Chapter Nine
Blazing tropical sun beat down on the exclusive beach resort in the Seychelles, where a six-star hotel sat in glorious isolation. There were humble Native huts in the grounds of course – but the original humble Natives had been deemed too unsightly for the hotel's corporate image and shipped off years ago to other less marketably scenic islands. The huts had been remodelled to be more what guests expected of a tropical paradise.
In the cool shade of one of them Margot Mallard was holding court with her entourage, the first-years to whom she had extended a little protection in exchange for a lot of service. One, a fish-hawk named Irma Falco, was handing over a brown envelope full of used banknotes.
"Very well, Irma," Margot weighed the envelope in her finger-feathers. "You shall have the answer to the question you asked yesterday. How did I topple sweet Giselle from her position as head of Omega Sorority last year? Considering she had a most suitable boyfriend helping to build her power base? Come close – you've paid for the secret to your ear-hole only, and you shall have it."
Irma shooed her classmates away and leaned closer for Margot to whisper to her, an anticipatory smile on her sharp hooked beak.
"Toon swans are like other swans – by nature they bond for life," Margot whispered. "Except Giselle hadn't got round to it with Beauregard, physically. I got there first. By the time I'd had my fun and dumped him – he was spoiled for life, for plain Avian girls like Giselle. She'll never have what I showed him the … appeal of." Margot's feather-finger ran down her curvaceous figure, courtesy of a mammal ancestor who did not appear on her official family tree. She chuckled. "Let's face it, apart from feathers she's equipped like a dinosaur dame, strictly Miss Jurassic Mark One where it counts. Giselle was devastated when I told her all the details. She lost all her edge, all her focus, and didn't see everyone else's usual daily plots before she fell right into them. Like stumbling blindfold through a minefield. Most amusing to watch for all concerned."
Irma's tail feathers spread slightly as she contemplated, her breath coming faster. "And Beauregard?"
"Oh, him. I made it very plain in public how he scored; barely one out of ten. He was a laughing-stock. Species that are meant to bond for life are such a delight to use and publicly dump; usually they just can't cope. He transferred out of Perfecto for good at the end of that term." Margot's eyes narrowed. "Just to make things interesting, I can tell you that Giselle forever missed out on rather a good thing. My real rating for Beauregard would be... an eight or a nine out of ten. I briefly considered keeping him, I admit. Danforth was so marvellously jealous when I told him all the details. He rates about a six if that – though fortunately for him, he has other uses." For a second she recalled a certain green mallard at Acme she had once considered getting into her nest; it would have been fun to inflate and pop that notoriously overblown ego, and the spaced-out loon she had since heard was his fiancée would have been most amusingly devastated.
Irma's beak had been set in a cruel smile as she savoured the revelations. Suddenly the smile vanished. She too was a pure-strain avian, and could walk around Acme Acres in her bare feathers should she someday wish to be so badly accessorised. "You've sold me a solution that… I can never use!"
"Yes, haven't I just?" Margot's tone was smooth, raising her voice for the others to hear as the mammal-descended mallard relaxed in satisfaction. "But it is the true answer, the exact information you wanted. What you can do with it is your problem. Buyer beware." She winked to the rest of the first-years, who were looking on in shocked admiration. "I trust you'll all profit from the lesson. Now, I could use a coffee."
There was a minor scuffle, Margot looking on smiling as the first-years fought with tooth, claw and mallet for the privilege. She nodded to the one who scrabbled to the top of the pile, a toon feline. "Yes, Felicia Felid. Unlike the rest you… are not today's loser."
An athletic hound in neat waiter's uniform offered Margot the menu. The hotel had a three-minute guarantee on such deliveries.
"Hmm." Margot scanned the list. There were thirty gourmet coffees, all of them unethically sourced FoulPlay brands from all around the world carefully extracted by force from snivelling and unfashionably dressed peasants. Her finger-feather flicked daintily over the descriptions of the skinny latte and the pleasingly plump mocha before settling on the morbidly obese cappuccino. "That one. Make it so."
Felicia's credit card would have winced at the price had it been able, but in two minutes an electric buggy with travelling coffee bar had drawn up outside the hypoallergenic plastic-thatched hut and the professional coffee chef was serving. Margot sipped appreciatively, before dismissing him and her hangers-on with a flick of her feather-hand. "This really is the life!" She watched as they scattered out of sight till summoned again. It was quite amusing being in the role of a teacher, she mused as she sipped the coffee. "Give a toon a fish for himself and he can eat for a day. Have him trained to prepare your turbot fillets in cordon bleu style, and after you fire him he can starve to death knowing exactly what he's missing…"
Just then, there came a distant rumbling sound. Margot frowned. "I didn't order an earthquake." She pulled out her T-pad to complain to the hotel management, and her feathers bristled at the sight of the 'No Signal' icon. "That can't be – these things work anywhere!" She strode towards the main hotel complex, visibly fuming. Perfecto students did not study cheap Toon special effects, but sometimes they manifested regardless.
The ground shook again. Suddenly a four-yard section of the beach erupted in a shower of sand, revealing a staircase going down shaped amazingly like a Moscow subway entrance. A torrent of toons emerged – nearly thirty rabbits wearing an unfamiliar uniform with mirror eyeshields on their helmets as used by motorcyclists that hid their faces.
"At-they are-they ones-ay!" One of the new arrivals pointed at the Perfecto students. In seconds they were surrounded by armed toons pointing weapons that were certainly not slapstick assault trifles.
"What's the meaning of this?" Roderick yelled "You put those down or you're in big trouble!"
Most of the bunnies were short, with plain brown outfits, mirror-fronted helmets totally hiding their features and what looked like construction boots. Two were different; they wore more elaborate uniforms than the rest, with stiff shoulder-boards and brightly polished boots over their huge feet. One wore a red helmet, the other a black one. The tallest rabbit also wore the black face-concealing helm; he strode forwards menacingly. "Final-year academic persons of decadent Western Perfecto academy! You have been living on Eastern Molvanian territory for five years, and not with tourist visas. Eastern Molvanian laws say you are owing our nation years of residency tax and border tariffs. You now liable for draft in revived Foreign Legion. Immediately."
"And we will, too," the red-helmeted bunny cut in.
"The Eastern Molvanian Foreign Legion?" Roderick scoffed. "I've never heard of it. Anyway you can't draft us! We're not Molvanian! We're U.S. Citizens!"
Hans von Haflinger nudged him nervously. "Roddy? Hate to say it but … that's what a foreign legion is - made of foreigners. And you know, we have spent more than half our time at Perfecto on that side of the border. For tax reasons, remember?" Perfecto Prep was half on what was legally the Eastern Molvanian Embassy, although the staff and students generally took the duty-free benefits and never thought twice about any duty that might come with it. There had never yet been any; Eastern Molvania was notorious about not enforcing its own laws anywhere let alone overseas.
The black-helmeted rabbit laughed. "Once, we had one. Was all used up in Molvanian Civil War. Not a toon of it left alive! Now have Regime Change, have need of a fresh one for extra-dangerous missions. No volunteers so…"
Danforth snorted. "We'll see about that. We never travel without our legal staff. Lawyer!" he yelled. "There'll be an injunction on you so fast your head'll spin!"
Inside a minute, there was the screech of tyres. Two felines in white aprons hopped out of the rapid-response travelling café bar, drinks menus and cafeterias at the ready.
"No, fools, not you! I wanted our lawyers, Barristers!" Danforth's beak gaped in amazement.
The taller one bowed. "That is our profession, Sir. We are qualified baristas, hired to accompany this party and provide a professional coffee experience twenty-four hours a day."
"Sure, sure – but the agency sent other toons as well – it's a standing order everywhere we go," Roderick snapped.
Margot blinked, a shiver running down her spine as a terrible thought struck her. "Who arranged that standing order? Just who in Perfecto hired you?"
The barista gave a small smile. "A most elegant and charmingly spoken lady rat, she made all the arrangements with the agency over the telephone."
"Rhubella. She knew half Perfecto is foreign soil. She must have been plotting with them through the Toon hole all along – nobody found her Plan because they were looking on the wrong continent! She swapped our trained counsel for trained coffee-slingers, and we never even noticed." Margot found herself admiring her ex-ally even as she realised the depth of the hole that was yawning beneath them. "That's … brilliant. She even fooled me."
"She must have known all along! That we'd head out overseas and wipe her status when she and the Loo-sers did what they did," Roderick's jaw dropped. "If we hadn't wiped her status … she'd be caught up by these goons too. But – we kicked her out and that made her safe from them. And … she'll only have to turn up at Perfecto on the last day and automatically she's Last Toon Standing." Roderick's ears and tail drooped.
"She can, too." Hans von Haflinger's eyes went wide in desperation as he pressed panic buttons on his T-pad and received nothing but static, as if somehow the signal was being jammed. Under Perfecto's insanely convoluted rules, if somehow only one Toon of a year's class made it to the graduation day then they passed with full honours regardless of their actual exam marks (if any). In Perfecto's two hundred and twenty year history it had only been invoked once, when the catastrophic BosToon Incident of 1933 had forced the establishment to move across the country to Acme Acres. "It's that "tontine" deal our legal department likes so much – last one alive gets everything."
"And now, Western trash-toons, for you ze peace is over." The red-helmeted rabbit struck a powerfully menacing pose, swatting at her long boots with a riding-crop. "To be moving, make-quick!"
"Ey're they ot-nay oot-nay ight-bray," her black-helmeted companion agreed. "Make-quick!" Shepherded by the platoon of smaller lepines, the entire Perfecto senior year were herded into its depths and vanished from view.
The tunnel entrance gaped, wreathed with special-effect smoke and fumes fitted to a classical descent to the underworld. Oddly enough, rather than the traditional brimstone, this one smelt strongly of boiled cabbage. Before the other Perfectos could respond, with a rumble the entrance collapsed to leave a smooth expanse of white sand beach as if it had never been there.
There was a stunned silence. Irma Falco looked across to the now empty upper floor hotel suites, and with a discreet gesture summoned her clique to her. A smile was on her hard beak. "I don't think they'll be coming back. At least, not any time soon."
"Agreed." Felicia Felid's tail swished excitedly. "It must be desperate out there if they're running out of available bodies. It looks like they're having to use cub soldiers already, to look at the size of some of those troopers. You know what this means, don't you?"
A hulking wolverine, evidently a Sports Scholar, scratched his shaggy head as he tried to think. Steam emerged from his ears at the unaccustomed effort. "Da Seniors. We get all their stuff?"
Irma sighed. "I was thinking, we wait till we see who comes out on top of the fourth-years' power struggle, then offer them our services." Suddenly her expression brightened. "But in the meantime – you're not wrong!" Shockwaves rattled the windows as her clique broke all record getting upstairs to loot. At Perfecto, as its surviving students proudly boasted, they taught toons to get their priorities right.
Far out across the steppes and deserts of KhazaksToon, a long-abandoned military base was bustling with activity. It had been thirty years since it had been carefully mothballed before being utterly forgotten; everything that had any resale value had been taken away years ago. This had not included dusty bales of obsolete uniforms, tools and utensils that were currently being unpacked in a musty warehouse.
"This outfit doesn't do a thing for me," Luanne Lecroy complained, the bovine girl struggling into one of the coarse brown uniforms they had unpacked at gunpoint from the faded bales. "Brown's not my shade. Don't they do them in any colour except brown?" She frowned. "I don't see the designer on this. I can't wear anything that's not by a Name."
There came a peal of manic laughter. The Perfectos turned to see the red-helmeted officer looking at them, faceless behind the mirrored visor but her every line a pose of arrogant contempt. "I am OverCaptainKomissar Karrotovich and you are here for duration! Or rest of your lives, whichever is longest." She paused, fists clenched on her hips as she looked around. "In twenty years survivors of Foreign Legion with Good Conduct medals become Eastern Molvanian Citizens third-class – and can apply for form for permission to apply for passport. Till then – be the getting used to it!"
"Just humour them," Danforth whispered to Margot "there's sure to be a telephone or an embassy around here somewhere. One phone call to my lawyer and we're out of here. This place doesn't even have any fences."
"You stupid boob," Margot hissed at him "why do you think there's no fence? We're a thousand miles from nowhere in the KhazaksToon desert! There's nowhere to go. No phone out there. No food. No water. And they tested Toon-killing stuff around here – some of this area is still so soaked in catalytic Dip it glows in the dark with lost tourists going up in paint fumes. If you want to try walking out of here, be my guest! I don't know whether that Dip zone starts a hundred miles or a hundred yards away."
"Oh, sweet Margot, do use your brain for once in awhile. We got in here through that stupid rabbit tunnel. And we've got a rabbit of our own to do just that and take us home, haven't we?" Danforth nodded towards Harrington Hare, the lepine currently discovering that as with all conscript armies the Eastern Molvanian uniforms came tailored either in size Much Too Large or Far Too Small. "Just wait till they're not looking and Harrington can dig us straight out again."
Margot groaned, looking at her erstwhile partner. "He's a hare. Only rabbits have rabbit toon shticks. Hares don't dig. Dig it?" She shook her head wonderingly. At Perfecto Toon shticks and general slapstick was looked down on as from a great height, but she had to admit it could sometimes turn out very useful. As in right now, when their wealth, position and gadgets were no longer available. She realised that all her year could rely on was their loyalty, trust and friendship for each other. That and thirty dollars will buy you a demi-tasse of FoulPlay coffee, she noted glumly.
Just then there was a heavy tread outside. She turned to see the OverCaptainKomissar looking up appreciatively at three new arrivals.
"Attention! We have your training officers, arriving. You may recognise them. They are proper workers not pampered bourgeoisie trashy-toons, oh yes!" OverCaptainKomissar Karrotovich gestured to three hulking figures who stood beside her.
"Oh no…" Danforth breathed, his tail feathers drooping. He certainly did recognise them. Although they wore slightly better tailored uniforms, they wore the Eastern Molvanian fatigues in what would be a Too Large size on anyone else but fitted them perfectly. "Wayne, Clint and Chuck. Our own Sports Scholars!"
The three hulking canines grinned, cracking their knuckles in anticipation. They had been found wandering aimlessly through the streets of Acme Acres and recruited for a pocketful of small change and the chance to pay the seniors back for years of looking down on the "dumb lunks" as they were usually referred to behind their backs. A Sports Scholar was extremely replaceable and partly recruited for their dim wits as well as their brawn, but none were so dim that they would not eventually get the message – and there was generally nothing wrong with their hearing.
"At end of week one of recruits gets promoted over rest of you one step, yes." OverCaptainKomissar Karrotovich looked around the Perfectos, seeing the instant wave of calculating expressions wash over them at the announcement. A dozen long-held alliances suddenly shattered as they each realised there was only room for one, and 'every toon for themselves' now applied. "Until then – to be working. Make-quick!"
Eight hours later, a ragged procession of dust-covered figures staggered back into camp. The only ones still looking jaunty were the three Training Officers, the Sports Scholars having taken great pleasure in handing out the orders passed to them by the only two Eastern Molvanian bunnies who apparently spoke English – and had generously left them to it as to how they enforced it. The ice-hockey sticks that Wayne, Clint and Chuck held looked odd in the desert, but they had found other good uses for them than swatting pucks across the ice.
Roderick Rat groaned. "The next time I write a cheque, I'll know why it says "do not fold, spindle or mutilate". Now I know how it feels."
Hans von Haflinger looked at him, hiding a smile. The grey-furred stallion's mind seethed with plans to be the one chosen to join the Sports Scholars. All previous loyalties were blowing in the dust, and it was no longer just the Sports Scholars who were expendable. "Roddy, old rat, you shouldn't have threatened to take their names. Where do you think you're going to take them to? They're in charge right now."
"That's right. Nobody in the world knows where we are. Do you think the rest of Perfecto will be spending time and resources looking? Like our junior years?" Margot brushed dust from her long mane of head-feathers, having vainly tried to cram it under the issued cap. She winced somewhat, realising there was a downside to keeping the junior years ruthlessly suppressed, no matter how much fun it had been. "We've already paid our fees for this term, so our tutors won't care either."
"Attention, useless trash—toons!" They turned to see OverCaptainKomissar Karrotovich looking them over, the helmeted bunny's voice laden with scorn. "Be enjoying of the meal – is special celebration meal for new Recruits. All other meals you are to be cooking and all washing, starting as of now." She gestured to one of the open warehouses where something was bubbling menacingly in a big vat. Green fumes arose.
One minute later they were looking at the evening meal. "Cabbage?" Roderick's ears drooped. "They run us around all day then feed us nothing but plain boiled cabbage?"
"Oh no. No luxuries for fourth-class non-Citizens," The voice of OverCaptainKomissar Karrotovich came from behind him. "Is cabbage substitute. Made from reprocessed shoddy propaganda leaflets of previous corrupt revisionist regime."
"Officers get real beetroot," Wayne rumbled, the Sports Scholar's chest swelling with pride. "And maybe beans."
"After, all to be helping renovate your new home." OverCaptainKomissar Karrotovich rubbed her paws together in gleeful anticipation. "Western Capitalist toons have saying, hard work never killed anybody. Is all part of education provided at no charge by benevolent Eastern Molvanian State. Soon you will be finding out!"
Night fell on the desert, and the temperature plummeted. A tired and irritable collection of toons squabbled over the least worst beds, often settling the arguments with hastily summoned mallets.
Over by the door, a white Persian feline sniffed disdainfully at the dust. "This is all so unfair." Zorinda brushed her once-white fur in dismay. "We don't deserve this. We're not bad people. I give to charity, regularly, I mean!"
"Yes. I know 'Bad Samaritans'. They send film teams to disaster spots around the world to have a good laugh," a night-black raven commented nastily.
"So? Charity is charity." Zorinda popped her claws out; they were not only manicured but fitted with diamond-plate edges. "Now shut your beak or they'll be carrying out a carrion bird in slices."
"They say civilisation is two missed meals away from barbarism," Margot murmured, looking on as Luanne Lecroy grabbed the bed furthest from the draughty door and sat on Giselle's objections by decisively sitting on the swan like a safe falling on an egg box. Hollow bird bones crunched in a nasty special-effects manner. "With that cabbage substitute I think it's only one meal away, especially if we don't miss it." She had to admit, despite Perfecto hiring trend-setting chefs at the cutting edge of international cuisine, it was the first time she had eaten fluorescent green vegetables.
Luanne smoothed out the flattened swan like a mattress and spread her on the hard camp bed, the avian toon's eyes blinking helplessly. "I got me a feather bed!" Luanne announced proudly, bouncing onto it with a feral grin. With Giselle's feather-hands flattened and tied in knots to the frame she would not be able to re-inflate, and was there until someone took pity on her. With nobody around but her Perfecto classmates, that was liable to be awhile.
Margot sniffed disdainfully, though the prospect of the hard and rusty metal mesh mattress of her own military issue bed hardly appealed to someone used to silk sheets. She expected the male toons had it no better – with an unexpected pang she suddenly wished they were not off in another building. Danforth would have been body heat if nothing else. He had been busy denouncing his classmates to the guards all day, though so far to little effect.
"Makes me wish I'd kept up with the flight exercises." Next to her, the raven Mistine brushed dust off her bed with a black wing. She looked at the mess on her ebony feathers disdainfully. "I could have flown straight out of here back to an airport and home to Perfecto, swept in like a shadow just when nobody expected and beaked Rhubella from behind to get the Last Toon Standing prize myself."
"Oh indeed, you could have, and you didn't" Margot's eyes glittered. "Think of that. As it is, you'd maybe get a mile or two across the steppe before splashdown in a lake of catalytic Dip. How we'd all mourn!" She laughed. "You should have worked harder in the gym. And the flight chest muscles that much exercise would have given you … well, you might have got a mammal guy looking at you. Till he recognised his mistake, at least."
"And the same goes for you. Why not flap your way and migrate like your ancestors – if you can?" Mistine's sharp beak clicked in derision. "Oh, I forgot. One of your ancestors in the twenties got too friendly with the ice-man – or was it the garbage man? Or both? No flight on that side of the family. Utterly ruined your family's aerodynamics ever since." She preened her slim avian figure haughtily. "You hardly even have any tail-feathers!" Her own ebony tail extended in an elegant fan down to her forward-swept knees.
Margot glared at her. Although she had the body feathers and the proper scaled legs of an avian, thanks to a handsome wolf in her gene pool the rest of her body was poorly shaped for flight – it had never been a problem before to someone who was more used to travel by private jet. None of her natural advantages were any value around here, she had discovered – if anyone, Luanne seemed to be in the lead having worked conspicuously hard and skilfully sabotaged many other toons' efforts. She concealed a sigh, knowing the danger of revealing any hint of weakness in the present company. Outside, the stars glittered hard and distant in the clear desert night.
"I don't know where the Dip testing range starts out there, but the atmosphere's pretty toxic in here." Margot Mallard strode to the open door, stepped outside and looked up at the bright stars, as she often had from the elegant terraces of Perfecto. It looked as if she would not be seeing that view for awhile. Unobserved for the minute, she allowed herself a sigh. There was one Senior who might be back there now enjoying the senior wing all to herself – unless her skunk girl was there, stinking it out.
"Rhubella only has to keep us here a few weeks to win," she shook her head wonderingly. "Or she can write us off permanently and leave us here in the desert to dry up and blow away up like cheap ink. What a Perfecto girl she is! She deserves to win. And what an ally she was." Her beak twisted wryly. For a second she mentally played through how it might have been had she stuck to her non-aggression pact with Rhubella. Even had everyone else been caught up by the Eastern Molvanians, that would still have left her facing Rhubella knowing only one could take the Last Toon Standing prize. Nobody ever said that graduating from Perfecto was easy, regardless of how much money you could throw at the problem.
Margot shook her head. "Never underestimate a cornered rat."
Back at Acme Acres, despite all the distractions there was still gruelling work to be done for the final exams that were looming. Outside Babs' family burrow, half a dozen toons were enjoying the sunshine between working through last year's exam scripts. The Looniversity always made them available as examples of the kind of things to expect, although every year's exact questions would be different.
"All right!" Rhubella looked through the pile of scripts, then around at the cast. "We'll take these at random – and casting is random as well. These dice I confiscated from a Perfecto junior last term." She juggled a pair of plain white plastic cubes expertly.
"They're like, rigged?" Shirley asked, the loon's forehead wrinkling slightly. "That'd be mondo bad karma."
"No, they're not. That's why we confiscated them. After we tested them he was given extra remedial hazing, used for a tackle target for a month by the American football team and told to get his act together." Rhubella winced inwardly, though at the time it had seemed the perfect punishment for someone dim enough to prefer blind chance to carefully studied calculation. She was acting as referee for the Acme Looniversity crowd, those of whom were here. Fifi, Shirley, Mary and Jaggi were there as were two she had not met before, a mouse named Lightning Rodriguez and Saul, a long-haired sheepdog.
Fifi rolled her eyes. "Le sigh. Roll zem bones, Ruby. We 'ave three hours left zis afternoon – eet ees time to be getting down to ze work!" She looked at one of the papers handed to her. "Plucky, 'e would love zis one. But eet 'as been used last year, so 'e will not be tested on 'Why a Zombie Holocaust would be a Good Thing". "
"The disturbing thing is, it's a romantic comedy." Rhubella nodded. She looked towards the camera and raised an eyebrow. "Who on earth writes these things?"
Shirley joined her in looking through the fourth wall. "If I still had my aura, I could like, fire up the crystal ball and find out. But I still get the feeling somebody's watching us."
"You know, even without her aura your daughter is rather impressive." Two miles away, Colonel Fenix watched through Shirley's currently unused crystal ball as the toons ran through the script. It looked as if there would be a lot of broken hearts and eaten brains before the final page. "Miss McLoon, I hope you don't mind too much, my enlisting Shirley. She will be put in harm's way, you know. That's unavoidable, in our business."
"Please, call me Melicent." The scene was the garden behind the McLoon family house. Melicent McLoon and Colonel Fenix were lying on sun loungers, relaxing in the shade of a blossoming tulip tree with a pitcher of iced Pimms #1 between them. "I quite understand. Shirley does too." Melicent offered the Colonel a refill, which he gratefully accepted. "Anything to get her mate back. And you were saying, Shirley might get to use all her Acme Looniversity training as well?"
"Oh, indeed." Hal Fenix sipped the iced drink reflectively. He was still off-duty until he judged himself fit to head out on the astral plane once more, and was determined to make the most of the downtime. "Melicent - you might wonder how we cover up full-scale Incursions, with whole city blocks demolished and such."
"It never makes the news, I've noticed." Melicent smoothed down her feathers, taking in the view. Hal was about halfway in age between her and her daughter, she mused – and Shirley had told her what her aura had thought about him. She could quite see why. Shirley's aura has good taste, she mused, not minding if Hal could read it in her mind. Better than the rest of her – Plucky is a nice enough boy and I'm happy with her choice – but she could do better… Making the rank of full Bird Colonel at Hal's age was quite an achievement in any Toon's army. "How do you do it?"
Hal laughed, and winked. "Miss Shirley will find out, after she's been sworn into our unit. We don't require her to sign her name on the enlistment form in blood any more, that's so last-year. I can only say – her film education won't be wasted. Not in the slightest."
Melicent nodded. "I always worried what starring roles she could find for herself in Hollywood no matter how good a Toon degree she gets. It's rather a niche market that she went in for. Fortune-tellers, mystics, everything like that you can hire any actor for with the right special-effects – and they're rarely the main characters. Her powers – when she has them – are very real. Rather a waste not to use them."
"Yes. Oddly enough, we have our own Special Effects department and film team. Again, I can't tell you quite what we need it for. And as for your daughter's powers – I can commence searching for her aura tonight." Hal stretched. "Thank you for the hospitality. I judge I'm strong enough to make a start on that."
"Mmm." Melicent McLoon refilled their glasses, and raised hers in a toast. "To friends reunited!" She cast her eyes over the phoenix's bright plumage. Bright feathers were a male thing with avians; some of the girls judged prettiest were coloured in the drabbest hues unlike in mammals and reptiles. "though getting Plucky back will mean losing one of your active troops. I'm told Private Gander has been making the most of his time keeping Plucky's body warm."
"That's Corporal Gander, as of today," Hal smiled. "The paperwork came through finally. That's one thing that I could do for him – while he could sign the forms." The phoenix's tail drooped slightly. "With all my abilities, I can't revive his goose body. All I can do is keep him on the company strength and hope someday we'll be able to bring him round."
"You certainly have your share of dangers, in your work." Melicent nodded towards the clearing where Unit Four Plus Two was camped. There came the sounds of terrifying howls and screams as Sergeant Macree tore apart another bayonet dummy with his bare claws, threw his head back and laughed deliriously. His thinking-mind dog twitched an ear, decided there was nothing much to translate and went back to the biography of Kierkegaard he was writing.
"I can't deny it. Sergeant Macree took third-degree Sanity loss last year – fortunately, the bits of his brain that make him an effective soldier weren't damaged. That was the Peoria Incident – the full facts of which are so hideous that they will never be revealed – not even to the toons who were there!" He winked. "Oh, and a few mass-market paperbacks and low budget documentary DVDs released direct to landfill. That way nobody takes it seriously."
Melicent gave a wry smile. "My little Shirley, joining up. As her teachers keep telling her, "expect the unexpected" – but even when she had her powers I don't think she spotted that future coming up. By tradition, when the female of the pair announces she's full of unexpected eggs, is it not the male who runs away and joins the army?"
"The world's full of surprises," Hal agreed. "Would you believe, Sergeant Macree used to be our healer? Technically he's a medic, but he generally used abilities you won't find in the official first aid manual." The phoenix shook his head. "That's something he has lost, along with eighty-two percent sanity. He was one of the best, too. If he was still available, I'd have set him on working on Corporal Gander. He might have had a chance to heal him enough for regular medicine to get to work. It would have needed so much energy though – enough to risk burning a toon's talents out permanently."
"Well, we can only do our best with what we've got." Melicent smiled wistfully. "That's something I'm glad to see Shirley's learned. Though after she lost her aura … I do think she tried a little too hard to be good at being a "normal" girl." Lipstick and beaks really did not go together, she reminded herself. Presumably it had been something Shirley had seen in Plucky's subconscious in the days of her aura, and brought out in an attempt to please him. "The trouble is with making folks' dreams come true – is when it falls flat. Then they're left without even the dream any more."
"Be careful what you wish for, you might get it." Hal stood and stretched. "Maybe I could wish for a nice quiet week at work for once, with nothing breaking in from Dimension X?"
They both laughed. Melicent smoothed her 1950's styled sweater down, contemplating. "There's that phrase they always use in Shirley's classes, 'Expect the Unexpected.' If even that's got limits of its own, I expect that's probably one of them!"
Far out in a direction difficult to describe, two figures converged at the top of what would have been an atmosphere had there been any actual air involved. To Shirley's aura, she was approaching the ethereal mystery of the Eleventh Veil, beyond which all earthly corruptions never applied – a realm of pure mind and energy. The passage there had been a difficult one, requiring all her powers and energies. Where she would soon be, energy would be all and base matter forever left behind. The veil stretched above her, serene and inviting. For an instant she looked back, down to the messy confusion of the Tenth Veil, the churning entrance to the spirit plane storm-wracked with disturbances from the material world like messy, polluted thunderclouds far below the first of the Crystal Spheres.
Shirley's aura looked down, for what she expected to be the last time – and saw the very last thing she would have expected to see.
"Hang on – I'm almost there!" To Plucky, there was no Crystal Sphere with the promise of endless realms beyond. He knew he was in a place he had no right to be or ability to stay – but that had never stopped him in anything before. To his vision he had fired the last of the fuel in the engines in a single extravagant burn and headed up in a zoom climb till the engines choked in the near vacuum and the control surfaces no longer responded. He had a few seconds left of climbing on momentum, his canard-winged astral plane already beginning to gently tumble as he left the furthest corner of the flight envelope. But it was enough – he was with Shirley again.
"Plucky? What are you Doing here?" Incongruously enough, what he saw of Shirley's form was no spacecraft but just her familiar blue glowing aura, exactly as he knew it at Acme Acres.
"Shirley. I'm here. You're not leaving without me." The mallard locked eyes on the loon's form, knowing he had only a few seconds before he began to topple back out of control. "Where you go, I go."
"Like, gah!" It was not the greatest of philosophical statements, but heartfelt. Shirley's aura took in the situation and winced. "You're here – all of you! You've left nothing behind and you can't get back! You stupid, stupid… brave, stupid bird!"
"Like I said – not without you." Despite himself, Plucky felt a wry smile on his beak in a way that did not translate too well with his aircraft form.
Shirley cast a glimpse up at the Eleventh Veil. Her mallard's energies were exhausted, and he would be an impossible weight to drag with her through the barrier. Even if she did so – her earthly form would have lost him forever. She had gladly left her toon form behind to enjoy a natural lifetime of all the gross physical things she had started taking such a liking to – but leaving herself a widow was not part of the plan. And Plucky had brought every last feather's worth of himself out to find her.
"Shirl! I can't stay airborne!" For an instant Plucky's voice cracked in panic. He was a stalling jet fighter at a height and a speed above the atmosphere that only a Space Shuttle was designed to cope with. Re-entry was not going to be too pleasant if indeed survivable. If he reached the mortal ground at all it would be crashing out of fuel in the darkness, right in something like the middle of the Pacific.
Shirley's aura grabbed him, the mallard's high-tech shape transforming into the palely green avian she had escorted so many times across the safe lower levels of that place. "You big lunk!" She held him tight. "You've so totally ruined everything!"
Plucky gave a sheepish grin. "Do I ever take half measures? All or nothing for this green duck, you know. And that's what I want to bring home. All of you."
Shirley felt her momentum slowing, as she held onto the depleted duck. "This is not the time for high-energy metaphysics lessons, okay? If I drop you from here – you'll break like an egg fallen out of the nest onto concrete pavement." She shuddered at that image – for some reason it hit her deeper than she thought it could. "And if I don't – we're both going down."
"You're coming home?" Plucky looked into the glowing powder-blue eyes.
The loon sighed. "Let me break this to you gently… because it's the last gentle thing we're going to get for awhile." She searched the green mallard's mind for a suitable expression. "What happens to a satellite when it fails to reach orbit?"
"Oh, that's an easy one, Shirl," Plucky's bill jutted with pride. "It's still doing at least 17,000 miles an hour. If it's not designed for re-entry, it falls back into the atmosphere like meteor. Ka-pow! Light show! Breaks up in the ionosphere, debris scattered halfway across a continent!"
Shirley's aura hugged him tight. She took stock of her available energies, and to Plucky's eyes re-shaped them into something like a heat shield around them both. There was already a slight buffeting as the more material parts of the astral plane began to press against it.
"I still think that console game of yours "Retro Rocket Rumble" is way mondo gross," she sighed. "Punching first-generation warheads at each other's cities – so uncool. But I'm glad you're used to the ideas. Because you and me, Plucky, that's just the way we're going in!"
End Chapter Nine
