The Less Lonely Planet

by Rhys Hughes

  Despite what the President had said about an immediate invasion, the voyage took many weeks. The troops on board grew bored and surly, but they were allowed to grumble as much as they liked because they were all free. Indeed the purpose of going to war was to give other people the same right to grumble, so nobody could complain about this grumbling. But if someone did complain, that was fine too, it showed they were free, and being free doesn’t mean you have to be happy.

  Finally the ships sighted land. Boats were lowered from the decks and the troops rowed quickly to shore.

  They landed on the beaches and swarmed out to attack the enemy. Soon all the fishing villages on the coast were burning and the cobbled streets were choked with mangled corpses.

  Marching inland, the troops took the capital of the little nation but the tyrant who ruled had already fled. They found him cowering in a hut in the mountains and they cut off his head and stuck it on a pole and danced with the pole to the freest music, free jazz, and everybody was invited to this dance, but they were free to accept or decline as they pleased. Smoke drifted freely across the landscape.

  When half the population was dead and the remaining half wholly free, the troops were visited by President Arbusto and many medals were pinned on many chests and many salutes were exchanged. Delighted by the performance of his troops, the President announced the name of the next country to be invaded. He was feeling generous.

  “But you’ll get a rest first of all,” he said, “because fighting for the freedom of others is even more exhausting than fighting for your own freedom. I’m not unreasonable.”

  In the pause between celebrating victory over this land and invading the next, the President made a list with his generals. Someone would shout the name of a country that desperately needed freedom and it was added to the list. But people kept thinking of new names. They stayed up all night and a hundred cigars were chewed.

  It wasn’t enough to make a list of destinations. There also had to be a certain amount of moral examination. President Arbusto asked himself two questions: (a) Can these wars be won? (b) Will they increase the amount of freedom in the world? The answer was yes both times. Therefore these wars were not just wars but just wars.

  The next country they invaded proved harder to subdue. It lay on the border of the first country, over a range of mountains, and had seen what had happened there, so it was more prepared. But the troops of President Arbusto won anyway and they were so annoyed by the stubborn resistance of the enemy that they decided to educate the survivors and persuade them to fully accept the gift of freedom.

  “From now on,” they roared, “when you say, ‘Hey, I think that freedom is a good idea’ you won’t be beaten by the opponents of freedom, because we came along and made you free.”

  And they made sure this lesson was remembered very well by beating it into them. There were other reprisals too, and the streets ran with blood, but blood is like oil and runs out eventually, and after the rainy season everything was quite clean again.

  The third country to be invaded was an island much closer to home. It was ruled by a dictator who had tricked his people into believing that his beard was magical. By tugging it a certain number of times he could reduce poverty, provide pensions, workers’ rights, equality for women, and other unlikely miracles. In fact his people lived in squalor and drove cars that were more than forty five years old.

  President Arbusto surrounded the island with his gunships and shelled the capital. Each shell had a message written on it, a free message, maybe some free verse poetry or a free offer by one of the telephone companies. When the shrapnel was discovered in the shells of buildings, some of this writing was still legible. But nobody was forced to read it, because they were free at last. Or dead.

  When the country surrendered, President Arbusto called a meeting with his generals to discuss the next name on the list. But such meetings never run entirely as planned, and in fact all that happened was that more names were added to the list. It was much easier to make a new list of countries that didn’t need any freedom.

  “I think we’re the only one,” the President said.

  The years passed heroically. One morning President Jorge Arbusto addressed the crowd below his palace. He seemed tired and worried but there was also enough of the old determination in his eyes to suggest he had a final task to accomplish, something supreme.

  “My friends and followers,” he began, “we seem to have made a mistake and exported too much of our own freedom to other lands. I know I said it couldn’t run out, it was like cows, but now that seems not to be the case. The new conclusion is that freedom is like a muscle. If muscles don’t get proper exercise they waste away.”

  “Yes,” he continued after a pause, “they become atrophied and that’s the same as if they weren’t there in the first place. The problem is that none of you ever exercised any of your freedom. While our troops were away in remote realms, exporting the stuff, you just went along with whatever I said and everything they did. You might have protested, and thus kept your freedom fit, but you didn’t.”

  He shook his head ruefully and sighed deeply.

  “As a result, freedom in our land has withered away almost to nothing and will soon perish. We have now exported freedom to every other country in the world, and they are all free, but because you allowed freedom here to shrivel, I’m forced to add another name to my list of countries in need of freedom. Or rather, to remove a name, the only name, from the list of countries not in need of freedom.”

  “That’s right,” he added with an ironic smile, “our own nation is the last one to stand in the way of global freedom. It is imperative we become free as quickly as possible.”

  The crowd muttered uneasily and President Arbusto waited for several minutes before interrupting them:

  “Don’t worry, it’s not necessary to import that freedom from abroad. I don’t think we need to be invaded by foreign troops. Even though freedom here is almost dead, it is still strong enough for one final act, the act that will restore total freedom. We can invade ourselves! This is cheaper than asking troops from free nations to invade us. Our own troops are due home anyway. When they return we can surrender to them instantly. They may be too astonished to open fire.”

  The crowd settled down at this news.

  “Of course,” the President added, “the tyrant who currently rules our country must be overthrown. This is something I can accomplish right now, to save time. Stand back, please.”

  With a wild yell, he grabbed hold of himself by the collar of his own shirt and dragged himself to the edge of the balcony. But he wasn’t going to give up without a fight and he pushed back. The tussle went on for half an hour. The opponents were evenly matched. It was so confusing, the crowd couldn’t tell who was fighting for freedom and who wasn’t. Some cheered for both. The President bounced against the balustrade, stumbled from one side of the balcony to the other.

  Suddenly, he managed to get his hand on the back of his own head, and with a mighty effort, he flipped himself over the balustrade and into thin air. He plummeted in silence to the hard ground below. The crowd parted to let him through. When they surged forward around his leaking corpse, they saw an extended arm and clenched fist, though whether this was a salute of freedom or defiance, nobody could guess.

  The Impregnable Fortress

  There was a knocking on the door. Rousing himself out of bed, the doctor came down to see what the bother was. A man stood in the rain, his cloak wrapped tight, his hood up. It was the overseer of the largest and most important fortress in the region. The doctor blinked. Looming out of the darkness, the overseer said:

  “There’s an emergency. Please come with me.”

  “An illness of some kind?” the doctor enquired, as he pulled on his boots and looked for his umbrella.

  “Not exactly. You might call it an accident.”

  The doctor followed the overseer out into the night. A sedan chair stood on the road. One of the waiting
runners helped them climb inside. There was plenty of room within and the doctor and overseer sat opposite each other. The doctor remarked:

  “I thought sedan chairs only carried one.”

  “This is an extra big model,” the overseer answered. “The fortress is too distant for one pair of runners to reach without a rest, so when they are exhausted, they will exchange places with us. And when we are exhausted, it’ll be our turn again to be carried. And so on. This is not only fair but very efficient.”

  The doctor huffed. He hated running at the best of times, let alone while carrying a heavy object.

  “What can I expect when we arrive?” he asked.

  “I prefer not to give details now. The entire fortress is affected. You’ll see it all for yourself.”

  The doctor frowned. He ruled out an outbreak of plague, because the overseer had denied there was any illness involved. Had an inner wall or tower collapsed, crushing people? This was unlikely. The edifice was too solidly constructed. It was the only impregnable fortress in the realm. Structural damage was unthinkable.

  “Are lives at risk?” the doctor pressed.

  “In a manner of speaking.” The overseer refused to say more on the subject. He turned and gazed out of the window and nodded to himself at each bend in the rutted road.

  The doctor looked out of the same window. The rain had stopped and the moon was breaking through the clouds. The summit of every hill they passed was crowned with a castle, for this was a land of castles, and the grey stones gleamed like giant teeth. One castle even seemed to be grinning, an odd optical illusion.

  “Are there any hills without castles?” he wondered.

  The overseer turned sharply. “At least a dozen to the north. There is still adequate space for new defensive buildings.” His tone was so strident that the doctor suspected he had touched a raw nerve. But how? It was a harmless enough question.

  “Well that’s good to know,” the doctor said.

  The road curved into a forest. There were castles here too, half hidden by stunted trees, many of them in ruins, charred from old fires or smashed to fragments by siege engines. Some were occupied by bandits, highwaymen, strolling minstrels and other low types, who carried out no maintenance on their new homes.

  At one point the road actually ran through the middle of a castle completely broken by a forgotten war. Even the few standing walls gaped with holes where invaders had forced entry long ago. The doctor found nothing astonishing in such destruction, for there truly was only one impregnable fortress in existence.

  The sedan chair stopped and the overseer grunted. “Time for us to get out and carry the runners.”

  The clouds had vanished but the road was muddy and treacherous with slimy puddles. The doctor cursed as he shouldered his burden. He heard the runners inside joking with each other and he felt the shifting of their weight as they experimented with finding a comfortable position. He almost slipped several times.

  They emerged from the forest and passed through a valley, climbing into the hills beyond. The road snaked through the peaks and a cold wind chilled the sweat on the doctor’s brow. He was just about to give up and run the risk of refusing to run further, when the overseer abruptly gave the order for another exchange.

  He climbed gratefully back into the sedan.

  There were another two exchanges before they finally approached the impregnable fortress. The doctor had only seen it once before, during the coronation of the present king, nearly forty years ago. The edifice looked different from his childhood memory. The huge walls were weirdly distorted and bulged outwards.

  The overseer hissed, “Very few people know about this. I trust you have enough sense to keep silent once the situation has been fixed? The price of gossip will be dreadful.”

  The doctor nodded and confirmed his loyalty.

  The sedan chair crossed the drawbridge. The overseer dismounted and indicated for the doctor to follow close behind. They passed through a variety of entrances, each armed with a trap, each requiring a password, and the process was so convoluted it was more than an hour before they finally gained the main buildings.

  The doctor endured another hour of cheating the defences, passing through mazes and dodging snares before they emerged into a small room in the central tower. Impregnable indeed! There was more to come. The overseer guided him down a lightless spiral staircase that seemed to be endless. Slippery steps underfoot.

  At last there was some light, the splutter of a brazier from below, and the staircase disgorged them into a corridor. They followed this for another hour. Always the way was down.

  “The bowels of the fortress,” said the overseer. He paused before a tiny door. “We go through here.”

  “Where does it lead?” asked the doctor.

  “It’s a shortcut to the womb of the fortress, which is where you’ll do your work,” smiled the overseer.

  It suddenly dawned on the doctor what was expected of him. “I don’t have the right tools,” he gasped.

  “Don’t worry. We have prepared everything. There is a block and tackle, wedges and chains, heavy lifting equipment of many sizes and shapes. And plenty of manpower.”

  “The fortress itself is sick!”

  The overseer licked his lips. “I already told you it’s more in the nature of an accident. We know what to do, but we need you just in case things don’t proceed smoothly.” Opening the door with a key, he gestured impatiently. “We’re wasting time.”

  The doctor wriggled through the door and inched himself along a service duct until he emerged in a spherical chamber. He saw seven new castles, too well made to be models, pressed against the perimeter of the chamber and pushing the walls outwards, but there was space to pass between them because they were separated by miniature moats. Through the shallow waters waded many workmen.

  “How did this happen?” cried the doctor.

  The overseer blushed. “One night I heard a noise, a sort of inhuman grunting and sighing and moaning, and I jumped out of bed and peered through the window. I thought we were under siege, and so we were, but not in the usual way. Another castle had mounted the fortress and was performing carnal motions!”

  “What a brute,” responded the doctor.

  “I can’t honestly declare the castle forced itself on us. I suspect it was invited. Shameless!”

  “But it left immediately after the deed?”

  “Naturally. There was nothing distinctive about it and once it fled into the night there wasn’t much we could do. We tried tracking it but a snowstorm covered the trail.”

  “And that was nine months ago?”

  The overseer shook his head. “Five years.”

  The doctor nodded. The gestation period for castles was bound to be rather longer than for humans.

  “How long has the fortress been in labour?”

  “Nearly a week. It’s driving us mad. The unborn castles are making no effort to leave the womb.”

  “Do you want me to help induce birth?”

  “The workmen will do that. But if a turret snags on the side of the birth canal, we’ll need your advice.”

  The doctor understood what this really meant. He had been brought here only as a consultant. In other words, a scapegoat, someone to blame and execute if anything went wrong.

  He watched helplessly as the workmen looped lengths of chain around the castles and fixed these to pulleys. Ropes led off down an extremely narrow passage descending from the chamber. Somebody shouted something and unseen hands tugged on the ropes at the far end. The castles started sliding towards the passage.

  Workmen stepped forward and applied their shoulders, heaving with all their strength. The sound was abominable. Wooden rollers would have helped but it was impossible to get them under the castles. The first castle reached the start of the passage and squeezed into it, pushing the walls back on both sides.

  The mother fortress shuddered and rocked on its foundations. As the last of the seven castles was dragged and
pushed into the passage, the doctor walked behind it, to check on its progress. Everything was fine so far. He felt the presence of the overseer next to him. The walls of the passage had gone slack.

  They emerged into daylight, at the base of the hill on which stood the fortress, in the thick of the forest. Carts were waiting to receive the castles as they were born. One at a time these carts were driven off, sagging under the weight.

  The doctor turned to the overseer. “What will you do with them now? Abandon them in the woods?”

  The overseer exploded in fury. “What do you take us for? This isn’t a fairytale!” Then he took a deep breath and calmed down. “No, there are seven hills far to the north with bare summits. We’ll set them up there, to guard our northern borders.”

  “When they grow up they may resemble their father. It will then be possible to assign responsibility.”

  The overseer rubbed his tired face. “Maybe.”

  “Trust me. It’s called genetics.”

  The overseer gazed up at the edifice behind them. “The important thing is that this affair remains secret. The security of our land is founded on the myth of the impregnable fortress. If word leaks out, it could mean the end of our culture.”

  Grimacing, he added, “None of us ever knew. I never even guessed. It’s not impregnable at all!”

  The doctor asked, “May I go now?”

  The overseer nodded. “I’ll escort you back to the sedan chair. New runners will carry you home.”

  The doctor bowed gratefully. Much later, as dawn bleached away the shadows, he roused himself from an unsatisfactory slumber and craned his neck out of the window of the moving sedan. He was looking for one hill and one castle in particular. A grin by itself wasn’t real proof, of course. Only time would tell.

  The Bathing Bells

  “I’m going to take you to see the bathing bells.”