The Japanese Devil Fish Girl (31 page)

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Authors: Robert Rankin

BOOK: The Japanese Devil Fish Girl
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32
 
T
he accommodation, to say the least, was wretched. No full board with free drinks from the bar. Dark and dank and grim and glum and gloomy. Smelling rank and, if even listed in
The Gentleman Traveller’s Guide to Prison Cells of the World
, scarcely even rating half a star.
 
George sat fuming in the rank and murkiness. Occasionally puffings and blowings escaped his lips. All indicative of extreme irritation and fury.
 
Professor Coffin toyed with his gold pocket watch. He had acquired this whilst aboard the Empress of Mars to replace that of George’s which he had returned to the lad. This beautiful timepiece not only chimed the hour, but went for five whole days without winding.
 
There was absolutely no telling how long it would go for if you
did
wind it.
 
Inside the face cover were engraved the words
ToNikola Tesla
From all the Backroom Boffins
26th July 1895
 
 
 
Professor Coffin held the watch to his ear. ‘We have been in this cell for nearly twelve hours,’ he said to George.
 
‘And I have hated every minute,’ George replied. ‘And,’ he added, ‘I had no idea that a single ape can go to the toilet quite so many times.’
 
‘He is a somewhat prodigious piddler,’ Professor Coffin agreed. ‘Which does not improve the ambience one little bit. But—’
 
‘Do not even begin,’ said George. ‘If you tell me one more time that all will be well, I will fall upon you and wring the life from your neck with my bare hands alone.’
 
‘Come, come, George,’ said the professor. ‘All will be well. But you are out of sorts. I have something here that will raise your spirits.’ And he dipped into his waistcoat pocket to draw out a slim glass phial.
 
‘Oh no,’ croaked the professor. ‘It is gone.’
 
‘Gone?’ asked George. ‘What is gone?’
 
‘Something rather special. Something that I felt might aid our escape from here. In all of our comings and goings it must have fallen from my pocket.’
 
‘Tell me of this something,’ said George Fox.
 
‘It does not matter now,’ said the professor.
 
‘No,’ said George, ‘for we are soon to die most horribly. So where would be the harm in you telling me?’
 
‘It was something I acquired whilst on board the airship. Something called the Scent of Unknowing.’
 
George did noddings of his head and stroked his striking chin.
 
‘A perfume that I thought to be of myth. One sniff and the sniffer becomes totally compliant. Whatever the sniffer is told to do, or told to think, so shall it be for the sniffer.’
 
Professor Coffin might have added more, but of a sudden was quite unable to speak. George’s hands were fastened around his throat and George was glaring fiercely and shaking the showman about.
 
‘You thoroughgoing swine!’ shouted George. ‘At last all falls into place. My periods of missing time. Ada’s most dramatic change of opinion concerning you.’
 
Professor Coffin floundered about. Though sprightly he, for the age of himself, no match was he for George.
 
Darwin the monkey set up a shrieking. Became a self-appointed referee.
 
‘All right,’ said George. ‘All right.’ He elbowed aside the chattering ape and let the showman fall.
 
‘I am sorry, George,’ croaked the professor, when he could once more find a voice to speak with. ‘You might think me wrong. But I did it for the best of motives—’
 
‘Your own financial advancement,’ said George Fox.
 
‘And yours too. Fifty-fifty.’
 
‘Or at least until you had what you wanted. At which time you would most likely have had me take a little sniff of the scent and confess that I no longer had any interest at all in taking my fifty per cent.’
 
Professor Coffin tried very hard indeed to make the words ‘I swear that I had no such thing in mind’ sound convincing.
 
George was
not
convinced.
 
‘We are finished, you and I,’ he said. ‘Our partnership is no more. If somehow I survive and somehow I find Ada, I will return with her,
somehow
, to England and take a respectable job.’
 
‘Ha,’ said the professor, with some difficulty because it hurt his throat. ‘Do not give me any of that, my boy. You have loved every minute of this. The thrills and high adventure.’
 
‘Loved every minute?’ George was all but speechless. ‘I have lost all count of how many people died on the
Empress of Mars
. Then the natives. Then the flying monkeys and now
this
.’
 
‘But you still live,’ said the professor. ‘And have you ever felt so truly alive before? You will find your love, George. I just know that you will and if you do return to England and take a respectable job, you will constantly recall our adventures and hanker after such excitement again.’
 
George Fox folded his arms in a huff and took to a sulking silence.
 
 
They did not get an evening meal, nor indeed a breakfast.
 
Which George felt the dying man deserved. And after all, if they were going to the cooking pot, then fattening them up was surely logical.
 
A Martian’s slidy foot did slurpings in the corridor outside. Intricate brass coggery was set into motion, and bolts slid back upon the grim cell door.
 
‘About time,’ said Professor Coffin. ‘No doubt some letter of apology from some high muckamuck at the Ministry of Immigration. Or possibly our breakfast.’
 
George Fox ground his teeth and knotted his fists.
 
The muzzle of a Martian terror weapon entered the cell. Gargly shouts of an urgent nature entered with it.
 
‘Time, it seems, to go,’ said George. ‘And Darwin,’ he said to the monkey butler, ‘you have my most sincere apologies. You saved my life and I in turn threw it away. Taking yours with it, I regret.’
 
Darwin the monkey shook George by the hand.
 
The three then left the cell.
 
 
There was something of a carnival atmosphere upon the streets of Lemuria. Bunting swagged from building to building.
 
Somewhere music played.
 
Unrecognisable was this to an Earthly ear, appearing more a discordant jangle, accompanied by rattlings. But it had the desired effect upon the considerable crowd that lined the streets. Martians jigged their nips and tentacles and street-side vendors with colourful carts sold bottles of Martian beer.
 
Professor Coffin waved gaily. Some of the crowd waved back.
 
Professor Coffin did not, however, consider it politic to tell George that he still retained a degree of confidence that all would end happily.
 
George Fox stalked and Darwin scampered. Behind them the well-armed Martian slid along.
 
It came as absolutely no surprise at all to either George or the professor to find that their final destination was the pyramid of skulls in the central plaza.
 
George did desperate glancings all about. There had to be some way he could make his escape. Well, some way
they
could make
their
escape. As George wanted no harm to come to Darwin. Perhaps some low-flying aircraft might be leapt onto. Perhaps the surviving Jupiterians would arrive in the very nick of time to rescue them. Perhaps Darwin might have something up his hairy sleeve.
 
Perhaps.
 
Or, perhaps, simply, George would die here. Die in this subterranean city. Die and be eaten, or other-ways about. But have his head bone join the hill of skulls. Be just another unnamed victim, dead in a faraway place.
 
George wished for Ada.
 
George wished he was back in England.
 
George Fox thought of his parents.
 
George missed his mum.
 
Up the shallow steps went George at the urge of an alien gun. Step after step and up and up, skulls to either side.
 
Upon the very summit, flat-topped, plateaued, stood a Martian of considerable stature. Before him a table and this spread with instruments designed for nothing but torture.
 
Except, perhaps, for meat butchery.
 
And serving up.
 
George glanced back. The professor joined him, Darwin too.
 
The Martian with the gun made further garglings.
 
‘Interlopers, insurgents, iconoclasts—’
 
The words boomed from the wonderful translating machine, which had been wheeled to the foot of the pyramid.
 
Amplified garglings followed, which George considered were probably a Martian translation of the words of English. Then—
 
‘We speak to you in your own tongue, that you may understand the error of your ways. And that your flippancy and casual attitude to official paperwork has led you to receive just punishment.’
 
A gargled Martian version of all this followed.
 
‘It is tragic that at a time such as this, when the prophecies are being fulfilled, that you did not come amongst us as penitent pilgrims armed with all the necessary correctly filled application forms and officially endorsed visas.’
 
Professor Coffin sighed and shrugged.
 
George said, ‘Prophecies fulfilled?’
 
‘Now is our time of great rejoicing,’ the voice continued. ‘And as such it is fitting that you should serve as part of our feast of celebration. Bow now and hide your faces from the Marvel that you are not fit to gaze upon.’
 
‘What of
this
?’ asked George.
 
But ask nothing more would he. Other than perhaps that God should forgive him all his trespasses. And recall the deal that George had formerly suggested, regarding the sparing of Ada’s life in exchange for his own.
 
The very large Martian with the table-load of tortures cast his tentacles about George and dragged him from his feet. Other tentacles ensnared Darwin and the professor. Curled about their mouths, stifling their cries for mercy, holding them with a hideous strength.
 
‘Death to the infidels!’ cried the mechanical voice. And then took once more to ghastly gargles.
 
A blur of tentacles scooped up horrible cutting tools, fiendish things a-dazzle with corkscrew blades.
 
The Martian crowd made free with joyful cheerings.
 
The instruments of torment swept down upon the joyless three.
 
33
 
A
mighty cry rose up above all. A hideous gargling shriek.
 
It stilled the Martian crowd to silence. The torture weapons halted in mid-swing.
 
A further gargled torrent of words and tentacles retracted.
 
George was suddenly free and gasped for air. His ears seemed to pop from the all-consuming silence. Gingerly George climbed to his feet. The professor, he observed, was doing likewise. Darwin was up upon his haunches.
 
The Martian executioner was replacing his terrible implements.
 
Professor Coffin offered George a shrug.
 
More amplified garglings issued forth. The huge executioner flung himself down to the paved plateau and set free plaintive moanings.
 
From his vantage point upon high, George could see that the countless Martians below were now sinking to the knee-like parts of themselves and bowing their horrible heads.
 
Further commands, for such these obviously were, poured from the translating machine. Uncomfortably, on its knees, the crowd did backings away.
 
And George looked down at the being who spoke the commands into the wonderful translating machine and George beheld a great wonder.

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