Truckers (13 page)

“It
is
Prices Slashed! Oh, Bargains Galore, save us! We're all mmphmmphmmph—”

Security stopped. He turned back, a look of puzzlement spreading across his face as slowly as treacle.

Masklin shrank farther back into the shadows. This is it, then, he thought. If I can get a good run at him . . .

Something outside the door started to roar. It was almost a truck noise. It didn't seem to worry the man, who just pulled the door open and looked out.

There was a human woman in the passage. She looked quite elderly, as far as Masklin was any judge, with a pink apron with flowers on it and carpet slippers on her feet. She held a duster in one hand, and with the other she was . . .

Well, it looked as though she was holding back a sort of roaring thing, like a bag on wheels. It kept rushing forward across the carpet, but she kept one hand on its stick and kept pulling it back.

While Masklin watched, she gave the thing a kick. The roaring died away as Security started to talk to her. To Masklin the conversation sounded like a couple of foghorns having a fight.

Masklin ran to the edge of the desk and half climbed, half fell down the chain of clips. The other two were waiting in the shadow of the desk. Gurder's eyes were rolling; Grimma had one hand clamped firmly over his mouth.

“Let's get out of here while he's not looking!” said Masklin.

“How?” said Grimma. “There's only the doorway.”

“Mmphmmph.”

“Well, let's at least get somewhere better than this.” Masklin stared around across the rolling acres of dark carpet. “There's a cupboard thing over there,” he said.

“Mmphmmph!”

“What are we going to do with
him?”

“Look,” said Masklin to Gurder's frightened face, “you're not going to go on about doom, doom again, are you? Otherwise we'll have to gag you. Sorry.”

“Mmph.”

“Promise?”

“Mmph.”

“Okay, you can take your hand away.”

“It was Bargains Galore!” hissed Gurder excitedly.

Grimma looked up at Masklin. “Shall I shut him up again?” she said.

“He can say what he likes as long as he keeps quiet,” said Masklin. “It probably makes him feel better. He's had a bit of a shock.”

“Bargains Galore came to protect us! With her great roaring Soul Sucker . . .” Gurder's brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

“It was a carpet cleaner, wasn't it?” he said slowly. “I always thought it was something magical, and it was just a carpet cleaner. There's lots of them in Household Appliances. With Extra Suction For Deep-Down Carpet Freshness.”

“Good. That's nice. Now, how do we get out of here?”

Some searching behind the filing cabinets found a crack in the floorboards just big enough to squeeze through with difficulty. Getting back took half a day, partly because Gurder would occasionally sit down and burst into tears, but mainly because they had to climb down inside the wall itself. It was hollow and had wires and odd bits of wood in it, tied into place by the Klothians, but it was still a tedious job. They came out under Kiddies Klothes. Gurder had pulled himself together by then and haughtily ordered food and an escort.

And so at last they came back to the Stationery Department.

Just in time.

Granny Morkie looked up as they were ushered into the Abbot's bedroom. She was sitting by the bed with her hands on her knees.

“Don't make any loud noises,” she ordered. “He's very ill. He says he's dyin'. I suppose he should know.”

“Dying of what?” said Masklin.

“Dyin' of bein' alive for such a long time,” said Granny.

The Abbot lay, wrinkled and even smaller than Masklin remembered him, among his pillows. He was clutching the Thing in two thin, clawlike hands.

He looked at Masklin and, with a great effort, beckoned him to come closer.

“You'll have to lean over,” Granny ordered. “He can't talk above a croak, poor old soul.”

The Abbot gently grabbed Masklin's ear and pulled it down to his mouth.

“A sterling woman,” he whispered. “Many fine qualities, I am sure. But please send her away before she gives me any more medicine.”

Masklin nodded. Granny's remedies, made from simple, honest, and generally nearly poisonous herbs and roots, were amazing things. After one dose of stomachache jollop, you made sure you never complained of stomachache ever again. In its way, it was a sort of cure.

“I can't
send
,” he said, “but I can ask.”

She went out, shouting instructions to mix up another batch.

Gurder knelt down by the bed.

“You're not going to die, are you, sir?” he said.

“Of course I am. Everyone is. That's what being alive is all about,” whispered the Abbot. “Did you see Arnold Bros (est. 1905)?”

“Well. Er.” Gurder hesitated. “We found some Writing, sir. It's true, it says the Store will be demolished. That means the end of everything, sir—whatever shall we do?”

“You will have to leave,” said the Abbot.

Gurder looked horrified.

“But you've always said that everything outside the Store could only be a dream!”

“And you never believed me, boy. And maybe I was wrong. That young man with the spear, is he still here? I can't see very well.”

Masklin stepped forward.

“Oh, there you are,” said the old nome. “This box of yours.”

“Yes?” said Masklin.

“Told me things. Showed me pictures. Store's a lot bigger than I thought. There's this room they keep the stars in, not just the glittery ones they hang from the ceiling at Christmas Fayre, but hundreds of the damn things. It's called the universe. We used to live in it, it nearly all belonged to us, it was our
home
. We didn't live under anyone's floor. I think Arnold Bros (est. 1905) is telling us to go back there.”

He reached out, and his cold white fingers gripped Masklin's arm with surprising strength.

“I don't say you're blessed with brains,” he said. “In fact, I reckon you're the stupid but dutiful kind who gets to be leader when there's no glory in it. You're the kind who sees things through. Take them Home. Take them all Home.”

He slumped back onto the pillows and shut his eyes.

“But—leave the Store, sir?” said Gurder. “There's thousands of us, old people and babies and everyone. Where can we go? There's foxes out there, Masklin says, and wind and hunger and water that drops out of the sky in bits! Sir? Sir?”

Grimma leaned over and felt the old nome's wrist.

“Can he hear me?” said Gurder.

“Maybe,” said Grimma. “Perhaps. But he won't be able to answer you, because he's dead.”

“But he can't die! He's always been here!” said Gurder, aghast. “You've got it wrong. Sir? Sir!”

Masklin took the Thing out of the Abbot's unresisting hands as other Stationeri, hearing Gurder's voice, hurried in.

“Thing?” he said quietly, walking away from the crowd around the bed.

“I hear you.”

“Is he dead?”

“I detect no life functions.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means ‘yes.'”

“Oh.” Masklin considered this. “I thought you had to be eaten or squashed first. I didn't think you just sort of stopped.”

The Thing didn't volunteer any information.

“Any idea what I should do now?” said Masklin. “Gurder was right. They are not going to leave all this warmth and food. I mean, some of the youngsters might, for a lark. But if we're going to survive outside, we'll need lots of people. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. And what am I supposed to say to them: Sorry, you've all got to leave it all behind?”

The Thing spoke.

“No,”
it said.

Masklin had never seen a funeral before. Come to that, he'd never seen a nome die from being alive too long. Oh, people had been eaten, or had never come back, but no one had simply come to an end.

“Where do you bury your dead?” Gurder had asked.

“Inside badgers and foxes, often,” he'd replied, and hadn't been able to resist adding, “You know. The handsome and agile hunters?”

This was how the nomes said farewell to their dead:

The body of the old Abbot was ceremoniously dressed in a green coat and a pointy red hat. His long white beard was carefully combed out, and then he lay, peacefully, on his bed as Gurder read the service.

“Now that it has pleased you, Arnold Bros (est. 1905), to take our brother to your great Gardening Department beyond Consumer Accounts, where there is Ideal Lawn Edging and an Amazing Floral Display and the pool of eternal life in Easy-To-Lay Polythene With Real-Crazy-Paving Edging, we will give him the gifts a nome must take on his journey.”

The Count de Ironmongri stepped forward. “I give him,” he said, laying an object beside the nome, “the Spade Of Honest Toil.”

“And I,” said the Duke de Haberdasheri, “lay beside him the Fishing Rod Of Hope.”

Other leading nomes brought other things: the Wheelbarrow Of Leadership, the Shopping Basket Of Life. Dying in the Store was quite complicated, Masklin gathered.

Grimma blew her nose as Gurder completed the service and the body was ceremoniously carried away.

To the subbasement, they later learned, and the incinerator. Down in the realms of Prices Slashed, the Security, where he sat at nighttimes, legend said, and drank his horrible tea.

“That's a bit dreadful, I reckon,” said Granny Morkie as they stood around aimlessly afterward. “In my young day, if a person died, we buried 'em. In the ground.”

“Ground?” said Gurder.

“Sort of floor,” explained Granny.

“Then what happened?” said Gurder.

Granny looked blank. “What?” she said.

“Where did they go after that?” said the Stationeri patiently.

“Go? I don't reckon they went anywhere. Dead people don't get about much.”

“In the Store,” said Gurder slowly, as if he were explaining things to a rather backward child, “when a nome dies, if he has been a
good
nome, Arnold Bros (est. 1905) sends them back to see us before they go to a Better Place.”

“How can—” Granny began.

“The inner bit of them, I mean,” said Gurder. “The bit inside you that's really you.”

They looked at him politely, waiting for him to make any sort of sense.

Gurder sighed. “All right,” he said, “I'll get someone to show you.”

They were taken to the Gardening Department. It was a strange place, Masklin thought. It was like the world outside but with all the difficult bits taken away. The only light was the faint glow of indoor suns, which stayed on all night. There was no wind, no rain, and there never would be. There was grass, but it was just painted green sacking with bits sticking out of it. There were mountainous cliffs of nothing but seeds in packets, each one with a picture that Masklin suspected was quite unreal. They showed flowers, but flowers unlike any he'd ever seen before.

“Is the Outside like this?” said the young priest who was guiding them. “They say, they say, er, they say you've been there. They say you've
seen
it.” He sounded hopeful.

“There was more green and brown,” said Masklin flatly.

“And flowers?” said the priest.

“
Some
flowers,” Masklin agreed. “But not like these.”

“I seed flowers like these once,” said Torrit and then, unusually for him, fell silent.

They were led around the bulk of a giant lawn mower and there—

—were nomes. Tall, chubby-faced gnomes. Pink-cheeked painted gnomes. Some of them held fishing rods or spades. Some of them were pushing painted wheelbarrows. And every single one of them was grinning.

The tribe stood in silence for some time.

Then Grimma said, very softly, “How horrible.”

“Oh, no!” said the priest, horrified. “It's marvelous! Arnold Bros (est. 1905) sends you back smart and new, and then you leave the Store and go to a wonderful place!”

“There's no women,” said Granny. “That's a mercy, anyway.”

“Ah, well,” said the priest, looking a bit embarrassed. “That's always been a bit of a debatable question. We're not sure why, but we think—”

“And they don't look like anyone,” said Granny. “They all look the same.”

“Well, you see—”

“Catch me coming back like that,” said Granny. “If you come back like that, I don't want to go.”