Oddjobs 2: This Time It's Personnel

by Heide Goody

  He reverently slipped his hands under the solid covers and lifted it.

  “It’s not heavy,” he said. “It really isn’t.”

  He stepped back from the chamber and laid it gently on a display table. The pages were yellow with age but undamaged. The Venislarn text on the open page was handwritten in a neat, uniform script in ink that was now a dark lustrous brown but might have once been either black or red. The style was quite beautiful and Vivian had modelled her own Venislarn handwriting on it, however the content of these pages was less exciting: a detailed and monotonous description of the foundations of a building. There was no mention of the building’s name or purpose on either of the visible pages but there was a drawing of an engraving, vaguely anchor-like in appearance, that could be seen on one of the foundation stones.

  “No one knows who or what produced the actual pages,” said Cameron.

  “But there are a variety of competing theories,” said Kathy. “Several of them refer to the creator as Yoth-Kreylah ap Shallas, the ‘living black and white’.”

  “Although that could just be another name for the book itself,” said Cameron. “The black ink on the white page. Yoth-Kreylah is often thought of as being a god-machine, a sentient device from an alien realm.”

  “Very good,” said Vivian primly. “You’ve both read things and are able to regurgitate them. Well done. Now, the question is, how do we use the book to learn more about these Kal Frexo runes and how they came to be rediscovered?”

  The two interview candidates stood in thought, glancing at each other from time to time. Either neither had anything to say or neither wished to speak first in case they appeared foolish.

  “Come now,” said Vivian. “Any ideas? How do we find the page I had previously seen?”

  “We drop it on the floor,” said Cameron. “Statistically, the book is likely to fall open at one of the most recently opened pages.”

  “We are not dropping an infinitely large book,” said Vivian.

  “We look in the index,” said Kathy.

  “It has no index,” said Vivian.

  “That you’ve seen. A book that allegedly details everything that is, was or could be in our universe, would also contain information about itself. That index is not necessarily at the back.”

  “So, it is as lost as the page we are looking for.”

  “Not equally. We’re trying to find one page. The size of an index is usually in proportion to the book. A one-hundred-page book might have a one page index, a two-hundred-page book a two page index. Whatever the size of the book, the chances of randomly stumbling upon the index are roughly the same.”

  “You might be making assumptions about book production methods and writing conventions,” said Cameron.

  “Then heat,” said Kathy.

  “Yes?” said Vivian.

  “If you touched the page of the book when you read it, you will have added some heat energy to the book, however little. It might have been some time ago but if you closed the book afterward, surrounding the page you had touched with an infinite number of insulating pages, finely tuned heat detection equipment might still be able to pinpoint which section of the book you were reading.”

  “Interesting,” said Cameron.

  “Then let’s also think about human residues,” said Kathy. She caught Vivian’s dubious look and explained. “You touched the book. Oils and cells from your skin will have been left there. You will have, infinitesimally, added mass to a book the weight of which is precisely and clearly known. We could weigh sections of the book to find the heaviest.”

  “That’s preposterous,” said Cameron.

  “And you have a better suggestion?” Kathy challenged him.

  “If you have seen one of these runes,” Cameron said to Vivian, “a brief search through your memories with a byhaxx invocation would bring the memory forth.”

  “Yes,” said Vivian who could think of nothing worse than having this new age Venislarn-lover rummage through her mind. “I think we can treat that as a last resort, don’t you?”

  In Dickens Heath, Rod’s satnav developed a system error and crashed after he took five left turns in a row and didn’t cross his own path.

  “This place doesn’t obey the laws of geography,” he said.

  “I laugh in the face of geography!” cackled Steve the Destroyer perched on the dashboard.

  “Not helpful,” said Rod.

  “Just keep driving,” said Morag Junior. “If we see Jeffney Ray here, it’ll be a pure fluke. But unless the other two find a lead, this is as good a plan as any.”

  At a crossroads where there couldn’t logically be a crossroads, Rod paused at the GIVE WAY for a pair of Mammonite women, each holding the hand of a Mammonite toddler. All four turned to look at the car.

  “It’s like The Stepford Wives, this place,” said Junior.

  “Village of the bleeding Damned more like,” said Rod and drove on.

  Morag Senior had visited Venislarn temples before, both those built by humans and those erected by the more comprehensible of the earthly Venislarn. The general principle, as far as she could grasp it, was to create something as stomach-turningly mad as possible. Irregular building materials, insane angles, smashed perspectives: all suffused with imagery of gods or symbols or secret knowledge that would turn the unsuspecting mind to mush. Senior had seen so much of it now, it had got boring and she rarely noticed it.

  Nonetheless, it was nice to see an attempt at an al fresco version.

  The Smith-Mammonson back garden was like a Renaissance artist’s idea of what a classical Greek garden might have looked like, with shapely gods and goddesses caught in marble poses among neatly tended borders and babbling rills and fountains. Except, in this instance, the gods and goddesses were only moderately shapely (some could hardly be said to have a shape, some had too much shape, and at least one seemed unwilling to maintain a single shape despite being hewn from solid rock), the rills babbled with the voices of the mad and the fountains’ drips were the sighs of the damned.

  “Nice,” said Nina.

  “Artful,” said Senior.

  “Thank you,” said the Smith-Mammonson woman. “Built to glorify our mother, in expectation of her triumphant return.”

  “Oh, she’d be dead pleased with this,” said Nina.

  “What mother wouldn’t?” agreed Senior, following the Mammonite down to the furthest section of the long garden.

  The pond was almost too big to be called a pond. It was a stone-lined pool that could have swallowed a car (and the truck towing it too probably). Something rolled and turned in its depths and the size of it gave Senior pause for thought.

  “This is your lu’crik oyh?” she said.

  “Titus,” said Smith-Mammonson.

  “And you’ve had him how long?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Right.”

  Senior considered the ramifications. A pet that was essentially an angry shrimp with extensive facial weaponry had grown to the size of a prize bull. From box to bull in two weeks.

  “How long would you say that thing is?” said Senior. “Twelve feet? Fifteen?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nina.

  “More?”

  “I mean I don’t know how long a foot is, grandma.”

  Senior edged nearer. Silver compound eyes flashed as the thing swam beneath.

  “Four metres then?”

  “I don’t do metric either,” said Nina.

  “But it’s big though,” said Senior and realised she was whispering so as not to disturb it.

  “So,” said Nina, “Mrs Smith-Mammonson, the man who sold it to you...”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you seen him recently?”

  Mrs Smith-Mammonson stiffened. “Are you asking me to divulge details about business contacts?”

  “I just wondered where we could buy one.”

  The Mammonite eyed her suspiciously.

  “Do you think there’s something wr
ong with him?” Mrs Bell-Mammonson asked Ray.

  In the aggressively neat garden, Ray considered her pet lu’crik oyh. It was bigger than Ray himself but small in comparison to others he had sold at the same time. Also, there was series of pinky-yellow nodules growing along its spine, giving extra shape and prominence to its dorsal fin. It wasn’t like any of the others that Ray had seen.

  “What have you been feeding it?” Ray asked.

  “Mostly lamb cutlets. We had veal at the weekend. Pate for occasional treats. Foie gras.”

  The answer meant nothing to Ray. He had bred these things. He didn’t understand them beyond the moment they became sellable.

  He crouched down at the poolside and tried to get a closer look. He couldn’t decide if those things on its spine were a sign of disease or if they were a form of colouration in the species that he’d just not seen before.

  “If you’ve sold me a deficient creature – and I’ve no idea what the neighbours will say – then I will demand a full refund,” said Mrs Bell-Mammonson.

  “Let’s not be hasty,” said Ray.

  “My husband will certainly want words when he returns from work.”

  Ray could see the Mammonite’s shadow cast over him. He was aware of how close she stood behind him.

  “I’m sure it won’t come to that,” he said.

  Without warning, the lu’crik oyh gave a sudden turn and flick of its tail and propelled itself upward at Ray. He pushed himself back with a tiny yelp and fell onto the grass. He felt its chisel-like legs claw at his body as it heaved itself out of the pool and landed on top of him.

  “Shit! It’s trying to eat me!”

  “Oh, yes,” said the Mammonite with mild interest rather than any concern.

  Ray wriggled in frenzied horror. The lu’crik oyh continued to clamber over him. He had a view of its face, its mandibles working hungrily in a mouth that was like a diseased wound with teeth. It stank like a fishmonger’s on a hot day. Its eyes flashed.

  “No!” he squealed and, frantically scrambling for leverage, he brought his knees up beneath it and pushed.

  “Don’t you hurt it!” said Mrs Bell-Mammonson.

  That just made Ray angry as well as terrified. With a huge mental fuck you for Mrs Bell-Mammonson, he pushed up at its belly and rolled, spilling the lu’crik oyh onto its back on the pool’s concrete apron.

  Soaking and wild with fear, Ray scrambled to his feet and away. The lu’crik oyh, stuck on its back for the time being, thrashed its tail from side to side and lashed at the air with its many legs.

  “What have you done, Mr Ray?”

  The beast on the ground cried out. From a mouth with no lungs, it produced a weak but piercing howl, a friction-filled honk, a satanic kazoo of a noise.

  “You’ve upset him!” said Mrs Bell-Mammonson. “I will have to call my husband now.”

  The creature howled piteously and flailed about. Ray did not want to be around when it found its feet again.

  Nina did not hear the faint honking at first.

  The lu’crik oyh in Mrs Smith-Mammonson’s pond had responded before she even recognised there was a sound coming from her neighbour’s garden. It sank to the bottom of the pool, arched its back and leapt for the surface. Morag pulled back, startled, when it breached and flung itself, head and body, onto the bank. It was fat and ungainly on land but it was not immobile. With a hurried shifting of its spider legs, it rotated its carapace left then right, sensing the air.

  “What the hell?”

  “He’s never done that before,” commented Mrs Smith-Mammonson with interest.

  It turned rapidly on the spot, sweeping a circle with its armour-plated tail and nearly slicing Nina’s legs from beneath her. Then, with a lurch that was half scuttle and half fishy flop, it launched itself toward the fence. The lu’crik oyh moved without grace and, as it ran, brought down three statues. It clawed down the fence and flolloped over into the next garden.

  “This is an unhelpful turn of events,” said Morag.

  And then Nina heard the sound: like parts rubbing in an ungreased engine, high-pitched and grating.

  Rod took a turn at random and looked at a street that might have been familiar, might have been utterly new. Uniformly charming semis, box hedges, gleaming prestige saloons on driveways, carefully spaced deciduous trees on the verges. The same things he’d seen for the past fifteen minutes just shuffled into a new order.

  “Okay, I’m lost,” he said.

  “It feels like we’ve driven miles,” said Morag. “Surely, we’d be out of Dickens Heath by now.”

  “We could be in Narnia now for all I know,” said Rod.

  “Narnia’s changed,” said Morag.

  A shape barrelled out of the privet next to them, slammed into the front corner of the car and slithered heavily over the bonnet and then the roof, leaving claw puncture marks and a crack in the windscreen. Its tail slapped on the tarmac on the other side and then it was gone, charging down the side between two houses.

  “Demon fish!” yelled Steve the Destroyer.

  “There weren’t any demon fish in Narnia,” said Morag faintly.

  Slime smeared down the windscreen. Rod unclipped his seatbelt to jump out but then, further ahead, another creature, as large as the first, slithered and skidded into the road.

  “You reckon these things are fair game?” he said.

  “God, yes,” said Morag, reaching to phone her older self.

  “Good,” said Rod. He put his foot to the floor and chased the thing as it flopped away down the road.

  The Vault guards helped carry their equipment through the maze of worlds to the location of the Bloody Big Book. Vivian watched Kathy take command and direct the men to place the instruments on various surfaces. Most of the equipment they never got to use because the first thing Kathy did was weigh the book.

  She calibrated the precision scales and carefully transferred the book from its pedestal.

  “Huh,” she said, intrigued.

  “What is it?” said Cameron and looked at the readout.

  “Nine hundred and fifty-four point nine grams,” said Kathy.

  The book was a hundred grams lighter than it should be. A fool would immediately declare it to be impossible but Vivian wasn’t a fool.

  “Check the scales,” said Cameron.

  Kathy removed the book, recalibrated the scales, checked the foot mountings and reweighed the book.

  “It’s shrunk,” said Kathy.

  “The book has been weighed dozens of times, with increasing levels of accuracy,” said Cameron. “It has never shrunk.”

  “Conclusions?” said Vivian, who had come to her own chilling conclusions but wanted the candidates to find their own.

  “Part of the book is missing,” said Cameron eventually.

  “Yes,” said Vivian.

  Morag Senior took the call from her junior self while running on a trail of broken fences that led from garden to garden.

  “What?” she yelled. “Yes! We know! We’re following it now!”

  She frowned furiously at Junior’s indistinct reply.

  “There are more?”

  She looked at Nina.

  “What the hell’s happening?”

  They hurdled over the smashed remnants of a trellis and found themselves in a garden with three of the creatures. Two of the lu’crik oyh were equally massive, whereas the third was smaller and more brightly coloured than the others, a ridge of bobbly growths running down its back. The two huge beasts circled and snarled at each other, with the smaller one turning nervously between them.

  “Fighting over dinner?” said Senior.

  “It’s not dinner,” said Nina and Senior immediately saw she was right. It was two big males competing for a smaller and more colourful female.

  “This is bad,” said Senior, speaking into the phone.

  “Bad how?”

  “It’s a female, drawing them in.”

  “Stop this at once!” commanded a s
trident voice.

  There were two people in the garden. Senior’s brain had not registered them until now. No, not people. The one who was about to try and scold the lu’crik oyh like naughty puppies was a Mammonite woman. The one cowering by the low wall that backed onto the canal was a scar-faced idiot who had already indirectly killed several innocent individuals.

  “Jeffney Ray.”

  The Mammonite woman wagged her finger at the circling lu’crik oyh.

  “You get out of here this instant!” she shouted at the larger creatures. “Look at what you’ve done!”

  “Get back, lady!” Nina shouted at her.

  “I’ll not be bullied in my own garden,” snorted the Mammonite and turned her attention back to the fishy interlopers. “Get away and leave young Caligula alone!”

  One of the males swiped its tail at her, possibly instinctively, possibly accidentally. The tail was a flat blade of heavy chitin. The Mammonite woman fell apart in two neatly severed chunks, spilling what passed for Mammonite blood all over her trimmed lawn.

  “Azbhul!” said Senior. “Nasty.”

  Jeffney Ray recognised Nina and Morag, stared at them goggle-eyed and then seemed to be considering whether to leap over the wall.

  “You stay there!” shouted Senior and made to reach him, past the deadly tails of the lu’crik oyh.

  The female squealed louder and this drove the males into further excitement. Senior could hear the smashing of wooden fences from somewhere in the distance.

  “She’s bringing all the boys to the yard, isn’t she?” said Nina.

  Nina picked up a garden fork as she followed Senior. Senior was about to ask her what she expected to do with it when one of the lu’crik oyh whirled on them and Nina jabbed it in the face. The lu’crik oyh spat and thrashed and, as it did, Jeffney Ray decided to take his chances and leapt over the wall into the canal.

  “Is this a set-up?” asked Cameron.

  Vivian directed her gaze at the man. “What do you mean?”

  “The interview. This activity. The convenient mystery of the missing pages.”

  Vivian gestured at the Big Bloody Book on the surface between them.