Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (30 page)

Then, just as suddenly as it had changed, it changed back. The tall man was intact, his horrified face maybe still lingering on whatever thoughts one thinks when one’s head is a flower. He gaped at Erno, then Emily, and with a strangled cry he turned and ran, tumbled over a cart, and cracked his head on the marble floor.

The overhead lights came back on.

Erno investigated the tall man where he lay. He was still breathing, so Erno tied his hands and feet with some rubber tourniquet bands. Then he went to unbuckle the restraints that held Emily, now passed out, on the cold gurney. Then he turned to see the little egg-shaped Freeman standing in a doorway.

“What happened?” asked the Freeman as he descended the stairs. “Are they…”

“The one on the floor was a flower, but he’s better now,” said Erno, and he stepped between the advancing man and his sister. “The doctor’s asleep in the cage.”

Too late Erno realized that he should be looking for a new weapon. The little man got there first. He picked up a small mallet, like a metal gavel, from the nearest tray. He held it like a remote control in front of him and drew slowly closer. Erno cast about. The tall man’s scissors were near his feet. He would go for those.

Then the little man kneeled down on the floor and turned the mallet around so that he was holding the head.
The chrome handle pointed at Erno’s chest.

“Hit me hard,” said the man. “Here,” he added, indicating his temple.

Erno just stared.

“Make it look good.”

“What?”

“I can’t have them thinking I helped you,” said the man. He looked up at the gurney. “She’s just like Chloe, my daughter’s girl.”

Erno took the hammer. “Really?”

The little man shrugged and smiled. “They all are.”

Erno wound back his arm and brought the hammer down in one swift motion.

“AH! OWWW!”
groaned the little man. He curled up and clutched at his head. “Jeez,
ow ow ow ow ow
. That … that
really
,
really
hurt.” He coughed and breathed heavily. Erno examined the man’s temple.

“Do you want me to do it again?”

“NO! No, no, no. Man … why didn’t that work? I thought it would knock me out.”

“I only thought it ’cause you thought it.”

“Jeez.” He pushed back and sat down.

“Maybe you can just pretend to be unconscious,” Erno suggested. “They’ll believe you. Your head’s even bleeding a little.”

“Yeah, maybe. Hey, look who’s up.”

Emily had slid down from the gurney. She came around to stand between them.

“I’m sorry, Emily,” said Erno. “I’m sorry I… I couldn’t think of any other way—”

Emily cut him short with a look. Then she gave the same look to the little egg man.

“I’m sorry too, Emily,” he said. Then she touched him behind the ear, and he fell asleep.

Even between the two of them, Scott and Mick could only drag Biggs a few feet at a time. They had managed to pull him, in this fashion, through a large but empty kitchen, into a service elevator, out of the service elevator, and down a long and dimly lit hall across a piebald red carpet. Neither boy nor elf had yet admitted that they had no idea where they were going, that they were moving for the sake of movement. Every so often Mick paused to force some of the contents of a bottle of brandy down Biggs’s throat.

“Is that really a good idea?” Scott asked finally. “I mean, he’s already unconscious—”

“Best thing for a cold body, is brandy,” said Mick. “Well, second to a roarin’ fire. Or a blanket or some warm clothes. Or an electric heater or what have you. But if ’n you haven’t all those things? Brandy.”

“Mmpf,” said Biggs suddenly, and he sputtered and twitched. Mick tried to hold his head up. “Muh … muh babies. Where…”

“Erno and Emily?” asked Scott. “We … don’t know. We’re trying to find them.”

This roused Biggs, and he struggled to get to his feet.

“Take it easy,” Mick told him. “Your time in the freezer’s made yeh logy. Or maybe they drugged yeh too. Did they drug yeh?”

“Dunno. What that noise?”

There
was
a noise. Scott hadn’t even registered it. Was it applause? It might have been coming from below them. There were two doors in this hall, one labeled
MEZZANINE A
and the other
MEZZANINE B
. Scott tested the first and opened it a crack.

He looked down across a dark and nearly empty seating area. Here and there sat robed figures—some hooded, some with hoods drawn back to reveal wizened, spotty heads and feathery white hair. Two were in wheelchairs pushed up against the guardrail in front. Also at the front of the sloping mezzanine sat a man with headphones before a wide console studded with switches and controls. He touched one of these, and music swelled. He touched another, and lights rose in the auditorium below.

They were overlooking a vast hall with a proscenium
arch and stage at one end. It was curtained in black and pink and flanked by two tremendous pillars carved to look like wheat. Atop each of these was a bowl, and atop each bowl was a sphere—one painted to look like the Earth, one solid black.

There were more seats beneath him, Scott supposed, probably filled with Freemen. But he couldn’t see for sure without stepping away from the back wall, out of the shadows, and risking detection by the old men in the mezzanine. What he
could
see was the stage with its amber glow, its intricately painted backdrops. It gave the impression of a sunlit glen peopled with trees and flowers.

Mick and Biggs were at his side now. “What is this?” Scott whispered. “Are they putting on a play?”

“It’s an initiation, I expect,” Mick whispered back. He seemed transfixed by the top right corner of the stage.

“This is lucky then. They’re all probably watching the show. Meanwhile we can find Erno and Emily and get out of here. What are you looking at?”

“The dark globe,” said Mick. “Look. ’Tis Pretannica: the magical world.”

Scott looked again. Now he could see that he’d been mistaken—the globe wasn’t solidly black after all but had a small round patch of blue and green where England might conceivably be.

“These folk know things,” Mick added. “Think it might do to watch this li’l mystery play.”

“No,” Biggs rumbled. “Have to find the kids.”

“Just for a wee bit,” promised Mick.

While they’d been talking, a man’s name had been called, and this man just now stepped onto the stage and squinted awkwardly into the harsh lights.

“SHAWN HIGGINBOTTOM,” a disembodied voice boomed. “YOU ARE THIS NIGHT A KNIGHT OF THE ROUND, HAVING ACHIEVED THE THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVENTH LEVEL OF FREEDOM.”

Thunderous applause.

“TAKE NOW THE SEAT OF HONOR BENEATH THE SICKLE AND THE SPOON, AND UNVEIL THINE EYES TO THE GRAND MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE.”

More applause, and Shawn Higginbottom left the stage by the same stairs. Then some prancing, staccato music started, and the grand universal mysteries were unveiled by way of a middle-aged man cavorting around the stage in green tights.

He’d just emerged from a slit in the forest backdrop, tipped his tricorn hat, and—
God help them
, thought Scott—he was going to sing.

Scott nudged Mick. “You were
right
,” he whispered. “It’s a good thing we stayed.”

Mick scowled at the leprechaun and made a furious sort of gurgling noise as two more men emerged dressed as the front and back ends of a pantomime unicorn.

Two new players entered in old-timey clothes, mustaches and sideburns, and wet-looking hair. Any kid in Goodborough could have told you who they were.

All the players frolicked off stage together.

“Yeah,” Mick huffed. “That’s
just
how it happened.”

Scott could sense Biggs getting fidgety behind them. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Just then the mood and tenor of everything changed. Cymbals crashed. The music turned very operatic, and the theater lights dimmed to a dusky red. The spectators in the mezzanine, even those in wheelchairs, inched forward just slightly in their seats. This was obviously the good bit.

Black-gloved hands reached through a tall slit in the fabric of the forest backdrop and pulled it wide. Harsh light poured through. A chorus of men’s voices sang,

Scott frowned. “What?”

From their vantage point at the rear of the mezzanine, they’d missed the slow procession through the hall below of pallbearers carrying, between them, a mock whale decked out like a parade float. But they saw it now: a long blue whale, fabric over a wooden frame,
shimmering with flowers and bits of crepe and tin. There were no seats down on the floor, so a hundred standing Freemen stepped aside as it nosed its way up the steps to the stage.

“This play just got weird,” Scott murmured.

“Not so weird as yeh think,” whispered Mick. “When somethin’ living goes through the opening ’tween worlds, somethin’ of a similar size on th’ other side has to take its place.”

Scott thought. “That’s … that’s why you appeared in that baby carriage when you came here,” he said. “Some poor baby ended up on the other side. In Pretannica.”

“Right.”

Scott thought some more. “Blue whales are the biggest animals that ever were. Bigger than dinosaurs.”

Mick sighed. “Yep.”

The opening in the backdrop was pulled wider, wider, and then the pallbearers with their make-believe whale passed through. Drums rolled like thunder. The man
at the console was sliding lighting controls like a sugarcrazed toddler.