by Adam Roberts
‘There’s been a misunderstanding . . .’ said the Dr, stepping forward. A soldier’s bayonet jabbed at his stomach, and he danced back again.
‘Against the wall over there, if you please,’ shouted the captain. ‘The Leader is coming!’
We lined up against the far wall obediently. One of the iron doors opened with a clang. Or perhaps I mean clank. The air of expectation in the room was enormous. Enormous air. Expectationish.
A strange figure, seated in a motorised wheelchair, rolled through.
‘Stavros!’ said the Dr. ‘The real original Stavros - in the flesh!’
And what flesh it was. This Stavros, wheeling now into the centre of the room, appeared to have been most hideously disfigured. Hair sprouted in hectic profusion from his head, from his nose and his ears. His cheeks and chin had been scraped clean of hair, but still bore witness to their essential hirsuteness with a prodigious spread of fat black dots. There was more hair in one of his eyebrows than on my entire head. His upper lip bore a moustache of such dense hirsuteness that, had it been detached from its facial location and nailed along the base of a door, would have functioned as an extremely effective draught excluder.
It’s said that kissing a man without a moustache is like ‘eating a hard-boiled egg without salt’. Not that I’ve ever understood that saying, to be honest. Nor indeed have I kissed any men, with or without moustaches. Unless you count kissing one’s own reflection in the bathroom mirror for, you know. Practice. But, anyway, if we stick with that analogy, the egg-without-salt metaphor, then kissing Stavros would be like eating a hard-boiled egg whilst also consuming the annual production of the entire Siberian salt-mining industry.
On second thoughts, that’s probably an over-elaborate way of explaining that his moustache was extremely hairy.
But the most startling thing about Stavros was his skin: dark brown, leathery, wrinkled, it looked as if he had been baked in an oven for weeks. Like a conker.
Stavros wheeled himself into a central position in the middle of the room. Then he surveyed the small group gathered about him, placed a cigarette between his lips, lit it, inhaled deeply, and then he spoke: ‘hello ever-a-body peeps.’
‘Hail Stavros!’ cried his followers in unison. ‘Hello!’
‘Is good,’ said Stavros, stubbing out his quarter-smoked cigarette on the panel in front of him and immediately lighting another one. He nodded in our direction, his mighty moustache wobbling. ‘Ooziss?’
‘Prisoners,’ repeated one of his followers. ‘Prisoners, oh Greatest of Greeks. This one claims to be a Doctor.’
‘My cousin Avraam, he’s a Doctor,’ said Stavros. ‘Innit.’
‘I’m not that sort of Doctor,’ said the Dr, stiffly.
‘Oh, oh-oh-oh, Time Gennleman, izzit?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Ah! Enemy alien. They are opposing every-a-thing I stand for, peeps, these time gennlemen. They wanna maintain all the linear order of history and such, and I wanna mash every-a-thin into a big stew.’ He licked his lips, stubbed out his cigarette and lit another one.
‘I pooh-pooh you and your stew!’ defianted the Dr. Stavros looked at him impassively, as if this taunt meant nothing, and as if the word ‘defiant’ couldn’t be used as a verb in that matter.
‘And woziss?’ he said, wheeling himself over to the alpine-horn-shaped TARDY.
‘Leader!’ barked the captain. ‘This is the alien’s time-travel device! It has disguised itself as some kind of police communicator, but there’s no doubt as to its identity.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Stavros, ‘innit. Lucky day. You and you, carry this thing downstairs to my kitchen, er, lab. I am gonna wanna examine this in more detail. Find out how it works, take it apart and put it back together innit. Then I can build my own time-a-travel machine, and send the my evil cyborgs through the complete range of time and space.’
The TARDY was on a wheeled platform of some kind, and Stavros’ soldiers set about pushing it through a door and away.’
‘Hmm,’ said the Dr, watching his TARDY - our only hope of escape, and the key to Stavros’s domination of the galaxy - being hauled out of sight. ‘That’s probably not, on balance, a positive development. Stavros has always hated the Time Gentlemen, and sought to undo everything that we have achieved. And now we have, inadvertently, given him the technological power to do just that.’
‘Oops,’ I said.
‘Surely he can’t be that bad,’ said Linn. ‘I mean, looking around us, this is all pretty rudimentary . . . technologically speaking.’
‘You need to understand the full story of Skaryan history,’ said the Dr, sorrowfully. ‘Once upon a time it was a planet very like Earth. Blue skies, green fields, worldwide satellite television coverage. Stavros Pastapopolos was a celebrity on this world - a celebrity chef on Skaryan television. Then this world was ravaged by global war, and in the aftermath two things mattered more than anything else: firstly control of the food resources, and secondly control of the mass media. Food for the body, and food for the brain. A power-elite seized power: nobody could oppose them because they combined a tight control over food distribution with a propaganda stranglehold over all TV channels. The Celebrity Chefs! Les Chefs du Monde!’
‘That’s not anything,’ said Linn, confidently, ‘that could ever happen on my home world.’
‘Power was seized by a cabal of a dozen Celebrity Chefs,’ said the Dr, picking up the narrative. ‘And they ruled the world with an iron skillet. They brought misery to millions. Eventually the populace rose up and overthrew them . . . they were all thrown into a giant copper braising pot and braised to kingdom come.’
‘Is that how his skin came to be so disfigured? Is that the result of . . . braising?’ I asked.
‘Actually, the reverse is true,’ said the Dr. ‘His skin was so leathery and tough that the braising had little effect upon him. He acquired his marmite-hued dermis as a result of severe ultraviolet burning, a function of the time Stavros had spent under the fierce sun of his native land, far to the south of here. It evidently enabled him to survive the copper pot, and finally to escape, to organise Kababian resistance to the Dhaliesque counter-revolution. But he has carried his seething resentment with him . . .’
‘You must-a-not seethe resentment, innit,’ broke in Stavros. ‘You gonna kill all its flavour. Resentment gotta marinade, OK? I marinaded my resentment for many many years, and I’s ready now to pay the cosmos back. Bring in the first of my Garleks, innit!’
A second iron door clonked open, and a machine glided through. Glid through. Glidened. Came gliding through. The first Garlek I saw with my own eyes.
It was based, obviously, upon the garlic; but was robotized and metallic and terrifying beyond all imagining.
Picture if you will a whole head of garlic: the fat, slightly cardboardy stalk about which are clustered, in a pear-shaped lump, dozens of bulging cloves. Imagine such a structure reproduced eight-feet-tall in metal and plastic; the stalk bent over at the top to provide some form of telescopic sight. Now imagine this creation rolling effortlessly across the floor, swivelling what looked like the barrel of a gun from its midriff, and above all exuding a pungent, unmissable, choking, gagging stench . . .
I coughed. Linn coughed. But Stavros seemed delighted with the reek of his creation.
‘Stop!’ he commanded, and the robot stopped. ‘Ready to bring a little spice to the universe, innit,’ he declared to the whole room.
‘Spice? Genospice more like,’ exclaimed the Dr.
‘No,’ said Linn. ‘No, I don’t get that one at all.’
‘Genocide,’ said the Dr, in a lower voice. ‘I meant.’
‘Same difference,’ said Stavros airily.
‘You’re a megalomaniac!’ cried the Dr.
‘Izza good Greek word,’ Stavros agreed, with some satisfaction. ‘Megalo, that’s meaning big, and Mania is a-meaning frenzy . I like it.’ He smiled broadly. Or I think he smiled. To be honest it was hard to
see what was going on behind that moustache.
‘Hail Stavros!’ cried the soldiers.
‘As I was saying,’ Stavros said, wheeling his electric wheelchair in a little circle around the stationary robot. ‘Garlic, or Allium sativum, izza vegetable closely related to the onion.’ He pronounced the word with the emphasis on the final syllable. ‘It don’t grow in the wild, peeps, and was first cultivated in Greece. And not Turkey, as some blokes is arguing, that’s simply a lie. Izza Greek, innit.’
‘Yes Stavros!’ cried his followers.
‘And now it finds its ultimate form, ever-a-body peeps. Inside this robotic case is a genetically modified Kababster. I have used all my culinary and scientific genius, innit, to cross a living Kababster with a big old chunk of garlic.’
‘You crossed a person with a piece of garlic?’ Linn cried in horrified disbelief.
‘Exactly, innit. You might say he’s a half cove and a half clove.’ Stavros seemed to find this very funny, and laughed a cough-y sort of laugh as he lit another cigarette. Nobody else laughed. ‘Anyway, the Garlek is a new breed. Is got the intelligence of a man, and the ruthless bitterness of raw garlic. The universe will never be so bland again!’
‘Hail Stavros!’ cried the soldiers.
‘I gotta twenty thousand of these babies sitting in a big hangar, innit’ said Stavros. ‘And I am passing out the order, ever-a-body, that all military and police duties are now gonna be handled by them! They in charge now! Well, I’m in charge of them, but they in charge of ever-a-thing else!’
‘Hail Stavros,’ the soldiers repeated, a little less enthusiastically.
‘Don’t worry, peeps,’ said Stavros. ‘You’re not gonna be redundant, innit. The old Kababster army is gonna be absorbed into the greater Garlek peace-keeping forces. Sooner or later you all gonna get the treatment, get crossed with garlic and given your own cyborg unit to drive about.’
‘Hail Stavros,’ said the soldiers, weakly.
‘I gonna show you how it goes with these prisoners here. Is nothing to be afraid of, innit.’ He pressed a button on his control panel and the Garlek robot shuddered into life. ‘Garlek, can you hear me, innit?’
The machine rasped a reply: ‘AFFIRMATIVE !’ Its metallic voice sounded like nails being dragged down a blackboard.
‘You see those prisoners over there?’
‘AFFIRMATIVE !’
‘What are you going to do, Stavros?’ demanded the Dr. ‘Kill us, in cold blood?’
‘Nah,’ said Stavros, stubbing out a cigarette and lighting another. ‘My Garlek is gonna take you down to the lab, and I’m gonna turn you all into Garleks. Cross you with cloves, innit. Then you’ll work for me.’
‘Never!’ said the Dr, defiantly.
‘You won’t get no say in the matter, innit,’ snarled Stavros. ‘Garlek?’
‘AFFIRMATIVE!’
‘Take ’em wayaway.’
The cyborg rolled towards us, its gun-stalk quivering.
We were marched at Garlek-gunpoint out of the chamber and along a sloping downward corridor. Things were looking bleak.
But the Dr did not seem discouraged. Indeed, he endeavoured to strike up a conversation with the creature.
‘I must say I admire the sheen of your bodywork,’ he said, chattily. ‘On that, er, metal skirt you’re wearing. These half-globes. How do you get them so polished-looking? ’
‘IT ’S LAMINATE! IT’S LAM-IN-ATE!’
‘Is it? I see. Very interesting. Although I wonder if it’s altogether manly to be, you know - wearing a skirt?’
‘A SKIRT MINE AINT!’ responded the cyborg in outraged mechanical tones.
‘I stand corrected. Clearly not a skirt. Evidently something much more masculine. Now, I can see the purpose of that eye-stalk, and of that laser-beam weapon thing you got there. But what’s the point of that whisk-like protuberance on the left? Is it for the stirring of eggs and suchlike?
‘AFFIRMATIVE!’
‘It’s certainly a large one,’ said the Dr, admiringly. ‘I’m sure you could stir three or even four eggs simultaneously with that protuberance.’
The Garlek shuddered, and screeched. ‘EGG-STIRRING—EIGHT! EGGS!-STIR!-RING!-EIGHT! ’
‘As many as eight at one go?’ asked the Dr. ‘Really? How interesting. I’m sure you have several most delicious recipes for eggs. Your creator, after all, is the famous Stavros Pastapopolos.’
The conversation seemed to dry up for a bit.
‘Cake mix?’ the Dr tried. ‘I mean, I suppose as well as whisking eggs you could whisk up some lovely cake mixture with that whisk?’
‘AFFIRMATIVE!’ barked the Garlek.
‘Do you know my favourite bit of baking cakes?’ the Dr asked. ‘Licking the mixture off the whisk afterwards. Getting your tongue in between the metal wires of the whisk to lick off all the . . .’
This seemed to make the Garlek very cross indeed. ‘LICKS TERMINATE!’ it shrieked. ‘LICKS TER-MIN-ATE !’
‘Alright, keep your hair on,’ said the Dr. ‘I daresay Stavros doesn’t permit people to lick the bowl, or the whisk, in his kitchen.’
‘He’s pretty mean, that Stavros,’ Linn agreed. ‘I mean to say. Wanting to turn us into hideous half-garlic monstrosities. That’s pure meanness, I’d say.’
‘EXTRA MEAN!’ agreed the cyborg, with pride, adding at once ‘WAIT!’
We had arrived at the top of a staircase, leading down into the bowels of the complex. ‘So what do we do now?’ asked the Dr. ‘I mean, I’m sure a staircase isn’t going to stop you. I’m assuming that you’re fitted with some kind of stair-floaty-uppy-downy device?’
‘AFFIRMATIVE!’
‘Is that fitted as standard, then? Or does that come as a fitted extra?’
‘EXTRAS INNATE,’ screeched the metal being, for some reason getting very excited, and quivering from side to side on its fat round base. ‘EX-TRAS INNATE! EX-TRAS INN-ATE!’
‘So in effect,’ said the Dr, ‘you can fly?’
‘DETERMINATE!’ the creature cried. ‘-edly’ it added, and to prove its point it lifted from the floor and floated through the air.
It shepherded us down the stairs and into a cluttered laboratory; exactly the sort of space you might associate with an evil dictator with a penchant for unspeakable experimentation. There were benches cluttered with all sorts of test-tube-racks, microscopes, colanders, chopping boards and sabatier knives. There were large microwave ovens, and away at the back were a series of glass tanks lit with a sickly green light. Inside these strange and monstrous creatures slithered and slid. I had no desire to examine it too closely, and indeed I was not given the chance.
A second Garlek was standing to attention over by one of the benches, and the first Garlek marched us over to this.
‘Well,’ said the Dr. ‘This is - this is not good.’
‘Indeed not,’ I agreed. ‘What can we do?’
‘Do?’ came Stavros’s voice. ‘You can get transmuted into Garleks, innit.’ He wheeled out of the shadows and into the centre of the laboratory.
‘How did you get down here so quickly?’ the Dr demanded.
‘I took the service elevator, innit,’ said Stavros. ‘You! Garlek number one!’
The Garlek that had escorted us flipped its egg-whisk up in salute.
‘You can go, innit. Go back to the surface and coordinate an attack upon the Dhals. I want ever-a-one of them slottered, OK?’
‘AFFIRMATIVE!’ shrieked the Garlek. It wheeled about and scooted away, leaving us with the evil genius, the second Garlek, and a laboratory full of dangerous implements.
‘Right,’ said the Dr, eyeing Garlek number two nervously. ‘So, here we are.’
‘What I wanna know,’ said Stavros, lighting up a cigarette, ‘is what you doing here, innit.’
‘Well, we were just passing through, you know . . .’ said the Dr, vaguely.
‘Passing through?’ asked Stavros.
‘Yes.’
‘On your way
somewhere?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And not, I-dunno, sent here by the Council of Time Gennlemen to destroy my Garleks before they can dominate the galaxy, innit?’
‘Oo no,’ said the Dr, glancing nervously at Garlek number two. ‘Nothing like that.’
‘Cause, you see,’ said Stavros, ‘that would suggest to me that my Garleks are destined to become the greatest threat the galaxy has ever seen. Innit.’
‘We-e-ll,’ said the Dr. ‘I’m not sure I’d go quite that far—’
‘It’d be pretty gratifying to me to think so,’ said Stavros.
‘Excuse me, Mr Stavros, sir?’ put in Linn.
‘Chef, innit,’ said Stavros.
‘Chef, yes. Excuse me, chef. I was just wondering. Why are you so dedicated to evil? I mean, why not give good a go? Couldn’t your Garleks be just as effective as forces for good?’
‘Good—is just another word for bland,’ said Stavros, dismissively. ‘You wanna boil all the bitterness out of my Garleks, do you? Nah. Now, enough chatting, innit. Time to turn you all into half-clove monstrosities, destroy your free will, fit you with cyborg exoskeletons and turn you loose upon the world filled with hate and the desire to destroy. Innit.’
‘Or else?’ asked the Dr.
‘What you mean, or else? Or else I’ll get my Garlek there to blast you with its death-gas of concentrated garlic-essence and no mistake. You die nasty that way, I assure you, innit.’ He gestured towards the Garlek with his cigarette. ‘You better do as I say,’ he concluded.
The Dr glanced at the Garlek once again. ‘Hold on a second,’ he said.
He walked briskly up the death-cyborg. ‘No, Doctor,’ I cried out. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Don’t fret Prosy,’ he declared.
‘But Doctor! It’ll destroy you!’
But heedless of my warning the Dr was reaching out with his right hand to grasp the death-gun stalk of the Garlek. I couldn’t watch: I closed my eyes.