Haroun and the Sea of Stories (17 page)

‘Spots and fogs, Bolo,’ boomed General Kitab, ‘that’s no way to address an ambassador who comes under a white flag.’

The ambassador gave an evil little grin of unconcern, and then spoke. ‘The High Cultmaster, Khattam-Shud, has granted me special release from my vows of silence so that this message may be delivered,’ he said in a low, hissing voice. ‘He sends you greetings and informs you that you are all trespassing on the sacred soil of Chup. He will neither negotiate with you, nor give up your spying nosy-parker of a Batcheat. —And O, but she’s noisy, too,’ the ambassador added, clearly speaking for himself now. ‘She torments our ears with her songs! And as for her nose, her teeth …’

‘There’s no need to go into that,’ interrupted General Kitab. ‘Drat it all! We aren’t interested in your opinions. Complete your confounded message.’

The Chupwala ambassador cleared his throat. ‘Khattam-Shud therefore warns you that, unless you retreat at once, your illegal invasion will be punished by annihilation; and Prince Bolo of Gup will be brought in chains to the Citadel, so that he may personally witness the Sewing-Up of Batcheat Chattergy’s caterwauling mouth.’

‘Knave, scoundrel, rapscallion, bounder, rogue!’ shouted Prince Bolo. ‘I should cut off your ears, have them sautéed in a little butter and garlic, and served to the hounds!’

‘However,’ continued the Chupwala ambassador, ignoring Bolo’s outburst completely, ‘before your utter defeat, I am commanded to entertain you for a moment, if you permit. I am, if I may immodestly say it, the finest juggler in Chup City; and am ordered to juggle, if you should so wish, for your delight.’

Blabbermouth, who was standing behind Prince Bolo’s chair, here burst out: ‘Don’t
trust
him—it’s a
trick
…’

General Kitab, with his love of argument, seemed perfectly willing to discuss this possibility, but Bolo waved a royal arm and cried, ‘Silence, Page! The rules of chivalry demand our acceptance!’ And to the Chupwala ambassador he said, as haughtily as he could manage: ‘Fellow, we will see you juggle.’

The ambassador began his performance. From the depths of his cloak he produced a bewildering variety of objects—ebony balls, nine-pins, jade statuettes, porcelain tea-cups, live terrapins, lighted cigarettes, hats—and flung them into the air in mesmerizing hoops and whirls. The faster he juggled, the more complicated the juggling became; and his audience was so completely hypnotized by his skill that only one person in the tent saw the moment at which one extra object was added to the flying cavalcade, a little, heavy, rectangular box out of which protruded a short, burning fuse …

‘Will you
for Pete’s sake
look
out
?’ yelled Blabbermouth, rushing forwards and sending Prince Bolo (and his chair) flying sideways. ‘The guy’s got a
live bomb
!’

She had reached the Chupwala ambassador in two strides, and, using her sharp eye and every ounce of her own juggling skills, she plucked the bomb right out of the rising, falling, dancing array of objects in the air. Other Pages seized the Chupwala, and statuettes and tea-cups and terrapins all plummeted to the ground … but Blabbermouth was rushing to the edge of the command hill as fast as her legs would carry her, and when she reached the edge she threw the bomb away down the hillside, where it exploded in an enormous (but now harmless) ball of glowing black flames.

The helmet had fallen from her head. Her long hair cascaded around her shoulders for all to see.

Bolo, the General, Mudra and Rashid rushed out of the tent when they heard the explosion. Blabbermouth was out of breath, but grinning happily. ‘So, we
just about
got
that
in time,’ she said. ‘What a creep that Chupwala was. He was ready to
commit suicide
, to get blown up
right along with us
. I
told
you it was a trick.’

Prince Bolo, who didn’t like his Pages to say ‘I told you so’, snapped back: ‘What’s this, Blabbermouth? Are you a girl?’

‘You
noticed
, sire,’ said Blabbermouth. ‘No point
pretending
any
more
.’

‘You tricked us,’ said Bolo, blushing. ‘You tricked
me
.’

Blabbermouth was outraged by Bolo’s ingratitude. ‘Tricking you isn’t exacly
difficult
, excuse
me
,’ she cried. ‘
Jugglers
can do it, so why not
girls
?’

Bolo went red in the face behind his red nosewarmer. ‘You’re fired,’ he shouted at the top of his voice.

‘Bolo, hang it all …’ began General Kitab.

‘Oh,
no
, I’m
not
,’ Blabbermouth shouted back. ‘Mister,
I quit
.’

Mudra, the Shadow Warrior, had been observing these goings on with an utterly inscrutable expression on his green face. Now, however, his hands began to move, his legs to adopt eloquent positions, his facial muscles to ripple and twitch. Rashid translated: ‘We must not quarrel when the battle is about to begin. If Prince Bolo has no further need of so courageous a Page, then perhaps Miss Blabbermouth would care to work for me?’

At which Prince Bolo of Gup looked crestfallen and ashamed, and Miss Blabbermouth looked exceptionally pleased.

~ ~ ~

The battle was joined at last.

Rashid Khalifa, watching the action from the Guppee command hill, was very much afraid that the Pages of Gup would be beaten badly. ‘
Tom up
would be the right term for Pages, I suppose,’ he reflected, ‘or perhaps
burned
.’ His sudden capacity for bloodthirsty thoughts amazed him. ‘I suppose war makes people crude,’ he told himself.

The black-nosed Chupwala Army, whose menacing silence hung over it like a fog, looked too frightening to lose. Meanwhile the Guppees were still busily arguing over every little detail. Every order sent down from the command hill had to be debated fully, with all its pro’s and con’s, even if it came from General Kitab himself. ‘How is it possible to fight a battle with all this chatter and natter?’ Rashid wondered, perplexed.

But then the armies rushed at each other; and Rashid saw, to his great surprise, that the Chupwalas were quite unable to resist the Guppees. The Pages of Gup, now that they had talked through everything so fully, fought hard, remained united, supported each other when required to do so, and in general looked like a force with a common purpose. All those arguments and debates, all that openness, had created powerful bonds of fellowship between them. The Chupwalas, on the other hand, turned out to be a disunited rabble. Just as Mudra the Shadow Warrior had predicted, many of them actually had to fight their own, treacherous shadows! And as for the rest, well, their vows of silence and their habits of secrecy had made them suspicious and distrustful of one another. They had no faith in their generals, either. The upshot was that the Chupwalas did not stand shoulder to shoulder, but betrayed one another, stabbed one another in the back, mutinied, hid, deserted … and, after the shortest clash imaginable, simply threw down all their weapons and ran away.

~ ~ ~

After the Victory of Bat-Mat-Karo, the army or ‘Library’ of Gup entered Chup City in triumph. At the sight of Mudra, many Chupwalas threw in their lot with the Guppees. Chupwala maidens rushed black-nosed into the icy streets and garlanded the red-nosed and halo-headed Guppees with black snowdrops; and kissed them, too; and called them ‘Liberators of Chup’.

Blabbermouth, her loose, flowing hair no longer concealed beneath velvet cap or halo-helmet, attracted the attention of several of the young lads of Chup City. But she stayed as close as she could to Mudra, as did Rashid Khalifa; and both Rashid and Blabbermouth found their thoughts turning constantly to Haroun. Where was he? Was he safe? When would he return?

Prince Bolo, who was out in front on his prancing mechanical horse, began to shout out in his habitual dashing but rather foolish way: ‘Where are you, Khattam-Shud? Come out; your minions are defeated, and now it’s your turn! Batcheat, never fear; Bolo is here! Where are you, Batcheat, my golden girl, my love? Batcheat, O Batcheat mine!’

‘If you’d be quiet for a moment, you’d know soon enough where your Batcheat waits,’ a Chupwala voice called out from the crowd that had gathered to greet the Guppees. (Many Chupwalas had started breaking the Laws of Silence now, cheering, shouting and so on.) ‘Yes, use your ears,’ a woman’s voice agreed. ‘Can’t you hear that racket that’s been driving us all to drink?’

‘She sings?’ Prince Bolo exclaimed, cupping a hand around an ear. ‘My Batcheat sings? Then hush, friends, and hearken to her song.’ He raised an arm. The Guppee parade came to a halt. And now, wafting down to them from the Citadel of Chup, came a woman’s voice singing songs of love. It was the most horrible voice Rashid Khalifa, the Shah of Blah, had heard in all his life.

‘If that’s Batcheat,’ he thought—but did not dare to say—‘then you can almost understand why the Cultmaster wants to shut her up for good.’

‘Oooh I’m talking ’bout my Bolo
And I ain’t got time for nothin’ else,’

sang Batcheat, and glass shattered in shop windows. ‘I’m sure I know that song, but the words seem different,’ puzzled Rashid.

‘Lemme tell you ’bout a boy I know,
He’s my Bolo and I love him so,’

sang Batcheat, and men and women in the crowd begged, ‘No more! No more!’ Rashid frowned, and shook his head: ‘Yes, yes, it’s very familiar, too, but not exactly right.’

‘He won’t play polo,
He can’t fly solo,
Oo-wee but I love him true,
Our love will grow-lo,
I’ll never let him go-lo,
Got those waiting-for-my-Bolo
Blues,’

sang Batcheat, and Prince Bolo shouted, ‘Beautiful! That’s so beautiful!’—to which the crowd of Chupwalas rejoined, ‘Aargghh, somebody stop her, please.’

‘His name ain’t Rollo,
His voice ain’t low-lo,
Uh-huh but I love him fine,
So stop the show-lo,
Pay me what you owe-lo,
I’m gonna make that Bolo
Mine,’

sang Batcheat, and Prince Bolo, cavorting on his horse, almost swooned with delight. ‘Just listen to that,’ he rhapsodized. ‘Is that a voice, or what is it?’

‘It must be a what-is-it,’ the crowd shouted back, ‘because a voice it is certainly not.’

Prince Bolo was deeply miffed. ‘These persons obviously cannot appreciate fine contemporary singing,’ he said loudly to General Kitab and Mudra. ‘So I think we should attack the Citadel now, if you don’t mind.’

At that moment a miracle happened.

The ground shook beneath their feet: once, twice, thrice. The houses of Chup City trembled; many Chupwalas (and Guppees, too) cried out in terror. Prince Bolo fell off his horse.

‘An earthquake, an earthquake!’ people shouted—but it was no ordinary earthquake. It was the entire Moon, Kahani, with a mighty shuddering and a mighty juddering, spinning on its axis, towards the …

‘Look at the sky!’ voices were shouting. ‘Look what’s coming up over the horizon!’

… towards the sun.

The sun was rising over Chup City, over the Citadel of Chup. It was rising rapidly, and went on rising until it was directly overhead, blazing down in the full fury of its noonday heat; and there it stayed. Many Chupwalas, including Mudra, the Shadow Warrior, took really rather fashionable wrap-around dark glasses out of their pockets, and put them on.

Sunrise! It tore away the shrouds of silence and shadow which the sorcery of Khattam-Shud had hung around the Citadel. The black ice of that dark fortress received the sunlight like a mortal wound.

The locks on the Citadel gates melted away. Prince Bolo, with drawn sword, galloped through the opened gates, followed by Mudra and several ‘Chapters’ of Pages.

‘Batcheat!’ Bolo shouted as he charged. His horse whinnied at the name.

‘Bolo!’ came the faraway reply.

Bolo dismounted; and with Mudra ran up flights of stairs, and through courtyards, and up yet more staircases, while all around him the pillars of Khattam-Shud’s Citadel, softened by the sun’s heat, began to buckle and bend. Arches were drooping, cupolas melting. The shadowless servants of the Cultmaster, the members of the Union of the Zipped Lips, were running blindly hither and yon, smashing into walls, knocking one another out as they collided, and shrieking dreadfully, all Laws of Silence forgotten in their fear.

It was the moment of Khattam-Shud’s final destruction. As Bolo and the Shadow Warrior leapt upwards into the melting heart of the Citadel, the Prince’s cries of ‘Batcheat!’ brought walls and towers tumbling down. And at last, just as they were despairing about her safety, the Princess Batcheat came into sight, with that nose (in a black Chupwala nosewarmer), those teeth … but there’s no need to go into that. Let’s just say there was no question but that it was indeed Batcheat, followed by her handmaidens, sliding down towards them along the banister of a grand staircase whose steps had melted away. Bolo waited; Batcheat flew off the banister into his arms. He staggered backwards, but did not fall.

Now the air was full of a great groaning noise. As Bolo, Batcheat, Mudra and the handmaidens fled down, down, through soggy courtyards and down squashy staircases, they looked back; and saw, high above them, at the very apex of the Citadel, the gigantic ice-statue, the colossal ice-idol of tongueless, grinning, many-toothed Bezaban beginning to totter and shake; and then, drunkenly, it fell.