“Not good,” I replied slowly. “I can’t dissuade an assassin from trying to kill me; Hamlet isn’t safe here, but I can’t send him back; and if I don’t get Swindon to win the SuperHoop, then the world will end. Goliath somehow duped me into forgiving them, I have my own stalker, and also have to figure out how to get the banned books I should be hunting for SO-14 out of the country. And Landen’s still not back.”

“Really?” she said, not having listened to me at all. “I think I’ve got a plan how we can deal with that annoying offspring of Pickwick’s.”

“Lethal injection?”

“Not funny. No, my friend Mrs. Beatty knows a dodo whisperer who can work wonders with unruly dodos.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Not at all.”

“I’ll try anything, I suppose. I can’t understand why he’s so difficult—Pickers is a real sweetheart.”

We fell silent for a moment.

“Mum?” I said at last.

“Yes?”

“What do you think of Herr Bismarck?”

“Otto? Well, most people remember him for his ‘blood and iron’ rhetoric, unification arguments, and the wars—but few give him credit for devising the first social security system in Europe.”

“No, I mean . . . that is to say . . . you wouldn’t—”

At that moment we heard some oaths and a slammed door. After a few thumps and bumps, Hamlet burst into the living room, stopped, composed himself, rubbed his forehead, looked heavenwards, sighed deeply and then said:

“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!”¹

“Is everything all right?” I asked

“Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d his canon ’gainst self-slaughter!” ²

“I’ll make a cup of tea,” said my mother, who had an instinct for these sorts of things. “Would you like a slice of Battenberg, Mr. Hamlet?”

“O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable—yes, please—seem to me all the uses of this world!”³

She nodded and moved off.

“What’s up?” I asked Emma, who had entered with Hamlet, as he strutted around the living room, beating his head in frustration and grief.

“Well, we went to see Hamlet at the Alhambra.”

“Crumbs!” I muttered. “It . . . er . . . didn’t go down too well, I take it?”

“Well,” reflected Emma, as Hamlet continued his histrionics around the living room, “the play was okay apart from Hamlet shouting out a couple of times that Polonius wasn’t meant to be funny and Laertes wasn’t remotely handsome. The management weren’t particularly put out—there were at least twelve Hamlets in the audience, and they all had something to say about it.”

“Fie on’t! Ah, fie!” continued Hamlet. “ ’Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely—!”⁴

“No,” continued Emma, “it was when we and the twelve other Hamlets went to have a quiet drink with the play’s company afterwards that things turned sour. Piarno Keyes—who was playing Hamlet—took umbrage at Hamlet’s criticisms of his performance; Hamlet said his portrayal was far too indecisive. Mr. Keyes said Hamlet was mistaken, that Hamlet was a man racked by uncertainty. Then Hamlet said he was Hamlet so should know a thing or two about it; one of the other Hamlets disagreed and said he was Hamlet and thought Mr. Keyes was excellent. Several of the Hamlets agreed, and it might have ended there, but Hamlet said that if Mr. Keyes insisted on playing Hamlet, he should look at how Mel Gibson did it and improve his performance in light of that.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Yes,” said Emma. “Oh, dear. Mr. Keyes flew right off the handle. ‘Mel Gibson?’ he roared. ‘Mel ****ing Gibson? That’s all I ever ****ing hear these days!’ and he then tried to punch Hamlet on the nose. Hamlet was too quick, of course, and had his bodkin at Keyes’s throat before you could blink, so one of the other Hamlets suggested a Hamlet contest. The rules were simple: they all had to perform the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy, and the drinkers in the tavern gave them points out of ten.”

“And . . . ?”

“Hamlet came last.”

“Last? How could he come last?”

“Well, he insisted on playing the soliloquy less like an existential question over life and death and the possibility of an afterlife, and more about a postapocalyptic dystopia where crossbow-wielding punks on motorbikes try to kill people for their gasoline.”

I looked across at Hamlet who had quieted down a bit and was looking through my mother’s video collection for Olivier’s Hamlet to see if it was better than Gibson’s.

“No wonder he’s hacked off.”

“Here we go!” said my mother, returning with a large tray of tea things. “There’s nothing like a nice cup of tea when things look bad!”

“Humph,” grunted Hamlet, staring at his feet. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any of that cake, have you?”

“Especially for you!” My mother smiled, producing the Battenberg with a flourish. She was right, too. After a few cups and a slice of cake, Hamlet was almost human again.

I left Emma and Hamlet arguing with my mother over whether they should watch Olivier’s Hamlet or Great Croquet Sporting Moments on the television and went to sort some washing in the kitchen. I stood there trying to figure out just what sort of brain-scrubbing technique Goliath had used on me to get me to sign their Forgiveness Release. Oddly, I was still getting pro-Goliath flashbacks. In absent moments I felt they weren’t so bad, then had to consciously remind myself that they were. On the plus side, there was a possibility Landen might be reactualized, but I didn’t know when it would be, or how.

I was just getting around to wondering if a cold soak might remove ketchup stains better than a hot wash when there was a light crackling sound in the air, like crumpled cellophane. It grew louder, and green tendrils of electricity started to envelop the Kenwood mixer, then grew stronger until a greenish glow like St. Elmo’s fire was dancing around the microwave. There was a bright light and a rumble of thunder as three figures started to materialize into the kitchen. Two of them were dressed in body armor and holding ridiculously large blaster-type weapons; the other figure was tall and dressed in jet black high-collared robes that hung to the floor in one direction and buttoned tightly up to his throat in the other. He had a pale complexion, high cheekbones and a small and very precise goatee. He stood with his arms crossed and was staring at me with one eyebrow raised imperiously. This was truly a tyrant among tyrants, a cruel galactic leader who had murdered billions in his never-ending and inadequately explained quest for total galactic domination. This . . . was Emperor Zhark.