by Hughes, Rhys
Mondaugen was also standing on the top row and came over to talk. “To be honest, I’m rather worried, I didn’t plan for these circumstances. My research into bursting balloons led me to the conclusion they only explode when they are inflated by one person, when the breath that fills them is exhaled by a single individual. Not all lungs are equally strong. Some people puff hard, others soft. If a balloon is inflated by mixed breath, all the different pressures inside it from all the different breaths interfere with each other. If jabbed with a pin, that balloon won’t burst. There is only danger when the breath is homogeneous.”
The Captain frowned. “Are you quite sure about that?”
“Many experiments confirm the theory. When I designed my stadium, I judged it safe from cataclysmic rupture by virtue of the fact it had to be inflated by a multitude. I never imagined one person might accomplish the task.”
And he gestured at Lowri’s straining assistants.
The Captain laughed. “There must be a hundred of them at least.”
Mondaugen sniffed sadly. “But they really are all the same person, mirrored again and again, the images given solidity. The barman told me all about it. Those living splinters were made from the previous mayor, a fellow named Weasel. It was Lowri’s revenge when he refused to hand over power. Now he works for her as a slave in all his variations.”
“It can’t have done his health much good.”
Mondaugen agreed and voiced another worry. “I bet they all have rotting gums and horrid breath. That makes the risks even worse. It’s not so bad when sweet breath blends with sour and they cancel each other out. Imagine the foul vapour that will drift over the region if the stadium bursts! It will poison anyone who survives the blast.”
Captain Nothing snorted. “I wonder who the gladiators will be?”
As if in reply to this question the barman climbed up to them accompanied by a dozen other men. There was understanding in their eyes but very little pity. “The arena is almost ready, the games will shortly begin. You’d better get changed into your armour.”
“Us?” cried Mondaugen and the Captain together.
“Of course. You are the newcomers, our guests. The honour of fighting to the death is yours and you don’t have a choice in the matter. If you decline or even delay then Lowri will do something much worse to you. Come with us and don’t forget to smile.”
Appreciating that resistance was pointless, Captain Nothing and the inventor allowed themselves to be led meekly to the centre of the arena. The rows of seats were now almost full of spectators, reluctant but unforgiving. The two victims were divested of their clothing and fitted with sparse armour. The Captain was given a helmet, small shield and bent sword. Suddenly the moon rose over a distant mountain and flooded the scene with waxy light. Now the crowd began cheering and he found himself alone in the central space with Mondaugen, who was dressed differently and carried a net instead of a shield. Was Lowri watching from her house? If he refused to fight would she fill him with arrows? While he was speculating on these enigmas, the inventor lunged at him and struck a glancing blow on his helmet.
“Watch what you’re doing with that fork!” the Captain protested.
Mondaugen leered. “It’s not a fork but a trident, a three pronged spear.”
“It looks just like a giant fork to me.”
Mondaugen came at him again, clearly trying for a swift victory, and the Captain was forced to defend himself. It no longer felt much like a game. The crowd cheered or hissed and Lowri’s attendants, who occupied one side of the stadium by themselves, applauded with their graded hands. The sound resembled boxes of thunder nested inside each other. Something wet splashed the Captain’s arm. Blood? No, it was clear and pure. A drop of rainwater. The scarf on Lowri’s house, visible over the walls of the stadium, stirred in a light breeze. The storm was coming at last! More raindrops rang on his helmet and he heard a concerned muttering behind him. He had retreated before Mondaugen’s onslaught and found himself pressed against the lowest tier of seats, a position from which he was able to discern individual voices.
“The oracle lied. Pitapata is not sleeping after all!”
“Something must have woken him!”
“The stadium will fill with rain and we will all drown!”
The panic spread, people jumping out of their seats and clambering to the top to jump over the side, risking broken legs to escape. The skies opened and the rain fell with a vengeance. Nobody had any more interest in the fight. The weight of so many people on one side of the stadium caused it to sag, so there was less distance to jump. Captain Nothing laid down his sword gently, to avoid puncturing the rubber, removed his helmet and joined the exodus. His plan was to retrieve the sausage from the tavern and employ it as a canoe, a use which even the maker, Dewi Gutstuff, would be proud of. He jumped down, landed outside the graveyard and started running. He glanced back once. As more and more of the spectators jumped down, the weight on the rubber wall decreased. He saw that Mondaugen was one of the last to leave. He was on the very edge when the stadium sprang back to its original shape, catapulting him high into the air. Still clutching his trident he vanished in the direction of Lowri’s house.
Captain Nothing entered the tavern, located his sausage and dragged it out into the rain. He met the barman coming the other way and on impulse stopped him to ask a question. An incredible idea had just entered his head. “Where does Pitapata live?”
“In an obsidian cave beyond the thorns.”
Thanking him and feeling slightly abashed, Captain Nothing shouldered the sausage and hurried back to the stadium. Despite the severity of the downpour, most of the rain would be falling on higher ground, the place where he had got lost earlier. A vast torrent of floodwater was surely on its way right now. The village would be deluged, but the stadium would float. It would drift far away on the torrent long before it filled up with rainwater. He had to get back inside. The stadium would become his new ship! Using the sausage as a pole, he vaulted over the side and landed on one of the rubber seats. He had kept hold of the sausage and now he clutched it like the mast of a schooner. Then the flood arrived. The stadium lurched and rose on an enormous wave, clearing the graveyard easily and accelerating down streets which were already full of water to the rooftops of their buildings.
He heard screams and popping bubbles. He peered over the side. Masonry crumbled into the deeps. Lowri’s attendants had formed a tower from their own bodies, standing on each other’s shoulders in a desperate attempt to cheat the flood, but they had made a fatal error. The smallest was at the base and the largest at the top. The structure was unstable and it sank rapidly into the foam and was gone completely. Now Lladloh was wholly submerged with the exception of the upper floors of Lowri’s house. As the stadium drifted past he saw her in her room again. She had thrown open the window and was rummaging in a big chest full of longbows. She selected a huge golden bow and strung it with one of her plaits. But it wasn’t an arrow she notched to it. No, it was Mondaugen! She whispered in the inventor’s ear and he made his body rigid, the trident held out stiffly in front. Then she drew the bow and shot him out.
He flew in a deadly arc. The Captain knew panic. The prongs would certainly pierce the stadium and the detonation and toxic fumes could not fail to end his life. How might he protect himself from this missile and the wrath of the Peachy Poo? He frowned. As far as he was concerned there was still no difference between a trident and a fork. And what is the best way of sheathing the tines of a fork? Captain Nothing knew the answer. He had seen it in a hundred picnics, a thousand barbecues. With a sausage! There was no other way. A sausage! He rapidly calculated the point of impact and stood there with Dewi’s masterpiece. The trident entered easily and quivered safely with the inventor on the end of it. Curiously Mondaugen was only half his original height and when the Captain took a final look at Lowri’s house he saw all the other Mondaugens clustered at the window, each wearing a single waistcoat.
As for
Lowri, she didn’t reveal anger of disappointment. She simply winked and then was gone. Somehow Captain Nothing knew that her house, alone among the other dwellings, would survive. He tried to rouse Mondaugen and pry him loose from the trident but the fellow was insensible and the sausage was also stuck fast. He left them where they were and took a much needed rest. When he opened his eyes the rain had stopped and the stadium was afloat on an immense lake. Far away he glimpsed dunes and a beach. He would soon be back at sea. As he peered over the side, something bobbed up next to his vessel. A wax skull. It did not scream.
“I’m waterproof and I float,” it said.
“Shall I help you aboard?” offered the Captain.
“Thanks. When you look back on this adventure I think you’ll fall in love with her.”
“Is that a prediction?”
“No, it’s just that everybody does.”
Captain Nothing fished the skull out with Mondaugen’s net. They sat together in the weak sun. “Where shall we sail to now?”
“Let’s go somewhere that skulls are welcome.”
The Captain pondered. “Do you mean Mexico or Haiti or perhaps West Africa?”
“Cornwall will do,” the skull replied.
By the time they reached the sea they were arguing about the safest way to prepare the sausage for dinner. But they were already good friends.
Rediffusion
They came for me just after midnight, those devious inspectors, opening my door with a special key and rushing into my living room before I had a chance to even get out of my chair. I had always imagined I would have plenty of time to hide the television in a cupboard before they entered, but the reality was quite different. I was helpless and they were merciless and they took my machine as evidence.
True, I had ignored no less than three warning letters, but I hadn’t felt guilty in the slightest about not buying a licence. Still don’t, in fact. At no point in my longish life had I ever entertained the notion of obtaining one. The expense was simply absurd. The best part of a full week’s wages just for the minor privilege of viewing one outmoded and rather staid channel among thousands. It didn’t seem right.
I was surprised the inspectors had the power to handcuff me, kick me with fake leather boots and bundle me into the back of a van. Clearly the law had recently been changed in this regard without my knowledge. Was it even a criminal offence to watch television without a licence? The thug sitting in the back of the van assured me it was, then he slapped me in my insolent mouth, breaking a tooth.
The van swayed around bends, accelerated over a bumpy road, slowly climbed a steep hill somewhere. I had the impression we were leaving the city, but when it finally stopped and I was let out, I found myself blinking up at the renowned corporation tower, a building not more than few miles from my house. Later I learned that the driver had taken a lengthy detour so he might claim higher expenses.
I was pushed up the stone steps and through the gaping portal into the impressive lobby, but my guards didn’t let me loiter in this cool spot for more than a few seconds before yanking me down a narrow passage that twisted and coiled like an intestine and ended in a blank wall. A narrow metal ladder speared into the ceiling at this point and I was told to climb it on my own. I did so unsteadily.
A dozen rungs later, I emerged into a wood panelled chamber. A hatch beneath my feet closed silently, cutting off my retreat. I was standing in the dock of an improvised courtroom, facing a judge who was nothing more than a gigantic image on a vast plasma screen. Two smaller screens displayed the prosecution and defence lawyers but the stations were badly tuned and the pictures fragmented.
It seemed I was late for my own trial and that the process was already over, for the judge was midway through his condemnation. “Unspeakably guilty of living as a broadcast parasite,” he intoned, “and therefore wisely sentenced to more years in prison than shall be deemed unseemly.” It was an odd sentence, both verbally and judicially, and I was too bewildered to utter an objection. I merely wept.
I had expected a warning, possibly a fine, certainly not imprisonment, and a wave of revulsion engulfed me. I staggered out of the dock, tried to locate the exit, sought to elude my fate, to flee. Instantly three new guards jumped out from behind furniture to apprehend me. One drew a futuristic gun out of a silver holster. He aimed it at my head, pulled the trigger and a hidden spring released its energy.
From the barrel of the gun emerged a cardboard bolt of lightning that jabbed me in the centre of my forehead then bounced harmlessly off. At the same instant, one of the other guards pushed me to the floor while the third placed his mouth next to my ear and cried, “Bzzzzzt!” I realised this was a typical stratagem of the corporation, a cheap prop rather than a real weapon, a low budget special effect.
“You’ve been stunned by the ray,” said the marksman.
“If you say so,” I replied.
“Don’t move at all, you’re paralysed,” he added.
“For how long?” I asked.
“Until we get you into your cell. Don’t forget. Sensation will return to your hands, then your legs, then your mind. We’ll be watching to make sure you do it in the right order.”
I said nothing, figuring that the paralysis was also supposed to extend to my tongue. They carried my stiff body out of the courtroom and down a wide corridor to a door that opened onto a large courtyard. At the centre of the courtyard stood a brick prison. I was amazed to see such a building hidden within the corporation tower. Tiny barred windows perforated the dizzy heights of irregular turrets.
The perspectives didn’t seem right, but then I recalled how an ordinary television set can manage to fit imposing mountain ranges and undulating deserts into the width of a screen and my surprise decayed as rapidly as a neglected cosine wave or bowl of forgotten cherries. The sentry posted at the prison gate shook his head fiercely, as if he sought to restore reception to a misfiring cathode ray tube.
“An awkward customer, resisted arrest, I see.”
My bearers nodded and lowered me slowly into his extended muscular arms. “He’s rather a crafty one.”
“Soon reduce him in size,” came the reply.
Then he turned and ran into the prison at a speed I deemed absurd and dangerous down a succession of dim curving corridors, narrowly missing other sentries and prisoners, clearly anxious to demonstrate his unnatural strength and stamina. His heavy feet slapped the flagstones like tsunamis of molten basalt. Despite my official paralysis, I made appreciative noises to humour him. I even sniggered.
Skidding to a halt before an open cell, he brusquely cast me inside and slammed the grey door, then raced back the way he had come. I landed on a low bed and my subsequent injuries were minor or imaginary, so I stood and flexed life back into my limbs, obeying the recommended sequence to satisfy any secret cameras that might be observing. Then I realised the key to my door was on the inside.
This oversight seemed too bizarre to be plausible, but I took advantage of the opportunity to slip out of my cell and tiptoe along the corridors. At first I was anxious and excited, then it dawned on me that the prison was actually a complex labyrinth and that I was profoundly lost. The laxity of the security measures was merely an illusion. The outer exit must always elude my desperate wanderings.
Two guards with buckets and brushes turned a corner and yelled at me to halt. I panicked and ran, nursing my aching jaw and whimpering. Then I tripped and sprawled. I heard the slurp of paint and felt the rough caress of bristles. They were painting vertical lines on my clothes, the traditional convict stripes. After they finished, they casually sauntered away and left me alone, but now I was branded.
I remained on my hands and knees and crawled down a side passage to an open door. The space beyond was an ugly forest of legs, a recreation area of some sort, a communal room. I scuttled like a crippled crab to the nearest vacant chair, hauled myself onto it. Now I was part of an audience facing a television screen. The other members of this audience were a
lso prisoners and we watched in silence.
Cheap soap operas were followed by light news bulletins and domestic shows concerned with cooking, gardening, finance. Cartoons were also in evidence. After an hour, the situation became unbearable and I whispered this fact to my neighbour. “I have been incarcerated for neglecting to pay my television licence and yet I’m clearly allowed to enjoy free television in prison. How ironic is that?” I asked.
He rubbed his bleary eyes and replied, “Not very, considering we’re all inside for the same crime. Only licence dodgers are permitted to rot in the private dungeons of the corporation. But it seems you are labouring under the delusion that television is provided to prisoners as a privilege or act of compassion. Even here a license is mandatory. Don’t you have one? Theft of corporation images is serious.”
“You are joking, surely?” I spluttered.
He shook his head. “The inspectors are vigilant and unforgiving. They always punish cheating eyes.”
“This news is terrible. What should I do?”
“Buy a licence, of course.”
“But I have no money or means of making any!”
“That is not a valid excuse.”
“In that case, I won’t enter this room again. I’ll forsake the pleasures of televised broadcasts and remain in my cell. But as this is my first day, I’m not sure how to get back there.”
“All dungeons are identical. Take your pick.”
“I thank you for your advice. Please don’t reveal the fact I sat here and absorbed one full illegal hour of broadcasting. In future I’ll ask my guards for books or magazines instead.”
He plucked my sleeve and pulled me back. “Even if you don’t watch it, you still need a licence for any working television set on the premises. It’s futile for you to attempt to hide.”
