The Ill-mannered Door (humorous sci-fi)

13: The Fuzz

I walked rather hurriedly up a cobblestone street in front of Derek, primarily because he had actually kneed me in the behind at least twice in his efforts to quickly extricate us from the market crowds. The crowds had switched to suspicious muttering by then, and that is, after all, when things get especially dangerous.

"That was completely uncalled for," he said from close behind me. "I can't believe you did that."

"Me? But, you just kneed me in the behind!"

"Yes, and I'll do it again if you don't move it along."

"But I don't even know where I'm going," I protested.

"You're coming with me to Richmond," he said.

"But I don't even speak Cantonese! I mean, I dabble a bit in Mandarin, but they're hardly the same thing," I assured him, slowing to a halt.

"Well, I suppose you can try learning it then, eh?" Derek said in a rather cheeky tone as he kneed me back into motion.

The good news in all of this was that I might not speak Cantonese, but I did very much enjoy Chinese food, and good Chinese food wasn't easy to come by back where I was from. Probably even harder to find here, I thought, as we reached a dingy hovel, complete with a nondescript door that was bolted shut and locked with, of all things, a new combination lock.

Derek held the lock in one hand and, after looking up at the sky for a few moments with a puzzled frown, began to turn the numbered dial on the lock's face.

As I stood there, rubbing my aching behind, I began to mumble, "13... 28..."

He gave me a dirty look and then started over on the lock.

"19... 4..."

"Do you mind?" he said and then began again.

"7..."

He then spun around and suggestively raised a knee in my direction and, considering that we were facing one another, I quickly put my knees together and shut my yap, as it were.

Derek turned back to the lock and tried a few more sequences of numbers unsuccessfully before standing back to kick at the lock a few times screaming, "Gaaaaaaaaahhhh!"

"Problem?" I asked, crouching slightly with my legs held firmly together.

"Yes! You!" he shouted, before trying to kick at the lock again but only managed to throw himself off balance and then fell with a plop into a mud puddle near the doorway. It didn't help to cool him off, I'm afraid.

"This is all your fault!" he shouted as he rose dripping from the puddle to wave an angry finger before my nose.

In staring at it, I wondered if he had intentionally chosen that particular finger. I had heard somewhere that that gesture was affectionately known as the Hawaiian good luck sign, but given the look on his face, I was reasonably sure that it wasn't good luck that Derek was wishing upon me.

"Thanks to you, I can't remember the combination now!"

"Oh, yes, well, that..." I stammered with my hands now protectively covering my privates.

He ignored me and went on with his tirade, "I hope you're happy with yourself! We're stuck here now!"

"Stuck here?" I asked rather lamely.

"Yes! The door we need to go through to get to Richmond, eh? Remember that?" he said, stepping closer.

I closed my mouth and quietly stared at him, figuring it might be better not to speak. Not to mention there was more than a bit of spittle flying from Derek at that moment.

"Well, it's in there!" he shouted as he pointed toward the locked door, a fine mist settling on my face. Yes, good call on the closed mouth.

I took a carefully measured step back and, after a quick wipe, I said, "Oh, terribly sorry, I suppose I interfered with your ability to leg it in a most difficult circumstance?"

"I hope you know that they don't have good tea here," he said with a scowl, "though it will be piping hot after tomorrow, eh?"

I shuddered when the realization of his words slapped me across the face along with a fresh spray. If we did stop the explosion, would I be dooming myself to live out the rest of my days in a world of poor tea? Did the inhabitants understand that good tea must be made from the tips of the tea leaves at the very top of the tree, or were they using just any old leaf around the bottom? They weren't total barbarians, were they? And what about the biscuits? Surely they had biscuits, or did they? Oh, for the love of all that is holy, what had I done?

It was then that we noticed the murmuring of a crowd coming up the road, which had apparently followed us at a distance from the marketplace.

"That's the one that's gonna burn down the city!" one of the men shouted, pointing in our direction.

Two guardsmen wearing swords and chain mail hauberks then broke through the crowd and approached us.

"Ya smelly fur-grabbers think ya gonna burn down our city, huh?" one of them asked, standing entirely too close as he looked back and forth between us.

"Smelly?" I began to protest and was going to explain to him that he quite had the market cornered on smelly, but Derek cut me off with a stinging slap to the back of my head.

"Ow!"

"We certainly were not going to burn down the city, officer," Derek said.

"I gotta whole buncha witnesses that say y'are, and I saw ya trying to break in this place wit' my own eyes, so come along, the both of ya."

"But, I wasn't--" Derek began.

"Mort, how long's it been since we gotta rough anyone up?" the closer guardsman asked the other.

Mort tilted his head back and rubbed his grizzled chin as he pontificated for a while on the matter at hand before finally saying, "Oh, long time, least since this mornin'."

It was then that we decided to go along quietly, and the grim pair of guardsmen carted us off, presumably on our way to some dark, rat-infested dungeon.