‘What on Earth is going on?’ he said as he pressed his way forward.
‘Can’t really tell,’ said a Guard who was watching outside. ‘Something in there attacked Lucus.’
There was a further commotion, and the tent shook violently. They heard the sound of a gun being fired and angry voices from within. After what appeared to be a short scuffle, the flap was ripped open.
Proton came out holding a dead chicken by its feet.
‘It’s fucking fried now,’ he said.
Stanton Bosch was beside him.
‘Aye, that’s a disappointment. Hilton will be upset.’
‘And that is contrary to the wishes of the soothsayer. It’s going to be hard going with the Sibyl.’
‘Carry it all the same.’
‘What the hell was Lucus thinking?’
‘I suppose he ain't know its importance.’
‘He was as good as dead already.’
‘Aye, the chicken had him brutal.’
‘It escaped from the cage. It was an accident. There was no need to kill it.’
‘It was a lucky shot. A dying fall.’
‘Stupid bastard.’
Proton cradled the dead, blackened chicken in his arms delicately, as though it were his baby, and with tears in his eyes carried it to his tent, sheltering it from the wind and the curious eyes of the onlookers. The other Guards were left to clear Lucus' tent and dispose of his remains, splashed all about by Starburst in her frenzy.
***
Chapter Twenty Two
Douglas was there to see her off. She had the poison in a double-bulbed phial, hidden in the head of her polo mallet.
‘Good of you to come.’
‘Of course I had to, Pamela. See you off and everything.’
It was chilly on the landing strip and he was dressed for the cold, all wrapped in a fur-lined trench coat with the collar up so that he was bundled like an ancient aviator.
‘The team’s over there.’
‘Yes, I saw them when I came in. Recognised a few.’
‘Course we don’t stand a chance.’
‘You never know. Things might work out.’
‘Missing a centre forward. One that can shoot anyway.’
‘You’ll get through all the same.’
‘The dogs, Douglas. Make sure they’re fed.’
‘Of course. They’ll be fine.’
‘And the trout in the spinney. There’s a run-off from one of the levees. It will need to be seen to.’
‘I’ll deal with it.’
‘Keep your eye on Traction. Don’t let him near the drinks' cabinet.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’ve never been so frightened, Douglas.’
‘Everything will be fine. We’ll see you back in a week.’
He took her in her arms, gave her a cumbrous embrace and a tight peck on the cheek.
‘Chin up, old girl!’ he said. ‘Crampton forever and all that! Just try your best. Maybe you’ll get a result.’
‘He has Guards and policy advisers and every kind of protection. He’s not an idiot. I can’t get to him, Douglas. If the Pastry Chef is dead. It is ridiculous.’
‘They set you up.’
‘Of course, they set me up.’
‘But you wanted to go. You didn’t even fight it.’
‘Tired of it, Douglas… tired of being here. Tired of being me.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘But it's true.’
They hugged again, one last time, and she went up the steps to the small space-carrier without looking back.
***
Chapter Twenty Three
They buried Lucus there in the scree when the sun had risen. They dug the shallow grave with the tips of their rifles, scratching at the permafrost and making a close box of it. It would have been harder if it wasn’t spring, but the frost kept it firm, and when he was in and Proton had said his piece, four hard kicks covered him with ash.
Then they were off again, hoping for the summit before nightfall.
The march was brutal and they walked in silence.
Again they stopped at noon, but this time the Guards who had been accustomed to eating with Proton withdrew from him and formed a huddle a little way apart. When he saw what they had done, he tried to join them, but they got up all together and moved away to sit down again on the rocks further up.
‘Something going on,’ he said to Stanton Bosch. They were standing further up the path, looking down.
‘Aye, they’re upset. About Lucus I suppose.’
‘I should go and talk with them.’
‘No, leave it. Let them be. Let them talk it through. They ain't got no options. But they need to work it out for themselves.’
‘It’s bloody Pranzi. Stirring them up.’
‘That’s why you should leave it.’
‘She was always against it, you know – bringing Cormack here. I kind of forced her into it. I was on a high. I had seen the light.’
‘Aye, the light.’
‘Well, if not the light, the communiqué from the Emperor explaining that Cormack was at the Intervention Event. You know I was on the original crew? That one that kidnapped him from Earth?’
‘No, I didn’t know that. Kidnapped, was he?’
‘Yeah, had me thinking then.’
‘Thinking?’
‘Yes, all the way back to Zargon 8. We had instructions not to talk to Cormack. But I really wanted to, you know.’
‘Did you now?’
‘Yes. I have questions. I wanted to ask him about God. You know, you reach a certain age in life and everything stops making sense. That happened to you yet?’
‘Not yet, no. Everything clear so far,’ said Stanton Bosch and he tapped his head.
‘You wonder what's the point of it all,’ continued Proton. ‘All this sort of deranged shambolism you see everywhere. Why bother? Live, procreate, die. Dung and death. On and on and on. Depressing really…’
‘Aye, I imagine so.’
‘So when I had orders to take him from the Prison Whale, was engaged to meet him again, it was like an epiphany.’
‘An epiphany? Must have been.’
‘I went for it.’
‘Aye.’
‘So far not much response from Cormack...’
‘Aye. He’s a quiet one. Talks to the cow a lot though.’
‘Yes, quite a connection there. Probably just frightened of me. Need to win him over.’
‘Just so.’
‘I wonder if I did the right thing bringing him here?’
‘Well, what’s done is done. You right in it now, whether you want to be or not, Captain. Now ain't no time for second thoughts.’
***
Chapter Twenty Four
She could hear Frantic, the centre half, talking with Porritt, two rows back.
‘Don’t have to tell her,’ he said. ‘Just do it.’
‘But she’s the captain.’
‘We don’t stand any kind of bloody chance at all unless we find ways to circumvent her.’
‘I’ll sound her out. She might not object.’
‘Just go ahead and do it. She won’t even notice.’
Over nothing, she thought. He wanted to switch to the wing, and she would have had said, Yes, immediately. In fact, she preferred him there. They didn’t want to talk to her. That was all. She was different, older, a woman, whatever.
She gave a sigh, reclined the spacecraft seat a little further, and stared at the tiny oval by her side that gave out onto the black void. She saw a middle-aged woman, her hair sprayed and set, face powdered and rouged, crowsfeet round her eyes, mauve lipstick. A relic.
I suppose I understand how they feel, she thought. If I were their age, I wouldn’t want to talk to me either.
‘Porritt!’ she said. ‘I heard you!’
‘Oh, hell!’
‘Oh, hell what? You can talk to me, you know.’
‘Yes, Mrs. Belling
ham.’
‘Move to the wing if you want. It might be an idea.’
But he didn’t want to, now she had suggested it.
Later she heard them again. They must have thought she was sleeping.
‘What gives her the right anyway?’ said Porritt.
‘She’s the selector, isn’t she?’
‘Is she? Selector and captain – very strange.’
‘Otherwise she wouldn’t even be on the team.’
‘How can she be selector and captain? Who is she exactly? I hear she lives in this huge country estate. All by herself.’
‘It’s called Blowers. She’s a nob. Her claim to fame is having introduced polo to Crampton. She spent some time on Zargon 8 as a girl and learnt the game there. That’s why she’s in charge of everything. The game on Crampton has outgrown her, that’s all.’
‘I think the whole planet has outgrown her. She’s one of those old fogeys. Takes pleasure in shoving her enormous bulk in the way of progress. Never come to terms with Empire, I suppose.’
He said the word, ‘Empire’, in a kind of snotty sarcastic whine, making fun of the declamation as he supposed she might. It was a concept irrelevant to him, as immediate as his duct.
She accessed her childhood, stored more vividly there.
She had been seven when she had gone. The Zargons had arrived on Crampton two years before. She remembered their smooth, grey battle-cruisers sat in the sky like barrage balloons, a statement of intent. Her parents had been uneasy, but had told her to curtsey to the Commander when he had paid them a visit.
She remembered the excitement of packing, everything not fitting in her small blue suitcase; meeting with the other children at the spaceport; the small transporter with the pilot who unnervingly left the cockpit to talk with them; her first view of the city – people, everywhere; the litter; great, grey museums impressively empty and smelling of carbolic; holo-theatres, advertising movies full of explosions; shops on seventeen levels where pretty, smiling girls sprayed her with perfume as she entered; trams that she caught according to a multi-coloured diagram; the animated advertising hoardings; a mono-rail full of angry commuters; smog one morning; a beggar playing a penny-whistle.
And when she had reluctantly returned to Crampton and been driven to Blowers, she had found her parents gone.
***
Chapter Twenty Five
They set off again after lunch at a good pace taking their cue from Stanton Bosch who was keen to press on. Cormack had rather embarrassingly joined the cow on the stretcher. His legs were aching, his feet were blistered and the Boschs had become frustrated. They were going to lose the Guards if he couldn’t keep up, so they had relented and told him to climb on. He lay back as best he could, resting a little on the cow, and shut his eyes as he bumped back and forth, listening to the crunch of crampons in the snow, and the laboured breathing of the Boschs, and above everything else, the roar of the wind as it whipped and lashed about them.
Up the mountain the way was marked with poles, the path having given way to snow, but they were coming on them further and further apart, until at last they seemed to disappear altogether. Cormack could just make out Proton, in the lead far ahead, striding purposefully.
Then it began to snow, lightly at first, the small snowflakes dropping like confetti from the cold white sky, and the cow opened her eyes, wondering what it was that was tickling her skin, and when she saw it was snow, she smiled.
‘I does love the snow,’ she said.
‘Really?’
‘Reminds me of home. Zargonic pastures.’
She made a play of catching the flakes on her tongue, and giggled when she missed and they landed on her nose.
But the fall that had started so gently, soon became a downpour, and the wind began to whip the larger flakes, themselves more like hail now. Stanton Bosch declared it a blizzard and called the party to a halt.
They laid up on a large plateau, making temporary camp with tarpaulins.
‘We can still make the summit before nightfall,’ Proton said. ‘It will ease off.’
‘Bes’ to lay up here till it pass right over,’ said Stanton Bosch. ‘Take no chances on this 'ere mountain.’
The Guards were consulted and were at one with the Bosch, so the tents were removed from the backpacks to make a more permanent camp for the night. They pitched them perilously close to the drop-off. The guy-ropes had to be pulled taut so they fizzed in the wind, but there was nothing for it but to wait, and soon the little camp was buried in two feet of snow.
The cow was in Cormack’s tent.
‘Ooo, huddle close,’ she said. ‘A cow does have no woollens to keep her warm.’
‘It’s very uncomfortable,’ said Cormack. But he lay down beside her all the same, and put his arms around her, and she moved herself close so that her body was backed tightly against his. They shivered together, with his head resting on her cheek, and all he could see was her leathered skin and the sharp bristles round the nape of her neck, and beyond them, on the wall of the tent, his shadow moving over hers, in time with her breaths.
***
Chapter Twenty Six
‘All the teams are here, Sire.’
‘The Cramptonians as well?’
‘They arrived this morning.’
‘Excellent. Was Mrs. Bellingham searched?’
‘Quite thoroughly scanned. But they found nothing.’
‘Perhaps she has just come for the polo after all. Keep her in barracks all the same.’
They were in the recreation room and had another, from an old groundsman who had died unexpectedly after falling in the moat, and had just finished stewing in it.
‘So when can we have her?’
‘After the first match, Sire. They cannot win. They are hopeless. They’ll play the Tartans.’
Something disappointing with this one though – a sort of sadness running through it like a vein in rock; a paucity of experience – all the memories indistinct as though they were tinged with sepia. The hive-mind had blamed the resolution and the cheapness of the duct. The Emperor had blamed its provenance.
‘I suppose they know about the rule changes. The consequences for losing. The prerogative will be strictly enforced.’
‘It hasn’t been for years.’
‘It will be a surprise.’
***
Chapter Twenty Seven
At last the blizzard subsided, but it would soon be dark and there was debate between Stanton Bosch and Proton as to the wisest course of action.
‘I say push on. We can make the summit before nightfall. We don’t have much time,’ said Proton.
‘Aye, we can make the summit with luck. But it is not just the summit you seek, is it?’ said Stanton Bosch.
‘We could make camp up there and wait if necessary. Rather up there than down here.’
‘The camp here is made and we are safe for now. We can rest a while and set off in the morning.’
In the end Proton prevailed. There was little time to lose, so they would attempt the summit before nightfall.
The camp was disassembled hurriedly and the tents and equipment were packed away. After much grunting, puffing, and rearranging of loads and clothing, everyone was ready. They set off in single file with the Boschs and their burden of Cormack and the cow at the back.
The heavy snowfall had made the going more difficult. The snow was no longer compacted and hard, but soft and giving, and they were soon bogged down. Proton was leading the way, manfully making flamingo-like strides between the drifts that sucked him in like quicksand, but it was slow-going even for him, and they had barely made two hundred yards when the sun began to sink below the horizon. A gloom descended on the mountain.
Soon Cormack and the cow, borne aloft by the Boschs, lost sight of the Guards who were pushing ahead in what seemed to be one last desperate dash for the summit. The Boschs were adopting a more measured approach, moving forward steadily and slowly in tortured sil
ence.
For four more hours, they tramped forward until at last in the darkness ahead, Cormack could make out flags, marking a way across a small jagged precipice covered with an ice floe, and up into what must surely be, he thought, the rim of the crater.
‘Aye, up there, ‘tis not far now,’ said Stanton Bosch.
They paused for a final rest, filling up on cheese and biscuits, and drinking water from the snowmelt. The cow ate the last of the kush-kush grass that Cormack had gathered for her from the lower slopes, and then Stanton Bosch led the way with a ‘Hey-ho!’ heading directly for the first of the poles.
It was difficult to see the way, but a strange moon had appeared to the south above the sea and was giving a pale blue light to the snow, so progress was still possible.
Tight in the hollows made by hardened lava floes were black pools of steaming mud that smelt sulphurous, and above, from the rim itself, surged great clouds of fluming smoke that whipped off the mountain and out over the valley below.
They came upon the summit unexpectedly. Stanton Bosch rounded one last outcrop, looking apocalyptic in his lederhosen amongst the billowing smoke, and then they were there - the side of the mountain that they had circled for close on three days at last giving way to a flatness of rocks and smoke and looming darkness.
The rim was some two hundred yards across, roughly circular, pocked with jagged little ledges with a sheer drop-off into the crater itself.
The cow expressed an interest and was shuffled to the edge for a look.
‘Oh, my good Lord!’ she said as a Bosch tipped her sideways for a better view. ‘Tis unfathomably dark down there.’
She asked to be held there for a while and seemed fascinated by something a little way down the far side where Cormack could see only blackness.
‘Hope your straps are tight enough there, cow!’ said Stanton Bosch. ‘Death for a cow or a man if you fall in there! We get our fair share of extreme sports madness on Foul Ball but there ain't no sport called Racing-on-a-Stretcher-Down-a-Volcano. No, cow. Don’t even think about it. Now where be the Guards?’
‘Perhaps they took a wrong turn,’ suggested Cormack.
‘So they be going down instead of up?’ said the Bosch, and put like that it didn’t seem likely, so they decided to leave the cow on her stretcher by the rim and do a quick circuit in the hope that the Guards were resting on the opposite side.