* * *
She wasn’t in the Lilly-pilly fort. Nor was she in the banana palm forest or the animal house. She wasn’t in the mango tree look-out, or in any other possie that he could see from up there. He was coming to the terrible conclusion that she had indeed gone home. Which meant that there was nothing for it but for Neville to go there, to put himself before Riff and beg for understanding for the Quiet Man. And also to put himself before Afsoon and beg her not to give up on their freshly renewed alliance.
He tried to marshal arguments but only one seemed to fit and that was that, without her, finding the secrets that would bring the Quiet Man’s mind home, finding what had become of Anosh and freeing Ava from whatever dire happenstance had imprisoned her - all that would be impossible. Without the two of them working together the placid unity of Home Country, Rahimi Island, Shoomba Territory, Boogerville and Cookie’s Corner - maybe even the Duchy - would be left spinning chaotically, like a top creeping toward the edge of a great table. A fall would come if they were not united in their efforts to stop it. Neville was manfully bound for Rahimi Island, to try to explain this when an unexpected voice stopped him in the banana palm forest.
“Ssssst!” it hissed. “Noodle! C’mere!”
It was Beau the Bum, lying nearly flat on the ground in a particularly dense concentration of stalks. His pellet gun lay beside him.
“Why are you lying on the ground, Beau?”
“Camouflage, dipstick! Get down! I don’ want anyone to know I’m here.”
“Why not?”
“ ‘Cause if nobody sees me, nobody can blame me. Get it? Now get down!”
He grabbed Neville’s arm and dragged him, unresisting, to the ground. In a way, Neville was grateful because, even though Beau the Bum was a bum, a few more moments to steel himself against the sadness of ‘Soon or the wrath of Riff were not unwelcome.
“You find yer mutt?” Beau asked when they were comfortably settled to left and right of the gun.
“Not yet. But she’s a Terrier-of-Death. Whoever . . . whatever’s got her . . . I wouldn’t want to be them.”
“Okay look! I was gonna offer to go searchin’, but if that’s the way it is . . .! Look, Noodle. That little sheila’s in the chokos. She can’t be there.”
“‘Soon? She’s in the chokos?”
He nodded. “Cryin’. I told her to get out but she yelled some kinda jibbery thing at me - sounded like swearin’. An’ she chucked a choko. Them things . . . ye could kill a black dog wi’ one o’ them chokos! You go get her out.”
It was, without doubt, exactly what Neville most wanted to do. Even despite the prospect of swearing and the chucking of chokos.
“I’ll owe ye a favour, Noodle. Honest. I’m good for it, okay? Just get her out!”