Deep Secret

It was right.

World maps began to unfold on the screen, Empire fashion, rippling with lines like isobars on weather charts, map after map, world after world, like half of Infinity. I leant back and watched them, wondering why the Emperor had chosen this particular password from this particular rhyme. Babylon was never a place in the Empire. After a while, a moving frieze of graphics appeared, humans and centaurs passing in profile across the shifting maps. They had the look of real people taken from photographs and they all seemed to be different, but it was hard to tell if they were intended to be meaningful or just an indication that the program was now truly running. Finally, the screen cleared. Letters said TYPE KNARROS.

I typed ‘KNARROS.’

NOW TYPE THE NAME OF MY GODDESS came the reply.

I turned frantically to the computer that held my Empire database, knowing I was going to be too late. “Stan!” I shouted. “Stan, what’s the name of the Emperor’s dismal goddess?”

“Can’t remember,” he shouted back across what seemed to be the Hallelujah Chorus. “Some damn great mouthful.”

I remembered it myself – Aglaia-Ualaia – just as the disk wiped.

“And that’s the man who knew every racehorse from 1935!” I said. “Well, at least I have backups.”

I did it all over again. By the early evening I was ready again, this time with a list of various other gods, heroes and historical personages from the Empire, just in case. I had developed a hearty respect for the Emperor’s paranoia. But it seemed that the name of his goddess was his last resort. I typed ‘KNARROS’ followed by ‘AGLAIA-UALAIA’ and a list came up.

KNARROS CODEWORLD LIXOS

FEMALE B. 3390 CODENAME NATHALIA

FEMALE B. 3390 CODENAME PHYSILLA

FEMALE B. 3400 CODENAME ANANTE

MALE B. 3401 CODENAME EKLOS

MALE B. 3402 CODENAME MAGRAKES

PLUS TWO MALE CENTAURS B. 3394 AND 3396

CODEWORLD BABYLON

FEMALE B. 3393 CODENAME TIMOAEA

MALE B. 3399 CODENAME JELLIERO

Each of the names was followed by clumps of letters, numbers and signs, which meant nothing to me, but which I supposed were the Empire’s version of blood groups or genetic codes or some such. The two lists were followed by the statement:

KNARROS WILL SUPPLY IDENTIFICATION AND

AUTHENTICATION OF HEIR(S) ONLY TO ACCREDITED

MESSENGER ON PROOF OF THE DEATH OF TIMOS IX

“Gotcha!” I said. I opened a bottle of wine to celebrate before I endeavoured to get through to Dakros on his com number. After the fun and games of the last few days, it was a simple matter to splice him into my telephone. I got him after half an hour, sounding far-off, crackly and very tired. “Two sets of them,” I said, “on two codenamed worlds.” I read him what they were.

He was nothing like as jubilant. “Who is this Knarros?”

“Some kind of guardian, I imagine. He might come forward when he hears—”

“Well, he hasn’t,” he said. “And which bloody worlds are Lixos and Babylon meant to be?”

“You could get the Imperial Secret Service on to it,” I suggested.

“I could if they weren’t all mindless gangsters,” he retorted. “We executed most of them yesterday. Trying to stage a coup. And,” he returned to what was obviously the main difficulty, “I don’t like the way it all seems to hang on this Knarros. You have to go through him for the eldest boy, even if it is on another world. What if he’s untrustworthy or someone does him in?”

“Blame the stupidity of your late ruler,” I said.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“Neither do I,” I said. The fact that the password was Babylon still made my back creep. “I’ve faxed the list to Jeffros. Let him put people to work on it and tell him to let me know if you need my help.”

“I’m bound to,” he said. “This is a stupid over-secretive mess!”

I rang off, sighing. “He’s going to want me to find Babylon for him. I can see it coming.”

“You can’t do that!” Stan said sharply.

“I think we’re talking about two different things, Stan,” I said. “Or at least I hope we are. Mind turning that music down? I’ve got a headache.”

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I drove to Bristol the next day with a passenger. I had not meant to go so soon, in spite of Stan’s nagging. It seemed to me that I had earned a day with my feet up. But my neighbour rang my doorbell just at the point where I had drunk enough of the wine to quench my headache.

Andrew Connick is a strange fellow, an inventor. Unlike the unfortunate Derek Mallory, Andrew has succeeded in pushing his creations out of his head into reality, and he holds several dozen patents, all for very useful gadgets. My favourite coffee-pot is one of them. Andrew gave it me to test. Like me, he lives alone – in one of the only two other houses in Weavers End, which is bigger and fancier than mine; it has a large garden with a pond in it, which I sometimes envy him for, until I think of all the digging and weeding Andrew has to do. The third house in Weavers End contains the Gibbs family: Mrs Gibbs cleans my house, her daughter cleans Andrew’s. Mrs Gibbs tells me her daughter says Andrew Connick is a very strange man. And I believe her – though I also believe that Mrs Gibbs tells Andrew that her mother says Rupert Venables is pretty strange too.

He was standing on my doorstep looking as if he was not sure why he was there. “Hello, Andrew,” I said. “Come on in.” I supposed Stan would have the sense to keep quiet, even though choral music was blasting out around me.

“I’ll not come in,” he said, in his distrait, Nordic way. Actually I believe him to be Scottish, but I think of him as Nordic because he has that bleached, handsome head and those large bones I always associate with Scandinavians. He is very tall. I am just under six feet and he towered over me, looking uncertain. “No, I’ll not enter,” he said. “I just came to ask you to give me a lift tomorrow.”

“Car broken down again?” I said. My heart sank. The last two occasions Andrew’s car had failed him, between Christmas and New Year, I had clocked up over six hundred miles shuttling Andrew and various spare parts between here and Cambridge – and Ely and Huntingdon and St Neots, not to speak of Peterborough and King’s Lynn.

“Aye,” he said. “It won’t be moving.”

My heart rebelled against more shuttling. I had earned a rest. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m not going to be here tomorrow. I’ve got to go to Bristol.”

He was silent, with his large pale eyes on the distance above my head, evidently thinking. After a while he said, “I’ll come to Bristol then.”

I had a mad feeling that if I had said I was going to drive to Carlisle, Edinburgh or Canterbury he would have agreed to come to any of those places too. “It’s quite a way,” I said, in a last-ditch effort to dissuade him. “I’m making an early start.”

He thought about that too. “I can be ready by six.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, I didn’t mean that early!” I said, giving in. “Let’s say eight-thirty, shall we?”

“I’ll be there,” he said, and left.

So I found myself committed to driving to Bristol. “Are you coming with me?” I asked Stan. “Or do you think you might frighten Andrew?”