Nowhere Near Milkwood

by Rhys Hughes

  It was not long before I managed to solve these extra crimes. Many of the Talking Plaques were arrested and replaced by those whose noses were within the parameters of acceptability. However, the total numbers of Talking Plaques increased, as the jails began to fill up with owners of immoral proboscises.

  Not that I was worried by the fact that all these extra crimes had been solved as well: I knew that I could rely on the President to change the law again. And, true to form, that is exactly what he did. This time, it was ginger beards that we made illegal. And, after that, dirty fingernails. In quick succession, we changed the law thirty-six times. Among others, things that had once been acceptable but were now heinous crimes included: owning pets, picking of the left ear, appendicitis, talking too quickly, talking too slowly and liking owls.

  And then one day, when I arrived at the President's tower with a proposal to outlaw birthmarks, I found him lying face down on the floor, gnashing his teeth with rage. His tower was in disarray; broken music machines lay everywhere, bubbles of music floating free and bursting with resounding discords against each other. I thought, at first, that he had failed to perfect some particularly difficult juggling trick and had destroyed his tower in a frenzy of ugli-fruit collisions, but then I saw that the fruit in his dish were not bruised and I guessed that it was something more serious.

  It soon transpired that my guess was correct. For the first time in three years, he had journeyed beyond the Pallid Colonnades and had visited his wife. There he had found a garment of underwear embossed with my own initials. I tried to deny the fact of the affair, but I blushed so pink that I gave myself away.

  Tearing up my new proposal, The President suggested an alternative. He would make the solving of crime illegal. This alternative brought a chill to my bones. I was arrested shortly afterwards and brought to this very cell. My guards then were nice fellows. They even introduced me to the Talking Plaque who was going to recount my crimes. The Talking Plaque in question was a young girl with auburn hair. But she did not even look at me. I am not ashamed to say that I cried.

  Naturally I appealed. And this was the crux of the whole matter. My appeal was a work of genius. I maintained that since the solving of crime was illegal, then the people who had arrested me had also committed an offence and should be jailed. And so on, until there was not a single person walking free in the whole world. I thought that this paradox would make the Appeal Judges see the absurdity of the charges levelled against me and throw my case out of court.

  Unfortunately, after long and careful consideration, they agreed with me and promptly ordered the arrest of those who had arrested me. I was returned to my dank cell and I have remained here ever since. Slowly as I rotted away the months, the cells around me were filled: the chain reaction, once it had started, could not be stopped.

  I suppose that one day soon the last human left on Earth will walk in here and lock the door behind them. I expect that the last human will be the President. And then, of course, apes or monkeys will have to guard the cells. I wonder when all this will happen?

  Ah! You have made your move at last! It is a good move too. You know something? You look a little bit like the President yourself. Indeed, I would be willing to testify that you were him if it wasn't for the fact that you have no ugli-fruit with you. It is not so easy trying to juggle with bananas.

  Judgment Day

  Now I'm sitting quietly on my cloud, I can confess everything. It's not very often that I get a chance to sit back and relax. So I'd better make the most of it. Put the kettle on, if you have to, or finish writing that letter to the friend you haven't seen for absolutely ages, but do it quickly. I haven't much time left.

  My name, as you are doubtless aware, is Titian Grundy. Until recently, I was Prefect of Police. I held the position for so long that I can't even remember what I was before. Probably a student of some kind. I vaguely recall skipping through autumn leaves with an auburn-haired girl and a multicoloured scarf, but this means nothing. I might have been a cheese-maker who'd simply lost his razor.

  Anyway, to return to my tale, I was sitting at my desk one day, spinning paper helicopters through my open window when I received a telegram by carrier-pheasant. The telegram was from the President, an old friend of mine, and it announced that a meeting of Parliament had decided to make gods illegal. The motion had been carried by six hundred and sixty-six votes to one.

  Jumping up, I held my chin in my hands and considered the import of this radical legislation. I knew the reason for the decision, of course; it was staring me in the face from the cover of yesterday's newspaper. Yet another leading citizen had been killed by an icy meteorite. It was generally held that the gods were responsible: throwing divine snowballs that concealed both a malicious glee and a fair-sized boulder.

  The responsibility, however, once entirely theirs, now lay with me. Now that the gods were mere criminals, as opposed to omnipotent beings, it was up to my Department to arrest them. If I failed in this assignment, I would doubtless be replaced. My career would be over and I would have to seek alternative employment (for some reason, the position of cheese-maker occurred to me.)

  Naturally, I was eager to embark on a raid of the Heavenly Realm as soon as possible. I was prepared to sign an arrest warrant at a moment's notice. The problem, as always, was transportation. I knew that the Force had several solar-powered gliders at its disposal, and had recently saved up to purchase an atomic trampoline, but even these shining examples of aerial-transport technology would be incapable of taking me up to such a great height. I was nonplussed.

  Sighing, I left the office and went for a walk around the large artificial lake that ringed the Department like a noose. Huge mechanical locusts flitted around my head, an invention of my second-in-command, Satsuma Ffroyde. They had been designed to keep intruders at bay. I stared into the dark umber waters for many minutes, struggling to find a solution to my dilemma by means of a thought-experiment. I set up the test-tubes and retorts of my mind and mixed the isotopes and catalysts of my imagination. But all was in vain.

  I could see reflected, quite clearly in the lake, the whole of the Heavenly Realm. It seemed to me then that I could jump down quite easily to my destination through this mirror of the ineffable. But before I was lulled into the attempt by the rhythm of the reflected clouds, a sharp crack assailed my ears and looking up, I perceived an enormous meteorite hurtling towards me. Luckily I was able to step aside as it plunged into the lake, shattering my own reflection into a thousand glassy shards.

  My lakeside meditation had saved my life, of this I was certain. Probably the gods, learning of Parliament's decision, had sought to destroy the potential agent of their nemesis. Staring into the mirror of the lake had not only warned me of the approach of the meteorite but had also diverted its trajectory. Obviously the gods had mistaken my reflection for the real thing and had aimed at the wrong target.

  This blatantly unimaginative assassination attempt stiffened my resolve to complete all my duties to the best of my ability. I was determined now not to beg the President to reconsider his new law, as I had been tempted to do. Instead, I returned to my office and called a meeting of all my high-ranking colleagues. Together, I felt sure, we would come up with a method of reaching the hide-out of these ontological criminals.

  The meeting, however, proved to be a major disappointment at first. Few of the officers present knew anything at all about the heights of theology. They talked listlessly about helium balloons and giant catapults. Satsuma Ffroyde even confessed to being an atheist. He claimed that modern research in pendulum-physics had proved that the universe ran on clockwork. When I rounded on him in disbelief, he turned purple and added that this was merely a metaphor.

  "This is ridiculous!" I cried, throwing my arms up in despair. "Is there no-one here who knows anything at all about the gods and how to reach them? I mean, who is their ruler? Do they have one? Is it Grunnt or Drigg? Perhaps it is Wheeze? Who is the god of meteorites? Gaap? Or is he th
e god of holes?"

  "I thought it was Chyme," mumbled one of the officers.

  "No, no! Chyme is the goddess of Aeolian-Harps!" countered another.

  Exasperated by their ignorance, I turned to Dr Celery, the Police Surgeon Specific. He alone in the Police Department could be relied upon to say something worthwhile. But he was by nature a very reticent man and had to be goaded to speak. After a lengthy goad with a bundle of Napierian Nettles, he cleared his throat and said:

  "Of course the gods exist and I know a method of reaching them. I have made a small study of the subject. I think that you may safely forget about helium balloons and the like. Physically, of course, it is impossible to enter the Heavenly Realm. However, it used to be said that a person's soul left their body at death and floated on up there without any other assistance. It is conceivable that I could temporarily kill you by freezing you in a cryogenic tank and then re-thaw you after you have completed your mission..."

  This was the sort of information that had proved extremely difficult to obtain since all the priests and clergy had fled the land during the great ecclesiastical-exile order issued by the President the previous year (one of them, apparently had tried to seduce him during a confessional.) I was delighted with Dr Celery and dissolved the meeting at once.

  The time-period of my demise was to be set at one month. This, it was presumed, would give me plenty of time to seek out and arrest the gods even if they fled to the furthest clouds of their pearly paradise. Accordingly, I submitted to Dr Celery's cryogenic machines, letting the sub-zero vanilla freeze the very blood in my veins and the very thoughts in my brain.

  As I lost consciousness, I found myself floating down a blue tunnel towards a light that was bright yet gentle. In one hand, I clasped the arrest-warrant I had prepared the day before and, in the other, a magnum of Chablis I had taken as my sole provision for the journey. As I sipped from the bottle, the light at the end of the tunnel seemed to glow still brighter. I heard strains of unearthly music and caught my first glimpse of the afterlife.

  The tunnel disgorged me with a convulsive spluttering noise and deposited me before the ivory gates of the Heavenly Realm. The gates were open and were unguarded. I guessed that Tourmaline, the three-bodied, single-headed Dog that was said to patrol the divine entranceway had sneaked off for a moment to relieve himself. It was one of the problems to be expected with possessing three bodies.

  I was grateful enough, of course, for Tourmaline is said to be quite bad-tempered and to bite even the most moral and holy of citizens as they file past. I was disappointed, however, that no-one appeared to greet me. Obviously, apart from the President, I had no friends on either side of the great divide between life and death. I sauntered through the gates onto the pearly meadows of the Heavenly realm. I became increasingly agitated and bitter when I discovered that even here there were no hordes of auburn-haired maidens willing to soothe my brow.

  Anyway, as time is indeed growing very short, I shall briefly wind up my tale. I searched the Heavenly Realm for the gods but found only a large clockwork mechanism that seemed to be governing the Cosmos according to some pre-determined program. To this day, I cannot say whether the gods, aware of my approach, had built this device to rule in their place while they fled, or whether it had always been there. At any rate, I switched the thing off and allowed free-will to enter into the Universe for a change.

  As for the blessed souls who cavorted around the Heavenly Realm, I couldn't prise any answers out of them either. They leapt around plucking harps and blowing trumpets in an incessant and extremely irritating manner. I rounded them up, arrested them one by one and imprisoned them in the vast palace that housed the clockwork machine. The President, of course, had earlier banned the use of musical instruments and therefore these ghosts and spirits were guilty of an offence under section G sharp of the Public Chord Act.

  Alone in Heaven, I played at being a god myself. Monotheism had finally prevailed over the less-organised Polytheistic system. Playing god turned out to be harder work than I had anticipated. But I grew to enjoy the unlimited power; I let it caress me with its corrupting fingers. As I said before, at this very moment I am sitting on my favourite cloud, toying with the destiny of whole continents.

  The only problem is that my month is almost up. It will soon be time for Dr Celery to re-thaw me and draw me back into my earthly body. I will have to give up this life of infinite privilege and become a mere Prefect of Police again, a servant of the State, mortal, fleshy and unliked. At least up here, I am reasonably content. Power, I have discovered, can be an adequate substitute for love.

  Naturally I have tried to kill Dr Celery many times, to prevent him bringing me back to life, but I can't seem to get the hang of these meteorites. I gnash my teeth in fury, but all to no avail. At least, when I do return, I shall be able to avenge myself by telling him that the gods do not exist and that Satsuma was at least partly right. The destruction of his faith will be some consolation. However, my own faith is also starting to crack, although I am in a more secure position than either of my colleagues. If I were Dr Celery then the absence of the gods would be a savage blow indeed. On the other hand, if I were Satsuma then I would have to ask myself: who built the clockwork machine in the first place? It is more than merely a metaphor. Luckily, I have none of these problems.

  Thank god I'm an agnostic!

  The Thirty Nine Million Steps

  Dare I say it? Dare I say that I — a mere cog in the workings of this great timepiece called the World (albeit an important one) — have prised myself loose from my bearings, rewound the coiled spring that keeps us all animated, redrawn the numbered face, replaced the hands with my own fists and even set the pendulum to swing on a rhythm of my own choosing? Dare I say that I — Titian Grundy, Prefect of Police — have changed society in a way more profound than any would previously have deemed possible? Dare I say such a thing?

  Of course! False modesty was never a great talent of mine, though I practised mightily hard and long, especially in front of the President when diplomacy and a possible promotion were in the air. But that is another story. The President himself was no slouch at taking credit for things he had achieved — and many that he had not — and I see no reason why I should be any different. Besides, my public expect a full and frank confession and in this particular case humility and the truth are mutually incompatible.

  So I will proceed directly to the very roots of my tale. There is no need for introductions. My previous exploits are already well-known enough to make any such preludes and preambles completely redundant. The Cabbage Affair was one of my remarkable successes: that time so painful in recent racial memory when a mutant Savoy threatened the very foundations of society. Cabbage soup was forthcoming to most citizens for months after the resolution of that corrugated case.

  So too the affair of the Elk-Assassins, a curious sect that sprang up with the sole purpose of eliminating public servants and inaugurating an Elk republic. Despite my very real terror of the creatures (their antlers still haunt my dreams) I succeeded in breaching the walls of their cliff top fortress — and ending their machinations — with a dozen cannon specially converted to fire kayaks, snow-shoes and all those other northern adjuncts so inimical to the wellbeing of elks.

  The case that I wish to discuss now, however, has served to make my name far more notorious than any of these. It began when I received a message from the President requesting me to reduce the crime rate to zero within a week. I was much vexed by this communiqué and spent long hours rolling around on the floor with my new assistant, Lola Halogen, in a state of indescribable agitation. Eventually I picked myself up and paid a visit to Dr Celery, the Police Surgeon Specific, in the basement of his private house. Being the most rational man I knew, I felt sure that he would be able to offer me some useful advice.

  And so he did: after much tugging of his stringy beard, he helped to define the nature of the problem. Crime occurred in the first place, he pointed out, b
ecause criminals thought they could run away from the scene of their misdemeanours. What was needed was a method of preventing them running away; a sort of moral net to catch them in their tracks. For example, a state of altered gravity in — or near — the vicinity of their intended crimes would ensure their undoing.

  I agreed with his conclusions but was bitterly disappointed when he went on to confess that he would not be able to help me further. He knew much about corpses and tweed but little about gravity. However, he then suggested that if I contacted the University, I may find some expert or other willing and capable of taking his ideas to their logical outcome. Accordingly I sent an express message by carrier-tortoise to the very hub of glorious Academia and within three days, found two intense and exceedingly proud individuals waiting for me in my office.

  They introduced themselves as Professor Warp and Professor Woof, the two greatest experts on the subject of gravity. They were serious rivals and bore more than a little malice towards each other. This antipathy ran so deep that they even affected different tastes in clothing, women and food. The former favoured cravats, brunettes and peas. The latter preferred spats, raspberry blondes and beans. My own tastes, of course, are both renowned and irrelevant to this tale, but I will state them anyway: unbuttoned cuffs, redheads and cheese.

  I outlined my needs and away they went, both determined to outdo and belittle the other. Professor Warp had decided that he was capable of constructing a machine which would reduce gravity by a factor of ten. This would ensure that criminals would not only be unable to flee the scene of their crimes but would not be able to reach them in the first place. Their ambitions would be left up in the air, so to speak. Professor Woof's chosen method, on the other hand, was to try to increase gravity by a factor of ten. Quite literally this would be a crushing blow to the naughty fraternity. In the first case, the Police would maintain the advantage by wearing weighted boots; in the second, by pounding their beats on spring-loaded shoes.