24

Feds And Tails.

Two days passed, during which the pigeons kept an easy vigil. The three people did little except sunbathe, swim and go out to eat. As Bernice watched them emerge onto the veranda on the third morning, she was very happy. She knew that their job was almost over and when they finished it, they could retire if they so wished. It would give them more time for their favourite hobby. Humans generally enjoyed going to famous places to take pictures. Bernice and Teddy, like most pigeons, liked to go to famous places and take a dump on them. Together they had already had a good crap on the Eiffel Tower, The Great Wall of China, The Tower of London and St. Peter's in Rome. Now they could go anywhere. The world was their toilet. She gave Teddy a nudge to wake him. The people down below were getting ready to leave. Dredly was showing Christy a blue leaflet. She was nodding and seemed excited. Even Sage's spirits seemed to have picked up. Within five minutes they had got into a cab and were heading for Hamilton. It was easy for the birds to keep a track of the vehicle, as the Bermudian speed limit is only 25 miles an hour (the island being so small and the traffic so heavy that anything faster would be madness). Half an hour later the cab pulled up near a street market. As Sage paid the driver, Bernice and Teddy landed on the top of a nearby building. They watched the three people below closely as they moved through the touristy crowd. Dredly was using the blue leaflet as a map. They finally stopped at a garish stall, which was covered in every kind of trapping of hippiedom. Teddy and Bernice flapped down to the top of the next stall so they could listen in.
"...And we've got this leaflet, which I believe entitles us to three free cassettes." Dredly was saying.
"Yeah, cool..." Said the skinny, lank haired stall owner. He sounded tight chested, as if he had asthma.
"Hey, boys, some of these are top class!" Christy exclaimed as she looked through the collection of bootleg tapes of Grateful Dead concerts. "They've got some great ones - look this one's the last night of Winterland..." She was clearly very excited at the discovery.
"Yeah, but what's the quality like?" Dredly asked.
"We've got a bootleg at home where most of it is drowned out by the sound of the taper asking his friend when the acid's going to kick in." Sage added.
"No, guys, these are real clear.” The stall owner said, “Hey, but don't take my word for it. Come back to the van and listen to 'em on the old stereo."
"Great." Said Sage, then they trooped down a side street in a line behind the gangly young man.
Teddy and Bernice flapped over to a nearby roof and watched the proceedings. A purple van was parked in the alley, facing the direction from which they had come. As they approached, Dredly had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't account for it - maybe it was the Bologna sausage he'd had for breakfast... The man beckoned to them to follow him around to the back of the van. Now Dredly was really worried. He'd seen all those movies about psychos who lure people to their vans and then mutilate them horribly. Meanwhile the scene from Silence of the Lambs, where Buffalo Bill kidnapped his last victim, kept replaying in his head. He made a mental note that if the man asked for help to get a sofa into the van, he would run away and not stop running until he got to the Atlantic coast and then start swimming.

They walked to the back of the van and the man fiddled with his keys to open the front door.
“You don’t need help moving any items of soft furniture, do you?” Dredly asked tentatively.
“No, no.” He wheezed, then opened the door and reached inside. “Okay bozos!” He cried, swivelling to face them, with a gun in his right hand and a silver badge in his left. “Up against the van. You’re under arrest!”
Without hesitation, they were all up against the side of that van before anyone could say ‘Are you just pleased to see me, or is that a gun you’re shoving up my nose?’

“I’m an officer of the Federal Bureau for Making Sure People Don’t Have Too Much Fun.” He said as he slapped the cuffs on Sage, then leaning in close to his left ear, he continued, “That’s ‘FBM-SPDH-TMF’ for short.”
“An acronym guaranteed to make sure we don’t have fun.” Sage replied with a weak laugh. Comedy is all about timing, and the timing of that particular weak witticism couldn’t have been worse if it had lost its watch three weeks earlier.
“Shut up!” The agent barked, slapping Sage across the back of the head with his badge.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be ignored, and incriminating remarks fabricated if we need to make the case against you stick. And you - the bear - lose that disguise. We don't want none of your ursine antics - clear?"
Christy sprouted hair and grew by three feet. Greta was back and Sage suddenly felt a wave of relief that he hadn't tried to bed the shaggy beast. The officer continued to read them their rights, then pulled the doors at the back of the van until they were fully open. A well dressed man was sitting inside, smoking a cigarette.
“First catch of the day, Agent Samson.” Said the dishevelled man with the gun.
“Well done, Agent Samson. Put ‘em in and let’s get ‘em back to headquarters.”

With that, they were bundled into the back of the vehicle. The dishevelled, lanky man slammed the doors and walked to the front of the van. Before he got in, he turned and looked at the roof above. The pigeons were there all right, just as he had been expecting. He gave them a thumbs up. Teddy put the tip of his wing to his forehead and saluted the fellow. The man clambered into the van and drove away. Bernice and Teddy were free. Their job was done and now they could do as they pleased. They took off and flew away into the blue of another sparkling Bermudian Spring morning. Sage, Dredly and Greta were not quite so chipper as they sat in the moving vehicle. The man sitting opposite them was in his early thirties with sandy coloured hair. He was wearing mirrored shades and was doing his best to look moody as he failed to make smoke rings with his cigarette. After what he must have felt was a suitably dramatic silence, he spoke.
“I guess you’re wondering what we do in FBM-SPDH-TMF, eh?” It was the kind of question to which he was clearly not expecting a reply, so the look of surprise on his face when Sage butted in was quite priceless.
“Too bloody right, mate!” Sage was like a Cornish pasty, stuffed to bursting with pure anger.
“Oh... Er... Um... You just keep quiet!” He spluttered, trying to regain his composure.
“But you asked us a question, surely we’re allowed to reply?” Dredly decided to join Sage in defiance.
“A wise, guy, huh? Well, you’d better wise up and smell the coffee!” He retorted, mixing his metaphors with non-dairy creamer. “We in the Federal Bureau for Making Sure People Don’t Have Too Much Fun deal with scum-suckers like you every day. Anywhere people are trying to have fun in a way that might worry a grandmother’s sewing circle from Duluth, that’s where you’ll find us, waiting in the shadows, waiting and watching. We’re like lions, we pick off the stragglers like you.”
“Then what do you do with them... Er, us...?” Sage asked.
“We give them... Er, you, a vigorous re-education, so that you can be re-integrated into society as peaceful, harmless...”
“Automatons?” Greta suggested.
He scowled. “Citizens. And once we’re sure the re-education has worked, we allow you to live in Billings, Montana.”
“Dear Christ! We have fallen into the hands of madmen!” Sage sobbed.
"Billings!" Dredly wondered... Could it be a mere coincidence?
“So, like... What kinds of things aren’t people allowed to enjoy?” Greta queried.
“I don’t have the time to go over all of them, but let’s just say that listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs, watching ‘The Simpsons’ and reading newspapers are near the top of the list.”
“Boy, that sounds like the kind of thing J Edgar Hoover would come up with...” Dredly muttered, but no sooner had he uttered the name of America’s leading transvestite, than the agent put his right hand on his heart and sang ‘Hail to the Chief’.
“What the hell was that all about?” Sage asked when the man had finished.
“You mentioned his name. It is sacred to us and its uttering must be praised in song.”
“You are one barrel short of an apple cart, mate.” Sage was mixing his sayings and Dredly wondered whether it was the enclosed space which was causing these little aberrations.

“Do you mean to tell me that somebody has gone to all the trouble of setting up a Government department whose sole aim is to stop people exercising their right to enjoy themselves as they want?”
“Yes.”
“That’s crazy. For sure, this would never happen in the Netherlands.” Greta complained.
“Oh yeah, let’s all go naked cheese rolling, or build a windmill in the shape of a lady’s hoo-hoo! Goddam Dutch pervert!” The agent’s mouth was starting to fleck at the edges with white saliva.
“I’m not Dutch.” Said Greta indignantly. “I just sound Dutch. There’s a very big difference, isn’t it?”
“Quiet, ya long haired freak!” The agent barked.
“Anyway, what we do is no more ridiculous than masturbation being illegal in certain States, or the fact that anyone over eighteen is allowed to carry a gun, even if they might be madder than a possum with a zucchini stuck in its ear.” The agent answered.
“He’s got a point there, Greta.” Sage said.
“Yes, but what do grandmothers from Duluth like anyway?” Dredly was intrigued.
“Sewing, playing cribbage, doing impersonations of Angela Lansbury, keeping their bowels regular. They’re easily pleased.” The agent replied.
“So, like, let’s just get this, y’know, straight. You’re gonna teach us how to keep our bowels regular?” Greta suddenly seemed to have warmed to the agent.
“Yes.”
“Whoa, cool!” Greta seemed deeply impressed by the prospect. Sage had to admit that he, too, liked the idea - but what cost, highly active bowels? That was the question which vexed him, but not the one that came out of his mouth.
“So what do they hate in general, these venerable ladies?”
“Anything un-American.”
“But Angela Lansbury is English.” Greta challenged.
“Exactly. Can’t get much more American than that.”
“But the Dead are as American as you can get - they’re an American institution...” Sage began, then slapped his hand across his mouth. “Oh my God, what have I said? That makes them sound like apple pie or TV evangelism or something!”
“But they’re not the kind of institution we want. We want wholesome institutions. Institutions where people have neat haircuts, and more importantly, where people don’t take drugs.”
“Yeah like the old crocks of Duluth aren’t on a near lethal cocktail of heart pills, sleeping pills, valium, mogadon, and laxatives!” Dredly exclaimed.
“Yes, but those are legal drugs... And anyway, the companies fund political parties, so they must be OK.” The agent said quickly.
What price, highly active bowels? Sage was still feeling vexed and nothing the agent had said had soothed that feeling.
“So what are you going to do to us?” He asked.
“Put you on our special programme. Are you familiar with ‘A Clockwork Orange’?”
They didn’t like the sound of this already and he’d hardly even kicked off.
“What we do is strap you to a chair with your eyes clamped open, pump you full of drugs - legal drugs, drugs which pay Senators' holiday expenses - and force you to watch every episode of the Little House on the Prairie and every episode of Donny and Marie Osmond’s TV show...”
“Barbarians!” Sage shouted, struggling with his handcuffs.
“And that’s just the start. We then get you hooked on television shopping. By the time we’ve finished with you, you'll be thinking that Pat Buchannan is a left wing pinko-liberal.”

They were in serious trouble. As they were driven along the coast road to the airport, porpoises in the sea swum in synchronised patterns, spelling out the word 'Trouble'... and it had a capital 'T'.

Can our heroes get out of yet another tight spot? And can agent Samson really guarantee them regular bowel movements, or will his promises turn out to be a crock of...

Find out in the next uncomfortably bloated chapter...