LOOKING BACK THROUGH THE FIREBALL
Copyright Tom Leonard
Edinburgh June 2022
2. STRANGE HAPPENINGS
Late one evening, Pippa was relaxing on a dirty bean-bag in the attic of Bligh Hall, slowly recovering from her painful kidney transplant. She was reading about ‘searching for identity’ and ‘mixed ethnic roots’ in Margaret Atwood's Life before Man, when she heard a scratching sound from outside the wooden frame of the once quarter-paned window.
“Get lost, sneaky vampire bat!” shouted Pippa, only for a bright orange Qinxhunter to crawl in, and stand erect on their pointed rear paws
“Good evening,” said the genderless sub-humanoid, waving their thin, curly trunk. “I'm Bra Quantum, a seriously minded, grass roots revolutionary of note.”
Pippa peered down her nose at the floppy-eared creature.
“You remind me of the 'Warrior of Righteousness' in Star Battle,” she said, with a curt smile, “but where's your spikesaber?”
“Never you mind,” retorted Bra, flexing their front paws. “I know about what really matters. That's all that matters.”
Pippa sighed, whimsically. “Does anything matter any more?”
“Yes, and life is too short to be politically expedient,” replied the sub-humanoid, raising their eyes to the Heavens, “as Qex, the Holy Creator of all genderless freegans, likes to tell us.”
“Your creator? How many of you are there left?
"The Qinxhunters are growing in numbers, and I'm sure we will prevail on some sunny day.”
“Your Marlene Rivera is certainly a Qinxhunter to be reckoned with.”
“Thank you! They helped defend the Trinkons at Brickwall, but then they was ostracised by those plebs, even though it was Marlene who threw the second Bojo-tail when the rozzers attacked.”
“How admirable! Would you care for some of my mucozade?”
“Got to rush! But I come with a message from our Holy Creator. Qex says that your recent surgery was proposed by the Janians, a strange sect that will take you to explore sentient creatures on other planets. As a consequence of your unique situation, Qex has appointed you to their panel of 'Roving Angels'.”
“That's ridiculous! Are you on psychedelics?”
“No chance. Indeed, Qex wishes to explore your very own consciousness on an important matter.”
“I'm not into your sort of unholy junk.”
“You misunderstand me. Mother Earth has been scheduled to regenerate, but Qex is concerned that the beings, that they breed there, may become just as scheming, sociopathic and barbaric as the last lot. As a Roving Angel, you will be expected to advise Qex accordingly.”
“I'm sorry, but I don't believe in Qex, their silly angels, or any of your baloney.”
“It grieves me to hear that. Maybe I’ll ask Qex to pay you a personal visit.”
“Why don’t you tell your ridiculous creator to get knotted?” Pippa blurted, irritably.
“How could you be so mean?” shrieked the colourful creature, vanishing in a puff of yellowy-brown soot.
Pippa experienced a change of heart before she nodded off, and thought that she would play the role of a Roving Angel, for the time being at least.
Dr. Jake Skulltwister didn’t like sub-humanoids, and he usually shot Qinxhunters on sight. During mid-October, he summoned Pippa and Slim to his office in Abrahall-Frere Tower, a historical edifice out of a nightmare movie, that had housed the pupils’ ‘Correction and Rehabilitation Unit’ ever since the Halcyon days when the college was called Bruton-on-Blackway.
Pippa was appalled to see the ancient words,'Where wicked children are turned into fine poets and ferocious generals on pain of the lash' engraved in Latin over the portal, and Slim was glad that he’d padded his shorts with metal gauze. He still hadn't quite recovered from his pummelling in the Galton-Penrose Lab.
When Pippa and Slim ventured entered the long-accursed tower, Jake Skulltwister was thrashing Corbyn Blair with a metal Spartan rod, while encouraging him to recite a bitter-sweet love poem entitled Achilles, Patroclus, and the evil Centaur. Poor Corbyn had been interrupting Skulltwister's classes with awkward questions; his voice became shriller and shriller as the beating progressed.
Slim was appalled when the dark green blood oozed down the purple-cheeked Trinkon's blue, sugary legs, and very distressed when Jake stamped on the wicked fourth-former’s size thirteen foot for whining too much.
When Corbyn lost consciousness, two hefty Gridiron players from Atlanta 17 threw his inert body into a lynx-shaped animal cage in the corner. The headless stuffed skeleton of General Sir Egon Dyer-Pearson (the victor at Jallianwala 2, and a former Laughlin pupil of note) shook and shuddered, and its right arm dropped off.
Jake Skulltwister pointed Pippa and Slim in the direction of the antique Rev. Bartle Abrahall-Frere whipping sofa, and emitted a blood-curdling laugh.
“I inherited Bartle Frere’s genes,” claimed Jake, “and the bad outweigh the good for the betterment of humanoidkind.”
“A few thousand fishy genes have been added to your pool since,” retorted Slim, in indignation.
“You'll pay for that with your ears,” howled Skulltwister, “and your already well-poisoned liver.”
“Your noble ancestors do you credit,” intervened Pippa, with extreme tact. “The Baronets of Harewood 77 were instrumental in colonising the entire county of Herefordshire, and grinding the peasants into the dust.”
“Thank you for saying that, Miss Pipette,” replied Skulltwister, with a curt smile, sliding two application forms onto the table. “My great grandfather, the tenth baronet, was the wealthiest slave owner in Mumbai 253.”
Slim eyed the forms suspiciously. “What are those documents? What’s your little game?”
Skulltwister tried to look sanctimonious.“My darling wife Sarg thought that you might like to sign up and become Junior Janians.”
“W-why?”.
“So that you can learn about all the social good the Society of Janians does for the people of this planet, of course.”
“B-but it says golden Icarians and white humans only,” stammered Slim. “W-why?”
“Because that's what our much revered Prince Felixos Von Attenburg stipulated when he founded the Society in Garmisch-on-Dnieper in AD1681,” explained Skulltwister. “He was the first Living Incarnate of the god Janus. He worshipped the golden Janus and the White Christ.”
“Screw that palace-bagger,” reacted Slim. “He wasn't even a Greek prince, let alone a real one.”
“Of course he was,” replied Skulltwister, with a deft flick of his catzinger. “He was married at a tender age to the Prince of Coburg, the militaristic guardian of our 'mentally deficient' in the murky regions under the White Tower of Mainau.”
“That Charlie wasn’t a prince either and I don’t want to be a Janian,” howled Slim, reeling in pain. “The two-faced Von Attenbergs still believe in shooting Talking Tigers, Apollo Foxes and original hominids, while claiming to protect nature itself.”
“That's to cull the species and protect against climate change, you fool.”
“It's highly discriminatory population control! I'd prefer to be an all-accepting Quaker……. Aaaaaarg!”
The Apollo Fish grinned like an angel-shark. “They’re a collection of jokers, and it's the pulley-beam for you, puppy dog. Prefects! At the double!”
The ape-like rugby props marched up, and hung Slim, head down, over the pulley-beam like a Satanic spider dancer in a spin. When the cat tore into Slim's tendon, both he and Pippa felt encouraged to sign their Junior Janian application forms in haste.
During that night a terrible crime occurred at Laughlin, that within months would become known as 'The First Galton Murder'. In the morning, the mutilated body of the Colonial Economics teacher John Ruskin was discovered, completely unexpectedly, in the college quadrangle, with an antique Dyer-Pearson bayonet thrust through its stomach. The words 'Galton lackey' were scratched into the victim's forehead, and a note asserting 'The true master race rules' was pinned to his insect-ridden left foot.
Wishing to avoid scandal, Headmaster Tredgold told his prefects to throw Ruskin's mangled body into the Sir Ronald Fisher Natural Selection Pit. That accomplished, Tredgold advised Pippa and Slim that he'd be taking them on a ferry trip, that very weekend, to one of the Janians' annual shindigs. It was known as the Helmsley Retreat.
The Mississippi duly arrived from Tibermouth early Saturday, its decks littered with devout Janians and colourful tourists. Sir Sargant Tredgold climbed aboard, and headed to the refreshments cabin to indulge in a large port and lemon with a creepy-crawly crony from the F.D.A.
Tredgold sent Pippa and Slim to the upper deck. When Dreyfus leapt aboard, in an unusually effusive mood, he was consigned to the rear hold to guard the baggage. Since he was neither Icarian nor human, Dreyfus wouldn't be permitted to participate in the Janians' official meetings, but he'd be expected to fetch and carry like a hungry dog for the entire weekend. He felt bitter about that.
Bra Quantum was waiting furtively when Pippa and Slim reached the upper deck. The Orange Qinxhunter (who was travelling to Machonik) wriggled their trunk, and smiled. However, the students were distracted by a filthy-rich-looking, golden-skinned woman, who waved furiously in their direction, and beckoned them over.
“Why hello, my pretty pretties!” purred Lady Jemima Sunkist. “I recognised you from your picture. Why don't you come into our parlour, and tell the Prince Alfred and I all about your fascinating selves? We'd simply love to learn about what makes you tick.”
“What picture?” Pippa dubiously inquired.
“The snapshot that darling Sarg and Jake sent me. You were up to no good, in the foliage under a bull-conker tree, with a strange-looking wastrel with floppy wings. Those outcasts should be left to rot in the gutter!”
Slim wasn't amused by that outrageous suggestion. “I assume you're referring to our buddy Dreyfus Dreadnought. He's a highly intelligent, trans male Apollo Alpha and he's as good as the rest of us.”
Prince Alfred Saxe-Hanover of the Homo Erectus adjusted his war medals, and smiled. “I totally agree with your philosophy of life, my fine fellow,” said the slowly greying sixty-year old. “I'm drinking Death Lust. What's your fancy?”
Slim twitched nervously. “Just a half of Viral Corona Eagle, but diluted with lemon pop, please, Your Highness.”
“Yeesh!...Boy!”
A purple-haired, Cnupian youth slid up with a jar of fizzy shandy, and nervously wriggled his hips. Slim licked off the froth, and grinned. The youth flinched.
“Would you like to spend the night with him?” inquired the prince. “I bought him from a Stalking Gove slave trader, and he's built like an imperial princess.”
“Not bluddy likely,” retorted Slim. “I don't like the smell of his breath.”
“I admire your assertiveness, and your impudent demeanour,” said the prince, with a salacious grin, as his slave wilted into the background.
An appalling image of the prince when he was several years younger flashed traumatically out of the recesses of Slim's mind. Slim emitted a ghoulish, gurgling moan that would have been interpreted by some as a symptom of insanity. Prince Alfred stared at him, with a mixture of curiosity and fright.
“I'm sure we've never met before,” blustered the prince. “I'd remember your curious eyebrows.”
“I remember everything,” blurted Slim, bursting into tears.
Lady Jemima turned her head, gave Pippa the glad eye, and grinned from ear to ear. “My mother was the Princess of Revelations City. Do you have any parents of note?”
The Daily Mail described her mother as the Whore of Babylon 99, recalled Pippa. She glared at the stuck-up aristocrat, snarled, and made good her escape.
The ubiquitous ferry lady cried, “And now for your own special voyage through nature!” and the Mississippi's gigantic wheels worked overtime while she guided the top-heavy paddle steamer across Tawi Sound, in the excellent company of Pippa, Slim, and Bra Quantum, who'd retreated to a bench by the quaint steering cabin.
Pippa enjoyed the lush view of Eden, and the spiralling hills beyond, and realised that there was more to life than dour Laughlin College. Bra much appreciated the company of accepting humanoids and Slim sat there admiring the z-eagles and ocean-gulls as they dived deep for their ever exotic underwater prey. When an eagle captured an octopus, he applauded in delight.
The Talking Ostrich chatted incessantly with Pippa, Slim and Bra while guiding her paddle-steamer through the Gates of Barron,, narrowly averting the rocks that tumbled into the bubbling water from the trembling cliffs above. Then, after negotiating the dark yellow Rapids of Wojtela, the crafty lady let her ship drift past the towering Lighthouse of Hypatia, until they reached the turbulent Montini Flow.
The mackerel, star fish and sea urchins leapt playfully out of the sizzling water, as the sea-wrens flapped their wings overhead, and Slim recalled his fishing trips out of Drumkok with his father when he was a child.
“That’s where I live with my siblings,” said the ostrich, and there, off the port beam, the immortal Isle of Lismore shimmered in the heavenly Haar, as the fantastical purple mountains of Flute towered above the red and orange forest on the Artonish Ridge, and into the bluey-pink sky above.
Quarter hour later, the Mississippi turned in an elliptic arc into Wash Creek, the narrow passage, fully twenty miles long, that separates Lismore from the larger island of Flute. After ten miles or so, Pippa noticed a bevy of ape-swans, with man-sized bodies and swan-like wings, emerging from under a stone bridge, and thought they were transmitting joyful mind waves through her neurotransmitters.
The ancient walled city of Machonik dominated the view to the west. To the east of the creek stood the cream-painted Fragrant Springs Hotel, where the Janians were holding their retreat.
When the Mississippi moored at the hotel jetty, several families of Janians hurried excitedly across the beach, from the charming village of Helmsley, to greet their guests with bowls of fruit, and garlands of roses.
Slim said “Farewell, kamarad,” to Bra, and he and Pippa leapt, easy-breezy, onto a sand dune.
While the Fragrant Springs Hotel was modest and Spartan, Pippa was pleased that her room was en suite. She and Slim drank tea, and devoured strawberry and clotted cream scones, with a gang of Junior Janians from Madron, and, an hour or so later, they all went down to the main conference chamber for the first plenary session.
The Living Clerk of the Helmsley Janians was sitting at the middle desk, surrounded by several circles of packed seats. Everybody was lost in silent contemplation, and various states of consciousness.
The clerk kept his bright red nose buried in The Janian Articles of Faith, according to Prince Felixos von Attenburg, and gripped his prosperous belly, without uttering a word. Then the corpulent fellow suddenly leapt to his feet, and announced, “In the name of our forty-third Living Incarnate, who sends his apologies for his absence.”
There followed twenty full minutes of Janian silence.
Pippa was lost in a vivid fantasy about the former slaves in the Chagos Islands, and the imperialists who brutally displaced them, when a wizened man, with flowers in his hair, rose to his feet. She could scarcely believe her ears at what she heard next.
“Friends, I'd like to hold the Tawns of the Alligator Peninsula in the Light,” spurted the eclectic fellow. “They spend most of their time hunting for food, and some of them can't even afford an occasional night out at the theatre. I've recently sent one of the more deserving ones a donation of two bronze schillings towards her child's medical expenses.'
“Despite all our extreme generosity, an unbearably stupid Qinview presenter had the cheek to complain about the way we, the bourgeoisie, persist in relaxing in our plush armchairs with our blinkers on, while the peasants grovel in the shit. This is horribly perplexing."
After another fifteen minutes of intrusive silence, a middle-aged woman in a chequered suit stood up, and burbled something nonsensical, before collapsing, slightly hysterically, back into her seat.
How sad, thought Pippa, but it was nice of the Janians to welcome her.
After a further, forty-minute, spell of excruciating silence, the Living Clerk stood up and nodded like a pea-brained marionette, whereupon everyone effusively hugged, and shook hands.
The bonhomie was cut short when the Senior Overseer, a stern-looking lady, called for silence. “Thank you, loving friends and forgiving souls,” she procrastinated. “We still have time for a brief announcement. The Living Incarnate is absent this weekend, since he's attending a top secret meeting with the Nineveh Gang in the Galton-Booth Business School on Planet Tiberius Ptolemy.…..”
Pippa wondered why the irritating Incarnate was ploughing his furrow talking to a bunch of neo-colonialist Apollo Penguins on a distant planet, and thought that he might, like other leading Janians, be giving himself a religious aura simply to increase his political clout.
“It's time to spend a few more minutes chilling out in Janian silence,” continued the Senior Overseer. “Whoops! I was supposed to finish with a quote…...”
What a futile meeting, concluded Pippa. Why do they even bother?
Pippa was starving when she and Slim arrived in the grim annexe for lunch, only for Prince Alfred Saxe-Hanover and Lady Jemima Sunkist to strut up, and sit down uninvited. Pippa did not have to wait for long to discover what ulterior motive they had in mind.
The sleazy aristocrats were accompanied by a brawny, green-haired businessman in his mid-thirties. The rugged huckster sported a bedazzling cravat that contrasted with his bullish, golden face. Owing to a post-natal accident with a chainsaw, his nape was coloured bright red and glistened in the sunlight.
"This is Dr. Ket Martingale,” announced Jemima, with aplomb “He's Chief Economics Advisor to the First Minister, and a life-time Janian for good measure."
Martingale took a sip of Gini and It, grabbed the seat immediately opposite Slim, and eyed his prey. Slim twitched nervously.
"Are you from West Bolubia, Slim?" inquired the older man.
"Never heard of the place. I'm from the upper class suburbs of Drumkok, though I’m pretty lower class myself."
"Shame,” replied the redneck. “I thought you might be Antinous of Bolu. Ant's much beloved by everybody. He's such a handsome fellow."
"Haven't never heard of any Ant, let alone that the geek."
"Really? Lady Jemima was wondering whether you would like to come with us to the Hotel de Wash after the Ceilidh."
"Why? What for?"
"I'll explain more later. It's on the other side of Wash Creek. You'd be very welcome to tag along, if only to stretch your delightfully strong legs. Prince Alfred is looking forward to watching the acrobatic fire dancers from Mustique. They're so avant garde."
"I'll m-mull on it," stuttered Slim, with a tremor.
That afternoon, the Janians bill-boarded twelve special interest meetings in the Fragrant Springs. The sessions addressed a variety of niche, burning issues.
Slim attended a meeting of the support group 'Assist and Abet', which helped convicts to rehabilitate upon release. He asked the pugnacious organizer how many convicts he'd actually met.
“One last month, and maybe two next week,” came the self-satisfied reply.
“That sounds like glorified window dressing to me,” asserted Slim, and the blotchy-eyed fellow wilted into his seat.
Come late afternoon, Pippa and Slim dropped in on a session on 'Sex Education in Primary Schools'. They were delighted when the lead speaker defended the interests of LGBTQUIPS+ humanoids everywhere.
Yes, the Janians are an outstanding, socially pro-active organisation after all, concluded Pippa, I feel proud to be a Junior Janian.
Slim dropped in on a session concerning 'The Freedoms of the Indigenous Peoples'. He was outraged by the suppression of the Heptagon. They were aboriginal, bronze Icarians, and he liked and admired them. They were largely confined to to small, economically restricted reservations, though others were abused and mistreated as slaves.
Slim discussed the problem with a wealthy Janian slave trader from Philadelphia 19, who was attending the session with his indigenous serving girl.
The slave trader told Slim that the prominent English eugenicist Sir Francis Galton gave £42000 of his family’s slave and arms trading wealth to his nephew Nick Galton in 1908, to found the, still-influential, pro-slavery Janians for Eugenics movement on Qinsatorix.
Slim was appalled that slavery was still rampant on his planet, and he felt like punching the wealthy Philadelphian in the mouth.
Later that night, Slim, Pippa and Dreyfus attended a Janian ‘All-Accepting Ceilidh for Everyone’ in a huge, disused hangar. Slim was dancing with his Qinxhunter friend Bra Hunter, who'd bussed in from Machonik for the auspicious occasion, when the redneck economic advisor Dr. Ket Martingale walked in, scratching his grizzly, Icarian face. Slim felt an instinctive surge of pleasure throughout his entire body, and he was not quite troubled by what that implied as he might have been.
“I'm away with the nobs to the hostelry on Flute,” said Ket, with a wink and a glimmer of a smile. “Why don't you join us for a late night apéritif?”
“I'm g-game,” stammered Slim, blushing deep silvery-green.
Pippa and Dreyfus retired to the heart-shaped love-seat, and enjoyed an exquisitely wonderful time together.
Slim and Ket caught up with Prince Alfred and Lady Jemima on the bridge to Flute. When a Maglev train screeched, noisily, along the rail overhead, Slim thought it was bisecting his frontal lobes, and separating his left brain from the right, but Ket pulled out his flask and calmed the teen down with a wee dram of Buckflex.
Slim's view of Machonik was disrupted by an antiquated edifice. The Hotel de Wash had been built Visigoth-style several centuries previously, as a railway hotel, but had since gone into decay, and renovated with a broader clientèle in mind. The funding from the Trivoli Triad didn't go amiss, and the hotel had a seedy look about it. The owner regarded the building as a 'social complex', with a range of facilities for diverse tastes, and the New Town Disco was a popular haunt for the teenagers. The building was virtually identical in appearance to the iconic Hotel Washington in Madison, U.S.A., which was destroyed by fire in AD 1996, while the transvestites fled from the upper floors and a homophobic fire-fighter danced outside in glee.
Ket suggested entering the complex via the Club de Wash, where the melancholic punk group, Apologies I Have None was beating its drums, but Jemima preferred to head for the hot and sweaty Café de Palms.
“It will be like looking back through the fireball to the God-forsaken 1980s,” she said.
Slim took a taste of his Neanderthal fillet steak, only for the hotel proprietor to dance in, in a hypermanic spin.
“What a cute number!” exclaimed the dark-haired Sicilian. “Why don't I take you down to Rod's for your initiation on the Metal Frame with the barmen in leather? Judge McCarthy-Cohn noticed you coming in, and a couple of Republican Senators are interested in joining the action.”
“I don't want to be spread-eagled like a pig,” protested Slim. “I'm heading for the New Town Disco, but, before that, I need a very long pee.”
“Why don't I come with you?” suggested Lady Jemima. “Then we can pay a visit to the Celebrity Suite.”
Ket yawned. “I'm tired. I'll be lying in wait for you in the Barber's Closet. It’s a Speakeasy that dates back to the Prohibition.”
After enjoying a whale of a time in the disco, Slim and Jemima climbed three long flights of stairs, only to encounter a worldly Talking Octopus sitting behind a shark-bone desk.
“The prince is in the Celebrity Suite with the obnoxious Apollo Himmler,” whispered the octopus, unfurling his tentacles. “It's a totally different universe in there.”
When Slim and Jemima entered that universe, Prince Alfred was reclining on a chaise-longue, snorting llello with a muscular creature with hairy limbs and a baboon-like face, both wearing only silver mankinis.
The baboon-like Apollo Himmler took a sniff of something refreshing from his asthma inhaler. “I'm the Head Treat Peddler, folk. The delicacies are on their way.”
A few minutes later, five naked hominids were marched in, all with glazed eyes and glistening bodies. Slim wondered how much benzo they'd been jagged with. The skinny albino looked fit to fall over.
The prince eyed up the girl with red-hair, and then the well-hung lad from Dingwall 2, before re-focussing his attention on the curvaceous redhead.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” asked the outrageous prince, flashing his diamond bracelet.
“Zoe, Zoe Russlethrush,” the redhead sullenly replied. “I was a laundry assistant in Midlothian 7 before your scheming procuress brought me to this filthy dive.”
The prince licked his slavering chops. “I didn’t ask for your life story,' he retorted. “Tie her to the trestle, Trinkons!”.
“No, you won't, you greasy SOB,” shrieked Zoe.
“Please leave her alone,” begged Slim.
“Thanks for trying,” sobbed Zoe, only for Lady Jemima to grab her by the nape and pull her towards the prince.
“I always like to show my girls what pleases His Highness most,” asserted the hard-nosed bitch.
“Won't!” shrieked Zoe. “Won't ever!”
“Give her to Slim then,” conceded the prince, with a token sigh. “I'll take the Neander on the rack. The plump one with buck teeth.”
Slim frowned, and stamped his feet. “Count me out, you creepy bastard," he howled, and the Chattering Vampire-Bats, climbing the poles in the corner, clucked their fangs in anticipation.
“Here's my big brother,” announced the Head Treat Peddler. “Hiya Dirk!”
The vampire-bats leapt to the ground and forced Slim to his knees, whereupon a grisly Apollo Himmler strode up.
“Why, it's sweaty Slim,” exclaimed Dirk, with a saucy wink. “I know all about you. Now kowtow to your Lord and Master!”
When Slim was released, relatively intact, from the Celebrity Suite, he crashed down the stairs, kicked the Sicilian proprietor hard in the gut, and headed into the Barber's Closet.
In the flash of an eyelid, Slim and Ket were crossing the bridge to Lismore together, without uttering ever a word.
When they reached the Fragrant Springs, Ket came in for a nightcap. This is my reward for being good, thought Slim.
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