He was like a fifteen-year-old in love for the first time.
'She's lovely, Spike, you're a lucky man.'
'This is Betty,' said Spike, waving the tiny arm of the infant with his huge hand. 'One year old. You were right about being honest with Cindy she didn't mind me doing all that vampire sh I mean stuff. In fact I think she's kinda proud.'
'You're a lucky man,' I repeated, wondering just how I was going to avoid making him a widower and the gurgling child motherless.
We walked back into the house, where Cindy was busying herself in the kitchen.
'Where have you been?' asked Spike, depositing Betty next to Friday. They looked at one another suspiciously. 'Prison?'
'No. Somewhere weird. Somewhere other.'
'Will you be returning there?' asked Cindy innocently.
'She's only just got back!' exclaimed Spike. 'We don't want to be shot of her quite yet.'
'Shot of her of course not,' replied Cindy, placing a mug of tea on the table. 'Have a seat. There are Hobnobs in that novelty dodo biscuit tin over there.'
'Thank you. So,' I continued, 'how's the vampire business?'
'So-so. Been quiet recently. Werewolves the same. I dealt with a few zombies in the city centre the other night but Supreme Evil Being containment work has almost completely dried up. There's been a report of a few ghouls, bogeys and phantoms in Winchester but it's not really my area of expertise. There's talk of disbanding the division and then taking me on freelance when they need something done.'
'Is that bad?'
'Not really. I can charge what I want with vampires on the prowl, but in slack times I'd be a bit stuffed wouldn't want to send Cindy out to work full time, now, would I?'
He laughed and Cindy laughed with him, handing Betty a rusk. She gave it an almighty toothless bite and then looked puzzled when there was no effect. Friday took it away from her and showed how it was done.
'So what are you up to at present?' asked Spike.
'Not much. I just dropped in before I go off up to Goliathopolis my husband still isn't back.'
'Did you hear about Zvlkx's Revealment?'
'I was there.'
'Then Goliath will want all the forgiveness they can get you won't find a better time for forcing them to bring him back.'
We chatted for ten minutes or more until it was time for me to leave. I didn't manage to speak to Cindy on her own again, but I had said what I wanted to say I just hoped she would take notice, but somehow I doubted it.
'If I ever have any freelance jobs to do, will you join me?' asked Spike as he was seeing me out of the door, Friday having eaten nearly all the rusks.
I thought of my overdraft.
'Please.'
'Good,' replied Spike, 'I'll be in touch.'
I drove down to the M4 to Saknussum International, where I had to run to catch the Gravitube to the James Tarbuck Graviport in Liverpool. Friday and I had a brief lunch before hopping on the shuttle to Goliathopolis. Goliath had taken my husband from me, and they could bring him back. And when you have a grievance with a company, you go straight to the top.
14
The Goliath Apologarium
DANISH CAR 'A DEATHTRAP' CLAIMS KAINIAN MINISTER
Robert Edsel, the Kainian minister of road safety, hit out at Danish car manufacturer Volvo yesterday, claiming the boxy and unsightly vehicles previously considered one of the safest cars on the market to be die complete reverse a deathtrap for anyone stupid enough to buy one. 'The Volvo fared very poorly in the rocket-propelled grenade test,' claimed Mr Edsel in a press release yesterday, 'and owners and their children risk permanent spinal injury when dropped in the car from heights as low as sixty feet.' Mr Edsel continued to pour scorn on the pride of the Danish motoring industry by revealing that the Volvo's air filters offered 'scant protection' against pyroclastic flows, poisonous fumes and other forms of common volcanic phenomena. 'I would very much recommend that anyone thinking of buying this poor Danish product should think again,' said Mr Edsel. When the Danish foreign minister pointed out that Volvos were, in fact, Swedish, Mr Edsel accused the Danes of once again attempting to blame their neighbours for their own manufacturing weaknesses.
The Isle of Man had been an independent corporate state within England since it was appropriated for the greater fiscal good in 1963. The surrounding Irish Sea was heavily mined to deter unwanted visitors and the skies above protected by the most technologically advanced anti-aircraft system known to man. It had hospitals and schools, a university, its own fusion reactor and also, leading from Douglas to Kennedy Graviport in New York, the world's only privately run Gravitube. The island was home to almost 200,000 people who did nothing but support, or support the support of, the one enterprise that dominated the small island: the Goliath Corporation.
The old Manx town of Laxey was renamed Goliathopolis and was now the Hong Kong of the British archipelago, a forest of glassy towers striding up the hillside towards Snaefell. The largest of these skyscrapers rose higher even than the mountain peak behind it and could be seen glinting in the sunlight all the way from Blackpool, weather permitting. In this building was housed the inner sanctum of the whole vast multinational, the cream of Goliath's corporate engineers. An employee could spend a lifetime on the island and never even get past the front desk. And it was on the ground floor of this building, right at the heart of the corporation, that I found the Goliath apologarium.
I joined a small queue in front of a modern glass-topped table where two smiling Goliath employees were giving out questionnaires and numbered tickets.
'Hello!' said one of the clerks, a youngish girl with a lopsided smile. 'Welcome to the Goliath Corporation's Apology Emporium. Sorry you had to wait. How can we help you?'
'The Goliath Corporation murdered my husband.'
'How simply dreadful!' she responded in a lame and insincere display of sympathy. 'I'm so sorry to hear that. Goliath, as part of their move to a faith-based corporate management system, are committed to reversing all the unpleasant matters we may previously have been engaged in. You need to fill in this form, and this form and section D of this one and then take a seat. We'll get one of our highly trained apologists to see you just as soon as they can.'
She handed me several long forms and a numbered ticket, then indicated a door to one side. I opened it and walked into the apologarium. It was a large hall with floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a serene view of the Irish Sea. On one side was a row of perhaps twenty cubicles containing suited apologists, who all sat listening intently to what they were being told with the same sad and contrite expression. On the other side were rows upon rows of wooden seating that held eager and once bullied citizens, anxiously clasping their numbered tickets and patiently waiting their turn. I looked at my ticket. It was number 6,174. I glanced up at the board, which told me that number 836 was now being interviewed.
'Dear, sweet people!' said a voice through a Tannoy. 'Goliath is deeply sorry for all the harm it may inadvertently have caused you in the past. Here at the Goliath Apologarium we are only too happy to assist in your problem, no matter how small . . .'
'You!' I said to a man who was hobbling past me towards the exit. 'Have Goliath repented to your satisfaction?'
'Well, they didn't really need to,' he replied blandly. 'It was I who was at fault in fact, I apologised for wasting their valuable time!'
'What did they do?'
'They bathed my neighbourhood with ionising radiation, then denied it for seventeen years, even after people's teeth fell out and I grew a third foot.'
'And you forgave them?'