The audience was less than impassive. Most of them studied their nails. Those that didn’t have nails to study wished they had. He shifted up a gear and now caught each baton on its flaming end, the pain, if present on his features, hidden by the painted masquerade of mindless glee. Small tears formed in the corners of his eyes as he determined to keep going.
The smell of burning flesh drenched the air.
If it were possible, the audience would have been less impassive.
Perhaps, they were dead mused the jester between stabbing ice-picks of pain, and then he remembered. Most of them already were. With racing pulse, he went into overdrive; and began hopping and somersaulting between each catch, whilst making a variety of alien bird calls. Possibly it could have been a song.
There was a gasp of amazement from a member of the live section of the audience who should have known better and was quickly hushed down through a mixture of blows to his head. The remaining stayed as their dark leader, aloft in his throne, emotionless.
The jumping became higher, the throws more dramatic, the smell more pungent and the ground, gone.
The jester plunged through the grate that had silently decided not to be there and ushered him away with the speed of a garlic soaked Frenchman getting kicked out of an allergy clinic.
A last shrieked warble that could have been the start of the chorus, cut through the air, and was abruptly cut in its prime as the grate re- materialised, again, without a sound; not even any hi-tech swirly whooshing sounds.
Silence roamed through the courtroom like a great beast and glowered at the audience. A delicate and refreshing wind from the deserts beyond wafted in, extinguishing the remaining baton and dissipating the smell.
Mercurius spoke first. He always did. Often people would wish he didn’t.
‘The entertainment does not… please your omnipotence.’
Mercurius was a wretched figure of a man with a face so ridiculous, it resembled a child’s plastercine sculpture after a mauling from the family alsation. It wasn’t that he was deformed, it just seemed that the Gods had never really gotten around to forming him at all and left him with a face that looked like he applied fresh lava to it each evening. His nose curled and met his lips in a constant superior sneer that belittled all but his overlord, and his cheeks, or the two most profound lumps on his face, poked out in differing directions and at uneven but excessive altitude from his gravely skin. If he had to be compared to a creature, which he often was, it would be a weasel; a melted one. Even weasels took offence at being likened to him.
‘Entertainment? Entertainment!’ bellowed Zod, ramming a spiked sphere of precious gemstone against an equally encrusted throne. Small sparks flew. One landed on Mercurius’ nose; it only improved matters. ‘I’ve had more entertainment from micro-waving puppies!,’ he paused., ‘actually, I have, but still, this is an outrage!’
Zod stood to his full height and engaged the hydraulics that stretched his midriff an additional few inches until he towered literally over the cowering assemblage. The body he currently occupied had been a champion gladiator who unwisely had simply been too good at his job. Whether that job was fighting in the arena of bedding young ladies, none could say, but he was just too darned good at them both. The heavily muscled frame and dashing black hair that made even the men swoon was the obvious figure head to rule the next new-age generation Empire. Zod made it so, staged a pretend revolution, and possessed the unwitting warrior. It left Zod happy with his new body, and it left the people happy with their new leader ‘Down with the old Zod and in with the new,’ they would cry. Few knew for very long about his ruse of taking a new form every so many years. But Zod believed it was for the best; his best. Besides, it made ‘the people’ forget they lived under, well beside mostly, a ruthless immoral, immortal, yet immaculately presented, dictator; and for a few more years, a democracy of sorts would be seen to reign.
Finest purple Panthion fur rolled from his stolen shoulders to the marbled floor and rippled softly in the warm desert breeze. Zod strode to his ‘shower of maggots,’ as he called the royal court. The emissaries of a hundred worlds, the most important individuals from the variously limbed and ridiculously coloured races they may be. Next to Zod though, they were just maggots, feeding from the discards of his tray. And Mercurius? He was the fattest of them all.
‘Is there not one amongst you who can entertain one such as I,’ he smiled softly and beckoned towards the centre floor.
Wisely, no-one moved, although there was a definite shift towards the back.
‘Are there no fancies you can conjure, no fables to tell? Have I seen it all?’ Zod implored, hands outstretched, begging like a millionaire who does it for a hobby on weekends.
An individual with an unfortunate excess of air in his lungs and a slight irritation let forth a muffled cough. He couldn’t keep it in any longer. Zod whirled, gleaming on the only member of his assemblage to show any response. The rest were seen to visibly de-tense.
‘Ah-ha! You, perhaps? Do you have something that can entertain your magnificent leader in his bored moment?’ Zod took a sure step closer, the flowing hairs of his robe tickling against the chosen face. Facing the inevitable, like a certain coyote upon finding himself running through mid-air, the man, who its not really worth imparting the name off, decided to go for broke…
‘Milord, the only story I have to tell, is one of pain, suffering and poverty. Methinks this is a tale you would rather not hear.’
Zod strode back to his chair, his movements hidden by the thick robe. He settled on his ornate and dramatic throne chair, taken from some primitive world with more gold than defences and smiled. ‘On the contrary, I am all ears,’ he spoke slickly. He could have been refined, poured into barrels and used to power archaic little wheeled things.
‘But first,’ interrupted Zod as the mans lungs filled for a burst of bardism, ‘please… take centre stage.’
Choruses of gulps were heard faintly. Everyone knew what that meant.
The man expecting this to happen all along, paused for a moment and fished in his ceremonial robes. Well, they were ceremonial, but they were hardly robes. His was a warm and dusty world, the only suits worn there were of the birthday variety. Anyway, removing a short brown stick from his waist pouch, he tapped it lightly and promptly lit at one end and stuck the other up one nostril. He took a long sniff and almost inverted his lungs in the resulting cough.
The man took a second draught and lazily blew the smoke out in a billowing plume; and then walked towards the grill.
‘So, now what do we do?’ asked Sknarf, who crouched against the
cave wall.
‘Da shift starts in an hour,’ added Klaus.
‘Were doomed! Doomed! We should have stayed in our cells, at least it was… Well, okay, this is better by any means. But we’re still doomed. When they find we’ve killed another troll they’ll… they’ll…. Use blunt axes?’ he suggested.
Sknarf slapped him.
‘Thanks, I needed that.’
She slapped him again.
‘Ow!’
And again.
‘OW! I’m calm now!’
‘Sure?’ she asked, ‘that was fun too.’
A strange quiet descended and the three looked to the dominant figure of Spiff for guidance. Like a statue carved by a sculptor with an eye for perfection, he stood motionless and erect, though he hid it well. A real man. Not one of those pretend ones you get in cereal boxes.
‘Spiff?’ Sknarf nudged him lightly.
‘Hmm?… Sorry chaps, bit lost in my own thoughts there.’ He began pacing, pausing and then staring intently at a region of space somewhere about where his eyes met.
‘This is what we do. First, we locate the Yeldarbian, and then… take it from there’
‘Way to go Spiff man, what a plan,’ said Rafe, ‘more detail than we’re used to perhaps, but still…’
‘I’ll admit chaps, its not much, but its a start. I’ve a feeling this Yeldarbian person can help us out. An old man once told me, ‘in him lies the key.’’
He paused.
‘Or something like that, anyway… its our best bet. We can’t return to the surface, so the only way is down. There must be a way out and I’ve a feeling that this ‘Yeldarbian’ person knows just where it is.’
‘Yeldarbian? Could that be Yeldarb, I met him once. Works in the deep mines, operating the borer. He’s the only one smart enough to control it; the trolls certainly can’t’ said Sknarf.
‘Sounds like an O.K. chap by me!’ said Spiff, heartening to this idea of a genius, working deep in the bowels of the earth at the cruel granite hands of his oppressors.
‘Tosser actually,’ replied Sknarf, ‘would turn in his granny if he hadn’t done it already. He chose to work for the trolls you see, got him out of the hard physical stuff.’
‘Man, why didn’t I think of that,’ said Rafe, his voice heavy with admiration.
‘Perhaps she was involved in illegal terrorist activities?’ said Spiff.
‘Who was?’
‘His granny.’
‘In this place, any activity is illegal’ said Sknarf, ‘still, if you want to see him, I see nothing to lose; or gain. He’s probably started early, he likes his machine so much. Earning extra brownie points16 perhaps.’
‘Perhaps he’s just trying to earn some extra rations for his…’ Spiff ground to a creative halt.
‘Granny?’ Suggested Rafe.
‘My people,’ he implored with a thick tribal accent, ‘are poor. In
times of hardship, we used to eat the grass. When there was no grass, we
ate the dust. No dust? We ate each other. When there was but one of us
left, we would err… Anyway, we are a poor people Milord, and poorer
now since your infestation took our world as its own.’
There was a small gasp of jealousy that spread in a wave throughout the watching crowd, baying like hyenas about a soon-to-be- kill.
Zod smiled.
‘Your taxes are unbearable, the wages non-existent and our world, polluted and stripped of what resources it had. It must stop, we must be treated fairly, we demand justice.’
‘You demand justice?’ enquired Zod and slumped deep into his chair as if to ponder this thought.
‘In that case,’ he continued, ‘justice you shall have.’
Everyone watched the grill, expecting it to open to the ‘things’ that lurked, every hungry below.
‘I will double the wages, half the taxes and send a thousand of my finest to nourish your land and return it to the original state it came from.’
‘Really?’ he asked, incredulous.
‘No of course not you silly man.’
The doors as predicted, slipped open and the latest entertainment sped away.
Zod sprinted to the closing gap and called down, ‘but I will keep one promise, I’ll return your world to its original state…’
He paused a moment for cruel effect.
‘…Dust!’ he jeered at the swallowing blackness.
There followed a shriek, a sound of one body landing on another much harder one. This was followed by much gnashing of teeth, most of them probably very sharp and not very clean.
‘Milord,’ oozed Mercurius, ‘a most noble gesture.’
‘You don’t think I’m getting soft do you Mercurius?’
There was a knock on the door like falling tombstones; falling on someone’s toes.
Mercurius nodded almost imperceptibly. Agreement was always safest as was the advice of Mercurius, most endured of all Zod’s advisors. In a few days, he would have been in the job a month.
‘Hmm. Your right, destroy his whole system also.’
There was a knock on the chamber door like the closing of a crypt.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Yeldarb entered the last of his extensive code that activated ‘The Machine.’ It grunted into life, joyous at the prospect of another endless day drilling and corresponded this to the control console, which Yeldarb ignored, as he always did.
He liked to get a bit of early drilling in and now, an hour before dawn, was the best time; not that dawn meant much down here, it was always dark.
Tapping yet more obscure codes, the machine began to trundle backwards up its tunnel of the previous day, and at length, came to a junction. A junction that shouldn’t be there and wasn’t unless you looked carefully; or didn’t look carefully and fell in.
This was Yeldarb’s idea for escape. It was such an obvious means of escape for someone who worked the bore, to attempt to tunnel their way out, that the trolls neglected to ever check on what he did. The bore turned with a squealing of crushed and tormented rocks and then pottered off down new borehole. After some minutes, it met the end with a shuddering thud, activated its fusion cutter and sank slowly forward, leaving a trail of smooth glassy rock behind it.
Yeldarb kept this up for an hour a day. Soon he reckoned, he’d be outside the force-field perimeter. After that, he hadn’t a clue, he’d probably have nothing to do but eat grass, but at least it would be free grass. Free to be in his stomach admittedly. Perhaps the grass didn’t get a good deal. In truth, all he really wanted to do was satiate his curiosity, and see if the land beyond was really a toxic wasteland as they had always been told.
Clunk!
The bore juddered to a halt, a variety of lights that plinked up and danced a pretty melody across the control display.
‘What the bleep?‘ said Yeldarb, who leapt from the controls and peered at the competing array of signals.
‘OBSTRUCTION MET,’ vocalised the in-built bore personality.
‘What!’ said Yeldarb. ‘Your a fusion bore, you don’t meet obstructions—of any kind.’
‘OBSTRUCTION MET,’ it repeated.
‘But… your cutter operates at a hundred million Zedigrees?’
‘LOOK, I’VE MET A BLEEPING OBSTRUCTION. GEDDIT.’
The machine with temperance like that of a bull elephant with genital chickenpox only ever took so much before it would resort to its more aggressive natural personality.
Yeldarb thought long, but not very hard. Nothing, ever got in the way of a fusion drill. Nothing. It turned matter into plasma, slowly, but it never had to stop, never wore down, and left such nice smooth tunnels. He decided to take the only action open to the cowardly, donned a virtual suit and stepped into the burning rock face.
What he saw, caught him completely by surprise.
It was a small round and green wooden door.
‘Their headisss!’
‘Milord?’
‘Their headisss, bring me their headisss you fool.’
‘Erm, and the rest of their bodies milord?’ asked Dingus with a certain lacking in the wise department.
‘Bring them too you foolissss’
Dingus looked around. There was no one else there.
A question formed on Dingus’s rocky lips but was anticipated by the sharp mind of Pontious Marcus.
‘Ssseparately, bring them to me ssseparately.’
Dingus again looked puzzled and began to from another questions.
‘Their headisss and bodiessss you incredible foolisss!’
‘But how can I bring them seperately, if der joined together?’
Pontios seethed. He was ssure the troll wass making a fool of him. ‘Thatiisss ississ the ideasss, to cutss ofesss their headisss!’
Comprehension dawned on the troll’s face with a limp fizzle. ‘Sorry, milord, its my ‘ead, still a bit…’ he indicated to a fresh application of cement, ‘delicate.’
If there’s one thing Pontious Marcus didn’t think trolls were, it was delicate.
Dingus attempted a salute but instead only succeeded in slapping what remained of his head. He turned and marched off, limbs swinging ridiculously in a pseudo-goose-step. Dingus delighted in utilising his race’s ignorance to its depths though in truth, he was quite intelligent. Well, he was still blind stupid, or at the very least, short-sighted, but still smart for a troll and if he could act stupid to annoy a superior, he’d jolly well do it. Pontious Marcus groaned deeply and thumped his shrouded head rhythmically off the holo-table which rippled gently and gave slightly to his weight.
What had he done to deserve this? he thought.
Given, he enjoyed sucking the life juices from hapless life-forms and given also that he was a founding supporter of an oppressive regime in its ravenous consumption of the galaxy, and even taking into account that he was the chief editor of genocide monthly, he couldn’t think of any specific instance to warrant such vile treatment.
Boredly, he tapped the midsection of the desk with a long decaying claw. Multi-sided shapes spun and phased in and out of view as each successive touch sent small waves dancing across the desk surface and then, there was a short lived but violent crackle.
A small marsupial17 sat on its haunches and sniffed at the newly materialised air.
Pontious, with a move practised countless times before, snatched the little mouse, took out a straw and began extracting the fluids within. What had he done to deserve this? he thought.
‘Gods, its hot down here!’ exclaimed a sweat drenched Rafe who
felt as though his shirt had been used as a shared towel by a group of
Greeks trapped in a sauna.
‘Hmm…’ replied Spiff, barely showing any signs of heat, other than the god given fire in his pants. ‘Relative humidity is approaching what could be felt as an uncomfortable level. Fortunately, by regulating my breathing, I can keep my overall temperature within acceptable limits.’ Rafe drowned the recital by his increasingly thirsty panting.
‘Are we there yet?’ called Sknarf from the rear of the group as they fumbled in procession through the sweltering darkness.
‘Buggered if I know,’ said Klaus who was stumbling along, clutching onto the tail of Spiff’s shirt and with the other hand, sweeping a never ending shower of body secretions from his forehead.
‘Ah-ha!’ cried Spiff who came to an abrupt halt. Followed shortly by equally abrupt halts for Klaus, Rafe and Sknarf who piled into each other with successive ‘Oomphs’ like a half hearted and fully clad orgy. Spiff’s toes tottered on the edge of a circle of blackness, barely distinguishable and yet very there. One further step and all four would have plummeted to a squishy and most terminal end. Well, probably only Spiff would have fallen, his screams no doubt bringing the rest to a de- mobilising stop as they pondered on whether or not to rescue him. ‘A fresh bore hole… how curious!’ whispered Spiff who was now in the process of easing himself down the sloping side much like one sinking into a bath of cold custard; the hot stuff isn’t as bad.
‘Is it safe?’ asked Rafe to the void where Spiff had once been.
‘SPIFF!’ shrieked Sknarf.
There was a fading whooshing sound that grew progressively faint. A thump and silence followed this at length. Actually, a thump followed by silence, you can’t have them both at the same time. That’d be silly, as would jumping into a dark tunnel you’ve barely met, but then, that’s Spiff. Condensation collected on the tunnel roof and escaped in steady methodical drips, punctuating the tensely held silence.
‘Do you think he’s dead?’ asked Rafe in a tone that betrayed hopefulness.
‘Nothing could have survived that fall,’ whimpered Sknarf who fell to her knees and stared longingly and also quite blindly into the depths. There was a further long deafening pause that was just getting settled in until it was rudely interrupted.
‘Hallo!’ called a familiar voice that echoed and reverberated off the walls like a crazed yodeller. It wasn’t for nothing that Spiff had the nickname, Teflon balls. The man was indestructible.
Dingus was dumbfounded, and not for the first time.
First that pesky Spiff’s cell had been found empty, chains ripped from the ceiling and then, the other cell also, found in a similar state of restricted contents. Empty that is apart from that demented marching machine guard, who didn’t think it prudent to abandon his post to inform of the escapee’s; despite the rather obvious gap in the logic that empty cells don’t generally need a lot of guarding, unless it’s to stop all that free space wandering off.
They’d been gone for…. Hours? He thought, but still, the only way out was… Well, there was no way out, everyone knew that. Except possibly the prisoners, but these indefatigable monkeys had a habit of proving you wrong. Especially when the ‘proof’ was based on ‘well, no ones escaped yet, have they?’
Dingus thought for a bit.
And then, he felt it.
It was almost undetectable, but here it was, quite plainly discovered on this page.
He looked at the sundial carved into his forearm and held it under the fizzling light above. The shadow spun around with his moving arm and continually displayed conflicting times. Pfah! Hi technology! He muttered.
It was still early though, he was sure of that; and certainly, far too early for that.
He paused. There it was again.
This time, unmistakable.
Drilling.
He pounded down the corridor.
Yeldarb’s virtual hand reached out tenderly and slowly towards the
doors knocker.
He also paused.
What in the obscure names of the many obscurely named Gods am I doing?
There could be anything behind that door.
And there was.
Still curiosity had him by the dangly bits with a tenacious grip that just wouldn’t let go. It practically forced his hand those last few inches as they closed around and then nervously rapped on the door.
‘Hallo there!’ boomed a voice from behind his ethereal shoulder, but seemingly placed flat against his ear.
The almost indescribable shock caused him to spin and recoil against the door as he fought to clamber away from the unseen menace. His feet slipped on loose rocks. The more he scrabbled, the closer it came, and not a seven letter word bonus in sight.
‘Hallo there! Do I have the pleasure of addressing the Yeldarbian?’ it boomed again and this time launched a volley of manly slaps against his shoulder, each slap widening the face encompassing smile.
Yeldarb panicked, it even knew my name! Yeldarb faced the inevitable, he was going to be petted to death.
Now, all fusion bores are equipped with a fairly extensive array of lasers about their circumference to deal with any obstacles that, however unlikely, may manage to slip past. As you can imagine, they’re pretty devastating devices and only used with care, or in moments of rabid panic, hot tea spilling onto the control panel and the like. This was the former, and unfortunately for all concerned, Yeldarb’s real body, lurking safely inside the bore in its throes had knocked said vessel of pungent soaked leaves all over ‘The Big Red Button.’ There was a fizzle and a burning smell.
This time, the shock was describable.
A myriad of air crackling lights blazed from pores in the hull in a dazzling show of power. They sliced into the surrounding rock and began etching a wide and deepening groove, which threatened to drag the bore down if it didn’t move soon.
As expected and probably predicted, Spiff had not been idle.
With a spurt of in-human speed, he had ripped the bores emergency hatch open, and unbelievably, was actually dodging each pulse of incinerating laser. Speed of light they may be, but just not quick enough for Spiff.
He leapt inside, and rushing towards the technology clad Yeldarb, grabbed him by whatever came to hand and yanked him violently (something Americans do to each other)18. Without pause for breath, oxygen’s for wimps anyway, he frantically, yet with a modicum of calm, shut down the lasers, and almost all the other bores controls.
Permanently.
Yeldarb was horrified and stared at the emergency axe embedded deep into his beloved machine.
‘You only had to hit the off button!’ he yelled hysterically.
‘GIT!’ groaned the bore as its bits and bytes seeped from the wound and left for a place of lower memory requirements.
‘C’mon old chap!’ said Spiff as he heartily slung Yeldarb over his muscular shoulder and bounded from the now smoking machinery room and flung himself and companion out of the emergency door, an instant before the control booth ignited in a fury of long frustrated power. He landed running and kept going up the tunnel as the bore sparked and shuddered in a build up to its climax.
Boom, for want of a more explosive word.
The bore erupted in an uncontrolled fusion explosion, thankfully far short of a megaton, but still, more than sufficient to actually knock Spiff off his feet! A torrent of vaporised rock washed over the pair and with blinding violence stormed up the tunnel and struck our not forgotten friends, who were still lounging about the entrance. The cavern walls shook like a mighty stomach rumble and then, fell still, the explosion exhausted.
‘What in frig’s name was that!’ cried Rafe, picking himself up from the warm rock.
‘I don’t know, but I think we should find out,’ said Sknarf who now clambered down the considerably wider tunnel.
‘That was not the answer I was after.!’
They found Spiff ‘resting’ at the edge of a gaping and spherical
cavern, Spiff’s framed curled about in a seeming attempt to protect what
looked distinctly like a chimpanzee.
There was a stunned silence as they took in the expanse before them, the fused and glassy steaming rock giving more than sufficient luminance that their paltry torch with a crackle of jealousy extinguished itself. This double crater spanned perhaps a hundred feet across and spoke of a considerable explosion.
Sknarf looked down at the two frazzled forms.
‘He… gave… his… life,’ she croaked, jewels of tears forming in the wide pools of her eyes and falling to sizzle on the rocks below.
‘Fear not ma’am,’ went the weak but cheerful reply.
Rafe groaned.
Dingus heard that also.
Or rather, felt it.
And when he got to his feet again, he thought, if it’s an escape attempt, it’s not a very subtle one. Still, he quadrupled his pace and set off towards the nearest lift shaft, which would hopefully contain personage moving equipment of the vertical kind.
‘But Spiff?’ spoke the exasperated voice of an unbelieving owner,
‘it was a fusion explosion, how could you, or anyone have survived that?’
Spiff’s eyes smouldered, literally.
‘Just a matter… of… self-discipline m’dear,’ came the withered but spirited reply. Spiff hobbled to his feet and in a brief instant, all phantoms of lingering fatigue were gone. He could have just returned from a week’s sunbathing; or a bonfire.
‘Erm, ‘scuse me a second Spiff,’ said Klaus as he dusted down a persistent flame flickering on what remained of his tunic.
‘And the monkey?’ asked Rafe, indicating the sprawled unconscious and blackened creature. It had more than a passing resemblance to a piece of very burnt toast.
‘Ah… That, I think… is our man, Yeldarb.’
‘You mean its human?’
Spiff considered this question carefully.
‘Possibly not.’
‘Erm… people? What’s dat?’ Klaus had noticed a protruding and shiny egg shaped aberration, midway up the far wall of the hollowed out chamber.
‘Whatever it is, it survived da explosion,’ he announced. Perhaps an obvious statement, but it was one that Klaus felt needed to be made. Spiff stared across the gaping chamber, his piercing vision attempting to analyse and place the anomaly.
‘I think it could be a…’ There was a slight pause.
‘You don’t know, Ha!’ exclaimed Rafe.
‘…Spaceship’19 finished Spiff with a growing smile, ‘C’mon, lets bring our little friend here and have a look.’
‘But quickly,’ he added, glancing over his smoking shoulder. It should have kicked the habit years ago.
Footnotes
17 A variety of four legged creatures that upon failed invasion from a certain red planet, due to their lacking in the size department, took a central role on Earth, at least, as vermin with a taste for solidified rancid animal mammary excretions.
18 This is possibly the worst joke in the book. If you find a worthier candidate, feel free to let me know.
19 A term originally coined for sailing vessels that had lots and lots of room.
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