The Garden of Unearthly Delights

by Robert Rankin

  ‘That is it,’ said Maxwell. ‘All niceties are at an end. When you have regained your breath tell me the commands. In the meantime—’

  Maxwell rampaged about the room, tearing open drawers, and cupboards, flinging the contents thither and thus. Maps and provisions, of course, are rarely to be found in bedrooms, but as happy chance would have it the Governor just happened to have a case of maps he’d been going through the night before and a packed picnic in a hamper. Maxwell availed himself of these.

  ‘Now,’ said he. ‘No more time-wasting. I am a desperate man. The commands at once or I release Rushmear upon you, and when he has done his worst, I fling you from the balcony.’

  ‘Shout, Horse and Hattock, Blenkinsop’s divan,’ mumbled Blenkinsop.

  ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘Tell it where to go and it will take you.’

  ‘It will respond to my voice?’ Maxwell tweaked the Governor’s ear.

  ‘The natives don’t speak our tongue, there was no need for such securative measures. Up until now, that is.’

  Maxwell kicked the Governor in the ankle. The red rage he had been struggling to hold in check, was all but consuming him once more. ‘You really had better be telling me the truth.’

  ‘I am, I really am.’

  ‘Right then.’ Maxwell thrust the magic pouch into the trouser pocket of the Governor’s white suit, took up the case of maps and the picnic hamper and strode to the french windows, flung them wide, stepped onto the balcony and yelled, ‘Horse and Hattock, Blenkinsop’s divan.’

  Nothing happened. The town lay still all around. The sun, now somewhat higher, cast down its sombre light. Maxwell turned upon the Governor. ‘What of this?’ he asked.

  ‘Shout louder. Shout come also.’

  ‘If you’re lying—’

  ‘Just shout it.’

  Maxwell turned. ‘Horse and Hattock, Blenkinsop’s divan, come!’

  And then a number of things happened. The Governor, who had been worming his hands free for some time, finally broke out of his bonds. And his bed, which he had thoughtlessly neglected to mention to Maxwell was the divan in question, rose from the floor with a rush.

  It passed through the french windows at considerable speed, struck Maxwell from behind and tipped him over the balcony rail. The Governor, with the look of one far gone in dementia, leapt onto the divan as it passed him by, yelping in triumph.

  ‘Halt, divan,’ he cried, when the bed was some ten yards beyond the balcony. ‘Hold still do.’ The bed came to rest and hovered in the air.

  Scrambling to the edge, the Governor peeped down, hoping to view Maxwell’s broken body on the ground beneath and have a good gloat over it. No body, however, was to be seen.

  ‘Come about, divan,’ commanded the Governor. The magical bed drifted back towards the balcony.

  The Governor peered at the convenient vine. Had Maxwell managed to grab it as he fell? ‘Where’s the bastard gone?’ asked the Governor.

  ‘Horse and Hattock and divan turn upside down.’ The cry came from below. The cry came from Maxwell, who was clinging to one of the legs of the bed.

  The divan turned smartly upside down. Maxwell, now on top, cried out in triumph. A voice from below screamed, ‘Up the other way again.’

  The divan, now uncertain quite what to do, turned upon its end. Maxwell clung to one side and Blenkinsop, the other.

  ‘Out of town,’ shouted Maxwell. ‘Away to Rameer.’

  ‘Stay where you are,’ shouted Blenkinsop. ‘Stay where you are.’

  The divan began to turn in circles. Maxwell clambered onto the upright end. Governor Blenkinsop grabbed hold of his ankle.

  ‘Get off,’ bawled Maxwell, lashing out with a substantial boot.

  The aerial commotion was now beginning to draw the attention of the townsfolk. Shuttered windows were opening. Nasty black shapes issued into the streets. Voices other than those of Maxwell and Blenkinsop were being raised. The watchman in the tower set to clamouring his bells.

  ‘Get off!’ Maxwell kicked with a will, but the Governor held him fast by the ankle. He evidently had considerable strength about him, for now he was climbing up. Maxwell tried to buffet him down, but clinging for that dear life of his to the violently rotating bed left him somewhat at a disadvantage.

  The Governor hauled himself onto the upright end of the spinning bed. He saddled himself firmly and dug in his heels.

  ‘You are a man of considerable enterprise,’ he told Maxwell. ‘Escaping from the hole, capturing me. But all is in vain. Down, bed!’

  ‘Up, bed!’ shouted Maxwell.

  The bed continued to spin. And now took to lurching also.

  ‘We seem to have confused the divan,’ said the Governor. ‘It will return to its senses once one of us is gone.’ He drove forward and grabbed Maxwell by the white lapels. ‘Off you go, old chap.’

  Maxwell clung on. The Governor held him fast with one hand, raised the other, put out two fingers and drove them towards Maxwell’s eyes. Maxwell tried to turn his head away, but could not.

  ‘Time to die,’ said the Governor.

  The fingers moved closer and closer, filled all of Maxwell’s vision.

  Maxwell closed his eyes. Gritted his teeth.

  The probing fingers pressed against his eyelids.

  Maxwell prepared himself for the latest in a line of horrible ends.

  He really should just have run off into the night. Coming back had not been all that clever.

  ‘Goodbye, cruel world,’ said Maxwell. ‘Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll and praise the Goddess.’

  The fingers pushed forwards.

  Then stopped.

  Drew back.

  Maxwell opened his eyes.

  The Governor was clutching at his stomach. His eyes were rolling. As Maxwell looked on, the shoulders of the zoot suit burst asunder. The arms ripped apart. Buttons popped from the bowling shirt.

  The Governor groaned and moaned. ‘What is happening?’ he burbled.

  That evil grin which Maxwell had worn as he drew tight the drawstring on the pouch containing Rushmear appeared once more upon his face. ‘I think you’re putting on a bit of weight,’ he told the Governor. ‘While you were unconscious I took the liberty of adding a handful of those blow-gut seeds you feed your prisoners to the ewer of water and giving it a good old stir. Remember how you thought the taste vile?’

  ‘No,’ croaked the Governor, swelling like a blimp.

  ‘Yes,’ shouted Maxwell. ‘Vile bastard that you are. A taste of your own medicine. What, old chap!’

  The Governor thrashed about, bloating hideously. Maxwell leaned forward and managed to let fly one really decent smack in the teeth. The Governor fell from the rotating bed. Down and down. As sheer chance would have it the bed was gyrating directly above the mountain of broken chairs as he fell. The Governor smashed down onto it, tumbled and bowled, rolled over and over and finally smacked to the ground, an ungodly naked swollen mass of flesh.

  The Skaven rat ogres swarming through the gates fell upon him with relish.

  Maxwell turned his face away from the horror. ‘Horse and Hattock,’ he told the divan, ‘on at once to Rameer and no more farting around.’

  Horror below, red sky above, Maxwell somewhere in between once more. The bed righted itself, Maxwell settled down upon it.

  And the last Kakkarta heard of Maxwell was his voice, crying dismally, the words, ‘My beautiful zoot suit.’

  And then he was gone.

  13

  The divan flew off towards the north.

  It moved at a sedate pace, some thirty feet above the ground, and stubbornly ignored Maxwell’s demands for a greater turn of speed and a slight increase in altitude.

  The divan simply dawdled along.

  Maxwell lay back upon it, hands behind his head, staring bitterly towards the sky. He was not in a jubilant mood.

  Certainly he had dealt out just deserts to Blenkinsop and escaped from Kakkarta with an enchanted bed to ca
ll his own. But. Well. Bloody Hell! He was still on this suicide mission. And he was hungry again. And be had lost his zoot suit. And he couldn’t actually be certain that the bed was carrying him in the right direction. Maxwell thought it all too likely that some sneaky spell had been preprogrammed into the divan, that might dump the potential bed-napper into a watery grave or propel him to the heart of the ailing sun. And so it was for this reason that he had not ordered the bed to fly at once to the outskirts of MacGuffin’s village, where, Maxwell felt confident, he could conceive a scheme to grab back his soul and punish the murky magician.

  So Maxwell stewed, hungry, nervous and not a nice man to know. The red fug of anger and his hatred for MacGuffin gnawed away at his senses like rats at a leper’s foot. Urgh!

  He would just have to get himself organized: set down somewhere safe, seek out some breakfast, ask directions, learn whatever might be learned about the city of Rameer and the Sultan who dwelt within.

  And he would have to do something about the man in the magic pouch. Maxwell felt that now might well be the time to dissolve his uneasy partnership with the volatile horse trader.

  The chances of this partnership ever becoming one of those now-legendary Cisco Kid and the Pancho jobbies, or a Lone Ranger and Tonto, or even an Abbott and Costello or a Sooty and Sweep, seemed somewhat remote. Rushmear and Maxwell did not seem destined to become soul buddies.

  Soul-less buddies.

  Soul-less adversaries.

  But soul buddies? Nah!

  Maxwell was going to have to ‘let Rushmear go’.

  Open the pouch and shake it out over the side of the flying bed was probably the best idea. A tad callous perhaps. But there you go. Or rather, there Rushmear went.

  But strangely Maxwell felt disinclined to do it. Even though he now lacked for soul and conscience, he did not actually hate Rushmear. And although he knew that the horse trader would most certainly try to kill him the moment he was released, Maxwell also knew that it was hardly Rushmear’s fault. Rushmear was, like himself, an innocent victim of circumstance.

  Troubled times for Maxwell, but decisions had to be made.

  And now.

  Maxwell pulled the pouch from his trouser pocket. ‘Rushmear, my good friend,’ he called. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘I am hungry,’ replied Rushmear in a voice of no small fury. ‘And I am also in imminent danger of crapping myself.’

  ‘But otherwise unscathed?’

  ‘Unscathed? I have been shaken to buggeration.’

  ‘No more so than I. But you will no doubt be overjoyed to learn that I have once again saved your life. We are free of Kakkarta and flying speedily towards Rameer upon a magic bed that I alone am able to command.’

  ‘You are a living saint,’ growled Rushmear. ‘Please release me, that I may prostrate myself at your feet and offer thanks.’

  ‘Yeah, right. But listen, Rushmear, I am locked in the horns of a terrible dilemma. And I would be grateful to hear your views, as they would colour my thinking in regard to the matter of your release.’

  ‘Speak on,’ muttered Rushmear. ‘It is always a joy to hear your words.’

  ‘Right. As I have said to you before, the chances of one man alone succeeding in the mission to acquire Ewavett and return to MacGuffin are less than zero. Two men, acting in harmony, sharing the same goal of regaining their souls before their time ticks away, might well achieve this. If one of them is you and the other, me.’

  ‘So where lies your dilemma?’ Rushmear asked in a greasy tone. ‘Release me and let us set to the task without further delay.’

  ‘My thinking entirely. But the dilemma lies in the matter of your release. I am haunted by the fear, no doubt unfounded, that you might choose to spring from the pouch and kill me, thereby throwing away your chances of success and sealing your own fate.’

  ‘Ahem,’ went Rushmear, greasier yet. ‘Put aside your fear, friend Maxwell. I am a bluff fellow, I know, given to the occasional immoderate outburst. I most fervently apologize if I have fostered the erroneous belief that I might seek to cause you harm.’

  ‘Yet I recall you vowing to ram my head up my bottom.’

  ‘In jest, I assure you.’

  ‘Then, if I release you now, I have your promise to let bygones be bygones, at least until we have completed our mission, destroyed MacGuffin and reclaimed our souls? Specific aims, which, and I cannot stress this too strongly, could never possibly be achieved if we do not work together.’

  ‘Let me out of the pouch,’ crooned Rushmear, ‘and I will demonstrate the quality of my friendship.’

  The ambiguity of that remark was not lost on Maxwell. The trouble was that he, at least, had (for the most part) been telling the truth - the chances of success were far greater if the two of them worked together.

  Troubled times.

  ‘All right,’ said Maxwell. ‘I will release you from the pouch.’

  ‘You won’t live to regret it,’ called Rushmear. ‘Not for one minute.’

  Maxwell sighed and put his thumbnail to the drawstring knot. ‘Climb out very carefully and slowly,’ he said. ‘Make no sudden moves, or the bed will upend and spill us both to our deaths.’

  Maxwell tugged upon the knot.

  And then.

  SMASH!

  Maxwell flew back on the bed. Head over heels. Heels in the air. The bed slewed to one side, turned in a circle, moved forward with a rush and went SMASH! once again.

  ‘What the . . . Hey!’ Maxwell floundered about, pouch in one hand, fistful of mattress in the other.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rushmear shouted. ‘Open the pouch. Set me free.’

  ‘Something’s happening to the bed.’ Maxwell clung on. The bed took another dash forward, struck something, bounced off, struck again.

  ‘Stop!’ shouted Maxwell. ‘Blenkinsop’s divan, stop! Go down, rest upon the ground.’

  The bed dropped down, clumped onto grass beneath.

  It came to rest in a bit of green and pleasantness. A veritable Arcadian glade, all bulbous trees like giant broccoli, feathered ferns and drowsing dabbled blooms. Very nice.

  Very very nice.

  ‘Let me out now,’ cried Rushmear.

  ‘In a moment.’ Maxwell tucked the pouch back into his pocket, and jumped from the bed. ‘What is your trouble?’ he asked it. ‘Are you broken, or is this some trick?’ He took a step backwards, struck something himself and was catapulted from his feet.

  Maxwell tumbled in a heap on the grass.

  He rose angrily. ‘Who did that?’ he demanded to be told.

  ‘Have a care now. Have a care.’

  Maxwell turned. A little man in a great big coat came hurrying up. He was a very little man and his coat, numerous sizes too large, dragged along the ground behind him. He had a big candyfloss of pink hair and a jolly red round face made grave by a look of concern.

  ‘Please don’t touch the grid again, sir,’ he implored. ‘You will come to harm.’

  ‘What?’ asked Maxwell. ‘Eh?’

  ‘The grid.’ The little man gestured towards nothing that could be seen. ‘The grid encircles the city of Rameer. It rejects magic. The Sultan does not allow unauthorized magic to enter his garden.’

  ‘His garden? Then the city is not far away?’ Maxwell rubbed at a grazed shin.

  ‘A day’s march. Less if you were to run. Somewhat more if you were to hop upon one leg, of course.’

  ‘And who might you be?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘I am Phlegster the gridster, southern area 801. And who might you be, sir?’

  ‘Do you know the town of Kakkarta?’

  ‘Well, I’ve never been there myself, but I’ve heard it’s a very nice place.’

  ‘Quite charming,’ said Maxwell. ‘And I am its new Governor.’

  ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, sir.’ The little man put out a hand and Maxwell shook it.

  ‘Also,’ said Maxwell, ‘I am one most highly skilled in the magical arts and prepared to
blast, upon a whim, any who delay my journey. I command the use of a magical bed, as you can see. And also,’ he drew the pouch from his pocket, ‘a bag containing a demon, which I must deliver to the Sultan.’ Maxwell shook the pouch. Rushmear raised curses. Phlegster stepped back smartly.

  ‘So,’ continued Maxwell, ‘be a good fellow and disarm the grid so I can pass on my way.’

  The little man shook his head. ‘I wish I could,’ he sighed, ‘but it would be more than my job’s worth.’

  Maxwell sighed also. ‘I too have a job to do. Namely, the delivery of this pouch.’ Maxwell shook it once again, raised an eyebrow to Rushmear’s outcries and returned the pouch to his pocket. ‘The Sultan will not be best pleased when I tell him you delayed me.’

  ‘I’m in no doubt,’ said Phlegster. ‘So, if you will kindly show me your official travel documents, letters of recommendation, pilot’s licence, proof of bed-ownership, signatured authority for the inter state transportation of a registered demonic entity, I will stamp these and cause you no further delay.’

  Maxwell made a show of patting his pockets. ‘Wouldn’t you just know it?’ he said. ‘I’ve left them all in my other suit.’

  Phlegster nodded politely. ‘Isn’t it always the way? But let us be glad you have discovered this now, rather than at the city gates, where the guards are less charitable than I.’

  ‘Less charitable, you say?’

  ‘Far less. For where I see a noble gentleman — the Governor of Kakkarta, who has accidentally mislaid his documents — they might see a potential assassin upon a stolen bed. And, once having slain him most cruelly, they would no doubt send a legion to arrest the gridster who let him slip past. We can count ourselves fortunate men today, sir, can’t we?’

  ‘Indeed we can.’

  ‘So,’ said Phlegster. ‘The way I see it, two options lay open to you: return to Kakkarta and pick up your documents, or leave your magical appurtenances here in my safe keeping and proceed through the grid on foot. If you carry no magic you will pass unshredded and not be challenged at the city gate.’

  ‘Outrageous,’ cried Maxwell. ‘I do not have the time for this falderal. Surely other options must exist.’ He mimed the jingling of coins in his pocket.