Something rotten (17 page)

Within a few moments, it was all over. Sitting on the ground and dressed in a rough habit tied with a rope at the waist was a grubby man with a scraggy beard and exceptionally bad teeth. He blinked and looked curiously around at his new surroundings.

“Welcome,” said Joffy, the first on the scene. “I represent the Idolatry Friends of St. Zulkx and offer you protection and guidance.”

The thirteenth-century monk looked at Joffy with his dark eyes, then at the crowds who had gathered closer to him, all of them talking and pointing and asking him if they could have their pictures taken with him.

“Your accent is not bad,” replied St. Zvlkx slowly. “Is this 1988?”

“It is, sir. I’ue brokered a sponsorship deal for you with the Toast Marketing Board.”

“Cash?”

Joffy nodded.

“Thank ?*&£@ for that,” said Zvlkx. “Has the ale improued since I’ue been away?”

“Not much. But the choice is better.”

“Can’t wait. Hubba-hubba! Who’s the moppet in the tight blouse?”

“Mr. Next,” interjected Lydia, who had managed to push her way to the front, “perhaps you would be good enough to tell us what Mr. Zvlkx is saying?”

“I . . . um, welcomed him to the twentieth century and said we had much to learn from him as regards beekeeping and the lost art of brewing mead. He . . . um, said just then that he is tired after his journey and wants only world peace, bridges between nations and a good home for orphans, kittens and puppies.”

The crowd suddenly parted to make way for the Mayor of Swindon. St. Zvlkx knew power when he saw it and smiled a greeting to Lord Volescamper, who walked briskly up and shook the monk’s grimy hand.

“Look here, welcome to the twentieth century, old salt,” said Volescamper, wiping his hand on his handkerchief. “How are you finding it?”

“Welcome to our age,” translated Joffy. “How are you enjoying your stay?”

“Cushty, me old cocker babe,” replied the saint simply.

“He says, ‘Very well, thank you.’ ”

“Tell the worthy saint that we have a welcome pack awaiting him in the presidential suite at the Finis Hotel. Knowing his aversion to comfort, we took the liberty of removing all carpets, drapes, sheets and towels and replaced the bedclothes with hemp sacks stuffed with rocks.”

“What did the old fart say?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“What about the incomplete Seventh Revealment?” asked Lydia. “Can St. Zvlkx tell us anything about that?”

Joffy swiftly translated, and St. Zvlkx rummaged in the folds of his blanket and produced a small leatherbound book. The crowd fell silent as he licked a grubby finger, turned to the requisite page and read:

“ ‘There will be a home win on the playing fields of Swindonne in nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and in consequence of this, and
only
in consequence of this, a great tyrant and the company named Goliathe will fall.’ ”

All eyes switched to Joffy, who translated. There was a sharp intake of breath and a clamor of questions.

“Mr. Zvlkx,” said a reporter from
The Mole
who up until that moment had been bored out of his skull, “do you mean to say that Goliath will be lost if Swindon wins the SuperHoop?”

“That is exactly what he says,” replied Joffy.

There was a further clamor of questions from the assembled journalists as I carefully tried to figure out the repercussions of this new piece of intelligence. Dad had said that a SuperHoop win for Swindon would avert an Armageddon, and if what Zvlkx was saying came true, a triumph on Saturday would do precisely this. The question was, how? There was no connection as far as I could see. I was still trying to think how a croquet final could unseat a near dictator and destroy one of the most powerful multinationals on the planet, when Lord Volescamper intervened and silenced the noisy crowd of newsmen with a wave of his hand.

“Mr. Next, thank the gracious saint for his words. There is time enough to muse on his revealment, but right now I would like him to meet members of the Swindon Chamber of Commerce, which, I might add, is sponsored by St. Biddulph’s
^®
Hundreds and Thousands, the cake decoration of choice. After that we might take some tea and carrot cake. Would he be agreeable to that?”

Joffy translated every word, and Zvlkx smiled happily.

“Look here, St. Zvlkx,” said Volescamper as they walked towards the marquee for tea and scones, “what was the thirteenth century like?”

“The Mayor wants to know what the thirteenth century was like—and no lip, sunshine.”

“Filthy, damp, disease-ridden and pestilential.”

“He said it was like London, Your Grace.”

St. Zvlkx looked at the weathered arch, the only visible evidence of his once great cathedral and asked, “What happened to my cathedral?”

“Burned during the dissolution of the monasteries.”

“Hot damn,” he muttered, eyebrows raised, “should haue seenthat coming.”

“Duis aute dolor in fugiat nulla pariatur,” murmured Friday, pointing at St. Zvlkx’s retreating form, rapidly vanishing in a crowd of well-wishers and newsmen.

“I have no idea, Sweetheart—but I’ve a feeling things are just beginning to get interesting.”

“Well,” said Lydia to the camera, “a revealment that could spell potential disaster for the Goliath Corporation and—”

Her producer was gesticulating wildly for her not to connect “Tyrant” with “Kaine” live on air.

“—an as-yet-unnamed tyrant. This is Lydia Startright, bringing you a miraculous event live for Toad News. And now a word from our sponsors, Goliath Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Hemmorrelief.”

12.

Spike and Cindy

Operative Spike Stoker
was with SO-17, the Vampire and Werewolf Disposal Operations. Undeniably employed in the loneliest of the SpecOps divisions, SO-17 operatives worked in the twilight world of the semidead, changelings, vampires, lycanthropes and those of a generally evil disposition. Stoker had been decorated more times than I had read
Three Men in a Boat,
but then he was the only staker in the southwest, and no one in his right mind would do what he did on a SpecOps wage, except me. And only then when I was desperate for the cash.

Thursday Next,
Thursday Next: A Life in SpecOps

D
eep in thought, I pushed Friday back towards my car. The stakes had just been raised, and any chance that I might somehow influence the outcome of the SuperHoop was suddenly made that much more impossible. With Goliath and Kaine both having a vested interest in making sure the Swindon Mallets lost, chances of our victory had dropped from “highly unlikely” to “nigh impossible.”

“It explains,” said a voice, “why Goliath is changing to a faith-based corporate-management system.”

I turned to find my stalker, Millon de Floss, walking close behind me. It must have been important for him to contravene the blanket restraining order. I stopped for a moment. “Why do you think that?”

“Once they are a religion, they won’t be a ‘company named Goliathe’ as stated in Zvlkx’s prophecy,” observed Millon, “and they can avoid the revealment’s coming true. Sister Bettina, their own corporate precog, must have foreseen something like this and alerted them.”

“Does that mean,” I asked slowly, “that they’re taking St. Zvlkx seriously?”

“He’s too accurate not to be, Miss Next, however unlikely it may seem. Now that they know the complete Seventh Revealment, they’ll try to do anything to stop Swindon’s winning—and continue with the religion thing as a backup, just in case.”

It made sense—sort of. Dad must have known this or something very like it. None of it boded very well, but my father had said the likelihood of this Armageddon was only 22 percent, so the answer must be somewhere.

“I’m going to visit Goliathopolis this afternoon,” I said slowly. “Have you found out anything about Kaine?”

Millon rummaged in his pocket for a notepad, found it and flicked through the pages, which seemed to be full of numbers.

“It’s here somewhere,” he said apologetically. “I like to collect vacumn-cleaner serial numbers and was investigating a rare Hoover XB-23E when I got the call. Here it is. This Kaine fellow is a conspiracist’s delight. He arrived on the scene five years ago with no past, no history, no parents—nothing. His national insurance number wasn’t given to him until 1982, and it seems the only jobs he has ever held were with his publishing company and then as MP.”

“Not a lot to go on, then.”

“Not yet, but I’ll keep digging. You might be interested to know that he has been seen on several occasions with Lola Vavoom.”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Agreed. You wanted to know about Mr. Schitt-Hawse? He heads the Goliath tech division.”

“You sure?”

Millon looked dubious for a moment.

“In the conspiracy industry, the word ‘sure’ has a certain plasticity about it, but yes. We have a mole at Goliathopolis. Admittedly our mole only serves in the canteen, but you’d be surprised the sensitive information that one can overhear giving out shortbread fingers. Apparently Schitt-Hawse has been engaged in something called the Ovitron Project. We’re not positive, but it might be a development of your uncle’s Ovinator. Could it be something along the lines of
The Midwich Cuckoos
?”

“I sincerely hope not.”

I made a few notes, thanked Millon for his time and pushed Friday back to my car, my head full of potential futures, Ovinators and Kaine.

Ten minutes later we were in my Speedster, heading north towards Cricklade. My father had told me that Cindy would fail to kill me three times before she died herself, but there was a chance the future didn’t have to turn out that way—after all, I had once been shot dead by a SpecOps marksman in an alternative future, and I was still very much alive.

I hadn’t seen Spike for more than two years but had been gratified to learn he had moved out of his dingy apartment to a new address in Cricklade. I soon found his street—it was on a newly built estate of Cotswold stone that shone a warm glow of ocher in the sunlight. As we drove slowly down the road checking door numbers, Friday helpfully pointed out things of interest.

“Ipsum,” he said, pointing at a car.

I was hoping that Spike wasn’t there so I could speak to Cindy on her own, but I was out of luck. I parked up behind his SpecOps black-and-white and climbed out. Spike himself was sitting on a deck chair on the front lawn, and my heart fell when I saw that not only had he married Cindy but they had also had a child—a one-year-old girl was sitting on the grass next to him playing under a parasol. I cursed inwardly as Friday hid behind my leg. I was going to have to make Cindy play ball—the alternative wouldn’t be good for her and would be worse for Spike and their daughter.

“Yo!” yelled Spike, telling the person on the other end of the phone to hold it one moment and getting up to give me a hug. “How you doing, Next?”

“I’m good, Spike, you?”

He spread his arms, indicating the trappings of middle-England suburbia. The UPVC double glazing, the well-kept lawn, the drive, the wrought-iron sunrise gate.

“Look at all this, sister! Isn’t it the best?”

“Ipsum,” said Friday, pointing at a plant pot.

“Cute kid. Go on in. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

I walked into the house and found Cindy in the kitchen. She had an apron on and her hair tied up.

“Hello,” I said, trying to sound as normal as possible, “you must be Cindy.”

She stared me straight in the eye. She didn’t look like a professional assassin who had killed sixty-seven times—sixty-eight if she did Samuel Pring—yet the really good ones never do.

“Well, well, Thursday Next,” she said slowly, crouching down to pull some damp clothes out of the washing machine and tweaking Friday’s ear. “Spike holds you in very high regard.”

“Then you know why I’m here?”

She put down the washing and picked up a Fisher-Price Webster that was threatening to trip someone up, and passed it to Friday, who sat down to scrutinize it carefully.

“I can guess. Handsome lad. How old is he?”

“He was two last month. And I’d like to thank you for missing yesterday.”

She gave a wan smile and walked out the backdoor. I caught up with her as she started to hang the washing on the line.

“Is it Kaine trying to have me killed?”

“I always respect client confidentiality,” she said quietly, “and I can’t miss forever.”

“Then stop it right now,” I said. “Why do you even need to do it at all?”

She pegged a blue romper on the line.

“Two reasons: first, I’m not going to give up work just because I’m married with a kid, and second, I always complete a contract, no matter what. When I don’t deliver the goods, the clients want refunds. And the Windowmaker doesn’t do refunds.”

“Yes,” I replied, “I was curious about that. Why the Windowmaker?”

She glared at me coldly. “The printers made a mistake on the notepaper, and it would have cost too much to redo. Don’t laugh.”

She hung up a pillowcase.

“I’ll contract you out, Miss Next, but I won’t try today—which gives you some time to get yourself together and leave town once and for all. Somewhere where I can’t find you. And hide well—I’m very good at what I do.”

She took a sideways glance towards the kitchen. I hung up a large SO-17 T-shirt on the line.

“He doesn’t know, does he?” I asked.

“Spike is a fine man,” replied Cindy, “just a little slow on the uptake. You’re not going to tell him, and he’s never going to know. Grab the other end of that sheet, will you?”

I took the end of a dry sheet, and we folded it together.

“I’m not going anywhere, Cindy,” I told her, “and I’ll protect myself in any way I can.”

We stared at one another for a moment. It seemed like such a waste.

“Retire!”

“Never!”

“Why?”

“Because I
like
it and I’m
good
at it—would you like some tea, Thursday?”

Spike had entered the garden carrying the baby. “So how are my two favorite ladies?”