Strange Tails

“ … and then we drifted up into this big green laser thing without so much as a by your leave, and we haven’t seen her since,” finished Potbelly. She sat back to take in the full spectacle of the leader of the Inner Circle.

The leader, or to give him his proper honorific, His Highness, was a jet-gray rhinoceros who hrumphed in return. His skin bore the texture of a dried out river bed, cracked and scaly, and through it pushed horns filed down into stubs, like something had got stuck in that river bed, feet up. Despite his achromatic hue he had the most expressive face Potbelly had ever seen—except for a human face, of course. Shifting his bulk and displaying his capacious rump, finally she understood why all the Nevermore doorways had been knocked out in the middle.

“How interesting … and thank you … to our American cousins,” he said, and not for the first time. His Highness’s more informal name was Itchynuts the Infallible, a declaration that produced involuntary urination in Squirrel, who now thought of himself as Squirrel the Incontinent. Their meeting did not start well and then declined steadily. It was the third time His Highness had declared a cousinly interest, and each time with markedly less enthusiasm.

The rhinoceros rolled his fleshy lower lip in renewed contemplation, his mouth opening up in the gray mud like a sinkhole. “I have heard of Coralane, naturally, we all have.” He let out a deep breath that went on for yards. “She is a legend, one of the first. Hence, I cannot believe such a story of her.”

“Fortunately,” replied Squirrel, who had remained uncharacteristically silent until then, “like the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot, believing in a thing isn’t required for that thing to be true.” He nodded in agreement with himself, pleased with the insight.

“You say you found this Tina’s leg,” continued the royal rhinoceros. “You say you brought it into the Silence. Doesn’t that make you complicit in your accusation?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that at the time. If I did, I would have gone there legless.” Potbelly shot a sideways glance at Squirrel the Incontinent.

“Maybe the aliens destroyed the Silence because of what you brought in this leg?”

“I think it’s quite possible. I don’t usually eat arach-snacks. It won’t happen again.”

A gold-black cobra, who until then had remained coiled, silently, around Itchynuts’s feet, unwound her top half and spoke. “To accuse Coralane of sabotage is a serious matter,” she sibilated. “To accuse her of murdering the humans for her own ends—that is even worse.”

Her name was Mildred the Magnificent, and the new arrivals had been informed of this estimable fact, as they had with Itchynuts, amidst much reverential fanfare by minions. Atop Itchynuts sat Derek the Deep, a scorpion, who curled his tail upwards when the rhino spoke, like an animated quiff. It did little to amputate Squirrel’s funny bone.

Stinkeye, on the other hand, was impressed from the outset. Anonymous as usual, given his diminutive size, he studied their hosts from atop Mount Snodberry. This lot might actually be an army, he thought—even the bugs looked dangerous.

“It does seem highly extraordinary,” noted the scorpion, possibly eyeing them skeptically, but it was hard to tell. “Have they been eating the psychotropic plant matter the humans grew in C-Wing?” As with Stinkeye, Derek the Deep’s voice turned up unannounced in the listener’s left hemisphere whether invited there or not.

“You said she was one of the first,” replied Stinkeye—who having experienced another new telepathic voice really didn’t see what the problem was. “Maybe it’s why she went off the rails. A failed prototype, like one of those flapping machines the humans made when they were trying to fly.”

“But Coralane could fly,” replied Itchynuts, for whom similes, like the Loch Ness Monster, were clearly a work of fiction. “She was a parrot. We have a poster on the wall.” They’d seen this poster on entering the throne room. Big Windbag is Watching You, thought Squirrel.

Zoltan, who had similarly remained silent to this point, now stepped in. His tone oozed obsequious deference “I think, Your Magisterial Highness, the moth is suggesting that her mind may not have been … all there.”

“Not all there? Where would it have been if not all there?”

“It would have been splattered across the wall if I’d had my way,” muttered Squirrel.

“It does seem an odd claim, Highness,” agreed Zoltan.

Squirrel quietly offered further suggestions in the direction of His Royal Highness—he didn’t give a hoot for anyone’s distance from the ground.

“How do we know these creatures did not destroy the Silence and then steal a spaceship as part of some cunning, devilish plan?” continued Itchynuts.

“Well, for one thing, we’ve met them.”

“They are uplifted creatures, do they not strike you as intelligent?”

The crow tapped a wing against his head. “As a bag of rocks,” he added.

“You know what, bird brain,” retorted Squirrel. “You deserve to be their purse-owner non-grater.”

“I rest my case,” replied Zoltan.

“Hmm, but it all sounds very … odd.” Itchynuts peered down at Potbelly. “And if this information was to be accurate, what are you proposing we do about it?”

“Make Coralane as flat as your poster?” she suggested.

Zoltan stepped closer to Itchynuts, lowering his voice. He seemed to be growing into his new-found status of Inner Circle courtier.

“I doubt very much Coralane is here,” he whispered. Given the distance between Zoltan and the royal ears, though, still loud enough to be heard plainly by all. “However … we must ensure our secrets are safe.”

“Quite.”

“Like the one about finding Cecil.”

“Cecil?”

“The creature the humans told you about. Before they ran off.”

“Oh, you mean Cedric?”

“Of course, Cedric. Not a word about finding Cedric.”

“How do you know about Cedric?” Itchynuts hrumphed. “Anyway, agreed, not a word. These newcomers know nothing about him, correct?”

“I told them nothing,” said Zoltan, peering back at them. “Nothing about finding Cedric in the jungle.”

“In the jungle? Aren’t we meant to find him on the alien planet?” This came from Derek the Deep, who, being atop Itchynuts, was party to the whispering.

“Yes, my apologies. The alien planet. Remind me whereabouts exactly?”

The cobra hissed an interruption. “I think that’s quite enough.” She reared up to stare directly at Itchynuts. “We have work to do, remember?”

Itchynuts rumpled his old barrister face. Each ripple of flesh descended to his softly corrugated lips like a waterfall to a pond. He twitched his tiny ears. “Quite,” he agreed, and flared his huge nostrils. Compared to the blank canvases of the scorpion and the cobra it was like Itchynuts had purchased every demonstrative gesture at the store and was refusing to share. “Not a word of this Coralane nonsense to the troops. We don’t want any alarm,” he concluded.

“Needless to say we must redouble our efforts to get this ship off the ground,” added Mildred. “If the Silence has been destroyed then we will likely be next.”

Itchynuts’s posterior rose like a great, gray, untrapped bubble, and everyone, even Snodberry, took a step backwards. The room was on the smaller side, as most in Nevermore were, and between them they had done much to negate the best efforts of a struggling dehumidifier.

Zoltan hopped to the busted doorway, aware he was about to lose his audience but convinced he was onto something. He pretended to see them out while actually blocking their path.

“Yes, we are in grave danger,” declared Zoltan, though his tone still oleaginous. “And you’re right, wouldn’t it be a tragedy if the same fate befalling the Silence befell Nevermore too?” He nodded to Squirrel. “Just a handful of survivors, too stupid to understand their purpose, the entire mission lost.”

Squirrel turned to Potbelly. “You know what,” he said. “Maybe eating crow isn’t such a bad thing.”

“I say stone them,” she agreed.

“And your point is?” asked Itchynuts, somewhat trepidatious, Zoltan hopping about his hooves.

“My point, Your Highness, is that secrecy would jeopardize our mission. Concentrating knowledge into too few hands … or feet … or paws … ” he glanced at Derek the Deep, “ extendy things.”

“Weren’t you just saying the opposite?”

“They are one and the same thing. Finding Cedric can’t be kept a secret if we don’t know what that secret is. Idle curiosity is not what Nevermore needs right now. Open, honest mystery, that’s the way forward.”

“So what you’re saying,” interrupted Derek the Deep. “Is that to keep Cedric a secret we must tell you all about him.”

“Precisely. Sharing information is the only way to stop it getting into the wrong … body parts.”

“We’ve wasted enough time,” declared Mildred. “I thought this meeting would yield important information about the Silence, not some tittle-tattle about a war hero. Move aside please.”

“What kind of information were you hoping to learn?” asked the crow, witnessing an unexpected opportunity rapidly disappearing. Hopping over to Squirrel he put a wing around him. “Maybe we should give these creatures more of a chance. Maybe they know more than we surmised.”

“You really are a two-faced creep,” replied Squirrel. “Have you considered a career in realty?”

“Maybe something about the spaceship?” continued the crow, still hugging Squirrel. “They helped bring it down, after all.” Squirrel shrugged him off, unsure what he was after.

“You might know something, right?” He turned to Potbelly, who furrowed her already wrinkled brow. Zoltan stared up into the obsidian eyes of Snodberry. Snodberry shrugged.

“You mean like star charts?” offered Stinkeye, almost forgotten at this juncture.

All eyes returned to the large moth slowly flapping its wings atop Snodberry. Actually, he was atop Siobhan, who was atop Snodberry, the former having been slung across the latter’s right shoulder like the world’s least desirable fur stole.

From some vague sense of loyalty to marginalized winged creatures, Stinkeye continued. “We do know something about star charts,” he said. “In fact, my dear sweet Vanessaconshaltamaressasitiamamorena embarked upon just such a noble quest of discovery.”

“And where is this Vanessaconshaltamaressasitiamamorena now?” asked Itchynuts, pausing in his attempts to circumvent the still bobbing Zoltan. “Pretty name by the way.” A few more wrinkles dropped into his meaty facial pool.

“Thank you, Your Highness. It was her mother’s—and four hundred of her sisters’. Which got confusing at times. Anyway, my dear Vanessaconshaltamaressasitiamamorena is now quite dead. Burned alive at the stake of a hundred-watt bulb. Couldn’t tell you a thing.”

Itchynuts shook his head. “Damn timewasters,” he mumbled.

“But Squirrel can,” Stinkeye finished.

There was a pause.

“Squirrel can?” repeated Itchynuts, looking at him, still holding a clumped hoof in the air.

“Yes, Squirrel can,” repeated Stinkeye.

“Squirrel can?” laughed Potbelly.

“Squirrel can!” declared Zoltan.

“Squirrel can?” echoed Squirrel. He was as surprised as anyone else that Squirrel can, but equally as miffed that it was so risible.

“Yes,” said Stinkeye. “You saw the same plans that Vanessaconshaltamaressasitiamamorena saw.”

“Oh, right, yeah, for like a minute. Can’t say I remember any of it.”

“Of course not. Though you would if you were hypnotized.”

Stinkeye flew down to Snodberry’s hip so the smaller creatures wouldn’t have to crane their necks so much. “We had a spider at the Silence who would swing back and forth and put us under,” he explained. “Fred would have us performing all sorts of embarrassing stunts.” Stinkeye let out a little chuckle. “Supposedly we were recalling what the humans were up to before they went on their alien holiday, but you know what it’s like when the boys get together for a few micrograms of illicit beer.”

“What a clever idea,” replied Mildred, who having easily bypassed Zoltan now slithered back into the room. “Did it work? The experimental recollection I mean, not the insect frat party.”

“A little, yes. I was hypnotized into remembering my own angel being fitted with her tiny nano-chip. I was in the room, conscious for the first time. Wasn’t enough to satisfy Coralane, of course. She needed specifics. And a damn good kick up the backside if you ask me—and that’s a hard thing to say about a fellow aviator.”

“Fascinating,” said Mildred, turning to Squirrel.

“Nobody diddles with my brain!” he protested, backing up. “I am sufficiently capable of embarrassing myself without your help. Besides, I really did just glimpse the thing. Like for a second. Not even that. A moment. A peek at most. I’d saaaayyy, iiiiit … aaaa … ”

Mildred swayed back and forth, her clear eyes fixed upon him, that scaly head a bejeweled, hooded pendulum. Squirrel fell into a deep, deep sleep.

“Well that didn’t take long,” remarked Potbelly. “So it’s true what they say about cobras.”

“Not really. I did take a books-on-tape course once, though. First time I tried it.”

“Fancy that. Now I know what I want for Christmas.”

“This will take a while,” said Mildred, to Itchynuts. “Pulling an image from the mind’s depth is like fishing for a needle in an ocean of very soggy haystacks. Fortunately, his ocean is quite shallow; more a puddle, really.”

Mildred coiled herself around Squirrel and with him tight in her grasp slid fluidly away. The manner of her disappearance sent involuntary chills down the spine of the attendant herbivores. Siobhan would have had a coronary, thought Potbelly, if she hadn’t already had one.

“So we have a deal?” asked the crow.

“A deal?”

“I brought you my secrets, now tell me yours.”

“Why do you want to know so much?” enquired Derek the Deep, suspicion in his echoing voice.

“Why do you not want me to know so much?” countered Zoltan.

“Impossible—“

“Ahem,” interrupted Potbelly, thinking that’s what people say when they want to approximate a cough. “And whose secrets are these exactly? If anyone’s pimping out Squirrel, it should be me.”

“Really,” sniffed Itchynuts “Pimping implies ownership.”

“What can I say—he’s attached to me, like a wart. Point is, if there’s stuff to be had, I want in. I’m a tough negotiator, mind. You know that guy who offers you a penny for your thoughts? I’m better than that guy.”

“The humans told us to keep the mission details a secret,” reminded Derek the Deep.

“Aha, so there are mission details,” said Zoltan.

“I’m starting to think we’re not very good at this secrecy lark,” sighed Itchynuts, who glowered at the pincers waving just in view.

“For some reason I now find myself agreeing with Zoltan,” said Potbelly. “You have Squirrel. What do we get?”

She trotted to the doorway to join Zoltan’s one-bird barricade. Snodberry, being suddenly of the same mind, thereby proving that he did in fact have one, barriered the escape route with a tree-like arm.

Itchynuts rolled his fleshy mouth at the thought of a charge. On seeing Snodberry tense a few muscles, just the ones on top that were there for show, he began to think better of it.

“The humans told us very little,” he said, finally arriving at the conclusion cowardice was the better part of valor. “We must locate Cedric on the alien planet, they said. We don’t know how, exactly, but we have a destination: follow the ribbon path until chagrin falls.”

“The ribbon path until chagrin falls?” repeated Zoltan. “How did they know this? Had they been there?”

“Cedric had.”

“Cedric went to the alien planet? And came back?”

“We were told this in a rush. They then gathered a few of us together to lead the others. They chose us, naturally, being their finest.”

“Naturally,” nodded Zoltan, with a tone so sharp it wore a double-breasted suit and a cravat.

“Wouldn’t they have thought to give you a map or something?” asked Stinkeye. “With little drawn mountains and woods and an X marks the spot?”

“They told us all they knew. At least, I believe so, and they had other, even more pressing concerns. Knowledge of the alien planet is moot if one has no way of getting there. Based on what Cedric had told them they were putting together the confuser ray to help bring down another ship. They had very little time.”

“And yet they didn’t do as good a job as our Stinkeye,” replied Potbelly, who said it with something approaching pride.

“Was that before or after you were about to be killed?” sniped Itchynuts, regaining some aloofness.

“It was after some military genius sent a team of tiny furballs to take down a whole alien spacecraft.”

“The hamsters are a crack platoon.”

“Really? I didn’t laugh once.”

“That’s as may be,” interrupted Zoltan, trying to get back on topic. “Who is this Cedric? And why did the humans run away from Nevermore with him?”

Itchynuts peered down his crusty snout at the minion Zoltan. “Swap their gruel for ice cream and suddenly they’re demanding sprinkles,” he sneered.

Zoltan’s beady eye fixed unabashedly on His Highness. “It just doesn’t make sense—fleeing the safety of Nevermore. Where might they have gone?”

“It makes sense if what you’re trying to do is invite danger,” replied Derek the Deep, his voice reverberating in their collective skulls. “The humans drew one here, a spaceship, right into the confuser ray. As for Cedric, we met him only briefly.”

His words finished echoing in their mind as two lions appeared, imperious despite their uniform dull-beigeness. One limped on a bandaged foreleg, its hind foot balanced gingerly against a skateboard, much like the one Michel owned at the Silence. On spotting Snodberry and Siobhan, the limping lion wheeled quietly behind its colleague. The colleague growled.

“Took you long enough,” said Itchynuts.

“Nev’s having a bit of difficulty,” said the lion, nodding to Nev. In response, Nev made himself entirely invisible to the room, especially the bit containing Snodberry.

“We are leaving,” declared Itchynuts, moving purposefully to the doorway.

Despite Nev’s reticence even Snodberry recognized they were outnumbered, and raised his drawbridge arm to let Itchynuts through. Potbelly trotted alongside the group as they left, feeling a little lighter now the tension had been lifted. Zoltan hopped along also.

“What was Cedric?” asked Potbelly.

“A hero.”

“No, I mean, which creature.”

“A mink, I think.”

“You think a mink?” repeated Potbelly, an impish note in her voice.

“Yes, with green-and-red striped eyes, just like Coralane.”

“A coincidence? Or did that imply a connection?”

“I think the mink had some kind of link to her, yes.”

“So not just some random genetic kink.”

“Correct. I think the mink had not a kink but a link.”

“But what about the alien planet?” reminded Zoltan. “What was Cedric up to?“

“Do you think,” interrupted Potbelly, deliberately blocking off Zoltan, “Cedric and Coralane were the earliest uplifted animals? They were in sync, maybe?”

“I said already … the mink had not a kink, but a link. Yes, in sync.”

“You thought this straight away?”

“Not at first. It took a while to sink in that the mink had not a kink but—“

“Enough!” said Zoltan. “Where did Cedric—“

“Did he smell?” enquired Potbelly, delighting in Zoltan’s annoyance.

“Well, I don’t know why that’s important, but I think there was no stink from the mink with—“

“To hell with you!” cried Zoltan. “You see! This is exactly why Coralane took charge at the Silence! If you’re not a bird then you’re a damn fool!”

“Careful,” warned Potbelly, with a wink. “They’ll throw you in the clink.”

“And I shall remind you of my Royal Highness,” declared Itchynuts, stretching fully upright as proof.

Zoltan squawked a harsh squawk and flapped quickly away, his wingspan casting a shadow across the brightly-lit corridor.

“When do we get our Squirrel back?” asked Potbelly.

“Mildred will return him soon enough.” Itchynuts’s boiler-engine backside turned into the main computer room, while Nev’s colleague blocked their path. “In the meantime, do whatever you wish. Enough time has been wasted already.”

Potbelly watched them disappear through the closing door. One huge pendulous rump reappeared, disappeared, and then reappeared again through the bashed out gaps in its sides.

“Do as we wish?” she said to the others. “OK, Snodberry, Stinkeye, let’s play find the human.”