Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & Read Online Free PDF Page A

the new creature I'm planning for you. It makes sugar stars all by itself!"
    She didn't smile. Dinner was noisy that dawn, with spoons clunked against plates. And some mashed potato ended up with a splat on the light above the bare wood table.
    ~
    Werner was so preoccupied that he didn't hear the footsteps. He was Klokwerk to the minute, as usual; he was in the starfish fossil room, brooding over his mistake, when Gretina touched him on the arm.
    He jumped in place without meaning to.
    "How did you get in?" he hissed.
    "Just banged at the entrance and Olag let me in."
    Fat sloppy Olag. But they were all like that.
    "What did you tell him?"
    "Didn't have to. He said, 'Klokwerk's upstairs, beautiful.'" Her eyebrows wrinkled at her own memories of the guards.
    "Well?" Werner was impatient. "What?"
    "I must see him."
    "Him?"
    "You know."
    "Now? Are you mad? You must forget this thing. The stone was just a trinket. You are being silly."
    "No, Werner. I must see if he wants to come home with me."
    She turned her back on her husband, and took the few paces to the Confuciusornis sanctus case. He was still there, still screaming, still striving to break free.
    "Greti, my lo—" Werner's wheedling "love" shrivelled in his throat. His hands, which he'd put lightly on his wife's shoulders to persuade her to go home, felt something very irregular underneath that sensible, dowdy dress.
    "Now, Werner!" Gretina twirled around to face him, with her dress wide open to the waist. "Every tool's here."
    The vest bristled with metal shapes as it gaped over her pink canvas brassiere, since she couldn't fasten more than the two bottom buttons.
    Werner's heart hit hard against his pocket-bound creature. Bam bam BAM BAM ...
    "Werner!" Gretina whispered. "Do it now!"
    The pain caught his breath. He needed to sit.
    She grabbed his arm and pulled it to her. "Now, Werner. There is no time to delay."
    "But—"
    "No. Stand up!"
    "But where? I can't walk out with it, Gretina. I need to sit down. Ooh ..."
    As he turned his head away, she lifted up her skirt, and between her legs, suspended by pink canvas straps, hung her knitting bag. And he had never suspected.
    "I've practiced, you big noodle. Now get on with it. You can get a sign later to put in the case. Ach, but you are useless. Werner!"
    Gretina grabbed his hands and planted them in two vest pockets.
    There was no arguing with her.
    In three minutes, she was walking, casual as a stroll in the park, through the terrifying hall with the master and his dog; walking as normally as if she'd just delivered Werner's blood pressure pills that she'd forgotten to put into his lunch, and delayed him a bit for some inane wifely chat —just what she'd told Werner to say if Olag or someone asked.
    The glass case was missing an occupant, but Werner could easily get an "exhibit closed" sign from another display in some out-of-the-way room tonight, and it would be an unnoticed skitter of a detour to pop it in place, all done probably in the next hour or so, and no one the wiser.
    By the time the door closed downstairs, he was smiling at the ingenuity of his little Greti ... and her wilful allure.
    It was in the Butterfly Hall five minutes later that he realised: Gretina had left with the tools. Without them, it is impossible for me to put a sign in that case tonight.
    ~
    A drizzle fell on Werner's bare head as he shuffled home. In his breast pocket, his little companion kicked mechanical feet. Stamp STAMP Stamp STAMP...
    It was in front of the parliament building that Werner suddenly grabbed his chest and collapsed. The streetlight tinged his face a pallid green, but it was, in actuality, the grey from a blood-starved heart.
    In the steady rain now, not even a cat to be heard. A taxi approached, slowed, then sped away, the driver having learnt to his disgust not to take pity on drunks.
    Stamp STAMP Stamp STAMP from the little mechanical being.
    Whuh Whuh ... Whu ... Wh ... from Werner's heart.
    STAMP STAMP, STAMP