“This not is over,” shouted one. “We do not forget. You have dishonoured the Itchy-sandal brotherhood. We would track you down and slaughter you like pig-dogs if our code didn’t mean we had to resign and work in puppet theatre for rest of lives.”
“Then we will leave you to it,” said Tom. “You should be able to get out once the mud dries up.”
The Magus joined them at the main door. “That was an accident,” he said. “I meant to go right into the house. Still, the gun will come in handy, at least it would have, if it had been loaded; health and safety again, I imagine.”
“Where do you think Rannie is being held?”
Luigi sniffed. “Up there,” he said. “That scent is unmistakeable.”
They left muddy footprints on the carpet up the stairs, and along the upper corridor. Luigi stopped at one of the bedroom doors. “This one should be it.” He knocked.
“Come,” came a woman’s voice, “but make sure you wipe your feet first.”
“Rannie!” The Magus stepped in and gave a huge smile.
“Hey.” The girl looked up from her soft-furnishing catalogue. “Magus, you old dog. I wondered how long it would take you.”
“I got your coded message.”
“Excellent. What coded message?”
“On the TV. You called me a ‘two-bladdered fart-snake’. That was code for come and rescue me of course?”
“No, it was code for ‘I still think you are a two-bladdered fart-snake’, but I suppose, seeing as you are here, you could rescue me. There’s only so many sets of curtains one can order. I guess you have some sort of escape vehicle outside so we can get clean away.” She regarded their shoes. “Clean-ish away I suppose.” The sound of boots echoed on the stairs outside. “Oh, are those friends of yours coming?”
“Phoist,” said the Magus. “The guards must have got out of the ditch.” He disappeared.
“Typical,” said Tom. “Can we bar the door?”
“Only from the outside,” said Rannie. “This is a prison, if you remember.”
“I’ll deal with it,” said Luigi, picking up a wardrobe as if it were made of poly-poly-poly-euro-thane-ether-propyl-acetate. He wedged the door shut with it and then shoved the dressing table behind. There was a thunderous knocking.
“Please to let us in so we incarcerate you for illegal entry to detention facility.”
“We are already incarcerated,” shouted Tom. “This is a prison, you know.”
There was a pause outside and muttering. “Then you give yourselves up?”
“Of course. We are already here.”
There was another pause and the sound of a discussion in Musoketeban, and then, “But you in wrong cell part of prison.”
“But we are in prison, so your job is complete.”
“Good point. But wrong. Open door or we break in and then inmate have no privacy until we engage joiner for repairs.”
“I don’t think so,” said Tom. “I like this room. I don’t want to be sealed anywhere else.”
“Then we apologise, but have to break in to move you elsewhere. It not conjugal visiting time.”
The attack on the door renewed, along with the sound of splintering wood.
Breakout
In which a death watch proves unreliable
T
he door started to give way. “That didn’t work too good,” said Tom. “Any more ideas?”
Luigi piled more furniture behind the existing collection. “Apologies ma’am,” he said. “I’ve made a mess of your room.”
“No problem,” said Rannie. “As part of the contract, they have to give me a new one if this becomes ‘unsuitable’, but I’m thinking that you are going to rescue me, so I won’t need it.”
“That was the idea,” said Tom.
“What about using the window?” said Rannie. “There’s scaffolding outside. We could climb down if we could get the bars off. Luigi, what do you think?”
“Piece of cake, ma’am,” said the big man, wielding the latest piece of barricade.
“What, you can break through the bars?”
“No, I found a piece of cake under the commode.”
“I wondered where that had gone, but what about the bars?”
“Easy.”
Luigi wedged the last piece of furniture into the pile and opened the curtains. The cool night wind came in through the open window, and he inspected the grille on the outside.
“No problem,” he said. “They have been repointing the brickwork and have used lime mortar to help with the damp. It is softer than the usual stuff, and hasn’t set properly yet.” He turned and applied a backwards kick with the sole of his boot. The grille dropped out of sight. “After you, ma’am.”
The scaffolding swayed as the three of them climbed out on to the narrow walkway. Tom shook his head. The reason it was swaying was that it was full of people. “Who are all these?”
“They look like fellow prisoners,” said Rannie, “but what are they doing here?”
A man with ears like a taxi with the doors open, dropped down from the floor above. “Hey, Rannie,” he said. “I love this death watch you got for me, and the matching earrings.”
“Death watch?” Tom said.
“Yes,” said the man proudly. “It counts down the number of days I’ve still got to live. According to the readout, I’ve got thousands left, so I knew it would be safe to break through the security grille and climb down. Stupid of them to use lime mortar, but I didn’t realise it, until that little man with the overcoat and fedora appeared in the room and told me to try. I think everyone else out here has had a similar visitation. Friend of yours?”
“The Magus; he’s my guy,” said Rannie with a mixture of pride and disbelief in her voice. “I wondered where he’d gone to.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” said the man. “We are used to your innovations in here by now. Can you get me one of those teleport devices he is using?”
“See me afterwards,” said Rannie. “We have to get away first.”
The ladders had all been removed from the scaffolding, for security reasons, so descent was assisted by Luigi leaning over and lowering Rannie and Tom to the next levels. They reached the bottom safely, but Tom was disturbed to see their ear-enhanced colleague from above was upside down in the lawn where he’d fallen, after apparently losing his grip on the scaffolding. Rannie undid the watch from his lifeless wrist. “I don’t think it’s working properly,” she said, shaking it. “I’ll put it in for repair when we get home.”
“Rannie! We thought you’d be behind this.” A group of former prisoners had gathered on the lawn, and a spokesman approached them. “What do we do next?”
“We can’t use road vehicles because of the national speed limit, and we’d soon be overtaken on foot, so I suppose we should head down to the railway to get a train out of here. Ah, I wondered where you were.”
“I was busy,” said the reappearing Magus, dusting himself down.
“All these people are your doing? Do you realise you’ve released a bunch of criminals into the wild?”
“I checked out their misdemeanours before liberating them. This unit is for lower-rated crimes. Most of the people here are in for parking, walking or eating offences, so I thought that if I showed them all how to escape, we would have more chance to disappear in the general confusion.”
“Good thinking, now let’s get down to the sidings and make good our exodus,” said Rannie, beckoning to the other prisoners.
There was a diesel locomotive and a rake of carriages already in the prison terminus. The destination board announced that it was the 08.30 excursion to the rock quarry, where the inmates were going to be allowed to search for fossils and craft their own paving slabs. The prisoners climbed aboard, and the Magus, Luigi, Rannie and Tom got into the cab.
“Do you know how to drive it?” said the Magus.
“There’s only one control,”
said Tom, “a switch marked ‘On’ and ‘Off’. I think I can manage. Could you MUPPET ahead and check the points are set correctly. There’s a big lever to pull at the side of each.”
Using the Magus as his advance warning and direction system, Tom piloted the train down the hill and out into open countryside. Signs of pursuit diminished as they left the prison grounds. The security guards followed in cars and vans, but after the first camera by the gates flashed at them for speeding, they slowed back down to the speed limit, and the train drew steadily further away. Less than an hour later, Tom brought them to a halt in a quiet country station.
“That should do,” said Rannie to the prisoners as the carriages emptied. “If you go down to the car park, you should be able to get transport away from here. You only have to steal the cars in the non-premium spaces. As for us, I think an ale is in order.” She regarded the Magus. “You okay?”
“I think I’ve done enough teleporting for one night,” said the Magus, panting. “I couldn’t move another metre.”
“A nice drink will sort that out,” said Tom. “Are we in danger of being arrested if we go in a pub?”
“No, we are dangerous fugitives. Nobody will come near us,” said Rannie. “I guess I owe you three a pint.”
“I’ll take mine intravenously,” said the Magus. “I’m too weak to drink right now. I’d rather get away from here.”
After a few celebratory drinks, they went back to the Fortune, which was occupying the whole of the premium spaces at the airport, and now buried in parking-fine notices. It was difficult to see out of the windows, to start with, but the paperwork soon burnt up in the atmosphere as they left the planet. A few days later, they were landing back at Rannie’s B&B. She and the Magus had been in their cabin for a lot of the journey, so Tom had showed Luigi how to pilot the ship. Apart from the fact the seat needed adjusting each time, Luigi became adept at the controls, and Tom was able to catch up on some badly-missed sleep.
After the usual arrival ceremonies, where she was showered with flowers and rabbit droppings from staff and inmates respectively, Rannie contacted some of her business associates with a view to collecting support against STOP. She was disappointed; the response was universal. “My car parking is free, so why should I care? The more car parks there are, the easier it is for me to leave my executive transport so close to the office that I never have to use my legs. And by the way, those flat-screen microwaves you sold me only work for thin-crust pizza, and keep picking up video nasties.”
“Failed,” she said to the rescuers after the last call. “I did try, but nobody is interested.”
“We have a dilemma,” said Tom. “Either go and hide and let STOP expand into the galaxy, after which we might get some help, or tackle the problem at source and prevent them getting the hexacat whiskers to build their fleet of car park-forming transports.”
“I prefer the former,” said the Magus.
“What the car park-former or the former option? Wait, knowing you, you mean go and hide.”
“Always the best choice,” said the Magus. “I think I’ll stay here.”
“But that leaves me with no crew at all.”
“I would lend you Luigi,” said Rannie, “but he missed his bunnies so much, I haven’t the heart to tear him away.”
“We will stay here,” said the Magus. “Option one it is.”
“No, you are going off with Two-Dan,” said Rannie. “I’m not having you cluttering up my business enterprise with your sexual deviances distracting me from making money. I’ve got a plan for a new app where you can use the camera on your phone to scan the way ahead and therefore make sure you don’t walk into things while you are using your phone. I’ll keep looking for help, though, and let you know if I find any allies. You go and play at privateering. You know you want to.”
“We have to get those hexacat whiskers, and I could do with some support,” said Tom. “I really can’t fly this thing by myself.”
“Go on, Moggy,” said Rannie. “If you are successful, I’ll do that thing you wanted with the ropes and the yoghurt. We can channel the hexacat whisker trade though Dearheat Enterprises when you return. It would be great to be able to deal in something legitimate for a change. I can give you a couple of ‘alert shirts’ to take away, to keep you from missing me, if you like.”
“What do they do?”
“You tap in to the footballer of your choice—they all wear body-sensors these days so that the fouls can be identified correctly—and then you experience all the tackles, spits and blows as they actually happen, given the delay for the signal transmission of course. It’s exactly like being on the field, only you don’t have all that running around to do. I’ll throw in some of my special under-arm deodorant, so you know when to wash.”
“I’ll have a shirt,” said Tom. “Do you have one for the Swedwayland Women’s Team?”
“Oddly, one of my most popular,” said Rannie. “I’m sold out, but I’ve still got plenty from the Scottish Eighth division. They all come in ‘large’, though.”
“I think I’ll leave it,” said Tom. “Come on, Magus. We need a proper crew, and the best place to start is Skagos. Hopefully, they have bred some new psychos by now.”
Doomsday
In which a demolition weapon becomes user friendly
T
he Fortune rocked under a barrage of rocks, a long way before it could reach the safety of Skagos. “There it is then,” said Tom. “I don’t know how these STOP drones found us, out here in the deepest of space, but... shields up.”
“We haven’t got any shields,” said the Magus.
“Heads down then.”
One of the STOP drones blew up beside them, and then another.
“What’s happened there? Is there a chance we can escape while they are exploding?”
“I’ll try to engage main drive,” said the Magus. “Now Drive, I need you to listen very carefully...”
“Hit the button, for Phoist’s sake,” said Tom. “You don’t need to motivate it to start up.”
Two more of the drones exploded and a third deliberately targeted one of its fleet and fired at that too.
“We might stand a chance. I’ll see if we have enough of the shunt-array working to take the rest out.” Tom hit the tiny green button nestling in between a large red pushbutton marked ‘Purge Oxygen’ and a blue one labelled ‘Phosgene’. The array responded, locking on to each of the drones and obliterating them in a hail of igneous rock fragments.
“We’re saved.” The Magus appeared from underneath the console.
“I don’t know how. Why did they attack each other?”
“They did,” said the Magus. “That’s all we need to worry about.”
“That and how they found us.”
“Yes, that too. Shall I set course for Skagos again?”
“Might be a good idea.”
The Black Empress Kara’s Good Fortune approached the glittering green planet that was Skagos. Tom pulled back on the throttle and stamped on the brake. “Got it. That fly has been bothering me the whole journey.” He gazed out of the canopy as the planet seemed to disappear. “What the Phoist is that?”
“It looks like one of those super moons I’ve heard about,” said the Magus. “They wander the cosmos until they find a planet they like and then screw about with the tides.”
“It doesn’t look natural. Have STOP developed some new weapon, and are right now about to destroy our Skagan friends?”
“I hope not. I’ll miss the greeting rituals and it would be a real shame if after building their population up again, they were exterminated by a malicious cliché.”
“Can you tell if it’s armed and about to fire at us? We should perhaps leave.” Tom looked nervously around the cockpit.
“This isn’t fantasy sci-fi you know. How could we possibly tell?” The Magus’ finger hovered over the emergency escape button, or it might have been the windscreen
-wiper controls.
“Build-up of power,” said Tom, “glowing sections of the vessel, lethal cannons pointed at us... that sort of thing.”
“Not if they are using a doku-shunt. You can’t tell if a big spring is being wound back. I think we should destroy it, to be on the safe side... or we could run like fuck.”
“It’s very big. What chance would we stand?” said Tom.
“I’ll hail them and find out. Opening all hailing frequencies.”
“What, all of them? How do you know?” Tom regarded the communications console, with its flashing light and big graduated knob.
“I suppose I might have missed the one reserved for religious propaganda.”
“We will have to risk it. Go on then.”
The Magus pressed a button beside one with the words scratched off. “Attention gigantic planetoid thing, can you hear me?”
“I nearly missed you,” came a voice. “I was listening to the story of how the prophet, Kris Norbert Mojebud, the Skagan god of everything you like the look of, came down from the mountain with a pillar of frozen vinegar and a gentle hatred of anyone who wouldn’t listen to him. I know that accent. Magus is that you?”
“It is. Young Pete, what are you doing on that moon?”
“Not a moon,” said Pete. “It’s a Bereavement Notable. The Skagans built it based on those plans you gave them.”
“You mean that’s what we got when I asked for a spy-drone?”
“I know it’s a bit bigger than designed, but I’m assured it will perform the same function. It has a camera, you know.”
“And the name, Bereavement Notable... it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”
“As an engineer, I wanted to define its function. I used the Nishant Acronym App, and it came up with ‘Awmagod’.”
“Sounds good,” said Tom. “What does it stand for?”
The Fourteenth Adjustment Page 14
