‘How?’ Zachary asked.
‘The same way you got here.’
‘Look,’ said Harold, ‘we understand your feelings, and maybe we were out of line on the school thing, but we can’t actually physically move the ship at the moment…’
The Don shook his head. ‘You’re out of here by this time tomorrow, or…’ he made a throat-slitting gesture. ‘Say if you understand,’
‘We understand,’ Zoe said quickly before Harold and Zachary could argue any more with a man who, she thought, might decide to slit their throats right now if he got any more backchat.
‘Nice meeting you Lady Guinevere,’ said the Don, and walked out, followed by Ulf and Father John.
Marlowe lingered for a moment. ‘I’ll intercede for you. I’ll save your lives. If I can come with you to the stars.’
They stared at him, not understanding fully what he meant.
‘The Don means what he says,’ Marlowe said. ‘Without my help you’ll be dead by this time tomorrow. I’ll intercede and buy you time. In return, you take me with you to the stars.’
‘It’s a deal,’ Zachary said.
Marlowe nodded, and followed the Don’s party out.
‘What do you mean “it’s a deal”?’ Zoe said. ‘Who is that guy, what do we know about him?’
‘Good move, Zach,’ said Harold. ‘This way we stay alive long enough to betray him.’
Zoe looked at Zachary. ‘Is that what you meant to achieve? What Machiavelli Junior here’s suggesting?’
‘How do I know what I meant?’ Zachary answered. ‘I only just heard what I said.’
39: THE CLOCK BEGINS TO TICK
That night when Meg got home from teaching school in the village, she was bursting to tell them how things had gone. The village girls were like dry sponges for information. They were picking up the alphabet, she had them up to four times table, she was feeling happy and successful. Then they told her about the Don.
‘All in all,’ Zachary said, ‘I think we’d better close down the school. As a gesture.’
‘The gesture’s ideologically unsound,’ Meg answered, biting down hard on a carrot. ‘I’ve got some very bright girls in that class. Little Maze particularly, she’s a teacher’s dream. Sometimes it’s as if she can read my mind.’
‘Maze can in fact read your mind,’ Zoe said.
‘You know what I mean.’
Harold was eating an apple. ‘I’m not sure I want to go back to eating ships’ biscuits and that blue stuff,’ he said through a mouthful of apple.
‘I don’t want to seem to be the wimp here, ’ Zachary put in, ‘but this Don character’s a little insecure, you know? A little unstable? On the subject of schools and civilization-as-he-knows-it and that kind of thing?’
‘Classic paranoid patriarchal reaction,’ Meg said dismissively. ‘All fascists are the same, they’re threatened by change.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘we’re threatened by change. The threat is death. That’s what the actual threat is, and I don’t want us losing sight of that.’
‘He can’t mean it.’
‘You haven’t met him. He means it.’
‘You’re saying he’d kill us to stop us from teaching little girls how to read and write? You’re saying he’s some kind of paranoid sociopath?’
Zachary sighed. He was not getting through. ‘I’m saying he means what he says, which is that he’ll kill us to preserve his idea of civilization. Not an uncommon point of view in our own time.’
‘I can’t believe that,’ said Meg.
At this point the conversation was put on the back burner because it was then that the klaxon started hooting, and the Slarn battle language began its beeping, and on the bulkhead behind them a hatch slid back revealing what they were soon to learn was a timing mechanism, and on the loudspeakers a Slarn voice began speaking.
‘Quizlart tammeranu, quizlart tammeranu, quortrin slarp je simkarn! Quizlart tammeranu, quortrin slarp je simkarn!’ said the voice.
They had turned in their couches and were all looking at the open hatch on the rear wall and the device which its opening had revealed. It was a horizontal bar, black for most of its length, then becoming red at the right-hand end. A pointer was at the far left of the black bar, which was divided by white lines into what they later found to be 40 sections.
‘Translation please Guinevere!’ yelled Harold over the continually repeated Slarn message.
‘Translation is “self-destruct enabled, self-destruct enabled, 40 days and counting. Self-destruct enabled, 40 days and counting”.’
‘And what’s that mean?’ Harold asked.
‘The Slarn fear greatly that their ships will fall into the hands of savage tribes who might use them to great harm. After three days landfall on a planet, self-destruct is enabled. After 40 days the ship returneth to the dust from which it came.’
Zachary looked at Guinevere’s image on the screen. ‘This business about returning to the dust, does that mean you just fall apart or…?’
‘Or explode?’ asked Harold.
‘Explode,’ Guinevere answered.
‘And how big an explosion would that be, Guinevere?’ Harold was finding this very interesting.
‘twill make a hole in the Earth 20 leagues across,’ Guinevere replied.
‘Twenty leagues?’ said Meg. ‘Sixty miles? That’s not a hole that’s a…’
‘Crater,’ Harold said. ‘Like the ones on the Moon. Can we stop the self-destruct program?’
‘Only by lifting to the stars again.’
Harold nodded. ‘So the self-destruct’s gravity-operated. We’ve got to mend you and take you off-planet to stop it. And we’ve got to do it in…?’
‘Forty days,’ said Guinevere. ‘Thou hast only 40 days.’
‘That’s the clock?’ Harold pointed to the black bar on the rear wall of the bridge.
‘Aye.’
They all moved to the timing device and stared at it.
‘Forty days and counting,’ Zoe said.
‘Look on the bright side,’ Zachary told her. ‘The Don might cut our throats tomorrow and save us the wait.’
Then Zoe suddenly realized the full import of the situation and she swung round and looked at the main screen, where Guinevere’s image stood watching them. ‘Guinevere? It’s you we’re talking about. It’s not some hunk of metal that’s going to blow up in 40 days, it’s a human being, it’s you.’
‘Aye. ‘tis me.’
‘That means you’d … you’d die.’
‘I’ve faced good Brother Death full many a time, Zoe. He’s an old acquaintance, nay, an old friend of mine.’
‘You can’t die!’
‘That I can. I’ve outlived my allotted span many times over. If I die, I die, and that’s an end to it.’
Zoe looked at her. ‘That’s all right for you. Maybe you’ve come to terms with death, but we can’t stand by and watch you die without doing anything. You understand that?’
‘I understand.’
‘There’s the people in the district too,’ said Meg. ‘If there’s going to be crater sixty miles across, then they’re going to die too.’
‘So what do we do?’ Zoe asked, nodding. Her sister Helena and little Maze were now at the forefront of her mind. If the self-destruct were allowed to proceed to its conclusion, they would die too.
‘I need food and rest. The rest is forced upon me. The food you must try to garner where ye may find it.’
‘What do you normally eat?’ Zachary said.
‘Beyond the Earth I eat the dust of stars. But here? Take. Read.’
From a slit in the main console extruded a gleaming sheet, about the size of a piece of writing paper. It had the look and consistency of a slightly glossy quality paper, but felt much tougher. The Wyzen grabbed for it, but Harold beat her to it. He saw it was a list of substances and began to read it out loud. ‘Copper, tin, salt, iron, water … gold? Nearly half a pound of gold? Zyglan? What’s Zyglan?’
<
br /> ‘I’ll tell thee when there’s need for you to know. What thou needest to know now is this: all the alchemical substances thou readest thereon I must eat if I’m to heal and fly once more.’
The others had moved in on Harold and were reading the list over his shoulder. Even the Wyzen was pushing in for a look.
‘That’s some treasure hunt,’ Zachary said.
‘Do these things have to be in pure form, Guinevere?’ Harold asked.
‘Wyzen,’ said the Wyzen firmly, in answer.
‘Nay,’ said Guinevere.
‘Okay, let’s go!’ Zoe said, ignoring the fact that night had fallen, and they did not know where to begin.
‘Hold,’ said Guinevere. ‘Before ye start the quest for food for me, ye must warn the people all around.’
They looked at her, knowing that what she said was logical, but feeling reluctant to delay starting on the quest to heal her.
‘If we fail to mend this body, they die with me. I’ll not die with the blood of innocents upon my hands. Ye must warn them all, before ye lift a hand for me.’
They were silent for a moment, then Zoe said: ‘She’s right. We have to warn them.’
40: WARNINGS
When they walked into the village the next morning, the school girls were already sitting in a group under the tree where they had been the day before. Maze was standing in front of them and conducting as they sang the alphabet. Meg glanced at Zachary, walking beside her. ‘You can’t ask me not to teach these children. Just look at them.’
‘The Don was kind of, how shall I put this, firm on the subject? You teach peasants to read…’ and he finished his sentence with the same throat-slitting gesture the Don had employed to get his point across.
‘Fascist, patriarchal … I’m going to talk to Our Mother about this,’ Meg said and strode toward the big hut, calling across her shoulder, ‘keep right on doing what you’re doing there, Maze!’
As they all headed for Helena’s hut, Zachary said to Harold, ‘I never heard of anyone dying in the cause of infants’ teaching before.’
Meg was first into the hut and she strode to Helena’s side, talking all the way. ‘Some fascist gorilla named Don Costello says I can’t teach school any more. Is that what you want? Is that your view?’
‘A messenger from the Don was here at dawn,’ Our Mother replied. ‘I think we must postpone to a better season.’
‘We could do it indoors. He needn’t know,’ Meg answered.
‘Meg,’ Zachary said, ‘aren’t we forgetting the little thing about the starship blowing up?’
‘The male doesn’t speak in my presence,’ Our Mother said, and turned her questioning gaze upon Zoe.
‘The starship’s … sick.’ Zoe did not know any other way of expressing it. ‘In 39 days, unless we heal her, she’s going to blow up. Like a very big bomb. Now, we’re going to try and get her well, but in the meantime, everyone should leave the district.’
Her ancient sister looked at her and said: ‘Take your ship and go. The women may stay if they wish. The males and the ship must go. I don’t want trouble with either the Don or the Slarn.’
‘I’m sorry Helena, but the ship can’t move at the moment. We have to heal her, and that means getting a lot of metal and stuff. If we fail to get everything, there’s going to be a giant explosion. Everyone in the district’ll be killed. You and your people are going to have to move away.’
‘Not possible,’ said the old woman. ‘we have food to get in against winter.’
‘Please,’ said Harold. ‘Try and understand…’
‘The woman speaks,’ Helena said, without looking at him.
‘Helena, if the ship explodes, food won’t matter. You’ll all be dead.’
‘If we leave, we’ll all be dead.’ She paused, remembering bad times in the past. ‘Starvation on the march, attacks by other clans when we try to cross their land. I saw it all in the old days. We leave here … we die.’
‘The Don and his people will have to leave too. If you travel together, he and his men can protect you.’
‘The Don won’t leave his turf unguarded for others to take.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Zoe. ‘because he’s the next one we’ve got to warn.’
Maze went with them to Trollcastle, and got Meg to teach her the five times table on the way. Maze knew that one day she would lead her people, and wanted to learn as much as possible before she succeeded Helena as Our Mother.
Now, they stood within the treeline, looking up past the clear area toward Trollcastle. Zachary was having strong second thoughts about this scheme. He was wondering whether it might not be better to send the Don a letter on the subject. Beginning a process which would lead up to this suggestion, he said: ‘Basically, this is a terrible idea, you know that?’
Zoe could not see the problem. ‘We’ve got to warn them. Guinevere says so.’
‘She didn’t say we had to warn them … in person.’
Meg looked at him in the way that a person who found worms particularly disgusting might look at a worm. ‘You’re the sort of man who announces he’s leaving by way of a note on the kitchen table, aren’t you?’
‘It takes a lot of guts to do that. Anyone can say things face to face, it takes a lot of guts to put it in writing.’
Meg simply snorted in disgust.
‘I’m just saying,’ Zachary went on, ‘that the Don seems to have an excitable sort of personality. I wasn’t the one who called him a paranoid sociopath, but I’d have to agree there’s a lot of truth in that diagnosis,’ Zachary said, feeling he was on solid ground here.
‘Guinevere says we’ve got to do it,’ Zoe said.
‘Guinevere doesn’t know everything.’
‘Effectively, compared with us, yes she does,’ said Harold.
Zachary knew when he was licked. ‘We’re going to do it. No one says we’re not going to do it! It’s just finding the right time and method.’
‘Don’t give it another thought, Zachary, I’ll do it,’ Meg said, and moved uphill toward the castle.
‘No!’ Maze yelled.
Meg turned and looked at Maze, wondering just who the squirt thought she was talking to.
‘You say in your mind “who is this squirt talking to?”,’ Maze said with grim amusement. ‘Answer is I talking to you. Trolls won’t listen to a woman.’
Meg’s eyes narrowed. ‘And why not?’ But she was already guessing why not.
‘They keep their women veiled and locked up.’
‘Just who do they think they are!’
‘They think they Trollwarriors, lords of the High Law.’
Not for the first time, Meg wished Maze would not be quite so logical. It was hard to ask a metaphorical question around her without getting a strictly literal answer.
‘Look,’ said Harold. ‘It’s simple. If women aren’t allowed, then I’ll go and explain everything to them. It’s better that way, because Zachary doesn’t understand the physics and I do.’
‘Great idea, kid, go for it,’ Zachary said.
Harold set out for the edge of the trees as the others stood watching him go. Meg was saying, ‘You disgust me, Zachary Owens, you truly disgust me. A grown man, standing by, allowing a half-grown boy to do his work for him …’
‘You heard the kid, he understands the physics,’ Zachary said, but watching Harold’s skinny back, with the shoulder blades poking out, he felt that this was not going the way he would have liked.
‘I didn’t think Topclass had it in him,’ Maze said.
‘I hate this,’ said Zachary. ‘I really hate this. Why me?’ He moved after Harold and stopped him before he had left the treeline. ‘I’ll tell him. I know how to talk to guys like the Don.’
Harold felt a huge surge of relief. ‘But I understand the physics,’ he said.
‘I understand “blow up”,’ Zachary said. ‘I understand “hole sixty miles wide”. I think I can handle those concepts.’ He walked on, muttering t
o himself, ‘Why me? What did I ever do?’
The others moved up to join Harold at the edge of the treeline. ‘Isn’t he a great guy?’ said Harold, ‘you know, the way he pretends he doesn’t want to do something and then comes through for you?’
‘He’s an asshole,’ said Meg.
‘Yeah, but…’ said Harold, ‘but a great asshole.’
Maze was looking at Harold with new respect. ‘That was good what you did, Topclass.’ Harold smiled at her. ‘For a dumb male,’ she added, thereby spoiling the compliment somewhat in Harold’s view.
‘My fantasy role playing character has a lot of hit points. He could take that Don apart.’
When Zachary got to the gate he found a Troll man-at-arms waiting for him. ‘Hi,’ Zachary said to the man-at-arms. ‘I was wondering if the Don of the house was at home…?’ and then stopped talking when the guard showed him the point of his spear.
They brought Zachary into the main hall, where the Don sat on the big chair at the centre of the stage. He was flanked by Ulf and Father John, and Rocky the squire stood by in case he was needed. Marlowe was sitting with some Troll men-at-arms on a bench at one side of the hall.
It was a long way from the door at the back of the hall, and when Zachary got to the stage, it was a long way to look up, but he smiled his best smile and said: ‘Hi! I’ve got a few things I have to tell you …’
‘You drop to one knee!’ Ulf bellowed. ‘You bow your head, you say “my lord”!’
Zachary was getting very tired of being interrupted. In the future, it seemed to him, no one ever let you finish a sentence.
‘Or I take your ears off!’ bellowed Ulf.
They were also over-fond of threatening to commit grievous bodily harm on people. Nevertheless, he dropped to one knee, and bowed his head. He had not done anything like this since he was an altar boy but he found it all came back in a rush when he needed it. ‘My lord,’ he said, and then looked up at Ulf. ‘Did I get that right?
‘I take it,’ the Don said gently, ‘that you’ve come to tell me that you and your friends and that iron castle are leaving the district.’
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