by Adam Roberts
‘LANDROVE,’ said Dark Father. ‘ARE THEY HERE?’
‘They’re here,’ he announced. ‘But one of them is an old friend of mine. I’ve changed my mind about betraying them and turning them over to you.’
Dark Father appeared to be contemplating the view of sky and clouds through the room’s window. Either that, or he was contemplating throwing up. ‘IT WOULD INDEED BE A SHAME,’ he said, shortly, ‘IF I WERE COMPELLED TO ORDER MY TI-FIGHTERS TO DESTROY YOUR CITY’S POLE . . .’
‘Pole?’ said Landrove, outraged. ‘What do you mean, pole? What manner of unsubstantiated and wholly untrue accusation is this? There is no pole.’
‘COME, COME, LANDROVE. THE LARGE POLE UPON WHICH YOUR SO-CALLED FLOATING CITY IS PERCHED. THE POLE YOU HAVE PAINTED SKY-BLUE. THAT POLE.’
‘Ah,’ said Landrove. ‘That pole. Well, it would be in many ways better, as far as we’re concerned, if you didn’t, you know, destroy that pole. Not that it supports the city,’ he added, hurriedly, ‘I’m not saying that, of course not, this city is suspended in mid-air by a miracle of futuristic technology, oh yes. But, that fact notwithstanding, it would probably be better if you – you know – refrained. From destroying the pole. Or even from mentioning the pole.’
‘AND SOMEMAN?’
‘I shall have him delivered to your Sterntroopers within the hour.’ Landrove’s voice was low, and bitter. Like a snail, you might say. But he knew when he had been beaten.
‘DO WE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER?’
‘We do.’
‘HAVE YOUR GUARDS PLACE THEM ALL IN CUSTODY, BUT BRING HAND SOMEMAN TO ME.’
‘Hi there, guys,’ said Landrove, returning to his guests. ‘More pimp-juice? Cranberry-and-apple?’ He sat himself down in one of the settees. ‘What can I do for you guys anyway? What brings you to my little city-cum-university?’
‘Landrove,’ said Hand, leaning forward. ‘I’ll tell you. You were the most skilful computer hacker I ever knew.’
Landrove smiled modestly. ‘It’s true. They used to call me “Hacker Bilk”.’ His smile faded, and he became thoughtful. ‘I never understood why . . .’
‘Well, there’s some secret data loaded into this droid,’ said Hand, gesturing towards See-thru. ‘And we wanted . . .’
‘Not that droid,’ interrupted Princess Leper, crossly. ‘The RC unit. I wouldn’t trust that droid with the secret plans of my granny’s outside toilet.’
‘Oh,’ said See-thru in hurt tones. ‘Thanks a lot.’
‘The RC unit,’ said Hand, uncertainly. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Really really? Or not really really.’
‘Really really.’
‘Ah,’ said Hand. He looked at the undulating floor. ‘Oh,’ he said.
‘You did bring the RC unit, didn’t you?’ said Leper. ‘You didn’t leave it back on Brathmonki to fall, once again, into the hands of the evil Imp-Emp-Imp?’
‘No,’ said Hand firmly. ‘I didn’t do that.’
‘So where is it? Is it on the ship?’
‘I gave it to Luke,’ said Hand. ‘I figured he’d need the motile commode, since he had this long flight to Swamp World to do.’
Leper’s steely-eyed stare spoke volumes. None of the volumes contained any polite or flattering writing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, turning to Landrove, and speaking in a dangerously polite voice. ‘I’m afraid we’ve wasted your time.’
‘Ah well,’ said Landrove. ‘Never mind. Some other time, maybe. Now there’s just one thing I wanted to talk to you about, and then maybe we can all grab some lunch.’
‘Something you wanted to talk to us about? What’s that?’
‘I’m sorry to say that the Imp-Emp-Imp, aided by a bounty hunter who’s been on your trail for some while, Hand, tracked your journey here, and indeed got here before you. Dark Father is waiting in an anteroom to take you all into custody. Sorry about that – my hands are tied. Not literally. Although they might be literally tied, or at least shackled, if I didn’t do precisely what Dark Father demands. He’s threatened the existence of the entire City, do you see? So I’m afraid it’s a troubled conscience for me, and imprisonment, torture and probably a painful death for you. Say “Lavie”.’
‘“Lavie,” ’ said Hand, too stunned to do anything but respond automatically. His eyes were as wide as saucers, provided we’re talking about saucers no more than two centimetres across, such as might be found in a dolls’ house, perhaps. But very wide, that’s the point.
‘You misunderstand,’ said Landrove. ‘C’est la vie. Now!’ He beamed and rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. ‘What do you want to eat? I got herring and matzos – what do you say?’
Chapter Six
Still swampy down on ole Swampy World
Luke’s training in the ways of the Farce had been proceeding intensively during this interlude. He had learnt how to pratfall, to stumble, to juggle jugs of water in such a way as to spill the water on his own head, to introduce bottles and glasses to one another as if in a social setting, and various other arcane Farcical skills. Yodella had Luke standing on his hands quite a lot. ‘Why, master?’ asked the young pupil. ‘Standing on hands harder is than on legs standing,’ said Yodella. ‘Students falling over often are. With the Farce get in tune with, they do.’
One day Yodella gave Luke his own lightsword. It was a slender glass tube of a pearly opalescence, with a silvery metal tip in which was contained the power source and the on-off switch. ‘A Jobbi’s weapon, lightsword is. Take care of it.’
‘From my limited experience, master,’ said Luke, ‘they do tend to, well, break – lightswords, I mean. Is that how they’re supposed to operate?’
‘Must be used properly,’ said Yodella. ‘If improperly used, then breakage may occur, for which liable is not the company of Yodella Light Bulb Manufacturers Incorporated, no money back, no circulars or unsolicited representation, Board Chairman A. Gonzo.’
‘But how am I to use it properly?’ Luke pressed.
‘Turn it on,’ Yodella instructed. ‘And hold it before you. I mean,’ he added hastily, ‘you before it hold and.’
Luke did as he was instructed. ‘Now, strike me, you will try,’ ordered Yodella.
Luke made a pass with the weapon, but Yodella avoided the blow with terrier-like rapidity, and in a moment he had leapt high in the air, and landed on Luke’s glowing blade. To Luke’s astonishment, the little green man simply stood there, balanced on the lightsword, his eye level with Luke’s eye.
‘Useless are you,’ Yodella said. With a swift backflip he propelled himself into the air, and landed back on the forest floor. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘punch this tree trunk you will – but from a distance of no more than one inch. Put all your energy into the blow – as if to punch through the tree you are trying.’
Luke turned his lightsword off and leant it carefully against a boulder. ‘Is this some wonderful trick of the Farce you are about to teach me?’ he asked. ‘To punch through a massy tree trunk from a distance of no more than an inch?’
‘Not really,’ responded Yodella. ‘Mash up your knuckles, mostly, and make you “ow!” go, it will. But most amusing to watch such a spectacle is. Yodel ayippee-ay-ii.’
Later that day, Luke was eating his supper with a bandaged hand.
‘So let me get this straight,’ said Luke. ‘You are the supreme Jobbi, the master of all masters, the capo di capi di jobi. You have mastered all the Jobbi arts, and possess a higher level of Farcical skill, wisdom, intelligence and power than any other being in the entire Galaxy.’
‘True this is,’ said Yodella.
‘And yet you can’t speak even the simplest sentence in Galactic Standard, without mucking the words up.’
Yodella looked sulky. ‘Dyslexia have I,’ he said. ‘Correlate to impaired intellectual ability it does not. Many highly intelligent people dyslexia have. Actually.’
‘But dyslexia effects the arrangement of letters within individual words,’ said
Luke, genuinely puzzled. ‘Not the arrangement of words within sentences.’
‘Arse-smart are you,’ grumbled Yodella, adding sulkily, ‘Yodel-ay-i-heeee.’ ‘Old, am I. Some respect for your elders, you should show. When it was all just fields, used to come here I did, you know. Doctors looking young these days, noticed that have you? Policemen also. Also, this new Imperial coinage, confusing it is; one hundred Imperial cents to one Imperial credit? About what’s that? What wrong was with the good old system of four thousand six hundred and seven zlatps to a pdoing, twenty-seven-and-a-half pdoings to a bdapbamboum, and one-point-one-bdapbamboums to a heebijeebiblubbablubbablubba? Sensible, that monetary system was.’
Luke ate in silence for a while, digesting this little speech, whilst also digesting his supper, although in a different sense of ‘digesting’. Finally he asked: ‘So just how old are you, master?’
‘I am seventeen centuries old, going on eighteen,’ replied Yodella. ‘Many changes have I seen.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Luke, politely.
‘Anyway,’ said Yodella. ‘Way any. Your training over, is.’
‘It is?’ said Luke, astonished. ‘But I feel like I have learnt so little!’
‘Did you not attention pay me to? Un learn you must. The essence of the Farce is not in learning. Learning, practice, skill, these things run counter to the power of the Farce. The Farce is in unpreparedness, in ignorance and stupidity, in a jackass readiness to take absurd risks. No more will I teach you. Go you must.’
‘Go?’
‘Yes, go. Your friends in trouble are. Captured by Dark Father, they have been, yes. Torture and death he is planning. Hoping to lure you to the Floating City he is, so that he can embed you within a gigantic solid block of crystal and thuswise transport you to his Imperial Emperor as a great prize. Testing, he is, the machinery that embeds people within the gigantic solid blocks of crystal on Hand Someman, after which torture and kill he will, Princess Leper.’
‘No!’ cried Luke.
‘Yes,’ returned Yodella. ‘Don’t interrupt.’
‘But how do you know all this, master? Is it the power of the Farce?’
‘That, and a short-short wave radio in my hut. Informed the entire quadrant of his actions has Dark Father. All part of his plan to sucker you into trying a rescue bid it is.’
‘But,’ said Luke, thinking hard, ‘but if Dark Father is specifically trying to lure me to the Floating City to ambush and trap me – is it, um, wholly sensible for me to fly right into that trap? I mean, isn’t there a danger that Dark Father will do everything you say – will trap me, put me in this machine, embed me in a gigantic lump of crystal and carry me to the Emperor?’
‘Idiot you are,’ said Yodella. ‘Understand the Farce you do not. Think you to harness the enormous power of the Farce by sensible being? How would this work, exactly? Nonsense. Put yourself in the way of danger, harm, and comical falling-over you will.’
‘Very well, master,’ said Luke, casting his face down.
‘Take the lightsword I have given you,’ said Yodella. ‘This spaceship of mine – borrow, you may. Damage or dent it do not. Not all the payments have I yet made on it, and very exacting “Crazy Ron’s Crazee Prices Spaceship Salesroom” is on the small print of hire-purchase agreements. Fly to the Floating City, rescue your friends, and here return, pronto, with immaculate un-paint-scratched spaceship.’
‘Very well,’ said Luke getting to his feet. ‘I’ll not fail you, master.’
‘See, we will,’ grumbled Yodella, wandering off into the forest, singing as he went ‘Don’t leave me high-iiiiiii. Don’t leave me dry-iiiiii.’
Chapter Seven
The horrible fate prepared for Hand Someman
Everything Yodella told Luke was true: Dark Father did indeed hope to lure Luke to the Floating City, by capturing and torturing his friends, and broadcasting their plight on short-short wave radio to the entire quadrant. He was gambling on Luke Seespotrun being the only person reckless enough to risk everything in a desperate attempt to rescue them.
Yodella was also right about the ‘Large-Scale Paper Weight Technology’ with which he hoped to immobilise Luke for his journey to the Imperial Emperor. He had brought this with him, and his Sterntroopers had assembled it inside the Floating City. Now, just to make sure it was working properly, he planned to test it on Hand Someman; after which he intended to pass the space pilot’s corpse to a certain bounty hunter with which he had made a deal.
‘BRING HAND SOMEMAN TO ME,’ he instructed. ‘THE TIME HAS COME TO TEST THE MACHINE.’
Two soldiers brought Someman forward. Although each of his arms was being gripped by a burly Sterntrooper, he was struggling. ‘Get your paws offa me,’ he bellowed, ‘you damn dirty Imp-Emp-Imps.’
‘COME, COME, MISTER SOMEMAN,’ said Dark Father doomily. ‘RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.’
‘What do you want from me, Dark Father?’ demanded Hand. ‘Do you expect me to talk?’
‘NO, MR SOMEMAN – I EXPECT YOU TO BECOME TRANSFORMED INTO A GIANT PAPERWEIGHT.’
This was not what Hand Someman had been expecting to hear at all. ‘Oh,’ he said.
‘THROW HIM INTO THE DEVICE,’ Dark Father commanded. The Sterntroopers dragged their prisoner to the brink of the machine.
‘Wait!’ Someman cried. He twisted his head around his shoulder. ‘I love you!’ he cried. ‘I just wanted you to know before I am cast into this infernal device – I love you!’
‘Well, that’s very flattering,’ replied the Stern-trooper holding his left arm. ‘If a little sudden. I mean, you didn’t prepare the ground at all. Shouldn’t we get to know one another a little more before—’
‘Not you,’ snapped Someman, ‘you idiot. Not you.’
‘Well,’ said the Sterntrooper, looking behind himself, ‘there’s nobody else back here.’
‘Isn’t there? Oh. I thought a second group of soldiers had brought Princess Leper along to watch me meet my grisly fate? Isn’t the Princess just back there?’
‘Nope.’
‘Oh.’
‘There was no need to bring the Princess along,’ explained the Sterntrooper. ‘We decided to leave her back in her cell.’
‘I could have sworn I saw something out of the corner of my eye, as I was being dragged along the corridor. Something that looked like two further Sterntroopers hauling along a second prisoner.’
‘Nope.’
‘Ah well,’ said Hand. ‘My mistake. Of course, I didn’t get a proper look, what with you gripping me so roughly.’
‘ENOUGH!’ boomed Dark Father. ‘THROW HIM IN!’
‘Nooo!’ cried Hand, but it was too late. He was shoved over the lip of the device. Gouts of steam dashed upwards. The monstrous levers began to heave and pump. There was a colossal clattering and banging noise, and, as if reluctantly, the great wheel on the side turned. Finally, at the far side of the machine, an industrial-grade conveyer belt rolled. Through the half dozen leather flaps that hung down as a rudimentary curtain emerged a gigantic hemisphere of crystal, ten feet in diameter and eight feet tall. And in its very centre, captured in a position of surprise and alarm, and positioned next to a three-foot sea-horse and a patch of imitation seaweed, was Hand Someman. Motionless.
‘EXCELLENT,’ said Dark Father. ‘THIS IS CERTAINLY CAPABLE OF PREVENTING A GREAT QUANTITY OF PAPER FROM FLAPPING OR FLYING OFF IN A STIFF BREEZE.’
From the shadows behind Dark Father emerged a crash helmet-clad figure: it was (rather unexpectedly, since we haven’t heard of this character before, but that’s sometimes how life is, people turn up abruptly and unexpectedly) Cheesa Fetta, the notorious bounty hunter.
‘Have you finished your games with Someman?’ he asked.
‘FETTA,’ said Dark Father, ‘SOMEMAN IS YOURS. TAKE HIM BACK TO PIZZA THE HUTT.’
‘How did you know?’ asked Fetta, amazed at Dark Father’s prescience, ‘that I have been contracted by Pizza the Hutt?’
‘ALL PIZZA THE HUTT�
�S BOUNTY HUNTERS HAVE NAMES DERIVED EITHER FROM CHEESE, MEAT OR SMALL PICKLED FISH,’ said Dark Father. ‘EVERYONE KNOWS THAT.’
‘That’s true of course,’ conceded Fetta. ‘Ah well, I’d love to chat, but I have to fly.’ He slapped an anti-gravitational button to the side of the enormous paperweight, and kicked the whole thing easily along the floor and out through the main exit.
‘AND NOW,’ said Dark Father, smugly, ‘THAT WE KNOW THE EQUIPMENT FUNCTIONS TO OUR SATISFACTION, IT IS TIME FOR ME TO CONFRONT LUKE SEESPOTRUN. HAS HE ARRIVED?’
‘Sensors confirm,’ said the first Sterntrooper, ‘that his ship has landed.’
‘EXCELLENT. I SHALL MEET HIM IN BATTLE. HE THINKS HIS FATHER IS DEAD, BUT I SHALL SHOCK HIM WITH A REVELATION ABOUT THE TRUE NATURE OF HIS PARENTAGE.’ Dark Father looked down at the Sterntrooper standing beside him. ‘WHY AM I TELLING YOU THIS? YOU’RE ONLY A LOWLY STERNTROOPER. WHY WOULD I WANT TO CONFIDE IN YOU?’
‘I don’t know, my Lord,’ replied the soldier, somewhat nervously.
‘NEVER MIND. ONLY – BE SURE AND HAVE THE PAPERWEIGHT-MAKING DEVICE READY FOR MY RETURN.’ Dark Father strode out of the room, his black cape swirling impressively.
Chapter Ten
A duel, and a surprising revelation about Luke’s parentage
Luke landed Yodella’s spare spacecraft on a deserted landing pad. There was nobody about. ‘It’s quiet,’ he said to RC-DU2. ‘Too quiet . . .’
‘Eek!’ squealed RC, making a dash to get away from Luke, trundling rapidly through an open door and inside.
Cautiously, Luke followed the droid, and made his way through the corridors. Somebody had taped a piece of A4 to the wall, on which in scrawly Stern-trooper handwriting was written: ‘Showdown Duel with Dark Father, this way →’
‘That’s helpful,’ said Luke. Clearly he needed to have his wits about him. He pulled out the lightsword that Yodella had given him, and fumbled with the switch at the base. After a couple of spastic flickers, the whole blade lit up gleaming white. He had to concede it looked pretty impressive.