"Thanks mate," Chas said to the mouse as he ran easily along the corridors of Mr Cuckoo's secret base. "So, he thinks there's nothing we can do, does he? We'll show him!"
The mouse squeaked in agreement, and waving a paw, indicated a turning. They passed through a very ordinary door indeed and suddenly they were out and into the ground floor of what looked like an art gallery.
Chas turned to look at the door behind him. It was painted blue with a brass door knocker, which was engraved with cogwheels. It was also completely surrounded by a gilt picture frame.
A man dressed all in black with a silly little beard and holding a champagne flute stared at him. Beside him was a woman with peacock's feathers in her hair and an air of terminal boredom.
"'Scuse me," said Chas to them. "Is this the way to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party?"
The man and woman turned quickly on their heels and studiously admired the painting behind them of a giant light switch. Chas grinned, and shut the door.
They found Spud down the road from the gallery. He was dressed in a black and white mime's costume, with the full white face paint. Spud looked like he was yelling something, and was pounding on an invisible wall in front of him. Up against the wall a few feet away was a little black box that looked like a transistor radio. A floppy black beret with a few coins in it lay on the path.
Spud waved frantically when he saw Chas, his mouth moving like he was talking a mile a minute. He kept pounding on the invisible wall but not a sound could be heard from him. Chas looked at the scene, thought a minute and walked over to the transistor radio, giving it a hefty kick.
The radio bounced off the wall and shattered, spilling wires and electronic bits all over the ground.
"... the hell out of here!!" Spud yelled, then yelped as his fist met no resistance, and he fell forward.
He staggered a few steps, and caught himself.
"That," he said, looking at Chas, "was truly horrible."
A passer-by, a woman with long hair, and a white flower tucked behind one ear looked at them curiously.
"I'm not a fucking mime!" Spud yelled after her, as she hurried down the corridor. He pulled up the edges of the black polo neck he was wearing, and tried to wipe the thick greasepaint off his face. It didn't move a fraction of an inch.
"Come on," said Chas, "we don't have a lot of time. Nics is still in there, and there's about two hours left before Cuckoo's plan kills all life on Earth."
"Right," said Spud, striding off down the tunnel, then stopping. "Um... where exactly?"
"Follow me," said Chas.
As they walked hurriedly back to the art gallery, Chas filled Spud in on the situation. The mouse still sat in Chas' breast pocket, front legs over the edge of it, looking out.
"Woah," said Spud. "So he's going to destroy all life on earth and replace it with his horrible clockwork things?"
"Yup."
"And we've no idea how exactly this plan is going to happen, only that there's a machine with a big red button that talks to you involved?"
"Nope, and yup. Except the machine talks, not the big red button."
Spud stopped suddenly and looked all around. They were on a relatively quiet street, with cabs and the occasional pedestrian walking past.
"What the hell are you doing?!" snapped Chas. "Nics is still in there, remember?"
"I'm looking for the fucking film cameras!" Spud yelled back. "This is just too fucked up to be anything other than a sick joke!"
"Hey, you're the secret agent!" Chas retorted. "You should be used to this sort of shit!"
"Not me, not Mrs. Molloy's little boy - I was way low down in the secret agent business. Hell, they couldn't even trust me to tie my own bloody shoelaces!"
"And now the truth comes out," hissed Chas, fuming.
"I think we should cut our losses and run," said Spud. "Get in touch with the Agency, they'll know what to do."
Chas stared at him for one long moment, then quick as a flash grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him up against the crumbling brickwork of an old wall.
"You listen to me, you miserable piece of shit, and you listen good. Nics is still in there, and I'm not leaving her. And you're going to help me, understand?"
The mouse squeaked in a worried tone. Spud nodded weakly, and Chas let him go.
A man walking a rat on the end of a lead gave them both a funny look.
"What?" Chas challenged him. "You didn't know that it was national beat up a mime day today?"
From behind him, Spud snorted and burst out laughing. Chas looked at him incredulously for a moment, then he too started to snigger.
"Come on," said Spud, starting to walk down the road again. "Time's a wasting..."
Chas' long legs only took a stride or two to catch up with him.
"Dude, I can't believe it though," said Spud. "You're girlfriend's an android!"
And he reached out one fist and punched Chas in a friendly way on his cast.
The cast broke neatly in two and fell onto the pavement. So did the mother-of-pearl disk, but Chas grabbed it as quickly as he could, looking at it anxiously for any signs of damage. There were none, he quickly stuffed it into his jeans pocket.
Spud picked up the two halves of the cast and looked at them. Inside one half was the word "REMEMBER", inside the second was the word "APRIL".
"Remember April," he said. "What the hell does that all mean?"
"Figure it out later," said Chas, scratching the back of his hand with an expression of bliss on his face. "God, that feels good!"
The art gallery was still open, and still full of pretentious gits. Chas and Spud walked quickly through the main door to find themselves in the midst of a new show.
Spud shot dirty looks at the members of the art critic scene who insisted on stopping him to ask if he was part of some new performance art piece. Unfortunately, the makeup didn't help to make this meaning clear.
One of the men was smoking. "Scuse me, mate," Spud asked him. "You got a lighter I can borrow?"
The critics, like a flock of blackbirds took their opportunity to swarm around him, firing so many questions that he never heard the man's reply.
"Look, I'm a bit busy now," he told them. "The world's going to end, so if you'll just excuse me..."
He ran after Chas, ignoring the murmurs of "simply wonderful", "outstandingly new", "such a charming post-modern take on the whole traditional oeuvre of the street performer".
Chas stood in front of the door in the picture frame, hands on the door handle, shaking it.
"It's locked tight," he said.
"Kick it in," suggested Spud. So Chas tried. No joy. Spud glanced up and down the section of gallery. People were watching them with the expression of critics judging a new piece of performance art.
"Together then," Spud said. "On three."
The two boys took several steps backwards and were about to charge the door when a frantic squeaking came from the mouse in Chas' breast pocket.
Chas looked down.
"Sorry, mate, here," and he offered the mouse a hand down to the ground.
The mouse retreated to a safe distance.
"Ready?" asked Spud. "One... two... three..."
And with a roar the two men charged the door, only to bounce off it in a rather painful manner. The mouse winced, and covered its eye with its paws. The door remained as it was, undented, and maybe even a little bit smug.
"Fuck," said Spud. "Guess that's not going to work."
Chas ignored him, and went back to pounding on the door until a bouncer came up and politely but firmly ejected them both.
They landed in the gutter outside the art gallery, the mouse running along to squeak at them urgently.
"I know, I know," Chas told it as he picked himself and the mouse up. The mouse settled back into his pocket.
"You know," mumbled Spud, his face still down in the gutter. "I don't like this modern art stuff."
He raised his head up.
"I mean, what's the point of it? I'm pretty sure I saw a photo of paint drying in there. How pointless is that?"
He trailed off as he spotted a pair of feet standing in front of his face. Normal sized feet, but clad in the most outlandish pair of bright red thigh high platform boots with silver buckles. Spud looked up to see the owner of said boots, and looked into the face of a woman.
Perhaps it would be more precise to say he looked into the mask that was being worn by a woman. It was made out of duck feathers. She also wore a very tight dress that was made out of an ice-white fabric that glowed.
She held out one hand to him. It had a fingerless glove on it, of the sort you'd wear in winter, made of unravelling pink wool.
"You're late," she told him as she helped him to his feet. "The director's fit to be tied, and you're on in five minutes."
"What? Where? What?" Spud gaped at her.
She handed him a double sized banana made out of Styrofoam and painted in fluorescent paint.
"Come on!" she told him, urgently, and strode off without looking to see if they were following. She had a very attractive walk.
Spud looked at Chas, who shrugged.
"Might as well," Chas said. His brow was furrowed, as if he was trying to remember something.
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