Theatre of the Gods (26 page)

‘But in conclusion,’ concluded Miss Fritzacopple, ‘whatever devils
we have aboard –’ and here she made a delicate gesture towards Lenore – ‘they are nothing compared to the devils we face out there.’

‘Yes, so let’s all just stay calm,’ said Fabrigas. ‘There’s no good getting lathered before our bath is run. We must remember our place in the natural order. These plants may have teeth, but we have brains. We can fashion weapons, make fire!’

‘Why are we listening to this old fooooool?’ said a voice that everyone immediately picked as the scalpel-sharp drawl of the surgeon. ‘He got us into this mess. It’s because of him we’re in this shape.’ A breeze of agreement rose and fell as Descharge swung his steely eyes towards them.

‘That’s enough!’ he barked. ‘There’s nothing to be gained from mob methods.’

‘But how,’ continued Shatterhands, ‘are we expected to follow a man who betrayed us, who poisoned us, who was about to throw us into space? As commander of this … “fleeeeeet” … it is your duty to punish mutineers, is it not?’ A louder, angrier murmur passed through, and the men began to push forward, to form a tighter group around Fabrigas, the captain, Descharge, Lenore, Miss Fritzacopple. ‘Stand down, dogs!’ cried the bosun, and Lenore could be heard to say, ‘Things are getting foolish, what?’ The mop-headed Roberto stood to one side, leaning with one arm on a rail and calmly studying the back of his hand. The trim on his jumpsuit shone faintly in the half-light. He had a heavy cargo hook beside him.

‘And this girl! This Devil Girl! She surely by her very nature has doomed us to hell!’ As the mob turned their attention to Lenore, Roberto yawned, straightened and languidly moped across to put himself between Lenore and the mob. He held the cargo hook loosely in his left hand.

‘And what are you going to do, little boy?’ said Hardcastle, the sailor at the head of the group. Poke me with your pole?’ He held a lamp above the boy’s shaggy head. Roberto calmly touched the hook to the sailor’s lamp and it exploded in a ball of fire. Hardcastle
went reeling madly back into a pile of fire hoses where he lay gently smoking.

‘Well, let’s seize the old man first,’ said someone. ‘The girl can wait!’

‘Oh, this is unseemly,’ cried Pantagruel. ‘Can’t we execute them in a civilised manner?’ But the mob came forward to seize the traitor, and just as they did, Fabrigas himself, to the surprise of everyone, fell to his knees. ‘It’s true! It’s all true! This is all my fault!’ He began to sob. ‘I took us all aboard this ship of doom, I took us all into this hell, I deserve to be tossed to the weeds! Don’t blame the girl! Don’t blame the fates! Oh toss me to the furious jaws of nature!’

‘Hear, hear!’ said the surgeon as he clapped his bony hands together, but he suddenly noticed that the rage that had been building in the crew had died. They were now looking at the old man with great pity. And Fabrigas, whose face shone with tears, had turned his eyes imploringly towards the deathly weeds above.

‘Throw me to the ferocious shrubs,’ he whispered, hands clasped before him, ‘I implore you! Hurl me in among the poison roses. Let my frail body nourish the soil! Bring swift mercy to this traitorous old fool!’

‘Now look what you’ve done, you beasts!’ said Miss Fritzacopple, and the chins of the assembled dropped. There was a noticeable change of mood upon the deck. Anger dissolved to shame. ‘Honestly, threatening a helpless old man.’

Then Descharge said, ‘Anyone who lays a hand on this man will answer to me.’

‘And me,’ said the bosun.

‘Quite so. I am commanding officer and as such I swear that I will make it my duty to bring this traitor to justice. But for now we need every resource at our disposal. His brain could be the only way we’ll make it out alive.’

‘And you’ve made him cry like a small girl,’ added the captain.

‘Oh, that is nice,’ said Lenore.

‘Now let’s get some rest and in the morning we’ll decide what’s to be done.’

Miss Fritzacopple had Lenore help her take the distraught old man to his cabin. They made him tea and put him up on his bed, though he was inconsolable. ‘It is more than I can bear to have brought such hell upon you all!’

‘OK, shut up now. Let’s rest tonight, then in the morning a solution will present itself.’

The next day when Lenore awoke she searched the ship with her perfect nose, but he was nowhere.

Dear Friends,

By the time you read this I will have been horribly killed by a gang of murderous trees.

It is because of my actions, and only my actions, that you too now find yourselves on the brink of becoming plant food. I only pray that the end for you is quick, for there is no way out of this predicament, except, perhaps, to do what I have done: to walk boldly from the ship, with your human head held high, and to hope for the best – or at least to hope for the least of the worst.

I leave now to face the only fitting end for a coward such as me: to be eaten by something less than animal. Know that I am truly sorry for what I have put you through. My only aim was to depart the Empire quietly, and to live out my days in peace. For, as I explained, I no longer have the heart, the stomach or the mind to be an explorer.

The one thing I will say in my favour is that, through my gross misdeeds, I may, though inadvertently, have led you to a swifter death than you might otherwise have suffered.

All the best!

M.F.F.

ON DEADLY GROUND

When the crew of the
Necronaut
woke they immediately threw themselves into the mouth of panic. Their ship seemed suddenly very small, and the jaws of the plants – yawning wide and terrible with the rising of the sun – unfathomably huge. And when they discovered the old-beard missing, and found his suicide note, their panic trebled.

‘We’re doomed! Without the wizard we are doomed!’

‘Be calm!’ said the captain, though he couldn’t help but let his eyes drift up to the glass cells which held the full weight of the jungle upon them, and where all ferocious hell was loose. Even Descharge, who had locked eyes with many fierce enemies, looked slightly alarmed as he drank his tea. At night, asleep, the deadly plants had looked somewhat tranquil. Now, with the dawn, the crew watched, aghast, as teeth snapped and green gums slathered against their ship, and there was a ceaseless screech and squawk of fangs dragging along the glass, leaving deep, silvery gouges. Vines whipped and shot jets of acid which scoured away the ship’s paint, and the sound of the hungry multitude was almost deafening. The
Necronaut
rocked gently under the fury.

‘Geeeeahhhhhhhhrrrggg!’ a sailor suggested.

‘It looks like the babies want their breakfast,’ said the botanist as she arrived on deck, still pulling her long lovely hair into a knot.

‘We’re safe so long as we’re in here,’ said the captain. ‘The ship
is sealed tight. Plus, we still have the GGPTBCE,’ and he threw a look at the machine’s custodian, Bortis, who sighed.

*

For just such missions was the GGPTBCE designed. Its eight-inch titanium-impregnated steel skin guarded an advanced weapons system and a pilot cocoon inside triple redundancy life-support systems. Nevertheless, Bortis was less than keen to take it out to recover a depressed senior citizen, and only when Descharge personally intervened did he agree to undertake the recovery mission. First he made Lambestyo agree that he would personally fix all the dents and scratches in the outer shell on its return.

‘But I want to take it out,’ said Lambestyo.

‘The only way you will ever drive him is over my dead body,’ said Bortis coldly.

Bortis climbed in and gave a sullen wave before he pulled the hatch closed. They all watched as the cargo bay opened and the mighty war machine stamped out into the jungle. It shone like a silver god in the dawn light; its footsteps made the leaves tremble lightly. There were a few still moments as the iron man stood in the clearing made by the crash-landing; the jungle seemed to lean away from this new beast. Then the fronds of hell rose gently, and all aboard the
Necronaut
watched as they plucked the robot from the earth and tore off all four limbs as if it were made from gingered bread. The steel beast fired all its weapons at once. Machine-fire splattered through the foliage and pinged off the hull of The
Necronaut
. Rockets ripped through the canopy and exploded in the sky above in a multicoloured ecstasy, all as the plants tore the chest plate off and hungrily devoured the hapless Bortis in his pod.

‘It’s probably good I did not go out,’ said Lambestyo.

*

‘Well, at least we know what we’re in for.’ The brains trust had moved to one side of the deck.

‘I am out of ideas,’ said the captain as he watched the plants pick through the remains of the GGPTBCE. ‘Without the old man we don’t stand a chance.’

‘And he’s certainly been eaten by now,’ said Fritzacopple, who still held his letter.

‘We must be sure,’ said Descharge. ‘He is vital to us alive, but if not, I want to see his corpse for myself.’

‘We could go by night. I could help us to avoid most of the worst traps,’ said the botanist. ‘The main problem is that we wouldn’t even know where to look. Finding his body would be like searching for a needle in a deadly hay field.’

‘I know where your noodle is,’ said a small voice.

*

By night, when the plants had again drifted off, a small party crept from the
Necronaut
, and into the jaws of a leafy hell. They were dressed in hazard suits topped with domes of acid-proof glass, and each held a lamp. Descharge went first. Miss Fritzacopple pointed to things as she went, her husky voice crackled in their earpieces: ‘That there is a classic flypaper trap, it uses mucus-secreting glands. Over there is a trapdoor plant. I wouldn’t like to think what’s in there. We must be very gentle. If one of these things wakes, we’re food.’

‘He went in that direction,’ said Lenore as she stood beside a mighty orchid. Her small nose tested the air.

‘We’ll have to skirt that copse of thorns,’ said the botanist. ‘Each one is tipped with poison. This really is marvellous.’

‘I don’t think it is marvellous,’ said the bosun. Being the biggest he was having the hardest time moving forward. Roberto looked perfectly at home, twisting and writhing through the vines like a tousle-headed monkey. The job of convincing him to stay on the
ship had proved too difficult – two sailors had been mildly electrocuted – so in the end they’d let him come.

‘That over there is a bladder trap,’ said the botanist. ‘There’s a vacuum tube inside. If you touch even one of those hairs the trapdoor will open and you’ll be sucked in.
Schwipp.
’

‘He’d better be alive,’ said the bosun, ‘or I’ll kill him.’

‘Shhhhh,’ said Descharge. ‘What is that sound?’

They all lay quietly for a second and realised that they could hear a low rumble, like the purr of a large cat, or a motor drill being gently smothered by a pillow.

‘Do plants snore?’ said the bosun.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Miss Fritzacopple. ‘Plants don’t have lungs. Aside from the lung tree.’

They struggled on, avoiding, as they went, a grove of paralysing ivy, and soon found themselves lying under a great orange bulb, from which the sounds of snoring were coming.

‘He’s inside the guts of that one,’ said the girl. ‘I can smell some biscuits on his breath.’

‘Fabrigas!’ Descharge barked. ‘You foolish old man, it’s time to wake and be reborn!’ and with his blade he slit the bulb from top to bottom. A torrent of purplish goo, bones and old man fell upon them, and there was a sound, something like a scream. For a second the whole jungle stirred and shook. The party winced.

But luckily for them the plants did not wake.

Fabrigas lay blinking between them. ‘You came,’ said the old man.

‘Of course we did,’ said the bosun. ‘You took all the biscuits.’

*

Fabrigas had left in darkness, and when he saw the jungle lightening and felt the first stirrings from the plants he had suddenly begun to reassess his decision to sacrifice himself. A huge set of jaws had begun to yawn, sleepily, before him. Staying still was pointless; running,
futile; so in the end he’d done the only thing possible: he’d crawled in through the creature’s mouth, and because it was still dozy he’d been able to slither past the worst of its teeth and into its belly without a chomping. In there he’d found the bones of sailors eaten by the plant. He’d found some more biscuits in the belt of one of the sailors after he’d eaten the last of his own. Then, within the belly of the plant, within the cacophony of ravenous vegetables, he’d slept.

IN THE HOUSE

They spent a few minutes cleaning the goo and bones from Fabrigas. ‘We should move fast,’ said the bosun. ‘I can smell the dawn.’

‘We might not even make it back,’ said Fabrigas. ‘You were fools to come for me.’

‘You were a fool for leaving us. I only came so I could hang you.’

‘Fools could have hiding in the house,’ said Lenore. But everyone ignored her.

‘Hang me? I brought you to the next universe, as promised, if not by will then by fate.’

‘You harboured a fugitive of the Queen.’

‘Or there’s an house for arguing!’ said the fugitive of the Queen.

‘I swear I’ll hang you by your … wait, what? A house?’

‘What do you mean, a house?’ said Fritzacopple.

‘It is a small house. You might say a cottage. It’s there upon the distance.’

‘My girl,’ said Fabrigas as he scooped the moss from his glass dome helmet, ‘you never fail to amaze.’

‘I never, ever do,’ she agreed.

*

It is not uncommon to come upon, in the middle of a dark and gruesome children’s tale, a cottage, and therein find a witch, or a
wolf or domestic troll. And yet here it was – in real life: a humble, homely cottage, such as a nice country family might occupy, but rooted in the depths of this green hell. It had been placed with care inside a dome, like a model in a museum, and the glass was caked in moss and filth, much like the hats our friends wore. The dome had a hatch with a latch which was easy for humans to master, but impossible for plants. Inside the dome, Fabrigas peeled up a corner of the lawn and found an iron slab beneath.