Doughnut - By Tom Holt Page 0,78

and carried on contemplating the opposite wall. Theo lay down on the floor and curled up in a little ball. It seemed the sensible thing to do.

Some time later, he heard voices and looked up. The duck was on its feet, rigidly to attention, wing-feather-tips brushing its temple in a millimetre-perfect salute. The two newcomers didn’t seem to have noticed. One of them, a blue-grey donkey with a lilac belly and a bow tied to its tail, was taking readings with some kind of instrument that whirred and flinked tiny red and green lights. The other, a tiny deformed-looking pig with the body of a pink wasp, was filling a syringe from a brown glass bottle.

“Leave us,” the donkey said to the guard, which saluted again and left the room. The pig squirted a tiny drop of something blue from the needle of its syringe, and put the bottle away in a big black bag.

Really not good, Theo decided. He reckoned he could probably take the pig, if he caught it unaware, but the donkey was big and mean-looking, and the guard would be only a shout away. He had no idea what was in the syringe, but he’d been around the scientific community long enough to figure that it probably wasn’t anything he’d want inserted in him. He stayed where he was and tried to look as though he was fast asleep.

They came across and stood a few feet from the cage, gazing at him as though he had little dotted lines tattooed on his skin. Then the pig said, “I don’t know, it looks perfectly normal. Its hair’s not the right colour, but that could be ordinary genetic mutation.”

“The clothes,” replied the donkey. “Where’d it get them?”

The pig leaned forward to look. “Some kind of military uniform.”

“Not one I recognise. And the shoes. Look at the shoes. What kind of feet do you suppose would fit in shoes like that?”

Valid point. The animals he’d seen so far either had bare, rounded stubs at the end of their legs, or else wore footwear like plump cloth bags tied at the ankle. How any of them could stand up without falling over was a mystery to him. He tried to shuffle his feet under him, but it was clearly too late for that.

“The shoes,” the donkey went on, “clearly weren’t made for any sentient species known to us. But they were made. They appear to be the product of sophisticated manufacturing techniques, maybe even mass production. Therefore somebody made them.” It glanced down at its scanner again, and its frown deepened. “Ask yourself,” it said. “Who made them, and what for?”

The pig rubbed its vestigial chin. “Some people like to dress up their pet humans in quaint costumes,” it said. “Maybe—”

“And it talks,” the donkey said grimly.

The pig looked up at it. “Surely not.”

“That was what the report said.” The donkey looked at the door to make sure it was closed, and lowered its voice. “Surely you can grasp the significance. A talking human, wearing unfamiliar clothes and bizarre footwear, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. If it means what I think it means…”

The pig looked terrified. “The Catastrophic Origin theory,” it whispered. “But surely—”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” the donkey said. “Now, I suggest we start by administering the hydroglyco-barythane, followed by an incremental series of electric shocks.”

In spite of himself, Theo made a soft whimpering noise. Both animals turned and stared.

“I think,” the piglet said in a horrified whisper, “it can understand what we’re saying.”

The donkey nodded slowly. “So do I,” it said. “Of course, we can test that quite easily using tetracyanic acid and a simple thumbscrew.”

“Um,” Theo said loudly, “sorry to interrupt but I couldn’t help overhearing, and if it’d save you the trouble, then, yes, I can understand you. Well, not the hydroglycowhatsit stuff, because I’m not a chemist, but the general sort of gist of things, no problem—”

The donkey’s head shot up. The pig made a terrified squealing noise and scrabbled in its bag, producing a small but efficient-looking handgun. “Let’s shoot it now,” it said quickly. “We can get all the answers we need from dissecting it.”

“Calm down, Professor,” the donkey said quietly. “And put that thing away, for now at least. I assure you, the cage is quite robust, and the guard is close by. We’re in no danger.”

“Physical danger, perhaps not,” the pig muttered darkly. “Spiritual danger, on the other hand—”

“Come now,” the donkey said, and its lips curled in