“Sir?” said Gammon.

“Go ahead,” said Will.

“Then follow me, please.” Gammon turned upon an antique heel and shuffled from the study. Will topped up his glass and Tim took his up for a topping also.

“Follow the leader,” said Tim. “And I’ll follow you.”

In the hallway, Gammon produced a ring of keys and introduced one to the lock of a low iron-bound door. The door swung open to the sound of suitably dramatic creaking noises. Gammon reached into the darkness, threw a switch. Neon lighting illuminated a stone stairway that led down and down and down and down some more.

And Gammon hobbled down this stairway, followed by Will and Tim.

“I had the lighting installed myself,” said Gammon, when they had descended a considerable distance. “I know that candles tend to make for a more forbidding atmosphere, but if you’d fallen down these steps as many times as I have—”

“Is it much further?” Will asked.

“Much,” said Gammon.

“I don’t fancy walking all the way back up again,” Tim said.

“Nor me, sir,” said Gammon. “That’s why I always take the lift.”

As all good things must come to an end, so too did the stone stairway.

Tim looked up at the big door that lay (or rather stood, or perhaps, more precisely hung) before them.

“That’s a big door hanging there,” said Tim.

“Don’t be fooled by it,” said Gammon. “It’s not so big as it thinks it is.”

“Is it just me?” Tim asked, “or do things always get whacky the moment we go underground? Remember the police station and all that interior-decorating nonsense?”

“You weren’t at the police station,” said Will.

“See what I mean?” said Tim. “Continuity and logic all go to pot underground.”

“A consequence of time travel,” said Gammon, selecting a key about four feet in length from his key ring. “Something to do with the transperabulation of pseudo cosmic antimatter.”

He turned the key in the miniscule keyhole and gave the door a little nudge with the toe of his buckled shoe.

“Gentlemen,” said he as he threw another switch and brought neon tubes stuttering to light. “The adytum. The naos. The cella. The Master’s Sanctum Sanctorum.”

Tim looked in.

And Will looked in.

And then Will looked at Tim.

And Tim looked at Will.

“It’s—” said Will.

And, “It’s—” said Tim.

“A computer room,” said Gammon.

37

“A computer room,” said Will, now inside the computer room.

“A computer room,” said Tim, now also inside the computer room.

“A computer room,” said Gammon, now entering the computer room. “Haven’t either of you ever seen a computer room before?”

“Well, yes,” said Will, seating himself in a steel swivel chair upholstered in royal blue leather, “but not in this day and age.”

“But surely anyone who is anyone has a Babbage nowadays? There’s one in every well-to-do household. And these are the top of the range. The 1900 series.”

Will did big shruggings. “I’ve never seen anything like these,” he said, and he ran his fingers lightly over the keyboard of the nearest computer. It was of the manual typewriter persuasion, wired to a magnificent brass-bound processor bustling with valves. The monitor screen was set into a mahogany cabinet. The mouse was a silver pentacle.

Tim sat down upon another chair and faced another keyboard. “I’m definitely loving this,” he said.

“Five computers,” said Gammon. “Macro processor, Babbage 1900s, linked to the Information Super Side Street: the Empire-net. My knowledge of such matters is great, although not so great as it yet might become.”

“Just one thing,” said Tim. “And don’t get me wrong, I am loving this, but I definitely recall something about icons and hacking weapons and magical accoutrements.”

“Computer terms, sir,” Gammon stepped forward, tapped at the keyboard. The screen before Tim lit up. “Those are icons,” he said, and he pointed.

“Okay,” said Tim. “I know what a computer icon is.”

“Splendid, sir, and—”

“Ah,” said Tim. “Hacking weapons, as in computer hackers?”

“Sir does know about computers.”

“And the magical accoutrements?”

“Has sir never heard the phrase, ‘the magic of technology’?”

“He has you by the short and curlies there,” said Will.

“Hardly an expression you’d normally use.” Tim raised an eyebrow beneath his hair. Will raised one beneath his.

Tim tapped at a key or two.

“If you’d allow me, sir,” said Gammon, leaning over his shoulder and breathing upon him that particular variety of halitosis which is the exclusive preserve of the elderly, “I’ll put us online.”

“Online,” said Tim fanning at his nose. “How cool is this?”

“I’ve been working on my own household page,” said Gammon.

“Home page,” said Tim.

“Household page,” said Gammon. “Ten thousand things you’ve always wanted to know about Gammon, but were always too polite to ask. I’m up to five now.”

“Five thousand?”

“No, five, sir. Do you think your question merits number six?”

Tim shook his head.

“Is there a Hugo Rune home page?” Will asked.

“Indeed, sir. The Master was always adding to his pages. Many pages, many, many pages; many, many, many—”

“I get the picture,” said Will. “Might we see it?”

“Restricted access only, sir. Perhaps, when you have completed your intensive training.”

“This really isn’t helping.” Will swivelled about on his chair. “It’s all very impressive, if somewhat unlikely, but what is the point? How is this going to help with me getting the job jobbed?”

“As I said to you, sir, you are dealing with modern witches. Thoroughly modern witches. These witches do not prepare their magic spells with toad’s blood and bubbling cauldrons. They do it through computers.”

“They never do?” said Tim. “Not in this day and age, surely.”

“Hold on,” said Will. “Are you implying that they do in ours?”

Tim shrugged. “I’ve heard rumours. Magic is a very precise science. If spells really work, they can only be made to do so by casting them correctly: pronouncing every syllable with absolute exactness, the precise intonation, accent, everything. A syllable wrong and the whole thing goes bum upwards. Spells are a formula to bend and mould space. You can’t just read them from the paper; that will never work.”

“I have found no evidence to support the theory that spells do work,” said Will. “I’ve read a lot of books on the subject. A lot. But I have no tangible proof.”

“They work,” said Gammon. “Magic works, I can assure you of that. In nearly two hundred years of service with the Master, I have witnessed many inexplicable things and I have observed the power of magic. Mr Tim is correct; the secret lies in the technique, in the precision. This precision can be achieved by programming a computer to so achieve it.”

“And that is what you intend to train me to do?”

“No, sir. The Master’s intention was to hack into the witches’ computer network. Allow me to show you.” And he leaned once more over Tim’s shoulder, breathing further halitosis.

“Impressive,” said Tim, fanning once more at his nose.

“You’ll have to pardon my slowness, sir. My fingers are not as young as they were.”

“Nor as old as they yet will be.”

“Please don’t take the piss, sir.”

“Sorry,” said Tim.

Tim’s screen lit up with a sepia display. It had much of the look of an embroidered cushion cover to it. A central inverted pentagram, with goat’s head motif, was encircled by lettering and surrounded by four skeletons holding handbags.

Will peered at it and read the letters. “The Chiswick Townswomen’s Guild,” said he. “If it’s really a coven of witches, surely the inverted pentagram and the goat’s head are a bit of a giveaway.”