Freax and Rejex. Robin Jarvis

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СКАЧАТЬ you want some sushi after?” he asked, switching on his best bedroom eyes. “I know a great place where I won’t get mobbed and we’ll be left alone – just me, you and the wasabi.”

      “That would be a no, sir,” she declined for the sixteenth time that month.

      “Always with the no,” he said with a shrug of his Armani-suited shoulders. “A good-looking, successful guy could lose confidence around all those noes. I had enough noes when I was with my wife, until the divorce. Then it changed to yeses. Yes, she wanted my apartment, yes, she wanted my cars, yes, she wanted my alimony checks, yes to all nine pints of my O negative. I was lucky to get out with both my… ahem… ‘wasabi’ still attached.”

      “Still a no, Mr Webber,” Tanya said, ducking out of shot behind the camera.

      “Would a little bit of raw fish be so offensive?” he entreated, staring at her departing chest.

      “It’s not the fish, you dick,” she muttered under her breath.

      Harlon Webber cast around for someone else to engage with, but the crew knew him well enough to only catch his eye when they needed to. Reluctantly he turned his attention to the monitor and watched the pre-filmed item that was going out.

      The whole of the United Kingdom had apparently gone nuts. Five months ago a children’s book called Dancing Jax had been published and had sold a staggering sixty-three million copies, at least one for every member of the population. It had completely taken over everyone’s life in that country.

      Reporter Kate Kryzewski was speaking over footage of violent clashes in Whitehall between opposing factions. Police officers in riot gear could be seen battling on both sides, most often fighting against one another. A bookshop burned to the cheers of a mob, petrol bombs were hurled against the gates of Downing Street and an army tank rolled through Trafalgar Square, scattering the incensed crowds. In Charing Cross Road water cannon and tear-gas grenades were deployed against a tide of protesters.

      “These were the alarming scenes here in London just seven weeks ago,” Kate’s voice-over said. “Similar pitched battles were being waged right across the UK. It seemed that all-out war had broken out, here in the home of fish and chips and the Beatles. The cause? An old children’s book of fairy tales first published in 1936. Unbelievable as it sounds, this nation was bitterly and brutally divided between those who had read it and those who refused to read it. The angry protests have since died down and peace has returned to the British Isles. Why? Because just about everyone has now read this book. So, what is it about Dancing Jax that could have triggered such an extreme reaction? I haven’t read it and won’t until I find out more, so I went on to the streets to do just that…”

      The report continued with her interviewing random people around London, against such familiar touristy backdrops as Buckingham Palace and Big Ben. They all praised the book and what it had brought to their lives.

      “It is my life,” said a distinguished man in a dark blue suit outside the Houses of Parliament. “You might as well ask what it’s like to breathe. No question about it. I have to have the book with me always because I can’t bear to be away from Mooncaster for very long. In fact, I’ve got five spares dotted about in case of an emergency. It’s market day there and I shouldn’t be messing about playing politics here. I’ve got to get the stall ready and set my wares out…”

      “Excuse me, sir,” Kate said, “but you don’t strike me as someone who would be interested in that kind of role play.”

      “Role play?” he snorted indignantly. “I don’t have time for games, madam. Only the Jacks and Jills can indulge in idle sport.”

      The picture cut to the main entrance of Selfridges on Oxford Street where an overly made-up elderly woman, decked out in countless necklaces and three earrings per ear, was staring aghast at the reporter. “You haven’t read it?” she cried in disbelief. “Oh, you must, dear. Get a copy this very minute. Don’t do anything else – go right now and get it!”

      “Why is it so important to you?” Kate asked.

      “Important?” the woman repeated in bafflement. “It’s just everything, dear, simply everything. ‘Important’ doesn’t come into it – it gets me back home, out of all this.”

      “It makes this bumhole of a place bearable, dunnit?” a black cab driver said to camera as he leaned out of his window.

      “And how many times have you read it?” Kate enquired.

      “No idea, darlin’, but there’ll never be enough, never. My real life there is sweet as a nut. Look at that bloody bus, thinks he owns the bleedin’ road! Why the hell can’t I bring my longbow with me into these soddin’ dreams, eh? I’d soon have him.”

      Back in the studio Harlon Webber threw his hands in the air for attention.

      “Why are all those schmucks wearing playing cards?” he asked anyone who would listen. “Is it some kinda cult of Vegas?”

      Nobody answered. They, like the rest of the world, were bewildered and intrigued as to what was happening in the UK and were watching the report closely.

      “Hey, Johnny,” Harlon called, squinting into the gloom behind the cameras. “Didn’t you say you got a kid sister over there? Weren’t you worried about her a while back?”

      Jimmy the cameraman was used to the jerk getting his name wrong. It used to bug him, but now it didn’t matter.

      “She’s just fine, Mr Webber,” he answered flatly. “It’s all just fine.”

      “Kate’s looking trim there, isn’t she? Hey, anyone here nailed her? I don’t normally dig redheads, but I’ve been trying for two years. Maybe I need to wear army fatigues. Yeah, I bet that’s why she goes to all them war places. She must have a thing for jarhead grunts. One of those power broads who has to feel superior the whole damn time.”

      No one in the studio answered him.

      “Hey, hi!” a young American student said into the lens outside the British Museum. “I’m Brandon from Wisconsin – or that’s who I’m supposed to be when I’m here, right? I’m really a farm guy in the Kingdom of the Dawn Prince and hey, you just watch out for that Bad Shepherd. He’s been sighted over by the marsh and that’s just way too close, man. He’s like real bad news and if he goes anywhere near my goats, I’m going after him with my axe and getting me some shepherd brains. He tore the hearts clean out of Mistress Sarah’s geese last fall, every one…”

      “If I could just speak to you as Brandon for a moment,” Kate interjected.

      “Sure, that’s cool. That’s why I’m here, right? To be Brandon and rest, so I can be stronger there – awesome.”

      “What do your parents make of all this, back home in the US?”

      “Yeah, I like Skyped those guys the other day. It’s real weird having a set of folks in this dream place, when my true mom is back in our cottage right now, teasing the wool, or out in the field pulling up the turnips.”

      “But your family in Wisconsin, what do they think?”

      “Oh, they don’t understand, man. They don’t have a copy of the sacred text so how could they? They’re nice people an’ all. Not СКАЧАТЬ