‘I thought he had a gun.’
   ‘Why would you think that?’
   I stared into Mr Stiggins’s unblinking brown eyes. If I lied he would know. If I told him the truth he might feel it his duty to tell SO-1 that I had been involved in my father’s work. With the world due to end and the trust in my father implicit, it was a kind of sticky moment, to say the least.
   ‘They will ask you, Miss Next. Your evasion will not be appreciated.’
   ‘I’ll have to take that chance.’
   Stiggins tilted his head to one side and regarded me for a moment.
   ‘They know about your father, Miss Next. We advise you to be careful.’
   I didn’t say anything but to Stiggins I probably spoke volumes. Half the Thal language is about body movements. It’s possible to conjugate verbs with facial muscles; dancing is conversation.
   We didn’t have a chance to say anything else as the door opened and Flanker and two other agents trooped in.
   ‘You know my name,’ he told me. ‘These are agents King and Nosmo.’
   The two officers stared at me unnervingly.
   ‘This is a preliminary interview,’ announced Flanker, who now fixed me with a steely gaze. ‘There will be time enough for a full inquiry—if we so decide. Anything you say and do can affect the outcome of the hearing. It’s really up to you, Next.’
   He wasn’t kidding. SO-1 were not within the law—they made the law. If they really meant business I wouldn’t be here at all—I’d be spirited away to SpecOps Grand Central, wherever the hell that was. It was at times like this that I suddenly realised quite why my father had rebelled against SpecOps in the first place.
   Flanker placed two tapes into the recorder and idented it with the date, time and all our names. Once this was done he asked in a voice made more menacing by its softness:
   ‘You know why you are here?’
   ‘For hitting a Skyrail operator?’
   ‘Striking a Neanderthal is hardly a crime worthy of SO-1’s valuable time, Miss Next. In fact, technically speaking, it’s not a crime at all.’
   ‘What, then?’
   ‘When did you last see your father?’
   The other SpecOps agents leaned forward imperceptibly to hear my answer. I wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
   ‘I don’t have a father, Flanker—you know that. He was eradicated by your buddies in the ChronoGuard seventeen years ago.’
   ‘Don’t play me for a fool, Next,’ warned Flanker. ‘This is not something I care to joke about. Despite Colonel Next’s non-actualisation he continues to be a thorn in our side. Again: when did you last see your father?’
   ‘At my wedding.’
   Flanker frowned and looked at his notes.
   ‘You married? When?’
   I told him and he squiggled a note in the margin.
   ‘And what did he say when he turned up at your wedding?’
   ‘Congratulations.’
   He stared at me for a few moments, then changed tack.
   ‘This incident with the Skyrail operator,’ he began. ‘You were convinced that he had a soap gun hidden about his person. According to a witness you thumped him on the chin, handcuffed and searched him. They said you seemed very surprised when you didn’t find anything.’
   I shrugged and remained silent.
   ‘We don’t give a sod about the Thal, Next. Your father deputising you is one thing, replacing you out of time is quite another. Is this what happened?’
   ‘Is that the charge? Is that why I’m here?’
   ‘Answer the question.’
   ‘No, sir.’
   ‘You’re lying. He brought you back early but your father’s control of the timestream is not that good. Mr Kaylieu decided not to threaten the Skyrail that morning. You were sideslipped, Next. Joggled slightly in the timestream. Things happened the same way but not exactly in the same order. It wasn’t a big one, either—barely a Class IX. Sideslips are an occupational hazard in ChronoGuard work.’
   ‘That’s preposterous,” I scoffed. Stiggins would know I was lying but perhaps I could fool Flanker.
   ‘I don’t think you understand, Miss Next. This is more important than just you or your father. Two days ago we lost all communications beyond the twelfth of December. We know there is industrial action but even the freelancers we’ve sent upstream haven’t reported back. We think it’s the Big One. If your father was willing to risk using you, we reckon he thinks so too. Despite our animosity towards your father he knows his business—if he didn’t we’d have had him years from now. What’s going on?’
   ‘I just thought he had a gun,’ I repeated.
   Flanker stared at me silently for a few moments.
   ‘Let’s start again, Miss Next. You search a Neanderthal for a fake gun he carries the following day, you apologise to him using his name, and the arresting officer at the Skyrail station tells me she saw you resetting your watch—a bit out of time, were you?’
   ‘What do you mean—”for a fake gun he carries the following day”?’
   Flanker answered without a trace of emotion, ‘Kaylieu was shot dead this morning. I think you should talk and talk fast. I’ve enough to loop you for twenty years. Fancy that?’
   I glared back at him, at a loss to know what to do or say. Looping was a slang term for Closed Loop Temporal Field Containment. They popped the criminal in an eight-minute repetitive time loop for five, ten, twenty years. Usually it was a laundromat, a doctor’s waiting room or a bus stop, and your presence often caused time to slow down for others near the loop. Your body aged but never needed sustenance; it was cruel and unnatural—yet cheap and required no bars, guards or food.
   I opened my mouth and shut it again, gaping like a fish.
   ‘Or you can tell us about your father and walk out a free woman.’
   I felt a prickly sweat break out on my forehead. I stared at Flanker and he stared at me, until, mercifully, Stiggins came to my rescue.
   ‘Miss Next was working for us at SO-13 that morning, Commander,’ he said in a low monotone. ‘Kaylieu had been implicated in Neanderthal sedition. It was a secret operation. Thank you, Miss Next, but we will have to tell SO-1 the truth.’
   Flanker shot an angry glance at the Neanderthal, who stared back at him impassively.
   ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me this, Stiggins?’
   ‘You never asked.’

   All Flanker had on me now was a slow watch. He lowered his voice to a growl.
   ‘I’ll see you looped behind the Crunch if your father is up to no good and you didn’t tell us.’
   He paused for a moment and jabbed a finger in the direction of Stiggins.
   ‘If you’ve been bearing false witness I’ll have you too. You’re running the Thal end of SO-13 for one reason and one reason only—window dressing.’
   ‘How you managed to become the dominant species we will never know,’ Stiggins said at last. ‘So full of hate, anger and vanity.’
   ‘It’s our evolutionary edge, Stiggins. Change and adapt to a hostile environment. We did, you didn’t. QED.’
   ‘Darwin won’t mask your sins, Flanker,’ replied Stiggins. ‘You made our environment hostile. You will fall too. But you won’t fall because of a more dominant life form. You will fall over yourselves.’
   ‘Garbage, Stiggins. You lot had your chance and blew it.’
   ‘We have right to health, freedom and pursuit of happiness, too.’
   ‘Legally speaking you don’t,’ replied Flanker evenly. ‘Those rights belong only to humans. If you want equality, speak to Goliath. They sequenced you. They own you. If you get lucky perhaps you can be at risk. Beg and we might make you endangered.’
   Flanker shut my file with a snap, grabbed his hat, removed both interview tapes and was gone without another word.
   As soon as the door closed I breathed a sigh of relief. My heart was going like a trip hammer but at least I still had my liberty.
   ‘I’m sorry about Mr Kaylieu.’
   Stiggins shrugged.
   ‘He was not happy, Miss Next. He did not ask to come back.’
   ‘You lied for me,’ I added in a disbelieving tone. ‘I thought Neanderthals couldn’t lie?’
   He stared at me for a moment or two.
   ‘It’s not that we can’t,’ he said at last. ‘We just have no reason to. We helped because you are a good person. It is enough. If you need help again, we will be there.’
   Stiggins’s normally placid and unmoving face curled up into a grimace that showed two rows of widely-gapped teeth. I was fearful for a moment until I realised that what I was witnessing was a Neanderthal smile.
   ‘Miss Next—’
   ‘—Yes?’
   ‘Our friends call us Stig.’
   ‘Mine call me Thursday.’
   He put out a large hand and I shook it gratefully.
   ‘You’re a good man, Stig.’
   ‘Yes,’ he replied slowly, ‘we were sequenced that way.’
   He gathered up his notes and left the room.
   I left the SpecOps building ten minutes later and looked for Landen in the café opposite. He wasn’t there so I ordered a coffee and waited twenty minutes. He didn’t turn up so I left a message with the café owner and drove home, musing that with death by coincidence, the world ending in a fortnight, court charges for I don’t know what and a lost play by Shakespeare, things couldn’t get much stranger. But I was wrong. I was very wrong.

9. The More Things Stay the Same…

   ‘…Minor changes to soft furnishings are the first indications of a sideslip. Curtains, cushion covers and lampshades are all good litmus indicators for a slight diversion in the timestream—the way canaries are used down the mines or goldfishes to predict earthquakes. Carpet and wallpaper patterns and changes in paint hues can also be used, but this requires a more practised eye. If you are within the sideslip then you will notice nothing, but if your pelmets change colour for no good reason, your curtains switch from festoon to swish or your antimacassars have a new pattern on them, I should be worried, and if you’re the only one who notices, then worry some more. A great deal more…’

BENDIX SCINTILLA. Timestream Navigation for CG Cadets Module IV


   Landen’s absence made me feel unsettled. All sorts of reasons as to why he wasn’t waiting for me ran through my head as I pushed open the gate and walked up to our front door. He could have lost track of time, gone to pick up his running leg from the menders or dropped in to see his mum. But I was fooling myself. Landen said he would be there and he wasn’t. And that wasn’t like him. Not at all.
   I stopped abruptly halfway up the garden path. For some reason Landen had taken the opportunity to change all the curtains. I walked on more slowly, a feeling of unease rising within me. I stopped at the front door. The boot-scraper had gone. But it hadn’t been taken recently—the hole had been concreted over long ago. There were other changes, too. A tub of withered Tickia orologica had appeared in the porch next to a rusty pogo stick and a broken bicycle. The dustbins were all plastic rather than steel, and a copy of Landen’s least favourite paper, The Mole, was resting in the newspaper holder. I felt a hot flush rise in my cheeks as I fumbled in vain to find my door key. Not that it would have mattered if I had found it—the lock I used that morning had been painted over years ago.
   I must have been making a fair amount of noise because all of a sudden the door opened to reveal an elderly version of Landen complete with paunch, bifocals and a shiny bald pate.
   ‘Yes?’ he enquired in a slow Parke-Laine sort of baritone.
   Filbert Snood’s time aggregation sprang instantly—and unpleasantly—to mind.
   ‘Oh my God. Landen? Is that you?’
   The elderly man seemed almost as stunned as I was.
   ‘Me? Good heavens, no!’ he snapped, and started to close the door. ‘No one of that name lives here!’
   I jammed my foot against the closing door. I’d seen it done in cop movies but the reality is somewhat different. I had forgotten I was wearing trainers and the weatherboard squashed my big toe. I yelped in pain, withdrew my foot and the door slammed shut.
   ‘Buggeration!’ I yelled as I hopped up and down. I pressed the doorbell long and hard but received only a muffled ‘Clear off!’ for my troubles. I was just about to bang on the door when I heard a familiar voice ring out behind. I turned to find Landen’s mum staring at me.
   ‘Houson!’ I cried. ‘Thank goodness! There’s someone in our house and they won’t answer… and… Houson?’
   She was looking at me without a flicker of recognition.
   ‘Houson?’ I said again, taking a step towards her. ‘It’s me, Thursday!’
   She hurriedly took a pace back and corrected me sharply:
   ‘That’s Mrs Parke-Laine to you. What do you want?’
   I heard the door open behind me. The elderly Landen-that-wasn’t had returned.
   ‘She’s been ringing the doorbell,’ explained the man to Landen’s mother. ‘She won’t go away.’ He thought for a moment and then added in a quieter voice, ‘She’s been asking about Landen.’
   ‘Landen?’ replied Houson sharply, her glare becoming more baleful by the second. ‘How is Landen any business of yours?
   ‘He’s my husband.’
   There was a pause as she mulled this over.
   ‘Your sense of humour is severely lacking, Miss whoever-you-are,’ she retorted angrily, pointing towards the garden gate. ‘The way out is the same as the way in—only reversed.’
   ‘Wait a minute!’ I exclaimed, almost wanting to laugh at the situation. ‘If I didn’t marry Landen, then who gave me this wedding ring?’
   I held up my left hand for them to see but it didn’t seem to have much effect. A quick glance told me why. I didn’t have a wedding ring.
   ‘Shit!’ I mumbled, looking around in a perplexed manner. ‘I must have dropped it somewhere—’
   ‘You’re very confused,’ said Houson, more in pity than anger. She could see I wasn’t dangerous—just positively, and irretrievably, insane. ‘Is there anyone we can call?’
   ‘I’m not crazy,’ I declared, trying to get a grip on the situation. ‘This morning—no, less than two hours ago—Landen and I lived in this very house—’
   I stopped. Houson had moved to the side of the man at the door. As they stood together in a manner bred of long association, I knew exactly who he was; it was Landen’s father. Landen’s dead father.
   ‘You’re Billden,’ I murmured. ‘You died when you tried to rescue…’
   My voice trailed off. Landen had never known his father. Billden Parke-Laine had died saving the two-year-old Landen from a submerged car thirty-eight years ago. My heart froze as the true meaning of this bizarre confrontation began to dawn. Someone had eradicated Landen.
   I put out a hand to steady myself, then sat quickly on the garden wall and closed my eyes as a dull thumping started up in my head. Not Landen, not now of all times.
   ‘Billden,’ announced Houson, ‘you had better call the police—’
   ‘No!’ I shouted, opening my eyes and glaring at him.
   ‘You didn’t go back, did you?’ I said slowly, my voice cracking. ‘You didn’t rescue him that night. You lived, and he—’
   I braced myself for his anger but it never came. Instead, Billden just stared at me with a mixture of pity and confusion on his face.
   ‘I wanted to,’ he said in a quiet voice.
   I swallowed my emotion.
   ‘Where’s Landen now?’

   ‘If we tell you,’ said Houson in a slow and patronising tone, ‘will you promise to go away and never come back?’
   She took my silence for assent and continued:
   ‘Swindon Municipal Cemetery—and you’re right, our son drowned thirty-eight years ago.’
   ‘Shit!’ I cried, my mind racing as I tried to figure out who might be responsible. Houson and Billden took a fearful step back. ‘Not you,’ I added hastily. ‘Goddammit, I’m being blackmailed.’
   ‘You should report that to SpecOps.’
   ‘They wouldn’t believe me any more than you—’
   I paused and thought for a moment.
   ‘Houson, I know you have a good memory because when Landen did exist you and I were the best of pals. Someone has taken your son and my husband and, believe me, I’ll get him back. But listen to me, I’m not crazy, and here’s how I can prove it. He’s allergic to bananas, has a mole on his neck—and a birthmark the shape of a lobster on his bum. How could I know that unless—?’
   ‘Oh yes?’ said Houson slowly, staring at me with growing interest. ‘This birthmark. Which cheek?’.’
   ‘The left.’
   ‘Looking from the front, or looking from the back?’
   ‘Looking from the back,’ I said without hesitating.
   There was silence for a moment. They looked at each other, then at me, and in that instant, they knew. When Houson spoke it was in a quiet voice, her temper replaced by a sadness all her own.
   ‘How… how would he have turned out?’
   She started to cry, large tears that rolled uninhibited down her cheeks, tears of loss, tears for what might have been.
   ‘He was wonderful!’ I returned gratefully. ‘Witty and generous and tall and clever—you would have been so proud!’
   ‘What did he become?’
   ‘A novelist,’ I explained. ‘Last year he won the Armitage Shanks Fiction Award for Bad Sofa. He lost a leg in the Crimea. We were married two months ago.’
   ‘Were we there?’
   I looked at them both and said nothing Houson had been there, of course, shedding tears of joy for us both—but Billden… well, Billden had swapped his life for Landen’s when he returned to the submerged car and ended up in the Swindon Municipal Cemetery instead. We stood for a moment or two, the three of us lamenting the loss of Landen Houson broke the silence.
   ‘I think it would really be better for all concerned if you left now,’ she said quietly, ‘and please don’t come back.’
   ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘Was there someone there, someone who stopped you from rescuing him?’
   ‘More than one,’ replied Billden. ‘Five or six—one woman; I was sat upon—’
   ‘Was one a Frenchman? Tall, distinguished looking? Named Lavoisier, perhaps?’
   ‘I don’t know,’ answered Billden sadly, ‘it was a long time ago.’
   ‘You really have to leave now,’ repeated Houson in a forthright tone.
   I sighed, thanked them, and they shuffled back inside and closed the door.
   I walked out through the garden gate and sat in my car, trying to contain the emotion within me so I could think straight. I was breathing heavily and my hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel my knuckles showed white. How could SpecOps do this to me? Was this Flanker’s way of compelling me to talk about my father? I shook my head. Futzing with the timestream was a crime punishable by almost unimaginable brutality. I couldn’t imagine Flanker would have risked his career—and his life—on a move so rash.
   I took a deep breath and leaned forward to press the starter button.
   As I did so I glanced into my wing mirror and saw a Packard parked on the other side of the road. There was a well-dressed figure leaning on the wing, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette and looking in my direction. It was Schitt-Hawse. He appeared to be smiling. Suddenly, the whole plan came into sharp focus. Jack Schitt. What had Schitt-Hawse threatened me with? Corporate impatience? My anger re-established itself.
   Muttering ‘Bastard!’ under my breath. I jumped out of the car and walked briskly and purposefully towards Schitt-Hawse, who stiffened slightly as I approached. I ignored a car that screeched to a halt inches from me, and as Schitt-Hawse took a pace forward I put out both hands and pushed him hard against the car. He lost his footing and fell heavily to the ground; I was quickly upon him, grabbed his shirt lapels and raised a fist to punch him. But the blow never fell. In my blind anger I had failed to see that his associates Chalk and Cheese were close by, and they did their job admirably, efficiently and, yes, painfully too. I fought like hell and was gratified that in the confusion I managed to kick Schitt-Hawse hard on the kneecap—he yelped in pain. But my victory, such as it was, was short lived. I must have been a tenth of their combined weight and my struggles were soon in vain. They held me tightly, and Schitt-Hawse approached with an unpleasant smile etched upon his pinched features.
   I did the first thing I could think of. I spat in his face. I’d never tried it before but it turned out delightfully, I got him right in the eye.
   He raised the back of his hand to strike me but I didn’t flinch—I just stared at him, anger burning in my eyes. He stopped, lowered his hand and wiped his face with a crisply laundered pocket handkerchief.
   ‘You are going to have to control that temper of yours, Next.’
   ‘That’s Mrs Parke-Laine to you.’
   ‘Not any more. If you’d stop struggling perhaps we could talk sensibly, like adults. You and I need to come to an arrangement.’
   I gave up squirming and the two men relaxed their grip. I straightened my clothes and glared at Schitt-Hawse, who rubbed his knee.
   ‘What sort of arrangement?’ I demanded.
   ‘A trade,’ he answered. ‘Jack Schitt for Landen.’
   ‘Oh yes?’ I retorted ‘And how do I know I can trust you?’
   ‘You don’t and you can’t,’ replied Schitt-Hawse simply, ‘but it’s the best offer you’re going to get.’
   ‘My father will help me.’
   Schitt-Hawse laughed.
   ‘Your father is a washed-out clock jockey. I think you overestimate his chances—and his talents. Besides, we’ve got the summer of 1947 locked down so tight not even a trans-temporal gnat could get back there without us knowing about it. Retrieve Jack from The Raven and you can have your own dear hubby back.’
   ‘And how do you propose I do that?’
   ‘You’re a resourceful and intelligent woman—I’m sure you’ll think of something. Do we have a deal?’
   I stared hard at him, shaking with fury. Then, almost without thinking, I had my automatic pressed against Schitt-Hawse’s forehead. I heard two safety catches click off behind me. Associates Chalk and Cheese were fast, too.
   Schitt-Hawse seemed unperturbed; he smiled at me in a supercilious manner and ignored the weapon.
   ‘You won’t kill me, Next,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s not the way you do things. It might make you feel better but believe me it won’t get your Landen back and Mr Chalk and Mr Cheese would make quite sure you were dead long before you hit the asphalt.’
   Schitt-Hawse was good. He’d done his homework and he hadn’t underestimated me one little bit. I’d do all I could to get Landen back and he knew it. I reholstered my pistol.
   ‘Splendid!’ he enthused. ‘We’ll be hearing from you in due course, I trust, hmm?’

10. A Lack of Differences

   ‘Landen Parke-Laine’s eradication was the best I’d seen since Veronica Golightly’s. They plucked him out and left everything else exactly as it was. Not a crude hatchet job like Churchill or Victor Borge—we got those sorted out eventually. What I never figured out was how they took him out and left her memories of him completely intact. Agreed, there would be no point to the eradication without her knowing what she had missed, but it still intrigued me over four centuries later. Eradication was never an exact art.’

COLONEL NEXT, QT, CG (non-exst.)—Upstream/Downstream (unpublished)


   I stared after their departing car, trying to figure out what to do. Finding a way into The Raven to release Jack Schitt would be my first priority. It wasn’t going to be hard—it was going to be impossible. It wouldn’t deter me. I’d done impossible things several times in the past and the prospect didn’t scare me as much as it used to.
   A patrol car drew up beside me and the driver rolled down his window. It was officer ‘Spike’ Stoker of SpecOps 17—the vampire and werewolf disposal operation, or ‘Suckers & Biters’ as they preferred to call themselves. I had helped him out once on a vampire stake-out; dealing with the undead is not a huge barrel of fun, but I liked Spike a great deal.
   He saw the consternation in my face and asked in a friendly tone:
   ‘What happens, Next?’
   ‘Hi, Spike. Goliath happens, that’s what.’
   ‘Word is you lipped Flanker.’
   ‘Good news travels fast, doesn’t it?’
   Spike thought about this for a moment, turned down the wireless and got out of his car.
   ‘If the shit hits the fan I can offer you some freelance staking for cash at Suckers & Biters; the minimum entry requirements have been reduced to “anyone mad enough to join me”.’
   ‘Sorry, Spike. I can’t. Not right now—I think I’ve had enough of the undead for a while. Tell me, am I still working at SO-27?’
   ‘Of course! Thursday? Are you in some sort of trouble?’
   ‘The worst sort,’ I said, showing him my empty ring finger. ‘Someone eradicated my husband.’
   ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ responded Spike. ‘My Uncle Bart was eradicated, but y’know, someone goofed, and they left some memories of him with my aunt. She lodged an appeal and had him reactualised a year later. Thing is, I never knew I ever had an uncle after he left, and never knew he had gone when he came back—I’ve only my aunt’s word that it ever happened at all. Does any of this make any sense to you?’
   ‘An hour ago it would have sounded insane. Right now it seems as clear as day.’
   ‘Hmm,’ grunted Spike, laying an affectionate hand on my shoulder. ‘You’ll get him back, don’t worry. Listen: I wish they’d sideslip all this vampire and werewolf crap and I could go and work at Sommeworld™ or something.’
   ‘Wouldn’t you miss it?’
   ‘Not for a second.’
   I leaned against his car, SpecOps gossip a welcome distraction as I sought to calm my nerves.
   ‘Got a new partner yet?’ I asked him.
   ‘For this shit? You must be kidding—but there is some good news. Look at this.’
   He pulled a photo from his breast pocket. It was of himself standing next to a very petite blonde girl who barely came up to his elbow.
   ‘Her name’s Cindy,’ he murmured affectionately. ‘A cracker—and smart too.’
   ‘I wish you both the best. How does she feel about all this vampire and werewolf stuff?’
   ‘Oh, she’s fine with all that—or at least she will be, when I tell her.’
   His face fell.
   ‘Oh, craps. How can I tell her that I thrust sharpened stakes through the undead and hunt down werewolves like some sort of dog-catcher?’ He stopped and sighed, then asked, in a brighter tone: ‘You’re a woman, aren’t you?’
   ‘Last time I looked.’
   ‘Well, can’t you figure out some sort of a… I don’t know… strategy for me. I’d hate to lose this one as well.’
   ‘How long do they last when you tell them?’
   ‘Oh, they’re usually peachy about it,’ said Spike, laughing. ‘They hang about for, well, five, six, maybe more—’
   ‘Weeks?’ I asked. ‘Months?’
   ‘Seconds,’ replied Spike mournfully, ‘and those were the ones that really liked me.’
   He sighed deeply.
   ‘I think you should tell her the truth. Girls don’t like being lied to—unless it’s about surprise holidays and rings and stuff.’
   ‘I thought you’d say something like that,’ replied Spike, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, ‘but the shock—!’
   ‘You don’t have to tell her outright. You could always scatter a few copies of Van Helsing’s Gazette around the house.’
   ‘Oh, I get it!’ replied Spike, thinking hard. ‘Sort of build her up to it—stakes and crucifixes in the garage—’
   ‘And you could drop werewolves into the conversation every now and then.’
   ‘It’s a great plan, Thurs,’ replied Spike happily. ‘I don’t want to lose Cindy—I’ve a family I want to start.’
   ‘...’
   ‘What’s the matter, Thurs? You look kind of shocked.’
   The fear and panic that had only just diminished reasserted themselves. Did I still have Landen’s baby? I muttered a short reply to Spike, jumped into my car and screeched off into town, startling a few Great Auks who were picking their way through a nearby garbage can.
   I was heading for the doctor’s surgery on Shelley Street. Every shop I passed seemed to stock either prams or highchairs, toys or something else baby related, and all the toddlers and infants, heavily pregnant women and prams in Swindon seemed to be crowding the route—and all staring at me. I skidded to a halt outside the surgery. It was a double yellow line and a traffic warden looked at me greedily.
   ‘Hey!’ I said, pointing a finger at her. ‘Expectant mother. Don’t even think about it.’
   I dashed in and found the nurse I’d seen the day before
   ‘I was in here yesterday,’ I blurted out. ‘Was I pregnant?’
   She looked at me without even the least vestige of surprise. I guess she was used to this sort of thing.
   ‘Of course!’ she replied. ‘Confirmation is in the post. Are you okay?’
   I sat down heavily on a chair. The sense of relief was indescribable. It looked as if I had more than just Landen’s memories—I had his child, too. I rubbed my face with my hands. I’d been in a lot of difficult and dangerous life-or-death situations both in the military and law enforcement—but nothing even comes close to the tribulations of emotion. I’d face Hades again twice rather than go through that little charade again.
   ‘Yes, yes,’ I assured her happily, ‘I really couldn’t be better!’
   ‘Good.’ The nurse beamed. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to know?’
   ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Where do I live?’
   The shabby block of flats in the old town didn’t look like my sort of place but who knew what I might be doing without Landen. I trotted briskly up the stairs to the top landing and Flat 6. I took a deep breath, unlocked and opened the door. There was a brief scrabble of activity from the kitchen and Pickwick was there to greet me as usual, bearing a gift that turned out to be the torn cover off last month’s SpecOps 27 Gazette. I closed the door with my foot as I tickled her under the chin and looked cautiously about. I was relieved to discover that despite the shabby exterior my apartment was south facing, warm and quite comfortable. I couldn’t remember a thing about any of it, of course, but I was glad to see that Pickwick’s egg was still in residence. It seemed I painted a lot more without Landen about, and the walls were covered with half-finished canvases. There were several of Pickwick and the family which I could remember painting, and a few others that I couldn’t—but none, sadly, of Landen. I looked at the other canvases and wondered why several included images of amphibious aircraft. I sat on the sofa, and when Pickwick came up to nuzzle me I put my hand on her head.
   ‘Oh, Pickers,’ I murmured, ‘what shall we do?’

   I sighed, tried to get Pickwick to stand on one leg with the promise of a marshmallow, failed, then made a cup of tea and something to eat before searching the rest of the apartment in an inquisitive sort of way. Most things were where I would expect to find them; there were more dresses in the closet than usual and I even found a few copies of The Femole stashed under the sofa. The fridge was well stocked with food, and it seemed in this non-Landen world that I was a vegetarian. There were a lot of things that I couldn’t remember ever having acquired, including a table light shaped like a pineapple, a large enamel sign advertising Dr Spongg’s Footcare Remedies and—slightly more worryingly—a size-twelve pair of socks in the laundry and some boxer shorts. I rummaged further and found two toothbrushes in the bathroom, a large Swindon Mallets jacket on the hook and several XXL-sized T-shirts with SpecOps 14 Swindon written on them. I called Bowden straight away.
   ‘Hello, Thursday,’ he said. ‘Have you heard? Professor Spoon has given his hundred per cent backing to Cardenio—I’ve never heard him actually laugh before!’
   ‘That’s good, that’s good,’ I said absently. ‘Listen, this might seem an odd question, but do I have a boyfriend?’
   ‘A what?’
   ‘A boyfriend. You know. A male friend I see on a regular basis for dinner and picnics and… thingy, y’know?’
   ‘Thursday, are you okay?’
   I took a deep breath and rubbed my neck.
   ‘No, no, I’m not,’ I gabbled. ‘You see, my husband was eradicated this afternoon. I went to see SO-1 and just before I went in the walls changed colour and Stig talked funny and Flanker didn’t know I was married—which I’m not, I suppose—and then Houson didn’t know me and Billden wasn’t in the Municipal Cemetery but Landen was and Goliath said they’d bring him back if I got Jack Schitt out and I thought I’d lost Landen’s baby which I haven’t so everything was fine and now it’s not fine any more because I’ve found an extra toothbrush and some men’s clothes in the bathroom.’
   ‘Okay, okay,’ said Bowden in a soothing voice. ‘Slow down a bit and just let me think.’
   There was a pause as he mulled all this over. When he answered his voice was tinged with urgency—and concern. I knew he was a good friend, but until now I never knew how good.
   ‘Thursday. Calm down and listen to me. Firstly, we keep this to ourselves. Eradication can never be proved—mention this to anyone at SpecOps and the quacks will enforce your retirement on a Form D4. We don’t want that. I’ll try and fill you in with any lost memories I might have that you don’t. What was the name of your husband again?’
   ‘Landen.’
   I found strength in his approach. You could always rely on Bowden to be analytical about a problem—no matter how strange it might seem. He made me go over the day again in more detail, something that I found very calming. I asked him again about a possible boyfriend.
   ‘I’m not sure,’ he replied. ‘You’re kind of a private person.’
   ‘Come on—office rumours, SpecOps gossip; there must be something.’
   ‘There is some talk but I don’t hear a lot of it since I’m your partner. Your love life is a matter of some quiet speculation. They call you—’
   He went quiet.
   ‘What do they call me, Bowden?’
   ‘You don’t want to know.’
   ‘Tell me.’
   ‘All right.’ Bowden sighed. ‘It’s… they call you the Ice Maiden.’
   ‘The Ice Maiden?’
   ‘It’s not as bad as my nickname,’ continued Bowden. ‘I’m known as Dead Dog.’
   ‘Dead Dog?’ I repeated, trying to sound as though I’d not heard it before. ‘Ice Maiden, eh? It’s kind of, well, corny. Couldn’t they think of something better? Anyway, did I have a boyfriend or not?’
   ‘There was a rumour of someone over at SO-14—’
   I held up the croquet jacket, trying to figure out how tall this unnamed beau might be.
   ‘Do we have a positive ID?’
   ‘I think it’s only a rumour, Thursday.’
   ‘Tell me, Bowden.’
   ‘Miles,’ he said at last. ‘His name’s Miles Hawke.’
   ‘Is it serious?’
   ‘I have no idea. You don’t talk about these things to me.’
   I thanked him and put the phone down nervously, butterflies dancing in my stomach. I knew I was still pregnant, but the trouble was: who was the father? If I had a casual boyfriend named Miles, then perhaps it wasn’t Landen’s after all? I quickly called my mother, who seemed more preoccupied with putting out a fire on the kitchen stove than talking to me. I asked her when she had last met one of my boyfriends and she said that, if memory served, not for at least six years, and if I didn’t hurry up and get married she was going to have to adopt some grandchildren—or steal some from outside Tesco’s, whichever was easier. I told her I would go out and look for one as soon as possible and put the phone down.
   I paced the room in a flurry of nerves. If I hadn’t introduced this Miles bloke to Mum, then it was quite likely he wasn’t that serious; yet if he did leave his gear here then it undoubtedly was. I had an idea and rummaged in the bedside table and found a packet of unopened condoms which were three years out of date. I breathed a sigh of relief—this did seem more like me, unless Miles brought his own, of course—but then if I had a bun in the oven, then finding them was immaterial as we didn’t use them. Or perhaps the clothes weren’t Miles’s at all? And what about my memories? If they had survived, then surely Landen’s share in junior-to-be had also survived. I sat down on the bed and pulled out my hair tie. I ran my fingers though my hair, flopped back, covered my face and groaned—long and loud.

11. Granny Next

   ‘Young Thursday came that morning, as I knew she would. She had just lost Landen, as I had lost my own husband all those years ago. She had youth and hope on her side, and although she did not know it yet, she had plenty of what we call the Other Stuff. She would, I hoped, use it wisely. At the time not even her own father knew quite how important she was. More than Landen’s life would depend on her. All life would depend on her, from the lowliest paramecium to the most complex life form that would ever exist.’

From papers discovered in ex-SpecOps agent Next’s effects


   There was a thump on the door at 8 a.m. A dangerous-looking man was standing on my doorstep. I’d never seen him before, but he knew me well enough.
   ‘Next!’ he bellowed. ‘Back rent Friday or I’ll throw all your stuff in the skip!’
   ‘You can’t do that.’
   ‘I can,’ he said, holding up a dog-eared lease agreement. ‘Pets are strictly against the terms of the lease. Pay up.’
   ‘There’s no pet in here,’ I explained innocently.
   ‘What’s that, then?’
   Pickwick had made a quiet plock-plock noise and poked her head round the door to see what was going on. It was a badly timed move.
   ‘Oh, that. I’m looking after her for a friend.’
   My landlord’s eyes suddenly lit up as he looked closer at Pickwick, who shrank back nervously. She was a rare Version 1.2 and my landlord seemed to know this.
   ‘Hand over the dodo,’ he mused avariciously, ‘and I’ll give you four months’ free rent.’
   ‘She’s not for trading,’ I said firmly. I could feel Pickwick quivering behind me.
   ‘Ah,’ said my landlord greedily. ‘Then you have two days to pay all your bills or you’re out on your sweet little SpecOps arse.
   ‘You say the sweetest things.’
   He glared at me, handed me a bill and disappeared off down the corridor to harass someone else.
   My bank statements made for depressing reading. I was not good with money. My cards had reached their limit and my overdraft was nearly used up. SpecOps wages were just about enough to keep you fed and with a roof over your head, but buying the Speedster had all but cleared me out and I hadn’t even seen the garage repair bills yet. There was a nervous plock-plock from the kitchen.
   ‘I’d sooner sell myself,’ I told Pickwick, who was standing expectantly with collar and lead in her beak.
   I stashed the bank statements back into the shoe box and took her to the park. Perhaps it would be better to say that she took me—she was the one who knew the way. She played coyly with a few other dodos while I sat on a park bench. A crotchety old woman sat next to me and turned out to be Mrs Scroggins, who lived directly below. She told me not to make so much noise in future, and then, without drawing breath, gave me a few extremely useful tips about smuggling pets in and out of the building. I picked up a copy of The Owl on the way home and was glad to see that the discovery of Cardenio had not yet broken. I smuggled Pickwick back into my apartment and decided that now was the time to visit the closest thing to the Delphic Oracle I would ever know: Granny Next.
   Gran was playing Ping-Pong at the SpecOps Twilight Homes when I found her. She was thrashing her opponent soundly while nervous nurses looked on, trying to stop her before she fell over and broke another couple of bones. Granny Next was old. Really old. Her pink skin looked more wrinkled than the most wrinkled prune I had ever seen, and her face and hands were livid with dark liver spots. She was dressed in her usual blue gingham dress and hailed me from the other side of the room as I walked in.
   ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Thursday! Fancy a game?’
   ‘Don’t you think you’ve played enough today?’
   ‘Nonsense’ Grab a paddle and we’ll play to the first point.’
   I picked up a paddle as a ball careened past me.
   ‘Wasn’t ready!’ I protested as another ball came over the net. I swiped at it and missed.
   ‘Ready is as ready does, Thursday. I’d have thought you knew that more than most!’
   I grunted and returned the next ball, which was deftly deflected back to me.
   ‘How are you, Gran?’
   ‘Old,’ she replied, whacking the ball towards me with savage backspin. ‘Old and tired and I need looking after. The Grim Reaper is lurking close by—I can almost smell him!’
   ‘Gran!’
   She missed my shot and called ‘No ball’ before pausing for a moment.
   ‘Do you want to know a secret, young Thursday?’
   ‘Go on, then,’ I replied, taking the opportunity to retrieve some balls.
   ‘I am cursed with eternal life!’
   ‘Perhaps it just seems like it, Gran.’
   ‘Insolent pup. I didn’t attain one hundred and eight years on physical fortitude or a statistical quirk alone. I got mixed up with some oddness in my youth and the long and short of it is that I can’t shuffle off this mortal coil until I have read the ten most boring classics.’
   I looked at her earnest expression and bright eyes. She wasn’t kidding.
   ‘How far have you got?’ I replied, returning a ball that went wide.
   ‘Well, that’s the trouble, isn’t it?’ she replied, serving again. ‘I read what I think is the dullest book of God’s own earth, finish the last page, go to sleep with a smile on my face and wake up the following morning feeling better than ever!’
   ‘Have you tried Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene?, I asked. ‘Six volumes of boring Spenserian stanzas, the only saving grace of which is that he didn’t write the twelve volumes he had planned.’
   ‘Read them all,’ replied Gran, ‘and his other poems, too, just in case.’
   I put down my paddle. The balls kept plinking past me.
   ‘You win, Gran. I need to talk to you.’
   She reluctantly agreed and I helped her to her bedroom, a small, chintzily decorated cell she darkly referred to as her ‘departure lounge’. It was sparsely furnished; there was a picture of me, Anton, Joffy and my mother alongside a couple of empty frames.
   ‘They sideslipped my husband, Gran.’
   ‘When did they take him?’ she asked, looking at me over her glasses in the way that grannies do; she never questioned what I said and I explained everything to her as quickly as I could—except for the bit about the baby. I’d promised Landen I wouldn’t.
   ‘Hmm,’ said Granny Next when I had finished. ‘They took my husband too—I know how you feel.’
   ‘Why did they do it?’
   ‘The same reason they did it to you. Love is a wonderful thing, my dear, but it leaves you wide open to blackmail. Give way to tyranny and others will suffer just as badly as you—perhaps worse.’
   ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t try to get Landen back?’
   ‘Not at all; just think carefully before you help them. They don’t care about you or Landen; all they want is Jack Schitt. Is Anton still dead?’
   ‘I’m afraid so.’
   ‘What a shame. I hoped to see your brother before I popped myself. Do you know what the worst bit about dying is?’
   ‘Tell me, Gran.’
   ‘You never get to see how it all turns out.’
   ‘Did you get your husband back, Gran?’
   Instead of answering she unexpectedly placed her hand on my midriff and smiled that small and all-knowing smile that grandmothers seem to learn at granny school, along with crochet, January sales battle tactics and wondering what you are doing upstairs.
   ‘June?’ she asked.

   You never argue with Granny Next, nor seek to know how she knows such things.
   ‘July. But Gran, I don’t know if it’s Landen’s, or Miles Hawke’s, or whose!’
   ‘You should call this Hawke fellow and ask him.’
   ‘I can’t do that!’
   ‘Worry yourself woolly, then,’ she retorted. ‘Mind you, my money is on Landen as the father—as you say, the memories avoided the sideslip, so why not the baby? Believe me, everything will turn out fine. Perhaps not in the way that you imagine, but fine nonetheless.’
   I wished I could share her optimism. She took her hand off my stomach and lay back on the bed, the energy expended during the Ping-Pong having taken its toll.
   ‘I need to find a way to get back into books without the Prose Portal, Gran.’
   She opened her eyes and looked at me with a keenness that belied her old age.
   ‘Humph!’ she said, then added: ‘I was SpecOps for seventy-seven years in eighteen different departments. I jumped backwards and forwards and even sideways on occasion. I’ve chased bad guys who make Hades look like St Zvlkx and saved the world from annihilation eight times. I’ve seen such weird shit you can’t even begin to comprehend, but for all of that I have absolutely no idea how Mycroft managed to jump you into Jane Eyre.’
   ‘Ah.’
   ‘Sorry, Thursday—but that’s the way it is. If I were you I’d work the problem out backwards. Who was the last person you met who could book-jump?’
   ‘Mrs Nakajima.’
   ‘And how did she manage it?’
   ‘She just read herself in, I suppose.’
   ‘Have you tried it?’
   I shook my head.
   ‘Perhaps you should,’ she replied with deathly seriousness. ‘The first time you went into Jane Eyre—wasn’t that a book jump?’
   ‘I guess.’
   ‘Perhaps,’ she said, as she picked a book at random off the shelf above her bed and tossed it across to me, ‘perhaps you had better try.’
   I picked the book up.
   ‘The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies?’
   ‘Well, you’ve got to start somewhere, haven’t you?’ replied Gran with a chuckle. I helped her take off her blue gingham shoes and made her more comfortable.
   ‘One hundred and eight!’ she muttered ‘I feel like the bunny in that Fusioncell ad—you know, the one that has to run on “Brand X”?’
   ‘You’re Fusioncell all the way to me, Gran.’
   She gave a faint smile and leaned back on the pillows.
   ‘Read the book to me, my dear.’
   I sat down and opened the small Beatrix Potter volume. I glanced up at Gran, who had closed her eyes.
   ‘Read!’
   So I did, right from the front to the back.
   ‘Anything?’
   ‘No,’ I replied sadly, ‘nothing.’
   ‘Not even the whiff of garden refuse or the distant buzz of a lawnmower?’
   ‘Not a thing.’
   ‘Hah!’ said Gran. ‘Read it to me again.’
   So I read it again, and again after that.
   ‘Still nothing?’
   ‘No, Gran,’ I replied, beginning to get bored.
   ‘How do you see the character of Mrs Tittlemouse?’
   ‘Resourceful and intelligent,’ I mused. ‘Probably a gossip and likes to name-drop. Leagues ahead of Benjamin in the brain department.’
   ‘How do you figure that’’ queried Gran.
   ‘Well, by allowing his children to sleep so vulnerably in the open air Benjamin clearly shows minimal parenting skills, yet he has enough preservation to cover his own face. It was Flopsy who had to come and look for him as this sort of thing has obviously happened before—it is clear that Benjamin can’t be trusted with the children. Once again the mother has to show restraint and wisdom.’
   ‘Maybe so,’ replied Gran, ‘but there wasn’t a great deal of wisdom in creeping into the garden and watching from the window while Mr and Mrs McGregor discovered they had been duped with the rotten vegetables, now, was there?’
   She had a point.
   ‘A narrative necessity,’ I replied. ‘I think there is more high drama if you follow the outcome of the rabbit’s subterfuge, don’t you? I think Flopsy, had she been making all the decisions, would have just returned to the burrow but was, on this occasion, overruled by Beatrix Potter.’
   ‘It’s an interesting theory,’ commented Gran, stretching her toes out on the counterpane and wiggling them to keep the circulation going. ‘Mr McGregor’s a nasty piece of work, isn’t he? Quite the Darth Vader of children’s literature.’
   ‘Misunderstood,’ I told her ‘I see Mrs McGregor as the villain of the piece. A sort of Lady Macbeth. His laboured counting and inane chuckling might indicate a certain degree of dementia that allows him to be easily dominated by Mrs McGregor’s more aggressive personality. I think their marriage is in trouble, too. She describes him as a “silly old man” and “a doddering old fool” and claims the rotten vegetables in the sack are just a pointless prank to annoy her.’
   ‘Anything else?’
   ‘Not really. I think that’s about it Good stuff, isn’t it?’
   But Gran didn’t answer; she just chuckled softly to herself.
   ‘So you’re still here, then,’ she commented. ‘You didn’t jump into Mr and Mrs McGregor’s cottage?’
   ‘No.’
   ‘In that case,’ began Gran with a mischievous air, ‘how did you know she called him a “doddering old fool”?’
   ‘It’s in the text.’
   ‘Better check, young Thursday.’

  I flicked to the correct page and found, indeed, that Mrs McGregor had said no such thing.
   ‘How odd!’ I said. ‘I must have made it up.’
   ‘Maybe,’ replied Gran, ‘or perhaps you overheard it. Close your eyes and describe the kitchen in Mr McGregor’s cottage.’
   ‘Lilac-washed walls,’ I mused, ‘a large range with a kettle singing merrily above a coal fire. There is a dresser against one wall with floral-patterned crocks upon it and atop the scrubbed kitchen table there is a jug with flowers—’
   I lapsed into silence.
   ‘And how would you have known that?’ asked Gran triumphantly. ‘Unless you had actually been there?’
   I quickly reread the book several times, concentrating hard, but nothing similar happened. Perhaps I wanted it too much, I don’t know. After the tenth reading I was just looking at the words and nothing else.
   ‘It’s a start,’ said Gran encouragingly. ‘Try another book when you get home, but don’t expect too much too soon—and I’d strongly recommend you go and look for Mrs Nakaima. Where does she live?’
   ‘She took retirement in Jane Eyre.’
   ‘Before that?’
   ‘Osaka.’
   ‘Then perhaps you should seek her there—and for heaven’s sake relax!’
   I told her I would, kissed her on the forehead and quietly left the room.

12. At Home with My Memories

   ‘Toad News Network was the top news station, Lydia Startright their top reporter. If there was a top event, you could bet your top dollar that Toad would make it their top story. When Tunbridge Wells was given to the Russians as war reparations there was no topper story—except, that is, the mammoth migrations, speculation on Bonzo the Wonder Hound’s next movie or whether Lola Vavoom shaved her armpits or not. My father said that it was a delightfully odd—and dangerously self-destructive—quirk of humans that we were far more interested in pointless trivia than genuine news stories.’

THURSDAY NEXT. A Life in SpecOps

   Since I was still on official leave pending the outcome of the SO-1 hearing, I went home and let myself into my apartment, kicked off my shoes and poured some pistachios into Pickwick’s dish. I made some coffee and called Bowden for a long chat, trying to find out what else had changed since Landen’s eradication. As it turned out, not much. Anton had still been blamed for the Charge of the Light Armoured Brigade, I had still lived in London for ten years, still arrived back in Swindon at the same time, still been up at Uffington picnicking the day before. Dad had once said that the past has an astonishing resistance to change, he wasn’t kidding. I thanked Bowden, hung up and painted for a while, trying to relax. When that failed I went for a walk up at Uffington, joining the sightseers who had gathered to watch the smashed Hispano-Suiza being loaded on to a trailer. The Leviathan Airship Company had begun an inquiry and volunteered one of their directors to accept charges of corporate manslaughter. The hapless executive had begun his seven-year term already, thus hoping to avoid an expensive and damaging lawsuit for his company.
   I returned home, fixed myself some supper and then flopped in front of the telly, switching to Toad News Network.
   ‘—the Czar’s chief negotiator has accepted the Foreign Minister’s offer of Tunbridge Wells as war reparations,’ intoned the anchorman gravely. ‘The small town and two-thousand-acre environs would become a Russian-owned enclave named Botchkamos Istochnik within England and all citizens of the new Russian colony would be offered dual nationality. On the spot for TNN is Lydia Startright. Lydia, how are things down there?’
   The screen changed to Toad News Network’s pre-eminent reporter in the main street of Tunbridge Wells.
   ‘There is a mixture of disbelief and astonishment among the residents of this sleepy Kent town,’ responded Startright soberly, surrounded by an assortment of retired gentlefolk carrying shopping and looking vaguely bemused. ‘Panic warm-clothing-shopping has given way to anger that the Foreign Secretary could make such a decision without mentioning some sort of generous compensation package. I have with me retired cavalry officer Colonel Prongg. Tell me, Colonel, what is your reaction to the news that you might be Colonel Pronski this time next month?’
   ‘Well,’ said the colonel in an aggrieved tone, ‘I would like to say that I am disgusted and appalled at the decision. Appalled and disgusted in the strongest possible terms. I didn’t fight the Russkis for forty years only to become one in my retirement. Myself and Mrs Prongg will be moving, obviously!’
   ‘Since Imperial Russia is the second-wealthiest nation on the planet,’ replied Lydia, ‘Tunbridge Wells may find itself, like the island of Fetlar, to be an important offshore banking institution for Russia’s wealthy nobility.’
   ‘Obviously,’ replied the colonel, thinking hard, ‘I would have to wait to see how things went before coming to any final decision. But if the takeover means colder winters, we’ll move back to Brighton. Chilblains, y’know.’
   ‘There you have it, Carl. This is Lydia Startright reporting for Toad News Network, Tunbridge Wells.’
   The scene switched back to the studio.
   ‘Trouble at Mole TV,’ continued the anchorman, ‘and a bitter blow for the producers of Surviving Cortes, the channel’s popular Aztec-conquering re-enactment series, when, instead of being simply voted out of the sealed set of Tenochtitlan, a contestant was sacrificed live to the Sun God. The show has been cancelled and an inquiry has been launched. Mole TV were said to be “sorry and dismayed about the incident”, but pointed out that the show was “the highest rated on TV, even after the blood sacrifice”. Brett?’
   The other newsreader appeared on-screen.
   ‘Thank you, Carl. Henry, a two-and-a-half-ton male juvenile from the Kirkbride herd, was the first mammoth to reach the winter pastures of Redruth at 6.07 p.m. this evening. Clarence Oldspot was there. Clarence?’
   The scene changed to a field in Cornwall where a bored-looking mammoth had almost vanished inside a scrum of TV news reporters and crowds of well-wishers. Clarence Oldspot was still wearing his flak jacket and looked bitterly disappointed that he was reporting on hairy, once extinct herbivores and not the Crimean front line.
   ‘Thank you, Brett. Well, the migration season is truly upon us and Henry, a two-hundred-to-one outsider, wrong-footed the bookies when—’
   I flicked channels Name That Fruit!, the nauseating quiz show, appeared. I flicked again to a documentary about the Whig political party’s links to radical Baconian groups in the seventies. I switched through several other channels before returning to the Toad News Network.
   The phone rang and I picked it up.
   ‘It’s Miles,’ said a voice that sounded like a hundred push-ups in under three minutes.
   ‘Who?’
   ‘Miles.’
   ‘Aaah!’ I said in shock. Miles. Miles Hawke, the owner of the boxer shorts and the tasteless sports jacket.
   ‘Thursday? You okay?’
   ‘Me? Fine. Fine. Completely fine. Couldn’t be finer. How are you?’
   ‘Do you want me to come round? You sound kinda odd.’
   ‘No!’ I answered a little too sharply. ‘I mean, no thanks—I mean we saw each other only, um—’
   ‘Two weeks ago?’
   ‘Yes. And I’m very busy. God, how busy I am. Never been busier. That’s me. Busy as a busy thing—’
   ‘I heard you went up against Flanker. I was concerned.’
   ‘Did you and I ever—’
   I couldn’t say it but I needed to know.
   ‘Did you and I ever what?’
   ‘Did you and I—’
   Think, think.
   ‘Did you and I ever… visit the mammoth migrations?’
   Damn and blast!
   ‘The migrations? No. Should we have? Are you sure you’re okay?’
   I started to panic—and that was daft, given the circumstances. When facing people like Hades I didn’t panic at all.
   ‘Yes—I mean no. Oops, there’s the doorbell. Must be my cab.’
   ‘A cab? What happened to your car?’
   ‘A pizza. A cab delivering a pizza. Got to go!’
   And before he could protest I had put the phone down.
   I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand and muttered:
   ‘Idiot… idiot… idiot!’