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think if Stan had arrived at any other time, I would have had trouble accepting him. Something about that unembodied presence brought me out in cold shudders, even annoyed as I was. But I was so fed up that I drank the rest of my whisky in one gulp and told him what was the problem. And finished by yelling, “And it’s all your damned fault!”

      “Steady! Steady on!” husked his disembodied voice. I had heard him talk to unquiet horses the same way. “It isn’t my fault. Another Magid has to be found. And you’re going about it all wrong anyway.”

      “Wrong?” I said. “In what way wrong?”

      “You always were prone to it,” he said. “Going about it like a normal person and forgetting you’re a Magid. You’ve got enormous powers, lad. Use them. Go after them the Magid way.”

      “Oh,” I said. “All right. But not until I’ve had a square meal, another stiff whisky and a pint of coffee. Does your present state remember the needs of the body? Can you wait that long?”

      “They’ve given me a year, these folk Up There,” he said. “If you can be ready before then.”

      That was the Stan I knew. I laughed. It made me feel better.

      An hour later, I took off my jacket. I was just about to hang it over a chair in my usual precise way when I thought of Mrs Nuttall and threw it after my cravat. Then I rolled up my sleeves and got to work, with Stan’s voice occasionally husking hints and short-cuts. It was a long evening. And a frustrating one. Thurless was thinking of staying in Japan permanently. Kornelius Punt had decided to go on to New Zealand. The Croatian and Maree Mallory were still untraceable—

      “Well, they would be,” Stan’s voice observed, “if they want to be. They’re the two with the really strong talent.”

      “And Ms Fisk is probably having a nervous breakdown,” I added.

      “That follows again,” Stan said. “It’s the penalty of being odd when most people are normal. We might have gone the same way, you and me, if we hadn’t been picked out for Magids.”

      “Speak for yourself,” I snapped. My mood had gone bad again after this further frustration. “I regard myself as a stable personality.”

      “Do you now?” said Stan. “You forget. I knew you when you were a schoolboy. This Maree. I agree with you she’s the most likely one. Dowse around for her father. He’ll know where she is. They say fathers and daughters are always pretty close.”

      I followed his advice, and it was excellent. A week later, I drove to a hospital in Kent and interviewed a tired, sagging, small man in a wheelchair who had already lost most of his hair. I could see that he had, only recently, been a fat little man with a twinkle. I could see the cancer. They hadn’t done much for it. I was desperately sorry for him. I gave that cancer a sharp flip and told it to go away. He doubled up gasping, poor fellow.

      “Ouch!” he said. “First Maree, now you. What did you do?”

      “Told it to go away,” I said. “You should be doing that too, but you’re hanging on to it rather, aren’t you?”

      “Do you know, that’s just what Maree said!” he told me. “I suppose I do – hang on to it – it feels like part of me. I can’t explain. What should I be doing?”

      “Telling the thing it’s an unwanted alien,” I suggested. “You don’t want it. You don’t seem to me to have finished what you set out to do with your life.”

      “I haven’t,” he said sadly. “First the divorce came along, now this. I’m not like my brother, you know, book after book – I have just the one thing. I would have liked to patent my invention, but, well…”

      “Then do it,” I said. “Where is Maree at the moment?”

      “In Bristol,” he said.

      “But I went to see her aunt and—”

      “Oh, she’s gone to her other aunt, up the road. I made her go back, love affair or no love affair, money or no money. She’s training to be a vet, you see, and it’s not a thing you can stop halfway over.”

      “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Would I find her through the university, then?”

      “Or the damned aunt,” he said. “Ted’s wife, Janine. Hateful woman. Can’t think why my brother married the bitch, frankly. Made even more of a mistake than I did, but Ted stuck by his – for the boy’s sake, I suppose.” He gave me the address, maddeningly enough in the same street as the house I’d gone to before, and then said anxiously, “It’s not really true I can get shot of this cancer by just thinking, is it?”

      “A lot of cancers do respond to that,” I said.

      “I’m not so good at thinking positively,” he said wretchedly.

      Before I left I did what I could for Derek Mallory. It was no good hitting the cancer when he was embracing it so fervently, so I hit a few centres in his brain instead, trying to turn him into a more cheerful way of thinking. I suspect he felt every hit. His face puckered like a baby’s. I thought he was going to cry, but it turned out that he was trying to smile.

      “That helped!” he said. “That really helped! I’m all for the mind stuff, deep down really. I’ve often argued with Maree about it. She can do it, but she won’t. Makes scathing remarks instead. She lacks belief, that’s her problem.”

      So I went back to Bristol again. But not until a week had passed. First I had to earn my living. I had a lot of deadlines to meet that week, and I would have met them too, with time to spare, except that as I was sorting the last and most intractable problems, my fax machine began making the little fanfare of sound I had set it to make when it was bringing me Magid business. I went and picked up the sheet. It said:

      Iforion 10.2.3413. 1100 hrs. URGENT

      Emperor assassinated. Come back to Iforion

      Imperial Palace soonest for immediate conference.

      This message by order of the Acting Regent,

      General Commander Dakros

      “Oh good!” I said. “Hurrah!” That was my first reaction. That man Timos IX really had it coming, and not only because of Timotheo, either. I hoped the assassin had hurt him first. Rather a lot. Then I thought again and said, “Oh shit. No heir.” Then I thought again and added, “And what am I supposed to do about that? I’m their Magid, not their nursemaid.”

      “Tell them to go whistle,” Stan suggested. He was evidently reading the fax over my shoulder.

      I faxed back that I would come tomorrow.

      They faxed back:

      Iforion 10.2.13. 1104 hrs URGENT

      Imperative you come now. Dakros

      I faxed again:

      Why? I’m busy here with Magid business.

      Dakros (whoever he was) faxed in return:

      We got the assassin’s accomplices. We’re dealing rebellion/other chaos. We need you to find the next Emperor. Real problems there. Only a Magid can solve it. Please, sir. Dakros

      It was the ‘Please, sir’ that got to me. The man was a General and Acting Regent and he was saying that, like a small boy pleading. I faxed that I was on my way and, since it sounded like the kind of problem you have to spend time on, I started to pack an overnight bag. Doubtless I could borrow stuff, but in the Empire they slept in a thing like a hospital gown, tied up with tapes, which I dislike, and I hate their razors. I could feel Stan hanging over me as I packed, wanting to say something.

      “What is it?” I said.

      “Don’t get too involved in that Empire, will you?” he said.

      “No

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