to talk to Amy alone, so he rose and made his excuses. He
strolled over to the bar and was caught just as he reached it
by Mrs Banning-Cannon who let him know she was pleased
to hear he was well.
Amy, to tell the truth, found Bingo's attentions relaxing.
She told herself off for leading him on, but then told herself
again that he would have remained there talking to her no
matter what she said, unless it was a straight bit of rudeness
from her.
'Looking forward to the bleachers tomorrow, old thing?'
he asked, when he came back to their seats with her half-
shant and his full one. 'I thought I'd put you out there, given
your spiffin' performance today.'
'Oh, come on, Bingo, there was nothing for me to do,' she
said, grinning. 'I caught and returned four shafts which my
dog Spot could have retrieved if they were Frisbees.'
'Oh, no,' he said seriously. 'You're a natural. I'm not the
only one who thinks it.'
She was glad when Flapper turned up with Hari Agincourt
in tow. Hari had been hard to pull away from his admirers.
He sat down with a weary thump and sipped his shant.
'Phew! That's better.'
They waited patiently for the earth-tremor to come and go
as it usually did at about this time by the pub clock. Outside
the rain bucketed down. By now they knew it would last
about half an hour. Most of the other players groaned, but
Amy said she found it quite soothing. 'It always reminds me
of home,' she said. 'When I was a little girl.'
'Have you popped the question formally, yet?' asked
Bingo of Hari, not sure how the notion had come into his
head at that point.
'Um,' said Hari. 'Well, no. I know you told me it was OK
with old man Banning-Cannon, but every time I start to ask
him, Mrs B-C turns up with her wonderful imitation of a
basilisk and transforms me pretty much to stone. Flapper
tells me I'm going to have to get used to handling her, if
we're to spend the rest of our lives together and all that, and
I know it's jolly yellow of me, but so far I've got no closer to
the important action than quacking like a duck...'
'A pretty feeble duck at that,' declared the Last of the
Banning-Cannons, not without an edge of rancour to her
dulcet tone as she gave Hari's arm something of a confusing
squeeze. Mrs B-C had her back to them, still deep in
conversation with the Doctor. 'But I suppose you're correct
about after the game being the right moment. Assuming we
win, of course.'
'As we must,' said Bingo.
'Quite,' said Flapper and examined a naked left finger
rather pointedly.
Amy wasn't sure she liked the direction of the conversation
but that wasn't what was making her uncomfortable. Looking
up, she noticed someone at the bar. Captain Abberley was
staring at her through the glass bottom of his shant. When he
saw her looking back he gave a slight bow. There were sides,
she decided, to the big, bluff Chaos Engineer.
What on earth did he really want from them? she wondered.
The Doctor had agreed with her that he had a clear but so far
unstated reason for being here. Perhaps he had not wished
to risk his own ship by bringing it in so close to the galactic
Hub? Perhaps he was moving through the Shifter orbit in
the hope of reaching a particular scale where he expected to
find something? Was he, too, looking for the Silver Arrow of
Artemis? Did he mean to steal it if it ever turned up? She still
had half an idea that it was already gone from Mrs Banning-
Cannon's portable vault and that the theft of the hat had been
nothing more than a cover-up.
As the pub shook and jingled, the customers were
interrupted in their sing-song - ' He was a patient she kept in a
can and she was a healer with feet out of line' - so full of triple and quadruple entendres that Amy was completely lost before
the first verse was over.
She was relieved when the singers were drowned out by
a bestial roar from the sky outside, tempting her to jump up
and go to the window. Overhead was ragged with racing
blackness recalling the dark tides Amy had seen during the
storms. Tides now rimmed with deep, glowing blue, the
exact colour of the old medicine bottles she had collected for
a while as a teenager. Then it felt as if the sides of the pub
were repeatedly kicked by a gigantic boot, except nothing
was damaged. The strange lack of accompanying sensation
made her, if anything, more frightened than earlier. She
was glad when the shift ended even if the sun did suddenly
rise again, in all its original glory, making the rain on the
windows sparkle like glass beads.
She looked back towards the bar, directly into the eyes of
Captain Abberley. He smiled, not unpleasantly, and gestured
to her to join him.
'I'll be back in a minute,' she told her friends.
Next morning by the clock, for there was no other way at the
moment of measuring time on Flynn, the game continued.
While the sky swept from dark grey to scarlet and the ground
shook and squirmed, the Gentlemen again took their turn
at the wotsit, and those old rivals continued to play what
was in so many ways the game of their lives. The Gentlemen
stayed ahead for most of the day but at teatime their luck
changed drastically and they lost four whackers to Grimtok,
the Visitors' number five archer. He was an elegant centaur,
rather finely built, with large blue eyes and a palomino coat,
another favourite with the ladies. Somehow the day, with its
brilliant, unfamiliar colours, had invigorated him and he was
at the top of his game.
Bingo Lockesley, as captain, was kicking himself. He
knew he had made a bad judgement. Once he had seen the
first two whackers go down so speedily he should have put
a better whacker in to play against Grimtok. As it was, there
would now be some important strategy required of him. By
lunchtime, he had come to a decision and, as soon as tea was
over, he put in W.G. Grace, who had been itching to play. With
her huge, glistening beard she made a picturesque, as well as
a confident, antagonist. Her confidence was not unfounded.
Within twenty minutes of taking up her whacking bat she had
sailed a beautiful arrow to Amy who sent it back to Flapper
in wotsit who tucked it neatly into the Visitors' target as
Grimtok galloped triumphantly around the 'stand', coming
to a sudden stop as, open-mouthed, he heard the unexpected
'Howzaf...
And then the sun went out.
*
The pavilion's floodlights came on automatically as Grimtok
cantered slowly back, while Amy and Flapper did their best
to maintain their gravitas when what they really wanted to
do was hug each other and jump up and down in celebration
of their own unexpected success. With the centaur's run of
luck over, the Gentlemen and the Visitors found themselves
more or less level pegging.
The sun eventually appeared in the sky, but now there
was no point in continuing until the next day. Back in the
pavilion, and later the pub, Amy and Flapper were feted
by their fellow team-members. Though they protested that
Grimtok had been unlucky, and everyone privately knew
that it was more to do with the fact that the centaur had been
playing on better form than he had ever demonstrated before,
there was still good reason for congratulations given that
until a short while earlier both women had been amateurs.
The Doctor was the most enthusiastic of all, not counting
Bingo, of course, who was ecstatic both as team captain and
as suitor.
Amy felt more than a little overwhelmed by the attention
she was receiving, so when Mrs Banning-Cannon burst into
the pub wearing not only a triumphant smile but also a large,
somewhat battered hat, she was relieved.
'Where did you get that hat?' she asked.
'Where did you get that tile?' asked the Doctor.
'Isn't it a lovely one?' Grimtok said, squinting through the
mist which was now curling through the air of the pub like
smoke.
'It's no longer in style,' said Mrs Banning-Cannon firmly.
'That's not the reason, of course, that I'm wearing it.'
'No!' The Doctor slipped from his barstool. 'You found it!'
'Actually, Doctor, I found the thief.' Mrs Banning-Cannon
removed the huge, if dishevelled, piece of creative millinery
work and floated it carelessly to the bar. 'With the hat.'
She whirled dramatically, her finger pointed at the young
man who had followed her through the door.
'There he is! Our snake in the grass. The viper we have
been holding to our bosom. The tie in the ointment.'
'I swear, Mrs Banning-Cannon, that the only reason I was
there was because - because I-I-I...' Hari Agincourt was
giving an impression of a dog whose paw-prints had been
discovered on the best bedspread.
'Don't stand there addressing me like some stammering
sailor, sir,' hissed the furious matron. 'I caught you red-
handed!' She took a step towards him.
Hari flinched. 'Honestly, the only reason I was outside
your door was because I couldn't find you. I was about to
knock when—'
'Liar! You were leaving our apartments where you had
left the hat in the hope that you would not be discovered
with it.'
'Hang on.' The Doctor shook his head, puzzled. 'You have
your hat back, Mrs Banning-Cannon?'
'Not that the hat is any longer of the slightest importance.
Catching the thief, however, still remains an issue. Or did
before I caught him.'
'That wasn't why I was there!' Hari declared desperately.
'What other reason would you have for being there?'
'I had come, you bullying old bat, to ask for your daughter
Jane's hand in marriage!' Hari stopped himself, frowning. He
wondered if he had phrased his reply quite as diplomatically
as he might have done. 'I mean...'
But Flapper had thrown herself into his arms. Although
she did not say the words 'My hero!' it was pretty clear that's
what she was thinking.
And for once in her long life in the metaphorical driving
seat, the heir to the Tarbutton zillions was at a loss for
speech.
At this happy point, Mr Banning-Cannon entered the
pub, his hand firmly holding the tailored collar of a lady's
smart royal blue two-piece containing a struggling woman
with tightly permed and blonded hair whom the Doctor
immediately recognised.
'Why, Lady Peggy,' he said, 'I'd been wondering if you'd
turn up in plain view, as it were, with the light altering so
rapidly and unexpectedly all the time. This, ladies, gentlemen
and others, is my old antagonist Lady Peggy Steele, the
Invisible Thief. Logic's been pointing her unwavering finger
at you for quite some while, Lady Peg. I'm so glad you decided
to do the right thing and return Mrs Banning-Cannon's hat.
Mm. Nice perfume.'
Enola Banning-Cannon, however, was gaping at Hari
Agincourt and her daughter. 'Did you say "marriage"?' she
asked.
'I did,' said Hari.
'I forbid it absolutely,' pronounced the second-to-last of
the Banning-Cannons, and, with the proud air of a freshly
launched battleship eager for business, she swept from the
saloon bar.
'Actually,' murmured the Doctor from his comer of the
bar. 'Amy put the hat there at my request. I finally caught up
with Lady Peggy after searching for her for years. I guessed
she had to be here somewhere. But I'm afraid she only stole
the hat for the second time.'
'Then who took it the first time?' Flapper wanted to
know.
'I've no idea, I'm afraid. Well, I have a suspicion...'
'And why did she pinch it?' asked Mr Banning-Cannon,
who was rather beginning to warm towards Lady Peggy.
Apologetically he released her collar. Lady Peggy shrugged
her jacket back into shape, tugged at its bottom, and at once
recovered her dignity. She took her handbag off her arm,
opened it, removed a pink compact and added some powder
to her nose and cheeks.
'Because I was convinced that damned arrow was hidden
in it,' she announced. 'It smelled of the thing. Appears I
made a mistake. Threw me off, I can tell you. I'm hardly ever
wrong.'
'How much was Frank/Freddie Force going to give you
for it?' the Doctor asked, staring at a poster of a picnic on
Flynn.
'We hadn't agreed an exact price,' she replied glaring at
Mr Banning-Cannon.
'So where is it now?' the Doctor asked.
'Wherever you hid it, Doctor.' Peggy patted the back of
her hairdo reassuringly.
'I didn't exactly hide it,' he said. 'But we should find that
out in good time, I'm sure.'
Chapter 24
The Filling Skies
POM'IK'IK WAS PROVING A pretty steady player and hard to budge.
Even Hari's expert shooting couldn't faze him, and it was
a bit of a disaster to see Hari go down for 8 thanks to Kali-
Kali's beautiful catch at right quarter. Sum'in, the Cairene
Dodger, took the whacker by eleven o'clock with W.G. Grace
being put in just after lunch. They were 42 to the Visitors' 87
and it looked all up for the Gents until Grace brought out her
treasured bow which looked like a Sumatan 50x to Bingo,
though it was almost certainly modified. The Doctor also
admired the antique bow. He could see why she had been so
fussy about protecting it on the journey here. Placing one end
against her foot, she showed her great strength as she bent
it forward to string it, then walked with steady confidence
onto the pitch, her hand raised to acknowledge her many
fans cheering from the bleachers.
Just as W.G. reached the wotsit, the glowing sun went
down with a faint sighing sound, a hard rain fell for a few
moments and then stopped. Tree
s swayed along the horizon
like a funeral procession in the deep purple haze. Rays of
white-yellow light, like pillars they seemed so solid, spread
from behind the trees and telescoped down to make way for
Miggea again, pushing the black and silver globe high into
the air and causing a horrible round of sickness in everyone
but the Judoon, who had anticipated the phenomenon and
taken pills for it.
Ignoring all this, Grace put arrow after arrow into
whackers, wotsits and wotsit keepers, slowly bringing the
score up to something the Gentlemen could live with. By the
end of play, Grace was not out and the score was 89 to the
Visitors' 90: they had been awarded extra points after the
umpires' decisions on a split arrow and an offside catch.
It was clear to all that the next day's match would be the
crucial one, assuming there was anything resembling a next
day as the Shifter moved through the multiverse bringing
incredibly good displays of lights, moving trees and 'jupiter
bushes' of primal energy which everyone did their best to
avoid.
Then came a massive throbbing from what seemed the
core of the planet's being. The sun began to sing a wild song
that sent out ripples of music, visible in the air they breathed.
The mere act of breathing caused them to absorb some of
the notes until at last virtually every living creature on the
planet was adding its song to the complex harmonies and
the sky was full of planets - planet after planet stretching
into infinity, sun into sun folding one into another, larger
and larger and at the same time smaller and smaller. They
watched a vast stretch of green-white curd curl around a
comer and disappear. The Doctor began cheering, his arms
around Amy. He came close to kissing the Team Captain
because he recognised the tentacle for what it was.
'We've made it,' he said. 'We're in the Second Aether.
That's Squid Mammy's Spill and - look!' He danced along
the pavilion's deck, pointing. From out of the green-white
tentacle emerged a tidy little steamboat, her paddles churning
against the splashing colour, her captain in his wheelhouse
booming out a song:
We're Rolling, Rolling, to the Roogalator Rhumba,
We're dancing to the doom of the dumble dram Samba!
How's the music doing down there, Mr Cappybera.
Fill up the converters and let's boogy with the thunder.