by Adam Roberts
‘Let me see if I can get it to replay,’ muttered Bony, getting up and shuffling over to the robot. ‘Here you go,’ he said, jabbing RC-DU2 in its metallic midriff.
A three-dimensional hologram immediately appeared on the dirt floor of Old Bony K’nobbli’s hut. It was a two-foot tall, vivid representation of a well-built gentleman wrapped in a multicoloured toga of some kind.
Greetings! The hologram said, staring at the space directly between K’nobbli and Luke. I am Nico Sigi Toussaint from the Planet Nigerium. I have forty million Imperial Credits trapped in a bank-account in the National Bank of Nigerium, and need a non-Nigerium friend to help me move it offworld. If you send me your bank details, a copy of your retinal scan and a simile of your signature, I will transfer the sum to you, and in return for your help will pay you twenty per cent of . . .
Bony kicked the droid; the hologram scattered and fell into crumbs of light before vanishing altogether.
‘That wasn’t it,’ said Luke. ‘It was a naked woman. But thin. Not fat-naked, but really nice naked.’
Bony was peering at the insides of the droid. ‘There’s a bunch of junk in here, my young friend,’ he said. ‘Lightsword enlargement offers. Marketing software. Ah, here’s a lady image, unless I’m very much mistaken.’ He prodded, and the droid shuddered to life, projecting a second image.
This one was indeed of a lady, but not the naked female Luke had seen before. Instead she was demurely clad in a white dress, with a striking hairstyle, gathered in two continental-sausage-style curls on either side of her head. Luke’s eyes were drawn to these, until he realised that they weren’t coils of hair, but rather growths or tumour-like lumps of oddly symmetrical shape, one on either side of her face.
‘Yuk,’ he said. But the hologrammatical figure was speaking:
I can only hope, she was saying, that my message reaches Wobbli Bent K’nobbli, and that you can do something to help me. Dark Father has captured the ship I was travelling on. On which I was travelling, I should say. That’s how distressed I am right now. It’s as if I no longer care about not ending my sentences with a preposition. Woe! Woe – but not to get distracted, included in this droid is, in coded form, the Great Secret, the Secret my mother passed to me in Secret, about which she swore me to secrecy, and which is so secret that even I have no idea what the Secret is, although nevertheless I believe it will bring about the end of the war between the Imp-Emp-Imp and the Rebelend. I hope that by passing this Secret on to you, Wobbli, I will be serving the forces of good. Please ensure that it gets to my adoptive father on the planet Ya!Boo!. Help me, Wobbli Bent; of my list of top hundred hopes you’re in the upper fifty.
‘Wobbli Bent K’nobbli?’
‘That’s me,’ said Bony. ‘The early stages of my disease left me rather unsteady on my pins. Now that I’m almost bent double I find it easier to balance.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Yes. Well, I knew her mother. Quite well. As it happens.’
‘She has lovely eyes,’ Luke mused dreamily. ‘Although the unsightly fungoid growths on either side of her head are a little less prepossessing.’
‘Yes. Of course, a gentleman might refrain from drawing attention to them.’
Luke blushed. ‘What’s her name?’ he asked.
‘Princess Leper. We must do as she says, and bring this droid to the rebel command. Assuming you don’t mind getting involved in a rebellion against the Imperial Empire of the Imperium that might result not only in your own death, but the murder of your friends and family and the sowing of your family estate with Arcturan salt?’
‘Well,’ said Luke, ‘I have been planning for ten years or more to join the Imperial Empire of the Imperium Space Navy, going to open days, being an active member of the Junior Cadets, reading the literature endlessly, watching Imp-Emp-Imp propaganda soap operas on the 3DTV, especially Fear and Obedience: the Young Generation, and generally preparing myself for life as an Imp-Emp-Imp pilot. But, on the other hand, you seem like a nice enough bloke. I’m happy to throw out my entire life plan at the drop of a hat and go along with you.’
‘I’ll get the tarpaulin off my hovervan,’ said Bent. ‘I’d advise you to put some clothes on.’
Luke looked down at himself. As was often the case with long-term nudists, he had wholly forgotten that he was as naked as a chef. ‘Right,’ he said.
Chapter Five
The Empire, Dum Dum Dum, Duhm d’ dum, Duhm d’ dum
Princess Leper was being held captive in the deepest dungeon behind the most dedicated guards, deep inside the latest massive monstrous mechanical contrivance of the Imperial Empire of the Imperium. Officially called ‘The Health Star’, unofficially this construction was universally known – and feared – under a more chilling appellation: The Death Spa.
And what, you ask, is this Death Spa? Well, since you ask, I’ll tell you.
The Imperial Empire of the Imperium had been secretly constructing this moon-sized movable machine over many months. With it they planned to bring muscle tone and detoxification to the entire galaxy, wiping out all sickness, lassitude and non-pertness. It was, in other words, the most horrifying prospect for ordinary non-fascist life. Under the hideous strictures of the Death Spa, the flabby, untoned flesh common to most of the trillions of non Imp-Emp-Imp citizens would simply disintegrate. Very few individual constitutions can withstand the sort of pummelling and detoxification of intensive Death Spa attack.
Muscles grown flabby with years of disuse simply tear when subjected to intensive exercise-massage-electro-toning assault. Tendons that for decades have been acting as little more than glorified string, holding arms and legs to the torso, will snap when put under the sorts of strain required by abrupt Death Spa workout. The hearts beating in a trillion chests, humanoid and alien, have in almost all cases been required – for decades – to do nothing more than squeeze a handful of sludgy blood in the general direction of ‘the bloodstream’ a couple of times a second. Under the effort provoked by the Death Spa’s ‘workout ray’ those hearts are all doomed. Only the very fittest, hardest, thinnest and most beautiful – which is to say, the fascist – will survive.
When the Emperor of the Imperial Empire of the Imperium looked out amongst the yet-to-be-assimilated worlds of the Galaxy, he saw planet after planet populated by fat, exercise-averse slugs. Sometimes these slugs were actual slugs, native to the worlds in question; but often they were humans whose bodies approximated slug-like qualities on account of the many years of eating nothing but sugar- and lard-based food groups whilst slumped in front of the 3DTV. To such a population, the very idea of a Death Spa provoked terror beyond belief.
And so the Emperor had ordered one built.
But why (you ask) did the Emperor not simply utilise his enormous and finely trained space fleet, packed with millions of highly trained Sterntroopers, to conquer these as yet unconquered worlds? Was this vast military machine not (you continue, pressing home what you consider to be your advantage in this notional argument) sufficient to keep the already trillions-strong population of the Imp-Emp-Imp crushed and subservient?
These are good questions.
And the answers? The answers, not to hold you in suspense, are no and no.
Allow me to fill you in on the history and current disposition of the Imperial armed forces.
The Imp-Emp-Imp dominated the forty thousand colonised worlds of the Galactic Federation with a ruthless oppressive military force. Its fleet of spaceships was all-inspiring. Or perhaps I mean awe-inspiring. Yes, the latter. Their Battle Frigates were twenty miles long, titanic constructions of metal and plastic, hideously beweaponed. Yet, vast though they were, they were dwarfed by the Super Battle Dreadnoughts, which were a hundred miles from top to stern. And a hundred of these Super Battle Dreadnoughts gathered together could still nestle in the underbelly of the ExtraSuper-Size Colossal Megabucket Bigboy HyperCruiser, the biggest ship in the fleet. Which is to say, it was the biggest ship in the fleet, until
the Imperial Emperor commanded the building of a Goliath Vastness Double-Cathedral Megasuperhyperdestroyer.
This fleet was launched upon the inky blackness of space to patrol and dominate, to hold the Imperial Empire of the Imperium together by sheer terror and brute force, by the forceful brutishness of its terrible, um. Its terrible she-ers, I suppose.
But this fleet, though awesome, was not terribly effective at actually defeating the burgeoning Rebelend opposition. In a number of space engagements it was roundly defeated. There were, it seems, teething problems. In particular, the spaceships were so huge that it took them three weeks to slow to a stop. Their turning circle was seventeen parsecs. The rebel alliance slipped past them in much smaller and much more manoeuvrable craft.
And so the Imperial Emperor ordered the execution of the designers who had designed the various larger ships, and instead called for the creation of Ti (short for tiny)-fighters. Millions of these craft were manufactured: intricately designed spheres fitted with laser-bolt disruptor cannons, and also with two solar panels, one on each side, which were not of much use in the blackness of space, but helped the heating coil warm up on the onboard water tank, thereby reducing the craft’s electricity bill by up to seven per cent, depending on available sunlight.
At the Battle of Progrok 7 the Emperor, and his terrifying second-in-command Dark Father, unveiled a fleet of one hundred thousand Ti-fighters and sent them out to defeat a much smaller Rebelend force.
But there proved to be a particular problem with the Ti-fighters, and it was this: flight controllers found themselves incapable of delivering the order ‘fly tighter Ti-fighters’ four or five times in rapid succession without, inadvertently, giving the order to ‘flitter, fla-tatters’. The Imp-Emp-Imp pilots, hypno-trained to obey all orders immediately and without question, no matter how bizarre, tried flittering and made a range of guesses as to what fla-tattering involved. Many crashed into other craft. Some flew round and round in circles until the rebels blew them up. One or two flew away altogether.
The battle was a washout.2
After an entire level of command officers were executed, it was decided to rename the spacecraft ‘Imperial Empire of the Imperium Small-bore Designated Spacecraft Interceptors’, which meant that the process of giving orders to the pilots, whilst slowed somewhat, no longer ran the risk of tongue-twisted misunderstanding. By the time the order ‘fly tighter, Imperial Empire of the Imperium Small-bore Designated Spacecraft Interceptors!’ was fully uttered, the moment had often passed, but at least there was no ambiguity about what was being said. Unfortunately, it now took so long for orders to be expressed battle was often finished by the time flight controllers could utter a complete order.
And so the Emperor and Dark Father had a right old confab. Yes indeedy, they settled down with a family-sized jug of Rutullian coffee and some amaretti biscuits and came up with a new plan.
The new plan was the Death Spa. And that is where Princess Leper was being imprisoned.
Grand Muff o’ Tartan was standing in the control room of the Death Spa, wearing his tartan muff, his cadaverous face gazing impassively at the large-scale viewing screen before him. Two Sterntroopers brought Princess Leper to him.
‘Tartan!’ she spat, derisively. ‘I might have known.’
‘Might you?’ sneered Tartan.
‘You can torture me all you want,’ said Leper, bravely, ‘I’ll never tell you the location of the Rebelend main base.’
The Grand Muff looked surprised at this. ‘There’s a main base to the Rebelend, is there?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t realise that. I thought you were scattered in many miniature little bases, round and about the galaxy.’
‘Um,’ said the Princess, looking about her as if for inspiration. ‘Yes. That’s it – scattered all over the place. Not what I said. What I said was a slip of the tongue. No main base, that’s right, nothing like that. There is no main base.’
‘Then why did you say there was one?’
‘What I meant to say was – you can torture me all you like, but I’ll, um, never reveal the locations of the many miniature little Rebelend bases scattered round and about the galaxy.’
‘Presumably, as far as location goes,’ said Tartan, ‘that would be scattered round and about the galaxy. Am I getting warm?’
‘Um,’ said the Princess.
‘But I’m more interested in this one main base you mentioned.’
‘Me? I didn’t say anything about the main base. I mean, I didn’t say anything about any “main base”.’
‘I’ve been holorecording our conversation. Do you want me to play back your words?’
‘Look – why don’t I go out, you can have me brought in again by the guards, and we can start this all over again.’
‘Where is the main base, Princess?’
‘Oh no,’ said the Princess, shaking her head wisely. ‘You won’t trick me. Just because you managed to trick me, there, at the beginning doesn’t mean that I’m prepared to betray my friends. And even if you tried to attack Gregbare, what’s to say that we don’t have a massive defence shield and some really really big laser cannons?’
Tartan nodded slowly. ‘Gregbare, is it?’
The Princess made a little gargling noise in her throat. ‘Is that what you heard? Um, your hearing might be – for all you know, I said, um, Bedgare. Or Redhair. I certainly never said Gregbare. You must have misheard. In fact there is no central base. There’s also no planet Gregbare. I just made it up. Um.’
‘Thank you, my dear,’ said the Grand Muff, gesturing to the Sterntroopers to take their prisoner back to the detention suite. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’
‘Wait!’ cried Princess Leper. ‘I demand a re-interrogation! I demand my right to be interrogated again . . .’
Her cries diminished to silence as she was dragged down one of the Death Spa’s lengthy metal corridors.
2 This is to say, one of those debacles which causes people to shout wa!
Chapter Six
‘These aren’t – the droids – [wave of hand] you’re looking for’
The ride into town in Old Bony’s hovervan was not comfortable. The hovervan did a poor job of living up to its name, proving to be more of a dragalongthe-ground-van that banged and bounced on every pebble in the way.
But eventually they cleared a rise and rolled into Moz Isleybrothers, the main town of Tatuonweiner. At first view, this seemed nothing more than a few ramshackle adobe houses, with a couple of humanoid aliens in smocks hanging about. But, strikingly, turning a corner the hovervan rolled through a vast open space in which a myriad of non-humanoid aliens sold bizarre wares, bickered with one another and generally rushed about, whilst in the distance a Sterntrooper mounted on another of those extremely realistic and vivid-looking giant lizards startled a seven-legged hovercyclist off his mount. Round another corner and the hovervan rolled through drab underpopulated streets once more.
Through seedy outskirts they rolled into the seedy inskirts, and did not stop until two Imp-Emp-Imp Sterntroopers waved them down at a roadblock.
‘Halt!’ called the first Sterntrooper stepping up to the side of the van. ‘We have orders to search every car entering the port to locate two droids. These droids are Imperial property and will be confiscated. Anybody found trying to smuggle them in will be arrested.’ He looked to the back of the hovervan where Luke’s two droids were sitting, trying to look innocent. ‘One is a golden annoyance-model,’ the Sterntrooper continued, ‘the other a motile commode.’ He stared long and hard at C3U-πP-HOL-8RA and RC-DU2. ‘Have either of you seen any such droids.’
‘Bony, what are we going to do?’ staged-whispered Luke into Old Bony’s right ear. ‘They’re looking for our droids – he said they’re going to arrest us.’
‘Don’t worry my young friend,’ said Bony. ‘I have a plan to smuggle these illegal droids past the noses of these Sterntroopers.’
‘You do?’ whispered Luke. ‘What’s your plan?’
&
nbsp; ‘You two realise,’ said the Sterntrooper, leaning a little way into the car, ‘that I can hear what you’re saying? I mean, your whispers are pretty loud, even if my helmet weren’t fitted with sound amplification technology. Which it is.’
Luke looked at the soldier aghast.
‘The Farce can have a powerful effect on the mind unused to it,’ Bony continued, oblivious. ‘I’ll use a special voice I can put on.’
‘You see,’ said the Sterntrooper, sounding a little peeved. ‘I heard the whole of that. You just said “the Farce can have a powerful effect on the mind unused to it”. I mean, you’re not even trying. Shouldn’t you have sorted out a plan before you got to our roadblock?’
‘My good fellow,’ said Bony, addressing the Sterntrooper. ‘These are not the droids you’re looking for.’
‘You mean,’ said the trooper, ‘“these aren’t the droids for which we are looking.” Don’t you?’
Bony’s brow furled and his smile sagged momentarily, but then it returned to his face even more beamingly. ‘I suppose I do,’ he said.
The Sterntrooper stared at him. ‘OK,’ he said, eventually. ‘If you say so.’
‘Come on, Bony, let’s go,’ said Luke, urgently.
‘Wait a moment,’ said Old Bony. ‘Watch this.’ From the folds of his brown cloak he whisked an onion. ‘Here you go, squaddie,’ he said, handing it to the Sterntrooper. ‘It’s for you. It’s a lovely apple.’ He turned his head and winked at Luke.
‘Bony,’ urged Luke, in a panicky voice. ‘Let’s go, now.’
‘Thanks,’ said the soldier, sounding slightly surprised, but taking the onion.
‘Aren’t you going to take a lovely big bite from it?’ prompted Bony. ‘Eh? Eh?’