The wagon emerged from the ramp’s entrance into the
open air. Here, bright streaming sunlight replaced the tunnel’s bluish crystal
glow, and the smell of sea air, spiced by a thousand flavours of food, perfume,
lucrative endeavour and a wide variety of sins, flooded their nostrils. The
crowd from the ramp rapidly became diluted by a rich suffusion of fishwives and
self-proclaiming livewires. The din buffeted them like a heavy surf, seething
around them and even getting up their trousers, showering them with human
voices along with the cries of organic animals and birds and the honks, floots
and djerls of a multitude of machines and micro-corporations
“It’s the bloody parade,” screamed the Transport
Gwyneth from above the passengers, her voice crackling and
spiting with such invective
that, for a moment, it temporarily overrode all the other noise. Skiff
looked up, meaning to smile and offer friendship, but he found her in the act
of smacking her own broad-gauged knees with such huge angry and forceful hands
that he looked away again, finding it hard to feel sympathetic. Instead he
decided to stand on the seat and get a better view
“Good Berremoth,” he shouted almost immediately, as he
first saw the Area Sales Manager’s hooray chariot off to his right and still
some distance away. “There’s something like a simulated coriolus shell about to
pass by. It’s borne on the shoulders of a couple of dozen people, not on
wheels.”
Anthem stood up now to watch as the bearers staggered
along, ploughing through a sea of lumpy fishwives who stumbled on beside
them, getting in the way and rocking the vehicle with their vulgar manners and
fat enthusiasm.
Cats and
parakeets got in the way too, as did various species of tramping mammals,
roform buffalo, miniature gazelle and red lump-gatherers, all mingling with the
legs of spectator and marcher alike, bellowing, whistling and telling jokes,
spitting on the road even and pumping up the energy in any other way they could
think of.
And, as
Skiff would have expected down here in the commercial district, far below the
quiet incense of the monasteries, thousands of children had joined the fun too.
They ran excitedly between the fishwives' dumpy legs, attracted by the vending
fervour, and feeding off the powerful emanations of empathy steaming from these
sales-orientated folk.
Many of the
marchers had now started to run off the road to investigate the Transport Gwyneth’s
wagon and its team of puller men, who stood out for their obvious superior
quality and size. Kids and adults alike giggled and poked at the watermelon
arms, which bulged as if recently filled with muscle fluid, and cooed at the
ocean rollers which rippled over dinner table sized backs. They felt the girth
of the thighs with loud cries of discovery, amazed by those cousins to grand
pianos, which themselves vibrated in happy response like a thousand calls to
prayer.
“I love the hats, Anthem,” Skiff shouted above the
din, warming rapidly to the people’s overt enthusiasm. He pulled a face at a
simpering lady who wore a huge device on her head shaped like a money till and
which actually spat coins out of its several open drawers. “I must buy you one
for sure, Anthy, a battleship trumping hat maybe. Or a submarine strolling
beret?”
“Skiff,” Anthem said, tossing her blue hair with the
imperious gesture she seemed to have adopted more and more. “Skiff, these are
hat-people pure and simple. On any excuse, they dress in colourful rags and empathy hats. Sometimes these are
literally the only clothes they possess too. But you can see how they spend
every last penny they earn on their hats. They are incredibly complex
milliners. Some of the hats I’ve seen are quite serviceable vending machines.
And of course, each hat plays its owner's personalised symphonic and rap
compositions."
"It
really is a wonderful exposition of commercial spirit." Skiff now felt
almost totally overcome by the empathy overload himself, as if floating on a
sea of liquid vending fervour. “I wonder we couldn’t recruit some of this
obvious talent to zap our operation along.”
"Sir! how fortunate you could
be here,” a fishwife called to Skiff, detaching herself from the general throng
and climbing up onto the wagon to do so. “I have the very thing you will be
asking for. It's the ultimate insurance policy. You can make your first
insurance premium right now. It’s that easy!"
"What will it insure?"
asked Skiff, feeling that an insurance policy would undoubtedly be the very
thing.
"The insured item could even be
an anchor if you want.” Clearly market research orientated, she seemed to know
who he was and that he came from a battleship. “Something to secure a
dreadnought battleship." The fishwife beamed encouragingly, so delighted
to be able to help.
Other marchers now gathered around
the wagon, congratulating him on the purchase he had not yet made. He felt very
proud and euphoric.
As the ecstatic buying frenzy
overwhelmed him, he entered a state of almost superhuman receptivity. Then, he
looked to his right again and realised that the hooray chariot was about to
stagger past. The Area Sales Manager rode the
chariot, a sort of mother of pearl coriolus shell, side-saddle, as if it were a
horse or a cavalry spider. And by dear Berremoth, was she all woman! On her
head she wore a crown of achievement, which rotated slowly, it's multichannel
broadcasts delighting the crowd around her. Like a beacon, she seemed to
actually illuminate the whole parade, almost as if she was the mother of the
coriolus shell itself.
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