Deep Secret (Magids 1) - Page 42

I took myself off, wondering what to do. The answer seemed to be, to finish my work here – at least I needn’t now interview Gabrelisovic – as far as I could, and then ask Will, as the nearest off-world Magid, to stand in for me while I dealt with Knarros. Will was easier to reach than any other Magid currently on Earth. It sounded so simple, put like that. I went off to do it.

From Maree Mallory’s

Thornlady Directory, file

twenty-six

I’m entering this quite late at night, after I left the publishers’ parties and dragged Nick away with me before he got too drunk. One of the parties must still be going on.

I can hear distant drunken hooting, and somewhere there’s just been a huge crash of broken glass. Someone turned the wrong way at a corner and tried to walk through a mirror probably.

Actually I left because a) my fabulous Nordic type wasn’t at any of them (Wendy was hunting for him too); b) Rupert is furious with me; and c) Janine came in while I was sitting on the floor between Nick and Wendy and bitched about what a sight we looked. She can talk. She was wearing a black thing with a golden snake wrapped round it that made her look like an advanced version of one of Zinka’s pictures. The snake had two heads and one head was – well anyway, I couldn’t stand any more and came away.

But I really meant to write down the extraordinary thing this afternoon.

What happened was that Nick was desperate to talk to Rupert – the Prat – about computer games. ‘Desperate’ is an understatement. Nick wouldn’t let me do anything else but help find him and snabble Rupert Venables. Of course we couldn’t find him at first. Then we ran him down in the bar – naturally at the precise moment he got caught by the dreadful Tansy-Ann. He was with her for ages.

Nick kept saying we should go and rescue Rupert, why didn’t we? He said we would earn the man’s undying gratitude. And I told him he had no idea what Tansy-Ann was like. She was quite capable of catching us and holding us in thrall too. And even Nick agreed she did look a bit that way. So we sat and waited. Somebody bought me some Real Ale because they said I looked as if I needed it – I blame that news sheet again – and Nick got bought a Coke he didn’t like. And we watched Rupert avoid having his back massaged by Tansy-Ann and get his hands squeezed instead, while Tansy-Ann pushed her beak into his face and talked for a good hour. I was getting almost sorry for the Prat, when Nick and I looked up after not looking for a second or so. And Rupert was gone. Tansy-Ann was alone, looking startled.

“Told you so,” said Nick. He had done no such thing. “He’s just like me. I can always get away from people if I want to. He’s probably in the gents.”

He wasn’t. Nick went in and looked. So we hunted all over the hotel again.

This time we found him with Mervin Thurless, but not until we’d hunted through all the downstairs places and most of the public parts of the first floor – not to speak of asking everyone we met. Rick Corrie went bounding past and sent us up to the first floor. Someone else sent us down again, where we met Wendy, who said she wouldn’t know Rupert if he came up and hit her. Then a great huge man with a fringe of black beard round his face and FANGS! written on his T-shirt came up and slammed into Wendy and hugged her. It made a truly massive embrace. And he told us over Wendy’s shoulder that Rupert the Mage was in Ops looking for Mervin Thurless. So there we went, and a man in battle fatigues who was trying to canoodle with a carroty girl told us wearily that he’d only just come on shift, try the Press Room. So we did that. And got handed another news sheet full of stuff about Uncle Ted pinching ideas from Mervin Thurless, and Tina Gianetti refusing to have both of them together on the same panel ever again.

“I bet he did take stuff from Thurless,” Nick said, reading all about it as we went along the corridor.

“I’m sure he did,” I said. “He told me he couldn’t bear to see ideas lying around not being used properly. And I wouldn’t trust a person like Thurless to use an idea properly if it was handed to him on a scroll from Heaven.”

“It says here,” said Nick, “that Thurless is running the Writers’ Workshop tomorrow in place of Wendy Willow. I should think she’d be better at it, wouldn’t you?”

By this time it was quite late. People were appearing changed into fine clothes ready for the parties. Maxim Hough hurried past wearing a velvet patchwork jacket, beside two achingly slender girls in glittery dresses. And coming towards us were two fabulous women in long tight black leather dresses that laced up all over with red thongs. It took me a moment to recognise that they were two of the long-haired people with the baby. Their hair was piled up in glossy hairdos and their false eyelashes stuck out a good inch.

Nick recognised them at once. “Wow!” he said. They were delighted. They struck poses and Nick admired them. “What have you done with the baby?” he asked.

“Larry’s looking after him,” said the one on the left. “Loretta, I mean.”

“She’s got ever so maternal since she changed sex,” the one on the right explained.

Nick became speechless. I asked them rather despairingly whether they’d seen Rupert.

“Rupert the Mage?” they said in their lovely husky voices. One of them added, “I love that man – he’s so straight!” and the other one said that he (or she) had seen Rupert going into the Filk Room, just along there. Then they went swaying off – they both had shiny black boots on with six-inch heels. I wondered how they could walk at all, in those tight black leather skirts as well.

Nick said, “I know one of them has to be a man! Can you tell which?”

“Darned if I know!” I said. “They’re both so beautiful. But that baby’s surely having a weird upbringing!”

Nick said, in a vague way, “All upbringings are weird.” He had his con map out, looking for this Filk Room. “It’s down the end of this corridor.”

It was a medium-sized empty room with bits of sound equipment strewn about in it, mostly flexes snaking all over the floor. Rupert Venables and Mervin Thurless were sitting on the only two chairs in there, talking deeply. But Thurless swung round and jutted his beard at us as we put our faces round the door. When he saw it was me, he looked savage.

“So you think you’re going to take this room away from me as well, do you?” he snarled. “Go away. Go and voodoo-dance somewhere else!”

We shut the door hurriedly and went and sat by the wall in a kind of lobby outside. Nick said, “It’s all right. We can catch Rupert the Mage as soon as he comes out.”

I wailed, “Oh dear! It was his room Rick Corrie gave me!”

“It’s not your fault,” Nick said.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net
readsnovelonline.net Copyright 2016 - 2024