The Song of the Quarkbeast

Zambini Towers

We’d had lunch, congratulated Perkins and were now gathered in the Palm Court. The only member of the ‘inner sanctum’ of licensed sorcerers absent was Patrick of Ludlow, who was busy moving an oak for a wealthy client eager to alphabetise his arboretum.[26]

Lady Mawgon and Monty Vanguard were still there, exactly the same as when we left. It would take ten or twenty years before a thin coating of lichen would make them look any different, although they might need a dusting by Tuesday week.

‘Goodness,’ said Perkins, who’d not seen a spell gone so badly wrong before. ‘Have we attempted a Magnaflux Reversal?’

‘Several times.’

‘Has anyone asked the Mysterious X?’ suggested Half Price. ‘Since he’s less of a who and more a what, he might have a different take on the problem.’

This was entirely true. Because of Mysterious X’s nebulous state of semi-existence, we often gave him small jobs to do, such as retrieving cats stuck up trees, and it could persuade pianos into tune by glaring at them. The fact that he didn’t have a licence didn’t bother us, as there was little tangible evidence to say X even existed at all.

‘I could speak to it,’ volunteered Tiger. ‘I think it quite likes me – I’m the only one who can give X its weekly degauss[27] without it causing trouble.’

‘Go on, then,’ said Wizard Moobin, and as Tiger hurried off, he passed the Transient Moose, who had just reappeared in the doorway, and watched us all in his usual laconic manner.

‘Let’s talk about the bridge contest,’ I announced. ‘Let’s suppose we can’t get Lady Mawgon back or use the Dibbles to help us – what problems do you think we might have?’

‘We’re still five to their three,’ said Moobin. ‘Blix is about on a par with me and a powerful levitator, but both Tchango and Dame Corby are less powerful than the Price brothers. Patrick is a solid plodder and can be trusted to get any heavy stone into position. We can keep Perkins in reserve and still beat them comfortably.’

They then talked about crackle allocations and technical stuff like that, and although half my attention was on the meeting, my mind always tends to wander a bit during technical discussions, which are, to be frank, boring. Wizards in general don’t make good conversation. They are always reluctant to talk about how fantastic the conjured thunderstorm actually was – the size of the tempest and the bright flashes of lightning, the fearsome and towering storm-clouds and suchlike – but go into almost excruciating detail about the strands of spell that went into it. It would be like meeting Rembrandt only for him to talk about nothing but the wood of his brush handles.

As I looked around the room in a bored manner my gaze fell upon the Transient Moose. I narrowed my eyes. For as long as anyone could remember the Moose had simply stood around doing not very much at all. As I watched he faded from view, but not to another part of the hotel as he usually did, but to where Lady Mawgon was rooted to the spot in her calcite splendour. The Moose stared at the alabaster, shook his antlers and then vanished.

‘Did you see that?’

‘See what?’ asked Moobin, who had just launched into a long and tedious discussion about Zorff’s 6th Axiom.

‘The Moose. He was examining Lady Mawgon as though he were . . . aware.’

‘The Moose was written with Mandrake Sentience Emulation Protocols,’[28] said Full Price, ‘and like a Quarkbeast it shows considerable evidence of consciousness. But as to whether they are really alive or designed to make us think they are, we’ll never really know.’

I opened my mouth to answer, but then noticed Tiger waving at me from the door of the Palm Court. I excused myself and hurried over, glad of a distraction.

‘Problems?’

‘Could be,’ he said. ‘Patrick of Ludlow just phoned. He said he’s run into oversurge issues moving the oak in the arboretum and wanted a wizard to go down and help sort things out.’

‘If it’s an oversurge issue why not take Perkins?’ said Moobin when I asked him whether he could help. ‘He should know what it’s like to absorb crackle rather than use it.’

Perkins agreed wholeheartedly as he was keen to begin his new career as a sorcerer, so a few minutes later myself, Perkins and Tiger were walking out the door towards my parked car. Tiger was carrying a partially inflated bin-liner as this was the way Mysterious X travelled when outside Zambini Towers. When you are nothing more than an inexplicable energy field of unknown origin, even a light breeze has a dispersing effect which can be quite unsettling.

‘Can you drop us off at the zoo?’ asked Tiger. ‘I kind of get the idea that Mysterious X might be able to help with the whole RUNIX deal, but wants to see the new Buzonji cub first.’

That was how the Mysterious X communicated. Not by words, but by ideas that popped into your head. Perkins had spent many hours consulting with him on the powers of suggestion – or, if you didn’t believe in Mysterious X, Perkins had been sitting in a room, mumbling to himself.

‘I never thought X was big on zoos,’ I said as we climbed into my car, ‘but then again, the Buzonji cub is very cute. All gangly legs and a pink nose.’