Читать книгу Grim Tuesday - Гарт Никс - Страница 8

CHAPTER ONE

Arthur hurried up to his room, the incessant jangling of the old-style telephone bell getting louder and louder. The rest of his family couldn’t hear it no matter how loud it got, but that didn’t make him feel any better. He couldn’t believe the Will was already calling him. It was less than eight hours since he’d defeated Mister Monday, assumed the Mastery of the Lower House and the powers of the First Key, and then just as quickly handed them (and the Key) over to the Will. The Will in turn had promised to be a good Steward and leave him alone for at least five or six years. Not a few hours!

It was also only fifteen minutes since Arthur had released the Nightsweeper, the cure for the Sleepy Plague that otherwise might have killed thousands, if not millions, of people. He’d saved his world, but was he going to be left alone to get some richly deserved sleep?

Obviously not. Furious, Arthur raced into his room, grabbed the red velvet box the Will had given him and ripped off the lid. There was an ancient telephone inside, the kind with a separate earpiece. It wasn’t obviously connected to anything, but Arthur knew that didn’t matter. He grabbed it, unhooked the earpiece and listened.

“Arthur?”

He knew those gravelly, deep tones at once. The frog voice that the Will had kept, even when it had transformed itself into a woman. Or something that looked like a woman.

“Yes! Of course it’s Arthur. What do you want?”

“I fear that I bear bad news. In the six months since you left—”

“Six months!” Arthur was now confused as well as annoyed. “I’ve been back for less than a day! It’s only just after midnight on Tuesday morning.”

“Time runs true in the House and meanders elsewhere,” boomed the Will, its voice clear and loud, almost as if it were in the room. “As I was saying, I bear bad news. Grim Tuesday has found a loophole in the Agreement that forbids interference between the Trustees. With the aid of at least some of the Morrow Days, he has laid claim to the Lower House and the First Key, claiming them as payment for the various goods he delivered to Mister Monday over the last thousand years.”

“What?” asked Arthur. “What goods?”

“Oh, metal Commissionaires, elevator parts, teapots, printing presses, all manner of things,” replied the Will. “Normally, payment would not be required till the next millennial settlement, some three hundred years hence. But Grim Tuesday is within his rights to demand payment earlier, as Mister Monday was always behind with his debts.”

“So why not pay him?” Arthur asked. “I mean, with… with what you normally use for money. So he can’t claim anything.”

“Normally payment would be made in coin of the House, of which there are seven currencies, each of which has seven denominations. The currency of the Lower House, for example, is the gold roundel, of three hundred and sixty silver pence, the intermediate coins being—”

“I don’t need to know the types of coins!” interrupted Arthur. “Why not pay Grim Tuesday in these gold roundels or whatever?”

“We don’t have any,” replied the Will. “Or very few. The accounts are in a terrible mess, but it appears that Mister Monday never signed any of the invoices that should have billed the other parts of the House for the services supplied by the Lower House. So they haven’t paid.”

Arthur shut his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t believe he was being told about an accounting problem in the epicentre of the universe, in the House on which the entirety of creation depended for its continuing existence.

“I’ve made you my Steward,” Arthur said. “You deal with it. I just want to be left alone like you promised. For the next six years!”

“I am dealing with it,” replied the Will testily. “Appeals have been lodged, loans applied for, and so on. But I can only delay the matter and our hopes of a legal victory are slim. I called to warn you that Grim Tuesday has also obtained permission to seek repayment of the debt from you personally. And your family. Even your whole country. Maybe your entire world.”

“What!” Arthur couldn’t believe it. Why couldn’t everyone just leave him alone!

“Opinion is divided on exactly who can be claimed against, but the amount due is quite clear. With compound interest over 722 years, the sum is not insignificant. About thirteen million gold roundels, each of which is one drubuch weight of pure gold, or perhaps you would say an ounce, which is 812,500 pounds avoirdupois, or roughly 29,000 quarters, which in turn is approximately 363 tons—”

“How much would that be in pounds?” asked Arthur faintly. Nearly four hundred tons of gold!

“That is your money? I do not know. But Grim Tuesday would not accept any currency of the Secondary Realms. He will want gold, or perhaps great works of art that he can copy and sell throughout the House. Do you have any great works of art?”

“Of course I don’t!” shouted Arthur. He had felt much better earlier, and had even believed he might never have an asthma attack again. But he could feel the familiar tightening, the catch in his breath. Though it was only on one side.

Calm, he told himself. I have to stay calm.

“What can I do?” he asked, making the words come out slowly and not too loud. “Is there any way of stopping Grim Tuesday?”

“There is one way…” mused the Will. “But you have to come back to the House. Once here, you would then need to—”

A loud beep cut off the Will and a new voice spoke, accompanied by a crackling buzz.

“This is the Operator. Please insert two and six to continue your call.”

Arthur heard the Will reply, but its voice was very faint.

“I haven’t got two roundels! Put it on our bill.”

“Your credit has been revoked by order of the Court of Days. Please insert two roundels and six demi-crowns. Ten… nine… eight… seven… six…”

“Arthur!” called the Will, very distantly. “Come to the House!”

“Two… one… This call is terminated. Thank you.”

Arthur kept holding the earpiece, but it was silent. Even the background buzzing had stopped. All he could hear was the rasping of his own breath, struggling to get in and out of his lungs. Or, rather, struggling inside his right lung. His left side felt fine, which was weird since that was the lung that had been punctured by the Hour Key in his life-or-death battle with Mister Monday.

Three hundred and sixty-three tons of gold.

Arthur lay down while he thought about that. How would Grim Tuesday try to get him to pay? Would he send Fetchers again, or other creatures of Nothing? If he did, would they bring a new plague?

He was so tired he couldn’t think of any answers. Only questions. They raced round and round inside his head.

I have to get up and do something, Arthur thought. I should look in the Compleat Atlas of the House or write down some kind of action plan. It’s Tuesday already, so there’s no time to waste. Grim Tuesday will only be able to do things here in my world on Tuesday, so he won’t waste any time… I mustn’t waste any time… waste any…

Arthur woke up with a start. The sun was streaming in through his window. For a moment he couldn’t work out what had happened or where he was. Then the fog of sleep began to clear. He’d flaked out completely and now it was after ten a.m.

On Tuesday morning.

Arthur jumped out of bed. After the fire and the plague of the day before, there was no chance of having to go to school. But that wasn’t what worried him. Grim Tuesday could have been doing something for hours while Arthur slept. He had to find out what was going on.

When he got downstairs, everyone else was either out or still asleep. There was the very faint echo of music from the studio, which meant his adoptive father, Bob, was playing with the door open. Arthur checked the screen on the fridge and saw that his mum was still at the hospital lab. His brother Eric was practising basketball at the back of the house and didn’t want to be disturbed by anyone. There was no message from his sister Michaeli, so he guessed she was still asleep.

Arthur turned on the television and found the news channel. It was still full of the “miraculous” escape from the Sleepy Plague, with the genetic structure of the virus sequenced overnight and so many sufferers coming out of their comas without going into the final, lethal stage. The fire at his school got some coverage too. Apparently it had been a very strange blaze, destroying every book in the library – even melting the metal shelves with its intensity – but the building itself had been hardly damaged and the fire had spontaneously extinguished itself. About the same time Arthur had entered the House, he thought.

The quarantine was still in place around the city, but within the city people were allowed to move about during daylight hours if they had “urgent business that could not be delayed”. There were checkpoints maintained by police and Federal Biocontrol authorities, who would test anyone passing through. Arthur could still hear the constant dull chatter of quarantine helicopters flying a cordon around the city.

There was no new news, at least none that Arthur could identify as the work of Grim Tuesday. He shut the television off and looked outside. Everything appeared normal. The only people in the street were across the road, putting a SOLD sign in the front yard of the house there.

Which, Arthur thought, was more than a bit weird on the morning after a city-wide biohazard emergency.

Arthur looked again. There was an expensive, clean, new car, the kind estate agents always used. There were two men in dark suits, with the usual kind of SOLD sign. But as Arthur looked, his eyes teared up and his vision blurred. When he rubbed his eyes and looked again, the men were much shorter, wider and misshapen than they had been. In fact, one looked like he had a hunchback as well, and both had arms that reached down almost to their knees.

Arthur kept staring. The two men looked a bit blurry, but as he focused on them he saw their suits fade. Those clothes were an illusion – they were actually wearing old-fashioned coats with huge cuffs, odd breeches, wooden clogs and leather aprons.

Arthur felt a chill run through his whole body. They weren’t estate agents. Or even human. They had to be Denizens of the House, or perhaps creatures summoned from Nothing.

Agents of Grim Tuesday.

Whatever was about to happen had already begun.

Arthur ran back up the stairs, taking three at each jump. Before he got to the top he was wheezing and clutching his side. But he didn’t stop. He grabbed the Compleat Atlas of the House from his room and went up again, out on to the rooftop balcony.

The two… whatever they were… had finished hammering in the SOLD sign, had taken another sign out of their car and were hammering that in as well. Arthur couldn’t quite see what it said till they stepped out of the way. When he read the bold foot-high words it took a second for them to penetrate.

DUE FOR DEMOLITION. THE NEW LEAFY GLADE SHOPPING MALL COMING SOON

A shopping mall! Across the street!

Arthur put the Atlas on his knees and looked at the two estate agents. Still staring at them, he placed his hands on the book and willed it open. He’d needed the Key before, but the Will had assured him that at least some pages would be accessible without it.

Who are those people? Are they servants of Grim Tuesday? What does Grim Tuesday oversee in the House? Thoughts tumbled through Arthur’s head, though he tried to concentrate on the two “estate agents”.

He felt the book shiver under his hands, then it suddenly exploded open. Arthur almost toppled over backwards. It always shocked him, even when he was expecting it, that the book trebled in size.

It was open at a blank page, but he’d expected that too. A small spot of ink appeared, then stretched into a stroke. Some unseen hand rapidly drew a portrait of the two estate agents. But not with the illusory dark suits. The Atlas showed them as they had appeared once Arthur rubbed his eyes, wearing large leather aprons that stretched from the neck to the ankle. Only in the illustration they both carried large hammers and had forked beards.

After the illustration was done, the invisible pen started to write. As it had before, it started in some weird alphabet and language, but changed into English as Arthur watched, though the writing was still very old-fashioned.

Immediately following the breaking of the Will, Grim Tuesday embarked upon a course that has wrought great damage to the Far Reaches of the House that were his assigned domain. In the vast room originally known as the Grand Cavern, there was a deep spring that brought a regular and controlled effervescence of Nothing to the surface. The Grim used this elegant provision of Nothing to prepare raw materials for lesser artisans, and to make and mould a miscellany of items himself, copying artefacts created by the Architect, or the work of lesser beings in the Secondary Realms. Yet the more the Grim made such items, the more he wished to make, in order to sell what he wrought to the other Days and even ordinary Denizens of the House.

Limited by the amount of Nothing that rose to the surface of the spring, the Grim decided to sink a shaft to mine the source that supplied the spring. That single shaft has become many tunnels, deeps and excavations, until almost all the Far Reaches become an enormous Pit, an horrific sore that threatens the very foundation of the House.

To work his ever-expanding mine, Grim Tuesday sought Denizens from the other parts of the House, taking them from the other Days in lieu of payment for the things he sold. These Denizens have become little more than slaves, indentured without hope of release.

As the number of these workers became legion, Grim Tuesday needed more officers to oversee them. Against all laws of the House, and by use of prodigious amounts of Nothing, the Grim melded his Dawn, Noon and Dusk together, and then recast them as seven individuals. In order of precedence they are Yan, Tan, Tethera, Methera, Pits, Sethera, Azer.

Collectively they are known as Grim’s Grotesques, for the seven are all misshapen in different ways, since the Grim could only make poor twisted copies of the Architect’s great work.

The two Grotesques pictured are Tethera and Methera. Tethera is obsequious to all and speaks honeyed words, but his actions are spiteful and vindictive. Methera is silent and cruel, speaks only to wound, and delights in the afflictions of others.

As with all Grotesques, Tethera and Methera have greater powers than most Denizens, but are lesser beings in all ways than any of the other Days’ Dawn, Noon and Dusk. Beware their breath and the poison spurs within their thumbs.

Despite their fearful mangling and botched remaking at Grim Tuesday’s hands, the Grotesques are slavish in their loyalty and love him as dogs love even the cruelest master, their hearts filled with an awful mixture of hate, fear and infatuation.

Arthur looked across at the two Grotesques. They had hammered the DUE FOR DEMOLITION sign in and were getting another SOLD sign out. Arthur stared at them, a frown deepening on his forehead and tension building in every muscle.

How could they buy the houses so quickly? Are they really planning to build a mall, or are they just trying to freak me out?

The two servants of Grim Tuesday walked over to Arthur’s own front lawn. Arthur stared down at them as they started to hammer in the sign. He couldn’t believe they were doing it, but he couldn’t think of anything he could do to stop them. For a moment he considered throwing something down on their heads, but he dismissed that idea. The Grotesques were superior Denizens of the House and almost certainly couldn’t be harmed by any weapon Arthur could lay his hands on.

But he had to do something!

Arthur shut the Atlas and hurriedly stuffed the shrunken book back in his pocket. Then he took off down the stairs at top speed.

They were not going to demolish his home and build a shopping mall!