Copyright © 2003 by John Grant. All rights reserved.

Part One   -   Part Two   -   Part Three   -   Part Four   -   Part Five

Part One

BOOK ONE

Thursday Night and Friday Morning:
A GUMSHOE IS BORN

Draconology #1
Shuffling on Wall Street

It always amused Buster Maltravis that he could walk from one end of Wall Street to the other and back again and no one ever paid him any notice. Not the other suits – the young ones scurrying with cellphones clamped like disfiguring growths to their ears, the old ones moving more sedately, their eyes far-fixed as if upon a sunlit land only they could see. Not the messengers, puffed up with sleek importance or dripping with designer-stained casuals. Not the secretaries wondering if they'd got time for lunch. Not the cyclists looking for a red light to run. Not the occasional well bred callgirl, glancing at her watch on her way to a one-on-one conference. Not the shoeshine guy on Broadway. Not the tourists, gaping around in grim determination to find something to look at in the world's second most famous canyon.

Most certainly not the tourists.

There were disadvantages, Buster Maltravis recognized, to living in Manhattan – not the least of them being the matter of virgins – but these were far outweighed by the advantages. There were very good and very simple reasons, in short, for basing his operations here.

And there was a very good and a very simple reason why it always amused Buster Maltravis that no one seemed to notice him.

He had more power over the future of human civilization than all the leaders of the free world rolled into one.

And just about nobody knew it.

That was why.

# # #

Ratiocination #1
The New ME

Thursday I was out of a job again, which was nothing special and I'd probably hardly have noticed it if Diane hadn't decided to dump me in favour of an accountant.

"He's an accountant with flair," she said to me, noticing the way my right eyebrow had gone up to indicate that I'd have thought she'd have better taste. "He's got a bit of get up and go. Pizzazz. Spunk. He's making something out of his life, and you aren't, Norris. You're just a shithead knows how to spell. You don't even have a fucking job, asshole." Same sentiments but different words as when a caveman had come home and told his mate he couldn't find any mammoth anywhere. Or when Adam told Eve the grocery store was all out of apples.

"What the hell do you mean saying I can spell?" I said, but she was too busy packing her Crystals of Power to hear me.

She tried to slam the door as she went, but the hinges were loose and so all she did was get her foot caught in it.

"And," I yelled after her, hanging over the banister, "I hope you run into Monty Bean and he bums a buck off of you!"

There could be few more effective curses than that. Monty Bean was the crκme de la crκme of the local panhandlers – the panhandler's panhandler. It had long been a source of bitterness between us that Diane was not immune to his cajolings whereas I, by dint of evasion tactics learned during an earlier career as a shoplifter, was.

I didn't really mind Diane leaving – although there were a couple of her CDs it was going to be hard to replace – because at least since Tuesday I'd had my eyes if nothing else on the new departmental secretary I'd discovered waiting for me on that day when Golgotha Publishing had decided my editorial talents were better suited to cookery books than to the thrillers I'd been handling all the way since the previous Friday – this was, you understand, before Golgotha Publishing had decided today that, on second thoughts, my editorial talents were actually better suited to checking the job ads in Publishers' Weekly for typographical errors.

In fact, it had been a kind of confusing two weeks for my editorial talents, because I'd started out editing the Moonshadow science fiction list for Leonora Press, a mid-sized publisher with a treasured family tradition that lasted exactly until BRG Communications, a Dutch company that had flooded the market with crockery which sang the greatest hits of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in the language of your choice, had placed a fat offer on old Mr Leonora's desk. BRG recognized that my talents lay in the field of self-improvement books, and I began to learn fast How To Create a New YOU in Only Seven Days. By three days later, when I was still less than half-New, the bottom dropped out of the singing-crockery market and BRG decided to divest itself of its overseas interests, overseas for the Dutch being home to me.

Luckily Amalgamated Regional Newspapers was looking around for a new company to invest in now that it had rid itself of its haberdashery chain, so it took over the publishing arm of BRG Communications. ARN decided my editorial talents were being wasted on self-improvement books – "Norris, self-improvement's dead" – and started me in on the development of the new pornographic line of the singing crockery they'd been forced to buy, along with the book publishing, from BRG. This was to be advertised as "Hot Stuff to Eat Your Hot Stuff Off Of" – I was rather proud of that line – and sounded just like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra until you listened to the lyrics and realized they were freely adapted from the Kama Sutra. Gave a whole new meaning to "My Way", sort of thing.

I was getting quite excited by late morning of my first day in the new medium but lunchtime brought the exciting, invigorating news that Amalgamated Regional Newspapers had done a deal with Golgotha Publishing which was going to be good news for everyone except the unfortunate eighty per cent who were being downsized. Yet again my editorial talents were to be directed towards a bright new vocation – "You're the third person today who's made the joke about the pornographic-singing-crockery market getting shafted, Norris, so can it" – which was, obviously for a man of my experience, thrillers.

At least this brought me some job stability, because for a full three days I was able to cool my crockery-inflamed brain by reading about serial killers who wrote messages out of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Hebrew in blood on the walls, serial killers who in their main life were the kindest Santa Claus the kids had ever come across, serial killers who thrust numismatically fascinating banknotes into various of their victims' orifices, serial killers who were driven into murderous fury every time they heard someone playing Stockhausen on the accordion, serial killers who dressed up as albino gorillas ...

Apparently, or so all these authors maintained, all serial killers really in their heart of hearts want to be caught – which must be quite an easy objective to achieve, come to think of it, if you're wandering around dressed up as an albino gorilla.

From there it was an obvious step, according to the Golgotha corporate mind, to cookery books. It was a step I took with a certain vivacity after first catching sight of the love of my life, the cookery department's secretary, whose name I now unfortunately forget. On one occasion she let me fetch a cup of water for her from the cooler, so I knew she was equally interested in me; and I'd become sure things would progress deliciously further between us. Now we both had been simultaneously downsized and Diane was conveniently departing with my wittily sardonic "Well, all I can say is he must be really hot between the balance sheets" still ringing in her ears and a bruise spreading across her palm from where I'd hit it with my face. Romance was in the air. As soon as I'd checked that the heartless, selfish bitch really had taken all her CDs, including the copy of Janis Ian's Breaking Silence that I'd stuffed down the back of the couch to forestall such an action in the event of her hurried departure, I got on the phone and said, "Gladys" – Gladys wasn't actually the departmental secretary's name, but I'm extrapolating – "Gladys, I've an extremely interesting case of personal angst here and I'd like to discuss it with you in a secluded little Javanese restaurant I know in the Village and can afford", but Gladys slammed the phone down as soon as she recognized my voice, which I took to be a discouraging sign.

So I decided there was nothing for it but to start looking for another job.

Some rapid work with the keyboard and then the bubblejet started heaving out my résumé.

My résumé, I had to admit as I read it, was not my strongest selling point. The three days working on self-improvement books would stand me in good stead, of course, and I'd been a thriller editor even longer than that if you counted the weekend, but really all I could rely on was the astonishing four months I'd run the Moonshadow list, which was regarded internationally as what would have been one of science fiction's most prestigious imprints had not Old Man Leonora been incapable of sending out an honest royalty statement, which meant I'd been stuck with pulp reprints and stuff the other houses wouldn't touch even though it was written by insightful, forward-looking intellectual prodigies with acne problems. Before Leonora and Moonshadow there had been no publishing experience to speak of; I'd only come into the offices to fix the telephones when Old Man Leonora, deaf even then, had hired me on the spot.

One of the self-improvement titles I'd started editing came to my rescue. "It is a universal truth," Melanie Steinwitz III had written in How YOU Can Be a Plutocrat in Three Easy Stages – of which Stage One, in my instance, was looking up "plutocrat" in the dictionary – "that, so long as you maintain a strict adherence to FACTS, your résumé can look

• better
• brighter
• ballsier

if you just put the right slant on it." Putting the right slant on mine did not take very long – Random House has had so many chief executives in its time that no one can remember who the fuck they all were – and that meant I had the rest of the evening free to go out and play.

With the whole of Manhattan as my playground.

# # #

Ratiocination #2
A Sudden Focus on Bifurcation

"OK," said the woman with the legs, "how about we forget about you buying me a drink and just go straight back to my place?"

Sounded good to me.

"Don't misunderstand me," she added.

Odd. There hadn't seemed a lot to misunderstand. The converse of what I'd had to drink.

"You're not normally this kind of a girl?" I hazarded.

She looked at me vaguely. Her eyes had that slightly misted look of someone who normally wears glasses.

"You did ask if you could buy me a drink and if I'd give you a job?" she said hesitantly.

Maybe my approach had lacked subtlety. Blame the last seventeen Harvey Wallbangers.

"Er," I said, "sort of. I can't precisely remember now for certain."

"Well, I have a job to offer," she said. "To the right candidate. Has there been some mistake?"

Don't get me wrong, but Ye Toplesse Hustler Inne on 43rd and Eighth isn't the normal place to encounter prospective employers. Prospective employees, yes, but only if it's a temporary personal therapist you're after.

Now it was my turn to look as if I needed glasses.

"No, no mistake," I said. "I even had a copy of my résumé with me somewhere earlier but I seem to have lost it."

I patted my pockets to show how honest and employable I was.

Diane never had worked out why there was always less money in her purse than she'd thought there'd been – so flighty and irresponsible of her not to have checked the envelope scotchtaped to the back of the bookcase – and thus ready cash was no problem. Cash in the slightly longer term didn't look too bad either, thanks to my plethora of downsizings and redeployments over the past two weeks, each one accompanied by a severance cheque – I wouldn't have dumped Diane if I'd not ascertained my financial security first. I could afford to gamble on the blonde being a timewaster or a nutcase. I could afford to gamble on her having a job for me, OK, but one that paid peanuts. Actually, right now I could afford to gamble on quite a lot on the offchance I might discover if her legs continued on up under the hem of her short black dress or just stopped there.

"Strange coincidence," she was musing. "I was sitting here wondering how I could find the right person for the job – Village Voice? New York Press? New York Times? – and up you come. D'you think there's anything in telepathy?"

No. If she'd been able to read my mind she'd have hit me.

"Yes," I said.

"You're in good company," she said, picking up her purse and stuffing her lipstick and some small change into it. "Carl Jung, Wilhelm Reich ..."

"Wasn't Reich the orgone-box guy?" Thank you, Dilys Greeley, author of 37 Alternative Ways to Enhance YOUR Libido, a book that had done surprisingly badly for Leonora Press three months back despite the wholehearted support of Barnes & Noble. I'd blamed the cover design, the art director had blamed the salesforce and everyone else had blamed me, leaving me no option but to come back for a second round and blame the author.

"The very same," she said, sliding off her stool and taking my arm. "We'll catch a taxi."

"Everyone said he stayed Jung at heart," I said.

"Nothing like a good sense of humour," she said coldly.

We didn't talk much as the cab jolted us up Eighth for what seemed a very long time, me looking out my window and she looking out hers. The driver spent half his time with his head out his window swearing at the top of his voice in either Swedish or Bengali. Manhattan was looking at its finest and the air was just pleasantly warm. It was a nice night for swearing.

We came to a stop somewhere on Central Park West, a few blocks downtown from the Natural History Museum. Before I could find my wallet, the blonde was pushing a twenty through the hatch at the driver and asking very prettily for a receipt. I climbed out onto the sidewalk and breathed in the romantic mixture of traffic fumes and greenery you get around there. Nobody asked me for a cigarette – it was that kind of quality area. The building whose door we'd stopped at looked like a penitentiary stripped of its luxuries, which must mean you had to be rich to live here. Aside from myself, the only drunks I could see looked respectable. Me, I was wondering if I'd remembered to put on clean underpants before coming out to play, which I guess showed the difference between me and them.

The legs were standing beside me. I looked up, and so was their owner.

"OK?" she said, nodding towards the lighted doorway. There was a guy standing just inside it wearing a black uniform, a lot of gold braid and a bad case of strabismus.

"Lead on," I said.

She led.

"Nice night, Ms Frimhalt," said the guy in the uniform to one or other of us as he held the door open.

"Thanks, Marco," she said, smiling absentmindedly.

The elevator was small enough that I could tell she wasn't wearing perfume. There was the smell of recently showered flesh.

"Frimhalt?" I said.

"Yes."

"Ms Frimhalt?"

"Jasmine."

"Really?"

"Yes. My father liked tea so it was either that or Earl Grey."

I looked at her sideways. She was grinning.

"Nothing like a good sense of humour," I said.

"Touché."

"Norris," I said.

"Mr Norris or ...?"

"Norris Gonfalcon."

"You're not Irish?" she said.

"No. And you?"

"No. Not with a name like Frimhalt."

I was beginning to wonder if I'd walked into a play by Harold Pinter. Then I realized she was still grinning. She had the kind of flawless, just-a-drop-of-creamer-in-your-coffee, seemingly unpored skin that looked as if it might go ping if you flicked it with a fingernail. Back in Ye Toplesse Hustler Inne it'd been too dark to tell the colour of her eyes, but now I saw they were the bright blue small kids paint the sky; the dissonance between their colour and the colour of the rest of her, not to mention the trace of epicanthic fold beside them, was, paradoxically, like a chord that should clash but proves when heard to be completely harmonious. Her face was maybe a little thin for John William Waterhouse to have wanted to paint her, but the cheekbones might have swayed him. Her hair was long and golden and very slightly wavy; its ends, at her shoulderblades, curled upwards to form a little runnel I yearned to pull my fingers along. Like her eyes, it seemed incongruous with the darkness of her face, but it was just right on her. She looked quite exceptionally pretty when she was grinning like this – in fact, she looked quite exceptionally pretty even when she wasn't.

Apartment 14 was smaller than a football field, but only just. There were Japanese prints on the walls and thin scatter-rugs on the polished tan-coloured parquet flooring. The furniture was in the lean, pared-back Scandinavian style, all varnished wood and grey glass and tightly stretched leather and matte stainless steel. The air was the colour of air-conditioning. On one of the grey glass tables there was a grey glass ashtray with a mound of grey ash and a couple of butts in it, which, while out of keeping with the rest of the decor, was good news. The bad news was that the place was as tidy as a picture in a catalogue. I hadn't seen anything so sterile since the photo-shoot for Revolutionize YOUR Sex Life with Feng Shui.

"A drink?" she said, leaving me standing by the door as she walked across to the other side of the room, pulling off the silk scarf she'd been wearing and tossing it over the back of a chair, where it settled in perfectly balanced folds to fit in with the rest of the decor.

"I've already had quite a ..." I began.

"No shit, Sherlock," she said, without turning back to look at me. "Will another make a big difference or none at all?"

"I want to be at my best for this ... uh ... interview."

This time she did turn around.

"I meant what I said about having a job to offer."

"I ..."

"Good. I'm glad that's understood" – waving me at an article of furniture that was almost certainly a sofa. "Scotch?"

"That'd ... that'd be fine."

"Malt? Blend?"

"Whatever you're having." I sat down.

"I'm having Isle of Jura."

"Whatever you're having," I repeated. She was obviously a connoisseur. All I knew about Scotch was what I'd read in The High-Alcohol Weightloss Plan. The salesforce had been instructed to tell the Barnes & Noble buyers the reason the pix were blurred was for aesthetic effect. That had been Old Man Leonora's explanation, but when the book flopped he'd said it was mine. I'd said it was the author's, and so the accusatory merrygoround had kept going around as usual, tra-la.

She put a half-full tumbler down in front of me on the grey glass table beside the grey glass ashtray with the mound of grey ash and the couple of butts in it. I looked at her own tumbler. It was full to the brim. She saw me looking at it and grinned again.

"People say I got my looks from my mother and my capacity for alcohol from my father," she explained.

"Does it help you lose weight?"

She looked puzzled for a moment, then gave a little shrug, dismissing the question.

"He can drink all night and be as sober as when he started. Never had a hangover in his life. Mind you, his life will probably be shorter than it could have been, but he's a happy man."

It seemed kind of pointless to me, drinking if you stayed sober, but I didn't say so.

"I'm the same," she said. "Cheers."

"Happy?"

"That too."

I took a gulp of the Isle of Jura. It was pretty good, even though it wasn't a Harvey Wallbanger.

"About this job," I said, reckoning we'd better get to the point while I was still able to reckon we'd better get to the point.

"Yes, about this job." She stared off into the middle distance, letting the words hang. She was rubbing the fingers and thumb of one hand together as if feeling the texture of a piece of cloth. The other hand was holding her drink, which was half gone. "I'm not sure where to begin."

I was surprised. Ever since I'd met her she'd been making quick decisions, seeming to know exactly what she was doing every step of the way. I'd just been following instructions like a well trained sheepdog, initially for reasons that would perhaps need explaining to the Pope but surely no one else and now because ... well, now I wasn't sure exactly why, but it had something to do with her decisiveness. Her hesitancy was as out of place as the ashtray.

"It just all seems so clichéd," she said.

"The good thing about clichés is that they're tried and true."

She acknowledged this with a formal twitch at one side of her mouth.

"If it weren't for my legs I wouldn't feel like such an idiot looking for a gumshoe," she said. "But the legs make it hackneyed. Have you ever noticed how, in just about every hard-boiled private-eye novel where the gumshoe's client is a young female, the first thing you hear about is her legs?"

"The hair's a good move, too," I said.

There was a somewhat meaningful silence between us.

"Jasmine's a nice name," I said.

"Norris isn't."

"True."

More silence.

Back to Pinter.

"Did you get your blue eyes from your mother as well?"

"Yes."

I thought about finishing my drink in a single glug and making for the door but decided not to.

"Gumshoe," I said.

"Yes. As in Sam Spade. Philip Marlowe. Spenser – with an `s', like the poet. Marlowe, Spenser; guess Robert B. Parker didn't think he could get away with calling his hero Shakespeare."

"Or Ireland," I said. "That'd have been a giveaway."

She peered at me through those hazy blue eyes. "You're not as stupid as you look."

"Be difficult."

That grin. Already I was in danger of becoming addicted to it. Gladys, assuming that had been her name, was forgotten – a nice girl, and obviously passionately keen to become a part of my life. Sad, really, but there you are. And what a relief I'd had the good sense to ditch Diane!

"Nothing like a good sense of humour," she said.

"You said that already."

"This time I meant it."

"About this gumshoe business ..."

"Yes." Her glass was empty so she got up and went to the stripped-pine bar on the other side of the room and came back with the bottle. I put my hand over the top of my glass, then took it away again. What the hell.

"People like Marlowe and Spade and all," I said, "they get into dangerous situations and get slapped around a lot. I'm not like that. I'm more like a sort of Hercule Poirot without the brains."

"Or the social graces."

"Them too. And the accong."

I sipped my whisky nervously. I had the feeling the interview had already gotten started and that I wasn't doing too well.

"This shouldn't be dangerous," she said. "Maybe a bit boring at times, but not dangerous."

"No going down those mean streets?"

"Wall Street. Pine Street. Liberty Street. The World Financial Center."

"The World Financial Center's not a street."

She flicked her hand. "Same difference."

"This is something to do with high finance?" I hazarded.

"It has everything to do with high finance," she said. "Have you ever heard of a guy called Buster Maltravis?"

"No."

"That's as good a place as any to start," she said.

# # #

Draconology #2
Two's a Cloud

The last elevator ride up to the observation decks of the Empire State Building is at 11.30 at night, and the sightseers are thrown out ... um, no, the sightseers are ushered out at midnight. There are two observation platforms, one at the 86th floor and the other at the 102nd. From either, during the day, you have the uncanny sensation as you stand looking out across Manhattan that you're flying over the city on the approach to JFK or LaGuardia, and that you should have buckled your seat belt by now.

At nighttime it's different.

What the sunlight shows you by day is a city: the coloured rectangles are certainly vehicles, with drivers, and the smaller moving splodges – smaller than ant-size – are easily enough recognizable as human beings. In one sense you're a somewhat dizzyingly long way from that city, but at the same time you have the feeling you're in almost intimate contact with it: you could, after all, get there very quickly indeed.

By night, though, the panorama is somehow divorced from humanity, or even from life. Well, organic life, anyway. At night you realize some crazy creator god has scattered gleaming jewels across a rumpled velvet tablecloth and then, not satisfied with the arrangement he's made, has started shifting them around. There's a definite sense of plan, of sentient purpose behind all those different movements the lights perform; they're largely restricted to well defined channels, for one thing. But it's not their plan: it's been imposed from the outside by an intelligence that's invisible, imponderable and generally incomprehensible.

One day the creator god will give up on his incessant tinkering with the pattern of the jewels, and on that day the seas shall rise up, the skies shall be filled with blood, the hyena shall give suck to the axolotl, a whole passel of Biblical fundamentalists shall chortle, rub their hands together and tell each other, "See? I told you the earth was flat," and in general we shall all know we're not so much in the End Times but well on through them.

It would be nice to say such fancies were flitting through the mind of Buster Maltravis as he clung to the Empire State Building's spire looking out over the bejewelled nighttime tapestry of Manhattan – nice, but misleading. Buster Maltravis was not one given to fancy – he'd tried it once and hadn't liked it. Instead he was making a statistical calculation, plus or minus ten per cent or so, as to how long it would be before the drought-afflicted, starving, almost entirely bankrupt Third World country to which he'd just authorized a shipment of enriched plutonium would be nudged by the purchase from "almost entirely" to "entirely" and thus be driven to using the plutonium, in tandem with some technology that even now was being leaked with his permission from Azerbaijan, to nuke the shit out of its neighbour state. At that point international peacekeeping forces would necessarily intervene, with as their spearpoint the US military. Some Polaroid photographs that would be taken tonight of the US Vice President engaged in unorthodox activities with various borrowed exhibits from the Bronx Zoo would ensure the US military bought its munitions from a certain Texas-based conglomerate, its software from a couple of Silicon Valley start-ups currently teetering on the verge of insolvency, its uniforms from several garment factories in Minneapolis, its media coverage from Fox News and its R&R from the GoodBliss chain of bordellos – "Fast Service is Our Watchword!"

All of which pillars of Free Enterprise were, of course, owned by Buster Maltravis through a network of shadow companies, toadies and pseudonyms. There were numerous reasons why he preserved his anonymity in all this, but not the least of them was that it simply made good commercial sense. He did, after all, want to make sure the customer had a choice.

Tonight, Thursday – Friday, in fact, because he'd had to wait until the cleaners had finished clearing up after the exodus of the day's human gapers – he'd come up to this eyrie atop the Empire State Building on whim. Whim, like fancy, wasn't something that came easily to him, but he'd been practising it over the last century and a half and had now achieved a fair approximation to spontaneity in its use. He'd made a memo to himself about this particular whim as recently as Tuesday afternoon.

There was a fluttering of leathery wings in the air nearby, momentarily drowning out even the far-below yells and honking of car horns as someone jaywalked, and he knew that the other copy of his memo had reached its intended destination.

"Pollyanna," he breathed, with difficulty choking back the fire that so readily came to his lips whenever he spoke her name.

In response there was a hastily quenched flicker of red flame against the orange gloom of the night sky. Claws rattled on the roof beneath his perch.

"Buster."

Her voice was as coy as any peacock's.

She shuffled up closer to him, her great faceted eyes gazing at him through the semi-darkness. The moon started to come out from behind a cloud but, seeing the choking soup of carbon monoxide and other, more exotic chemicals that squatted like toxic candyfloss above the city, hastily retreated.

Craning his neck downwards, Buster Maltravis regarded Pollyanna in return. They had been conducting such occasional assignations furtively over the past few decades, and it was far too soon for him to be becoming bored of her, yet bored of her he incipiently was. Still, now was not the time to go ripping her into her constituent bones and musculature; were her remains to tumble to the streets below, the humans might very well start asking uncomfortable questions – although, this being New York, they very well might not. In a few years, though ... sometime when they were out on the Grand Hunt at Bella Vista, where there were no prying human eyes to see ...

For now, the lust that was building in him was not blood lust, though equally hard to deny. Still, he thought that somehow there ought to be more.

"Pollyanna ..." he said again.

"Buster," she replied.

"Pollyanna."

"Buster."

"Pollyanna."

"Buster."

"Pollyanna."

"Buster."

"Pollyanna."

"Buster."

"Look," he said with a heavy sigh, "I didn't just invite you here to talk, you know."

"Buster?"

Relinquishing all his aspirations to the turgid, syrup-thick skies above, he dropped on her, snarling and snorting his passion.

# # #

Ratiocination #3
The Unexpected Consequences of Van Halen

"Before we continue this conversation," said Jasmine, leaping to her feet again, "there are a few things I must do."

"Before we continue this conversation," I said, "there are a few things we ought to estab ... estab ... sort out." I put my empty tumbler down beside the ashtray.

"Such as?"

"Have I got the job?"

"You'll do."

I cleared my throat in momentary embarrassment. "I suppose it would be a bit, well, forward of to mention the matter of recomp ... reco ... pay?"

"Name your salary." She was looking at me in an exasperated way. "I pay by the month. In advance. Plus expenses."

A very, very, very unreconstructed thought lumbered through my mind as to what I might ask for as part of my recompense. Before I could interpret it, it was obliterated by the near-blinding blaze of another thought, which for an instant seemed yet more profound: There! I can think the word "recompense". Why the hell can't I say it? This latter reflection seemed to be telling me a great deal about the human condition.

But I shoved it impatiently aside and got back to the former thought – or, rather, the relishable morsel of explicit contemplation.

No. No, I couldn't ask her for that. Although I'd known her for only a short time, I respected her far too much – her wit, her vivacity, her intellect, her charm, her goodness, her legs. Besides, if I suggested it I probably wouldn't get the job.

I named the largest sum I could think of, which right then was the advance Dimity Hardcastle's agent had screwed out of Golgotha for her latest Dave Knuckle hard-boiled mystery yarn, Smack My Butt, Babe.

Jasmine's eyes never wavered.

"Done," she said.

"Per week?" I persisted, trying clumsily to cash in on the advantage I thought I had.

"Don't push your luck, buster. It's per month, like I said. I'll go to my bank in the morning and get you your first month's wages. I'd give you a cheque tonight, but it'd be best if this didn't go through your bank account."

"Ah," I said wisely. Then: "Why not?"

"Because the transaction would leave a record on somebody's computer somewhere." She still held her eyes steady but I had the subliminal impression she was rolling them.

"Quite right," I said. "I was just trying to find out if you were sufficiently, you know, security-conscious."

"Yeah, right. Now, if you'll excuse me ...?"

She walked over to a part of the wall I'd not noticed before and touched a button beneath what was either a magnificent piece of postmodernist art or the place the electrician had got to in the rewiring when it'd been time for him to knock off for the night. There was a sound so soft it might have been the swish of blood through my own veins, and a panel slid back to reveal, looking rather like the control room of a nuclear submarine, a state-of-the-art Bose stereo system.

Barely glancing at it, she jabbed a finger, and some ninety megawatts of Van Halen filled the apartment.

And I do mean filled it. Despite the fact the room was large enough that probably the only reason someone hadn't tried fitting the New York Public Library inside it was that the building's other tenants might have complained about the two stone lions in the corridor, there was plenty of Van Halen to go around.

Seemingly oblivious to the blare, Jasmine turned on her heel and marched across the room to a door tastefully done in distressed steel grey and watered-down peach. She threw the door open and, beyond, I saw a bathroom designed by Salvador Dali and furnished in what looked, from where I sat on the sofa, like black patent leather.

She beckoned me to join her in there, and I did, casting my gaze around the room in case there were any lurking whips and handcuffs. I'll say one thing for Van Halen: the sheer physical impact of their music had rendered me abruptly stone-cold sober.

"Let us take a shower together!" Jasmine bellowed above the sound of a passing bass riff.

I moved impetuously forward, but she planted a splayed hand firmly in my chest to stop me. Next she put a finger of the other to her lips, then reached past the shower curtain to turn the water on full. Finally she signalled to me that I should flush the toilet.

"This place may be bugged," she yelled at me, "but it should be safe for us to talk now!"

"Not if we have to shout at the top of our voices if we're going to be able to hear each other."

Jasmine looked unsettlingly nonplussed. Without a further word she turned the shower off and then ambled abjectly back across the room to strangle Van Halen.

The ensuing silence throbbed like a powerful engine.

"We could go somewhere else," I whispered experimentally into it.

She winced as if I'd howled at her. "Not so loud, please, Norris."

"And it might be a good idea if you refrained from using my name," I added.

She looked at me earnestly and gave the smallest nod of her head.

Of course, I didn't – then – believe for one moment that the apartment could be under electronic surveillance: that sort of thing happened only in spy movies. But I had two reasons to play along with her paranoid fantasies. First of all, she was now my employer and, as Leonard B. Michelson Jr had observed rhapsodically in his eloquent How to Make Opportunity Knock for YOU:

Don't smartass the boss
Or your job you'll toss.

I've always felt that book had to be remaindered so rapidly less because of its lyricism, more because of the photo of the author on the back flap; of course, the consensus of the publishing industry was that the disappointing sales were all my fault. My second reason for indulging Jasmine's apprehensions was ...

"Stop looking at me like that!" she hissed.

"Sorry," I mumbled. The air in the room seemed a little less timid, as if slowly convincing itself that Van Halen had actually gone. "It's not my real name, anyway. Norris Gonfalcon. I made that up when Old Man Leonora – the publisher who gave me my first job – said he wanted me to be an editor. I thought 'Norris Gonfalcon' was kind of suitable as a book editor's name, like you'd never have gone to see a John Wayne movie if he'd been calling himself Marion Morrison. No one would have taken me seriously if they'd known my real name was ... whatever my real name actually is."

Like the air in the room, Jasmine was slowly relaxing. A moment before she'd been so stiff with tension I'd felt I could have leaned her at an angle against the wall. Now her pose was loosening.

"That's all right," she murmured. "I'm not really called Jasmine Frimhalt, either. That's just what ..."

"We should get out of here," I interrupted.

She gave me a watery smile. "If you're going to be a proper gumshoe, you ought to say 'And fast' at the end of that."

"And fast," I agreed.

"OK, but where?"

"My place?" I hazarded.

"Sounds good to me," she said. "Let's get moving."

Matching actions to words, she swiftly crossed the room, picked up the scarf she'd dropped on the chair-back and, wrapping it around her neck, went into the bathroom. I could hear the sounds of her throwing things into a washbag. I wasn't sufficiently captivated by the moment that I didn't instinctively regard this as a good sign: Oh, boy, she's bringing her toothbrush! That means she's planning to ...

I gave myself a mental slap.

I gave myself a second mental slap when I remembered the state I'd left my own apartment in. How could I have been so stupid as to invite Jasmine – pseudo-Jasmine – to them? An even more disconcerting thought barged into my mind. What if Diane had decided to come back and collect anything she'd left behind? I could hardly breezily pass her off as the cleaning lady at three o'clock in the morning: "Miss Reeves is just putting in a bit of overtime." Jasmine would scarcely be impressed, and Diane herself would ... Well, I'd be surprised if there were time for more than about a page and a half of my life history to flash before my eyes. Worse still: what if Diane come back to attempt a reconciliation? No ex-girlfriend of mine had ever seemed remotely interested in a reconciliation in the past, but there's always a first time for everything.

When Jasmine emerged from the bathroom, sequin-studded washbag in hand, heading for what I assumed was the closet where her coats hung, I tried to suggest some alternatives.

She dismissed them immediately. "I've heard about those hotels," she said, pursing her lips, pausing with a sky-blue coat half off the hangar. "They rock from side to side at nights, don't they? I'll take my chances with your lovenest, thank you very much."

Again that grin. Her confidence was fully returned, filling not just her lips and her eyes but every movement she made.

I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but she managed to fit the bulging washbag into her small, black, shiny purse without the remotest clumsiness. "We'll take a cab," she said.

"Right."

# # #

What I Could Do For YOU #1
Sir Andrew Aguecheek

Before we left her apartment, there was one urgent question I wanted to ask Jasmine.

"No," she said.

# # #

Ratiocination #4
Al Fresco Interlude

Outside on the sidewalk it was evident that things hadn't taken advantage of our absence to change at all. The park was a dark brooding mass, seemingly alive but temporarily comatose, on the other side of the street; a few blocks downtown the blackness was frosted by the lights of the Tavern on the Green. I glanced at the buildings on the far side of the park and speculated spuriously about whether any of those big-city spies you've read about was right now watching Jasmine and myself through binoculars or a telescope and wondering who we were: an established couple, newly met lovers, two people who'd merely come down in the same elevator together and so were leaving the building at the same time. It struck me that I very much wanted Jasmine and myself to be newly discovered lovers, and not just because of her legs. As if sending a signal to that distant hypothetical watcher, I took her hand in mine. For a split second I thought she was going to pull it away, but then her fingers squeezed back.

I gave her a small conspiratorial smile, and we started the serious business of trying to make a taxi stop for us.

"So your father wasn't really a tea freak after all?" I said offhandedly.

# # #

Vox Pop #1
The Illuminated Dartboard

Ant Glimmering sadly shut the door of the Buford Tavern and slid the bolts home. Identifying all the keys on the bunch he lugged from his pocket and using them to lock the door's dozen or so locks took him several minutes, but the task was eventually achieved.

He celebrated his success with a belch. It had been waiting all evening, building up inexorably, so the eruption was heartfelt. His mom, an expert in the bar trade – having owned and run a popular establishment in downtown Chicago for the decades since Dad had picked an argument with a Teamster – had been very firm on this matter: Never belch while the joint's open, Anthony, she'd instructed, marking each word by a smite on his forehead with her wooden spoon, 'case a customer hears you and don't like it. Save your gas up 'til they's all gone.

He winced and reflexively rubbed his jaw as he remembered the subsequent briefing she'd given him on the perils of public farting.

Not that there'd been any customers tonight anyway. Beer sales had been brisk, as they usually were, but Ant had had the place to himself, also as usual. The juxtaposition of the two circumstances was responsible for the profundity of the belch.

He lurched back to his stool by the bar and fell onto it.

Buford, New Jersey, had seemed the ideal place to buy a bar, and certainly the price had seemed attractive. So had the description offered by the realty website Ant had discovered on the net. "With Buford's censused population of only five," the anonymous poster had gushed, "you can be assured that no rival establishment will be opened up in this busy little township." It had gone on to paint a dazzling word-portrait of a thriving establishment that drew regulars and the passing trade with equal facility – which was, Ant had to admit, perfectly true. Encouraged by Mom, whose only sign of doubt had been a muttered, half-heard comment to the effect that maybe the remote northerly extremities of Jersey weren't far enough, Ant had snapped up this golden opportunity to make something of himself. The papers had been processed with astonishing speed, and within the week he'd arrived in Buford ("This quaint friendly hamlet with five hundred years of tradition breathing from its very stones!") to discover it was eight miles down a snake-infested dirt track from the nearest paved highway and that two of the people referred to in the POP. 5 sign were recently deceased – "recent" being 1953 – two more were under age, and the fifth was Muslim.

He sighed and mosquitoes rained from the air. If only he could permit himself to allow under-age drinkers, things might be a bit different, but that was another of the many points Mom had been strict on. So most nights it was just him and the television.

The television was blaring above the bar now as he reached across and pulled himself another beer. You can allow yourself one in an evening, Mom had said, and if you knows to take care o what you say an do, mebbe two. But – take that! – three's dangerous, kiddo. In accordance with her wisdom, each night he nervously drank the third in a single gulp so as to reach the tranquil safety of the fourth as swiftly as possible.

Thank the Good Lord for the television, his boon companion in his solitude. And thank the Good Lord for the Reverend Rick Hamfist, whose nightly three-hour programme of independent political debate, Window on the Evils of the World, coming up next, was Ant's, well, window on the evils of the world, none of which had been, to his knowledge, intrepid enough to venture so far as Buford's little blaze of obscurity ("A guaranteed tourist trap, summer or winter!").

On the television, the commercial break drew to its close. The face of a newscaster filled the screen. "And that's all we have time for tonight," said the newscaster. "Jenny Bringle will be here at six with the early-morning news. Until then, it's goodbye from us."

The next commercial break started.

It was a trailer for tomorrow night's reality-tv bonanza, So You Want to Be a Millionaire Hooker?, in which bevies of attractive young women intimately and imaginatively attended to happy successions of paunchy middle-aged television execs and the winner got a small fraction of one per cent of the money the sponsors had put up.

What should be do with the next ten minutes? ruminated Ant morosely. At one end of the bar – the wall, floor and ceiling around it pocked like a sponge – was a dartboard. Nobody but Ant ever played, but it was an essential part of Buford's social fabric nevertheless, he felt. He'd have a game with himself right now to pass the time except he couldn't remember where he'd put the darts. Besides, he was overdue to put up a new picture of Hillary Clinton; the old one was hanging in tatters from the cork.

There must be something else I could do.

He glanced at his dilapidated copy of the Bible, sitting in a puddle of beer next to the dust-covered till. The Reverend Rick had recommended it a few months ago, and so Ant had driven into Stillwater specially to pick one up. On getting home he'd discovered that the thin oilskin pages were excellent for making spliffs. So far he'd gotten halfway through Leviticus, and felt each time he lit up that he was breathing the very word of the Lord into himself.

Unfortunately, he was clean out of dope, so the Bible wasn't an option for tonight. Probably a good thing. Last time he'd tried to roll a joint while this smashed on beer he'd repeatedly put his thumb through Exodus xxiii.

He could microwave himself a ready meal, he guessed, but he'd already had three of these to alleviate the tedium of the evening and soak up the Bud. The last of the three, corned beef hash with home fries, had spoken to him.

At first Ant hadn't believed it was happening – just assumed it was the beer talking. The patty of hash, swimming in its pool of red food-colouring juice, had formed itself into rubbery lips, enunciating its words with care. Two of the home fries, jostling, had done an excellent impersonation of bushy eyebrows, dancing in perfect synchrony with the lips. Ant had, as he'd watched, aghast, been irresistibly reminded of the face of the Reverend Rick Hamfist. The voice had been the Reverend Rick's as well.

There could be no other conclusion but that God had chosen to communicate with him direct.

Sitting here now. Ant couldn't remember exactly what it was that God had said, although bushels and voting Republican had played a large part in it. Oh, yes, and apparently he'd been given a divinely ordained obligation to fulfil, too. What was it now?

He shifted his heavy belly restlessly above his straining pants waist. It was slightly alarming to think that the Voice of God was right now floating around in there alongside eleven pints of Bud and at least a dozen microwaved mini-franks in cheese-type sauce, but only slightly. Or maybe the Voice of God wasn't in there any more, but had escaped to go and possess someone else's corned beef hash when Ant had let rip with that mighty belch a couple minutes ago?

Get your mind back on the subject, kiddo! he could imagine Mom saying, and gave a wary Pavlovian flinch. What was the command God gave you?

It hadn't been one of the ten customary ones – that much Ant knew. He'd memorized all of those during childhood, under Mom's idiosyncratic tutelage regime, along with all their various codicils and qualifications which told how it was perfectly OK to kill, commit adultery and loathe one's neighbour.

His mind continued to fumble with the conundrum, but had made very little progress by the time the last of the used-car ads was over and Window on the Evils of the World was ready to roll. Putting the mystery to one side for the moment, Ant devoted his full attention to the screen.

For fully five minutes after welcoming his viewers the Reverend Rick Hamfist pointedly explained why the passage in Matthew vi that read

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men; but thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly

was actually a dreadful mistranslation from the original Hebrew. That there'd been a lot of mistranslation going on about then was pretty clear from the mention of "synagogues", after all. Matthew must have said "churches", because Jesus and the twelve honchos wouldn't have gone and worshipped in synagogues like Jews did, would they?

As must surely be obvious to all, the sweet Christ hadn't been recommending that you went and did your praying in the closet among the mothballs and all those sweaters various elderly relatives had given you over the years and the jeans you couldn't shoehorn yourself into any longer and the piece of female underwear you'd once found in a train and kept to show the guys even though to this day you couldn't work out what it was actually for. No, with one of those astonishing pieces of prescience which proved that every word of the Bible had been inspired by the Lord, Jesus had been referring to the television set. Because TV hadn't been invented by the time King James was translating the Bible, the merry monarch had stuck in the nearest word he could think of, which was "closet".

So the burden of the passage was actually that you weren't supposed to do your praying in church and particularly not on the streets, where it might get you locked up for vagrancy, but on television. If you got it right, well, as the Good Book said, the Father would "reward thee openly", which could only mean that God wanted you to call the following number with your credit card to hand because, if you didn't, then, however much unction the Reverend Rick Hamfist personally devoted to trying to persuade the Good Lord otherwise, you were going to spend eternity becoming finger-lickin' good.

Ant gulped. Just his typical bad luck those bastards at Bell Atlantic had cut off his phone.

The phone number that he couldn't call hung on the screen for several minutes, grinding his moral inadequacy into him, before it was mercifully replaced by the first in the next cycle of advertisements, this time for SlimWipes, a product which Ant disdained.

His mind staggered back to the problem he'd been trying to solve before the Reverend Rick's latest outgushing of the Truth had divinely interrupted it.

Ah, yes.

Ant wished he hadn't been so hungry at the time. For some reason, it was the third TV dinner of the evening that he was always the most ravenous for. He might, had he thought about it, have asked the corned beef hash to repeat its instructions so they'd be more firmly fixed in his memory. As it was, the last part of the Voice of God's concluding prayer had been choked off by the sturdy muscles of Ant's own gullet.

There had been something about guns. To be expected: guns were a pretty hot topic with the Lord, especially as exposited by the Reverend Rick. Wait a moment – almost had it there! That was it: he, Ant Glimmering, was to gather up his entire collection of semi-automatic assault rifles, or at least as many of them as he could fit into the trunk of his trusty Chevy, and drive with them into Manhattan, where he was to ...

And that was the tricky bit.

Where he was to what?

Ant let out another belch in the hope that it'd contain just enough residue of the Voice to give him a clue, but no such luck.

Oh, well, maybe tomorrow afternoon, once he'd had a good night's sleep ...

The Reverend Rick was back on the screen, announcing that he was taking calls should any of the faithful have questions of theology they wished to ask him. Tonight's subject was the wisdom of "the sponsors of this show", Aunt Ethel's Home Baked Microwavable Hearty Eating All Natural Quick Dinners.

Ant stared balefully once more at the dead phone.

# # #

Ratiocination #5
Invasion of Personal Space

"No, he wasn't," she said as she clambered into a yellow cab, with me attentively following. "But he was extremely dogmatic about the soda he drank," she continued as I settled into the back seat beside her. "Which was why he named me Pepsi."

"'Pepsi'?"

"Yes."

I rolled the name around on my tongue.

"OK," I said.

"You two young things finished yore canoodling back there?" said the genial cab driver, a paternal gleam of bonhomie in his eye as he glanced at us in his mirror, a smile crinkling the many laughter lines around his mouth.

No.

This was New York.

It can't have been like that.

In response to his torrent of incomprehensible abuse I stammered out my address. He spat viciously on, fortunately, his own side of the bullet-proof partition and with a scream of agonized machinery we punched our way into the traffic flow.

"Is it safe to talk here, do you think?" I said to Pepsi, who was quite delightfully cramped against me.

She nodded urgently towards various bubblegum-encrusted grilles situated around the rear half of the taxi. I was fairly certain they were standard equipment for certain models of yellow cab, but only fairly, so I took her point. They could as easily conceal microphones as loudspeakers.

Our driver had a way of cutting through traffic holdups that made me extremely keen not to look out the window too often, and so it was only a matter of moments before we found ourselves outside my building in what I called the Village but everyone else described as Alphabet City. Perhaps they were right. There certainly seemed to be a shortage of those cozy little neighbourhood bistros where you couldn't hear yourself think for the fashionably shrill laughter of the people at the next table and came out still hungry.

Pepsi fumbled in her purse, produced another of those twenties, and stuffed it through the hatch at the driver.

We made it to the entrance without mishap.

"Why're you doing that?" inquired Pepsi as I pressed the bell for Mr Smithee on the top floor.

"I lost my front-door key a few weeks back," I explained, "and this seems simpler than getting another one out of the super."

The lock buzzed crossly. Mr Smithee, whoever the hell he was, seemed particularly vexed tonight. Served him right for playing his Britney Spears CDs at all hours.

"See?"

"Very smooth," she conceded.

I ushered her up the stairs and into my apartment ahead of me, but I needn't have bothered: Diane hadn't come back.

"Welcome to my ..." I began, feeling for the light switch. It didn't seem to be where I'd left it.

"Good evening," rumbled a voice from the darkness within.

# # #

Tox Top #1
Knotty Affairs of State

It was late, late, late in the Oval Office, but still Alfie Sedoma – his brows furrowed, his eyes near crossed in concentration, his lips moving, one foot up on the great carved ivory desk his political allies had donated to the White House after he'd jailed the ringleaders of Greenpeace – wrestled on with affairs of State. He'd known even before he'd accepted the Party's nomination that there would be nights of hard toil like this one. It was as Harry Truman had immortally said: "The buck stops here." Throughout the successful election campaign Alfie had been fond of quoting Truman's words, although, on taking office, he'd been disturbed to discover quite how many of the bucks seemed to stop at his Vice-President.

The lights were low in the room except at his desk, so that he seemed to be encased in a glowing shell.

But then suddenly the tranquility was shattered by the phone ringing.

Putting his task to one side with a shrug, he picked up the receiver.

"This is your President on Mickey," he said formally.

He listened as the voice of an aide cooed soothingly into his ear.

"All right," he said after she'd finished. "Put Vice-President Knuckle on the line."

There was a sputtering as the connection was made.

The Vice-President began to speak, but the President spoke over him.

"Look, dammit, Dave, what in hell were you doing in the Bronx Zoo in the middle of the night? Again?"

Fizz, pop, squawk went the voice on the line, with the President interposing an occasional piquant gloss.

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"An iguana?"

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"Of course the mainstream media won't publish the photographs, but what if they get into the hands of Alternet or someone like that?"

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"You're right, those scum at Alternet probably are all Greenpeace members. We can screw 'em for that."

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"Yeah, you're right. That wouldn't be final enough. Look, Dave, I'm gettin' an idea here ..."

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"Well, give the cops a grand like everyone else. You can afford it, can't you, Davey-boy? Now, lemme think ..."

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"That was 'xactly what I was gonna say! We want this story quashed entirely. So we've gotta use the method of last resort."

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"No, 'course I'm not frightened even to say his name!"

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"All right, then, I will. It's 'Buster Malt ...' You know something, Davey-boy? This is real silly. You know his second name as well as I do."

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"Sticks and stones may break my ..."

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"OK, you gotta go. And in future, Dave ...?"

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"Yeah, stay out of temptation's way. Leave the Bronx Zoo to the tourists, OK?"

Fizz, pop, squawk.

"And may the blessings of the Good Lord guide you, too, and his wisdom be with you. 'Bye."

Replacing Mickey on his cradle, the President breathed a long sigh and gazed at the window. In times past, he might have seen the grand cityscape of Washington DC, but the bulletproofing of the glass had been enhanced to such an extent that it was now almost completely opaque. The upside of this was that he could see his own reflection. He mugged a photogenic grin at himself, then returned to the task at hand.

Try again – yet again.

If he put the left end of the lace just so, and then ...

# # #

Situation Normal #1
It Can't Happen Here

IT'S OFFICIAL – SEDOMA IS NEW MESSIAH
Presidential Decree Declares Prez Son of God

Veep Knuckle Demands Percentage
Defense Secy Blames North Korea, Later Claims Was Misquoted
Spokeswoman Jubilant: "This Proves Florida Count No Fluke"
Secretary of State Prepares Wrists, Razor for Ultimate Sacrifice
Attorney General's Shock Counter-Claim: "Am Little Teapot, Short, Stout"

In the greatest shockwave to impact the foreign policy of any nation since Ozymandias fell off his legs, the President today declared himself to be the Son of God, adding that in future all heretics and unbelievers will be despatched to the Flames of Hell Fire or to Leavenworth, whichever is the closer.

"I am confident that Congress would be entirely behind me on this one if I hadn't disbanded it on direct instructions from Dad – er, the Dad in the sky with the beard, I mean. My other Dad is seeking political asylum in Haiti, or anywhere. My new Mom is Britney Spears, she being the only possibly-virgin of child-bearing age I could find at short notice.

"In future, anyone who fails to address me as Alfred E. Christ will be deemed a blasphemer and sentenced to spend a FREE three-week luxury vacation in the Texas resort of your choice oops I turned the wrong page."

Reactions from leading Democrats were muted. According to one of them, speaking under conditions of strict anonymity from Guantanamo Bay, "We prefer to concentrate on the economic issues."

Asked by the press to demonstrate his newly discovered deity with a few miracles, the Christ said he would, in front of witnesses, turn wine into water, a process that he added would require a few hours. His offer was hastily declined.

The British premier has responded with enthusiasm to the announcement. "I'm sure I speak for all the British people when I say that we wish Alfie the very best, oh gosh yes." The Christ welcomed this message, as he did those from many individuals who rang the White House hotline to wish him a prompt and easy crucifixion.

Other international leaders have been more skeptical, and their countries have been accordingly nuked, as have the United Nations and Mars. "The jihad on terrorism is not yet over," warned the Savior.

Pressed by a BBC correspondent, the Messiah gave that trademark quirk of the mouth that indicates severe toothache and replied: "I am as sane as the next man."

The reference is believed to be to the Attorney General.

Late Developments:

• Pope Excommunicated
• Sedoma Levitates: "No Fracture," Assures Bel Air

# # #

Ratiocination #6
Even Nothing Isn't What It Seems

"Dad!" gasped Pepsi, and I could feel her dashing from my side into the gloom. There were beloved-father-clasping-beloved-daughter-in-his-arms sounds among the shadows, but not enough light was spilling in from the dim ten-watt corridor bulb to reveal anything much to me beyond the pale blur of my own right hand, which was still groping around the wall trying to find the light switch. Then the corridor bulb's timer clicked and there was no light at all – which was odd, because there should have been some street-glow coming in through the holes in the drapes.

"I moved the switch," said the voice again. There was something in it that I vaguely recognized, but now wasn't the moment to concentrate on that. "It's on the other side of the doorway," the voice continued, "but I'd be grateful if you wouldn't turn it on right yet. Just give me a few moments, please."

A new sound – the sound of someone stuffing starched canvas into a bag that was a little too small.

A stirring of different shades of darkness, and I became aware that Pepsi was standing next to me once more. She groped for my hand and took it softly in hers. Blind, I revelled in the sweet warm smell of her.

The mysterious shuffling noises on the far side of the room continued for perhaps half a minute, and then slowed and stopped. The springs of the couch let out the grumpy sigh they always let out when someone heavy sat down on them – one reason I'd never tried making out on that couch after a first disastrous experiment: it was like having your grandmother give a running commentary throughout the entire performance about how much better things had been done in her young day.

"It's OK. You can switch the light on now."

Pepsi's hand slapped against the wall a couple of times and finally found the fixture.

I was dumbfounded.

A realtor describing the apartment I'd left just a few hours ago would have made liberal use of terms such as cozy!, well lived in!, full of idiosyncratic character and charm!, conveniently compact for easy maintenance!, plenty of scope for you to impose your own decor creativity!, redolent!, obviously much loved! and perhaps even a slightly risque organic! The astute potential purchaser or lessee would have, quite correctly, interpreted all this to mean unfit for human habitation!, due to be condemned! and liable to collapse into the street at a moment's notice!, and would probably, this being the Manhattan housing market, have pounced upon it immediately as a heaven-sent bargain.

What lay before my eyes was something entirely different. Gone was the pair of used undershorts dangling from the skewed corner of the framed poster of Jennifer Lopez in Angel Eyes, which framed poster was itself gone. No longer did the walls reveal to the trained eye a stratigraphic record of various amateur wallpapering essays made since, at a guess, about 1860 – an archaeological core sample of the cheapest special offers of flock wallpaper on sale at different points in history. The sprayed graffiti had vanished, as had the piles of half-empty pizza boxes and the totally empty beer cans. Socks had seemingly scuttled away on tiny invisible feet. Shelves had sprung into existence, and along them were arranged neatly my hundreds of books in – so far as I could see – accurate alphabetical order by author's last name. Sitting in the middle of the now-carpeted floor was my cat Belcher, adopted as a stray from the alley behind the building; as he looked up at me, I could see that for the first time in his life he was perfectly groomed and had all his ears. For once the miasma of Belcher's rarely emptied litter tray did not fill the air with its welcoming whiplash.

I seemed, instead, to have stepped into one of the more unbelievable photographs in Better Homes & Gardens magazine.

The two rickety plastic patio chairs I'd bought as a stopgap when first I'd moved in a decade ago were now comfortable recliners, generously upholstered and covered in what looked like hand-sewn embroidery. Likewise the couch – but I looked away from the couch immediately because it held the most mind-numbing sight of all.

And it wasn't just the appearance of the place. Earlier this evening you could have stood in the middle of this room's floor, stretched out your arms and, though you couldn't quite have touched all four walls, you could have if you'd been an orang-utan. Post-redecoration, you'd have been able to play an only slightly cramped game of tennis in here. (The room was also now substantially longer and wider than the dimensions of the building, which opened up a whole avenue of speculations down which my mind resolutely refused to wander.) When Pepsi had switched on the light, instead of a single bare bulb erupting in glare from the ceiling there had smoothly appeared countless accent lights in all corners, angled and coloured to give the perfect illusion of sunny daylight.

There was even a bunch of flowers in a vase.

"You seem surprised, Norris," said the figure sitting in the middle of the couch. He was the bit I really didn't believe.

"Monty Bean!" I exclaimed.

He sloped his head in acknowledgement.

"Or if you're not Monty Bean you're his twin brother," I added.

"No," he said suavely, "I'm the real thing – not Monty's double."

He paused for us to laugh at his little joke. Neither of us did. The look on Pepsi's face seemed almost capable of peeling off the brand-new wallpaper, which was a tasteful textured parchment whose Renaissance-patterned embossings were traced with what looked at least from this distance like real gold leaf.

I did my best to make him feel at home. "Not that old has-Bean, you mean?" I quipped.

"Oh, Jesus," murmured Pepsi.

"Don't just stand there in the doorway, you two," said Monty, an embarrassed gruffness entering his voice.

Pepsi beside me, I took a couple of paces into the room. The door swung shut behind us.

He was Monty Bean, and yet he wasn't.

Let me explain that.

Not all of the people who frequented the streets around here were muggers, street crazies, pickpockets, hookers, rapists, panhandlers, publishing editors, murderers, junkies or drunks, or any combination of two or more thereof. Every now and then you'd come across a completely normal, upstanding, sober citizen. Monty Bean had become a regular there just a month or two ago. What was unique about Monty Bean was that he was a panhandler who was also a completely normal, upstanding, sober citizen. You could hold a perfectly sensible friendly conversation with him, secure in the knowledge that there'd be not the slightest mention of the government beaming telepathic rays directly into your cerebral cortex from their sky satellites in the sky; that you'd not find yourself jammed up against a wall with a knife at your throat; that you wouldn't find his fingers in your pocket trying to lift your wallet, your stash, or worse. In short, you felt almost guilty giving this well spoken, smiling, broadly read and seemingly highly educated man a buck.

Which was why, of course, I never did.

But the Monty Bean seated on my transformed couch had a different presence from the man I'd so often darted across the street away from. In part this had to be his clothing. In the street he'd affected a multiply stained, manure-brown suit from whose shoulders odd shocks of stuffing started like dirty thistle-heads, but here he was dressed in trimly creased stone-grey jeans and a beige polo neck. On his feet were new-looking Nikes. It was quite a relief to see that one of them had a candy wrapper stuck to it.

And there was something else different about him as well, but for a few moments I couldn't think what it was.

Ah ... yes.

His eyes.

Although of course whenever I'd encountered him outside in the street I'd been doing my best to avoid his eyes, on the couple of occasions he'd snagged me for a conversation I'd been unable to avoid noticing they were an eloquent, limpid brown. Not tonight, though. They were a clear, piercing blue.

Like his daughter's.

And, as with Pepsi, the contrast between those blue, blue eyes and the dark skin surrounding them was both settling and unsettling at the same time.

All of these thoughts and inferences rushed through my head in a lot less time than it takes to tell about them. I was still standing a couple of steps inside the room.

"I thought you said you got your looks from your mother," I said in an aside to Pepsi, referring to the eye colour.

She gave me a puzzled frown, obviously not understanding what I was talking about.

"And you," I added to Monty Bean, "how the hell did you get in here?"

"You left the door unlocked," he lied smoothly. "Daughter o' mine, do you think you could fetch us some drinks?"

"Do you have Isle of Jura?" she asked me.

"He does now," said Monty before I could reply. "On the counter in the kitchen, next to the fridge."

"And the kitchen is ...?"

"Don't look at me," I said. "Everything's changed since the last time I was here."

Monty jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards a door in the corner.

With a casual swing of her hips to show us both that she was fetching drinks because she wanted to, you realize, and not because any dumbass male had told her to, Pepsi nonchalanted over to the door and pushed it open, flicking on the light within. I could see gleaming aluminium and tile before the door sighed shut again.

"I wanna ask you something before she gets back," said Monty as I sat down nervously in one of the chairs. "And I'd like it if you could give me an honest answer, OK?"

"Er, yes," I said.

"Are your intentions honourable?"

"What?"

"Honourable. Your intentions."

"I'm not sure I know what you ..."

"I see you going around with that little girl of mine, it's natural I'd want to know you're not going to hurt her in any way, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, but ..."

"So give me the answer." He pinned me to the hand-stitched embroidery with a lance-like glare of those blue eyes. "Do you have a long-term interest in her, or are you just anxious to get into her pants? Or have you already done so?"

"We haven't actually gone that far ..." I stuttered.

"I don't think that's the kind of answer I want to hear, Norris," he growled.

"That's not what I mean." I tried to keep the whine out of my voice. "Into the relationship, is what I'm saying. We've not got that far in our relationship that the subject's come up. It's not a romantic entanglement yet, and it may never be. What I'm trying to tell you is we've only just met. Your daughter's a pretty girl, yes, too damned right, but she's also my employer. She wants me to be a gumshoe for her in some mystery she still hasn't explained to me."

"Your employer?" Spiky eyebrows scampered. "Ah. I hadn't realized that. That puts a whole different complexion on things, yes indeed."

He put his chin on his chest and stared at his feet, stretched out in front of him. But, as a professional detective, I could tell he wasn't really staring at them because he obviously didn't notice the candy wrapper.

"She's probably done the right thing," he mumbled, more to himself than to me. "She usually does."

Pepsi came clattering back from the kitchen, expertly holding three glasses ahead of her between her fingers. As back at her own apartment, she hadn't stinted on the measures, so that it was only with incredible adroitness that she managed not to slosh any of the whisky onto the carpet.

During the several seconds it took her to distribute the drinks and settle herself down on the other chair, a complex of questions formed in my mind.

"Cheers!" said Pepsi brightly.

I took just the briefest sip of my own, so that I was speaking already by the time the other two were lowering their glasses from their lips.

"Look, Monty, Pepsi," I began, "can I make a few things clear?"

They nodded assent.

"OK, this is my apartment. Yes, Monty, you've made a lot of improvements to it – really a lot of improvements, and in an astonishingly short space of time. I'm not certain how you managed it, but I'm extremely grateful to you, however you did it. But that's not the point. What's the point is that this apartment is mine. That means I should be the one asking the questions?"

"You're so ... oo ... dominant," breathed Pepsi sarcastically. I decided to take this as agreement.

"That's reasonable," said Monty. His mind still seemed to be mainly on the news that Pepsi had hired my services as her gumshoe, running through the ramifications – whatever they were – of this development.

"Right," I said forcefully. "You've already lied to me about how you got in here. Could you tell me the truth about why you got in here?"

He cleared his throat. "Well ... well, I think you've deduced that I keep a look out for ..." He turned to Pepsi. "What did he say you were calling yourself tonight, Acapulco?"

"Pepsi," said Pepsi.

Back to me again. "I keep an eye on Pepsi. Make sure she's all right, doesn't go getting herself into any trouble so bad I can't fish her back out of it again. You understand?"

"Only natural in a father," I responded.

"Oh, I'm not her father. What you been telling this guy, Acap ... Pepsi?"

"Well, I've been trying to tell him that ..." She tucked her legs up onto the seat beneath her in a defiant sort of a way.

"Then who are you?" I said.

"We'll get to that later. First things first. As I was saying, I take it as my very serious responsibility to keep a lookout for my little darling, so as soon as I saw she was getting interested in you, a couple of months ago, I started doing a bit of digging."

"A couple of months ag ...?" I started.

"Daddy!" cried Pepsi, glaring furiously at him.

"Darling," he said, spreading his hands, "I was acting in your own best interests."

"You were snooping."

"OK, so I was snooping in your own best interests. Now, can I get on and put this poor sap out of his misery?"

She subsided, taking another large mouthful of her whisky and then breathing out histrionically through flared nostrils.

It was quite a performance, and Monty was having to put on a performance of his own to pretend he wasn't being affected by it.

"Acapu ... Pepsi here," he said, "spotted you maybe six eight weeks ago while you were in that Chinese diner over on West Broadway. You were eating roast pork with stewed water chestnuts, not that I noticed, and you were reading a copy of How YOU Can Turn Yourself Into a Hollywood-Style Heart-Throb in JUST Seven Easy Stages ..."

"It was an advance copy," I hastened to explain, "and I was only reading it because Leonora were publishing it. I was doing a last-minute check for typos."

"Yes," said Monty. "Anyway, my little girl was passing when she saw you through the window."

"I was looking at the menu, Daddy, not at him," said Pepsi with a rekindled glower.

"Whatever it was she saw on the menu was so appealing to her palate," continued the old man drily, "that she scuttled into a doorway, pulled a silk scarf out of her purse and put it over her head like a yashmak so's no one could see her face properly. You didn't even glance up at her when she came into the diner, which, bearing in mind your normal habits, demonstrates what a masterpiece of improvised disguise the headscarf was."

"Especially since the only one I had was covered in little pictures of Sylvester and Tweety-Pie," interpolated Pepsi, losing her surly expression for a moment and then hurriedly reassuming it.

"She scoped you out all the rest of the time you were eating, and then she followed you back to your office."

"Got as far as the reception desk," attested Pepsi, as if accidentally. "Jeez, but that receptionist was a bimbo – where'd you find her? Anyway, she told me your name and I got out of there as quick as I could, even though there was some old jerk yelling at me he wanted to hire me as an editor ..."

"That'd have been Old Man Leonora," I said. I didn't add my thoughts concerning the receptionist, whose name was Cynthia and who had filled my dreams for, oh, a whole ten days. Turned out she was an MBA and living with a professional wrestler named Cedric, so our romance had withered on the vine.

Cedric, indeed.

Monty harrumphed. "Ever since then," he said, raising his voice just a little so we knew to shut up, "she's been hanging around this area, performing a really quite creditable covert surveillance operation. So I've taken it upon myself to do the same. Only, of course, my focus has been on her rather than you. After all, this part of town's packed with muggers, street crazies, pickpockets, hookers, rapists, panhandlers, publishing editors, murderers, junkies and ..."

"OK, OK. We know that bit," I said, trying to hurry him along. But really I wasn't so interested in his story as I was in Pepsi's motives. The guy who looks at me from the mirror in the mornings when I'm shaving isn't actually repulsive, not quite, but at the same time he's not so inordinately good looking that a woman of Pepsi's, well, calibre would be likely to pick him out of a crowd, let alone be so instantly and passionately smitten as to start stalking him. He's got goodish legs, mind you, but if you lean over to get a look at his legs in the mirror while you're shaving you end up cutting yourself, so I don't do that any more.

"At first," Monty Bean was saying, "I thought she was safe enough from whatever Don Juan-like wiles you might choose to deploy, because I saw that you were living with another woman, in seeming domestic stability. That was, of course, before I observed this woman sneaking upstairs whenever you weren't around to spend an hour or two with the Smithee guy on the top floor playing his Britney Spears CDs. Among other things."

He nodded understandingly, patently leaving a lot unsaid.

"That bastard!" I hissed before I could stop myself. I glanced at Pepsi and, seeing the narrowness of her eyes, hastily readjusted the rest of my expostulation. "Although, as they say, it's all well as ends well, eh? Besides, she was nothing to me."

"So I could see it was only a matter of time," said Monty, "before this particular relationship of yours collapsed and you would be once more, as it were, on the market. That it was my darling who'd first introduced your girlfriend to the Smithee youth at the record store was neither here nor there. As her guardian, it was only natural that I began to pay attention to your activities as well. It wasn't very hard to break into this apartment while you were out at work and check the place over for illicit drugs, weaponry and such. I can't say I was" – he sniffed fastidiously – "very impressed by the lifestyle I discovered, but I could see very little that was actually of potential hazard to Acapulco here – Pepsi, I mean. Neither you nor the woman appeared to be HIV positive. The downsides, of which there were many, were none of them particularly serious – the dietary regime, the alcohol consumption, the pornography, the economical heed paid to laundering ..."

"And my second question," I said, gesturing around me to encompass all that the eye could see, "is: How did you manage to change the apartment like this?"

"My glass is empty," replied Monty. "Yours?"

Before I quite knew what I was doing I was bringing round the bottle to give us all refills. As I returned it to the kitchen I noticed that there was a new, large wine rack there filled with further bottles of Isle of Jura and other malts, some of whose names I didn't even recognize. Father Bean seemed determined his daughter – his quasi-daughter, as I must learn to think of her – wouldn't have to slum it while here, at least on the drinks front. Or on the decor front. Just about the only slummy bit left around here, now that even the cat had been spruced up, was me.

I gave a little mental hiccup as I came back to my chair.

That means Monty definitely expects her to stay here!

This first thought was rapidly followed by a second:

I wonder if Pepsi does?

And then by a third:

Well, she did bring her toothbrush ...

And a fourth:

Mind you, I was just beginning to enjoy my newly re-attained singlehood and independence.

As I sat down, Pepsi crossed her legs.

A fifth:

But not much.

Monty Bean sat forward on the couch, steepling his fingers in front of his chin and looking me earnestly in the eyes.

"I think," he said, "it's about time we – that is, Acapulco and I – improved your education."

"Eh?" I said.

"Your knowledge of history," said Pepsi. "We were talking about it while you were fetching the drinks."

I turned to face her. "You were going to tell me about Buster somebody, but you never did. Now you want to give me a history lesson first?"

"Buster Maltravis," said Monty in a gravelly tone. "And we'll be getting to him in due course. But you won't understand the full significance of Buster until we've corrected a few of your misapprehensions about the course of human history."

I gave him my best incredulous look.

"I'll go fetch the bottle," I said, rising yet again, "if we're going to be in for a long session."

"Bring two," chirped Pepsi.

# # #

Draconology #3
Environmental Protection 101

The lights never go out in Wall Street, and in particular they never go out in the office suite retained by Buster Maltravis for the use of his various corporations. Night and day, there's always at least a skeleton staff working there.

And what are all these corporations that require such constant attendance if they're to function to their fullest potential?

Well, there's a list of them etched into the glass of the main door opposite the elevator. The etching was done by a master of that trade, the forty-seventh in an unbroken father-to-son ancestry of glass-engraving brought here especially from his atelier in Vienna to do the painstakingly fine work. So ancient was his family tradition and so highly regarded its artistry that for several generations now its name had been entirely forgotten, so suffice it to say that the old man who'd come eagerly to Wall Street seventeen years ago to etch Buster Maltravis's door had before that engraved the crowns of monarchs, cupolas in the Vatican, the fingerbowls of four Presidents of the United States (and, in an amorous moment, that of a White House chambermaid, ever thereafter known as "Fingerbowl Francine"), the eggs of two scions of the House Fabergé, and much more besides.

But this door in Wall Street was regarded by the engraver, and indeed by Buster Maltravis, as his indisputable masterpiece.

For the highly detailed etching had been done in such a way that no mortal eye could read the inscriptions on the glass unless the sunlight struck it in exactly the right way, which it could do only on the 29th of February at the time of a full moon.

This, one might have thought, would be rare enough. But, just to be on the safe side, the door was at the end of a windowless corridor.

Showering wealth upon this maestro of engravers, and swearing him to eternal secrecy concerning the inscriptions, Buster Maltravis had personally escorted the old man out to JFK Airport and aboard his Vienna-bound plane.

Which had inexplicably exploded somewhere above the Atlantic.

Then had come the gilding of the names with the purest gold, done by a craftsman whose family history and international renown were extraordinarily similar to those of his Viennese counterpart, except that he came from Kyoto and his return flight inexplicably exploded somewhere above the Pacific.

The gilding, as an extra safeguard, could be seen only during the summer months.

The CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security and even the gossip column of the New York Post had all tried to read that list from the door, but all to no avail.

However, thanks to the latest advances in membrane theory, here it is:

Maltravis Charitable Enterprises, Inc.
The Holy Church of St Buster & St Mary Maltravis Laundering Services
B.M. Offshore Banking
The Little Sisters of Maltravis
Enron

Half a dozen multiconglomerate corporations, and not a cent's worth of tax to pay among the six of them!

It was a mighty achievement, and Buster Maltravis would have paused to admire the list with smiling satisfaction each time he came and went from his offices the conventional way had it not been that, if entering and leaving this way, he was as unable to read the inscriptions as anyone else.

Other times, of course, he came and went either by a window or via the helipad on the roof.

Tonight had been a window night.

Now, at 4am, he sat at a huge infinity-shaped desk made of a single block of flawless obsidian, surrounded by three of his most trusted aides and exceedingly angry.

"This," he said with distaste, holding up a 1500-page document between two fastidious fingers as if it were something unidentified he'd discovered bobbing enigmatically alongside him in his bathtub, "is what, exactly?"

The first of the aides, whose name was James, spoke. "It's, er, the new report from the Environmental Protection Agency. Sir."

"I am perfectly aware of that," said Maltravis with heavy irony.

The second aide, whose name was also James, hastened to expand upon the first's description.

"We intercepted it in the usual way before it reached the President, and rewrote large parts of it in accordance with the guidelines you laid out in your consultative document Roadmap for a Healthier Future. Sir."

"But not large enough parts of it," commented Maltravis acerbically. "And you?"

He nodded to the third, last and most valuable aide.

The third, last and most valuable aide, whose name was Corbin, farted amiably and looked up through circular rimless spectacles from the joint he was rolling.

"It's not, like, a gripping read, dude, but, you know, but it does the biz. Geez, bummer, I got the munchies. Fatso."

Unlike the other two, he was dressed not in a suit, white shirt and tie but in an old Grateful Dead teeshirt and stained blue jeans ripped strategically at knee, buttock and groin. His hair was tousled and long, his chin blotched by a designer-cut five o'clock shadow. He knew that Maltravis would tolerate his scruffy appearance and unsavoury personal habits for the sake of his immensely fertile brain, his quickwittedness, his astonishingly acute insight and his amazing ability instantly to analyse and solve even the most intractable problems.

The fart had been a bit of a mistake, though. A final straw.

"What have you just done to the ozone layer?" hissed Maltravis.

Corbin looked at his joint suspiciously.

"I ain't even lit it yet, man," he said after giving it a moment's further scrutiny.

"That wasn't what I meant!"

Corbin glanced at the two Jameses for support or at the very least explanation, but they refused to meet his gaze. Stony-faced, they regarded the far corners of the ceiling.

"You're FIRED!"

A shudder ran backward and forward between the two Jameses. The word "fired" had a peculiarly literal meaning for Maltravis employees.

Only Corbin seemed unimpressed.

"Wanna toke?"

Maltravis pressed a foot-pedal and the door burst open to reveal a pair of hefty goons dressed in ill cut suits and mirror shades.

"Take this man and FIRE him," said Maltravis, his voice icy cold.

"Aw, duuuuuude," wailed Corbin as the goons dragged him off, the heels of his tattered plimsolls squeaking on the floor.

"I don't think you're a fatso at all. Not really. Sir," said one of the Jameses with a righteous smile, earning himself a glare.

"And he didn't leave his joint behind," muttered the other bitchily amid the echoes of the slamming door.

"Now," said Maltravis, "I need to show you how to edit government documents so that they more clearly speak to the needs of the people. Remember, the people require to absorb the elements of any new legislation within a maximum of something under thirty seconds, between the commercials, the weather and traffic reports, the latest baseball news and urgent on-site updates on whether or not Christina Aguilera's bust has been surgically enhanced. That, gentlemen, is the strength of our system of democracy – because, if ever the people were permitted long enough to concentrate properly on anything the legislators might be planning, democratic government would become impossible. Remember that."

"Sir."

"Yes sir."

"Okey dokey."

"Certainly, sir."

"You can count on me, sir."

"Silence!"

For the next half hour or so they beavered away on the EPA document, doing their best to ignore the barbecue odours that wafted through the room. At last they had it reduced to newsworthy dimensions, and one of the Jameses read it aloud to check for grammatical errors.

FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION TO
THE HOUSE OF CONGRESS, THE SENATE, AND
THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT

A World At Stake
A Report of the Environmental Protection Agency

(1) Air Pollution

Air pollution's a real bad thing. Fortunately, the partnership between the US Government and business is doing everything in its power to control both national and global air pollution, and can legitimately congratulate itself on the measure of success it is achieving.

(2) Groundwater Pollution

Groundwater pollution's a real bad thing. Fortunately, the partnership between the US Government and business is doing everything in its power to control both national and global groundwater pollution, and can legitimately congratulate itself on the measure of success it is achieving.

(3) Destruction of Natural Habitats

Destruction of natural habitats is a real bad thing. Fortunately, the partnership between the US Government and business is doing everything in its power to control destruction of natural habitats both nationally and globally, and can legitimately congratulate itself on the measure of success it is achieving.

(4) Drilling for Oil in Regions of Unique Scientific and Biological Importance

Drilling for oil in regions of unique scientific and biological importance is a real bad thing. Fortunately, the partnership between the US Government and business is doing it anyway, both nationally and globally, and can legitimately congratulate itself on the measure of success it is achieving.

(5) Global Warming

A team from the Limbaugh-O'Reilly Research Institute has reported that it thinks we should all just enjoy the fine weather.

(6) Depletion of the Ozone Layer

Depletion of the ozone layer is a real bad thing. Fortunately, the partnership between the US Government and business is doing everything in its power to control depletion of the ozone layer both nationally and globally, and can legitimately ...

The James continued reading for a while longer.

"And furthermore," said Buster Maltravis, crossing his hands smugly on his paunch when the aide had finished, "we can congratulate ourselves on our conservation of the forests."

"How so, sir?" fed the other James.

"It's obvious, my boy. By reducing this EPA report from fifteen hundred pages to just one, we've ..."

# # #

Infodump #1
A Short, Short History of the Human Species (Revised Standard Version)

The history of the human species in all its various guises, began Monty Bean portentously, can be summed up by a single word, and that word is ...

"Excuse me," I said, "but I have to go to the bathroom." It was a miracle that I hadn't felt the urgency before, what with my consumption at Ye Toplesse Hustler Inne and then later at Jasmine's/Pepsi's apartment, and now here.

Bean looked not so much disgruntled as disconcerted by the interruption: it had obviously come as a surprise to him. The muscles of his deeply creased face shifted like kittens in a sack until they formed a frown. Clearly he was one of those people – usually men – who expect that, when they start speaking, the world will pause to listen. Well, not when he was panhandling, of course. Those who stop for panhandlers, rather than pretending not to notice that there's someone standing in front of them with a hand out and a spiel spilling, have a special dictionary that functions as a translation device somewhere in one of the more autonomous parts of their brain, so that, though they're hearing, they can't really be described as listening. On the basis that Increased Word Power Improves YOU, here are exclusive extracts from that dictionary:

Quarter-pounder with cheese = booze
Cup of coffee = booze
Bus fare = booze
Wife and kids to support = booze
Somewhere to lay head for night = booze
Veteran = drugs and booze

Standing in the bathroom, which thanks to Monty Bean's redesign looked like the inside of a blender, I worked out after only a minute or two how to raise the toilet seat but was initially too nervous of all the blades and functional-looking protuberances to start peeing. The roar of the new air-ionizer in my ears, I gazed at myself in the mirror.

Spiky hair of indeterminate colour. Stubbly chin. Slightly shifty eyes. Pudgy nose. Weak chin. Further down, there were sloping shoulders, a narrow chest, and an incipient pot belly, although it was still suckable-in – as I swiftly demonstrated to my reflection's satisfaction. All told, not the sort of guy that dreamboat women ordinarily pick up in bars. Not the sort they choose to hire as gumshoes, either, unless they've been watching too many old noir movies. It would have been nice to think that Jasmine/Pepsi had seen beyond my somewhat unappetizing exterior to see the soul within, but I knew that if she'd done that she'd not have touched me with a bargepole.

So there had to be another reason she'd selected me.

But what?

My bladder suddenly decided to cooperate, and all my speculations were drowned in a torrent of urine. The flow seemed to be set to last a long time. I wondered if I should shave, spruce myself up a bit, maybe have a shower, while I waited for it to finish, but in the end I just watched it.

Back in the main room, I sat down again. One of them had refilled my glass in my absence. Maybe Monty Bean's heralded immunity to the effects of alcohol was infectious, or something, because my mind seemed clear as crystal and I got the scotch to my lips on the first attempt.

"Pray continue," I said.

# # #

Vox Pop #2
Aunt Ethel's Home Baked Microwavable Hearty Eating All Natural Quick Dinners – A Microbiological Analysis

Ant Glimmering was halfway along Buford's single street on his way home before it occurred to him that he lived in the rooms above the Buford Tavern. Heaving a weary sigh, he turned on his heel and began the long stagger back.

There wasn't much of a moon, so the stars were blazing in the night sky overhead, the Big Dipper a mighty crazed zigzag and the Pleiades a lustrous eye. A meteor streaked across the velvet to die in silence.

None of this Ant Glimmering noticed.

There was probably the atmospheric hoot or two of an owl as well, but he didn't notice that either.

All he could think about was the task God had given him for the morrow. Gather up the ordnance, get it into Manhattan and then ...

And then ...

And then that was the difficult bit, because still he couldn't remember the final part of God's instructions. Something to do with a woman – that much Ant was pretty sure about, because, like one of those cartoon explorers crawling across the desert on the subject of water, Ant's hindbrain was alert to any mention of what he always referred to as "the fairer sex" even while treating like shit.

His problems were not eased by the discovery that, on leaving the Buford Tavern, he had carefully locked up all of its locks for the night, then had somehow managed to lose the keys during his erratic sojourn along Buford Street. (The founding fathers of Buford had displayed no great versatility in the naming of the little burg's principal geographical features.) Thank goodness he'd devised a cunning stratagem in response to other, similar occasions.

Letting himself in by the unlocked back door, he tiptoed as silently as he could through the darkened kitchen; he hadn't yet bought himself a brace of macho pit bull terriers, but he might one day, and so it was best to keep in practice. Somehow he found the stairs leading up from the bar and, after a final brief visit to what was either the bathroom or the linen closet – he'd find out in the morning – he fell onto his bed.

But sleep, despite the beer, would not come readily to him tonight.

As he lay there staring up at the ceiling, to which the starlight from the window gave an almost invisible pearly sheen, all he could see was the moving mouth of his microwaved corned beef hash. If he couldn't recall the sound of the words it had spoken, perhaps he could lipread?

A woman. Yes, OK, we'd got that far.

There is something very strange about that woman. Something that'll make it easy for you to identify her.

Ah. We're making progress.

She's several hundred years old.

Ant continued to stare at the ceiling.

Surely there must be more?

He wasn't any kind of an expert on Manhattan – indeed, he had only a somewhat fuzzy notion of where it actually was – but he had a hunch that its thrumming streets were probably fairly densely populated with elderly woman. Not all of them would be several hundred years old; at a guess, only a very few. But his dim memories of the etiquette lessons his mother had drummed into him told him that there was no possibility of him identifying the truly ancient ones from the others by simply going up and asking any likely-looking candidates. As a child, fascinated by a word he'd picked up on Sesame Street, he'd asked Mom if she was a septuagenarian and had ended up in E.R. for the rest of the week.

He beseeched the envisaged oily face to tell him more.

Its sole response was to waggle its home-fried eyebrows meaningfully at him.

Eyebrows.

Was that a clue?

Home fries.

Another?

He knew he was grasping at mental straws.

He knew for a fact he still had a stash of Aunt Ethel's Home Baked Microwavable Hearty Eating All Natural Quick Dinners in the freezer, and he was moderately certain that at least a few of them were the Corned Beef Hash With That Hearty Whizz That Spells MAN-APPEAL flavour – it was a bit difficult to tell, because all the flavours tasted much the same – and he supposed he really ought to heave himself up out of bed and trundle downstairs to heat a packet up and see if God would choose to work the miracle again, but the prospect of such a labour-intensive enterprise intimidated him. Maybe he could have one for breakfast.

Better to keep going with the mental imaging. It might not actually work, but it had the advantage that nobody in Buford would think he was a nutcase if they found out he was hallucinating corned-beef hash on the ceiling while trying to get to sleep, whereas they might if word got out that he was heating up one of Aunt Ethel's Home Baked Microwavable Hearty Eating All Natural Quick Dinners in the hope that God would speak to him out of it.

He had an uneasy suspicion that people might decide he was a bit of a fruitloop if they knew he was so much as eating one of Aunt Ethel's Home Baked Microwavable Hearty Eating All Natural Quick Dinners. Certainly none of the Buford Tavern's customers would, even when he'd tried giving them away as a Thanksgiving Special.

But his mind was straying off whatever point it had been on.

"You've got to tell me more than that," he mouthed silently at the clammy air.

The eyebrows gave a high-saturates shrug, and a jolt of telepathic information burned like – appropriately – greased lightning to the very core of Ant Glimmering's brain.

She's cute!

Well, that narrowed the field down a lot.

Multi-centenarian females were rare enough, but cute ones?

He'd be surprised if there were more than one such in the whole of Manhattan.

With a feeling that he had made a major stride in the interpretation of the Word of God, Ant Glimmering turned weightily over in his bed and at last oblivion barged unresisted into his mind.

# # #

(to be continued ...)

Part One   -   Part Two   -   Part Three   -   Part Four   -   Part Five