by Eoin Colfer
‘Again, you’re using the wrong verb. There were no digging implements involved.’
Trillian clenched her fists so fiercely that her phalanges creaked.
‘You pedantic, smarmy ass!’
‘Ah yes. I had forgotten how fond you people are… were… of lower-life-form-based insults. What’s next? Cheeky monkey?’
‘Oh, I can do better than that.’
‘Really? I’ll get my notebook. I’m always on the lookout, you know.’
Trillian thrashed like a combatant being restrained by invisible arms. ‘That’s right, Wowbagger. Make a list of insults, so you can while away your meaningless life making people miserable.’
‘As opposed to spending your life away from your child, reporting on other people’s misery?’
‘At least I’m not making them miserable.’
‘Really? Why don’t you ask the girl in the tube?’
They were well matched and Bowerick was warming to the contest. He tossed his mug into the ceiling and gave the human female his full attention.
‘Go on then, Trillian Astra. Give me something new I haven’t heard a million times before.’
‘Zark you, Bowerick.’
‘What do you think? New?’
‘Do you think I’d waste my time trying to impress someone who mutilated my daughter?’
‘I think so. You media personalities are always trying to impress the Universe. Think of me as a viewer.’
Trillian might have smiled; there were teeth involved. ‘A viewer? I never tried to cater to viewers in your demographic.’
‘And which demographic would that be?’
‘The lunatic fringe. The sad loner brigade.’
‘A loner brigade?’ said Bowerick, smirking.
‘You’re hiding, Wowbagger. In this ship, behind words. You are a sad, lonely, stupid man, wasting the incredible gift you’ve been given. Imagine the things you could have done.’
Wowbagger could not hold her eyes. ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.’
‘You are pathetic.’
‘That was one of my favourites movies. I’ve watched a lot of movies.’
‘And insulted a lot of people.’
‘That too.’
‘All over a couple of elastic bands.’
‘Zarking bands. We know now that the whole elastic band doctrine was buffa-biscuit.’
‘You had eternity and you wasted it.’
Bowerick leaned hard against the wall, disappearing up to the shoulder. ‘I did. I did and I want to die.’
‘So do I.’
Bowerick was surprised at this, and by how much it upset him. ‘You want to die?’
Trillian placed a hand on his smooth green cheek. ‘No, stupid. I want you to die.’
‘Finally, we agree on something.’
Trillian stared into Wowbagger’s emerald eyes.
‘How soon do you have to die?’ she asked.
Bowerick had been around long enough to spot an opening when he heard one.
‘Not immediately,’ he said and leaned down to kiss Trillian Astra.
She was shaking a bit, but not as much as the girl in the tube who had just regained consciousness.
Asgard
It tickled the Aesir’s divine fancy to set impossible tasks for mortals then pull up a bar stool to the view pool and watch the unfortunate prince or suitor burst a gut trying to do his god’s bidding. Slaying the fiercest dragon was a favourite, as was climbing the tallest tower or crossing the widest desert. Anything with a superlative in it. The best impossible tasks were the ones that were so close to possible that the poor eejit being run around in circles could almost touch victory when failure crept up behind and administered a fatal dose of gruesome death.
Tasks were generally handed down in groups of three, so the one being tested could taste success on the first two and even develop a bit of a cocky swagger, which made for much higher high fives when the testee god delivered his killer blow on task three. Odin insisted on wildcard rules so that in theory the mortal always had a chance at success, but in the history of task-setting, only one man had successfully completed three tasks without dying somewhere in the process. Truth be told, that man had actually been Odin himself in one of the human disguises that he was so proud of.
‘Oooh,’ all the other gods were forced to coo. ‘What an amazing mortal who looks nothing like Odin.’ And pretend that it was totally non-ridiculous that a mortal could move faster than the speed of cameras and change size whenever it suited him.
You would think he’d have made an effort with the fake name, Loki had mental-brained to Heimdall. I mean, Wodin. Come on.
Zaphod Beeblebrox had managed to negotiate from three tasks down to one, which in effect meant that he would fail and perish two tasks early, a fact that would have a devastating trauma-inducing effect on absolutely no one inside the ice shell except Zaphod Beeblebrox.
The Galactic President found himself listing to one side as he pelted along the Rainbow Bridge.
My balance is all off without Left Brain, he realized. And my breathing too.
He was sucking down big breaths, but only a fraction of the air was making it to his lungs.
There’s a leak somewhere.
In actuality there was no tracheal leak, it was simply that Zaphod’s lungs were accustomed to a pair of windpipes feeding them, but now there was only one and it was struggling to do the job. It did not help that the carbon dioxide-oxygen mix was a little too CO2 heavy for most mortals, so the closer Zaphod got to the planet’s surface, the woozier he became.
‘Compliments to the under-brazier!’ he yelled, because it seemed appropriate.
And though this may seem like a nonsense sentence hodgepodged together by a doped and dopey brain, this particular phrase happened to be that day’s password for the Helheim pressure cannons located below the Asgardian iron mines. Which would have mattered not at all, had not Zaphod’s delirious utterances been picked up by the fading beams of Heimdall’s call to Odin and transmitted to the wireless earpiece of Hel, the mistress of Helheim. Even then, no action would have been taken without the failsafe bong-o-code, a complicated series of taps known only to the big-knob gods, which had to be physically hammered into the vein of iron that ran through the stone of Hlidskjalf, Odin’s gigantic watchtower and throne, all the way down to Helheim. However, as the iron of Asgard has a little divine magic in its molecules, there is a certain amount of communication between the vein and any metal that has been removed from the vein, the bridge for instance. And as Zaphod tore across Bifrost, the corrugated nubs of his melted heels sent a flurry of pings and bongs vibrating into the bridge with every footfall; pings and bongs that perfectly matched the failsafe bong-o-code for the Helheim pressure cannons.
Highly unlikely. Forty-seven million to one against. Piddling odds for anyone or anything inside the footprint of an Infinite Improbability Drive’s spooldown corona of coincidence and serendipity.
Zaphod’s sense of balance was further discombobulated by the mini-cyclones burrowing through the tube of false atmosphere and thrumming about his head and shoulders.
Dragon wash, he realized. The beasties are close.
If Zaphod’s sense of balance was a little discomfited, then his other senses were positively assaulted by the approach of the dragons to his rear. They soared through the true atmosphere, improbably graceful, long necks undulating with each wing beat, fire snuffles playing around their nostrils. Several scaly heads poked into Zaphod’s peripherals but the creatures didn’t seem to be in any hurry to nudge him off the bridge.
They’re toying with me. Bloody flying rodents.
‘Evening, gents,’ he called breathlessly. ‘You can’t be bought off, I suppose? I have a really good replicator on the ship. Whatever you guys want. Name it.’
The dragon with most horns swooped in close to act as spokesman for the group.
‘Whatever we want?’ it said in a voice like meat being sucked through a bottleneck. ‘Wow. Okay. Let me think. We could spare him, couldn’t we boys?’
‘Sure.’
‘Could do.’
‘Why not?’
It was an encouraging start, Zaphod thought.
‘So what do you want? Tell me what I can do for you.’
The horned dragon chewed on a flap of skin hanging from its nose.
‘Could you fit us all on your ship?’
‘Of course I could,’ huffed Zaphod, without for a second considering whether this was true.
‘And you could transport us to a new world? A young world brimming with life?’
‘That is not a problem. Off the top of my head I can think of a dozen, and this is my stupid head.’
The dragon inched closer, so the blue flames at its sala-mandroid nostrils singed Zaphod’s hair.
‘And could we kill every last being on the planet?’ it said in a growled whisper.
‘And the trees,’ called one of his mates. ‘We want to burn down the trees, for a laugh.’
‘And the trees,’ said spokesdragon. ‘Even dragons need to relax.’
Zaphod was amazed that he could run and talk at the same time. ‘What was the bit before trees?’
‘Kill everyone, oh and lay eggs in their corpses. That’s very important to us. Can you arrange this, little mortal?’
‘Whereabouts in their corpses?’ asked Zaphod, just to make conversation.
‘Oh, you know. Hollows, crevices. Eye sockets are good.’
And though he didn’t think he had it in him, Zaphod ignored the pain in his lungs and picked up the pace.
Why do you always do these things, stupid? he silently berated himself. Do you even know why you are here?
He didn’t. The reason would come back to him when he had a second to think. If he had a second.
Deep in the bowels of Asgard there mouldered a magma-powered deep-sink sewage treatment megacube. Below this and to the left a bit, in what might reasonably be called the rectum of Asgard, sat the region known as Niflheim. At the lowest extreme of Niflheim, on what might be fairly referred to as the interior sphincter of Asgard, sat Helheim.
Hel, the mistress of said sphincter, lounged on the pile of inflated serpent-intestine cushions that littered her throne, stroking the baby dragon stole around her neck.
‘What do you think of my new stole?’ she asked Modgud, her corpse-eating familiar, who was currently wearing the form of a giant eagle.
Modgud squinted. ‘I think it’s still alive, sweetness.’
Hel wrung the little dragon’s neck with a perfunctoriness that suggested much experience.
‘What do you think now?’
‘I don’t know,’ mewed Modgud, who had always been a bit petty for a corpse eater. ‘It seems so… lifeless.’
Suddenly Hel sat bolt upright in a flurry of squeaking cushions.
‘I just got the… It’s the th-th-thing,’ she stammered, twisting a communicator earpiece deeper into her ear hole.
Modgud rose up on his claws. ‘What, sweetness? You just got what?’
‘The password, phrase, from Odin.’
‘Which one? The change the sewage filter one?’
‘No. No, you stupid bird. Compliments to the under-brazier. That’s the password for the pressure cannons. We’re under fire.’
Modgud was wounded by the personal attack, but decided for the good of the planet that he would let it fester for the moment.
‘Now, now, sweetness. Hold up there. No call for hysterics. Don’t you need some kind of confirmation?’
Hel dabbed her brow with a hairy forearm. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I do, dear friend. The failsafe bong-o-code. Sorry about the stupid bird comment.’
‘Oh, forget it,’ said Modgud, good-naturedly. ‘You’re in a high-pressure job.’ Inside, he swore to up the daily doses of poison. Maybe he couldn’t kill this witch, but he could have her writhing on the toilet for half the day.
Hel’s relieved smile froze as the failsafe bong-o-code vibrated up through her torso from the iron throne she sat upon.
‘What is it?’
‘Shut up, idiot. I’m counting bongs.’
Modgud preened for a few moments while his mistress counted.
‘War!’ she said at last, springing to her feet. ‘Asgard is at war. Finally my chance to get out of this dump and back to the surface. If my defences save the day, then it’s so long, loser craphole.’
‘Loser?’
Hel rolled her eyes. ‘You are so sensitive for a corpse eater. Warm up the cannons.’
‘Which ones? Not all of them?’
‘Yes, all of them.’
‘What am I shooting at?’
‘Not the bridge, Heimdall’s on the bridge. But anything else that moves!’ snapped the she-devil. ‘We might lose a few dragons but there are aliens inside the shell.’
Loser craphole, thought Modgud sulkily, opening a window on his wrist computer. At least we acknowledge the existence of technology down here. At least we’re not relying on archaic phone calls and bong-o-codes.
‘I can mental-brain what you’re thinking!’ screeched Hel. ‘Something about tents and cake!’
Modgud activated the cannons with a few taps on his screen.
God help us, he thought. But not the gods we have here. Some other ones that are a bit less…
The corpse eater did not finish the thought, just in case Hel got her mindreading spot on for once.
Zaphod was running out of breath and what little he did have left sprinkled his lungs with pins and needles. The dragons swirled around the bridge now, at least a dozen of them, shunting each other with playful shoulders, nipping at tails. They loosed fireballs close to their target, stripping chunks of ice from the bridge.
Still, thought Zaphod. Killed fighting dragons in Asgard. Not a bad way to go. Better than slipping on a wet spot and tumbling into a boring hole. A pity I couldn’t reach that wall.
Wall. Hadn’t Dionah Carlinton-Housney said something about a wall?
I shall make reaching that wall my new short-term goal, decided Zaphod with the same full tank of foundation-free reasoning that characterized most of his life-changing decisions. If it’s the last thing I do, I will reach that wall.
Two lurches later his legs gave out and he was reduced to dragging himself along the bridge in a three-handed scrabble.
‘Wall, damnit,’ he croaked. ‘Wall.’
The dragons thought this was hilarious and one of them even pulled a cell phone from under a scale to call his weekend buddies.
‘Honestly, you have to see this idiot, Burnie. You remember that guy with the wooden legs? Remember we lit him up like a torch? This guy is even funnier. Get up here now.’
More dragons. Froody.
The beasts’ wings dipped inside the atmosphere tube, tugging at Zaphod’s clothing with their sharp little claws.
‘Come on. This is an official presidential jacket. Don’t you lizards know who I am?’
Bifrost jumped with the impact of giant footsteps as Heimdall jogged leisurely along the bridge, grin wider than the crooked Mayor of Optimisia with dental implants who has just won the planetary lotto on his birthday and discovered that his chief love rival from high school was recently cuckolded and that the prosecution’s case against him has collapsed.
‘You didn’t make it,’ said the god, eyes magnified by the orange lenses of his ski goggles.
‘Are those prescription?’ wondered Zaphod.
‘You didn’t complete your task, Babblepox.’
‘It’s Beeblebrox,’ shouted the frustrated Galactic President. ‘You may not realize this, but every time you mispronounce my name I feel bad. I’m a positive kind of person, but for some reason that really hurts. It’s not funny.’
‘I think it’s funny, Feeblejocks,’ said Heimdall
, using his godly voice-projection powers to broadcast his comments to the dragons, who chuckled fireballs and smacked wings. ‘What do you think, my beautiful pets?’
‘I think it’s a buffa-bucket of hilariousness,’ answered a red striped alpha male hovering above the bridge, his rear legs dangling, which is harder than it looks. ‘If you ask me, boss, mispronouncing this mortal’s name is as close to…’
More sounds came out of his mouth, but they weren’t words as such, just shrieks and a few initial consonants which were probably on their way to being swearwords before the pain blotted out any commands from the dragon’s parietal lobe.
‘What the…’ said Heimdall before his jaw dropped. The red striped alpha had simply burst into plasma flame, taken from behind by some sort of missile.
‘Wow,’ said Zaphod. ‘I’ve often wondered what would happen if a dragon held its breath.’
Another dragon was hit, in the shoulder, sending it spinning towards the surface of the planet, leaking ink blots of blue-black smoke.
‘Aren’t you going to react?’ asked Zaphod. ‘Don’t you have the whole super-speed reaction thing? Or is that just the major gods?’
Heimdall was goaded into action.
‘Fly, my beauties,’ he called. ‘Hide on the surface.’
The dragons dropped out of their hovering pattern and scattered for cover as far away as they could get from whatever was attacking their comrades. Fast as the dragons were, many could not outrun the slew of spiralling missiles that were hugging the bend of the planet, breaking from the pack when they locked on to a target.
Heimdall collapsed his horn and put an emergency call in to Helheim.
‘Hel? We are under attack here!’
‘I know,’ said the she-devil. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve sent a few dozen shells your way. Can you see the enemy?’
Heimdall was known for being so alert that he needed no sleep. They used to say in the taverns of Scandinavia that he could see grass grow and hear a leaf fall on the other side of an ocean. But that was a long time ago, and these days Heimdall often snuck off for a snooze after his latte and had been known to miss the sound of Autumn altogether.
‘I don’t see them. Just missiles coming up from the southern hemisphere.’