Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

"Don't the Water War, the Scotch Streak and the Egyptian Stars count as alien invasions?" asked Richard. "I mean, technically, the Deep Ones are terrestrial, but your Great Squidhead Person is from outer outer space. And the other two bothers were down to unwelcome meteorites."

"You've a point. Make that eight alien invasions. The Water War was a local skirmish, though. Extra-dimensional, rather than extraterrestrial…"

Cleaver hopped from one foot to the other. The little boy in him was furious that grown-ups were talking over his head. If he hadn't been chucked off his course in life — by Catriona, as he saw it — he might have been in on the Secret History. The Mystic Maharajah, oldest of the Splendid Six, had carried a spear (well, an athane) in the Worm War. Captain Rattray (Blackfist), another Splendid, emerged from disgrace to play a minor role in the Wizard War. Teenage Clever Dick was too busy squeezing pus-filled blemishes to get involved in that set-to. Child sleuths, like child actors, seldom grew up to be stars. Richard was named after Richard Riddle, the famous Boy Detective of the turn of the century (so was Cleaver, probably). Few knew what, if anything, happened to Riddle in later life.

"You won't listen, you won't listen!"

"Have you considered that the Cold might be extra-dimensional rather than antediluvian?" asked Leech, offhandedly. "Seems to me a bright young man of my acquaintance reported something similar in a continuum several path-forks away from our own. It cropped up there in 1963 or so, during the Big Freeze. Didn't do much harm."

"You can't say anything about her," insisted Cleaver, almost squeaking.

"Interesting that you see the Cold as a her," continued Leech. "Then again, I suppose women have been 'cold' to you all your life. You made a poor impression on Miss Kaye, from all accounts. And she's always been generous in her feelings."

Cleaver's face tried to burn. Blood rose in his blueing cheeks, forming purplish patches. He might break out again.

"I know what you're twying to do, you wotter!"

Leech laughed out loud. Richard couldn't help but join in.

"I'm a 'wotter', am I? A wotten wetched wight woyal wascally wotter, perhaps?"

"You're twying to get me angwy!"

"Angwy? Are you succumbing to woawing wed wage?"

Cleaver couldn't help sounding like a toffee-nosed Elmer Fudd. It was cruel of Leech to taunt him Fourth Form fashion. Richard remembered bullies at his schools. With him, it had been his darker skin, his literal lack of background, the numbers tattooed on his wrist, his longer-than-regulation hair, his eyelashes for heaven's sake. He had learned early on to control his temper. If he didn't, people got hurt.

"You missed one off your list of apocalypses," said Cleaver, trying to be sly again. "Perfidious Albion. That was an extwa-dimensional thweat. An entire weality out to oblitewate the world. And we stopped it. In 1926! Not your Diogenes Club or those Undertaker fellows, but us! The Splendid Six! Clever Dick, yes. They first called me that to poke fun, but I pwoved it was a wightful name. I stood with the gwown-ups. Blackfist and Lord Piltdown and the Blue Stweak…"

"… and Aviatrix and the Mystic Maharajah," footnoted Richard.

"Should never have let girls and foreigners in," muttered Cleaver. "That's where the wot started."

"Chandra Nguyen Seth turned out to be Sid Ramsbottom, from Stepney," said Richard. "As British as corned-beef fritters and London fog. Used boot polish on his face for years. He might have been Mystic, but he was no Maharajah."

Cleaver didn't take this in — he was a ranter, not a listener. "Seth and the girl helped," he admitted. "The Splendids saved the day. Beat back the Knights of Perfidious Albion. Saved evewyone and evewy-thing. Without us, you'd all be cwawling subjects of Queen Mor-gaine. I was given a medal, by the pwoper King. I was witten up in Bwitish Pluck, for months and months. I had an arch-nemesis. Wicked William, my own cousin. I bested the bounder time after time. Made him cwy and cwy and cwy. There was a Clever Dick Club, and ten thousand boys were members. No g-girls allowed! I was in the Lord Mayor's Show and invited to tea at the palace twice. I could have been in your wotten old wars. Won them, even. In half the time. Dark Ones, Deep Ones, Wet Ones, Weird Ones. I could have thwashed the lot of 'em and been home before bed-time. But you couldn't leave me alone, could you? No woom in the Gwown-Ups' Club for Clever Dick. Not for any of the Splendids. That w-w-woman had to bwing us down to her level."

"He means your club now," said Leech. "In some circumstances, I'd agree with him."

"You'd both have to climb a mountain to be on a level with Catriona Kaye."

"Touche," said Leech.

"You're both just twying to change the subject."

"Oh dearie me," said Leech. "Let's talk about the weather again, shall we? It's an endless topic of fascination. I was getting bored with writing heatwave headlines…"

Leech's Daily Comet had been censured for running the headline SWEATY BETTY over a paparazzo shot of Queen Elizabeth II perspiring (in ladylike manner) at an official engagement.

"How do you think he's done it, Jeperson? Science or magic?"

"No such thing as magic," said Cleaver, quickly.

"Says the boy whose best friend used a magic diamond to become hard as nails. What was his name again, Captain…?"

"Wattway!" shouted the Professor, duped into a using a double-r name. When he wasn't angry, he spoke carefully, avoiding the letter «r» if possible. Sadly, Cleaver was angry most of the time. "Dennis Wattway! Blackfist!"

"Not a magic person, then?"

"The Fang of Night was imbued with an unknown form of wadioactivity. It altered Captain Wattway's physiology."

"I could pull a hat out of the air and a rabbit out of the hat, and you'd say I accessed a pocket universe."

"A tessewact, yes."

"There's no 'weasoning' with you. So, Jeperson, what do you think?"

Richard wondered whether he should follow Leech's tactic, getting the Professor more and more flustered in the hope of breaking him down and finding a way to roll back the Cold. It was all very well unless Clever Dick decided to stop trying to impress his visitors and just had the snowmen stick icicles through their heads.

"I assume the phenomenon is localized," said Richard. "Deep under the levels. There must have been a pocket of the Cold. Once it was all over the world, a giant organism — a symbiote, drawing nourishment from the rock, from what vegetation it let live. When the Great Ice Age ended, it shrank, shedding most of its bulk into the seas or ordinary ice, but somewhere — maybe in several spots around the world — it left parcels of itself."

"No, you're wong, wong, wong," said Cleaver, nastily.

"Is that a Chinese laundry?" said Leech. "Wong, Wong and Wong."

" Wwong," insisted Cleaver. "Ewwoneous. Incowwect. Not wight."

He sputtered, frustrated not to find an r-free synonym for "wrong".

"The Cold didn't hide below the gwound, but beyond the spect-wum of tempewature. Until I weached out for her."

"I see," continued Richard. "With the equipment generously supplied by your former employer, you made contact with the Cold. You woke up Sleeping Beauty… with what? A kiss. No, a signal. An alarm-call. No, you had instructions. What common language could you have? Music, Movement and Mime? Doubtful. Mathematics? No, the Cold hasn't got that sort of a mind. A being on her scale has no use for any number other than 'one'."

Richard looked about the room, at the thickening ice that coated everything, at the white dusting over the ice. Tiny, tiny jewels glittered in the powder. He made a leap — perhaps by himself, perhaps snatching from Cleaver's buzzing mind.