Fat Charlie's mouth was suddenly very dry. He hoped it was the desert air, and sipped his bottled water.
"Hang on. Why the desert?" asked Fat Charlie.
"No birds. Remember?"
"So what are those?" He pointed. At first they looked tiny, and then you realized that they were simply very high: they were circling, and wobbling on the wing.
"Vultures," said Spider. "They don't attack living things."
"Right. And pigeons are scared of people," said Fat Charlie. The dots in the sky circled lower, and the birds appeared to grow as they descended.
Spider said, "Point taken." Then, "Shit."
They weren't alone. Someone was watching them on a distant dune. A casual observer might have mistaken the figure for a scarecrow.
Fat Charlie shouted, "Go away!" His voice was swallowed by the sand. "I take it all back. We don't have a deal! Leave us alone!"
A flutter of overcoat on the hot wind, and the dune was now deserted.
Fat Charlie said, "She went away. Who would have thought it was going to be that simple?"
Spider touched his shoulder, and pointed. Now the woman in the brown overcoat was standing on the nearest ridge of sand, so close that Fat Charlie could see the glassy blacks of her eyes.
The vultures were raggedy black shadows, and then they landed: their na**d mauve necks and scalps - featherless because that's so much easier when you're putting your head into rotting carcasses - extended as they stared shortsightedly at the brothers, as if wondering whether to wait until the two men died or if they should do something to hurry the process along.
Spider said, "What else was there in the deal?"
"Um?"
"Was there anything else? Did she give you something to seal the bargain? Sometimes things like this involve a trade."
The vultures were edging forward, a step at a time, closing their ranks, tightening the circle. There were more black slashes in the sky, growing and wobbling toward them. Spider's hand closed around Fat Charlie's hand.
"Close your eyes."
The cold hit Fat Charlie like a punch to the gut. He took a deep breath and felt like someone had iced his lungs. He coughed and coughed while the wind howled like a great beast.
He opened his eyes. "Can I ask where we are this time?"
"Antarctica," said Spider. He zipped up the front of his leather jacket, and did not seem to mind the cold. "It's a bit chilly, I'm afraid."
"Don't you have any middle gears? Straight from desert to ice field."
"No birds here," said Spider.
"Wouldn't it be easier to just to go and sit inside a building that's nice and bird-free? We could have lunch."
Spider said, "Right. Now you're complaining, just because it's a little bit nippy."
"It's not a little bit nippy. It's fifty below. And anyway, look."
Fat Charlie pointed at the sky. A pale squiggle, like a miniature letter m chalked onto the sky, hung unmoving in the cold air. "Albatross," he said.
"Frigate," said Spider.
"Pardon?"
"It's not an albatross. It's a frigate. He probably hasn't even noticed us."
"Possibly not," admitted Fat Charlie. "But they have."
Spider turned, and said something else that sounded a lot like "frigate." There may not have been a million penguins waddling and slipping and belly-sliding toward the brothers, but it certainly looked that way. As a general rule, the only things properly terrified by the approach of penguins tend to be small fish, but when the numbers get large enough-
Fat Charlie reached out without being told, and he held Spider's hand. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he was somewhere warmer, although opening his eyes made no difference to what he saw. Everything was the color of night. "Have I gone blind?"
"We're in a disused coal mine," said Spider. "I saw a photo of this place in a magazine a few years back. Unless there are flocks of sightless finches who have evolved to take advantage of the darkness and eat coal chips, we're probably fine."
"That's a joke, isn't it? About the sightless finches?"
"More or less."
Fat Charlie sighed, and the sigh echoed through the underground cavern. "You know," he said, "If you'd just gone away, if you'd left my house when I asked you to, we'd not be in this mess."
"That isn't very helpful."
"It wasn't meant to be. God knows how I'm going to explain all this to Rosie."
Spider cleared his throat. "I don't think you'll have to worry about that."
"Because-?"
"She's broken up with us."
There was a long silence. Then Fat Charlie said, "Of course she has."
"I made a kind of a sort of a mess of that part of things." Spider sounded uncomfortable.
"But what if I explain it to her? I mean, if I tell her that I wasn't you, that you were pretending to be me -"
"I already did. That was when she decided she didn't want to see either of us ever again."
"Me as well?"
" 'Fraid so."
"Look," said Spider's voice in the darkness. "I really never meant to make-. Well, when I came to see you, all I wanted to do was say hello. Not to. Um. I've pretty much completely cocked this all up, haven't I?"
"Are you trying to say sorry?"
Silence. Then, "I guess. Maybe."
More silence. Fat Charles said, "Well, then I'm really sorry I called the Bird Woman to get rid of you." Not seeing Spider while they were talking made it easier, somehow.
"Yeah. Thanks. I just wish I knew how to get rid of her."
"A feather!" said Fat Charlie.
"No, you've lost me."
"You asked if she gave me anything to seal the deal. She did. She gave me a feather."
"Where is it?"
Fat Charlie tried to remember. "I'm not sure. I had it when I woke up in Mrs. Dunwiddy's front room. I didn't have it when I got on the plane. I suppose that Mrs. Dunwiddy must still have it."
The silence that met this was long and dark and unbroken. Fat Charlie began to worry that Spider had gone away, that he had been left abandoned in the darkness under the world. Eventually he said, "Are you still there?"
"Still here."
"That's a relief. If you abandoned me down here I don't know how I'd get out."
"Don't tempt me."
More silence.
Fat Charlie said, "What country are we in?"
"Poland, I think. Like I said, I saw a picture of it. Only they had the lights on in the photo."