One day Unk knocked on the door of Bud’s office and opened the door before Bud had answered. As a result, he found Bud fiddling at an instrument panel ingeniously concealed in a closet which Bud usually kept closed and locked.
“Bud,” Unk began, “We’re almost out of avocados. I’m thinking maybe we can send the lilrabbi out to buy some quickly before the supper . . . what is that?”
Bud looked extremely guilty. He closed the closet in silence. He looked at Unk and then down at the floor. Then he cleared his throat.
“It’s called a criten.”
“I thought a criten was some kind of bug.”
“Well, it is, in a way.”
“What exactly is it?”
“You don’t know?” Bud looked hard at Unk and then said, “Look, lets deal with the avocados and I’ll tell you later.”
Unk forgot about the criten until they were all back home.
“Hey,” he said looking at the lilrabbi. “You remember you were asking me about a criten a while back?”
“Yeah. Did you find out what it was?”
“No. But where did you come across the word?”
“I was reading a book,” the lilrabbi said, at which Kat raised her eyebrows. He went over to his stack of comics and searched. He returned with a dog eared copy of the Journal for the Proceedings of the Society for Ulterior Motivation of the University of Golf.
“You read the J.P.S.Umug?” Kat asked.
“Sometimes. Anyway, there was a mention of a criten but no description of it in an article for a device that appears to stimulate people’s brain to aspirations of world domination.”
“That sounds dangerous,” Unk said, taking the journal. “What’s the other device called?”
“Plovalis.”
As Unk leafed through the journal a black feather fell out and drifted to the floor.
“That yours?” he asked the lilrabbi.
“No. I didn’t put it in there. It must have been in there already.” He turned to CS Lewis. “Did you put it in there? Was it yours?”
“No.”
“You gave this journal to him?” Kat asked CS Lewis.
“The draftsmanship of those comics is terrible. I thought it would be better for him.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From a chap in the Transcendental Arrangement, a harmless chap with braces and keys.”
