The Man From the Diogenes Club Read online

  Leech’s Daily Comet had been censured for running the headline ‘Sweaty Betty’ over a paparazzo shot of Queen Elizabeth II perspiring (in ladylike manner) at an official engagement.

  ‘How do you think he’s done it, Jeperson? Science or magic?’

  ‘No such thing as magic,’ said Cleaver, quickly.

  ‘Says the boy whose best friend used a magic diamond to become hard as nails. What was his name again, Captain—?’

  ‘Wattway!’ shouted the Professor, duped into using a double-r name. When he wasn’t angry, he spoke carefully, avoiding the letter r if possible. Sadly, Cleaver was angry most of the time. ‘Dennis Wattway! Blackfist!’

  ‘Not a magic person, then?’

  ‘The Fang of Night was imbued with an unknown form of wadioactivity. It altered Captain Wattway’s physiology.’

  ‘I could pull a hat out of the air and a rabbit out of the hat, and you’d say I accessed a pocket universe.’

  ‘A tessewact, yes.’

  ‘There’s no “weasoning” with you. So, Jeperson, what do you think?’

  Richard wondered whether he should follow Leech’s tactic, getting the Professor more and more flustered in the hope of breaking him down and finding a way to roll back the Cold. It was all very well unless Clever Dick decided to stop trying to impress his visitors and just had the snowmen stick icicles through their heads.

  ‘I assume the phenomenon is localised,’ said Richard. ‘Deep under the levels. There must have been a pocket of the Cold. Once it was all over the world, a giant organism – a symbiote, drawing nourishment from the rock, from what vegetation it let live. When the Great Ice Age ended, it shrank, shedding most of its bulk into the seas or ordinary ice, but somewhere – maybe in several spots around the world – it left parcels of itself.’

  ‘No, you’re wong, wong, wong,’ said Cleaver, nastily.

  ‘Is that a Chinese laundry?’ said Leech. ‘Wong, Wong and Wong.’

  ‘Wwong,’ insisted Cleaver. ‘Ewwoneous. Incowwect. Not wight.’

  He spluttered, frustrated not to find an r-free synonym for ‘wrong’.

  ‘The Cold didn’t hide below the gwound, but beyond the spectwum of tempewature. Until I weached out for her.’

  ‘I see,’ continued Richard. ‘With the equipment generously supplied by your former employer, you made contact with the Cold. You woke up Sleeping Beauty… with what? A kiss. No, a signal. An alarm-call. No, you had instructions. What common language could you have? Music, Movement and Mime? Doubtful. Mathematics? No, the Cold hasn’t got that sort of a mind. A being on her scale has no use for any number other than “one”.’

  Richard looked about the room, at the thickening ice which coated everything, at the white dusting over the ice. Tiny, tiny jewels glittered in the powder. He made a leap – perhaps by himself, perhaps snatching from Cleaver’s buzzing mind.

  ‘Crystals,’ he mused. ‘“A near-infinite number,” you said. Each unique and distinctive. An endless alphabet of characters. Chinese cubed.’

  Cleaver clapped his hands, delighted.

  ‘Yes, snowflakes! I can wead them. It cost a gweat deal of Mr Leech’s money to learn how. First, to wead them. Then to make them.’

  ‘Your bird must think you’re a right mug,’ said Leech, sourly. ‘She must have seen you coming for a million years.’

  ‘Eighteen million years, at my best guess,’ said Cleaver, smugness crumpling. He didn’t like it when his goddess was disrespected.

  ‘How do you make snowflakes?’ Richard asked. ‘I mean, snow is frozen rain…’

  Cleaver was disgusted, as Richard knew he would be. ‘You don’t know anything! Fwozen wain is sleet!’

  Leech laughed bitterly as Richard was paid back for his pedantry.

  ‘Snow forms when clouds are fwozen,’ said Cleaver, lecturing. ‘You need humidity and cold. It’s vapour to ice, not water to ice. Synthetic snow cwystals have been made in vapour diffusion chambers since 1963. But no one else has got beyond dendwitic stars. Janet and John cwystallogwaphy! The colder you get inside the box, the more complex the cwystals – hollow plates, columns on plates, multiply capped columns, skeletal forms, isolated bullets, awwowhead twins, multiple cups, skeletal forms. Then combinations of forms. I can sculpt them, shape them, carve them. Finnegans Wake cwystallogwaphy! You need extwemes of tempewature, and a gweat deal of electwicity. We dwained the national gwid. There was a black-out, wemember?’

  A week or so ago, a massive power-cut had paralysed an already-sluggish nation. Officially, it was down to too many fans plugged in and fridge-doors left open.

  ‘You knew about that?’ Richard asked Leech.

  The Great Enchanter shrugged.

  ‘He authowised it!’ crowed the Professor, in triumph. ‘He had no idea what he was doing. None of the others did, either. Kellett and Bakhtinin. McKendwick. And certainly not your spy, Mr Pouncey!’

  Leech had listed the other staff: ‘two junior meteorologists, one general dogsbody and a public relations-security consultant’.

  ‘McKendwick had an inkling. He knew I was welaying instwuctions. He made the Box – the vapour diffusion chamber – to my specifications. He kept asking, why all the extwa conductors? Why the designs? But he cawwied out orders like a good little wesearch assistant.’

  Cleaver stood by an odd apparatus which Richard had taken for a generator. It consisted of a lot of blackened electrical coils, bright copper slashes showing through shredded rubber. There was a cracked bakelite instrument panel, and – in the heart of the coils – a metal box the size of a cigarette packet, ripped open at one edge. It had exploded outward. The metal was covered with intricate, etched symbols. Line after line of branching, hexagonally symmetrical star-shapes. Representational snowflakes, but also symbols of power. Here, science shaded into magic. This was not only an experimental apparatus, but an incantation in copper-wire and steel-plate, a conjuring machine.

  ‘It’s burned out now,’ he said, slapping it, ‘but it did the twick. In the Box, I took the tempewature down to minus four hundwed and fifty-nine point seven thwee degwees Fahwenheit!’

  Richard felt a chill wafting from the ice-slopes of Hell.

  ‘We’re supposed to be impressed?’ said Leech.

  ‘You can’t get colder than absolute zero,’ said Richard. ‘That’s minus four hundred and fifty-nine point six seven Fahrenheit.’

  ‘I have bwoken the Cold Bawwier,’ announced Cleaver, proudly.

  ‘Not using physics, you haven’t.’

  ‘So what was it, magic?’

  Richard wasn’t going to argue the point. There weren’t instruments capable of measuring theoretically impossible temperatures, but Richard suspected the Professor wasn’t making an idle boast. Within his Box, reality had broken down. Quantum mechanics gave up, packed its bags and went to Marbella, and the supernatural house-sat for a while.

  ‘It’s where I found the Cold. Minus point zewo six. She was sleeping there. A basic hexagon. I almost missed her. Bweaking so-called absolute zewo was so much of an achievement. McKendwick saw her first. The little lab assistant took her for pwoof we had failed. There shouldn’t be ordinawy cwystals at minus point zewo six. And she wasn’t ordinawy. McKendwick found that out.’

  Richard assumed McKendrick was the snowman with the tam-o’-shanter. The others must be the rest of Cleaver’s staff. Kellett, Bakhtinin, Pouncey. And whoever the postman was. What about the few other residents of Sutton Mallet? Frozen in their homes? Ready to join the snow army?

  ‘Fwom a hexagon, she gwew, into a dendwitic star, with more stars on each bwanch. A hexagon squared. A hexagon cubed.’

  ‘Six to the power of six to the power of six?’

  ‘That’s wight, Mr Leech. Amusing, eh what? Then, she became a cluster of cwystals. A snowflake. Then… whoosh. The Box burst. The power went out. But she was fwee. She came fwom beyond the zewo bawwier. A pinpoint speck. Woom tempewature plummeted. The walls iced over, and the fweeze spwead out of the build
ing. She took the village in hours. She took McKendwick and the others. Soon, she’ll be evewywhere.’

  ‘What about you?’ asked Leech. ‘Will you be the Snow Queen’s “Pwime Minister”?’

  ‘Oh no, I’m going to die. Just like you. When the Cold spweads, over the whole planet, I’ll be happy to die with the west of the failed expewiment, humanity. It’s quite inevitable. Hadn’t you noticed – when you were coming here – hadn’t you noticed she’s gwowing? I think we’ll be done in thwee months or so, give or take an afternoon.’

  Richard whistled.

  ‘At least now we know the deadline,’ he told Leech, slipping the hypodermic out of his hairy sleeve.

  Cleaver frowned, wondering if he should have given so much away. It was too late to consider the advisability of ranting.

  Leech took hold of the Professor and slammed his forehead against the older man’s, smashing his spectacles. A coconut-shy crack resounded. Cleaver staggered, smearing his flowing moustache of blood.

  “Yhou bwoke mhy nhose!’

  Richard slid the needle into Cleaver’s neck. He tensed and went limp.

  ‘One down,’ said Leech. ‘One to go.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s a big girl. What are the snowmen doing?’

  Leech looked out of the window, and said, ‘Most have wandered off, but the postman’s still there, behaving himself.’

  ‘While Cleaver’s out, they shouldn’t move,’ Richard said, unsure of himself. ‘Unless the Cold gets angry.’

  Richard plopped the Professor in a swivel chair and wheeled him into a corner, out of the way. Leech unslung his giant backpack and undid white canvas flaps to reveal a metal box studded with dials and switches like an old-time wireless receiver. He unwound an electrical cord and plugged it into a socket that wasn’t iced over. His bulky gadget lit up and began to hum. He opened a hatch and pulled out a Trimphone handset, then cranked a handle and asked for an operator.

  ‘Who else would want a telephone you have to carry around?’ asked Richard.

  Leech gave a feral, humourless smile and muttered, ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ before getting through.

  ‘This is DL 001,’ he said. ‘Yes, yes, Angela, it’s Derek. I’d like to speak with Miss Catriona Kaye, at the manor house, Alder.’

  Leech held the Trimphone against his chest while he was connected.

  ‘Let’s see if Madam Chairman has gathered her Talents,’ he said.

  Richard certainly hoped she had.

  VI.

  They were on the road to Mangle Wurzel Country because some paranormal crisis was out of hand. Jamie had a fair idea what that meant.

  Growing up as the son of the current Dr Shade and the former Kentish Glory, it had taken several playground spats and uncomfortable parent–teacher meetings to realise that other kids (and grown-ups) didn’t know these things happened regularly and – what’s more – really didn’t want to know. After getting kicked out of a third school, he learned to answer the question ‘What does your Daddy do?’ with ‘He’s a doctor,’ rather than ‘He fights diabolical masterminds.’ Since leaving home, he’d seen how surreally out-of-the-ordinary his childhood had been. No one ever said he was expected to take over his father’s practice, but Dad taught him about the Shade Legacy: how to summon shadows and travel the night-paths, how to touch people inside with tendrils of velvet black, how to use the get-up and the gadgets. Jamie was the only pupil in his class who botched his mock O levels because he’d spent most of his revision time on the basics of flying an autogyro.

  Jamie thought Mum was pleased he was using the darkness in the band rather than on the streets. He was carrying on the Shade line, but in a different way. His father could drop through a skylight and make terror blossom in a dozen wicked souls; Jamie could float onto a tiny stage in a pokey venue and fill a dark room with a deeper shadow that enveloped audiences and seeped into their hearts. When Jamie sang about long, dreadful nights, a certain type of teenager knew he was singing about them. Because of Transhumance, they knew – if only for the forty-five minutes of the set – that they weren’t alone, that they had friends and lovers in the dark, that tiny pinpoints of starlight were worth striving for. They were kids who only liked purple lollipops because of the colour they stained their lips, wore swathes of black even in this baking summer, would drink vinegar and lie in a bath of ice cubes to be as pale as Gené, lit their squats with black candles bought in head shops, and read thick paperback novels ‘from the vampire’s point of view’. Teenagers like Vron – who, come to think of it, he was supposed to be seeing this evening. If the world survived the week, she’d make him pay for standing her up.

  Gené had found Vron’s dog-eared Interview With the Vampire under a cushion in the back of the van, and was performing dramatic passages. Read out with a trace of (sexy) French accent, it sounded sillier than it did when Vron quoted bits of Anne Rice’s ‘philosophy’ at him. Vron wrote Transhumance’s lyrics, and everyone said – not to her face – the lyrics needed more work. Bongo said, ‘You can’t rhyme “caverns of despair” with “kicking o’er a chair” and expect folk not to laugh their kecks off.’ About the only thing the band could agree on was that they didn’t want to be funny.

  So what was he doing on the road? In a van with four weird strangers – weird, even by his standards.

  Gatherings of disparate Talents like this little lot were unusual. Fred had said they needed ‘everybody’. Jamie wondered how far down the list the likes of Sewell Head came – though he knew enough not to underestimate anyone. According to Gené, the Diogenes Club were calling this particular brouhaha ‘the Winter War’. That didn’t sound so bad. After the last few months, a little winter in July would be welcome.

  Beyond Yeovil, they came to a road-block manned by squaddies who were turning other drivers away from a ‘military exercise’ barrier. The van was waved out of the queue by an NCO and – with no explanation needed – the barrier lifted for them. A riot of envious hooting came from motorists who shut up as soon as a rifle or two was accidentally pointed in their direction. Even Gené kept mum once they were in bandit country – where they were the only moving thing.

  As they drove along eerily empty roads, Susan continued to relay Head’s directions. ‘Follow Tapmoor Road for two and a half miles, and turn right, drive half a mile, go through Sutton Mallet, then three miles on, to Alder – and we’re there.’

  Jamie spotted the signpost, which was almost smothered by the lower branches of a dying tree, and took the Sutton Mallet turn-off. It should have been a short cut to Alder, the village where they were supposed to rendezvous with the rest of the draftees in the Winter War. The van ploughed to a halt in a four-foot-deep snowdrift.

  The temperature plunged – an oven became a fridge in seconds. Gooseflesh raised on Jamie’s bare arms. Keith and Sewell Head wrapped themselves in sleeping bags. Susan’s teeth chattered, interrupting her travel directions – which were academic anyway. The road was impassable.

  Only Gené didn’t instantly and obviously feel the cold.

  Jamie shifted gears, and reversed. Wheels spun, making a hideous grinding noise for half a minute or so, then the van freed itself from the grip of ice and backed out of the drift. A few yards away, and the temperature climbed again. They were all shocked quiet for a moment, then started talking at once.

  ‘Hush,’ said Gené, who was elected Head Girl, ‘look.’

  The cold front was advancing, visibly – a frozen river. Hedges, half-dead from lack of rain, were swallowed by swells of ice and snow.

  They all got out of the van. It was as hot as it had been, though Jamie’s skin didn’t readjust. He still had gooseflesh.

  ‘It’ll be here soon and swallow us again,’ said Keith.

  ‘At the current rate, in sixteen minutes forty-five seconds,’ said Sewell Head.

  It wasn’t just a glacier creeping down a country lane, it was an entire wave advancing across the countryside. Jamie had no doubt Head knew his sums –
in just over a quarter of an hour, an arctic climate would reach the road, and sweep around the van, stranding them.

  ‘We have to go ahead on foot,’ said Gené. ‘It’s only a couple of miles down that lane.’

  ‘Three and a half,’ corrected Head.

  ‘A walk in the park,’ said Gené.

  ‘Thank you, Captain Scott,’ said Susan. ‘We’re not exactly equipped.’

  ‘You were told to bring warm clothes.’

  ‘Naturally, I didn’t believe it,’ said Susan. ‘We should have been shouted at.’

  Jamie hadn’t been told. He’d take that up with Fred and Vanessa.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ said Head, unconcerned.

  ‘There’s gear in the back of the van,’ said Jamie. ‘It’ll have to do.’

  ‘I’m fine as I am,’ said Gené. ‘Happy in all weathers.’

  Jamie dug out one of his father’s black greatcoats for Susan. It hung long on her, edges trailing on the ground. Head kept the sleeping bag wrapped around him, and looked even more like a tramp. He must be glad he came out with his scarf and gloves. Keith found a black opera cloak with red-silk lining, and settled it around his shoulders.

  ‘Careful with that, Keith,’ Jamie cautioned. ‘It was the Great Edmondo’s. There are hidden pockets. You might find a dead canary or two.’

  Jamie pulled on a ragged black-dyed pullover and gauntlets. He fetched out a hold-all with some useful items from the Legacy, and – as an afterthought – slung the Shade goggles around his neck and put on one of his dad’s wide-brimmed black slouch hats.

  ‘Natty,’ commented Gené. ‘It’s the Return of Dr Shade!’

  ‘Sod off, Frenchy,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Burgundian, remember?’

  The cold front was nearly at the mouth of the lane, crawling up around the signpost. He rolled up the van windows, and locked the doors.

  Gené climbed onto the snowdrift, and stamped on the powder. It was packed enough to support her. Bare-legged and -armed, she still looked comfortable amid the frozen wastes. She held out a hand and helped haul Susan up beside her. Even in the coat, Susan began shivering. Her nose reddened. She hugged herself, sliding hands into loose sleeves like a mandarin.