Theatre of the Gods (36 page)

‘You stole a Router? And yet you live.’

‘We didn’t steal him. He stowed away aboard our ship.’

‘This boy is a classified file. The agencies will have sent their deadliest operatives to track him. If you’re wise you’ll kill and bury him in the swamp, then get as far away as possible.’

‘I’m not sure it’s possible for us to flee much further than we have. Now you? Who’s trying to kill you?’

‘As I said, I’ve made some powerful enemies. Have you heard of the Thorn Table?’

‘I have not.’

‘They are a group of businessmen. They are more powerful than any other group in the Empire, more than all the royal lines combined. For now. They create governments, destroy kings and queens. Now they have their sights on universal domination. They want to smash through the Wall, reunite the empires, and rule the Sphere unchallenged. To achieve this they signed an alliance with a powerful entity. This entity will give them the means to win the final war between the empires of the universe. This entity has
real
power.’

‘The Xo?’

Albert chuckled through his nose. ‘Oh, my dear old man. You clearly have no idea.’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘I was approached by the Thorn Table and asked to be their contact inside the royal family. I was told that the group had made contact
with a very powerful ruler from “outside” the universe. He has promised to give the Thorn Table power to rule unconditionally, and for all time. No more empires. No more wars. They said our royal line would be made sovereign rulers for life.’

‘For a price.’

‘For trivial favours. That we bring him the tiny green head of his enemy’s daughter, for example. And yours. He is particularly hungry for yours.’

‘Why mine?’

‘Because you pretend to be a god. You believe you can circumvent the natural laws of time and space. At first I cooperated, but when I expressed moral doubts I was quickly disposed of.’

‘You have morals?’

Albert smiled brightly. ‘I dabble. Oh, I had no problem with slaughtering you and the girl. It’s when they proposed doing away with my sister, the Queen, that I expressed alarm. I think they mean to abolish the dynasty, create a hyperpower of their own. My three treacherous cousins, I assume, have taken my duties. The Queen is oblivious, a puppet. My ship was sabotaged. When I woke from my wine stupor I was lost in a white foggy atmosphere. When the fog cleared I found myself crashed here. But so it goes. It was a glorious accident that it happened this way, because it has allowed me to build my perfect world. I was rescued by a doctor, the only survivor of a wrecked saucer craft. He had made camp here and begun a series of experiments in biological engineering. When my adoptive father passed away he left me this project and I continued to build on its greatness. I took a small group of frightened creatures huddling in the darkness and I made them great. We built our fortress. We built our defences.’

‘You mean the crabs?’

‘I’m impressed.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘You strayed into our zone, triggering our automatic defences.
When you were able to save yourselves I deemed you worthy and sent a party out to welcome you.’

‘You shouldn’t have. And the phantom family my crewmates encountered? Were they part of your defences?’

Albert looked briefly confused. ‘Phantoms? We have no phantoms.’

‘And yet some of us experienced phantoms, visual and aural.’

‘It was probably swamp gas.’ The old man raised an eyebrow. ‘If you breathe too much swamp gas you start to hallucinate. This is a mysterious place. But you’ll come to love it with time. This is my new kingdom and I am shaping it as I please. It is a paradise.’

‘A paradise?’

‘Don’t let appearances fool you. Everything we need is here. With you and the boy I can repair my ship and perfect my army. I can finally defeat the Ubuntu. Then I can return to the Empire to tell them all about the world I’ve built, and the plot against them.’

‘My boy,’ said Fabrigas with a gentle smile, ‘where exactly do you think you are?’

Outside they heard the wind regather to carry towards them the low, steady heartbeat of the drums. The master began to rant, his lips were slick with spittle. ‘I’d like to have a ceremony to officially welcome you into our family. Then we can start to move forward. With your brain and this boy’s hands we can do anything. And I haven’t even begun to talk about the girl! What do you say? Shall we toast our new alliance? Will you call me Lord?’

‘Lord? From what I’ve heard your people call you the Worm.’

The Worm smiled even wider, his teeth sparkled, his gums were a burst of vermilion. ‘I do not take it as an insult.’ He reached over for the bowl of worms. He took a handful and shoved them in his mouth. His mighty teeth slashed them to pieces. ‘To be called a worm is a compliment. The worm is the master. The worm is king. All life grows from decay and the worm lives among it. People look to the bear, the lion, the eagle. Does the bear survive when cut in two?’ Bits of worm were stuck to the Worm’s lips, and worm juice
trickled down his chin. ‘You don’t think much of these parts. You think they are ugly and deadly. Let me tell you, I have sat on celestial thrones, I have dined with rulers, known pleasures you could never dream of. And yet there is no place I would rather be than here, because here I am king.’

‘King of the worms.’

‘Precisely. When I return as a conqueror it won’t be under the banner of the dragon, it will be beneath the banner of the mud-snake.’

‘Boy,’ said the old man, ‘I think you are two mud-snakes short of a feast.’

The Worm laughed, long and loud. ‘Two mud-snakes short of a feast! That’s very funny. You have no idea how
wrong
you are! Well, it’s a shame, it really is. But if that’s your decision.’ He reached for a small bell.

‘No!’ cried Lulabelle, running forward from the shadows. ‘He’ll eat you!’

Fabrigas sighed and muttered, ‘Great, just great.’ Roberto couldn’t have read Lulabelle’s lips, since she didn’t have lips as such. He didn’t hear Prince Albert turn to her and say, ‘So that’s how you repay me for my gifts! Now you’ll be eaten, too!’ or the sound of the bell, and he didn’t hear the guards enter the room again behind them.

CARNIVAL

The moon was high and bright, the drums loud, as the old man and the boy were led in vines through the vine huts to a vine cage at the back of the compound and shoved roughly inside. Kandy stood in the gloom, peering at Fabrigas with those huge black eyes. Then she spoke three words, but they were shocking, because she spoke, haltingly, but clearly, in their language. She said, ‘I … am … regret.’ Then she walked off quickly, her hands behind her back. Then the traitor Lulabelle was ushered gently in by two distraught-looking guards.

There was another man in their cage, a humanoid pilot. He wore a ragged military uniform. He had clearly become marooned on this world too, been rescued by the Marshians and then somehow transgressed their laws. He was also as crazy as a boat full of monkeys.

‘The moon is full! Our time is done, oh yes, we are certainly done for!’

The ragged man cowered in the corner of the cage and Fabrigas could see the wide white of his left eye as he peered at the old man through a slit in his fingers.

‘Nonsense, crazy man,’ said Fabrigas. ‘There’s no need to mess your flight suit. We will get out of this if we keep our wits, though I fear yours might have fled already. What is the worst that could happen here? We die? So be it.’

The pilot laughed and dashed his gaunt and battered face against
the light. ‘Oh no, no, no!’ he said. ‘Dying is not the worst that could happen. Dying is not the worst that could happen at all!’ He was babbling on. ‘More meat for the larder!’

Their companions were brought to see them. ‘What did you do?’ said Lambestyo.

‘I followed Roberto. Where have you been?’

‘Snooping around. Not getting caught. And what did he do?’

‘He followed a woman.’

Lambestyo let his eyes flick over the desolate Lulabelle, then shrugged. ‘Well. There isn’t much I can do right now. They have me under guard,’ and he gestured with his thumb towards a team of Marshians with guns and spears sitting some distance away.

Lenore and Miss Fritzacopple stood stony by the cage. ‘What a coopload of turkeys,’ she muttered. Lenore said nothing. She sniffed the air. Roberto refused to look at her. He sat in the corner, turning his pet starfish in his fingers.

*

Later that day, Roberto felt himself shaken from a nap.

‘Roberto. You need to escape from here and take a message to the
Necronaut
. You can slip through the gaps in the fence.’ Fabrigas had scrawled a picture of their ship on a scrap of paper. He pointed to the picture … and to Roberto … ‘You …
Necronaut
… You …
Necronaut
.’

Roberto got the message, but he didn’t like it. He shook his head slowly while never taking his eyes from the old man’s.

‘Roberto!’ He drew a crude cartoon: Roberto running to the
Necronaut
, then an arrow showing him returning with help, then everyone dancing for joy. ‘It’s the only way!’

Another stern shake of the head. ‘Roberto!’ and the old man drew another picture, this one of himself and the captain standing on either side of Lenore, both holding swords. ‘Trust us, boy. We’ll
protect her. We can’t all escape. They’d hunt us down in minutes.’

Roberto stared hard.

The old man pointed to the pocket where he knew the boy kept his precious talisman. ‘Well. Why don’t we let the Magic Eighth decide?’

Roberto huffed and turned away. He carefully took his Magic Eighth from his pocket, pressed it to his forehead, then shook the sphere hard six times. Then he took his hand slowly away from the readout panel and spent a long time staring at the hazy text. Fabrigas could not see what it said, but he saw the boy’s shoulders drop.

Roberto looked out into the twilight, past the gently dozing guards, to the high palisades with gaps he knew he could so easily slip through, to the jungle beyond. He sighed heavily.

*

Roberto never looked back at the old man.

He cut the knots around his hands and ankles with the scalpel in his boot.

He passed through the compound as quick and soft as a midnight shadow.

Roberto climbed the palisades and slipped through a narrow gap.

He passed within three feet of a guard and didn’t rouse him.

Roberto took a single great leap and floated silently over the final palisade, swinging his arms around in broad hoops, like a new bird taking its first flight, clearing the sharpened spikes by a few inches.

Roberto landed in the jungle, and his bearings caught up with him. He recognised the swamps.

Roberto sprang into the jungle and vanished.

Lenore sensed him leave. With her fine nose she followed him into the jungle. Soon he was gone, mingling with the trees, the mud, the beasts.

She lay back on her cot. ‘He abandons me,’ she said to no one.

ROBERTO AT THE WORLDS’ FAIR WITH DIAMONDS

We cannot know what Roberto had been expecting as he waited at the Worlds’ Fair, near the South Marina, somewhere between the Helix of Progress and the Avenue of New Ages, dressed in his Imperial Postal Service jumpsuit, with a small bouquet of pungent flowers and a pocketful of diamonds. His date would arrive, he’d been told, sometime after the climax of the starlight charity celebrity dinner at the Elektrotek Ballroom to honour the winner of the 3,145th Beauty of the Universe Pageant. The Purple Corpse Blossom is her favourite flower, they’d told him, and though their smell is repellent to most humans, their stench would attract this particular guest from miles away. Literally, miles. The diamonds in his pocket were to bankroll their evening together, which, depending on their fortunes, could last anywhere from a few hours to a lifetime. He had been told to prepare himself for someone who was unique, perhaps more so than any other individual in the Cosmosphere. They did not even bother to describe her to him. ‘You will know her when you see her,’ they said. They also told him that his date would be instantly recognisable to every
other
person at the fair that evening. Furthermore, every law-enforcement unit, every secret agency, every public official, mercenary, bounty hunter and ambitious amateur thug in the Sphere would be hell-bent on intercepting her. And, of course, the Imperial Postal Service would be looking for her. This most feared of secret
agencies saw everything, and not a stamp could be licked without them knowing about it. Nevertheless, they said, it was his – and only his – job to protect her, and to use the tools at his disposal – the data in his head, the diamonds in his pocket – to ensure her safety.

These two ran from insurmountable odds, you might say. The people who’d rescued him from his hub had described to him the complex computational simulations they’d been running to discover a strategy which would allow this small, blind – though not entirely helpless – girl to traverse the Sphere of Empires, to slip through the impenetrable net, and to escape this universe. In the end, they’d said, after lifetimes of running their simulations, on a computer-array more powerful than any known, they had discovered one single strategy which could give them a chance of success. A 12.5 per cent chance, to be exact. And that singular strategy, they’d explained to him, was Roberto.

Also, they’d said, there was an old man who could help them.

Reluctantly.

And so with that heavy weight set upon his young shoulders, it is hard to even fathom what Roberto thought as he stood at the fair with his reeking posy and his pocketful of diamonds, and waited.

He would not have heard the explosion, he would only have seen the silent, silky river of smoke burble and boil from the doors of Elektrotek Ballroom, people running out, eyes wide with fear, guards falling, choking from the doors, VIP guests – the kind used to seeing people grovelling under their feet – clawing their way over the dusty ground, and being trampled by the heavy boots of blind and frantic guards.

And then a figure walking serenely from the deadly mists, nose in the air, stepping carefully over the weeping dukes and semiconscious beauty queens. There is another figure following just behind, a woman. She is wearing a gas mask. They stop at the edge of the cloud of smoke and dust which now has enveloped the Elektrotek Ballroom. The tiny figure turns and says something to
the taller silhouette, curtsies politely. The woman removes her gas mask, nods, and they part.