Theatre of the Gods (35 page)

In their pods they had a panel containing an emergency sack, and a flask of water. In the event of a ‘sun-leak’ they were instructed to crawl into these silver sacks and wait. This, of course, was pointless. A boy inside one of these sacks had probably four minutes at most until he was cooked, and it would take the fire team ten minutes to arrive. The ‘cleaning’ teams arrived much quicker. The shock troops would soon be there in their black suits and gas masks, their handcuffs and hoods, and there would be no bargaining. He could feel their boot-steps growing louder. They ran in sync.

Roberto had zipped the sack up to his neck and prised away the seals on the edge of the UV shield across the cover of the light-tube. He’d put the water flask under his chin and zipped the sack over his head. Then he’d slipped into the starlight tube. It wasn’t easy to open the UV cover with his hands inside the sack, but he’d managed.

The heat was instantly unbearable, far worse than he’d imagined. He’d felt his hair singe and the sweat leave his body in mad fright.

Outside he’d felt the drum of boot-steps enter, searching the pods. Two minutes, he thought. That’s if they didn’t leave a guard behind.

He counted, 38, 39, 40. He felt the sweat sizzling under his legs. He was drenched in his own water. The sack was filling with steam, smoke and gases. He felt the beat of each pod slamming shut as it was searched, he marked the time. It might as well have been hours. He saw a burning sun, a tube descending, a ladder leading up, a heat so strong it pushed the tiniest pieces of him apart. He was a cloud, a vapour, a lovely rain, he was dying.

Soon he felt the boot-steps leave and the outer door slam shut. The whole place would be in lockdown. There was no escape.

He rolled out of the tube and hit the floor hard. He clawed away the silver skin and emerged like a newborn, slick and tearful, his face twisted into a horrible grimace.

When he’d mopped the sweat and tears from his eyes with his knuckles, he saw the trooper at the end of the corridor, in a black mask and holding a long club. He was far too short to be a guard.

The trooper said, ‘Don’t run. I’m here to help.’ The voice seemed to come from inside his head. ‘I work for a group called Dark Hand. We’ve come to rescue you.’

‘We have a job for you,’ they told him. ‘We need you to help us stop a war,’ they said. ‘We need you to use the things inside your head to stop a war,’ they said, ‘and we will teach you how. This is a secret battle,’ they told him. ‘It is a battle to stop a war to end all wars. We need you to go to the Worlds’ Fair. You will meet a girl there. Have you ever met a girl before?’

Roberto had not.

*

DOOR 5: Drawers filled with preserved butterflies and insects, anatomical drawings and instruments. Roberto pocketed a small scalpel; he hid it in his sock. A shadow flashed by in the corridor behind.

DOOR 6: Weapons of all kinds.

DOOR 7: Locked.

DOOR 8: A bare room with a stack of old books.

Roberto went back out into the corridor and considered the final door.

*

It was a ship. Fabrigas ran his light along its blonde flank, from its steam rudder to the tip of its bow, back to the name, shining in gold letters: the
Prince Albert
. ‘Well I never,’ he whispered. ‘Well I never, ever.’ It was a small galleon, the hull smooth and familiar. It had been seriously damaged, perhaps in a crash like the one they’d been in, and repaired crudely. The far side of the ship had been virtually melted away by sunlight. He climbed the ladder through the docking bay and walked the deck under the triple-reinforced glass roof. It was
a miracle of engineering, the spaceship. Something which looked as delicate as a flower bulb, but which could withstand impacts from space-junk, cannon fire, and smashing into moons and planets at fantastic speed. He had often mused that the ships they used to sail the heavens were so strange and miraculous that they seemed like foreign objects, like devices gifted to their species by a mysterious alien culture.

He wandered the ship, a man in a waking dream. What madness was this? He went to the navigation room and was not surprised to find old tools, decades out of date. Much of the fittings and equipment had been stripped from the ship. In the living quarters he found personal items. A man owned this ship, and from the items he could tell he was of royal descent, and from the line of Queen Gargoylas. He found a repeating watch with the cipher of Gargoylas X, a ring with the cameo of a kneeling warrior, a garter badge and a dress sword.

On the desk he found a letter.

Dear friends and family,

By the time you read this I will be dead. As the youngest member of this most royal family I have come increasingly to feel as if I have no place. I feel that my views are never heeded, and I have come to tire of the duties I am expected to perform. For what, I ask, do we do these things? For what purpose are our feeble deeds in such a mad and violent universe? It is such a black and brutal place that I see no longer a point in dwelling on within it.

Thus have I schemed to pilot my favourite ship into a sun.

I wish you all well. Weep not for me, for I died long ago.

Junior

Fabrigas put down the letter and left the suite. This was as strange a thing as ever he’d witnessed. The privy beside the prince’s suite
was unlocked. He pushed open the door, but there was nothing in there that surprised him.

*

The door at the end of the corridor. Roberto touched the door and felt the crude latch submit. Even he was astonished by what he saw behind it.

A BURST OF VERMILION

Please remember, there is no limit to the number of times you can access your Little Page of Calmness (LPoC),
here
.

*

‘Oh, hello,’ said the man behind the last door. ‘Is it seven already?’ But Roberto couldn’t hear his voice: genteel, boyish. His voice, the voice of someone who does all the talking, did not need to make itself sound interesting. ‘Sugar,’ the man said to the girl Roberto had followed here, ‘get this boy a drink.’ The girl, whose name was Lulabelle, obeyed. Roberto was in a room: soft cushions, a table covered with partly nibbled fruit, sofa seating ripped from the withdrawing room of a ship and thrown in the corners upon which several Marshian youngsters lounged. A wall hung with tapestries, all austere, yet wet with colour, a man in the centre of it all with sparkling eyes. He had full lips, impossibly smooth skin – but for visible sunlight burns on the left side of his face. He was a young man with longish hair and the makings of a fine beard. He wore an expensive leisure suit which showed signs of wear, and his shirt was open to the third button so his chest hair bloomed. He lay back upon a pile of cushions, one hand hanging limp, the other lightly gripping his lapel. He was not at all afraid to let the silence hang. It seemed an age before he took a sip from his glass and said, ‘I have heard a
lot about you. I am sure you’ve heard of me.’ Lulabelle brought back a tray with two glasses of burning red liquid on it. The man reached up languidly to exchange his empty glass for a fresh one. He sipped, he savoured. ‘Please, sit.’ He gestured to a blood-red cushion. The boy, interpreting his gesture, shook his shaggy head. ‘No? Will you at least have something to eat? Drink?’ He gestured to a bowl beside him which seemed to be filled to the brim with red worms. They squirmed in the bowl. ‘No? Suit yourself.’ The man lifted a single worm from the bowl and let it dangle on his tongue before he chomped it. He took another sip and licked his upper lip. The Marshian youths were motionless. The red liquid shone. The wind outside was growing stronger, carrying from far away the sound of drums. Lulabelle stood to one side, green with fear. Or perhaps just green. Her skin sparkled. She was blinking madly at him. Roberto could see the tray she held shaking, and the bubbles in the glass dancing. The colonel squinted at Roberto, then turned to Lulabelle and said, ‘Thank you, sugar heart, you have done well. You can leave now.’ She left quickly.

Roberto couldn’t hear what the man was saying, and his lip-reading abilities were minimal, but Carrofax was there, watching, invisible and helpless from the corner. The master’s teeth moved up and down. Big, icy teeth.

‘So.’ The man adjusted his position on the cushions. ‘You are the boy with fire in his fingers. The boy who brings trouble.’ Roberto recognised the last word, ‘bubble’, and he observed the bubbles dancing in the bloodish liquid in the glass the man nursed. Roberto learned lip-reading from a manual which had flown into his mental database, but he wished now that he’d practised more when he’d had the chance. There was something about the way those red lips pulled back across his perfect white teeth that was frightening. The other youths who lay on the sofas and cushions looked stupefied. They were limp-limbed, dead-eyed, the breeze which found its way in through the gaps in the barn-room walls indolently flicked their
hair and clothing. Roberto touched a finger to the scalpel hidden in his sock. It was there if he needed it.

*

Fabrigas examined the propulsion system and found a perfectly ordinary magnetic engine. So there was no conceivable way the ship could have, as it appeared to have done, drifted calmly through dimensions. There was obviously more to this ship than met the eye. Carrofax appeared beside him and said, ‘Your boy is in trouble. Fetch that starfish and come on.’

‘Starfish?’ Fabrigas peered down into the vents. There was an alien object attached to the gears of the engine, down where the vacuum tubes gave way to the clockwork mess of cogs and wheels. ‘A starfish on the inside of a ship?’

‘Yes, yes, it’s a starfish,’ said Carrofax. ‘Just take it and I’ll explain later.’

Fabrigas peeled the sea creature from the engine. He shone his light on it, trying to make out the strange markings, but he couldn’t. If only he had more light. Then, as if to answer his prayers, the ship’s lights came on.

‘So, you have found the colonel’s ship,’ said Skyorax. ‘Ah well, it is nothing that he did not want you to see. All is just as he planned.’

*

The beating of the drums was louder now and it filled the air with long, lingering murmurs.

A wind was rushing through the valley, throaty and threatening, and with it came a low, bubbling moan.

‘I’ve become good at spotting bad apples,’ said the man. He slowly shut his eyes and spoke as if he needed to meditate carefully upon every word. ‘You, my boy, are a bad apple. My own master would
have picked you out right away, tossed you in the mud.’ He opened his eyes. ‘But the thing about this community is that we recycle everything, even our bruised fruit.’ Roberto wasn’t following any of it. He planned to run, as soon as this crazy man closed his eyes again. But the man seemed to sense this, and he fixed Roberto with a burning glare. ‘Do you understand what is happening here? Do you know how important this project is?’ Roberto had seen his face many times before. He’d seen his photo beside his name and his name attached to orders for terrible things. He knew what he was capable of. ‘They tried to do away with me. But I survived. I’m building my army. Ready to return as conqueror.’ Roberto backed slowly towards the door, just as it opened. He felt a hand upon his shoulder, and he wheeled round to find Fabrigas. The old man was flanked by two Marshians, and behind them lurked the menacing Skyorax. ‘It all went just to plan, Lord,’ he slithered.

‘So it seems,’ said Fabrigas. ‘We can’t stay long, Albert. I just came to tell you we were leaving.’

‘Oh, but you’ve only just got here,’ said Albert. ‘Surely you can stay for one last meal.’

*

In the sleeping barn, the wind was ramming icy spikes through the gaps in the walls. Miss Fritzacopple woke and found Lenore staring out the window. Ghostly. The wife of the sailor lost at sea.

‘What are you doing staring out the window? You can’t even see. Go back to bed.’

‘Something is happening,’ replied the girl. ‘Can feel it in my airs.’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ said the botanist. ‘It’s just the wind making you moody.’ But then she saw Roberto’s empty cot. ‘Well. Perhaps he just got hungry in the night.’ She placed her hand on her own swollen belly.

‘Hungry. Yes,’ said Lenore. ‘But for what kind of dish does he hunger?’

INTO THE SUN

‘So. You know who I am. Was.’

‘Yes. You are Albert, heir and prince, colonel in the Royal Navy. You went mad and flew your ship into a sun. It seems, however, that you missed your target.’

‘Colonel,’ said Skyorax, ‘I have done as you asked, I have lured them here. Give me the fancy woman – as a treat. Or just give me the boy!’

‘Fool!’ cried the colonel, and he flung his glass across the room at the man-troll. It smashed against the wall, leaving a burst of bloody vermilion, and Skyorax cowered in fright. ‘I’m sorry, master, I’m sorry!’

‘Get out of my sight, all of you.’

Skyorax slunk from the room, the guards followed, and the colonel turned his attention back to his prisoners. ‘I apologise. Skyorax is criminally impertinent. I rescued him from the mud, taught him the names for things – in many ways he’s still a savage. But unfortunately he’s all I have since my master, the doctor, passed on.’ He took a sip from his glass. ‘You have deduced some of the facts, old man. I am Albert. I was the prince. But I never tried to take my own life. My ship was sabotaged. Apparently I’ve made some very powerful enemies.’

‘They wanted you dead?’

‘Silenced. They drugged me. They left a copy of my suicide note
for me to find, just so I would know that I was about to die in disgrace. They are artists, I must give them that.’

‘Why kill you?’

Albert smiled. ‘Because I know a secret. I know a secret greater than any other. I know a secret that would destroy the royal line, bring down the Empire.’

‘Tell me.’

‘You first. Who is this boy, and where did you find him?’

‘He found us. He is a Router, an escapee from the pods.’