The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers coaaod-6

by Hugh Cook

  Once they were in the Analytical Institute, Ivan Pokrov led them to his private quarters where they found the conjuror Odolo sleeping sweedy.

  ‘Let’s wake him up,’ said Chegory, still hoping for advice which would help them wage war against Binchinminfin and win Olivia’s freedom.

  But Pokrov had other ideas.

  ‘Let the poor man sleep,’ said Ivan Pokrov. ‘He’ll know as much at dawn as he knows at the moment, no more and no less. Meantime, come through to my office. I’ve got something to show you.’

  All followed Pokrov into his private office where, with solemn ceremony, he produced a large flask.

  ‘I’ve been doing some alchemical research in my spare time,’ said Ivan Pokrov. ‘This is the end result of my labours.’

  Then he took some small china cups and poured them each a dose of a subtle fluid the colour of a virgin’s inner flesh. Uckermark sniffed. Then sipped. Then rolled his eyes in delight.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘Beautiful!’

  Logjaris tried it.

  ‘Not bad,’ he admitted.

  ‘Not bad?’ protested Uckermark. ‘It — it’s magnificent!’

  A duckling raised on such stuff would have grown into a dragon. A kitten which lapped on such would have matured to a tiger. So at least thought Uckermark. But Chegory thought otherwise. For a single sip sufficed to tell him that this was alcohol. Chegory, who knew the true evil of this filthy poison, spat it out, then turned on the analytical engineer.

  ‘You made this?’ said Chegory.

  ‘Truly,’ said Pokrov, with pride.

  Chegory was appalled. Was there not one person of integrity in all of Injiltaprajura? He had thought Pokrov every bit the solemn scientist, dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and learning, yet here he was revealed as a bootlegger dealing in drugs most foul — drugs which corrupt the sOul, rot the liver, maim the unborn in the womb, savage the brain and leave the victim a helpless imbecile shuddering from one waking nightmare to the next.

  At least Injiltaprajura still owned one upright citizen. Chegory Guy himself had not wilfully broken the law. (So he thought — conveniently forgetting incidents such as his vigorous attempt to vandalise the door to the Cabal House.) He had tried to serve, honour and obey the established order. (Was there any merit in this when the alternative was almost certain to be execution?) He had tried to be an obedient slave to the law, to be a dutiful cog in the system like one of the thousands of little titanium cogs that clicked around in the heart of the analytical engine. (So he told himself, forgetting that one of his daily dedications was to knifefighting practice — hardly a hobby indicative of meek submission to the ruling order.)

  Face to face with temptation, Chegory vowed that he would try to remain a strictly honest and upright citizen, direct and truthful in all his dealings with his fellows, sober for life, an unspotted virgin till the day of his marriage. He would show them! They would see that an Ebrell Islander could be as moral as the next person! Or more so! Despite the bloody stain which tainted his flesh he would prove himself pure!

  As Chegory was so thinking, he heard someone sniggering. With murder in his heart he searched all faces, ready to kill when he discovered the mind-reader who was laughing at him. But it was only Shabble, chortling at some private joke.

  ‘Come, Chegory,’ said Ivan Pokrov. ‘Aren’t you going to drink with us?’

  ‘No!’ said Chegory.

  He waited for the men to be done with their drinks and to settle down to the business of planning war against Binchinminfin. But other drinks followed the first. When the flask of liquor was drained, Ivan Pokrov produced a second. Then a third.

  The party began to get lively. Logjaris and Uckermark broke into song. A very strange song with a chorus in which they imitated dog, cock, cat and seal. Much to the bemusement of Chegory Guy, who had never seen a seal in his life, nor heard of one either.

  In the end, most of the men had consumed so much of this toxic substance known as alcohol that they had reached the vomiting stage. It is very strange, but people who should know far better will often spend good money — excellent money, the best that work can buy — to go through this experience of overloading their systems with potent poisons. They will do this not once but repeatedly — which supports the theories of the eminent philosopher Stupa, who holds that to exist is to suffer, and that human beings are constructed in such a way that they value suffering above all else.

  At last Chegory could stand the company of these drunks no longer. He left them, and Ivan Pokrov found him much later sitting alone on the rocks outside.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Pokrov.

  ‘What isn’t?’ said Chegory. ‘You — this is craziness! A demon in the palace and all you — all you do is get drunk!’

  ‘I’m not drunk,’ said Pokrov. ‘The others are, but I’m not.’

  ‘But you’ve been drinking that, that alcohol stuff, haven’t you?’

  ‘What" of it?’ said Pokrov.

  ‘It’s against the law!’ said Chegory.

  Pokrov laughed. Softly.

  ‘It is!’ insisted Chegory. ‘And for good reason! It rots you, doesn’t it? It kills you, right? Isn’t that so?’

  There was a pause while Pokrov thought his way around the problem. Then the analytical engineer said:

  ‘You want to be perfect?’

  ‘Well,’ said Chegory, ‘I don’t want to kill myself, that’s for sure!’

  ‘We are mortal, you know,’ said Pokrov.

  By using this inclusive ‘we’, Pokrov was perpetrating a half-truth, for technically Pokrov was immortal. He would never die of old age. Yet he could be killed.

  ‘We’re mortal?’ said Chegory. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  Ivan Pokrov responded by giving him the first and most annoying of the Seven Unsatisfactory Explanations:

  ‘When you’re older you’ll understand.’

  ‘No,’ said Chegory, ‘that’s not good enough. You can’t get out of it just like that. What the hell are you on about? Drinking, that’s drugs and stuff. What the hell’s that got to do with mortality? Hey? Come on, man, what is this crap?’

  ‘When I say we’re mortal,’ said Pokrov, ‘I mean we can’t live free of risk.’ That was true. It was as true of himself as it was of Chegory. ‘So your — your obsession with health is — not exactly misplaced, I wouldn’t say that. But — let’s say it’s, well, overstated. You’re in danger of becoming a fanatic.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all crap/ said Chegory. ‘You’re trying to tell me we should — what? Take poison? Because — because what? Because everyone dies? Is that any reason to hurry along to get killed?’

  ‘You are a bit fanatical about this,’ said Pokrov.

  ‘Fanatical!’ said Chegory. ‘Is that what you call it? I’ll tell you what I call it! I call it serious! And why? Because when you’re a stinking Ebby, man, you better be serious, because people are out to kill you, that’s why, you can’t fuck up because then you’ve had it, man, just one mistake and that’s it, wham! You never lived with, with people hunting you, you walk in the street and you hear, well, things, people say things, that’s it, then you want to smash them smash them smash — bones, you could smash, blood, I could smash — I could kill some bugger! That’s serious, man! Then now, okay, now there’s a demon, there’s all hell running loose, and you, you’re, it’s like — I mean, what’s going down here, man? You think this is some kind of joke? Lives on the line and you, you crazy shits, you just sit around, you just get smashed, and me — serious, why not? There’s people I — well, care for, okay? But, oh, I’m an Ebby, right? So it’s not serious for you, oh no, suddenly you’re this great big adult, I’m a kid or something, mortality, all that crap, what’s that supposed to prove?’

  Thus Chegory Guy.

  In brief.

  In truth, he soliloquised long, so full of hate, rage and frustration that at first he never noticed Ivan Pokrov’s departure. When he realised
the analytical engineer had walked off, abandoning him without apology, he was so full of fury that he was ready to kill someone.

  There was only one thing to do.

  Chegory did it.

  He hunted out his favourite sledgehammer and expended his rage by smashing some much-hated boulders to pieces, sweating in his violence until his body and emotions were exhausted entirely, and, reeling with fatigue, he sought some place to sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Dawn came to the island of Jod. The dark of night flowed into freshets of blood as the sky haemorrhaged. A bruised and bloated carbuncular sun oozed from the crimson horizon like a bloodclot incarnadine forced from a full-fist wound by slow but remorseless alluvial pressures. Red glowed the bloodstone of the streets of Injiltaprajura. Red was the brooding coral strand which fringed the Laitemata. Red were the beaches of Scimitar and red was the seaweed of the bloodstained lagoon.

  But white was the Analytical Institute. The marvellous building uprose upon Jod like a cool confection of ice and snow, a manifest miracle in this mosquito-tormented clime of sweat remorseless and fevers oppressive.

  Unfortunately, within this building of beauty was a scene of the utmost depravity. In Ivan Pokrov’s quarters a number of comatose bodies lay slumped in a stuporous sleep hard to distinguish from profound concussion. The owners of those bodies had given themselves to a profound, shameless debauch of the flesh. They had overindulged in obscene and poisonous drugs and were now suffering the consequences.

  Among those who lay there as if dead were the wizards Pelagius Zozimus and Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin. Once their apprentice days are behind them wizards seldom get drunk, for when they become intoxicated these masters of the mirific run risks far greater than those faced by lesser beings. However, these two had got as thoroughly wasted as the rest of them.

  Even the cutthroat Thayer Levant had drunk himself into a helpless stupor, despite his highly developed sense of self-preservation.

  This was the scene which confronted a sober and bad-tempered Chegory Guy when he came in from the servants’ quarters where he had grabbed a little sleep in the last part of bardardornootha. He relieved his emotions by kicking everybody in sight. A few groans greeted this performance. But nobody was actually roused to consciousness by Chegory’s endeavours, and the groans were but sleeptalk complaints from the dim depths of drug-bewildered nightmares.

  Then Chegory found Shabble, who was hiding in a fish tank, pretending to be a stone. Chegory grabbed hold of the feckless one. Shabble was cold and inert in his hand.

  ‘Wake up,’ said Chegory, tossing Shabble into the air.

  The globular one described a perfect parabola. Plunged toward the floor. Then snapped into sun-bright life and swept upwards in a tight, flight-delighting spiral.

  ‘Hello, Chegory!’ said Shabble happily.

  ‘Hi.’ said Chegory' moodily.

  Then picked up a scimitar which one of the sleepers had plundered from the pink palace the night before. While he waited for his comrades to rouse he practised a few head-lopping strokes.

  Pelagius Zozimus was first to wake. He woke from force of habit. He was a master chef, after all, and one of the burdens of a cook’s life is the necessity to rise before long before others are awake. Think of this when next you seat yourself in your dining room to banquet upon that delicate concoction of snake’s eggs and the flesh of half a dozen different serpents which there awaits your delight. It didn’t get there by itself, you know!

  [Those who are nauseated by the Originator’s casual references to the consumption of snakemeat and the eggs of snakes must remember that the Originator is not a Practitioner. While the Crime in question demands Final-isation whether one follows Religion or not, a lighthearted attitude toward the Crime is understandable (if not pardonable) in an alien atheist, ^. in Twee, Master of Religion.]

  [With reference to Zin Twee’s comment above, it is not at all clear from the Text that the Originator is in fact an atheist. While some passages display a distressing impiety, nowhere is there a denial of the existence of Things Beyond. Despite the existence of a certain Passage in the Text which appears to denigrate blasphemously all Establishments, it is still possible that the Originator could be, to take a couple of examples, a worshipper of Evil (Pure or Applied) or a member of the Danatos Blood Cult. Newt Gerund, Chief Pedant.]

  Habit is not the only reason why Zozimus woke. A baby, child of one of the female servants who dwelt on Jod, was bawling loudly. If there was one thing Zozimus found it impossible to sleep through it was the racket of a crying child.

  Pelagius Zozimus hated babies.

  That was one of the reasons why he had become a wizard. Not the sole reason, of course. He had been born and raised in Wen Endex, and in early youth had made a most shameful discovery about himself. He was an intellectual. There is no place for such in Wen Endex, where the Yudonic Knights rule by brute force and unthinking violence. Consequently, a disproportionate number of wizards come from that province, and from Galsh Ebrek in particular, despite the enormous difficulties of the pilgrimage from there to the castles of Argan’s Confederation of Wizards.

  Pelagius Zozimus decided to wake the others, but when he acted on decision the task defeated him, just as it had defeated young Chegory Guy.

  ‘Right,’ muttered Zozimus. ‘I’ll at least make sure they stay awake once they do wake up.’

  Then Zozimus, who was in a decidedly warlike mood, made the most ferocious curry imaginable. Into it went peppercorns complete, ground grey pepper of the Yellow Phoenix grade, the smouldering orange-brown of cayenne pepper (known also as dragon fire), a quantity of Five Heavenly Virtues Spice Powder, and last (but by no means least) an enormous amount of that curry powder known as Leaping Green Lizards’ Incendiary Delight.

  A couple of the sleepers roused and were presented with the curry for breakfast. Naturally, none of them could eat it. Indeed, after a night of boozing they were scarcely in a condition to eat anything. Ivan Pokrov took one mouthful of the newborn dish which Zozimus had just birthnamed Wizard’s Revenge, turned a very funny colour, then withdrew. He did not return for some time. Even the barbarian Guest Gulkan, who was inured to suffering by a lifetime’s practice, refused a second mouthful.

  Log Jaris might have been able to get through some of the stuff, but the matter was never put to the test, for the bullman was still dead to the world.

  ‘Fussy, are we?’ said Zozimus.

  He sampled his own wares, looked thoughtful, then put some rice on to boil.

  In the end, only Chegory and Zozimus dined on the curry, and then only after diluting it with quantities of boiled white rice. They were both sweating ferociously by the time they had finished, partly from the sultry heat of the morning but mostly from the inner fires ignited by the master chef’s misplaced genius. The other humans contented themselves with the juice of several green coconuts, a fluid much to be recommended to anyone in their condition, for it is most certainly the best of all known remedies for that dreadful affliction known as a hangover.

  [Here an inaccuracy born of a pardonable ignorance. An ancient medical text in our possession clearly states that a hangover will be cured most swiftly by cooling the body, draining it of blood and replacing that drug-contaminated fluid with a transfusion from an immaculate source. While a codex of later date reports that mass fatalities resulted from an experiment designed to test this thesis, we nevertheless must accept the authority of our ancestors, even if we find ourselves sadly lacking in the expertise required to exploit this knowledge. Xjoptiproti, Fact Checker Interpolative.]

  [There is nothing sad in this lack since we none of us indulge in alcohol. With tragic exceptions! Such as Xjopti-proti himself, who was found dead a day after the writing of the above. A flask of potato liquor was at his side and a still for the manufacture of this lethal concoction was discovered in his study. Need I say more? Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]

  Breakfast was scarcely over when a panic-stricken servan
t came rushing in to say that the Hermit Crab was without — and was demanding an audience with Chegory Guy.

  ‘Oh shit!’ said Chegory, smacking his forehead. ‘I never fed the thing! It hasn’t been fed since — since — gods! Is it three days? Four?’

  Chegory tried to think. He had given lunch to the Crab on the first day of disaster — the day on which the loss of the wishstone had been discovered. But on the second day he had been too busy with things like the petitions session. Then there had been the banquet in the evening and the dragon and — well, after that the Hermit Crab had been the last thing on his mind. He had spent the third day sleeping and hiding out in Uckermark’s corpse shop. Then on the fourth day — yesterday — there had been the depositions hearing, Varazchavardan’s coup, and all the madness which had followed.

  The Crab had been totally unfed for at least three whole days!

  ‘Well, come on,’ said Ivan Pokrov. ‘Let’s not keep the thing waiting. That wouldn’t improve it’s temper, you know.’

  ‘You’re coming with me?’ said Chegory.

  ‘You can go alone if you want,’ said Pokrov.

  ‘I, uh — yes, well, company’s fine. Yes, come, sure.’

  With that, Chegory set off for his interview with the dreaded Hermit Crab. He started remembering some of the things he had been told about its Powers. About, for example, the sorcerer who had been turned inside out after trying to enslave the Crab. Flies had settled upon his pulsating [Here details of twenty-seven revolting incidents have been deleted. By Order. The gusto with which the Originator narrated the said incidents is itself something which verges on the obscene. Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]

  Chegory and Pokrov found the Hermit Crab waiting at the main entrance to the Analytical Institute. The morning sim was shining and sheening on the mottled surface of its carapace. Beneath its body, where its bulk blotted out the sun, the shadows were thick, dark, black. The Crab’s claws were infolded against its carapace. Chegory tried to figure their reach then abandoned the effort. Brute force was the least of the dangers he faced. Nevertheless, the sheer bulk of the Crab was intimidating. Chegory had forgotten how huge it was.