Theatre of the Gods

by M. Suddain

  That is all I want to write because my arm is tired.

  *

  From the journal of M. Francisco Fabrigas

  These are dark times. We have been sent off course by means of a practical joke and are now struggling to catch up with our fleet. We are in a dark region of Interspace and the men want me dead. I should probably not have described my engine using the metaphor of a violent death, even if life itself – that is, the idea that our life is divided up into a series of discrete events, one following after the other from birth to death – is itself no more than a useful metaphor. I should have said that my engine was like a chicken or something. Fortunately, certain chilling events over the past few days have arrived to distract the men from mutiny.

  We passed today through a strange energy cloud of unknown composition and instantly all the slave children became ‘possessed’. It was only the juveniles, a fact I cannot explain. In their bunk rooms below decks, beds were floating, eyes were bulging, heads were spinning, bitter excrescence was oozing from juvenile orifices, the tiny pink tongues were lolling and gabbling in a dialect only Carrofax, with his superior education in languages, could comprehend:

  ‘We are legion.

  ‘You are damned.

  ‘We come here from the hinters where we found not what we sought,’ they said. Among other things.

  I went to the captain’s cabin to alert him and found him floating in the air and saying, ‘Do not come into these reaches.

  ‘Do not knock upon this hatch.

  ‘You are on a ship of fools,

  ‘Bounded for hell.

  ‘Pain shall be your sustenance,

  ‘Fear, your biscuit,

  ‘Peace, your enemy.’

  So that happened. I had to deal with the situation myself by painting more hexagrams.

  When at last it was all over the children slumbered like soldiers and the walls were covered in purple excremental goo and automatic poems scrawled in juvenile blood. It certainly wasn’t a pleasant scene. The captain wandered down for a look, then shrugged and returned to his room. Nothing seems to bother him. Although I have perceived his mood darkening. This is the nature of these parts.

  Because we have strayed from the fleet we were boarded by Royal Customs and Enforcement officers near Balfour. They said it was to hunt for an escaped girl and a possible accomplice. The bosun whispered to the captain, ‘Let us hope they don’t find the piñatas,’ which I did not understand. Of course we have no piñatas. Then the inspectors lined up all the children and examined them. The chief looked into every child’s face and held up a swatch of a particular shade of green for comparison, but none of the children’s faces matched the shade, except for a boy called Sneevlit who suffers from the sea-walms, and he was excused. Having made a lazy search of the ship, they left.

  That is the last contact we will have with the empires. We have left the spheres of civilisation and are travelling into parts I never thought to return to even in my direst man-mares. We are at the end of civilisation; the beginning of infinity.

  THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY

  Everything you think you know about the universe is wrong. You imagine, I’m sure, that the universe is full of things: burning suns, bright meteors, steaming comets. It might surprise you to know that the universe is mostly nothing. No light, no matter, no mercy for the soul who finds himself there. It is only upon venturing into these reaches that the sailor realises that being smashed up by a comet, or burned up by a sun, is not the ultimate nightmare. The ultimate nightmare, dearest reader, is to find yourself alone, in the hungry, hungry dark, where not a sound is heard, and not a wink of light is present.

  As they sailed on into the black reaches of infinity, a mood a few steps short of madness set in.

  There is a little girl standing in a doorway filled with light. Fabrigas sees her open her mouth and pull a winged creature out. Then she squeals like a bat and vanishes.

  Captain Lambestyo sees Commander Descharge dressed as a washerwoman say, ‘Look. Look what you have made me become. If you don’t destroy your maker you will surely die,’ before he wakes, sweating, and discovers he has wrapped his sheets around his throat.

  The bosun dreams he is on a deserted highway below seven sad mountains. The highway shines so brightly it stings his eyes. He sees his parents in the distance; they hold a baby. The bosun says, ‘I’ve lost it, I’ve lost my watch!’ His father says, ‘No, see, you’ve always had it,’ and the bosun Jacob Quickhatch looks down to see that his silver watch has been roughly stitched into his chest in place of his heart.

  Fabrigas wakes to the sound of screaming and knows that the ship is succumbing to mass nightmares – that stage of ship’s madness before uncontrollable dancing and sleep-tantrums.

  *

  Captain Lambestyo was well in the hunt for the annual award for maddest sailor. As the weeks at sea became months he was seen less and less, staying in his cabin most of the day, emerging only occasionally to yell at his men for ‘not sweeping the decks tomorrow’, or ‘broadcasting bad thoughts into my soul’.

  Fabrigas returned to his cabin late one night after fetching his supper. (He had taken to foraging after midnight when the ship was sleeping because he was still afraid his crew would try to kill him.) There were more night-screams than ever coming from the sailors’ quarters. When Fabrigas quietly closed his door and turned on his lamp he found Lambestyo sitting in his lounge chair, making the old man inexplicably shout out ‘Splah!’

  ‘Shhhhhhhhhhhhh,’ said the Necronaut. ‘No splah.’ He went quickly to the door and checked it was locked; rolled twice along the wall and flattened himself beside the porthole. Then took a quick glance out. Satisfied, he went over to Fabrigas and grasped the old man by the arms. ‘They are out for you (joo), man. I hear them talking. Quick, tell me who you trust upon this ship! Answer, don’t think!’ His eyes were wide and urgent.

  ‘Right now? Nobody.’

  The boy smiled. ‘Good answer.’ He went to Fabrigas’s liquor table and sloshed some J. Frogman’s Red Rum into a glass, slupped most of it, then came back. ‘There are spies on my ship. I know it. I can “smell” them.’ The captain had recently learned about quotation marks and was losing no opportunity to use them in conversation. ‘Trust no one here. Tell them nothing. Keep your blinds closed when you work. Keep a small mirror in a pocket handkerchief. What are those – herrings?’ Fabrigas was still holding the tray with his supper on it.

  ‘Yes. Would you like some?’

  ‘No thank you very much. Do you have a gun?’

  ‘I … do not.’

  ‘Here, I brought you one.’ Lambestyo pulled an old pistol out of his belt. It was slick with gun oil and, inexplicably, matted with dog hair. ‘This is my second backup pistol. Keep the first chamber empty because it has no safety. If the “sheet” goes down I need you to back me up.’ He leaned in close to the tall man’s chest. ‘They embarrass you, man. They want to embarrass both of us because we are too real. It’s us against them, man. But listen, listen, listen, listen, [he had been drinking] listen. We have to stick together. You and me. We can’t trust no one else here. Do you see anyone else here? Shhhh! What was that!’ He swung towards the window, brandishing the pistol and the liquor tumbler menacingly. Then he turned back to the old man, drained the glass, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his pistol hand, and tossed the glass and the pistol onto the old man’s bunk. Then he grabbed Fabrigas by the collar of his dressing gown, stood on the toes of his boots so that his head was just a few feet below his, and said, ‘Why can’t we all just love each other? Why does it all have to be about war, and keeeeling? Wouldn’t it be better if we learned to love each other?’

  ‘To love each other?’

  ‘Jess.’

  ‘Love is an evil magic,’ said the old man. ‘It confounds the brain. The man who isn’t happy with himself makes it his quest. It is a superstition of the heart. Fall to space madness, but don’t ever fall to love.’ The boy looked so sad at
this that the old man quickly added: ‘But if love works for you! Maybe it’s time to get some sleep.’

  ‘I don’t sleep any more. I’m like a wolf.’

  ‘Wolves don’t sleep?’

  ‘I think they take naps. Can I stay here tonight, on your floor?’

  ‘Perhaps it would be better if we stayed in our own rooms tonight.’

  The captain looked astonished. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I’m very confused and I need time to think things over.’

  The Necronaut considered this for a few seconds, then broke into a knowing smile, slapped the old man on both shoulders and said, ‘You (joo). You (joo) are a clever man.’ Then he grabbed his pistol from the bed, tapped his nose knowingly with the barrel, and went to the door. ‘I’m sorry, friend. I get the “fear” when I go to sea.’ He spread his arms and beamed. ‘The walls, they close in on me. You (joo) don’t know what it’s like.’

  He opened the door, saw the great hulk of the bosun standing there, and it was his turn to yell, ‘Splah!’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Quickhatch, ‘there is something below that you really need to see.’

  *

  Remember, if at any time during this story you feel frightened, or agitated, you can turn to here, the Little Page of Calmness.

  The bosun took them down through the passenger quarters, down through the dripping steel warrens, through the engineering deck, the storage decks. His giant frame filled the narrow passages. He clutched a silver talisman in his giant fist. He took them down through the waste rooms, the prisoner cells, down through the hazardous materials rooms, the radioactive containment chambers, and finally through the slaveys’ quarters – where all slept soundly. The giant stopped at the junction of the last maintenance corridor on the ship: the one which led to the bow-pit where the pit-bats lived. They were silent. The place was dark and airless, lit by a lonely bulb. The memory of the slavey pack-possession was still fresh, everyone was on edge. ‘Why are we here?’ said the captain.

  ‘It’s in the bow,’ said the bosun, who was standing beside the hatch. Fabrigas observed that the giant man seemed frightened. But that could not possibly be true.

  ‘What is in the bow?’

  ‘You should see for yourself.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to?’

  The bosun turned towards the bow-pit hatch and whispered, ‘Come out, petal.’

  The unoiled hinge made a violin’s call as the hatch slowly opened.

  A few seconds passed, then the three men saw a scruffy brown head float up. Two eyes scanned the scene, widened, and before the head could vanish again the bosun shot out a painted arm. There was a short commotion, accompanied by the mad twitter of bats, and when the bosun withdrew his hand he held a boy, an urchin dressed in a jumpsuit of the Imperial Postal Service: pale blue with yellow trim, the kind worn by the slaveys who worked in the high-security installations – only this boy’s suit was soiled and torn at the shoulder. With his ragged hair and wild eyes he resembled a young animal.

  ‘This is what you wanted to show us? An escaped slave?’ said the captain.

  The bosun shook his head … slowly. Then a voice came from out of the pit; it rang like a bell made from ice. The voice said, ‘Small boy. Are you there?’

  Fabrigas felt his gut contract.

  Then a shape rose from out of the black pit. It was a girl, tiny; in this light her skin was the colour of snot from a recently bloodied nose. She looked like a seasick ghost. Fabrigas and Lambestyo took each a step back.

  ‘What …’ said Lambestyo, ‘in the heavens …’ he continued, ‘is that?’

  ‘Hello, strange men,’ said the girl. She stepped into the dim corridor. She wore a fine hunting coat, a simple dress and a pair of black boots, no other adornments but a desiccated Corpse Blossom pressed through a buttonhole of her coat.

  ‘Stowaways,’ said the bosun as he set the boy down. The urchin gave one last defiant flick of his shoulders and the bosun removed his giant hand from the back of his neck. In his other hand he held his silver talisman up towards the girl, as if trying to ward off her presence. What amazed them was not her green skin but her eyes: they shone like water running over diamonds. ‘They’ve been nesting in there, living off the bats in the nose-cone, roasting them with a candle, buttering them with algae.’

  ‘I was wondering what was happening to my bats,’ said the captain. ‘I thought they had caught wind of their fate and were escaping.’

  ‘No,’ said the girl, ‘we had to eat some. But only a single one per day.’ She spoke with the most curious accent.

  ‘And this is why you turned green!’ said Fabrigas, and the girl said, ‘I am green?’

  When asked, ‘What is your name?’ she said, ‘I am called Lenore,’ and gave a little stomp and a bow. ‘I do not know the name with which I was born. I heard a medicines seller at the fair say Lenore and I stole it for myself.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Lambestyo said. ‘Auntie Lenore’s Liquid Gripe Tonic for Restless Sleepers or Night Screamers. A fine product. I use it often.’

  The girl frowned and pursed her lips in the shape of a butterfly and said no more. Fabrigas was silent, ashen.

  ‘And what is your name?’ said the captain to the boy.

  ‘He can’t hear you,’ said Lenore, ‘he has deafs.’

  ‘Well, didn’t he tell you his name?’

  ‘No. Cannot speak.’

  ‘Well, couldn’t he write it down for you?’

  ‘I’m blind.’

  The captain squinted. ‘And why are you on my ship?’

  ‘I was a prisoner of the Queen and I e-scaped. I met this boy at the fair. It’s all made up in this fine letter,’ and she passed the old man an envelope. He took it without even looking at it.

  ‘I don’t need any post to tell me who you are,’ said Fabrigas. ‘You are the Vengeance, and we are doomed.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that,’ groaned the bosun.

  ‘I can say it. I can say it loud. Dark Hand’s predictions were right. This is the final bolt through the lid of our sepulchre.’

  ‘What are you talking about, old fool?’ said Lambestyo. He looked unimpressed. ‘It’s just some stowaway children. We will feed and wash them and then decide what’s going to happen. It looks as if this boy has never bathed or eaten.’

  ‘Just the bats.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We will add the boy to the crew,’ said Fabrigas, gathering himself. ‘He can pull his weight. But no one must know we are carrying the Vengeance. There’ll be blind panic if the crew finds out she’s aboard. So I’m swearing you both to silence. Giant, you must swear on that silver talisman you wear; Lambestyo, on your guns.’ Both men nodded. ‘We’ll keep the girl here and bring her meals.’

  Then the girl raised her nose and said, ‘Something burns out in space.’ Minutes later their ship would pick up a distress signal which would alter the course of this voyage once again.

  From the journal of H. Q. Gossipibom, poet

  Oh what a strange and terrifying calamity came out of the night! We were all asleep but the alarms woke us to the news that we had disturbed a nest o’ pie-rates! And when I came up to deck I found a sight so shocking I nearly fell off my shoes! It was a scene torn right from a painting of hell from the artist Heicleftus Broigh.

  We were still peeled off from the main fleet and had come upon the fleet of ships ablaze. The ships were be-swarmed on all sides by Hornets! These terrible bandits have had the wings of giant wasps grafted onto their backs. They wear huge black goggles – like the eyes of those they mimic – and they fly around without a ship. And how they massed about these doomed hulks, how the blur of their wings and the flash of their fiery blades did taunt the soul. There was one ship which wasn’t on fire. It had many corpses on the deck, we could see, some floating limp through breaches in the hull.

  And did our captain give a wide berth to this cauldron of destruction and head back to the fleet? Did he heck-wise!

  �
��Pull to and prepare to board!’ he cried. What madness! The ship heaved and groaned as it swung in beside the one surviving ship, whose name was the Black Widow. The captain handed command to the Master Fabrigas, swung his gun belts across his shoulders and ordered all us passengers below, and so I had to watch this tragedy unfold through a porthole, but what I saw was enough to turn my bloodlets to frigid mercury.

  From my sliver I saw the captain board the Black Widow by rocket-pack, and the bosun followed, and on the way they met of a sudden a pack of hornets, all heavily armed and with motor blades whirring, and there was a terrible fight. The captain ran one through with his blades, and the bosun took two bandits – one in each mighty hand – and clashed them together as a percussionist in an orchestra might smash two cymbals, and though their clash was silent they brought a wincing gasp from all aboard the Necronaut. Oh! Oh! Then the two men vanished inside the Black Widow. Oh what madness!

  They returned minutes later with a woman. All this for a wretched woman! When they appeared above again the Hornets flew into retreat.

  Salty crab for dinner tonight – of which I am rather fond.

  *

  From the journal of M. Francisco Fabrigas

  Hornets strike quickly, flying in and killing all aboard before sweeping up the ship’s treasures in giant nets and flying back to their secret nest. They are impossible to chase because they have no ship, and when attacked they scatter in many directions. The captain wanted to use the GGPTBCE to fight the bandits, but Corporal Bortis declined, so instead he went aboard the flaming ship to battle the swarm by hand – all to rescue, in the end, a single passenger. In a way, it is fortunate for her that our own fleet played that practical joke on us which sent us out into space on our own. Of course the incident has delayed our return to the fleet by even longer. But the hand-to-hand battle was a useful exorcism for the captain, and he immediately began acting 63 per cent less mad. He brushed aside all praise for rescuing the woman, saying, ‘I thought there might be treasure there,’ and the bosun just started shouting at the slaveys again.