Mister Monday. Гарт Никс

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      In recent aeons, the Inspectors had become lax, rarely doing more than appear, squint at the cage, box and crystal, salute the Sentinels, and disappear again. The Sentinels, who had spent ten thousand years in faithful service marching between the chapters of the clock, did not approve of this slipshod attention to duty. But it was not in their nature to complain, nor was there any means to do so. They could raise the alarm if necessary, but no more than that.

      The Sentinels had seen many Inspectors come and go. No one else had ever visited. No one had tried to steal or rescue the fragment of the Will. In short, nothing had happened for all of that ten thousand years.

      Then, on a day that was no different from any of the more than three and a half million days that had gone before, an Inspector arrived who took his duties more seriously. He arrived normally enough, simply appearing outside the clock face, his hat askew from the transfer, his official warrant clutched firmly in one hand so the bright gold seal was clearly visible. The Sentinels twitched at the arrival and their blades shivered in anticipation. The warrant and the seal were only half of the permission required to be there. There was always a chance the watchwords delivered by the previous Inspector would not be uttered and the Sentinels’ blades would at last see blurring, slicing action.

      Of course, the Sentinels were required to allow the Inspector a minute’s grace. It was not unknown for a transfer between both time and space to briefly addle the wits of anyone, immortal or otherwise.

      This Inspector did seem a bit the worse for wear. He wore a fairly standard human shape, that of a middle-aged man of rapidly thickening girth. This human body was clad in a blue frock coat, shiny at the elbows and ink-stained on the right cuff. His white shirt was not really very white, and the badly tied green necktie did not adequately disguise the fact that his collar had come adrift. His top hat had seen much service and was both squashed and leaning to the left. When he raised it to acknowledge the Sentinels, a sandwich wrapped in newspaper fell out. He caught it and slipped it into an inside pocket of his coat before speaking the watchwords.

      “Incense, sulphur and rue, I am an Inspector, honest and true,” he recited carefully, holding up the warrant again to show the seal.

      The Twelve O’Clock Sentinel swivelled in place in answer to the watchwords and the seal. It crossed its blades with a knife-sharpening noise that made the Inspector tremble and waved a salute in the air.

      “Approach, Inspector,” intoned the Sentinel. That was half of everything it ever said.

      The Inspector nodded and cautiously stepped from the transfer plate to the curdled darkness of the dead star. He had taken the precaution of wearing Immaterial Boots (disguised as carpet slippers) to counteract the warping nature of the dead star’s dark matter, though his superior had assured him that the warrant and the seal would be sufficient protection. He paused to pick up the transfer plate because it was a personal favourite, a large serving plate of delicate bone china with a fruit pattern, rather than the more usual disc of burnished electrum. It was a risk using a china plate because it could be easily broken, but it looked nice and that was important to the Inspector.

      Even the Inspectors were not allowed to pass the inner rim of the clock face, where the feet of the numerals were bordered by a golden line. So this Inspector gingerly trod past the Twelve O’Clock Sentinel and stopped short of the line. The silver cage looked as solid as it should, and the glass box was quite intact and beautifully transparent. He could easily see the crystal inside, just where it was supposed to be.

      “All, ah, seems to be in order,” he muttered. Relieved, he took a small box out of his coat pocket, flicked it open, and with a practised movement transferred a small pinch of snuff to his right nostril. It was a new snuff, a present from a higher authority.

      “All, ahhh, ahhh, in order,” he repeated, then let out an enormous sneeze that rocked his whole body and for a moment threatened to overbalance him over the gold line. The Sentinels leaped and twisted from their regular positions, and the Twelve O’Clock Sentinel’s blades came whisking down within an inch of the Inspector’s face as he desperately windmilled his arms to regain his balance.

      Finally he managed it, and teetered back on the right side of the line.

      “Awfully sorry, terrible habit!” he squeaked as he thrust his snuff box securely away. “I’m an Inspector, remember. Here’s the warrant! Look at the seal!”

      The Sentinels subsided into their usual pacing. The Twelve O’Clock Sentinel’s arms went back to its sides, the blades no longer threatening.

      The Inspector took out a huge patched handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped his face. But as he wiped the sweat away, he thought he saw something move across the surface of the clock face. Something small and thin and dark. When he blinked and removed his handkerchief, he couldn’t see anything.

      “I don’t suppose there is anything to report?” he asked nervously. He hadn’t been an Inspector long. A decade short of four centuries, and he was only an Inspector of the Fourth Order. He’d been a Third Back Hall Porter for most of his career, almost since the Beginning of Time. Before that—

      “Nothing to report,” said the Twelve O’Clock Sentinel, using up the rest of its standard vocabulary.

      The Inspector politely tipped his hat to the Sentinel, but he was concerned. He could feel something here. Something not quite right. But the penalty for a false alarm was too horrible to contemplate. He might be demoted back to being a Hall Porter or, even worse, be made corporeal – stripped of his powers and memory and sent somewhere in the Secondary Realms as a living, breathing baby.

      Of course, the penalty for missing something important was even worse. He might be made corporeal for that, but it would not be as anything even vaguely human, or on a world where there was intelligent life. And even that was not the worst that could happen. There were far more terrible fates, but he refused to contemplate them.

      The Inspector looked across at the cage, the glass box and the crystal. Then he got a pair of opera glasses out of an inner pocket and looked through those. He could still see nothing out of order. Surely, he told himself, the Sentinels would know if something had gone amiss?

      He stepped back outside the clock face and cleared his throat.

      “All in order, well done, you Sentinels,” he said. “The watchwords for the next Inspector will be ‘Thistle, palm, oak and yew, I’m an Inspector, honest and true.’ Got that? – excellent – well, I’ll be off.”

      The Twelve O’Clock Sentinel saluted. The Inspector doffed his hat once more, swivelled on one heel and set down his transfer plate, chanting the words that would take him to the House. According to regulations, he was supposed to go via the Office of Unusual Activities on the forty-fifteenth floor and report, but he was unsettled and wanted to get straight back to the twenty-tenth floor, his own comfortable study, and a nice cup of tea.

      “From dead star’s gloom to bright lamp’s light, back to my rooms and away from night!”

      Before he could step on the plate, something small, skinny and very black shot across the golden line, between the legs of the Twelve O’Clock Sentinel, across the Inspector’s left Immaterial Boot and on to the plate. The blue and green fruit glazed on the plate flashed and the plate, black streak and all, vanished in a puff of rather rubbery and nasty-smelling smoke.

      “Alarm! Alarm!” cried the Sentinels, leaving the clock face to swarm around the vanished plate, their blades snickering in all directions as the sound of twelve impossibly loud alarm clocks rang and rang СКАЧАТЬ