The Comeback of the King

by Ben Jeapes

  He launched into his spiel anyway.

  “Cost,” Ted said.

  The two were in the back of the Agora bookshop (‘Rare and Antiquarian Books Our Speciality’) in New Canal – a room scattered with books and catalogues and paperwork. Ted stood with his hand resting on his laptop, which was open on the desk. He felt like an unconvincing computer salesman beneath the gaze of a very sceptical customer.

  “At the moment, you see, you pay for every copy of the operating system that you own. You’ve got two computers so you pay twice. But, you see, if you upgraded like I’m suggesting then you could install the new system as many times as you want … for free–”

  He trailed off and flashed his most persuasive grin, even though it hurt his bruised jaw.

  Malcolm didn’t blink.

  “And?”

  “And–” Free was meant to be the killer point. Malcolm wasn’t supposed to respond with just ‘and?’ “You can upgrade to the latest version at any time, also for free.”

  “And?”

  “And–” All Ted’s carefully honed phrases were evaporating from his mind. He clutched mentally at bullet points. “Because it’s open source, that means any users anywhere can identify and correct problems with the programs, and they can submit their own changes which get incorporated, and that means bugs are dealt with really quickly and buggy programs won’t make the computer crash.”

  “They don’t at the moment, because I don’t have any buggy programs.”

  “Yes, but if you did–” Ted resisted the temptation to wave his hands as a substitute for explanation. “It doesn’t use the registry, see, configuration is just in plain text files so you can just add to it and keep adding and … the system tools are really specialised, so there’s no overlap, they don’t interfere with each other’s operation, you can just stick a new program in anywhere and it’ll run just as easily as any other … and … and … source code is included, so if you want anything added on, anything at all, I could do that for you–”

  Each of those, Ted had convinced himself, was an absolute clincher – or, it would be, if Malcolm knew half as much about computers as he did. He felt himself floundering in Malcolm’s continued silence and a straw drifted into view. “Technical support!”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes! How many times have you had to go through the automated switchboard just to get a simple answer? But because this is open source–” He stressed the magic words again, hoping to convey to Malcolm telepathically just how cool that was. “… It’s got people working on it all the time, and there’s forums online where you can ask any question you like and get an answer–”

  “Forums,” said Malcolm, as if Ted had suggested naked mud wrestling, and Ted remembered he was talking to a man whose CD collection was still outnumbered by vinyl LPs.

  “Yes, but I’d use them, you wouldn’t have to, obviously,” he said quickly. “If you want technical support, you just raise your voice slightly and call, ‘Ted!’”

  “If it’s a Saturday, or a weekday during holidays,” Malcolm pointed out.

  “Well, yes … but any other day you can text me and I’ll come over immediately lessons are over. Or in a study period. And I’ll still be quicker than the official support line. And I don’t charge.”

  Malcolm shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “And in slightly less than two years, you’ll be at university and the computers will still be under warranty, which they wouldn’t be if you uninstalled the operating system they came with.”

  “Look.” Ted had one last try and leaned over the laptop, hand on the mouse. “Can I just show – see, it all runs off this kernel … every program is completely specialised, so if there’s a problem you can trace it straight there and fix it–”

  Malcolm smiled, gently. “Now you’re making the classic sales mistake of telling me about features rather than benefits. I’m sorry, no. The Agora’s computer network is not going to be your ICT project and we’re not upgrading to open source software.” He patted Ted on the shoulder. “I believe you. I believe every word you say. But we’re sticking with the old system.”

  Ted scowled and stared at the floor.

  “This way is just better,” he mumbled.

  “I’m sure it is. By the way, have you seen the card from Zoe?”

  Ted automatically took the postcard that Malcolm passed him, even though it meant that Malcolm had officially closed the subject of upgrading the computers, and it was staying closed. On the picture side, Brighton pier stuck out into the sea, a baroque palace on stilts above the water. On the writing side:

  Hi guys! Having a great time totally not missing you-know-who. Sometimes can’t believe she’s out of my life for good but still no sign of her so fingers crossed eh. Got a tarot reading on the pier this morning. BADLY freaked the lady out. Hugs to all. Zoe xxx.

  “Thanks.” Ted handed the card back. It just made him gloomier. Zoe, Malcolm’s original book shop manager, would have taken his side – and anyway, she was fun to have around. They had been through enough together to have a whole lot more in common than a sixteen-year-old boy and a twenty-something woman normally would. She set the bar very high indeed for any girl of his own age that he might meet and who might actually be his girlfriend in real life rather than his dreams. But she had her own path in life, and that summer’s events had freed her from certain obligations, which meant she no longer had to stay around Salisbury. She called it her sabbatical break but neither of them knew if she would return.

  Malcolm patted him on the shoulder again and this time managed to turn the gesture into a gentle shove towards the front of the shop.

  “Thank you for caring, Ted. I do appreciate it. But for now, just look after our customers?”

  *

  With a wide smile that stretched from ear to ear, the King wandered through Salisbury’s crowded market place.

  “Marvellous!” he murmured from time to time. Or, “Astonishing!” Sometimes: “Really?”

  The royal subject who had brought him down from Old Sarum had quite reasonably asked where he wanted to go. The King had replied, “The centre.” This was where the man had dropped him off.

  It was a wide open space the size of two or three fields put together, paved with smooth stone, and it was occupied by a small town of wood and metal and fabric shelters covering tables where people bought and sold more types of food than he could name. Fish, chicken, ducks, cuts of meat from animals that he couldn’t recognise just by looking. Eggs, packed into little boxes in clusters of six. Several fields’ worth of vegetables and fruit, all stacked up for people to prod and poke before they selected a minute fraction of what was on offer.

  Other stalls sold what were obviously clothes, others sold items he could not even guess at. The market bustled and thrived with life, even on a damp day when drizzle hung in the air. Many stall keepers and shoppers gave him a nod of recognition when they realised he was looking at them, though then they looked puzzled, as if wondering how they remembered his face. A couple had asked if he was on TV, whatever that was.

  “Is this market here every day?” he asked of a man selling piles of ripe, firm fruit that somehow managed to have flourished even at this time of year.

  “Just twice a week, sir.”

  Twice a week! Just! What was on sale in this market, on this day, could feed and clothe his old kingdom for a year. How large the world had grown! And how well had his kingdom prospered in his absence!

  The King’s ambling had brought him to the edge of the market. There was a line of trees and then the rows of stalls stopped. There was more empty space beyond them. On the south side of the space was a tall building fronted by stone pillars, but that was not what caught his attention. In front of it was a low, curved wall. The centre of the curve was topped with a sculpture of some powerful beast lying on a pile of what looked like discarded weaponry. Metal plates fixed to the wall inside the curve were carved with row upon row of names. A tribute of bright r
ed flowers had been left below the sculpture and there was a large central plaque which, because the sculptor had been a royal subject, the King was able to read.

  In honour and remembrance of the citizens of Salisbury …

  “What is this place?” he asked a passing royal subject.

  “It’s the war memorial, sir.”

  The King looked back at the rows of names with a sense of shock. A war like this would have depopulated his kingdom overnight. The fact that this new world had so many people to spare was an even starker lesson than the size of the market.

  He looked from right to left and right again. Did no one know what this place was? The presence of the red flowers showed that someone paid it attention, but where were the priests? The supplicants? The acolytes?

  “They have made themselves a grove,” he murmured in disbelief, “and they don’t even know it!”

  It was a grove of stone and metal rather than trees – well, in this modern stone and metal world, why not? But it was hallowed. He could feel its power in his bones. The sacrifice of all those men had been brought here in the hearts of their mothers and wives and children and poured into this sacred structure.

  He laughed and clapped his hands together, drawing strange looks from passers-by who seemed to find it unseemly behaviour in front of a war memorial. He owed them no apologies.

  There were temples in Salisbury too, of course. There was the cathedral, as the driver had called it, and many smaller ones, most of them to the same deity. They had passed a couple on the way into town. If the deity was aware of the King’s presence then so far he had not shown any displeasure, but the King did not intend to push his luck. Was this deity the reason the kingdom had fallen? He didn’t know, but until he was more sure he would steer clear of the temples.

  Here, though, was a place of power that he could use as he wished, and no one but him realised it.

  Now to find the one person who would understand; the one who would make his life complete; the one who would reign by his side in the new world he intended to create.

  As usual, there was no shortage of randomly passing royal subjects to ask questions of.

  “You! Where is the nearest river?”

  *

  “And this is New Canal. They’ve done it up nicely since August.”

  Blake and Amanda were on foot now. Two police officers in fluorescent yellow jackets could stroll quite easily through the shopping crowds, even on the last Saturday before Christmas.

  Amanda had lived in Salisbury as a child, and driven through it a few times since, but never really had a view of it from the ground up. She appreciated the tour from a local – this local, in particular. Each street had an anecdote attached to it, some useful piece of advice drawn from the inexhaustible treasury of his experience, and she knew she was all the richer for every word that reached her ears. Tom Blake might be an Essex man by birth but when he had got his first job in the force, in Salisbury, he had quite simply decided that this would be his home and he would dedicate his career to it. She wondered just how many of his colleagues appreciated what a resource he was. It would be good to keep in touch with him while she fixed her eyes on the next step – Chief Inspector Stewart by the time she was 40.

  Now she found herself looking the wrong way down a one-way street. Where she stood, traffic came down New Canal towards her and turned right into the High Street. At this end New Canal was narrow and pinched but a couple of shops further down it broadened out considerably. Christmas lights were hung across the street, looking like ugly, untidy chicken wire in the daylight. The building on the corner of the wide area was shrouded in scaffolding and plastic sheets.

  Ah, yes. August. The events of that night – as much as was known about them – had made national headlines, so they had certainly reached Swindon.

  “What exactly happened in August?” she said. “I only know what made the news.”

  Blake grinned without humour.

  “Then you know as much as anyone. Somehow, all in the space of a few short minutes, this street was reduced by parties unknown to something resembling Baghdad city centre. Every window shattered, a building collapsed–”

  “What do you mean, parties unknown?” Amanda glanced up and could immediately see two cameras, without even trying. “What about CCTV?”

  “Completely fritzed. Just static for the whole period. But what the papers won’t have told you is that this is also the next thrilling instalment of the Ted Gorse saga.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Oh good grief.”

  He nodded.

  “The night it all happened here was the night the hospice burned down and Ted got his brother back. Shortly before the disturbances, an officer responded to a burglar alarm going off in a shop in New Canal. The shop’s manager was called, they went in, nothing happening, put it down to a glitch in the alarm. This was less than an hour before all hell broke loose. The shop was that one, over there.” He stopped and pointed briefly.

  They were at the point where New Canal widened out. The extra space was taken up with a taxi rank and some car parking slots. The shop behind the cars had wide plate-glass windows which were taken up with a display of books.

  “The Agora,” Amanda read out loud from the sign above the door.

  “See what it says beneath?”

  She had to peer more closely to read the smaller lettering from this distance.

  “Rare and antiquarian books our speciality.”

  “And who did I say worked in an antiquarian bookshop in New Canal?”

  She turned her head slowly to look at him.

  “Really?”

  “Want to hear another mystery?”

  “God, yes.”

  “I said brother Robert was found in the Close. Also found in the Close that night – the body of another teenager, identified from dental records as one Stephen Miller of Henderson Close, East Harnham. From all the evidence he had fallen a considerable height to his death.”

  “From the top of the cathedral, maybe?”

  “Except that the body lay some distance away, suggesting he maybe fell out of a plane or a helicopter, though none were recorded flying over the city that night. The same night, Stephen’s mother, who he lived with vanished – she never was found. But, remember who also lives in Henderson Close? In fact, guess who Stephen’s oldest friend was, ever since they were toddlers?”

  Amanda held his gaze long enough to get confirmation of his sincerity. Then she looked back at the Agora, half expecting an entirely new light to be shining on it.

  “He does have a way of being … well, as you say. On the periphery. All circumstantial, of course–”

  Blake ground his teeth together.

  “It’s all circumstantial! Every single bit of it! I don’t know if he was actively involved in any of this, there’s certainly nothing I can accuse him of, there’s nothing I want to accuse him of … I just know that where Master Gorse is, things happen. And that makes me worried.”

  “Me too.” She gazed absently at the shop again, then took his arm and casually turned to face away from the shop so that the Agora was reflected in the window in front of them. Its door opened to let out an IC1 teenage male: about five foot seven or eight, Amanda estimated, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, light brown hair. The reflection slouched its way with its hands in its pockets through the female lingerie in front of them and disappeared off the edge of the window. They both turned to watch the back of Ted’s head bobbing away through the crowds.

  “A very wise woman told me,” Blake mused, “that as long as you’re not doing anything illegal, as long as a member of the public is not being harassed–”

  “She sounds my type of girl,” Amanda agreed. They followed, casually.

  Ted didn’t go far – just to the end of the street, where he ducked into a fast-food restaurant.

  Amanda checked her watch.

  “Lunch break, of course. Fancy a bite, Tom?”

  “I co
uld certainly do with using their toilet–”

  *

  The King stood by the river and gazed into its depths – all three foot’s worth of them. Water flowed over a gravel bed and through the weed-choked wire ribs of a strange wheeled contraption that lay on its side next to the bank.

  He glanced up and down the stream. In his mind’s eye it was the artery of his kingdom. Its waters had swarmed with fish. Men had poled boats laden with goods and passengers between here and the coast, past rich fields and through thick forests with populations of deer and boar. Good days in a good land. Now the river was controlled, hemmed in by brick banks, reduced to this shallow trickle. On either side were buildings of stone, though no kind of stone that he recognised – grey, smooth slabs and small red bricks. And these buildings, so grand that they should have been the dwelling places of gods, were just shops, though the things they were selling defied comprehension.

  The passers-by, the people of Salisbury – they barely gave the river a glance. The most attention the river was getting just now was from a small child who was throwing bread for, or possibly at, a handful of ducks. No one knew who slept here, in the river’s bed. Very few even glanced at their King, standing by its bank. They meant no disrespect – it was just that people in this land of a million strangers were accustomed not to notice anyone.

  The King was getting used to the pattern from the few who did acknowledge him: they would nod a casual greeting, then look as if they wondered why they had done that.

  How could any of this be?

  A woman was walking down the path towards him, talking into a device held in her hand that she pressed to her ear. It was her coat that caught his attention. It looked as if it had once been the fur of an animal, though the King was certain it had never been alive. What he did know was that it reached down to the ground, it was cut in a way that showed off her figure to absolute perfection, and it looked warm. This woman was a royal subject.

  “Give me your coat,” he said as she walked past. The woman looked up at him and her mouth dropped open.