Theatre of the Gods Read online

  ‘Nonsense!’ Fabrigas would cry. Then he’d go on to explain, at length, that these ‘spirits’ were just toxic hallucinations brought about by the dense smoke trapped within the airport. It was a simple case of poisoning.

  If Fabrigas had been a superstitious being, if he had believed in ghosts, or magic, or the mediations of fate, he would have thought that this day was particularly significant. This was his tenth visit in ten days to the airport where he was to recruit sailors for his voyage, and where he hoped to catch the pilot they called the Necronaut. All morning the number 10 had been haunting him. His steamship was the St Gorgon X. Port 10, the packet had left from.

  ‘Coincidence!’ Fabrigas had shouted, and all the other passengers in his berth had jumped a foot clear of their seats. The nine other passengers had whispered in astonishment when they’d seen the old-beard. He had ignored them, stared hard at his ticket: Berth J, section 10.

  A conductor had popped his head in, counted the passengers and said, ‘Ten then. All set.’

  ‘Lunatic!’ shouted Fabrigas, and the conductor frowned and left. Fabrigas could not imagine any cosmic reason why he’d come to the saddest and deadliest sphere in the universe ten days straight. He’d stared out of the window of the St Gorgon as they’d approached Carnassus: a spiky black urchin floating in the ether, its cranes and gantries flailing like the arms of a dying monster. There was an endless stream of ships crowding in like insects to a swollen, maggot-filled carcass. And beyond, the infinal and infernal spheres of the Holy Neon Empire: gold, silver, greenish, brownish; a dense haze of baubles standing out against the blackness. Many spheres were built around a star, like a giant lampshade, so that every ounce of solar energy could be harnessed. The outer shells were miles thick and when meteors hit they rang like bells. Each bubble was a breathtaking miracle of scientific progress; and each was built to house a hysterical mess of superstitious souls.

  A child, a small boy, had left his seat and walked over, stared up at this giant, cloaked figure whose granite face was dressed in storm clouds, mouthed a single, silent word, then fled back to his mother’s skirts.

  Their steamship had dipped and headed for Dock 10. ‘Gah,’ the old-beard had said, to no one. And ‘Gah,’ he’d whispered to himself.

  *

  Fabrigas had left his packet, travelled through the gates of Carnassus, past the great oily sign, the dreaming pilots, the drowned souls, the lady and her chicken, the man and his mango, over undulating seas of memory and time, over the cannon’s bath, each place setting off the thundering retort of a forgotten moment: a lost and floating face, an all-but-vanquished place, until finally, as an old, old man, he’d reached the door of the Ten Bells, pulled his hoverpad to a stop, flipped it out of gear with his thumb, and returned to the present moment.

  He carried a small wooden box in the crook of his left arm.

  A few minutes later, a figure in a fine day suit came oozing from the smog, calmly attending to his cuffs and smiling wryly at the chaos around him. ‘Sir has been setting a demanding pace this morning.’ Fabrigas looked down at his servant blankly, as if he was trying to place him, then shook his head and said, ‘There was no point delaying. Today is the day. I’m certain. Yes.’

  ‘Oh? You’ve received intelligence?’ said Carrofax.

  ‘No, no intelligence. Just a feeling.’

  ‘A feeling?’ His servant allowed the corners of his mouth to rise impertinently.

  ‘Yes, a feeling. A man can have feelings, can’t he?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t dare to have an opinion on that, sir.’

  A supertanker sounded its klaxons from the darkness just a few leagues off. As the shockwave hit, vendors reached to stop their fruit from rolling off the stands, scores of startled rats were shaken from the steel rafters, the subsonic storm front made the old man’s beard and lashes quiver. The city rang like a bell for a full minute before the sound faded.

  Captain Nezquix, head of the Royal Naval Procurement Agency, came striding from a nearby alley, his confident young gait undermined, somewhat, by the plastic bags he wore on his shiny leather boots, and the white kerchief he clasped to his nose.

  ‘Boy, you are late. What news?’ said Fabrigas as he towered over the young captain.

  ‘All is in place. Skycore says the Necronaut will be here. There was a possible sighting at the Whore’s Arms. And he wrote his sign on a wall near the dens … in urine.’ Nezquix coughed politely into his kerchief. ‘We’ll be ready for him this time.’

  ‘You’ve stepped up operations?’

  ‘We have, though you are spending a frightening portion of your ship’s budget on procuring this gentleman.’

  ‘He is no gentleman. And he is worth every copper.’

  ‘How strange of you to refuse one of our fine naval pilots for this expedition.’

  ‘We are all doomed on this mission,’ said Fabrigas. ‘I need to catch a pilot skilled enough to give my crew even the faintest chance of survival.’

  Each Empire’s navy has its own recruitment method. Some put notices in newspapers; others buy advertising space on local prostitutes; some put posters up in toilets and in alleys commonly used as toilets. In this Empire’s navy, at this time, it was tradition that the pilot of each ship be caught. It stood to reason that the harder a pilot was to catch at dock, the more fierce and able he would be at sea. If a pilot submitted, said: ‘Fine! You got me!’ he was hardly worth hiring. A good pilot knew how to play ‘hard to catch’. The best pilots in the Empire were almost impossible to catch, and this pilot, the Necronaut, was the toughest catch of all.

  The Procurement Agency, under Captain Nezquix, had set up successively more elaborate traps during the past ten days, each with a bounty hidden inside as bait, and on each occasion the Necronaut had simply taken the bounty and vanished. But today was different. Today Nezquix had pulled no punches. He had set up a sequence of traps so baroque, so stunningly complex, that no mortal human, surely, could escape them.

  ‘We have him covered from all angles,’ said Nezquix proudly. To the north, he explained, was a bordello whose saucy harlots would lure their quarry with the promise of lustful deeds taken from a list compiled by a naval psychiatrist who had been given access to a secret file on the Necronaut. The bordello was designed to seal at the push of a button when their target entered.

  To the south was a morphium den whose sofas were giant magnets.

  To the east was a simple pie and ale shop which hid an orchestra of traps. The Necronaut, it was said, loved pies. He loved them filled with fried crickets and liver. He was a traditionalist. They said a lot of things about the Necronaut. More legend surrounded him than any man, even Fabrigas. The Necronaut was six foot six if he was an inch, they said. His chest was fifty-nine inches, his arms were thirty inches at the bicep. The legend-tellers were unusually precise. He was the purest kind of mercenary. He was a former naval pilot, so his mods were state of the art: his performance had been enhanced by the very latest military–industrial technology. He possessed the sharpest mind of any pilot known, and a bravery which could be confused with insanity. He was possessed, some people said. He had piloted a crippled slave ship single-handed between the twin black holes at Dominatrus. He had escaped the ransom prison on the pirate world of Diebax. He wore size 12 boots.

  ‘So you see,’ concluded Nezquix, ‘it is all under control. To the west is another bordello, Harlots de la Mer. It is staffed by even saucier ladies. If he escapes our main traps we have an outer ring of supplementary traps: pits, nets, laser-guided tranquilliser darts, more prostitutes. It is a ring of iron from which even he cannot escape. We have never failed to catch our pilot. Even a wizard like you couldn’t do b—’ He had not been allowed to finish his thought because Fabrigas had fixed the young captain with a look which made his larynx freeze over like a water pipe in winter.

  ‘I hope your confidence in yourself is repaid,’ said the old man.

  ‘It will be.’

  ‘We will b
e watching your progress from the tavern.’ Fabrigas took a silver case from his breast pocket and opened it. Balancing his wooden box on his arm, he took two plugs from the case and pushed them into his ears, then they left Captain Nezquix alone and entered the Bells.

  TEN BELLS

  The Ten Bells was the most dismal and dangerous tavern in the most desperate sphere in the most awful corner of the Holy Neon Empire. Terrible things happened in the Bells, and the worst of all the things that happened there was singing. It was the singing of sailors and longshoremen, but these weren’t ordinary sailors, or the kind of longshoremen you might know. These were drunken, tone-deaf, infectious and forgotten sailors, the ones who’d long ago lost their ship, their crew, their will to live, and whose song was more painful, more unbearable, than the crying of a million orphan babies. Even the words of these songs were enough to make you leap from a pier.

  Black Jess he was a goodly friend,

  A goodly friend o’ mine – Oh!

  But lately something’s changed in him,

  It ain’t hard to define.

  Oh, I wish I had me Jess’s gal,

  And I ain’t bein’ cute.

  I would convince her that I loves her,

  But the point, ’tis probably moot – Oi!

  But the earplugs were working. As they sat in the corner of the tavern to wait for the traps to fall on the Necronaut, all Fabrigas and his servant had to endure were the gaping pink mouths and tearful, red-rimmed eyes of the sailors. They had nothing to fear from these scoundrels so long as they were busy singing. Behind the bar were racks of bottles marked with skulls and Xs. Any sailor knows the code. One X, that’s a breakfast whisky. Three Xs, that’s for ‘fivesies’, or cleaning the barnacles from your ship. Five Xs and a skull, that’s for when you’re tired of living. One skull with a clown’s nose, that’s for pirate-children’s parties. When the innkeeper looked over, Fabrigas nodded gravely. The innkeeper sighed, shook his head, then brought Fabrigas his jasmine tea.

  ‘It might be,’ ventured Carrofax cautiously, ‘that this … “Necronaut” … never shows up. It might be that he doesn’t even exist.’

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ Fabrigas said, as he adjusted the plug in his right ear. He was lying. The earplugs were of his own design. They were constructed to block out all but pleasant sounds, and his servant had a mellow and well-modulated voice. Fabrigas took a long, slow sip of tea and squinted, then said, ‘Of course he exists. If he doesn’t exist then who has been escaping from our traps and stealing our bounties all week? Anyway, he will show. He is waiting for dark.’

  ‘For dark? But in Carnassus it is always night.’

  ‘He’s waiting for ten bells, when they reboot the generators. He is no fool.’

  Carrofax sat patiently, spine straight, hands clasped in front of him while Fabrigas watched silvery shadows through the grimy glass of the tavern window. He watched the naval agents in the street – disguised as longshoremen and prostitutes – attempt to act naturally. He watched spiders big as rats pounce on rats as big as cats. He watched a man pick another man’s watch, then offer him the time of day. Inside the tavern he watched the pink mouths moving, silently. He watched the sailors, steel arms slung across each other’s shoulders, sway like masts. There were no naval agents in the tavern to protect him if the locals turned nasty: if they ran out of Four-X Special, or if their steam-powered accordian broke. There was no telling how unpleasant things would get if these seamen had to sing without accompaniment.

  He waited.

  The clock above the bar struck ten bells. The lights across Carnassus dimmed briefly, then rebooted.

  *

  It has been estimated that more pockets are picked during the ten seconds of darkness when the airport’s generators reboot than the rest of the day combined. As the lights rose again Fabrigas saw that a boy was sitting at their table. ‘Begone, child, this table is taken!’ shouted Fabrigas. He had finished his tea, but he hated being rushed. Astonishingly, the boy did not scurry away. He removed his hood. His face made Fabrigas all but gasp aloud.

  THE NECRONAUT

  The boy put his finger to his lips. ‘Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.’ He had a young face. A hard-eyed, weathered and dreadful face. The boy spoke and Fabrigas was struck dead by his black eyes and defiant jaw. It was a face to break a mother’s heart, or any heart. He wore gun belts that criss-crossed his torso under a heavy leather coat; the brass cartridges twinkled in the half-light. Fabrigas was so stunned that he watched the boy speak for a full minute before he removed his earplugs, placed them on top of his wooden box, and said, ‘Pardon?’

  The stranger blinked, then said: ‘My name is Carlos Góngora Lambestyo. I was a cadet in Her Majesty’s Elite Black Squadron. During the invasion of Manchurious V my bat-fighter was hit by a rocket and I crashed. I was captured by the enemy. I escaped by holding down a guard and rubbing his head until he gave me his keys. That is all you need to know about that time. I found a refugee ship and drifted through space for a full year, fighting for my life, surviving on rats and other small creatures. I got aboard a ship by pretending to be a beautiful lady. Then I threw the captain overboard and took his ship. The crew was ready to kill me until I proved I was not a lady.’ The boy had not said ‘kill’ like you or I might. He’d said ‘keeeeel’, ‘… to keeeeel me’. Looking into the boy’s eyes Fabrigas suddenly found that, yes, he felt like dying.

  The boy held the old man’s eyes in his, leaned closer.

  ‘I have seen things and been places you wouldn’t believe, old man. Many times I have wished for death myself, but it never came. Now I hear you are trying to catch a pilot for a dangerous mission of almost certain death. That pilot is me.’ He took a small sphere from his coat and placed it on the table. It made a dull thud. ‘I usually only tell my story once.’

  The young man’s tale filled Fabrigas with utter despair, and he thought about just fleeing. But he stayed fixed to his chair, trying not to stare. Carrofax, he noticed, was staring, bemused. This was the infamous mercenary pilot whose very name struck fear into the heart of every sailor?

  ‘He is the Necronaut?’ said Carrofax.

  ‘You are the Necronaut?’ said Fabrigas.

  ‘That is a name given to me by others; I did not choose it for myself,’ said the boy. ‘“Necro” means “Death”. “Naut” is a word for the number zero, I’m told. So “Necronaut” means “No death”.’

  Fabrigas made to speak, then thought better of it.

  ‘Do you mind?’ said the boy. He pointed to the teapot. Fabrigas blinked twice. The boy poured himself a cup of jasmine tea, sipped and nodded thoughtfully. His leather gun belts croaked. ‘I once piloted a ship smuggling jasmine from the Black Isles. Our cargo caught fire. I smelled like jasmine for months. Whenever I smell jasmine I think of that time. It is not relaxing. But I never cry.’

  He took another sip. ‘I see you look at my scar. You are perhaps wondering how I got it?’ The boy’s forehead carried several deep marks, and a long scar ran from his temple, down his face, down his neck, to the collar of his cloak, and on to God knows where. This boy’s face looked like a map – a map of a land called Pain. ‘I have fought many, many monsters,’ said the boy pilot. ‘Zombies, Cyclopses, Triclopses, serpents, vampire owls. But the creature who gave me this was a woman. We are not together any more. I could tell you the story but when I finished you would surely want to keeeeel yourself, so I won’t.’ He put down his cup and pushed it away with his index finger.

  ‘My boy, how old are you to have had such dreadful experiences?’ said Fabrigas, who had been trying not to look at the scar.

  ‘I am no boy,’ said the boy, ‘I am eighteen and one-quarter years old. I have whiskers, see?’ He pointed to a faint copse of stubble on his chin. ‘I have my own ship, the Fire Bird. At least I did, until it caught fire. I have many terrible stories like this. One day I think I should write a book.’

  ‘How much flesh are you, boy?’

  ‘… Ninety-fiv
e per cent. But my military enhancements make me very strong. Would you like to arm-wrestle?’

  The servos in the young man’s elbow whirred softly.

  ‘So you’ve lost no organs to plague?’

  The boy pouted. ‘I almost lost a kidney in a game of cards. True story.’

  Fabrigas pushed aside his own cup and looked at Carrofax. Carrofax shook his head. ‘Young man,’ said Fabrigas, ‘your story is very moving, and yes, we do need a captain who can pilot our ship on a mission to the next universe, by order of the Queen. There we will find a new dimension with its own properties, laws, monsters –’

  ‘Treasures?’

  ‘Perhaps. But you will not be there.’ The boy pilot squinted, then took his elbow off the table. ‘Stories of your bravery are legendary, but we require more than bravery for this mission. We need experience. You are just a boy. I’m sorry, but we cannot offer you this job after all. More tea?’

  The boy set his weathered eyes on the old man. Then he scratched the back of his head, looked around for the first time, taking in the stained walls, the sailors, now silent. Fabrigas hadn’t noticed at first, but the men had stopped singing when the boy entered.

  ‘This is a nice tavern,’ continued the Necronaut, ‘if you like the bar scene. I do not. I have seen taverns so dreadful that you would weep tears of blood.’ He pointed to his left eye. ‘I was once in a tavern that served only blood. Why would you do that? Serve only blood? Well, in any case, you would need to catch me first. You have not.’

  ‘Have we not?’ said the old-beard.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘If you are speaking of the auto-cuffs around my ankles, I have disabled them.’

  ‘Have you indeed?’

  ‘Yes. Shackles can’t hold me. And nor can any of those traps you have waiting for me outside.’ The boy patted the small black cannonball which sat upon the table.