A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (8 page)

. . . No one would argue that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Goliath Corporation. They helped us to rebuild after the Second War and it should not be forgotten. Of late, however, it seems as though the Goliath Corporation is falling far short of its promises of fairness and altruism. We are finding ourselves now in the unfortunate position of continuing to pay back a debt that has long since been paid—with interest . . .

Speech to Parliament by English Goliathsceptic
S
AMUEL
P
RING

I
was in the SpecOps Memorial Cemetery in Highgate looking at Snood's headstone. It read:

Filbert R. Snood
A fine operative who gave his
years in the line of duty.
Time waits for no man
SO-12 & SO-5
1953–1985

They say the job ages you—and it had aged Filbert a lot. Perhaps it had been for the best when he didn't call after the accident. It couldn't have worked and the breakup when it
came—as it surely would—might have been too painful. I placed a small stone atop his headstone and bid him adieu.

“You were lucky,” said a voice. I turned and saw a short man in an expensive suit sitting on the bench opposite.

“I'm sorry?” I asked, taken aback by the intrusion into my thoughts. The small man smiled and stared at me intently.

“I'd like to speak to you about Acheron, Miss Next.”

“It's one of the rivers that flow to the underworld,” I told him. “Try the local library under Greek mythology.”

“I was referring to the person.”

I stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out who he was. He wore a small porkpie hat balanced on top of a rounded head that had been crew cut like a tennis ball. His features were sharp, his lips thin, and he was not what you'd call an attractive-looking human being. He sported heavy gold jewelery and a diamond tiepin that twinkled like a star. His patent-leather brogues were covered in white spats and a gold watch chain dangled from his waistcoat pocket. He was not alone. A young man also in a dark suit with a bulge where a pistol should be was standing next to him. I had been so wrapped up in my own thoughts I hadn't noticed them approach. I figured they were SpecOps Internal Affairs or something; I guessed that Flanker and Co. weren't finished with me yet.

“Hades is dead,” I replied simply, unwilling to get embroiled.

“You don't seem to think so.”

“Yeah, well, I've been given six months off due to work-related stress. The shrink reckons I'm suffering from false memory syndrome and hallucinations. I shouldn't believe anything I say, if I were you—and that includes what I just told you.”

The small man smiled again, displaying a large gold tooth.

“I don't believe you're suffering from stress at all, Miss Next. I think you're as sane as I am. If someone who survived the
Crimea, the police and then eight years of tricky LiteraTec work came to me and told me that Hades was still alive, I'd listen to them.”

“And who might you be?”

He handed me a gold-edged card with the dark blue Goliath Corporation logo embossed on it.

“The name's Schitt,” he replied. “Jack Schitt.”

I shrugged. The card told me he was head of Goliath's internal security service, a shadowy organization that was well outside government; by constitutional decree they were answerable to no one. The Goliath Corporation had honorary members in both houses and financial advisers at the Treasury. The judiciary was well represented with Goliath people on the selection panel for High Court judges, and most major universities had a Goliath overseer living within the faculty. No one ever noticed how much they influenced the running of the country, which perhaps shows how good at it they were. Yet, for all Goliath's outward benevolence, there were murmurs of dissent over the Corporation's continued privilege. Their public servants were unelected by the people or the government and their activities enshrined in statute. It was a brave politician who dared to voice disquiet.

I sat next to him on the bench. He dismissed his henchman.

“So what's your interest in Hades, Mr. Schitt?”

“I want to know if he's alive or dead.”

“You read the coroner's report, didn't you?”

“It only told me that a man of Hades' height, stature and teeth was incinerated in a car. Hades has got out of worse scrapes than that. I read
your
report;
much
more interesting. Quite why those clowns in SO-1 dismissed it out of hand I have no idea. With Tamworth dead you're the only operative who knows anything about him. I'm not really concerned about whose fault it
was that night. What I want to know is this: What was Acheron going to do with the manuscript of
Martin Chuzzlewit
?”

“Extortion, perhaps?” I ventured.

“Possibly. Where is it now?”

“Wasn't it with him?”

“No,” replied Schitt evenly. “In your testimony you said he took it with him in a leather case. No trace was found of it in the burned-out car. If he
did
survive, so did the manuscript.”

I looked at him blankly, wondering where all this was going.

“He must have passed it to an accomplice, then.”

“Possibly. The manuscript could be worth up to five million on the black market, Miss Next. A lot of money, don't you think?”

“What are you suggesting?” I asked sharply, my temper rising.

“Nothing at all; but your testimony and Acheron's corpse don't really add up, do they? You said that you shot him after he killed the young officer.”

“His name was Snood,” I said pointedly.

“Whoever. But the burned corpse had no gunshot wounds despite the many times you shot him when he was disguised as Buckett or the old woman.”

“Her name was Mrs. Grimswold.”

I stared at him. Schitt continued.

“I saw the flattened slugs. You would have got the same effect if you had fired them into a wall.”

“If you have a point, why don't you get to it?”

Schitt unscrewed the cap of a Thermos flask and offered it to me. I refused; he poured himself a drink and continued:

“I think you know more than you say you do. We only have your word for the events of that night. Tell me, Miss Next, what was Hades planning to use the manuscript for?”

“I told you: I have no idea.”

“Then why are you going to work as a Litera Tec in Swindon?”

“It was all I could get.”

“That's not true. Your work has been consistently assessed above average and your record states that you haven't been back to Swindon in ten years despite your family living there. A note appended to your file speaks of ‘romantic tensions'. Man trouble in Swindon?”

“None of your business.”

“In my line of work I find there is very little that
isn't
my business. There are a host of other things a woman with your talents could do, but to go back to Swindon? Something tells me you have another motive.”

“Does it really say all that in my file?”

“It does.”

“What color are my eyes?”

Schitt ignored me and took a sip of coffee.

“Colombian. The best. You think Hades is alive, Next. I think you have an idea where he is and I'm willing to guess that he is in Swindon and that's why you're going there. Am I correct?”

I looked him straight in the eye.

“No. I'm just going home to sort myself out.”

Jack Schitt remained unconvinced.

“I don't believe there is such a thing as stress, Next. Just weak people and strong people. Only strong people survive men like Hades. You're a strong person.”

He paused.

“If you change your mind, you can call me. But be warned. I'll be keeping a close eye on you.”

“Do as you will, Mr. Schitt, but I've got a question for you.”

“Yes?”

“What's
your
interest in Hades?”

Jack Schitt smiled again.

“I'm afraid that's classified, Miss Next. Good-day.”

He tipped his hat, rose and left. A black Ford with smoked-glass windows pulled up outside the cemetery and drove him quickly away.

I sat and thought. I had lied to the police psychiatrist in saying I was fit for work and lied to Jack Schitt in saying that I wasn't. If Goliath was interested in Hades and the
Chuzzlewit
manuscript, it could only be for financial gain. The Goliath Corporation was to altruism what Genghis Khan was to soft furnishings. Money came first to Goliath and nobody trusted them farther than they could throw them. They may have rebuilt England after the Second War, they may have reestablished the economy. But sooner or later the renewed nation had to stand on its own and Goliath was seen now as less of a benevolent uncle than a despotic stepfather.

. . . There is no point in expending good money on the pursuit of an engine that can power aircraft without propellers. What is wrong with airships anyway? They have borne mankind aloft for over a hundred relatively accident-free years and I see no reason to impugn their popularity . . .

Congresswoman Kelly, arguing against parliamentary
funds for the development of a new form of propulsion,
August 1972

I
TOOK
a small twenty-seater airship to Swindon. It was only half-full and a brisk tailwind allowed us to make good time. The train would have been cheaper, but like many people I love to fly by gasbag. I had, when I was a little girl, been taken on an immense clipper-class airship to Africa by my parents. We had flown slowly across France, over the Eiffel Tower, past Lyon, stopped at Nice, then traveled across the sparkling Mediterranean, waving at fishermen and passengers in ocean liners who waved back. We had stopped at Cairo after circling the Pyramids with infinite grace, the captain expertly maneuvering the leviathan with the skillful use of the twelve fully orientable propellers. We had continued up the Nile three days later to Luxor, where we joined a cruise ship for the return to the coast. Here we
boarded the
Ruritania
for the return to England, by way of the Straits of Gibraltar and the Bay of Biscay. Little wonder that I tried to return to the fond memories of my childhood as often as I could.

“Magazine, ma'am?” asked a steward.

I declined. In-flight airship magazines were always dull, and I was quite happy just to watch the English landscape slide past beneath me. It was a glorious sunny day, and the airship droned past the small puffy clouds that punctuated the sky like a flock of aerial sheep. The Chilterns had risen to meet us and then dropped away as we swept past Wallingford, Didcot and Wantage. The Uffington White Horse drifted below me, bringing back memories of picnics and courting. Landen and I had often been there.

“Corporal Next?—” inquired a familiar voice. I turned to find a middle-aged man standing in the aisle, a half-smile on his face. I knew instantly who it was, even though we had not met for twelve years.

“Major!—” I responded, stiffening slightly in the presence of someone who had once been my superior officer. His name was Phelps, and I had been under his command the day the Light Armored Brigade had advanced into the Russian guns in error as they sought to repulse an attack on Balaclava. I had been the driver of the armored personnel carrier under Phelps; it had not been a happy time.

The airship started the slow descent into Swindon.

“How have you been, Next?” he asked, our past association dictating the way in which we spoke to one another.

“I've been well, sir. Yourself?”

“Can't complain.” He laughed. “Well, I could, but it wouldn't do any good. The damn fools made me a colonel, dontcha know it.”

“Congratulations,” I said, slightly uneasily.

The steward asked us to fasten our seat belts and Phelps sat down next to me and snapped on the buckle. He carried on talking in a slightly lower voice.

“I'm a bit concerned about the Crimea.”

“Who isn't?” I countered, wondering if Phelps had changed his politics since the last time we had met.

“Quite. It's these UN johnnies poking their noses where they're not welcome. Makes all those lives seem wasted if we give it back now.”

I sighed. His politics
hadn't
changed and I didn't want an argument. I had wanted the war finished almost as soon as I got out there. It didn't fit into my idea of what a
just
war should be. Pushing Nazis out of Europe had been
just
. The fight over the Crimean Peninsula was nothing but xenophobic pride and misguided patriotism.

“How's the hand?” I asked.

Phelps showed me a lifelike left hand. He rotated the wrist and then wiggled the fingers. I was impressed.

“Remarkable, isn't it?” he said. “They take the impulses from a sensor thingummy strapped to the muscles in the upper arm. If I'd lost the blasted thing above the elbow I'd have looked a proper Charlie.”

He paused for a moment and returned to his first subject.

“I'm a bit concerned that public pressure might have the government pulling the plug before the offensive.”

“Offensive?”

Colonel Phelps smiled.

“Of course. I have friends higher up who tell me it's only a matter of days before the first shipment of the new plasma rifles arrives. Do you think the Russians will be able to defend themselves against Stonk?”

“Frankly, no; that is unless they have their own version.”

“Not a chance. Goliath is the most advanced weapons
company in the world. Believe me, I'm hoping as much as the next man that we never have to use it, but Stonk is the high ground this conflict has been waiting for.”

He rummaged in his briefcase and pulled out a leaflet.

“I'm touring England giving pro-Crimea talks. I'd like you to come along.”

“I don't really think—” I began, taking the leaflet anyway.

“Nonsense!” replied Colonel Phelps. “As a healthy and successful veteran of the campaign it is your duty to give voice to those that made the ultimate sacrifice. If we give the peninsula back, every single one of those lives will have been lost in vain.”

“I think, sir, that those lives have already been lost and no decision we can make in any direction can change that.”

He pretended not to hear and I lapsed into silence. Colonel Phelps's rabid support of the conflict had been his way of dealing with the disaster. The order was given to charge against what we were told would be a “token resistance” but turned out to be massed Russian field artillery. Phelps had ridden the APC on the outside until the Russians opened up with everything they had; a shell-burst had taken his lower arm off and peppered his back with shrapnel. We had loaded him up with as many other soldiers as we could, driving back to the English lines with the carrier a mound of groaning humanity. I had gone back into the carnage against orders, driving among the shattered armor looking for survivors. Of the seventy-six APCs and light tanks that advanced into the Russian guns, only two vehicles returned. Out of the 534 soldiers involved, 51 survived, only 8 of them completely uninjured. One of the dead had been Anton Next, my brother. Disaster doesn't even
begin
to describe it.

Fortunately for me the airship docked soon after and I was able to avoid Colonel Phelps in the airfield lounge. I picked up my
case from baggage retrieval and stayed locked in the ladies' until I thought he had gone. I tore his leaflet into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet. The airfield lounge was empty when I came out. It was bigger than was required for the amount of traffic that came to town; an off-white elephant that reflected the dashed hopes of Swindon's town planners. The concourse outside was similarly deserted except for two students holding an anti-Crimea war banner. They had heard of Phelps's arrival and hoped that they could turn him from his prowar campaigning. They had two chances: fat and slim.

They looked at me and I turned quickly away. If they knew who Phelps was, they might quite conceivably know who I was as well. I looked around the empty pickup point. I had spoken on the phone to Victor Analogy—the head of the Swindon LiteraTecs—and he had offered to send a car to pick me up. It hadn't arrived. It was hot, so I removed my jacket. A looped recording came over the Tannoy exhorting nonexistent drivers not to park in the deserted white zone, and a bored-looking worker came by and returned a few trolleys. I sat down next to a Will-Speak machine at the far end of the concourse. The last time I was in Swindon the airship park had been simply a grass field with a rusty mast. I guessed that much else had changed too.

I waited five minutes, then stood and paced impatiently up and down. The Will-Speak machine—officially known as a Shakespeare Soliloquy Vending Automaton—was of
Richard III
. It was a simple box, with the top half glazed and inside a realistic mannequin visible from the waist up in suitable attire. The machine would dispense a short snippet of Shakespeare for ten pence. They hadn't been manufactured since the thirties and were now something of a rarity; Baconic vandalism and a lack of trained maintenance were together hastening their demise.

I dug out a ten-pence piece and inserted it. There was a gentle whirring and clicking from within as the machine wound
itself up to speed. There had been a
Hamlet
version on the corner of Commercial Road when I was small. My brother and I had pestered our mother for loose change and listened to the mannequin refer to things we couldn't really understand. It told us of “the undiscovered country.” My brother, in his childish naé¯veté, had said he wanted to visit such a place, and he did, seventeen years later, in a mad dash sixteen hundred miles from home, the only sound the roar of engines and the
crump-crump-crump
of the Russian guns.

Was ever woman in this humor wooed?
asked the mannequin, rolling its eyes crazily as it stuck one finger in the air and lurched from side to side.

Was ever woman in this humor won?

It paused for effect.

I'll have her, but I'll not keep her long . . .

“Excuse me?—”

I looked up. One of the students had walked up and touched me on the arm. He wore a peace button in his lapel and had a pair of pince-nez glasses perched precariously on his large nose.

“You're Next, aren't you?”

“Next for what?”

“Corporal Next, Light Armored Brigade.”

I rubbed my brow.

“I'm not here with the colonel. It was a coincidence.”

“I don't believe in coincidences.”

“Neither do I. That's a coincidence, isn't it?”

The student looked at me oddly as his girlfriend joined him. He told her who I was.

“You were the one who
went back,
” she marveled, as though I were a rare stuffed parakeet. “It was against a direct order. They were going to court-martial you.”

“Well, they didn't, did they?”

“Not when The
Owl on Sunday
got wind of your story. I've read your testimony at the inquiry. You're antiwar.”

The two students looked at one another as if they couldn't believe their good fortune.

“We need someone to talk at Colonel Phelps's rally,” said the young man with the big nose. “Someone from the other side. Someone who has been there. Someone with clout. Would you do that for us?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I looked around to see if, by a miracle, my lift had arrived. It hadn't.

. . .
Whom I,
continued the mannequin,
some three months hence, stabbed in my angry mood at Tewkesbury?

“Listen, guys, I'd love to help you, but I can't. I've spent twelve years trying to forget. Speak to some other vet. There are thousands of us.”

“Not like you, Miss Next.
You
survived the charge. You went back to get your fallen comrades out. One of the fifty-one. It's your
duty
to speak on behalf of those that didn't make it.”

“Bullshit. My duty is to myself. I survived the charge and have lived with it every single day since. Every night I ask myself: Why me? Why did I live and the others, my brother even, die? There is no answer to that question and that's only just where the pain
starts
. I can't help you.”

“You don't have to speak,” said the girl persistently, “but better for one old wound to open than a thousand new ones, eh?”

“Don't teach me morality, you little shit,” I said, my voice rising.

It had the desired effect. She handed me a leaflet, took her boyfriend by the arm, and departed.

I closed my eyes. My heart was beating like the
crump-crump-crump
of the Russian field artillery. I didn't hear the squad car pull up beside me.

“Officer Next?—” asked a cheery voice.

I turned and nodded gratefully, picked up my case and walked over. The officer in the car smiled at me. He had long dreadlocked hair and a pair of overly large dark glasses. His uniform was open at the collar in an uncharacteristically casual way for a SpecOps officer, and he wore a goodly amount of jewelry, also strictly against SpecOps guidelines.

“Welcome to Swindon, Officer! The town where anything can happen and probably will!”

He smiled broadly and jerked a thumb toward the rear of the car.

“Trunk's open.”

The boot contained a lot of iron stakes, several mallets, a large crucifix and a pick and shovel. There was also a musty smell, the smell of mold and the long dead—I hurriedly threw in my bag and slammed the boot lid down. I walked around to the passenger door and got in.

“
Shit
!—” I cried out, suddenly noticing that in the back, pacing the rear seats behind a strong mesh screen, was a large Siberian wolf. The officer laughed loudly.