‘This can’t be the shop you had back in Boston,’ said George. How far the Hatter had sunk – from designing scopas suits to desecrating war victims.
‘My humble establishment is like the submarine from which you escaped,’ Theophilus explained. ‘It flits about from place to place. More twenty-first century know-how.’
‘I must say, Carter, you’ve got an impressive project under way here,’ said Brat. ‘My hat goes off to you.’
‘First I have to sell you one.’
‘Probably not the best way to keep civilization afloat, but still ingenious.’ The MARCH Hare grabbed a crumpet, slammed it into his tea.
‘Brat, those aren’t people in that parade!’ said George. ‘Don’t you understand?’
The Hatter cackled.
Brat ate the soggy crumpet. ‘In any event, it’s this flying shop of yours that really interests me. I’m trying to hook up with the other survivors. Can you run me over to the mainland?’
‘Most ambitious, General,’ said Theophilus. ‘You can’t make deals with extinction, but you can make deals with me. To wit – help us with tonight’s labors, and I shall fly you wherever you want.’
A hospital gurney displayed the topography of a sheeted female corpse. Approaching, the Hatter uncovered her. She was Oriental and, considering her water-logged condition, quite beautiful.
‘Born in the twelfth century. Southeast Asia, the Khmer Empire. These eyes once beheld the Angkor Wat temple complex for the royal phallic cult. Imagine – a royal phallic cult once existed in medieval Cambodia!’
‘Have you no respect for the dead?’ snapped George, restoring the sheet.
‘I have nothing but respect for the dead,’ said the Hatter. ‘Why do you think I work so hard on the parade? Night and day – my monument to the invalidated past. You know about monuments.’
‘This is lunatic’s business!’ said George. He made a fist but could not decide what to do with it. ‘Disgusting! She isn’t from the twelfth century, she’s just another victim of radiation or hunger or—’
‘Actually, I find the whole thing rather sane,’ said Brat.
‘Sane? Sane? Call me sane, will you?’ screamed the Hatter. ‘They called the Joint Chiefs of Staff sane! They called the National Security Council sane!’
He went to his Z-1000 computer, arching his fingers over the keyboard as if playing a concerto.
‘Mostly it’s the supporting cast of history who wash up here, but sometimes we get a star. On Sunday I found Nostradamus, that brilliant, courageous, plague-fighting scholar of the Renaissance. What I wouldn’t give for Hitler. I can change the past, you see – I can improve it. Last night Joan of Arc burned ten priests at the stake. If I had Hitler, I’d make him Jewish. Spermatids, George? Was that your wish? Little baby sperm? You’ve come to the right place.’
‘I have to see a fertility expert.’
‘I am one. I can make you as fertile as an alley cat.’
The Hatter dashed into a dark alcove, its entrance flanked by two dressmaker’s dummies, headless and skinny. Seconds later he emerged holding a crumbling, mossy hunk of bark. A white mushroom – robust, symmetrical, and shaped like a church bell – clung to the wood. ‘Behold your friend and mine, Agaricus cameroonis.’
‘Toadstools can be poison, I hear,’ said George.
‘Thermonuclear mushrooms cause sterility, Cameroon mushrooms cure it. Or, to be technical, Cameroon mushrooms promote spermatid production in irradiated seminiferous tubules. This fact has been known since 2015 AD.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Have you a choice?’
George’s bullet wound was thumping crazily now. Why couldn’t Mrs Covington’s magic lantern show have been more explicit on this matter? A simple slide of him devouring a Cameroon mushroom – was that too much to ask? Why did the post-exchange environment involve so damn many decisions?
‘Walk through our forest on a moonlit night,’ said the Hatter, ‘and with luck you’ll spot Agaricus cameroonis lifting his wan head through the crevice in a rotting log. But don’t expect to see him there the next day, for at the first blush of dawn he slips back into his palace of decay and hides. You’re looking at a rare one, George, a collector’s item. You aren’t going to find this fellow in your local drug store.’
‘All right. I’ll eat it.’
‘Nope. Sorry. Bad idea.’ Theophilus thrust the Agaricus cameroonis under his morning coat. ‘You don’t really want children. They make a lot of noise, they spill their milk, they leave their crayons all over the place.’
‘Please…’
‘First you must answer the question.’ He rubbed the concealed fungus.
‘What question?’
‘Ah – what question? Good question.’
‘Maybe he means the question about the raven and the writing desk,’ said Brat.
‘Yes! That’s it!’ said the Hatter. ‘Nobody has figured that one out!’
Nobody except Dr William Randstable, thought George, struggling to avoid a grin.
‘Beyond their expertise in spermatid production,’ said the Hatter, ‘Cameroon mushrooms make marvelous soup and terrific—’
‘A raven is like a writing desk,’ said George, ‘because Poe wrote on both.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said a raven is like a writing desk’ – he paused for dramatic effect – ‘because Poe wrote on both.’
The Hatter huffed and puffed like Rumpelstiltskin hearing the miller’s daughter say, ‘Is your name Rumpelstiltskin?’ He did a manic little dance, smashing his high-button shoes into the floor.
‘You must promise to name all the children after me,’ he said as he pulled the Agaricus cameroonis from his coat.
‘All but the first,’ said George.
He tore the mushroom from its bark, thrust it in his mouth. The meat trembled on his tongue, and he chewed. It tasted like what it was, mushroom flesh, tangy, succulent, damp. A soft buzz traveled from his stomach to his gonads. As he closed his eyes, his mind overflowed with his psychic museum – pictures of his forthcoming family thriving in the timefolds. Aubrey and her siblings romped through a tropical paradise. Glow-faced boys devoured uncontaminated fruit. Lithe girls swam in clean waves.
Nostradamus was on to something, Mrs Covington had said.
‘Is that it?’ George asked. ‘Am I fertile now?’
‘No,’ said the Hatter.
‘But soon – right?’
‘Nope. Sorry.’
‘You said I’d be an alley cat.’
‘Spermatids do you no good until they enter your epididymis, where they can mature, grow tails, acquire motility, and learn the facts of life. Unfortunately, your Spermatids will be too feeble for that.’
‘Too feeble?’
‘Weak as newborn babes.’
‘Can I help them?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘How?’
‘The South Pole.’
‘The what?’
‘The magnetic forces at the South Pole have been known to steer spermatids on their proper course.’
‘The South Pole – in Antarctica?’
‘This sounds like bushwa to me,’ said Brat. ‘I’d be careful if I were you, Paxton.’
‘Stand on the exact endpoint of the earth’s axis for one full minute,’ said Theophilus with the imperial confidence of a contract bridge champion sitting down to a game of go fish, ‘and the next day you’ll be able to book passage for four hundred million sperm at a time.’