The Boy Who Didn't Want to Save the World

by Dominic Barker

  They continued down the hill until they reached the huge wooden gates that led into the city. They were shut. Capablanca climbed down off Pig the Horse and rapped on the door. A small panel within the door was opened and a guard’s head popped out.

  ‘Hello,’ said the guard. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘Hello,’ replied Capablanca.

  ‘Would you like some fruit?’ asked the guard.

  ‘Er …’ said Capablanca.

  ‘Have an apple,’ said the guard, and one was passed through the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Capablanca.

  ‘It does me good to see you eating it.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Capablanca as he fought to swallow yet more fruit.

  ‘Now, what was it you wanted?’

  Capablanca looked serious.

  ‘I want to see the King.’

  ‘The King?’ said the guard, a little surprised. ‘Have you an appointment?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Capablanca, ‘but it’s very important.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ agreed the guard. ‘Well, do you know the password?’

  ‘Er … no,’ said Capablanca.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the guard. ‘I’m afraid I can’t let you in if you don’t know the password.’

  ‘It really is very important.’

  ‘It’s not nice, I know,’ said the guard, ‘but we’ve had to tighten up security because of strange tidings from the east.’

  ‘Strange tidings?’ repeated Capablanca. ‘What strange tidings?’

  ‘They say,’ whispered the guard, ‘that there are those who have come into the east of our land who aren’t nice. It’s said that they won’t eat fruit. They are laying waste to our land and destroying our orchards.’ And then a look of horror swept across his face. ‘Ooops,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this. You might be one of them. But I do so like a chat.’

  ‘I’ve eaten the fruit,’ pointed out Capablanca.

  ‘I know,’ said the guard. ‘But the new rules say if you haven’t got the password you can’t come in.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I’m not saying I agree with it, mind. It all seems very tough to me. They’ll be asking us to stop people doing things next, and that’s not what I, for one, came into the guards for.’

  It occurred to the wizard that a trusting city like Elysium might not opt for a very difficult password.

  ‘This password,’ he chanced. ‘It wouldn’t be “fruit”, would it?’

  The guard’s face lit up.

  ‘How did you know?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, it had just slipped my mind,’ said Capablanca.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said the guard cheerfully. ‘I’m so pleased I don’t have to send you away. It would spoil my day.’

  Chapter 20

  The mighty doors opened and the three questors and their horse walked into Elysium, capital city of Illyria. The streets were narrow but not dark. All the houses were painted in bright colours. Flowers danced on window ledges. People bustled hither and thither, all smiling and nodding and shaking hands and kissing each other. Children dashed about playing games. Everyone waved.

  ‘My arm aches,’ complained Blart, who was fed up with waving back at people.

  ‘Keep smiling,’ ordered Capablanca.

  Blart kept smiling. He was too frightened not to. Never in his life had he seen so much goodwill and frankly it scared him.

  They walked through streets that resounded with merry laughter, down lanes where men and women chortled together outside their houses and through thoroughfares where good-natured chatter and banter zipped all around them. Blart had thought the country was bad but this was much worse. At least in the country there were gaps between all the cheerfulness. Here it was just non-stop.

  But things were to get worse. Heading for the diamond tower, they turned into a new street and gasped.

  If they thought the streets before had been crowded, they were in dire need of a dictionary to come up with an adequate word to describe this street.

  ‘I feel sick,’ Blart informed his companions.

  All along the side of the road were stalls. Stalls that sold everything that you could think of. Fish and meat and vegetables and cheese and spices and silk and wool and flowers and fruit. Lots of fruit.

  ‘I want to go home,’ said Blart as the heady smell of the market began to overpower him.

  A man rushed from a stall and gave Capablanca a cheese.

  ‘No thank you,’ said Capablanca. ‘I don’t want it. I haven’t got any money.’

  The man gave him a strange look and rushed away, leaving the cheese behind.

  A woman approached Beo and handed him some silk.

  ‘Woman, please take this back,’ said Beo, ‘for we cannot pay for it.’

  The woman scurried away, leaving the silk behind her.

  Another woman approached Blart and handed him some bottles.

  ‘What’s this rubbish?’ demanded Blart.

  ‘These are precious spices,’ replied the woman.

  ‘I don’t want them,’ said Blart. ‘And if you don’t get out of my face I’ll smash them over your head.’

  Blart felt there was less danger that women would hit him back than men so he was even ruder to them. The woman’s face fell but she left the bottles of spices behind her before rushing off.

  They continued along the road. Each time they passed a stall someone would dash out and give them something, be it some fresh fish or some wine or some elaborate jewellery. However much they protested they could not reject the goods they were given. If a stallholder couldn’t get them to take a gift directly then he just placed the object in one of Pig the Horse’s saddlebags. More and more things mounted up. In their pockets, in their hands and over their shoulders.

  ‘There’s going to be a terrible bill at the end of this street,’ warned Capablanca.

  But they reached the end of the street and there was no bill. Nobody stopped them and nobody demanded payment.

  ‘Sure, we’ll be arrested as thieves,’ said Beo.

  But they weren’t arrested as thieves. And the reason they weren’t can only be understood by understanding the nature of the Illyrian economy.

  You see, most economies work on the ‘buy’ idea. You want something. You go to someone who has it. You agree a price. And then you get it.

  The Illyrian economy didn’t work like this. Their economy, instead of being based on the idea of buying, was based on the idea of giving. Everybody gave a share of whatever he or she had to everybody else. So, a man who had grown a lot of oranges gave some to everybody he knew. A woman who made cheeses gave some to everybody she knew. And so on. Everybody ended up with all the oranges, apples, cheeses and everything else that they needed, which is all that an economy is there for in the first place. And if, for example, the man with the oranges had something go wrong like his orange trees getting a disease and dying, then it didn’t mean that he had to starve because everybody carried on giving him things even though they didn’t get any oranges back. They had everything else so missing out on oranges wasn’t so terrible. And as soon as the man got some new orange trees he’d start growing oranges and giving them away again. This is why everybody was always trying to give Blart, Beo and Capablanca things.

  Economists from all the other countries of the world had heard of this idea and said that it couldn’t work because people were naturally greedy and selfish and that they liked having more things than everybody else. But Illyrians continued to make it work in complete disregard of economic theory, which was very rude of them in the opinion of the economists. And because they weren’t always competing with each other and trying to make a profit, the Illyrians ended up being friendly and generous to one another and they were the happiest people in the world. It made all the economists mad.

  However, Capablanca, Beo and Blart were unaware of the workings of the Illyrian economy. They just had a whole load of goods that they didn’t want.

  ‘Where’s the
re a beggar when you want one?’ asked Capablanca of nobody in particular. ‘All cities have beggars. We could just give all this stuff to one of them.’

  But the Illyrian economy worked so well that there weren’t any beggars. Someone had once tried begging in Illyria but by the end of the second day found he’d been given so much that he was the third wealthiest person in the kingdom and had to retire.

  And so the questors were forced to carry their goods because they didn’t wish to offend anybody by dropping them blatantly in the street. Fortunately they didn’t have to carry them far because suddenly there opened before them a grand square paved with the deepest blue marble. In the centre sat a splendid fountain. At the far side of the square stood the entrance to the golden dome, which was the palace of King Philidor and his Queen. And from the entrance to the dome a long line of people tailed back.

  Capablanca approached the man who was nearest to them.

  ‘How do I get to see the King?’ he asked the man.

  The man gave him a broad smile.

  ‘I’m so glad that you asked me that question,’ he replied. ‘You just happen to have found the end of the queue to see the King.’ The queue went right round the huge square twice.

  ‘Surely all these people aren’t waiting to see the King?’ said Capablanca.

  ‘They are,’ responded the man. ‘And who wouldn’t want to see the King? He does an excellent job and he’s a fine man and we all like to pop in and tell him how well he’s doing.’

  ‘And how long do people stay?’ asked Capablanca.

  ‘Oh, as long as they like,’ replied the man. ‘The King never throws anybody out.’

  The wizard did a small mathematical calculation. He multiplied the number of people in the queue (lots) by the time they could stay with the King (as long as they liked) and came to the conclusion that he could be waiting for ever. This is not a good thing to discover when you have only limited time left to save the world.

  ‘Still,’ said the man, ‘I’m in no rush. You go in front of me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Capablanca.

  But he knew that moving one place further forward in the queue wasn’t going to change the fact that it was going to take far too long to get to the front. By that time Zoltab could have triumphed.

  The woman in front of Capablanca turned round.

  ‘I haven’t quite worked out what I’m going to say yet,’she told him. ‘Why don’t you and your friends go in front of me?’

  This didn’t make much sense to Capablanca as she had a great deal of time to make up her mind, but there was the future of the world at stake and so he didn’t point out her error but instead changed places, accompanied by his two companions.

  ‘They’re all doing it,’ said Blart, who was younger and had the best eyesight.

  Looking closely, Capablanca saw that it was true. The queue was not a stationary patient mass but a line of people constantly changing positions and swapping places forward and backward.

  The reason for this movement is the friendliness and generosity of the Illyrian people, which shows itself in its highest form when it comes to queues. Being so polite, they find it almost intolerable to get something before someone else and therefore are prepared to go to almost any lengths to get the person behind them to take their place. Which explains why only an hour after joining the longest queue in the world Capablanca, Blart and Beo found themselves at the front of it. They had been ushered there with much polite encouragement. The most impressive reason for swapping – an old man who claimed that he could feel a heart attack coming on and didn’t want the wizard to trip over his corpse – actually drew applause from onlookers.

  Between them and a visit to the King was only one courtier. He sat behind a desk on which rested a large book and a bowl of rather mouldy-looking fruit. Unlike the other Illyrians he didn’t smile when they approached him. Instead he gave them a sour look and said, ‘Names?’

  Capablanca gave their names, including that of Pig the Horse.

  The clerk wrote down their names and then said, ‘The horse can’t go in. Guard, take it to the stables. The rest of you can go through there.’ The clerk indicated a large golden door behind him. ‘The King and Queen are the ones sitting on thrones.’

  The questors walked towards the large golden door, which swung open as they approached to reveal a vast, rectangular room with a gold ceiling, silver walls and a bronze floor. In front of them, sitting on two jewelled thrones, sat the King and Queen of Illyria. Both were wearing golden crowns and dark purple ceremonial robes. Indeed, the grandeur of the sight was initially daunting but any nerves the questors may have had were eased by the jovial smile on the King’s bearded face and the welcoming expression of the Queen.

  Encouraged, the questors approached the throne.

  ‘Your Majesty, we have –’ began Capablanca.

  ‘Sssh,’ replied the King.

  Capablanca stopped speaking. From behind him came a raucous brass fanfare. All three turned round to see five trumpeters standing in the far corner, blowing with all the energy they could muster and turning their faces very red in the process.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the King loudly. And then, in a quieter voice, he said to his guests, ‘All a bit unnecessary, I know. I don’t like to stand on ceremony here, but they do so like playing that I can’t bring myself to stop them. Now, what can I do for you good people?’

  The wizard began his tale. Blart, who had heard it all before, yawned rather conspicuously until Beo accidentally stood on his foot. Beo wanted to create a good impression because he was well aware that the only person who can turn a common warrior into a knight was a king and it wasn’t every day you got the chance to impress a king.

  The wizard continued his tale. When he got to the bit about Zoltab’s return the King shook his head and the Queen tutted. When he got to the bit about the fight in the tavern the King said, ‘Well, I never,’ and the Queen said, ‘Oh dear.’ And when he described the attempt to murder them over the sea the King was shocked and the Queen covered her ears. Finally, the wizard finished his tale by explaining that if his quest to save the world was to be successful then he must humbly beg the King and Queen to allow him access to the diamond tower and the map which lay within which would reveal the location of the Great Tunnel of Despair.

  The royal couple sat a while in thought after the wizard’s story and request.

  ‘There do seem to be some bad people about,’ remarked the King eventually.

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t mean it,’ said the Queen.

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ agreed the King. ‘You’re right. I was too quick to judge.’ He turned to Capablanca. ‘Have you tried offering them fruit?’

  ‘No, we haven’t,’ admitted Capablanca. ‘We think it’s gone beyond fruit.’

  ‘We mustn’t be too hasty,’ said the Queen. ‘Give these people some fresh fruit and they may stop all this silly digging for Zoltab.’

  ‘With respect, Your Majesty,’ said Capablanca, ‘these minions are servants of the most evil lord this world had ever seen. The only way to stop them spreading their contagion throughout the world and destroying everything including your beautiful kingdom is to fight. To get to the top of the Great Tunnel of Despair and cover it with the Cap of Eternal Doom. And to do that I must have the map.’

  ‘Surely you’re overreacting,’ said the King.

  ‘I wish I were, Your Majesty,’ replied Capablanca.

  ‘Have you considered counselling?’ asked the Queen. ‘I’ve heard it can work wonders. Many of these people have had unfortunate childhoods marred by parental break-up and consequently lack self-esteem.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said the King.

  ‘Try fruit and counselling,’ said the Queen.

  ‘Yes,’ said the King, ‘fruit and counselling. But,’ he added kindly, ‘if that doesn’t work feel free to come back and we can all discuss it some more.’

  ‘But there’s no time,’ said Capablanca urgently. �
�Zoltab will soon be free and his evil reign will spread through the world and there will be no more fruit and no more counselling.’

  Capablanca was trying hard to remain calm but he was not succeeding. The anger and frustration was there for all to hear, except Blart, who was so used to being spoken to with anger and frustration that it sounded normal to him.

  ‘Now you’re getting emotional,’ said the Queen soothingly. ‘It’s been a long journey for you and I’m sure you and your friends are very tired. Why don’t you go to one of our guest suites? Have a little rest and I’m sure it will all seem better in the morning. We will ask our clerk to show you the way and bring you some fruit.’

  ‘No,’ said Blart firmly, before Beo could stop him. ‘No fruit.’

  ‘Please trust me,’ Capablanca begged. ‘Please let me have the map.’

  ‘We’re sorry,’ said the King, ‘but if we give you the map then somewhere there will be violence and destruction and as King of Illyria I cannot permit it.’

  ‘But …’ spluttered Capablanca in desperation.

  ‘We’re sorry,’ said the Queen. And with that the royal couple stood up to end the questors’ audience.

  And so the world once more looked destined to fall to Zoltab and his ministers and minions. Famine, disease, pestilence and death would cover the earth for ever.

  ‘Your Majesty hasn’t got any vacancies for a knight, has he?’ asked Beo.

  Chapter 21

  But before the questors could leave there was a bang as the throne room door was booted open.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ shouted a very angry female voice. ‘There I am feeding my pets and some big fat oaf charges up on a horse and kills one of them. Unbelievable. All the rest of them have run off and now I’ll never get them back.’

  Blart, Capablanca and Beo turned round. It would perhaps have been best if Beo hadn’t. For he recognised the furious girl and she recognised him.