by Tod Davies
When he reached the rocking horse—a high-spirited stallion held by an orderly—he saw a tailor’s dummy beside it. On the dummy was a navy blue and red military coat, rich with medals, and a large hat trimmed with a matching cockade. Snotty stripped off his torn shirt and put these on. A perfect fit. The Orderly Gnome held out his hands to help Snotty into the saddle. Snotty sprang up onto his stallion, and the Orderly handed him his sword.
Looking out over the heads of the rigid troops, Snotty saw the three Giant Garden Gnomes who had captured him quailing before a red-faced, white-haired General. “You idiots!” yelled the General Gnome, shaking a furled poster in their faces. “Nincompoops! Nitwits! Numbskulls! Ignoramuses and Fatheads!” Then the General Gnome turned from them in disgust and galloped on his own magnificent steed of red and black toward Snotty. As he approached, Snotty, with a newly formed honor guard of mounted Gnomes, rode up a straight road to the top of a butte.
“SNOTTY THE SUN GOD! HOORAY!”
It seemed to Snotty, more confident with each moment that passed, that he knew just how to behave. The crest of the butte sparkled gold in the desert sun. He rode for this, his guard following. The General brought up the rear. The white stallion rocking horse kept up a steady gait. Snotty was pleased to find that he knew how to ride a rocking horse.
“But then,” he thought, “I have always known that I was a Great Man.”32
Each moment that passed confirmed him in this view. As he rode, sheep strewed rose petals in his path, bowing their woolly heads and filling the air with their baaas. Snotty rode to the edge of the butte, the light of the sun behind him. Below him, thousands and thousands of Giant Garden Gnomes stood at attention.
Snotty raised his sword high. The sunlight glittered off its blade. The Gnomes yelled, their giant fists in the air. Snotty could just make out these words: “SNOTTY THE SUN GOD! SNOTTY THE SUN GOD! HOORAY!”
Snotty, pleased at being the center of attention, took this new development in stride. In fact, as he waved his sword at the adoring masses, he felt just the tiniest bit bummed. If it was inevitable that his greatness should one day shine on the world stage, he thought it might have happened sooner.
But a Great Man is always ready to Forget the Past and Greet the New Day, so Snotty sat, straight and genial in the saddle, his expression an abstracted smile—as if his head were too full of great plans for him to take much notice of anything else. The Gnomes below continued their shouts, and Snotty experimented with turning first this way, then that, and letting the sun glint not just off his sword, but off the shiny buttons of his coat as well.
The white-haired General Gnome rode up to him and presented arms.
“Sorry about that before, sir,” the General said. “Those blockheads mistook you for a common criminal. They had no idea you were Snotty the Sun God.”33
Now Snotty was not at all sure what a Sun God was. Still he had a shrewd idea that it was something fairly high up the Christmas tree.
Snotty waved a small hand in a gesture of disdain, as if to say that such petty matters were best soon forgot. This was the attitude, he felt, that should accompany Greatness. Admiring looks passed among the Gnomes of his entourage, so he was probably right.
“Sir,” the General Gnome said. “We must repair to your fortress. And to the Grand Feast.”
“We must,” Snotty agreed, careful to keep his expression as lofty as he could.
“But first,” the General Gnome continued, “the tradition of the GREAT PARDON.”
Snotty gave a grave nod, although of course he had no idea what the Great Pardon could be.
The General Gnome addressed the troops below. “Fellow Gnomes!” he boomed. “As was foretold, our Sun God has returned to us! It is written in the Gnomic Book of Deeds: ‘HE WILL COME AMONG US AND WE WILL KNOW HIM. FOR HE WILL SACRIFICE HIS VERY FINGER FOR A MESS OF TRASH!’” At this he grabbed Snotty’s hand and held it up to the sun, which shone through the space where his littlest finger had once been.34
The crowd went wild. The Gnomes whooped and hollered and threw their Gnome hats into the air. They chanted, “SNOTTY. SNOTTY. SNOTTY.”
But the General Gnome held up a hand. There was an expectant silence. “And now,” he boomed, “as is our tradition, the Sun God will grant a merciful pardon to OUR CHOICE OF MONSTER!”
Snotty shifted uneasily. He didn’t like the sound of the word ‘monster,’ but he kept his expression as blank as he could. The band struck up a doleful tune. And from the ranks of the Gnomes came a line of prisoners, chained together and sobbing and crying for mercy. All, that is, but one.
There were five in all. The first was a fire-breathing Pig, with stiff iron bristles on its chin. The second was a Monstrous Woman, taller than the largest Gnome, her hair and talons streaked with red and white. The third was a silver Bear. The fourth was a Dragon with a bat’s wings and a lion’s head.
All these four moaned and pleaded. “Wow,” Snotty said to the General Gnome. “Cool.” The General Gnome nodded, pleased.
The fifth prisoner alone was quiet, hiding behind the others. A Gnome Guard gave it a vicious kick that forced it forward. Only then did Snotty see that the fifth prisoner was Snowflake.
What a wretched thing Snowflake was in that company! The little horse was dull-eyed and beaten; its head dragged in the dust, its pelt was matted and gray, and its hooves were cracked. The crowd greeted it with jeers.
The Dragon was clearly the favorite. And no wonder. Its scales shone like those of a fish jumping in a mountain lake. Its wings were as wide as the butte, their color a translucent black. In its lion’s head, its eyes shone a deep turquoise blue.
“I am the Dragon!” it roared. Its brilliant eyes stared straight at Snotty, reminding him of something, even if he couldn’t remember what. “I serve he who has the courage to sell his finger for a mess of trash!”35
“That’s the GNOME WAY!” shouted someone in the ranks. “You tell ’em!” And the Gnomes again shouted and hollered and threw their hats in the air.
After that, the display of the other monsters was an anticlimax. The Woman disdained to play to the crowd. The Bear tried without success to compete with the Dragon. The Pig’s flames had gone out, even though it tried hard to get them going again. Now it couldn’t manage anything but a grunt.
Snowflake, head bowed, just stood there in his quiet way.
“The DRAGON!” the crowd cried as the monsters, chains clanking, made their way toward Snotty. “The Dragon! Free the DRAGON!”
Even though Snotty hadn’t been a Sun God for very long, he knew enough not to go against a crowd. Anyway, he liked that Dragon, too. It was big. It was cool. It was definitely grand.
So impressed was Snotty, in fact, that he forgot all about Snowflake.
With a lordly gesture, he uncurled one hand toward the Dragon. A great cheer came from the troops as the guards released the monster from its chains.
The Dragon roared; its wings flapped. It flew straight to Snotty, where it bent one reptilian knee, demonstrating its loyalty to the Sun God.
At this Snotty gave a modest grin.
Cheers rang out. Drunk with success, Snotty wheeled his horse around and rode beside the General off the butte. The Dragon and the Guard of Honor followed close behind.
As they trotted on their noble rocking horses toward the Grand Feast, Snotty said, “By the way, General. Those other monsters, the ones I didn’t free: what happens to them?”
The General Gnome shrugged. “We kill them, of course.”
Snotty gave a careless nod.36
Snotty and the General rode away from the Bazaar and the end of the Great Lawn, out onto the glowing desert, which stretched to the foothills and mountains beyond. As they rode, Snotty listened, all attention as the General discoursed on the Way of the Gnome.
The General pointed to the Peak that jutted up before them, dominating the landscape, the Peak that had impressed Snotty so much before. “Its name is the Peak of Transcendence,” he said. “Every Gnome�
��s desire. The white, the icy, the glorious Peak!” Seeing the Peak like that, chill and grand on the horizon, made Snotty feel hot and restless and bothered. A gust of yearning for even more grandeur than this rushed through him. “What’s better than a Sun God?” he wondered. “King? Emperor? What?” His head throbbed and his limbs burned. His tongue was dry. His eyes hurt. His throat rasped. “I’ll be it, whatever it is! Whatever it is, I’ll do it!”
“The Peak!” he thought fervently. “That’s it! I’ll conquer the Peak!”
“Ah, General,” Snotty said, forcing himself to speak casually. “Any of your bunch ever climbed the Peak before?”
“Never,” the General said in a hushed voice. “He who would lead us to the Peak of Transcendence would be the Greatest Of Them All!”
Snotty nodded in what he hoped was a cool sort of way. Inside, though, he was seething. “Fine!” he thought in a fever of plans. “The Greatest Of Them All! That’s for me! Right!” Snotty did not know it, but these were Gnomic ambitions he felt. Now that he was the Sun God, they had become his as well.
It was this Fever with which Snotty now burned. And it burned every thought of everything but the Peak of Transcendence out of his mind.
Chapter VIII
IN THE FORTRESS OF THE GNOMES
“We’ll start,” the General Gnome announced as they rode through the tall gray metal gates of the Fortress of the Gnomes, “with the Grand VIP Tour.”
“Suits me,” said Snotty. He was impressed by his surroundings, though of course he didn’t show this. The Gnomes of the Fortress cheered his arrival, and the appetizing aroma of the Feast ahead filled the air.
The Fortress itself, a solid mass of concrete and flat gray trim, was a showcase of advanced technology and security. Everywhere, for example, were screens of the largest possible size. Each one showed what was going on somewhere else, whether in the Fortress, or on the Plains outside.
“Handy, those,” the General grunted. He tried, and failed, to keep a note of pride from his voice. “We’ve got everything under control—everything boxed in! Not a leaf falls without us knowing it—not that there are many of those left, now that we’re almost through fixing up the Garden.” The General gave a genial chuckle. “No, Snotty, nothing gets by a Gnome! No Angel, no Fairy Tale creature—certainly no Rebel. Can’t have any of them coming round here, now, can we?”
“I should say not,” Snotty said gruffly. He didn’t know what Rebels the General was talking about, and as for Angels or Fairy Tale Creatures—he didn’t even want to think about it, really. And of course he knew better than to ask.
A waiting Gnome took the reins of his rocking horse, and Snotty and the General Gnome dismounted, continuing the Tour on foot. An entourage of Gnomes followed at a respectful distance.
“As you see, Snotty, Gnome Technology is the finest in all the worlds,” the General said. “It is second to none in its ability to put EACH AND EVERY THING IN ITS VERY OWN BOX!”
Snotty nodded. He could see the truth of this with his own eyes. Everywhere around him were boxes. Security boxes, dispatch boxes, telecommunications boxes, boxes of supplies—stacks and stacks of boxes of all kinds reached up to the top of the Fortress walls. All of this impressed him.
They paused at a smaller set of screens. On them, Gnomes rushed here and there. The Feast was being prepared.
“The Kitchen,” the General said, pointing. “Anything you want them to make, you just let me know.”
Snotty nodded his satisfaction.
“I see all my favorite foods, General,” he said.
“Yes,” the General said. “There’s nothing like a real Feast.” They watched as two Lambs turned a whole sheep on a spit. And Snotty’s mouth watered as the Gnome Pastry Chef gave a last touch to a tall chocolate cake covered with chocolate whipped cream.
“Yum,” Snotty said in spite of himself. He suspected this was not something a Sun God would say. Still, the General didn’t seem to notice.
“Sir, where do you want this Monster, SIR?” bellowed a Gnome. The Dragon stood there, head bowed. The Gnome held it by a silver chain.
Snotty frowned. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with the Dragon.
“Of course, Snotty expects you to tether the Monster in a secure place and await further instructions,” the General barked.
Snotty nodded. “Might come in handy,” he said, trying to look wise.
All the Gnomes beamed at this. “Snotty’s right, as usual,” the General Gnome said. “This Monster will be useful in battle.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Snotty said, his expression lofty and serene. But to himself, he thought, “What battle? Where? With WHAT?”
Rifle fire sounded from the other side of the Fortress wall.
“Target practice, eh?” Snotty said.
“In a way,” the General said, smiling as if Snotty had been very witty. “The firing squad. They’re getting ready for tomorrow.”
Snotty, startled, thought of Snowflake. He wiped a hand across his forehead. It and his cheeks were very hot. But then there was the Great Wall of the Fortress to admire, and the moment passed.
It was a cunning thing, the Great Wall. Woven of jagged metal, it encircled the fort.
“Can’t get through that,” the General Gnome said. “Impenetrable. Im-pen-e-tra-ble!”
“What’s it made of?” Snotty took hold of a bit of the wall, which was formed of silver links so tiny that they appeared as a seamless whole. It was a dangerous looking thing, all right.
“Prejudices,” the General Gnome said.
“What?” Snotty said.
“Stupid views,” the General explained. “Strongly held opinions with little or no basis in fact.” He and Snotty looked up in silence at the Great Wall, admiring the sheer genius of the Gnome invention. “Our architects asked themselves, what’s the one thing that’s impossible to breach? The answer was obvious! Nothing gets past a stupid prejudice.”
“You’re proud of Gnome technology, General.”
“As proud as a Gnome can be.” The General Gnome wiped a tear from his eye. “GT will be the saving of the Plains. Of course,” he continued matter-of-factly, “no progress without struggle! As Mr. Big says, we must destroy the Plains in order to save them.”
Snotty froze. Mr. Big? Was Mr. Big here? No. He couldn’t be. It must be some other Mr. Big.
Agitated, Snotty only half-listened as the General pointed out the other sights. Gnome and boy made their way now through winding corridors. The General wanted to show Snotty to his quarters before the Grand Feast.
So rattled was Snotty that he hardly noticed the grandeur of his Gnome-sized rooms. There were his evening clothes, too, his first set ever, laid out on the satin coverlet of the enormous bed. But instead of savoring the moment, he just threw them on any old which way. He kept thinking: Who was Mr. Big? And what was he doing here?
In Megalopolis, Snotty claimed he worked for Mr. Big. “But of course it’s a lie. There’s no Mr. Big. I made him up,” he thought.
At every moment, though, he felt less and less certain about the truth of this. “Because,” he thought, “somehow I’ve always known that Mr. Big DOES exist, that I DIDN’T invent him.” But how could Snotty know such a ridiculous thing: that Mr. Big both did and didn’t exist? How could these two things be true at the same time?37
Had the Gnomes invented a Mr. Big of their own? Or was Mr. Big here—really here?
“And what does it mean if he IS?” Snotty wondered. He was still wondering when the General came to escort him to the Grand Feast.
The Grand Feast was, of course, in the Grand Hall. (Snotty quickly got used to the fact that, with the Gnomes, everything was Grand.) Hundreds of solemn Gnomes, in full military or evening dress, their decorations blazing in the light of the fluorescent chandeliers above, sat in rows at a series of dark gray metal tables covered with gray plastic cloths and flat gray silver. They drank from pewter goblets. Sheep servants bustled around them, covering
every surface with platters of steaming lamb roasted to a gray turn.
“Herrrrmmm... errrrrmmm... eerrrrrrm.” There was a buzz of interest as Snotty entered, and then applause as the General escorted him to the place of honor. When Snotty sat, the entire room leapt to its feet. The General Gnome proposed a toast: “To Snotty!” he cried. And the Gnomes replied in manly chorus: “To Snotty! To Snotty! To Snotty!”
Snotty acknowledged this tribute with an urbane smile. “Er, General,” he said as they began the meal. “Mr. Big. Will he be joining us?”
At this, the General roared with laughter, slapping his knee. He passed on what Snotty had said to the next Gnome, who passed it on to the next, and so on. Soon the entire Hall chuckled at this display of wit. And with that Snotty had to be satisfied. He didn’t dare ask again.
This was the night of Snotty’s triumph. He was toasted, and he toasted in return. It seemed to him that he had never been so witty or so sophisticated. He’d got the knack of holding one hand in his evening jacket pocket with the kind of rakish elegance he had seen on TV. There was much manly banter and he joined right in. “Just as if,” he thought, “I was actually a Man!” He wished with all his heart that Mr. Big could see him now. If Mr. Big existed, of course.
At one point in the evening, Snotty noticed a woman in the room. There was only one. She had not taken part in the toasts, or in the foods of the Feast: at her place was a bit of bread and a cup of water. She got up to excuse herself, and, as she passed, each Gnome leapt up and touched his forehead with a gesture of respect. You could see why. She was modest, but there was something formidable about her, too.
“That’s Justice,” the General Gnome said. “She’s on our side, as you see.”
Snotty looked at her, fascinated. Justice was a tall woman, with everything about her practical and no nonsense, from her gray helmet of hair to her sensible shoes.
“Justice,” he said. “I thought she was blind.”
“She is,” the General said. “Blind as a bat without her glasses.” And Snotty noticed the black-rimmed glasses she wore on the end of her nose.38
