by Hugh Cook
'Mike,' said Yot, 'do you like fire?'
'Sure,' said Mike. 'Fire good friend. Him got bad temper sometimes, but we all friends, we understand.'
'Well,' said Yot, taking a deep breath, 'I'm here to tell you about a special kind of fire. We call it the Flame. This Flame is a god. Not any god, but the Lord God of All Gods. Do you hear me?'
T got no ears,' said Mike. 'But I hear okay. You joker with god to share. But I not into that stuff. If some god so great, then him make us believe by god-magic. Not need thin boy with warts running round saying what what.'
'You don't understand,' said Yot earnestly. 'If our god forced us to believe in him, we'd have no free will. Our god works by giving us preachers to bring us the revealed truth. Gouda Muck is one of those preachers.'
'This not new thing,' said Mike. 'Many preacher talk god, say god most important. You know what most important? Woman with soft arse. That best thing. I get woman some day, nice woman, make baby. We have kids. That nice thing, you know?'
'Theology is more important than sex,' said Yot coldly. 'We have the truth. We have proofs. The Flame reveals itself everywhere through fire. The nature of god is to transform one thing to another, for creation is the essence of divinity, and transformation is the essence of creation.'
'Creation means making,' said Drake, who had picked up some of this religious lingo while walking the tunnel with Sully Yot. 'Transformation means change. Divinity means god, more or less.'
'You not dnly one speak Galish,' said Whale Mike. 'You got long word but not make much sense. Your god god because change things. That make something god? Man, my belly change things. Food to shit.'
And Whale Mike laughed.
'Food to shit,' he repeated. 'That interesting. You look next time you cut some joker open. You have good look, poke around inside.It don't hurt him, he dead by then, so you look. Man, I spend two days once with some joker's belly. That good thing. Food come down to stomach, see, then—'
It was a long explanation. Yot listened, then said:
'It's not really the same thing. You see, we change food to - to something not food because, well, we're alive. But fire isn't alive. Fire changes only because god is in the fire, demonstrating divinity. You understand? Animals are alive, plants are alive, but fire isn't.'
Yot repeated this in three different ways, trying to get the facts into Whale Mike's head. When Yot was finished, Mike sat for a while staring at the fire with his tiny, imbecilic eyes. He looked puzzled. Then his fat, stupid face split into a grin.
'Now I understand what you getting at,' said Whale Mike. 'You think maybe fire not alive. Then maybe fire god.'
'You're getting nearer the truth,' said Yot. 'That's good! I'm glad you're starting to believe.'
'Man,' said Mike, 'I hear, that one thing. Believe, that something else. You real fancy speaker, but you got no more sense than rabbit fart. You not get upset now, we good friends, but I got to say this. You think fire not alive, but him alive all right. Him good friend, that what.'
'Fire—'
'No, you fart later. Now listen. Fire, him alive because he need feed, otherwise die out. Him born just like us, live strong, die grey. You put him under water, you find out how much god you got there. He die under water, you try some time.'
Yot did his best, arguing his thesis remorselessly. But whatever he tried Mike countered. Finally, Yot and Drake withdrew, leaving Mike to tend his fire in peace.
'He's too stupid!' said Yot angrily. 'He can't understand! All he can think about is a woman with a soft arse!'
'Well, that's understandable,' said Drake. T can identify with that.'
'Oh, you would! No, Mike was the wrong choice. He's not really human. He's - he's a filthy stupid animal. We should try someone else. Someone smarter.'
'Like the Walrus, perhaps?' said Drake.
'Well. . .'
'It's pretty late,' said Drake. 'We'd better be getting some sleep. What say - what say we leave conversions until our next good meal? Okay?'
'Okay,' said Yot.
Even religious fanatics need to go to bed sooner or later.
33
The Old City: remnants of a military-industrial complex (properly known as Karalagazoko Atalamiti Zenavanarik) built in Penvash during Technic Renaissance which briefly revived some of the High Science which had survived the terrors of the Days of Wrath; wrecked during Genetic Mutiny, an episode so destructive that accounts of it were few, inaccurate and fragmentary.
Next day the pirates rose early, stoked their fires, blessed the night for sparing them from rain and snow, tore the last sinews from the bones of the animals they had murdered the day before, checked the stowage of their wealth and weapons, then started downstream in high spirits.
Soon they encountered another gigantic phallus of green star-stone, just like the one they had seen on the previous day. Bucks Cat repeated his remark about his uncle Habby, for Cat treated jokes as consumer durables, to be used as long and as often as possible. Jez Glane, in turn, repeated his desire to find a matching 'woman-one'.
Then a little horseplay started.
Jon Arabin let the more boisterous burn off their surplus energy. When things started to get serious - Simp Fiche suddenly acquired a bloody nose, and a couple of tempers showed signs of being the worse for wear - he called them to order and led the way downstream again.
Up ahead was a hammering sound which grew steadily louder as they got closer. Nobody suggested turning back. Marching in strength, with weapons to back up their
muscle, today they feared next to nothing. The fresh meat so recently put in their bellies had made them new men -and heroes, too, at least until they encountered some real live danger with claws to it.
After half a league, they reached a stunted tower from which came the hammering. The ground round about shook; they felt like a handful of lice standing on the skin of an enormous drum being beaten with a big silver ladle by a one-eyed hunchbacked dwarf wearing red velvet trousers and red felt slippers to match.
'___ ________ ___' shouted Slagger Mulps.
'____________?' shouted Jon Arabin in reply, having seen the Walrus's mouth move.
'____________ ________________' replied Mulps.
Arabin made a curt gesture of discontent. They moved downstream until it was quiet enough to hear themselves shout.
'Man!' said Jon Disaster, his head still ringing. 'The sound of that thing's like being knocked about the head with a mud pack.'
That started a comparison competition, which Simp Fiche won by comparing the hammering to something too gross to bear mentioning.
They went on with added confidence, believing by now that they had found the Old City of legend, and had met the worst it had to offer. They passed many ruins half-hidden amongst dishevelled evergreen forest. Often they had to scramble over walls of honest-built granite, great blocks of it good for another thirty million years or more, at least, if left to do their job in peace.
The ruins grew steadily higher, while the river dividing those ruins grew wider, chuckling along cold and hard. Sometimes, the earth throbbed underfoot. Steam and thin threads of acrid yellow smoke drifted from cracks in the ground. One place echoed with the chimes of a dozen bells, which they could not locate, though they looked hard, on the off-chance that the bells in question might be made of gold.
Late in the afternoon, Rolf Thelemite, who was in the lead, cried:
'Careful coming over the wall! There's a hole on the other side!'
'My kind of hole?' called Simp Fiche.
'Your kind?' said Jon Disaster. 'We didn't know you were choosy!'
'I am, you know,' replied Simp Fiche. 'I like them tight enough to bleed.'
And when Fiche saw the hole, big lips of stone opening into a tunnel glistening with wet pink light, he declared it too big for him.
'But Jez will try it, surely?' said Burpskin, with a glance at Glane. 'After all, it's the woman-thing to match the man-spike.'
After a certain
amount of hilarity, as pirates competed with each other in crudity, nothing would serve but that Jez Glane must lower himself into the hole.
'I don't think that's wise,' said Drake suddenly.
'Why not?' said Glane.
'It doesn't feel right,' said Drake, who, for no reason that he could pin down, had a terrible foreboding about that hole.
'Doesn't feel right?' said Glane. 'Man, we haven't tried it at all yet! How can we know how it feels?'
'Yes, for sure,' said Bucks Cat. 'He's got to lose his virginity some time.'
'Who knows?' said Glane. 'There might be something down here worth eating.' And, with a grin, he got in. 'Nice and greasy,' he said. 'A snug enough fit. And
He frowned, for the lips were closing on him.
'Pull him out!' said Jon Arabin.
Whale Mike snatched Glane by the hair, meaning to yank him from the hole. Too late! Metal spikes slammed from the sides of the hole and riveted Glane through and through. Impaled, he tried to scream, but his agony was too great for him to cry out.
Steam hissed up. Then, with a glutinous bubbling sound, the hole filled with boiling yellow fluid.
'Stand back!' shouted Jon Arabin.
They leaped clear as the fluid fountained up, burning where it fell.
'I'm burnt! I'm burnt!' cried Raggage Pouch, scalded by the flying fluid. Staggering blind, he fell into the river.
The fluid in the hole receded as rapidly as it had come. Jez Glane was gone - all but for his bones, impaled on bright steel. Even as they watched, the bones crumbled. There was the 'Whoosh!' of a great in-suck of air - and the last traces of their deceased comrade were gone.
Drake, trembling, turned, tried to walk away, tripped over his own feet, and fell sprawling. Someone was urinating noisily. Someone else was vomiting. Sully Yot felt a tightness in his chest, and began to find it hard to breathe. The incident had precipitated a minor asthma attack. Yot had seemed to outgrow his childhood asthma on reaching the age of twelve, but the stresses of the journey had at last brought its return.
'Where's Pouch?' said Arabin.
'The damn fool fell in the river,' said Mulps.
'Pouch!' roared Arabin. 'Come back here you . . . you
His voice trailed away to nothing. He stared at the water. Others joined him on the riverbank and watched in silence as the water boiled with blood. Suddenly the bloody waters vomited upwards, throwing a shower of river, stones and body-parts into the air. Settling swiftly, the waters soon ran smooth and clean once more.
'Blue-blooded mandarins,' muttered Arabin, in shock and wonderment; he had reached right back to his early childhood for that exclamation.
Drake got to his feet slowly, feeling sick. Two more comrades dead! Just like that! It was too much to take. So many good men dead. The weapons muqaddam, aye, slaughtered by the Collosnon. Quin Baltu, and - and all the others. It was grief just to list them.
Good comrades. Men of my life.
Drake looked round at the shocked and shaken survivors. These were his comrades true. Many of these he'd felt like killing at times. Some, on occasion, had tried for his throat. But now . . .
My friends. My life.
He felt it hard to remember a time when he had not known these men. You who I love.
Now that was right strange. Weird, even. To feel so close to such a gross gang of warped, twisted killers and outcasts.
But are we not men ? Aye, we 're men all right. The same blood as princes.
And Drake, tears in his eyes, prayed to the Demon, to the Flame, or to Whoever It Was, not to write them off without thought and feeling.
For a while, the survivors watched silently as Whale Mike probed the river's waters with his battle-rod, trying to spear the death within the water. Then a quavering voice spoke:
'This is the Old City all right,' said Tiki Slooze. 'We'll none of us get out alive, no, none of us.'
'Shut up, you!' said Slagger Mulps. 'Or I'll smash you to death and damnation on the spot.' Then, to the Warwolf: 'Jon, let's make camp. I'm thinking a good fire's the thing, though there's daylight still. We've no need to walk further today.'
'Aye,' said Arabin, still slightly dazed. 'Aye. Just a little further, to a . . .a cleaner spot. Then we'll camp.'
That they did, Jon Arabin making a fire, as usual, with the tinder box kept safe in his sea-pouch. All were slow to sleep that night, resting uneasily beneath the gaunt shadows of darkness-haunted trees.
Out in the night lay the greater, darker bulk of half-demolished towers and monumental blockhouses of uncertain origin and unknown function. The river talked to itself, muttering, rambling, churning syllables of madness over and over, sweeping the chill of the Penvash mountains down toward the sea. Strange noises filled the night: distant thumpings, grindings and strange whistle-noises. And an intensely irritating high-pitched humming.
Tiki Slooze woke them near dawn when he screamed.
'What is it, man?' roared Arabin.
'My legs!' screamed Slooze. 'Something's bitten my legs off!'
'Nonsense, man,' said Arabin. 'You've been dreaming.'
To prove it, Arabin felt in the night for the legs of the torture-screaming Slooze. And felt the stumps, felt the wet hot gush of arterial blood spurting over his fingers. He moaned, fumbling for something to tourniquet with - but it was too late, would have been too late no matter how fast he moved, and Tiki Slooze was very shortly dead.
'Are we all here?' said Arabin.
'Aye,' said an optimist.
But a check revealed one missing: Harly Burpskin.
The survivors stood back to back, weapons drawn, until it was light enough to explore. Day showed their dirt-rough faces gaunt with fear and hunger.
'Let's move,' said Ish Ulpin, more ready than the others for a task of death.
'Keep together,' warned Arabin. 'We don't know what's out there.'
'Thanks for the warning, mother dearest,' said the Walrus.
None of them expected to find Burpskin alive.
Hunting, they found no proper tracks, only great trails of slime suggesting a snail had been there - a snail two or three times the size of a horse.
'And that,' said Arabin firmly, 'I won't be believing till I've cut it in half with a hatchet.'
All they found of Harly Burpskin was his head lying lonesome near the river. Though they were all potential cannibals, nobody suggested eating it: instead, they made a decent funeral pyre and burnt it, with what ceremony they could muster.
'He was a good enough sort,' said Drake, as the flames ascended.
'Aye,' said Meerkat, 'we'll give the man that.' 'And may the Doom Beyond be merciful,' said Peg Suzilman.
All were strangely moved by that little funeral service. It was decent enough to die by sword or by drowning, but the monstrous, senseless deaths their comrades were meeting with here were different.
Having disposed of the mortal remains of Harly Burpskin, they prepared to do the same for Tiki Slooze - only to find that what was left of Slooze had disappeared while they had been tending to Burpskin's head.
'Here's a fresh slime-track!' said Rolf Thelemite. 'Let's follow it!'
'Are you mad, man?' said Peg Suzilman. 'It's a killer!'
'Aye,' said Arabin, 'but anything that moves on slime can't move fast, can it? Stands to reason.'
'Evil things are not governed by reason,' said Sully Yot, mouthing a phrase Gouda Muck had taught him.
'I'll see my enemy face to face before I die,' said Jon Arabin grimly.
With that, he set off. The strongest fell in behind him. Shortly, they came upon a slug. It was yellow, translucent, and several times larger than an ox. As they stood gaping, it turned on them, cruising forward at about half a man's walking pace.
'Kill it!'said Ish Ulpin.
'Nay, man,' said Jon Arabin. 'It must have a bloody big man-buggering mouth on it to start with. Worse, where there's one there may be a thousand. We know what it is. We know we can outpace it. Let's be going.'
/> The others followed him downstream.
They crossed more slime-trails, and spotted other monstrous slugs cruising in the forest or lying, as if oblivious to the cold, on the roofs of gigantic blockhouses. When they halted, they became aware that there were at least a dozen slugs on their trail.
'No good going back then,' said Mulps.
'Yes, and we can't chance crossing the river,' said Meerkat, looking with a shudder at the haunted waters which had chewed Raggage Pouch to pieces then spat out the bits.
'Then let's put our trust in speed, boys,' said Jon Arabin. 'A good steady pace now, no running, for we've all day to march in. Come on!'
Further downstream, they reached another wall. Not of granite but of blue crystal which glittered as fierce as diamond.
'Man,' said Drake, 'this looks to be fabulous wealth.'
'Mayhap,' said Jon Arabin, 'but we've no time to be fooling with such.'
The rest of the pirates begged to differ. But all their attempts to souvenir pieces of the wall came to nothing. Even Whale Mike, flailing away at it with his rod of titanium, was unable to do any damage.
'Come on,' said Jon Arabin. 'The slugs gain on us while we greed without purpose.'
'We greed to get rich,' said Ish Ulpin. 'There must be a way to break this thing.'
'Look south,' said Jon Arabin. 'You see? There's another wall the same, some fifty paces further forward. Let's go that far at least.'
As he jumped over the wall, there was a roar from the south.
'Fire!' yelled Drake, as sheets of flame leaped from the glittering crystal wall fifty paces south.
The flames advanced. Jon Arabin glanced right, then left. East and west, flames reached away as far as he could see. Eastward, the flames stretched right across the river and into the forest on the other side.
'It's but an illusion,' said Rolf Thelemite calmly. 'Has to be.'
Moments later, they started to feel the heat glowing against their faces. Undergrowth crackled into fire as the flamewall marched forward. Trees exploded into flames. Advancing, the wall spat gouts of fire at random.
'Back!' shouted Arabin. 'Back, or we'll be burnt alive!'
They turned and fled.
