Theatre of the Gods (47 page)

He summoned him.

The door groaned open, and a fat, vicious-looking man in black leather trousers and a black leather waistcoat entered. ‘So,’ said the man, ‘you are finally ready to talk, I think?’

‘I am,’ said the Well Dressed Man. ‘But I think not to you.’

‘You think not?’ The fat man waddled over to his rack of treats and took down a device of hooks and screws whose function no one unfamiliar with the darkest art would be able to guess. The fat man knew what the instrument did. ‘Let’s just see if you’re ready to talk to me.’

‘I have a better idea,’ said the Well Dressed Man. ‘Why don’t you go and see the Pope? Tell him God is here to speak with him.’

‘The Pope.’ There was no question in his voice.

‘Yes. I want you to deliver something to him.’

‘You want me to deliver something. To the Pope.’

‘Yes. I would like you to take him your eyeballs.’

‘My eyeballs.’

‘But first why don’t you release my arms? Oh, and go and get some of your friends. The ones who helped to torture me. We’re all going to have
so
much fun together.’

*

As I have made very clear, the Pope does not abide other universes. ‘I abide them not!’ he said once, probably.

The Pope had long ago set up a ‘Special Papal Inquiry’ into the question of multiple universes, but this had essentially involved visiting leading scientists, threatening them, bullying them into ‘confessing’ that it was all a load of nonsense, and, if necessary, sticking hot things in places where hot things are unwelcome. But the Pope had been forced, by circumstance, to soften his stance on Cosmic Abominations and allow technicians working for the Man in the Shadows to install RIPS engines on the holy palaces of the Fleet of the Nine Churches.

And so, here he was: somewhere. ‘Why is it so foggy?’ said the Pope as he stared into the whiteness of the Ghastly Blank. ‘I hate fog. Make it stop.’

‘It is normal for it to be … foggy … when you travel to another … place,’ said Cardinal Mothersbaugh. ‘But it will clear soon, I’m sure.’

‘It had better. And why are all these butterflies here?’

‘Oh, these are gifts sent by well-wishers to cheer you up.’

‘I don’t like butterflies. Poison them. And let’s fire the cannons now, see who is out there in the fog.’

‘Let’s save that excellent suggestion for later today, Your Holiness. Look, that butterfly is the colour of your hat.’

The Pope frowned. ‘And when will we find these people we are here to kill? When will our crusade begin?’

‘The spy aboard has left a trail. It should not be difficult to find them.’

‘Holiness,’ said a messenger entering the room, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, but it is urgent. One of your prisoners wishes to speak with you.’

‘Prisoner? I do not speak to prisoners. Go away.’

‘He says to tell you he is God.’

‘God? Which god?’ For the first time the Pope turned towards the
messenger and beheld with horror the hollow cavities in his face, the tray he held, the pyramid of glistening, peeping spheres.

‘He says he is the God who sees all things.’

A NEW DAY

‘We must leave!’ Lenore said to a startled Fritzacopple who was brushing the knots from the girl’s hair as they rode to the honey factory to meet the Emperor. ‘There’s a man here who is going to make us do the worst
things
to each other. There is a fleet of death arriving! I see a snowy death for everyone if we stay!’

‘A snowy death? What kind of nonsense is that? It’s thirty-eight degrees. You had another bad dream. Keep still now.’

Lenore had suffered many bloody dreams in the week since they’d arrived – even while awake. She dreamed 456651: The One with the Thumb; 456669: The One with the Evil Orthodontist; and 466612: The One with the Girl from Poughkeepsie. In that, the sky was raining blood and fire. She had met Roberto in a city in flames.

‘Why are you still in that city? Don’t you know there are people there who want to kill you?’ Roberto had swatted angrily at the coils of smoke.

‘We have not a ship! You went off in it! I thought you could not speak.’

‘In my dreams I can speak and hear. You’re endangering our mission.’ It was a beautiful day and Lenore let her hand drag through the cones of ash upon the ground where she sat. It was good to see. Even though she had a magic nose it was still nothing like seeing things in full, radiant colour. People ran screaming, a man in black ran past on fire, the snowflakes laughed sweetly in the air.

‘What mission? You took me from the fair. Now I don’t know where I am.’

‘I rescued you. You were a prisoner, and now I’m helping you home. It’s what they asked me to do. They said the life of every living thing depends on us, and you could help by not getting yourself killed.’

‘Well,
that’s
a funny thing because the Dark Hands told
me
to protect
you.
And you are not helping much as far as I can see. Running off with that froggy-looking girl. I don’t know why they’d send a deaf boy to protect me anyway. Surely the boy who hears is better.’

‘They chose me for my skills. They said that if I couldn’t hear people I wouldn’t be able to listen to cowards and grown-ups telling me what’s good for me. Now the bad doctor and his friends have taken the ship. They’ve flown us into death. We have no wind or food. I think they might try to eat me.’

‘You? But you are not even a mouthful, Roberto.’

‘Just try to stay out of trouble until I get back. It won’t be long.’

‘No,
you
try to stay out of trouble until we find
you
. I’m supposed to protect
you.
’

‘No,
I’m
supposed to protect
you
!’

‘Why did you leave me, Roberto?’

‘Because the Ball told me to.’

‘You should not listen to balls.’

‘I have to go now. If that man comes into your dreams, don’t tell him where I am.’

‘I don’t
know
where you are!’

And then he was gone, and Lenore was left standing in the burning sunshine, in the burning city, listening to the fires whisper.

‘And that’s when I a-wakes!’ She’d told Miss Fritzacopple about it. At length. That was the last time she’d spoken to Roberto. He no longer appeared in her dreams. It was as if he’d vanished completely.

‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about all that,’ said the botanist.
‘We don’t know where to look for our ship. We can’t afford to purchase another.’

‘If Roberto was here we could use some of his diamonds to buy a ship.’

‘Well, until then we should enjoy the comfort and protection of this great city. Now, be still, we’re nearly at the factory. The Emperor is a fine man, don’t you think?

*

‘So. This is … this was … your Sweety?’

‘If you want to use its layman’s name, sure,’ said Dray. He and Fabrigas were looking at stunning cine-images of the great serpent taken with cameras attached to high-altitude balloons. The worm’s width had been calculated at 14 miles, and its length, 785 miles. Roughly.

‘Such a massive creature.’

‘What, this old thing? Pupa.’

‘Pupa? No, no, no.’ Fabrigas smiled pretentiously and shook his beard.

‘Pupa. Been with us for centuries, moving across the surface, devouring whole jungle tribes, snatching ships who strayed outside the shipping channels, and generally thwarting our efforts to destroy it. You know how it is.’

‘I …’

‘Without a mate, as you undoubtedly know, the polycraebianatic supermorphic embryo will never leave the larval stage, fortunately. If it did, it could grow much bigger than our planet, or even our suns.’

‘Impossible. No. A creature so big could not find enough nutrition.’

‘Ordinarily. His quantum acetabula allow him – or her –’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘– to draw nutrition from multiple dimensions. He can vacuum
up the vast clouds of sugar around stars in many universes at once. He, or she, is an omnivore in the truest possible sense. Just like your friend here.’ He held up the starfish Fabrigas had plucked from the engine of mad Prince Albert’s ship. ‘This little beauty is almost as old as the universe, and it has tiny nodes on its underside which seem to allow it to exist in all universes at once. I bet you’ve noticed some strange activity wherever one of these has showed up.’

‘That is an understatement.’

‘Well, again, we want to thank you for bringing this treasure out of the worm.’ He placed the starfish on the steel table. ‘What we’d love to know is how you were able to target the creature’s brain so precisely using a primitive rocket. We can’t recreate your experiments in our advanced labs.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t want to bore you with details –’

‘Go on.’

‘You’d have to understand conflatory interstertial-plasma vectors –’

‘I do.’

‘Even with enough hours to explain, I confess my calculations were tempered with instinct.’

‘I see. In any event, the great mystery is how you then vanished into the Forbidden Zone.’

‘About that I confess I have no idea.’

‘… Well, at the end of the day it’s a good thing you did, hamster. Your trajectory otherwise would have put you right in the middle of the battlefield and certain death at the hands of our enemies. You silly puppets.’

‘Certain death, you say?’

‘Yes. Almost seems as if someone did it intentionally to save your life, chipmunk. Almost.’ He held the starfish up to the light again.

‘I still don’t entirely understand exactly what the Forbidden Zone is, and I have the most powerful brain of anyone I’ve met in my universe.’

‘Well, this is a whole new universe, lovebird. The Forbidden Zone
is a finite dimension. We keep it in a box. And for obvious reasons we keep that box in a high-security facility.’

Fabrigas was speechless. He slapped himself on the forehead and left a pink mark.

‘Careful now. Yes, it’s all very exciting,’ said Dray. ‘Now we’re starting to worry that the boundaries to our artificial universe might be becoming unstable. Thanks to certain entities.’

The starfish twinkled in the light of the laboratory lamps.

‘We’ve learned a lot about the universe by building one. We’ve managed to strip away illusions of space, time and matter, and reveal the Omniverse as it is: a continuum in which everything is one, all is connected, and death does not exist. So we have that, poppet.’

‘This confirms all my theories,’ said Fabrigas, breathless. ‘This universe could almost precisely mirror our own!’

‘Yes, pumpkin. A universe could be an entirely new sphere, or it could differ by as little as one teaspoon, or a single, lonely starfish.’

*

The others, minus Captain Lambestyo, had been on a whirlwind trip to the honey factories, the hydro-subway, the Museum of Alternate Histories. Now the party took high tea in the dining rooms floating above the barracks of the Royal Armoured Insect Division.

There was a lot of activity today because the monks had announced that they were about to declare a date for the end of the world. And yet there was no panic among the people. The citizens of Diemendääs had been told to prepare for the end days many times before. They were presently too busy with the Festival of the Dead to worry about the monks’ dire proclamations.

A woman and her young daughter were having cakes at one of the small tables nearby. The girl had a bee in her lap and she absentmindedly stroked its black, fuzzy belly while the bee cooed and wriggled with pleasure. The mother wore a skeleton tiara and a black
dress. Kimmy was transfixed by the girl and her bee. ‘I could get you one if you like,’ said Prince Panduke. And for once Kimmy didn’t have a smart reply. Lenore had a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of questions for the Emperor.

‘And what is that down there?’ she said, pointing vaguely out the window.

The tea platter tinkled as it was set down.

‘That is the barracks of the Royal Armoured Insect Division.’

‘I see. And those insects work for you?’

‘They do.’

‘And what do you pay them?’

‘We pay them with food and shelter.’

‘And the bees? What pays you them?’

‘Our bees have no use for money, of course. They are content to make honey.’

‘I see. So they are slave bees.’

‘Lenore!’ said the botanist.

‘It’s no insult. I would be surprised beyond words if they saw it that way. They spin their webs and make honey in them – they would do it if we were here or not. But we help them to sell their honey and the profits are used to protect them from invasion and disease.’

‘I see. And where is Our Lady this day?’ she said. ‘Will she be not adjoining us?’

The Emperor arranged himself. ‘Not today. Perhaps you will meet her before you leave.’

‘Mother would not want to meet the likes of her,’ said Panduke.

Lenore ignored him. ‘And then tell me, why does she wear thorns up in her hair?’

The Emperor, who had been gazing out the window, turned and looked down at the girl with, Miss Fritzacopple observed, a look of surprise. ‘You do have a lot of questions.’

‘She doesn’t mean any offence,’ said the botanist.

‘Of course. Tell me, young lady,’ said the Emperor, as he topped
his tea with milk, ‘do you have memories of your younger years? Of your home, your family?’

‘I don’t remember very much. My dreams tell me my family was killed when I was tiny. But dreams aren’t always to be trusted.’ Then the girl added, brightly, ‘I can sometimes see the future!’

The Emperor smiled somewhat smugly. ‘Is that so? And can you see my future?’

‘I can.’

‘And?’

‘I see … only grand things.’

Again the Emperor smiled. ‘Perhaps lying is one talent you don’t have. If you’re anything like my wife you see fire and death ahead. As you know, our people are obsessed with the end times. Last year the monks had me evacuate the entire population to the mountains to wait for an asteroid called Big Lance. It never came.’

‘End … times,’ the girl mouthed, before adding, ‘Also! I know who is your murderer.’

‘Murderer? There are no murders here. We have had some assisted killings at best.’