Attack of the Cupids (7 page)

There was a list on the wall. It was headed ‘One Thousand Things To Do With My Life.' There were exactly a thousand things on the list. Some of them even had ✓s against them. ‘Save the World' didn't have a ✓ yet but the way things were going it might not be much longer.

She had everything sorted out and in its place. She had Dates, Must-do's and Should-do's. She had libraries of Things I Know. She had fountains of
Generosity, gardens of Patience and an entire lighting system of Hope with bulbs that
never
blew. Her mind was built upon space, purpose and clarity. And the greatest of these was clarity.

‘Boo,' said Muddlespot sulkily.

He shuffled past another war room. This one was working on Operation End World Poverty. The guys in there looked as though they were winning too. If Muddlespot had had something to kick he would have kicked it.

He skirted the Reading Corridors carefully. The normal rules of Sally's mind (space, purpose etc) did not seem to apply so much to the Reading Corridors, which were dark and narrow and the nearest thing her brain had to a rough end of town. They tended to turn sharp corners so you couldn't see what was waiting round them. Doors and little windows opened on these passages, and from behind them came strange sounds, music maybe, and the noise of hidden feasting, or perhaps screams and cries of battle. Some very queer things lived down there, and sometimes came out. Whenever you found something unexpected in Sally's mind, the chances were that it had wandered out of the Reading Corridors. It was an unsettling place. Muddlespot could never quite escape the
feeling that he himself might somehow have come from there, even though he knew with every part of his scientific and rational being that he had been created when someone had hit someone else with a brass hammer in the City of Pandemonium far below, and that he had flown in here on a batskin airplane with squadrons of enraged doves on his tail. Sally had been reading
Paradise Lost
at the time.

He came to the Rules.

They were written into a wall of transparent crystal. When you moved around and looked at them from the other side, you could still read them because the lettering wasn't backwards. And every thought in Sally's mind knew what they said.

The First Rule was this:

Be nise to evryone and they wil be hapy.

It had been written very early in Sally's life when her mind had been quite a different place, much smaller and with bright colours and slides and ball parks and things. The words
and they wil be
had been changed several times over the years, first by adding
usuly
and then by more elaborate forms such as
they will be more likely to be
and
it will help them to be
and
more than they otherwise would be
and so on,
in the light of experience. Muddlespot had even tried writing in
it will not make them any more
 . . . But the words
Be nise to evryone . . . hapy
were still there underneath it all, carved deep in a childish hand. They always would be, to the end of Sally's life.

The Second Rule had been written in about Year 4. It read:

Do your best at everything because you can.

There had been no amendments. Experience hadn't even tried to argue with that one.

The Third Rule had been added after a rocky couple of months with relationships in Year Eight. It said:

Keep ruls 1 & 2 but dont rub friends faces in it & dont wory 2 much cos they wil probly b OK with u again soon.

Again there were no amendments. Although a little while afterwards the hand of Experience had added a
and a ✓.

‘What,' groaned Muddlespot, ‘am I supposed to do with this?'

He had tried and tried. He had spent hours whispering to Sally things like ‘Did you see the way she looked at you?' and ‘Why are they
excluding
you?' and ‘They're
only
being friendly because they want you to help them with their homework' etc. It had made
no difference at all. Sally liked and was liked by too many people. If things ever went bad with someone she would go off and be with others for a bit. And (see Rule 1) look for a way to make up. Because everybody did like Sally. Even Muddlespot liked her – a bit. As much as his professional duties allowed.

Which made it all very difficult.

‘But I'm here all the same,' he snarled, leering at his reflection in a crystal pillar. ‘Me, Muddlespot.
Prince
of Evil!'

His reflection leered back at him. The surface of the column was curved. It exaggerated his waist while doing nothing for his height. As he was basically round anyway the effect was not flattering.

He found a flat bit of wall between two powerful-looking statues. Here he studied his reflection again, frowning fiercely and drawing himself up to his full shape (that of a pear on short stilts). ‘I was sent for a purpose,' he intoned. ‘Hand-picked.'

The statues looked down upon him. The list from which he had been picked had numbered precisely one. The Authority whose hand had done the picking had gone strangely quiet since the Incident of the Cat, the Muffin and the Wonky Oven. As far as Low Command were concerned, Sally was now in the box marked ‘Off
Limits' and Muddlespot in the one marked ‘On His Own'.

‘I wouldn't be here if she didn't want me!' he cried.

‘Want me, want me,' whispered the corridors.
But what does she want me
for
?
The whispers ran away, fading down the aisles and chambers.

Then, just at the moment when they should have died altogether, there was an echo, or a shuffle of movement, round a corner where he could not see.

‘Who's there?' said Muddlespot, wondering if he had really heard it.

Silence.

Frowning, Muddlespot went to investigate.

What he didn't want to find was that Low Command had changed their minds about that ‘On His Own' label and had sent someone up to replace him. If so, there was going to have to be a quick bit of murder behind the statues, because he was
not
going back downstairs for a career interview. Career interviews with Low Command tended to be painful and when they were over the only career options left would be as (a) somebody's wall ornament, or (b) their mittens. The sort of people Muddlespot worked for did not like failure.

He tensed. He leaped to the corner of the passage, claws bared. The passage was empty.

‘Hello?'

In the darkness at the far end, something scuttled.

Warily Muddlespot stole forward. He entered a small octagonal chamber. The light here was tinted just faintly maroon. The chamber too was empty. He listened. He heard nothing.

Or maybe – maybe – the whisper of bare feet, receding quickly down a distant corridor, and a soft explosion of sound that disappeared with it.

It might have been a snigger.

The air had a huge stillness, as if the whole of Sally's being was holding her breath. (Which it very well might be.)

There
was
something in the room: something small, lying in the middle of the floor like a sweet packet that someone had dropped.

Litter, in the mind of Sally Jones? The rules on litter were
very
strict.

It was a folded bit of card. Muddlespot bent to pick it up.

As he did so, the floor shook.

‘It's not FAIR!' Billie screamed.

‘Yes it is,' said Sally. They were face to face in the kitchen at home. Sally's feet were planted, her arms were folded. She wasn't backing down. Not even when Billie thrust her face, red as a ripe tomato, within centimetres of Sally's own.

‘Sweetheart,' Mum pleaded from the sidelines, ‘you don't have to invite anyone you don't want to . . .'

‘She already has,' said Sally. ‘How's Holly going to feel now if you tell her you don't want her after all?'

‘But she makes me
sick
! I just look at her and I feel
sick
! All the time I'm sitting at the table with her in school, I'm trying not to throw up! And I've
got
to have her because
Sally's
invited
Kaz
!

‘Kaz is coming,' said Sally. ‘I can't uninvite her.'

‘No,' said Mum. ‘Of
course
Kathy is coming. Billie – why don't you just
talk
to Holly and clear up whatever the matter is? Last week you were best friends . . .'

‘
NO!
' shrilled Billie. ‘We weren't
ever
! And the trouble with Holly is HOLLY!'

‘Oh,' said Mum.

‘All right. Tell Holly you don't want her and invite someone else,' said Sally.

‘There
is
no one else!'

‘What about Josh? He's nice.'

‘NO.
BOYS!
'
screamed Billie.

‘That does it!' fumed the Inner Sally, who wasn't feeling nearly as calm as the Outer Sally was managing to look. ‘I'm going to kill her!'

‘No you aren't,' said Windleberry, who was being exactly as calm as the Outer Sally, and even had his arms folded and feet planted in the same way.

‘Then I hope she kills herself! Why doesn't she?'

‘You don't mean that.'

‘Don't I?
We'd
all be happier – and so would she!'

They stood side by side, looking out through the great windows which were the Outer Sally's eyes, and which were largely filled with the sight of Billie's red face.

‘You're just so
selfish
!'
came Billie's voice from outside.
‘Selfish-selfish-
selfish
!'

‘
I'm
selfish?' screamed the Inner Sally. ‘Looked in a mirror lately, have you?'

‘I'm not going to uninvite people I've invited,'
said the Outer Sally, without raising her voice.
‘If you don't want Holly to come, then invite Lauren or someone like that.'

‘Well done,' said Windleberry.

‘
When
I need your advice . . .' growled the Inner Sally.

‘. . . But Lauren won't come if Freda isn't there!'

‘Then invite
both
of them, sweetheart,'
said Mum.
‘Sally won't mind, will you?'

‘Not a bit,'
said the Outer Sally.

‘Can I say “Well Done” again?' said Windleberry.

‘She's got one more than me, now,' said Sally. ‘I knew she would.'

‘You don't mind about that. You said so yourself.'

‘I mind that she's got it by shouting and screaming.'

‘Greg's not doing the barbecue, is he?'
Billie said dangerously.

‘He'd like to,'
said Mum.

‘Seconds out, round two,' said Sally. ‘She'll get at Mum about Greg now. She knows they're going through a bad patch.'

‘. . . Well,
I
can't do it, sweetheart! I'm not going to have the time. It'll give him something to do . . .'
Mum continued.

‘But he's so
embarrassing
! He tries to be
cool
. And his hairy
paunch!
'

‘Darling – he'll wear a nice plain T-shirt, I promise . . .'

‘He should wear a nice plain sign round his neck that says
I Am Embarrassing
.'

‘Actually I agree with her there,' said Sally.

. . . He mustn't talk to anybody. He mustn't even
look
at them . . .'

‘He's just trying to be friendly . . .'

‘Friendly? He makes me
sick
! I just don't understand why you . . .'

‘Time to step in,' said the Inner Sally.

‘So,'
came her own voice from outside.
‘Does this mean you're uninviting Holly and inviting Freda and Lauren instead?'

Through the windows onto the world they saw Billie's face swing round upon them like the gun turret of a tank.

‘No,'
she said.
‘I'm going to invite Cassie and Viola.'

‘
What?
' cried the Inner Sally.

And the Outer Sally said,
‘You're crazy.'

‘I'll invite who
I
want to,'
said Billie, reddening again.
‘
You
have.'

‘But Cassie and Viola. Won't. Come.'

‘It'll just look like we're trying to get in with their group,' groaned the Inner Sally. ‘And that'll never happen, unless we invite the twenty coolest sixth-form boys in the county too. Which would be nice, but they wouldn't come either.'

‘
YES THEY WILL!!!!
'

‘Social suicide,'
said the Outer Sally.