Part 9 (1/2)

Pertelope frowned. 'Well, I'm hardly suitable either, Lammo,' he replied. 'I mean, I'm not a woman, am I?'

Lamorak bit his lip. This was embarra.s.sing. 'It doesn't actually specify a woman,' he said, 'not as such. Just a ... Hold on, it's coming this way. Right then, action stations.'

'I still think . . .' Pertelope said, and he was still speaking as Lamorak crawled away over the sand and hid himself behind a large boulder.

Forty-five minutes can be a long time.

It wasn't, of course, a unicorn that they had been sent to get. If all they'd needed was a unicorn, they could simply have strolled into Harrods' or Bloomingdales' pet department and ordered one.

In other words, this was the easy bit.

'Stone the flaming crows,' exclaimed the unicorn, 'it isn't a b.l.o.o.d.y sheila after all.'

But by then it was too late; the noose, cast by Lamorak's well-practised hand, was already flying through the air. There was a brief struggle, some extremely colourful language from the unicorn, and it was all over.

'Quick,' Lamorak grunted, 'grab the rope while I get the chloroform. And watch out for that horn.'

Tommy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' snarled the unicorn, hurling its weight vainly against the rope. Pertelope dug his heels into the sand and strained backwards, while Lamorak emptied the bottle on to his handkerchief.

'You didn't tell me they could talk, Lammo,' he gasped. 'Just imagine that, a talking animal.'

As if to confirm his statement, the unicorn said something else. It was largely to do with how this particular unicorn's father had been right in his warnings about the extreme effeminacy of the English; and for all his naturalist's curiosity, Pertelope was quite relieved when Lamorak managed to stuff the handkerchief up its nose. Slowly, and still muttering imprecations under its breath, the unicorn sagged to the ground and pa.s.sed out.

'Well,' Lamorak said, 'we did it. Next time, though, we use a tranquilliser gun and the h.e.l.l with tradition.' He knelt down and set to work with the rope.

'Can I get out of these clothes now?' Pertelope said. He was bright red in the face, only partly as a result of his exertions.

'In a minute,' Lamorak snapped. 'Give me a hand over here first, quickly, before the blasted thing wakes up.'

Pertelope sighed and grabbed a length of rope. He wasn't sure that what they were doing wasn't a gross interference with a majestic wild animal in its natural habitat. He firmly disapproved of such things, along with zoos, circuses and leaving dogs in cars with the windows done up. 'Don't tie it so tight, Lammo,' he said at intervals, 'you'll hurt the poor thing.'

'Right,' said Lamorak at last, standing up and breathing heavily, 'we've done that. Now I suggest we have five minutes' sit-down and a rest.'

Pertelope brushed the dust off his skirts. 'After,' he said firmly, 'I've got out of these dreadful clothes.'

'Go ahead,' Lamorak replied. 'I'm just going to sit here and . . .'

Pertelope blushed furiously. 'I need you to unzip me,' he snarled.

'Sorry.' Lamorak hoisted himself to his feet again. 'This time, for pity's sake hold still. You nearly put my eye out with your hairclips last time, remember.'

But before he could make any further movement, a bullet hissed through the air, just missed his eyebrows and lifted Pertelope's hat off his head. The two knights remained where they were, standing very still indeed.

'Thtick 'em up,' said a voice somewhere behind their backs, 'or I'll blow your headth off.'

The Australian wilderness is a place of many strange and terrible noises. There's the unmistakable yap of the dingo, the screech of the kookaburra, the soft bark of the kangaroo, the rasping growl of the mezzo-soprano gargling with eggs beaten in stout-all these can be disconcerting, and to begin with, even terrifying. But there's one sound guaranteed to fill even the hardiest heart with fear and turn the brownest knees to water; and that's the sound of a hearty contralto voice singing: Onthe a jolly thwagman camped bethide a billabong Under the thade of a tumpty-tum tree . . .

over and over again, apparently through a megaphone. The repet.i.tion is attributable to the fact that the singer doesn't know the rest of the words. The amplification effect, on the other hand, is due to the large metal drum that covers the singer's head.

'Can we put our hands down now, please?'

'Thorry?'

Lamorak closed his eyes, and then opened them again. 'I said,' he reiterated, 'can we put our hands down now, please?'

'Oh. Yeth. Only nithe and eathy doth it, right?'

'Yeth. Yes. Sorry.' Lamorak lowered his arms experimentally, and ran quick checks over himself to discover whether he'd been shot yet. All clear. 'How about turning round?' he suggested.

There was a pause. 'Go on, then,' said the voice. It sounded like a cow at the bottom of a deep, steel-lined pit.

The proprietor of the voice looked at first sight like the after-effects of the sorceror's apprentice run riot in a breaker's yard. Starting from the top, there was a big round drum, with two tiny holes. Under that, unmistakably, what had once been the bonnet of a Volkswagen Beetle, before someone with a degree in design flair and enormous biceps had beaten it into a vaguely anthropomorphic shape with a big hammer. Two steel tubes stuck out from the sides at right angles, and there was a rust-mottled revolver at the end of one of them. Finally, two more tubes projected out from the underside and linked up with a pair of old-fas.h.i.+oned diver's boots.

'Ith either of you laughth, I thall be theriouthly angry,' it said.

Pertelope blinked. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'but why are you wearing those funny clothes?'

The ironmongery quivered slightly. 'Look who'th talking,' it replied.

'Please,' Lamorak said hastily, 'you mustn't mind my friend. It's just that he's an idiot, that's all.'

There was a dubious, rusty sound from inside the drum. 'You're thure that'th all?' it said. 'I mean, that ith a throck he'th wearing.'

Pertelope winced. 'There's a perfectly good reason-' he started to say, but a sudden pain in his foot, the result of Lamorak inadvertently stamping on it hard, cut him short.

'Anyway,' Lamorak said brightly, 'it's been very nice meeting you, and the very best of luck with whatever it is you're doing, but I'm afraid we've got to be getting along. Cheerio.' He started to walk purposefully towards the unicorn, but the muzzle of the revolver followed him.

'Not tho fatht,' said the ironclad. 'What're you two doing with that 'roo, anyway?'

The two knights looked at each other. 'That what?' Lamorak enquired.

'The kangaroo,' replied the voice from inside the drum. 'Come on, thpit it out.'

'Excuse me,' Lamorak said, in the very recherche tone of voice one uses when pointing out the blindingly obvious to a heavily-armed idiot, 'but strictly speaking, that's not a kangaroo.'

'It ithn't?'

There was something in the modulations of the voice that gave Lamorak the clue he'd been looking for. 'You're not from these parts, are you?' he said.

The ironmongery didn't reply; but it shuffled and clinked in such a way as to confirm Lamorak in his belief. 'Or this time, come to that,' he added slowly. 'You're from the future, aren't you?'

'Oh thit,' mumbled the ironclad. 'How did you know?'

Had Lamorak been truthful, he'd have replied that it was the logical conclusion when you came across someone who'd heard of kangaroos but didn't know what they looked like, and had the idea that in the Outback, the way to dress inconspicuously was to make up as Ned Kelly. Instead, he said, 'Lucky guess.'

Pertelope, meanwhile, had been doing a very good impersonation of a man swallowing a live fish. 'How do you mean, from the future?' he finally managed to say. Lamorak smiled.

'Allow me to introduce you,' he said. 'Sir Pertelope, this is the Timekeeper. Timekeeper, Sir Pertelope.'

For his part, Pertelope looked like someone who has just been told that the sun rises in the east because of horticulture. He furrowed his brows.