Theatre of the Gods

by M. Suddain

  ‘Sweet mercy, that’s delightful!’ came the botanist’s distant voice and snapped him from his terror.

  Everything else was quiet. A hazy rain fell; it seemed to swirl around them, though the air was still. They were huddled around the lamp; the other lamp bobbed away in the distance, letting out the occasional ‘Heavens!’ or ‘Good grief!’

  ‘Come back to our light!’ called the captain, but she didn’t answer. ‘Maybe someone should look after her.’ Hardcastle looked at McCormack and they both shrugged. Hardcastle went off to relieve himself in the shadows. ‘I’ll go,’ said Lambestyo, standing self-consciously. ‘I mean, it’s best I go and find her.’ He looked around, unsure which way to set off. Her lamp had vanished.

  ‘I know where she is,’ said Lenore. ‘I will witness what she’s doing. I’m bored anyways.’

  The girl floated off after the botanist. Lambestyo sat down again. They heard a bird’s call from the undergrowth so loud and sudden that they all jumped.

  A dark and dreary fog was creeping in.

  Hardcastle returned to the group with an object he’d found buried in the mud near the swamp. It was a sphere of brass and wood with several moving parts. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s a child’s puzzle.’ He wiped away the mud as Carrofax appeared and said, ‘He should not be playing with that. That isn’t a happy toy.’

  ‘Give that to me,’ said Fabrigas, but the sailor said, ‘Get your own toy!’

  ‘If I may, sir,’ said Carrofax, ‘and without wishing to interfere in your … human things … I think it might be time to prepare for a quick departure.’

  Roberto had walked a few feet away and was bouncing higher and higher in the flimsy gravity. He was bouncing so high that at times only his pale legs were visible. Higher into the darkness above, floating back like a leaf, until each time he left the ground he was gone for minutes.

  Then he didn’t come back at all.

  For ten minutes the captain wandered around below, vainly calling up, until finally Roberto floated down and touched, crouched, paused, his hair thick with leaves and bugs. He put his hands flat upon the ground. Fabrigas noticed. ‘What is it?’ The boy’s face was soaked in fear. He swung instinctively around to find Lenore, but she had already vanished from sight.

  Now the dreadful fog had hidden even the darkness.

  Then Roberto left the ground like a bullet, springing into the foggy heights, and was gone.

  *

  Miss Fritzacopple stood in a grove of luminescent ferns. ‘There’s enough here to make lanterns.’ She looked over at Lenore, standing among the ferns, cast in an eerie light. ‘You look like a young ghost!’ she laughed. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s something strange upon us,’ said the girl, ‘down up there,’ and she was off. Miss Fritzacopple hurried to gather her things and follow. She saw the girl’s shape, a whisper of light, vanishing and reappearing among the thickening trees, and she experienced a rapid beating of her heart. She heard, she thought, a child’s laugh and stopped. But to her right she saw no lamplight, just her own – ending at a grove of thorns and skeletal trees that vanished into darkness. The girl had vanished, too.

  She ran on, her boots coughed in the mud, the tip of her tongue dabbed at her teeth, until finally she entered a swampy grove where the green girl was standing, arms wide. The tree she stood beside was old, its ancient skin spun in jagged eddies, its broad, knuckled roots grasped the earth, its bare branches reached down, it seemed, to cradle the girl.

  ‘You see now?’

  The botanist went towards the ancient tree. ‘Well I never.’ She held up a jar with a piece of glowing fern in it and studied the patterns on the bark of the tree. ‘In all my years,’ she whispered. ‘This reminds me of the old trees of the Timberlak tribe,’ she said. ‘They used them as signposts for the dead. So they could find their way home. But how would they get here?’

  On the far side of the clearing was a thin creek spanned by a small wooden footbridge. The bridge was made of two halves joined at the centre by rusted hinges.

  ‘Just look at that!’

  ‘We should not cross it, my lady. We should not.’ But the botanist ignored the girl, taking her by the hand and leading her up the bridge and down the other side.

  ‘See? Not so bad. But I wonder who built it.’

  ‘We did, of course,’ said a child’s voice. ‘But you really ought not to have crossed it.’

  *

  ‘Roberto!’ called Fabrigas. He knew what the boy had felt: vibrations, and kneeling himself he too could feel them.

  ‘Look, the lovers are leaving,’ said McCormack.

  And it was true, the two horned beasts were trotting quickly off into the darkness.

  ‘Something frightened them,’ said the bosun.

  ‘Let’s form a defensive position on that hill,’ Fabrigas said.

  *

  A boy and a girl stood together. Miss Fritzacopple and Lenore had jumped when the boy spoke. Lenore had jumped particularly high because she was not used to being snuck up on by anything. ‘What’s there?!’ she cried. ‘I can’t smell you.’

  ‘We didn’t mean to startle you,’ said the girl. ‘We heard you from our camp and came to see.’

  They were young, the boy around nine, the girl perhaps eleven. They both wore strange outfits: the boy a purple tunic, belted trousers and boots, and the girl a short dress with green stockings and boots. Although it was dark at the edge of the clearing, beyond the reach of the lamp and the jarred fern, this pair seemed to glow. ‘We’re glad you came. You’re the first visitors we’ve had in ever such a long time.’

  Lenore went to Fritzacopple’s side and grasped her hand. ‘Who are they, Miss Lady?’ she hissed. ‘I can’t smell them. I can’t smell them not at all!’

  *

  The drumming clicks had quickly grown from a soft rain of pins falling on glass to a sound like the rattle of bones in a sack. The party contracted to a tight group around the tree at the top of the hillock. Each had a blade in one hand and a pistol in the other, but as the drumming grew louder the two sailors, Hardcastle and McCormack, broke away and ran back towards the boat, screaming, ‘Forgive us, please! We don’t want to die today!’ Soon they were pushing off from the beach and out into the fog.

  ‘Cowards!’ yelled the captain. He took his heavy flare pistol and aimed it into the heights. The pistol gave a throaty ‘chonk’ as it released its charge. There was a delay, then the charge lit, turning night into day. This was the first time they’d seen the full scope of the jungle valley they were in. The walls of a ravine rose miles on either side and curled over so that it looked as if it closed above them, and the vines fell, in some places, almost to the ground. There were groves of trees, hissing rivers flowing delicately over the contours of the land. And down the valley came another kind of river: thousands upon thousands of creatures were charging towards them. They were like great spiders with the armour and weapons of the crab. They came at them, their razor-sharp claws a-clacking, their eyes unblinking, and their call was like the squittle of a million rats.

  *

  ‘It’s this way,’ said the boy. ‘Our ship is this way.’ Miss Fritzacopple and Lenore followed the children down a narrow path through a copse of low-spreading thorns. The thorns grabbed at our dear friends’ clothing, imploring them to stop. ‘Don’t go with these strange children!’ the bushes seemed to say, but the women didn’t listen. They felt compelled to follow.

  ‘Miss Lady, why can my nose not see the children?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the botanist, though she secretly thought she might.

  ‘It’s like they’re not even there!’

  ‘It’s not much further. When our ship crashed we built a camp and we’ve been here ever since. It’s not so bad when you get used to it.’ They broke from the thorn grove and came into a clearing. In the clearing was an old saucer craft, rusted and broken. Its front landing gear had given way and plunged the disc’s edge into the earth. A r
ed fluid had oozed from the ground and dried around the rim. The whole ship was overgrown with weed and vines, and bugs crawled down its flanks and in and out of its shattered eyes. Next to the ship was a low table and chairs, the kind a family might take camping.

  ‘Won’t you sit for a while?’ said the girl. ‘Our parents won’t be back for some time, I’m afraid, and our friends are out, too.’

  ‘Miss Lady,’ hissed Lenore, ‘I hate this. Please let’s go backwards.’

  ‘In a minute,’ replied the botanist. ‘There might be something useful here.’

  ‘Won’t you sit with us?’ said the children, in one voice. In the darkness somewhere Fritzacopple thought she heard another voice, an urgent voice calling out a single word, over and over and over.

  ‘Of course, we’d be delighted,’ said Miss Fritzacopple through a rigid smile. ‘But would you mind if I took a look around your camp first? It’s just that it seems so … lovely.’

  The boy and girl looked at one another. ‘Of course,’ said the boy. ‘But don’t go far.’ Then together: ‘It’s dangerous here.’

  Miss Fritzacopple retreated into the darkness, lamp held at arm’s length, never turning her back on the children, and Lenore clung tightly to her arm. ‘I am a scared person.’

  ‘I know.’ They moved towards the voice, and soon the single repeating word resolved itself. Their lamp found the skeleton of an adult, face down, arm stretched out, then another skeleton. It looked as if they’d been trying to reach an amphibious vehicle which stood a few metres away. The vehicle’s tracks were busted, and the bulbous plexiglas enclosure had wide splits in it – as if it had been taken to with an axe. Not far from the vehicle they found two small mounds of earth, and a third skeleton, curled into a foetal position nearby. The voice grew louder, heavy and monstrous. They pushed on through the darkness. Soon they came upon it. It was a machine, an automaton based loosely on the human form. It lay twisted on its back. Its legs were smashed, its arms lay metres away, torn off and cast aside, but its brain was still intact in its glass dome, and in its strange mechanical voice it spoke the same word, again, and again, and again …

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  *

  ‘Hold your line!’ yelled the captain as the first wave of spider crabs swept up the slope, their long legs singing like war-rattles as they lunged for the visitors’ faces. It was not much of a defensive line: a boy, an old man and a giant. As fast as they killed a spider crab another one took its place, snapping at their faces with its claws, tearing at their clothes with its many barbed legs. Fabrigas produced numerous gadgets from his cloak: a high-powered air cannon, a gun that shot webs of electricity. The spider crabs squealed and died, their broken bodies formed a three-foot-high wall, but still they came, and when Fabrigas had used up all his tricks he too resorted to slashing at them with his blade. ‘We need to retreat!’ he said, but there was nowhere to run. The flare had faded, leaving them in a small, orange puddle of light. The captain flung three skewered crabs from his blade. The bosun had done away with his blade and was smashing crab after crab with his now-bloody fists.

  That’s when a strange thing happened. Strange, you say? When everything else that’s happened up until now has been completely normal? Well, strangeness is a matter of perspective. Fabrigas would later say how natural it seemed when a young female voice, so close that it seemed to be coming from inside his head, said, ‘Unlight your lamp.’

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Do it. Do it now.’

  So he did. He grabbed lamp and pole and hurled them into a nearby puddle. There was a hisssss and they were plunged into darkness. ‘What the holy mistress are you doing, wizard!’ screamed the bosun.

  For a second or two the assault continued, and they had to slash blindly in the air, but then the onslaught stopped. They could hear the stream flow past them and away, the legs clacking off into the distance. Then there was silence, the sound of heavy breathing. ‘How did you know?’ said the captain, kneeling to suck in bladders of air.

  ‘Someone told me,’ said Fabrigas. ‘Perhaps a little bird.’

  ‘Well, what do we do now? We’re blind. The others won’t be able to find us.’ That’s when they saw something new: a crowd of pale blue beacons coming down the valley.

  *

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  Lenore and Fritzacopple, arms knotted, left the broken robot, the broken rover, the graves and the skeletons, and inched slowly, like a crippled crab, back to the saucer craft. The place was empty and silent. The children were nowhere to be found. ‘Let’s go please now, Miss Lady,’ said Lenore.

  ‘I want to check the ship first. There might be something useful in there.’ They walked up the creaking gangplank and into the light-less ship.

  It was a two-level craft. On the lower level were the atomic motors, the living quarters, the galley and the robot’s compartment. On the upper level they found the control room, and the cryogenic ‘suspended animation’ tubes often used by primitive cultures for interstellar travel. In the chair at the main control desk was another figure, slumped.

  ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like this, I don’t like this –’

  ‘Be brave.’ She shook the girl off and walked quickly through the cabin, picking up objects and examining them as she went. She pocketed a map book, a journal. Resting inside the cover of the journal was a starfish. She looked up to the windows and saw the children standing hand in hand at the edge of the clearing, their eyes slashing the darkness.

  ‘What are you doing?’ they said. Their voices somehow penetrated the hull of the ship. They said, ‘You don’t go in there. Daddy will be very angry.’ Fritzacopple shuddered and turned back to her work, ignoring the leathery and lifeless form, the long nails, the tufts of wiry hair, the pistol in his hand.

  ‘What are you?’ said the girl child.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said the botanist. ‘I’m a person.’

  ‘Not you. We weren’t talking to you. We meant her. What is she?’

  ‘What am I? What means they what I am?’

  ‘You aren’t a normal person. You don’t belong here.’

  ‘You don’t belong anywhere. Daddy is going to be so mad when he meets you.’

  ‘Miss Lady? What do they mean?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure Daddy will learn to live with us,’ said the botanist as she stuffed some blueprints of the ship inside her leather jacket.

  Then a man’s voice said, ‘Who are you?!’ and Lenore screamed.

  *

  The scream blew the darkness away. It was so loud that the men, still gasping for breath on the pile of crab remains, stopped, and even the lights approaching in the distance halted momentarily. Fabrigas looked to his captain, then into the darkness. ‘Roberto will reach her,’ he said. ‘We have to prepare for these new attackers, whoever they are.’ The crowd of blue beacons was getting closer.

  OTHERS

  High above, Roberto swung blindly, reaching forward for the next vine, ignoring the slithering shapes that lurched all around him, ignoring the hideous bugs that splattered against his face, shrieking as they burst. There was nothing familiar here, he could not feel the familiar loving currents of electricity begging his fingertips to tame and enslave them. There was no information running up his arms, no swarms of bits tingling the base of his ancient young spine, just the faint, almost imperceptible electrical energy of the primordial plant life. All he could feel in his hands was the slimy blood of the vines mixing with the redder juice from the cuts on his own hands, and all that nagged at the base of his skull was a leaden, animal fear: the kind he had not felt since t
he day of the surge. Even in the murderous tunnels of Bespophus he’d felt no fear. All he’d had to do there was place his hands against a wall and know he had millions of volts at his disposal. Here in the jungle he was deaf (obviously) and blind in the dark, and swinging towards an unknown danger over which he had no power. Suddenly, the light he’d been moving towards disappeared. He stopped, hanging in the darkness, waiting for the lamp to reappear. It did not. Instead he heard the scream. It was the first thing he’d heard since the surge.

  *

  The man in the doorway was bearded, with sunken eyes. He towered over them. ‘What are you doing aboard my ship?’ Lenore retreated into the waiting arms of Miss Fritzacopple, but the botanist did not retreat.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Fritzacopple. She could feel the small girl’s heart beating faster than a sparrow’s. ‘He’s not real.’

  ‘Exactly what do you mean I’m not real?’ said the captain. ‘You’d better show some respect when you’re on my ship!’

  Outside, the children laughed brightly. ‘We told you so,’ they cried. ‘You made him angry. You won’t like him when he’s angry.’

  *

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  DANGER!

  Roberto had swung towards the screaming voice, then got lost again. He was lost inside the canopy, and inside his own terrible silence. But now he could see red lights blinking faintly. He pushed off from the vine and drifted down. He drifted down through the darkness towards them.

  *

  ‘We just want to leave quietly now,’ said Fritzacopple. ‘We don’t want trouble.’