Part 2 (1/2)

'Yes. We missed him.' The General turned back to his desk.

'Sorry, Sir.'

Tchike waved the apology aside. 'There will be other opportunities. I thought this might be the time. Perhaps I should have known better.' He consulted the desktop organiser next to the chessboard. 'We're scheduled to play again on July 16th next year. You can have another shot at him then.'

'Sir... do you think he'll show up? I mean, after today '

'He'll be there. He has to be there.' The General sat, somewhat wearily, the mock-leather chair sighing pitifully under his weight. 'Now I've had my chance to cut off his head, he'll want the chance to cut off mine.'

The Unthinkable City, 15:36 (Local Time)

'Can't you just answer the d.a.m.ned question?' demanded Mr Homunculette. 'Who, exactly, are you supposed to be representing?'

Mr Qixotl tried not to smirk. That, he thought, was as close to diplomacy as Homunculette ever got. The man acted as if he'd been on the edge of a nervous breakdown since birth, as if he were still waiting for a good excuse to have a full-blown psychotic fit. Homunculette's people had been involved in a particularly unpleasant war for some time now, and it had left them horribly neurotic. Qixotl had stopped in the stone pa.s.sageway outside the anteroom, hoping to hear something interesting from the other side of the doorway, but all he'd heard so far was Homunculette's usual whining gargle.

Not that Mr Qixotl really had to eavesdrop. He had the whole ziggurat bugged anyway.

There was a brief silence from the anteroom.

'Confidentiality?' spat Homunculette. 'Don't talk to me about confidentiality. Let me tell you something, you're dealing with an agent of the most secretive and... are you listening to me?'

Mr Qixotl decided to step in before the man started ranting.

'Afternoon,' he said, brightly, pretending not to have heard any of the preceding conversation. 'Getting to know each other, are we? Lovely. There's some cheesy nibbles in the c.o.c.ktail lounge, if you're interested.'

The chamber was small, and lit by flaming torches which, in Mr Qixotl's opinion, lent a lovely Gothic feel to the place. The anteroom was sandwiched between the pa.s.sageway and the conference hall, the area unfurnished except for a table and a handful of oak-flavoured plastic chairs. Homunculette was sprawled across at least three of these, staring at the front page of the New Bornean Gazette New Bornean Gazette. Mr Qixotl had only left the newspaper on the table to add a touch of local colour to the room, and he was frankly amazed anyone was bothering to read it. Homunculette still hadn't changed out of the black business suit he'd been wearing when he'd arrived, even though it was spattered with mud and stained with something that looked disturbingly like organic waste. Evidently, thought Qixotl, he'd come straight here from the roughest boardroom meeting in history.

No one else was visible in the room, but that wasn't surprising. The other occupant, the one Mr H had been shouting at, wouldn't be seen or heard until it wanted to be.

'We were wondering how much longer we're going to have to wait,' hissed Homunculette, almost literally lying through his teeth. 'I mean, I wouldn't be so rude as to suggest we're getting impatient '

'Perish the thought,' cut in Mr Qixotl.

' but we're reaching the stage where we might be thinking about getting impatient, at some point in the near future. If you get my meaning.'

Mr Qixotl tried to look cheerful. 'Not getting edgy, I hope, Mr H. Saw your little friend up on the roof, on the way in. Still expecting trouble, are we?'

'Marie isn't my friend,' snapped Homunculette. 'She's my companion. There's a difference.' Then he stopped scowling, just for a moment, and looked generally anxious instead. 'On the roof? What was she doing on the roof?'

'She's your ”companion”, Mr H, not mine. Looked like she was keeping watch, to me.'

Homunculette relaxed. Visibly. That didn't happen often, in Mr Qixotl's experience. Homunculette's face looked as if it had been built for tension; it was long, it was narrow, and it was topped by a crop of thinning black hair that all the gel in Mutter's Spiral couldn't make stylish. 'Marie isn't happy about the security arrangements in this place,' he muttered. 'She's worried about an attack from the outside. You don't even have any atmospheric defences set up.'

Mr Qixotl smiled disarmingly. He hoped. 'Relax, Mr H. Only another three, er, parties to come before we can start proceedings, and one of them's only a couple of minutes away now. Listen, if you're getting itchy feet, why not go and have a chat with Mr Trask in his guestroom? Sure he'd be glad of the company.'

'Thank you, no,' spat Homunculette.

Mr Qixotl opened his mouth to say something facile and rea.s.suring, but found himself suddenly distracted by the table. There was an unusual pattern in the wood grain, a pattern he'd never noticed there before. It looked almost like... letters?

THE HUMAN REPRESENTATIVES ARE COMING? spelt the table.

Mr Qixotl grimaced. 'Yeah. Yeah, that's right, Mr s.h.i.+ft. Why d'you ask?'

He stared at the table, but the words had faded away. His eyes wandered towards the newspaper.

I WAS EXPLORING THE FOREST EARLIER, read the front-page headline. I SAW THEM MAKING THEIR WAY HERE.

Mr Qixotl picked up the paper and started reading the lead story, which had until a few seconds ago been about a major scandal involving the President of Malta. 'Didn't see you, did they, Mr S?'

BARELY, read the newsprint. THE WOMAN MIGHT HAVE CAUGHT SIGHT OF ME AT THE VILLAGE, BUT I (CONTINUED ON PAGE THREE) Mr Qixotl turned the page.

(FROM PAGE ONE) DOUBT SHE KNEW WHO I WAS. TELL ME SOMETHING, MR QIXOTL.

'Whatever you like, Mr S.' Mr Qixotl tried to maintain his smile. He hated talking to the s.h.i.+ft. He hated talking to any non-corporeal life-form. The s.h.i.+ft was the messenger of a power which enjoyed dealing in abstracts, for some reason. It was a purely conceptual ent.i.ty, only existing as a set of ideas inside the head of whoever it wanted to communicate with. Right now, it was somewhere inside Mr Qixotl's neurosystem, altering his perceptions so he could see its little ”messages” worked into the text of the New Bornean Gazette New Bornean Gazette. He flipped through the rest of the paper, eventually stopping at the crossword.

1 ACROSS. Why exactly did you invite humans to this auction? My employers a.s.sumed that only representatives of time-active cultures would be here (8,6).

'That's what we thought, as well,' scowled Homunculette, evidently having read the same thing on the sports page.

Mr Qixotl sniffed. 'Yeah, well. They're from UNISYC, they've got their own reasons for wanting the property. That's why the auction's being held on Earth, so the human reps can get here without busting a gut.'

3 DOWN. Speaking of the ”property”... I've been looking over this City of yours. The Relic's in your vault, true? Two levels below ground level (5,2,4,2).

'There a problem with that, Mr s.h.i.+ft?'

17 ACROSS. No. I took the liberty of inspecting the security devices protecting it, though. Interesting. Maybe a little over-complicated. However... (3,4) 'The security had better be up to scratch, that's all,' Homunculette snapped, interrupting the crossword. If such a thing were possible. 'You know how many major powers are going to be after that Relic, don't you? The last thing we want is a bunch of Cybermen turning up on our doorstep.'

Mr Qixotl shook his head. 'Everything's sorted, Mr H. The City's got a Brigadoon circuit in effect, so you'd need some pretty smart technology just to get in here without an invite card. And the Cybermen aren't going to be coming back to Earth for another year or so, I checked. No one's going to gatecrash the auction. Trust me on this, all right?'

Homunculette made a muted grunting sound that might just have been a laugh.