Fantastic Metropolis

If I gallop straight at the savages and trample a few to death he informed the listeners it will avail us nothing now. There’s no denying they deserve a good trampling.

I don’t care said Miss delamere what you say I’m not going back to the moon without the answer. Heligola is salted for vampire ants this was settled. The perceptible ought to be cut down and burned.

30

After a couple of torpid hours two or three of the sleeping monsters revived. When four million prairie elves suddenly reappeared the monsters hastily drove off in huge pickup trucks speeding towards Heligola the sanguinary heart of this decimated world.

Colly whom we have not seen since page 27 dropped to the ground and hopped away.

The rusty ironclad sank lower and lower in the blood red sky.

Alarmed by the columns of fetid smoke coming from the domes and spires of the citadel Ocnus held his breath stood upright and broke into a sustained walk. His long legged strides took them rapidly over the uneven landscape—stepping around the hills of bricks pig nettles and bhang thistles—Boppy now fatigued in fatigues regretted his prodigious girth as he was tossed about. A school of soot gnats offered to spot Iffy and Zari. Happily they were flung lightly to the rails on either side of the tapering bookshelves. When Ocnus suddenly stopped they could hear the screaming heads impaled on golden stakes.

Heligola was not always a metropolis of never ending wickedness said Boppy unsteadily. It derives its name from the very small pewter roses found near by.

Just then a voice hailed the walking stick.

31

Who’s there? a voice shouted. Death is that you? Move on quit follerin’ me now.

There’s some one in a sedan chair running this way exclaimed Boppy it must be God.

Boppy paid no attention to reality he believed God. Hallo! he cried. God is that you?

It was.

God soon reached the town. Monkeys gaping in the hollow walls tossed rotten eggs at his head.

Undisturbed pretending to be the epitome God calmly walks the deserted streets warmed by winter rains a Baron Munchausen by proxy looking for you. The hounds chained up in the slave market said nothing. Behind hoarded up windows lazzaroni pore over their humble luxuries.

The united characters have incorrect maps of the citadel and the beards fool no one they are pointed out by scorpions covered in chains by 11,000 bellowing mummers seated on a droski by pinching blue hands and dumped into a maze of high green hedges. Boppy landed on his chin amid the dry leaves where white pigeons coo the girls were beginning to wish they had brought more smiles. Ocnus is lying very still on the ground. It seems his back was broken in the fall and he can’t breathe. They were obliged to go on it was boggy ocnus was no more.