Fourth Bear (43 page)

“For God’s sake—”

“
I’m
head of the NCD,” said a voice behind them, “and you can release my associate and let us both pass.”

“You?” said Chapman, staring at the small alien who was glaring up at him. “An alien constable who no one else will work with?”

“I’m NCD and have a badge to prove it. In the event of a superior officer being incapacitated or suspended, authority devolves to the next-ranking officer. In this case, me.”

Chapman looked at Ashley, then at Jack, then nodded to the other officers, who released him. Ashley didn’t wait a second, darting through the cordon with Jack close behind.

“Thanks,” muttered Jack as they hurried into the gloom of the underground car park.

“Never mind that,” replied Ashley. “What are we looking for?”

“Seven cucumbers, each one the size of a small torpedo. They’ll be in a red van.”

They found it on the lower level. Jack looked in the driver’s window. There were several green coveralls dumped on the passenger seat. The key wasn’t in the ignition. He cursed, went round to the back and was just about to open the rear doors when he realized that the van was radiating heat. He touched the door handle with a saliva-tipped fingertip, and it hissed malevolently at him.

“Shit,” he said. “It’s begun.”

He wrapped a handkerchief around his hand and threw open the doors, ducking to avoid the hot waft of air that rolled out. The interior of the van was filled with the giant cucumbers Jack had last seen in Hardy Fuchsia’s greenhouse, with the uppermost cucumber resting on a digital scale. A tube from a bottle was leading into the giant vegetable, with a time switch metering the weight-gaining contents. The digital scale read 49.997 kilos, and already the cucumber’s smooth skin was turning from green to a dark orange and giving out large quantities of heat—the paint on the van’s sides was starting to blister.

They both stared at it blankly for a few seconds.

“I don’t know the first thing about disarming thermocuclear devices,” admitted Jack, the fear rising in his voice. Bomb disposal was usually a case of cutting the blue wire, but there weren’t any wires in sight—and the reaction had already started.

“Well, don’t look at me,” retorted Ashley, going a deeper shade of blue.

“I thought you were meant to be an advanced alien race or something?”

“We are,” replied Ashley indignantly. “I’m just not that good on low-tech stuff. How are
you
on steam engines and windmills?”

“Okay, okay—let’s not argue about this.”

Jack moved closer and winced with the heat. The cucumber was starting to glow from within, and lighter patches the size of small coins were appearing on its skin.

“We need a moderator,” said Ashley, having just worked out the principles of nuclear-fusion theory from scratch. “The light hydrogen isotopes of deuterium and tritium are combining to form a heavy helium atom and a spare neutron. It’s the spare neutron that continues the reaction—soak up that and this cucumber is just a large and very hot vegetable.”

“So what do we need?” asked Jack, not having understood a word.

“Half a ton of graphite.”

“Graphite? Where the hell are we going to get that from? A million pencils?”

“Or just plain water.”

Jack looked around desperately for a few fire buckets or something and then took an involuntary step back as the reaction grew
even
hotter. The light patches on the cucumber’s skin formed into dimples and then collapsed inward into
holes,
which projected shafts of pure white light from the rapidly overheating core. The same effect was beginning to start on the other cucumbers. Even though they were under the necessary fifty kilos, the single critical cucumber was bringing them all up to ignition.

“I’ll find some,” said Jack, making a step to go. But Ashley stopped him.

“It’s already
full of holes,
” he said. “There’s no time. Do you have your penknife?”

Jack rummaged in his pocket and drew it out, his hands shaking as he snapped open the large blade.

“I have a liquid core that will do just as well—only take care. As well as being an excellent moderator, it’s also a powerful molecular acid—don’t get it on yourself.”

Ashley closed his eyes and pulled open his jacket to reveal his taut, transparent skin.

“I need a breach in my membrane, sir.
You’ve got to stab me.
”

Jack stared at him. They took another step back as the heat intensified. The paint had caught fire on the outside of the van.

“I can’t, Ash.”

“Jack,” said Ashley as he placed a single sucker digit on Jack’s forehead, “you
must
do this.”

“Of course,” replied Jack as the power of Ashley’s infinitely superior intellect pushed aside the barriers of illogical emotional reasoning. “It’s all so
very
clear.”

And he plunged the knife into the alien’s abdomen without delay. Ashley had tensed himself, and Jack pulled out the knife.

“Stand back, sir.”

The cucumber had started to break down further, and the light and heat were now so intense that Jack had to shield his eyes. Then an arc of soft blue liquid shot from the wound on Ashley’s chest, and with a rapid flickering and a tearing noise, the light in the cucumber began to flash and dance as Ashley’s liquid insides reacted with the subatomic tumult within the cucumber’s core. The light faltered, brightened, flashed, then went out, and all the cucumbers rapidly began to melt under the destructive power of Ashley’s aqueous innards. But it didn’t stop there. The neutron-absorbing cascade of rambosia vitae dissolved not only the cucumbers but the chassis of the van containing them and the concrete floor beneath, making a strange hissing and bubbling noise and giving off a smell like toffee apples.

Ashley had squeezed every last drop from himself and finally fell back empty like a deflated balloon, his once-snug uniform falling off him. Jack cradled Ashley’s now-flattened head in his arms, but he wasn’t yet dead. His eyes flickered open.

“My mind is going,” he said in a soft voice. “I can feel it. All that I am. Tell… tell… What was her name again?”

“Mary?”

“Right. Tell Mary I… would pluck the stars from the sky… 100… her… 10010101… 10… 1.”

“Tell her yourself, Ash. Ash?”

But it was no good. Ashley had gone. The liquid center that had so successfully quenched the thermocuclear device also carried the memories and experience that made him the alien that he was. Without them he was nothing but a deflated blue bag. In a very real sense, he had forgotten himself for the benefit of others.

The van collapsed in the middle as the rambosia vitae ate through the chassis. There was now a smoking hole in the concrete floor revealing the next level down, and a car that had the misfortune to be directly below was also being dissolved, albeit a bit more slowly as Ash’s vitae ran out of power.

“Ash,” said Jack to the light blue membrane that was draped across his hands like a silk scarf, “I’ll get them, don’t you worry.”

The small alien had traveled 18 light-years to find out more about our sitcoms and ended up saving half of Reading. It was an odd state of affairs, even by Ashley’s standards, but Jack had no time to dwell upon such matters—the inquiry had not yet run its course. NS-4 and QuangTech still had a lot to answer for, and the fourth bear was still out there somewhere. Jack looked up as he heard the sound of feet running down the entrance ramp.

The first on the scene was Briggs, with Copperfield and several other officers close behind. They stopped dead in their tracks when they saw Jack and the shriveled blue transparent bag that had once been Ashley.

“Where’s this ‘thermonuclear device,’ then?” asked Briggs.

“In the van,” replied Jack as the back axle finally dissolved to nothing and the Ford transit collapsed. They looked inside. It was empty, of course. The vitae had eaten through everything.

“It
was
there,” said Jack, “seven giant cucumbers about to achieve critical ‘cuclear’ ignition—but rendered harmless by Ashley’s memories.”

“I was right,” said Briggs. “You’re stark, staring mad.”

“I can explain. NS-4 and the Quangle-Wangle—”

“Drop the knife, Jack.”

Jack looked down. He was still holding the penknife.

“You killed the alien!” said someone at the back.

“No, no—I can explain.”

“I think you’d better come with us,” said Briggs. “You’re under arrest.”

“On what charge?”

“Almost everything I can think of—but we’ll just have ‘murder of a serving police officer’ to begin with.”

Before Jack could protest, two officers had disarmed him, pushed him facedown on the floor and begun to caution him.

“Briggs!” yelled Jack in desperation. “It’s not over!”

“For you it most certainly is,” Briggs replied, kneeling down to speak to Jack, who had his head pressed against the concrete. “A plea of insanity is about the best defense you have—and from what I’ve seen and heard over the past few days, it will be enthusiastically and gratefully accepted.”

“Give your brain a chance, Briggs,” growled Jack. “Ash just stopped an explosion from devastating most of Reading. We need to arrest Bisky-Batt, the Quangle-Wangle and the fourth bear.”

“And let me guess,” said Briggs. “The Easter Bunny as well?”

“No,” replied Jack with a grunt as someone grabbed his wrist and pulled it up behind him, “she had nothing to do with it.”

“I hope you’ve got a good lawy—”

Briggs stopped as a group of large bears walked into the underground garage from the stairwell. Jack, who was facing the other way, couldn’t see who it was at first.

“Relinquish Spratt to my custody,” came a deep voice.

“Don’t push it, Craps,” replied Briggs. “Threatening a police officer and obstruction are serious offenses, Ursidae immunity or not.”

Jack rolled over so that he could see what was going on. The small party of human officers was being faced down by an even larger contingent of bears, Vinnie Craps at their head. They didn’t look too happy either, and they were all males.
Large
males.

“I’m not going to argue, Briggs,” said Vinnie. “Spratt is a Friend to Bears, and bears look after their friends.”

“Like you look after Bartholomew? Harboring murderers isn’t being friendly and will land you in the clink, Boo-Boo.”

Craps walked up to Briggs, towered over him and placed a single pointed claw on the knot of his tie. “If you call me Boo-Boo again,” he said in a low, threatening growl, “it’ll be the last thing you do.” He raised a lip to reveal a shiny white canine. “Last chance: Leave the Bob Southey right now.”

“No way,” replied Briggs, who was showing a degree of courage that he’d forgotten he possessed. “And if you don’t surrender Barth—”

Suddenly the underground garage was full of noise. Directionless and powerful, it seemed to well up from the earth and reverberate right inside one’s skull. Jack wasn’t quite sure where it was coming from until he saw Vinnie with his mouth wide open. The roar was a deafening bellow that seemed to surge forth from within and expel itself at furious speed; it was a deep, guttural cry that spoke volumes about territory, outrage, anger and dominance.

Everyone jumped about a foot in the air. Briggs was almost knocked off his feet, and the sound set the car alarms going. The noise was brutal, and in a sort of primordial way, the kind of noise that makes anyone who hears it just leg it for the nearest cave or high tree. It also spoke of unpredictable danger. Even Jack, who was now a Friend to Bears, had an awful feeling that even
he
wasn’t completely safe—that any moment the six hundred pounds of angry bear might vent his anger on him. Abruptly, the roar stopped. Vinnie coughed slightly, cleared his throat and walked through the crowd of dazed officers, pulled Jack to his feet and escorted him to the stairwell.

“Hey!” said Briggs, suddenly regaining his composure.

Vinnie stopped and took a threatening pace toward them, and they all took a hasty step back.

“Leave now,” repeated Vinnie, and they did.

Highest ursine decoration:
Anthropomorphized bears have a peculiar and byzantine system of merits, honors and awards that number almost three hundred. Only two of these, however, are conferred upon nonbears. Most common is the Ursine Badge of Merit (2,568 recipients), which is more a measure of thanks. The second is the Ursidae Order of Friendship, which is closer to a status than medal and confers upon the holder unswerving protection from any bear, to death, without question. There are only five living recipients, all of whom live in Reading, Berkshire.

—
The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records
, 2004 edition