Hairy London by Stephen Palmer

asked.
    “This Trichologist must have a palace of note if his rumour already spreads north of the river,” Valantina replied. “We’ll fly for a while and observe the land below us. Watch out for a hirsute palace unfamiliar to you.”
    He nodded, gazing through the glass globe at the tenebrous city below him. In some houses elekertrick lamps burned, but many streets were dark from end to end, and he feared for the lives of their residents. Some communities had made camps by shearing great quantities of hair, and many of these camps were marked by blazing bonfires, but he knew such communities could not last long. The hair regrew. It covered all. Truly, it was a plague.
    And then disaster. Valantina turned the selenowiz east so that the moon returned to view. She cried, “Sheremy, look!”
    The moon was not round. A segment had been taken from it.
    “An eclipse,” he gasped. “And we’re far from the north bank of the Thames.”
    “We will never make it back... though I will try!”
    But it was far too late. As the eclipse became full and the moon turned red the selenowiz descended like a discarded feather to the ground, chuttering as Valantina fought with the controls, then gliding into a lush crop of black hair. Everything went dark. The selenowiz halted, silent; they lay submerged beneath hair. Sheremy massaged a bruised shin, while Valantina sat back in her seat and sobbed.
    He grasped her shoulders and pulled her to him. “There there,” he said. “We’ll find a way back. I’m a member of the Suicide Club, remember.”
    She turned to him and wept upon his chest. “I am so sorry, Sheremy,” she said. “I should have checked the lunar timetable. It has been so long since I had anybody to take with me in the selenowiz.”
    He kissed her cheek. “My dear,” he said, “I’ll expend every effort to save you... to save us from any unpleasant fate that might lie ahead. With me at your side...” He paused, considered who he was talking to, then continued, “... and with you at my side, we’ll forge a path back to Swan Lane. I do so swear!”
    There came a noise of thumping outside the selenowiz. Sheremy jumped, peering into the luxuriant gloom. Pale lamps like frosted lanterns inside the globe gave some illumination, but he could make nothing out beyond the edge of the vehicle. Then the thumps returned, louder, and the hair moved outside.
    Faces. Dark faces, bald, sweaty, with round white eyes. Grinning people holding tribal weapons.
    “I believe the natives have located us,” he said.
    ~
    Velvene was horrified by the cruelty he had witnessed at the Pentonville Road building, cruelty the like of which he had not known existed. Though he knew nothing about children, an unexpected feeling inside him, that he thought must be sympathy, welled up. He could not control this feeling, and he found himself weeping; not for himself, as he had in Highgate Cemetery, but for the boy Tyko.
    He wandered along the road towards King’s Cross Railway station, pulling the clay figure behind him; forlorn, tired and bruised.
    The smell of chocolate emanating from the station perked him up, and he realised he was hungry. Outside the entrance he saw a number of people holding placards with curious legends upon them: Ban The Hair, and Equal Rights For Us And Them, and, most curiously of all, If You Can Read This You’re Educated.
    One of the men grunted at him and tossed over a printed newspaper, which Velvene opened to scan the front page.
MARX IST-LENINIST TIMES
    Emergency Editon!
    LONDON ARISTOCRACY S PREAD HAIRY LIE
    From our Russian corespondent. The parasitic upper classes of London Town yesterday night spread a great ha iry blanket across us all, destroying the mobility of the working classes in a fowl m ove that Engels hiself could have predicted in The Conditio n Of The Working Classes In England. Tody every street in London town, every alley and passage is choked with hair that the aristocracyy can avoid becuase they