I thought back on my time with Mac. In those days I’d often wondered how people could get themselves into such dangerous situations.
‘I trusted the dinosaurs so implicitly that I became more and more reckless,’ Baldwyn went on. ‘Things got to the stage where I jumped off Demon Rocks without a parachute.’
The mention of ‘Demon Rocks’ made me prick up my ears a second time.
‘I simply hurled myself into space without a second thought. Only when I’d fallen two thousand feet did it occur to me that visibility was extremely poor that day, and that a heavy drizzle and dense mist were very unfavourable conditions in which to be sighted by a Reptilian Rescuer. After five thousand feet I had my first misgivings. What would happen if none turned up at all?
‘At the foot of Demon Rocks lies a glass forest whose crystal treetops are as sharp and pointed as the peaks of the Gloomberg Mountains. But I wouldn’t have survived even if there had been a whole warehouseful of mattresses down there, not after falling from such a height.
‘I suppressed this disagreeable thought for a while, but after falling another ten thousand feet I was unpleasantly struck once more by the suspicious absence of any pterodactyls. Another thousand feet or so, and I would crash to the ground. I would have welcomed it had the outlines of a flying lizard shown up, if only in the distance, but nothing of the kind occurred.
‘While falling the last five hundred feet I realized that it had probably been unprofessional of me to jump in such poor visibility. There wasn’t even a bird to be seen, a potential sign that my decision to jump without a parachute had not been based on mature consideration. On the other hand, a parachute wouldn’t have done me much good. The treetops would have skewered me more slowly, that’s all.
‘Fifty feet from impact I came to the conclusion that it had definitely been a mistake to risk the jump. I fiercely reprimanded myself, condemned my carelessness, and bitterly deplored my blind faith in the Reptilian Rescuers.
‘I had indeed been mistaken, that much was clear. Three feet from being spitted on a glass tree trunk the height of a flagpole I had one of my life’s most profound revelations: I was an unmitigated idiot. One foot from impact I mentally underlined this realization twice in red pencil.
‘Six inches from impact a flying lizard shot out of the dense mist, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, and carried me back up Demon Rocks, where he gave me a regular tongue-lashing. I’d had plenty of lectures from Reptilian Rescuers in my time, but I’d never felt so ashamed.
‘That pterodactyl really knew how to bawl someone out, believe me! The strangest thing of all was, there was a little bear sitting on its back. Not a white one like you, though. Its fur was blue.’
An old friend
That clinched it: Baldwyn had been referring to one of my countless missions with Deus X. Machina. I recalled the dense mist, the poor visibility, and Mac’s stubborn insistence on waiting till the very last moment. It had been a genuine feat of navigation, flying almost blind in a heavy drizzle. I also recalled the shamefaced young man we’d deposited on the summit of Demon Rocks.
I had helped to save Baldwyn’s life.
A tearful, affectionate scene ensued when I told Baldwyn that the little blue bear had been me. Baldwyn wept because he had encountered one of his rescuers. As for me, I wept at this reminder of my happy cubhood, which was now a thing of the past. Finally we wept because we couldn’t help it. We pulled ourselves together after a while, and he continued, sniffing:
‘Stupidly enough, that incident reinforced my faith in the reliability of Reptilian Rescuers to such an extent that I started taking even bigger gambles. I floated down the Wotansgard Rapids in a barrel and jumped into an erupting volcano from a dirigible balloon. No risk was too great. And all went well every time – one of those pterodactyls always turned up at the last moment.
‘Until the day I decided to defy the tornado. So here I am. Not even a bird showed up – not even at the very last moment.’
Well, Mac and I couldn’t be everywhere at once.
Depending on their particular interests, the old men had taken up various hobbies of which most were connected with the things the tornado sucked in. One day it swallowed an entire library, and since then a man named Gnothi C. Auton had been busy retrieving books from the sand, arranging them, cataloguing them, and lending them out. Others specialized in collecting velvet cushions, door handles, or sun umbrellas. They were always engaged in swapping things, cadging them off each other, or bartering them. Thus the biggest social event in Tornado City was the day of the regular flea market, when each inhabitant could barter the junk displayed outside his front door.
Tornado treasures
‘Junk’ is putting it a bit strong, perhaps, because some of the things on offer were extraordinarily valuable. There were cut diamonds the size of billiard balls, gold jewellery, whole treasure chests filled with silver coins and strings of pearls, ivory mantilla combs, platinum shoehorns, cutlery and flatware of unbreakable glass from the Impic Alps, ashtrays of volcanic crystal, coffers full of tiny gold bars and barrels of paper money, skilfully fashioned rings and bracelets in a wide variety of precious metals, crowns and sceptres, diamond-studded coffee spoons, caskets of rubies and emeralds, and elaborately decorated kitchen utensils made of highly compressed meteorite dust.
All these had been engulfed by the tornado over the years. Once inside it, however, the most valuable articles were worth least, whereas a few intact fresh eggs or a roll of really soft toilet paper were regarded as absolute luxuries. Cash, gold, and diamonds meant nothing in Tornado City.
I started to collect these treasures notwithstanding. From the flea market I amassed vast quantities of antique gold coins, diamond tiaras, noblemen’s coronets, magnificent goblets, silver cutlery. I filled my house with stacks of gold bars and stored sacks of pearls beneath my bed. After a few weeks my home resembled a treasure chamber from the Thousand and One Nights. I swathed myself in splendid robes of silk and ermine, wore a caliph’s crown for breakfast, and strutted up and down in front of my house draped in sparkling necklaces of precious stones. At every flea market I bargained for treasures of all kinds: bales of Chinese silk, jade vases, platinum goblets, sackfuls of gold, silver buckets filled with uncut diamonds. I couldn’t get enough of them.
By now, I could scarcely move in my house. While sleeping I was pricked by the jagged extremities of the royal crowns I’d stacked on my bed for lack of space. I had to pick my way with difficulty through the luxury goods that lay around all over the place, waded through the diamonds and pearls that covered the floor to a depth of several paw’s-breadths, and had to clamber over brimming treasure chests just to get from my bed to the table.
In contrast to this superabundance, I was always short of coffee, sugar, porridge oats, and honey-water – all of them simple, everyday things to which I was accustomed, but which I’d largely bartered away for my treasures. I lived on a strict diet consisting mainly of water and the scraps of food I sometimes found on the rubbish dump.
One morning Baldwyn came to breakfast. He was looking worried. Having grown used to his notoriously bad moods, I thought no more of it. I gave him a cup of potato tea (an infusion of roasted potato skins – a brew I’d invented for want of coffee) and a plate of potato skins, likewise roasted. Donning my ermine cape with ruby buttons and my favourite crown, I waded through my treasures to the kitchen table to keep Baldwyn company. ‘You’re the talk of Tornado City,’ he said, having taken a sip of potato tea and, with a look of disgust, replaced the emerald-encrusted gold cup on its saucer.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘What are people saying about me?’ My curiosity was aroused – they probably envied me my treasures. Lying on the table were some sacks of gold. They were obscuring my view of Baldwyn, so I pushed them aside.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard them, the din they’re making all day long. They’re laughing at you, that’s what.’
I shook a little gold dust out
of my ears – maybe I hadn’t heard aright. I’d become the wealthiest inhabitant of Tornado City in no time at all. I owned the Norselander crown jewels, I controlled the whole of Tornado City’s gold and platinum reserves. What was so funny about that?
‘Take a look at yourself,’ Baldwyn said with a hint of compassion in his voice. ‘You look like a circus clown with megalomania. Look around you! What do you want with all this loot? You’ve got sackfuls of diamonds but you can’t offer me a decent cup of coffee. You’re swimming in gold but living on scraps. You still haven’t caught on, have you? You’re going to be here in Tornado City till the end of your days. There’s no going back! You can’t take it anywhere, all this rubbish you’ve collected, and it’s utterly worthless in here. You still haven’t come to terms with the fact that you’re the tornado’s prisoner like the rest of us.’
Baldwyn rose and struggled across the room to the door, ripping his cloak on a gold sabre in the process. That really infuriated him. In the doorway he paused and turned.
‘You’re a hundred years old, so grow up at last! The sooner you resign yourself to your fate the better. And get rid of all this loot!’ So saying, he made his way down the stone stairs to the public tearoom, where everyone was tearing me to shreds.
I see sense at last
I remained seated at the table for a while, blushing under my magnificent crown. Baldwyn was right, but not quite in the way he thought. I was well aware that my treasures were worthless in here. I had accumulated them because I still secretly hoped to extricate myself – and them – from the tornado. This had completely blinded me to my real objective, which was to escape. Well, things were going to change.
I spent the next few weeks getting rid of all my treasures – no easy task, because nobody really wanted to take them on, still less give me anything genuinely useful in exchange. Usually so decrepit, the old men hobbled past my flea-market stall with surprising agility, so I resorted to a trick: I visited each of the inhabitants in turn and took the opportunity to shower them with sumptuous gifts. In Tornado City, as in every sensible society, to refuse a gift was considered an insult.
I would drop in for coffee and leave a sack of diamonds behind, or pay someone a brief visit and happen to have a casket of gold bangles with me, or come for a game of chess and drape my host in dozens of pearl necklaces. This not only divested me of all my useless ballast but enabled me once more to enjoy what the tornado had to offer in the way of really important things like coffee, bread, and tobacco, for it was customary for a host to repay one gift with another.
Having jettisoned all my ballast, I concentrated on escaping.
I searched the tornado daily for potential escape routes. I combed it for cracks and fissures big enough to squeeze through – I even sniffed the air in quest of a dimensional hiatus.
No matter how much longer I lived inside the tornado, I simply wasn’t born to remain in the same place for evermore (even if that place itself covered vast distances!). I wanted another sight of the sea and sky, yearned to breathe fresh air again and gaze across miles of open countryside. If there was a way into the tornado there must also be a way out. That was a lesson I’d learned in the maze of tunnels in the Gloomberg Mountains.
I crawled into every corner of Tornado City in search of loopholes, emergency exits, secret trapdoors. I sounded every wall with my knuckles, burrowed into the rubbish dump like a mole, and mentally reviewed the most adventurous methods of escape – for instance in a home-made balloon, with the aid of a parachute made from underpants sewn together, or in a do-it-yourself helicopter with kayak paddles for rotor blades.
But the tornado seemed as escape-proof as a maximum security prison. Nobody knew what would happen if you burrowed through the tornado’s walls. You probably aged still more, so the risk was simply too great. As for escaping by air, this was rendered far too dangerous by the heavy objects that were forever sailing in through the top of the funnel.
Escape plans
I proceeded to pump the old men. It transpired as time went by that nearly all of them had flirted with an escape plan of some kind. They told me of tunnels that had filled up with detritus in a flash, of flying machines that had crashed, of daring dreams and shattered hopes. In the end, I was forced to acknowledge that all my escape plans had already been tried and found wanting. There was only one way out of the tornado: straight through the wall, and that route no one had ever ventured to take.
‘No, wait,’ said Baldwyn. ‘One person did.’
‘You mean he made a genuine attempt to escape?’ I said eagerly. ‘Who was it?’
‘Phonzotar Huxo, who owns the post office.’
I knew the dilapidated building at the foot of the staircase. The sign outside said ‘POST OFFICE’, but I’d always assumed it to be a joke the tornado-dwellers played on themselves. What good was a post office in the middle of a tornado?
‘Does someone really live there?’
‘He seldom ventures outside his door. Pay him a visit. Phonzotar always welcomes a bit of company.’ Baldwyn turned his head aside, so I couldn’t tell whether the noise he made was a cough or a smothered laugh.
Phonzotar Huxo
I paid a visit to the post office the very next day. The interior of the building was dark and untidy. The walls were lined with tall shelves full of dusty, empty bottles, and there were big stacks of faded message forms in the corners. Phonzotar Huxo was seated at a desk piled high with papers, scribbling away in the gloom.
‘Excuse me,’ I said cautiously. ‘Is this the main post office?’
‘No, it’s the bakery!’ the old man snapped without looking up. He continued to scribble away, then picked up the message form and inserted it in a bottle.
‘I’m sorry … I simply wanted to know how the postal system works here. It must be a complicated business …’
I had evidently struck the right note, because his manner became somewhat less brusque.
‘It’s quite simple,’ he croaked. ‘You insert your messages-in-a-bottle in the wall of the tornado and they’re forwarded. Incoming mail falls into the top of the tornado. You only have to gather it up.’
‘You mean you do receive incoming mail?’
‘Not so far, but it should be here any minute.’
‘Er … How long have you been waiting for it?’
Phonzotar scratched his head. He might have been gazing out across a wide expanse, trying to discern something on the horizon. ‘Er … Two hundred years? Three hundred? What’s the date today?’
I tried another tack. ‘I’ve been told you tried to leave the tornado once upon a time.’
‘It wasn’t me, it’s so long ago. It was someone else.’
‘But you did try?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
Phonzotar looked at me for the first time. He didn’t make a demented impression. On the contrary, he looked like a wise old man who knows all the secrets of the universe.
‘You want to know, eh? You’re new here, I suppose. Can’t come to terms with the idea of dying in here, no matter how far in the future? That’s it, isn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘Then I’ll tell you something, youngster. Listen carefully, because I’ll only tell you once. There’s only one way out of the tornado, and that’s straight through the wall, as I’m sure you’ve discovered for yourself.’
I nodded again, too excited to interrupt him.
‘I come from a long line of adventurers. According to our family annals, my forefathers first arrived in Zamonia paddling tree trunks. Curiosity alone impelled them to cross the ocean. They did so without any navigational aids, with nothing between them and Davy Jones’s locker but a few logs. That’s what I call courage, my lad.’
I mumbled some appreciative noises.
‘Some of it rubbed off on me. I’ve never shirked risks, no matter how great they were and how slender my chances of survival. Have you ever sat on a palm leaf and tobogganed down a frozen wat
erfall a mile high?’
I was forced to admit that I’d not yet had that pleasure.
‘That’s the sort of thing I mean. When I think of the dangers I’ve defied! I could tell you a tale or two, youngster …’
I hoped he wouldn’t go off at a tangent.
‘That’s the reason I’m in the tornado now,’ he went on. ‘And that’s why I risked trying to burrow my way out through the wall.’
Yes, yes!
Horrific visions
‘But I only managed to stick my head in the wall. It felt as if a shaft of lightning had gone in through one ear and out the other.’ A look of horror came over Phonzotar’s face.
‘Armies of dead men went marching through my head. I heard a noise like a cosmic scream. My brain turned to ice. Then the ice cracked in all directions and disintegrated into tiny particles like snowflakes, and each snowflake was afflicted by a pain of its very own. In the end, everything went black. I found myself looking out into the universe. Seated on a diminutive planet made of glass was a red dwarf who had twelve important messages for me.’
Phonzotar’s face brightened.
‘I extracted my head from the sand. The next day I opened this post office.’
He proceeded to scribble on another message form. The old man’s attempt to escape from the tornado had obviously driven him insane. I thought it appropriate to withdraw.
Just as I was leaving the gloomy room, Phonzotar called me back. ‘Hey, take these and stick them in the tornado wall. Express post, very urgent. Well, go on!’
An important message
The old man handed me three bottles. I took them for courtesy’s sake and went outside, then drew several deep breaths. The possibility of leaving the tornado by way of the wall could be struck off my list.