Rawduck VII

 The antechamber to the audience chamber had a queue of people running directly through the middle of it, from one gilded door to another, and along each side of the queue were four guards.  They stood roughly equidistant, their eyes roaming freely over the people queuing, with their weapons clearly on display and their hands at rest at their sides, but still close enough to their weapons that they had only to react to draw them.  The floor of the antechamber was tiled with a repeating black and white pattern that was smudged here and there with dirt, and towards one end there was a reddish smear that might have clay or might, perhaps, have been something else.

Yannish, the King’s advisor, was wearing an uncomfortable uniform of heavy cotton that made him sweat anytime there wasn’t a cooling breeze around him.  It wrapped around him in blue and gold with lines of green here and there separating bands of the other colours. It looked smart but it made him feel like he was being roasted alive.  He leaned in to the three mages who were standing in the queue; they had reached the middle of the antechamber and Yannish had decided that it was time to brief them.

“The King is King Rawduck the seventh,” he said, watching their faces.  Inevitably he saw the youngest mage, a boy barely out of his teens with a cocky grin, a single sparkling green eye and a eye-patch, and a shock of blonde hair, start to open his mouth.  “The seventh,” said Yannish with careful emphasis.

“I heard you,” said the boy, who had given his name as ‘Vorrai’.  Before he could continue the only woman of the trio elbowed him in the stomach.  He oof-ed a little.

“Then you heard him say ‘the seventh’,” she said.  “So I imagine that the King, and all the forebears of that name, have all heard everything you might be thinking of saying right now.”  She was called Meridion, recalled Yannish.  She was svelte and delicate-featured but denied any and all elven heritage.  She was rumoured to have had several children but, looking at her, Yannish found it hard to believe.  She didn’t look old enough to have borne two children, let alone the purported dozen.

“Quite,” said Yannish, rather glad he hadn’t had to explain himself.  Vorrai rubbed his stomach, but it appeared to be pro forma rather than from any injury.  “The Kings Linguists have determined that there is a small island off the coast of the Yugan Continent where the language has a word Rohrpug, which means ‘fighter of seven animals’.  They believe that the King’s name probably stems from there.”

Vorrai’s face, which Yannish thought was shallowly pretty but might become handsome in twenty years’s time, screwed up in thought.  “The Yugan Continent was only discovered forty years ago,” he said.

“Vorrai!”  Meridion looked exasperated and brushed long dark hair away from her face.  It fell back, occluding an eye.  “If the King has decided that that is the origin of his name, who are we to question that?”

Vorrai frowned, but before he could answer the third of the trio lifted a hand.  He was, like Yannish, wrapped in heavy cotton clothes but, unlike Yannish, appeared to find them a suitable temperature for the inside of the palace.  He had refused to give a name and Yannish, normally adept in politicking these things out of people, had failed repeatedly to convince him otherwise.  “There are many truths,” he said.  “This is one of those truths that will, with time and repetition, become self-evident.  Leave it, boy.”

Yannish nodded, while wondering about the deep resonance that the nameless mage had achieved.  The floor had almost vibrated under his feet.  And with that thought, the queue shuffled forward and the three mages were at the door to the audience chamber and were ushered inside by the attendants there.

“Mages?” King Rawduck VII looked over them as though he were reviewing soldiers.  They all had the uncomfortable feeling that they had failed to polish their boots sufficiently for a moment.

“Hengist’s charm of disapproval,” said Vorrai after a moment.  He made a cutting motion with his hand and the sensation disappeared.  Around the room all the guards drew their weapons and pointed them at the mages.

“Don’t do that without obtaining permission first,” said the King.  He gestured something surprisingly complex and the guards returned to their at-ease stance.  “You have lived this time; next time you may not be so fortunate.”

Meridion rolled her eyes.  “We get it,” she said, “you’re the King.  We should show respect.”

Vorrai rolled his eyes now, but he nodded and looked at the floor.  “I could kneel,” he said.  “But it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned recently.”

“Shut up,” said the King.  “There are balances of power, yes, and right now the balance is tipped in my favour.  Not by a great deal, I grant you, but I’m not here to threaten you or play word games.  I want to hire you.  So I only need as much advantage as it takes to get you to listen to my proposition.”

“Fair,” said the third of the trio, his voice rumbling like an earth elemental’s.  “Speak, then, your Majesty.”

“Four days travel from here is the river Clem,” said Rawduck VII.  He gestured casually towards the north-east.  “Across the river are some disputed lands.  I wish to resolve the dispute, and to do that I need a bridge.  As quickly as possible, in fact.  Or quicker, even.”

“Quicker than possible?” Vorrai smiled.  “I like a challenge!”

“There are few bridge-building spells,” said Meridion, who seemed to be ignoring Vorrai now.  “It’s just not something you often need magic for.  Expensive, hard to do, and you need a good mage.”

The King let his gaze drift from Vorrai to Meridion and back, taking in all three of them.

“Yes, of course,” she said.  “I didn’t think it was a coincidence that the three of us ended up together in the queue.  Well, I suppose there’s always Athelred’s Graceful Span.  It will take 24 hours though.”

“The spell needs 24 hours to cast?”  Rawduck VII looked appalled.  “I thought magic was quick!”

“It takes about 7 minutes to cast,” said Vorrai.  “And nearly 24 hours to anneal to the point where it can support the weight of a small army crossing it.  And it’s unnecessarily froufrou.  We can just cast Gormund’s Extensible Log fifteen or sixteen times and get a—“

“Pontoon that will be swept away in the first storm,” said the third of the trio.  “Hardly a strategic choice.”

“Athelred’s Span will allow shipping below it,” said Meridion.  “I did pick it for a reason, you know.”

“No shipping on the Clem,” said the third of the trio.  “At least, not that way.  Depth of the river is very variable.”

“Well,” said Vorrai, who looked annoyed now, “how about Mimi’s Catapult?  Doesn’t interfere with river traffic whether or not there is any, can be left there indefinitely, and gets the army across in less than an hour.”

“Possible,” said Meridion, tapping a tooth with a fingernail.  “We could set three up and do it even faster.”

Vorrai grinned but the King interrupted them.  “A bridge,” he said.  “Not a magical transport system.  No teleporting either.”

“Summon Elemental,” said the third of the trio resonantly.  “Have an earth elemental raise the river bed at the desired point, and then tunnel through the rise.  Will take less than an hour, and—“

“Minor flooding of the surrounding land while the bridge is being formed,” said Vorrai.

“Unacceptable,” said Rawduck VII immediately.

“Ice Elemental,” said the third of the trio implacably.  “Freeze the surface of the river and have the army skate across.”

“Two elementals,” said Vorrai.  “One on each side.  Have them triggered by something so that they only freeze the surface when the bridge is needed.”

“I like it,” said Meridion slowly.  “Bridge on demand, and we can key it to the King’s troops.  Maybe to the sergeants or something, so that he has control of who can cross.”

“I like the sound of this,” said the King.  “This is fast?”

“Mostly,” said Vorrai.  “We will need a few human sacrifices though.”

A brewery of egg-shells

Grey Ellen stood in the corner of the Innishere public house.  Outside it was raining, a slow but solid curtain of water that fell down relentlessly from a sky the colour of polished lead and turned the hillside roads into ad hoc streams.  Birds huddled on branches under broad leaves, heads tucked under wings, and the smells of wet peat and dark loam rose up around them.  Inside, the fire in the long stone hearth crackled happily throwing out waves of heat into the main room and any rain finding its way down the tall chimney evaporated back up before it ever reached the flames.  Cooking smells -- browning pastry, popcorn and burning sugar swirled amongst the tables, and the drinkers held tall glasses of dark ales and golden lagers to their lips while they listened to their companions hold forth on myriad topics.
Mrs McAleethie came in, shaking her umbrella off so that rainwater glistened brightly in the air before spattering on the nearest tables.  She hung it on Grey Ellen's arm, and then draped her sou'wester over Ellen's head where it joined two others.
"I'm a glass of white, Seamus," she said to the barman, looking around the room.  "And I'm not a one to go calling out the Queen of the Fairies or nothing, but she's up and taken my wee bairn and left me with a thing that looks like a raven had sex with a stick and they got to arguing over who should be pregnant."
There was a moment of silence while the drinkers considered what that might look like, and then a gentle hubbub returned and Seamus poured a glass of white wine at the bar.  He picked a fruity Sancerre as it seemed like Mrs McAleethie was a mite upset.
There was a clatter as Grey Ellen dropped the umbrellas and shook the raincoats off of her head.  She kicked aside outdoor boots and trampled Wellingtons, and generally made a complete pig's ear of a mess in the corner.  Mrs McAleethie scampered to the bar to grab her glass of wine before Ellen might think to take it for herself.
"Sweet chaos, sister," said Ellen.  She was called Grey because the locals believed that she straddled, somehow, the world of men and the world of the fay, and naturally that meant she couldn't be trusted.  It was pure coincidence, so they said, that her hair had greyed before she reached the age of twenty-five, and that a chance encounter with leprosy had left her with skin that only a zombie could envy.  "When you make bold statements like that you risk drawing the gaze of Our Mother of Nails.  What on earth could bring you to think that she'd violate the treaties and truces that we have and swap out a bairn for a boggart?"
"Aside from the fact we seem to make a fresh treaty every three months, swearing that this time we believe they'll honour it?"  Seamus's words seemed almost incidental, but somehow no-one else had been speaking when he spoke.  The gentle hubbub rose around him again and he swabbed the bar with a stinking, grey cloth.
"The child is little more than a toast-rack with the head of a Barbie doll," said Mrs McAleethie. "And not a new one, neither, but one that your older sister tried to barbecue one summer to punish her for putting out for Ken too often.  Calling it a child is a mercy to it, so it is; if it had feathers we'd pity it and drown it in the Holy Water at the Kirk, but as it is the Father, Lord bless his inebriate soul, says that the thing is just afflicted with the ugly and should be loved despite it."
"But are you sure it's a changeling?" asked Grey Ellen, her eyes bright in her thin, undernourished face.
"That I'm not," said Mrs McAleethie in the tones of a woman who was sure she was right but was trying hard to appear humble.  "I guess it's possible that I've bore a child who looks so little like me or my husband that we've both been wondering if we were both cheated on."
"You must be sure," said Ellen.  She hugged herself. "Have you suckled the child?"
"Bejesus no!  I'd sooner let the dog!"
Heads turned.
"But I won't!"
Heads turned away again.
"Then do as I say," said Grey Ellen, deepening her voice and ducking her head.  "Set the child before the fire in a bassinet and set a pot of water onto the fire to heat.  When the water seethes and bubbles as though raging at the injustice that Our Mother of Nails has committed to you, you must crack a dozen eggs and discard the contents.  Place each shell in the liquid, and bring it back to the boil.  If the child be a changeling it will surely reveal itself, and then you must seize it and plunge it into the boiling water as well.  But watch carefully -- when it flees your child will be returned and you must pluck it from the water before the heat hits it."
"Boil the baby," said Mrs McAleethie with an unwholesome tone of pleasure in her voice.  "All you drinking here, you're witness to what she just said.  I'm off to boil the baby, as per her instructions."
"That's not quite what I said," said Ellen, but Mrs McAleethie was hauling on a sou'wester and unfurling an umbrella and heading out into the curtains of rain.

The fire was small, but still enough to heat the McAleethie kitchen, and the baby in the bassinet was set in front of it and sweating like it was the middle of summer.  As Mrs McAleethie cracked eggs and set the white and yolks aside, casting the shells into the pot, the baby sat up.
"Have you been talking to Grey Ellen?" said the baby in a deep, masculine voice that suggested a lifetime of rich foods and courtly dancing.
"What if I have?"
"Only she's the only witch I know who thinks boiling eggshells is a sovereign remedy," said the baby.  "A dozen, right?"
Mrs McAleethie stopped cracking and turned to the child.  "You're a changeling," she said. "Ellen said that this would force you to reveal yourself."
"You could have just asked," said the baby.  "I've been here eight months and you've not said one word to me.  If I was really your child I'd be struggling to acquire language right now.  My first words would likely be "I want a divorce.""
"And what are you doing here anyway?  Where's my wee bairn, Johnnie Sebastian?"
"Dead," said the baby.  "He had kidney failure at nine days.  The Queen didnae want to see you upset, so she provided you with a surrogate for a wee while."
"Dead!" Mrs McAleethie sat back. "So it is.  And how does having you here help?"
"With the grieving," said the baby.  "You've had much longer to come to terms with losing the child, you'll get over this better and you'll have other children.  What are you going to do with the eggshells you're brewing so, then?"
"Ellen said to boil the baby," said Mrs McAleethie absently.  "Sodom and Gomorrah child, now I've no child at all.  What am I to do then?"
"Get pregnant," said the baby. "Or adopt."
"That's like stealing, but it's legal, right?"
"Mostly," said the baby.  "Though I'd not tell them about Grey Ellen and you taking her advice to boil babbies if I were you."
"Gomorrah," said Mrs McAleethie.  "I always thought I'd get the true child back after all this."
"He's a bit decomposed," said the baby.  "Quite runny in a lot of places too.  I... wouldn't."
"I can understand that," said Mrs McAleethie. "Of course, it seems a bit unkind to leave him with your Queen in that state too, ye ken?  I'm thinking maybe you could deliver him to Grey Ellen?  By way of thanks for all her advice?"
She and the baby shared a smile.

Hidden gargoyle

The tea was refreshing and bitter, and Geraldinium stared out at the sunset.  Her studio was the attic rooms of an entire row of terraced houses, whose occupants were unaware that they had even had attics once.  The view of the sunset was through a huge window that was the width of number 17 in the terrace, slightly angled because of the slope of the roof and was soul-shiftingly vivid.  There was a storm on the way and the saccharine colours that reminded her of the kind of cheap paintings you could find in pound-shops, all horses on the beach and unicorns shedding tears for sleeping teenage girls, but at the edges there were hints of darkness, clouds that edges themselves with hate rather than silver.  It seemed like an auspicious night for her sculpting.

When she set the tea-cup down on the scarred wooden table in front of the window she picked her hammer and chisel back up again.  The noise of her sculpting would undoubtedly cause worry to the Daily Mail reader in the house below where she sculpted, but she considered that to be something readers of that vile rag to deserve.  She crossed to the keystone, and paused.  While she’d been drinking her tea and watching the sunset, surely no more than half-an-hour, three spiders had emerged from somewhere and built webs on and across the stone.  The webs covered the gargoyle’s lumpy, sketched-in head, and two of the spiders were sat, staring malignly at her, right where she’d intended the gargoyle’s main eyes to be.  The third spider scuttered away at her approach and had disappeared down the side of the stone.  She regarded them for a moment, and then picked up a rough cloth from her work desk and wiped the webs and spiders away.  They were too early; they could come and contribute to the project when she was done with the carving.

The rhythmic tap of the hammer on the chisel, and the steady work of looking at what had been removed and what had been discovered as a result of that was soothing work, and as she steadily brought the gargoyle out of hiding and into the light her mind wandered back to the records from the Orphanage.

The Orphanage had originally been called the Home for Wastrels and Waifs and had been founded by a Mr. and Mrs. Gentlescot in the early 1800s.  The founding date wasn’t written down anywhere that Geraldinium had been able to find, but allusions to various events in the records suggested that it was probably somewhere between 1810 and 1816.  He had been a butcher, and she appeared to have been a monster hiding in human skin.  There were a number of letters written by her, in a crabbed hand that needed careful study, to various dignitaries and philanthropists of the time, which had been returned with responses to her pleas for money (and occasionally unwanted children).  The letters revealed that she viewed the children essentially as a cash-crop, a way of extorting money from people with either principles or emotions or both, and she would describe their piteous states in elaborate detail in an attempt to ensure a cheque by return of post.  Reading through these descriptions Geraldinium had been struck by the unneccessity of them: if this woman had spent more time (and money) looking after the children then they wouldn’t have been in this state yet.  When she described the four-year old being washed in cold water by a one-armed girl and a blind boy Geraldinium noted that two paragraphs earlier there had been mention of children far more able to look after ablutions.  The accident that had caused the girl to become one-armed sounded contrived to her as well.  There was, to her mind, a definite whiff of unpleasantness around the butcher’s wife.  The implicit threats in her letters, too, “Please send money as it seems unlikely that poor Clara will last the night without it; rest assured I shall keep you abreast of her progress…”.  There had never been any hope for these poor children.

She tapped a new part of the keystone sharply, and with a sudden crack a thin rectangular piece of stone broke free and fell to the floor, smashing.  Geraldinium cursed, and then paused.  The piece of stone had revealed a date incised into the keystone, and she realised that the rectangular piece must have been added later on to cover up the date.  This had to be the founding date that wasn’t written down anywhere, but… it said 1618.  For a moment her skin crawled and she wondered if she hadn’t made a mistake in choosing this stone.  Then she looked at the gargoyle, now appearing almost to be clawing its own way out of the stone and knew that this creature needed to be on display and not hidden any longer.

Withered stumps of time

Phlebitis, doomed sailor, sat in the waiting room and felt impatient.  Somewhere beyond the reception desk, through at least three doors and down corridors that were carpeted in beige and painted in blue and left the traveller with the feeling that they were the only thing left on earth, was Justice Aburton.  Who was keeping him waiting, in the appropriately named room, for reasons that Phlebitis suspected were entirely selfish.

On the wall, a clock made of toast ticked quietly, measuring out the seconds, minutes and hours with three hands, each looking as though it were ashamed of its companions and was reluctant to spend time in their company.  The hands tried to stay maximally separated, meaning that the clock currently claimed that the time was 30 seconds past ten past two, and had been just five minutes earlier twenty-five seconds past five past nine.  Phlebitis could understand the use of toast as the outer body of the clock as it was disposable, replaceable, and edible if the mood took you.  He spent months at a time on board his ship, hauling boiled frogs, or willow-drug statues, or little jade figurines that were probably cursed, and appreciated things that had a use but could also be eaten when the only alternative was boiled frog or the cabin boy.

The receptionist lifted her head from the magazine she was reading and smiled vacantly at Phlebitis.  Her pupils were dilated, and the whites of her eyes were mostly yellow.

“He will see you now,” she said, her voice dreamy and quiet.  “He says he will apologise for keeping you waiting if you can only show him how late he is.”  Phlebitis snorted at that; Justice Aburton was famous for making seemingly penitent offers if the injured party could only do three impossible things before breakfast.

“The usual way?” he asked, gesturing towards the door behind reception.

“Yes,” replied the receptionist, her focus sliding back towards her magazine.  “Please don’t kick the echidna on your way.”

I don’t even know what one of thsoe is, thought Phlebitis, but he nodded and smiled, and made his way to the door.

Beyond was the beige, earth-like carpet of the corridors, and the walls and ceiling were painted sky-blue, and Phlebitis remembered walking on a honey-coloured beach one morning just after sunrise, wondering how he was going to escape from the wretched desert island.  He shivered; he’d learned a lot about what he was capable of in those three weeks.

The corridors seemed to run on interminably, and there too few doors into rooms for the length of the corridors.  For them to be sensibly sized the rooms that were there would have to be the size of football pitches at least.  He walked down them, knowing the route by heart and turning at all the right places without having to count doors or paces, arriving at the door with the little brass nameplate on it: Justice Aburton.  He knocked.

“Come in,” came a heavy-sounding, tired voice.  “Come in, come in.  I haven’t got all day to wait while you figure out a door-handle.  Ah Phlebitis,” as Phlebitis opened the door, “come in.  I’ve been told I should be expecting you.”

“I made an appointment, yes,” said Phlebitis, closing the door behind him.  “I wasn’t expecting you to honour it though.”

“You killed two of my insurance inspectors last time you were here.”

“I left the Unreal City without anyone telling me that you had men hidden in my frog-boiling barrels.”

Neither man sounded angry, they were just stating facts.  For a moment there was silence between them, and then the Justice, a brown-haired man with a face as wrinkled as an old potato (and with little green patches), tapped a finger on some documents on his desk.

“It says here,” he said, tapping again for emphasis, “that you wish to leave harbour with some withered stumps of time.”

“I am trading in clocks and watches this time round,” said Phlebitis.  “The frog-farmers have finally developed astronomy and want access to timepieces to improve their harvest.”

“Of frogs?”

“So they tell me.”  Phlebitis had his own doubts that frogs and watches worked well together, but he couldn’t see how a clock would build a weapon, so he wasn’t worried about this new trade demand.

“It seems unlikely,” muttered the Justice.  He turned pages of a document, the papers held together by a clip in the corner, while Phlebitis looked at the three frames hanging on the wall behind him.  Two contained certificates, of Law and Philosophy, and the third contained a picture of a young man, who might just have been the Justice, proudly holding up a fish as long as his body.  Phlebitis, who knew how heavy fish were, thought the picture had been faked.

“But you have withered stumps of time,” said the Justice, pointing at a page.  Phlebitis leaned in a little to see it and realised that it was a copy of his manifest.  He read the line that the Justice was stabbing a finger at, and frowned.

“Those are integral sticks,” he said.  “I got them from Madame Genevieve, who’s government-sponsored and possibly has links to the City Directors–“  Justice Aburton glared at him so hard when he said that that he had to stop and swallow before continuing, ”– and she said nothing about there being export problems.”

“The integral sticks form a clock of sort,” said the Justice.  “There aren’t normally issues with them, but you’re taking them to a new destination, and we don’t really know what they want them for.”

“You just said yourself that clocks aren’t an issue going to frog-farmers!”  Phlebitis felt like he was being jerked around like a marionette by some petty mandarin.

“Most clocks don’t contain reservoirs of time!”

Justice Aburton was white faced save for two burning red spots in his cheeks, and he was half out of his seat, leaning forward on his knuckles on his desk.  His breath was short, panting.

“What?” Phlebitis felt a sudden chill run down his spine, and he struggled not to shiver.

“They are withered stumps of time,” said the Justice.  “As they grow they contain time within their cells, and then when they sporulate they die.  Their time is released into their spores, which grow rapidly into young plants, getting past the most dangerous part of their lives in the blink of an eye as far as the rest of the world is concerned.  But if the plants don’t sporulate for some reason, possibly because humans have intervened and prevented it, the time is never released and is held still in the dead and withered stumps when the plant dies from other means.  You can then crush the plant to release that time into one burst.”

“That sounds dangerous,” said Phlebitis.  “To everyone.”

“It is,” said the Justice.  “So I must abjure you from taking them as cargo.”

“Yes, of course,” said Phlebitis, suddenly placid and eager to help.  Although the Justice eyed him a little suspiciously, they finished the documentation in just fifteen minutes, and then Phlebitis was free to leave again.  He walked back through the corridors deep in thought, wondering how he could hide the fact that he’d already shipped four cargoes of the withered stumps of time to the frog-farmers.

The end of Mrs. Harrow

"Hello?  Oh, it's you Mrs. Harrow.  Do you know what time it is?  No?  Neither do I, but I was asleep, so let me just che–.  Ah.  Mrs. Harrow, it's 2:43 am.  Goodnight, Mrs. Harrow."

*

"Ok, stop ringing the damn phone already.  I know it's you Mrs. Harrow.  Why are you calling me, insistently, at this ungodly hour of the morning? ...I believe you'll find that most major religions would agree that this is an ungodly of the day, actually.  Why don't you call some of them and find out for yours–? ...No.  No.  Three times no, Mrs. Harrow.  What do you want?  Why are you calling me? ...Your washing machine doesn't work?  Why should I care? ...No, I'm not your landlord.  I'm not.  I can assure you I'm not, and if I were, I'd be evicting you.  Oh dear God, don't start crying.  Oh for the love of–"

*

"Good morning, you've reached Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations, Department of Soft Power and broken cuddly things.  Goodbye Mrs. Harrow."

*

"Good morning, you've reached Data Analy–.  Oh, it's you again.  I thought you'd stopped calling me repeatedly after you finally stopped calling last night.  I don't care about your washing machine, Mrs. Harrow.  I'm not your landlord, Mrs. Harrow.  I'm not related to your landlord either.  Where did you get my number from, Mrs. Harrow?  What do you mean?  Well that can't be right, we're ungooglable.  By the way, we've copyrighted that word, just in case.  You can sued for even thinking it, if we get wind of it.  Where did you get my number from Mrs. Harrow? ...I see.  I'm not sure how she would have my number, but I have my suspicions.  I'm still not your landlord, Mrs. Harrow.  Goodbye Mrs. Harrow.  Goodbye.  Good–"

*

"Jeronica?  What's the problem, you sound... well, you sound almost human.  You have a call for me?  Yes, of course I sound suspicious, I can only think of one person who might be trying to get to me via you, especially after I spoke to the switchboard.  Would this be Mrs. Harrow, by any chance?  No!  Don't put that harridan through to me!  She's got my home number and spent a lot of last night; well, this morning actually! calling me.  You know I can't take the phone off the hook at the moment, the Sweden thing... yes, quite.  Look, Jeronica, can you do me a favour?  Yes, I know I'll repay it fourfold, I haven't forgotten what you're like.  Yes.  Tell her I died, of a heart-attack, when the phone rang."

*

"Jeronica?  Hello again.  She started crying?  Oh good, that should keep her off the phone for a while.  You sound happy... really?  You're letting me off the favour bargain?  She must have done more than just cry then... hah, I see!  What?  No, I don't know anything about her washing machine.  I think it's broken.  Of course I could get it fixed for her, but why should I?"

*

"Hello?  Is that Swed–?  Mrs. Harrow?  I'm dead, Mrs. Harrow, I know you were told."

*

"Hello?  Hello?  This is a pretty bad line, can you tell me who you are again, and which ministry you work for?  Hans?  That's not a Swedish ministry... oh, you're calling from there?  I didn't think we were doing business with you at the moment though.  Oh.  Well, if you don't know what I'm talking about then you're probably not supposed to, so I wouldn't worry about it.  How can I help you, Hans?  ...There is no ordinance disguised as a broken washing machine.  No.  No.  Really, stop it.  Mrs. Harrow put you up to this didn't she?  She called you up and wouldn't stop until you gave in.  Yes.  Yes, I've been on the receiving end of her calls as well.  No, don't worry about it.  Well, do worry about it, but only in a low-key kind of way.  Thanks."

*

"Julius?  I've got an address for you.  ASAP.  No, the P does not stand for please, don't be ridiculous."

*

"Mrs. Harrow, I've been expecting your call.  Well yes, you've been calling me and people you think can influence me for nearly a week now, haven't you?  You were bound to call again, as you've still not got whatever pound of flesh you're after, have you?  Yes, yes, I'm well aware you want a replacement washing machine, not a pound of flesh, I was alluding to Shakespeare.  I doubt very much he is a gigolo, Mrs. Harrow.  No, I'm not replacing the washing machine.  No, I'm not your landlord.  However, before I hang up one last time, Mrs. Harrow, I'd like you to ask yourself a question.  Yes, I realise it may be hard for you, but try anyway.  In all the time you've been calling me, and please remember that I've never met you, and you called me first, you've never told me your name."

*

"Julius?  Fire at will."

Secondary recursion

"Dr. Verfuegbar?  Dr. Verfuegbar?  That's not the right patient, Dr. Verfuegbar."
"What are you talking about nurse?  The man is clearly on the operating table."
"Yes, Doctor, but he's not the right patient.  He's male."
"I can see that, thank-you nurse."
"How do you propose to give him a hysterectomy then, Doctor?"
"The surgery plan is on the table over there, nurse.  You can see what I'll be extracting, and how I'll be putting things back in again."

*

Miss Snippet held the struggling woman back from the child on the floor.  She had her arms wrapped around the woman's rib-cage and was squeezing slightly more tightly than was really necessary to try and cut down her breathing and make her easier to control.  The pair of them seemed to be attempting some complicated dance move, as the woman kept trying to rake Miss Snippet's shins with her high-heels, and Miss Snippet kept stepping away.  The headmaster, an indecisive man except where it came to nepotism, looked on vaguely anguished, but made no attempt to help the scalded and bruised child on the floor.  Miss Snippet glared angrily at him.

"Headmaster!" she said, jerking her head back to avoid being reverse-headbutted by the struggling woman.  "Headmaster, can you please help Michael up!"

"I don't think I should be touching the child," said the Headmaster, his voice trembling with nervousness.  Miss Snippet noticed that a tic had started up in the corner of his right eye.  "I think we need a medical professional here now."

"Then call one."  Miss Snippet's tone was as acid as her thoughts, as she stepped back again to avoid another high-heel raking and realised she'd backed up against a wall.

*

The radio's still playing but I've left it in the bedroom.

Bedroom.

Bare doom.

The radio's still praying, and I've left it to it's bare doom.

The radio's still.

What?

*

Dr Verfuegbar lifted the scalpel, and the blade glinted in the bright, cold light of the operating theatre.  On the table, the patient murmered something and tried to roll over.  Dr. Verfuegbar sighed, set the scalpel down again, and tightened the thick leather bands that restrained the patient.  They'd been laid across his throat, chest, wrists and ankles, leaving enough space for him to get into the patient's abdominal cavity and hunt for a womb.

The nurse, stood at a small steel side table, read through Dr. Verfuegbar's operating plan.  Part of her admired the beauty of his handwriting, another part was impressed by the elegance of his grammar.  A third part of her, that she was trying very hard not to listen to, was screaming that the operating plan had nothing to do with humans, and was in fact a wiring schematic for a telephone.

A soft bing sounded in the operating theatre, and she looked up.

*

"What was that?"  The Headmaster looked even more panicky, and Miss Snippet could see that his hands had started shaking now, and little beads of sweat were standing out on his forehead.  The last time she'd seen him like this she'd been killing herself laughing as his nephew nearly immolated himself in front of three hundred parents at the nativity play.

"The doorbell," said Miss Snippet.  "It's how people request entry to the school when we're closed."

She stepped sideways smartly, unexpectedly, and ducked as much as she could.  She buried her nose in the woman's back, just between her shoulder-blades, and the woman's attempt to reverse head-butt her again missed and her head bounced off the wall with a solid thunk.

"Let them in," said Miss Snippet in her best tone of control, the one that calmed wild animals at the zoo and could reduce an entire class of small children to tears.

*

Something goes bing where I can't see it, and I know that there's a wave coming.  There's pressure somewhere around my legs.

Something goes thunk and there's a door opened in the wall.  I think I can see a way out.

What does Verfuegbar mean?

*

"The lip reader has arrived," says the Nurse, answering the intercom.  Dr. Verfuegbar lays down the scalpel again, and looks confused.

"Don't we normally feed them to the landmines?" he asks.

"No Doctor, it's just that the last four hundred have been taken by the landmines," says the Nurse.  "It might just be that all the landmines have been found now.  The lip-reader has arrived."

"Do we still need a lip-reader?"

The nurse thinks about this.  "I think we might have given the patien–"

*

Miss Snippet lays the unconscious woman down on the floor next to her son, and checks the child's pulse.  It's there, but it's not strong.  The Headmaster comes back into the room with a man who reminds her of a cruise-ship and purchasing replacement children from a third-world country.

"She's not allowed in here," he says flatly, pointing at the unconscious woman.  "I have a restraining order."

*

I'm not allowed out of here.  I have a re-training order.

*

"Put the lip-reader on the table," says Dr. Verfuegbar.  "I have a maiming order."

Clemethtine

Janet O'Steen, Ireland's foremost logodisciplinarian, stared at the white powder laid out neatly in lines on her desk.  Her OCD was making her twitch like an underdressed epileptic in a snowstorm and her fingers kept pinching together in a claw-shape.  She badly wanted to clean the table, then clean the cleaning cloth, and finally clean her hands.  She struggled to resist, also wanting to try and get inside the mind of one of her characters.
She had been listening to the radio earlier in the day and a Radio Four documentary about Negro Spirituals had come on, and as she'd half-dozed in her chair, her cup of Ovaltine placed carefully on a placemat on the floor by her feet, she'd started day-dreaming a little about the circumstances which the radio presenter was claiming brought about the songs.  She had a feeling that she might not have woken up until after the first documentary had finished and a second one had started, but she also didn't think that was worth worrying about.  She'd woken up with a new back-story for a minor character in her novel The Waltons.  To her annoyance, her agent was insisting that she add another sister to the brood that had a broader appeal.
"Think sex appeal, but without the sex," said her agent, sounding depressingly chirpy on the phone-call.  "Or possibly without the appeal."
"Wouldn't that be unsexy and unappealing?" asked Janet, aware that her agent had only a passing acquaintance with sarcasm.
"Yes, but you've already got two sisters like that," said her agent breezily.  "The butch lesbian and the one that becomes a prostitute."
"How can an unsexy woman become a prostitute?" asked Janet, astonished by the very thought of it.  "Surely there has to be some attraction there for her cust–, her cli–, whatever you call the men who visit prostitutes."
"Sex on demand, if you've got the cash," said the agent.  "That's got sex appeal.  Your whore can have one leg and birthmarks all over her body so long as she's cheap enough.  In fact, didn't you already write about that?"
"There's no lesbian in The Waltons," said Janet, not wanting to get side-tracked.  She had made her main character's mother essentially a cheap whore in Bride of Prejudice and she was still sensitive about the reviews that book had received.
"Well ok, make the lesbian the new character," said her agent, and the call drifted aimlessly on a little longer before Janet gave in.
So when she'd awoken, she did so with the knowledge that the new sister was supposed to be called Clementine and was named for her mother's favourite Negro Spiritual.  There was a nagging thought in the back of her mind that since the mother had grown up in rural Bath she might never have encountered such songs, but she was trying not to think about that until she had the character right.  The vicar, at the girl's baptism, had had a bad cold and a lisp and so the child was actually named Clemethtine, and in a fit of nominative determinism when she turned fourteen, as she would at the start of the novel, she would run away from home and shack up in a meth lab with a young man who had abandoned his dreams of becoming a groom (second class) to peddle drugs to the local landed gentry.  Between them they would mix up a patent cough mixture that contained the active ingredient methamphetamine, which, though not fixing the cough at all did at least give the user the energy to get things done even when their cough turned out to be consumption.
The lines of white powder on her table were castor sugar, but she was trying to get a feel for how Clemethtine would react when Philbros, her ex-groom, showed her that he'd crystallised the cough mixture and intended to press it into tablets.
"Look, Clemmy!" he said, forgetting that she hated any diminuation of her name.  "The calexis worked!  All those bottles for the cough-mixture – we don't need them any more!  You don't have to lug hundredweights of glass around on your back now!  We'll just press the crystals into tablets and people can eat them like sweets."
Clemethtine, whose back ached abominably every night and every morning, actually sighed with relief at the thought of not having to work like a donkey any more.  "Is it safe?" she asked. "How much cough-sryup do you have to evaporate to make one tablet?"
"Of course it's safe!  It's just energy in a more convenient form!  We'll be rich!"
Clemethtine, being more practical than Philbros picked a tablet up and handed it to him.  "Show me," she suggested.
Philbros would die in a couple more pages, and then Clemethtine could discover her lesbian tendencies with Philbros's mother, thought Janet.  Then she needed to find a way to getting the story back to Janet and the family living in Bath still, some way that seemed natural.  Although their departure now to the city could be in part because they were fleeing the heavily addicted clients that Clemethtine was no longer supplying.
The white lines were too much for her now.  She swept them quickly off the table and went to start the cleaning process.

Bounty Hunter II

"Tell me about this woman and her children, then," I said a little slowly.  I was wondering what was going on here.  Even Ma Dodd wouldn't intimidate the Sheriff into setting her boy up like this, no-one held a grudge against Dodd.  It's hard to hold a grudge against a guy who can't even reliably tell a man what day of the week it is.  "She been seen around these parts then?"
"I dunno," said Dodd, his face falling a little, sadness creeping in at the edges.  "I was just trying to find her, and I figured I'd go around and ask a bunch of folks.  She's mean, and she's mean to children too.  I figured people are bound to notice that."
Maybe, I thought to myself.  And maybe people who notice that are careful not to notice themselves noticing that; folks round here know what their own business is and are mindful to keep it that way.  Same as me, my business is my own, and I don't rightly like people asking deep questions about it, so I don't go asking any deep questions about anyone else's business.  And is that the kind of thing that lets a woman get away with stealing children?  I wasn't much sure I liked the kinds of thoughts that Dodd was bringing up.
"I think you gotta be mighty careful asking questions like that," I said.  I gestured at the house.  "Might be I can get you something to drink, Dodd?  Seems like talking's making me thirsty."
"Uh."  Dodd looked puzzled.
"Lemonade, maybe?  Your Ma lets you drink lemonade doesn't she?"
"Have you got Dandy-lion and Burr-dock?"  Dodd drew the words out like they were two words each, clearly liking the sound of them.
"Sure thing," I said.  I did too; not for me, but some of the visitors I got had old-fashioned tastes and liked the stuff.  I thought it made you wet the bed at nights, but that surely wasn't my problem if it affected Dodd like that.  "Sit yourself down while I go fetch."
When I came back outside Dodd was still standing by his car, so I hiked on down the path and handed him a tall glass with ice and a straw in.  He sucked the drink greedily, and he looked a little happier again when he took his lips away from the straw.
"Any clue what this woman looks like then?" I still wasn't sure I wanted to know, but I sure as hell wanted to know why Dodd had a Sheriff's badge and was asking questions of decent, god-fearing folk.
"She has children with her, but they're not her own."  Dodd sucked his drink a little more and I waited, seeing if he had anything else to say.  "She's mean to them."  Another slurp.  The straw rattled a little in the glass. "She's always cold."
Now that was a surprise.  The temperature out here in summer doesn't fall much below 70 and right now it was in the high 80s.  "How do you know she's cold, Dodd?  She telling folks that?"
"She's always wearing a coat," he said, sounding sly and proud at the same time.  "It's a long one, brown, and comes down to her ankles and up to her neck.  She's always wearing it.  She must be cold to wear a coat all the time."
"That's a mighty fine piece of thinking," I said, and despite the temperature a chill had just run all the way down my spine and was making me want to shiver.  I controlled myself, pressing my shoulders out and my chest forward, forcing myself to notice the sun beating down on me.  "Maybe she's got no other clothes though, Dodd."
"Hadn't thought of that," he said.  He sucked on the straw again, getting the last of the drink up.  Then he looked up, his eyes bright and a smile on his face once more.  "But then she's only got the coat and she'll be easy to find!"
"That's true," I said, nodding and holding my hand out for the glass back.  "You should go and ask people if they've seen the woman in the coat.  Tell them it's a brown coat, that'll help."
"Right!  Right!"  Dodd pushed his glass back into my hand and ran round his car, tripping and catching himself on the hood in his haste.  He righted himself and got in, and started her up on the first try.  He waved to me as he pulled away, and I waved back with my free hand.
"Holy crap," I muttered to myself as I turned back up the path to wash up the glass and wait some more for my parcel.  "Dodd's going looking for Clarissa Kay?  That can only end one way."

The commission of Feng Shui

"I wouldn't try moving that," said Deadneck quietly, her voice barely audible over the clatter of her typewriter keys.  Miss Girard stopped pushing Janet's desk and looked over.
"Why not?" she said.  "Look, I'm being paid to do a job here and it seems like you're all determined to stop me! Your Chief Constable has hired me to do this, you should be helping me, not saying stupid things about how you think things should be done!"  Her voice rose steadily as she spoke, and because it all came out in a torrential flood of words she ran out of breath at the end and found herself gasping and squeaking like a cat toy.
"The desks are bolted to the floor," said Deadneck, not stopping typing.  "That's why you can't move it."
Miss Girard gave the desk another futile push, and then knelt down to peer at its legs.  Sure enough, they were bolted to the floor by two different bolts on each leg.
"Why?" she said plaintively.  "Everywhere else in the police station has been fairly easy.  Of course, people complain when you move things but they see the sense in the new system fairly quickly.  I've improved the filing system, I've made the hot-desks places it's nice to spend time, I've even made the ladies toilets something less than a horror movie.  Why is so hard when I try and deal with Inspector Playfair's side of the office?"
"Probably because we all know what he's like," said Deadneck.  "And we know what's likely to happen when he comes back, and because none of us want to take the blame for it."
"What is he, some kind of monster?"
"Oh no," said Deadneck pulling a sheet of paper from the platten and getting a new one ready.  "Monsters can be killed."

Miss Girard's response to that disappeared behind the opening of the door to the rest of the police-station again, which heralded the arrival of her handyman, Oliver.  He was wearing his usual blue overalls with the paint splashes down one leg, a white t-shirt with a frayed collar, and carrying his metal toolbox.  He looked around the room, nodded at Deadneck, and wrinkled his nose.
"Smells like dog in here," he said.
"I don't care," said Miss Girard.  "I need these desks unbolting so that they can be moved."
"That don't sound right," said Oliver.  "You just pushes a desk, Missus."
"Not these," said Miss Girard, pointing.  Oliver followed her finger, but still looked puzzled, so she knelt down to show him the bolts.  There was a low discussion down by Deadneck's feet as Oliver wanted to know why the desks were bolted down and Miss Gerard made wild guesses.  Eventually they both stood up again.
"It'll take a while," said Oliver.  "Someone's sheared the heads off all the bolts."  Deadneck just nodded quietly.  "And it might get a tad noisy, we'll have to drill the bolts out in a number of places."
"That's fine," said Miss Gerard with the casual arrogance of someone who doesn't have to be there listening to the noise.
"Er," said Deadneck who felt it wasn't fine.
"Right then, let's get started.  You might not want to stay in here, miss."  Oliver looked at Deadneck, who shuddered and typed a little faster and a little harder.
"It's the energy of this room!" said Miss Girard suddenly.  "There's a strong negative energy here, so strong that I can almost feel it!  It comes from... she swung around, her eyes tightly closed and her finger outstretched.  Oliver stepped back to avoid it.  Deadneck never stopped typing, but her eyes were also on Miss Girard, fascinated to see where she'd stop.  There was nothing for a few seconds but the squeak of Miss Girard's heels on the floor. Then she stopped, somehow facing Playfair's door.  Without saying anything, she swivelled slowly until she was facing Miss Flava's door, and then she shivered.
"Warring factions," she said, her voice thick and slow.  "There is a powerful energy here, but it runs into opposition before it can gather real momentum.  It is tamed temporarily.  We must direct the energy to a better source, we must guide it into productive lines."
She opened her eyes again, and seemed to recover herself a little.
"We must bring in tokens of disillusionment!" she declared enthusiastically.  We must re-route the energy around the contestants, so that they are calmer within and withof themselves!"  There was a noise from Deadneck's direction that might have been a stifled laugh.  "I have just the things in the car!"
"Is she always like that?" asked Deadneck after Miss Girard had left, struggling womanfully with the door.
"Not really," said Oliver.  He opened the toolbox and took out a power-drill and started looking for a socket to plug it into.  "I think the police station's getting to her a bit."
Deadneck just nodded, wound the sheet of paper out of her typewriter and picked up the next report.  She wondered, just for a moment before returning to her job, what Playfair would decide to arrest Miss Girard for when he discovered what she'd done to his office layout.

Bounty Hunter

Dodd wasn't quite all there, most folks would agree with that.  He was a nice guy, and there wasn't no-one who would say he wasn't, specially not when his mother was down at Martin's bar and drinking heavily again.  She had a heavy fist and she kicked a man when she got him down.  But he actually was a nice guy, wouldn't hurt animals or insects, and cried for half the day when he found a roadkill squirrel outside Martin's.  His mum was inside at the time, and Lady Agnes stuck her head round the door and let it be known at the top of her voice that Dodd was screaming and pounding on the road outside, holding up the traffic.  Then she disappeared back to the chauffered car and Dodd's mum looked up from her pint of dark, made a face like one of them gargoyles on the top of the church where the reverend thinks no-one looks no more, and went outside.  I wanted to follow her, and I'm sure every man in that place did, but there ain't none of us had the courage.  We sat and we waited, and we heard what might have been the slap of a meaty hand meeting flesh, and then we waited some more and finally Ma Dodd came back in, and put the squished squirrel down on the counter and gestured to it.
"Cook it," she said.  "Cook it good."
No-one said a word, though we were all wondering who was going to be eating it, and Martin gave the nod to his niece who was tending bar that afternoon as well, so she gets a page of newspaper, wraps the squirrel up all careful like and takes it back to the chef.  Twenty-minutes later the squirrel's back out, on a plate now and shaved or somesuch; there's a pickle shoved in each eye socket and some fries and a bit of spiky salad on the side, and Martin sets it down in front of Ma Dodd as careful as you please, and she picks it up and takes it outside.
Hell if we weren't all dying to go and look and see what she did with it.  But none of us would move, and so the rest of us were all sitting still, not wanting to be the first, not wanting to be the one out of place when she came back in.  She came back in with the plate, though the fries were all missing, and puts it back down on the bar.
"He'll stop crying now," she said.  "It's food.  He understands about food."



*
A few years later I was a bit further out of town dealing with little jobs and bigger jobs, some of which needed other jobs that kind of wrapped around them and kept them from prying eyes, the kinds of jobs that need doing but need doing quietly, in shadows and becurtained rooms with people who're somehow slightly allergic to light, as they like to tell it.  I was sitting out at the front, minding my own business and watching the world go past, waiting for it to deliver a little package to me, when Dodd pulls up in a battered old car, the kind of thing that'll run forever because when they made it it was all iron and steel and chrome and they didn't have anything better or lighter.  When he stopped I could see it start to sink into the gravel.
"Merry afternoon," he said gravely, getting out of the car and picking a hat up off the seat next to him.  He put it on; it was a hunter's cap, with the ear-flaps and the peak, and it looked a little odd on a guy I was used to seeing in shorts.  He was wearing a jacket and trousers that were all taupe, and I was impressed with myself for knowing what that colour was, even if I didn't think it was a colour a man should be wearing.
"Dodd," I said, not too friendly but definitely not hostile.  I'm not a hostile kind of guy unless I'm provoked.  "You got yourself a nice car?"
"My car," he said, patting the hood and wincing when he left his hand there too long.  "My car.  It takes me home, to Mummy."
"I bet it does," I said.  Dodd wasn't that easy to talk to.  "It brought you here too, right?  Why did it do that?"
"We're looking for people," said Dodd, trying for serious now.  I made myself stop smiling and forced myself to listen.  "I've got a job, and I look for people.  Have you seen any of them?"
"I don't think I rightly know who you're looking for," I said, thinking that I rightly knew everyone he might be interested in talking to.  "There's only me and you here right now, Dodd.  I reckon you've found both of us."
"It's my birthday tomorrow," said Dodd, but it was always his birthday tomorrow.  "For my present you could just tell me where the people are."
"That sounds like a mighty good present to give you," I said, "but I still don't know who it is you're looking for, Dodd.."
"There's a woman–"
"Hah!" I laughed.  "If it's a woman you're after Dodd, you've come out of the wrong side of town.  You want Katerina's, but there's a membership fee."
"No, I'm looking for a woman.  She steals children."
That gave me a pause for a moment, I don't have anything to do with that kind of illegal.  Children are strictly off-limits as far as I'm concerned, but it also meant I didn't know who he was after.
"Children?" I said, now curious.
"She steals children," said Dodd again.  "And she takes them home with her, and then she makes them leave her again so she can do it with others."
"She sounds bad," I said.  "Shouldn't you let me deal with that problem, Dodd?  I can have a word with the Sheriff, see what he wants to do about it all.
"He appointed me!" Dodd sounded very proud now, and produced a badge.  "See? I'm a bounty hunter!"
I stared at the little badge, wondering where our Sheriff's sense of humour had come from.

Wishlist

It was an obvious product enhancement.  Anyone could have seen it, anyone would have done it.  I just got there first, that's all.
There were a number of shopping sites that were popular enough to allow you to create wish-lists that other people could see.  It let your friends and family know what you might like for your birthday, it let your friends and family see your wedding registry all from one site, it even let your enemies and exes know what you were getting and be annoyed about it.  But it made things a little bit easier, for some people at least, and that was a product enhancement.  It was just the right way to merchandise the site a little better.
My first suggestion was just that we separate wedding registry and wish-lists.  "Make them separate," I said, "and people can put the expensive stuff they want from people they never see on one list, and they can put the cheap stuff they'd really love on the list to share with the people who mean the most to them."
"Like who?" asked Brent across the table.  His roseacea was particularly bad that day.
"Like no-one," I said, going for honesty.  "That'll be where they keep the things they really want and don't want anyone to know about."
"But we'll know," he said, his face wrinkling in puzzlement, like a shah-pei's.
"Yes," I said, "and we can market to them based on their secret desires.  We can recommend leather clothes, soft Japanese ropes and unusual intimate jewellery alongside the usual cookie-cutters and books."
We went ahead and split the lists, and it was successful.  Brent wasn't happy, as I got a bonus that quarter and he didn't, but then I checked his own recommendations and realised that he must have a very strange wish-list indeed.
If I'd stopped there, it might have been ok.  Just maybe.
"Well," I said at the next meeting.  "I was thinking, why have just two lists?  Why not let people create their own lists?  Let them create a Secret Santa list to be shared by the office, let them create a Nerf-arsenal list to be shared by the whole civil-war reenactment club, und so weiter?"
"What was that last bit?" asked Brent.  His fingernails were black from where he'd shut his hand in his garage door that morning.
"It was German," I said smugly.  I'd read it in a magazine the previous evening.
"I think they pronounce their w's as v's," he said, sounding disinterested.  I blushed, knowing he'd won a point over me, and realised I had to try and claw the advantage back.
"We use the existing list technology," I said quickly, "and just give it editable names and a sharing list.  Then we'll keep an eye on common names for lists and we'll automatically create lists of those types to inspire people."
By itself, it wasn't a bad idea.  It really wasn't.
"The new lists are working well," said Brent, reading from a forty-eight page report.  He'd lost two fingers to frostbite over Christmas and I didn't like looking at his hands any more.  "But there are a few worrying trends, and I don't think we should be allowing autogeneration of popular list types any more."
"Why's that?"  Kevin, Head Honcho for Marketing, was growing a moustache and it was turning out patchy.  He was compensating by trying to seem dynamic.
"We had to remove a 'People I'd like to F-word" list already, said Brent.  I sniggered, but quietly and behind my hand.  "We also had to remove an 'Outed sex offenders list' too.  There's a little too much flexibility in the lists, they can seriously infringe on our policies."
"I agree with Brent," said Geraldine, who represented Legal.  "We could get into some serious trouble with some of these lists.  We should probably put an age-restriction on creating a list too, so there's no more 'We hate Brent Conmurty' lists either."
Brent looked stricken, apparently he'd not known about the list.  I was relieved that I'd got my sister to create it using her daughter's boyfriend's account.
If I only left it there.  If only I'd not risen to the bait.
I went home that evening determined to get a little more revenge on Brent done.  I wasn't sure what I wanted any more, or why revenge was important, but it was fun and I got a little bored in the evenings before I opened the wine.  I put his name on my 'To Hit' list and then went off and got drunk.
I was woken at three am by the pinging of my cell-phone.  I'd fallen asleep on the toilet after throwing up my knees, as far as I could tell.  My head hurt, so I peered at my phone, hoping it would be telling me how to feel better.
Saw the addition to your hit list, read the text.  Ran Brent Conmurty down on the Haversham road two hours ago.  He's so much roadkill now!
I threw up again.  How the hell had I mixed up my 'to-hit' list and my 'hit' list?  And where had a 'hit list' come from anyway?
The cold memory of Brent in the meeting, when he was still alive, saying that autogeneration was dangerous reared its ugly head.
My phone pinged again.
Bonus: I got his parents too; house has been petrol bombed into a ruin!

Lemon drizzle

The rain was lemon flavoured this morning.  It wasn't really noticeable until you looked at the puddles, but it was also a pale yellow colour, not really lemony, but definitely not anything less pleasant.  Miles stood out in it for several minutes, his tongue stuck out to catch rain drops, enjoying the taste.
"The neighbours are watching," said Anna eventually.  She was stood at the window in her floral dressing gown smoking her second cigarette.  Ash clung defiantly to the end of it, and the red glow of the coal was barely visible.
"I don't care," said Miles.  "It tastes like lemonade used to taste."
"Back when it was all chemicals and additives?  That's a good thing?"
"I like it."
Anna shrugged, let the cigarette fall from her lips and screwed her slipper down on it, extinguishing it.  It was her bedroom, and she did as she liked in there, but Miles had banned her from having any soft furnishings unless they were flame-proof.  The she drew the curtains again and went off in search of clothes with a minimum of cigarette burns, permanent creases and dirty marks.
Miles let a few more drops of rain fall onto his tongue, and then looked around him.  At all the ground floor windows of the neighbouring houses curtains swished, looking for all the world as though a strong wind had blown through all the rooms.  He grinned, and started off to the bus-stop for work.




*
"Lemon today, huh?"  Marcus was carrying an umbrella with an odd little gauge attached to the handle.  Miles pointed at it, still sipping his coffee.
"Acid co-efficient," he said.  His voice was deep and throaty, and seemed suited to his beard which birds could nest in.  "Despite the lemon flavour the rain is barely acidic.  If I had to be drawn on an opinion–" Miles snorted a laugh and scalded the back of his throat with coffee "–I'd say that we're seeing a definite regression back to pre-industrial levels of pollution."
"Have you told the press corps yet?"
"Meeting them at lunch tomorrow.  They're paying."
"Of course."  Both men laughed.
"So," said Miles cautiously, "not wanting to draw you on an opinion of course, but do you think the rain used to taste of lemon?"
"No," said Marcus, lowering his voice.  "Nor cinnamon, nor cardamom, nor candy-floss."
"Cardamom?"
"...you might have missed that," said Marcus thoughtfully.  "I think perhaps you were in the southern hemisphere for the monsoon."
"Yeah, that was wet," said Miles.  "Horizontal waterfall doesn't do it justice.  Didn't taste of anything much though."
"Yeah," said Marcus.  "But I think we've miscalibrated the weather satellites up here in the Northern hemisphere."
"We can't have," said Miles.  "We've checked them all with the geological core data.  We know the parameters, we've been over them sixteen times.  Sixteen, Marcus!"
"Lemon flavoured rain, Miles."



*
In the weather centre at last, Miles sat down at a terminal and tapped the screen.  It lit up, welcoming him, and he made a couple of quick finger gestures, drawing odd little geometric shapes on it.  There was a pause while the system spoke to a second system, which went via secure handshake to a third archival vault and requested some apparently random data.  Satisfied with the result, a message jumped back across the nodes, and Miles's screen bloomed with red and blue hues, finally coalescing into a password screen.  He entered a password using more touch-gestures, and only then did he have access to a limit suite of functions for Septentrionus, the weather-satellite director.
With a couple of taps and swipes he brought up the principal parameter screen and started checking the figures again.  He paused on the third row and re-read the figures there.  Then, shaking his head, he checked them against a book on his desk.  They were very different.
A swipe copied the data to a secure clipboard, and then he tight-messaged it over to Marcus.  Only a couple of minutes passed before a response came back.
"Response decodes to a recipe for lemon drizzle cake.  We have a joker in the system."
Miles sat back and wondered what the hell what happening to the weather.

Milton Stilton

Milton Stilton accepted the news that he'd been elected Mayor unemotionally.  The young boy, the runner, who'd been sent with the news felt that it was rather weird; after all, if you'd gone to all that trouble and expense to persuade people to vote for you, shouldn't you at least smile when you heard that they had?  Milton was unconcerned though.  He had spent his childhood preparing for his career as a lawyer, and his first case had been one he'd brought against his parents for the cruelty of his name.  The presiding judge, Justice Neckles, had noted in his summary that Milton was very intense, but had found in agreement with him.  Being elected Mayor was just another step in his quest to extract suitable vengeance on the people who'd brought him up.  With the Mayoralty possessed, he would start bringing political pressure to reinstate the death penalty.  He was dimly, in some small, locked, sane corner of his mind, aware that his parents might very well be dead before he could have them legally killed, but the larger, cackling, less stable part of his mind had plans even so.
"Well boss," said Samuel, leaning back in his chair so that it balanced on just two skinny steel legs.  The chair creaked and the legs bowed under his weight, testament to the cheap office furniture that Milton had bought, as Samuel was thin enough to occasionally substitute for the goalpost in his weekly five-a-side football game.
"Well what?" said Milton.  He hated that Samuel would start a sentence and forget to finish it.
"Well boss," said Samuel again.  "We won.  You're Mayor now.  I should be calling you your Worship or something, right?"
"Your Worship is for priests and judges," said Milton.  "Perhaps Your Excellency would do?"
"I'm not going to, of course," said Samuel as though Milton hadn't spoken.  "You'll still be Milt to me."
"Absolutely not!" said Milton, who knew what the unfortunate abbreviation of his name meant, and hated that only slightly less than he hated his parents.  "I forbid it, canonically and without exception.  And I mean it, Sam!  I will kick up a fuss!"
Samuel's chair creaked again as it rocked a little, its occupant thinking back to the trial, where Milton had, at one point, produced evidence against his own mother of bestiality.
"Right," he said.  "Only, it's not like you've got a lot of nicknames, Milt – on."
"I don't want nicknames," said Milton.  "Nicknames are are attempt to create a clique, a little group of like-minded individuals who want everyone else to know how chummy they are."
"Friends give you nicknames, Mil," said Samuel.
"I don't want friends either!  I'm Mayor now, not Mr. Friendly.  Friends only ever want things from you, like money, or favours, or sympathy."
"Well, I guess they are things it would be unreasonable to ask of you," said Samuel.  "Here, how about Mr. Cheese?  Mr. Big Cheese?"
"NO!" Milton went pale when he was angry, which was unfortunate as his veins showed up bluely and often resulted in people saying, very quietly after he'd left, that Stilton was perhaps a very good name for him.
"Oh well.  Fine, what are you going to do as Mayor then?  We won't get the council documents sent over until tomorrow, but is there anything on your own agenda?"
"Of course, we have a manifesto.  We're going to make people happy," said Milton.  "We're going to clean this town up, and provide people with heroes.  Someone for someone to believe in."
"Why will we need heroes if we've cleaned the town up?"
"We don't, so they'll be cheap to employ and we can get them to do useful things, like help old people and dispose of the homeless."
Samuel's chair landed back on the ground and the legs splayed a little further out, bringing him a little closer to the floor.  He pushed some papers aside on his desk and found the manifesto that Milton was talking about.  As he flicked through it, the chair leant back again, and balanced on two legs.
"This isn't the one I sent to the printers, Big," said Samuel after a moment.  "There weren't no pie charts in the one I sent to the printers."
"I recalled that one," said Milton, staring off into the distance.  "It wasn't sufficiently on message.  Don't call me Big.  I know what you're alluding to."
"You should do, I just told you.  What message was I not on, then?  I don't remember our message being about ridding the streets of anyone unsavoury.  What's that mean?  Savoury's a herb isn't it?"
"We needed to be more hardline.  I won't get the death penalty reinstated on the strength of reducing taxes and improving rubbish collection."
Samuel turned the pages of the manifesto, looking for page 7 where the rubbish collection had been.  Now those pages declared that the Mayor was starting a war on rubbish, and would be arming the bin-men.  Samuel turned a few more pages, and there was the Mayor's new policy on children: they should be mourned and not celebrated.
"Seems like your manifesto is all kinds of death penalties," he said, thoughtfully.
"Yes.  And I shall give them all up if the basic death penalty can be reinstated," said Milton.  "It's a cunning ploy I stole from a Marketing Director."
"So when you said dispose of the homeless...?"
"That's exactly what I meant.  Everyone should search for the hero inside themselves, step up, and support the cleanliness of our streets.  After all, cleanliness is next to Godliness."
"I'm not sure there are any heroes who do that kind of thing, boss," said Samuel.
"Then we shall find some!  You can be my first!"
"Allergic to spandex and rubber," said Samuel quickly.  "Annoys the missus no end, all the kinky stuff has to be... well, really kinky, if you get my drift."
"No," said Milton, who at thirty-nine was still a virgin.  "Well, you don't have to wear spand–"
"People have to be able to identify a hero," said Samuel, cutting him off.  "Look, ask that PA of yours to do it.  She seems like a stup– nice girl."
"Anna-Marie?" said Milton.  "Perhaps.  She could be Colostomy-woman.  I always thought there should be a superhero called that."
"That's nice, boss," said Samuel, picking the manifesto up again and turning the pages, looking for a way to change the subject before Milton could elaborate any further.

The book of miracles

Isabella Bonfontaine half-smiled.  That is, half of her face smiled, but the other half remained fixed, immobile.  The effect was slightly disconcerting, at first I thought she was mocking me.  Then I wondered if perhaps she only half-agreed with what I'd asked her for.
"I had a stroke when I was younger," she said, her voice deep and soft like a nineteen-twenties film star.  "I lost some muscle control in the side of my face.  It doesn't bother me."
The unspoken question, does it bother you? hung in the air for a few moments and then evaporated as I decided it didn't.
"I had a cat when I was younger," I said.  "It got run over by a truck.  On the whole, I'd say you did better."
She half-smiled again, and I smiled back, and although it was clearly just my imagination, the room seemed a little lighter for the rest of our conversation.  Isabella leaned back, nestling her shoulders comfortably into the padded cushion of the banquette and laid both her hands on the table.  I looked at them; they were short, spatulate, functional hands, engineer's hands as my mother would have dismissively described them.  (Though for all her obsession with hands, seeking out long, elegant, musician's hands, the woman who strangled her had the ugliest, wartiest, hairiest hands I'd ever seen.)  She was wearing rings on two fingers on each hand, each ring a simple metallic band with a different intaglioed design.
"You're looking for a book," she said.  I nodded.  My satchel, a hopelessly fashionable courier's bag made of pre-aged brown leather that I'd hoped would impress her, was next to me on the seat, and I opened it to remove a piece of A4 paper onto which I'd written what I knew of the book.  Isabella said nothing, watching me with bird-bright eyes, and accepted the page when I offered it to her.  While she read it, I closed the satchel up again and hid it under the table.
"The book of miracles," she said a few moments later, and I looked at her, puzzled.  "It's what you've described here," she said.  I noticed that only three-quarters of her lips moved when she spoke, and she slurred, very slightly, a few words here and there.  "This is the – well, a to be precise, book of miracles."
"You know this book then?" I was genuinely surprised now, as the antiquariats I'd consulted had all shaken their heads, laughed, and told me I was being deceived.
"I know of several books of this general form," she said.  "They list miracles that have happened, and give precise instructions on how to repeat them.  They're usually quite interesting, and of course, quite valuable to the people who own them."
"Can you get me one?" I said, leaning forward now, my arms on the table and my stomach tensed.  Isabella laid the paper back in front of me, forcing me to sit back a little to make space, and suddenly I realised I could smell my own sweat.  I sat back further, now embarrassed.
"No."
"I can pay.  I can pay well," I said, mentally wondering how many life insurance policies I could cash out in a hurry.
"You misunderstand," said Isabella, that half-smile playing around her lips again.  "I can't get you a book of miracles because they're no use except in the places they're kept.  One of those instructions for recreating miracles is invariably that the miracle happen where it happened the first time."
"Oh." I waited, she seemed to suggest there was more to say.
"I can, however, take you to one of these books, and what you choose to do then is up to you."
"When can we leave?"

Part 2

Why are you here?

Ah!  You!  I wasn't… I mean, you're early.  I think.  Actually, no, I don't have any names down here on the allocations register… why are you here?
Well yes, I suppose it is your office, and if you want to take that tone with me, then yes I suppose you do have every right to be here.  I wasn't aware that they'd reallocated it though, they usually leave it a little longer after a death.
You didn't know about that?  Jonathon, I think, or was it William?  A boring name, and a boring little man.  He was still in here when they started fumigating the office and apparently chose not to leave.  Not a great loss, by any means, and I'm sure that if he tries haunting you it'll be more tedious than spooky, but there you go.
Why am I here?  Well, I'm Buddy, your emotional comfort in hard times, your unconscious ego, your spiritual guide to a well-lived corporate life.  I'm here to help you resolve what needs resolution and to show you the way forward when the only way up is down.
Are you ok?  You just repeated the same question again.  I've already told you why I'm here.  Oh?  Seriously, you're asking it a third time?
Fine, well then, why am I here?  As far as I can tell, this is karma, this is the universe's way of telling me off for things I've done in a previous life.  Lives.  What's the mass count noun for multitudes of lives?  Oh never mind, lots of previous lives, anyway.  My task now is simply to help other people see the choices ahead of them.  Much as I'd like to give you the order to fire… I mean, much as I'd like to ensure that you make the right choices, that's out of my hands.  All I can do is make sure that you're aware that you have a choice, and that sometimes, some choices are better than others.  Not that chair, it squeaks.
Why are you here?  Well, that's a harder question, and I'm assuming that you won't just be satisfied with the glib "It's your office, and Williathon or whatever his name was needs someone to haunt"?  I didn't think so.  Well, it's a cruel and uncaring universe out there, and there are various spirits that amuse themselves by shepherding people in certain ways.  So there are spirits that have classically been called angels who try to guide people towards opportunities in life, to push them to make choices that allow them to achieve things, either for themselves or for humanity as a whole, that improve the lot of the human race.  Bear in mind that these angels don't care about the people they choose; if they see that your death will result in an improvement of quality-of-life for millions of others, you'll be hounded to jump off a bridge, insult a mob-boss on his birthday, or develop an insatiable hunger for electricity.
Similarly there are spirits that have classically been called demons who simply desire to amuse themselves at humanity's expense, and they can have some very… sophisticated… tastes.  Fall foul of one of them and you might find yourself practising surgery in dark alleys with a rusty can opener.  Possibly on someone else.
Which am I?  I'm neither, I'm a spiritual guide and confidante, I'm someone who's used by other spirits, the neutral, overlooked spirits, to give people options.  Not that tie, you look like you're going to the opera.
Why am I here?  Again?  Today, mostly, I'm here because my last job, though successful, hasn't produced the right kind of ghost for the haunting we'll need here in a couple of weeks time.  Ah, you look worried now; how right you are at last….

Reporting from the trial

There has been mild excitement in London today as the artist Geraldinium Holmes entered court to stand trial. At least part of the excitement stems from the fact that few people seem to know what she's on trial for, despite the terms of her arrest and the charges being laid out in uncharacteristically clear fashion by the prosecution (Charmley and Inte-State, whose last case presentation confused the presiding Judge so badly that he finally sentenced their attending clerks to a six week intensive English course. This appears to have produced welcome improvements). Outside the court a small crowd had gathered, some artists, many purchasers of paintings by Geraldinium, and a small contingent of protestors for animal rights. The artists appeared to believe that Geraldinium was representing Art and that somehow they were all on trial with her as their proxy. The purchasers had a number of different opinions, ranging from this being a publicity stunt to the wild claim that she was on trial for actually being Muammar Ghaddafi (the person making this claim, an obese elderly woman smelling of turpentine, also appeared to think that Geraldinium was a man). The protestors were adamant that the trail should be about her dedication to the cause of animal cruelty and showed little interest in what the trial was actually about.
Inside the court, the trial was sparsely attended, with a few scattered journalists and some law students.  At the back of the room was a man who smelled and looked homeless, but who managed to persuade the court stewards that he should be allowed to stay.
After the initial statements of what the trial was about (the claim that Geraldinium Holmes either caused her assistant orphan-girl to kill herself, or was aware that she would make the attempt and did nothing to stop her, electing instead to photograph it for the purposes of creating commercial work from it), Geraldinium was called to the stand, and Mr. Charmley questioned her.
After twenty minutes, he gave up attempting to find out what her name was and why it was so unusual, and moved on to the details of the case.
"Miss Holmes," he said in an operatic baritone, "How did you come to take this photograph?" (Exhibit A, currently on display at the Walham Road Art Gallery, E1).
"I didn't," said Miss Holmes.  "It was taken by a motion-sensing camera that's set-up in a room on the third floor of my house."
"The picture is surely too well-focused and clear for that to be true!"  Mr. Charmley looked a little non-plussed but rallied well.
"It's one of seventy-six that were taken in the space of a single second," replied Miss Holmes.  "The others are not such good quality.  Which is why this one was chosen."
"And where are the other photographs, to substantiate your claim?"  Mr. Charmley was smiling at this point, in a way which, in other cases, has indicated that he is about to reveal a devastating truth.
"The police took them away," said Miss Holmes.  "I have a receipt, see?"  At this point she produced a receipt from her handbag, and Mr. Charmley looked as though he were about to kill someone.  His clerks edged away from him.
"Actually," he said, his words leaden and precise, "you send them out to seventy-five other people, didn't you?  With the message printed on the bottom, 'it could be you next'.  Didn't you?"
"No," said Geraldinium, yawning.  "I have the receipt here that shows the police took them away from me.  I don't know what happened to them after that."
There was much discussion and shouting at this point, until the Judge restored order and requested a viewing of the receipt.  He then retired for thirty minutes, and upon his return dismissed the case on the grounds that the prosecution had inadequate evidence to pursue it.  Mr. Charmley appeared apoplectic, and Miss Holmes had to be woken up from where she was sleeping on the floor in the ante-chamber to the court.
Outside the court there was a mixed reaction to the verdict, not helped by the artists and protestors both having gotten drunk and having a small battle involving the throwing of paint over each other.

Julian's ruse

Daryn's mombot forced us to learn how to sing.  We were all up in his room watching him play 'Perfect Crime' on his console when the mombot came in and made us all go downstairs to the dining room to learn how to sing.  Since we'd not had a mombot for a long time, ever since Dad had her returned to the Yard for not cooking pasta properly, I didn't really know much about them.  I was a little surprised at how quickly everyone else obeyed the mombot's instructions.
"I don't want to learn how to sing," I said to Daryn as we trudged down the stairs, the mombot leading the way and dusting the balustrade at the same time.  "I want to play Perfect Crime.  I think I can see how to get past the guard dogs without shooting them."
"Yeah, but the mombot says we have to learn how to sing," said Daryn.  "How are you going to beat the dogs then?"
"I'll show you," I said.  "Can we sneak back upstairs?"
"No," said Daryn.  "The mombot will notice."

* "Dad?"
Dad looked up from his desk.  Scattered across it in hundreds of tiny pieces was a fishbot.  We'd never been allowed fishbots because Dad said they only rusted, so I didn't know where it had come from.
"What?" he said.  He didn't sound anything, not angry, not impatient, not interested.  He was just waiting for me to say whatever it was I had to say and then he'd get on with what he was doing.
"What's a Julian's Ruse?"
"A what?"  Dad looked slightly confused.
"A Julian's Ruse," I said.  "Daryn's mombot wanted us all to learn how to sing today, and it said that when we were all singing right it'd be Julian's Ruse."
"Julie Andrews," breathed Dad after several seconds of thought.  "Wilkins!"
"What's a Julie Andrews then?" I asked, but Dad wasn't listening to me anymore.  Instead, he'd found his phone amongst the fragments of the fishbot and was making a call, one of those work calls where he pushed just three buttons on his phone and then said code-phrases to the person on the other end to identify himself.
"The dog has barked at the pepper-plant," he said after a short pause.  Then, "No, I think its tyres need changing."  That seemed to satisfy the person on the other end because there was another pause and Dad relaxed a little.  Then, "Wilkins has started."
After that he waved me away and had a much longer conversation, but I still managed to catch some bits of it.  The bit where he was talking about us being forced to sing was weird, because it sounded like the person on the other end was describing it to Dad.

* Daryn came to school the next day looking excited.
"They replaced the mombot last night!" he said.  "We've got a top-of-the-line version now!  It can play 'Perfect Crime'!  And it can get past the guard dogs without shooting them too!"
"Replaced it?" I said, but I knew who had ordered that.
"Yeah, I dunno why.  Mom said that it never happens, mombot's are never replaced unless you're rich, and Dad's been phoning people trying to find out what was wrong with the old one."
"Must have been a fault," I said.
"Yeah, that's what Dad says too.  But the new one's so cool!"
"Is it making you learn how to sing as well?"
"No, the new one's so much cooler than that.  It even got rid of the goatherd."
"Goatherd?"
"Yeah, there was a goatherd that the mombot kept in a cupboard.  All he ever did was tell us how lonely he was though."

* I ran a search later for Julie Andrews.  Then I ran a search for Nazis, and after an afternoon of reading, I realised why Dad has got so upset.  When I got home he was still at work though, so I logged onto his computer, connected through to the Yard with his password, and ran a search on Wilkins.
"File not found," was the response.