Free C by Tom McCarthy Page A

stretch.”
    Widsun mouths silent acknowledgment of this, blowing a smoke-ring from his lips. “You know I’m working for Room 40 now?”
    “Room 40?”
    “At the Ministry. Signals.”
    “Ah: they got you, did they? Consummatum est , and Homo fuge branded on your body. I wondered what the secretive tone in your letters was about.”
    “Carrefax, listen: things have changed since I was last here.”
    “Too damn right they have! When you were last here I was beavering away at wireless, only to get pipped at the post. When was it? ’Ninety-seven? ’Ninety-eight? Best part of a year before the boy was born, at any rate.” He gestures vaguely at Serge, who’s sitting quietly in the corner holding the guillotine with which the men have allowed him to cut their cigars. “Now we’ve got seven RX stations in Masedown alone.”
    “No, I mean that—”
    “Happens every bloody time. You work on it, prepare its way into the world, then some other bastard sneaks into the nest and steals your egg.”
    “Politically, old friend: I mean politically. There’ll be a war.”
    “Be a—what? War? Nonsense! The more we can all chatter with one another, the less likely that sort of thing becomes.”
    “If only that were true,” sighs Widsun dolefully. He sips his brandy, lets out a measured, spirit-heavy breath and continues: “We were hoping—my colleagues and I—we thought we might pick your brains about the sign language your pupils use when—”
    “You’ve come to the wrong place, old chap! It’s banned here from day one. We teach them language here, not secrecy and silence. That’s what leads to wars!”
    “I’ve seen old Bounder doing it …”
    “Bounder?”
    “Your gardener.”
    “Oh, Bodner! Blast that fellow. My damn wife insists on keeping him around. He came with the estate; been with her since she was born. Special connection, you see, what with his mouth …”
    “That kind of communication will become important when—”
    “When I first came down here to teach her to speak I tried to get him to do it too—but he was having none of it, the stubborn ox.”
    Serge, still fiddling with his guillotine, pictures Bodner’s mouth again: the undulating lips, the shrivelled trunk of tongue. He thinks of oxtongue, sliced and laid out on a plate. It makes him swallow, and his spit taste bitter.
    Sophie prances into the library and straight up to Widsun.
    “I’ve found seven of them!” she sings, thrusting a spread palm and two fingers from her other hand right up against his face.
    “Seven of what?” her father asks.
    “He puts messages in the papers every day, and I have to crack them and reply in the same code,” she announces in a voice that’s guilty and defiant at the same time.
    Carrefax looks daggers at his guest.
    “I’m training her up as a spy,” Widsun confesses. “Good mental exercise, you must admit, if nothing else …”
    “I’ll be a double agent,” Sophie purrs, bunching up her hair, “a double-double agent. If I’m caught, I’ll poison myself before the enemy can make me spill the code. I’m even working on the potion. Before you leave—” to Widsun, this, snaking her arm along his broad shoulder again—“I’ll give you a whole bunch of different poisons to take back to your Ministry. And in two years, when all your other spies are dead, I’ll come and be the greatest spy of all. Oh: apples!”
    “Apples—what?” her father asks her.
    “From the garden; Bodner; don’t you worry; need the pips, Papa; pip-pip!”
    And she’s off again. She spends the next few days scurrying between her lab and Widsun’s room, clutching pages filled with columns of letters, numbers and other, indeterminate ciphers scrawled and crossed out in her own hand, not to mention lighter pages hand-torn from the Daily Sketch and Daily Herald , from the Globe, Manchester Guardian and Times , the Star , the Western Mail and Evening News . Serge, no longer allowed into Widsun’s room