Nowhere Near Milkwood

by Rhys Hughes

  "Woe! My prepared tomb is not wide enough!"

  "By the gods, Titian, I'm scared."

  "I don't think the gods exist, sir. At least I saw no evidence of a metaphysical order of beings during my stay in the Heavenly Realm. After you declared them illegal, maybe they willed themselves to nothing? Some felons go to vast lengths to evade Justice. I would like to discuss this situation with Dr Celery or Lola Halogen, even Satsuma Ffroyde, but I am fed up with the way they always mock my cerebral ineptitude. So I won't. I'll unravel this problem myself."

  "A promotion if you're successful, Titian!"

  "I am already at the summit of my profession, sir. If I am promoted again, I may trip over the top of the career-ladder and plummet down the far side and become a shoe-clerk."

  "Just save my dwelling from demolition!"

  I bowed deeply, not out of respect, but because I was so weary from acclimatising to the higher stresses of flesh life that I needed to rest my head on the floor. It lay there for long minutes. The President found this a charming gesture and he was mollified a little, a very little, so small a little that he grew angry at the modesty of it and raved against serenity, declaring it illegal. But still I couldn't lift my skull. Then he lashed out with his boot and kicked me straight. Because I am not yet a shoe-clerk I can't say what make of boot. But it doesn't matter. Eight towers were coming together to kick harder than this. And they were shod in silver and stepmother-of-pearl.

  (4)

  "He's glaring back at me!" I hissed.

  "An abominable situation," agreed the President, "but I have to put up with your face from much closer."

  "You are my friend and therefore immune."

  "Not so. Ugliness does not function in the same way as bacteria. My stomach still heaves at your smile."

  I had recently arrived from the moon, and my knees were aching. The President had summoned me while I was collecting blackness from the Dark Side for use as eyeliner for my beekeeper wife. There were no flowers to pick, so beauty products were the only romantic gifts I could offer her. Trying to serenade in low gravity is a fine way of making other husbands furious. Songs tend to spin past the window of choice and into the wrong bedroom. Makeup remains the only secure option. Not that she appreciated my efforts. In fact I hadn't spoken to her since the last Lunar Eclipse, an occasion she used as cover for her escape. I fumbled in the dim rooms of my dwelling but she had vanished.

  While I was crouching on the edge of a crater, scooping up the best blackness with a spade, a selenite with a hose attached to its head came up behind me and jumped into the hollow. I sighed and turned and saw how the hose ran off the horizon into the void, the other end originating on the Earth. The President's tower hadn't enjoyed standing on the moon and had returned to the mother planet. He had taken a menagerie of selenites with him, partly because he liked strumming airs on their antennae. This creature was one from his collection and it had a careworn look, bloated from rich oxygen mixtures and callow cheese. It squatted on its heels in the dust, mouths agape, arms folded.

  A few hours later, the first trickle spilled from the hose, licking the parched moon soil and swirling in unprecedented eddies. The selenite paddled fitfully, as I waited for the message. The President has a large tap in his bathroom, and optimum pressure, but this crater was very deep and required a lot of filling. I passed the selenite a handkerchief from my pocket and instructed it on how to knot it into a hat. The liquid was now up to its lower shoulders and it seemed unhappy. None of my business how an extraterrestrial entity chooses to waste its leisure! But no, the President had probably forced it to comply on pain of sanity, which is a dreadful fate for a lunatic citizen.

  Eventually the sorry creature was wholly immersed and had to detach its head to save itself from drowning. The throat bolts slid out and its skull bobbed to the surface of the new pond, flared nostrils sucking the airless atmosphere in soundless undulations, purely for pleasure, as its lungs were still at the base of the crater. The last drop spluttered out of the hose and I peered closer in anticipation of the official message. It came at last in the shape of a bulge in the hose which worked its way very slowly between worlds, like astral digestion, and finally disgorged itself in the centre of the lake. A sealed bottle containing a letter. I hooked it with my spade and read it.

  In old-fashioned zincplate script, the President formally requested the pleasure of my presence in his elongated domicile as soon as rapidly convenient. I turned and bounced back to my lunar cottage, preparing the seat of my Shanks' Pony. The porcelain hybrid was uncomfortable but very efficient, provided the chain didn't break. I aimed it for the peninsula which connected Earth and Luna and flushed it a dozen times. It frothed, grumbled and slushed as the cistern refilled, projecting me in wide arcs across dry seas and jagged peaks. Once I landed hard and cracked the lid but the main functions remained unimpaired. Down the thirty-nine million steps into the hygienic ozone layer!

  The continents lay spread before me like a half-eaten banquet, with spilt-ale oceans and bagel atolls. The President's tower had moved to an isolated forest where clowns practised seriousness privately. My Shanks' Pony weaved between trees and I switched off the afterburners. My bowels were grateful for that. Coasting through blackberries, I stained my chin and reputation with juice. I parked my transport outside the President's gate, a childhood touch recalling the era when every latrine was located outdoors, and hoofed it under the portals. He was upstairs with a single spyglass and eight resentments, so I joined him and shook at the phallic creepiness of the additional towers.

  I studied one Grundy after another. "Ugh!"

  "My sentiments exactly, Prefect. But they are getting closer by the blink. What do you think they want?"

  "To go in a different direction, by the look of it. They don't care to meet us any more than we wish to meet them. By the way, don't you try to weed your roof-garden sometimes?"

  "It's only a cheesewort, Titian! Ignore it and it'll probably leave you alone. It's a mature perennial."

  I sat on one of the houses in his miniature village and eased spiky tendrils from under my toes. "I could accuse the scene of impossibility, but it won't stand up in Court. The other towers are overgrown too. They can't be used as concrete evidence."

  "Shall I summon Professors Warp and Woof?"

  "The University quacks? No, I'll resolve this on my own. They would only make matters worse. One might suggest burning the towers down while his rival advocated freezing them up, and in tandem no progress would be made at all. Give me a little time."

  "You have five grey seconds and one pink!"

  "Not enough! Wait, an idea has birthed. Instead of trying to fathom the physics involved in this crisis, we should act first and then obtain the facts during interrogation. For instance, by declaring all the other Presidents illegal, you will sanction me to arrest them. They might have more insight into the event. If not, we can keep them locked up, because ignorance of the law — any law, including those used in science — does not constitute a plausible defence."

  "The identity parade will be bewildering."

  "I will ensure you don't accidentally pick yourself. And if you do, I'll get you a very good solicitor."

  "My legal insurance has run out. It escaped from the stocks a month ago. I hope this anomaly truly is scientific in character, not artistic. Otherwise there'll be no laws to be ignorant of, and we will have to let the other Presidents walk free. But I trust you, Titian, even though you once attempted to fondle my cheese."

  "Fondue, not fondle, sir! A charity jape. No, I can't lie to you! I admit the deed. It had auburn rind."

  He raised an imperious thumb and pointed. "Go thither and apprehend the extra Presidents, to the tune of seven, for I now declare refraction of identities to be bent behaviour."

  The tune in question he played on an ugli-fruit balalaika. I prefer the melody of pi myself, or any irrational number other than the root of 2, which is for squares. Seven is a ditty for hepcats and much
too young for officials. But the President is a mean ugli plucker, as few citizens will deny, and he ushered me vibrantly on my way, down the steps, though not vibrantly enough, for he followed me closely, humming the words with the panache of a sour belch locked in a radiator. But a surprise greeted us when we attained the main hall at ground level. Another Titian Grundy glided through the door on centipede-skates, each tiny leg fitted with a castor, shaking his truncheon at us.

  "What are you doing down there, you fool?"

  "No, sir, that's an alternative me, from a parallel dimension. He's obeying the orders of an analogous President to arrest you! At least one of your variations has had the same idea first! You've declared yourself illegal from a different direction."

  The impostor roared: "Evening all. Enjoying ourselves, are we? Best come down to the prison for a chat."

  "What sort of chat, you myriapod mounter?"

  He winked. "Just a little one."

  "Beware, sir! That's the most dangerous form of chat. His breath is reminiscent of teapot vapours. Plus he is me. I advise total mistrust of all his banter. Use me as a shield."

  The President ducked down behind my rump, but I skipped aside. "Not this me! The other me! Him! Hide behind him, so that he can't seize you. Crouch behind my own me and he'll guess where you are as precisely as if he had eyes in the back of my head!"

  "If I hide behind him, you'll have eyes in the back of his head and may strike a deal to scrutinise me."

  "How can you question my loyalty, sir? I protected your wife's nose from a demented Savoy, picking the former, pickling the latter, when the cabbages spouted against the kings."

  "Beatrix is still retroussé about that. But this is stupid prattle, serving no purpose in the greater narrative. No, the point is that I can do as I please. I refuse to be disgraced in front of my Prefect(s) in my own tower and thus am disinclined to hide. Instead I will declare Titian Grundy illegal. Arrest him quickly!"

  I flicked out my handcuffs and approached the impostor, but while I was walking toward him, I somehow managed to secure my own wrists in the hoops of brass. Because I was now illegal, I had instinctively fulfilled my duties, apprehending the nearest version of myself, which was me. The President stamped a foot as I held up my chained wrists and coaxed a sad guilty rattle from the yellow links.

  "Shall I knock myself about a touch, sir?"

  "Police brutality is against the spirit of the age, though still in accordance with the wine of the aeon. Set yourself free, Titian. Ah, the key has snapped! Weaving them from chives has disadvantages. By Hopp and Drigg, I declare handcuffs illegal!"

  The moment this pronouncement struck his ears, my impostor leapt to snap his own handcuffs around mine. This released me, because mine hoped to make it easier on themselves by offering no resistance. But now there was a paradox in the room, for the handcuffs which had arrested mine had no alibi, and the other Titian Grundy was forced to let the first lot go to secure the second. And then he had to let the second go to secure the first. And so on. Until the President wearied of this display, acrobatic though it was, and suddenly shouted:

  "I decree an exclusion zone on confusion!"

  The limit was set at one mile, and the impostor was forced to skate out of the building, the way he'd come, to avoid trespassing. I was very happy to see the back of him, because I had always wondered what my nape looked like. Horrid. I won't cut my own hair again. No time to regret my style, for doubts were also growing askew. You can imagine our sorrow as we watched him race into the haze. If we didn't understand the phenomena of copied towers soon, and understand it like logicians, with a cool nod at each strange twist, we would have to join him in exile. The exclusion zone is relevant to every confusion.

  (5)

  Because I am Titian Grundy's reflection, my good looks are mostly on the wrong side. But it doesn't matter, because they're all ugly anyway. When I went missing from his mirror I didn't expect to be gone for good. Just a holiday is what I had planned, a fortnight at the bottom of a saucepan or possibly a month in a cat's eye. But the President wanted me before I was able to pick. He caught me in transit, passing through a chrome axle under his tower and easing me off with a hatchet. He said nothing to the real me, preferring him to think I had deliberately absconded forever to a realm beyond identity. My owner searched for me in the corner of every myth and so was swallowed by Neptune.

  The President riveted my image to a shiny panel and lifted me up to the roof of his home. Seven different towers pulsed in the distance with matching occupants and gilding. I peered at each through a telescope and saw they were watching me, some of them actually shaving by my features. The rival Grundys were unappealing, as I already knew from reflecting my individual model, but I never imagined that a multiplication of Prefects would increase the distaste geometrically, rather than arithmetically. I beheld an octagon of repugnance. I knocked on the surface of my panel to attract the President's attention and he took me down from the telescope and held my flat lips to his fat ear.

  "It must be a crease in the cosmic fabric."

  He shuffled. "I was told the cosmos was made of starched vacuum and couldn't be crinkled. My tutor lied!"

  "The staff at Dictators' School always deceive their pupils. That's why you have had such a brilliant career in politics. Somehow this tower has duplicated itself, or has been duplicated by an outside agency. Laws of common sense have been infringed."

  "An outside agency? Amnesty Interstellar?!"

  "Eight Presidents are the last thing they'd want. No, it's far more likely to be a haphazard anomaly in the weave of space-time. I wonder if these other towers are past and future echoes of our reality? A temporal mirage of some kind. It is feasible."

  "I don't think so. The Titian Grundy on that tower is making rather rude gestures at you in real-time. His tongue is poked at this moment. I suspect a more serious perturbation."

  "If they were just echoes, a collision would present no problem. We will merely pass through each other. But if they're as solid and real as this one a tragedy is on the agenda."

  "Why do you think I summoned you, Prefect?"

  He hadn't actually, but I kept quiet, because his patience had worn so thin it could be used as a noose to hang a virus. I tugged at my chin and fretted. What if there was more than one dimension? What if a number of alternative universes existed side by side? They might have their own histories, similar but not exactly the same, with variations of culture, geography and fruit. They would be unaware of each other's presence in a continuum which extended sideways through the body of creation. Yes, the scenario was likely. A mandala of potentials. They should be detached by lateral space-time but at this point they had overlapped. I communicated this numbing hypothesis in a whisper.

  The President was very unhappy. "You mean to say those other towers are as valid as mine? That they have equal status in objective life? And does this also apply to my variants?"

  "I'm afraid so, sir. None of you can really be considered the model for the others. There is no archetype as such. You evolved independently in eight parallel, but not identical, realities. These rival rulers have prolapsed into the fulcrum around which they revolved. Do not treat them as impostors, or you curse yourself!"

  "So humane evasive action must be taken..."

  "I can think of nothing, sir. Nets might be cast over them, but few fishermen are willing to work for you these days, not since you declared boredom and escaping the wife illegal. Somehow we must divert the towers around each other so that they miss."

  "Dig curved trenches to guide the wheels? My towers would then pass harmlessly in a kind of giant waltz."

  "There might be trouble where the trenches met. Remember that these structures are converging from eight different directions. Also it would take too long to excavate that amount of soil. No, we need to propel the towers into the air over each other."

  The President steamed up my surface with his desperate breath. Then he inhaled sharply, almost sucking me thr
ough the glass, an idea burning one eye like naphthol on a jellyfish.

  "Atomic trampolines! We'll set them up in front of the other towers and bounce them into an exchange of position. Then they will all trundle their own way, on divergent courses."

  "That will also be quite amusing to watch."

  "I'll order every gymnasium to hand over their fast-breeder springs while you beat your guard, Percy Flamethrower, about the kidneys with an iron rod to produce the heavy water."

  "What if the Presidents in the other towers also decide to lay down atomic trampolines? Could get nasty."

  "With so many minor details at variance in the parallel dimensions, it's unlikely more than one reality has invented such equipment. No need to panic, Titian. Let's get to work."

  "Wait! I've just remembered that we're one of the realities without atomic trampolines! Cancel the plan!"

  "Blister it, you're right! We don't even have radioactivity in this universe. Better think of something else! What if we stand large mirrors in front of every other tower? That should bring forward the date of the collision to a time when we aren't there. Then we will just proceed over the ruins like a capricious obelisk."

  "Reflections have fled their mirrors in our world, remember? Titian is searching for me at this instant."

  The President sighed. "I wish I was a puppet!"

  (6)

  In a military balloon bristling with steel spikes, the sole passenger of an old sugar on his last adventure. That's where I was. I never expected the President to reach me out there, particularly as he'd terminated our friendship numerous months previously. But he knows which side his uglis are juiced and is capable of suspending all grudges for profit. And he's capable of suspending a whole wardrobe of jackets from his nose. But I'm bragging for him now and that's his job. Anyway, I had become a rover of the sky, a mandolinist and romantic, with teeth so rotten the plaque had decayed, leaving them shiny and dazed. The wonders I had seen! Amana and Cus, Hogsbrud and Yam-Yam, Nouth and Niggle, Paraparapara and Djiwondro, rubber garters up a damsel's skirt!