A Plague of Hearts by Patrick Whittaker (best large ereader .TXT) 📖

Cheshire Cat vanished.
‘He’s got the right idea,’ said the March Hare. ‘If you think I’m joining some conspiracy against the State, you’d better think again. I’m a bloody valet - not a saboteur.’
‘If you’re not for us,’ said the Grey Squirrel, ‘you’re against us.’
‘I will not be press-ganged, bullied or intimidated.’
Julie shook her head sorrowfully. ‘You still don’t get it, do you? Nobody’s press-ganging you. But the simple fact is that we’re asking you to join us because you’re on the Panda’s hit list.’
‘The what?’
‘The Panda’s hit list. Your boss is a known subversive and as far as the Panda’s concerned, that makes you one as well. Believe me, it’s only a matter of time before the Secret Police come knocking at your door. Or maybe they won’t knock. Maybe they’ll just sneak up behind you with a piece of piano wire.’
‘She’s right,’ said Doctor Ormus. ‘The State has murdered people for far less than associating with Red Orchestra members. Sooner or later the Panda is going to send his thugs for you.’
Again, silence. This time it was broken by the shrill clamour of the front door bell.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Julie. She went out and came back a minute later with the Penguin in tow. His hat was pushed slightly back, revealing a scar that ran across his forehead.
‘So this is the house of the famous Doctor Ormus?’ he said. ‘And what do we have here? A bunny rabbit and a tree rat. Strange company for a respected scientist. Taken up vivisection, have we, Doctor?’
‘I’d like to take it up on you,’ Ormus retorted. ‘These happen to be my friends.’
‘You have my sympathy. And who’s the girl? Your assistant?’
‘Actually,’ said Julie, ‘I’m his lover.’
‘You also have my sympathy. However, I am not here to discuss your domestic arrangements. The Doctor has something which doesn’t belong to him. I’ve been given full authority to see to it that it’s returned to its rightful owner.’
‘And what,’ asked Doctor Ormus, ‘would that something be?’
‘It’s called a Vector Gauge. I understand an old colleague of yours left it with you for safe-keeping. Needless to say, I have the place surrounded and unless I leave here with the device in the next five minutes, none of you are going to be around to see tomorrow.’
‘It’s in the library safe. I’ll fetch it for you.’
‘If you would.’
‘And when you see Peregrine Smith, tell him that I send it with my best wishes.’
‘I’ll do that, Doctor. Now if you’ll just hand over the device, I can be on my way.’
Doctor Ormus left the room. The Penguin turned to follow. ‘I dare say I’ll see all you good people again quite soon,’ said the Penguin.
You can count on it, thought the March Hare. You can bloody well count on it.


6. The Croquet Match

There was a strange atmosphere at the Queen’s croquet match that afternoon. The gay abandon of bunting, pennants and painted rose bushes provided an ill-fitting backdrop to the despondency evident in those attending. The courtiers were dressed for a party; their clothes were flamboyant and screaming with colour. And they laughed and chatted and swapped scandals. But their enjoyment was brittle.
The Palace Guards standing at the edge of the croquet lawn seemed surly. There was no trace of pride in their postures. Wandering around the edge of the game, the March Hare was acutely aware of slouched shoulders and tunics that had been pressed hastily and with little skill. Pikestaffs tended to stray from the vertical. Buttons were undone. Some of the men sported five o’clock shadow.
A sign of the times, decided the March Hare, sitting on the wall of a fountain. He had noticed that several rose bushes had been painted only once - without the obligatory undercoat. Their original colours could still be seen through the thin veneer of gloss. Such minor points troubled him.
A man wearing the garb of a royal gardener sat next to him and began tucking into a thick cheese sandwich, taking large, eager bites which he washed down with ale. The Gardener was clearly drunk. His grip on his beer jug seemed tentative. The March Hare expected it to fall at any moment.
‘Anyone would think it was my fault,’ complained the Gardener. ‘I’ve just about taken all I’m going to take. I seem to get the blame for everything around here. I mean, the slightest thing goes wrong and who does the Queen have a go at? As if I didn’t have enough to do without having the crap beaten out of me every few hours. Bloody Royalty! What do they know about gardening? I told her you can’t spray-paint pansies without killing them, but would she listen? Would she shut that fat gob of hers just long enough to learn something new and worthwhile? Would she hell!
‘Just look at the stupid cow, will you! Calls herself a Queen and she can’t even hold a flamingo properly!’
The game, as usual, was a farce. The unknown sportsman who had started the tradition of using flamingos for mallets and hedgehogs for balls was either a comic genius or an idiot. Probably both.
‘I bet it was Peregrine Smith,’ said the March Hare.
‘Who?’ said the Gardener.
‘Never mind,’ said the March Hare. He had not meant to speak out loud. I must be under a lot of strain, he decided. Being drafted into the Red Orchestra is one thing I could have done without. Before you know it, I’ll be talking to mushrooms and trying to walk up walls.
The air was ripe with the screams of troubled flamingos and the oppressive tones of the Queen forever yelling, ‘Off with his head! Off with her head! Executioner! Fetch the Executioner!’
Lazily, the March Hare watched the game, tried to make sense of it all - the constant bending of the rules, the endless running after hedgehogs who took great delight in rolling at right-angles to the direction they were supposed to go. The biggest mystery, decided the March Hare, was the Queen’s insistence upon calling for the Executioner when it was clearly unconstitutional to have someone beheaded just for scoring points.
The Gardener mopped his face with a damp handkerchief. The labyrinth of broken veins covering his cheeks was an exploded view of his bloodshot eyes. ‘Spent all morning cutting the grass to a height of one quarter of an inch,’ he said, ‘then along comes Her Bleeding Majesty and announces she’s gone metric. She wants the grass two centimetres high. When I ask her why, she says it’s because of Martial Law. She hates Martial Law, you know. Thinks it could lead to the abolition of the Monarchy.’
‘Could it?’
‘We should be so lucky. The Monarchy’s like something you pick up on the bottom off your shoe and can’t scrape off. Two centimetres! It’s enough to drive a man barmy.’
A rapid series of squeals brought the March Hare’s attention back to the game. Two hedgehogs were fighting on the croquet pitch, their tiny fists driving at each other like rogue steam-hammers. It was a brief and ineffectual flurry, the only damage done being to a croquet hoop which happened to be in their way. Exhausted by their labours, they fell apart, panting and wheezing, and promising vile retribution. One limped over to the March Hare.
‘You can have this for a game of cards,’ grumbled the Hedgehog, sitting in a slouch between the Hare’s feet. ‘I never did like croquet. It’s a sissy’s game. Given a choice, I’d rather be a cricket stump than a croquet ball.’
‘Got to start somewhere,’ said the Gardener.
‘How would you know?’ the Hedgehog snapped back. ‘I bet you’ve never been a croquet ball in your entire life.’
‘Can’t say I have. But I once had a job as a goal post.’
‘Anyone can be a goal post.’
‘Goal post? Did I say goal post? I meant cross-bar.’
‘Some of my best friends are cross-bars. Pretty cushy job if you ask me.’
At this, the Gardener burped and slid into the fountain. The cold water did nothing to sober him.
‘Quack, bloody quack,’ he said, lifting one leg into the air. ‘Damn the torpedoes. Her Majesty expects every blade of grass to be blue.’
The March Hare got to his feet. ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he said to the Hedgehog. ‘I’ve just seen someone I know.’
‘Don’t mind me. You go ahead and socialise. I’m off to lunch anyway.’
Alice, the girl who had gate-crashed the Mad Hatter’s party, was running at full-tilt across the lawn in fierce pursuit of a bewildered flamingo. She cut a comic figure with her skirts billowing behind and her face puffed with frustration. Not looking where she was going, she ran straight into the March Hare, delivering a head-butt to his stomach which sent them both sprawling.
‘Oof!’ said the March Hare, deciding against getting up straight away. He sat on the grass, nursing his injured midriff.
Alice jumped to her feet. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’ she demanded crossly. Then she recognised the March Hare. ‘Oh. It’s you, is it? I might have known. Thank goodness it isn’t March; else you’d be even madder than you already are.’
‘Your accent,’ said the March Hare.
‘What about it?’
‘You wouldn’t happen to know a girl called Julie, would you? You sound very much like her.’
‘I don’t have time to discuss my many friends right now. I’m right in the middle of a very important game.’
‘So I see,’ said the March Hare. ‘I have a feeling you’re new to this.’
‘It’s a silly game,’ said Alice, bitterly. She spat on the palm of her hand and rubbed savagely at her chlorophyll-stained knees. ‘My mallet kept talking back to me, and now the stupid thing’s run off.
‘Where I come from, they’re made from wood. How can one be expected to play croquet with an overgrown parrot?’
‘It’s a flamingo.’
‘And a strange one at that! I’ve never seen such a bird. Come to think of it, this whole world is full of weird and crazy animals.’
‘Myself included?’
Alice looked abashed. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘It’s hardly the worst thing I’ve heard all day.’
‘It’s just that I don’t understand this world at all.’
‘Right now that makes two of us.’
‘Where do they all come from?’
‘Who?’
‘The flamingos and the hedgehogs and all the other talking animals I’ve met today.’
‘Nobody seems to know. According to my friend, Doctor Ormus, we’re all at least partially human - though how he works that out, I really couldn’t say. My personal theory is that we were created in some laboratory. We’re genetically-engineered mutations, half-animal, half-human. You’ve surely heard of Peregrine Smith?’
‘Is he the man who invented you?’
‘Well, that’s one way of putting it. Of course, not everyone’s as convinced as I am that he’s behind our creation, but it is a fact that we were discovered just a few weeks after he disappeared.’
‘Disappeared? He was a magician then?’
‘He could have been. Some say he was the greatest scientist who ever lived. Others claim that he dabbled in the Black Arts. There’s even a story that he came from another world.
‘Whatever he was, he was also a criminal. He used corpses for bizarre experiments -