Johannes Cabal The Necromancer (23 page)

Jan understood immediately. “Oh, lumme, they’re not, are they?” he said with dismay. He hated this.

T’shardikara had many negative traits, but inattention wasn’t one of them. “They’re up to something,” he clicked and whirred at his troops in their native tongue. “Kill them!”

Three dozen Mutron space carbines opened fire simultaneously, but it was already too late. Chambers, space hero to a generation, had fired at the ground beneath him at full power! The pistol, with its inertial compensators deactivated, produced a monstrous kick. In the Moon’s weak gravity— one-sixth of Earth’s—he was thrown high above the surface. Tumbling head over heels, he reactivated the compensators and started snap-shooting with deadly effect on the snipers. Jan’s enormously powerful hind legs had propelled him into the dark lunar sky without the need for assistance, and he fired in valiant and enthusiastic support. Selenite warriors shattered and exploded under the lethal rain, their return fire confused and ineffective. In seconds, one had thrown down its carbine and was running for the safety of the nearby tunnel—certainly the method by which they had taken the base by surprise. Like a trickle forming into a deluge, the others quickly decided that they couldn’t face up to Captain Tim Chambers, and they, too, ran, a rout rather than a retreat.

“Re-form, you fools! Regroup and attack!” raged T’shardikara. Suddenly he realised he was alone. Discretion being the better part of valour, he ran, too. “The next time, Captain, you will be sorry for this. Oh, yes!” he grated before throwing himself headlong into the tunnel. Chambers’s and Jan’s combined fire brought it crashing down on his heels.

Ten minutes later, they were inside Moonbase Omega untying the prisoners. “Great guns, sir!” cried the base commandant, slapping Chambers on the shoulder. “I thought the jig was up there for a little while. Then, when that Selenite who was leading them—”

“T’shardikara.”

“They’ve got names? Fancy that. Anyway, when the leader said it was all a trap to take you in, I thought right then, didn’t I think right then, Valerie?”

Valerie, the commandant’s beautiful daughter, looked at Chambers with unabashed adoration. “Oh, yes!” she said. Something about her attention made Chambers feel a bit funny and awkward.

    I meen, she’s a GURL, uech, yak, spu. She wil want to kiss and talk about ponys. Stil, faithfull reeder, I am oddly affkted by her presens. The ol kommadant is stil talking. “I thort rite then, they hav bitten off more than they can chew.”

    Then Yan the bunny sa

“Think you could do this for a living? Being a hero and everything?”

Timothy was still looking around the room with wide eyes. Light bulbs flickered random patterns in plywood consoles, a painted moonscape was visible through a plastic window, Layla and some giant stuffed toys stood around in tatty uniforms of silver lamé. Layla had an expression of unabashed adoration that wasn’t altering by a twitch. “This is great,” he breathed.

“Well,” continued Jan, “all you have to do is fill in a form and all this can be yours.”

“A form?” said Timothy dubiously. “Forms” were the only things about growing up that filled him with fear. They looked complicated, and he knew his parents hated them.

“Oh, don’t say it like that. It’s your entry to the Space Corps. Your name’s all that’s needed. Right here.” He produced a form from his stuffing.

Timothy looked at it for the best part of three seconds before saying, “Okay.”

“That’s great,” said Jan, flicking pieces of kapok off the parchment. “You won’t regret this.” In an undertone he added, “At least, not immediately.” He passed Timothy a pen.

    Then 3 things hapen all at once almost. 1st there is a big smash as if ½ the wall have been knokked down behind us. 2nd the pen just vanish out of mi hand. 3rd Yan the RABIT OF FEER is dangling off the floor. A man who look a bit like the man in the HALL OF MIRORS have him by the throte and is shakking him and being v angry. “I tole you NO CHILDREN!” he showt. Eeep! Now I kno I am in trubble. This place must be for grone-ups onli.

    “Mister Cable sa we do whatever is nesesary,” sa Yan.

    “Then I am cowntermanding it,” sa the angry man. “No children! Not now. Not ever. You tell Mister Cable that if he don’t like it, he can take it up with ME!” He thro Yan at the wall like he is just a big stuffed toy wich I supose is fare enouf. Then the man turn on the other toys and the shiny lady and sa, “And you all owrt to be ashamed of yoreselves,” but the way he sa it, I don’t think that he think they wil be. Then he take mi hand and say, “Yore coming with me, young man.”

    He take me owtside and take me to the gate were mi mum is wating and I kno I’m rilly inn trubble. But she just blub and call me Timmy and keep kissing me and half the skool is walking past and going “Yah boo! Little darling Timmy!” Chiz chiz chiz is not fare. But the man, he sa “Do not be hard on Tim. Children get xcited and forget abowt everything else. He did not mean to upset you, I am sure.” Wich is true as I did not rilly. I just forgot. So mi mum sa “Thank you, Mister Cable” and take me home and we are halfway there when mi rapeir-like intellijence realise that this is the other CABLE BRO as in CABLE BROS. I hav a piece of toast for supper and a glas of milk and go to bed.

    This is wat I had done at the weakend.

Miss Raine, Timothy’s teacher, finished reading the report and tapped her lower incisors with the butt of her pen. This made worrying reading; very worrying reading. Something really ought to be done. She took the exercise book, walked out of the marking room through the staffroom, and down the corridor to the headmaster’s study. She knocked and entered at his invitation.

“Good afternoon, Miss Raine,” he said as he finished pencilling in some numbers on the budget figures he was compiling. Miss Raine was notorious for making a big hoo-hah over nothing. He had no doubt that this was going to be more of the same. “And how can I help you?”

“It’s Timothy Chambers, Mr. Tanner. I’m a little concerned about his state of mind.”

“Tim Chambers? Really? He’s always struck me as perhaps a little overimaginative, but nothing that a few years of secondary school won’t knock out of him. What exactly is the problem?”

“He handed in a report today about what he did at the weekend.” She threw it on the desk. “It’s bordering on the psychotic.”

As Tanner leaned forward to pick up the report, he noticed that Miss Raine’s skirt stopped just shy of her knees. This was a new development. He frowned inwardly; there is such a thing as mutton dressing as lamb. On the other hand, they were unexpectedly appealing knees. Very appealing indeed. He flicked through the report but wasn’t really paying much attention. How was it that he’d never noticed what a handsome woman Miss Raine was? Very handsome, most attractive. Perhaps she had changed her hair? She was saying something about calling in the district school psychiatrist, and he nodded absently. A possible threat to the other children? Why, that would be most unpleasant. They must do everything in their power, in his power, to make sure that didn’t come to pass.

In the space of ten minutes, Timothy Chambers stopped being a nice, decent sort of lad, if a little prone to fancies, and had become a potential serial killer, arsonist, and cannibal. Psychiatric reports were a probability, observational internment a possibility, and removal from the school a certainty.

Tanner watched a pleased Miss Raine leave his study, and he wasn’t looking at her back. She turned at the door and added, “After all, I should know. I was at the carnival myself last night. I had a wonderful time.”

From the journal of the Reverend M——, vicar of Saint Keyna’s, Jessop Leazes. April 25th, 1——

   The rivalry of Mrs. J——and Mrs. B——has reached quite incendiary proportions. This week Mrs. B——was charged with creating the floral arrangements for the church, a task she relishes. Indeed, she has always created quite most competent displays.

This morning, however, I was called to the church by the sexton, who told me, and I use his exact words, “The darrft ol’ biddy’s really done it this time, arr.” At the time I believed he meant that she had excelled herself in a positive sense. I discovered my mistake the instant that I entered the church.

The stench was appalling, breathtakingly so, like a poorly run pig farm. The source of the smell was immediately obvious. Where I would have expected to see examples of Mrs. B——’s work, there were instead the most extraordinarily repulsive piles of rotting vegetable matter.

I was in the process of discussing with the sexton how we should dispose of the mess, when Mrs. B——herself entered. I could swear that there was an expression of pride upon her face, but it was wiped away so quickly by the smell, I cannot be sure. She was devastated. Yes, she admitted that she had supplied the floral arrangements as agreed, but could cast no light upon how it was that they had rotted in so short a time. She kept saying how beautiful they had been, how exotic.

I helped carry out the grotesquely wilted remains to the sexton’s wheelbarrow, which he had brought around for the purpose. An unenjoyable process: the flowers were wet and dripped some sort of ichor. The sexton was going to dump the mess on the composting heap in the corner of the churchyard, but I told him that I did not care to have such matter upon consecrated ground, to take it away entirely and burn it. This comment elicited a remarkable reaction from Mrs. B——. She put her hand to her mouth, and I heard her say, “Consecrated!” to herself, as if coming to a horrible realisation.

She was just hurrying off when Mrs. J——arrived. She had her husband pushing along their own wheelbarrow, upon which were several floral pieces. Word travels quickly around the Green, but I was still astonished at the alacrity with which Mrs. J——had leapt into the breach. Mr. J——wheeled them through the gate, and again Mrs. B——reacted unexpectedly, gasping as the barrow made its way through the churchyard.

There followed a harshly whispered conversation between the two women that seemed very unfriendly. From what little I could make out, it appears that they had both attended the funfair the previous evening. Mrs. B——had purchased a quantity of exotic plants, the acquisition of which had required her to sell some personal item. These plants she had used in her arrangements, although why they had survived all the evening yet rotted so quickly when in the church defeated me. Mrs. J——had also bought something there, presumably a book on flower arranging, for her work—though it uses only common, simple flowers— was the best I’ve ever seen.

Mrs. B——left in a hurry, presumably after the fairground people to demand her money back, although they have already moved on in the night, and nobody seems to know where. I wish her well, but I fear this is most certainly a case of caveat emptor.

IN WHICH THE CARNIVAL REACHES JOURNEY’S END AND DIFFICULTIES PRESENT THEMSELVES EN MASSE

Francis Barrow folded the last bit of fried bread with his knife and fork, speared it, and used it to mop up the remains of the cooked yolk that had escaped from his poached egg. Placing his cutlery on the greasy plate, he picked up his tea and took an appreciative look out of his dining-room window It was a horribly unhealthy meal, of course, and one his daughter only allowed him to have once a fortnight. A luxury’s only a luxury if you don’t get it often, he thought, and picked up the local paper.

Leonie came in as he read the front page. “Anything exciting?” she asked as she cleared up the table.

He sniffed and flicked rapidly through the pages. “No, not really. They’re repainting the crossing in front of St. Cuthbert’s Primary, there’s a Beetle Drive at the parish hall on Friday, and we’re playing Millsby at the weekend, of course.”

His daughter laughed. “‘We’re playing Millsby’?” she said. “When was the last time you wore flannels?”

“Aye, well,” he said, and put the paper down. “Showing moral support, then.”

“It’ll be you and your cronies on the boundary, sitting there in deck-chairs with a relay of local lads running between you and the beer tent. You’re incorrigible.”

“It’s what cricket’s all about,” he said. He looked at her and could see his wife so strongly in the line of her chin and her nose. The tawny blond hair was all her own, but the way she set her face sometimes … Leonie had just turned twenty-five: the same age her mother had been when they’d married. All those years ago. His smile became sad.

There was a slightly frantic knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” said Leonie, and went out of the room and down the hall. Barrow could hear her speaking to Joe Carlton, who seemed busting to tell her something. After a moment, Joe himself came in, the most excited he’d been since he’d almost become mayor six years ago.

“Frank!” said Joe. “You’ve got to see this! Come on!” He did something that looked a little too much for comfort like capering.

“Calm down, you’ll do yourself a mischief,” said Frank. Joe tried, but he just went pinker. “Now, what’s all the fuss?”

“It’s the railway station!” One of Joe’s legs looked like it might involve him in another caper any second.

“What about the railway station?”

“It’s come back!”

It was a beautiful morning by anybody’s standards. The air was crisp and clear, with birds singing so high in the sky they were little more than dots. The fields were a shocking green beneath the blue vault of the sky, and it was so near perfect it took a little effort to remember that he was going to see something astounding. Carlton had run out of words very quickly, and he now lived for the look he was sure was going to appear on Barrow’s face when they arrived. Barrow was notoriously difficult to surprise, and Carlton was wishing that he hadn’t blurted out what had occurred. Still, he hoped the actual sight was going to be astounding enough. They walked down a cobble path that had long been disused, turned a corner by a bridge that stood over nothing, and there it was.

“Well,” said Barrow. He took out his tobacco pouch and started to fill his pipe. “I’ll be buggered.” The station was indeed back.

The station had been built comfortably over a century before, before there was even photography to record its newly built appearance. It couldn’t possibly have looked so well as it did now. Beautifully painted drainpipes ran down from the eaves of a roof whose slate tiling surpassed mere human precision; a team of twenty master roofers with obsessive-compulsive disorders and micrometer screw gauges could have toiled a year and not even come close to its perfection. Windows so clear that they seemed to actively repulse grease and grime stood exactly and totally framed in a way that no other panes of glass had ever been framed before. A fire bucket depended from a hook by the waiting-room door; never has a bucket been so red, never has the sand within it seemed so pure and just that the act of stubbing a cigarette in it would reduce any man to tears.