by Foul-ball
‘I don’t say that I’m anything.’
Bernard turned to Proton in exasperation.
‘Candidate, Cormack,’ began Proton. Then he turned his back to Bernard and waggled the laser gun that was attached to his utility belt. ‘Don’t you remember our little talk about responsibilities and obligations and about how one good turn deserves another? One good turn like saving your damned life back in that volcano.’
‘I was only asking the obvious question. I’m certainly not ungrateful.’
‘And look at your poor friend, the cow,’ continued Proton. ‘She is so disappointed in your attitude.’
In fact, the cow was nowhere to be seen, having slithered off somewhere earlier that morning.
‘Why don’t you just do what Bernard says and get in the barrel?’
Cormack had thought that perhaps the fervour would have faded from Proton’s eyes now they had reached Shambalah, but if anything it was more pronounced. What could Proton possibly want from him so badly? It was like being chained to a bounty hunter, the chains being merely figurative but no less constraining for that - there was never anywhere to run to. Everywhere alien danger. And how would it end? With Proton wearing a Carmen Miranda hat, serving fruit punch in hollowed-out coconuts like Kenneth More in The Admirable Crichton?
Cormack surveyed Proton’s craggy features carefully, searching for answers, and decided it was best to get in the barrel.
‘Good,’ said Bernard. He had Cormack squeeze up some more, and then he put the lid on, and hammered it into place. ‘Now are you OK in there?’
‘Well, it’s very uncomfortable,’ said Cormack, who was bent double. ‘But I’m as good as can be expected in the circumstances, if that’s what you mean.’
‘The Ordeal will begin when we lower you in the river. So you needn’t use any of your special powers until then. All right?’
‘I don’t have any special powers.’
‘Oh, bugger! The river!’
Cormack could hear some low murmuring, as though Bernard was consulting Proton on some point of order, and then Bernard spoke up again.
‘Perhaps, in retrospect, it would have been better to take you and the barrel to the river first and then had you get in it over there but it’s too late now because I’ve hammered in the nails and they’re the only ones I’ve got for now so could you please bear with us while we roll you there. It’s only a short trip. I really am most apologetic for the cock up. This is absolutely not part of the Ordeal.’
Cormack braced himself as the barrel was tipped over, and then he was rolled gently for a little while until he could make out the sounds of running water, and then the barrel was upended again and there was more murmuring and Bernard finally said, ‘Right, we’re here now. Are you ready?’
‘Ready for what?’ said Cormack.
‘Good man,’ said Bernard and Cormack was about to say something in reply, when all of a sudden the barrel fell on its side, and then rolled violently down what appeared to be a sharp incline at quite some speed, and then there was a great splash, and more rolling, and then a kind of bobbing sensation, and a forward motion, and Cormack realized he’d been kicked into the river, and was now heading downstream at quite a pace.
Immediately he could feel wetness on his clothes from below where the barrel was leaking. He raised himself a little from its side so that he was up on his haunches like a bobsledder, and tried to spread his weight more evenly in an attempt to stop the barrel rolling so much, and was mostly successful at that, so for a little while he was going down the river in a semi-practised manner; but soon after he was settled in this way the barrel jolted as it hit a succession of small rocks, and then he heard the distant roar of what sounded ominously like white water and rapids and torrents.
Very soon, the burble of a little creek was overwhelmed by a roar, and he had to give up any thought of trying to control the spinning of the barrel, and could only brace himself inside as best he could as he was buffeted back and forth, and thrown up and down, and banged against the sides. The barrel was a quarter full of icy water now, and Cormack was becoming badly bruised and nauseated besides.
Then just as he felt ready to black out, there was a huge crack as the barrel smashed at speed into what must have been a very large rock, and he could feel a rush of icy cold water coming all over him. He spluttered and fought for breath, then looked down towards his feet and could see sunlight, and a huge flow of water where a gaping hole had opened up. He started kicking at it, and got it a little bigger, but the water was everywhere inside now and he knew he would have to get out immediately or drown. He squeezed himself round so his face was to the hole, and tried to push himself through, but only managed to get out as far as his waist, and for a while he was stuck there, racing down the river half in and half out of the barrel, bending his body upwards like a beached herring flapping on a sandbank, gasping at the air.
He wriggled some more, and got a purchase on the hoop that held the barrel together at the top, twisting himself round and scraping his hips horribly in the process until he was finally out. What was left of the barrel continued on down the rapids, smashing some more against the rocks as it went along.
Cormack swam frantically for the bank.
The current was so strong, and the rocks so frequent and jagged, that he was always close to being cut to pieces, but at last he made it, and he scrambled up on dry land and collapsed, lying on his back with his eyes closed, panting for breath.
There he lay for quite a while.
He was very still and could feel the sun beating heavily on his eyelids. Everything was an auriferous bloom, speckled with drifting lipids, until he felt a shadow move across him so the bloom became dulled, and he heard something feral moving in the undergrowth, and felt sharp, fetid breath on his face. In spite of his injuries, and his tiredness, and the overwhelming resolve just formed in his mind to die here and now on this muddy riverbank, the Wille zum Leben described by Schopenhauer, buried deep but atavistically aroused, made him open his eyes, and look about him, and assess the threat that was coming upon him.
It was Stanton Bosch.
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘Holy crap!’ said Stanton Bosch.
‘Stanton Bosch!’
‘Scratched you up good and proper, it did!’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Now, don’t be like that. I’m here to help. It was me what cracked you open.’
‘You did what?’
‘I cracked open the barrel. Look!’
He was brandishing an axe and was soaking from head to foot, still in the lederhosen, which seemed to have shrunk around him, so the effect was quite startling, as though he were an axe-murderer from the rain-sodden climax of a horror movie.
‘How did you get here?’ asked Cormack.
‘Secret path, right after you. I was following you all the while. See, Proton’s not the only one with a plan.’
‘Does he really have a plan? What is his plan? I think he’s trying to kill me.’
‘Oh, he don’t want to kill you at all. You is very valuable. He don’t want you dead at all. None of us do.
We wants you certified. That’s what we wants.’ Stanton Bosch was spinning his axe in front of him. ‘And I is here to make sure it happens. Then we kills Proton.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘After we get you certified, we kills Proton.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Get him out of the way. I wants you all to myself see.’
Stanton Bosch gave a dirty laugh and rolled his eyes madly.
‘The cow’s in it with me. If that swings your interest.’
The cow emerged from behind a large shrub and slithered towards him.
‘Hi, Cormack. Isn’t it exciting?’
‘Cow! What are you doing here?’
‘Plotting with Stanton Bosch.’
‘I is a Pantheistic Syllogist too, see,’ said Stanton Bosch.
‘
What?’
‘A Pantheisitic Syllogist,’ said Stanton Bosch. ‘We is an underground organization of poets and desperate thinkers from all across the known Universe. Me and the cow are both prominent in the organizing committee.’
‘Didn’t I ever mention to you that I’m a Pantheistic Syllogist, Cormack?’
‘You did but I wasn’t sure you were serious.’
The cow gave a little giggle.
‘Thing is this,’ continued Stanton Bosch. ‘Proton has brought you here because he believes you’ve been touched by God. He’s making you undergo the Three Ordeals that will determine whether you is the Negus.’
‘The Negus?’
‘Yes, the Negus.’
‘I don’t think I’m any Negus. I’m from Rochdale.’
‘Me and the cow know that you’re no Negus. Don’t worry about that. You have absolutely no special abilities at all. You may even have disabilities. That has been apparent to us from the beginning. The Captain is too stupid to have seen it though, and he and the Sibyl are going to kill you with these here Ordeals unless we helps you out.’
‘Proton said he’s gone out on quite a limb on my behalf. I understand what he means now.’
‘So anyhow, me and the cow are conspiring to save your life.’
‘And what’s your motivation?’
‘Mostly Pantheistically Syllogistical and partly financial. We will fill you in later. In the meantime, we need to negotiate this here waterfall to get you through the First Ordeal so we can carry on from there.’
He pointed down the river, only some hundred yards beyond where Cormack had pulled himself out, to where the water was at its wildest and a thick mist was rising.
Cormack said, ‘You know, I knew there would be a waterfall involved in this thing somewhere.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
The two semi-finals were played on a Thursday.
First up, the Ceramics, camel-like dromedaries from a small world named Reggiphon within the Crab Nebula, played the home team, the mighty Zargons themselves, and were soundly beaten four to one.
The Emperor performed his now familiar and increasingly unpleasant duty at the end of the match, perfunctorily and with no emotion. The captain of the Ceramics presented his neck as though he was a farm animal inured to the slaughter, taking all the sport out of it, thought the Emperor. His only concession to the horror of his predicament was a large gobbet of spit, which again camel-like, dribbled from his fat lips as the mallet came down on him wearily and chopped his head off.
The Emperor returned resignedly to his seat in the stands. The tournament had become something of a bloodbath, and there was a growing outrage throughout the Empire, outrage that the Emperor and his minions were barely keeping a lid on. But the hive-mind was sanguine and conveyed his optimism.
‘It has had an unexpectedly prophylactic effect,’ it said to the Emperor.
‘Prophylactic?’
‘Everybody is thoroughly terrified.’
They waited for the Cramptonians to take the field. They were playing the Archons, a consistent team of mechano-insectoids that had somehow managed the creditable feat of progressing to the semi-finals without a backbone between them.
‘I trust that the Cramptonians will lose,’ said the Emperor. ‘At last. This is getting quite wearisome.’
‘There is a good chance of it,’ said the hive-mind. ‘The Archons have been impressive.’
‘The tournament has been the most dreadful mess.’
‘Imperial and Ancient has favoured the underdogs. It was unexpected. Nevertheless, you will have the old girl’s duct today. Just be a little mindful of the crowds when you start rummaging through her brains like a dog through garbage, right in front of them.’
‘I will pluck it sweetly like a plum from a pie. They will not even notice.’
‘Here she comes now.’
Mrs. Bellingham, her silver hair tied up tight in a severe bun, strutting like a peacock in her soiled jodhpurs, led the Cramptonians on the field at a pace, oblivious to the crowd.
She, like the Emperor, was annoyed with the manner in which her team had performed. At the start of each match, she had prepared herself for her death. She had primed the mallet and pictured the Emperor above her, his arm raised to strike her. She had imagined the detonation and the bloody aftermath, the screams of disbelief from the crowd, the panicked stampede from the Circus, the cutaways to blank screens on the sports channels, the shock and fear that she would engender everywhere in the Empire.
She had played every game so badly, and impressed poor tactics and losing strategies on her teammates, and had even managed to score an own-goal, but still, with the unerring complicity of the spandrill, they had gone a goal up and to her disbelief had won each game. Afterwards she had had to stand on the touchline, too far from the Emperor to have harmed him, and watch her opponent, bent before him, die in her place.
But not today. Today they would lose and she would kill him.
‘Team Crampton,’ she said to her team huddled around her after the anthems had been played and before they mounted their ponies. ‘Let us try something different for today’s match. Frantic, I want you to switch with Canard in goal.’
‘But, I have never played in goal before…’
‘I’m concerned about the injury to your hand.’
‘I have no injury to my hand.’
‘Canard will be more use to us on the left wing.’
‘Canard has never played on the left wing before.’
‘Let us just try it and see how it works.’
There was a general muttering amongst the team. She could see they were worried, but they would have to do as she said. She was the captain.
Then they mounted their ponies and lined up for the throw-off. Canard positioned himself in between the goal posts. Frantic was on the left wing.
‘Canard, I told you to swap with Frantic,’ she said.
‘Yes, you did.’
‘So swap with Frantic.’
‘Captain, I cannot do that.’
‘I am your captain and you will obey me.’
‘Captain, I cannot. We have seen the way you have been playing. We are not stupid. It is as if you want us to lose.’
Mrs. Bellingham was shocked.
‘Why would I want us to lose?’
‘You are anxious that it be over. You know you are to die and you want it done quickly. It is understandable. But don’t you understand that we can win?’
‘We can win?’
‘We can win the whole tournament and you will not be killed. Those are the rules of Imperial and Ancient. And we are so close now.’
‘Get on the wing!’
‘We will not let you do it. We can win. We can bring glory to Crampton.’
Mrs. Bellingham remonstrated with him some more, and then shouted at Frantic, but it was no use. The team had stopped listening to her. She withdrew to the centre circle for the throw-off and within a minute they were up by a goal.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Proton and the Sibyl were waiting a few hundred yards downstream of the bottom of the waterfall. They had found the broken pieces of Cormack’s barrel, washed on the bank, and the Sibyl had begun to look for the body.
‘I’m most terribly sorry,’ said Bernard. Proton was staring in disbelief at the river. ‘But it often happens like that with the Candidates. Only a very few have survived the First Ordeal and then, of course, the ones that have, have all wished they hadn’t when they’ve had to participate in the Second.’
The Sibyl looked at Proton nervously and pulled at a pocket deep within his multi-coloured caftan.
‘Look, I do apologize for mentioning it at this difficult moment, but there is the small matter of the fees you would have paid to my brother, the soothsayer…’
He was interrupted by a piercing scream, wild and terrifying, and he and Proton both looked up, towards the top of the waterfall from where it seemed to have come, and they could see a
human figure struggling in the river at the lip of the great cascade, and then the figure was over the edge and tumbling within the water, still screaming, and it seemed to fall forever until it hit the bottom with a flat plop, and was lost in the churning froth.
‘Was that him?’ said Proton.
‘Yes, I think it might have been,’ said the Sibyl.
‘Cormack, my boy, Cormack… what have you done?’ said Proton quietly.
‘Tremendous drop, and looked like a bit of a belly flop at the end,’ said the Sibyl but Proton wasn’t listening and began running towards the waterfall and calling out for Cormack.
He scrambled amongst the gravel close to the bank, scouring the river, and for a good while could see nothing except white water rushing in eddies over the hidden rocks. Then at last, far off, close to the other bank and a little way back from the waterfall, he spotted a small round thing bobbing above the surface and thought it might be a head, moving leisurely backwards, and he called out to it – ‘Cormack!
Cormack, mate!’
‘Proton!’ it called back.
‘Cormack, mate! Is it really you? You made it! You bloody made it!’
Proton laughed a mad laugh.
Cormack continued his languid backstroke, making directly for Proton now that he could see him.
When he was close enough to the bank, Proton paddled in, grabbed him from behind and pulled him from the river.
‘Cormack, mate! Cormack!’ said Proton. ‘You bloody did it!’
Cormack smiled back weakly.
‘He did it but he was supposed to do it in the barrel,’ said the Sibyl, who had rushed to join them.
‘Oh come on, Bernard!’ said Proton. ‘You think the Negus needs a barrel? Way to go, Cormack!’
‘The Shamanic Throat will have to be consulted.’
‘He isn’t even dazed. Are you Cormack?’
