by Heide Goody
Morag looked up. “What are you two doing here?”
“Ah, that famous Scottish warmth,” said Ingrid. “Nice to see you too. I was summoned.”
“Yo-Morgantus is ill,” said Rod.
“Poisoned,” said Ingrid.
“Who by?”
“Us, allegedly.”
“And you’re here to find out if there’s any possible reason why the Venislarn might throw a hissy fit and desecrate our cathedral,” said Rod. “Case closed, I reckon.”
Morag stumbled mentally. “They killed him because…”
“Because Yo-Morgantus has a dicky tummy and has lashed out,” said Rod. “You have an alternate theory?”
Morag thought furiously. The moment she had seen and recognised Drew’s body, she had leapt to a single and escapable conclusion: Shardak’aan Syu, the August Handmaiden of Prein, seeking to torture Morag before killing her, had – what? – given Drew to her for one night only and then ripped him apart. Here. Want this? Want this? Well, you can’t have it.
The idea was so well-rooted in her mind, she struggled to accept Rod’s more reasonable explanation.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” she said irritably. “You should be in hospital or at home.”
“Aye, possibly,” he said, “but Vivian called and suggested I meet you. Head you off at the pass, as it were.”
“Is that so?”
“Said you had a face like thunder and were thinking of declaring war on the court.”
“Preposterous.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said with an amused and knowing look in his eye. “Come on then, let’s play doctors and nurses.”
On cue, double doors opened and a presz’ling strode out. Its pole-like limbs walked along ceiling and floor equally as though gravity was merely a lifestyle choice. The prehensile wound-lined protuberance in the centre of its body that was, at once, mouth, anus and ovipositor angled towards them.
The presz’ling spoke in Venislarn whilst simultaneously producing a thin, reedy screech that carried a rudimentary English translation.
“Sogho fer juriska – Come – v’zhul cho – make – adn-hrifet long’hor – restitution? – tye!”
Ingrid picked up a fat medical kit. “No, tye presz’ling-fu. We have come to inspect and treat your lord.”
The presz’ling sucked air noisily through its orifice, very much like a builder about to tell someone they’d ‘clearly had some cowboys in’ before giving them an astronomical quote for repairs.
“Shomph pi-khar – To follow! – tye!”
Rather than lead them into the hall of monsters Morag had entered before, the presz’ling took them along to a stairwell and up three flights. The presz’ling climbed with disregard for the actual stairs, planting needle-tipped feet on walls, floors and stairs with such ease it appeared like a weightless bundle of sticks falling slowly up the shaft.
As they climbed, Morag once again suspected that the Venislarn in the Cube had tampered with the local space-time dimensions. By her judgement, they were some distance above the building’s roof.
The presz’ling pushed a door open. “Ghu’qani – In – tye!”
The space beyond was dark, barely lit at all. Morag could only perceive the vaguest outlines of a huge space. The ceiling was too dark to see, the furthest wall merely an end to what she could see. She knew somehow that this chamber covered the entire roof of the Cube, that this was what lay above the hall of monsters, the audience hall and all the corridors and private rooms. This was the place from where Yo-Morgantus’s streamer-like tendrils came and therefore that thing on the floor…
The floor was covered in a mammoth cushion of rolling yellow flesh. It bulged and shifted like an oleaginous sea. No, it was like a bouncy castle, albeit a bouncy castle as big as a football field, stitched together from offal, skin and knobbly organic protrusions from which jutted shards of bone, flaps of tissue and the partially absorbed bodies of humans and Venislarn. No, on reflection, it was nothing like a bouncy castle at all, unless it was a bouncy castle dredged from the worst nightmares of someone with a chronic fear of castles.
Ingrid checked the seals on her biohazard suit and pulled the hood into place. She turned to Morag and Rod.
“Whatever happens,” she said. “Do not touch him. No skin-to-skin contact.”
“Pretty much goes without saying,” said Morag.
Rod unclipped his holster and drew his pistol with his good right hand.
“You going to need that?” said Ingrid.
“Just in case. Won’t be the first time I’ve wanted to give a colleague a merciful death and not been able to.”
Ricky dusted his hands together as he emerged from the crypt.
“I don’t remember why, but when I was at primary school, we used to play a game called ‘funerals’. We’d take it in turns to bury each other and then say the words, ‘In the name of the father and the son and into the hole he goes.’”
“Your point?” said Vivian.
“None,” said Ricky. “Just bodies in holes.”
Over by the altar, Scenes of Crimes were scrubbing the surrounding stone for the fifth time.
“That’s pretty much the exact opposite of what they’re meant to do,” he said. “It’s weird like…”
“Like a criminal police officer?” said Vivian.
“Ha! We’ve got those. Or like one of your lot working for the Venislarn.”
“We do work for the Venislarn,” said Vivian. “The exact opposite of our role?” She paused to think. “Attempting to bring about the Venislarn Apocalypse before its time and ensuring the maximum amount of human suffering.” She looked back to the crypt door. “We will return for the body in the next day or two, once we are certain the media’s attention is elsewhere.”
“As soon as possible, please.” Archdeacon Silas placed a hand on Vivian’s arm. “Rita is adamant that we will not be able to use this building for its intended purpose until such time as it’s been thoroughly cleansed.”
“I am sure it won’t be more than two days.” Vivian removed his hand. “By the end of the weekend at the latest.”
“Weekend? As in Sunday?” he said, alarmed. “But the cathedral? The scheduled services?”
“Yes,” said Vivian. “You may have a day of rest. We do not. I am returning to the Library now. I dread to think what Miss Seth has been up to with our samakha guests. Will you be joining me?”
Silas threw his arms wide. “This takes precedence,” he said.
“Quite,” said Vivian. “Then you may wish to reschedule your community outreach efforts for some future time. Next year perhaps. Let us go,” she said to Ricky.
“I’ve still got some details to resolve here,” the chief inspector replied.
“Not going to resolve themselves, no?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Good, then they will still be here when you get back from taking me.”
Ingrid walked carefully out across the surface of Yo-Morgantus, Venislarn god and the most puissant (or at least most comprehensibly puissant) entity for more than a hundred miles. She walked with a rolling gait, part lunar astronaut, part mud-wader. Near the centre of the Venislarn’s wobbling and burping mass, a ginger-haired woman protruded from the flesh, her left arm and abdomen fused with her god. The woman’s eyes tracked Ingrid silently.
Ingrid genuflected to the woman. “San-shu chuman’n, my lord, I see you have grown in… stature since we last met.” Within the folds of suppurating flesh, something flapped and farted.
Ingrid opened her medic’s case, removed the Geiger counter and played it over the Venislarn’s body.
“Readings are elevated,” she called back to Morag and Rod. “It’s a potassium iodide smoothie for all of us later.”
She unpacked heat paddles, syringe and pressure cuffs from the case and then knelt. She slid her hands into the nearest folds of fatty flesh and levered them apart.
“I’m just going to take your ju-falas
, my lord.”
As she inserted the heat paddles, Yo-Morgantus reacted violently, shifting and rolling like an earthquake-struck island. Pseudo-limbs erupted bloodily from the surface. Ingrid rolled away as one threatened to loop over her and pull her under where, protective suit or not, she would be lost.
Rod shouted out to her.
“Stay back!” she replied, hand held up in warning. “It’s okay. Got my secret weapon.”
With toddler-level agility, Ingrid crawled back to her medic’s case, plugged her phone into the in-built speaker and thumbed play. Frenetic electric guitar and classical string filled the air. The godquake subsided almost immediately.
Ingrid grinned at the confused look on Morag’s face. “Yo-Morgantus and I have a shared love of ELO,” she explained. “But only the early stuff with Mike Edwards on cello,”
“I have to ask, why?” said Morag.
“Not sure. He died a sudden and violent death. I think Yo-Morgantus enjoys things on a different level to us.”
“Rock and roll drugs overdose?” said Rod.
“Nope. A six-hundred kilo hay bale rolled down a hill and crushed the van he was driving.”
“Rock and roll,” said Morag. “At least the roll part anyway.”
Ingrid proceeded cautiously. She ran lines from the heat paddles to a handheld yathathana-scope and drew fluid samples that caused her to shake her head gravely.
Rod gave her a questioning look.
“Well,” said Ingrid, thinking on her feet, “Yo-Morgantus’s chet-sakrina are misaligned to such an extent that they’re svading with the wrong portions of the dho-latz weave. He’s rotating – well, g’rnt-folding — through a sense-plus khladish loop of mal-skeined hnngis and shodar-lan tissues and this is leading to a frenz mac-frenz accumulation of dry cosht in the ghesimal wallets. Basically, lo-sjin fofoi pakh lat.”
“In English?” said Rod.
Ingrid shot him a look. “We don’t have the nouns or the verbs.” She thought for a moment. “Or the grammar.”
“Try,” said Rod.
“Lord Morgantus is not well.”
“We already knew that.”
“He’s probably been poisoned.”
“Again, knew that.”
Ingrid sat back in a crouch and thought. The half-eaten and comatose woman twitched and brushed her hair out of her eyes.
“You did this,” said the woman, her tone dead.
“No, lord,” said Ingrid. “I don’t know what this is, some sort of plant toxin. Like, erm…”
“You did this.”
“No. No.” Ingrid racked her brain. She knew this. She knew she knew this. “Wild mandrake! Etoposide phosphate! You’ve eaten something, you’ve eaten someone. Lord, have you eaten anyone with cancer?”
“Lord Morgantus delights in cancers and tumours,” said the redhead.
“Yes, but this one was pumped full of chemotherapy drugs. That’s what’s done this.”
“No,” said the ginger. “Not these humans. You are playing for time.”
Ingrid could feel the Venislarn skin tension beneath her legs begin to weaken. Ingrid started to slowly sink.
“I assure you, lord…”
Morag shouted something.
Ingrid battled against her own suit and the enveloping hollow beneath her to turn to look to her colleagues by the door.
“Kevin!” shouted Morag.
The word initially made no sense to Ingrid. And then she realised what Morag was saying and then she truly understood.
“Lord,” she said, putting her gloved hand down to steady herself and finding it sinking in, as though she was pressing against thick custard. “Lord, have you recently consumed one of the Uriye Inai’e?”
“Their house is beholden to ours,” said the redhead tonelessly.
“You have eaten Kerrphwign-Azhal, a noble of the Uriye Inai’e,” said Ingrid, trying to keep the panic out of her voice as she sank lower. Although she wasn’t sure if her legs had been drawn into the Venislarn body, she could not see them for the loose folds of skin about her. “It was hibernating. Lord! Hrifet!” Ingrid paddled against the encompassing folds. Rod shouted her name.
“Rod!” she yelled back. “Don’t you dare fucking shoot me yet!”
It took Ingrid a full further ten seconds to realise that she wasn’t sinking any further.
The redhead looked down at her, the young woman’s possessed body angled oddly, like a bad animatronic. “Kerrphwign-Azhal was presented as a gift by one of the court.”
“And it had only this week consumed the heart of a man dying from cancer,” panted Ingrid.
“This was deliberate?” asked Yo-Morgantus.
Ingrid held her tongue. There were several answers she could give. She could placate him, she could, with a word, instigate some Stalinist-style court purges or… she could tell the truth.
“I do not know, lord,” she said. She crawled without any co-ordination or dignity to where her medic’s case now lay on its side and fumbled around for a fat vial. “I do know that this could alleviate your suffering until the poison has gone from your system.”
There was no response for a moment or two and then, as though the nightmare bouncy castle was re-inflating, Ingrid found herself being lifted up from beneath until she was lying on a blessedly solid surface.
“Thank you, lord,” she sighed.
At the Library, Vivian found Room Two to be empty, apart from a chair on its side and a fine scattering of what appeared to be gold glitter on the floor. In the otherwise empty office, she found Nina poring over a set of papers.
“What did you do with them?” said Vivian.
Nina looked at her blankly.
“Anthony, Michael, Harvey and Tyrone,” said Vivian.
“Oh. My fishy friends, my marine amigos. Yeah, I sent them home. It’s gone four and we’ve had a packed day.”
“I dread to think.”
“No,” she countered. “We did really well. First, we solved that stupid fox, chicken and melons riddle by trading a couple of melons for a bigger boat. Then we had a rap battle.”
“A… rap battle?”
“Yup,” said Nina. “The group decided that Tony T’s was best but, really, no one could top my efforts.”
“I am so glad I was out of the building at the time.”
“It would have blown your mind wide open,” said Nina. “Like, kapow.”
“Yes, I am sure. Indeed, it sounds like you have had a marvellous time –”
“And then we made cards for our moms.”
Vivian closed her eyes. “Sorry? You did what?”
“Made cards for our moms. Hearts and flowers and ‘I love my mom’.”
Vivian thought on this. “Two things immediately spring to mind, Miss Seth. One, the word is ‘mum’. Or ‘mother’ or ‘mummy’. ‘Mom’ is just annoying. It sounds like an Americanism but, along with the inability to pronounce the words ‘bald’, ‘tooth’ or any ‘I’ vowel sounds, is just an unnecessary quirk of the Brummie accent.”
“Whatever you say, mom.”
“And…” Vivian gave Nina her most perplexed look. “Cards?”
“It was nice. We used felt-tips and we sent Lois out to get glitter and glue.”
“How dreadful.”
“I think the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you, Nina. Truly you are a special snowflake and I couldn’t possibly cope without you.’”
Vivian nodded very slowly. “Would you like a cup of tea, Nina?”
“Does it come with a free lecture of how proper tea should be made?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Then, yes, please.”
In the lift on the way down, the ooze and alien sweat on Ingrid’s suit created an acrid and meaty stink as it dried. Rod and Morag pressed themselves into the furthest corners from it. Ingrid appeared not to notice.
“That was some impressive work,” said Morag. “Seriously kept your cool.”
Ingrid shrugged, a gesture
which wafted the stench around.
“I’ve seen worse,” she said, “and I don’t mean that in a macho posturing way. This universe is full of terrors.”
“Aye, you’re not wrong,” said Rod. “What’s the worst thing you’ve encountered?”
“Ah, now this does sound like competitive macho posturing,” said Morag.
“Worst thing?” said Ingrid. “Books. I’ve read the Bloody Big Book. Well, a bit. Not all obviously. The terrors described in those pages, the vile secrets that wait for us at the end of a telescope and at the bottom of a microscope. My mind boggles with the unholy shapes and frightening truths.”
“No specifics?” said Rod.
“Hmph.” Ingrid smiled. “We don’t have the language. But, I tell you this, if I could get the bigwigs in power to just glimpse the monsters that haunt my dreams, they wouldn’t merely stop the budget cuts; they’d write us a blank cheque.”
“I believe that,” said Rod. “You, Morag? Worst thing?”
“Worst? I don’t know. Most frightening? An August Handmaiden of Prein.”
Ingrid shrugged casually, politely unimpressed.
“She was about to eat my face,” said Morag. “Those pink flesh mandibles opening up in her underside…”
“What happened?” said Ingrid.
“Something changed her mind,” said Morag, which wasn’t exactly a lie. The shotgun had certainly changed her mind: turned it into molten goo and distributed it evenly around the area. “Rod?”
“First experience was the worst,” he said. “Al-Qa’im. As if the night time firefight with gunrunners wasn’t enough, I got separated from my patrol among these ruins and –”
The lift binged and the doors opened. Rod and Morag squeezed out as quickly as possible into the fresher air of the lobby.
“I don’t smell that bad, do I?” said Ingrid.
“We could lie and spare your feelings,” said Morag.
“Oh.”
Vivian hovered with cups.
