The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions Part 23

A pause, then a whirring of wheels and a clicking of parts.

'Papers,' came the voice from the brazen trumpet.

'Papers?' asked Professor Coffin. 'What is this talk of papers?'

'Papers of indenture and permission to travel. An entry visa to Lemuria, accompanied of course by letters of recommendation sealed with the authorisation of at least three diplomatic envoys who can vouch for your honesty and good character and have known you for at least-'

'Hold hard, please,' said Professor Coffin. 'I am of a royal household I have no need for such trivial doc.u.ments.'

'I have not yet even begun to enumerate the trivial trivial doc.u.ments,' replied the mechanical speaker. 'You also require foodstuff importation permits, not to mention for the introduction into Lemuria of an uncla.s.sified hairy-boy.' doc.u.ments,' replied the mechanical speaker. 'You also require foodstuff importation permits, not to mention for the introduction into Lemuria of an uncla.s.sified hairy-boy.'

'An uncla.s.sified hairy-boy?' Professor Coffin asked.

'I told you not to mention that.'

A tiny silence followed. Darwin broke it with a raspberry.

'And where are your medals?' asked the voice.

'Back in my palace?' Professor Coffin suggested.

'A pilgrim without votive medals?' The voice, although monotone and lacking all inflections, seemed somehow to take a graver turn.

'Votive medals? Ah, I see,' said the professor. 'Naturally, as pilgrims, having travelled halfway across the planet to offer our devotions to the G.o.ddess, we indeed had many votive medals. But our journey has been fraught with peril at every turn. We have been attacked and set upon time and again. All of our belongings were stolen.'

Had George been wearing a hat he would now have taken it off to Professor Coffin. The showman certainly knew how to 'think on his feet', as it were.

The Martian leaned past the professor and gargled once more into the machine.

'Weapons?' queried the voice. 'We are informed that not only did you fail to pa.s.s through immigration control at the crater, but you were attempting to smuggle weaponry into Lemuria.'

'Ah,' said the professor. 'There does seem to be some misunderstanding.' Professor Coffin cast George a desperate glance.

'Do not look at me,' said George. 'You were doing so nicely on your own. Carry on.'

Clickings, whirrings, cog-intermes.h.i.+ngs, marvellous puffings of steam. Then more words issued in cold blank monotone.

'The details of your neglect in providing correct and appropriate doc.u.mentation, illegal entry to Lemuria, arms smuggling, unlicensed importation of an uncla.s.sified hairy-boy these and numerous other misdemeanours and breaches of protocol, some genuine, others whimsical and unjust but prompted by the enormity and scale of the offences, are now being punched onto card and entered into the Patent Adjudicator.'

George Fox rolled his eyes about. 'We do not require the services of a Cerebral Prognosticator to predict what is coming next,' said he.

'Execution,' said the machine.

'No surprise there then,' said George.

'Public execution, followed by ritual dismemberment and the dispersal of meat stuffs to the population.'

'Hold hard there,' cried Professor Coffin. 'That is utterly outrageous.'

There was a pause, then the voice spoke once again.

'Indeed,' it said. 'I do apologise. So many misdemeanours have overloaded the data operation system. The sentence should be prolonged torture, then then ritual dismemberment, ritual dismemberment, then then execution and the dispersal of meat stuffs.' execution and the dispersal of meat stuffs.'

'I protest,' Professor Coffin protested. 'I demand a reappraisal, an opportunity to appeal against each separate charge before a jury of my peers. The representation of an accredited legal advisor. A-'

The gun b.u.t.t caught him a terrible blow and felled him to the floor.

'Carry your fellow criminal to the cell provided,' the voice from the machine told George, 'and counsel him upon reawakening to make no further protests or his tongue parts will be severed from his head.'

George Fox made a gloomy face and gathered up the professor. Things now looked impossibly hopeless. Which made George impossibly sad.

32.

The accommodation, to say the least, was wretched. No full board with free drinks from the bar. Dark and dank and grim and glum and gloomy. Smelling rank and, if even listed in The Gentleman Traveller's Guide to Prison Cells of the World The Gentleman Traveller's Guide to Prison Cells of the World, scarcely even rating half a star.

George sat fuming in the rank and murkiness. Occasionally puffings and blowings escaped his lips. All indicative of extreme irritation and fury.

Professor Coffin toyed with his gold pocket watch. He had acquired this whilst aboard the Empress of Mars to replace that of George's which he had returned to the lad. This beautiful timepiece not only chimed the hour, but went for five whole days without winding.

There was absolutely no telling how long it would go for if you did did wind it. wind it.

Inside the face cover were engraved the words ToNikola Tesla From all the Backroom Boffins 26th July 1895 Professor Coffin held the watch to his ear. 'We have been in this cell for nearly twelve hours,' he said to George.

'And I have hated every minute,' George replied. 'And,' he added, 'I had no idea that a single ape can go to the toilet quite so many times.'

'He is a somewhat prodigious piddler,' Professor Coffin agreed. 'Which does not improve the ambience one little bit. But-'

'Do not even begin,' said George. 'If you tell me one more time that all will be well, I will fall upon you and wring the life from your neck with my bare hands alone.'

'Come, come, George,' said the professor. 'All will be well. But you are out of sorts. I have something here that will raise your spirits.' And he dipped into his waistcoat pocket to draw out a slim gla.s.s phial.

'Oh no,' croaked the professor. 'It is gone.'

'Gone?' asked George. 'What is gone?'

'Something rather special. Something that I felt might aid our escape from here. In all of our comings and goings it must have fallen from my pocket.'

'Tell me of this something,' said George Fox.

'It does not matter now,' said the professor.

'No,' said George, 'for we are soon to die most horribly. So where would be the harm in you telling me?'

'It was something I acquired whilst on board the airs.h.i.+p. Something called the Scent of Unknowing.'

George did noddings of his head and stroked his striking chin.

'A perfume that I thought to be of myth. One sniff and the sniffer becomes totally compliant. Whatever the sniffer is told to do, or told to think, so shall it be for the sniffer.'

Professor Coffin might have added more, but of a sudden was quite unable to speak. George's hands were fastened around his throat and George was glaring fiercely and shaking the showman about.

'You thoroughgoing swine!' shouted George. 'At last all falls into place. My periods of missing time. Ada's most dramatic change of opinion concerning you.'

Professor Coffin floundered about. Though sprightly he, for the age of himself, no match was he for George.

Darwin the monkey set up a shrieking. Became a self-appointed referee.

'All right,' said George. 'All right.' He elbowed aside the chattering ape and let the showman fall.

'I am sorry, George,' croaked the professor, when he could once more find a voice to speak with. 'You might think me wrong. But I did it for the best of motives-'

'Your own financial advancement,' said George Fox.

'And yours too. Fifty-fifty.'

'Or at least until you had what you wanted. At which time you would most likely have had me take a little sniff of the scent and confess that I no longer had any interest at all in taking my fifty per cent.'

Professor Coffin tried very hard indeed to make the words 'I swear that I had no such thing in mind' sound convincing.

George was not not convinced. convinced.

'We are finished, you and I,' he said. 'Our partners.h.i.+p is no more. If somehow I survive and somehow I find Ada, I will return with her, somehow somehow, to England and take a respectable job.'

'Ha,' said the professor, with some difficulty because it hurt his throat. 'Do not give me any of that, my boy. You have loved every minute of this. The thrills and high adventure.'

'Loved every minute?' George was all but speechless. 'I have lost all count of how many people died on the Empress of Mars Empress of Mars. Then the natives. Then the flying monkeys and now this this.'

'But you still live,' said the professor. 'And have you ever felt so truly alive before? You will find your love, George. I just know that you will and if you do return to England and take a respectable job, you will constantly recall our adventures and hanker after such excitement again.'

George Fox folded his arms in a huff and took to a sulking silence.

They did not get an evening meal, nor indeed a breakfast.

Which George felt the dying man deserved. And after all, if they were going to the cooking pot, then fattening them up was surely logical.

A Martian's slidy foot did slurpings in the corridor outside. Intricate bra.s.s coggery was set into motion, and bolts slid back upon the grim cell door.

'About time,' said Professor Coffin. 'No doubt some letter of apology from some high muckamuck at the Ministry of Immigration. Or possibly our breakfast.'

George Fox ground his teeth and knotted his fists.

The muzzle of a Martian terror weapon entered the cell. Gargly shouts of an urgent nature entered with it.

'Time, it seems, to go,' said George. 'And Darwin,' he said to the monkey butler, 'you have my most sincere apologies. You saved my life and I in turn threw it away. Taking yours with it, I regret.'

Darwin the monkey shook George by the hand.

The three then left the cell.

There was something of a carnival atmosphere upon the streets of Lemuria. Bunting swagged from building to building.

Somewhere music played.

Unrecognisable was this to an Earthly ear, appearing more a discordant jangle, accompanied by rattlings. But it had the desired effect upon the considerable crowd that lined the streets. Martians jigged their nips and tentacles and street-side vendors with colourful carts sold bottles of Martian beer.

Professor Coffin waved gaily. Some of the crowd waved back.

Professor Coffin did not, however, consider it politic to tell George that he still retained a degree of confidence that all would end happily.

George Fox stalked and Darwin scampered. Behind them the well-armed Martian slid along.

It came as absolutely no surprise at all to either George or the professor to find that their final destination was the pyramid of skulls in the central plaza.

George did desperate glancings all about. There had to be some way he could make his escape. Well, some way they they could make could make their their escape. As George wanted no harm to come to Darwin. Perhaps some low-flying aircraft might be leapt onto. Perhaps the surviving Jupiterians would arrive in the very nick of time to rescue them. Perhaps Darwin might have something up his hairy sleeve. escape. As George wanted no harm to come to Darwin. Perhaps some low-flying aircraft might be leapt onto. Perhaps the surviving Jupiterians would arrive in the very nick of time to rescue them. Perhaps Darwin might have something up his hairy sleeve.

Perhaps.

Or, perhaps, simply, George would die here. Die in this subterranean city. Die and be eaten, or other-ways about. But have his head bone join the hill of skulls. Be just another unnamed victim, dead in a faraway place.

George wished for Ada.

George wished he was back in England.

George Fox thought of his parents.

George missed his mum.

Up the shallow steps went George at the urge of an alien gun. Step after step and up and up, skulls to either side.

Upon the very summit, flat-topped, plateaued, stood a Martian of considerable stature. Before him a table and this spread with instruments designed for nothing but torture.

Except, perhaps, for meat butchery.

And serving up.

George glanced back. The professor joined him, Darwin too.

The Martian with the gun made further garglings.

'Interlopers, insurgents, iconoclasts-'

The words boomed from the wonderful translating machine, which had been wheeled to the foot of the pyramid.