Something rotten (13 page)

Flanker gave a rare smile.

“Good. I’ll have my divisional head of SO-14 get in touch with you.” He turned to Braxton. “But I’ll still need that report on Tuesday.”

“You’ll get it,” replied Braxton, “. . . on Friday.”

Flanker glared at us both and without another word strode from the room, his minions at his heels. When the door closed I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sir, I—”

“I don’t want to hear anything more about it,” replied Braxton sharply, gathering up his papers. “I retire in two months’ time and wanted to do something that made my whole pen-pushing, play-it-safe, shiny-arse career actually be worth it. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the LiteraTec division with all this insane Danish book-burning stuff, but what I do know is that people like you need to stay in it. Lead them on a merry goose chase, young lady—I can keep Flanker wrapped up in red tape pretty much forever.”

“Braxton,” I said, giving him a spontaneous hug, “you’re a darling!”

“Nonsense!” he said gruffly, and a tad embarrassed. “But I do expect a little something in return.”

“And that is?”

“Well,” he said slowly, his eyes dropping to the ground, “I wonder if you and I might—”

“Might what?”

“Might . . . play golf on Sunday. A few holes.” His eyes gleamed. “Just for you to get the taste. Believe me, as soon as you grasp the handle of a golf club, you’ll be hooked forever! Mrs. Hicks need never know. How about it?”

“I’ll be there at nine,” I told him, laughing.

“You’ll be a long time waiting—I get there at eleven.”

“Eleven it is.”

I shook his hand and walked out of the door a free woman. Sometimes help arrives from the last place you expect it.

7.

The Literary Detectives

Goliath Corporation Publishes Broad Denial

The Goliath Corporation yesterday attempted to head off annoying and time-wasting speculation by issuing the broadest denial to date. “Quite simply, we deny everything,” said Mr. Toedee, the Goliath head PR operative, “including any story that you might have heard now or in the future.” Goliath’s shock tactics reflected the growing unease with Goliath’s unaccountability, especially over its advanced weapons division. “It’s very simple,” continued Mr. Toedee. “Until we have been elevated to a Faith when everything can be denied using the ‘Goliath works in mysterious ways’ excuse, we expressly deny possessing, or any involvement with, the Ovinator, Anti-Smite technology, Speedgrow tomatoes or Diatrymas running wild in the New Forest. In fact, we don’t know what any of these things are.” To cries of “What is an Ovinator?” and “Tomatoes?” Mr. Toedee declared the press conference over, blessed everyone and departed.

Article in
The Toad on Sunday,
July 3, 1988

I
found Bowden fretting in the LiteraTec office and related what had happened.

“Well, well,” he said at last, “I think old Braxton’s got a crush.”

“Oh, stop it!”

The office we were sitting in resembled a large library in a country house somewhere. It was two stories high, with shelves crammed full of books covering every square inch of wall space. A spiral staircase led to a catwalk that ran around the wall, enabling access to the upper galleries. It was neat and methodical—but somehow less busy than I remembered.

“Where is everyone?”

“When you were here last, we had a staff of eight. Now it’s only Victor, me, and Malin. All the rest were reassigned or laid off.”

“All SpecOps departments?”

Bowden laughed. “Of course not! The bullyboys at SO-14 are alive and well and answer to Yorrick Kaine’s every order. SO-1 hasn’t seen many cuts, either—”

“Thursday, what a delightful surprise!”

It was Victor Analogy, my old boss here at the Swindon LiteraTecs. He was an elderly gentlemen with large muttonchop side-burns and was dressed in a neat tweed suit and bow tie. He had taken off his jacket due to the summer heat but still managed to cut a very dashing figure, despite his advanced age.

“Victor, you’re looking very well!”

“And you, dear girl. What devilry have you been up to since last we met?”

“It’s a long story.”

“The best sort. Let me guess:
inside
fiction?”

“In one.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s quite good, really. Confusing at times and subject to moments of extreme imaginative overload, but varied, and the weather’s generally pretty good. Can we talk safely in here?”

Victor nodded, and we sat down. I told them about Jurisfiction, the Council of Genres and everything else that had happened to me during my tenure as Bellman. I even told them loosely about my involvement in
The Solution of Edwin Drood,
which amused them both no end.

“I’ve always wondered about that,” mused Victor thoughtfully. “But you’re sure about Yorrick Kaine’s being fictional?”

I told him that I was.

He stood up and walked to the window. “You’ll have a hard time getting close,” said Victor thoughtfully. “Does he know you’re back?”

“Definitely,” said Bowden.

“Then you could be threatening his position as absolute ruler of England almost as much as President Formby is. I should keep on your toes, my girl. Is there anything we can do to help?”

I thought for a moment. “There is, actually. We can’t find which book Yorrick Kaine has escaped from. He could be using a false name, and we should contact any readers who might recognize the Chancellor’s somewhat crazed antics from an obscure character they might have read somewhere. We at Jurisfiction have been going through the Great Library at our end, but we’ve still drawn a blank—every character in fiction has been accounted for.”

“We’ll do what we can, Thursday. When can you rejoin us?”

“I don’t know,” I answered slowly. “I have to get my husband back. Remember I told you he was eradicated by the ChronoGuard?”

“Yes.
Lindane,
wasn’t it?”

“Landen. If it weren’t for him, I’d probably stay inside fiction.”

We all fell silent for a moment.

“So,” I said cheerfully, “what’s been happening in the world of the LiteraTecs?”

Victor frowned.

“We can’t hold with the book-burning lark of Kaine’s. You heard about the order to start incinerating Danish literature?”

I nodded.

“Kierkegaard’s works are being rounded up as we speak. I told Braxton that if we were asked to do any of it we’d resign.”

“Oh-ah.”

“I’m not sure I like the way you said that,” said Bowden.

I winced. “I agreed to be the SO-14 Danish Book Seizure Liaison Officer for Flanker—sorry. I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“I see that as
good
news,” put in Bowden. “You can have them searching in places they won’t find any Danish books. Just be careful. Flanker has been suspicious ever since we said we were too busy to find out who was planning to smuggle copies of
The Concept of Dread
to Wales for safekeeping.”

Bowden laughed and lowered his voice. “It wasn’t an excuse,” he chuckled. “We actually
were
too busy—gathering copies of banned books ready for transportation to Wales!”

Victor grimaced. “I really don’t want to hear this, Bowden. If you get caught, we’ll all be for the high jump!”

“Some things are worth going to jail for, Victor,” replied Bowden in an even tone. “As LiteraTecs we swore to uphold and defend the written word—not indulge a crazed politician’s worst paranoic fantasies.”

“Just be careful.”

“Of course,” replied Bowden. “It might come to nothing if we can’t find a way to get the books out of England—the Welsh border shouldn’t be a problem since Wales aligned itself with Denmark. I don’t suppose you have any ideas how to get across the English border post?”

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “How many copies of banned books do you want to smuggle anyway?”

“About four truckloads.”

I whistled. Things—like cheese, for instance—were usually smuggled
in
to England. I didn’t know how I’d get banned books
out.

“I’ll give it a shot. What else is going on?”

“Usual stuff,” replied Bowden. “Faked Milton, Jonson, Swift . . . Montague and Capulet street gangs . . . someone discovered a first draft of
The Mill on the Floss
entitled
The Sploshing of the Weirs
. Also, the Daphne Farquitt Specialist Bookshop went up in smoke.”

“Insurance scam?”

“No—probably anti-Farquitt protesters again.”

Farquitt had penned her first bodice-ripping novel in 1932 and had been writing pretty much the same one over and over again ever since. Loved by many and hated by a vitriolic minority, Farquitt was England’s leading romantic novelist.

“There’s also been a huge increase in the use of performance-enhancing drugs by novelists,” added Victor. “Last year’s Booker speedwriting winner was stripped of his award when he tested positive for Cartlandromin. And only last week Handley Paige narrowly missed a two-year writing ban for failing a random dope test.”

“Sometimes I wonder if we don’t have too many rules,” murmured Victor pensively, and we all three stood in silence, nodding thoughtfully for a moment.

Bowden broke the silence. He produced a piece of stained paper wrapped in a cellophane evidence bag and passed it across to me. “What do you make of this?”

I read it, not recognizing the words but recognizing the style. It was a sonnet by Shakespeare—and a pretty good one, too.

“Shakespeare, but it’s not Elizabethan—the mention of Howdy Doody would seem to indicate that—but it
feels
like his. What did the Verse Meter Analyzer say about it?”

“Ninety-one percent probability of Will as the author,” replied Victor.

“Where did you get it?”

“Off the body of a down-and-out by the name of Shaxtper killed on Tuesday evening. We think someone has been cloning Shakespeares.”

“Cloning Shakespeares? Are you sure? Couldn’t it just be a ChronoGuard ‘temporal kidnap’ sort of thing?”

“No. Blood analysis tells us they were all vaccinated at birth against rubella, mumps and so forth.”

“Wait—you’ve got more than one?”

“Three,” said Bowden. “There’s been something of a spate recently.”

“When can you come back to work, Thursday?” asked Victor solemnly. “As you can see, we need you.”

I paused for a moment. “I’m going to need a week to get my life into gear first, sir. There are a few pressing matters that I have to attend to.”

“What, may I ask,” said Victor, “is more important than Montague and Capulet street gangs, cloned Shakespeares, smuggling Kierkegaard out of the country and authors using banned substances?”

“Finding reliable child care.”

“Goodness!” said Victor. “Congratulations! You must bring the little squawker in sometime. Mustn’t she, Bowden?”

“Absolutely.”

“Bit of a problem, that,” murmured Victor. “Can’t have you dashing around the place only to have to get home at five to make junior’s tea. Perhaps we’d better handle all this on our own.”

“No,” I said with an assertiveness that made them both jump. “No, I’m coming back to work. I just need to sort a few things out. Does SpecOps have a nursery?”

“No.”

“Ah. Well, I suspect I shall think of something. If I get my husband back, there won’t be a problem. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

There was a pause.

“Well, we have to respect that, I suppose,” said Victor solemnly. “We’re just glad that you’re back. Aren’t we, Bowden?”

“Yes,” replied my ex-partner, “very glad indeed.”

8.

Time Waits for No Man

SpecOps-12 is the ChronoGuard, the governmental department dealing with temporal stability. It is their job to maintain the integrity of the Standard History Eventline (SHE) and police the timestream against any unauthorized changes or usage. Their most brilliant work is never noticed, as changes in the past always seem to have been that way. It is not unusual in any one ChronoGuard work shift for history to flex dramatically before settling back down to the SHE. Planet-destroying cataclysms generally happen twice a week but are carefully rerouted by skilled ChronoGuard operatives. The citizenry never notices a thing—which is just as well, really.

Colonel Next, QT CG (nonexst.),
Upstream/Downstream (
unpublished
)

I
wasn’t done with SpecOps yet. I still needed to figure out what my father had told me on our first meeting. Finding a time traveler can be fraught with difficulties, but since I passed the ChronoGuard office at almost exactly three hours from our last meeting, it seemed the obvious place to look.

I knocked at their door and, hearing no answer, walked in. When I was last working at SpecOps, we rarely heard anything from the mildly eccentric members of the time-traveling elite, but when you work in the time business, you don’t waste it by nattering—it’s much too precious. My father always argued that time was far and away the most valuable commodity we had and that temporal profligacy should be a criminal offense—which kind of makes watching
Celebrity Kidney Swap
or reading Daphne Farquitt novels a crime straightaway.

The room was empty and from appearances had been so for a number of years. Although, that’s what it
looked
like when I first peered in—a second later some painters were decorating it for the first time, the second after that it was derelict, then full, then empty again. It continued like this as I watched, the room jumping to various different stages in its history but never lingering for more than a few seconds on any one particular time. The ChronoGuard operatives were merely smears of light that moved and whirled about, momentarily visible to me as they jumped from past to future and future to past. If I had been a trained member of the ChronoGuard, perhaps I could have made more sense of it, but I wasn’t, and couldn’t.