Nowhere Near Milkwood (28 page)

Not really. It was the proton Neirb'O detonating under the virulent onslaught of the quantum-surfers of the neutron Sgnimmuc. For years they had been bombarding Neirb'O with quarks, in an attempt to destabilise it and destroy the atomic bond between the two worlds. Finally they'd added enough quarks to attain their subdastardly stratagem. Animula's home had been destroyed! A more symbolic marriage smash than the breaking of dish or plate! But she wasn't pleased.

I removed her gag. "Animula! What's wrong?"

"My name is Mandy and all my friends and family have just perished. Apart from that, cramp in a leg."

"Superb! That will keep you static in bed."

"I spit on you! Let me out!"

"Ah, she is so eager to satisfy my desire! For twelve years she has languished in a dungeon, serving time for daring to be the very smallest thing in the cosmos, dreaming of nothing but the date of her release and her subsequent marriage! She is drooling so heavily with impatience that her saliva is spurting across the considerable gap dividing us with such force and accuracy that my blushing cheeks are plashed! Animula! Tonight I must take your maidenhead. I've no idea where I'll take it but you can come along as well, if you like."

She grimaced in gratitude. "Swine monster!"

Before I continue, permit me to point out that this Temple of Drigg was the miniature one in the model village in the roof-garden at the top of the President's tower. It was cheaper to book than the bigger temples in the real city, and more likely to be filled with my meagre companions to a level just above embarrassment. This was the place where I'd shrunk on my jaunt to Neirb'O, anticipating all sorts of adventures, other than those of love — which hurt more!

Now the priest swayed from side to side and the President groped in his pocket for the ring. It was a diamond solitaire-confinement, but the gem had escaped by tunnelling through the platinum band. No matter: kiss and tickle require no tokens other than themselves. Animula and I had no need of ostentatious signs of our mutual affection. While the Vice Roger lifted her out of the box, holding her in a firm embrace, the priest and his congregation shuffled and cleared sundry throats. Another minute and I'd be the happiest husband ever!

Then the President dropped the ring and it rolled out of the Temple into the garden. He hopped after and brought it back. The priest scowled and routinely asked if anyone present had just cause for preventing this union between Animula and myself.

This question is pure tradition and nobody ever expects a person to actually raise an objection. Indeed the priest scarcely paused to listen for a reply before launching into the next part of the service, which is outdated drivel about obedience and honour (I certainly didn't intend to obey Animula!) and similar nonsense. But it was too soon to congratulate my fortune, for the President suddenly lifted his arm and cried out that he had an objection, a large one.

"Cancel the wedding! Replace the wife!"

The priest rubbed his mandibles. "What is the nature of your qualm? Does it consist of moral doubts?"

"Not at all. It is strictly practical."

"Pray reveal its character."

While I wept in frustration and betrayal, the President dipped into his other pocket and removed a portable-semaphore. It was a cube on legs with moving arms, a fine example of the signallers' apparatus. He walked forward and rested it on the priest's shoulder, so that it was angled at the window at the rear of the altar. Then my (misnamed) best man twisted a knob to work the arms. Because he had his back to the congregation, it was impossible to read what message he was relaying. The priest remained ignorant of the content of the missive too, for the device prevented him from turning his head. When the President had finished, he stepped back, lowered the semaphore and yawned.

We waited. Through this rear window, far away across the landscape, to the Carbuncle Hills, the President's message had danced, to be caught up by a semaphore tower on the highest peak. In turn, this tower relayed the message yet further over the horizon, where it was plucked from thin air by a second tower, and passed to a third, and so on, until the words of the dispatch were hastening to the ends of the planet. Eventually, it would reach the corner of Groof and Lyg, the most remote place of all. I failed to see what connection that distant clime had with my marriage. A hopeless rage filled me, a desire to be free of the President, who seems always destined to cancel my joy.

He sat down in one of the spare pews. After an hour, the priest and the Vice Roger followed his example. So did I, finally, and even Animula sat back in her case. There was no sense questioning the President as to the substance of his bulletin. It was obvious from the nonchalant way in which he sprawled that he was confident the matter would resolve itself. The congregation fidgeted, the minor Rogers started playing a game which involved constructing anagrams of the word 'bannister'. I was paying for the delay. With the Fire Companies still chasing me for unpaid bills, my solvency was rapidly coming unstuck. I swallowed my impatience and grief and counted the indolent minutes.

Late in the evening, when all our thumbs were so twiddled they were bloated but floppy, like the nuptial lance in my trousers, the President jumped up to rouse the priest. He pointed to the entrance of the Temple. The open door looked out over the other side of the realm, and the giant semaphore tower on the opposing hill began to turn. Then I comprehended. The message had circumnavigated the entire planet, travelling beyond the corner of Groof and Lyg and returning on the dark side, until it arrived back at its point of origin. The priest blinked at the moving arms. Here was the objection to my marriage!

By the time I had craned my neck to study the news, the message was finished. Short and bitter, like my childhood! The priest nodded, called to the congregation to depart, and they all left in single file, with my bride pushed in the care of the Vice Roger, until only the President and myself remained. Then I demanded:

"What did the message say? What do you want?"

"It was a command for you to drop everything and hurry to my tower. I'm glad to see that you obeyed."

I was outraged and flabbergasted. "How can you possibly order me to your tower? We are already here!"

"But a summons is a state of mind, as well as a physical condition. Although I couldn't ask you to arrive here, if you already were, I could convert your presence into an entrance by removing the others. When they departed, it made up for the fact that you didn't move. The final result was identical, in the same way that fruit can be juggled by leaving them immobile in the air and manipulating the man who throws them. I summoned you by changing the environment."

"I grudgingly accept your logic. But why exactly am I here? It must be very urgent to spoil my life."

"Follow me." The President led me out of the Temple of Drigg and to the edge of his garden. I looked over the panorama. Far away, but not so far as the nearest semaphore, stood seven other towers. Rivals from some mysterious republic, interlopers.

"Your abode has committed structural polygamy!"

He sighed heavily. "I first noticed them when I ran out to retrieve your ring. We are obviously on collision-course. They are too monumental to be cheap imitations. So I conclude they are just as real as mine, and staffed with genuine Presidents."

"I suggest they have collapsed into our universe from a sequence of dimensions parallel to this one."

"Lateral timelines don't usually overlap."

I snapped my fingers. "The annihilation of Neirb'O! That detonation must have disrupted the space-time continuum, causing eight realities to prolapse into just one location."

"What can we do, Titian, dear friend?"

"Arresting the other Presidents or towers won't help. But you might consider banning all rival realities. Then I'll lock them up inside each other, move them out of the way."

"I agree. Best to keep elsewheres off the streets! But how will you manage to do that? Dimensions are enormous, stretching the entire length of the universe. I know you've arrested many big things in your time. My nose, however, remains at large."

"And so do the rival realities! But not for long! What is a dungeon other than an enclosed space with a lock turned by a key? Each dimension already has a bounded limit. They are, in a sense, potential dungeons. I merely require something to lock them with. If I can create a key of the correct size, we'll be able to secure them inside themselves. Naturally, there'll be no chance of parole."

"Can you really fabricate such a key?"

"I've already got one! Remember the green pyramid I gathered on the purple atom? It's an expanded quark, with power over the chronoflow. The rival dimensions are extensions in time and space. That's all a universe really is anyway. My pyramid is a building block of both time and space. It can seal the other realities."

"Quick, Titian! Carve it into a key shape!"

I shook my head. "It is a minimal particle and can't be subdivided. Its shape just can't be altered."

Before I could fret further over this problem, the President called to me in considerable anxiety: "Look at that! A giant version of you has stepped out from that tower and is striding over to that other tower and is trying to uproot it from the ground! Luckily it has failed and is now returning to its own building..."

I blinked. "He'd make a wondrous best man!"

(8)

Sitting on the apex of my green pyramid, shaking the reins, hoping to be hurled into the past. Feeling like a bad actor, a salted ham, especially as the sweat on my mouth had dried in the breeze of my flapping, leaving pale sodium deposits on my lip. Reminded me of days with Beatrix Trifle, can't say why. The quark seemed disinclined to go anywhere, past, future or home, but I felt it could be encouraged. I was off to arrest my first ancestor, in the primal slime, for committing a genetic felony which had eventually led to my doleful existence. I would remove him from the game of evolution and thus stall myself.

Just before tripping out of the present, there was a rap on my door and a hunched figure entered my room. He wore a diseased pelt, carried a gnarled club and was so hairy that his shadow consisted of nine thousand monkey outlines knotted together. His brows were huge, also his toes. He dragged the yellow knuckles of his free hand on the bare boards and gave his name as Ug. I was familiar with the appellation, for it had belonged to a Palaeolithic thief, whose horrible crime was related by the Talking Plaque wedged up the chimney. Was this the same villain? It could hardly be, unless Time was playing a joke.

With many obscene gestures, mostly directed at his groin, he led me to the conclusion that he was precisely what I was looking for. But what had brought him to his future? The power of my imagination? No, for that has exerted precious little control over ladies. Perhaps he'd decided to turn himself in? A likely solution.

"So you are my very first ancestor? Ug!"

I was expressing disgust, not calling him, but he nodded and struck the floor with his club. "Ug! Ug! Hrungh!"

"Ah! I get it! I have already travelled into the past on my pyramid but the journey was so smooth I didn't realise it! So this is the age of the early hominids, eh? Funny how my room looks exactly the same! Was it carried back with me? Yes, that makes sense, in the same way that moulds are carried forwards in time with their host cheese. Well now, I suggest we step out to explore the jungle."

He helped me dismount from the quark with several well-aimed blows. But he ensured that I took the pyramid with me, balanced on my shoulder. Then he clubbed me out of the door, down the stairs and outside. I shall confess to feelings of disappointment at this juncture. I'd expected all sorts of extinct beasts, mammoths and smilodons and readers, but nothing much was different. There were streets and buildings and people, and the President's tower in the distance, outside the city. It was identical to the present! What a pity! I turned to my new companion to comment on the coincidence, but he replied with a savage blow to my neck. I tripped and winced. Clearly the entire world had travelled back with me, overlapping the past, so that prehistory was now no different from my own era. Maybe this was the reason for his temper?

"Ug! Ug! Ug! Hrungh! Ughsagh!"

"I'm going as quick as I can! Patience, you autochthonic bully! The President will have much to say about this, when I complain to him. Just wait to see whose side he'll take!"

This statement caused Ug to snigger.

It soon became apparent that we were travelling to the tower of our absolute leader. As we passed under the main gates of the city, out into the barren countryside, Ug started hitting me with regular strokes and I dropped the quark. He roared in fury at this, beating my knees until the pyramid was restored to its place on my shoulder. I leaped the remainder of the distance, thanks to the club's propellant power and we gained the bright cylinder within an hour. The door was open and I entered. But the President was not at home. I called for him, but there was no reply. Was he visiting his wife at the Pallid Colonnades? Almost certainly not! The only option was that he was hiding.