Muddle and Win Read Online Free Page B

lunched a thousand chips.
    A
schoolgirl
?
    Muddlespot fell off his perch.
    He bounced on the floor a couple of times and sat there with his eyes wobbling and little circles of twittering green ghouls floating around his head.
    He had been expecting someone of immense power and holiness. A terrible enemy, who had defeated all of Corozin’s best. A threat to the very fabric of Pandemonium. A saint. A martyr. Maybe even a lama.
    Maybe the schoolgirl
was
a lama?
    To tell the truth, he was not sure exactly what a lama was and whether you would find one in Darlington Row. The rumours that filtered down as far as Corozin’s palace made him shudder, but were never terribly specific. He had had what you might call a sheltered existence – up to now.
    ‘Pay attention, Agent Muddlespot!’ said one of the guards, plonking him back on the rim of the furnace.
    The other guard had picked up a standard No. 3 red-hot poker and was using it as a pointing stick. ‘Notice the shoes – no scuffs. The tie knotted at the top button, see? And the things you don’t see. She’s vegetarian. Helps injured animals. Visits the old man down the street who can’t get out any more. Alarm bells ringing yet?’
    ‘Er  . . .’
    ‘Better brush up on that fieldwork, Agent.’
    ‘Ve-ry quickly,’ agreed the other.
    (Neither of them, of course, had done any field-work of their own since the days of buckled shoes and powdered wigs. And they weren’t going to do any more if they could help it. Doing what they did down here was easier and safer. And far more Fun.)
    ‘Just check out her stats,’ said one grimly.
    Another pinch of powder went into the furnace.
Huff!
Little figures of fire were leaping and dancing across the image of the girl in the flames. Muddlespot knew what they were. They were the schoolgirl’s Lifetime Deed Counter (LDC).
    Everyone Up There had an LDC. And for all of them, a time came when their totals of good and bad deeds could be compared. There then followed a complicated series of adjustments, weightings, appeals, swaps, derivatives, salvations and redemptions which nobody really understood
but
the basic idea was that if the good deed count was low enough and the bad deed count was high enough then the person in question came Down Here and a Lot of Fun was had in chambers like this one, for a Very Long Time.
    This LDC said:
    Lifetime Good Deeds: 3,971,567
    Lifetime Bad Deeds: NIL
    Muddlespot whistled. It didn’t look as though there was going to be much Fun with Sally Jones. With figures like that, the only source of Fun would be whoever it was who hadn’t been able to make them better.
    ‘Er – is there a fault in the counter?’
    ‘Never ask that question, kid,’ said one guard.
    ‘Low Command gets stressed when you ask about the LDCs  . . .’
    ‘We sent old Filharmouzh down there to tell them there
had
to be a fault. He came back in pieces. I mean,
very small
pieces. When we undid the packet  . . .’ The guard pulled a face. ‘Well, we couldn’t help it.’
    ‘We breathed him in. Bits of him, anyway.’
    ‘He was mostly dust, see.’
    ‘Made me sneeze, he did.’
    ‘Thing is, the LDCs aren’t run by Low Command. It’s more of a Joint Commission kind of thing. With the Other Side. They’re a teeny bit sensitive about that down below. So no, you don’t ask. The LDC tells it like it is. Nil means Nil. Believe it.’
    Billie dashed to get through the front garden gate ahead of Sally. ‘
I’m
on the computer!’ she said.
    The computer had been imported into the house by Greg, Mum’s partner. It stood on the upstairs landing, which was the only space that Mum would allow it. Once Greg got home he would monopolize it for the rest of the evening. The two-hour window between the girls’ return from school and Greg’s from work was very precious.
    ‘Fine,’ sighed Sally, and waited while Billie hunted for her house key. She reckoned up the chances of getting five uninterrupted minutes on