'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?'
'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 Goliathopohs 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 Cuckoos?'
'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.
'Ipsum,' 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 black-and-white and climbed out. Spike himself was sitting in a 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.
'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 clients 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.
'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 T-shirt 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 at 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?'
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 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.'
'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 and 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.'
'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.
14
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 die 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.
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 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 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, I 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 electro-defragmentisers.'
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 advanced weapons guru and ex-convict of The Raven. This was the 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. '1 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.