Harold ran directly to the window which Zoe had climbed through. He decided that, if all was clear, he would climb through it. It was all very well for Meg to tell him not to go inside, but Zoe was a girl and she had gone inside, and if he did not follow her he would never hear the end of it. Harold was intelligent enough to know that there were things he was afraid to do, but Maze had been correct in thinking that he was also brave enough to do them if he had to.
Climbing through the castle window was going to be one of those things, he decided. He ran to it, and looked inside. He found himself looking into the face of a Troll man-at-arms. They were so close he could smell the garlic on the man’s breath. Harold changed his mind. He would not, after all, climb through the window because that would mean simply climbing into the arms of the Troll. He expressed the logic of this position with a startled shout. He took off, running along the side of the wall. As he came around the corner, he saw a Troll man-at-arms running toward him. He turned back the way he came, and found that the Troll he had come face to face with in the window had now climbed out and was pursuing him too. He spun around and took off away from the castle toward the part of the forest where he had left Meg and Maze. As he ran, he heard a satisfying metallic clang as the two Trolls who had been chasing him collided with one another at the corner of the building.
The guard on the roof watched Harold running away from the castle. The boy seemed to have a very good turn of pace. He picked up the speaking tube and bellowed the news that the intruder had now gone.
Harold dived into cover alongside Meg and Maze. ‘Didn’t see her,’ he panted. ‘Place is alive with Trolls. Let’s get back to the ship, I’ve got an idea.’
Beneath Trollcastle was what had once been a basement level, housing an auxiliary power supply and rooms for the storage of files and computer records, but the first Don had cleared all that rubbish out and converted the space into a useful set of dungeons. Zachary now sat in the dark in one of the dungeons, thinking about Testing being defined as single combat with swords, and wondering why he had never bothered to learn a useful skill like fencing or kendo. Why had they not taught him these things at school, he wondered. Had his teachers wanted him dead? Thinking about that, he recalled that several had in fact expressed exactly that wish.
Just as he was putting that depressing thought to one side, he heard a rattling at the door, and then he could see lamplight as the door opened, and the Don’s priest came in, a lamp in one hand and a little leather-covered box in the other.
‘I’m Father John,’ said the priest.
‘How do, Father?’ Zachary said.
Whoever had opened the door was now locking it from the outside.
‘I thought you might wish to make confession and receive last rites,’ said Father John.
‘Isn’t that for people who are dying?’ Zachary said, wanting to get the situation perfectly clear.
‘That’s so,’ said the priest.
Zachary thought about this. ‘You people haven’t had a doctor look at me, so why do you think I’m dying?’ Zachary thought he already knew the answer to that, but was hoping that Father John would come up with different answer which might pleasantly surprise him.
He was doomed to be disappointed in that hope. ‘Tonight you undergo the Testing. That’s like being on your deathbed,’ Father John replied. He sat down and lifted the leather-covered box. ‘You want, ah…?’
Zachary had a fair idea of what was in the box, having seen boxes like that in hospitals. He had spent some time in hospitals during his late teens when he had been having a series of love affairs with motor cycles and for a while had been averaging a major broken bone a year. Some of the priests when they came around the wards had carried boxes like that to give communion to the patients.
‘I’m really not very religious, Father,’ he said.
‘Neither am I,’ said the priest. ‘Just a Christian.’
‘Well as I say … not very religious.’
‘I’ve met a lot of people like that,’ said the priest. ‘But just before they die they seem to want to discuss it anyway.’
‘Why do you think I’m going to die?’
‘Because most people who have single combat with Sir Ulf do die.’
‘You approve of this?’
‘No.’
‘You think it’s fair?’
The priest hesitated. ‘I think it’s the law.’
‘But not fair.’ Zachary felt he was making some headway.
‘If I were making the law, this may not be the way I’d do it,’ Father John allowed.
‘So why don’t you try to change it? Sometime soon? Before tonight maybe?’
‘You’ve met the Don?’ Zachary nodded. ‘Do you have a suggestion about how I could change his mind?’ Father John said this in the way you might ask someone how they thought they might go about changing the color of the sky. Zachary thought about the question, and then shook his head. ‘Zachary, my son, the Don may seem to you to be a little high-handed when it comes to trying people for crimes and handing out appropriate punishments.’
‘A little high-handed? He’s like a … like a Mafia chieftain!’
‘Exactly right. That’s where the first Don got his ideas on law and order.’
‘Great,’ said Zachary. ‘That’s wonderful. It makes me feel a whole lot better about this.’
‘It’s workable. In a fairly chaotic situation, it means that justice gets done quickly. All monarchies got started this way.’
‘Excuse me?’” said Zachary. ‘Monarchies? I don’t want to be rude, Father, but all the evidence suggests that this outfit started out as an outlaw biker gang.’
‘Club. Motor cycle club. The club records say that they were on the road when the Great Exit occurred. The next town they rode into … there was no one there. So the first Don … Don Spider Costello …’
Zachary could not help grinning. ‘You serious? Your first Don was a biker called Spider Costello?’
‘You find this amusing perhaps?”
The look in Father John’s eyes told Zachary that this was not a subject to be joking about. ‘Certainly not!’ he exclaimed. “Nothing amusing about that at all.’
‘I’m pleased to hear that,’ said Father John, and went on, “Don Spider the First was a great man. He re-invented feudalism. He’d seen picturemovies. Stories about heroes, knights, kings, Mafia Dons, and he adapted their political system. Later he found books which called it “feudalism”. When the gas ran out and the bikes became useless, his successors brought in horses, armor … swords.’
‘I really don’t want to know about swords, Father.’
‘That’s a pity. Because after dinner, you’re going to need to.’
‘You have to harp on that? After dinner, I’m going to be fighting a giant homicidal maniac, using weapons that he knows how to use and I don’t.’
‘That’s why I came to see you,’ said Father John. ‘I find that being in this kind of situation very often turns people’s minds to eternal matters.’
Meanwhile, in the women’s room, Zoe was hearing about the gentler side of the Don. ‘He needs a wife,’ one of the women was saying, looking at Zoe as if mentally measuring her for a bridal dress, ‘he was widowed when the fluenza came through last year.’
‘His young wife and their son,’ said another, brushing aside a tear. ‘She had lost their first two by the baby fever, but their son had survived the first three years. Then the fluenza took them both.’
Zoe felt moved to tears herself. The old illnesses, the child mortality, the minor and major plagues which, in a few privileged parts of the world, for a few decades of the 20th and 21st centuries, had temporarily been held at bay by hygiene, vaccination and antibiotics, had all returned to haunt humankind.
‘Of course. You don’t have antibiotics any longer.’
‘Biotix?’ the oldest of the women said, ‘they’re a legend. A legend of the golden age.’
Zoe thought of her own tim
e and wondered how anyone could have thought of it as a golden age, but knew that parts of it, in those times and places where sufficient food and good hygiene and modern medical technology had combined to save life, that those parts must now seem like utopia, like a golden age indeed.
‘The Don is very lonely without a wife,’ said one of the women, and they all looked at each other and then at Zoe.
‘I’m not looking for a husband just yet,’ she said hastily.
‘Fifteen,’ one of the women said, ‘in a year or two you’ll be in your best child-bearing years, and time isn’t standing still, you know.’
‘Look, about my friend,’ Zoe said, hoping to divert the conversation. These women were like her yaya, her father’s mother back in Greece. Yaya thought Zoe was getting a bit old, and was always trying to arrange marriages for her. ‘About Zachary…’
‘Of course!’ one of the wives said to the other wives, ‘She wants to marry Zachary!’
‘Forget him,’ said another. ‘Forget him till the Testing’s over.’
‘Poor girl,’ said yet another, weeping, ‘to lose a sweetheart like this.’
‘If Zachary’s life is in danger, help me get him out of here!’
They looked at her with a sad amusement.
‘He’d never let you help him escape.’
‘Oh yes he would!’
‘So young,’ one said to the others, ‘knows so little of men.’
‘You don’t know Zachary!’ Zoe said. ‘He’ll be delighted if I help him escape. He won’t want to do this Testing thing, he’s not crazy…’
‘All men want to do the Testing,’ the oldest of the women patiently explained to her. ‘All men. They want to be Tested, to go to the brink of death and return. That’s what men live for.’
‘Not Zachary.’
‘All men. Zachary included.’
Zoe knew she was getting nowhere. She stood and ran for the door she came in by. When she got there she reached for the handle and found there was no handle! She turned and looked at the Trollwives. ‘Is there another way out?’ They shook their heads. ‘You’re really locked in here?’ They nodded. ‘You’re prisoners?’
‘In our own best interests,’ the oldest of the Trollwives explained.
In the dungeon, Zachary was losing patience. ‘You can’t test me. I’ll tell you why you can’t test me. Because your law doesn’t apply to me!’
‘How can our law not apply to you, Zachary?’ Father John seemed puzzled.
‘Because I’m not from here. I’m from the past. Me and my friends are from the time before the Slarn came and took everyone away.’
Father John looked at him gravely. You really don’t want to die with all these lies on your conscience.’
‘You don’t believe me? I’ll prove it.’ Zachary dug around in his pockets, and pulled out a cigarette lighter, flicked the wheel and made a flame. ‘You got one of those?’ Then he brought out a ballpoint pen and wrote on his hand with it. ‘Ever seen something like this?’ He proceeded to produce more and more stuff from his pockets. ‘Dry-cleaning receipt? Movie ticket stub? Parking ticket? Credit cards? Look at the jeans! Look at the joggers? You ever see a shoe like that? I’m from the past!’
John took in all the evidence and remained unconvinced. ‘From over the seas, perhaps.’
Zachary groaned. ‘“Over the seas?” I’m defeated.’ He patted his pockets and found the ultimate proof. Bringing it out, he showed it to Father John. ‘Mobile phone,’ he said. Father John looked at the mobile phone, then back at Zachary. ‘One of these couldn’t have been made in this time,’ Zachary said, ‘therefore it’s from the past.’
‘Possibly,’ said the priest, ‘and you found it. For something 90 years old it’s in remarkably good condition. Whatever it is.’
‘It’s a mobile phone. For talking to other people.’
‘Then talk to someone.’
‘They … don’t seem to work in the future. The transmission tower’s all covered with vines. But,’ Zachary said, ‘they do other things. They have music, you can play games on them …’ The mobile beeped. He looked at its screen, then showed it to the priest and said, in despairing tones, ‘they have pictures of batteries?’
‘It says “battery low”.’
‘I guess a recharger would be out of the question?’ Zachary said, and then the mobile phone beeped one more time and died. It had been a nice try.
‘You see, Zachary, even if you were from the past,’ Father John said, with inexorable logic, ‘the Don administers the law in this territory, and would still be within his rights to Test you, for in his mercy, he wants to give you a chance.’
‘I have a chance of surviving single combat with Ulf?’
‘Probably not.’
‘In his mercy, the Don could let me go.’
‘Ah, but balancing mercy, there’s justice.
‘I’ve never done very well out of justice, Father.’
‘And that’s exactly why you should make confession, while there’s still time.’
Zachary thought about that, and in the process realized that he still possessed his utterly dumb, totally irrational optimism. ‘But Father,’ he said, ‘I don’t plan on dying.’
Father John smiled in the way people do when they are humoring someone who does not understand the situation. ‘Of course not, my son,’ he said, ‘no one ever does.’
43: THE TESTING
In the hold of the starship, by the door of the school bus, Meg and Harold, with the unsought help of the Wyzen, were explaining the situation to Guinevere, whose manifestation stood before them.
‘The Foresters just won’t move,’ Meg was saying.
‘And we don’t know whether the Trolls are going to or not,’ Harold said, ‘because every time we send someone into the castle they don’t come back out again.’
‘Wyzen! Wyzen! Wyzen!’ added the Wyzen excitedly.
‘So we’re going to have to get you the things you need for healing as quickly as possible,’ Meg said.
‘Just as soon as we get Zoe and Zachary out of Trollcastle.’ Harold added.
‘Wyzen! Wyzen!’ the Wyzen said by way of summing up.
‘There’s little time to waste,’ Guinevere began to say. She was worried about the natives. If they were unwilling to move away, they could die and some of the things she needed for her healing were not easy to get.
‘Relax,’ Harold interrupted. ‘I’ve got it all under control. ‘We get in the bus, you matter-transport us out of here.’
‘I shall, betimes,’ said Guinevere, and her manifestation disappeared.
‘What’s “betimes” mean?’ asked Harold.
‘Surely you must know that Harold,’ Meg said sweetly, hustling him onto the bus in a hurry, ‘since you know everything else?’ The Wyzen crowded onto the bus after them.
‘I don’t know everything,’ Harold said.
‘Don’t you? I thought you did,’ Meg said. ‘Off the bus Wyzen, off the bus!’
But the Wyzen had no intention of getting off, and ran to the rear of the bus and sat down and, before Meg could expel her, the bus disappeared from the hold in a blaze of white light, and reappeared instantaneously on the horse trail that ran through the forest.
‘There you are, Harold. “Betimes” means “early”, “soonest”, that kind of thing,’ said Meg, glaring with exasperation at the Wyzen, who thereupon took fright, and hid behind a seat. ‘Wyzen, come out of there!’
‘Meg, we don’t have time,’ Harold urged. ‘Anything could be happening at the castle.’
Meg thereupon shrugged, and moved to the driving seat of the bus, found to her great relief that the keys were still in the ignition, started the engine, and managed to get the bus into gear. She mentally blessed her father for having taught her to drive trucks and tractors on the family farm. Without that experience she was not sure she would have been able to get the bus running. They drove off, bumping along the forest trail as fast as the bus’s suspension woul
d allow, knocking down saplings and negotiating rocks as they went.
After a moment or two, the Wyzen emerged from hiding and came to the front of the bus, where she settled down on the floor beside Meg, and tried to help her with gear changes. ‘Cut it out Wyzen! Cut it out!’ Meg screamed.
‘Here, Wyzen,’ said Harold, ‘play with this.’ And he showed the Wyzen the levers and knobs which worked non-essentials like the lights, the indicators and the horn.
‘I must be nuts doing this!’ shouted Meg over the roar of the engine.
‘It’ll work! I promise you!’ said Harold. ‘They’ve never seen anything like this before. It’ll terrify them! They’ll run like rabbits!’
‘I must be crazy!’ Meg repeated as they drove toward Trollcastle.
At Trollcastle, the inhabitants ate dinner early, just before sundown and, given the lack of electric light, Zoe could see the sense in this. The food had consisted of a vegetable soup, roasted wild sheep that the men had hunted the day before, and a pie made of several kinds of fruit, including apples, plums and apricots. The sheep had been cooked on a spit over an open fire and was delicious, reminding Zoe of the souvlaki lamb she had eaten at big family parties. The vegetables had been boiled. Delicious as the food might have been, Zoe had not eaten much. She was too worried about Zachary, and his forthcoming Testing.
Apparently the women were to watch the Testing. Behind a curtain, there was a fretwork screen let into one wall, and through it the Trollwives could see into the main hall. After their empty plates had been taken away, Zoe as the friend or, as the more romantic of the Trollwives kept insisting, the fiancée of the prisoner, was given place of honor at the centre of the screen.
She found herself looking down into the hall through which she had entered the castle earlier in the day. The Don, Ulf, Father John and some other Troll leaders were eating at a high table on the stage. In the main body of the hall, more trestle tables had been set up for the Troll warriors, who were sitting on benches, eating, drinking, and shouting at one another and, to Zoe, it looked like nothing so much as a shrimp and beer night that her parents had once taken her to at the local football club. As Zoe watched, the Don stood, and all talk ceased as he began to speak.
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