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-calm down so we can-”
“ Don’t call me Mel! ”
Monk’s shoulder blades collided with a Botchaki Silk Tree. “Okay. All right. I get it. You’re upset. I don’t blame you. I’m upset too.”
“Really? Because it looked to me like you were congratulating yourself. It looked to me like you were patting yourself on the back so hard it’s a wonder you haven’t dislocated your shoulder.”
“Well, all right, fair enough, I’m excited about my new invention,” he confessed, “but I am sorry it’s causing this slight difficulty. And I swear I had no idea that there was anything living in the spaces between dimensions. I mean, how could I? I had no idea there were spaces between dimensions. I had no idea-”
“So you admit you’re mucking about with things you don’t understand?” Melissande demanded. “Just-just-plotzing about tra-la, tra-la, not having the first wretched clue of what might-”
“Plotzing? Plotzing? I’m not plotzing!” said Monk, offended. “You seem to be forgetting that I’m a research thaumaturgist, Mel-issande. This is what I do. I reveal hidden metaphysical truths, I chart uncharted mysteries, I-”
“Need your bloody head examined!” she shouted at him. “ What’s come through that door you opened? ”
Monk shoved a finger between his shirt collar and his throat and wiggled it, hard. “Um… well… I’m not sure, exactly. I haven’t seen it. As far as I can tell it’s most likely invisible, due to the incompatibility of the comparative dimensional vibrations.”
Melissande exchanged another look with Reg. “How delightful.” Only her intimate acquaintance with homicidal maniacs and rampaging dragons kept her voice steady. “And where do you think our invisible friend might be right now?”
Monk swallowed convulsively. “Ah. Yes. Well, I’m not entirely sure… but I think you’ve got it.”
CHAPTER SIX
Once the shouting and squawking had died down, and Monk had picked himself up and brushed the leaf mould off his sober blue suit and rubbed the bits that Reg had poked with her beak, Melissande clapped her hands for order.
“All right,” she said sharply. “If everyone can just calm down? Good. Now, Monk. Do you have any idea what it is you think we’ve got?”
“Well,” said Monk, frowning, “after a lot of careful consideration and by a comprehensive process of elimination I’m pretty sure it’s a concatetanic conglomeration of uber-parallel-dimensional antietheretic particles supercharged with extraneous thaumaturgical emissions on a scale of seventeen to the eleventh power, cubed.”
Melissande blinked at him. “I see,” she said, after a pause. “Ah-let me put that another way. Would you have any idea what it was if you weren’t a thaumaturgical genius working in a secret government Research and Development facility?”
“Of course,” said Monk, as though surprised she’d even ask. “It’s a sprite.”
“A sprite?” Bibbie’s eyes lit up yet again. The wretched girl really was as bad as her equally wretched brother. “Really, Monk? You’re positive? Because according to Herbert and Lowe-”
“Sprites are just another postulation of theoretical thaumaturgical metaphysics,” said Monk eagerly. “I know, I know. But now I’m not so sure!”