Theatre of the Gods

by M. Suddain

  ‘I just want to know if …’ Fabrigas sighed heavily, ‘… if my mission will be successful.’

  Shake shake shake.

  ‘… Ask me later,’ said the Magic Eighth Ball.

  ‘Oh, for the love of …’

  Sometimes Fabrigas felt entirely alone in a dim and superstitious Empire. Even with all that science had done for them, the cities that hung like burning crowns in space, the airships that took them flying off to where they wished to go, they still preferred to believe that the paw of a now-extinct creature called the rabbit would bring them luck.

  ‘Did it bring the poor rabbit any luck?’ said Fabrigas.

  ‘… All signs point to maybe.’

  ‘What kind of answer is this?’

  ‘Look,’ the Magic Eighth broke from his trance briefly, ‘I can’t tell the belly spirits what to say, I just read what it says on the ball. That is what my papa taught me, and his papa before him, and his papa –’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, we all have papas.’

  The Magic Eighth paused, mouth open, as if about to speak, but then did not, and for a second Fabrigas thought he looked as frozen as his own photograph. Fabrigas felt a chill in the small hut.

  ‘Yes … You were saying?’

  Silence from the Magic Eighth. And then when he finally did speak, the voice which crawled out of his mouth was not his own, and his eyes looked drained of life.

  ‘Fabrigas. Receive us. Do you know us? We know you. Over.’

  Fabrigas paused, choked a little. ‘I … beg your pardon?’

  The Magic Eighth said nothing.

  ‘I … do not think we’ve met,’ croaked the old-beard. ‘Have we met?’

  Nothing for a long while. The Magic Eighth was so still that even his fat had stopped wobbling. Then …

  ‘Fabrigas. Receive us. We are Dark Hand. You know us. We gave you a letter and a book. We gave you protection against great enemies. We are speaking with you through this man at enormous risk and at a frequency which only you can perceive.’

  ‘I’m … I’m present.’

  ‘You are present. But not willing. Do not give in to your own schemes and misgivings. There is a new plot against you. An ambush at the crossing. Many dead if you aren’t prepared. Over.’

  The old man sighed.

  ‘No misgivings. Here is your cosmic reading: you will still go on your mission. No error. You will fulfil your promise to us. You will meet a child. This child has a file. It is mathematically certain that you will meet. So much depends on this equation that it is impossible to express it.’

  ‘But I –’

  ‘No interruptions. Not until we say “over”. There is a plot to rule the universe. We are working to stop this plot. This child you will meet travels with a file containing details of the plot. You must protect this child and bring the file to our friends, the Immortals. Bringing the file to them is the only way to stop the plot. We will help you along the way where we can. But to fail in this mission will endanger both our species, and indeed every species. Over.’

  ‘Well, I fully intend to –’

  ‘No you do not. We know your mind. You forget.’ The temperature in the tent had fallen to just above freezing, while the Magic Eighth had risen several inches off his prognostication mat. He floated rigid in the air, yet still spoke in that calm, measured voice.

  ‘We know what your intentions are. Let us settle this for eternity.’ The Magic Eighth raised one arm, stiffly, plucked two pebbles from an ornamental bowl, one black, one white, and placed them on the straw mat before the old man. ‘Now is the time to choose the course of the rest of your life. If you wish to accept the destiny life has chosen for you, pick up the black pebble. If you wish to decline this mission and return to a peaceful life, choose white. Choose. Over.’

  And the old man did. He picked up the white pebble from the mat and held it in his palm before the fat astrologer and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just really very tired.’

  ‘Then it is decided. You have chosen black. Over.’

  ‘Wait, that’s not the one I … I wanted to choose white. Let me do it over. Over.’

  ‘You don’t need to say “over”. It will change nothing, but very well, choose again. Over.’

  This time the old man was very careful to choose the white pebble. The pebble of tranquillity.

  ‘Black. Another excellent choice. Over.’

  ‘You are tricking me, mystery-men! You know I want white.’

  ‘No trick. We know what you mean to do, and you will do it every time. You are in control. It is a mathematical certainty. Why are you trying to separate this pebble from all the other events in your life? You must release your hold. Dissolve, become new. Surrender to the autonomous dynamics of your primal material. We covered this already. Over.’ And Fabrigas had no answer.

  ‘The child will come aboard with the file. You will speak to an entity called Blue Lantern. He will give further instructions. That is all for now. We hope this has been enlightening. Over.’

  And then the Magic Eighth returned to his own mind and said, ‘Where was I? Something about sand lizards. Who’s been messing with my pebbles?’

  Fabrigas quickly paid the man. The fat oracle extended a chubby finger to the shelf stacked with Eighth Balls and said, ‘Would you like to purchase your very own M8B?’

  He did not.

  Fabrigas stumbled out to the docks where a crowd of oily souls began to shout, ‘There he is! It’s Fabrigas! What-ho! What news from the belly spirits?!’

  Fabrigas smiled faintly, tried his best to give a reassuring wave. He did not understand why these beings – whom he’d last heard from so long ago he’d grown to believe they’d always been imaginary – would contact him now. He didn’t know any children. He hated children. And he did not need a magic ball to help him. He could tell from events in the spheromancer’s hut that it would take more than balls to get him to the next universe.

  Oh, ev’ry rose she has a thorn,

  Like ev’ry night she has a dawn,

  And pirates sing a deathly song,

  Oh, ear-ly in the mor-ning.

  Oh, ev’ry rose she has a thorn,

  Like ev-a-ry rooster sings the morn,

  And I’ll be home, it won’t be long,

  You’ll see me in the mor-ning.

  ‘Each Rose, She Has a Thorn’ – traditional shanty

  THE NECRONAUT

  A good voyage depends upon a good ship, for a poor crew can survive on a good ship, but even a good crew stands little chance on a poor one. A good ship is light but sturdy, its fasts and stays are all in good repair, and its solar sails have no micro-tears or wrinkles. A good ship has a well-tuned propulsion system and all the latest navigational equipment. It has a nose-cone full of well-trained anti-crash bats, not just budgies painted black to look like bats (as some unscrupulous operators have been known to provide). A good ship is a steady ship. A good ship carries no surprises, but holds all hopes.

  This ship, the one selected by M. Francisco Fabrigas for his voyage to the Interior, was not, based upon appearances, a good ship.

  The expedition’s naval engineers had been aghast when they first saw the vessel he had selected. His fleet commander, a man called Descharge, had shaken his head in disbelief. Fabrigas had been offered his choice of the finest naval vessels; the one he had chosen was a poorly converted former pirate ship. It was a deep-space galleon, in the Gothic style, a nugget of steel with a solar-sail array and a rear magnet battery. These were admittedly well-to-do pirates, the kind the Queen might call ‘open-sea prospectors’. The officer decks were grandly decorated with marble, gold, ornate cornices and chandeliers made from silver skulls and bones. The ship had a semi-automated flight deck and navigation centre, a lounge, a galley, a split-level ‘deck’ under a reinforced glass shield. The life-support systems were semi-automated to regulate air and light according to an artificial cycle of days and nights. But the lower decks were a were-rabbit’s warren of tubes and s
teel tunnels. They had been freshly painted, yes, but there was still the faint smell of booze, and bloodstains in some of the rooms, and there were secret compartments that you could fall into if you accidentally leaned against the wrong panel. It was a terrifying ship.

  The ship was not powerful, or well gunned, but it was agile, simply built and strong. Fabrigas needed a ship sturdy enough to take his new Residual Inter-universal Perpetuating Solenoid (RIPS) engine, the engine he’d invented to propel a ship into the next universe. It wasn’t that the RIPS was large; in fact, it was less than the size of a loaf of bread. But this particular version was very, very, very heavy. It contained such a density of dark ooze that it had added almost another eighth to the weight of the ship.

  The engine was quite similar to the one Fabrigas had first sketched on the back of a napkin all those centuries ago, but he had made a great number of modifications to it, adding innovations born from advances in dark-energy mechanics, micro-engineering, and craftierthan-light technology. He had solved some of the problems, he hoped, encountered by the foreign empires who had stolen plans for his engine and attempted to recreate it. Namely: Hex Permanence, Sudden Explosion Phenomenon, Crew Disappearance Syndrome and post-Jump vomitings. He had designed the most advanced engine in the universe for arguably one of the least advanced ships.

  The crew that had been attracted to this mission by the newspaper adverts were likely to be unwholesome specimens: naval sailors fresh from court martial, or prisoners sentenced to death for theft, fraud or murder, whose only remaining chance was to die in space with honour. Or they’d be spies for the Queen. But most would be slave children lent by Her Majesty from her factories. ‘Slaveys’, as they were called. So, to sum up: a rancid former pirate ship staffed by children and criminals and spies and captained by an angry teenager. ‘It is almost as if he wants to fail,’ spat Commander Descharge.

  To cap it off, his ship was called the Owl IV. The Owl! The stupidest, most dim-witted bird in the universe, and an emblem of misfortune at sea. On inspection day he’d found his pilot, young Lambestyo, at the docks, standing by his new ship and squinting.

  ‘This is a horrible boat.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Fabrigas. ‘But it is inconspicuous and strong and very hard to blow up. You’ll see.’

  ‘The owl is a stupid bird,’ said the Necronaut.

  Fabrigas nodded. The pilot adjusted his gun belts. The old man couldn’t help but notice that he was glancing around nervously. ‘And I want the name changed. I want the ship to have a strong name. I want it to be called the Necronaut. Yes.’

  ‘Like you?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You want the ship to be named after you?’

  ‘I am the captain. And I want a raise,’ said the captain. ‘My fee has doubled.’

  Fabrigas shook his head and sighed. ‘I’ll change the name. I frankly don’t care. And if you want a raise I’ll happily take you to the Queen and you can ask her.’

  ‘I’m not scared of any queen. I got this from a queen,’ and he pulled away his collar to show a fine, purplish scar. ‘You ask her. Double what we agreed and half up front.’ Then he’d looked up at the Owl one last time, spat on the ground and stalked off.

  *

  Now, a month later, it was launch day and Captain Lambestyo, aka the Necronaut, had failed to show up to pilot his ship, the Necronaut.

  Fabrigas stood on the dock near his new vessel and noted that his official send-off consisted of a dour public bird reading a short note from the Queen, and a military brass quartet playing a tune called ‘Wishin’ You Well’. And yes, I said ‘public bird’. Since there were thousands of missions every day requiring some kind of well-wishing from her, and since she didn’t have nearly enough public officials to go around, the Queen had decreed that a vast army of parrots be bred and trained to read her messages at events.

  ‘Queen Gargoylas X, 3,987th monarch of the line of Garamond, salutes you proud souls and wishes you well on your mission to bring back this raw good and/or product.’

  His ship was dwarfed by the battle fleet which was to accompany them. Her Majesty’s Navy had mustered a formidable fleet: ten thousand destroyers, dreadnoughts, battleships, cruisers, floating fortresses and torpedo boats, as well as armoured carriers capable of scrambling a hornet’s nest of radio-operated drones and manned fighters. They hung like an insect army against the shining spheres.

  ‘It is quite an impressive sight, is it not?’ said Carrofax.

  ‘It is a pointless display,’ said Fabrigas. ‘When we have crossed over and are in the Ghastly Blank, the space between universes, no amount of guns will save us. We will be blind, unable to see our attackers. The best chance you have is to be tiny and silent. That is why I came here alone in a saucer craft.’

  Fabrigas heard the whizz of knee-servos and he turned to find Commander Descharge, marching towards him, accompanied by two young officers. The commander gave a neat bow and a wolfish smile. ‘Again, a curious ship you’ve chosen. It is not too late to transfer to one of our armoured frigates. They are well gunned and comfortable.’

  ‘I am comfortable with my choice,’ replied Fabrigas. ‘I would prefer it if my crew survived the trip.’

  ‘Well, you do not have to worry about that. Our fleet will form a ring of steel around you. Only the Pope himself could penetrate it. And when our mission is complete I will return and receive my appointment as Supreme Imperial Commander.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said one of the young officers. Fabrigas turned his sleepy gaze towards the officer, then up towards the fleet. ‘Well. We will see how steely your ring is when we come to make the crossing,’ he said.

  ‘And your pilot?’ Descharge smiled thinly. ‘He is … where?’

  ‘He will arrive. Presently.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The commander pulled on his gloves. ‘We were all astonished to discover that you’d spent most of your procurement budget on a navy deserter. A criminal, and a teenager. Still, you probably saved his life. If he wasn’t protected by your appointment I would have to hang him.’

  ‘Would you and all?’

  ‘Most certainly. Our battle fleet will only protect him until the mission is complete. Then he’ll have to face trial.’

  ‘A battle fleet is no protection in the Hex.’

  ‘The Hex?’

  ‘The Hex, the Ghastly Blank, the space between. When you pass through the membrane of this reality and into the Hex you find yourself temporarily blind, surrounded on all sides by whiteness, at the mercy of whatever beasts or armies wait there.’

  ‘Indeed. Though according to your testimony you’ve never seen the Hex, have you?’

  ‘No, I was knocked unconscious during my crossing.’

  ‘So how were you able to conclude that you were in another universe?’

  ‘Through observation. I could see it immediately with my own eyes.’

  Descharge smirked and threw a glance towards his young companions, who were stifling laughs behind their hands. ‘Well. Whatever the case, I look forward to greeting this pilot of yours. Should he ever … materialise.’

  ‘He will show.’

  ‘… and though you may face impediments and obstacles various in nature,’ the parrot continued, ‘the Queen wishes upon you all the fortune and goodwill she can muster.’

  Somewhere along the docks a roar went up. A fight of some kind had broken out in the crowd. Fabrigas saw the thick mass move, then part, and a lone figure fell out onto the boards. The crowd roared. Fabrigas and Descharge saw the figure stand unsteadily, straighten its gun belts, then jog casually towards them.

  ‘Good day,’ said Lambestyo as he huffed past Fabrigas and up the gangplank. He passed the bosun, a man-mountain: ‘Tend to those gentlemen, will you?’ Some distance behind him, another group of men broke out onto the docks. Two wore bailiffs’ britches, and the rest, much larger, carried weapons. The bosun stopped the group at the plank’s foot, saying, ‘Now what business could you gentlemen be having o
n one of Her Majesty’s own ships?’

  ‘Your captain, sir, owes us for gambling debts, and we are here to seek settlement!’

  ‘Well, well,’ said the giant, whose hands looked as if they could wrap themselves around a cannon’s neck. ‘The way I see it, you have three problems. First, this is Her Majesty’s vessel, and it is illegal for any subject to board without her permission. Second, the captain is a busy man and has to prepare for a long journey. And third,’ and here the bosun dropped his giant head towards the men – who all leaned back as one – lowered his voice to a rumble, and said, ‘I don’t want you to.’

  The men stepped away from the plank’s foot to confer and then decided that perhaps the captain’s debts were small enough to wait until he returned. Commander Descharge smiled, bemused. His bird-like head rolled in its neck socket and his wide, cold eyes surveyed the scene. Then he looked to the old man and said, ‘Just stay close to the fleet and try to keep out of trouble.’ And with that the commander and his two officers strode away to their own ship, arms behind their back, the motors in their knees and ankles playing a mournful dirge.

  Finally, the band played ‘Nearer My God to Thee’, then gathered their horns, drums, harps and vibraphones, and left. Fabrigas mounted the catwalk to his ship. He found the captain, stalking the decks.

  ‘So. You changed your mind about the trip?’

  ‘After due thought,’ said the captain, ‘and taking all points of views into consideration, I have decided to accept your terms of payment.’

  Fabrigas looked back towards the docks where the shimmering wall of waving metal human arms and gleaming eyes looked much like a great ocean wave about to crash upon them.

  STRANGERS AND STRANGENESS

  Two strangers met in Carnassus, in a smoke-filled tea house, on the day the expedition was to depart. Their meeting brought considerably less attention, but was no less vital to the outcome of the voyage to the next universe.