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Over dinner—a noxious potato porridge and sandwiches on stale bread—the subject returned to Shiz. Naturally. Brrr learned a good deal more about the Animal Adverse laws enacted during the Wizardic reign. Early on, when professional Animals could still quit their positions and freely cross the borders, Professor Lenx had fled too quickly to liquidate a sizable portfolio held by a Shiz fiduciary house. He assumed the funds had since been co-opted by the Wizard’s financial ministers, but he had no way of knowing.
“I daren’t write to enquire. I don’t care to give my location away, you see. Old-fashioned reticence about money matters, and cautious that way,” said the Boar.
“No one would call you cowardly, old darling,” said Mister Mikko, which sounded like a riposte in a disagreement between them that stretched back years. “A little mustard on your cheese butty? I think so. Let me spread it for you.”
Perhaps it was a thrill of sympathy for Professor Lenx having to endure that particular slur—cowardly!—or maybe Brrr was simply relieved not to be the target of the criticism himself. He found himself saying, “I actually had a profile in Shiz once—of a sort—and of course I am now formally a Namory, by order of Lady Glinda.”
“A Namory! And you didn’t mention it till now. You are too humble, Sir Brrr,” said Professor Lenx. “May I humble you further with another spoonful of pottage?”
“There’s a shortage of certain kinds of labor in the Emerald City these days,” said Brrr. “Domestic work isn’t yet open to Animals again, it seems, but there are other opportunities. The WOO is history, gentlemen. Your old stomping ground, Shiz, has become ringed with factories. I understand Dixxi House to the north of Shiz is begging for a workforce. The Animal Adverse laws are greatly relaxed, and the EC is making all sorts of overtures to exiled Animals.”
“Well, we’re far too old to enter the workforce,” said Mister Mikko.
“And I’m crippled,” said Professor Lenx. “Not to mention that my field was mathematics. I specialized in diluted equations.”
“Did you say deluded equations?” Mister Mikko posed this piously.
“Ha-ha, exceedingly ha. What a robust sense of humor you have. Too bad it isn’t equaled by your sense of history. Or perhaps you taught histrionics, I quite forget, as of course one would tend to.”
As much to smooth over the comedy of professional sniping as for any other reason, Brrr said, “If the EC’s ministers of labor are really interested in wooing back the Animal workforce, they would be smart to free up any funds appropriated from Animals who had to leave under the Wizard’s ‘courtesies.’”
“We didn’t have to leave,” said Mister Mikko. “I did teach history, young Sir Brrr, and I know that much. We could quite as freely have chosen to go to prison, you know. That option was never denied us. So we are considered to have departed of our own volition.”
“You know what I mean,” said the Lion. “The banks could institute an amnesty of sorts. If Animals were permitted again to invest and profit, they might be more likely to lend their shoulders to the wheel of industrial progress. The powers that be should consider this.”
“Well, I wouldn’t trust the current administration any more than I trusted the Wizard of Oz, may he rot in hell and all babies sleep well, thank you very much.” Professor Lenx worked at a bit of rind with his tongue and then spat the mess out of the side of his bristly mouth.
“Tut-tut. And I just swept that dung heap,” said Mister Mikko, and spat in concert.
“Oh, the Scarecrow’s not smart enough to be devious,” said the Lion.
“Stupidity is as dangerous as cleverness,” retorted the Ape.
“More so,” said the Boar.
Brrr looked at the two of them, noting their infirmities, their indignities, their brave courtesies to him. He didn’t like the old codgers, nothing so drastic as that. But if he had been of a certain class of urban Animal, he might have gone to Shiz University himself, once upon a time. He felt a tende
rness at the idea. They might have been his very professors. For a moment he pretended they were, and he was a devoted student who had made good in the world, and was looking after their interests, the old dears, now that they couldn’t manage much for themselves.
“I attended a few lectures now and then,” he told them, playing at the fantasy. Well, attending lectures open to the public, that was true enough. “I once had a private practice trading in small original etchings under glass, the occasional watercolor. I grew to know quite a bit about old paper, and the fugitive qualities of certain pigments…”
“Oh, you don’t say! But how bizarre,” said Mister Mikko. “I don’t suppose you ever came across a Miss Quasimoda? She was a White Ape who taught drawing from life. Quite scandalous.”
“With you involved, I shouldn’t wonder,” intoned Professor Lenx.
“I mean the drawing from life,” huffed Mister Mikko. “The very idea!”
“No, no, I never did,” said Brrr hurriedly. “I don’t remember anyone’s name from that time, except for a headmistress of one of the women’s halls. Someone named…Madame…Madame Morrible.”
The silence could have been scraped with a putty knife.
“She was in cahoots with the Wizard,” said Professor Lenx shortly. “That’s what was said in the SCR, anyway.”
“Of course she was, she and that little tiktok agent of hers. Gramitic.”
“Grommetik.”
“All due respect. I am certain it was Gramatic. Gramitic.”
