“I know, mate, but wot a delightful mess.”
“Jon-Tom’s right,” Weegee admonished him. “Besides, you told me you were going to stay away from thosesuch temptations.”
“Aye, luv, but blimey, a whole case full!”
“Keep an eye on him,” Jon-Tom instructed her. “Mudge has a good heart, but where temptations are concerned he’s weak.”
“Weak? Like ’ell I’m weak. I can resist anythin’ if I put me mind to it.”
“It’s your nose I’m worried about you putting to it.” He tapped the suitcase. “If I left you alone with this for five minutes you’d snort your brains out. Everyone needs to be sharp if we’re going to get out of this.”
“And ’ow might we be goin’ to get out o’ this, your magicship?”
“I want to go home,” said Cautious suddenly. “Back to sane world.”
“So do I. I mean, I want to help the rest of you get home.” What did he want, he asked himself abruptly? Did he even know?
“Hey, I can hear what they two fellas saying up front.” Cautious was leaning against the front wall of the truck.
“Impossible,” Jon-Tom said. Then it occurred to him he was arguing with a raccoon, a creature who could hear a beetle crossing a dead leaf thirty feet away in the middle of a forest. Trying not to make any noise, he and the two otters clambered forward to stand close to their masked companion. They waited silently, hardly daring to breathe while he listened.
Finally Jon-Tom couldn’t stand it anymore. “What are they saying?”
“They laughing a lot. Talking about what they going to do when they get to a place called Vegas.”
“Vegas? Las Vegas? I thought they said they were going to Chicago.”
“Won’t you ever learn anythin’ about life, mate?” Mudge shook his head in the dim light. “Why should they tell us where they’re ’eadin’?”
It made sense, Jon-Tom mused. Logical destination, empty interstates, plenty of loose cash for making big deals, and people visiting from all over.
“Quiet,” said Cautious. After a minute, “They talking ’bout us now.”
“Us? You mean, the rest of you?”
“Yeah. they going to sell us. To zoo or something like whatever that be. Sure they can get lot of money for us.”
A pair of five-foot-tall otters, an equally big raccoon and a parrot that could swear a blue streak certainly would tempt any zoo or circus director, Jon-Tom thought.
“What about me? Are they saying what they’re going to do with me?” He could see Cautious’s eyes glint in the darkness.
“They ain’t going to sell you. Ain’t going to let you go, neither.”
“I thought as much.” That’s why they hadn’t worried about the possibility of him finding their cocaine shipment. If by some miracle or an otter he stumbled across it, he wouldn’t live long enough to tell anyone about it. They’d dump him along some lonely stretch of desert road, between Flagstaff and Las Vegas would be a likely place, and the buzzards would do their autopsy long before the Highway Patrol.
“We’ve got to break out of here. Even if they decide to let me go I’m damned if I’ll see my friends sold to some rotten sideshow.”
He could visualize Mudge and Weegee stripped of their clothing, put on display in a glass cage in a Vegas casino, poked and probed by double-domed researchers and callous zoologists. See the amazing talking otters! See the giant talking raccoon!
On the other hand, if he didn’t get lonely for their own kind, Mudge might do rather well living in the lap of luxury surrounded by gambling and liquor. Best not to mention such a possibility to his impressionable and occasionally mentally erratic friend. Certainly Weegee wouldn’t opt for such a life.
Would she?
An answer to his unasked question took the form of soft sniffling from nearby. “Mudge, I don’t like this world. I want to go home.”
“So do I, luv, so do I. Mate, you’ve got to do somethin’.”
With these confessions in hand he felt better about his chosen course of action.
“Mudge, they think they’ve locked our weapons away from us. Have they?”
The otter bent over the steel footlocker. “Give me three minutes, mate.”
Actually Mudge was wrong. He needed four. Once they were rearmed Jon-Tom ordered everyone to move to the back of the truck.
“That way those guys up front won’t hear me spellsinging.”
“Spellsinging, fagh!” Kamaulk rocked back and forth atop a dresser. “Don’t expect us to believe in that, har. That’s a feeble joke you’ve been fooling people with all along.”
“Believe in what you want to believe in, Kamaulk. The rest of us are getting out of here.”
“Think you that? Well, on the off chance you may be right…” he turned and started hollering toward the driver’s compartment. “Hey you humans up front! Your captives are preparing to—mmmpff!”
Using a couch for a trampoline Cautious had landed on the parrot in a single bound. Mudge gave the raccoon a hand subduing the spitting, snapping parrot. Kamaulk’s intent was clear enough: he’d hoped to secure his own freedom by spoiling their attempt to escape. Jon-Tom almost felt sorry for the bird. He had no idea what kind of world he’d stumbled into. Much of the furniture was secured with rope and they soon had the pirate bound and gagged to a chair.
“That takes care o’ ’im.” Mudge turned to look grimly up at Jon-Tom. “Now let’s take care o’ us, mate. If you can.”
“Everybody keep close together. I’m not sure what’s going to happen if this works.” As they crowded tight against his legs he let his fingers fall across the suar’s strings, wishing desperately it was his trusty duar instead. One good solid spellsong. That’s all he needed from his store-bought instrument. Just one hefty spellsong.
