Deep Secret (Magids 1) - Page 6

“Do you now?” said Stan. “You forget. I knew you when you were a schoolboy. This Maree. I agree with you she’s the most likely one. Dowse around for her father. He’ll know where she is. They say fathers and daughters are always pretty close.”

I followed his advice, and it was excellent. A week later, I drove to a hospital in Kent and interviewed a tired, sagging, small man in a wheelchair who had already lost most of his hair. I could see that he had, only recently, been a fat little man with a twinkle. I could see the cancer. They hadn’t done much for it. I was desperately sorry for him. I gave that cancer a sharp flip and told it to go away. He doubled up gasping, poor fellow.

“Ouch!” he said. “First Maree, now you. What did you do?”

“Told it to go away,” I said. “You should be doing that too, but you’re hanging on to it rather, aren’t you?”

“Do you know, that’s just what Maree said!” he told me. “I suppose I do – hang on to it – it feels like part of me. I can’t explain. What should I be doing?”

“Telling the thing it’s an unwanted alien,” I suggested. “You don’t want it. You don’t seem to me to have finished what you set out to do with your life.”

“I haven’t,” he said sadly. “First the divorce came along, now this. I’m not like my brother, you know, book after book – I have just the one thing. I would have liked to patent my invention, but, well…”

“Then do it,” I said. “Where is Maree at the moment?”

“In Bristol,” he said.

“But I went to see her aunt and—”

“Oh, she’s gone to her other aunt, up the road. I made her go back, love affair or no love affair, money or no money. She’s training to be a vet, you see, and it’s not a thing you can stop halfway over.”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Would I find her through the university, then?”

“Or the damned aunt,” he said. “Ted’s wife, Janine. Hateful woman. Can’t think why my brother married the bitch, frankly. Made even more of a mistake than I did, but Ted stuck by his – for the boy’s sake, I suppose.” He gave me the address, maddeningly enough in the same street as the house I’d gone to before, and then said anxiously, “It’s not really true I can get shot of this cancer by just thinking, is it?”

“A lot of cancers do respond to that,” I said.

“I’m not so good at thinking positively,” he said wretchedly.

Before I left I did what I could for Derek Mallory. It was no good hitting the cancer when he was embracing it so fervently, so I hit a few centres in his brain instead, trying to turn him into a more cheerful way of thinking. I suspect he felt every hit. His face puckered like a baby’s. I thought he was going to cry, but it turned out that he was trying to smile.

“That helped!” he said. “That really helped! I’m all for the mind stuff, deep down really. I’ve often argued with Maree about it. She can do it, but she won’t. Makes scathing remarks instead. She lacks belief, that’s her problem.”

So I went back to Bristol again. But not until a week had passed. First I had to earn my living. I had a lot of deadlines to meet that week, and I would have met them too, with time to spare, except that as I was sorting the last and most intractable problems, my fax machine began making the little fanfare of sound I had set it to make when it was bringing me Magid business. I went and picked up the sheet. It said:

Iforion 10.2.3413. 1100 hrs. URGENT

Emperor assassinated. Come back to Iforion

Imperial Palace soonest for immediate conference.

This message by order of the Acting Regent,

General Commander Dakros

“Oh good!” I said. “Hurrah!” That was my first reaction. That man Timos IX really had it coming, and not only because of Timotheo, either. I hoped the assassin had hurt him first. Rather a lot. Then I thought again and said, “Oh shit. No heir.” Then I thought again and added, “And what am I supposed to do about that? I’m their Magid, not their nursemaid.”

“Tell them to go whistle,” Stan suggested. He was evidently reading the fax over my shoulder.

I faxed back that I would come tomorrow.

They faxed back:

Iforion 10.2.13. 1104 hrs URGENT

Imperative you come now. Dakros

I faxed again:

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
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