O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
the horse-sense you rode in on.”
The assembled Order of the Fern moaned collectively.
“Now hear this:” Harvey announced, “You schizoid Doctor
Doolittles will get nothing from me! The Epiphany Machine is a
monster and it must be destroyed, I tell you. Man was not meant to
deal with such a thing! I would rather perish than allow my machine
to fall into your hands, or, I might add, your
nose! Perish, I say! Run
me through! Cast me to the ashes! You shall have the machine over
my dead body!”
“Very well,” said Vlad, pulling a pistol out of his waistband and
leveling it at Harvey. “As it is, a man can only take so many jokes
about his schnoz.”
Harvey closed his eyes.
“STOP!” boomed a voice suddenly, from the back of the room.
A shortish man with a long black hair, a beard a cowboy hat with
a feather in it and huge sunglasses hurried through the crowd of
Ferns. As he snatched the gun out of Vlad’s hand, he exclaimed
“What are you? Learning disabled? I told you a thousand times, we
ain’t gonna kill nobody. You got fish-food for brains?”
“Sorry, Don Wong. I just—”
The man took a long-suffering breath and responded civilly, “It’s
okay, boy. You’re getting better at the public speaking. Now take all
these Fern people out of here and let me try and talk some sense into
this stubborn critter. And take the
cholo
out with you, all right?
Que
tal, amigo?
You okay?”
Still gagged, Milo nodded as the fern bodyguards carefully
extricated him from the sinister recliner and led him outside of the
warehouse. After cutting Harvey’s ropes, the others followed suit and
it wasn’t long before Don Wong was left to speak privately with
Harvey.
Don Wong reminded Harvey of Indians in Spaghetti Westerns:
he looked the part, but he was too quaint and neatly dressed to be a
real Indian. His giant black sunglasses, beard and ten-gallon cowboy
hat obscured most of his sunwrinkled face.
“So you’re pretty down on this machine of yours, huh?” Don
Wong said plainly.
Harvey replied angrily, “I’m telling you, mule-raper, it must be
destroyed.”
The Don laughed. “Well, son, everything man invents has the
potential to be used for evil as well as good. You should have known
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