by M. Suddain
‘You should not call him a wizard,’ said Fabrigas. ‘My friend the master does not like it when people say that word to him. Just as Carrofax does not like it when you call him demon. And I do not like it when you call me Little Monster.’
‘You!’ cried the Well Dressed Man.
The old man laughed girlishly, and curtsied. ‘Yes, I have taken this old fool’s mind so I could stop your plan. For I am rather fond of him. You have taught me very well, I think. And for that, I and him are most grateful.’
‘But then where is the real …’ The assassin felt the force of the blade passing between his ribs and gently tickling his heart. He stared into the old man’s eyes with unguarded amazement as the Black Widow appeared behind him, kissed his cheek and said, ‘I have it, Daniel.’
‘I don’t understand how –’
‘Did you really think your parley games would work upon him?’ the old man said. ‘He is Fabrigas. He is my friend. He has the biggest brain the universe has made. Also, these two have the box with my captain in it. And I want him to bring it to me. Now be a sweetie and die.’
It is a truth that when the pale man can turn no paler he turns blue. The Well Dressed Man turned blue, then purple. He walked serenely away and leaned upon the catwalk rail. He looked out through the windows to where the greatest space battle the universe, perhaps any universe, had ever seen was reaching its dramatic climax. He saw a long, lean tentacle reach from the blackness and flick away a battle station as though it was a piece of dust on the arm of a fine coat. He let out a heavy breath.
The beautiful assistant turned to face her magician and said, ‘Is it really you in there, Lenore?’
‘Of course,’ the magician replied. ‘Now I think you have something which belongs to me. I need it very badly.’
‘I’m worried what might happen if I give this to you.’
‘You do not need to think about that. That isn’t your concern. I need to feel like I have something in the universe. You know how it is.’
The beautiful assistant nodded. She took the small black box from her top and handed it to him.
‘Thank you. I forgive you for kissing his face.’
The Black Widow looked at her Lasiotek Magnesium Chronograph wristwatch. ‘I only have a few minutes left,’ she said. ‘Please tell this old fool that I’ll miss him. And I’m sorry I said his stories were boring.’
‘I will.’
The Black Widow nodded once, then threw herself into the black hole of the nearest laundry tube. The vacuum force took her flying away.
The old man woke from his dream to see the Well Dressed Man leaning on the rail, staring out at the battle. A red blossom had been left for him on the back of the Well Dressed Man’s well-pressed shirt. He looked down at the discarded knives on the floor, furiously trying to piece together the past few minutes.
‘Yes, she is a wonder,’ said the Well Dressed Man. ‘She pulled a veil over my eyes. Made me think I’d thrown away the fake knife when I’d really thrown away … well, who knows what it was.’
‘It was a silver spoon,’ said Dray from the shadows.
‘Ah yes. You know, I was only doing the thing I love, the thing I was born to do. Some make shoes, some bake pies, I control minds. Could I do any different?’
‘No,’ said Fabrigas as he turned the black box over in his hands. ‘We all do what we’re made to do.’
Outside the windows and far away the tiny girl was still enveloped in a bubble of blue light. The Well Dressed Man turned and smiled. ‘Old man,’ he said, ‘despite what I’ve been compelled to do, I have to say, it was the highest privilege to meet you.’ Then he turned back to the fire. There could have been a glass of brandy in his hand. His pale face was caught perfectly in the flames of the burning warships. ‘Do get her home, won’t you?’
‘I’ll do my best.’
And with that the immaculately dressed assassin fell gently over the rail, his buttons clinking on the iron. Fabrigas never heard his body hit the flattened steel. Kissssssss-Shoooommmmm!
Dray stepped from the shadows. ‘Well, I don’t know about “biggest brain in the universe”,’ he said, ‘but well done anyway. How did you do it? Special earplugs? Foil hat?’
‘To be perfectly honest,’ said Fabrigas, ‘I’m not entirely sure. I think I might have been temporarily possessed.’
‘Typical,’ muttered Dray. ‘Anyway, old cock, I should probably get back down to the city and find my wife. Nice to meet you. Mind how you go.’
And off he wandered into the mist.
‘Yes, I must head off too,’ said Fabrigas as he looked over the rail to the steam press below. ‘I’m rather … pressed … for time.’ And he was sad that there was no one there to hear him.
*
‘Get them! Kill them!’ screamed the Pope. He screamed those words towards the closing doors of the command centre as he was led quickly, by Cardinal Mothersbaugh, towards his evacuation ship.
‘I want them all dead, and their monster too!’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Mothersbaugh, ‘but we really must get you to your escape ship, Holiness, before the monster strikes again.’
Outside, the Sweety had struck again. He’d sent another tentacle smashing through the heart of a planet-sized storage ship. Now the papal fleet had turned all its guns upon the furious beast, but the blows were as mosquito bites upon the haunch of an elephant. Meanwhile, the Klaxon fleet continued to surge like blood through the gaping holes in the Pope’s defences, and the Diemendääs fleet received the order to fall back to safety – wherever that was. The eternal night of space was lit so brightly now that it seemed as if a new sun had been born, and every brave soul in the battle could look upon the Sweety, in his glory, a creature beyond the size of a gas-giant, his jaws wide and handsome, his long, elegant arms reaching out on every side to shred and smash, his belly white and pulsing with the fire from the Pope’s guns as they rained holy hell upon him. Fabrigas the younger was doing his best to take the Necronaut within range of the platform, but the terrible forces of the vortex meant he couldn’t get nearly close enough. The Fleet of the Nine Churches, locked in a tender embrace with the many long arms of the Sweety, was losing its own battle with the abyss.
From the far end of the execution platform the judge’s voice could be heard as he tried to get back into the command palace. ‘Can’t quite get the door open here! Seems to be locked from the inside!’ Roberto still had his palm against the maintenance panel, but he was struggling to divert enough power to the palace’s engines, while still keeping a protective bubble around him and Lenore. The bosun had each of his hands around a priest’s throat while another man-giant was on his back with his arm around his huge neck.
Suddenly there was a dramatic flash of light and Roberto stumbled inside the bubble. The air at once smelled of electrical burning. Roberto realised his short hair was standing high on end; Lenore’s was too.
‘Roberto, what have you done?’
But Roberto had done nothing. A voice said, ‘Hello, children.’
‘Who’s there?’ Lenore could sense nothing about their new guest, and Roberto could not describe to her the man he saw materialise on the platform with his hands neatly crossed in front of him. He was dressed in a fine morning suit. His skin was pale, he had pointy ears and two small horns on his head and his eyes burned like candles. ‘Don’t be afraid, Roberto. I won’t hurt you.’ And as if to prove the point he raised a palm and stopped a burning hunk of wreckage just inches from the boy’s bubble. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact.’ Time had slowed; the scenes of violence and destruction all around them wound down like a stalled watch.
‘I’m very sorry to startle, but I thought we should meet briefly before you leave. My name, children, is Carrofax.’
DEMON
On the platform the demon had coalesced into a shape that almost looked solid. ‘Child,’ said Carrofax, ‘you must be very tired.’
‘I am a bit tired – now that you mention
it,’ replied the girl. ‘But am I finished yet? No.’
‘Oh no!’ laughed the demon. ‘Oh no, if there’s one thing you’re not it’s finished. If your journey is one of ten thousand miles then you have not even taken the first step. You are about to embark on a great adventure, one which will make all this seem like a Sunday tea party. And your little friend, too.’ The creature turned his fiery eyes on the boy, and Roberto scrambled back in his bubble. There was nothing in his head to prepare him for seeing his very first phantom.
‘It’s very important that what’s in this boy’s nut gets to the right people. It’s the only way to defeat Calligulus. But if you’re to succeed then I must give you both something to help you on your way.’
‘But you can’t interfere with the world,’ said Lenore. ‘You’ll be punished, foolish man!’
‘Let that be my problem,’ the demon replied. ‘I have weighed up the pros and cons, the ins and outs. I think, in the end, it will be worth the sacrifice.’
*
Fabrigas couldn’t even bring himself to wonder where the Black Widow had vanished to. He stashed the box containing the Forbidden Zone in his cloak, then ran to the small balcony on the far side of the pressing room and raised a sleeve against the strobing glare. Through the gas bubble around the balcony he could see the burning hulks dissolving under the force of the black hole, while the unconquerable arms of the Sweety merrily bashed the larger hulks to pieces. The whole lot, he knew, the Sweety too, would soon tumble into the black hole, along with the platform which held the two children he had sworn, albeit half-heartedly at times, to protect. Suddenly, the palace to which the platform was attached lurched violently, all the priests but one were thrown over, and that one was only saved because a small figure on the platform sent out a claw of blue energy to wrap itself around the priest’s ankles. Fabrigas cried to the empty space between them: ‘My children! My children!’
It was an outpouring which surprised even him.
‘It’s no use, old friend,’ said a familiar voice. ‘You’ve helped these children as much as you can. They have to look after themselves now.’
‘Carrofax. What happened to your ears, and your horn?’
‘I can’t hear you, old friend, because I no longer have ears, so let me anticipate your likely questions. I gave one of my horns to the girl and my ears to the boy. With those ears he’ll be able to hear a pin fall a billion miles away, and with my horn the girl will be able to travel there before the pin has even come to rest. Among many other things. They will need these things.’
‘But you can’t interfere with the material world!’
‘Please don’t interrupt. I can’t hear you, remember? The next thing you’re likely to ask is how I can interfere in this universe. The answer, obviously, is that I cannot, on pain of a fate worse than death. I now have to return to the ectoplasmic dimensions, where I’ll face trial for my crimes. It is likely that we’ll never see each other again.’
‘But, Carrofax! I can’t live without you! You are my best friend!’
‘I have no idea what you just said, but I’m sure it was very moving. I know how much you must be suffering, old friend, to make such companions in such short time, and to lose them all. And now to lose me too. I can tell you now that your sacrifices will have benefits you could not possibly imagine. You might even have saved your species. And eternity knows they are worth saving. Just. I, on the other hand, have a less glorious fate awaiting me. Goodbye, young man, it was a pleasure serving you.’
‘But, Carrofax!’ The old man’s eyes bulged with tears and they soon shone brightly in his beard.
‘No protests. Close your eyes now,’ said the demon. Fabrigas blinked twice, then dutifully closed his eyes. ‘Try to … become limp? Did I say that correctly?’ Then Carrofax drew a deep lungful of air and gave a single breath so powerful that Fabrigas found himself flung far into space, far away from the ship, the black hole, far away from everything.
HANDS OF TIME, CLAWS OF SPACE
Roberto still had the bosun by the ankles with a tendril of electromagnetic energy, but it is never easy for a boy to hold a giant. You try it. The bosun looked up at the boy’s tiny face and said, ‘I like your new ears. Smashing.’
‘I like them too,’ said the boy from within his blue bubble. ‘I can hear your heart beating very fast.’
‘Oh yes,’ said the bosun, ‘very fast, always has. You’d best focus all your energy on helping your friend now.’
‘Roberto! What happens?’ said Lenore, from within her blue bubble. The tendril of electricity connecting their twin protective spheres was now stretched to breaking.
‘I don’t want to leave you, giant.’ The boy’s eye’s sparkled with tears.
‘Well, don’t think of it that way. Think of it as me leaving you. There isn’t nearly enough room in that big blue bubble for a hulk like me. You have to get your two balloons together and look after each other. You have to stick together in this life. That’s all it’s about. There’s no big secret. Now do us a favour, will you? While we’re talking, head over there and stop that silver watch from going over.’ Roberto looked and saw a silver watch that had fallen from the bosun’s pocket. It was slowly quivering its way to the edge of the platform. ‘It’s terribly precious to me, you see.’
‘But I’ll need to let go of you to grab it.’
‘You’ll have to soon anyway. You can’t hold me, I’m far too burly. I’m huge. The watch is yours, my naughty nut. But if you ever do find yourself in a mountain town called Grendel, on Persuvius, and if you happen by the watchmaker’s there, would you pop in and give it to my father? And tell him his son is thinking of him.’
So Roberto nodded twice, turned to save the watch as it teetered on the edge, and when he looked back the bosun was gone.
*
On a moon called Persuvius, in a town called Grendel, there is indeed a watchmaker’s workshop. There is a watchmaker there, a widower, whose family were all killed, whose only living son had vanished and could never come home. His watches are the finest there is, and they mark the passage of time in every measure imaginable.
THE CREATURE INSIDE
What makes a human a human? Is it a heart? Skin? A functioning spleen? Legs which take you walking through the fields? Fingers which clutch and caress? Eyes which see the heavens, and weep when they lose a dear, dear friend? I have often pondered this question as I walk my dreamy death through life. We are such a strange and wonderful species that I’m sometimes lost for words to describe us. Though not often.
Also then, so long as I have you here, answer me this: if it is true that the human creature has no eternal soul, if she is but a brief blink in existence, if she is nothing more than the sum of her fleshy parts, and if those parts can be replaced with mechanical pieces, then what is she? Her memories? Ah, but her memories are fragile fictions. Is she then the choices which will compose her natural life? Possibly. But if she is just this and no more – a fleshy decision-making machine, something born only to die – then what makes her decide to rise from her bed each day? What gives her life purpose? And what compels her to make her choices good? Perhaps, in the absence of any immortal judgement – or perhaps even in the presence of such judgement – she must become her own pure idea of what is right, and what is wrong. Perhaps in this sense she becomes not a ‘self ’ at all, but rather an effect. Perhaps rather than being defined by the physical object she seems to represent, this raw lump of meat and metal she is for the brief time of her life, she can be defined simply by what she leaves behind when she departs the stage for ever.
*
The Pope sat in his plush, private escape pod and watched as his fleet burned. His escape pod was larger than many ships, and it had everything he might need to last through an emergency. ‘The battle is lost, Holiness,’ Mothersbaugh had said as he’d ushered him to the door of the escape pod. ‘We must get to a safe distance.’
‘Get your own pod!’ the Pope had cried as he’d hit t
he button to close the door on his cardinal’s startled face.
Now he folded and unfolded his arms. These were events he simply could not fathom, and what he could not fathom need not exist, and that was just the end of things. He frowned; his plush chair made crunching sounds as he impatiently moved his weight from one side to the other, and banged his feet against the front. Then he pushed the intercom button.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Is anyone there? Answer me.’ His prayer travelled out into the universe and died.
He waited.
‘I am very hungry!’ There was no reply. The Pope sighed.
Soon he heard a noise. It was a loud bump followed by a snuffling sound and it came from the cupboard where he kept his shoes. The Pope loved his shoes. ‘A man,’ he often said, ‘should be judged second by his moral fibre, third by his shoes, and first, of course, by the gods.’ And that was why he had ordered that a certain amount of his emergency food and water be removed and replaced by a rack containing forty pairs of shoes. Now there were snuffles coming from his shoe cupboard. ‘A stowaway!’ said the Pope, ‘On my escape pod!’ He stood and marched stiffly to the cupboard door, flung it open, and said, ‘So!’
The creature inside the cupboard was much larger and much more fond of shoes than even he. She was a golden beast with hazel eyes and a white muzzle, and though her long, fluttering lashes could be confused, by some, for instruments of flirtation, her bared black claws and deafening roar were unambiguous.
She saved his fine boots – still attached to his feet – for last.
*
Fabrigas the younger was still sitting in his crippled spaceship, watching the smouldering embers of the battle between two armies, the universe’s largest monster and its greatest battle fleet, all at the mouth of a super-black hole and thinking …