The Smell of Telescopes

by Hughes, Rhys

  It was high summer in the modern age and she had finally completed her book. She slammed it and stretched. Then excited cries from outside prompted her to investigate. The streets of Smarje were thronged with a mob of children and adults even younger. A travelling fair was in town, bright wagons and stalls gathered in a circle in the square. Fat men in gaudy costumes were selling balloons, offering prizes for games, frying pancakes in honey. She strolled the tents. On the edge of the carnival, where the crowd was thinnest, she encountered a carriage with a strange creature yoked to the axle. A sign announced: Billy Barnett’s Circus Of Cruelty! And she gasped, for the horns of the beast swivelled and a low moan issued from a metal throat, summoning a man from behind a flap who dryly listened to her exclamation.

  “Rutilicus Azelfafage! A load of bull.”

  “It is a machine, my good fellow, which rose out of the sea on the coast of Maryland. I was strolling on the shore when it came out, rusty and damaged, as if it had walked the bed of the Atlantic from Europe to America! The skeleton of a dwarf was transfixed on the horns. I cleaned it up and employed it for a mule.”

  “And you, I assume, are Billy Barnett?”

  “None other. Come inside and view the show. I have hired thespians to adopt the roles of famous rascals from the past. Yes, walk this way! The light is dim, but your eyes will quickly adjust. Mind the step! The man who stands before you is Caligula, drunk on gore. And this is Nero, fiddling with himself while rum burns; in tune, ham! Shrink from Attila the Hun, stifled in ambition and fur, both diseased! This recess houses corrupt officials and sadistic slavers. Behold Señor Alonzo and Captain Guzmán! And here is Oswald, the winking troubadour, a vampire who sucks notes not necks. Who else? Ah yes, the Wilson Twins, from a Hyperborean glacier: Snoo, Brian and William.”

  “Twins? But there are three of them!”

  Billy shuddered. “That is precisely what makes them so wicked. Let us hurry past to another display.”

  “The smell of gunpowder and ship is extreme.”

  “You are now in the section which contains the buccaneers. Look at Black Grippo and Roche Braziliano arguing over dice! Here are Alex- ander Exquemelin, François l’Olonnais and Bartolomeo Portugues. What is Coeur de Gris saying to Edward Mansveldt? Stylish limes and hats! Gape at the beauty of Charlotte Gallon, more lethal than a cutlass! These are cheap actors, unable to match the archetypes. Here is an adept: Henry Morgan, his high boots stained with grog.”

  She stood before the figure, who winked.

  Laughter convulsed her. “Ah, such a perfect place to hide! To play oneself! Nobody may suspect that.”

  He bowed, while Billy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. It was her old master for sure, looking even more romantic than under Panama suns, but with a tinge of gloom in his dashing, eyes lowered, pocket bulging with air, not gold. So she spoke first.

  “You should call me ’Phagia Ankles now.”

  “So I will. Do you know what it is to fall on poor times, my loyal navigator? I buried my treasure in a Welsh village, under a black stone bridge, planning to dig it up for my retirement. But I forgot the exact location of the cursed place! Penniless I wandered, until I met my fine accomplice, Mister Barnett, whose business was in shreds. There were no more hides to trade; squonks had become extinct. Together we invented a new profession, touring the world as a circus. The authorities searched for me everywhere but here, for my disguise was too natural to fail. As myself I am secure and do not have to pay for my crimes. We make enough money to survive, but it is hard.”

  Juanita grimaced. “You have forgotten things? Then both our brains are full and we will turn mortal.”

  “I do not comprehend you. Provided we repeat the mantra once a day there is nothing to fear. I have passed the gift to others since I last saw you. I kissed Billy here, for I was lonely. You may do the same now your monkeybreath has cleared up.”

  “A chapter in a grimoire provided the cure. Knickers stitched from banana skins killed the bacteria.”

  “Knickers? We were at sea too long, ’Phagia! What is this book you mention? Do you believe in magic?”

  She took his hand. “I must show you.”

  As they walked back along the corridor to the outside, a figure in rags jumped up at them from a trapdoor and mumbled a cascade of flowery curses. Billy snatched its rotting collar in one giant hand, dealt it a tremendous blow on the chin with the other and bundled it down into the darkness from whence it came, sliding the bolt on the trap and scowling at the absurdity of the situation.

  “A few of these thespians are regular brats. I purchased them at a discount from the Theatre de l’Orotund. There is too little room to use all of them at once, so I keep the most unconvincing ones in storage in the basement, just in case something happens to the proper exhibits. He was Humberto von Gibbon, a man who committed crimes against literature. He tried to grope my pistol once.”

  “I knew the real fool. The likeness is superb.”

  They walked on and emerged from the wagon, squinting in the Smarje noon. Billy sat on the steps and yawned as Morgan and Juanita sauntered back to her abode. He would wait here to greet more customers. His bull copied his yawn, and before she was out of earshot, he called: “You had a name for my beast. What was it?”

  She clutched her head. “I do not remember!”

  Morgan followed her into her house and sat at the wide table while she stood at his shoulder and opened the grimoire before him. He pouted at the peculiar words and symbols.

  “This is quite meaningless to me, ’Phagia!”

  “Let me share my ideas with you. Numerous factors have been fusing in my mind these past three hundred years. Do you know a bald ghoul who is called Xelucha Dowson Laocoön?”

  “Not unless I toasted him anonymously.”

  “That is unlikely. He is a sort of archfiend who roams space, time and fiction looking for recruits to his criminal society. It was almost certain he would eventually try to enlist a handful of buccaneers. That is what he did in Panama. We did not spy him because we were completely drunk on sherry after months of enforced sobriety. But the story begins elsewhere, in Asturias, when the chief of the Cadiz clan played a trick on a poet, drifting him out to sea on a floating island, prevented from rescue by ancient flying lizards.”

  “I shall listen better without my hat.”

  “This book is the most powerful grimoire of Ugolino Cadiz. And the middle chapter concerns the secret of immortality, the words which must be chanted daily to preserve the flesh from decay. The poet was trapped in a castle which contained a machine that spoke the mantra for him, so eternal life was part of his punishment. It was somehow passed from him to La Santa Roja in Pennsylvania, probably by an agency which wept, for it was moist with tears, not spit, when she offered it to you. Then you presented it to us. Immortals feel uncomfortable in close proximity, so when you stood in the middle of the crowd and dispensed drink, the five crewmen kissed by you moved to the edges of the gathering, as far apart from each other as they might be.”

  “Yes, I wondered why you all fell out.”

  “Five equally spaced nodes on the circumference of a circle, which is what we were at that moment, form the points of a pentagon. When the sherry lulled us to sleep, Laocoön arrived on the scene, scouting for a brace of buccaneers. He did not care to blunder into the mass of dozing men, in case he woke us, so he skirted the rim, choosing the five outer villains. The way he works is by using a symbolic stick and carrot. The stick always comes first. He slipped a coconut under the skull of ’Ceti Whiskers, so that the barber confused the nut with comfort. He pushed a puppet of himself in the leg of ’Tology Spleen, to lead the sailmaker’s knee astray. He hired a group of Indians to butcher vegetables in front of ’Vado Lashes, the squeamish cook. Then he carved his triple initials on the teak helmet of ’Lin Brows.”

  “These sticks are rather obscure, lad.”

  “The intention is to niggle and itch, rather than to menace. Later in our lifetimes he planned
to return with the carrot, which might be a cancellation of the stick. But our spans are no longer normal, and this has thrown his plans into chaos. Doubtless he is ranging the centuries, astounded at our persistence. But I believe we have finally reached the rear of our immortality and that he will soon appear. I have a personal reason for hoping to foil him, and if you will help me, I shall aid you in turn to recover your treasure.”

  Morgan chuckled. “How can immortality have an end? You squander my time with logical contradictions.”

  “Three centuries of experience is the limit of a human brain. Full to the brim of our heads, we must now leak memories. One of those leaks will eventually be the mantra which keeps us alive. We shall forget it, allowing death to claim its debt.”

  “I see what you mean. This is ironic.”

  “Laocoön knows we are almost at that stage. He has wandered to the future to witness our demise and now has come back a little to persuade us into his cabal. He will certainly offer us salvation, the removal of a batch of unwanted memories to increase space for the mantra. He might use surgery to cut out part of the brain which holds trivial nostalgia. That is probably what I would do.”

  “A carrot indeed! But what was your stick?”

  “That is where he made his biggest error. The first time he met me was not in Panama. When I was a child I applied to join his society and he struck me by turning me down. Thus in Panama, when he thought he was giving me a stick, by sabotaging my octant, he was really finishing the process and letting me bite the carrot. Does this make sense? The order of his tactics was reversed and drove me against his plans, not up with them. So I am immune to his intrigues. And when he comes soon to dangle another carrot, I shall refuse it because I have already eaten one. How this will ruin his subtle design!”

  “But we are safe from forgetting that mantra, for it is written in your volume. It may be relearned.”

  “True, but one day we shall also forget how to read. However, this is not important. I suspect Laocoön’s visit to the five eternal crewmen will be the unusual event that pushes out their memories of the mantra. A bald ghoul with three capes is a new experience which takes up a vast amount of room in the brain. He will materialise and they will lose the secret. Then they will be aware that this act of forgetting reduces all their lifespans to one day, for the chant must be uttered each morning. At this point, Laocoön will announce his offer of surgery, or something similar, and we will accept through fear of death. The old rovers, your men, will be lost to themselves, hollow puppets of a noxious sage. I do not wish to let this happen, sir.”

  “I agree, ’Phagia. But what will you try?”

  “By preceding Laocoön, I can kill the men before he has the chance to save them. None of us have met since 1671. My arrival will be almost as startling as the ghoul’s. They will forget the chant, but there will be no offer of a reprieve. The following day, death will come for them, in the most convenient form. The hungry barber will starve, the needled sailmaker will be impaled, the cook will boil, the carpenter suffocate. And I too will succumb, but I do not know how. You will survive because you are a Welshman and too slow to learn new ideas. You will forget how to forget and thus exist forever!”

  “I have hung many of my followers at sea, but this smells rank. To betray the vanquishers of Panama!”

  “No, to redeem them. Alive in Laocoön’s clutches, they would be as placid as zombies. Dead, as ghosts, we can still use them. A fresh crew for one last adventure! A band of phantoms sailing to Wales to look for your lost gold. Our best exploit!”

  “This touches my heart, ’Phagia, but ghosts are notoriously fickle entities, like wisps of heated rum. How shall we organise them, control them? Such a party may fade away.”

  “Look at this chapter in the grimoire. It shows how to raise souls to obey your bidding. A particular symbol needs to be created, a shape. But it already exists. In Panama, the five immortals formed a pentagon. Something in the symmetry of that design has remained with us. Consider the towns we have chosen for our retirements. Here is a list I drew up. When these figures are applied to an atlas, they create a huge pentagon which stretches over many states.”

  “That is geometry, my boy, not magic.”

  “Each town is exactly 111 miles from the next one on the chart, at an angle of 72°. But consider the inner lines between the nodes. We have the emotional links critical to perform the spell in question. The five eternal crewmen kept in touch only with two others. Drawing these links and erasing the pentagon leaves us with a pentangle, a star of will and force, a symbol to raise spirits.”

  Morgan nodded and regarded her charts.

  He fanned himself with his hat. “I have underrated you, ’Phagia. I thought you were merely a genius, but this is far beyond cleverness. So I salute the length of your nose.”

  “Take this book and travel to the centre of the pentangle. It is a point in the wild Kärnten mountains of Austria. The precise location is 46°53N 13°50E. Stand there and intone the spell. Then the five phantoms will rush from the five corners to meet you, arriving at the same time. We shall be all yours to command.”

  “Very good. Will I require anything else?”

  “Human sacrifice. The more potent the individual, the better. That shall be left to your discretion.”

  “A ship! We need a ship to rove to Wales.”

  “The crew have already provided one. The finest vessel a buccaneer could want. ’Ceti’s bones will be for the flag, and ’Tology’s coffin as a sail, and ’Vado’s pot for a hull, and ’Lin’s armour for a figurehead, and also my octant as the rudder.”

  “You said your octant was sabotaged!”

  “The main gamble we must take. Mayhap it will steer us not to your trove but elsewhere. A risk, sir!”

  “Before we set sail, I wish to treat you all to a meal. As ghosts, your tastes will be insubstantial and cheap. There is a restaurant down in Sardinia, owned by a man called Giovanni and his cat. It caters just for pirates and serves a tasty spaghetti and goblin dish. The walls are coloured with turmeric and tears.”

  “I accept. But now I must be on my way to visit the crewmen. It is fortunate that I have an excuse to do so, for it would be impolite just to turn up unannounced. The surprise factor will still be large enough. ’Ceti wrote to ’Vado asking for a coconut. ’Tology wrote to ’Lin asking for a mirror. So ’Lin will visit ’Ceti and encounter ’Vado, passing the mirror to him. I must visit ’Vado and pick it up, and then transport it to ’Tology, the only two I desire to see. Both ’Ceti and ’Lin will have left their images in the mirror, for it is a camera, not a glass, and I can surprise those as effectively as the flesh men. They will die and I shall return here to do likewise.”

  “Give me the book and let me be off.”

  Morgan escorted her out of the house and back to the carnival. The wagon of Billy Barnett was surrounded by people stretching and sighing, but these were not customers. The actors were having a break for lunch. The novelty of the spectacle, with murderers and despots and pogromists standing in little groups chewing sandwiches or smoking cigarettes, was such that it spilled out a dozen older memories. She clutched the elbow of her master and licked her lips.

  “I cannot recall the mantra!”

  Morgan opened the grimoire and showed her the words. She relearned them and gasped with relief. They pushed through the mob, brushing past a motley gathering of minor scoundrels. Then she noted a figure sitting in the dust, picking at the dirty hems of his capes. Billy was berating him for poor acting, for an inadequate leer. She stepped near and began to grind her teeth. They gazed up.

  “Xelucha Dowson Laocoön! The noxious sage!”

  Billy groaned. “That is who he is supposed to be! But he is rather more balderdash than bald, and fool instead of ghoul. Look at the twist of his jaw. Hardly an evil smirk!”

  She studied the thespian. For a brief moment his eyes sparked with fear and he raised his hand to wipe a drop of sweat from his cheek. She noticed the t
humb, the faded scar.

  With a shriek, she threw herself on him, pinning him to the ground and shouting to Morgan for assistance. He knelt by her side and rotated the man over and over, so that he became wrapped up tight in his capes, like the congealed filling of an antique pancake. Billy frowned, amazed at this development, wondering aloud whether even a bad actor should be punished quite so sternly as this.

  “No, he is real! He truly is Laocoön!”

  The ghoul thrashed and cursed, exhausting himself in his sartorial restraints. Finally he gave up and answered: “Yes, I am he. What better disguise to adopt than as myself?”

  “Not you as well!” Morgan was disgruntled.

  “Naturally, for I am at least as crafty as you. I hastened to this point in time to discover how you planned to hinder me, and then I went back to preempt your scheme. In the Theatre de l’Orotund, I found a man who was a criminal against drama, and I persuaded him to join my cabal. He is my first and only recruit. I dressed him up as me and sent him to visit the immortal crewmen on the flying machine. So he has a headstart on you and will meet them first. They will become my zombies before you are able to raise them as ghosts!”

  Morgan cried: “You will never be able to catch him, ’Phagia! Nor I attain the Kärnten peaks so fast.”

  “A shame. He would make a good sacrifice.”

  The ghoul blinked at her. “But there is no point in conducting the ceremony now. Your men will not die and their souls will be trapped for me in reduced minds. Eternal, dull rogues! Marionettes who may dance to my will. I must steal your glory.”

  A smooth voice announced: “I am able to overtake the other Laocoön and visit the crewmen before him!”