Jasper Fforde_Thursday Next_05 (4 page)

“Don’t move,” said Stig in a low rumble. “We don’t want to hurt it.”

He never did. Stig saw any renegade unextinctees as something akin to family and always caught them alive, if possible. On the other hand, chimeras, a hodgepodge of the hobby sequencer’s art, were another matter—he dispatched them without mercy, and without pain. The
Diatryma
made a vicious jab toward me; I jumped to my left as the beak snapped shut with the sound of oversize castanets. Quick as a flash, Stig leaped forward and covered the creature’s head with an old flour sack, which seemed to subdue it enough for him to wrestle it to the floor. I joined in, as did the entire storeroom staff, and within a few moments we had wrapped some duct tape securely around its massive beak, rendering it harmless.

“Thanks,” said Stig, securing a leash around the bird’s neck.

“Salisbury?” I asked as we walked past the rolls of Wilton shag and cushioned linoleum in a wide choice of colors.

“Devizes,” replied the neanderthal. “We had to run for eight miles across open farmland to catch it.”

“Did anyone see you?” I asked, mindful of any rumors getting out.

“Who’d believe them if they did?” he replied. “But there’re more
Diatrymas
—we’ll be out again to night.”

Acme Carpets, as you might have gathered, was just the cover story. In truth it was the old SpecOps under another name. The ser vice hadn’t really been disbanded in the early nineties—it just went underground, and freelance. All
strictly
unofficial, of course. Luckily, the Swindon chief of police was Braxton Hicks, my old divisional boss at SpecOps. Although he suspected what we got up to, he told me he would feign ignorance unless “someone gets eaten or something.” Besides, if we didn’t mop up all the bizarrer elements of modern living, his regular officers would have to, and Braxton might then have a demand of bonus payments for “actions beyond the call of duty.” And Hicks loved his bud get almost as much as he loved his golf. So the cops didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother them.

“We have a question,” said Stig. “Do we have to mention the possibility of being trampled by mammoths on our Health and Safety Risk-Assessment Form?”

“No—that’s the part of Acme we don’t want anyone to know about. The safety stuff only relates to carpet laying.”

“We understand,” said Stig. “What about being shredded by a chimera?”

“Just carpets, Stig.”

“Okay. By the way,” he added, “have you told Landen about all your SpecOps work yet? You said you were going to.”

“I’m…building up to it.”

“You should tell him, Thursday.”

“I know.”

“And have a good anniversary of your mother giving birth to you.”

“Thank you.”

I bade Stig good day and then walked to the store offices, which were situated in a raised position halfway between the storeroom and the showroom floor. From there you could see pretty much everything that went on in the building. As I walked in, a man looked up from where he was crouched under the desk.

“Have you captured it?” he asked in a quavering voice.

“Yes.”

He looked relieved and clambered out from his hiding place. He was in his early forties, and his features were just beginning to show the shades of middle age. Around his eyes were fine lines, his dark hair now flecked with gray. Even though he was management, he also wore an Acme Carpets uniform. Only his looked a lot better on him than mine did on me. In fact, he looked a lot better in his than
anyone
in the establishment, leading us to accuse him of having his professionally tailored, something he strenuously denied but, given his fastidious nature, not outside the bounds of possibility. Bowden Cable had been my partner at the Swindon branch of the Literary Detectives, and it seemed only natural that he would have the top admin job at Acme Carpets when we were all laid off from SpecOps.

“Are we busy today?” I asked, pouring myself a cup of coffee. Bowden pointed to the newspaper. “Have you read this?”

“The stupidity surplus?”

“Part of it, I guess,” he replied despondently. “Incredibly enough, reality TV has just gotten
worse.
”

“Is that possible?” I asked. “Wasn’t
Celebrity Trainee Pathologist
the pits?” I thought for a moment.

“Actually,
Whose Life Support Do We Switch Off?
was worse. Or maybe
Sell Your Granny
. Wow, the choice these days makes it all so tricky to decide.”

Bowden laughed.

“I’ll agree that
Granny
lowered the bar for distasteful program makers everywhere, but RTA-TV, never one to shrink from a challenge, has devised
Samaritan Kidney Swap.
Ten renal-failure patients take turns trying to convince a tissue-typed donor—and the voting viewers—which one should have his spare kidney.”

I groaned. Reality TV was to me the worst form of entertainment—the modern equivalent of paying sixpence to watch lunatics howling at the walls down at the local mad house. I shook my head sadly.

“What’s wrong with a good book?” I asked. Bowden shrugged. In these days of junk TV, short attention spans and easy-to-digest sound bites, it seemed that the book, the noble device to which both Bowden and I had devoted much of our lives, was being marginalized into just another human storytelling experience also-ran, along with the epic poem, Greek theater, Jackanory, Beta and Tarzanagrams.

“How’s the family?” asked Bowden, trying to elevate the mood.

“They’re all good,” I replied. “Except Friday, who is still incapable of any human activity other than torpidity.”

“And Pickwick? Feathers growing back?”

“No—listen, can you knit?”

“No…. Why?”

“No reason. What’s on the books for us today?”

Bowden picked up a clipboard and thumbed through the pages. “Spike’s got a brace of undead to deal with and a possible pack of howlers in the Savenake. Stig’s still on the path of those
Diatrymas.
The Taste Division has got an outbreak of stonecladding to deal with in Cirencester, and the Pampas Squad will be busy on a slash ’n’ burn in Bristol. Oh, yes—and we’ve an outbreak of doppelgängers in Chippenham.”

“Any literary stuff?” I asked hopefully.

“Only Mrs. Mattock and her stolen first editions—
again.
Face it, Thurs, books just don’t light anyone’s candle these days. It’s as good that they don’t—add the sixteen or so carpets to be laid and the twenty-eight quotes needed yesterday, and we’re kind of stretched. Do we pull Spike off zombies to do stair runners?”

“Can’t we just drag in some freelance installers?”

“And pay them with what? An illegal
Diatryma
each?”

“It’s that bad, is it?”

“Thursday, it’s
always
that bad. We’re nuzzling up to the overdraft limit again.”

“No problem. I’ve got a seriously good cheese deal going down this evening.”

“I don’t want to know about it. When you’re arrested, I need
deniability
—and besides, if you actually sold carpets instead of gallivanting around like a lunatic, you wouldn’t need to buy and sell on the volatile cheese market.”

“That reminds me,” I said with a smile. “I’ll be out of my office today, so don’t put any calls through.”

“Thursday!” he said in an exasperated tone. “
Please
don’t vanish today of
all
days. I really need you to quote for the new lobby carpet in the Finis, I’ve got the Wilton rep popping in at four-thirty to show us their new line, and the Health and Safety Inspectorate is coming in to make sure we’re up to speed.”

“On safety procedures?”

“Good Lord no! On how to fill the forms in properly.”

“Listen,” I said, “I’ve got to take Friday to the ChronoGuard career night at five-thirty, so I’ll try to get back a couple of hours before then and do some quotes. Have a list ready for me.”

“Already done,” he said, and before I could make up an excuse, he passed me a clipboard full of addresses and contact names.

“Good,” I muttered, “very efficient—nice job.”

I took my coffee and walked to my own office, a small and windowless room next to the forklift-recharging point. I sat at my desk and stared despondently at the list Bowden had given me, then rocked back and forth on my chair in an absent mood. Stig had been right. I
should
tell Landen about what I got up to, but life was better with him thinking I was working at Acme. Besides, running several illegal SpecOps departments wasn’t all I did. It was…well, the tip of a very large and misshapen iceberg. I got up, took off my jacket and was about to change into more comfortable clothes when there was another tap at the door. I opened it to reveal a large and muscular man a few years younger than myself and looking even more incongruous in his Acme Carpets uniform than I looked in mine—although I doubted that anyone would ever try to tell him so. He had long dreadlocks that reached almost to his waist and were tied back in a loose hair band, and he was wearing a liberal amount of jewelry, similar to the sort that Goths are fond of—skulls, bats, things like that. But it wasn’t for decoration—it was for protection. This was ex–SO-17 operative “Spike” Stoker, the most successful vampire staker and werewolf hunter in the Southwest, and although no friend of the undead, he was a friend of mine.

“Happy birthday, bookworm,” he said genially. “Got a second?”

I looked at my watch. I was late for work. Not carpet work, of course, since I was already there, but
work
work.

“Is it about health and safety?”

“No, this is important and relevant.”

He led the way to the other side of the storeroom, just next to where we kept the adhesive, tacks and grippers. We entered a door hidden behind a poster for Brinton’s Carpets and took a small flight of steps down to the level below. Spike opened a sturdy door with a large brass key, and we stepped into what I described as the “Containment Suite” but what Spike referred to as the “Weirdshitorium.” His appraisal was better. Our work took us to the very limits of credibility—to a place where even the most stalwart conspiracy theorists would shake their heads and remark sarcastically, “Oh, yeah…right.” When we were SpecOps, we had secrecy, manpower, bud get and unaccountability to help us do the job. Now we had just secrecy, complimentary tea and cookies and a big brass key. It was here that Stig kept his creatures until he decided what to do with them and where Spike incarcerated any of the captured undead for observation—in case they were thinking of becoming either
nearly
dead or
mostly
dead. Death, I had discovered long ago, was available in varying flavors, and none of them particularly palatable. We passed a cell that was full of gallon-size glass jars containing captured Supreme Evil Beings. They were small, wraithlike objects about the size and texture of well-used dish cloths, only less substantial, and they spent most of the time bickering over who was the
most
supreme Supreme Evil Being. But we weren’t here to bother with SEBs; Spike led me on to a cell right at the end of the corridor and opened the door. Sitting on a chair in the middle of the room was a man in jeans and a plain leather jacket. He was staring at the floor with the light on above, so I couldn’t at first see his face, and his large and well-manicured hands were clenched tightly in front of him. I also noticed that his ankle was attached to the floor by a sturdy chain. I winced. Spike would have to be right about this one—imprisonment of something actually
human
was definitely illegal and could be seriously bad for business.

“Hey!” said Spike and the figure slowly raised his head to look at me. I recognized him instantly and not without a certain degree of alarm. It was Felix8, Acheron Hades’ henchman from way back in the days of the
Jane Eyre
adventure. Hades had taken the face from the first Felix when he died and implanted it on a suitable stranger who’d been bent to his evil will. Whenever a Felix died, which was quite often, he just swapped the face. Felix8’s real name was Danny Chance, but his freewill had been appropriated by Hades—he was merely an empty vessel, devoid of pity or morals. His life had no meaning other than to do his master’s bidding. The point now was, his master had died sixteen years ago, and the last time I saw Felix8 was at the Penderyn Hotel in Merthyr, the capital of the Welsh Socialist Republic. Felix8 looked at me with a slight sense of amusement and gave a subtle nod of greeting.

“Where did you find him?” I asked.

“Outside your place half an hour ago. He had this on him.” Spike showed me an ugly-looking machine pistol with a delicately carved stock. “There was a single round in the chamber.”

I bent down to Felix8’s level and stared at him for a moment. “Who sent you?”

Felix8 smiled, said nothing and looked at the chain that was firmly clasped around his ankle.

“What do you want?”

Still Felix8 said nothing.

“Where have you been these past sixteen years?”

All my questions were met with blank insolence, and after five minutes of this I walked back outside the cell block, Spike at my side.

“Who reported him?” I asked.

“Your stalker—what’s his name again?”

“Millon.”

“Right. He thought Felix8 might have been
another
stalker and was going to warn him off, but when he noticed the absence of notebooks, cameras or even a duffel coat, he called me.”

I thought for a moment. If Felix8 was back on my trail, then somebody in the Hades family was looking for revenge—and they were big on revenge. I’d had run-ins with the Hades family before, and I thought they’d learned their lesson by now. I had personally defeated Acheron, Aornis and Cocytus, which left only Lethe and Phlgethon. Lethe was the “white sheep” of the family and spent most of his time doing charity work, which left only Phlgethon, who had dropped off the radar in the mid-nineties, despite numerous manhunts by SO-5 and myself.

“What do you suggest?” I asked. “He doesn’t fall into any of the categories that might ethically give us a reason to keep him under lock and key without trial of some sort. After all, he’s only wearing the
face
of Felix—under there he’s an erased Danny Chance, married father of two who went missing in 1985.”