Chapter 3
A growing crowd of angry people gesticulating at a parked taxi told me all I needed to know about where Vole Drakeforth might be.
“So sorry, excuse me.” I apologised, pushing my way through to the eye of the storm.
Drakeforth screwed a monocle deeper into his eye socket and wriggled the fake moustache he was wearring under a leather chauffeur’s cap. “I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you,” he declared.
“You cut me off!” an angry driver shouted.
“Where did you get your licence?” another demanded.
“Scared me half to death!” a woman holding a bicycle added.
Drakeforth waved their concerns away like buzzing flies.
“Once again. It is true that I am driving, in the sense that I am travelling through a multi-dimensional spatial patrix that, even if you could perceive the full scope of it, you could not possibly hope to understand.” This casual dismissal of their concerns drove the crowd into a howling frenzy.
I forged through, passing Drakeforth and going to the rear of the vehicle, which was jutting out into the street and clogging the flow of traffic like a tennis ball in a downpipe.
After opening the trunk and transferring my luggage inside, I got into the back seat and waited for Drakeforth to finish being annoying.
The angry voices increased in volume while Drakeforth turned his back on the crowd.
“Thank you, thank you,” he waved and smiled. He opened the door and got behind the wheel.
“Hello, Drakeforth,” I said.
“Pudding,” he replied, and started the engine. Without referencing the rear-vision mirrors, the car lurched backwards. The air filled with the polite coughing of various car horns and the hysterical shriek of emergency braking.
Slipping the gear stick into drive, Drakeforth hit the accelerator and the cab leapt forward as it if had been stung.
“Wait!” I yelped. “The woman from the party…” I blinked; my silent companion was sitting next to me and regarding the blurred vista with interest.
“Do you have your ticket?” Drakeforth asked.
“The zippelin ticket to Pathia? Yes, but why?”
Drakeforth’s response was lost in the squealing of tyres as we hurtled around a corner and drove the wrong way up a one-way street.
“Wrong way!” I cried.
“That is entirely a matter of perspective,” Drakeforth replied calmly.
“Well, from the perspective of the oncoming traffic, we are going the wrong way.”
“You left me a letter.” Drakeforth put the kind of accusation into that simple statement that I usually only heard when addressing myself.
I started with, “Well, yes?”
“A letter, Pudding. After everything we went through, you thought a simple narrative about our adventures, followed by a brief explanation of where you had gone, was somehow going to make up for the deceit of it all?”
“That was the plan.” In fact, I thought the plan had been quite good. By the time Drakeforth finished reading my record, I would be well gone into the empathic matrix of the Python building and would be well out of it.
The hum of the engine rose to a higher pitch and the car charged faster at the oncoming traffic in a re-enactment of those nature documentaries where a predator breaks cover in the climactic moment.
“We are going to die,” I whispered. The pale woman passenger turned her head and raised an eyebrow.
The taxi bounced over the curb, sliding sideways from one streetlight pole to the next. Startled noises rained down in a way the survivors of the Cat Storm of Kabutz remember all too well1.
Drakeforth twisted the wheel, sending the taxi back into the street. We careened through a narrow gap between a dairy van and a truck carrying a load of ice. I screamed and had a sudden flashback to summer holidays in the back yard with Mum, Dad, and Ascott.
The taxi roared into the next intersection before, like a duck taking flight, it settled into a smooth path in line with other traffic.
After a few seconds to unclench, I started to breathe again. The interior of the taxi flickered with a green strobe light. Twisting in my seat, I stared out the rear window at a fast approaching police car.
“Drakeforth, I think they want you to stop.”
“Stop what?” he replied, swerving through the lanes of traffic.
“Being you?” I suggested.
“Ha!” Drakeforth barked. The traffic lights ahead of us changed and the traffic dutifully slowed to a halt. Drakeforth leaned on the horn and the car cleared its throat.
I watched as two officers, a man and a woman, exited the vehicle behind us and approached the taxi, one on each side.
“If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me,” Drakeforth announced.
“Sure.” An hour ago, I had been in what the Godden corporation technicians described as a state of transition. Now all I wanted was a cup of tea and a nap.
The male officer rapped on the driver’s window. Drakeforth lowered it and peered up at the green uniform, with its line of shiny brass buttons.
“Good morning, sir,” the officer intoned.
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed,” Drakeforth replied with a tone of mild surprise.
“Indeed…” the officer took his time unclipping a leather holster on his belt and extracting a notebook and a pen. He then clicked the pen before carefully lifting the cover on the notebook, as if wary of what might leap out at him.
“Well, goodbye then,” Drakeforth said, and closed the window. The traffic continued to wait in an orderly queue for the changing of the lights.
I squinted through the window on the other side; the female officer peered back at me through the glass. I felt a sudden affinity with a museum exhibit.
The first officer tapped on the driver’s window again. Drakeforth did a double take and opened the window.
“I have the strangest sense of didgeridoo.”
“Do you know why we stopped your vehicle, sir?” the officer asked, pen poised to take notes.
“You didn’t. The lights changed. We stopped.”
“I see, sir. Not quite the reason, sir. Do you know exactly how fast you were going?”
“At which point?” Drakeforth replied. “Exactly?” he added after a moment for emphasis.
The police officer rumbled and refocused his attention on the spot where the pen waited to write on the notebook page.
“The suspect vehicle was witnessed travelling the wrong way down Perversas Street. During the duration of the traverse, the vehicle diverted from the traffic lane and entered the pedestrian zone of the sidewalk. Further to—”
“You spelt pedestrian wrong,” Drakeforth said, interrupting the officer’s dictation and note-taking.
“What?” The officer stopped writing and frowned.
“P-E-D-E-S-T-R-A-I-N,” Drakeforth spelled out.
“Pedes-train?” The officer frowned at the page.
“Yes, from the Ancient Gherkin. Pedes, meaning to clump together, and train, meaning to annoy the caviar out of everyone else trying to use the sidewalk.”
“I…believe the spelling, P-E-D-E-S-T-R-I-A-N, pedestrian, is correct, sir.”
“Officer, a spelling error in their notes would be acceptable for most people. But for someone who clearly takes as much pride in all aspects of their work as you do, such a black mark is unforgivable.”
The officer stared at the page of notes and then returned his concerned gaze to Drakeforth, who remained suitably solemn.
With a deliberate neatness, the policeman eased the offending page from the notebook’s wire binding and crumpled it in one hand.
“Perhaps I can take that for you?” Drakeforth offered. “We don’t want to have you write yourself up on a littering charge, now, do we?”
“Uh, no. Thank you sir,” the policeman said, offering the crumpled piece of paper.
“Now, what was it you wanted to ask me?” Drakeforth asked.
The lights changed and the traffic moved forward. Drakeforth drove off, his head still inclined towards the officer in green.
I settled back in my seat with a sigh. “You should probably take the next exit, less chance of being followed if you cut through the avocado district.”
“They won’t follow us,” Drakeforth replied. “That clipper is still trying to work out what just happened. He’s got the sort of pride that will refuse to accept humiliation.”
I covered a yawn with my hand. “I hope so, we don’t want to miss our flight.” Closing my eyes was all the encouragement sleep needed. I had a vague sensation of falling as I tilted sideways until my head rested on the silent woman’s shoulder. She firmly pushed me back onto an even keel and I found a comfortable spot with my head pressed against the window.
1 In 936, according to the calendar of Nyk, Johann Kabutz (hailed as a brilliant scientist or a raving moon-bug, depending on who you ask) sought to determine the exact factors that would best define “raining cats and dogs”. While his results were inconclusive, the safety gear he developed for the animals he launched en-masse into the sky led him to invent the parachute.