LOOKING BACK THROUGH THE FIREBALL
Copyright Tom Leonard
Edinburgh June 2022
3. JANIANS AT LARGE
Pippa and Slim were eating a delicious breakfast in the Fragrant Springs Grill the next morning, when Dr. Sargant Tredgold intruded on their space puffing his lithium-pipe. Then he snatched a hard-boiled egg from Slim’s plate, and cracked it with a copper spoon.
What's the ghastly headshrinker up to now? wondered Pippa. We must be in for something nasty.
Tredgold explained that upon conclusion of the Janian meeting on Lismore early that afternoon they would be flying to the Isle of Mainau, where he’d be involved in detailed group political discussions with Lady Jemima’s father, Sir Aristides Sunkist, the forty-third Living Incarnate of Janus, upon Sir Aristides' return from the City of Nineveh on Planet Tiberius Ptolemy. The discussions would take place in the Ape-Swan’s Nest, a white tower where the totally paranoid shipping magnate hung out for his own safety.
Slim objected to having to keep company with any more ‘crazy political creeps’ and Pippa said that she wanted to return to Nod to feed her pet otter Scatty. Tredgold laughed unkindly, and replied that he would instruct the Yin (who was attending the retreat for such purposes) to provide them with special psychiatric assistance.
“A couple of well-placed shots of depixol in your posteriors would curb your silly neuroses,” said Tredgold, polishing off his boiled egg. “My colleague Jock Crichton-Strachan and his buddies used depixol when they went on safari in Andalusia 2, and an entire tribe of rebellious Zetis saned up for a month.”
“This isn't the Lancaster Retreat!” raged Pippa. “You're trying to control us for your own deceitful purposes.”
“I certain am, guys,” responded Tredgold. “So knuckle under!”
“I don’t want to be a rubbery-legged automaton!” wailed Slim.
“Tant pis,” replied Tredgold, with a hint of a snigger.
Later that morning, several Janians and Attenders were still suffering from bladder-busting hangovers, but most of the rest attended a Quarterly Lismore and Flute Regional Business Meeting in a leaky Era Nouveau building in the hotel grounds. The delegates sat on rows of wooden benches while water dripped on their heads from above and festoonettes squirmed at their feet below. Pippa and Slim felt weak in the limbs from the effects of their ghastly injections.
Pippa knew that all decisions at the business meeting would be reached by so-called ‘consensus’, rather than democratic vote, and she wondered, through her psychological haze, how consensus decision-making, also popular among the Anarchists of Barcelona 177, actually worked.
The Living Clerk was sitting on the purple podium on his favourite fluffy kushner. “If there are no objections, I will record the Minutes of our June 2712 business meeting on the Isle of Thrush as read and approved.”
“So moved!” cried a blotchy-faced ogre from Orcus.
“Thank you, Wolfschwein! The Living Incarnate's political assistant, the pretty ape-swan on my left, has agreed to observe this vitally important meeting on his behalf. This is by my special permission, and I invoke our 'flesh-eating bird-animal' regulation of AD 2336. Any objections?”
“Good on you!” shrieked a wild lady with gangrenous eyes.
“The only item on the agenda is The Approval of our Annual Report,” declared the clerk. "I put the Living Elder in the light.”
The Living Elder was a bony octogenarian with a distended, box-like rib-cage that tremored as he spoke. "Our major conclusion should be that 'unadulterated love is what makes the planets go round,” he declared, rubbing his capacious gut.“Love is the essential ingredient of a loving life. When we have love, only love matters. Love, love, love! I so move!”
“Love!” howled an obese septuagenarian with seven untidy pigtails. “I thrive on love. Lust, too.”
“Seconded!” cried a squat neutro-hominid, unfurling her long, black eyelashes.
“The motion is on the table,” declared the clerk, clapping his hands like an intellectually challenged gorilla.
Awhile later, a green-skinned lady wearing a morning suit, and a top hat, leapt up to speak. For reasons best known to himself, the clerk stared rudely at the lady and gave her the thumbs down. She flopped silently back into her seat, furiously biting her lip.
Several quiet minutes later, a gentleman in a pin-striped suit rose to his feet. The clerk gave him a feckless smile.
“The Living Elder succeeded in restating our Articles of Faith of AD 1681, and scant else,” lisped the prim gentleman, tugging his royal blue cravat. “I'm sure that I speak for many of us, when I say that our final report should include a summary of the splendid conclusions that were vaunted during yesterday's niche sessions, if only to enhance their external visibility.”
There was no immediate response. Twenty minutes later, the clerk was about to sum up, when the ape-swan political assistant scurried over and delivered some officious instructions from afar.
The clerk twitched his primeval nose, and gave the curly-haired ape-swan an inappropriate smile. “Many thanks for reminding me, darling. During a top secret enclave last night in the magnificent Celebrity Suite of the Hotel de Wash, several of our worthy members agreed to parley with the bronze Icarians with a view to brokering a Treaty of Peace and Reconciliation between them and Parliament... I'll minute that as a special amendment.”
“They're trying to siphon off the revenues from the Heptagon casinos,” howled a yuppie hipster in ubertight, velvet pants. “Fraud! Corruption! A curse on you schmucks!”
“Security!”
There was another deathly hush, while the Apollo Pigs tossed the obnoxious hipster in the air, and hauled him away, flashing his mankle, like a carcass of sweaty meat.
After a short period of reflection, Prince Alfred of Saxe-Coburg rose pompously to his feet. “This Peace Treaty was debated during our ad hoc meeting in the relaxing Celebrity Suite of the Hotel de Wash late last night. On my dear Jemima's advice, several of us will be stopping off in Heptagon City this very afternoon, on our way to Mainau, to initiate peace negotiations with the Heptagon tribal elders.”
“The motion has been amended accordingly,” declared the clerk.
After another deathly hush, and several minutes of scribbling and crossings-out, the clerk read out a remarkably brief minute, consisting of two confused, incoherent sentences.
A gentleman wearing a bright white toga rose angrily to his feet. “Point of Order! I must insist that you give the socially pro-active projects, including Assist and Abet, that were described yesterday afternoon, a careful mention.”
The clerk looked the dude straight back in the eye. “Insufficient consensus,” growled the red-nosed buffoon. “Request denied!”
Slim leapt furiously to his feet. “What about all those enlightened ideas about the future of the LGBTQ+ community?" he howled.
The Living Clerk grimaced, shook his head, and raised his fuzzy eyes to the Heavens. Thereupon, he nodded, as if in effusive agreement with divine forces from above.
“Request denied! The Living Elder's motion and my amendment, and none other, are the sanctified Word of the Living God, and are therefore approved by Janus himself as divinely-inspired consensus,” the prickly fellow sanctimoniously declared. “This meeting is thereby adjourned.”
So that was that!
If that was consensus decision making, I'd prefer to be ruled by the Tarantulas of Brasilia 13, concluded Pippa.
That afternoon, and while still befrazzled by the idiosyncrasies of the Janian retreat, the teenagers from Nod stuffed their bags full of loot, and set off for the Heathcopter pad, where they were greeted, frosty-eyed, by their eminent travelling companions. Prince Alfred's purple-haired house boy crawled in with the luggage.
A couple of minutes later, an exceedingly long yellow limo ground to a halt in front of the multi-rotor bubblecopter. A hairy-faced, middle-aged Apollo Himmler in a lounge suit stepped out, carrying a red briefcase. It was the Foreign and Alien Secretary of Qinsatorix, and his name was Dirk Eradacus.
Eradacus was accompanied by the curly-haired ape-swan political assistant who'd attended the Janian business meeting that morning, and a forlorn teenager.
Slim was stricken to the core.
The teenager was Zoe Russlethrush, the pretty girl who'd so bravely asserted herself in the Celebrity Suite of the Hotel de Wash the night before. Eradacus was the Head Treat Peddler's predatory older brother, and now the evil Foreign Secretary was participating in the Janians' makeshift peace mission!
Slim felt that his and Zoe’ hearts were pulsating in unison. My Icarian heart and her human heart are connected by some mystical force from the Heavens, he thought. Maybe they'll be entwined for ever.
When Dr. Tredgold rushed over to greet the Foreign Secretary, Eradacus peered down his catarrhine nose.
"This is my fiancée Zoe...Zoe Russlethrush, I think,” explained Eradacus. “They have such stupid names in Bilston Glen don't they?”
"Soon to be Dirk's fourth indentured wife," purred the ape-swan. "The first three were sent to Limbos."
When they boarded the Heathcopter, Ket Martingale encouraged Slim to sit by him in an aisle seat, and took an embarrassingly firm grip of the youth’s inner thigh.
Now I feel imprisoned, deliberated Slim. If he comes on any stronger, then I’ll blow a gasket. It did turn me on, what happened between us in the Fragrant Springs last night, but in terms of sensitive feelings that's all there was to it.
The distraught redhead Zoe Russlethrush was sitting across the aisle, next to Pippa. Slim glanced at Zoe, and the poor girl turned her head, and sobbed.
When the copter soared towards the clouds, Pippa imagined that she and Zoe were flying to Heaven together. When the copter dived towards the Flutian Steppes, Pippa thought that she and Zoe were about to be buried without trace.
Slim peered through the transparent floor at the thousands of Z-critters toiling in the fields below. Suddenly, a battle-cruiser zoomed by, and engulfed the critters in clouds of cokokium gas.
"That's to keep them happy," explained Ket. “It makes them wanna eat less, and work harder. The European expansionists did the same thing with raw cocaine, way back on Planet Earth.”
“Fucking bastards!” exclaimed Slim.
Ket squeezed Slim’s flesh harder, until it hurt. "They were to be much admired,” Ket retorted. “We spray the critters with glow-zone when we want to sterilise them."
"What do you do when you want to exterminate them?" inquired Slim, caustically.
"We drench them with Gulp-One, of course."
"I get the idea. You must have read the works of Ploetz and Fischer on racial hygiene."
Ket stroked Slim’s hairless chest with his wandering, right hand. "You're learning! Keep up the good work and we'll finance your university studies, at University College Los Alamos, I think. It's next to the Global Security Complex.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Slim. “That’s exactly what I don’t want.”
“You can thank me later, slave of my dreams,” purred Ket. “Our hotel on Mainau is remarkably well-equipped.”
When the copter circled above the tiny City of Heptagon, Pippa could discern scores of wooden huts and wigwams scattered among the pine trees in the compact reservation below. Several hundred indigenous Icarians were waiting in a lush meadow with bowls of tasty apples and delicious peaches, their bronze skin glistening in the golden sunlight.
Dirk Eradacus and Prince Alfred lead the Janian delegation across the pasture towards the Big Wigwam. The clean-limbed Chieftain of the Heptagon came out, and raised his arms in salutation.
"I'm Sleeping Sparrow," he said. "Welcome to my kingdom.”
The autumnal winds were blowing, and the pine trees giving vent, when the chieftain of the Heptagon, and his elders, took shelter in the Big Wigwam, to meet with the Janian delegation, that included Foreign Secretary Eradacus since he was an Honorary Closet Janian.
Ket advised Slim that the Peace Treaty would be negotiated by the Janians, on behalf of the hi-tech Icarians and their vast business conglomerates. The vain and narcissistic First Minister of Qinsatorix, previously the Lord Mayor of Ottawa 39, was kept 'totally unaware' of the conflicts of interest, and was away in the Gold House in Trivoli with his fawning minions.
Left to their own devices, Pippa and Slim drifted off for a natter under a Jumbo tree, where they discovered a couple of comfy places in the snake-like roots, only for Dreyfus to appear, arm-in-arm with Zoe Russlethrush. The poor girl was still looking sullen and distraught.
“How're you, Zoe?” Pippa gently inquired.
“What a relief to talk to another human,” spurted Zoe, “...homo sapiens, I mean. As for those homo erectus....”
Awhile later Pippa saw a Talking Llama welcoming several tourists into a khaki wigwam next to the first-aid tent. The four teenagers decided to take a nosey.
The llama ushered them in, “Welcome to the Cavern of Chance and Fortune,” she said. “The Heptagon Casino is down that passageway, and through the squeeze. Cash up front, or punch your pin into the friendly croupier's facilitating machine.”
The place was infested with tourists who'd travelled there from their plush hotels on the Isle of Mainau. Pippa and Slim enjoyed rubbing shoulders with so many different people, and Zoe chatted with a very wise Apollo Elk from the University of Berkeley 66 about combinatorial formulae and the probabilities of winning at bridge.
After losing four bucks at Farklejack, Dreyfus Dreadnought saw the ball on the giant roulette wheel bouncing out of the number 16 pocket and into one of the three zero pockets. On the next two spins, ball bounced out of the number 17 pocket and into a zero pocket. Dreyfus therefore felt inside the No 17 pocket, tore away the green velvet, and discovered a strange metal contraption on a spring, that had presumably deflected the ball out of that pocket.
Dreyfus promptly flapped his wings, and landed with a clatter by the statue of Princess Winona of the Dakota Sioux at the middle of the wheel.
“This wheel is biased and totally unfair according to the laws of higher mathematics,” announced the precocious Apollo Alpha, to the international tourists from afar. “It's ripping you all off!”.
Eight stroppy guards promptly ran up, hauled Dreyfus and his companions through the chest-crunching squeeze, dragged them up the stone staircase, and threw them onto the sheep and llama dung heap.
An hour or so later, the politicians left their wigwam with impassive expressions on their sombre faces. Lady Jemima emerged furtively from a tin hut, and chased after her colleagues as they hurried to the Heathcopter. The four smelly teenagers emerged from the dung heap, dusted themselves down, and followed the whoremonger from Hell up the silver-plated steps.
During take off, Pippa caught a glimpse of a fleet of golden, ocean freighters, at anchor in Scalpel Flow. During the rapid descent, she saw a tall, shining white, castle emerging from the greenish-blue Lake Spectrum, nestled inside a redstone asteroid crater.
That's must be the Ape-Swan's Nest, where the evil Musso-fascists once hid before they were mushy-face-battered and hung from the roof of the gas station, realised Pippa. It's a bit like the Tower of London, and its connected to Flute by a very deep subterranean canal.
Just when the copter seemed ready to dive head over heels into Lake Spectrum, it abruptly levelled out, as if by animalistic instinct, and headed for the landing pad by the Hotel of the Purple Habsburgs, where the pilot successfully landed it in one piece.
Pippa saw Sleeping Sparrow riding up the beach on a giant camel, cheek by jowl with his non binary partner. They'd travelled at pace from their village on Flute to catch the low tide.
Around that time, the body of the red-nosed Living Clerk of the Janians was discovered in a wheelie-bin behind the Fragrant Springs Hotel in Helmsley. The brash fellow's face had been battered in, and his protrusive nose was no longer visible. The words 'Galton Tory' were scratched into the victim's chest, and a silver horseshoe was rammed down his throat. The rozzers were completely perplexed by this, the Second Galton Murder.
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