Strange Tails

Potbelly had never felt so miserable in her entire, short life.

Fire opals, red diamonds, emeralds, alexandrite, amethyst, an incalculable fortune in gemstones burped and disgorged themselves elegantly around her. She glared at each one, wishing upon them the worst fate that could possibly befall an inert mineral. She was starting to imagine quite a few.

The poor bedraggled dog could not lift her head to look away from this glinting bed of jewels because beyond them sat the blinding luster of the most powerful energy source on the planet: Sequin Mountain. It crackled and sizzled from its raw fabulousness, flashing brilliantly against each of the scattered gems, a sight no humble canine had ever so closely witnessed—indeed, under better circumstances, a sight worth a thousand Gardens of Babylon, a hundred Pyramids of Giza, and at a fair exchange rate, at least two dozen Zeus statues with a couple of Alexandrian Lighthouses thrown in.

And yet Potbelly felt wretched. Back on Earth, cold and starving, waiting endlessly in an Aldi, watching Squirrel fumble with the pull tab on a rusty tin of Chum, it had been like Nirvana compared to this. She’d give a thousand hunks of diamond just to watch him chuck a sachet of Purina against the wall in despair.

Her broken rib seared with the same energy of the mountain. Coralane’s evil eyes stared down at her, waiting for the moment she’d finally quit and die. Her only companions, Squirrel and Stinkeye, marched and fluttered just as wretchedly behind, keeping within her shadow, their only view for the last three hours her shambling, stubbly butt. They were not having a banner day either.

And yet Sequin Mountain blazed on. Blue-white veins of untempered power licking around each tiny disk of raw fabulousness. How Sequin Mountain came to exist only Goddess knows, but that it existed at all is testament to her divine grace.

Coralane, it transpired, had found a copy of the Great Spider Bible—or at least, its accompanying angelic Cliff Notes. It told, she said, unable as she was to quit pontificating in that ear-aching squawk, that the glorious mountain, in its original unicorn formation, begat a divineth cord through which the spiders might harness her Goddessy power. All that remained, after the begatting, was for some noble devotee to attach a cord to whichever blessed electrical grid they happened to have available. For the connection, a simple delicately wrought ankh was all that was required—a paperclip, say. Easy, except for the longest time, and for every spider-priest who tried it, utterly impossible.

A succession of these priests, many of the highest rank, made that very attempt only to experience the unfortunate side-effect of being instantly incinerated. No living creature, they discovered, could connecteth itself to Sequin Mountain without having its mortal soul fabularized into nothingness. Once, the angelic Cliff Notes relate, in answer to the mountain’s own brilliance, there appeared from the holy mists a beautiful spider, a worshipful supermodel, sipping the finest champagne from a hand-cut crystal goblet and riding atop a golden chariot, which rolled along a carpet hewn from the reddest of red rubies. Maybe, it was thought, she might be the one to absorb such almighty levels of astounding fabulosity—but all that remained was a smudge.

In fact, so Coralane read, the only success came from the Goddess herself, during a home demonstration. Muttering something about doing a job properly her divine wind blew—though the bible fails to tell what she ate beforehand—and thereafter, wheneth She withdreweth, there layeth a connectedeth divineth cord.

That single fragile hook-up now drove an entire planet’s propulsion system, not to mention a mind control device of global scope: the Uncognitron. It kept the computers running, the buildings lit, the schools schooling, the factories factoring, the curling irons ironing, and even ran the special things grown up spiders use at the weekends when they love each other very much.

Most importantly of all, as Coralane had come to learn from her own research, and this is something even Cedric did not know, there was a single, solitary watchspider guarding the divineth cord—and even then, primarily for health and safety reasons. It was a low-skill job because touching the divineth cord was, after all, instant death, and every worshipper on Ponyata enjoyed their new found luxury so much that sudden vaporization didn’t happen to be one of them.

Dealing with this little problem of instant annihilation proved a trifling matter for such a brilliant and devious mind as Coralane’s, though. She found a weak point: the Uncognitron itself could be simply switched off. And she could prod this weak point with a sharpened stick if she possessed the one thing she needed: a Stinkeye.

Strange, thought Squirrel, as he listened to her, how so much explanatory backstory might be so conveniently learned in such a serendipitous way. He’d have to mention that.

Potbelly stopped to catch her breath. Squirrel eyed Coralane eyeing her.

“Remind me, again, why you want to switch this thing off?” he said, distracting the parrot from Potbelly’s delicates. “And why do you want to save the humans? I’m having trouble squaring it with your whole torturing and killing them thing.”

“That was another planet,” she replied, as if it was reason enough.

“And … ”

Coralane paused to turn those red-and-green eyes on him. “And I might ask the same question of you.”

Squirrel pondered this for a second. “It’s the dog’s fault,” he decided.

“She ate your homework?”

“She gave me a reason to be here. I don’t recall her doing the same for you.”

“I doubt this dog could give me anything I need.”

“Let’s test that. Try putting your head in her mouth.”

Coralane squawked indignantly. “The humans are useless to me like this. With their collars on they are vegetables. No, that is an insult to vegetables—at least a potato makes some chips. And removing their collars does little to improve matters.”

“How do you know about that?”

“The demagnetizer fob? An easy theft for a bird. Zoltan proved disappointing, though. He had no answer for what came next, after the removal. At first I thought all was lost but then, thank the Goddess, a rather wonderful idea struck me.”

“The Uncognitron?”

“Yes. Something like that.”

“So if you release the humans you think they’ll help you? After battling the spiders?”

Coralane began strutting forward, towards Sequin Mountain, and with no other choice the rest had to follow. Squirrel stayed in her shadow for relief. “Coralane, is it just me or do you rather enjoy these pregnant pauses of portentous doom?”

“The planet Ponyata is leaving and taking us with it. Soon we will be nothing but collar fodder. The answer to this problem is to let loose a great war. Genocide, even. What would you like me to do, tell a joke?”

“Well the odd knock-knock wouldn’t hurt. Did I tell you the one about—“

“Let’s pretend you did.”

“And it made you laugh?”

“I was floored.”

“Hmm, couldn’t have been me then.”

Stinkeye, who had been quietly encouraging the silently glum Potbelly, joined in on the conversation. “This genocide you mention … surely the humans won’t kill all the spiders, will they? Just enough to win?”

“You are talking about the human race, Stinkeye. How many wars have they waged for no good reason at all? Imagine what they do when they do have one.”

“So maybe we shouldn’t be doing this then? Maybe we didn’t think this through.” Stinkeye peered down at Potbelly, but for her part she said nothing.

“And leave an entire species as slaves?” countered Coralane. “How noble of you.”

“At least they’ll still be alive.”

“Will they? And if you leave them that way, brain dead, what does that make you, the one who let it continue? You cannot hold a man down without staying down with him.”

“Did Hulk Hogan say that?”

“No.”

They pondered Coralane’s case a little further. Potbelly stopped to rest.

“We have to keep moving,” urged Coralane. “The only thing keeping us alive is they don’t know where we’re headed. As soon as Cedric is collared, they will.”

“Hurts,” was all Potbelly could manage.

Squirrel patted her butt. “Come on old girl, walkies.”

Potbelly’s head bobbed a little pathetic tic. She whimpered at the muscles it pulled in her side.

“Remember when I was close to quitting, Potbelly?” continued Squirrel. “When through the pain I could no longer continue? When I was just about ready to shuffle off this mortal coil?”

“No.”

“Aha, but say it did happen. You’d have something to say, right? Something encouraging? Something stirring.”

“Maybe.”

“And that would be?”

“Squirrel, dammit, if you can’t think of something motivational to say then I’m not going to do it for you.”

“See? There you go old girl. You’re gonna be alright.”

“Squirrel—”

“We have to keep moving,” insisted Coralane. “It is only one more mile.”

“You go, I can’t.”

“But you’ll be caught,” urged Squirrel, anxiously.

“Free the humans, free the Nevermore army. After that, what matters? I’ll survive.”

He looked at her closely. She was worse than that time she ate expired chuck steak at the IGA. “Where will you hide?”

Potbelly scratched at the uneven floor to reveal a shingle of loose gems. On Earth it’d be enough to buy a kennel the size of Buckingham Palace. Heck, it’d probably be enough to buy Buckingham Palace.

“Dogs dig. I’ll go down far enough to hide. It hurts, but I’ll manage.”

“Are you sure?”

“Back on Earth, if you’d told me I’d be rolling around in a bed of diamonds in front of the most fabulous thing in the universe, I wouldn’t have thought that such a bad day.”

“We have to keep moving,” repeated Coralane.

“Yeah you mentioned,” said Squirrel, his tone suggesting she shouldn’t do it again.

“She’s right,” said Potbelly. “Go on. Save the galaxy. Or a couple of planets, at least.”

Squirrel waited for her to change her mind. After another minute or two, the only thing that changed was her height, as slowly she dug into the diamond stratum beneath her.

Coralane had already moved on. Eventually, and reluctantly, Squirrel followed, carrying Stinkeye with him.