“Susie,” hisspered Corniun, “careful be. Careful very be.”
Chapter 44
Because of its similarity to Snow-it Hall, the Ughloovre now seemed to Susie familiar territory: scary territory, but scarily familiar. She wasn’t going back to the dungeons, she kept telling herself. She wasn’t going back to the dungeons.
To begin with, she couldn’t think what was strange about the place. Then it hit her: There was an absence of pengrins. But then she couldn’t remember whether, on her previous visit there, the Ughloovre had been sentried by pengrins, or whether – dint of its similarity to its more opulent cousin – she was just expecting that it should be.
The Ughloovre was extremely quiet. Almost spookily quiet.
Susie was walking ahead of the column between Dremo and Mr Nip. Because of the quiet, there had become something almost church-like about the building. Perhaps it was for that reason that, when she started to talk, Susie felt enjoined to whisper. She didn’t really understand it herself. “Scarcely buzzing,” she whispered to Dremo. “Guess I’m not the draw you thought I was going to be.”
“They’re already in their seats,” Dremo replied, but there was no warmth in his tone, no reassurance, no gratitude. He totally avoided her eyes, preferring instead to concentrate on Mr Nip. “Your speech, let me assure you, is very eagerly anticipated.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Susie said.
“Just tell it as it is,” said Dremo. “And was. That’s all that can be expected of any orator, anyone.”
“I’m scarcely an orator,” said Susie, with a modesty she thought suited her rather well. “Not really even a speaker. Just a mumbler, me. At best.”
“Come now,” said Dremo, still looking at Mr Nip.
“Blueming quiet, isn’t it?” announced Bluemerang to the escort of about a hundred echoes kettle-drumming from off the walls.
Truth to tell, the butterflies in Susie’s tummy were breeding at an alarming rate. She had the feeling that a hiccup would release from her mouth an orchard of Orange-tips and an entire armada of Red Admirals. She couldn’t think what on earth she would tell her audience. A fear started to grip her that she would just stand there, her mouth opening and closing, like a laryngitic goldfish, with nothing coming out. And if, by any chance, some words did tumble from her, what words would they be? The rantings of an idiot, the burbling of a fool.
She could cope, Susie, with knowing she was a fool. What she couldn’t cope with was others knowing she was. Or even thinking she was. Loath soccer and frozen playing fields though she did, she’d prefer a month of such torment to for one moment being the object of scorn.
She saw the double-doors approaching. She knew beyond them was the stage. Knew that before the stage there would be a cosmos of eyes, staring at her, expecting her to impart wisdom. Expecting … expecting … expecting something … anything.
In the snap of a camera shutter, the flock of gastric butterflies became a colony. Before she could react to which, Dremo pushed open the double-doors.
It was there that the pengrins were sentrying. …
And it was there too that, waiting for them, were the Snow-italls.
“Arrest them,” said Elaide.
Susie was roughly seized by three of the pengrins. Her hands were tied behind her back. A chorus started to grow within what had become the well of what had become the court. “Try her,” chanted the chorus. “Try her. Try her. Try her.”
Susie looked to Dremo, who hung his head in a shame which, lit by neon, could not have been more obvious.
“Try her. Try her. Try her.”
Nip’s shame was less overt. But Susie could not help noticing that several ears had fallen from his chest. Around her there was a cacophony, an ocean of sneering and derision. It felt to Susie like she was drowning in shark-infested … jelly, where all the dorsal fins were gloats, and the ocean was a glutinous, impenetrable mass, navigable only by those gloated fins. It wasn’t even that the sharks were coming to eat her. To take painful nips at her, yes, but nothing so merciful as actually to chomp into a vital organ. This was to be death by a thousand humiliations. There is no death more painful than that.
“Try her. Try her. Try her.”
But it was not for her plight that tears were welling. That added sting to them, but it did not cause them. She knew her case was hopeless and that she would, for the rest of her days, live out some miserable existence endungeoned by the Snow-italls. No, it was not the despair causing her tears, it was the betrayal.
At her side, two more pengrins trapped Mr Nip within a hermetically sealed jar, from the confines of which he could be seen (but not heard) to scream. Another brace of pengrins seized Dremo.
“You promised me amnesty,” he protested. “If I delivered Susie to you, you promised me amnesty. You promised, you promised.”
“You are a criminal,” Elaide told him, as behind her the court started to assemble in a similar fashion to the way on Susie’s other ‘trial’ had been. “Do you seriously believe that Snow-italls would make a deal with a criminal?”
“But … you promised,” Dremo protested again. The shame in his face now stucco’d with contrition and self-loathing.
“For promises to mean anything,” Elaide told him, “they have to be made to those worthy of a promise. Criminals do not fall into that category.”
“I’m no criminal,” Dremo stated, both blandly and abjectly.
From lowered lids he glanced in Susie’s direction. He found only her shoes.
“You have been plotting the overthrow of the government. That makes you a criminal,” Elaide told him.
“No, I have only been advocating debate,” said Dremo, suddenly finding a scruple or two of courage. “That makes me only an emocrat.”
“Semantics!” snorted Elaide. “I do not play word games with criminals. That either. Let the trial begin.”
“It is the government which should be in the dock,” Dremo shouted. “Not me.”
Whilst Elaide and Dremo had been involved in this exchange, Susie had been looking around her. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that all the Sufrogs were being bound, and that Corniun’s hind-legs were being tied to her forelegs.
Before her, all (to begin with) was just a blur. A kaleidoscope of dorsalled gloats. Then individual figures started to emerge from the ether. There was Momma and Poppa, there Shingle and … And there, there was IKI 31 & 32. She just knew that on its countenance would be plastered the biggest gloat of all.
This cost her a double-take.
Because, far from gloating, the faces of both IKI 31 & 32 wore expressions of regret similar to that of Dremo. The I-knew-it contrived to sidle closer to the prisoners. Susie could see that was to enable them to have words with her. Its (apparent) regret notwithstanding, Susie was not entirely sure how much she wanted to talk to the I-knew-it.
Chapter 45
The pengrins were corralling the ‘accused’ into a small pen on the back wall of the court room. Susie could see O’Nestly hiding himself behind Corniun’s substantial bulk and pressing himself against that back wall. But she couldn’t understand why.
The same counsel as had previously ‘defended’ Susie presented herself again. And, again, she shared a body with Lord Justin Case.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Susie insisted. “I’m not going to plead ‘guilty’.”
“The only possible way to avoid execution,” her counsel told her, “is to throw yourself on the mercy of the court. The court will not be merciful if its time has been wasted. Pleading ‘not guilty’ would be to waste the court’s time.”
“Funny kind of justice,” said Susie, “which punishes you for telling the truth.”
“The court will not be merciful either,” her counsel told her, “if you try and get cute.”
“Contempt of court,” the judge warned her.
Susie could see Ma’am Elaide approaching them. “How can you be in contempt of court,” she wearied, “if you h
ave contempt for … ”
“Gag her,” the defence counsel told the nearest pengrin.
“Please,” said the pengrin.
“I beg your pardon,” said an astonished counsel.
“Please,” the pengrin repeated. “Gag her … please.”
“We don’t ‘please’ pengrins,” Elaide told him. “Whatever next? I’ve never heard of such a thing. We are Snow-it-alls. We ‘please’ no-one.”
“Then, ma’am, we have no option,” said Terry, the orbuttieler. With which he pulled at his beak and yanked it off. To reveal that this was some kind of smiley scabbard sheathing a stiletto blade, honed to scalpel sharpness, and without the slightest vestige of amusement about it, or happiness. Terry grabbed Elaide, held this lethal beak to her throat. “And now,” he said, “I’d like to talk. Please.”
In that moment Susie realised why the pengrins’ smiles had been so menacing: The eyes above them had been scowling. There are few things more menacing than an insincere smile. Brutus smiled as he stabbed Caesar. Bendy politicians had been smiling ever since. Bendy politicians are those more interested in public relations than relations with the public. They smile with their lips – and only with their lips.
But Susie’s time for reflection was scant.
“Talk?” Elaide replied to Terry. The latter responded by pushing his beak further into her neck. “Yes, talk. Of course, talk. We’ll sort out this little contretemps. In moments. This slight difference of opinion. In sockends. If maybe you just wouldn’t jab me so hard. Please.”
Other pengrins had grabbed the other Snow-it-alls. They were forcing them out of the back doors which, Susie surmised, led to the Ughloovre dungeons. This was causing a kerfuffle of ginormous proportions: The pengrins samurai’d in menace, the Snow-it-alls treacled in terror, the I-knew-its liquoriced in befuddlement, and the Emos hithered-and-dithered … and withered and thithered.
“Escape now,” IKI 32 hisspered to Susie.
“If you’re going to escape,” 31 said, “escape now.”
O’Nestly whispered to Mimimi. She squeezed him hard against the back wall. O’Nestly, being a sponge, was squidgy enough that thus his bonds were freed. He immediately set about loosing those of his colleagues. They, in turn, released the shackles of their fellows. IKI 31 & 32 was, meantime, untying the knot holding Susie’s hands.
“Why?” she asked, her gratitude tie-dyed with suspicion.
“We betrayed you,” said 31.
“You were trying to help,” said 32.
“There are things which could be better,” 31 told her.
“We betrayed you,” said 32.
“Come with us,” Susie urged them, her hands now free.
31 said, “We have nowhere …”
“… to go,” said 32.
31 said, “Here there’s maybe something – maybe just a tiny something – that we can do.”
“Elsewhere, they are elsewhere’s problems, not our own,” said 32.
“Thank you,” Susie said.
Slowly the Sufrogs sidled out. The scene around them was a cake-mix of confusion, churning around in whirls of doughy incertitude.
Mimimi found herself undoing the ropes that held Dremo. Halfway through which she recognised what she was doing. Dremo looked her imploringly in the eyes, “I did help Susie,” he begged.
“What the hell?” Mimimi shrugged and finished the job she had started. She and Dremo left the room together.
Last of all to leave was Susie herself, still with the still moaning Miss Chief bobbing in her bib pocket. On the table before the improvised dock was the hermetically sealed jar. An extremely squashed up Mr Nip looked out of it very squashed-uply … plaintively and plaintiffly. If IKI 31 & 32 had betrayed Susie, how much more had Peatur Nip done so. No, she was damned if she’d take him with her. He’d made his traitorous bed. Now was the time for him to lie in it. However squashed-uply.
She tiptoed from the room, joined the others in the corridor. They glanced this way and that, checked that it was indeed empty. It was.
They had gone maybe twenty yards down the corridor. Nip’s desperate eyes had not left Susie’s. “I’ll be right back,” she said.
“You go on, I’ll catch you up.” She sneaked back into the still tumultuous court-room, stole the jar from its place on the table, registered Nip’s glance of profound thanks, and stole once again – this time, out into the corridor.
The rest of the group were further along it than she’d have imagined, and she had to trot quite vigorously (still on tiptoe) in order to catch them up.
Along the second corridor they thought it safer to make noise. Now what they wanted was distance between them and their would-be persecutors. They started to run – in Corniun’s case, to canter.
Down the length of that second corridor until it intersected with the third. That too was empty. The fourth corridor likewise. This led them to the electronic door.
They pushed the button. The door pshhhed open.
“Wait,” said Dremo. “They could be waiting on the other side.”
“What choice do we blueming have, mate?” Bluemerang asked.
Recognising immediately the choicelessness of their situation, they piled into the door. It pshhhed closed. As it started to pshhh open on the other side, they all held their breaths.
The door was open.
No pengrin had rushed forward to arrest them. Bluemerang twentytatived a blue nose into the outside world.
Nothing.
There was no-one waiting for them.
As one bundle, they hustled from the electronic door and thence to the streets beyond.
Chapter 46
As fast as their legs could carry them the Sufrogs careered down the street. They zig-zagged as zig-zaggedly as they could. They were making for Mount Neverrest. At the foot of Mount Neverrest was the frontier crossing to the Fowork Forest. Nothing else seemed important. Until they ran so fast they ran out of breath. They stopped on a street corner, waited until the others crashed, slid and skidded into them.
“We need a plan,” puffed Dremo.
“Excuse we,” said Miss Chief, “excuse we, Mr Emo creature, but if there’s any ‘we-need-a-plan’-ning to be done it is we whom does it.”
“And your plan might be?” puffed O’Nestly, frankly glad of the rest the halt had afforded him.
“Our plan? Is it our plan you are recurring to?”
“-ferring to, yes,” panted O’Nestly.
“Ah, our plan, we see. Our plan would be … our plan, let we see, … our plan would be to consult with the Emo creature.”
“Great i-blueming-dea, Miss Chief.”
“The cameras,” said Dremo, his breath returning to him now in great gulches. “If you, Susie, were to stand on Corniun’s back, you could swing the cameras so that they were facing all sorts of different directions. With the streets all being identical, whoever it is monitoring the cctv would be clueless where precisely in The Ughloos we were.”
Susie waited for a moment for someone to say “but”. It never arrived. Then she started ransacking her brains for loopholes in the plan. None came to her.
“Well?” Miss Chief asked of her.
“Well?” Susie asked back.
“What are you waiting for, child? We have told you what to do. On the nag’s back and quick about it.”
“No,” said Corniun obdurately. There was “WAY no,” the unicorn insisted, that she was allowing Miss Chief on her back. If Susie wanted to adjust the cameras, that was fine. But she had to have a contact that wasn’t Miss Chief. O’Nestly volunteered.
From camera to camera they skitted. One they’d turn right the way around, another half. Some of them they didn’t touch at all. After a dozen or so such adjustments they were reasonably confident that any monitor would be thrown into sufficient confusion to create the window necessary for the Sufrogs to effect their escape.
Again they found a neutral corner, one anonymous and camera-shy enough to serve as a plot-
hatchery. They tried to break the seal on Mr Nip’s prison, but it remained fast and he squashed up. Bluemerang and Mimimi both mouthed to him through his glass cage that they had done their best. Feelings were, to be polite about it, ambivalent that the jar should have been brought along at all.
“We have to get to the Fowork Forest,” Susie said. “Mr Nip said there was a crossing here at The Ughloos.”
“There is,” Dremo confirmed. “There are only three pengrins guarding it. Just one thing …”
“What?” Susie asked.
“I don’t think I can come with you,” Dremo said sadly. “I’m an inhabitant of the IAO. No-one who has left has ever returned.”
“Do you not think,” asked O’Nestly, “that the reason for that might be that what’s waiting is so much better than what’s left behind?”
“I’ve family here,” Dremo said, again sadly.
“Zey will zrow you into ze Ughetto, n’est-ce pas? What family do you have zere?”
“I betrayed you,” Dremo confessed. “The fact of the matter is, I don’t deserve to come with you.”
Susie thought for a moment. “I also betrayed you,” she said quietly. Dremo just looked at her with blank eyes – something which Susie found more disconcerting than she would have done any positive reaction. “I wanted to whoosh straight back home,” she continued, abashed but with some relief at finally getting this off her chest. “Mr E was trying to talk me out of it. I’m not sure – if he hadn’t been kidnapped – that he’d have succeeded. I’m sorry.”
“I seem to recall,” said O’Nestly, trying to veil his pride in Susie but not succeeding too well, “that someone once wrote ‘thus conscience doth make cowards of us all’. By all the saints, did he get that wrong! It’s not conscience makes cowards of us, but lack of conscience.”
“Excuse we, O’Nestly, …,” Miss Chief had again found her hoity-toitiness. “but if there are any proverbs to be proverbed it should be …”
“Got you!”
It was Momma and Poppa.
Susie wanted to faint.
Susie and the Snow-it-alls Page 19
