They came to the edge of the red-dirt plaza and halted by an elaborate fountain; limestone fauns and satyrs pouring streams of water from ewers and cornucopias into an oval basin. A rose-pink marble palace stood in front of them.
“Bloody ugly fountain, ain’t it? All that nymphs-an’-shepherds classical nonsense … Now, Peter, please take three o’ the bully boys and follow that street there to the left. I shall go up here to the right. Just keep the lads to their tasks, and clap a stopper on any foolishness that yer sees. First we gets control, then we may relax a little, tell ‘em that. Strictly business, an’ no funny business, har-har! We shall clear each side o’ the town back towards the middle and meet in the square. Break a leg, eh, Peter?” Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges slapped Blue Peter on the shoulder and strode off down a narrow alley, three bully-boys trotting after him.
Captain Greybagges was proved to be correct in his analysis. There were some brief but vicious fire-fights where little grey buggers had managed to rally a few surviving toad-men, but their resistance was weak, disorganised and easily overrun. The little grey buggers made a last stand in the central hall of a stately classical edifice with Doric columns and bas-reliefs of Greek gods upon its facades. The hall was filled with an assortment of statues, bronze armour and weapons and other ancient Greek and Macedonian relics. In the centre of the hall there was a chariot, made of wood and bronze and painted in bright colours. The little grey men had taken cover behind it, and put up a spirited defence. They had managed to get some of the silvery arquebusses to function, and the red-crystal barrels spat out bolts of pure heat, and several pirates were wounded with ugly burns. The pirates made attempts to move the chariot, but it was tied to a post with a large complex knot of hemp rope.
The pirates pulled back, and were discussing their next move, when Jack Nastyface lost patience. He seized the giant razor of Ali the Barber, which a pirate-squad had brought along as a sort of mascot, ran forward from behind cover and slammed it down upon the knot, which fell apart into strands. Jack shoved the chariot and, freed from its mooring, it rolled away to crash into a tall glass cabinet full of erotically-glazed Etruscan pottery. Jack Nastyface was then left exposed, and a bright fizzing bolt of red light punched into his chest, and he fell dead upon the parquet floor.
The little grey buggers were now open to the fire of the pirate marksmen, and surrendered, their silvery arquebusses clattering to the floor as they dropped them. Captain Greybagges strode forward, his face dark with anger.
“Who shot Jack Nastyface?” he roared. “Which one o’ you little grey buggers shot that man?”
The little grey buggers showed no sign of understanding what the Captain had said, but they all moved away from one little grey bugger, leaving it standing alone. With a snarl, Captain Greybagges pulled a pistol from his belt and shot the little grey bugger, which was blown onto its back, a pool of blue-green blood spreading on the mosaic floor.
“You little grey buggers, if you be smart, will recognise that I be angry, and that when I be angry I shoots little grey buggers,” he roared. “You wuz clever enough to know how to avoid the Glaroon’s anger, so yuz best be clever enough to avoid mine from now on, or I swear upon my oath that I will shoot the damn’ lot o’ yuz!”
The little grey buggers stared at him with their big black eyes, then they all blinked their eye-membranes, as though in acceptance. Captain Greybagges turned away, and found Blue Peter next to him, his long-barrelled Kentucky pistol smoking in his hand; they had drawn their guns and fired simultaneously.
With the little grey buggers defeated and cleared away to the plaza, and the lizard-people happily surrendering and accepting a ‘change of management’, the people started to appear. Captain Greybagges had set up a command-post in a belle époque ballroom with horrible mock-roccoco décor of pastel-coloured plaster and gilt, where he directed pirates to escort groups of lizard-people herding smaller groups of little grey buggers to the plaza. A stocky fellow came to him, clad in boiled-leather armour and a helmet with a horse-tail plume.
“Why, Temujin! How pleasant to meet you again, old friend!” said the Captain and embraced him warmly. They talked, while Blue Peter and Israel Feet continued giving orders to pirate-squads. The stocky man marched away, a confident swagger in his walk, although he had quite short bowed legs.
“He’s a good fellow, is Temujin,” said the Captain. “He’s taken charge of the slave-people over on the west side. Got them to hide theyselves when the fight was still goin’ on, and now he’s getting’ ‘em organised. One thing less to worry about. I’ve always liked the chap. I’m surprised that he had such a terrible reputation.”
“Temujin?” said Blue Peter.
“Better known as Genghis Kahn, although he isn’t the real one, of course, but a sort of copy.”
Other people appeared, and the Captain dealt with them: “That was Aristotle, Peter. A heart of gold, but a bit of a bore, I’m afraid.” … “Michelangelo di bloody Lodovico Buonarroti. Great artist, he’s a copy of the real Michelangelo, but he can still whack out a sculpture fit to take yer breath away. Bit of an arrogant sod, though. I’m not sure whether I should keep him away from Mr Chippendale, or introduce them, if you catch my meaning.” … “Helen o’ Troy, Peter. The ‘face that launched a thousand ships’, and the bum that launched a couple o’ thousand more, wouldn’t you say? She’s a great dancer, too. Nice lady.” … “Oggie the Very Early Man. He can’t take his drink – wasn’t even invented in his day, was it? So he has an excuse, I suppose - but he has his good points. Right now I can’t think what they are, though.”
The Martian day is thirty-seven minutes longer than the Earth day, but that Martian day felt far longer than that, as there was so much to do. The sun was beginning to get low in the sky before Captain Greybagges was able to sit back and take his ease. Jake Thackeray had brought sandwiches, pies, cakes and bottles of cold lemon tea from the Ark de Triomphe, enduring many amusing sallies from the pirates along the lines of “har-har-har, Jake! I hopes that yuz have washed yer hands, har-har-har!” as he handed out the refreshments.
“Now there is something I must do, Peter,” said the Captain, brushing crumbs off his black trousers.
“Go and wake up the Glaroon, Captain?” said Blue Peter.
“No, that can wait. He’s snoozing in his chamber and the little grey buggers are all under guard. Even if he wakes he’s still stuck in that chamber, and what keeps out the noise o’ thoughts also keeps his thoughts in, so he be no threat for the moment. No, I have something else to do. Keep ‘em in order here for a bit.” Captain Greybagges got up and went.
Blue Peter thought for a short while, then decided that the Captain should not be wandering on his own, not with Glaroons still extant, even though the town was now secured and quiet. He checked that his pistol was loaded and primed, and followed him.
Captain Greybagges walked purposefully through the town, past gaudy palaces, small castles, thatched cottages with roses round the door, the jumbled-together architecture of the Martian capital (what is it called? thought Blue Peter). The Captain came to a large building of red brick, with tall windows and a grand sweep of steps up to its doors. He stopped for a moment, looking up at it, then trotted up the steps and went in. Peter followed him.
The interior of the building was quiet and well lit from the high windows. There were books everywhere. Bookshelves, row upon row, into the distance. Tables stacked with books. Books on lecterns. Books piled on the floor. Books, tomes, codexes, slim volumes, chapbooks, bouquins, folios, quartos, octavos, coffee-table books, text-books, dictionaries, magnum opuses, opuscules, manuscripts, handbooks, booklets, workshop manuals, scrolls, hardbacks, paperbacks, potboilers, classics, penny-dreadfuls, pamphlets, thesauruses, leaflets, bodice-rippers, blockbusters, atlases, bestsellers and incunabuli. All sorts of books, but no Captain Greybagges.
Blue Peter went up the stairs to the next floor. There was an open door. Blue Peter looked into the room. More books.
A desk in the middle of the room with a shaded light. Standing by the desk, a tall slim woman dressed in a floor-length white gown, an Ionic chiton. She had a long serious face with an aquiline nose, large lustrous brown eyes and a mop of black hair in corkscrewing curls. She was beautiful. Captain Greybagges was facing her. Blue Peter recognized her as the model for the tiny figure next to the Captain on the quarterdeck of the ship-in-a-bottle in the Great Cabin of the Ark de Triomphe.
Someone nudged him gently, and he turned to find Miriam standing by him. She smiled, and indicated with a nod of her head that they should quietly leave. Blue Peter turned back. Captain Greybagges and the tall woman still faced each other,
“Hypatia!” breathed Captain Greybagges in a voice that quavered with emotion. “My Princess of Polynomials! My Queen of QED! My Empress of Exponentials! My love!”
“Sylvestre! The Capitan of my ’Eart!” She had a melodious voice with a Greek accent.
They stepped towards each other. Blue Peter noticed that the beautiful woman had fine green hairs on her forearms and on the backs of her hands and fingers. As she put her hands to his face Captain Greybagges’s green beard moved, the long green strands swaying, reaching out to enfold her hands and entwine lovingly with the fine green hairs. They stood perfectly still, gazing into each other’s eyes. Then a slight flicker of apprehension slid over Captain Greybagges’s face.
“Why, you dirty ole goat!” the beautiful woman hissed. “You focked a bleddy witch, you ole bastid!”
Miriam grasped Blue Peter’s sleeve and forcefully pulled him away from the door and quietly back down the stairs.
POSTSCRIPTUM –
Some Months Later, Mitcham Green, South London.
“I am glad that Hypatia is no longer angry with you,” said Blue Peter, “and that she has agreed to be your wife.”
“Showerin’ her with baubles and trinkets o’ great price merely caused her to laugh at me in a mockin’ and contemptuous way. Abasin’ meself and grovellin’ alike to a poor sad fool pleased her greatly, but did not move her by more than the thickness of a hair, a very fine hair, too, such as might adorn the head o’ yer beloved grandmother. Begging her to marry me was the only way I could mollify her,” said Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges. “It has been quite successful, as a stratagem. I believe that in a couple of decades or so she may even consider forgiving me. Consider in a purely theoretical way, of course, as a problem in logic. She is no longer throwing things at me, or not very often, anyway, which encourages me to have these foolish hopes.”
There was the sharp crack of willow upon leather, and a spatter of applause from the crowd at the cricket match.
“Oh, yes! Well played! Well played!” cried Captain Greybagges, clapping.
“I am sorry that the Glaroon escaped your vengeance, too,” said Blue Peter. “That must have been painful for you.”
“I didn’t appreciate that the little grey buggers could launch him off like that without first awakening him. I did not know that his chamber o’ silence was equipped as a saucer-craft, you see, so it did not occur to me that they could do that. When I saw the chamber fly out of the top of that tower I was so angry I nearly shot a couple of the little grey sods, but what good would that have done? Anyway, I suspect that I may never be able to have me vengeance upon him. I think that in many ways I have been merely the tool of Great Cthulhu in this affair, that I was but a small part in some political shenanigans of the Great Old Ones. They may have been glad to see the Glaroon deprived of power, but they would never have allowed him to be subject to the vindictiveness of a mere mortal. They have their position in the universe to consider. Such a thing might have given ideas to others.”
There was another burst of applause. The wicket-keeper threw the ball high in the air to celebrate his excellent catch. The ball dropped down again into his gloved hands and he bowed to the crowd, grinning. The Captain continued.
“The Glaroon was, I think, becoming addled and corybantic in his dotage – even a Great Old One may become too old in the end - and thus a nuisance to the other Great Old Ones. I have heard that he is now in the keeping of Cthulhu in his palace at R’yleh. One might regard the whole business as similar to a manoeuvre to put mad old Lord Diddlewits into a nursing-home, so that he ceases to be an embarrassment to his family, and can no longer drink three bottles of Oporto wine before breakfast and shoot at the butler with a fowling-piece, as can sometimes happen in the best families.”
“You have mentioned this Cthulhu fellow before, I remember.”
“Great Cthulhu is a wily old cove, no doubt about that. I rather like him. When I was a slave of the Glaroon he was always decent to me. In some circles he has a grisly reputation, but that is mostly gossip, I think. There is a tale that you will go stark-mad if you merely go within a hundred paces of him, but that was only something his wife used to tell her girl-friends, the sort of affectionate calumny that wives are wont to say of their husbands. I had the story from Mrs Cthulhu herself, so it’s surely the truth. I have stood right next to Great Cthulhu many times, and am I stark-mad? Their daughter, Miss Lulu Cthulhu, is a terrible scamp, but then she is only a few million years old, so barely in her teens by their reckoning.”
The over came to its end, the bowler crossed to the other wicket, and the fielders rearranged themselves on the pitch, their shirts very white in the warm sunlight. Mumblin’ Jake came and put a folding table between the two buccaneers, where they sat in campaign-chairs outside the boundary-mark, then came with glasses, a jug of ale and pork pies.
“Thank ’ee, Jake. Have a glass of ale yourself. Oh, is there any mustard? For the pie?” Jake brought a pot of mustard, and then sat under a tree with his ale, mumbling. They ate and drank in silence for a while.
“Anyway, I think that the Glaroon, with his mania for stealing things and people from Earth’s past, was creating too many tears and rents in the fabric o’ time, and the other Great Old Ones could not allow that. If this time-line of ours had collapsed from too many punctures, then everybody – the Great Old Ones included – would have been inconvenienced greatly.”
“Will the damage to time heal itself, Sylvestre?”
“Yes, it will … in time! Har-har-har-har! I apologise, Peter! I shan’t do that again, for there are far too many opportunities for such levity when one speaks of time all the time! Har-har-har! Now I have on a somber face, I promise … where was I? … Yes, the damage caused by the Glaroon’s saucer-craft ripping through the fabric o’ time will mend itself as a wound will, if it be clean. I have been taking measures to clean the wounds, so to speak. Putting back the things that were taken, that sort o’ thing. Means I’ve had to use the little grey buggers to crew a few saucer-craft, and so create a few small rips myself. In the same way, I suppose, that a wound must sometimes be trimmed with further cuts so as to heal better. Debriding, the doctors calls it. When that’s done, mind you, there will be no further trips into the past by anybody, not if I have anything to do with it.”
“The little grey buggers flying saucer-craft, Cap’n? Is that wise?”
“I’ve got the lizard-people keeping a weather-eye upon ’em, and the little grey buggers be the best at flying those things through time. Sideways through time, too, which can be rather unwholesome an’ dismal. No, if trouble were to come, it would be from the Great Old Ones turnin’ the little grey buggers against me, and my feeling is that I am doing pretty much what the Great Old Ones want, and saving them from having to do it themselves, so why should they? The little grey buggers are sharp enough to realise that, so they will obey me to keep the Great Old Ones sweet.”
Captain Greybagges poured himself another glass of ale, drank deeply and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The bowler bowled, with an ungainly side-arm throw. The batsman slashed at the ball, and missed. The wicket-keeper fumbled and dropped it, cursing audibly.
“The healing process is already happening. When we were on the coast o’ the Colonies we visited places and they were
close together, and now they be far apart, hundreds o’ miles. Nobody’s noticed the ground shiftin’ about, yet there it is. The Glaroon was doing’ somethin’ nasty around those parts, too. Solomon Pole told me about it when we met in Salem. Sol was shooting toad-men out in the barrens, with a great huge duck-gun on a punt, the sly fellow. That’s all gone now. Whatever it was the Glaroon was a-doin’, well, it ain’t there now. Things are easing back to how they should be. The disjunctions, the cleavages, the gaps, the lacunae in the skeins of time will soon be of the past. They will be history. Quite literally history, too, as it will all hang together so prettily so that pompous old greybeards in mortar-boards will be able to write boring books about it, an’ torture innocent schoolboys into learnin’ it by rote as though it were holy writ.”
Captain Greybagges took another pork pie. Blue Peter handed him the mustard-pot.
“Odd thing, Peter. Most of the Mars people - the slaves taken from the past, the Glaroon’s historical menagerie – did not choose to go back to the time from whence they came. Oogie the Very Early Man did, but only because it was the only way he could stay sober, and he missed mammoth-steaks, too. A lot of them want to stay on Mars. They’ve spent their lives there, I suppose, if one discounts the false memories that have been put into their heads to make them think they are whoever it is they are supposed to be. It’s their home, as much as anywhere is. Some of ‘em surprised me, though. Aristotle is now running a taverna in Athens, down by the Piraeus docks. Says he should have thought o’ doin’ it years ago. The only proper work for a philosopher is bein’ landlord o’ a pub, he reckons. Temujin is trading carpets in the souk o’ Stamboul, where his base cunning and native ferocity can be employed on a daily basis. An’ Helen o’ Troy …”
“Is an actress here in London, and she now calls herself Nell Gwynne!” laughed Blue Peter.
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