Something Rotten

29 The Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire

We told the President that yes, he was right — the whole thing was some sort of motorway services theme park. Dowding and Parks were genuinely pleased to get their President back, and Yorrick Kaine cancelled the vote in Parliament. Instead, he led a silent prayer to thank providence for returning Formby to our midst. As for Spike and me, we were each given a post-dated cheque and told we would be sure to receive the 'Banjulele with Oak Clusters' for our steadfast adherence to duty.

Spike and I parted after the tiring day's work and I returned to the SpecOps office, where I found a slightly annoyed Major Drabb waiting for me near my car.

'No Danish books found again, Agent Next!' he said through clenched teeth, handing me his report. 'More failure and I will have to take the matter to higher authority.'

I glared at him, took a step closer and prodded him angrily in the chest. I needed Flanker off my case until the Superhoop at the very least.

'You blame me for your failings?'

'Well,' he said, faltering slightly and taking a nervous step backward as I moved even closer, 'that is to say—'

'Redouble your efforts, Major Drabb, or I will have you removed from your command. Do you understand?'

I shouted the last bit, which I didn't want to do — but I was getting desperate. I didn't want Flanker on my back in addition to everything else that was going on.

'Of course,' croaked Drabb, 'I take full responsibility for my failure.'

'Good,' I said, straightening up. 'Tomorrow you are to search the Australian Writers' Guild in Wootton Bassett.'

Drabb dabbed his brow and made another salute.

'As you say, Miss Next.'

I tried to drive past the mixed bag of journalists and TV news crews but they were more than insistent so I stopped to say a few words.

'Miss Next,' said a reporter from ToadSports, jostling with the five or six other TV crews trying to get the best angle, 'what is your reaction to the news that five of the Mallets have withdrawn from the side following death threats?'

This was news to me but I didn't show it.

'We are in the process of signing new players to the team—'

'Miss Manager, with only five players in your team, don't you think it better just to withdraw?'

'We'll be playing, I assure you.'

'What is your response to the rumour that the Reading Whackers have signed ace player "Bonecrusher" McSneed to play forward hoop?'

'The same as always — the Superhoop will be a momentous victory for Swindon.'

'And what about the news that you have been declared "unfit to manage" given your highly controversial decision to put Biffo in defence?'

'Positions on the field are yet to be decided and are up to Mr Jambe. Now if you'll excuse me . . .'

I started the engine again and drove away from the SpecOps building, the news crews still shouting questions after me. I was big news again, and I didn't like it.

I arrived home just in time to rescue Mother from having to make more tea for Friday.

'Eight fish fingers!' she muttered, shocked by his greed. 'Eight!'

'That's nothing,' I replied, putting my pay cheque into a novelty teapot and tickling Friday on the ear. 'You wait until you see how many beans he can put away.'

'The phone's been ringing all day. Aubrey somebody or other about death threats or something?'

'I'll call him. How was the zoo?'

'Ooh!' she cooed, touched her hair and tripped out of the kitchen. I waited until she was gone then knelt down close to Friday.

'Did Bismarck and Gran . . . kiss?'

'Tempor incididunt ut labors,' he replied enigmatically, 'et dolore magna aliqua.'

'I hope that's a "definitely not", darling,' I murmured, filling up his beaker. As I did so I caught my wedding ring on the lip of the cup, and I stared at it in a resigned manner. Landen was back again. I clasped it tightly and picked up the phone and dialled.

'Hello?' came Landen's voice.

'It's Thursday.'

'Thursday!' he said with a mixture of relief and alarm. 'What happened to you? I was waiting for you in the bedroom and then I heard the front door close! Did I do something wrong?'

'No, Land, nothing. You were eradicated again.'

'Am I still?'

'Of course not.'

There was a long pause. Too long, in fact. I looked at my hand. My wedding ring had gone again. I sighed, replaced the receiver and went back to Friday, heavy of heart.

I called Aubrey as I was giving Friday his bath and tried to reassure him about the missing players. I told him to keep training and I'd deliver. I wasn't sure how, but I didn't tell him that. I just said it was 'in hand'.

'I have to go,' I told him at last. 'I've got to wash Friday's hair and I can't do it with one hand.'

That evening, as I was reading Pinocchio to Friday, a large tabby cat appeared on the wardrobe in my bedroom. It didn't appear instantly, either — it faded in from the tip of its tail, all the way up to its very large grin. When he first started working in Alice in Wonderland he was known as 'The Cheshire Cat' but the authorities moved the Cheshire county boundaries and he thus became 'The Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat', but that was a bit of a mouthful so he was known more affectionately as 'The Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire' or, more simply, 'The Cat'. His real name was 'Archibald' but that was reserved for his mother when she was cross with him.

He worked very closely with us at Jurisfiction, where he was in charge of the Great Library, a cavernous and almost infinite depository of every book ever written. But to call the Cat a librarian would be an injustice. He was an Uberlibrarian — he knew about all the books in his charge. When they were being read, by whom — everything. Everything, that is, except where Yorrick Kaine was a featured part. Friday giggled and pointed as the Cat stopped appearing and stared at us with a grin etched on his features, eagerly listening to the story.

'Hello!' he said as soon as I had finished, kissed Friday and put out the bedside light. 'I've got some information for you.'

'About?'

'Yorrick Kaine.'

I took the Cat downstairs, where he sat on the microwave as I made some tea.

'So what have you found out?'

'I've found out that an alligator isn't someone who makes allegations — it's a large reptile a bit like a crocodile.'

'I mean about Kaine.'

'Ah. Well, I've had a careful trawl and he doesn't appear anywhere in the character manifests either in the Great Library or the Well of Lost Plots. Wherever he's from, it isn't from published fiction, poetry, jokes, non-fiction or knitting patterns.'

'I don't believe you'd come out here to tell me you've failed, Chesh,' I said. 'What's the good news?'

The Cat's eyes flashed and he twitched his whiskers.

'Vanity publishing!' he announced with a flourish.

It was an inspired guess. I'd never even considered he might be from there. The realm of the self-published book was a bizarre mix of quaint local histories, collections of poetry, magna opera of the truly talentless — and the occasional gem. The thing was, if they became officially published they were welcomed into the Great Library with open arms — and that hadn't happened.

'You're sure?'

The Cat handed me an index card.

'I knew this was important to you so I called in a few favours.'

I read the card aloud.

'At Long Last Lust, 1931. Limited edition run of one hundred. Author: Daphne Farquitt.'

1 looked at the Cat. Daphne Farquitt. Writer of nearly five hundred romantic novels and darling of the Romance genre.

'Before she was famous writing truly awful books she used to write truly awful books that were self-published,' explained the Cat. 'In At Long Last Lust, Yorrick plays a local politician eager for self-advancement. He isn't a major part, either. He's only mentioned twice and doesn't even warrant a description.'

'Can you get me into the vanity publishing library?' I asked.

'There is no vanity library,' the Cat said with a shrug. 'We have figures and short reviews gleaned from vanity publishers' manifests and Earnest Scribbler Monthly, but little else. Still, we need only to find one copy and he's ours.'

He grinned again but I didn't join him.

'Not that easy, Cat. Take a look at this.'

I showed him the latest issue of The Toad. The Cat carefully put on his spectacles and read: 'Danish book-burning frenzy reaches new heights with Copenhagen-born Farquitt's novels due to be consigned to flames.'

'I don't get it,' said the Cat, placing a yearning paw on a Moggilicious Cat Food advert, 'what's he up to burning all her books?'

'Because,' I said, 'he obviously can't find all the original copies of At Long Last Lust and in desperation has whipped up anti-Danish feeling as a cover. With luck his book-burning idiots will do the job for him. I'm a fool not to have realised. After all, where would you hide a stick?'

There was a long pause.

'I give up,' said the Cat, 'where would you hide a stick?'

'In a forest.'

I stared out of the window thoughtfully. At Long Last Lust. I didn't know how many of the hundred copies still remained, but with Farquitt's books still being consigned to the furnaces I figured there had to be at least one. An unpublished Farquitt novel the key to destroying Kaine. I couldn't make this stuff up.

'Why would you hide a stick in a forest?' asked the Cat, who had been pondering this question for some moments in silence.

'It's an analogy,' I explained. 'Kaine needs to get rid of every copy of At Long Last Lust but doesn't want us to get suspicious, so he targets the Danes — the forest - rather than Farquitt — the stick. Get it?'

'Got it.'

'Good.'

'Well, I'd better be off, then,' announced the Cat, and he vanished.

I was not much surprised at this for the Cat usually left in this manner. I poured the tea, added some milk and then put some mugs on a tray. I was just pondering where I might find a copy of At Long Last Lust and, more importantly, thinking of calling Julie again to ask her how long her husband flicked on and off 'like a light bulb' when the Cat reappeared balanced precariously on the Kenwood mixer.

'By the by,' he said, 'the Gryphon tells me that the sentencing for your fiction infraction is due in two weeks' time. Do you want to be present?'

This related to the time I had changed the ending to Jane Eyre. They found me guilty at my trial but the law's delay in the BookWorld just dragged things on and on.

'No,' I said after a pause. 'No, tell him to come and find me and let me know what my sentence will be.'

'I'll tell him. Well, toodle-oo,' said the Cat, and vanished, this time for good.

I pushed open the door of Mycroft's workshop with my toe, held it open for Pickwick to follow me in, then closed it before Alan could join us and placed the tray on a worktop. Mycroft and Polly were staring intently at a small and oddly shaped geometric solid made of brass.

'Thank you, pet,' said Polly. 'How are things with you?'

'Fair to not very good at all, Auntie.'

Polly was Mycroft's wife of some forty-two years and although seemingly in the background was actually almost as brilliant as her husband. She was a bouncy seventy and managed Mycroft's often irascible and forgetful nature with a patience that I found inspiring. 'The trick,' she told me once, 'is to regard him like a five-year-old with an IQ of two hundred and sixty.' She picked up her tea and blew on it.

'Still thinking about whether to put Smudger on defence?'

'I was thinking of Biffo, actually.'

'Smudger and Biffo would both be wasted on defence,' muttered Mycroft, making a fine adjustment on one face of the brass polyhedron with a file. 'You ought to put Snake on defence. He's untried, I admit, but he plays well and has youth on his side.'

'Well, I'm really leaving team strategy to Aubrey.'

'I hope he's up to it. What do you make of this?'

He handed me the solid and I turned the grapefruit-sized object over in my hands. Some of the faces were odd sided and some even sided — and some, strangely enough, appeared to be both. My eyes had trouble making sense of it.

'Very . . . pretty,' I replied. 'What does it do?'

'Do?' Mycroft smiled. 'Put it on the worktop and you'll see what it does!'

I placed it on the surface but the oddly shaped solid, unstable on the face I had placed it upon, tipped on to another. Then, after a moment's pause, it wobbled again and fell on to a third. It carried on in this jerky fashion across the worktop until it fell against a screwdriver, where it stopped.

'I call it a Nextahedron,' announced Mycroft, picking up the solid and placing it on the floor, where it continued its random perambulations, watched by Pickwick, who thought it might be chasing her, and ran away to hide. 'Most irregular solids are only unstable on one or two faces. The Nextahedron is unstable on all its faces — it will continue to fall and tip until a solid object impedes its progress.'

'Fascinating!' I murmured, always surprised by the ingenuity of Mycroft's inventions. 'But what's the point?'

'Well,' explained Mycroft, warming to the subject, 'you know those inertia! generator things that self-wind a wristwatch?'

'Yes?'

'If we have a larger one of those inside a Nextahedron weighing six hundred tons, I calculate we could generate as much as a hundred watts of power.'

'But. . . but that's only enough for a light bulb!'

'Considering the input is nil, I think it's a remarkable achievement,' replied Mycroft somewhat sniffily. 'To generate significant quantities of power we'd have to carve something of considerable mass — Mars, say — into a huge Nextahedron with a flat plate falling around the exterior, held firm by gravity. The power could be transmitted to earth using Tesla beams and . . .'

His voice trailed off as he started to sketch ideas and equations in a small notebook. I watched the Nextahedron fall and rock and jiggle across the floor until it fell against a roll of wire.

'On a more serious note,' confided Polly, putting down her tea, 'you could help us identify some of the devices in the workshop. Since both Mycroft and I have taken the Big Blank you might be able to help.'

'I'll try,' I said, looking around the room at the bizarre devices. 'That one over there guesses how many pips there are in an unopened orange, the one with the horn is an Olfactrograph for measuring smells, and the small box thing there can change gold into lead.'

'What's the point of that?'

'I'm not entirely sure.'

Polly made notes against her inventory and I spent the next ten minutes trying to name as many of Mycroft's inventions as I could. It wasn't easy. He didn't tell me everything.

'I'm not sure what this one is, either,' I said, pointing at a small machine about the size of a telephone directory lying on a workbench.

'Oddly enough,' replied Polly, 'this is one we do have a name for. It's an ovinator.'

'How do you know if you can't remember?'

'Because,' said Mycroft, who had finished his notes and now rejoined us, 'it has "ovinator" engraved on the case just there. We think it's either a device for making eggs without the need of a chicken, or for making chickens without the need of an egg. Or something else entirely. Here, I'll switch it on.'

Mycroft flicked a switch and a small red light came on.

'Is that it?'

'Yes,' replied Polly, staring at the small and very unexciting metallic box thoughtfully.

'No sign of any eggs or chickens,' I observed.

'None at all.' Mycroft sighed. 'It might just be a machine for making a red light come on. Drat my lost memory! Which reminds me: any idea which device actually is the memory eraser?'

We looked around the workshop at the odd-looking and mostly anonymous contraptions. Any one of them may have been used to erase memories, but then any one of them may have been a device for coring apples, too.

We stood in silence for a moment.

'I still think you ought to have Smudger on defence,' said Polly, who was probably the biggest croquet fan in the house.

'You're probably right,' I said, suddenly feeling that it would be easier just to go with the flow. 'Uncle?'

'Polly knows best,' he replied. 'I'm a bit tired. Who wants to watch Name That Fruit on the telly?'

We all agreed that it would be a relaxing way to end the day and I found myself watching the nauseating quiz show for the first time in my life. I realised just how bad it was halfway through, and went to bed, temples aching.