Lost in a good book (19 page)

Landen stood up.

“C’mon, Thurs. Let’s leave this clown to our scones. Do you remember when we first kissed?”

The tearoom was suddenly gone and in its place was a warm night in the Crimea. We were back at Camp Aardvark watching the shelling of Sevastopol on the horizon, the finest fireworks show on the planet if only you could forget what it was doing. The sound of the barrage was softened almost into a lullaby by the distance. We were both in battle dress and standing together but not touching—and by God how much we wanted to.

“Where’s this?” asked Landen.

“It’s where we kissed for the first time,” I replied.

“No—!” replied Landen. “I remember watching the shelling with you, but we only
talked
that evening. I didn’t actually kiss you until the night you drove me out to forward CP and we got stuck in the minefield.”

I laughed out loud.

“Men have such crap memories when it comes to things like this! We were standing apart like this and desperately wanting to just
touch
each other. You put your hand on my shoulder to pretend to point something out and I slid my hand into the small of your back like . . .
so.
We didn’t say anything but when we held each other it was like, like
electricity!
”

We did. It was. The shivers went all the way to my feet, bounced back, returned in a spiral up my body and exited my neck as a light sweat.

“Well,” replied Landen in a quiet voice a few minutes later. “I think I prefer
your
version. So if we kissed
here,
then the night in the minefield was—”

“Yes,” I told him, “yes, yes it was.”

And there we were, sitting outside an armored personnel carrier in the dead of night two weeks later, marooned in the middle of probably the best-signposted minefield in the area.

“People will think you did this on purpose,” I told him as unseen bombers droned overheard, off on a mission to bomb someone to pulp.

“I got away only with a reprimand, as I recall,” he replied. “And anyway, who’s to say that I didn’t?”

“You drove
deliberately
into a minefield just for a legover?” I asked, laughing.

“Not any old legover,” he replied. “Besides, there was no risk involved.”

He pulled a hastily drawn map out of his battle-dress pocket.

“Captain Bird drew this for me.”

“You scheming little shitbag!” I told him, throwing an empty K-ration tin at him. “I was terrified!”

“Ah!” replied Landen with a grin. “So it was terror and not passion that drove you into my arms?”

“Well”—I shrugged—“maybe a bit of both.”

Landen leaned forward, but I had a thought and pressed a fingertip to his mouth.

“But this wasn’t the
best,
was it?”

He stopped, smiled and whispered in my ear: “At the furniture store?”

“In your dreams, Land. I’ll give you a clue. You still had a leg and we both had a week’s leave—by lucky coincidence at the same time.”

“No coincidence,” said Landen with a smile.

“Captain Bird again?”

“Two hundred bars of chocolate but worth every packet.”

“You’re a bit of a rake, y’know, Land—but in the nicest kind of way. Anyhow,” I continued, “we elected to go cycling in the Republic of Wales.”

As I spoke the APC vanished, the night rolled back and we were walking hand in hand through a small wood to the side of a stream. It was summer and the water babbled excitedly among the rocks, the springy moss a warm carpet to our bare feet. The blue sky was devoid of clouds and the sunlight trickled in amongst the verdant foliage above our heads. We pushed aside low branches and followed the sound of a waterfall. We came across two bicycles leaning up against a tree, the panniers open and the tent half pegged out on the ground. My heart quickened as the memories of that particular summer’s day flooded back. We had started to put the tent up but stopped for a moment, the passion overcoming us. I squeezed Landen’s hand and he curled his hands round my waist. He smiled at me with his funny half-smile.

“When I was alive I came to this memory a lot,” he confided to me. “It’s one of my favorites, and amazingly, your memory seems to have got most things correct.”

“Is that a fact?” I asked him as he kissed me gently on my neck. I shivered slightly and ran my fingers down his naked back.

“Most—
plock
—definitely.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing—
plock plock
—why?”

“Oh
no!
Not now of all times!”

“What?” asked Landen.

“I think I’m about to—”

“—wake up.”

But I was talking to myself. I was back in my bedroom in Swindon, my memory excursion annoyingly cut short by Pickwick, who was staring at me from the rug, leash in beak and making quiet plock-plock noises. I gave her a baleful stare.

“Pickers, you are
such
a pest. Just when I was getting to the good bit.”

She stared at me, little comprehending what she had done.

“I’m going to drop you round at Mum’s,” I told her as I sat up and stretched. “I’m going to Osaka for a couple of days.”

She cocked her head on one side and stared at me curiously.

“You and Junior will be in good hands, I promise.”

I got out of bed and trod on something hard and whiskery. I looked at the object and smiled to myself. It was a good sign. Lying on the carpet was an old coconut husk—and better than that, there was still some sand stuck to my feet. My reading of
Robinson Crusoe
hadn’t been a total failure after all.

14.
The Gravitube
™

By the time this decade is out, we aim to construct a transport system that can take a man or a woman from New York to Tokyo and back again in two
hours
. . . .

—
U
.
S
.
PRESIDENT JOHN F
.
KENNEDY

For mass transport over the globe there were primarily the railroads and the airship. Rail was fast and convenient but stopped short of crossing the oceans. Airships could cover greater distances—but were slow and fraught with delays due to weather. In the fifties the journey time to Australia or New Zealand was typically ten days. In 1960, a new form of transportation system was begun— the Gravitube. It promised delay-free travel to anywhere on the planet. Any destination, whether Auckland, Rome or Los Angeles, would take exactly the same: a little over forty minutes. It was, quite possibly, the greatest feat of engineering that mankind would ever undertake.

VINCENT DOTT
,
The Gravitube: Tenth Wonder of the World

P
ICKWICK INSISTED
on sitting on her egg all the way to Mum’s house and plocked nervously whenever I went over twenty miles per hour. I made her a nest in the airing cupboard and left her fussing over her egg while the other dodos strained at the window, trying to figure out what was going on. I rang Bowden while Mum fixed me a sandwich.

“Are you okay?” he inquired. “Your phone’s been off the hook!”

“I’m okay, Bowd. What’s happening at the office?”

“The news is out.”

“About Landen?”

“About
Cardenio.
Someone blabbed to the press. Vole Towers is besieged by news channels as we speak. Lord Volescamper has been yelling at Victor about one of us talking.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“Nor me. Volescamper has turned down fifty million quid for it already—every impresario on the planet wants to buy the rights for first performance. And get this—you’ve been cleared by SO-1 of any wrongdoing. They thought that since Kaylieu was shot by SO-14 marksmen yesterday morning you might have been right after all.”

“Big of them. Does this mean my leave is over?”

“Victor wants to see you as soon as possible.”

“Tell him I’m ill, would you? I have to go to Osaka.”

“Why?”

“Best not to know. I’ll call you.”

I replaced the receiver and Mum gave me some cheese on toast and a cup of tea. She sat down at the other side of the table and flicked through a well-thumbed copy of last month’s
FeMole
—the one with me in it.

“Any news from Mycroft and Polly, Mum?”

“I got a card from London saying they were fit and well,” she replied, “but they said they needed a jar of piccalilli and a torque wrench. I left them in Mycroft’s study and they’d vanished by the afternoon.”

“Mum?”

“Yes?”

“How often do you see Dad?”

She smiled. “Most mornings. He drops by to say hello. Sometimes I even make him a packed lunch—”

She was interrupted by a roar that sounded like a thousand tubas in unison. The sound reverberated through the house and set the teacups in the corner cupboard rattling.

“Oh Lordy!” she exclaimed. “Not mammoths
again!
” And was out of the door in a flash.

And a mammoth it was, in name and stature. Covered with thick brown hair and as big as a tank, it had walked through the garden wall and now sniffed suspiciously at the wisteria.

“Get away from there!” yelled my mother, searching around for a weapon of some sort. Wisely, the dodos had all run away and hid behind the potting shed. Rejecting the wisteria, the mammoth delicately scraped through the vegetable patch with a long curved tusk and then picked the vegetables up with its trunk, stuffed them into its mouth and munched slowly and deliberately. My mother was wide-eyed and almost apoplectic with rage.

“Second time this has happened!” she yelled defiantly. “Get off my hydrangeas, you . . . you . . .
thing!
” The mammoth ignored her, sucked up the entire contents of the ornamental pond in one go and clumsily trampled the garden furniture to matchwood.

“A weapon,” announced my mother. “I need a weapon. I’ve sweated blood over this garden and no reactivated herbivore is going to have it for dinner!”

She disappeared into the shed and reappeared a moment later brandishing a yard broom. But the mammoth had little to fear, even from my mother. It did, after all, weigh almost five tons. It was used to doing
exactly
what it pleased. The only good news about the invasion was that it wasn’t the whole herd.

“Giddout!” yelled my mother, raising the broom to whack the mammoth on the hindquarters.

“Hold it right there!” said a loud voice. We turned. A man dressed in a safari suit had hopped over the wall and was running towards us.

“Agent Durrell, SO-13,” he announced breathlessly, showing my mother an ID. “Spank the mammoth and you’re under arrest.”

My mother’s fury switched to the SpecOps agent.

“So he eats my garden and I’m supposed to do
nothing?
”

“
Her
name is Buttercup,” corrected Durrell. “The rest of the herd went to the west of Swindon as planned, but Buttercup here is a bit of a dreamer. And yes, you do
nothing.
Mammoths are a protected species.”

“Well!” said my mother indignantly. “If you did your job properly then ordinary law-abiding citizens like me would still have gardens!”

The once verdant garden looked as though it had been the target of an artillery bombardment. Buttercup, her voluminous tum now full of Mum’s vegetable patch, stepped over the wall and scratched herself against an iron streetlamp, snapping it like a twig. The lamp standard dropped heavily on the roof of a car and popped the windscreen. Buttercup let out another almighty trumpeting, which set off a few car alarms, and in the distance there was an answer. She stopped, listened for a bit and then happily lumbered off down the road.

“I’ve got to go!” said Durrell, handing Mum a card. “ Compensation can be claimed if you call this number. You might like to ask for our free leaflet ‘How to Make Your Garden Less Palatable to Proboscidea.’ Good morning!”

He tipped his hat and jumped over the wall to where his partner had pulled up in an SO-13 Land Rover. Buttercup gave out another call and the Land Rover screeched off, leaving my mother and me staring at her wrecked garden. The dodos, sensing the danger had passed, crept out from behind the potting shed and plock-plocked quietly to themselves as they pecked and scratched at the scoured earth.

“Perhaps it’s time for a Japanese garden,” sighed my mother, throwing down the broom handle. “Reverse engineering! Where will it all end? They say there’s a
Diatryma
living wild in the New Forest!”

“Urban legend,” I assured her as she started to tidy up the garden. I looked at my watch. I would have to run if I was to get to Osaka that evening.

I took the train to the busy Saknussum International Gravitube Terminus, located just to the west of London. I made my way into the departures terminal and studied the board. The next DeepDrop to Sydney would be in an hour. I bought a ticket, hurried to the check-in and spent ten minutes listening to a litany of pointless antiterrorist questions.

“I don’t have a bag,” I explained. She looked at me oddly, so I added: “Well, I
did,
but you lost it the last time I traveled. In fact, I don’t think I’ve
ever
had a bag returned to me after tubing.”

She thought about this for a moment and then said: “
If
you had a bag and
if
you had packed it yourself, and
if
you had not left it unattended, might it contain any of the following?”

She showed me a list of prohibited items and I shook my head.

“Would you like an in-drop meal?”

“What are my choices?”

“Yes or no.”

“No.”

She looked at the next question on her sheet.

“Who would you prefer to sit next to?”

“Nun or a knitting granny, if that’s possible.”

“Hmm,” mused the check-in girl, studying the passenger manifest carefully. “All the nuns, grannies and intelligent nonamorous males are taken. It’s technobore, lawyer, self-pitying drunk or copiously vomiting baby, I’m afraid.”