Theatre of the Gods (32 page)

‘Cowards!’ yelled the captain. He took his heavy flare pistol and aimed it into the heights. The pistol gave a throaty ‘chonk’ as it released its charge. There was a delay, then the charge lit, turning night into day. This was the first time they’d seen the full scope of the jungle valley they were in. The walls of a ravine rose miles on either side and curled over so that it looked as if it closed above them, and the vines fell, in some places, almost to the ground. There were
groves of trees, hissing rivers flowing delicately over the contours of the land. And down the valley came another kind of river: thousands upon thousands of creatures were charging towards them. They were like great spiders with the armour and weapons of the crab. They came at them, their razor-sharp claws a-clacking, their eyes unblinking, and their call was like the squittle of a million rats.

*

‘It’s this way,’ said the boy. ‘Our ship is this way.’ Miss Fritzacopple and Lenore followed the children down a narrow path through a copse of low-spreading thorns. The thorns grabbed at our dear friends’ clothing, imploring them to stop. ‘Don’t go with these strange children!’ the bushes seemed to say, but the women didn’t listen. They felt compelled to follow.

‘Miss Lady, why can my nose not see the children?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the botanist, though she secretly thought she might.

‘It’s like they’re not even there!’

‘It’s not much further. When our ship crashed we built a camp and we’ve been here ever since. It’s not so bad when you get used to it.’ They broke from the thorn grove and came into a clearing. In the clearing was an old saucer craft, rusted and broken. Its front landing gear had given way and plunged the disc’s edge into the earth. A red fluid had oozed from the ground and dried around the rim. The whole ship was overgrown with weed and vines, and bugs crawled down its flanks and in and out of its shattered eyes. Next to the ship was a low table and chairs, the kind a family might take camping.

‘Won’t you sit for a while?’ said the girl. ‘Our parents won’t be back for some time, I’m afraid, and our friends are out, too.’

‘Miss Lady,’ hissed Lenore, ‘I hate this. Please let’s go backwards.’

‘In a minute,’ replied the botanist. ‘There might be something useful here.’

‘Won’t you sit with us?’ said the children, in one voice. In the darkness somewhere Fritzacopple thought she heard another voice, an urgent voice calling out a single word, over and over and over.

‘Of course, we’d be delighted,’ said Miss Fritzacopple through a rigid smile. ‘But would you mind if I took a look around your camp first? It’s just that it seems so … lovely.’

The boy and girl looked at one another. ‘Of course,’ said the boy. ‘But don’t go far.’ Then together: ‘It’s dangerous here.’

Miss Fritzacopple retreated into the darkness, lamp held at arm’s length, never turning her back on the children, and Lenore clung tightly to her arm. ‘I am a scared person.’

‘I know.’ They moved towards the voice, and soon the single repeating word resolved itself. Their lamp found the skeleton of an adult, face down, arm stretched out, then another skeleton. It looked as if they’d been trying to reach an amphibious vehicle which stood a few metres away. The vehicle’s tracks were busted, and the bulbous plexiglas enclosure had wide splits in it – as if it had been taken to with an axe. Not far from the vehicle they found two small mounds of earth, and a third skeleton, curled into a foetal position nearby. The voice grew louder, heavy and monstrous. They pushed on through the darkness. Soon they came upon it. It was a machine, an automaton based loosely on the human form. It lay twisted on its back. Its legs were smashed, its arms lay metres away, torn off and cast aside, but its brain was still intact in its glass dome, and in its strange mechanical voice it spoke the same word, again, and again, and again …

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

*

‘Hold your line!’ yelled the captain as the first wave of spider crabs swept up the slope, their long legs singing like war-rattles as they lunged for the visitors’ faces. It was not much of a defensive line: a boy, an old man and a giant. As fast as they killed a spider crab another one took its place, snapping at their faces with its claws, tearing at their clothes with its many barbed legs. Fabrigas produced numerous gadgets from his cloak: a high-powered air cannon, a gun that shot webs of electricity. The spider crabs squealed and died, their broken bodies formed a three-foot-high wall, but still they came, and when Fabrigas had used up all his tricks he too resorted to slashing at them with his blade. ‘We need to retreat!’ he said, but there was nowhere to run. The flare had faded, leaving them in a small, orange puddle of light. The captain flung three skewered crabs from his blade. The bosun had done away with his blade and was smashing crab after crab with his now-bloody fists.

That’s when a strange thing happened. Strange, you say? When everything else that’s happened up until now has been completely normal? Well, strangeness is a matter of perspective. Fabrigas would later say how natural it seemed when a young female voice, so close that it seemed to be coming from inside his head, said, ‘Unlight your lamp.’

‘Who said that?’

‘Do it. Do it now.’

So he did. He grabbed lamp and pole and hurled them into a nearby puddle. There was a
hisssss
and they were plunged into darkness. ‘What the holy mistress are you doing, wizard!’ screamed the bosun.

For a second or two the assault continued, and they had to slash blindly in the air, but then the onslaught stopped. They could hear the stream flow past them and away, the legs clacking off into the distance. Then there was silence, the sound of heavy breathing. ‘How did you know?’ said the captain, kneeling to suck in bladders of air.

‘Someone told me,’ said Fabrigas. ‘Perhaps a little bird.’

‘Well, what do we do now? We’re blind. The others won’t be able to find us.’ That’s when they saw something new: a crowd of pale blue beacons coming down the valley.

*

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

Lenore and Fritzacopple, arms knotted, left the broken robot, the broken rover, the graves and the skeletons, and inched slowly, like a crippled crab, back to the saucer craft. The place was empty and silent. The children were nowhere to be found. ‘Let’s go please now, Miss Lady,’ said Lenore.

‘I want to check the ship first. There might be something useful in there.’ They walked up the creaking gangplank and into the light-less ship.

It was a two-level craft. On the lower level were the atomic motors, the living quarters, the galley and the robot’s compartment. On the upper level they found the control room, and the cryogenic ‘suspended animation’ tubes often used by primitive cultures for interstellar travel. In the chair at the main control desk was another figure, slumped.

‘I don’t like this, I don’t like this, I don’t like this –’

‘Be brave.’ She shook the girl off and walked quickly through the cabin, picking up objects and examining them as she went. She
pocketed a map book, a journal. Resting inside the cover of the journal was a starfish. She looked up to the windows and saw the children standing hand in hand at the edge of the clearing, their eyes slashing the darkness.

‘What are you doing?’ they said. Their voices somehow penetrated the hull of the ship. They said, ‘You don’t go in there. Daddy will be very angry.’ Fritzacopple shuddered and turned back to her work, ignoring the leathery and lifeless form, the long nails, the tufts of wiry hair, the pistol in his hand.

‘What are you?’ said the girl child.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said the botanist. ‘I’m a person.’

‘Not you. We weren’t talking to you. We meant her. What is she?’

‘What am I? What means they what I am?’

‘You aren’t a normal person. You don’t belong here.’

‘You don’t belong anywhere. Daddy is going to be
so
mad when he meets you.’

‘Miss Lady? What do they mean?’

‘Well, I’m sure Daddy will learn to live with us,’ said the botanist as she stuffed some blueprints of the ship inside her leather jacket.

Then a man’s voice said, ‘Who are you?!’ and Lenore screamed.

*

The scream blew the darkness away. It was so loud that the men, still gasping for breath on the pile of crab remains, stopped, and even the lights approaching in the distance halted momentarily. Fabrigas looked to his captain, then into the darkness. ‘Roberto will reach her,’ he said. ‘We have to prepare for these new attackers, whoever they are.’ The crowd of blue beacons was getting closer.

OTHERS

High above, Roberto swung blindly, reaching forward for the next vine, ignoring the slithering shapes that lurched all around him, ignoring the hideous bugs that splattered against his face, shrieking as they burst. There was nothing familiar here, he could not feel the familiar loving currents of electricity begging his fingertips to tame and enslave them. There was no information running up his arms, no swarms of bits tingling the base of his ancient young spine, just the faint, almost imperceptible electrical energy of the primordial plant life. All he could feel in his hands was the slimy blood of the vines mixing with the redder juice from the cuts on his own hands, and all that nagged at the base of his skull was a leaden, animal fear: the kind he had not felt since the day of the surge. Even in the murderous tunnels of Bespophus he’d felt no fear. All he’d had to do there was place his hands against a wall and know he had millions of volts at his disposal. Here in the jungle he was deaf (obviously) and blind in the dark, and swinging towards an unknown danger over which he had no power. Suddenly, the light he’d been moving towards disappeared. He stopped, hanging in the darkness, waiting for the lamp to reappear. It did not. Instead he
heard
the scream. It was the first thing he’d heard since the surge.

*

The man in the doorway was bearded, with sunken eyes. He towered over them. ‘What are you doing aboard my ship?’ Lenore retreated into the waiting arms of Miss Fritzacopple, but the botanist did not retreat.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Fritzacopple. She could feel the small girl’s heart beating faster than a sparrow’s. ‘He’s not real.’

‘Exactly what do you mean I’m not real?’ said the captain. ‘You’d better show some respect when you’re on my ship!’

Outside, the children laughed brightly. ‘We told you so,’ they cried. ‘You made him angry. You won’t like him when he’s angry.’

*

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

Roberto had swung towards the screaming voice, then got lost again. He was lost inside the canopy, and inside his own terrible silence. But now he could see red lights blinking faintly. He pushed off from the vine and drifted down. He drifted down through the darkness towards them.

*

‘We just want to leave quietly now,’ said Fritzacopple. ‘We don’t want trouble.’

‘Well, you’ve got trouble, missy,’ said the man. ‘And plenty of it.’ Then he strode from the room, ducking under the low door, slamming his hand on a big red button as he left. There was a sound of terrible gears, gears that hadn’t moved for a long time, and the door rolled shut.

‘You can’t escape now!’

Miss Fritzacopple leaped for the door but it was too late.

‘You horrible spy! You’ll be trapped, trapped for ever!’ The children were peering in the windows with their liquid eyes.

Fritzacopple felt the air in the cockpit tighten, felt her head lighten. ‘He’s draining the room,’ said the botanist, as her body grew heavy. She heard Lenore say, ‘Miss Lady, don’t die! I don’t want to be alone.’ Tears filled the girl’s dead eyes. Before she passed out Fritzacopple saw Lenore lift her snotty nose and sniff the air, smile and say, ‘Roberto. He’s coming.’

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

MELANCHOLY AND SADNESS

Space sickness, loneliness, melancholy, despair, cabin fever, paranoia, these are the diseases of the mind which affect, to some extent, every space traveller. It is not natural for a person to leave the familiar gravity of their home. And when they do, the things that happen to their minds are sometimes catastrophic. And if you think these are personal diseases, that they are non-contagious, then you’re mistaken. These mind-fevers can be passed from person to person as easy as lice or plague. When plague starts to appear on his ship the captain knows they’ll have a devil’s job getting rid of it; but when space sickness starts to spread through her crew a captain knows she’s probably doomed.

*

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

DANGER!

The door opened again with a terrible scream, widened, then changed its mind and began to close, then stopped halfway. A lawn chair was thrown into the gap. It buckled, but held, and soon the
iron gears ceased their anguished cries and fell into a low moan of acceptance. Fritzacopple woke from near asphyxiation to see Roberto’s face in the doorway, caked in mud and dead insects.

*

The blue beacons grew large in the mist and, with them, silhouettes and low voices. Soon the lights of the approaching party illuminated a boy, a giant and an old man standing on an oozing, wriggling pile of spider crabs. A slender figure stepped forward.

SWAMP FOLK

She was a woman, or at least a kind of woman. Tall with pale, greenish, jelly-like skin suffused with glittery specks, and black saucer-eyes. Stepping out of the mist she addressed them in an unknown language, in a voice that sounded like water running over the eyes of a flute, and they stood patiently as she spoke. She made wide, grand gestures, and pointed to the distance – to the darkness. Her party was six: three women and three men. They almost looked like people. Almost. They wore strange clothes made from a shiny leather, and each had a long, three-pronged spear – like a fork for turning hay.