Jasper Fforde - The Song of the Quarkbeast

It was Zipp, our precog. He looked tired and drawn. He usually did when trying extra specially hard to see more clearly into the foggy murk of the yet-to-be.

‘Do I get a ten?’

‘On both counts.’

Tiger dutifully fetched the Visions Book so I could rate Kevin’s powers. I turned to the correct page, and noted that his last vision, the one by which we found Zambini, was coded RAD105. I gave him a ten for this, countersigned it and then gave him ten also for RAD095. It took his Correct Vision Strike Average up to 76 per cent – just out of ‘Remarkable’ and into ‘Exceptional’, but not yet beyond the 90 per cent mark and the highest accolade of all, ‘Blistering’.

‘Jenny?’ said Tiger, who had been staring at the entries in the Visions Book. ‘What does that look like to you?’

‘RAD105?’

‘No, I mean, what if the 5 was an S? What would you think then?’

‘RADIOS?’

I stared at Tiger and he stared back. The kid was a genius.

‘Kevin,’ I said excitedly, ‘are you still getting the “Vision Boss” prediction?’

‘I had it again just now. Why?’

‘It could mean ‘Vision BO55’. You may have just had a vision . . . about a vision.’

‘That’s a first,’ said Kevin, unfazed by it all, as usual.

Tiger dashed off to the library to fetch the relevant volume of the Precognitives’ Gazetteer of Visions .

‘It must have been made some time in the mid-seventies to be numbered so low,’ [35] Visions were not allocated code numbers until late 1973, something that had been long overdue. The main reason was to enable precogs to calculate an official strike rating, and thus a logical scale of payment. observed Perkins.

‘We’ll soon find out.’

Tiger returned with a dusty volume and laid it down in front of me. I soon found the entry.

‘Vision BO55, 10 October 1974,’ I read, ‘was seen by Sister Yolanda of Kilpeck.’

‘Yolanda? Cool. What was it about?’

‘Doesn’t say. It was a private consultation – contents undisclosed.’

‘If it was Sister Yolanda it probably will or did come true,’ said Kevin. ‘She didn’t make many, but her strike rate was always good. Who was the recipient?’

I read the name and suddenly felt cold all over.

‘Mr Conrad Blix of Blix Grange, Blix Street, Hereford.’

We all looked at one another. Blix was involved in a strong prophecy from Sister Yolanda, and Kevin had been hinting at it all week, just without knowing it. We’d be fools not to pick up on a lead like this.

‘I think we need to find the contents of that vision – and quickly,’ said Tiger.

‘Easier said than done,’ I replied. ‘It was a private consultation. Only Blix would have the details.’

‘We need someone at iMagic,’ observed Tiger, ‘someone on the inside.’

‘Who?’ asked Perkins. ‘Corby, Muttney and Samantha are all loyal to a fault.’

I thought for a moment.

‘Perkins,’ I said, ‘you’ve just betrayed us.’

‘I have?’

‘Like the worst kind of leaving-the-sinking-ship rat. I want you to accept Blix’s offer for two million moolah, get into Blix Grange, go to where Blix keeps his records and find out what Vision BO55 relates to.’

‘How am I going to do that?’

‘I don’t know. Guile and ingenuity?’

But Perkins was still reluctant.

‘Blix will never believe me. He’ll think it’s a trick of some sort.’

‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘he’ll need convincing.’

Reader, I punched him. Right in the eye, a real corker – a punch such as I’d never inflicted on anyone, except that time back at the orphanage when Tamara Glickstein was bullying the smaller kids.

‘YOW!’ yelled Perkins. ‘What was that for?’

‘He’ll believe you now. Tell him I went apeshit when you betrayed us. Tell him I’ve gone a bit loopy.’

‘No need to lie, then,’ remarked Perkins grumpily, nursing his eye, which was already beginning to go purple.

‘Better get going,’ I said, glancing at the clock and then giving him my warmest hug. I even kissed him on the cheek as an apology for the punch. Tiger offered to hug and kiss him too, but Perkins said ‘no thanks’ and went off to make the phone call. It was three minutes to midnight, and Perkins was gone by five past. Gone too with midnight was Kazam’s chance to cut a deal with Blix. The die was cast. The contest would go ahead.

And as likely as not, we’d lose.

I lay in bed staring at the water-stained ceiling of my room on the second floor of Zambini Towers, a room I had chosen for the fact that it faced east, and the sun woke me every morning. The sun didn’t wake me this morning as I had yet to get to sleep. Magic contests rarely ended happily, and through the years had resulted in recrimination and despair, bruised egos and lifelong feuds. There were always winners and losers, but this was the first time in wizidrical contest history that the defending team were unable to field a single sorcerer of any sort .

I had tried to fool myself that Zambini’s ‘trust in providence’ approach was actually sensible and worthwhile, but could not. We were, without a shadow of a doubt, stuffed.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Tiger, who occasionally slept on my floor as he was not yet used to sleeping on his own, and missed the cosy dormitory companionship of eighty other foundlings, all coughing, grunting and crying.

‘I was thinking about how everything would be fine.’

‘Me too.’

‘Actually I wasn’t.’

‘No,’ said Tiger, ‘neither was I.’

I went downstairs after my bath and wandered into the office. I made myself a cup of tea and sat down, deep in thought.

‘You seem sad,’ came a low voice with a sing-song Scandinavian lilt to it, ‘is everything okay?’

I turned to find the Transient Moose staring at me.

‘You can talk?’

‘Three languages,’ replied the Moose, ‘Swedish, English and a smattering of Persian.’

‘Why haven’t you spoken before?’

The Moose gave a toss of its antlers that I took to be a moosian shrug.

‘No one here really shares any of my interests, so there’s not much to say.’

‘What are your interests?’

‘Snow . . . female moose . . . grazing . . . getting enough sodium and potassium in my diet . . . snow . . . avoiding being run over . . . snow . . . female moose . . . snow.’

‘You’re not likely to be run over in here,’ I said, ‘or find snow or a female moose – and you don’t need sodium, since you’re a spell.’

‘As I said,’ said the Moose, ‘not much to talk about. Did you like my thinness enchantment?’

‘That was you?’ I asked, with some surprise.

‘I didn’t like the way they kept on taking the sorcerers away,’ he said simply, ‘so I used that thing that didn’t want to be found to increase my power.’

He nodded towards where the terracotta pot and ring were located in my desk, and I took them out and stared at them. It still didn’t make any sense.

‘How is this working?’

‘I have no idea,’ replied the Moose. ‘It’s suffused with emotional power. Loss, hatred, betrayal – you name it. I can almost hear the screams.’

‘Negative emotional energy? A curse?’

The Moose gave another toss of its antlers.

‘Sort of. But good or bad, I can tap into it and draw as much power as I want. It’s like having a sorcerer, sitting right there in that pot.’

I had an idea. It was a long shot, admittedly.

‘What are you like at building bridges?’

‘Well,’ said the Moose after some reflection, ‘we weren’t talking to the Siberian elk for a while after the whole cash-for-wolves scandal, and I was instrumental in bringing them to the negotiating table. I was alive then, of course, and real.’