The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions

  ‘I think I am impressed,’ said George, now sitting up and feeling at his parts. ‘I think most of it is true.’

  ‘All of it is true,’ said Ada, making a wounded face.

  ‘Which is why I am impressed,’ said George. ‘In the recent past you would have probably made up some far-fetched fiction.’

  ‘Well, I don’t do that any more,’ said Ada. ‘Not with you.’

  ‘And I am glad,’ said George in reply. ‘And very grateful to you for saving my life.’ And Ada gave George a bit of a hug and that really hurt poor George.

  He was not too badly burned, though, as it happened, and this was probably due to the protective attributes of his quality suit, although it had shrunk somewhat in the cooking pot’s water and now had a music-hall look.

  Ada served George food and drink and George was grateful for it.

  ‘Does anyone have any idea where we are?’ asked George, as he munched upon a marshmallow. ‘I do not suppose one of the sky-pilots survived with a map or a compass?’

  ‘There has been some very funny talk,’ said Ada, ‘especially amongst the Jupiterian tourists. They have maps of Earth woven into the linings of their jackets apparently, and I overhead them saying that this island is not on their maps.’

  ‘Then we are truly marooned,’ said George, drinking from half a coconut. ‘If it is not on the map then it is not near a shipping lane.’

  ‘I think that goes without saying,’ said Ada. ‘Cannibal natives do not find favour in tourist resorts. And this is very much a paradise island. Mr Thomas Cook would probably be more than happy to add it to his brochure.’

  ‘Well,’ said George, ‘looking on the bright side – and as I have been saved from a horrible death and you are with me once again, I feel I can look on the bright side – we will not starve upon this island. The natives have been able to sustain themselves and once we have dealt with them, so shall we.’

  ‘ “Dealt with them” – as in exterminate them?’ Ada queried.

  ‘You know me to be a charitable fellow,’ said George, ‘in no way racially bigoted and meaning harm to no man. But those evil fellows tried to cook me. I do not think I will mourn for their loss.’

  ‘So we should just wipe them out and take over their island?’ asked Ada.

  ‘Well.’ George paused. ‘When you put it like that—’

  ‘Oh, do not get me wrong,’ said Ada. ‘I have no problems with that at all. We might even think of salting some of them down and storing them away to be consumed at a later date.’

  George was somewhat speechless at this and felt he was done with his dinner.

  But there was no getting away from the fact that the prospect of life upon a paradise island with Ada Lovelace held to enormous charm. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, near as near could be. He would just have to grin and bear it while the natives were put down. It was for the common good, there was no help but to do it.

  All will be well, thought George to himself. And he thanked the Lord for salvation. Everything had been so brutal lately. But everything had led to him being here. Upon this beautiful island with Ada. It was clearly God’s will. What God had in mind for him. And any previous doubts he might have had throughout his short life thus far as to the existence of God had now all blown away.

  George had become a believer.

  George, indeed, had found God.

  And so George had a bit of a pray and thanked his God for all. For having spared Ada from drowning and him from the cooking pot. Clearly, George concluded, it had been God’s plan all along to send George here, that he and Ada might live in the new Garden of Eden as the new Adam and Eve.

  ‘I thank you very much,’ said George to God, ‘for everything you have done for us and for providing us with this new Eden. One,’ George added, ‘superior to the first, as it lacks for the terrible serpent.’

  ‘Do I hear you praying, George?’ asked the voice of Professor Coffin.

  27

  ‘How positively wonderful to see you.’ Professor Coffin danced his little dance. ‘I feared that I had lost you for ever, but once more we are reunited. What a happy happenstance.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said George. And, ‘Yes,’ also and, ‘Indeed,’ once more.

  ‘No injuries, I trust? No permanent disfigurings?’

  ‘I am somewhat scalded but I will survive.’

  ‘Most splendid,’ cried the professor. ‘And so you must gather some sleep to your person, for tomorrow the big march begins.’

  ‘Big march?’ George asked. ‘And what big march is this?’

  ‘To the temple, young fellow. To Her temple.’

  ‘I am missing something,’ said George. ‘And a most substantial something, so it seems.’

  ‘Fiddle de dum diddle, thus and so.’ Professor Coffin bowed. ‘Of course, dear boy,’ he said to George, ‘you were not perhaps made privy to the topological and indeed archaeological anomalies when you were transported to this dismal village.’

  ‘They bonked me on the head,’ said George.

  ‘Quite so. You see, at the very heart of this island rises a great volcano and upon its rim rises something more – a temple, my boy – the temple of Sayito.’

  ‘That is an impossible assumption to make,’ said George. ‘It might be any old temple.’

  ‘Yes, you would think so, would you not? However, the native we captured somewhat earlier spoke the name without too much in the way of prompting.’

  George let that one slip by. The professor clearly had quite extraordinary powers of persuasion.

  ‘So,’ said Professor Coffin, ‘we will set out with the cracking of the dawn. The burghers of Jupiter will accompany us. They apparently came to Earth to hunt tigers, and I suggested that tigers might be found in the jungles of this island.’

  George sighed softly and shook his head.

  ‘No sadness now, my sweet fellow. Those Jupiterians will provide a sturdy guard for us, against natives and who knows whatever else.’

  ‘There is worse than natives on this island?’

  ‘The captured native seemed at first most fearful of something lurking on the slopes. But he will lead the way for us as a guide. I explained to him as best I could that I knew what was for the best.’

  Professor Coffin wished George a good night’s sleep. He patted George kindly upon the shoulder and assured him that all would be well. ‘Tomorrow should prove to be a most exciting day,’ he said.

  And George felt no reason to doubt this.

  Professor Coffin departed and this time, to the accompaniment of a background din provided by many jungle beasties, George said his prayers as a good boy should and then dropped off to sleep.

  *

  It had all the makings of a proper expedition, so much in the way of equipment there was to be seen. Sleeping bags and picnic hampers, hammocks and mosquito nets. Bottled water and provisions, beer and crates of cigarettes. Tents and special umbrellas, big game rifle ray guns too. A folding canvas gents excuse-me. Sola topis, red and blue.

  George was handed a sola topi, turquoise blue with fine big brass jungle goggles.

  ‘Where did all this wonderful stuff come from?’ asked George of the professor. ‘I cannot believe it all just washed ashore.’

  ‘The burghers of Jupiter, as you will have observed, are somewhat jolly fellows,’ Professor Coffin explained. ‘One reason for this is that they are always prepared. For anything, really. They work on the principle that “well prepared is best prepared”. They were first into a lifeboat. A lifeboat that they had previously packed with all this paraphernalia “just in case”.’

  ‘They clearly possess superior foresight,’ said George, putting on his sola topi. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Absurd,’ said the professor. ‘But it will keep the mosquitoes out of your hair and the sun off the back of your neck. Mind you, with that hat and your shrunken suit you’d cut a comic dash on the stage of the Hackney Empire.’

  ‘Professor,’ said George, stee
ring the showman away to a quieter place where he might speak confidentially. ‘Do you really think that we will find Sayito in this temple?’

  ‘I have every confidence, my boy.’

  ‘And you believe She is a Goddess, correct?’

  Professor Coffin shrugged. ‘I believe only this,’ he said to George, ‘that whatever She is, She is unique. And if we return with Her to the civilised world, She will make our fortunes.’

  ‘I do see a flaw in such reasoning,’ said George. ‘Whoever, or whatever, She is, She may not wish to accompany us.’

  ‘We will cross that bridge when we come to it. I feel confident that I have the means to persuade Her. George, we are not here by any accident. All of this has been preordained. All of this is fate. Your fate.’

  ‘But why?’ asked George. ‘Why me?’

  ‘I have no doubt that all will eventually become clear, to everyone’s satisfaction.’

  George was not altogether convinced.

  ‘So are you ready to leave?’ asked the professor.

  ‘As ready as I will ever be, I suppose,’ said George.

  ‘And you have done your business and washed your hands?’

  ‘What?’ went George, appalled.

  ‘You really do not ever want to get caught short in the jungle,’ Professor Coffin explained. ‘Too many red ants’ nests or horrible fishes that swim up your old John Thomas if you are having a wee-wee in the river—’

  ‘Stop, Professor, please!’ went George. ‘And I have been, thank you.’

  Professor Coffin gave him a look.

  ‘And washed my hands too. Now stop.’

  The captive native, secured about the waist by a length of sturdy rope for fear that some untoward circumstance might cause him to desert his position, led the way. Behind him two Jupiterians, heavily built and armed in the likewise persuasion. Then Ada and Darwin, then George and the professor, and then four further burghers of Jupiter, the final two armed with their big game rifle ray guns and walking backwards.

  ‘As long as we are not attacked from the sides we have every chance of survival,’ said George.

  Professor Coffin said nothing.

  It was going to be an uphill struggle in every sense of the words. The fellows from Jupiter, enthusiastic and full of beans as they were, were not built for uphill travel. Jupiter was a great big planet with heavier gravity than the Earth, and as a consequence the folk of Jupiter were very solidly built. So although they experienced a certain lightness of step when they set foot upon Planet Earth, this had a tendency to be negated by the heroic quantities of Earthly food they proceeded to consume.

  George did not know quite what to make of them.

  They were certainly more human than were the ecclesiastics of Venus. They appeared to really love life. They laughed, they sang, they gambolled and they laughed some more. And were it not for certain subtle differences – their lack of an index finger, the length of their ear lobes, the close set of their eyes – they were really all but human in appearance.

  And they did not seem to bother with religion. They came, they traded, they spent the money they earned from their trading and then they all went home.

  They were a racist’s delight.

  George eyed them as they puffed and plodded and climbed ever higher and higher.

  On every hour they took a break and sat down for a rest. George sat close to Ada, who had divested herself of her normal travelling clothes and now wore only her vest, corset and bloomers, and looked just the way that a girl adventurer should. Together they gazed out over the jungle. It truly was paradise, the lush green trees, the silver sands, the gorgeous ocean beyond.

  ‘Tell me,’ said George to Ada, ‘do you still have your female intuition?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Ada. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because even though I obviously do not possess it to a single degree, I have a very bad feeling about how all of this is going to end.’

  ‘The professor knows what is—’

  ‘Stop that,’ said George once more.

  ‘Everything sweet as a sweet little nut?’ asked the professor, ambling over. ‘I thought I heard you saying “stop”, young George.’

  ‘Everything is fine.’ George lifted his sola topi and wiped away sweat from his forehead. ‘How much longer do you think it will take us to reach the summit?’

  ‘If we continue unmolested, an hour perhaps. We have, however, been followed for at least the last hour by small brown men with bones through their noses.’

  George gave a terrible shudder. ‘I expect they want our guide returned to them.’

  ‘And us in their cooking pot. But it is not really for the natives that I have concerns regarding our safety.’

  ‘No?’ said George. ‘Then for what?’

  ‘Look up,’ said the professor. ‘Up into the sky.’

  George glanced up to the dazzling sky.

  ‘Apply your goggles, George,’ said the professor.

  George lowered his goggles from his headwear and scanned the heavens above. At length he lifted his goggles once more and said, very quietly, ‘What are those?’

  ‘I am of two opinions,’ said Professor Coffin, ‘and I am torn between the two.’

  Ada Lovelace did glancings upwards, donned her goggles and stared. ‘Oh dear no,’ said Ada Lovelace. ‘I do not believe that.’

  ‘Whether or not they fit into your belief system,’ said Professor Coffin, ‘is probably neither here, nor there. They circle above us large as life, but somewhat twice as terrible.’

  ‘Vultures?’ said George. ‘Or great bats? But certainly horrible creatures.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Professor Coffin, ‘your goggles lack for a magnifying lens. They are neither of the above, young George. They are either harpies or they are pterodactyls. ’

  George took in the enormity of this.

  Ada all but fainted.

  ‘Just think,’ said Professor Coffin, ‘if we could get one of those back to London alive. I have heard tales of an island where there lives a gigantic ape. Long King Dong I think they call him, but that is probably just a tall tale. Those, however,’ and he pointed to the sky, ‘those look real enough to me. If they attack us – and I feel that they will – we must do everything in our power to net one.’

  George Fox rolled his eyes. ‘You never let an opportunity slip by, do you, Professor?’ he said.

  ‘I am a professional, George. I tucked half a dozen shrunken heads into that knapsack you are carrying – the Rubes will pay a goodly penny to see those in London.’

  ‘Aaaagh,’ went George, a-tearing off his knapsack. ‘Those are people’s heads.’

  ‘Onwards and upwards, George.’ The professor laughed. ‘Indeed onwards and upwards everybody, we will soon be there.’

  Another half an hour of plodding upwards found the party upon a grassy promontory, several hundred yards below the summit.

  ‘Oh yes indeed, indeed,’ said the professor. ‘What think you of that, George? What think you?’

  Above them loomed the temple. A vast construction clinging to the rim of the volcano. George had once seen an etching of the Potala Palace in Tibet and there was much of that extraordinary edifice evident here. But there was so much more to be amazed by. Golden rooftops pitched at eccentric angles; turrets, seemingly of pearl, rising to dwindle in dizzying perspective. This building was Gothic, it was Chinese, it was Indian and Japanese and Javanese and Balinese, Taiwanese as well. And parts even bore a striking resemblance to the Prince Regent’s pavilion in Brighton. There were statues of many Gods, Judaic, heathen, pagan. Symbols inlaid into stone. The hexagram of Solomon, Böhme’s wheel of anguish, the lapis sigil of the alchemists. Fludd’s Trinitarian heaven enclosed within the sacred triangle. The squared circle of Pythagoras. The Rosicrucian ‘Tree of Pansophia’. The tenfold universal spheres of Hermes Trismegistus. These and more, in stone beneath the sunlight.

  ‘I am afeared,’ said George to the professor. ‘We are in a s
acred place and we have not come here to worship. We must turn back, Professor. We must go no further.’

  ‘Oh my word no,’ said Professor Coffin. ‘We might well be the first civilised men to have visited this place in a thousand years. We cannot turn back now, not when we are so close. My entire life has led to this moment, George, and yours also. It is our fate, do you understand me? It is your fate.’