Hooflandia

by Heide Goody

  “Which brings us to the notes,” said Clovenhoof.

  “Yes,” said Lennox. “Jeremy doesn’t like the new plastic British notes.”

  “Too shiny. Too clean,” shuddered Clovenhoof.

  “So, we’ve taken a retro step with the Hooflandian notes,” said Lennox. “They’re designed to retain the chemical essence of anything they touch.”

  “Super absorbent,” said Clovenhoof.

  “Easily stained.”

  “It gives them character.”

  “A unique feel.”

  “And I pissed on every hundredth bank note just to get the ball rolling.”

  Ben dropped the money in disgust.

  “Can we talk about this wall, please,” said Nerys.

  “What’s the problem? I want a wall. A bigly wall. Tall, proud –”

  “See-through?” said Nerys.

  “Absolutely. I want people to be able to see into Hooflandia and be all jealous that they’re on the wrong side.”

  “So, looking in at the nudist beach?”

  “Nudist beach!” said Ben. “Are you nuts? This is Boldmere, not… not Brighton!”

  “Not any more, Ben. It’s Hooflandia and all things are possible,” said Clovenhoof. “It will be a normal beach for the Family Bumper Fun Day, then we’ll change it to a nudist beach later on. Part of my exclusive club and lifestyle coaching centre. It saves me having to buy a private island. I’m building my own island paradise right here in Hooflandia.”

  “We’ll get the sand for the beach delivered with the wall materials,” said Nerys. “But I think it’s going to be a simple brick and concrete wall, sorry.”

  Oh. Your weird friends are here,” said Ben. “The Calhoun children, was it?”

  Joan and Rutspud had entered the presidential suite. Rutspud was nodding approvingly. Joan’s face suggested she was less impressed but she was French and they famously had no taste in décor. They’d built the Pompidou Centre for one thing.

  “This place looks like a tart’s boudoir,” said Joan.

  “Thank you,” said Ben, vindicated.

  “Boudoir,” said Lennox.

  “Sure,” said Clovenhoof. He reclined on a chaise longue and invited Joan and Rutspud to grab their own. Joan sat primly on the edge of another chaise longue, and Rutspud bounced gently on the springs of his. “Are you two coming to the Family Bumper Fun Day?”

  He caught a look between Joan and Rutspud.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” said Rutspud.

  “Spit it out,” said Clovenhoof, “what’s up?”

  “Apparently there’s to be a protest march at the same time as your Family Bumper Fun Day,” said Joan. “Church solidarity against PrayPal. Some people we know are going on it.”

  “Some people?”

  “Nuns,” said Joan.

  “Lots of nuns,” said Rutspud.

  Clovenhoof clapped his hands with glee. “The looks on your faces! I thought it might be bad news, but that sounds like great fun. How many nuns?”

  “Tommy Chuckles said a million, but he might be exaggerating.”

  “And he’s also a puppet,” said Joan, “so I don’t know how much we can trust his word.”

  “A million nuns! Thank you, guys. Well, if that’s all you’ve got to tell me…”

  “No,” said Joan. “We’ve come to ask for assistance.”

  “We need your help,” said Rutspud.

  “I told you, I’m not helping you fortress-wreckers.”

  “We’ve made some progress finding the programmer who wrote your app,” said Joan.

  “That’s swell but –”

  “And we think he hangs out at a Large Mike’s chip shop.”

  Clovenhoof paused, licking his lips at the thought of fast food. “Of course, I could have told you that. That’s where he and me and Festering Ken cooked up the idea.”

  “So that’s our main line of enquiry at the moment,” said Joan and began to explain their current plans, but Clovenhoof wasn’t listening. He was thinking about a kebab – steaming fragrant meat, topped with chilli sauce that could blow your socks off, grease all over his face as he tried to eat it and not caring in the slightest… He licked his lips.

  “– a chain of about twenty and we just can’t get round them all,” said Joan.

  Clovenhoof held up an Eddy-Cab security fob. “Take Kylie.”

  “What?” said Rutspud.

  “The car. She does what you need if you just talk to her. You’ll get round the chip shops no problem with that. One condition though.”

  “What?” asked Joan, as Rutspud gleefully grabbed the key.

  “Bring me back a kebab from the first one you get to.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Joan and Rutspud went out to the street.

  “There,” said Rutspud.

  “Ah, it’s one of those,” said Joan, recognising the sleek curves of the cars they’d seen on the transporter. Why did they look more like fish than mechanical conveyances? Like fish with the disturbingly anatomical curves of the human body... Joan felt a little sordid just looking at it.

  She stood at a respectful distance.

  “Hello, Kylie.”

  The car said nothing.

  “Can we get in please?” she asked.

  Rutspud stepped forward and pressed something on the key fob. The doors unlocked with a well-engineered ‘ka-thunk’.

  “Shall I drive?”

  “You know you want to,” said Joan.

  In the driver’s seat, Rutspud examined the controls with a huge grin on his face.

  “Check this out! It’s got an AR-compatible HUD, a Warp Ten acceleration mode, multi-variable suspension lifting and three sixty parking globe vision.”

  “You sound excited, so I assume they’re good things.”

  “Oh, momma, you’ve no idea,” said the demon gleefully. “Start her up, Kylie. Whack her in Warp Ten and plot a course for Large Mike’s.”

  “I’m sorry,” said a sweetly unflappable computer voice. “The law requires an adult with a full driving licence to control this vehicle at all times when it is in operation.”

  “What?”

  “The law requires an adult –”

  “I am an adult.”

  “The weight on the seat is below the minimum weight permitted. I can contact Eddy-Cab support if you wish –”

  “It thinks I’m a child!” he hissed.

  Joan couldn’t help a small laugh when she saw Rutspud’s look of horror. He bounced in the seat. “That’s just rude you stupid machine. Do you have any idea how old I really am?”

  “I’m not equipped to answer that question,” said Kylie, “but the weight on the seat is below the minimum –”

  “Screw you, Kylie!”

  Rutspud sat and glared for a full minute before Joan broke the silence. “Shall we swap seats?”

  Rutspud sulkily slid across while Joan went around. She popped her broadsword onto the back seat so that she could hold the steering wheel.

  “How’s that, Kylie?”

  “How is what?” asked Kylie.

  “Am I heavy enough to drive this car?”

  “The weight on the seat meets the minimum required.”

  “Fat heffalump,” scowled Rutspud but Joan ignored him.

  “Please state your destination,” said Kylie.

  Rutspud huffed and grumbled while Joan gave Kylie the first address. He leaned across to try and see the heads-up display and Joan swatted at him.

  “I’m driving, Rutspud,” she said.

  “No, you’re not, the car is,” he said. “You don’t even know how to drive.”

  “But I’m supposed to be in control, just in case,” said Joan, taking a firm grip on the steering wheel.

  “Don’t even know how cars work,” he muttered.

  “I imagine it’s not too different to a horse and carriage from my day.”

  “Sure,” he sneered. “Exactly the same. But where are
the horses, huh?”

  “They’re… internal.”

  “Internal?”

  “Internal, yes.”

  Ten minutes’ later, they pulled up outside a Large Mike’s chip shop.

  As they stepped out, Rutspud inhaled deeply as he had at the previous ones they’d visited. “Mmm, that smells good.”

  “You say that every time,” said Joan.

  “To which you reply by mithering on about the English habit of frying everything in oil.”

  “It’s disgusting and unhealthy.”

  “Which is why it smells good. Let’s go and get kebabs and see what they know.”

  They went inside and to the glass-fronted counter, which was filled with various things coated in batter and golden from the fryer.

  “What can I get you, bab?” asked the middle-aged serving woman.

  “Just deciding,” said Rutspud, studying the menu displays overhead.

  “But I wondered if you could take a look at this picture,” said Joan. “Do you recognise this person?”

  The woman gave a half second glance to the picture they had printed off the internet.

  “Perhaps, he works here or lives nearby?” said Joan,

  “No, don’t know him, bab. Have you decided what you want?”

  “Three kebabs, with everything on,” said Rutspud.

  “I don’t want one,” said Joan to Rutspud.

  “That’s good then, because I’m having two and we’ll take one back for Mr Clovenhoof.”

  Rutspud watched the woman as she carved strips off the rotating spindle of kebab meat. “It’s a lot like our team-building exercises back home,” he observed, “taking all the bits that nobody wants and recycling them.”

  Joan looked at him. “You mean... oh yuck!”

  “It’s not that bad,” he said. “I won these legs in a team-building game in, oh, must be before they started numbering years.”

  “That sounds barbaric.”

  “Tough but effective business practice. Encourages ambition and independent effort. A demon’s gotta stand on his own two feet. Or someone else’s.”

  “I’ll be outside when you’re done,” said Joan.

  Joan went outside where the air wasn’t thick with hot oil and greasy kebab meat. She looked around the outside of the shop and tried to compare it with what was on the photo. She wasn’t sure if it was a match or not. The sign about OAPs wasn’t there, but maybe that offer had been replaced. Rutspud returned a few minutes later, shovelling hot food into his mouth and making appreciative chomping sounds.

  “This is so good,” he said. “It’s got all the flavours you want in a dish.”

  Joan couldn’t help herself. “Like what?”

  “Neglect, desperation and suffering,” said Rutspud, smacking his lips.

  Joan decided not to ask whose suffering that might be.

  They both looked up as a bus drove by. Rutspud paused, his kebab partway to his mouth.

  “Why would a bus need Wi-Fi?” said Joan, reading the promotional lettering on the side of the bus.

  “Because it’s cool,” said Rutspud in that distant voice of those who are thinking about something else entirely. “Why put cupholders in chairs? Why spear your earlobes with pieces of decorative metal? Why combine swimming and dancing and pretend it’s a sport? Humans stick stuff together for a million stupid rea–” Rutspud made an odd, strangled noise. His eyes bulged.

  “What is it?” she said, alarmed. “Too many kebabs? Is it that chili sauce?”

  Rutspud appeared to be choking. Maybe kebabs were incompatible with demon biology or maybe he just had wind. Would he explode in fleshy gobbets or fart?

  Rutspud turned to her and clawed at her breastplate. Joan was shocked and then instantly angry. She slapped him hard but that didn’t stop him. He took a deep wheezing breath.

  “The ticket! The ticket!”

  “What ticket?” she said.

  “The bus ticket!” he cried. “The one with the e-mail address on it!”

  Joan pushed him away. “You’re looking in the wrong place,” she said and pulled it out from the leg greave in which she had stored it.

  Rutspud snatched it from her. “Look!”

  She looked, but it took her a moment or two to see. A number eleven on the ticket. A number eleven bus.

  “That’s it!” spluttered Rutspud. “He wrote his e-mail on his bus ticket. It’s where our guy hangs out. It’s the number eleven, which is a circular bus route, so he can spend hours just going round using his computer. It’s his office.”

  “So, all we have to do is get on the bus and look for him?” said Joan.

  At that moment another number eleven bus pulled up behind the first.

  “All we have to do is get on the right bus,” said Rutspud.

  Clovenhoof twirled around so that he could properly absorb how gobsmackingly brilliant his family fun day was going to be. What had started as a flippant remark at the press conference five short days ago, a response to the supposed failings of his PrayPal to replicate something as pathetic as the church coffee morning, was now burgeoning into what could only be described as an absolutely kick-ass party.

  According to Nerys, they were expecting over five thousand people at this event, which would elevate the humble coffee morning to something that would make everyone sit up and take notice. The coffee part of it would be serviced by the team of baristas with state of the art coffee machines that looked as though they might also be able to navigate to far-flung galaxies or perhaps control a nuclear power station, but Clovenhoof had definitely seen them create coffee so that was okay. Biscuits were piled high into vast constructions that Milo Finn-Frouer had called Croquembouches Biscuit but which looked like Christmas trees constructed from biscuits. They were crying out for someone to eat a biscuit from the bottom layer, prompting a catastrophic collapse. Clovenhoof magnanimously decided to leave that treat for his guests.

  He strolled down to the edge of his new lake. The diggers had moved vast amounts of soil, but it turned out that transporting soil away from an urban site was a tricky and time-consuming task, as it all had to be loaded into lorries and taken elsewhere. His moat did not yet encircle the whole of Hooflandia, but as his yacht was arriving today it was being filled with water by a team of engineers with pumps and hoses.

  Nerys appeared with a clipboard and a swagger. Ben trailed behind, carrying a bottle of fizzy plonk.

  “I do like pumps and hoses,” said Clovenhoof to the world at large.

  “Makes me want to go to the toilet just looking at it,” said Ben.

  “Me too,” said Clovenhoof. “And isn’t pissing one of life’s great pleasures?”

  “A relief perhaps,” said Nerys uncertainly.

  “Yes, but the beauty of it is there are so many things and persons one can piss on. New dress?” Clovenhoof asked.

  “Yes,” said Nerys, doing a twirl. “It’s one of a kind. Isn’t it fabulous?”

  “It looks as though it’s made from Capri Sun wrappers.”

  “It is,” said Ben with a baffled shake of his head.

  “Winnebago Kisskiss is a hot new fashion designer,” said Nerys. “He makes one-off pieces from unexpected materials. I wanted something avant-garde and memorable for today.”

  Clovenhoof nodded. “Make a note to ask him about a new smoking jacket for me.”

  “Will do. Right, I think we’re almost ready with everything.”

  “Everything?”

  Nerys checked her clipboard.

  “Buffet with Hooflandia flags in all the sandwiches. Check. Screening of the Hooflandia community vision and corporate opportunities on loop in the presidential suite. Check. Fairground rides, programme of entertainment, customer advice desk for PrayPal users. Check, check, check.”

  “And they do look marvellous,” Clovenhoof agreed, “but surely one of the many climaxes of the day – I do love a multiple climax – is the launching of the presidential yacht into the Hooflandian lagoon w
hile the crowds gaze on from the beach. I cannot help but notice the lack of a yacht, a lagoon and, quite tellingly, a beach.”

  “Fear not, Jeremy,” said Nerys smoothly. “The yacht should be here within the hour. The moat – sorry, the lagoon, should be filled in…”

  “Two point six hours,” said Ben, glancing over at the engineers.

  “And here comes the beach now,” said Nerys and pointed ahead.

  “Those are lorries, not a beach,” said Clovenhoof. “Just because I’m rich, doesn’t mean I’m gullible.”

  “Says the man who wants a smoking jacket made out of orange squash packets,” muttered Ben.

  “That’s the sand. They’re going to just dump it and go,” said Nerys.

  “Won’t it need levelling out? Raking?” said Ben.

  “Sand dunes,” shrugged Clovenhoof. “So, we’ve got the beach. The lagoon will be full in…”

  “Two point five five hours,” said Ben.

  “The yacht comes in. We get it on the slipway. I do my keynote speech and then smash – champagne christening and the SS Watery Cock-Extension slips into the lagoon.”

  Ben held out the bottle of plonk to Clovenhoof. Clovenhoof looked at it but did not touch it.

  “I hope you’re about to say, ‘Have a refreshing breakfast tipple while I tell you about the fricking mahoosive bottle of fizz you’re gonna use to launch your yacht.’”

  “What?” said Ben. “It’s a bottle.”

  “I’m launching a bloody ship, Ben! I want to smash a bottle off its prow that they can see from space.”

  “I’ll get onto it,” said Nerys. “How big do you want it?”

  “The biggest!” said Clovenhoof.

  “That’ll be a Melchizedek of champers then.”

  “I knew Melchizedek of old,” said Clovenhoof. “We’re talking Biblical times. Smug git. Fancied himself as a bit of Christ figure. Even wanted the job. I told him. ‘Melchy,’ I said, ‘don’t even get your hopes up. In this business, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’ Bloody nepotism.”

  “Oi, mate!” shouted a lorry driver in a hard hat. “Where do want this lot?”