Jasper Fforde - The Song of the Quarkbeast

Tiger looked around, as if wondering how he could have missed something so important.

‘Where are they?’

I waved my hand in the direction of the building at large.

‘The coils are not coils you can see – they are more like a constantly circulating field of negative wizidrical energy that can absorb, store and then discharge vast amounts of crackle on command. The applications are endless, from boring holes in solid rock to making something from nothing. We have the capacity to hold four GigaShandars.’ [18] A thousand MegaShandars is equal to one GigaShandar, and a thousand GigaShandars is one TeraShandar; 28.2 TeraShandars is the estimated total wizidrical power discharged throughout the history of magic – the equivalent of taking Hereford’s cathedral to the moon and back, and still having enough left over to take it around the earth ten times.

‘And what could a GigaShandar actually do?’ asked Tiger, who was almost permanently inquisitive.

‘It’s a million Shandars, or if you prefer to use the older imperial measurements, about twenty-six cathedral miles, which is enough crackle to. . .’

‘. . . move a cathedral twenty-six miles?’

‘You learn fast. Yes, or move twenty-six cathedrals one mile each – or a medium-sized church five hundred miles, or, if you like, take a cricket pavilion all the way to Melbourne.’

‘Would there be any point to that?’

‘Not really.’

‘So a capacity of four GigaShandars is enough to move one cathedral – hang on – one hundred and four miles?’

‘Pretty much, although moving cathedrals cross-border by magic would be a bureaucratic nightmare. The paperwork would swamp you before you’d even got as far as Monmouth.’

Tiger went silent for a moment.

‘I’m sensing there’s a reason why cathedral-moving is not on our rate sheet.’

‘You sense right. Dibble died while servicing this enchantment twenty-six years ago and he left it in “standby” mode and passthought protected, so what we have now is a very, very big battery and no charger. It didn’t matter when the crackle was negligible because we didn’t have a hope of doing any big jobs. But now the power of magic is on the rise, we really need the Dibble back online if we’re to do any serious magic, like digging canals or laying railway track or building henges or something.’

‘I get that,’ said Tiger, ‘kind of. But don’t you think they should be called “Zargon Coils” or “Znorff Inverters” or something groovy rather than “Dibble”?’

‘Isn’t “Dibble” groovy?’

‘No, not really. It’s more . . . dorky .’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ I replied, ‘but real life isn’t like that. Dibble invented them, so Dibble they are.’

We walked across the lobby and into the Palm Court. In the heyday of the Majestic Hotel, this would have been an exotic indoor garden of tropical plants, tall palms and limpid pools with lily pads and koi carp. Scattered around would have been small tables filled with gossiping nobility taking tea, while waited upon by attentive waitresses.

No longer.

The room had not been used for entertaining or growing tropical plants for years, and many of the glass panes in the bell-shaped roof were either cracked or missing. Buckets lay scattered about into which water dripped during rainstorms, and the marble floor was stained and uneven. In the centre of the room was a large and very dry fountain. Standing next to it was Lady Mawgon. She had changed out of her usual black crinolines and into her even blacker ones, which showed she meant business. Her clothes were so black, in fact, that they were simply a dark Lady Mawgon-shaped hole in the world, and it could give one vertigo if you stared too long.

‘You never thanked me for putting the hayrick under you, Prawns.’

‘I’m most grateful to you for not letting me fall to a painful death,’ said Tiger, knowing it was senseless to argue.

‘Good manners cost nothing,’ she grumbled. ‘Did Miss Shard pay up?’

‘The matter was concluded satisfactorily,’ I replied.

‘Hmm. Now, you are here to witness my attempt to hack into the Dibbles. You will not approach me and you will not talk. Do you understand?’

Tiger and I weren’t sure whether that meant we couldn’t answer or not, so we played it safe and nodded vigorously.

‘Good. Primarily I will be trying to get into the root directory of the spell’s central core to reset the passthought. [19] Very like a password, but infinitely more complex. To share a passthought you really need to have witnessed the event or emotion the passthought was based on. From there I will attempt to switch the coils back on. You should make notes as I talk my way through it. I shall permit you to wish me good luck.’

‘Good luck, ma’am,’ I said, taking out my pocketbook and a pencil.

She turned to an empty space in the room and raised her index fingers. After a pause, she drew her hands downwards and out, much like a conductor beginning a symphony. A blue-filled tear appeared in the air, as though a tent flap had been unzipped. She continued to move her hands as if conducting, and as she signalled to an imaginary percussion section, the randomly placed chairs in the room moved away from the tear and the chandeliers tinkled slightly. Lady Mawgon made a few flourishes as one might do to signal in the entire string section, then held one hand in the air as if sustaining a note from the bassoons, and peered closer into the rent. The tear had depth within, and coloured lights flashed to and fro as Lady Mawgon subtly moved her hands between the theoretical harp and kettle drums to probe the inner workings of the spell. It was a incantation of great complexity, and Tiger and I stared wide eyed. Spellbound, in fact. I’d worked around spells for years, but never actually seen one.

‘Hmm,’ said Lady Mawgon, speaking over her shoulder while signalling to an imaginary cello section to play pianissimo. ‘The enchantment is standard Wa’Seed on a RUNIX core. The secondary spells are off-the-peg Shandar that self-regulate the internal fields, but it seems Dibble added a few gatekeepers to thwart a hack, then set them orbiting the central core in all five directions at once so they couldn’t be unwoven.’

‘The Great Zambini was always cautious,’ I replied, risking her anger by breaking my silence. ‘He thought four GigaShandars of raw crackle lying around might tempt a fallen wizard with mischief on their minds.’

‘You might be right,’ said Lady Mawgon.

There then followed about five minutes of hard spelling which was almost indistinguishable from the gesticulations of a conductor. Indeed, I am told the skills are interchangeable, and the myth about wands may originally have begun with a conductor’s baton.

And then, just as Tiger and I were getting bored and thinking of other things to do, our ears popped as something happened.

‘Okay,’ she said, giving a rare smile, ‘I’ll just reset the passthought and we’re done.’

She made a few more flourishes with her hands to an illusory woodwind section, and the rent closed.

‘There,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I’m surprised it was so easy. The coils will be full by this time tomorrow and we can run a test spell with them by Friday morning. Prawns, go and fetch Moobin so I can share the passthought.’

Tiger hurried out and I congratulated her on the work.

‘I could have done it in my sleep ten years ago,’ she replied, ‘but I thank you for your praise. Why are you staring at me?’

‘You’re going grey,’ I said.

‘I’ve been grey for years,’ she said, ‘and I’ve warned you against impertinence.’

‘No, no,’ I replied, ‘ everything on you is going grey.’