Theatre of the Gods (40 page)

And that was exactly the ‘one more thing’ the old man had to do. ‘To perform this duty I’ll need your assistance,’ he said to Lenore.

‘Oh no, no, no. I don’t want to there go back!’

‘You can’t possibly expect this child to go into the marshes again,’ said the botanist.

‘I guarantee no harm will come to her,’ said the old man.

‘And what exactly are you going to do there?’ said Fritzacopple.

‘We’ve had help from a stranger, and now we must return her favours. We are going to perform an exorcism.’

THE EXORCIST

This man, the hero of our story, was a man of science, a child of his universe(s). He did not believe in magic, or astrology, or ghosts, or poltergeists, or any supernatural phenomena that he was not able to see and test for himself. Yes, he had a phantom butler, but life is filled with contradictions. It is sometimes possible for a man or woman of science to observe the effect of the supernatural, and to apply to it his or her own principles.

That’s how Lenore found herself standing in the centre of the familiar dead clearing, inside a set of symbols burned on the ground with petroleum distillate, surrounded by a circle of fine brass reeds pressed into the mud, while Fabrigas stood to one side with a small harp. The harp was brass with copper strings and, like many of the artefacts he kept hidden within his cloak, it was very, very old.

‘And why are we here again?’ said Lenore.

‘I made a promise to one of these phantoms that I would free her and her family from this place.’

‘Oh. And how does that involve me?’

‘You seem to be a fine conduit for trans-temporal vibrations. Or, as many people crassly call them: ghosts.’

‘Oh.’

‘It is confounding the kind of junk which can collect over the years,’ the old man said as he placed more of the brass reeds around the edge of the circle. ‘This whole world would have been clean and
fresh once. Then, a stray seed here, a lost spaceship there. Before you know it, jungles, peoples, the walking dead!’

‘The walking deads?’ The green-skinned girl glowed so brightly tonight that she seemed not to be part of this or any familiar world. She was from elsewhere, of elsewhere, belonging nowhere. ‘I think you mentioned that they are not ghosts,’ she said.

‘They are not. They are echoes in the valleys of perception, they are counter-moving waves in the quantum seas, and they come as much from within our brains as without. Everything we perceive is created by our minds. Our minds collect this phantom noise and turn it into shapes we can understand, just as we see familiar objects in clouds. And then we take it one step further: we build stories around them. We call them ghosts because we like to think our loved ones haven’t vanished for ever, you see?’

‘I see.’

‘It really is amazing where life can spring up, and how hard it is to vanquish it, even after death. But we must, or it hangs around and causes untold damage.’

Lenore gave a sharp yelp.

‘What is it?’

‘Our guests are arrived.’ One of them had whispered right in her ear.

‘You again,’ it said. ‘Don’t you know you aren’t welcome here?’

‘They are saying that please we aren’t welcomed here!’

‘That’s splendid, please keep them talking. We need the whole family to arrive.’

‘You cannot see them? Miss Lady could see them.’

‘I cannot, but they may not materialise until they feel under threat. Keep conversing with them.’

‘So … how are you all? Everything is … well?’

Lenore heard a hissing from the darkness.

Fabrigas had finished setting up an array of amplifying speakers made from parts he had salvaged from the skeleton yard, and he had
wired them up to his small harp. It looked as if he was about to perform a recital.

‘Who is that man? We don’t like him.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about he,’ said Lenore. ‘He is a crazy old thing.’

‘The strange thing about the so-called spirit world is that it really is just a wave, after a fashion,’ said the crazy old thing as he finished wiring his instrument. ‘And every wave can be cancelled by another wave. Are they all present?’

‘No. Still some to arrive.’

‘I’m here,’ said a girl’s voice. ‘I’m Judy.’

‘Please to meets you, Judy.’

‘Oh! You’re wearing Gloria around your neck. I was wondering where she went.’

‘Gloria?’

‘My starfish. We’ve been lost here for so long. Though not as long as Gloria. She will be looking forward to travelling again.’

‘Oh, Judy, your head is so full of strange ideas,’ said a young man’s voice, and now more voices entered, a cast of phantom players, their words overlapping and colliding like waves in a pool. ‘Children, I told you not to play with strangers.’

‘Oh, darling, this place is all strangers. Strangers upon strangers.’

‘I want to take the rover out, I’m bored.’

‘I’m bored too, can we get a monkey?’

‘We don’t want you here.’

‘Go away.’

‘We don’t like you.’

‘We don’t like you at all, you frighten my children.’

‘These voices are making my head hurt!’

‘That’s good, we are nearly set!’ Fabrigas was hooking up his amplification array to a large ship’s battery. Then he struck a chord on his electrified harp and suddenly the whole clearing was lit by sound. They heard it far off in the camp; the Ubuntu looked at each other and grinned.

‘What is that noise! For the love of –’

‘We hate that noise!’

‘Make it stop!’

The burst of sound had illuminated the figures like a powerful lamp. Now they were clearly visible. The oozy figures of the shipwrecked family were stumbling back, fingers stabbed into their ears as Fabrigas’s chord shimmered mercilessly in the air like a rolling clap of thunder.

‘Stop, you’re hurting us!’

‘What
is
that awful music!?’

‘I think you are hurting them!’

‘It’s all as it should be, it’s all for the best!’

The figures began to lose their shape, they warped like reflections on the surface of a pond.

‘Please stop! If you don’t stop, we’ll hurt you, we’ll take out your eyes!’

‘I think it is working,’ said the green girl. ‘Or not!’

‘It’s working,’ said the old man, ‘just don’t move from where you are.’

It was a good thing that Lenore could not see what was happening around her, because now the family’s faces transformed, contorted into shocking grimaces, and they began to lash wildly at her.

Even Fabrigas could see the family now, and he said, ‘Great ghosts, I can see them!’ before he let rip with another ear-shredding chord. When the wave hit the family they were sent stumbling back, and their reflections began to burn and twist.

‘You evil people!’

‘We hate you!’

‘What are you doing to us?!’

‘I want to ride in the rover!’

‘I made us cookies for a late snack!’

They came storming back again, their faces bent and demonic. They reared up beside Lenore and hissed, as one …

‘He’s coming! Calligulus is coming with his army! He’s coming for you. The Vengeance! He laughs at your vengeance! The great one, destroyer of worlds, taker of souls, is coming to destroy you. He slaughtered your father, his enemy; he slaughtered your friends; he killed everyone you know. Soon he’ll throw you into a pit of hell. You won’t believe his power and his cruelty. You will suffer for eternity!’

‘Well now,’ said Lenore.

‘We’re sorry.’ And then they began to dissolve like fine sand. ‘We are so very sorry.’ Until each figure was a galaxy of spinning grains. ‘We didn’t mean to frighten you.’ And the last voice they heard was that of a young woman saying, ‘I’m so sorry. Thank you. I won’t forget this.’

But she would forget, because she was just a memory herself.

‘Please take care of Gloria.’

And after that the clearing was very, very quiet.

*

‘Calligulus,’ said Fabrigas later. ‘Does that mean anything to you? We’ve heard mention of him several times. Once in that mad botanist’s lab, once during the exorcism. Albert mentioned a pact with a powerful being from outside the universe. Could it be him?’

‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Carrofax. ‘But he could well be from the ectoplasmic dimensions, or an even higher sphere. As you know, I cannot return while I serve you, but I have been to the borders. The Thresholders know nothing about him.’

‘Could he be as dangerous as Albert said?’

‘It depends. A non-mechanical can only manifest here by becoming “flesh” – by taking the burden of mortality – or by coming here as a relatively harmless spectre, as I have done. Unless …’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless someone invites him into the material world. But none of
your people would be foolish enough to do that. Surely. In any event, one thing we’ve been able to establish for certain is that he wants your green girl dead. And you, for some reason. Perhaps because of your dimension-hopping abilities.’

‘So you admit now that I can travel between dimensions?’

‘It seems so. Although I would point out that you seem to have had help from unlikely quarters.’

‘So you apologise for mocking me earlier?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. But all this makes it even more vital to keep an eye on that green girl and get her home as soon as we can.’

Lenore was sitting alone at the edge of camp, a beacon in the twilight. She had wandered out there after the exorcism. She had a lot to think about now, it seemed.

*

Day became night, though of course it was hard to tell.

The men came back from the skeleton yard dragging a giant rocket and beaming. ‘When you hear our plan,’ Fabrigas said to Miss Fritzacopple, ‘you will be sceptical. But please hear us out.’

The plan was as simple as it was mad. They had searched the skeleton yard from end to end but hadn’t found a single working ship. None of them, not even Fabrigas, had the engineering skills to fabricate a ship from parts. It had looked hopeless, until they found a military hospital ship with an old-fashioned escape rocket.

‘They outmoded these long ago,’ said Fabrigas. ‘They’re just too dangerous. They were designed to go flying way out into space, away from the ship, and danger, but mechanical problems often caused them to go off when they weren’t needed, or worse, when someone was cleaning them. Or when the captain was giving a royal tour. Also, they have no steering, meaning that whatever direction it was pointing, that’s where it went. Even if that way was blocked by a spaceship, planet or space-cow.’

‘I do not like where this story is pointed,’ said Miss Fritzacopple.

‘Now keep an open mind,’ said Fabrigas. ‘It is true that we are currently trapped in a haunted beast. But we can escape. What we’re going to do is aim this rocket towards that blowhole up there.’ He gestured vaguely towards the silver circle in the sky. ‘The Ubuntu have assured us that if we can get through, there’ll be friendly people with working spaceships.’

‘So this is another one of your explosive exits?’ said Lambestyo.

‘It’s perfectly safe. We should be fine.’

‘Should?’

‘I will calibrate the rocket precisely. It will be a controlled blast.’

Miss Fritzacopple walked away, leaving the old man to stand beaming beside his rocket.

*

Fabrigas and the captain were working through the night on the rocket, which had been dragged to a nearby clearing, stood upright and leaned towards the blowhole.

‘We need much longer to prepare,’ said Lambestyo.

‘Nonsense,’ said Fabrigas. ‘We don’t have longer. The Ubuntu say that the blowhole will be visible for one more day. Besides, we can’t risk those marshy types reorganising and coming to attack us.’

‘Do you think it will work?’

‘I have calculated our trajectory as best I can from the information I have, which isn’t much. But I am very confident of my mathematics. Fairly very confident.’

‘I see. So we might not hit the hole.’

‘The fuel is old. It might just explode on the ground. But it will be fun trying!’

‘Well, I can’t wait to leave this place, even if it is in a ball of fire.’

EJECT US

The day of the launch. Can you feel the excitement? The crew stood nervously around the scarred metal tube. The Ubuntu stood a long way away, looking nervous. They had packed their new friends a picnic of mushrooms, moss and honey grubs. The goodbyes had been tearful. Kimmy had found her friend and pressed her little torch into his giant hands. ‘For you,’ she said.

‘On-off,’ he replied sadly. Then he’d swept her effortlessly onto his shoulder with one arm and carried her out to the rocket. Now he was far, far away, with the rest of them.

The Ubuntu were lit from behind in fern light. Small children sat on shoulders for a better view. Carrofax said, ‘I’ll see you on the other side, wherever that is,’ and the captain sealed the door and strapped himself in.

‘Are we ready?’ he said. No one replied. ‘Very well,’ he said, and he hit the big red button marked ‘Ejectus’.

*

I’m not sure if any of you have been in a rocket. And if you haven’t I’m not sure you can imagine what it’s like to take off in one. It’s like having your stomach smeared across your brain while your brain is swung around in a sock. The explosion from the rocket knocked the Ubuntu off their feet and turned the eternal night into furious 368
daylight. Suddenly, every dark corner of the interior was illuminated. In the dome, the Marshians ran from their huts. There was light, even in the deepest depths where the beast called the Makatax had dragged the limp corpses of the bosun and Prince Albert deep into his cave, and tossed them on a pile of bones and rags, ready for the feast. Even beyond his lair, in the deep corridors of vines and thorns where light had never penetrated, and where the most terrifying creatures you can imagine live, it was suddenly twilight. As the rocket traced an arc towards its target it illuminated everything, even the small camp by the old tree, where the saucer craft stood, and where everything was still.

BOOK THREE

I am Calligulus!

Creator of empires,

Master of puppets
,