The Merlin Conspiracy (24 page)

The phone ringing woke me up next morning. It rang and rang.

I woke up enough to give a deep, wild growl and shamble up the corridor draped in the towels I'd been using for blankets. I've told you what I'm like when I first wake up. I crashed into the table and knocked the phone off it. I left it on the floor and groped for the receiver until I found it; then I shook it a bit to shut it up. When that didn't stop the noise, I put it to my ear and gave another wild growl.

“Is that you this time, Romanov?” said the horrible woman's voice.

“Graah!” I said.

“No, listen to me,” she said. “I've tried and I've tried to be forgiving, and God knows I've tried to live on the pittance you give me …”

I groaned. Probably that was exactly what Romanov would have done, because she thought I was him. She went on and on. It was all about how difficult it was to keep up appearances without more money and how people stared at her because she had to wear the same dress twice—all that stuff. It got up my nose completely. “Why don't you earn some money of your own, then?” I said, except that it came out as “Wumunumumen?”

“What?”
she said. “Romanov, are you
drunk
?”

“No, I just haven't had any coffee yet,” I said, or rather, “Jussuffcuffya.”

“You
are
!” she said, almost triumphantly. “Romanov, I'm seriously worried about you. You could have had a scintillating career here. The world was at your feet when you
deserted
me and took yourself off to that island. I didn't understand you then; I don't understand you now. I hear you're planning to open a circus. Frankly, it doesn't surprise me that you've started drinking, too. You must come back at once and take your place among decent people with the right outlook on life before you fall apart completely. You
know
I can look after you. I can
help
you, Romanov. I think you're in with a bad crowd. I didn't like the sound of that caretaker you're employing at
all
, and I'm sure that elephant is just a cry for help....”

It was around then that I tried to stop her by putting the receiver back on the telephone, but it did no good. Her voice just went on trumpeting out into the corridor, on and on, all about what a weak character Romanov was and how he needed a good woman to help him. I sat on the floor and listened for five minutes or so, thinking it was really no wonder Romanov had left her and wondering how to shut her up. I was too sleepy to think properly, but I could tell that her voice was coming streaming in by magic from somewhere across my right shoulder. Everything was done by magic here. That gave me a sort of idea, and I sighed and picked the receiver up again.

She was angry by this time. She was going, “Romanov, will you
answer
me! If you don't, you can be sure I shall do exactly what I said. I can manipulate magic, too, you know. If you stay this obstinate, I shall lay my hands on all the power I can get, and I shall make you
sorry
. It may take me years, but I shall
do
it, and then you'd better look out! I am sick to
death
of your attitude....”

Squawk, squawk, squawk, I thought, while I carefully traced the line her voice was coming in on, and when I had it, I sort of turned the line on round, like you turn the hands of a clock to point to a different hour. Her voice went fuzzy, and then faint, and then turned into a whisper with gaps in it, and finally it stopped altogether. I could tell she was still talking, but now she was doing it in quite the wrong direction, yelling away into the sea somewhere, and the corridor was peaceful again.

Beautiful! I thought, and slouched off in my towels to look for my clothes.

They were dry, but stiff as cardboard. While I was unbending them from round the pipes, I got the feeling that the plumbing had gone more normal than I remembered, but I still couldn't see properly, so I wasn't sure. And when I shuffled my way into the kitchen, that seemed different, too—smaller, probably. But I need four cups of coffee before I turn into a real human being, and I gave the coffee priority. I hunted by smell. I'm good at that. I found a tin of coffee and a jug and a strainer, and while I was hunting down the kettle I could hear singing on the range—this range was a shiny black sort of stove with a fire in its middle, which I certainly didn't remember from last night—I discovered a newly baked loaf in one of its ovens.

Doing well, I thought, and sniffed around for the butter.

That hunt took me to the window above the sink, where the butter dish had been put into a bowl of water to keep cool. While I was feeling about for it, the window flew open and something sticky and pliable came through it and tried to take hold of my face. I jumped backward. I nearly screamed. It was such a shock that my eyes actually came right open. My heart banged, and I came up to normal human standard in a flash. This was just as well, as it turned out, but at the time I was really annoyed. Being sleepy is my
luxury
, and the sticky thing was only Mini's trunk, anxiously probing in case I'd died in the night or something. I swore at her.

“You went deathly quiet inside the house and I didn't know where you
were
!” she said.

“I was
asleep
, you fool!” I snarled.

“Oh!” she said. Then she went into her nervous school-girl act. I could hear one of her back legs rubbing shyly against the other. “I'm terribly sorry, but I'm …”

“Hungry,” I growled. “God! You ate a whole shedful last night!”

“The goat ate quite a lot, too,” she said apologetically.

“All right, all right, all
right
!” I said, and I stamped out through the door—the door now opened straight out of the kitchen, confusingly—and along the house to the shed, which was about as empty as a shed could be. There was one wisp of something left. The goat was in there polishing that off as I came. “Out!” I said to her.

She turned round, chewing, ready to give me a cheeky look. Then she saw the mood I was in. I swear I saw that goat change her mind. She went trotting meekly outside and left the place to Mini and the hens.

I slammed the shed door shut. “Elephant food,” I said. “Hen food. Food for goats while you're at it, too.” When I opened the door again, the place was stacked to the ceiling, so full of hay and branches and big cattlecake things that I had a hard job getting to the corn bin. “Right,” I said as I scooped corn up with the bucket, “keep this shed full like this in future or I'll want to know the reason why. That clear? It makes no sense to have to keep opening and shutting doors. Let the elephant help herself.”

Then I fed the hens and, still angry and yearning for coffee, stamped back to the kitchen. On the way I spotted an egg laid in the flower bed by the house wall, and I scooped that up. Odd, I thought. I clearly remembered that last night this wall was neat stone and nice pale wood. Now it seemed to be white-painted plaster. But I was wanting my coffee too much to bother about it.

I went in and put the egg in the butter bowl—Romanov might fancy it, I thought—and got my coffee at last. I didn't take nearly as long having breakfast as I'd meant to. Somehow being properly awake so soon had thrown me off line. I felt urgent and still angry. I cut myself a doorstep of bread with masses of butter and went along to see Romanov while I was eating it. I thought I'd better tell him how I'd turned his wife off.

His square white bedroom didn't seem nearly so airy this morning. The window looked smaller. And I could have sworn that the spaces between his thrown-down clothes had almost halved since I was last in there. Romanov looked worse by light of morning. His hair was sticky with sweat, and his face looked dreadful because the brown tan of it had gone yellow on top of grayness. He didn't move or open his eyes as I leaned over him.

Well, I thought, not too happily, flu usually gets worse before it gets better. “Want any breakfast?” I said. “Or can I find you an aspirin?”

He just turned over fretfully and didn't answer. There was no way I could think of to get a doctor to him, so I just went quietly out again and shut the door.

My foot kicked the telephone on my way down the passage. I picked it up, jingling, in a buttery hand. It was a toy telephone, red and blue plastic, and there wasn't even a flex in the wall or anything joining it to the yellow plastic receiver lying on the table. I stared at it a moment. “Cordless phone?” I said. “Heavily disguised mobile?” But I knew it wasn't either of those. It was a toy. “That's magic for you,” I said when I was in the kitchen hunting for a basket. “It's all magic in this place. You just have to take a firm line with it, I suppose.”

I went out with the basket to see if the hens had laid any more eggs. They had. Eggs were hidden in all sorts of cunning clumps and crannies. I kept finding them.

“Oh, good!” Mini said, looming over me with her ears lifting anxiously. “I'd been
so
afraid of treading on one of those. What are they for?”

I looked up at her, meaning to explain about eggs, but I happened to see the garden wall beyond her. It was definitely lower now, and its bricks were old and crumbling away in places. It was also much nearer the house than I expected. “Mini,” I said, “has it struck you that this place is getting smaller?”

“Oh, it
is
,” she said. “It's only a hundred steps over to the trees this morning. I'd been meaning to ask you why.”

“I think it may be because Romanov's ill,” I said.

Mini wasn't attending. Her ears and her trunk were both lifted toward the sky, somewhere behind the house. I craned round that way. The house was in my way, but I could hear something, a sort of whirring.

“What is it?” I said.

Mini's eyes, wonderful gray, clever, innocent eyes, turned to meet mine. “Some kind of a flying machine,” she said. Her thick gray eyelashes fluttered nervously. “It—it doesn't feel good.”

“Is it coming here?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

“In that case,” I said, “come and put yourself in front of the door to the house. I don't think we want whoever it is going inside. Not with Romanov ill.”

After a bit, from where we stood, with Mini across the house door and me with my head just about touching the lowest bit of her gray, wrinkled stomach, I could see the flier, too, across her huge rump and the corner of the roof. It was just passing from a whitish slice of sky to a blue one. It crossed the line that divided the two sorts of sky with a kind of a blip, which seemed to slow it down. At any rate, it took longer than I expected to cross the blue slice, and when it came to the next line, there was another blip as it crossed into a slice that was all bulgy gray and silver clouds and went doggedly whirring across those. It took so long that I kept hoping it wasn't coming here after all. But that was too much to hope, of course.

Five minutes later it circled deafeningly in over the house and came down at the top of the hill, beside the garden wall. It was like a helicopter without the big rotors, white and quite small. Mini curled her trunk up in disgust at the smell that came off it. The hens ran for their lives. I clutched my basket of eggs and stared at big numbers and letters on its pointed tail, and the goat came wandering up, chewing, and stared, too.

“I bet it's Mrs. Romanov,” I said as the whirring stopped. “I made her really annoyed this morning.”

A door popped open, and two boys in embroidered jackets jumped down onto the grass. A man followed them out in a more stately way and stood staring around for a moment, tugging his embroidered coat down and putting his gold-rimmed glasses straight, before he snapped a curt word to the boys, and they all three began walking down the grassy slope toward the house.

My stomach sort of jumped. This was that Prayermaster I'd mistaken for Romanov in Loggia City, with his two kids. They must be here to have the law on me. I wondered if I could get Mini to kick their flier to bits so that they couldn't drag me off back there.

“No, I will
not
!” Mini said. “What do you take me for?”

Then I'll just have to throw eggs at them, I thought, watching them as they came. They were just like I remembered them. The Prayermaster had that stiff, self-righteous look, the look you learn to know and dread in teachers at school, and the boys were just as bad. The older one was dark and smug and saintly. The younger one was the ratty little sneak with fair hair and a pointed face who had pinched me and twisted the pinches.

They all three looked up at Mini and down at the goat and then shrugged and looked across at me. The Prayermaster unclosed his disapproving mouth to say, “Nick Mallory.” I nodded. I suppose he had got my name from the Loggia City police. “The unclean one,” he said, “known as Romanov—I take it he is inside this house.”

Unclean yourself! I thought. “What do you want to know that for?”

“Naturally, because we are here to eliminate him,” the Prayermaster explained, as if he was saying something very obvious to someone very stupid. “Kindly stand aside from the door and remove your animals as you go.”

I stared into his cool, straight face and his stern gray eyes inside their gold-rimmed lenses, and I wondered all over again how on
earth
I'd managed to mistake him for Romanov. And the way he put his explanation made me very suspicious. “Just a moment,” I said. “Did you by any chance offer Romanov money to eliminate
me
?”