hope Moobin knows what he’s doing. He says he’s got the rebuild planned, but I think his definition of “plan” might be more along the lines of “make it up as we go along”.’
Tiger snapped his fingers.
‘Didn’t Full Price say Moobin wanted us to witness an experiment he’d got cooking?’ he asked.
‘He did. Better go and see when he wants us. When you get back you can fill out the B1-7g forms for this morning’s work – but not Perkins’ involvement, remember.’
He nodded and trotted out of the door. A few minutes later I heard him yell as he fell up the lift shaft.
There was a knock at the door and I turned to see a small man in a sharp suit holding a briefcase. He looked vaguely familiar.
‘My name is Mr Trimble,’ announced the man, ‘of Trimble, Trimble, Trimble, Trimble and Trimble, attorneys- at-law.’
He handed me a business card.
‘We’ve met before,’ I said coldly, ‘when you were representing the Constuff Land Development Agency.’[15]
‘That was one of the
‘I see,’ I replied. ‘My name is Jennifer Strange, acting general manager of Kazam. Would you like a seat?’
Mr Trimble took the proffered chair, and got straight to the point.
‘I have wealthy and influential clients,’ he said, ‘and they have a proposal for Kazam.’
I didn’t like the sound of this, but at least Trimble was being honest – and I had five thousand moolah to earn back.
‘Oh, yes?’ I replied suspiciously. ‘What sort of proposal?’
Mr Trimble took a deep breath.
‘My clients would like Kazam to reanimate the mobile telephone network.’
It wasn’t the first time we had been asked to switch the network back on, and wouldn’t be the last. Mobile phones had been one of the first things to go when the drop in wizidrical power required the slow switch-off of services that ran, essentially, on magic. Mobiles and computers hadn’t been possible since 1993, colour televisions since 1999 and GPS navigation since 2001. The last electromagical device to be switched off was the microwave oven in 2004, and that was only because aircraft radar used the same electromagical principle. The only magical technologies of any size still running were north-pointing directional compasses and the spell that kept bicycles from falling over – both of which were so old that no one knew how to switch them off anyway.
‘We’ve been approached by BellShout, N2O and VodaBunny about this before, I said, ‘and our answer is the same: all in good time. The mobile phone network will be active just as soon as we have brought back those electromagical technologies that have priority – medical scanners, and then microwave ovens.’
‘Will that take long?’
I shrugged.
‘A while. When the electromagical spells were shut down no one made a hard copy of the spell, so much is having to be rewritten – when you consider that a yo-yo has over two hundred lines of spell-text to make it work and a photocopier over ten thousand, you get an idea of the complexity of the task. Besides,’ I added, ‘the switch- off gave us an opportunity to reconsider the direction magic will take. We’ll not make the same mistake we made last time. Licensing the power of magic to individuals and companies placed sorcery in the hands of the unscrupulous. Magic belongs in the hands of all – or none.’
We stared at one another for a few moments. It was a view that the Great Zambini had embraced, and almost everyone at Kazam.
‘Well,’ said Mr Trimble, ‘would you take it to your sorcerers anyway? I’d like to report back to my clients that the refusal was unanimous.’
I agreed I would speak to them, and Mr Trimble rose to fetch his hat, which had automatically made its way to the hatstand, part of a self-tidying spell that ran throughout the building.
‘I’m most grateful to you for your time,’ he said. ‘The executives at BellShout will be very happy to talk if you change your position.’
And after shaking my hand, he left.
I wasn’t alone for long. The Prince dropped by with his day’s schedule, and I could see he wasn’t happy.
‘Pizza deliveries
‘Maybe sooner than you think,’ I told him. ‘I’ve got a task for you.’
His Royal Highness Prince Omar Smith Arkwright Ben Nasil was one of our carpeteers, which might have been a noble and exciting profession were it not for an incident one wintry night when Brother Velobius and his two passengers died when their Turkmen Mk18C ‘Bukhara’ broke up in mid-air owing to rug fatigue. For safety reasons, the Civil Aviation Authority had introduced strict rules that made it almost impossible to make magic carpet flight profitable. Limited top speed, navigation lights – and worst of all, a ban on passengers. All we could do were deliveries.
‘Here’s the thing,’ I said. ‘Kevin has foretold the Great Zambini returning tomorrow afternoon at 16.03 and fourteen seconds.’
‘Let me guess,’ said the Prince, ‘Kevin knows when but not where?’
‘That’s about the size of it. We need Zambini back, Nasil,[16] so stick to Zipp like a limpet. If he has a vision about where Zambini might show up, I want you to come and find me immediately.’
He said he wouldn’t fail me, made some comment about needing to take his carpet off the flightline next month for some remedial patchwork, and we said goodbye.
‘Is he really a prince?’ asked Tiger, who had just returned.
‘Second in line to the Duchy of Portland,’ I told him. ‘What’s the deal with Moobin?’
‘He said come up any time. He said you’d be impressed.’
This worried me as Moobin liked a challenge, and was quite used to risking life and limb on weird experimental stuff that he described as ‘important, cutting-edge stuff’ but we saw more as ‘just being a nuisance’.
‘Let’s do it.’ I sighed. ‘It’s not like things could get more weird this morning.’
Wizard Moobin
We walked towards the elevators.
‘I hope he doesn’t blow himself up again,’ I said.
‘Or make himself attractive to badgers,’ added Tiger, reminding us of the time Zambini Towers had been inundated with winsome, lovelorn black-and-white mustelids when a badger-repellent spell had gone badly wrong. Explosions and badger attraction aside, Moobin was easily our favourite sorcerer as he was probably the most normal. He was in his mid-forties but looked a lot younger, and although more powerful than Mawgon, lacked precise control and often surged – the word for a sudden burst of wizidrical energy just when you didn’t want it. Just before the Big Magic he had nearly blown us all to pieces when he turned lead into gold, then blew up another laboratory while trying to invent a spell that reversed the effects of laboratories blowing up.
We took the elevator to the third floor, which involved simply saying the floor number and then stepping into the empty lift shaft. You fell to the floor you had requested and had to step smartly out before you fell back down again. Unskilled users had been known to get stuck for some time oscillating back and forth – on one occasion, for three days.
We found Moobin in his room, which was actually three rooms knocked into one. He used it for sleeping and tinkering, which explained the vast amount of apparatus lying about, none of which I understood, but all of which looked dangerously complicated, and hastily mended.
‘Jennifer!’ he remarked excitedly when he saw me. ‘How did the finding job go this morning?’
