Haroun and the Sea of Stories (6 page)

‘What did you do that for?’ hissed Haroun, not wishing to wake his father; at which Iff gave his wicked grin. ‘A foolish notion,’ he said innocently. ‘A fancy, a passing whim. Certainly not because I know more about such matters than you, dear me, no.’

Haroun ran to the window, and saw the Hoopoe floating on the Dull Lake, grown large, as large as a double bed, easily large enough for a Water Genie and a boy to ride upon its back.

‘And off we go,’ carolled Iff, much too loud for Haroun’s liking; and then the Water Genie skipped up on to the window sill and thence to the Hoopoe’s back—and Haroun, with scarcely a moment to reflect on the wisdom of what he was doing, and still wearing his long red nightshirt with the purple patches, and clutching the Disconnecting Tool firmly in his left hand, followed. As he settled down behind the Water Genie, the Hoopoe turned its head to inspect him with a critical but (Haroun hoped) friendly eye.

Then they took off and flew rapidly into the sky.

The force of their acceleration pushed Haroun deep into the comfortable, thick and somehow
hairy
feathers on the Hoopoe’s back, feathers that seemed to gather around Haroun to protect him during the flight. He took a few moments to digest the large number of amazing things that had taken place in quick time.

Soon they were travelling so quickly that the Earth below them and the sky above both dissolved into a blur, which gave Haroun the feeling that they weren’t moving at all, but simply floating in that impossible, blurry space. ‘When the Mail Coach Driver, Butt, was rocketing up the Mountains of M, I had this same sense of floating,’ he recalled. ‘Come to think of it, this Hoopoe with its crest of feathers reminds me quite a bit of old Butt with his quiff of hair standing straight up on his head! —And if Butt’s whiskers were somehow feathery, then this Hoopoe’s feathers—as I noticed the moment we took off—have a distinctly hairy feel.’

Their speed increased again, and Haroun shouted into Iff’s ear: ‘No bird could fly so fast. Is this a machine?’

The Hoopoe fixed him with its glittering eye. ‘You maybe have some objection to machines?’ it inquired, in a loud, booming voice that was identical in every respect to the Mail Coach Driver’s. And at once it went on: ‘But but but you have entrusted your life to me. Then am I not worthy of a little of your respect? Machines also have their sense of self-esteem. —No need to gawp like that, young sir, I can’t help it if I remind you of someone; at least, being a driver, he’s a fellow who feels fond of a good, fast travel machine.’

‘You can read my mind,’ Haroun said, somewhat accusingly, because it wasn’t entirely a pleasant feeling to have one’s private ruminations bugged by a mechanical bird. ‘But but but certainly,’ answered the Hoopoe. ‘Also I am communicating with you
telepathically
, because as you may observe I am not moving my beak, which must maintain its present configuration for aerodynamic reasons.’

‘How are you doing that?’ demanded Haroun, and back came the inevitable answer, quick as a flash of thought: ‘By a P2C2E. A Process Too Complicated To Explain.’

‘I give up,’ said Haroun. ‘Anyhow, do you have a name?’

‘Whatever name you please,’ replied the bird. ‘Might I suggest, for obvious reasons, “Butt”?’

So it was that Haroun Khalifa the storyteller’s son soared into the night sky on the back of Butt the Hoopoe with Iff the Water Genie as his guide. The sun rose; and after a time Haroun spotted something in the distance, a heavenly body like a large asteroid. ‘That is Kahani, the Earth’s second Moon,’ said Butt the Hoopoe without moving its beak.

‘But but but,’ Haroun stammered (much to the Hoopoe’s amusement), ‘surely the Earth has just the one Moon? How could a second satellite have remained undiscovered for so long?’

‘But but but it is because of Speed,’ Butt the Hoopoe responded. ‘Speed, most Necessary of Qualities! In any Emergency—fire, auto, marine—what is required above all things? Of course, Speed: of fire truck, ambulance, rescue ship. —And what do we prize in a brainy fellow? —Is it not his Quickness of Thought? —And in any sport, Speed (of foot, hand, eye) is of the Essence! —And what humans cannot do quickly enough, they build machines to do faster. —Speed, super Speed! If not for the Speed of Light, the universe would be dark and cold. —But if Speed brings light to reveal, it can also be used to conceal. The Moon, Kahani, travels so fast—wonder of wonders!—that no Earth instruments can detect it; also its orbit varies by one degree per circuit, so that in three hundred and sixty orbits it has overflown every spot upon the Earth. Variety of Behaviour assists in Evasion of Detection. But also, there are serious purposes for the variation of orbit: Story Water facilities must be provided across the entire planet with an even hand. Voom! Varoom! Only at High Speed may this be done. You appreciate the further bonuses of Machines?’

‘Then is the Moon, Kahani, driven by mechanical means?’ Haroun asked, but Butt had turned its attention to practical matters. ‘Moon approaching,’ it said without moving its beak. ‘Relative speed synchronized. Landing procedures initiated. Splashdown in thirty seconds, twenty-nine, twenty-eight.’

Rushing up towards them was a sparkling and seemingly infinite expanse of water. The surface of Kahani appeared—as far as Haroun’s eye could see—to be entirely liquid. And what water it was! It shone with colours everywhere, colours in a brilliant riot, colours such as Haroun could never have imagined. And it was evidently a warm ocean; Haroun could see steam rising off it, steam that glowed in the sunlight. He caught his breath.

‘The Ocean of the Streams of Story,’ said Iff the Water Genie, his blue whiskers bristling with pride. ‘Wasn’t it worth travelling so far and fast to see?’

‘Three,’ said Butt the Hoopoe without moving its beak. ‘Two, one, zero.’

~ ~ ~

Water, water everywhere; nor any trace of land … ‘It’s a trick,’ cried Haroun. ‘There’s no Gup City here, unless I’m much mistaken. And no Gup City equals no P2C2E House, no Walrus, no point in being here at all.’

‘Hold your horses,’ said the Water Genie. ‘Cool down, don’t blow your top, keep your hair on. Explanations are in order, and are forthcoming, if you will only permit.’

‘But this is the Middle of Nowhere,’ Haroun went on. ‘What do you expect me to do out here?’

‘To be precise, this is the Deep North of Kahani,’ the Water Genie replied. ‘And what is available to us here is a short cut, avoidance of bureaucratic procedures, a means of cutting the red tape. Also, if I must truthfully admit, a means of solving our little difficulty without admitting to Guppee authorities my little mistake, my loss of Disconnecting Tool and subsequent blackmail by its Pincher. We are here in search of Wishwater.’

‘Look for patches of the Ocean that shine with extra brightness,’ Butt the Hoopoe added. ‘That’s Wishwater; use it properly and it can make your desires come true.’

‘So persons in Gup need never be directly involved,’ Iff went on. ‘When your Wish is granted, you can return the Tool, and home you go to bed, and end of saga. Okay?’

‘Oh, very well,’ Haroun agreed somewhat doubtfully, and, it should be said, with a little regret, because he had been looking forward to seeing Gup City and learning more about the mysterious Processes Too Complicated To Explain.

‘Tip-top type,’ cried Iff in great relief. ‘Good sport, prince among men, popular choice. —And hey presto! Wishwater ahoy!’

Butt paddled carefully towards the patch of brightness at which Iff was eagerly pointing, and came to a halt by its edge. The Wishwater gave off so dazzling a light that Haroun had to avert his gaze. —Now Iff the Water Genie reached inside his little gold-embroidered waistcoat and pulled out a small bottle made of many-faceted crystal, with a little golden cap. Swiftly unscrewing the cap, he drew the bottle through the bright water (whose glow was golden, too); and, fastening the lid once more, he passed the bottle carefully to Haroun. ‘On your marks, be prepared, here goes,’ he said. ‘This is what you must do.’

This was the secret of the Wishwater: the harder you wished, the better it worked. ‘So it’s up to you,’ Iff said. ‘No fooling around, get down to it good and proper, do serious business, and the Wishwater will do serious business for you. And bingo! Your heart’s desire will be as good as yours.’

Haroun sat astride Butt the Hoopoe and stared at the bottle in his hand. Just one sip, and he could regain for his father the lost Gift of the Gab! ‘Down the hatch,’ he cried courageously; unscrewed the cap; and took a goodly gulp.

Now the golden glow was all around him, and inside him, too; and everything was very, very still, as if the entire cosmos were waiting upon his commands. He began to focus his thoughts …

He couldn’t do it. If he tried to concentrate on his father’s lost storytelling powers and his cancelled Story Water subscription, then the image of his mother insisted on taking over, and he began to wish for her return instead, for everything to be as it had been before … and then his father’s face returned, pleading with him,
just do this one thing for me, my boy, just this one little thing
; and then it was his mother again, and he didn’t know what to think, what to wish—until with a jangling noise like the breaking of a thousand and one violin strings, the golden glow disappeared and he was back with Iff and the Hoopoe on the surface of the Sea of Stories.

‘Eleven minutes,’ said the Water Genie contemptuously. ‘Just eleven minutes and his concentration goes, ka-bam, ka-blooey, ka-put.’

Haroun was filled with the shame of it, and hung his head.

‘But but but this is disgraceful, Iff,’ said Butt the Hoopoe without moving its beak. ‘Wishes are not such easy things, as you know well. You, mister Water Genie, are upset because of your own error, because now we must go to Gup City after all, and there will be harsh words and hot water for you, and you are taking it out on the boy. Stop it! Stop it or I’ll be annoyed.’

(Truly this was a most passionate, even excitable sort of machine, Haroun thought in spite of his unhappiness. Machines were supposed to be ultra-rational, but this bird could be genuinely temperamental.)

Iff looked at the red blush of humiliation that was all over Haroun’s face and softened somewhat. ‘Gup City it is,’ he agreed. ‘Unless, of course, you’d like to hand over the Disconnecting Tool and just call the whole thing off?’

Haroun shook his head, miserably.

‘But but but you are still bullying the boy,’ Butt the Hoopoe expostulated furiously without moving its beak. ‘Change of plan, please, right away! Cheering-up procedures to be instituted at once. Give the lad a happy story to drink.’

‘Not another drink,’ said Haroun in a low, small voice. ‘What are you going to make me fail at now?’

~ ~ ~

So Iff the Water Genie told Haroun about the Ocean of the Streams of Story, and even though he was full of a sense of hopelessness and failure the magic of the Ocean began to have an effect on Haroun. He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity; and Iff explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories; so that unlike a library of books, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was much more than a storeroom of yarns. It was not dead but alive.

‘And if you are very, very careful, or very, very highly skilled, you can dip a cup into the Ocean,’ Iff told Haroun, ‘like so’, and here he produced a little golden cup from another of his waistcoat pockets, ‘and you can fill it with water from a single, pure Stream of Story, like so’, as he did precisely that, ‘and then you can offer it to a young fellow who’s feeling blue, so that the magic of the story can restore his spirits. Go on now; knock it back, have a swig, do yourself a favour,’ Iff concluded. ‘Guaranteed to make you feel A-number-one.’

Haroun, without saying a word, took the golden cup and drank.

~ ~ ~

He found himself standing in a landscape that looked exactly like a giant chessboard. On every black square there was a monster: there were two-tongued snakes and lions with three rows of teeth, and four-headed dogs and five-headed demon kings and so on. He was, so to speak, looking out through the eyes of the young hero of the story. It was like being in the passenger seat of an automobile; all he had to do was watch, while the hero dispatched one monster after another and advanced up the chessboard towards the white stone tower at the end. At the top of the tower was (what else but) a single window, out of which there gazed (who else but) a captive princess. What Haroun was experiencing, though he didn’t know it, was Princess Rescue Story Number S/1001/ZHT/420/41(r)xi; and because the princess in this particular story had recently had a haircut and therefore had no long tresses to let down (unlike the heroine of Princess Rescue Story G/1001/RIM/777/M(w)i, better known as ‘Rapunzel’), Haroun as the hero was required to climb up the outside of the tower by clinging to the cracks between the stones with his bare hands and feet.

He was halfway up the tower when he noticed one of his hands beginning to change, becoming hairy, losing its human shape. Then his arms burst out of his shirt, and they too had grown hairy, and impossibly long, and had joints in the wrong places. He looked down and saw the same thing happening to his legs. When new limbs began to push themselves out from his sides, he understood that he was somehow turning into a monster just like those he had been killing; and above him the princess caught at her throat and cried out in a faint voice: