by Nina Post
“Medusa told me that you match the flavors to the nutrients in Cluck Snack products,” she said.
“That’s right,” Archie said.
“She also told me that you have to constantly respond to the changing ecosystem and nutritional needs of each type of single-purpose angel.” She leaned in the doorway.
Archie pushed his gigantic magnifying glasses with built-in light to the top of his head. “Correct.”
She rubbed her forehead. “OK.” She hesitated. “What I need to know is, am I feeding them right? I order boxes of Cluck Snack, but it’s whatever they want. I can’t keep track of what more than fifty SPs need to eat. I just buy it, and let them sort it out. Am I―” She scratched her neck. “Should I―” She put her hands on her hips, but changed her mind and crossed them in front. “Am I being irresponsible and careless?”
Archie put down some kind of beaker and held her by the shoulders. He arched a brow. “Your shoulders feel so bony.”
“Thank you. Yours too.”
“Are you remembering to eat?”
“Sometimes.” She felt disoriented, like she had phased into some kind of parallel universe, where things were similar, but weird. She wondered if Freud’s concept of the ‘unhomelike’ would apply here. Archie holding her shoulders and expressing concern for her was about to drop-kick her into an out-of-body experience.
“You’re doing fine,” Archie said, in a reassuringly rumbly voice. “They will innately want to eat the Cluck Snack product that meets their specific nutritional requirements. They have bracelets, yes, that are engraved with their favorite Cluck Snack product?”
“Yes.”
“And they tend to eat mostly that product, along with a few others?” Archie asked.
“Yes.”
“There’s nothing to worry about, then.”
She didn’t know if she could deal with this. She didn’t have the brass ovaries to ask if he had any children. But men didn’t necessarily know. What if he said no, because he didn’t know otherwise, and she withdrew from the discussion only to end up regretting it forever?
She sighed, slumped at Mr. Black’s swivel chair, and stared at nothing in particular. She had to stop over-thinking this and work on getting the Impostor out of CAH, and getting Archie recognized as the bona fide, authentic, accept-no-imitations Archie Driscoll.
Some of the SPs came into Mr. Black’s office, climbed up on her chair and sat on her desk. With two SPs splayed across her like giant giant cats, and the others knocking things off the desk as they raced Mr. Black’s pen holder and paperweight, her mood lifted.
he Ferryman strode into the lobby of Amenity Tower with the sleek primal energy of a jungle cat. The automatic door opened for him without anyone pressing the button, well in time for him to prowl through it. He seemed to move in slow motion, and gave a licentious once-over to the three women in the lobby.
If he were a Bird of Paradise dancing in front of the house he constructed, any nearby female would be won over and come in. This was the reaction he was used to, and he still couldn’t accept that he never got it from Kelly Driscoll, who had proven to be inured to his charms. Especially after she removed a giant leech from his back and watched him cry. But he didn’t like to think about that day.
“R. Ferryman here for Mr. Raum.” The Ferryman, when he felt like it, spoke in a nearly inaudible, low-frequency hum that had baffled and frustrated cities all over the world during his travels, giving rise to the unexplained phenomena Taos Hum, Bristol Hum, Auckland Hum, and Bondi Hum.
Clementine smiled like she was on nitrous oxide, and spoke in a purr. “He’s expecting you in the underground parking garage, Mr. Ferryman.”
Raum and three other board members minus Af―plus a videographer for What’s On Your Mind, With Roger Balbi―waited in a red trolley parked on the street by the same loading dock where they had once tried to escape in a dumpster.
“Uh, no,” the Ferryman said when he saw the trolley.
Raum stepped out from behind the wheel and paused on the steps. “Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how hard it was to get this trolley for the day? I had to talk the giant water scorpion into going out and stealing it. He’s going to hold that over my head forever. The tables have turned. Now who will be giving whom a manicure?”
The Ferryman started to walk away, but whipped around and pointed at Raum, then the trolley. “Do you have any idea how unsexy this is?”
Raum hopped down to the concrete floor. “You’re a Ferryman. Since when does your kind care about being sexy?”
“Since me.”
“This is what you do,” Raum protested. “You ferry, whether in a boat or a trolley. We have your deposit. We have an existing working relationship. We have an NDA. We―”
“No we don’t. Af and I have a working relationship.”
“I have a reference from Af.” Raum held out a piece of paper.
The Ferryman glanced up and sighed with a skeptical expression, but snatched the paper out of Raum’s hand and read it out loud. “Raum, Forcas, Vassago, and Imamiah are my neighbors.” He gave Raum a look. “Signed, ‘Af, prince of wrath, unit #4209.’ Really? That was all he was willing to say?” He started to walk away again.
“Wait!” Raum called out.
The Ferryman paused and raised his chin in an expression of weary endurance.
“The trolley has a bell that sounds like a roaring bear,” Raum said.
The Ferryman came back. He accepted the keys from Raum, settled into the driver’s seat, and put on the trolley driver’s fez-like hat. “All aboard.” He tried the bell, and it sounded exactly like a roaring bear. He grinned, delighted.
The four board members, seated in the first half of the trolley behind the Ferryman, looked excitedly out the windows and waved their Amenity Tower Angels pennants. The videographer sat in the back row and kept rolling.
“This is so great,” Imamiah said. “Isn’t this great?”
“We get to go all the way across town,” Vassago said.
“Can we stop and get ice cream?” Forcas said.
The Ferryman drove the trolley out of the garage and used the bell again. The trolley roared, startling an ant on a bicycle, making him swerve into a delivery truck unloading Cluck Snack boxes onto the sidewalk in front of Amenity Tower Grocery.
“That’s the ant who left a glass bottle by the hot tub at the locust party!” Forcas said.
Imamiah cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Hey! Ant!”
The ant raised his head from a pile of bicycle parts and broken Cluck Snack boxes. He had a bent antenna.
“Don’t take glass to the hot tub, drone!” Vassago yelled.
The ant held up his red, bulbous back end.
Imamiah pointed. “Look, the little bastard is gaster-flagging us!”
“We’ll see you in the automat, ant!” Vassago shook his fist.
Imamiah leaned farther out the window as the trolley rounded the corner. “I hope a butterfly tricks you into raising its caterpillars!”
They all turned to look at Imamiah.
“What?”
The Ferryman got onto the main east-west drive and headed west. Pothole City’s rebuilding process was constant, frenzied, and omnipresent. Normal walking routes were closed to pedestrians, forced onto the street with cars, trucks, and cabs. In the worsening congestion, drivers kept their hands on their horns. Construction workers shouted at drivers who came too close to their sites, most of which had signs stating ‘Another Clucking Along Holdings Site: For a Better Tomorrow.’
“Where are we going, again?” Imamiah asked.
“A tour of the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Pothole City,” Raum said.
“Really? You know, the sewer system remained intact after Pothole City was destroyed,” Imamiah said.
“Wake up, Imamiah―we’re going to Clucking Along Holdings to poison the Cluck Snack dry mix supply,” Forcas said.
Imamiah’s face fell. “But then… w
e couldn’t have any Cluck Snack.”
“So? Isn’t that for like, ferrets and cats, or something?” Vassago said.
“It’s for everyone!” Forcas said.
Imamiah pouted and watched the giant white worms and flying monsters building the new skyscrapers and altering the skyline of Pothole City.
They came to a dead stop at an intersection, where a group of protesters headed north to the river. Their banner sign read, FIX THE POTHOLES. The protestors chanted and walked steadily past the trolley, accompanied by Pothole City Police (more of a volunteer militia, given the nascent state of the rebuilding process).
“Oh, come on,” the Ferryman said.
“Why are they so slow?” Forcas said.
“Just drive through them,” Imamiah said.
“Honk the bear horn!” Vassago said.
The Ferryman shrugged and pressed his fist against the steering wheel, making the roaring bear sound. The startled protestors jumped and looked toward the trolley, which had inched forward. One of them flapped its wings and flew into the wide front window, leaving a smushed green blob.
The Ferryman cursed under his breath and ran the windshield wipers, reducing the protestor blob to a smear. He pressed the horn again, and the protestors scattered, leaving a path through the north-south street.
The Ferryman entered the parking lot at Clucking Along Holdings. As he drove between two rows of parked cars, he hit one of the cars on the rear bumper. The impact shuddered through the trolley.
“What was that?” Forcas said.
“Nothing,” the Ferryman said, backing up a few inches.
“I think we just had a trolley accident,” Vassago said.
“Can we just park this damn thing?” Raum said.
“It’s fine. Everything’s fine. That car was clearly parked beyond the confines of the space, so they’re the ones at fault.” The Ferryman put the trolley back into gear and drove to the very front, parking in a spot marked Reserved: Gonzalez, knocking down the sign and a small tree in the process.
The angels got out and stretched.
“As a driver, you suck,” Raum said. “But I guess when you’re used to driving a boat―”
The Ferryman shot Raum a warning look.
“Thanks! Bye!” Imamiah said to the Ferryman as he walked toward the building.
“Yeah, good luck with that!” the Ferryman said to Imamiah’s back.
“What do you mean, good luck?” Vassago tossed his pennant through the trolley window from outside.
Imamiah stopped and turned around, hands on hips.
The Ferryman pulled his shirt cuffs, aligning them half an inch past his jacket cuff. “You need to keep me around you at all times. That’s how this works. Unless you’re Af, and even then, it’s not very smart to extend the radius.”
“So come with us,” Vasssago said.
“My insurance is high enough as it is.” The Ferryman unwrapped a piece of Cluck Snack Pizza Flav’r Gum and popped it in his mouth. “I need someone to watch the trolley while we’re inside. Unless your plan is to drive the trolley inside.”
“That sounds cool,” Vassago said. “Let’s do that.”
“We’re trying to be under the radar,” Forcas said.
Raum made an exasperated expression at the Ferryman. “Get your insurance agent down here to watch the trolley.”
“My insurance agent?”
“No, your movie agent,” Raum said. “Yes, your insurance agent.”
The Ferryman rolled his eyes but took out his phone. “Hi Josh. It’s Ferryman Region Three. Can you come down to Clucking Along Holdings? I have some friends here who would love to buy the Full Eternity Policy with a Raquia and Sheol Rider. Three of them. That’s right. No, we’re kind of stuck here for a while. Great, thanks.”
Raum gestured at the trolley. “We have to buy life insurance on these shabby mortal vessels just so someone can watch the trolley for half an hour?”
The Ferryman shrugged. “Cost of doing business. Hired autos aren’t covered in my liability policy. Makes you feel better, it’s not just for your mortal vessels.”
Raum huddled up with the others. “We’ll expense it. If Don really wants this done, he’ll have to pay travel and incidental expenses, which, in this case, includes three life insurance policies. I have a credit card that he gave me.”
They separated and Raum nodded at the Ferryman. “Fine.”
After the insurance agent sold Raum, Vassago, and Imamiah term life insurance policies, he settled into the driver’s seat with an issue of Pothole City Perdition Broker magazine.
The angels and the Ferryman entered CAH through the front door, and the Ferryman zeroed in on the sleek receptionist.
Raum pictured someone adjusting the Ferryman’s levels of sexual energy at a giant control panel, like in one of those 1950s-era sci-fi movies he watched when he couldn’t sleep. He often had trouble sleeping; his mind didn’t turn off, and he needed company and distraction, so he watched movie after movie, his budgies chirping in the background.
At the moment, the Ferryman’s levels were eleven, “one louder,” as Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap had put it.
Raum kept close to observe as the Ferryman sidled up to the desk and leaned in with a conspiratorial look.
“Hello,” the Ferryman purred.
The receptionist blinked. He continued in a low, velvety tone. “I have a tour group here from the Canadian Dry Mix Supply Management Committee, part of the Commission canadienne du mélange sec. They have a very important role coordinating the management of industrial dry mix supplies in Canada, and are currently in the process of determining their national industrial dry mix production target. We scheduled a tour of your facilities. Could you direct us to the dry mix production area?”
The receptionist stood, tapped something into a computer tablet, and held up the tablet so the screen faced out.
“Don’t touch.” She pushed his hand away with the back of her fingers. “You’re here. You need to be…” She tapped a second location with her long red nail and a line connected the two dots. “Here.”
The map looked like an Escher painting.
“How are we supposed to―” The Ferryman tilted his head in confusion.
“Someone will be here in a moment to process your request.” The receptionist put the tablet away and smiled.
They waited in the lobby. Raum kept checking his watch. “Do they only give one tour a day?”
“You would think an operation like this would give tours every half-hour,” Forcas said.
A few minutes later, a granite block of a man approached them. “You are here for a tour?”
“Yes, and we’ve been waiting for―” the Ferryman started to say.
The granite block nodded to someone behind them, and whoever it was restrained them, blindfolded them, and transported them.
They found themselves on a polished concrete floor.
“How did we get here?” Vassago said in a moan.
Imamiah rubbed his eyes. “Is this Sheol? Perdition? The Gates of Death?”
“The Gates of the Shadow of Death? Silence? The Bilge? The Lowest Pit?” Vassago said.
Raum pointed to a sign. “No, drama queens, it’s the Cluck Snack Dry Mix production facility.”
“Oh.” Imamiah stood carefully, wobbled, and pushed himself up. “What did they do to us?”
“They really don’t want anyone to know how to get this part of the building,” Imamiah said.
A mellifluous artificial female voice came over the intercom system. “Welcome to the Clucking Along Holdings state-of-the-art Cluck Snack Dry Mix facility, where our proprietary dry mix is produced for every Cluck Snack product in the world. Our machines, which can process thousands of Cluck Snack products per minute, are designed by our in-house engineering department.”
The message repeated in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, German, French, and Swedish.
The factory took up one end of the gigantic facility, and p
unctiliously arranged boxes of dry mix covered the entire back wall. Automation dominated: the dry mix was packaged on the conveyer belt before robotic forklifts transported the packages to storage for delivery.
A Cluck Snack delivery truck pulled into the dock and the robots deposited box after box into the truck.
Raum held up a glass vial of bubbling, leek-colored liquid. “Let’s do this. One of my budgies has a cloacal discharge and I need to get back to change his diaper.”
“Ew,” Vassago said.
“Where do we start?” Imamiah asked.
“At the start of the line, casserole brain.” Raum watched the production robots. “Before it’s packaged.” He strode casually over to the area where the bins of dry mix waited to be poured down a funnel into the boxes. The funnel automatically stopped when the box filled to the top, and started again at the next box.
“How much of the mix are we supposed to do?” Forcas said.
“As much as possible.” Raum poured some of the vial’s liquid into all of the giant bins waiting for processing. “That should be enough. If Don wants more done, he can pay for the Ferryman again. Forcas, jam the line.”
Forcas ripped the emergency shut-off lever out of the wall.
“That should work,” Raum said.
“Someone’s been working out,” the Ferryman said.
“Oh, we don’t have to work out,” Forcas said. “Some traits carried over to our vessels.”
“Whatever you say. I’m going on vacation soon,” the Ferryman said, then passed out.
“He’s dead!” Vassago said.
“He’s not dead, he’s just overtired,” Forcas said.
Raum reached into the Ferryman’s pockets and took out the trolley’s key ring, putting it in his pocket.
“Is it an aneurysm?” Imamiah said. “I bet it’s an aneurysm. We need to get him to the ER!”
“I think you’ve been watching too many medical dramas,” Forcas said.
“I can’t just be someone with an interest in medical conditions?” Imamiah said.
“What’s wrong with him?” Vassago said.