"Interdimensional travel, please."
The reception clerk ignored me and continued running his grubby index finger down a long column of neatly annotated figures in an open ledger. His lips moved silently as he laboriously tried to keep a running total in his head, allowing me to take a closer look at him.
Following the grand nineteenth-century style of his employers at 'Menschen's Portal Emporium', he dressed (badly) in the fashion of that era: a black dress coat with shiny elbows, a faded white shirt with a heavily starched upright collar, badly frayed, and around it a drooping black tie, surprisingly finished off in a fashionable bow. Did this awkward-looking character have social aspirations?
Eventually, he admitted defeat in his task and, with a pained sigh, removed his finger from its place on the column of figures and closed the ledger. An eyebrow twitched in grudging recognition of my presence, and he bowed respectfully.
"With pleasure, sir, I will make the necessary arrangements. If you would care to wait."
His thin voice was an unpleasant nasal whine with a fake upper-class accent that was unintentionally comic, and I tried not to laugh at his strangulated pronunciation.
Earth Minor, my home world, has a population of immigrants from different historical periods in the parent world, and we take pride in our cosmopolitan way of life. All accents are socially acceptable here, but any attempt to conceal your heritage by mimicking a different accent to impress, especially British, goes against the grain.
Our planet is an artificial satellite built to house refugees from an overcrowded Earth, but we are fiercely independent. Most people dressed according to the historical era of the country of their ancestors, in the same way that the clerk had adopted the dress code of his employers. But, for the receptionist of a high-class travel portal emporium, his appearance fell far below the expected standard.
For a start, he looked in need of a wash. His shirt was more grey than white, and his bow tie was crooked, but I was not in a position to criticise and carefully folded my arms to conceal the rip in my T-shirt.
After his automatic greeting, he now gave me the full once-over, and by the way his lip curled, I guessed he did not like what he saw. Assuming that I was an easy target and unable to fight back, he smirkingly made what he imagined to be a witty riposte.
"I assume, sir, that you have a client account with us. You are a gold cardholder, perhaps."
Heavy sarcasm was no substitute for wit, but it was not in my interest to point this out.
"Well, no," I said. "That is, not now. You see…"
He didn't let me finish.
"In that case, sir, you need to make an appointment. You can contact General Enquiries here with most acoustic devices. If you don't own one yourself, then perhaps a neighbour will oblige. Please close the door as you leave."
As he was picking up his ledger, he glanced at my hand and breathed in sharply. His manner instantly changed, and he became pathetically servile, wringing his hands together and bowing low.
"My dear sir, do forgive me. My lapse in manners was quite deplorable."
He coughed deferentially.
"I believe that the signet ring you are wearing bears the crest of Lord Foxberry. A most noble family. His Lordship is an esteemed client of ours. You are the younger son, perhaps?
"Oh, dear, manners, Mr Cheap, manners," he said before I could reply. "It is not my place to ask personal questions of Your Grace. Please excuse my impertinence. Do you wish to open an account as a new customer?"
I was astonished.
'Lord Foxberry?'
Who was he talking about? My father worked for the city council, and my sister gave me the ring for my birthday. It was homemade. She is an expert at that kind of stuff and works as a designer in a factory where they manufacture imitation jewellery. The crest was a fake, but it was good enough to fool Mr Cheap. I had no idea that it was the crest of Lord Foxberry. She must have copied it from a magazine.
This deferential attitude from Mr Cheap made me feel even more uncomfortable than I already was. Menschen Brothers, 'Specialists in Inter-Dimensional Travel', was an exclusive establishment, and a scruffy, seventeen-year-old student like me was not their typical customer.
There was a sudden jolt beneath my feet. The kind of noise a train makes when it passes over a set of points and changes to another line.
Now two men were standing behind the counter.
Mr Cheap was oblivious to the presence of a companion and went on searching for a visitor's pass to pin to my shirt.
The stranger was a little older than Cheap, but there was a distinct similarity. He, too, was dressed in the formal black suit of a Victorian clerk and had a thin, sly-looking face. He was surprised to find himself here and looked around curiously. His eyes fell on me, and he bowed.
"Uriah Heep, at your service, sir, humble, but willing."
He started to laugh most alarmingly, showing an uneven set of yellow teeth. Mr Cheap made no reaction and went on with his work as if nothing was happening.
The intruder beckoned me forward, and something like a film in a cinema began to run behind him. It showed Uriah Heep standing above an old man who sat at his office desk with his head resting in his hands. Heep was pointing to entries in a financial ledger with a malicious sneer that caused the terrified victim, whom I took to be his employer, Mr Whitfield, to hang his head in shame and fear.
The image faded, and another scene appeared. This one showed Uriah Heep on one knee proposing to a weeping young woman. I first assumed this to be Agnes Whitfield, daughter of Mr Whitfield, whom Heep was trying to blackmail into marriage, but surely, I was wrong.
The stunningly beautiful girl had a light brown skin tone and was wearing a modern short skirt. She had long black hair, and around her forehead a coloured band. Of course, I did not know it was then, but I know now.
It was Montana!
The floor jolted as before, and our visitor and the images were gone, vanished into thin air.
Uriah Heep! I recognised him as the scheming clerk in Charles Dickens' novel. 'David Copperfield', which we read in my English class.
But Uriah Heep was just a character in a book.
I had unknowingly met for the first time a character from fiction, who had crossed over to become a real person in the physical world.
Mr Cheap, who had witnessed nothing of what had just happened, broke into my thoughts.
"There we are, sir," he said, handing me my pass. " Now I must introduce myself properly. I am Cluan Cheap by name and humble by nature. I serve my superiors as a mere clerk, sir, a simple employee, and somebody of no great account, but these are the early days of my career. People often remark that I have a flair for business matters. 'One to watch', as I overheard a leader in the business world describe me to a colleague.
"I can be of valuable assistance to a young gentleman like yourself, a person of means and noble family, for whom the details of business and commerce are too sordid for any personal involvement."
I was too confused to answer. What was going on here? When the floor jolted, I must have entered another dimension. Or seen a mixed-up vision of a possible future.
From an outside corridor came the sound of approaching footsteps, and Mr Cheap cocked his head to one side, ears outstretched like a guard dog. He must have recognised who was coming and hurried to bring our interview to a close.
"Enough for the present," he said. "Address all correspondence for the personal attention of Mr Cluan Cheap. Now, sir, may I have the honour of shaking your hand and sealing our agreement? As gentlemen, we require no further assurance; our word is our bond. Quickly now, if you would, sir."
Mr Cheap clasped my hand in a limp grip, and his flesh had the queasy softness of a wet fish. He eventually let go, and I rubbed my palm against the cloth of my jeans, trying to remove every trace of his touch.
"Good morning," said a severe looking but handsome lady in a black Victorian dress. She crossed the heavily carpeted floor, pushing an antique vacuum cleaner.
She glanced at the clerk behind the counter, and he cringed under her gaze.
"What are you doing front of house, Cheap?" She barked, "Your place is in the back office."
"I know my place well, ma'am. I just came out to ascertain some figures from the Daily Sales Ledger."
His words and tone were polite, but his body shook with indignation.
"Well, go and ascertain them somewhere else," said the lady brusquely.
Mr Cheap scuttled off without another word.
Who was this woman?
Judging by her air of authority, she was either a boss with an eccentric dress sense or a cleaning lady with an attitude, but back then, I was too quick to judge.
This lady had incredible powers that bordered on the supernatural, and one day, in another dimension, she would save my life.