My situation, perhaps slightly unusual in what had started out as a
straightforward stalking sortie, or what I prefer to term, in a more
professional manner, a snoop scoop, was such that I was aware of
very little; the general pandemonium, the bizarrely generated froth,
the pivoting thoroughbreds, the echoing walls of the reginal hammam
and above all the side effects of the Mark VI's catastrophic systems
failure completely masked the early tentative knocking, the "Ma'am,
may I be of assistance?", the approaching footfalls and finally the
great inarticulate flughorn that should by rights have had my goji
pickers stampeding to my private apartments. In reviewing the
material later, the Mark VI as I was to discover in the longeuse that
followed my brief transit of Balmoral Castle, was capable of recording
and restreaming in toto the circumstances of any particular sequence
of which it had been witness (its memory banks were effectively
infinite as a glance at its records for that September day showed -
and the lucky hack who had such an instrument at their disposal had
little more to do than edit, and even that the Mark VI offered in
abundance hence an article under my name appeared in the Correio
da Manha the very next morning, accepted without editorial
interference as if I were to the Portuguese born, submitted
electronically almost without my knowledge.), a sort of Mandelbrot set
capacity that was astonishing, indeed rather frightening, in its detail.
For instance I could, and did, review the sequence from Muscletone's
appearance on the bagneural threshold to the point where he
recrossed that same threshold not many minutes later in an exit
scene worthy of Lady Macbeth, though the more powerful for being
entirely unfeigned, and I could divide that scene into ever narrowing
slices so that where once we had been contemplating an encounter
that recalled the famous shower scene from Psycho - the foam
standing in as screening material - we could retreat into a Dadaesque
minimalism that followed every drop of moisture coursing down the
troubled footman's cheek, every twitch of his facial muscles, his very
pulse observed and, yes, heard! The sound of the rush of blood
coursing above the baying. It was possible to watch this animated
statue for hours and to believe that one had understood him and his
motives. And the Mark VI was capable of taking the viewer from
bedlam to the heart of an iceberg within a moment. As I pored over
the scene where Muscletone stood at the door all colour bled from his
