by Rhys Hughes
The balloon soared higher, the sea gave way to land, mountains thrust up their peaks like free jazz triangles, and the low pressure began to give Castor the same sort of headache as cheap red wine, but without the fuss of uncorking. Many of these mountains were crowned with crumbling castles, malign gothic confections fused to the rock, and figures in hooded cloaks roamed the battlements, pointing at the balloon in surprise and dismay.
Once a strange flapping machine that seemed a combination of vulture and bee spiralled up from a tower and flew alongside Castor. Then it turned and punctured his canopy with a great artificial sting, pumping yellow venom through clear tubes before disengaging and plummeting to the ground with folded wings, littering an icy valley with splinters of wood and scraps of fabric. Castor felt no sympathy. His main concern was for his own survival.
The balloon began to lose height and there was no ballast in the basket to toss over the side. Down it drifted, closer to the serrated peaks, closer to the impossibly decadent castles, and Castor felt his time was up at last. But then he passed over a particularly sharp ridge and noticed the crater below, a crater filled with a lake. On the shores of this lake stood a circular city, a collection of narrow houses with tall chimneys. All was not yet lost!
The basket touched down in the cold waters of the lake and the deflated canopy settled next to it. Castor used his penknife to cut the cords binding the basket to the now useless mass of silk, hard work indeed, and when it was finally free he leaned over the side and paddled to dry land with his bare hands. He approached a rotting wooden jetty, snatched hold of a dangling knotted rope, pulled the basket against a thick mooring pole and climbed up.
There was nobody in sight. Castor called out a general greeting but received no reply. He shrugged and went to explore the bizarre city. He passed a kiosk that sold cigarettes but did not spend any of his money there, preferring to continue up a cobbled street to a public square where some sort of ceremony was taking place. Men and women stood in a ring around a black vertical structure that he eventually identified as a large water clock.
He asked the nearest person, “What’s going on?”
The reply was sorrowful. “We’re waiting for rain. Our clock has been empty for almost a year and until it fills up again we can’t tell what hour it is. Time has stopped in our city, I’m sorry to say, and we are helpless to do anything about it, and in fact we can’t even move.”
Castor said, “Why don’t you fetch a bucket of water from the lake to fill the clock? Surely any liquid will do?”
“How can any of us walk to the lake? Time has stopped and thus all motion is impossible. Don’t you know anything about physics? Without time there is no movement: in fact TIME is nothing more than MOVEMENT. Without movement, there is no going anywhere!”
“I’ll fetch water for you,” offered Castor.
“Nonsense! If lying wasn’t impossible without time I’d call you a liar and slap your lying cheeks, you monster!”
“But you are moving right now, your lips anyway.”
“No I’m not. Stuff like that is an illusion. The thing that depresses me is that we’re going to have to wait for all eternity because rain can’t fall in a place where there’s no time. What a dilemma!”
“I’ll resolve it for you,” announced Castor.
Since leaving Porthcawl, he hadn’t relieved himself once and now his bladder was painfully full. He pushed through the immobile crowd, reached the side of the water clock and regarded the service ladder pegged to the side. Climbing this, he straddled the opening at the top of the device, unbuttoned his trousers and ensured that the reservoir was no longer dry. There was a sudden shifting of gears, a grind of wheels, jerk of a minute hand.
The crowd gasped. “Time has been restarted!”
Castor climbed down amid cheers. Strong hands patted him on the back and a portly man in bursting clothes thrust his red face at him. “How may we ever repay you? I’m the unofficial ruler and thus in a position to give you the freedom of the city, and so I hereby do, with all the traditional benefits, such as free use of public transport, pickles and concubines.”
“I accept the honour,” announced Castor.
“Let us repair to the nearest tavern at once and joyfully slide many beers in your direction, not forgetting a chip supper!”
“Sir, you are an astute judge of character!” declared Castor. “But I must point out that the amount of fluid I contributed to the clock will allow it to run for a few hours at most. I base this judgement on complex mental calculations of volume and pressure that I made during the act.”
“In those situations I usually just whistle,” returned the ruler. “You truly are a prodigy. But the solution is obvious!”
He shouted out a few instructions and the crowd formed an orderly queue. One by one they climbed the clock and followed Castor’s example, filling the device to the brim with highly pressurised kidney juice. Now the clock was guaranteed to keep going for many months, if not years. The ruler led Castor out of the square along an alley and through an archway into a courtyard. At the end of the courtyard stood a venerable, shadowy tavern.
Castor entered and took a seat in the common room. Perching opposite him, the ruler ordered beer and chips. The tavern was almost deserted. A musician sat on a stool in the corner, discordantly plucking at an enormous lute with twenty strings. Before the ruler could make any remarks, a buxom serving girl hurried up with two enormous jugs. Castor accepted the beer and took a deep gulp gratefully. A big bowl of chips followed shortly.
“Your first time in Chaud-Mellé?” asked the ruler.
“Is that the name of this city? I’ve never heard of it. Are we still in Europe? I arrived by free balloon and don’t have my passport. But to answer your question properly, yes I’m a newcomer, and before you wonder if my purpose is business or pleasure, I left Wales to buy cigarettes.”
“We are not quite in the Europe you know,” explained the ruler, “but occupy a buffer zone between Earth and Happenstance, a planet that recently collided with our world and got stuck to it. Don’t look so distraught! The impact was very mild and nobody noticed who didn’t see it occur. But there were other effects. Weather patterns were seriously disrupted.”
“Is that why you don’t get much rain these days?”
“Exactly. When our water clock went dry, we literally ran out of time. So you came along at the right moment!”
“Why not invest in mechanical timepieces?”
The ruler grimaced. “The situation is tragic. Chaud-Mellé was once famed for its clock towers, hundreds and hundreds of them, and the precisely timed gothic excesses and tabulated debaucheries they made possible. But now we are left with just one clepsydra (the correct term for a water clock) and are no superior to any ordinary Alpine settlement full of yodellers and sausages! This has nothing to do with the collision but was our own fault.”
“What happened?” wondered Castor.
“We decided to relocate the city on a whim. It was already surrounded by tall mountains, but they weren’t quite high enough for our sense of the melodramatic, so we contacted the Carnacki Moving Company to transport our buildings, bridges and roads a hundred or so miles north, into the heart of a more impressive range, but most of the structures went missing during the actual move and then the firm went bust and we lost our right to compensation. We were left with maybe 10% of our original city and what remained was all jumbled up and scratched. We truly were treated in a shoddy fashion!”
Castor nodded and finished his beer. The ruler was attentive and ordered him another. “Moving is always a stressful experience,” said Castor, “and ranks with marital breakup and toothache.”
The ruler was bitter. “In a warehouse somewhere, our buildings are gathering dust: the opera house, the university, the prison, the hothouses where we harvested Forgetfulness Honey, not to mention the public parks and squares with fountains, all covered by tarpaulin and unloved!”
“How did you harvest Fo
rgetfulness Honey?” asked Castor.
“I don’t rightly recall. All I remember are those strange giant bees that look like gliders... Anyway, there’s no point crying over the past: it has never cried over me, at least not to my present knowledge!”
“Why are you the unofficial ruler of Chaude-Mellé?”
“Because I’m the head of the most secret society in the city – so secret I’m not sure who the other members are – or even if there are any – and my proper title is the Impotentate of the Platinum Dawn. But you can address me by my real name, Jubjub Loos, like one of my close friends.”
“Will I get to be on such familiar terms with you?”
“That depends how long you stay.”
“I was just passing through,” said Castor, “but I’ll be glad to break my trip for a couple of luxurious months here.”
“Good man,” said Jubjub, and he called for more beer.
Castor drank himself into a stupor and woke, blinking, in morning sunlight in a nicely furnished room on the second floor of the tavern. A little bell stood on a low table next to his comfortable bed and almost by instinct he reached out and rang it. Breakfast was instantly brought to him by a semi-naked maiden who also soothed his hungover brow. After another short sleep and a hot bath he dressed in the fine clothes that had been left for him.
He descended into the street and was applauded by a large crowd of people but his progress wasn’t hampered in any way. Wherever he went people saluted him, called out compliments or offered him their bodies for sexual purposes. Wandering into the market he emerged with bags of free fruit that had been thrust upon him. In a small restaurant he ordered coffee and a light snack and was given wine and a big complicated meal instead, for free.
He waddled out of the restaurant, burping all the way, and decided to look for a quiet place, maybe a leafy park, where he might digest his food in peace. Keeping to the less obvious alleyways he managed to avoid too much attention until he was compelled to cross the Rubellastrasse, one of the main arteries of the city. A sedan chair that was approaching suddenly stopped, its door opened and Jubjub himself jumped out with a very low bow.
“My vehicle is at your service. I will walk!”
“I don’t need it, thanks,” said Castor, but felt he had no choice. He climbed into the box and allowed the runners who carried it to take him on a circuit around the city until they were exhausted. Then he disembarked at a sweet shop and filled his pockets with lollipops and toffees.
Feeling bloated beyond belief, he entered a sauna and had his stomach cramps massaged away by three women, a redhead, blonde and brunette. He remembered that his main objective was to buy cigarettes, but he decided to complete that task some other day. It was too relaxing here. Relaxing and strangely stimulating… One of those wonderful paradoxes again!
Castor remained in Chaud-Mellé for almost six weeks before things began to go wrong. People around him became less accommodating, waiters and concubines grew surly and muttered about payment, the sedan chair runners made excuses for not carrying him, citing sprained ankles and blisters. At last he decided to lodge a complaint with the Impotentate. He walked to the Temple of the Platinum Dawn and knocked loudly on the door.
Jubjub answered in person. He appeared to have no office staff. He regarded Castor with a mixture of regret and rage.
“I thought I had the freedom of the city!” snapped Castor.
“You did, I mean you do,” replied Jubjub, “but there has been a small problem, a change, an unforeseen consequence. In short, you are no longer as welcome here as once you were. Oh, we continue to honour you – it’s our duty – but do so without any love, in fact we have only malice in our hearts now. Life has been comfortable enough for you, I dare say, in the past six weeks. But for the rest of us things have gone rather badly. There has been a severe economic downturn, the stock market has crashed, and the crime rate is soaring.”
“None of that is my fault!” protested Castor.
“I assure you that it is. When you urinated into the water clock, and thereby set an example that we all followed, you contaminated the actual seconds, minutes and hours by which this city lives. Life in Chaud-Mellé recently has (for want of a less vulgar word) been pretty pissy.”
“But this is weird! Liquid is liquid, surely?”
Jubjub shook his head. “That’s not the case here. Thanks to you, we have been using smelly yellow time instead of the clean blue kind. Our businesses are failing as a result. Everything has got worse.”
Castor Jenkins chewed his lower lip. “It’s probably best if I depart Chaud-Mellé and resume my original quest. I’ll bid you farewell and leave you alone. But can you give me any advice about the lands that lie to the east?”
Jubjub pulled at his chin. “My knowledge is vague. Why don’t you head west and return home instead?”
“I want to buy cigarettes,” said Castor, “and I can’t go back empty handed. But I would like to have some idea of what awaits me beyond the mountains.”
“Very well. Before you enter Happenstance proper, you must cross the Cheese and Biscuits Empire, a vast realm north of the Grape Lands. I know nothing about its government or people. There is a precarious path that will take you from Chaud-Mellé as far as the Sorbet Glacier. Then you must brave the ice and yodelling until you reach the first Gouda Gate. That’s all I know.”
Castor smiled. “Good enough. Now I will equip myself for the voyage and leave you in peace.”
He took final advantage of his status and obtained new hiking boots, a rucksack, warm clothing and food from the appropriate shops without spending a single coin. But no maps were available anywhere and it was clear that few people, if any at all, had ventured east from the city. Castor set off with a confident stride. He passed through the thin outskirts of Chaud-Mellé, climbed the steep side of the crater and located the start of the narrow path.
The weather remained good and the sun set in a display of rich orange and purple behind him, slopping colour over the snowy peaks on all sides, so that he stopped to turn and watch. Then he continued in the fading light but storm clouds took advantage of the dusk to sneak up. Rain and more rain! He sheltered under an overhang, wrapped himself tight in his heavy coat and slumbered fitfully. In the morning he was cramped and sore. Onwards he went in dampened spirits.
And so his journey grew less enjoyable with each passing day. Finally he topped a rise and peered down at an immense wedge of lemon ice. The Sorbet Glacier! Stumbling down the path, he reached the smooth surface just as a figure stepped onto it from the other direction. This figure approached rapidly, a man carrying a case on a strap over his shoulder, and Castor shouted an amazed greeting. He recognised the stranger, a man called the Postmodern Mariner, having met him on two separate occasions in the past.
They paused in the middle of the glacier and shook hands. “Where are you going?” they asked each other.
The Postmodern Mariner answered first, “My destination is Wales, the town of Porthcawl in fact. There’s a rumour that the mating cry of a plesiosaurus was recently heard on a night with poor visibility. I want to investigate and maybe write a short article about it.”
“Permit me to save you the effort,” Castor said.
And he explained that the cry of the plesiosaurus was nothing more than the lonely sound of a foghorn. The Postmodern Mariner reached into his pocket for a pencil and notebook, squinted at a list and ticked off the top item with a sigh. “In that case, I’m going to Chaud-Mellé for some vegetables, bread, chocolate, coffee and toothpaste.” He struggled to read his own handwriting. “And a packet of lentils. What does that say?”
Castor peered at the list. “Paprika, I think, or kraken…”
“I sometimes doubt that supernatural sea creatures exist at all! My job is a very dispiriting one!”
Castor was sympathetic. “I had an encounter with a triton a few months ago. Please don’t give up yet!”
“Where are you headed?” the Postmodern Mar
iner asked.
“To the Cheese and Biscuits Empire. I know nothing about it and can’t even be sure if it’s a kingdom or a republic.”
The Postmodern Mariner pursed his lips. “A long and difficult journey by foot, over many glaciers much worse than this one, between mountains infested with brigands, through forests full of creatures that even the gnoles have nightmares about, and over swamps that smell like the armpits of an octopus. Do you have some other form of transportation you might use? A helicopter for example?”
“I don’t,” Castor admitted.
“How about a motorbike fitted with Gatling guns?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“A mechanical riding spider with tungsten knees?”
“Just my own legs.”
The Postmodern Mariner blinked and puffed out his cheeks. Then he said, “In that case, why not take the Sea Train?”
“What’s that?” asked Castor.
“A vehicle originally invented in Brazil to carry mermaids between different subaquatic carnivals.”
“But we’re inland,” protested Castor.
“You don’t understand. The Sea Train doesn’t just run under the sea, it can go anywhere. The name refers to how it’s constructed. It’s made from solidified sea water.”
“How bizarre,” commented Castor.
“The nearest Sea Train station is at the far end of this glacier. The next express is due twenty minutes from now. That will take you directly to Rysnap, the capital of the Cheese and Biscuits Empire, skirting all the perils on the way. It’s free to ride, but once you arrive in Rysnap you’ll have to offer the Gross Fondoo something in return.”
“Is the Gross Fondoo the melted – I mean elected – ruler?”
“Yes, he’s the big cheese. But ruling is only one of his hobbies. He does other things as well and when he gets angry his brow throbs with smelly blue veins. He likes to spread himself around.”