declares. “This here is only a short story. I don’t have time to mess around the way I would in a novel, or even a novella.”
“Short stories are good things,” Cleveland says. “You cannot have a monster at the end of a book if there is no book.”
“Maybe there will be a monster at the end of the story,” Tundra Dawn says.
“Oh, no! There had better not be! Then it would be a scary story, and it is supposed to be a funny story.” Cleveland is better at getting excited over nothing than any other three more or less people you can think of.
“It’s a good thing you told ’em the story’s supposed to be funny,” Tundra Dawn says. “They might not figure it out otherwise.”
“Everything will turn out fine.” Tremendous Ptarmigan is a great believer in happy endings. He has other annoying characteristics, too, like a high, thin, kinda squeaky voice. But, because he is so Tremendous, he can see a long way. He points ahead. “Looks like we’re coming to a town.”
“Low bridge! Everybody down!” Cleveland sings out. He knows all kinds of useless things, and commonly turns them loose at the worst possible moment.
There is a bridge over a straight channel of water in front of the canal. Ghosts moan and whuffle their sheets above the eerie canal. Once Tundra Dawn and her sidekicks have got past it, she sees what a big place they’ve found. “It’s not jut a town,” she says. “It’s a city!”
“It’s not just a city,” Cleveland exclaims. “It’s a metropolis!”
This is not one of the useless things Cleveland knows. There’s a sign not far past the bridge: WELCOME TO METROPOLIS! Cleveland isn’t wrong all the time—just often enough to be completely undependable.
What, you may well ask, is a metropolis, or even Metropolis, doing in the middle of the tundra? This particular one is kind of sitting there waiting for the adventurers to arrive and get on with things. So they do.
Being a metropolis, Metropolis is the capital of the local kingdom. “What,” says a gate guard, in tones of darkest suspicion, “is your purpose in entering our fair city?”
“We’re looking for—” Cleveland can open his mouth wide enough to fall right in.
Tundra Dawn stomps on his foot. He yips and does an amazing dance. Tundra Dawn says, “We want to talk to the King, man.” She sounds like someone who has wandered into a burger joint with a late-night case of the munchies.
“Right.” The gate guard is anything but impressed. He must have heard the routine before. But he stands aside. “Go on in, then. Quickest way to get to the palace is with the subway—the Metro, we call it.” His meager chest swells with civic pride.
“Why do you call it that?” Ptremendous Tarmigan isn’t the shiniest ornament on the tree, or even on the ptree.
“Beats me.” Neither is the gate guard.
There’s a Metro station just inside the gate. That’s handy. It saves steps, and exposition. A stairway goes down, down, down to the permafrost layer. Tundra Dawn and her sidekicks approach the ticket seller, a short, squat, bearded bloke with a bad case of stocking cap who twitches every so often.
“Who’s he?” TP/PT does have that gift for missing the obvious.
“He’s the Metrognome,” Tundra Dawn explains.
“He certainly ticks like one,” Cleveland says.
On getting paid, the Metrognome stylishly turns the turnstile. Tundra Dawn and Cleveland and Tremendous Ptarmigan go on to the subway car. It’s pulled by a team of four large, broad-shouldered, metamorphic-looking individuals. “Stop!” One of them holds out an enormous, mineralized paw. “Pay troll!”
“Nobody told us this was a troll road,” Tundra Dawn says.
“Is,” the troll assures her.
“We already paid the fellow back there!” Cleveland squawks.
“No pay,” the troll says, “no go.”
“Here.” Angrily, Tundra Dawn forks over again. “I still think you’re full of schist.”
“Complain all you want, meat lady,” the troll answers. “Long as you pay, I don’t care. I got me a big apatite to feed.”
“Meat lady!” The pupils in Tundra Dawn’s eyes roll round and round under their clear plastic outsides, she is so mad. Not only is the troll a bigot, he is a stupid bigot. Must have rocks in his head, she thinks, which is not altogether tolerant, either. But if he doesn’t know foam rubber and terry cloth when he sees them . . . It’s his loss, is what it is, goes through Tundra Dawn’s noodle.
Cleveland, of like construction, is quivering with rage of his own. But quiver is all he does.