Shell Shocked (The Cosmic Carapace, #1) (15 page)

Norbert looked slightly crestfallen, but quickly rallied and started rooting around in another, smaller box to the side of the chest. He grabbed something and held it up to Becky.

“What ‘bout these?!” In his hand was a pipe roughly a foot long which opened up at one end into what looked like a mouthpiece.

“Is that a blowpipe?!” asked Becky incredulously.

“Yes!” Norbert was stood now, bouncing with excitement.

“See I met these foreign fellas in the pub and at the time I had some lovely ham on me what I’d got from old Jeb, ‘cos ‘eed owed me one from when..”

“Yes, yes, alright. I don’t think I want to know. What do they fire?!”

“These!” he answered triumphantly, fishing in the box again and pulling out a small dart gingerly. Becky reached out to take it and Norbert snapped it back urgently.

“Careful!” he shouted.

“I tested this on Mr Boggart's cat at number 23 and ‘ee didn’t wake up for three days!”

Becky took the dart slowly and carefully from him and looked at it. It had a three bright red feathers at one end and a very sharp looking point at the other which as she looked closely, appeared to be hollow and full of some kind of oozing liquid.

“Well, they will have to do, let's go.” Norbert began stuffing the pipes back into the box as Becky turned to leave when something made her stop. There was something there, just on the edge of hearing. Like a high pitch whine. It sounded like... but it couldn’t be...

Suddenly the air seemed to vibrate around them. Things seemed to slow down, the air becoming like treacle. She turned back to Norbert which seemed to take an age. Just as he came into view, looking up at her with complete shock on his face, he vanished. He had simply gone. The box he had been holding was falling to the floor, but like everything else, it was stuck in slow motion. Becky watched it tumble, her mind racing. What on earth was... then he appeared again. Norbert popped into being in front of her, but... he was different. His hat was purple, but it had been red just now. He was wearing some sort of monocle too that looked like one half of a pair of binoculars. Then she saw his face. It was definitely Norbert, but this version had a scar down his left cheek. It was then she realised. This was another Norbert, from another world. The Norbert she knew had just been winked out of existence.

The world snapped back into focus, the air thinned, time seemed to return to normal.

“Norbert!” she shouted.

“’Allo” said Nebwett in front of her. “What’re you doing in my shed?”

––––––––

T
hey stood blinking at each other in the flickering light of the lantern which had fallen on its side as the Norbert she had known had disappeared. She looked at the device in this faux Norbert’s hands. It looked exactly like Spangler's Vibobbler.

“Where did you get that?” she blurted out, far louder than she had intended.

A look of something close to shame flashed across the faux Norbert’s face before it settled back into his standard leer.

“I made it. It’s mine. Who are you? And why d’ya keep calling me that? My name's Nebwett.”

“Because there was a Norbert Strang here when you turned up. Now he’s vanished and the only way he’s going to be able to come back is if you bugger off back to where you came from!” Becky realised she wasn’t just talking loudly now, she was shouting at the small figure, who still sat on the floor in front of her. She gulped some of the stuffy air which was packed into the shed and carried on more quietly.

“I don’t know why you stole that thing, but you have no idea what you’re doing. It’s not something that you can mess around with, it has consequences!”

Nebwett stood up and brushed at his jacket.

“I didn't know ‘eed vanish like that! Why’d I want to do that to him, ee’s me ain’t ‘ee?! I just ‘fort we could maybe pass on stuff to each other and make few bob.” He pulled his hat from his head and started to pass the brim through his fingers, turning it round and round. Becky smiled to herself as she watched his hands working. This really was just another version of the same man. She noticed he was swaying slightly and his eyes were so bloodshot there was more red than white. He’d clearly had fog, or whatever the equivalent was where he was from.

“Ok, look. There's a little kettle over there and a small jar of something brown that I’m really hoping is coffee next to it. Why don’t I make us a cup and you and I can have a little chat about things before you do what you have to do and go home.”

Her tone hardened as she made this last point and Nebwett looked down as he scuffed the floor with his shoe.

“Yes, miss.”

Becky managed to light the small gas stove which the grubby kettle sat on, and found to her relief that the brown stuff was indeed coffee. They pulled over two boxes which served as stools and they sat facing each other. Nebwett was looking around the shed smiling, his eyes wide.

“Itssa amazing! I’ve got some of this stuff too, the exact stuff! Most of it’s different, but innit amazing I ‘ave some of the same fings?!”

“Yes, amazing,” answered Becky, her tone suggesting they had more important things to talk about.

Nebwett looked back at her.

“So how d’you know about this thing then?” he said pointing to the Vibrobbler in his lap (a sentence which could be misconstrued in the hands of a polluted mind... so just stop it).

“D’you know Garsh as well? Work for him or somfin?” he continued.

“Garsh?!" Becky spluttered. "What do you have to do with him?!”

“So you do know ‘im! Well ‘ees the one who gave me the idea for this int he? He’s got one just like it and I heard what he did with it so I thought ‘ello ‘ello, I could use this to make a few bob. Buy and sell with the other side kind of fing. Then I had it! ‘Oo better to deal with than me! I mean, I can trust myself can’t I?!”

Becky was dubious about the accuracy of this statement, but kept it to herself.

“You mean, you really made this? You made a new one yourself? But the twins have been trying for months!”

“Oo’s the twins?!”

“Oh never mind. Look, you need to tell me everything you know about what Garsh is doing and why. Right now.”

Nebwett looked at the look in her eye and his rather exaggerated survival instinct told him to comply.

He told her the snatches of conversation he had heard when he’d been invited to Garsh’s residence by Geeb. He told her how he had heard Garsh was planning to take over Alexandria and its world, and then the next, and the one after that. Garsh planned to take all worlds, all realities as his own, and he was going to do it by bringing things across worlds to help him.

~~~~

S
pencer was ready to kill Colin. He hadn’t stopped talking for the last forty minutes and Spencer’s patience had now worn so thin that it was pretty much translucent.

“I just think we need to think about the greater good here Spencer. It seems they knew you wouldn’t be able to manage it, which is why you're not in manacles, but one good go at that door with the full force of my shoulder and we’d soon be out of here. All you need to do is find a good stone with a sharp edge and...”

“FOR THE LAST TIME COLIN, I AM NOT GOING TO CUT YOUR FEET OFF!”

“This is no time to be squeamish friend, we must all do what we can in times of trouble.”

Spencer’s head dropped into his hands for what felt like the hundredth time since he had been stuck in the dungeon.

“Let’s say I do manage to hack your feet off with a rock and you can get out of the manacles. In fact, let’s even say you manage to barge the door down, which probably has some sort of iron bolt the other side of the oak, what exactly is the plan then?”

“We fight our way to back up to the courtyard and show these villains they can’t just take our country!”

Spencer groaned softly. Although he couldn’t see his face in the gloom, he knew Colin had jutted out his jaw as he had said this in proud defiance. Thank goodness it was at least too dark to see any sign of a glint of heroism in his eye.

“So you're going to fight your way out of a guarded palace on bloody stumps after losing god knows how much blood are you?”

“Hmm. That could be tricky I’ll admit. Maybe we could use me as a decoy? A distraction? Just carry me to the top of the stairs and prop me up. I’ll start shouting and fight off the rotters while you sneak away and find this Garsh chap.”

“SHUT UP!” Spencer screamed into the black space he knew Colin was occupying.

Silence rang out almost more loudly than Spencer’s shout. He could feel it bearing down on him from all sides. The blackness, the soft, thick quiet.

“Erm...”

It was spoken quietly, but it seemed to boom around the echoing space like a gunshot. Spencer jumped upright, back against the wall, his whole body tense. The sound had come from the far corner of the room, nowhere near where he knew Colin to be.

"Spencer? Have you moved?" Colin’s voice rang out now sounding confused. Spencer said nothing. He didn’t want to give his position away to whoever had just spoken. He started to edge slowly along the wall away from the end where the voice had come from.

“Er, sorry, no. It’s me.” the voice in the dark replied to Colin. Spencer froze again as it spoke, first in fear, but then... there was something familiar there. He recognised it somehow.

“Well hello friend!” boomed Colin. “Glad to see we have another brother in chains in which to help our bid for freedom!”

Spencer involuntarily rolled his eyes.

“Er Spencer? It’s me, Albert Bulber, we met earlier today? Well, I think it was today, see I'm not sure how long I've...” The voice tailed off.

Spencer relaxed and slid back down the wall to the floor.

“Albert? You’ve been here the whole time? Why didn’t you say anything?!”

“Well I rather think I might have been unconscious. I’ve got a sizeable bump on my head anyway. When I woke up it was pitch black and your friend there was talking about cutting his own feet off. It didn’t seem the time to be making myself known to be honest, not until I recognised your voice and he called you Spencer, anyway. I take it he’s not erm.. dangerous, Spencer?”

Spencer frowned in the dark. He was of the opinion that actually, Colin was very bloody dangerous. Mostly to himself, but still. That wasn’t why he was frowning though. There was something wrong here that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He could feel it hovering in the blackness in front of him, just out of sight.

“No, no, he’s fine,” answered Spencer distractedly.

“So, where are we?” the voice of Albert asked sounding weary.

“In the dungeon of the palace, but not for long if you will only come over here with a good, strong, sharp rock and..” Colin began, but he was cut off by Albert.

“Well that’s a funny place to put us. I thought they’d put us somewhere secure with guards and things.”

Spencer was torn away from his unease by this.

“You did catch the word ‘dungeon’ just then right?"

“Well yes, they
call
it that,” answered Albert. “But it hasn’t been used as that for years! I just use it when one of the Supreme Council is ‘excused from the meeting’ as they call it.”

“You mean dead?” asked Spencer.

“Well yes,” said Albert. “They’re very old men. It’s amazing I'm not up there more often to be honest.”

Spencer closed his eyes. Of course! Albert wasn’t from here, not from Alexandria, he was from Placeholder! That’s what had been bugging him. How on earth did he get here?

“So, shall I let us out then?” asked Albert. there was silence from the rest of the room. “It’s just I've got the key here and if it helps avoid anyone losing their feet and what not...”

~~~~

L
ance Bale and Tony Freedle were not exactly what you would call ‘expert’ guards. For starters, they had the combined attention span of a three hour old fruit fly. Secondly, most of their experience came from being the ones attempting to steal the things being guarded rather than the ones doing the actual guarding. This had caused them to question their role in life somewhat. To two people who had a reputation for being the worst and above all, most idiotic criminals in Alexandria, this was a tough ask. Even in such a weak field of only two, Lance was definitely in last place in the brains department, and it was he who was struggling the most with this particular shift in their livelihoods.

“What I want to know is, what’s the score? What are we gonna get?” he asked.

“There ain’t no score," answered Tony. “We just stands here and make sure no one comes in or out and then we gets paid.”

“That sounds like working that does,” Lance answered with a worried tone. If there was one thing Lance was sure of in life, it was that he was firmly against working for a living. On this point, Tony was in firm agreement.

“No, no. My cousin Lou wouldn’t get us into any of that stuff.” He made a face which made it very clear that when he said the word ‘stuff’, he was referring to something very unpleasant indeed, possibly involving a toilet.

“'Ee told me that this was just like... the first bit of the job. Then the other bits ‘appen and we get more proper jobs.”