Theatre of the Gods

by M. Suddain

  And now we are prisoners in a village of primitive marsh folk. We haven’t met their leader yet, but if his hideous troll-servant Skyorax is anything to go by we are in trouble.

  The journal I found aboard the saucer craft is very interesting and casts a different light on the fate of the crew. It opens with a warning: ‘Judy’s Property. If you’re reading this, and you aren’t me, DON’T.’

  The entries themselves are mostly the musings of a young woman: ‘No one understands me, I hate X, I love Y, Daddy is so mean, the doctor is an ogre, little brothers are the worst.’

  But then, on Day 1497:

  ‘We’ve got so little food that Daddy says we might have to eat the starfishes!!! Eat them? They’re my little friends! I’d rather starve.’

  Then, Day 1511:

  ‘Daddy just gets meaner every day. He frightens me sometimes.’

  Day 1519:

  ‘They ate them! All of them! Except Gloria. They’ll never find Gloria.’

  The journal had a live starfish resting inside the cover – Gloria, I suppose. I have given it to Lenore to play with so she will stop asking silly questions, but perhaps I will show it to the old man.

  Now I must go because I hear someone lurking around our barn. If it’s that Skyorax I think I will die.

  STARLIGHT TUBE

  The night was a ghostly den of mist and shadows – much like the day – and the moon hung low and silver. They had spent another day confined, bored, to the compound. There had been another lavish feast that night – a lavish feast on top of a lavish lunch on top of a sumptuous breakfast – and now Roberto couldn’t sleep because his belly was swollen. He poked it with one finger and it gurgled angrily. Little slugs. That’s what they’d become if they carried on like this. A band of little slugs. He sat by the window, staring out into the darkness. If his ears worked he would have heard the night commanded by the bosun’s epic snoring, and he would have heard that the drumming had stopped, briefly. They had all stood out by the cage and listened to the drums. Roberto had placed his hand on the wet earth and raised an eyebrow.

  Something moved in the darkness. A shadow passed with quick and easy steps. It was her, he knew, the local girl who’d bathed his wounds the day before. She had brought him his food the first night and when he’d smiled she’d looked at four different spots on the ground. The previous day during the slug attack he’d approached her. She’d stood by one of the cabins, one webbed hand on the wall, looking frightened. While the bosun went about his business, Roberto had taken a silver coin from his pocket, held it before the girl’s astonished face, and in a flash made it disappear. The girl had jumped. Then she gave a quick flurry of blinks and scuttled off. He knew that later she would find the coin in her pocket and, he hoped, be pleased. She wouldn’t even realise that it was a coin from another universe. She wouldn’t know, he mused, that the boy who’d given it to her was a powerful master-being whose head contained a universe of data. The coin trick was only in his brain because someone, somewhere, sometime, had sent an instructive illustration of it to a friend. Of course, Roberto couldn’t have known, even with the spinning galaxies of information trapped inside his skull, that the flurry of blinks the girl had given him was a coded message: ‘You and your friends must run away. Now. You don’t know how much danger you’re in.’ He instead took his information from Hazmatt’s Guide to Romantic Etiquette – a few chapters of which were lodged somewhere in the recesses of his brain – which told him that when a woman flutters her lashes at you it means she likes you.

  Now she was walking quickly past their sleeping barn. It was a sign, he thought. She was giving him a message by walking past his barn – although, to be fair, Hazmatt’s mentioned nothing about flirtatious walk-bys. To be sure he took his Magic Eighth from his pocket, shook it, and observed the quivering message. He stood for a few moments, flicking the gems in his pocket with the tips of his fingers. Then he saluted the moon, then leaped from the window and into the night.

  *

  Fabrigas was also puzzled by the presence of the moon, and troubled by his stomach, and bothered by the voices in each ear. He’d gone for a walk to soothe his system, but it hadn’t worked, so he’d decided to go back to the sleeping barn and ask Miss Fritzacopple to hand over Judy’s journal. Before he’d even arrived his powerful ears had picked up the nightmarish hiss of Skyorax. ‘This is a very dangerous place. No one makes it out alive without our assistance. Our beloved leader grants favours, but they must be earned. Tell us about this girl, the one who talks to giant worms. Who is she? Where did she come from? Where is she going?’

  ‘I don’t know a thing about her. I can’t help you. And I’m confident I can make it out of here alive without your help.’

  ‘Who is she? Where did she come from? Where is she going?’ Skyorax said more urgently.

  ‘I told you, I have no idea.’

  ‘My master begs to differ. The colonel thinks you very much know who this girl is. It is a mysterious group you have. But they could be useful to us. You should ensure that when the time comes you are positioned well.’

  ‘Positioned well?’

  ‘This is a community which needs women with your … fertile qualities. My master could make sure you were treated like a queen. You would be favoured above all others in his care.’

  ‘I don’t much care for his favour. Now if you’ll excuse me, I was just getting ready to sleep.’

  ‘To sleep, yes. But I would not close both eyes if I were you. We have been patient with you. But there’s a price for delay. Every hour you refuse to cooperate you fall lower in his estimation. Delay too long and you’ll be no better than worm-food.’

  ‘It’s time for you to leave. Don’t make me ask again.’

  ‘Or what? This is my camp. I am the keeper. I go where I like. You, however, are in a corner, yes?’

  ‘This lady has asked very nicely if you would leave her to prepare for bed.’ Fabrigas’s monstrous frame cast a shadow over the troll-man.

  ‘Ah, your knight is here to save you. I will leave you. But if I were you I’d look to your team. Your boy is about to go horribly astray.’

  ‘Which boy?’

  Skyorax smiled. ‘Take your pick, old man.’ He left. Miss Fritzacopple looked sheepishly at him. ‘Thank you. I didn’t know what he was capable of.’

  ‘Did you not? And the journal you took from the saucer craft? Were you not going to show me that?’ The botanist couldn’t disguise her surprise. ‘There’s a young she-phantom who very much wants me to retrieve it for her. Please give it to me.’ The botanist fetched the slim book from a hiding place under her bed. ‘What is this place?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m willing to bet it has a few more hidden surprises.’ He flicked rapidly through the book. The botanist could not believe how fast he absorbed its contents. ‘So they ate the starfish. How very intriguing.’

  That’s when Carrofax appeared and said, ‘Your boy is in trouble, or near enough.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Like the man said, take your pick.’

  *

  In the centre of the compound there was a large barn, like an aircraft hangar, and at the front was a hatch leading underground. The barn and the hatch were special, Roberto knew, because they were always under guard. Light oozed from the slits in the walls and the shuttered windows: the bluish light of the luminescent ferns they’d found around the swamps. But Roberto didn’t know entering these buildings was strictly forbidden, because he hadn’t heard Kandy’s speech, as translated by Carrofax, as recited by Fabrigas. He was thrice removed from that important piece of information. So when the girl tripped lightly down the steps and inside the basement room he’d ducked into the shadows, and when the guard stepped around the corner he’d made his move. The door to the basement was protected by a lock ripped from a starship. It had a government-level encryption code. It took the boy four seconds to crack it.

  Behind the door were steps leading down to a lo
ng passage with four doors on either side, one door at the far end. The girl had disappeared. He tried the first door and it opened into a small room. The lighting was dim and the fern lamps were coated in amber. On one table stood an array of medical equipment. On another was a row of tanks and in those tanks, suspended in fluid, was a collection of creatures. Some almost looked like people. Almost. Others were monsters who looked like spiders crossed with crabs. He touched a finger to one of the tanks and the creature inside snapped its claws.

  The next room was stacked with disused navigation equipment from a ship, some busted, some stripped for parts, and in the next (and this was very surprising) was a full-grown apple tree growing under solar lamps rigged to a ship’s battery. Roberto knew every object he saw by scanning images from the messages in his database – even though he’d never seen any of the real objects before. He’d come to know the whole universe from inside a pod the size of a taxi carriage. When the surge came, Roberto had been practising his coin tricks. The mechanics of routing could go on without him. He could sleep, or eat, or think about girls (which he was doing more and more often these days, though at that time he hadn’t even met a real one). The images of girls and geese and a million other things all came through his brain. All the routing happened in his subconscious mind. It was something he could do, but not explain.

  And that was why, as he pulled away a perfect red fruit and examined it, he knew exactly what he was looking at. ‘Apple.’ Or, ‘leatherberry’, as it was sometimes called. He took a bite and his mouth exploded, a cascade of flavour scattering stars of pleasure through his brain. He had never in his life eaten anything like it. ‘You shouldn’t eat this,’ said a voice behind him in a broken version of his language, but he didn’t jump, because he couldn’t hear the voice. ‘Them are the colonel’s apples,’ she said.

  *

  Fabrigas had wandered out to the edge of the compound in search of Roberto and had quickly become distracted by the moon. He took out his telescope and held it to his eye. But he really couldn’t make sense of it. It was a round, silver blur. At that moment the truth of where they were and what that moon was hit him with the force of a punch. How could he have been so stupid? But he had no time to dwell on it, because right then he heard a voice in his ear say, ‘You read it. You read my journal. How could you do this to me?’

  ‘I needed to know what happened to your family. It’s the only way I can help you. Now I know what needs to be done.’

  ‘Destroy it. Burn the diary right now.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well.’ The old man took out the girl’s journal, produced a small acetylene torch from his magical cloak, and in seconds had incinerated the book.

  ‘Thank you. Now I will help you. The boy you’re looking for is under the barn in the centre of the compound. It is extremely dangerous in there.’ And then the voice vanished. Assuming that Roberto couldn’t have gone down into the guarded basement, Fabrigas stalked around the barn above. It was large, dark, and had a set of wide doors like an airship hangar. The walls had a gap of a foot at the bottom. Fabrigas rolled under. Now he lay in the darkness, listening for movement, but he could only feel a large rat scurry past his ear. He felt for a small penlight he kept hidden, he turned it on, he gasped.

  *

  Roberto gasped too when he turned to find her standing in the corridor, but then the girl ran off, and when he put his head out he saw the last door closing.

  DOOR 3: More things from a ship. Furniture, fittings, an old movie projector and screen. Inside the projector was a bright fern. There was a cavity with a small wheel in which a creature could run, and a little hook on which tempting food could be spiked. He gave the wheel a spin and saw, projected upon the wall, a man – a prince – walking proudly down the stairs from a ship. The prince was receiving a royal welcome. He shook hands with hosts in fine clothing. People cheered. He knew the prince’s name. He knew from the messages in his brain.

  DOOR 4: Some kind of war room. There was a table laid with a map of the area. Roberto recognised the fort, the swamp nearby. There was a spot marked with a large ‘X’ and next to it was the title ‘NEW SHIP’. There was a large area, heavily marked, and beside it was the word ‘UBUNTU’. He scanned his entire database, through all the trillions of bits of information stored in his head, but he could find no meaning for the word ‘UBUNTU’. Some information, granted, might have been lost in the surge.

  Back when the surge came Roberto had felt a white-hot pop inside his head, the smell of burning, and a terrible silence. His pod had quickly filled with smoke. He’d stumbled out into the hall, mad with terror, seen the smoke pouring out from under the doors of the other pods. Inside the first pod he’d found a small, limp body with lolling tongue and blood trickling from its nose. And in the next pod the same, and the next. He’d never seen any of these boys, but they were, he noticed, just like him. Alarm lights were winking at him through the smoke in the corridor and he could see the hammer blurring against the bell. It was at that moment he knew he was deaf. He also knew he had less than a minute. There were doors – these would be covered – and a fire hatch – this too would have a shock-trooper at the end – but there was one final way to the outside, a light-tube: a long tunnel roughly the width of his shoulders that carried starlight in from outside. He knew that to get inside this tube, where the pure, unfiltered starlight streamed, was suicide. He would be burned to a crisp in seconds. He could hear voices approaching.

  In their pods they had a panel containing an emergency sack, and a flask of water. In the event of a ‘sun-leak’ they were instructed to crawl into these silver sacks and wait. This, of course, was pointless. A boy inside one of these sacks had probably four minutes at most until he was cooked, and it would take the fire team ten minutes to arrive. The ‘cleaning’ teams arrived much quicker. The shock troops would soon be there in their black suits and gas masks, their handcuffs and hoods, and there would be no bargaining. He could feel their boot-steps growing louder. They ran in sync.

  Roberto had zipped the sack up to his neck and prised away the seals on the edge of the UV shield across the cover of the light-tube. He’d put the water flask under his chin and zipped the sack over his head. Then he’d slipped into the starlight tube. It wasn’t easy to open the UV cover with his hands inside the sack, but he’d managed.

  The heat was instantly unbearable, far worse than he’d imagined. He’d felt his hair singe and the sweat leave his body in mad fright.

  Outside he’d felt the drum of boot-steps enter, searching the pods. Two minutes, he thought. That’s if they didn’t leave a guard behind.

  He counted, 38, 39, 40. He felt the sweat sizzling under his legs. He was drenched in his own water. The sack was filling with steam, smoke and gases. He felt the beat of each pod slamming shut as it was searched, he marked the time. It might as well have been hours. He saw a burning sun, a tube descending, a ladder leading up, a heat so strong it pushed the tiniest pieces of him apart. He was a cloud, a vapour, a lovely rain, he was dying.

  Soon he felt the boot-steps leave and the outer door slam shut. The whole place would be in lockdown. There was no escape.

  He rolled out of the tube and hit the floor hard. He clawed away the silver skin and emerged like a newborn, slick and tearful, his face twisted into a horrible grimace.

  When he’d mopped the sweat and tears from his eyes with his knuckles, he saw the trooper at the end of the corridor, in a black mask and holding a long club. He was far too short to be a guard.

  The trooper said, ‘Don’t run. I’m here to help.’ The voice seemed to come from inside his head. ‘I work for a group called Dark Hand. We’ve come to rescue you.’

  ‘We have a job for you,’ they told him. ‘We need you to help us stop a war,’ they said. ‘We need you to use the things inside your head to stop a war,’ they said, ‘and we will teach you how. This is a secret battle,’ they told him. ‘It is a battle to stop a war to
end all wars. We need you to go to the Worlds’ Fair. You will meet a girl there. Have you ever met a girl before?’

  Roberto had not.

  *

  DOOR 5: Drawers filled with preserved butterflies and insects, anatomical drawings and instruments. Roberto pocketed a small scalpel; he hid it in his sock. A shadow flashed by in the corridor behind.

  DOOR 6: Weapons of all kinds.

  DOOR 7: Locked.

  DOOR 8: A bare room with a stack of old books.

  Roberto went back out into the corridor and considered the final door.

  *

  It was a ship. Fabrigas ran his light along its blonde flank, from its steam rudder to the tip of its bow, back to the name, shining in gold letters: the Prince Albert. ‘Well I never,’ he whispered. ‘Well I never, ever.’ It was a small galleon, the hull smooth and familiar. It had been seriously damaged, perhaps in a crash like the one they’d been in, and repaired crudely. The far side of the ship had been virtually melted away by sunlight. He climbed the ladder through the docking bay and walked the deck under the triple-reinforced glass roof. It was a miracle of engineering, the spaceship. Something which looked as delicate as a flower bulb, but which could withstand impacts from space-junk, cannon fire, and smashing into moons and planets at fantastic speed. He had often mused that the ships they used to sail the heavens were so strange and miraculous that they seemed like foreign objects, like devices gifted to their species by a mysterious alien culture.

  He wandered the ship, a man in a waking dream. What madness was this? He went to the navigation room and was not surprised to find old tools, decades out of date. Much of the fittings and equipment had been stripped from the ship. In the living quarters he found personal items. A man owned this ship, and from the items he could tell he was of royal descent, and from the line of Queen Gargoylas. He found a repeating watch with the cipher of Gargoylas X, a ring with the cameo of a kneeling warrior, a garter badge and a dress sword.