Lost in a good book (12 page)

“About your work?”

“Much too dull. Can I try an idea out on you?”

“Sure.”

He smiled, looked around, lowered his voice and leaned closer.

“Okay, here it is. Brilliant young surgeon Dexter Colt starts work at the highly efficient yet underfunded children’s hospital doing pioneering work on relieving the suffering of orphaned amputees. The chief nurse is the headstrong yet beautiful Tiffany Lampe. Tiffany has only recently recovered from her shattered love affair with anesthetist Dr. Burns, and—”

“—they fall in love?” I ventured.

Mycroft’s face fell.

“You’ve heard it then?”

“The bit about the orphaned amputees is good,” I said, trying not to dishearten him. “What are you going to call it?”

“I thought of
Love Among the Orphans.
What do you think?”

By the end of the meal Mycroft had outlined several of his books to me, each one with a plot more lurid than the last. At the same time Joffy and Wilbur had come to blows in the garden, discussing the sanctity of peace and forgiveness amidst the thud of fists and the crunch of broken noses.

At midnight Mycroft took Polly in his arms and thanked us all for coming.

“I have spent my entire life in pursuit of scientific truth and enlightenment,” he announced grandly, “of answers to conundrums and unifying theories of everything. Perhaps I should have spent the time going out more. In fifty-four years neither Polly nor I have ever taken a holiday, so that is where we’re off to now.”

We walked into the garden, the family wishing Mycroft and Polly well on their travels. Outside the door of the workshop they stopped and looked at each other, then at all of us.

“Well, thanks for the party,” said Mycroft. “Pear soup followed by pear stew with pear sauce and finishing with
bombe surprise
—which was pear—was quite a treat. Unusual, but quite a treat. Look after MycroTech while I’m away, Wilbur, and thanks for all the meals, Wednesday. Right, that’s it,” concluded Mycroft. “We’re off. Toodle-oo.”

“Enjoy yourselves,” I said.

“Oh, we will!” he said, bidding us all goodbye again and disappearing into the workshop. Polly kissed us all, waved farewell and followed him, closing the door behind her.

“It won’t be the same without him and his daft projects, will it?” said Landen.

“No,” I replied. “It’s—”

There was a tingling sensation like an electrical storm in summer as a noiseless white light erupted from within the workshop and shone in pencil-thin beams from every crack and rivet hole, each speck of grime showing up on the dirty windows, every crack in the glass suddenly alive with a rainbow of colors. We winced and shielded our eyes, but no sooner had the light started than it had gone again, faded to nothing in a crackle of electricity. Landen and I exchanged looks and stepped forward. The door opened easily and we stood there, staring into the large and now very empty workshop. Every single piece of equipment had gone. Not a screw, not a bolt, not a washer.

“He isn’t just going to write romantic novels in his retirement,” observed Joffy, putting his head round the door.

“No,” I replied, “he most probably took it all so no one else would carry on with his work. Mycroft’s scruples were the equal of his intellect.”

My mother was sitting on an upturned wheelbarrow, her dodos clustered around her on the off chance of a marshmallow.

“They’re not coming back,” said my mother sadly. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, giving her a hug, “I know.”

7.
White Horse, Uffington, Picnics, for the Use of

We decided that “Parke-Laine-Next” was a bit of a mouthful, so I kept my surname and he kept his. I called myself “Ms.” instead of “Miss,” but nothing else changed. I liked being called his wife in the same way I liked calling Landen my husband. It felt sort of
tingly.
I had the same feeling when I stared at my wedding ring. They say you get used to it but I hoped that they were wrong. Marriage, like spinach and opera, was something I had never thought I would like. I changed my mind about opera when I was nine years old. My father took me to the first night of
Madama Butterfly
at Brescia in 1904. After the performance Dad cooked while Puccini regaled me with hilarious stories and signed my autograph book—from that day on I was a devoted fan. In the same way, it took being in love with Landen to make me change my mind about marriage. I found it exciting and exhilarating; two people, together, as one. It was where I was meant to be. I was happy; I was contented; I was fulfilled.

And spinach? Well, I’m still waiting.

THURSDAY NEXT
,
Private Diaries

W
HAT DO YOU THINK
they’ll do?” asked Landen as we lay in bed, he with one hand resting gently on my stomach and the other wrapped tightly around me. The bedclothes had been thrown off and we had only just regained our breath.

“Who?”

“SO-1 this afternoon. About you punching the neanderthal.”

“Oh,
that.
I don’t know. Technically speaking, I really haven’t done anything wrong at all—I think they’ll let me off, considering all the good PR work I’ve done. Look a bit daft to arrest their star operative, don’t you think?”

“That’s always assuming they think logically like you or me.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

I sighed.

“People
have
been busted for less. SO-1 like to make an example from time to time.”

“You don’t
have
to work, you know.”

I looked across at him, but he was too close to focus on, which was sort of nice, in its way.

“I know,” I replied, “but I’d like to keep it up. I don’t really see myself as a mummsy sort of person.”

“Your cooking might tend to support that fact.”

“Mother’s cooking is terrible, too—I think it’s hereditary. My SO-1 hearing is at four. Want to go and see the mammoth migration?”

“Sure.”

The doorbell rang.

“Who could that be?”

“It’s a little early to tell,” quipped Landen. “I understand the ‘go and see’ technique sometimes works.”

“Very funny.”

I pulled on some clothes and went downstairs. There was a gaunt man with lugubrious features standing on the doorstep. He looked as close to a bloodhound as one can get without actually having a tail and barking.

“Yes?”

He raised his hat and gave me a somnambulant smile.

“The name is Hopkins,” he explained. “I’m a reporter for
The Owl.
I was wondering if I could interview you about your time within the pages of
Jane Eyre.
”

“You’ll have to go through Cordelia Flakk at SpecOps, I’m afraid. I’m not really at liberty—”

“I know you were inside the book. In the first and original ending, Jane goes to India, yet in
your
ending she stays and marries Rochester. How did you engineer this?”

“You really have to get clearance from Flakk, Mr. Hopkins.”

He sighed.

“Okay, I will. Just one thing. Did you prefer the new ending,
your
new ending?”

“Of course. Didn’t you?”

Mr. Hopkins scribbled in a notepad and smiled again.

“Thank you, Miss Next. I’m very much in your debt. Good day!”

He raised his hat again and was gone.

“What was all that about?” asked Landen as he handed me a cup of coffee.

“Pressman.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. He has to go through Flakk.”

The grassy escarpment at Uffington was busy that morning. The mammoth population in England, Wales and Scotland amounted to 249 individuals in nine groups, all of whom migrated north to south around late autumn and back again in the spring. The routes followed the same pattern every year with staggering accuracy. Inhabited areas were mostly avoided—except Devizes, where the High Street was shuttered up and deserted twice a year as the plodding elephantines crashed and trumpeted their way through the center of the town, cheerfully following the ancient call of their forebears. No one in Devizes could get any sleep or Proboscidea damage insurance cover, but the extra cash from tourism generally made up for it.

But there weren’t just mammoth twitchers, walkers, druids and a neanderthal “right to hunt” protest up the hill that morning. A dark blue automobile was waiting for us, and when somebody is waiting for you in a place you hadn’t planned on being, then you take notice. There were three of them standing next to the car, all dressed in dark suits with blue enameled Goliath badges on their lapels. The only one I recognized was Schitt-Hawse; they all hastily hid their ice creams as we approached.

“Mr. Schitt-Hawse,” I said, “what a surprise! Have you met my husband?”

Schitt-Hawse offered his hand, but Landen didn’t take it. The Goliath agent grimaced for a moment, then gave a bemused grin.

“Saw you on the telly, Ms. Next. It was a
fascinating
talk about dodos, I must say.”

“I’d like to expand my subjects next time,” I replied evenly. “Might even try and include something about Goliath’s malignant stranglehold on the nation.”

Schitt-Hawse shook his head sadly.

“Unwise, Next, unwise. What you singularly fail to grasp is that Goliath is all you’ll ever need. All
anyone
will ever need. We manufacture everything from cots to coffins and employ over eight million people in our six thousand or so subsidiary companies. Everything from the womb to the wooden overcoat.”

“And how much profit do you expect to scavenge as you massage us from hatched to dispatched?”

“You can’t put a price on human happiness, Next. Political and economic uncertainty are the two biggest forms of stress. You’ll be pleased to know that the Goliath Cheerfulness Index has reached a four-year high this morning at nine point one three.”

“Out of a hundred?” asked Landen sarcastically.

“Out of
ten,
Mr. Parke-Laine,” he replied testily. “The nation has grown beyond all measure under our guidance.”

“Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer, Schitt-Hawse.”

His face dropped and he stared at us for a moment, doubtless wondering how best to continue.

“So,” I said politely, “out to watch the mammoths?”

“Goliath don’t watch mammoths, Next. There’s no profit in it. Have you met my associates Mr. Chalk and Mr. Cheese?”

I looked at his two gorillalike lackeys. They were immaculately dressed, had impeccably trimmed goatees, and stared at me through impenetrable dark glasses.

“Which is which?” I asked.

“I’m Cheese,” said Cheese.

“I’m Chalk,” said Chalk.

“When is he going to ask you about Jack Schitt?” asked Landen in an unsubtly loud whisper.

“Pretty soon,” I replied.

Schitt-Hawse shook his head sadly. He opened the briefcase Mr. Chalk was holding, and inside, nestled in the carefully cut foam innards, lay a copy of
The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

“You left Jack imprisoned in this copy of ‘The Raven.’ Goliath need him out to face a disciplinary board on charges of embezzlement, Goliath contractual irregularities, misuse of the corporation’s leisure facilities, missing stationery—and crimes against humanity.”

“Oh yes?” I asked. “Why not just leave him in?”

Schitt-Hawse sighed and stared at me.

“Listen, Next. We need Jack out of here, and believe me, we’ll manage it.”

“Not with my help.”

Schitt-Hawse stared silently at me for a moment.

“Goliath are not used to being refused. We asked your uncle to build another Prose Portal. He told us to come back in a month’s time. We understand he left on retirement last night. Destination?”

“Not a clue.”

Mycroft had retired, it seemed, not out of choice but out of necessity. I smiled to myself. Goliath had been hoodwinked and they didn’t like it.

“Without the Portal,” I told him, “I can’t jump into books any more than Mr. Chalk can.”

Chalk shuffled slightly as I mentioned his name.

“You’re lying,” replied Schitt-Hawse. “The ineptness card doesn’t work on us. You defeated Hades, Jack Schitt and the Goliath Corporation. We have a great deal of admiration for you. Goliath has been more than fair given the circumstances, and we would hate for you to become a victim of
corporate impatience.
”

“Corporate impatience?” I repeated, staring Schitt-Hawse straight in the eye. “What’s that, some sort of threat?”

“This unhelpful attitude of yours might make me vindictive— and you wouldn’t like me when I get vindictive.”

“I don’t like you when you’re
not
vindictive.”

Schitt-Hawse shut the briefcase with a snap. His left eye twitched and the color drained out of his face. He looked at us both and started to say something, stopped, got ahold of his temper and managed to squeeze out a half-smile before he climbed back into his car with Chalk and Cheese and was gone.

Landen was still chuckling as we spread a groundsheet and blanket on the well-nibbled grass just above the White Horse. Below us at the bottom of the escarpment a herd of mammoths were quietly browsing, and on the horizon we could see several airships on the approach to Oxford. It was a pleasant day, and since airships don’t fly in poor weather, they were all making the best use of it.

“You don’t have much fear of Goliath, do you, darling?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“Goliath are nothing more than a bully, Land. Stand up to them and they’ll soon scurry away. All that large car and henchman stuff—it’s for frighteners. But I’m kind of puzzled as to how they knew we would be here.”

Landen shrugged.

“Cheese or ham?”
¹

“What?”

“I said: ‘Cheese or ham.’”

“Not
you.
”

Landen looked around. We were about the only ones within a hundred-yard radius.