The Peacock Cloak

those well things at the bottom, remember? Who gives a shit about anything else?”
    “May as well check this out while we’re here, surely?”
    “Why? What’s the point?”
    “There might be something here we want. We’d be nuts not to have a look.”
    “I guess,” Pennyworth reluctantly acknowledged, rubbing his bald head. “I don’t like this place though. It’s like… Well, it’s like people were here a long time ago and…”
    Shoe laughed mockingly.
    “Afraid of ghosts, Pennyworth my old mate?”
    “Nah, of course not. It’s just that…”
    “Well okay then,” Shoe interrupted and he passed through the arch. The corridor was cut into the rock rather more roughly than the hall or the stairwell so it had something of the quality of a mine tunnel, and it was lit at intervals with the same glowing pinkish cubes as the stairs. The time was clearly approaching when all these underground structures would sink back into total darkness. Every fifth or sixth cube here was already guttering or entirely extinguished, and one of them gave a final flicker and expired just as they were walking past it.
    After ten metres or so, a large chamber opened up on the right. Its whole floor space was stacked with plastic boxes, piled untidily on top of each other, perhaps put there by someone in a hurry, or perhaps disordered by previous intruders rummaging through them.
    Short, plump Pennyworth immediately ran forward to check them out.
    “Holy shit!” he breathed “Look at this!”
    Shoe looked, and his hard lean face broke into a smile.
    Diamonds! Every box they looked in was full of diamonds. Diamonds in their thousands, diamonds in their tens of thousands, were all around them.
    Pennyworth shouted with incredulous laughter.
    “Bloody hell, Shoe! We’ll be rich !”
    Shoe glanced wryly at his companion, running his hands through jewels all the while.
    “Worth pausing on the stairs then was it, mate?”
    “Too bloody right, my old buddy. Good job I’ve got you to knock some sense into me.”
    They stuffed their pockets to bursting point. Then Pennyworth took off his shirt and tore two holes in the shoulders. He tied up the ends of the arms, stuffing them both with more diamonds until they bulged, then put the shirt back on with his own arms sticking out through the torn holes, so that the shirt-arms dangled in front of him like bloated extra limbs.
    “You dick, Pennyworth,” said Shoe. “You look like you’re wearing some dumb octopus suit or something.”
    For some reason, Shoe’s initial elation had faded slightly, but Pennyworth was still far too excited to notice or care.
    “Who cares what I look like?” he retorted. “This is my future I’ve got here. This is my bloody future.”
    He rubbed his shiny head.
    “Now let me see. How am I going to carry more?”
    He had an idea, hesitated, and made a decision.
    “Damn it,” he said, “I’ll do it. We’ve all done it when we’ve had to hide stuff in prison, haven’t we? I can shove six big diamonds up my arse, and swallow half-a-dozen little ones too.”
    “Whatever turns you on,” said Shoe with a slightly distant laugh, and he went back into the corridor.
    Pennyworth wasn’t joking. He whipped down his breeches at once and winced and grunted as he shoved stones up himself, his eyes bulging and streaming. Then he picked out a handful of little diamonds, gathered what saliva he could in his dry mouth as lubrication, and swallowed them one by one, gagging as each one went down. Finally, he heaped diamonds into a box and picked it up to carry with him.
    “At least take a box Shoe!” he exclaimed, waddling uncomfortably out into the corridor, with the heavy box in his arms and the bulging octopus arms dangling down his front. He was in obvious pain. His eyes were watering, and he walked gingerly. Diamonds, after all, are hard and angular things .
    “Yeah I will,” said Shoe. “But later. I’ll pick up a box on my way back past here.”
    Pennyworth stared at him, dismayed.
    “Way back? Aren’t we going straight to the well now?”
    “Hurts to walk, huh?” said Shoe laughing. “That’s your problem, buddy. I want to see where this leads.”
    “Come on, Shoe my old friend,” Pennyworth pleaded, looking up with dismay into the face of his tall learn friend. “Don’t fool around, eh? Let’s just get down to that well.”
    But Shoe shook his head and insisted on continuing along the corridor.
    “I’m not fooling around.