So back into the churnel we went—which, from this side as well as the one we'd entered in South London, took the form of a broom closet.
When I commented on the fact, Dryck Spivey made a little moue of distaste. "I'm afraid it's essential," he said, as he led the way into the closet. He had to duck his head steeply in order not to disarrange his turban. "The use of any other camouflage is unwise, in this solar system. If there are agents of the Ostracoderm Equality League anywhere within four astronomical units, they will most likely come to investigate. Fortunately, they cannot abide the smell of ammonia."
"Huh?" said Sheila, as she followed Spivey into the closet.
The pub owner James Watters came third, with me after him and Dexter Guptill on my heels. "They've not been cleared for this yet," muttered Watters. I don't think he intended me to hear that.
I thought the statement nonsensical myself, but wasn't sober enough to worry about it. It was my turn to undergo again the bizarre experience of traveling through the churnel.
More bizarre still, this time around. While everything around me was still black, with that unsettling sense of being somehow digested, I suddenly heard shouts and cries . . .
Behind me, I suppose. It was hard to say.
I recognized Dexter's voice, and thought I recognized that of Steven Speairs also, although I wasn't positive. But all I could hear were fragments of whatever they were shouting.
"—is it doing here?"
"—told you that submersible would—" That was definitely Guptill.
"—no sense at all—"
"—your fucking fault—" Guptill again.
The rest was lost. Just an inchoate series of unrecognizable sharp sounds. Curses? Wails? Who could say?
In my defense, I did give some thought to going to their rescue from whatever it was that was besetting them. But the idea was hopeless. There was no way to tell directions in the churnel. I had no idea where they were.
The thought was admittedly brief. Once I saw that slight crack of light I'd been looking for, I was desperate to reach it. In whatever manner one moves in the churnel—it seems to be an odd sort of wriggling scramble, as if one were a bit of food attempting to escape a swallowing gullet—I made my way to the light and burst through into the room beyond.
Another pub. I let out a groan. More precisely, another misbegotten "theme pub"—English, this time, not Irish—about as authentic as a movie star's teeth.
I turned around and stared at the churnel exit. Another broom closet, sure enough. The door was closed, however, and though I watched intently, it remained closed.
"Where are Steven and Dexter?" I demanded. "And the others?"
"Give it up," said Watters. "If they're not out by now, they're lost. The churnel does have its perils and misfortunes."
"A pity, indeed," said Spivey. His headshake was a careful thing, perhaps because he feared he might disarrange the turban. "But if one insists on feuding with submersibles, what can one expect?"
He turned away and bestowed a gleaming smile on the man standing behind the bar. "Mario! How nice to see you again!"
The bartender was a squat fellow dressed in leather and a scowl. "Fuck you, Dryck." He'd been wiping the bar with a small towel, which he now waved at me and Sheila. "Did I invite you to bring these Neanderthals into my pub?"
I laughed. Quite gaily.
Not because I was immune to insult, but because I had Sheila Rowen at my side.
Her scowl was to the bartender's as the great maelstrom of Norse legend is to the pitiful swirl of a toilet flush. Three strides and she was at the bar, reaching over with a left hand whose reasonably feminine size was a complete mismatch with the forearm from which it extended. A clutch, a heave, and the squat loudmouth was being hauled into harm's way. The harm itself taking the form of Sheila's purse, whose strap was even now sliding easily—oh, yes, it was a well-practiced motion—from her shoulder, down her arm, into her other hand, the great weight-lifter biceps and triceps and whatnot bringing the purse back for a death-dealing wallop . . .
Did I mention the weight of the thing? Rowen frequently won bar bets by challenging feeble men to lift it with only one hand.
The purse had reached the full extent of the backswing, now. It was coming forward . . .
Alas. One of the patrons intervened. A redhead, even burlier than Sheila. He came out of his seat much faster than you'd expect from a man of his size. Laughing, he caught the purse by the strap just as it was starting its downswing and held it fixed in place.
"Leave off, girl! If you obliterate the dolt, we'll have to mix our own drinks."
He had a slight accent, which I couldn't quite place. Not any variety of American dialect, though, I was sure of that.
Sheila glared at him, but the redhead's grin never wavered. "Do you want to have to mix your own drinks? The state you're in, who knows what horror you'd come up with. Nice tattoos, by the way. The one on the bicep. Got that in Liverpool, didn't you?"
Sheila looked down. "Yes, as a matter of fact. How'd you know?"
"Recognize the work. Got one there myself." The huge redhead let go of the purse strap and lifted the sleeve of his T-shirt. On his shoulder was a tattoo whose lettering did in fact look very much like Rowen's All Men Are Mortal.
His was less refined, though. Giants and Wolves Suck. It's amazing the lengths to which sports fans will take their silly rivalries.
At least Sheila had been diverted from her homicidal purpose. She heaved the bartender back across the bar. "Watch your mouth in the future, shorty."
Scowling at her, Mario rubbed his throat. "Fucking lady weight-lifter."
"Yes. Exactly."
Spivey had reached the bar, his gleaming and mustachioed smile in place. "I believe the introductions were never properly completed. Sheila Rowen, Mario Jori. Mario, Sheila Rowen."
They glared at each other. Dryck ignored it all. "Some drink, Mario! We've just been through the churnel."
Mario now glared at him. "Have they been cleared? I want a straight answer, Spivey, none of your Hindoo gobbledygook."
"Such a lowbrow." Spivey reached up and felt around for a moment in the folds of his turban. His hand emerged holding a thin card of some sort, about the size of a business card but seeming to be a lot glossier.
He held it up right in front of Jori's beady eyes.
"You can read?"
"Fuck you. Of course I can read." From the time it took him to finish reading whatever was on the card, though—not to mention the way his lips moved—it seemed clear enough that though Jori possessed the skill he was none too adept at it.
Eventually, he was done. Still scowling, he went back to wiping the bar top. "Fine. So you're an authorized recruiter. Ask me if I'm impressed."
He might not have been, but I was. Alarmed, rather.
So was Rowen.
"And what's this?" she demanded.
We were both lawyers, after all, as inebriated as we might have been at the time. No lawyer above the level of the lowliest ambulance chaser, no matter how drunk, would not instantly recognize the implications of the term "recruiter."
The stem is the verb to recruit, after all, and the verb cries out for both subject and object. Recruit whom, and to what?
Sheila had been in the process of sliding her purse strap over her shoulder. Now, as if by a volition of its own, the strap was back in her hand, the purse beginning to swing back and forth much like a cobra's head sways as it fixes its target.
I cleared my throat, the process reminding me of life's priorities. "I need a drink," I said forcefully. No quite as forcefully: "I must insist on an explanation, Mr. Spivey. You are an authorized recruiter for . . ."
By now, Watters was at the table where the big redhead had resumed his seat. He pulled out a chair and joined him.
"Don't be stupid," he growled. "The Ancient Order of the Angle, what else? Also known as the Brotherhood. Although"—he gave Sheila a respectful glance—"that's more in the way of a nickname than what you'd call a real formality."
She sneered at him. "Ask me if I care—since I've no more intention of joining this fishy club of yours than I do of joining the Temperance League." She pulled out a chair at the same table and sat down. "I need a drink. And don't anyone tell me it's my round. I'm not in a friendly mood." If proof of that were needed, the Purse of Death was planted right on the table, not down by the chair legs where Sheila normally kept the hideous thing while in convivial company.
"I'll buy," said the redhead cheerfully. "Beers all around, Mario!" he boomed. "The best the house has."
Jori's scowl, I'd concluded by now, wasn't so much an expression as the permanent fix of his face. He started filling beer steins from a spigot. "What the house has is tap beer. Take it or leave it."
I took a chair, digging into a pocket for my cigarettes. Having extracted one, I proceeded to light it.
"No smoking!" cried out Mario. "You're in Los Angeles now, buddy. We got laws. We care about the environment and our personal health."
I stared at him, dumbfounded. "This is a pub."
"So?"
"A place where men and women come to ingest a toxic substance, of their own free will. A substance called alcohol; known to science and recognized in law as being dangerous under any circumstances, deadly under some, and potentially addictive. Are you seriously advancing the claim that you have a right to poison yourself in a healthful manner?"
"Absurd," Sheila agreed. She'd extracted her own coffin nail and was lighting it up. "Like passing a law permitting suicide so long as you use a razor blade instead of a gun. The illogic makes my head hurt."
By now, Mario had finished filling the steins and was bringing them over to the table. "Look, I don't make the laws," he growled. "You can't smoke in here."
Sheila was still not quite over her temper. "And who's going to make me stop, shorty? You?"
Jori plunked down the steins and sneered right back at her. "Don't need to. The Harpies'll be along any minute. If we were just a little ways up the road, near their lair in Santa Monica, they'd have been here already."
"Here they come, in fact," said Watters, wincing.
The redhead reached back over his shoulder and hauled something off the backrest of the chair. I hadn't noticed it before. It was a great heavy leather thing, about the size of Sheila's purse. When he lifted it onto the table, however, I saw that it was simply a carpenter's tool belt, albeit much larger than the average.
He was pulling out some earplugs from one of the pouches. "Got some extra pairs, Dryck, James. Want 'em?"
"Please," said Spivey, shuddering a bit. He took the small devices from the redhead, quickly lifted the edge of his turban, and shoved them into his ears. By the time he was done, Watters already had his in place.
I wasn't paying much attention, however. I wasn't even paying much attention to my mug of beer. Because, to the side, I'd spotted the most horrible apparitions seeming to emerge from nowhere.
Like ghosts, if ghosts could be pickled.
There were three of the horrors. The first bore the appearance of a middle-aged man dressed in a suit, his face heavy with stern condemnation. The second, dressed in exercise clothing, that of a woman on the verge of middle-age whose taut face and muscle tone indicated that she was devoting half her waking life to denying the fact. The third, a young man of perhaps twenty dressed in shorts, flip-flop sandals and a tank top. His hair was blond, his eyes were blue, his nose was snub, and his expression that of vacant self-approval.
I recognized them, of course, from the legends. The dread Harpies indeed, the fearful trio.
Official Disapproval. Mature Self-Discipline. Untainted Youth.
"Youuuuu caaaaaaaaan't smooooooke in heeeeeere. . . ." they wailed in unison. "It's forbiiiiiiddddennnnnn. . . ."
"My boooooooody is a temmmmmmple," came a little coda from Untainted Youth.
As one, Rowen and I puffed vigorously.
Mature Self-Discipline shoved her face forward. Ghastly thing, the flesh so tight over the bones I would have suspected cosmetic surgery if she were anything other than a Health Harpy. In her case, though, it was surely due to an hour's worth of face exercises every day.
"Your second-hand smooooooooke is shorrrrrrrtening my liiiiiiife. . . ." she moaned.
"Oh, I hope so," said Sheila, blowing smoke at her.
Mature Self-Discipline wailed and drew back. Official Disapproval billowed to the fore.
"It's a seeeeeeeeeerious menace to society and the enviiiiiiiiiiironment. . . ."
"Oh, that's nonsense!" I snapped. "I can't imagine a sorrier exhibition of ecological ignorance. For look you, sir—what is, without doubt or question, the single greatest peril to the global environment?"
The three Harpies stared at me.
Untainted Youth began a tentative moan. "Secccccccond-hand smoooo—"
"Ridiculous!" I waved a finger under his insubstantial little nose. "Ask any biologist, any ecologist. Any educated and informed environmentalist."
I took the time for a quaff of beer. Then—as I feared, it was American beer, as thin as a politician's virtue—I sneered at Youthful Vigor. "Idiot. The great threat to the environment is people. We're breeding like rabbits, multiplying with wild abandon, overflowing the globe."
"Filling every ecological zone and niche," added Sheila. "No, say better—wrecking and ruining every ecological zone and niche."
"Absolutely correct," I said. "We are the ultimate alien invasive species. Destroying all life forms in our path. And why?"
Sheila picked it up perfectly. "No natural enemies."
"Exactly," I said. "But nature is crafty and cunning. So, in self-defense, she created tobacco—and thus, the cure from within: the disease."
As one, Sheila and I blew smoke over the hideous shapes. "Think of us as thinning the herd," I said.
"A newly evolved top predator," Sheila agreed, along with a smoke ring. "A boon and a blessing, from the standpoint of the overall ecology, however gory and gruesome be the immediate effects."
With a despairing wail, the Harpies vanished.
Jori stared after them. For once, the scowl on his face was gone, replaced by astonishment.
"You did it!" he cried. "I didn't think it was possible."
Spivey, Watters and the redhead were pulling out their earplugs. "Impressive, I admit," said Dryck.
The redhead chuckled. "I think that calls for a round of drinks on the house, Mario."
"Sure does." He was already headed back to the bar, pulling out a hidden cigarette on his way.
The intervention of the Harpies had diverted us momentarily, but Sheila and I were both lawyers. Minds like steel traps. So we returned immediately to the important issue at hand.
"Ancient order be damned," I announced. "I don't care if you've got mystic symbols and insignia, secret handshake, the lot. I'm not volunteering for anything."
"Me neither," said Sheila.
Spivey smiled. Watters and the big redhead grinned.
"Chumps," sneered Jori, around his cigarette butt. The bartender had finished pouring the steins and brought over the beers. Then he went back and rummaged behind the bar, emerging with a large ashtray. When he placed it on the table I saw that a large label was wrapped all around the side.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING. The traces of second-hand smoke emanating from this device may ruin your home team's chance of winning the pennant race and encourage the rise of false messiahs.
Jori dragged a chair from a nearby table over to our own. For some reason, the movement caused me to notice for the first time that the bar was empty except for us.
"Ha!" I sneered back. "Your idiot English theme pub décor doesn't exactly pull in the customers, I take it."
"Don't be stupid. We're in Venice, California."
"I thought you said this was Los Angeles," protested Sheila.
The sneer now seemed as permanently fixed on Mario's face as the scowl had been earlier. "It is Los Angeles. Stupid Brit tourist. Never been here before, I take it? Los Angeles is a mystic entity. A virtual city, as it were. It's got a name, true enough—even got elected politicians—but no actual existence in the material world."
"Certainly not!" chuckled Spivey. "I have never met a person yet who was from Los Angeles. No, they are from Venice or Chatsworth or Hollywood or West Los Angeles or South Central—anywhere but 'Los Angeles.'"
"Well, sure," said the redhead. "Even Southern Californians have a sense of shame. Only a trace, of course. The climate saps shame the way a desert saps water."
Mario chimed in, still sneering. "Any other time of the day or night this joint is jumping." He hauled the cigarette out of his mouth and used it to point at the redhead. "The bikers left the moment he came in. They're scared of him."
The redhead's grin widened. "Don't know why."
Mario grunted. "Ask the EMTs, they'll tell you." His cigarette was now waved in Spivey's direction. "And the druggies split the minute I told them he was coming."
Sheila peered at Dryck. "Why are they afraid of him? Is it something about the turban? They think he's a terrorist?"
Spivey got a pained look on his face. Mario barked a laugh.
"No, it ain't that," he said, shaking his head. "I told you, lady. You're in Los Angeles, not some hick town in the Midwest. Any druggie here can parse the difference between a Hindoo and any variety of Moslem in a heartbeat, especially Sufis. God help you if they get started on Christians."
He jabbed the cigarette toward Spivey. "It's that he drives them nuts. Starts reciting the Upanishads to show them why they're a bunch of ignorant airheads."
"Letter perfect," agreed Dryck. "Being, first, as I have a fluency in Sanskrit and they do not. Being, second, as I have a brain and they do not."
Sheila shook her head. "Recite from the Upanishads all you want. I'm still not volunteering for anything."
"Me neither," I echoed. Rowen and I have never been a romantic item—not even close—but on some matters we are like man and wife. A horror of pro bono work being one of them.
Mario barked another laugh. A series of them, rather. The sneer never wavered throughout. "Don't get it, do you?"
The redhead cleared his throat. "I'm afraid the issue of 'volunteering' is a moot one. The Brotherhood of the Angle doesn't accept volunteers, anyway."
"Certainly not!" exclaimed Dryck. "A most untrustworthy lot, volunteers. First, because what is freely offered can also be freely withdrawn. Second, because they are patently mad. No, no, my dear friends. You've been drafted."
Sheila and I stared at him.
"We're conscripts?" she asked.
"Exactly so."
She and I now stared at each other. After a few seconds, she shrugged. "Well, I suppose that's all right, then. Since my ethical principles haven't been violated. I warn you, though. Conscript or not, I bill by the hour."
I was no longer exactly drunk, since one of the churnel's side effects is the peculiar ability to leech alcohol from a human body. So it seemed, at any rate. But I was certainly not what you'd call sober. So, though I wracked my brain trying to find a coherent argument against allowing ourselves to be conscripted, I was unable to come up with anything.
Except "it's not just," of course. But no British lawyer will speak those words aloud, fearing the instant public ridicule. In the United States, I've been told, the phrase is sufficient cause for being disbarred from the profession.
"Drafted for what?" I asked. "And why us?"
"As to the second question," said Spivey, "you fit the three principle criteria for inclusion in membership in the Ancient Order. First, you are drunkards."
"Hey, wait a min—" began Sheila.
"Plain as the nose in front of your face," stated Watters. "Second, you trail behind you—radiate before you—the miasma of Those Who Have Known Fish."
The redhead belched. "And finally, you've got a particular skill the Order has need of, at the moment." He waggled his still half-full beer mug in a manner that was vaguely apologetic. "Bad luck for you, of course, that last bit. But there it is. The Brotherhood's not a charitable organization, after all."
"What skill?" I demanded. The cigarette was back in the corner of my mouth. The smoke was causing my eyes to water but my soul to feel cleansed. It's a horrid business, this grubby scrabbling to gain an extra month of two of life. Compared to it, simple greed is practically a virtue.
"You're lawyers, what else?" snorted Watters. "You think we normally consort with attorneys?"
Dryck, Mario and the redhead all got pained looks. So did Sheila and I, for that matter.
"It's a living," Sheila muttered.
"It's a disgrace," said Watters.
"Well, yes, of course. That's why we make up for it by smoking."
"A point," averred Dryck, "a veritable point."
But I wasn't letting my attention get diverted. This had the sulfurous reek of pro bono work.
"We're not licensed to practice in California," I pointed out. "Sorry, lads, but—"
"Oh, twaddle," said James. "No one's asking you to plead before a court or file papers or whatever such. A simple matter of interrogation. Squeezing the truth from a recalcitrant witness."
"Witness to what?" asked Sheila.
"Exactly what we're trying to find out." The redhead waved a big hand at Jori. "Bring the critter forward, Mario."
"Why me?" demanded the bartender. "That damn aquarium's heavy. You're the muscle man. You're the—"
The redhead growled. Mario practically sprang from the table.
He headed off toward a corner of the pub. For the first time, I noticed that there was an aquarium sitting on a table there. A rather large one, at that. It fit quite badly with the fake English décor, fortunately.
"I'll need a hand with all the gadgetry," Mario said, over his shoulder. Watters rose and went over.
Within a minute, they were hauling the aquarium and its appended air filters—water filters? whatever—back to the center of the pub where the rest of us were waiting. With a heavy thump, Mario set it down on the table next to ours, then headed for a door at the back of the pub.
"I'll need to get an extension cord. I had to unplug everything. Give it five minutes and the bastard will accuse us of trying to suffocate him."
I stared at the aquarium. The bottom was covered with sand, rocks, the usual, with the inevitable garish faux shipwreck at the very center. A bigger plastic piece of crap than the usual, but not otherwise interesting. "There's no fish in it."
"Well, sure. Not any more." The redhead rapped a big knuckle on the glass. "The little fucker eats everything he can gets his mouth on. And it's a big mouth. Come out, you wretch. Come out, I say!"
My eyes went to the plastic shipwreck, that being the only object in the aquarium large enough for a fish—or whatever—to be hiding within.
Nothing. No movement at all.
The redhead wrapped the glass again. "Come out, I say. Or I'll put on my belt and squeeze you good, I will."
That did the trick. The faux shipwreck began wobbling back and forth. A moment later, a very blunt fish head began to squeeze its way out of the hatch. Within a few seconds, the entire body had emerged.
Weird fish. Completely white—bone white—and I'd never seen a fish with that shape. There was also the oddity that a goodly portion of its body seemed wound about with some sort of thread.
Then I saw the tail. Flukes, rather.
"That's not a fish!" I exclaimed. "That's a whale!"
"So he claims," said Watters grimly. "But that's what you're here to find out."
The redhead rose, held up his T-shirt sleeve with one hand while he thrust the other into the water, seized the miniature albino whale and hauled it out of the tank. Then, none too gently, he plopped it onto the table top. When the miniwhale landed, the meaty impact sent a little spray of water over the rest of the table, with a few drops landing on those of us sitting about. From the smell, it was seawater.
"Brute!" yelped the whale.
"Just be glad I didn't squeeze you," said the redhead. "Now talk, fish."
"I'm not a fish! I'm a whale! Whales are part of the mammal class, you ignoramus."
"I said, talk," hissed the redhead. All of sudden, the jovial fellow seemed a lot meaner than he had theretofore.
Sheila interrupted the proceedings. I'd half-noticed that she seemed to be ogling something on the other side of the whale, that was out of my sight.
She pointed a finger at it. "What the hell! There's a tiny little man strapped to the fish. Whale, whatever. And its no plastic toy, either. He's waving his arms and it looks like he's hollering something."
I half-rose out of my chair to get a better look. A bit gingerly, Sheila took hold of one of the creature's flukes and half-spun it around, so I could see the other side.
Sure enough. There was a miniature man there. I could now see that he was bound to the whale's flank by the thread I'd noticed earlier. One of his legs was half-missing, replaced by a wooden peg, and he was—sure enough—gesticulating like mad and did indeed seem to be yelling something.
I could hear the sound he was making, but couldn't distinguish any words.
"Hold the creature down," I commanded, to no one in particular. I leaned over and turned my head, bringing my ear close to the jabbering homunculus.
Now, I could make out the words. Some of them anyway. The accent was peculiar. Like that of a Bostonian I'd once known, but on steroids.
"—but I shall go stark raving mad— " Here I couldn't make out the words, then:
"Say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st though endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st go mad?"
I sat back down. "Which one is my client? If it's the homunculus, I'm entering a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity."
"That's what I told you!" yelped the miniwhale, glaring at the redhead. "The little bastard's nuts. You can't believe anything he says. It's all ranting, raving nonsense."
The creature wriggled about a bit, to bring one of its eyes to bear on Sheila. After studying the tattoos for a moment, it said: "Will no one rid me of this troublesome captain?"
Sheila smiled coolly. "Don't look at me. I'm a lawyer."
The miniwhale wriggled about again, to level a reproachful look onto the redhead. "That's cruel. That's low. Even for you."
The redhead's smile was even cooler than Sheila's. "I warned you, didn't I? After you made jibes at my threats of a bastinado."
"Well, of course I did!" The miniwhale flapped its flukes against the tabletop. "Got no feet, you idiot."
"Fine, then. So I did as I said I would. Brought in the lawyers."
It was hard to be sure, given that the creature's "face" bore no resemblance to a human's. But I was pretty sure that was a ferocious glare the creature was giving the redhead. Then, wriggling about again, swept it across everyone at the table.
"They're smoking, too! I thought that was illegal in California."
Mario blew smoke on it. "Only in public establishments. And I'm closed for the day."
"You haven't read me my rights!"
"You don't have any," said Watters. "You're a fish."
"A mammal!"
"A mammal that swims," qualified Spivey. "Which therefore automatically makes you an object of suspicion—as you well know."
"That's just natural selection!" yelped the whale. Its eyes seemed to squint a little, examining Dryck. "Funny. You don't look like one of those nitwit Christian fundamentalists."
"Stop playing the innocent," replied Spivey. "You know perfectly well that natural selection is a favored tool of at least three of the piscine cabals. The Magellans have developed it into a fine art."
"So talk, fish," said the redhead.
The miniwhale flopped its head back and forth, studying first me and then Sheila. The motion finally nudged my memory. That big head—proportionately, anyway—that was one-third the total length of the body; the long and narrow jaw, the teeth rather than baleen...
"You're a sperm whale!" I exclaimed. "Sort of. Allowing for shrinkage."
The narrow jaw gaped. "Okay, then. I want this one for my lawyer. At least he can tell the difference between a fish and whale. Or are any of you dumb enough to think there's such a thing as a 'sperm fish'?"
The redhead shrugged heavily. "As you wish. Ishmael, you're now the creature's attorney."
The miniwhale ogled me. "Ishmael? Oh, no thank you, then!" It wriggled and flopped about again, bringing Sheila into its sight. "And this one's got tattoos! You rigged the deck!"
"Don't be stupid," said the redhead. "Just because our agent who brought you in was tattooed? He was also male, and black, and a savage cannibal. Whereas she's female, white, and . . . Well, yes. She's a lawyer."
He rose up, seized the whale by its tail and lifted it off the table. "And enough of this! Start talking!"
He dropped the creature back down. There was the same meaty flop, but less in the way of water strewn about. By now, the thing was half-dry.
"Fine!" snapped the miniwhale. Literally, snapped. That was actually quite an impressive jaw, even if the whole creature wasn't more than thirty centimeters long. I made a note to myself not to lean close again. That jaw could take off an ear, quite easily.
The miniwhale took a deep breath. Then:
"It's like I told you the first time. There I was, looking for—"
"Let's start with my client's name," said Sheila. "What is it, anyway?"
"Moby Dick," supplied Mario.
The miniwhale slapped its flukes. "That's a lie! That stupid Melville couldn't even get the name right, in that fable of his. Whoever heard of a silly name like 'Moby Dick,' anyway?"
I cleared my throat. "Actually, a goodly percentage of the English-speaking world. Being as how that fable, as you call it, is now considered classic literature."
"If that's not your name," interjected Sheila, "what is it?"
"Dick Moby," said the miniwhale sullenly. "Although I prefer Richard."
"Richard it is, then," said Sheila. "Please continue with your account."
"As I was saying, there I was just minding my own business seeking revenge on the Great Sea Serpent"—here Richard gave the redhead another look of reproach—"and while I'm on the subject, I'd like to know why you're persecuting a fellow mammal instead of going after that vile seagoing snake—"
"I've been after him for eons," said the redhead mildly, "as you well know. Stop complaining and keep talking."
The miniwhale snapped its jaw at him angrily. Then:
"On account of how the evil sea serpent ate my beloved wife Alice."
"There's an Alice Dick, too?" I asked.
"Alicia, actually. Her family and friends called her Alice. So there I was, hot on the tracks of the snake, when—when—"
The miniwhale flopped about again, onto one side, bringing the homunculus up into sight of everyone at the table.
"When this maniac started hounding me! For no reason whatsoever! Unless you believe that pack of lies told by Melville, in prose so bad his name is a scandal and a hissing amongst school children the world over."
"English-speaking world, anyway," Sheila said. "A point, there. I ask the jury—is this a jury, by the way, or a court of any kind?—to note that my client has accurately depicted the nature of his accuser."
"No, we're not a jury," said the redhead. "Nor is this a court, except in the most informal sense of the term."
"More in the way of a lynch mob," added Watters. "Think of us carrying torches and pitchforks, and you won't go far wrong."
"That said"—this from Dryck—"I'll agree the point is valid. Even in my native land, the name 'Melville' is used to frighten children into obedience."
The miniwhale somehow managed to look smug. I decided the beer was so bad that I might as well exert some professional effort. So, stubbing out my cigarette, I pointed to the homunculus.
"I think it's time we heard from my client. If anyone can figure out how to make him audible."
"I came prepared," said the redhead. "But first—"
He twisted in his chair, rummaged about in one of the pouches in his carpenter's-belt-on-steroids, and came up with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Holding down Richard with his left hand, he slid one of the jaws under the thread and snipped it.
The line began to unravel. Thrashing feverishly, the homunculus worked himself loose and fell onto the table top.
He rose awkwardly, on account of the wooden leg, then started waving his arms about and resumed—judging from the mouth, anyway; you could barely hear anything—his ranting and raving.
"Can't make out a word," said Mario.
"Just hang on a second," said the redhead. He'd returned the pliers to their pouch and was digging about in a different one.
This time, he brought forth . . .
A miniature bullhorn, no less.
"You did come prepared," said Sheila.
"Damn right I did," said the redhead. "I've been tracking this scumbag for years. The white whale, I mean. The captain's just a harmless lunatic."
Sheila spotted her chance. "If you admit he's a lunatic, then I must insist the court—excuse me, the sans-culotte mob—is required to discount his testimony."
"And I reiterate my client's plea of being not guilty on grounds on insanity," I added. "Whatever he's accused of."
"He's not accused of anything," said Dryck. He smiled at Sheila. "And I am afraid the lunatic nature of the witness is irrelevant. Seeing as how at least ninety percent of the universe is lunatic also."
Watters grunted. "What your cosmologists call 'dark matter.' It's actually particulate madness."
By now, the redhead had handed the bullhorn over to the homunculus. The tiny one-legged man raised it to his lips, and we could finally hear his words.
"Quick! forge me the harpoon! I want it of the true death-temper!"
"I told you!" yelped Richard. "He's a spermicidal maniac!"
"Say better, piscicidal maniac," growled the redhead.
Watters nodded. "I still say you're a fish."
The homunculus seemed to grow more excited still. He jabbed a finger, pointing first at the redhead and then at James.
"I have here two pledges that I shall yet slay Richard M. Dick and survive it! I am immortal then, on land and on sea."
Sheila cocked an eye at the miniwhale. "M?"
"Milhous. It's my middle name. Whales are all pretty much hardcore Republicans."
"Stupid," grunted Mario. "Wasn't Republicans put a stop to commercial whaling."
Somehow, Richard M. Dick managed to form a sneer on that sperm whale mouth. "Who cares? We're the biggest and mightiest animals on the planet. You expect us to support those wimps in the Democratic Party?"
Angrily, he slapped his flukes on the table again. "But who are you going to believe? This gibbering madman? I say again: I'm a mammal. All of science is united on the opinion."
That seemed to throw the homunculus into a veritable frenzy. "Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to the heavens, whose live vividness but scorches him! Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the glances of man's eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his firmament!"
"Enough of this," said the redhead. He brought a huge forefinger under the nose of the homunculus.
"Are you Captain Ahab, or not?"
"Aye, that I am!"
"Then give us the truth about this fish, and cease the preaching!"
The homunculus suddenly looked a bit worried. "Avast!" he cried. "Let's have fair play here, though we be the weaker side. No fearless fool now fronts thee."
"The truth!" bellowed the redhead. Unleashed, his voice seemed to rattle the whole room. Ahab reeled back.
"The lightning flashes through my skull! Mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground."
Dryck laid a restraining hand on the redhead's big shoulder. "Easy, there. But, Captain Ahab—we will have the truth."
His mild tone settled the homunculus down. Ahab peered up at Dryck's turbaned head.
"There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy—"
"That's it!" roared the redhead. Again, the whole room shook. "Incommunicable, is it? We'll see about that!"
His hand went back to the carpenter's belt, bringing out the pliers again. He snatched up Ahab and brought the jaws to bear on his good leg.
"The truth, lunatic! Or you'll be stumping about on both legs!"
I began to protest—the captain was my client, and we were now clearly beyond any legal definition of "interrogation"—but, fortunately, the redhead's wrath seemed to have finally registered on Ahab.
"Desist! Desist!" The homunculus jabbed a frantic finger at the miniwhale. "Your oaths to hunt the White Fish are as binding as mine! Look ye there, inside of the beast! Thus I blow out the last disguise!"
The redhead stared at Richard M. Dick. Then, with a muffled exclamation, he released Ahab and took up the miniwhale by the tail again.
"Cough it up!" he demanded.
"I have the right to remain silent!" yelped Richard. "Undisgorged, too! I am not a crook!"
"Bah!" The redhead seized the miniwhale with a huge hand and squeezed. I mean to say, really squeezed.
The narrow jaw gaped open. Richard's eyes bulged.
Another homunculus appeared, emerging from the miniwhale's mouth, this one dressed in tattered rags.
He plopped out onto the table. Then, after shaking his head, he staggered to his feet.
"Well, it's about time!" Perhaps because he was a bit larger than Captain Ahab, his words were faint but could be understood easily enough.
The homunculus swiveled his head, examining all of us around the table. When he was done, he smiled widely.
"Hi, everybody. My name's Jonah and I'm an alcoholic. And, boy, do I have a story to tell."
Eric Flint is the author of many novels and some short fiction. He has also edited a number of anthologies. Dave Freer has written a number of novels and short stories. Andrew Dennis has co-authored books with Eric Flint. This is the first time the three have worked together.
To read more work by these authors, visit the Baen Free Library at: http://www.baen.com/library/