'You left Jack imprisoned in this copy of The Raven. Goliath need him out to face a disciplinary board on charges of embezzlement, Goliath contractual irregularities, misuse of the Corporation's leisure facilities, missing stationery … and crimes against humanity.'
'Oh yes?' I asked. 'Why not just leave him in?'
Schitt-Hawse sighed and stared at me.
'Listen, Next. We need Jack out of here, and believe me, we'll manage it.'
'Not with my help.'
Schitt-Hawse stared silently at me for a moment.
'Goliath is not used to being refused. We asked your uncle to build another Prose Portal. He told us to come back in a month's time. We understand he left on retirement last night. Destination?'
'Not a clue.'
Mycroft had retired, it seemed, not out of choice but out of necessity. I smiled. Goliath had been hoodwinked and they didn't like it.
'Without the Portal,' I told him, 'I can't jump into books any more than Mr Chalk can.'
Chalk shuffled slightly as I mentioned his name.
'You're lying,' replied Schitt-Hawse 'The ineptness card doesn't work on us. You defeated Hades, Jack Schitt and the Goliath Corporation. We have a great deal of admiration for you. Goliath has been more than fair given the circumstances, and we would hate for you to become a victim of corporate impatience.'
'Corporate impatience? What's that, some sort of threat?'
'This unhelpful attitude of yours might make me vindictive – and you wouldn't like me when I get vindictive.'
'I don't like you when you're not vindictive.'
Schitt-Hawse shut the briefcase with a snap. His left eye twitched and the colour drained out of his face. He looked at us both and started to say something, stopped, got a hold of his temper and managed to squeeze out a half-smile before he climbed back into his car with Chalk and Cheese and was gone.
Landen was still chuckling as we spread a groundsheet and blanket on the well-nibbled grass just above the White Horse. Below us, at the bottom of the escarpment, a herd of mammoths were quietly browsing, and on the horizon we could see several airships on the approach to Oxford. It was a pleasant day, and since airships don't fly in poor weather, they were all making the best use of it.
'You don't have much fear of Goliath, do you, darling?' Landen asked.
I shrugged.
'Goliath is nothing more than a bully, Land. Stand up to them and they'll soon scurry away. All that large car and henchman stuff – it's for frighteners. But I'm kind of intrigued as to how they knew we would be here.'
Landen shrugged.
'Cheese or ham?'11
'What?'
'I said: "Cheese or ham?'
'Not you.'
Landen looked around. We were about the only people within a hundred-yard radius.
'Who, then?'
'Snell.'
'Who?'
'Snell!' I yelled out loud. 'Is that you?'12
'I didn't!'13
'Prosecution? Who?'14
'Thursday,' said Landen, now slightly worried, 'what the hell's going on?'
'I'm talking to my lawyer.'
'What have you done wrong?'
'I'm not sure.'
Landen threw his hands up in the air and I addressed Snell again.
'Can you tell me the charge I'm facing at the very least?'15
I sighed.
'She's not married, apparently.'16
'Snell! Wait! Snell? Snell—!'
But he had gone. Landen was staring at me.
'How long have you been like this, darling?'
'I'm fine, Land. But something weird is going on. Can we drop it for the moment?'
Landen looked at me, then at the clear blue sky, and then at the cheese he was still holding
'Cheese or ham?' he said at last.
'Both – but go easy on the cheese; this is a very limited supply.'
'Where did you find it?' asked Landen, looking at the anonymously wrapped block suspiciously.
'From Joe Martlet at the Cheese Squad. They intercept about twelve tons a week coming over the Welsh border. It seems a shame to burn it so everyone at SpecOps gets a pound or two. You know what they say: "Cops have the best cheese".'
'Goodbye, Thursday,' muttered Landen, looking at the ham.
'Are you going somewhere?' I replied, unsure of what he meant.
'Me? No. Why?'
'You just said "goodbye".'
He laughed. 'No. I was commenting on the ham. It's a good buy.'
'Oh.'
He cut me a slice and put it with the cheese in a sandwich, then made one for himself. In the distance a mammoth trumpeted as it made heavy weather of the escarpment, and I took a bite.
'It's farewell and so long, Thursday.'
'Are you doing this on purpose?'
'Doing what? Isn't that Major Tony Fairwelle and your old school chum Sue Long over there?'
I turned to where Landen was pointing. It was Tony and Sue, and they waved cheerily before walking across to say hello.
'Goodness!' said Tony when they had seated themselves 'Looks like the regimental get-together is early this year! Remember Sarah Nara, who lost an ear at Bilohirsk? I just met her in the carpark; quite a coincidence.'
As he said the word my heart missed a beat. I rummaged in my pocket for the entroposcope Mycroft had given me.
'What's the matter, Thurs?' asked Landen. 'You're looking kind of … odd.'
'I'm checking for coincidences,' I muttered, shaking the jam jar of mixed lentils and rice. 'It's not as stupid as it sounds.'
The two pulses had gathered in a sort of swirly pattern. Entropy was decreasing by the second.
'We're out of here,' I said to Landen, who looked at me quizzically. 'Let's go. Leave the things.'
'What's the problem, Thurs?'
'I've just spotted my old croquet captain, Alf Widdershaine. This is Sue Long and Tony Fairwelle; they just saw Sarah Nara — see a pattern emerging?'
'Thursday!' Landen sighed. 'Aren't you being a little—'
'Want me to prove it? Excuse me!' I said, shouting to a passer-by. 'What's your name?'
'Bonnie,' she said, 'Bonnie Voige. Why?'
'See?'
'Voige is not a rare name, Thurs. There are probably hundreds of them up here.'
'All right, smarty-pants, you try.'
'I will,' replied Landen indignantly, heaving himself to his feet. 'Excuse me!'
A young woman stopped and Landen asked her name.
'Violet,' she replied.
'You see?' said Landen. 'There's nothing—'
'Violet De'ath,' continued the woman. I shook the entroposcope again – the lentils and rice had separated almost entirely.
I clapped my hands impatiently. Tony and Sue looked perturbed but got to their feet nonetheless.
'Everybody! Let's go!' I shouted.
'But the cheese—!'
'Bugger the cheese, Landen. Trust me – please!'
They all grudgingly joined me, confused and annoyed by my strange behaviour. Their minds changed when, following a short whooshing noise, a large and very heavy Hispano-Suiza motor-car landed on the freshly vacated picnic blanket with a teeth jarring thump that shook the ground and knocked us to our knees. We were showered with soil, pebbles and a grassy sod or two as the vast phaeton-bodied automobile sunk itself into the soft earth, the fine bespoke body bursting at the seams as the massive chassis twisted with the impact. One of the spoked wheels broke free and whistled past my head as the heavy engine, torn from its rubber mounting blocks, ripped through the polished bonnet and landed at our feet with a heavy thud. There was silence for a moment as we all stood up, brushed ourselves off and checked for any damage. Landen had cut his hand on a piece of twisted wing mirror but apart from that – miraculously, it seemed – no one had been hurt. The huge motor-car had landed so perfectly on the picnic that the blanket, Thermos, basket, food – everything, in fact – had disappeared from sight. In the deathly hush th
at followed, everyone in the small group was staring – not at the twisted wreck of the car, but at me, their mouths open. I stared back, then looked slowly upward to where a large airship freighter was still flying, minus a couple of tons of freight, on to the North and – one presumes – a lengthy stop for an accident inquiry. I shook the entroposcope and the random clumping pattern returned.
'Danger's passed,' I announced.
'You haven't changed, Thursday Next!' said Sue angrily. 'Whenever you're about something dangerously other walks with you. There's a reason I didn't keep in contact after school, you know – Weirdbird! Tony, we're leaving.'
Landen and I stood and watched them go. He put his arm round me.
'Weirdbird?' he asked.
'They used to call me that at school,' I told him. 'It's the price for being different.'
'You got a bargain. I would have paid double that to be different. Come on, let's skedaddle.'
We slipped quietly away as a crowd gathered around the twisted automobile, the incident generating all manner of 'instant experts' who all had theories on why an airship should jettison a car. So to a background muttering of 'Needed more lift' and 'Golly, that was close' we crept away and sat in my car.
'That's not something you see very often,' murmured Landen after a pause. 'What's going on?'
'I don't know, Land. There are a few too many coincidences around at present – I think someone's trying to kill me.'
'I love it when you're being weird, darling, but don't you think you are taking this a little too far? Even if you could drop a car from a freighter, no one could hope to hit a picnic blanket from five thousand feet. Think about it, Thurs – it makes no sense at all. Who would do something like this anyway?'
'Hades,' I whispered, hardly daring to say the word out loud.
'Hades is dead, Thursday. You killed him yourself. It was a coincidence, pure and simple. They mean nothing – you might as well rail against your dreams or bark at shadows on the wall.'
We drove in silence to the SpecOps building and my disciplinary hearing. I switched off the engine and Landen held my hand tightly.
'You'll be fine,' he assured me. 'They'd be nuts to take any action against you. If things get bad, just remember what Flanker rhymes with.'
I smiled at the thought. He said he'd wait for me in the café across the road, kissed me again and limped off.
8
Mr Stiggins and SO-1
* * *
'Contrary to popular belief, Neanderthals are not stupid. Poor reading and writing skills are due to fundamental differences in visual acuity – in humans it is called dyslexia. Facial acuity in Neanderthals, however, is highly developed – the same silence might have thirty or more different meanings depending on how you looked. "Neanderthal English" has a richness and meaning that are lost on the relatively facially blind human. Because of this highly developed facial grammar, Neanderthals instinctively know when someone is lying – hence their total lack of interest in plays, films or politicians. They like stories read out loud and speak of the weather a great deal – another area in which they are expert. They never throw anything away and love tools, especially power tools. Of the three cable channels allocated to Neanderthals, two of them show nothing but woodworking programmes.'
GERHARDT VON SQUID – Neanderthals – Back after a Short Absence
'Thursday Next?' enquired a tall man with a gravelly voice as soon as I stepped into the SpecOps building.
'Yes?'
He flashed a badge.
'Agent Walken, SO-5; this is my associate, James Dedmen.'
Dedmen tipped his hat politely and I shook their hands.
'Can we talk somewhere privately?' asked Walken.
I took them down the corridor and we found an empty interview room.
'I'm sorry about Phodder and Kannon,' I told them as soon as we had sat down
'They were careless,' intoned Dedmen gravely. 'Contact adhesive should always be used in a well-ventilated room – it says so on the tin.'
'We were wondering,' asked Walken in a slightly embarrassed manner, 'whether you could fill us in on what they were up to, they both died before submitting a report.'
'What happened to their case notes?'
Dedmen and Walken exchanged looks.
'They were eaten by rabbits.'
'How could that happen?'
'Classified,' announced Dedmen. 'We analysed the remains but everything was pretty well digested – except these.'
He placed three small scraps of tattered and stained paper wrapped in cellophane on the desk. I leaned closer. I could just read out part of my name on the first one; the second was a fragment of a credit card statement and the third had a single name on it which made me shiver Hades.
'Hades?' I queried 'Do you think he's still alive?'
'You killed him, Next – what do you think?'
I had seen him die up there on the roof at Thornfield and even found his charred remains when we searched the blackened ruins. But Hades had died before – or so he had made us believe.
'As sure as I can be. What does the credit card statement mean?'
'Again,' replied Walken, 'we're not sure. The card was stolen. Most of these purchases are of women's clothes, shoes, hats, bags, and so forth – we've got Dorothy Perkins and Camp Hopson under twenty-four-hour observation. Does any of this ring any bells?'
I shook my head.
'Then tell us about your meeting with Phodder.'
I told them as much as I could about our short meeting while they made copious notes.
'So they wanted to know if anything odd had happened to you recently?' asked Walken. 'Had it?'
I told them about the Skyrail and the Hispano-Suiza and they made even more notes. Finally, after asking me several times whether there was anything more I could add, they got up and Walken handed me his card.
'If you discover anything at all—?'
'No problem,' I replied. 'I hope you catch them.' They grunted in reply and left.
I sighed, got up and walked back into the lobby to await Flanker and SO-1. I watched the busy station buzzing around me and then suddenly felt very hot as the room started to swim. The edges of my vision started to fade and if I hadn't put my head between my knees I would have passed out there and then. The buzz from the room became a dull rumble and I closed my eyes, temples thumping. I stayed there for several moments until the nausea lessened. I opened my eyes and stared at the flecks of mica in the concrete floor.
'Lost something, Next?' came Flanker's familiar voice.
I very gently raised my head. He was reading some notes and spoke without looking at me.
'I'm running late – someone's misappropriated an entire cheese seizure. Fifteen minutes' time, interview room three – be there.'
He strode off without waiting for a reply and I stared at the floor again. The baby was making itself known. Somehow Flanker and SpecOps seemed insignificant given that this time next year I could be a mother. Landen had enough money for us both and it wasn't as though I needed to actually resign – I could go on the SpecOps reservist list and do the odd job when necessary. I was just starting to ponder on whether I was really cut out for motherhood when I felt a hand on my shoulder and someone pushed a glass of water into my line of vision. I gratefully took the glass and drank half of it before looking up at my rescuer. It was a Neanderthal dressed in a neat double-breasted suit with an SO-13 badge clipped to his top pocket.
'Hello, Mr Stiggins,' I said, recognising him.
'Hello, Ms Next – the nausea will pass.'
There was a shudder and the world snapped back a couple of seconds so harshly it made me jump. Stiggins spoke again but this time made less sense:
'Helto, our m Ms Next – the nauplea will knoass.'
'What the hell—' I muttered as the lobby snapped again and the mauve-painted walls switched to green. I looked at Stiggins, who said:
'Hatto, is our am Mss Next – bue nauplea will kno you.'
/>
The people in the lobby moved abruptly and were suddenly wearing hats. Stiggins jumped back again and said:
'That is our ame Miss Next – bue hoivplea kno you?'
My feet felt strange as the world rippled again and I looked down and saw that I was wearing trainers instead of boots. It was clear now that time was flexing slightly and I expected my father to appear, but he didn't. Stiggins flicked back to the beginning of his sentence yet again and said, this time in a clearer voice:
'That is our name, Miss Next, but how know you?'
'Did you feel anything odd just then?'
'No. Drink the water. You are very pale.'
I had another sip, leaned back and took a deep breath.
'This wall used to be mauve,' I mused as Stiggins looked at me.
'How you know our name, Miss Next?'
'You turned up at my wedding party,' I told him. 'You said you had a job for me.'
He stared at me for almost half a minute through his deep-set eyes. His large nose sniffed the air occasionally. Neanderthals thought a great deal about what they said before they said it – if they said anything at all.
'You speak the truth,' he said at last. It was almost impossible to lie to a Neanderthal and I wasn't going to try. 'We are to represent you on this case, Miss Next.'
I sighed. Flanker was taking no chances. I had nothing against Neanderthals but they wouldn't have been my first choice of defence, particularly against the charge of an attack on one of their own.
'If you have a problem you should tell us,' said Stiggins, eyeing me carefully.
'I have no problem with you representing me.'
'Your face does not match your words. You think we have been placed here to hurt your case. It is our belief too. But as to whether it will hurt your case, we shall see. Are you well enough to walk?'
I said I was and we went and sat down in the interview room. Stiggins opened his case and drew out a buff file. The contents were typed in large underlined capitals. He brought out a wooden ruler and placed it across the first page to help him read.
'Why you hit Kaylieu, the Skyrail operator?'
'I thought he had a gun.'