Foul Ball

  ‘I know what I’m doing, Traction. I am a gardener.’

  ‘You are mistress of this house. I’m the gardener.’

  ‘The Bellinghams have been gardening here for five centuries. You are the hired help.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Such a shame about the moon.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘It will have an effect on the hollyhocks.’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’

  ‘And on recruitment too.’

  ‘Recruitment has been an issue with us for a long time, ma’am. The destruction of the moon can’t really make it any worse.’

  ‘I suppose not. The young people show no commitment to the cause.’

  ‘They have known nothing but the Empire. It is only to be expected.’

  ‘They have no fight in them.’

  ‘It has been parlayed out of them.’

  ‘Are we to meet in committee?’

  ‘They’re waiting in the dining room.’

  ‘Oh, God! Is that dreadful man with the beard there?’

  ‘He certainly is. He’s the new Vice-Chairman, remember. I think he’s anxious to say his piece.’

  They made their way back to the great house, and Mrs. Bellingham stopped in the hallway to take off her wellingtons. She could hear the hub-hub from the dining room. The Committee was in full cry. Worse than the hounds, she thought. She wondered why she bothered.

  Traction made her straighten her frock and fix her hair. Then she gave a little spray with the perfume compact she kept in the press, and set her face in the mirror, before she opened the oaken double doors.

  There were half a dozen men seated around the oval table. They all stopped talking and looked up at her as she entered.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind, Pamela – started on the sherry.’

  ‘No, not at all. Go right ahead, Douglas. That’s what it’s there for – get you merry. Is this going to be a formal meeting? Do we have a quorum?’

  ‘Pamela, I think you need to sit down.’

  ‘I am going to sit down, Douglas.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Because there have been too many problems lately.’

  ‘Sit down, Pamela.’

  She sat down with a sigh.

  ‘Pamela…’

  ‘Oh, do get on with it, Douglas.’

  ‘Pamela, I’ll come right out with it. We are asking you to step down as Chairwoman.’

  Mrs. Bellingham was silent.

  ‘It’s not that we don’t value your leadership…’

  ‘It’s that I’m a woman…’

  ‘Not at all. It’s about results.’

  ‘We are getting results.’

  ‘Well, no, we’re not. Are we? And now, the moon, destroyed. It’s just that we feel we need a change of direction.’

  ‘May I guess who you have in mind as the new Chairman?’

  ‘Pamela, it’s not like that.’

  ‘Then what’s it like?’

  ‘You’re making this needlessly difficult, Pamela.’

  ‘I should shut up.’

  ‘Not at all. But the decision is made. I’m afraid we had a vote in your absence. It was unanimous. Geoffrey is to be the new leader of the Resistance.’

  Mrs Bellingham gave Geoffrey a stern look. He sat across the table at its head position. It was her table but he was at its head.

  ‘We have lots of business to attend to, Mrs. Bellingham,’ he said.

  ‘Go right ahead,’ she said, turning from him to cross her legs and sit sideways so she faced the French windows and the patio. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  ‘I think you should start, Geoffrey,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Very well.’ He took a breath, cleared his throat, and began. ‘There is news from the uniSwarm that concerns us. The Praetorian Guard have mutinied. They have commandeered a transporter.’

  ‘And why does that concern us?’ said Mrs Bellingham, still staring out of the window.

  ‘It is an opportunity of a sort, Mrs Bellingham. The Emperor has consequently taken a new Guard. We have reports from within the Palace that they’re unpractised. For instance, they are not tasting the Emperor’s food. Not aware that that is part of their responsibilities.

  ‘Now, the Pastry Chef is a Cramptonian. Name of Mimic. He is married to a Juval Councillor in Gamos Province. I have taken the liberty of having the Councillor kidnapped. I think she might be coerced into helping us.’

  ‘You want to torture her?’

  ‘Douglas, a point of order.’

  ‘Yes, Geoffrey.’

  ‘Can Mrs. Bellingham be quiet when I’m talking?’

  ‘Pamela, let Geoffrey finish.’

  ‘As I was trying to say, apparently the Councillor and the Pastry Chef are still close. They have a child. They correspond regularly. With a little intimidation we might be able to persuade her to contact him. And then in turn, we might be able to persuade him to help us.’

  ‘Do you see, Pamela? It’s a real opportunity. We’re not saying it will work. But we can at least try.’

  ‘What exactly are you proposing? It’s all very will-o’-the-wisp.’

  ‘We’re planning an assassination attempt, Pamela. Against the Emperor.’

  ***

  Chapter Ten

  The hive-mind had made a suggestion to the Emperor and they had tried it with a duct they had borrowed from the Sub-Commissar, who had abandoned it because he wished to trade up to a newer model.

  If the Emperor could put it in his mouth while it was still fresh and warm, and keep it steady in the back of his throat, the hive-mind could make a connection using the saliva that flowed there as a conducting material. Then they could read it together through the throat cable. Ducting had always been denied the Emperor - he was supposed to use the hive-mind instead - so this was very interesting for him.

  The Commissar’s early childhood memories were, however, lacklustre and proletarian; his conversations were improperly referenced and largely inaccessible; the maps and reference material, utilitarian and uninteresting; the witticisms, dull; the uniSwarm connection, irrelevant; the glands, ineffective; and most everything else, predictable. But when they accessed the culvert that stored the sexual material, they dwelt there for a long time, in amongst the froto-sense-data and the holo-clips and the scene-glyphs that had been burnt directly from his retina. It more than made up for the rest.

  They found many dark things there and they longed for more.

  ***

  Chapter Eleven

  The hang-gliders and the little silver fish and the part of the vomit of the cow that had dropped in the Leech were far behind them now, some ten miles downstream of their current position, and the little flotilla of tuk-tuks was at last in sight of the tiny port at Bartislard.

  ‘Now, you be careful when you exit the vessel now, won’t you, me dear?’ Stanton Bosch said to the cow, as he tied the boat to its mooring on the broken pier. ‘Don’t want no more accidents now, do we?’

  It was harder for the cow to get out than in, and she had to make a little run with the boat bobbing up and down and rocking back and forth before she leapt. She steadied herself beforehand, as though she were taking a jump in a gymkhana, but when it came to it she botched it horribly and landed splay-legged on the wet boarding, sending the boat rolling so violently that Cormack was almost capsized.

  ‘You be careful there, you dangerous cow!’ said Stanton Bosch. ‘Almost had the skinny man in the water!’

  Cormack disembarked more proficiently, but was shaken and spent a while checking himself all over for little silver fish that might have been splashed on him.

  Soon after, all the Boschs had their tuk-tuks tied and their charges on dry land. Proton made a payment and they were dismissed.

  Then he assumed the look of a jungle tracker, sniffing for fewmets, and eventually found the poorly marked path to Bartislard in amongst the thick vegetation
that grew out and around and all over everything.

  They marched ahead. Cormack and the cow were positioned in amongst the Guards, trying hard to keep up. The path seemed little used and was barely passable in places – vegetation had spread from the forest floor and covered it with shoots and tendrils, and it was thick with big fallen leaves that lay all about, so the way forward was just a path of wet, brown mulch that wound like a gutter in between the creeping green. Vines dropped from the damp canopy like streamers and draped over them as they walked, wiping their already dripping clothes with a further sticky wetness, and all around them they could hear the chirrups of frogs, and an insect buzz, and the whoops of the things they had heard on the boats, much louder now, but nowhere to be seen – just undergrowth and bush and clouds of mosquitoes about them, and trees that twitched here and there, and cracked and rocked in the sun-speckled distance.

  Proton pushed on at a vigorous pace and at every turn in the path, he got a little further ahead of the rest of them.

  Eventually he was out of view of Cormack and cow.

  They talked amiably. The cow was impressed with the vegetation.

  ‘Cormack, them vines up there does look so tasty, especially after being cooped up on a transporter ship. I does almost be tempted to take a nibble, if the Guards would only let me.’

  ‘I think you had better not.’

  ‘I does see some particular variety, that is yellow and almost straw-like in appearance, innit, strong and starchy, and it does hang down from the canopy most temptingly.’

  The cow looked up.

  ‘Why there does be one now! It is passing directly over me! If I just reach out me tongue, like here so, I think I could catch it in me mouth…’

  The cow reached for the vine and jerked on it hard, but it would not give. She gave it another tug and there was a small croaking sound from above. The vine came spinning down like a nunchaku, whipping viciously through the air with a scything sound, until it dropped to the forest floor.

  Cormack saw with a start that the vine, in fact, had eyes and a mouth and what the cow was chewing was a tail.

  The thing began to run.

  It was fast and wiry and, because the cow still had the end of its tail in her mouth, it was circling round her legs in ever decreasing circles until it had completely wrapped itself all around her at the level of her knees so she was lassoed.

  She fell on her back, her legs kicking in the air, and let it go from her mouth but still it would not stop. It kept running around her, tightening itself like a garrotte, until Cormack could see the tail scoring the flesh around the cow’s knees, and then the cow’s blood dribbling around it, and soon the cow was screaming at the sky and frothing and gurgling.

  The thing had sawn right through her legs.

  ‘Holy crap!’ came a cry from the far side of the clearing. ‘Holy crap! Not on the first day! Not on the very first day!’

  It was Stanton Bosch come back again.

  ‘I come running up the path because I forget to tell you about the gontails! Don’t pull at the gontails, I was going to say!’ he shouted.

  He looked down at the cow on her back, her lower legs amputated, and the stumps above her four knees pumping torrents of blood as though she were a low-pressure water fountain of a curious design. She was gibbering convulsively.

  ‘Get it off her! Get the gontail off her!’ he said.

  He chopped at the tail with his knife, and the gontail fell away, scuttling off into the forest.

  ‘Holy crap! On the first day! Who would’ve believed it could happen on the first day?’

  He got down to comfort her.

  ‘Them stumps will heal, my darling - though you might not believe it now. They will heal eventually. And they will be hard and tough and knobbled so them gontails can’t whip ‘em off any further. Don’t you worry, me darling. We will fix you right. We will get you healed up good and proper.’

  Proton had run back towards the main party when he had heard the commotion.

  ‘A little accident,’ said Stanton Bosch by way of explanation. ‘The cow had it rough with a gontail.’

  ‘Oh, my good Lord!’ said Proton when he saw her.

  ‘She’ll live,’ said Stanton Bosch. ‘See, we can bind those stumps with this ‘ere linden weed that’ll staunch the flow of the blood. That’ll make her a little more comfortable. Aye, it will. And we can rest her right back, with her head to the side, and that will let her breathe more easy like. And give her valerian and wort, them there flowers – it will ease her pain. And them severed legs. Look for them!’

  ‘Can they be reattached?’

  ‘They'll do for me stew tonight…’

  Stanton Bosch collected the weed, and he spent a while wrapping it round her, trying to ease her pain. Then he fed her the herbs as medicine, and when she was settled, the Guards, under his instructions, gathered some half a dozen weighty branches from close by and bound them with creepers to make a stretcher strong enough to take her weight. They lifted her, blathering and mooing, onto it. Then they applied a suture of mud as a compact and tied her round with vines to make sure she wouldn’t fall as they walked.

  When they were ready, the Guards raised the cow, frothing in her agony high above them. Thus, they bore her through the jungle, on their shoulders, as though she were hunting kill.

  ***

  Chapter Twelve

  The Emperor was in the Imperial Gymnasium, straddled on a mechanical pony – it was his polo simulator. Polo was his passion. He had it set to Very Difficult, a testament to his prowess, and he thwacked with his mallet at the holographic spandrills with practised glee.

  The Gymnasium was his to use and his alone. It was huge, filled with the latest equipment, echoic and cold.

  ‘Bloody ridiculous all this crapulousness you have bottled up inside of you,’ he said to the hive-mind. ‘It seems to be your overarching emotion. Let it go.’

  He could sense a loosening of the throat cable, and there was a short silence while the hive-mind composed itself. Then it said, ‘The news from the Opikarp is quite startling.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Emperor.

  ‘And coming on top of news of the mutiny.’

  ‘Perhaps it is related.’

  ‘Something is afoot.’

  ‘We will have to deal with the Cramptonian Pastry Chef immediately.’

  ‘Of course, I will have him sent in.’

  ***

  Chapter Thirteen

  The cow was quieter now. Cormack could hear the sound of her slow, heavy breaths and grunts from the back of her throat as he walked. But there was less burbling. Altogether the noises lacked the quality of a death rattle, which they had seemed close to assuming an hour ago, and for that he was grateful.

  The path had widened, and it seemed they would soon be at Bartislard, because they came upon houses now: small boxy huts with A-framed roofs and jalousied windows sitting on piles of builders' rubble to raise them from the termites.

  There were children playing outside, who ran from them when they approached, and cool looking adults smoking reefers on the steep concrete steps that led to gaily-painted front doors. They gave them friendly waves as they passed, and asked concernedly about the cow and whether they could have a cut.

  The city walls were visible from a distance, a uniform grey that they could see through breaks in the undergrowth, and the path, as it approached, assumed the quality of a road and became tarmacadamed.

  They picked up the pace and soon they were behind the walls, unattended and breached in places, and in the city proper.

  Stanton Bosch, who was still with them, scouted ahead and Proton told them to wait for his return in a group to the side of a main thoroughfare, outside a grocery shop, which they did, attracting little attention from the passers-by, surprisingly, given their startling appearance and the presence of the amputated cow raised on a stretcher. But then Bartislard was a tourist town, the resident population only very small and mostly mer
chants at work in their shops, and tourists, as fearful as they might be when they pass the bizarre, dismiss it as local colour.

  The Bosch returned and announced, ‘There’s room at the Tropico,’ and led them down narrowed, cobbled streets, between the gabled shop fronts of the tight oaken-framed houses, to an unprepossessing inn that bore a sign with a single star.

  ‘It ain't much but it’s friendly enough and will suit you whilst you gets your bearings. There’s room enough for ten.’

  The Hotel Manager was oily and surly.

  ‘You will have to keep the cow in the refrigerator,’ he said.

  ‘But she’s very sick.’

  ‘I’m sorry. We don’t allow guests to carry food to their rooms.’

  ‘She’s not food. She’s my friend.’

  ‘Put her in the refrigerator like the man says, Cormack,’ said Proton. ‘There’s a good chap. She’ll be quite safe.’ Then he turned to the manager and said, ‘I’m so sorry. He’s from out of town,’ as though he wasn’t.

  Cormack was unmoved, but Stanton Bosch told him that Zargonic cows are accustomed to cold, and he asked her if that was so and she seemed to nod, and, after all, he didn’t have much choice in the matter, so he allowed her to be led to the fridge.

  When they found them, the rooms were threadbare and poorly maintained. It was given that Proton was to share with Cormack and they argued over the beds. One was obviously superior and had a view through the window to the courtyard with the added benefit of a bit of a breeze, whilst the other appeared to be an afterthought, a fold-up variety, jammed in a stuffy corner.

  Proton insisted he take the better and backed up his argument with a finger to his laser gun, but Cormack was upset.

  ‘You are my prisoner after all, Cormack.’

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, and he went to lie down on his and it buckled and sagged in the middle.

  ‘Why have you kidnapped me, Proton?’

  ‘Saved your life. Stopped you from being eaten alive by the Emperor.’

  ‘I want to go back to Earth, to my friends, my family.’

  ‘Not right now, Cormack, young feller. Plans for you first.’

  ‘What plans?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that yet. Get some rest. Eat some tucker. Hang out with the cow if that’s what you want.’