by Rhys Hughes
“Jules Verne was right all along as well,” said Abortia.
Twisthorn laughed. “Giant mushroom forests always interest me. Let’s collect samples on the way back.”
* * * * *
In the meantime Dancin’ Daze was trying to hitchhike back to London from Glastonbury, her toes encrusted with blood. She had done good Agency work during gigs by the bands Franz Ferdinand, Coldplay and The Flaming Lips, and had even managed to kill the lead singer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs with a flying karate kick from the front row onto the stage. Then roadies had ejected her back into the crowd and some idiot stabbed her with a burning cigarette.
But other gigs and other deaths soon followed. A great many. To her surprise, Radiohead turned out to be a group debatably made up of human beings and wasn’t a solo robot with an aerial on its head and a variable capacitor for a nose. That demoralized her a little. Now she stood on the verge of a road. A camper van approached, slowed down, stopped. The driver leaned out of the window, called for her to jump in the passenger seat. She did so and they drove off.
“Fancy a puff on this joint, babe? Oh I see you don’t have a mouth. No worries, that’s groovy. Just come from Glastonbury, eh? I haven’t been for ages. I heard there was a lot of mud this year. And the food and beer was overpriced as usual. And there were bloody massacres. And some of the bands had poor sound quality.”
Dancin’ said nothing. She sat quietly, demurely.
“Used to play drums myself, decades ago,” continued the driver, “but then I got disillusioned with the music business. The record companies only seem to want to sign up human musicians and I’m a monster. Name’s Ruby dubDub. What’s yours?”
Dancin’ kept her non-existent lips sealed.
“I’m thinking of forming my own record label with a clockwork man I met in the pub last week,” said Ruby, “who calls himself Wilson. He has been adjusted and now has an aerial on his head. And a variable capacitor for a nose. Don’t you love it when clockwork men do that? Turn on, tune in, conk out! Why not join our scheme? The music industry’s a tightrope and you’re perfect for crossing it…”
* * * * *
Twisthorn came to see me in the sickbay immediately after his return to the Agency. Hapi and Abortia had mapped the tunnels from the surface down to the palace and they emerged from the crater of Mount Snæfell with sooty faces a few days later. They showered in Reykjavík and then boarded a special Agency jet for the supersonic flight to London. I was delighted to see Twisthorn and grateful for the time he spent with me in the following weeks.
He answered all my questions with candour.
“It’s a well known fact the Nazis kept searching for the entrance to the Hollow Earth,” he told me. “On three occasions Himmler gave orders for battalions to penetrate the interiors of extinct volcanoes. No news was ever sent back and it was assumed the soldiers had died. From what happened to me it’s clear one battalion arrived safely but couldn’t find its way back out. It seems the Italians got there too. Mount Snæfell was one way in, Mount Etna another.”
“And when you saw them, it gave you reassurance?”
He nodded. “That’s when I became confident I wasn’t in outer space. I had to proceed all the way to the throne room just to be absolutely certain. Also I wanted to get back to the surface and I’d arranged to meet Abortia and Hapi by the throne. So I kept going.”
“How did you defeat the giant foot so easily?” I asked.
“Because he was actually very feeble. The legend of Theseus and Sciron gave me an initial clue. Theseus was just a man, Sciron was a giant, but the battle was won too easily. Theseus had no trouble whatever kicking Sciron off his own cliff. So then I knew.”
“Yeah, but knew what?” I protested.
“That the inhabitants of Nekrotzar were giants only because Nekrotzar was a smaller planet with weaker gravity, enabling them to grow bigger. Sciron was a giant like the other members of his race but because he had evolved in a low gravity environment he wasn’t physically powerful on Earth. His enormous size was just for show. His strength was relative to the conditions of Nekrotzar. Here he was just a gigantic weakling…”
“And this also applied to his clones?” I asked.
“Exactly,” agreed Twisthorn. “The Sciron faced by Theseus was one of the more normal looking copies that somehow found an escape out of the palace and up to the Earth’s surface.”
“I have an idea,” I said, “to help navigate the labyrinth of the palace if you decide to return there.”
“Go ahead and tell me,” he responded.
“Take my ectoplasm gland. I don’t want it. You can use it to generate a cord long enough to stretch through all the caverns on the way down and through all the rooms when you arrive.”
He rubbed his shiny chin. “The surgeons already took it out. It wasn’t my idea. But that’s the way it is.”
“I don’t care,” I responded.
“You are one of the good guys,” said Twisthorn.
His surprise was genuine but mild. It’s hard to rattle that big grey golem. Yes indeed. He helped me up and let me use him as a crutch as I lurched down the corridor. It was nice just to walk again. I didn’t think we had a definite destination, but then I realised we were heading towards the canteen. My nose twitched. The odour of frying mushrooms permeated the corridors. I wasn’t sure if the smell was utterly tempting or totally foul. A minor paradox.
“We have a new cook,” explained Twisthorn.
“You’re training him to prepare really strange meals?”
“He has a vested interest in the paranormal. He’ll also have a hell of a lot of washing up to do.”
I didn’t need to visit the kitchens to know that Marvin Carnacki was in there, sleeves rolled up, sweating like a pigdog, chopping fungi the size of trees into pieces small enough for an enormous pot.
“Risotto today. For every staff member,” said Twisthorn. “Tomorrow it’s pizza. Someday people will relate legends about the man who cooked more meals than humanly possible.”
“Talking about legends, Theseus was always getting into trouble. Just like you. Is there some connection?”
“Nah,” protested Twisthorn with a chuckle. “He got into trouble because every Theseus creates an Anti-Theseus. I get into trouble because it’s my style. Different situations.”
I couldn’t argue with that. We shared a table in the canteen. And I was happy afterwards, because my breath smelled a whole lot fresher. But I’d describe the meal as chthonic if anyone ever asked me.
I hope they never do.
THE EARLOBES OF ÆSOP
Twisthorn was trying to pick a regular day of the week when all Agency workers would be free to attend a compulsory lecture. After the success of Marvin Carnacki’s little talk about the planet Nekrotzar, the golem had decided that more lessons were needed from a variety of academics, and he had the funds to lure the best.
“For instance,” he said to Hapi, as he consulted the calendar pinned to the wall above his desk, “we could ask Glushko to visit next Friday to tell us about reliable rocket engines.”
“But he died in 1989,” Hapi pointed out glumly.
“Pedant! That was just an example. There are hundreds of professors active on the lecture circuit in a host of disciplines. I’ve drawn up a viable list on this napkin. Let’s see. Why don’t I invite Norman Mailer to give us a lecture on Feminism? What, he’s expired too! Didn’t they freeze him in liquid helium? How gauche!”
“Pick another name, boss,” said Hapi.
“Okay. What do you say to Richard Dawkins for a talk on Evolution? Don’t tell me he’s dead as well!”
“No, but he changed into something else.”
“Did he? What exactly?”
“A two-dimensional being that hisses, spits and crackles when there’s interference in the ionosphere…”
“Dolt! You mean a television celebrity!”
“That’s right,” said Hapi.
At this point the e
ctoplasm guy, Breath O’Dicks, spoke up. His spooky gloop-secreting gland had lately been surgically reinserted. “Let’s ask Luc Besson to lecture on Cinema.”
Twisthorn turned his head and puffed his cheeks to enormous size and exhaled the air over his lips until they vibrated like sewage pipes during a seaquake. The resultant noise was horrible: a diabolical raspberry that no whipping would turn into a fool.
“Be serious, Breath. The personage you’ve referred to is French. If we invite Besson we might as well close the Agency, dress like existentialists and munch garlic all day!”
Breath shrugged. “Would keep vampires off.”
“But that’s just it, we want to entice vampires, to get them within reach of our hands—so we can wring their necks! Haven’t you learned anything during your sojourn with us?”
Breath flushed. “I’m trying really hard.”
“Maybe you should stick to doing the only thing you know—extruding throbsters up chickadees!”
There was an awkward pause. Then Hapi said, “Why not ask Carnacki himself for suggestions?”
“Good idea!” agreed Twisthorn. “Fetch him.”
Hapi went off and returned a few minutes later holding a chain on the end of which Marvin Carnacki was secured by an iron collar. The former head of his own Institute was slick with kitchen grease, black with oven soot and he smelled like rotten risotto. His only garment was an apron on which hung chunks of gigantic mushroom from the interior of the Hollow Earth. His hands were blistered.
Twisthorn put the question to him. Marvin screwed up his face, licked lips scalded by boiling soups and wheezed a reply through a throat ruined by mustard and onion fumes. “A talk on Creative Writing should be easy to organise. There’s a tutor called Mr Gum who would jump at the chance and his rates are competitive.”
Hapi and Breath nodded with great enthusiasm.
But Twisthorn was displeased.
“No, no! If anyone comes to talk about literature it must be Philip José Farmer and nobody else!”
“But he’s trapped on Nekrotzar, isn’t he?”
Twisthorn sighed. “Very well. Arrange for this Mr Gum—whoever the hell he is—to come here.”
“When, boss?” smirked Hapi.
Twisthorn slapped his forehead with an open palm. “That’s what I’m attempting to work out! Why do you think I’m sitting under my calendar? Do you suppose it’s for the benefit of a chronic ailment? I often think I’m the only sane entity in this organisation! Whenever Mr Gum comes, it’ll have to be before we leave.”
“Leave for where?” blinked Hapi.
“The USA, of course!”
“I didn’t know we were going there…”
“Neither did I, until just now,” admitted the golem, “but I want to tear Upside Downey Jr into tiny cubes of raw flesh for having the temerity to oppose me more than once.”
“He won’t be easy to defeat,” warned Hapi. “Nobody who opposes him returns home in good health.”
“I heard that rumour,” commented Breath.
“Return Mr Carnacki to the kitchen,” ordered Twisthorn, “and tell him to prepare fried beans and peppers on a bed of quinoa for our dinner. This time there should be an equal number of red, yellow and green peppers. I won’t tolerate an imbalance.”
Hapi scuttled off, Marvin shuffling after him.
The golem stroked his glazed chin and frowned at the calendar. “And where the hell is Dancin’ Daze? The Glastonbury Music Festival finished more than two months ago!”
“I heard that rumour as well,” said Breath.
* * * * *
The mail-room continued to be the location of most assassination attempts against Agency workers. Twisthorn had compiled statistical evidence to prove this was the case, but his figures didn’t explain why the mail-room was so much more perilous than any other room in any other building on the complex. It was a frustrating mystery no closer to solution than it had ever been. Maybe there was no secret. Perhaps the whole thing was just a monumental set of coincidences.
All the same… He couldn’t give up yet…
But how his skull hurt!
The golem had racked his clay brains so hard over the problem that he was now forced to relieve his headache by taking his mind off the enigma and doing something unconnected with deduction. Opening parcels was a good way to achieve this. The mindless process of collecting the mail was a bland tonic for his troubled soul.
Abandoning his statistical calculations, he left his office and made his deliberate way down long corridors to the mail-room. Potted mandrakes whimpered when he entered.
He was just in time to greet the postman arriving on his bicycle. A true eccentric, this fellow, with his stripy shirt and his beret and a big Thermos flask filled with absinthe.
“Anything for me?” called Twisthorn.
“Oui! Here’s a large box addressed to Mr Bellow from a place called Moonville. The sender has written his own name on the bottom in case it gets delivered to the wrong address, but that never happens with me. I’m too careful for such mistakes!”
Twisthorn accepted the parcel.
“What’s the sender’s name? Frabjal Troose? Doesn’t ring any bells, I’m afraid, and I wouldn’t enjoy them even if it did. I hate bells. I’m not really afraid, by the way, that was just a figure of speech. Here’s fifty pounds for a tip. Take care on the roads.”
“Worry not, I’m a proficient cyclist.”
“I believe that. I believe everything you ever tell me.”
“Oui, I’m very plausible.”
“All these years and I never asked your name,” said Twisthorn.
“Dnarrettim,” came the reply.
The golem frowned. “Dnarrettim? What a curious name! Is it Cornish? How does one pronounce it?”
“Like Mitterrand—but backwards.”
The golem slapped his thigh. “Always having a laugh at the expense of the French! What a wag!”
“Quelle sorte de musique aimes-tu? Es-tu marié?”
“Ha ha! Tee hee!”
The postman blinked. “Anyway, I must be going. I have several other booby traps—I mean parcels!—to deliver to other addresses in London, including Buckingham Palace.”
“Give my regards to the Queen if you see her!”
The postman cycled off.
* * * * *
Twisthorn shook the parcel. It rattled. He gave it to the mechanical sniffer and then scanned it with X-rays. There was a robot inside. Another robot! The golem was sick of smashing robots. He considered them to be highly unimaginative. Fighting against programmed opponents rarely filled him with the feeling he was testing his strength against hundreds of centuries of secret evolution, as battling yetis or trolls did. Robots could only trace their lineage back to the 1920s, when a Czech inventor first created them. Hardly a worthwhile heritage!
The name of that utter madman was Karel Čapek and his robots were originally androids—with plastic skin instead of metal hide—who poured out of his factory and helped to impose communism on the city of Prague, or maybe to hinder it, Twisthorn couldn’t recall which. In his spare time Čapek was also an author. The golem had grudgingly high regard for The War With the Newts, a novel about slavery, coral reefs and the overthrow of humanity. One of his favourite quotes came from another Čapek book, a collection of travel essays:
“One never knows whether people have principles on principle or for their personal gratification…”
But Twisthorn knew exactly why he had his principles. It was to keep his sword-stick slick with the blood of enemies. That simple. He was glad he wasn’t human and so didn’t require complicated emotions or believable characterization. Strange that Prague was the birthplace of not just robots but also of golems! In some of his shorter stories Čapek had managed to conjure visions not vastly dissimilar to those of Philip José Farmer. Both were fabulists in an ironic sense, reversing the simplistic moral messages to be found in standard fables.
They weren’t like th
at annoying æsop fellow!
Not like him. Not at all.
* * * * *
Unable to postpone the inevitable any longer, Twisthorn ripped open the parcel and waited for the robot to jump out and assault him. At the same instant, Abortia Stake entered the mail-room. She made an easy target, but the robot in the box seemed in no rush. It climbed out slowly, flexed its limbs and looked around the room. Then it clanked off into the adjacent laboratory and began rummaging through electrical equipment. Twisthorn and Abortia exchanged glances.
“Maybe I should keep that door locked,” said the golem.
“Too late now,” observed Abortia.
They both went into the laboratory to see what the robot was doing. It was busy inventing something.
“What are you playing at? What’s your name?”
The robot answered without pausing, “I am Does-My-Head-In and I was built by Frabjal Troose to give you a run for your money, but I was advised that your money is considerable, so the run must be interminable also. For symmetry’s sake.”
“Who is Frabjal Troose?” cried Twisthorn.
“The dictator of Moonville,” said Does-My-Head-In, “which is a city existing neither on Earth nor in Happenstance but on the margins of both. I can’t explain it better than that because he didn’t program me with a gift of the gab. I can reveal, however, that Moonville is a place where people like to moon around a lot.”
“Thanks for that snippet,” said Twisthorn.
“I think he’s building another robot,” warned Abortia.
“Hey buddy, is that correct?”
Does-My-Head-In nodded without squeaking. “Yes it is. One problem for potential assassins until now has been that only relatively small—and thus ineffective—electromechanical killers can be sent through the mail. Cost of postage is otherwise prohibitive! But Frabjal Troose has devised a method whereby he can post a lightweight robotic inventor to the Applied Eschatology Agency and that inventor will efficiently construct a second robot on site. Much cheaper!”