by Heide Goody
Inside the box, the juvenile bat-octopus-anemone-squirrel thing stirred in its sleep.
“What were you going to do with that?” said Nina.
“Keep it as pet. Train it,” said Trevor.
“To do what?” said Morag incredulously.
“Sit on my shoulder. Whatever.”
“And then suck your brains out through your ears?”
“You’ve got to lay off the weed, Trevor,” said Nina. “We’re confiscating this, this and this.”
“I paid three hundred for that!”
“The weed or the shambler? Either way, you overpaid. Go on. Clear off.”
Mystic Trevor stuffed his belongings back in his bag and then hesitated. Maybe he was trying to think of a way to undo the last few minutes. Maybe he was searching for a biting remark or witty rejoinder. Whichever, it wasn’t forthcoming.
“Jesus, Trevor,” said Nina, “stop standing there like a creepy uncle.”
The miserable occultist shuffled off.
“What a stupid arse,” said Nina thoughtfully.
Morag picked up the plastic box and the snoozing horror within.
“These things are huge when they’re fully grown.”
“They’ve got a pair up at the Menagerie in Dudley. We can store it in the Vault for now and then get one of the hauliers to take it up to Dudley tomorrow.”
“Okay,” said Morag and drained her drink. “A walk back to the office then.”
She saw Nina pocket the cannabis and the rehpat viarr.
“Got plans for those?” Morag asked.
“Maybe. I’m going to meet up with Ricky Lee. See you tomorrow?”
“Every day is a gift,” said Morag, gave her a wave and headed off.
Her phone rang as she walked through the Broad Street tunnel. She tucked the bondook under one arm and answered.
“What was in the vial she took off Wizard Dave?” said Rod.
“Mystic Trevor,” said Morag. “You been spying on us all this time?”
“Spying. Wishing I was at the pub. I tried to locate that scar-faced git but lost him somewhere near Centenary Square.”
“It was a truth potion.”
“God help us all. Hey, you’re a woman.”
“Keen observational skills there, Rod.”
“I’m meeting someone for a drink after work today – a woman – and, before you go all Nina on me, it’s not a date. It’s just a drink.”
“Kathy Kaur. Nina mentioned it.”
“She’s texted me to ask where we should meet up.”
“Okay.”
“What does she mean?”
Morag headed towards the stone steps by the Brindley Place bridge.
“Well,” she said slowly, “I think it means she wants to know where you want to meet her.”
“But what answer should I give? Where’d be the right place to take her?”
“Ah, I see,” said Morag. “Because we women all get together once a week to discuss everything and I should know the answer.”
“Fine. Be that way.”
Morag laughed.
“It’s a drink. Anywhere will be fine,” she said and immediately changed her mind. “Not a real ale pub.”
“I was thinking of the Wellington.”
“Is it a real ale pub?”
“It serves real ale.”
“Does it have a range of taps of beer with names like Worcester Wench and Old Dirigible, perhaps with little notes underneath explaining whether it’s hoppy or yeasty or got, I don’t know, citrus notes?”
“It might,” said Rod cautiously.
“It’s a real ale pub. I’m going to go out on a sexist limb here and say that no woman in the history of the world ever has liked real ale.”
“Harsh and untrue,” said Rod.
“And in a recent survey I’ve just invented one hundred percent of women say that listening to men talking about why real ale is great is the most boring thing ever.”
“You and I talk about real ale.”
“No, Rod,” she said. “You talk about real ale and I pretend to listen because I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“Ow. You’ve cut me deep. So, a wine bar or something?”
The bondook rolled over, shifting its weight in the box. Morag juggled it back into position.
“Seriously? Those are the two options? It’s either real ale pubs or wine bars? Christ, man. Just go somewhere nice.”
“Like where?”
“A pub. A bar. There’s enough to choose from. What was that place under the hotel on New Street?”
“Bacchus?” he said.
“Go there.”
Her phone buzzed with a text message.
“Do you think it’s nice enough though?” said Rod.
She glanced at the message. It was Cameron.
MANAGED TO GET AN EARLIER TRAIN WHEN WE CHANGED. NEW ST AT 6:30. HAPPY TO WAIT.
“Muda.”
“Sorry, I was only asking for advice,” said Rod’s tinny voice.
“Not you,” she said. “I’ve got to go, Rod. Plans of my own.”
She crossed the bridge to the ICC as she dialled her home phone number.
Morag Junior offered the open bag to Steve the Destroyer.
“Nacho?”
Steve the Destroyer took one of the triangular crisps and, because he had no mouth, not a proper one, he just stared at it. He sat on the arm of the sofa next to Junior.
“And the idea of this television show is to guess answers to questions?”
“The answer that the fewest people have guessed in their survey. And if they get a pointless answer – one that no one has guessed – then extra money goes in the jackpot.” Junior slurped her beer. “This round is countries that end in the letter ‘n’.”
“Yantuvan,” said Steve. “Ower’een.”
“I don’t think the programme makers will have heard of those.”
“Then it is pointless and I win!” declared Steve.
“It has to be countries they’ve actually heard of. They wouldn’t allow those answers.”
“Then I will find this quiz man and I will drag his worthless carcass into the flames of hell!”
“That’s the spirit.”
The landline phone rang. Junior passed the nachos to Steve but kept hold of the beer as she went to answer it.
“Yemen,” she called to Steve and picked up.
“Right, listen carefully,” said Morag Senior.
“And hello to you,” said Junior.
“I haven’t got time. Suddenly everything’s happening at once. We’ve spent half the day on the trail of some scar-faced dealer in Kal Frexo runes. I’ve got a baby bondook to take to the Vault before I can head home to change and Cameron’s train’s coming in at six-thirty now, not whenever it was.”
“Where’d you get a baby bondook?”
“No time,” said Morag Senior.
Junior could hear the woman panting as she walked and talked. Actually panting. Was she really that out of shape?
“I’m going to wear my gold top and my khaki pedal pushers. I want you to check they’re washed and wearable by the time I get in.”
“Yes,” said Junior, “but they are in different piles.”
“Oh, you sorted things?”
“I did everything on your list. I took a bullet for the team.” She looked at the plasters on her hands. “A hail of bullets. Steve and I are just kicking back now. A bit of Pointless and some spicy nachos.”
“Yemen!” yelled Steve victoriously from the lounge.
“I bought those nachos for me,” said Senior.
“So did I,” said Junior. “Look, if you’re going to be late, I can step in and meet Cameron.”
“Not necessary,” said Senior firmly. “Everything’s sorted. I’ve booked a table at that South American place on Bennetts Hill. It’s going to be fine. Just sort my clothes and stop eating my nachos.”
“Sure thing,” said Junior.
�
�I’ll be there within the hour. Probably.”
Senior clicked off. Junior put the phone down and went back into the lounge.
“Five points!” said Steve, dancing on the arm of the sofa and waving his nacho like a pennant. “You are a master of this game, gobbet!”
“Change of plan,” said Junior. “That was Grandma Morag. She needs me to go into town and meet our ex-boyfriend.”
“Fine, fine,” said Steve. “Ha! He said ‘Surinam’! It doesn’t even end in ‘n’! Gouge his eyes out, quiz man!”
“That means it’s biscuit tin time for you.”
The sack doll dropped its nacho and gave her a look of utter betrayal, an impressive achievement with a stitched-on face.
“But the tin is dark and I want to watch the Pointless.”
Junior huffed and went to the kitchen. She looked in the fridge. There was a mostly-finished jar of jam. She washed it out in the sink with a torrent of hot water and then dried it as she carried it back to the lounge.
“Here,” she said, picked Steve up and stuffed him into the jar. It wasn’t quite big enough and his limbs were all squashed up against the glass. He looked like something from an Amnesty International leaflet, or Cirque du Soleil.
“There,” she said, screwing the lid on tightly. “The very latest in doll containment with entertainment options included.”
She put the jar on the coffee table and rotated it so Steve could see the telly.
“Brilliant!” he shouted.
Jeffney Ray opened the front door. There was the smell of cooking in the air. Wednesday: that meant sausages and potato waffles. He hoped it was tinned peas, not frozen peas. His mom knew he preferred tinned peas. She was at the kitchen sink, staring out of the window and smoking a fag. It might as well have been the same one she had been smoking that morning. She wasn’t like Ray. She wasn’t a go-getter with a dream.
“What have you got there, Jeffney?” she said.
He looked at the carrier bag in his hand but offered no explanation.
“How far off’s dinner?” he said.
“Ten minutes,” she said.
“Tinned peas or frozen peas?”
“Mushy peas.”
“I prefer non-mushy.”
“It’s what we’ve got.”
“I’m just going to tidy some things up in the shed,” he said.
“You said you were going to take it down.”
“It needs tidying first.”
Ray went out across the uneven patio to the shed and unlocked the padlock. It was a big shed, put up by the previous owner. The floor and the lower levels of the walls had rotted away – he wasn’t sure how much of the funky smell in the shed was rot and how much was his lu’crik oyh – but it was still a sturdy structure and good for a few months yet. Ray drew the door closed behind him. He didn’t want his mom looking in and worrying.
There was a single deep rack of metal shelving along the long wall. Ray had arranged his tubs and tanks along the shelves in sequential order. From left to right, there were two tanks – one currently empty, the other teeming with ghostly fry swimming, bobbing and occasionally eating each other – then there were the three tubs. Only one of the tubs was open. In its depths, five – oh, no, only four left now – four fingerlings circled each other. Ray wasn’t sure if they were best described as fingerlings or spiderlings or something else. They had fins, they had gills but they had legs, plenty of them, and their eyes were not fish eyes. They were… They were a goldmine. The broadband thing was Ray’s day job, the means for paying back his start up loan, but this little operation, the only one of its kind as far as he knew, was going to make him very wealthy and very popular with the right kind of people.
The two remaining tubs had lids on and were weighted down with bricks. He had taped labels to the sides of the boxes. LU’CRIK OYH. HANDLE WITH CARE. The rightmost tub shook violently as the creature within bucked and thrashed. He was ready to go.
Ray scrolled through his phone address book and dialled. As he waited for them to pick up, he carefully emptied the carrier bag of dead Dinh’r eggs that he’d bought from the Tony T into the empty tank. Some of the more damaged ones just floated on the surface. Most sank to the bottom, the water lending them a brown conker shine.
“Lee-Mammonson residence,” said a refined voice on the phone. “Please note, this call may be monitored for training purposes. My name is Imelda Lee-Mammonson.”
“San-shu, Mrs Lee-Mammonson,” said Ray. “It’s Jeffney Ray. I’m calling about your order.”
“Mr Ray,” said the Mammonite with restrained haughtiness, “I was beginning to think you had forgotten us.”
“Fear not. I have your order right here.”
“We’ve not had any word from you at all. I was in two minds about cancelling it.”
“Well, you can if you really wish, Mrs Lee-Mammonson. We do have a waiting list.”
“The Smith-Mammonsons have had their lu’crik oyh for two weeks. The envy of the neighbourhood it is.”
“As I say, a waiting list.”
Ray opened the bag of khei-ba drel seeds he’d bought from the Black Barge – at such an extortionate price, the cheeky fat bastard! – and sprinkled them liberally across the surface.
The Mammonite woman on the line made a terse huffing sound as though that might elicit some response from Ray but he wasn’t lying when he said he had buyers queuing up for his hybrid creations. The first of the drifting fish seeds landed on a Dinh’r egg. A fraction of a second before they touched, a hair-like tracer of yellow energy sprang between them, a mote of lightning, a quickening of life.
“I can deliver it to you tomorrow afternoon,” said Ray.
“And you can assure me it’s a prime specimen?”
Ray looked at the angrily shaking box. “Positively jumping with vitality.”
“I will be in from one,” she said.
“One it is. Good evening, Mrs Lee-Mammonson.”
Ray put an extra couple of bricks on top of the Lee-Mammonsons’ new pet’s box to keep it steady and, seeing that the fertilisation process was already underway on the new batch, locked up and went in for his tea. He’d have to eat quickly. He had samakha gangsta boys to entertain tonight and a bunch of psycho runes to sell to a greedy public.
Waiting in the New Street Station concourse, Rod Campbell realised just how nervous he was when he caught himself unconsciously reaching for a pistol that was not there – a gun that was in the gut of a dead Dinh’r somewhere under the streets of Birmingham, a gun that he wouldn’t be wearing now anyway because he was off duty and firearms weren’t regarded as mandatory equipment for dates.
“It’s not even a date,” he muttered to himself.
How could he be nervous? He’d been on dates before. Okay, not dates as such but, in a past life he had flung himself into the pub and club scene and engaged in those ancient mating rituals that involve necking pints, strutting one’s funky stuff and trying it on with every lass in the club until he found one with sufficiently low standards. God, that was a past life, he thought. In terms of actual “everyone, this is my girlfriend” girlfriends, it had been more years than he could count on his hands (including the missing finger). How could he be nervous? He’d confronted the very hordes of hell. He’d faced off with a man-eating starfish. He’d taken down mutant toad men. He’d stood in the lair of Yoth-Sheol-Niggurauth, mother of a thousand young, and bargained –
Oh, heck, there she was!
Dr Kathy Kaur walked towards him from the platform escalators. She was a vision of – okay, she wasn’t a vision of loveliness or anything; Rod was nervous, he wasn’t a love-struck mooncalf – but she was a vision of someone who had made an actual effort with their appearance. She was wearing a dress that wrapped over at the waist, hugging her figure in a way that was simple and yet very alluring. Rod had nipped into the office loos, changed into a fresh shirt and ditched his tie.
“Hi, Campbell.”
“Kathy.”
He leaned in a little and then, as an absolutely nothing gesture, patted her elbow.
She frowned at him with those expressive eyebrows of hers.
“Busy day?” she said.
“Always is,” he said.
“Maybe a beer is in order.”
“Christ, yes,” he said.
Morag Junior rode the train into the city from Bournville and spent the journey peeling most of the plasters from the cat scratches on her hands. She’d left the gold top and khaki trousers on the bed as requested. She might be stepping into Morag Senior’s shoes without express permission but she wasn’t such a heel as to take the clothes Senior had bagsied. Junior made do with a simple skinny jeans and strappy top combo. She arrived at the station by half six and took the stairs up from the platform.
She had few details of the assignation. Cameron was arriving at six thirty. He was in the city because he had an interview for the tech support job. Morag Senior had agreed to meet him at the station but precisely where was unknown.
She spotted him instantly, hanging around beneath the departure boards. At first, she thought that he hadn’t changed at all. He still had that dark, floppy hair. He still had that damned university scarf that made him look as if he was just about to cycle off to lectures or catch a train to Hogwarts. And then she saw subtle changes. He’d got a bit of sun for once in his life, his pale Scottish complexion was now a tanned caramel brown. There was a string of wooden beads around his neck under that scarf and running up between them was a pale pucker-edged scar. Travel had apparently changed him. He saw her approaching.
“I just got a text from you, saying you were going to be delayed,” he smiled and planted a firm chaste kiss on both her cheeks, left then right. “San-shu, Morag Murray.”
“My texts get delayed in the wi-fi or whatever,” she said. “I’ve probably sent you a dozen others that’ll turn up later when we’re off somewhere else. It’s like communicating with a time traveller.”