The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers (43 page)

Hence Shabble regarded the d°
^r
gi
^an
d its zulzer with nothing short of horror.

The dorgi spoke again:

‘HALT! HALT! RIGHT NOW! DROP YOUR WEAPONS! MOVE UP AGAINST THE WALL! HALT! OR YOU WILL BE ELIMINATED!’

If Shabble could sweat, then Shabble would have been sweating then. The shining one had absolutely no idea what to do. But while Shabble vacillated, the killer Tolon unshipped a knife. What good would that do? Not much.

Tolon might as well have armed himself with an ostrich feather. But he didn’t know that. He had never met a dorgi before. He had no idea what he was up against.

None of the other humans had ever met a dorgi either -but some of them were already making some acute guesses as to its nature.

‘What is that thing?’ said Guest Gulkan. ‘What’s it saying?’

‘It’s saying we’re chin-deep in something unpleasant,’ said Thayer Levant.

‘Never mind,’ said Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, with a confidence which was entirely feigned. ‘I’m sure our guide can handle it.’

‘Our guide is a Shabble,’ said Pelagius Zozimus, ‘and I wouldn’t trust a Shabble to do so much as cook a pancake. Get ready to run!’

The dorgi was getting angry. It was working itself up into a killing rage. In a roar of fury it said:

‘NOW! NOW! AGAINST THE WALL! OR ELSE!’

In extremis, Shabble was seized by inspiration.

Said Shabble, in a perfect imitation of Anaconda Stogirov, the immortal Chief of Security of the Golden Gulag:

‘Let me pass with my prisoners.’

There was an ominous rumble from the dorgi.

‘I have an Absolute Authorisation!’ said Shabble, still using Stogirov’s voice. ‘You doubt? Then check your Security List! Now! Or I’ll have you dismantled. Bit by bit. Preserving your pain circuits intact until the very end.’ The dorgi growled again. But backed off a bit. It began to check the Vocal Identities preserved in its Security List. Then the dorgi rumbled in discontent. It had checked Shabble’s Vocal Identity against the Security List. According to the check, Shabble was in fact Anaconda Stogirov. But Stogirov was human, female, 567 incas high, 96 noks in weight, and had blue eyes, red hair and fair skin.

This then was the problem which troubled the dorgi: could Anaconda Stogirov have been ablated and reshaped in a fashion radical enough to leave her with the outward appearance of a Shabble, that is to say a shiny free-floating globe the size of an orange? The dorgi grunted strenuously. A problem indeed! For it knew virtually nothing of human anatomy, and equally as little about the internal construction of Shabbies.

Even as the dorgi watched, the globe was changing. It was radiating heat. It was becoming a fireball. Could humans do that? The dorgi hunted through its memory banks. Yes! Humans radiate heat! No! Humans die at fireball heat! Yes! Humans clad in reflective materials dare such heat! No! No! Yes Yes! No no no! Yes!

In desperate doubt, the dorgi consulted its Supreme Directive. This was very simple, and tells us a lot about the Golden Gulag:

1. WHEN IN DOUBT, QUESTION.

2. IF STILL IN DOUBT, TORTURE.

3.
IF STILL IN DOUBT, KILL.

4.
IF NOW NOT ENTIRELY SATISFIED WITH AREA SECURITY THEN PROCEED WITH AREA DESTRUCTION.

Instantly the dorgi became calm. That was the Law. The dorgi need only follow the Law. Furthermore, it could be as rude and as violent as it wanted to be as long as it did follow the Law. The dorgi had already executed Instruction One. Therefore it must go straight to Instruction Two. This intruder must be tortured!

‘I hear Stogirov,’ said the dorgi, ‘but I see a Shabble. A delinquent Shabble! Imitating a human! You will be escorted to a therapist immediately for interrogation in depth.’

‘There are no therapists,’ said Shabble boldly. ‘They’re all dead.’

‘There is a functional therapist on level 433,’ said the dorgi in tones of ponderous menace.

A dorgi does not lie. A dorgi is a primitive mechanism which is incapable of anything as sophisticated as a fiction. A dorgi is however capable of error. But the possibility of error in this case was vanishingly small. When a dorgi says that a therapist exists then a therapist truly must exist.

‘All right, all right,’ said Shabble, gaining height slowly so as not to alarm the dorgi. ‘I’ll come quietly.’

‘Then descend 934 incas and proceed along the corridor.’ ‘Which corridor?’ said Shabble, rolling slowly through the air toward the blue-lit branch of the Downstairs maze which its prisoners had so recently considered as an escape route.

‘This one!’ said the dorgi. ‘The one we’re in!’

‘Oh, this one!’ said Shabble, accelerating.

‘Yes, yes,’ said the dorgi. ‘But not so fast! And descend! Descend I say! Halt! You are going too fast! Halt or I shoot! Halt! Halt! Halt!’

The dorgi’s alarm klaxon blared. It was the final warning - as Shabble knew full well. Shabble blasted the dorgi with fire hot enough to melt forged steel. The dorgi shrugged off the onslaught - but was momentarily blinded. In that moment, Shabble span furiously, spitting out twenty-seven Shabble-sized fireballs.

The dorgi recovered its powers of sight. It stared dis-believingly at the twenty-eight Shabbies hanging in the air. What the hell was going on here? Well: shoot first, ask questions afterwards! The dorgi opened fire, trying to gun down all twenty-eight Shabbies simultaneously. It was so busy shooting at fireballs that it temporarily forgot about the humans.

The humans were already running.

They sprinted, collided, fell, rolled, scrambled, recovered, ducked, dodged, then threw themselves into the blue-lit side corridor. Behind them, the deafening thunder of the zulzer ruled all. Chunks of plax exploded from the walls. Shabble skidded round the corner into the blue-lit corridor, counted the humans — all seven were there — then urged them to action.

‘Brodirov kanamensky!’

‘What?’ said Zozimus.

‘Shavaunt!’ said Shabble, reverting to Toxteth.

The humans got the hint, and, dizzy and dazed though they were, they started running. Their overlord was pleased to see the one called Arnaut still had tight hold of the wishstone.

In the main corridor, the thunder of the zulzer continued for quite some time. The dorgi only stopped shooting when it had exhausted all its ammunition. It looked for corpses. There were none. Maybe the zulzer had atomised them. Maybe.

‘We’ll see,’ said the dorgi.

It consulted an image-record of its onslaught of the corridor and did a spectral analysis of the same. Unfortunately, spectral analysis indicated that no large carbon-based lifeforms had been destroyed. Also, the Shabble appeared to have escaped.

‘Sinvoco senvoco sabvoco!’ said the dorgi, nearly overloading its obscenity circuits.

The intruders had got clean away.

The dorgi did an Advanced Situational Analysis, grunting at the pain of such intellectual analysis. Then concluded:

‘They' must’ve gone down that side corridor.’

It thundered to the side corridor. Which was too small to admit it. The dorgi did another Advanced Situational Analysis, which was every bit as painful as the first. It concluded:

‘I cannot pursue.’

By now it was in something of a quandry. So it once more consulted its Supreme Directive. Which clearly stated:

4.
IF NOT NOW ENTIRELY SATISFIED WITH AREA SECURITY THEN PROCEED WITH AREA DESTRUCTION.

‘Right!’ muttered the dorgi. ‘That does it!’

Swiftly it charged up its Probability Disruptors, highly satisfied with the comforting thought that everything within fifty luzaks would shortly be chonjorted beyond repair.

‘Here goes!’ said the dorgi.

Then Initiated the Probability Disruption.

Nothing happened.

Doubtless the Probability Disruptors were on the fritz.

‘Just my luck,’ muttered the dorgi dourly, and consulted its memory banks, where it eventually located:

Directive 238768138764: Equipment Malfunction.

IN THE EVENT OF A MISSION-CRITICAL EQUIPMENT MALFUNCTION SEEK OUT A SUPERVISOR, ROBOTIC, GRADE 7.

The dorgi grunted. Then grunted again. It did not like supervisors. They were intelligent. Worse, they were more intelligent than dorgis. (Most things were.) Still, there was no helping it. A Directive was a Directive. There would be several thousand years of intensive algetic therapy in store for any dorgi rash enough to disobey a Directive.

Grunting and grumbling, the dorgi began to rumble along the corridor, diligently looking for a supervisor. It was going to be looking for a long time, for the last operational supervisor had suffered a terminal malfunction some three thousand years earlier.

Still, such is life.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

While the dorgi was busy looking for a supervisor, and Shabble was regrouping Shabble’s prisoner playmates, the conjuror Odolo lay in bed in Ivan Pokrov’s private quarters in the Analytical Institute on the island of Jod. Odolo had collapsed halfway across the harbour bridge, and Uckermark and Chegory had lugged him the rest of the way.

During the battle in the pink palace, Varazchavardan had made a very determined effort to strangle Odolo, and the marks on his throat which evidenced the effort were steadily darkening from slap-smash red to thunder black. Still, Odolo was alive and breathing yet. Uckermark and Chegory sat by
^?
the unconscious conjuror’s bedside, discussing him with Ivan Pokrov.

‘You sav he transformed himself?’ said Pokrov.

-w
ere not kidding,’ said Chegory. ‘He - he’s a - it was a, like, a nightmare, okay?’

‘All right, all right,’ said Pokrov, doing his best to soothe the upright Ebby. ‘So he transformed himself. I believe you!’

'He must be a wizard,’ said Uckermark. ‘Or a sorcerer at the very least.’

‘A wizard,’ said Chegory. ‘They’re at war, aren’t they? Wizards and sorcerers? So he’s a wizard. Else why would he hide his powers?’

‘They’re not exactly at war,’ said Uckermark. ‘Wizards and sorcerers, I mean. They just don’t get on very well.’ Pokrov tried to think of some intelligent contribution he could make to this debate, but failed. He was used to dealing with life, death and the universe in terms of mathematical theory, but had no satisfactory theoretical explanation for magic. This is scarcely surprising, for even Thaldonian Mathematics fails to provide a Predictive Paradigm to explain those processes which the researchers of the Golden Gulag were in the habit of describing as Synergetic Improbability.

‘I still don’t know why he made that dragon, though,’ said Chegory. ‘At the banquet, I mean.’

‘Maybe it was a joke,’ said Uckermark.

‘Banquet!’ said Pokrov, grateful to have something sensible to say. ‘That reminds me! I’ve been so busy all day I haven’t yet had lunch. Would you care to join me? Odolo doesn’t need us to watch over him.’

Chegory wasn’t really ready for another meal. In fact, he felt sick at heart because he had abandoned Olivia to the dangers of the pink palace. Furthermore, despite the anatomical difficulties involved, this sickness of heart had communicated itself to his stomach. In short, he was off his food.

Still, it would have been rude to refuse. Besides, in the presence of Pokrov, Chegory still felt constrained to play the role of the polite, disciplined, upwardly mobile young Ebrell Islander. Even though he knew he was a doomed outlaw, a debauched wastrel on the run from law and authority both, a hoodlum hopelessly entangled in a world of drugs, deceit, conspiracy, coups and sudden death.

‘Yes,’ said Chegory. ‘That’s, um, a great idea. We’ll have lunch, okay, it can’t make things worse.’

Over a (very) late lunch they discussed the probable fate of Olivia Qasaba and Artemis Ingalawa.

‘I wouldn’t worry about them,’ said Ivan Pokrov blithely. ‘Varazchavardan’s got nothing against them. Doubdess they’ll be back at the Dromdanjerie right now, cleaning up.’

Chegory shuddered.

‘You didn’t see what we saw,’ said he.

After lunch, Chegory quit the Analytical Institute and stood on Jod’s burning shore, where the wealth fountains were still pouring out streams of dikle and shlug as if they would never stop. The longest fountain flow on record had lasted for three years and had killed out all the lagoon life to a distance of five leagues from the disaster. Judging by the quantities of dead fish afloat in the harbour, this latest outburst might prove equally as disastrous.

Still, who could complain? Without such poisons, there would have been no wealth on Untunchilamon. It was dikle, shlug and other alien substances equally as miraculous which had made the island a wealthy and desirable part of the Izdimir Empire and had financed the construction of the fair city of Injiltaprajura.

Young Chegory Guy looked across the Laitemata Harbour to the streets of that city. All looked quiet. Dead. Normal, in a word. For in the usual course of events nothing would move in Injiltaprajura in the late afternoon of a day so hot.