The Garden of Unearthly Delights (26 page)

18

The clout William took to
the head increased the sum of his knowledge, only by teaching him that Maxwell
was not a man to be dealt with in a flippant manner.

Maxwell
spoke at length to William, telling him of his misadventures, of MacGuffin and the
stolen soul and the flying chair and the rat ogres of Kakkarta. And of the
Governor and of the grid and dah-de-dah-dedah.

William
listened with great interest, asking questions here and there. He made it clear
to Maxwell that in his opinion it was impossible for one man to take another’s
soul. Yet he conceded that his knowledge of magic was scant and that ‘weird
shit happens’. He
did
ask Maxwell why he had lost his faith in the
existence of the city, when the Governor of Kakkarta had told him that he was a
personal friend of the Sultan.

Maxwell
asked William whether he had ever heard of such a thing as a continuity error.
William said he had not.

The
talk of Ewavett and Aodhamm inspired much wonder in the lad, who explained that
recently some knowledge had been knocked into him regarding cyborgs and
artificial intelligence, but that he had been at a loss to make any sense of it
at the time.

When
Maxwell had done with the telling of his tale, William mulled it all over and
then agreed without reservation to direct Maxwell at once to the City of
Rameer
.

‘But
you must understand’, he stressed, ‘that technically you lay yourself open to
the charge of kidnap. Should the men of my village catch up with us, they will
not deal leniently. Your pleas that you seek the City of
Rameer
will hold less water than a bucket
with no bottom.’

‘That
is a crap metaphor,’ said Maxwell, ‘but I take your point.’

‘I
think you’ll find it’s a simile,’ said William, ‘but I’m glad you do.’

‘So
shall we be off?’

‘Let’s
go.’

‘Which
way?’ Maxwell asked.

William
pointed. ‘Over yonder hill,’ he said.

The day passed on to
afternoon, to evening, then to night. William proved himself to be a boy of
considerable resource. Skilled not only in the arts of scrumping fruit,
stealing cow’s milk, snaring, killing, skinning and cooking rabbits, but also
in woodcraft.

Having
no sleeping-bag or cloak, Maxwell was grateful for the shelter of the
bush-branch bender he constructed. Also for the meal. They talked not long into
the night as they agreed it best to douse the fire and make an early start in
the morning.

Maxwell
lay awhile gazing up through the canopy of leaves towards the star-strung sky.
What was it all about, eh? What did it all mean? Maxwell shrugged, Black Bess
farted and that was the end of the day.

The night passed without
incident. No villagers with flaming torches. No wolves, nor snakes, nor
creeping things. Neither William nor Maxwell were abducted by aliens. There was
no earthquake.

At
dawn, a tall grey-haired man with iron-framed spectacles came to enquire why
Maxwell and William were camped in his front garden, and could Maxwell do
something about his horse, because it was eating the flowers in the man’s
window-box.

Maxwell
apologized profusely. The man said he thought it, ‘A diabolical liberty.’
Maxwell said he was sorry once again. The man claimed that the world was going
to the Devil and such things shouldn’t be allowed. Maxwell punched the man’s
lights out.

And off
they rode once more.

It was
really
boring.

There
is always that bit when nothing very much happens. Sometimes it’s relieved by a
little humorous anecdote, or a descriptive passage that’s part of a running
gag, or some conversation with a lot of long words in it that implies there’s a
lot more
depth
than there actually is. But sometimes —
rarely!
—
but sometimes …

There’s
nothing!

‘What
is
that?’
William asked, pointing excitedly.

Maxwell
stared off into the distance. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said.

And it
was.

So they
rode on.

‘I’m
getting bored with this riding,’ said William. ‘Don’t you know some humorous
anecdote you could tell me?’

‘No,’
said Maxwell.

‘How
would you describe this countryside?’

‘I
wouldn’t,’ said Maxwell.

‘Isn’t
that a parsnip over there?’

‘No,’
said Maxwell.

‘Did I
tell you my thoughts on the quantum theory?’

‘Yes,’
said Maxwell.

And so they rode on.

‘I once
saw a man who was only one inch tall,’ said William.

‘Did
you?’

‘No,
not really. He turned out to be just very far away.
Ouch!’

They
rode on.

After
more of the same for several hours, William suddenly said, ‘Look up ahead.’

Maxwell
looked. ‘Ah!’ said he. ‘Splendid.’

A
knight rode before them. He wore golden armour, a child clung on behind him.

‘Look
back,’ said William. ‘There’s another one coming after us.’

‘Simply
splendid.’

‘What
do you plan to do when we reach the entrance to the city, Maxwell.’

‘I plan
to go inside, of course.’

‘What
about me?’

‘I plan
to take you in too.’

‘Oh
no,’ said William. ‘Oh no. Not me.’

‘listen,’
Maxwell gave the lad an encouraging pat on the shoulder. ‘I have a magic pouch
in my pocket. It contains a suit of golden armour. I will put the armour on and
we will enter the city with the other knights. It will appear that I am
delivering you for your examination.’

‘I
suspected you had something like that in mind.’

‘I’ll see
you come to no harm. I promise.’

‘Promises
are easier made than kept.’

‘You
have all the makings of a fine innkeeper, William. Perhaps we will acquire some
of the Sultan’s wealth. You could buy your own inn. Conduct affairs of state
from there, once you’re elected Prime Minister.’

‘That
statement might carry a bit more weight were it not prefixed by the word
perhaps.’

‘Yes,
you’re right.’ Maxwell drew Black Bess to a halt. ‘I may be a soul-less, angry,
violent bastard with only eighteen more days to live, but I won’t be
instrumental in letting any harm come to a child. Get down from the horse. You
can either wait here until I return, as I surely will, or go your way. Not that
I think it a good idea for a boy of your age to be wandering about on his own.’

William
remained in the saddle. ‘Just testing,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

‘You’ll
trust me, then?’

‘Don’t
you think I want to know what’s inside the city?’

‘Rock
‘n’ Roll,’ said Maxwell. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll.’

‘You’ll
have to explain to me just what that means,’ said William.

The landscape had begun to
change. Rocky outcrops showed through the grassy meadows. The trees were
autumn-leafed. The setting sun saw Maxwell, once more in the golden armour, but
it didn’t see the worried face he wore beneath the visor.

‘The track’s
going down, isn’t it?’ William said.

‘It has
been for some time. Are we nearly there, do you think?’

‘Oh
yes. I feel as if I know this place. We’re very close now.’

The
path grew steeper and as the moon rose up it cast its light upon a scene of
such surpassing strangeness that Maxwell had to pull up the horse short and
just stare at it in disbelief.

It
appeared that they had entered the crater of some vast extinct volcano. The
track spiralled down the inner rim, down and down into a great black void.
Knights rode slowly on before, diminishing away to tiny golden dots on the
track below.

‘You
don’t suppose’, said Maxwell, ‘that the term, The City of Rameer, is in fact a
euphemism for Hell?’

‘I knew
this is what it looked like,’ said William. ‘I just didn’t want to put you off
by mentioning it.’

‘Thanks
very much.’

‘Don’t
mention it.’

And as
it had been the order of the day…

They
rode on.

Down
and down and down. And down. And down and down. And down.

And
down.

‘I see
light,’ said William.

‘Me
too,’ said Maxwell.

And
they did see light. Ahead. Like a thin line of dawn.

‘Do you
get the feeling that we’re not going down any more?’ William asked.

‘I get
the feeling that we’re going up. But I don’t see how we can be.’

But
they were. After a fashion.

The light
grew before them. And then rose
above
them.

‘The
sun’s coming up,’ said William.

‘That’s
impossible,’ said Maxwell.

And
then they rode out. Upon grass. Maxwell stared. And William stared. ‘William,’
said Maxwell, ‘do you realize what we’re doing?’

William
nodded. ‘We would appear to be riding upside down on the inner skin of the
planet’s outer shell. Clearly in defiance of at least one law of physics.’

‘Then
that sun we see above us— ‘Would appear to be the molten core of the planet.’

‘I’m
very impressed,’ said Maxwell. ‘I don’t believe it, but I’m very impressed,
none the less.’

‘An
entire world, upside down. Look, you can see, there’s no horizon, it curves up
and out and away. We’re like flies walking on a ceiling.

‘I feel
dizzy,’ said Maxwell. ‘The blood must be rushing to my head.’

‘Don’t
be silly. If it was doing that, we’d fall, well,
up
I suppose, into the
heart of the molten core.’

‘It’s
just like the world above. Grass and flowers and trees. And look, way ahead.
What is that?’

‘Do you
mean over yonder hill?’

‘I do.’

‘The
City of
Rameer
,’ said William.
‘Definitely.’ And this time it really was.

‘Let me
tell you’, said Maxwell, ‘what I mean by Rock ‘n’ Roll.’

19

Maxwell was not really
sure just how he’d imagined the City of
Rameer
might look. Naturally he’d thought that a city ruled over by a
Sultan would probably have an Arabian Nights flavour to it: a bit of old
Baghdad, with plenty of domes and cupolas and minarets; a high city wall with
tall Moorish gates, manned by fierce-looking guards with turbans and scimitars.
Things of that nature.

He had
not
expected it to look like
Milton Keynes
.

So he
wasn’t surprised when it didn’t.

He was
quite surprised by what it did look like, though. And it really didn’t look
like a city. It was big, which is to say there was a lot of it about. Tall
buildings, elegant, in pale brick.

Neo-Gothic,
Palladian style. Horizontal skylines broken at intervals by triangular
pediments atop Doric colonnades. Heavy on classical influences. A great many of
these. Graeco-Roman, Spanish, high baroque, Renaissance, reflected through Wren
and Hawksmoor, Adam and Inigo Jones.

To
Maxwell, who knew sweet damn all about Hawksmoor and Inigo Jones, and who might
have guessed that a Doric colonnade was a kind of Morris dance, it was none the
less pretty impressive, if something of a jumble. Here was an architectural
folly on a scale to dwarf the work of the now legendary, Sir Clough
Williams-Ellis himself.

Surrounding
all were beautiful gardens, tended lawns, rose arbors, marble statuary.

‘We’re
going the wrong way,’ said William. ‘The knights are turning off, see they’re
going towards those buildings over there.’

‘I
think it’s time for us to drop out of the procession,’ said Maxwell. ‘Come on.’
He steered the horse to the shelter of a spreading chestnut tree, removed the
golden armour, slipped it into the magic pouch and returned the pouch to his
trouser pocket.

‘It’s
clever how it does that, isn’t it?’ said William. ‘I suppose a state must exist
within the pouch where the quotient of fundamental physical properties
possessed by the object placed inside no longer conforms to the accepted
three-dimensional paradigm on which much of the quantum theory depends for its
veracity. You forgot to take your substantial boots out, by the way.’