The Eye of Zoltar (18 page)

‘No mmnk …
boy
.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Ignatius.

‘I think he said he wasn’t a monkey-boy.’

Ignatius laughed.

‘Well, he
is
, that much is obvious – and a nasty piece of genetic throwback, to boot.’

Ralph frowned for a moment, rummaged in his handbag and brought out the razor-sharp flint knife. Without pausing he sliced cleanly through the rope that tethered Ignatius to the ground. The rowing boat, with Ignatius inside it, began to rise gently in the morning air.

‘Ralph!’ yelled Ignatius, suddenly panicking. ‘What in—!’

‘Wait there,’ I said, ‘I’ll throw you a line!’

I ran to the half-track and rummaged in the tool locker for a length of cord. By the time I had found one, Ignatius was about twenty feet above me, drifting east. I tied a spanner to the end of the line and readied myself to throw it to him.

‘It’s okay,’ he yelled excitedly. ‘The wind is taking me towards the border. Cancel the taxi, I’ll be home and safe in an hour or two!’

‘Hang on, Ignatius,’ I said, having seen civilians try to use magic for their own ends and it all going horribly wrong, ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Ignatius happily, ‘by the time the magic wears off I’ll be home and dry.’

‘Wait … !’

But I was too late. The rowing boat was now drifting faster as the breeze caught it, even bumping against Curtis’ pod pole as it went past. Curtis popped his head out to see what was going on, and was surprised to see Ignatius drifting past.

‘I’m off home,’ said Ignatius. ‘Join me?’

Curtis said he wouldn’t but wished him well and they agreed to meet up at a bar in London some time when all of this was over. Their voices roused everyone else, who also wished Ignatius well but probably, like me, were actually fed up with him. The rowing boat rose until it reached its maximum height of about six hundred feet or so, and continued to drift in the direction of the unUnited Kingdoms.

Now awake, the group came down from their pod poles. The fog had now dispersed and the risk of Hotax attack lessened, so they washed in the lake while they swapped notes about the night’s noises, terrors and close calls, then we all sat down to a breakfast of coffee and bacon and eggs. By the time we had finished, Ignatius and his rowing boat were simply a distant dot in the morning sky.

‘I’ve just had a thought,’ said the Princess. ‘I mean, aren’t there anti-aircraft batteries along the border?’

‘That’s just for aircraft coming in,’ said Wilson. ‘They’d have to be either mad or vindictive to shoot at anyone leaving – wouldn’t they?’

And as if to prove that Emperor Tharv’s orders to his military were precisely those things – mad
and
vindictive – we saw small puffs of anti-aircraft fire explode around the small dot. It was a slow-moving target, and Ignatius didn’t stand a chance. There was a large explosion and we saw a few bits fall to earth trailing smoke.

‘That was hard cheese,’ remarked Curtis without a shred of compassion. ‘Should have stuck with us – or taken a parachute.’

‘I trained in the navy,’ said Wilson, ‘and the first thing you learn is that parachutes are not generally required while boating.’

‘Ook-ook-ook,’ said Ralph, with a slight curling of the lip that I took to be an early hominid smile.

‘Do you think he planned that?’ asked the Princess.

‘I’m not sure Australopithecines
can
plan,’ I said, ‘but you never know.’

‘Okay,’ I said, as soon as we had given Ignatius a minute’s silence as a vague sort of respect, ‘this is where we are: Addie went to rescue Perkins last night and told me that if she didn’t return she was dead. It’s now nine o’clock. I say we leave it until midday before assuming the worst. After that, we head off towards Llangurig. Any objections?’

There weren’t any, of course, and we settled down to wait.

It rained in the morning for about half an hour, but we sheltered under the awning attached to the half-track. At eleven o’clock two Tralfamosaurs moved through the camp, so we climbed the poles until they were safely past. The morale of the small group was not high. Despite the fact that none of us had liked Ignatius and his demise had tipped Addie’s guaranteed 50 per cent survival rate in our favour, a member of our group had still died, and somewhere he would be mourned. Curtis was being unbearably smug as he thought he had one over on me, so was best avoided. I’d told the Princess about his visit the previous evening. She again suggested she kill him, which I again refused. So with neither of us talking to Curtis and Ralph not talking very well, Wilson was about the only person we could all turn to for a chat. He was in a good mood, and spent the time writing up his birdwatching notes in a blue exercise book.

I looked over his shoulder and noticed that aside from the odd pigeon and a wren or two, the ‘birds I’ve seen this week’ page was almost completely blank.

‘Not much luck seeing birds, then?’ I asked. ‘Tharv’s ban must be working.’

‘The absence of birds has nothing to do with him,’ said Wilson. ‘Birds have a hard time living out here. The successful ones either learn how to burrow like sand martins, puffins or blind mole-sparrows, or have a huge turn of speed like the swift or Falcon X-1. Anything else that flaps is otherwise … devoured.’

‘By what?’

‘The Cloud Leviathans,’ said Wilson as though it were obvious. ‘The beasts swoop low across the land ingesting huge volumes of air along with everything that’s in it. The air is then compressed in the Leviathan’s muscular chambers, and when the run is over, the beast swallows the flying creatures and vents the compressed air through pressure ducts on its undersides, assisting with extra lift at the end of a feeding run.’

‘Sort of like whales in the ocean?’ asked Curtis.

‘Absolutely,’ said Wilson. ‘Leviathans have been known to swallow flocks of starlings more than ten thousand strong, and are suggested as the reason behind the passenger pigeon extinction in North America. It’s the reason birds migrate, too – to avoid being eaten. I’m not surprised at the lack of birds. Since Cloud Leviathans are about the size of a smallish passenger jet, they can get pretty hungry.’

‘How does it fly with such ridiculously small wings?’ asked the Princess, holding up a blurry photograph she’d found in a copy of
Ten Animals to Avoid in the Cambrian Empire.
The creature was sort of like a stubby plesiosaur, with four seemingly inadequate-sized paddle-shaped wings, and a large mouth on the underneath of a broad, flat head.

‘No one’s ever studied them at length,’ said Wilson, ‘firstly because they are rare – fewer than five, it’s suggested – and secondly because they have a chameleonic skin that allows them a limited invisibility. No one has ever seen a body, far less a skeleton, hence the theory of a legendary graveyard – somewhere they all go to die.’

‘Do you think it’s likely Sky Pirate Wolff trained one?’ I asked.

Wilson thought for a moment.

‘It’s always
possible
, of course, and I’ve heard the stories about aerial piracy, the destruction of Cloud City Nimbus III and the RMS
Tyrannic
, but I’m fairly sceptical. As the Princess noted, it doesn’t look like a good flyer, so how could it support the weight of a team of pirates?’

We all fell silent after that, and I considered Sky Pirate Wolff, and whether she existed or not – if not, then the Eye of Zoltar might not exist either, but I was not necessarily here to
find
the Eye, but to ask Able Quizzler what he knew – something I could still do, even with our current difficulties.

On the dot of twelve and with Addie and Perkins not returned, I decided we should leave. I wrote what we were doing on a sheet of paper and left it taped to the bottom of Addie’s pod pole. Wilson suggested he take the wheel and after some grinding of gears we departed along the the compacted dirt road marked ‘Llangurig and the North’, to which the Cambrian Tourist Board had helpfully added: ‘32% chance of being devoured, but good scenery with ample picnic spots’.

We hadn’t gone more than two miles when we came across a dusty Range Rover parked on a grassy lay-by at the side of the road. We slowed down as we passed, and looked in at the driver and passenger, who were staring at the view. They didn’t look up and, sensing something might be wrong, I instructed Wilson to stop the half-track a little way down the road.

‘Wait for us here,’ I said to the Princess and Curtis, then walked cautiously back to the Range Rover accompanied by Wilson and Ralph, who didn’t seem to want to stray too far from my side.

‘Everything okay?’ I asked the driver of the Range Rover, but he didn’t reply. He was a well-dressed middle-aged man who was holding a camera in one hand while the other rested lightly on the steering wheel. His brow was wrinkled, as though he had just seen something, but he made no movement. Something definitely wasn’t right.

‘Hello?’ I said, and waved a hand in front of the driver’s face. He didn’t even blink.

‘Mine’s unresponsive,’ I said, ‘what about yours?’

‘Same,’ said Wilson, staring uneasily at the passenger. She was seemingly frozen in mid-stretch, her mouth partially open as though just finishing a yawn.

‘Mule Fever?’ I suggested.

‘If it was, they’d have ears long before the paralysis set in,’ replied Wilson.

‘I can’t feel a pulse,’ I remarked, holding the driver’s wrist, ‘and the skin feels hard and waxy.’

‘Hotax did this,’ said Wilson.

I looked at the motionless people.

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying,’ said Wilson, ‘that the Hotax are not just murderously cannibalistic but big on conservation. They retain the discarded skin, hair and bones then preserve them perfectly. Look.’

He reached inside the car and lifted the hair from the back of the driver’s neck to reveal a row of fine cross-stitching in the skin, then tapped the man’s nearest eyeball, which was not human at all, but skilfully made of
glass
.

I peered closer. It was quite the most remarkable piece of work. As realistic as anything I had ever seen, and ten times better than the rubbish you get at the waxworks.

‘Amazingly lifelike, aren’t they?’ said Wilson. ‘The families of Hotax victims often elect not to bury their relatives but instead use them as hatstands in the hall. Mind you, the good thing about a Hotax attack is that you don’t know anything about it – just a slight prick in the back of the neck as the poisoned dart hits home. Then you’re like this, preserved at the moment of death, for ever.’

‘I … suppose I could think of worse ways to go,’ I said.

‘I could
definitely
think of worse ways to go,’ agreed Wilson thoughtfully. ‘Knowing Hotax they would have stripped the car for any tradable spares, too. Look.’

He lifted the bonnet to reveal an empty engine bay.

We stood for a moment, musing upon the Hotax’s odd mix of utter savagery, skilled artistry and business sense in the car spares industry, when the roar of an engine punctuated the silence.

It was the half-track. We both turned, and whoever was driving clunked the vehicle swiftly into gear and it lurched off.

‘Hey!’ I yelled, and ran after it. As it drove away, the driver turned to see how close I was, and I recognised him immediately – Curtis. The half-track was not fast, but Curtis had a head start; I couldn’t catch him.

‘Tell me you didn’t leave the keys in the ignition,’ I said to Wilson as he joined me.

‘Whoops,’ he said, ‘sorry.’

‘Ook,’ said Ralph.

‘This is bad,’ I said, looking around at the empty moorland and wondering what horrors lay hidden just out of sight, ‘
really
bad,’

‘He’s probably doing it as a stupid joke,’ said Wilson without much conviction. ‘He’ll be back soon.’

‘He’s gone for good,’ I said, realising what was happening, ‘on a journey to the Leviathans’ Graveyard.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he thinks Leviathans’ teeth are key to the magic industry and wants them all for himself, I imagine.’

‘Are they?’

‘Not at all. But,’ I added, ‘it doesn’t explain why he didn’t dump my handmaiden by the side of the road.’

‘I have a theory about that,’ said Wilson. ‘The Cambrian Empire has suffered a servant shortage for the past three decades, and it’s not just handmaidens. Footmen, cooks, pastry chefs and even bootboys are in short supply. He probably wants to sell her in Llangurig and I dare say he’d get a good price.’

‘He’d best be careful,’ I said. ‘Laura was trained in the art of silent assassination.’

‘That might be a relief,’ said Wilson, ‘but if she kills him, can she drive a half-track?’

‘Almost certainly not,’ I said, reasoning that Curtis – who was strong – would not need much effort to overpower the Princess while she was in Laura’s smaller and weaker body.

I sat down on a boulder by the side of the road and rubbed my face with my hands.

‘This trip is getting worse and worse.’

‘We might be able to buy her back,’ added Wilson thoughtfully, ‘unless she’s good at ironing – a well-ironed shirt out here is as valuable as gold.’

‘I’ve got a feeling the Prin— I mean, Laura’s not that good at ironing,’ I said, guessing that she’d not be able to identify an iron in a line-up of fruit. ‘How far is it to Llangurig?’

‘By road, about thirty miles,’ replied Wilson, ‘half that if we cut across country. But one thing’s for certain—’

‘We don’t want to spend a night in the open.’

‘Right.’

I walked to the other side of the road, picked up a stone and chucked it as far into the Empty Quarter as I could in a pointless display of anger and frustration.

I had entrusted the care of the expedition to a twelve-year-old who had lost Perkins to a group of bandits and then failed to rescue him, leaving Perkins at the mercy of Emperor Tharv and a possible – no,
probable
relaunch of his Thermowizidrical Device project. I had lost the Princess entrusted to my care and then woefully underestimated Curtis’ greed, and given him a reason to abandon us to our deaths in the middle of the Empty Quarter, the most dangerous place in the Cambrian Empire, which is, in turn, the most dangerous place in the unUnited Kingdoms.