“Butter?”

It may not be necessary to visit the office at all, for few are they who have a wholesome use for butter. When Jum Burie heard the commissar mention said emulsion, her suspicion increased to atypical paramounts, even by her measure, and so, delaying the scouted plan on a hunch, she forged a new course of action, instantly captured the commissar and operator both, and wrapped them in the tight coils of strong snakes with nothing left to lose. She put the capturees in the darkest room, made out of the heaviest steel, and gave them fire and lightning and thunder and rain, and when they were gone she cracked open their brains and melted them, and boiled them, and made them into wine and nectar, which she drank and came to know all their thoughts, all their memories, and everything they had done and seen. She knew Traycup and Ben Garment awent on the blimp, and knew Roby carelessly jaywalked into a passing house.

She told all this to Tuberlone.

“We will contact the weather department,” said Tuberlone, “and find instant information of these dealings, if these dealings have truly transpired.”

“They have,” said Jum Burie.

Tuberlone ignored this and said, “How do you feel?”

“Exhausted,” said Jum Burie. “Utterly, utterly exhausted.”

“Good. Stay that way.”

Roby munched a pretzel and said, “The taste of this thing gives me no sting, and seems a sweet treat to eat that cannot be beat!”

Together their party had traveled a bit of a ways, perhaps for some days, by hook and by crook, maybe by look and by book, by highways and byways, and something else that rhymes. Roby found a great deal of joy in the travelage—they all did, for the most part, but such voyagement had never been part of her upbringing, and she was seeing new things. They went far from Hoglistwune, sometimes walking, sometimes joining impromptu unicycle parades, and usually not running from explosions—that's not to say that they strolled calmly from explosions, but more of a commentary on the frequency of explosions in the areas they went through.

It was thirty days to the day, give or take a year, more or less, when they loped away from the sandwich shop owner's daughter's schooner, bid her farewell and found themselves at a wayward crossroads far from civilization and savagery both, unkempt and long-forgotten roadways, and not a single cell tower in sight. It'd probably be a good few minutes before someone ran a subway line nearby.

“A bus,” said Roby, “or a taxi—one of these I do not see, but they are examples of methods of transportation, and perhaps we can sample the pleasure of that sensation!”

“Mayhap the pretzel's,” said Traycup, “gone to your head!”

“A Conestoga wagon,” said Ben Garment. “That's a third example. We've even the horse to lug it about!”

“Horse costume! Wagon-lugging's beyond me,” said Phillippo.

“What about pushing?” said Mario.

Traycup surveyed the area, and saw a frog learning to write its first poem under the tutelage of a viola's ghost, and it gave him a real sizzler of an idea. “A series of skateboards bound together by a blood oath and a set of intertwined breadties,” he said.

They all agreed this was the most wise decision, but before they could even call up the talent agency, a standard bus came from behind the planetarium, stopped right next to them, and flang open its door, threw wide its arms, and scooped them all aboard in one swift motion.

“Next stop,” said the bus, as it drove off at a slightly illegal speed, “Traycup's house! Way back at the beginning of the story! I am an example of a method of transportation, after all!”

Traycup was dismayed to his sternum when he heard those words, because he didn't want to go to the beginning, he meant to go forward, and the rest of them, too, knew that this was backwards progress, and so not progress at all, but tacky and stymieing ungress. They gazed out the windows longingly as they saw their journey undone.

“Persuade the bus,” said Ben Garment, “a novel location for your home—get it to cut an angle that'll take us closer alongward to a useful destination!”

“Trigonometry lessons must wait for a different day,” said Traycup.

A math teacher sprang up from his seat, and nearly lost his “Bless This Morass” poncho in the mayhem. “What? You fools! Trigonometry waits for no man, nor woman, nor any person who dares delay the teachings thereof! Now, prepare yourself for sohcahtoa!” With that, the teacher began dictating formulae, and the party, startled straight into obedience, studiously wrote down the same, but Phillippo's pen ran out of ink.

“Pen-math,” said Roby, “is bold math.”

“I had confidence,” said Phillippo with attenuation.

“And now you'ven't even ink!” said Traycup with a cup and saucer.

“Studentia must be silent or be silenced!” said the math teacher. “Now, we're moving on to spherical coordinates. Brace yourself for theta and rho!”

They all became braced, and it was a good time for it, because the bus, growing bored, veered seaward and shouted at some nearby sharks, “Hey! Fish-face! Let's get nasty! Show me your sword—as I guessed, mine's got more girth!” And so the sharks surrounded the bus, their fins alone emerging above the surface, emanating their threat to all and sundry. The bus swang its sword, which incited the rage of the sharks, and did nothing as untoward as damage or injury, for it was all bluster. Bus bluster.

Hector, the leader of the sharks, said, “Ping pang walulu, bing bang patutu! Not that that means anything to you two! Now, catch a wave—a real one!”

As Hector foretold, a wave washed over the bus, and took it clear out to sea, right into the heart of shark territory, and more sharks arrived, and soon there were three thousand of them, and each shark had a hundred rows of teeth, and one of the junior sharks, a sharksquire, went about sharpening all the sharks' teeth. He did a really good job.

Roby sat down and put her picnic basket in her lap, while Traycup stood around with binoculars and forgot all about the recent math lesson. Phillippo and Mario debated their mismemories of the stated equations, conflating their squares and their cubes, and were unable to find the least common denomination. Ben Garment, however, knew several of the sharks.

“We grew up in the same wiretap,” he explained.

“Why,” said a shark named Steelth Octrode, “if that isn't Ben Garment! Released from the clutches of the towel rack at last!”

“But a fortnight ago!” said Ben Garment. “And so I espy Steelth Octrode, and Hunjaleo, and Fordock the Mind Manager, and Illilixililli!” Ben Garment laughed, and he stood up on the summit of the bus, and waved to his old schoolyard chums.

“Now's a thing,” said Traycup, “of luck, to've found some friends in such a dire strait.”

Ben Garment said in a low voice, in volume and character, “Friends, no, but traitors to the old cause, so make ready to conduct a great slaying.”

The bus said, “A great slaying? Why, say no more!”

The three thousand sharks said, “A great slaying? You'll say no more!”

And then the battle was joined, and the sharks made an assault upon the bus with all their teeth, and the bus swang its sword to and fro and cut up some of the sharks into pieces, and everyone else climbed a ladder up to the safety of a convenient balcony, for the country's most grand and exquisite hotel stood there on the beach, overhanging the beautiful sparkling sea.

When they absconded to the height of the ladder, they saw there in the suite Poodleface, the most famous singer in the time zone, and she was aghast with subterfuge, for the ladder had been left in the hopes of a romantic rendezvous, which was not what was currently occurring.

Poodleface said, “What prompts this untoward disturbance of my domain?”

“This transition!” said Traycup, exiting the hotel room, and Roby and Ben Garment and Phillippo and Mario followed him.

But Poodleface wasn't satisfied with the curtness of this answer, and so turned the hallways of the hotel into an inescapable geometric maze, where up was left and down was backwards, and time stood still or lounged about like an unemployed gopher cart, and the only way out was—whoa, that's a spoiler, but let's just say they should've paid more attention to the math lesson.

“Remain here in danger forever,” said Poodleface, wincing her eyes and slurping her ears.

Running about in a mild panic, no emus or ketchup bottles in sight, the whole of the gang quickly became separated and shortly after thoroughly lost, which perhaps was for the best—but not now.

Traycup looked at a nutcracker and said, “Ben Garment is right. Here's a costly side quest, and it'll see Oopertreepia packed up and gone afore we knock 'pon its door! We oughtn't dawdle.” But he said it to no one, since they had been separated, and what's worse, Mario and Phillippo had found the arcade, and were now playing Frogger for the high score.

Elsewhere, or at the same where but elsewhen, Roby stood alone in a quiet spot where the hallway went in every direction, and she looked around and saw no one, and so said, “Well, this thing is fine and will find time to wind high and low if I go to the show or to show, and so I have a mind to bide my time, and besides—” She opened up her picnic basket wherein was found a steaming hot bowl of shark fin soup, and she was even impressed that she had kept this secret—but she had not long to savor the victory, for there was Ben Garment, coming from over there. Roby packed her picnic and panicked a bit.

“This,” said Ben Garment to Roby and only Roby, “is the fault of Traycup, for he makes too much of too little, and more mistakes as well.” Ben Garment was getting as steamed as the first day on the job, and none the wiser.

“Knowing the way is not a way of me,” said Roby.

“Lady of the manor! A housemobile! A true boon, but you've gone and thrashed it.”

Now, this was true, and Roby had a pang in her heart for the grand old manor, but “A blimp was of you.” She didn't want a scoop of anger, but fair's fair, and no one'd told her they were expecting her to keep it. Besides, it was a real gas guzzler.

“That was also undone by Traycup,” said Ben Garment. “Alas! The voyage to Oopertreepia is as good as doomed! We'll know not whatever lies beyond its appealing crenelations and within its secreted vaults. You Lopkits make undue trouble!”

“We are friended!” said Roby. “So do like a friend, and unmake this trial, and try making amends.”

Ben Garment swooned and stitched his name into the wrapper of last year's chocolate bar and tied it about his head in a fit of fashion, and said, “Well! And how's so?”

They pressed on, togetherly apart, and made a long wander of it. After a season of twists and turns, there before them was an elevator. Roby pushed its button, and after it played its charm and threw wide its gates in a busish manner, she stepped aboard, and Ben Garment joined her, and the doors were closed.

“Well enough,” said Ben Garment, and inspected the instrument panel for an egress. “Behold! The floors are unindicated and ever changing. The maze persists.”

“As we have met the teacher of math,” said Roby, “we should fear not the twisted path, for the pattern is now made plain, so we proceed in the manner explained.” She pressed the emergency button, and the lights flashed red and blue and seven—so as to alert the occupants declaring the emergency that an emergency had been declared—and the elevator's position ceased strangeness, and soon there was the thump thump thump of the heavily-armored firefighting rescue team, who prised the elevator doors open with golden spoons, and captured Roby and Ben Garment lovingly, and delivered them to the safety of at least twenty-five feet away from the building, past the smoking area, over by the bike racks across the street.

“A case of ease,” Roby said. Perhaps the pretzel had gone to her head indeed.

Ben Garment grew a long beard so that he might stroke it thoughtfully, and while doing so, said, “A cool trick.”

Aside from them were Mario and Phillippo, with sad pockets turned out and Froggerless. Above them stood a terrifying effigy of the producer, who scolded them three more times for their fiscal irresponsibility before turning into a bluish cloud which sank beneath the ashtray.

“Say,” said Phillippo, “none of you have a quarter to spare?”

Alas that none had quarters to their name, but all experienced joy at their reunion, and the avoidance of another splittage.

The next solution was delivered by an elaborate financier who, drawing the four of hearts without even looking, turned and faced Traycup as he was dragged out from the entrance by a very bold but uninformed bodyguard, whose little earpiece had run out of batteries, and had not got the message that these strange folks were supposed to be trapped in the building, and, sensing Traycup's proximity to Poodleface, he executed his duty with characteristic efficiency and removed the offender from the environs.

“You've undone my doing!” said Poodleface, who was there, too, now. The bodyguard had failed her for the first and last time, and so she turned him into a shrimp and put him in charge of the minifridge access. “These are foul basenjis meant to be confined in a prisonous domain until their days end with brittle bones and dried-up hearts! Return them to the capturement quarters at once!”

“Quarters, you say?” said Phillippo.

“Let's let it die,” said Traycup. Ere Poodleface could place an ad for new bodyguards, they sauntered away from the hotel's parking lot and went to be near a line for the movie theater. There was an amount of cityhood nearby them, and Traycup looked the streets up and down, and created an identification of them. “Thanks to the old wave, we're but a stone's throw from a day's goal!” And it was true, for before them was a grand and fanciful sign proudly welcoming visitors to the luxuriant city of Dot-Speck-Water-Trail, which was not Nesodi Iveent, but which was also not far from Nesodi Iveent, so if a particularly swift possum could be wrangled and saddled in short order, they'd be at their destination at last, before a football game's commercial break could go into overtime.

“Shall we make a picnic?” said Roby.

Jum Burie stood at Sporthenge, by the big statue of the squirrel shaver, and Tuberlone was there with a stack of newspapers—well, more like a pile—all tuned to the weather station.

“As foretold by the prophecy,” said Tuberlone, placing the last paper in the pile—well, more like a stack.

“Useful gossip.” This Jum Burie said not in despair or frustration. “From hither, thence? Who had seen them and come to know their path?”

Meanwhile, parents pushed strollers full of children round and round the park.