Tropic of Skorpeo

by Morrissey, Michael

  “Is that infectious?”

  “Verrrry, Your Beeeness. I have myself succcummmbed.”

  “I presume you mean honeycombed?”

  “Yessss, Yourrr Highnesss.”

  “Hedrone, stop that silly buzzing noise when you speak, or I’ll have you de-bugged.”

  “Yesssss, Your Highnessss.”

  “And I’ll get the time tortoise to give you a nip. And this time I don’t mean ‘maybe’.”

  “I’m sssssorry, Your Honeynesss…”

  Queen Beia realised that further threats would be useless, for it was clear that Hedrone had a hopeless case of the hums. Increasingly, she found herself wishing that she was a postinsectualist who could ignore the silly rules and dances and, frankly, hive mentality that she found herself engaged in. Nevertheless, she had publicly declared that she would attend the Celestial Union of Hive. Of course, as queen, she could break her word and not have to answer to anybody. Not even to herself.

  Annoyingly, she often found herself justifying her actions to Lord Maledor. With his horns, dark slits of eyes, and forked tail, he was quite… cute. Possibly he could be en-droned?

  Though Juraletta resisted with all her might, it was useless. She was drawn closer and closer to the green man who was dramatically tall and, what was even more annoying, extremely handsome. When she was about three feet from him, the overwhelming force stopped. They looked at each other, and she tried not to blush as he put his hands on his hips and made her even more aware of his revealing attire.

  “What sort of a bird are you?” the man asked.

  “I’m not a bird,” Juraletta said indignantly. “I’m a princess, and I will shortly be a queen, and you will be one of my subjects. I shall arrange to have you punished for your impudence.”

  “My – what a talkative bird!” To her amazement and irritation, the young man threw his head back and laughed uproariously. “Never in all my hunting days have I come across such delusions of grandeur,” the dishy fellow continued. “Who are you?”

  “A queen doesn’t have to answer questions from a commoner.”

  “I thought you were only a princess,” he said with a smirk.

  “I’ll be a queen in a few days,” Juraletta declared with as much regal confidence as she could muster. The man, she had noted, was alarmingly muscular and appeared very supple – a perfectly proportioned green-skinned hunter! And how had he compelled her to walk towards him? Presumably with that silly orange spot. What magic was this?

  “Who might you be?” Juraletta asked. She was rather alarmed as to how things were developing Outside. Gorgie would say, ‘I told you so’, a very boring habit of gorgons. Yet another part of her was excited and intrigued by this strange man with his mighty bow that was almost as tall as he was.

  “I am Prince Rhameo, and these are my hunting grounds. You are my prey.”

  “You are deluded. I am definitely not your prey, and these lands belong to the Empire of Qwerty, of which I am queen-to-be. I’ve never seen you before so I don’t really see how you can be a prince. Of what are you prince?”

  “I am the Prince of Alphab, which is the queen city of Skorpeo.”

  “This isn’t Skorpeo – it’s Qwerty.”

  “This is Skorpeo,” insisted the young man. “It has always been Skorpeo, and it always will be Skorpeo.”

  “Nonsense!”

  He shrugged. “Would you like to marry me for an hour or so? Just long enough for a little…” And then he made a complicated gesture with his fingers that meant nothing to the young princess.

  Juraletta spluttered momentarily, then glared up at him. “I beg your pardon? I am betrothed to be married.”

  She had never used the word ‘betrothed’ before, and she had done her best to make it as polysyllabicated and official-sounding as possible.

  “And when are you getting married?”

  “In two days.”

  “Plenty of time, then,” Rhameo said. “I’ll whistle up a nannybat.”

  “You will do no such thing,” said Juraletta, impulsively clapping her fingers over Rhameo’s mouth. When her fingers touched his soft green lips, a little tingle like the mildest of electric shocks ran up her arm, through her four breasts, and down the length of her body.

  “I’ve just remembered something,” declared the young man, his voice slightly muffled behind her hand. “Pundit mentioned that there is a small structure in this zone and the inhabitants, who are rumoured to be mad, believe they come from a different planet. Aren’t we supposed to be feuding?”

  She whipped her hand away. “It is your Pundit – whoever he or she is – who is mad. And you’re mad, too. This is the realm of Qwerty of which I am soon to be queen.”

  “You’ve still got time to marry me for an hour or two…”

  “Well,” said the princess, her mood mysteriously lightening as she felt the warmth of his breath slowly fade from her fingers, “what do you Skorpeans do when you marry? Cover each other with orange spots?” She looked down at her leg. The prince followed her gaze, crouched down, and vigorously rubbed the spot, making it disappear. His fingers felt extremely pleasant, almost girlish, an impression she would never have expected given his muscular, manly form.

  “We go flying.”

  “What is fly-ying?” asked the princess.

  “Come for a ride. I’ll show you.”

  “I’ll come flying as long as we don’t get married. We won’t be married, will we?”

  “Not without a nannybat, and nannybats can’t fly. Ready?”

  In an instant, they were airborne. Though Rhameo hadn’t given her any lessons, she instinctively knew how to move her limbs in time with his, as if they were actually enjoined creatures of the air. As they encircled the gardens, Juraletta forgot to check if Venera was still there (for she had begun to doubt it), but there was no sign of the dwarf or the ventriloquial (or schizophrenic) giant, who were presumably still cowering in the hedgey mammoth.

  Juraletta heard a waft of notes from above them, as sweet as exotic fruit. Looking skyward, she saw a thin membrane spreading over several acres in an iridescent shimmer of rippling colours. With each wave of phosphorescence, a beautiful fragment of music emerged, hues and notes fusing into a magical tapestry of sound. Even as one of the folds of the membrane stretched down and enveloped them, the sensations remained pleasingly musical.

  “I’m getting careless,” muttered Rhameo, “letting us be caught by a singing skyray.”

  “It feels quite pleasant,” said Juraletta. “Pleasurable, even.”

  “That’s how the skyray traps its prey. Musical enchantment.”

  “Can’t we stay a while?”

  “No,” said Rhameo, “our wills would be weakened – then we would never escape.”

  “Would we be married?” asked Juraletta, looking at him coquettishly.

  “No, we’d be dead.”

  “What is dead?”

  “Don’t they teach you anything on Qwerty?” Rhameo asked, giving her a sidelong look. “Dead means… it means that you won’t get to marry anyone. Who are you marrying, by the way – some rich old geezer, I presume, in order to consolidate your rule?”

  “Not exactly…” Now that she thought about it, Juraletta was not quite sure why she was marrying the Fissionable Duke. It was simply that Gorgie had told her that that was what she must do, and she had always believed her scaly mentor.

  Seeing her pause, Rhameo smiled. “But just at the last moment, along comes Prince Charming and rescues you from a fate worse than death, right? Well, not this imperial cookie. You’re looking at the greatest galactic bachelor, gay El Supremo. I’m the hunter – free as a bird!”

  “According to you, we’re not free – we’re trapped.”

  “Not if I can help it,” he said with confidence. “I’ll use one of my orange tips.”

  Rhameo loaded his bow with some difficulty, as the arrows were covered in sticky music; each time either of them moved, Juraletta heard a few notes
shrill softly. After a moment’s struggle, Rhameo’s bow twanged and an arrow whizzed into the membrane overhead. Instantly, a discord appeared in the syrupy harmonies and Juraletta felt her mind clear. With a piercing shriek, the folds of the membrane parted… they found themselves tumbling downward – only for a moment – and then the prince remembered that he could fly.

  Within seconds they landed on the lawn not far from where Juraletta had met the dwarf and the giant (who were still nowhere to be seen).

  “I’m sorry about the skyray,” Rhameo said. “I’m going to speak to my father about them and see if something can’t be done. Perhaps the Dark Magician can send them to another time zone.”

  “Who’s the Dark Magician?”

  Rhameo paused for a moment to consider. “One of those characters with a bald head, sinister goatee, and an evil chuckle. Someone who believes that black magic can fix everything. Rather boring, really – always has his nose in a book, looking up some sinister spell or muttering over some smelly brew. I’d rather be out flying and hunting. Look at what I shot this time – you! My most exciting catch in months.”

  “Correction, Rhameo. You didn’t catch me – I let myself be caught. I could have escaped from you any time I liked.”

  “Oh, just how, exactly?” asked Rhameo, one eyebrow raised.

  “That’s my secret,” Juraletta said, wracking her brain for an answer in case he put her claim to the test.

  “Same time next week?” asked Rhameo. “That will be our secret. Secrets add spice to life.”

  “By this time next week, I’ll be married to the Fissionable Duke, and my life will become spicy with –” She nearly said dysprosium (a component of the hoary aristocrat’s novel diet) but, rather than sound ridiculous, fell silent for a moment… “So I won’t be able to –”

  She stopped mid-sentence. The green-skinned fellow had vanished.

  Juraletta hastened back to the portcullis of Venera Castle which, fortunately, was just where she remembered having left it. She had lots to tell Gorgie, and plenty of questions to ask. Hopefully, the poor old snake-headed thing was not still crouched in a cupboard, counting to herself and waiting to be found. Juraletta knew that she always hid in dusty places, and the dust would not agree with the snakes – it gave them hay fever. And when they all started sneezing at once, poor Gorgie got a headache.

  Lord Maledor always did his best to look terrified when Queen Beia threatened him with the time tortoise. Secretly he was amused, for her time tortoise was a fake, and she had never shown the slightest suspicion. It was amazing how much arrogance these Replicoids assumed – they actually thought they were real! The only thing real in this sector of the universe was himself, Lord Maledor, the greatest scientist of all time. Well, the greatest scientist of this particular time zone, at least. He had discovered several other time zones, one of which its inhabitants called Skorpeo, and while he was sure that it didn’t contain anyone with a fraction of his own mental ability, it would be amusing to manipulate it, confuse it, and conquer it… though not just yet. He would let the Skorpeans maintain their delusion of uniqueness for a while longer, for on this night, Lord Maledor was worried that he might have another pink thought about the Octopus.

  He was not often stirred by lustful thoughts – his previous one had been three thousand years ago and that, to his shame, had been over a Replicoid with blue hair and indestructible nipples. But now the Octopus had aroused his interest, which was… uncomfortable. And while Lord Maledor never admitted to having anything as crude as desires, it was somewhat embarrassing.

  The Octopus was a large, squat, mucilaginous life form capable of satisfying eight lovers at once. Whether the Octopus was male or female was a question only a simpleton would ask – the Great Eight-Tentacled One was an oily hermaphrodite who was heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual, though studiously not metrosexual. To view the Octopus in mid-copulation was to undergo a permanent change in consciousness. It was said to be a mind-altering sight that only occurred during sporadic octophonic-orgies every thousand years or so, and usually in deepest space – far from the eyes of the merely curious.

  No more pink thoughts! Lord Maledor thought with a grimace. He was trying hard to have fashionable green thoughts. He forced himself to think of lush planets with miles of rolling lawn, oceans of lime, and peppermint-coloured waterfalls, but it was no good – the pink thoughts returned. He pictured a planet covered by a huge golf course on whose verdant surface crawled millions of bright emerald bugs. Everywhere, he pictured nothing save oozing, pulsing green life forms. The thought made him feel ill – the cure was worse than the disease.

  There was only one thing to do – make a new reality. He had already made several unstable realities in the Fornax System, and the one that had existed longest had endured for fifty million years. Owing to the insertion of false memories and fake geological evidence, the inhabitants believed they had a history of several billion years. Such delusions of grandeur were sadly common in realities. It was amusing to see them supernovate.

  In fact, Lord Maledor had wearied of realities. As he ran a bath of time crystals (which kept his skin immortally young), he thought he might make an unreality. Such a world would be more flexible as the laws of space and time would be as arbitrary as the twitching of bored fish in an aquarium. People could be born old and die in the womb. Life forms with totally random molecular compositions could interbreed with inanimate life forms to produce the living dead – these living dead would not be B-grade zombies, but thinking stones or cognisant rocks. Large life forms could be interbred with small ones. Simple with complex. Fast with slow. A cheetah could be crossed with a sloth to produce a cheetoth or a slocheet, hybrid beasts that would go mad as they tried to sprint in pursuit of stationary fruit, or creep slowly after gallivanting gazelle.

  Lord Maledor was disturbed from his reverie as someone or some… thing tried to make itself heard over the galactic monitor. He tightened the towel around his waist and flicked a switch. A small man with a toothbrush moustache appeared on the screen and launched into a rant, arms waving and spit flying.

  “We must get rid of za Chews! Ze only good Chew is a dead Chew! Only zen can ve have a strong and pure Chermanee!”

  What was the fellow talking about? Obviously, he had taken his defeat at chess a little too seriously. I might let him win next time, thought Lord Maledor. He could let him take Russia and use the oil, coal, and manpower to strike back at the United States. Let him become master of Naziworld. Like all conquerors, once he triumphed over his world he would become bored and complacent – or perhaps instead of complacency he would become paranoid, just as the Americans had done during the cold war.

  A cold war? Millions of Eskimos charging over snowy plateaus carrying twenty-foot icicle spears, freezing their victims in giant burial chambers of green ice, while threatening to lower the temperature until the air became liquid and flowed up the legs and sent aching fingers of frostbite into the groin.

  “Still game, Adolf?” Lord Maledor laughed. “Or do you want to wage war in the more temperate zones?”

  Astroburger was worried. He wasn’t worried about worrying, for it was his job to worry about the fate of the universe, which meant that he was free of meta-worry. But Astroburger felt responsible not merely to Queen Beia, but also (even more so) to his own conscience – especially with regards to cosmic disasters, of which the universe possessed a plethora.

  He turned to the Giant Asteroid Monitor and noted that there were at least fifty asteroids more than a kilometre in diameter lurking in the vicinity of Simulacra. After calculating their respective orbits, it was apparent that at least five were on a collision course with his own very vulnerable world. There was only one thing to do – change the course of Simulacra, though he was unsure how he could do this without causing a disaster even larger than the catastrophe it was designed to avoid. Worrying stuff indeed…

  Giant asteroids were just the tip of the cosmic disaster iceberg, however. G
iant comets, novae, supernovae, intergalactic collisions, collisions with clouds of anti-matter, being sucked into a black hole, and last though not least, being engulfed by the entropic collapse of the known universe. All provided a delicious sense of impending catastrophe that would keep a prophet of doom as happy as a sandboy, the latter’s glee having naught to do with sand and rather more to do with the quaffing of gin as they delivered pseudo sawdust to the homes of the affluent.

  Still though, there were other universes – parallel, alternative, and dark universes, an infinity of them – and some argued that if that were the case, why worry about the one you happened to be in? Worry not! There are more universes! Some run on screwball philosophical principles. Foolish talk bubbled up from court – babble about virtue ethics when they meant vacuous gothics; verbal gas about virtual reality when they should have been talking about virtuous reality – and so forth. Nonsense, all of it.

  In the apocalyptic mind of Astroburger, only a miniscule hope lingered that Simulacra would see the year out. The doomsayer took a deep breath to steady himself, and reached into a pocket in the deepest recesses of his robe. He had had the Royal Apothecary make him a pill consisting of some of Queen Beia’s very secretive secretions and some high-powered (and highly powdered) sedatives to calm him down – exactly what was needed for times such as these. As he swallowed the pill with a grimace, he wondered how the queen stayed so calm when disaster seemed certain. Perhaps the myriad adoring faces within the Palace of Reflections soothed her. Or perhaps it was the person she was reputed to secretly communicate with in her chambers in the small hours of the night – a certain Lord Maledor, whoever that was…

  But back to the asteroid problem. Astroburger quickly designed a simulacrum (or simulacra) of a black hole, which consisted of a small glowing sphere and a large dark force-field. When he activated the simulacrum the force-field immediately swallowed the sphere, then collapsed into a swirling mass of energy that rapidly devoured itself. It was not an ideal solution, and even trying it would put the universe (Simulacra included) in danger of disappearing up its own orifice…