"I feel terrible, Jeeves," I groaned. "I'm as sick as a --
what's the bird? A phoenix?"
"I fancy you mean a parrot, sir." replied Jeeves, profferring a
plastic cup of steaming fluid before my bleary eyes. "The poet
Keats..."
Instructing Jeeves to tell the poet Keats that he was an ass, I
quaffed the potion before me. Suddenly my head cleared, the sun
shone, and the wrens sang in the trees outside my window. It had
been a long night at the Drones Console room, but after one of
Jeeves' life-giving cups of Vendepac coffee I was ready for more.
Lately there had been a certain disagreement between Jeeves and
myself. I had just acquired an Apple Macintosh, to which he had
objected, saying that the Mouse was most unpleasant in
appearance, whereas I thought it rather natty. Jeeves was
contemplating the Mouse with disfavour when the phone rang.
"Lady Judith, sir" said Jeeves.
As regular readers of these chronicles will know, Aunt Judy is
one of my more fearsome aunts, the one who breathes flames on
undergraduates and then jumps up and down on the ashes. "What can
she want, Jeeves?" I gasped. "Has she found out about the
infinitely self-submitting job I ran last week on the
recommendations of the Eagle authors?"
"I could not say, sir. Possibly she wishes you to perform some
service for her."
I took the instrument with trepidation. "Bertie, you young
sheep!" said Aunt Judy, "I want you to write me an improved
version of ZED. Your uncle David and I are short of manpower
right now, and we've just found a list of enhancements that
everyone's been waiting for since 1981."
"But aunt!" I exclaimed. "I know nothing at all about ZED. I'm
still writing this Archive program for TLS, don't you know."
"Bertie! Do I have to come round to your office and staple your
ears to the latest copy of INFO.NEW?"
"Oh all right, aunt." I said weakly, and dug out my copy of the
ZED source, which was covered in dust and written in binary owing
to its great antiquity. Jeeves shimmered out, casting another
frosty glance at the Apple Mouse as he did so.
By the next day I had written the more straightforward of the
ZED improvements and was ready to test them. I went to my
terminal and logged on.
"It's no good, Jeeves." I said. "The Eagle won't let my job run
to get the bally source off tape, dash it. There's a long line of
20-minute Chemistry jobs ahead of it and the silly bird claims
that the cheapest time to run my job will be at 3 p.m. on
November 11th, provided that it stays fine. Shall we pack our
bags and go to Monte Carlo until the job finally runs?"
"I fancy I may be able to help, sir." replied Jeeves
reassuringly, and he stood not upon the order of his going but
went out at once, as somebody once said.
He returned an hour or so later, manifesting an expression of
satisfaction.
"If you would care to resubmit your job, sir, you may be able to
obtain a faster turnround now, I fancy."
I did so, and bless me if the jolly thing didn't start executing
at once. "Jeeves!" I said. "I take my hat off to you. How did you
manage it?"
"I took the liberty of phoning the Chemistry department, sir,
telling them that the University Grants Committee was about to
descend on them for a surprise visit. You will find that the
chemists have cancelled all their jobs and are now all engaged in
serious research into the nature of matter once more. I then
phoned up the Eagle authors and recommended a somewhat more
efficient random number generator for use in the scheduling
algorithm."
"Thank you very much, Jeeves." I sighed. "Take the Mouse and
give it to the poor. You have earned it."
"Very good, sir." said Jeeves, visibly moved. "I shall dispose
of it forthwith."
Jonathan Partington, c. 1990