NEWT DID IN FACT own a small home computer, despite his boyhood experiences. In fact, he’d owned several. You always knew which ones he owned. They were desktop equivalents of the Wasabi. They were the ones which, for example, dropped to half price just after he’d bought them. Or were launched in a blaze of publicity and disappeared into obscurity within a year. Or only worked at all if you stuck them in a fridge. Or, if by some fluke they were basically good machines, Newt always got the few that were sold with the early, bug-infested version of the operating system. But he persevered, because he believed.
Adam also had a small computer. He used it for playing games, but never for very long. He’d load a game, watch it intently for a few minutes, and then proceed to play it until the High Score counter ran out of zeroes.
When the other Them wondered about this strange skill, Adam professed mild amazement that everyone didn’t play games like this.
“All you have to do is learn how to play it, and then it’s just easy,” he said.
QUITE A LOT OF THE FRONT parlor in Jasmine Cottage was taken up, Newt noticed with a sinking feeling, with piles of newspapers. Clippings were stuck around the walls. Some of them had bits circled in red ink. He was mildly gratified to spot several he had cut out for Shadwell.
Anathema owned very little in the way of furniture. The only thing she’d bothered to bring with her had been her clock, one of the family heirlooms. It wasn’t a full-cased grandfather clock, but a wall clock with a free-swinging pendulum that E. A. Poe would cheerfully have strapped someone under.
Newt kept finding his eye drawn to it.
“It was built by an ancestor of mine,” said Anathema, putting the coffee cups down on the table. “Sir Joshua Device. You may have heard of him? He invented the little rocking thing that made it possible to build accurate clocks cheaply? They named it after him.”
“The Joshua?” said Newt guardedly.
“The device.”
In the last half hour Newt had heard some pretty unbelievable stuff and was close to believing it, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
“The device is named after a real person?” he said.
“Oh, yes. Fine old Lancashire name. From the French, I believe. You’ll be telling me next you’ve never heard of Sir Humphrey Gadget—”
“Oh, now come on—”
“—who devised a gadget that made it possible to pump out flooded mineshafts. Or Pietr Gizmo? Or Cyrus T. Doodad, America’s foremost black inventor? Thomas Edison said that the only other contemporary practical scientists he admired were Cyrus T. Doodad and Ella Reader Widget. And—”
She looked at Newt’s blank expression.
“I did my Ph.D. on them,” she said. “The people who invented things so simple and universally useful that everyone forgot that they’d ever actually needed to be invented. Sugar?”
“Er—”
“You normally have two,” said Anathema sweetly.
Newt stared back at the card she’d handed him.
She’d seemed to think it would explain everything.
It didn’t.
It had a ruled line down the middle. On the left-hand side was a short piece of what seemed to be poetry, in black ink. On the right-hand side, in red ink this time, were comments and annotations. The effect was as follows:
3819: When Orient’s chariot inverted be, four wheles in the skye, a man with bruises be upon Youre Bedde, achinge his hedd for willow fine, a manne who testeth with a pyn yette his hart be clene, yette seed of myne own undoing, take the means of flame from himme for to mayk ryght certain, together ye sharle be, untyl the Ende that is to come. [Japanese car? Upturned. Car smash … not serious injury?? . . . take in … . . . willowfine = Aspirin (cf.3757) Pin = witchfinder (cf.102) Good witchfinder?? Refers to Pulsifer (cf.002) Search for matches, etc. In the 1990s! . . .. … hmm … . . . less than a day (cf.712, 3803, 4004)]
Newt’s hand went automatically to his pocket. His cigarette lighter had gone.
“What’s this mean?” he said hoarsely.
“Have you ever heard of Agnes Nutter?” said Anathema.
“No,” said Newt, taking a desperate defense in sarcasm. “You’re going to tell me she invented mad people, I suppose.”
“Another fine old Lancashire name,” said Anathema coldly. “If you don’t believe, read up on the witch trials of the early seventeenth century. She was an ancestress of mine. As a matter of fact, one of your ancestors burned her