The overseer dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands
and took a deep breath. `Come along now, people,' he wheedled, `you'll like it once you get there, promise.'
`Nuts.'
`But there's rivers,' whined the overseer. `Majestic, aweinspiring torrents, crashing over dizzying waterfalls, winding lugubriously through ancestral forests. There's deserts. There's rock formations any red-quartzed troll'd give his right arm to live in. There's bush fires that make Hell look like a camping stove. What in God's name are you complaining about? It's a bloody spook's paradise out there.'
`There are also,' said the spokeswraith, `spiders.'
There was a soft thunk as the overseer's jaw dropped on to the studded collar round his neck. `What was that?' he gasped.
`And snakes.'
`And mosquitoes.'
`And,' added the spokeswraith meaningfully, `it's not as if it's exactly got vacant possession, you know. The whole place is absolutely crawling with . . .'
With a massive effort, the overseer hoisted his jaw back into place. `Yes?'
`You know,' replied the smoke-cloud diffidently. `Things. It's really creepy out there, you know?'
`They go around singing all the time,' ventured a voice from the last bench but one. `It's enough to give you the willies.'
`Bloody unsocial hours, too,' added a scratching, grinding sound from somewhere near the middle of the ship. `Dreamtime-and-a-half, that sort of thing.'
`Let's get this straight,' said the overseer, with an ever so slightly unbalanced lilt in his voice. `All you ghouls and ghosts and things that go bump in the night are refusing to get off the ship because you think the place is haunted?'
`Yes.'
`Be reasonable,' added the scratching sound - a feverwraith from the Plumstead Marshes - `they're natives„ they're
used to living here, we're not. They'd have us for breakfast. If you turn us off the ship, it'd be mass murder. Exorcism. Whatever.'
The overseer lowered his head, stuck his hands in his pockets - where, inevitably, he found a small piece of string, a halfeaten apple and two small bronze coins of purely nominal value - and thought about it for a while; then he retired into the helmsman's cabin and banged his head against the ship's wheel for a while. Oddly enough, it helped, because when he emerged he knew exactly what he was going to do.
And it worked. It was, of course, bitterly unfair on the indigenous paranormals; and it has to go down as one of the biggest stains on the superhuman rights record of the English nation. Now, however, it's far too late to do anything about it, because within five years of the arrival of the deported spirits from Albion, the native deities had been completely wiped out, leaving the entire continent empty to receive the newcomers. In due course, they settled in, adapted themselves to their new environment and evolved an entirely original lifestyle of their own which bore no resemblance whatsoever to the culture they had left behind them, and which survived for seven hundred years before being completely destroyed by the coming of the First Fleet.
Which, so the aborigines say, served the buggers bloody well right.
`Tho what did they actually do to the native thpiritth?' the Timekeeper demanded. Lamorak winced. He hated this part of the story. It was, he had always felt, enough to make one ashamed of being Albionese.
`They methylated them,' he replied quietly. `Well, it's been really nice meeting you,' he said. `and I look forward very much to having met you before, but unless we make a start immediately we're going to be very, very late. Ciao.' He picked up his rucksack, slung it on his back and advanced purposefully towards the unicorn.
`That'th horrible,' said the Timekeeper, and shuddered. `But it thrill doethn't ecthplain about the apron and the unicorn.'
`Very true,' replied Lamorak over his shoulder. `Right then, Per, you grab hold of the rope while I push.'
`The apron,' said Pertelope, `was a talisman belonging to one of the deported spirits. It has magical powers of its own. We managed to track it down, through newspaper reports of unexplained happenings which could only have been caused by the apron, and it turns out to be owned by a maiden of unspotted virtue living in Sydney. Hence the unicorn.'
`I thee,' murmured the Timekeeper. `At leatht I think I thee. What thort of unecthplained happeningth?'
Lamorak smiled unpleasantly. `It's kind of hard to explain,' he said.
The Timekeeper was not amused. `Try me,' she said.
`Football results,' said Pertelope. `The apron plays merry hell with the results of Australian Rules football matches. All we had to do once we knew that was to plot all the results on a big graph and wait until a significant mutation in the sine curve became apparent.'
yd?'
`Paramatta Under-Twelves 22, Sydney 0,' Lamorak growled. `Which was as good as putting up a big neon sign saying OVER HERE.' He paused and scowled. `I can explain the mathematics of it in very great detail if you want me to,' he added.
`No thankth,' said the Timekeeper, and Lamorak noticed that her eyes looked as if someone had accidentally slapped three coats of weatherproof varnish over them. `Actually,' she went on, `it'th time I wath getting along, tho . . .'
`Of course. We quite understand. Right, Per, when I say heave . . . Per? What the hell are you staring at?'
Pertelope was standing bolt upright, his face contorted into an expression of terminal sheepishness. He swallowed once or twice, raised his left arm and waggled his fingers.
`Smile, Lammo,' he hissed out of the side of his mouth. think we're on television.'
Faster than the speed of light is very fast. And, it goes without saying, dark.
`Ouch.'
`Sorry.'
`That was my foot.'
`Yes, all right, I said I'm sorry.'
`Well, mind where you're going next time.'
Sleek, streamlined, virtually frictionless and as devoid of light as six feet up a drainpipe, the mighty starcruiser pounced like a giant cat across the vastness of space. Far below - so far that distance became just another deceptive illusion - the earth spun on its languorous axis, while Time found itself dragged inexorably up the down escalator.
`For crying out loud, George, watch what you're doing with that bloody kettle.'
`Sorry.'
`You'd have thought the dozy cow would've been back by now. I'm starving.'
`So are the rest of us, Simon. The difference is, we don't make such a great big performance out of it.'
`Oh yes? And who asked for your opinion, Priscilla?'
`I'm not Priscilla, I'm Annabel.'
`And I'm Priscilla. You just put your teacup down on my head.'
`God, sorry, Priscilla.'
`I'm not Priscilla, I'm George.'
Aboard the starship Timekeeper, there are three levels of Time: earth time; relative time; and the time they'd all been cooped up on this small, cramped and above all dark spaceship. The third variety had the weirdest properties of all. It seemed to last for ever.
`Look, this is hopeless. I'm going out for a pizza. Anybody else fancy coming?'
`Listen, George...'
`Trevor. I'm George.'
`Listen, Trevor, you just can't do that. This is a scientific experiment, right? We're playing sillybuggers with the fabric of causality as it is; I mean, God only knows what damage we're doing just by being here. If you suddenly touch down in the middle of the twentieth century and start stuffing yourself with a deep-pan quattro stagione, there's no limit to what could happen. So just sit down and shut up, okay?'
There was complete silence.
`I said okay, Trevor?'
`I'm not Trevor, I'm Nick.'
`Where's Trevor, then?'
`How the hell am I supposed to know that, Louise? There's no light in here.'
`Actually, I'm not Louise, I'm Angela. Who the hell is Louise, anyway?'
Meanwhile, the second escape capsule roared away across the indescribable magnitude of Nothing, piloted by a ninetyseven-year-old child, stra
ight as an arrow towards where he remembered the best pizza restaurant in the world used to be. The problem was that it wasn't open yet; it wouldn't be open for seventy years.
There was complete silence, except for the unicorn. It raised its head, saw the maiden of unspotted virtue, blushed, and said `G'day' awkwardly, and started chewing the cud ferociously.
Then, very slowly, Lamorak reached out for Pertelope's pack, took out the sponge bag and found the oil of cloves; then he drank it, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and smiled.
`Hello there,' he said.
`Actually, Lammo,' Pertelope hissed, `you're not supposed to drink it, you're supposed to-'
`Shut up, Per, I know what I'm doing.' Lamorak snood up, brushed dust off his trouser-knees and walked up to the maiden of unspotted virtue.
`Swap,' he said. `My unicorn for your apron. How about
The maiden of unspotted virtue stared at him. `Have you gone out of your tiny mind?' she said.
Lamorak raised an eyebrow. `I'm sorry,' he said, `I don't quite follow. Straight swap. You get your award for best nature programme, I get the apron, everybody's happy. Where's the problem in that?'
There are many cold places on earth, but few of them are as cold as two feet away from the maiden's eyes. `Listen, whoever you are,' she said. `I'm trying to make a serious film here. If I go home and tell my producer I've got ten minutes' footage of live unicorns in the can, I'm going to spend the rest of my career filming the weather forecast. Now will you please both go away? You're frightening the kangaroos.'
For perhaps the first time ever, Lamorak was at a slight loss for words. After considerable effort, he managed to say, `But it's a unicorn.' The maiden of unspotted virtue sighed.
`Buster,' she said. `I don't care if it's a performing woolly mammoth. I have my credibility as a serious wildlife presenter to think of. Understood?'
`But it's a-'
`Quite.' The maiden pursed her lips. `That's fine. You take it along to the satellite boys, they'll probably give it its own chat show. Meanwhile, some of us have work to do, so if you wouldn't mind . . .'
Lamorak said nothing. Even if he could have found any words appropriate for the situation, he'd have had difficulty saying them with his lower jaw hanging loose like a secondhand drawbridge. He shook his head in disbelief, turned away and sat down under a rock.
`Excuse me,' Pertelope said.
`Well?'
`I think,' Pertelope said, `there may have been a slight misunderstanding here. You do have the apron, don't you?'
`What apron?'
`Ah. So you're not a maiden of unspotted virtue?'
A moment or so later, Pertelope picked himself up off the ground, rubbed his jaw and joined his colleague under the rock.
`Something must have gone wrong,' he said.
Lamorak nodded. `Wrong bloody maiden,' he replied. `I mean, how the devil was I supposed to know there were two of . . .?' He broke off. A horrible thought had just occurred to him.
`Oh shit,' he said. `Of course. Why didn't I realise?'
Pertelope looked up at him. `What do you mean?'
`The football results. We must have misinterpreted them. Here, hand me your rucksack, quick.'
Pertelope did as he was told; and, while the maiden of unspotted virtue and her camera crew raced off into the distance, with a doomed kangaroo a mere ten yards in front of them, he thumbed through the Sports section of What's On In Sydney.
`Per,' he said at last, closing the book, `you might have told me that Lightning Darren O'Shea had signed for the Paramatta Under-Twelves.'
Pertelope registered dismay. `Oh drat,' he said. `Yes, that does put rather a different complexion on it, I suppose. What do we do now?'
The Timekeeper leant over the rock and cleared her throat. `We could eat,' she suggested.
`Not peaches, please,' Lamorak sighed. `Not right now, I couldn't face it.'
The Timekeeper grinned. `All right,' she said, `how doeth thcallop chowder, chicken with bathil and oregano and apricotth in brandy thtrike you?' By way of explanation, she opened her shopping bag and produced three large tins. 'I'll just thet up the tholar-powered microwathe and we're in buthineth.'
Lamorak smiled wryly. `Why not?' he replied. `And afterwards, could you give us a lift in this spaceship of yours?
Otherwise it's going to be a long walk.'
`Thure thing.' The Timekeeper took a small tin cube from her pocket, pressed a knob on the back, and held it at arm's length. It grew into a microwave oven.
`Only don't tell anyone you'the theen one of thethe, becauthe they haven't been invented yet,' she added. `You could thet off a complete Dark Age with one of thethe thingth.'
`No problem,' Lamorak replied. `You keep stumm about the unicorn, we'll forget about the technology.'
The Timekeeper laughed and set to work with a tinopener. It was some time since she'd used it last, and she nearly burnt a hole the size of a large geological fault in the landscape before she got the atomiser beam properly adjusted, but there was no harm done.
That still doesn't explain things, Lammo,' Pertelope was saying, and his voice sounded remarkably like the buzzing of a fly against a windscreen.
Lamorak shook his head and said, `Not now, Per. Later, perhaps.'
Pertelope scowled at him. `But Lammo,' he said, `it doesn't matter about Lightning Darren O'Shea, because it says here his brother Norman is now playing for the Melbourne Werewolves, and that means the x-coefficient no longer reciprocates the reflected tangent of pi-'
`Later, Per.' Lamorak closed his eyes, settled his head against his rucksack and lay back. You know, he said to himself, I could get to like failure after a while. It's so much more relaxing . . .
And then he sat bolt upright again, and grabbed for the book.
`Told you,' Pertelope was saying. `And of course we'd have to recalculate the differential shift in the y-axis.'
Lamorak wasn't listening. He was staring at the Timekeeper; who had opened the tins and emptied their contents into little plastic bowls, which she was loading into the machine.
`Nearly ready,' she said.
`Great,' Lamorak replied, trying to sound calm. `Tell me, when it was your turn to go shopping, why did you come here?
`It'th where my tholks came throm, originally,' she replied. `Of courthe, I don't thuppothe it'th anything like it'll be in their day, but . . .'
`I see,' Lamorak said. `Um, that's a nice pinny you've got on, if I may say so.'
The Timekeeper smiled. `You think tho? Actually, it'th been in my thamily for yearth. Nithe embroidery round the edgeth, look. Thlowerth and thingth.'
The two knights exchanged glances. Then Lamorak drew Pertelope to one side.
`All right,' he said, `you're obviously thinking the same as me.'
`It'd explain the distortion in the base coefficient, certainly,' Pertelope replied. `It's a very interesting effect, actually, because-'
`Yes, all right, I believe you.' Lamorak drew in a deep breath, then let it go. `Look,' he said, `one of us is going to have to ask her, and I think it's probably your turn. Okay?'
`Ask her what, Per?'
`Never mind,' Lamorak replied. `Forget I spoke.'
The Timekeeper shut the oven door and twiddled the dial a couple of times. `It'll be about three minuteth,' she said. `Tho that'th a unicorn, ith it? I've alwayth wanted to thee a real unicorn.'
`Bingo,' muttered Lamorak under his breath. At her age, and with those braces on her teeth, I don't need to ask, I just know. `Can I just have a closer look at that apron thing for a moment?' he asked.
There are two ways of landing a spaceship escape capsule on the surface.
The first way is to ease your way down through the upper atmosphere and sidle back into gravity with the aid of your stabiliser rockets. The alternative method is to keep on going until you hit the ground. This technique should on no account be confused with crashing, although the net result is more or less the same.
Fortunately, any
thing that happens to the landscape of the Great Victoria Desert is almost certain to improve it, and Trevor would no doubt have been only too pleased had he known that in years to come (long after he was born, in fact) the enormous crater brought into being by his textbook Method II landing would be flooded with water and turned into Australia's first inland surfing park, with tides automatically stimulated by a huge solar-powered turbine.
As he dragged himself out of the remains of the cockpit, however, all he could think of was the rather depressing fact that his spacecraft had had its chips, which meant that unless he could find the foraging party, he was going to have to stay here for the rest of his life. Quite apart from the fact that he seemed to have landed in a distinctly unprepossessing spot, he faced the horrible prospect of reverting to the normal lifepattern of a surface-dweller, with all the morale-sapping repetition that would entail. It's bad enough turning thirty once in one's lifetime. Having to do it twice is enough to make anybody very depressed indeed
And even that unattractive prospect, he realised, was going to be pretty remote unless he found something to eat. Quickly.
He had been trudging generally eastwards for about half an hour when the smell of something edible floated past him on the sluggish desert breeze. He stopped in his tracks and concentrated. About thirty seconds of intense inhaling satisfied him that it wasn't some sort of olfactory mirage. If the smell was simply a product of his imagination, then his imagination wouldn't have put so much garlic in it. He walked quickly in the direction he guessed the scent was coming from, later breaking into a run.
`It's not for me, you understand,' Lamorak said hastily. `It's for a friend of mine.'
The Timekeeper continued to stare at him. `A friend of vourth,' she repeated. `A friend of yourth who liketh drething up in women'th clotheth.' She shot a glance at Pertelope, and then added, `Another friend of yourth who liketh drething up in women'th clotheth. I thee.'
`Now hang on a minute,' Pertelope started to say, but Lamorak ignored him. `It's not like that,' he said. `Look, we're on this quest, right, and we've got to recover the Holy Grail, okay, which means that-'
Grailblazers Tom Holt Page 10
