Theatre of the Gods

by M. Suddain

  The Burger Time burger chain operates in seven million locations around the universe and is best avoided.

  THE BEAST WITHIN

  Oh, the other one I forgot to mention was the Minionites, sometimes called Marshians because of their love of swamp-life: a small subgroup of an ordinarily non-cannibalistic tribe under the power of a charismatic human ex-prince which once every full moon gives sacrifice to a great beast in return for its protection, and draws power (or so they believe) from the consumption of human flesh.

  When the stage tipped, Lenore and Lulabelle went tumbling back towards the idol’s mouth, and the bosun, with a cry, rolled after them. The giant was not a dancer like Miss Fritzacopple, and the children slipped beyond his grasp and down the throat of the idol. As they vanished a great roar smashed the darkness. The beast’s cry floated up through the mouth, and was so dreadful that every heart upon the platform stopped drumming, briefly, before hammering on faster than ever. But the call of the beast was nothing compared to the shrill, shredding screech of the green-skinned ladyling who had fallen into its lair. ‘I’m coming!’ cried the bosun as he threw himself down the idol-mouth.

  Skyorax cried, ‘Oh great one! For your protection we offer you the flesh of these mortal souls! But please don’t take the beauty! Please leave her pretty flesh for me!’

  ‘Quiet, fool!’ cried the Worm.

  Captain Lambestyo met the viciously armed Marshians who inched their way down the platform, hungry for people-flesh, and, armed only with a shard of bamboo, he began to make them regret their poor dietary choices. Miss Fritzacopple, unarmed, ducked around the swinging blades like an expert contortionist. In the flimsy gravity she darted, tumbling over the heads of the frustrated locals. ‘Exactly what kind of dancing did you do?’ said the captain.

  ‘Modern!’ she replied as she arched her back below a flying cleaver, which split a bamboo stake in two.

  The battle continued. The Worm was enjoying it greatly from his perch, though it was hard to tell. He smiled, bemused, at the impending slaughter. His mouth watered. The botanist would be a tender morsel, true, though the old man was probably only good for stew. He nodded, impressed, as two of his best men cornered the hooded old man and moved in for the kill. He was rather surprised when, at that moment, he glanced to his left and saw Fabrigas sitting cross-legged beside him. ‘Hello,’ the old man said. ‘Impressive set-up you have here.’ Albert was dumbstruck. ‘Oh, you thought you saw your butchers cleaver me to death?’ said Fabrigas. ‘Just a parlour trick. I also do a fine turn with trick knives. They’re in my beloved cloak there, which I’ll now be taking, along with those things belonging to my crew.’

  ‘Skyorax!’ Albert called. ‘Kill this man immediately!’

  ‘Oh no, master. Don’t make me fight a wizard. Anything but that!’

  ‘Coward!’

  ‘Oh, Albert,’ said Fabrigas, ‘this will all be over soon. It can only play out one way. He who lives by the beast, as they say … ’

  At that moment they heard the beast roar louder than ever, but this time it was a cry of pain and anger. They heard the bosun’s voice: ‘These children are not your meal to take!’ Another roar, louder, angrier, the whole jungle shook. The bosun clambered to the top of the idol’s mouth, the two children tumbled from his shoulders to safety. And then a look of shock came across Bosun Quickhatch’s mighty face. The creature had him by the ankle. Before it hauled the giant back into the depths the man paused, a look of tranquillity on his face, and said, ‘It was ever so nice to know you all.’ Then he vanished. They heard him cry out – a cry of war – then the creature cried out – a cry of pitiless fury. The captain left a blade in a masked figure who had dared to step before him and cried out, ‘Bosun!’ There was no answer from below. Marshian reinforcements armed with guns and crossbows were now arriving at the platform. Things were hopeless. In one corner, Miss Fritzacopple was surrounded by attackers. Captain Lambestyo gathered himself and sprang to take Lenore in one strong arm. ‘Roberto would kill me if we lost you,’ he whispered.

  ‘Pfhh,’ said the girl. ‘And he is where?’

  But Lambestyo was not the only swiftly moving shadow that night. Black shapes fell from above, faster than the eye. They smashed easily through the flimsy bamboo roof. As the feasters raised their blades to end Miss Fritzacopple a shadow fell upon her, then sprang with her into the heights, leaving the Marshians standing with their blades quivering over an empty space. ‘The Ubuntu!’ cried the Worm. ‘The savages have come to steal our meal!’ More shadows fell upon the platform and took each of the prisoners flying up through the holes in the roof and into the darkness. It all happened so fast that no one had time to react. ‘Well,’ said Fabrigas, ‘it looks like we have some new friends to bunk with. This has been fun, it really has.’ He wore his beloved cloak now. He stood wearily, just as another hulking shadow fell from the jungle heights, took the old-timer in its strong arms, and sprang upwards.

  ‘Stop them!’ cried the Worm. A great angry cry came from the mouth of the idol. ‘The beast is furious!’ said the master. ‘Run, children!’ And they did, the surviving Marshians, leaping over each other to escape the black, clawed beast who now rose up through the darkness, smashing away the wooden idol face like it was paper. Even Albert fled. Or tried to. Before Fabrigas had left he’d found time to tie one end of a vine around the leg of a table, and the other around the leg of the Worm. As the old man was carried away into the darkness, he heard the mad Prince Albert’s screams as he was munched by the beast he loved.

  AND HOW DID YOU LIKE THAT?

  Is your blood moving? Is your heart pumping fast? How do you think our friends felt as they found themselves flying through the jungle heights, through a cloud of bugs and giant insects, fat leaves and vines slapping them senseless, then back to their senses, then out again, the whole jungle seeming to assault them mercilessly for their carelessness? They heard heavy, steady breathing near their ears and felt strong arms wrapped around them. Then they were drifting down, down from the canopy and into the village of the Ubuntu.

  UBUNTU

  People came from the huts to see the visitors, and when I say ‘people’ …

  The Ubuntu are muscular, ape-like creatures, their skin is perfectly black, their arms hang almost to their knees, allowing them to reach for vines, or run swiftly on all fours across the ground. In the dark they disappear, only their glowing blue eyes visible – so they keep those closed most of the time, moving through the jungle by smell, by instinct.

  Fabrigas was the first to gather himself. ‘Are we all present?’ he said. ‘Where is the girl?’

  ‘I am over here,’ said Lenore as she and the captain touched the earth. Lulabelle arrived soon after, tearful and bewildered.

  ‘I have to go back for my bosun,’ said Lambestyo, distraught. ‘He is my friend!’

  ‘He is lost,’ said Fabrigas. ‘Not even he could match that beast’s strength.’

  Everyone was silent. The only sounds were the soft calls of the jungle, and the cries of the beast still raging and hungry in the distance.

  ‘We will perform our rites for the bosun later,’ said Fabrigas, as their dusky and inquisitive rescuers drew closer. ‘But in the meantime we need to find out who these people are and why they stole us.’

  ‘I can answer that,’ said a young voice. A tiny, pale figure stepped forward from the wall of dark skin. ‘My name is Kimmy Persuivus. I’m ten years old. I think you need to get back to the ship rather urgently.’

  ON/OFF

  Kimmy Persuivus is a very small, very quiet girl. She is a girl that if you passed in a hall you might not even notice. If she tugged you on the sleeve and said, ‘Excuse me,’ you might think, ‘Who’s this, a talking hamster?’ Kimmy Persuivus is not a hamster. She is three feet tall, plus change, with a round face and round glasses. She mostly likes to read. In the lunch room of the factory where she works you can usually find her at one of the tables, trying to support a tattered book in one hand
, and a penlight in the other – because the workhouse is a gloomy place, and her eyes aren’t very good. At night you might see her small shape glowing faintly through the blankets. Her favourite stories are ones in which a small girl whom nobody thinks very much of goes off to have great adventures and perhaps marry someone very handsome – but also someone with a dependable income, because looks and daring aren’t everything. ‘Who needs to marry a dragon-slayer?’ she often says to herself. ‘What kind of career is that?’ Her ultimate dream would be to marry a handsome adventurer who also has his own mail-order books service.

  Kimmy Persuivus was only assigned to the Necronaut because of a typographical error. When she’d tried to explain, in her soft voice, that she was K. Persuivus, and that the person they were after was probably K. Persuavis, the confident and athletic older boy from the next dormitory, she’d been told to shut her hamster-hole. It was usually the way (although, to be fair, Kevin Persuavis had got a similar reception when he’d asked why on earth he’d been assigned to catalogue books in the library).

  And so, Kimmy Persuivus had reluctantly joined the crew of the Necronaut, and, as it turned out, would become more vital to their mission than almost anyone else.

  When the bosun saw her clutching her copy of Brenda the Dragon Befriender (a book about a young girl who negotiates for both parties during the great dragon/human conflicts), he’d simply shaken his head and walked off. But Kimmy Persuivus is a very hard worker, and she did much more than her fair share around the ship. After the first attack on the Necronaut she had dragged fire extinguishers almost as big as herself, and fought the flames until her face was black. The bosun had noticed, and as he strode past had given her a gentle pat on the shoulder that almost knocked her down.

  But to everyone else she had stayed invisible.

  *

  After landing in this swampy world, Kimmy had quietly watched events develop.

  No sooner had the food-gathering party left the ship than things began to unravel. A giant slug had swum up and tried to mate with the ship, but they had managed to prise it off with long poles. Then the Ubuntu arrived. At first, a group of five appeared beside the ship in a dugout boat, chattering and marvelling at the hulk. Shatterhands suggested firing off a warning shot, but Descharge overruled him, and bravely went to meet the visitors. Things went well, although without a translator it was difficult. They were able to get somewhere with crude drawings in the dirt, and a lot of pointing at things. ‘I think that if I wrestle his eldest daughter I can have the hand of his strongest warrior,’ he said, returning, and Shatterhands had rolled his eyes.

  The Ubuntu, it turns out, are a sweet, good-natured people with a wicked sense of humour. Descharge invited a group aboard for a modest feast. The Ubuntu brought strange and wonderful foods, and a bottle of their best spirit, which made Dr Sackwell’s Rum seem like cordial. It was a grand evening and there was much dancing and singing. But not everyone was happy.

  ‘These people are savages,’ hissed the surgeon. ‘Who knows what they’re capable of.’

  ‘And then there’s the giant slugs,’ said the cook, ‘and Gods know what else.’

  ‘The others are certainly dead by now,’ said the poet. ‘Gone, gone, gooooone!’

  ‘There’s no way they could have survived, not with a blind girl leading them. We must leave this beastly realm,’ shrieked G. De Pantagruel, whose nerves had been ravaged by the trials of the past few days. His Gentrifact companions murmured in agreement.

  ‘By my butcher knife, you’re right,’ said Huxbear the cook. ‘If we were wise we’d push off now, while we still have our heads.’

  The surgeon agreed, but urged caution.

  Kimmy had overheard it all from her secret reading place, a small nook near the foredeck where she’d sneak away to read a book she’d stolen from the galley. No one noticed her there. At the end of the night, an Ubuntu chief, whose name was Chima, was attracted to her pretty penlight. Kimmy impressed him by turning it on and off – at least he appeared to be impressed. ‘On, off,’ she said, clicking the small brass button, and she taught him several other words: ‘ship’, ‘dragon’, ‘castle’.

  When the Ubuntu left, Shatterhands and the cook came on deck. Again, they thought they were alone, but they weren’t. Sometimes it helps to be small and quiet. She turned off her reading light and listened.

  Then the sailor, Hardcastle, showed up, dis-burbling about giant crabs, and a swamp girl who’d risen from the dark lagoon, holding a child’s puzzle in her lifeless hand. When his friend McCormack had refused the swamp girl’s gift she had taken him into the depths. Hardcastle had pushed his boat away in panic, circling the swamp for hours, weeping, until he’d accidentally stumbled upon the ship. ‘They’re dead!’ he cried. ‘Oh mercy, I have never seen such an abode of monsters!’

  ‘This is just exactly what I expected,’ said the surgeon. ‘This is a cursed place and no one who wants to live would stay here.’

  Late that night the ship had been woken by Hardcastle’s screams. When they got to his bunk he was already dead. Wet footprints led out of the bunk room.

  The next day the Ubuntu returned with more food and gifts, and in greater numbers. But they discovered a ship descending into anarchy. The repairs had been going well, certainly, and the vessel was all but space-worthy, but now most of the crew agreed that they should flee while they had the chance. Amorous slugs were showing up in increasing numbers and becoming harder to dislodge. It was clear, the surgeon argued once more, with support from his friends, that the others were dead. Descharge saw his allies dwindling. Even when Roberto showed up and frantically began to draw impressions of his friends’ plight on the walls in chalk, Shatterhands was unmoved.

  ‘The only conclusion we can draw from these sketches is that this boy is utterly mad.’

  But the one thing Descharge had in his favour was the broken piston-rod which could not be repaired without a replacement part. He and the engineer had tried several makeshift options, but they’d all failed under tests.

  ‘There’s no flying without this,’ said Descharge, as he held the broken rod before the surgeon’s long, damp beak. One of their Ubuntu guests, though, had been watching, and he walked over to inspect the part. He gently took it and held it up to the light. ‘What is he going to do?’ said the surgeon with an evil sneer. ‘Perform some kind of black magic on it?’

  An hour later the same tribesman appeared, grinning, with a replacement part in his big, hairy paw.

  And so Descharge saw the writing on the wall. He had no excuse now. It wasn’t the Ubuntu he feared; his own tribe was turning on him.

  Kimmy Persuivus also saw the state of play. Late that evening she slipped quietly off the ship. No one saw her leave, because no one ever really saw her. No one saw her wade out into that deadly swamp and duck beneath some monster lilies. She wasn’t frightened in the swamp, even when the swamp girl rose up from the waters in front of her. Kimmy helped her solve her puzzle. As she would explain years later in her best-selling book, Swamp Girls Are People Too, swamp girls are people too. The swamp girl led Kimmy safely through the bogs to the edge of the Ubuntu camp. The person she was looking for must have seen her light flashing in the darkness, because minutes later a tall figure appeared in front of her and said, ‘On-off?’

  *

  Kimmy had drawn pictures in the dirt of a girl, a woman, a beardy man, a giant and a man with a scar on his face. The chief had pointed into the darkness with a dread look in his eyes. The Ubuntu knew all that happened in this jungle. The chief had assembled his best men for the lightning raid, and they had brought her friends back from the mouth of death. Now this tiny hero stood staring up at Fabrigas, and the old man stared down, bewildered at the girl, for although she’d clearly been aboard his ship, he swore he’d never seen her in his life.

  ‘We have to get back to the ship,’ she said. ‘Something terrible is happening.’

  *

  Fabrigas and the captain raced throu
gh the jungle on the backs of two loping beasts and broke through a wall of vines beside the wide stretch of bog where the Necronaut was waiting.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  There was nothing but a calm lagoon with flattened swamp trees. The Ubuntu stood around, smiling, pointing to the place where the ship had been. ‘Dragon,’ said one, helpfully. The captain stalked around the edge of the lagoon, throwing up his arms and saying, let’s be honest, some bad words.

  ‘Those ————, ————! I’ll ———— their ———— when I get my hands on them!’

  Fabrigas stood motionless. As he always said, you only have to imagine what lies ahead. There are no surprises.

  ‘I am very surprised!’ he said. ‘This makes difficult things even more difficult.’

  ‘You think?!’ said our captain, and he went off on another blind rant, shaking his fists at the imaginary moon so that the Ubuntu laughed with delight.

  ‘They must have repaired the ship,’ said Fabrigas. ‘I cannot believe that they would betray us.’

  Back at the Ubuntu camp, the atmosphere was tense. Lenore sat on one end of a log, Lulabelle nearer the other end, and Miss Fritzacopple sat in the middle. And no one spoke.

  Kimmy sat on a rock nearby, watching.

  ‘Well … isn’t it good to be out of danger again? Yes,’ said Miss Fritzacopple.

  Lenore was doing her best not to smell … her. The fishy girl. But it was difficult. Lenore was not yet a young woman, but she had started to have certain ideas about how a boy should behave – especially one who was supposed to be protecting her from harm on a deadly planet. They should definitely not go off protecting other girls. And they certainly shouldn’t just vanish without a word. Not that he really had any words. The captain, now there was a man to depend on. She sniffed. ‘It is getting much crowded on here. I believe I’ll walk.’