by Adam Roberts
Hand hauled his body forward in its chair, grimacing with pain, and squinnied at the level Luke was indicating. ‘That – that’s the Semileptonic Beta Invariant Drive Overload. It focuses the tau-leptons through the branching-ratio determinator, so that the neutrino condensate preserves a constant Vub balance and the thrust remains inclusive – apply that lever when the hyper-tau state, during the initial conditions for subspace separation, approaches a perturbative level – but don’t in any circumstances use it to try to reduce the invariance of conventionally oriented subatomic tau-leptons, ya hear? – because then you’ll run the serious risk of backing up semileptonic beta events, and if that happens then your tau-leptons will begin to cascade into dilepton formulations,’ he gasped, through gritted teeth.
‘I see,’ said Luke, nodding knowledgeably. ‘And this lever?’
‘Cigarette lighter.’
‘Right.’
Luke stared intently at the panel replete with flashing lights. There was a very large number of the flashing lights. There was also a large number of switches, buttons, levers and various other instrumentation. ‘I think I can do it!’ he called. ‘I’ve been paying attention to all the stuff Old Bony has been telling me about the Farce. I think I can feel the Farce now – it will guide me. Strap in, everyone! We’re leaving!’
Hand Someman, nearly fainting with the pain, pulled his seatbelt strap across his belly, and Old Bony K’nobbli fitted himself into the adjacent one. Masticatetobacco was already slumped in a seat. The two droids extended grapples to clutch the metal deck beneath them.
Luke grasped the steering column with both hands. Through the windscreen he could see Imp-Emp-Imp troops setting up a tripod-mounted heavy-duty laser rifle. Once it was ready, the Millennium Bug would be easy meat. Their goose would be cooked. They would be in hot water indeed. They would be out of the frying pan and into the fire. Luke was beginning to assemble a fairly impressive mental list of cooking-based metaphors for their condition when the whole ship jarred and rocked. One of the Sterntroopers was firing at them with his hand-laser.
‘Come on,’ urged Hand, his face white. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Right,’ said Luke. He pressed the clutch, and pressed a button. Then he depressed the clutch, unpressed the button he had previously pressed and pressed another button. Then he squeezed the subatomic-condensate-gas pedal. He redepressed the clutch, repressed another button. The ship did not move.
A number of further laser bolts struck the craft. It rocked on its landing legs.
‘Straight up there,’ suggested Old Bony, pointing at the large square of blue sky visible directly above them.
‘I know,’ said Luke, peevishly. ‘The ship doesn’t seem to want to move.’
‘Handbrake,’ gasped Hand, as he passed from consciousness into a groggy pain-filled semi-conscious state. ‘Ooh,’ he added, and a few seconds later said ‘oh-ahh’.
‘Right – handbrake, yes.’ Luke squeezed the little red button at the top of the handbrakeish black bar beside his seat, and pushed the lever down. Immediately his chair flopped backwards through forty-five degrees.
‘I think that lever merely adjusts the orientation of the driving seat,’ Old Bony suggested, ‘and is not the handbrake at all.’
‘Push me up!’ urged Luke glowering at the ceiling. ‘I can’t see where I’m going!’
By the time they had the seat back in flying position, the Sterntroopers had assembled the tripod-mounted heavy-duty laser rifle, and were eyeing up the Millennium Bug through its sights. ‘Hand Someman!’ cried Luke. ‘Which is the brake lever? Which one?’
But Hand was unconscious.
‘Could we wake up his co-pilot?’ Luke gabbled. ‘The big hairy guy?’
‘Hibernation is more usually a state of not waking up,’ opined Bony. ‘Or so I’ve always been led to believe.’
‘But he can surely fly this ship, since he’s the co-pilot,’ pressed Luke. ‘Could you – I don’t know, use the Farce? Do something?’
‘The short answer to that question,’ returned Bony, ‘would be no.’
‘Droids?’ Luke shrieked. ‘Do you know which lever is the handbrake? They’re about to fire the big tripod-mounted gun thing right at us – hey, droids?’
‘Droids?’ replied See-thru in an outraged voice, adding a piercing whistling sound that caused beads of blood to form on Luke’s eardrums. ‘Droids? Droids? Are you trying to be offensive, you great stinking inbred loonball albino freak-beak?’
‘Not at all,’ said Luke, desperately.
‘We have names, I’ll have you know, we have names and feelings too . . . is it,’ he added, becoming even more agitated, ‘is it because we are metal that you figure you can simply discard our names? What century are you living in? What kind of attitude is that? – how would you like it if I tried to attract your attention by calling out “hey! Sacks of Watery Protein!” eh? You’d be hurt, wouldn’t you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ gabbled Luke. ‘I’m sorry See-thru, I was just hoping that you knew which lever was the handbrake. You see, we really need to get out of here. In a minute these Sterntroopers are going to fire this really really big gun right at us, and Someman has lapsed into unconsciousness, and Masticatetobacco is asleep.’
‘You fill me with disgust and disdain,’ said Seethru, disdainfully. Then he deactivated himself in disgust.
‘Eeek!’ shrieked Arcy Doo-doo.
‘This one,’ Bony said, ‘I think. The handbrake – under the dashboard here.’
Luke grabbed the lever and pushed it down. At once the mighty engines of the Millennium Bug roared, the complex interdimensional gearing caught, and the spaceship lurched into motion.
It zoomed backwards and smashed into the rear wall of the hangar, with a devastating effect on the structural coherence of the Millennium Bug’s rearend. The crash jarred the engine out of gear, and with a grating whine the whole spaceship stalled. Masonry cascaded down like heavy, stony hail. All the lights on the dashboard went out.
For a moment it was chaos. Then everything was quiet. Hand groaned in his unconsciousness.
‘The Farce tells me,’ murmured Old Bony, his voice deep with meaning and mystery, ‘that you had inadvertently placed the ship in reverse gear.’
‘Reverse gear,’ said Luke, nodding.
Chapter Nine
Concerning the True Nature of the Farce
The Sterntroopers took them all into custody, shackled their wrists with Shak-Lo! The Low-Price Handcuff Alternative, and herded them into the hold of a Police Cruiser. Hand Someman was fitted with a Cure-O-Girdle, and left supine on the metal floor. Masticatetobacco was similarly shackled. Luke was treated with a device called Stik-U-Don’t-Like, a heavy stick applied with some force to the top of his head.
He passed into unconsciousness.
The next thing he knew, he was waking groggily in an Imp-Emp-Imp prison cell. He sat up. ‘Where am I?’ he asked.
‘Inside the Death Spa,’ said a female voice. Luke turned his head.
Sitting on a metallic utility bench at the side of the cell was the woman from the toilet-droid’s hologram, in the flesh. She was even more beautiful, and even more obviously diseased, in real life than in cheap holographic form.
‘Princess Leper!’ he cried.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘And you are Luke Seespotrun.’
Luke’s heart spun. Young love coursed through his arteries, and came galloping back up his veins as lust. ‘How can you possibly know that?’ he asked, eagerly. ‘Is it fate that we meet? Did destiny whisper my name to your heart?’
‘He told me,’ the Princess said, jabbing a thumb over her right shoulder. Stretched out on the bench to her right was Old Bony, fast asleep. ‘Apparently you got my droid. But instead of taking it to Ya!Boo! and my adoptive father, where it might have done some good – instead of doing that, you took it straight into a heavy concentration of Imp-Emp-Imp soldiery.’
‘Sorry about that,’ said Luke, getting to his
feet, and rubbing the back of his skull where it was sore.
‘The Imp-Emp-Imp have the droid now,’ said Leper, mournfully. ‘It’ll be a matter of time before they extract the Secret I stored on board it. And when that happens, we might as well give up all hope for the rebellion. The Imperial Emperor, and Dark Father, will beat the Rebelend. That’s all there is to it.’
‘You really think Dark Father would beat the Rebelend?’
‘Oh he’ll beat it. He’ll beat it mercilessly,’ said Leper.
‘It’s catastrophic.’ Luke sat down next to her.
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, kid,’ wheezed a voice from the floor.
‘Hand!’ cried Luke. ‘Are you OK? You got shot in the chest!’
‘I did,’ Hand Someman gasped. He was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall. His big hairy co-pilot was flat on his back beside him, snoring softly. ‘The shot burnt out pretty much a whole lung. The Imp-Emp-Imp gave me a cybernetic lung, and patched up my skin – the better to interrogate me, I guess. It’s not a very good medical prosthesis, this artificial lung, so I’m pretty breathless. It’s a good job I still got one natural lung, otherwise I’d be just plain puffed.’
‘This is just terrible! Prisoners inside an Imp-Emp-Imp facility! What’s to become of us?’ wailed Luke.
‘What’s to become of us?’ repeated Princess Leper. ‘That’s an asinine sort of question. They’re going to torture us, that’s what. They’ve been torturing me for several days.’
‘Great Thog, no!’ cried Luke. ‘That’s terrible!’
Leper nodded sorrowfully. ‘They had me on the treadmill for hours yesterday. For much of that time, they angled it at twenty degrees, so I was effectively running uphill.’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘Before that it was this cross-country-ski-simulator machine, with both leg and arm poles to operate. You can set that at “South Downs” or “Kathmandu” settings, and of course they set it at the latter. And after that the sauna . . . they really turn the heat up beyond the levels any medical practitioner would sanction in there.’
‘We’re doomed,’ said Luke, simply.
‘We are,’ agreed Leper. ‘And not just us. This Death Spa has the capacity to exercise and massage an entire planet to death. It’s flying to Gregbare as we speak.’
‘Gregbare? The planet originally colonised by naturist science fiction authors? Why there?’
‘Because that’s where the Rebelend central base is located.’
‘On Gregbare? Why?’
‘Because we were sure it was the last place the Imp-Emp-Imp would look. I mean, bearing in mind the nature of the settlers on that world, who would want to look there? Who in their right minds?’ She shook her head. ‘But now that they know that the Rebelend base is located there, the Imp-Emp-Imp will swoop and obliterate it. Once they destroy that the Rebelend will be at an end. It will be the end of hope for the whole Galaxy. The Imperial Empire will crush the whole universe beneath its jackbooted heel. Beneath its heeled jackboot, I mean.’ She turned to Luke. ‘Or, on second thoughts, perhaps the first one. As you put it so succinctly – we’re doomed.’
‘We,’ said Old Bony, sitting up slowly, and stretching like a cat waking up, ‘are not doomed.’
‘And what do you know about it, grandad,’ wheezed Hand Someman. ‘You brought an entire troop of Sterntroopers right to us in that bar. It’s your fault I got shot up. And what – what was that business with the glass tube?’
‘Wait,’ said Leper, holding up her hand. ‘Wobbli Bent K’nobbli is a great, if slightly whiffy, old man. Let us listen to what he has to say.’
‘Yes, Bony will advise us,’ urged Luke. ‘What should we do? How can we get out of here?’
‘It’s very simple,’ said Bony. ‘We must trust to the Farce.’
Hand Someman blew a quantity of air through his lips, thereby indicating that he was not inclined to follow Old Bony’s advice in this matter.
An hour passed. Luke paced up and down the cell. He examined every nook and cranny, and found no bolts to unscrew, no air-ducts to climb into. There was no way out of this cell.
‘Bony,’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask. What exactly is this “Farce” of which you speak so often.’
‘Ah,’ said Bony, tapping the side of his nose. ‘The Farce. It’s a powerful ally, the Farce, provided you know how to work with it.’
‘That doesn’t really answer my question.’
‘The Farce is woven into the fabric of the universe. It is an all-pervasive power.’ The old man’s eyes glinted with enthusiasm. ‘Let me put it this way: do you know how the universe was made? How it came to be?’
‘The Big Bang,’ said Luke.
‘After that,’ said Old Bony K’nobbli. ‘After the originary matter of the universe had been disseminated? Do you know where the stars and planets came from – why the cosmos isn’t just a soup of undifferentiated matter?’
‘Gravity?’ Luke hazarded.
‘But gravity is only the form taken by the Farce!’ screeched Old Bony, terribly excited. ‘The universe grew by collisions. By things banging into other things. By lumps of matters colliding stupidly with other lumps of matter. This is the underlying principle of the cosmos – this stupidity. Pratfalls! Tumbles! Crashings-into-things! Does the cosmos rest on the principle of walking smoothly out through a door? No! It rests on the principle of misjudging the exit and smacking your kisser against the doorframe, and then stumbling back, putting your foot in the wastepaper bin and tripping over your desk to land in such a way as to give yourself mild concussion. Do you see?’
‘I think I do,’ said Luke, tentatively.
‘Matter bumping into other matter! Comets crashing into gas giants! Planets knocking moon-sized chunks out of other planets! It’s all one universe-sized slapstick comedy! The cosmos could not have formed without it. This is the Farce. This is the principle that binds all living matter.’
‘I see,’ offered Luke. But there was no stopping Old Bony now.
‘What is the force that causes your bootlaces to become undone at exactly the moment you step into the urinals at a spaceport bar, so that then they trail along the floor? It is the Farce. Why, when you move your hand to bring a slice of toast to your mouth whilst reading the morning news-flimsy does your movement result in you jabbing toast up your nose? How else to explain,’ he added, growing wistful as if recalling a much-loved memory, ‘bidding farewell to your beautiful young girlfriend as she mounts the Hoverbus – walking alongside the slowly departing vehicle keeping pace with her window seat – blowing kisses to her, as she blows kisses to you – interpreting her suddenly widened eyes and open mouth as her dawning remorse for her decision to leave town in the first place – widening your own eyes as you gaze into hers, and nodding, as if to say, yes, my love, how stupid that we must part – and then walking sideways into a lamp post and dislocating your jaw? There is no other explanation.’
‘And how does this help us in our current situation? Exactly?’
K’nobbli looked mysterious. ‘We must trust the Farce.’
‘But how is that actually, practically going to help us?’ Hand asked. ‘All that fine talk – we’re still stuck in here.’
There was a lurch, and the whole cell shuddered. ‘What was that?’ asked Luke.
‘It felt,’ offered Hand, ‘like the Death Spa coming out of hyperdrive?’
‘We must have arrived at Gregbare,’ said Leper, and she put her face in her hands. ‘It’s all over. They’ll be charging up their engines of death. The secret base of Rebelend activity – doomed. The whole world of Gregbare – all those buck-naked SF authors, doomed. And we’re stuck in here, unable to help them.’
The occupants of the cell were silent for several minutes. Finally Luke spoke up.
‘Did you say,’ he asked, ‘“buck-naked”? Or “butt-naked”.’
Leper turned on him. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Well it’s just that “butt-naked” is a much less plea
sant image than “buck-naked”. Or so it seems to me. In the sense that a naked butt is a less savoury thought than a naked buck.’ Luke looked from face to face. ‘Don’t you think? I mean, I’m not even sure what a “buck” is, in this context, but I’m fairly sure that seeing it naked would be less upsetting than seeing a SF author’s naked, um, er.’ He stopped speaking.
Everyone went back to being gloomily silent.
Through the metal wall of the cell the sound of jackboots clanging on metal walkways became audible. It soon became apparent that the footsteps were approaching. Two Sterntroopers were marching smartly along the corridor outside, towards the cell.
They stopped outside. All the prisoners looked expectantly up at the door.
It slid upwards to reveal the two Sterntroopers standing in the corridor outside. Both had laser pistols in their hands. ‘Prisoners!’ barked one of the faceless soldiers. ‘You will be interrogated one by one – starting with you.’ He gestured at Luke with his pistol. ‘Come now!’
Luke looked over his shoulder, as if there were somebody behind him at whom the soldier might be pointing. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Oh crikey bikey,’ said Luke, alarmed, getting to his feet.
The two soldiers took a step in unison to come into the cell. In unison their helmeted foreheads collided with the low overhang of the cell door. In unison they clattered backwards to the floor, to lie motionless.
Princess Leper was the person with the foresight to hurry over to the horizontal forms. ‘They’re both unconscious,’ she announced, with a degree of amazement in her voice. ‘They just walked straight into the door lintel. That’s pretty clumsy – pretty amazingly clumsy if you ask me.’
‘You see,’ said K’nobbli, as if he had expected precisely this development. ‘You must trust the Farce.’
Chapter Ten
Some rushing about, and general running to and fro, inside the Death Spa
Luke and Leper stripped the soldiers of their armour, took their weapons and utility belts and tied them up in the cell. In the process they ripped the armour in several places. ‘Look at this stuff,’ said Luke, pulling a chestplate into two pieces. ‘It’s fantastically thin. It’s like the sort of plastic you make Christmas decorations out of. Or like the stuff microwave meals comes packed in.’