Jeff Noon - Automated Alice

Celia, the Automated Alice, however, was not there: but Alice didn't even have a second to think about that, because straight away Stripey the Zebraman was shouting out (in a black-and-white voice), "Pablo, the police are approaching at a rate of knots on the starboard bow!"

"And they're in their whirlybird!" added Ramshackle.

"It's not the police," squeaked Miss Computermite, "it's Mrs Minus!" (At which news, Long Distance Davis immediately vanished into the shell of his hat; which at least made a little more room in the shed!)

"All hands on deck!" shouted Pablo, and Alice really did think she was on a ship for a moment, especially when Pablo started to pull upon the series of levers which lifted the garden shed onto its rickety-chickeny legs. "Our destination, Alice?" he called out, taking over the wheel.

"To my Great Aunt Ermintrude's home in Didsbury!" replied Alice.

"I'm not sure if I know the way," said Pablo.

"Oh dear," said Alice, "neither do I."

"If I may make a logical suggestion," said Miss Computermite, "perhaps we should follow that green-and-yellow parrot; he seems to know the way."

"Full steam ahead!" bellowed Pablo and off the shed lurched at a frightening pace, along the road.

"Whippoorwill!" cried Alice, and rushed to the shed's front window to watch the parrot's colourfully flashing flight. "What time is it, Captain Ramshackle?" she asked (whilst hardly daring to ask!).

The Badgerman consulted his wrist-clock. "It's just gone almost exactly, not quite nearly, half-past one."

"Thirty minutes left!" worked out Alice. "I do hope we get there in time!"

But they were making a tremendous pace by now; the garden shed had already carried them along Oxford Road. (You should have seen how it leapt over the houses!) Now it was transporting them down Wilmslow Road towards Didsbury, and what a marvellous transport a walking, running, hopping, skipping and jumping garden shed can make; how easily it can scamper over the driving droves of auto-horses! Miss Computermite had climbed out of the window (quite an easy task when you have six legs!); she was now perched on the shed's roof, shouting out directions from there, and keeping her eyes on stalks for the flutterings of the distant parrot. Stripey the Zebraman was stationed at the back window of the shed; his job was to keep a look out for Mrs Minus's automated whirlybird. ("She's catching up with us, Pablo!" was Stripey's incessant cry. "Faster! Faster!") Pablo was at the steering wheel, trying his best to urge the shed forwards. Long Distance Davis was still firmly curled into his shell-hat (which was rolling around the shed's floor like a corkscrewed bowling ball, and threatening at any minute to fall out!). Alice was trying her best to be useful, but Captain Ramshackle wasn't trying to be useful at all! Instead, he was dancing around excitedly whilst chanting out yet another verse of his little song:

"Oh garden sheds may play the fool

Upon the snakes of big;

But all I want's the crooked rule

That makes a jigsaw jig."

But somehow or other the six strange travellers managed to stay on board and to work together in a rather slipshod shipshape fashion. (Or should I say a slipshod shedshape fashion?) Whatever, shipshape or shedshape, the intrepid half-a-dozen made a pretty pace. Through Rusholme they rushed home; through Fallowfield they ploughed a fallow and through Withington they (almost) withered; until, finally, Didsbury and its sprawling cemetery were in their sights. The place where Manchester buried its dead. Alice looked down from the garden shed's tottering heights, as she tried to locate her Great Aunt's house. The cemetery looked a lot sprawlier than Alice remembered it, but she supposed to herself (correctly of course) that many many more people must have died since she was last here in 1860. Now she spotted Whippoorwill landing on the broken-down roof of an old, decrepit house. "That can't be right!" said Alice. "Great Aunt Ermintrude would never let her house get into such an untidy state!" But the house certainly seemed to be in the right place, as far as Alice could remember: it was just that the cemetery had grown so much in the intervening years that it had actually grown all around the old house!

"Put me down here, Pablo!" Alice said to the shed's pilot.

"I don't think I've got any choice," answered Pablo.

"What do you mean?" asked Alice.

"Whirlybird gaining on the stern, Pablo!" shouted Stripey the Zebraman. "Her cannon is loaded!"

"I think we're about to be fired at!" cried Pablo. "Nobody panic!"

But of course, everybody aboard did panic, especially when they heard the cannon-ball whizzing through the air towards them! The cannon-ball hit the left leg of the shed! The leg crumpled up like a roasted chicken leg that has been kept too long in the oven, and then the whole world keeled over to one side and crashed to the ground!

Everybody tumbled out of the fallen shed into the graveyard. The garden shed was splintered into a thousand pieces and Pablo Ogden was shaking an angry fist at the hovering whirlybird. "How dare you!" he cursed at Mrs Minus, who was gazing down calmly from the safety of the whirlybird; the Snakewoman was smiling at him with her evil little fangs. "I'll get you for this destruction!" Pablo shouted.

"I don't care for you," responded Mrs Minus. "It's Alice I want."

But Alice didn"t want to be wanted by Mrs Minus; all that Alice wanted was to reach the house of her Great Aunt in time for her journey to the past. All around her were jutting gravestones and sculptured angels. The old house was lying in the midst of all these memorials and it looked as dead as a doornail. Why, even the doornails in its rotting door looked as dead as doornails!

Alice looked around quickly to see that all of her fellow shed-travellers were alive and well. Miss Computermite had reduced herself to her former size in order to scurry into the nearest crevice; Long Distance Davis had become a shiny snail slithering along a gravestone's edge; Stripey the Zebraman had turned into a mere play of shadow and light amongst the tombs; Captain Ramshackle was already burrowing a deep sett into the cemetery's soil; Pablo Ogden was still cursing at Mrs Minus on the whirlybird as it lowered itself to the ground.

All amongst the gravestones the policedogmen were gathering in their packs, but they were keeping their distance, and Alice couldn't work out why. Inspector Jack Russell stepped forwards from the pack of dogs, but he merely looked at Alice along the sights of his long snout; he didn't even try to arrest her. Alice was puzzled by this uncommon behaviour, but then she heard Whippoorwill squawking from the garden of the house, and Alice rushed forwards to greet him. It wasn't really a garden of course, it was just an extension of the cemetery. The parrot was perched upon a crumbling gravestone set directly in front of the house. Alice expected Whippoorwill to deliver yet another riddle, but no such thing happened. Alice saw that he had a little something lodged in his beak, which forbade him to make even a single squawk.

It was a jigsaw piece. Alice realized that this jigsaw piece was Whippoorwill's last and final riddle. She pulled it loose, and saw that it was a crooked picture of a blur of green-and-yellow feathers. Alice added it deftly to the others in her pinafore pocket, and it was only then that she noticed the names engraved upon the gravestone that Whippoorwill was perched upon:

Ermintrude and Mortimer Peabody;

Not dead, only radishing.

Indeed, there was a rash of radishes growing all around the grave. Alice suddenly remembered Professor Chrowdingler's ruling that she had to eat some radishes backwards in order to return to the past. But how do you eat a radish backwards? Alice pulled up a knotted specimen by the leaves, and then bent double in order to thrust her face through her legs, backwards, and then she bit into the root. Naughty Whippoorwill, when offered some radish, mimicked her to do the same. Alice laughed, to see such a backwards parrot!