The Young Dictator

by Hughes, Rhys

  On board the largest spaceship, Gran stood and watched the aliens on benches pull the oars. “Faster!” she cried. The drummer in the rear of the vessel increased the speed of his rhythm.

  During her time on Bellatrix Three, Gran had invented, perfected and patented many brand new weapons and technologies in order to conquer Earth and destroy Jenny and Maya. Oars carved from neutron star hearts were only one example. She laughed…

  In front of her, on a console, was a red lever.

  This lever, if pulled, would activate the most incredible and dangerous weapon that had ever been conceived.

  It had taken Gran weeks to design and build it.

  But it could only be used once.

  Gran stared at it. Even she felt a twinge of fear when she contemplated what would happen if it was pulled.

  It was intended as a last resort to avoid defeat.

  She was tempted to pull it anyway!

  Resisting the temptation with difficulty, she licked her lips, turned her head and gazed through the porthole.

  So many stars! So many planets and comets!

  She shook her fist at them all.

  “You saps!” she chortled.

  So much fun to insult celestial objects!

  The aliens continued to work their oars. She never gave them any rest at all. Why should she? She snarled.

  “Faster! Pull harder! We’re not at Jupiter yet!”

  The drum rhythm increased.

  “Crush and dominate!” screeched Gran.

  “Crush and dominate!” echoed the crew. They laughed as they said it and made faces. Gran smiled back.

  It seemed she had taught them well after all.

  It was dawn. Birds were singing outside her window. Jenny smiled and listened to them carefully. How sweet of them to trill melodies like that just for her! She knew this music wasn’t really for her sake, but it didn’t hurt to pretend it was, did it? She climbed out of bed and wandered into the bathroom to wash her dreamy face.

  She dressed and went downstairs. Today was the big day, a day when she did something fine and moral for a change, the setting free of a slave! Jenny was aware she had a lot of sins on her conscience and that it would take ages to cancel them out. She didn’t intend to try cancelling them all out. Certainly not! One or two would do.

  The breakfast room was empty, of course, and she helped herself to a big bowl of cornflakes. The cornflakes eaten in Buckingham Palace were coated in real gold. She munched her way through them and then looked for the note the Queen was supposed to have left her. But it was nowhere to be found! Had the Queen forgotten?

  Jenny sighed and was about to tramp back up the stairs and knock on the Queen’s bedroom door, when she recalled that the Queen wanted to enjoy a lie-in and shouldn’t be disturbed.

  “I’ll have to wait for her to get up,” Jenny decided.

  She looked at the clock. A quarter to six. She just needed to kill time for the next five hours or maybe more…

  But she was too agitated for that and she kept pacing back and forth through the rooms. She bit her lip. Maybe she ought to ask Maya to write a note instead? She also had the necessary authority. And so, apparently, did Chairman Meow, who was asleep in a basket in a nearby room. But Jenny hesitated and didn’t go to wake either of them up. Why not? Then she clenched her jaw tight and snorted.

  “Why do I need a note at all? It’ll be far more fun trying to sneak in without permission and freeing Tubbs on my own! This is what I’ve been missing lately. Good healthy adventure!”

  She buttoned up her coat and left the palace through a back door. She also needed practice for when Gran arrived with her invasion fleet. Jenny was acutely aware that she had grown soft living in luxury and had lost a lot of the killer instinct that had made her successful in the first place. To rescue Tubbs without assistance would help to sharpen her reflexes again and toughen her enough for the fight ahead.

  She walked at a fast pace through the streets of London.

  It didn’t take long to reach the Houses of Parliament. There were two guards at the main entrance, both of them dressed in red cloaks and very tall furry hats. They carried halberds in their hands, a long weapon that is a cross between a spear and an axe. Jenny decided to avoid them and look for a less dangerous method of entry.

  She crept around the back of the building and found an open window. It was very small, too narrow for an adult to climb through, which is why it had been left open; but Jenny was just able to squeeze herself into the gap. She wriggled her legs and oozed forward into darkness. Some sort of storeroom, full of mops and buckets!

  The dust made her sneeze but there was nobody else in the room. She was safe for the time being. She groped her way to the door and managed to open it. A brightly lit corridor lay on the other side. She slipped out as quietly as she could and scurried down it to a staircase. She guessed that the kitchens would be on a low level.

  So she went down, sliding on the bannister for added efficiency. Then she heard voices and the marching of feet. Guards were coming! How to avoid being caught by them? There was only one method. Jenny stood as flat as possible against the wall and closed her eyes. The guards came up the steps, puffing and panting very loudly.

  “Look at this statue! I’ve never seen this one before!”

  “Don’t be silly. They never put new statues in here now. It must be an old one. Probably you just never noticed.”

  “There’s no nameplate on it! That’s unusual.”

  “Maybe it’s of someone so famous that they don’t need to be named. That seems perfectly logical to me.”

  “I can’t think of any little girls in British history so famous they don’t need to be named. Not a single one.”

  “Neither can I, come to think of it. Which means—”

  “Yeah, we didn’t get a good enough education. All the same, I’m very curious as to who it’s supposed to be. It looks a little bit like Jenny, who used to rule the galaxy, doesn’t it?”

  “Heavens no! It’s nothing like her! The sculptor ought to be ashamed of himself if this statue is supposed to be Jenny Khan! I reckon it’s from the very ancient times before the invention of sick and homework. You know, when the dinosaurs were at large.”

  “At large? You mean to say they weren’t always big?”

  “Nah, at one point they were tiny.”

  The guards seemed satisfied with this explanation and resumed their patrol of the stairs and corridors. Jenny heaved a sigh of relief and with great care continued her exploration of the building. It was a bit like a maze on the inside, but she was familiar with the layout from the time she had spent as a Member of Parliament.

  She passed many other statues as she proceeded and she wondered if any of them were real people pretending to be made of stone? But there wasn’t much point worrying about that now. She caught a whiff of food, some sort of potato pie, and followed her nose, knowing it would lead her to the kitchens, to the galleys and the galley slaves who worked in them. She looked forward to meeting Tubbs!

  “But what if he’s forgotten about me?” she gasped.

  No, that wasn’t possible. However hard they worked him down there, however much they tried to break his spirit and degrade his body with all the tough physical work, they would never be able to erase from his mind the days when he worked for the greatest and most clever dictator Britain ever had, namely the one and only Jenny.

  At last, after many twists and turns, she found the door to the kitchens. She opened it a crack and peered through.

  It was diabolical in there! Hot and steamy and loud!

  Jenny frowned. Occasionally the clouds of steam would part in some random breeze and then she got a clearer view of what was happening. It came as something of a shock to see purple creatures with four arms and feet that pointed backwards strolling around and flicking whips over the bare backs of sweating human beings…

  “The skargills!” Jenny cried. “What are they doing here?”

  She sl
ipped through the door and hid behind a barrel of olive oil. The skargills were urging the galley slaves to work even harder, despite the fact they were already operating at maximum efficiency. One skargill on a podium was fatter than the others and he was banging on a massive iron drum with four very heavy drumsticks.

  His drumming created a rhythm for the slaves to stir the pots. Chained to enormous wooden spoons, these slaves groaned as they pulled, pushed and pulled again on the clumsy handles.

  “Simmering speed!” shouted the skargill who seemed to be in charge, and the drummer increased the speed of the rhythm. Boom boom boom! It was like listening to a thunderstorm inside a gigantic cauldron. Waves in the immense pots of soup crashed from side to side and sometimes a splash of broth jumped out onto the floor.

  “Take more care, you idiots!” screamed the skargill in charge, as he viciously flicked his whip left and right.

  Jenny looked at the slaves one at a time. Finally she spotted Tubbs at the end of the line! He had grown a bushy beard and his skin was tanned with turmeric and other exotic spices. Unlike the other slaves, who often had dead eyes, his gaze was bright and strong. It was clear that his spirit still hadn’t been broken by this treatment.

  There was nothing Jenny could do right now to rescue him. Too many skargills everywhere. She decided to wait.

  Jenny remained hidden behind the barrel all day. Late at night, after the flames beneath the pots were turned down, the slaves were unchained from the wooden spoons and allowed to bed down on straw in a corner of the kitchen reserved just for them.

  They were still chained, but now it was to each other, rather than to the domestic oars of the wooden spoons. One skargill stood watch over them but he clearly didn’t take his duties very seriously, for he soon fell asleep on the job and began snoring.

  Jenny tiptoed out from her hiding place. She had cramp in her legs but she managed not to cry out in pain.

  As she approached the area where the slaves were, one or two of them looked up, so she quickly put her fingers over her lips. “Shh! I’m a friend and I want to set you free!” she hissed.

  Tubbs turned sharply at the sound of her voice.

  “Miss Khan? Is that really you?”

  “Yes, friend Tubbs,” Jenny whispered.

  “I’m so happy to see you once again!” he blurted.

  “Keep your voice down, you fool!” she warned him. “You don’t want to wake the sentry up, do you? The skargills don’t have much compassion and you can’t expect mercy from them.”

  “Believe me, I’m aware of that,” Tubbs said bitterly.

  Jenny crouched down beside him. “Listen, I’m here to set you free, to set all of you free. Where are the keys?”

  “The keys to our shackles, you mean? The chief skargill has them. He wears them on his belt and even sleeps with them under his pillow. You’ll never get them off him. It’s impossible.”

  “But how am I supposed to release you from these chains?”

  “You’ll have to cut them off, Jenny.”

  Jenny pouted. She didn’t have the physical strength or stamina to cut through so many thick links of metal. And the noise of a hacksaw, even if she could get hold of one, would be sure to wake the sentry; and then he would call for reinforcements, and before you knew it, all the skargills in the building would be rushing at them.

  “How come the skargills are your masters?” Jenny asked.

  “They appeared through a hole in the floor one day and declared that their own businesses beneath the ground had gone bankrupt. So they were looking for work up on the surface.”

  “And they found jobs without any trouble?”

  “Well, most people felt uncomfortable working with slaves. It’s true that there were sufficient volunteers for the positions of slave master, but at the end of the day, the fact the skargills have four arms went largely in their favour. They can hold four whips at the same time, you see, and that cuts down on unnecessary expenses.”

  Jenny chewed her lip. “This is outrageous!”

  “None of us enjoy it down here, trust me!” Tubbs laughed.

  Jenny sniffed. “What are you cooking that needs such big pots and so many big spoons and galley slaves?”

  “Dinosaur soup,” said Tubbs.

  “Oh, I see!” Jenny arched an eyebrow.

  Tubbs explained that dinosaur soup was the hardest soup in the world to cook properly. “It needs to boil for sixty million years and then simmer for another ten million before it’s ready.”

  “That is rather a long time,” remarked Jenny.

  “And it can only be eaten with a mile-long baguette; or, if you have a pretension to be continental, then croutons the size of meteorites. I regard it as a waste of time and effort myself.”

  Jenny lowered her voice even more. “I’ve just had an idea. Why don’t I lead you all in a rebellion against them?”

  “Against who? The croutons?”

  “No, the skargills, you daft pudding!”

  Tubbs looked bewildered. “I guess I ought to leave the details to you. I never truly understood anything you did. You were always a smarty-pants and I was just your simple driver.”

  “It’s high time this ‘smarty-pants’ led a slave revolt. Are you with me or against me?” Jenny hissed into his ear.

  “With you, of course! I will follow you to the end!”

  “And these other men. Are they reliable?”

  Tubbs nodded. “Yes, but if it turns out they aren’t, then we can simply kill them with the knives and forks.”

  Jenny said, “If there’s no way of getting these chains off you, then you will all have to remain joined together at the neck during the uprising. It’s going to take a lot of coordination.”

  “I have plenty of that. I’m a driver, remember?”

  Jenny accepted his assurances in this matter and she moved along the line of slaves, whispering the plan of action into every ear, waking up the few who were asleep. Nobody objected.

  “Let’s get the sentry first!” Jenny ordered.

  “Ready when you are,” said Tubbs.

  “Now!” cried Jenny; and she shouted a battle cry.

  The slaves rushed at the skargill.

  He awoke in time to angle his trident and impale one of the slaves, but he was unable to pull the weapon back out and use it again. Tubbs and a few other men picked him up and carried him to the giant bubbling pot of dinosaur soup. “Over you go!” they cried.

  Into the soup he splashed and he screamed and thrashed for less than a minute before sinking to the bottom and drowning. But his screams had alerted the other skargills and they came rushing to the scene, armed with tridents and scimitars and morning stars.

  Jenny narrowed her eyes. The morning stars were the most vicious of the weapons. It’s a kind of mace with a spiked ball on the end of a handle and it can cut through armour and shields.

  “All together! Keep in step!” she bellowed.

  But the slaves weren’t able to get their timing right and they stumbled and tripped over each other and got in each other’s way. It appeared that the uprising was over already. The skargills would win easily against this undisciplined lot of rebels. How sad!

  Then Jenny had an idea. She hastened to the podium where stood the iron drum. The fat skargill was no longer seated there, so she took over his place and started banging the drum.

  The galley slaves, conditioned for many years to working in time with this rhythm, suddenly became coordinated. “Ramming speed!” screeched Jenny above the awesome booming noise.

  The slaves picked up one of the huge wooden spoons, cradling it under all their arms, and used it as a lance. Charging forward they collided with the nearest skargill, knocking him into the skargill directly behind him. In turn, he was propelled into the next skargill in line and so on, until almost a dozen of the purple creatures had fallen over backwards. The slaves did not hesitate to trample them as they went.

  “Long live smarty-pants!” cried Tubbs.

/>   And all the galley slaves abruptly took up this shout.

  “Victory to smarty-pants! Victory!”

  One of the slaves received a blow on the back of the skull from one of the skargill’s weapons. He slumped and his friends had to drag him along, together with the slave killed by the sentry. “Turn to the left!” Jenny cried as more skargills joined the battle from another doorway. Without a blink of hesitation, the galley slaves obeyed.

  They swung to the left and the wooden spoon struck down another ten skargills. “Spin in a circle!” Jenny shouted.

  Round and round went the slaves, like a soup-spattered tornado, some hitherto unknown force of nature trapped inside a room and creating lots of havoc in order to be set free again. Skargills fell everywhere, some of them even throwing themselves into the pots of soup rather than be struck by that dreadfully revolving giant spoon.

  “Enough!” Jenny stopped beating the drum and panted for breath, the sweat glistening on her reddened cheeks.

  The skargills lay dazed or dead all about the kitchens.

  A few had managed to escape, but it wasn’t worthwhile pursing them down the hole that led to their cavern.

  The slaves cheered. Tubbs took a scimitar from a fallen skargill and used it to free the living slaves from the couple of dead ones. He wasn’t able to cut the chains with the blade, so he had to sever the heads of the corpses. It was grim but necessary work.

  “We’re not out of danger yet!” warned Jenny.

  “But we’ve overthrown our oppressors!” chuckled Tubbs. “That’s all any of us ever dreamed about since we were sentenced here. I think that we deserve to celebrate with some wine!”

  “Wine! Wine! Wine!” chanted the other slaves.

  “Where are you going to get wine from this early in the morning?” It was with a contemptuous sneer that Jenny asked this question. She knew that they didn’t have much time left.

  “We’re in the kitchen, aren’t we? There’s always wine to cook with, a really good pasta sauce often uses wine.”

  “Wine! Wine! Wine!” repeated the delirious slaves.

  “You fools!” snapped Jenny.