Theatre of the Gods (33 page)

‘How very odd they are,’ said Fabrigas.

At this point, Roberto returned on foot with Lenore and Fritzacopple, throwing up his arms as he approached as if to say, ‘Women! I ask you.’ He was covered from head to foot in jungle filth.

‘Why did you run off like that?’ said Lambestyo to Fritzacopple. ‘We were all worried to sickness.’

‘You worry too much. I’m a big girl.’

‘You are. I see you are. Which is why you should know better.’

The botanist rolled her eyes.

Soon Carrofax appeared. ‘Sir, you’ll be interested to hear about the place you’re in. You could write a book.’

‘Yes, yes, just tell me what this woman is saying.’

It turned out that the woman was saying a lot of things, and Carrofax translated as best he could, and Fabrigas conveyed his translation to the group. They were very lucky to be alive. The spider crabs were attracted to their lamplight. If they hadn’t cast their lamps aside the deadly crabs would never have stopped, and the visitors would have found themselves slashing at the creatures from atop a pile of remains a mile high. They are nice in soup, the crabs. Several of the strangers stepped forward to put some into sacks.

And the spider crabs, it turned out, were one of the least deadly things that could have been attracted to their brassy, alien light. Giant hornets patrolled the area, as did schools of flying leeches. Poison-whiskered catfish hid in the mud. There were giant death-slugs that could swallow you, digest you, then emit you as a fine and fragrant powder. The woman bent and scooped up a handful of powder, let it run through her fingers. It sparkled in the lamplight.

‘Also nice in soups,’ said Carrofax. ‘She’s going to take us back to the compound.’ Her limpid eyes restlessly roamed the darkness. Her name was Kandy.

‘So what are we supposed to do, just trust them?’ hissed the captain as he roughly wrapped a piece of rag around a deep wound in his arm.

‘I’m sure we’ll be fine,’ said the old man. ‘I think you worry too much.’

‘Is that so?’ said the captain. ‘Well, maybe you worry too little. Maybe it’s my job to worry, I have children to look after. We were only supposed to go out for supplies.’

Fabrigas frowned. ‘Why are you so moody today?’

‘I’m not moody. You are moody.’ The old man went to put a friendly hand on his shoulders and the pilot said, ‘Don’t touch me.’

They trekked away through the darkness, the rescuers’ sure-footed feet slapping slickly on the earth, the visitors stumbling and lurching out for vines that in some cases turned out to be snakes. ‘They were a group on their way to a folk-music symposium when they lost their
way and were pulled into the orbit of this world,’ explained Carrofax as they were taken through a dense patch of jungle. ‘They lost their navigation systems … solar storm … everything black … somehow ended up here … did the best with what they had … bug attacks … captain eaten by giant slug … mysterious stranger … it’s all pretty routine really. But now look!’ As they reached the top of a shallow rise a fort emerged from the mist, suspended, it seemed, in the palm of Kandy’s hand. The fort comprised stepped palisades of sharpened logs with a shining silver dome in the centre. When they approached, silhouettes hurried out to pull the gates open, but not a word was exchanged; the place was quiet as a tomb. The other residents all looked like Kandy. Then the rescue group vanished and Kandy took them on through the compound.

They were taken into a bare barn with low benches and a fire pit in the centre. Soon, a group of youngsters scuttled in with wooden bowls and clumps of dried moss. They pulled up when they saw the strangers, but Kandy gave a few gruff blips and they began to shyly dab away at their guests’ cuts and crab bites. All except one child, who could not be made to approach the hulking figure of the bosun. Kandy took the bowl and tended to his wounds herself, speaking as she did.

‘She says they will look after all our weapons until we come to leave. They will be kept in a secure barn. They can’t have heavily armed strangers wandering around their camp. I suggest you agree, as a gesture of goodwill, but keep your hidden weapons. You’ll be given sleeping quarters for tonight. It’s too dangerous to take you back to the ship right now. There is another tribe in the area who will have seen you arrive. They’ll likely attack in great numbers …’ Carrofax yawned. ‘… Excuse me. She says they are savage creatures … they move silently, like a pack of wild beasts, and if they should catch you they’ll make you wish for death … etc. So there’s that as well.’

Their quarters were clean and comfortable: a room of bunks each
separated by a screen made from vines. ‘Well, I suppose after all we’ve been through we deserve a short rest,’ said Fabrigas as he tested his vine mattress.

‘I still don’t like it at all,’ said Lambestyo, standing warily near the door. ‘We need to get back to our ship. We shouldn’t have followed them here. You’re too impulsive sometimes. We should steal weapons and bust our way out. You’ve always been impulsive.’

‘Nonsense,’ said the old man as he lazily picked a piece of crab shell from his beard. ‘You always say that. If anything you’re too cautious. Now come and sort out your sleeping area – you’ll be too tired to do it later.’

FEAST FIRST

It was a miraculous community these Marshians had built. With no way to generate electrical energy they’d had to be inventive. They used the constant rain to turn wheels. They harnessed luminous ferns for light. They used swamp gas for heat. They had domesticated a number of local creatures. Once a week they’d rub furry rats together to generate enough static charge to power up their distress beacon, which sent a stream of blips into the heavens in a vain request for deliverance.

They were taken to the feasting hall for, predictably, a feast. A hunting party had killed a slug. It was a sickening white flesh, a meat which had had all the colour and nutrients leeched out of it. The creatures, too, who sat at the tables, looked to have had their life force drained; their complexion resembled the sad old faces in portraits faded by the sun. They looked like once-grand splashes of life and colour dissolved into listless puddles of tinted water. There were bowls of green algae stew, rows of glistening marsh oysters and platters of steamed spider crabs. A special table had been set aside for the guests.

‘But what I want to know,’ said the old-beard to no one, ‘is do they know where exactly they are?’

‘Oh, I could tell you where you are if you wish, sir.’ His butler was teasing him mercilessly.

Their hosts were shovelling food into their fishy mouths with great
abandon; the noise was tremendous.

‘I don’t want you to tell me; I want to know if
they
know,’ he said to the air.

‘It hasn’t come up yet. Please let me tell you.’

‘No!’ the old man shouted – apparently to an antlered skull hanging on the wall. He realised that their hosts had paused in their munchings to blink at him with their huge, sad eyes. Then they heard the sound of drums in the distance, deep and warlike, and the guests paused also. Kandy stood and raised both arms to soothe them. That’s when Fabrigas looked up and noticed another figure at the leaders’ table. It was so strange not to have noticed a man like this earlier – if indeed a man was what he was. He was not beguilingly aquatic like his brethren. He was more troll-like, dirty like an orphan, with an outsized head and tiny, twinkling, moleish eyes. He stood on scrawny legs below a potted stomach, never taking his eyes off the beautiful young Miss Fritzacopple, and he spoke to them in their own language.

‘Don’t be scared of the drums, humans. Those drums come from the other tribe. The Ubuntu are primitive, aggressive, but harmless so long as we’re inside the compound. I am Skyorax. I am the keeper of this most modest society, and servant to our master, the colonel. He regrets to say he’ll not be able to see you during your stay. He has many more important things to contend with. He sends his best regards, but urges you not to disrupt the lives of these kind and simple country people, to be impulsive, or to …’ he turned his twinkling eyes on the captain, ‘bust your way out.’ His eyes skipped back once more to examine the botanist from head to boot. ‘I think you will be very comfortable here. And now I must be getting back to the colonel. This is a very busy season for us. Yes. It is the breeding season.’ He let his words hang in the air for an age before Lambestyo coughed into his hand and said, ‘Well then.’ Skyorax took one last lingering look across the group, nodded once, and walked slowly out of the hall.

‘And then there’s him,’ said Carrofax.

‘So they have a master? A god of some kind? Not this Calligulus we’ve been hearing about?’

‘Oh no. The colonel is a man. You won’t quite believe which man he is. If I told you who it was, you’d die of surprise. He lives in an underground bunker in the centre of the compound. He calls himself Colonel, although his own people call him the Worm. At least they do when Skyorax isn’t near. Don’t trust either of them.’

‘You don’t have to remind me not to trust people.’

A cloud of frightened yelps drifted in from the main compound. They heard a gurgling roar, like a bassoon full of water. They left their meals and hurried out into the compound where some of their hosts were tracking huge shapes moving up the side of the dome. Soon Kandy was approaching them, palms raised, burbling. ‘She says it’s just a minor slug attack,’ said Carrofax, ‘nothing to worry about. She says to go back to enjoying your meal.’

‘I think we’ll wait here, thank you,’ said Fabrigas, and Kandy looked mystified. The two shapes were inching their way slowly up the dome, stopping to release shrill cries, the whole structure groaning under their weight. They were as big as elephants, and even in the gloom it was possible to see their lumpy hides, their horrible round mouths with rows of slender teeth. The hosts were firing spiked balls from slingshots through the shell of the dome, but the shiny stars were simply bouncing off the beasts’ rough hide and falling back upon the heads of the villagers.

‘The crown of the dome is the weakest point,’ said Fabrigas. ‘If they make it to the top it will break.’ And as if on cue the dome let out a cracking sound. ‘I think it’s time to put an end to this,’ said the bosun. He casually wandered over and picked up a three-pronged spear, weighing it carefully in his huge paw. He sized up the creature above him, and flung the spear casually into the darkness. It passed through the thin skin of the dome and out into the night. In the distance a bird cried out.

‘That’s fine spearmanship,’ called the captain.

The bosun ignored him. He picked up another spear, tossed it three times in his hand, then flung the pole with all his strength. It hit the lower beast directly in the mouth-hole. The slug squirmed and gave a pulse of low booms.

‘You made it angry,’ said Lambestyo. ‘Good work.’

Then they all leaped in the air as they heard a slug’s shriek from right behind them, and when they spun round they were aghast to find that the cry had come not from another slug, but from their tiny, green friend. The two slugs paused in the heights, then cried out in unison, and Lenore replied again with a long shrill wail. Then the larger slug rolled back down the dome to earth, and shrugged away into the darkness. The other beast gave one more cry, then shuffled off after its mate.

No one really had a thing to say. Except Lenore.

‘It is the breeding season, you know. They is a pair on their honeys-moon. They came here as this place looks to them just likes a gigantuan slug. I told them it was a house. It was a giant mistake, and they are sorry. Did they not mean to frighten you? Yes. And I said we was sorry for throwing sticks at them. What a day!’

Again, no one really had words. Lenore turned and walked off.

Kandy approached, muttering as she bustled them towards their sleeping barn. ‘She says they’re attracted to noise. With all the fuss since your arrival they must have become curious. That’s why people around here don’t speak much.’ And then, as if to emphasise her point, she walked off.

*

Later that night, as he lay on his bed, on top of his covers, Fabrigas was assailed by noise. He heard, with his sublime earholes, the heavy hooting of some soon-to-be-mating birds, the beat of large wings flying over, the huff and snort of the honeymooning beasts wallowing
in their bog a mile away, the titter of the rodents small enough to clamber through the holes in the huts, and in the distance, the ceaseless and hypnotic drumming, mingled with a million other sounds: bull cries, fearful shrieks, throaty rattles, sleepy toots and bleeps. But these comforting and terrifying sounds were almost impossible to concentrate on when he had a voice in each ear.

‘Master, they keep pushing back the time to return us to our ship. Now it’s after the so-called full-moon festival. If it’s too dangerous for you to be out there then what of the others on the
Necronaut
? What desperate state must they be in? I could tell you if you like, because I know exactly what state they’re in.’

And in his other ear, a less familiar voice …

‘It’s me, Judy. I’m from the saucer craft. I saved your life today. I whispered in your ear to tell you to put out your lamps.’ The voice was like an echo carried on the wind. ‘You need to leave here, it’s very dangerous. I will help you, but you need to do something for me.’ Fabrigas rolled onto his side and clamped his giant hands around his ears, but he could block out neither voice.

‘Sir, are you listening? I’m concerned that if we wait too long we might lose the
Necronaut
. Then where would we be?’

‘One of your people went into our ship and took my journal. I need you to destroy it. That plant lady took it. I don’t trust her. A girl shouldn’t read another girl’s diary, don’t you agree?’

‘Sir, if we just
demand
to be returned to our ship they might listen. I could teach you the rudiments of their language.’

‘And I need you to help put my family to rest. I know you can help, I just know you can. And I will help you.’

Until finally Fabrigas sat up and said, ‘That’s enough! I can only handle one imaginary person in my head!’