CHAPTER NINE

On his return to the office, Erskine Cannis went to his room, took off his coat and sat down at his desk. He knew it was what he was supposed to do, and he did it well. He was getting the hang of this. He was proud of himself. The female, Emily, had told him that she wouldn’t be needing him till two-fifteen. He glanced at his watch-they were really very easy to use, not at all confusing-and worked out that he had over an hour before then. Plenty of time. Erskine Cannis analysed the phrase, and it made him smile. It implied that the stuff somehow gathered in pools, like rainwater, whereas he knew perfectly well that it was an unceasing linear progression, with its active component (the present) never more than one second long. Sort of like a one-millimetre-long conveyor belt. They, on the other hand, seemed to think of it as a form of chewing gum, something that could be softened and stretched and set hard, played for, wasted and even killed. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Really, it was rather silly, and he had an innate mortal fear of silliness. But, somehow, you couldn’t help liking them. They had a sort of quirky charm that was hard to resist. Plenty of time, then. The other prerequisite was not being disturbed.

He looked down at his desktop and noticed a small pot. It was made of clear plastic, and inside it were paper clips, red and green and white and black. He frowned, momentarily distracted. Why all the different colours? He could conceive of a reason colour-coding, for instance, red for clipping together letters, blue for receipts, green for internal memos-but he knew intuitively that that wasn’t it. They manufactured them in lots of different pretty colours because it made them fun. That word was a brick wall across the fast lane of his mental processes. It meant he had to slow down, stop and find a way round, and just now he had better things to do. He realised he’d picked the pot up while he’d been thinking about paperclip colours, and for some reason he felt an urge to shake it, just to hear the noise it made. He put it down again, the urge denied (Why? Wouldn’t have done any harm just to shake a plastic pot. But no, it would’ve been silly) and tried to remember if it had been there earlier. No, it hadn’t. In which case, someone must’ve gone out of his or her way to put it there, believing that the new trainee would sooner or later need coloured paper clips. He frowned. Would that be an office procedure or some kind of quasi-religious ritual? No, stop it, he ordered himself; leave it. Fascinating though this environment undoubtedly was, crammed with strange new worlds, new life and new civilisations, he wasn’t here to explore it. He was here to work. The God depended on him-he kept letting that slip out of his mental focus; how could he do that? - and he had no time for idle curiosity.

The God. Even now, Erskine Cannis’s mouth went dry at the thought of her. It’s given to very few sentient entities to be so close to their God, in the same building, with the possibility, likelihood even, of actually seeing her, three or four times a day. His kind, he knew, was uniquely blessed in that regard, and the consideration for that blessing was duty. Work, he told himself. Snap to it.

He moved his hand to open the desk drawer, and in doing so knocked over the plastic pot. It fell on its side and rolled. Quick as lightning, Erskine Cannis slammed a hand down on it and closed his fingers tightly. Then he frowned, let go and gently stood it upright.

From the desk drawer-basically a rectangular storage compartment riding on an ingenious arrangement of runners and rollers-he took a small cloth bag, loosened the string round its neck and shook it over his palm. A few grains of light grey dust spilled out; he closed his hand on them, put the bag away safely and unclenched his fingers. The grey specks made his skin itch.

He tried to remember how to do this.

It wasn’t complicated, but it was only his second day. With his other hand, Erskine Cannis searched in his pocket and took out a cigarette lighter; next, he carefully dropped the dust onto a piece of scrap paper (a memo about reducing Sellotape wastage; obviously important, but he’d read it and taken its message to heart, so the actual paper was expendable), creased it down the middle to keep the dust from spilling, :and set light to it. The paper flared for a moment, then crumpled into black ash. He felt the tips of his fingers burn, but that couldn’t be helped. Any moment now, he thought.

Bright white light scorched his eyes; he closed them (lacking a secondary eyelid) and, when he opened them again, a small green creature was perching on his knuckles. It looked vaguely humanoid, in a toad-like sort of way. Its most striking feature was its big round red eyes.

‘Put me down,’ it said.

‘Sorry,’ Erskine said automatically. Very slowly and carefully, he moved his hand down to desktop level, until the little creature could comfortably jump down.

‘Quite all right,’ the creature said pleasantly. It sat on the cover of Erskine’s desk diary, fished behind its ear and produced the stub end of a very small roll-up, which it lit by snapping its claw-like fingers. It took a long, deep drag and said, ‘Report.’

Erskine took a deep breath. ‘So far, so good, I think,’ he said. ‘I’ve been assigned to assist the female, Emily Spitzer—’ The creature waved its cigarette at him impatiently. ‘We know all that,’ he said.

‘Sorry. This morning, we went to a place called Zimmerman and Schnell…’ He paused. Not the right time to ask, but curiosity had been gnawing at him all morning. ‘I was wondering about that, actually. If it’s a place, why’s it got the same name as people? Only places are called things like America and Leicester and Tottenham Court Road, but Zimmerman’s a person name. And isn’t Schnell the German for “quickly”?’

The little creature sighed. ‘It’s technical,’ it said. ‘Look it up on the Internet in your spare time. You went to Zimmerman and Schnell.’

‘Yes.’ Erskine winced. He was being inefficient; in fact, verging on silly. ‘We went there. We had to exterminate a nest of giant spiders.’

‘Mphm.’ The little creature dabbed a tiny speck of ash off the tip of its miniature fag. ‘And?’

‘We succeeded,’ Erskine said, with a hint of pride. ‘Having sealed the infested area and run Everleigh scans, we introduced cyanide gas—’

‘Yes, yes, you can skip all that. Anything odd happen?’ The creature seemed to be making an extreme mental effort. ‘Anything-well, out of the ordinary.’

Erskine shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We killed the spiders, called in the clean-up squad and came back here. Oh, and Mr Arkenstone from the Salt Lake City office stopped by to borrow some detonators. That’s it, really.’ Pause. ‘Did I do all right? Only—’

‘Hold it.’ The creature raised a claw. ‘Mister what from where?’

‘Mr Arkenstone from the Salt Lake City office.’

The creature scowled; at least, that was the likeliest explanation for what it was doing with its face. ‘We haven’t got a Mister Arkenstone. Come to that, we haven’t got an office in Salt Lake City.’

For a moment, Erskine’s mind went blank. He hated it when that happened. ‘But the female told me—’

‘Ah.’ The creature sat up. ‘Let’s go through this one step at a time. What happened?’

‘Well.’ Erskine took a moment to shepherd his thoughts. ‘We took the lift to the sixth floor-that’s where the infested room was-and when we got there, this man was standing outside the door, waiting for us. He said hello, and Ms Spitzer said, hello yourself, what are you doing here—’

‘Just a tick.’ The small creature frowned. ‘Just say that again.’

‘Hello yourself, what are you doing here?’

The creature sighed. ‘Inflection,’ it said. ‘Emphasis. No, fine, all right. Did she say, what are you doing here, or was it more like, what are you doing here?’

‘The second one.’

‘Got you. Go on.’

Erskine had lost his place. He wasn’t making a very good job of this. He felt ashamed. Still, he could put that right by doing much, much better. ‘Then the man said, you remember I told you what I do for a living. Then Miss Spitzer told me to go away. So I did.’

The small creature studied him for a moment, and Erskine couldn’t help feeling that this wasn’t at all good. To have failed on only his second day—

‘All right,’ the creature said slowly. ‘You went away.’

‘Yes. There was a bend in the corridor. I went round that, so I’d be out of sight and earshot. I-well, I assumed she didn’t want me to see or hear anything.’ Pause. ‘Was that wrong?’

The small creature waved its hand. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ it said, and Erskine’s heart blossomed with relief. He hadn’t failed after all. ‘So, how long did you stay there?’

Erskine thought. ‘Fifty-one seconds,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t know how long I was supposed to be away for, you see, she didn’t say, and there was nothing in the training sessions or the accompanying written material—’

‘And then you went back.’

‘Yes.’ Erskine bowed his head. Now he came to think about it, his actions had been irrational and arbitrary; instead of asking how long he had to go away for, he’d just relied on his own intuition and guessed. He made a solemn vow never to let anything of the sort ever happen again.

‘And?’

‘The man had gone,’ Erskine said. ‘Miss Spitzer told me he was Mr Arkenstone from Salt Lake City, and—’

‘She told you. You didn’t ask.’

Oh no, Erskine thought, I got that wrong as well. ‘No,’ he confessed.

‘Fine.’ Having found him out and made him confess, the creature didn’t seem inclined to make anything of it. ‘That’s interesting. Right, yes. Well done. Keep up the good work.’

Erskine couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘You mean I did all right?’

‘What?’ The creature was stubbing out its roll-up on its thumb claw. ‘Oh, yes, great stuff, keep at it. Report again tomorrow.’ He tucked the roll-up stub back behind his ear and stood on tiptoe, which meant he was about to dematerialise. But Erskine couldn’t let him go without asking—

‘Excuse me.’

‘Mm?’

He could hardly bring himself to say it. ‘Will you—?’ Go on, say it and get it over with. ‘Will you have to tell Her about it? About all the-well, the mistakes I made? Only, I know they were pretty bad, some of them, but really, I’ve learned a lot today, and I promise I’ll make absolutely sure I don’t do anything like that again, so if you could possibly …’ He ran out of words, sagged and waited. The creature looked at him.

‘Get a grip, son,’ it said, and vanished.

When Emily got back to the office after lunch, there was a message waiting for her at reception. Mr Gomez wants to see you, ASAP.

She pulled a terrifying face, which the receptionist ignored through long practice, and stalked through the fire door and up the stairs. By the time she got to Mr Gomez’s room, she’d calmed down a little; you could’ve melted brass on her, but not iron. She whacked the door with her knuckles and went in.

‘Ah, there you are.’ Why was it, she wondered, that no matter how quickly she responded to his call, how legitimate her reason for not instantly materialising when summoned, there was always that note of mild, indulgent reproach in his voice when he first spoke to her? ‘Good lunch?’

Of course he didn’t give a toss. He just said stuff like that to show you what a warm, caring employer he was. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Fine. Now, we’ve got a bit of a situation with San Cristobal Plastics.’ He frowned. ‘Turns out that one of their board of directors is a troll.’

‘Know the feeling.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Beats me,’ Mr Gomez went on, ‘why they didn’t notice it earlier. I mean, they’re a very well established firm, very big in injection moulding, turnover up twenty-six per cent last year, and it’s a highly competitive market these days. Doing particularly well in the Far East, too. Still, there it is, nobody’s perfect.’ He paused, reflecting on the basic treachery of the universe. Usually, Emily would have let him indulge himself, but not today.

‘So?’ she said.

‘Hm?’

‘So what do they want us to do about it?’

Mr Gomez frowned. ‘Well, kill it, of course. Get rid of it, before it eats a customer.’

‘But—’ Emily took a deep breath. ‘You said it’s a director of the company. You can’t go around knocking off members of the board just like that.’

‘Oh, it’s all right, they’ve had a vote. Some trouble with the small investors, but the insurance companies and trust managers pushed it through. So they want it taken care of before the news reaches the market. They’re in a delicate enough position as it is, with the Koreans pushing them. And there’s rumours of a hostile bid from—’

‘Fine,’ Emily said. ‘I’ll go and do that, then. You’d better give me the details.’

Mr Gomez gave her a little smile, the sort that a harassed mother might give to a teenager who’d finally consented to put away her newly ironed clothes. ‘Here’s the address,’ he said, handing her a sheet of paper. ‘They’re expecting you. Just go to the front desk and ask for Mr Pickersgill.’

‘Mphm.’ She nodded. ‘He’s the head of security, then.’

Slight frown. ‘No, he’s the troll. And this time, please remember to get the work order countersigned. You know we can’t raise an invoice without a completed work order.’

Emily kept her teeth clamped together. She turned to leave, but Mr Gomez called her back. ‘You’d better take young Erskine along with you,’ he said. ‘The more of our established clients he meets, the better. If they can put faces to names—’

‘Have I got to?’ She hadn’t meant it to come out as a whine, but there wasn’t really any other way of saying those particular words. ‘Look, it’s going to be a pretty delicate job as it is. If I’ve got to babysit Erskine while I’m at it—’ She closed her mouth. Complete waste of time. ‘I’ll take Erskine with me,’ she said. ‘It’ll be good experience for him.’

‘Splendid. Let me know how it went when you get back.’

As Emily walked back down the corridor, her mind was a three-lane highway. In the fast lane, the ethics of killing company directors just because they happened not to be human. In the middle, the practicalities of offing a troll (skin like Kevlar, bones practically unbreakable, immune to all major poisons; daylight usually fatal, but these days, with high-factor barrier creams—). Not just killing one, but doing it in broad daylight, in its office, and without turning most of SW1 into a radioactive desert. A challenge. Which left the slow lane, in which the problem of what had happened to George Sprague still chuntered quietly along, going nowhere in particular but draining her already overtaxed reserves. All that and Erskine too. What joy.

When she barged into his office without knocking, she found him sitting at his desk reading a file. ‘What’ve you got there?’ she snapped.

‘The Piedmont Technologies case notes,’ he replied pleasantly. ‘I was just admiring the way you handled the infestation of three-headed giant bats. Though, strictly speaking, the use of dioxin in an environmentally sensitive area—’

‘Put it away,’ she said irritably. ‘And get your coat.’ She paused, sat on the edge of the desk. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘how would you go about killing a troll?’

It was like pressing an on-switch. ‘Built-up area or open countryside?’

‘Horseferry Road.’

Dip of the head to acknowledge the data input. ‘In that case oh, sorry, daylight or night-time?’

‘Right now.’

‘One-oh-five millimetre recoilless rifle and a molybdenum steel projectile,’ Erskine said promptly. ‘Assuming we can establish a danger area not less than eight hundred by six hundred metres—’

‘In his office,’ Emily said sweetly. ‘Probably in an interview room, but we may have to do it in reception. Oh, and without making him suspicious.’

‘Hm.’ The look on Erskine’s face was thoughtful, but with overtones of suppressed enthusiasm. ‘Presumably a suicide attack isn’t an option.’

She shrugged. ‘You’ll be doing it.’

‘Me?’ He stared at her as if she’d just told him he’d been made king. ‘Really?’

‘Mr Gomez thinks the experience will be good for you.’

‘Gosh.’ Pause, as self-doubt cut in. ‘You’ll be there, though, won’t you? In case anything goes wrong, I mean. Only—’ Hesitation; then the big confession, all in a rush. ‘Only I’ve never actually done a solo trolloctomy, not in practice. I mean, I’ve done computer simulations, but—’

‘Of course you haven’t, you fool.’ Emily sighed. ‘Neither have I, come to that. You don’t get many trolls south of the Malverns these days. And yes, of course I’ll be there - you don’t think our insurance’d stand for letting trainees loose killing things without proper supervision? So,’ she went on, pressing her fingertips to the side of her head, ‘how are you going to go about it? Decided yet?’

Erskine thought for a moment-not explosives, not poisons, recoilless rifle not available, golly, tricky one-and suddenly the answer was there, staring him in the face. But it was so-well, so amazingly cool that he hardly dared suggest it—

‘M-magic sword?’ he said breathlessly.

Emily nodded sadly. ‘Magic sword,’ she repeated. ‘Worse luck.’

‘But—’ This was so exciting; he felt he was about to burst. ‘I mean, I didn’t think people really used them any more.’

‘Oh, they do.’ Emily pulled a face. ‘Believe me. It makes you wonder if there’s really such a thing as progress in this business. I mean, we can put a man on the moon and take out fully grown manticores with satellite-mounted high-energy lasers, but there’ll always be some prick who can’t resist the urge to chase after wildlife with a bloody great knife. Distinctly Freudian, if you ask me. Anyway, I told them when I joined, I don’t do swords unless I’ve really got to, and it strikes me you’re just the sort who’d enjoy it, so yes, the gig’s yours. Nip down to the stores and sign one out. See you in reception in ten minutes.’

As soon as she’d gone, Erskine was on his feet and tearing down the corridor towards the lift. As he ran, he accessed his mental plan of the building. Edged weapons were stored in the stationery cupboard on the third floor, in a locked steel cabinet whose combination was 1415 (easy to remember: battle of Agincourt). When he got there, he burrowed through stacks of green chit pads and timesheet books until he’d cleared a way through to the cabinet door. He picked the tumblers round with his fingernail and opened the door.

Tsk, he thought. Why do these people have to be so untidy? Spears, axes, cutlasses, crossbow bolts, all jammed in together any old how; he was going to have to take the whole lot out if he wanted to get at the stuff at the back, and all those sharp edges piled up like that was just begging for someone to do himself an injury.

Right at the back, behind a stack of mildewed whaling pikes, he found it: a simple black scabbard, flecked with white mould. A simple steel cross-hilt, with a brown label dangling off it on the end of a bit of white string. The label read E77931542 Magic Sword Class 2b.

Erskine finagled it out past the pikestaffs, wiped the mould off with his sleeve, and laid his right hand very gently on the wire-wrapped grip. It felt icy cold, and when he pulled his hand away sharply, small patches of skin stuck to it and ripped off.

I don’t know you, said a high, shrill voice in his head.

‘I’m Erskine Cannis,’ he said aloud.

Your name is not important. What are you?

Intuitively, Erskine knew he was going to have to choose his words very carefully. After all, the thing had already tasted his blood; didn’t that give them some sort of power over you? He was beginning to wish he hadn’t accepted the honour of carrying out the mission.

‘I’m a junior trainee,’ he said.

Very good. What are you, junior trainee?

He thought hard and quickly. People who lied to these things tended to have short, unhappy lives. On the other hand, he didn’t think he’d be much better off telling it the whole truth.

‘Scared,’ he said. Silence; then the voice in his head laughed softly. Nice answer, it said. Bear in mind that I am permitted three questions. ‘Are you?’

You didn’t know that?

Erskine tried a little smile. It came out droopy and sad. ‘Like I said, I’m a junior trainee. We were going to do magic swords in my second year at college, but we ran out of time.’

Unfortunate. What are you, scared junior trainee?

He managed to drag his stare off the sword and onto his watch face. ‘Late,’ he said. ‘My boss is waiting for me upstairs, so if it’s no trouble—’

Very well. The risk is yours to take, if you insist on it. Please note that Weyland Metal Industries and its successors in title accept no liability in respect of death or injury incurred as a result of false or misleading answers, for further details see handbook. Pause. Your last chance. Is there anything you’d like to say at this point?

Erskine swallowed hard and licked his lips. ‘Urn,’ he said.

Um?

‘Can we go now? Only, Miss Spitzer did say ten minutes, and I’ve still got to put all this junk back in the locker.’

He listened for a moment, but the voice had gone, and all he could hear was his own heart pounding. Well, he said to himself, got away with that, then.

So far.

Erskine shuddered and started stuffing weapons back inside the cabinet. His hands were bleeding where he’d lost the patches of skin, but they were still so cold and numb he couldn’t feel any pain. It took him a long time to reset the combination, with fingers that felt like huge overripe bananas.

‘There you are,’ Emily said as he scuttled through the fire door into reception. Of course, she couldn’t quite give it Colin Gomez’s unforgivably patronising tone. Presumably that only came when you were real management. ‘You found one, then.’

Erskine nodded. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘In the golf bag.’

‘Fine. Really inconspicuous, he won’t suspect a thing.’ She sighed. ‘I was going to take the Tube, but if you insist on lugging that thing around with you, the firm can bloody well pay for a taxi. We’ll be about an hour and a half,’ she called out to reception, who made a note in the going-out-and-coming-in book. ‘Come on, you,’ she said to Erskine. ‘And if you can make it look like you’re not with me, that’d be something.’

Like the Delphic oracle or a crystal ball, Frank’s ham sandwich with Emily had answered some questions and raised an uncomfortable quantity of others. As he peeled the Door off the cabin wall and lay down on the bed, he made an effort at correlating the results.

Questions definitely answered. Yes, she was now an unmistakable and unavoidable issue, something he was going to have to deal with, one way or the other. It wasn’t an issue he particularly wanted to face, because love is like consumer credit: a refusal often offends. He’d always had a tendency to believe what people told him, and ever since he could remember, his parents had given him the impression-in the nicest, most loving way imaginable-that he was neither use nor ornament, and nothing he’d done or experienced since leaving home had given him cause to question their assessment. It was logical, therefore, to assume that any girl he offered his heart to would find it about as desirable as junk mail; and then there’d be all that tiresome lovelorn mooning-about to get through before he could draw a line under the whole business and move on to something else. Certainly, if God had come to Frank in a dream and asked him what he wanted for Christmas, he wouldn’t have put true love at the top of the list. Come to think of it, he’d probably have ended up asking for socks and soap on a rope, because as far as he knew he’d never really wanted anything-which explained why at one stage he’d had ten million pounds in his bank account, and never spent it on anything except underwear and convenience foods.

Yes, but doesn’t everybody want true love? Everybody else. He had the advantage over them of having seen it in action, close up. His parents had been utterly devoted to each other, he knew that for stone-cold fact; for one thing, his mother was under the influence of J. W. Wells & Co’s universally acclaimed love philtre, guaranteed to ensure true love for ever, and Dad well, dosing him with the stuff would’ve been like pouring bottled water into the Great Lakes. A fat lot of good true love had done them, though; true love and unlimited wealth and even the Portable Door, but if you had to sum them up in one word, it’d have to be miserable. Why else, after all, would they have built their own pocket universe and retired into it? That, Frank recognised, had left him with a rather jaundiced view of love, not to mention money and magic. As far as he could tell, all three were in the same category as satellite TV and broadband: everybody says you’ve got to get it, so you do, and then it either doesn’t work or turns out not to be worth having. In which case, why bother?

Not the most constructive world-view, he was perfectly ready to admit, but it was the one he was stuck with, and there didn’t seem to be a lot he could do about it. Take away love and money, though, and what were you left with? All he could think of was Doing Good; and somehow he’d never been able to get himself particularly worked up about that. He had no quarrel with other people; most of the other people he’d met had turned out to be quite nice, on balance. But the thought of spending his life doing nice things for them had never really grabbed his enthusiasm. The insurance thing, with Mr Sprague, had been the closest he’d been able to get. It was Doing Good, because people who would’ve died or been horribly mutilated didn’t and weren’t. Also, he got paid money for it, and (most important of all) it hadn’t called for any real effort on his part. Nip through the Door, hold up a bit of cardboard with some writing on it, nip back, the rest of the day’s your own. True, there was also the heavy maths, figuring out precisely when and where he had to intervene, but he’d never really minded that. He hadn’t enjoyed it, but it had been a not-too-irksome chore; somewhere between a little light dusting and ironing while watching something good on TV.

Fine; not much of a life, all told, but a hell of a lot better than working for local government. Now, though, it looked like all that was about to go up in smoke, thanks to the question answered and the question posed; yes, I’m in love, and what the hell happened to Mr Sprague?

Well. There wasn’t a lot Frank could do about the question answered. Like a man trapped in a subterranean cavern rapidly filling with water, he was just going to have to wait and see what happened on that score. Mr Sprague, though: different kettle of fish. He didn’t know much about these things-and Emily, for all that she was now officially the most wonderful person on earth, hadn’t been much use at all-but it did seem quite likely that the George Sprague thing was because of him, and quite possibly his fault. In which case, it was up to him to do something about it. The problems of others which weren’t his responsibility might not have interested him much, but he was red-hot on clearing up his own messes. It was, he recognised, about all the character he had. When he was fourteen, his bedroom had been tidy. It was that bad.

Frank rolled off the bed and stood up. He hadn’t a clue where to start, so the only option open to him was to go and ask someone. And, since he couldn’t think of anybody else to ask

He spread out the Door and walked through it into Mr Sprague’s office. This time, to be on the safe side, he didn’t go straight into Mr Sprague’s actual inner lair. Instead, he chose a patch of wall in a corridor halfway between the secretary’s office and the toilet. Luckily there was nobody about, and he rolled up the Door and put it away. Then he presented himself before what was her name? He’d heard George say it many times, but he hadn’t taken it in. Luckily, he’d never actually met her; the most she’d been was a squeaky voice at the other end of a phone line.

‘Hello,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Any chance of a quick word with George?’ She looked at him, whatever her name was. ‘How did you get in here?’ she said.

‘Front door was open,’ he replied, innocent as a lamb, ‘so I came on up. Is he in? I can come back if he’s not.’

Deep frown. ‘He’s not expecting you, then.’

‘No.’

‘And your name?’

‘Frank Carpenter.’

Where he’d got the charm from, he had no idea. Definitely not from his parents, who between them had enough of that precious quality to fill a very small acorn cup. Dad had once told him he guessed it must be from the non-human side of his family tree, a remark that had puzzled him a lot until he’d met Mr Tanner’s mother. One drop of her personality diluted with, say, the Pacific Ocean, and you’d probably get charm. Anyway, regardless of where he’d got it from, he had it, occasionally, mostly when dealing with harassed middle-aged women. Right now, he guessed, it was the only thing stopping him from being slung out into the street.

‘I’ll ask,’ the secretary said. It was clearly a huge concession, but Frank doubted whether it’d be enough. He liked George, but he had an idea that he suffered fools and time-wasters as gladly as fire does water.

‘Thanks,’ he said gloomily. Then, on the off chance, he turned the charm tap till it jammed and added, ‘Sorry, can you spare me a second?’

She hesitated, hand on intercom switch. ‘Well?’

Big frown. ‘Not quite sure how to put this.’ (And that was no lie.) ‘You’ll think this is a very strange question, but—’ Another hesitation. Bank up the suspense, engage her curiosity. Then just blurt it out, as though you’ve tried not to ask the question and failed. ‘Do you think George has been acting a bit oddly today?’

Frown. ‘What makes you say that?’

Interesting reply. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining it. Only - well, I spoke to him on the phone earlier, and I couldn’t help thinking he wasn’t—’

‘Quite himself?’

(Bingo!)

‘Exactly,’ Frank said gratefully; no need to act there. ‘And I was a bit worried, so I dropped everything and came straight over.’

The secretary considered him as though he was a crossword clue. ‘You’re a friend of his, then?’

‘Oh yes. Friend of the family, really. Uncle George. He’s known me since before I was born.’ Which was true, of course. ‘I don’t know,’ he added quickly, ‘I expect I’m making a great big fuss over nothing. I think I’d better go-I know how busy he is and I don’t want to be a nuisance.’

‘No, don’t do that,’ she said; and Frank thought, if I really did get it from the goblins, then thank you, little scaly people, for sharing your DNA with me. ‘Actually, he’s not that busy right now. I’ll tell him you’re here, and you can go right in.’

‘Actually.’ Don’t screw it up now, Frank ordered himself. ‘I think it’d be better if I just went in unannounced. It’s this game we used to play when I was a kid. Pretty childish, of course, but you know what it’s like in families.’

Pure babbling, of course; but if she hesitated, it was only for a moment, until he’d given her a winning smile. It wasn’t an expression he’d had much experience with, and without a mirror handy he had no idea how it’d come out. But it must’ve been good enough, because she smiled back and said, ‘You go on, then. Shall I get you both some coffee?’

‘That’s very kind, but it gives me the most dreadful indigestion.’

‘You should try decaff.’

Sad smile. ‘Makes no difference, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh dear. Would you prefer tea?’

‘Tea’s worse.’ He reached for the door handle, gave it a twist as though wringing its neck, and dived into the office.

Mr Sprague was sitting behind his desk; well, where else would he be? The odd thing was, he had his feet up on the desktop, and was reading a newspaper. Upside down.

As soon as he saw Frank, the paper collapsed like a tent in a hurricane, and the feet were whisked off the desk. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Mr Sprague barked at him, but his voice sounded scared. ‘I mean, who are you?’

There hadn’t been many sudden flashes of insight in Frank’s life, and he found the sensation bewildering. Nevertheless, when he replied, his voice was surprisingly steady.

‘You know perfectly well who I am,’ he said. ‘Where’s George?’

The owner of Honest John’s House of Monsters wasn’t really called John. That harmless deception aside, however, he generally did his best to earn his self-awarded adjective. When he’d told Amelia Carrington that her order wasn’t ready yet, he’d been telling the truth. His mother had always insisted that the truth, rather like major credit cards, is accepted everywhere.

Fine.

He reached down and grabbed hold of the lid. Properly speaking, it was too heavy for one man to lift on his own, but Neville the trainee had already gone home and the winch was bust. He leaned back against the weight and heaved, ignoring the strongly worded communique from the muscles of his back.

The problem as he saw it was that, by all accounts, Amelia Carrington shared his single-minded sincerity. If she said he’d be killed if he didn’t deliver on time, she meant it, and there was precious little he could do about it.

The lid lifted eight inches. Then the strain on his fingers and elbow tendons got too much for him, and he let go.

Needless to say, the problem lay with the livestock. He had a very good breeding ewe-possibly the finest in the country: Best of Show at Smithfield last year, and Best In Class at the Bath & West three years running-and a thoroughbred drake with a better pedigree than the Duke of Kent. The problem was, they didn’t like each other. Nor was it one of those quirky, Bogardand-Hepburn love/hate relationships, which only takes a gentle pressure on the right levers to convert it into a fiery romance. The ugly fact was, the last time he’d managed to coax the drake into the ewe’s pen, she’d tried to eat him.

Technical problems, as they say in the trade.

So, with Amelia Carrington’s not so oblique encouragements very much on his mind, Honest John decided it was time for a little lateral thinking. It was sheer luck, he couldn’t help thinking, that he had a Plan B.

He tried again. This time, he raised the lid a full fourteen inches before yelping with pain and letting go.

It had to be a very heavy lid, of course; half-inch high-tensile steel plate, and that was the lightweight version. The regulations specified a full twenty millimetres for Class 4 species, and you had to have four padlocks to BS 8867 and an alarm system.

Honest John’s operation couldn’t run to that (the EU will be the death of small business in this country) so he made do with what he’d got. Right now, that included a lid he couldn’t lift and a (no pun intended) deadline.

Years ago, before he’d been Honest John’s House of Monsters, he’d had a short and colourful career as Honest John’s House of Clones. He’d managed to blot most of the details out of his memory, but he still had a few mementos: stuff the liquidators hadn’t found, or hadn’t considered worth the expense of taking away. One of them was the large, built-in cast-iron vat that took up most of the floor space in Number Six shed. He hadn’t used it since he’d been hounded out of the cloning biz; he wasn’t even sure if the rich green goo that filled it was still functional. Only one way to find out. Unfortunately, that would involve lifting the damn lid.

The pyramids, he thought. Stonehenge. They’d managed to shift bloody great big heavy things using muscle power alone. Technologically speaking, what did they have that he didn’t? Apart from thousands of conscripted labourers, of course.

Honest John clambered down and took an armful of bricks from a pile in the corner. With these, he was able to wedge the gap each time he lifted the lid, until at last it was big enough to let him get his arm through. Shivering a little, he groped about until his fingers made contact with the surface of the goo. He fished out a sample and studied it.

Yuck was, of course, his instinctive first reaction. It was slimy, green and smelly, but that was how it was supposed to be. There were traces of some kind of yellow mould, but presumably it was either inert or non-organic. Just as well. Thinking about it, he cursed himself for his negligence. A mildew spore finding its way into that lot could easily have evolved into sentient life inside a week; a fortnight, and it’d probably have discovered nuclear fission.

Fool’s luck, he thought. But the stuff felt and smelled right; it even (don’t try this at home, kids) tasted right. He remembered some of the stories he’d heard about Amelia Carrington over the years, hopped down and scuttled over to his bench. Busy, busy.

On top of the bench was a small fridge, the sort you daren’t open in hotel rooms unless you’re a millionaire on expenses. Inside was a rack of test tubes. He filled a pipette with foul-looking yellow gunge from one of them, and shut the fridge door.

Halfway to the vat, he paused. Was this a sensible, responsible thing to do? No. On the other hand, living to regret it would nevertheless be living, and by definition preferable to the alternative. He climbed up onto the rim of the vat, stuck his arm out as far as he could get it, and squeezed the little rubber bulb. Then, moving faster than he’d done in years, he dragged the bricks out until the lid slammed shut, and hopped clear like a startled frog.

He landed awkwardly, hurting his ankle. Silly, really. Even under optimum conditions, it’d take seventy-six hours. In cold, crud-encrusted goo, you could add another six to eight hours, assuming it was going to work at all. The light-blue-touchpaper approach was simple hysterical melodrama. He got up slowly, hobbled over to the bench and switched the kettle on. He hadn’t had a brew for hours, and his throat felt like sandpaper.

Either the ewe would have to go, Honest John mused, or the drake. No bloody use at all having them if the buggers didn’t get on. He thought it over. Sound business principles dictated that the ewe was the one to get shot of. With her pedigree and stallful of rosettes, she’d be worth a fortune. Tierkraft AG and Cincinnati Lifeforms had both made him tempting offers for her. The drake, on the other hand-well, he was worth money, but not nearly as much. Even so, it’d be a wrench to say goodbye to Daisy, even if she had eaten three DEFRA inspectors and a Ministry vet…

A sound like the booming of an enormous gong startled him out of his meditations. He looked round, then down at his watch. Twenty minutes. It couldn’t have come from the vat, then. Must’ve been something else. Concorde going over, maybe.

He sipped his tea. Stone-cold. He preferred it that way.

Only, hadn’t they grounded Concorde years ago? He couldn’t remember. Served him right for not reading the papers. To fill in the time, he opened a dog-eared box file and made a start on the monthly accounts. Now, then: feed receipts.

Boom.

Not Concorde, even if it was still flying. Not unless it was taking a short cut through the shed. Once his head had stopped spinning, he stood up and took a few steps towards the vat. Then he changed his mind. If it was the vat … He had an idea there’d been an article in the trade mag a while back; something about what happened if the goo was left so long that it began to ferment. Hugely accelerated development, Honest John seemed to recall, but really bad stuff happened to the DNA coding.

Urn.

He could go back to the vat and investigate. Or he could nip outside, get in the van, drive very fast to Heathrow and hope like hell that Concorde (a) was still in service and (b) could outfly whatever was beginning to stir under that lid.

His twisted ankle held him up rather, and he stopped to get his coat. But for that, he might have made it.

Instead, he’d just laid his hand on the door handle when a third boom knocked him off balance. He staggered and fell, just as the lid flew off the vat like a frisbee and took out the far wall. For a moment, his eyes were filled with brick and plaster dust. When he’d wiped them clean, he looked at the vat and saw a single huge green claw rising up and digging its talons into the rim.

Cast iron is brittle old stuff. It went ping as it crumbled.

Oh well, thought Honest John. He searched in his pocket for his mobile phone, and prodded in a number. He gave his name, asked to speak to Amelia Carrington and was put through straight away.

‘Your order’s ready,’ he said.

‘Good.’

‘One thing, though.’

‘Well?’

The claw was snaking upwards, on the end of a massive green-scaled leg. The talons flexed, and something made a deep growling noise that set the building vibrating. Honest John took a deep breath. ‘Do you think you could possibly collect?’ he said.