Jimbo squinted past the open lid.
‘Can’t see any . . . I mean, can’t see no demon,’ he said.
‘That’s because there isn’t one,’ said Dibbler. It was worrying him, too. He’d have been a little bit happier if there’d been a demon or some sort of magic. Something simple and understandable. He didn’t like the idea of meddling in science.
‘Now then . . . Suck-‘ he began.
‘The Surreptitious Fabric,’ said Jimbo.
‘What?’
‘The Surreptitious Fabric,’ Jimbo repeated helpfully. ‘It’s our new name.’
‘Why have you changed it? You haven’t been Suck for twentyfour hours.’
‘Yeah, but we thought the name was holding us back.’
‘How could it be holding you back? You aren’t moving.’ Dibbler glared at them and shrugged. ‘Anyway, whatever you call yourselves . . . I want you to sing your best song, what am I saying, in front of these boxes. Not yet . . . not yet . . . wait a moment . ..’
Dibbler retired to the furthest corner of the room and pulled his hat down over his ears.
‘All right, you can start,’ he said.
He stared in blissful deafness at the group for several minutes until a general cessation of movement suggested that whatever they had been perpetrating had been committed.
Then he inspected the boxes. The wires were vibrating gently, but there was barely any sound.
The Surreptitious Fabric clustered around.
‘Is it working, Mr Dibbler?’ said Jimbo.
Dibbler shook his head.
‘You boys don’t have what it takes,’ he said.
‘What does it take, Mr Dibbler?’
‘You’ve got me there. You’ve got something,’ he said, at the sight of their dejected faces, ‘but not a lot of it, whatever it is.’
‘Er . . . this doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to play at the Free Festival, does it, Mr Dibbler?’ said Crash.
‘Maybe,’ said Dibbler, smiling benevolently.
‘Thanks a lot, Mr Dibbler!’
The Surreptitious Fabric wandered out into the street.
‘We need to get it together if we’re going to wow them at the Festival,’ said Crash.
‘What, you mean . . . like . . . learn to play?’ said Jimbo.
‘No! Music With Rocks In just happens. If you go around learning you’ll never get anywhere,’ said Crash. ‘No, I mean . . .’ He looked around. ‘Better clothes, for one thing. Did you see about them leather coats, Noddy?’
‘Sort of,’ said Noddy.
‘What do you mean, sort of?’
‘Sort of leather. I went down the tannery in Phedre Road and they had some leather all right, but it’s a bit . . . whiffy . . .
‘All right, we can get started on them tonight. And how about those leopardskin trousers, Scum? You know we said leopardskin trousers’d be a great idea.’
A look of transcendental worry crossed Scum’s face.
‘I kind of got some,’ he said.
‘You either got them or you ain’t,’ said Crash.
‘Yeah, but they’re kind of . . .’ said Scum. ‘Look, I couldn’t find a shop that’d heard of anything like that but, er, you know that circus that was here last week? Only I had a word with the guy in the top hat and, well, it was a kind of a bargain and-‘
‘Scum,’ said Crash quietly, ‘what have you bought?’
‘Look at it this way,’ said Scum with sweating brightness, ‘it’s sort of leopardskin trousers and a leopardskin shirt and a leopardskin hat.’
‘Scum,’ said Crash, his voice low with resigned menace, ‘you’ve bought a leopard, haven’t you?’
‘Sort of leopardy, yes.’
‘Oh, good grief-‘
‘But sort of a real steal for twenty dollars,’ said Scum. ‘Nothing important wrong with it, the man said.’
‘Why’d he get rid of it, then?’ Crash demanded.
‘It’s sort of deaf. Can’t hear the lion-tamer, he said.’
‘Well, that’s no good to us!’
‘Don’t see why. Your trousers don’t have to listen.’
SPARE A COPPER, YOUNG SIR?
‘Push off, grandad,’ said Crash easily.
GOOD LUCK TO YOU.
‘Too many beggars around these days, my father says,’ said Crash, as they pushed past. ‘He says the Beggars’ Guild ought to do something about it.’
‘But the beggars all belong to the Guild,’ said Jimbo.
‘Well, they shouldn’t allow so many people to join.’
‘Yes, but it’s better than being on the streets.’
Scum, who out of the whole group had the least amount of cerebral activity to get between him and true observation of the world, was trailing behind. He had an uneasy feeling that he’d just walked over someone’s grave.
‘That one looked a bit sort of thin,’ he muttered.
The others weren’t paying any attention. They were back to the usual argument.
`I’m fed up with being Surreptitious Fabric,’ said Jimbo. ‘It’s a silly name.’
‘Really, really thin,’ said Scum. He felt in his pocket.
‘Yeah, I liked it best when we were The Whom,’ said Noddy.
‘But we were only The Whom for half an hour!’ said Crash.[25] ‘Yesterday. In between bein’ The Blots and Lead Balloon, remember?’
Scum located a tenpenny piece and turned back.
‘There’s bound to be some good name,’ said Jimbo. ‘I just bet we’ll know it’s right just as soon as we see it.’
‘Oh, yeah. Well, we’ve got to come up with some name we don’t start arguing about after five minutes,’ said Crash. ‘It’s not doing our career any good if people don’t know who we are.’
‘Mr Dibbler says it definitely is,’ said Noddy.
‘Yes, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, my father says,’ said Crash.
‘There you go, old man,’ said Scum, back down the street.
THANK YOU, said the grateful Death.
Scum hurried to catch up with the others, who were back on the subject of leopards with hearing difficulties.
‘Where did you put it, Scum?’ said Crash.
‘Well, you know your sort of bedroom-‘
‘How do you kill a leopard?’ said Noddy.
‘Hey, here’s an idea,’ said Crash, gloomily. ‘We let it choke to death on Scum.’
The raven inspected the hallway clock with the practised eye of one who knows the value of good props.
As Susan had noted, it was not so much small as dimensionally displaced; it looked small, but in the same way that something very big a long way away looks small – that is to say, the mind keeps reminding the eyes that they are wrong. But this was up close as well. It was made of some dark, age-blackened wood. There was a pendulum, which oscillated slowly.
The clock had no hands.
‘Impressive,’ said the raven. ‘That scythe blade on the pendulum. Nice touch. Very Gothic. No-one could look at that clock and not think-‘
SQUEAK!
‘All right, all right, I’m coming.’ The raven fluttered across to an ornamental door-frame. There was a skull-and-bones motif on it.
‘Excellent taste,’ it said.
SQUEAK. SQUEAK.
‘Well, anyone can do plumbing, I expect,’ said the raven. ‘Interesting fact. Did you know the lavatory was actually named after Sir Charles Lavatory? Not many people-‘
SQUEAK.
The Death of Rats pushed at the big door leading to the kitchen. It swung open with a creak but, here again, there was something not quite right. A listener had the sense that the creak had been added by someone who, feeling that a door like that with a door surround like that ought to creak, had inserted one.
Albert was washing up at the stone sink and staring at nothing.
‘Oh,’ he said, turning, ‘it’s you. What’s this thing?’
‘I’m a raven,’ said the raven, nervously. ‘Incidentally, one of the most intelligent birds. Most people would say it’s the mynah bird, but-‘
SQUEAK!
The raven ruffled its feathers.
‘I’m here as an interpreter,’ it said.
‘Has he found him?’ said Albert.
The Death of Rats squeaked at length.
‘Looked everywhere. No sign,’ said the raven.
‘Then he don’t want to be found,’ said Albert. He smeared the grease off a plate with a skull pattern on it. ‘I don’t like that.’
SQUEAK.
‘The rat says that’s not the worst thing,’ said the raven. ‘The rat says you ought to know what the granddaughter has been doing . . .
The rat squeaked. The raven talked.
The plate shattered on the sink.
‘I knew it!’ Albert shouted. ‘Saving him! She hasn’t got the faintest idea! Right! I’m going to sort this out. The Master thinks he can slope off, eh? Not from old Albert! You two wait here!’
There were already posters up in Pseudopolis. News travels fast, especially when C. M. O. T. Dibbler is paying for the horses . . .
‘Hello, Pseudopolis!’
They had to call out the city Watch. They had to organize a bucket chain from the river. Asphalt had to stand outside Buddy’s dressing room with a club. With a nail in it.
Albert, in front of a scrap of mirror in his bedroom, brushed his hair furiously. It was white. At least, long ago it was white. Now it was the colour of a tobacco addict’s index finger.