by Heide Goody
Rod tilted his head. “Probably best if you did. You should get checked out.”
“I didn’t get bitten.”
“Aye,” he said, “but the thing with francium, it is a bit radioactive.”
“A bit radioactive?”
“A wee bit.”
“God damn you, Rod Campbell. I had plans for tonight.”
He showed her his phone.
“Maybe a picture of a cute spider in a hat will cheer you up,” he suggested.
Morag punched him.
Tuesday
Once she realised she was going to be late for work, Morag decided to enjoy the experience. She stopped en route from New Street Station to the Library to pick up a hot drink and a breakfast roll and ate half of it while watching the cranes over the Central Library demolition site. Then she cut through the dodgy underpass of Fletchers Walk into Centenary Square and strolled toward the Library of Birmingham.
The Birmingham consular mission to the Venislarn was housed in a purpose-built confection of glass, gold cladding and vast interlocking magic wards forged from a tungsten-magnesium alloy with a selenium core. The building did a sterling job of masquerading as the city’s largest public library even though some might question why so much of the huge building was clearly inaccessible to the public.
Morag stuffed the uneaten half of her breakfast roll in her jacket pocket as she entered the Library through the concourse. She circled around to the bank of lifts behind the ground floor coffee shop and swiped her ID against a blank piece of wall, then stepped into the lift and pressed for the seventh floor.
“Hold the door!” called Lois Wheeler, scuttling over in impractical heels.
Morag did as instructed and the office receptionist clattered in, all chunky jewellery, bust and bustle.
“Ta, bab,” she said.
“Not like you to be late,” said Morag.
“I’m not. I was sent down to find you. You weren’t answering your phone.”
“Dead battery,” said Morag. “Spent half the night at the restricted ward and forgot to plug it in before bed. Sent to find me?”
“Vaughn demands your company.”
Morag snorted. “Vaughn? Demand?” The consular chief was a virtual ghost and an actual recluse. He was like the after images you get from staring at the sun. He was clearly there but it was impossible to pinpoint him with any clarity and if you stared at him he’d slide off to the corners of your vision. The idea of him demanding anything was absurd.
But Lois wasn’t joking.
“Well, he can go boil his head if he thinks I’m going to run for him,” said Morag. She pointed at her forearm and the cotton balls taped along it. “That is for the general antibiotics they gave me. That one is the antimicrobial something or other. And that one is for the pyam’n sree anti-parasitics, even though I didn’t get bitten by one of the bastards.”
“And what’s that one?” said Lois, pointing at a red mark on her wrist.
Morag licked it.
“Red sauce. I had a bacon bap. What’s he worked up about anyway?”
“You know he’s been going on about the likelihood of a ministerial inspection after the whole” – Lois did a complex and sound-effect laden pantomime which was apparently supposed to convey a train crash, a rampaging god monster, a fight in a chocolate factory and all the other events of three weeks ago that had left two consular employees dead and two injured – “you know, thing.”
“I’ve seen the e-mails. He now wants to talk about it, huh?”
“There’s someone from the ministry here.”
Morag paused.
“Right. So, he wants everyone in and everything spic and span. I get it.”
Lois wrinkled her nose.
“The ministry feller wants to talk to you.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Like they’d tell me that, bab,” said Lois and then tutted. “You’ve made me hungry now.”
“Because I mentioned bacon?”
Lois leaned in and sniffed at Morag’s jacket.
“You smell of it too.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No, not in a bad way,” said Lois, taking hold of Morag’s arm so she could get a proper nosefull.
Professor Sheikh Omar had for many years used the rib bone of an alligator as a letter opener – not because it was imbued with special properties or esoteric powers, but simply because it amused him. In recent months, he had been receiving more handwritten mail. This ought to have been a diverting novelty in an age when incoherent email, dashed off in a trice, was the norm. But, he’d found that the letters conformed to a depressingly predictable pattern. They would be written in coloured ink on material that varied from homemade vellum (crafted from the skins of family pets) to lumpy mats of plant (and, perhaps, insect) fragments embedded in recycled paper pulp. The intention was always to create a sense of uniqueness and power, but Omar found them unimaginative and more than a little unsavoury. Maurice knew to bring him the tongs when one of these appeared in the post.
He sighed and opened the latest handwritten letter, which was from someone called Jeffney Ray. The name was familiar. Omar had published Venislarn: A Language Primer as a convenient source of income. The textbook had proven a useful resource for students, but an unforeseen consequence was the correspondence from those who had bought it, expecting not only to become fluent in the language of the Venislarn after quickly flicking through its pages but also to have the expertise of the author at their disposal for anything relating to the Venislarn. Omar knew that his readers paid handsomely for the book, but that was more to do with the nature of the illegal sales channels where they found it than his own modest profiteering. Omar operated a three strikes system, and Jeffney Ray was now on his second strike.
Dear Professor,
Can you tell me if theys a market for elderly women in Fish Town as consorts or sex slaves? My mom is asking too many questions about my business operations. Her eyesight is quite bad so I might be able to tell her it’s assisted living.
Yours
Jeffney Ray
Omar shuddered. Not at the callousness of the question but at the appalling grammar. He used the tongs to drop the offending object into the waste paper basket and hoped that he wouldn’t be hearing from Jeffney Ray again.
Rod woke from unpleasant dreams with a sharp intake of breath and was reaching to throw off his bed covers and leap at the intruder in the room when he realised who it was. Kathy Kaur, the restricted ward duty doctor, put down the sketch papers she had taken from the bedside table.
“Sorry. I was just looking. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
He gave a little shake of his head. All was forgiven.
“I’ve very sharp hearing,” he said. “Even the rustle of paper, I’m – whoosh, like a shot. Ears of the hawk, me.”
She shrugged.
“I mean, I have spent the last ten minutes checking your drips, writing on your chart, generally clattering around the place and” – she gave him a playful waggle of her perfect eyebrows – “you know…”
“Watching me sleep?”
“No. What? No, that sounds insanely creepy, Campbell. What kind of doctor has the time to stand around watching their patients sleep? I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
“So, what was all that eyebrow business for?”
“Well, it’s not code for ‘I like to watch you sleeping’ is it?”
“You confused me,” he said.
“And that’s the way I like you,” she grinned.
Rod was in a private room on the restricted ward. His left arm had a cannula and drip taped to it. His right was patched with gauzy dressings where the Dinh’r had bitten him. The light behind the blinds told him he had slept in late.
“What are these?” Kathy touched the sketches on his bedside.
“Summat from long ago.” He picked one up. It was a failed rendering of an irregular, vaguely beast-shaped jewel he had seen for only a few seconds man
y years ago and which he had glimpsed again in a Dinh’r-induced vision the day before. He had sketched them in the wee hours when bad dreams and then insomnia had a hold on him. “A magic stone,” he said. “Supposed to grant your heart’s desire.”
“Really?” she said.
“Your eyebrows are doing that thing again.”
“Are you fixated on my eyebrows?” she said.
“No,” he said.
Rod could honestly say, despite Morag’s nudge-nudges and wink-winks on the matter, that he wasn’t at all fixated on any part of Kathy Kaur. A more honest bit of him might acknowledge that his fixation was evenly distributed around all of Kathy Kaur’s parts. An even more honest part of him might concede that he was happy to fixate on any one of a broad number of attractive, funny and smart women, particularly since he had neither the time nor the social skillset to do anything about any single one of them.
“Is this magic stone meant to look… wonky?”
“Yes. It was a red piece, like a ruby.”
“I’ve seen something like this before,” she said.
“Where?” he said, sitting up.
She scrunched up her face, going up in the funny stakes, down in the attractive stakes and apparently trying to squeeze out some extra smarts.
The moment Morag knocked on Vaughn Sitterson’s office door it opened, Vaughn turned away from her and gestured to the slender man drinking tea in one of the low seats. Vaughn, the ghostly recluse of a consular chief, did not do physical contact, eye contact or any specific acknowledgement of other people’s existence.
“And here she is now,” he said, apparently addressing a patch of carpet by the man’s feet. “Morag Murray, investigator for response team A.” He angled round towards her, his gaze not making it much past the edge of the door frame. “Jonathan Cattress of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Audit and Risk Committee.”
The slender man stood.
“Glad you could join us, Ms Murray,” he said.
Cattress had a posh southern accent, a limp handshake, gold cufflinks and what appeared to be a public-school tie. But Morag wasn’t quick to judge him. She would bide her time before declaring him an effete, toffee-nosed Sassenach.
“Come to inspect us little people on the front line?” she said.
Cattress made a lingering noise in his throat as though his super-plummy tones needed a good run up to get started.
“Not an inspection as such,” he said. “That will be conducted by a full team, my dear. Consider this a pre-inspection inspection, if you will.”
“And I shall,” said Morag brightly, who had no idea why she was there. “Mr Sitterson, is there something you needed me for, in particular?”
Vaughn, who had managed to slide behind his desk and take cover behind a sheaf of papers, looked up towards her but only got his gaze as far as the filing cabinet by the window.
“Mr Cattress needs a tour of our facilities.”
“Oh. And?”
“And I thought,” said Cattress, “that as a relative newcomer, you might be best placed to introduce me to the esoteric mysteries of this provincial outpost.”
“I do have work to do,” Morag said to Vaughn. “A number of house calls to members of the public I didn’t get to do yesterday.”
“And I thought you disliked so-called Crackpot Monday,” said Vaughn. “House calls can wait.”
“Apparently so,” said Morag. “Well, Jonathan, it looks like I’m at your disposal. Where would you like to start?”
“Your records and storage facility. The Vault I believe it’s called.”
Rod watched Kathy Kaur’s face-scrunching attempts to remember where she’d seen the blood-red jewel fail to work.
“It was in a picture,” she said, lamely.
“Ye-es?”
“Nope. That’s all I’ve got. Maybe I saw it while swotting up.”
Rod frowned at her.
“For the job application,” Kathy explained. “The tech support role in the Vault.”
“You’re going for Ingrid’s job?” he said.
“Well, it’s not her job now, is it? You don’t think I should go for it?”
Rod chose his words carefully. In his experience, telling women what they should or shouldn’t do rarely ended well. “I would have thought a doctor such as yourself would have better things to do than poke forbidden books and ancient relics in our basement.”
“I know my pessh khol-kharid from my pesco llarith. There’s no other job like it. They’re making their selection for interview today and I wondered if you” – she gave him her best smile – “had any inside knowledge on who they’re taking forward.”
“Ah,” he said. “You wanted to pick my brain. And here was me thinking that you were just here to add a little sunshine to my life.”
“I can do both,” she said.
She came close and inspected the dressings on Rod’s injured arm. She made a noise of approval at what she saw.
“I don’t think you’re going to lose the arm. Or have intestinal Venislarn parasites interrupting your evening meal.”
“Shame. It’d be nice to have company.”
“How’s the pinkie?” she said.
Rod showed her his left hand. She brushed her fingertip over the very pink nub of his severed finger.
“I was thinking of getting a prosthetic,” he said.
“A false pinkie?”
He gave a facial shrug. “I was thinking there’d be just enough room inside for a gas-propelled grappling hook and a spool of high-tensile wire. What’s your handwriting like?”
“Why?”
“Vivian Grey.”
“The ice queen?”
“Aye. She’s doing the shortlisting. Knowing her, she’ll bin any applications with scruffy writing. It’s a doctor thing, isn’t it? Part of the training to write indecipherable prescriptions.”
Kathy patted his healing arm. “No. My handwriting is beautiful and rounded.”
“Not too beautiful though?” he said. “Not a bit girly? Cos she doesn’t like that either.”
“Well, I don’t do little hearts above my ‘i’s if that’s what you’re asking. Here, I’ll show you and you can rate my chances.”
She picked up one of Rod’s sketch sheets and then tapped her breast pocket for her pen. She then looked around on the trolley and the bedside unit.
“Balls. Where did I put it?”
“I’m afraid I was asleep while you were clattering around,” said Rod.
“The number of things that go missing round here,” she muttered.
“People building a better life for themselves by stealing office supplies,” he said.
She gave him a dark look.
“It’s not just office supplies,” she said and her eyebrows weren’t waggling so he couldn’t tell if she was joking.
“Things go missing in every workplace,” said Rod. “Taken home. Fallen down the back of the desk. Surgeons are famous for losing things inside their patients during surgery.”
“Not whole rooms,” said Kathy.
“Pardon?”
Kathy looked uncomfortable.
“It’s not something we talk about. Some people here refuse to believe it but some of us are convinced that some doorways, some corridors and even some rooms have simply vanished.”
Rod stared at her eyebrows for any sign of playful wiggling.
“I’m not making it up,” she said.
Rod threw back his covers and swung his legs out of bed.
“Show me.”
Morag and Jonathan Cattress were waiting at the lifts when a door dinged open and Vivian stepped out with a cheerful-looking border collie on a lead.
“You been rounding up sheep?” said Morag.
“I have not, Miss Murray,” said Vivian plainly.
“Ah,” said Morag and then, because it was clear Vivian wasn’t about to volunteer any further information, “because you do appear to have a dog with you.”
; “I do,” said Vivian, and with a “Come on, Ruffles” she led the dog away.
Morag swiped the hidden card reader in the lift and she and Cattress descended to the basement level of the Library.
“So, what’s your Abyssal Rating?” she asked the Foreign Office man.
“What is an Abyssal Rating?” said Cattress.
Morag blinked. “Abyssal Rating. The scale of how much fucked up – I mean, messed up stuff you’ve been exposed to. Maybe your department have a different name for it.”
“I don’t think so. What is it for?”
“For? There’s some, hmmm, challenging stuff in the Vault. The mind can only take so much.”
“I’m sure I have sufficient strength of character,” he said in tones of one assuring a child that, yes, Father Christmas did exist.
The doors slid open on a corridor of white tiles. Two Library security guards, pistols holstered, stood before the glass airlock entrance to the Vault. Morag waved at the CCTV camera in the corner and then the guards.
“Malcolm. Andy.”
She typed a code at the door panel and the first glass door swung open.
“This guy’s with me,” she said, as they went through. “Apparently he doesn’t need an Abyssal Rating.” Malcolm’s eyes widened but he said nothing. “If I need you to come in with a bucket and a mop, I’ll holler,” she said.
Cattress did not deign to comment until they were through the second door and it was closed behind them.
“I do understand there’s a certain need for humour in the lower ranks, Ms Murray,” said Cattress, “but I hope you don’t intend to play me for a fool.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she said.
“And this is the Vault, is it?” he said.
White aisles stretched away to distant walls. Pristine cabinets and spotless shelves housed books, artefacts and objects that defied definition. It looked like a museum designed and run by an OCD cleanliness freak.
“It is,” she said.
“It’s considerable in size.”
“But not considerable enough. We are finding items every week that can’t simply be stored at the Dumping Ground.”
“The Dumping Ground?”