by Debi Gliori
“. . . So if you could just tell me where our rooms are,” continued Mrs. McLachlan serenely, “and where I might find the stable block for the animals . . . ?”
The receptionist had turned deathly pale and slumped over her desk, scattering pens and ledgers as she did so. Sensing that all was not going well, Mrs. McLachlan turned round in time to see Tock ambling across the tartan carpeting, dragging his dripping bag of lily pads behind him as he smiled a wide and toothsome greeting at the receptionist. Through the revolving door came Titus, Latch, and Signora Strega-Borgia, loudly informing anyone within earshot that Knot was outside in the parking lot being copiously sick.
“Disgusting,” said Signora Strega-Borgia, holding something infinitely unpleasant at arm’s length. “But at least I got it back. Oh, Latch, be a dear, would you, and give this a bit of a rinse?”
The butler twitched slightly, but obediently took hold of the regurgitated ectoplasm and bore it off to a bathroom.
Exactly one half-hour later, the family, minus Knot, reconvened in the dining room, immensely cheered by the discovery that the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms had indeed earned its four-star reputation. The family had variously bounced on the beds, peered into the mini-bars, turned on the televisions, and channel-surfed, and even Damp had spent a happy twenty minutes ironing her teddy bears flat in the trouser press thoughtfully supplied by the management.
After some heated discussions, Pandora was sharing a room with Mrs. McLachlan, Titus with Latch, and Signor and Signora Strega-Borgia installed a travel cot for Damp at the end of their bed and sighed mightily at the prospect of sharing a room with their early-waking baby. Mollified by the thought of lunch, the beasts and Tock obediently unpacked in the stables, left Knot groaning on a heap of clean straw, and joined the family round a linen-clad table by a window in the dining room.
The clan Strega-Borgia settled in their chairs and began to decipher their leatherbound menus. Mrs. McLachlan tucked a linen napkin under Damp’s chins and began to translate the menu for the benefit of those who couldn’t read. “Now Tock, dear, here’s a nice vegetarian dish just for you: fricassee of wild mushrooms with rice—or perhaps the salad of baby artichokes on a bed of lamb’s lettuce. And Titus?” she prompted. “What would you like, dear?”
Titus scanned the menu. What was all this stuff? he wondered. His eyes alighted on something that looked vaguely familiar. “Steak tartarr,” he pronounced with a confidence that he didn’t feel, “with poms freet.”
Pandora scowled behind her menu. Trust Titus to order first, she thought. Not to be outdone, she added, “And I’ll have the huevos rancheros with guacamole.” There, she decided, that’ll put his gas at a peep.
“Isn’t guacamole the stuff that seagulls cover rocks in?” asked Titus.
“That’s guano,” sighed Mrs. McLachlan, “and it’s very impolite to talk about such things when we’re about to eat, dear.”
A waitress appeared holding a large carafe of ice water and two bread baskets. She placed these in the middle of the table, produced a notebook and pencil from her pocket, and laboriously began to take the family’s order.
The fireplace clock measured out ten minutes while the Strega-Borgia tribe waited patiently, nibbling on bread and sipping ice water in happy anticipation of the feast to come. Ten more minutes ticked by, and then a further ten, by which time the bread baskets were empty, the water carafe drained, and tempers beginning to fray. Damp had quickly tired of playing peekaboo with her napkin and had begun to grizzle; Titus was whistling tunelessly through his teeth and drumming on the tablecloth with his fork in time with some internal rhythm of his own; and Pandora was attempting to glean some measurement of entertainment from re-reading the menu.
“I wonder what has happened to our lunch?” said Latch.
Hiss hiss, tappety tap. Hiss.
“I’m starving,” moaned Pandora, looking up from her seventeenth tour of the menu.
Tap, tappety, hiss, tap-tap.
“This is ridiculous,” muttered Signor Strega-Borgia. “Much longer and it will be time for supper, not lunch.”
Hiss. Tappety tap, hiss hiss.
“Oh do shut up, Titus,” snapped Pandora. “Stop that. You’re driving me insane.”
“What?” squawked Titus. “What have I done now? Stop what?” He glared at his sister. “You’re always so grumpy when you haven’t eaten,” he added. “Actually, cancel that: you’re always grumpy, period.”
Just as the family was about to erupt in preprandial hostilities, the waitress reappeared with a laden tray from which she began to serve lunch.
“Mmm, lovely,” lied Mrs. McLachlan, cutting Damp’s shriveled fish into baby-sized bits and somewhat redundantly blowing on them.
“What is that?” hissed Titus, prodding the red mush that oozed blood across his plate. “It’s not even cooked,” he complained.
“Quit moaning,” said Pandora, seizing the opportunity for revenge. “You’re always so grumpy when you haven’t eaten.” She took a vast forkful of her lunch and swallowed it without noticing the many small flecks of jalapeño pepper that garnished her plate. She was so hungry that she managed to devour five more mouthfuls before the full effect of the chilies struck her.
“I’m not eating raw meat,” said Titus, pushing his plate in Sab’s direction.
The griffin frowned at the blood-stained steak that was Titus’s rejected lunch. “What d’you think it was?” he said, poking it with a talon and adding darkly, “Or who, for that matter?”
Pandora’s eyes watered, her throat closed up, and her tongue announced its intention of spontaneously self-combusting. “Wa . . . te . . . r . . . ,” she croaked, seized by a chili-induced coughing fit.
“Give it five seconds with both nostrils,” advised Sab, passing Titus’s lunch over to Ffup.
The waitress returned with another water carafe in time to witness Ffup aiming a blast of dragon fire onto Titus’s raw steak. Ffup misfired and the bread baskets burst into flames.
“For heaven’s sake!” yelled Signor Strega-Borgia, leaping to his feet just as the tablecloth caught fire. Unaccustomed to dealing with guests who were attempting to flame-grill their own food, the waitress flung the contents of the water carafe at the burning tablecloth and fled to the kitchen. Drenched in icy water and picking up on the general mood, Damp began to sob.
“Good Lord,” came a woman’s voice, “the chilies weren’t that hot.” Bearing down on the remains of the Strega-Borgia’s table was an overdressed woman carrying a fire extinguisher. She pointed its nozzle at the table and sprayed everything in sight with foam. The Strega-Borgias regarded the blackened ruins of their lunch in dismay. In the interval of stunned silence that followed, Pandora decided that she loathed this woman on sight. Clad from head to toe in a clinging jumpsuit made from real zebra skin, the wielder of the fire extinguisher smiled a cold little welcome and adjusted her fox-fur collar in such a fashion that the glassy eyes of the deceased mammal fixed their accusing gaze on the floor.
“I need some fresh air,” whispered Pandora, sidling out of the dining room before she was sick over the woman’s crocodile-skin shoes. Running into the hall, she saw that the young Tock-phobic receptionist had been replaced by a middle-aged man who was too engrossed in pouring himself a drink from a flower vase to pay any attention to her hasty flight upstairs. From the dining room came a mocking peal of laughter and the ringing tones of a woman’s voice caroling, “Oh, she’s your daughter, is she? What a funny little thing she is. And what a handsome crocodile. Lovely skin. . . .”
Pandora, eyes, throat, and now face aflame, fled for the shelter of her bedroom.
Something’s Cooking
Despite the smoke damage in the dining room, business at the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms carried on as usual. The disgraced beasts and Tock were relegated to the stable block and Signor and Signora Strega-Borgia installed themselves on the sofas in the residents’ lounge. Mrs. McLachlan and Damp explored the gardens in the company
of Latch while Titus and Pandora discovered the true meaning of boredom.
In the bedroom she shared with Mrs. McLachlan, Pandora sat glassy-eyed in front of the television while Titus crawled under her bed in search of a telephone socket into which he could plug his laptop and access the Internet. He retreated backward from under the bed, muttering, “Right—surf’s up,” and logged on. Beeping sounds came from the laptop as it dialed out to an ISP located somewhere in deepest Argyll. Waiting for the connection to establish itself, Titus idly chewed his fingernails, gazed unseeingly out of the window, and wished with all his heart that he could return to StregaSchloss. I’ve only been here for twenty-four hours and already I’m bored, he thought. Bored, bored, bored. At least at home I could go and raid the fridge, but I’m not allowed to do that here.
In front of him, a dialogue box informed him that he was now connected to the Net. The cursor blinked on and off, politely waiting for Titus to enter an address. Without hesitation, he typed:
www.diy-clones.com
pressed ENTER, and then sat back again to wait for the interminable time it usually took to gain access to the Web site.
The previous summer, Titus had accidentally stumbled on this address when he mis-keyed in the name of his favorite ice cream manufacturers. He’d been starving after dinner, and after a fruitless trawl of the freezers for ice cream, he had decided to see if he could set up a direct supply of Dairy Cones to StregaSchloss. Diy-clones had been the result of his hasty typing, and after he’d spent five gripping minutes exploring the many attractions of that fascinating Web site, Titus had completely forgotten how hungry he was. Now, six months later, in an upstairs bedroom of the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms, he was inching closer to making a major scientific breakthrough. The screen on his laptop glowed deep red as the Web site came online. Titus logged in his password, bypassed screenfuls of introductory stuff, scrolled rapidly through pages of mathematical calculations, and arrived at what he was looking for. There. It all seemed simple enough. All he needed was:
fresh blood
some growth medium
an incubator
and an infrared facility.
Checking a side panel on his laptop, he found that he had at least one of the requirements at hand. His computer had the ability to communicate data by means of an infrared transmitter located next to the modem input. But as to where he was going to find the rest of his list . . . Titus sighed. Fresh blood was going to be a bit tricky, not to mention totally gruesome. He could just about manage to acquire some of his own—if he shut his eyes and stabbed himself with a badge pin, he was sure he could squeeze out enough blood for his needs before he fainted.
Pandora’s blood was another matter entirely. Titus eyed his sister speculatively, wondering how to go about this without simultaneously causing her too much pain and alerting her to what he was doing. For the time being, he was reluctant to let Pandora in on his master plan for creating two clones, one of himself and the other of her, mainly because if he shared the secret with her, he would also have to inform her that he needed her blood. It was unlikely that she would see the scientific necessity for this. However, he mused, Pandora would be the first to agree that creating clones for the purpose of doing homework (Pandora-type clones) and tidying the bedroom (Titus-type clones) was a stroke of utter genius. Staring through Pandora as his thoughts turned this way and that, he realized that she had turned the television off and was gazing at him in alarm.
“Titus . . . ?” She shivered. “What is it? You’re looking at me very strangely . . . almost as if you’ve turned into a—a zombie or something.”
Titus snapped out of his reverie and grinned wolfishly at her. “Not a zombie, sister dear. A vampire, actually. . . .”
He’d worked out how to do it, he realized. In fact, Pandora had worked it out for him. Fresh blood was going to be easy. Now he could turn his attention to the two remaining items on his list.
“What are you doing?” said Pandora, peering over his shoulder before he had time to log off from the incriminating Web site. “Is that another game? Diy-clones? Don’t you just hate it when people spell things wrong on purpose? Die doesn’t have a ‘y’ in it.”
“Um, yes,” Titus mumbled, barely listening as he frantically tried to leave the Web site without Pandora catching a glimpse of anything that might alter her assumption that he was playing yet another Death & Destruction type of computer game. Distraction was the only answer, he thought, as he saw her squinch up her eyes and try to read what was written on the screen on his laptop. Distraction, plus a little bit of laying the foundations for his newly hatched plan to acquire some of her blood. . . .
Titus took a deep breath. “Pan . . . ,” he began, leaning backward on Mrs. McLachlan’s bed in a manner more designed to obscure his sister’s view of the computer than to afford him any comfort, “d’you think I look a bit pale?” Titus opened his eyes a little wider and sneaked a quick glance at Pandora to see how this was going down.
“Nope. Not even slightly,” she stated. “In fact, you’re blushing.”
“Um, no, I meant—d’you think I’m looking a bit flushed?” Titus hastily amended. “Running a temperature kind of thing?”
Pandora gave up trying to read Titus’s screen and stood up. “Titus, what are you on about?”
“It’s just that I’m a bit worried . . . ,” Titus improvised. “Last night I—it was awful—I woke up and found myself lying on the stairs—I don’t know how—not the foggiest idea of how I got there.”
“You were probably sleepwalking,” Pandora said, delivering this statement in the uninterested tone of a weather forecaster predicting icy spells in January.
Delighted that Pandora had swallowed this fictional hook without any difficulty, Titus pressed home his point. “But . . . I could do anything—end up anywhere when I’m sleepwalking . . . and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I wouldn’t even remember what I’d done.”
Pandora rolled her eyes and exhaled noisily. “I wouldn’t let that worry you, Titus. You never remember what you’ve done. You’ve got the cognitive capacity of a goldfish. If you were a computer, you’d crash as soon as anyone switched you on—”
“WHAT?” roared Titus. “I’ve got a memory like an elephant!”
“No, Titus.” Pandora opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the corridor. “Your memory isn’t like an elephant’s. Just your appetite.”
The door slammed shut behind her.
Quid Pro Quo
Two weeks dragged slowly by. The Strega-Borgia hotel bill swelled into an alarming five-figure sum, much to the dismay of Signor and Signora Strega-Borgia. Over breakfast, Signor Strega-Borgia waded his way through a sheaf of slips, commenting bitterly on each one as around him the family tried to eat breakfast as inexpensively as possible.
“How on earth did we manage to run up a phone bill for four hundred and eighty-three pounds ninety-six?” Signor Strega-Borgia waved the offending item at his wife, who wisely declined to answer.
Titus, recalling his hours spent on the Internet, failed to quell the blush advancing across his cheeks.
“We’ve only been here for sixteen days,” moaned Signor Strega-Borgia to the array of bent heads across the table. “Look at this—laundry facilities: two hundred and ninety-five pounds plus VAT—we could buy a washing machine for less. . . . And here—room service: eight hundred and thirty-seven pounds, forty-two—that’s ludicrous!”
Signora Strega-Borgia looked up from her toast. “That’ll be the food for the beasts, darling—”
“What have they been eating, for heaven’s sake? Beluga caviar? Lobster thermidor? Wild boar and truffles?”
Signora Strega-Borgia ignored the interruptions. “Since they’re not allowed in the dining room anymore, the poor dears do need their creature comforts.”
“SUNDRIES!” bawled Signor Strega-Borgia, spotting another attempt to plunder the family’s diminishing finances. “Look—one linen tablecloth: three
hundred and ninety pounds; ten linen napkins: a hundred and fifty pounds; two bread baskets: fifteen pounds forty; damage to table: two hundred and ninety-three pounds—”
“Good morning. Is everything in order?”
Signor Strega-Borgia started guiltily. The hotel manageress, Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell, had appeared as if on oiled wheels beside the table and was fixing upon the family a smile that was remarkable only for its lack of sincerity. Her hooded eyes told a different story altogether.
Pandora’s cereal spoon clattered into her bowl, bounced out across the tablecloth, and catapulted its milk-sodden contents straight onto the manageress’s left shoe. Pandora gave a small squeak of dismay, inwardly logging another item onto the day’s bill—one pink ostrich-skin shoe: two hundred pounds. She gritted her teeth and decided not to apologize—the ghastly woman was a walking advertisement for humanity’s history of cruelty to animals: her shirt was the product of overworked silkworms, her rabbit’s-foot brooch a gross reminder that somewhere out there was a bunny amputee limping across the heather, and her suede skirt had cost some innocent sheep dear. Why, then, Pandora wondered, was Dad being so chummy with her? She clenched her fists as a loud peal of laughter rang out across the dining room.
“Oh, Luciano,” Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell shrieked, “you’re such a scream!”
“Indeed,” muttered Signora Strega-Borgia, raising her coffee cup and her eyebrows in tandem. “Could I have some more coffee, Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell?”
Uh-oh, thought Pandora, registering the chill in her mother’s voice.
“Certainly, Signora,” said the manageress. “I’ll just make some fresh . . . myself, I never drink the stuff—so bad for the complexion.”
One all, thought Pandora, dreading what she knew from experience was to come.
“Personally,” said Signora Strega-Borgia to no one in particular, “I rely on our impeccable genetic heritage to look after my complexion.” She smiled to herself and idly smoothed a stray hair back into place, looking up to deliver the final thrust straight between Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell’s eyes. “You will discover in the fullness of time that good breeding always wins hands down over mere diet and artifice.”