by Gregory Dark
The scene was being transmitted to a monitor. Watching this monitor, despite it being only one of an entire bank of such machines, was the cowled Snow-it-all.
This Snow-it-all pressed the button of another machine that it might make a copy of the transmission. The time was logged.
The Snow-it-all cackled. Just the once. It was a cackle which could have frozen blood.
It had no need to cackle twice.
Chapter 25
Back at Snow-it Hall, Susie and Elaide both retired immediately to their rooms.
Susie’s ‘bedroom’ was exactly the same as her ‘dressing-room’ had been at the Ughloovre, except that there was a mattress on its floor. Legs on beds the Snow-it-alls considered a luxury, a profligate waste of natural resources. Windows, of course, as well as to encourage viewing through them, were liable to attract dust and dirt from outside and were therefore avoided. Paint or paintings on the walls, carpets on the floor, designs on the bed-clothes, all of these were frippery. Her room was of a cheerlessness which not only failed to provide cheer, but sapped whatever cheer there might have been prior to entering.
Susie sat down cheerlessly on her cheerless mattress. A cctv camera was trained on her from one corner of the ceiling. She faced into the wall so that it might not see her face. Whatever ovation-elation she might have enjoyed had soured into a lackadaisical disgruntlement, a sort of unattractive blues: those not of Muddy Waters but of muddy waters. She knew that Mr E was still disappointed in her. And one part of her thought it was really unfair that he was; and another part of her – damn it – knew – damn it – that he was absolutely right. Damn it. And damn Mr E too. … And damn Susie herself.
“Sorry,” she said quietly to the wall.
“No amount of ‘sorries’,” said Nespa, “is going to stop ze tummy from rumbling.”
“I was talking to Mr E,” Susie sulked.
“You don’t need to apologise, don’t you know, to me. It’s to yourself that you do,” said the South Pacific frog. “You’re stuck with yourself, Susie, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. It’s better, isn’t it, if you’re going to spend all that time with one person that you like that person? It makes life, don’t you know, so much easier. We don’t make a choice whether or not to be with ourselves. Given that, isn’t it sensible to make ourselves as likeable to ourselves as we possibly can?”
“Yes,” Susie sulked again.
“Your choice, Susie,” said Mr E with a curious mixture of kindness and sternness – the vocal equivalent of sweet-and-sour sauce.
“Would you sing a song, Bluemerang?” asked O’Nestly.
“What?” the Perthfrog asked.
“A song?”
“Song?”
“Would you sing it?”
“Song?”
“Song, song. What’s so difficult to understand about that?” O’Nestly asked.
“Me, you mean?” asked Bluemerang.
At which moment the door swung open. Miss Chief and Mimimi entered the room. Their legs seemed to have had their robustness returned to them, and their hairiness had lost much of its vigour. Both the frogs seemed, in fact, to be entirely in the pink. Which was not altogether surprising as both of them had indeed turned pink. Not the pink of Caucasian skin, but a bright pink. The livid pink of strawberry ice-cream. No, of calamine lotion.
“Two friends for you,” Poppa said cheerfully. “Fret not about the colour. I’ve given them something. Give it a couple of days they should both be back to green. It’s just possible that at that point their navels might start enlarging. Just the tiniest bit. Nothing to worry about. It’s a perfectly normal side-effect, perfectly normal.”
Momma closed the door.
“We’re … pink,” Miss Chief wailed. And burst into tears.
“No major deal!” said Mimimi. But she also burst into tears.
There was no wail in the universe quite like Miss Chief’s wail. She was a wailer of international standard. The wail Miss Chief wailed was … well, a whale of a wail.
* * *
Elaide’s room was windowed. The Vis-all-seer by definition saw everything and was therefore not distracted by looking out of the window. To the contrary indeed. It was an aid to her concentration.
Elaide’s room was carpeted. This likewise was not indulgence. It was that, pacing the room in cogitation about the IAO’s welfare, she should not be distracted by the sound of clacking footfalls. Elaide’s room was painted and paintinged, her bed had legs, her sheets were patterned (in swirls of orange and green and coral). But these were, none of them extravagances. Aids, no more, to concentration. The greater the concentration of the Snow-it-allest the greater the benefit to the IAO – indeed to Grammarcloud in its entirety.
Elaide loved living in a region governed by someone with the wisdom and goodness of herself. She not only enjoyed being the Vis-all-seer but she enjoyed a life which had thrust her on such a pedestal. It was, Elaide considered, an indication of life’s intelligence and of its sense of justice. Life’s rewards should go to those whom life rewarded. There need be no equity in life beyond that because that was the equity in life.
And that Elaide knew that, and had come to understand that, was yet another indication of her wisdom, and thus of life’s equity. Which made the position of Snow-it-allest brighter yet. Not only doing the job, not only loving a place which would let her do the job, but knowing she was absolutely the best candidate for that job. The best, the ablest, the wisest, the most judicious. God, she so loved being her, Elaide. She felt deeply, deeply sorry for all those lesser entities who weren’t her. She wrapped her arms around her in a thirsty and amorous embrace.
This brief cuddle with the one being Elaide truly loved was interrupted by a timorous knock at the door. “Wait,” Elaide said.
She pushed a button in the wall. A false wall slid from its slot to form a room as barren and cheerless as Susie’s. “Come,” she said.
Terry, the orbuttieler, swung the door open. “I-knew-it 31 and 32, ma’am,” he said.
“They may enter,” said Elaide. “Yes?” she enquired with an arched eyebrow as it did so.
“The earthling,” said 31.
“She’s a spy,” said 32.
“She’s plotting,” said 31.
“We’ve got the tape,” said 32. The I-knew-it handed Elaide a cassette.
“Right,” said Elaide. “We’ll deal with this in the morning.”
“But …” stammered 32.
“We’ll deal with this,” Elaide repeated in terms measured in their loadedness, “in the morning.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused and withdrew.
Elaide again pushed the button in the wall. The false wall slid open. She launched herself at her empress-sized bed and sprawled across it. She smiled empress-sizedly to herself, kissed herself reverentially on the hand and, in a further fit of deep concentration designed to improve the IAO lot, fell asleep.
* * *
“Will you sing?” O’Nestly urged, further down the corridor.
“We would sing,” Miss Chief replied. “We have, as you know, a lovely voice. A voice like a contrary.”
“Canary,” O’Nestly corrected her. “No,” he added quickly. “No, Miss Chief, you were quite right. Thinking about it, yours is a voice, sure it is, just like a contrary’s.”
“But we’re blue because we’re pink. And because we’re blue and pink we cannot sing.”
“What is this blueming thing, anyway, about singing?” asked Bluemerang.
“I need to talk to your girl here,” O’Nestly explained. “If they see us huddled together away from the camera they’ll know something’s up. We need a distraction.”
“We could sing a distraction,” Miss Chief lamented, “if only we weren’t pink and blue.”
“Why sing?” asked Nespa. “Ze boom of ze tummy howling, zat is enough to drown out any sound, n’est-ce pas?”
“What?” asked Bluemerang.
“What?” asked O�
�Nestly, seeking clarification.
“Sing?” Bluemerang asked. “What do you want me to sing?”
“Oh, something,” ummed O’Nestly, “you know, singy.”
“Singy?”
“Something you can sing,” said O’Nestly.
“Well, that’s really blueming helpful.”
“I need to talk, seriously, to your young lady,” O’Nestly ‘explained’.
“‘And there’s a bong and a wong,’” sang Bluemerang, “‘and a billa-blue-ue-ue-ue-ming-bong/ You’ll come a-dahing, Dorinda, with me’.”
“Just keep going,” O’Nestly said.
“Does he have to?” asked Mr E.
“Yes,” said O’Nestly curtly. He turned to Susie. “You cannot believe it, Susie, the squalor of the Ughlies. It’s serious squalor.”
“We’ll go and visit them, O’Nestly. I told you we’d go.”
“There’s young Emos, barely more than babies,” O’Nestly told her, his eyes burning with pain and intensity, “making I-knew-it footwear. Working in the dark, their workplace airless, their supervisors, Susie, trained to bully.”
“O’Nestly,” Susie said somewhat indignantly, “I’ve said we’ll go and we’ll go. It’s not our problem, there’s nothing we can do about it, but we will go. Now, please, give it a rest.”
“Whose problem is it then, Susie?” asked Mr E.
“Not mine,” Susie announced squarely and squarely plonked herself closer into the wall where she closed her eyes – squarely – and huffed a pretend sleep.
“Thank about it,” said Mr E.
The chance Susie had for such thought was brief indeed. For at that moment there was a crash on the door. The next, there was a crash through the door.
Momma and Poppa was there. Wearing frowns.
I-knew-it 31 and 32 was there. Wearing hideous smiles.
The pengrins were there. Louring, menacing.
One of the pengrins grabbed Bluemerang from Susie’s bib. Tossed him in an unceremonious heap into the corner.
“You are to come with us,” said Momma.
“The Vis-all-seer,” said Poppa, “does see all.”
“She’s seen your all,” said 32.
“You’re under arrest,” said 31.
Chapter 26
“This is ridiculous,” Susie said as she was being marched down the corridor. “I haven’t done anything. Hello? This, I said, is ridi-cu-lous.” But, for all her bravado, deep down Susie was scared. Apart from 31 and 32, both of them trying to rein in smiles that threatened to crack their faces, the grimaces of her escort were grim indeed.
It was Anne Boleyn’s escort going to the block, Edith Cavell’s as they marched her before the firing squad.
Elaide was waiting for her in her empty room. She was distinctly not amused. “I am bitterly disappointed,” she told Susie. “Bitterly.”
“What have I done?” Susie asked for it seemed to her the hundredth time.
“One of your Sufrogs,” Elaide told her, “has been talking to an Emo.”
“Yes?” Susie asked.
“He’s been talking, child, to an Emo,” Elaide repeated, astonished that she should need to do so.
“Is that a crime or something?” Susie asked.
“I am bitterly disappointed,” said Elaide. “What’s its name?”
“Whose name?”
“The name of the Emo?”
“I don’t know,” Susie said honestly.
“Know,” Elaide ordered her. Her voice was calm. But possessed of threat. “You have until tomorrow to know. When you do know, so will I. I want there to be no room for doubt. Do I make myself clear?”
For want of any other reaction, Susie shrugged. A lot of emotions were jousting within her, all broadswording through a tangle of other emotions, all vying for dominance: anger, fear, frustration, loyalty, panic, indignation, resentment ... more fear, more fury.
“In the meantime,” Elaide continued, “I think it sensible that you are acquainted more thoroughly with our ways. I have therefore decided that I-knew-it 31 and 32 should be your constant companions. Doubtless you will become the firmest of friends.”
“But … ” Susie started to protest.
“No buts,” Elaide said. From the corner of her eye, Susie could see 31’s smirk. It could have been used to scythe through not just Cheddar cheese but the Cheddar Gorge. “No thank you’s either,” Elaide went on. “I expect no gratitude.” Gratitude, it has to be conceded, was not in the forefront of the emotions in Susie’s head. “I know I know what’s best for those around me. I’m strong enough to need no gratitude from those whom I help.”
Again Susie nodded – again for want of a more appropriate, or indicative, reaction – or one that could encompass the universe of her warring emotions.
“I tire,” said Elaide. “You will go. I will retire. I still have work to do, considerations to be considered, thoughts to be thought. Tomorrow, Susie. The name of the Emo tomorrow. Go.”
31 and 32 took her arm and crammed her unceremoniously back into the corridor.
31 said, “You are to do …”
“… exactly what we say,” said 32.
“Sure,” Susie sarcasticked. “Sure I will.”
32 said, “We now report directly …”
“… to the Snow-it-allest,” said 31.
Susie was on the point of nah-nah-ner-nahing at them that she was only a magi circle away – so there! – from a whoosh back to Earth. But her wiser self yelled at her – for God’s sake – to keep her own counsel; that most of the power of that knowledge lay in the fact that it was secret. She therefore replied to their bragging by stomping the remainder of the steps back to her room.
She was as alarmed as she was disconcerted as she was indignant that there was already a pengrin on sentry duty outside of it. High-dudgeonly she pushed open the door.
“Good night,” she said firmly to 31 and 32.
32 said, “We sleep …”
“… with you,” said 31. And the I-knew-it barged its way through her into the room and onto the bed.
31 said, “We have …”
“… the pillow,” said 32.
Susie grabbed hold of Mr E.
“Excuse we,” said Miss Chief, whose pink skin was now peeling in hideous gulches to reveal a khaki one below, and whose navel was now the size of her kneecaps, “excuse we, but there seems to be an extremely large lump in our bed.”
“Goldi-blueming-locks isn’t in it,” said Bluemerang.
31 said, “You will treat us …”
“… with quiet civility,” said 32.
“They report directly to the Snow-it-allest,” Susie told them.
“Does zis mean you can procure us food?” asked Nespa.
31 said, “Anything you say …”
“… will be recorded,” said 32.
“I sleep first,” said 31.
32 said, “When he wakes, I sleep.”
31 said, “I-knew-its …”
“… never sleep,” said 32.
“I have to talk to Susie,” O’Nestly hisspered to Bluemerang. “Sing, Bluemerang.”
“‘And there’s a bong and a wong,’” sang Bluemerang, “‘and a billa-blue-ue-ue-ue-ming-bong/ You’ll come a-dahing, Dorinda, with me’.”
“The worm turns,” O’Nestly told her, his hisspers being drowned by the ‘song’. “You have to see The Ughlies. You have to know.”
“Elaide knows, O’Nestly,” Susie hisspered back. “She wants me to give her the name of the Emo you spoke to.”
“You can’t do that, Susie,” O’Nestly pleaded with her.
“No, I can’t do that, O’Nestly: I don’t know it.” There was a sprinkling of despair peppering her tone.
“That’s good,” said O’Nestly. Bluemerang had stopped singing. The sponge nodded to him that he should continue.
“‘And there’s a bong and a wong,’” Bluemerang sang again, desperately trying to give it new emphasis, as if this were anoth
er verse, “‘and a billa-blue-ue-ue-ue-ming-bong/ You’ll come a-dahing, Dorinda, with me’.”
“But I do know your name, O’Nestly,” Susie confided.
“That’s not good,” said O’Nestly. “That is seriously not good. Not good at all, at all.”
31 said to Bluemerang, “Will you …”
“… shut up,” 32 said to Bluemerang.
31 said, “I’m trying …”
“… to sleep,” said 32.
“No,” O’Nestly kept saying to himself, “that is seriously not good at all, at all.”
Chapter 27
Susie was returned the next day before the Vis-all-seer’s presence. Try as she had all day to snatch a word with Mr E and to try to organise their whoosh back to Earth, no such opportunity had presented itself. Largely because the permanent presence of the I-knew-it had prevented it from presenting itself.
She was surprised when this I-knew-it confirmed to Elaide that it had heard nothing which would suggest Susie knew anything about the identity of the malfeasant Emo. She was surprised because it had been her impression that this I-knew-it would do anything to make life more difficult for her.
In that she was right. She was wrong only in that she under-rated its subtlety and cunning. 31 and 32 had agreed that their only way back to their favoured position of Elaide’s favourite was through Susie’s utter disgrace. Susie, the I-knew-it had decided, needed to be caught not scrumping apples but breaking into the vault of a bank. It had been decided between itselves that such was best achieved by, mixing a metaphor, giving Susie the length of rope her Sufrogs needed to hang her with.
Susie chose to have Mimimi with her as her contact. Mimimi’s navel was now the size of an archery target. Not that either she or Miss Chief had put on weight. The navel had just spread. The khaki they had turned was itself now peeling. Below it their original green was beginning to seep through.
Poppa had again given them a couple of lozenges to counter the navel-distention, but both his patients had merely feigned the swallowing of them. Independently of each other they had both arrived at the same conclusion: that the cure was about ten times worse than the malady.