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The Esca had had enough. Oort had told her not to, but not using her voice to its full potential was just too much work. Mira’s voice poured warmly out of the tall blue anglerfish-flamingo mash-up: “This . . . is part of it, boys. We need to see who you are. You can’t fool the Frockade. You can’t lie to spores. The useful goop of the Yüzosh is going to soak into you, learn as much as it can, and rearrange itself into a fetching outfit that will advertis
e your inner self like a giant neon sign. It’s going to put your insides on the outside, spiritually speaking. The Yüz originally used it as an interrogation device. Then a dating aid. Once, an Andvari went in and came out dressed in a tuxedo of screaming faces on fire. Very good for us to know what he was made of, you see? Ah! I know how to explain. Recall the scene in the hit film of summer 1984, Splash, in which Eugene Levy surprises Darryl Hannah on the New York City street and sprays her down with a hose, which reveals her true mermaid nature for all to see. It is that. That is going to happen to you. Your tail will flap very wetly on the concrete and people will take many pictures of your most secret and intimate self. Not bad, right?”
“You’re gonna pump us full of more toxic rot, you mean. I don’t even do dairy,” Oort protested. “I take antibacterial gel with me if I’m going down to the shop for crisps. Gotta keep the girls’ hands clean and all.”
The roadrunner whirled round. Her voice flashed instantly from Mira’s to the creaky leather-and-disapproval voice of Oort’s father: “Omarcik! How many times shall I have to tell you there is no good thing to be had in killing you before the show? Do you know how many species are mucking about down on this town, all possessing of different dietary needs and allergies and stress tolerances? Fifty-seven! To keep halal is nothing to compare! And we’ve not had so much as a batch of bad fish in two hundred dinner rushes of this nature. We have got this sorted, my son. We have got this dialed in. Don’t go swim for an hour after, don’t pick at it, and it rinses right clean in six, seven hours, evet? Is perfectly safe! Sometimes I worry about my boy. No one else has ever made such a problem for me. Look, will it make you feel cozy if I go first?”
“No,” grumbled Oort.
“Absolutely,” said Decibel Jones. “And what’s going to happen to our togs?”
The roadrunner was in full orchestral mode now. She puffed her feathers and shifted hard from Mr. Omar Calis?kan Sr. to Nani of the Blackpool lounge room and crooned:
“Do not make yourself a fret. I am your laundry machine like always, I am not? Now, you just button your eyes on Nani, Mr. Hot of the Shot. Your big Danesh-head always thinks it is more full of things than the rest of the heads around here, but with it, you cannot even make roti that fails to taste like a foot. Watch tight and presto chango, Nani will do Mr. BunnyBugs best good lipstick trick.”
The Esca approached the Frockade, casually sang a few bars of something in her own language, something that felt like it was boxing their ears with unspeakable emotion, something so full of grace and need that Dess almost lurched forward to take the alien in his arms like a crying child, before remembering all that nonsense about infrasounds and feeling very silly indeed.
The seafoam-green surface of the Frockade sagged alarmingly before lurching forward and absorbing the roadrunner so quickly and completely that it pulled in Oort’s and Decibel’s cries of horror as well, leaving them slack-jawed and quiet.
Oort St. Ultraviolet shrugged. There was nothing more to it, he supposed. Once they’d agreed to this madness, why object to the icing on top? He pulled down his threadbare Glampire Planet Tour T-shirt over the waist of his broad-striped linen pajama pants. No matter what the blue bird said, he felt that he’d traveled in top style for the new jet set. Still no dad-belly, even a cough and a groan past forty. It might not be much to be proud of, but it wasn’t nothing, either. Ultraviolet sang his sole contribution as a lyricist to their debut album much more softly than the roadrunner, bracing involuntarily for the big ooze he knew was coming. No antibacterial gel could help him now. He stood on tiptoes in front of the Yüzosh portable toilet, shrugged, and belted one out for the cheap seats:
It’s my own fault
if I’m singing chained to Venus
It’s my own fault
if I miss you every day
It’s my own fault
’cause I didn’t read the Terms of Service
and I loved you anyway
The Frockade seemed to accept his payment of one slightly wobbly a cappella ex–hit single and slurped the musician up without complaint.
“He’s fine.” Decibel Jones puffed out a long-held breath. “He’s fine. Totally alive.”
Everything was suddenly very quiet. The air on this weird Happy Fun World tasted amazingly wholesome. It whipped up his blood like egg whites.
“See you on the flip side,” said Decibel Jones with a smart salute to no one in particular, and gave it his best song off his solo album because it was a good album, dammit, no matter what Mira or Oort or his garbageman or the Guardian had said, and somebody ought to hear it, even if that somebody was a giant green toilet seven thousand light-years from Croydon:
I run on love and glitz and beer
I’m a futuro-grandiose need machine
And up in lights my name appears
I am Prozzymandias, Queen of Queens!
And then Jones was gone too.
24.
Party for Everybody
Decibel Jones stepped alone out of the other end of a rock festival portable toilet and into a cocktail party already in progress.
