Haroun and the Sea of Stories (13 page)

After several hours of high-speed travel through the Twilight Strip, they found themselves in the Southern Polar Ocean. Here the waters had lost even more of their colouring, and the water temperature had dropped even lower.

‘We’re going the right way! We can tell!’

‘Before, it was filthy! Now it’s Hell!’

said Goopy and Bagha, coughing and spluttering.

Mali loped along over the water’s surface without any sign of discomfort. ‘If that water is so badly poisoned, doesn’t it hurt your feet?’ Haroun asked him. Mali shook his head. ‘Take more’n that. A little poison, bah. A little acid, pah. A Gardener’s a tough old bird. It won’t stop me.’

Then, to Haroun’s surprise, he burst into a little, rough-voiced song:

You can stop a cheque,
You can stop a leak or three,
You can stop traffic, but
You can’t stop me!

‘What we are here to stop,’ Haroun reminded him, adopting what he hoped was an authoritative, leader-like tone of voice, ‘is the work of the Cultmaster, Khattam-Shud.’

‘If it’s true that there is a Wellspring, or Source of Stories, near the South Pole,’ suggested Iff, ‘then that’s where Khattam-Shud will be, you can be sure of it.’

‘Very well, then,’ Haroun agreed. ‘To the South Pole!’

The first disaster struck soon afterwards. Goopy and Bagha, uttering piteous whimpering noises, confessed that they couldn’t go any further.

‘Never thought it’d be so bad!’

‘We have failed you! We feel sad!’

‘I feel terrible! She feels worse!’

‘We can hardly speak in verse.’

The waters of the Ocean were growing thicker by the mile, thicker and colder; many of the Streams of Story were full of a dark, slow-moving substance that looked like molasses. ‘Whatever is doing this can’t be very far away,’ Haroun thought. To the Plentimaw Fishes he said sadly: ‘Stay here and keep watch. We’ll go on without you.’
Of course, even if there is danger, they won’t be able to warn us
, Haroun realized, but the Plentimaw Fishes were already so miserable that he kept this thought to himself.

The light was poor now (they were at the very edge of the Twilight Strip, very near the hemisphere of Perpetual Darkness). They travelled on towards the Pole; and when Haroun saw a forest standing up from the Ocean, its tall growths waving in a light breeze, the absence of light added to the mystification. ‘Land?’ Haroun asked. ‘Surely there’s not meant to be any land here?’

‘Neglected waters is what it is,’ said Mali in disgust. ‘Overgrown. Gone to weed. Run down. Nobody to keep the place in trim. It’s a disgrace. Give me a year and the whole place’d look like new.’ It was quite a speech for the Floating Gardener. He was plainly upset.

‘We haven’t got a year,’ Haroun said. ‘And I don’t want to fly over it. Too easy to spot, and we couldn’t take you with us, anyway.’

‘Don’t you go worrying about me,’ said Mali. ‘And don’t be thinking about flying, either. I’ll clear a way.’ And with that, he put on a great burst of speed and disappeared into the floating jungle. A few moments later Haroun saw huge clumps of vegetation flying into the air, as Mali got to work. The creatures who lived in this weed-jungle rushed out in alarm: giant albino moths, large grey birds that were all bone and no meat, long whitish worms with heads like shovel blades. ‘Even the wildlife is Old here,’ Haroun thought. ‘Will there be dinosaurs further in? —Well, not dinosaurs exactly, but the water-dwelling ones—that’s right—ichthyosaurs.’ The idea of seeing an ichthyosaur’s head poking out of the water was both scary and exciting. ‘Anyhow, they are vegetarians—
were
vegetarians,’ he comforted himself. ‘At least, I think so.’

Mali strode back across the water to give a progress report. ‘Bit of weeding. Bit of pest control. Have a channel ready in no time.’ And back in he went.

When the channel was clear, Haroun directed Butt the Hoopoe to enter. Mali was nowhere to be seen. ‘Where have you got to?’ Haroun called. ‘This is no time for hide-and-seek.’ But there was no reply.

It was a narrow channel, with roots and weeds still floating on the surface … and they were deep inside the heart of the weed-jungle when the second catastrophe occurred. Haroun heard a faint, hissing sound, and an instant later saw something enormous being thrown in their direction—something that looked like a colossal net, a net that had been spun out of the darkness itself. It fell over them, and held them tight.

‘It is a Web of Night,’ said Butt the Hoopoe usefully. ‘A legendary Chupwala weapon. Struggle is useless; the more you fight, the harder it grips. Our goose, I regret to inform, is cooked.’

Haroun heard noises outside the Web of Night: hisses, little satisfied chuckles. And there were eyes, too, eyes staring through the net, eyes like Mudra’s, with blacks instead of whites—but these eyes were not friendly in the least. —
And where was Mali
?

‘So we’re prisoners already,’ Haroun fumed. ‘Some hero I turned out to be.’

Chapter 9

The Dark Ship

They were being pulled slowly forwards. Their captors, whose shadowy shapes Haroun started to be able to make out as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, were drawing the Web along by invisible but powerful super-strings of some sort. Forward to what, though? Here Haroun’s imagination failed him. All he could see in his mind’s eye was a huge black hole, yawning at him like a great mouth, and sucking him slowly in.

‘Up the creek, pretty pickle, had our chips,’ Iff disconsolately remarked. Butt the Hoopoe was in an equally cheerless state of mind. ‘To Khattam-Shud we go, all neatly wrapped and tied up like a present!’ the Hoopoe wailed without moving its beak. ‘Then it’s zap, bam, phutt, finito for us all. There he sits at the heart of darkness—at the bottom of a black hole, so they say—and he eats light, eats it, raw with his bare hands, and lets none of it escape. —He eats words, too. —And he can be in two places at one time, and there is no getting away. Woe is us! Alas, alack-a-day!
Hai-hai-hai
!’

‘
You’re
a fine pair of companions and no mistake,’ Haroun said as light-heartedly as he could manage. To Butt the Hoopoe he added, ‘Some machine! You swallow every spooky story you hear, even the ones you find in other people’s minds. That black hole, for example: I was thinking about that, and you just pinched it and then let it frighten you. Honestly, Hoopoe, pull yourself together.’

‘How to pull myself, together or anywhere else,’ Butt the Hoopoe lamented without moving its beak, ‘when other persons, Chupwala persons, are pulling me wherever they desire?’

‘Look down,’ Iff broke in. ‘Look down at the Ocean.’

The thick, dark poison was everywhere now, obliterating the colours of the Streams of Story, which Haroun could no longer tell apart. A cold, clammy feeling rose up from the water, which was near freezing point, ‘as cold as death’, Haroun found himself thinking. Iff’s grief began to overflow. ‘It’s our own fault,’ he wept. ‘We are the Guardians of the Ocean, and we didn’t guard it. Look at the Ocean, look at it! The oldest stories ever made, and look at them now. We let them rot, we abandoned them, long before this poisoning. We lost touch with our beginnings, with our roots, our Wellspring, our Source. Boring, we said, not in demand, surplus to requirements. And now, look, just look! No colour, no life, no nothing. Spoilt!’

How this sight would have horrified Mali, Haroun thought; perhaps Mali most of all. But of the Floating Gardener there was still no trace. ‘Probably trussed up like us in another Web of Night,’ Haroun guessed. ‘But O, what wouldn’t I give to see his gnarled old root-body running along beside us now, and to hear that soft flowery voice speaking such rough and infrequent words.’

The poisoned waters lapped at Butt the Hoopoe’s sides—and then splashed suddenly higher, as the Web of Night was brought to an abrupt halt. Iff and Haroun, acting by reflex, jerked their feet away from the splashing liquid, and one of the Water Genie’s attractively embroidered and twirly-pointed slippers fell (from, to be precise, his left foot) into the Ocean; where, quick as a blink, with a fizz and a hiss and a burble and a gurgle, it was instantly eaten away, right down to the tip of its twirly toe. Haroun was impressed, in a horrified way. ‘The poison is so concentrated here that it behaves like a powerful acid,’ he remarked. ‘Hoopoe, you must be made of tough stuff. Iff, you’re lucky it was just your slipper that fell in, and not you.’

‘Don’t sound too pleased,’ Butt the Hoopoe said moodily without moving its beak. ‘Who knows what’s in store for us, up ahead?’

‘Well, thanks very much,’ Haroun rejoined. ‘Another happy notion from you.’

But he was worrying about Mali. The Floating Gardener had actually been walking over the surface of this concentrated poison. He was a tough old creature, but could he withstand its acid-like power? Haroun had an awful mental image of Mali sinking slowly into the Ocean, where with a fizz and a hiss and a burble and a gurgle … he shook his head. No time for such negative thoughts now.

The Web of Night was pulled away, and as the faint twilight returned Haroun saw that they had reached a large clearing in the weed-jungle. Just a short distance away was what looked like a wall of night. ‘That must be the beginning of the Perpetual Darkness,’ Haroun thought. ‘We must be at the very edge of it now.’

Only a few roots and weeds, most of them badly burned and corroded by the poison-acid, floated on the surface of the Ocean here. There was still no sign of Mali, and Haroun continued to fear the worst.

A party of thirteen Chupwalas had surrounded Butt the Hoopoe, and pointed menacing-looking weapons at Iff and Haroun. They all had the same strange reversed eyes, with white pupils instead of black ones, bland grey irises instead of coloured ones, and blackness where the whites should have been, which Haroun had first seen on the face of Mudra. But, unlike the Shadow Warrior, these Chupwalas were scrawny, snivelling, weaselly-looking types wearing black hooded cloaks adorned with the special insignia of Cultmaster Khattam-Shud’s personal guards—that is, the Sign of the Zipped Lips. ‘They look like a gang of office clerks in fancy dress,’ Haroun thought. ‘But they’re not to be underestimated; they are dangerous, no question about it at all.’

The Chupwalas clustered around Butt the Hoopoe and stared curiously at Haroun, which was annoying. They were riding what looked like large, dark sea-horses, which seemed to be just as puzzled by the Earth boy’s presence as their riders. ‘For information only,’ Butt the Hoopoe revealed, ‘these dark horses are machines also. But a dark horse, as is well known, is unreliable, and not to be trusted.’

Haroun wasn’t listening.

He had just seen that the wall of night, which he had thought to be the beginning of the Perpetual Darkness, was no such thing. It was in fact a colossal ship, a vast ark-like vessel standing at anchor in the clearing. ‘That’s where they’ll be taking us,’ he understood with a sinking heart. ‘It must be the flagship of the Cultmaster, Khattam-Shud.’ But when he opened his mouth to say as much to Iff, he found that fear had dried his throat and all that came out of his mouth was a strange croaking noise:

‘Ark,’ he croaked, pointing to the dark ship. ‘Ark, ark.’

~ ~ ~

Gangways with railings slanted down along the side of the Dark Ship. The Chupwalas brought them to the foot of one such gangway, and here Haroun and Iff had to leave Butt the Hoopoe behind and begin the long climb to the deck. As Haroun climbed, he heard a piteous cry, and turned to see the Hoopoe protesting, without moving its beak, ‘But but but
that
you must not take—no, you can’t—it’s my
brain
!’ Two cloaked Chupwalas were on Butt’s back, unscrewing the top of the Hoopoe’s head. From the head cavity they removed a small, dully gleaming metal box, emitting, as they did so, a series of short, satisfied hisses. And then they simply left Butt the Hoopoe floating there, its circuits disconnected, its memory cells and command module removed. It looked like a broken toy. ‘Oh, Hoopoe,’ Haroun thought, ‘I’m sorry I ever teased you about being only a machine! You’re the best and bravest machine that ever there was, and I’ll get your brain back for you, just see if I don’t.’ But he knew it was an empty promise, because after all he had troubles of his own.

They climbed on. Then Iff, who was behind Haroun, stumbled badly, seemed on the verge of falling, and grabbed Haroun’s hand, apparently to steady himself. Haroun felt the Water Genie pushing something small and hard into his palm. He closed his fist over it.

‘A little emergency something, courtesy of P2C2E House,’ Iff whispered. ‘Maybe you’ll get a chance to use it.’

The Chupwalas were ahead of them and behind as well. ‘What is it?’ Haroun muttered in his lowest voice.

‘Bite the end off,’ Iff whispered, ‘and it gives you two full minutes of bright, bright light. So it’s called a Bite-a-Lite, for obvious reasons. Hide it under your tongue.’