by Martin Dukes
“Oh, thanks,” said Alex. “No need to pack then. But I still don’t get what these Brothers want with me.”
Malcolm looked awkward and shuffled his feet.
“Well?” insisted Alex.
“You really don’t want to know.”
“I think you’ll find I do,” said Alex, feeling a growing sense of foreboding that was in no way reduced by Malcolm’s next pronouncement.
“They want your head,” he said with a sigh. “There, I’ve said it. I’ve been rather dreading having to share that with you.”
“Huh? You’re talking metaphorically, I guess.”
“No. I’m talking actually. They actually want your head.”
“Er, why?” asked Alex with a sudden dryness in the mouth and moisture in the palms. There was a nervous twitch in his bowels too. It seemed that heads had played a large part in his life just recently. It didn’t look like they were going to stop doing so any time soon. “Why?” he demanded, louder this time. “That’s crazy!”
“It’s a long story,” started Malcolm.
“Make it short.”
“Okay, okay, so they have this thing in a temple somewhere which they all go to worship. It’s called the Dodekakephalon.”
“The what?”
“Do-dek-a-kef-a-lon,” said Malcolm helpfully. “Basically it’s a circle of eleven skulls. There should be twelve but there’s a gap in it where there should be one more.”
“Huh! What? Mine? Do you mean mine?”
“Yep. That’ll be yours, then.”
“But why? That’s totally mad! What can they possibly want with my skull?” Alex felt the blood drain from his face.
“Well, it’s not because it makes up a pretty pattern, that’s for sure,” said Malcolm. “Each one of the skulls belongs to some kind of ancient prophet with the kind of extraordinary powers they think you’ve got. They believe that when the last skull is set in place all their energy will be unleashed; you know, like completing a circuit or something, in one massive cataclysmic explosion that will regenerate the Universe and, get this, usher in a golden age. That’s what it says in their holy book. So I understand. Crazy!” Malcolm tapped the side of his head and cast his eyes upward.
Alex felt a prickle travel across his scalp as though his imperilled skull was picking up the vibes.
“And you believe this?” he croaked.
“I think it’s a load of old tosh,” said Malcolm with a wry smile. “But it’s not what I think that counts, is it?”
“But it’s stupid!” objected Alex once more. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s religion,” said Malcolm shrugging. “It doesn’t have to make sense. That’s the way it works.”
“So what are we going to do?” asked Alex. And then, as a sudden thought hit him, “And what’s it to you, anyway? I mean, why do you even care what happens to me and my skull?”
“Whoa!” said Malcolm. “Why so suspicious all of a sudden?” He had another look at his pebble, and finding it apparently to his satisfaction, came across to Alex and put a hand on his shoulder. He looked Alex earnestly in the eye.
“I thought we were friends. I like you, Alex, and I feel responsible for you – you and your little pals.”
“So what are you getting at?” demanded Alex grimly. “That still doesn’t explain it.”
Malcolm sighed.
“Okay, so I’m working with a bunch of guys trying to fight the Brothers. We’re not keen on the Brothers. They stand for everything we stand against.”
“Go on,” grunted Alex.
The pebble made a faint pinging sound and began to glow red.
“Uh oh!” said Malcolm, pocketing the pebble in one smooth movement.
“What? What’s going on? You can’t go now!”
“I absolutely can,” said Malcolm. “The Brothers are watching me, just as we’re watching them. They know something’s going on and they’re trying to track this connection. I’ve got to go or they’re definitely going to be coming for you – and they’re stronger than us. You got that?”
“Yes, but what shall we do?” demanded Alex urgently.
“Survive,” said Malcolm with a shrug. “Stay out of trouble until I can come and get you out of here. They can’t track all of the past, so if I can do anything to help I’ll have already done it, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t!” gasped Alex. “What the hell!”
Malcolm began to fade, becoming rapidly transparent.
“I’ll be trying to keep an eye on things,” said Malcolm’s faint voice. “And I’ll be in touch if I can.” These were the last words Alex could make out as Malcolm faded to nothing.
“Oh my God,” said Alex, squeezing his face between his hands. “This is a nightmare!”
He woke, sweating, in a room dark and silent except for the faint rhythmic wheezing coming from Will’s bed. Sitting up and peering about him into the darkness, Alex took a few deep breaths and tried to slow his racing mind. Was it a dream? The briefest moment of reflection was sufficient to assure him it was not. Malcolm had really been there.
Flicking on the lights was not an option, of course, so Alex sprang out of bed and flung back the shutters at the windows so that pale moonlight painted a broad path across the floor.
“Wake up!” he shouted, in case the clatter of the shutters should not be enough to eject his friends from the land of nod.
“What? Are you crazy?” grunted Henry, regarding him blearily.
“What time is it?” muttered Will, groping for his glasses.
“They’re coming for my skull!” moaned Alex, running his hands distractedly through his hair. “Oh my god, they’re actually coming for my skull.”
“Huh?” said Will and Henry in unison.
“Who’s coming for what?” demanded Will sleepily.
“The Brothers! They’re coming for my head!” shouted Alex, eyes staring wildly. He gestured at his head using both hands. “You know – my bonce, my bean, my noggin, my chump. They’re actually coming for my head!”
“What’s going on?” demanded Kelly, coming in with Tanya from the adjoining room.
“He’s had a nightmare,” said Henry sleepily. “Some guys’re coming for his bean apparently. Tough break.”
“No!” said Alex, shaking his head vehemently. “No, no, no. It wasn’t a nightmare. Honestly. It was real! Malcolm was there. You’ve got to listen to me now, before I forget any of it.”
His four friends exchanged wary glances. There was no mistaking Alex’s sincerity. His ashen features and staring eyes put this beyond question.
“Go on,” said Kelly cautiously.
Speaking rapidly, pacing up and down the path of moonlight, Alex recounted the content of his dream. The others sat on the edges of the beds and listened, dressed variously in nightgowns, Arab pyjamas or with sheets wrapped around them.
“I’m sorry but that is, like, totally insane,” said Henry shaking his head when Alex had finished and slumped exhausted on a couch. “I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.”
“Oh, right. So you’re prepared to accept being transported into a parallel world, into something like the nineteenth century,” scoffed Kelly. “That just seems perfectly okay and normal to you. Wake up, Henry. There’s a whole universe of weirdness out there and you’re right in the middle of it.”
“Okayyyy. Point well made,” said Henry, flushing somewhat.
“Shut up, Henry,” said Tanya, furrowing her small brow.
“Don’t you start,” he said.
“Alright, alright,” said Will anxiously. “But what are we going to do, anyway? I mean, have we just got to hang around and wait to see if anyone turns up to take Alex’s skull?” He turned to Alex. “Did you ask him why he rescued me and Tanya and dropped us off here? I mean, I’m presuming it was him.”
“I didn’t ask him,” said Alex ruefully. “I was presuming the same thing. There was loads more stuff I wanted to ask him but we r
an out of time.”
“But what have we got to do with it?” asked Henry, glancing around at the others. “After all, it’s only Alex’s skull they’re after.”
“I guess we just got sucked in,” said Tanya wide-eyed.
“Are you guys trying to make me feel bad, or something?” asked Alex, looking distraught.
“No, not at all,” said Kelly. She came across to him and put her arm around his shoulder, giving him a bit of a squeeze. She kissed the side of his forehead whilst sending Henry a sidelong withering glance. “We’re all in this together.”
“Yes, it’s like… it’s like our destinies are all bound up together,” said Will enthusiastically.
“Yeah, well, obviously,” said Henry awkwardly. “I guess it’s All for One Skull and One Skull for All.”
“Thanks,” said Alex with feeling. “But I wish you’d stop going on about skulls.”
“We should give ourselves a name,” suggested Tanya. “You know – like a secret society.”
“What about Super-Secret Sacred Society for the Protection of Alex’s Stupid Skull,” suggested Henry, who really didn’t know when to back off.
The others stared at him for a moment, with varying degrees of disapproval.
“What about the Guardian of the Skull?” suggested Will. “That’d be cool.”
“I’m not having skull in it,” said Alex vehemently.
“Okay, so what about the Outlanders then?” proffered Will. “We’re all kind of foreigners here, aren’t we?”
“That’s so lame,” said Henry.
“I’m not hearing anything better,” Kelly told him sharply.
“Alright, so what are we Outlanders going to do, anyway?” said Henry in conciliatory tones. “What was it Malcolm said?”
“Nothing, really,” said Alex with a shrug. “Just keep a low profile and stay out of trouble.”
“’Sounds like a plan,” said Henry with a low sarcastic whistle. “I wish I’d thought of that.”
Nevertheless, it seemed for a while that the plan would work. The Outlanders – for that is how they came to think of themselves – settled in to their new lives in Zanzibar. Alex and Henry began their military training, occasionally under the eye of Sultan Jalil himself, but more usually under the stern supervision of Ahmed, the master of what passed for a military academy. Ahmed was a grizzled, bow-legged warrior perfectly adapted for riding horses and equally well adapted for beating Alex black and blue in the many bouts of fencing he was forced to endure. They were blunted sabres, of course, or Alex would have been sliced up like salami within minutes; nevertheless, being repeatedly struck with a large piece of steel soon began to seem a hardship. Henry, captain of the school cricket team and general sporting superhero, soon got the hang of horsemanship. By the end of the first week he was seated reliably on the right side of his horse, and by the end of the second the beast was beginning to understand that the direction of its travel was not a matter of its own whim or fancy. A week later and Henry was beginning to attract admiring glances from the various young ladies who came along to watch the young men at their practice.
Two of these were Kelly and Tanya, who soon made friends amongst the young ladies of the court and spent their days around the bathing pools, or in the dressmakers, or having various parts of them cut, styled, smoothed and generally pampered.
“Come on, Alex. You can do better than that,” called Kelly from the other side of the parade ground one morning, whilst Alex was busy being roundly trounced by Henry at fencing.
Alex knew otherwise, but nevertheless the humiliation of being thrashed by Henry in front of Kelly and her girlfriends was more than he could bear. Motivated thus, he picked up his sabre and went at Henry with renewed vigour and enthusiasm. There was a brief clash of steel and Alex found himself on his back with Henry’s sabre point pressed to his throat.
“Okay. So maybe this isn’t your special power,” said Henry ironically, letting Alex roll over and get to his feet.
Ahmed, who had been observing with interest, strode forward, grinning broadly, and clapped Henry on the back.
“Excellent, Master Henry. We will make a swordsman of you yet. He turned to Alex and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Master Alex, I fear we must look once more at your grip.”
The Sultan was delighted to learn that more milkskins had wandered into his realm and was eager to be introduced to them. Will was much relieved to find that he was to be excused military training. Perhaps he felt that Will would add little to his nation’s military strength. Instead he was assigned as the astronomer Zoroaster’s pupil and assistant, the previous one having recently died of old age.
Zoroaster was keen to learn more about Will’s world and about the Outlanders in general. He was a frequent visitor to their quarters, bringing with him a great many penetrating questions and a strong whiff of mothballs. Zoroaster’s lodgings were in a tall tower on the northern edge of the city. Here he spent most clear nights studying the firmament and marking the passage of the planets through the constellations. This philosopher, whose mind operated on a higher plane and whose body muddled through as best it could, cared little for his clothes, his appearance, his surroundings and indeed for personal hygiene, as anyone caught downwind of him could readily attest. Sometimes, when the sky was clear and the heavens ablaze, he hardly ate for days on end, getting by on a few scraps of mutton or a bowl of rice. The two simple rooms he lived in were furnished with austerity bordering on the absurd. There was only a single chair, and Zoroaster’s desk consisted of an old door balanced on two huge piles of the bound volumes of his notes and investigations. For want of a bookshelf, more of these stood in teetering piles around the walls. His sleeping compartment contained a bed, a wooden chest of clothes and a washstand with plain white bowl and a cracked jug. Cords stretched from wall to wall supporting a pegged array of socks and greying undergarments.
Will, on his first encounter with this, took it upon himself to improve the old man’s living conditions. Given that he was a diplomatic and sensitive boy he set about this in a gradual, unobtrusive way so as not to excite the hostility of one so colossally set in his ways as to be like a human glacier. He began, cautiously enough, by introducing a second chair. This meant that when not studying the night sky together through Zoroaster’s brass telescope, the old man could sit with Will and instruct him in the basics of mathematics.
“Maths!” said Alex, when Will told him about this. “After all that trouble you used to have back in Intersticia? I take it that wasn’t your idea.”
“Well, no,” admitted Will. “But it’s different with Zoroaster. He’s actually quite kind and patient… and he explains things properly. Do you know, I actually think I’m starting to enjoy it.”
“And what about the stars?” Tanya had asked. “There’s so many of them here. I never saw so many in my life.”
“No light pollution,” explained Henry. “There’s exactly the same number of stars but you can just see ‘em better.”
“That’s right,” nodded Will. “He’s showing me all the constellations. And he thought he’d discovered a new planet. To start with I hadn’t the heart to tell him we’ve already discovered them all.”
To say that Zoroaster was surprised to hear about Will’s knowledge of the heavens would have been an understatement.
“Do I hear you right?” he demanded, his great bushy brows beetling like a couple of agitated caterpillars facing off. “Can my ears be deceiving me? Did I really hear you suggest that the Sun and not the Earth may be at the centre of the Universe?” Zoroaster sat down heavily on the edge of his desk, causing the other side to tilt up and a great many papers to cascade to the floor.
“Not the Universe; just the Solar System,” said Will, somewhat alarmed. “I thought you guys had worked all this out by the nineteenth century. I mean, what about Galileo? And who was that other chap, Copernicus, was it? They got it all sorted out centuries ago, didn’t they?”
“Never h
eard of them,” muttered Zoroaster, stroking his beard distractedly and staring into the middle distance. “Hang on a minute.”
With muttered oaths, he scattered notebooks from his various book piles, heedless of the slithered chaos at his feet, until he found a large black one close to the bottom of what had been the largest pile. This he threw onto his desk, thumbing the pages urgently, running his fingers down the lines of notes and calculations and murmuring, “Yes. Yes. It all makes sense now.”
He turned to Will, breathing deeply. “Of course, you are correct. You must be. How could I be so blind? And you say this is common knowledge in your world? What a wondrous place that must be! How I wish you could take me there.”
He sat down on his chair and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly.
“Forgive me. I feel that I have been stricken by a thunderbolt. But come, tell me what else you know about the heavens. I had not guessed I was instructing one whose knowledge was superior to my own.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” said Will modestly. “I bombed out in my last Physics exam. There’s nine planets, see, if you include Pluto.”
“Nine, you say. Extraordinary! I know of only five. Tell me their names.”
“And the Earth is a planet too!” he sighed, when Will had finished numbering them on his fingers. “All our wisdom is shattered into pieces. We must build it anew. Our duty is clear. We must sift your words and test them with our own observations. But tell me, why did you not mention this earlier? Did I not tell you I thought I may have discovered a new planet? I have been making observations for years. I had thought to present my findings to the other professors in the university next month, duffers though they mostly are. Why, Will? Why did you permit me to continue in my folly?”
“I didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” said Will in a small voice.
