Twisthorn Bellow

by Rhys Hughes

  That should have been the end of it, but I was still infected with the madness Marvin Carnacki had induced in my soul. I flung myself at Twisthorn again and again. He tried to brush me off lightly but I just wouldn’t back off. So he was forced to get rough.

  “Sorry, Breath,” he said, and the regret in his voice was genuine.

  Witnesses to the incident later told me that the whole thing lasted thirty seconds. I believe it. But in that short period a mangling occurred that I surely will never forget. Having said that, I don’t recall the actual beating. The bruises are my mementoes. And the scars. Very rapidly I faded in and out of consciousness, like a flickering lightbulb, then I distinctly remember hearing a shouted warning that the doorway was starting to vanish. Maybe my life was saved by that yell. Twisthorn punched me one last time, then he turned his attention to his mission.

  As he passed through the door, he began to shimmer. Just before he was entirely gone, he glanced over his shoulder at Marvin Carnacki and jerked a thumb. “I’ll be back for you.”

  Despite my condition I managed to laugh.

  But Marvin only sneered. “How will you do that? Nekrotzar is located in outer space. If you succeed in diverting it from its present course you’ll never see planet Earth again!”

  It was a fair point, well made. Yes.

  * * * * *

  And that’s how I ended up in a hospital bed. The surgeons worked hard to repair the damage. When I came to my senses I felt different, lighter but in a way I couldn’t immediately identify. I realised I was in one of the Agency’s secret sick-bays. The nurses were friendly but didn’t engage too intimately in conversation. I asked for a newspaper. Many weeks had passed since the assault. A single paragraph on one of the back pages of one of the crankier tabloids reported that the actor Breath O’Dicks had been injured by falling scenery on the set of his latest film, Suckula Meets Fuckenstein. I smiled to see my name in print, then I frowned at the blatant lie. The Agency bastards can pull any strings they want to.

  I found myself growing obsessed about the progress of Twisthorn’s weird mission on an alien world. Nobody could give me any information. As for Marvin Carnacki, I didn’t even ask about him, partly because I didn’t care, partly because the merest thought gave me painful cramps inside. I know that sounds very mixed up, but I was very mixed up right then. Be grateful for small mercies, is what I say. As I recovered I tried simple exercises with my ectoplasm gland, attempting to shoot forth tendrils of gloop to tickle those nurses in the same places they tickle themselves in the privacy of their bedrooms, but nothing worked. My injuries were still serious, or so it seemed. Frustrating.

  * * * * *

  So I have to relate the story of Twisthorn’s exploits on Nekrotzar at second hand, the same way I received it from the big grey dude in question. Might as well get down to that task now. My pillow is comfortable enough. After he stepped through the doorway, our spiral horned hero emerged through an almost identical portal on the other side that vanished behind him like a broken cobweb. He was in a vast hall, the lobby of the palace, and the sight of his surroundings was impressive even to him, and he’s seen a lot of odd sights in his career, believe me.

  You don’t have to take my word for that, or for anything else, of course, but your doubts aren’t important to me. Anyway, Twisthorn gazed at the horizons, then craned his head to look up at the distant ceiling. Storm-clouds were gathering in one corner of the room, bumping back and forth between the place where the ceiling met a wall and a row of columns rising from the floor. When King Sciron had given his order to start work on the palace, he forgot the inconveniences of geography. The landscapes of his home planet became enclosed in the edifice.

  Mountain ranges, river valleys, deserts, steppes, icecaps, glaciers, even entire oceans, these don’t just disappear simply because you roof them over and enclose them between gigantic walls in absurdly immense rooms. The forests die, this is true, because of the lack of sunlight, but Nekrotzar’s sun had gone out millennia before anyway. The only vegetation Twisthorn found on his visit was various kinds of fungus, some toadstools as big as redwood trees, puffballs like the severed heads of bloated corpses, bog algæ like the pubic bushes of nympho banshees. And all illumination was provided by the perpetual electric storms . . .

  Why didn’t he arrive directly in the throne room? Why did he now have to travel all the way from the lobby to the centre of the palace? Who knows for sure? The rulers of Nekrotzar had been devoted to games of mischief, it was in their nature to be capriciously sadistic. Twisthorn began walking over a mouldy carpet as big as a savannah. He was aware of many pairs of eyes watching him from the shadows, some from above, but sensations like that were part of a day’s work for him. Something flapped high above. A lump of pterodactyl crap hit his shoulder.

  “So that’s how it’s going to be?” he muttered.

  He glowered up at the gliding reptiles but they were out of range. He didn’t even bother to count them. But one of the pterodactyls glided off and landed on the highest step of a colossal metal stepladder. Here it kept a fire burning and a saucepan full of simmering milk. A jar of Ovaltine stood nearby. Another working day was over and now it wanted to relax with a nightcap. A pterodactyl’s working day is a seemingly endless round of soaring, swooping and croaking.

  Twisthorn couldn’t have cared less . . .

  He crested a rise, a warp in the carpet, and stood gazing down at a small inland sea. Mists obscured most of its expanse, but at the wide mouth of a lazy river was a wooden jetty with a golden boat moored to it. A man stood on the jetty and something made him look in Twisthorn’s direction. Fingering his sword-stick, Twisthorn ambled down the incline to meet the man. They stood a few yards apart, squinting at each other, then both slowly nodded, as if reassured.

  “I know you,” said Twisthorn.

  “Yeah?” came the reply. “Well I ain’t Rabbi Loew.”

  Twisthorn moved closer. “You’re Philip José Farmer, the writer. What are you doing on an alien world?”

  The boatman shrugged. “For some reason I’ve been resurrected here. No explanation was ever offered by anyone. I thought at first that maybe every other human who had ever died would join me somewhere along the length of this mighty river, but it didn’t turn out like that. I’m alone. Perhaps I was deliberately chosen for this fate.”

  “To become a new Charon, an infernal ferryman?”

  “Nah, I just rent out the boats. Been waiting for my first customer since my rebirth. You’re the one.”

  “Honoured,” said Twisthorn, “but I don’t have time to work out this new mystery. I reckon it might not even be connected to my main quest, it could be just a fluke. I don’t care because you have what I need, namely a boat. I have to ask the price first, I guess.”

  “Look buddy, I like you, don’t know why. You ain’t Stanisław Lem, for one thing. I wouldn’t give him the time of day. You can have the barge for free. Money’s no use to me, but do me a favour, will ya? If you see Tom Mix upriver, say hello from me.”

  Twisthorn shrugged. “Easy enough. I will.”

  Philip José Farmer blinked, then came to a decision. “Wait a moment! Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but there’s a quality oddly endearing about you and I want to help properly.”

  “Thanks for the observation. I’m listening.”

  “This river is exactly one million miles long and terminates in the throne room. If you use the boat to paddle there it’ll take at least a century. But there’s a short-cut. The river loops like a mutated intestine, the coiled gut of a pope’s overused catamite, only it don’t stink quite as bad. If you’re strong enough, drag the boat overland to the next room and rejoin the river there. That way you’ll bypass a fair stretch of the waterway, because first it flows into the lower levels and then around and up through most of the turrets before returning to this level.”

  “Thanks. You’re one of the good guys.”

  “Smile when you call me that, stranger,” sa
id Philip José Farmer.

  “How much of the river will I bypass?”

  The answer came with a grin. “Ninety nine percent.”

  “That’s a big relief. And I’m a big golem, so I need relief that’s big. I enjoyed Image of the Beast and its sequel Blown, by the way. Finished reading them both last week.”

  “Thanks. Written purely for money, but they have a delirious intensity that I’m still rather proud of.”

  “Shall I tell you my favourite thing in them? The snake that dwells in the whoopsy. It’s very funny.”

  “Funny strange or funny ha ha?”

  Twisthorn crinkled his brow. “Both I guess.”

  “Yeah. See you around!”

  There wasn’t a need for further conversation or decision-making. Twisthorn grabbed hold of the mooring rope and dragged the boat up the riverbank. Then off he set across the carpet in the indicated direction. Seeing him preoccupied with his burden, the pterodactyls took their opportunity to swoop and sink their talons into his shoulders. They tried to carry him off to their cliff top nests. Bad mistake. Soon the ground was littered with broken long heads and the flapping remnants of torn wings.

  Twisthorn entered the adjacent room by passing through a wet curtain, the spume of a waterfall that cascaded from a high shelf directly over the door. A curiously formed rainbow undulated away into pale brown light. Desert sands whipped abrasive particles against his bare legs and arms. He ignored them and also ignored the biting insects that regarded him as a potential supper. Twisthorn is a tough customer, the sort of golem who shakes cocktails by standing on the epicenter of an earthquake. Talking about those, there were none, nor any volcanoes, for Nekrotzar was a geologically dead world.

  Small mercies again. Twisthorn spied the river in the distance. He plunged into a petrified forest, snapping stone trunks left and right. Then he was set on by a group of telepathic winking tyrannosaurs. Swinging the boat on the end of its rope he knocked those down like Cretaceous skittles. Their winking days were over. Damage to the hull was thankfully minimal. He pushed the golden barge out into midstream and jumped aboard, determined to enjoy the ride. But others in the equation had different ideas about that. And here was one of the most bizarre aspects of the entire adventure. What the hell were Nazis doing on Nekrotzar?

  They ambushed him in the next room, which was a sort of lounge filled with giant sofas and occasional tables. They sniped at him from behind the cover of weirdly shaped rocks, from both banks of the narrowing river. He cursed, lifted his kpinga and ricocheted all those bullets back and made every slug count. But two of his blades were cut off in the process. Now his weapon only had nine blades. As for the Nazis they were old men, clearly marooned here for many decades, but how and why? I don’t think Twisthorn killed every one, at least he doesn’t reckon he did, just most of them. Good enough.

  First Nazis, then a more traditional Fascist. The river widened again and revealed a midstream island, more of a sandbank. The water was shallow here and the barge grounded to a halt. An Italian even older than the Nazis suddenly ran out of a hut, dancing and gesticulating. He pulled a tarpaulin off a metal object, then a boiler was fired up, coal shovelled and valves adjusted, and now Twisthorn found himself facing a steam-powered robot that was a representation of the dictator Mussolini. The Italian danced more furiously and shouted:

  “Muscle Leany! He’ll smash ya!”

  Maybe Twisthorn shook his head ruefully at this, maybe not, as the rusty contraption jerkingly strode towards his stranded boat. One simple slap of his clay hand and Muscle Leany was nothing more than scattered cogs and puffs of liberated vapour. The Italian wept, tore at his frayed uniform with uncut fingernails and screeched:

  “Whatta mistake to make!”

  It’s never wise to send robots against Twisthorn but crazy inventors can’t seem to learn that simple fact.

  Plenty of things happened to him after this, mostly bad things, but each time he won through. One percent of a million miles is still a hell of a long way. The rooms he passed into all contained their own dangers. Snakes the size of oil pipelines, lady golems fabricated from riverbank mud that tried to lead him astray, armies of evil spiders with tiny human faces, muttering warlocks sitting inside caves who cast bolts of spluttering green fire. And Twisthorn lost all sense of direction. He just took what came to him and responded appropriately. After a while he even stopped wondering why.

  Marvin Carnacki hadn’t lied. The palace was a maze, a labyrinth worse than the famous one Theseus found his way through. But Theseus used an unwinding cord to retrace his steps and Twisthorn only had the river to follow. Inside Twisthorn was a growing conviction that he wouldn’t be stuck on Nekrotzar forever but he didn’t want to appear too confident. Tempting fate and all that. He just kept working the oars and only broke his rhythm to deal with hostile assaults. He thinks it was the T’ao T’ieh that really made him cynical about the threats.

  The T’ao T’ieh, he later explained, is an inverse variation of Cerberus, the guardian hound of Hell. Whereas Cerberus has one body and three heads, the T’ao T’ieh has only one head but two bodies. Anyway, at a bend in the river, just before it plunged into a chasm between two looming easy chairs, the dog in question jumped into the water from the shore and started swimming towards the boat. Twisthorn lifted one oar and used it as a club to pulverise the hound’s skull. A single stroke was enough. No contest. The corpse spiralled to the bottom.

  Then he entered a space longer and narrower than any encountered so far, more of a corridor than a room, and he guessed it was the approach passage to the throne room. He squinted in the dim light and made out the flight of steps that led up to the plush chair of a king. It was unoccupied at the moment but on the bottom step stood something that could only be one of the authentic inhabitants of Nekrotzar. Then Twisthorn knew that the other things he’d fought weren’t original to this world. The realisation gave him some relief. It confirmed a guess.

  The source of the river was a broken fountain halfway along the corridor but Twisthorn didn’t wait to reach it. He jumped out of the boat and sauntered towards the shape that blocked his progress up the steps. It was a giant foot, equipped with eyes and nose and mouth, and its ochre toenails were harder and sharper than obsidian chips. On the stump of the severed ankle that was its head it wore a tarnished crown.

  “King Sciron, I presume?” asked Twisthorn.

  “Yes and no. The original Sciron perished centuries ago, but not before he had cloned himself many times. Each of those clones experimented with further clones, improving the basic model until the optimum example was achieved. That’s me, in case you’re wondering. I’m the ultimate step in the evolution of the rulers of Nekrotzar!”

  Twisthorn winced, more at the pun than the threat. “I know someone back at the Agency who I bet you’d like to meet. Just your type. Actually she’s in Glastonbury at the moment, killing hippies. Are you going to let me pass? I have a job to do.”

  “Nope. I intend to stomp you into oblivion.”

  “I knew something like this would happen. Let’s finish it. You’re going home in a sock, a body sock…”

  “Darned if that happens.” And while Twisthorn was busy groaning again the foot took the opportunity to spring into the air and land on the top of his head. Twisthorn didn’t move so much as an inch. So the foot started jumping up and down in frustration.

  “Lie down, will ya?” it screeched hysterically.

  Twisthorn inclined his head to the side and the foot slid off. Then Twisthorn stood on the little toe until a cry of surrender was forthcoming. Perception clouded by pain, the foot was scarcely aware of being loaded on the barge and sent drifting off downstream.

  “Are you wondering why I don’t kill you?” asked Twisthorn.

  “To a certain extent, yes,” croaked Sciron.

  “Because you’re not French. That’s the main reason. Also I met my literary hero earlier and it put me in a good mood.”

  “Where are y
ou sending me?” wailed the foot.

  “To him. To Philip José Farmer…”

  “But I’ve never read any of his books! How far is it?”

  “One million miles,” called Twisthorn, “and if you make it all the way in one piece you deserve this mercy.”

  “Help! I don’t know how to swim! What if I fall out?”

  “If’s a small word,” said Twisthorn.

  He waved farewell but didn’t pause to hear what the reply was. Sciron was definitely down at heel, he decided.

  * * * * *

  Twisthorn bounded up the steps into the throne room. Next to the ornate chair was the rudder that controlled the direction of the palace through space. He gripped it in his left hand, then gazed at a pair of screens below that indicated velocity and direction. Twisthorn smiled, then released his hold on the rudder. A lesser hero might have sat on the throne at this point but he stood where he was and waited.

  An hour later the voices came to him from the rear of the throne room. Hapi and Abortia stepped from the shadows.

  “Shylock Cherlomsky was right all along,” Twisthorn said.

  “He knew his stuff, for sure.”

  Twisthorn grinned. “When I was younger he told me all about Nekrotzar and he stressed that it really was a very old planet. He also mentioned that it was a lot smaller than Earth. The collision between the two worlds has already happened, billions of years ago, but the Earth was just a cloud of stardust then and congealed around Nekrotzar, trapping the palace deep under what is now Iceland.”

  “Shame the Carnacki freaks didn’t know any of that when they tried to divert its course,” said Hapi.

  “Yeah, could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. Their ritual made Nekrotzar shift not even one foot. It was already where they wanted it to be. That’s what I call irony.”