The Fall of Tartarus (42 page)

Cramer
noted that his dried eyeballs were now fastened about his left ankle,
bolas-like.

‘In
two days I return to Tartarus,’ he said in his high, rasping voice. His
stitched-shut eye-sockets faced Cramer’s approximate direction. ‘My quest is
almost over.’

Cramer
raised his drink. ‘You don’t know how pleased I am,’ he sneered. ‘But I thought
no one knew the whereabouts of your precious shrine?’

‘Once,
that was true,’ the Abbot said, unperturbed by Cramer’s rancour. ‘Explorers
claimed they’d stumbled upon the alien temple, and then just as conveniently
stumbled away again, unable to recall its precise location. But then two weeks
ago a miracle occurred.’

Cramer
took a long pull from the bottle and offered his guest a shot. The Abbot
refused.

‘There
is a pouch on a cord around my waist,’ he said. ‘Take it. Retrieve the items
within.’

Cramer
made out the small leather pouch, its neck puckered by a drawstring. He could
not reach the Abbot from his seat. He was forced to kneel, coming into contact
with the holy man’s peculiar body odour - part the stench of septic flesh, part
the chemical reek of the analgesics that seeped from his every pore.

He
opened the pouch and reached inside.

Three
spherical objects met his fingertips, and he knew immediately what they were.
One by one he withdrew the image apples. He did not immediately look into their
depths. It was as if some precognition granted him the knowledge of what he was
about to see. Only after long seconds did he raise the first apple to his eyes.

He
gave an involuntary sob.

Image
apples were not a fruit at all, but the exudations of an amber-like substance,
clear as dew, from tropical palms native to Tartarus. Through a bizarre and
unique process, the apples imprinted within themselves, at a certain stage in
their growth, the image of their surroundings.

Bracing
himself, Cramer looked into the first apple again, then the second and the
third. Each crystal-clear orb contained a perfect representation of Francesca
as she strode through the jungle, past the trees where the apples had grown.

The
first apple had captured her full-length, a short, slim, childlike figure
striding out, arms swinging - all radiation silvers and massed midnight hair.
In the second apple she was closer; just her head and shoulders showed. Cramer
stared at her elfin face, her high cheekbones and jade green eyes. Then the
third apple: she was striding away from the tree, only her narrow back and fall
of hair visible. Tears coursed down his cheeks.

He
held the apples in cupped hands and shook his head. He was hardly able to find
the words to thank the Abbot. Just the other day he had been bewailing the fact
that he had but half a dozen pix of Francesca. That the holy man had come all
the way to Earth to give him these . . .

‘I
. . . Thank you. I don’t know what to say.’

Then
Cramer stopped. Perhaps the whisky had clouded his senses. He stared at the
Abbot.

‘How
did you find these?’ he asked.

‘When
you left,’ said the Abbot. ‘I continued north. At the time, if you recall, I
was following directions given to me by a boatman on the river St Augustine.
They proved fallacious, as ever, and rather than continue further north and
risk losing my way, I retraced my steps, returned to the plateau where we had
camped.’ He was silent for a time. Cramer was back on Tartarus Major, so
graphically did the Abbot’s words conjure up the scene, so painful were his
memories of the events upon the plateau.

‘When
I reached the clearing, it occurred to me to pray for Francesca. I fell to my
knees and felt for the totem I had planted to mark her resting place, only to
find that it was not there. Moreover, I discovered that the piled earth of the
grave had been disturbed, that the grave was indeed empty.’

Cramer
tried to cry out loud, but no sound came.

‘In
consternation I stumbled back to my tent. She was waiting for me.’

‘No!’

‘Yes.
Francesca. She spoke to me, “Abbot, do not fear. Something wondrous has
happened”.’

Cramer
was shaking his head. ‘No, she was dead. Dead. I buried her with my own hands.’

‘Francesca
lives,’ the Abbot insisted. ‘She told me that she knew the whereabouts of the
holy temple. She would show me, if I did as she bid.’

‘Which
was?’

He
smiled, and the approximation of such a cheerful expression upon a face so
devastated was ghastly to behold. ‘She wanted me to come to Earth and fetch you
back to Tartarus. She gave me the image apples as proof.’

Cramer
could only shake his head like something clockwork. ‘I don’t ... I can’t
believe it.’

‘Look
upon the images,’ he ordered.

Cramer
held the baubles high. ‘But surely these are images of Francesca
before
I arrived on Tartarus,
before
her death?’

‘Look
closely, man! See, she carries your laser, the one you left in your flight from
the clearing.’

He
stared again, disbelieving. He had overlooked it in the apples before, so
slight a side-arm it was. But sure enough - strapped to Francesca’s thigh was
the silver length of his personal pulse laser.

‘She
wants you,’ the Abbot said in a whisper.

Cramer
wept and raged. He hurled his empty whisky bottle through the air and into the
jungle, which accepted it with hardly a pause in the cacophonous medley of
insects, toads and birds.

‘But
the sun might blow at any time,’ he cried.

‘Some
experts say a month or two.’ The Abbot paused. ‘But vain and rapacious men
still pilot illegal boats to Tartarus, to raid the treasures that remain. I
leave the day after tomorrow. You will accompany me, I take it?’

Sobbing,
unable to control himself, wracked with guilt and a fear he had no hope of
understanding, Cramer said that he would indeed accompany the Abbot. How could
he refuse?

And
so began his return to Tartarus Major. He cursed the twisted machinations of
fate. A little under four months ago he had set out on his first voyage to the
planet, in a bid to find a Francesca he feared was surely dead - and, now, he
left with the Abbot aboard a ramshackle sailship, its crew a gallery of rogues,
to be reunited with a Francesca he knew for sure to be dead, but somehow
miraculously
risen . . .

He
chose to spend the voyage under sedation.

The
first he knew of the landing was when the Abbot coaxed him awake with his
croaking, cracking voice. Cramer emerged reluctantly from his slumber,
recalling vague, nightmare visions of Francesca’s death - only to be confronted
by another nightmare vision: the Abbot’s mutilated visage, staring down at him.

‘To
your feet. Tartarus awaits.’

He
gathered his scant belongings - six flasks of whisky, the image apples - and
stumbled from the ship.

As
he emerged into the terrible daylight, the assault of Tartarus upon his every
sense seemed to sober him. He stared about like a man awakening from a dream,
taking in the panorama of ancient wooden buildings around the port, their
facades and steep, tiled roofs seeming warped by the intense heat.

Theirs
was the only ship in sight, its silver superstructure an arrogant splash of
colour against a sun-leached dun and ochre city. A searing wind soughed across
the port, blowing hot grit into Cramer’s face. He gazed at the magnesium-bright
sun that filled half the sky. The very atmosphere of the planet seemed to be on
fire. The air was heavy with the stench of brimstone, and every breath was a
labour.

The
leader of the thieves stood beneath the nose-cone of the ship. ‘We set sail for
Earth in two days,’ he said. ‘If you want passage back, be here at dawn. We’ll
not be waiting.’

Cramer
calculated how long it might take to reach the jungle plateau, and return -
certainly longer than any two days. He trusted there would be other pirate
boats to take him back to civilisation.

Already
the Abbot was hurrying across the port, his armless gait made fastidious with
concentration. His dried eyeballs scuffed around his ankles as he went,
striking random patterns in the dust. Cramer shouldered his bag and followed.

Unerringly,
the holy man led the way down narrow alleys between the tall timber buildings
of the city’s ancient quarter. Just four months ago these byways had been
thronged with citizens streaming to the port, eager to flee the impending
catastrophe. Now they were deserted. The only sound was that of their
footsteps, and the dry rasp of the Abbot’s eyeballs on the cobbles. Between the
over-reaching eaves, the sky dazzled like superheated platinum. All was still,
lifeless.

They
descended to the banks of the St Augustine, its broad green girth flowing
sluggishly between the rotten lumber of dilapidated wharves and jetties. The
river, usually choked with trading vessels from all along the coast, was empty
now; not one boat plied its length.

An
urchin fell into step beside the Abbot and tugged at his robes. They came to a
boathouse, and the Abbot shouldered open the door and stepped carefully aboard
a long-boat. Cramer climbed in after him and seated himself on cushions beneath
the black and scarlet awning. The Abbot sat forward, at the very prow of the
launch, while the boy busied himself with the engine. Seconds later it
spluttered into life, a blasphemy upon the former silence, and the boat surged
from the open-ended boathouse and headed upriver, into the interior.

Cramer
pulled a flask of whisky from his bag and chugged down three mouthfuls, the
quantity he judged would keep him afloat until the serious drinking began at
sunset. The Abbot had thought to provision the launch with a container of food:
biltongs, rounds of ripe cheese, cobs of black bread and yellow, wizened fruit
like pears. A goblet suggested that they should take from the river for their
refreshment: Cramer decided to stick to his whisky. He ate his fill, lay back
and closed his eyes as the boat bounced upstream. He must have dozed; when he
next opened his eyes he saw that they had left the city far behind. Flat fields
spread out on either hand; tall crops, perhaps green once, were scorched now
the colour of straw beneath the merciless midday sun.

He
thought of Francesca, considered the possibility of her resurrection, and
somehow withheld his tears. To busy himself, to take his mind off what might
lie ahead, he dipped the goblet into the river and carried it to where the
Abbot was seated cross-legged at the prow like some proud and macabre
figurehead.

He
raised the brimming goblet to the holy man’s lips. Graciously, the Abbot
inclined his head and drank thirstily. When the cup was dry, he murmured his
thanks.

Cramer
remained seated beside him. Already he was soaked with sweat and uncomfortable,
and he wore the lightest of jungle wear. The Abbot was surely marinating within
the thick hessian of his habit.

Cramer
nodded to where his sleeves were tucked inside their shoulder holes. ‘Yet more
penance since we last met,’ he observed, his tone sarcastic.

He
wondered when the Abbot would have his tongue pulled out, his legs amputated,
his testicles removed - if they had not been removed already.

‘After
finding Francesca,’ the Abbot said, ‘I made my way back to Baudelaire. I
informed the Church Council of the miracle in the jungle, and petitioned them
for permission to undergo
penance physicale.
The following day the
Surgeon Master removed my arms.’

Cramer
let the silence stretch. He felt dizzy with the heat. The glare of the sun
seemed to drive needles into his eyes. The boat changed course slightly and
passed a sandbank. Dead birds and other bloated animals floated by.

‘And
Francesca?’ Cramer whispered.

The
Abbot turned his cowl to Cramer, suggesting inquiry.

Cramer
cleared his throat. ‘Why does she want me with her?’

‘She
did not say.’ The Abbot paused. ‘Perhaps she loves you, still.’

‘But
what exactly did she tell you?’

‘She
said that I was to bring you back to Tartarus. In return, she would guide me to
the temple.’

Cramer
shook his head. ‘How does she know its whereabouts? Months ago, like you, she
had no idea.’

‘She
was bequeathed its location in her sleep.’

He
cried aloud. ‘In her sleep?
Sleep
? She was dead. I buried her myself.’
He was sobbing now. ‘How can she possibly be alive?’

The
Abbot would say no more, no matter how much Cramer pleaded. He lowered his
head, and his lips moved in soothing prayer.

Cramer
took sanctuary beneath the awning. He sucked down half a flask of whisky as
night failed, as ever, to fall. The bloated sun dipped below the flat horizon,
but such was the power of its radiation that the night sky was transformed into
a flickering canopy of indigo, scarlet and argent streamers. The light-show
illuminated the entirety of the eastern sky, and against it the Abbot was a
stark and frightening silhouette.