The Garden of Unearthly Delights (24 page)

 Frank
looked hopelessly at Tom the innkeeper. And Tom looked hopelessly at Frank.

 Then
they both looked hopelessly at Maxwell.

 ‘Look,’
said Frank, ‘there is no other answer to your question It’s just a saying. The
City of
Rameer
lies over yonder
hill, means, well, that something you really really want in life is always just
beyond your reach.’

‘Like a
bird in the hand won’t get the baby bathed,’ said the innkeeper.

‘No not
like that at all,’ said Frank. ‘You know what it means.’

‘Oh
yes, I know what it means. I was just saying that, a bird in the hand won’t get
the baby bathed, is a saying as well.’

‘Oh,
yeah, right. It’s a saying as well. But it doesn’t mean the same as, the City
of Rameer lies over yonder hill.’

‘Well,
I know
that,’
said the innkeeper. ‘Do you think I’m stupid, or
something?’

‘Shut
up!’ Maxwell shouted, as the red mist filled his head. He glared at the
innkeeper. ‘What is the name of this inn?’ he asked.

‘The
Prospect of Rameer.’

‘And do
travellers pass this way seeking the city?’

‘It has
been known,’ said Frank. ‘One time in eighty-three a whole charabanc load of
monks—’

‘I’m
talking to the innkeeper,’ said Maxwell. ‘Do people seek the city?’

‘They
do.’

‘And
what do you tell them?’

‘That
it’s—’

‘Over
yonder hill.’ Maxwell threw up his hands. ‘Right,’ said he, swinging about and
spreading his glare over the gathered patrons. ‘Has anyone here ever been to
the City of
Rameer
?’

Heads
shook.

‘Does
anyone here know where it is?’

Heads
nodded.

‘Would
someone care to tell me?’

Heads
shook again.

‘Why?’
demanded Maxwell.

‘Because
you’ll hit them,’ said Frank. ‘They’ll tell you it lies over yonder hill and
you’ll hit them.’

‘Not
until after I’ve hit you. Perhaps the demonstration will inspire them to
exactitude.’

‘It
won’t. It won’t. How can I make you understand? There
is
no City of
Rameer
. It’s a fable. A fairy-tale place.
Like the Isles of the Blessed, or Atlantis—’

‘Or
Cardiff
,’ said the innkeeper.

‘Or
Cardiff
,’ said Frank. ‘There is no such
place as  the City of
Rameer
.’

‘There
is too! I met some knights today from there.’

‘Golden
knights?’ asked the innkeeper. ‘Very,’ said Maxwell.

‘Hah,’
Frank laughed. The folk about the bar laughed, somewhat nervously though.
‘Knights of the Golden Grommet,’ said Frank. ‘They’re not from  Rameer, they
come from Grayson. They just ride around the grid making a bloody nuisance of
themselves.’

‘Ah!’
said Maxwell. ‘Yes! The grid! That encircles the City of
Rameer
, raised by the Sultan. Deny that if
you will.’

‘You
can’t deny the grid,’ said Frank.

‘I
wasn’t going to,’ said the innkeeper. ‘But whoever said that the Sultan raised
the grid?’

‘A
gridster,’ said Maxwell. ‘He told me he works, er, worked, for the Sultan.’

‘The
gridsters are all mad.’ Frank twirled his finger at his forehead. ‘A generation
ago they were big fellows. But look at them now, shrinking away. That’s what
too much contact with the grid does for you.’ He looked hard at Maxwell. ‘Do
you live close to the grid?’ he asked.

‘No I
don’t. But the existence of the grid proves the existence of the Sultan.’

‘It
does nothing of the sort. It merely marks the boundary between our world and
the one next door.’

‘I’m
missing something vital here,’ said Maxwell.

‘You
don’t know much about cosmology, do you?’ the innkeeper asked.

‘Apparently
not,’ said Maxwell, draining his pint.

‘Right,
well you know when the four worlds banged together?’

‘What?’

‘At the
time of the great transition.’

‘Oh,
that, yes. What four worlds?’

The
innkeeper sighed and pulled Maxwell another pint. ‘Thirty-five,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Never
mind, you can pay me later. Now, what was I saying?’

‘About
four worlds.’

‘Right,’
said the innkeeper. ‘According to accepted scientific doctrine, the earth was
once all alone in its particular orbit around the sun. Then one day, out of the
blue, or black, three extra planets arrived. They caught up with the earth and
shunted into it. All four worlds amalgamated to form a single planet, which is
now the shape of a sausage. A cylinder with a hemisphere at each end. Are you
following this?’

‘I
think so,’ said Maxwell.

‘Good,
so now there is our world, the red world next door, bashed up against it, the
silver world beyond that and the blue beyond that.’

‘And
all forming the shape of a sausage?’

‘Or a
cigar,’ said Frank. ‘You can prove it for yourself. If you walked along the
edge of the grid, then many months later you would find yourself back where you
started.’

‘But
the grid is kept in place by the Sultan,’ said Maxwell.

‘Cobblers,’
said Frank. ‘The grid is the boundary between our world and the red one. Their
natural laws are not our natural laws. Magic flourishes there. No-one knows
exactly what the grid is, but it keeps out magic, so let’s be grateful for
that.’

The
innkeeper nodded. ‘They say the women in the red world have got three tits and
two—’

‘Don’t
talk silly,’ said Maxwell.

‘—handbags
each,’ continued the innkeeper. ‘But then they probably believe that about our
women.’

‘I
wouldn’t fancy a woman with three tits,’ said Frank.

‘Nor
me,’ said the barman. ‘I’m a four-tit man. Always have been, always will be.’

‘Stop!’
shouted Maxwell. ‘Do you realize what you’re saying?’

‘You don’t
like them with three then, do you?’

‘No! I
mean about the folk in the red world. What they might believe about this one.
That they might believe in a Sultan Rameer. A powerful ruler who has a great
city.’

‘They
might,’ said the innkeeper. ‘But they’d be mad if they did. There is no city
and no Sultan.’

‘But
that’s terrible. Terrible.’ Maxwell clutched at his head.

‘You
know,’ said Frank, ‘three tits wouldn’t be
that
terrible. One for each
hand and one for your mo—’

‘No!’
said Maxwell. ‘There
has
to be a city. There
has
to be.’

‘There
isn’t,’ said the innkeeper. ‘Take our word for
it.
Perhaps there was
one, long ago. But there isn’t any more.’

‘There
has
to be.’ Maxwell raised his fists. ‘You don’t realize what this means to me.
I
must
find the city and the Sultan. I must. I must.’

A
traveller now entered the inn. He was tall and grave and bore the look of one
who had seen much and knew of more. He approached the bar. ‘Someone seeking a
city?’ he asked.

Maxwell
turned upon him. ‘I am.’

‘And
what city might that be?’

With
pounding temples and the red mist in his eyes, Maxwell said slowly, ‘The City
of Rameer. Do
you
know where it is?’

‘I do,’
said the traveller.

‘You
do?’ said Frank and the innkeeper and many patrons too.

‘You
do?’ asked Maxwell, knotting his fists.

‘The
City of
Rameer
lies—’

17

It took at least six
strong men to throw Maxwell from the inn. There was quite a lot of unpleasantness,
furniture was broken and pictures knocked from the walls.

Maxwell
slept the night in the stable with Black Bess. He awoke to the sound of a
crowing cock and the smell of horse dung. He had a hangover, a blackened eye
and numerous cuts and abrasions. He was not in the best of spirits.

He sat
in the straw and set once again to the gathering of his scattered wits. What
was he to do now? According to the innkeeper, he had entered a different world,
passed from an angry red planet, with its magicians and man-eating rat ogres,
into a golden world of namby-pamby knights and old women who struck small boys
on the head.

And if
there really was no city and no Sultan, there was probably no Ewavett either.
Everything he’d gone through, all the privations he’d suffered, had been for
nothing. The whole affair was pointless, ludicrous, plain stupid.

‘Stupid!’
Maxwell punched himself in the head. ‘Stupid!’ He punched himself again.
‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!’ Maxwell stopped punching himself. Well, it
was
stupid,
punching yourself like that.

Maxwell
groaned. He’d been rightly stitched up. What was he going to do now?

Go
forward?

Go
back?

He
could
go back through the grid, hope to find the flying bed and order it to fly
to MacGuffin. If the bed knew where MacGuffin was, of course. And if he could
escape the attentions of the gridsters who would be waiting, eager to toast his
testicles with gelding tongs or stuff him in the maggot box.

And if
he just sneaked out and walked …

To
where? Through Kakkarta? Then swim the ocean?

‘Aw
shit!’ said Maxwell. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’ He was doomed. Nineteen days to live
and no hope of either succeeding in his mission or returning in time. Not good.

Maxwell
sat in the straw with his head in his hands and gave things a good thinking
through. Perhaps things were not as black as they appeared. Perhaps he was
not
limited to nineteen days. Not
here.
Perhaps if what the innkeeper
had said was actually true, he was in a different world, which obeyed different
natural laws, a world without magic. Perhaps MacGuffin’s magic couldn’t touch
him here. Couldn’t reach through the grid and get at him.

‘Yeah,’
said Maxwell. ‘Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps I won’t die at all. Let him
keep my soul. I can learn to live without it. If I tried really really hard, I
bet I could keep my temper and not keep wanting to kill people. Yeah, stuff
MacGuffin. Stuff him.’

Maxwell
raised two fingers towards the oak timbers above. ‘Stuff you!’ he shouted.
‘Stuff you!’

The
pain that hit him was unlike any he had known before. It. came from every
direction at once. Maxwell had read in a book by George Ryley Scott about the
torture of one John Clarke by the Dutch at Amboyna in 1662. Church candles had
been lit beneath his feet, which periodically went out due to the quantity of
human fat dripping onto them. The very thought of this had caused Maxwell to
run to the bathroom and throw up. The pain that tore through him now, was such
an agony as had been poor John Clarke’s.

Maxwell
rolled about, and through his screams he heard the voice.

‘I hope
he is working,’ it said.

The
voice of MacGuffin.

‘No,’
shrieked Maxwell. ‘Leave my soul alone.’

The
pain subsided and he lay in a wretched heap.

There
was no escape. MacGuffin had him. He had shaken the crystal globe containing
Maxwell’s soul, no doubt to impress his next victim. The next man for the night
flight to Kakkarta.

Maxwell
rolled himself into a ball and passed from consciousness.

He awoke from a horrid
dream about Dutchmen in clogs to find the innkeeper standing over him.

‘Time
to settle your account,’ said this man.

‘Oh
yes?’ said Maxwell, with no interest whatsoever.

‘Indeed.’
The innkeeper produced a scroll of paper and began to unroll it. ‘I don’t know
how you slept,’ he said, ‘but I’ve been up all night with an abacus working
this lot out. I pride myself that I have calculated the exactitude of your owings
with a preciseness which leaves error without a peg to hang his hat upon. It
covers the ale you consumed; the room you booked, but chose not to occupy; the
groom’s charges for tending to your horse and shoeing him while you slept, and
the damage caused to fixtures and fittings, which occurred during your
unprovoked attack on the travelling cleric and the subsequent mêlée which
concluded with your forcible eviction from the premises.

‘Now,
my real problem lay in calculating the exact value of the fixtures and
fittings. Opinions varied as to the trend in current market prices. Some said
they were up, and others down. But I poured oil upon the troubled waters of
commercial debate by declaring my philosophy, that the cost of a replacement
item does not necessarily equate with the value the owner puts upon the
original. For instance, let us take the stool you hit Frank over the head with.
I asked Frank what he thought it was worth and, possibly as the result of rage
or concussion, he declared that you should be made to pay twenty gold pieces
for a new one. Twenty gold pieces, I ask you. “Frank,” I said, “Frank, the
stool was not new, it had a wobbly leg and I paid less than five gold pieces
when I bought it.” Yet, and here is a curious thing, yet I value that
particular stool at one hundred gold pieces, a staggering sum some might think.
But if you think that staggering, just listen to how I value some of the other
fixtures. Wait now! Unhand me! What are you doing?’