A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (24 page)

I hadn't thought that
Chuzzlewit
was a popular book, but I was wrong. Not one of us expected the public outcry and media attention that his murder provoked. Mr. Quaverley's autopsy was a matter of public record; his burial was attended by 150,000 Dickens fans from around the globe. Braxton Hicks told us to say nothing about the Litera Tec involvement, but news soon leaked out.

BOWDEN CABLE
,
speaking to
The Owl
newspaper

C
OMMANDER
B
RAXTON
H
ICKS
threw the newspaper on the desk in front of us. He paced around for a bit before collapsing heavily into his chair.

“I want to know who told the press,” he announced. Jack Schitt was leaning on the window frame and watching us all while smoking a rather small and foul-smelling Turkish cigarette. The headline was unequivocal:

C
HUZZLEWIT
DEATH
:
SPECOPS BLAMED

It went onto outline specifically how “unnamed sources” within Swindon SpecOps had intimated that a botched ransom payment had been the cause of Quaverley's death. It was arse
about face but the basic facts were correct. It had placed Hicks under a lot of pressure and caused him to overspend his precious budget by a phenomenal amount to try to discover Hades' whereabouts. The spotter plane that Bowden and I had pursued had been found a burned-out wreck in a field on the English side of Hay-on-Wye. The Gladstone full of the counterfeit money was close by along with the ersatz Gainsborough. It hadn't fooled Acheron for one second. We were all convinced that Hades was in Wales but even political intervention at the highest level had drawn a blank—the Welsh Home Secretary himself had sworn that they would not knowingly stoop to harbor such a notorious criminal. With no jurisdiction on the Welsh side of the border, our searches had centered around the marches—to no avail.

“If the press found out, it wasn't from us,” said Victor. “We have nothing to gain from press coverage and everything to lose.” He glanced over at Jack Schitt, who shrugged.

“Don't look at me,” said Schitt noncommittally, “I'm just an observer, here at the behest of Goliath.”

Braxton got up and paced the room. Bowden, Victor and I watched him in silence. We felt sorry for him; he wasn't a bad man, just weak. The whole affair was a poisoned chalice, and if he wasn't removed by the regional SpecOps commander, Goliath would as likely as not do the job themselves.

“Does anyone have any ideas?”

We all looked at him. We had a few ideas, but nothing that could be said in front of Schitt; since he was so willing to let us be killed that evening at Archer's place, not one of us would have given Goliath so much as the time of day.

“Has Mrs. Delamare been traced?”

“We found her okay,” I replied. “She was delighted to discover that she had a motorway services named after her. She
hasn't seen her son for five years but is under surveillance in case he tries to make contact.”

“Good,” murmured Braxton. “What else?”

Victor spoke.

“We understand Felix7 has been replaced. A young man named Danny Chance went missing from Reading; his face was found in a waste basket on the third floor of the multistory. We've distributed the morgue photos of Felix7; they should match the new Felix.”

“Are you sure Archer didn't say anything but ‘Felix7' before you killed him?” asked Hicks.

“Positive,” assured Bowden in his best lying voice.

We returned to the LiteraTec office in a glum mood. Braxton's removal might provoke a dangerous shake-up in the department, and I had Mycroft and Polly to think of. Victor hung up his coat and called across to Finisterre, asking him if there had been any change. Finisterre looked up from a much-thumbed copy of
Chuzzlewit.
He, Bailey and Herr Bight had been rereading it on a twenty-four-hour relay basis since Acheron's escape. Nothing seemed to have changed. It was slightly perplexing. The Forty brothers had been working on the only piece of information we had that SO-5 or Goliath didn't. Sturmey Archer had made a reference to a Dr. Müller before expiring and that had been the subject of a rigorous search on SpecOps and police databases. A rigorous yet
secretive
search; that was what had taken the time.

“Anything, Jeff?” asked Victor, rolling up his shirtsleeves.

Jeff coughed.

“There are no Dr. Müllers registered in England or on the continent, either in medicine or philosophy—”

“So it's a false name.”

“—who are
alive.
” Jeff smiled. “However, there
was
a Dr. Müller in attendance at Parkhurst prison in 1972.”

“I'm listening.”

“It was at the same time that Delamare was banged up for fraud.”

“This is getting better.”

“And Delamare had a cellmate named Felix Tabularasa.”

“There's a face that fits,” murmured Bowden.

“Right. Dr. Müller was already under investigation for selling donor kidneys. He committed suicide in '74 shortly before the hearing. Swam into the sea after leaving a note. His body was never recovered.”

Victor rubbed his hands together happily.

“Sounds like a faked death. How do we go about hunting down a dead man?”

Jeff held up a fax.

“I've had to use up a lot of favors at the English Medical Council; they don't like giving out personal files whether the subject is alive or dead, but here it is.”

Victor took the fax and read out the pertinent points.

“Theodore Müller. Majored in physics before pursuing a career in medicine. Struck off in '74 for gross professional misconduct. He was a fine tenor, a good Hamlet at Cambridge, Brother of the Most Worshipful Order of the Wombat, keen train-spotter and a founding member of the Earthcrossers.”

“Hmm,” I murmured. “It's a good bet that he might continue to indulge himself in old hobbies even if he was living under an assumed name.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Victor. “Wait until the next steam train extravaganza? I understand the
Mallard
is defending her speed record next month.”

“Not soon enough.”

“The Wombats
never
disclose membership,” observed Bowden.

Victor nodded. “Well, that's that, then.”

“Not exactly,” I said slowly.

“Go on.”

“I was thinking more about someone infiltrating the next Earthcrossers meeting.”

“Earthcrossers?” said Victor with more than his fair share of incredulity. “You've got no chance, Thursday. Weird lunatics doing strange things privately on deserted hillsides? Do you know what you have to go through to be admitted to their exclusive club?”

I smiled.

“It's mostly distinguished and respected professional people of mature years.”

Victor looked at Bowden and me in turn.

“I don't like that look you're giving me.”

Bowden quickly scoured a copy of the current
Astronomer's Almanac
.

“Bingo. It says here that they meet on Liddington Hill at two
P
.
M
. the day after tomorrow. That gives us fifty-five hours to prepare.”

“No way,” said Victor indignantly. “There is no way, I repeat, no way on God's own earth that you are going to get me to pose as an Earthcrosser.”

An asteroid can be any size from a man's fist to a mountain. They are the detritus of the solar system, the rubbish left over after the workmen have been and gone. Most of the asteroids around today occupy a space between Mars and Jupiter. There are millions of them, yet their combined mass is a fraction of the Earth's. Every now and then an asteroid's orbit coincides with that of Earth. An
Earthcrosser.
To the Earthcrossers Society the arrival of an asteroid at a planet is the return of a lost orphan, a prodigal son. It is a matter of some consequence.

MR
.
S
.
A
.
ORBITER
—
The Earthcrossers

L
IDDINGTON
H
ILL
overlooks the RAF and later Luftwaffe airfield of Wroughton. The low hill is also home to an Iron Age fort, one of several that ring the Marlborough and Lambourn downs. The antiquity of the site, however, was not what attracted the Earthcrossers. They had gathered in almost every country of the globe, following the peculiar predictions of their calling in an apparently random fashion. They always observed the same routine: name the site, do a very good deal with the owners for exclusivity, then move in the month before using either local security or more junior members of the group to
ensure that no infiltrators find their way in. It was perhaps due to this extreme secrecy that the militant astronomical group managed to keep what they did absolutely quiet. It seemed an almost perfect hiding place for Dr. Müller, who co-devised the society in the early fifties with Samuel Orbiter, a notable television astronomer of the time.

Victor parked his car and walked nonchalantly up to two huge gorilla-sized men who were standing next to a Land Rover. Victor looked to the left and right. Every three hundred yards was a group of armed security men with walkie-talkies and dogs, keeping an eye out for trespassers. There was no way on earth that anyone could slip by unseen. The best means of entering anywhere you aren't allowed to go is to walk in the front door as though you own the place.

“Afternoon,” said Victor, attempting to walk past. One of the gorillas stepped into his way and put a huge hand on his shoulder.

“Good afternoon, sir. Fine day. May I see your pass?”

“Of course,” said Victor, fumbling in his pocket. He produced the pass inserted behind the worn plastic window of his wallet. If the gorillas took it out and saw that it was a photocopy, then all would be lost.

“I haven't seen you around before, sir,” said one of the men suspiciously.

“No,” replied Victor evenly, “you'll see from my card that I belong to the Berwick-upon-Tweed spiral arm.”

The first man passed the wallet to his comrade.

“We've been having problems with infiltrators, isn't that so, Mr. Europa?”

The second man grunted and passed the wallet back to Victor.

“Name?” asked the first, holding up a clipboard.

“I probably won't be on the list,” said Victor slowly. “I'm a latecomer. I called Dr. Müller last night.”

“I don't know of any Dr. Müller,” said the first, sucking in air through his teeth as he looked at Victor with narrowed eyes, “but if you
are
an Earthcrosser you will have no problem telling me which of the planets has the highest density.”

Victor looked from one to the other and laughed. They laughed with him.

“Of course not.”

He took a step forward but the smile on the men's faces dropped. One of them put out another massive hand to stop him.

“Well?”

“This is preposterous,” said Victor indignantly. “I've been an Earthcrosser for thirty years and I've never had this sort of treatment before.”

“We don't like infiltrators,” said the first man again. “They try to give us a bad name. Do you want to know what we do to bogus members? Now. Again. Which of the planets has the highest density?”

Victor looked at the two men, who looked back at him menacingly.

“It's Earth. The lowest is Pluto, okay?”

The two security men were not yet convinced.

“Kindergarten stuff, mister. How long is a weekend on Saturn?”

Two miles away in Bowden's car, Bowden and I were frantically calculating the answer and transmitting it down the line to the earpiece that Victor was wearing. The car was stuffed with all sorts of reference books on astronomy; all that we could hope was that none of the questions would be too obscure.

“Twenty hours,” said Bowden down the line to Victor.

“About twenty hours,” said Victor to the two men.

“Orbital velocity of Mercury?”

“Would that be aphelion or perihelion?”

“Don't get smart, pal. Average will do.”

“Let me see now. Add the two together and—ah, good Lord, is that a ringed chaffinch?”

The two men didn't turn to look.

“Well?”

“It's, um, one hundred and six thousand miles per hour.”

“Uranus' moons?”

“Uranus?” replied Victor, stalling for time. “Don't you think it's amusing that they changed the pronunciation?”

“The moons, sir.”

“Of course. Oberon, Titania, Umb—”

“Hold it! A
real
Earthcrosser would have logged the closest first!”

Victor sighed as Bowden reversed the order over the airwaves.

“Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Belinda, Puck, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon.”

The two men looked at Victor, nodded and then stepped back to let him pass, their manner changed abruptly to acute politeness.

“Thank you, sir. Sorry about that but, as I'm sure you realize, there are very many people who would like to see us stopped. I'm sure you understand.”

“Of course, and may I congratulate you on your thoroughness, gentlemen. Good-day.”

As Victor walked by they stopped him again.

“Aren't you forgetting something, sir?”

Victor turned. I had wondered about some sort of password, and if that was what they wanted now we were sunk. He decided to let them lead the situation.

“Leave it in the car, sir?” asked the first man after a pause. “Here, borrow mine.”

The security man reached inside his jacket and pulled out, not a gun as Victor expected, but a baseball catcher's glove. He smiled and handed it over.

“I dare say I won't make it up there today.”

Victor slapped his own forehead with the ball of his hand.

“Mind like a string bag. I must have left it at home. Imagine, coming to an Earthcrossers meet and forgetting my catcher's glove!”

They all laughed with him dutifully; the first guard said:

“Have a good time, sir. Earthstrike is at 14:32.”

He thanked them both and hopped into the waiting Land Rover before they changed their minds. He looked at the catcher's glove uneasily. What on earth were they up to?

The Land Rover dropped him at the east entrance to the hill-fort. He could see about fifty people milling around, all wearing steel helmets. A large tent had been set up in the center of the fort and it bristled with aerials and a large satellite dish. Farther up the hill was a radar scanner that revolved slowly. He had expected to see a large telescope or something, but no such apparatus seemed to have been set up.

“Name?”

Victor turned to see a small man staring up at him. He was holding a clipboard and wearing a steel helmet and seemed to be taking full advantage of his limited authority.

Victor attempted a bluff.

“That's me there,” he said, pointing at a name at the bottom of the list.

“Mr. Continued Overleaf, are you?”

“Above that,” Victor countered hurriedly.

“Mrs. Trotswell?”

“Oh, er, no. Ceres. Augustus Ceres.”

The small man consulted his list carefully, running a steel ballpoint pen down the row of names.

“No one of that name here,” he said slowly, looking at Victor suspiciously.

“I'm from Berwick-upon-Tweed,” explained Victor. “Late entry. I don't suppose the news filtered through. Dr. Müller said I could drop in any time.”

The small man jumped.

“Müller? There's no one here of that name. You must mean Dr. Cassiopeia.” He winked and smiled broadly. “Okay. Now,” he added, consulting his list and looking around the fort, “we're a bit thin on the outer perimeter. You can take station B3. Do you have a glove? Good. What about a helmet? Never mind. Here, take mine; I'll get another from stores. Earthstrike at 14:32. Good-day.”

Victor took the helmet and wandered off in the direction that the small man had indicated.

“Hear that, Thursday?” he hissed. “Dr. Cassiopeia.”

“I heard it,” I replied. “We're seeing what we've got on him.”

Bowden was already contacting Finisterre, who was waiting back at the Litera Tec office for just such a call.

Victor filled his briar pipe and was walking toward station B3 when a man in a Barbour jacket nearly marched straight into him. He recognized Dr. Müller's face from the mugshot immediately. Victor raised his hat, apologized and walked on.

“Wait!” yelled Müller. Victor turned. Müller raised an eyebrow and stared at him.

“Haven't I seen your face somewhere else?”

“No, it's always been right here on the front of my head,” replied Victor, attempting to make light of the situation. Müller simply stared at him with a blank expression as Victor carried on filling his pipe.

“I've seen you somewhere before,” continued Müller, but Victor was not so easily shaken.

“I don't think so,” he announced, offering his hand. “Ceres,” he added. “Berwick-upon-Tweed spiral arm.”

“Berwick-upon-Tweed, eh?” said Müller. “Then you know my good friend and colleague Professor Barnes?”

“Never heard of him,” announced Victor, guessing that Müller was suspicious. Müller smiled and looked at his watch. “Earthstrike in seven minutes, Mr. Ceres. Perhaps you'd better take your station.”

Victor lit his pipe, smiled and walked off in the direction he had been given earlier. There was a stake in the ground marked B3, and he stood around feeling slightly stupid. All the other Earthcrossers had donned their helmets and were scanning the sky to the west. Victor looked around and caught the eye of an attractive woman of about his own age a half-dozen paces away at B2.

“Hello!” he said cheerfully, tipping his helmet.

The woman fluttered her eyelashes demurely.

“All well?” she asked.

“Top hole!” returned Victor elegantly, then added quickly: “Actually, not. This is my first time.”

The lady smiled at him and waved her catcher's glove.

“Nothing to it. Catch away from the body and keep your eyes sharp. We may get a lot or none at all, and if you
do
catch one, be sure to put it down on the grass straight away. After deaccelerating through the Earth's atmosphere, they tend to be a trifle hot.”

Victor stared at her.

“You mean, we aim to
catch
meteors?”

The lady laughed a delicious laugh.

“No, no, silly!—They're called
meteorites.
Meteors are things that burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. I've been to seventeen of these suspected Earthstrikes since '64. I once nearly
caught one in Tierra del Fuego in '71. Of course,” she added more slowly, “that was when dear George was still alive . . .”

She caught his eye and smiled. Victor smiled back. She carried on:

“If we witness an Earthstrike today, it will be the first predicted strike in Europe to be successful. Imagine catching a meteorite! The rubble made during the creation of the universe over four and a half billion years ago! It's like an orphan finally coming home!”

“Very . . . poetic,” responded Victor slowly as I started talking in his ear by way of the wire.

“There's no one listed anywhere by the name of Dr. Cassiopeia,” I told him. “For goodness' sake don't let him out of your sight!”

“I won't,” replied Victor, looking around for Müller.

“Pardon?” asked the lady at B2, who had being eyeing him up and not staring at the sky at all.

“I won't, er, drop one if I catch one,” he replied hurriedly.

The Tannoy announced the Earthstrike in two minutes. There was a murmur from the expectant crowd.

“Good luck!” said the lady, giving him a broad wink and staring up into the cloudless sky.