Oddjobs Page 24

  “The god section,” said Nina.

  “You have a lot of books,” said Morag.

  “This is only one of the reading rooms,” said Nina. “We have to keep some of the books separate. They’re kind of territorial. And occasionally hungry.” Nina passed a tablet screen to Morag. “I’ll find us some books. Meantime, maybe you could check if any other sections have intel on our two prime suspects.”

  “Your tea,” said Vivian.

  Rod moved his computer keyboard aside and placed a coaster on the desk with his bandaged hand.

  “Glad to see someone uses a coaster.” Vivian placed down a cup of tea that was the perfect chestnut brown.

  “Well, if you don’t, it’s just the thin end of the wedge,” said Rod. “Got to have some order in this world.”

  “Quite so.”

  “Also,” said Rod, “this coaster, the outside dissolves in water to reveal a concealed Japanese throwing star.”

  “I am not sure if I can imagine a situation in which one might need to a turn a coaster into a weapon.”

  “Preparing for the unimaginable,” said Rod sagely. “That’s what we’re all about.”

  Vivian neither agreed nor disagreed but left him to his work. It was a task that had him stumped even before he had begun. Nine missing items and nine pieces of accompanying paperwork that provided only the most cursory of information. There were photographs of the items, names provided for a handful of them and — apart from a list of dates and locations to indicate where they had been found, bought or stored — nothing more. It was a mystery with no breadcrumb trail to follow.

  Rod needed a Venislarn expert. He called Dr Ingrid Spence. The phone went to voicemail the first time he rang. On his second attempt, someone or something answered.

  “Nnnng.”

  “Ingrid?”

  “Oh, hi Rod,” she croaked. Ingrid sounded like she was gargling marmalade with razor blades in it.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Nuh-uh,” she sniffed. “Come down with something virulent and mucous-y. I just don’t know where it’s all coming from. It’s like I’ve got the snot glands of an elephant.”

  “Aye, you’ve painted a vivid picture there. You should be at home, resting up.”

  “I am,” said Ingrid. “Me, a bottle of Night Nurse, a dozen Curly Wurlies and a box-set of Xena: Warrior Princess.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to catch you on. Hey, you don’t think you caught anything from treating that Venislarn windbag?”

  “Not likely,” she said and gave a hacking cough. “If I start sprouting tentacles or some newborn Venislarn bursts out of my chest cavity, I’ll let you know. Anyway…”

  “Yes?”

  “You called,” she said.

  “Oh. Aye. I’ve got these items I need identifying. Explaining. I wanted some background information on them.”

  There was a protracted wheezing on the line as though Ingrid was trying to hawk something up from the back of her throat.

  “Or maybe you’re not well enough,” said Rod.

  “Maybe. Can’t it wait until next week?”

  Rod weighed it up in his mind: end-of-the-world style incursion versus professional courtesy to his sick colleague. Did the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one? But then again, if they cancelled sick leave every time there was a Venislarn emergency, they’d be forbidding flu-ridden germ carriers from abandoning their desks all the time.

  “No, it’s okay,” he said. “I’ll muddle through. Could have used the brains of the smartest Venislarn expert in the city.”

  “Smartest Venislarn expert on the payroll at least,” she said and hung up.

  “Right,” said Rod. “Square one. Drawing board. Back to.” He stared at the sheets of paper. Nine objects, eight of them probably decoys. One object that potentially held the key to predicting a catastrophic incursion before the end of the day. “We have to solve this without the help of the smartest Venislarn nerd on the payroll.”

  And immediately his next obvious course of action struck him. He didn’t like it. He really didn’t want to do it. It took him a full ten minutes and possibly the finest cup of tea he had ever drunk to sufficiently build up the courage and swallow his pride.

  He phoned Birmingham University.

  When Vivian reached the reading room, Nina had a fat tome open on the table and a phone to her ear. Opposite her, Morag was working through a tall stack of bookmarked volumes.

  Vivian tilted her head to look at the woodcut engraving in the book before Nina. The image had the appearance of a photographic double exposure, as though the artist was incapable of settling on one artistic representation of Zildrohar-Cqulu. The body of the being was both that of a short-limbed locust-like insect and that of a sinuous lizard with dragon wings sprouting from its back. Its head was that of a hairless and fanged ape, whilst simultaneously being the multi-fronded chitin-covered helmet of the angriest prawn Vivian had ever seen. Locust-ape or lizard-prawn, or locust-prawn or lizard-ape, Zildrohar-Cqulu had been rendered with suitable menace.

  Nina was nodding to the person on the other end of the phone line.

  Vivian followed the Venislarn text on the page and translated out loud to herself.

  “Zildrohar-Cqulu, high priest of the Temple of Ages, the wielder of wakefulness, the fastness of sleep. Brother of Ligh’er the Unnameable –”

  “Surely, his name’s Ligh’er,” said Morag.

  “Yes,” said Vivian.

  “Well, that’s hardly unnameable, is it?”

  Vivian grunted and continued reading. “The tyrant of dreams, the speaker of men’s souls, the drinker of song-weave, he of the flame-vision. His house of sleep is — glued? mortared? — mortared with the blood and spirit of his slaves, each accorded a place in his principality in hell.”

  “Hull,” said Nina.

  “He’s got a principality in Hull?” said Morag. “Suddenly, this guy sounds far less cool.”

  “He’s in Hull,” said Nina.

  “Pardon?” said Vivian.

  Nina jiggled her head at the phone in her hand.

  “I’m just talking to Glynn at our mission there now. They have him in storage, sleeping, or whatever it is that Venislarn gods do instead of sleeping. He was brought to the country recently after some natural gas prospector company unearthed him in the South Atlantic.”

  “Hull?”

  “Yes, Hull,” said Nina patiently. “Grey, miserable, smells of fish.”

  “Yes, I know Hull,” said Vivian. “I had a brief and unsatisfactory relationship with a junior accountant from Hull. If Zildrohar-Cqulu is sleeping under our guard in Hull, then I think we can safely strike him off our list.” She looked to Morag. “So, the Nadirian.”

  Nina stepped away to conclude her conversation with the Hull consular mission.

  Morag placed her hand on the pile of books. “Dozens of references to beings that might or might not be the Nadirian. Funnily enough, descriptions of an entity that appears to be what you expect it to be aren’t exactly going to agree with each other. The Venislarn name, Nadirian, is a loan word from us. Nadir, from the Arabic nazir, the opposite, the other, the reflection.”

  “All very nice, Miss Murray,” said Vivian, “but we need facts, not a lesson in etymology.”

  “Facts.” Morag tapped her tablet. “I’ve got a handful of facts and a theory with virtually no evidence to support it. Fact one, in the Emerald Tablet, Jabir ibn Hayyan asserts that the mirror-god is the father of the Uriye Inai’e.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, we know that prayers of supplication can be effective in calming or subduing them. It worked on Kevin.”

  “Tenuous.”

  “Yep. Well, this is even more tenuous. In this commentary on The Testament of Solomon, Cassiodorus says that after the shape-stealing demon has eaten, it can be bound and captured in a box woven from ivy.”

  “Do we have a box woven from ivy?” asked Vivian.

  �
�Shouldn’t think so.”

  “So it is a moot point.”

  “I suppose.”

  Morag closed the book in front of her. “Thing is…”

  “Yes?” said Vivian.

  “In all these books, there are no pictures of the Nadirian.”

  “Because it can take on any shape,” said Vivian.

  “And yet Chad and Leandra produced a cuddly toy version of the Nadirian at Wednesday’s meeting.”

  “I don’t think those toys were meant to be true to life.”

  “But all the others were clearly based on the images we have of them.”

  Vivian considered this. “You think the toy designer has seen a picture or a document that we haven’t?”

  Morag shrugged.

  “It’s either that or we put our trust in prayers and boxes made of ivy.”

  “Then let us go ask Chad and Leandra and, on the way up, you can tell me your theory.”

  When she came off the phone from Glynn, Nina saw she had a missed call from Rod. She called him back.

  “Are you busy, Nina?” he asked.

  “That’s a trick question,” she said. “I’ve been caught out by that one before.”

  “I wondered if you fancied coming for a ride with me.”

  “I choose to interpret that in the filthiest way imaginable.”

  “To see Professor Sheikh Omar.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Nina with a vicious sarcasm that sent her voice up in pitch. “I just love visiting the Josef Mengele of Venislarn studies.”

  “Woah, did you just make a reference to a twentieth century historical figure?”

  “I’m talking about the evil doctor in that Nazis at the Centre of the Earth movie. I’m saying the man is an evil fuck.”

  “I just thought you might be able to persuade Omar to help us. He always had a soft spot for you.”

  “Yeah. I think I’d like to gouge out his soft spot with a pencil.”

  “Fine.” Rod paused. “I was also going to offer to buy us McDonald’s drive-thru on the way back.”

  “Hotdog!” said Nina in far happier tones. “You should have opened with that. See you in the car.”

  Morag and Vivian found Chad in the marketing office. He was sat cross-legged on the floor contemplating a large cardboard cutout of a young woman in the arms of a samakha youth.

  Chad looked up. “Ladies!” he said, delighted. “Welcome to the idea nursery. We never see you down here. Help yourselves to some strawberries or cherry tomatoes.” He waved a hand to a selection of red fruits and salad items on the desk. “Leandra and I are on the colour diet. Friday is red.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” said Morag.

  “It’s good for the blood,” said Chad. “My favourite is Sunday. Green. Lots of grapes and kiwis to help the positive flow of chi. What do you think to this?” he asked, gesturing to the cardboard cut-out. “It’s concept material for a possible book-dash-film-dash-multi-platform-dash-story event.”

  Morag thought about adding ‘dash pointless’ but refrained.

  “Last decade it was all dark romance with vampires. We’ve had zom-rom. We’ve had alien teen romances. Maybe it’s time for teen-Venislarn romance. I look at this and I’m thinking A Love as Deep as the Ocean. What do you say?”

  Vivian eyed the cutout. “Samakha have their eyes on the sides of their heads, like fish. “Not the front.”

  “Focus groups said that the public couldn’t accept a romantic male lead who didn’t have his eyes on the front of his head.”

  “But it is factually inaccurate.”

  “I think we’re aiming for a deeper truth, you know?” said Chad. “Leandra was very positive. She said some of those troubled samakha youths you had in yesterday had a real energy to them. Do you know if any of them have considered a career in the film industry?”

  “Um, quite possibly,” said Morag.

  “We have some questions for you, Mr de Marco,” said Vivian.

  “Shoot,” said Chad. “It’s only through questions that we learn more about ourselves.”

  “You showed us that hideous range of cuddly Venislarn toys.”

  “I wouldn’t know about ‘hideous’, Vivian. Customer beta-tests were very positive. We could even have them in the shops for Christmas.”

  “You produced one of the Nadirian.”

  “Yes, we did.” He rooted around behind a desk and came up with a shopping bag. “Not everyone’s into the asymmetrical thing but I think this guy has a real charm-factor. Well, I would. Based on a design concept I submitted myself.”

  He pulled out the toy. It looked like a root vegetable, a misshapen root vegetable with an uneven number of legs and a mouth that was on the opposite end of the body to its eyes.

  “We want to know where this… concept came from,” said Vivian.

  “Ah,” said Chad. “The mysteries of the muse. Where do ideas come from? I read this interesting lifestyle piece about Plato. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his work. He believes that ideas –”

  “Did you make it up or did you copy it from somewhere?” said Vivian.

  Chad’s perma-grin faltered. “Am I in trouble or anything?”

  “That depends,” said Morag.

  “He said it was okay for me to have it.”

  “Who?”

  “Greg. He gave it to me a couple of days before, you know…”

  “He died,” said Morag.

  “Yes.”

  “What did he give you?” said Vivian.

  Chad opened a desk drawer and pulled out a large hardback notebook.

  “This.”

  Nina put her collar up against the wind as they crossed the square to the stairs of the Faculty of Arts building.

  “This place bring back bad memories?” said Rod.

  “Yep,” said Nina. “Puts me in the mood for punching things.”

  “Hold onto that. We might yet need it.”

  They went up to the first floor and to Professor Sheikh Omar’s office. Rod knocked.

  “There’s somebody at the door,” sang a voice from within.

  “You knock?” Nina said to Rod.

  “Always. He might not be decent,” Rod replied.

  “The man is incapable of being decent.” She threw the door open.

  Professor Sheikh Omar was at his desk. A magnifying glass on a gooseneck stand was positioned over a broad manuscript. The manuscript was leather hide not paper and it was covered in faded pictures, not actual script.

  “I’ve never regarded the Polynesian people as particularly flexible,” said Omar conversationally as he peered. “Either physically or morally. But I’m always prepared to be proven wrong.” He looked up and smiled. “Care to take a gander? Fair warning, it’s a little racier than the old seaside What the Butler Saw.”

  A tinkling of crockery heralded the arrival of Omar’s assistant, Maurice.

  “Timing,” said Omar. “It’s almost as if we were expecting you. Oh, Maurice, you read my mind!” Omar picked up the box of chocolates on the tray. “Cadbury’s Milk Tray. I would say that I much prefer the chocolate confections of the Swiss or the Belgians but there is something utterly delicious about Cadbury’s, isn’t there? A beautiful kitsch quality. Some days, we don’t want caviar; we just want fish fingers. Don’t you agree?”

  “We’ve come to ask you some questions,” said Rod.

  “No,” said Omar simply. “Try again. Sit down, have tea, eat a chocolate or two, and try again.”

  “We require your assistance with our enquiries,” said Rod.

  “Close, but not quite,” said Omar, his tone hardening a fraction. “One last time. Sit. Take tea with me.”

  He rolled up the ancient hide as Maurice poured. Rod reluctantly sat and Nina followed a second later. “You know what annoys me most?” said Nina. “That this kind of shit is funded by my student loan.”

  “A pleasure as always to see you, Nina,” said Omar. “Your mere presence, like the rising sun, c
asts elucidating rays. Rodney, let me tell you what you meant to say when you entered my office.”

  “Using your psychic powers again?”

  “No, my intellect, dear boy. To paraphrase, any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from magic. You need my help.”

  “Need is a strong word.”

  “The clock is ticking. You are floundering. And you have even brought the delectable Nina Seth with you as an enticement. You need my help and you should have come in with the humility of a petitioning supplicant.”

  “You use big words,” said Rod.

  “Don’t feign ignorance. It diminishes you, Rodney. You need my help because I know things you do not and I’m feeling broadly disinclined to help you.”

  “You won’t help stop a Venislarn incursion?” said Nina.

  “If they will it, nothing will stop it,” said Omar.

  “But we can prevent thousands of needless deaths.”

  “No such thing. Death is always needed. It’s the grist in life’s mill. Maurice and I are taking the old charabanc down to Barry Island for the weekend to get out of the way. Maurice does love the donkeys. I think he feels a certain kinship.”

  “Ignore him.” Maurice finished pouring and bustled the empty tray away.

  Omar plucked a chocolate from the box and popped it in his mouth. “Last time we spoke, Rodney, you said I was full of shite.”

  “I did.”

  “It would only be natural for a fellow to feel offended by such remarks. Fortunately, I am a forgiving fellow.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “The thing is, of course, forgiveness cannot simply be given; it has to be asked for.”

  “Ah,” said Rod, understanding. “You want me to grovel. You want me on my knees.”

  Omar smiled at Nina lewdly. “He’s so eager. It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it?”

  “He’s wasting our time.” Nina stood up.

  “I will help you,” said Omar, “in exchange for three things: a genuine and heartfelt apology, a verbal acknowledgement that you have come to me because I have skills and knowledge above and beyond yours and, finally, an understanding that, after today, you owe me.”

  Rod had been in the job long enough to know what ‘you owe me’ meant. In the world in the shadow of the Venislarn, debts and favours were true currency and could be called in at any time. Omar wasn’t after mere words; he was seeking fealty.