“The journey wasn’t wasted then?”
“No, Sah. We got the leather. Highly prized, the leather, Sah. That’s what the farmer told us.”
“So is that the end of your space ambitions?” Tom looked hopeful.
“No, Sah, we’ve been building new ships to Phoist’s specifications.”
“I see.” Tom was now dreading what would happen if the Skagans got loose again. Perhaps he could intervene and stall the next invasion of the Galaxy. “Thank you Vac. I’d be very grateful if you could show me round these..?”
“I shall make arrangements, Sah.”
“Now would be a good time,” said Tom, standing up. “We will go now.” He thought he spotted a fleeting change to Vac’s inscrutable features.
“Now, Sah?”
“Now, Vac.”
“Very good, Sah.”
“Don’t mention it. Go and get the car.”
“I’ll organise an escort, Sah.”
“Don’t worry; I think we’ll take the Alfa instead.”
Research
The Magus finds no Cure
A Receptionist gets Cakes
A
small hairy man pushed open the glass doors of the Glenforbis Research Centre in the main town of Glenodure. The automatic scrubbers washed over him and removed most of the aroma remaining after his walk across the celebrated Nightsoil square. He breathed again. Being able to hold his breath for anything up to 30 minutes had its advantages, even though it used to get him thrown out of a certain type of party in the days of his youth.
He smiled at the buxom receptionist. She did not notice, because of the mass of hair obscuring his face.
“Still no cure for the Dokuvirus then, Mr Magus?” she observed.
“Nearly there,” said the Magus. “Then will you go out with me?”
“Do you know,” she replied, “I think I might? I’m curious what’s to be found under all that fleece.”
“There’s a reason for me to continue then.”
“Why, were you thinking of throwing in the hand-dryer?”
“I’ve been struggling with formulae and analysis for the last year now and I still don’t seem to be nearer a solution. I was going to give it all up today, and go and find someone who might love me for my personality alone.”
“Do you have a personality? I’d not noticed.”
“I expect I could develop one,” said the Magus, hopefully. “Would you like me if I did?”
“I suppose so,” she admitted, “although you are a little short for me, and I have this thing about body hair… Can I see your ID?”
“I’ve forgotten my badge today,” said the Magus quickly. “Can you buzz me through?”
“Perhaps when you’ve lost the hair… oh I see, you want access to the facility…”
“When I’ve lost this rug, most certainly,” replied the Magus, licking the stubble around his lips.
The receptionist shuddered, and then she nodded. “Ah, I understand; you want to come into the building? How do I know it is really you under all that fur? You could be a spy trying to infiltrate the offices.”
“And steal what?”
“I don’t know; secrets, formulae, the lift, the coffee machine…”
“That contraption’s about the most valuable part of the whole lab since we lost our funding from the Prog Revival Movement.”
“Shame about that, but tell me then, can you prove it really is you?”
“Call up my security picture.”
“I will,” she said firmly. “We will see, you evil mastermind. Oh.”
On the desk in front of her a small holographic head of a very hairy creature appeared. It looked exactly like the Magus.
“There you are, then,” he said. “Now will you let me in?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.” She pointed to a sign behind her. ‘Please remove crash-helmets, Keffiyeh and all surplus hair before entering the building. Burkas are permitted to save offence to religious zealots.’ “So I can’t let you in I’m afraid.”
“I see. Do you have a washroom I can use?”
“Er, yes,” said the receptionist. “It’s over there. Don’t be long or I’ll call Security.”
“Five minutes,” said the Magus over his shoulder.
* * *
Two minutes later, a small hairy man with a towel wrapped around his head reappeared from the washroom. “Right, now let me in.”
“Oh. Is that you under there, Magus?”
“Who else? Now let me in.”
“What have you got wrapped around your head?”
“It’s a burka, can’t you tell?”
“Of course it is sir.” She pressed a button under the desk and the security door opened.
The Magus entered. He stopped and regarded the receptionist. “Yes?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“I think an apology is due, don’t you?” he said, folding his arms.
The receptionist squirmed on her seat. “I suppose so, sir; er, sorry about the wait.”
“No problem, but you should eat less and exercise more if you’re worried about it,” said the Magus, and left her scratching her head, wondering what he was on about.
The lift took him up the five floors to his laboratory. It did not really need to be on the fifth floor, because the building had been virtually empty since the bottom dropped out of the dung market.6 The building’s owners had been desperate to encourage other industry, and the Magus had been able to rent his workshops from them at a very reasonable rate.
The facilities were good, and there were many other deserted rooms on the fifth floor containing equipment used in guano reclaim, such as dung analysers, anal dungalysers, scanning electron microscopes, scanning microbe electroscopes, macrobiotic centrifuges and centrobiotic microfuges.
The Magus perched on a stool and studied his notes on the K-pad he had taken from a locked drawer. He worried that, as he had forgotten his badge, he might also have forgotten his key, but then he remembered he had left it on a hook at the side of the desk, and was able to access his research with but little delay.
It did not look good. He checked the latest batch of cultures in a series of glass flasks on the warming pad, shooed off the office hexacat and scratched his head. He was always scratching somewhere since that last visit to the flea-circus adventure park.
In response to his latest hair-removal formulae, none of the cultures had done anything but grow tremendously; most had pushed the bungs out of the flasks. He grunted in resignation but then took a sharp breath. The container that the hexacat had been leaning against had not spilled its contents. The stopper was firmly in place and the culture looked a little sickly.
“Could this be it?” he muttered to himself; muttering was a fate reserved for all scientists lacking a scantily clad female assistant to mutter to. Dismay was another fate for any self-respecting scientist, when the zombies come in and eat the assistant’s brain, as they are wont to do in most of the films he had watched, and dismay was right around the corner as he picked up the flask and shook it. There was a small explosion, the stopper blew out like a champagne cork and flew across the room, hitting the hexacat squarely on the rump, just as it was relieving itself on a new batch of test specimens. It gave a yelp, deposited a pile of vomit on to the samples and scooted for cover.
“Sorry Cat,” said the Magus. “I’ll ring down for one of those nice cakes to make it up to you. Looks like I’m not getting anywhere here either.” He flicked the intercom.
“Er, hi.” The receptionist sounded bored. “How can I help you?”
“Could you get me a couple of cakes please and some coffee from the shop around the corner? The machine seems to have disappeared up here.”
“I meant to tell you about that,” came the reply. “Anyway, what am I supposed to do for money?”
“I’ll give you my credit-card number and
password, and you can find my thumbprint on the security database. Get yourself something while you are there, of course.”
“Of course.” The call cut off. The Magus put his chin in his hands and stared sadly at the new batch of test samples. Where it had only smelt slightly of dung before, it now also reeked of spew and cat-wee. He went to examine it more closely. Perhaps the Microfuge would be able to do something with it. If not, he was not too worried. There were many people now infected with the Dokuvirus, mostly farmers, but occasionally matadors and milkmaids, who were always ready to give samples, especially, they said, if he had the obligatory scantily-clad assistant. The grafts they used to replace the missing skin usually stayed bald, but complete transplants were now out of the question.
The Magus shuddered, remembering the lawsuits that had followed. He had won his case, arguing that the victims were technically not the same people he had initially dealt with, and therefore all guarantees were invalid. It had been a close call, and had not some vital evidence been lost by the prosecutors at exactly the same time as his cash reserves mysteriously plummeted to zero, the case would have dragged on for years. Now, he was living off the small income he earned as a model for grooming parlours and renting his body out for the new craze of extreme hairdressing.
The intercom buzzed. “Hi, I’m sending your food up in the lift; a coffee and two Meadow Muffins. I know how much the cat likes them.”
“Thank you. What did you get for yourself?”
“A new pair of shoes; I hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh,” said the Magus as the call cut off. “I suppose it’s worth it. I can always pretend it was a fraudulent transaction if they want me to pay off the card sometime.”
The coffee and cakes arrived on a tray in the paternoster. The Magus grabbed them desperately as they went past, burning his fingers on the hot cup. He knew he had that one chance; the system ran round the whole building; if he missed, it would be another hour before it came round again.
The hexacat smelled the muffins and rubbed around him, purring. “Here you go, Cat,” he said putting one down on the ground. The animal ignored it and jumped on the bench to start chewing its way through the other. It took a lick at the coffee as the Magus retrieved his cake from the floor. They sat, staring at each other, the hexacat begrudging his every mouthful, until the last crumbs had disappeared. The Magus poured a drop of coffee into a petri-dish. The hexacat turned its nose up and went back to sit on the hot-pad to wash its face.
He stood up and stretched. “I suppose I’d better clean the samples up before I try the next batch of experiments.” The hexacat ignored him and went to sniff around the nearly empty coffee cup. It knocked it over and proceeded to lap up the dregs as they too dribbled over the new batch. The Magus gave a sigh, and finished the now cold liquid in the petri-dish.
* * *
“Letters for you.” The intercom crackled as the Receptionist disturbed his daydream.
The Magus tore his eyes away from the window. He had been watching the inactivity at the main dung-processing plant. Things were not so good for industry on Glenforbis, with most people now concentrating on milk and meat production, and the weaving of colourful rugs. Tourism was increasing slightly, as the demand for ethnic floor-coverings and a hefty steak started to increase, and the Magus was now considering replacing the doku herd7 at his country mansion. Farming was better than endless and fruitless research simply in order to shag the Receptionist.
“Could you send them up please?”
“I’ll put them into the paternoster.”
“Please don’t, they’ll blow off and get stuck in the mechanism.”
“I could fix them down with my tomahawk.”
“I’ll come down; I probably need the exercise.”
“You’ll get it. Use the stairs; someone wearing a burka has stolen the lift.”
* * *
There were two letters. The Magus retrieved them from the Receptionist’s desk, and panted back up the stairs to the lab before opening them. The first one looked official and bore the impression of the leasing company. He slotted it into a reader. It was a final demand for the rent, with a warning that they would ‘send the boys round’ if it was not paid by the end of the week. There were also promises to turn off the power to the lab as an indication that they meant business, and a veiled suggestion about the continued wellbeing of his family and friends. “As if I had any,” the Magus muttered. “Oh poo, that as good as wraps it up for me, then. I’ll get my coat and skedaddle before they come for the money.”
The hexacat nudged the remaining letter, trying to lick the stamp off it. “They’re using mouse glue again I see,” said the Magus, “I suppose I’d better see what’s inside it.”
The second correspondence was more old-fashioned. It appeared to be some sort of envelope, sealed, and sporting a ten-digit touchpad. On the back was large red text, saying that any attempt to open it without using the correct code would result in the fiery destruction of the contents and the room being sprayed with Anthrax.
“It’s probably junk mail again,” muttered the Magus as the hexacat fussed around him, leaving a layer of white fur on his hairy legs.
He entered his personal code into the touchpad, and the envelope flopped open. Inside, there was a single piece of an antique medium known as ‘paper’. The paper contained a single paragraph, appallingly typed:
“Dear Magister Magus you have one a prize in the natural drawer please enter this code into you’re bank terminal. Yule need too scratch of the coating to reveal the number off coarse.
Rear-guards
Betty Turpin-Tosser
Secretary to Abrams Tadd, Badloserlot Lotteries.”
“The standard of clerical education is improving at last,” muttered the Magus, rummaging in his pocket for a coin. “I could understand most of that. Damn!” He remembered that everything was done via credit on this planet, coins being an antique curiosity. He tried the handle of a spatula and succeeded in nearly obliterating the faint characters on the page, but after holding it up to the light and peering through screwed up eyes, he managed to scribble down the sequence.
He called up the Hyper-net and logged in to his bank account. After a short conversation with a foreign gentleman about a dispossessed despot who was looking for somewhere to keep his funds, he disconnected and managed to log back into the correct bank system. He typed in the code. There was a pause while the back-end processors performed an exhaustive security check and he was challenged with his passphrase. This had to be typed without error, and then he was asked for the seventh, twenty-first and ninety-second characters of his secret code-sentence. Finally, he had to lick the screen to provide a sample of DNA. To his surprise, the account connected first time, and the automated system answered.
“Good morning Mister Magus,” it said, “And how can we help you today? Please speak clearly after the tone.”
“Deposit code,” said the Magus clearly.
“Disposition request?” asked the voice.
“Deposit!” said the Magus.
“You wish to deposit a disposition?” replied the voice.
“Reset,” said the Magus tiredly. “Manual input.”
“Manual input controls ready,” responded the system. “Please make sure that your fingers are clean.”
The Magus snorted, and called up the deposit screen. He typed in the code and sat back, expecting it to be rejected, or at the very least empty out his last few credits in transaction charges. His pilose profile twisted with disbelief. The amount deposited in his account had more zeroes following the first number than he had seen for a long time.
“It can’t be true,” he muttered. “It must be a mistake.”
“We have checked this irregular transaction and confirmed there are no errors,” replied the terminal, apparently anticipating his disbelief. “Can we interest you in one of our premium high-interest accounts, or are you going to spend it
all on fast women and loose cars? If the latter, please see the recommended list of suppliers, available with your ‘LackofTaste’ Card. You will get money back on each transaction, and points are building towards your Grade-Three Twat listing, when you will receive a cuddly toy robot shaped like a hexacat.”
“Brilliant,” said the Magus, “a toy hexacat, and I’ve got enough cash to continue my research now; what luck. Fancy that happening to me, of all people.”
Inspection
Tom discovers a Business
Vac gets a Refund
T
om refused the offer of being carried outside to the car on a litter, and stood at the front doors of the SCT main offices surrounded by Skagan guards of both sexes, resplendent in their obsidian leather uniforms.
The Alfa appeared from the direction of the garages and stopped at the foot of the steps. Vac eased his way out of the vehicle and stood to attention.
“Your car is here, Sah.”
“I can see that, thank you Vac. Are all these guards really necessary?”
“Yes, Sah. Insurgents could be anywhere. We will protect you with our lives.”
“I thought we’d already agreed that firstly nobody would want to kill me and secondly even if they did want to, they would not be able to get on the island without your defence nukes taking them out at extreme range. Which reminds me, could you make sure that you warn local shipping again? I’ve had three demands for compensation already today from people traffickers claiming they have lost valuable cargo.”
“They were heading this way, Sah; can’t have illegals landing on the Island.”
“Apparently, they were passing through on their way to the welcome centre at Watford Gap.”
“Sorry, Sah.” The expression on Vac’s face did not alter.
“I’ll take the wheel.”
“Sorry, Sah, division of duties insists that I drive for you; Process Manual defines it.”
“Can’t we simply overlook that for today… or better still, change the Manual?”
The Fifth Correction Page 3