‘That cloud is coming fast, and I can see now what it is made of.’
Chapter Thirteen
On Myrtle’s Captivity in Mothstorm and Her Observations of the Snilth.
A Young Lady’s Adventures in Unknown Space (Further Continued).
9
Oh, would that I had never woken from that swoon but had joined poor Mother in the sleep of Death! Yet wake I did, eventually, and found myself a prisoner, laid all alone upon the floor of a horrid chamber made of moth wings and moth bones and skeins of silken thread. Where was Father? Where was poor deluded Reverend Cruet? Where were all the officers and men of HMS Actaeon? Had they too been murdered by the beastly Mothmaker?
I did not know. My memories all ended with the sight of poor dear Mother cast down dead upon the floor at that creature’s feet. I could only fear the worst.
It will not surprise you to hear that I wept bitter tears, abandoned there in that noisome oubliette. I did not even run to check the doors and walls for chinks and weaknesses and possible escape routes. What had I to escape to, motherless as I was, and perhaps an orphan, trapped inside that storm of moths, upon the fringes of a solar system which must soon fall utterly under the dominion of an insane demigod?
It was all too vexing for words.
After a time – I do not know how long – a hatch or doorway opened in the mothy wall and one of my blue gaolers entered, bearing a tray of what I took to be food. At first I turned my head away and was inclined to be haughty, but then I recalled Ssilissa and how good and kind she was, despite her silly infatuation with J.H. These Snilth are God’s creatures too, I thought, and it would be well for me to be civil to them, at least. So I dried my eyes upon my handkerchief and looked at the one who stood over me.
I noticed at once that this Snilth was less spiny-looking than the rest and wore no armour, only a papery sort of shift. Its tail did not end in a bony club like Ssilissa’s, nor in an arrangement of spikes and spines like those of other Snilth, but simply tapered to a point.17 Indeed, this creature looked less ferocious in every way than other Snilth I had encountered, and it was watching me with unexpected sympathy.
‘Your eyes are leaking,’ it said. ‘Are you ill?’
‘I am bereft!’ I replied. ‘I am weeping for my mother, who was killed by your horrid bully of a Mothmaker.’
The Snilth hissed softly. It might have been angry at me for those unkind words about its goddess, but I chose to interpret the sound as a sigh of sympathy.
‘And what has become of my father?’ I sobbed. ‘And all those other gentlemen?’
The Snilth glanced over its shoulder at the doorway, and then crouched down beside me, curling the tip of its tail across its blue feet. ‘The other males are all unharmed,’ it said. ‘They have been carried to the moth-moon of Snilritha, there to toil as slaves. But the Mothmaker ordered you be held here in Mothstorm.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because your mother was a Shaper,’ said the Snilth. ‘And because you are a female, and therefore more dangerous.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ I cried. In my grief I had quite forgotten Father’s theory about the strange reversal of the natural order among these creatures, and this slur against the gentler sex nettled me. ‘I am a lady, and not the least bit dangerous.’
‘But … ’ said the Snilth, and stopped. It touched both its ears (which I think was its way of showing puzzlement, rather as you or I might scratch our heads). ‘Among the Snilth,’ it said, ‘it is the females who fight, and build, and plan, and make wars. It is the job of males like me to mind the eggs, and prepare the food, and keep the nest clean. Small wonder that your race is weak and easily conquered if you send mere males to fight for you!’
‘But among my people,’ I explained, ‘the gentlemen are quite the stronger of the two sexes. They do all the soldiering and exploring and build up great businesses, while we ladies content ourselves with the domestic realm: needlework, watercolours, playing the pianoforte, etc.’
The Snilth looked amazed. Could it be that our earthly arrangements seemed as shocking to him as the Amazonian Snilth ladies and their meek menfolk were to me? Hoping that I had not offended him, I strove to change the subject.
‘You speak surprisingly good English,’ I commented. But alas, in my eagerness I spoke too loudly! There was a clash of armoured feet outside my door and a bitter, hissing torrent of commands, and our conversation was at an end. The poor he-Snilth leapt to his feet and scurried away, pausing to glance back regretfully at me before he left my cell and closed the door behind him.
Alone again, I settled into my previous position on the floor, disdaining the bowl of bluish gruel my gaoler had left me. But although I wept many more tears, until my hankies were quite soggy and needed to be wrung out, there was a spark of hope now in the darkness of my soul; I felt that even here, in the house of the Mothmaker, I had a friend.
10
After that, whenever Alsssor (for that was his name) brought food in to me, he stopped a little while and found some excuse to talk. Strange and unearthly though he was, I became quite glad of his company, and the sight of his blue face always cheered me when it peeked at me around the corner of the door.
He seemed intrigued by the topsy-turvy world I told him of, where males toiled while females cared for them, and asked me a great many questions. I found it most pleasant to recall the little ways of earthly life: how gentlemen would open doors for ladies, and pull up chairs for them at dinner, and walk on the outside of the pavements to save them from being splashed by passing carriages.
In return, he taught me a little of the history of the Snilth. Most of it was dull and bloody, since they had done nothing for millions of years but whirl through space amid their herds of moths, stripping bare any world which lay in their path. But when I asked him whether no Snilth had ever thought to question this brigandly behaviour, he grew thoughtful and lowered his voice still further, and told me the awful story of Zssthss Hammertail, a Snilth war-leader in the olden days who had grown so powerful and so popular that at last she tried to challenge the Mothmaker.
I guessed at once that this was the rebellion of which the Mothmaker herself had spoken, so of course I did not expect a happy ending to the tale. But I was still shocked at the cruelty of the Mothmaker’s revenge, which was still remembered by the Snilth thousands of years later. All brave Queen Zssthss’s followers had been rounded up, and the queen and her clan had been put to death in a very dreadful manner.
‘In what manner?’ I asked.
Alsssor turned a greyish colour and said, ‘It is too horrible to speak of. All her followersss … the whole Hammertail clan, right down to her poor little eggsss. Since then, not one of us Snilth has ever dared to even think of disobeying the Mothmaker’s commands.’
11
Not long after that, I heard a great commotion of orders and jangling of armour somewhere outside, and the door of the cell opened to reveal not just Alsssor, but a female Snilth who was carrying the insensible form of Mrs Burton!
I cried out in surprise and leapt to my feet as the Snilth warrior dumped poor Ulla on the ground and stood back. ‘How came she here?’ I asked. ‘Do you have her husband too? And Art? Was Art with them?’
Alsssor spoke in his own sibilant language to the she-Snilth, who lifted her visor to reply. She had a rather sweet face, with fine cheekbones and a small blue mouth. When she had spoken, Alsssor turned to me and said, ‘This red-skinned female was taken along with a hairy-faced male and a young male hatchling.’
I guessed at once that the ‘hairy-faced’ must mean Sir Richard Burton, who persists in wearing the most peculiar beard. And as for the hatchling … ‘Was he named Art?’ I asked, overjoyed at the thought that my brother might be alive, yet wondering how I should break to him the bleak intelligence that we were motherless once more.
‘I do not know. They were found on the water-world you call Uranus.’
‘I do not call it Uranus,’ I retorted. ‘It w
ould not be ladylike. Georgium Sidus is the name which well-bred people apply to that sphere.’
Alsssor seemed to be explaining my words to his armoured companion. She walked all round me, sniffing in a rather impertinent manner and reaching down to lift up the hem of my dress and rub the fabric between her blue fingers. All the time she and Alsssor kept up a hissy, slithery talk, which I presumed was about me. After a little of this the warrior reached out and brushed Alsssor’s chest with her tail, then turned on her heel and stalked out of the cell.
‘What was all that about?’ I asked.
Alsssor blushed deep mauve. ‘That is Ssoozzs Forktail. She has asked me to marry her. We shall mate as soon as she has money enough to furnish a nest for us.’
I blanched a little at his use of the ‘m’ word. (Not ‘money’. The other one.) ‘How quaint!’ I replied. ‘Where I come from, it is the gentleman who must ask the lady and provide a home and all the furnishings to go in it.’
‘That is what I was telling Ssoozzs,’ said Alsssor.
And he smiled, I thought, rather mysteriously.
12
There was no time just then to ponder Alsssor’s words, for he had not long been gone when Mrs Burton sat bolt upright, clutched at her neck and cried loudly, ‘Richard!’
She seemed quite discomposed, the poor dear, to learn that she was no longer upon Georgium Sidus, and that, indeed, whole leagues of space separated her from that squelchy and unprepossessing orb.
‘The moth-riders must have kept me unconscious while I was flown here,’ she said, springing up and beginning to check the walls and door of our prison for chinks, weaknesses, etc. ‘But what have they done with Richard?’
‘The Snilth are enthusiasts for women’s suffrage, rational dress and other such reversals of the natural order,’ I said (and I said it meaningfully, since Ulla Burton was herself somewhat of an enthusiast for the so-called Rights of Women. I hoped the Snilth might serve as an example to her of just where such unfeminine behaviour may lead if one lets it get out of hand!). ‘The gentlemen are all imprisoned in one of their ramshackle satellites, but since we females are thought to be superior we are housed here, beneath the Mothmaker’s house. The Mothmaker is another Shaper, like my mother, only a great deal more powerful and not nearly so well mannered. It is she who controls this odd rabble.’
Ulla looked at me. ‘And where is your mother, Myrtle?’ she asked. ‘Is she held here too? Surely she will find a way out of this?’
I began to sob and told her all that had befallen us, while she held me in her arms and said, ‘There, there.’ Being a Martian, she offered a somewhat bony shoulder for me to cry on, but it was good to have a shoulder of any kind after all those hours and days alone.
‘Do you think it possible that she is not really dead?’ Mrs Burton asked. ‘After all, she was thought dead before, and then your brother found her among the spider webs.’
‘This time is quite different,’ I said, shaking my head sadly. ‘This time I saw her killed. And she has said often and often that when her mortal body died, that would be the end of her life in this world.’
‘And are you sure she spoke the truth?’ asked Ulla. ‘If I had all her power and wisdom, I am sure I should never entirely give it up. Surely there is some hope?’
I dried my eyes and considered this. ‘She did say something rather mysterious before she … before she … ’
‘Go on.’
‘She told me that I must go to the Tin Moon. Why do you think she said that?’
Mrs Burton shook her head. ‘I cannot imagine. The Tin Moon orbits the planet Mercury, I believe. I seem to recall that it is a bleak and lifeless object. But if your mother said that you must go there, it would be foolish not to do as she asked. I am sure she had some reason.’
There was sense in what Ulla said, and I confess that she made me feel almost hopeful, until I recalled that I was at quite the other end of the Solar System from the planet Mercury, and a prisoner to boot.
‘And what of Art?’ I asked, drying my eyes. ‘Alsssor – the Snilth who guards me – said that a young boy was captured with you on Georgium Sidus … ’
‘That was Midshipman Bradstreet,’ explained Ulla. ‘I saw him fall. If the Snilth brought only one boy back, it must be him. Which means that Art is still free! Oh, I pray he may find some way to rouse the Empire and let them know what this Mothmaker is planning!’
I agreed, but privately I held little hope. Art is so much better at getting into trouble than out of it that I feared he had almost certainly been drowned or eaten by now, and even if he had not, his chances of communicating with the wider Empire must be vanishingly slight.
13
A night passed, during which the Mothmaker’s house turned away from the home-made sun which hung outside it, and the silvery light which had poured in dimly through our prison’s moth-wing walls faded and was replaced by velvet darkness. I slept but fitfully, curled on the unyielding floor beside Ulla. Mr David Wyatt seems to have rather a soft spot for Mrs Burton and always portrays her looking very exotic and alluring, so perhaps it will shock you to learn that she snores like a carthorse? It was almost a relief when the silvery sun returned and I could rise and stretch my stiff limbs and look forward to the arrival of Alsssor with our breakfasts. (The blue gruel, I had discovered, was a form of Snilthish porridge and really quite palatable.)
But when Alsssor arrived he brought no porridge with him, only two armoured female Snilth, who dragged Ulla and myself from the cell and started to haul us along the winding, dusty corridors of the house. Alsssor ran behind them, and I looked back and asked him plaintively what was happening, and whither we were being taken.
‘The Mothmaker has called for you!’ he said. ‘I do not know why … ’
Mere instants later we were thrust into a huge room, one wall of which was taken up by a surface of shiny darkness, like a pool of oil stood up on end or the blue-black shell of an enormous mussel. In front of this weird wall stood our foe, with Reverend Cruet at her side. The Mothmaker was once again in human form, her haughty face so distressingly like Mother’s. ‘Do not be fooled by her cunning disguise!’ I warned Ulla. ‘She is really a sort of smoky jellyfish, with ever such a lot of eyes.’
‘And what about her friend, the clerical gent?’
‘Oh, that is Reverend Cruet; he is a real person, but quite under the Mothmaker’s control.’
‘Silence!’ commanded the Mothmaker. She was not speaking to me but to our two Snilth guards, who had been whispering behind us in their hissy voices.
The Mothmaker waved one pale hand, and the strange wall behind her flared with light. It was, I realised, some form of magic-lantern screen, and upon it was projected a picture of our sun and its various worlds.
‘Mothstorm is travelling into the heart of your system,’ she said. ‘I wish to learn more of your mother’s planets before I make them my own. Shipton has told me much, but you shall tell me more. Already we have passed the outer worlds – dingy, primitive little places, barely worth troubling with. The next is this … ’ And as she spoke, the picture on the screen changed to show a sulphurous yellow gas-planet girdled by fine bands of rings.
‘The planet Saturn,’ said Shipton Cruet triumphantly.
‘Indeed,’ Ulla agreed, but uneasily, as if she feared that even that might be too much information to give to the Mothmaker.
‘It looks pretty when you see it like that,’ I observed, ‘but it is a horrid place. Those rings are infested by gigantic spiders.’
‘First Ones,’ said the Mothmaker. ‘A formidable enemy. Very well; we shall pass by your Saturn for the time being and speed on to the next world … ’
Behind her head, like a poisoned halo the banded disc of Jupiter appeared.
‘This planet has many moons,’ she observed. ‘And there is life on all of them. Will the inhabitants attempt to fight me?’
‘Never, dear lady!’ said Reverend Cruet loyally. ‘Not once they realise how
charming you are!’
‘Of course they will!’ said Ulla fiercely. ‘The Jovian moons are under the protection of Great Britain, and when they see your insect fleet approaching they will launch every ship they have, and … ’
‘Wonderful!’ said the Mothmaker, with immense self-satisfaction. ‘Jupiter shall be the place where I begin my conquest. You will tell me all you know of the ships that guard it, their bases, their numbers and the weapons with which they are armed.’
‘I do not know any such thing!’ I declared, quite truthfully, for I think it is unladylike to stuff one’s head with facts and figures.
‘I don’t believe you do, dear,’ said the Mothmaker gently, smiling at me. ‘You are as innocent of military matters as Shipton Cruet. But this other creature, this red-skinned thing … ’
‘I shall tell you nothing,’ said Ulla grimly. As an intelligence agent she had doubtless stuffed her pretty head brimful of facts and figures, but she was far too brave to betray what she knew to the Mothmaker.
The Mothmaker looked at her, and her smile faded. ‘Oh, but I believe you will,’ she said. And all at once she was back in her true form, and a tentacle of shadow lashed out and gripped Ulla tight, and other, lesser tentacles seemed to reach inside her head and go feeling about in her brain. And the Mothmaker laughed and said, ‘So Io is their chief harbour – a squadron under the command of Admiral Chunderknowle – twelve ironclads – two dozen sloops of war – a scattering of gunboats – so few! So few! Why, this Jupiter will be even easier to take than I had hoped! I shall use it as a base from which to launch my onslaught on the central planets. How stupid it was of my sister to build such rich worlds and then to let mere fools and weaklings gain dominion over them!’
And her cackles pursued us along the corridors of Mothstorm as our guards dragged us back to the cell, like the maniac laughter of Snow White’s step-mama in the pantomime.