God Emperor of Didcot (19 page)

‘Freedom,’ said Smith. ‘And dignity.’

‘They gave me a crate of red wine,’ another elder said. ‘And some balsamic vinegar.’

‘Gentlemen, please listen!’ cried Smith. ‘This is not about tinned goods, or stocking your cellars. This is about life and death! What good will
Cotes de Rhône
be to you when Ghast stormtroopers march through your cities, killing all before them?’

‘We could break the bottles on their heads,’ the elder said. ‘It would really hurt, especially if we only used the cheap stuff.’

‘That would sting something awful,’ said the elder with one tusk.

‘Please try to understand.’ Smith looked away, his head aching with frustration. ‘I know our history together may not be too good. I know we’ve disagreed at times—’

‘Oh, water under the bridge,’ said the elder with one eye.

‘– but our Empire cannot defeat the Ghasts on its own. With your help, we can liberate Urn, keep our army strong, and keep all of our worlds safe from tyranny. But without your help, we are too few. There are some odds that even British people cannot overcome.’

The elder with one eye opened his hands helplessly. ‘Two alien races, far away. I’m sorry, Captain Smith, but I really don’t see the relevance of this. We have business to look after, work to do. This isn’t the Dark Ages, you know.’

Around the henge, the elders murmured their agreement.

Smith opened his mouth, but he was drowned out by a bellow of rage. Throat sacs inflated, jaws wide open, head thrown back, Suruk roared at the sky. As they recoiled in shock he sprang onto the Great Table, onto the sacred inscription.

‘Shame on you!’ he cried. ‘Shame on you, cowards and fools! You will fall, this land will fall, and you will cry to the ancestors to save you, and they will spurn you just as you spurn them! As your houses burn, as the tribes are driven forth as slaves instead of warriors, you will remember this day and curse your mealy words a thousand times! These humans, these little pink things, have more honour than you! This—’ he jabbed a finger at Carveth, ‘
this
stunted jester has more honour than all of you put together!’

He stopped, panting. There was an awkward pause, and the group noticed a familiar figure standing beside the Great Table, looking up at Suruk.

‘Right, you,’ said the official. ‘That’s quite enough. Hop it.’

‘Well,’ said Morgar, ‘it’s been nice seeing you again.’

‘Huh,’ Suruk said. ‘I suppose the same. What can I do but wish you well? Apart from hacking you into pieces, of course. But even that would hardly seem worth the bother.’

They stood on the landing pad in front of the
John
Pym
. It was hot, and the satellite dishes of the clan-houses seemed to waver in the haze.

‘Here,’ said Carveth, and she passed Morgar the bottle of wine from her bag. ‘Cheers for putting us up.’

‘Thank you,’ Morgar said. He peered at the label disapprovingly. ‘Hmm. French, eh? I wonder what region it is?’

‘Europe, stupid,’ Suruk said.

Morgar looked at his brother and sighed. ‘Look, I feel pretty bad about the way this has turned out—’

‘Perhaps the Ghast legions will perk you up,’ Suruk said coldly.

Smith elbowed Suruk in the side.

Suruk said, ‘Goodbye, brother. Goodbye, father. I thank you for the jumper.’

‘Thank you for the skull, Suruk,’ Agshad said.

They bowed to one another. ‘Goodbye to all of you. Good luck, Captain Smith. I hope the ancestors look well on you. And Suruk, if ever you do think about going to law school, I can always send you a prospectus.’

*

Above Didcot 5, the
Systematic Destruction
slid into orbit. On the bridge, 462 watched plasma torpedoes corkscrew through the peach-coloured cloud, into the storms. There was a brief flash of light, then another, and, a second later, a third. Only then did he turn from the window.

An orderly stood beside him. ‘Supreme Ship’s Commander!’

‘Minion.’

‘Report on planet surface follows! All life should have been destroyed. Threat almost certainly neutralised.’

462’s eye narrowed. ‘ “Should be?” ’

‘Um. . . is.’

462 put his hands behind his back and walked to his seat. ‘So, Project Midwife is finished. Good.’ He sat down, thinking. No doubt the Edenite buffoons on Urn would be making a mess of things. Still, it did not matter. Tea was useless to the Ghast Empire and, once he returned, he would give the order to strip Urn of everything the Ghasts could use before destroying it.

‘Sir!’ another orderly called. ‘A message has come from our entirely neutral allies the Yull. They state that a craft similar to the human ship
John Pym
has landed on the M’Lak world of Didcot 6. I am pleased to inform you that we have sufficient torpedoes remaining to—’

462 lurched upright and cuffed the minion across the jaw. ‘Silence!’ He sank back into his chair slowly, as if deflating. His mechanical eye ached. ‘No. To attack their world would violate M’Lak airspace. The enemy could paint us as aggressors and invaders – which is, of course, totally untrue. No, there are other ways. I think we can find someone altogether more disposable to do our work for us.’

He rubbed his hands, claws and antennae together, and began to laugh. The orderly, not wishing to be shot, joined in.

Carveth turned from the monitors and said, ‘Course set for Urn, boss.’

‘Thank you, Carveth.’

Things were subdued on the
John Pym
. Rhianna had retreated to her room, leaving Smith and Carveth in the cockpit. They sat quietly, depressed and a little embarrassed, as if at a wake for someone they hardly knew.

‘It’s going to be bad news when we get back,’ Smith said. ‘For everyone.’ He sipped a glass of gin and tonic.

Given the lack of allies, he had decided to ration the ship’s tea for emergency situations. He was already itching to brew up, despite having only enforced the new rule for half an hour. ‘Bloody aliens. All of them. Bloody stupid, unreliable bunch!’

‘On which subject,’ said Carveth, ‘where’s Suruk gone?’

‘In his room. Trying on his new jumper, apparently, which probably means ripping it into bits. I’d leave him to it.’

‘Perhaps I ought to see how he’s doing. After all, he did say that I had more honour than all his tribal elders put together.’

‘He also called you a stunted jester. Don’t push your luck. I’ll do it.’

Smith brushed his jacket down and strolled along the corridor. He felt empty and tired. Suruk’s door was closed; the next door down, Rhianna’s, was open. He raised his hand to knock on Suruk’s door and paused, uncertain of what to do. Things seemed pretty quiet in there. Perhaps it was best to leave the alien to it: like Smith, the last thing that would cheer him up would be people urging him to ‘let it all out’, ‘have a good cry’ or some new-age rubbish like that. What was a ‘good cry’ anyway? A happy grieve? A merry mourn?

‘Hey there.’

He glanced around: Rhianna lounged against the door-frame of her room, arms folded, watching him. ‘Hello,’ he said warily.

‘Coming in?’

‘Er, alright then,’ he said.

She stepped away gracefully and he walked into her room. It was alien territory, even less familiar to him than Suruk’s weapons racks and skull collection. The first impression was of an explosion in a sari factory: drapey things hung from the walls and ceiling. An item like a poorly-constructed wheel dangled above the bed, trailing feathers as though it had been used to bludgeon a thrush.

Trinkets jostled with suspicious-looking plants on the shelves. It was all extremely exotic, and hence made him think of Fry’s Turkish Delight.

‘Came to see Suruk really,’ he said. ‘Must be a bit of a shock for him. Maybe he’s best off on his own. Can’t hear anything smashing in there, so he’s probably alright.’

Rhianna said, ‘It must be really hard for him,’ and sat down on the mass of pillows, tassels, rugs, throws and ethnic litter that made up her bed. ‘You know, I really. . .
feel 
for those poor indigenous people, deprived of their way of life by colonialist imperialism.’

‘
We 
didn’t deprive them,’ Smith retorted, stung. ‘It was their choice to chuck in their traditions for accounting and risotto. I tell you, they were a damned lot easier to rule when they were demented savages. The only crazy thing down there now is the paving on their bloody driveway.’

‘I know.’ Her voice was softer. ‘It’s so sad.’

She leaned back, and it occurred to Smith that he would like to kiss every inch of her body. Well, most of it: some bits needed a clean. Maybe if she had a wash and asked nicely. There’d have to be something in it for him, like getting her to put on an English accent. Yes, an English accent and some sort of smalls – big smalls. . . Noticing the beginnings of what his old friend Carstairs referred to as ‘Trouser-prong’, he turned to the bookshelf and read the titles of some of her books. His eye skimmed over a grisly selection of volumes about lentil-rearing and Beat poetry, and stopped on some hippy diatribe entitled
Rage
Against the Washing Machine
. He felt considerably less excited now.

He turned round and nearly yelped: ghost-like, she had slid across the room in a soft waft of joss and was now quite close to him. ‘I never thanked you,’ she said.

Smith swallowed hard. Somehow Rhianna frightened him in a way that the shock divisions of the Ghast Empire did not. ‘What for?’ he managed.

‘For rescuing me from those children.’

‘They were just children,’ he said, glancing at the door. ‘Nothing much.’

‘They were psychics, Isambard. They could have killed me.’

‘Oh, well, all in a day’s work, eh? Nothing to worry about.’ Dammit, she had shifted between him and his escape.

‘I owe you.’

‘Oh, nonsense, nonsense.’

‘I think—’

‘Oh my God, did you hear that? Bloody Carveth no doubt, haha, probably done something I need to go and look at. . . so. . . so, I’d best go and look at it, hadn’t I? Yes!’ he added, in case she disagreed and, so saying, he bolted to the door, yanked the handle, sprang into the corridor, slammed it behind him and fell against the opposite wall, panting with relief.

Bloody hell, he thought, thank goodness I escaped that! She could have been all over me there! Damn foreign women, forward as anything and depraved with it, no doubt. Blimey, one moment longer in there and she probably would have pinned me to the wall and stuck her hands on my—

‘Balls!’ he said bitterly, and he walked back to the cock-pit, cursing himself, the Morlocks, the Ghasts and everything else. The gin and tonic was calling to him.

Morgar wrapped the praetorian skull in a plastic bag. He took it down to the family hangar that afternoon.

He opened the hangar door with the remote control and stood in the doorway, looking at the clan spacecraft. It was a tough, battered, powerful thing, its prow a patch-work of spikes and soldered armour plates. Some of the trophies still lingered on the front: Morgar had thrown most of them away.

He sighed, took out the praetorian skull and drove it onto one of the spikes. It jutted from the front of the ship, aggressive and empty-eyed. There was a noise behind him, and he spun around.

‘Dad?’

‘Hello,’ Agshad said. He was carrying a tin of paint.

Morgar nodded at the ship. ‘I just came down here to put that skull away that Suruk brought us. By the ancestors, he does come back from his holidays with some right old tat. Thought I’d stick it here. . . it just seemed sort of appropriate.’

Agshad chuckled. ‘Nostalgia, eh?’ He stepped into the garage and patted the ship with his free hand. ‘Ah, we used to have some laughs in this old thing. When I look back at it all. . .’

‘What’s that you’ve got?’

‘This? Oh, just some old red paint and a brush. I just thought I’d store it here, just in case I ever feel like painting the business end of anything red. . . you know, go faster stripes or something.’

They stood there together for a while, looking at the ship.

‘We’re being hailed!’ Carveth cried. ‘Someone’s calling us!’

Smith jolted awake, spilling the remains of his drink over his lap. ‘Where?’

Carveth folded down a console and her fingers clattered over the keys. ‘On the left. Four ships. Dart-shaped.’

‘Ghasts!’ Suddenly Smith was very awake indeed. ‘They must have followed us here. Put them on loudspeaker.’

Carveth reached out, and high-pitched noises came from the speakers: squeaky, breathless, angry sounds.

‘Well, it’s not Ghasts,’ Smith said. ‘It could be worse.’

‘British offworlder scum! You are in sacred Yull space, offworlder cowards! Today you die, British!
Hup-hup!
Yes, cut out hearts for the war-god!
Hwup!
’

‘Good God,’ Smith said. ‘The lemming-men of Yull!’

‘Kill you slow, offworlder!’ the speaker screeched.‘
Hephuphephuphup!
’

‘Tell them we mean no harm!’ Carveth cried. ‘Calm them down or something!’

The door flew open and Suruk stormed in. He leaned across Carveth, toggled the speakers and roared, ‘Scum of Yull! Pirates and murderers! I will slay you all!’

‘Dirty M’Lak!’ the Yull shouted back. Carveth had the nasty feeling that she was trapped between two broken amplifiers. 

‘So M’Lak are now cowards too! Polite after-dinner chat no match for frenzied assault of Yull! Prepare to die!
Hup-hup!
’

‘We will wade in your blood, filth!’ Suruk snarled.‘Today you will know that one of the M’Lak has not embraced cowardice!’ He flicked off the intercom. ‘Woman, turn this ship and prepare to fight.’

‘Bugger right off!’

‘The lemming-men will try to ram us,’ Smith said. ‘Do you think we can outpace them?’

‘I can bloody well try,’ Carveth said. She turned the ship, and in the edge of the windscreen Smith saw four specs of light, the engines of the Yull dart-ships. Carveth pushed the throttle forward. A sudden rushing, scraping sound came from the rear of the ship, and the floor began to shudder.