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"Pretzels? But it's not Thursday."
"Bek, take that chain mail bikini off RIGHT NOW!"
"It's my lardy cake and I'll fight the lot of you."
"Search your pants chaps, we've lost Waffles."
"Aaaaaargh! It's in the cat!"
"Well, I've never seen Hitler eating a vole's arse."
With a frustrated sweep of one Body Geometry Comp clad foot, the Priestess scatters the complicated
pattern of twigs, bark, dead leaves and pebbles with its sprinkling of Finish Line Cross Country that she
had arranged on the ground in roughly the centre of distribution of the Cake Stop massive before it had
gone AWOL. The whispers of voices that the device had channelled from the disparate corners of the
information matrix that is A-Time fade away into nothing.
"It's gibberish," she says. Kathy is concerned by the taught note of despair she can hear inflecting
Ravenbait's voice. "I can't trace them like this. There are too many of them in too many different places
and most of them don't know how to give a focused signal. The locator spell is picking up all sorts of
crap."
"It wasn't your fault," Kathy tells her, squeezing her shoulder comfortingly. "They have Gunner and
Flying Monkey, the Sheriff, Aeroflash and Nutty. They'll be okay until we find a way to track them
down."
"No, it wasn't my fault," Ravenbait agrees and her voice this time contains an angry edge, a piano-wire
garrotte of the fury that they have seen before in the battle with the ABD. "This is the doing of the
Hollow Man, and he had no damn right. We have an agreement. We have a mutual avoidance treaty,
and I want to know what has provoked him into breaking it."
The others have absolutely no idea what the Priestess is talking about, but it doesn't matter. It is better
for her to be angry than despairing. Angry gets things done. They have seen that the pipe from Bognor
Regis and the strange, fleshy plants have all vanished, and it is at least of some relief that she seems to
know what happened because none of the rest of them does.
"Have some malt loaf," suggests Hairyhippy. Ravenbait shakes her head, looking pensive.
Chuffy, meanwhile, is hunched in a little ball at the side of the road, rocking backwards and forwards.
FatBloke squats down next to him and asks him what is wrong. All he can hear is a mournful meeping
sound and the word "Bags".
The domestique has lost his lady. She vanished along with everyone else. He does not even know
whether she is with anyone who can look after her properly, or whether she has been whisked away to
some remote corner of this despicable, unpredictable place with none but Terry and Gonzo for
company. It is utterly unbearable.
"I don't think we can expect much help from him right now," observes Cuddy Duck.
"No," says Ravenbait, "But that's okay. It's not his help I want anyway."
With a stern glance she calls the two ravens to her and gives them some instructions that no one else
understands.
* * *
Gunner Rogers finds himself on a strangely coloured moorland underneath a shifting purple sky, with a
voice whispering "no chain, no chain" over and over in his head and a dozen identical beautiful blonde
women matching pace with him, taking it in turns to brush up against his elbows.
Aeroflash and Flying Monkey find themselves back at West Kennet Longbarrow, but there is no
welcoming Colin this time. Only a howling gale and a lighthouse made of the shells of Landrover
Discoveries beaming a cold, black light out from the top of Silbury Hill through a shifting purple sky
while predatory pigeons stare at them menacingly from stunted, bent trees.
Nutty finds himself leading perhaps a dozen of the others, all numb with shock, along a cycle path
painted bright green. It is covered in broken glass and potholes, with lamp posts set in the middle and
dog faeces everywhere. He can see a broad, quiet, smoothly surfaced road to his left but they cannot get
there for there is no turning to lead them off the path and there is a chicken wire fence in the way that
reaches further than he can see up into the shifting purple sky.
The Sheriff finds himself in some sort of amphitheatre set out like a courtroom under a shifting purple
sky, and he does not know if he is the prosecution or the defence. In the jury box are some of the rest of
the Cake Stop, including Microphonie, Simplebsharris, Bardsandwarriors and Muckspreader. But there
is another jury box, with some people from Campaign, who never set out on this journey and yet are
still here, and their faces are set.
Gonzo finds himself with his stripes now part of his skin, absorbed into his flesh. He is standing on the
edge of a vast herd of zebra on the scorching African savannah under a shifting purple sky, and there
are lions. One of the lions is Kitzy. She has huge teeth and looks very fast and very hungry.
Bagonabike finds herself sitting on top of an enormous fridge in a field under a shifting purple sky,
surrounded by enormous packages from which burst strange men waving lobsters.
Steelman finds himself in an immense yard under a shifting purple sky, with neat lines of skips filled
with A4 envelopes and wrapped magazines stretching away on all sides. His copy of Cycling Plus is in
there. He knows it is, for Withers is there looking for it. All he has to do is find it and then he can take
it back to bed where Helga is waiting.
Terry finds himself on his turbo trainer, feet somehow fused with the pedals, stuck in front of a
television showing nothing but snooker in black and white. He is in the middle of an emptied outdoor
swimming pool under a shifting purple sky. It is raining.
Groucho finds himself under a shifting purple sky which slowly becomes a haze followed by the eery
strands of a sixties guitar hero. He is watching TOTP2. He is watching TOTP2. He is watching
TOTP2. He is watching TOTP2. He is watching TOTP2. He is watching TOTP2.
All across A-Time the lost members of Cake Stop are left in surreal places where they can do nothing
but think about what is in front of them, what faces them, their immediate prospects. Not about the
Priestess who hunts for them in the complex patterns of this world.
* * *
Thought and Memory flapped off some time previously. Now the few League and Sorority members
left behind are sitting around twiddling their thumbs, or checking wheel alignments or playing with
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, waiting to see what the Priestess is going to do next. Ravenbait herself
has taken Fingal to the crest of the next rise, where she stands astride him, leaning forward on the
aerobars and scanning the horizon.
The ravens return, tumbling out of the sky like a pair of Autumn leaves, correcting the fall at the last
moment to land gracefully at her feet. There is some quiet hooting and croaking that the other members
of the Cake Stop cannot understand. Then they become aware of a thumping from deep underneath
them, in the Earth. It is like something out of Jurassic Park, with the water in their bottle shaking
against the sides of the plastic containers. The thumping is getting closer. Nervously they get to their
feet and prepare to mount their steeds. Redshift and Chuffy draw their swords. Kathy gathers up the
ferrets.
As the thumping gets close enough for the sound to reach them through the air as well as through the
ground, they hurry to catch up with the Priestess, who has not moved.
When they reach her they suddenly realise that the crest is, in fact, the top of a steep descent to a vast
plain, part of the same formation as the plain on which they had battled the ABD. Across the plain is
approaching something that appears totally unbelievable. It is a giant elephant walking on his two back
legs. He is almost the shape of a man, yet he has an unmistakable elephant's head and four arms. His
trunk is slightly withered and he emanates a soft blue glow not unlike that given off by Aeroflash.
He is accompanied by a convoy of followers, some of whom carry great fans made of peacock feathers
with which to waft his face, some of whom carry a great chair. When they have come as far as he
wishes, they set the chair down and the Elephant God Ganesha takes his seat.
Ravenbait turns to the others. "Do any of you have any sweets?"
"I might," Hasufel says, rummaging. He was sure he had some of that order from AQuarterOf left.
The Priestess pulls a couple of crumpled paper bags out of her rackpack. "It's better if you have your
own, but if you want to come with me you need to have sweets. You can take a few of mine."
"Are you coming back?" Kathy asks in a small voice, not sure she wants to get any closer to the strange
being on the plain below.
"Probably," says Ravenbait.
Kathy takes a couple of squares of turkish delight from the paper bag. Tim and the others do the same.
Together, they point their bicycles downwards and freewheel all the way to the feet of the Dancing
God.
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