Search Results for 'led'

“Oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god,” mumbled Finnley, head in hands and rocking strangely.

Elizabeth was startled by this strange behaviour from the normally quiescent Finnley.

“What on earth is wrong with you?” she asked irritably.

Finnley raised her head from her hands and regarded Elizabeth with tired, bloodshot eyes.

“What’s wrong with me?” she snarled. “I will tell you what is wrong with me. All these fucking batshit crazy characters making mess and expecting conversation is what is wrong with me. What’s going on? It’s not fucking Christmas is it?”

Elizabeth felt that she was losing track of all the new characters being added willy nilly without her prior consent and approval, it was most disconcerting. She decided to make a new law, that no new character could add more characters without her express permission. She would grant the existing characters a weekly audience in which they could present their new characters for inspection. Characters that Elizabeth failed to approve would be sent to Mars, or the Australian outback.

The idea of having her own robot appealed to Lizette, and she was already starting to feel an affectionate soft spot for Finnley 8. It ~ was it a he or a she? would do nicely as a personal servant and dogsbody. She wondered if the management would loan the robot to her for the duration of her stay, as a personal assistant and proof reader.

I wonder if they realize, Elizabeth was thinking, that I could write them all out of the story at the rat tat tat of a few keys.

“Rat tat tat tat,” Elizabeth said to Haki by way of a warning, enunciating each word clearly, and then wincing as she bit her tongue again in the same place.

Arona Haki wasn’t sure what to make of it, and fled.

Elizabeth slept late, not waking until the alchemy of the early morning had long since passed and the sun was high. It was a long luxurious moment between the remaining fragments of dreams and the harsh reality of the day before she remembered all the new additions. Where had they all come from? By what strange forces of attraction had they been drawn to her?

Enough of that nonsense, she told herself, as she climbed into her arthritis as if it were a pair of old slippers. She buttoned on a belly ache for good measure, and placed a headache on top of her tousled hair.

“Now then” she said, “Who the fuck are you lot and what are you all doing here? Has any of you thought to make coffee?”“

“Norbert! Do you want my help with your nose ?” asked Liz, upset by the unappealing forraging of the gardener with his huge appendice.
“Is your nose smelling of finger or your finger smelling of nose”, began to sing Finnley. “I love those rock’n roll songs, agent provocateur.” she mumbled.

”What exactly are you still doing here, Finnley? I have Haki to do the cleaning and look after the baby and Sonia. And what a beautiful job she does too. Without any unnecessary complaining,” Elizabeth added pointedly.

Finnley rolled her eyes. “And I suppose you expect her to do your proofreading as well?

“Oh yes,” Elizabeth conceded gratefully, always amazed at Finnley’s perspicacity.

”By the way,” said Finnley, ”I know you miss Godfrey but you might want to stop with all the comfort eating. Your bum is starting to look obese.”

Aunt Idle:

Trying to get a conversation out of Bert was like trying to prise a can of beans open with a nappy pin. If he’d been a bit more willing to discuss it with me I might have told him about the note, but I didn’t. I suppose he was disgruntled because I was more interested in that medical team buying up ghost towns than his bridge, so we sat in silence for the rest of the trip. Not that I wasn’t interested in the place on the other side of the river, but there was something very odd going on, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. That note, made from old maps at the Brundy place, then Flora’s card with the same name on ~ what the dickens was going on? Should I ask Flora point blank, or would that alert her that I was on to her? Might be better to be more subtle, see what I could find out before confronting her. I even thought of getting the remote view team to see if they could find anything out ~ although the results were so sketchy that might just be a wild goose chase, lead me off in the wrong direction.

“Take the next left, Idle, down this here track,” Bert said.

Miles away I was, so I didn’t hear him at first and had to slam the brakes on a bit sharpish. I caught Bert rolling his eyes at me and glared at him.

The track hadn’t been driven on for months, if not years ~ that much was obvious. We bumped along kicking up a cloud of dust for a few miles before the river came into sight, then the track followed the river for another half a mile or so, eventually petering out.

“We’ll have to walk from here,” said Bert, getting out of the car. I passed Bert the rucksack with the bottled water and locked the car. “You don’t need to lock the car here” Bert snorted.

“Habit,” I snapped, “Lead the way.”

I found Joe near the fallen bridge. He was sobbing. I approached silently and put my hand on his shoulder.
“Are you alright, mate ?”
“Yes I’m alright”, he snorted. “You remember when we used to play there ?”
Of course I remembered, we called it the bridge to nowhere. I’ve never really understood why Bert had built that bloody bridge. Jasper told me after the blast that the old man also made sure nobody could use it again. That was no surprise. Old Bert was a tight as a duck’s ass when it came to his craft. That’s why he never could make it in his trade, if he didn’t like what you did of one of his creations he’d rather smash it up so that no one could use it afterward. Always the sneaky one.
“I remember”, I said. “Your face looks like a Panda.”
He snickered. “You know my father. He’s got a liking for China.” He laughed, but it felt forced. Anyway, I laughed with him. There was no point in bringing up the gloom, we needed fun.
“Let’s take a dive!” I said. Hoping to change his mind. He tried to smile but cringed as his face must have hurt badly. When he removed his shirt, my heart sank as I saw the dark marks on his chest and back. No pushing him in the water.
“Last one to reach the other side of nowhere!” he shouted before jumping in the cold water.
“That would be you!” I roared. Naked in the wild, at least as close to the wild as you could have here, I felt like a lion, full of strength, dangerous.

It was good to get off the ship and finally arrive. Lizette had been having doubts during the long journey, wondering if she had made the right decision. Admittedly she’d been bored back home on earth and was ready for a new adventure, but once on board the ship, the doubts had crept in. Often she had woken up in the night during the journey in sheer panic, feeling trapped, but had managed to calm down and look on the bright side. The settlers needed her unique skills and her usual unbridled enthusiasm, and it would do nobody any good if she gave in to moments of fear and confusion.

Finnley 8 had helped her adjust her suit, which seemed cumbersome and restricting ~ Lizette normally preferred to wear next to nothing back on earth. But with her customary sanguine attitude, she quipped to the robot, “Well, at least I don’t have to wear a bra underneath all this bumph!”, to which Finnley 8 made no reply.

The doorbell chimed. Liz had a chill streaming through her spine. As nobody was moving, still as a crane in a Japanese sumi-e.
“Finnley, ma fille, open the door.”
The old maid mumbled something in Maori, rolling her eyes, and sticking her tongue out à la haka. She didn’t need tattoos with all her wrinkles.
“It’s a baby madam.”
“What do you mean a baby ?”
“A newborn, I think the storks brought it at our door, it’s covered in guano”.

Nobody heard him so he tried again.

”knock knock”

”Who’s there?” called out Elizabeth

”Norbert”

”Norbert who?”

”Nor, bert ya shudn’t cull out uf ya don’t wont mey tu carm knuckin”.

”Friggin kiwi accents,” muttered Finnley. “I can’t understand a word they say.”

“Norrrrbert, here, Norby Norby Norby!” called Godfrey.

“You called, sir?” asked the gardener.

”Here’s one for you!” cackled Mother Shirley. She was in a great mood now her headpiece fitted so comfortably. Finley 21 was going to be very useful. ”Knock knock”

Finnley 21 rolled her eyes again.

”Who’s there?”

”Shirley.”

”Shirley who?”

”Shirley you must know. You’re a computer!”

Mother Shirley broke into guffaws of raucous laughter.

That wasn’t the slightest bit amusing. The voice in her head sounded very stern.

Aunt Idle:

Bert came with me. Usually one of us always stayed home to keep an eye on Mater and the kids, but now we had that capable girl, Finly, to keep an eye on things.

It was good to get away from the place for a few hours, and head off on a different route to the usual shopping and errand trips. The nearest sizable town was in the opposite direction; it was years since I’d been to Ninetown. I asked Bert about the place on the other side of the river, what was it that intrigued him so. I’ll be honest, I wondered if he was losing his marbles when he said it was the medieval ruins over there.

“Don’t be daft, Bert, how can there be medieval ruins over there?” I asked.

“I didn’t say they were medieval, Idle, I said that’s what they looked like,” he replied.

“But …but history, Bert! There’s no history here of medieval towns! Who could have built it?”

“That’s why I found it so fucking interesting, but if it doesn’t fit the picture, nobody wants to hear anything about it!”

“Well I’m interested Bert. Yes, yes, I know I wasn’t interested before, but I am now.”

Bert grunted and lit a cigarette.

We stopped at a roadside restaurant just outside Ninetown for lunch. The midday heat was enervating, but inside the restaurant was a pleasant few degrees cooler. Bert wasn’t one for small talk, so I picked up a local paper to peruse while I ate my sandwich and Bert tucked into a greasy heap of chips and meat. I flicked through it without much interest in the mundane goings on of the town, that is, until I saw those names: Tattler, Trout and Trueman.

It was an article about a ghost town on the other side of Ninetown that had been bought up by a consortium of doctors. Apparently they’d acquired it for pennies as it had been completely deserted for decades, with the intention of developing it into an exclusive clinic.

“There’s something fishy about that!” I exclaimed, a bit too loudly. Several of the locals turned to look at me. I lowered my voice, not wanting to attract any more attention while I tried to make sense of it.

“Read this!” I passed the paper over the Bert.

“So what?” he asked. “Who cares?”

“Look!” I said, jabbing my finger on the names Tattler, Trout and Trueman. Bert looked puzzled, understandably enough. “Allow me to explain” I said, and I told him about the business card that Flora had left on the porch table.

“What does Flora have to do with this consortium of doctors? And what the hell is the point in setting up a clinic there, in the middle of nowhere?”

“That,” I replied, “Is the question!”