Something Rotten

33 Shgakespeafe

We turned to find a small man with wild, unkempt hair standing in the doorway. He was dressed in Elizabethan clothes that had seen far better days and his feet were bound with strips of cloth as makeshift shoes. He twitched nervously and one eye was closed — but beyond this the similarity to the Shakespeares Bowden had found was unmistakable. A survivor. I took a step closer. His face was lined and weathered and those teeth he still possessed were stained dark brown and worn. He must have been at least seventy but it didn't matter. The genius that had been Shakespeare had died in 1616 but genetically speaking he was with us right now.

'William Shakespeare?'

'I am a William, sir, and my name is Shgakespeafe,' he corrected.

'Mr Shgakespeafe,' I began again, unsure of how to explain exactly what I wanted, 'my name is Thursday Next and I have a Danish prince urgently in need of your help.'

He looked from me to Bowden to Millon and then back to me again. Then a smile broke across his weathered features.

'O, wonder!' he said at last. 'How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!'

He stepped forward and shook our hands warmly; it didn't look as though he had seen anyone for a while.

'What happened to the others, Mr Shgakespeafe?'

He beckoned us to follow him and then was off like a gazelle. We had a hard job keeping up with him as he darted down the labyrinthine corridors, nimbly avoiding the rubbish and broken equipment. We caught up with him when he stopped at a broken window that overlooked what had once been a large exercise compound. In the middle were two grassy mounds. It didn't take a huge amount of imagination to guess what was underneath them.

'O heart, heavy heart, Why sigh'st thou without breaking?' murmured Shgakespeafe sorrowfully. 'After the slaughter of so many peers by falsehood and by treachery, when will our great regenitors be conquered?'

'I only wish I could say your brothers would be avenged,' I told him sadly, 'but in all honesty the men who did this are now dead themselves. I can only offer yourself and any others who survived my protection.'

He took in every word carefully and seemed impressed by my candour. I looked beyond the mass graves of the Shakespeares to several other mounds beyond. I had thought they might have cloned two dozen or so, not hundreds.

'Are there any other Shakespeares here?' asked Bowden.

'Only myself — yet the night echoes with the cries of my cousins,' replied Shgakespeafe. 'You will hear them anon.'

As if in answer there was a strange cry from the hills. We had heard something like it when Stig dispatched the chimera back in Swindon.

'We are not safe, Clarence, we are not safe,' said Shgakespeafe, looking around nervously. 'Follow me and give me audience, friends.'

He led us along the corridor and into a room that was full of desks set neatly in rows, each with a typewriter upon it. Only one typewriter was anything like still functioning; around it stood stacks and stacks of typewritten sheets of paper — the product of Shgakespeafe's outpourings. He led us across and gave us some of his work to read, looking on expectantly as our eyes scanned the writing. It was, disappointingly, nothing special at all — merely scraps of existing plays cobbled together to give new meaning. I tried to imagine the whole room full of Shakespeare clones clattering away at their typewriters, their minds filled with the Bard's plays, and scientists moving among them trying to find one, just one, who had even one half the talent of the original.

Shgakespeafe beckoned us to the office next to the writing room, and there showed us mounds and mounds of paperwork, all packaged in brown paper with the name of the Shakespeare clone who had written it printed on a label. As the production of writing outstripped the ability to evaluate it, the people working here could only file what had been written and then store it for some unknown employee in the future to peruse. I looked again at the mound of paperwork. There must have been twenty tons or more in the storeroom. There was a hole in the roof and the rain had got in; much of this small mountain of prose was damp, mouldy and unstable.

'It would take an age to sort through it for anything of potential brilliance,' mused Bowden, who had arrived by my side. Perhaps, ultimately, the experiment had succeeded. Perhaps there was an equal of Shakespeare buried in the mass grave outside, his work somewhere deep within the mountain of unintelligible prose facing us. It was unlikely we would ever know, and if we did it would teach us nothing new — except that it could be done and others might try. I hoped the mound of paperwork would just slowly rot. In the pursuit of great art Goliath had perpetrated a crime that far outstripped anything I had so far seen.

Millon took pictures, his flashgun illuminating the dim intenor of the scriptorium. I shivered and decided I needed to get away from the oppressiveness of the interior. Bowden and I walked to the front of the building and sat among the rubble on the front steps, just next to a fallen statue of Socrates that held a banner proclaiming the value of the pursuit of knowledge.

'Do you think we'll have trouble persuading Shgakespeafe to come with us?' he asked.

As if in answer, Shgakespeafe walked cautiously from the building. He earned a battered suitcase and blinked in the harsh sunlight. Without waiting to be asked he got in the back of the car and started to scribble in a notebook with a pencil stub.

'Does that answer your question?'

The sun dropped below the hill in front of us and the air suddenly felt colder. Every time there was a strange noise from the hills Shgakespeafe jumped and looked around nervously, then continued to scribble. I was just about to fetch Stig when he appeared from the building carrying three enormous leather-bound volumes.

'Did you find what you needed?'

He passed me the first book, which I opened at random. It was, I discovered, a Goliath biotech manual for building a Neanderthal. The page I had selected gave a detailed description of the Neanderthal hand.

'A complete manual,' he said slowly. 'With it we can make children.'

I handed back the volume and he placed it with the others in the boot of the car. There was another unearthly wail in the distance.

'A deadly groan,' muttered Shgakespeafe, sitting lower in his seat, 'like life and death's departing!'

'We had better get going,' I said. 'There is something out there and I've a feeling we should leave before it gets too inquisitive.'

'Chimera?' asked Bowden. 'To be honest we've seen the grand total of none from the moment we came in here.'

'We do not see them because they do not wish to be seen,' observed Stig. 'There are chimera here. Dangerous chimera.'

'Thanks, Stig,' said Millon, dabbing his brow with a handkerchief, 'that's a real help.'

'It is the truth, Mr de Floss.'

'Well, keep the truth to yourself in future.'

I shut the rear door as soon as Stig had wedged himself in next to Shgakespeafe and climbed in the front passenger seat. Bowden drove off as rapidly as the car would allow.

'Millon, is there any other route out that doesn't take us through that heavily wooded area where we found the other cars?'

He consulted the map for a moment.

'No. Why?'

'Because it looked like a good place for an ambush.'

'This really gets better and better, doesn't it?'

'On the contrary,' replied Stig, who took all speech at face value, 'this is not good at all. We find the prospect of being eaten by chimeras extremely awkward.'

'Awkward?' echoed Millon. 'Being eaten is awkward?'

'Indeed,' said Stig, 'the Neanderthal instruction manuals are far more important than we.'

'That's your opinion,' retorted Millon. 'Right now there is nothing more important than me.'

'How very human,' replied Stig simply.

We sped up the road, drove back through the rock cutting and headed towards the wood.

'By the pricking of my thumbs,' remarked Shgakespeafe in an ominous tone of voice, 'something wicked this way comes!'

'There!' yelled Millon, pointing a quivering finger out of the window. I caught a glimpse of a large beast before it vanished behind a fallen oak, then another jumping from one tree to another. They weren't hiding themselves any more. We could all see them as we drove down the wooded road, past the abandoned cars. Lolloping beasts of a ragged shape flitted through the woods, experimental creations of an industry before regulation. We heard a thump as one leapt out of the woods, sprang upon the steel roof of the car and then disappeared with a whoop into the forest. I looked out of the rear window and saw something unspeakably nasty scrabble across the road behind us. I drew my automatic and Stig wound down the window, tranquilliser gun at the ready. We rounded the next corner and Bowden stamped on the brakes. A row of chimeras had placed themselves across the road. Bowden threw the car into reverse but a tree came crashing down behind us, cutting off our escape. We had driven into the trap, the trap was sprung — and all that remained was for the trapper to do with the trapped whatever they wished.

'How many?' 1 asked.

'Ten up front,' said Bowden.

'Two dozen behind,' answered Stig.

'Lots either side!' quivered Millon, who was more used to making up facts to fit his bizarre conspiracy theories than actually witnessing any first hand.

'What a sign it is of evil life,' murmured Shgakespeafe, 'Where death's approach is seen so terrible!'

'Okay,' I muttered, 'everyone stay calm and when I say, open fire.'

'We will not survive,' said Stig in a matter-of-fact tone. 'Too many of them, not enough of us. We suggest a different strategy.'

'And that is?'

Stig was momentarily lost for words.

'We do not know. Just different.'

The chimeras slavered and emitted low moans as they moved closer. Each one was a kaleidoscope of varying body parts, as though their creators had been indulging in some sort of perverse genetic mix-and-match one-upmanship.

'When I count to three rev up and drop the clutch,' I instructed Bowden. 'The rest of you open up with everything we've got.' I handed Bowden's gun to Floss. 'Know how to use one of these?'

He nodded and flipped off the safety.

'One . . . Two . . .'

I stopped counting because a cry from the woods had startled the chimeras. Those that had ears pricked them up, paused, then began to depart in fright. It wasn't an occasion for relief. Chimeras are bad but something that frightened chimeras could only be worse. We heard the cry again.

'It sounds human,' murmured Bowden.

'How human?' added Millon.

There followed several more cries from more than one individual, and as the last of the terrified chimeras vanished into the undergrowth I breathed a sigh of relief. A group of men appeared out of the brush to our right. They were all extremely short and wore the faded and tattered uniform of what appeared to be the French army. Some wore shabby cockaded hats, others had no jackets at all and some only a dirty white linen shirt. My relief was short-lived. They stood at the edge of the forest and regarded us suspiciously, heavy cudgels in their hands.

'Qu'est-ce que c'est?' said one, pointing at us.

'Anglais?' said another.

'Les rosbifs? Ici, en France?' said a third in a shocked tone.

'Non, ce n'est pas possible!'

It didn't take a genius to figure out who they were.

'A gang of Napoleons,' hissed Bowden. 'Looks like Goliath weren't just trying to eternalise the Bard. The military potential of cloning a Napoleon in his prime would be considerable.'

The Napoleons stared at us for a moment and then talked among themselves in low tones, had an argument, gesticulated wildly, raised their voices and generally disagreed with one another.

'Let's go,' I whispered to Bowden.

But as soon as the car clunked into gear the Napoleons leaped into action with cries of: 'Au secours! Les rosbifs's'échappent! N'oubliez pas Agincourt! Vite! Vite!' and then rushed the car. Stig got off a shot and managed to tranq a particularly vicious-looking Napoleon in the thigh. They smashed their cudgels against the car, broke the windows and sent a cascade of broken glass all over us. I thumped the central door-locking mechanism with my elbow as a Napoleon grappled with my door handle. I was just about to fire at point-blank range into the face of another Napoleon when there was a tremendous explosion thirty yards in front of us. The car was rocked by the blast and enveloped momentarily in a drifting cloud of smoke.

'Sacrebleu!' shrieked Napoleon, breaking off the attack. 'Le Grand Nez! Avancez, mes amis, mart aux ennemis de la République!'

'Go!' I shouted at Bowden, who, despite having been struck a glancing blow by Napoleon, was still just about conscious. The car juddered away and I grabbed the steering wheel to avoid a band of twenty or so Wellingtons of varying degrees of shabbiness who were streaming past the car in their haste to dispose of Napoleon.

'Up, guards, and at them!' I heard Wellington shout as we gathered speed down the road, past a smoking artillery piece and the abandoned cars we had seen on the way in. Within a few minutes we were clear of the wood and the battling factions, and Bowden slowed down.

'Everyone okay?'

They all answered in the affirmative, although they were not unscathed. Millon was still ashen and I took Bowden's gun off him just in case. Stig had a bruise coming up on his cheek and I had several cuts on my face from the glass.

'Mr Shgakespeafe,' I asked, 'are you okay?'

'Look about you,' he said grimly, 'security gives way to conspiracy.'

We drove to the gates, out of Area 21 and through the darkening evening sky to the Welsh border, and home.