it might have demonstrated our nature to the thing we could only guess at being the Executive Officer. As we were dragged before him, he looked at us and said, “Are you lost?”
His voice was a roar, but even then it was barely audible over the thundering beat that filled the room. It came from jaws whose opening was the size of my head, a great, gin-smelling depth lined with tiny white teeth set in a base of a rolling length of opening bone. His eyes were two piggy grey marbles, his skin was flushed the colour of a grilled tomato, with a surface layer of darker capillaries threaded across his flesh like a road map of the Alps. His hair, if you could call it that, was three black strands slicked over a hillside scalp. He wore a suit the size of a wedding marquee. His belly sprawled out the length of my outstretched, tugged-on arms, his feet were two stubbly protrusions wearing - how we were thrilled by this sight! - black and white spats, poking out over the edge of the sofa. He could have crushed a buffalo just by sitting on it, he could have suffocated an elk between his thumb and forefinger, and it was from his chest that the great pounding roar of noise was coming.
A hand the size of my chest reached out to a control panel designed for fat fingertips, and pressed a button. A light went on beneath a bank of speakers behind his head, and at once the great roaring deDUM deDUM deDUM grew less, covered instead by an irritating hiss. It was still there though; I felt it rising through my stomach, aching in my gut.
He repeated, smiling, from his predator’s mouth, “Are you lost?”
I tugged with deliberate weakness at the arms that held my own, testing their strength and doing my best to imply my own feebleness. I felt the stitches strain across my flesh, and grimaced in pain. “I guess so.”
“You don’t have an appointment.” It wasn’t a question.
We looked up and met his tiny eyes, almost lost in the folds of his face, then looked down. He followed our gaze and smiled. “Ah, yes,” he said. “I often get that reaction.”
Beneath the tent of his shirt, big enough to fill with hot air and fly in, something was moving inside his chest. I could see the shirt rise and warp, sink and flatten, then rise and warp again, as if a great big boil was being pumped in and out, or tectonic plate movement had decided to do its thing with his bone and skin. Its great rapid motion was in time to the beat, and it was moving above his heart.
I said, “Oh. I see.”
“Do you?” he asked. “That’s interesting. Most people go out of their way not to look.”
“Couldn’t you have gone to the NHS, like any ordinary Joe?” I asked.
“I’m not an ordinary Joe,” he replied, “and neither, I think, are you.” He nodded at his two hooded guards. They pushed me forward; I stumbled, tripped, fell at his spat-wearing feet. The white and black leather filled our vision and we bit back on a hysterical laugh. A smile must have shown because he said, “Is something funny?”
“You’re wearing spats!”
“And?”
“We just . . . it’s so nice to . . . we’ve always wanted to see someone wearing spats. We thought it only happened in films. Sorry. It must seem irrelevant.”
“You don’t need to apologise,” he grumbled, and now we realised what the hissing was, that irritating, needle-in-the-ear sound. The speakers were replicating the sound of his beating heart, the great swelling massive thing the size of a swallowed dog pounding inside his chest, but they were doing it a few instants out of phase. One sound met the other, and both were beaten down. That at least was the theory of it.
He leant forward. That is, his head bent down towards me half an inch. He didn’t seem capable of doing any more. He said, “Is there something I can do for you, little man?”
“I’ve got to ask - sorry about this - but I’ve got to ask - why spats?”
“Style,” he replied primly, “is more stylish if it’s done to a personal agenda.”
“And why is your heart pumping out enough decibels to shatter an eardrum?”
He smiled. This was a question he was clearly used to being asked, and enjoyed answering. “I,” he declared proudly, “am the lord of the dance.”