Slide On The Run

by Mick Farren

  Lupo frowned at Slide as the Fygglhgis hastily vanished into the night, back they way that they had come. "Those things…"

  Slide nodded, as if totally understanding the nosferatu's confusion. "They are Fygglhgis. Indigenous Martians. I think our presence scared them off. They are understandably nervous creatures."

  Now Lupo was even more puzzled. "Indigenous Martians? How can such a thing be?" He gestured around at the immediate environs of Albert Park. "I though all this was all an artificial fabrication on a dead world."

  Slide didn't need to read the vampire's mind to know that Lupo didn't grasp, or hadn't been told about, the cathedral gulf of time across which he had traveled. He believed that the Gridley Wave had only transported him from Earth to Mars, and that he was on some dead and dry C21 planet. Slide didn't feel like being the one to tell him that he was also a cool eight million years in his own relative past, and that the Gridley Wave might not turn out to be a reliable return ticket. In fact, Slide decided it was high time to take his leave. "Well listen, Nosferatu Lupo, this chance encounter has been very enlightening, but right now…"

  Lupo interrupted him.

  "You think to leave?"

  "I fear I have things to do and people to see."

  Lupo sternly shook his head. "I'm afraid, Idimmu Slide, that the places to which you go and the people you will see have already been precisely determined."

  Slide tensed, but did not move. "What?"

  "This is nothing personal, you understand?"

  "A matter of business?"

  "Exactly."

  "Then this meeting is not a matter of chance?"

  "I fear not. I was sent to bring you to the Turquoise Tower."

  "Turquoise Tower?"

  "The palace of Queen Mina."

  "You are in the employ of Sir Richard Barton?"

  Now Lupo really was offended. "Indeed I am not, sir. The human is a crude and predictable pervert. If I am in the employ of anyone, as you put it, I am in the employ of the Queen herself."

  Slide considered simply using the moment of Lupo's anger to take off. He had no idea if he could outdistance a vampire with his demon speed, but he was willing to give it a try. The problem with flight was that he had no clear idea to where he might flee unless it was back into the stews, knocking shops, and gin houses of the proles. He was hardly in any position to return to Rosa's or leave the city. He owed no debt of allegiance to these Victorians, but, from what he had heard so far, he doubted that the Slimy Things would greet him warmly should he try to defect. He might just as well go with Lupo to the Turquoise Tower. If nothing else, it would be a new phase in his Martian education. He was also amused by Lupo's condemnation of Barton as a "crude and predictable pervert" considering the vampire's feeding requirements, and methods of luring its prey, unless the Gridley Wave had radically transformed Lupo's metabolism. Slide raised an acquiescent hand. "I didn't think you were working for Barton. I just felt I needed to check."

  "Then you'll accompany me of your own free will?" Lupo seemed a little disappointed that Slide was offering no resistance.

  Slide gestured to the path that led away from the henge. "Shall we go?"

  The demon and the vampire walked rapidly with Lupo's personal fog at their heels, and they occasioned looks of concealed mystification from passing humans who did not know what they were, but grew nervous all the same. A gate came into sight, and beside it, clearly waiting for them, stood a ornamented and very gothic carriage, drawn by four jet black thoats, with two Red Martian postilions in royal livery, plus two footmen armed with short barreled radium rifles, who looked both formal and dangerously practical at the same time.

  "So my arrest is being conducted with a certain style?"

  Lupo opened the door of the carriage, and motioned Slide to get in. "Who said you were being arrested?"

  "It rather seemed like it."

  "You are merely being conducted to an audience with the Queen."

  "Is that what this is?" As he climbed into the coach, Slide could only conjecture that someone on Mars knew more about his situation than he did, and he didn't like that one bit. Again, it seemed that coasting with his curiosity might be the only way to learn who and what. They moved off, and the postilions pressed the thoats to a sharp pace. Beyond the carriage window, a broad avenue carried only a light, nighttime traffic of carriages, steam cabs, and various models of electrocars. If he looked up, he could see the riding lights of Martian ornithopters, and, every so often, a man or woman would float by them in midair, supported by an Equilibrimotor flying belt. Slide did not have a good view of the Turquoise Tower until they had left the thoroughfare, and were ascending a wide spiral ramp that was the only approach to the palace of Queen Mina. The soaring structure that loomed beyond the window was a narrow but baroque tower, a blue-green phallus, spiky with buttresses and gargoyles, floodlit against the Martian night. It terminated in a hypodermic spire, some kind of transmission mast, or perhaps a mooring staff for airships.

  As the carriage negotiated the rising curves of the ramp, Slide was also treated to a panoramic view of the Grand Canal and the desert beyond. Slide could hardly guess what Lupo made of the Grand Canal with its huge undulating pipes, believing as he did that he was on sere, and long dead planet. In the distance, Slide could see what looked like a second city, but where Extrosylvania was a place of light, neat within its circular walls, this

  other conurbation sprawled dark and dirty, with tall smokestacks that belched black and noxious fumes into the thin Martian air, smoking slag heaps that blemished the red desert, and grim portals that revealed the angry red hearts of industrial furnaces. "What the hell is that place?"

  On this point, Lupo knew more than Slide did. "Those are the Morlock Foundries

  "The what?"

  "Where do you think these people get their weapons, and the rest of their neo-Victorian toys?"

  Slide had not been aware that Extrosylvania had an abundance of weapons, but, very shortly, he began to see this was in fact the case. Queen Mina kept herself heavily guarded, to a point where he would have believed Extrosylvania

  to be in a state of war, except that he had seen no similar signs at Rosa Coote's, or in the sectors of the proles. In those places, all had seemed peacetime normal, although he knew there was no predicting the paranoia of those in power. The coach passed through three sets of circular gates, defended by emplacements of heavy Gatling guns and light artillery, and manned by formidably armed guard companies of both humans and Red Martians. At the first gate, Slide also noticed blue flashes of concentric psychic energy briefly enveloping the coach, indicating to him how the Turquoise Tower was protected against threats both normal and metaphysical. They finally pulled up in a courtyard, where more soldiers waited, who, once Slide and Lupo had alighted from the carriage, immediately conducted them into the palace itself. With a six-Martian escort,they were swiftly through majestic, radium-lit corridors with walls, floors, and ceilings faced with geometric slabs of turquoise so large that they could have only been artificially produced. The destination to which Slide and Lupo were being led turned out the be a pair of tall and dauntingly imposing stainless steel doors, inlaid with gold and platinum, and flanked by even more armed men in the full armor of one of Extrosylvania's crack regiments.

  The immaculate guards caused Slide to momentarily wonder if his clothing was completely suitable for an audience with a queen. Funny how he always ended up in one variation or another of a dirty duster coat, and, if he hadn't known better, he might have believed himself the victim of a sartorial predestination. This final squad of guards relieved him of his radium revolver and gave him a small ceramic token in return, in order to retrieve the weapon later. Then the guarded doors swung back and Slide walked into the Throne Room of Queen Mina of Extrosylvania.

  Story so far: Accused of disrupting time and on the run from mysterious enemies, Yancey Slide, Idimmu Demon of the Tenth Continuum, finds himself leaving a trail of disintegrated backs
tory, as, somewhere else in the universe, unimaginable forces cause unthinkably destructive upheavals. Slide arrives on ancient Mars via Doc Zen's Carter Machine, only to discover that a coterie of extraordinarily perverse neo-Victorians have established a faux-British Raj on the Red Planet. After watching an intimate display of Victorian decadence at the Establishment of Mrs. Rosa Coote, he encounters the vampire Lupo and is, with no choice in the matter, conducted to the palace of Queen Mina, the ruler of the Imperial City of Extrosylvania.

  Episode Seven

  The Turquoise Tower

  The Throne Room was like a chill and austere boudoir of muted purple, small, gauze-draped gatherings of white gold light, and soft-focus shadows, but, beneath the cool control and austere restraint of the supposed philosopher-queen, Slide sensed a ruthless, and potentially explosive barbarism that would, sooner or later, demand to run free, if only for short intervals and in small measures. And, indeed, what else should he expect from She of Fable who had melded minds with Count Dracula. The lingering spell-by-association of the bizarre combination of vampire, human tyrant, and old school demon king was both implacable and indestructible. Although driven from the material realms, and the undead body of the Tepes the Impaler, by Van Helsing and his gang of repressed and ravening, witch-hunting bigots, old Drac, the Infinite Count remained as potent as ever, circling in orbit in the ever-vague, over-there of the Ancients, but somehow managing, maybe fed by the mass energy of his Legion of Darklost, to maintain a disembodied icon-presence, black cape and manicured fangs, in the culture of the consumer dimensions. In one time-stream he even ruined the minds of children with a heavily merchandised, but also heavily drugged, brand of breakfast cereal.

  Slide had noticed, however, as they entered the throne room, that Queen Mina was being unhooked from a intravenous feeding set-up with decoratively imperial hardware. From long experience, Slide recognized that the oily fluid being introduced into the royal veins as almost certainly a cocktail that contained a unhealthy amount of the old fashioned IV tincture form of tetradetoxin, know as oblividol. Where the fuck was she at if she needed to be doped up on tetradetoxin, plus fuck knew what else? By the time anyone reached the need for a tetradetoxin drip, they had almost certainly picked up rare tastes for a lot of other highly addictive shit along the way. And what did that effectively say about Count Dracula, if his link with the woman could only be maintained by large doses of a powerful time and dimension stabilizer? Unless of course the tetradetoxin was to keep the Count at bay.

  Queen Mina leaned forward as Slide approached the throne. She seemed to be having a little trouble focusing her eyes. "You are the demon?"

  "I'm Slide, Yancey Slide, your Majesty."

  She had the ever-young, ever-old, look of the vampire, but with an added lines of contempt around the mouth. Her courtiers probably called her slender, but to Slide, she looked as emaciated as a twentieth century cocaine concubine whose price was about to plummet, with skin like wafer thin, transparent ivory. "You have probably heard things about us."

  Slide was assuming the queen was using the royal "us". "I have learned to not to pay very much attention to gossip."

  "About how we are the Victim Queen of a Great and Legendary Evil?"

  "I am a Idimmu, your Majesty, we really

  don't grasp the concept of evil."

  She fixed him with a stare that was penetrating, but was also inclined to drift off-focus at certain moments. "You are something of a conundrum, Yancey Slide?"

  "I'm sorry, your majesty. I don't mean to be. It is my aim to seek simplicity in all things."

  The Queen swayed slightly and Slide took this yaw in her inspection and questioning as a chance quickly to examine his surroundings. He had visited a lot of courts in his time. As a demon, he was able to move with ease and speed from lowlife to high places, and had never been totally certain which one he really preferred. His real interest had always been in the extremes. It was the center that generally caused him trouble. As courts went, that of Queen Mina was sparse. A small gaggle of Green Martian handmaidens ministered to her

  needs, along with an equal number of human attendants, all underdressed for the chill of the Martian night, in the style of the seraglio paintings so popular in the colonial 1800s. Mina herself was barely clothed in a loose jeweled robe that could have been designed by Gustav Klimt, and might have been considered more suitable for the bedroom than the throne room. The garment used abstract mosaics of small glowing gems that, coupled with the movements of the wearer, produced constantly shifting shimmer patterns, but Slide suspected that at least some of the crystals could only be radioactive, and, if the Queen was, to any degree still human, they were probably wreaking havoc with her cell structure. The robe was also heavy and tended to fall open whenever she leaned forward, affording Slide a clear view of the dark nipples of her small but firm breasts. He could only assume that this was a private audience, unless of course Queen Mina was the pace setter of the local decadence, or attempting to emulate Catherine the Great. The small compliment of courtiers certainly indicated that whatever matter had caused the Queen to summon Slide to her presence was hardly for public consumption.

  Aside from the guards and servants, just six individuals waited on the monarch's pleasure, five humans and one Martian, and the arrival of Slide and Lupo raised the total to eight. After introductions had been made, Slide found that he was in the company of Bolivar Morlock, an obvious Captain of Industry, the stereotypical fat capitalist, red faced from over indulgence in whores and vintage port, and arrayed in frock coat and solid gold watch chain. Sir Hubert Guest was the elderly commander of the Royal Martian Air Force, while the even more antiquated General Cairngorm, was the senior officer of Queen Mina's imperial staff. An admiral would have completed the set, except that, on Mars, with its scarcity of water and complete lack of seas, high or otherwise, a navy was clearly redundant; something that Slide knew must have been a blow to this faux-British collective consciousness. On the Red Planet, Britannia had no waves to rule.

  The two men were formally attired in full dress uniforms, blue and scarlet respectively, and all but bowed down by decorations and gold braid, and, Slide would quickly learn that they shared a common and aggressive stupidity that it was near-miraculous that the Slimy Things had not wiped out Extrosylvania long ago. A conniving oaf called Captain Harry Flashman was the human commander of the Throne Room's Red Martian guards, while a mute young woman who was referred to only as Prudence the Kitten, and whose function Slide was never to learn or fully understand completed the human representation. The ranking native in the throne room was Jalja Hajd, the Red Jeddak of Amhor, and Master of Indigenous Regulars. Queen Mina, however, totally ignored these supposedly familiar courtiers and concentrated exclusively on Slide. "You are said to have the ability to exist and function in multiple places at multiple times?"

  Slide shook his head. "That is not strictly true, Majesty. It might appear so, but only because of the relativity of time and the singular perpetuation of the observer."

  "We are not sure we understand."

  "And I'm not sure I could explain without expounding a brief history of time and the separation of parallel dimensions."

  "We have neither the time nor inclination for a history of time."

  "That's why I hesitate to attempt it."

  "We have heard that they hunt you in other realms of the continuum." "That is true, your Majesty."

  "It is said that you deliberately caused disastrous alterations in an entire swath of very important time lines."

  "It is said, ma-am, but that does not make it true."

  "Then you are a fugitive from retribution for a crime that you did not commit?"

  "That is my story, your Majesty."

  "And you're sticking to it?"

  "I am, ma'am."

  "You must have been relieved when brought we you to our realm."

  Slide resisted giving himself away by raising a cynical eyebrow. Either someone was deceiving
the Queen about the reason for Slide's presence on Mars, or some temporal discrepancy had come into play. At his side, he heard Lupo let out a faint exhalation as though he knew that the Queen might be misinformed. As far as Slide was aware Dr. Zen's Carter Machine had hurled him across both space and time on the Gridley Wave, and he had been slammed naked into the hard sands of Mars with not even Mahdjfb the Fygglhgis to witness his actual arrival. No one in the Turquoise Tower, or anywhere else on the planet, could have had a hand in the event, although he knew, from his perception of the subjective present, that could easily not be what they firmly believed. Thus Slide's reply was thought-out and guarded. "I would certainly rather be here than in some of the other places I have recently found myself."

  "But are you grateful to us, Yancey Slide?"

  Slide half bowed and smiled. He might as well play along with the illusion for the moment. "Yes, you majesty. I am extremely grateful."

  "Grateful enough to be of service in return?"

  Yeah, well, he might have known. Nothing was for nothing, anywhere in space-time. Again he bowed. This time lower and with a greater flourish. "I am at your service, you Majesty."

  Slide knew he was entering the art of the deal, but this was doing it the hard way, when the first phase was clearly going be waiting for Queen Mina and her coterie of courtiers to define exactly what the deal was all about. Like those who hunted him, and those from whom he ran, the Queen seemed to be under the delusion that Slide had the power to alter history and change the course of the future. It was nonsense, of course. Just part of the bad rap that had been laid on the idimmu almost since infinity. Sure, they could mightily fuck things up by the classic "Stepping On The Butterfly" time paradox, but any entity with

  temporal jump capacity could emerge into a particular era, inadvertently destroy one crucial factor, and wreak havoc in another. Like the story went, he could step on butterfly in one time zone, and cause towers to fall millions of years later on the same timeline. The trouble was that survivors of the cataclysm would not remember that the towers had ever existed in the first place, because, in their reality, the towers never had.