The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers coaaod-6

by Hugh Cook

  — and thereby excite their customers to heights of pleasure unheard of and undreamt of elsewhere. But in the days of the Golden Gulag, dikle was used exclusively as a high-temperature lubricant in the sunships of the Systems Patrol.

  So now you know.

  All the time that Cheogry and Olivia were studying, servants of the Analytical Institute were busy on the foreshore, filling amphorae with these precious substances. Meantime the musically obsessed Shabble, still floating in a teapot, sang on and on and on.

  Shabble had of course been telling the truth about capturing some pirates (the Malud marauders Al-ran Lars, Arnaut and Tolon) in the depths of Downstairs. Furthermore, Shabble had indeed been lied to by these ruthless cutthroats, who had broken their most solemn promises and had slipped away when the innocent one at last went to sleep. The reckless one had also been telling the truth about the wishstone. It really had been stolen.

  Even now, events of some note were taking place on the mainland. Undesirable elements (such as Ebrell Islanders) were being rounded up to be interrogated about the missing wishstone. Many were being beaten up as they were rounded up. Furthermore, it was most unlikely that the trouble would be over by the time Chegory Guy was due to return to the mainland.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Late in the afternoon, Ivan Pokrov was summoned to the Counting House. That was the official name for the room in the Analytical Institute which housed the Analytical Engine itself. A transmission shaft had snapped, bringing the operations of the Engine to a grinding halt, and he was needed to supervise the repairs. He left Chegory and Olivia with plenty of work to do, and at first they worked diligently, or at least pretended so to work.

  But the day was hot, and Chegory soon abandoned scholarship for dreams. Wild dreams! Fantasies in which a benevolent Hermit Crab granted him thighs, nipples, breasts, buttocks and watermelons by the thousands. Then Olivia seized her Ebrell Island friend and shook him into wakefulness.

  ‘Pokrov’s coming!’ she said.

  Thanks to this warning, Chegory Guy was the very picture of diligent scholarship when Ivan Pokrov returned in the company of Ingalawa.

  ‘How far have you got?’ said Pokrov.

  ‘Not far,’ admitted Chegory.

  ‘There’s always tomorrow,’ said Pokrov. ‘It’s time to go home. I’ll be coming with you. I’ve decided to accept the dear doctor’s invitation. I will dine at the Qasaba household this evening.’

  As the westering sun sank in the west they packed up. Chegory changed into his evening wear — trousers and shirt — leaving his loincloth on the island for the morrow.

  They were ready to make the trip back to the mainland. There were of course four of them — Chegory, Olivia, Ingalawa and Pokrov — but unfortunately there were only two pairs of stilts left in the rack at the main entrance to the Analytical Institute. The flow of dikle and shlug from the wealth fountains had eased but it was still more than ankle-deep.

  ‘Let Olivia and Artemis have the stilts,’ said Pokrov. ‘We men can wade.’

  ‘No need,’ said Chegory. ‘There’s more in the workshop. They were getting repaired yesterday. The glue should be dry by now. I’ll go and get them.’

  With that said, off he trotted.

  Ah, how pleasant it is to have servants! An obedient Ebrell Islander willing to run for the stilts without even being asked! However… appearances are deceptive. These animals cannot really be domesticated. As you will see.

  While Chegory was off on his errand, the others did not sit, nor did they retreat into the shadows. Pokrov was lost in thought (a common occurence for him) and thus paid no heed to heat or discomfort. As for the two women, why, they were not going to be the first to admit to the weakness of the flesh. They were both Ashdans, the pride of which race has not been exaggerated by the many commentators who have remarked on it.

  ‘Look,’ said Olivia, pointing to the south-west. ‘A canoe.’

  Indeed, a double-hulled canoe was being paddled through the Rajavakoram Channel between Scimitar Island and the mainland. They knew it at once to be one of the seagoing canoes of the Ngati Moana for it was far larger than the frail outriggers which fished in the local lagoon.

  ‘They’ll have news,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Only of the west,’ said Ivan Pokrov.

  In the season of Fistavlir the only canoes to reach Untunchilamon were those which came from the west. In such vessels the Ngati Moana dared the shallows of the Green Sea, helped by the Coral Current. A canoe adrift in that flux of water will be carried at least thirty leagues to the east between one sunrise and the next.

  This canoe would in all probability have come from the island of Yam, which lies due south of Asral and Ashmolea.

  Its crew would have aided their eastward drift by salvaging whatever scraps of wind came their way, or by paddling, maintaining their strength by feeding on sharks and turtles caught fresh from the sea.

  ‘We could get away on one of those,’ said Pokrov softly.

  Artemis Ingalawa laid a hand on his shoulder and said:

  ‘It’s too early to think of that.’

  She was in no hurry to flee Untunchilamon. Life here was good. Anyone could have told that just by looking at what she was wearing: not the plain robe which would have been appropriate to one of her rank but a trouser suit of yellow silk and a silken alizarine cloak fringed with gold and cinnebar. She had known poverty in the past and liked her present financial status much better. What’s more, on Untunchilamon she was free to indulge her mathematical passions to the full, yet was far removed from the competitive pressures which sometimes made life in her homeland very difficult indeed.

  Artemis Ingalawa had found her utopia and was determined to enjoy it till the end.

  Besides, there was still a chance that Aldarch III might lose the war for control of Yestron. But, certainly, if he did win, and then stretched out his claws toward Untunchilamon, there would be many good citizens of Injiltaprajura who would be prepared to pay heavily for a place on one of the canoes of the Ngati Moana. Usually, the Star Navigators take no passengers, for the journeys they make in their open canoes are long and hard, even to those habituated to such a life.

  What motivates these people to dare where no others will? Trade, obviously. These matchless navigators traffic in pearls, ivory, dragon teeth, sponges and spices. But above all else it is the lust for pounamu which drives them. This brittle green stone they love as much as do the aesthetes of Ang, and so to acquire it they will sail the length and breadth of the Great Ocean, touching on shores so distant that one is scarcely more than a legend to the other.

  While Pokrov and the Ashdans were still watching the canoe, Chegory returned with the extra stilts. But with him as well was Shabble. Chegory had liberated the irresponsible one from the teapot. The living jewel was bobbing now at his shoulder, still humming softly. You see? You would not really want an Ebrell Islander as a servant. Off it goes on the simplest of errands: to get some stilts. Yet back it comes with the most feckless delinquent on all of U ntunchilamon.

  ‘Chegory,’ said Ingalawa, chiding him. ‘I thought we could have done without Shabble’s company tonight.’

  ‘But Shabble loves dinner parties,’ said Chegory. ‘Shabble loves them all too much!’ said Ingalawa. Shabble was to formal dining in the Dromdanjerie what the Empress Justina’s albinotic ape Vazzy was to banqueting in the pink palace. Need more be said?

  ‘Don’t worry about Shabble,’ said Ivan Pokrov. ‘I’ll keep our spherical friend in order.’

  ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ said Ingalawa. ‘You know what happened last time.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pokrov with a sigh. ‘I remember.’

  Shabble loves to gossip. Shabble loves to sing. Shabble loves to imitate voices with malicious intent, and is the most adroit ventriloquist imaginable. Shabble is (socially, at least) a menace.

  But Shabble did naught but hum softly as the four humans went stilt-striding through the chemical outpour to the ha
rbour bridge. There they dismounted, put their leg-lengtheners in the stilt-rack, then began to walk toward the mainland. They went slowly, slowly, for the heat was unendurable, the humidity suffocating.

  Day was almost at an end, and, in its death-throes, the bloody sun set the oily waters of the Laitemata ablaze with baleful fire. Fish in their thousands floated belly-up in those poisoned waters. Lifeless their silver, swift-fading their orange and green. An octopus groped for survival one last time then slackened and died.

  If the flow from the wealth fountains did not abate there would be nothing left alive in the Laitemata by the morrow.

  Then the dikle and shlug would spread out into the lagoon. A few days’ outflood would suffice to double the price of fish in Injiltaprajura. Still, who could complain? Production of such poisons was one of the mainstays of Untunchilamon’s economy, and there was no stopping that production even if people had wanted to.

  ' Chegory stopped to watch another sick octopus struggling in the water. The dying beast was kin to the gigantic krakens which dwelt in the Deep far to the north. Such monsters shun the shallows and will never dare water low enough to be plumbed by human divers. Hence Injiltaprajura was safe from their depredations, for the Laitemata Harbour could only be approached through lagoon passages scarcely deep enough to float a ship.

  ‘Come on, Chegory!’ said Olivia, and he hurried to catch up with the others.

  The harbour bridge rocked beneath the feet of the trampling humans, for it lacked all foundation and was afloat upon pontoons. Its boards of unpainted coconut wood creaked underfoot as creak the bones of an animated skeleton as it wrestles the lid from its coffin.

  As Chegory drew level with Olivia she dropped back. He halted immediately, knowing she meant to tap his ankle and send him tumbling. He paused, as if admiring the view. The clutter of stalls and shops scattered along the waterfront all the way from the harbour bridge to the far end of Marthandorthan. The crowded slumclutter of Lubos directly ahead. Further uphill, the hulk of Ganthorgruk, with the Dromdanjerie — home — directly above it. Higher yet, the inscrutable mass of Pearl. Then, riding the heights of Pokra Ridge, the pink palace itself and the temples and mansions of Hojo Street.

  ‘Come on, Chegory,’ said Olivia, skipping past him. ‘Come on, or you’ll be late for dinner.’

  He followed.

  They were only halfway to the shore when the sun-bloody sky flashed into rainbow. Its gaudy colours writhed like the feathers of a million peacocks afloat upon an ocean of boiling red oil. Then the waters of the Laitemata buckled, then flailed, then reared toward the sky as a monstrous shape erupted from the sunfire sea. Up from the waters it came. Huge, bulking, loathsome, vast. A kraken! Its gorged tentacles of purple-brown shed water in flurries as they thrashed.

  It was close, close, close enough to seize them. Its eyes were bloody as the sun, swollen with rage, engorged with lusts anthropophagous. Knowing that it was themselves that the eyes perceived, the humans tried to flee. The kraken groped for the harbour bridge. Shook the bridge. The shockwaves skittled the scampering humans.

  Olivia screamed in fear. She scrambled to her feet then tripped and fell. Chegory grabbed one of the rope handrails and hauled himself upward. Pokrov stayed down, clutching a knee in agony. Ingalawa got up. The kraken shook the bridge again. But this time Ingalawa kept her footing. She slid into the whirlwind stance with a combat shout so shattering it could be heard for half a league away. All praise for her courage! Yet what use was such defiance? The kraken was already hauling its vast, slovenly bulk toward its prey. Could Ingalawa outfight it? To that question, what fool requires an answer?

  Even Shabble seemed unprepared to contend with the loathsome thing from the depths, for the imitator of suns was sliding upward into the sky, singing, sweetly singing, soft-lilting in an ecstasy of music.

  Shabble’s brightness caught the eye of the kraken. Which lazily uncoiled a spare tentacle and sent its fearsome strength questing for Injiltaprajura’s oldest juvenile delinquent. The tentacle caught the ever-rasing Shabble and snapped tight around the surface of the shining one.

  There was a brilliant flash of light.

  A burst of searing heat.

  A convulsion as the kraken writhed in pain, the remnants of its Shabble-ensnaring tentacle racked by spasms of uncontrollable agony. Bright burnt Shabble, though this brightness was somewhat obscured by the fumes of incinerated tentacle which hung around the shining one.

  ‘Shabble!’ yelled Chegory. ‘Kill it kill it kill it!’

  The kraken recovered itself. Groped toward the humans.

  ‘As you love us, kill it!’ screamed Chegory.

  One tentacle of swollen purple-brown coiled round Olivia’s ankle. Chegory fell upon it in fury. In a berserker rage he wrestled with the monster. But he wrestled uselessly, for the remorseless strength of the monster began to drag the Ashdan lass toward its waiting maw. In panic Chegory tore at the tentacle with his teeth. But the rubbery substance refuted the onslaught of his incisors.

  Olivia screamed incoherently as she was torn away from the harbour bridge. Chegory grabbed her hand. Her eyes bulged with panic as she clutched him. The tentacle upreared. Chegory, still clutching, was yanked off his feet.

  Then Shabble Shabble spat fire.

  The kraken convulsed in agony.

  It outflung Olivia. She fell. Landing heavily on Chegory Guy.

  The kraken screamed.

  High and shrill it screamed.

  Shabble let rip with a blast of fire which tore the monster clean in half. Huge clouds of steam ascended from the sea, tainted with the stench of burnt monster and by fumes released by superheated dikle and shlug.

  The monster was dead. Dead, dead, dead and destroyed, while they were still clutching to life.

  Olivia was sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, clutched close by Chegory and clutching close. Artemis Ingalawa eased out of her fighting stance. Ivan Pokrov, the pain in his knee abating, picked himself up. He was eager to observe the monster’s corpse at close hand before it subsided beneath the waters of the Laitemata. He could be heard to mutter:

  ‘How interesting. How very interesting.’

  Shabble, still softly singing all the while, floated down from the heavens like a feather.

  ‘Chegory dearest,’ said Shabble, ‘there’s more than one.’

  The Ebrell Islander untangled himself from Olivia and looked round. Shabble was right! There were at least half a dozen monsters in clear sight, thrashing madly in the harbour waters. The nearest was only a league distant.

  ‘Kill them!’ he said curtly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t really want to kill anything else, Chegory dearest,’ said Shabble.

  ‘Don’t worry about the other monsters,’ said Pokrov. ‘They’ll die from a surfeit of dikle and shlug before they can do any harm. Come and look at this, Chegory. Isn’t it fascinating?’

  ‘It’s gross, it’s horrible,’ sobbed Olivia. ‘I hate it, I hate it, I want to get out of here, I want to go home.’

  ‘Come along then, darling,’ said Chegory.

  Then, soothing her as best he could, he led her shore-wards along the harbour bridge.

  In the heat of the moment he did not realise that he had called her his darling. As for Olivia, if she noticed his presumption, she did not choose to comment on it.

  The conjurer Odolo, Official Keeper of the Imperial Sceptre, had endured all manner of terror that day. He had been arrested as soon as the loss of the wishstone was discovered. He had been beaten, interrogated and threatened with torture. Only the personal intervention of the Empress Justina had spared him from the loss of toenails and fingernails both.

  Late in the afternoon, Justina had set Odolo at liberty. But that gesture of imperial liberality meant little on its own. Doubtless he was still under suspicion. He had declined the meal she offered him (his interrogators had starved him on principle) and had fled.

  Odolo had been physically and mentally exhausted by the time he got to Gantho
rgruk. It had been too late for lunch and too early for the evening meal, but he had persuaded the chef to rustle up some soup. Then he had taken himself to his bed where he had collapsed. To dream grim dreams of monsters various.

  Last and most vivid of his dreams was one in which krakens upheaved themselves from the waters of the Laitemata. This dream lacked the slapdash incoherence of image and narrative which characterises most of our sleeping delusions. Worse, it stayed bright and sharp in memory when Odolo awoke.

  Why should that worry him?

  Because he remembered the morning, and the scorpions which had swarmed to life in his breakfast bowl. Scorpions real enough, mind you! In the end, it had been necessary to pulp them with a rolling pin.

  Odolo hurried to the nearest window which had a view of the Laitemata. What he saw therefrom increased his worries a thousandfold.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Olivia was still shaking and shuddering when they reached the shore, where the harbour bridge ended at the bank of crushed red coral and broken bloodstone which ran the length of the entire waterfront of Injiltaprajura. They had scarcely stepped off the bridge when Ox No Zan hailed them. ‘I’ve been waiting for you!’ he said.

  ‘That much we could have guessed for ourselves,’ said Pokrov. ‘Did you see the show?’

  ‘Oh yes, oh yes!’ said Ox Zan. ‘Shabble was marvellous!’ Shabble did three rapid pirouettes and squeaked with undiluted pleasure. Injiltaprajura’s master of irresponsibility has never been averse to accepting compliments.

  ‘It’s Chegory we’ve got to thank,’ said Ingalawa. ‘He’s the one who brought Shabble along.’