Monk, at full disapproving volume. “Flap your lips or get on your bike, boy. We’re busy women and we don’t have all day.”
Monk cast another anxiously furtive look around the Glasshouse’s moist interior, then stepped closer again. “I just need to know if you’ve noticed anything… peculiar… since last night.”
“That rather depends on how you define ‘peculiar,’ doesn’t it?” said Bibbie. “I mean-”
“Put a sock in it, ducky,” said Reg, and fixed Monk with a beady glare. “All right, Mister Clever Clogs. I know that look, so out with it and no more messing about. What have you gone and done this time?”
A rising tide of embarrassment flushed Monk’s face pink. “Er… well…”
“Oh, Saint Snodgrass preserve us,” said Melissande, her stomach sinking. “You’ve invented something else, haven’t you? And we accidentally ate it at dinner last night, didn’t we? So any minute now we’re going to-to- sneeze ourselves into an alternate reality, aren’t we!”
“Close,” said Monk apologetically, “but alas, no cigar.”
Bibbie grabbed his right earlobe between thumb and forefinger and twisted. Monk yelped. “Just tell us what’s happened, brother dear,” she growled, “or you’ll be sorry.”
With some difficulty Monk wrested his earlobe free. “All right,” he said, dropping his voice to a near-whisper and beckoning them even closer. “What’s happened is I’ve managed to invent an interdimensional portal opener.”
“Of course you have,” Melissande breathed. “Isn’t everybody these days?”
Monk winced. “I hope not. If they are the Department’ll go spare.”
Taking a deep breath, she reached for the iron forbearance that had stood her in such good stead back home. “And did you invent it on purpose or was it an accident?”
“An accident,” said Monk, as though he were admitting to some terrible wizardly crime. Then he brightened. “But you know what they say.” Lurking beneath his anxiety was a reprehensible flicker of glee. “Genius will out.”
“So will blood,” said Reg. “After I’ve punched you in the nose.”
“Reg, you’re a bird,” he sighed. “You can’t punch anyone.”
“I’m talking theoretically,” said Reg, leering. “It’s called punching by proxy. Why do you think I keep these two bruisers around?”
“Can we please not get sidetracked?” said Bibbie, stamping one foot. “Monk-”
“Yes, yes, I know,” he said. “Mel, do you remember the portable portal I invented?”
“Of course,” she said impatiently. “But what’s that got to do with anything?”
Monk shoved his hands back in his pockets. “Well, a couple of nights ago I was at home, in the library, having a good hard think about a Department project I’m not allowed to discuss, and I was kind of… fiddling with it. The portal, I mean. Running the baseline etheretic harmonics through my back brain while my front brain was focused on this other project, you know, kind of like doodling, and I sort of tweaked the portal’s matrix. Not a lot. But just enough.”
Melissande looked at him. He can’t be serious. “ I thought the Department made you surrender the portable portal,” she said, amazed that she sounded so eminently reasonable. Politely disinterested, even. She wanted to hit him. Really make him yelp.
“They did,” said Monk. “And I did. At least… I surrendered the final version, the one I used to get us to and from New Ottosland. And the prototype Mark A.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” said Reg, sweet as a song bird. “You kept the prototype Mark B all for your little self, didn’t you, you gold-plated twaddle-brained gormless unsanctified git!”
Monk’s expression turned mulish and his voice rose defensively. “Well, why shouldn’t I? The portal was mine, wasn’t it? I bloody well invented it! Why shouldn’t I keep a copy of my own inventions?”
Bibbie took a step sideways, leaned on the trunk of the Lanruvian Palm and banged her forehead against its purple bark. “I’d like to point out,” she announced to the world at large, “that any resemblance between me and the unmitigated moron on my left is purely coincidental and in no way implies that we are actually related!”
“Hey!” Monk protested. “You’re supposed to be on my side!”
“And I would be if your side didn’t give me a headache,” retorted Bibbie. “ I got read the riot act after New Ottosland too, remember, and I wasn’t even involved! You kept me out of that little adventure just like I was a gel.”
As Monk and Bibbie exchanged ferocious grimaces, Reg snickered. “Your superiors at the Department can’t know you very well, Mister Markham, if they don’t know you always work with parallel prototypes.”
Monk immediately looked cagey. “I… might have forgotten to mention it.”
“We can discuss your amnesia another time,” said Melissande. “Right now let’s stick to this crisis, shall we? Why should we care that you accidentally invented an interdimensional portal? It’s not as if-” And then the penny dropped. “Oh, for the love of-don’t tell me, let me guess. You used it, didn’t you? You opened the portal to another dimension.”
“Of course he did,” said Bibbie with a scornful, inelegant snort. “Haven’t you worked it out yet? My genius brother never met a door he wasn’t willing to wrench so wide that it falls off its hinges!”
“Oh, look who’s talking!” retorted Monk. “The girl who souped up Father’s etheretic distillation modulator so all the clocks ran backwards and the cat lost its-”
“If we could please just focus!” said Melissande loudly. “Or I swear by all things metaphysical there will be a great deal of punching by proxy!”
“Something’s come through, hasn’t it?” said Bibbie, arms folded again. “That’s what this panic is all about.”
“I don’t know,” Monk muttered. He had the grace to look abashed. “Not for certain.”
Reg rattled her tail feathers. “In other words, yes.”
“What was it?” said Bibbie. “I mean, what dimension did the portal open onto, Monk? And what kind of things live in it? Are we talking microscopic creepy crawlies? Slimy tentacles? Alternate versions of ourselves? What?”
“Actually,” said Monk, brightening again, “it turns out that I’ve made an important discovery. In fact it looks like I’ve debunked another popular misconception.”
“Of course you have,” said Bibbie, rolling her eyes. “And which one have you debunked this time?”
Monk was all lit up now, his thaumaturgical enthusiasm burning like a fever. “I’ve discovered that when you open a portal between dimensions it’s not as simple as stepping from one to the other. It’s not like-like going from the dining room to the parlour, say.”
Bibbie frowned. “It’s not? Are you sure? Because Hepplewight’s Theorem distinctly postulates-”
“Oh, bollocks to old Hepplewight,” Monk said airily, waving an excited hand. “What would that old fossil know? He’s not had an original thought for twenty-seven years, not since he worked out how to splice a thaum and they made him a Grand Master on the strength of it. No, no, no, I’m telling you, Bibs, there’s a kind of empty space between the dimensions. A passageway. A conduit. I managed to get a reading, not much, just a few seconds’ worth. But it was enough to prove Hepplewight wrong.”
Irritation forgotten, Bibbie’s face lit up just like her mad brother’s. “You didn’t! Monk, that’s fantastic! That’s- that’s phenomenal!”
“I know!” he said, grinning like a loon. “I could hardly believe it! If I could sneak the results into the Department I’d be able to work out exactly what that means but I don’t dare risk it, I’ll have to-”
Melissande, having heard more than enough, turned her head till she was nose-to-beak with Reg. “Shall I take the first swing, Your Majesty, or would you care for the honour?”
“You take it, ducky,” said Reg, eyes gleaming. “I’ll follow it up with a one-two jab to their skinny arses!”
Monk and Bibbie stopped enthusing about his latest discovery and gave them another patented Markham peas-in-a-pod stare.
“Eh?” said Monk. “What? No-wait-”
“I don’t want to wait,” said Melissande, advancing on him with both sweaty hands clenched to fists. “I want to conduct myself in a thoroughly unladylike fashion and pummel you to a whimpering pulp, Monk Markham! I want seventeen generations of New Ottosland princesses to stand up in their graves and cheer as I abandon every last shred of royal tradition and knock you into the middle of next week! I want-”
“To calm down!” said Monk, retreating with both hands raised. “That’s what you want to do, Mel. Just-just-
