The third - a brand new, jet-black Dodge with tinted windows, fat tyres, diplomatic number plates and a sticker in the window saying "Tax Disc Applied For" - materialised on the M40 at its junction with the M25 and drove like a bat out of h.e.l.l northwards, staying in the fast lane all the way and flashing the cars in front with its lights until they pulled over and let it pa.s.s.
"No," said Aristotle, "I had the iced bun, Dio had the Black Forest gateau, Merlin had the toasted teacake, you had the croissant and the black coffee, so you owe me thirty pee."
The soi-disant skittles team glowered at each other. Nostradamus, who had the bill, took a pencil from behind his ear and began to do sums.
"Actually," Merlin said, "I just had a cup of tea. It was, er, Mrs Magus who had the . . ."
Simon Magus glanced at his watch. "All right," he said, "I"ll treat you. I"ll pay. Can we go now, please?"
The magi looked at him.
"There"s no need to take that tone," Aristotle growled. "It"s perfectly simple. I gave Nostradamus a fiver-"
"We haven"t got time, Ari," Simon Magus growled. "Let"s sort it out in the van, all right? Mahaud - oh G.o.d, where"s she got to now?"
"I think she went to the shop to buy some peppermints," Merlin said. "She said that sucking a peppermint stops her feeling travel-sick."
"Oh for crying out loud," Simon Magus exclaimed. "Dio, be a good chap, go and tell her..." But Dio Chrysostom, who was adamant that he"d had nothing but a hot chocolate and a digestive biscuit, folded his arms and pretended not to hear. Things were starting to get just a little bit out of hand.
Simon Magus frowned. On the one hand, here were eight of the finest minds in the whole of the Gla.s.s Mountain, the final repository of the wisdom of the world, the fountain of magic, the shield and pillar of mankind. On the other hand, they made the Lower Sh.e.l.l back at the Coll seem positively rational by comparison. He cleared his throat meaningfully.
"Right," he said. "The bus leaves in three minutes. Anybody not back by then gets left behind. Clear?"
He jingled the keys and stalked off across the car park.
"Oh bother," said the Queen of Atlantis, frowning slightly. "That is a nuisance. Get out and change it, somebody."
There was a certain degree of shuffling in the body of the bus, but otherwise n.o.body moved.
"Don"t tell me," the Queen said. "There isn"t a spare wheel in this thing." She smiled glacially. "Am I right?"
"There, um, wasn"t room," said a foolhardy young PA. "You see, we had to strip out everything that wasn"t absolutely essential so"s we could fit the surveillance devices and the mobile fax transceiver in, and..."
"And somebody decided that a spare wheel wasn"t essential." The Queen pursed her exquisite lips. "More a sort of luxury, I suppose, like a built-in c.o.c.ktail cabinet. I see. Well then, did we also discard the puncture repair kit as the last word in Sybaritic self-indulgence, or have we still got that somewhere?"
"Oh yes, we"ve..."
The searchlight eyes homed in. The wire-guided smile locked on target.
"How simply splendid," the Queen said. "Out you get, then."
Reluctantly, like a toreador going out to meet a bull with nothing but a bunch of flowers and a toothpick, the foolhardy young PA stood up, banged his head on the roof of the bus, and shuffled across to the door.
"Now then." The Queen turned her head and turned the smile up to saturation level. "While we"re waiting, let"s just see what else we"ve forgotten, shall we?"
Fortunately, the phone rang.
"Turkey."
Sir Turquine looked up from his map. By his calculations they should be in Hertfordshire by now, which meant that some d.a.m.n fool had moved Coventry a hundred miles to the south. "What?" he snapped.
"Are you sure this is the right way?"
"Look..."
Boamund, who had been fast asleep ever since Perry Bar, woke up with a jolt and said, "Stop the van!"
"Sorry?"
"I said," Boamund repeated, "stop the van."
Turquine looked at him and shook his head. "You can"t," he said, "it"s a main road. You"ll have to wait till we pa.s.s a Little Chef or something."
"Not that, you fool," Boamund snapped. "We"re here. This is it."
Pertelope shrugged. "You"re the boss, Snotty," he said. "There"s a lay-by just ahead. Will that do?"
"Yes," Boamund said impatiently, "that"s fine, just pull over." He was frowning - a bad case of concentration, by the looks of it, as if he was struggling to keep something large and slippery in his mind.
"You all right, Bo?" Bedevere asked. "You look all funny."
"Actually," Boamund replied, "I had a dream."
"h.e.l.lo," Turquine said, "here we go. Young Snotty"s been at the glue again."
Boamund waved his hand angrily. "Shut up, Turkey," he said. "This dream was important, and I"m trying to remember it. It"s not easy, you know."
The van stopped, and the knights jumped out. It was cold, and a fine shower of rain was falling. Beyond the post-andwire fence, mist was blurring the edges of a large pine wood.
"That"s it," Boamund said, pointing. "That forest over there. The other side of those trees, there"s a lake. That"s where we"ve got to go."
Bedevere had managed to get hold of the map, and was examining it carefully. "He"s right, you know," he said. "At least, there"s flooded gravel pits all round here. At least," he added, lowering the map and nodding northwards, "if that"s Meriden over there, then there"s gravel pits behind those trees. Otherwise, we could be anywhere."
He stopped and looked down. Toenail was tugging at his sleeve.
"Did you say Meriden?" the dwarf demanded excitedly.
"Yes," Bedevere replied, "that"s right. Why?"
"Meriden," the dwarf repeated. "Where the bikes come from."
Bedevere raised an eyebrow. "What"s he going on about bikes for, anybody?" he said. Galahaut nodded.
"The old Triumph factory was at Meriden," he said. "What of it?"
The dwarf grinned. "Nothing," he said. "Only, Meriden happens to be the exact geographical centre of Albion, that"s all."
Galahaut frowned. "How extremely interesting," he said.
"Now puddle off, there"s a good little chap, because . . ."
"Say that again," Bedevere interrupted.
"Meriden," the dwarf repeated, "is the exact centre of Albion, geographically speaking." He winked at Bedevere. "Just thought I"d mention it," he added.
"Thanks." Bedevere twitched his nose a few times and looked at the map. "You know," he said, "that"s rather interesting, if you think about it."
Lamorak looked at him quizzically. "Is it?" he said. "Personally, I could never get the hang of geography. What"s the capital of Northgales, all that stuff. I mean, who wants to know?"
"In the exact centre," Bedevere said, as much to himself as to anyone else. "Well, I"ll be blowed."
"Your Majesty."
"Mmmm?"
"I think you"d better pull over, Your Majesty."
The Queen glanced in her rear-view mirror, sighed, and slowed down, while the PAs looked at each other and grinned. They were going to enjoy this.
The policeman who walked over and tapped on the window was young, tall and red-haired. In fact, the Queen said to herself, it"s funny how young they all look these days. She wound down the window and smiled.
"Good afternoon, officer," she said pleasantly.
The policeman didn"t react to the smile; or if he did, he didn"t show it.
"Do you realise," he said, "you were doing over a hundred and ten miles per hour back there, madam?"
"Gosh!" the Queen replied. "How frightfully exciting! It didn"t feel like that at all."
"Please get out of the van, madam."
"But it"s raining."
The policeman"s face remained impa.s.sive. "Out of the van, please," he said. "Now I"m going to ask you to blow into-"
"Sorry?"
"I"m going to ask you rivet rivet rivet rivet," said the small green frog; and then it seemed to notice that something was different. It hopped up and down on the spot once or twice and then it just sat there with its mouth open. The Queen shook her head sadly and beckoned to the other policeman.
"Officer," said the Queen, "I"m going to turn you into a frog, too."
The policeman stared at her.
"Please don"t take it personally," the Queen went on, "because I know you"re just doing your job, and really it"s not your fault, it"s just the way things are. It won"t hurt, I promise you."
She smiled, and a second frog appeared at her feet. Very carefully, so as not to damage the little creatures" fragile legs, the Queen picked the two amphibians up and put them on the palm of her hand.
"Now then," she said. "One day, a princess will come along this road. Probably," she added, "doing a hundred and twenty and towing a horsebox. If you"re terribly nice to her and don"t ask to see her driving licence, she may kiss you and then you"ll be back to being policemen. If not, try mayflies. I"m told they"re a bit of an acquired taste, but well worth persevering with. Ciao!"
She put her index finger gently behind the frogs" back legs to encourage them to jump off her hand, smiled once more and got back into the van.
"Right," she said.
"Where?"
Boamund scowled. It had been such a vivid dream, the sort you know you"re going to remember, and now all there was in his mind was a sort of sticky silver trail where it had once been.
"It"s about here somewhere," he said. "A lake. All misty. You know the sort of thing."
Turquine shook his head. "No sign of a lake here, Snotters," he said. "I mean, a thing like a lake, it"s not easily overlooked. You must just have imagined it."
"I did not imagine it," Boamund shouted. "It was a lake, and it was here."
"Isn"t here now," said Turquine, and he smirked. "Just a lot of trees, and this."
He waved his arm at the small, exclusive, half-finished development of executive starter homes and shrugged. The other knights, unusually sensitive to their leader"s embarra.s.sment, said nothing.
"We could try over there," Boamund suggested; and Bedevere was reminded of a cat he"d once known who had the habit of going to each door and window in turn every time it rained, presumably on the off chance of finding one where it was sunny. "It must just be hidden by the mist. I"m sure if we looked properly..."
"Come on, now," Turquine was saying, in that unbearably aggravating let"s-be-reasonable tone of his. "We"ve given it a jolly good go, there"s no lake here, so let"s say no more about it and-"
There was a splash. Turquine had found a lake all right.
The ghost read back what he"d written and knew that it was good. You get that feeling sometimes, when you"re a ghost.
He looked at the clock, which was now keeping perfect time, and saw that it was just on half past nine. Just dune to fax it through before everyone at the Manchester studios went home.
As the ghost strolled through the abandoned house, he wondered to himself what he"d found so difficult. As soon as he"d cottoned on to the idea of having Mike Baldwin start off the scene, it had just come; as if someone somewhere had been feeding it directly into his head. He"d just sat clown, grabbed the paper, never blotted a line.
For the first time, he noticed what he"d been writing on; it was that funny piece of parchment he"d found in the clock. Without thinking he"d pumiced away the pictures and the initial capitals, but he hadn"t touched all that silly Latin writing. Still, too late to do anything about it now.
A brief spasm of curiosity took hold of him, and he sat down on the lid of a chest and squinted at the ma.n.u.script. Years now since he"d tried to read any Latin, thank G.o.d b.l.o.o.d.y silly language, anyway, with half the words ending in -us and the rest ending -o. The handwriting was small and cramped, too, which didn"t help.
Historia V rissima de Calice Sancto, quae Latine vort.i.t monachus Glas...o...b..riensis Simon Magus ex libello vetere Gallico, res gestas equitum magorumque opprobria argentariorumque continens . . .
. .. A very true history of the holy something or other, which Simon the Magician, a monachus, that"s monk, yes, monk of Glas...o...b..ry something-ed to Latin; the verb"s at the end of the line; containing, containing, oh yes, containing the things done of hors.e.m.e.n and magicians and the opprobria, opprobrious things of somethings, argentariorum, people who have something to do with money . . .
Load of old cod. As soon as I"ve faxed my copy in, the ghost promised himself, I"ll take the pumice to this lot, and then maybe I can write something worth reading on it. Opprobrious things of people who have to do with money indeed! Who on earth would want to read about that?
He went into the office, dialled the number into the fax machine and fed the sheet of parchment into the automatic feed. There were the usual strangled-duck noises, and the parchment started to twitch spasmodically into the little plastic jaws. When it had finished transmitting, he pulled it out, carefully removed the little record slip, and went in search of pumice.
"Boamund."
"Yes?"
"I don"t want to appear personal, but you know that leather book thing, you know, the one we got back from Atlantis?"
"Yes?"