by Debi Gliori
“Two things, fish-breath,” he muttered. “That stone I spat out is not an egg. Do I look like a chicken to you?”
“Um, ochh, weel…no. Ah'd say youse were mair like a sea horse, maself.”
“Exactly.” The reconstituted Alpha allowed a grim smile to cross his mouth. “However, no matter what form my body may take, my soul will always be that of a librarian, so…pay attention: that stone is the property of the library. You may not photocopy, scan, clone, or reproduce library property by means mechanical, digital, or magical without the express permission of the librarian—that's me, by the way. Furthermore, you may not use library property for the purposes of Black Magic, unlawful killing, or material gain. Library property should not be used in the furtherance of any criminal act or any attempt to reverse the laws of nature. If you agree to be bound by these conditions, say yes…. ”
“Och, I…er, I…I, um…”
“Seeing as you're Scottish, I'll assume that ‘I' means yes. Splendid. Consider yourself elected to the honorable company of mythical librarians.”
“But, but…I dinnae understand…,” the Sleeper wailed. “Whit is a librarian?”
His voice echoed back at him across the loch. Whatever a librarian was, he realized, it wasn't anymore. The sea horse had gone, leaving behind its shiny stone, which lay gleaming and glittering amongst the pebbles on the beach, rather like a phoenix surrounded by battery hens. To the Sleeper's intense relief, upon closer inspection it looked nothing like an egg, but in every way resembled the diamond of his fiancée's dreams.
“Noo, if ah could jis' find a ring tae put it in, we'd be sorted,” he decided, tucking the Chronostone into his abdominal pouch for safekeeping. Wondering if any suitably circular bits of metal had been washed ashore at high tide, the Sleeper scanned the beach for a while but, aside from pebbles and driftwood, the shore below StregaSchloss was remarkably litter-free. However, if he remembered correctly, the same could not be said for a fenced-off length of foreshore farther down the loch. From what he'd been able to see of that particular beach, it was covered in rusting oil drums, discarded plastic crates, broken glass, and mountains of old tires. To complete this picture of Highland charm, someone had thoughtfully bulldozed a deep trench along the high-tide line and filled it with what smelled like rancid fish parts. These had been decomposing spectacularly for the past two months, forming a malodorous barricade that nothing dared cross, a state of affairs heavily encouraged by the current owners of that stretch of Lochnagargoyle. Reminding himself not to eat his way past the barrier this time, the Sleeper swam off on a beachcombing expedition for Ffup's ring.
An Empty Net
or reasons undreamt of by Titus, the weather had taken a remarkable turn for the better; so much so that by eleven o'clock at night he'd been forced to open both his bedroom windows, allowing air and hordes of ravening gnats to circulate freely around his room. The only source of illumination being his laptop, the gnats clustered round its glowing light and discovered that, while they couldn't read what was written on the screen, someone had thoughtfully provided them with a large food source in its vicinity. Proboscises quivering with anticipation, they settled in their hundreds on the banquet laid out before them and helped themselves to the sheer abundance of Titus.
So absorbed was Titus with what he'd found on the Internet that he didn't even notice as the gnats attempted to drain him of blood. Intent on discovering what manner of company would drive a truck full of white mice down a single-lane road in rural Argyll, Titus had trawled the Internet for signs of the name he'd spotted on the back of the driver's overalls. Then, the name “Corp-ex” had meant nothing. Nor had it meant very much when he'd found, in the dust of the track, some tiny plastic rings with SAPIENTECH printed on them in miniature type, followed by what looked like a bar code. However, several pieces began to fall into place when he'd discovered that similar tiny plastic rings had been fastened around the dead mice's front paws.
And now, eyes glued to the screen, occasionally gasping, “Wow,” or “Heck,” and frequently, “Are they allowed to do that?” Titus had hacked his way into the heart of Corp-ex.com and discovered a cesspit of exploitation, corruption, and panglobal multinationalism. This was a sprawling business empire that subjected people in the third world to slavery, destroyed swaths of virgin rain forest, emitted toxic fumes that fell to earth as burning acids, irradiated lakes in remote parts of the Russian wilderness, poisoned oceans by slipshod oil shipments… oh, and yes, drove truckloads of laboratory mice down single-lane roads in rural Argyll.
Titus sat back in his chair and groaned. Now what? Faced with the global span of Corp-ex.com's many dodgy business interests, he felt as confident as an anchovy about to declare war on an octopus. Well… perhaps not an anchovy, he amended rapidly. Maybe more of a gnat going after a rhinoceros? Whatever. A lone teenager with zero chance of stopping a vast corporation that, if previous performance was anything to go by, was probably intent on polluting one of the last unspoiled sea-lochs in Scotland. Brushing aside environmentalists, imposing media blackouts, lying to shareholders, and even shrugging off a series of devastating attacks on its research stations by a group of eco-terrorists intent on blowing it off the face of the planet—Corp-ex had ignored them all. Insulated by wealth, the company rolled on, blinkered, deaf, and utterly immune to public opinion. Like they were going to pay any attention to one Titus Strega-Borgia, outraged resident of Argyll?
I mean, get a grip, he thought. Just what exactly am I going to do? March up to their no-doubt heavily guarded entrance gate and demand that they cease trading immediately or I'm going to the police? Yeah, right. Like that's going to work. Perhaps I could demand to speak to their leader? Failing that, I might try tiptoeing around to their chain-link perimeter fencing by dead of night carrying a set of bolt cutters. Snip my way in. And, if by some miracle their guard dogs don't deliver me back to StregaSchloss in the form of mince in a matchbox, then what? What am I looking for? What makes Lochnagargoyle an ideal spot for one of Corp-ex's business ventures?
Scrolling down the pages of information on the screen in front of him, Titus re-read the various names of companies sheltering under the Corp-ex.com umbrella. Several were pharmaceutical giants whose names were familiar; others he'd never heard of. His eyes skidded to a stop halfway down a page, his attention caught by a familiar name; a name last seen printed on a dead mouse's identification tag; a name last heard from the mouth of a driver trying to deliver said mouse to SapienTech of Auchenlochtermuchty. Oh yes, Titus breathed, now we're onto something…. SapienTechnologies Inc. had a Web site, the hyperlink for which was printed in blue, signaling that it was live. It read:
www.sapientech.co.uk/homepage/url
More than slightly curious, Titus clicked on the link and waited to see what would happen. In the silence, he could hear something moving outside. It sounded like hesitant footsteps on the rose-quartz drive, as if whoever was out there didn't want to be discovered tiptoeing outside StregaSchloss at this late hour. He peered at the screen, but the laptop was still engaged in the cyber equivalent of tapping politely on SapienTech's door, checking its watch, squinting through the mailbox, and wondering when someone was going to invite it in. Against the hideous possibility that behind the door lay a cyber-plague, Titus had installed virus-checking software, which, he fondly imagined, also stood on SapienTech's doorstep, armed to the hilt, bristling with menace, and even now picking its teeth with the business end of a cybermachete. Understandable, really, Titus thought, that the door was taking so long to open….
Sighing with impatience, he stood up, stretched, yawned so widely his jaws almost locked, and crossed to an open window to see if he could spot whoever had been tiptoeing across the drive. To his surprise, he saw the distant figure of Pandora sprinting across the open fields toward the dark mass of the forest skirting Mhoire Ochone. In the moonlight, her shadow looked like a giant daddy longlegs, her scissoring legs skimming over grassy hummocks as if, any minute now,
she might achieve liftoff and flutter into the night. What on earth was she doing? A metallic chingg came from his laptop, alerting Titus to the dialog box that had popped up on his screen.
WARNING: THIS SITE IS NOT SECURE AND INFORMATION YOU SEND CAN BE READ IN TRANSIT. DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE?
In the time it took Titus to read this and press ENTER,
Pandora had vanished from sight, but by then Titus had other things on his mind. His virus-protection software had swung into full-on defense mode and was rapidly deploying its virtual troops, booting them into the front line and passing around the Kalashnikovs. The laptop chittered and clicked, its hard drive spinning in an attempt to cool itself down as something out there on the Internet, hidden behind the door of SapienTech, stretched out a long cyber-probe, reached down the telephone line past the paralyzed server, hurled itself along underground cables, and, with deadly accuracy, attempted to plunge straight into the brain of Titus's laptop. Blissfully unaware that his defenses were under attack, Titus gave a snort of disgust. In front of him, a new dialog box read:
ERROR TYPE: KLZ2.
THE SPECIFIED SERVER COULD NOT BE FOUND.
This being the computer's way of saying, “Gosh and golly, I tried to visit those nice folks at SapienTech, but d'you know, when I got there, not only had they moved the premises, but some thoughtless cretin had demolished the building after they'd gone…. ”
Wearily, Titus returned to the previous screen, only to find it blank. Scroll and click as he might, he found himself utterly unable to access anything to do with Corp-ex.com or its many subsidiaries.
It was as if it had never existed.
A Walk in the Woods
he forest floor was dappled with moonlit patches, their irregular shapes reminding Pandora of a jigsaw, a vast puzzle requiring some even vaster hand to reach down and reassemble the scattered pieces into an illuminated whole. The air was so still it appeared to be holding its breath, the silence so deep and velvety she could almost feel it caress her skin. Admittedly, she was covered in gooseflesh, which couldn't be blamed on the ambient temperature, since she was damp with sweat after sprinting across the fields. I'm not nervous, Pandora told herself, ignoring her pounding heart, I'm… uh, just a bit puffed after all that running. Ahead lay the dark forest of Caledon; behind her, moonlit fields, StregaSchloss, and safety. Unable to decide whether to turn back or carry on, Pandora weighed her options. Turning back and heading for home did have a lot to recommend it: a warm bed, soft pillows, a vast book she'd hardly been able to tear herself away from—not to mention the sure and certain knowledge that no orcs were likely to leap out from behind a tree if she was safely tucked up in bed. On the other hand, fear of fictional characters was no reason for turning back home. She'd come too far to give up now. Half-smiling to herself, Pandora felt she'd stepped between the pages of a book. As if she was on a quest. She was the huntress; and out in the darkness lay her unsuspecting quarry. Although this was really just a game, there had been enough of an edge of danger to set her heart racing. She felt electric, alive, and deliriously grown-up.
What was it Zander had said earlier? He'd turned to her, halfway through their tour of StregaSchloss, and she'd realized how very blue his eyes were—so blue, in fact, that she hardly listened to what he was saying. “You have an old soul, Pandora,” he'd whispered, sending an agreeable shiver running through her body. She'd frowned, not having the foggiest idea what he was twittering on about, but perfectly happy to stand there and listen to him read her the telephone directory if necessary, if only it meant she could continue to gaze into his blue, blue eyes….
He'd reached out then, patted her on the shoulder, and said, “We're two of a kind, you and I…. D'you know what I mean?”
“Um… yeah. Sort of. Absolutely.”
“I sense that we've known each other before. In a previous life, perhaps. Maybe we were brother and sister, maybe even comrades, brothers-in-arms.”
“Gosh. I…er…”
“What star sign are you, Pandora? No, hang on, don't tell me. I bet I can work it out. I see you as brave, fierce, loyal, passionate—the vibe I'm getting off you says Scorpio. Am I right, or am I right?”
She should have stopped him right there and then. He was so wrong and, as a dyed-in-the-wool Leo, she was on the point of roaring her defiance when he leant forward and kissed her on the top of her head and carried on as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn't turned into a human lobster, for heaven's sake.
“Don't look so shocked. I can always tell these things. I'm a Pisces—my intuition is never wrong. …” Then he'd burst out laughing, even though it wasn't at all funny, and flung his arms wide, as if embracing all of StregaSchloss, the gardens, and the loch. “This place is just so full of energy, it's almost alive.” Zander inhaled, looking as if he was trying to absorb Argyll through his nostrils alone. “Can't you feel it? Like an electric current running through your body? No, don't say a word. Twin souls have no need for language. I know you understand me. Let's just be still and absorb the essence for a moment.”
To Pandora's acute embarrassment, he'd turned his face up to the sky and begun to breathe loudly, all the while muttering, “In through the nose, two, three—imagine a stream of positive earth energy filling every cell of your body; out through the mouth, two, three, releasing all that negativity, emptying your body of toxins; in through the nose, two, three…”
Politely, Pandora had tried to look rapt with wonder. “…out through the mouth, two, three, becoming at one with the mystery …”
Pandora had fixed an expression of deep concentration on her face.
“… two, three, opening your channels to the goddess…” Biting her bottom lip, Pandora had desperately attempted to tune him out. No. It was hopeless. She had to stop him, otherwise she was about to burst into hysterical laughter, and that, she sensed, wouldn't go down at all well. Despite it all, she still wanted to impress him. Clearing her throat, she aimed for a light, conversational style—anything to make him stop breathing like that.
“Ah…so… why are you here ? Is being a butler something you've always wanted to do?”
Zander's head had snapped around to face her, and in that moment Pandora had felt her blood turn to ice. As if a mask had fallen away, his face was filled with hate, his mouth twisted into a snarl of contempt—then, just as abruptly, the moment was gone. He'd given that slightly hysterical laugh again, and, looking away from her, had swooped down, plucked a dandelion head out from the path at her feet, and begun to puff it to pieces, blowing the tiny seeds into her hair.
“Apologies, Miss Strega-Borgia, I forgot myself. Let's see if butler is my true destiny. What have we here? A tinker, a tailor, a butler, a sailor—”
“It's soldier, not butler.”
“Never fancied the army, myself. Real warriors don't wear uniforms, and they fight their own battles, not other people's…. Rich man—puff —poor man…”
“… beggar man, thief,” she'd added.
“The seven ages of man,” Zander observed, gently picking dandelion seeds out of her hair.
“But there's eight,” she had mumbled, face aflame.
“Rich men and thieves are the same thing,” he'd said, turning away and gazing down Lochnagargoyle before crushing the denuded dandelion underfoot and walking on so quickly she'd had to run to catch up with him….
He wasn't walking quite so fast now, she decided, her eyes growing used to the darkness in the forest. Up ahead she could make out the glow of his flashlight as Zander climbed the tree-lined western slope of Mhoire Ochone. He appeared to be making for Star Wood, a little clearing in the forest of Caledon that, according to local rumor, was formed when debris from a comet had peppered Scotland in the early part of the seventeenth century. Nothing had ever grown in Star Wood until recently, when a sturdy example of a cell tower had sprouted out of the soil and sprung to a height of a hundred meters in approximately two days flat. Unsurprisingly, this tower didn't put out leaves or fl
owers, but it did emit microwaves, supposedly enabling the residents of Argyll to use cell phones. Unfortunately, this improvement had the opposite effect on the area immediately surrounding StregaSchloss, blanketing everything around in blissful, beep-free silence. Not possessing a cell phone herself, Pandora had little sympathy for Titus's frustration when he discovered that his newest toy still didn't work unless he made the effort to carry it beyond the dead zone of StregaSchloss.
Watching from behind a nearby tree, Pandora saw Zander halt in the center of Star Wood. He switched off his flashlight, presumably because sufficient moonlight was pouring into the clearing to allow him to read the map he held folded in one hand. He turned around to face Lochnagargoyle and pulled a small object out of his pocket. Pandora was disappointed to see that this was nothing more exciting than a cell phone; she realized that after their conversation she'd been unconsciously expecting him to produce something far more bizarre—a ceremonial dagger, an astrolabe, or an aura detector at the very least…. Slightly appalled at herself, she crept closer, all the better to eavesdrop. This is not good, Pandora, she thought. Skulking around in the darkness is very bad indeed. If he finds you spying on him, he'll never speak to you ever—