by Hughes, Rhys
I selected a telescope almost as long as my arquebus and climbed the spiral stairs of the oldest tower, reaching a narrow fissure at the very top, a gap in the crumbling stone walls through which I had often squeezed as a boy, delighting to run over the slippery tiles. It was no longer an easy matter to pass between the edges of jagged granite and I was lacerated and bruised by the time I emerged in the cool night on the other side. So too was I less sure of foot than in the years of my childhood and I picked my way with unmanly caution to my former vantage point at the very edge of the roof. Far below and all around lay a darkness that was more purple than black, the wild forests of the Gargano, dense and peaceful.
As I lifted the telescope to my right eye a moment of vertigo threatened to topple me but I breathed deeply and widened my stance. The stars glimmered faintly on the leaves of the tallest trees but no other traces of illumination could be discerned. I scanned slowly, lingering for many minutes whenever I reached a point where I believed a neighbouring castle stood. My task was disturbed by an ominous sound from behind. Gently I tucked the telescope into my belt, unslung the arquebus from my shoulder and lit the fuse. Then I turned to confront whatever was stalking me. There was nothing there, but the threatening growl was repeated.
Frowning, I stepped over the roof, my finger on the trigger, my eyes straining to catch sight of the hostile presence. Suddenly the surface under my feet gave way and I fell into the vast space of the immense hall at the centre of the castle. As I plunged through dusty air I realised I was the victim of a simple irony: the noise I had interpreted as a growl was no more than the slow breaking of rotten beams under my weight. The black floor of the hall seemed absurdly far away. Obeying my instincts but devoid of rational hope, I braced myself for an impact that came sooner than expected and did not destroy me.
I lay sprawled on a soft surface at an elevation half that of the roof. What had happened? Then I remembered the gigantic orrery. By an amazing stroke of luck I had landed on one of the model worlds. A single static moon overhead informed me that I was on the miniature planet Earth. I laughed in relief as I sat up, smelling the tropical forest that had broken my fall, cool sap staining my clothes, tiny branches pricking my legs, but my joy was premature. As I tried to stand, I lost my balance again and the finger that was still on the trigger of the arquebus discharged the weapon in a random but extremely unfortunate direction.
In the flash that preceded the roar and belch of smoke I beheld the skeleton of a donkey far beyond the rim of the world. The bullet smashed the gleaming skull, rebounded and struck the key that wound the orrery. Somewhere a spring began uncoiling, a spring tightened over a period of many years, and I was abruptly in motion. The walls of the hall became a blur, the other planets turned in their own courses and the sun at the centre of the machine burst into flame. Light and heat washed over me. The shifting angles of the solar system, its natural laws, became the transformational geometry of my sickness and suffering.
After many hours of groaning and retching I acclimatised to the dread velocity of my new home and it now appeared the castle was awhirl and not I. Like some colossus from fable I lurched to the horizon, my feet straining to free themselves from the sticky surface, pausing after only ten laborious paces for a rest. I made camp and pondered how to escape my predicament. Even were it possible, leaping into space would be suicide, for my own momentum would dash me against a wall of the great chamber, turning me into a sunburst of gore on the naked stones. It might be better simply to wait for the spring to wind down and the device to stop.
Such a wait, however, might outlast my lifespan, for the sheer size of the coil indicated that the mechanism had been designed to run unattended for decades. I preferred to search for the axle that connected the planet to the central gears: by inching my way along it towards the sun I would reduce my speed until it became safe to drop onto the floor. In preparation for this venture I dipped my cloak into the ocean, protection against the heat that would increase as I approached the hub of the solar system, and set off to find the point where the axle met the globe. I counted my steps as I walked.
My journey proved to be frustrating. I had landed in the middle of Africa, a continent the size of a large carpet, and now I made my way across the Sinai Peninsula into Asia. I quenched my thirst in the Caspian Sea, climbed the Himalayas for a better view, saw no connecting rod in evidence, continued striding to the edge of Siberia and jumped the Bering Strait into the Americas. Days and nights passed in rapid succession, for the world was turning on its own axis, and the moon sailed across the sky, casting its gibbous shadow on the spinning walls of the hall. It seemed to be a free body in orbit, unconnected to the greater machine.
This could not be, and I raised my telescope and focussed it on the rim of the yellow satellite but no evidence of shaft or wires could I detect. I struggled to recall that time when I first beheld the orrery. Surely I had noticed struts supporting the planets? Perhaps in the gloom of the vast chamber I had merely assumed they were present. I considered alternative methods of keeping spheres suspended in air. Had Sneakios inflated them with phlogiston or a similar gas? But this answer raised another question, namely how free floating objects could interact with the central gears.
There had to be a transmission system of some kind. The phenomenon of magnetism now suggested itself as an explanation and I deemed it probable that the inside of my world was lined with lodestones. Stooping, I began to hack at the ground with the blade of my pocket knife, determined to unearth those objects as proof of my hypothesis, but my efforts at penetrating the crust produced only a spurt of lava that charred the tips of my fingers and persuaded me to retreat into the Atlantic Ocean. Risking damage to my arquebus I swam back to Africa and returned to my camp.
I dried the gunpowder in my flask by pouring it out along the equator. My first circumnavigation of the Earth had given me a good appreciation of the surface area of my prison. The difficulty of walking made small distances seem far. I was hungry and wondered where to find food. Cupping my hands together and plunging them into the sea, then allowing the water to drain through my fingers, I caught infinitesimal fish by the thousands, also squid and whales, and crammed them into my mouth. This meal was uncouth but nourishing and I knew starvation would not be a danger.
In the days, weeks, months that followed I improved my living conditions as best I might, but the psychological burden of my situation remained heavy. I broke off the peaks of mountains for use as stone tools, trawled the oceans with my cloak for food, warmed my hands over active volcanoes on chilly nights. Once I lost my temper with the moon and used it as a target, shattering it into a thousand fragments with my arquebus. The debris tumbled towards the sun in ever decreasing circles and was finally consumed in the heart of that awful furnace. The absence of the moon did nothing to calm the tides of my blood.
My astronomical knowledge served me to a minimal extent. I lay on my back and stared into space. The walls of the universe rotated so rapidly they were perceptible only as a sort of a visual scream, more featureless than a fine mist, and the same held true for the ceiling where it met the walls. The point directly above the sun was the only fixed spot in this bizarre sky. The hole through which I had plunged revolved at a speed proportional to the distance of the Earth from the sun and served me as a marker to count the passing of the artificial years, though this exercise seemed pointless to my demoralised inner self.
I struggled to assume a more optimistic attitude. Surely my family would return one day and halt the machine? I forced myself to calculate the orbital periods of all the planets, using an entire desert as my blackboard and my finger as a stick of chalk, to keep my intellect fresh. My equations were possibly faulty: I foresaw nothing useful coming out of this chore. I lived in a condition of monotonous fear, fishing the oceans for protein, inventing new curses to express my opinion of Sneakios, opening my bowels, dreaming of escape: such became my stagnant routine.
The matter of disposing of my
bodily wastes, though unpleasant a topic, must be dealt with in some detail because it has a significant bearing on my ultimate fate. At first I decided to select a clearly defined area of the globe as my privy. I refused to pollute the sea. A small country in the far west of Europe, a land I believe is called Wales, became my dung heap. A random choice but one that instinctively felt appropriate. However, after many months, the stench became too powerful even in Africa, my base continent, and so I began hurling my dung into space towards the sun and more often than not it was burned up in the flames.
I was a fully grown man, a not inexperienced soldier, and I had long since outgrown the excitement of birthdays, but now they came so thick and fast as my little world rushed around its sun that I ceased to even acknowledge them. However in the evening of one such name day I received an unexpected gift: a moving point of light far beyond the orbit of the most distant planet. The hours passed, the object came closer, resolved itself into the semblance of a comet. I watched as it approached the sun, trailing behind it a tail of silver ribbons, and a reckless idea took full possession of my brain.
It was clear that after this comet swung around the sun and began its return journey into the void, it would approach Earth closely. I made a noose from my belt and waited on the summit of Kilimanjaro, balanced precariously on one leg, to snare it as it grazed the phoney ionosphere. My cast was successful: I held on tightly and allowed the celestial wanderer to drag me off my world. Muscles straining, I climbed the length of the belt, pulled myself onto an orb no wider than a cushion and howled my joy. Astride a comet I was leaving the solar system for a region of the castle where I might dismount without injury.
Or so I imagined. In actuality, hope made me careless and I turned to wave farewell to the receding blue globe. I had already passed Mars and was entering the Asteroid Belt. A sudden blow on the skull dazed me and almost knocked me from my perch. I had collided with that dwarf planet known as Ceres. Only half conscious I struggled to maintain my grip and found it impossible to do more than act as a passive observer as the comet passed through an open door in one of the walls and continued along a dim passage. The clicking of an unseen ratchet slowly roused me to a more sensible condition but I remained dizzy with pain.
The comet trundled down a stairway into the network of cellars that become natural caverns illuminated by phosphorescent slime. It was cold. Far beyond the solar system, space was not as empty as I had imagined: here was a storeroom for comets, hundreds of them, a convocation of frosty bodies, tails hanging limp and bedraggled. The sharp stalagmites on the cavern floor made any abrupt descent a lethal prospect. What could I do? I merely clung on until my comet turned and began its journey back towards the sun, my teeth chattering in the subterranean chill. Here was the frost of the interstellar underground!
My extra weight had altered the comet’s orbital period, reducing it by many years if not centuries, and in my delusion I imagined that the other comets were frowning at us in disapproval, condemning our impetuosity. When we re-entered the hall I was unable to see the planets: they were spinning too rapidly. But as the comet synchronised itself to the movements of the other parts of the orrery it accelerated in a wide sweep and gradually the sticky worlds loomed out of the background blur. Then I wished I was back in the icy cavern because I realised that if I remained on my perch I would be toasted alive. The path of the comet meant that it would skim the sun before swinging around on its next outbound journey.
At this moment the calculations I had worked out in the desert with my finger proved their worth, for I was comfortably familiar with the orbits of all the planets. I knew that the comet would pass above Saturn and that my only chance of survival lay in leaping down onto its rings. I landed on the thickest of these and rolled towards the edge, stopping myself just in time and standing to survey my new environment. Suddenly much lighter, the comet accelerated with an alarming wobble in its motion, emitting a horrible screech, but I was more concerned with the barrenness around me, the featureless loops of polished steel.
With the blade of my dagger I sawed at the rings, cutting them through and prising them apart until they formed a long and extremely narrow walkway jutting in the direction of the sun. Then I waited for the right moment. When it came I ran at full tilt along this ludicrous gangplank and used the very end as a springboard to launch myself high. Jupiter grew large before me. I landed with a terrific jolt on Ganymede, largest of the Jovian moons, thankfully without breaking any bones. Had I fallen onto Jupiter itself I doubt I would ever have escaped its powerful adhesion, but the stickiness of Ganymede was relatively weak.
My dagger was blunted but it served well enough to dig a deep hole in the surface of the satellite. No lava spurted to burn away my ambitions: this world was geologically dead. I inserted my arquebus into the hole until only the tip of the barrel showed above the surface. Then I poured all my remaining gunpowder into it, waited again for the right moment and showered sparks into the barrel. The detonation was more deafening than a stereotypical thunderclap. Ganymede was blasted off its orbit and into the Asteroid Belt, knocking those foolish lumps aside like cosmic skittles, and sailing casually past blushing Mars.
The arquebus was wrecked but such was the price I was willing to pay for survival. The callow satellite, an awkward nomad, came close to the Earth and I made my final leap. Any thoughts I had that Ganymede might find a new orbit here and replace the old broken moon were frustrated, for it continued to drift towards the sun and was ultimately incinerated, a fate identical to that of the unsteady comet and many of the scattered asteroids. I had managed to cause a great deal of damage in the solar system, no mean feat for an ordinary mortal. It is true that humans are the most destructive species!
I noticed a change in the sun after this incident, an increasing brightness and agitation of its flames, but soon I was confronted with more immediate distractions. One morning I was assailed by a curious buzzing sound. A peculiar vehicle no larger than a table hovered over my head. It descended a few paces distant and a hatch opened to permit the emergence of two diminutive figures, both completely hairless and no less mechanical than their craft. I frowned at their grey skins and slanting black eyes. Visitors from an extraterrestrial civilisation? I opened my arms in a gesture of peace but one of the figures raised a small weapon.
A wooden bolt of lightning, painted bright yellow, shot out on a spring and jabbed my chest. I bellowed in fury and stalked forward in a vengeful manner. The figures retreated and the vehicle rose back into the sky. I had no arquebus but my blunted dagger would serve as a deadly enough projectile. I threw it with the skill of a conjurer and my aim was true. The alien craft veered sideways and careened into the sun, exciting the flames even more. Thereafter boredom returned to my life. And heat. I sweltered and basted in my own juices and even swimming the night side oceans cooled me insufficiently. The Earth was becoming inhospitable.
“Baron! Can you hear me?”
The voice was not inside my head. I was not yet mad. In as nonchalant a manner as possible I replied, “Yes indeed. What do you want?”
“I am Sneakios, the creator of the machine.”
I peered in all directions but saw no man: he was part of the blur of the revolving walls. I pulled my ears. “Will you join me for supper?”
“By no means. I am standing in a doorway of the hall and dare not approach more closely. The orrery is about to detonate. I am using a special device to communicate with you, an amplifier that modulates sound waves relative to your velocity. Another one of my astounding inventions! All solar systems have finite lifespans and this one is no exception. Your sun will die in an extremely violent fashion.”
“What became of my family, you rascally Bulgar?”
“The religious authorities decided to formally denounce modern astronomy and declared that all adherents of a sun-centred system were potential heretics. The orrery was too bulky to dismantle and its existence here became a fatal liability, so it was prudent for the inh
abitants of this castle to depart. As for myself, the edict almost ruined me: I have returned to my former profession of repairing clocks.”
“Why did you arrange for the machine to explode?”
“That was not my doing. I merely programmed the sun to swell and then collapse into a cool white star, but somehow the central furnace has acquired extra mass, enough to ensure that it will destroy itself in a supernova, a word I recently coined.”
“Bah!” I snorted, but I could not shrug off my guilt. The debris from my plunge through the roof, the shattered moon, the comet, the asteroids, Ganymede, the spacecraft, my dung: all had contributed to changing the destiny of the sun. The fault was entirely mine. As if aware of my thoughts, the sun began to groan.
“Farewell Baron!” called Sneakios. “I wanted to pay my respects to all my wonderful toys. Now I must depart, but if you wish to save yourself you should visit Italy and peer down over Puglia, where you will observe a tiny dot. That dot is your own castle and inside its largest hall is a second orrery, a microscopic version of this one. It controls everything. Squash the castle with your thumb and you will stop time and shut off the sun. I wish you luck!”
Cursing myself for a dullard, I strode to the coast of North Africa, splashed through the Mediterranean Sea, hauled myself up spluttering on Sicily. Why had it not occurred to me to take this course of action before? I hurried onwards, stood high above Puglia and leaned forward to search the landscape. At this point the sun exploded. I felt myself flung high and closed my eyes, certain I would be dashed against the sides of the hall. But the walls no longer existed. I was soaring away from a ruin, over the forest, the sun sinking in a sky that was bounded by no walls. I was outside again, in the real world. I was free!
