The Peaceful Affair: Chapter 18
Somewhere in the vast midst of the Atlantic Ocean, Eve Apples and Xena Hammerhead stood on the flight deck of the USS Philadelphia admiring the view.
“Beautiful,” averred Hammerhead with unabashed certitude.
“Inspiring,” avowed Apples. “Reminds me of Nietzsche’s Superman.”
Hammerhead requested clarification. “Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher?”
“No,” replied Apples. “Nietzsche’s Superman, the bar on Forty-Second Street.”
“Oh,” ohed Hammerhead, as various memories were extracted from a small area in her brain that was dedicated to bars full of attractive young men. “Oh, oh,” she then double-ohed, as the memories yanked were matched against the view on the flight deck and found matching — the attractive young men were One and The Same: Captain Michael One and Lieutenant Joe “The Same” Kowolski.
Just as the two beautiful ladies were about to spring with joy, the crackling of a loudspeaker was heard, and the captain’s voice boomed magisterially all over the place:
Pilot, pilot on the deck,
Don’t forget to double check,
Before you lift to risk your neck,
On a hairy, fairy trek,
What the heck —
The last line was accompanied by the sound of a Captain tussling with his beloved, odious poodle.
On the flight deck, Captain One and Lieutenant Kowolski bade the fair ladies farewell and took off in their SHHH-18 “Woodpecker” stealth fighters to engage the British in a bout of aerial chess. The planes possessed the latest in furtive technology: One’s craft had You Cannot See Me painted in huge golden letters across the fuselage, and Kowolski’s was disguised as a supersonic duck.
As soon as the two had disappeared up, up, and away, the captain’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker once again:
Lady, gentleman, flyer, diver,
It won’t cost fifty, not even a fiver,
If you are tough — a true survivor,
Behold,
Q — the magicdriver!
A puff of purplish avocado-colored smoke billowed next to the ice-cream stand at the edge of the flight deck, clearing rapidly to reveal a fair-skinned Bushman with short-cropped blond hair. Even trying immensely as she did to err divinely, Hammerhead could not mistake the man for anyone other than General General’s magicdriver.
Al!pr!kt!ch — aka Q — raised both his hands up toward the cloud-shaped cumuli, and vociferated, “Ladies and gentlemen. Look and listen!” With that, he inserted both his hands into his left vest pocket, and pulled out two homeless snakes, which he abracadabraed into a pair of beautiful spring bouquets. These he handed over to his lovely canine assistant, who trotted over to Hammerhead and Apples, pawing each a single nosegay. “Only one!” he barked at Apples who was trying to encroach upon her friend’s posy.
“I need two volunteers,” called Q magically, and before you could recite War and Peace the captain’s voice floated out of the crackling loudspeaker:
Fee, figh, foe, fear,
Near I am, to make it clear,
A beer, A deer, An ear, A cheer,
I offer all — and add a peer,
I’ll even make you a brigadier!
Just pick me as your volunteer.
Q conferred lengthily with his assistant, and — after much barking, yelping, howling, and woofing — the decision was made. “Let the ladies step forth,” pronounced Q, raising his right hand invitingly in the general direction of Hammerhead and Apples. The duo strode over to the magicdriver, who immediately pulled a rabbit out of his left vest pocket and, without further ado, hocus-pocussed it into a large compartment made of tinted glass.
“First, let’s give a big hand for the ladies,” said Q, and his assistant grudgingly proceeded to paw over his favorite five-fingered leftover.
Q opened the compartment’s glass door. “Now, if you please, kindly step inside.” Noting the worried look spreading slowly across Apples’s nose, he added, “There’s no need to feel troubled whatsoever. I’ve done this hundreds of times, and only once have I not failed.” Assured, Apples entered the glass cavity, followed by a chirping Hammerhead.
As soon as the two were safely ensconced within, Q began to chant, “Hocus-pocus … Abracadabra … Theotokopoulos Domenikos … Candelabra!” There was a flash of light accompanied by a string quartet. Q opened the door and his assistant sniffed inside. The compartment was empty.
Obviously.
“Welcome aboard the HMS Thatcher,” Ibrahim McGregor was saying, as the smoke dissolved. “I trust you had a pleasant journey, my lovely wives?” Beside him, in the nippy warmth of the cabin interior, stood Secret Agent.
“Best trip I’ve had since I got back from Oz,” said Hammerhead sprightly.
“Reminds me of the time Indy and I had gone fishing with Captain Schnook,” Apples remarked pensively.
Hammerhead U-turned to business. “How successful was your investigation yesterday? Did you find out anything about Mac?”
“Nothing at all,” replied Agent gloomily. “We questioned the main protagonists, but our efforts came to naught.”
“Well,” began Apples on the philosophical note of B minor, “I guess you have to taste failure every now and then, in order to appreciate the savor of success. That’s life.”
“Life is a gift,” whipped McGregor, “and today would be a good day to open it.”
“Life is a mere hobby,” commented Agent so sharply he almost bled to life, “but death — now there’s a vocation!”
“Indeed!” Hammerhead couldn’t agree more unless she tried really hard. “Do you know Death came for me last night? Alas, I was out walking the shark. You wouldn’t believe what — ”
The piercing wail of a siren made them all stop their bout of philosophy in its tracks. Contrary to her sororal sibs, who liked to sing mariners to havoc, the siren in question — who went by the name of Thelma — enjoyed helping people eschew lengthy debates of absolutely no consequence. She was currently on vacation from her job in Congress.
Gravity descended upon the merry band, despite the graviton’s being a hypothetical particle, hitherto unobserved by physicists; not even by Albert Fine-Man, the only person ever to be elected Geek Of The Year twice by Prime magazine.
Agent cleared his throat, the air, and the decks. “We must think proactively,” he said, standing up to face his colleagues in a manner that could only be interpreted in twenty-seven different ways. “We need to assess the situation by reflecting upon the valuation of our appraisement in terms of procedural ramifications that arise as consequences of ascertaining the validity of estimations, which had been assayed by former operational policies, subject to the pertinence of said acts to patent evidentiary affirmations that stand in concordance with future interests, deemed preferential or preferable by the totality of extant hominine existences.”
McGregor, Apples, and Hammerhead all fell simultaneously on their bottoms, smitten as they were by Agent’s innate governmental wisdom, acquired during a lifetime of holistic service. Before any of them could muster the mustard to remove their rumps from the floor, the piercing wail of a siren penetrated the pastoral surroundings, ululating, “All hands on deck!” Louise, the siren at hand, happened to be Thelma’s half-mother on her sister’s side. The fearsome foursome made its way fleetly outside and onto the deck, where the captain was hosting the regulation picnic. McGregor and his associates joined the other guests by taking hold of a chaise longue, a cup of tea, and some bona fide English scones (not the Taiwanese imitation).
Comfortably enwombed in the plushness of his seat, Agent commented, “As my good friend Captain Pick-Hard always says, nothing beats a nice cup of Earl Grey.”
“Except, perhaps, a nice cup of tea,” retorted McGregor musingly, sipped from the cup he was pampering, and repositioned his head to point upward so as to enjoy the battle of aerial chess along with the rest of the party.
Major Godsave Queen and his copilot, Cooking Sergeant Kingand Country, had engaged the enemy: Captain One and Lieutenant Kowolski. Louise’s siren-song voice sailed overhead in pregnant overtones, commentating the battle’s progress with cold-blooded sangfroid. “The Same has just launched a castling missive.”
A tense moment followed.
Another tense moment followed.
Yet another tense moment followed.
Louise finally caught up with the unruly running commentary. “Three tense moments followed,” she said, slightly out of breath, but with such aplomb as could only be ascribed to her firm self-confidence. “Queen and Country have parried the missive. They fire a rook locket at One. One is now in check.” On the deck, a touching scene was taking place, with Apples helping Agent hold his breath, which had become too heavy for Agent to hold by himself.
The whining of powerful engines dancing above was earsplitting.
“I hate eating a split ear of corn,” mumbled Hammerhead with her mouth full; which was very impolite, mind you.
Tensions were mounting on starry knights. “The Same hurls a bishop at Queen and Country,” commentated Louise. A smoke screen engulfed the combatants for several seconds and a number of firsts. When it cleared, Louise announced, “Queen and Country confess to bishop. Checkmate.”
The deck was in turmoil. So, too, were the people atop it.
Hammerhead stomped her foot. “I hate losing.”
“I hate people stomping on my foot,” McGregor spoke up, putting his foot in his mouth in an attempt to allay the pain.
In a voice not unlike that of a gondolier whose mouth is full of hot ravioli, Agent gurgled, “I hate people misplacing their foot in my mouth.”
“Look what you’ve done to my shirt!” screamed Apples. “It’s all covered with ravioli. This stuff never comes off in the laundry.”
“There goes my vacation,” lamented Thelma and wailed, her extensive congressional experience propelling all inconsequential blabber to an instantaneous screeching brake, followed by a comma, ultimately crashing onto a full stop. In the ensuing eerie silence the sole sound in motion was that emanating from the soul of a bleating sheep.
Just as the Clock was about to strike One (and probably slap The Same some), who would not have taken kindly to Time’s Scythe, everyone heard a thump, which sounded just like a thud. Since the maid hadn’t been in that week, a cloud of dust rose up in the air.
“Look, it’s a huge hat,” cried Apples after the dust had settled in Edmond, Oklahoma, pointing toward the farther end of the deck, which seemed like the aft, but could quite easily be mistaken for the bow.
“No,” corrected Hammerhead, who possessed a sharp lawyerly I, “it’s a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant.”
Recognizing his q, Agent took it, bowed augustly, and descended below decks. Quebec, Queensland, and Quba (the apple republic founded in the Qanary Islands by Cuban spelling revolutionists) immediately joined forces in a concerted concentrated effort to find the missing q.
Agent entered his cabin to behold a shortish man wearing a wide blue cape with red lining. “Monsieur,” said the low person in a charming Québécois accent, “please — draw me a shop.”
Silently, Secret Agent bent down, reached beneath his bunk, and pulled out a canvas and oil colors. In less than two hours he’d drawn a beautiful shopping mall in such fine detail you could actually spot the discounts.
“Well,” said Antoine Cent Eccent, dropping his accent in the mail, “now that we’ve exchanged passwords so nicely, shall we get down to business?”
Putting the final touches on his painting, Agent said surely, “Sure.”
“My tariff is three bucks fifty,” ACE priced prissily, “and under no condition will I raise it!”
“Would you consider lowering it?” asked Agent gregariously.
“You bet!” replied ACE zealously, and the two proceeded to shoot craps with a pair of antique dice, a family heirloom Agent had inherited from his distant ancestor, Henry VIII, who had himself received it as a parting gift from Anne Boleyn just before she’d headed north and south. After some dicey ado the price was set at two bucks thirteen.
“If you don’t mind,” requested ACE gently, “I’d like to see the payment first.”
“As you wish,” purred Agent, and disappeared behind a large door marked Payroom — Monetary Personnel Only. By and by, he came back with the fee marching peacefully behind him.
“Here are your two bucks,” announced Agent ceremoniously. “Notice how fine their antlers are.”
“Quite, quite,” mumbled ACE, subjecting the bucks to a quick quiz of quantum chromodynamics. After several moments he proclaimed, “It seems I can pass the bucks. Now, what about the rest of my fee?”
Without further ado, the bucks arranged thirteen translucent vials on a small periodic table, creating a beautiful varicolored mosaic. Fastidiously, ACE opened each bottle and sniffed its contents at length. “Excellent,” he avowed once the thirteenth vial had been opened and shut. “I must congratulate you, Agent — thirteen scents of the highest quality. Such aromas!”
Secret Agent extended both sides of his mouth, stopping just shy of the ears. (The big buck whispered to the smaller buck, “They call that a smile”.) “I do believe it’s time to reciprocate, my dear Cent Eccent.”
(“Pay close attention,” murmured the big buck, “here it comes again.”) ACE smiled, said, “But of course,” and pulled a leather satchel he’d been gifted by the lamplighter out of his left shoe. He opened it, extracted a palimpsest, and handed it to Agent.
The agent jumped with joy. “Finally, I shall learn everything about Mac.” He pored over the parchment for several minutes, and then cried in disappointment, “All it says is ‘Charles Dodgson’!”
“I believe I’ve supplied the information requested,” said ACE serenely.
“No, no, no,” bayed Agent. “I wanted to know everything: The identity of his uncle’s sole nephew; the complete list of cities he wasn’t born in; the rabbi who’d baptized him; his father’s maiden name; his maiden’s father’s name; how often he sneezes while he snoozes; the reason he’s as slippery as an eel with a spiel. Everything!”
“All right, all right,” growled ACE, “I propose a compromise: I’ll settle for the vials only.”
“Fine,” snarled Agent.
“Fine,” grumbled ACE. “I didn’t like those big bucks of yours, anyhow.”
With that, Agent parted company and ACE parted the Black Sea.
