THURSDAY NEXT – My Life in SpecOps

I pushed Friday back towards my car, deep in thought. The stakes had just been raised and any chance that I might somehow influence the outcome of the Superhoop were suddenly made that much more impossible. With Goliath and Kaine both having a vested interest in making sure the Swindon Mallets lost, chances of our victory had dropped from 'highly unlikely' to 'nigh impossible'.

'It explains,' said a voice, 'why Goliath are changing to a faith-based corporate management system.'

I turned to find my stalker, Millon de Floss, walking close behind me. It must have been important for him to contravene the blanket restraining order. I stopped for a moment.

'Why do you think that?'

'Once they are a religion they won't be a company named Goliathe, as stated in Zvlkx's prophecy,' observed Millon, 'and they can avoid the Revealment coming true. Sister Bettina, their own corporate precog, must have foreseen something like this and alerted them.'

'Does that mean,' I asked slowly, 'that they're taking St Zvlkx seriously?'

'He's too accurate not to be, Miss Next, however unlikely it may seem. Now that they know the complete seventh Revealment, they'll try and do anything to stop Swindon winning – and continue with the religion thing as a back-up just in case.'

It made sense – sort of. Dad must have known this or something very like it. None of it boded very well, but my father had said the likelihood of this armageddon was only 22 per cent, so the answer must be somewhere.

'I'm going to visit Goliathopohs this afternoon,' I said thoughtfully. 'Have you found out anything about Kaine?'

Millon rummaged in his pocket for a notepad, found it and flicked through the pages, which seemed to be full of numbers.

'It's here somewhere,' he said apologetically. 'I like to collect vacumn-cleaner serial numbers and was investigating a rare Hoover XB-23E when I got the call. Here it is. This Kaine fellow is a conspiracist's delight. He arrived on the scene five years ago with no past, no parents, nothing. His national insurance number was only given to him in 1982, and it seems the only jobs he has ever held was with his publishing company and then as MP.'

'Not a lot to go on, then.'

'Not yet, but I'll keep on digging. You might be interested to know that he has been seen on several occasions with Lola Vavoom.'

'Who hasn't?'

'Agreed. You wanted to know about Mr Schitt-Hawse? He heads the Goliath tech division.'

'You sure?'

Millon looked dubious for a moment.