by Martin Dukes
“Cut loose the anchors,” said Rakesh tersely.
The skipper opened his mouth to object, but Rakesh quelled him with a gesture.
“Just do it,” he snapped.
A minute later, the anchors plunged to the ocean depths, following the vessel’s cargo and provisions. It was a desperate measure. The expressions on the crew’s faces told their own story.
“They’re still closing,” said Alex, regarding their pursuer bleakly. “It’s no good.”
“What are they going to…?” Henry began to ask, but this question was answered for him when a momentary puff of smoke appeared on their pursuer’s bow, to be followed a moment or two later by a distant boom as a cannon was fired.
“Bow chaser,” said Jemail as a cannonball skipped across the wave tops behind them.
“He’ll have our range in a minute,” said the skipper, looking beseechingly at Rakesh. “We’re helpless as babes. He’ll come upwind of us and eat the wind right out of our sails. Then he’ll rake us from stem to stern. We’ll…”
“Shut up!” Rakesh told him, eyes glaring, biting his lip. He turned to Alex and the Outlanders. “It seems we have no choice.”
To illustrate this point there was another louder boom and a second cannonball came fizzing across their bows, no more than a boat’s length away.
The Outlanders looked at each other anxiously and then at Rakesh. He saw no guidance in their faces, only despair and disappointment. He nodded.
“Heave to,” he said.
The skipper shouted the necessary commands and the helmsman turned the vessel’s head up into the wind, sails flapping as the crew rushed to haul them down. The ship bobbed helplessly on the heaving seas as their pursuer approached purposefully to become their captor.
Twenty minutes later and the barque lay alongside whilst Garek’s men secured possession of their prize. Alex and the Outlanders found themselves conducted across the lurching gap between the two vessels to where a grinning Garek awaited them.
“This is naked piracy,” protested Rakesh, shrugging aside one of Garek’s crew who had sought to prevent him from approaching their commander. “I demand that you release my ship immediately or the Sultan will hear of it.”
“That’s nonsense, Rakesh, as you well know,” said Garek smoothly, signalling for his men to leave Rakesh alone. “I could argue that I am doing the Sultan’s work for him, by re-capturing fugitives from his justice – and those who commit treason by assisting them,” he added with a significant nod. “Besides, empty bluster does you no credit. I have no particular interest in you unless you intend to annoy me. I shall release you and your Zanzibari friends in due course. My interests lie elsewhere,” he said, putting a big hand on Alex’s shoulder.
“Get off!” snapped Alex, stepping backward half a pace until his progress was arrested by Shirman’s vice-like grip on his upper arms.
“Why don’t you just leave him alone?” demanded Kelly, eyes blazing.
“I have my reasons,” said Garek. “As I think you know, my dear.”
“So what exactly are you going to do with me?” asked Alex, feeling torn between anger and anxiety, but with anxiety beginning to get the upper hand.
“Well, let me see,” said Garek, in tones of mock indecision, stroking his chin. “I think we need to get you to dry land and make a nice little base where we can set up a ground station. Then we’ll see what we shall see, shan’t we? Oh, happy days! You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this, Alex. You really have no idea.”
He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Secure them below,” he said with a nod to Shirman. “I think our mission’s nearly done.”
Garek’s base proved to be an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of a village some miles to the north of Canopus. It was already dark when the captives were put ashore with a strong guard and conducted along deserted lanes to the warehouse. Here they were locked together in what might once have been an office. A pair of Garek’s burlier crew members were stationed outside, armed with the rifles that the Sultan had found so fascinating. There was something of a struggle with their captors as Alex was parted from his friends– curses, shoves, kicks and a fierce blow that left Henry sprawling on his back.
“Alex!” gasped Kelly, her pale face disappearing from sight as the door was slammed behind him.
“Come on now,” grunted Shirman, bending Alex’s arm up painfully behind his back and urging him along the corridor. “Let’s have no more funny business, eh?”
“Alright! Stop that, you’re going to break my arm,” squawked Alex. “Where are you taking me?”
“To Garek, where d’you think?” laughed Shirman nastily. “He’s got big plans for you.”
“Crudely put, Mr Shirman, but true enough,” said Garek, opening a door at the end of the corridor and stepping aside as Alex was shoved roughly through.
Shirman closed the door and stood watchfully by as Garek sat himself casually on the edge of a table. Alex rubbed his arm ruefully and glanced around at a bare, whitewashed space, furnished only with Garek’s table and a couple of plain wooden chairs. Various items of unidentifiable technological equipment had been secured to these chairs. A cable ran from each of these to a large box-like item with a number of lights flickering on its side. The surface was otherwise smooth and grey, in the manner of other angelic technology Alex had seen.
“You will be wondering what is going on,” Garek told him. “And I shall enlighten you, because you deserve an explanation of what is shortly going to happen to you.”
“You’re an angel, aren’t you?” asked Alex tersely, rounding on him. There seemed no point in pretending ignorance now. “An angel. Malcolm told me all about you. You want to take my skull for this stupid Dodekka-thingy-mah-jig you’ve got up there.”
“I’ve no idea who this Malcolm is you’re referring to,” said Garek, taking a swig from what looked very much like a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “But your analysis is essentially correct, except in the fact that your skull is only one of a number of promising candidates under investigation. It’s just that your skull is my business, if I make myself clear. Hmm?”
“So you’re going to murder me for my skull,” said Alex bleakly. “Great!”
“Murder is such an ugly word,” said Garek with an affectation of regret. “And your use of it betrays your ignorance in so many ways. Besides, as I have said, it may be that your skull is not the one. We are going to whisk you off to Elysium now so that we can have a good look at it. What do you say to that?”
Alex shrugged. “I think it stinks; what do you expect me to say? Anyway, Malcolm says the angels have got this place locked down. If you try and use any angel tech they’re going to come down on you like a ton of bricks.”
“Malcolm again, eh? I can see he’s been leading you astray, whoever he is. Look around you at the walls, Alex. What do you see?”
Alex noticed that there were a number of small grey disks fixed to the wall at waist height. They were about the size of coins, with fine metallic cables snaking in between, fixed crudely in place with black staples. He shrugged.
“What do you expect me to see?” he snapped. “I don’t get your technology, do I?”
“Indeed,” said Garek, crunching the cup in his big hand and throwing it into a corner. “Well, what I see is a field generator. I won’t even attempt to describe how it works. Suffice to say anything that happens in this room is invisible to our angelic observer friends. Think of it as a kind of cloaking device.” He indicated the chairs, with the various equipment attached to them. “And these are cross dimensional trans-locators. These are the little suckers that are going to get you and I back to Elysium.”
He indicated the chairs. “Shall we?”
“If you think I’m sitting on that, you’ve got another think coming,” scoffed Alex.
Garek laughed and shook his head.
“Oh, Alex,” he said. “Alex, Alex, Alex.” He shook his head some more. “Do you really think you ha
ve a choice? I, on the other hand, have lots of choices. I could, for example, simply have you tranquilised and strap you unconscious to the chair myself. It makes no difference whether you’re awake to see it. I could, on the other hand, take one of your little pals out into the courtyard and put a bullet through their head. I am not, by nature, a violent man, but if needs must…”
Alex had not been feeling in the highest of spirits for the last few hours, but this plunged him into a new abyss of despair.
“What about little Miss Kelly?” said Garek, making his hand into the shape of a gun. “I bet you’d love to see what her brains look like spattered on the wall.”
“Shut up!” shouted Alex, clenching his fists. “Alright, you’ve made your point! You’re such a loser. If you can just knock me out anyway, why d’you even have to say all that other stuff? Come on, let’s get on with it.”
“I think you’ll find there’s only one loser here,” said Garek smoothly, his face betraying momentary irritation. “I’m glad we’ve cleared that up. After you…” He indicated the chair once more.
With a weary sigh, shoulders slumped, Alex settled himself onto one of the chairs. Garek made various straps secure so that his victim was held firmly in place at the wrists and ankles. Then he placed what felt like some kind of skull cap on Alex’s head, moving on to attach a number of adhesive pads at various points of his neck, chest and abdomen. Each one of these supported a tiny metal cylinder with a light on either end.
“Rather ancient technology, I’m afraid,” said Garek, making an adjustment to Alex’s skull cap. “But it does have the virtue of being essentially untraceable.”
Alex had begun with the intention of submitting stoically to his fate, without uttering another word, but mounting anxiety and curiosity drove out this resolve.
“What’s going to happen?” he found himself asking, struggling to keep his voice steady. The straps at his wrists and ankles were biting into his flesh and he could feel his heart hammering in his chest. If Garek had set things up to make Alex feel as though he were about to be fried in an electric chair, he could hardly have done better. The rectangular machine had begun to make a dull humming noise and the cables that connected it to Alex’s chair pulsated with blue light.
“We’re going to Elysium,” Garek told him, patting him companionably on the cheek. “Isn’t that a treat?”
He sat on the second chair, and Shirman, whose presence Alex had almost forgotten about, stepped forward to prepare Garek in the same manner. After a few minutes it was over.
“Okay. All systems are good to go,” he said, stooping to inspect the pattern of lights on the humming box. “What shall I do with the others?”
“Hold onto them ‘til you extract,” said Garek. “Otherwise, wait for further instructions. Use your initiative.”
“Very well,” said Shirman with a nod. “Ready for extraction?”
“Ready,” affirmed Garek.
Shirman seemed to move his hand over a number of the lights and the room appeared suddenly to blur, shatter and shrink. A blinding light filled Alex’s consciousness, but shutting his eyes tightly made no difference. The light was inside his head. A tingling began in his fingertips and became a violent, painful vibration that shuddered throughout his being. He was suddenly so heavy that it felt as though every part of him was cast in lead, and then he was suddenly weightless, fading into unconsciousness, a tiny shriek lost in the vast, howling emptiness within.
He awoke with a start, eyelids springing open. Light of an ordinary kind revealed a room full of people.
“Home sweet home,” said Garek’s voice behind him.
“I had forgotten how irritatingly flippant you were,” said another voice, a harsh, icy voice that didn’t sound as though it would adjust itself well to laughter. “Have you really been away thirty years?”
“Twenty-nine,” said Garek as two men came forward to unstrap him. “But I came through with the goods, didn’t I?”
“That remains to be seen,” said the unseen owner of the icy voice, with a definite note of scepticism.
He moved in front of Alex, proving to be a tall man of elderly appearance; thin with narrow ascetic features and a high forehead. Whatever hair he might have possessed was concealed by a tall black hat, tapering somewhat towards the top and embroidered with a pattern of silver skulls. He wore an elaborate arrangement of layered garments, strung about with an impressive amount of gold and silver jewellery. In his right hand was a black staff, topped off with a splendid jewel-encrusted skull. Alex sensed a preoccupation with skulls. This had to be a religious person and a high status one to judge from the spectacular amount of dressing-up going on. The other men present were similarly clothed, although the relative plainness of their garments spoke of lower degrees of status.
“Hi,” said Alex querulously as unseen fingers released his skull cap and others set to work on undoing the various straps that confined him. “Where am I?”
“It speaks,” said the possessor of the showy garments. “Welcome to Elysium, Alex. This is a little part of it we have made our own. My name is Ezekiel. It is very good to meet you. We have a most important enterprise to set in motion. I trust we can rely upon your complete co-operation?”
Alex could only stare at the man for a moment.
“What, while you chop my head off?” he asked incredulously. “Oh yes, that’s just fine with me– anything I can do to help you out, up to and including decapitation? You expect me to co-operate with that?”
“Nobody said anything about doing such a thing,” clucked Ezekiel disapprovingly. “Not until the necessary measurements have been made and your skull has been definitively proved to be the one. I see no reason to leap to such a conclusion. Garek will have explained our purpose, I expect…”
“Not in detail. There was no time, Your Worship,” said Garek in an unexpectedly humble tone.
“Hmmm,” said Ezekiel, raising a jewelled gloved finger to his lip and regarding Alex critically. “There are things that I feel duty bound to explain to you. You may rise,” he said, beckoning with his staff. “You are no longer confined.”
Alex stood, glancing around at Garek and at the circle of black-clad men. Each of them regarded him with a steady curiosity, as though he were some interesting specimen in a museum.
“I trust you will not attempt any foolishness,” said Ezekiel when Alex stood before him. “I could, if I wished, crush you like a bug with a snap of my fingers.”
Alex shook his head glumly as Ezekiel turned and led him through a door into a long, gloomy corridor with stone columns set at intervals in the walls. The decorative scheme was far from being a cheerful or uplifting one. A stone-flagged floor echoed to his footsteps. Iron-bound doors opened off on either side. Ezekiel opened one of these and ushered Alex through into a room that proved to be a small and cosy study with leather upholstered armchairs on either side of a crackling log fire.
“Please sit,” said Ezekiel, taking off his hat to reveal a completely bald pate and leaning his staff against a bookcase. “Would you care for tea?”
“’You got a coke?” asked Alex in the “what the hell?” frame of mind that had begun to settle upon him. His present circumstances seemed so unreal that his mind vacillated from terror, to smouldering resentment, to stunned acceptance. There was a kind of grim humour, too, and it was this that momentarily took hold of him as an expression of disapproval passed across his host’s noble features.
“It can be arranged,” said Ezekiel with evident resentment, as though he were being asked to perform some mildly indecent act.
Almost immediately a servant came in with a tray of tea and a glass of coke with ice and lemon. There were ridiculously small cakes too, set neatly on an elegant cake stand. Ignoring the china plate that had been set before him, Alex took a few of these and crammed them into his mouth, taking a perverse pleasure in the disgust this evidently caused his host. Take any victory, however small, he told himself, a fierce little th
rill passing though him. The cakes were delicious, too.
Ezekiel stirred his little teapot, a silver one, and poured himself a cup, a delicate bone china one, before adding milk and a little sugar. He took a speculative sip, wiped his lip and regarded Alex stonily.
“You are aware, I take it, that there are more than four dimensions,” he said.
As a conversation opener this was hard to beat.
“Huh?” said Alex, somewhat taken aback by this sudden diversion into physics. “What’s that got to do with anything? I thought we were here to do stuff with my skull.”
“Bear with me,” said Ezekiel with a sigh. “Dimensions– there are more than four.”
“Whatever,” said Alex with a shrug. “If you say so.”
“I do, I most definitely do. There are, in fact, eleven. The first three dimensions describe the space that you live in, and for convenience we may describe them as height, width and depth. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Alex took a sip of his coke. “I get it. And I’m guessing the fourth is time, right?”
“Indeed,” nodded Ezekiel. “A special dimension. But you also exist in a further three dimensions, dimensions that others of your species have described as the shadow dimensions. I am not as you are, although I may seem as such. I exist in six dimensions and can perceive all of them. You cannot. You lack the sensory organs to perceive them.”
“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me there,” said Alex. “I’m rubbish at Physics.”
“I’m not asking you to sit an examination on it,” said Ezekiel with a note of impatience in his voice. “I’m simply trying to explain to you how things are.”
“Go on,” said Alex after a moment’s contemplation. He concluded that every moment passed in conversation with Ezekiel was a moment in which he wasn’t having his head chopped off. On the other hand, the way things were going conversationally, he wondered if it might come to seem a welcome relief.
“And so the additional three dimensions of our existence can never be apparent to you,” Ezekiel continued. “Because you lack the experience or vocabulary to describe them. I could never describe them to you in any terms that would make sense to you. It would be like describing the colour purple to a person blind from birth; they would have no framework of experience by which to interpret any description of it. Do you understand me?”
