apology Project' their switching to a religious status was now not only possible but probable. The only plus was that in all likelihood it wouldn't happen until after the Superhoop, which raised the possibility - confirmed by my father - that Goliath would try to nobble the Swindon team. And targeting the captain, Roger Kapok, was probably the best way to do it. I passed the VIP car park where a row of expensive automobiles 195 was on display and showed my SpecOps pass to the bored security guard. I entered the stadium and walked up one of the public access tunnels to the terraces, and from there looked down upon the green. From this distance the hoops were almost invisible, but their positions were marked by large white circles painted on the turf. The ten-yard lines crossed the green from side to side and the 'natural hazards', the Italianate sunken garden, rhododendron bushes and herbaceous flower beds, stood out clearly. Each 'obstruction' was scrupulously constructed to specific World Croquet League specifications. The height of the rhododendrons was carefully measured before each game, the herbaceous border stocked with identical shrubs, the sunken garden with its lilies and lead fountain of Minerva the same on every green the world over, from Dallas to Poona, Nairobi to Reykjavik. Below me I could see the Swindon Mallets indulging in a tough training session. Roger Kapok was among them, barking orders as his team ran backwards and forwards, whirling their mallets dangerously close to one another. Four-ball croquet could be a dangerous sport, and close-quarters stick-work that managed not to involve severe physical injury was considered a skill unique to the Croquet League. I ran down the steps between the rows of tiered seating, which was nearly my undoing; halfway down I slipped on some carelessly deposited banana skins, and if it hadn't been for some deft footwork I might have plunged head first on to the concrete steps. I muttered a curse under my breath, glared at one of the groundsmen and stepped out on to the green. 'So,' I heard Kapok say as I drew closer, 'we've got the big match on Saturday and I don't want anyone thinking that we will automatically win just because St Zvlkx said so. Brother Thomas of York predicted a twenty-point victory for the Battersea Chargers last week and they were beaten hollow, so stay on your toes. I won't have the team relying on destiny to win this match -- we do it on teamwork, application and tactics.' There was a grunting and nodding of heads from the assembled team, and Kapok 196 continued. 'Swindon have never won a Superhoop, so I want this to be our first. Biffo, Smudger and Aubrey will lead the offensive as usual, and I don't want anyone tumbling into the sunken garden like during last Tuesday's practice. The hazards are there for you to lose opponents' balls in clean and legal roquets, and I don't want them used for any other purpose.' Kapok was a big man with closely cropped hair and a badly broken nose which he wore with pride. He had taken a croquet ball in the face five years ago, before helmets and body armour were compulsory. He had been at Swindon for over ten years and at thirty-five was at the upper age limit for pro croquet. He and the rest of the team were local legends and hadn't needed to buy a drink in Swindon's pubs for as long as anyone could remember -- but outside Swindon they were barely known at all. 'Thursday Next,' I said, walking closer and introducing myself, 'SpecOps. Can I have a word?' 'Sure. Take five, guys.' I shook Roger's hand and we walked off towards the herbaceous border which was adjacent to the forty-yard line, just next to the garden roller which, owing to a horrific accident at the Pan Pacific Cup last year, was now padded. 'I'm a big fan, Miss Next,' said Roger, smiling broadly to reveal several missing teeth. 'Your work on Jane Eyre was astounding. I love Charlotte Bronte's novels. Don't you think the Ginevra Fanshawe character from Villette and Blanche Ingram {torn Jane Eyre are sort of similar?' I had noticed, of course, because they actually were the same person, but I didn't think Kapok or anyone else should know about the economics of the BookWorld. 'Really?' I said. 'I'd not noticed. I'll come straight to the point, Mr Kapok. Has anyone tried to dissuade you from playing this Saturday?' 'No. And you probably just heard me telling the team to ignore the seventh Revealment. We aim to win for our own sakes and that of Swindon. And we will win, you have my word on that!' 197 was on display and showed my SpecOps pass to the bored security guard. I entered the stadium and walked up one of the public access tunnels to the terraces, and from there looked down upon the green. From this distance the hoops were almost invisible, but their positions were marked by large white circles painted on the turf. The ten-yard lines crossed the green from side to side and the 'natural hazards', the Italianate sunken garden, rhododendron bushes and herbaceous flower beds, stood out clearly. Each 'obstruction' was scrupulously constructed to specific World Croquet League specifications. The height of the rhododendrons was carefully measured before each game, the herbaceous border stocked with identical shrubs, the sunken garden with its lilies and lead fountain of Minerva the same on every green the world over, from Dallas to Poona, Nairobi to Reykjavik. Below me I could see the Swindon Mallets indulging in a tough training session. Roger Kapok was among them, barking orders as his team ran backwards and forwards, whirling their mallets dangerously close to one another. Four-ball croquet could be a dangerous sport, and close-quarters stick-work that managed not to involve severe physical injury was considered a skill unique to the Croquet League. I ran down the steps between the rows of tiered seating, which was nearly my undoing; halfway down I slipped on some carelessly deposited banana skins, and if it hadn't been for some deft footwork I might have plunged head first on to the concrete steps. I muttered a curse under my breath, glared at one of the groundsmen and stepped out on to the green. 'So,' I heard Kapok say as I drew closer, 'we've got the big match on Saturday and I don't want anyone thinking that we will automatically win just because St Zvlkx said so. Brother Thomas of York predicted a twenty-point victory for the Batterjea Chargers last week and they were beaten hollow, so stay on your toes. I won't have the team relying on destiny to win this match - we do it on teamwork, application and tactics.' There was a grunting and nodding of heads from the assembled team, and Kapok 196 continued. 'Swindon have never won a Superhoop, so I want this to be our first. Biffo, Smudger and Aubrey will lead the offensive as usual, and I don't want anyone tumbling into the sunken garden like during last Tuesday's practice. The hazards are there for you to lose opponents' balls in clean and legal roquets, and I don't want them used for any other purpose.' Kapok was a big man with closely cropped hair and a badly broken nose which he wore with pride. He had taken a croquet ball in the face five years ago, before helmets and body armour were compulsory. He had been at Swindon for over ten years and at thirty-five was at the upper age limit for pro croquet. He and the rest of the team were local legends and hadn't needed to buy a drink in Swindon's pubs for as long as anyone could remember - but outside Swindon they were barely known at all. 'Thursday Next,' I said, walking closer and introducing myself, 'SpecOps. Can I have a word?' 'Sure. Take five, guys.' I shook Roger's hand and we walked off towards the herbaceous border which was adjacent to the forty-yard line, just next to the garden roller which, owing to a horrific accident at the Pan Pacific Cup last year, was now padded. 'I'm a big fan, Miss Next,' said Roger, smiling broadly to reveal several missing teeth. 'Your work on Jane Eyre was astounding. I love Charlotte Bronte's novels. Don't you think the Ginevra Fanshawe character from Villette and Blanche Ingram from Jane Eyre are sort of similar?' I had noticed, of course, because they actually were the same person, but I didn't think Kapok or anyone else should know about the economics of the BookWorld. 'Really?' I said. 'I'd not noticed. I'll come straight to the point, Mr Kapok. Has anyone tried to dissuade you from playing this Saturday?' 'No. And you probably just heard me telling the team to ignore the seventh Revealment. We aim to win for our own sakes and that of Swindon. And we will win, you have my word on that!' 197 He smiled that dazzling reconstructed Roger Kapok smile that I had seen so many times on billboards throughout Swindon, advertising everything from toothpaste to floor paint. His confidence was infectious and suddenly beating the Reading Whackers seemed to move from 'totally impossible' to 'deeply improbable'. 'And what about you?' I asked, remembering my father's warning that he would be the first one Goliath would try to nobble. 'What about me?' 'Would you stay with the team no matter what?' 'Of course!' he replied. 'Wild horses couldn't drag me away from leading the Mallets to victory.' 'Promise?' 'On my honour. The code of the Kapoks is at stake. Only death will keep me off the green on Saturday.' 'You should be on your guard, Mr Kapok,' I murmured, 'Goliath will try anything to make sure Reading win the Superhoop.' 'I can look after myself 'I don't doubt it, but you should be on your guard nevertheless.' I paused as a sudden childish urge came over me. 'Would you mind ... if I had a whack?' I pointed at his mallet and he dropped a blue ball to the ground. 'Did you used to play?' 'For my university.' 'Roger!' called one of the players from behind us. He excused himself and I squared up to the ball. I hadn't played for years but only through lack of spare time. It was a fast and furious game quite unlike its ancient predecessor, although the natural hazards, such as rhododendrons and other garden architecture, had remained from the era when it was simply a polite garden sport. I rolled the ball with my foot to plant it firmly on the grass. My old croquet coach had been an ex-league player named Alf Widdershaine, who always told me that concentration made the finest croquet players - and Alf should know as he had been a pro for the Slough Bombers and retired with 7,892 career hoops, a record yet to be beaten. I 198 looked down the green at the forty-yard right back hoop. From here it was no bigger than my fingertip. Alf had hooped from up to fifty yards away but my personal best was only twenty. I concentrated as my fingers clasped the leather grip, then raised the mallet and followed through with a hard swing. There was a satisfying crack and the ball hurtled off in a smooth arc - straight into the rhododendrons. Blast. If this had been a match I would have 'lost the ball' until the next third. I turned around to see whether anyone had been watching but fortunately they hadn't. Instead, an altercation seemed to be going on between the team members. I dropped the mallet and hurried over. 'You can't leave!' cried Aubrey Jambe, hoop defence. 'What about the Superhoop?' 'You'll do fine without me,' Kapok implored, 'really you will!' He was standing with two men in suits who didn't look as though they were in the sports business. I showed them my ID. 'Thursday Next, SpecOps. What's going on?' The two men looked at one another. It was the tall one who spoke. 'We're scouts for the Gloucester Meteors and we think Mr Kapok would like to come and play for us.' 'Less than a week before a Superhoop?' 'I'm due for a change, Miss Next,' said Kapok, looking about nervously. 'I think that BifFo would lead the team far better than me. Don't you think so, Biffo?' 'What about all that "wild horses" and "code of the Kapoks" stuff?' I demanded. 'You promised!' 'I need to spend more time with my family,' muttered Kapok, shrugging his shoulders and clearly not keen to remain in the stadium one second longer than he had to. 'You'll be fine - hasn't St Zvlkx predicted it?' 'Seers aren't always a hundred per cent accurate -- you said so yourself! Who are you two really?' 'Leave us out of it,' said the tall suited man. 'All we did was make an offer - Mr Kapok decides if he stays or goes.' 199 Kapok and the two men turned to leave. 'Kapok, for God's sake!' yelled Biffo. 'The "Whackers will knock the stuffing out of the team if you're not here to lead us!' But he continued walking, his former team-mates looking on in disgust, and grumbled and swore for a while before the Mallets' manager, a reedy-looking character with a thin moustache and a pale complexion walked on to the green and asked what was going on. 'Ah!' he said when he heard the news. 'I'm very sorry to hear that but since you are all present I think it's probably the right time to announce that I'm retiring on grounds of ill health.' 'When?' 'Right now,' said the manager, and ran off. Goliath were working overtime this morning. 'Well,' said Aubrey as soon as he had gone, 'what now?' 'Listen,' I said, 'I can't tell you why but it is historically imperative that we win this Superhoop. You will win this match because you have to. It's that simple. Can you captain?' I asked, turning to a burly croquet player named Biffo. I had seen him do 'blind passes' across the rhododendron bushes with uncanny accuracy and his classic 'pegging out' shot from the sixty-yard line during the league game against Southampton was undeniably one of the Top Ten Great Croquet Moments of history. Of course, that had been over ten years ago, before a bad tackle twisted his knee. These days he played defence, guarding the hoops against opposition strikers. 'Not me,' he replied with a resigned air. 'Smudger?' Smudger played attack and had made midair roquets something of a trademark. His celebrated double hoop in the Swindon-Gloucester play-off of 1978 was still talked about, even if it hadn't won us the match. » 'Nope.' 'Anyone?' 'I'll captain, Miss Next.' It was Aubrey Jambe. He had been captain once before until a 200 media-led campaign had him ousted following allegations about him and a chimp. 'Good.' 'But we'll need a new manager,' said Aubrey slowly, 'and since you seem to be so passionate about it, I think you'd better take it on.' Before I knew what I was saying I had agreed, which went down pretty well with the players. Morale of a sort had returned. I took Aubrey by the arm and we walked into the middle of the green for our first strategy meeting. 'Okay,' I said, 'tell me truthfully, Jambe, what are our chances?' 'Borderline impossible,' answered Aubrey candidly. 'We had to sell our best player to Glasgow to be able to meet the changes that the World Croquet League insisted we make to the green. Then our top defender, Lauren de Rematte, won a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Africa on one of those junk mail prize draw things. With -L Kapok gone we're down to ten players, no reserve, and we've lost % the best striker. Biffo, Smudger, Snake, George and Johnno are all * v good players but the rest are secondraters.' 'So what do we need to win?' ¦ 'If every player on the Reading team were to die overnight and be replaced by unfit nine-year-olds, then we might be in with a chance.' 'Too difficult and probably illegal. What else?' Aubrey stared at me glumly. 'Five quality players and we might have a chance.' It was a tall order. If they could get to Kapok, they could offer 'inducements' to any other player who might want to join us. 'Okay,' I said, 'leave it with me.' 'You have a plan?' 'Of course,' I lied, feeling the managerial mantle falling about my shoulders, 'your new players are as good as signed. Besides,' I added, with a certain amount of faux conviction, 'we've got a Revealment to protect.' 201 A! \ 23 Granny Next READING WHACKERS CONFIDENT OF WINNING SUPERHOOP Following the surprise resignation of both Roger Kapok and Gray Ferguson from the Swindon Mallets croquet team this afternoon, the Whackers seem almost certain to win next Saturday's Superhoop, despite the prophecy by St Zvlkx. Betting shops were being cautious despite the news and lowered the Mallets' odds to 700-1. Miss Thursday Next, the new manager of the Mallets, derided any talk of failure and told waiting reporters that Swindon would triumph. When pressed on how that might be so, she declared the interview over. Article in the Swindon Evening Blurb, 18 July 1988 'You're the manager of the Mallets?' asked Bowden with incredulity. 'What happened to Gray Ferguson?' 'Bought out, bribed, frightened -- who knows?' 'You like being busy, don't you? Does this mean you won't be able to help me get banned books out of England?' 'Have no fear of that,' I reassured him, 'I'll find a way.' I wished I could share in my own confidence. I told Bowden I'd see him tomorrow and walked out, only to be waylaid by the over-zealous Major Drabb, who told me with great efficiency that he and his squad had searched the Albert Schweitzer Memorial Library from top to bottom but had not unearthed a single Danish book. I congratulated him on his diligence and told him to check in with me again tomorrow. He saluted smartly, presented me with a thirty-two-page written report and was gone. 203 Gran was in the garden of the Goliath Twilight Homes when I stopped by on the way home. She was dressed in a blue gingham frock and was attending to some flowers with a watering can. 'I just heard the news on the wireless. Congratulations!' 'Thanks,' I replied without enthusiasm, slumping into a large wicker chair. 'I have no idea why I volunteered to run the Mallets - I don't know the first thing about running a croquet team!' 'Perhaps,' replied Gran, reaching forward to dead-head a rose, 'all that is required is faith and conviction - two areas in which, I might add, I think you excel.' 'Faith isn't going to conjure up five world-class croquet players, now, is it?' 'You'd be surprised what faith can do, my dear. You have St Zvlkx's Revealment on your side, after all.' 'The future isn't fixed, Gran. We can lose, and probably will.' She tut-tutted. 'Well! Aren't you the moaning minnie today! What does it matter if we do lose? It's only a game, after all!' I slumped even lower. 'If it was only a game I wouldn't be worried. This is how my father sees it: Kaine proclaims himself dictator as soon as President Formby dies next Monday. Once he wields ultimate executive power he will embark on a course of warfare that results in an armageddon of Level III life-extinguishing capability. We can't stop the President from dying but we can, my father insists, avoid the world war by simply winning the Superhoop.' Gran sat down in a wicker chair next to me. 'And then there's Hamlet,' I continued, rubbing my temples. 'His play has been subjected to a hostile takeover from The Merry Wives of Windsor and if I don't find a Shakespeare clone pronto there won't be a Hamlet for Hamlet to return to. Goliath tricked me yet again. I don't know what they did but it felt as though my free will was being sucked out through my eyeballs. They said they'd get Landen back but quite frankly I have my doubts. And I have to illegally smuggle ten truckloads of banned books out of England.' 204 Tirade over, I sighed and was silent. Gran had been thoughtful for a while, and after appearing to come to some sort of a momentous decision announced: 'You know what you should do?' 'What?' 'Take Smudger off defence and make him the mid-hoop wingman. Jambe should be the striker as usual, but Biffo--' 'Gran! You haven't listened to a word I've said, have you?' She patted my hand. 'Of course I have. Hamlet was having his merry wives smuggled out of England by sucking out his eyeballs which leads to an armageddon and the death of the President. Right?' 'Never mind. How are things with you? Found the ten most boring books?' 'Indeed I have,' she replied, 'but I am loath to finish reading them as I feel there is one last epiphanic moment to my life that will be revealed just before I die.' 'What sort of epiphanic moment?' 'I don't know. Do you want to play Scrabble?' So Gran and I played Scrabble. I thought I was winning until she got 'cazique' on a triple word score and it was downhill from there. I lost by 503 points to 319. 205 24 Home Again DENMARK BLAMED FOR DUTCH ELM DISEASE 'Dutch Elm Disease was nothing of the sort' was the shock claim from leading arborealists last week. 'For many years we had blamed Dutch Elm Disease on the Dutch,' declared Jeremy Acorn, head spokesman of the Knotty Pine Arboreal Research Facility. 'So called Dutch Elm Disease, a tree virus that killed off nearly all England's elms in the mid seventies, was thought to have originated in Holland -- hence the name.' But new research has cast doubt on this long-held hypothesis. 'Using techniques unavailable to us in the seventies we have uncovered new evidence to suggest that Dutch Elm Disease originated in Denmark.' Mr Acorn went on to say: 'We have no direct evidence to suggest that Denmark is engaged in the design and proliferation of arborealogical weapons, but we have to maintain an open mind. There are many oaks and silver birches in England at present unprotected against attack.' Arboreal Warfare - should we be worried? Full report, page nine. Article in the Arboreal Times, 17 July 1988 I hurried home to get there before my mother as I wasn't sure how she'd react to finding that Friday was being looked after by a gorilla. It was possible that she might not have any problems with this but I didn't really want to put it to the test. To my horror Mum had got there before me -- and not just her, either. A large crowd of journalists had gathered outside her house, awaiting the return of the Mallets' new manager, and only after I had run the gauntlet of a thousand 'no comments' did I catch her, just as she was putting her key in the front door. 'Hello, Mother,' I said, somewhat breathlessly. 207 'Hello, daughter.' 'Going inside?' 'That's what I usually do when I get home.' 'Not thinking of going shopping?' I suggested. 'What are you hiding?' 'Nothing.' 'Good.' She pushed the key into the lock and opened the door, giving me a funny look. I ran past her into the living room, where Melanie was asleep on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table with Friday snoring happily on her chest. I quickly shut the door. 'He's sleeping!' I hissed to my mother. 'The little lamb! Let's have a look.' 'No, better let him be. He's a very light sleeper.' 'I can look very quietly.' 'Maybe not quietly enough.' 'I'll look through the serving hatch, then.' 'No--!' Why not?' 'It's jammed. Stuck fast. Meant to tell you this morning but it slipped my mind. Remember how Anton and I used to climb through it? Got any oil?' 'The serving hatch has never been stuck--' 'How about tea?' I asked brightly, attempting a form of misdirection that I knew my mother would find irresistible. 'I want to talk to you about an emotional problem -- that you might be able to help me with!' Sadly she knew me only too well. 'Now I know you're hiding something. Let me in--!' She attempted to push past, but I had a brainwave. 'No, Mother, you'll embarrass them -- and yourself.* She stopped. 'What do you mean?' 'It's Emma.' 'Emma? What about her?' 208 i 'Emma . . . and Hamlet.' She looked shocked and covered her mouth with her hand. 'In there? On my sofa?' I nodded. 'Doing . . . you know? Both of them -- together?' 'And very naked -- but they folded the antimacassars first,' I added, so as not to shock her too much. -* She shook her head sadly. 'It's not good, you know, Thursday.' 'I know.' 'Highly immoral.' | 'Very.' *' 'Well, let's have that cup of tea and you can tell me about that emotional problem of yours - is it about Daisy Mutlar?' 'No - I don't have any emotional problems.' 'But you said--?' 'Yes, Mother, that was an excuse to stop you barging in on Emma and Hamlet.' 'i 'Oh,' she said, realisation dawning. 'Well, let's have a cup of tea )).] anyway.' I breathed a sigh of relief and Mother walked into the kitchen - to find Hamlet and Emma talking as they did the washing up. Mother stopped dead and stared at them. 'It's disgusting!' she said at last. 'Excuse me?' enquired Hamlet. 'What you're doing in the living room - on my sofa.' 'What are we doing, Mrs Next?' asked Emma. 'What are you doing?' flustered my mother, her voice rising. 'I'll tell you what you're doing. Well, I won't because it's too . . . here, have a look for yourself And before I could stop her she opened the door to the living room to reveal . . . Friday, alone, asleep on the sofa. My mother looked confused and stared at me. 'Thursday, just what is going on?' 209 'I can't even begin to explain it,' I replied, wondering where Melanie had gone. It was a big room but not nearly large enough to hide a gorilla. I leaned in and saw that the French windows were ajar. 'Must have been a trick of the light.' 'Trick of the light?' 'Yes. May I?' I closed the door and froze as I noticed Melanie tiptoeing across the lawn, fully visible through the kitchen windows. 'How can it be a trick of the light?' 'I'm not really sure,' I stammered. 'Have you changed the curtains in here? They look kind of different.' 'No. Why didn't you want me to look in the living room?' 'Because . . . because ... I asked Mrs Beatty to look after Friday and I knew you didn't approve but now she's gone and everything is okay.' 'Ah!' said my mother, satisfied at last. I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd got away with it. 'Goodness!' said Hamlet, pointing. 'Isn't that a gorilla in the garden?' All eyes swivelled outside, where Melanie had stopped in mid stride over the sweet Williams. She paused for a moment, gave an embarrassed smile and waved her hand in greeting. 'Where?' said my mother. 'All I can see is an unusually hairy woman tiptoeing through my sweet Williams.' 'That's Mrs Bradshaw,' I murmured, casting an angry glance at Hamlet. 'She's been doing some childcare for me.' 'Well, don't let her wander around the garden, Thursday -- ask her in!' Mum put down her shopping and filled the kettle. 'Poor Mrs Bradshaw must think us dreadfully inhospitable - do you suppose she'd fancy a slice of Battenberg?' » Hamlet and Emma stared at me and I shrugged. I beckoned Melanie into the house and introduced her to my mother. 'Pleased to meet you,' said Melanie, 'you have a very lovely grandchild.' 210 'Melanie had stopped in mid-stride over the sweet williams. She paused for a moment, gave an embarrassed smile and waved her hand in greeting .. .' 211 'Thank you,' my mother replied, as though the effort had been entirely hers. 'I do my best.' 'I've just come back from Trafalgar,' I said, turning to Lady Hamilton. 'Dad's restored your husband and he said he'd pick you up at eight thirty tomorrow.' 'Oh!' she said, with not quite as much enthusiasm as I had hoped. 'That's. . . that's wonderful news.' 'Yes,' added Hamlet more sullenly, 'wonderful news.' They looked at one another. 'I'd better go and pack,' said Emma. 'Yes,' replied Hamlet, 'I'll help you.' And they both left the kitchen. 'What's wrong with them?' asked Melanie, helping herself to a slice of the proffered cake and sitting down on one of the chairs, which creaked ominously. 'Lovesick,' I replied. And I think they genuinely were. 'So, Mrs Bradshaw,' began my mother, settling into business mode, 'I have recently become an agent for some beauty products, many of which are completely unsuitable for people who are bald -- if you get my meaning.' 'Ooooh!' exclaimed Melanie, leaning closer. She did have a problem with facial hair -- hard not to, being a gorilla - and had never had the benefit of talking to a cosmetics consultant. Mum would probably end up trying to sell her some Tupperware, too. I went upstairs, where Hamlet and Emma were arguing. She seemed to be saying that her 'dear Admiral' needed her more than anything, and Hamlet said that she should come and live with him at Elsinore and 'to hell with Ophelia'. Emma replied that this really wasn't practical and then Hamlet made an extremely long and intractable speech which I think meant that nothing in the real world was simple or slick and he lamented the day ha ever left his play, and that he was sure Ophelia had discussed country matters with Horatio when his back was turned. Then Emma got confused and thought he was impugning her Horatio, and when he explained that it was his friend Horatio she changed her mind and said she 212 would come with him to Elsinore, but then Hamlet thought perhaps this wasn't such a good idea after all and he made another long speech until even Emma got bored and she crept downstairs for a beer and returned before he'd even noticed she had gone. After a while he just talked himself to a standstill without having made any decision -- which was just as well as there wasn't a play for him to return to. I was just pondering whether finding a cloned Shakespeare was actually going to be possible when I heard a tiny wail. I went back downstairs to find Friday blinking at me from the door to the living room, looking tousled and a little sleepy. 'Sleep well, little man?' lSunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit,' he replied, which I took to mean: 'I have slept very well and now require a snack to see me through the next two hours.' I walked back into the kitchen, something niggling away at my mind. Something that Mum had said. Something that Stiggins had said. Or maybe Emma? I made Friday a chocolate-spread sandwich, which he proceeded to smear about his face. 'I think you'll find I have just the colour for you,' said my mother, finding a shade of grey varnish that suited Melanie's black fur. 'Goodness - what strong nails!' 'I don't dig as much as I used to,' replied Melanie with an air of nostalgia. 'Trafford doesn't like it. He thinks it makes the neighbours talk.' My heart missed a beat and I shouted out, quite spontaneously: 'AHHHHHHHHH!' My mother jumped, painted a line of nail varnish up Melanie's hand and upset the bottle on to her polka-dot dress. 'Look what you've made me do!' she scolded. Melanie didn't look very happy either. 'Posh, Murray Posh, Daisy Posh, Daisy Mutlar -- why did you - . . mention Daisy Mutlar a few minutes ago?' 'Well, because I thought you'd be annoyed she was still around.' Daisy Mutlar, it must be understood, was someone whom Landen 213 nearly married during our ten-year enforced separation. But that wasn't important. What was important was that without Landen there had never been any Daisy. And if Daisy was around, then Landen must be too-- I looked down at my hand. On my ring finger was ... a ring. A wedding ring. I pulled it forward to the knuckle to reveal a white ridge. It looked as though it had always been there. And if it had-- 'Where's Landen now?' 'At his house, I should imagine,' said my mother. 'Are you staying here for supper?' 'Then . . . he's not eradicated?' She looked confused. 'Good Lord no!' I narrowed my eyes. 'Then I didn't ever go to Eradications Anonymous?' 'Of course not, darling. You know that myself and Mrs Beatty are the only people who ever attend - and Mrs Beatty is only there to comfort me. What on earth are you talking about? And come back! Where do you--' I opened the door and was two paces down the garden path when I remembered I had left Friday behind, so went back to get him, found he had got chocolate down his front despite the bib, put his sweatshirt on over his T-shirt, found he had glibbed down the front of it, got a clean one, changed his nappy and. . . no socks. 'What are you doing, darling?' asked my mother as I rummaged in the laundry basket. 'It's Landen,' I babbled excitedly, 'he was eradicated and now he's back and it's as though he'd never gone and I want him to meet Friday but Friday is way, way too sticky right now to meet his father.' 'Eradicated? Landen? When?' asked my mother incredulously. 'Are you sure?' » 'Isn't that the point about eradication?' I replied, having found six socks, none of them matching. 'No one ever knows. It might surprise you to know that Eradications Anonymous once had forty or more attendees. When I came there were less than ten. You did 214 a wonderful job, Mother. They'd all be really grateful - if only they could remember.' 'Oh!' said my mother in a rare moment of complete clarity. 'Then . . . when eradicatees are brought back it is as if they had never gone. Ergo: the past automatically rewrites itself to take into account the non-eradication.' 'Well, yes - more or less.' I slipped some odd socks on Friday's feet -- he didn't help matters by splaying his toes - then found his shoes, one of which was under the sofa and the other right on top of the bookcase - Melanie had been climbing on the furniture, after all. I found a brush and tidied his hair, trying desperately to get an annoying crusty bit that smelt suspiciously of baked beans to lie flat. It didn't and I gave up, then washed his face, which he didn't like one bit. I was eventually on my way out of the door when I saw myself in the mirror and dashed back upstairs. I plonked Friday on the bed, put on a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt and tried to do something -- anything -- with my short hair. 'What do you think?' I asked Friday, who was now sitting on the dressing table staring at me. 'Aliquippa ex consequat.' 'I hope that means: "you look adorable, Mum".' 'Mollit anim est laborum.' I pulled on my jacket, walked out of my room, came back to brush my teeth and fetch Friday's polar bear, then was out the door again, telling Mum that I might not be back that night. My heart was still racing as I walked outside, ignoring the journalists, and popped Friday in the passenger seat of the Speedster, put down the hood -- might as well arrive in style - and strapped him in. I inserted the key in the ignition and then-- 'Don't drive, Mum.' Friday spoke. I was speechless for a second, hand poised on the ignition. 'Friday?' I said. 'You're talking--?' 215 And then my heart grew cold. He was looking at me with the most serious look I had ever seen on a two-year-old before or since. And I knew the reason why. Cindy. It was the day of the second assassination attempt. In all the excitement I had completely forgotten. I slowly and very carefully took my hands off the key and left it where it was, trafficators blinking, oil and battery warning lights burning. I carefully unstrapped Friday, then, not wanting to open any of the doors, I climbed carefully out of the open top and took him with me. It was a close call. 'Thanks, baby, I owe you - but why did you wait until now to say anything?' He didn't answer - just put his fingers in his mouth and sucked them innocently. 'Strong silent type, eh? Come on, wonder-boy, let's call SO-14.' The police closed the road and the bomb squad arrived twenty minutes later, much to the excitement of the journalists and TV crews. They went live to the networks almost immediately, linking the bomb squad with my new job as the Mallets' manager, filling up any gaps in the story with speculation or, in one case, colourful invention. The four pounds of explosives had been connected to the starter motor relay. One more second and Friday and I would have been knocking on the pearly gates. I was jumping up and down with impatience by the time I had given a statement. I didn't tell them this was the second of three assassination attempts, nor did I tell them there would be another attempt at the end of the week. But I wrote it on my hand so I wouldn't forget. 'Windowmaker,' I told them, 'yes, with an "N" - I don't know why. Well, yes - but sixty-eight if you count Samuel Pring. Reason? Who knows. I was the Thursday Next who changed the ending of Jane Eyre. Never read it? Preferred The Professor? Never mind. It'll be in my files. No, I'm with SO-27. Victor Analogy. His name's Friday. Two years old. Yes, he's very cute, isn't he? You do? Congratulations. No, I'd love to see the pictures. His aunt? Really? Can I go now?' 216 After an hour they said I could leave so I plonked Friday in his buggy and pushed him rapidly up to Landen's place. I arrived a bit puffed and had to stop and regain my breath and my thoughts. The house was back to how I remembered it. The tub of Tickia orologica on the porch had vanished along with the pogo stick. Beyond the more tasteful curtains I could see movement within. I straightened my shirt, attempted to smooth Friday's hair, walked up the garden I path and rang the doorbell. My palms felt hot and sweaty and I couldn't control a stupid grin that had spread all over my face. I was carrying Friday for greater dramatic effect and moved him to ^ the other hip as he was a bit of a lump. After what seemed like several hours but was, I suspect, less than ten seconds, the door opened to reveal. . . Landen, every bit as tall and handsome and as large as life as I had wished to see him all these past years. He wasn't as I remembered him - he was way better than that. My love, my life, the father of my son -- made human. I felt the tears start to well up in my eyes and tried to say something but all that came out was a stupid snorty cough. He stared at me and I stared at him, then he stared at me some more, and I stared at him some more, then I thought perhaps he didn't recognise me with the short hair, so I tried to think of something really funny and pithy and clever to say but couldn't, so I shifted Friday to the other hip as he was becoming even more of a lump with every passing second and said, rather stupidly: 'It's Thursday.' 'I know who it is,' he said unkindly. 'You've got a bloody nerve, haven't you?' And he shut the door in my face. I was stunned for a moment and had to recover my thoughts before I rang the doorbell again. There was another pause that seemed to last an hour but I suspect was only fractionally longer -- thirteen seconds, tops - and the door opened again. 'Well,' said Landen, 'if it isn't Thursday Next.' 'And Friday,' I replied, 'your son.' 217 'My son,' replied Landen, deliberately not looking at him, 'right.' 'What's the matter?' I asked, tears starting to well up again in my eyes, 'I thought you'd be pleased to see me!' He let out a long breath and rubbed his forehead. 'It's difficult--' 'What's difficult? How can anything be difficult?' 'Well,' he began, 'you disappear from my life two and a half years ago, I haven't seen hide nor hair of you. Not a postcard, not a letter, not a phone call, nothing. And then you just turn up on my doorstep as though nothing has happened and I should be pleased to see you!' I sort of breathed a sigh of relief. Sort of. Somehow I always imagined Landen being uneradicated as just a simple sort of meeting each other after a long absence. I hadn't ever thought that Landen wouldn't know he had been eradicated. When he was gone no one had known he had ever existed, and now he was back no one knew he had gone. Not even him. 'Ever heard of an eradication?' I asked. He shook his head. I took a deep breath. 'Well, two and a half years ago a chronupt member of SO-12 had you killed at the age of two in an accident. It was a blackmail attempt by a Goliath Corporation member called Brik SchittHawse.' 'I remember him.' 'Right. And he wanted me to get his half-brother out of TJie Raven where Bowden and I had trapped him.' 'I remember that, too.' 'O-kay. So all of a sudden you didn't exist. Everything we had done together hadn't happened. I tried to get you back by going with my father to your accident in 1947, was thwarted and chose to live inside fiction while little Friday was born and, return when I was ready. Which is now. End of story.' We stared at each other for another long moment that might also have been an hour but was probably only twenty seconds, I moved Friday to the other hip again and then finally he said: 218 'The trouble is, Thursday, that things are different now. You vanished from my life. Gone. I've had to carry on.' 'What do you mean?' I asked, suddenly feeling very uneasy. 'Well, the thing is,' he went on slowly, 'I didn't think you were coming back. So I married Daisy Mutlar.' 219 25 Practical Difficulties Regarding Uneradications DANISH PERSON SOUGHT A man of Danish appearance was sought yesterday in connection with an armed robbery at the First Goliath Bank in Banbury. The man, described as being 'of Danish appearance', entered the bank at 9.35 and demanded that the teller hand over all the money. Five hundred pounds in sterling and a small amount of Danish Kroner held in the foreign currencies department were stolen. Police described this small sum of Kroner as of 'particular significance' and pledged to wipe out the menace of Danish criminality as soon as possible. The public have been warned to be on the lookout for anyone of Danish appearance, and to let the police know of any Danes acting suspiciously, or, failing that, any Danes at all. Article in The Toad, 15 July 1988 'You did what?' 'Well, you did vanish without a trace -- what was I meant to do?' I couldn't believe it. The little scumbag had sought solace in the arms of a miserable cow who wasn't good enough to carry his bag, let alone be his wife. I stared at him, speechless. I think my mouth might even have dropped open at that point, and I was just wondering whether I should burst into tears, kill him with my bare hands, slam the door, scream, swear or all of the above at the same time when I noticed that Landen was doing that thing he does when he's trying not to laugh. 'You one-legged piece of crap,' I said at last, smiling with the relief, 'you did no such thing!' 221 25 Practical Difficulties Regarding Uneradications DANISH PERSON SOUGHT A man of Danish appearance was sought yesterday in connection with an armed robbery at the First Goliath Bank in Banbury. The man, described as being 'of Danish appearance', entered the bank at 9.35 and demanded that the teller hand over all the money. Five hundred pounds in sterling and a small amount of Danish Kroner held in the foreign currencies department were stolen. Police described this small sum of Kroner as of 'particular significance' and pledged to wipe out the menace of Danish criminality as soon as possible. The public have been warned to be on the lookout for anyone of Danish appearance, and to let the police know of any Danes acting suspiciously, or, failing that, any Danes at all. Article in The Toad, 15 July 1988 'You did whatV 'Well, you did vanish without a trace - what was I meant to do?' I couldn't believe it. The little scumbag had sought solace in the arms of a miserable cow who wasn't good enough to carry his bag, let alone be his wife. I stared at him, speechless. I think my mouth might even have dropped open at that point, and I was just wondering whether I should burst into tears, kill him with my bare hands, slam the door, scream, swear or all of the above at the same time when I noticed that Landen was doing that thing he does when he's trying not to laugh. 'You one-legged piece of crap,' I said at last, smiling with the relief, 'you did no such thing!' 221 'Had you going, though, didn't I?' He grinned. Now I was angry. 'What did you want to go and make that stupid joke for? You know I'm armed and unstable!' 'It's no more stupid than your dopey yarn about me being eradicated!' 'It's not a dopey yarn.' 'It is. If I had been eradicated, then there wouldn't be any little boy . . .' His voice trailed off and suddenly all our remonstrations dissipated as Friday became the centre of attention. Landen looked at Friday and Friday looked at Landen. I looked at both of them in turn, then, taking his fingers out of his mouth, Friday said: 'Putn.' 'What did he say?' 'I'm not sure. Sounds like a word he picked up from St Zvlkx.' Landen pressed Friday's nose. 'Beep,' said Landen. 'Cubbies,' said Friday. 'Eradicated, eh?' 'Yes.' 'That must be the most preposterous story I have ever heard in my life.' 'I have no argument with that.' He paused. 'Which I guess makes it too weird not to be true.' We moved towards each other at the same time and I bumped into his chin with my head. There was a crack as his teeth snapped together and he yelped in pain - I think he had bitten his tongue. It was as Hamlet said. Nothing is ever slick and simple in the real world. He hated it for that reason - and I loved it. , 'What's so funny?' he demanded. 'Nothing,' I replied, 'it's just something Hamlet said.' 'Hamlet? Here?' 'No - at Mum's. He was having an affair with Emma Hamilton, 222 whose boyfriend Admiral Nelson attempted to commit suicide.' 'By what means?' 'The French navy.' 'No . . . no,' said Landen, shaking his head. 'Let's just stick with one ludicrously preposterous story at a time. Listen, I'm an author and I can't think up the sort of cr-- I mean nonsense you get yourself into.' Friday managed to squeeze off one shoe despite the best efforts of my double knots and was now tugging at his sock. 'Handsome feUow, isn't he?' said Landen after a pause. 'He takes after his father.' 'Nah -- his mother. Is his finger stuck permanently up his nose?' 'Most of the time. It's called "The Search". An amusing little pastime that has kept small children entertained since the dawn of time. Enough, Friday.' He took his finger out with an almost audible 'pop' and handed Landen his polar bear. 'Ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip.' 'What did he say?' 'I don't know,' I replied, 'it's something called Lorem Ipsum a sort of quasi-Latin that typesetters use to make up blocks of realistic-looking type.' Landen raised an eyebrow. 'You're not joking, are you?' 'They use it a lot in the Well of Lost Plots.' 'The what?' 'It's a place where all fiction is--' 'Enough!' said Landen, clapping his hands together. 'We can't have you telling ridiculous stories here on the front step. Come on in and tell me them inside.' I shook my head and stared at him. 'What?' 'My mother said Daisy Mutlar was back in town.' 'She has a job here, apparently.' 'Really?' I asked suspiciously. 'How do you know?' 223 'She works for my publisher.' 'And you haven't been seeing her?' 'Definitely not!' 'Cross your heart, hope to die?' He held up his hand. 'Scout's honour.' 'Okay,' I said slowly, 'I believe you.' I tapped my lips. 'I don't come inside until I get one right here.' He smiled and took me in his arms. We kissed very tenderly and I shivered. 'Consequat est laborum,' said Friday, joining in with the hug. We walked into the house and I put Friday on the floor. His sharp eyes scanned the house for anything he could pull on top of himself. 'Thursday?' 'Yes?' 'Let's just say for reasons of convenience that I was eradicated.' 'Yuh?' 'Then everything that happened since the last time we parted outside the SpecOps building didn't really happen?' I hugged him tightly. 'It did happen, Land. It shouldn't have, but it did.' 'Then the pain I felt was real?' 'Yes. I felt it too.' 'Then I missed you getting bulgy - got any pictures, by the way?' 'I don't think so. But play your cards right and I may show you the stretch marks.' 'I can hardly wait.' He kissed me again and stared at Friday while an,inane grin spread across his face. 'Thursday?' 'What?' 'I have a son!' 224 I decided to correct him. 'No -- we have a son!' 'Right. Well,' he said, rubbing his hands together, 'I suppose you'd better have some supper. Do you still like fish pie?' There was a crash as Friday found a vase in the living room to knock over. So I mopped it up while apologising, and Landen said it was okay but shut the doors of his office anyway. He made us both supper and I caught up with what he was doing while he wasn't eradicated - if that makes any sense at all - and I told him about Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, wordstorms, Melanie and all the rest of it. 'So a grammasite is a parasitic life form that lives inside books?' 'Pretty much.' 'And if you don't find a cloned Shakespeare then we lose Hamlet'?' 'Yup.' 'And the Superhoop is inextricably linked to the avoidance of a thermonuclear war?' 'It is. Can I move back in?' 'I kept the sock drawer just how you liked it.' I smiled. 'Alphabetically, left to right?' 'No, rainbow, violet to the right -- or was that how Daisy liked-- Ah! Just kidding! You have no sense of-- Ah! Stop it! Get off! No! Ow!' But it was too late. I had pinned him to the floor and was attempting to tickle him. Friday sucked his fingers and looked on, disgusted, while Landen managed to get out of my hands, roll round and tickle me, which I didn't like at all. After a while we just collapsed into a silly giggling mess. 'So, Thursday,' he said as he helped me off the floor, 'are you going to spend the night?' 'No.' 'No?' 'No. I'm moving in and staying for ever.' * * * 225 We put Friday to bed in the spare room and made up a sort of cot for him. He was quite happy sleeping almost anywhere as long as he had his polar bear with him. He'd stayed over at Melanie's house and once at Mrs Tiggy-Winkle's, which was warm and snug and smelt of moss, sticks and washing powder. He had even slept on Treasure Island during a visit there I made last year to sort out the Ben Gunn goat problem -- Long John had talked him to sleep, something he was very good at. 'Now then,' said Landen as we went to our room, 'a man's needs are many--' 'Let me guess! You want me to rub your back?' 'Please. Right there in the small where you used to do it so well. I've really missed that.' 'Nothing else?' 'No, nothing. Why, did you have something in mind?' I giggled as he pulled me closer. I breathed in his scent. I could remember pretty well what he looked like and how he sounded, but not his smell. That was something that was instantly recognisable as soon I pressed my face into the folds of his shirt, and it brought back memories of courting, and picnics, and passion. 'I like your short hair,' said Landen. 'Well, I don't,' I replied, 'and if you ruffle it once more like that I may feel inclined to poke you in the eye.' We lay back on the bed and he pulled my sweatshirt very slowly over the top of my head. It caught on my watch and there was an awkward moment as he tugged gently, trying to keep the romance of the moment. I couldn't help it and started giggling. 'Oh, do please be serious, Thursday!' he said, still pulling at the sweatshirt. I giggled some more and he joined in, then asked whether I had any scissors and finally removed the offending garment. I started to undo the buttons of his shirt and he nuzzled my neck, something that gave me a pleasant tingly sensation. I tried to flip off my shoes but they were lace-ups and when one finally came off it shot across the room and hit the mirror on the far wall, which fell off and smashed. 226 'Bollocks!' I said. 'Seven years' bad luck.' 'That was a only a two-year mirror,' explained Landen. 'You don't get the full seven-year jobs from the pound shop.' I tried to get the other shoe off and slipped, striking Landen's shin -- which wasn't a problem as he had lost a leg in the Crimea and I'd done it several times before. But there wasn't a hollow 'bong' sound as usual. 'New leg?' 'Yeah! Do you want to see?' He removed his trousers to reveal an elegant prosthesis that looked as though it had come from an Italian design studio - all curves, shiny metal and rubber absorption joints. A thing of beauty. A leg among legs. 'Wow!' 'Your uncle Mycroft made it for me. Impressed?' 'You bet. Did you keep the old one?' 'In the garden. It has a hibiscus in it.' 'What colour?' 'Blue.' 'Light blue or dark blue?' 'Light.' 'Have you redecorated this room?' 'Yes. I got one of those wallpaper books and couldn't make up my mind which one to use, so I just took the samples out of the book and used them instead. Interesting effect, don't you think?' 'I'm not sure that the Regency flock matches Bonzo, the Wonder Hound.' 'Perhaps,' he conceded, 'but it was very economic' I was nervous as hell, and so was he. We were talking about everything but what we really wanted to talk about. 'ShhP 'What?' 'Was that Friday?' 'I didn't hear anything.' 227 'A mother's hearing is finely attuned. I can hear a half-second wail across ten shopping aisles.' I got up and went to have a look but he was fast asleep, of course. The window was open and a cooling breeze moved the muslin curtains ever so slightly, causing shadows of the street lamps to move across his face. How I loved him, and how small and vulnerable he was. I relaxed and once more regained control of myself. Apart from a stupid drunken escapade that luckily went nowhere, my romantic involvement with anyone had been the sum total of zip over the past two and a half years. I had been waiting for this moment for ages. And now I was acting like a lovesick sixteen-year-old. I took a deep breath and turned to go back to our bedroom, taking off my T-shirt, trousers, remaining shoe and socks as I walked, half hobbled and hopped down the corridor. I stopped just outside the bedroom door. The light was off and there was silence. This made things easier. I stepped naked into the bedroom, padded silently across the carpet, slipped into bed and snuggled up to Landen. He was wearing pyjamas and smelled different. The light came on and there was a startled scream from the man lying next to me. It wasn't Landen but Landen's father -- and next to him, his wife, Houson. They looked at me, I looked back, stammered, 'Sorry, wrong bedroom,' and ran out of the room, grabbing my clothes from the heap outside the bedroom door. But I wasn't in the wrong room and the lack of a wedding ring confirmed what I feared. Landen had been returned to me - only to be taken away again. Something had gone wrong. The uneradication hadn't held. 'Don't I recognise you?' said Houson, who had come out of the bedroom and was staring at me as I retrieved Friday from the spare bedroom, where he was tucked up next to Landen's Aunt Ethel. 'No,' I replied, 'I've just walked into the wrong house. Happens all the time.' , I left my shoes and trotted downstairs with Friday tucked under my arm, picked up my jacket from where it was hanging on the back of a different chair in a differently furnished front room and ran into the night, tears streaming down my face. 228 26 Breakfast with Mycroft FEATHERED FRIEND FOUND TARRED Swindon's mysterious seabird asphalt-smotherer has struck again, the victim this time a stormy petrel found in an alleyway off Commercial Road. The unnamed bird was discovered yesterday covered in a thick glutinous coating that forensic scientists later confirmed as crude oil. This is the seventh such attack in less than a week and Swindon police are beginning to take notice. 'This has been the seventh attack in less than a week,' declared a Swindon policeman this morning, 'and we are beginning to take notice.' The inexplicable seabird-tarrer has so far not been seen but an expert from the NSPB told the police yesterday that the suspect would probably have a displacement of 280,000 tons, be covered in rust and floundering on a nearby rock. Despite numerous searches by police in the area, a suspect of this description has not yet been found. Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain, iS July 1988 It was the following morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at my ring finger and the complete absence of a wedding band. Mum walked in wrapped in a dressing gown and with her hair in curlers, fed DH82, let Alan out of the broom cupboard where we had to keep him these days and pushed the delinquent dodo outside with a mop. He made an angry plinking noise, then attacked the boot-scraper. 'What's wrong, sweetheart?' 'It's Landen.' 'Who?' 'My husband. He was reactualised last night but only for about two hours.' 229 'My poor darling! That must be very awkward.' 'Awkward? Extremely. I climbed naked into bed with Mr and Mrs ParkeLaine.' My mother went ashen and dropped a saucer. 'Did they recognise you?' 'I don't think so.' 'Thank the GSD for that!' she gasped, greatly relieved. Being embarrassed in public was something she cared to avoid more than anything else, and having a daughter climbing into bed with patrons of the Swindon Toast League was probably the biggest faux pas she could think of. 'Good morning, pet,' said Mycroft, shuffling into the kitchen and sitting down at the breakfast table. He was my extraordinarily brilliant inventor uncle, and apparently had just returned from the 1988 Mad Scientists Conference, or MadCon '88 as it ¦was known. 'Uncle,' I said, probably with less enthusiasm than I should have mustered, 'how good to see you again!' 'And you, my dear,' he said kindly. 'Back for good?' 'I'm not sure,' I replied, thinking about Landen. 'Aunt Polly well?' 'In the very best of health. We've been to MadCon - I was given a lifetime achievement award for something but for the life of me I can't think what, or why.' It was a typically Mycroft statement. Despite his undoubted brilliance, he never thought he was doing anything particularly clever or useful - he just liked to tinker with ideas. It was his Prose Portal invention which had got me inside books in the first place. He had set up home in the Sherlock Holmes canon to escape Goliath but had remained stuck there until I rescued him about a year ago. 'Did Goliath ever bother you again?' I asked. 'After, you came back, I mean?' 'They tried,' he replied softly, 'but they didn't get anything from me.' 'You wouldn't tell them anything?' 230 'No. It was better than that. I couldn't. You see, I can't remember a single thing about any of the inventions they wanted me to talk about.' 'How is that possible?' 'Well,' replied Mycroft, taking a sip of tea, 'I'm not sure, but logically speaking I must have invented a memory erasure device or something and used it selectively on myself and Polly - what we call the Big Blank. It's the only possible explanation.' 'So you can't remember how the Prose Portal actually works?' 'The what?' 'The Prose Portal. A device for entering fiction.' 'They were asking me about something like that, now you mention it. It would be very intriguing to try and redevelop it but Polly says I shouldn't. My lab is full of devices, the purpose of which I haven't the foggiest notion about. An ovinator, for example - it's clearly something to do with eggs, but what?' 'I don't know.' 'Well, perhaps it's all for the best. These days I only work for peaceful means. Intellect is worthless if it isn't for the betterment of us all.' 'I'll agree with you on that one. What work were you presenting to MadCon '88?' 'Theoretical Nextian mathematics, mostly,' replied Mycroft, warming to the subject dearest to his heart -- his work. 'I told you all about Nextian geometry, didn't I?' I nodded. 'Well, Nextian number theory is very closely related to that, and in its simplest form allows me to work backwards to discover the original sum from which the product is derived.' 'Eh?' 'Well, say you have the numbers twelve and sixteen. You multiply them together and get 192, yes? Now, in conventional maths if you were given the number 192 you would not know how that number was derived. It might just as easily have been three times sixty-four or six times thirty-two or even 194 minus two. But you 231 couldn't tell just from looking at the number alone, now, could you?' 'I suppose not.' 'You suppose wrong,' said Mycroft with a smile. 'Nextian number theory works in an inverse fashion from ordinary maths -- it allows you to discover the precise question from a stated answer.' 'And the practical applications of this?' 'Hundreds.' He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and passed it over. I unfolded it and found a simple number written upon it: 2216'091 -1, or two raised to the power of two hundred and sixteen thousand and ninety-one, minus one. 'It looks like a big number.' 'It's a medium-sized number,' he corrected. 'And?' 'Well, if I was to give you a short story of ten thousand words, instructed you to give a value for each letter and punctuation mark and then wrote them down, you'd get a number with sixty-five thousand or so digits. All you need to do then is to find a simpler way of expressing it. Using a branch of Nextian maths that I call FactorZip we can reduce any sized number to a short, notated style.' I looked at the number in my hand again. 'So this is?' 'A FactorZipped Sleepy Hollow. I'm working on reducing all the books ever written to a number less than fifty digits long. Makes you think, eh? Instead of buying a newspaper every day you'd simply jot down today's number and pop it in your Nexpanding calculator to read it.' 'Ingenious!' I breathed. 'It's still early days but I hope one day to be able to predict a cause simply by looking at the event. And after that, trying t