The Smell of Telescopes (38 page)

“These sticks are rather obscure, lad.”

“The intention is to niggle and itch, rather than to menace. Later in our lifetimes he planned to return with the carrot, which might be a cancellation of the stick. But our spans are no longer normal, and this has thrown his plans into chaos. Doubtless he is ranging the centuries, astounded at our persistence. But I believe we have finally reached the rear of our immortality and that he will soon appear. I have a personal reason for hoping to foil him, and if you will help me, I shall aid you in turn to recover your treasure.”

Morgan chuckled. “How can immortality have an end? You squander my time with logical contradictions.”

“Three centuries of experience is the limit of a human brain. Full to the brim of our heads, we must now leak memories. One of those leaks will eventually be the mantra which keeps us alive. We shall forget it, allowing death to claim its debt.”

“I see what you mean. This is ironic.”

“Laocoön knows we are almost at that stage. He has wandered to the future to witness our demise and now has come back a little to persuade us into his cabal. He will certainly offer us salvation, the removal of a batch of unwanted memories to increase space for the mantra. He might use surgery to cut out part of the brain which holds trivial nostalgia. That is probably what I would do.”

“A carrot indeed! But what was your stick?”

“That is where he made his biggest error. The first time he met me was not in Panama. When I was a child I applied to join his society and he struck me by turning me down. Thus in Panama, when he thought he was giving me a stick, by sabotaging my octant, he was really finishing the process and letting me bite the carrot. Does this make sense? The order of his tactics was reversed and drove me against his plans, not up with them. So I am immune to his intrigues. And when he comes soon to dangle another carrot, I shall refuse it because I have already eaten one. How this will ruin his subtle design!”

“But we are safe from forgetting that mantra, for it is written in your volume. It may be relearned.”

“True, but one day we shall also forget how to read. However, this is not important. I suspect Laocoön’s visit to the five eternal crewmen will be the unusual event that pushes out their memories of the mantra. A bald ghoul with three capes is a new experience which takes up a vast amount of room in the brain. He will materialise and they will lose the secret. Then they will be aware that this act of forgetting reduces all their lifespans to one day, for the chant must be uttered each morning. At this point, Laocoön will announce his offer of surgery, or something similar, and we will accept through fear of death. The old rovers, your men, will be lost to themselves, hollow puppets of a noxious sage. I do not wish to let this happen, sir.”

“I agree, ’Phagia. But what will you try?”

“By preceding Laocoön, I can kill the men before he has the chance to save them. None of us have met since 1671. My arrival will be almost as startling as the ghoul’s. They will forget the chant, but there will be no offer of a reprieve. The following day, death will come for them, in the most convenient form. The hungry barber will starve, the needled sailmaker will be impaled, the cook will boil, the carpenter suffocate. And I too will succumb, but I do not know how. You will survive because you are a Welshman and too slow to learn new ideas. You will forget how to forget and thus exist forever!”

“I have hung many of my followers at sea, but this smells rank. To betray the vanquishers of Panama!”

“No, to redeem them. Alive in Laocoön’s clutches, they would be as placid as zombies. Dead, as ghosts, we can still use them. A fresh crew for one last adventure! A band of phantoms sailing to Wales to look for your lost gold. Our best exploit!”

“This touches my heart, ’Phagia, but ghosts are notoriously fickle entities, like wisps of heated rum. How shall we organise them, control them? Such a party may fade away.”

“Look at this chapter in the grimoire. It shows how to raise souls to obey your bidding. A particular symbol needs to be created, a shape. But it already exists. In Panama, the five immortals formed a pentagon. Something in the symmetry of that design has remained with us. Consider the towns we have chosen for our retirements. Here is a list I drew up. When these figures are applied to an atlas, they create a huge pentagon which stretches over many states.”

“That is geometry, my boy, not magic.”

“Each town is exactly 111 miles from the next one on the chart, at an angle of 72°. But consider the inner lines between the nodes. We have the emotional links critical to perform the spell in question. The five eternal crewmen kept in touch only with two others. Drawing these links and erasing the pentagon leaves us with a pentangle, a star of will and force, a symbol to raise spirits.”

Morgan nodded and regarded her charts. 

He fanned himself with his hat. “I have underrated you, ’Phagia. I thought you were merely a genius, but this is far beyond cleverness. So I salute the length of your nose.”

“Take this book and travel to the centre of the pentangle. It is a point in the wild Kärnten mountains of Austria. The precise location is 46°53N 13°50E. Stand there and intone the spell. Then the five phantoms will rush from the five corners to meet you, arriving at the same time. We shall be all yours to command.”

“Very good. Will I require anything else?”

“Human sacrifice. The more potent the individual, the better. That shall be left to your discretion.”

“A ship! We need a ship to rove to Wales.”

“The crew have already provided one. The finest vessel a buccaneer could want. ’Ceti’s bones will be for the flag, and ’Tology’s coffin as a sail, and ’Vado’s pot for a hull, and ’Lin’s armour for a figurehead, and also my octant as the rudder.”

“You said your octant was sabotaged!”

“The main gamble we must take. Mayhap it will steer us not to your trove but elsewhere. A risk, sir!”

“Before we set sail, I wish to treat you all to a meal. As ghosts, your tastes will be insubstantial and cheap. There is a restaurant down in Sardinia, owned by a man called Giovanni and his cat. It caters just for pirates and serves a tasty spaghetti and goblin dish. The walls are coloured with turmeric and tears.”

“I accept. But now I must be on my way to visit the crewmen. It is fortunate that I have an excuse to do so, for it would be impolite just to turn up unannounced. The surprise factor will still be large enough. ’Ceti wrote to ’Vado asking for a coconut. ’Tology wrote to ’Lin asking for a mirror. So ’Lin will visit ’Ceti and encounter ’Vado, passing the mirror to him. I must visit ’Vado and pick it up, and then transport it to ’Tology, the only two I desire to see. Both ’Ceti and ’Lin will have left their images in the mirror, for it is a camera, not a glass, and I can surprise those as effectively as the flesh men. They will die and I shall return here to do likewise.”

“Give me the book and let me be off.”

Morgan escorted her out of the house and back to the carnival. The wagon of Billy Barnett was surrounded by people stretching and sighing, but these were not customers. The actors were having a break for lunch. The novelty of the spectacle, with murderers and despots and pogromists standing in little groups chewing sandwiches or smoking cigarettes, was such that it spilled out a dozen older memories. She clutched the elbow of her master and licked her lips.

“I cannot recall the mantra!”

Morgan opened the grimoire and showed her the words. She relearned them and gasped with relief. They pushed through the mob, brushing past a motley gathering of minor scoundrels. Then she noted a figure sitting in the dust, picking at the dirty hems of his capes. Billy was berating him for poor acting, for an inadequate leer. She stepped near and began to grind her teeth. They gazed up.

“Xelucha Dowson Laocoön! The noxious sage!”

Billy groaned. “That is who he is supposed to be! But he is rather more balderdash than bald, and fool instead of ghoul. Look at the twist of his jaw. Hardly an evil smirk!”

She studied the thespian. For a brief moment his eyes sparked with fear and he raised his hand to wipe a drop of sweat from his cheek. She noticed the thumb, the faded scar.

With a shriek, she threw herself on him, pinning him to the ground and shouting to Morgan for assistance. He knelt by her side and rotated the man over and over, so that he became wrapped up tight in his capes, like the congealed filling of an antique pancake. Billy frowned, amazed at this development, wondering aloud whether even a bad actor should be punished quite so sternly as this.

“No, he is real! He truly is Laocoön!”

The ghoul thrashed and cursed, exhausting himself in his sartorial restraints. Finally he gave up and answered: “Yes, I am he. What better disguise to adopt than as myself?”

“Not you as well!” Morgan was disgruntled.

“Naturally, for I am at least as crafty as you. I hastened to this point in time to discover how you planned to hinder me, and then I went back to preempt your scheme. In the Theatre de l’Orotund, I found a man who was a criminal against drama, and I persuaded him to join my cabal. He is my first and only recruit. I dressed him up as me and sent him to visit the immortal crewmen on the flying machine. So he has a headstart on you and will meet them first. They will become my zombies before you are able to raise them as ghosts!”

Morgan cried: “You will never be able to catch him, ’Phagia! Nor I attain the Kärnten peaks so fast.”

“A shame. He would make a good sacrifice.”

The ghoul blinked at her. “But there is no point in conducting the ceremony now. Your men will not die and their souls will be trapped for me in reduced minds. Eternal, dull rogues! Marionettes who may dance to my will. I must steal your glory.”

A smooth voice announced: “I am able to overtake the other Laocoön and visit the crewmen before him!”

Morgan, Billy and the ghoul turned to stare at the speaker. It was the pirate queen, Charlotte Gallon, her hair tied in bunches, dark eyes glowing, more lovely than all the moonlight in a sea of wine, and not a drop or shimmer less intoxicating.

“That is a lie! You are just an actor!”

“No, I am also real. In fact, every rogue here is the genuine one. It certainly is the best way of avoiding the authorities. And all of us are immortal, albeit temporarily.”

“How many people did you kiss, sir?”

Morgan blushed. “The Welsh get lonely, not from being on their own but without constant reassurance.”

Charlotte added: “No man will beat a flying machine in a race, but the roads will fall in love with me, like all other things, and help me along. And I can imitate ’Phagia.”

“Yes, it is odd how you resemble the navigator even though you are a ravishing female and he is not.”

“I may not start without the right cup of tea.”

Billy pointed at a tent closer to the hub of the town. “That stall specialises in perfect beverages.”

Morgan lifted Laocoön onto his shoulder and grunted. “I shall take this ghoul and the grimoire to Austria, hack him open at the designated place and recite the incantation.”

“Wait! I am not a sacrifice. I am a sage!”

But the buccaneer laughed as he strolled with his prize toward the horizon, and his captive was forced to chuckle also, for Morgan stuffed the magic book into his trousers and tickled him with his free hand. As they moved away, Laocoön’s giggles became sobs, increasingly weaker and desperate, until they merged with the general hum of the planet, itself tickled by the solar wind. And now Charlotte had purchased her tea, had sipped it, and was hurrying off in a different direction, leaving Billy and the navigator joyously stupefied and eager for tranquillity. But it was not to be, for as they continued to pass through the assembled evil person- alities, she stopped short at a couple who were gnawing chocolate and cheese, the man garbed in a waistcoat of pale sequins, the woman in skirts only recently straightened.

“Father! Mother! How can you be here?”

They blinked twice at her, shook their heads and returned to their snack. She was no longer familiar.

Billy explained: “These two come from a part of the exhibition you did not enter. They are Federico and Marina Zanahoria, a trespasser and an adulteress. Rather insignificant criminals really, but they caused a fair quota of pain to each other.”

“No, they are my family! Watch close!”

She pulled off her hat and her hair tumbled out, having taken over three centuries to grow back to its childhood length. Then Federico and Marina clapped their hands and embraced her. “Yes, it is us. The horrid Ugolino remade us in a green jar.”

“I have many doubts. I am too happy! You might be actors! Prove to me you are real! What is my name?”

“It is Juanita, of course. Our daughter.”

“Ah, relearning that fact has made me forget the mantra again! And Morgan has taken the book! It must be time for me to die. My destiny is here. But how will I expire? How?”

Suddenly there was a sound of stamping feet from within the wagon. Then the steam bull, now nameless, issued a terrible roar and pawed the dust into a cloud. The whole contraption shuddered. Billy was aghast as it rolled forward, drawn by the automaton. It accelerated and turned to bear down on them, dozens of faces peeping from tiny windows. They were all familiar and mutated. From a hatch at the rear, a stream of pistols and blunderbusses tumbled out, the triggers stiff and bored, as if each weapon had been married for years.

“The reserves have broken from storage! Damn those Cadizites! Weak performers every one. They always seemed disinterested when miming acts of torture, so I never used them.”

Juanita was fixed to the spot, unable to move as the bull ploughed into her, knocking her down. The wagon rumbled on and the sweet but icy voice of Ugolino floated back to her. He was trying to blow kisses from the open doorway, but with the jolting motion his aim was inaccurate. A window at the top of the wagon sprang open and the head of Humberto von Gibbon emerged, his jowls crimson.

“Help! I am being abducted yet again!”

The last thing the navigator understood was that the iron entrails of the bull were missing and that the ground was hot and damp. Then she died. But the world did not fold into blackness. Her ghost slipped from her skeleton, rejoicing to be free, the marks of the restraining sinews still visible on her arms, but fading as she blew toward a meeting with Morgan, a reunion of her comrades on a barren mountain, over the corpse of a ghoul, and then away, trailing in their captain’s wake, to collect the parts for a new ship, including her octant, and off to Wales to dig for gold, but not before a brief diversion to a restaurant in Sardinia, to a celebration where healths do not need to be drunk, but where a cat speaks and a cook grumbles in a kitchen of charcoal ovens at rogues who are bright blue with lewd tattoos.