Neverwhere

And every few stalls there would be somebody selling food. Some of them had food cooking over open fires: curries, and potatoes, and chestnuts, and huge mushrooms, and exotic breads. Richard found himself wondering why the smoke from the fires didn't set off the building's sprinkler system. Then he found himself wondering why no one was looting the store: why set up their own little stalls? Why not just take things from the shop itself? He knew better, at this point, than to risk asking anyone . . . He seemed marked as a man from London Above, and thus worthy of great suspicion.

There was something deeply tribal about the people, Richard decided. He tried to pick out distinct groups: there were the ones who looked like they had escaped from a historical reenactment society; the ones who reminded him of hippies; the albino people in gray clothes and dark glasses; the polished, dangerous ones in smart suits and black gloves; the huge, almost identical women who walked together in twos and threes, and nodded when they saw each other; the tangle-haired ones who looked like they probably lived in sewers and who smelled like hell; and a hundred other types and kinds . . .

He wondered how normal London—his London—would look to an alien, and that made him bold. He began to ask them, as he went, "Excuse me? I'm looking for a man named de Carabas and a girl called Door. Do you know where I'd find them?" People shook their heads, apologized, averted their eyes, moved away.

Richard took a step back and stepped on someone's foot. Someone was well over seven feet tall, and was covered in tufty ginger-colored hair. Someone's teeth had been sharpened to points. Someone picked Richard up with a hand the size of a sheep's head, and put Richard's head so close to someone's mouth that Richard almost gagged. "I'm really sorry," said Richard. "I—I'm looking for a girl named Door. Do you know—" But someone dropped him onto the floor and moved on.

Another whiff of cooking food wafted across the floor, and Richard, who had managed to forget how hungry he was ever since he had declined the prime cut of tomcat—he could not think how many hours before—now found his mouth watering, and his thinking processes begi

The iron-haired woman ru

Richard stood in the middle of the throng, listening to the music—someone was, for no reason that Richard could easily discern, singing the lyrics of "Greensleeves" to the tune of "Yakkety-Yak"– watching the bizarre bazaar unfold around him, and eating his sandwiches.

As he finished the last of the sandwiches, he realized that he had no idea how anything he had just eaten had tasted; and he resolved to slow down, and chew the cookies more slowly. He sipped the lemonade, making it last. "You need a bird, sir?" asked a cheery voice, close at hand. "I got rooks and ravens, crows and starlings. Fine, wise birds. Tasty and wise. Brilliant."

Richard said, "No, thank you" and turned around.

The hand-painted sign above the stall said:

OLD BAILEY'S BIRDS AND INFORMATION

There were other, smaller, signs scattered about:

YOU WANTS IT, WE KNOWS IT, and YOU WON'T FIND A PLUMPER STARLING!!!! and WHEN IT'S TIME FOR A ROOK, IT'S TIME FOR OLD BAILEY!! Richard found himself thinking of the man he had seen when he had first come to London, who used to stand outside Leicester Square Tube station with a huge hand-painted sandwich board that exhorted the world to "Less Lust Through Less Protein, Eggs, Meat, Beans, Cheese and Sitting."

Birds hopped and fluttered about small cages that looked as if they had been woven out of TV ante

"Actually," said Richard, "I'm looking for the marquis. And for a young lady named Door. I think they're probably together."

The old man did a little jig, causing several feathers to detach themselves from his coat; this provoked a chorus of raucous disapproval from the various birds around them. "Information! Information!" he a

"Sorry?" said Richard, awkwardly leaping from ice floe to ice floe in the stream of the old man's consciousness.

"If'n I give ye your information. What'll I get?"

"I don't have any money," said Richard. "And I just gave my pen away."

He began to pull out the contents of Richard's pockets. "There," said Old Bailey. "That!"

"My hankie?" asked Richard. It was not a particularly clean handkerchief; it had been a present from his Aunt Maude, on his last birthday. Old Bailey seized it and waved it above his head, happily.

"Never you fear, laddie," he sang, triumphantly. "Your quest is at an end. Go down there, through that door. You can't miss them. They're auditioning." He was pointing towards Harrods' extensive network of Food Halls. A rook cawed maliciously. "None of your beak," said Old Bailey, to the rook. And, to Richard, he said, "Thank'ee for the little flag." He jigged around his stall, delighted, waving Richard's handkerchief to and fro.

Auditioning?

thought Richard. And then he smiled. It didn't matter. His quest, as the mad old roof-man had put it, was at an end. He walked toward the Food Halls.

Fashion, in bodyguards, seemed to be everything. They all had a Knack of one kind or another, and each of them was desperate to demonstrate it to the world. At the moment, Ruislip was facing off against the Fop With No Name.

The Fop With No Name looked somewhat like an early eighteenth-century rake, one who hadn't been able to find real rake clothes and had had to make do with what he could find at the Salvation Army store. His face was powdered to white, his lips painted red. Ruislip, the Fop's opponent, resembled a bad dream one might have if one fell asleep watching sumo wrestling on the television with a Bob Marley record playing in the background. He was a huge Rastafarian who looked like nothing so much as an obese and enormous baby.

They were standing face to face, in the middle of a cleared circle of spectators and other bodyguards and sightseers. Neither man moved a muscle. The Fop was a good head taller than Ruislip. On the other hand, Ruislip looked as if he weighed as much as four fops, each of them carrying a large leather suitcase entirely filled with lard. They stared at each other, without breaking eye contact.

The marquis de Carabas tapped Door on the shoulder and pointed. Something was about to happen.