“Come with me please.” William offered to take my arm, which I declined by shying away from him. He indicated the exit sign at the far end of the corridor. “Your friends are waiting for you.”
“I expect we will be seeing each other again soon, Miss Pudding,” Cartouche said calmly.
“Thanks for having me, you have been most hospitable.” I almost curtsied to the inquisitor and then hurried for the exit.
Chapter 37
It was still dark outside, which meant we hadn’t been in custody for as long as it felt. Or it meant we had been in custody for days, which it definitely felt like.
William guided me to a sand coloured van, the kind of vehicle widely used by tradespeople and kidnappers around the world. The side door slid open, a dark shape lunged out and a cloth bag was pulled over my head as they bundled me inside.
“This really isn’t necessary,” I said through the muffling fabric.
“Welcome aboard, Pudding,” Drakeforth said from somewhere nearby. “Our mystery tour is about to begin.”
“Quiet,” William said, and it sounded like he thumped Drakeforth.
“The key,” Goat said and I could almost hear him nodding.
The engine roared into life and we careened through the narrow streets. Inside the van, I struggled to stay in my seat as we took corners at tyre-squealing speed.
“Where did you study law?” I asked.
“Quiet,” William replied.
“I only ask, because this is my first time actually needing a lawyer to get me out of jail, and it does seem a little odd to be shoved into an unmarked van with a bag over my head.”
“I won’t tell you again, keep quiet.”
“Hit her and you will regret it,” Drakeforth said.
Everyone fell silent and the van stampeded on through the city.
We would arrive at our destination eventually, though resigning myself to the inevitable set my teeth on edge. I felt powerless and angry. So I waited, feeling determined to inflict as much inconvenience on our captors’ lives as possible, when the time was right.
The van slowed and stopped, engine growling like my stomach. How long had it been since I ate? After a pause, we rolled forward and stopped. The engine went silent and a door rolled down behind us.
We were guided out of the van and my bag was removed. I blinked at the space. Some kind of cavernous room, perhaps a warehouse. A large rug marked an attempt at making some kind of lounge, complete with furniture and table decorations. The van had parked in the middle of the floor, and a small group of people regarded us suspiciously. I glared back at them, pleased to have a target for my annoyance.
I looked to my left, where Drakeforth and Eade stood, dishevelled and bagless. I could smell Goat to my right.
Dollar William came into view. “You have questions, and I may have answers. I also have food if you are hungry. Come and make yourselves comfortable.”
We took seats in soft couches and I accepted a plate with a fresh sandwich without saying thank you. That will show them.
“Welcome to the Credit Union,” William said.
“You bologna-biting-belligerents,” Drakeforth said.
“Drakeforth, don’t insult people with your mouth full,” Eade chided.
I finished chewing and asked, “Where’s Professor Bombilate?”
William frowned. “We were going to ask you the same thing.”
“You kidnapped him and us,” I replied.
“We did not kidnap anyone. We lost Bombilate and we rescued you from our oppressors.”
“Doesn’t that make you our oppressors?” I asked.
William raised an eyebrow and turned slightly to check our surroundings. “Do you feel oppressed?”
“I feel a lot of things; oppressed is pretty far down the list,” I admitted, and took another sandwich.
“Why are we here?” Eade asked.
“You took affirmative action against the forces that seek to enslave all of Pathia,” William replied.
“You think we blew up the pyramid on purpose?” I asked. “That’s exactly what the lawn thought, too.”
“Lawn?”
“Yeah, the police. Where I come from, they wear green uniforms. We call them The Lawn.” I sounded way more gangster than I felt.
“You were explaining why we have been freed from legal imprisonment, recklessly driven through the streets, and finally fed sandwiches,” Eade said.
“Really good sandwiches.” My plan to make them all suffer was fading with my hunger.
“Thank you, and yes I was, wasn’t I?” William replied. “Why did you blow up the pyramid?”
“We didn’t! At least not on purpose.” I felt that I was covering well-trod ground. “Is this some kind of trick? You’re actually police and trying to get us to admit to something we didn’t do?”
“I can assure you that we are as far from officers of the lore as you are from home,” William said.
“Drakeforth, what do you think?” I asked.
“I think I will have another sandwich while you tell them everything” Drakeforth replied.
Chapter 38
I hadn’t talked that much in a long time and when I finally stopped, the room remained silent. Eade was frowning deeply and Goat appeared to be asleep.
“Quite the story,” William said, rousing himself from a near trance.
“It’s all true.” I stifled a yawn. Performance art was exhausting. Even if it was just telling the story of my recent life’s upheavals to a bunch of economic revolutionaries.
“Empathic energy…” William said. “Well, that just proves what we have been saying all along.”
“Surely that depends on what you have been saying all along?” Eade replied.
William spoke with the certainty of a zealot who has memorised his dogma: “The current knowledge economy is an unsustainable model of economic management. The entire country is hurtling towards a complete breakdown of social order.”
“Yes, clearly there is chaos in the streets,” Eade said.
“It is coming,” William replied with smug certainty.
“And you think the only way to save Pathia is to switch to the credit system used elsewhere?” Eade asked.
“It’s the only option that makes sense,” William replied. “Tourism, exports, technology… We can leave the sandstone age ideals behind and embrace the modern world.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “The modern world runs on empathic energy, and if you missed the big bit in the middle of my story, I did explain that the primary source of that energy is dead people.”
“Hardly our problem, Pathia doesn’t use empathic energy.” William waved my concerns away like a heretic swatting a fly.
“We are talking about people, actual people. The energy of their existence being ground up and used to power toaster-ovens.”
“Not around here,” William insisted.
“Except, maybe, you know, the pyramid that was stuffed full of the stuff?” I replied.
“Which has nothing to do with actually using empathic energy,” William continued. “We want to change the economic system, not get tangled up in the ethics of an unnecessary alternative energy system.”
“You’re putting profits before people?” I felt quite shocked by the casual dismissal of all those lives.
“Yes, exactly.” William seemed pleased that I understood.
“If you changed the system, would you allow the Godden Energy Corporation to export and sell double-e flux extracted from Pathian citizens?” I asked.
“If they were prepared to pay for what they harvest, then sure,” William replied.
“Okay, I’ve heard enough: you are terrorists. This entire country really takes the toupee.”
“We still need your h
elp to find Professor Bombilate,” William replied.
“What do you want with the professor?” Eade demanded.
“Isn’t it obvious? Bombilate knows the truth. He was working with us to bring about the economic revolution.”
Eade gave a harsh, barking laugh.
“Nonsense!” She stood up and paced around the lounge set like she was performing a one act play in one of those tiny theatres where there is no more than six inches between the edge of your seat and the row in front. “Professor Bombilate is the leading authority on infornomics. Not only has he written and lectured extensively about the benefits and strength of the knowledge economy, he has also shown that it is the best system for a stable society.”
“Odd, isn’t it?” Drakeforth commented casually. “Two extremists with different views, and yet they are both utterly certain of the irrefutable nature of their world view.”
“It’s like one of those rom-com sensies,” I said. “The two characters are at opposite extremes, they hate each other and everything the other stands for, then they end up falling in love and their opposing ideologies are completely abandoned in the final act.”
“Compromise is when both parties lose,” Drakeforth replied.
I glanced at Eade, who was fully engaged in arguing with William. “Only if you have never truly been in love.”
“Marriage for a work permit does not require love,” Drakeforth said.
“You must have felt something?” I asked.
“Relief, mostly,” Drakeforth replied in a tone that suggested he was done talking about it.
“Compromise. Maybe that is what we need.” I stood up and waited for a gap in the argument to interrupt.
“I know where Professor Bombilate is!” I shouted over the rising voices.
“What? Where?” Eade turned in mid-rant and held a hand up to silence William, who continued talking without her.
“Somewhere…in Pathia?” I started. “Okay, I don’t know where exactly. But! The important thing is that we need to work together to find him.”
“We’re doing fine without him,” William said.
“Are you? Really? You need his specialist knowledge to pull this off. Even if you were successful, you think that the entire country is just going to switch to a new economic system overnight?”
“There will be a period of transition,” William said.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. I didn’t think much of that plan, either.”
“She’s right.” Eade sounded like the words were sour in her mouth. “We need to work together. Either you help us find Bombilate, or we can leave and do this on our own.”
“What’s your interest in him?” William asked.
“Eade worked with him,” I said.
“Odd, he never mentioned you.” William regarded Eade with a steady glare.
“He never mentioned you, either,” she snapped back.
I started again, thinking about compromise. The best place to start would be getting them to agree on something. “Professor Bombilate is an intelligent man. We all agree on that.” I waited while they nodded. “He is an instrument for change. Change can be good. If it’s done right, it can be great.”
“It can also be a disaster,” Eade muttered.
“We can prevent a disaster, if we work together to find Professor Bombilate. Maybe he can help bring the Knotstick Order to justice for their use of empathic energy.”
William shrugged, and even Eade looked less interested. At least that made two things they could agree on.
“What do we know about Professor Bombilate’s disappearance?” I asked. The room went quiet, no one leapt to be the first to speak up.
“Who saw him last?”
“Technically, we all did,” William replied. “At different times, I guess.”
“So when did you last see Professor Bombilate?” I kept pushing to the point.
“Ahh… It would have been a month ago? He came to our committee meeting,” William looked around and his comrades nodded in agreement.
“Did he seem distressed, concerned, afraid for his life?” I asked.
“No more than usual,” William said.
“Professor Bombilate doesn’t fear anything,” Eade insisted.
“Except the complete collapse of civilisation as we know it,” William replied.
“If he never feared anything and then suddenly threw in his lot with the Credit Union, as a revolutionary, then I would say he found out something that scared the doughnuts out of him.”
No one laughed, which was my biggest fear. They all stared at the floor, then each other, and finally at me.
“The professor started working on something about four months ago,” Eade said. “He didn’t talk to me about the details, but I was used to that. He was always researching something.”
“Did he leave any notes?”
Eade gave a sharp, hacking laugh. “As if he would write anything down. In Pathia you learn to keep things in your head. When the professor is ready, he types it all up and the information gets distributed through the various informercials.”
It made a strange kind of sense. When knowledge is currency, writing stuff down would be like printing your own money. “Where does he do his thinking?” I asked.
“In his head,” Eade replied, right on cue.
“Where does he go when he is thinking?” I tried again.
“His home office, usually,” Eade replied.
“Doesn’t he work with you in the museum?” I asked.
“Sometimes. He’s usually out there talking to people, putting things together. Working out his ideas.”
“People, ideas, observation. He sees things and makes connections,” I summarised.
“We haven’t found him, though,” Eade reminded everyone.
“Because we haven’t been looking. Not really looking.” I felt a breakthrough coming up through my skin. A rippling wave of ah-ha! “We just need to go where he is, not where we think he should be.”
“Genius,” Eade said, with so much sarcasm she sounded like she was speaking a different dialect.
“It’s like we can either know which direction he is going in, or where he is. But not both.”
“This is a man, not a quantum probability,” Eade replied.
“The principle is the same. We can find him if we know where he is.”
“Okay, you’re making no sense at all,” Eade said, rolling her eyes.
“She’s making perfect sense,” Drakeforth spoke for the first time in half a chapter.
“Well by all means, illuminate the rest of us.” Eade sat down and folded her arms.
“If we know where Professor Bombilate is, we will find him. To know where he is, we have to know why he is there. The answer to that seems to be connected with the activities of the Credit Union, which recently gained the support of Bombilate and the Knotstick Order, which has a vested interest in keeping things exactly as they are. Which can best be described as complete cauliflowery obfuscation of their side operation in harvesting double-e flux and probably selling it to the Godden Energy Corporation.”
William spoke up: “Which means they are already undermining the current system, and the only reason they would do that is because they know how unsustainable it is.”
Goat woke up and sprang from the depths of the sofa with a wordless yell. He blinked and looked around in confusion.
“It’s heavier than it looks,” he said.
“Is he okay?” William asked.
“I think he suffers from heat stroke,” Eade said. “Too much time out in the desert with no working air-con.”
“If we are agreed that we need to find Professor Bombilate, then—” William started, when I interrupted him.
“We need to go.” I turned in a full circle, loo
king for an exit.
“Where?” Eade asked.
“Wherever Pudding leads,” Drakeforth replied. He stood up and put his hat on.
Chapter 39
The Credit Union filed out of the lounge and onto the stone floor where the van was parked. We piled in and waited while the warehouse door was cranked open. One of the Credit Union soldiers ducked under the narrow gap and then came scrambling back inside.
“Sandies!” he shouted, and ran towards the lounge. We watched as he scooped up the half-empty sandwich platters and ran into the deeper shadows of the warehouse.
“Police,” Eade explained.
“Is there a back door out of here?” Drakeforth asked.
“Creditors,” William ordered, “enact Plan Unicorn.”
The van emptied even faster than it had been filled. People scattered in all directions, while we sat in confusion.
“I’ll drive,” Eade announced, and climbed into the front seat. She started the engine and stirred the gear stick until she found reverse. The van leapt backwards and skidded on the smooth floor. Eade worked the stick like a pilot in a flat spin stall. The van tyres spun and smoked. We gripped our seats as the van roared towards the exit. Police vehicles with flashing lights were converging in the street outside. Eade twisted the wheel and we shot through a narrow gap before hurtling down a street lined with matching industrial garage doors.
The rear window lit up with the insistent flashing lights of pursuing police. Eade ignored them and we slid sideways around a corner, straightened up and, in a remarkable act of coincidence, we merged with traffic on a busier street and everything settled into a strange sense of unusual calm.
“Where was it you wanted to go?” Eade asked.
“Ah, the museum?” I replied.
Eade hit the brakes and we head-banged like a mosh pit snapshot.
She turned and frowned at me. “Why do you want to go there?”
“I have an idea,” I said. “I want to go back to the museum to check something out.”
Behind us, a loud honking sound erupted. I looked around, wondering what had happened.
Time of Breath Page 16
