Theatre of the Gods

by M. Suddain

  Slinkity-slap, slinkity-slap.

  ‘It is now or never,’ said Fabrigas as he stepped from behind the girl to toss a small canister on the ground, and for a second the tunnel was daylight, they could see two beasts crouching where the shadows had been, slick and grimacing, and as the light from the flare capsule faded the beasts sprang forward.

  CARNAGE

  The whole slaughter took a few loud moments. Descharge stepped in front of Miss Fritzacopple and calmly put two capsules from his Leitenstorm 980 field pistol into the first beast – who hardly flinched – while Fabrigas smoothly produced a flare gun from his cloak, and put a canister between the beast’s eyes. As it exploded in white-hot flames it let out a shrill death note. The second creature, blinded by the flash, barrelled into them, knocking Fabrigas, Fritzacopple and Descharge away into a heap. Roberto stepped in front of Lenore, but the beast picked him up with one frond and flung him over its shoulder. The corridor was filled with smoke, lit softly by the first beast’s flaming corpse. In the haze the Vengeance stood serenely, a look of calm on her tiny face. She said, ‘Well, hello, Mr Plant. Where for are you going on this day?’ The creature gazed down at the girl with a look of adoration, raised a mossy paw, touched the tiny girl tenderly on the cheek, and pulled away, as if it had brushed something very cold.

  Then it errupted in a storm of sparks.

  Roberto had ripped the electrical wires from the low ceiling and rammed them into the back of the creature’s head. The result was that Lenore’s admirer had become a hissing puddle oozing over the floor. They could hear other beasts on the way and knew that they had seconds. They flung themselves through the hatch and into the small chamber above. ‘There’s the valve to release gas into the tunnels,’ said Carrofax. ‘Don’t hesitate.’ But before Fabrigas could secure the hatch it sprang open and a giant head flew into the room, rolled across the floor and stopped beside Lenore with a shrubby slap. The bosun followed, sweaty and bloody though the hole. ‘Like I said,’ he muttered, ‘I’ve seen worse.’

  *

  After sending in the gas to dispose of Connofeast’s weaponised plants they addressed the next stage of their escape. Beyond the blast doors, they knew, was a whole new world of plants who wanted to eat them, and they weren’t completely sure the giant diesel-powered escape sphere Carrofax had located was up to it. ‘If the plants could rip the GGPTBCE apart in seconds, how do we stand a chance in a giant hamster ball?’ said the bosun.

  ‘Because the old fool knew what he was dealing with,’ said Descharge.

  The Locomosphere was a hit with the residents. They smashed their heavy vines against the shell of the craft, desperate to get to the fleshy morsels inside, and sent it bumping and spinning into the jungle. The sound was catastrophic. ‘I’m going to be sick, mates!’ cried the bosun as the craft spun through the wild like a top. They were each strapped securely into a crash-proof seat, inside the gyroscopic inner core. The craft’s powerful diesel engine was working hard to keep them righted, and Roberto, the boy with the kinship for machines, was driving. The machine had extendable spider legs, if needed, but it was its smooth outer sphere which was keeping them alive. It was too large for any of the mouths which slathered for it, too light and slippery for any of the vines to get a purchase; the plants roared and shook their fronds in sheer frustration.

  ‘Poor mad vegetables!’ cried Fabrigas above the noise. ‘I almost feel for them!’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said the botanist.

  ‘I like this not!’ cried Lenore as they popped out of the grip of a mighty vine like a cork from a bottle and went shooting high into the air, landing with a terrible crunch.

  But soon they could see the Necronaut through the foliage, and a lucky blow from behind by a giant mega-dahlia sent them on towards it. ‘Great stars, I’m glad to see it!’ said the old-beard. That was when cannon fire from the Necronaut ripped through the undergrowth around them.

  ‘What now?’ said the old-beard, whose face was almost as green as Lenore’s.

  ‘They think we’re an enemy!’ cried Miss Fritzacopple.

  ‘That was a warning shot,’ said Descharge. ‘The next will end us. We can’t go any further.’

  ‘If we stay here we won’t last much longer.’ Already the plants were swarming around the craft. ‘I have an idea!’ said the bosun, as he grabbed the control deck from Roberto’s hands and hauled back on the stick, raising them high on the craft’s extendable limbs. Then the bosun began to jiggle the stick so that their machine hopped from side to side on its two back legs.

  ‘Are you completely mad?!’ cried the botanist. The bosun said nothing. He set the machine down and rolled several cautious feet towards the Necronaut. There was no more gunfire, and as they came close they saw the docking bay open.

  MONKEY DANCE

  The bosun and the captain had had only one other expedition together. It is a long story, with many strange happenings, so I’ll just tell you the short version.

  They had been hired to transport a shipload of piñatas.

  What is a piñata? That is an excellent question. A piñata is an olde-worlde party toy, a ceremonial animal designed to be filled with sweets or other treasures. The guest of honour, blindfolded, tries to smash open the piñata with a club. Then everyone has cake. Yes, it is a strange tradition, though not as strange as some other olde-worlde traditions such as tiny-man tossing, or whale kissing.

  So their ship was stocked with several thousand piñatas, only these piñatas weren’t filled with sweets, they were filled with explosives bound for the revolutionary war in the jungles of Mesomyxos.

  Just a few days into the expedition their ship was boarded by customs officers. These officials weren’t interested in their cargo, they simply wanted to take a bribe, and to drink the captain’s best liquor. But as the chief inspector and his cronies drank more and more of Lambestyo’s best booze they grew increasingly unruly. The chief ordered his men to hang one of the piñatas from a spar so that he might smash it. So while the drunken inspector stumbled around, wildly swinging at the fake piggy which hung above him, Lambestyo and his bosun inched slowly towards the lifeboats, and by the time their ship exploded in a stack of amber mushrooms they were some distance away.

  They floated for nine days with little food or water. The captain became very sick. He started to hallucinate that their craft was being followed by clowns riding giant pigs. But the bosun wouldn’t allow his captain to succumb to space-madness. Whenever he drifted off he would slap him, hard, then tell him a story from his strange childhood. And if things got really bad he would do his space-monkey dance. He would stand – despite his body being weak from hunger – and wave his arms above his head, and hop from leg to leg, and poke out his lip. When the bosun did his space-monkey dance he made the captain laugh, and that, as we know, is basically impossible.

  They survived their ordeal, thanks largely to the bosun’s dance, and were picked up by a Customs Office ship which was searching the area for a missing inspector and his team.

  And so the bosun knew that if he could make his jungle machine do a space-monkey dance his captain would remember. Remember and laugh.

  AFTERGLOW

  And he did.

  When the captain saw the bosun and his friends again in the dock of the Necronaut, he laughed. He laughed for the first time in years and frightened everyone. Then the captain composed himself and ordered that Fabrigas be thrown in the brig for one hour as a punishment for putting his crew’s life in danger, and although the old man blustered at first he eventually agreed that it was probably fair.

  After his incarceration they had a big meal, then they slept. They slept despite the noise of the ravenous jungle plants. Lenore dreamed that she was waltzing in a grand ballroom with a fearsome plant while a host of demons watched. Miss Fritzacopple dreamed of her husband, the revolutionary hero, who had given her a foxglove cast in bronze before he left for his last mission. Fabrigas dreamed of a thousand other worlds, each o
f them populated entirely by cats. Even the captain slept, because he hadn’t since his friends had left.

  DEADLY CREATURES

  One of the most confounding things about exploring a universe, as you are no doubt beginning to discover, is that when you are faced with a mysterious phenomenon, something you have never encountered before, the most unbelievable explanation is often the correct one.

  In OD2142K (that is a historical date, in case you were wondering), the explorers Halls and Oates set out to climb Mt Valhaldestein, one of the tallest peaks in the known universe. Valhaldestein is a magnetic mountain: ships cannot travel there, and climbers must bring only wooden tools. The peak holds more dangers than you could possibly imagine, from sub-zero temperatures to burning nitrogen vents, to swarms of ice-leeches, to mountain cannibals, to prankster porters who will tie your laces together when you aren’t looking, or dress up like mountain cannibals. Halls knew of the dangers when he conceived of the expedition, so he was most surprised to find that the one thing which was bound to strike mortal fear into his team – even his climbing partner – was a mythical creature called the Valhaldestein Yeti. This creature, despite never having been seen, was said with great confidence to have terrible claws and teeth. She was white-furred, and so essentially invisible in the snow except for her blood-red eyes, and she was strong enough to pull a person’s limbs clean off, and yet merciful enough, it was said, to beat him unconscious with those limbs before eating them. Halls had only to mention the Valhaldestein Yeti in front of his people to see them cry out and jump into each other’s arms. He was disgusted to see that even his partner didn’t like mention of the monster.

  ‘We have bigger problems to worry about than some imaginary beast!’ said Halls, and he was right. When they reached the first base camp they learned that half their food had spoiled. By the second camp, two-thirds of their porters had run off. A blizzard kept them at bay for several days. Finally, everything calmed. They were left with a perfect night, the endless stars shimmered to the horizon, and the only thing to break the silence was a low moan from the darkness. Every minute it came a little louder. The remaining porters flew into a panic and fled. The officers conferred secretly with Oates, and as the phantom cries grew they too decided to abandon camp and flee down the mountain. Halls was furious; he called them cowards, fools, and he was still yelling from the ridge as his men fled. His cries ended abruptly.

  Oates returned the following day to find just what he’d expected: the blood, the bear-like prints in the snow, the scraps of clothing. The point, I suppose, is that it is important to be careful which legends you believe, but in the end, either way, it won’t stop you being eaten by them.

  After hearing about such strange and brutal creatures I suppose you’re wondering: what is the most feared and dangerous creature in the universe? Well, that’s a very interesting question and the answer will surprise you.

  Let’s start with third place.

  3. The Sweety.

  The Sweety lives alone on a barren planet in an uninhabited region of a deserted corner of its universe. The corner of this universe was once pretty and thriving and many more people would live there if the Sweety did not. The Sweety is much larger, even, than the super-planet he rests on. He has a vast maw with an underbite containing rows of terrifying fangs, each fang larger than a mountain. He has thousands of long, suckered tentacles which he uses to snare prey. These tentacles can reach far into space. But what makes the Sweety deadly is not its size, but its passions. The Sweety, you see, wasn’t always alone. There was once a lady Sweety and they lived together in bliss for many thousands of years. One day the Sweety woke from a nap to find his mate gone, vanished. This, sadly, happens sometimes, for it is almost impossible to make love last, especially when you’ve been together for thousands of years. The Sweety was understandably upset and he cried to the stars, but space refused to carry his grief. Ever since that day the Sweety has watched the heavens, waiting for the day when his beloved will return. In old age his mind and vision have begun to dull so that if he sees even a faint movement, the glint of a piece of space-junk, or the flutter of a sail of a ship, he sends one of his mighty tentacles lashing far away to grab the object and bring it to him, and he holds it there, close to his heart, in an unbreakable grip, until the thing stops moving. Because it is a sad fact that the most terrifying mover in the universe is not the hunger in the belly, but the hunger in the heart, for though the belly can be full the heart can never. The Sweety’s mountainous body is littered with the skeletons of ships.

  Anyway. Our number-one spot most definitely goes to the zombie-moss spores. No one would argue with that. But more on that creature later.

  The number-two spot goes to a very interesting creature indeed.

  THE POPE

  The Pope. His Holiness the Pope. Light of the universe, fire of our sins. He stood four foot ten in papal slippers, with a round face, pretty eyes and sandy side-parted hair. He was Pope to most creatures. The Colonel in the services. The Devil in the conquered lands. ‘His Craziness’ in the learned taverns. But in earshot he was always His Holiness. No creature, sentient or not, was feared as much as the Pope (except, as I’ve already mentioned, the zombie-moss spores). The Pope believed that he was on a perpetual crusade on behalf of his semi-polytheistic super-cult. He saw himself as an intergalactic exorcist. He believed in ghosts. He believed that the universe was ridden with ghosts and evil spirits: individuals, couples, families, whole nations of spirits. ‘They are everywhere!’ he’d shout. They live in great numbers, two to every person. They live off men’s souls. They whisper in women’s ears. They tell them all to do terrible things. ‘And only I can stop them!’ Political parties, whole peoples are controlled by these spirits, he’d argue. ‘The reason the great plague exists,’ he would shout, ‘is because people deny the Holy Spirits!’

  When the Pope learned that he was to wake his fleet, the Fleet of the Nine Churches – the largest and most destructive death fleet ever assembled – and take it deep into the universe, and then to the next universe, on the biggest and most ambitious crusade ever attempted, eliminating along the way any person, peoples or worlds that should obstruct him, to bring about the destruction of a single demon girl, it was as if all his birthdays had happened at once. And the Pope, to be fair, had an unusual number of birthdays.

  He rose early on the day they were to embark, and that almost never happened, and when his aides arrived they found him already sitting in his favourite chair in his red leisure suit with white stripes, his hat on the table next to him. He was kicking the chair legs impatiently. ‘When are we going?’ he cried.

  ‘After breakfast, Excellency,’ said Cardinal Mothersbaugh. The Pope hated waiting. He didn’t understand that preparing a fleet of 180,000 ships, some as big as planets, took, oh, at least a day. And so he sat, drumming on the table with his fingers, putting on and removing his hat, admiring himself in the long mirror, threatening to kill people, until finally he got word that the fleet was ready.

  And the Fleet of the Nine Churches was a sight to behold (or not, for it was painted black so as to be all but invisible in the depths). It had fearsome dreadnoughts, and prison ships equipped to take entire populations for relocation. There were moon-eaters (ships large enough to chomp and digest entire moons or small planets). When the fleet lifted from its moorings and sounded its klaxons the universe trembled. Perhaps even the gods themselves were woken from their slumbers. The Pope was carried down the gangplank in a ceremonial chair, but when he got inside all ceremony was dropped and he ran giggling to the command centre.

  Now he stood on the bridge, in his white cylindrical hat embroidered with a gold ‘X’.

  ‘Let’s teach that stupid Devil Girl a lesson she won’t forget!’ he cried.

  ESCAPE

  They woke late. Roberto was stamping around the decks and when they came above he threw up his arms, like, ‘What time is this? I ask you!’ The dinophytes had not tired, and they continue
d to rock the steel boat with a gentle fury, such that it was impossible to breakfast on anything but a solid.

  The Gentrifaction were in a terrible state: nerves shot, eyes oozing black-mascara tears. They sat at breakfast with kerchiefs to their mouths and could not console one another.

  After breakfast an emergency meeting was held and things were decided. The first thing that was decided was that the slate was clean. All transgressions were forgotten and they would now work as a team. They held a small service for Bortis. Connofeast’s hamster ball had picked up several small, sticky pieces of him as it rolled towards the ship. They peeled them carefully off and put them in a small box. It was discovered that the hamster ball had also carried spores into the docking bay, and these had already manifested in a kind of venomous shrub, a variety of shrieking moss and a gnawing lily.

  ‘I knew a girl called Gnawing Lily,’ said the captain, but everyone ignored him.

  ‘There is a chilling sentience here,’ said Fabrigas, ‘a hive mind,’ before he sent the bosun in with fire and industrial herbicide.

  The second thing that was decided was that it would be impossible to make the Necronaut launch-worthy. The steering systems and the sails were badly damaged, and, though Roberto could help, some things could only be repaired from outside, and that, under the circumstances, was impossible. ‘It is a thorny problem,’ said Fabrigas.

  Descharge found him mulling things over on the navigation deck. ‘I need to let you know, as a gentleman and an officer, that I do not believe in this “clean slate”. I still intend to make you pay for your crimes. You and your captain.’