They were about a third of the way round, some ten minutes after leaving the cow, when Cormack, above the roar of the wind, heard a strange, plaintive moan. The Boschs either didn’t hear it, or had chosen to ignore it, because they continued on without comment, but to Cormack it sounded dreadfully familiar, hitting some still raw nerve, and it filled him with a sense of foreboding and doom.
He walked on, trying to ignore it, but it continued - the low moaning sound, awful and unearthly, an unloosed imprecation to a terrible God; like the noise the cow had made in her spasms within the Prison Whale, he thought, and then chills ran down his spine and he had an appalling prescience and called at once for Stanton Bosch. In their panic, they ran all the way back to where the cow had been lain on her stretcher.
She was gone. Just an impression of two poles and a emaciated rump worn into the rocky ground marked her former presence, but the low moan, much louder here, indicated where she was now well enough – deep within the crater.
‘Cow, can you hear me?’ said Stanton Bosch, lying flat to the rim, his leathered legs held by another in case he slipped.
The moan came back stronger and deeper.
‘She be in there,’ he said to Cormack, pointing down the crater. ‘There ain't no hope for she. Prime beef gone to waste. We should have eaten her earlier.’
‘She’s my friend. We need to get her out.’
‘No chance of that. The cow has had it.’
‘Hold on there cow!’ shouted Cormack down the crater. ‘I’m coming to get you out!’
‘You does be so good to me,’ the cow shouted back limply. ‘I was just having a look-see into the crater because I thought I could see some lovely straw and I didn’t realize I was so close to the edge and then the stretcher started to slide like a toboggan and…’
Cormack began to strip off, furiously removing his jumpsuit.
Stanton Bosch watched him in horror.
‘No, no, skinny man!’ he said. ‘To go after her without the proper equipment would be certain death. Leave her to her fate. She ain't the first cow to be barbecued.’
‘I’m going in,’ said Cormack, and got down flat on his belly and crawled across to the rim. He could see little down there except smoke, and the dark scarred rock, and a faint glow from deep below, but, at least initially, it seemed possible to be able to scramble down a little, and still keep a hold, and then perhaps find a way further towards her.
‘Holy crap!’ cried Stanton Bosch as he watched him go. ‘Holy crap! These tourists! They does horrify your soul in truth! And it is only the fourth day! Only the fourth day!’
Cormack pulled himself over the rim, and hung by his fingertips to the top for a while, checking his footing was firm, and then he let go, counting on a ledge he could feel below his toes to hold him while he looked for a way further down. He flattened his feet to grip in the scree, but, to his horror, the gravel wasn’t compact enough to hold the weight of his body, and he began to slide, rapidly gaining momentum until he hit a huge lump of rock buried deep in the rubble that caught between his legs and slowed him down enough for him to reach and grab onto the side again. He was winded and hurt, but at least he wasn’t sliding any more. He caught his breath and looked down again. He could see the cow now, still on the stretcher, perhaps twenty feet below. The strap on the stretcher towards her lower right stump had caught on a rock, and it was that that was holding her in place, but she was upside down and dangling headfirst towards the bottom of the crater.
‘I can see you, cow!’ he called out to her. ‘I’m coming to you!’
‘Cormack, me stumps are numb! Me brain is pumped with blood!’
Again he reached below for a firm footing, and again his foot poked at scree and gravel that, when he pushed it, gave way and rushed down the crater starting, by the sounds of it, a mini-avalanche as it fell. The powdered rock had the consistency of salt. In fact, the only rock that he might be able to reach that he was sure would not give way was the outcrop that was holding the cow.
He thought for a while of what to do, and there seemed to be nothing for it. He pulled himself tight to the side of the crater as though he were about to launch himself into a backstroke, and sprung his legs, jumping feet first into the scree in the general direction of the moans of the cow, and then began to slide. He saw immediately that he had miscalculated the direction of the cow by a few degrees, so he tried to correct by rolling his body towards her. He also saw immediately that he had miscalculated the pain of being flayed by hot volcanic scree pocked with larger rubble, but fortunately for him there was little time to dwell on it because the cow was coming on him fast, off to starboard, and he felt he had a chance to snag her, if only he could get his leg up and out of the scree and hook it in a strap. He turned face down and scrabbled with his hands in a kind of crawl action, trying to slow down his descent, and then he bent one skinny leg towards her and kicked out at her head. Miraculously she saw it, and she grabbed at it with her mouth, but she couldn’t hold on. But she did do enough to knock it onto the strap nearest her head, and then there was a horrifying moment when the strap attached to the rock stretched and seemed as if it would give way, but it held firm, and Cormack and the cow hung together, stationary, in mysterious conjunction, the cow on the stretcher face down to the crater, and Cormack below her, held by his boot on the strap nearest her head.
‘Are you OK?’ said the cow.
‘Don’t worry about me, cow,’ said Cormack.
Then he made protracted efforts to haul himself up and onto the stretcher with the cow. He had to be careful in case he broke the strap that was holding them onto the rock-face, but eventually he did it, and he had himself sprawled on top of her as the best way to distribute his weight without causing further rock falls or damage to the strap.
The cow was uncomfortable.
‘What now, Cormack?’ she muttered. His head was right on hers.
‘Um… not too sure. I suppose we wait to get rescued.’
‘But I thought you was doing the rescuing?’
‘Well, here I am but I don’t see how I can manoeuvre a two ton Zargonic cow out of a volcanic crater on my own.’
‘So you just came down her to keep me company?’
‘They will be sure to rescue you now. They won’t leave me down here.’
***
It was Proton who appeared, dangling on an abseiling wire, within the half-hour.
‘Well, what have we here?’ he said, looking at them amusedly.
‘Hello, Captain,’ said the cow.
‘I’m not leaving without the cow,’ said Cormack.
‘Well, that is quite all right for once, because in fact, none of us are leaving,’ said Proton. Now Cormack could see that Proton was not alone, and that all the other Guards had joined him, each of them attached to an abseiling wire. ‘It’s going to be easier to lower her down than up. So she will have to come with us.’
‘We’re going down?’ asked Cormack.
‘Yes, down,’ said Proton, pointing downwards for extra emphasis. ‘Down into the crater.’
***
Chapter Twenty Eight
The Cramptonians and the Tartans lined up on the halfway mark for the playing of the National Anthems.
They were within the Circus, the Emperor’s monument to sports, modelled for the Circus Maximus on Spartan Drax. It was a vast oval, broken in two and pulled apart to form two horseshoe-shaped stands, each rising over five hundred feet high and tiered with fifteen hundred rows of seats, all carved into the sandstone. It was used for chariot racing, and exhibitions of horsemanship, and was flooded for ancient naval re-enactments and diving displays. Today it was to stage the polo tournament, and it was full to capacity, six hundred thousand seated within.
The Emperor was present to perform the formalities, smiling sourly from his throne halfway up the middle tier. He had the hive-mind, as always, to his side. They were surrounded by thick jacquard tapestries that formed a shaded little cell, filled
with oily ministers and bare-chested slave boys, and nectarines and guavas, and golden bowls and boxes of rubies and opals, and spinals dripping from cornucopias, all above the flower petals scattered ankle-deep. It looked as though a bordello had been opened for business in the stands.
The tournament, as arranged by the hive-mind, had drawn teams from across the Empire - mostly humans, remnants of the dispersal, but others besides.
The Tartans were humans, from the planet Tarta in the long-arm nebula, but had evolved in its low gravity atmosphere so they were eight feet tall, hairless, with extremely long limbs. They looked fragile, like men of fluted glass, but their strange physique was well suited to Imperial Polo, giving them a huge driving range and massive flexibility.
After the anthems, there was an amount of marshalling of the players, and a last minute discussion of tactics, and then, at last, the players on their ponies were ready, and a signal was given by each captain to the referee. The game commenced.
The spandrill, one of a dozen captured from Foul Ball, was dropped into the centre circle in a small plastic bag, from which it was supposed to bite its way out, but, perhaps from indolence or a measure of cross-breeding, it was loathe to move at all and lay in the bag in the circle, motionless. The referee, afraid he might have suffocated it, bent down to check for signs of life, whereupon it sprang into life and rocketed from the bag at his face.
Mrs. Bellingham lurched forward with her mallet, but held back for fear of injuring the referee. The Tartan captain had no such qualms, and launched a vicious attack on the little animal as the referee struggled to pull it off. The thing was mildly bloodied, and it loped off down the pitch looking for some respite only to be greeted by the Tartan centre forward. He drilled his mallet into it, it had to be scraped off, and then it ran at speed towards the touchline before being frightened back into action by the noise of the crowd.
The game continued in this manner for some time, the technically superior skills of the Tartan team being undermined by the capriciousness of the spandrill.
‘We’re doing pretty well,’ she said to Frantic as she passed. ‘You should all be proud.’
‘We’re playing for you, Mrs. Bellingham. We’re really trying to put on a good show.’
‘Thank you, young man.’
She had tried to contact the Pastry Chef that morning - nothing from his duct. No surprise. She had known he must be dead.
***
Chapter Twenty Nine
Proton had a hard time of it, because the cow kept rocking the stretcher back and forth in her panic, and Cormack was reluctant to stop clinging to her and be belayed to the extra wire that Proton had brought, but eventually the ropes were attached, and Cormack and the cow, with Proton beside, were properly secured. The Boschs were nowhere to be seen, presumably paid off, but the Guards were silently descending like spiders on threads to the gloom below. All were wearing special thermal suits that had apparently not been deemed necessary for Cormack and his cow, or perhaps it was another glitch in Proton’s logistics and none could be found of the right size. Whatever the reason, Cormack was uncomfortably warm and getting warmer.
Proton was on the wire between them, supervising their suspension, and occasionally wrapping them in his fire-retarding embrace to stop them bouncing to the sides.
‘Where exactly are we headed?’ said Cormack.
‘Down there. Pranzi is leading a team to reconnoitre,’ said Proton.
They could hear a steady rumbling from below, and were able to watch the slow progress of some of the Guards below them.
‘But I thought Stanton Bosch said there was no way out.’
‘There is a way out and Stanton Bosch knows it very well but they like to keep their little secrets on Foul Ball. This one is not for the tourists. Steady as she goes, cow.’
The cow was still in a state of confusion, flustered from the fall, and was pulling at the straps with her teeth.
‘Cormack, I feel meself sliding again.’
‘Hold on, cow.’
They remained there hanging for a while, the cow spinning herself in circles, and then unspinning herself at speed in the manner of a dangling yo-yo, and Cormack begged her to stop because she was making him dizzy. Eventually, after about five minutes of this, Cormack saw two of the ropes that were hanging free on the far side of the crater jerk violently, and there were noises from below, and two dark figures emerged, climbing back up to their level with the help of rappels.
It was Pranzilla and a second Guard whose name he didn’t know.
‘We can’t find it, Captain,’ Pranzilla called out from across the crater.
‘You can’t find it? Don’t give me that, Pranzi! Do not give me that!’
‘It’s hopeless. There’s nothing but molten rock.’
‘It must be there!’
‘It isn’t. And we can’t look any longer. We’re frying down there.’
‘We have to keep looking till we find it! We have no choice!’
‘We can’t stay here any longer. We need to get back up. I’m calling the other Guards back. We can rest on the surface and try again later.’
‘No!’ cried Proton. ‘We don’t have any time!’
‘Captain, there is nothing down there, OK? There is nothing to find. We looked and we looked and there is nothing there. And you know what the funny thing is? The funny thing is that we knew there would be nothing there. Because this whole crackpot expedition was doomed from the start. There is nothing down there and I have the lives of the Guards to consider. We have played out your fantasies long enough. It is time for somebody to get a grip.’
‘Get back down there, Lieutenant!’ screamed Proton. ‘This is insubordination!’
Pranzilla began to rock back and forth with the rope tight between her legs as though she were a trapeze artist building momentum for a swing. She began to loop in little close circles, slowly at first, but soon going well enough that she could touch the side of the crater with her leg if she reached out far enough. She kicked hard against the rock, and propelled herself across to the other side of the crater, where she grabbed another rope. Then hanging onto both ropes, she took the carabiner from hers and hooked it to the other. She jerked the second rope hard and repeated the whole performance again and again. One by one, the Guards were called to the surface.
Proton was going berserk.
‘Get the hell down there, Lieutenant! This is in direct contravention of my orders! Nobody is to go to the surface! Get the hell down there!’
Cormack could see all the other Guards now, slowly ascending on grapples, the ropes giving twitches as they jerked themselves up.
‘Holy mother of a crap! This is insubordination! We are so close! So close! I am not going to let you mess this up, Lieutenant!’ Proton shouted, and then he turned to Cormack with a look of urgency on his face. ‘I know the cow means a lot to you so take the rope or she’ll likely crush herself on the crater wall as she writhes. I have some business I need to take care of. I’m going down!’
Cormack, open-mouthed, took the rope that held the cow’s stretcher from Proton’s outstretched hand, and watched Proton lower himself with a whizz of the carabiner to the floor of the volcano.
The seven other Guards came level with Pranzilla, and Cormack and the cow and Pranzilla gave them a hand signal indicating they wait. All looked below, into the smoking gloom, for a trace of the descending Proton. But they could see nothing, and hear nothing, except a distant rumbling from deep within the mountain.
They stared a good while longer, but eventually Pranzilla had had enough, and she was ready to signal to the other Guards to carry on back up and out. Then, just as she raised her hand to wave them on, there came a mighty whoosh and a roar and then there was a flash of flame and suddenly the crater was thick with a white, pungent smoke, pouring up from below them. Cormack could see nothing except whiteness all around him. He felt his throat tightening and he started to cough and choke.
‘Cormack!
Cormack!’
Pranzilla had somehow managed to grapple down and was right next to him. ‘You hold on tight here. I’m coming back for you. I need to go down.’
‘Down into that?’
But it wasn’t just down; it was all over them.
‘I heard the Captain. He’s calling for help.’
Then she was gone, down below his feet, whirring into the abyss.
The cow was making strange choking sounds, and Cormack was trying to keep her steady by holding onto the stretcher that was moving under its own momentum like a pendulum and carrying him with it.
He could feel the cow’s cable winding and unwinding round his, and it was getting harder to get hold of her, so he unhooked his carabiner and hooked it back to her rope. Then he moved himself across so that he was back spread-eagled on the cow, as he had been five minutes before. Just as he was settled, Cormack felt a sickening lurch, and heard a snap, and there was a sudden drop and a sudden arrest as though the cow had been hanged, and then the cow screamed as best she could, and there was a further snap, and they were hurtling down the crater on the stretcher, as if it were a bob-sled, and everything went black.
***
Chapter Thirty
The Cramptonians had won the game, two goals to nil - an historic victory, their first against the Tartans.
At the end of the match, the Tartan captain was called to the centre circle and made to kneel by the referee. This he did without complaint. All the other players were lined up on touch on the far side of the pitch.
Then the crowd, in silence, turned towards the stands to look for the Emperor.
Mrs. Bellingham, from her position on the touchline, watched and waited, wondering what was going to happen. There was a ripple, moving outwards from the Emperor’s enclosure and rolling through the crowd. The spectators rose from their seats, and prostrated themselves one by one ahead of him as he marched surrounded by his bodyguards towards the pitch. He was carrying a polo mallet in his hand and looked mad as hell. He reached the pitch and continued to the centre circle.