Young Tales of the Old Cosmos (7 page)

Then something else began to emerge but it didn’t come all the way out. A solid metal cylinder. It seemed to be stuck fast and its presence made the Milky Way distinctly uncomfortable, though it didn’t really hurt. The gods ignored it and spread themselves out.

“This reminds me of a story I once read about a space monster called Robert or Trebor who also got stuck in a black hole,” said Andromeda.

But she spoke to herself. The gods and goddesses had already reached the spiral arms of the Milky Way and promptly sat astride them. When all were settled, one of them, perhaps Drigg or Hiss, barked an instruction and the galaxy began revolving faster. The metal cylinder that filled the supermassive black hole had become an axle or camshaft transmitting power from a parallel dimension.

As the rotational velocity of the Milky Way increased, the deities whooped with delight. Then understanding dawned.
This
was the fairground and the Milky Way was a carousel. The invitation had been a trick, a cunning ruse to make her excitedly flex her mind so that a gateway would open between two different realities. The cheats!

She appealed for help, but Andromeda didn’t seem inclined to come to her assistance and the Small Magellanic Cloud was too physically feeble to do much, so faster and faster she span and her protests and cries were rendered incomprehensible and transmuted into a weird music, a melody that grew louder and quieter in accelerated waves. Fairground music, not dissimilar to the random tune she had earlier hummed. The music of some cosmic carnival madness. And so intrigued was she by the notes that she forgot she was producing it and frowned to listen more closely. The gods shouted, the goddesses giggled and the monumental axle began to resonate. Now Nigggl called for yet more speed, and Hopp and Scala chorused their approval, and some hidden agency responded positively to this suggestion. Everything became a blur.

“It’s for your own good!” roared Andromeda above the din.

The Small Magellanic Cloud narrowed his eyes. “Did you plan this all along? You did! You are in cahoots with those gods. But why?”

“You’ll see. I had the best intentions and still do. I arranged everything.”

Now the centrifugal force was so great that the Milky Way’s spiral arms slowly uncurled and the gods were thereby relocated further along the diameter of an ever-increasing circle, thus making them spin even faster. They squealed with happiness. Then Gaap lost his grip and was flung off the carousel far into intergalactic space. But his colleagues paid him no heed and continued to demand more speed.

The Milky Way found it impossible to keep her arms close to her sides and soon they were fully extended. Then other gods lost their balance and were hurled clear. Ragluv the Vulgar collided with Chyme and knocked her off and they both went tumbling and laughing together into the void.

“What if her spiral arms snap off?” demanded the Small Magellanic Cloud.

“They won’t,” responded Andromeda in clipped tones. “Do the beams of a lighthouse break loose when they sweep around too fast?”

“What’s a lighthouse?” wondered the Small Magellanic Cloud.

But Andromeda wasn’t given a chance to answer. A dislodged god missed her by only a few parsecs and she was forced to duck as a second deity was catapulted in her direction. The afternoon of fun was turning hazardous. As the other divinities lost their grip, it became apparent the Milky Way was changing her structure. Left to herself, she would have completed a single revolution in 225 million years, the so-called ‘cosmic year’, but driven by the central shaft that jutted from her mind this period of rotation had accelerated to thirty three and a third revolutions per minute. The pseudo-music that issued from her bawling mouth seemed to be in stereo, a full album’s worth of amusement arcade jingles and circus instrumentals.

“She’s curdling!” gasped the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Andromeda blanched in dismay. “You’re right. I hadn’t foreseen this. Curds and whey… If I was an intolerable punster I would make a joke about the Milky
Whey
. But I’m not one of those at all. Our dear friend is turning into yoghurt!”

“Can’t you shut down the carousel?”

“It’s the property of the gods. I don’t even understand it!”

The final god to be flung off the whirligig was Allaflap the Flaky. Presumably this meant he had won the game, but the carousel didn’t stop spinning and without the weight of the deities it actually span faster. And now it began to shed other objects, things much smaller and plainer than gods. Andromeda squinted at them. Planets. This had been the plan all along, a dramatic cleansing of every infected star in her friend’s body, an expulsion of her fleas in a single haze of motion. The rejected planets rattled through space like carbine bullets and Andromeda threw up an electromagnetic shield to protect herself. The Small Magellanic Cloud did likewise. Then the fusillade was over…

But the carousel continued to spin and the
Yoghurty Way
was churned into something even thicker. It was friction that ended the nightmare, for the central shaft began to overheat and melt, strips of white-hot and red-hot alloy alternating like a barber’s pole while the fairground music momentarily increased in intensity. Then the cylinder vaporised entirely. The transmission of power was ended and momentum alone kept the poor galaxy in motion. Ages passed before she slowed to a standstill. There was a shocked silence as the reality of what had happened sank in and Andromeda was the first to find her voice again.

“She’s turned into the
Cheesy Way
!”

It was true. Stiff and soapy, the dizzy galaxy hung in the void like a crushed disc of Cheddar or Stilton. But her fleas were gone. And it didn’t take long for this fact to be noticed and responded to by all the galaxies both within and outside the Local Group. Without fleas she was no longer
galaxia non grata
but a perfectly respectable member of the community. And so the universe stopped expanding. It didn’t start contracting just yet, there was a watchful hiatus to allow further developments to occur before such a momentous decision was made, for no galaxy, however impulsive, casually switches its red shift to blue, but even this stasis was a remarkable indicator of how radically the situation had changed.

The
Cheesy Way
groaned weakly, “I ought to thank you, dear Andromeda, but I don’t feel too well. I have an urge to act in a maudlin manner and sing inappropriately sentimental songs. I’m excessively cheesy and I don’t like it.”

“Look on the bright side,” came the response. “You’ll go well with crackers.”

“What will happen to her discarded planets?” asked the Small Magellanic Cloud. “Isn’t there a risk they’ll migrate to other galaxies?”

Andromeda smiled with confidence. “No, it has all been worked out. The vast spaces between our gravitational fields are full of rogue black holes, collapsed stars that follow no predictable orbit. Every one of her planets is certain to fall into one of those black holes and be swallowed forever. The gods promised me that’s what would happen.”

“What will those gods do now?” croaked the
Cheesy Way
.

“Travel the long way back home, right to the edge of our universe and beyond it. For them it’s a sort of vacation…”

That was absolutely true, almost. One of the gods couldn’t forget his former role so easily or resist the temptation to fulfil his destiny. When Snooka saw the planets falling into the black holes, he followed his nature and reached in a white-gloved claw to retrieve them. One by one he gathered them up and returned them to their original positions, carefully placing them around each designated star. He was oblivious to the frantic pleas for him to desist. Collecting balls from pockets and returning them to the cosmic baize is what Snooka always does. He just can’t help it. But the
Cheesy Way
was distraught.

“The universe has started expanding again!” she wailed.

After Snooka had departed, Andromeda made a final effort to console her friend. “When he brought your planets back I happened to notice he had his own fleas. Even the gods must play host to pesky little parasites. So you’re in good company!”

“That god was covered in planets?” sobbed the
Cheesy Way
.

Andromeda shook her head. “Not planets. I think they’re called angels.”