by Toby Frost
‘Pull,’ Carveth whispered back.
Smith pulled and the door swung open. He stepped over the threshold, rifle in hand.
He looked into a long corridor, its high ceiling exaggerated by the whiteness of the walls. There was a pedestal on Smith’s right, like an empty lectern. On the opposite wall a little brass plaque hung under a big discoloured space. Smith peered down the hall. There were glass cases, racks of leaflets and no exhibits at all.
He took a leaflet from a dispenser and unfolded it as the others followed him in.
‘We’re in the 20th Century hall, from the looks of it,’ Smith said. ‘This must be where they kept all the cultural artefacts. . . but it looks like they’ve gone.’
‘Gone?’ Carveth turned from one of the brass plaques, appalled. ‘Gone? Are you telling me we’ve gone halfway across the galaxy to find it’s all bloody gone?’
‘Shush,’ Smith replied. ‘We’re in enemy territory. Come on.’
One of Green’s men waited at the end of the corridor. ‘You won’t like this,’ he whispered.
Smith looked around the corner, into the entrance hall.
The hall was decaying, but it had once been magnificent. Behind a ticket box, a grand staircase rose to the upper levels of the museum. A ten-foot statue of Saint George dominated the foyer, his uplifted sword almost brushing the chandelier above his head.
The hall had been looted. Ropes and posts had been thrown through the windows of the ticket box. The heads of the two lions that crouched at the bottom of the stair-case had been smashed to dust. A sooty mess in one corner showed where a fire had been made from books, leaflets and pieces of broken chair.
But the statue was the worst; that was sacrilege.
Someone had drilled two holes into the saint’s forehead and thrust bits of metal into them so that they jutted out like antennae. A rope had been tied around his waist, attaching a rusty barrel to his rear so that it stuck out of his backside. They had turned Saint George into a Ghast.
‘Bastards!’ cried Smith. ‘That’s Saint George! They’ve given Saint George a metal arse, the filthy swine!’
A shadow moved on the staircase. ‘ Ak? ’
Green gave Smith a hard look. ‘That’s torn it. You’ve got them going,’ he whispered.
‘They’ve got me going,’ Smith replied. ‘How dare they do that!’ He reached to his side, for his sword.
‘What’re you doing?’ Green hissed.
‘I’m off to get some exhibits for the Dirty Moonman display.’ He drew the sabre. ‘Get a glass box ready, Green – I’m going to pin some insects.’
Green grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘Let me do this,’ he said.
Step by step, the Ghast descended into view. It was an early-model drone, Smith saw: brutish and slightly porcine, like a school bully. The thing was cautious. It approached as if on unstable ground, its disruptor gripped firmly in both hands.
Smith slipped the Civiliser out of its holster.
At the bottom of the stairs, the Ghast turned left and Green ducked into the shadow of the statue of Saint George.
The Ghast approached, picking up its feet to avoid making noise. Its coat creaked softly. Green crept out behind it.
Green’s hands snapped around its helmet, his leg tripped the Ghast and he yanked its head back and up.
Smith heard Green grunt, saw the Ghast kick once, and there was a sound like a branch snapping in cloth. Slowly, Green lowered it to the ground, grabbed its coat and dragged it back into the shadows.
Suruk made his purring, croaking sound. Smith nodded approvingly.
‘Ugh,’ Carveth said. The whole scene reminded her far too much of a man trying to ravish a lobster.
‘Looks like they’ve sacked the place,’ Smith said. ‘I suggest we split into teams and see what’s left.’ He stepped over the dead drone and took a handful of Family Fun Maps from the leaflet rack. ‘Here. We’ll take the Yothian Cultural Artefacts hall.’
The hall was broad and high, lit by ferroglass panels in the roof. It felt desolate and cold – haunted. Carveth peered into a glass display case, which showed a dummy wearing Yothian formal dress. The Yothians were tall and broadly conical, with little yellow heads. The dummy looked like a huge road cone.
‘What an amazing civilisation,’ Rhianna said.
‘Do you think they stack?’ Carveth replied. She squinted at the metal plaque. The light was bad, and it was hard to make out the words.
‘Only in the mating season,’ Smith said. ‘Come along, men.’
They walked on. There was no sign of the tablets, nothing that would indicate where they had gone. This part of the museum had been largely left alone by the Ghasts; it was clear that it would never have housed anything of M’Lak origin.
‘Look!’ Carveth said, pointing into one of the Yothian display cases. ‘That one’s pulling a moony!’
‘The model’s fallen over,’ Rhianna explained. ‘The Yothians are far too dignified a people to do that.’
Carveth huffed. ‘Another “higher” lifeform.’
Rhianna quickened her pace to catch up with Smith and Suruk, her sandals flapping.
Carveth stayed behind, struggling to read the plaque beside the fallen model. She reached out and ran a finger over the embossed words. ‘ In courtly dress,’ she made out, ‘ which is—’ Confused, she ran her finger back and forth before realising that she was trying to read the head of a screw. A screw in the dark leads to confusion, she thought, reflecting that this was probably worth remembering.
Behind the plaque, something went thump. She sprang back, stared into the gloom and looked down at her hand.
The wall had shaken; she’d felt it in her fingers. Surely not. But here was the proof: as if into quicksand, the plaque was sinking into the wall.
‘Boss?’ she said, much quieter than she had intended.
‘Boss!’
Ten yards away, Smith looked round. ‘Shush!’ he hissed. ‘Keep it down, Carveth. Come on.’
‘But I—’ The wall split open. Air blasted into the hall and light shot around the edges of the glass case with the fallen Yothian as if a door were opening into heaven.
The case swung back, and blinding light flooded the hall, turning Carveth into a silhouette. Smith ran to her side, pistol ready. Suruk raised his spear ready to throw.
A figure stood before them in the centre of the light.
The rush of air set her skirt and sleeves fluttering. Slowly, gracefully, the woman stepped into view. Wise blue eyes looked them over. She smiled.
‘Halloo! Come here for the tour, have you?’
The woman stood at the edge of the doorway. She was attractive, Smith noticed, and vaguely familiar. She was an android, he realised, and a remarkably pretty one.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘welcome to my abode! A lady and gentleman, a Morlock and a fellow simulant. Certainly makes a change from school parties.’
Smith took a step forward. ‘Good evening, madam. Do you live here?’
She smiled again. ‘Yes, indeed I do! For I am the Archivist, you see. Ah, the Yothian seems to be pulling a moony again. He does that. Very bad. Really must sort that out.’
She led them down a set of steps, spiralling deep into the earth. Smith followed, then the others, and behind them half of Green’s men, their boots clanking on the metal stairs. The Archivist glanced over her shoulder. ‘Nearly there,’ she told Smith.
‘What is this place?’
‘This? Ah, you’ll see. Should be rather interesting, I think.’
The walls were white, as was her dress. It made her seem ethereal. She reminded Smith of the Lady of the Lake, albeit dryer. But she was too smart to be ghostly, too clever and quick. Smith thought it quite appealing.
The stairs ended at an airlock door. The Archivist paused at the lock, ready to dial the entry code. ‘Seeing that you’re not a school party, I don’t think we need to scan for lice,’ she said brightly, and her finger flicked around the dial. The airloc
k slid open and lights boomed and flickered in the cavern beyond.
They stood at the edge of a warehouse the size of a cathedral nave. Rows of packing cases made corridors and partitions in the vast room, interspersed with relics too large to be packed away. Paintings lined the walls.
‘Blimey,’ Carveth said, which Smith thought was pretty accurate.
Kaldathrian dung-statues stuck their heads above the lines of crates like malodorous giraffes. A Yothian fertility glider hung from cables in the roof, its landing gear dangling lewdly over their heads. Smith recognised a sphere of rock, twenty yards across and etched with symbols: the ball from a game of planet-hockey played by the Voidani space-whales, a sport capable of devastating whole solar systems. Current thinking held that the ancient Voidani had once played this sport near Earth, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs when the ball went off-side and demolished Central America.
‘Behold!’ Suruk pointed to a statue of a huge M’Lak, throwing its head back to laugh – unusually, this one was broad as well as tall. ‘Brehan the Blessed. We are in the halls of the M’Lak.’
‘Amazing,’ Smith said to the Archivist. ‘You compiled all this yourself?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I had a couple of robot forklifts to help, but yes. I’m rather glad you dropped in, to be honest. Terrible conversationalist, your robot forklift.’
‘It must have been a lot of work.’
‘Not really. I mean, a lot of what there was has been lost. The war does that, of course. The best you can do is keep a few things safe. We all need culture, don’t we? Look at that,’ she added, pointing to a framed picture on the wall. ‘I bet you’ve never seen one of those before.’
They stopped. Smith peered up at a poster almost as tall as he was. It looked like Ghast propaganda, but although the style was right, the subject was undoubtedly wrong. It showed a Ghast perched on a stool under a spotlight, legs crossed in front of it. Instead of a trenchcoat and helmet, it wore long gloves and a little round hat and was sticking its stercorium out.
‘What the devil is that?’ Smith said.
‘It’s an advertisement for some kind of show,’ the Archivist replied. ‘It’s almost two thousand years old, dating just before the first Number One took power. Once, the Ghasts had names, lives, identities of their own. But then they had to take the choice that comes to all sentient life sooner or later: the tough option of individual freedom, or the comfort of collective obedience. Mankind chose freedom, after some indecision. The Morlocks have always chosen freedom. But the Ghasts chose. . . poorly.’
‘So they were once proper people,’ Smith said.
‘Foreigners, of course, but still people. Incredible. But not impossible, I suppose. It just goes to show how far you can fall.’
The Archivist pointed at the picture. ‘It may be all the history they have. Once, even the Yull were sane. They had a civilian government, a developing society. . . back then they only jumped off cliffs on special occasions.’
Smith stepped back from the picture, its spell broken. ‘It’s quite something,’ he told the Archivist. ‘You’ve done the Imperial People a great service by keeping all of this safe.’
‘Unless anyone actually wanted their ancient artefacts back,’ Rhianna observed from behind.
Smith didn’t comment: Rhianna had been quiet and a bit sulky ever since they had got here. Her disapproval of the museum had increased greatly since they had met the Archivist, for reasons he could not figure out. Funny bunch, girls. You’d have thought that two intelligent, attractive women would get on very well. He thought about this for a while. Something tugged at his sleeve.
‘—think we’ve found it,’ Carveth was saying. ‘Come on boss, wakey-wakey.’
Smith followed her past scowling statues of famous M’Lak. At the far end of the corridor stood a slab of stone nearly nine feet high, covered by a tarpaulin. At a nod from the Archivist, one of Green’s men pulled the tarpaulin away.
Down one side of the stone were blue characters; down the other, red markings, representing concepts and arguments respectively. There could be no mistake – this had been made by the M’Lak.
‘Whoa,’ Rhianna said.
‘This is ancient indeed,’ Suruk declared. ‘I can read ideas – notions – but I am shamed to say that the exact meaning is lost to me. It tells of the days before time, that I know, but otherwise it is as clear as a Scotsman’s mist.’
‘Me too,’ said the Archivist. ‘Not really my area, I’m afraid.’
‘Perhaps I may help.’ They looked around: Morgar stood behind them, cleaning his glasses on his clan colours. ‘There is one amongst us who understands ancient things. Tormak!’ he called. ‘Come here a moment, would you?’
From the troops stepped a slight, rather refined-looking warrior. He ran a hand through his thick mane, looked up at the stone and said, ‘Ah, yes, well, yes. . . quite.’
‘This is my old friend Tormak,’ Morgar said. ‘Listen closely, for he’s a clever chap.’
Suruk turned to the newcomer. ‘You are a speaker of runes, friend?’
‘Fine art and antiquities, actually,’ Tormak replied. ‘Not really my field, this, but still. . .’ For a while he scrutinised the stone. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is definitely the Tablet of Aravash. As you no doubt know, it is written that if the Tablet ever sees the light of day, Armageddon will begin. Which would be a problem, were Armageddon not going on right now.’
‘Oh,’ said Morgar, ‘I suppose galactic war does rather count. I never thought of it like that. . .’
‘So there is nothing to fear from the Tablet,’ Suruk observed. ‘Let us shed some light upon it.’
Smith turned to the Archivist. ‘Could we move the tablet?’
‘Oh no,’ she replied, ‘we can do much better than that.’
She reached up and pulled a cord, and a lamp flicked on above the stone.
‘Daylight bulb,’ she explained.
With a soft crackle, the tablet began to fall apart. Dust trickled from the blank rock, rolled down the face of the stone, piled itself into a heap at the base. The sand fell in thin sheets over the rock, and where it had been there were little marks, channels cut into the stone. Like the breaking of a mould or the stamping of a coin, images appeared in the smooth face of the tablet.
There were two figures repeated several times on the stone: one could have been Suruk as drawn by a six-year-old, or by Suruk himself. Smith found the other unsettling.
It was a M’Lak, no doubt, but a sort of upright shadow with huge holes instead of eyes, leaping over the horizon.
‘Shall I read?’ Tormak asked.
‘Go ahead,’ said Smith.
‘Proceed,’ Suruk replied.
Tormak pointed to the top right of the stone. ‘Well, I’d say this stone depicts several scenes involving the afterlife. Up here is a pair of stock figures, you see: a warrior and, next to him, this rather sinister stylised person. He repre-sents death. He is the Dark One, who leads warriors from this life to the next. The pictures show the warrior’s journey in a sequence, rather like the Beano.’
Tormak moved his hand across the stone.
‘In this picture here, the writing reads: Suddenly, the warrior’s bright eyes burn dim. How can this be? The answer is that the Dark One has come to take him. In this next picture, we see them passing through the Ways of the Dead, until finally they arrive at Ethrethor, the hunting-ground of the dead. The last picture reads The Dark One leads the warrior to the ancestors. The ancestors hail the noble hunter and they all have a party.’ Tormak stepped back and rubbed his chin. ‘Interesting. Now that is unusual.’
‘Go on,’ Smith said.
Tormak indicated a set of runes. ‘These are very peculiar. They give a location for Ethrethor. It says: They shall meet where the day never ends and laughing they shall ride the very lightning.’
They looked at the stone, staring at the symbols as if the force of their gaze could draw meaning from the rock.
‘It’s really interesting,’ Rhianna said, ‘but no.’
‘So we draw a blank,’ Smith observed.
‘Maybe not.’ He looked round. It was Carveth. She glanced nervously from face to face, as if surprised to find that she had spoken. ‘Chances are I’m going to regret this for the rest of my life. But that’s what the adverts say for Lloydland: There’s so much fun the day never ends.’
‘But what of the lightning?’ Rhianna asked. ‘Surely that’s a reference to the respect for the power of nature held by indigenous peoples.’
‘Nah, it’s a ride at Lloydland.’
Smith turned from the stone to Carveth. ‘How do you know all this?’
The android shrugged. ‘They send me offers sometimes. I get discounts from being in the Pony Fan Club.’ She folded her arms, suddenly defensive. ‘I can join the Pony Fan Club if I want. I’m only two.’
Smith looked back at the tablet. ‘So it’s some sort of prophesy, you say? I’m not entirely convinced. I’ve never heard of a prophesy advertising a theme park before.’
‘Well, not a prophesy as such. But if Lloyd Leighton owned the land, why not stick a theme park there anyway?’
‘Hey, yeah,’ Rhianna said. ‘And Leighton was well-acquainted with Number Two. Maybe there is more to Lloydland than we thought. . .’
‘So Lloydland is where Leighton went to research the Vorl,’ Smith said quietly. ‘And that’s where he disappeared. And, from the looks of it, where we will find the Vorl.’
Carveth nodded. ‘And by a happy coincidence, it has rides and ice cream. Everybody wins.’
Boots clanged on the stairs behind them. A soldier jogged into the hall, gun swinging against his hip as he ran. ‘Captain Smith? Orders from the Grocer to get you topside, sir. Gertie’s here.’
They hurried back up the steps into the museum. Green was waiting for them. At the doors, Smith turned back.
‘Thank you, madam,’ he said. ‘Your assistance has been invaluable. It may have saved the universe.’
‘It’s always nice to have visitors,’ the Archivist replied.
