My mother stopped her random method of cooking and recalled for a moment, I imagine, fond embraces with her eradicated husband. It must have been quite a shock, waking up one morning and finding your husband never existed. Then, quite out of the blue, she yelled:
'DH-82, down!'
Her anger was directed at a small Tasmainan tiger that had been nosing the remains of some chicken on the table edge.
'Bad boy!' she added in a scolding tone. The Tasmainan tiger looked crestfallen, sat on its blanket by the Aga and stared down at its paws.
'Rescue Thylacine,' explained my mother. 'Used to be a lab animal. He smoked forty a day until his escape. It's costing me a fortune in nicotine patches. Isn't it, DH-82?'
The small re-engineered native of Tasmania looked up and shook his head. Despite being vaguely dog-shaped this species was more closely related to a kangaroo than to a Labrador. You always expected one to wag its tail, bark or fetch a stick, but they never did. The closest behavioural similarities were a propensity to steal food and an almost fanatical devotion to tail-chasing.
'I miss your dad a lot, you know,' said my mother wistfully. 'How—'
There was a loud explosion, the lights flickered and something shot past the kitchen window.
'What was that?' said my mother.
'I think,' replied Landen soberly, 'it was Aunt Polly.'
We found her in the vegetable patch dressed in a deflating rubber suit that was meant to break her fall but obviously hadn't – she was holding a handkerchief to a bloodied nose.
'My goodness!' exclaimed my mother. 'Are you okay?'
'Never been better!' she replied, looking at a stake in the ground and then yelling. 'Seventy-five yards!'
'Righty-on!' said a distant voice from the other end of the garden. We turned to see my Uncle Mycroft, who was consulting a clipboard next to a smoking Volkswagen convertible.
'Car seat ejection devices in case of road accidents,' explained Polly, 'with a self-inflating rubber suit to cushion the fall. Pull on a toggle and bang – out you go. Prototype, of course.'
'Of course.'
We helped her to her feet and she trotted off, seemingly none the worse for her expenence.
'Mycroft still inventing, then?' I said as we walked back inside to discover that DH-82 had eaten all the vol-au-vents, the main course and the trifle for pudding.
'DH!' Mum said crossly to the guilty-looking and very bloated Tas tiger, 'that was very bad! What am I going to feed everybody on now?'
'How about Thylacine cutlets?' suggested Landen.
I elbowed him in the ribs and Mum pretended not to hear.
Landen rolled up his sleeves and searched through the kitchen for something to rustle up. All of the cupboards were full of tinned pears.
'Have you anything apart from canned fruit, Mrs … I mean, Wednesday?'
Mum stopped trying to chastise DH-82, who, soporific through gluttony, had settled down for a long nap.
'No,' she admitted. 'The man in the shop said there would be a shortage so I bought his entire stock.'
I walked down to Mycroft's laboratory, knocked and, when there was no reply, entered. All his machines had been dismantled and now lay about the room, tagged and carefully stacked. Mycroft himself, having obviously finished testing the ejection system, was now tweaking a small bronze object. He seemed somewhat startled when I spoke his name but relaxed as soon as he saw it was me.
'Hello, love!' he said kindly. 'I'm off on retirement in one hour and nine minutes. You looked good on the telly last night.'
'Thank you. What are you up to, Uncle?'
He handed me a large book.
'Enhanced indexing. In a Nextian dictionary, g