The Peacock Cloak by Chris Beckett Read Free Book Online

further. You go down there if you want to. I’ve got my heart’s desire, mate, I’m holding it now. I’ll wait for you up here.”
    Shoe shrugged and climbed down the narrow stairs. At their foot, the equivalent of two storeys down, he reached a small but pleasantly proportioned room, its walls and ceilings decorated with a fine tracery of stone in an abstract pattern vaguely suggestive of vines and seashells. In the middle of the room, and filling up a good proportion of its floor area, was a circular pool of clear still water. On the far side of the pool was a stone seat like a throne. Cubes in three of the four corners of the room gave out gentle pinkish light. The fourth cube had died.
    Suddenly aware of how weary he was, of how long a journey his life so far had been, and how long it might still be, Shoe felt an overwhelming desire to go and sit in that stone seat and rest. Never mind Pennyworth waiting up there with diamonds shoved up his rectum and diamonds like a yoke round his neck.
    “More fool him,” muttered Shoe. “He can wait.”

    “Shoe! Shoe! ”
    The voice came at first from far away and he didn’t take much notice of it, just noted it, and frowned slightly, and let his thoughts return, like fish released back into a stream, to the silent and peaceful chambers where they had been so happily engrossed.
    “ Shoe! Shoe! ”
    This time, annoyingly, the voice was close by, coming not from some remote place but from just across the small space where he was sitting.
    “Hey Shoe! What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”
    With a start, Shoe looked up and remembered where he was. He saw fat Pennyworth standing in the doorway of the room, still laden with his heaped box of stones and his ridiculous octopus arms. Sweat was running down the bald man’s face, which was a caricature of outrage and incredulity.
    “ What are you bloody doing? ” shouted Pennyworth, too angry to remember his unease about disturbing the echoey silence. “I’ve been up there all this time, trying so hard not to crap these diamonds out again that I’ve got a cramp up my butt, and you’ve not found anything at all. You’re not even looking for anything.”
    “Oh, yeah, sorry,” said Shoe, indifferently. “I didn’t notice the time passing.”
    “You didn’t notice the… I don’t believe I’m hearing this! We’re stuck in the middle of a desert on some godforsaken planet, in case you’d forgotten, and here you are sitting around like… like some old guy in a movie relaxing on his veranda in the sun. I could hit you, Shoe, do you know that? We want to get away from here remember? We’re on an alien planet!”
    Shoe reluctantly stood up.
    “You should try sitting here,” he said, “It…”
    “I haven’t got time for a sit down,” interrupted Pennyworth (for whom, it must be admitted, sitting down had every reason to be a particularly unappealing idea).
    He eyed the water. “Might just wash my hands though. They’re a bit shitty.”
    “Don’t you dare touch that water,” snapped Shoe.
    Pennyworth frowned.
    “Why shouldn’t…?” He shrugged. “Oh suit yourself. If you want to act all weird, be my guest. But let’s get going to that well.”

    “So what were you looking at anyway?” asked Pennyworth, after he had completed the painful ascent from the room with the pool and they were making their way back along the corridor towards the landing.
    “I sat in the chair and I looked at the water, and… It was just peaceful. It was like I…”
    They were approaching the room full of treasure and Pennyworth interrupted him.
    “You going to pick up a box?”
    “I guess.”
    Shoe went into the room and absently tossed a few extra diamonds into one of the boxes to top it up.
    “I was like I remembered something,” he mused, “like I remembered something really obvious which I keep forgetting. I remembered… Well, it’s hard to explain but I remembered that everything is…”
    “Tell you