Theatre of the Gods

by M. Suddain

  The strangest thing is that after the incident, when I went below to check the green girl, I found her sitting patiently with a bat upon each shoulder. She said, ‘So they find a woman. Everyone else most dead. How sad.’ And she was right. They had found the woman hiding in her room, clutching a giant book and waving a broken sherry bottle. When the captain said, ‘We are rescuers,’ she’d replied, ‘I cannot leave my books!’ Her name is Miss Maria Fritzacopple. I will take a brief moment to describe her: she is a young woman with unruly hair and sultry, red-rimmed eyes which cast a sensuous insolence upon all she surveys. She has the physique and balance of a dancer, though she claims to be a botanist by trade. Her hands are fine and have none of the cuts and scratches I’d associate with that vocation. And yet when I questioned her on her expertise I found her knowledge to be thorough. She is the kind of woman men find extremely distracting. But fortunately I am immune to such calentures!

  BORN TO RAISE HELL

  ‘I thank you, but you needn’t have bothered,’ said Miss Fritzacopple gruffly. ‘The beasts would have left in time and I could have saved all my books and samples.’ Her belongings were a modest pile on the deck: a leather case, and a small stack of books. Eventually she said: ‘Well, I suppose I am grateful to you. If you’ll just drop me at the nearest port I’d be happy.’

  Fabrigas explained: ‘Lady, we are not going to any port, we are not within light-decades of a port.’

  ‘Then any place where I can catch a ship home. Put me in one of the lifeboats if you have to.’

  The captain ordered everyone back to their stations. ‘We will continue our efforts to catch up with the fleet. We have to keep our eyes open in case the Hornets come back. I will conduct my interrogations of this woman later.’

  ‘Your interrogations?’ Fabrigas said.

  ‘Yes. Interrogations.’

  ‘And why would that be necessary?’

  ‘To learn things from her. I am the captain and the captain can’t be too careful. Now go to your posts!’ And with that he turned and marched off, stumbling over a rope as he went.

  *

  Fabrigas finally had time to properly examine the secret stowaway who was still bunking with the bats in the bow of the ship. He had many questions, but most of all he wanted to know how the girl knew that there was a woman on board the stricken vessel. He went down to visit, carrying a leather case and a small folding table. But no sooner had he stepped into the tiny corridor than her ghostly voice came from behind the door, and she said, as if their conversation had never even broken off: ‘She has pink woodroot in a bag. Yes. It is a favourite aroma for me. Some children of the factories use it to write unvisible messages, I hear – but to me all messages are unvisible.’

  The single bulb that lit the space was shorting out, the corridor was madly stuttering. ‘Where is Roberto? Have not seen him today.’ Since her young travelling-companion had not been able to tell them his name they had decided to give him one. They had called him Roberto after the ship’s cat, who had died from complications relating to licking a puddle of spilled rum.

  ‘The deaf boy,’ said Fabrigas. ‘He was fooling around with some of the youngsters on deck earlier.’

  ‘I see. He is supposed to be taking care of me and my affairs. Tell, was it girls he was with?’

  ‘Girls? I really have no idea. Probably.’

  ‘I see. He comes now anyhow.’

  Roberto appeared then down the stairs behind him, wary as a cat. He eyed the old man through slitted eyes. Never taking those eyes off him for a second, the boy strode down the tunnel. He reached up a single finger to the lamp hanging from the ceiling and the bulb stopped its flickering.

  ‘Remarkable,’ said Fabrigas. ‘You are a Router.’

  But of course the boy could not hear, or answer. He opened the hatch to the bough and carefully helped his young friend out. ‘Thank you, Roberto,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you have finally appeared.’ The boy stood to one side, arms folded defiantly.

  Fabrigas unfolded his table. He took a number of instruments from the leather bag and placed them on the table, alongside a rolled-up map. Roberto eyed them with great interest.

  ‘It is strange that you can sense such things about people,’ Fabrigas said. ‘That woman and her woodroot, for example.’

  ‘I have powerful nostrils,’ she said. ‘I can tell you had herrings. Your cook keeps hidden cheeses. Your captain has started to wear a wild scent o-pon his hair.’

  ‘A scent you say? Very interesting. And I assume you used your nose to stumble upon us.’

  ‘We did not stumble, we followed you to here on purpose. We snuck on with the customs people who came to see if I was here.’ Fabrigas sighed. ‘And I did not use my nose so much to find you. I followed the symbols you painted all around your ship.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Yes, the symbols. They speak very powerfully to me from a long way away.’

  Clouds rolled over the old man’s eyes. ‘They tricked me,’ he said.

  ‘Anyway, it’s all in that letter I gave to you, which I can smell you have not opened.’

  Fabrigas rubbed his temples with his outsized thumbs. He stood up and leaned against the side of the tunnel for a few seconds, his face in the crook of his elbow. Then he gathered himself, sat down at the table, and took the envelope the girl had given him from a pocket in his cloak. He tore the seal. The letter read as follows:

  Dear Doctor

  We did not trick you. We simply adjusted our strategy to accommodate your reluctance.

  We are Dark Hand. We come from the Empire of the Xo, within the primordial cities of the Floating Worlds. As you know, we made a pact when you were a boy to show you certain great secrets known only to us. In return, we asked only that you would one day grant us a small favour. You see our favour standing before you. I think you will agree that they are indeed very small. Though not entirely helpless.

  These children have been liberated at great personal risk. As outlined earlier via the haunted belly of a cut-price spheromancer, we simply ask that you give protection to these two things. It is vital that they are preserved alive, and that they are never separated.

  Once you’ve guided them through the ambush at the crossing at Akropolis, and into the next dimension, things become simpler: they can be brought home to our friends, the Immortals, who, as we have mentioned in the past, are the oldest species in the universe, and who live at the dawn of time, in the ocean of creation, upon the Three Spirit Islands beyond the Sea of Tranquillity.

  This is all we can tell you now:

  – The boy has great secrets in his head.

  – He is the message, she is the way.

  – Both these children believe they are the other’s guardian.

  – Unicorns do not exist.

  – None of this, and all of it, ultimately, matters.

  – Trust no one, least of all the person you are thinking about right now.

  – There are people in pursuit who wish her, and you, dead. They are the same people who have been trying to kill you since you were a boy.

  – The rewards for performing these favours for us will be beyond your imagination; the penalties for failure, unimaginable.

  Perhaps you need evidence that we are who we say, and that we have your interests at heart. The Immortals have revealed to us that your beloved master’s last words were as follows:

  X{4µM}
  We were with you in your younger days, we protected you from your enemies, and at your darkest moments gave you hope. Several times you have betrayed us, and used our secrets for your own benefit. But we have stayed with you, because we know your potential.

  Best regards

  Dark Hand

  PS The Immortals tell us that this girl becomes more volatile the closer she gets to maturity. She is like a small Doomsday Clock. This process will begin to happen in approximately ninety nautical days.

  Fabrigas put the letter aside. He touched his thumb t
o his forehead and closed his eyes.

  ‘What does this letter about us say?’ asked the girl.

  ‘It says that we’re to look after you.’

  ‘That’s about all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You smell of angry.’

  ‘I’m not angry.’

  ‘You are. It smells strongly. Have I made you angry, sir?’

  Fabrigas opened his eyes and they were moist and tired. The girl stood patiently before him, her wide, sightless eyes were locked uncannily on his. ‘No, I’m not angry with you, dear. I’m angry at my luck. I’m in the wrong universe, and I’m the wrong age for the job I’ve been given.’

  ‘Just like me,’ said the girl.

  The old man’s face softened like a still pond wrinkled by the wind.

  ‘Please help us,’ said the green girl. The scruffy boy stepped forward, his hand dived into his pocket, and when it reappeared it held, between its thumb and forefinger, a single small diamond. He placed the gem carefully on the table before the old man. Fabrigas looked coldly at it, then waved it away. ‘I don’t need diamonds, boy. I’m not a beauty queen.’ Roberto, astonished, plucked the diamond from the table and dropped it in his pocket where it made an audible clack. ‘Your friend should guard his diamonds carefully. There are greedy people on this boat.’ Weary, Fabrigas unrolled a star map and smoothed it out on the table. He placed an instrument on each corner of the map to hold it down. ‘We need to work out where we need to take you. And how we get there.’ He was about to continue when Roberto picked up a magnascope, a very delicate instrument for calculating the position of a ship in relation to yourself. (This sounds foolish, but believe me, it makes perfect sense.)

  ‘Be careful with that instrument …’ Fabrigas made to say, but by the time the word ‘careful’ had left his mouth the deaf/dumb boy had activated the device, calibrated it perfectly, and was pointing to the ship’s position on a chart, an act that takes most students years to master. Then he traced a line with his finger to the crossing zone at Akropolis.

  ‘Well, well,’ Fabrigas said. ‘It looks like your guardian has certain skills.’

  ‘I have not doubt,’ said the girl. ‘And he is not the guardian of me.’

  *

  Fabrigas made his report to his captain who was napping.

  ‘We are in a frightening and dangerous situation. We are harbouring a fugitive. The whole Empire will be after us.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ Lambestyo did not even open his eyes.

  ‘She is the girl they call “the Vengeance”.’

  ‘Yes, yes, the girl that the whole universe has been hunting. Our own fleet even. Funny.’

  ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘It is a little bit funny. It’s like how old people look for their spectacles when they’re wearing them.’

  ‘We don’t do that.’

  ‘You did it the other day, I saw.’

  ‘This is serious! I have no doubt that the price on her head is considerable. And the price for harbouring her, unthinkable.’

  ‘Considerable you say?’

  ‘Yes. If we were not already well beyond the zones of habitation I estimate that it would take someone like the surgeon mere minutes to hand her to Descharge.’

  Lambestyo at last opened his eyes – shot through with blood. ‘How do you know I won’t hand her over?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. Now, I do not want to go to the hereafter with the burden of these children’s souls. Or anyone’s on this ship. So we must work together to keep them safe. At least until we can drop them somewhere. And if I’m not here you have to do it alone. And you can’t trust anyone.’

  ‘That’s a big job. What about the boy? What is his “deal”?’

  ‘I can tell by the boy’s abilities, and by his eye activities, and by the blue “onesie” he wears, that he is a Router.’

  ‘And that is …?’

  ‘A Router is one whose physical architecture, mostly the brain, is used to organise and redistribute large amounts of messaging information via the Ethernet. The information contained in modern, high-speed telegraphic messages is so voluminous and complex that no computational device has been invented which can handle the job. Only the human computer is capable of such a task. He would have been implanted with fingertip sensors when very young, then placed into one of the high-volume communications hubs. This gives him a tremendous ability to conduct energy and information. Are you listening?’

  Lambestyo brought his eyes back from the porthole. ‘Of course, he’s a computer. Continue.’

  ‘More than a computer, he is a hybrid of machine and nature. Each Router has a pod and the pods of each hub number in the millions. The child in each pod handles roughly a billion messages each day, exploiting his on-board computer to sort the messages according to size, destination, priority and cetera. These calculations, of course, take place at a subconscious level, but since every piece of material passing through the child’s brain becomes permanently imprinted, Routers become sensitive files, and so are kept as prisoners for their entire lives.’

  ‘So this boy is a sensitive file?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘If he’s so precious, then how did he escape?’

  ‘I don’t know. Occasionally, a station is hit by a phenomenon called a “surge”, in which too much information is accidentally routed through a single node. Based on my observations of this boy I would assume that he was a victim of such a surge. When I examined him earlier I found tissue damage on his hands and carbon residue around the nose and earholes which leads me to conclude that he was the target of a significant surge. While most victims of a surge are killed instantly, this boy has suffered only a loss of hearing, and perhaps, from his behaviour, a touch of the Prince Alberts.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The girl has been sent to us by a secret agency of the Xo called Dark Hand. The fact that they were able to give me a line of algebraic code known only by my master and me is proof that they are who they say.’

  ‘And what did the code say?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  But he did. The code was an iteration of a mathematical phrase his Master Provius had written. It translated as ‘Forgiven’.

  AGAINST THE DARK

  Run a good ship, his mother had always said, and by that she meant know everything that comes in, and everything that goes out. Keep food in the cupboard and spices on the rack. His mother ran a good ship.

  ‘Our ship is sailing for the rocks!’ his old man would say each night when he came in. ‘They are ruining us, these vultures!’ His wife would say, ‘Come now, it isn’t that bad. We have more than we need to live. Come, eat your soup, my salty man.’

  His father’s ship was far from on the rocks. Publishers would send him samples of their best volumes in the hope that the baron would agree to distribute them. ‘See, baby wolf, I get these publishers from across the universe who think that theirs is the only book among the stars. And what am I to do with them all?! Each book costs a packet for the rights, a quarter that to print. Shipping costs me more money and sleep than I can spare. Then there’s insurance, handling, a case of wine for the shipping managers, the reviewers, the Queen’s censors. Then what’s a humble merchant left with? I need a margin, or what am I in the business for? Fun? Take this volume of Bartellio’s Black Holes and Other Anomalies you’ve been leafing through and muddying up with your fingers. It is science, which is always a poor seller, but if it isn’t too stodgy it might sell to the academies. I could sell a few tens of thousands, and maybe make a little selling this edition to a dealer – if you hadn’t laid your paws all over it. A small margin is what I’ll get. Meanwhile the publisher cries to me, “You’re squeezing us out of business! You demand too great a cut of meat! You leave us chewing on the bone and sucking marrow!” I say. “My cut of meat might seem large, but that’s because I have to share it with a horde of beggars! There is nothing left at the end but a sliver of fat.”’ Young Fabrigas wo
uld look around the drawing room, at the priceless paintings, the antique lamps, and think to himself that it was a miracle what a sliver of fat could buy. ‘“Oh!” these publishers say. “But what of the poor fool who wrote the thing? He has to live in a garret and suck on his boots for sustenance! He must heat his hands over a passing rat!” I say, “I am not thy author’s keeper! If he has chosen the life of an artist he must starve like one! I have ninety-nine problems of my own, the hundredth is yours to keep.” Just look at this edition of The Dictionary Internomicon. A thousand volumes all cased in wood. What am I supposed to do with it? Who will buy them? What shall I do with any of them?!’

  His son replied, ‘Father, I have read Bartellio’s book. It is fine enough, though it does have four errors in mathematics, and nine in usage. You might well be able to negotiate a discount. As for the Internomicon, I have only read the first volume, and so far it has few errors. Any wealthy family in the Empire would want one, since it has all the words a person would need to dazzle in conversation.’

  His father was amazed. ‘Baby wolf, you are a marvel!’ He sacked his readers, saving a small fortune, pulled his boy out of school and set him to work reading full-time. Each day new books would arrive in the delivery bay of the mansion in Carnassus, and young Fabrigas would unpack them carefully, read each thoughtfully, and make notes. These notes were like gold to his greedy father, and his boy’s mind expanded like a galaxy. Every evening his mother would have to come up to his room and fetch him for his dinner. Sometimes he was in such a trance that she had to shake him violently just to rouse him.

  ‘Start with the onions and be patient,’ the old man murmurs at the table in the basement. ‘Don’t boil the soup too fast, let it mature.’ He can babble on, trance-like, for hours, a medium channelling the ghosts of memories. I must be patient when he slips into the depths, wait for him to rise gently to the surface again. He was in his eighth year when the plague came. When the Black Cloud arrived it brought screams, bloody mobs, and fire. Then silence. The young Fabrigas thought he’d gone deaf. At dawn, twelve days before his eighth name day, he woke to hear Carnassus silent. It had never been silent. All across the city the same tiny dramas were playing out: people were leaning over the beds of loved ones who were leaving in a cloud of sweat and sickly odour. His mother went quickly, mercifully. The boy mopped her brow and listened as she used her fading strength to tell him where the most important of his father’s papers were hidden, which of those were to be destroyed, and confessed to the boy the very worst of her husband’s crimes. Then she used her last breath to tell him that she loved him with all her heart.