“Did you actually want something or did you call just to cast aspersions on the veracity of my reports?” I prompted him testily. Those bottles of cheap wine weren’t getting any closer.
“Aspersions on the whatisiticy of your reports?” he mocked, his hologram turning to survey the scene around us. “It is a very small warehouse as well.”
“I’m hanging up now,” I said and tapped the phone, but the image remained just as clear, if slightly see-through, as before.
“That’s an Agency issue phone and it only breaks the connection with me if I choose to hang up,” Grayson explained with a loathsome self-satisfied smirk on his face. The temptation to smack the centre of that smugly handsome (so all the women working at the Agency headquarters were quick to point out with very little encouragement) face was almost overwhelming, but since it was composed only of photons caught in a magical holding field it would have been wasted effort and I would have been left looking foolish.
“Fine,” I said and flicked the phone into the nearest dustbin. “I’m walking away then.”
“I need you at the office tomorrow,” he said to my back, stopping me before I could get more than a couple of steps. ‘Need’ was not a word he used often.
“I’ve got rest days,” I pointed out, not turning around, but not going any further away either. “Cephalapod intrusion,” I reminded him. “That’s a full five days off, minimum.”
“I know, and it was a good job,” he complimented me and there was no irony in his tone as he said it, though it probably hurt him to admit it. He didn’t like me any more than I liked him. “Normally, you’d get your rest days, but I need you in my office for a briefing at 0900 and you will be here. Understand?”
Now I turned and looked at him. The phone’s image wasn’t perfect, stood as it was in the small drift of KFC buckets and projected through the side of the dustbin, but the expression on his face was easily readable. It wasn’t challenging, but it wasn’t offering any ways out either.
“OK, I’ll be there,” I relented, reluctantly and petulantly.
“Good,” he nodded, adding before he broke the connection, “That’s an Agency phone and you signed for it so make sure that you bring it back with you.”
The image shivered and then was gone, a few released photons drifting aimlessly before fading into the ambient light levels. I looked at the bin into which I had tossed the phone. It was overflowing with sauce-soiled fast food wrappers and half-drunk beer cans. I certainly wasn’t going to stick my hand into that mess, but fortunately I was prepared for such an occasion. I whistled and a custom upgrade summoning spell brought the phone leaping to my hand. We weren’t supposed to personalise Agency property. I had received that email and Hs been forced to open it by an intelligent IT system doesn’t allow for the deletion of unopened email messages, but that didn’t mean I had to read the contents or take any notice of them. I’d also paid for unbreakable and self-cleaning upgrades, so the dollops of mayonnaise and decaying remnants of rotting lettuce leaves slipped off the skin of the device during its brief moment of flight. It was clean and unmarked by the time that it landed in my hand. Pocketing it, I headed for home.
Marylebone Train Station, London
Marylebone station was relatively quiet when I arrived since most of the day’s commuters were safely at home watching England mess up in the latest global football competition. The team had very little chance of success since a scandal had broken just prior to the tournament, the Sports World Anti-Spelling Agency detecting several of the squad using charmed football boots. They were sent home in disgrace and a bunch of second stringers had been despatched to take their place on the pitch. It was the latest in a series of upsetting incidents that had seen the popularity of the game dip below that enjoyed by Harpy racing for the first time in the history of either sport. I happened to know that one of my colleagues at the Agency had been put on the case at the request of the Football Association, whose top officials believed that they were being cursed by some of the opposition. The smart money was on the Germans, but since they weren’t winning any matches either nobody could be sure.
The departure board in the station showed that the next train to Oxford wasn’t due to leave for a quarter of an hour, so I wandered over to the Costa Del Sol Coffee stand to get a cinnamon latte. Nobody could make a cup of coffee like those Spaniards and the company’s preparation secrets were reputedly stored in a Swiss bank vault guarded by three-headed Cerberii. This was nonsense, of course, because everyone in the business knows that it is nigh on impossible to domesticate a Cerberus. CDSC, however, cultivated the rumour since it kept any casual corporate spies away.
As I handed over my half crown, there was a polite tug at my sleeve elbow. Controlling the immediate urge to spin around and snap the attacker’s neck in single sleek killing move, I turned around slowly to look down into the wizened face of an old woman. There might have been more crevasses in her skin than in the whole of the Antarctic continent, but her eyes glittered with intelligent amusement.
Fortune Teller, I thought distastefully.
Prognosticating future events is a completely respectable occupation and the most successful practitioners are able to demand, and receive, huge retainers from the rich and powerful members of society’s upper strata in exchange for providing information about which film role to accept, which club not to go to and which Formula One driver to carry out the paternity test on. There is a whole concentration of plush offices over on Hardly Street where the glitterati can get discreet readings in the privacy of anonymous-appearing offices in complete confidence. Powerful blocking spells prevent tabloid photographers getting within a mile of the place.
None of which prevents partially-talented seers from hawking their dubious wares around public areas like stations and stadiums, libraries and public conveniences for pennies, annoying the likes of me.
“Can I give you a reading dear?” the old woman asked in a slightly quavery voice that I felt pretty sure she was putting on in the hope of increasing the likelihood of a commission. No old person could really be as cute and loveable as this one appeared to be, grandmother or not. She had the whole soft, chubby, rosy-cheeked, grey-hair-tied-in-a-bun thing going on. It had to be some kind of low level glamour she was projecting. I concentrated hard to break through it, but she remained just as she appeared.
“No thanks,” I told her cheerfully, masking my displeasure. There was no point in being rude to the poor dear as well as refusing her. “I don’t need one and most of the things in my future are likely to be things it’s best not to know about in advance.”
“Oh that’s just the thing dear,” she replied with a wink, “Of all the people in this station I took one look at you and thought ‘Now there’s a man in need of a reading’ I thought.”
That’s the thing about seers, you see; they always think that they know better than you and, most annoyingly, they usually do. It breeds a certain arrogance in them that makes you want choke them on their own tea leaves or batter them to death with their own crystal ball, but since I had some time to waste before the train left and since she was unlikely to go away without creating an unnecessary scene, I dug into my pocket and pulled out a guinea. I was about to stick that back in and find something a bit smaller, but I suppose that the last traces of the afternoon’s adrenaline rush were still warming my bloodstream because I handed over the coin to her instead.
“Well thank you my dear,” she almost curtseyed with gratitude and then spoiled the illusion by biting on the money to ensure that it was real before dropping it into a pocket somewhere in her black mourning dress. “Now what would you like? Palm? Head bumps? Coffee Dregs? Aura?”
I’d only just started the latte so I wasn’t about to hand that over to her any more than I was going to have her run her bony fingers all through my hair feeling for the contours of my skull. The least intrusive choice was the obvious one. “Aura,” I said.
“Fair enough,” she said and flipped h
er eyes back over in her head until only the whites were showing. I’d seen that trick before and had gotten over the creepy, unnerving feeling that it usually engenders in the punters, but it was probably still effective with the more general public. When the eyes flipped right way round again, they shone with an unearthly blue reflection under the station lights. The old crone wandered around me, scanning my invisible aura with her augmented vision until finally she had seen all that she wanted to see and ran through the whole eye flipping process again, restoring her normal vision.
“Let me guess,” I suggested, aware that the appointed hour of the train departure was getting closer and I still had to go through the usual argument with the guard at the platform gate as to whether or not my Agency ID allowed me free access to Public Transport. “She’ll be tall, dark and beautiful.”
The old woman looked at me with an annoying, knowing smile playing around her lips and then she nodded. “Oh yes dear, she will be beautiful,” she confirmed, “but she will be blonde, not dark, and she is not to be trusted. Whatever you do, don’t trust her.”
The smile had disappeared from her face and she was wearing an expression of earnest honesty perhaps even fear, though not for herself. Street seers often faced the painful reality that their prognostications weren’t going to be taken seriously. Unless they were handed out in those very exclusive offices on Hardly Street, visions of the future were given short shrift by most people. They were considered to be a pleasant diversion, no more. Some local colour. To know the future and not be able to change a thing, now that was a cruel gift to be given. It was known in the trade as the Cassandra Curse and it sent some people mad.
“All right,” I said, slightly shaken despite myself. This wasn’t going quite the way that I had expected it to. “And when exactly am I going to meet this mystery blonde?”
“Oh soon,” the old woman replied dreamily, “very soon. Tomorrow in fact.”
“Tomorrow?” That was surprisingly exact. Precision like that usually required a top level consultation by appointment only and bring your cheque book.
Before I could ask any more questions a burly member of station security walked over to stand at the old woman’s elbow. “Is this woman bothering you sir?” he asked in a low and growly voice. I suspected from the deep, sonorous timbre that there might be a hint of the wolf in him. He certainly had the build for it, being tall and well-muscled. His six o’clock shadow was more like half past nine. Werewolves make for very good security officers, although they do all need to take the same nights off.
“What?” his sudden question caught me off guard when it really shouldn’t have. I wondered briefly if there was something other than cinnamon in the coffee, but it was probably the aftermath of the day’s squid god hunting activities. “No, no, not really.”
The old woman, though, had already taken to her heels and fled. She possessed quite a turn of speed for someone of her apparent age and build. Obviously there had been previous dealings between her and station security and she considered the appropriate action to their presence to be run like the clappers.
“The next departure from platform alpha will be the 20.30, calling at Oxford, Birmingham Old Street, Manchester, Preston Parkway, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Carlisle and arriving in Glasgow at 21.45,” the platform speaker system announced in eight languages at once. “Passengers for this service should make their way to platform alpha immediately as the train is preparing to depart.”
“That’s me,” I said, realising it belatedly. The old woman had already reached the station exit and was lost to the gathering gloom outside. I probably could still have caught her if I had really wanted to, but she was just some street peddler of incomplete visions and that was the most optimistic assessment. At worst she was some complete faker. The eye thing, though, that had been real and her concern for me had seemed real as well.
“Don’t you worry about anything that Old Meg told you sir,” the security guard reassured me with a toothy smile. “She’s been handing out previews for years now and I don’t think any one of ‘em ‘as ever come true yet.”
“Really?” I was annoyed at myself for letting the woman’s act get to me like that. I was supposed to be a bloody professional after all and I was acting like some country bumpkin come to the big city for the first time, straw in my hat and all.
“Not to my knowledge and I’ve been ‘ere fifteen years as of April, sir,” he confirmed. “Now you’d be better hurrying sir or you’ll miss that train.”
For once, the flash of my Agency badge was all that was needed to gain access to the platform and I was waved through at the thinning tail end of the queue, not that it was much of a queue at this time of a week night anyway, especially factoring in the effect of the football game. I could have walked all the way up to first class, but since my exit from the Oxford Central station was at the rear end of the platform I just entered the first carriage that I came to and strapped myself into the seat that had the least amount of padding kicked out of it. It was only a ten minute ride to Oxford, but the risk of sudden deceleration was enough to convince most of the passengers to make full use of the harnesses provided. At least where they hadn’t been vandalised beyond use anyway.
There were a few strained faces amongst the others in the compartment, I noted without real surprise. It was only a month since activists belonging to the Campaign For Real Travel had spiked a consignment of locomotive fuel and the South Coast Express had streaked three times past the speed of sound before failing to take a bend in the tracks and becoming a permanent fixture a hundred feet below the Kent countryside. Following the incident there was a certain amount of understandable anxiety amongst those who still had no choice but to take the train despite the assurances from the British Railways Consortium that all fuel was now checked prior to going into the tank and again just before the departure of the train from the station.
Whatever the risk, the train still beat the teleportation system. If something went wrong with that three people could go in and come out as one squirming mass, though that had reportedly only happened the one time. The last time that I had needed to teleport for a job there had been a routing error in the conduit and I had ended up at Abu Simbel Central rather than the South Prestatyn station. I had spent three very hot days in a hotel with no running water and only scorpion fighting for entertainment before the logjam was cleared and I was finally able to get to my destination. On arriving, I was told that someone else had been sent in to clear up the vampire infestation and I had missed all the fun. I had no intention of ever going back to Egypt again as a result.
“The next stop will be Oxford,” the train announced politely in a pleasant, accentless voice that can only be achieved by computer. “Oxford is the next stop. Please hold on tightly.”
The train raced out of the station, pressing me back into my seat with the force of acceleration. Within seconds the speed stabilised and I checked the messages on my phone. Even had it been daylight there would have been no point in looking out the window since the countryside beyond was little more than a blur as it raced past. Minutes later, I was pressed forward into the harness as the train slowed down and came to a halt in Oxford. I disembarked with a few others and stepped out into my home, the city of dreaming spires.
Agency Headquarters, Central Oxford
Oxford University had once been an important seat of learning. Now, thanks to the presence of the Headquarters of the Agency in its very heart, it was a whole row of seats, perhaps even a bench. The connection between the University and the Agency was enshrined in the building that dominated the city’s skyline and was visible for miles around on all the approaches. In deference to the city’s nickname, Agency Central (as everyone insisted on calling it despite its official designation as the Victor Von Frankenstein Tower) had been built in the shape of a spire, the sloping design culminating in a penthouse office that lay just below the cloud layer on a particularly overcast day. Huge windows looked out from that to
p office and the inverted, rolling layer of grey just metres overhead proved to be useful in cowing new visitors come to meet with the Director. Grayson had installed a weather manipulator into the antenna array that projected from the top of the building so that he could ensure that it was a particularly overcast day whenever he was meeting with someone that he wanted to significantly cow.
Down at street level, though, the base of the building was huge and the entrance was an ornate portico above which was carved the motto of the Agency in a long dead Sumerian dialect. It had been selected because the script looked especially impressive carved into the lintel stone above the entrance but the translated message of ‘We kick demon arse’ was a curt reminder of the work that went on behind those doors. The fact that it was a curt reminder only to dead Sumerians didn’t necessarily mean that it was being wasted on the wrong audience.
Visitors and tradespeople entered through the main doors at the front of the building. They had been framed with stones transported all the way from Stonehenge. This had been achieved despite great complaint from the environmentalist lobby which didn’t seem to realise that the Agency was making more than a decorative statement. To be fair, nobody at the Agency told the environmentalists exactly why those stones had been chosen. Staff, on the other hand, used an entrance at the rear of the building, just to the side of the vast rollup loading bay doors. Articulated lorries, smaller vans and motorcycle couriers could be seen off-loading all manner of shipping crates, packages, parcels and live animal cages at any time of the night or day. Such activities were only possible because the noise-dampening spells that the Agency used on its delivery vehicles meant that they didn’t fall foul of the city’s stringent night time noise regulations. There were a couple of larger vehicles in the loading bay as I rounded the sloping corner of the building the morning after the cephalopod intrusion and headed for the staff door. One of them was disgorging a huge crate, probably a hundred feet long or more, onto the floor of the loading bay. Office scuttlebutt had suggested that an obelisk from the newly-discovered temple out in the Egyptian desert was due in for forensic examination. Egypt was fast becoming the final frontier for occult research now that Atlantis had yielded up its last dripping secrets, which made me all the more nervous about the prospect of being sent back there.
The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D. - the Curious Case of the Kidnapped Chemist Page 2