by Hugh Macnab
coin.
At first he stood still - unwilling to risk disturbing the sand, perhaps covering the coin – and looked all around. Then, he tried manoeuvring horizontally just above the surface of the sand, but still without joy. Next he tried floating up to just outside the neck of the container, where he had been when Bb’d dropped the coin into the slot, to see if he could figure out where it would have landed and that was when he heard the laugh.
A child’s laugh. A girl he thought, and it seemed to come from inside the dome and somewhere further along the sandy ceiling. A second laugh confirmed the first, and Shylock once again swooped to surface level and set out following the merry sound.
There were two of them - children that is - playing together in the sand. A boy and a girl - both around five years of age, and from many aspects of their appearance, possibly twins.
It was the boy who spotted Shylock first. ‘Hello, who are you? he asked, with that familiar sweet innocent curiosity of almost any young child.
Shylock introduced himself and in turn, asked their names. The boy introduced himself as Jack, his sister as Jill and confirmed that they were indeed twins – Siamese twins joined at the waist, with three legs.
‘I’m sorry…’Shylock began, noticing their infirmity for the time.
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ cut in Jill. ‘He makes me do this all the time,’ she said, indicating her brother with her thumb. ‘We don’t have to be joined like this, we can be anything we want to be, but he likes sympathy, so…..’
‘You rotter!’ shouted her brother. ‘You always spoil my fun. I don’t know why I play with you!’ he sulked.
Bemused, Shylock asked Jill why she went along with her brother’s idea.
‘Oh, this is actually quite a good form,’ he explained. We can play good-guy bad-guy, cops and robbers, hero and villain…you know, lots of different games for two.
‘But why be joined together?’ Shylock asked.
‘That’s mother’s idea,’ Jill explained. ‘She holds the inter-dimensional record in the three-legged race with my father, and she’s really proud of it. She's always on at us to train. Besides, when playing hide and seek in Wilderment, it takes so long to find each other that we’re almost always late for supper.’
‘I see,’ replied Shylock, considering the difficulty of finding a needle in a haystack much the same, only easier.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’ asked Jack.
‘I’m looking for a small silver coin I left here by mistake,’ Jack said.
‘Is it about this size,’ asked Jill, forming a small circle with her thumb and seventh finger. Shylock replied that it was. ‘Well,’ she continued. ‘That’s easy. The Sandworm has it.’
‘The Sandworm?’ asked Shylock, not at all sure he wanted to know the answer. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh yes,’ answered Jack. ‘We found it and traded it for two large Mr. Whippy ice-cream cones! It was worth it, they were really yummy!’
Shylock remembered the ice-cream vendor back on Bb’s beach at a time which seemed like forever ago - and was wondering how the children had found him when large fluorescent letters flashed in the air just above the children proclaiming the best ice cream in creation was only available from Mr. Whippy. Apparently Mr Whippy was pretty good at targeting his advertising campaign.
So much seemed to have happened to him since he’d left Bb at the beach – and now, he had a Sandworm to find. He felt like curling up, sticking his thumb in his mouth and letting the world go by, but realised that regardless of what he was going to do when he got back to Earth, and he was going back, he had to find the Sandworm first. He asked the twins if they knew where it was.
‘Well,’ they answered together. ‘It seems like he doesn’t like the sand being disturbed,’ said Jill. ‘And when we started building our sand-castles, he appeared pretty quickly,’ added Jack. ‘He said it gives him the most awful headaches,’ explained Jill. ‘But because we gave him the silver coin, he said we could play here for a while – that he’d hide until we were gone,’ Jack finished.
Shylock dropped from his hovering position and sat on the sand, shuffling his bottom until he was comfortable. ‘And when do you think you’ll be leaving?
‘Hmm,’ they both thought, aloud. ‘Perhaps a Mr. Whippy….’ they said in unison, allowing the sentence to trail off.
Shylock let out an ever so quiet whimper, and without even bothering to attempt persuasion, promised to be right back.
IOU
Shylock shrieked when his thought-journey ended and he hovered over Bb’s beach. It was deserted! Not a soul in sight - empty, not even a Jupiter-bar wrapper! No Snow, and certainly no Mr. Whippy.
Throwing back his head he howled, ‘BBEEEEEEEEE! BBEEEEEEEEE!’
‘No need to shout,’ replied Bb, appearing in an instant - immediately in front of Shylock. ‘Good grief, you know this is my beach and I’m never far away.’
‘Thank goodness you’re here,’ gasped Shylock, throwing courtesy to the wind. ‘What happened? Where’s the snow, and all the people? and…’
‘And hello to you too,’ cut in Bb, sarcastically. ‘I’ve missed you, and hope that you’ve been all right, and that your beach – totally covered in ice and snow – has not caused you too many problems?’
Shylock, caught a little short, bumbled an embarrassed apology of sorts.
‘Humph!’ replied Bb, unimpressed. ‘And I suppose you’re back for a reason? Probably wanting something, I suspect?’
‘Well, eeerrr…yes, actually,’ Shylock had to agree. ‘But, nothing very much!’ he added, as an afterthought. ‘Just a couple of ice-cream cones – with chocolate flakes!’
Bb blinked in surprise, not sure if he should believe Shylock or not, but never-the-less sensing a profit opportunity. ‘And just how much are you prepared to pay?’ he asked.
Shylock now had a dilemma. He had already given Bb his only coin, which he needed back…but couldn’t get, without paying for two ice-cream cones for the twins who would leave Change’s gaol so that he could try to find the sandworm who would perhaps….this was getting too hard, he thought to himself. ‘Look,’ he said to Bb. ‘How much would you like?’
‘How much can I have?’ replied Bb.
‘How about I make out an IOU? asked Shylock.
‘An IOU?’ queried Bb. ‘What’s that?’
‘You know,’ said Shylock. ‘An I owe you!’
‘Ah,’ Bb exclaimed. ‘You mean a promissory note, a future assurance to pay, a binding contract or bond?’
‘That’s it,’ Shylock agreed. ‘We agree a sum. I sign an IOU and give it to you to keep until I can redeem it.’
Bb thought for a moment. ‘Okay. That sounds agreeable.’
‘So, how much would you like for two ice-cream cones?’ asked Shylock.
‘With chocolate flakes,’ Bb added. ‘As much as I can have.’
Shylock, realising that he could literally be in this debate forever and not get anywhere, also that he already had a virtually infinite sum to find back on Earth, readily agreed. Bb instantly produced a small writing desk, chair, blank scroll of parchment and a feather quill. Shylock sat and committed to pay the bearer as much as he could have, sometime – and signed the document Shylock Winston the third.
Bb examined the parchment, added Winnie in brackets after Shylock’s name, rolled it and placed it in his inside pocket. ‘Link up,’ he said, poking Shylock in the chest with one finger. ‘We’re going to my place.’
Random-infinite numbers
Shylock could hear the noise well before they arrived at Bb’s place. It seemed like hundreds of people talking, shouting and laughing all at once, and when they did finally materialise that’s exactly what he saw. People (a loose description for all shapes and sizes) everywhere! He could recognise some of the life-forms he’d already seen on Bb’s snow-covered beach.
Bb’s place extended as far in all directions as had the beach in Get Lucky, only where the beach had been completel
y void of life, this was the opposite. A vast city of tents, booths, arcades and galleries spread out in front of him – and behind, to the side, in fact all around! The walkways between were filled with people, or in many cases, moving shapes Shylock could only presume to be people – a vast sea of milling, smiling, happy people. Shylock stood stock still in astonishment.
‘This is all yours?’ Shylock asked, holding his palms open and upwards.
‘Impressed?’ Bb asked, smiling, revealing two rows of perfectly formed, gleaming white teeth.
Shylock couldn’t help but comment. ‘You’re teeth! They’re…’
‘Perfect?’ finished Bb. ‘Yes, they are, aren’t they,’ he said, honouring Shylock with a second showing. ‘Profits have been good recently.’
‘Profits,’ muttered Shylock, irritably. ‘If you negotiate all your deals as well as you did with my ice-cream, I’m not surprised you’re doing well.’
‘Right!’ said Bb. ‘That reminds me. Ice-cream….now, where did I put him?’ he said, slowly drifting off along one of the apparently never-ending passage-ways. ‘Up here, somewhere…I think.’
Shylock followed, totally absorbed in the richness of the pastiche around him. First, a stall selling familiar candy-floss to nine-legged table-like forms, then a stall-keeper demanding that he should throw jellyfish-like objects at a rotating fan, after that a giant Panda sat stuffing a larger Panda into it’s mouth with everyone around wagering on the probability of his success.
The farther he followed Bb, the harder it was for him to