‘Okay,’ thought Luka grimly, ‘how hard can it be?’ He stared at the instruments on the bridge. There was this switch, which probably put the wheels down for driving on when the Argo was on land, or up when the Argo hit the water; and this button, which was pretty obviously green for ‘go’, and this one next to it, which was just as self-evidently red for ‘stop’; and this lever, which he should probably push forward to go forward, and maybe push further forward to go faster; and this wheel, which would do the steering; and all those dials and counters and needles and gauges, which he could probably just ignore.
‘Hold on, everybody,’ he announced. ‘Here goes.’
Something then happened so rapidly that Luka was not entirely sure how or what it was, but an instant later the jet-propelled amphibian craft was flipping over and over in the middle of the great waterway and then they were all in the water and a whirlpool was sucking them down and Luka just had time to wonder whether he was about to be eaten by a Sickfish or other watery beast when he lost consciousness, and woke up a moment later back at the little pier, climbing into the Argo, thinking ‘How hard can it be?’ – and the only sign that something had happened was that the counter in the top left-hand corner of his field of vision had gone down by one life: 998. Nobodaddy was snoozing on the deck of the Argo again, and Luka called out, ‘A little help?’ But Nobodaddy didn’t move, and Luka understood this was something he would have to work out for himself. Perhaps those dials and gauges were more important than he had thought.
On the second try he managed not to turn the Argo over, but he didn’t get far before the whirlpool started up and whirled the craft around and around. ‘What’s happening?’ Luka yelled, and Nobodaddy lifted his panama hat and replied, ‘It’s probably the Eddies.’ But what were the Eddies? The Argo was spinning faster and faster, and in a minute it would be sucked down again. Nobodaddy sat up. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Yes. The Eddies are definitely in the neighbourhood.’ He looked down into the water, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, ‘Nelson! Duane! Fisher! Stop playing now! Go torment somebody else!’ But then the Argo was pulled underwater, and there was the blackout again, and they were back at the pier with the counter at 997. ‘Fish,’ said Nobodaddy briefly. ‘Eddyfish. Small, speedy rogues. Causing whirlpools is their favourite sport.’ ‘And what’s to be done about them?’ Luka wanted to know. ‘You have to work out how it is,’ Nobodaddy said, ‘that people manage to reach back into the Past.’
‘I guess … by remembering it?’ Luka offered. ‘By not forgetting it?’
‘Very good,’ said Nobodaddy. ‘And who is it that never forgets?’
‘An elephant,’ said Luka, and that’s when his eye fell upon a pair of absurd creatures with duck-like bodies and large elephant heads who were bobbing about in the water not far from the Argo’s mooring. ‘And,’ he said slowly, remembering, ‘here in the World of Magic, an Elephant Bird as well.’
‘Full marks,’ Nobodaddy replied. ‘The Elephant Birds spend their lives drinking from the River of Time; nobody’s memories are longer than theirs. And if you want to travel up the River, Memory is the fuel you need. Jet propulsion will do you no good at all.’
‘Can they take us as far as the Fire of Life?’ Luka asked.
‘No,’ said Nobodaddy. ‘Memory will only get you so far, and no further. But a long Memory will get you a long way.’
It would be difficult, Luka realised, to ride on the Elephant Birds the way his brother Haroun had once ridden on a big, telepathic, mechanical hoopoe; for one thing, he wasn’t sure that Bear and Dog would be able to hold on. ‘Excuse me, Elephant Birds,’ he called out, ‘would you be so good as to help us, please?’
‘Excellent manners,’ said the larger of the two Elephant Birds. ‘That always makes such a difference.’ He had a deep, majestic voice; obviously an Elephant Drake, Luka thought. ‘We can’t fly, you know,’ said the Drake’s companion in ladylike tones. ‘Don’t ask us to fly you anywhere. Our heads are too heavy.’
‘That must be because you remember so much,’ Luka said, and the Elephant Duck preened her feathers with the tip of her trunk. ‘He’s a flatterer, too,’ she said. ‘Quite the little charmer.’
‘You’ll be wanting us to tow you upriver, no doubt,’ said the Elephant Drake.
‘You needn’t look so surprised,’ said the Elephant Duck. ‘We do follow the news, you know. We do try to keep up.’
‘It’s probably a good thing they don’t bother with the Present where you’re going,’ added the Elephant Drake. ‘Up there they only interest themselves in Eternity. This may give you a helpful element of surprise.’
‘And if I may say so,’ said the Elephant Duck, ‘you’re going to need all the help you can get.’
A short while later the two Elephant Birds had been harnessed to the Argo and began pulling it smoothly upstream. ‘What about the Eddies?’ Luka wondered. ‘Oh,’ said the Elephant Drake, ‘no Eddyfish would dare trifle with us. It would be against the natural order of things. There is a natural order of things, you know.’ His companion giggled. ‘What he means,’ she explained to Luka, ‘is that we eat Eddyfish for breakfast.’ ‘And lunch and dinner,’ said the Elephant Drake. ‘So they give us a wide berth. Now then: where was it you wanted to go? – No, no, don’t remind me! – Ah, yes, now I recall.’
4
The Insultana of Ott
The Mists of Time were getting closer when the Argo passed a strange, sad land on the River’s right bank. Its territory was barred to River travellers by high barbed-wire fences, and when Luka did finally see a scary-looking border post, with its floodlights on high pylons and its tall reconnaissance towers containing lookout guards wearing mirrored sunglasses and carrying powerful military binoculars and automatic weapons, he was struck by a large sign reading YOU ARE AT THE FRONTIER OF THE RESPECTORATE OF I. MIND YOUR MANNERS. ‘What kind of a place is this?’ he asked Nobodaddy. ‘It doesn’t look very Magical to me.’