Empire of Fashion

[Pleater]

The wolf hunters had hijacked a train and arrived at the Gare du Nord with their dogs, bows, spears, and the last few packs of furs they had collected.

Did I say that the Hall of Rings was in Paris?

The Fashion Fur paramilitaries came upon the hunters in the Place Napoleon, and in an attempt to subdue them, fired their rifles over their heads. This was a mistake as the hunters responded by firing several volleys of arrows, straight and level. Although the paramilitaries were wearing stab vests they were not designed to resist twelve inches of good steel with a chunk of wood behind it travelling at speed.

There were a few pursuits along the Rue de Dunkerque, but few of them reached the Boulevard de Magenta or Rue La Fayette.

We hurriedly disposed of our blue scarves and eventually left the old Hopital Lariboisiere where we had taken refuge as the hunters began to rampage further afield, chasing the Fashion Police – who had been ordered to disarm by the Fashion Fur people, and then we heard the hovercraft zig zagging about, though we did not see it, and a lot of shouting went on too.

We were avoiding the bodies as we headed for the Hall of Rings, and looking around cautiously, but night had fallen by then and all seemed quiet in our immediate vicinity.

There was a big yellow moon and I tried to keep my mind from the harvest back at home and on the immediate possibility of meeting the grim reaper in person. The Hall of Rings was deserted, but had been partly ransacked and a number of the offices were jumbles of overturned furniture, spilled papers and the beginning of an almighty stink. We pushed the doors shut and ventured to the far end where the store room was.

It remained intact, so the Captain jemmied the door as I held the lamp. We carried the equipment up to the control room, and found that there was no power. That caused us some considerable dismay, until we spotted the battery holders. The large coin cells, which were several inches in diameter, were stored in large numbers, so we just slotted them in until the racks were full and the lights came on – being careful not to touch them with our bare hands.

The local receiving stations were designed to be used with cars, which were all absent, so it was with some relief that we realised that the horizontal rings could be rotated so as to make a standing portal, like the one generated by the portable equipment, which meant that we could walk through them. I was quite relieved to find that there was a fine tuning control, and that although it was drilled and screwed down, a few moments work with some of the joining threads used to construct the clothing we were issued with was sufficient to cut through the screw and release the control.

The threads were very fine, and abrasive – designed to cut through the weft of the cloth so the clothing wore out in time for the next alteration.

I set the angles for the station in the Welsh mountains, and pulled it down onto receiving station one in the hall. Before I could get down to the floor of the Hall the Captain had walked through it, and come back.

‘No one there, I expect they are all in bed by now,’ she reported.
‘Perhaps we should try America, they’ll still be awake.’
She shook her head.
‘If anything we should try further North. If the Acryli-beast hunters are still in the Arctic, they will be in trouble by now. They would normally have been moved south weeks ago.’
‘Then we should try there at once.’ I declared, and hurried back to the control room.