by Heide Goody
“You think we dismembered an artefact whose infinite size has the potential to create singularly cataclysmic problems in order to make this selection process more immersive?”
“I don’t like coincidences,” said Cameron. “I don’t buy them. It’s manan’shei. It’s just God being lazy.”
“Or the gods playing with us,” said Vivian.
Kathy, who had been toying with her collar thoughtfully, said, “Whether stolen or missing, an infinite number of pages have gone. A finite proportion of an infinite object is itself infinite.”
“Yes?” said Vivian.
“And although key information would be missing from those pages, one might extrapolate any missing information for the infinite data already present. It would mean…”
“Yes?”
“It would mean that whoever has those pages possesses a form of omniscience.”
“A little knowledge is a graz dangerous thing,” said Cameron. “Infinite knowledge is…”
“Apocalyptic,” said Kathy.
“Yes,” said Vivian. “A tad over-dramatic, Dr Kaur, but essentially true. So, what questions do we need to ask ourselves?”
Cameron touched the edges of the book with his fingertips. “Where are the pages now?”
“And who took them?” said Kathy. “This is meant to be a secure facility and it has been breached.”
Behind her, Andy the security guard rolled his shoulders in disagreement and cleared his throat.
“You may posture all you wish,” Vivian said to him. “She is right. We have been victims of theft.”
“It could be that the missing pages have been used to uncover or extrapolate the no-longer-missing Kal Frexo runes,” said Cameron. He suddenly clicked his fingers. “Heyun’toth!” he exclaimed. “You’ve had a recent surge in OOPArts in the city.”
“We have,” said Vivian, who did not see the connection.
“Ontological necessity,” said Cameron.
“No,” said Kathy. “Really?”
“Explain,” said Vivian, who did not enjoy being the only Venislarn expert in the room who did not understand.
“It could be said that truth demands physical expression,” said Cameron. “Logical truth becomes em-shadt reality: new knowledge created the items.”
“Is there any scientific basis to this?” asked Vivian, who suspected that Cameron was talking hippy mumbo-jumbo.
“The Mathematical Universe hypothesis is not universally accepted,” admitted Kathy. “And this is an unsubstantiated variant.”
“But,” said Cameron with an abrupt passion, “if someone is using the stolen pages to generate new ‘truths’ then the OOPArts could be simply bubbling into existence in response.”
Vivian found it all very doubtful.
“Or it’s magic,” said Cameron. “Describe it however you like.”
“I would prefer to describe things as they are, Mr Barnes. But, to the questions: who took them and where are they now?”
Kathy looked up at the ceiling and the walls. “Assuming it wasn’t a cat burglar or Tom Cruise crawling through the air vents, the pages were taken by someone who was allowed in here. There’s CCTV and security records. Apart from permanent staff who has been down here?”
Andy the guard coughed meaningfully. Vivian looked at him sharply. He gave her an innocent look.
“Professor Omar was in my view the entire time we were down here,” she said.
“Just saying,” Andy replied.
“What’s this?” said Kathy.
Vivian gave a rueful shake of the head. “It proved necessary to bring Professor Omar down here. On Tuesday.”
“And his little assistant friend,” said Andy.
“Yes,” said Vivian slowly.
Morag Junior and Rod were almost on top of the creature when it crested a humpbacked bridge at the edge of the village, flung itself up onto the wall and cartwheeled down into the canal.
“Bugger,” said Rod with quiet feeling and slammed to a halt on the bridge.
He was already out of the door by the time Junior could speak.
“Are we chasing after that thing? On foot?”
“What else?” said Rod.
“And if we catch it?”
“Restrain it. Kill it,” he said and then actually gave it some thought. “With my bare hands if need be.”
“You have city hands, gobbet!” yelled Steve but the big guy was already running toward the steps to the canalside below.
Junior, with Steve the Destroyer clinging to her sleeve, thumbed the number for the office. They were going to need police to set up a cordon at the very least. And maybe, she thought giddily, the RAF to bring in an airstrike.
The lu’crik oyh lunged at Nina again and she stabbed it cleanly with the garden fork, driving one tine into its eye and the other three into the fleshy corner of its mouth. It reared back, pulling the fork from her hand.
Morag saw this as the opportunity to run past but the other male, who had been trying to monopolise the female’s attention, saw this as some sort of threat and lunged at her. Morag stumbled into the borders and got briefly entangled in a thorny rose bush.
Nina’s fork was currently embedded in the other lu’crik oyh’s face – it was doing a spectacularly bad job of trying to dislodge it by headbutting the back wall of the house – and she looked about for another weapon. She picked up a plastic can of weed killer and hurled it at the lu’crik oyh threatening Morag. The can bounced and splashed across the creature’s face. It reared as though burned.
Morag pushed herself out of her thorny bush, ran to the wall and stepped over onto whatever narrow bank was on the other side in pursuit of Jeffney Ray.
The forked lu’crik oyh (which clearly subscribed to the ‘try, try again’ school of thought) charged at the house one last time and, in a single, swift and noisy act, skewered itself and fell dead. There was a loud ploosh and Nina turned away from the self-kebabbed spiderfish to see that the other male had disappeared into the canal. There was no sign of Morag.
The female, who had gone from two suitors to none in the flap of a fin, turned this way and that, hollering her weird squeaky cry. From not far away – not far enough at all – came answering sounds of destruction as prized pond pets were drawn to the flirty female.
“Bitch, you need to shut up,” said Nina and considered what gardening implement would be her next weapon of choice.
A narrow strip of land ran along the backs of the canalside houses, a balance beam of muddy turf between garden borders and the Stratford-upon-Avon canal. Morag Senior worked her way along it, foot by tricky foot, following Jeffney Ray. The desperate fool was in the water, splashing his way across the canal. He was some distance ahead of her but Senior’s eyes kept returning to the waters at her feet. She had seen the lu’crik oyh go under and could picture it all too clearly in her mind’s eye, cruising through its element. It might have been clumsily dangerous on land, but underwater it was an agile and hidden terror. She studied Jeffney’s inefficient breaststroke and wondered whether lu’crik oyh preyed on frogs.
Jeffney clutched at the grass verge of the opposite bank.
“You can’t get away!” she shouted.
Probably spurred on by the prospect of death from below rather than a desire to prove Senior wrong, Jeffney Ray hauled himself up and rolled exhausted onto the towpath. Senior looked up and down the waterway. There was a bridge a couple of hundred yards ahead. She hurried towards it because there was no way she would be swimming with a lu’crik oyh in the water.
Nina was rapidly working on her hoe-wielding skills.
The female lu’crik oyh might have been a fraction of the size of the males but it was still as big as Nina and, to the extent that insect-fish hybrids’ faces could convey intentions, it looked like it was eyeing her up for lunch.
Nina just wanted the damned bitch to shut up with the whining and go quietly. It wasn’t much to ask, but every time Nina whacked at it with the long-handled ho
e to drive it back to its pond, the adn-bhul creature would blart out another horrid honk.
Trying to drive it away wasn’t working. Nina wondered whether trying to lure it might be more effective, so she gave it a tempting waggle of leg, a cry of “come and try my tasty thighs” and hopped and skipped enticingly into the open rear door of the house. The lu’crik oyh needed no further encouragement and slithered in behind her. All she needed to do now was circle around and shut the door from the outside to trap it in the house.
Nina ran to the front of the house and pulled at the front door handle. It was locked. There was no key.
“What kind of person locks their front door and hides the key?” she demanded of the world.
The lu’crik oyh was in the kitchen, turning towards the hallway and Nina. Nina went back partway towards it and opened the downstairs toilet door, pulling it open as a barrier between herself and the lu’crik oyh a second before the creature ran into it.
The door swung back on its hinges. Nina leaned her weight against it and dug in her heels. The lu’crik oyh was stronger but Nina felt the pressure on the door ease. The damned thing had gone into the toilet. She slammed the door shut after it and pulled the fat and hideous carving of Yoth Mammon off the hallway table to brace the door closed.
She heard angry thrashing noises from within and then the sound of breaking ceramic. A pool of water spread under the doorway.
“Drown yourself if you like,” said Nina but then the noise took on a curiously subterranean tone, a drain-ey noise. “No, you’re too big,” she whispered.
She ran out to the back garden and round to the side of the house but the sounds from underground were already moving on.
“Come on, bitch. Play fair.”
The sounds moved under the partition fence and onward toward the house next door. Nina stepped through the smashed fence, over the tangled remains of a rotary clothes line. She had no idea where the drains might lead next but she had no time to wonder. There was a scream from the upstairs of the house. Someone had probably just developed a lifelong phobia of toilets. How long that life would be remained to be seen.
Vivian entered the meeting room bearing a tea pot and two cups on a tray. Professor Sheikh Omar sat with his chair angled towards the window. The metal rings that shrouded the Library of Birmingham building barely impeded the view of Centenary Square and the demolition site over Chamberlain Square next door. A crane, higher than any building around, swung its arm round with titanic slowness.
“It never stops, does it?” said Omar. “It’s quite beautiful.”
Vivian set the tray down.
“‘One could tear out any number of pages from the Wittgenstein Volume and it would not change its contents a single jot,’” said Vivian. “Your words, professor.”
“Near enough,” said Omar. He regarded the pot. “Are you going to be mother?”
Vivian had not intended it to be any other way. She poured.
“Either you are being dashed civil, my dear,” said Omar, “or you intend to ply me with more truth potion.”
“I can do both,” she said and passed cup and saucer across.
He looked at the colour of the tea before adding a splash of milk. “Tea-making is an art,” he said, not indicating at all whether he thought Vivian had mastered it or not.
“The cornerstone of civilisation.”
“I’m always amazed,” he said, “that the staff in cafeteria these days seem utterly unable to perform the task. They give you a pot of hot water and a tea bag as though they can’t be bothered to introduce one to the other themselves. I’m sure if they took the same approach with sandwiches – here’s your bread, here’s your cheese, chop-chop – they’d soon be out of business.”
“I don’t tolerate it,” said Vivian. “I tell them to get their finger out and make the tea for me.”
“Hear, hear.”
“I’ve had one young incompetent point out that the reason they don’t do teas properly is that they’re all coffee shops these days. I don’t know where all the tea shops went.”
“Died or fled to Yorkshire,” said Omar and sipped gently.
“Your assistant, Maurice,” said Vivian.
“Ah, if it wasn’t for his tea-making skills, I’m sure I would have got bored with him years ago.”
“He’s on his way.”
“You’re letting me go.”
“No. We’re having him arrested.”
Omar put the cup down on the saucer with a soft chink. There was a tremor of emotion in his hands though his voice didn’t betray it. “He’s of a delicate disposition. He doesn’t take kindly to big burly types manhandling him.”
“Either you or he stole a section from the Wittgenstein Volume.”
Omar downed his cup of tea, swallowed noisily and put the cup down heavily. He gave Vivian a pointedly emphatic look and said, “Neither Maurice or I stole your book on Tuesday. That’s the truth.”
Vivian opened her mouth to speak. Omar raised his hand to stop her.
“Neither of us stole it on Tuesday. Neither of us has stolen it, part or all, at any point in time. We have not engaged or asked anyone to steal it for us. I have not offered advice or assistance to anyone who has. I know of no one who has stolen part or all of the book or who has expressed any intention of doing so. If you were to ask me who has taken, had taken it or has plans to take it I would have to say, in all honesty, that I do not know.” He heaved a heavy breath. “Have you genuinely sent officers to arrest Maurice?”
Vivian nodded. “They won’t be there yet.”
“Please,” said Omar. “Don’t.”
Vivian gave it some thought.
Omar tilted his cup to regard the dregs. “Was there any rehpat viarr in there?”
“There was barely anything in the pot left over from this morning,” said Vivian.
Omar nodded in understanding.
“Do you trust me, Mrs Grey?”
“Not an inch, Professor Omar,” she replied.
“So, if I were to tell you that despite any scurrilous rumours and despicable truths told about me, I regard the Venislarn threat just as you do, you wouldn’t believe me?”
“I would be surprised that you presume to know my opinions.”
“It is said that the Big Bloody Book was written by a machine or a god or some other horror,” said Omar. “Clearly something not confined by the notions of time and space inherent in our universe. It is said that the author, Yoth-Kreylah ap Shallas, was a being with a thousand limbs, each holding a pen, fed by the ink of its own blood. I can’t help but picture some sort of literary squid.”
“Yes,” said Vivian. “All very vague and unhelpful nonsense.”
“If one had one of the pens, some simple sympathetic magic would have it direct you to any missing pages.”
“If.”
Omar dabbed at his shirt with a handkerchief where a stray drop of hastily drunk tea had splashed him. “Call off the boys in blue and do not harass my Maurice and I will tell you where you can find such a pen.”
“Oh, please, professor,” said Vivian. “If you are going to waste my time…”
“Cross my honest little heart,” he said and did so.
Vivian had already made her decision but let Omar squirm for several seconds. “Very well,” she said. “Where is the pen?”
“In Birmingham,” he said.
“Yes. I require a little more information than that.”
“No, you don’t, my dear,” said Omar. “Just apply a little thought. Where is the best place to hide a leaf?”
Morag Junior ran after Rod along the towpath in pursuit of the lu’crik oyh. He might have been ex-SAS and a specimen of peak physical fitness but Rod Campbell was built for strength and endurance, not speed. As Junior overtook him, Steve offered words of encouragement.
“Come on, meatsack. This isn’t no boy scout picnic!”
Rod growled wordlessly.
Ahead, the lu’crik oyh was visible a
s a shallow bow wave, a dark V-shape in the water. Further on, there was potential trouble: two cyclists on the towpath, humans (only humans would think yellow Lycra tops, skin-tight trunks and cycling helmets were acceptable clothing to wear in public). The bow wave was definitely edging towards them.
“The noise!” shouted Rod.
“What?” shouted Junior.
“The noise! The wheels!”
It took Junior a good few seconds to work out what he meant. The wheels of the bikes, the brakes… they sounded remarkably like the honking of the female that had driven the lu’crik oyh wild in the village.
“Stop!” she yelled at the cyclists and waved her arms urgently. “Get off! Get off!”
“But it’s our right of way,” she heard one of them say to the other and then the bow wave was at the bank.
In perhaps a life-saving accident, the water splashing over the edge of the bank startled the lead cyclist, who came to a wobbly stop and stumbled off his bike as it fell over. The other could not help but do the same. By the time the lu’crik oyh had lugged itself up onto the path, the noise of squeaking brakes had ended and the cyclists were a few feet away from their bikes.
Both cyclists screamed and swore and shot up the wooded bank next to the canal with the kind of speed one would expect of Lycra-clad athletes. The lu’crik oyh clawed experimentally at one of the bikes.
Now that they were upon the beast, Junior had no idea what they were going to do about it. She slowed but Rod rushed forward, apparently intent on attacking it with a pen.
“Go, giant man!” cried Steve.
Rod raised the pen to stab at it. The lu’crik oyh swung his way and slammed him to the ground with its head. Morag looked for a weapon. She had nothing. There weren’t even any handy sticks or stones on the towpath. With a flicker of mental apology, she plucked Steve off her shoulder and hurled him at the creature. It was a distraction at least.
The creature’s insect eyes shimmered silver as it turned.
“From hell’s heart, I –” yelled Steve and then was gone into its maw.
The creature shook itself and Steve briefly resurfaced between its jaws, apparently trying to pick a fight with the lu’crik oyh’s tongue.