Theatre of the Gods (56 page)

Then he rose from his bath and cried, ‘Get me a taxi-ship to the surface!’

*

The Well Dressed Man could feel the girl withering under his assault. With six iron blast-cannons firing heat at the wall, the ice was beginning to fall away in chunks, and he could see, what was that? The corner of a frame, a gantry, perhaps, an iron skeleton wound with chains and steel ropes as thick as an arm. Excellent. And then he heard her voice. ‘It won’t do you any good.’ Joy! Her voice sounded tired, uncertain. He had kept her awake all night. He had built noisemakers in her head, and when he’d had to sleep he’d instructed the guards to make noise outside her cell. Then he’d got her up before dawn. And now she would be so,
so
tired. He could feel it. And what was this? As a huge slab of ice fell away he saw a book! Oh yes, now things were moving. The momentum was his. Must be careful not to set the book on fire.

‘Lenore.’

That pesky demon.

‘You’re not allowed to interfere!’

‘I can speak to whom I choose.’

‘Carrofax?’

‘Yes.’

The roar of the furnaces was so loud that it was hard to be heard.

‘You’re Fabrigas’s friend.’

‘I’m his friend and servant. He wants you to be very strong.’

‘But I am so very tired.’

‘Yes. She’s tired, I can feel her strength failing. You can talk all you like but there’s nothing you can do to help.’

‘Lenore, I need you to listen carefully. I need you to know something.’

‘What is it?’ She sounded sleepy, like a drugged patient.

‘You’re not the one he’s really hunting.’

‘Silence, demon!’

‘I know. Yes. Roberto has the file.’

‘He doesn’t have the file. Roberto
is
the file. He has been sent to kill Roberto. He’s using you to lure –’

‘Silence!’ Lenore’s head was filled with a crash of thunder so loud that even the demon was briefly startled.

‘You almost did it,’ said Carrofax. ‘You almost came into my domain. Just do it. I’ll make you cry for an eternity.’

‘You think you’re powerful,’ said the Well Dressed Man, ‘but when Calligulus comes you’ll be the one crying.’

‘If Calligulus comes then so will you.’

*

Fabrigas leaned across the unconscious figure of the man and marvelled. It was a younger him, there was no doubt. There was nothing in the universe he was truly certain of any more, but he knew his own face. His beard was sparser, but there was no mistaking those eyes. No one else in the universe had those eyes. Usually.

It turns out that a Gunsworth gas-powered shot-cannon is not quite as terrifying a weapon as it appears. The weapon was designed for duels. The pack of shot it carries has a low velocity and a wide spread. In fact, the Gunsworth brand gas-powered shot-cannon is really only dangerous when it is loaded incorrectly. Then it becomes truly terrifying. Nevertheless, the shot had made a mess of the patient’s shoulder; he’d had to play dead by slowing his heart to just a few beats per minute – a useful trick he’d learned from a bandit while he was a prisoner on … Well, that’s a long story in itself. The general had found no pulse and had declared him dead. When the
men had come to take him away the general had demanded that they leave him for the vultures. Fabrigas the elder had unbolted the bars from his balcony,
quietly
, so that the hefty papal guards outside his front door wouldn’t hear. He had fashioned a rope from his bed sheets and slung it over his balcony. He’d found his younger self still lying beneath the wall where he fell, and when he’d said, ‘Wake! I’ve come to rescue you,’ this young self had slowly raised his head and said, ‘I must be dead, then.’ It had begun to snow again.

Fabrigas sent an urgent memogram to Dr Dray and asked him to come to his apartment, discreetly, and bring medical equipment. Dray had told the guards that he was there because the old man was having heart palpitations. Which technically wasn’t a lie. Fabrigas was beside himself. Literally. The two men had worked tirelessly through the night, to stabilise their patient and to stop his wounds from oozing blood. ‘He needs a hospital, old crow,’ whispered Dray, ‘or he’ll die.’

‘Not possible. If the general found out he’d arrest him again.’

‘And your stance is that this is a young you?’

‘It’s not a stance. I know it.’

‘And why do you always twist yourself into the most impossible positions, parrot?’

‘Because the most impossible things are often true.’

Dray left in the small hours of the next morning saying he would return soon with morphine and blood, and as the sun rose again the younger finally opened his eyes, turned towards his older self and said, ‘Do you know the odds against this event occurring?’

‘I do. The number opposing it is so large that it may as well be infinite.’

‘Yes. Bring me a glass of water, would you? There’s a good boy.’

*

‘I’m getting sleepy, Mr Carrofax.’

‘I know. But if you can just hold out for a while longer.’

‘A while longer?’

‘You can hold out, Lenore. I know you can. I know what you have in you,’ said the demon.

The Well Dressed Man smiled. His eyes shone like frozen steel. This was his moment.

‘You are correct,’ said the small girl. Suddenly her voice did not sound quite so ragged. ‘Things are going in motion now. That old woman says you cannot change the future, but I believe I’ve kept him busy long enough. Almost. Perhaps. Do you, phantom friend?’

‘I do,’ said Carrofax. ‘She did not add me to her equation. I am part of this story now. A new sequence has begun.’

The steely smile vanished from that immaculate face. The perfectly groomed eyebrows sank. Why would this stupid demon want the girl to keep him busy? Now something was tickling at the back of the Well Dressed Man’s skull. He leaned closer, risking his face against the roar of furnaces to peer in at the title of the book.

A Distraction for a Well Dressed Fool.

The well-dressed fool sat up straight, blinked twice. Now he knew. Something was happening in the city below. Something very, very bad.

He heard the demon laugh.

*

‘So, what is your strategy?’

‘My … strategy?’

‘Yes, yes, your strategy, your escape plan, your grand idea?’ Fabrigas the younger had regained his strength so quickly that it had alarmed his older self. Now he was even out of bed, stumbling around the room, left arm slung, impatiently picking up objects in the old man’s apartment and glaring at them. ‘You say you’ve been given the task
of protecting a mysterious child by a shady entity called Dark Hand. Now the child is being held captive in the mountain by a madman, the planet is surrounded, your ship is gone, your captain vanquished, your phantom butler has been dispensed with, you are a prisoner in your own apartment, the door is guarded by the Pope’s goons, and the only other person who could help you is your enemy’s assassin. Certainly a major challenge. So, what’s your plan of attack?’

‘Well,’ said Fabrigas the elder as he stroked his beard, ‘I … rented this apartment.’

Fabrigas the younger didn’t blink. He turned and stared for a long time, trying to work out if his older self was joking. He put down the tribal mask he had been holding. It was hard for him, now that he had regained his senses, to believe that this old man was him. He looked worn out, beaten down, strung out, done in – the fire had gone out in his eyes, it seemed. Could this really be himself in the future? If it was, he wished the cannon had finished him. He gently tested his fragile shoulder. ‘Well, I suppose I owe my life to this …’ he glanced around him, ‘apartment, but we’ll need a much better plan if we’re to break out, rescue the girl, escape the cordon and find our ship, eh? Shall we cook some WD40-X and blast our way out?’ He turned again, expecting to find his older self invigorated by his speech. Instead, the old man would not even lift his eyes from the vase of posies which he patted with his outsized hand.

‘Perhaps,’ ventured the elder, ‘an explosive plan is not what is called for here. Perhaps what is needed is a more gentle touch, something which will ensure our peace of mind and provide for a stable and fulfilling future. We have this neat pad. We have escaped the cruellest blows of fate. Perhaps we should just count our blessings.’

His younger self looked at him with total incomprehension. ‘What in the holy heckins are you talking about?!’ he cried.

‘Well, it’s just … nothing. I suppose I am talking about nothing at the end of it all. I am just very, very tired, I suppose. I’m tired of being rescued from my quiet life by fate. Tired and in need of rest.
I just …’ He didn’t finish.

‘Old man. I don’t know what has happened to you that has made you forget your purpose. But all life needs a plan. It’s how we block out the fact that life is meaningless.’

‘Well, then how about this?!’ The old man turned towards him, suddenly full of passion. ‘Let’s break out of here, you and me. Let’s run away from all this. Let’s set our minds to our old goal. Let’s work together to find the orphan moon where our father lives. In this universe you are still a young man, so there is a chance he still lives. And Danni, too!’

For a second he could see his younger self pause, his face soften as he considered the idea. But then he shook his head angrily. ‘Old fool, there’s no hiding from a destiny. You are part of a grand machine. If you try to escape, the machine will find you. Unless you have a plan, the universe will make one for you.’

Fabrigas the elder turned away and shook his head. He was about to tell his younger self how foolish the things he was saying were. He was about to tell him how words like ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’ were false and pointless, fit only for use by crooked astrologers, or as first names for royal children. He was about to adjust a crooked picture on the wall of his new apartment when the picture began to vibrate of its own accord. Then the whole apartment began to shake, and then the wall of his prison was smashed away by a great iron hand. The sound was tremendous. When the dust evaporated the twins saw, shadowed against the morning light, in the space where the wall of the apartment had been, in the courtyard where the attempted execution had taken place, a shining iron giant a hundred feet high. The giant spoke in an amplified metallic voice. The giant said, ‘Doctor Fabrigas, it’s me, Kimmy. I’ve come to rescue you.’

CYCLOPS!

The Well Dressed Man stepped out of the cable carriage into the streets of Diemendääs and found uncontrolled madness. And uncontrolled madness was something he could not abide. How he hated chaos. His was a world of order, his powers worked best when people were behaving in a predictable way. He smelled the noxious gas of free will in the air. Instead of skipping, and ‘Chicken!’ shouted at maximum volume, he heard sirens and heavy gunfire. What in the world had been going on here? Then he saw it: a towering figure of iron rising over the snow-covered buildings. It looked as he imagined a god would look: tall and shiny. Confident. Able to command a room. It rose into the sky, lifting its mighty arms to smash a passing papal patrol ship from the sky. The craft split open like a fruit, disgorging smoke and fire and chunks of sparking metal. Then the giant paused, turned and strode in his direction.

‘OK then,’ said the Well Dressed Man.

*

For some reason no one had bothered to ask the small, bespectacled girl what she was doing around the warehouses. She had walked right past two papal guards to enter one of the larger stores, and they barely glanced at her. But they certainly noticed a few minutes later when Cyclops! (for that is the name Dr Dray had given his iron giant) burst through the roof of the building, casually flicked away 526
the reinforced wall and strode off across the city. A team of papal fighter-copters scrambled to intercept her, but she smashed them to pieces with her mighty iron knuckles.

‘My girl,’ said Fabrigas as he gazed down at the guards fleeing the rolling shadow of the giant, ‘have I told you lately that you are a truly astonishing child?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Kimmy as she grabbed a Pope-tank by its gun and flung it a mile away. This Cyclops! made the GGPTBCE look like a child’s toy. Another tank sent a shell whistling past the giant’s head. Kimmy turned her beast and kicked the tank away as if it were a tin can. ‘I sent a message about my plan to Miss Fritzacopple. I gave one of the prince’s homing owls a sniff of her perfume and he went right to her. She sent a reply saying to rescue Lenore. When Miss Fritzacopple escapes she will meet us at the royal launch bays by the space-port.’

‘Who is this Miss Fritzacopple?’ said Fabrigas the younger. He sat behind them, nursing his heavily bandaged shoulder.

‘She is a traitor and a dangerous assassin!’ said Fabrigas the elder.

‘Oh. But is she attractive?’

‘Oh, please,’ said Kimmy.

They were making steady progress up the craggy face of Mount Diemendääs, but the Pope’s forces were massing around them. ‘We’re getting too much attention.’ Machine-gun fire pinged off the skull of the giant. ‘But I am having so much fun.’ Kimmy picked up an airborne rocket-launcher and flung it into the swarm of attack ships.

‘Just get us as close to the entrance as you can.’

And that’s when the battle palaces floating above the city opened wide their terrible rocket-tubes, and the bombardment of Diemendääs began.

THE BLACK ARTS

The Black Widow, aka Penny Dreadful, aka Miss Maria Fritzacopple, aka La Pantera Plata, heard the rising chaos from her cell and knew that Kimmy had made her move. The guards would be distracted by the commotion. If her cell had had a window, she would have seen the iron giant moving up the side of the mountain, hand over hand, stopping to swat at the attack ships which buzzed around its head like flying insects. And now the Emperor’s insect legions had risen up too. Giant scorpions, armoured spiders, combat hornets and legions of beetles as big as houses were rolling silently across the earth towards the mountain to attack the Pope’s forces. And the bees were gathering above, a black tornado miles high; they fell wave on wave upon the papal guards, hitting each with the force of a cannonball, and each hulking man went tumbling over. Stingers pierced hearts and eyes. Meanwhile, rockets and artillery fire rained down from the Pope’s fleet in space, slicing channels through the falling snow, smashing into the ancient towers and temples of Diemendääs, and the people of Diemendääs, who had always anticipated the end of days, put down their snowballs, put on their gas masks and wandered, dejected, towards the city’s bunkers.