The Times & Life of Lucifer Jones
by Steve Pemberton

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Contacting the Author

If you have any questions, comments, criticisms or even praise for me about this book, please email fiction at pembers dot net.

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With that necessary unpleasantness out of the way, let's settle down and continue the story...

Chapter Two: The Temptress & The Ferret

Scene Two

For perhaps half an hour, Jack wandered along corridors and through kitchens. This part of the building was almost deserted. He supposed that with so few guests at the hotel, there would be few staff about anyway, and between meals, most of them would not be needed. Of the few people whom he did encounter, none gave him a second glance; apart from the butlers, the staff had no contact with the guests, so no-one recognised him, and the white coat seemed as good as a security pass.

He had little idea of what he was seeking. Something - anything, in fact - that was out of the ordinary. Occasionally, he would open cupboards or drawers - those that were not locked - and would discover crockery and cutlery, or jars of spices and condiments, or tins of polish and bottles of disinfectant. At least, those were what he assumed these things to be. Not being able to read the labels, he could equally well have stumbled across a magician's store of powdered dragon horn and efreet urine, or a witch's hoard of dwarf's toenail and eye of witchfinder, or perhaps a drug trafficker's illicit cache of the horribly addictive mind-rotting Terran weed, tarra-gon. He left them largely untouched, not wanting to cause undue trouble for whoever was responsible for them. All things considered, the kitchens of the Ocean Vistadid not seem to be a likely hiding place for any particularly awful secrets. [21]

A little while later, Jack left the kitchen area, and found himself standing in a short, wide room. The floor and three of the walls were built of large blocks of chocolate-coloured stone, but the fourth wall - opposite the doorway through which he had entered - was made of pale red brick. In the left-hand wall, a staircase led downwards. Next to this was a dark opening, perhaps two metres high and one and a half wide, which was fenced off by a barred metal gate. Jack's attention gravitated to the brick wall. Around its edge, he could see the outline of an arch, which had been painted in a colour similar to that of the bricks - no doubt in an attempt to hide it. This was exactly the sort of thing he had been looking for. Clearly, the room had at one time been longer, and the arch had been a support for the ceiling. Jack walked over to the wall, and tapped on the brickwork. It sounded depressingly solid.

He went to the gate. Beyond it was a square shaft, about three metres on each side, which went down for at least ten metres and up for about five. He supposed that it might be a lift shaft, although there was no sign of the lift. He turned instead to the staircase, and descended it.

After he had gone down about twenty steps, he found himself standing in a passageway constructed of stone similar to that of the room he had just left. The surroundings were quite gloomy, and the floor looked treacherously uneven. Instinctively, he fumbled for a light switch on the wall near the bottom of the staircase. After a few seconds' exploration, there was a click, and a pallid light, the colour of dragon's pus, oozed down from the ceiling. It was so weak that it covered only half of the distance between ceiling and floor, meaning that you were almost as likely to trip or stumble as you were in total darkness. [22]

When he had taken about ten steps, Jack noticed a curious smell in the air. He thought at first that it might be damp, or mould, or dry rot, but then the memory of an indiscretion at a former friend's nineteenth birthday party caused him to realise that it was actually alcohol that he could smell, and that he must have stumbled across Edding's famous wine cellars. After another few paces, the corridor made a turn to the right. The corridor ambled along in this new direction for perhaps a hundred metres until, under the twin cloaks of perspective and poor lighting, it was free to do whatever it wished. Every now and again, an arch led off one wall or the other.

He wandered down the corridor, stopping every now and then to peer through an arch. From what he could see, the rooms beyond were occupied by rows of tall shelves. The shelves were quite close together, giving the rooms the appearance of a paper-based library. The smell, however, told Jack that it was not books that they held. Being dark, the rooms would make good hiding places for whatever Jack was looking for. Being dark, they would also bring his chances of finding whatever he was looking for close to zero. Jack pressed on, reminded of the joke about the old man who lost his glasses in a dark alley, but went looking for them under a street lamp, since that was the only place where there was enough light to see.

The room beyond the fourth arch on the left was empty. As far as he could tell, there were not even any markings on the floor to show where shelves had once been. This was unusual, considering that the preceding rooms were so tightly packed. Then he thought that perhaps the hotel had fallen on hard times, or perhaps this room was spare capacity that had never been used. He walked a little further along the corridor and peered through the fifth arch. That room was full. He went back to the fourth arch and gave the gloom within a dirty look. "All right," he muttered, not really sure whom he was addressing, "we'll play it your way." He took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.

Nothing happened.

Well, what did you expect? one part of Jack's mind said to another. An attack by a great mass of fangs and hair? Unconditional surrender by the Bad Sugar-Plum Fairy? These alternative realities aren't all they're cracked up to be, you know. You get what you pay for.

Oh, shut up, the other part replied. I'm trying to find the light switch.

When Jack finally found the switch, the discovery did not appear to do him much good. When the flickering was over, the light (which, to be fair, did at least reach all the way to the floor now) covered the first five metres or so of the room, which were already illuminated reasonably enough by the light from the corridor. After a moment, another light came to life, bringing visibility up to ten metres. Jack took a few paces away from the arch, and was rather surprised to see a third light switch on in front of him. He looked back, and saw that the first two lights were still working. He went back to the archway, half-expecting the new light to go out, but this did not happen. Instead, another light switched on. He walked back to where he had been standing when the third light came on, and another two lights started up, about three seconds apart. There was now enough light for him to see that the room was at least forty metres long, although only about six or seven in width.

As Jack walked towards the far end of the room, more lights came on, although they did not proceed at the same pace as he did. The way that the darkness retreated, sometimes fleeing headlong, sometimes playing chicken with him, made it seem that the room was being clumsily stretched.

When the far wall was finally illuminated, it turned out to be some sixty metres from the door. On the wall, about ten centimetres from the floor, was painted the outline of an ellipse, about two metres high by three wide. It was bright red, and for some reason put Jack in mind of Zamandha - it resembled a mouth, he supposed, and the colour was obviously lipstick. He looked at it for some moments, pondering its possible significance.

"ES base to Z1. Report, please."

The shock of hearing that crackling voice, apparently coming from between him and the wall, was enough to send Jack staggering backwards. He tripped, and landed awkwardly on his right elbow. He sat up, and the voice repeated: "ES base to Z1. Report, please." A few seconds later, it said: "Z1, do you read me? Is there anybody there?" At that, another voice, fainter than the first, added:

"Oh, leave it. Probably just another fluctuation of worms in the quantum."

The first voice chuckled, and replied: "You mean another spider's walked over the proximity sensor." There was a short burst of static, and then silence.

Cautiously, Jack stood up, and began backing away from the wall, determined not to be caught out again. He had no idea what a quantum might be, or why his presence might be mistaken for worms fluctuating in one, although he suspected that Julia might be able to tell him.

Having backed up to the door, Jack turned off the lights, stepped into the corridor, and collided with Edding.

"I'm terribly sorry, Sir," said Edding, once they had picked themselves up. "I was not expecting to encounter anybody in this corridor, and so I was proceeding with somewhat less than my customary caution." He had taken a brush from one of his numerous pockets, and was using it to dust off Jack's clothing.

"Well," replied Jack, "no harm done, as you can see." His elbow throbbed at that, as if to say: "You little liar."

"This meeting is perhaps a fortunate one, for I understand that Sir did not inform his companions of his plans for the day, or his intended whereabouts. Miss Hewlett, in particular, was concerned for Sir's safety."

"Oh... Well, you'll tell her I'm all right, won't you?"

"Naturally, Sir. Am I to offer any further explanation?"

"Explanation? For what?"

Edding put away his brush and straightened Jack's kitchen boy jacket, and replied: "Well, Sir has been... I hesitate to say 'missing'... for quite some time."

"What time is it, then?" asked Jack.

"One hour after noon, Sir." The butler took out his pocket watch, and added: "One hour and three minutes, to be precise."

"Oh..." One o'clock? That meant he'd been exploring for three and a half hours. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun? he thought.

I'd hate to see Felintor's version of boredom, then, replied that other part of him.

"Might I enquire what Sir is doing so far from the guest areas?" enquired Edding.

"Oh, is this place out of bounds?" asked Jack, trying not to sound guilty. "I didn't see any signs or anything..."

Yes you did, said the other part. You just couldn't read them.

"Not exactly, Sir," the butler replied. "But it can hardly be of any interest to Sir."

"Well, actually," said Jack, as an idea leapt on him, "I'm quite interested in old buildings."

"Old, Sir?" asked Edding, smiling in a slightly patronising manner. "This establishment was constructed fifty-one years ago, and Sir should surely know that architectural styles have hardly changed in the intervening period."

Jack wanted to grab the butler by the lapels and shout: "No, I don't know, and I don't want to know! Just don't spoil a perfectly good excuse, will you?" He realised, however, that this would probably not improve matters, and so he said nothing.

"However," Edding continued, "if Sir finds disused wine cellars fascinating enough to forgo lunch in their favour, I am sure that I will be able to find a member of staff who will be able to satisfy Sir's curiosity further."

He turned curtly and walked back down the corridor, towards the staircase. As Jack followed him, that other part of his mind said smugly: You should've kept your mouth shut. See what a little bit of the truth has gotten you into?

Scene Three

"...and if you look very closely at the eighth and ninth pillars on this side of the hall, you can see that they're a slightly different colour from the others. You might think that that was due to the fact that they receive more sunlight, but they're actually darker than the other pillars, and in fact the reason is that when this room was last decorated, in fifty forty-eight, the painters miscalculated the amount of paint that they would need for the pillars, and so they had to order some more for these two, and of course the variations in the manufacturing process mean that you can never get exactly the same colour twice, except perhaps by accident, which of course only ever happens when you're not expecting it, haha."

Jack disengaged his brain from his ears, and told his face to keep smiling and nodding politely. He found himself wondering why he was standing here, pretending to listen to a lecture that might have been entitled History and Geography of the Ocean Vista for Absolute Morons. It was being delivered by a patronising fifty-year-old near-moron called Ernkel, whose passion for industrial archaeology was surpassed only by his passion for talking about it. Oh yes, he thought, I remember. I told Edding I was interested in old buildings. I was trying to think of an excuse for being somewhere that I wasn't supposed to be - when was it? Only this morning?

At that, the other part of his mind interposed: Time flies when you're having fun. The inverse is equally true.

Jack remembered that he had been investigating an empty wine cellar, and wondered whether Ernkel's tediously detailed knowledge of the hotel extended below ground. Carefully, he reconnected his brain to his ears.

"Now, this pillar over here has a little inscription carved into it about a metre and a half from the floor..." Trying not to appear to be in a hurry, Jack walked over to where Ernkel was standing. "It must be more recent than fifty forty-eight, because otherwise it would have been painted over. The script and the language are both Modern Torian, although it's a little hard to read, because it seems to have been carved with some implement that wasn't entirely suited to the purpose of carving on wood - a fruit knife, perhaps - and it actually reads: 'Derriannda shags Vorrk the cleaner.' Next to this inscription are a pair of matchstick figures, who appear to be engaged in - "

"Well, yes, never mind about that," said Jack, his cheeks reddening. "I was wondering, actually, do you know anything about the wine cellars?"

"Naturally," replied Ernkel, his tone suggesting that what he actually meant was: "What I don't know about this building you could fit into the gap between those two matchstick figures."

"Well, do you think we could take a look at them, then, because that's really what I'm interested in."

"Very well, then," said his guide.

"It's the fourth cellar on the left that particularly intrigues me," said Jack to the back Ernkel's head, as they turned the first corner.

"Oh, really?" asked Ernkel, looking briefly over his shoulder. "It's haunted, apparently," he added, and plunged into the first cellar on the right.

"Haunted?" asked Jack. He wanted to say: "But this place is only fifty years old," but then realised that this might be an explanation (albeit not a very good one) for the voices that he had heard that morning. So instead, following Ernkel, he continued: "What by?"

"Now these cellars are all of similar construction and dimensions, and this one is fairly typical. The shelves are bolted to the flagstones, and..."

"Do you think we could have a look in here?" Jack asked, as they passed the "haunted" cellar.

"Why?" asked Ernkel, as though Jack had just insulted him. "You can see that it's empty."

Yes, Jack thought, but it's about twenty metres longer than the other cellars, and the lights don't all come on at once. Even without the mysterious voices, and the big woman's mouth on the far wall, it should be worth at least a few minutes' pontification. Ernkel, however, seemed to think otherwise. Jack hurried after him.

Eventually, the tour of the wine cellar corridor (all two hundred metres of it) finished, and Ernkel took Jack back to his room. Barely two minutes after Ernkel had left, Edding arrived to summon Jack to dinner.

Scene Four

"'Probably just another fluctuation of worms in the quantum'?" asked Julia.

"That's exactly what he said," Jack replied.

"It's a little garbled, to say the least," she said, looking out of the window of her room. The last of the sunlight was trickling out of the sky. "'Quantum' has almost lost its meaning these days; it's like 'wotsit' or 'thingamajig.' As for 'worms,' well, it could be 'earthworms,' 'parasites,' 'computer worms,' which are similar to viruses... maybe even 'wormholes.'"

"At the risk of sounding stupid, what are they?"

"Well, you know how Einstein said nothing can travel faster than light?"

"Ye - es," he said carefully.

"Well, a few years later, someone else said that it ought to be possible for holes to form in space, that would link two distant places together. It would take very little time to travel through these holes - much less than it would take a ray of light to travel between the two places - so if you could exploit them, you would have a means of faster-than-light travel."

"Can you exploit them, then?"

"No," she said, a little heavily. "The first problem is that they're very narrow - even a ray of light would find it a tight squeeze. That's why they're called wormholes. The second problem is that they're very unstable. Whenever one did form, it would almost certainly disappear before anything could go through it."

"So what does the whole thing mean?" Jack asked.

"Haven't a clue," she answered. "Was there anything after that?"

"Yes... the first one said something like: 'You mean a spider's walked over the proximity sensor.' That was all."

"Proximity sensor, eh?" A number of ideas began to form in Julia's mind. "I think," she said carefully, "that tomorrow, you and I will take a look at this empty cellar."

"But what if Edding finds us?" he protested.

"What if he does?" she asked, shrugging. "He can hardly treat us worse than he does already."

Scene Five

The following morning, they went to investigate the cellar. At Julia's suggestion, they took the clocks from their rooms (their watches had been stuck at 2500 hours on the 30th of February ever since entering Felintor), to see if there was any relativistic time dilation at work. ("Don't ask me to explain," she had said. "I'm not sure I understand it myself.")

They found the cellar fairly easily, without encountering Edding or Salweem Swull. Julia timed the lights as they flickered into life from the door to the far end of the room. "About ninety seconds," she announced. She switched the lights off again. The one nearest the door went out almost immediately, followed in sequence by those further away. Again, the process took about ninety seconds.

"There are, I think, three possibilities here," Julia said, having switched the lights back on. "One, somebody has installed some clever circuitry to give your eyes plenty of time to adjust when you switch the lights on. Two, my subconscious is getting a bit peeved at having to provide so much material for a dream all in one go, and is starting to grumble. Three, somebody has been playing silly buggers with the basic physics of this room."

"Well, one would be a bit boring," said Jack, "and you know I don't believe two, so can we have a look at three?"

Scene Six

It is now necessary to leave Jack and Julia to their experiments for a while, in order to consider Zamandha. At the point in time most of interest to us, she was in an out-of-the-way corner of the hotel's kitchens, engaged in an animated discussion with one of the Beverage Assistants.

"Look, Missus," the young, tousle-haired, grubby-aproned boy was saying to her, in a shrill, penetrating voice that had evolved to be heard over the din of food preparation and washing up, "I can't go putting that sockrot in a guest's drink. If one word of it reached my boss, my life wouldn't be worth a cracked milk jug."

"Ragbowl," Zamandha said to him, in the sweet, sugary tone that wicked witches in fairy tales adopt as an immediate prelude to offering the heroine a shiny red apple, "are you aware that your bosses have asked me to prepare a report on all aspects of the services and facilities on offer at this hotel?"

"Err... no," Ragbowl replied, wondering what relevance this might have to the present conversation.

Adding another two spoonfuls of sugar, she replied: "Well, it's supposed to be a secret. We don't want the staff to be on their best behaviour just because they know they're being watched by someone who can have them sacked if they don't behave."

Ragbowl gulped.

Zamandha looked at a point about half a metre to the boy's left, and said carelessly, as if dictating to a secretary: "'The staff were, in general, very courteous and helpful. However, I encountered great difficulty in obtaining coffee outside dining hours. The Beverage Assistant named, I believe, Ragbowl, was particularly unhelpful in this matter, being surly, rude, and unco-operative.'" She turned back to Ragbowl, who was now visibly whiter beneath the grime on his face. "Am I making myself clear?" she enquired.

"You've got me right where you want me, haven't you?" he muttered, looking furiously at the floor.

"You're fortunate in a way," she continued, "in that I haven't actually written the report yet. I'm still making notes for it, and I haven't decided whether I should include that bit about you. Would you help me make up my mind?"

He looked up at her, and grimaced. "All right," he said heavily, "what do you want me to do?"

"I thought you'd see it my way," she said, her voice sweetening again. "Now, this evening, at dinner, you will receive an order for a drink, probably decaffeinated coffee, for a Mister Jack Henderson. Make it as normal, and then put two drops of this in it." She pressed a small, elegant bottle, made of clear glass with a cork stopper, into his clammy hand. "First chance you get, pour the rest down the sink, and throw the bottle away."

"What if I'm caught?" he whined.

"Well," she said callously, "if you're careful, you won't be. I'm relying on you, Ragbowl. If you make a mess of this, you'll wish I had put that paragraph about you into my report. But if you do the job properly, I'll perhaps write something a bit more favourable. Something like: 'The Beverage Assistant Ragbowl was particularly helpful, and deserves special mention. When I wanted some coffee outside dining hours, he not only made me a cup just as I like it, but he also found me some biscuits to go with it.'"

At that, Ragbowl stood up straighter, and beamed proudly. "All part of the service, Miss-err... Ma'am," he said.

She smiled benignly. "Well, good day to you, Ragbowl," she said. As she was leaving, she turned and added: "Don't mention the report to anyone else, will you? Remember, it is supposed to be secret."

"Special mention, eh?" the Beverage Assistant mused to himself. If there's one thing boys of his age love, it's the envy of their peers; and there would certainly be plenty of that to bask in when the report's findings were made public. "'The Beverage Assistant Ragbowl was particularly helpful.' What a piece of luck." He went back to his work happier than he had been in months.

"The old 'friends in high places' trick," Zamandha chuckled to herself, as she walked through the deserted dining room, heading towards the guests' rooms to prepare for what she planned to happen after dinner. "Never fails, does it?"

Scene Five (continued)

"OK," said Julia, "we'll walk in step down to the end of the cellar. You leave your clock here."

As they walked, Jack found it very difficult to maintain the same pace as Julia: she always seemed to be three paces in front of or behind him. When he mentioned this, she called over her shoulder: "I'm doing my best to keep a constant pace - you're the one who's always changing."

"Your voice sounds lower-pitched than usual," he remarked.

"Funny you should say that. You sound higher." She stopped and instructed: "Walk past me a few paces." He did this, and she asked: "How do I sound now?"

"Higher," he replied. "Do I sound lower?"

"Yes." She thought for a moment, and then said: "Give me your hand." He blushed, and looked away. "To make sure we walk at the same pace," she explained patiently.

He obeyed. They walked the last twenty metres in silence. Julia's palm was cool and dry. He wondered if his felt hot and sticky to her. He tried to concentrate on something else. For some reason, the acoustics seemed very odd in this room. He remembered reading something about how, if you blindfold someone and take them into a room they've never been in before, after a few minutes of conversation, they can usually give you a fairly good estimate of the room's size. Something to do with the brain being able to measure the time that the echoes took to return. He suspected that he wouldn't be able to do that here. Every time he put a foot on the flagstones, it seemed that the sound got left behind and had to chase him to catch up. That sort of effect usually needed very expensive radiophonic trickery, [23] but sound engineers didn't usually have the option of playing silly buggers with basic physics...

"How long would you say it took us to walk from the door?" Julia asked once they had reached far end of the room. There were no crackly voices this time.

"Oh, about a minute and a half, maybe two," he said.

"That's what the clock says," she agreed. "OK, we've been here about fifteen seconds - let's go back."

They did. The clock that they had left at the door said they had been gone for twenty minutes.

"Well," said Julia, looking from one clock to the other and back again, "I think we can rule out option number one."

She resynchronised the clocks, and told Jack to walk by himself to the far end of the room and back again. As he got further away from her, his movement got slower. By the time he was about twenty metres away, she could barely detect any motion at all. As he came back, he gradually speeded up. When they looked at their clocks, Jack's said that this experiment had taken a minute and a quarter. Julia's said it had taken four.

"Any theories?" Jack asked, after she had told him what she had seen.

"Hypotheses, not theories," she corrected. "Well, the only way I know for sure to make time run slow like that - as seen by an observer who's considered to be at rest - is for the body to travel at a speed close to that of light."

"But we were walking, not zooming about in a spaceship."

"True," she said. "Maybe the speed of light is a lot lower here. But then, walking pace would have to be a substantial fraction of lightspeed if you could easily make time run at a quarter of its usual rate. And we would surely have noticed it already if that was the case. There is another possibility... some people reckon that time is a kind of radiation." Seeing the puzzled look on his face, she added: "Well, it's really just speculation - no-one's ever done any serious research, as far as I know. But if time is a kind of radiation, like light or gravity, there must be things that emit it, and, more interestingly, things that absorb it."

"Like light can't pass through a brick wall, you mean?" he asked.

"Precisely. It seems possible, then, that what we have in this room is some kind of material or field that absorbs some of the time that falls on it. As you move from this end to the other end, more and more time is absorbed, so there's less time available for things to happen in."

"Wouldn't that mean that things happen quicker, rather than slower?"

"No... your body perceives time as passing at a constant rate, regardless of what your brain might think about 'time flies when you're having fun,' and all that. Suppose I'm at this end of the room, and you're at that end, and we each hold up a clock that the other can see. If there's, say, a four-to-one time dilation ratio along the length of this room, then for every minute that I perceive as passing at this end, I perceive only fifteen seconds passing for you at the other end. Likewise, for every minute that you perceive as passing at that end, you perceive four minutes passing for me at this end."

"Which perception is the right one, then?" asked Jack, doubting that he would get a simple answer.

"Neither," Julia replied. "Or both. After all, my clock seems to be running at the right speed to me, and yours at the right speed to you."

"You know," he said, after an awkward pause, "Ernkel said this cellar was supposedly haunted."

"Haunted?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "Well, that explains everything, I'm sure. Ghosts can do whatever they like with your perceptions of reality."

Scene Seven

Edding placed a tray with two glasses on the table. He put one of the glasses in front of Julia. "Altamarian sherry, five thousand and twenty-eight vintage, for Ma'am..." The other glass he placed in front of Zamandha. "... for Ma'am, Zixcuvbn rosé d'un teint brunâtre, from the King's Own vineyards of Emidon Harbour."

"Thank you so much," said Zamandha, flicking her smile at him.

"Now, Sir, Mesdames," Edding continued, "would you care to order hors-d'œuvre?"

Warming to the invitation, Zamandha requested: "I'll have prawn crackers fried in sunflower oil and fifteen grams of butter."

"Butter from the Shofirrn, the Centadorian, or the mainland herd, Ma'am?" Edding inquired.

"Shofirrn, I guess," she replied.

Jack half-expected Edding to ask which cow the butter was to come from, but instead the butler turned to Julia, saying: "And for you, Ma'am?"

"A bunch of grapes, please," she replied, "ripe grapes."

Edding had evidently been taking lessons in how to disguise a sigh. "From where, Ma'am?" he asked.

Julia considered how best to vex him further, and settled for: "Wherever's nearest to this hotel."

"That would be the hinterland of Port Laskeron," he said, half to himself. "And for you, Sir?" he asked, turning now to Jack.

"Cheese and biscuits, please," he requested.

"What kind of cheese, Sir?" he asked patiently, aching to have a good tantrum at the washing-up boys.

"Oh, don't start that again," Jack snapped. "I shouldn't have to make that kind of decision. Servants are supposed to free their masters from such menial chores. I don't care what kind of cheese it is, as long as I don't starve while I'm waiting for it." He began to rise from his seat, and gripped the table with both hands. "Cheese, damn it!" he shrieked. " Cheese!"

Edding nodded politely, and asked: "What kind of biscuits does Sir wish to have with the cheese?"

Jack buried his face in his hands and counted to ten under his breath. He looked back to Edding and said, from between clenched teeth: "Whatever your handbook of culinary etiquette dictates is the proper kind to have with whatever kind of cheese you pick for me."

"Very good, Sir." Edding turned to leave.

At that moment, Zamandha interposed: "Jack - are you sure you don't want anything to drink before we start?"

For no reason that he could fathom, she looked nervous. "If it makes you any happier, my dear," he sighed, "I will. Edding, would it be too much trouble for you to add a cup of coffee to the order?" Just in time, he added: "The same blend and style as last night."

"None whatsoever, Sir," replied the butler, cranking his features into another textbook smile.

It may be recalled that Zamandha recently persuaded the Beverage Assistant Ragbowl to add some unspecified substance to Jack's coffee. Unfortunately for her plans, Ragbowl is currently crouched in the gap between two ovens, preoccupied with a vicious battle between his conscience and his avarice. This battle is likely to continue for some time, and so Ragbowl will take no part in the preparation of the coffee which Jack has just ordered.

Scene Eight

The sun had just set, and the breeze from the nearby cliffs was beginning to acquire a cold edge. "Have we all that is necessary for the consummation of our quest?" Elder Brother Penicillium enquired of the brethren who were assembled on the main path that led from the hinterland to the infidels' den of iniquity, or, as most of its occupants knew it, the Ocean Vista. "Brother Osmium, have you the Escutcheon of Righteousness, that wards us against the infidels' unchivalrous attacks on our sanctity?" [Picture of Elder Brother Penicillium. The scene in this picture is from the radio series. It isn't in the book, because I thought of a better way of doing this bit.]

"Aye, Elder Brother," said Osmium, a large, fat monk who looked a good deal like Friar Tuck. He bent over, wheezing as he did so, and pulled a rectangular piece of steel with rounded corners from his pack. He displayed it to Penicillium, holding it in both hands. The Escutcheon was about fifty centimetres high by thirty wide, and carved with carefully-chosen pictures and verses from the Book of Going Forth. It was said that merely touching it would cause an infidel to faint from its sheer holiness. It was sometimes necessary for a monk to bring the Escutcheon and the infidel together at considerable speed to achieve the effect, but that still counted as touching; no-one said the God Groll didn't appreciate a helping hand from His followers every now and again.

"Brother Palladium, have you the Bell of Rudaceous, that we may drive away the infidels with the music of the soul?"

"Aye, Elder Brother," said Palladium. He held up a small bronze bell and struck it with a stick which he took from a pocket of his habit. It gave a high, clear note, with the upper harmonics just loud enough to make you wonder if you were developing tinnitus. It had no clapper; the monks held that putting a clapper in a bell was only one step away from putting the bell in a tower and attaching a rope to ring it, which amounted to using machinery.

"Brother Alluvium, have you the Candles of Truth, that our souls may pass inviolate through the spiritual darkness of the den of iniquity that lies before us?"

"Aye, Elder Brother," answered Alluvium. He was the youngest in their monastery, barely out of a short habit, and he fidgeted a lot. Penicillium suspected that he had been given his name because of his remarkable ability to cause queues to form outside the privy at any time of day or night.

"Brother Antirrhinum, have you the carpals of the Prophet Coniferous, may-men-ever-revere-his-name, that we may be blessed with the fortitude of spirit that is the reward of all who are loyal to the God Groll?"

"Aye, Elder Brother," replied Antirrhinum, "that I have." He held up a small leather bag and gave it an enthusiastic shake. It rattled, like a box of dice. [24] Penicillium gave him the standard "thou-hast-earned-thyself-another-seven-decades-in-hell" glare. Somehow Antirrhinum had never managed to achieve the respect for his superiors that the God Groll had decreed was the right of every novice, and Penicillium found himself wondering how he had come to be chosen for this most holy of quests. A moment later, he wondered how any of the brethren had been chosen. Well, Father Chalice had picked them, of course, but Groll alone knew what criteria he had applied. As the second most senior monk, Penicillium had to lead the quest, naturally, now that the Father didn't travel as well as he used to, and Modicum was obviously favoured by Groll, since he was the one who had first met the Unbeliever when she fell from the heavens, so he had to come, too, even though he was often late for mass, and used magic for the most mundane and secular purposes, like tying the laces of his sandals, and, most unorthodox of all, admitted to liking the gruel that Brother Indusium the cook gave them. You weren't meant to like gruel; that was the whole point of eating it. [25] Food that tasted nice was a distraction from higher things. Brother Indusium was the best cook that the monks had had for years.

Travelling cross-country on foot had probably been a mistake, as the brethren had nearly all lived in big cities prior to entering the Order, but their beliefs allowed no other way. So far, this approach had resulted in four torn habits (not in itself a problem, as tattered clothing demonstrated a proper contempt for worldly things, but it risked exposing the flesh), an impressive array of bruises and scratches, two violently upset stomachs after sampling (against Penicillium's orders) some of the more attractive fungi that grew in the forest near the monastery, one sprained ankle, and a suspected case of snakebite. All the same, Penicillium reflected, it could have been worse. For a start, the snake could have been a Management Consultancy Spider.

"Brother Modicum," asked Penicillium, "have you the Book of Going Forth, that shall be our guide in the consummation of our quest, and in all our doings in this world?"

There came an indistinct reply, such as might be chanted by a monk who wasn't sure of the words to a hymn.

"Modicum," chanted Penicillium petulantly, "I asked you if you have the Book of Going Forth. "

Carefully, Modicum lowered the Book of Going Forth to the ground, and straightened up again, placing one hand on the book to steady it. "Aye, Elder Brother," he said clearly, once he had got his breath back.

"Good," said Penicillium, despite the evidence of his eyes. "Brethren, ahead lies the den of iniquity where the Unbeliever is held from our Order. We, the Chosen, shall release the Unbeliever and return her to the Sanctuary. Many shall be the temptations that the infidels place in our path, but we shall triumph over them. Touch nothing, see nothing, and hear nothing while we consummate our quest. Speak to none who is not of our order." Penicillium and Father Chalice had already said a great deal on this and related matters, and Alluvium and Perichondrium, one of the other young brothers, had resolved to do a little research of their own if the opportunity arose. "Brethren," Penicillium continued, "the last stage of our quest is the most perilous, yet we shall not fail. Our God and His Prophets are watching over us."

This last statement was absolutely true. Groll enjoys a good laugh as much as anybody.

Scene Nine

Salweem Swull, head chef of the Ocean Vista, stood in the doorway of the kitchen and bellowed the orders for the after-dinner drinks. He didn't bellow them at anyone in particular; he just bellowed them into the room, on the premise that there should always be someone there to deal with them.

The order that caught Ragbowl's attention went something like: "One-cup-of-Brilliantine-decaff-coffee-for-Mister-Jack-Henderson- black-no-sugar-made-with-water-from-the-drinking-tap-don't-let-the-water-boil!" Ragbowl's avarice rallied and delivered a knockout blow to his conscience. He was already due three days' shit-shovelling duty in the stables for being away from his post for half the evening. He would just have to hope that Zamandha would be able to pull the strings that would get him out of it.

He clambered out of his hiding place and called out: "I'll take that order!" This was not to inform Salweem that the matter was being dealt with - he expected that as a matter of course - but rather to ensure that nobody else dealt with it.

"Beverage Assistant Ragbowl!" bellowed Salweem. "Where've you been all evening?"

"A letter home to my mum, boss," Ragbowl replied, who had been saving this excuse for just such an eventuality.

Salweem lumbered into the room, and leaned, cliff-like, over him, blocking out most of the ambient light. He looked down at Ragbowl in much the same way that an environmental health officer would look at a botulism outbreak. Ragbowl became aware that the other boys were turning to look at him, but that hardly mattered.

When Salweem eventually spoke, his voice was quiet, but, to Ragbowl, he sounded as though he was still bellowing. "I thought your mother was dead, Ragbowl."

The ancestor-worshipping cult of Karthax the One-Headed [26] acquired its newest convert when Ragbowl replied: "Err, yes, err, boss. Gone but not, err, forgotten, boss."

Salweem looked at him carefully, as though the restaurant manager had laughed nervously and said to the environmental health officer: "Botulism? No, it's just a new type of preservative." You were supposed to be more tolerant of other people's religious beliefs these days, and it was just possible that the little oik was telling the truth. [27]

"All right, Ragbowl," he said carefully, "I know your priests probably get very upset if you don't fulfil your obligations to your God, and frighten you with tales of how His wrath shall be visited on the wayward, and all the rest of it. But that's after you're dead, right? Now my wrath is going to be visited on the wayward here and now. Four days in the stables, starting tomorrow morning, and if you don't have that Brilliantine decaff on Edding's tray in five minutes, just as Mister Henderson wants it, it will be a week. Right?"

"Err... right, boss." Ragbowl ran back to his place, and had Jack's drink ready rather faster than the laws of thermodynamics ought to have allowed. However, his earlier inaction meant that Jack received the dose which Zamandha planned for him some three hours later than she had anticipated. She, of course, was unaware of this delay, but it promised to add a few interesting twists to the events which she intended to take place after dinner...

Scene Ten

Zamandha walked along the corridor that led to Jack's room. Her bearing was confident, for she had every right to be there, but quiet and cautious too, for she didn't really want to have to explain to anybody what it was that she was doing there at quarter past eleven at night.

"This is the place," she whispered to the large form behind her. "Careful how you carry him - you won't wake him up, but I don't want him hurt."

"Right, milady," came the reply, in a voice like high-speed continental drift. Zamandha's companion looked grey in the pale illumination from the lights on the path outside, mainly because that was her natural colour. She was not merely built like the proverbial brick privy, but had probably been the inspiration for the original design. Standing two metres twenty-five in her bare feet, and about half that across the shoulders, she could easily have been taken for a Troll. On the whole, this was rather fortunate, because that was what she was. Little is known about the Trolls of Felintor. As a rule, they live well away from human settlements, in high mountains or deep underground. There are no great feelings of love or hate between the two races. The reason usually cited for the segregation is "socio-economic incompatibility" - neither race has anything that the other thinks would be worth the trouble of obtaining it. This is probably just as well for the Trolls, for they appear not to understand the concept of money. There are other reasons why the races live apart, but the narrative will come to them in due course.

Zamandha's companion, however, whom humans knew by the name of Stonearm, was one of the small number of Trolls who had decided to make a living amongst humans, mainly because she was the weakest of her peers, and did not particularly like the idea of spending her adult life as a librarian. [28] The work was basic fetching and carrying, but the food was good, even if she did have to go and collect a handful of small, bright metal discs every week. They tasted nice, but they gave her terrible wind, and so she just piled them in a corner of her room, which no-one seemed to object to. [29]

Zamandha motioned Stonearm to stop, and cautiously tried the handle of Jack's door. It wasn't locked. The two of them tiptoed in. At least, Zamandha did. The sound made by a Troll trying not to draw your attention to the fact that she is walking towards you is at about the same volume as the sound made by a human who is trying very hard to do just the opposite. Jack, who had been known to sleep through thunderstorms, was curled up in bed, snoring softly.

They walked over to the bed. Zamandha put a hand on the bedclothes to pull them back, and Jack sat up, wide awake. She tried not to scream. "Who's there?" Jack asked, looking out into the corridor.

"I thought you said he'd be asleep," remarked Stonearm.

"Ssshh!" insisted Zamandha. "Err... it's me - Zamandha."

"Who's that with you?"

"He's, err, one of the butlers," she replied.

"No I'm not," said Stonearm. Trolls, by and large, are very honest creatures.

"I'll have you fined a week's wages for that," muttered Zamandha.

"Sorry, milady." Stonearm was not actually particularly upset about missing a ration of those small discs, as her room was becoming rather cluttered, but she had gathered that the Little Squidgy Ones attached some kind of value to them, and so anything that caused a suspension of the ration must necessarily be a crime in their eyes.

"Look," said Jack, "what are you and that... butler doing here, anyway?" Some part of his brain was not happy with the label of "butler" that Zamandha had ascribed to the large silhouette that stood to her left, and was working through a list of alternatives.

"I've got something... rather interesting to show you," she replied.

"Can't it wait until tomorrow morning?"

"No, I'm afraid not... Julia mustn't see this."

"Why not?"

"Well," Zamandha said, casting about for an explanation that wouldn't have Stonearm taking notes, "I'm afraid she's a bit... mentally unstable at the moment. The time she spent with those Chanting Monks may have had a deeper and more lasting effect on her than we thought."

"Oh..." said Jack. The way she said "mentally unstable" suggested that she actually meant that Julia was mentally unstable in the way that the Sahara Desert was a nice spot for a bit of sunbathing. He ventured to add: "Who says so, anyway?"

"Yes, who?" asked the... butler would have to do for the moment.

"You keep out of this, granite-features," Zamandha ordered.

(Hmmm, thought the other part of Jack's brain, granite-features, and added another couple of possibilities to its list.)

"If you please, milady," replied her companion ("Furthermore, m'lud, the defendant, when challenged..."), "my name is Stonearm."

Zamandha glowered at Stonearm, and said: "Make that two weeks' wages." She turned to Jack again, and continued sweetly: "So, that's why I've woken you up, rather than left it until tomorrow morning. Would you like to come with me?"

Jack sighed. "I may as well. Now you've woken me, I won't get back to sleep for at least an hour."

Scene Eight (continued)

Boldly, the monks approached the den of iniquity where the Unbeliever was held prisoner against their Order's will. It was built in what Penicillium referred to as "the modern style" - a homogenous collection of bricks thrusting skywards, as if to plague Groll Himself with its unholiness. [30]

They walked into the lobby. Apart from a few tastelessly-chosen potted plants, it was deserted. "Observe, brethren," chanted Penicillium softly, "the way to the Unbeliever is unguarded. Thus do the infidel's defences fail him even in his greatest need."

"Good evening, can I help you?"

As one, the monks turned to face the infidels' doorkeeper, who had suddenly appeared behind a large desk at the far end of the lobby.

"Infidel," Penicillium chanted at her, "where is the Unbeliever kept prisoner?"

The receptionist, a forty-something woman dressed in a pastel lemon uniform that made no concessions to her complexion, sighed, and held up a weary hand. "Sir," she said, "before you go any further, I think we'd better establish a few things. This is a free hotel. We don't care what creed you are, Sir, as long as you pay your bill on time, and clean the chalk off the floor and the slime off the walls. Now I'm an Irixian, and we believe that violence is bad for the soul, but we have a couple of Dissenting Lorgrites staying here at the moment, and you know how they like to keep in practice with those Auricular Knives of theirs. Calling one of them an infidel is the surest way I know to end up carrying your ears home in a bag." She paused briefly, treated them to Smile Number 3, The Customer Is Always Right, and then continued: "Now we've got the preliminaries out of the way, Sir, who was it you wanted to see?"

"We have come to rescue the Unbeliever, Jezebel," Penicillium replied stiffly, "whom you are keeping prisoner here."

"Not unless he hasn't paid his bill," she said. "I'll have a look for you." She turned to a pair of grey boxes on the desk. One was roughly cube-shaped, and about thirty centimetres on each side, while the other was flat and perhaps forty centimetres long. Some complicated tubing connected the two boxes together, and attached the cube-shaped box to the desk. She poked at the flat box, which made a clicking sound as she did so. After a few seconds, there was a short squeak. The receptionist peered over her glasses at the cube-shaped box, and tutted. She poked the flat box again. There was another squeak. "I'm sorry, Sir," she said, "we don't have an 'Unbeliever' or a 'Jezebel' staying here at the moment."

"Your demon lies, infidel," he told her, pointing to the boxes. "Follow me, brethren. We shall find the Unbeliever." He walked smartly towards a doorway on the right-hand side of the lobby, a couple of metres in front of the receptionist's desk.

"I'm sorry, Sir," she called out to them, pointing to a sign on the lintel, "you can't go in there. Residents only." Penicillium ignored her. The brethren trailed after him. Alluvium and Perichondrium snatched a last glance at the receptionist. She did not resemble very much the description of the infidels' unholy temptresses that Chalice had given them. In much the same way that fish in isolated mountain lakes can evolve into unique, highly-specialised species, so forty-five years of being surrounded by bald men clad from neck to ankle in brown hessian had done some very strange things to Chalice's ideas about women. The two of them hurried after the others.

The monks had gone about ten metres along the corridor when they found it blocked by a large slab of a man, whose short, spiky hair brushed against the ceiling. His uniform was midnight blue, and looked to have been designed by someone whose day job was making armchairs for elephants. Behind and to one side of him was another man, of similar appearance. "Excuse me, Sir," said the first man, in the tones of one who is not naturally inclined to address anyone as "Sir," nor to ask anyone to excuse him, "did you happen to read the sign over the entrance to this corridor?"

Penicillium said nothing.

"You can read, can't you, Sir?" the man asked.

"I am an Elder Brother of the Order of Castillon, infidel," snapped Penicillium. "Of course I can read."

"Well, then, Mister Big Brother," said the man, "perhaps you noticed that the sign says 'Residents Only'?" Penicillium suspected that the man had to take someone's word for this. "Now correct me if I am wrong, Sir," he continued, "but you and your little brothers are not residents of this hotel, are you?" In just such a tone do people in taverns throughout the universe say: "Would you care to step outside?"

"Brother Palladium," Penicillium chanted out of the corner of his mouth, "have you the Bell of Rudaceous?"

There was some shuffling and fumbling behind him, and several muffled ouches, as the brethren tried to avoid treading on one another's toes. "Aye, Elder Brother," Palladium announced eventually.

"Then drive away these infidels with the music of the soul."

Palladium struck the bell vigorously several times.

The big men did not flee in mortal terror.

The one at the back tapped the one at the front on the shoulder, who turned to him and nodded. "That was a really stupid thing to do, Mister Big Brother," he said. "Grut here doesn't like bells. He says they remind him of when he was a little boy and had to get up in the middle of the night to be beaten by his dad." [31] He turned to Grut again. "I'll deal with this one," he said, poking Penicillium in the ribs. It was like being tickled with a sledgehammer. "You can have the idiot with the bell. What's that? He said we have to pay for the damage, and cleaning up? Since when? Tell you what, we'll do it outside."

"Friends, violence is bad for the soul," Penicillium chanted, unsure of whether this would have any effect.

"Oh, has Matilda been banging out that Irixian tolerance propaganda again?" the man asked. He crouched down, to bring his face level with Penicillium's, about ten centimetres away. The monk braced himself for the stench of alcohol or brimstone when the other spoke, but instead there was a whiff of peppermint. "Did she mention that there's a couple of Dissenting Lorgrites staying here?" The man's chin scarcely moved when he spoke; it was something you could sand wood with.

Carefully, Penicillium nodded. He noticed that the man had stopped calling him "Sir."

"Did she mention what Dissenting Lorgrites do to people who upset them?" Grut tapped him on the shoulder again. The man held a hand up and said: "Just a minute, Grut."

"Brethren," chanted Penicillium quietly, "when I say run, run."

"Did Matilda say what they do to people who upset them?" the man inquired again. Again, Penicillium nodded.

Grinning, the man asked softly: "Did she tell you that Grut and me are the Dissenting Lorgrites?" Penicillium shook his head. "How unfortunate for you," the man said, his grin widening. "Still, she's a busy woman, and she can't be expected to remember everything..." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a sickle-shaped knife.

"Run!" Penicillium shouted. He turned to flee.

There was no-one behind him.

Scene Eleven

As they made their way along the corridor, they passed a window, and Jack got his first good look at Stonearm. She was used to reactions like that from humans, and so said nothing. While Jack was recovering from the surprise, the part of his brain that had been at work on the problem of what Stonearm actually was quickly scribbled something at the bottom of its list, tapped Jack on the shoulder and dropped a piece of paper in front of him with the word TROLL written on it in large letters, as if it should have been obvious all along.

During the journey to wherever it was that Zamandha was taking them, Stonearm answered all of the banal questions that Jack asked her, accurately and fully, without once letting on that other Little Squidgy Ones had asked her exactly the same questions at least a hundred times before. Creatures who can see stalactites growing are nothing if not patient.

Scene Twelve

The door opened onto a dark passageway. "Brethren, which of you has the Candles of Truth?"

"We've lost them, Elder Brother," said Brother Osmium, wretchedly. "Brother Alluvium was carrying them."

"No, it's all right, brethren," piped up Brother Calcaneum, largest and strongest of the questers, and very useful after Alluvium had caused one of his queues to form outside the privy. "He dropped them when we crept - " he looked sidelong at Penicillium, and corrected: " - when we ran away from those Dissenting Infidels, and I picked them up."

Penicillium permitted himself a small smile, and said: "See how the God Groll favours those who are bold in the face of adversity." On Penicillium's instructions, Calcaneum handed out the candles. "Now, brethren, which of you has the Tinderbox of Chastity?"

There followed half a minute of embarrassed patting of pockets and searching of packs. "I, err, think Brother Perichondrium had that, Elder Brother," Calcaneum said lamely.

Scene Thirteen

"This is the place," said Zamandha, unlocking the door and flicking the light switch. A soft, pinkish light filled the room. "Stonearm, you wait outside and make sure no-one else enters."

"Yes, milady."

Jack and Zamandha went in. He had not been here before, but he guessed it was Zamandha's room. One of her handbags was on the dressing table, and the blouse she had been wearing that morning was draped over the back of a chair. There was a large double bed in the middle of the room, and a portable screen in one corner, of the type that cartoon characters go behind to get changed. Jack had time to notice this much before a tremendous yawn came upon him. Zamandha looked at him as though fearing for his health. He realised that he hadn't put his hand in front of his mouth, and said: "I'm sorry - I'm not usually up this late."

She patted him on the shoulder, saying: "You go and sit on the bed over there, and I'll go and get changed." He did this, and Zamandha went behind the screen.

"I hope you don't want me to help you choose a party frock," he said to the screen. That part of his mind that had recently been working on the problem of Stonearm's species was shaking its head. Julia mustn't see this... "I'm not just fashion-unconscious, I am fashion- dead. And besides, I really don't like parties - at the ones I've been to, everybody's danced a bit, and stuffed their faces, and talked to people they've never met before about things they've got no interest in, and got mind-slammingly drr - unnk, and done a bit of pot, or maraw-w-wanah, or something, and committed various... sexual... indiscretions - not necessarily in that order, mind, and... and..." He yawned again.

There was a pause. Zamandha called back: "I thought you university students were into that sort of thing."

"Some of 'em, maybe," he replied, "but not me." After a moment, prompted by that other part of him, he added: "How do you know I'm a student, anyway?"

"You'd be surprised at what I know, Jack." He could tell she was smiling a rather devious smile as she said that, a smile that said: "Furthermore, I know something that you don't." "Now," she said in that same tone, "tell me what you think of this..." her smile broadened even as she spoke "...party frock." She stepped out from behind the screen.

Well, said the other part of Jack's mind, I think we know what it is that Julia mustn't see.

If she's going to a party dressed like that, chipped in his libido, I want an invitation.

Jack struggled to put names to what Zamandha was wearing. He had never been particularly knowledgeable about women's undergarments, even after he had started dating girls. The mainstay of Zamandha's costume was black, and made of some shiny material. It made some attempt at covering her breasts, but she had already pulled the zip down to reveal most of her cleavage. Jack allowed his eyes to follow the line of the zip. It, and the garment as a whole, finished below Zamandha's navel, but only just. There was quite a lot of bare flesh below that. The word "alabaster" came into Jack's mind, and he realised that, although it was appropriate, he didn't have the slightest recollection of what it meant. He noticed a small red triangle with black edges, roughly in the middle of all that bareness, which he decided must be her knickers. She wore a pair of black thigh-length high-heeled boots, which added a precarious ten centimetres or so to her height, and black silk gloves, which reached just past her elbows. The delicate gold necklace which, in her haste to change, she had forgotten to remove, did spoil the image a little, but that hardly mattered at this stage.

"I see," said that socially responsible part of Jack that was still in some semblance of control, "you're going to a fancy-dress contest."

She performed a slow pirouette in front of him. From the back, the black garment around Zamandha's torso looked like a couple of wide belts that she had put on in the wrong place, and she appeared not to be wearing any knickers at all. Once she was facing him again, she gave a slightly coy smile and asked: "Well - what do you think?"

"It's - " yawn " - very nice, Zamandha," he replied. "It's a bit drab, though - all that black."

She sat next to him on the bed, and unfastened a couple of the buttons on his pyjama jacket. She put one arm around him and placed the hand on his shoulder. The other hand slipped inside his jacket and moved lightly, smoothly over his chest. Jack's libido responded the way a baby does when you tickle him. The rest of him, however, was motionless, more or less as he had been since sitting down.

Zamandha stopped stroking him for a moment, and looked at him. He turned his head towards her. Their eyes met. Ordinarily, Jack would have blushed and looked down at that point, but his body seemed to have much more inertia than usual: once it had established a posture, it wanted to remain in it. She smiled, not a lecherous smile or an "I know something you don't" smile, but a friendly, hopeful smile, as if she wanted to say something which she thought would make him happy, but was holding back, either through fear of embarrassment, or through not being able to find appropriate words. He remembered that his first girlfriend had given him just such a smile a few seconds before she told him for the first time that she loved him. He smiled back.

Seemingly emboldened by Jack's response, Zamandha shuffled a little nearer to him, and whispered: "Touch me." Obediently, he placed a hand on the knee of her boot. The leather was smooth, and cool to the touch. She smiled again, more salaciously this time. "Not there," she said, and moved his hand around her back and onto her waist. "There." His libido started turning cartwheels at the sensation of her bare skin. She unfastened the remaining buttons on his jacket and put both arms around him. "What a man," she murmured, as she began caressing him again. "All those muscles."

"Who are you trying to kid?" he asked. He tried to scoff, but it came out as another yawn. "You could use my ribs for a xylophone - " What key would it be in? pondered that other part of his mind " - and my neck and shoulders for a coathanger."

"So modest, too."

"No, really," he yawned, "I'm not bothered about being all skin and bone - I make up in other ways."

She smiled once more, and this smile was unmistakably lustful. "Yeah - I'll bet you're a really great kisser." Her face came closer to his.

"Oh, I wouldn't know about that - " He got no further, as Zamandha's lips met his with considerable force.

Zamandha had this part well-planned. She timed the start of her kiss so that Jack would have to open his mouth shortly afterwards - either to gulp down some air or to protest. When this happened, she was able to slip her tongue into his mouth quite easily. She was hoping that, after this, he would begin to co-operate, but this failed to happen.

It seems at this point that events can be left to the reader's imagination for just long enough to enable the narrator to mention that Zamandha's apparel is not the traditional seduction garb of the women of this part of Felintor. She has, however, researched this particular topic in meticulous detail.

Zamandha broke off the kiss, leaving Jack coughing and spluttering. She took a deep breath, and then let it out again, slowly. Doggedly following the script, she announced: "You really are a great kisser, Jack."

The dry-voiced part of Jack's mind cautiously prodded his libido. It appeared to have curled up and gone to sleep.

"Am I?" he asked. Zamandha's statement seemed to be inconsistent with what had been happening a few moments before, but he did not feel inclined to pursue the matter. "I dunno about you," he continued, "but I wanna go to bed."

She gave a little smirk, and replied: "That can be arranged."

"Good," he said, pulling free from her embrace, "I'm knackered." He flopped backwards onto the bed, his legs still dangling over the edge.

Zamandha looked coolly at Jack's motionless body for a couple of seconds. Through her teeth, she said: "I am going to kill that Ragbowl."

Scene Fourteen

"Here's another unholy mess you've got me into, Dunty," said Alluvium, once he judged that the big fat aggressive man with the funny white hat was out of earshot.

"Oh, yes?" retorted Perichondrium. "Dunty" was the name he had had before entering the Order of Castillon; he still wasn't sure whether he preferred it to the one he had now. "You were the one who wanted to know how Penicillium and Chalice knew so much about the ways and temptations of the infidels when they've hardly been out of the monastery in thirty years."

"I'll tell you how they know," muttered Alluvium, ramming another soapy dish into the rack beside the sink. "It's because their ways are exactly the same as ours."

Neither of them spoke for a moment, and then Perichondrium lifted a dish out of the water and wiped the bubbles off it. "I'll tell you something, though," he said, "this green stuff might sting your hands, but it doesn't half shift the grease."

Alluvium threw his dishcloth at him.

Scene Thirteen (continued)

Zamandha clambered onto the bed and crouched next to Jack. "Jack!" she whispered into his ear. "Jack, wake up."

His eyelids levered open. "Morning already?" he yawned. "Feel as though I've only been asleep five seconds." He raised his head a little, looking for the origin of some curious sensations that his body was reporting to him. Seeing only one possible explanation, and that a rather unlikely one, he asked: "Samandha, what are you doing?" She gave no immediate answer, but it seems worth mentioning that, despite the effects of whatever it was that Ragbowl had poured into his coffee, Jack had managed to develop an erection, which Zamandha was now busy stroking with her fingers. Unfortunately, his libido was still fast asleep, and in the absence of anything in his mind that could give these sensory messages their proper interpretation, Zamandha's caresses were merely pleasant, as opposed to ecstatic.

"Do you like that, Jack?" she asked.

"It's very... uh, relaxing," he replied. "What time is it?"

She shuffled around to look at the clock on one of the walls, keeping her hand in place. She turned back to him, and said: "Twenty minutes to midnight, darling."

"Oh, that's all right Thought it was tomorrow morning. Still got plenty of time to catch up on my sleep. Goodnight." His head fell back, and his eyelids clamped shut.

She slipped her free hand under his head, and brought the hand that had been massaging him up to his waist. "No, please don't... sweetheart."

The word "sweetheart" prompted Jack to reopen one eye, with which he surveyed her face suspiciously. She looked close to tears. "You're not in love with me, are you?" he asked.

Relief swept across Zamandha's face. "Yes," she said triumphantly, "foolish, impassioned woman that I am!"

He opened the other eye, and frowned at her. "Well, I'd better warn you - " he began. At this point, she kissed him on the lips - gently and briefly this time. He cleared his throat in an embarrassed manner, and continued: "I'm not very loveable." She kissed him again, on the cheek. "Miserable bastard really. But that's what - " on the neck, a few centimetres below the ear " - nine years of university does to you - " at the junction of his sternum and collar bones " - totally cut off from real life. Should've listened - " pectoral " - to Mum - wanted me to play drums in a - " on the nipple, allowing herself to linger " - thrash band. But no - I was an awkward bugger - " just below the bottom of the sternum " - always have been. I wanted to do A-levels. And I did - " near the navel "And it's been downhill ever since."

She slid back along the bed so that her face was level with his, and put her arms around him to pull their bodies close together. Once more she kissed him, and whispered: "Maybe I can take your mind off that."

"Maybe you can, too," he replied, squinting at her to make up for the blurredness of his vision. "You know, you're really a very nice girl. Before I go back to university, we really must exchange addresses. I don't know if any of our paper mail companies deliver to Felintor, but I'll make sure you get a letter somehow."

She wriggled a little, to give one hand some freedom in the space between his shoulder blades, and said fretfully: "That wasn't quite what I had in mind, dear."

"Wasn't it?" He squinted a little harder, and then gave up, letting Zamandha's face dissolve into a smear of pink and red and blonde/brunette. "Oh, look, I'm too tired now - tell me in the morning." His brain flipped a switch, and his body stopped struggling to maintain its position, and slumped forwards.

"Damn that Ragbowl!" Zamandha breathed, struggling to disentangle the arm that was now under Jack. "I'll have him boiled in one of his own cauldrons!" Having freed herself from Jack's weight, she shook him - gently at first, and then more vigorously. This failed to produce any response, and she gave him two calculated slaps across the cheek.

His eyes half-opened. "Oh - you again," he slurred. "Go away, will you - I'm too tired to dream." He reached out an arm and tried to push her away, but succeeded only in making himself roll onto his back. She slapped him again, on his cheeks and chest. Jack only response was a tremendous yawn.

In desperation, Zamandha began to bounce up and down on the bed, muttering words which, ordinarily, she wouldn't have admitted to knowing even polite euphemisms for. A few seconds later, there was a tremendous splintering crash from one side of the room, followed by some heavy, clumsy footsteps and a loud thump. In the unnaturally quiet silence, Zamandha surveyed the scene of this noise. The door of the room was missing, and that part of the frame that had been attached to the hinges had been torn away, exposing the brickwork. The door was now underneath Stonearm, who was struggling to rise to her feet. She was not having much success; whenever she tried to support herself with a foot or a hand, it would punch through the door. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Zamandha shouted.

"Err... very sorry, milady," replied Stonearm, smiling sheepishly. "I was leaning against the door to make sure no-one got in, and... I guess I must have fallen asleep." She had by now managed to lever herself upright, and stepped out of the door. She cautiously picked it up and leaned it against the wall, next to the doorway. It now provided even less cover than Zamandha's costume. There were a few dents in the carpet, which suggested that Stonearm had broken some floorboards as well. The Troll turned to Zamandha and ventured to add: "I'll, um, have somebody from Maintenance fix the door, milady."

She nodded slowly, and simmered: "But before you do, take this lump of meat - " she slapped Jack again, knowing that it would have no effect " - back where you found it, and then report to the Wages Clerk and ask him to withhold six weeks' pay from you!"

Stonearm scurried over to the bed, the floorboards creaking as she did so. "Right away, milady." She picked Jack up, and left the room, going through the doorway sideways so as not to damage it further.

"And be quick about it!" Zamandha called at the retreating figure.

Once the Troll's footsteps had faded into the distance, Zamandha brought a chair over to her dressing table and sat down. She turned the table's light on and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was tangled, and her mascara had run. One eye looked as though it had been punched. What remained of her lipstick was smudged around her mouth; she guessed that most of it was now on various parts of Jack. Damn him, she thought. Damn Ragbowl. Damn Stonearm. Damn everybody. Including me. She might be able to salvage something from this evening, but it seemed unlikely, and she would be very lucky if she got another attempt. You were expecting one? she asked herself.

She rose, and pulled off her boots. The feeling of having her heels on the ground was a little disorientating, and so she sat down again. Sighing, she sat back and closed her eyes. She could not be expected to report until the following morning, and even if Stonearm reported the accident straightaway, Maintenance would not investigate until after breakfast. She had perhaps nine hours to herself, then. Maybe I can salvage something from this evening after all, she thought. Where did I put that inflatable doll?

Scene Twelve (continued)

From the distance came a heavy, rhythmic thumping, like a tidy-minded earthquake. It seemed to originate from the left-hand branch of the T - junction that the brethren were now faced with. Penicillium motioned them back into the corridor from which they had come. A few moments later, he saw a huge, grey creature, that made the Dissenting Lorgrites look like model Irixians. It walked past them without seeing them, and continued along the right-hand branch of the junction. It was hard to be sure in the pale, unholy light that dribbled into the corridor through the decadent glass windows, but the creature was carrying something that looked very much like -

"The Landless One!" gasped Penicillium. "Modicum, what says the Book of Going Forth of this event?"

There was a rapid rustling of paper. "'Appendix nineteen (Bumper Book of Collected Trivia), paragraph six hundred and twelve,'" Modicum read. "'The Unbeliever shall have a companion, whom you shall know as the Landless One. Concerning the Landless One, Groll has revealed to me only that he or she must endure a rite of passage, which he or she shall survive alone, and that he or she must be wary of one whom you shall know as the Hungry Woman, and who shall be recognised by her cowhide raiment.'"

"Yes? And?" said Penicillium.

"That's all there is, Elder Brother," replied Modicum.

"Then," said Penicillium, uncertainty beginning to creep into his voice, "we cannot be sure whether this creature intends good or ill to the Landless One." Doubt is a terrible thing for the religious. "Modicum, take Brothers Calcaneum and Osmium with you and discover whence the creature came, and then return to us. We shall follow the creature to determine whether it shall lead us to the Unbeliever."

Scene Fifteen

Zamandha was hoping that when Jack woke up in the morning, he would dismiss the time he had just passed in her company as a rather strange dream. And this he probably would have done, were it not for the fact that the gloom of the corridors, coupled with Stonearm's native incompetence, caused Zamandha's henchbeing to deliver Jack's slumbering form to Julia's bedroom...

Julia woke with a start, to see that the door of her room was open. Somebody was in her room, but stepped out into the corridor and closed the door. She began to get out of bed, intent on confronting this person, but stumbled over someone lying next to her. She fumbled for the lamp on her bedside table. Even after her eyes had adjusted to the light, she could scarcely believe what they were telling her.

"Jack?!" she exclaimed, shaking him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Slowly, his eyes opened, and his head turned towards her. "Julia?" he asked, yawning. "What are you doing in this dream?"

"Jack, you're not dreaming." She shook him again. "Wake up!"

A satisfied grin spread across his face. "Ha-ha-how do you know? You think this whole thing is one big dream - " he waved his hand about to signify their surroundings " - don'tcha?"

She looked at him, vexed. "Jack, I'd like to know what you're doing in my bedroom."

"Your bedroom?"

Julia could see that this did not fit very well with the state of the world, as Jack perceived it, and guessed that he had been asleep for some time. Possibly he had been brought here by whoever she had seen in her room a few moments ago. "Yes," she told him, "and my bed, more to the point."

He looked around and saw that this was so, and then looked back to her with raised eyebrows. "That's strange," he commented. "Last thing I remember, I was on a bed in Zamandha's room. It's funny, you know. She came into my room at, well, I suppose about eleven fifteen, said she wanted to show me something very interesting, but it can't have been, 'cos I was yawning all the time, and I suppose I must have fallen asleep in the end... God only knows how I ended up here, though... I mean, I don't think I'm a sleepwalker..."

"What was this thing she wanted to show you?" Julia asked. As if I can't guess, she thought.

"Well, I think she was going to a fancy-dress contest," Jack said, "and she wanted my advice on the costume she was wearing - God only knows why she was asking me - I mean - only fancy-dress I ever went to I went as a ghost, 'cept Mum wouldn't let me cut eyeholes in the sheet, so I tripped and pulled the plug on the video jukebox..." The sentence tailed off in a yawn.

"What was Samandha wearing for this... fancy-dress contest?" Three guesses this time, I think. She's got imagination, that one.

"Well," he replied, "she was wearing this..." He juggled the various names for Zamandha's main item of clothing that had gone through his mind, but was unable to pick one that he felt comfortable about saying in front of Julia. "...shiny black thing - can't really call it a dress, there wasn't enough of it - I mean, the neckline was cut so low, you could almost see her nipples - I think. An' I mean, I've heard of miniskirts and hot pants, but this thing barely came down to her hips - you could see her knickers clear as anything..."

Julia coloured a little, wondering whether Zamandha had been wearing anything on top of this garment beforehand. "It's called a basque, Jack," she told him, matter-of-factly. Her attention was suddenly distracted by a sound outside the window, which something told her was definitely not the wind or an animal. That horrible paralysis which sometimes afflicts people in dreams came over her. Her eyes strained to make sense of the shapes in the darkness. Someone in a large, hooded cloak wanted very much to get in, and was not going to let details like the fact that the bolt was on the wrong side of the frame do more than slow him down a little.

A few seconds later, the window was open. The narrator would very much like to describe the method of entry, but is informed that it is a trade secret (as defined by the Trade and Guild Practices Act of 4918), and is unwilling to face the cost of the litigation that would be necessary to establish that its revelation would not constitute an unfair restriction on the livelihood of the interloper or the guild of which he is a member. [picture]

The intruder jumped from the windowsill, his cloak billowing, and landed, cat-like, in the middle of the room. He pulled his hood back and grinned at them, a grin that said that he was going to be the only one who grinned while he was around. The word "vampire" presented itself to Julia, and at that, a wild, crazy hope arose in her heart. Just before you get to the most horrible bit... She looked down at Jack. He was rolling over to look at this new arrival. She took a closer look at the intruder. The slick, black hair, dark eyes, and pale, almost anaemic face looked promising, but Julia's hope sagged when she realised that no self-respecting vampire would have worn a moustache like that. It was thin and straggly above his lip, and finished in a blot on either side of his mouth, like a stretched-out piece of chewing gum. His cloak was a serviceably sinister black, but the tunic and trousers that he wore underneath it were in various unstylish shades of grubby brown. His boots had flecks of mud and wet blades of grass sticking to them, so Julia guessed that he had probably not made the journey to the path outside the window in the form of a bat.

Experimentally, she sat up straight and made the sign of the cross with her forearms. "Don't move!" he hissed. He dropped into what Julia supposed was a fighting stance, with his feet apart, one in front and the other behind. His right hand was raised above his head, as if to throw something at her. He looked at his hand, grimaced, and pulled a knife from his belt. It was an ambiguous sort of knife: small enough to cut meat on a plate, large enough to do the same to people. She smiled a little. You knew where you were with people who broke into your room in the middle of the night and brandished knives at you. Even so, Julia couldn't help but think of Timothy Stanton as he reached for his weapon. "Who are you?" she asked him.

He grinned again, as if to say that even that was an unwise question. "I am one who is feared throughout these islands," he replied in a voice like acid dripping onto a metal plate. "Men talk of my exploits in terrified whispers - and the reason they whisper is usually because I've torn their throats out to make sure they don't warn anybody else."

That's more like it, she thought.

"So," said Jack, still yawning, "I take it you're going to do something pretty nasty to us?"

The man's grin broadened further. "Not just pretty nasty," he told them. " Very nasty. In fact, I'd go so far as to say unspeakably nasty. But allow me to fill in a little background first. I am an agent of the nameless evil - "

Julia interrupted with: "Oh, bloody hell!"

"I thought you'd say something like that." The man's grin was threatening to split his face.

Yes, she agreed. But probably not for the reasons you think.

"You," he continued, "intend to 'save' Felintor from the nameless evil. Now of course, my bosses don't like that. So they've decided to nip this entire 'salvation' business in the bud, before you two get your hands on any power crystals, or magic swords, or anything. So I'm going to take you to some isolated spot, and kill you." There was a heavy thump, and the door of the room trembled. The man looked at it, and gave another grin, a grin that said: "Too late."

"OK," said Julia. "When do we start?"

Scene Twelve (continued)

The brethren stood outside a door. They had seen the grey creature carry the Landless One in, and come out again without him. The door had proven to be locked, and none of the monks there was strong enough to force it. It had the number 39 on it, and Brother Palladium was frantically leafing through the Book of Going Forth, looking for paragraphs that it might refer to. So far he had come up with passages on the timetable of masses for days that were not especially sacred to Groll or a Prophet, the frequency with which a monk should change his habit, [32] and the unholiness of broccoli.

Brothers Modicum, Calcaneum and Osmium came hurrying along the corridor. Osmium was breathing even harder than usual, and something told Penicillium that it was not running that had brought this on. All three looked rather troubled. From behind the door came a crunchy, tinkling noise.

"What news, Brother Modicum?" asked Penicillium.

"Elder Brother, there is only one room from which the grey creature could have come. The door had been broken down. Within was the one who calls herself Zamandha."

"Then the grey creature must be carrying out the work of our God. Did Zamandha see you?"

"No, Elder Brother. She lay on her bed."

"Did she sleep, then?" Penicillium asked.

There was an embarrassed silence.

"She must be the Hungry Woman," offered Calcaneum. "She was dressed in cowhide, just like the sacred book says." The red-hot poker of guilt jabbed at him as he said that. "Dressed" wasn't quite the right word. "Undressed" would have been more accurate. Sensing Penicillium's stare drilling into the top of his head, he added: "We only took a quick glance at her, Elder Brother - just long enough to be sure who she was."

"The three of you may confess your sins to Father Chalice when we return to the Sanctuary," Penicillium told them.

"Thank you, Elder Brother," the three of them mumbled.

From behind the door came the unmistakable voice of the Unbeliever shouting: "Oh, bloody hell!"

"Brethren," chanted Penicillium urgently, "the Unbeliever is in danger. Brother Calcaneum, force this door open."

Obediently, Calcaneum put his shoulder to the door. He surreptitiously tried the handle - no point in falling flat on your face if you could possibly avoid it. Having confirmed that it was locked, he charged it. It shuddered, but remained firm.

When Calcaneum finally broke the door from its hinges, and the monks piled into Julia's room, they found it empty. The covers of the bed had been thrown back, and the curtains flapped forlornly in the desultory breeze from the broken window.

From the corridor came the sound of metal scraping over metal, and a voice said: "Well, well, well, if it isn't Mister Big Brother and his brave gang of little brothers. Which ear is it to be first, then?"

Scene Sixteen

Sound percolated into Julia's consciousness. A steady, low-pitched drumming - horses' hooves on bare earth? The creaks of badly-made joinery under pressure. Occasionally, the sharp crack of a whip; a noise of pain or fear from the horses; a guttural shout from a hard, uncompromising, unforgiving voice.

Gradually, wondering whether it was wise, she opened her eyes. It was night; everything that she could see was in shades of grey and black. She was in a vehicle of some kind, evidently horsedrawn, with suspension to match. There was a roof of sorts behind and above her, but the rest of the vehicle was open to sky. Their captor was at the front, driving. She raised her head a little, and saw that the sky was filled with glittering points of light, as though some anarchic Creator had poured a pot of luminous paint onto the dome of the heavens through a continent-sized colander. [33] A few seconds passed before some part of her brain announced that it had recovered a name for these lights: "stars." It added that, despite appearances, they were globes of incandescent gas, to which the planet on which she resided was as no more than a speck of dust to a light bulb. The reason that they looked so small was that the distance to even the nearest of them, measured in kilometres, had more digits than the National Debt.

They were an odd sight, these stars. Julia had only ever seen photographs of them, taken from Earth orbit or the far side of the Moon. She vaguely remembered something about very long exposure times, which would explain why these stars seemed faint. They illuminated nothing except themselves, as if shining on a rough, grubby lump of rock was beneath their dignity. Their presence was somehow discomforting. Certainly, she had known that they were there, behind the ever-present curtain of skyglow, but that knowledge was merely abstract. She shivered a little. She felt exposed, as if she had been walking through a crowd and suddenly realised that she was naked. She recalled that dreaming about being naked in public was supposed to be a sign of personal insecurity. What did it mean, then, if you dreamt about being on a naked planet?

The carriage rounded a bend in the trail (it could hardly be called a road), and a huge semicircle of light came into view in front of them. It hung in the sky, perhaps twenty degrees above the horizon, looking like a flying saucer whose anti-gravity system had stabilised it at the wrong angle. Moon, said the librarian in her head. Half-full.

Or half-empty, she replied. The librarian was about to launch into an explanation of the Moon's phases, and how it always presented the same face to the Earth, but she motioned it to be silent. She - or at least, her dream self - was about to die, and she did not want to meet the " unspeakably nasty" end that was in store for her with one of the contributors to her internal monologue wittering on about classical astronomy. She decided to try to put herself into the right frame of mind for the occasion.

As she had suspected, trying to feel afraid proved futile. She could imagine quite a number of was to die which, up until a few years ago at least, were considered unspeakable, but the fact that it was not really her who was going to suffer the pain or embarrassment or whatever made her feel detached from events. The clammy, visceral fear that she had previously felt in times of mortal danger was no more appropriate now than it would have been if she had been losing a computer game. The agent of the nameless evil was, like the inconsistent files on Caroline Weaver and Caroline Smith, someone else's problem.

Unwilling to face the celestial condescension above her, she lowered her head, and caught sight of a large, ill-defined bundle on the seat beside her. Twisting around to get a better view, she saw that it was Jack, fast asleep, still wearing his pyjamas, together with the dressing gown which their abductor had grudgingly allowed him to put on before they left. Her first thought was that, sprawled there, as if painted by an artist who was experimenting with limbs which pointed in unconventional directions, he looked rather cute. She tried to ignore this feeling, reminding herself that it was a fairly universal response to the sight of a sleeping person, no matter who the viewer, no matter who the sleeper. Somehow "cute" didn't seem quite the right word. Too patronising. "Innocent," perhaps? "Innocent," of course, invited you to substitute "naive" in its place. From what she knew of him, that last was not without foundation. University had that sort of effect on some people, and he seemed to have it worse than most. Oh, Jack, she thought, why do you carry on believing in this? And then, as if Felintor was some kind of multi-player computer game (Or a mutual hallucination, muttered another part of her), she added: How will you manage after I'm gone?

You stupid woman, she rebutted herself. He won't exist after you're gone. None of this will. This cute-innocent-naive bundle beside you isn't the real Jack Henderson. He's just a non-deterministic model of the real Jack Henderson, cobbled together out of observations and guesses about the real Jack Henderson by whatever megalomaniac, attention-seeking sub-persona inside that over-worked, under-valued brain of yours has dropped you into this grand solipsistic delusion. You've got enough real problems waiting for you when you wake up - like where you're going to find yourself - without worrying about the imaginary problems that you're going to be leaving behind.

Look, she replied. I'm trying to get myself into the right frame of mind for the end of this dream. Remember - just before you get to the most horrible bit...?

At that moment, the carriage went over a particularly aggressive bump, and their kidnapper cursed, more loudly than usual. Julia didn't understand most of the words he used, and suspected that if she did, she would wish she didn't. Jack stirred slowly, like the morning sun rising between the skyscrapers that filled the skyline of Julia's home city. "Wayoo trynado?" he slurred at the kidnapper. "Can' a man gesome sleep 'for 'e dies, eh, Mister... Misser..."

From the way Jack's brow furrowed, Julia guessed he was having a really thorough look around his memory for the kidnapper's name. She would be surprised if he found it: the man hadn't bothered to give it to them.

"Excuse me, Mister-Agent-of-the-Nameless-Evil," she began. Jack looked at her as if to say, I'm sure it wasn't that. "What is your name?"

The man turned to face her, and then suddenly jerked his head back to where it had been. He cracked his whip three or four times, uttering several more words that made no appearance in any dictionary that Julia had ever consulted. She wondered if his first name was something like Sergeant Stazi's.

It is often said that sound, and especially music, is very useful in conveying the mood of a scene. Books don't have sound, of course, but it may help to imagine for a moment that they do, and to suppose that the composer who has been commissioned to write the incidental music for this book has been given the following instructions for the end of this scene:

"We want something that says Menace with a capital M. A minefield with some pits of quicksand, and a few shark pools for good measure. Rent a few good horror movies and listen to the bits where the heroine is eating her muesli, or is curled up in bed with a good book (or a good hero), just before a couple of putrescent arms punch through the wall and try to strangle her. That's the sort of score we want."

"And then it needs to be arranged for instruments which are impossible to take seriously. A kazoo is the obvious place to start. Carry on with an alpenhorn, a pair of spoons, a very cheap 1970's electric piano, and a set of bagpipes. The bagpipe player should be able to help with the tuning, which should be slightly different for each instrument. Not so different as to shift it into another key, but just different enough to set the reader's teeth on edge."

The bagpipes began to drone as the man turned back to Julia. "Promise not to laugh?" he said. The electric piano joined in with a high, brittle countermelody, fed through some sort of electronic processor that made it sound like breaking glass. "I don't find my name in the least bit amusing," the man added. The spoons played a busy, syncopated rhythm, like Sergeant Stazi tap-dancing.

"All right," she said, "I promise." The alpenhorn wandered in and out of the mix, sounding like a department-store Santa uneasily going "ho ho ho" to the small child on his knee whilst watching the child's mother making frantic "we-can't-possibly-afford-one-of-those-think-of-some-excuse-for-not-being-able-to-deliver-it" signals.

The music crescendoed [34] as the man said: "My name is - " The instruments hit a huge chord together, and then stopped. In the silence that followed, the man concluded: "The Ferret."

The music resumed, softly, and the soundtrack editor had to do some very clever juggling about to prevent it from being completely masked by Julia's riotous laughter.

Read on: Chapter Three is at http://www.pembers.net/fiction/lj_ch3.html.

Footnotes for Chapter Two

[21] The local environmental health officers might have taken a different view of the large bottle of cherry gin concealed in a cupboard behind several dozen six-packs of Mrs. Swish floor cleaner. It belonged to one of the cleaning ladies, who thought her supervisor didn't know about it, although she did occasionally wonder why it never seemed quite as full as she remembered having left it the last time. [Back to main text.]

[22] It is worth pointing out that no-one has ever actually seen dragon's pus, except presumably the dragons themselves, of course, but the first fluorescent strip lamps manufactured in Felintor were derided by one influential anti-progress lobby as giving off light which was this colour, and the description stuck. [Back to main text.]

[23] Bad dubbing will suffice, if the film is a foreign one. [Back to main text.]

[24] An examination of the bones possessed by the various Castillon monasteries that were said to be those of Coniferous would lead a doctor to conclude that the Prophet had seven or eight hands, a spare set of teeth for eating grass, and a prehensile tail. [Back to main text.]

[25] The word "gruel" is related to "grout," a kind of thin mortar for filling the gaps in tiling. [Back to main text.]

[26] Gods, like people, are often named for something that is distinctive about them. In the pantheon of which Karthax was a member, having one head was very distinctive indeed. [Back to main text.]

[27] Salweem had had so much trouble with people like Orthodox Shriven Mathrites, who are forbidden to eat boiled cabbage on Wednesdays if it is raining, [27a] that he had joined the United Revised Church of Groll, which allows its followers to eat whatever they like as long as they pay for it.

[27a] Because their God, Mathran, had once choked on a piece of boiled cabbage prepared under just such inauspicious circumstances. The Irixian sect of this religion believe that Mathran choked because the cabbage had been plucked by someone with his back to the sun, and chopped up with a knife whose blade was longer than eleven centimetres. At one time, Irixians were completely banned from the Ocean Vista. The Laskeron Hagiography Society has advanced the view that Mathran actually choked on a fish bone, but no-one else takes this very seriously. [Back to main text.]

[28] Most of the Trolls who take this option are females, mainly because they're more adept than the males at forcing their voices up into registers that the Little Squidgy Ones can hear. [Back to main text.]

[29] Most Trolls don't even know what metal is. It's hard to find a use for something that you can crumple with one hand when it's in centimetre-thick sheets, and which melts when the temperature starts to become mildly uncomfortable. [Back to main text.]

[30] Penicillium had never heard the term "phallic symbol," and wouldn't have used it if he had. [Back to main text.]

[31] Quite a lot of things reminded Grut of this, among them followers of the Demigod Urkl, people who used foreign words when their own language had perfectly good words that meant the same thing, and broccoli. [Back to main text.]

[32] No more than four times a year. This is possibly the origin of the saying: "Old habits die hard." [Back to main text.]

[33] Such descriptions are usually the result of the over-enthusiastic interpretation of the terms of an author's poetic licence, but in Felintor's case, at least, this was not actually very far from the truth. [Back to main text.]

[34] Musicians get very annoyed if you say "reached a crescendo" when you mean "reached a climax." [Back to main text.]