Theatre of the Gods

by M. Suddain

  ‘What is that noise! For the love of –’

  ‘We hate that noise!’

  ‘Make it stop!’

  The burst of sound had illuminated the figures like a powerful lamp. Now they were clearly visible. The oozy figures of the shipwrecked family were stumbling back, fingers stabbed into their ears as Fabrigas’s chord shimmered mercilessly in the air like a rolling clap of thunder.

  ‘Stop, you’re hurting us!’

  ‘What is that awful music!?’

  ‘I think you are hurting them!’

  ‘It’s all as it should be, it’s all for the best!’

  The figures began to lose their shape, they warped like reflections on the surface of a pond.

  ‘Please stop! If you don’t stop, we’ll hurt you, we’ll take out your eyes!’

  ‘I think it is working,’ said the green girl. ‘Or not!’

  ‘It’s working,’ said the old man, ‘just don’t move from where you are.’

  It was a good thing that Lenore could not see what was happening around her, because now the family’s faces transformed, contorted into shocking grimaces, and they began to lash wildly at her.

  Even Fabrigas could see the family now, and he said, ‘Great ghosts, I can see them!’ before he let rip with another ear-shredding chord. When the wave hit the family they were sent stumbling back, and their reflections began to burn and twist.

  ‘You evil people!’

  ‘We hate you!’

  ‘What are you doing to us?!’

  ‘I want to ride in the rover!’

  ‘I made us cookies for a late snack!’

  They came storming back again, their faces bent and demonic. They reared up beside Lenore and hissed, as one …

  ‘He’s coming! Calligulus is coming with his army! He’s coming for you. The Vengeance! He laughs at your vengeance! The great one, destroyer of worlds, taker of souls, is coming to destroy you. He slaughtered your father, his enemy; he slaughtered your friends; he killed everyone you know. Soon he’ll throw you into a pit of hell. You won’t believe his power and his cruelty. You will suffer for eternity!’

  ‘Well now,’ said Lenore.

  ‘We’re sorry.’ And then they began to dissolve like fine sand. ‘We are so very sorry.’ Until each figure was a galaxy of spinning grains. ‘We didn’t mean to frighten you.’ And the last voice they heard was that of a young woman saying, ‘I’m so sorry. Thank you. I won’t forget this.’

  But she would forget, because she was just a memory herself.

  ‘Please take care of Gloria.’

  And after that the clearing was very, very quiet.

  *

  ‘Calligulus,’ said Fabrigas later. ‘Does that mean anything to you? We’ve heard mention of him several times. Once in that mad botanist’s lab, once during the exorcism. Albert mentioned a pact with a powerful being from outside the universe. Could it be him?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Carrofax. ‘But he could well be from the ectoplasmic dimensions, or an even higher sphere. As you know, I cannot return while I serve you, but I have been to the borders. The Thresholders know nothing about him.’

  ‘Could he be as dangerous as Albert said?’

  ‘It depends. A non-mechanical can only manifest here by becoming “flesh” – by taking the burden of mortality – or by coming here as a relatively harmless spectre, as I have done. Unless …’

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘Unless someone invites him into the material world. But none of your people would be foolish enough to do that. Surely. In any event, one thing we’ve been able to establish for certain is that he wants your green girl dead. And you, for some reason. Perhaps because of your dimension-hopping abilities.’

  ‘So you admit now that I can travel between dimensions?’

  ‘It seems so. Although I would point out that you seem to have had help from unlikely quarters.’

  ‘So you apologise for mocking me earlier?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. But all this makes it even more vital to keep an eye on that green girl and get her home as soon as we can.’

  Lenore was sitting alone at the edge of camp, a beacon in the twilight. She had wandered out there after the exorcism. She had a lot to think about now, it seemed.

  *

  Day became night, though of course it was hard to tell.

  The men came back from the skeleton yard dragging a giant rocket and beaming. ‘When you hear our plan,’ Fabrigas said to Miss Fritzacopple, ‘you will be sceptical. But please hear us out.’

  The plan was as simple as it was mad. They had searched the skeleton yard from end to end but hadn’t found a single working ship. None of them, not even Fabrigas, had the engineering skills to fabricate a ship from parts. It had looked hopeless, until they found a military hospital ship with an old-fashioned escape rocket.

  ‘They outmoded these long ago,’ said Fabrigas. ‘They’re just too dangerous. They were designed to go flying way out into space, away from the ship, and danger, but mechanical problems often caused them to go off when they weren’t needed, or worse, when someone was cleaning them. Or when the captain was giving a royal tour. Also, they have no steering, meaning that whatever direction it was pointing, that’s where it went. Even if that way was blocked by a spaceship, planet or space-cow.’

  ‘I do not like where this story is pointed,’ said Miss Fritzacopple.

  ‘Now keep an open mind,’ said Fabrigas. ‘It is true that we are currently trapped in a haunted beast. But we can escape. What we’re going to do is aim this rocket towards that blowhole up there.’ He gestured vaguely towards the silver circle in the sky. ‘The Ubuntu have assured us that if we can get through, there’ll be friendly people with working spaceships.’

  ‘So this is another one of your explosive exits?’ said Lambestyo.

  ‘It’s perfectly safe. We should be fine.’

  ‘Should?’

  ‘I will calibrate the rocket precisely. It will be a controlled blast.’

  Miss Fritzacopple walked away, leaving the old man to stand beaming beside his rocket.

  *

  Fabrigas and the captain were working through the night on the rocket, which had been dragged to a nearby clearing, stood upright and leaned towards the blowhole.

  ‘We need much longer to prepare,’ said Lambestyo.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Fabrigas. ‘We don’t have longer. The Ubuntu say that the blowhole will be visible for one more day. Besides, we can’t risk those marshy types reorganising and coming to attack us.’

  ‘Do you think it will work?’

  ‘I have calculated our trajectory as best I can from the information I have, which isn’t much. But I am very confident of my mathematics. Fairly very confident.’

  ‘I see. So we might not hit the hole.’

  ‘The fuel is old. It might just explode on the ground. But it will be fun trying!’

  ‘Well, I can’t wait to leave this place, even if it is in a ball of fire.’

  EJECT US

  The day of the launch. Can you feel the excitement? The crew stood nervously around the scarred metal tube. The Ubuntu stood a long way away, looking nervous. They had packed their new friends a picnic of mushrooms, moss and honey grubs. The goodbyes had been tearful. Kimmy had found her friend and pressed her little torch into his giant hands. ‘For you,’ she said.

  ‘On-off,’ he replied sadly. Then he’d swept her effortlessly onto his shoulder with one arm and carried her out to the rocket. Now he was far, far away, with the rest of them.

  The Ubuntu were lit from behind in fern light. Small children sat on shoulders for a better view. Carrofax said, ‘I’ll see you on the other side, wherever that is,’ and the captain sealed the door and strapped himself in.

  ‘Are we ready?’ he said. No one replied. ‘Very well,’ he said, and he hit the big red button marked ‘Ejectus’.

  *

  I’m not sure if any of you have been in a rocket. And if you
haven’t I’m not sure you can imagine what it’s like to take off in one. It’s like having your stomach smeared across your brain while your brain is swung around in a sock. The explosion from the rocket knocked the Ubuntu off their feet and turned the eternal night into furious 368 daylight. Suddenly, every dark corner of the interior was illuminated. In the dome, the Marshians ran from their huts. There was light, even in the deepest depths where the beast called the Makatax had dragged the limp corpses of the bosun and Prince Albert deep into his cave, and tossed them on a pile of bones and rags, ready for the feast. Even beyond his lair, in the deep corridors of vines and thorns where light had never penetrated, and where the most terrifying creatures you can imagine live, it was suddenly twilight. As the rocket traced an arc towards its target it illuminated everything, even the small camp by the old tree, where the saucer craft stood, and where everything was still.

  BOOK THREE

  I am Calligulus!

  Creator of empires,

  Master of puppets,

  Controller of the mortal worlds.

  The dead and forsaken call my name.

  The lost and broken cry out for my mercy.

  The empty and forgotten dance before my idols,

  Dance, dance, dance!

  See this Empire I have built.

  Is it not pretty?

  I am Calligulus!

  Son of Zep,

  Son of Mat,

  Child of the darkness of the bottomless abyss,

  And the fires of the infinite sun.

  Zep rules!

  UP

  In space there’s no such place as ‘up’. No up, no down, no sideways, no forwards, no backwards. When a rocket takes off, a rocket such as the one our friends are in, it’s convenient to say that the rocket is travelling up, when really it isn’t. The best we can say is that the rocket is travelling ‘away’. Away from ground, away from friends, and into the unknown at a frightening speed. In another sense it can also be said to be travelling ‘up’ and ‘away’ from all other possible events. But this is a complex subject.

  It has been weeks since I last sat down to write because I have been away getting the old man’s mail. I went because I wanted to see if anyone else was trying to reach him in his mansion on this deserted moon beside the sea guarded by fearsome serpents. Sending mail here is no simple matter. We are countless billions of light-years from anywhere populated, and we have no electricity, so sending electronic messages is out of the question. The only thing that really works is telepathic monkeys. Ours is Fergus, a fine monkey who lives in a small hut on the far side of the moon, the side which gets the best signals from the outer worlds. You’d like him, you really would. How the system works is this: the individual who wants to send a letter dictates it to a mind monkey on their world. Then the mind monkey sends it telepathically to Fergus who writes it down. It isn’t a perfect system. For a start, for it to work all the monkeys must have met. This is called ‘entanglement’, and it is vital to any psychic-monkey mail service. Also, the messages are never written down exactly as the sender intended. But no matter, it’s a lot better than trans-dimensional homing squirrels. That system was very messy, and sometimes deadly, though always adorable.

  The main problem with this system is that every time I want to get the mail I have to make a journey of several weeks following a narrow trail through a stony wilderness, along narrow ledges, skirting chasms of despair. At one point I have to sneak past a mud-dragon who has been sleeping for 700,000 years. In all that time he hasn’t even twitched, they say, but there’s a first time for all things.

  When I finally reach Fergus’s hut he’ll come out and hand me whatever has been sent, and a tin of hot soup, for which I am very grateful. This time, all that was waiting for me was a note from a communications company saying, ‘Are you currently happy with your mind-monkey coverage?’ And underneath, Fergus had scrawled, ‘Yes!!?? x.x.’ He eyed me carefully as I read it. I guess I should have known that there wouldn’t be any real mail. No one, after all, even knows the old man is alive. But I do like to get out once in a while.

  EXIT WOUNDS

  They seemed to travel ‘up’ for ‘hours’.

  Then there was a heavy sound, a cross between a thud and splat. It was a thplat, definitely, and it seemed to sound their end. Then the engine cut out and there was silence. Everyone opened their eyes and saw that their craft was falling over a bright terrain of crumbling mountains. The chute had opened. That was good. Below they saw an amazing sight: it was a creature, serpentine, fat and burning emerald green in the sunshine. The creature was so vast it defied belief, and so ugly it defied it a second time: it had folds of skin, red, orange, yellow, green, and great scarlet pustules all along its flanks, each as large as a volcano, each erupting with yellowy pus. Its eyes were black and cloudy; it had a row of spiny fins along its back. It had one back leg upon the side of a volcano, and one of its forelegs planted square in the middle of the remains of a mid-sized village. A deep canyon in the jungled earth showed where the dragon had made its slow, merciless progress, while ahead of it – just a few hundred miles on – was a madly gleaming city built around a set of mountain peaks. Just behind the creature’s eyes was a blowhole – probably for breathing or expelling gases – and just behind the blowhole was another hole, red and frayed at the edges, a hole made by the rocket which had just punched through its tiny brain like a high-powered bullet.

  ‘I knew it!’ shouted Fabrigas. ‘We were inside a beast the whole time!’

  Below, the beast was writhing in its end. This brand-new hole would be terminal. It reached up into the sky and snapped at the empty air with its long, terrible teeth, before falling back and coming to rest with its head upon an active volcano; the plume of burning gas and rock began to scour the flesh away from its skull.

  ‘It must have grabbed us in its jaws as we flew towards the planet from the moon. This would explain why there were so many crashed ships in there. At last, a solid reality to put our feet upon!’ And then, as if to mock the man of reason, the whole scene below them vanished like a dream – the serpent, the city – and they found themselves drifting down towards a silvery forest.

  ‘What madness is this?’ said Fabrigas.

  FORBIDDEN, FORGOTTEN

  They landed with a soft bump because the land was covered in a layer of crimson moss. The trees were short conifers whose needles were silver, smooth and shiny as wire. The glade they landed in became a valley which channelled the moss down in a red river to a broad, scarlet plain under a sky as rough and grey as soldiers’ coats, singed bright orange at the horizon. There was no animal life, it seemed; no birds or insects called to them. There was only the calm, eerie ring of a billion needles rubbing together. It was so strange and beautiful that they sat there for a full minute before the captain said, ‘So. We missed the hole?’

  He left the capsule cautiously, his heavy boots sank deep into the plush, red carpet. ‘This bothers me,’ he said to no one. He wandered to the edge of the clearing, put his hands on his hips, and peered down the long valley. The others waited with steepled fingers. He wandered out of sight and was gone for a full five minutes before he ambled back, paused, strolled to the hatch, frowned and said, ‘We make camp.’

  *

  There was no food to gather, no critters, no mushrooms, no toadstools. There was nothing to make shelter with, and no need anyway, since the evening – if it was an evening – was warm and pleasant.

  Fabrigas made coffee on his small stove. Miss Fritzacopple made soup with mushrooms the Ubuntu had given them and some herbs she had kept. Kimmy watched her stir the pot.

  ‘This place is disturbingly uniform,’ said Fabrigas. ‘These needles are all exactly the same length. It’s as if they’ve been made by machine. They remind me of the Festivus trees we had when I was a boy. We used to hang decorations on them, and on Festivus Eve Brother Love would come and leave presents for us.’

  But no one had the energy to think about wha
t Festivus was, or where they were, or what it meant. All they could do was let their tired bones sink into the soft earth and sigh.

  *

  Lenore woke to feel someone gently tickling her face, and she opened her nose to discover … What is that? … Butterflies!

  A swarm of white butterflies had flown into the clearing; not just hundreds, or thousands, but millions of butterflies were floating up the valley in a shivery cloud. What a sight. Everyone ran around the glade, throwing up their arms and giggling. Except the captain. Soon they were lost in the cloud, not even knowing which way was which. They enjoyed themselves for almost an hour. Thousands of butterflies were soon spiked upon the ends of the conifer needles, so that in a few minutes the bare trees seemed to have sprouted exquisite foliage. Then, another sign of animal life: from nowhere, bright orange spiders ran down the needles and began to feast on the tender creatures. It was quite a slaughter.

  The butterfly extravaganza continued for hours. The sun refused to set, the light remained soft and steady, the spiders grew fat. Everybody sat in silence and watched the never-ending drifts of snowy Lepidoptera. After a few hours the captain said, ‘I hate these damned butterflies,’ and no one bothered to disagree.

  *

  Then they were gone, as quickly as they’d arrived, and the clearing was once more deathly still and quiet.

  ‘I feel like I could just lie here for ever,’ said Kimmy. ‘The ground is so soft, I feel like I could go on listening to the music of the trees for days. It’s so beautiful.’

  Fabrigas heard her and knew at once that she was right and that they should move on very quickly, without delay, right this second, let’s go. But then somehow seconds later he was thinking of something else. He was staring up at the trees and marvelling at the way the geometry of the needle-straight spines caused circles to pulse through his eyes.