Chapter 19

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Heralded by a crackle of static, Featherstone's reedy voice once again burst from the speakers. "Behold, agents! Behold what I have—"

"Oi! Who you callin' agent, sunshine?"

"What? Oh, right. Sorry. Behold, agents and witch! Behold what—"

"Excuse me. I'm ever so sorry to interrupt, but I'm afraid I'm not an agent, either."

"Huh? Right, right, of course. Okay. Behold, agents and witch and princess! Behold—"

"Frank, you moron! What the hell is that thing?"

Radovic's question was rapidly rendered redundant, as the giant foot's emergence from the portal was followed by an accompanying giant leg, which was in turn followed by the remainder of what turned out to be, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, a giant.

"Well," replied Featherstone, once the enormous, hulking, club-wielding form, dressed in simple homespun garments, had emerged fully into the hangar, and stood blinking vacantly in the sunlight, "it's a person. A person of elevated stature."

"It's a what?" The eye-bulge was as distinct in Radovic's broadcast voice as it was on his face.

"A person of elevated stature."

"What, you mean, like a giant?"

"Well, I don't think that's really very PC, Dr Radovic."

"PC? PC? Next you're going to be telling me we should call that bloody witch a dermatologically challenged person."

"Well, actually—"

"Frank, what the hell were you thinking? When I asked for something terrifying, I didn't bloody well mean terrifying to us, too! Until we perfect our control of these imports, we need to contain them—how the hell are we going to contain that?"

Featherstone audibly swallowed. "Well, it's just when you got angry about the dragon, I thought perhaps I'd try something without wings. Something the electric fence would contain."

"Wings?" demanded Radovic. "Wings? Why the hell would that thing need wings when it can just step over the bloody fence. Honestly, Frank, you must be the stupidest genius in existence."

"I'm so sorry, Dr Radovic." The younger man was clearly crushed. "It's just that his stature turned out to be a little more elevated than I was anticipating. You see, I'm finding that as the amplitude of the probability waveform increases, the specificity of each import's characteristics is tending to become a little less...specific. Furthermore"—there was a sudden crackling from the now twenty-metre-tall portal, which pulsed from green to yellow and then to red, and in quick succession spat out an axe, a battered lamp and a confused-looking goose, before returning to its original colour—"the whole system is becoming a bit...unpredictable," he finished faintly.

"Becoming unpredictable?" muttered Fields, craning his neck to look up at the enormous figure towering over him, its giant form silhouetted against the late-afternoon sky. "Well, that's just wonderful."

The giant gazed around, seemingly oblivious to the tiny people backing away from his massive, boot-clad feet. "Nee," he rumbled in a deep, resonant voice, reminiscent of nothing so much as two tectonic plates colliding. "Moe, rye, lum," he continued, as a troubled expression formed on his unshaven, lumpy features. "I'm gwonna sit down on me bum," he finished, before proceeding to do so, with a resounding, window-rattling thump.

Fields drew a bead between the two huge hazel eyes, but refrained from firing, partly because the giant hadn't actually threatened them as yet, but mostly because he was pretty sure it wouldn't achieve much beyond possibly pissing the big guy off. And although he hadn't been sure of much over the course of what was proving to be an inordinately long and trying day, he was pretty sure a couple of tonnes of pissed-off giant would be seriously bad news.

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