Lice shifted excitedly in his fur. That told him something; hinted, rather, as lice were notoriously unsure, not wanting to commit themselves short of indisputable fact. Sliding off the stool he strode along the shelves and picked a volume at random - although it was possible the book followed him about the room - gathering more leaves to his person. What use these might be had yet to be remedied; perhaps they would provide roofs for worms. The book's cover was a faded blue, its title unreadable. But on opening the fragile volume he discovered it to be a history of gods, their labours, loves, misfortunes, victories, arguments, sojourns, sonnets, betrayals. Greek and Roman were their names. Doctor Mood, however, saw them differently, gave them other features and affixed other epitaphs to their graves. He sat reading for hours, missing only his cigars. He sat reading aloud to the members of this splendid library, to the mites of flesh and floor, carpets long and shorn. And every one of them, from the surliest opus to the sprightliest tick, sat with him, listening attentively to his tale of Pluto and Persephone.
56
The mutants poked him with sticks that may once have been fingers. Mostly they wore heavy cowls. The few that displayed their faces did so either out of menace or sympathy. Not one of them said anything, but he guessed this to be a cell of the resistance.
Scherzo Trepan's ribs ached. They must have pumped several gallons out of him, the man who thought he was a fish.
Some of their number shuffled off down a conduit. Others melted to left and right, squat figures wrapped in balls of dreary yellow luminescence. Two remained, one grinning, visible as the second struck a match and lit a recycled candle, its colour thin and translucent, its shape undecided, its mellow flame softening the prevailing brick, lending it chalkier contours, whereas the oil lamps had provided a gritty illumination. The sewer appeared less hostile in this light, the walls less likely to collapse.
Scherzo was appreciative of the distinction.
‘You took a bump on the head,’ the grinning mutant stated.
‘I did?’ answered Scherzo. ‘I don't remember.’
‘You're lucky to be alive. If we hadn't found you, you'd have drowned.’
His companion the match lighter mumbled something incoherent.
The grinning nodded. ‘If you're a spy,’ he threatened, ‘we may kill you yet.’
‘And if I'm not?’
‘Then we'll want to know your purpose.’
Fair enough. Scherzo explored his beardless features. There was stubble there now.
The candlelight exposed a shelf of slimy concrete about a metre wide on which the grinning and the cowled sat like schoolboys round an illicit fire. Scherzo half expected one of the other to spark up a dog-end and pass it between them, all chewed nails and crooked thumbs, leafing through a glossy magazine with pinched cheeks and creased torsos. He was situated on a similar shelf on the opposite shore of a murky channel, a narrow highway of capering rats and turds, the leap-frogging traffic of gutters and drains.
The place stunk. Perhaps it was his own stench which enabled him to remain in control, to remain alive. Perhaps his fantastic odour had persuaded the mutants of some latent worth, a potential comrade.
His shoes were missing. Stolen? He glanced at his inquisitors' feet. There were five, each buckled into a battered sandal.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Portland Road.’
‘They demolished Portland Road.’
‘Not my house they didn't.’
‘What's your name?’
‘Trepan - Scherzo Trepan.’
‘And your mother's name?’
He made no reply, having forgotten. It came as a surprise, this lack of memory. He wondered how complete it was.
‘Where'd you go to school, Scherzo Trepan?’
‘I don't remember.’
‘How old are you? Where do you work?’
‘I don't know.’
‘You don't know much. You know who I am?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
The cowled figure whispered something in the grinning's ear.
‘What are you doing down here?’
Scherzo recalled. ‘Getting past the wall.’
‘The wall?’
‘I wanted to see what was on the other side.’
The grinning looked puzzled. ‘Why?’
‘The river used to be over there; the open country.’ Adding, ‘I haven't been around for a while.’
The grinning wiped his nose on his sleeve, bent it back into position. ‘You expect us to believe that, that you haven't been around for a while? You know how preposterous that sounds? Tell him, Archie.’
The cowled bent forward, leaning over the quiet stream. ‘You're lying.’
‘See?’ the grinning said. ‘Archie reads minds.’
‘Oh yeah?’ responded Scherzo. ‘In that case, if I'm lying, why'd you rescue me in the first place?’ He hoped an answer was forthcoming.
The grinning cupped large hands round the flickering candle, releasing the dark. ‘Because,’ he related, ‘Scherzo Trepan.’ All but snuffing that flame. ‘We believe you're mad...’
And madness is sacred.
The light was killed. Darkness crowded into Scherzo's head like a troop of Brownies into an elevator, their cymbal-like squawks and sticky digits unhooking the emergency telephone and blowing the fuses of his brain, their merit badges and petty rivalries the cause of blockages in his sensory apparatus, the blunt and sharp instruments upon which he relied. He settled on all fours, imitating the rodents (the turds were legless after all those curves), and felt the cold damp stone. He could no longer smell the candle, which led him to think the grinning and the cowled had abandoned him, mad or otherwise, to the vagaries of the absolute and the forced wisdom of the blind.
57
Sweltering in heavy green parka, Theodore Dreep, college journalist and murderer, decided to pause a while. The black man had vanished on an errand of his own, becoming invisible among the sturdy limbs, a non-stationary growth amid insatiable vegetable reproduction.
Dreep imagined he could hear the trees fucking, stripping one another of virginal bark. But it was only the breeze, a low, telegraphed soughing.
Nevertheless, deep in the folds of his clothing, Theodore possessed an erection.
The forest appeared to go on forever, the world turned over to acorns and blossom. It wasn't just a single blossom, either, but a complex, irregular blend of every wood and jungle that had ever existed. It had its cold areas and its warm, was an amalgam of temperatures and average rainfalls. The pair travelled roughly south, and as they did so the balance shifted in favour of broadleafs, exotic hardwoods increasing in volume whereas farther north these grew in isolated clumps or stood alone. This far south (it would be impossible to say what latitude or how long it had taken them to walk) there were only a handful of Douglas fir and other evergreens, most of which Dreep, with his limited arboreal knowledge, failed to recognize. Where ten or more grew together there was snow in the air; but such unwelcome reminders of his arctic nightmare were becoming less common. Instead, outsized insects buzzed at head height, as colourful as they were bizarre.
They'd followed the sun at approaching ninety degrees and daily the sun had slowed, the forest grown denser, stickier, more humid. Daily the animal life had thinned to extinction on the ground and the air become sluggish in their lungs. One creature stayed with them, however, glimpsed occasionally through misshapen branches. Poorman, the white shadow, raw, naked, stretching the cold, carrying it southward with him, the icicle man. His breath frosted, killing flowers, the onetime research station commandant. He floated like a ghost to their rear, working harder now to keep up, busier in the cool of night than during the metal day, circling the lonely hours before dawn when Dreep would habitually throw another log on the fire.
On the river bank that same Dreep hunched down, stared at his bulky reflection in the placid water and came to a deci
sion. Poorman aside he knew himself to be alone, but still he gazed nervously left and right to confirm that no-one was watching before he began, slowly and painfully, to remove his clothing.
He lay supine in the tall grass and tugged firstly at the stubborn zip of his parka, feeling as if he was yanking the stitches from and unhealed wound. The zip gave a few teeth at a time. The fur lining yawned, spread its silver tentacles like the current-spun barbs of a sea-anemone, spines touched with orange, tickling the atmosphere whose heat lubricated the process by which the stiffened garment was levered from Dreep's forgotten body. The parka open, those spines turned a garish red as the light splashed across the sweater beneath, the whole resembling the slit guts and gills of an enormous fish. Colours moved like digestive juices, leaked and spilt. The rasping of his throat accompanied that of his upper limbs as he dragged his encumbered arms from their protective tubes. Theodore felt vulnerable without his armour, yet was cognizant of the fact that he had outgrown its usefulness. Next he loosened the belt of his trousers, leather and metal and plastic cracking, and carefully slipped them over his gaunt hips. The immediacy of flesh below knuckles was a curious sensation, the barriers reduced to thermal layers. He had to sit up to pull off his boots, their absence then allowing him to remove the cumbersome trousers altogether. Dreep tossed them away like the diseased pelt of some improbable mammal. The boots collapsed and died. Tiring, he wrenched the blood-red sweater from the grip of his chest, peeled it off his shoulders, eventually pulled it loose of his skull, the ears holding on till the last, stretched tall like antlers. He rested a short time in his stained underwear before crawling through the grass to the river's edge. Overlooking the water Theodore finally shed the last vestiges of his adopted skins, leaving himself bare and sore. Then he slithered like a newborn alligator into the depthless water.
He drank of it, let it fill his wasted body, bobbed on the bright surface as the renewing liquid permeated his dour flesh and bloated his starved organs. There could not have been more than six pints of consanguineous fluid in him. His muscles grew fat; his joints were oiled. He grazed the river. The gentle swell bore him downstream, while above him soared the endless canopy whose harboured birds were never seen to descend below tree height, fantastic glints among the greenery, spread wings of blue and yellow, amber and pink and orange, red and purple and gold, presenting to his eyes a parade of cloudy visions...
Woodtoe, known as Blinder, climbed the tallest tree he could find. To the south the forest darkened as if overhung by the anvil of a storm, hinting at a deceptive uniformity, while to the north the trees looked farther apart, wider spaced, more acutely defined, as if their presence were a detailed illusion, a painted background, a border to reality that was heading toward him. Also, southward, cutting a notch in the sky, a rocky prominence disturbed the verdant regularity of the horizon, its discernible crown dressed stone and its lofty station dominating the green world. An ideal place for a fortress. Blinder strained his eyes to the outcrop. The topmost branches to which he clung swayed as he moved. It was impossible for him to remain motionless. To do so would mean planting himself in the powdery earth and patiently stringing out the years in the hope that he might grow sufficiently tall to see over the massed heads of his woody brethren. A sacrifice he was not ready to make, the advantages of his present mobility far outweighing those of a life, however long, fixed permanently in the ground. He was about to descend when a silhouette, that of an ungainly bird, crossed the shallow, day-enhanced moon, heading for the fortress on its rocky plinth and alighting there in a commotion of metre-wide feathers. The aviator's flight and landing were clumsy, off-balance. Blinder smiled, for this was no ordinary roost. The huge bird was the affirmation he sought of the castle's occupancy.
Quickly he clambered down. Juggling fruits and cones, full of himself but with Poorman not far behind, Blinder rushed to locate Dreep and tell him the news. But all he could find of the skinny white man were the flaky casts of dead clothes.
58
An angel led our masked avenger to believe that the way ahead was fraught with danger and that only the brave might hope to survive, which did a lot for Scherzo's ego but little to boost his confidence in things inherently divine. By now he was sure he had passed beyond the wall and in doing so entered the underground realm of the transcendental. None of which was new to Trepan. The blackness he suffered served to goad his memory, that memory to produce images of death and Hellfire. Already he sensed a probing warmth caressing his bones. It would get steadily hotter. The sewer wound inexorably, but with the angel's help he managed three correct turns out of four. As did the mutant resistance tailing him. He wondered if they'd planned this expedition in advance or were simply taking advantage of his coming. Scherzo felt like some biblical figure - in reverse, as he was leading the rag-draped innocents into the stinking bowels of dread perdition. He couldn't think what they hoped to achieve by entering the furnace. Who knows, maybe they intended to extinguish it.
One thing was for sure; theirs was a volunteer workforce.
59
No wonder the sun stood still. Unlike blue-green Pulchritude upon which everything was forced to keep moving lest it be eaten, the planet itself vulnerable, forever enacting death on its lumpy surface in order to forestall the transfixing of its lonely heart, the sun, a G2 sub-dwarf, was a great butter churn just waiting to be dipped into, spread copiously on a variety of space-faring loaves and ultimately tongues, fuel for the stomachs and engines that thrived on such transportational plunder. Presland Bill, ensconced in his subterranean passion parlour, might mourn its passing, as it represented a splendid combustion, but as a casualty of war, his war, he would remain indifferent. Besides, there were more pressing matters occupying Pluto at that moment, like the mysterious disappearance of his beloved.
At which point the doctor stopped reading. The silence was short lived. The same draught he had followed here gently edged the library doors open. Dust motes gathered imploringly about his thick ankles and leaves green and gold joined the numerous tomes in a rustling agitation.
Grandma, he thought, is that you?
60
A dank mist slowly obscured the city. Twilight squeezed the mist to earth, the yellow street-lamps burning fitful holes through its clammy obstinacy. Lousy weather for cats, but there were plenty abroad.
Walking upright, in trench coat and Homburg, a singular tom dropped in at The Odd One Out for a jar and a gawp at the natives. He paid with money earlier stolen from a cigarette machine alone and unprotected in the train station foyer across several merging streets, his pockets satisfyingly full at this moment with dull gold coins. It was his first real opportunity to take a close look at the planet's indigenous life, having previously been too busy dodging Pearce and his globular flunkies. They were, all three, the man and his subordinates, still around somewhere. Of course, they could travel in neither space nor time without him.
For the immediate future then, Staples was free.
So he smiled his best cheesy smile, licked his whiskers and ordered another drink.
Back home on Formalhaut Staples spent his time in sleepy contemplation. There wasn't much else to do on a world nature had tamed to the point of removing all sharp edges and ensuring there was always a plentiful growth of Soft Landing Bushes under any precipice more than tail high. Life on Formalhaut was quiet, not to say boring. Nothing was born and nothing died; anything new had simply changed from being something else. Then Austin Pearce arrived. At first it was assumed Pearce was the altered condition of a resident, but that was before his peculiar behaviour attracted the attention of some of the more socially aware allotropes. Staples' curiosity became aroused when the newcomer began constructing a villa on his favourite hillside; moreover, on a large flat rock surrounded by complimentary amber blossoms, that, no matter the cloud cover and regardless of the presence of rain, was always just the right temperature. Clearly something had to be done. And yet, like most allotropes, Staples ha
d never taken action on anything greater than a digestive scale. He was nonplussed. On Formalhaut there was no cause, as anything done could as easily be undone. The newcomer's villa, however, was fixed and permanent, alien to the landscape and existentially moored.
Someone nudged him in the ribs.
61
In his hotel room, 4H behind pointed ear, Austin Pearce, late of Renny's utility cupboard, cut a slice from his pie chart and placed it on the glass top of the coffee table. That left four slices: gravity 172 degrees, cosmic rays, primary 49 degrees, secondary 26 degrees, light, velocity of 108 degrees.
Average sectional divisions as far as the yonderscope and four-dimensional space were concerned. But the fifth slice, local phenomena, had risen to an unprecedented 93 degrees, wherein lay his difficulties. He was stuck. What was worse, the present he was stuck in was twenty years behind the actual present of Pulchritude. And the universe, he felt sure, was experiencing perturbations in his absence.
Pearce left the room and clomped down the marble steps with its brass-fettered carpet. He hit the smudged night through the revolving doors. The blue globe and the green, fused together in a mute yellow, bobbed to his rear like a helium balloon on a string. He'd called off their pursuit of the orange in the hope that that entity would return of its own accord. It would get hungry, he reasoned. It knew little of terrestrial supermarkets. He'd rather not think about the trouble it could find itself in. Right now Austin was headed back to Renny's and his machine, the malfunction of which had left him stranded and his chief transmogrifier on the loose. Anything could happen.
Taking a taxi to the remembered address he approached the door, picked the lock using a string of violet pearls, walked the short length of the hall, reading from the glinting dust that Renny had not been home for some days; confirmation of an earlier hunch, when, the previous morning, the sun had briefly ceased to move across the sky. The yonderscope shone dimly in the curtained rectangle of the front room. Thankful, Pearce adopted the position. He toed the levers and tugged the wires, breathed on the mirrors and tapped the dials, buffing one and all with his soft elbow patches. Everything appeared to be in order. Nothing had been tampered with. Relaxing in the fold of burgundy leather he patiently subtracted logarithms.