"Very good, sir," Nimrod assented, "but before you proceed any further, you do have Dr Methuselah's package about your person, don't you?"
"Indeed, Nimrod. Secreted away safely." He patted the breast pocket of his jacket.
"What is it that was so important we had to make a detour at what is, according to you, such a crucial time?" Petunia challenged.
"It's just a precaution."
"Against what?"
"A lethal, fungal pandemic outbreak," Ulysses said with a dangerous, shark-like grin. "As you have so rightly pointed out, there is no time to delay. The game is surely afoot."
Having clambered over the fence and entered the botanical gardens in such a clandestine way, the trio skulked their way along the night-shrouded pathways. But as they neared the Amaranth House, Ulysses' prescient sense began to flare.
A shadowy figure detached itself from the darkness before them. Ulysses' nostrils were instantly assailed by the earthy odour of rotting compost. Then the figure spoke.
"Why, good evening, Mr Quicksilver," it said, the voice strangely familiar, and took another step closer. Wan moonlight fell across the stranger's face.
"Director Hargreaves," Quicksilver said, making a vain attempt at ignorant foppish bravado. He could see other man-shapes emerging from the looming shadow of the Amaranth House now, a mob of gardeners and visitors, or so it seemed. "Fancy meeting you here. Are you out for a pleasant evening's stroll as well?"
The Director said nothing.
His sixth sense screaming, Ulysses heard the whoosh of displaced air behind him too late as a heavy object connected with the back of his head. Muscles relaxed, his body folded up, and he crumpled onto the carefully manicured lawn.
VIII
The Mandrake Mandate
Darkness enveloped him, a cloying blackness redolent with peaty decay. Ulysses struggled to consciousness and blearily opened his eyes. This did little to dissipate the murk but slowly his eyes began to adjust to the green gloom. Blinking away his concussed stupor, every movement of his eyelids causing the obvious lump on the back of his head to throb horribly, Ulysses struggled to make sense of his surroundings.
He was underground, of that he was sure, and it seemed that the only light came from some photo-luminescent plant source. Growths of a curious algae covered what Ulysses could now see were riveted iron beams and pillars, supporting some structure or other above.
Stretched out on his back, he was staring up at a ceiling. Cautiously he moved his hands and feet - they were not restrained - and felt the edges of the table, or whatever it was he was lying on. Slowly he turned his head to his left. Lying on a wooden worktable next to him was an unconscious Petunia; eyes closed, breathing deeply. Beyond her the gloom thickened again, a mass of inseparable shadows. Ulysses turned his head to the right, half expecting to see Nimrod laid out like Petunia but there was nothing but the dark shapes of freestanding shelves, the kind one might expect to find in a greenhouse.
It was quiet in this place, but not silent. An unsettling sound, a fizzing-crackling noise, filled the gloom: it was as if he could actually hear things growing in the darkness. And then the skull-splitting pain distracted him again, deadening the information being relayed by his other senses. Despite the throbbing ache at the base of his skull, Ulysses sat up and leant towards the comatose young woman. "Petunia," he hissed, "can you hear me?"
The girl stirred in her sleep, making a semi-conscious moan, but her eyes remained shut.
"Petunia," Ulysses tried again, daringly loud, his voice carrying in the stillness. "You have to wake up." He put out an arm to shake her. Behind the headache, Ulysses became aware again of the desperate itch of precognition at the back of his skull. As if he hadn't worked it out for himself already, they were in danger.
A sooty bulb hummed into life. Smudged yellow light bathed the chamber. Ulysses winced under the sudden illumination.
"Let her sleep," came a voice. "It will be much less painful for her that way."
"What? Who is that?" Ulysses challenged, shielding his eyes against the light with one hand. "Show yourself!"
There were figures moving close by, not ten feet away. He squinted, trying to make out features, discern differences, but there was something frustratingly indistinct about many of the lumpen forms. Then he saw someone he did recognise.
"Director Hargreaves. I might have known."
The Director said nothing but continued purposefully towards Ulysses, a curiously benign, almost drugged, expression on his face. Hargreaves looked like he had been interrupted about his business, missing his jacket and with his shirtsleeves rolled up. He was holding something in his left hand. Its tip glittered under the glare of the artificial light and Ulysses recognised it immediately: it was his bloodstone cane.
"Oh, you disappoint me, Mr Quicksilver," came the voice from the shadows again. It was not the Director who had spoken.
"Whom am I speaking to? Show yourself!"
At Ulysses behest, another man stepped into the wan pools of light cast by the naked bulbs. He was of medium height, medium build, with greasy black hair swept back from a widow's peak.
"Do I know you?" Ulysses asked disparagingly.
"Apparently not. But I know you," the man replied, almost taunting him. "Everyone knows Ulysses Quicksilver - dandy, rogue, sometime agent of the throne. You're notorious, something of a celebrity in the wake of your adventures at the jubilee celebrations. A man of some standing, it would seem. An ideal subject, in fact."
"Subject? What are you talking about?" Ulysses swung his legs off the table.
"For replacement."
"Replacement?" Ulysses repeated. If only he could keep his apparent captor talking then he might yet be able to get them out of this predicament.
"Yes, Mr Quicksilver. Replication and replacement."
"Assistant Director Mandrake. Who did you have to do away with to earn that title?"
Ulysses couldn't help glancing round in surprise, hearing Petunia's voice behind him. He had thought her still unconscious.
"I remember you," the man said, his smug expression vanishing in a moment. "Yes, Petunia Chase."
"Jolly good, so everybody knows everybody now. Introductions over, would you kindly explain what is going on?" Helping Petunia down from the wooden table Ulysses whispered, "I rather feel it's time to leave."
With a sudden, deft movement he spun on his heel and lunged for the Director. Seizing hold of the bloodstone tip of the cane, he twisted and pulled. The rapier blade sheathed within slipped free with a razor ring.
"If you had fun and games in mind, then you should have restrained us."
"Why? What's the point?" the Assistant Director said, unimpressed. "Where are you going to go?"
His prescient sense burning like a blowtorch flame, Ulysses darted glances around the subterranean chamber. His eyes fully adjusted to the change in light levels, Ulysses could see his surroundings quite clearly now. On either side of both he and Petunia stood the stacks of mushroom beds. Swollen fungal shapes emerged from rich compost, their flesh pallid and grey-green: the colour of rotting human flesh. The fungi were at varying stages of development, the very newest growths nothing more than bulbous white heads pushing up from beneath the dark soil. But there were other trays next to these that contained much more advanced growths. Where Ulysses would have expected to see fat stems topped by dark-gilled heads, these fruiting bodies were vaguely humanoid in shape. And they just kept increasing in size, from one stack to the next.
Beyond the planting trays a host of figures were moving towards Ulysses and Petunia, tightening the noose around them. There were both men and women, dressed in all manner of garb, from that of high class ladies and gentlemen to the practical overalls of lowly gardeners. But there were other things shuffling between them, like ill-formed clay figures with clumsy limbs and thick-trunked bodies, hairless and with only the merest suggestion of features, like folds of flesh in their blank faces.
Petunia gasped
, eyes wide in horror as she caught sight of another of the assembled throng: "Uncle? But - no - it can't be!"
"Oh, but it can," Mandrake stated bluntly.
There he stood, renowned botanist and outspoken critic of the Empire, Auberon Chase, as large as life when the last time Ulysses had seen him he had been very much dead.
"Keep back!" Ulysses warned the advancing mob. They moved as one. Director Hargreaves was closest. "I told you to keep back!" the dandy bellowed in both fear and rage. Hargreaves reached for him. Ulysses swung his rapier blade, savagely bringing it down on the Director's arm. The keen edge cut into the exposed flesh and sliced through it cleanly.
The Director made a curious keening sound, looking in appalled horror at where the limb had been severed below the elbow. Petunia's scream was more full-bodied. Ulysses was shocked himself. He had not intended to slice the man's arm off. The severed limb lay on the concrete floor, still holding the sheath of his cane. No blood pumped from either the wound or the stump of the arm. In fact, where Ulysses' blade had cut through the flesh it appeared dense and grey, like the meat of a fungus.
"What the hell's going on here?" Ulysses cried, pulling Petunia close to him, ready to ward off any other further attacks.
"Revolution, Mr Quicksilver. A change to the world order." The advancing crowd of people and fungoid things halted in their advance.
"But... why? How?" Ulysses' mind was racing as he tried to see a way out. Where was Nimrod? If only Ulysses could keep this Mandrake talking, perhaps they might yet get out of this situation alive.
"You have the arrogance to ask why?" Mandrake railed. "Or is it sheer bloody-minded ignorance? Are you not aware of what the rapacious society we live in has done to this planet? We are the custodians of Mother Earth and yet all mankind does to her is rape and pillage from the very thing that he should be striving to protect. This is called the Great Steam Age by some but such power and progress comes at too high a price. Irreparable deforestation is taking place on a global scale causing untold environmental damage. The Amazon rainforest is being depleted on a daily basis, all to feed the hungers of the infernal machines Magna Britannia is so beholden to. Policy must be changed. Attitudes must be changed.
"Untold thousands of species have been destroyed, thanks to the thoughtless harvesting of the rainforests for fuel. Thousands of cures for all manner of diseases have quite possibly been lost. Plants were among the first living organisms to rise to prevalence on this planet and practically all other forms of life owe their existence to them. Plants were once the dominant kingdom on Earth and they shall inherit this world again!"
"But what do you hope to achieve here that will make any difference?" Ulysses challenged.
"Replication and replacement."
"So you keep saying, but what do you mean?" Petunia shrieked, her desperation at her own plight vying with her desperation to understand.
"Let us show you." The throng began to advance again. Ulysses swept around him with his blade but there were too many. Feeling a hand on his shoulder, he turned and looked into the amorphous face of one of the fungoid creatures. The fungus-being's mouth opened and it exhaled a cloud of spores into Ulysses' face. He stumbled back, coughing, but the plant-thing maintained its hold on him.
He felt woozy, drowsy, and inclined not to fight back. The rapier fell from his open fingers. Cold, damp, probing digits sought out bare flesh, enclosing his left hand in their succulent grasp. Petunia's screams became muffled and then turned to a hacking cough. Ulysses suddenly felt so tired; he just wanted to sleep.
But somewhere, deep inside himself, Ulysses Quicksilver the hero, the struggler against adversity, the champion of Magna Britannia, could sense what was happening and fought to be free. With his right hand he fumbled inside a jacket pocket. Fingers closed around the small inhaler pump that had been Dr Methuselah's gift to him. Fighting to keep his eyes open, Ulysses put the pump to his mouth and inhaled deeply - once, twice, three times.
His head already beginning to clear, airways free of the soporific spores, Ulysses shook the stupor from himself and looked into a face that was re-moulding itself into a visage that was looking more and more like his own by the second. At the same time, the bulk of the fungoid creature was changing, becoming leaner and growing in height to match his own.
Ulysses took the inhaler from his lips and sprayed it into the face of the creature. The fungus-Ulysses recoiled, wailing in pain, parts of its altering face dissolving on coming into contact with the fungicidal-spray as if eaten away by acid.
Petunia was limp in the grasp of another of the shapeless plant-men, which with every passing moment was becoming more and more like her in form and appearance. Ulysses pushed away from his own squealing attacker and sprayed the second metamorphosing creature, with the same consequences. As the shrieking fungus dropped Petunia, Ulysses put the inhaler to her slack mouth and let her inhale the antidote. Dr Methuselah had done his job well, creating a means by which to fight the necrotising spores of the fungal infection.
Having swept up his sword-cane, with one arm around Petunia to support her, Ulysses seized the initiative and advanced. Their attackers now found themselves under attack as Ulysses strode towards them, spraying the last of the pump's dose into the throng.
Men and women fell back, giving voice to the same unearthly screams as the fungoid things, suffering the same injuries as the two that had tried to assume the forms of Ulysses and Petunia.
Then they were past the throng, an iron door in front of them. Ulysses pulled it open and threw the two of them through. Up a steel spiral staircase and they found themselves inside the Amaranth House, what little starlight that penetrated the smog layer of London setting the myriad glass panes glittering in the reflected light of the distant city.
The two escapees staggered and stumbled along the set cobble paths between the planting beds, lungs heaving, the debilitating effects of the spores still lingering within their overwrought respiratory systems.
They were no longer alone either. The recovered throng emerged from the subterranean level of the glasshouse and poured after them, moving as one body again. It would be only a matter of moments before they caught up. And then the doors to the Amaranth House were before them and harsh, white light blazed into the building.
Ulysses threw the two of them bodily aside, tumbling into a bed of cacti, uncaring of the pricks of the spines as, engine roaring throatily, the tanker truck smashed through the glass doors and into the Amaranth House. Razor sharp glass shards chopped through leaves and lanced into the mud of the planting beds. Dark liquid fountained from the ruptured drum of the tanker and rained down on everyone and everything inside the glasshouse.
Creatures screamed as the fungicidal agents of the weedkiller broke down their mushroom bodies. The seemingly human men and women suffered the same fate, their true fungal forms dissolving into a grey sludge. The battered door of the driver's cab creaked open and Ulysses' loyal manservant jumped down from the vehicle.
"Just in the nick of time, eh, Nimrod?" Ulysses said, managing a wry smile despite being drenched in stinking fungicide and feeling drained from the effects of the fungus-thing's attentions.
"It would appear so, sir," Nimrod agreed. "Now, might I suggest that we make our getaway post-haste?"
"Indeed! I couldn't agree more."
Nimrod assisting Petunia in as gentlemanly a manner as possible, Ulysses picked himself up out of the cactus patch.
"Not so fast!"
Ulysses' flopped back into the prickly plants as his feet were pulled out from under him. Twisting round he looked into the manic face of the Assistant Director. Mandrake looked back at him with only one eye, the other dissolving along with the spoiled half of his face that had been splashed with the potent weed killer. "What have you done?"
"Hah! I knew it! You're one of them!" Ulysses exclaimed.
"I was the first," Mandrake snarled through liquefying lips. "The first of many."
The mimicking f
ungoid creature began to claw its way up Ulysses' legs, but he kicked out, freeing himself from the clutches of the bizarre plant-human hybrid.
"That may well be the case," Ulysses replied, "but whatever you are, you're still dead!"
In a flash the rapier blade was out of its sheath. Ulysses thrust, the slower Mandrake caught with his guard down. Mandrake gasped and staggered backwards. Ulysses' blade came free of the body, the fungus flesh leaving a milky residue on its surface.
Ulysses, Nimrod and Petunia watched as whatever it was that had passed for Assistant Director Mandrake stumbled backwards over the guard wire surrounding the recently re-planted Patagonian Mantrap and toppled into the gaping maw of the incongruously named Audrey.
"Now," said Ulysses, suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. "Let's get out of here."
IX
Bad Seed
"It was him, wasn't it?" Petunia said, gazing into the middle distance.
"Don't think on it anymore, my dear," Ulysses said, hugging the shocked young woman around the shoulders. "It's over now. He's gone."
The three of them were sitting on the neatly tended lawn outside the Amaranth House. With the Mandrake-thing's demise, the last of the fungus-creatures had fallen too. It had been as if the plant-men mimics were all part of one gestalt consciousness: with the first destroyed, the repository of that consciousness went too.
"But it was his body that was washed up at Southwark, wasn't it?"
"Yes. I rather think it was. But, like I say he's gone. It's over."
"One of those... things... took his place. But how did he end up in the Thames? When they tried to take me I just wanted to sleep."
The Ulysses Quicksilver Short Story Collection (Pax Britannia) Page 4
