“What, by the Temple and the Arch, has got into you?” asked the Elephant.
“Wrong question. But I shall ask the right question on your behalf. The question is actually, what hasn’t got into the three of us? It hasn’t got into Peregrine and me because we were holding our breath. It hasn’t got into you because, I don’t know, probably because you’re an elephant, with nice thick skin, more likely because you were breathing through your trunk, which is down at ground level—and what did get into our captors? And the answer is, what hasn’t got into us are the selfsame spores that have got into our portly shepherd and his pseudocanine companions.”
“Spores of the Mushroom?” asked Peregrine. “The Mushroom People’s the Mushroom?”
“Indeed. That selfsame Mushroom,” agreed the Marquis.
“Blimming heck,” said the Elephant.
“Which is why,” de Carabas told the Elephant, “if you attempt to kill me, or to kill Peregrine, you will not only fail but you will doom us all. Whereas if you shut up and we all do our best to look as if we are still part of the flock, then we have a chance. The spores will be threading their way into their brains now. And any moment now the Mushroom will begin calling them home.”
A SHEPHERD WALKED, implacably. He held a wooden crook. Three men followed him. One of those men had the head of an elephant; one was tall and ridiculously handsome; and the last of the flock wore a most magnificent coat. It fit him perfectly, and it was the color of a wet street at night.
The flock were followed by guard dogs, who moved as if they were ready to walk through fire to get wherever they believed that they were going.
It was not unusual in Shepherd’s Bush to see a shepherd and part of his flock moving from place to place, accompanied by several of the fiercest sheepdogs (who were human, or had been, once). So when they saw a shepherd and three sheepdogs apparently leading three members of the flock away from Shepherd’s Bush, none of the greater flock paid them any mind. The members of the flock who saw them simply did the same things they had always done, as members of the flock, and if they were aware that the influence of the shepherds had waned a little, then they patiently waited for another shepherd to come and to take care of them and to keep them safe from predators and from the world. It was a scary thing to be alone, after all.
Nobody noticed as they crossed the bounds of Shepherd’s Bush, and still they kept on walking.
The seven of them reached the banks of the Kilburn, where they stopped, and the former shepherd and the three shaggy dog-men strode out into the water.
There was, the Marquis knew, nothing in the four men’s heads at that moment but a need to get to the Mushroom, to taste its flesh once more, to let it live inside them, to serve it, and to serve it well. In exchange, the Mushroom would fix all the things about themselves that they hated: it would make their interior lives much happier and more interesting.
“Should’ve let me kill ’em,” said the Elephant as the former shepherd and sheepdogs waded away.
“No point,” said the Marquis. “Not even for revenge. The people who captured us don’t exist any longer.”
The Elephant flapped his ears hard, then scratched them vigorously. “Talking about revenge, who the hell did you steal my diary for anyway?” he asked.
“Victoria,” admitted de Carabas.
“Not actually on my list of potential thieves. She’s a deep one,” said the Elephant, after a moment.
“I’ll not argue with that,” said the Marquis. “Also, she failed to pay me the entire amount agreed. I wound up obtaining my own lagniappe to make up the deficit.”
He reached a dark hand into the inside of his coat. His fingers found the obvious pockets, and the less obvious, and then, to his surprise, the least obvious of all. He reached inside it, and pulled out a magnifying glass on a chain. “It was Victoria’s,” he said. “I believe you can use it to see through solid things. Perhaps this could be considered a small payment against my debt to you . . . ?”
The Elephant took something out of its own pocket—the Marquis could not see what it was—and squinted at it through the magnifying glass. Then the Elephant made a noise halfway between a delighted snort and a trumpet of satisfaction. “Oh fine, very fine,” it said. It pocketed both of the objects. Then it said, “I suppose that saving my life outranks stealing my diary. And while I wouldn’t have needed saving if I hadn’t followed you down the drain, further recriminations are pointless. Consider your life your own once more.”
“I look forward to visiting you in the Castle someday,” said the Marquis.
“Don’t push your luck, mate,” said the Elephant, with an irritable swish of his trunk.
“I won’t,” said the Marquis, resisting the urge to point out that pushing his luck was the only way he had made it this far. He looked around and realized that Peregrine had slipped mysteriously and irritatingly away into the shadows, once more, without so much as a good-bye.
The Marquis hated it when people did that.
He made a small, courtly bow to the Elephant, and the Marquis’s coat, his glorious coat, caught the bow, amplified it, made it perfect, and made it the kind of bow that only the Marquis de Carabas could ever possibly make. Whoever he was.
THE NEXT FLOATING Market was being held in Derry and Tom’s Roof Garden. There had been no Derry and Tom’s since 1973, but time and space and London Below had their own uncomfortable agreement, and the roof garden was younger and more innocent than it is today. The folk from London Above (they were young, and in an intense discussion, and they had stacked heels and paisley
