Nowhere Near Milkwood (29 page)

This was true, but not as I had imagined it. With a cruel laugh, Ug stood up straight, dropped his weapon, cast off his mask and wig, ripped open his pelt and angled his nose to reveal — the President himself! He had been in disguise all the while!

"Are you really my first ancestor?" I groaned.

"Don't be silly, Titian. It was a ruse to summon you here. I didn't want you escaping into the chronoflow yet. Something else has come up. I need you to solve a serious crime."

He led me up to the roof-garden and showed me the other towers. The sight was overwhelming and I lurched, though this might have been due to my wounds. I grasped the President.

"They are buildings from a number of parallel dimensions which have collapsed into one point," he said.

"Obviously so. You must declare them illegal!"

"No, I suggest that the actual dimensions be outlawed. They must be locked inside each other. But we need a key able to turn the tumblers of time and space. That's why I insisted you bring the pyramid with you. It is a quark and thus will serve to fasten the rogue space-time continuums which have tumbled open into ours."

"But it can't be shaped into a key!"

"In that case the lock must be made to fit it, instead of the other way round. When these rival realities are all safely incarcerated within themselves, the key can be swallowed. No that's impossible. It's too big and won't be chewed or digested..."

"Maybe the lock can be eaten!" I responded.

"Yes, if made of some edible substance. Here's a block of cheese. I was keeping it for a special occasion. Carve a lock out of it which will be an exact fit for the pyramid! Then insert the quark and turn it seven times. Each time you turn it, one of the dimensions will be locked up in the one in front of it. The final turn will fasten those rival realities inside ours. All to serve the law."

"Best with a tawny port and olives."

But it was worth a try. I took the cheese, scooped a pyramidal hole and sprinkled the resultant crumbs over the few carnivorous blooms which still gossiped at our heels. They had dined on rare flies and so were in a grand mood for dessert. Feathery tongues licked ultraviolet lips. When the lock was finished, I positioned it on the railings and pointed it at the furthest tower. Then I inserted the green quark and rotated it once. The fit was perfect and I heard the tumblers of a whole universe clatter in response, and a cosmic bolt slide into place somewhere in space-time, a sound pithier than wedding-peals.

The effect was instantaneous and amazing. The target tower, and the dimension to which it belonged, grew darker, as if a door was closing on it, and vanished! It had been locked up in the dimension in front of it. Then I pointed the cheese at this dimension and rotated the quark again. This universe also disappeared, secured inside the one in front. Another turn, another captive! Justice on a macroscopic scale! A fourth, a fifth and a sixth! Now there was a solitary illegal reality to contend with. I resisted the temptation to regard it as the ringleader (the rogue towers hadn't converged symmetrically, or they would have formed an octagon and troublemaker nodes from my position may have existed next to each other, not in front or behind). I dabbed my forehead with a sleeve, feeling the heat of a pasteurised responsibility.

The President gritted his molars. "One more turn! Let them have it, Titian! The soft-cheese-softly approach is maturing! Get those elsewhere cheats off our teleological patch."

I rotated the quark a final time. The seven deviant dimensions were now in jail, locked within the walls of our own. Best place for them! No need for a trial, because you can't prosecute the undetectable, and even cosmic rays won't hop between alternative presents which are sealed. The rascals only existed in theory now, which is the way it ought to be, and when we got round to arresting their textbook sympathisers, in libraries and colleges, even that luxury would be denied them. No geometry volume, however crisp, was going to keep a Non-Euclidian vigil for this pack, if I had my way, or even if it had me. And this reminds me: any book that quotes itself should be banned.

Now it was time to destroy the lock, to prevent any mischief-makers from releasing them. I removed the pyramid and elevated the cheese to my mouth, but it was too big to be consumed by just one man, even an unjust one. The President refused to help me. He'd already had lunch. There was enough for eight gourmets, without crackers, and I resigned myself to an evening of pure greed, something to compare with the legendary feasts of the Unbearable Supper Wars, when an entire continent was devoured by the state which sat on it (an event often held to mark the end of the Yellow Dynasty and rise of the Green, but rarely held in any other sense due to shortages of spare edible geology.) Try bolting food when it has already bolted seven of your extra bellies!

As if this notion had called for assistance, I heard a clatter from the ground floor and hurried down the stairs to see what the matter was. The President stayed on the balcony, enjoying his triumph. To my relief, I found a table spread for a party, with seven occupants in eight chairs surrounding it, waiting for me to appear. They cheered and rattled their knives against their plates. I laid the lock in the centre of the table, took the empty chair and helped to carve the cheese into equal wedges. A glad snack followed, washed down with hare's-breath wine, a vintage ear. When finished, I dabbed at my lips and belched. It was during the moment of mild awkwardness which comes in the wake of most communal feasts that I appreciated my mistake. My dining-companions were me! The other Titian Grundys from the rival towers! Why had I not noticed? Possibly because I am so
proud
that anything I do is tainted with this quality. Thus I look at the obvious in
vain
, missing it.

Now one of the Grundys spoke: "A fitting start to our negotiations, for we have decided to act in a curdled, I mean mature, fashion, and the cheese was a witty symbol of that."

"Negotiations?" I cried. "What do you mean?"

Another Grundy explained: "Instead of trying to devise malignant or traitorous methods of outwitting each other, we conclude it is better to band together to cure our problem. After all, we're in the same trouble. It was Titian here, that one, not him, who had the courage to depart his tower and visit Titian there, on your right, to suggest a truce. So they called on Titian, opposite you, and the three of them raced on to try to persuade Titian, at the far end, to join up. It worked and he aided them to win over Titian, on your left, plus Titian. Then they set off to work on the seventh Titian, who was me."

"I see their labours were productive. Now you've come round to talk me into also shelving hostilities?"

"We don't preach peace, but redirected brutality. We have assembled here to plan a rebellion, for it's the President who has always been the major source of bother for us, the sharpest thorn in our joy's sideshow. No longer! We intend to kick him out of government and take over! That's what this conference is about. Each of us has contributed one facet of a geminous putsch and when they're combined, a fresh era will dawn, though probably not in the east, unless we go there on vacation, for it will be wherever we are. The first Titian brought the napkins, the second hurled in the knives, the third the wine, fourth and fifth added the plates and table. The sixth donated the chairs. Successful insurrections are always plotted over lunch. Otherwise they never come to pass. You have provided the location — this actual tower!"

"No, I supplied the meal. Incredibly, it wasn't a simple cheese but a transdimensional lock. You don't know what you've done! You're trapped in my dimension forever, beyond your own presents! More to the point, we now outnumber the President, who is upstairs alone, and so can usurp him without excessive risk. Follow me!"

I stood as fast as my digestion permitted and prepared to scurry up to the balcony, keen to storm the doldrums of my human condition, namely the ruler who had wounded me as only a friend might. I was suffused with a weird delight, a brute, raw, peeled exultation that had been festering under my stable exterior for the greater part of my whole life. To crush the President and his whimsical decrees! To inaugurate a new republic, a Dynasty of Prefects, an octagonal oligarchy! But before my happiness had a chance to familiarise itself with my mind, testing all the corners and lobes, raiding the larder for subconscious impulses, the eloquent Grundy who had last spoken rose and cried:

"Wait! I'm the seventh Titian and you haven't yet heard what I have contributed to the coup! I didn't realise the other dimensions were shut away and I presumed we had to have something tangible to scheme against, so I brought the other Presidents!"

I paused with my foot on the bottom stair. Just then the President, my version, came bounding down, excited and frothing. He had leaned over the rail of his balcony and observed seven alternative hims loitering at his gate, juggling all sorts of inconsequential stuff to waste the time, including ridiculous plot devices and strained effects. He asked if they had escaped from jail already, and I nodded, too apprehensive to explain that they'd never even been incarcerated. He went out to learn the truth and it was patent the rebellion was over before it had begun. Presidents and Prefects to the tune, spume, fume of eight apiece, but only a single dimension! I was back where I'd started, in a multiple singularity, with one last chance to rescue the coup.

"Do we slay tyranny or not, comrades?"

Seven Grundys shuffled uneasily. The collective nerve had gone. The fault was my own, for I had framed the question poorly, making it appear like a call to suicide. Before I could amend my meaning, the eight rival Presidents entered the tower, led by mine, each finding the Grundy which belonged to him and setting about his head and body with whatever hadn't been dropped in the juggling display. I received a fistful of air on the chin, and the increase in atmospheric pressure around that projection, a cataclysmic event in facial history, spattered the surface with dimples. The entire collapse of my face seemed imminent, for these craters joined together, dropped to the bone and commenced to drag me in after them. To be sucked inside-out by one's own compressed jut! Then I grasped why the various Presidents were so furious.

For a dungeon in a prison is any locked volume. That's the official definition and it has naught to do with size. A cell's
dimensions
can be those of an entire
dimension
, in parallel, and still be an enclosure for captives. And what enters a prison other than felons and their visitors? Precious little, I can tell you! The President was quicker to comprehend the facts than I. When he saw his doubles, he realised he was within the slammer, not outside it, for they had stood in single file to greet him, and it is files which are generally smuggled into jails, often in cakes, sometimes in postures. I had locked our existence inside the others, and our sentence was interminable, unlike this one, which now staggers to an end at the same time that my consciousness slips under the will of boots and knuckles. Soon I hope to be lost in the bowels of the system, nearer the old days end of my span. There was purpose and sense then. It roamed free at times. Else I may take the less noble, shoelace route out of the frustrations of this confined hole.

Because this universe simply isn't big enough for both, both, both, both, both, both, both, both of us!

About the Author

RHYS HUGHES was born in 1966 and began writing from an early age. His first short story was published in 1991 and his first book, the now legendary
Worming the Harpy
, followed four years later.

Since then he has published more than thirty books and his work has been translated into ten languages and he is currently one of the most prolific and successful authors in Wales. Mostly known for absurdist works, his range in fact encompasses styles as diverse as gothic, experimental, science fiction, magic realism, fantasy and realism.

His main ambition is to complete a grand sequence of exactly one thousand linked short stories, a project he has been working on for more than two decades. Each story is a standalone piece as well as a cog in the grand machine. He is finally three-quarters of the way through this opus. The end product will be called
Pandora’s Bluff
.

His blog can be found at:
http://rhysaurus.blogspot.com

Other Books by the Same Author

Worming the Harpy (1995)

Eyelidiad (1996)

Rawhead & Bloody Bones (1998)

The Smell of Telescopes (2000)

Stories from a Lost Anthology (2002)

Nowhere Near Milk Wood (2002)

Journeys Beyond Advice (2002)

The Percolated Stars (2003)

A New Universal History of Infamy (2004)

At the Molehills of Madness (2006)

A Sereia de Curitiba (2007)

The Crystal Cosmos (2007)

The Less Lonely Planet (2008)

The Postmodern Mariner (2008)

Engelbrecht Again! (2008)

Mister Gum (2009)

Twisthorn Bellow (2010)

The Coandă Effect (2010)

The Brothel Creeper (2011)

Link Arms With Toads! (2011)

Sangria in the Sangraal (2011)

The Truth Spinner (2012)

Tallest Stories (2013)

The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange (2013)

The Just Not So Stories (2013)

The Young Dictator (2013)

More Than a Feline (2013)

The Gloomy Seahorse (2014)

Flash in the Pantheon (2014)

The Sticky Situations of Zwicky Fingers (2014)

Rhysop's Fables (2014)

Bottled Love Story (2014)

The Lunar Tickle (2014)

Captains Stupendous (2014)

Bone Idle in the Charnel House (2014)

Orpheus on the Underground (2015)

Thirty Tributes to Calvino (2015)

Mirrors in the Deluge (2015)