by M. Suddain
Then into the heart of the storm. The Black Widow took them on a sickening hell-journey, dipping and diving through the swinging hooks. The pilots, startled, began to flail and found their cables tangling, and there was a series of mighty explosions as grapple ships were swung against each other. ‘Geeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!’ admitted Fabrigas.
Ahead, the palaces emerged through the smoke and fire. They could see the Diemendääs ships throwing themselves against the Pope’s defences only to be forced back by the unbelievable firepower of the death-fleet. And the Black Widow flew them straight into it, straight into the cloud of dust, fire and debris.
‘Sheeeeeeeeooooooaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!’ Fabrigas suggested.
The Black Widow sent them rocketing towards the docking bay of the largest papal command palace, where she assumed they’d find Lenore, and gave her jet wings one last burst of throttle.
*
Fabrigas the younger, meanwhile, was taking a few seconds to ponder the infinite strangeness of the universe. Just a year ago he was a junior monk at the Dark Friars’ Academy. He’d left to join the Academy’s Exploratory Unit. He had signed up as a science officer on a deep space expedition, had narrowly avoided death on fourteen separate occasions, before finally finding safe port in a city on the outer reaches of his universe. Once there he’d got into trouble after snogging a general’s wife at a ball. He was placed before a firing squad and shot. He survived, miraculously, was rescued by an older version of himself and was caught up in some kind of trans-dimensional war.
It was a lot to fit into a single year. He had now eased his stricken craft expertly into the gravity of the moon. The grappling craft pursuing him would not dare to fly so close to Bespophus. They would have to take the long way round. He was, he had to admit, a damned good pilot, even with just one arm. He observed the peaceful jungles of the moon below, and for a second considered setting his craft down there and hiding in the undergrowth. But something told him that was not a good idea.
Then, as he came round the moon’s dark half he saw a quite incredible sight. It was a fleet, massive and heavily armed – it had been tucked quietly behind the moon. The lead craft hailed him.
‘This is Fleet Commander Descharge of the Necronaut. Please identify yourself.’
Fabrigas cleared his throat, switched on his ship’s communicator. ‘This is … Master M. Francisco Fabrigas … of the vessel … whatever the heck this ship is called. I didn’t really have time to check.’
There was silence on the other end of the line.
THE SILENT ONES
A good voyage depends upon a good ship. A good ship sees many terrible things, in battle and in peace, but always remains a good ship. The Necronaut had proved itself, despite appearances, to be a very good ship. It had carried its present crew through several dimensions, a number of skirmishes and one major space battle, before it had brought them before a massive sign in space: ‘Silence’.
This, briefly, is what had happened.
(Oh, I know, I know: the Pope, the battle, our friends. This really won’t take long.)
In that lonely patch of empty space they’d sat until they saw a vast ship emerging from the darkness. The ship was painted black and what windows it had were dimly lit. Descharge could do nothing as the ship pulled up beside them and a wide hatch opened to reveal a softly lit bay. The bay was lined with deep, cushioned material. The Necronaut touched softly down and listed over in the plush upholstery. Four figures in hazard suits came through a small door and walked along the side of the Necronaut, studied its markings. They had a short conversation in sign language. One of the men punched some keys on an electronic sign he was holding and held it up. The sign read: ‘If you please, have silence. Danger. Open hatch?’
They had no choice. The strangers entered the Necronaut. Two carried a large box. Black. About the size of a shoebox. Only slightly larger. It’s not important. Descharge stepped forward, but when he took a breath to speak, the men began waving their arms frantically. The two put their box down, carefully, and from the box they unpacked sets of padded slippers and distributed them to the survivors. Then the two leaders beckoned Descharge to follow them, quietly. They took him from the ship and down a corridor to a padded room. The two hosts sank into soft chairs behind the desk and gestured that Descharge should sit opposite. The silence was maddening. They took off their hats and Descharge observed gaunt, weary faces, the faces of people who have trouble sleeping. Then one of the hosts, the one Descharge thought might be a man, leaned forward and said, in a whisper so soft it was hardly audible, ‘Forgive us. We must … have total silence. We have … a Sweety.’
*
It takes some time to tell a long story in a whisper. It turns out that when the Necronaut had made the desperate jump from the previous universe (leaving behind their friends, the giant worm, the cannibal cult), it had landed in the outer regions of a doomed cluster of planets called Klaxonia. Klaxonia was once a prosperous and peaceful mini-empire. Then one year the Pope of their galaxy had paid an official visit and brought with him two slug-like creatures, each just a few feet long, which he said were a recent gift from a visiting explorer. Within a few days the creatures had doubled in size, then trebled, then trebled again. The Pope left quickly. A few days later the creatures had doubled in size yet again. By the time the experts gave their recommendation – that the pair be exterminated with all haste – the creatures had grown beyond the point where this would have been easy, and by the time a military force could be scrambled they were each as big as a mid-sized town, and the mid-sized town they had been sitting on was dust.
As we have seen from the experiences of the people of Diemendääs, a Sweety, even in the larval stage, can be terrifyingly destructive. Within a year this breeding pair had taken over the Klaxon’s entire home-world, and the survivors had fled to other nearby worlds. Calm took over, with the two species living as cautious neighbours. The two creatures, it seemed, were very happy together. They transformed, grew long, tentacle-like arms. They were observed sitting arm in arm on their new world, gazing out at the galaxy they now technically commanded.
And it would have continued like this, but for a still unexplained happening. No one knows how, or why, but one day the lady Sweety disappeared. Vanished. When Mr Sweety woke from his nap to find her gone his cries subdued the heavens. The Sweety began to search space with his long tentacles, and where his tentacles reached he left devastation. The Sweety, as I have mentioned, is attracted to the faintest vibration, the sound of a ship’s horn, or the hum of an engine, or even an old man breaking wind, and when he hears it his instinct is to reach out for it. Overnight, the Klaxon Empire was devastated.
But it is amazing how life carries on. The Klaxons made adjustments. They took off their shoes, they spoke in whispers, they hand-sewed giant muffling gloves so that they could do simple tasks like open a tin can, or letter, or light a cigar, without making noise. Everything from pulling a cord on a lamp, to filling a water jug, creates a sound. And what happens when you have to fix a roof, or repair a road, or make a baby, or do any other noisy thing? And what about the things a person can’t control? What about a hungry child, or a man who talks in his sleep? It was not uncommon in the early years for sleep-talking men to bring destruction on their city. And then there were the suiciders: those who were so utterly fed up with themselves, and society, that they would simply walk into a town square and yell, ‘Take me now!’ The Sweety always did. And what about absolutely unavoidable phenomena, such as rain hitting a roof, or a boulder rolling down a mountain pass? Well, unbelievable as it is, the Klaxons found solutions to all these problems, and many, many more. They created, in a few generations, from the ruins of their old, noisy society, an utterly silent one. They developed the galaxy’s most sophisticated sign language (a language which incorporated not just their hands but every part of their body, even eyelashes). Their technicians invented silent drills and hammers, face-mufflers for toddlers and sleep-disorder su
fferers, silent beds for the amorous. In fact, the birth rate climbed for the first few years. Danger, it turns out, is a powerful aphrodisiac.
After centuries of this, the Klaxons came to face the ultimate question: fight or flight? Now that they had managed to engineer powerful silent ships, should they evacuate their people to safer worlds, or stage an all-out war against the Sweety? An evacuation of all 789 billion citizens in their world-cluster would be unimaginably difficult and dangerous. And even if they could leave the district, where would they go? The planets in the region could not possibly accommodate the mass migration of their entire population. What if their migration caused a conflict of some kind? The noise from that could kill them all.
On the other hand, they would only get one chance to terminate the monster. And if they failed … well. They were a peaceful people, the Klaxons, and most had come to accept, even love, the Sweety, in all his slimy glory. He was representative of everything that was ugly and tragic about life. There were even protests in the streets of the capital of Klaxonia at the idea of attempting to destroy him. Silent ones.
But in the end it was accepted that a battle was the only way.
And so, the next few decades of Klaxon life were spent with two supreme goals in mind: 1. Assemble the most ferocious arsenal the galaxy has known. 2. Do it quietly.
The most powerful battle fleet ever seen was assembled around the edge of their territory, not far from the planet on which the Sweety lived. 276,000 heavily armed battleships waited for the order to initiate Operation: Deadly – Though Necessary, You Understand – Kill.
And that was when the Necronaut showed up.
*
This was the story as outlined (though in shorter form) for Descharge. He eased carefully back in his chair and put his fingers to his lips – his hosts winced. Then he sat forward again and whispered, ‘I think I might have … another option.’
What Descharge suggested was delightful in its simplicity. ‘We have at our disposal,’ he whispered, ‘a technology that allows a ship, or group of ships, to leave a universe silently, and to appear elsewhere. What we also have,’ he said, ‘is a walking boy-computer. He has the maps and secrets of the universes in his head. Granted, the technology isn’t perfect, and it carries certain risks, but it would allow you to transport a large number of people with almost no risk of waking the Sweety. Our boy can operate the technology. And we would be happy to provide you with it, if you would be willing to give us the energy to power our engine, and to help us recover our shipmates from the belly of a giant worm.’
I do not want you to think that the rest was easy. It took some hours to explain the situation to Roberto (even with the rather elegant picture-talking machine the Klaxons had invented). It certainly took some time to convince him to take the pile of clattering diamonds from his pocket and put them in a soundproof packet. And it took some days to get a workable plan together, and it took some weeks to do the engineering work necessary to prepare an entire fleet for transport to another universe. But it was an opportunity for the crew to fatten themselves up again, and for Klaxon technicians to repair the Necronaut to a specification its crew could not have imagined. It was decided that a large and heavily armed exploratory fleet would make the jump, establish a base camp on a habitable world, with an aim to eventually bring the rest of their people through. The Sweety would be left behind to live in peace. It was such a wonderful plan that there were silent celebrations in the silent streets. When they made the jump to their new universe they found their quiet and near-invisible ships a great advantage. They sat silently until the Hex cleared. Then they slid silently behind the gleaming moon. Then they saw a small, crippled ship being pursued by fighters whose flanks bore the unmistakable insignia of the Pope.
STEAM
‘You stupid woman! You nearly killed us!’
‘But I did not! Now quickly.’
The Black Widow had flown them into the docking bay at high speed and into a pile of laundry. ‘If it wasn’t for that giant pile of man-knickers we’d have been killed and you know it.’
‘Nonsense. You’re being overdramatic.’ She plucked a pair of man-knickers from the back of the old man’s head and cast them aside. ‘Now hurry, we haven’t much time to save the girl.’
Or herself, she neglected to mention.
‘I don’t understand why you’ve suddenly changed sides, woman!’
‘You old fool! How many times do I have to save your life before you realise I changed sides weeks ago?’
They ran on through dim, empty corridors lit only by emergency lighting. The evacuation of non-essential staff had been sounded and the bells still rang around the ship. The Black Widow led them through the narrow labyrinth without even pausing to check the way.
‘How on earth do you know where you’re going?’
‘I don’t know. I have the strangest sense of déjà vu. I feel as if I’ve been here before. The command centre will be this way, I’m sure.’ Then, from the distance they heard a growing roar, like the sound of a waterfall. And then they heard a tremendous noise – KissssssssShoooommmmm! – like the thunder of a giant tribal drum. As they turned into a long corridor they heard the noise again …
Kissssssss-Shoooommmmm!
… and they felt their bodies vibrate. ‘I think perhaps this isn’t the way we should be heading.’
‘Nonsense!’
At the end of the corridor they went beneath an open iron fire door, burst through a set of chain-mail curtains, hit a wall of thick steam. It took them a few seconds to process what was happening. They found themselves pulling up inside a dim canyon – half a mile high, walled on one side by windows, and on the other by catwalks along which were spaced row upon row of thundering vacuum tubes, each big enough to take a large bundle of laundry. Down the centre of the room – which stretched to vanishing point – were twin rows of presses, each wide enough that you could lay a bed sheet across, and they all rose together in unison, like a gang of iron butterflies, and they fell together …
Kissssssss-Shoooommmmm!
… shaking the entire room and sending up heaping clouds of hellish steam.
‘You foolish woman! This isn’t the Pope’s palace. You’ve landed us in the laundry ship!’
‘But that’s impossible. I was sure I –’
‘I should have suspected with the man-knickers!’ They heard the fire door slam shut behind them. ‘We have been led like rats into the trap!’
Then through the silky mist a figure swam, tall and lean, like a ghost: a ghostly pale figure at an ironing board, tiny in the vast room, but giant, it seemed, in the eye. The figure led the iron smoothly around the contours of a perfectly white shirt.
‘The thing about controlling the human mind,’ said the figure, ‘is it’s a lot like ironing a shirt. First, the temperature has to be just right. Too hot and the material burns; too cold and there’s no effect. You have to see the object not as a whole, but as a series of small parts which work together.’
Kissssssss-Shoooommmmm!
‘If you work across each part, smoothing out the wrinkles of perception, unfurrowing the fabric of experience, then you will be left with something truly beautiful. Something as blank and perfect as the formless void which exists at the birth of a universe, a new canvas on which you can paint your will.’
‘It’s that man again,’ said Fabrigas.
The figure put down his iron and held the immaculately pressed shirt to the strange blue light of battle which sputtered in through the windows. ‘But I could just iron for ever, you know? I could iron a thousand shirts and not grow tired of it. It does not seem like a mundane task to me, for such are the subtle differences in each shirt that each has its own nature. Sleep, woman!’ The Black Widow slumped to the ground. ‘She came here to try to kill me. Some people never learn. This is not exactly how I imagined things playing out,’ said the figure, ‘but one must adapt to circumstances.’
‘What have you done with Lenore?’ s
aid the old man.
‘What have I done with her? Old man, that girl has been sailing under her own steam. But she’s safe for now.’ The wall of small, square windows on one side of the great laundry room had become a flickering grid as the skirmishes at the edges of the Pope’s fleet continued.
The Well Dressed Man put the shirt over his vested torso and buttoned it carefully. Then he tied his black silk tie and slipped the knot around his throat. Then he took an elegant, two-button jacket from a rack nearby, slithered into it, and stepped at last into the light. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘in all my years as an assassin I have never killed a well-dressed person. Your cloak, if you please.’
I AM THE LORD OF CHAOS & DESTRUCTION
The green-skinned demon-girl whose eyes were blue as gun metal and who smelled of roses (the thorns, not the petals) had arrived in a strange universe, on a small ship, frozen inside a block of ice, and now leaned calmly and attentively towards the voice who read her final judgement. She stood at the edge of the execution platform. The platform was separated from space by a thin bubble of life-giving gas, and from the death-bringing black hole by just a few million miles. Or thereabouts. Her features flickered madly in the pulsing light of battle, while the abyss itself was an invisible entity, perceivable only by the hazy coils of superheated gas which circled it as water gathers around a plughole. Pieces of debris were passing by at fantastic speeds, barely perceivable at the rate they moved. In fact, it was getting very dangerous to be out in the open. The judge, a portly man in golden cloak and silver wig, knew it, and he was hurrying through his proclamation. ‘Child, you have been found guilty of … various things which I won’t bother to elaborate on.’ He flinched as the wing of a fighter craft sliced through the air bubble with a pop and whizzed above their heads. Seven huge men had been sent to guard her – heaven knows why – and they stood nearby. When the heavies arrived Lenore had caught a familiar scent and had barely stopped herself from crying out, ‘It’s you!’