Falling Platypus - Chapter 10

“What did you think of chapter 22?”
—Dayton Modwell

“I see you’ve found the bijou.”
—Dayton Modwell

We were a subdued group returning from the mountain. After trading good mornings, we didn’t talk at all except when we stopped for coffee. The guides explained they had found my bot­tle of Swamp du Vinegére the night before, and thought it was a gift from the hermit. They’d drunk it all and now they felt like they were dying. I didn’t tell them whose bottle of Swamp du Vinegére it had actually been, although I kept the label as a sou­venir of my souvenir.

In the truck, they turned on the radio and listened to whatever was playing on the one station within range.

It was a Joey Tony Lines album that had come out ten years before.

Joey Tony Lines was a terrible singer who ripped off other people’s songs and pretended they were his own. Even his name was a rip-off: he’d stolen it from another, better, singer: the rock star Joey Tony Lewis.

I’d seen him—Joey Tony Lines—one night in Walm. He played at The Slab. That was, in fact, the night I first met Joey Brunoe.

“We have the same name,” he’d told me.

“Lines?” I asked.

“Joey,” he said. That was Joey Brunoe.

* * *

From when she woke, to our arrival at Camp Commie, Serena Mayfield’s face was placid and betrayed nothing. She looked like a waxwork of herself. You would never imag­ine that her brain had been overcome with bijou fever. Unless, that is, you looked in her eyes, and saw something glint, some­thing that was both white and all the colors of the rainbow, something that was its own prism.

I was subdued because I had looked into her eyes and seen just that, and knew what it meant because Dayton had come out of the cave and told me. He told me that, in a chapter he edited out of Full Force: My Life as a Zebra Tamer, he revealed how the fever had once gripped him—for 20 years, in fact.

And it worried me. For her sake, and mine.

The truck pulled into a suspiciously still Camp Commie. I could smell pancakes cooking, but I didn’t see Joe. The wind ruf­fled his homemade banner.

A flag whipped in the wind on a pole in the center of camp. “I don’t remember that,” I said.

“Hey,” said one of the guides. “That looks like your boss!”

I did a double take. He was right. It was a spitting image of Serena Mayfield, the most beautiful woman in the world.

“You know who else it looks like,” said the second guide.

“Yeah,” said the first. “Serena Mayfield. The most beautiful woman in the world.”

They both looked at me. I shrugged. They were on to some­thing, though: those two people were one and the same.

* * *

We three stood around the pole and looked at the flag. It was made up of sections of paper, twelve inches wide, which were themselves made up of 100 lines each of ticker tape. The “draw­ing” of Serena Mayfield was printed in binary.

“I am sorry, laddie,” the surveyor of Camp Commie’s voice said behind me, and I felt the grip of handcuffs around my wrists. “I told you I was on to something.”

* * *

“So where’s Serena Mayfield?” he asked me. We were sit­ting in the command tent. The silver automaton was blessedly si­lent, the floor littered with excess ticker tape. (“I had to change the spool three times,” the surveyor had confided when he saw me looking.)

“I don’t know,” I said. She’d disappeared as soon as we ar­rived in camp. “But she was here when we came down from the mountain.”

The surveyor looked at the two guides to confirm this. They nodded. They didn’t know what was going on.

“This came through today with the paper,” the surveyor said, and passed me a black and white photograph, square, glossy. It was a shot of the moment Serena Mayfield and I stole the Land Cruiser from West Spoke. It looked much more exciting in the photo than it had actually been.

“And this,” said the surveyor, “is the last thing that came out of the bloody automaton. Considering what it says, you’d think they might have sent it through first.”

This is what it said:

WANTED BY CHARITY FOOD AND THE DIPLO­MATIC PARTY FOR WORLD HARMONY: THE KIDNAP­PER OF SERENA MAYFIELD. ALSO, SERENA MAYFIELD. SEE ATTACHED PICTURE (INSTRUCTIONS FOR ASSEM­BLY FOLLOWING).

I pushed it back across the desk with my nose. “I can ex­plain,” I said.

“Try,” said the surveyor, and he crossed his arms.

“I see,” he said when I finished, and he uncrossed his arms. “So what you seem to be saying is, Charity Food is the bad guy and you’re not. That they’re acting like maniacs and that, as any­one can see if they actually looked at the picture, Serena May­field’s driving and not you.” He frowned and fluffed his mus­taches. “This is a problem,” he said.

“Not really, you can just let me go,” I suggested.

“Oh, of course, I can do that,” he said, and uncuffed me. “The problem is, I already wrote to Charity Food and told them you were here.”

* * *

We were standing outside the command tent now. The sur­veyor told the guides to leave camp and pretend they were just ar­riving back when Charity Food arrived. Informed of the plot, they agreed.

“Farewell!” the first said to me. “You lucky guy, you!”

Their truck trundled out of sight.

“Now, to get you out of Camp Commie,” the surveyor said, rubbing his hands briskly. He led me round the back of the camp, where a beater old truck sat rusting under a tree. “She’s a piece of crap, but she’s roadworthy,” he said. “I built her myself,” he added proudly. “You can count on her, aye.”

“Where should we go?” I asked him. “There’s nothing for hundreds of miles.”

“Maybe they’ll go away when they realize you’re not here,” the surveyor said skeptically. “But if they don’t, I recommend you make for the far side of Mount Commie.”

“What’s over there?” I asked. “A hiding spot?”

“Better,” the surveyor said. He showed me a map, on which someone had drawn a snaking trail of dashed lines in red pen. “This is the route of the Marilyrilarilyn Safari. If you can find them, and tell them I sent you, she’ll smuggle you to safety.”

I groaned. But Serena Mayfield, who had joined us by now, thought it was a capital idea.

“And here are your things,” she said, handing me my uno­pened cardboard box and Dan Denny’s backpack.

“I’ll go take apart your tent,” the surveyor said. “Now get out of here! Scram! Skedaddle! You don’t want them to find you, which if they do, is thanks to me!”

“You’ve been a good friend,” I told him, and shook his hand. “Even if we haven’t always been the most forthright.”

He nodded. “As if the wind really took all your clothes off!” he laughed.

I put the truck in reverse and pulled away from camp. He waved us goodbye.

* * *

“I can’t believe we’re going back to the Marilyrilarilyn Sa­fari of our own accord,” I said, drumming my hands on the wheel.

“It’s a good thing, actually,” Serena Mayfield said. “Her route takes us much closer to the jungle. Which means we’ll be one step closer to the bijous.”

I faced her.

“Bijous are all you care about,” I said. I wanted to hear her say it, to hear her agree—but she shook her head.

“Of course not. That’s silly.”

I looked in her eyes, and I didn’t see the glint.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

“About Marilyrilarilyn? No, I think it really is the right thing to do. She offered us help, after all. Don’t worry about food,” she added, and pointed to two takeaway boxes. “Joe made me some farewell pancakes.”

* * *

We drove in the dark for two hours, hugging the base of Mount Commie. Presently, Serena Mayfield spotted lights in the dis­tance.

It was the Marilyrilarilyn Safari.

The drivers recognized me when we approached. They waved.

The handlers who’d escorted us the first time, the husband and wife, sprinted up as we got out of the truck, this time sans spears.

“Hello!” they said in unison.

“I find it unusual that you are back so soon,” the woman said, and you could almost hear the question.

“We’re on the run from a charity,” I said. “They want to do something terrible to me because they think I kidnapped the world’s most beautiful woman, Serena Mayfield.”

The husband and wife looked at Serena Mayfield in unison.

“I didn’t kidnap her,” I protested. “She asked me to do it, and besides, she was the one driving.”

“It’s true,” Serena Mayfield said, and rested her arm on my shoulder.

“I understand,” the man said, then shook his head. “Actually, I don’t understand, but come with us anyway. Marilyrilarilyn will want to see you.”

Marilyrilarilyn was eating a slice of cheese by one of the cook fires. “I’m feeling decadent today,” she explained guiltily. “But hey, what’s the point of being on vacation if you can’t eat a slice of cheese now and then?”

The husband and wife winced at the question, even as they bowed.

“Marilz,” they said together, “we bring you your friends. They are running away from charity.”

“Are they?” Marilyrilarilyn said. “That doesn’t make much sense to me. But I promised them if they ever needed my help, I would give it to them.”

“The surveyor of Camp Commie sends his regards,” I added. I bowed too, just in case it helped our case.

Marilyrilarilyn looked uncertain. “I don’t know who that is,” she said at last. “Is he the one who sent me this?”

The husband and wife winced again and she dismissed them with a wave. They padded away, relieved.

Marilyrilarilyn handed me a letter of introduction. “Yes,” I said.

“I don’t know who that is,” she repeated. “But he called me Marillie!” She laughed, the high-pitched laugh of someone who is a little bit psychotic.

“Does the offer stand?” I asked her. “Will you help us?”

“I never thought you’d take me up on it,” she said, and took a deep breath. “But Marilyrilarilyn always keeps her promises. The offer stands.”

She gestured for us to sit, and cut us each a slice of cheese. “Now, let’s hear the whole story,” she said. “From the beginning. Don’t stop until you’re done.”

She looked longingly at the loaf of cheese from which she’d cut us slices. “Oh, what the hey,” she said, with the attitude of someone who has just let her hair down. “I’ll have one more slice! What’s the point of being on vacation, after all?”