A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 Read Online Free PDF Page B

very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good—and we all know how rare that is . . .
    ACHERON HADES
— Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit
    T AMWORTH DIDN ’ T call that week, nor the week after. I tried to call him at the beginning of the third week but was put through to a trained denialist who flatly refused to admit that Tamworth or SO-5 even existed . I used the time to get up-to-date with some reading, filing, mending the car and also—because of the new legislation—to register Pickwick as a pet rather than a wild dodo. I took him to the town hall where a veterinary inspector studied the once-extinct bird very carefully. Pickwick stared back forlornly, as he, in common with most pets, didn’t fancy the vet much.
    â€œPlock-plock,” said Pickwick nervously as the inspector expertly clipped the large brass ring around his ankle.
    â€œNo wings?” asked the official curiously, staring at Pickwick’s slightly odd shape.
    â€œHe’s a Version 1.2,” I explained. “One of the first. They didn’t get the sequence complete until 1.7.”
    â€œMust be pretty old.”
    â€œTwelve years this October.”
    â€œI had one of the early Thylacines,” said the official glumly. “A Version 2.1. When we decanted him he had no ears. Stone deaf. No warranty or anything. Bloody liberty, I call it. Do you read New Splicer ?”
    I had to admit that I didn’t.
    â€œThey sequenced a Steller’s sea cow last week. How do I even get one of those through the door?”
    â€œGrease its sides?” I suggested. “And show it a plate of kelp?”
    But the official wasn’t listening; he had turned his attention to the next dodo, a pinkish creature with a long neck. The owner caught my eye and smiled sheepishly.
    â€œRedundant strands filled in with flamingo,” he explained. “I should have used dove.”
    â€œVersion 2.9?”
    â€œ2.9.1, actually. A bit of a hotchpotch but to us he’s simply Chester. We wouldn’t swap him for anything.”
    The inspector had been studying Chester’s registration documents.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said at last. “2.9.1s come under the new Chimera category.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œNot enough dodo to be dodo. Room seven down the corridor. Follow the owner of the pukey, but be careful; I sent a quarkbeast down there this morning.”
    I left Chester’s owner and the official arguing together and took Pickwick for a waddle in the park. I let him off the leashand he chased a few pigeons before fraternizing with some feral dodos who were cooling their feet in the pond. They splashed excitedly and made quiet plock plock noises to one another until it was time to go home.
    Two days after that I had run out of ways to rearrange the furniture, so it was lucky that Tamworth called me. He told me he was on a stakeout and that I needed to join him. I hastily scribbled down the address and was in the East End in under forty minutes. The stakeout was in a shabby street of converted warehouses that had been due for demolition two decades before. I doused the lights and got out, hid anything of value and locked the car carefully. The battered Pontiac was old and grotty enough not to arouse suspicion in the grimy surroundings. I glanced around. The brickwork was crumbling and heavy smears of green algae streaked the walls where the down pipes had once been. The windows were cracked and dirty and the brick wall at ground level was stained alternately with graffiti or the sooty blackness of a recent fire. A rusty fire escape zigzagged up the dark building and cast a staccato shadow on the potholed road and several burned-out cars. I made my way to a side door according to Tamworth’s instructions. Inside, large