She took them without looking at him, and he returned cheerfully to his griddle, singing quietly, “Loooove me tender, looooove me long, neeever let me go … ”
The man’s humming, Sable noted, clashed with the Burger Lord background music, a tinny tape loop of the Burger Lord commercial jingle, and he made a mental note to have him fired.
Hello-my-name-is-Marie gave Sable his MEAL™ and told him to have a nice day.
He found a small plastic table, sat down in the plastic seat, and examined his food.
Artificial bread roll. Artificial burger. Fries that had never even seen potatoes. Foodless sauces. Even (and Sable was especially pleased with this) an artificial slice of dill pickle. He didn’t bother to examine his milkshake. It had no actual food content, but then again, neither did those sold by any of his rivals.
All around him people were eating their unfood with, if not actual evidence of enjoyment, then with no more actual disgust than was to be found in burger chains all over the planet.
He stood up, took his tray over to the please dispose of your refuse with care receptacle, and dumped the whole thing. If you had told him that there were children starving in Africa he would have been flattered that you’d noticed.
There was a tug at his sleeve. “Party name of Sable?” asked a small, bespectacled man in an International Express cap, holding a brown paper parcel.
Sable nodded.
“Thought it was you. Looked around, thought, tall gent with a beard, nice suit, can’t be that many of them here. Package for you, sir.”
Sable signed for it, his real name—one word, six letters. Sounds like examine.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” said the delivery man. He paused. “Here,” he said. “That bloke behind the counter. Does he remind you of anyone?”
“No,” said Sable. He gave the man a tip—five dollars—and opened the package.
In it was a small pair of brass scales.
Sable smiled. It was a slim smile, and was gone almost instantly.
“About time,” he said. He thrust the scales into his pocket, unheeding of the damage being done to the sleek line of his black suit, and went back to the limo.
“Back to the office?” asked the chauffeur.
“The airport,” said Sable. “And call ahead. I want a ticket to England.”
“Yessir. Return ticket to England.”
Sable fingered the scales in his pocket. “Make that a single,” he said. “I’ll be making my own way back. Oh, and call the office for me, cancel all appointments.”
“How long for, sir?”
“The foreseeable future.”
And in the Burger Lord, behind the counter, the stout man with the cowlick slid another half-dozen burgers onto the grill. He was the happiest man in the whole world and he was singing, very softly.
“. . . y’ain’t never caught a rabbit,” he hummed to himself, “and y’ain’t no friend of mine … ”
THE THEM LISTENED with interest. There was a light drizzle which was barely kept at bay by the old iron sheets and frayed bits of lino that roofed their den in the quarry, and they always looked to Adam to think up things to do when it was raining. They weren’t disappointed. Adam’s eyes were agleam with the joy of knowledge.
It had been 3:00 a.m. before he’d gone to sleep under a pile of New Aquarians.
“An’ then there was this man called Charles Fort,” he said. “He could make it rain fish and frogs and stuff.”
“Huh,” said Pepper. “I bet. Alive frogs?”
“Oh, yes,” said Adam, warming to his subject. “Hopping around and croaking and everything. People paid him money to go away in the end an’, an’ … ” He racked his brains for something that would satisfy his audience; he’d done, for Adam, a lot of reading in one go. “. . . And he sailed off in the Mary Celeste and founded the Bermuda Triangle. It’s in Bermuda,” he added helpfully.
“No, he couldn’t of done that,” said Wensleydale sternly, “because I’ve read about the Mary Celeste, and there was no one on it. It’s famous for having no one on it. They found it floating around all by itself with no one on it.”
“I dint say he was on it when they found it, did I?” said Adam scathingly. “Course he wasn’t on it. ’Cos of the UFOs landin’ and takin’ him off. I thought everyone knew about that.”
The Them relaxed a bit. They were on firmer ground with UFOs. They weren’t entirely certain about New Age UFOs, though; they’d listened politely to Adam on the subject, but somehow modern UFOs lacked