Nowhere Near Milkwood

by Rhys Hughes

  The priest rubbed his mandibles. "What is the nature of your qualm? Does it consist of moral doubts?"

  "Not at all. It is strictly practical."

  "Pray reveal its character."

  While I wept in frustration and betrayal, the President dipped into his other pocket and removed a portable-semaphore. It was a cube on legs with moving arms, a fine example of the signallers' apparatus. He walked forward and rested it on the priest's shoulder, so that it was angled at the window at the rear of the altar. Then my (misnamed) best man twisted a knob to work the arms. Because he had his back to the congregation, it was impossible to read what message he was relaying. The priest remained ignorant of the content of the missive too, for the device prevented him from turning his head. When the President had finished, he stepped back, lowered the semaphore and yawned.

  We waited. Through this rear window, far away across the landscape, to the Carbuncle Hills, the President's message had danced, to be caught up by a semaphore tower on the highest peak. In turn, this tower relayed the message yet further over the horizon, where it was plucked from thin air by a second tower, and passed to a third, and so on, until the words of the dispatch were hastening to the ends of the planet. Eventually, it would reach the corner of Groof and Lyg, the most remote place of all. I failed to see what connection that distant clime had with my marriage. A hopeless rage filled me, a desire to be free of the President, who seems always destined to cancel my joy.

  He sat down in one of the spare pews. After an hour, the priest and the Vice Roger followed his example. So did I, finally, and even Animula sat back in her case. There was no sense questioning the President as to the substance of his bulletin. It was obvious from the nonchalant way in which he sprawled that he was confident the matter would resolve itself. The congregation fidgeted, the minor Rogers started playing a game which involved constructing anagrams of the word 'bannister'. I was paying for the delay. With the Fire Companies still chasing me for unpaid bills, my solvency was rapidly coming unstuck. I swallowed my impatience and grief and counted the indolent minutes.

  Late in the evening, when all our thumbs were so twiddled they were bloated but floppy, like the nuptial lance in my trousers, the President jumped up to rouse the priest. He pointed to the entrance of the Temple. The open door looked out over the other side of the realm, and the giant semaphore tower on the opposing hill began to turn. Then I comprehended. The message had circumnavigated the entire planet, travelling beyond the corner of Groof and Lyg and returning on the dark side, until it arrived back at its point of origin. The priest blinked at the moving arms. Here was the objection to my marriage!

  By the time I had craned my neck to study the news, the message was finished. Short and bitter, like my childhood! The priest nodded, called to the congregation to depart, and they all left in single file, with my bride pushed in the care of the Vice Roger, until only the President and myself remained. Then I demanded:

  "What did the message say? What do you want?"

  "It was a command for you to drop everything and hurry to my tower. I'm glad to see that you obeyed."

  I was outraged and flabbergasted. "How can you possibly order me to your tower? We are already here!"

  "But a summons is a state of mind, as well as a physical condition. Although I couldn't ask you to arrive here, if you already were, I could convert your presence into an entrance by removing the others. When they departed, it made up for the fact that you didn't move. The final result was identical, in the same way that fruit can be juggled by leaving them immobile in the air and manipulating the man who throws them. I summoned you by changing the environment."

  "I grudgingly accept your logic. But why exactly am I here? It must be very urgent to spoil my life."

  "Follow me." The President led me out of the Temple of Drigg and to the edge of his garden. I looked over the panorama. Far away, but not so far as the nearest semaphore, stood seven other towers. Rivals from some mysterious republic, interlopers.

  "Your abode has committed structural polygamy!"

  He sighed heavily. "I first noticed them when I ran out to retrieve your ring. We are obviously on collision-course. They are too monumental to be cheap imitations. So I conclude they are just as real as mine, and staffed with genuine Presidents."

  "I suggest they have collapsed into our universe from a sequence of dimensions parallel to this one."

  "Lateral timelines don't usually overlap."

  I snapped my fingers. "The annihilation of Neirb'O! That detonation must have disrupted the space-time continuum, causing eight realities to prolapse into just one location."

  "What can we do, Titian, dear friend?"

  "Arresting the other Presidents or towers won't help. But you might consider banning all rival realities. Then I'll lock them up inside each other, move them out of the way."

  "I agree. Best to keep elsewheres off the streets! But how will you manage to do that? Dimensions are enormous, stretching the entire length of the universe. I know you've arrested many big things in your time. My nose, however, remains at large."

  "And so do the rival realities! But not for long! What is a dungeon other than an enclosed space with a lock turned by a key? Each dimension already has a bounded limit. They are, in a sense, potential dungeons. I merely require something to lock them with. If I can create a key of the correct size, we'll be able to secure them inside themselves. Naturally, there'll be no chance of parole."

  "Can you really fabricate such a key?"

  "I've already got one! Remember the green pyramid I gathered on the purple atom? It's an expanded quark, with power over the chronoflow. The rival dimensions are extensions in time and space. That's all a universe really is anyway. My pyramid is a building block of both time and space. It can seal the other realities."

  "Quick, Titian! Carve it into a key shape!"

  I shook my head. "It is a minimal particle and can't be subdivided. Its shape just can't be altered."

  Before I could fret further over this problem, the President called to me in considerable anxiety: "Look at that! A giant version of you has stepped out from that tower and is striding over to that other tower and is trying to uproot it from the ground! Luckily it has failed and is now returning to its own building..."

  I blinked. "He'd make a wondrous best man!"

  (8)

  Sitting on the apex of my green pyramid, shaking the reins, hoping to be hurled into the past. Feeling like a bad actor, a salted ham, especially as the sweat on my mouth had dried in the breeze of my flapping, leaving pale sodium deposits on my lip. Reminded me of days with Beatrix Trifle, can't say why. The quark seemed disinclined to go anywhere, past, future or home, but I felt it could be encouraged. I was off to arrest my first ancestor, in the primal slime, for committing a genetic felony which had eventually led to my doleful existence. I would remove him from the game of evolution and thus stall myself.

  Just before tripping out of the present, there was a rap on my door and a hunched figure entered my room. He wore a diseased pelt, carried a gnarled club and was so hairy that his shadow consisted of nine thousand monkey outlines knotted together. His brows were huge, also his toes. He dragged the yellow knuckles of his free hand on the bare boards and gave his name as Ug. I was familiar with the appellation, for it had belonged to a Palaeolithic thief, whose horrible crime was related by the Talking Plaque wedged up the chimney. Was this the same villain? It could hardly be, unless Time was playing a joke.

  With many obscene gestures, mostly directed at his groin, he led me to the conclusion that he was precisely what I was looking for. But what had brought him to his future? The power of my imagination? No, for that has exerted precious little control over ladies. Perhaps he'd decided to turn himself in? A likely solution.

  "So you are my very first ancestor? Ug!"

  I was expressing disgust, not calling him, but he nodded and struck the floor with his club. "Ug! Ug! Hrungh!"

  "Ah! I get it! I have alread
y travelled into the past on my pyramid but the journey was so smooth I didn't realise it! So this is the age of the early hominids, eh? Funny how my room looks exactly the same! Was it carried back with me? Yes, that makes sense, in the same way that moulds are carried forwards in time with their host cheese. Well now, I suggest we step out to explore the jungle."

  He helped me dismount from the quark with several well-aimed blows. But he ensured that I took the pyramid with me, balanced on my shoulder. Then he clubbed me out of the door, down the stairs and outside. I shall confess to feelings of disappointment at this juncture. I'd expected all sorts of extinct beasts, mammoths and smilodons and readers, but nothing much was different. There were streets and buildings and people, and the President's tower in the distance, outside the city. It was identical to the present! What a pity! I turned to my new companion to comment on the coincidence, but he replied with a savage blow to my neck. I tripped and winced. Clearly the entire world had travelled back with me, overlapping the past, so that prehistory was now no different from my own era. Maybe this was the reason for his temper?

  "Ug! Ug! Ug! Hrungh! Ughsagh!"

  "I'm going as quick as I can! Patience, you autochthonic bully! The President will have much to say about this, when I complain to him. Just wait to see whose side he'll take!"

  This statement caused Ug to snigger.

  It soon became apparent that we were travelling to the tower of our absolute leader. As we passed under the main gates of the city, out into the barren countryside, Ug started hitting me with regular strokes and I dropped the quark. He roared in fury at this, beating my knees until the pyramid was restored to its place on my shoulder. I leaped the remainder of the distance, thanks to the club's propellant power and we gained the bright cylinder within an hour. The door was open and I entered. But the President was not at home. I called for him, but there was no reply. Was he visiting his wife at the Pallid Colonnades? Almost certainly not! The only option was that he was hiding.

  This was true, but not as I had imagined it. With a cruel laugh, Ug stood up straight, dropped his weapon, cast off his mask and wig, ripped open his pelt and angled his nose to reveal — the President himself! He had been in disguise all the while!

  "Are you really my first ancestor?" I groaned.

  "Don't be silly, Titian. It was a ruse to summon you here. I didn't want you escaping into the chronoflow yet. Something else has come up. I need you to solve a serious crime."

  He led me up to the roof-garden and showed me the other towers. The sight was overwhelming and I lurched, though this might have been due to my wounds. I grasped the President.

  "They are buildings from a number of parallel dimensions which have collapsed into one point," he said.

  "Obviously so. You must declare them illegal!"

  "No, I suggest that the actual dimensions be outlawed. They must be locked inside each other. But we need a key able to turn the tumblers of time and space. That's why I insisted you bring the pyramid with you. It is a quark and thus will serve to fasten the rogue space-time continuums which have tumbled open into ours."

  "But it can't be shaped into a key!"

  "In that case the lock must be made to fit it, instead of the other way round. When these rival realities are all safely incarcerated within themselves, the key can be swallowed. No that's impossible. It's too big and won't be chewed or digested..."

  "Maybe the lock can be eaten!" I responded.

  "Yes, if made of some edible substance. Here's a block of cheese. I was keeping it for a special occasion. Carve a lock out of it which will be an exact fit for the pyramid! Then insert the quark and turn it seven times. Each time you turn it, one of the dimensions will be locked up in the one in front of it. The final turn will fasten those rival realities inside ours. All to serve the law."

  "Best with a tawny port and olives."

  But it was worth a try. I took the cheese, scooped a pyramidal hole and sprinkled the resultant crumbs over the few carnivorous blooms which still gossiped at our heels. They had dined on rare flies and so were in a grand mood for dessert. Feathery tongues licked ultraviolet lips. When the lock was finished, I positioned it on the railings and pointed it at the furthest tower. Then I inserted the green quark and rotated it once. The fit was perfect and I heard the tumblers of a whole universe clatter in response, and a cosmic bolt slide into place somewhere in space-time, a sound pithier than wedding-peals.

  The effect was instantaneous and amazing. The target tower, and the dimension to which it belonged, grew darker, as if a door was closing on it, and vanished! It had been locked up in the dimension in front of it. Then I pointed the cheese at this dimension and rotated the quark again. This universe also disappeared, secured inside the one in front. Another turn, another captive! Justice on a macroscopic scale! A fourth, a fifth and a sixth! Now there was a solitary illegal reality to contend with. I resisted the temptation to regard it as the ringleader (the rogue towers hadn't converged symmetrically, or they would have formed an octagon and troublemaker nodes from my position may have existed next to each other, not in front or behind). I dabbed my forehead with a sleeve, feeling the heat of a pasteurised responsibility.

  The President gritted his molars. "One more turn! Let them have it, Titian! The soft-cheese-softly approach is maturing! Get those elsewhere cheats off our teleological patch."

  I rotated the quark a final time. The seven deviant dimensions were now in jail, locked within the walls of our own. Best place for them! No need for a trial, because you can't prosecute the undetectable, and even cosmic rays won't hop between alternative presents which are sealed. The rascals only existed in theory now, which is the way it ought to be, and when we got round to arresting their textbook sympathisers, in libraries and colleges, even that luxury would be denied them. No geometry volume, however crisp, was going to keep a Non-Euclidian vigil for this pack, if I had my way, or even if it had me. And this reminds me: any book that quotes itself should be banned.

  Now it was time to destroy the lock, to prevent any mischief-makers from releasing them. I removed the pyramid and elevated the cheese to my mouth, but it was too big to be consumed by just one man, even an unjust one. The President refused to help me. He'd already had lunch. There was enough for eight gourmets, without crackers, and I resigned myself to an evening of pure greed, something to compare with the legendary feasts of the Unbearable Supper Wars, when an entire continent was devoured by the state which sat on it (an event often held to mark the end of the Yellow Dynasty and rise of the Green, but rarely held in any other sense due to shortages of spare edible geology.) Try bolting food when it has already bolted seven of your extra bellies!

  As if this notion had called for assistance, I heard a clatter from the ground floor and hurried down the stairs to see what the matter was. The President stayed on the balcony, enjoying his triumph. To my relief, I found a table spread for a party, with seven occupants in eight chairs surrounding it, waiting for me to appear. They cheered and rattled their knives against their plates. I laid the lock in the centre of the table, took the empty chair and helped to carve the cheese into equal wedges. A glad snack followed, washed down with hare's-breath wine, a vintage ear. When finished, I dabbed at my lips and belched. It was during the moment of mild awkwardness which comes in the wake of most communal feasts that I appreciated my mistake. My dining-companions were me! The other Titian Grundys from the rival towers! Why had I not noticed? Possibly because I am so proud that anything I do is tainted with this quality. Thus I look at the obvious in vain, missing it.

  Now one of the Grundys spoke: "A fitting start to our negotiations, for we have decided to act in a curdled, I mean mature, fashion, and the cheese was a witty symbol of that."

  "Negotiations?" I cried. "What do you mean?"

  Another Grundy explained: "Instead of trying to devise malignant or traitorous methods of outwitting each other, we conclude it is better to band together to cure our problem. After all, we're in the same tro
uble. It was Titian here, that one, not him, who had the courage to depart his tower and visit Titian there, on your right, to suggest a truce. So they called on Titian, opposite you, and the three of them raced on to try to persuade Titian, at the far end, to join up. It worked and he aided them to win over Titian, on your left, plus Titian. Then they set off to work on the seventh Titian, who was me."

  "I see their labours were productive. Now you've come round to talk me into also shelving hostilities?"

  "We don't preach peace, but redirected brutality. We have assembled here to plan a rebellion, for it's the President who has always been the major source of bother for us, the sharpest thorn in our joy's sideshow. No longer! We intend to kick him out of government and take over! That's what this conference is about. Each of us has contributed one facet of a geminous putsch and when they're combined, a fresh era will dawn, though probably not in the east, unless we go there on vacation, for it will be wherever we are. The first Titian brought the napkins, the second hurled in the knives, the third the wine, fourth and fifth added the plates and table. The sixth donated the chairs. Successful insurrections are always plotted over lunch. Otherwise they never come to pass. You have provided the location — this actual tower!"

  "No, I supplied the meal. Incredibly, it wasn't a simple cheese but a transdimensional lock. You don't know what you've done! You're trapped in my dimension forever, beyond your own presents! More to the point, we now outnumber the President, who is upstairs alone, and so can usurp him without excessive risk. Follow me!"

  I stood as fast as my digestion permitted and prepared to scurry up to the balcony, keen to storm the doldrums of my human condition, namely the ruler who had wounded me as only a friend might. I was suffused with a weird delight, a brute, raw, peeled exultation that had been festering under my stable exterior for the greater part of my whole life. To crush the President and his whimsical decrees! To inaugurate a new republic, a Dynasty of Prefects, an octagonal oligarchy! But before my happiness had a chance to familiarise itself with my mind, testing all the corners and lobes, raiding the larder for subconscious impulses, the eloquent Grundy who had last spoken rose and cried: