There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 6

6. Does Your Cow Give Fresh Milk?

"We are now going to conduct", said Cleo as they walked hurriedly down a street calling itself Bahnhofstraße, "an experiment. To allay my wildest fears."

Ant looked behind them. The black Mercedes was still keeping pace with them with almost comical faithfulness, crawling slowly down the other side of the street.

"But first", said Cleo, "we have to lose that car. Into this shop, quick."

The shop was called KAUFPALAST LUMPENBURG. Huge red stickers on its windows promised MONSTERPREISENSCHNITTEN!, whatever Monsterpreisenschnitten were. From the display windows looking out onto the street, they seemed to be tangerine bikinis.

"NOW", said Cleo loudly. "STRAIGHT ACROSS THE SHOP TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BUILDING."

"There's no need to shout", said Ant. However, instead of walking towards the line of glass doors on the north side of the shop, Cleo grabbed Ant's elbow, put a finger to his lips and hustled him up an elevator.

As the elevator went upwards, it played a happy tune, and a friendly voice spoke to them in German about all the wonderful things they might like to buy. Or it might have been suggesting invading Czechoslovakia. Ant had no idea. Eventually, the elevator came out on the first floor, which was confusingly labelled 2. Cleo tugged Ant away through the shop café until they found a set of fake half-timbered windows overlooking the north side of the building.

The Mercedes was sitting outside waiting for them.

"How did they -" said Ant, before Cleo clapped a hand over his mouth and pulled out her headphone device. Turning it on, she swiftly moved it over Ant, and then herself, whilst looking out of the window towards the car. When the headphones were positioned directly over Cleo's scrunchie, one of the men in the back seat yelped soundlessly in pain and tried to tear off the headphones he was wearing.

"Bingo!"

Cleo looked at the scrunchie for a long, long time. Then, she began wrapping it carefully in Bacofoil. Old ladies sitting eating cake in the café looked at her oddly.

"Betrayed", said Cleo, shaking her head sadly, "by one of my own accessories."

"I can't get over how you've become an electronic surveillance expert all of a sudden", said Ant.

"I talked to the man in the shop in Kettering Road", said Cleo. "It's all very simple."

"But you've got that, that", Ant waved at Cleo's device, "bug location device."

"It's not a bug location device", said Cleo. "It's just a set of headphones and a radio, for listening in to bugs."

"But you found the bug with it."

Cleo nodded. "Only because I could see the man who was listening in on us. I could see him react to hearing the feedback in his headphones. Do you know what feedback is?"

Ant shrugged dumbly. "I know it sounds bad."

"Well, it happens when you have a microphone recording a sound, and you connect it up to a speaker to play that sound, and the microphone can hear the speaker. The same sound chases its tail round the circuit, causing a godawful racket. So what do you think happens if I hold a speaker next to one of Mr. Karg's bugs and play the sound that bug is recording to it?"

Ant was still lost. "How could you do that?"

"Because", gloated Cleo, "I have a bug in Mr. Karg's car."

"No!"

"Yes. When I walked up to the car that time outside school and spoke to him, I leaned in and put a stupidly large microphone under his passenger seat. So all I have to do is move this set of headphones over whatever I'm searching for bugs until I get feedback."

"Wow", said Ant. "That's brilliant."

"Not really. The only reason it's working is because they never expected to get bugged by a fourteen-year-old girl."

Ant considered the implications. "That means you can hear what they're saying inside the car."

"Yes", said Cleo. "I used to listen to it for hours. Then the novelty wore off. Half the time all they talk about is football, or whose breath smells because there's four of them in the car together, or whose turn it is to drive, or why they're not being paid enough for this. Considering they've been listening to me twenty four hours a day, and considering how much of the day I spend singing to the cat, I feel quite sorry for them. Come on - we need to leave."

Cleo unwrapped the scrunchie and slipped it quietly into the handbag of a German lady who was standing browsing through a selection of lycra Monsterpreisenschnitten. Then she moved back to the café window and watched the street outside. Sure enough, eventually, the lady at the till walked over to the escalator, down to the ground floor, and out of the shop. The Mercedes stayed put. However, the men in it were clearly arguing.

"They can hear street noises from the microphone now", said Cleo, with one ear to her headphones. "Because of that, the three other men in the car with Mr. Karg - Dave and Andy and Ryan - think we're outside. Any minute now they'll drive round to the other side of the building to see if we're there."

The Mercedes pulled away and turned the corner.

"I can hear that dog barking", said Cleo, pointing to the street below, where the German woman was walking past a dog. "They must have the bug on loudspeaker in the car. Any minute now, they're going to realize they heard that same dog barking five seconds back and turn the car around."

The Mercedes shot back around the corner towards the barking dog.

"That should confuse them for a while", said Cleo. "But we now have a transportation problem ahead of us. We can't travel by train. They already know we have plans that way; they've been listening to us talking. They'll head us off at the railway station. Probably the bus station too."

"We still have access to Lieutenant Turpin's Universal Earth Transportation System", said Ant.

"I am not hitch hiking all the way to Spitzenburg, Ant", said Cleo.

"We don't need to hitch hike all the way to Spitzenburg. We need to hitch hike all the way to the next town that has a railway station."

"Ant, that will take hours. Nobody picks up hitch hikers."

Ant grinned. "Happy people pick up hitch hikers."

Cleo's hand moved automatically to the Personal Orgonizer in her handbag, then drew back from it. "No. Ant, that's hideous Orwellian mind control."

"What's wrong with making people happy?"

Cleo clutched her handbag to her. "No, Anthony. I won't. It is unprincipled and morally wrong."

Thick snowflakes big as Christmas baubles brushed against the window. In the street below, German women with large expensive hairdos began running for cover holding whatever came to hand over their heads. Ant looked at Cleo meaningfully.

"All right", said Cleo, pulling out the Orgonizer and looking at it as if at a fearful temptation. "Just this once."

***

"NEVER", said Cleo, "EVER. AGAIN."
They were sitting in Spitzenburg, in the snow. The ornamental fountain they were sitting on was frozen solid. In the main pool of the fountain, small fish flicked about dolefully beneath the ice. Above their heads, jets of ice spouted from the mouths of stone dolphins. A few disconsolate magpies were wandering around a deserted public park. On one side of the park were tall, high-gabled houses. Outside every house was parked a German car. On the other side of the park, the main road in from Lumpenburg was flanked by banks of dirty snow. On the other side of that road was a massive, ancient gateway guarded by stone eagles, and a sign saying MAGISCHES MÄRCHENSCHLOß SPITZENBURG KAFFEE u. KUCHEN HOTEL RESTAURANT HÜGELGIPFEL 1 KM.

It did not seem to be market day in Spitzenburg. From the tiny size of the town, cowering beneath the massive brooding castle high above, Ant wondered whether it ever was.

"We got here, didn't we?" said Ant.

"The first driver", said Cleo, "was so happy when you shot him with the Personal Orgonizer that he was going to take both of us to Disneyland. He was halfway to Munich airport before I realized that was what he was saying."

"Gosh," said Ant. "Was that really what he meant?"

"Yes, Ant. The German for Disneyland, oddly enough, is Disneyland. The second driver, meanwhile, was so happy that he took us home to meet his family, and I had to shoot them all as well. And then they were so happy they insisted on showing us a precisely-cross-referenced list of slides from fifteen separate holidays they'd spent in the same hotel in Majorca."

"They had a nice big dog, though", said Ant.

"He is STILL HERE, Ant", said Cleo sternly, trying to stop the enormous white Pyrenean from licking her face. "DOWN, HASSELHOFF. He seems to find me fascinating. And I didn't even have to shoot him with the Orgonizer."

"You don't have to shoot dogs with it", said Ant. "They're naturally happy." He reached out and scratched the massive dog behind the ears. "It's a good job the third driver liked dogs."

"Ant, you shot him seven times. By the time you were through shooting him, he liked everything. He decided he liked driving off the road just as much as he liked driving on it. He was even happy when he ran his car into a tree. He was hugging the tree when we ran away."

"We only had to walk the last ten kilometres", said Ant.

"I am FREEZING, Ant." Cleo hugged herself tight, rubbing her own shoulders. "My hair extensions have frostbite. They will fall off and I will look like Skin out of Skunk Anansie and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT. And now you seem to be suggesting we take a healthy hike into the icebound northern wastes."

"Cleo, we are two hundred kilometres further south than Cornwall. We are in no way 'northern'. Germany is only cold in winter because it has a continental climate..."

Ant took a small metal box out of his inside pocket. The box had been decorated by Ant with Letraset transfers saying IDIOT DETECTOR. Underneath this were smaller transfers saying INFALLIBLY DETECTS IDIOTS. The Idiot Detector had a single red button, and a single red light. Next to the red light was a label: IDIOT LIGHT. Ant moved the Detector round himself in a circle, keeping the button pressed.

"...and because a lot of Germany is high above sea level, of course. Which is why I think I'm getting no signal on this thing. The mountains are blocking it out. Gondolin told us they'd get in touch once we were in Spitzenburg." Ant cast a hand around the deserted snowbound park. "And here we are. But I think they're waiting for us to tell them we're in Spitzenburg. I think we need to get to higher ground."

Cleo looked at the box. "Do you really think Alastair's men would be fooled by all those stickers you've put on it?"

Ant looked at the box. "Why not? It looks like every cheap Christmas present I've ever had. It's particularly convincing in that, as an Idiot Detector, it doesn't work, especially once I remove the batteries and hide them. Yes, I do think it fools them. It fools them a lot. They search my house a lot."

A knot formed in Cleo's throat. "They do what? How do you know?"

Ant shrugged. "Things move about when I've done nothing to move them. My dad isn't around a lot of the time, you know. That's why Mum hires private investigators, to catch him leaving me home alone and prove he's a bad father. That means I'm the only one in the house. So I know when things move about for no reason. They come into our house maybe once or twice a week. Probably into yours too."

Cleo shuddered, and not just from the cold. Hasselhoff licked her to warm her up.

Ant looked out across the park.

"Cleo, doesn't 'KAFFEE u. KUCHEN' mean 'Coffee and Cake'?"

"You have my interest."

"And doesn't 'MAGISCHES MÄRCHENSCHLOß' mean 'Magical Fairytale Castle'?"

"Yes."

"'HÜGELGIPFEL 1 KM?'"

"'Top of the hill 1 kilometre'. Do you want to know what 'RESTAURANT HOTEL' means?"

"I think I can work that one out. And I think I have an idea."

***

Cleo's breath was puffing out healthily now as they climbed the icy drive. She had
stopped shivering. She also appeared brighter, as her immediate future now contained cake. As a further proof that her condition was improving, she was complaining.

"The castle is at the TOP OF THE HILL, Ant. Could we not have found a café we could walk DOWNHILL to?"

Ant blew on his fingers to unfreeze them. "We have to be high up, remember? Whatever ship Gondolin has sent will be up in space right now, most likely in a geostationary orbit, an orbit that keeps pace with the Earth's rotation, directly over the equator. If we're surrounded by mountains, we won't have a direct line of sight to it. But if we're on top of a mountain..."

The woods surrounding them were silent in that way in which snow muffled sound. Occasionally, a heavy load of snow slid off a tree, causing Cleo to jump and grab Ant by the elbow. At Ant's other elbow trotted Hasselhoff, attempting to sniff the entire landscape one tree at a time.

"This hill is VERY STEEP, Ant. I can scarcely keep my footing on it -" Cleo promptly lost her footing and had to grab at Ant's shoulder. Her street shoes had leather soles shiny as mirrors, and the road up to the castle was a junior glacier.

"Stick to the snow, it'll be easier."

"I will get SOAKED. My FEET will be FROZEN."

Up above, the castle was vast. Whoever had built it here had been very single-minded - dragging such immensities of rock so far up a nearly vertical slope would have been difficult even with modern equipment. Then Ant realized that whoever had built the castle had not needed modern equipment. They'd had peasants.

The castle had three outer turrets he could see, one of which seemed to contain a gatehouse. The central structure, inside the curtain walls, was taller, but appeared to have been converted into a house. He could see windows which would surely have been too large to be practical in mediaeval siege warfare. Clusters of pointy-topped turrets that looked just as ornamental as the windows finished off the north and south sides. They seemed to belong more in Disneyland than the Middle Ages. The first driver who had picked Ant and Cleo up would probably have liked them.

Far beneath them on the main road, Ant could see two elderly German women staring goggle-eyed at something approaching from the direction of Lumpenburg.

"MEINE FREUNDE! MEINE LIEBE FREUNDE! LIEBE DAMEN!"

Cleo's eyes widened.

"Isn't that Herr Niggemann? The man who crashed his car into the tree?"

One of the old ladies covered the eyes of the other. "ELISABETH! GUCK NICHT, IN GOTTES NAMEN! AUGEN ZU!"

Ant peered through the trees, and could see a pink and wobbling shadow.

"He isn't wearing any clothes", said Cleo. "He'll catch his death."

"WIR BRAUCHEN KEINE KLEIDER!" said Herr Niggemann. "WIR SIND ALLE KLEINE KINDER DER NATUR!" He wobbled towards the old ladies, who retreated in fear.

"Well, I'm glad", said Ant, "that someone's happy."

***

Jochen was polishing glasses in the café when the two visitors wandered in up the drive. One was a boy of Jochen's own age, the other a very pretty black girl. They were well dressed against the weather, but both looked soaked to the skin. They were speaking English to each other, too rapidly for him to understand. The boy was gesturing with what looked like a toy raygun. The gun had a dial on top of it. The dial appeared to be set to HAPPY. The girl was using two English words a great deal. One was 'irresponsible', and the other was 'ant'. They appeared to be arguing about insects. They also had a gigantic dog as white as the snow that lay unmelted on his thick furry coat.

Eventually, realizing that Jochen was listening, the girl said: "Stumm, stumm", and pointed furiously toward Jochen. The boy looked up and said to the girl: "It's all right, he probably doesn't understand us anyway." The girl replied that he could not assume that ant. This, to Jochen's mind, was not a correct English sentence.

"Good morning", said the girl in very good German. "Is this the Magic Fairytale Castle Café?"

Jochen nodded.

"We demand coffee and cake", said the boy.

"The cakes are in the cabinet", said Jochen, pointing. "Do you want a latte, an espresso, or a cappuccino?"

The boy looked blankly at the girl.

"Latte, espresso and cappuccino mean exactly the same things in German ant", said the girl in English.

The boy nodded and turned back to Jochen.

"I demand a latte, please." He fiddled with his wallet. "How much for a one way ticket to Hamburg?"

"Pardon?" said Jochen, completely thrown.

"You just asked him for a one way ticket to Hamburg", said the girl in English. "I think you need to be a couple of lines further down on your list of handy German phrases."

"Ah", said the boy. His eyes defocussed as if mentally searching just such an invisible list. "Erm - does your cow give fresh milk?"

"Not that far", said the girl. "That's chapter four, On The Farm. You want Chapter Two, How Much Does It Cost?"

"Aha!" said the boy triumphantly. He looked up at Jochen and breathed in, preparing to say:

"How much does it cost?" said Jochen, and added, in English: "You pay afterwards. When you leave."

"He speaks English", said the boy, turning to the girl in amazement.

"Many Germans do", said the girl. "They have schools where English is taught to them."

"The cunning devils", said the boy. "Your English is very good", he said to Jochen.

"Not really", said Jochen. "English speakers come in all the time and say 'How much does it cost?' and I have to explain to them that in Germany, you pay when you leave. It is my best English sentence."

"Gosh", said the boy, struggling to get his mind round the concept. "So, you hand over the goods, and they pay you later?"

"That's the idea."

"Do any English customers actually pay up?"

"Many of them remember to. And I can run very fast if they don't. Also, my grandfather has a gun."

The dog shook the snow off himself enthusiastically. A furry avalanche exploded in all directions, sending lumps of hairy snow up to two metres up the café walls.

"Eurgh!" said the girl. "Make him stop! Why is he doing that?"

"He's a dog", explained the boy, which was true.

"Sorry", said the girl to Jochen in German.

Jochen looked down at the dog. The dog looked up at Jochen. Jochen was the dog's best friend in the whole world.

"I should not allow you to bring your dog in here", said Jochen severely.

"That's all right", said the boy. "He's not our dog."

"But there will probably not be any other customers in this weather", continued Jochen. "And it is very cold outside. Would he like some water, do you think?"

The dog's tongue was lolling happily from his mouth. He was having the best day ever. He walked around the back of the gigantic porcelain Labrador that Jochen's grandfather steadfastly refused to remove from the café, attempting to sniff its glazed pottery bottom.

"I think he would like some water", said Jochen. "I will get him some."

He turned and walked back into the kitchen.

***

The café had been decorated by someone who had clearly wanted to produce an air of sophisticated modern comfort. There were leather armchairs. There were low coffee tables. There were newspapers and downlighters. Unfortunately, the café was still inside a German castle, and there were also rusted iron rings set in the walls, the stuffed head of a wild boar, and a great deal of bare stonework. The overall effect was one of a Starbuck's franchise set inside a mediaeval torture chamber, with a giant porcelain labrador in one corner.

Over the counter, above an espresso machine that looked only marginally younger than the castle, was a black-and-white photo clearly taken on the café terrace in happier times. A group of smiling young men in old-fashioned clothes and very short haircuts were posing for the camera.

"It's snowing harder out there now", said Ant. "It'll be harder going down."

Cleo put her fingers to her temples and closed her eyes. "You are ruining my moment of caky goodness, Ant. I am fully aware the future contains icy unpleasantness. Let me concentrate on the here and now, which is warm and dry and, oh gosh, Black Forest flavoured." She bent down to give the cake cabinet the attention it deserved.

The door to the terrace outside opened; snow swirled in in spirals. A new customer had entered. He was tall, well protected against the snow in gloves, scarf and an overcoat. He was also wearing a hat. He seemed to be having difficulty closing the café door, as if the mechanism of a door swinging on a hinge was new to him.

Ant moved to help him, pushing the door shut gently. The newcomer did not thank Ant, but merely nodded curtly to him, turned and crossed the café with an odd, unsteady walk, leaving puddles of liquid on the laminate floor. When he reached the counter he stopped, rocking backwards and forwards slightly as if drunk.

Hasselhoff began to growl low in his throat. From an animal who, up till now, had behaved like a seventy-kilogramme comfort cushion, this was disconcerting. Ant suddenly became aware of how scarily immense Hasselhoff was, and of how big the bone-crushing teeth at the back of his jaw - which became visible when he was panting contentedly - really were.

The German boy emerged from the kitchen and looked the newcomer over. "Eine Minute und ich bin dabei -"

The newcomer spoke from behind his scarf. The voice sounded like German, but did not sound human. It was like wind whistling in a cave.

Cleo looked at Ant warningly, and they both took a step back from the counter.

The German boy stared at the customer.

"Wer sind Sie?"

Cleo opened her mouth to speak; Ant held his hand up to stop her.

"I understood that, thanks", he said. "He's asking him who he is."

The newcomer's eyes were startlingly, brilliantly blue. They were, in fact, a disturbingly familiar shade of it. The blue extended all the way from the pupils to the eyelids, without whites.

"Dies ist die zweite Mal, daß wir die Frage stellen", said the newcomer. "Wir fragen höflich: Wo ist es?"

"Ant", said Cleo. "He's -"

Ant nodded. "I know."

The German boy was reaching behind the espresso machine, lifting out something heavy. The newcomer smiled, a quivering smile that seemed to require great effort.

"Kugeln werden dir nicht helfen", he said.

Cleo looked down at the puddles of liquid the customer had left on the floor. They were not pools of meltwater. They were bright blue, and they were now moving under their own power toward the chair and table legs.

Cleo shook her head at the boy as he drew back the cocking mechanism on the gigantic, antiquated World War Two machine gun he was holding.

"He's right", she said. "Bullets won't help you. Not against him."

The newcomer turned and cocked his head at her, like a dog hearing a sound it could not explain. He slammed his hands down onto the counter top. Bright turquoise goop poured from his sleeves and spread out across the counter.

"Hold Hasselhoff", said Ant. "Don't let him go for him. That will do us no good at all."

"HOLD him? If a hippo had fur it'd be smaller!"

Ant's hand came out of his pocket holding a Stanley knife.

"Ant", said Cleo, "what are you -"

Ant reached behind him to a standard lamp plugged into the wall, switched it off at the socket, ripped the wire out of the lamp, went to work on it with the knife, spread the blue and brown wires out wide, then turned the wall socket on again. The German boy raised the weapon into the middle of the newcomer's chest.

"No, DON'T!" yelled Cleo, hanging on to the now frantic Hasselhoff. "You'll just spread little bits of it round the café, and each little bit is as dangerous as one big one -"

Ant lunged forward and stabbed the wire down onto the counter top. There was a bang and a spark, and the entire surface of the goop on the countertop rippled like dried paint. Smoke rose from the counter, along with an acrid smell of burnt plastic. All the lights went out. The newcomer toppled backward onto the floor with a horrible SPLAT as his head hit the laminate, and trails of blue goop shot out across the floor away from it.

"DON'T PUT YOUR FOOT DOWN!" yelled Cleo urgently. "THERE'S BITS OF IT ALL OVER THE FLOOR!" She hopped from chair to chair and ducked down behind the counter. "Where do you keep your cleaning solvents?"

"What?" said the German boy.

"This'll do", said Cleo, turning a plastic bottle round in her hand to read it. "It contains hypochlorite." She tossed the bottle to Ant, who rapidly unscrewed it and began applying it to the floor. Cleo looked up at the German boy.

"Fuses. Where are the fuses? Im Keller?"

The boy looked blankly back at her.

"The fuse box!" Cleo tapped the plug on the coffee machine. "Get the lights back on, before any bit of it finds a place to escape to!" She gestured at the lights. "Die Lichter! Schalte die Lichter schon wieder an!"

The boy gaped at her a second more, then seemed to understand, nodded and ran from the room.

"Try to make a circle of hypochlorite round it on the floor", said Cleo to Ant. "Then it can't escape."

The lights came back on. Ant had corralled all the remaining globs of blueness, and was pouring drain cleaner on them.

"What are you doing?" The boy had appeared at the kitchen door again. "That floor was expensive!" The laminate crisped under the vile chemicals Ant was sloshing all over it; the smell was diabolical.

"Trust me", said Cleo, "if you don't want a little globule of that stuff crawling up your nostril while you sleep and invading your brain, this is the only way."

"Who was that man?" The boy revisited his sentence. "What was that man?"

Cleo looked at Ant. Ant shrugged. Cleo looked back.

"How long have you got?"