Kitabı oku: «Mister Monday»

Table of Contents

Mister Monday

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Grim Tuesday

About the Author

The Keys to the Kingdom series

Copyright

About the Publisher

MISTER MONDAY

A flash of light suddenly distracted Arthur from his slow, counted breaths. It hit the corner of his eye and he swung around to see what it was. For a moment he thought he was blacking out again and was falling over and looking up at the sun. Then, through half-shut eyes, he realised that whatever the blinding light was, it was on the ground and very close.

In fact, it was moving, gliding across the grass towards him, the light losing its brilliance as it drew nearer. Arthur watched in stunned amazement as a dark outline became visible within the light. Then the light faded completely, to reveal a weirdly dressed man in a very strange sort of wheelchair being pushed across the grass by an equally odd-looking attendant.

PROLOGUE

They had tried to destroy the Will, but that proved to be beyond their power. So they broke it, in two ways. It was broken physically, torn apart, with the fragments of heavy parchment scattered across both space and time. It was broken in spirit because not one clause of it had been fulfilled.

If the treacherous Trustees had their way, no clause of the Will would ever be executed. To make sure of this, all seven fragments of the Will had been hidden with great care.

The first and least of the fragments was fused inside a single clear crystal, harder than diamond. Then the crystal was encased in a box of unbreakable glass. The box was locked inside a cage of silver and malachite, and the cage was fixed in place on the surface of a dead sun at the very end of Time.

Around the cage, twelve metal Sentinels stood guard, each taking post upon one of the numbers of a clock face that had been carved with permanent light in the dark matter of the defunct star.

The Sentinels had been specially created as guardians of the fragment. They were vaguely human in appearance, though twice as tall, and their skins were luminous steel. Quick and flexible as cats, they had no hands, but single blades sprang from each wrist. Each Sentinel was responsible for the space between its own hour and the next, and their leader ruled them from the position between twelve and one.

The metal Sentinels were overseen by a carefully chosen corps of Inspectors, lesser beings who would not dare question the breakers of the Will. Once every hundred years one of these Inspectors would appear to make sure that all was well and that the fragment was safely locked away.

In recent aeons, the Inspectors had become lax, rarely doing more than appear, squint at the cage, box and crystal, salute the Sentinels, and disappear again. The Sentinels, who had spent ten thousand years in faithful service marching between the chapters of the clock, did not approve of this slipshod attention to duty. But it was not in their nature to complain, nor was there any means to do so. They could raise the alarm if necessary, but no more than that.

The Sentinels had seen many Inspectors come and go. No one else had ever visited. No one had tried to steal or rescue the fragment of the Will. In short, nothing had happened for all of that ten thousand years.

Then, on a day that was no different from any of the more than three and a half million days that had gone before, an Inspector arrived who took his duties more seriously. He arrived normally enough, simply appearing outside the clock face, his hat askew from the transfer, his official warrant clutched firmly in one hand so the bright gold seal was clearly visible. The Sentinels twitched at the arrival and their blades shivered in anticipation. The warrant and the seal were only half of the permission required to be there. There was always a chance the watchwords delivered by the previous Inspector would not be uttered and the Sentinels’ blades would at last see blurring, slicing action.

Of course, the Sentinels were required to allow the Inspector a minute’s grace. It was not unknown for a transfer between both time and space to briefly addle the wits of anyone, immortal or otherwise.

This Inspector did seem a bit the worse for wear. He wore a fairly standard human shape, that of a middle-aged man of rapidly thickening girth. This human body was clad in a blue frock coat, shiny at the elbows and ink-stained on the right cuff. His white shirt was not really very white, and the badly tied green necktie did not adequately disguise the fact that his collar had come adrift. His top hat had seen much service and was both squashed and leaning to the left. When he raised it to acknowledge the Sentinels, a sandwich wrapped in newspaper fell out. He caught it and slipped it into an inside pocket of his coat before speaking the watchwords.

“Incense, sulphur and rue, I am an Inspector, honest and true,” he recited carefully, holding up the warrant again to show the seal.

The Twelve O’Clock Sentinel swivelled in place in answer to the watchwords and the seal. It crossed its blades with a knife-sharpening noise that made the Inspector tremble and waved a salute in the air.

“Approach, Inspector,” intoned the Sentinel. That was half of everything it ever said.

The Inspector nodded and cautiously stepped from the transfer plate to the curdled darkness of the dead star. He had taken the precaution of wearing Immaterial Boots (disguised as carpet slippers) to counteract the warping nature of the dead star’s dark matter, though his superior had assured him that the warrant and the seal would be sufficient protection. He paused to pick up the transfer plate because it was a personal favourite, a large serving plate of delicate bone china with a fruit pattern, rather than the more usual disc of burnished electrum. It was a risk using a china plate because it could be easily broken, but it looked nice and that was important to the Inspector.

Even the Inspectors were not allowed to pass the inner rim of the clock face, where the feet of the numerals were bordered by a golden line. So this Inspector gingerly trod past the Twelve O’Clock Sentinel and stopped short of the line. The silver cage looked as solid as it should, and the glass box was quite intact and beautifully transparent. He could easily see the crystal inside, just where it was supposed to be.

“All, ah, seems to be in order,” he muttered. Relieved, he took a small box out of his coat pocket, flicked it open, and with a practised movement transferred a small pinch of snuff to his right nostril. It was a new snuff, a present from a higher authority.

“All, ahhh, ahhh, in order,” he repeated, then let out an enormous sneeze that rocked his whole body and for a moment threatened to overbalance him over the gold line. The Sentinels leaped and twisted from their regular positions, and the Twelve O’Clock Sentinel’s blades came whisking down within an inch of the Inspector’s face as he desperately windmilled his arms to regain his balance.

Finally he managed it, and teetered back on the right side of the line.

“Awfully sorry, terrible habit!” he squeaked as he thrust his snuff box securely away. “I’m an Inspector, remember. Here’s the warrant! Look at the seal!”

The Sentinels subsided into their usual pacing. The Twelve O’Clock Sentinel’s arms went back to its sides, the blades no longer threatening.

The Inspector took out a huge patched handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped his face. But as he wiped the sweat away, he thought he saw something move across the surface of the clock face. Something small and thin and dark. When he blinked and removed his handkerchief, he couldn’t see anything.

“I don’t suppose there is anything to report?” he asked nervously. He hadn’t been an Inspector long. A decade short of four centuries, and he was only an Inspector of the Fourth Order. He’d been a Third Back Hall Porter for most of his career, almost since the Beginning of Time. Before that—

“Nothing to report,” said the Twelve O’Clock Sentinel, using up the rest of its standard vocabulary.

The Inspector politely tipped his hat to the Sentinel, but he was concerned. He could feel something here. Something not quite right. But the penalty for a false alarm was too horrible to contemplate. He might be demoted back to being a Hall Porter or, even worse, be made corporeal – stripped of his powers and memory and sent somewhere in the Secondary Realms as a living, breathing baby.

Of course, the penalty for missing something important was even worse. He might be made corporeal for that, but it would not be as anything even vaguely human, or on a world where there was intelligent life. And even that was not the worst that could happen. There were far more terrible fates, but he refused to contemplate them.

The Inspector looked across at the cage, the glass box and the crystal. Then he got a pair of opera glasses out of an inner pocket and looked through those. He could still see nothing out of order. Surely, he told himself, the Sentinels would know if something had gone amiss?

He stepped back outside the clock face and cleared his throat.

“All in order, well done, you Sentinels,” he said. “The watchwords for the next Inspector will be ‘Thistle, palm, oak and yew, I’m an Inspector, honest and true.’ Got that? – excellent – well, I’ll be off.”

The Twelve O’Clock Sentinel saluted. The Inspector doffed his hat once more, swivelled on one heel and set down his transfer plate, chanting the words that would take him to the House. According to regulations, he was supposed to go via the Office of Unusual Activities on the forty-fifteenth floor and report, but he was unsettled and wanted to get straight back to the twenty-tenth floor, his own comfortable study, and a nice cup of tea.

“From dead star’s gloom to bright lamp’s light, back to my rooms and away from night!”

Before he could step on the plate, something small, skinny and very black shot across the golden line, between the legs of the Twelve O’Clock Sentinel, across the Inspector’s left Immaterial Boot and on to the plate. The blue and green fruit glazed on the plate flashed and the plate, black streak and all, vanished in a puff of rather rubbery and nasty-smelling smoke.

“Alarm! Alarm!” cried the Sentinels, leaving the clock face to swarm around the vanished plate, their blades snickering in all directions as the sound of twelve impossibly loud alarm clocks rang and rang from somewhere inside their metal bodies. The Inspector shrank down before the Sentinels and started to chew on the corner of his handkerchief and sob. He knew what that black streak was. He had recognised it in a flash of terror as it sped past.

It was a line of handwritten text. The text from the fragment that was supposedly still fused in crystal, locked in the unbreakable box, inside the silver and malachite cage, glued to the surface of a dead sun and guarded by metal Sentinels.

Only now none of those things was true.

One of the fragments of the Will had escaped – and it was all his fault.

Even worse, it had touched him, striking his flesh straight through the Immaterial Boot. So he knew what it said, and he was not allowed to know. Even more shockingly, the Will had recalled him to his real duty. For the first time in millennia he was conscious of just how badly things had gone wrong.

“Into the trust of my good Monday, I place the administration of the Lower House,” the Inspector whispered. “Until such a time as the Heir or the Heir’s representatives call upon Monday to relinquish any such offices, properties, rights and appurtenances as Monday holds in trust.”

The Sentinels did not understand him, or perhaps they could not even hear him over the clamouring of their internal alarms. They had spread out, uselessly searching the surface of the dead star, beams of intense light streaming from their eyes into the darkness. The star was not large – no more than a thousand yards in diameter – but the fragment was long gone. The Inspector knew it would already have left his rooms and got into the House proper.

“I have to get back,” the Inspector said to himself. “The Will will need help. Transfer plate’s gone, so it will have to be the long way.”

He reached into his coat and pulled out a grimy and bedraggled pair of wings that were almost as tall as he was. The Inspector hadn’t used them for a very long time and was surprised at the state they were in. The feathers were all yellow and askew and the pinions didn’t look at all reliable. He clipped them into place on his back and took a few tentative flaps to make sure they still worked.

Distracted by his wings, the Inspector didn’t notice a sudden flash of light upon the surface of the clock, or the two figures who appeared with that flash. They wore human shapes too, as was the fashion in the House. But these two were taller, thinner and more handsome. They had on neat black frock coats over crisp white shirts with high-pointed collars and very neat neckties of sombre red, a shade lighter than their dark silk waistcoats. Their top hats were sleekly black, and they carried ornate ebony sticks topped with silver knobs.

“Where do you think you’re going, Inspector?” asked the taller of the two new arrivals.

The Inspector turned in shock, and his wings drooped still further.

“To report, sir!” he said weakly. “As you can see. To… to my immediate superiors… and to… to Monday’s Dawn, or even Mister Monday, if he wants…”

“Mister Monday will know soon enough,” said the tall gentleman. “You know who we are?”

The Inspector shook his head. They were very high up in the Firm, that was obvious from their clothes and the power he could sense. But he didn’t know them, either by name or by rank.

“Are you from the sixty-hundredth floor? Mister Monday’s executive office?”

The taller gentleman smiled and drew a paper from his waistcoat pocket. It unfolded itself as he held it up, and the seal upon it shone so brightly that the Inspector had to shield his face with his arm and duck his head.

“As you see, we serve a higher Master than Monday,” said the gentleman. “You will come with us.”

The Inspector gulped and shambled forward. One of the gentlemen swiftly pulled on a pair of snowy white gloves and snapped off the Inspector’s wings. They shrank till they were no larger than a dove’s wings and he put them in a buff envelope that came from nowhere. He sealed this shut with a sizzling press of his thumb. Then he handed the envelope to the Inspector. The word EVIDENCE appeared on it as the Inspector clutched it to his chest and cast nervous glances at his escorts.

Working together, the two gentlemen drew a doorway in the air with their sticks. When they’d finished, the space shimmered for a moment and then solidified into an elevator doorway, with a sliding metal grille and a bronze call button. One of the gentlemen pressed the button and an elevator car suddenly appeared out of nowhere behind the grille.

“I’m not authorised to go in an executive elevator, not up past Records by any means, stair or lift or weirdway,” gabbled the Inspector. “And I’m definitely not… not authorised to go down below the Inking Cellars.”

The two gentlemen pushed back the grille and gestured for the Inspector to step into the elevator. It was lined with dark green velvet and one entire wall was covered in small bronze buttons.

“We’re not going down, are we?” asked the Inspector in a small voice.

The taller gentleman smiled, a cold smile that did not reach his eyes. He reached up and his arm clicked horribly as it stretched, growing an extra couple of yards so he could press a button on the very top right-hand side of the lift.

“There?” asked the Inspector, awed in spite of his fear. He could feel the Will’s influence working away inside of him, but he knew there was no hope of trying to help it now. The words that had got away would have to fend for themselves. “All the way to the top?”

“Yes,” said the two gentlemen in unison as they clanged shut the metal grille.

CHAPTER ONE

It was Arthur Penhaligon’s first day at his new school and it was not going well. Having to start two weeks after everyone else was bad enough, but it was even worse than that. Arthur was totally and utterly new to the school. His family had just moved to the town, so he knew absolutely no one and he had none of the local knowledge that would make life easier.

Like the fact the seventh grade had a cross-country run every Monday just before lunch. Today. And it was compulsory, unless special arrangements had been made by a student’s parents. In advance.

Arthur tried to explain to the gym teacher that he’d only just recovered from a series of very serious asthma attacks and had in fact been in the hospital only a few weeks ago. Besides that, he was wearing the stupid school uniform of grey trousers with a white shirt and tie, and leather shoes. He couldn’t run in those clothes.

For some reason – perhaps the forty other kids shouting and chasing one another around – only the second part of Arthur’s complaint got through to the teacher, Mister Weightman.

“Listen, kid, the rule is everybody runs, in whatever you’re wearing!” snapped the teacher. “Unless you’re ill.”

“I am ill!” protested Arthur, but his words were lost as someone screamed and suddenly two girls were pulling each other’s hair and trying to kick shins, and Weightman was yelling at them and blowing his whistle.

“Settle down! Susan, let go of Tanya right now! OK, you know the course. Down the right side of the oval, through the park, around the statue, back through the park and down the other side of the oval. First three back get to go to lunch early, the last three get to sweep the gym. Line up – I said line up, don’t gaggle about. Get back, Rick. Ready? On my whistle.”

No, I’m not ready, thought Arthur. But he didn’t want to stand out any more by complaining further or simply not going. He was already an outsider here, a loner in the making, and he didn’t want to be. He was an optimist. He could handle the run.

Arthur gazed across the oval at the dense forest beyond, which was obviously meant to be a park. It looked more like a jungle. Anything could happen in there. He could take a rest. He could make it that far, no problem, he told himself.

Just for insurance, Arthur felt in his pocket for his inhaler, closing his fingers around the cool, comforting metal and plastic. He didn’t want to use it, didn’t want to be dependent on the medication. But he’d ended up in the hospital last time because he’d refused to use the inhaler until it was too late, and he’d promised his parents he wouldn’t do that again.

Weightman blew his whistle, a long blast that was answered in many different ways. A group of the biggest, roughest-looking boys sprang out like shotgun pellets, hitting one another and shouting as they accelerated away. A bunch of athletic girls, taller and more long-legged than any boys at their current age, streamed past them a few seconds later, their noses in the air at the vulgar antics of the monkeys they were forced to share a class with.

Smaller groups of boys or girls – never mixed – followed with varying degrees of enthusiasm. After them came the unathletic and noncommitted and those too hip to run anywhere, though Arthur wasn’t particularly sure which category they each belonged to.

Arthur found himself running because he didn’t have the courage to walk. He knew he wouldn’t be mistaken for someone too cool to participate. Besides, Mister Weightman was already jogging backwards so he could face the walkers and berate them.

“Your nonparticipation has been noted,” bellowed Weightman. “You will fail this class if you do not pick up your feet!”

Arthur looked over his shoulder to see if that had any result. One kid broke into a shambling run, but the rest of the walkers ignored the teacher. Weightman spun around in disgust and built up speed. He overtook Arthur and the middle group of runners and rapidly closed the gap on the serious athletes at the front. Arthur could already tell he was the kind of gym teacher who liked to beat the kids in a race. Probably because he couldn’t win against other adult runners, Arthur thought sourly.

For three or maybe even four minutes after Weightman sped away, Arthur kept up with the last group of actual runners, well ahead of the walkers. But as he had feared, he found it harder and harder to get a full breath into his lungs. They just wouldn’t expand, as if they were already full of something and couldn’t let any air in. Without the oxygen he needed, Arthur got slower and slower, falling back until he was barely in front of the walkers. His breathing became shallower and shallower and the world narrowed around him, until all he could think about was trying to get a decent breath and keep putting one foot approximately in front of the other.

Then, without any conscious intention, Arthur found that his legs weren’t moving and he was staring up at the sky. He was lying on his back on the grass. Dimly, he realised he must have blacked out and fallen over.

“Hey, are you taking a break or is there a problem?” someone asked. Arthur tried to say that he was OK, though some other part of his brain was going off like a fire engine siren, screaming that he was definitely not OK. But no words came out of his mouth, only a short, rasping wheeze.

Inhaler! Inhaler! Inhaler! said the screaming siren part of his brain. Arthur followed its direction, fumbling in his pocket for the metal cylinder with its plastic mouthpiece. He tried to raise it to his mouth, but when his hand arrived it was empty. He’d dropped the inhaler.

Then someone else pushed the mouthpiece between his lips and a cool mist suddenly filled his mouth and throat.

“How many puffs?” asked the voice.

Three, thought Arthur. That would get him breathing, at least enough to stay alive. Though he’d probably be back in the hospital again, and another week or two convalescing at home.

“How many puffs?”

Arthur realised he hadn’t answered. Weakly, he held out three fingers and was rewarded by two more clouds of medicine. It was already beginning to work. His shallow, wheezing breaths were actually getting some air into his lungs and, in turn, some oxygen into his blood and to his brain.

The closed in, confused world he’d been experiencing started to open out again, like scenery unfolded on a stage. Instead of just the blue sky rimmed with darkness, he saw a couple of kids crouched near him. They were two of the walkers, the ones who refused to run. A girl and a boy, both defiantly not in school uniform or gym gear, wearing black jeans, T-shirts featuring bands Arthur didn’t know, and sunglasses. They were either super-hip and ultra-cool, or the exact opposite. Arthur was too new to the school and the whole town to know.

The girl had short dyed hair that was so blonde it was almost white. The boy had long, dyed-black hair. Despite this, they looked kind of the same. It took Arthur’s confused mind a second to work out that they had to be twins, or at least brother and sister. Maybe one had to repeat a grade.

“Ed, call 999,” instructed the girl. She was the one who had given Arthur the inhaler.

“The Octopus confiscated my phone,” replied the boy. Ed.

“OK, you run back to the gym,” said the girl. “I’ll go after Weightman.”

“What for?” asked Ed. “Shouldn’t you stay?”

“Nope, nothing we can do except get help,” said the girl. “Weightman’s got a phone. He’s probably already on his way back. You just lie here and keep breathing.”

The last words were directed at Arthur. He nodded feebly and waved his hand, telling them to go. Now that his brain was at least partially functioning again, he was terribly embarrassed. First day at a new school and he hadn’t even made it to lunch time. It would be even worse coming back. He would be seen as a total loser and, after a month of the new term, would have no chance of easily catching up or making any friends.

At least I’m alive, Arthur told himself. He had to be grateful for that. He still couldn’t get a proper breath, and he was incredibly weak, but he managed to prop himself up on one elbow and look around.

The two black-clad kids were showing that they could run when they wanted to. Arthur watched the girl sprint through the gaggle of walkers like a crow dive-bombing a flock of sparrows, and vanish into the tree line of the park. Looking the other way, Arthur saw Ed was about to disappear around the high, blank brick wall of the gym, which blocked the rest of the school from view.

Help would be coming soon. Arthur willed himself to be calm. He forced himself up to a sitting position and concentrated on taking slow breaths, as deep as he could manage. With a bit of luck he would stay conscious. The main thing was not to panic. He’d been here before, and he’d come through. He had the inhaler in his hand. He’d just stay quiet and still, keeping panic and fear securely locked away.

A flash of light suddenly distracted Arthur from his slow, counted breaths. It hit the corner of his eye and he swung around to see what it was. For a moment he thought he was blacking out again and was falling over and looking up at the sun. Then, through half-shut eyes, he realised that whatever the blinding light was, it was on the ground and very close.

In fact, it was moving, gliding across the grass towards him, the light losing its brilliance as it drew nearer. Arthur watched in stunned amazement as a dark outline became visible within the light. Then the light faded completely, to reveal a weirdly dressed man in a very strange sort of wheelchair being pushed across the grass by an equally odd-looking attendant.

The wheelchair was long and narrow, like a bath, and it was made of woven wicker. It had one small wheel at the front and two big ones at the back. All three wheels had metal rims, without rubber tyres, or any sort of tyre, so the wheelchair – or wheel-bath, or bath chair, or whatever it was – sank heavily into the grass.

The man lying back in the bath chair was thin and pale, his skin like tissue paper. He looked quite young, though, no more than twenty, and was very handsome, with even features and blue eyes, though these were hooded, as if he was very tired. He had an odd round hat with a tassel on his blond head and was wearing what looked to Arthur like some sort of kung fu robe, of red silk with blue dragons all over it. He had a tartan blanket over his legs, but his slippers stuck out the end. They were red silk too, and shimmered in the sun with a pattern that Arthur couldn’t quite focus on.

The man who was pushing the chair was even more out of place. Or out of time. He looked somewhat like a butler from an old movie, or Nestor from the Tintin comics, though he was nowhere near as neat. He had on an oversized black coat with ridiculously long tails that almost touched the ground, and his white shirt front was stiff and very solid, as if it was made of plastic. He had knitted half-gloves that were unravelling on his hands, and bits of loose wool hung over his fingers. Arthur noticed with distaste that his fingernails were very long and yellow, as were his teeth. He was much older than the man he pushed, his face lined and pitted with age, his white hair only growing on the back of his head, though it was very long. He had to be at least eighty, but he had no difficulty pushing the bath chair straight towards Arthur.

The two men were talking as they approached. They seemed entirely unaware of Arthur, or uninterested in him.

“I don’t know why I keep you upstairs, Sneezer,” said the man in the bath chair. “Or agree to your ridiculous plans.”

“Now, now, sir,” said the butler-type, who was obviously called Sneezer. Now that they were closer, Arthur noticed that his nose was rather red and had a patchwork of broken blood vessels shining under the skin. “It’s not a plan, but a precaution. We don’t want to be bothered by the Will, do we?”

“I s’pose not,” grumbled the young man. He yawned widely and closed his eyes. “You’re sure that we’ll find someone suitable here?”

“Sure as eggs is eggs,” replied Sneezer. “Surer even, eggs not always being what one might expect. I set the dials myself, to find someone suitably on the edge of infinity. You give him the Key, he dies, you get it back. Another ten thousand years without trouble, and the Will can’t quibble cos you did give up the Key to one in the line of heredity, as it were.”