Chapter Twenty-Six
Let us take a moment, now, to moralise: Millions of years before the cosmic forces that needed to coalesce in order for Pluck to be born, coalesced, one of his cave-dwelling ancestors stood in a savannah, watched the springboks gambol, enjoyed the red sun’s palms press upon his scalp through his frankly filthy mass of hair, and crinkled his face, canalled as it was by the ploughing fingernails of the elements, into a smile. Time had as yet remained unspooled into a line, and the man—let’s call him “Ur-Pluck” (which almost rhymes with “kerplunk”), or, for short, simply “Ur” (as in “Midge”, with no e, but not really; more like “your” or “you’re” as rendered in text-speak, although now we’ve really spun along that thread into today; so perhaps it would be just as well to dispense with these parenthetical tangents, agreed?)—Ur, I say, to continue, Ur, was all the happier for it (“it” referring, in this instance, to his simple, as in “uncomplicated” (not stupid), yet dense, as in “packed together” (not stupid), perception of time).
Then along came another of the tribe, a man we might as well call “Billy”, who was the progenitor of no such line of people, the ancestor of none, for a simple reason we’re about to relate. This Billy was in the habit of strutting around under the impression he was something of a genius, before that term, obviously, had even been invented. His latest invention he called a “wheel”—in their tongue, it sounded more like Grrruhnnn!—and it didn’t do much but roll. Still, Billy maintained that it would change everything they knew, and pave the way (a phrase he didn’t actually use) for the future (a concept which, again, had little meaning for them as it stood).
And here he came now, rolling it along, with the help of something he’d pulled off a tree and dubbed a “stick” (Grrrrurg!), making, it has to be said, a right arse of himself. The springboks, with an elegance which never ceased to evoke Ur’s awe, scattered at Billy’s approach. Ur stared at this dirty, foul-smelling, hunchbacked blowhard and decided that if there was such a thing as “change”, and if that change in their pleasantly solid state was going to come by way of Billy with his clumsy “wheel”, then Ur wanted no part of it. Ur grabbed his club (one of, ironically enough, Billy’s earliest triumphs) and smashed Billy’s head right in, then wheeled the wheel off the nearest cliff and wiped his hands in satisfaction. (He didn’t really know why he’d wiped his hands, for he was hardly concerned about dirt or dust, and, for that matter, he hadn’t watched any films of people making that motion, and so hadn’t internalised its semiotic connotation of “Job done!” or “Well, that’s taken care of!”, but I swear to you, he did it nonetheless.)
There would be other Billys, of course, but not enough Ur-Plucks to club them before their wheels could roll, and so we have arrived at our snowed-in hotel and a dastardly murder, the investigation of which will recommence in the next chapter.