Part 11 (1/2)

It had to do with the cars at the junkyard.

”I'm a humble animal,” Toad explained to Falcon and Anna. ”I knew it wasn't on my account that Earwig had come.”

According to the inventor, the car was the object best suited to getting the city's stuffed animals to understand in one stroke what the Matter Processor was capable of. A car was not simply a means of transportation and a status object; for the hoi polloi, cars represented the mystery and perfection of technology.

”I need your help, Toad,” Oleg Earwig had said that morning a month before. ”I need your help. And as thanks, as payment, you'll get a Matter Processor. You'll get it so cheap that I'm almost ashamed. I'm almost ashamed. With a Matter Processor here at the junkyard, your work will be transformed forever. Now and forever. It's going to be so much simpler. So much more efficient. So much cheaper. You're going to be a rich toad, Toad. Thanks to the Matter Processor.”

First Earwig described in detail how the Matter Processor looked. Toad was imagining a sort of advanced cannon, some sort of artillery piece. The rays that came out of the weapon were invisible, but had the ability to reduce or enlarge the matter that was ”shot at.”

In other words, Earwig explained, as if the toad were a little cub, with a Matter Processor at the junkyard, Toad could shrink all newly arrived wrecked cars. He could sort them on shelves or compartments instead of in these enormous heaps of metal. When he needed a particular spare part, it was only a matter of enlarging it.

”But is that possible?” Toad had exclaimed.

Whereupon Earwig picked up the paper and pen and, with even greater energy, fury, and zeal, drew and pointed and calculated in order to convince Balder Toad of the project's feasibility.

”Together,” Earwig had said, ”we will shake up Mollisan Town completely. Nothing will be the way it was. Nothing! Ever!”

Balder Toad did not reply. Earwig frightened him.

The idea was to summon a press conference, a real demonstration, at the Marktplatz in Lanceheim. During the night Oleg Earwig would a.s.semble the first full-scale Matter Processor in the city's history on a large, newly constructed stage. The apparatus would be concealed under a golden cloth. Toad would contribute a couple of the largest vehicles he had at the junkyard. Tractors or trucks. The a.s.sembled press would arrive, along with curious onlookers, and Earwig would let the covering fall.

”The murmur,” the inventor imagined at the toad's kitchen table, ”will be ear-splitting.”

Then Earwig would turn on the Matter Processor and shrink Toad's trucks into little toys.

No more difficult than that.

”It's inconceivable,” Toad said to Anna Lynx. ”In hindsight like this it's inconceivable, but he managed to convince me. I thought I would be part of something historic. And because I believed in him, I made the mistake not only of inviting my friends, I asked Mom and Dad to get over to Marktplatz. And when Dad refused-he never took time off without a reason-I told him everything. First he thought I was joking. Then he laughed. I was offended, of course. I cajoled and argued and staked my honor on it. Finally he promised to come.”

Balder Toad appeared to be on the verge of tears at the memory of the conversation with his father, and Anna Lynx put a consoling paw on his shoulder.

The day arrived.

Toad's friends were there, the press was there, and animals had gathered at Marktplatz by the hundreds. Earwig pulled the cloth off his machine, and a murmur actually pa.s.sed through the audience. It looked impressive. Toad had contributed a truck that had come into the junkyard a week before; it was almost in the middle of the square, and Toad himself was standing on the large stage alongside Earwig. His gaze was searching for his father in the sea of stuffed animals below.

The demonstration could begin.

Earwig shouted that now it was time to turn on the Matter Processor, and he warned the animals about standing in the way of the radiation. Then, with dignified steps, he went up to the apparatus and flipped the switch.

At about the same time Toad saw his father. He was smiling.

A bluish ray shot through the air, straight toward the truck, and ... nothing happened.

Fiasco.

Toad's dad's smile got wider.

Oleg Earwig panicked up on the stage. He threw himself toward the machine and started fiddling and pounding on it. But the animals on the square started to laugh. They laughed at Earwig, and they laughed at Toad, and-his dad was laughing the loudest of them all.

”How could he fool me?” Toad asked. ”How could I subject myself to such ridicule?”

Falcon and Anna both sat silently.

”Oleg Earwig says you can give him an alibi ...” Falcon ecu said when Balder Toad's silence had lasted long enough. ”He says that-” can give him an alibi ...” Falcon ecu said when Balder Toad's silence had lasted long enough. ”He says that-”

”An alibi?” Toad said. ”That I'll give him an alibi? Is he crazy? The only thing I want to give him is a punch in the jaw. That's all he's ever going to get from me.”

3.5.

Anna Lynx was sitting on the very edge of a hard couch, feeling uncomfortable. A cup of tea was on the table in front of her, and normally the aroma of jasmine would have soothed her nerves. Cow h.e.l.lwig was sitting in the armchair across from her, staring. From out in the kitchen Anna could hear fresh tea water boiling. She did not know what she should say.

Cow h.e.l.lwig had called right before the Evening Storm and asked whether Anna could come over to her place. It wouldn't take more than an hour. Despite the fact that Anna was tired, dazed after the experience at the junkyard, she answered yes. She called her mom and asked if she could keep Todd company a little while.

Mom was old at this point, and she couldn't manage more than an hour on her own with her intense cubcub. The last five years had been hard on her; she was not made to live alone.

The Chauffeurs had fetched Anna's dad many years too early. In most cases stuffed animals managed to get old and worn before the day the Chauffeurs showed up in their red pickup. No one knew where the old animals were taken, or what awaited them there. The church, of course, supplied its answers, the Proclamations spoke of a magnificent paradise, but Anna's mom was no more than moderately religious. They fetched Dad at the office; the lawyers in the adjacent rooms had carefully closed their doors as the Chauffeurs brutally carried him away. Despite the fact that Anna had not been there personally and seen it happen, this scene recurred often in her nightmares. And afterward it was as though Mom slowly withered away, the energy ran out of her, and now Anna was almost as much a mother to her own mom as she was to Todd.

What a fool she'd been, she thought now. She had run over to Cow in solidarity, in the belief that Cow had finally listened to reason. been, she thought now. She had run over to Cow in solidarity, in the belief that Cow had finally listened to reason.

Anna felt so strongly about this issue. During her entire adult life she had seen males get their way at the expense of females. She was not dogmatic, not a fanatical zealot of equality. She knew and acknowledged that the care-taking instincts that marked so many of her actions would be called ”maternal” if anyone were to put a label on them. She was even trying to bring up Falcon ecu. But she was proud of that. She wanted to be a good mom, just as she wanted to be an attractive female. What she refused to accept was that these instincts-motherliness and vanity-should reduce her in the eyes of the patriarchy. No one looked down on a careerist or a materialist, if they were male. The personal consequences of the need for affirmation were always taken in dead earnest, as long as it concerned males. And Anna refused to let herself be treated degradingly due to feminine characteristics that the factory had filled her with in some way when she was sewn together. She often spoke about this with her girlfriends, and Cow h.e.l.lwig had always been one of her most ardent sympathizers.

Anna had bounded up the stairs to Cow, rung the doorbell, and it had been ... him ... who had opened.

”The crazy lynx is here now!” he had called in to the apartment, then disappeared into the living room as Anna was taking off her coat.

Now she was sitting across from the married couple, on the edge of the couch, doing her best to avoid ... his ... gaze. She raised the teacup and sipped the tea.

”Anna,” said Cow, ”I saw no other way than to invite you over. So we can work this out.”

”Work what out?”

”Well, whatever there is to be worked out. You just can't let your constables go around arresting Simon simply because ... you've imagined something.”

”C'mon, imagined something ... ?”

”Yes. There has to be something.”

Was she joking? But this was not a jocular presentation, and in the cow's eyes Anna read a sincere lack of understanding that shocked her.

”But ... but ...” she stammered. ”But everything we said the other evening ... ?”

”I still don't understand,” said Cow. ”What does that have to do with Simon? When you said I should move in with you... I thought you were joking!”

”But you were the one who said that,” said Anna, flabbergasted. ”You said it yourself. That you were thinking about taking that job at the Ministry of Finance, but that ... he ... said that it was too far to drive the whole way down to Amberville every day.”

The silence in the h.e.l.lwig family's living room was deafening.

”You had me arrested because I thought it was too far to drive down to Amberville?” Simon asked at last.