Eddie Bear looked up at Jack. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“Wake up, Eddie,” said Jack once more. “You’ve used the phrase yourself enough times. Something about ‘Beyond The –’”
“Second Big O,” said the suddenly enlightened Eddie. “Beyond The Second Big O.”
“Exactly,” said Jack. “And there it is, The Second Big O in what once spelt TOYTOWNLAND. That’s where these invaders have come from. They come from Beyond The Second Big O – and that is The Second Big O.”
Eddie Bear looked up at Jack. “You genius,” he said.
“Well, thank you, Mister Bear,” said Jack, “but I just reasoned it out. That’s what we detectives do, reason it out.”
“Or calculate,” said Eddie, “As in the Opera House business. Do you feel up to confiding in me about that yet?”
“Later,” said Jack. “For now we have to get after the murderers. What does your nose tell you, Eddie?”
“It tells me,” said Eddie, dismally, “that that is the way they went. Beyond The Second Big O.” Eddie sniffed. “Through The Second Big O.”
“Then that’s where we’re going. Come.” And Jack set off. And then Jack turned. “Come on, then,” he said.
But Eddie once more stood his ground. Most firmly so, in fact.
“Well, come on then, Eddie,” said Jack. “Let’s go, come on now.”
“Ah,” said Eddie and Eddie stood firm.
“Come on now,” said Jack.
“I can’t,” said Eddie. “I just can’t come.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I can’t go through there,” Eddie said. “We must call Bellis, get him to employ troops, send an armed task force through, if he will. If he dares.”
“Dare?” said Jack. “What’s to dare? We’ve got weapons, Eddie. Stop this foolishness, come on.”
“I can’t come on, Jack. I can’t. It’s the end of my world up there. I don’t know what will happen if I leave my world.”
“There’s only the two of them. We’re a match for them.”
“There isn’t just two, Jack. If there’s another world beyond that O, then there could be a whole worldful, another whole worldful and not yours or mine.”
“You don’t know what’s there and you won’t know until we’ve gone through and found out. Those monsters that are impersonating us have killed your kind, Eddie, many now of your kind. They’ll return and kill more if we don’t stop them.”
“We’ll lie in wait, then,” said Eddie.
“You can walk,” said Jack, “of your own accord, or else I’ll carry you.”
“You wouldn’t!” Eddie drew back in alarm. “You wouldn’t treat me like that.”
“All right, I wouldn’t, but I’m pleading with you, Eddie. Let’s go after them now, before the scent goes cold. We’ll be careful and I’m damn sure that they won’t be expecting us.”
“You don’t understand,” said Eddie. “You didn’t grow up here.”
Jack looked down at Eddie Bear. The bear was clearly shivering.
“You are afraid,” said Jack. “You really are.”
“Yes I am, Jack. I really am.”
Jack cocked his head from one side to the other. “You knew,” said he. “You’ve known all along.”
“Know what?” said Eddie. “What did I know?”
“You knew what the phrase meant. Beyond The Second O. If you grew up here and you were told you’d be lost if you went over that hill, you had to know what the phrase meant.”
“Well, perhaps I did. But it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“Look,” said Jack, “whatever is out there, I’ll protect you. I’ll protect you with my life.”
“I know you will, Jack – you’ve done it before.”
“Then come with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Then I will go alone.” And Jack turned to do so.
“No,” cried Eddie. “Jack, please don’t go up there alone.”
“Then come with me, Eddie. Come with me, Mister Bear.”
Eddie dithered and dithering wasn’t his style. “Let’s go tomorrow,” he said. “In the daylight.”
Jack hefted his mighty Mini-gun. “I’m going now,” he said, “and if you won’t come, if you can’t come, then I understand. You’re brave, Eddie. I know you’re brave. But if this is too much for you, then so be it. Wait here and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Jack, please don’t go.”
“I must.”
And with that Jack turned away, looked up the hill, up at the letters TO TO LA, and then Jack set off up the lonely hillside, and Eddie Bear watched him go.
And Eddie Bear made faces and scuffed his paw pads in the moonlit dirt. He couldn’t let Jack go up there on his own, he couldn’t. There was no telling what kind of trouble he’d get himself into. Eddie would have to go, too. No matter how great his fear.
And Eddie took a step or two forward.
And then a step or two back.
“This is ridiculous,” said Eddie. “I can do it. I must do it. I can and I must and I will.”
But he couldn’t.
The figure of Jack was diminishing, as is often the case with perspective. Eddie watched as Jack climbed higher, bound for that Second Big O.
“Come on, Eddie,” the bear told himself. “Jack is your bestest friend. You would never forgive yourself if he came to harm and you could have protected him from it.”
“I know,” Eddie now told himself, “but I’ve been hoping against all hope that there was another solution. That the murderers were simply spacemen, or something. Something not of this world, but not something from Beyond The Second Big O. Because beyond there lies a terrible, dreadful something. That’s what I was taught and that is what I believe.”
“And you’re letting your bestest friend wander into that something alone,” Eddie further told himself. “What kind of bear are you?”
“A terrified one,” Eddie further, further, further told himself.
“Oh, what do I do? Tell me, what do I do?” And Eddie, although no devout bear, prayed to the God of All Bears. “I don’t know what to do,” Eddie prayed. “Please won’t you send me a sign?”
And perhaps it was the God of All Bears, or perhaps it was not, but a sign was made manifest to Eddie. Manifest in the Heavens, it was, as such signs often are.
And Eddie looked up and Eddie beheld. And he beheld it on high.
The moonlit sky was studded with stars, but one was brighter than all the rest. Eddie Bear peeped through his button eyes. “There’s a new star in Heaven tonight,” he said.
And the new star, the bright new star, grew brighter still.
“Is that you, Mister God?” asked Eddie.
And brighter and closer grew this star until it was all over big.
And Eddie looked up at this very big star.
And Eddie Bear said, “Oh no!”
For this star, it now seemed, was no star at all. This star now grew even bigger and hovered now overhead. For this star, it seemed, was no star at all. It was a spaceship instead.
A proper flying saucer of a spaceship, all aglow with twinkling lights and a polished underbelly.
And the saucer now hovered low above Eddie and Eddie could make out rivets and tin plate and a sort of logo embossed into the underside of the brightly glowing craft. And this logo resembled a kind of stylised, in-profile sort of a head. And this was the head of a chicken.
And a bright light swept down upon Eddie.
And Eddie Bear took to his paw pads.
And onward scampered Eddie with the spaceship keeping pace, and the light, a sort of death-ray one, he supposed, a-burning up the grass and gorse and briars and nettles and stuff.
“Wah!” cried Eddie as he scampered. “Wah! Oh, Jack. Help me!”
Jack, a goodly way up the hill, turned and looked over his shoulder. And Jack saw the spaceship and Jack saw Eddie.
And Jack was frankly afeared.
And when Jack had managed to summon a voice, this voice cried, “Eddie, hurry!”