Doughnut - By Tom Holt Page 0,76

or getting involved.

He broke into a gentle trot and arrived at the doughnut stall very slightly out of breath. Under the shade of the awning he could see a long trestle table covered with trays of doughnuts, eclairs, cream horns, buns, cupcakes and flapjacks, which reminded him that he’d skipped a meal or so recently. He couldn’t see a stallholder, so he reached for the nearest doughnut –

Something slammed against the side of his head, and he dropped forward, banging his chin on the edge of the table as he fell. The world had gone all soft and runny, and he heard a voice, above and behind him.

“Damn humans.” The voice sounded more weary than angry. “It’s time they did something.”

“In broad daylight too.”

Um, he thought, but he wasn’t up to doing anything more energetic than lying still and groaning.

“It’s wearing clothes.”

“I swear they’re getting worse.” He heard the sound of a cellphone being dialled. “Hello? Put me through to Pest Control, will you? Thanks, I’ll hold.”

“Never seen one in clothes before.”

It wasn’t sounding good. With a substantial effort, he wriggled round and saw two animals.

No he didn’t. At first glance he’d taken them for animals, but that was because he’d just had his brains shaken up by a powerful blow to the head. Not animals. The word zoomorph floated into his mind from somewhere (he couldn’t help being impressed at his own resilience; how many people could come up with zoomorph a few seconds after being bashed stupid?) Animal-shaped, but not animals as such. More like –

“Look out, it’s coming round.”

Cuddly toys. Two of them. One of them was bear-sized and sort of bear-shaped, except that no bear ever looked anything like that, or ever had fur that distinctly unnatural shade of orangey-lemon, or wore a little red jacket two sizes two small for its shoulders, or had eyebrows. By the same token, the other one wasn’t a tiger, because tigers don’t stand upright, or have anomalously humanoid jaws and pink noses. That was it, he suddenly realised; that was what was so terribly wrong. They weren’t just unnatural, or anatomically impossible. They were cute.

“Yes, hello?” The tiger was talking into a phone pressed to its ridiculously implausible ear. “Yes, I’m calling from the doughnut stand at BY129865, we’ve got a rogue human, could you send a team to—? Right, yes. Only, hurry, will you? We’ve got it cornered, but it looks pretty lively. And…” The tiger hesitated. “It’s wearing clothes. Yes, really. OK. Thanks.”

Then Theo recognised the voice, and it was as though a door had opened, or a light had come on. He knew these creatures. He’d known them all his life.

“Tigger?” he said. “Pooh?”

The bear nearly jumped out of its skin. The tiger froze. “It’s talking,” it whispered.

“Like hell it is,” the bear replied, in a high, brittle voice. “It’s just barking.”

“It said our names.”

Slowly and cautiously, the bear reached out and grabbed a hammer. “Some of them can do that,” it said, trying to sound casual and failing dismally. “People train them to repeat names and simple phrases. My cousin Paddington had one once that could sing all four verses of ‘Bear Necessities’. Didn’t mean it could talk, though. Didn’t make it intelligent.”

The tiger was grimly maintaining eye contact. “If it moves,” it said, “bash its head in.”

This isn’t right, Theo told himself, it’s people dressed up in costumes, like at Disneyland. But he knew instinctively that there was nothing even remotely human under the fur. Another memory stirred; a film, this time. His mouth was completely dry, as if he’d slept with it open.

Behind him, he could hear screams, and gunshots. The bear relaxed. “It’s the patrol,” it said. “They’ll be here in two shakes.”

“You think they’ll be able to catch it?”

“Maybe. Or maybe they’ll just shoot it, who gives a damn?”

I do, Theo thought, and remembered he was a scientist and a mathematician. Let x, therefore, be the time needed for a hammer y held in the paw of a bear P to move the distance Z between the bear’s chest and the head of a human T moving from A to B. Assuming an average speed s for the hammer and s1 for the human –

He did the equation, and got the result s1 = 2.16 metres/second. He wasn’t sure he could move that fast, but it was probably worth a try.

“Hey, it’s getting away!” the tiger yelled as he streaked past. He felt the slipstream of the hammer just behind his