A Wild Ride Through The Night (13 page)

‘I’m glad,’ said Gustave. He decided to get down to brass tacks. ‘Would you think it very impolite of me to ask you a favour in return?’

‘You’ve already got the tooth,’ the Time Pig grunted. ‘Besides, I’m very busy.’

‘It’s only another question,’ said Gustave. ‘My next task is to meet myself, and I’ve no idea how to set about it.’

‘That’s impossible,’ the Time Pig said meditatively.

‘I know.’

‘Let me finish! It’s only impossible so long as you’re in your own spatio-temporal continuum. If you changed your continuum, however, you could see your
spatio-temporal continuum projection
in your
future-contingency honeycomb
, which would more or less amount to meeting yourself.’

‘I don’t understand. What’s a spatio-temporal, er …’

‘Spatio-temporal continuum projection? It gives you a view of
your
future-contingency time warp. In other words … Well, I really can’t explain that either. But I can take you there.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course. All we have to do is take a trip into the future.’

‘Could you do that?’

‘Hey,’ the pig exclaimed, ‘I’m
Time
, remember?’

GUSTAVE SEATED HIMSELF
on the Time Pig’s back. It spat a little blood and pus into Lake Blue-Blood, then flapped its leathery wings and took off. Above the clouds within moments, they climbed higher and higher. Time gave another flap of its wings, and they left the earth’s atmosphere behind. The strange pair were surrounded on all sides by a colossal black void sprinkled with stars that glittered so brightly they hurt Gustave’s eyes. Behind them, the earth shrank to a steadily dwindling bluish-white ball.

‘I say,’ Gustave exclaimed, ‘I can breathe! I thought there wasn’t any air in space.’

‘Nonsense,’ the Time Pig replied, ‘there’s everything in space. They also claim there’s no sound here. If that were so, how could you hear me?’

Gustave was surprised at how good the acoustics were in space. He could hear the sun crackling as it burned, and even distant stars rustled like tissue paper. They were just flying past the moon, and he thought he detected a light twinkling at the bottom of one of its craters.

‘The Sea of Tranquillity,’ the Time Pig said, unasked. ‘That’s Death’s house. The light’s on, so he must be at home.’

Before Gustave could reply, the Time Pig flapped its wings several times and they soared past half a dozen planets, some more moons, and a large shower of asteroids. For a while they glided through another black void dimly lit by a few tiny suns in the far distance. Then the specks of light multiplied and condensed until they eventually formed whole constellations in which Gustave seemed to discern familiar shapes, for instance a galloping horse
that
aroused painful memories of Pancho Sansa. Events had followed one another in such quick succession, he hadn’t got around to mourning the loss of his faithful companion.

‘Yes, that’s the universe for you,’ the Time Pig pontificated. ‘I mean, we’re in it when we’re down on earth, but you don’t realise that until you’re floating around up here, eh? Not even a telescope can convey this sublime impression.’

‘You’re right,’ murmured Gustave, overwhelmed by the boundless panorama.

‘But don’t be too impressed, my boy. Majestic as it may look from here, the structure of the universe is no more complicated than …’ Time searched around for a comparison. ‘Than that of a department store, for instance.’

Gustave remembered the old woman in the forest, who had also blathered about a department store.

‘There are three floors, and a different time prevails on each. The basement contains the past—it’s the storeroom, so to speak, where all that has happened is stacked. The ground floor is the present, where we are right now, and the first floor is reserved for the future—everything that’s going to happen. Or rather, everything that
may
happen. That’s our destination.’

‘I once met an old woman who also claimed that the world of dreams was like a department store—if I understood her correctly.’

‘I hope she wasn’t a dream princess!’ The Time Pig laughed. ‘The members of that profession like to theorise that the whole of the universe is a dream. A thoroughly subjective interpretation, but quite an interesting philosophy.’

‘If that were right,’ mused Gustave, ‘
who
would dream it?’

‘Exactly. That would be the next big question: Who is the universe actually dreamt by? Hard to say. By me, perhaps? That would be another very subjective assumption.’ The Time Pig gave a grunt of amusement. ‘But I’m not dreaming. I don’t even sleep. Who knows, perhaps it’s a collective dream—perhaps it’s a kind of porridge stirred by many dreamers. Not a very appetising idea, what?’

Gustave nodded. A meteor not much bigger than his head wobbled past only an arm’s-length away. It was strewn with miniature volcanic craters, one of which was emitting a dainty little flame.

‘But perhaps the universe is being dreamt by
you
,’ said the Time Pig. ‘Who knows?’

Gustave frowned. ‘I’m certainly not asleep at the moment,’ he said, ‘so how can I be dreaming it?’

‘Right again. Which brings us back to our original question: Who is the universe dreamt by? At least the two of us can be ruled out as suspects. Perhaps it’s dreamt by an ant that lives on Saturn.’

‘Are there really ants on Saturn?’

‘Of course, there are ants everywhere. Did you know that the ants on Saturn have three heads?’

‘Yes,’ said Gustave.

‘You’re a strange lad. You don’t know for sure there are ants on Saturn, yet you know they have three heads.’

Gustave could have enlightened the Time Pig, but he refrained. Instead, he asked, ‘What if the person who’s dreaming it all wakes up?’

The pig gave another laugh. ‘In that case, my boy, it’s curtains!’

Some more little meteors wobbled past, somewhat faster than the first, and Gustave seemed to hear a noise, a roaring, pattering sound like that of a waterfall. Or was it the crackle of a big fire? A sun?

‘We’re nearly there!’ cried the Time Pig. ‘You’d better hold on tight now. We could soon be in for some turbulence.’

A massive asteroid went thundering over their heads. Gustave felt as if he were being tugged at by some mighty, invisible hand that had closed around him and the pig and was towing them along by main force.

‘Are we there? Where are we?’

‘You see that red dot over there? The one with the orange aura?’

‘Yes. Is it a star?’

‘No, it’s a Galactic Gully. We’re taking a short cut, it’ll be quicker. Gullies are a bit bumpy, but they’re faster than those sluggish black holes. You don’t get transformed into light or elasticated like spaghetti, either. You retain your original shape. All that happens is, the words sometimes come out longer when you speak.’

‘What is a Galactic Gully?’

‘It’s the Milky Way’s drainpipe, so to speak. An elevator into the future, a slide that’ll take you into the day after tomorrow. I told you: up here there’s everything. Black holes, white holes, red holes. I once saw a hole near Betelgeuze whose colour I couldn’t even find a name for.’

Meanwhile, the red dot had expanded into a purple vortex that occupied half Gustave’s field of vision. Spiralling through it, and glowing like molten lava, was a long, dark red streak.

‘That looks like Wanderlust Wine,’ said Gustave, ‘only much bigger.’

‘Wanderlust Wine?’ The Time Pig chuckled. ‘Sounds like a drink I could use a swig of right now.’

‘It’s very beautiful.’

‘Yes, dangerous things often are.’

The roar had swelled to ear-splitting proportions. Gustave saw the vortex capture swarms of meteors, comets, moons and whole planets. They were sucked into its rotating centre and vanished without trace. He felt as if he were being flayed alive.

‘Hang on tight!’ the Time Pig yelled.

They plunged into the purple whirlpool, and Gustave’s head was filled with its crackling, crepitating roar. He saw stars: black, white, yellow, red, orange, green, yellow, blue, lilac, gold, silver, and red again. He went hot and cold and hot in turn. Then everything disintegrated into innumerable multicoloured snowflakes that formed whirling patterns of breathtaking beauty. Simultaneously, absolute silence fell.

‘Wwwhhhaaat wwweee’re doooiiinnng heeere hhhaaas nnnooot rrreeeaaallly bbbeeen dddefffined yyyettt,’ shouted the Time Pig, its words sounding as if each were made of rubber and had been individually stretched.

‘Sssccciiieeennntttiiifffiiicccaaallly dddeeefffined, I mmmeeeaaannn,’ it went on. ‘Bbbuuuttt sssooommme dddaaayyy sssooommmeee-ooonnne wwwiiilll cccooome aaalllooonnnggg wwwhhhooo wwwiiilll dddeeefffiiine iiittt aaalll. Aaannnddd ttthhhaaattt iiinnndddiiivvviiiddduuuaaalll wwwiiilll ccclllaaaiiimmm ttthhhaaattt I’mmm ooonnnllly
rrreeelllaaatttiiive
!’ The Time Pig gave a hoarse
laugh.
‘Aaannnddd yyyooouuu kkknnnooowww wwwhhhaaattt? Hhheee’lll bbbeee aaabbbsssooollluuutely rrriiiggghhhttt!’

The tunnel continually changed shape. It was sometimes circular, sometimes rectangular, sometimes triangular, then circular again, then flat, and so on. In the end, everything around them went as black as the bottom of a well, and they flew on unmoving through the starless darkness—for an eternity, or so it seemed to Gustave.

‘I’m sure this seems like an eternity to you,’ called the Time Pig, ‘but it’s less than a hundred years.’

‘You mean we’re travelling a hundred years into the future?’ asked Gustave.

‘Not quite, but more or less.’

The Time Pig looked round with an uneasy expression on its rosy face.

‘I don’t like this dark stretch of the Gully. It’s a part of the universe I prefer not to linger in—there are too many riffraff around. But that’s how it is with short cuts, they can often be hard going.’

From the depths of the Gully came a sound that seemed familiar to Gustave. He couldn’t quite place where he knew it from, but he involuntarily associated it with extreme danger. Although still distant, it seemed to be approaching rapidly.

‘Talk of the devil,’ groaned the Time Pig. ‘Now there’ll be trouble.’

At last Gustave managed to identify the source of the sound— or rather, the sources, because they were heading straight towards him with an ever-increasing roar. They were the
Siamese Twins Tornado
, the two telepathic whirlwinds that had sunk his ship
Aventure
before
disappearing into the sky. Now composed of rotating stardust, cosmic gases and eternal ice, they were tossing meteorites and bits of asteroid around and behaving no less tempestuously up here than they had down on earth.

The Time Pig flapped its wings and made straight for them. ‘A Siamese Twins Tornado!’ it shouted above the din. ‘You have to steer straight through the middle, it’s the only way.’

‘I wish I’d known that earlier,’ sighed Gustave. ‘If I had, my journey might have taken quite a different course.’

The whirlwinds piled up on either side of him like monstrous great millstones. Their roar was almost enough to burst his skull, and the cosmic turbulence they produced nearly wrenched him off the back of his mount, but he clung tightly to the Time Pig’s bristles and tried to duck beneath the thunderbolts the tornadoes hurled back and forth as a means of communication.

Gustave felt he was being torn apart as he and the Time Pig flew through their electrically charged field of force. A shaft of lightning entered one ear, went screaming through his brain, and emerged from the other. He was compelled to listen to the telepathic messages the tornadoes were exchanging. Incredibly savage and ruthless, they conveyed a blind and frenzied urge to destroy everything in their path. Fragments of rock whistled past Gustave’s head and cosmic dust filled his nose and mouth, almost taking his breath away. But at last came a jolt and a sound like a net being ripped apart, and they were out the other side. Still rampaging and hurling thunderbolts around, the tornadoes swiftly receded into the darkness of the Galactic Gully.

‘Phew!’ said the Time Pig. ‘Damn those tornadoes! I told you,
this
is where the worst riffraff in the universe hang out. Did you know they communicate by thunderbolt?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Gustave.

The Time Pig raised its eyebrows. ‘You know a great deal.’

They glided along through the silence and darkness for ages, and Gustave began to doubt if this really was a short cut. Where did it lead to, anyway? Into the future, fair enough, but where in the future, exactly? Before he could put that question to the Time Pig, clouds suddenly welled up out of the darkness, and the Galactic Gully resounded with cries, howls and frantic whinnying sounds.

‘Not that too!’ groaned the Time Pig. ‘I hate this part of the cosmos!’

A rider on a wild, snorting charger came galloping towards them. Gustave recognised him at once, although he looked strangely altered. It was Death, wearing his billowing cloak and brandishing a scythe, and following him on foot came a band of rampaging demons. Whether or not he noticed Gustave and his imposing mount, he didn’t spare them a glance but galloped past with head erect. It struck Gustave that his face looked less … well, less
dead
than before. Once bare bone, his skull seemed now to be thinly covered with skin, although his eye sockets were as black and empty as ever.

The wild horde vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, heading in the same direction as the tornadoes.

‘That was Death,’ the Time Pig explained.

‘I noticed,’ Gustave called back. ‘But you said he was in his house on the moon.’

‘So he is. We’re in a Galactic Drainpipe—everything works rather
differently
up here, my boy. You must bid farewell to your traditional ideas of time, or you’ll lose your mind.’

‘Why did Death look so young?’

‘That’s easy: because he still
was
young. That was Death a few hundred years ago, in his storm-and-stress phase. He was probably on his way to afflict humanity with some plague or other.’ The Time Pig spat contemptuously into the darkness. ‘He was far more ambitious in those days—utterly convinced that his activities were worthwhile and full of bright ideas: epidemics, crusades, wars, massacres, revolutions! But no matter how hard he toiled, the world’s population doubled and redoubled in spite of him. At some stage he simply ran out of steam.’ The Time Pig gave a sympathetic laugh. ‘He used to have many more hangers-on, as you saw, but look at him today! Just a skeleton—a mere shadow of his former self. He does his job by the book and skulks in his retirement home on the moon. Little boys are all he frightens nowadays. His sole companion these days is his crazy sister. Death has become an old-age pensioner.’