by Hughes, Rhys
They sailed towards it. A slab of land no larger than a small island, it was all that was left of the continent.
“I get it!” cried Maya. “The metric system isn’t used so much in the USA, so the aliens were less disadvantaged by the change in the mass of the kilogram. So the fighting here was much more fierce and it resulted in the almost total destruction of the landmass. They probably used ray guns to turn the country into wisps of vapour!”
“What do you want to do, honey? It won’t be much fun living on this tiny piece of land surrounded by sea.”
“Let’s turn around and go back to France,” said Maya.
“Do you want to live there, honey?”
“Not just live, but be in charge. Rule them.”
“I suppose they owe us a favour.”
Maya added thoughtfully, “Why stop with France? Maybe we should make ourselves rulers of Europe?”
“It’s worth a try, honey,” said Lisa.
“Yes it is. After all, there’s no school to go back to.”
Lisa and Maya looked at each other. Then they threw back their heads and clenched their fists and laughed.
The way that Genghis Kan’t met his death wasn’t quite as he had wanted. Instead of a brave heroic final charge at his enemies, he was killed by a trick. When Jenny’s fleet landed on Bellatrix Three in front of his palace, his remaining troops were ready to fight back. But a hatch opened in the main spaceship and a figure emerged.
It was Albert and he was carrying a white flag.
“That’s strange!” said Genghis Kan’t. “They want to surrender, even though they have almost won the war!”
He was suspicious but he thought it would be bad manners to refuse to allow Albert into the palace. Albert walked up to the throne on which sat the dictator. He was sweating heavily.
“What’s that thing around your neck?” asked Genghis Kan’t.
“They made me wear it,” hissed Albert.
“I don’t understand. It’s some sort of collar locked in place.”
“Yes,” said Albert, “it’s a bo—”
He never finished the sentence. There was an explosion.
Albert had been sacrificed, used as a suicide bomber against his will as a cheap and easy method of killing Genghis Kan’t. This had been Gran’s idea. Because Albert was a Vegan, the gentlest race in the galaxy, he had found it impossible to say no to her.
The blast tore his head off his shoulders. His head struck the head of Genghis Kan’t with such force that it knocked it off. And two heads went rolling across the floor. The pet monster of Genghis Kan’t came bounding into the room. It saw the remains of its master and then it began crying. A dozen bodyguards had also been blown to smithereens. They were the last loyal troops of the destroyed tyrant.
Gran and Jenny marched into the room followed by their own soldiers. They stared at the mess that had once been the ruler of the galaxy. With a grim smile on her face, Gran ushered Jenny towards the throne. Jenny sat in it and made herself comfortable.
“I am the new dictator of the galaxy!” she cried.
Her soldiers fell to their knees.
“Jenny! Jenny! Jenny!” they chanted.
Even the pet monster bowed down before her. “Just like the Queen of England did,” Jenny pointed out.
It was total victory for her. A new dawn.
“You are now in a position to have anything you want,” said Gran. “It can’t be withheld from you, my girl.”
Jenny nodded. “There are many things I intend to have brought to me in due course, including sweets and money, but first I want to ask you an important question. Will you answer it?”
“Of course I will. To the best of my ability,” said Gran.
“But will you answer truthfully?”
Gran rolled her eyes in dismay. “If I must.”
“Glad to hear it. This is what I want to know. Why did you carry that mammoth to the top of the hill?”
Gran hesitated and bit her lip. Jenny frowned. Her ancient eyes blazing with repressed fury, Gran snarled:
“In order to roll him down the other side!”
“I thought so,” said Jenny.
As the days passed, Jenny grew more and more sluggish. Her skin began to change texture and colour. Something weird was happening to her, but she didn’t know what. She called Gran to the throne room and asked her if she had any ideas or suggestions.
Gran was troubled and pulled at her chin. “I feared this might happen, my dear. It’s bad news, I’m afraid.”
“What does it mean?” asked Jenny.
“You are now the greatest dictator in the history of the galaxy. You are even greater than Genghis Kan’t because you managed to overthrow him. You are the ultimate dictator.”
“That doesn’t really explain why my flesh is turning into a weird shiny substance and why I’m finding it difficult to move. You don’t suppose I have caught a dreadful space disease?”
Gran shook her head. “No, it’s a natural biological process. A dictator is like a caterpillar. You know how caterpillars turn into butterflies and moths? First the caterpillar becomes a chrysalis and then it changes inside a cocoon and grows wings and eventually it breaks out and emerges as an adult and looks and acts differently.”
“I’m going to turn into a butterfly, you mean?”
“Not one of those. A dictator is the caterpillar stage of a demon. That’s what you’ll become in a few weeks.”
“A demon! But I don’t want to be a demon!”
Gran shrugged. “There’s no way of preventing it. Unless—”
Jenny blinked hopefully back at her.
Gran said, “The rules of Hell decree that dictators, when they are very successful, turn into demons, but those rules can be changed. Why not? It will involve an invasion of Hell and the overthrow of the Devil. But there is no reason we can’t do that. Think big!”
And she threw back her head and laughed loudly.
Jenny asked sceptically, “How am I supposed to invade Hell? I don’t even have directions to get there…”
Gran leaned closer. “You do know what a black hole is, don’t you? It is a collapsed star so dense that it distorts the fabric of space; and in the process, it becomes a doorway to Hell. All you need to do, my girl, is set off with a handpicked team of special troops in a spaceship and find the nearest black hole to Bellatrix Three.”
“Fine. And then what?” wondered Jenny.
“You just need to enter it, pass through to the other side, challenge the Devil to a battle and overthrow him. You will be free to crown yourself the new ruler of Hell and change the silly rules about how dictators must turn into demons if they are too successful. The Devil’s not as tough as he pretends to be. Twist his horns clockwise…”
Jenny frowned. “How do you know so much about him?”
Gran smiled. “He’s an old flame.”
Owl Scared of the Dark
The special spaceship was ready and Jenny was ready too, though she felt more nervous than she ever had before. Ruling Britain and starting a civil war was one thing; conquering the galaxy was another; but invading Hell and defeating the Devil was beyond her previous imaginings and she had doubts about her ability to succeed.
“Am I really up to this task?” she wondered.
“Of course you are!” Gran assured her. “Believe me, the Devil isn’t as tough as he wants people to believe.”
“It’s all bluster, is it? Just him putting on an act?”
Gran nodded. “Yes, that’s right. I’m not saying he’s powerless. In fact he’s a tough cookie, but he’s not invincible and that’s what matters. Even the toughest cookie will crumble when dunked into a strong cup of tea. If you turn yourself into a cup of tea, you’ll be certain to win, my dear. And I mean that only as a figure of speech.”
“I thought as much,” said Jenny. “Well, goodbye!”
Gran smiled and said quietly:
“Remember his weak spot. Turn his horns clockwise
and his head will fall off. You’ll have to get very close to him to do that, of course. Flatter him, tell him how superb he is, and you’ll be able to approach him easily. I’ll be waiting for you right here.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come along?”
“No, my girl. Someone needs to stay behind to watch over the empire you have created. If we are both absent, the planets of the Federation may attempt to win their freedom again.”
“That’s a good point,” agreed Jenny.
Gran said, “Before you go, accept this parting gift.” She held up a pair of sunglasses with very dark lenses.
Jenny tried them on. She couldn’t see a thing. “These are to protect my eyes against the fierce fires of Hell?”
“If you like,” said Gran mysteriously.
“Thanks a lot. Goodbye!” cried Jenny. She strode toward the ramp of the spaceship and walked up it into the vessel. Gran watched her go and waved. The selected crew was already on board. The ramp was drawn in and the hatch slid shut. Then the craft rose rapidly into the sky on its anti-gravity engines and was soon a speck.
Gran stood on the steps of the crystal palace and looked at the peculiar landscape of Bellatrix Three. Then she turned smartly on her heel, paced back to her luxurious private quarters, rubbing her hands as she went. She spoke to herself in a soft voice. “With Jenny out of the way, I can start to establish my secret regime, a state within a state! It’s always safer to be a shadowy figure in the background!”
She entered her apartment, sunk into the most comfortable chair, read another chapter of a book by her favourite author, Machiavelli. Then she laid the book down and indulged herself in some nostalgic memories of the time when she was a young girl and the Devil was her boyfriend and the cosmos had seemed a more exciting place. That was long before she knew anything about power politics.
Such innocence! Gone forever. Ah well!
Jenny moved with increasing difficulty. Her skin was hardening more and more every day, acquiring a shiny surface like a crystal; and this surface was starting to become transparent, revealing a strange shape deep within, something bulky stirring in the centre of her being. She knew what it was and what it meant. Time was getting short.
It was the demon inside her and soon it would hatch!
She kept her midriff bare, so that she could check continually on what was happening through this body window.
But she also forced her mind to focus on the practicalities of flying the spaceship through a black hole. The nearest black hole to Bellatrix Three was six light years distant. She ordered the spaceship into hyperspace and issued commands to her navigator and pilot.
The journey was brief and comfortable.
Then the spaceship arrived on the edge of the black hole.
Jenny pressed her face to the porthole and whistled slowly through her teeth at the impressive sight of the collapsed star, a pit of nothingness that sucked in all matter and energy that came within its gravitational field. It was an utterly dark object but fringed with a froth of dancing light. There was a sudden lurch and she stumbled.
“Our craft has been caught by the black hole,” said the pilot with more than a little fear in his voice. He did his best to conceal his fear, as all the crew members did, but it was obvious.
“Don’t worry,” soothed Jenny. “Gran assured me that we can survive if we enter the black hole in the correct manner. We must aim for the very centre of the hole. Be prepared for some weird effects and please bear in mind that time and space are going to be playing tricks on you. Also you will be stretched as thin as feasible…”
“How thin is that?” asked the pilot.
“It means you’ll be stretched to the point where your body is nothing more than a line of molecules. You won’t have any width at all. You’ll be just length, pure length, like string.”
The pilot and navigator swallowed with difficulty.
“It’s called spaghettification,” Jenny added, “but once that part of the ordeal is pasta — I mean past — we’ll be fine. We’ll turn back into solid beings. At least I sincerely hope so!”
The spaceship lurched again. It was accelerating into the middle of the black hole, which was expanding and shutting out the stars on all sides. A series of alarms went off somewhere. Immense gravitational forces were stretching the ship and under ordinary circumstances the hull would have snapped into many tiny pieces. But…
Circumstances inside a black hole aren’t ordinary.
Far from it! They are bizarre.
Because the front end of the spaceship was nearer the black hole than the rear end, gravity pulled unequally on the vessel, stretching it. Because this stretching was equally distributed, the occupants inside didn’t notice it. To an outside observer, if there had been one, Jenny’s nose would have grown longer and longer and thinner and thinner, but because everything was stretched in proportion, including her eyes and her brain, no change was noticeable from her vantage point.
“It doesn’t really hurt. That’s a relief!” she remarked.
And this was true. It should have hurt, being stretched into spaghetti, being turned into string a million miles long, but the nerves that register pain were also stretched and the pain signals had so far to travel up them to reach the brain that they never arrived. Jenny frowned. Blackness was all she could see through the porthole.
Then something appeared in the far distance.
A smudge of colour. Smoky red.
She called to the navigator, “Are we still on course?”
“Yes, your excellency!” came the reply.
“Then that must be the outskirts of Hell!” Jenny breathed.
The smudge grew bigger and bigger.
It was a spherical flame.
“We’re almost there!” she cried.
The cliffs hung in nothingness and they were on fire; but pathways and stairways existed between the flames. The spaceship docked against one of the cliffs and the ramp was extended.
Although the flames spurted strongly, they weren’t so bright that eyes couldn’t bear to look at them. Jenny didn’t think that the sunglasses Gran had given her would be needed after all.
Jenny, her pilot and navigator went out. A bodyguard of twenty troops accompanied them, the best fighters in the Federation, which doesn’t say much for their ability. But they were loyal.
The instruments had confirmed that the air was breathable, although a little too rich in sulphur fumes, so there was no need for bulky spacesuits. An old man sat on a rock and his long beard smouldered. He was gritting his teeth and cursing to himself with such concentration that he failed to notice Jenny until she was right before him.
“Are you an inhabitant of Hell?” she enquired.
He looked up, startled, and Jenny saw that despite his age, his bright blue eyes were young. He opened his mouth and seemed unable to form words. Then he blurted, “Yes, I am!”
“Will you give us directions to the Devil?”
The old man pouted. “What do you want to go finding him for? He’s a rogue without any compassion. When I arrived here last year I thought he might lend a sympathetic ear to my complaints, but he just laughed when I told him all my troubles. He’s bad.”
“That’s his job, to be bad, surely?” Jenny pointed out.
The old man pulled his beard. “Listen, the reason I’m here is because of a girl like you. I was the guardian of the IPK, the official kilogram that set the standards for all other kilograms. Little girls are trouble! I showed it to her in good faith and then she sabotaged it! The shock was too much for me and I had a heart attack and died.”
“And you awoke and found yourself here? Then you can’t have been a very pleasant person in the real world.”
“I don’t deny I had my share of little sins,” sighed the old man, “but I don’t think I deserved to be sent to Hell.”
“It’s very pleasant chatting to you, but I don’t have very much time to spare. I’m turning into a demon, you see. So if you
could just give me the directions to the Devil I’d be grateful…”
“Ah yes! I can see a demonic shape moving inside you.” He pointed at her midriff and shuddered. “Horrid!”
“My skin is transparent because I’m about to become a chrysalis. If I don’t find the Devil soon I’ll burst.”
“And the demon will fly out? To be honest, it looks more like a mean old woman than a traditional demon.”
Jenny frowned. She felt the demon inside her knocking with ancient knuckles on the inside of her skin. “An old woman?” She turned to her pilot and asked him to bend forward and peer deeply into the core of her being, to try to describe it accurately.
“To be honest,” the pilot replied nervously, “it looks like your Gran. It’s her spitting image, in fact. Sorry!”
Jenny was shocked. And yet this made sense.
The old man sighed. “I guess demons come in all shapes and sizes. If I aid you, will you put in a kind word for me, maybe persuade the Devil to send me back to France? That’s fair.”
Jenny agreed to this proposal. The old man said:
“Just follow the path until you reach a fork. Then take the left path and keep going until you reach another fork. Take the left path and so on. You must always take the left path at every fork. Sooner or later you will meet the Devil. He’s easy to recognise.”
“Because he has bat wings and a forked tail?”
“Heavens, no! That’s just a silly myth. He looks like an owl seated on a unicycle. But he does have horns!”
Jenny was genuinely grateful for the old man’s help. She said farewell to him and carried on down the path, followed by her team. Fires jumped out of the rocks on both sides. There was no vegetation, no animals, just bare jagged rocks and leaping flames.
“I wonder what people eat around here?” Jenny wondered.
“Each other?” suggested the pilot.
Jenny considered this possibility, but then she remembered that food wasn’t necessary in Hell. Anyone who was trapped down here would live forever without eating or drinking and in fact that was supposed to be part of the punishment. Gran had told her.
