Theatre of the Gods Read online

  … That there are many universes, perhaps an infinite number; that each contains, and is contained within every other; and that all of them sing together like voices in a choir. It is a beautiful thing – a song of infinite harmony. It wasn’t yet a proper theory. It was hardly even an idea. But it was this idea that would shape the rest of his life and lead him to undertake a journey to the next universe, lead him to this very place, the airport of Carnassus, to a market where a tribe of bloodthirsty sailors were about to cut him open.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ said Fabrigas, to the massed assembly of grinning, murderous men. ‘Before our killing game begins, let us take a short moment to consider things from another perspective.’

  ‘Consider this po-spective, flesh-wizard,’ said a one-armed rogue as he raised his sword and cut a giant sea eel in two.

  Flesh-wizard. That was one he hadn’t heard.

  ‘A cogent argument well made,’ said Fabrigas. ‘But really, there is no need for this day to end in death. Why would you strike us down? For are we not all travellers in this universe, and are we not brothers in the next? Are we not just like you? If you strike us, do we not weep? And if you stab us repeatedly with your swords, do we not bleed copiously from our abdomens?’ He held his hands, palms up, towards the sailors, his sleeves black holes before their faces. ‘I beseech you to look within your hearts. Think of those you once loved, and those you’ve lost, for as my great-uncle, the poet Treminos, once said: “Vengeance, aghast, looks to the eyes of pain and sees / His brother, his sister, his self!”’

  Then a change began. The sailors, by degrees, became sadder, their shoulders and their weapons slumped, they began weeping, right there in the market, huge blobs of briny water rolled fat down their cheeks and hit the filthy ground. They began to fall upon their knees, howling, sobbing, crying to the heavens. ‘Gaaaaaaaah-ha-ha-ha,’ they said. ‘My brother! My brother!’ they cried. ‘What have we done? What have we become?!’ ‘I never even learned to read!’ another cried. And still another cried: ‘I love you all so much!’ Fabrigas still had the twin black holes of his sleeves raised, and now at last he lowered them, and while the bandits bawled ferociously, while the vendors emerged, stunned, from their stalls, Fabrigas and his new friend, Carlos Lambestyo, slipped silently away.

  NOOSE 145

  In Carnassus, it is a fine evening. All is well. The hour of chaos has already subsided, though people will talk about it for weeks.

  He came: the wizard! He made a hundred desperate sailors cry like babies with the sound of his voice!

  There is a miasmic glow in the air tonight: a soothing haze which lags across this effluential paradise. What you thought to be all ugliness is beauty. Two lovers walk here, see? He a young naval officer, she a mistress of a dim profession. They have just met. Young love. It is like a royal procession: this king with his ceremonial sword of conquest; this queen with a sceptre of oily flowers in her hand; dogs and flying insects trailing behind in an adoring escort. The king and his queen step lightly past a ragged, lifeless dog, its belly taut with gas and maggots, its mangy coat peeled back, and its legs pointing lustily to the stars. The flies and insects dance merrily around it, the two lovers notice not. They stroll the catwalk above the great shipyard where hulks of unimaginable size are hammered out, oblivious to the chaos all around them, existing only for each other. Love can indeed exist in such a place as Carnassus, if only for a brief time, and if only after the exchange of an agreed sum.

  And down below we find another budding relationship: two men have made it to the sanctuary of the carcass of a half-built warship, and the taller man – the one who looks like an angry warlock – has the smaller man – the one with the scars on his face – trussed up from a spar by a noose around his ankle. Let’s listen.

  ‘So well done, you caught me. You really must be a wizard.’

  ‘I … am not … a WIZARD!’ The old man stood and stretched to full height, his voice thundering off the steel husk.

  ‘OK, OK,’ said the boy pilot. ‘Don’t get us found again.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll be weeping for at least an hour more,’ Fabrigas replied as he showed his pilot the tiny brass jets that poked from the hem of his sleeve. ‘It’s a mild nerve gas which penetrates the membrane of the nose. It makes you see life through the eyes of others. Very useful. My box.’

  ‘So,’ said the Necronaut as he patted around for where he’d stashed the precious box, then handed it to Fabrigas who looked briefly at it before tossing it over his shoulder. They heard the brass spheres sing as they bounced away.

  ‘So,’ said the Necronaut.

  ‘It was not a map of the neighbouring universes. It was a pretty but worthless toy. To map another universe would be like trying to lick your own tongue. The idea is absurd.’

  Lambestyo was still frozen in the motion of handing over the box, and his eyes had followed the merry orbs into the darkness. He returned both eyes to the old man, and Fabrigas took a step back.

  ‘A good captain is not just a pilot, boy, he is a bodyguard. I needed to test your skill and bravery. Both were adequate. And now I have you caught.’

  ‘Yes. When are you going to cut me down? My ankle is numb and the blood is going to my head.’

  The pilot swung lazily from the spar.

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘So you knew that I would end up standing exactly where you placed the noose?’

  ‘Not exactly. I had 145 nooses placed at various locations around the port. The trick was to get you to throw your knives away.’

  Lambestyo roughly adjusted his gun belts. ‘I see. Very clever. How much meat are you, old man?’

  ‘I am 99.9 per cent flesh. I am immune to the Black Cloud and so have lost no organs to it. Like all of us I had a respirator implanted so I could breathe any gas, or no gas.’

  ‘I see. And so what will I be paid if I decide to take this mission?’

  ‘I have not offered you this mission.’

  ‘But you should. I saved your life, after all.’

  ‘I see you are as tall as your memory. If you remember, in the end, I saved you.’

  ‘Well. Let’s call it a draw. It was a close shave.’ He rubbed his chin.

  ‘I suppose it was,’ said Fabrigas. He looked out into space where the columns of sloops and galleons faded among the fuzz of shining spheres. Today certainly wasn’t his closest shave ever. It wasn’t even his closest shave in recent weeks. A month ago he’d been to a place a thousand times more terrifying, a thousand times more deadly, than the Airport of Carnassus.

  Coarse the sea-net roof

  Sheltering this honest shack

  Within the mighty airport we have built.

  And my sleeves grow wet

  With the moisture dripping through the holes.

  Poem of an emperor upon visiting Carnassus. Date unknown.

  THE DREAM AGE

  Fabrigas had risen from a sea of dreams, dripping with excitement, on the morning of the day he was to meet the Queen. He had been astonished when he was informed that he would finally have an audience. It was hard to say how long he’d waited in his small room with its narrow bed, a wooden desk groaning under books and document tubes, its small window framing an achingly familiar scene of gold and silver spheres, but this might put it in perspective: within that span of time, foreign empires had risen, then fallen, then started to rise again, then burst into flames. Great wars had been fought. Humanity had doubled in size while its resources had halved. Spheres beyond the size of suns had been built and torn down. The species had thrown together a telescopic array so large and powerful that it could peer back almost to the dawn of time. The navy had built the oracle called Skycore: a giant ball of hollow string filled with plasma, adrift in a secret part of space, which supposedly used the power of probability to tell the future. So there’s that as well.

  It had taken an age or more, but the day had come when Queen Gargoylas would finally review Fabrigas’s deeds and, if he was lucky, give him his Bil
l of Passage. He stood, pink-faced, in the middle of the room as he dried his hands and stared at the spheres cluttering his window. When Carrofax drifted in with a young ‘slavey’ who carried a tray of tea and toast and a copy of the Gazette and Sentinel the old man started from his trance. ‘Good morning, sir. The Gazette has a very interesting piece today about plans to use Skycore to find the Vengeance.’

  ‘Barghhh!’ said Fabrigas, which is the noise you make when you try to express disgust with a mouthful of toast. He had no time for the Queen’s great ball of string. He watched the girl pour his tea, checking that she trickled in just the right amount of synthetic milk. She had dark skin and ornate tattoos on her young hands, so he knew she must be a slave taken during the Morphium Wars on Zapotek. He kept his fierce eyes upon her while he picked up the first section of his newspaper, then he slowly turned his gaze to the front. The Gazette’s banner contained just three letters and a symbol of interrogation: ‘UWX?’

  The great Sphere of Empires was in a precarious state, beset by shortages and conflict. The eight great Galactagogs of the universe – the U8 – were trapped inside this globe, like fighting animals forced to occupy the same cage. The Holy Neon Empire shared the centre of the sphere with the Vangardiks. They were once a single empire, but since the Great Schism, and the building of the Great Wall of Peace, they were bitter enemies. Nearby was the once mighty Concordat: a loose collection of states who were desperate to avoid war, but equally desperate to hold their place in the centre. The Xo occupied the mysterious outer reaches, the Floating Worlds, and remained a powerful and unknowable force. They were a neutral power, kept no standing army, but exercised power through their secret agency, Dark Hand. The other Galactagogs – the Hyperboreans, the Skandanyevans, the Kobra, the Cosmogoths – as well as all the many minor powers – were biding their time, aware of the cost of giving the Holy Neon Empire too much power, but equally aware of the price for failing to back the winner. Any small conflict could potentially trigger a 10th Universal War, UWX, and unlike the nine previous conflicts this one would be decisive, unimaginably destructive: it would be a war to end war.

  Fabrigas let his eyes drift down to the ‘Briefly’ column. There was a short piece on the inquiry into disastrous events at the Worlds’ Fair, when an attack by enemy agents led to the disappearance of the tiny treasure they called the Vengeance. There was a rumour the escape had been masterminded by Dark Hand. Were the Xo finally renouncing their neutral status?

  Attempts were under way to recover the vessel of the Queen’s youngest brother, Prince Albert, the last male heir, who had almost brought down the dynasty when he went mad during a yachting regatta and tried to fly his ship into a sun. His name had become a byword for insanity. The magistrates had voted to ‘… give all resources to recovering his remains’.

  The Pope was calling for another crusade. But it was something he did at least once a month, so it was hardly news at all. But as the commander of the largest battle fleet in the universe he was not a man any ruler could ignore for long. This month was Panathenaea, the great festival celebrating the Empire’s religious glory. The Pope would be visiting. The spectacle would feature a monumental procession through the Avenue to the Necropolis, followed by unfathomable animal sacrifices, before the Inquisition executed a select mob of heretics.

  So it was a busy month.

  The magistrates had also voted to extend the Workhouse Act into the foreseeable future. This act made it legal to sell the children of debtors into slavery in return for erasing their outstanding balance. ‘It is necessary, given the current challenges and chronic shortages our Empire faces, to continue to depend upon the valuable contribution that children make to our economy. They are the “good oil” keeping our Empire moving. Additionally, their fleshy young parts require no oil.’

  ‘Widdibgulusk,’ said Fabrigas, which is the sound you make when you try to say ‘Ridiculous’ with a mouth full of toast.

  The slave girl finished her work and hurriedly left the room.

  ‘Do I sense you are excited today?’ said Carrofax.

  ‘Certainly I am!’ said the wild-faced old man as he swallowed his toast. ‘Today I will no longer be a prisoner of this Empire, no? Today I will be free!’ His eyes were shining moistly. He crunched into his second slice and chomped merrily.

  ‘Sir is not … nervous?’ enquired Carrofax.

  ‘Nerbusch! By wub I be nerbusch?’

  ‘Well, there is the faint possibility the Queen may … oppose your wishes.’

  ‘Nobsensch!’ said Fabrigas.

  Two attendants arrived to take them to the docks. Soon they were crossing the stretch of space to the palace in a glass taxi. Fabrigas knew this view like his own face. The sphere on the right – the mid-sized sphere of deep blue steel with sunburst crest – was the Great Royal Hall, where entertainments were performed to millionfold audiences. The tickets were expensive, certainly, but you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the Mutant Opera Company perform Modesto Bazruski’s The Princess and the Megasaurus. Just to the left was the Library of the Golden Gate, a magnificent gold cube designed to seal itself at the push of a button (because every now and again a ruler came along who thought books were a bad idea). There was the Spielmuseum, the Botanical Complex, Aquasphere X, the Grand Pleasure Dome, the Perihedral Signum, and a host of other imperial sights. And in the centre, contaminating the heavens with a light that stung the eyes, was the Royal Palace of Her Majesty Queen Gargoylas X. He could tell preparations for a brand-new sphere were under way because demolition crews had cleared the charred debris left by a city whose core-sun had exploded, vaporising every object, and each remaining citizen – mostly just the sick and elderly – within. Such was the price of progress. Somewhere in the distant starfields a construction fleet would be building a vast iron frame around a new young star. When finished, the alchemists would do their work, transforming the raw iron from the core of a depleted sun into brass, silver, even gold, until finally the new palace would be dragged to its position, there to remain for countless millennia.

  Beyond, the spheres spread out as far as he could see. Some were small and elegant – the exclusive estates, the private schools – while others were unspeakably huge – the prisons, the slum cities. So many stories were contained within them. The universe was like a cloud of gold and silver balloons around them, and as they sailed the breech Fabrigas felt bubbles of excitement rise in his belly to tickle his beard.

  BY ORDER OF THE PROPHET

  There are eight chambers to reach the Queen in her Slayer’s Pavilion. As the elevator doors opened, Fabrigas found himself looking into the First Chamber. In this ante-hall, so vast its walls and ceiling vanish into the haze, an army of proprietors waited, vainly, to petition the Queen for clemency from bankruptcy, and they spent the time by playing dice. The chamber was filled with the white-hot whizz of servos in fingers, the bony crack as steel-knuckled hands released the cubes against the marble walls. At the end of the day one merchant would be chosen at random and sent to see the Queen. If they could emerge from the penultimate chamber with their mind intact, and if the Queen liked their face, their livelihood would be saved. Many came running back screaming from the Third Chamber, and few had a face to please the Queen.

  The noise of the dice-play crashed like a dying wave when the towering Fabrigas emerged from the gloom of the elevator car. The eyes followed him as he strode the long mile through the chamber towards a pair of brass doors wide enough to walk an airship through. The doors’ handles were a pair of dragons – actual size – caught at the apex of a violently sensuous embrace.

  The Second Chamber is filled with frightening statuary of the Demon Backinell: the gathering whose chaos was supposed to have bred the conditions from which the order of the cosmos arose. These demons are engaged in activities from which imagination flees, and upon which a modest writer will not dwell. Here the frightening experience of universal chaos is mingled with the breath of infinite creation.


  The door of the Third Chamber has statues of imperial authority: two owls without faces (justice), a great bear nursing a human infant (mercy), and two monkey demons tearing out the throat of a dragon (awesomeness). The visitor would need to leave their airship behind to enter this chamber. Why bring an airship in the first place? The chamber is smaller than the last, and silent – so much so that if you hadn’t already broken into a jog, you would. It is forbidden by law to tell you what’s in the Third Chamber.

  The Fourth Chamber has delicate frescoes of grand royal conquests and in the scheme of the chambers is rather pleasant. Do not be lulled.

  The Fifth Chamber is not pleasant. The Chamber of the Screw is entered through a circular door. The visitor finds himself in a rotating barrel: the inverse shape of a great invisible drill. The curling and ornately filigreed edges are blade-sharp, heated to smoking point. The visitor will find themself scrambling so quickly towards the tiny aperture at the far end they will not have time to consider what this chamber could possibly symbolise.

  By the Sixth Chamber the visitor has noticed the successive narrowing and darkening of the chambers of the Queen. This chamber is cramped. The visitor can reach up to touch the ceiling, or out to touch the heads spiked upon steel needles. These are the lords, ladies, magistrates and judges who have disappointed Her. These heads are arranged as so: the first faces the wall, the second is turned ten degrees towards you, the third ten more, and so on, so the effect as you rush past – and rush you will, from a jog into a gallop – is of a single severed head turning to greet you. The floor tacks with blood and the stench is overwhelming.

  In the Seventh Chamber the visitor finds their gallop halted by the fact they must crawl through this chamber on their knees, through sticky sheets of spiderweb. The Queen’s legion of beloved spiders can grow as big as the human head.