Harry Cavendish (22 page)

The residents and tourists of Bartislard appeared, as was their manner in the face of most peculiarities, to have taken the whole thing in their stride and life in the city continued as normal, except that the Municipal Sanitation Authority had to divert excess capacity to the strip of forest where Cormack’s army lay routed.

Stanton Bosch was hale and hearty, inveighing Traction and the cow with anecdotes about the day’s adventures.

‘I did gets the skinny man a good one,’ he said, chuckling. ‘Scared to hell to see me inside his wardrobe…’

The cow had adopted sunglasses, ostensibly against the harsh glare from the SplatterHorn, which gave her a peculiar European demeanour, as though she were an international arms dealer, or model on assignment, and she laughed politely at his joshing, but her face was fixed with a distracted air and it was obvious that, today, she found his company trying.

‘To return the day’s business,’ she said seriously.

‘Aye, the day’s business…’

‘What plans for the mock Negus now?’

‘We does follow him to Zargon 8. That much is clear…’

‘Does he still carry the tracking device?’

‘There ain’t no need to track him now, Traction. We does know where they be headed.’

‘They will meet with considerable resistance.’

‘And they don’t have an army now.’

‘I don’t think that army was ever much use to them.’

‘I suppose they will try to raise popular support. The certification of the Throat still carries weight in certain parts of the Empire.’

‘We follows them to Zargon 8 and then we makes our move,’ said Stanton Bosch with a snort and raised his filthy glass to toast with the cow, but she turned her head from him haughtily and stared hard-faced towards the SplatterHorn. Its cold, ridged flanks were all he could see, reflected in the lenses of her sunglasses, as he tried to fix her with his sky-blue eyes.

Cormack was released and allowed into the main cabin, where he assumed his assigned commander’s chair with an air of resigned inevitability and sat despondently, barely able to twiddle the knobs on the console, the skein of doom all over him.

‘Cheer up, mate!’ said Proton. ‘I’ve forgiven you.’

‘You know, it’s not all about you, Proton.’

‘No, it’s all about you, Negus.’

‘And don’t call me Negus. I’m not your Negus.’

Proton went back to being Captain-like, judging that Cormack was best left alone. He issued various commands that sent the transporter hither and thither. It seemed to Cormack that he was only doing it to annoy him and he judged himself confirmed in his opinion when Proton, after several minutes, got frustrated and rested his microphone back down and turned to him, telling him, ‘Cormack, Cormack, mate! The attitude cannot continue! We need to work together! We need to help each other! There are dark forces gathering.’

‘What dark forces?’

‘We need to get our message out there.’

‘Out where?’

‘The uniSwarm. The Intergalactic Information Superhighway. Now we’re finally off Foul Ball we have a uniSwarm connection. You want to help me, don’t you, Cormack?’

‘I’m not sure I do, Proton.’

‘Will you do one thing for me?’

‘No. Absolutely not.’

‘It’s in your interest too, you know. We need to help each other.’

‘What is it you want?’

‘Appear with me on a uniSwarm broadcast. We’ll release it when we’re on Zargon 8. It will generate enthusiasm for our mission.’

Cormack was about to open his mouth to protest but Proton hushed him immediately with an ‘Uh, uh, uh!’

‘You won’t even have to talk,’ he said. ‘Just stand next to me. I’ll do all the talking. Cormack, mate, why do have to spend all my time trying to persuade you to do things? Dealing with you is just so frigging frustrating. I am trying to help. I’m trying to help you be all you can be. Do you understand?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘You’ll do it for me, won’t you?’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘OK, not for me – for Pranzi.’

‘No.’

‘Dead Pranzi.’

‘No.’

‘For the cow, then.’

‘Leave the poor cow out of it, Proton.’

‘The poor, dead cow…’

Finally they had him stand a little to the left of Proton, in front of a blue curtain that had been found in amongst the engineer’s things, while Proton was seated, and they chained him to the armrest hidden by Proton’s elbow, because Cormack had relented enough to agree to just be there, silent while Proton talked.

Proton had a sheaf of papers and his hair was brylcremed and teeth even shinier than usual. He looked like a jacked-up newsreader.

He was waiting for his cue from Meson, who was holding the camera.

‘Can I go now?’

‘Yes, Captain.’

Proton cleared his throat, fixed his grin, and began.

‘Members of the Empire, inhabitants of the Universe, I am Captain Proton, the Commander of the Praetorian Guard,’ he said, pompously, thought Cormack. ‘Three weeks ago, as a result of orders from the Emperor – now assassinated,’ he added in an undertone, unnecessarily, thought Cormack – ‘we, the Praetorian Guard, were summoned to Palanka on Zargon 8 to deal with an extreme situation. Contained within the belly of a Prison Whale, there was a boy, a boy from Earth…’

‘And his cow…’ added Cormack quietly, which was sufficient to distract Proton so that he lost his train of thought and ummed and erred and shuffled paper a little while before continuing, ‘…a boy from Earth who had been placed there by the Emperor because he is special. Special because he has knowledge and experience of something beyond our Universe: something prodigious; something we have been searching for signs of for many millennia. This boy, his name is Cormack, by the way…’ Meson fiddled with the lens of the camera and pointed it more towards Cormack, putting him in a wide shot with the Captain. ‘…has met with….now this may sound strange but please bear with me…God! God, himself!

Now, I know that sounds extreme, but it is the truth and our scientists have verified the encounter. The event registered on the detectors. It is irrefutable. The Emperor was convinced. I myself have seen the evidence. He gave us our orders. He wanted us to kill Cormack. Why? Because Cormack represented the most extreme threat to his Empire imaginable. For, my friends, is it not written in the Ancient Texts, thus…’

Here Proton adopted an inscrutable, Oriental-type expression and started intoning in a language that Cormack could not understand. It sounded vaguely Chinese, but he spoke it liturgically, as though he was singing a long slow psalm with complicated cadences.

‘Yes!’ Proton said at last, escaping from the trance and opening his eyes very widely. ‘I could not allow it to happen. On realising the truth about this boy, the truth that was kept from you, citizens of the Empire, by the Emperor, I kidnapped him. I took him to Foul Ball, to Shambalah, to meet with the Shamanic Throat and undergo the Ordeals that would confirm him as the Negus. And my friends, Cormack, passed all the Ordeals. Didn’t he, Bernard?’

Bernard was shuffled on in his capacity as Sibyl and was suitably subtitled. Proton had to dissuade him from giving a long dissertation on testing procedures in favour of a simple confirmation. The scroll was produced, shown to camera and Bernard was shuffled off.

‘It can be edited later, OK?’ said Proton because Bernard was protesting and had to be silenced with a lemon tea.

‘My friends,’ continued Proton. ‘I am far from religious, but when it was apparent to me that the prophecies in the Ancient Texts were to be fulfilled and that the Negus was amongst us, I had to act. I am proud to say, my actions have been justified. Cormack is the Negus. He has proved himself as such and we need to recognize him as such. I intend that he be crowned. I am going to Zargon 8 for that very purpose.

‘The Ancient Texts have been fulfilled. The Negus has been found. We have our new Emperor!’

‘What a load of twaddle,’ said Cormack.

‘Put it on the uniSwarm, but don’t allow access until we’re safely on Zargon 8,’ said Proton.

Stanton Bosch and the cow and Traction were in a space troika, three thousand clicks from Foul Ball, following the transporter.

The Bosch had opened his arm and was within the armature, performing his daily routine of cleaning the joints and lathing the flesh that hung like skewered meat off his metal bones.

‘The Sibyl should be supporting me and my claims,’ he said to the cow. ‘Then there would be no trouble whatsoever.’

‘He will,’ said the cow. She had dropped the accent and spoke quite clearly now. ‘But you understand that the Sibyl has always been a little backwards in his attitude to replicants like yourself. You are half robot. You are not fully human. That is why he has never allowed you to take the Ordeals.’

‘Which is why I had to do them covertly, in conjunction with the mock Negus,’ said Stanton Bosch.

‘And I did them. And I survived them. I ain’t care if I is half robot or half teacup. It was still damned difficult. I is the Negus. It is I that is to be crowned.’

‘In good time,’ said the cow. ‘The validity of the Ancients Texts cannot be questioned. These claims will resolve themselves eventually. The Sibyl will come round to our way of thinking. The true Negus must triumph and the mock Negus will be destroyed. However, the mock Negus must first validate your claim.

He was the only one that saw you. He must confirm that you completed the Ordeals.’

‘And the Sibyl must too.’

‘The Sibyl is under obligation, religious and otherwise. Don’t worry about the Sibyl. He will come round.

But we need the mock Negus’ support as well. What could be more powerful than his confirmation of your status? What could be more damaging to Proton?’

‘So we don’t kill him yet, cow?’

‘Not yet.’

The transporter was given clearance to land on Zargon 8 without hindrance, as expected. Nobody was looking for Proton or his ship - he was still presumed dead and the ship destroyed.

They descended from the transporter purposefully - Bernard, Proton, with Cormack surreptitiously handcuffed to him and the Guards at the rear, all dressed as anonymously as possible in the dowdiest of Zargonic capes - and then mingled with the crowd as best they could.

It was obvious to Proton that something had changed on the planet in his absence.

The crowds in Central Square were bigger than he remembered and of a more cosmopolitan hue. There seemed to be people from all over the Empire here: Venutians in flashing green jumpsuits; Spandraws from the Outer Core beyond Gannymede; Gimlets riding Carpruthians that flopped and gimballed along the sidewalks. The Emperor would never have allowed it.

Everywhere there were beggars.

Proton was disgusted and had a mind to shoot them all there and then, but was dissuaded by Bernard who was against causing too much of stink before they reached the Palace.

‘The place has really gone to the dogs,’ said Proton.

Cormack was examining a long line of turd that spread from the outer paving of the road towards its central bow and appeared to have been dropped by a giant flapping eagle that was hovering sixteen feet above.

‘Things have definitely gone downhill,’ he confirmed.

They stopped by a market where Bernard gathered fruit and didn’t have enough money to pay, which Proton initially assumed was because of his anchoritism and lack of interest in worldly things, but then he remembered the fees he had had to pay him to get Cormack certified and did a double-check, shocked by what the stallholder was asking.

‘That is almost fifteen times what we would have paid a month ago,’ he said.

‘Since the Emperor’s death, inflation is running at two hundred per cent,’ said the stallholder. ‘The economy is in freefall.’

When they reached the trams, further confusions - few were running, and the ones that did were not travelling to any timetable. The drivers and guards had to adjust the points as they rode.

Still, they climbed aboard. It seemed a rather inauspicious way to travel to the Palace, thought Cormack, but Proton’s appetite for les grandes gestes appeared sated by his experiences with the army on Foul Ball and he made it clear that public transportation would have to suffice for now.

They were sat next to an odd-looking couple of visitors from out of town who clutched each other in fear every time Bernard shifted in his seat. He smiled at them benignly and waved benedictions on them, flicking them with the sleeves of his cape.

‘So what’s the plan then, Proton?’ said Bernard, when he had finished.

‘We head for the Palace,’ said Proton.

‘Are you sure?’ said Cormack.

‘Everything is in hand.’

‘Aren’t they just going to throw us in jail? Or a Prison Whale? Or execute us? Or something?’

‘Due process, Cormack. All of that would take quite a while to arrange and the planet’s shot to pieces. ’

‘We’re just going to declare ourselves?’

‘A little faith, Bernard.’

They rattled on towards the Palace, every now and again jumping the points and stopping with a slam, until the driver engaged reverse and sent his guard out with a crowbar and they were set and off again.

Stanton Bosch, the cow, and Traction were not far behind and were themselves using public transportation.

The troika was parked in low orbit and they crammed with other tourists into a space shuttle that would take them to the surface of Zargon 8.

The cow was having a hard time of it, and, being unable to reach the straps that Stanton Bosch and Traction clung to as though they were sailing a catamaran, was lain on the floor. She found it difficult to reconcile her discomfort with her new persona as agent provocateur, so the sunglasses were removed for the time being. They hoped to find her some kind of baby carriage on Zargon 8 that would accommodate her more fashionably.

Again the issue of the Negus and his coming with an army was raising itself.

‘We should have brought the other Boschs, you know. Contrary to the Ancient Texts to come here unarmed,’ said Traction as he swung precariously.