by Tom Holt
(He thought about the ten-pound note, debited from his bank account.)
“And maybe,” she went on, “the only way you can get magic to pay is by using it to do petty, mean things, like paying five people one wage between them. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Because otherwise…” She frowned, concentrating like mad. “Magic exists, right? We’re pretty sure about that. But magicians don’t rule the world; only a few people know about it; there’s no sign that it’s being used all over the place. If it could be used to make money, don’t you think that’s what all the industrialists and entrepreneurs and miserable, craggy-faced men from Dragons’ Den would be doing, right, left and centre? And they wouldn’t bother being discreet about it, because the government’d be right behind them, because magic’d mean massive tax revenues and probably better weapons, not to mention a listening elf in every living room. I think it’s only a deadly secret because nobody’s found out how to get rich with it.”
“Except your boss,” Don said quietly.
She shook her head. “But he builds houses,” she replied. “That’s not magic. I mean, he hasn’t got goblins and zombies laying bricks and running up and down ladders, just a lot of eastern Europeans, like everybody else. He builds houses and then he sells them to people. He’s made a lot of money, but only because he builds reasonable houses and sells them for a fair price. That’s not magic, it’s just business.”
Don nodded. “So your theory doesn’t stand up then,” he said. “It fails the why bother test. Because it’s a hell of a lot of trouble to go to, just to save—”
“Two hundred thousand pounds a year,” she pointed out. “That’s a lot of money.”
“True.” He scowled at his hands, folded in his lap. “But it’s not that much. How much does your company charge for a smallish bungalow, say?”
“About two hundred thousand.”
“And there you have it,” Don said. “In the context of all the dosh he must be scooping in, it’s not actually all that much. And you’re saying that for this relatively small sum, he’s playing silly buggers with the laws of reality as we understand them, quite possibly putting the stability of the space/time continuum at serious risk, not to mention all the work and effort he must’ve put into figuring out how to do it. I don’t know,” he confessed wearily. “If I was a wealthy, successful property developer, I don’t think I’d bother trashing Newton and Einstein for less than seven figures. I’d just squeeze a couple more little boxes into my next development and save myself the aggravation.”
For some reason she found that infuriating. “Fine,” she snapped. “So what are you saying? I’m making it all up, or what?”
“No, of course not.” He scratched his head in a despairing sort of a way. “But like you said yourself, it was just a theory. That’s the trouble,” he said angrily. “Magic, for crying out loud. There’s no rules. Or if there are, we don’t know them. It’s like those stories where you’re playing chess with Death with your life at stake. Only,” he added bitterly, “it’s not chess; it’s Mornington bloody Crescent. It’s not fair. There ought to be someone we could ask, or a number we could ring.” Suddenly he leaned forward, a wild look on his face. “Maybe there is,” he said. “Maybe it’s as simple as that. Phone.”
“What?”
“Your phone.” He grabbed it out of her hand when she offered it. “You can access the Net on this thing, right?”
“Yes. You just—”
“I know.” He was stabbing buttons. “Well, it’s worth a try,” he said. “It’s just a matter of finding the right keywords to google.” He paused, caught in the headlights of indecision. “How about…?”
“Commercial thaumaturgical consultants,” Polly said.
He looked at her, impressed. “All right,” he said. “We’ll try that.”
Polly’s phone was three months old, practically antique. It took a frustratingly long time, but then…
“My God,” she said in a tiny voice. “There’s dozens.”
Don was staring at the miniature screen. “You know what,” he said. “I think we’ve just stumbled across a whole bloody industry. It’s like finding one of those lost cities in the jungle.”
Polly took the phone from him. “By the addresses,” she said, “I reckon over half of these are in America.” She frowned. “Germany, Australia, Japan, India. Not many round here, by the looks of it. Hang on, I’ll refine the search.” She tapped in “London.” “That’s more like it,” she said. “That just leaves five.”
“Five,” Don repeated in a haunted voice. “Which means there’s enough work in the magic business to keep at least five people full-time employed. That’s—”
“How about this one?” Polly said. “‘S. Gogerty, freelance commercial thaumaturgical consultant,’ followed by a double helping of alphabet soup – FBASM, FRIW, all that stuff. Looks pretty impressive, don’t you think?”
Don peered over her shoulder then shrugged. “Let’s have a look,” he said in a bewildered voice.
A rather plain website, austere even. Name, an expanded version of the list of meaningless qualifications, contact details, areas of expertise (temporal phase shift anomaly resolution, dimensional variance management, matter/energy disparity transposition – what the hell was all that about?), a brief CV, a tariff of charges.
“Better take a look at that,” Don said.
A table of figures came up on the screen. They both stared at it for a moment. Then Don gave a low whistle.
“And I thought lawyers were expensive,” Polly said.
“That’s an awful lot of noughts chasing one lonely integer,” Don agreed. “Hardly seems fair.”
Polly looked at him. “We can’t afford him,” she said.
Don thought for a moment. “We’ll have to,” he said. “I mean, just look at all this stuff. I haven’t got the faintest idea what any of it means, but you can tell just by glancing at it. It’s complicated. Difficult. Technical. ‘High-energy metamorphic resonance modulation,’ for crying out loud. I have an idea that’s the sort of thing you’re not recommended to try at home with a Ouija board and a set of box spanners. Even if we knew where to start, we could do serious damage blundering about trying to DIY it. Worse,” he added quietly, “than I’ve done already. And that’s saying something.”
Polly conceded the point with a slight nod. “I suppose people who do this stuff all the time have insurance to cover the costs,” she said. “Wish we did.”
“To hell with it,” Don said. “I’m going to call him.”
Polly wavered, then said, “All right. But no small talk, right? Nice-weather-we’ve-been-having-lately looks like it’d cost me a month’s salary.”
Don jotted down the phone number on the back of his cuff, then logged off the Net and pecked it in.
Ring ring, then “You have reached Stanley Gogerty. I’m afraid I can’t take your call right now –”
“Sod it,” Don snarled.
“– but if you’d care to leave your name, species and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as—”
“Species,” Polly repeated. “I do so hope that’s supposed to be a joke.”
Don recorded a brief message, then rang off. “Well,” he said, “you never know. He might be the answer to our prayers, he might not. Anyway, we tried. Beyond that, I really don’t know what we can do next.”
“Go home,” Polly replied.
“That’s all right for you,” Don said sourly. “I can’t. That Briggs woman’s probably got my flat surrounded by police marksmen by now. I’ll have to stay at your place for the time being.”
“Oh.” Brief moment in which Polly failed to refute the suggestion that this wasn’t the best news she’d ever heard in her life. “Of course, yes, you’re welcome. Only…”
“Only what?”
“No, that’s fine,” Polly said firmly. “You’re my brother and we’re both in this together. Just…”
“Just?”
She pulled ever such a
sad little face. “Please can you try and remember to put the toilet seat down after you’ve—”
“Yes, all right.”
“And try not to overfill the bath, because the water slops out over the side. And if you have to use the cooker while I’m not there—”
“It’s all right,” Don said. “I can go and sleep in a cardboard box in a shop doorway somewhere.”
“There’s no need to be like that about it. All I’m asking is—”
“I think this is our stop,” Don said firmly. “Come on.”
* * *
Five minutes after Mr Gogerty had left him, Uncle Theo got up from his comfy armchair, padded across the room, opened a cupboard, dug about like a dog in a rat hole and came out with a small tin, the sort that small drills, screws and Rawlplugs tend to nest in. He opened it and took out a pear-shaped red jewel, which he laid flat on the palm of his hand. He sighed.
“So what are we doing,” Kevin asked, “being chickens?”
The hen, whose name apparently was Mary Byron, looked at him. “Let me guess,” she said. “You’re some sort of musician.”
“How did you—”
“Well?”
“Yes,” Kevin said. “I play the guitar. Well, it’s a hobby. There was a time when I thought I could make a—”
“And you’ve got a sister,” Ms Byron went on, “who’s a lawyer.”
If he hadn’t been gripped by an unconquerable urge to look round for foxes, Kevin would have stared at her. “That’s right,” he said. “How in God’s name…?”
Ms Byron clucked sternly. “The cockerel you met earlier,” she said, “his real name’s Charles Mynott-Harrison and he used to be the conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic. His sister was once a partner in Broadhead and Symes, specialising in mergers and acquisitions. That’s her,” she added, jabbing her beak in the direction of a sad-looking hen with no tail feathers and a drooping comb, “over there. Next to her, the Plymouth Rock with the twisted beak, that’s Ginny Speke, commercial leaseholds with Steinway Ross. Her brother was the drummer with Painted Roses, if you can remember them. Very big in the late eighties.”
Kevin’s throat was dry. “What happened?”
She pecked up a speck of grit. “This is a farmyard, Mr Briggs,” she said, “which means the rules are different from what you’ve been used to. If you have more than one cockerel in a farmyard, they fight.” She paused to nibble behind her wing. “Charles won.”
“Oh.”
“In fact,” she went on, “I’m rather surprised he let you go. Funny, really. By all accounts he was a very promising young conductor – built up quite a reputation with the Mahler symphonies. These days…” She shrugged. “I’d watch out for him if I were you,” she said. “Of course, in a day or two you’ll probably be challenging him yourself. If,” she added meaningfully, “you last that long.”
“Oh my God.”
“There’s a pattern to it, you see,” Ms Byron went on. “All the hens here used to be solicitors. And all the cocks were their brothers and something to do with music. About thirty-six hours after they get here, their memories of being human are completely wiped.”
“Except yours.”
A very odd look came into Ms Byron’s perfectly round eyes. “No,” she said. “That’s the funny thing. My memory went earlier than most, as a matter of fact. I’m not sure how long I’ve been here, but when I arrived it was winter, so it’s been a while, and all that time I was convinced I was a chicken, always had been. It’d never have occurred to me that I was one of Them once. Then, quite suddenly, not long before you showed up –” she stood on one leg, using her free foot to scrabble at her tummy “– it all came back to me, wham, like it’d never been away. Very odd indeed. Doesn’t seem like any of the others are remembering anything, though. I’ve asked them, and all they say is ‘cluck.’ Which is also odd,” she added, “because before I could understand them perfectly. In chicken language, I mean. Excuse me,” she added. “I need to go and lay an egg. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t go away.”
Kevin didn’t want to be left alone, but he really didn’t want to be present at the birth, so he edged away into the corner of the run and pretended to be very interested in a small pile of rat droppings (which wasn’t very hard, actually, and he was surprised he’d never taken an intelligent interest in rat droppings before, because they were really quite fascinating. No, he ordered himself, stop that, right now) until he became aware of a shadow falling across him.
“You looking at me?” said a horribly familiar voice.
Knowing it was really the former conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic should have taken all the terror and mortal dread out of it, but it didn’t. Instead, he remembered Ms Byron saying if you have more than one cockerel in a farmyard, they fight. He told himself, To hell with it. I’m a goddamn chartered actuary, I can take a sissy conductor with one wing tied behind my back. The shadow moved a little, blotting out the light. Oh no, I couldn’t, he thought.
“I asked you a question,” said the voice. “You looking at me or what?”
Exactly how long, he wondered, does it take to lay an egg? Perhaps Ms Byron would come back and save him. Perhaps not. She hadn’t stuck her neck out to save the drummer of the Painted Roses, so presumably either she didn’t care or there was nothing she could do.
“What you looking at?” said the cockerel, and his voice was a cracked record, a recorded message. “You looking at me?”
Kevin turned round slowly. The erstwhile Mahler-botherer was very big and his spurs were very long and sharp. “Now I am,” Kevin said, and if his voice was a bit high and squeaky, it could have been higher and squeakier. “Big deal. I’m so impressed.”
“What did you just say?”
Oh well, Kevin thought. It really couldn’t matter less, but since he had the choice, he’d prefer the last thing he heard to be his own voice, saying something cutting and sardonic. “I said,” he replied, barely high and only very slightly squeaky, “that you take the second movement of Mahler’s Third way too fast. It’s a piece of classical music, not a drag race. Also, you clearly can’t tell a bassoon from a rocket-propelled grenade, because you make the third movement sound like the Paris rush hour. As for the violin solo in the first—”
The cockerel was taut with fury. “Take that back,” he said.
“I will not,” Kevin said. “And you may notice I’m speaking very loudly and very slowly, because you’re clearly as deaf as a post, otherwise you couldn’t have failed to notice what a bog you made of the opening of ‘Das Lied Von Der Erde.’ The plain fact is, you couldn’t conduct a bus.”
The cockerel quivered. “You can’t say that to me,” he said. “That’s totally unfair. The New York Times compared me to Karajan.”
Kevin smiled. “They must’ve meant Hank Karajan,” he said. “Minor country and western star, had a voice like a pig in a blender. Or maybe they were thinking of Howling Bill Klemperer. Mind you, if I were Hank or Howling Bill I’d sue over that. At least they were professionals.”
Big chickens don’t cry. Neither do small ones. No tear ducts. But the cockerel’s eyes were red and puffy, and was that a tiny teardrop soaking into its cheek feathers? Hang on, Kevin thought.
“You,” he snapped. “Tell me your name.”
“You know perfectly well,” the cockerel replied, and his words constituted a genuine, authentic snivel.
“Tell me anyway. Come on,” Kevin barked. “What’s your bloody name?”
“Charles Mynott-Harrison,” the cockerel snuffled. “And I think you’re perfectly horrible, and I can’t begin to imagine why you’re picking on me like this, I haven’t done anything to—”
He stopped in mid-whine. A light had come on behind those empty button eyes. He started to look round for foxes, then stopped.
“Go on,” said Kevin gently.
“I’m Charles Mynott-Harrison,” the cockerel said, his voice heavy with wonder. “Oh my God, what am I doing
here? What’s happened to me? What are all these horrid feathers?”
Kevin tried to smile. The beak wouldn’t let him, of course, but at least he could remember how a smile worked. “That,” he said, “is a very good question. Allow me to introduce myself, by the way. I’m Kevin Briggs.” He held out his hand, realised it was a wing, and tucked it away again. “You have no idea,” he said, “how pleased I am to meet you. And I take it back about the slow movement.”
“Really?”
“Trust me,” Kevin said. He could see Ms Byron approaching, just as a frantic clucking from the direction of the hen house turned into a wail of horror and disgust, from which Kevin deduced that a lady solicitor had just laid an egg.
CHAPTER TEN
Mr Gogerty glanced at his watch.
There are any number of mail order catalogues where you can buy fancy watches: titanium-cased, extra-shockproof, special-forces-approved, with all manner of wonderful functions that only James Bond could ever find a use for. Mr Gogerty’s watch didn’t come from one of them. It was built by Feinwerkhaus of Suhl, back in the days when people really knew how to make stuff. It was small, plain to the point of austerity, with a blue steel case, white face, thin spring-steel blue hands – and three dials. That was the whole point. Mr Gogerty’s watch (one of only nine ever made by the greatest watchmaker the world has ever seen) told the time in the present, the past and the future.
The middle dial told him it was a quarter past five, and he breathed a sigh of relief. The satnav built into his phone (Beckmesser & Schmidt of Augsburg, a hundred years before Marconi was born, but that’s another story) told him he was where he needed to be: 47 New Road, Sidmouth, Devon, standing in front of SpeediKleen Dry Cleaners, est. 1975. The last bit made him smile, a special trade-only grin that about a dozen people in the whole world would have understood properly.