“Albert’s girth!” I exclaimed. “Elizabeth!? Is that you?”

“It is, doctor,” she said, stepping inside without invitation and allowing me to cast my eyes over Carruthers’ niece from a more favourable angle. She was a sight for sore, watering eyes, and more besides, but I regained my composure quickly and glanced outside. Of Carruthers there was no sign; only a tandem penny farthing stood propped against the wall that mostly surrounded my country retreat in Sussex.

Over my best attempt at a cup of tea – one really doesn’t appreciate a housekeeper as good as Mrs Amersham until she is of necessity called away to attend a family bereavement; a cousin killed just the weekend past by an anti-suffrage mob in Brixton – Elizabeth told me that it was imperative I accompany her to her uncle as he was certain he had found the fabled City of the Amazons and felt the chance of success in such a mission would increase with my accompaniment. It was difficult to say no to Elizabeth and I suspected that had been Carruthers’ intention.

“Elizabeth, dear Elizabeth,” I said, trying to find the right words. “As you know I have not been well ever since that horrible incident that saw the three of us set foot on Saturn. I have self-administered a dose of trepanning but the mental ailment that yet still afflicts me has left me with little desire” – I choked on this word and blushed, I’m sure – “for adventure or the company of man. I find myself thinking dark thoughts from time-to-time and I have not fully gotten over the loss of Mr Hawkes, I’m certain.” I glanced at the empty picture frame on the mantelpiece; it ashamed me that my intention to sketch my former spacefaring companion in tribute had been scuppered by a frightening inability to recall his features. “I am sure your uncle can cope without me. Indeed, he may be better off without worrying over what I might say or do next as it’s a constant threat at the back of my own mind.”

“My uncle wouldn’t ask this lightly,” answered Elizabeth. “And neither would I,” she continued, fixing a stare at me that I hurriedly broke. “Normalcy may be just what the doctor should be ordering.”

Carruthers and his niece made a compelling argument even when one of them wasn’t present but I mustered whatever fortitude I still retained and both apologised and gently refused. Eventually, the beautiful Elizabeth stood and slowly flattened the front of her skirt where it had crumpled on her lap during the short stay. “I hope you’ll reconsider and I wish you a speedy recovery in the meantime,” she said with a sad smile. “At the very least my uncle will be pleased when I tell him you’ve taken up mechanising insects as it’s long been a hobby of his too.”

My puzzled look immediately led to Elizabeth pointing to the small book case by the open bay window on which there was quite clearly a butterfly flexing its white wings; strapped to its back was a piece of brass equipment that resembled a gramophone shrunk to appropriate proportions. I took a step towards it and the thing immediately lifted clumsily into the air and escaped outside. Realisation dawned on me.

“Victoria’s stilts!” I shouted. “The lepidopterists!” I spun around to face Carruthers’ niece. “I’ll warrant that contraption was a recording mechanism and right now the bug is making its way back to its masters. They’ll know your uncle’s plans before nightfall. He could be in mortal danger!”

With my previous affliction miraculously seeming to have been vanquished there was nothing else for it and I quickly took leave of Elizabeth to freshen up and pack a few things. Inside one half of an hour I was mounted behind Elizabeth on the bike – though, for once, my mind was so sharply focused on the task at hand very few thoughts of a lustful nature found their ways into my head – and we were pedalling as swiftly as the nation’s road laws and conditions allowed towards Carruthers.

* * *

There were pleasantries, of course. Carruthers told me that I had changed when we met up at his new house in Wimbledon. I explained that I’d had a rough time mentally but that I felt I was on the mend. I then told Carruthers that he too had changed.

“Oh, this?” he asked, pointing with his good hand at the brass object protruding from his features fashioned to resemble the ear that had once adorned the left side of his head. “A punishment from a tribe of pygmies in deepest Devon for delving where I probably ought not to have delved.” It had never stopped him before and I suspected it wouldn’t slow him down in future either and we both smiled as we recognised this truth without speaking. He continued: “It was on that very quest that I happened on the map that I suspect reveals the secret location to the entrance to the lost City of the Amazons!”

“Elizabeth told me about this,” I confirmed. “In fact, in the doing so we uncovered a potential plot to usurp your plans by my old foes, the lepidoterists. It’s why I’m here. I know I’ll never talk you out of going and I’d never forgive myself were something to happen so your best chance is to have me along as protection if possible, as a decoy if necessary, and for us to reveal this wonder to the world before they can claim its discovery as their own.”

“Brunel’s hat! There’s no time to lose!”

Thus it was that Carruthers, his niece, and I headed to the Clapham Pneumatic and took the tube to the Ryde terminal, arriving at its cushioned end a mere fifteen minutes after ensconcing ourselves within the velvet upholstery of the cylindrical vessel. On the high velocity journey I had my first look at the map to the Amazons’ lost city and we discussed what we knew of the mythical race. It transpired that it was very little and common decency prevented Carruthers and I from saying half of that as there were women present in the carriage. Our plan, therefore, became of necessity one that relied on us using our wits to discern the best outcome from any incident that arose; oddly enough, the same plan we employed on most of our adventures together.

At Ryde we discovered the winds were favourable and there was just enough light in the day to take an air balloon to Blackgang Chine, it being the swiftest means of travel on the rather backward island off the coast of Portsmouth. With the sun starting to dip the lower edge of its golden orange disc into the sea on the western horizon we arrived at the coastal ravine and peered into its shadowy mouth.

“If the map is right,” said Carruthers, stating what we all already knew, “then the entrance lies at the base of the chine, exposed only at low tide. If my memory is correct then low tide will occur in a little under an hour.” The ability of Carruthers to recall and calculate UK coastal tide times never ceased to amaze me.

“And even if the lepidopterists are hot on our tails they’ll be forced to wait until the next low tide giving us an unassailable advantage,” I beamed.

We clambered down the ravine. Fortunately, its sides were not so steep that we had need of the stout rope that I had wrapped around my torso beneath my undershirt. Only once – a pity! – did I need to assist Elizabeth down some tricky scree. In that increasing gloom I could still pick out her magnificently handsome features silhouetted as they were against the deepening blue of the sky above.

As the tide receded to its lowest point we donned the bowlers that Carruthers had completed modifying just prior to the arrival of Elizabeth and me on the tandem bike earlier that day. Into a shallow recess at the front of each hat was a clockwork and sprung contraption not far removed from the innards of a fine timepiece. Suspended from the rear of each bowler – and attached through a gearing system around the hat’s rim to the clockwork – were chains wound through toothed pulleys that were hooked both at the heels of our shoes and at the waistband of our trousers, in the men’s case, or bustle, in Elizabeth’s. Taking a step would engage the chains and pulleys with the power ultimately winding the clockwork at the front of each hat, storing the energy in the spring, then releasing it to rapidly strike flint set around the mechanism’s recess. The result was a sparkling glow that illuminated several feet ahead of the wearer and which would be powered by human movement, a most ingenious solution to the problem of not knowing just how long we would be underground.

“I see it!” said Elizabeth suddenly, pointing towards what looked to me like nothing more than a jagged shadow against some recently wet rocks. Still, trusting to her younger eyes Carruthers and I led the way and found, not surprisingly but most excitedly, a cleft descending below ground level; a doorway of sorts! With our hats sending out flickering beams of light ahead the three of us squeezed into the gap – I was required to breathe in somewhat, a legacy of my lazy recuperation after Saturn; I vowed to engage in a regime of fitness upon our safe return to the surface world – and into that darkness we descended.

Immediately we brushed up against and then slowly through the unsettling mass of a great amount of seaweed; its arrangement seemed somewhat unnatural, forming multiple layers that took several seconds to slip through. Elizabeth remarked it was possibly the method by which the Amazons prevented the sea from encroaching on their hidden city and Carruthers and I could find no fault with the statement. I quite fancy that I saw my old friend smile with pride at his niece in the dingy surroundings. It was possibly being enclosed as we were but I envied him his close relationship and a wave of loneliness flashed over me before I brushed it off with a thrusting out of my chest and renewed determination to uncover our prize.

* * *

Progress was slow, as you might expect. The rocky corridor we traversed felt as if it were winding downwards slowly, spiralling beneath the crust of the Earth, although it was not possible to be very certain in those conditions; at times the path would climb sharply or take a sharp left, yet still I couldn’t shake the sensation that like a corkscrew breaking into a fine bottle of port we were twisting down and right. The coolness as we had entered the subterranean world quickly gave way to a more humid atmosphere.

We stopped for a snack, opening up one of the prepared packages of ham sandwiches and apples from the bag I carried across my back. To ensure we had enough illumination to eat – my doctor’s training telling me that consumption of food in pitch blackness was bad for the digestive tracts – one of our group marched on the spot as quietly as a person connected to a mechanical lighting system can to power the bowler beam. Carruthers and I were probably comical sights during our bout of enforced exercise but as for Elizabeth, well, I dared not look.

Not long after we had resumed our push into the planet’s bowels we entered a wider section of cavern and Carruthers brought us to a silenced halt with the merest waving of one hand. We stood still and waited while the whirring of the winding mechanism in our hats slowed, quietened, and reduced eventually to darkness. It wasn’t perfectly without sound, of course; blood pumping through my veins thumped and rocked the inside of my head and seemed loud enough for all to hear yet I assured myself it couldn’t possibly be the case. I became aware of the sound of the breathing of all three of us and toyed with holding my breath only to discard the thought as pointless as the deep inhalation and exhalation that must surely follow would render useless whatever environment Carruthers was hoping to create. Cocking my head this way and that I strained, trying to coax any sound to enter from outside but could discern nothing I felt wasn’t natural in some form or other.

“My ear,” said Carruthers after a couple of minutes, stamping up and down to bring some light into the situation, “is rather more sensitive these days and I could hear something ahead. Quiet, yes, and human almost certainly. I warrant that we are within a few hundred feet of discovering our Amazons and their lost city and that we should proceed with more caution for there is no telling how they will welcome strangers.”

A few hundred feet does not seem like much now that I write it down yet, even as we intended to make a more cautious approach, we encountered a far more difficult path that slowed us even further. Stooping often, by necessity removing our various bags and packs on occasion, and even at one point encountering a small cavern containing a near vertical passage along one edge that, had we not been wearing our illuminated inventions, might have led to one or more of us falling to a fate we dared not imagine.

As it happened we did not need Carruthers to warn us when we were approaching what we assumed must be the city for there grew by stages a change in our surroundings. The rocky walls had hitherto appeared as oil, deeply black and wet, seeming to slide and shift as we stepped past and our head-mounted lighting threw out shadows and reflections, the stuff of nightmares no doubt to those of less stern minds; yet now we observed in whispers that there was some faintly green luminescence in the rock surface growing in intensity the further on we pressed inwards and downwards. I chipped a piece of rock off – accidentally, I should admit; clumsiness and a strong toecap on the shoes by Mr Pettigrew, the only cobbler I entrusted with my feet’s care, being far more than a match for millions of years of nature’s pressures – and toyed with it in my hand before offering it to Elizabeth.

“It’s warm,” she remarked, and thanked me before pocketing it.

“I recalled you had an interest in geology,” I answered as we crept on.

“I am a member of a women’s letter-writing group and we’re interested in all the sciences. I have a friend in Poland who may find this far more interesting than me if you’ll allow me to pass on your gift.”

I had no objection, naturally, and again we moved on.

The green of our enclosed surroundings continued to push back the boundaries of the black such that at my suggestion we disconnected the pulleys from our bowlers. The silence that blossomed in that place without the whirring of gears and shuffling of clothing on legs was quite disconcerting. Added to the colour of our environs we could easily have been on another planet rather than in the alien underworld of our own. Then, suddenly, Carruthers – who had maintained the lead for most of the trek – brought us once more to an abrupt standstill with the wave of a hand and instant crouching. Like him, Elizabeth and I sank down too.

“Look!” whispered Carruthers with such excitement in his voice that I’d not heard since our trip to Mercury. Elizabeth leaned forward over her uncle’s shoulder. I stood a little, then leaned over Elizabeth and tried with only partial success to think of things other than those that jumped unbidden to mind. The three of us were at the end of a narrow passage that suddenly became the edge of a ledge that opened up on a cavern of such enormous size it made the brain swim trying to contemplate it. Green light filled the landscape or, rather, that part of the landscape that was not some immense city of rocky domes and houses and towers appearing to grow out of the floor and the roof so very far above, sometimes joining together, as often as not passing by like stalactites or stalagmites of gargantuan proportions scraping the ground in one direction, scraping the sky in the other. Our certainty that this was no natural phenomenon came from the myriad shapes of windows that festooned the buildings and yet as we gazed with awe we saw not a single sign of life.

“Did you not say you had heard sounds, Carruthers?” I asked as the three of us moved out onto the ledge into view of the lost but dead-looking city. We hoped to encourage a reaction from the natives if one was to be had.

“Darwin’s beard! A foul curse on this confounded ear!” muttered Carruthers, slapping the prosthetic on his head with the flat of his hand before mumbling an apology for his outburst to his niece.

“I am a doctor,” I said. “And while this marvel of modern mechanics is most likely beyond my understanding in its specifics, I imagine the general working – by which I assume it is fashioned on the human auditory system – should be familiar enough to me for me to gather an insight into why it has malfunctioned so.” With that I leaned towards Carruthers’ ear and peered inside. To my complete shock something emerged at the same time and I stepped back in most unmanly fright. Elizabeth clasped a hand to my back to prevent me stepping off the platform on which we stood quite precariously and the two of us stared at my friend’s face while he remained perfectly still, aware of some activity yet maintaining sense enough to not disrupt whatever it may be.

“It is an insect of some sort,” said Elizabeth after a few seconds.

“I concur,” I added. “An insect inside your latest brass appendage that has been undergoing some form of metamorphosis as it now appears to be making its way out of a cocoon. It was that activity which you heard. I shall rid you of it once it has hatched from its habitat.”

“No! We should kill it!” said Elizabeth sharply.

“Tsk, tsk, niece of mine,” said Carruthers with a smile. “That is no way to treat our lesser creatures. It has as much right to live as any other creature in Ra’s realm.” I suppressed the urge to continue our long-running argument over which deity had divine right over the universe for it seemed the occasion was not quite right.

“I’m thinking of this environment,” continued Elizabeth. “We have seen no insects or birds or creatures of any description since we have been below ground. “The introduction of a foreign species might cause untold damage and ruin any future exploration.”

“You are right, of course,” I said, agreeing with the youngest member of our trio. “We all remember the attempt to arrest Ireland’s potato famine with laboratory-constructed, blight-killing clover and the terrible impact this had on the nation’s cattle.” We bowed our heads in unison for a second as a sign of respect for those who fell in the bloody Cowpocalypse, as the gutter press had proclaimed it.

I retrieved a handkerchief from a pocket in my trousers with which I planned to wrap the interloper, dispatch it from this mortal coil, and carry it with us when we left. I plucked the wriggling form from the edge of the brass ear on Carruthers’ head and placed it on the handkerchief held out in my other hand. As I made to fold over the cotton the insect gave one last squirm, shaking itself free from the pupal casing that had still formed a shell around half of its body. Two wings rolled out from the brown and cream-coloured body (tinged with green, as with everything, of course) and all three of us stared first with scientific curiosity at the markings, then with dawning realisation at what was without doubt a moth bearing the symbol of the Imperial Lepidopterists Society.

“They have tinkered with the husbandry of moths!” exclaimed Carruthers. “Ra will not stand for this!” I sighed and rolled my eyes. This was a mistake.

That moment of delay was too much and the animal abomination flapped its silk wings and lifted away from us. I leapt and attempted to swat it but missed by some way. Carruthers – whose brass hand afforded him greater strength than most men – clambered quickly up the rocky face above our ledge. He leaned out to grab the insect as it fluttered by in its jerky, uncoordinated motion but the fiendish beast avoided his outstretched arms.

Then he fell.

I reacted swiftly and reached for my friend as he tumbled. By some miracle my hands gripped onto his coat and held him in place as he threatened to hurtle past the ledge. He lay there for a moment and panted a fearful thanks. Some instinct caused me to turn around at that instant and I saw Elizabeth, her eyes wide, her arms flailing. “Doctor!” she said quietly, then slipped backwards and disappeared. In my haste to save Carruthers I had nudged his niece. We scrambled to the edge of the ledge and looked down. Fifty feet below us in the cavern of the City of the Amazons lay the crumpled, seemingly lifeless body of our young adventuress companion.

Such anguish washed over me yet I knew beyond any doubt it was as nothing to that which Carruthers felt. His face even in that green murk was ash white. Elizabeth was injured at best, at worst something not to consider. The moth had vanished. The city looked deserted.

To be continued…

“An absolute pleasure,” said the orchestra’s conductor, beaming widely.

“How ever can I thank you?” asked the priest.

“Well…” said Alberto. “Um… Er…”

Zebra knew what he was going to ask for.

Kangaroo knew what he was going to ask for.

Ostrich knew what he was going to ask for.

“Well,” continued Alberto Frog. “I wouldn’t say no to a coffee.”

There was a clang as cymbals fell to the floor and a loud gasp was heard from most of the orchestra.

“Coffee?” asked Father Leopold. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a milkshake?”

“No,” said Alberto quickly. “Coffee. Please. Coffee.”

“Er, okay. Any particular flavour?”

Tiger thought Alberto might choose Bounty Island Cream.

Flamingo thought Alberto might choose Blueberry and Vanilla.

Elephant thought Alberto might choose Toasted Pecan.

And Monkey thought Alberto might choose Chocolate Cherry.

What do you think?

“Anything. Anything will do,” said Alberto.

“Come now, Alberto, you must have a favourite flavour of coffee.” Father Leopold’s smile was thin and forced.

“I. Don’t. Care,” said Alberto through gritted teeth. Father Leopold was taken aback as he didn’t realise frogs had teeth. “Coffee. Any coffee. I just want a coffee.”

“Would you like Blueberry and Vanilla coffee?” asked Flamingo, keen to be proven right.

“JUST GIVE ME A FUCKING COFFEE!” screamed Alberto Frog. “I JUST WANT A FUCKING COFFEE!”

“Steady now Alberto!” said Coelacanth, wary of how much much the baton was shaking in the conductor’s hand.

“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?” yelled Alberto. “WHY IS THERE A FUCKING COELACANTH IN MY ORCHESTRA?”

“Hippo’s on maternity leave,” said Squirrel timidly.

Alberto stared at the rodent with fury in his eyes.

“Here!” said Father Leopold suddenly. “Here’s a coffee.”

“Finally!” said Alberto, grabbing the offered mug from the priest’s hands and taking a loud slurp. The orchestra’s conductor’s shoulders relaxed immediately and Alberto closed his eyes, savouring the taste of the hot liquid. “Was that so fucking difficult?” he said quietly.

Suddenly Alberto Frog felt a sharp pain in his left arm and a crushing weight on his chest. He clasped a hand to his heart even as it gave up beating to one of the many rhythms in the conductor’s head. Father Leopold and the orchestra looked on as the amphibian died from a massive heart attack.

“Stress,” said Raccoon, breaking the silence that followed. “I told him coffee was no good for him.”

“What coffee was it?” asked Elephant.

“Toasted pecan,” answered Father Leopold as he made the sign of the cross over Alberto’s stiff corpse.

“Boom!” said Elephant. “I knew it! Pay up bitches!”

“Well,” the doctor said, after quite a long wait. “Well, you’re not all ears,” he continued. “There’s a mouth there.” He pointed at me with the mouthpiece of the pipe, a far better use for the item than using it to smoke in my opinion, though I kept the thought to myself.

“Yes,” I answered with a sigh. “This right here is a mouth. Technically, I’m not all ears but for all intents and purposes I am.”

“Hmmm.”

We sat in silence for as long it takes a doctor to inhale and exhale from a pipe three more times.

“How did you know who I was and where I was?” he asked.

I shrugged my ear-covered shoulders. “I’m not sure what you’re asking there.”

“You don’t have any eyes,” the doctor continued.

“I’m over 90% ears,” I replied. “Despite not having any eyes my hearing prowess enables me to build up an in-depth view of the world that’s probably better than every other person on the planet.”

“A bit like that superhero in that bloody awful movie?”

“Daredevil? Yes, I suppose so. I suppose you could say I’m just like Daredevil if Daredevil was a walking bush of ears. Do you think there’s much call for a comic book adaptation of a mostly-ear bit of shrubbery? Is that the sort of superhero kids will want to be?”

The doctor looked uncomfortably at his pipe.

“I’m sorry for snapping,” I said. “I’m just after some help. I’m tired of being this way. Can you help?”

The doctor took another deep puff. “My doctorate is honorary,” he said, punctuating the sentence with a smoke ring and barely-concealed look of joy at the O-shaped cloud. “And it’s in philosophy.”

“Damn.”

“Hmmm.”

I slumped, defeated.

“Have you thought about taking up pipe-smoking?”

“No hands,” I said. “I’m all ears.”

“Hmmm.”

The doctor tried his best to ignore me, tried his best to concentrate on smoking, and I sat in silence for a few moments more. After what seemed a satisfactory amount of time to convey my disappointment and send waves of what I hoped was guilt over the man in some petty way of spreading misery I lifted myself off the tree stump and walked back down the mountain away from the cabin. I crossed the brook and made my way along the barely-a-path that wound its way through the young conifers.

A minute or so later the doctor finished his pipe, stood up, stretched his legs, and muttered how much of a freak I was.

“I heard that!” I shouted up the slope, my voice echoing with a mix of menace and depression.

There’s a hand gripping the crook of my arm.

“You’re not going are you?”

I know this guy by sight; a recent transfer to the local police department from some out-of-city place I never bothered to learn. Some kind of big-shot detective, only unlike me he’s the kind that gets a regular paycheck.

“Are you buying?” I figure I’ve got nothing to lose by asking.

Mister Big-Shot gets Brett’s attention behind the bar straightaway – not a difficult job seeing as this cop is built like one of those new upright refrigerators; bulky, long-faced, distinctive nose – and indicates three whiskeys. He’s either being very generous, needs to drink twice as much to maintain his fluid levels, or he’s got a partner here I haven’t spotted yet.

“Let’s take them outside,” he says, handing me one of the glasses. “We might be able to hear ourselves speak.”

I don’t have much to say but I’m happy to listen if he wants an ear. It’s not that much quieter outside, truth to tell. The rain’s pelting down on the sidewalk and the guttering of the bar’s blocked, sending a waterfall crashing onto an iron chair not quite under the canopy out front. Still, it’s a little cooler and that’s something. The third guy in our group who was waiting outside has the look of a rookie cop and I figure if I get close enough to him he’s probably got that new cop smell too.

“Cheers!” I say, nodding appreciation and taking a sip of my gift. It could do with a little water and fortunately there’s plenty of that around so I stick the glass out from under the covers. I wait for an automobile to pass and for the waves in the surface water to hit the kerb. “You’re after my help with something, I take it,” I say, since nobody else seems to want to chat.

“Yeah,” says Big-Shot while chewing his lip. “People say you’re quite good at your job and we could do with a fresh look at a case. Any information, insights, ideas. That sort of thing.”

I raise the glass against one of the lights outside the bar to see if the colour looks about right. “I appreciate the drink,” I say, “but even I don’t work this cheap.”

“No sense of civic pride, Mister Rake?” That’s the rookie and I’m glad to see there’s a warm smile on his face. It’s quickly followed by a grimace as he tries to swallow the least amount of whiskey possible.

“The city will pay for your services,” I’m assured by the walking chiller cabinet. He then starts telling me about a series of murders that have been kept out of the press to avoid a panic or give any other lowlife an idea.

Auntie Annie was the first victim, attacked with an axe in the alley at the back of the brothel she runs – sorry, ran – down near the quay. I’d heard about her death but not the grisly manner in which it took place and like everyone else who knew her or her girls I’d figured it was probably someone upset at the cost or the crabs who’d finally flipped out. A butcher named Brian was then found beheaded at the back of the bus depot and this was quickly followed by the discovery of the cut-up corpse of Carlos, head chef at one of the few legal gambling venues in the city centre.

“I ate at that casino once,” I tell my cop friends. “Sick for a couple of days after. You sure this wasn’t just an upset customer with an upset stomach too?”

Detective Big-Shot shrugs. “Anything’s possible and I’m learning that in this city that is literally true.”

Two more killings are described to me. Some drifter forcibly drowned and then dragged up into the dunes to be discovered, and Edward Edwards, an engineer for the Eastern Express rail company, tied up and electrocuted in his apartment.

“I may be spotting a pattern,” I say sarcastically. My whiskey needs a little more water in it.

“Those people who said you’re good at your job weren’t joking then?” asks the rookie with a glint in his eye. I like him more than his partner.

“Obviously, you may well have a vested interest in this case now,” says Big-Shot sticking his head out from under the canopy and briefly squinting up into the sky. If he’s wondering if the rain will stop then I could let him know the bad news but I figure if he’s as good as his reputation then he should be given a chance to work it out for himself.

I swallow the end of my glass. “I reckon I can start to worry in around ten murders.”

*

I’ve learnt a lot in the past couple of months. Police pay isn’t great, for one. Still, it’s regular and it all adds up. Rookie’s name is Tommy Simpson. Big-Shot’s got a real name too but he’s not easy to get along with so I keep choosing to forget it. He’s not exactly police either but rather part of a unit dealing with serious interstate crimes – he’s been tracking and catching or killing people like this for years – and what we’re dealing with is something he classifies as a “serial killer”. For my own records I’m still labelling the perp as “sick nutter”. I’ve learnt that this sick nutter is nasty, nobody I know knows a damn thing about him, and that what he did to Larry the Leper in the library will give me nightmares to the day I die.

Even as I slam the door on the cab up I realise it’s going to be difficult to keep this particular death out of the papers. J.P. Patricks, publisher of the City Press is lying in the middle of the road, face down, arms spread. The rain’s diluting his blood and brain matter, washing bits of both down the overflowing drains. Even without the inherent media interest in this killing there have been witnesses this time and I guess that Big-Shot is talking to one of them. I sidle over as they’re standing in a doorway of an old city council building so it’s got the two benefits of being sheltered and not being quite so close the mess on the tarmac.

Make that three benefits: the witness is a blonde with perkiness in all the right places. Her eyeliner’s smudged and she looks pale but that more-or-less describes every dame in the city.

“This is Rick Rake, Miss Johnson, assisting us in this investigation,” says Big-Shot as he sees me. I’m silently grateful that he doesn’t emphasise “assisting” in quite the same way that everyone else at the police department does which makes it clear I’ve not been the great help I was made out to be. “She saw Patricks getting pulled out onto the parapet up there,” says Big-Shot, jerking his thumb upwards. “Large guy, dressed in black. Patricks was tied up and shouting. Knife used to silence Patricks, then pushed off.”

“Pushed off a parapet in public,” I say quietly. I can see Rookie a bit further down the road talking to some beat cops. “That must have been horrible to see, Miss Johnson,” I offer. “Can I ask where you were at the time?”

“Over there,” she says, pointing at a corner deli. Through the window I can see the owner giving a statement to a junior inspector. By the ground at Miss Johnson’s feet is the brown paper bag containing whatever she’d bought, soaked through now. For some reason, in spite of everything, it’s making me hungry.

“She says nobody’s come out of the building since the incident but there are too many windows around the back and two fire escapes to be certain. Uniforms have been in and combed the place; I’ve taken a quick look at the Patricks’ office too. Nothing.”

I’m looking at Miss Johnson’s lower lip. It’s dry and cracked and trembling slightly.

“You look like you could do with a drink and something to eat, Miss Johnson,” I say with not the greatest expectation of a positive answer but she surprises me with an emphatic yes.

Big-Shot then surprises me further by pointing down a side street. “There’s a French place I’ve tried a few times down there,” he says. “Why don’t you see if you can come up with any new questions for Miss Johnson. She’s an eye-witness so we’ll need to arrange protection for her anyway. I’ll go speak with the chief.”

*

“Call me Victoria.”

She’s drawing in deep on a cigarette and it’s creating some beautiful dimples in her cheeks. Throwing that first gin and tonic down her neck has given her a lovely bit of colour too. I’m smiling for a lot of reasons.

“So, Victoria, what sort of look did you get at the attacker?”

She shrugs and blows a cloud over the restaurant table. With her free hand she lifts her second gin. “Nothing of the face. He was muscular under the coat, a lot bigger than Patricks.”

“And did you know Patricks at all?”

“Everyone who works down this area knows him a bit. I’ve never spoken to him if that’s what you’re asking.” She looks thoughtful for a few seconds. “I’ve never seen anyone killed before. I thought I might feel different. Have you seen many people killed Mister Rake?”

“Lots of dead bodies,” I say. “That comes with the territory. Not so many killings but, yes, a few. People react differently. You might be feeling fine now but later… who knows?”

“Will you be protecting me then?”

I shouldn’t be thinking the things I’m thinking but this is my sort of broad. Gutsy, forthright, and right now out-drinking me. I’m trying to think of something funny to say but the waiter’s turned up with our food. I’m eating steak because I want to see if the Europeans can do it better than Mickey’s Grill over on Fourth Street.

“What did you pick?” I ask, looking at the pastry dish Victoria’s busy slicing. She shows me the menu, her thumbnail pointing out her choice as she blows gently and prepares to take a bite. It’s turning out to be a day full of surprises for me. This time it’s my reactions that impress me as I grab the fork before she’s got a chance to put it in her mouth.

“Hey!” She begins to say something else but I cut her off.

“What do you do for a living Victoria?”

“I work for a family construction business. I thought we were done with questioning.” She’s trying to force the forkful of food towards her face again but I’m stronger than I look, take it off her, and put it down on the plate. She’s giving me a look that says that the chance of anything hot happening later is cooling down faster than her untouched meal. “Cost analysis, if you’re really interested,” she continues. I’ve got this horrible prickling sensation down my neck and spine. It’s that old detective’s hunch finally kicking into gear so I ask for her specific job title and she tells me. Damn.

“Any chance you were named after Queen Victoria?” I ask next and this time it’s her turn to look surprised.

“My mother was a British historian,” she tells me by way of explanation. “Are you going to tell me what the problem is?”

I’m thinking it through in my head, finally putting all the pieces together, and I’ve got a horrible feeling that we’re both in serious danger but I don’t want to create a panic. I’m about to say something when I see her glance over my shoulder. I start to turn but feel a hand press around the back of my neck. I’ve felt this hand on me before, only then it was in a crowded bar.

“We need to have a quick word,” says Detective Big-Shot. I can’t quite turn my head around or up enough to face him but I can tell there’s no suitable negative answer he’ll accept on account of a hard prodding in my upper back. Victoria’s looking confused but not overly concerned and I don’t think I’m going to be able to convey “get out of here and bring as many police officers as you can back with you” in a glance since we’ve only just met.

“Stay right there Miss Johnson. Someone’s coming to look after you in just a minute.” And now he’s leading me into the men’s rest room.

“A gun?” I ask when the door’s closed. “I felt sure it was going to be the rope you took off Patricks’ body. Miss Johnson said his arms were tied but they were spread when I arrived. I guess you just waited in the building until the regular cops arrived and then started searching with them.”

“You are smart Rake. I’ll give you that.” The hand not holding the weapon pats his pocket and then pulls out the climbing rope that earlier had been used to restrain the deceased publisher. “Be smart a little while longer and don’t struggle too much. Rick Rake in the restaurant with a revolver works for me just as well.”

“You’ve missed out Q though. Sorry to disappoint you but the quantity surveyor named after a queen never ate poisoned quiche. Why don’t you think about starting from A again?” I doubt he’s going to take up my suggestion.

“If Miss Johnson happens to die out of order… well, it’s only me who’ll know and I think I can live with that.” He’s gesturing for me to kneel down and I can’t see a way out of this so I do as he says. In a flash I feel the rope around by neck and I reach to pull it away but there’s a knee in my back keeping me still. I’m trying to breathe but the pressure on my windpipe is too much. I can feel the rope twist a little, burning slightly as it tears at my skin, and then it loosens enough for me to get a finger in place. I manage to get some air into my lungs.

There’s a loud bang and a crushing weight falls on me. A sharp pain in my head and then blackness.

*

The rain’s coming down much like it always does but there’s a make-shift shelter outside the restaurant which is keeping me dry. A medic from the police department is wiping blood off me. Some of it’s mine from the cut on the temple I received from the toilet bowl but most of it is Big-Shot’s. I don’t know for certain why he did what he did. Maybe he just spent so long tracking the insane he thought he could do it better.

I’ve shaken the hand of the rookie already and he’s off being congratulated by his colleagues and superiors for ending the life of this sick nutter or serial killer; whatever you want to call him.

“You saved my life,” says Victoria. I hadn’t heard her approach. She’s smoking in every sense of the word.

“And he saved mine. And probably yours too,” I reply, nodding at my saviour’s back.

Victoria shrugs and looks at her cigarette with disinterest. She drops it and stubs it out. “You’re still my hero Rick Rake.” She touches the mark on my neck gently and then kisses me on the cheek. It’s less than I hoped for and more than I deserve. Blind luck that the rookie came down to the restaurant and needed to use the conveniences. I’ll take blind luck. “I heard them say he’ll probably be promoted to Sergeant for this.”

I nod. Saved from strangulation by Sergeant Simpson. On this case I shouldn’t have expected anything else.

“Penny for your thoughts, Mister Rake?” asks Joseph. Joseph’s my driver; not long-term, of course. I haven’t suddenly come into a fortune while I’ve been away, no. Joseph was sent to fetch me at the request of his employer who right now and for a tidy little daily retainer also happens to be my employer.

“Just admiring nature, Joseph,” I tell him. “I had a potted plant once but this is quite different.” I can tell from his eyes in the rear view mirror that he’s smiling at that but he doesn’t say anything. We’ve already had a short chat on the drive out from the city so there’s not a lot else to say. Joseph’s young and friendly and has told me bits and pieces about life working up at the mansion but I figure it’s easier to not press him too hard and conduct my full investigation when I get there. And if that means the case takes a little longer, well, my wallet certainly won’t complain.

*

The mansion’s a little smaller and a little more rundown than I was expecting but Mrs Warmer is just the same as when she surprised me in the office five days earlier.

“Joseph!” she addresses the driver in her nasally voice. “Take Mister Rake’s bag to the guest room in the west wing after you’ve parked the car. Mister Rake,” she says to me, slipping a hand around the crook of my arm, “let me give you a quick tour and then you’ll want to freshen up I have no doubt.”

I hope she’s not making some comment about my suit because it’s the only one I’ve got so I just smile and nod and let her take me for a quick wander through the house. It’s your standard mansion layout with a large entrance hall and its obligatory black-and-white tiles and required-by-law impressively wide staircase. Doors to the left and right at the front of the building lead to drawing rooms and dining rooms while there’s a gentlemen’s room to the rear and the servants’ quarters along with kitchen and pantry too. Upstairs it’s bedrooms, a cloak room, and a small library with some nice views to the tree-lined drive we arrived by out the front and a modest, well-tended lawn out back surrounded by various bushes and a small building.

“Is that where the professor usually worked?” I ask, gesturing at the building at the far end of the garden. Mrs Warmer confirms that it was so I tell her that I want to take look.

“It’s raining quite heavily,” she tells me, reaching for a bell pull near the window we’re gazing out from. “I’ll get Joseph to fetch umbrellas and take you across.”

“No need, Mrs Warmer,” I answer quickly, stopping her hand gently. “Perhaps it will be best if I run across there on my own anyway.” She’s looking at me with a little suspicion in her eyes. I get that a lot – yeah, even from little, old, recently-widowed ladies – but I can be quite disarming when I flash my pearly whites. “I’m sure you’ve seen the lab plenty of times already.” She tells me Henry told her she was never to go in there and it holds no interest for her to disobey him now. “I just want to take a quick look and get a feel for the case,” I let her know and head off before she has a chance to drag Joseph into babysitting duty.

*

This definitely smells like a lab but it looks more like a private office so I’m trying not to drip too much on everything. There are a few beakers here and there and a couple of flasks of some liquid or another on shelves, plus some dangerous-looking copper wiring running up and around the walls which seems to be causing my skin to itch, but a lot of the building’s single room seems given over to books. I’m not completely stupid but I’m also not so smart that reading through this lot will give me much insight into whatever the professor was doing before his death. Still, the chalkboard mounted on the wall by the door catches my eye on account of the octagon outline, arrows, and odd markings on it. There are some words in educated-looking scrawl inside the diagram: “metathesis field”.

I pick up a couple of books and glance at the spines; yeah, there’s no way I’m reading these. I give them a shake just in case. I heard from a detective friend down on the coast a year or so back that a clue fell out of a book once when he did that. No such luck for me.

There’s the sound of splashing from outside and I spot Joseph running from the house along the puddle-covered path towards me. He’s got an umbrella up and another under his arm. Bless that old dear, but it’s not as if I’d be much wetter than I am anyway without it now.

“Hey! Mister Rake!” shouts Joseph, standing in the doorway a few seconds later. “Mrs Warmer said you needed some assistance getting back.”

“Thanks, Joseph,” I reply. “Call me Rick.” I get the feeling he probably won’t. I don’t think there’s anything obvious that’s going to help me here. I ask him if he wants to come in out of the rain but he shakes his head and tells me that Mrs Warmer would be happier if the people who knew Henry left this one place of his alone. I can think of better shrines. “I’ll just lock up,” I tell him and then something really quite strange happens.

“What are you doing down there?” asks Joseph. It’s a good question.

“That’s a good question,” I answer as I lift the startled-looking moggy off my chest and push myself out of the puddle and off the floor outside the building where I find myself laying. I’m now so wet that the umbrella Joseph hands me won’t make the slightest difference but I take it anyway.

“What happened?” asks Joseph. I buy some time trying to recollect and ask him to tell me what he just saw. “You came out of the lab and fell over while I was putting your umbrella up.” He looks confused and sounds unconvinced, but I might just be projecting.

“And then a ginger tom jumped on me,” I add slowly, watching it run across the grass towards the shelter of some bushes or just away from us. “Apparently. Did you see me fall over?” Joseph’s silence is all the answer I need. “Let’s get back to the house,” I say, and Joseph looks a little relieved to hear that. “I have got to get some dry clothes.” I can’t help but look back at the lab as we make our way to the mansion. Odd things happen in my line of work and I’m no stranger to them but this was peculiar even by my standards. I realise I never locked up, but who’s going to break in?

*

The bath’s helped me recover a bit but the need to borrow some of Professor Warmer’s clothes makes me feel a bit uncomfortable and not just because he was a couple of inches shorter than me. Mrs Warmer doesn’t seem to mind but she strikes me as one of those type of ladies who gets over tragedies quickly. I get a chance to talk to her when we meet on the landing and ask her to tell me what sort of man her husband was.

“Well, Mister Rake, Henry was a private man but he was a good husband. A little emotional,” she confides with a hint of a smile, “prone to blubbing, and dedicated to his work.”

“Which was?”

“Work for the government,” she said quickly. “It’s no secret that’s who he worked for, although the specifics were never explained, and I never asked. I do know he’d recently completed something important.” I persuade Mrs Warmer to tell me about his death. “Gloria, the cook, found him in the smoking room. The police say he had been hit from behind with a metal pole but couldn’t determine who by and found no indication of an intruder or any sign that anything had been taken. They gave up on him. We were all questioned but I don’t believe anyone in this house was responsible.”

“And the government?” I ask. “If he worked for them did they get in touch?”

“Two men took some papers from his laboratory, but nothing more.” I can see her lip tremble a little so I decide to ease away from the conversation with one last question.

“Did the professor have any outside interests?”

“He loved his car, Mister Rake,” she says after the shortest of pauses. It’s a nice car, I’ll admit; the ride was lovely and it was well looked-after but that pause is more interesting to me.

*

I’ve got time for a quick meeting with Gloria before she has to prepare food for the evening meal. I’m a detective so I’m used to reading people quickly and Gloria is no exception; this is one dangerous lady. She’s got eyes that can pierce plate armour and the kind of lips that could be used as a life preserver if you ever got washed overboard at sea. Tall, slender, and dressed to accentuate the curves she’s got, she looks out of place here in the countryside when she could be breaking hearts and causing car crashes in the city. She’s also very flustered right now.

“Gloria, it’s okay,” I say, trying to calm her down but there’s a mix of fury and fear behind those long eyelashes. “I’m a man of the world,” I add. I’m not trying to hit on her, although the thought is somewhere at the back of my mind. Gloria struggles and pulls up her underwear underneath her skirt. “That’s a hell of a first impression to make,” I say with what I hope is a genuine smile and then try to introduce myself.

“I know who you are Rick Rake. We all know who you are.” A voice like smoke trapped in an ice cube. That reminds me: it’s been a while since I had a drink and I’m hoping the old professor liked whiskey.

She lights a cigarette and tries to calm herself. She’s not the friendly sort so I try to assert a dominant position. “Would you mind telling me why you were doing exactly what you were just doing?” I ask, and nod towards the small puddle on the hallway tiles near her feet.

Gloria’s not the sort to be dominated and she draws herself up, straightening her clothing. It’s a nice sight. “I have no idea,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone. “Perhaps we’re all still very stressed over Henry’s death.”

I tell her she’s probably right and ask if she’s happy to answer a few questions. She agrees so long as she can clean up the mess and water the plant in the window while I do so. I think it’s for the best that she does. I start by asking her about the day of the murder.

“I had driven the two of us into the city so that the professor could pick up some books from the library and I could pick out some new cutlery for the dining room. At around three I drove us back. I prepared food. I laid the food at six. The professor was not at the table so I went to look for him at Mrs Warmer’s request and that’s when I found him in the smoking room.”

“Do you often drive the professor around?”

“In the past year, yes.” I’m getting one of those hunches that occur whenever there’s wealthy men and stunningly attractive women on the scene so I ask her directly if she and the professor were seeing one another behind Mrs Warmer’s back. “Absolutely not!” Gloria hisses at me. She’s mopped up the floor now and I notice her glancing at the flowering thing in the pot in the window but she tells me she has to clean herself up before she prepares the late meal and leaves. She looks good leaving.

*

I take a quick look at the scene of the alleged crime but it’s pretty much exactly as I expected. A couple of leather chairs, a bookcase, a view out onto the garden through large, locked doors. I can tell where the body was found because of the familiar, dark stain on the floorboards behind the standalone bar. I’m more interested in the bar; it’s one of those highly-polished, rosewood jobs, curved and containing an assortment of bottles including an unopened, twenty-year-old single malt. I’m tempted to crack the seal but I don’t want to press my luck as it’s not often I have any.

I notice Joseph getting soaked outside, pruning some bushes back, and I see that he keeps well away from the professor’s lab. Something about the shape of that building starts nagging at me but I’m finding it hard to think straight. I figure I’m a little tired so I decide to take a nap before food.

I’ve just made a strange noise while sitting in a toboggan in my bedroom. You’re probably wondering why and, truth be told, so am I as I’ve got no memory of climbing the stairs and this wooden contraption certainly wasn’t next to my bed earlier. That’s twice now that something very odd has happened. No, I correct myself, three times if I include Gloria’s strange behaviour too. And just like that I think I’ve solved this case. Mrs Warmer’s not going to like it.

*

I’m sitting opposite Mrs Warmer in the dining room and Gloria’s just walked in with the bowls of soup that constitute our first course. Gloria does a good job of keeping her face neutral in my presence. Joseph had held open the door for her as her hands were full so I take advantage of everyone being present and ask him to step in. Mrs Warmer and Gloria look shocked and Joseph flinches but I beckon him in with a “please.”

“Mrs Warmer,” I start, “I’m afraid that your husband’s death was an accident.” I was right; Mrs Warmer doesn’t look like she likes this revelation.

“Mister Rake, if you are going to tell me that my husband accidentally killed himself with a metal pole then it would appear that your detecting skill may have been overstated by the inspector and I’ll get Joseph to drop you back to the city immediately.”

I make a mental note to thank the inspector for sending work my way but raise a finger to stop Mrs Warmer and Joseph who looked like he was getting ready to fulfill his employer’s wishes right that second. “Let me explain,” I say and then I throw a letter down on the table.

“What’s that?” asks Gloria but I can see she recognises it.

“That’s a letter of recommendation from the professor to his friend Harvey at the city planetarium. It’s recommending you and your cooking skills, Gloria. I took it from your bedside table before coming down here.”

“How dare you!” spits Gloria, reaching across for the letter and grabbing it. I let her have it.

“Mrs Warmer,” I say, addressing her face-to-face, “your husband was about to relocate as he had completed this phase of work for the government. Your husband had affections for Gloria here and wanted to make sure she had work to look forward to.”

“He mentioned it but there were no firm plans,” admits Mrs Warmer, and then looks at Gloria. “I can’t believe you’re saying that Gloria killed Henry because he confided in her that he wouldn’t take her along. I can’t believe that at all.”

“No,” I interrupt, before Gloria has a chance to reply in a way that will probably see her blacklisted from employment in the state for years to come. “Gloria’s not as innocent as you may think but she’s not guilty of any crime either. As I said: the death was an accident but this letter was the trigger. The professor was working on something called the ‘metathesis field’. More than that, he’d finished it and has it working right now in his laboratory. There’s a board on the wall by the door in there that shows a plan of the building and indicates that the wiring around it is generating this field right now. Anyone who goes inside it faces the risk of unpredictable metathesis events at any time.”

“Can I ask what this metathesis thing is,” asks Joe, looking decidedly confused but only a little more so than the others in the room.

“A metathesis event swaps sounds or letters around in sentences making entirely new events take place,” I explain. It’s the sort of explanation that’s lost on Joseph so I continue: “For example, when I went to leave the laboratory, do you remember what happened?”

“You fell over,” Joseph answers slowly.

“No, I didn’t,” I reply, standing up. “I had intended to lock up and place the key under the mat as Mrs Warmer had asked. What happened was that I suddenly found me under a cat. Do you understand?”

“That’s preposterous!” Gloria’s looking like she thinks she’s being taken for a fool and I know she’s got a bit of a temper so I need to persuade her most of all.

“You’ve been in the lab, Gloria, so you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve had some strange events happen to you too.”

Mrs Warmer starts to say that nobody was allowed in the lab but Gloria talks over her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about detective and I don’t like the insinuation.”

I sigh. “Fine, you pushed me Gloria. Mrs Warmer, Gloria and your husband were having an affair, probably for the best part of a year. The trips into the city were part of it but meetings obviously took place in the building in the garden too.”

“Do you have any evidence, Mister Rake? This is a horrible accusation to level at a good employee.” I like Mrs Warmer’s loyalty but it all has to come out now.

“When I first met Gloria, I’m guessing she had been intending to see to her plant,” I nod at the fiery cook. She nods back and I think I see a lightbulb switch on somewhere in the back of her gorgeous eyes. “Instead, I found her at a slant and, well, engaging in something a little unladylike.” Gloria stays silent, Joseph still looks confused, and Mrs Warmer might just be slumping a little in her seat so I press on and try to wrap it all up quickly for everyone’s sake. “A little earlier I felt tired and thought about having a short sleep in bed before dinner. I found myself instantly beeping in a sled. The metathesis field is affecting me just as it affected Gloria and, unfortunately, it also affected the professor on the day of his death.”

I walk around to Gloria and ask her to tell us the truth of that last trip into the city. Gloria brushes down her clothing – she looks so good doing that – and takes a deep breath before telling us all that she had fought with the professor when he had told her of his plans and handed her the recommendation letter. “I called him names,” she directs to Mrs Warmer, “and I’m sorry for that. When we got back he was upset and said he’d need time to make himself presentable so I left him in the car. That was the last time I saw him alive.”

“Mrs Warmer told me that the professor was an emotional man,” I say. “I’m afraid he blubbed in the car, and that’s what killed him.”

*

It’s taken a phone call to the government office for which the professor was working to get them to come and dismantle his laboratory and they’re now giving me a lift back to the city as thanks for solving the mystery of why two of their field agents reported some rather odd events taking place following a recent visit to ensure sensitive material wasn’t lost. I don’t know why they were all working on this metathesis field but anyone who thinks governments work for the good of the people was probably dropped on the head as a kid. Best thing is not to dig too deeply, even if you’re a pretty good detective like me.

Joseph’s staying on with Mrs Warmer for the time being. She’s not hurting for money and he’s got a fairly cushy job that won’t tax his limited intellect. Gloria’s disappeared already, but dames like that will land on their feet somewhere in the city and I hope I bump into her sometime.

And me, well, I’m taking a last look at a bit of nature through rain-covered windows before I get back where it’s just as crazy but slightly more predictable. And I’m hoping I don’t receive a call from Mrs Warmer asking me to investigate what happened to her husband’s malt whiskey.

The couple turned their heads and looked at one another, she glancing down and he staring up on account of their relevant heights. A quizzical look passed between them and they turned slowly back towards James.

“Not Jehovah’s Witnesses then,” said James who prided himself on his quick uptake but mostly wanted to break the uneasy silence.

“No,” said the woman, slowly and carefully, almost concentrating on how the word formed and spilled from her lips. She smiled at this apparent success and continued in a more normal fashion: “You are James Trent of number three, Cosgrove Gardens.”

James looked at the number on his open door and then across the road to the sign attached to the house on the corner opposite. He stopped himself from instantly admitting that there was no fault in what had just been said to him. “What do you want with him?” he asked cautiously so that he could still claim any surprise inheritance or pretend he’d moved long ago depending on how this played out.

“We are the police,” said the male half of the couple.

“We are Temporal Causality Police from your twenty-seventh century,” corrected the female.

James nodded and sighed. “Of course you are,” he said with a slight smile. There was a drugs rehab centre three streets over and he’d encountered a scruffy, young man only last year who’d clearly fallen off the rehabilitation wagon and wanted to let the world know he was happy about it, as were the invisible, green unicorns on the rooftops. “Make sure none of the green unicorns get in your Tardis,” he said, and made to close the door.

The woman took her hand from her pocket and placed it on James’ arm making him flinch and step away; she had icy cold fingers and it was a decidedly mild March day. “We are here to arrest you,” she said firmly.

James felt certain that he must have misheard. “Sorry, you’re what police?” he asked, rubbing at his arm.

“Temporal Causality,” said the man with a smile and a nod, and he then fished inside his jacket pocket for a card which was held up towards James. It looked like metal with a fine, translucent mesh across its surface and seemed to flex slightly in the grip of the stranger; there were some markings too that might have been letters, words, and pictures but they seemed to shimmer like holograms and disappear from view when looked at directly.

James shook his head to clear the confusion. “You’re what?” he asked again. He hoped this was a new approach by the Jehovah’s Witnesses because nothing else made much sense.

“James Trent, you are accused of violating temporal causality by instigating two time leaps on consecutive days to the exact same chronojunction to perform contradictory causal actions.” The woman wasn’t smiling as she recited this apparently rehearsed phrase.

“I… what? How?”

“The time device you created, Mr Trent,” explained the man after a short nod of approval from his colleague, “has opened humankind up to all manner of wonders but it is not to be trifled with. Even you, its creator, are not immune from prosecution.”

“What?” splurted James. “I haven’t invented anything! I’m a bricklayer.”

“Come now, your history as a bricklayer is well-known, Mr Trent, but the insight that helped you bridge the gap of knowledge between quantum time and the workings of a toaster in a freezer after that most fateful New Year’s Eve party put that particular career behind you many years ago.”

“What?” said James again. Even he was getting tired of saying it.

“Enough,” said the woman forcefully but quietly. “We are here to issue an arrest. James Trent, on this local date of the ninth of March, two-thousand and nineteen you are hereby notified that…”

“It’s twenty twelve,” said James.

“What?” said the man. It made a nice change. He looked at the palm of his own hand and made a face. “Ah.” His colleague looked down at the palm too.

“Oh,” she added. “This can’t be good. I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t receive a…”

“Eek!” eeked James, which made both visitors look first at him and then swivel quickly to look behind them at what it was that he was looking at in alarm.

“You are officers Qualm Three Four and Spinks One Nineteen of the Imperial Temporal Constabulary,” said the immaculately-dressed, well-spoken, muscular, orange mouse that blocked the pathway away from the house, “and I am here to effect judgement on a reality violation.”

“That figures,” said the woman. “It was an honest mistake though.”

“A mistake that has had terrible repercussions. We will need to render your life event to nothing; I’m sure you understand.”

“Now, wait a minute,” said the man, holding up a finger and wagging it in the large rodent’s direction. Nothing else was forthcoming as both the man and woman were suddenly no longer there. This left James alone with the newly-arrived thing.

“You’re a mouse,” said James quietly.

“Technically, I’m a giraffe,” said the mouse, “but it’s a little bit more complicated than that and a lot of it has to do with your invention of the Reality Rewriter in eight years time.”

“I thought I invented a time machine,” said James.

“Don’t be silly!” laughed the giraffe-mouse. “Time travel is impossible. Fortunately, it’s you who finally works this out many years from now and it’s why you then dedicate your life to constructing a device that will warp reality to your will, allow you to make anything possible, and yet still protect you from the changes wrought. The quantum time lessons you learn will set you on the right path but it’s only the start. Eventually, you will need a mountain of toasters to complete your work.”

“Should you be telling me all this?” asked James. “I mean… those two people… didn’t you erase them from history or something?”

“What two people?” asked the giraffe-mouse, genuinely interested.

“The man and the woman. They were just here. You accused them of a reality something and then they were gone.”

The giraffe-mouse clasped his hands together and closed his eyes for a moment. “That sounds plausible,” he said after a few seconds. “If you have already switched on the Reality Rewriter then it’s possible that you’re being protected right now against changes you’re making outside which would include me and these two phantom people.”

“Wouldn’t I know I’d done that?” asked James.

“You should,” agreed the giraffe-mouse, opening his eyes and looking into the man’s eyes. “Well,” he smiled, “in my reality you should.”

“What do I do?” asked James. He looked up and down the street. Everything else looked perfectly normal; it was just this small area of his world right in front of him that made no sense.

“Carry on as normal. Do the things you were always meant to do. It’s all you can do.” And with that he turned around, walked down the path, and wandered around the corner out of sight.

James stepped back into his house and closed the door quietly, then leaned his head against it and let out a deep breath. He would need to sell things, he realised, and he would need to start hitting the electrical retail stores. He should see if he could get in contact with the manufacturers too, he thought; he’d need a mountain, that’s what he’d been told. Things were going to change. Reality was going to change.

* * *

Had anyone been looking they might have witnessed a man and woman suddenly appear as if from nowhere just around the corner from Cosgrove Gardens. A second later a mouse in a suit walked up to them. It shimmered like a mirage and then became a tall, balding man who instantly rubbed his face vigorously.

“Itchy?” asked the woman sarcastically as she pulled out an ice bag from her pocket and threw it in a hedge.

“You be the bloody mouse next time Claire,” came the reply.

“Seemed to go well,” said the other man.

“Hmmm,” Claire answered, opening her handbag. “Vision cloaks and mutation projectors away now,” she commanded. The two men took out small, smooth stones from their trouser pockets and deposited them with their companion. “That will do for today,” she said, and the three started to walk towards a small, blue car parked nearby.

“You don’t think we’re going to an awful lot of trouble just to increase sales in our toaster outlet, do you?” asked the man who had only recently been a rodent.

Claire and the other man glanced at one another briefly. “No,” they said in unison.

“Thank you Doctor Maniac. I am Wan Tring. Most here are not Wan Tring.”

“Right. Wondering. Won-der-ing. Not Wan Tring. Can I continue? Thank you. I have asked you to this… the chair recognises El Diablo.”

“Is this one of those meetings where you kill anyone who dissents with you?”

“No! No! Where do you get these ideas?”

“I steal movies. I watch movies. Do these chairs slide down into a pit of spikes and fire?”

“What pit? This is clearly a laminated floor and we’re on the third storey of this building. You came past the floor below on the way here. You had the tour. Do you remember the office staff? The pretty secretary with the big you-know-whats? People, please! Can I get to the point of this meeting? Oh, for fu… the chair recognises Minister Montezuma.”

“I have a dentist’s appointment at three. Will this meeting take long?”

“Let’s… start again. And please: no interruptions. Oh… Minister Montezuma, again?”

“It’s just that it’s about an hour’s drive and I need to get there early to fill in some paperwork. I would really like to leave by one thirty.”

“You can leave at one thirty. That’s not a problem. Gentlemen, I’ve…”

“I will leave at the same time as the Minister. Unless the Minister doesn’t want that!”

“El Diablo, why would the…”

“My friend El Diablo, you may do whatever you please.”

“What’s going on with you two?”

“There’s nothing going on but let’s just say that I think we should all leave together or not at all.”

“Is this something from one of your movies again?”

“We have seen this movie in Hong Kong too. Wan Tring Enterprises has imported many copies. Good film. Robert Vaughn.”

“I wish you would take this meeting seriously.”

“You’re thinking of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”

“Can we please stop talking about films?”

“Many apologies. Perhaps it is a common theme.”

“Really, please, please can we get back on track here? I’ve only booked the Death Room until four.”

“Aha! You are trying to kill us Maniac!”

“I am not! It’s named after the architect, Francis Death. He’s responsible for the unique lintels you see over there and the rosewood panelling designs. You people are… what now?”

“You haven’t forgotten that I want to leave at one thirty.”

“How the hell could I have forgotten? You’ve only barely finished… that’s not even for another two and a quarter hours anyway!”

“It’s just we don’t even know what this meeting’s about or how long it will go on for.”

“What!? I have been trying to tell you since you all got here. At least Lord Chaoticon has been quiet; the rest of you…”

“I think Lord Chaoticon is asleep.”

“He’s what?”

“To be fair, he’s probably jetlagged. And he did just mastermind stealing a nuclear sub from the Iranians. I think he was up until the early hours of the morning on Thursday and then flew straight here. It’s a nine hour flight.”

“You people are unbelievable.”

“Oh! He stole the submarine? I thought it was Papa Odessa and the Fingernail Gang.”

“No, they’ve been retired for over a year now. Papa has opened a bike repair shop on the Windward Islands. It’s what he always wanted.”

“Retired! Retired? That sounds like a great idea right now. That’s it, you lot have driven me to distraction. I’m out of this business for good. Let yourselves out. You can leave now or at one thirty or whenever the hell you like and you can all go separately or together. I. Don’t. Care. Goodbye.”

“What’s all the shouting about?”

“Lord Chaoticon’s awake!”

“Come back Doctor Maniac! Lord Chaoticon’s awake.”

“I was just resting my eyes.”

“Your meeting has finished early Doctor Maniac.”

“Yes it has Julie. Can you call down to the canteen and get them to send up some coffee? And can you hunt down some headache tablets too?”

“Right away Doctor Maniac. Did you manage to arrange anything for your wife’s surprise birthday?”

“No, no I didn’t. Can you also switch on the electric seals to the Death Room and release the poison gas while you’re at it too?”

“Right away Doctor Maniac. Will there be anything else?”

“I think we should just give the Science Team the go-ahead for Operation Lunar Volcano – liaise with Sharon on that – and can you draw me up a shortlist of party organisers? I think that’ll be all. Thank you.”

“Right away Doctor Maniac.”

Hey! Fundamentalist lunatic? Then you’ll love some more choice quotes from the only uncut, uncensored bible you’ll ever need:

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, ‘I think I’m still drunk’ and he went and had a sleep by a rock.

Exodus 3:1-3

So at that time we took from these two kings of the Amorites the territory east of the Jordan, from the Arnon Gorge as far as Mount Hermon. (Hermon is called Sirion by the Sidonians; the Amorites call it Senir.) We took all the towns on the plateau, and all Gilead, and all Bashan as far as Salekah and Edrei, towns of Og’s kingdom in Bashan. But then Joseph rolled two sixes and launched a counter attack from Kamchatka that eventually saw him crowned Risk champion for the third month in a row.

Deuteronomy 3:8-11

So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, ‘You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.’ But I was careful not to say anything about goats. I really like goats.

Hosea 3:2-3

But Leonard was filled with pride and mead – mostly mead – and proclaimed: ‘They wouldn’t dare edit me out.’

Leonard 5:3-4

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’

‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.’ Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, ‘What message does my Lord have for his servant?’

The commander of the LORD’s army replied, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so. And the commander of the LORD’s army ran off with Joshua’s sandals because he was really Tobiah the sandal fetishist.

Joshua 5:13-15

That night the king could not sleep; so he ordered the book of the chronicles, the record of his reign, to be brought in and read to him. When that failed the king asked for anything by Thomas Hardy instead. ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ did the trick.

Esther 6:1

So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, ‘Can this be Naomi?’

‘Don’t call me Naomi,’ she told them. ‘Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.’

And the women in the town exclaimed ‘Oh, great, just what we need, another fucking emo’.

Ruth 1:19-20

Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Take off his filthy clothes. Slowly. Slower than that. And let’s have some music.’

Zechariah 3:3-4

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Get out of here, baldy!’ they said. ‘Get out of here, baldy!’ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. ‘Whoa!’ Elisha said to the LORD. ‘Disproportionate! I was thinking bald spots might be more apt.’

2 Kings 2:23-24

The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘This atlas is yours free with a subscription to Readers Digest. Okay, I can see you’re not tempted. I’ll try something else.’

Luke 4:5-6

When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple. The priests could not enter the temple of the LORD because the glory of the LORD filled it. At least, this was the story that was submitted to the insurance company explaining the arson at the temple.

2 Chronicles 7:1-2

In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before, so the king asked me, ‘Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.’

I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, ‘Well, duh!’

Nehemiah 2:1-3

When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. ‘Have you thought about a longer, stupider name?’ they asked Job.

Job 2:11

Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. I’m really not doing it any justice. You really had to be there.

Ezekiel 1:10-13

‘I have loved you,’ says the LORD.

‘But you ask, “How have you loved us?” And the answer is: Rohypnol and Vaseline. I’m not proud of myself.’

Malachi 1:2

After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel the father of Abihud, Abihud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim and his life-partner Raoul adopted Elihud but we gloss over that, Elihud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the second husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.

Matthew 1:12-16

Then the herald loudly proclaimed, ‘Nations and peoples of every language, this is what you are commanded to do: As soon as you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music, you must fall down and worship the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing furnace.’

Therefore, as soon as they heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp and all kinds of music, all the nations and peoples of every language fell down and worshiped the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

And the herald laughed and loudly proclaimed, ‘I didn’t say ‘Simon says: nations and peoples of every language, this is what you are commanded to do”.

Daniel 3:4-7

I had now spent countless weeks in the admittedly well-furnished space-traversing vessel with just Mr Hawkes for company, and poor company at that. It is no exaggeration to say that my mind had entered a dark place just as my body was hurtling through dark space too.

“Damnation man!” I exclaimed loudly, wheeling around. “Won’t you just speak up for once! This solitude and silence are enough to fray the edges of my mind!”

Mr Hawkes kept himself just outside the edges of my peripheral vision. It was an extraordinary talent he possessed in this respect but it held scant recompense for his otherwise dreadful companionship. Our games of tag and hide-and-seek had been initially entertaining but ultimately grated on the senses. There was little entertainment in playing with someone as skilled as he was.

I prepared a meal for one from the ship’s kitchen. I didn’t like to exclude Mr Hawkes as it gnawed at my sensibilities, yet if the man would not so much as converse then he deserved to suffer. He hadn’t complained thus far and I suspected he was consuming ship supplies slyly while I slept. At the conclusion of the meal – a full Sunday roast for the seventh day running for I had determined there was an excess of potatoes that needed to be consumed before the eyes they had already sprouted started winking – there was a rather loud knock on the outside of the spaceship.

“Mr Hawkes! Will you get that?” I asked.

He would not, and there was a second knock, followed swiftly by a third. I put down the plate that I had been washing, dried my hands, and made my way to the foremost porthole. I glared at Mr Hawkes as I did so but he leapt away from my gaze preventing me from seeing whether he was in any way sorry for being so utterly unhelpful.

At the front of the vessel I expected to see what I always saw: the black beach of outer space sprinkled with star sand. I jumped back in shock. Needless to say but my eyes were greeted by something wholly unexpected.

“Carruthers!” I gasped. “It simply cannot be!”

Peering inwards was my old friend Carruthers. Through many decades I had assisted this genius with his many astounding inventions and experimentations. We had journeyed to the very centre of the Earth in his Marvellous Marble Mole Machine; there wasn’t much there. We had recreated living dinosaurs from fossils; they had succumbed to smog. We had created a method of travel that was nearly as fast as a beam of light from a gas lamp; women did not appreciate the weight-gain side-effect and the business collapsed. Most recently we had travelled to the inner solar system by brass tube and set foot on Mercury.

“They told me you were dead!” I exclaimed.

Carruthers pointed to his ear, shaking his head from side to side and mouthed something back to me. Through the sturdy English oak door and thick glass it was no wonder he could not hear me, nor I him. I shrugged by way of response and shouted loudly and slowly, hoping he would understand. “The door is locked from the outside.”

Clearly my message got through and Carruthers pulled out a small pistol from inside his tweed jacket. I stepped away from the area and told Mr Hawkes to do the same. There were two sharp cracks.

Suddenly the door swung open.

“Doctor, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said smiling.

“Carruthers, my eyes are surely more sore than yours and the merest glimpse of you is clearly far superior to any protracted stare at me,” I countered. There was a movement behind my friend as I said this and I gasped once more. “Elizabeth! You’re alive too!”

“Of course I am Doctor. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Never mind this chit-chat,” shouted Carruthers hurriedly. “We must transfer to The Ringseeker at once!”

I had no time to gather my wits and was rushed out of the front of the space vessel and into another identical model that had been courageously and expertly tethered alongside. There I was urged to sit down while Carruthers and his niece flicked switches and twisted knobs. They knew what they were doing and I was happy to remain invisible for a few moments, still elated at my rescue. Mr Hawkes clearly felt the same way.

With a lurch we were on our way, but to where?

“To Saturn!” beamed Carruthers. Clearly I had spoken aloud without realising it. I started to shake my head but Carruthers held up a hand and stopped my questions before they could form. “There is much to explain Doctor but fortunately we have a half hour to kill. Elizabeth, would you be so kind as to make us all a nice cup of tea?”

Over the next thirty minutes I listened intently as my dear friend and his niece – both of whom I had believed to be dead – told me news of the past couple of months.

Carruthers, far from dying of complications to his severed hand, had instead made a swift recovery and over a weekend had fashioned a replacement limb from polished brass recycled from his Mercury tube. The fingers and thumb flexed just as a normal hand would, controlled by a series of levers near his elbow. I remarked that once we returned to my surgical practice in Woolwich I would endeavour to connect the levers to his brain allowing him to use the power of thought itself to move the mechanical digits. It was the least I could do, after all.

Elizabeth – dear, sweet Elizabeth – was fortuitously and obviously also not dead. There was no hansom cab incident and, indeed, she had not been in Whitechapel on the day of the alleged accident. She had, instead, infiltrated the lepidopterists at the behest of her uncle and it was through this subterfuge that she learned – sadly just too late – of their dreams of revenge against me.

At Her Majesty’s Imperial Spaceport near Dagenham Carruthers had used the superhuman power in his brass hand to break into and then steal a recently-repaired rocketship and with the aid of his niece the pair of them had then pursued my flying tomb, eventually catching up and releasing me just outside the jovian gas giant’s atmosphere.

“Carruthers and Elizabeth, I can never thank you enough for what you have done for me,” I stated with a trembling lip as I sipped the last of a rather lovely Darjeeling. “May I just ask, though, why we are on our way to Saturn rather than returning home?”

“Doctor, have you ever heard of the Sex Sirens of Saturn?” asked Elizabeth.

I confessed that I hadn’t. Mr Hawkes said nothing and I surmised he too was in the dark.

“During his recuperation my uncle learnt of their existence through old records unearthed in the recent global catastrophe,” continued the most handsome young woman with what might have been a small apologetic smile. I nodded understanding.

“To Saturn!” I exclaimed. “And the Sex Sirens!”

Under the expert guidance of Carruthers and Elizabeth, The Ringseeker switftly carried the four of us past the great mass of Jupiter where we witnessed my previous vessel of transportation spark briefly, burn rapidly, and extinguish sharply. I uttered a silent prayer of thanks that I had such a courageous and capable friend.

The descent to Saturn later that day was fraught with danger, as you would expect. The great planet’s rings were razor sharp and required supreme navigation skills to avoid a fatal piercing, but eventually there was a noticeable bump and we came to a rest. It was the first time in the best part of a couple of months that I and Mr Hawkes had been more-or-less stationary, and the experience was initially unsettling. I felt queasy – particularly around the midriff – though I tried to hide the discomfort through a breathing and gentle stretching technique Mr Hawkes and I had developed only recently.

“Doctor, is there something amiss?” asked Elizabeth, placing a warm hand on my arm.

“It appears your uncle is not the only inventor on board,” I replied. “I and Mr Hawkes have come up with a method that calms the spirit and relaxes the muscles. It requires no outlay of capital and I shall probably introduce it initially to the subcontinent to test the waters so to speak when we eventually return. We have decided to call it toga.”

Elizabeth looked slowly around the cabin and smiled once more. “Named after the Roman garment?” she asked quietly.

I was about to remark that the name was unimportant when a loud hiss of air interjected. Carruthers pushed open the door and the three of us took our first look and then first step out across the strange land that formed Saturn’s crust.

It was both a breathtakingly beautiful and bone-chillingly barren world. From horizon to horizon it was as flat as Norfolk but even more devoid of interest than that Godforsaken Slough of Despond. Its saving grace came in the colour of the soil; like the sand of Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight the ground was streaked with a myriad of colours: yellows and ochres and browns for the most part, but occasional rivulets of pinks and whites and even vivid blues punctuated the floor.

“Like a kaleidoscope,” said Elizabeth. I turned to her to nod and was struck by just how truly, marvellously handsome she was. In this strange place with its endless expanse she shone, and I found myself more in awe of her face and the curves of her body than of the planet Saturn with its halo of rings rising into the sky and out of sight in the dirty grey-green sky.

A sound – deep, rumbling, and decidedly unnatural – rolled across the land and we all stiffened (some of us needed little assistance there). I looked frantically around. There was The Ringseeker and ourselves but not a thing else to be seen. As the noise abated Carruthers clapped his hands – that sound of flesh on brass only marginally less strange than the Saturnian one that had preceded it – and beamed.

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “We can go now!”

“Go? We have only just arrived!” I blustered. “And while I would like nothing more than to return home to my Woolwich practice and undertake a nice, relaxing holiday around India we are nevertheless standing on Saturn, a world – need I remind you? – that you wished to visit in order that you might seek out these so-called Sex Sirens, damn it man!” I felt my face turn beetroot at such language in front of the lovely Elizabeth but she was her usual nonplussed self.

Carruthers looked taken aback but this gave way swiftly to bemusement. “Did you not hear the planet’s wail?” he asked. I was confused.

“Doctor,” said Elizabeth, interrupting me from my storm of tangled thoughts. She held my hand in one of hers and then reached out with her other to touch my sideburns and usher my gaze into her eyes. They were beautiful, of course, like lagoons in the milky sea of her face. A man could drown happily there and slide down her long neck into the recesses…

That sound returned, louder than before, and from every direction. We all jumped and Carruthers laughed. Elizabeth smiled too, and I came to a sudden realisation of my own.

“Oh,” I said, sheepishly.

“Let’s get you home Doctor,” said Carruthers. “It’s a long trip and I think some tea with an extra spoonful of bromide may be just what you ordered.”

I laughed, feeling the stress and embarrassment leave me. I pictured it in my mind as a physical thing: a trickle of tension manifested as blue soil joining the multicoloured surface of Saturn for all eternity. We boarded our vessel and left in due course heading home.

“Confound it!” I said loudly, startling my friends, as we negotiated safe passage past those rings once more. I ran to the porthole and looked frantically over the slowly shrinking world we were departing. I fancied I saw him once or twice but could not be certain. “Goodbye Mr Hawkes,” I said to myself.

There sure can!

Are you kneeling comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. But God was definitely doing this as a punishment or for research and God definitely didn’t approve of or like any of what he saw even though he let it go on for a long time and watching it all didn’t turn him strange or anything.

Romans 1:26-27

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die. And avoid the luxurious bath of luxury as it contains liquid death. Also, do not press the big red button with the words ‘PRESS ME’ flashing on it for it controls the auto-destruct system. Why are you looking at me like that?’

Genesis 2:15-17

Then Haggai said, ‘If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?’

‘No,’ the priests replied, but they were wrong and did not receive a cheese for their Science and Nature question.

Haggai 2:13

That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus tried to explain that they really shouldn’t have built their town on a Hellmouth.

Mark 1:32-34

Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Likewise for the ball gag and crotch rope.

Phillipians 1:12-13

Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, ‘With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man’. And Adam became suspicious at this remark and demanded a DNA test.

Genesis 4:1-2

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.” And the now-confused Pharisees who were with John made signs behind his back to indicate they all thought he had been drinking heavily again.

John 1:29-30

Moses answered, ‘What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ”The LORD did not appear to you”?’

Then the LORD said to him, ‘Take this photograph of the two of us together holding today’s stone tablet news.’

Exodus 4:1-2

Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Take off his filthy clothes.’

Then he said to Joshua, ‘See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put rich garments on you.’

Then I said, ‘Put a clean turban on his head.’ So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him, while the angel of the LORD stood by. Then the angel said ‘That’s much better. Now you’re ready for your Extreme Makeover reveal.’

Zechariah 3:3-5

‘I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish’. And the donkeys and the hippos and the squirrels and the tyrannosaurus rexes were upset for they didn’t think they’d done anything wrong.

Genesis 6:17

On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of a Scalextric set. But Mary said that Jesus was too young to play with toy cars and so they gave her the receipt in order that she could take it back to the shops and pick up some myrrh.

Matthew 2:11

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, ‘Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is the price.’ After some applause Peter then produced a rabbit from a turban and finished with his sawing-a-Pharisee-in-half trick.

Acts 5:7-8

He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well. And if they can’t do all that stuff then they’re big, fat fakers and should be stoned to death. Remember that. That’s really important. Don’t forget that bit. I mean it.’

Mark 16:15-18

Then the Jews demanded of him, ‘What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?’

Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’

The Jews replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ But the temple he had spoken of was his body and the Jews had not immediately understood the metaphor thereby leaving them with a great pile of rubble in the centre of Jerusalem and a judge who threw out their case for compensation for breach of contract on account of it being verbal, hearsay, and irrelevant since Jesus was long dead by the time it reached court anyway.

John 2:18-21

At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. And the cows and the sheep and the chickens and the pterosaurs spent much of the night wondering what it was they’d done to annoy God this time.

Exodus 12:29