The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next 1)

“Anything?”

Mycroft nodded so I wrote: Have you seen my dodo?

“Now what?”

Mycroft looked triumphant.

“Have a look, dear girl.”

I lifted off the top carbon and there, written in my own handwriting, were the words: ¿Ha visto mi dodo?

“But that’s amazing!”

“Thank you,” replied my Uncle. “Have a look at the next!”

I did. Beneath the Polish carbon was written: Gdzie jest moje dodo?

“I’m working on hieroglyphics and demotic,” Mycroft explained as I peeled off the German translation to read: Haben Sie mein Dodo gesehen? “The Mayan Codex version was trickier but I can’t manage Esperanto at all. Can’t think why.”

“This will have dozens of applications!” I exclaimed as I pulled off the last sheet to read, slightly disappointingly: Mon aardvark n’a pas de nez.

“Wait a moment, Uncle. My aardvark has no nose?”

Mycroft looked over my shoulder and grunted.

“You probably weren’t pressing hard enough. You’re police, aren’t you?”

“SpecOps, really.”

“Then this might interest you,” he announced, leading me off past more wondrous gadgets, the use of which I could only guess at. “I’m demonstrating this particular machine to the police technical advancement committee on Wednesday.”

He stopped next to a device that had a huge horn on it like an old gramophone. He cleared his throat.

“I call it my Olfactograph. It’s very simple. Since any bloodhound worth its salt will tell you that each person’s smell is unique like a thumbprint, then it follows that a machine that can recognize a felon’s individual smell must be of use where other forms of identification fail. A thief may wear gloves and a mask, but he can’t hide his scent.”

He pointed at the horn.

“The odors are sucked up here and split into their individual parts using an Olfactroscope of my own invention. The component parts are then analyzed to give a ‘pongprint’ of the criminal. It can separate out ten different people’s odors in a single room and isolate the newest or the oldest. It can detect burned toast up to six months after the event and differentiate between thirty different brands of cigar.”

“Could be handy,” I said, slightly doubtfully. “What’s this over here?”

I was pointing to what looked like a trilby hat made from brass and covered in wires and lights.

“Oh yes,” said my uncle, “this I think you will like.”

He placed the brass hat on my head and flicked a large switch. There was a humming noise.

“Is something meant to happen?” I asked.

“Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Try to empty your mind of any thoughts.”

I closed my eyes and waited patiently.

“Is it working?” asked Mycroft.

“No,” I replied, then added: “Wait!” as a stickleback swam past. “I can see a fish. Here, in front of my eyes. Wait, there’s another!”

And so there was. Pretty soon I was staring at a whole host of brightly colored fish all swimming in front of my closed eyes. They were on about a five-second loop; every now and then they jumped back to the starting place and repeated their action.