When he got there, he looked about briefly, assessing the demeanour of the crowd, and raised the Imperial Polo Mallet to shoulder height slowly. He held it over the Tartan captain for a second, and then brought it down on his long fluted neck viciously.
The head rolled away quite cleanly, and it was all done so efficiently, like the killing of a farmyard animal by a practised butcher, that Mrs. Bellingham wondered if it was done at all, and had to look again to verify that, yes indeed, the head was severed, and there was a full foot of grass between it and the long bony torso of the man, stretched out like a pipe-cleaner, who two minutes before had been playing polo with her.
The Emperor turned and marched furiously back to his position in the stands.
The Cramptonians would play again tomorrow, in the quarterfinals.
***
Chapter Thirty One
‘I sense his theophany very strongly. I see it as a cow.’
‘No, that is not his theophany. That is his cow.’
‘But it is strangely deformed. I see it without legs. It has been mutilated. It is the strangest thing. Most worrying! I have never seen a theophany in this form before. His spirit is very badly damaged. It presages failure.’
‘No, it is his cow, a real cow, and it has no legs.’
‘But it is very vivid.’
‘It is real. By the way, I brought the chicken for you. The soothsayer in Bartislard said it was very important.’
‘Oh, the chicken! Yes! And it looks like you’ve barbecued it already.’
‘I do apologise. Will it do?’
‘A burnt offering! It was really for soup. Never mind. I hope it wasn’t too much of a bother to carry it all the way here.’
‘Well, actually, now you come to mention it, it was a bit of a bother...’
‘Can't keep chickens in Shamballah! Wouldn't do at all! The Shamanic Throat would be terrified! But the Candidates never fail to surprise me with their generosity.’
‘We brought it all this way so that you could have chicken soup?’
‘Thanks most awfully…’
Cormack awoke to two voices discussing his cow and the cock. The first was recognizably Proton’s, but the second was unfamiliar, and given its rather shrill and girlish quality he was surprised, when he opened his eyes, to see it belonged to a tall, lethargic looking stranger with a long white beard, who was wearing what appeared to be a multi-coloured caftan.
‘Hello,’ said Cormack.
‘Ah, he is awake,’ said the stranger.
He was perhaps six feet tall, and his white beard was complemented by long white hair, immaculately cleaned and styled, and flowing down the back of his caftan until it reached a flannel belt, tight round his austere waistline. He was Druidic, and solemn, with a hooked nose, and moved his hands like a pope.
‘I was wondering when he would come round,’ he said.
‘Hi there, Cormack,’ said Proton cheerfully.
They were outdoors, in a glade in a forest, the trees all around lush and emerald green, and the sunlight dappling through the breaks in the canopy and breaking onto the forest floor. Everything was wet with a drizzle that was casting little rainbows in amongst the foliage.
Cormack could see the cow happily munching on kush-kush grass, thick as bamboo. She gave him a wink when she saw he had opened his eyes but couldn’t speak because her mouth was full.
‘Welcome to Shambalah, Candidate,’ said the man in the caftan. ‘Welcome.’
Cormack got up, still dazed, and stretched, marvelling at the dazzling white cloak that he had been dressed in. Then he looked about him, glancing at Proton, who, with a huge, cheesy grin on his face, marched towards him with his head slightly cocked to one side, and his finger wagging in mock admonition of Cormack’s supposed prodigality. He hugged him manfully.
The embrace was only broken when Cormack accidentally stumbled forward onto Proton’s toe and Proton stepped back with a groan.
Then he recovered himself, punched the air, and screamed, ‘We made it, Cormack! We made it! It was a bloody close call back there what with the eruption and the smoke and the cow tobogganing down on me and you screaming like a banshee and everything going to shit but we bloody made it!’
‘What happened, Proton?’ asked Cormack. ‘How did we escape from the volcano?’
‘I found the opening, Cormack! It was deep in the crater but just where Stanton Bosch had said it would be - bang behind a large bitumen outcrop. Maybe that’s why the other Guards missed it. Anyhow, I had to clear the rock. So I shot at it with my laser gun. That’s when all that smoke started to roll out and the volcano started to boil. Maybe, in retrospect, I had the gun set too high. Who knows? Who cares? Anyway I got on the radio and Pranzi said she was coming down and just as she got to me, lo and behold, you and the cow came sliding on by right on cue, and Pranzi managed to slow you both down, and I was able to give you one kick with my massive mountaineering boots, and you both sailed through the opening, which admittedly was really big after I had blasted it, and then I pushed you here - five miles down the secret passage that leads from the bottom of the volcano. We are in Shambalah, Cormack! Legendary home of the Shamanic Throat!’
‘Gosh!’ said Cormack. ‘It’s all very dramatic!’
‘Isn’t it just? But the mission is on course. That’s the important thing. All the nay-sayers, Pranzilla chief amongst them I have to say, have been proved wrong.’
‘Where is Pranzi? I have to thank her for saving my life.’
Proton’s face turned ashen.
‘She didn’t make it, Cormack. When you and the cow careened down the inside of the volcano, you smacked her bang into the molten lava and boiled her alive. That’s what I meant when I said that she slowed you down. Hell of a thing though… Hell of a thing…’
There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment.
‘But don’t dwell on it, mate!’ said Proton at last. ‘The cow made it! Your Captain made it! And most important of all, you, Cormack, made it!’
‘Indeed, you did,’ said the old man with the caftan who had moved beside them.
‘Let me introduce you to Bernard, the Australised Sybil to the Shamanic Throat,’ said Proton. ‘Bernard, you’ve already met Cormack, the Candidate.’
‘Yes, I have. Again, welcome to Shambalah. We hope your stay here will be most productive.’
‘Thank you.’
‘We’ve provided quarters for you on the other side of the glade. It’s going to be a fun two weeks but it’s going to require a lot of hard work on your part. Are you up for it?’
‘I’m up for anything.’
‘Good man!’ said the Sybil. He turned to Proton. ‘He has the mark?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Proton.
‘Can I see it?’
‘Chosen One, show him your nipple.’
Cormack reluctantly pulled aside his shirt to expose his nipple and the little burn the Creator had given him last week Thursday when He was in his kitchen.
‘Hmm, rather small,’ said the Sybil, peering at it closely. ‘The Texts spoke of something quite pronounced. But it is there all the same.’ Then he addressed Cormack directly. ‘I’m afraid you’ll be suffering more of these little indignities in the coming weeks. We’ll be assessing your credentials quite thoroughly. Don’t be alarmed – it’s all part of the process. You wouldn’t believe how many phonies pass this way. It’s all quite enervating…’
Then the Sybil withdrew with Proton a little way into the trees at a far enough distance for them not to be overheard. Cormack could see the Sybil was nodding his head, and rubbing his chin, as Proton talked energetically close to his ear.
He thought he might have a few words with the cow in the meantime. She was spread out in the grass, rolling in the dew, and for the first time since her accident her dreadful injuries seemed irrelevant, her body once again become a comfortable whole, the legs as unnecessary to her now as a bicycle to a fish. She was flat on her back, udders up, provo
catively twirling a stalk of grass in her mouth with a strange come-hither look in her large, brown eyes.
‘You look very well,’ he said to her.
‘This place be wonderful, Cormack!’ she said. ‘They does be so good to me.’
‘How long have we been here?’
‘One day and one night. They were very worried about you. Especially Proton. You wouldn’t wake up.’
‘A whole day?’
‘The old man kept feeding you great big draughts of this amber liquid.’
‘Oh! That would explain the yellow vomit stains on my vest...’
‘But this place is like paradise, Cormack! And me, a little Zargonic cow, unaccustomed to anything much outside me little Zargonic cow pasture, travelling all over the galaxy and getting in such scrapes and adventures and then ending up here – in cow heaven! Cormack, this is beyond me wildest fantasies! I don’t know if I’ve told you this before but often, sometimes at night, men does come at me with straw. I’m a Pantheistic Syllogist, you see. Have you heard of us? Only the most wicious and despicable band of desperados in the known Universe, we is…’
‘Yes, all right. That’s enough of that,’ said Cormack, but secretly he was happy that the cow seemed back to her old self at last.
And he had to admit the place did look stunning, quite unlike the other areas of the planet he had travelled through. The plants were different, lush and welcoming. There were beautiful, brightly coloured flowers blossoming everywhere: bluebells, and fulgent daffodils, and tufts of crocuses, and climbing nasturtiums, and others that he couldn’t name in amongst tall spreading fruit trees, their boughs laden with golden cherries and mangoes and shaddocks, christophenes and paw-paws. There was meadow all about, cut like a lawn and embowered with gladioli, and delicate little butterflies flitted here and there, in amongst the rhododendrons that grew in neat thickets of every variegation.
Proton and Bernard, the Sybil, had finished their conference and had rejoined Cormack and the cow.
‘So I hope you guys are going to be happy here,’ said Proton
‘Oh yes!’ said the cow.
‘It all looks very lovely,’ said Cormack.
‘Lovely it is, but we have some serious work to do.’
‘What kind of work?’ asked Cormack.
‘We begin with the First of the Three Ordeals tomorrow.’
‘The Three Ordeals?’
‘The Three Ordeals.’
‘And what is the First?’ asked Cormack nervously.
‘Ordeal by Detonation,’ said Proton. ‘Am I right, Sybil?’
‘Actually, no. That one got dropped a little while ago by special decree of the Shamanic Throat. Lot of fuss about it and I do rather miss it because it was a fun one and very spectacular but we’ll have to pass on it all the same. The first will be Ordeal by Water.’
Cormack looked puzzled.
‘My advice is don’t worry about it,’ said the Sybil. ‘Just go with the flow as it were - don’t mind the pun. It will all come quite naturally. If you are who you say you are, of course…’
***
Chapter Thirty Two
Traction was in paroxysms.
The Opikarp had decided to spend the day at the holo-theatre watching the transmission of the polo tournament live from Zargon 8 with a selection of Crampton proles, and had had to be transferred via the most enormous fishnet, all shuddering and hypertensive, into a vast Perspex bowl that was led on a choke through the streets.
It was unheard of, an incredible security risk, but typical of the bloody-mindedness of the recalcitrant karp; for what use was being the Governor of a small and poxy planet on the far side of the Galaxy, he must have thought, if one could not a shove one’s fishy face before the populace once in a while and watch them quiver? And they were certainly quivering, disgusted to see him, and moving in droves from the streets as he passed with Traction besides him, on their way back to his tank, the game now over.
‘Unbelievable that Mrs. Bellingham could win,’ said the Opikarp, his voice metallic and crisp inside Traction’s head. His thoughts from the fishbowl were being relayed directly by sensors straight to Traction’s duct. ‘It was not the Emperor’s intention to kill the captain of the Tartans, you know. He rather liked him. They have children at the same pre-school.’
‘Unbelievable and disgusting. I believe the freckly fellow on the left wing, Fran-tart or something, was mostly to blame.’
‘I have word that the Emperor was planning to abandon Imperial and Ancient directly after the first match – after having lopped off Mrs Bellingham’s head. He’s had a most affecting change of heart, and is feeling terrible for the spandrills. He is such an aficionado of the game. A real purist. Can’t stand to see it being fucked about with unnecessary rule changes. But now he will have to see it right through to the end of the tournament. It would look capricious to go back on his word right after he kills her. This could well be the most horrific sporting event the Universe has ever seen.’
‘Why doesn’t he just execute her in normal fashion and have done with it?’
‘It cannot be done. The tournament must proceed. The Universe is watching. He has been too clever by half. Not usually his problem at all. She is likely to have become quite a celebrity after her unexpected win.’
Indeed, when the Opikarp was safely restored to his fish tank, and the gubernatorial fish food had been sprinkled, and he had pumped up his swimming-bladder sufficient to rest just below the surface, and had gobbled at it, and bubbled his digestive gas into the water, they turned on the sports channels so that he could gauge the national reaction, and they, at least, were full of it - quite an oddity for the Cramptonians to have done so well, and the Tartan captain had turned out to be a rising star in the game, so his unexpected demise was noteworthy too. Mrs. Bellingham had gone from doomed no-hoper, debased representative of a subjugated race, snotty enough to play polo – known to be the hated Emperor’s favourite game – badly, and stupid enough to think that she might represent the Cramptonian people whilst doing it, to plucky old thing, still very much doomed, but now perhaps tragically.
There had been little local interest in the first game, but that was set to change for the second.
‘This could well turn out to be a public relations disaster.’
‘The Zargons could not get any less popular on Crampton.’
‘We are unpopular but we are feared. We must not encourage the thought that the Cramptonians might have a bit of spunk in them. They played rather well in the end. Imperial and Ancient seemed to suit them. But I suppose the Emperor has the matter in hand.’
The Emperor, in fact, at that moment sat on his pony simulator in the Imperial Gymnasium, did not have the matter in hand, and was apoplectic. Consultation with the hive-mind had ceased. The hive-mind, forever nervous that its throat cable might be amputated, had stopped transmitting into the Imperial Brain entirely, an almost unprecedented occurrence, and the collection of nano-bots that made up its intelligence was quite still in its box.
The Emperor was pink with rage.
‘Whose plan was this? Eh? Whose plan was it for me to slaughter the best polo players in the galaxy, one by one?’
The hive-mind was silent.
‘The man was a friend of mine. Bloody embarrassing when I have to make light conversation with his widow at the P.T.A. These Cramptonians are better than you thought, eh? I hope for your sake they lose the next match. I will use a blunt mallet on her and make sure it takes three blows to lop through her fat neck.’
‘Sire, the tournament is becoming a great success. Ratings are solid throughout the Universe. As we had hoped, it has raised the profile of the game considerably everywhere. There is nothing to worry about. The Cramptonians will not win the next game. When they’ve lost, we can ease off on the gore, if that is what you wish.’
But, confounding the hive-mind’s expectations, the Cramptonians won their next two games and were through to the semi-finals.
&n
bsp; ***
Chapter Thirty Three
Cormack asked what it was.
‘It’s a barrel,’ said Bernard.
It was made of oak and coopered expertly, rimmed with cast iron hoops, and coated with tar. The Sibyl had placed it upright in a small depression in the centre of the glade as though it were a totem pole.
‘And what am I to do with it?’ asked Cormack.
‘You are to get in it,’ said Bernard.
‘And why would I want to do that?’
‘It’s going to be really rather tiresome if you question every little aspect of the Ordeal. There are two more after this and we’re likely to be here forever, presuming you are who you say you are, of course. If you aren’t, then we might be through rather quickly, I suppose, but all the same, why don’t you just be a good chap and get in and then we can start the whole thing off?’
‘I don’t say that I’m anything.’
Bernard turned to Proton in exasperation.
‘Candidate, Cormack,’ began Proton. Then he turned his back to Bernard and waggled the laser gun that was attached to his utility belt. ‘Don’t you remember our little talk about responsibilities and obligations and about how one good turn deserves another? One good turn like saving your damned life back in that volcano.’
‘I was only asking the obvious question. I’m certainly not ungrateful.’
‘And look at your poor friend, the cow,’ continued Proton. ‘She is so disappointed in your attitude.’
In fact, the cow was nowhere to be seen, having slithered off somewhere earlier that morning.
‘Why don’t you just do what Bernard says and get in the barrel?’
Cormack had thought that perhaps the fervour would have faded from Proton's eyes now they had reached Shambalah, but if anything it was more pronounced. What could Proton possibly want from him so badly? It was like being chained to a bounty hunter, the chains being merely figurative but no less constraining for that - there was never anywhere to run to. Everywhere alien danger. And how would it end? With Proton wearing a Carmen Miranda hat, serving fruit punch in hollowed-out coconuts like Kenneth More in The Admirable Crichton?