stood and stared up at the statue. He scowled at the map, then screwed it into a ball and threw it away. Being rescued is one thing, but nobody loves a smartarse.
Gathering the folds of the nappy in his right hand (he couldn’t now find the safety pin) he retraced his steps until he was standing once again in the shadow of the colossal mouse. A seagull perched on the mouse’s left ear spread its wings and launched itself into the air, complaining bitterly about the inconvenience. He knelt down and started scrabbling in the sand with his fingers.
Almost immediately, he connected with something. It proved to be a small tin box, olive-green, on whose lid was stencilled in white, property of US Government, along with a serial number and a hazmat symbol that suggested the box had once contained weapons’ grade plutonium. He was inclined to doubt that, somehow. He flipped off the lid and saw a doughnut.
Gingerly he prodded it with his forefinger. It was soft enough to be fresh, and still faintly warm, glistening with frying oil. He picked it up, taking care to keep it sideways on, so he wouldn’t inadvertently look through the hole. He hesitated. His moral duty was to take it back to the cave, where Max was waiting. He hesitated a bit longer.
He’s your brother, said his conscience, but even it didn’t sound terribly enthusiastic. I know that, he thought, and I’m glad he’s alive after all, I guess. But he’s all right here, isn’t he? I mean, the Seven Dwarves are bringing him food and presumably doing his laundry, or else how come his suit is so spotlessly, immaculately white, and at least here there aren’t Mob hitmen gunning for him, like there would be back home. Would I really be doing him a favour, taking him back into harm’s way? Surely it’d be better, kinder, to leave him here for now, go back, figure out a way of taking him from here to a more suitable parallel universe, where he could be safe and happy and a very, very long way away…
Well?
His conscience didn’t reply immediately. Perhaps it was wrestling with its conscience, and so on and so forth, like two mirrors facing each other. That was the sort of thing that happened when Max was involved. When it finally spoke, the best it could come up with was Yes, but.
That, however, was enough. He sighed, stood up, took a firm grip on the hem of the nappy and headed for the rocky outcrop.
As he rounded it, he felt something whistle past his cheek; swishswishswish, the sound a bullet makes as it spins in flight. A fraction of a second later, he heard the bang. He looked up and saw a bunch of red-jacketed bears on the edge of the cliff. A spurt of sand kicked up a yard or so to his left; another bang. Oh hell.
He turned to run back the way he’d just come, but he could hear shouting, someone yelling orders. They were behind him as well as in front. Quickly, he assessed the distance to the bears on the cliff: four hundred yards, at least. A moving target at four hundred yards was a pretty tall order. Letting go of the nappy and letting it slide to the ground, he picked a line across the beach and started to run.
He’d never been much of an athlete, even at school, but the gunshots and splashes in the sand motivated him in a way that a succession of PE teachers and coaches had never quite managed. I’m going to make it, he was just thinking, when a dappled whitetail fawn rose up out of the dunes on his left, about twenty-five yards away, and drew a bead on him with a slide-action shotgun. He skidded to a halt, his feet scouring ruts in the sand, just as the fawn fired. He felt the slipstream of the shot charge, a welcome breath of air on such a hot day. Behind him he could hear hooves thudding. Another volley of shots from the bears on the clifftop bracketed him with admirable precision. For a split second he considered plunging into the sea and swimming for it; just then, half a dozen mermaids burst up through the water and aimed at him with spear guns. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of three elephants, their huge ears flapping like wings, flying directly at him out