Theatre of the Gods (10 page)

‘But, master,’ his servant had said, ‘why is it that you want to vanish?’

‘Because I think this might be hell, and no man wants to live there.’

‘Oh, master, if only I could make you see the truth.’

In some strange way, Fabrigas did see the truth. He saw how these failed attempts to assassinate himself bore out his theory of a great Infiniverse. There are infinite universes, some in which he was, some in which he wasn’t. But of course he could never
be
in a universe in
which he was dead. Certainly, in other universes the gun might work, the spinning blade might do its job, the thorns of the roses he clutched to his breast would prick his flesh and the lovely poison would take him off to eternity. But in this universe, the one he inhabited, he would always remain alive, he would always be in hell.

TITANROD

‘A dream! A dream! What is this dream, sisters?’ The Man in the Shadows was a terrifying young individual. He’d inherited his mother’s fortune while still a teenager and used it to build an empire of frightening influence. He had the ears of kings, the hearts of princesses, and the balls of anyone who’d crossed him. He had called the Queen’s three sisters to his super-yacht,
Titanrod
, as soon as he’d heard about the Queen’s nocturnal epiphany. ‘The Queen doesn’t dream, she doesn’t dare. She cowers like a naughty fool in the dark and waits for daylight. So tell me how your idiot sister suddenly had a dream which puts Plan UWX at risk.’

They were at moor at a private marina near the palace under the pretext of a pleasure cruise around the Asphodel Meadows. Things were tense. The Queen’s three sisters occupied the sofa opposite in frozen magnificence. From behind an almond-shaped glass lounge table on which stood an abstract ceramic sculpture, they peered at this brooding boy as he sat in his velvet bucket chair and tossed a lava ball from hand to hand.

‘We confess, young sir, we did not know about the dream,’ said sister one, in a voice like a barber’s blade slicing through a sheet of fine paper. ‘It is news to us.’

‘I had everything in place, sisters. The old wizard was virtually at the executioner’s table. Our assassins close in on our master’s enemy, the Vengeance. Her death could have been pinned on the Queen.
She would have been hauled from the throne like a dog, and you would finally have been in power. Now it’s all in jeopardy because your sister had a bloody dream!’ He flung his lava ball at the phonograph machine which had been playing a lively modern tune on drum and vibes. The song died under a pile of glass and coloured goo; the plush den was cast into a jagged silence. ‘Who put her up to this? I want to know.’

Each sister kept her gruesome smile, her corpsy repose.

‘We do not know, sir,’ said sister two, in a voice like a sock full of nettles. ‘She has no friends in court. We killed them all. There are only ghosts beside her bed, and her fool, Barrio.’

‘Perhaps Dark Hand have infiltrated the palace.’

‘Nonsense, sisters. They could never get close enough to have the Queen’s ear.’

‘Perhaps she simply had a dream, sir.’

‘She didn’t have a dream!’ The Man in the Shadows kicked out, shattering an omni-breasted porcelain nude worth almost as much as the golden ship it rode in. ‘This was a political masterstroke. Her mission is all the people are talking about now. They have hope in their eyes. With a single move she’s saved her head, saved her wizard, and stalled UWX by months or years. Imagine what will happen if her hero succeeds!’ The Man in the Shadows feigned to laugh, then shook the incredulous smile from his face. He smoothed his trousers, calmed slightly. ‘Let me explain, one more time, how the game is supposed to play out. Our master – all love and fear him – has asked us to kill a small girl – his arch-enemy’s daughter – and an elderly wizard before the two can meet. In return, he will give us great power. With his help we can finally smash down the Wall, re-form the Old Empire and conquer the centre. There will once more be a single Empire at the centre of the sphere. The battle for the centre of the sphere is the game. Win the centre, win the game. It’s the only battle. If people travel beyond the boundaries of the universe there is no centre, there is no battle. Plan UWX becomes pointless. It’s like playing
cards with someone who can wish themself a better hand.’

‘But the wizard is a fool, sir. Our intelligence says his trans-dimensional engine probably doesn’t even work.’

‘Probably isn’t good enough. We must be certain. Our master looks down upon everything, he sees all: past, present, future. The old wizard is pretending to be a god. That is why he has to burn. Our master wills it. As separate agents the Vengeance and the wizard are problematic; but if they join together they become a
nightmare
for our plans, and his.’

‘Perhaps this is a secret blessing, young sir,’ said sister number three, with a voice like a sack of rats with crêpe paper wrapped round their tails.

‘A
blessing.
’ He made to pretend-laugh again, this time transforming it into an open-mouthed frowning toss of the head.

‘Yes, a blessing. Our idiot sister’s plan is only a good one if the wizard makes it to the next universe. If he fails it will be a swifter end for her. She is desperate. And if Skycore is right and fate really does want to bring the wizard and the Vengeance together – why, so be it. With the right trap set all our problems could end together. In fire and blood. Then the battle is won in a stroke.’

There was a beat in which the Man in the Shadows’ fists unclenched.

‘This is not the worst plan, sisters. I could arrange a surprise for the wizard at the crossing. If the Vengeance is there, even better. But first I must consult my oracle about these developments.’

‘You’ll go to Skycore now, with all that is happening?’

‘
Pffft
. Skycore. That useless ball of string. Give it to the kittens, sisters. I have a much more powerful oracle now.’

‘Where?’

‘Where is this oracle?’

‘We must see it.’

‘You will never see it, sisters. It is very well disguised: in that it is not disguised, and is in the first place you would think to look. Look at your faces. Priceless.’

‘Do not mock us, sir.’

‘But there is one other serious matter, sisters.’

‘We sense it.’

‘A file has gone astray from one of the communication hubs in the Sentinel complex.’

‘Not possible.’

‘More than possible.’

‘What information has this file?’

‘It was a dark communiqué containing details of our Master Plan for UWX.’

‘This is terrible news. You understate it. It is beyond serious.’

‘It is, true, but it is easily manageable. The file is encrypted, protected, and it has to make it all the way to our enemies if it’s to be useful. And that is a very,
very
long way. I am about to send my best agents to destroy the file. I need not tell you what the consequences are if our master learns a file has leaked.’

‘You do not.’

‘With his guidance these hubs will soon be outmoded. I’ll make preparations for the wizard’s destruction before I leave for the oracle. In the meantime, make sure Misfortune’s Queen has no more dreams.’

M8B

Fame. Everyone dreams of fame. You long to live for ever, to gain the power of flight. But fame is fickle. One minute you’re a young man alone in the universe; the next you’re travelling beyond the stars and making grand discoveries; the next you’re being ridiculed for proposing that it might be possible to travel beyond the boundaries of time and causality and exist in other dimensions; the next you’re being defrocked and imprisoned for cosmic heresy; the next you’re being exonerated and exalted as a saviour of your kind, saved from your execution and sent, ironically, on a mission of certain death – all because some queen had a dream that a starfish spoke to her. It’s typical, really.

It was madness at the docks. It was the day before the voyage and the people of Carnassus came up: the young, the old, the strong, the sick, the rusty, many of the very ones who had tried to murder the old man just a few weeks earlier. They came up, slick, from out of the slum depths and rammed the docks to breaking point. They crowded the way to the necromancer’s hut.

It is customary (and by customary I of course mean compulsory), in many human empires, to consult astrologers before long expeditions. Without an astrological consultation none of the great insurance houses would insure a voyage. The Empire employed a gaunt and cave-eyed legion of necromancers, shadowmancers, gastromancers, augurers and other charlatans to pull apart the entrails of fish, or to poke at tea leaves, and to tell the pilot or explorer whether
the expedition would be successful. Fabrigas knew them. If Fabrigas had two hopes when he arrived in this strange (yet almost identical) universe, the first was to find his master alive, the second was to discover that every single one of these prognosticating charlatans had died of stupidity-related illnesses. In his early days, in his own universe, he had been forced to visit hundreds of these fools, and doing so had only confirmed his suspicions that they didn’t have the faintest idea what they were talking about.

‘Did the man who tore the entrails out of a helpless bird to tell me that my trip to Arcadius would see me “return with more discoveries than the Emperor could dream of” think to tell me that the only discovery I would make was that fire-breathing sand lizards don’t like it when you watch them mating?’

‘I cannot answer that at this time,’ said the Magic Eighth.

The Magic Eighth was by far the most ridiculous prognosticator the old man had ever been forced to visit. He was a huge man with a wobbly, oily belly which flowed across his belt. He was a spheromancer. Spirits, he claimed, inhabited his belly and would speak through a small sphere he held. He would sit in a kind of trance, tongue lolling out, and he would shake his ‘Magic Eighth Ball’ vigorously, so that his fat belly wobbled, and then he would answer in a strangled voice.

‘I just want to know if …’ Fabrigas sighed heavily, ‘… if my mission will be successful.’

Shake shake shake.

‘… Ask me later,’ said the Magic Eighth Ball.

‘Oh, for the love of …’

Sometimes Fabrigas felt entirely alone in a dim and superstitious Empire. Even with all that science had done for them, the cities that hung like burning crowns in space, the airships that took them flying off to where they wished to go, they still preferred to believe that the paw of a now-extinct creature called the rabbit would bring them luck.

‘Did it bring the poor rabbit any luck?’ said Fabrigas.

‘… All signs point to maybe.’

‘What kind of answer is this?’

‘Look,’ the Magic Eighth broke from his trance briefly, ‘I can’t tell the belly spirits what to say, I just read what it says on the ball. That is what my papa taught me, and his papa before him, and his papa –’

‘Yes, yes, yes, we all have papas.’

The Magic Eighth paused, mouth open, as if about to speak, but then did not, and for a second Fabrigas thought he looked as frozen as his own photograph. Fabrigas felt a chill in the small hut.

‘Yes … You were saying?’

Silence from the Magic Eighth. And then when he finally did speak, the voice which crawled out of his mouth was not his own, and his eyes looked drained of life.

‘Fabrigas. Receive us. Do you know us? We know you. Over.’

Fabrigas paused, choked a little. ‘I … beg your pardon?’

The Magic Eighth said nothing.

‘I … do not think we’ve met,’ croaked the old-beard. ‘Have we met?’

Nothing for a long while. The Magic Eighth was so still that even his fat had stopped wobbling. Then …

‘Fabrigas. Receive us. We are Dark Hand. You know us. We gave you a letter and a book. We gave you protection against great enemies. We are speaking with you through this man at enormous risk and at a frequency which only you can perceive.’

‘I’m … I’m present.’

‘You are present. But not willing. Do not give in to your own schemes and misgivings. There is a new plot against you. An ambush at the crossing. Many dead if you aren’t prepared. Over.’

The old man sighed.

‘No misgivings. Here is your cosmic reading: you will still go on your mission. No error. You will fulfil your promise to us. You will meet a child. This child has a file. It is mathematically certain that you will meet. So much depends on this equation that it is impossible to express it.’

‘But I –’

‘No interruptions. Not until we say “over”. There is a plot to rule the universe. We are working to stop this plot. This child you will meet travels with a file containing details of the plot. You must protect this child and bring the file to our friends, the Immortals. Bringing the file to them is the only way to stop the plot. We will help you along the way where we can. But to fail in this mission will endanger both our species, and indeed every species. Over.’

‘Well, I fully intend to –’

‘No you do not. We know your mind. You forget.’ The temperature in the tent had fallen to just above freezing, while the Magic Eighth had risen several inches off his prognostication mat. He floated rigid in the air, yet still spoke in that calm, measured voice.

‘We know what your intentions are. Let us settle this for eternity.’ The Magic Eighth raised one arm, stiffly, plucked two pebbles from an ornamental bowl, one black, one white, and placed them on the straw mat before the old man. ‘Now is the time to choose the course of the rest of your life. If you wish to accept the destiny life has chosen for you, pick up the black pebble. If you wish to decline this mission and return to a peaceful life, choose white. Choose. Over.’

And the old man did. He picked up the white pebble from the mat and held it in his palm before the fat astrologer and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just really
very
tired.’

‘Then it is decided. You have chosen black. Over.’

‘Wait, that’s not the one I … I wanted to choose white. Let me do it over. Over.’

‘You don’t need to say “over”. It will change nothing, but very well, choose again. Over.’