by Rhys Hughes
I shrugged. True, I hadn’t yet written anything that had made much of an impression in the wider world. I wasn’t as accomplished a journalist as Jack London or Henry Morton Stanley, but I lived, and still live, in hope. Living in hope is easier than living almost anywhere else. For one thing, it can be taken along with you, like a tent.
A trumpeting sound sundered the jungle silence outside.
Neary was cavorting with new friends!
The flapping of giant ears sent a breeze through the foliage, a breeze that smelled of groundnuts, frogspawn, fermented snake venom, cassava and the fresh ichor of squashed bugs.
‘Elephants,’ I announced unnecessarily.
‘They have accepted him as one of their own,’ Fabalo remarked, half in admiration, half in disapproval. ‘It might end in tears, it might not; do you have an opinion on your friend’s behaviour? It is unorthodox for any man. Even weirder for a locomotive.’
‘I believe he is lonely. Indeed, I suspect that all the Faraway Brothers are lonely. This thesis hasn’t occurred to me before, but it seems obvious now, despite Scipio’s chasing of women, despite Distanto’s self-reliance, despite Neary’s transhumanism … Perhaps they belong together, a happy family once again? Triplets reunited!’
Fabalo expressed scepticism. ‘You’re not a qualified psychologist, are you? Better to avoid the subject of families, in my view. The interactions are too intricate, complex, prone to misinterpretation. I wonder where my lost son can be! Poor Fabalo Junior!’
I shared his pain; not very strongly, I admit, but with all the goodwill I could muster. We sat in quiet contemplation for a further ten minutes and the trumpeting started up again, then died down. I thought I heard Neary shout the word ‘buns!’ in an imploring voice; but it was extremely faint and my imagination wasn’t reliable at that time.
Fabalo gestured at the sky through the open doorway.
I gazed at the tropical stars. They burned with almost no twinkle. And a thin crescent moved amid them like a sickle. ‘A full moon is needed for the transference ritual,’ he explained.
‘Another ten days or so. I’ll be ready,’ I said.
‘What if Jukka Halme gains control of you before then?’ Fabalo was genuinely worried about this prospect.
‘Then you must disable me somehow. Stop me from moving,’ I said in a little voice. ‘Remove my legs …’
He nodded. ‘That is essential for the ritual anyway.’
I didn’t ask him to elaborate on this.
The awkward silence returned.
‘Music,’ he said absently. Then he hummed a melody with his noble lips. I frowned. I had absolutely no inkling that my fate was to be bound up with that tune so fundamentally!
More about that later. After the following digression.
The Promised Digression
Mr Jason Rolfe had indeed crossed the Pacific Ocean all those years ago. I ought to explain what happened when he eventually reached the coast of California. The owner of the gunpowder factory in Chengdu had plenty of cousins living and working in the United States and had already contacted them by telephone to warn them of the jet-assisted cyclist’s arrival, for he required their assistance to facilitate his plan, which involved shepherding Mr Rolfe right across the continent to New York, where another treadmill barge was waiting to convey him over the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. The factory owner wanted Mr Rolfe to circumnavigate the globe and return to China, right into his vengeful arms!
That’s how indolent some villains are. They can’t be bothered to pursue their victims, but arrange for the victims to come to them. However, if too many variables are involved, even the most cunning plan designed by the greatest genius is likely to fail. That’s what happened in this instance. One of the cousins was drunk and didn’t shepherd Mr Rolfe properly; his false signs and roadblocks were positioned badly. That was in Utah. Mr Rolfe took a right turn, instead of a left, and kept going. Before too long he was in Mexico, heading south toward the narrow isthmus that connects North and South America. Over the desert he roared, hurling up clouds of sand, dust and grit and obscuring himself.
Like a thunderbolt hitched to a storm, he dragged these clouds behind him. When the factory owner learned the news, he wailed and jumped up and down in anguish; he had no cousins in Mexico. Thus did Jason Rolfe escape the designs of an evil oriental! But let’s stress this point: most evil oriental characters in most adventure tales are stereotypes, lazy products of torpid and prejudicial imaginations; but this factory owner was actually the direct descendant of aberrant white missionaries who settled in China ages ago. And so if he was a stereotype, it’s a different one from the one you had in mind before reading this sentence. His up and down jumps had so much force that he broke his ankles.
Now back to Mr Rolfe in Mexico …
Alarmed by his sudden appearance, people threw food at him, tortillas shaped like discs that could have sliced off the head of a feebler man; but he caught them and munched. The rains were infrequent, but thirst wasn’t a problem for him; he had removed his helmet and now used it as a vessel to store the precious liquid. Southwards he went, through Guatemala and Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica; and then into Panama and over the canal via a bridge. From there he somehow managed to cross the perilous Darien Gap into Colombia. In that land of melancholy songs, he rumbled through the forest, over mountains speckled with poisonous frogs, across the border into the vastness of Brazil.
Deep in the immense jungle lived a man known as Dom Daniel. Some who knew him called him a charlatan; others, a visionary genius. He was acutely troubled by the impact of mankind’s doings on the environment; it was many decades before such concerns became fashionable. It was Dom Daniel who had commissioned Distanto Faraway, the airship pilot, to take his collections of seeds to Hippolytomia, that anomalous isle with a tropical climate located above the Arctic Circle. It was Dom Daniel who was now engaged with the breeding of plants so tough they would be impervious to the axes and saws of illegal loggers. That was his latest project to protect the forest against human encroachment.
A wealthy man thanks to an inheritance, Dom Daniel had purchased a large tract of the Amazon in a very isolated region. Here, in the solitude and obscurity he desired, he was free to conduct his research without any kind of government or commercial interference. Somewhere between the Juruá and Tapauá Rivers, his plantation thrived. He had raised a mansion in the middle of it; he had abandoned his original house after loggers had cut down all the trees surrounding it. That was far to the east in Tocantins and he regarded his own experiences there as akin to the persecutions of a prophet; one day the last tree in the world would fall. The worry was with him constantly. He alone seemed to care.
In the study of his mansion he experimented with genetic codes. More by chance than design he created some outstanding hybrids with unusual properties. Among the clutter of his possessions, the cabinets of samples, the books and charts, the microscopes, thermometers, clocks, barometers and other scientific devices, he produced a new subspecies of rubber tree that couldn’t be chopped down. An axe or machete would simply bounce off. Even dynamite was ineffective against it. The sap it oozed was much thicker and stronger than the sap of the standard rubber tree. Dom Daniel decided they were worth growing. He filled his plantation with them and waited patiently to observe developments.
The splutter of a distant engine intruded on his peace.
He gritted his teeth. A motorboat?
No, it wasn’t coming up the river; it was in the jungle itself.
It was, of course, Mr Jason Rolfe …
Weaving between the trees at high speed, the intrepid cyclist clenched his handlebars extremely tightly and licked away the perspiration pouring down his face onto his upper lip. He still blamed a particular journalist for his tribulations. ‘Lloyd Griffiths! When I get my hands on you …’ But at that moment in time, it appeared very unlikely he would ever be given the opportunity to wring the neck of yours truly.
Meanwhile, Do
m Daniel was reaching for the blunderbuss hanging by its trigger guard on a hook on his study wall. He intended to repulse with grapeshot this noisy trespasser. When the gun was loaded, he threw open his windows and leaned out, jutting the flared barrel into dense greenery, waiting for the appearance of the invader. Then he had a better idea. With a chuckle, he retracted and emptied the gun.
Why shoot grapeshot when you can fire dynamite sticks instead? After all, the blunderbuss was a large example of the type. Many hissing sticks could fit into the barrel. The explosions wouldn’t damage the rubber trees, but the intruder would be concussed to death.
And that’s what he did, turning the rather old-fashioned weapon into an analogue of a grenade launcher. Jason Rolfe had no inkling of this. All his concentration was utilised in avoiding collisions with trees. Suddenly he entered a region of vegetation even denser than those he had already negotiated. Rubber trees trailing vines, dripping sap everywhere. With an expression of mortification, Mr Rolfe lifted his hands from steering duties and brushed the vines aside. Sap fell onto him. His arms were now at full stretch, clearing a path for himself between the trailing creepers. The sap continued to drip, setting his arms firm.
He discovered that he was unable to move them at all.
More sap fell; he noticed something.
A glint of light on glass. The window of a mansion!
Then he heard a bellowed curse.
A gun erupted; numerous spitting projectiles span toward him. Unable to take any kind of evasive action, he watched helplessly as they tumbled into the automatic feeder of his engine.
‘Dynamite? You’ve refuelled me, you fool!’ he cried.
The sap still fell, thickening …
Thickening, setting, flattening out.
His arms were slowly being turned into wings.
Rubber wings, resilient and reliable.
But not much use in jungles.
Fortunately for him, he broke out of the zone of experimental rubber trees into a narrow clearing. This was the landing strip that Dom Daniel used to fly in supplies when he needed them; for although his ecological consciousness was enormous, he wasn’t entirely against the products of a modern world if they suited his purpose.
An aeroplane stood at the far end of the runway.
Mr Rolfe raced toward it …
He shut his eyes, imagining the collision with such exactitude that he actually felt not only the pain of the inevitable crash but the blissful peace of its aftermath, when death came to soothe everything and make him just as he was before he was born.
But that’s not what happened. His wings worked.
Up into the air he went; his bicycle clutched tightly between his knees, his outstretched arms coated in rubber performing superbly to create lift. I guess his angle of climb was very steep. Otherwise he might have bashed himself on the treetops and become stuck in the canopy permanently, like a frustrated fruit of failed vengeance.
He soared above the jungle. The winds pushed him.
Toward the northeast he flew.
He began laughing with the sheer joy of flight!
Down below, having observed all this through a spyglass, Dom Daniel hurled his blunderbuss on the floor and began jumping up and down on it, just like the factory owner in Chengdu.
Do all foiled schemers do that? I guess they do.
But what do I know about it?
I’m just a journalist, a living skeleton.
Soon to be a zombie midget!
Anyway … Mr Jason Rolfe continued flying. He soared through clouds full of rain and slaked his thirst, but food was more of a problem. He was able to peck at grains of pollen that swirled past his head, but they weren’t very filling. No matter! His velocity was such that he would cross the sea in a matter of days and be above land again; and yet, when he checked his fuel levels, he was dismayed to learn there were enough explosives in his feeder to carry him on his present course entirely across Europe, dumping him at last in the freezing Barents Sea.
‘Many thanks, Lloyd Griffiths!’ he snarled bitterly.
In fact, that wasn’t his destiny …
No sooner did he reach the continent of Europe, passing above a small fishing village called Buarcos, than his pitilessly long journey came to an end. Sand dunes undulated below. There was the crack of a rifle shot. The pulsejet engine was disabled by a lucky bullet. Mr Rolfe went into a dive. He had lost all power; and most of his speed and lift. He doesn’t recall too much of the immediate aftermath. He does remember striking the top of a particularly soft dune and tumbling over and over. Then a woman seated on a unicorn was smiling down at him.
Her long, wavy black hair streamed in the breeze and her eyes glittered in the moonlight. He didn’t miss the fact that she held a gun in one hand, an anachronistic flintlock model. She rescued him, took him back to her camp, tended to his injuries and fed him.
She was Luísa Ferreira, the Bandit Queen; and when he was better, he was invited to join her band of outlaws.
He accepted at once; he’d always wanted to be a rascal.
She asked him one day, ‘What weapon?’
He replied, ‘May I choose any?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, we have a wide selection of carbines, swords, axes, daggers, morningstars and halberds.’
‘Morningstars? What are those?’
‘A kind of mace with a spiked ball on the end. I’m sure you have read about them in historical novels.’
‘Are the spiked balls on the end of a chain that can be swung around? If so, I do know what you mean.’
‘No, that’s a flail. We don’t have those. A morningstar’s spiked head is attached firmly to a rigid handle.’
He sighed. ‘That’s all very well, but my favoured weapon is a lance. I know how to use a lance properly.’
‘Really? What’s the secret, Dom Jason?’
‘To cradle it, that’s what! And to jab like this, one, two! There’s sweet delicacy in the art of lance work.’
‘Very well. I’ll tell my craftsmen to manufacture a lance especially for you. How long would you like it?’
Impulsively, Mr Rolfe cried, ‘The longest ever!’
Luísa nodded. ‘No problem.’
And it wasn’t either.
The Xylophone
The full moon rose over the dense canopy of trees and, even though I fully understood the necessity of the coming ceremony, I listened with an anguished heart to the pounding of the drums.
The ghost of the Finnish mercenary who lived in the fungus spread on my bones was growing stronger, constantly wrestling with my own mind for control of my movements, trying to take over my body. Often I found myself speaking with his grim voice.
For instance, he might force me to talk thus:
‘Did I ever tell you about the time I saw a sea monster near the Åland Islands? It was swimming only a few kilometres offshore. It looked like a small island itself, but I wasn’t deceived. Many predators on this world of ours have learned the arts of camouflage to enable them to sneak unheard and unseen to within striking distance of their victims! So it was with this beast. I licked my lips and selected a saw from a shed of tools. Then into the waves I dived, swimming toward it. Foolish monster! It would never trouble the foam of my country again!’
‘Stop it! Shut up!’ I groaned in my own voice.
But the ghost of Jukka Halme was persistent. ‘I dived beneath it; with my saw I cut a neat circle out of its centre. It screamed and thrashed! But there was nothing it could do, for I had removed its horizontal face from the remainder of its bulk. Onto this face I climbed, while the rest sank to a watery doom. Then I tormented the thing for weeks, sailing it along the coast, slaking my thirst for horror on its helpless but sentient visage. The responses my blade’s teeth were able to elicit from the being! You would scarcely credit such spectra of agony—’
‘You are the true monster, not it,’ I roared.
Neary was standing beside me. He rested his prehensile steel trunk on my shou
lder and said, ‘Come with me, Mr Griffiths. Everything is ready for the ritual. Don’t be frightened …’
He led me considerately toward the clearing.
Fabalo stood there with his sleeves rolled up. Normally he didn’t wear a shirt; so the enormous importance of the occasion wasn’t in doubt. The other citizens of Humanzeeville stood in a wide circle. It was a situation similar to the zombification ceremony that I had already endured, but the atmosphere was even more intense. As if aware of the momentous events about to unfold, even Hywel stirred.
‘Mwwwuagghuagh!’ he groaned
Fabalo regarded me and said:
‘You are in the process of being fully possessed by an evil spirit, Mr Griffiths, and there’s only one way of preventing Jukka Halme taking you over completely. Cleansing fire must consume the bones that form your skeleton. It would kill you forever if we did that, of course; but a method exists for transferring your soul, mind and personality into the midget you keep inside you. Do you agree to it?’
I nodded mutely. My voice was a shrivelled nothing.
‘In that case,’ he continued, ‘as I have secured your consent: let’s get the ritual going! To work, my friends!’
This command was directed at the members of his tribe.
With howls of glee, they rushed at me.
I stepped back, stumbled, fell.
Jukka Halme was roaring in my ears, stamping around in my soul. He finally realised that his supernatural existence was in jeopardy; but there was little he could do to protect himself. The humanzees were strong and determined. They pulled me apart.
‘That’s right!’ cried Fabalo, ‘Dismantle the simpleton!’
‘Neary!’ I screeched. ‘Help me!’
But he refused to answer my plea. ‘Sorry, no. It’s for your own good, Mr Griffiths, truly it is. Be brave.’
‘But it hurts! It bloody does!’
‘I understand. I turned myself into a train, you know; but I didn’t make a fuss. I clenched my jaw and endured.’
Fabalo said, ‘This is the worst part and it’s almost over.’
