by Kim Newman
Though they had arrived by unorthodox means, these were Earthly beings.
Within a minute of their arrival, only Five was still standing. The ducks had been more trouble.
Mac rapped on Five’s helmet with a pistol. The woman meekly put her hands up.
Two keeled over.
Soldiers looked at Three-or-Four, who was plainly dead. One of them asked if they should try to get her down.
Whitney skinned silver-foil away from Two’s wrist – which was pink and had sunburn scars – and failed to find a pulse.
‘Welcome to our planet,’ said Richard.
Five made fists and thumped the sides of her helmet. Her faceplate popped open and she unloosed a torrent of foul language in broad West Country.
Richard deduced the space-women were the flower children from Hermit Hogg’s cheese farm.
The helmet came off. Five shook out a long tangle of brown hair. The green on her face had streaked. She rubbed it with the heels of her hands.
She didn’t stop swearing – not at Richard and Whitney, but at ‘Magister’ – for long minutes. She went around kicking things, including One’s empty boots and Three-or-Four’s tree.
The afterstench of bodged magic was thick. A short-term translocation spell, carelessly done.
Richard didn’t think any of the space-women had struck down Luna Moon or the others. Those had been professional, vicious jobs. This had been a throwaway. A delaying tactic.
Five shook her fists at the sky. Whitney slapped her, to get her attention. Five slapped back, instantly. But calmed down.
‘You,’ Whitney said. ‘Name?’
‘Fan.’
‘Fan, do you surrender?’
‘Oh yerr, I gives up all roight.’
Maitland ordered his sergeant to take away Fan’s tool-belt. A lot of the gadgets seemed to be toys.
‘I knew we shouldn’t have stepped in that morris square,’ said Fan. ‘So did he, Magister. Bloody posh old bastard tosser. Couldn’t wait to get shot of us. It were all lies, all the time. I b’aint never going to the moon. And he’m killed Jillie and Jonquil and Bertha. Hannah too, prob’ly. She never popped back. Goddess knows where her bits be spread.’
Maitland wasn’t following this. Richard and Whitney were.
‘Fan,’ said Richard, ‘we’re here to stop Magister Rex Chalfont.’
‘’Bout bloody time, too.’
‘So… take us to your leader.’
* * *
Fan led Richard and Whitney down a rutted, tree-lined path. Branches entangled above them. Sunbeams filtered down into the nearly covered way, casting shifting patches of light onto the ground.
‘So that’s what “sun-dappled” means,’ he said. ‘I’d always wondered.’
Whitney tugged his arm, to prevent an unwise step. She used her knobkerrie to snap a man-trap that had been left under a carpet of leaf litter.
‘Wrong time of year for falling leaves,’ she explained.
An unwholesome country smell turned out to be a dead little man splatted against a stout oak by a giant wickerwork fly-swatter studded with Viet Cong-style punji sticks.
‘Magister Rex hates they poachers,’ Fan explained. ‘Leaves ’en up to warn off others.’
Richard got on the walkie-talkie and warned Mac to have his men be careful about following the country code. Stiles in these parts were likely to be booby-trapped and streams might well be full of mines.
From the disillusioned space-woman, they learned Magister Rex and the Inner Circle of the Temple of Domina Oriens had promised free trips to the moon for their followers. Chalfont claimed to have been there and back many times, but the happy hippie cultie side of things had become strained lately – what with the unsought-for competition from NASA. Fan wasn’t in on the politics, but confirmed there’d been a little war in the group. Those left standing had fallen back to Mildew Manor, the unlikely mission control from which Chalfont promised imminent mass migration to the sacred satellite. According to Fan, the quadrilocating assassin was Gosling – who nipped about via more precise and effective spells of translocation than the Hogg Farm Space Kiddettes. It was all done by morris dancing, apparently – Moon Man’s Morris, executed by the Chalfont Group with man-in-the-moon masks and belled sticks, around a square marked with yellow diagrams.
Fan was vague about how precisely Chalfont made his space voyages, but clearly believed Magister Rex had been traversing cislunar space regularly since the 1950s. Without anyone noticing. Had Chalfont perfected a long-range translocation spell? Jaunting that far was beyond the combined magical prowess of Merlin, Circe, Ali Bongo and Sooty, and Richard couldn’t see Magister Rex being top of that class. Not with bloody morris dancing. If the sellotape-and-glue sorcery used to deploy Fan and her gang was an example of his prowess, Richard wouldn’t trust Chalfont to pull a rabbit out of a hat without killing a volunteer from the audience. Fan only said Magister went to the moon ‘through the Shimmer’.
They got out of the copse alive and came upon Mildew Manor, a big, square Gothic revival pile – complete with turrets and towers – in the middle of eighteenth-century fake ancient ruins and gardens cultivated to seem wild. Fan told them a single light was always kept burning in the East Tower window, in accordance with a tradition no one dared violate. In the driveway, a minivan with a green cheese man-in-the-moon painted on the side panels was parked next to a jeep with an ELF Eismond on the bonnet and a couple of bicycles. No built-in-the-garden-shed rocketship in evidence. No transdimensional police box. No Verne cannon. No antigravity trampoline. No geese.
Fan wouldn’t go further.
Richard and Whitney crossed the lawn. A moondial was set on a stone table, abandoned teacups around the rim. A ceramic ashtray was full of aromatic dog-ends.
The front door hung open a crack. Whitney pushed it with her stick. No death-trap sprung.
‘Anyone home?’ called Richard.
‘Could they have zapped themselves into oblivion?’
‘We can but hope.’
In the hallway, a large Luna Selene Moon canvas hung askew. Whitney adjusted it, and had an insight. Her tactile intuition again.
‘This way.’
Richard felt the thrumm – in his fillings, mostly – before he heard the churning, rumbling sound. His nerves were on edge, as if he were standing next to an invisible cataract or inside a giant disguised power station. A lot of energy in the air. He didn’t need to tell Whitney to be careful.
The first room they came to was a TV lounge. BBC moon news rolled on, to empty chairs. A well-spoken announcer apologised to those tuning in for Tich and Quackers, usually broadcast at this time. Apollo 11 was in lunar orbit. Onscreen diagrams showed how the Eagle would separate from the Columbia, leaving Mike Collins in orbit as Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the lunar surface. The BBC didn’t ask what the whole world was wondering – how pissed off was Collins at going so far, but hanging back at the last moment? Touch-down would happen tomorrow evening GMT and man would first set foot on the moon in the middle of the night. The schedule was for the convenience of American networks, but the BBC were too polite to complain. The television set was splattered with burst tomatoes, suggesting the Chalfont Group’s feelings about the Apollo programme.
Richard switched off the television, and the thrumm was obvious.
Something big, nearby.
At the end of the hall, double-doors were painted with Luna Moon designs, in the same style as the décor at the Temple in Sekforde Street. The thrumm came from beyond the doors.
Whitney, wary of another shock, did not reach for the handles.
Richard pulled open the doors.
* * *
The Great Hall of Mildew Manor was stripped of furniture. Tall windows were bricked over. Panelling bowed away from the walls, and had come away from bare brick in patches. Uncarpeted, polished floor strained as if the herringbone tiles were resisting universal pull.
In the middle of the room, a sphere of blue-
white, crackling energy – about twenty feet from pole to pole – revolved slowly. The Shimmer. It looked like a 3D projection, the ghost of the moon. Though the Shimmer was transparent, Richard couldn’t only see the far side of the room through it. Somewhere inside the shifting, semi-gaseous globe of magick hung a giant, animate Luna Moon picture.
Whitney whistled.
One other person was in the hall. A man in a red diving suit lay in a corner, clutching his right arm – which ended at the wrist, stump caulked over with blue-green sludge. Richard twisted off the man’s helmet – more brassbound and Victorian than the Space Kiddettes’ silver fishbowls – and recognised Maurice Nordstrom, the publisher. His comb-over flapped away from a flaky scalp. He was delirious with pain and wonder.
Nordstrom thumped himself with his stump, and muttered, ‘Failure, failure, failure…’
Richard understood. Magic devices like the Shimmer depended on faith. Waver for even a second and you ended up stuck in a tree or rent apart by dwellers in the outer void. Or it just doesn’t work.
Nordstrom had been cautious, tried to test the waters. The waters didn’t care for the inference that they were not to be trusted.
It was no use quizzing the man. His mind was gone with his hand.
‘I don’t suppose there’s an off switch?’ said Whitney.
‘Not this side.’
‘That’s what I was worried about,’ she said. ‘So, the Shimmer is a portal? A magic door to the moon. Like a Wonderland rabbit-hole or a Narnia wardrobe.’
‘If Chalfont had his physics thinking cap on rather than his sorcerer’s pointy hat, he’d call it a Schwarzschild wormhole or an Einstein–Rosen bridge.’
‘Like I said, a magic doorway—’
‘To the moon, Alice.’
The wall-panels, floor-tiles and ceiling were covered with – as Margery Device had said – runes and equations. Childish scrawls, which shone like teeth and white shirts in a discotheque when ultra-violet plays on the crowds during the chorus of ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’. Richard wondered if the spell had been touched up since 1953. It was a powerful piece of work – a masterpiece, perhaps the only one Magister Rex had in him. He’d had help, of course. Richard knew the brushstrokes of Luna Moon.
‘I still don’t believe you can actually get to the moon through that,’ said Whitney.
‘Neither did Nordstrom.’
‘I’m not saying you can’t get anywhere.’
Richard understood. The Shimmer was more likely a portal to another dimension than another world. Luna Moon’s imagination, perhaps.
‘What about Aldrin’s non-star light?’ he asked. ‘The breakdown of Ranger 8 and Surveyor 5 on your actual moon.’
‘Suggestive, not conclusive.’
He looked at her. And knew that, like him, she was more excited than terrified. But was still terrified.
Their hair was rising again, more dramatically. Whitney had a Bride of Frankenstein frizz. His scalp prickled as he sprouted a Struwwelpeter afro.
‘We’re putting it off, aren’t we?’ he said.
She agreed.
He got on the walkie-talkie, and Captain Maitland relayed him to Catriona in London. He gave a concise report about the set-up at Mildew Manor. She had dragged more secrets out of Assistant Director Spilsby.
‘The good news,’ she responded, ‘is that someone in NASA covered their bottom by incorporating unadvertised defensive capabilities into Apollo 11. The rocket has “cold iron” and “bell, book and candle”, like all British warships since Nelson fought Cagliostro. So, the – whatchumacallit – BEM ought to be shielded from sorcerous attack.’
‘What’s the bad news?’
‘Typically, the shield can only be activated – I’m so dreadfully sorry, I’m mindlessly passing on what Americans have told me, what I mean by “activated” is “switched on” – if certain words are spoken at a certain spot by the man in charge. And he’s unavailable.’
‘Senator Kennedy? Don’t tell me he’s been shot too!’
‘No, he’s answering police questions after driving into a lake with a junior aide who drowned. They’d been at a party. It’s not an affair from which anyone will emerge with honour. Frankly, I’m so annoyed with Teddy I could spit. Even if he’s let go, we can’t get him to the pentacle in the Pentagon to read the riot runes.’
‘How long can the astronauts stay in orbit? Surely, Houston won’t let them try a landing under these circumstances?’
‘Houston’s tolerance for, and I quote, “hoodoo voodoo” is at an end. They’ve all been intent on this since Teddy’s brother said there’d be an American on the moon before the end of the decade.’
‘JFK also promised to bring that American back safely.’
‘Indeed. But NASA is in a risk-taking, seat-of-the-trousers mood at the moment. If they aborted the landing – hideous, term, that – they think it’d be the end of the space programme.’
‘Being blasted to bits during the descent would probably put a dampener on things, too.’
‘The boffins are impatient.’
‘So it’s down to us? Whitney and me?’
‘Spilsby wants Whitney on the bench. A platoon of GIs with cruciform tattoos and holy water-pistols are on their way.’
‘They’re lost.’
‘I know. It’s a wonder they’ve not napalmed Grasmere. As far as I’m concerned, it really is down to you two. Richard, I don’t need to tell you to come back safe. Don’t try too hard to protect the girl. She’ll not be grateful and can look after herself.’
‘I’ve noticed.’
‘Good. You’re getting better at noticing. It bodes well. Gallantry is all very well, but it’s nearly the 1970s. Lecture over. Go and save the world. And the moon.’
He told Whitney they had the go-ahead. He didn’t mention Spilsby.
In an antechamber to the Great Hall, several pressure suits – not strictly diving suits, of course – hung on hooks, with helmets shelved above. It took long minutes to get properly dressed for the expedition. The gear was baggy enough to fit over their Earth clothes, though Richard had to take his boots off and transfer gadgets to flapped pouches on the thighs. Reluctantly, they left their berets behind. The suit-boots were weighted, soled with something like slate, fixed to the trouser-rims with gluey strips. The space-suit was reddish metallic oilskin, and musty inside. Somehow, the helmet did not shut off sound.
Whitney had a similar suit, but opted for silver finish and the plastic fishbowl. She struck a pin-up pose.
‘Out of sight, Psychedella,’ he commented.
They checked each other for straps, seals and hooks and hoped they’d followed proper procedure. The oxygen bottles were lightweight and seemed too small to be any use.
Richard peeled an Eismond off his chestplate.
‘I’m not wearing this,’ he said. ‘It’s the badge of an oik.’
Beside the suits was a rack of athamés. The Temple must have got a good price on a job-lot of ceremonial stabbing implements. An array of contraptions with pumps and nozzles which looked like Edwardian fly-sprays could have been moon-guns. Hung by the rack was a clipboard with printed forms and a stubby pencil on a string. Richard flipped over filled-in forms. Suits were checked out to Nordstrom, who they needn’t worry about, and Rex Chalfont, Anemone Zyle and Rudy Gosling, who would likely be more problematic. Boxes were ticked, signatures appended. He and Whitney didn’t bother with the paperwork.
It ought to come down to two against three. Richard knew little about Rex Chalfont or Anemone Zyle, but Rudy Gosling was a practised killer – and, whatever lay beyond the Shimmer, they were up against people who would be more familiar with the terrain.
When they returned to the Great Hall, Nordstrom was dead. Puffy blue-green fungus was spreading across his face. It was horribly easy to imagine the poison gunk covering the whole world.
To be on the safe side, they picked him up between them, gave him a swing or two and launched him into the Shimmer with the
old heave-ho.
Nordstrom flapped in the centre of the globe and disappeared, like a switched-off TV picture dwindling to a dot. Even the afterimage didn’t last.
‘I hope he didn’t just dissolve in front of our eyes,’ said Richard. ‘If so, what we’re about to do would be cataclysmically stupid.’
Whitney shrugged.
Richard’s impulse was to kiss Whitney Gauge, but he knew they would just grind helmets.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
They held hands, tightly enough to feel the grip through the gauntlets, and walked towards the Shimmer. After a few steps, they weren’t on the floor, but above it. The phantom moon exerted gravitational pull.
Richard tried not to shut his eyes. The rushing noise increased.
He and Whitney clung to each other. Incalculable forces worked on them. He felt upside down and inside out…
* * *
And topsy-turvy.
On the other side of the Shimmer was the moon. At least, the parti-coloured Earth, hanging bright in velvet-black night, strongly suggested they were on the satellite.
Everything else wasn’t as expected.
No expanse of greyish dust plain, pitted with craters. Not even a range of green cheese. In a screamingly colourful jungle, trees had peacock feathers and birds had serpent-scales. Thick fire rivulets ran through black crystal fern. Dew-drops crawled up rock-cracks like liquid bugs. Some trees were sickly, bursting with the blue-green fungus which had tainted Mo Nordstrom. Patches of the stuff lay about. Small weird dead animals curled up in it like undigested carrots in fresh sick.
Richard’s brain stopped sloshing in its pan as the trip trauma passed. But his insides still felt funny, and he was light-headed. Close to tipsy. Tipsy-topsy-turvy was not a place to be. Not with murderers about, and an official moon mission in peril.
The Shimmer was here too, but in a negative image – a globular tracery of sparks revolving in mid-air.
Whitney let go his hand and took experimental steps, making yard-long leaps between footprints. She squealed, like a kid on a fairground ride.
