Colonel Korsakov banked upward, the old engines whining, but he was brought up short by a wall of zeppelins; the Indignant screeched in a tight arc, but the planes swung around behind, gaining fast.
“I can’t die!” wailed Sefino. “I’m not properly dressed! Everyone in heaven will snicker and make catty remarks about my shoes!”
“You’re not helping!” grunted Korsakov. Then: “Arghh! Get that infernal cube away from me!”—for the black box had sprouted wings and was now flying around, screeching and wailing, swooping at Korsakov’s head.
Jo unbuckled her belt and leaped after the box, swatting it away from Korsakov. The box tumbled across the cabin, shrieking and bouncing off the walls—and suddenly the plane’s radio turned itself on in an explosion of static.
“Good afternoon!” said Ken Kiang over the radio. “Just thought I’d call up. A friendly chat, you know, before I kill you.”
“Because of this box?” shouted Jo. “You’re going to kill us over that?”
“Uh…yes,” said Ken Kiang. “It’s not much of an excuse, but it’ll do.”
“You can have it back!”
“Oh, I don’t want it back,” said Ken Kiang happily. “To tell the truth, I just want to be evil. And rest assured, I’ve got some elaborate evil planned for today! Why, I almost envy you—the exquisite sensation of being crushed by my genius!”
The radio crackled off and four new missiles tore across the sky, streaming fire. The black box ricocheted around the cabin, beeping and squealing, banging into the controls. Jo leaped after it, shouting, “Sefino! Help me!”
“No, no, we’re all doomed,” moaned Sefino. “It’s all over! We deserve to die! The only thing left for us to do is degrade ourselves. Yes, yes! Grovel before our conqueror!”
“I can’t avoid these missiles!” shouted Colonel Korsakov.
“Don’t avoid them! Fly into them!” shrieked Sefino in a kind of ecstasy.
The radio popped on again. “Ken Kiang here! It just occurred to me—you’re about to die. Rather makes you wish you’d spent more time cherishing life’s little pleasures, doesn’t it? Well, too late for that. And you’re probably too panicked to remember those pleasures at all. But don’t worry, I’ve drawn up a list! Let’s remember them together.” He cleared his throat. “Ah, warm summer days…your favorite song coming on the radio…a hot dog at the ballpark, extra mustard and relish…”
“I can’t take it anymore!” said Sefino. “When will it all end!”
“In one minute ten seconds,” crackled the radio cheerfully. “The smell of freshly mown grass…peppermints…shiny pennies…”
“For the love of Lenin, shut up, Kiang!” yelled Colonel Korsakov.
“Chamomile tea,” droned Ken Kiang. “Funny puppies—oh, the silly things they do!…the smell of freshly baked bread…dandelions…”
The black box swerved past Jo’s head. She grabbed on to it but it kept flying, dragging her across the plane, banging her fingers against the walls, burping in her face.
“Babies! Beautiful, bouncing babies!” shrieked Ken Kiang.
There was a huge, gut-shredding noise. Jo was thrown across the cabin, and the Indignant shook as a missile exploded, just out of range; but the plane somehow still held together.
The radio buzzed again. “Oh, hello. Still there? Ah well, don’t you worry, you’ll be a ball of exploding flame soon enough. Speaking of which…did you know that I wrote a song all about dying in an exploding ball of flame? Shall I sing it for you?”
“NO!” said everyone.
“I’ve hired the London Symphony Orchestra.” A string section welled up in the background, and Ken Kiang crooned: “Oh, that crazy getting-blown-up feeling, it’s like falling in love…”
A familiar voice came over the radio: “GOT ANY PIE ON THIS PLANE? WHERE’S THAT PIE YOU PROMISED?”
“Ain’t it a shame, hoo-hah…being blown up in looooove…”
“PIE, YOU HAVE, ON PLANE?” shouted Hoagland Shanks. “Criminy, how can I make you understand? FOR ME A PIE, HOW? DO NOW!”
“That’s it,” snapped Ken Kiang. “Stop, everyone.”
The orchestra stopped, and fussy British musicians muttered complaints in the background.
“Enough,” said Ken Kiang. “Although there is a rich tradition in villainy of pointlessly toying with people before killing them, I’m finding it tiresome. Well, nobody can say I’m halfhearted at being evil, for I have done all the required toying. You will die in thirty seconds.”
Jo had finally wrestled down the black box—she could barely hold it as it shuddered and gurgled—and suddenly it spat out a pipe, a furry hat, and a moth-eaten scarf.
Then the box became still, except for the silver crank, which quivered expectantly.
“Hello, that’s my pipe!” said Sefino. “And that—that’s your hat, Korsakov!”
“So it is,” said Korsakov.
“Fifteen seconds,” said Ken Kiang.
“Well, what a coincidence.” Sefino tamped some tobacco into the pipe and lit it. “At least I can have a pleasant smoke before I die.”
“But wait!” said Jo eagerly. “What if I turn this crank?”
She turned it. The box exploded, covering her with soot and leaving a ringing in her ears. Nothing else happened. The box lay scattered on the floor in pieces.
Jo stared at the pieces hopelessly.
“Time’s up,” said Ken Kiang.
Ken Kiang insisted, as a matter of principle, that all his missiles be works of art, each hand-painted with scenes of famous historical battles. The first missile to hit the Indignant was lavishly illustrated with the Battle of Agincourt (1415), with thousands of men-at-arms and longbowmen clashing in the muddy fields of northern France; the next missile had a detailed mural of the entire Crimean War (1853–1856), from the destruction of the Ottoman fleet at Sinop to the final signing of the Treaty of Paris, and…
Anyway, they blew up. The Indignant plummeted into the Pacific Ocean.
Notably, before the plane reached the ocean floor, it was eaten by a large fish.
“HERE’S to villainy!” cried Ken Kiang, lifting his glass. “Here’s to wicked work well wrought! Here’s to outrage, injustice! Violence and venom! Marvelous murderers and cutthroat criminals! I embrace you all, brothers! I’m one of you now!”
Hoagland Shanks sat with his arms crossed. “Where’s my pie? I don’t see any pie yet.”
“Just you wait!” said Ken Kiang cheerfully.
Ken Kiang and Hoagland Shanks were seated in a small, cluttered Paris bistro, a members-only club, extremely discreet, hidden behind an unmarked door in an unfashionable neighborhood; and open only to men as wealthy and perverse as Ken Kiang.
“Shanks, I can’t tell you how lovely it feels,” exulted Ken Kiang. “The sticky, clammy, damning feeling of blood on my hands. My first murder! It’s only a matter of time before I tackle the other major sins.” He consulted his checklist. “Let’s see, there’s torture, sacrilege, treason…Shanks, why do I have a whole chapter on mouse abuse? Goodness knows but I do!”
“Hey, it’s none of my business,” interrupted Hoagland Shanks. “But I woulda thought you’d killed plenty of folks. I heard you were supposed to be a really evil guy or somethin’.”
“Confession time, Shanks,” said Ken Kiang. “I’m really no more than an amateur evildoer. Until tonight, I was all hat and no cattle! It’s only now, with this magnificent quadruple murder, that I’ve married my malevolent mistress of malefaction and started sliding down the slippery slope to sweet sin!”
“Heck if I know what you’re jawin’ ’bout, Ken,” growled Hoagland Shanks. “But I still don’t have my pie—and you promised me pie! Now talk sense, talk pie!”
“Oh, I shall,” said Ken Kiang, refilling his glass. “For that is just what you shall receive. Hoagland Shanks, welcome to one of the most exclusive establishments of Paris, La Société des Friandises Etranges—the Club of Weird Desserts, to you—and your passport
to the exhilarating world of gourmet pie!”
Hoagland Shanks scanned the menu with distaste. “Fancy talk, Ken, but I don’t see pie on this menu. No real pie, anyway. Where’s apple pie? Where’s cherry pie? I don’t like it, Ken; don’t like it one bit.”
Ken Kiang drew close. “Oh, but only yield your mouth to me, Shanks—lend me your stomach! I shall open new worlds before you. Pies beyond your wildest dreams. Pies you dared not even hope exist!”
“Apple pie,” said Hoagland Shanks firmly. “They got that?”
“They have a pie here,” said Ken Kiang dreamily. “The Calibrated Cataclysm. Juicy quinces and persimmons and coconut milk, soaked in a hundred different liqueurs precisely measured out in single-angstrom drops to achieve a perfect harmony on the tongue, served flaming in a dish of richest creams and ices; what say you, man—will you try it?”
“Apple pie,” said Shanks.
“But just a taste—a taste can’t hurt, can it?”
“Apple pie.”
“Perhaps you are more sophisticated than I gave you credit for,” said Ken Kiang. “Perhaps you prefer the avant-garde. Then would you consider the Phosphorescent Fascination, a shimmering goo of edible plastic mixed with liquid neptunium—a radioactive substance that, if you dim the lights, will shine out of your throat! Oh, you’ll quickly become a Class Four biohazard, Shanks; but the exquisite flavor is worth every click of the Geiger counter. How about it, Shanks—like to live dangerously?”
“Apple pie.”
“Very well. Never let it be said that Hoagland Shanks doesn’t know what he likes. An apple pie it is. But first…why not have a spoonful of this?” And Ken Kiang held up a tiny gold spoon, which held the tiniest bit of yellow filling, scooped from a tiny pie on the table.
Hoagland Shanks shrugged, took the spoon, and tasted. His eyes immediately popped wide, his mouth hung open, and he whispered, “Whoa! Ooh…I mean…wow! What is that, Ken?”
“A personal favorite,” Ken Kiang said. “Made of a substance that activates dormant taste buds on the insides of your veins—and thus you taste the pie with your entire body as it pulses throughout your internal organs! Come on, Shanks! Can you bear to pass that up?”
Hoagland Shanks shuddered with pleasure as the extraordinary dessert worked through him. He reached for another bite.
“All in good time, my man,” said Ken Kiang gently, moving the pie out of Shanks’s reach. “You shall have all the pie you like, in good time.”
Hoagland Shanks licked his lips. “If they’re all as good as that pie, lemme at ’em!”
“You shall have them all,” promised Ken Kiang. “But before we begin, won’t you join me in a little pie of my own—a recipe I’ve concocted myself—won’t you do me that favor, Shanks?”
“You bet! Whatcha got?”
Ken Kiang said a few words in French to the waiter, who brought out a pie with a black, lumpy crust. The waiter threw the pie down and stole away as quickly as he politely could, standing far from the table, muttering darkly.
“Jeez, Ken,” said Hoagland Shanks. “What kinda pie you got here?”
“I doubt you have tasted it before,” said Ken Kiang. “It is the Pie of Innocence Slain. In it, Shanks, you will taste crushed dreams, and defeat; youthful enthusiasm curdled into despair; desperate loneliness; and at the center, Shanks, that rarest, most dainty of delicacies—the heart, Shanks; the pure and uncorrupted human heart. Tonight, Hoagland Shanks, you consume your own soul.”
“You talk like a darned fool, Ken,” said Hoagland Shanks. “Tastes like peaches.”
Fifty-five pies later, Hoagland Shanks trembled with joy.
“I thought I knew about pies,” he whispered. “I thought I knew what pies were all about.”
“I told you they were good pies,” said Ken Kiang.
It was four in the morning. They had been at La Société des Friandises Etranges for eight hours. Ken Kiang sat up straight, fresh as a flower, and drank coffee. The waiter slumped in a booth, watching the Belgian Prankster on a black-and-white TV.
“You must know an awful lot about pies, to know about this place,” said Hoagland Shanks.
“Oh, I’ve picked up a little knowledge here and there,” said Ken Kiang carelessly.
“Reckon you know…about any other pie places? Like this?”
“Of course!” said Ken Kiang. “But, unfortunately for you, a deal’s a deal. I promised you the most delicious pies you have ever tasted. You have received said pies. End of transaction.”
Hoagland Shanks looked hurt. “But telling me about just one—that wouldn’t put you out, would it?”
“That’s just it,” said Ken Kiang. “It would ‘put me out.’ I’m evil, remember? I refuse to tell you where more delicious pies may be found, Shanks, simply because it is a mean thing to do.”
Hoagland Shanks started to cry. “But, but…all I want is more pies.”
“I confess I find your tears strangely satisfying.”
“Isn’t there a way for me to get pies that still lets you be a mean guy?”
“Hmmm.” Ken Kiang cocked his head. “Perhaps there is, Shanks. Perhaps there is…”
Ken Kiang was ruminating, considering the problem from several angles, when his eyes happened to fall upon the TV in the corner; the Belgian Prankster was still on; Ken Kiang watched for a few moments—his eyes grew wide; and all at once he let forth a mighty yawp and leaped to his feet, pointing at the TV in horror.
“The Belgian Prankster?” he howled. “The Belgian Prankster?”
IT was completely dark. Jo couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t see anything. Only after a moment did she remember how the Indignant had been shot down, and she had been screaming, and then everything had ended.
She heard herself say, “So this is the afterlife.”
“Do you think we’re really dead?” said Sefino somewhere.
“I’m certainly dead,” came Colonel Korsakov’s voice.
“I’m not dead,” said Aunt Lily.
There was a long silence.
“Pretty dark, though,” said Jo slowly.
“There’s no way I survived,” said Sefino. “Crashing into the ocean, sinking, explosions everywhere, water flooding through the cracks and holes and—”
“That’s strange,” said Jo. “Are you wet, too?”
“A bit soggy, yes.”
There was a pause.
“I thought the afterlife would be drier than this,” said Jo.
“Or better lit,” said Sefino.
“We’re not dead!” insisted Aunt Lily.
No one spoke for a while. Jo fidgeted uncomfortably in the wet darkness. Her body was coming back, and it ached all over.
“Pretty dull afterlife,” said Sefino. “I must have been more of a sinner than I thought.”
“I expect it picks up later,” said Colonel Korsakov.
“Listen to yourselves!” said Aunt Lily. “I don’t see how we could’ve survived, either—but isn’t it obvious we’re alive?”
Jo coughed up some salt water. “Does anyone have a light?”
“In the compartment above your head,” said Colonel Korsakov.
Jo opened the compartment, found the flashlight, and clicked it on. The plane was destroyed, its hull torn and flooded with black, swirling seawater. Jo’s beam of light swung over the oily murk, in which floated waterlogged books, lamps, boxes—all of Sefino’s and Korsakov’s possessions, soaked and ruined.
“Where are we?” said Jo.
“I have high expectations of heaven,” said Korsakov. “My grandmother said that if I lived a good life, all my wishes would come true in the next world.”
“You must have exceptionally weird tastes,” said Sefino.
“C’mon, let’s get out of this plane before it totally falls apart,” said Aunt Lily. “Jo, you’ve got the light. Lead the way!”
They got out of the plane, squeezing through the gash on the side. Jo carefully lowered herself down into the darkness, and
into more water, which came up to her waist, warmer and slimier than she expected.
Jo didn’t think she was dead, either. In fact, she buzzed with strange exhilaration. She felt as though she was on the verge of something big, that she was coming close to a destination that had been pulling at her ever since the package fell from the sky.
Soon they were all wading in the slimy water. The ground was squishy and uneven, and the dark, humid air seethed with living smells. Jo’s flashlight swept around the damp cave, in which everything pulsed and squished about in the most sickening way.
Colonel Korsakov was fiddling with the plane. “I’ve fixed the lights…Mind your eyes….”
The plane’s lights switched on and a great length of the cavern was lit up—a dim tunnel of glistening pink walls, soft and quivering, with dozens of tubes leading in and out, spilling juices; a red, ribbed, dripping passage, leading off into forbidding darkness.
With a whoop of delight Colonel Korsakov slogged ahead, wading excitedly into the treacherous goo; he looked around with awe, with astonishment, and finally with an unrestrained boyish glee. He turned around, and smiling, held his arms out wide.
“Grandmother was right! My wishes have come true!” he exulted. “It cannot be denied—the miracle of it all! We are inside my digestion!”
“I have been sent to hell,” said Sefino.
“The organs! The entrails! The enzymes and juices!” rhapsodized Korsakov. “At long last, reward! An eternity to spend in my own stomach!”
“Hey!” Jo was looking down the tunnel in the other direction. “Come look at this!”
Jo pointed her flashlight down the dripping tunnel. It dropped into an enormous mucilaginous gorge, thick with running juices, the walls writhing rhythmically.
At the bottom there stood a building.
It was a solid, respectable five-story brick building. In a city, one might pass it a hundred times without noticing it. Inside a giant throbbing stomach, however, it was noticed.
The Order of Odd-Fish Page 6
