Galapagos Regained (61 page)

“Now see here, sir—”

“Which is not to say the atheists will win the day. Both sides in this wearisome debate make the same logical error.”

Schopenhauer proceeded to teach me about
Modus ponens,
the rule of inference that underlies so many philosophical proofs and disproofs. It takes the following form, with
P
the antecedent and
Q
the consequent:

If P, then Q.

P.

Therefore, Q.

When it comes to verifying the Almighty, with
Q
standing for “God exists,” the religious man has hundreds of
P
's at his disposal, such as “There must be a First Cause” and “Nature has obviously been intelligently designed” and “Morality does not admit of a secular explanation.” The problem is that atheists will grant believers none of these antecedents, and so we never get to the consequent.

When disbelievers take the field,
Q
now stands for “God does not exist,” with
P
ranging from “Innocent people suffer” to “Scripture contains internal contradictions” to “Science provides reliable information about the physical universe.” But of course no sane believer would grant veto power to such assertions, and so the disproof works only for those who are already atheists.

Leaning on his walking-stick, Schopenhauer gestured towards the medieval burial vaults embedded in the temple floor. “I have always disdained the Christian mania for imposing churches on pagan places of worship. Your Byssheans may be idiots, but I understand their desire for classical conviviality: drinking wine, reciting verse, playing with ideas—what could be more sublime? Let me ask a favor, Herr Heathway. The Italian postal system being what it is, might I prevail upon you to bear my message to Lord Woolfenden in person?”

“I should be pleased to do so.”

“I am grateful beyond words,” said the philosopher, placing the manuscript in my hands. “When you get to Oxford, tell them that in Doktor Schopenhauer's view our brutal and irrational world has no need of Western religion's brutal and irrational Deity. Give me rather our aesthetic accomplishments and ethical attainments. Give me art and pity. Your Mr. Dalrymple has every right to keep chasing after his nonexistent ark, though for me there is but one worthy quest, its objects being beauty, truth, and love.”

And with that rousing speech (so reminiscent, Father, of your better sermons) Schopenhauer took leave of me, being much in need of sleep.

Your loving son,

Bertram

Smiling broadly, Granville secreted the message in his nightstand. As he returned Charlemagne to the dovecote, another sort of bird, the lark of joy, built a nest in his heart. Paestum to Sardinia to Gibraltar to Plymouth: a voyage of perhaps two thousand miles, easily completed within twenty days by a sailor of Captain Deardon's experience. Before the month was out, Bertram would be standing in this very cell, entertaining Granville with Oriental adventures.

Whistling a festive air, he sauntered to the barred window and surveyed the pasture, bathed in muted lunar light. The legions of stuffed men had arrived in force, pouring across the hills and swarming towards Coventry. He considered summoning Dr. Earwicker and insisting that he alert the County Council—but what would be the point? If the world regards you as sane and pious, you can torture foxes (as did Samson) or arrange the death of your mistress's husband (as had David), and no one will think the worse of you. But if you've been pronounced a lunatic, you can testify to an imminent scarecrow invasion from now until Michaelmas, and all you'll get for your trouble is a room in a madhouse.

*   *   *

Sweat assailing his eyes, pumice scratching his hands, Malcolm Chadwick led his Indian vulcaneers—Cuniche, Nitopari, Pirohua, Ascumiche—up the north face of Mount Pajas. Slowly but inexorably, the darkness lost its substance, like a bottle of ink poured into a lake. Reaching the array of boulders sitting atop cactus bombs, he paused to catch his breath. Briefly he imagined himself as a vulture lying in wait above a killing field, though his intention this morning was not to consume carrion but to prevent its creation.

From his rucksack he removed the
Lamarck
's spyglass and three boxes of lucifer matches. He checked his pocket watch. Eight o'clock. In a mere sixty minutes the hangman was due to practice his profession on Dartworthy and Miss Kirsop.

Lifting the glass to his eye, he peered towards Mephistropolis. In the center of the exercise yard rose the scaffold, a ramshackle affair suggesting a decrepit footbridge leading to an impoverished village. A brawny guard ripped a worm-eaten board from the platform and nailed a fresh one in its place. Oscillating in the sea breeze, two nooses hung from the crossbeam, empty and ominous, like eye sockets in a skull, each swaying above its own trapdoor.

The portal of the keep flew open, disgorging a mass of convicts clad in burlap, attended by a corps of twenty guards. Goaded by the rifle butts of Capitán Machado's men, the ninety English prisoners and their Ecuadorian counterparts marched across the yard towards the gallows, blinking and wincing in the morning light. Though lacking their customary fetters, the prisoners could hardly be entertaining thoughts of escape—especially when they considered the pair of sentries manning the watchtower and the other two guards patrolling the wall. Ordered to attention by Machado, the convicts stiffened into the required pose. Malcolm directed his enhanced gaze across the assembled wretches, noting to his relief that their ranks included Ben the horse thief and his five fellow conspirators.

Whilst the prisoners sweated and thirsted, a solemn throng of Duntopians flowed into the yard, including Orrin Eggwort, Jethro Tappert, and Linus Hatch, dressed in their Sunday finest and supervising their respective concubines. No sons or daughters accompanied the cleavewives. Evidently all three harems had dissuaded their masters from allowing the children to see two English citizens hanged for no particularly good reason. The emperors installed their rumps in high-backed throne chairs, even as the concubines and the other spectators occupied a grid of stools. Now Governor Stopsack made his entrance, smartly attired in his white linen suit. Strolling past the Duntopian royalty, he appropriated the remaining throne chair, then pulled a fat cigar from his vest pocket and bit off the end.

Riding crop tucked under his arm, Kommandant Hengstenberg emerged from the keep leading a blindfolded and trembling Miss Kirsop by her manacles. An instant later a red-bearded guard appeared, dragging Dartworthy, likewise shackled and blindfolded, followed by a dusky boy of perhaps eleven, banging out a funereal cadence on a snare drum. Bringing up the rear of the parade was Executioner Ordoñez, a hulking man with shaggy arms, his features obscured by a black cloth hood.

As Stopsack lit his cigar, Malcolm set the seismic chicanery in motion, distributing the matchboxes amongst the Indians and ordering them to set the tinder aflame. Cuniche, Nitopari, Pirohua, and Ascumiche crept along the lip of the crater, igniting the twenty stacks of kelp-topped kindling. Flecked with sparks, a billowing mass of smoke soon filled the skies above Minor Zion, giving Ben the horse thief a credible reason to point towards the mountain and scream, with feigned dismay, “Look! The volcano! Look! Look!”

Shocked by Ben's discovery, the inmates chattered excitedly amongst themselves, as did the guards, emperors, concubines, and ordinary Duntopians. Act one, “The Smoldering Summit,” had begun.

“It's alive!” cried Joe the poacher, clearly relishing his part in the diversionary strategy. “Alive! Alive!”

The crater released more deceptive vapors. Lurching free of his throne chair, Stopsack strode up to Eggwort and issued a gubernatorial decree, his words echoing across the yard and up the face of Mount Pajas—“Tell Hengstenberg to postpone the execution!”—to which the Supreme Emperor replied, “I'll give that order at the good Lord's urgin' but not yours!”

“The volcano will kill us!” yelled Pete the highwayman, impersonating panic.

“As when God squashed Gomorrah!” added Harry the panderer.

The time had come to raise the curtain on act two, “The Exploding Pumice.” After collecting the matchboxes from the Indians, Malcolm climbed to the summit, passed through the ring of smoldering kelp, and, descending into the crater, ignited the master fuse. He returned to daylight, then made his way back to the field of boulders and hunkered down, commanding Cuniche, Nitopari, Pirohua, and Ascumiche to do likewise.

With a monstrous roar, like the cough of a consumptive troll, a skyrocket shot out of the crater, arced towards the penal colony, and exploded, releasing a blossom of embers above the exercise yard.

“These are the last days of Duntopia!” declared Amos the sodomite.

A second rocket took flight and exploded.

“The last days of Galápagos!” yelled Tim the anarchist.

Three more rockets flew heavenward and detonated.

“Proceed with the execution!” shouted Eggwort, addressing Ordoñez.

“Halt the execution!” cried Stopsack, not so much speaking the syllables as hurling them in Eggwort's face like birdshot.

“Governor, your jurisdiction ends on these shores!” the Supreme Emperor asserted.

To the anxious cadence of the miserable drummer boy, Kommandant Hengstenberg began shoving the sightless Miss Kirsop up the warped steps of the gallows. She tripped on the last riser, sprawling across the planks. The Kommandant forced his prisoner to stand, then positioned her atop the nearer trapdoor, the noose caressing her shoulder. He returned to the ground. The red-bearded guard hauled Dartworthy onto the gallows, propelled him past Miss Kirsop, and aligned him with the second noose.

The guard abandoned the scaffold. A sixth rocket transmuted into a fiery bouquet. The boy stopped drumming.

“Don't leave my men here to die!” the capitán implored Hengstenberg.

“Your Excellency, you must cancel the execution!” the Kommandant in turn beseeched Eggwort.

A seventh explosion, a seventh celestial blossom.

Ordoñez mounted the gallows and, as if awarding her a medal on a neckband, dropped Miss Kirsop's noose over her head, then provided Dartworthy with his own mortal cravat.

“I beg you—spare me!” screamed Miss Kirsop as the masked hangman took hold of the lever beside her trapdoor.

“A pox on Duntopia and all its dictators!” cried Dartworthy.

“Perfessor Cabot, Miss Quinn, you will now confess your sins before our Savior!” shouted the Supreme Emperor, leaping up from his throne chair. “You must beg Christ's fergiveness fer torchin' the holy ark!”

“No,
you
must beg Christ's forgiveness for murdering innocent people!” yelled Dartworthy.

An eighth explosion.

“Gotta save the children!” shouted Rebecca Eggwort, rolling off her stool. “We'll take 'em to Albemarle on the
Cumorah
!”

“Thou shalt not abduct my sons!” cried the Supreme Emperor.

“Go kiss a squid!” retorted his eldest wife.

Mrs. Eggwort's declaration inspired her sorority of concubines to rise in a body and collect about her considerable frame. Hips swaying, elbows swinging, the nine rushed across the exercise yard, headed for the main gate.

“Wives, come ye back!” insisted Eggwort, dancing in irate circles about his throne chair.

“Husband, go to Hell!” replied Hagar.

Inflating like a puffer-fish, the Governor rushed towards the gallows, screaming, “No executions during eruptions! It isn't done! Hangman, remove the nooses!”

Ordoñez obeyed, detaching the ropes from Dartworthy and Miss Kirsop.

“Hangman, do your duty!” demanded Eggwort. “Stopsack's got no authority here! Ferget the volcano!”

Ordoñez restored the nooses to the prisoners' necks and then, seized by a fit of insubordination, jammed both hands in his pockets.

“Open the traps!” yelled Eggwort.

“Keep 'em closed!” shouted Stopsack.

“God sent this cataclysm to test our faith!” averred Eggwort.

“God sent this cataclysm to test
your
faith!” retorted Ordoñez, his words muffled only slightly by the cloth hood. “You heard the Governor! No executions during eruptions!”

Now Mr. Tappert's harem joined the exodus, followed shortly thereafter by Mr. Hatch's six concubines.

“Halt!” cried the Associate Emperor.

“Not another step!” screamed the Assistant Emperor.

The ninth rocket exploded. The revolt of the concubines continued.

“Pull the lady arsonist's lever!” shrieked Eggwort, hopping up and down to gain Ordoñez's attention. “Render her unto Satan! Obey me now! I'm the Supreme Emperor!”

“Not anymore you aren't!” declared Stopsack. “This prison complex belongs to the Crown, which makes Charles Isle a British possession as well!”

“We're all gonna die!” shouted Clarence the usurer.

“I don't wanna die!” yelled Jake the fornicator.

“Your Excellency, allow us to flee!” pleaded Hengstenberg.

“Open the woman's trap!” ordered Eggwort. “Punish her blaspheming flesh!”

The hangman tore off his hood and cried, “
Es imposible,
Your Excellency!”

Were it not for the ropes about the necks of Dartworthy and Miss Kirsop, Malcolm would have regarded the diversionary strategy as an unequivocal success. But the nooses could not be denied. Fixing on the array of cactus bombs, he struck a match and ignited the axis of the interconnected fuses, thereby inaugurating act three, “The Flying Stones.” The combustible cords sizzled and hissed as a dozen flames ate their way towards the explosive fruits. He faced east, scanning the skies for Chloe and the Frenchman, but he saw only the rising sun, a herd of cumulus clouds, and a flock of vicious frigate birds, searching for prey.