by M T McGuire
“Squid?” asked The Pan, his eyes lighting up. Like all Hamgeeans, he was particularly fond of squid.
“Yer,” said Gladys, as she hefted a plate out of the oven and dumped it on the kitchen table, “’S disgusting! Eating the tentacles an’ all. I dunno how you does it.”
“It’s very tasty and nutritious,” he said, grinning, “you should try one. Here,” he proffered a fork full of sucker-ridden tendrils at her and in absence of a positive reaction, ate them himself. By The Prophet it was good. “Done to perfection, are you sure you won’t try one?”
“Very,” said Ada.
“Suit yourself,” he said, waving the fork, “all the more for me.” He had a distinct impression Gladys and Ada wanted to speak to him about something else. Normally, at this point, they would head back to the bar. This evening they hovered uncertainly. Ada eventually broke the silence.
“You do realise, don’t you, dear, that if you ever get into any trouble, we have contacts, Gladys and I?”
The Pan couldn’t stop himself from doing a double take. He froze, knife and fork poised over his plate and as he stared at her, felt the colour drain from his face, not that there was much there. He seemed to have become paler recently. Lack of light, he presumed, from all the make-up he was having to wear.
“I hope you’re not in the Resistance,” he said coolly.
“Not the one you’re thinking of, dear,” she said.
Surely they hadn’t betrayed him, he trusted them, he always had, and he knew he had good instincts. No-one behind him. He listened. Nothing but the usual burble of voices from the bar downstairs. He was ready to run if he had to but it would be a pity to leave that squid.
“Mmm,” he put his knife and fork down, “then what are you talking about?” He made eye contact. It wasn’t something he did often which was why, by doing so the right way, he could make people feel extremely awkward. Not awkward enough to tell him the truth, though, even if Ada blushed and looked away first.
“Nothing,” she told him breezily. Yeh, right. He raised a quizzical eyebrow at her.
“Nothing?”
“Eat yer squid,” said Gladys in exasperation, “Ada and I has to get back to the bar; Trev’s on ’is own.”
The Pan was puzzled. Whatever it was she had wanted to say, she’d chickened out. He had been so wrapped up in concealing his own secrets it had never occurred to him that Ada and Gladys might have any. They didn’t strike him as the secretive type. Clearly, he’d misjudged them. Somehow, he would have to find out more.
Chapter 22
The next morning dawned bright and clear. The Pan donned his Mervinette disguise and sold the ring. Then he returned home to the Parrot to change – entering the usual way, up the drainpipe. Disguise jettisoned, he left, dressed as himself and took the money to Gerry the Work Experience Creature at Snurd and they spent the morning discussing the finishing touches to be made to his own set of wheels. He returned to the Parrot at lunchtime with a bunch of flowers he’d stolen for Gladys and Ada and went to his room.
He had slept little the previous night, but he had done a lot of thinking, partly about his enigmatic conversation with Ada and partly about the things he had been given by Big Merv. He opened the bag Harry had removed from the last safety deposit box and spread the contents across his bed. It was odd stuff. He opened the sewing kit. First he examined the scissors. The Pan knew good craftsmanship when he saw it. This was the best, which was only to be expected if his theory as to the previous owner’s identity was correct. The Nimmists were never ones to stint when it came to commissioning works of art. In many respects the Nimmists were never ones to stint full stop. Perhaps that was where the K’Barthans had earned their reputation of being happy-go-lucky. The scissors were gold, intricately patterned and too distinctive to be sellable. On to the needles and bobbins then. The needles were newer, ordinary and therefore worth very little, the bobbins were as problematic as the scissors and the thimble ... the thimble. He held it up to the light and turned it over and over in his hands.
“Oh man,” he said and whistled.
It had a border depicting tiny scenes that he recognised from his brief Nimmist education as episodes from the life of Arnold, The Prophet. It was beautiful, exquisite and would be even more impossible to sell than the scissors. He could have it melted down he supposed ... no he couldn’t. Had he finished his education, he’d planned, against his father’s wishes, to go to Art School. He would starve before he trashed anything so beautifully made.
“This is a serious piece of kit,” he told himself.
Oooh. There was something stuffed into it. Interesting.
A piece of paper. He took it out and unfolded it. It was old and yellowed and covered in mathematical symbols. Adding up had never been The Pan’s forte, let alone reading equations, and he wished he’d paid more attention in his maths classes at school. There were geometric drawings, too and he wondered what they were all for.
He folded up the paper but when he came to put it back in the thimble he noticed something very strange. A faint glow appeared to be coming from inside. He turned it over, puzzled. The top was made of the same gold as the sides but when he held it open-end up there was a small dot of light in the bottom as if he was looking towards the end of a tunnel. He held it up to his eye and almost dropped it in astonishment.
He could see through it, but the view was not his room. Instead he saw the sea bathed in sunlight, gulls circling and small ships dancing on the waves. The picture was so bewitchingly realistic he could almost feel the wind on his face. It made him intensely homesick. He thought about the seaside in Hamgee, about the bar where he and his brother had gone to hang around and chat up girls. He thought about his sister, who had usually spent her time warning the other girls about her brothers while allowing their friends to chat her up. She was the middle one of the three, his older brother was a regular Casanova. The Pan was not. There had been girlfriends but nothing like the numbers who had flocked around his big brother.
It wasn’t that girls weren’t attracted to him initially – the difficulties usually began when he spoke.
The Pan wanted a girl he could really talk to but most seemed to find his jokes offensive and anything more than small talk off-putting – and what with all the trouble he got into at school, they tended to regard him as a dangerous freak. He had hoped the problem would go away when he became an adult, but being blacklisted, he’d never had the chance to test the theory.
“It would probably help if you managed to grow up and actually become an adult,” he told himself in his Virtual Father’s voice.
“I am an adult.”
“I was talking about mental maturity.”
“OK, you have me there.”
He didn’t have the energy for a row with his Virtual Father right now and turned his mind to remembering happier days. As he did so, the view through the thimble changed. When he thought about the bar he’d visited in his youth he saw it as he imagined it might be currently and when he thought about his other childhood haunts they also appeared as if in the present, bathed in warm evening sunlight.
“Hmm, showing me what I want to see are you? In that case ...”
He thought about his family but no matter how vividly he tried to imagine his parents or his brother and sister, the thimble produced nothing but a misty grey blur. Perhaps they were dead, or maybe it had been so long since he’d seen them that his subconscious mind – or whatever was feeding the images he could see in the bottom of the thimble – had forgotten what they looked like.
It was time for the pubs to open, so he experimented with a more immediate subject, the saloon bar of the Parrot and Screwdriver. To his surprise, in his thimble’s faintly fish-eye view, none of the regular early evening clientele were there, only a group of Grongles. The inside of the thimble had seemed to be showing his dreams, it must be showing his fears now. He shoved the bag, the thimble and the rest of the strange items it contained in the bottom of the
wardrobe and went downstairs.
Seven Grongles looked up sharply as a shifty young man in blue canvas jeans and a loud green and purple paisley silk shirt walked into the deserted bar. Apart from the Grongles it was empty, all other customers having wisely made their excuses and left. Even Humbert, Ada’s foul-mouthed parrot, had been sensible enough to shut up. Any conversation the Grongles had been making died on their lips at the appearance of The Pan. For his part he was in shock. Grongles hardly ever came into the Parrot. He was suddenly afraid it might be all his fault and that while playing with the thimble he had inadvertently imagined them there.
“Ah,” he said.
Chapter 23
The Grongles eyed The Pan coldly.
Here was a tricky dilemma. He was already in the room and to leave would look pointed and might cause them offence. Offending Grongles was never shrewd, especially if you were a government blacklisted person and you were trying not to draw attention to yourself.
However, staying would be foolish if the Grongles had decided they would like to spend their evening alone. He hesitated, trying to glance round the bar with an air of affected nonchalance. Humbert took off.
“Arnold’s air biscuits!” he shouted, flying over to The Pan and sitting on his shoulder.
Oh great.
“Thanks Humbert. Now they’ll think you belong to me,” he said quietly.
Never mind. Too late now, he was going to have to order himself a drink, neck it and leave as quickly as possible.
“Evening gentlemen,” he said casually and walked over to the bar. The only sound to break the silence was the clatter of his elastic-sided pointy boots as they made contact with the stone flagged floor. He was painfully conscious of the fact he was not in disguise as a tweedy old man but was appearing as himself, The Pan of Hamgee, in all his GBI glory.
“Alright mate?” asked Trev, giving him a reassuring wink. “What’ll it be?”
Something fortifying, if only to help dull the pain of the parrot claws digging into his shoulder. Humbert was scared, too, and hanging on with surprising strength.
“A large brandy, please,” squeaked The Pan, “a very large one.”
Trev poured him a triple on the house and he stood at the bar, with his back to the Grongles, using his pair of extra eyes to watch them closely. He tried not to start shaking too obviously as one of them came and stood next to him. He recognised the voice at once when the Grongle said, “Good evening to you, vermin.” It was the patrol Grongle who’d stopped The Pan and Big Merv when they were taking the test drive in his snurd.
“Good evening, sir,” said The Pan.
Oh dear. It seemed the Grongle had recognised him and wanted to chat.
“Do I know you?” he asked. Bad that he had recognised The Pan but good that it appeared he couldn’t remember where from.
“I don’t think so, sir.” By The Prophet’s snot this was unlucky.
“No. I do know you.”
“Begging your pardon,” said The Pan, only too aware that he was about to contradict something larger and more prone to violence than he was, “but I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.” He held out his hand. “How do you do?”
The Grongle made no attempt to shake his hand and stared at him blankly.
“Your accent,” he said, “are you Hamgeean?”
“No, no,” said The Pan swiftly, “can’t stand southerners. No sophistication. Do you know they eat squid? Even the tentacles? Disgusting they are.”
The Grongle nodded.
“I used to be stationed in Hamgee. Personally, I like a bit of squid myself,” he said, “as, I suspect, do you.”
“Ner, not me, mate,” said The Pan imitating the way Trev spoke, “I’m a pie and chips man meself.”
“If that’s so, vermin, I’m sure you won’t mind my checking,” retorted the Grongle, taking a static-powered hand-held computer from his pocket. Like most Grongles, his military-style haircut meant he couldn’t charge his computer the usual way, by rubbing it in his hair. Instead, he rubbed it on a special patch of fur sewn onto his tunic for just this eventuality. He locked eyes with The Pan and stared at him while he powered up his electronic gizmo. It beeped to indicate it was charged and he flipped open the screen.
“Let us see, Hamgeean, five nine, early twenties, dark hair, blue eyes, shifty ...” he said typing rapidly at the tiny keyboard with his thumbs. “Status: GBI – your continued existence is treason,” he glanced at The Pan. “No matter,” he continued, closing his computer with an abrupt snap. “We are not here on your account. Two days ago a robbery took place in the city.”
Didn’t it just. The Pan adopted his most innocent expression.
“Really?” he asked. “How interesting.”
“Some worthless artefacts were stolen which were of great sentimental value to the new Protector of Ning Dang Po, Lord Vernon.”
The Pan could see, via his reflection in the mirror behind the bar, that he had lost any hint of colour.
“L—Lord Vernon,” he stammered. “I thought the name of our auspicious Protector was Mergatroid.”
“Protector Mergatroid met with an unfortunate accident.”
“Ah,” squeaked The Pan, nodding sagely. The Protector must have been in Lord Vernon’s way, he reflected. People who got in Lord Vernon’s way tended to meet with ‘unfortunate accidents’, except for The Pan who’d merely been blacklisted. Lord Vernon had only been Sergeant Vernon then, of course.
The Pan had been standing looking in a shop window in his home town when some hapless unfortunate came running down the street towards him, closely pursued by Sergeant Vernon.
It had been one of those side-stepping incidents. The fugitive sped past and The Pan had been momentarily distracted by the fact he was old and yet moving very fast for a man of that age. Then he had realised Sergeant Vernon was chasing the man and that he was standing directly in his path. Most anxious to avoid contact with any Grongle, most of all one with a reputation like Sergeant Vernon’s, The Pan had stepped smartly to the left. So did Sergeant Vernon. The Pan had stepped quickly to the right and so had Sergeant Vernon. The Pan had made one final effort to avoid a collision, by stepping back to the left again but Sergeant Vernon had done the same thing and they had collided. The fleeing felon had escaped and Sergeant Vernon had got to his knees with lightning speed, clamped his hands round The Pan’s throat and begun to squeeze hard. Sergeant Vernon wore black suede gloves, even in the height of summer, with a selection of rings on the outside.
“You are obstructing justice,” he had said.
Unfortunately, although The Pan was a perennial coward, he never knew when to shut up.
“I don’t think I am.”
“Oh really?” said Sergeant Vernon, increasing the pressure on The Pan’s neck, “how so?”
“Because I’d have to obstruct the Just to do that. You don’t qualify.”
In reply, Sergeant Vernon had squeezed his neck so hard he couldn’t breathe. He remembered little else other than feeling the increasing pressure on his windpipe and listening to the voice of his father, which seemed to be coming from a long way away, pleading for his son’s life.
The bruises had taken weeks to go down and his father had spent the subsequent evening lecturing him about the differences between being brave and being an idiot. The Pan would have plenty of opportunity to be brave when he became a man, he was told, always assuming, of course that he could avoid being an idiot long enough to allow himself to become one. Hardly a day passed, now, when he didn’t wish he could wind back the clock, repeat the experience and this time, keep his big mouth shut.
Unlike every other Grongle in the world, Sergeant Vernon had grey eyes, and instead of slits they had circular pupils like a human. Something about those human eyes in a Grongle face, the tone of grey, the absence of any warmth or humanity, gave Sergeant Vernon a powerful stare – almost hypnotic.
The Pan shivered as he remembered how the sergeant had leaned towards hi
m, subjecting him to the full power of his ice-eyed glare. He remembered how he had stared back into those eyes and felt as if they were drawing something out of him, in a very evil way; his essence, his being, his soul.
“Who are you?” Sergeant Vernon had asked and instead of making something up, The Pan, half-mesmerised and unable to stop himself, had told him his real name.
“As I was explaining to you, vermin,” the Grongle at the bar continued, bringing The Pan’s thoughts abruptly back to the present, “Lord Vernon wishes to have his belongings returned. One item has been discovered. A ruby ring. It was sold yesterday morning by an elderly man who has been seen in this establishment on several occasions. Bring him to me and I may forget to tell Lord Protector Vernon I have found The Pan of Hamgee. Think about it. You know where I am if you would like to talk.” He went back to the table and sat down, leaving The Pan shaking and fearful at the bar.
Chapter 24
Lord Vernon. It couldn’t be anyone else running the country could it? Oh no, it had to be him and it had to be his stuff sitting in a bag upstairs. Typical. While The Pan had to admit he’d had several lucky escapes over the years, he felt that on the whole, his luck sucked. Almost as mightily as his life, he thought miserably.
“Wossup?”
“Nothing you need to know about.” Trev adopted a hurt expression. “Seriously, don’t get involved.”
Before Trev could utter a reply, one of the Grongles shouted: “You there! Barman! Another drink.”
There was a slight kerfuffle as Ada and Gladys appeared from the Holy of Holies behind the bar and by-passed Trev.
“Just coming,” called Ada cheerily, waving a full pitcher of orange juice in the air. Ada hurried over to the table with Gladys in hot pursuit and poured each of the Grongles a full glass.
“May I propose a toast, dears?” she asked them.
“If you must,” said the patrol Grongle who’d recognised The Pan, gracelessly.