13.

My Life aboard the SS Moloch

Inside the sack

All I at first perceived of the Moloch was her smell. Thick though it was, the sack in which I was imprisoned did not exclude that mixture of engine oil and rusty iron, funnel smoke and coal dust, with which the ship had announced her presence days in advance during the third of my lives. There were also the familiar sounds she made even when stationary: the steady pounding of huge pistons, the manifold banging and hammering of the creatures at work throughout her hull with tools of various kinds, the panting of the engines in her iron belly.

Then the noises grew louder and the pounding of the pistons fiercer. With a rumble, the ship’s propellers began to turn. Valves hissed steam and metal grated on metal as the iron monster awoke.

The Moloch was getting under way.

By now, I suspected my captors had forgotten me. I’d made several attempts to extricate myself from the sack, but it seemed to be made of very tough leather or some equally stout material.

It was also clear that the sack had been tied up with rope, which greatly restricted my freedom of movement. From the way I’d been treated, I had little reason to suppose that my captors had anything very pleasant in store for me. I cursed myself for having been hoodwinked by the Troglotroll yet again.

I was gradually running out of air. That’s to say, the air in the sack was becoming progressively staler. Every breath I took consumed a little more of its life-giving properties, so I decided to ration it by taking only one breath a minute.

Hmpf. One minute.

Hmpf. One minute.

Hmpf. One minute.

Hmpf. One minute.

Hmpf. One minute.

Hmpf. One minute.

Hmpf. One minute.

The rumbling and pounding persisted, and I could now detect a little motion. It indicated that we must be well out to sea.

Maybe I should draw attention to myself, I thought. I groaned and grunted and rolled around in my sack insofar as I was able, but nothing happened. Better to keep still, I told myself; it would use up less air.

Hmpf. One minute.

Hmpf. One minute.

Hmpf. One minute.

After an hour – I had taken sixty breaths, so an hour must have passed – I made some more signs of life. I called for help and rolled to and fro, but still nothing happened. I decided to breathe only once every two minutes.

Hmpf. Two minutes.

Hmpf. Two minutes.

Hmpf. Two minutes.

After another hour – I’d taken thirty breaths – I started to feel frightened. Could they have put me in the sack to suffocate me?

The air had acquired the consistency of stale porridge, it was so hard to suck in. From now on I breathed only once every three minutes.

Hmpf. Three minutes.

Hmpf. Three minutes.

Hmpf. Three minutes.

After the third hour (twenty breaths) I was in a state resembling Carefree Catalepsy. Everything had become wholly unimportant to me, and the lack of oxygen in my brain induced peculiar hallucinations. Tiny elves populated the sack, tickled my nostrils, and crawled into my ears. I called to them to leave me in peace. They didn’t go away, but I heard a voice say:

‘Hey, we almost forgot about him!’

The sack was opened and air streamed in, but I was still so stupefied that I actually saw a whole flock of elves flutter out of the opening.

The next thing I saw was more blackness: the blackness of the smoke in which the Moloch was always shrouded. It was some days before I became even relatively inured to the omnipresent soot. All aboard the iron ship were permanently engulfed in a fine mist of coal dust. You could never see the entire deck, only those parts of it which the smoke deigned to unveil. You would glimpse a few square yards of pitch-black deck, or one of the rusty funnels, or, if you were lucky, a patch of sky, before another cloud of smoke enshrouded the whole scene once more.

Toiling away on deck were hundreds of smoke- and coal-blackened creatures who went about their work mechanically, paying me little heed. They were Zamonians of all kinds. Trolls, dwarfs, Poophs – every variety seemed to be represented.

I was still inside the sack, half conscious with only my head sticking out. No one took any notice of me. My captors had tied me up in a bundle and left me to my fate. I wriggled out of my cocoon and tottered over to the rail. We couldn’t be all that far from land – perhaps I should simply jump. I looked down. The sea was a good three hundred feet below me. Three hundred feet… Could I make it?

Then I saw there wasn’t any sea, just thousands of sharks jostling round the hull and snapping at anything thrown over the side.

At that moment a strong breeze sprang up and rent the Moloch’s pall of smoke in half. A big patch of blue sky became visible. I could even make out the coast of Zamonia.

And Atlantis.

Atlantis achieves lift-off

It was hovering in the sky some five miles above the coastline. The whole city had risen from the ground like a huge, screw-shaped plug, a spaceship of soil and rock with a city on top. Shafts of greased lightning were sporadically darting from the hole it had left behind. Now and then, clods of earth the size of houses broke off the inverted cone and fell, but in general the spaceship seemed to be a remarkably stable structure. I had no idea how the Invisibles had engineered this feat, but I wasn’t surprised that it had taken them several thousand years.

Then the smoke closed in again like a black curtain.

Two soot-stained Yetis came up behind me and grabbed me by the shoulders.

‘Are you a bear?’ said one of them.

I nodded.

‘Then it’s into the Infurno with you.’

The Infurno

The Infurno was the red-hot heart of the Moloch, an engine room containing more than a thousand coal- and wood-burning furnaces – one for each of the ship’s funnels. Each furnace was manned by a gang of taciturn black bears, distant relatives of mine with blank, sad, incurious eyes, who ceaselessly fed the flames with tree trunks or shovelfuls of coal. I was assigned to one of those gangs. A Yeti thrust a shovel into my hand and told me to get stoking. Still dazed by my recent experiences, I set to work.

I would have welcomed at least a few minutes’ peace and quiet to reflect on my predicament, but this wasn’t easy aboard the Moloch. What with the constant din, the murderous heat of the furnaces, the smoke and the hard labour, there was no opportunity to let your thoughts roam far afield. If you took a few steps away from your furnace or lowered your shovel, even for a moment, a couple of Yetis would materialize, teeth bared, and order you back to work. I made a few attempts to establish contact with my fellow slaves, but they just stared at me uncomprehendingly or cast fearful glances at the Yetis.

At night the gang shuffled into a dormitory beneath the Infurno, where we were given hunks of bread and bowls of water and allowed to stretch out in hammocks for a few hours. I used to fall asleep at once, as if someone had hit me over the head with a club.

Hard labour

It’s remarkable how apathetic you can become when engaged in hard manual labour. Sometimes I shovelled coal, sometimes I pushed handcarts filled with briquettes, sometimes I hauled tree stumps. For days on end I toted sacks of anthracite from the gloomy bowels of the Moloch up a flight of steps a hundred yards high. There were also logs to split, tree trunks to saw, coal to stack, bellows to pump, ashes to be dumped over the side.

My black bear colleagues slaved away like robots, feeding the ever-hungry furnaces and scrubbing the decks and engines to prevent them from being buried in soot. None of them ever spoke a word to me, and even among themselves they merely grunted when absolutely necessary. Without realizing it, I was becoming one of them.

I soon abandoned all attempts to communicate and lapsed, like them, into routine mechanical drudgery. I lived my life to the rhythmical throb of the Moloch’s engines – indeed, I became as much a cog in the machine as all the rest. The only bright spot in our existence was the brief spell we spent in our hammocks, regaining our strength, and the prospect of a bowl of soup and a mug of water.

Most of the supervisors were Yetis or Wolpertingers, but even they made an apathetic impression. Their seniority didn’t appear to entitle them to any special privileges. They lent a hand when needed, performed the most strenuous chores, and were not too proud to wield a shovel from time to time. Everyone fed the furnaces, the furnaces powered the engines, the engines drove the propellers, and the propellers kept the Moloch under way. That was all there was: a ship that sailed the seas for the sake of it – the most futile form of locomotion imaginable.

I put on muscle

I could almost see my muscles develop. My whole body grew hard and lost every ounce of fat. I could throw a sack of coal over my shoulder like a feather pillow, shoulder a ten-foot tree trunk by myself, take the stairs from the coal bunker three at a time with a hod of briquettes on my back.

The calluses on my paws were so thick that I could slam the red-hot furnace doors without burning myself. The heat was such that, instead of running down me, my sweat evaporated at once.

At night I dreamed of huge, roaring fires and mountains of briquettes. I had ceased to think. Not even in my dreams did it occur to me that there could be anything more important than furnaces and coal, leaping flames and the Moloch’s progress through the waves.

Some months went by before I saw the sky again. I had spent the whole time in the ship’s iron belly, where my only sight of the outside world was the round hole, wreathed in oily smoke, through which we tipped ashes over the side. Sometimes I stuck my head through it for a breath of fresh air, but the sky was obscured by soot and the oil-polluted sea thick with sharks that snapped at low-flying seagulls.

One day, one of the furnaces burned out. The Wolpertingers were dismantling it, and the rest of us had to manhandle the components on deck, whence they were heaved over the rail and into the sea.

I had just come on deck carrying one of the heavy furnace doors when a gust of wind hit the Moloch and parted the smoke to reveal a wonderful summer’s day, a clear blue sky, and, sparkling like a diamond in its midst, the sun.

A glimpse of the sun

For one brief moment a sunbeam slanted down on us and turned the deck into a luminous clearing. I relished that moment of warmth and stared at the sun in bewilderment, blinding myself for several minutes. Then the smoke closed over us once more and the Yetis herded us back inside. As I staggered down the stairs with a Yeti’s elbow in my back, I suddenly wondered why I was submitting to such treatment.

The sunlight had rekindled my capacity for thought.

After a few days I’d reached the stage of being able to forge plans. Escape was out of the question and I couldn’t expect any help from my fellow prisoners (if prisoners they were, not volunteers), so I set about making the acquaintance of whoever was next in command above the Yetis and Wolpertingers.

The bigger the ship the greater the need for a captain, and the Moloch was the biggest ship in the world. Somewhere on board there had to be someone who steered her and could read charts, who determined her course and bore ultimate responsibility. Perhaps he was an approachable person. Perhaps he was entirely ignorant of the scandalous working conditions in the Infurno, because he never showed his face there.

Anyone who could keep such a vessel on course must possess more brainpower than a Yeti. I need only gain access to that person and make it clear to him that I was overqualified for the Infurno.

So I simply stopped work.

That was the nub of my plan: I tossed my shovel into the furnace along with the coal, folded my arms, and waited. Instantly, a Yeti appeared beside me.

‘Carry on!’ he bellowed.

‘No,’ I said.

The Yeti was completely flummoxed. He wasn’t used to in­subordination.

He summoned another Yeti to his assistance.

‘Get on with your work!’ commanded the second Yeti.

‘No!’ I said stubbornly.

The two Yetis were utterly at a loss. They planted their fists on their hips and snorted with indignation.

‘We’d better take him to the Zamonium,’ one of them said eventually.

Zamonium … It was a long time since I’d heard that word.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms

and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

Zamonium. Legendary element reputed to be capable of thought. The alchemists of Zamonia endeavoured for centuries to create something they referred to as ‘the Philosopher’s Stone’ or ‘Zamonium’, a mineral from which they hoped to obtain nothing less than the elixir of life and the answers to all unsolved questions. During the eighth century of Zamonia’s existence the legendary alchemist Zoltan Zaan succeeded in producing a stone that could actually think, but did not, unfortunately, surpass the intellectual capacity of a sheep. Legend has it that Zoltan Zaan was so annoyed at having squandered several tons of gold on the manufacture of Zamonium that he threw the stone into the quicksands of Nairland.

The Yetis hustled me along the interminable, rusty passages in the bowels of Moloch until we came to an iron door guarded by another three Yetis. Armed to the teeth, they wore black troll-hide uniforms and heavy iron helmets and were at least a head taller than the ones who had dragged me there.

‘We must see the Zamonium,’ said one of my captors, gripping me by the shoulder. ‘This bear is refusing to work in the Infurno.’

‘Unheard-of,’ said one of the Yeti sentries.

‘Unprecedented,’ said another.

‘It’s never happened before,’ said the third.

It took their combined strength to open the iron door, which resembled that of a strongroom. They thrust me into a big, rusty chamber but remained outside themselves. Then they pushed the door shut behind me.

‘You refused to work?’ said someone.

I meet the Zamonium

I had heard that voice twice before: once many years ago, when the Moloch was steaming past my raft; and again more recently on the waterfront, just before the sack was pulled over my head. How did the voice know I’d refused to work? No one had said anything, least of all me.

‘I know everything,’ said the voice.

I looked around the room. It was empty save for a small central pillar with a glass bell jar on it. Under the glass was something that appeared to be a clod of earth shaped like a tiny brain. Was someone trying to intimidate me? What was this clod of earth? Where had the voice come from?

‘Just for calling me a clod of earth I could have you keelhauled five times over, but I’ll exercise my immeasurable clemency and make allowances for your ignorance. I’m not a clod of earth, I’m Zamonium – the Zamonium!’

‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Bluebear.’

I had caught on at last. That little clod of earth under the glass was the rare element known as Zamonium. It could actually think and make its voice heard inside my head. Being accustomed to voices in the head, I was only moderately impressed.

‘Let’s get to the point. From what I hear – and I hear every thought that occurs to anyone aboard my ship – you stopped work without being instructed to do so. What’s the idea?’

‘Well, first I’d like to point out that I’m not here of my own free will. I was –’

‘So what? You think you’re an exception? Nobody’s on board this ship of his own free will. Nobody apart from me!’

So I was right. The Moloch was a slave ship.

‘Exactly. And you’re just another insignificant component of this slave ship! You’re worth no more than a tiny cog in the works, a dab of anticorrosive paint. You’ve become a part of the Moloch, and that’s the way you’ve got to function.

‘Now pin your ears back, my boy. Just so you know what’s what around here, I’m going to tell you a little story, the story of how the Moloch came into being. Listen closely, it’s very instructive …’

I’ve always enjoyed a good story.

The Zamonium’s tale

‘One day I fell into the sea. The circumstances that led up to it are irrelevant; what matters is that I sank to the bottom of the Zamonian Sea. So there I lay on the seabed, thinking. Thinking is all I can do, but on the highest level!

‘My first thought was, this is no place for the only thinking element in the world, so I concentrated on the creatures surrounding me, to wit, a clam, a jellyfish, and a sponge. I ordered the jellyfish to place me on the sponge. Then I ordered the clam to cut the sponge adrift with its sharp shell and join me aboard it. That done, I commanded the jellyfish to carry us to the surface. Once on the surface the sponge dried in the sunlight, enabling us to drift across the sea. It was a very rudimentary form of ship, but at least it was a start.

‘A female seagull flew up and alighted on the sponge. She was about to eat the clam when I ordered her instead to fly off, collect some twigs, and stick them in the sponge. In that way she built a nest around us. Our vessel was growing bigger. Then I allowed the female seagull to eat the clam. Now comes the romantic part. The nest encouraged a male seagull to move in with us, and before long the nest was full of seagull’s eggs. They, in their turn, attracted a Zamonian fisherman. He proposed to steal them, but I ordered him to take me on board. I was now the owner of a fishing boat.

‘A big sailing ship came by, and I told the fisherman to take me aboard it. Next, I instructed the skipper of the sailing ship and his crew to capture other, bigger vessels, which they continued to do until I had assembled a whole fleet.

‘Then I gave orders to anchor off an island and construct one big ship out of all the others. That was the real beginning of the Moloch. We set sail in her and incorporated every vessel that came our way. The Moloch became bigger and bigger. Imagine, we even have our own shipyards on board! That’s what I call true greatness!’

The Zamonium panted excitedly inside my head.

‘And so I circle the globe in search of more slaves and more ships that’ll help me to make the Moloch bigger still. One day, all the ships in the world will be merely components of the Moloch, and then… then …’

The Zamonium hesitated.

‘Yes, then… Well, I’ll have to think of what to do then, won’t I? Anyway, it’s absolutely no business of yours. Now where was I?’

‘You were probably going to add a moral of some kind,’ I hazarded.

‘Precisely! That was it! What I really meant to say was, on this ship only one person does things of his own free will, and that’s me!’

I got the picture: the Zamonium was totally insane.

‘Who’s insane? I’ll show you who’s insane! Obey me! Obey me!’

The hell I would!

‘Obey… Obey …’

My head was going all mushy. I felt as if my brain was being simmered over a low flame like the cheese in a fondue. It was a far from unpleasant sensation, to be honest.

On the contrary, I found it more and more agreeable. Before long I didn’t know how I’d got along without that sensation. The Zamonium was my friend, that was official, so why not obey the element if that was its heart’s desire? Why not become its utterly submissive slave – one that would obey its most ludicrous orders, faithful unto death?

I had just decided to submit to the Zamonium, at once and without reservation, when another familiar voice made itself heard in my head.

‘Leave the youngster alone!’

It was the encyclopedia.

No, it was Professor Nightingale in person.

Nightingale steps in

‘Nightingale? Is that you?’ A sudden note of alarm had crept into the Zamonium’s voice.

‘You bet it is! So I’ve found you at last, Bluebear. Where are you, my boy? I can’t see a thing, I’m afraid.’

‘On board the Moloch. We must be somewhere north of Atlantis.’

‘Shut your trap!’ commanded the Zamonium.

‘Well, well, Zamonium, I’d never have guessed you’d be hiding aboard the Moloch. It was obvious, really. Still nursing your old dreams of world domination?’

‘I’m not dreaming, Nightingale, I’m thinking! And I’m not hiding the way you do in your labyrinth of caves. I’m the Zamonium! Don’t dare come near me, Nightingale, I’d be compelled to destroy you!’

‘You’ve no idea how near you I am.’

‘I’ve got the world’s biggest, most powerful, most heavily armed means of locomotion at my disposal, manned by an army of submissive slaves. What have you got to set against that?’

‘You’ll find out!’

‘You wouldn’t dare to cross me again.’

‘Oh yes, I would!’

‘Oh no, you wouldn’t!’

‘Oh yes, I would!’

‘Oh no, you wouldn’t!’

‘Oh yes, I –’

‘Stop it!’ I cried. ‘Two voices arguing inside my head? It’s enough to drive a bear insane! Would someone be kind enough to explain what this is all about?’

‘Of course, my boy, so sorry!’ said Nightingale. ‘Where to begin… Well, to start with, the encyclopedia in your head functions as a direct receiver of my thoughts and a transmitter of your thoughts to me. Wireless telepathy, the business of the future! I didn’t want to make use of it except in a dire emergency. I mean, it’s a gross invasion of privacy, isn’t it? But this counts as an emergency, I suppose.’

‘Get lost, Nightingale! The youngster’s mine!’

‘Keep quiet, you! Listen, my boy, I’ve a confession to make. Zamonium didn’t come into being just like that. I… how shall I put it? I, er, invented the stuff.’

‘That’s right!’ crowed the Zamonium. ‘I can confirm that – for once.’

‘Zamonium really belongs under lock and key in the Chamber of Unperfected Patents, but… I’d better begin from the beginning …’

‘Get lost, Nightingale! Push off!’

The Philosopher’s Stone

‘It’s every inventor’s dream to discover an element capable of thought. In the days when I embarked on my research, inventors and scientists were still called alchemists, and inventing an element capable of thought was known as creating the Philosopher’s Stone. That element, that stone, was supposed to deliver us from all evil and answer all unsolved questions on our behalf. What is the meaning of life? How do you turn lead into gold? How do you become immortal? How do you square the circle? How do you construct a perpetual motion machine? How do you install a fountain of youth? We expected Zamonium to answer all those unsolved questions for us.’

‘How wrong you were!’ crowed the Zamonium.

‘True, and the mistake was mine. I must first point out, however, that I constituted the Zamonium with the utmost care.

‘I began by salvaging the Protozamonium which Zoltan Zaan had thrown into the quicksands of Nairland, an operation for which I designed the quicksand hose. It didn’t take me long to locate the Protozamonium with the aid of that equipment and the friendly assistance of the Cogitating Quicksand. But then, as bad luck would have it, the quicksand hose broke down and… well, you know the story.’

I remembered it. Mac the Reptilian Rescuer had rescued him in the nick of time.

‘Protozamonium really wasn’t very bright, but that was no reason to throw it into the quicksand. It could think, and that was a start.’

‘A good story,’ giggled the Zamonium. ‘I always enjoy hearing it myself.’

‘You only have to add the right ingredients. Well, I’m sure I’m not betraying any secrets when I say that gold dust was one of them. Alchemists considered it chic to add gold to everything in those days, even though it had no alchemical effect whatever. Things glittered a bit more, but that was all… Oh yes, and duck spittle – that was equally indispensable! Nobody talks about duck spittle nowadays, but then it was the thing!

Vital ingredients

‘Increasing the power of thought was far more important. That I achieved with the aid of, among other things, molten Cogitating Quicksand from Nairland. I also infused a little of my own cerebral fluid, of course, together with caffeine concentrate extracted from century-old coffee, nicotine from the umbels of the Phorinth flower, split mercury atoms, glucose, whitewash, snail slime from the time-snails found only on the edges of dimensional hiatuses, a grated violin string, formic acid, gum arabic, vitamin C, liquid amber, garlic, talcum powder, Gloomberg moss, glycerine, pure alcohol, Spanish fly, and frozen gas from the Graveyard Marshes of Dull.

‘Well, it was while I was adding the last ingredient that a will-o’-the-wisp fell into the mixture by accident, a graveyard moth that had recently been struck by lightning. That ruined the whole thing. Though close to perfection, the Zamonium was mentally deranged.’

‘Nonsense! That moth was just the ticket. It made me what I am: the most powerful element in the universe! You wanted a docile little stone that would do your housework for you. Instead, you created the new Lord of Creation!’

‘Be quiet, you pathetic element! The demented Zamonium kept trying to hypnotize me into building it a vehicle in which to conquer the world. It became too much for me in the end, so I threw it into the sea. I thought I’d finished it off. Obviously, I was mistaken.’

‘Are you through?’

‘With you? Far from it! I’ve only just begun.’

‘Huh, now you’re really scaring me! What do you propose to do? I possess the biggest ship in the world, a war machine manned by an army of submissive slaves. I can subjugate whole continents by will-power alone. What can you do to counter that?’

‘You seem to forget I invented you. You’re just a chain of atoms put together by me – a chain I can tear apart at any moment!’ Nightingale’s tone was coldly disdainful.

‘Oh yeah! Then show me what you can do, Nightingale! Show me what your poor old brains are still capable of!’

Something almost indescribable happened to my own brain as Nightingale and the Zamonium pitted themselves against each other right inside my head. From the crackling and flashing be­tween my ears, my brain might have been plugged into a high-tension cable. The pain was unbearable.

Phonzotar Huxo must have experienced a similar sensation when he stuck his head through the wall of the tornado – the feeling a rope must get at the spot where it almost snaps during a tug-of-war.

‘Stop it!’ I yelled.

The pain eased at once, the crackling ceased.

‘Sorry, my boy, I completely forgot about you. Hm, this isn’t working, I must think of something else. Grin and bear it, my son. I, er… I must put on my thinking caps for a while, that’s all. Don’t give up hope!’

Then Nightingale’s voice disappeared.

‘That’s what happens to anyone who dares to take me on!’ shouted the Zamonium. ‘Goodbye and good riddance, Nightingale!’ Then, to me: ‘That’s the last you’ll hear of him!’

It was more than probable. This wasn’t the first time Nightingale had abandoned me in a dangerous situation.

Thereafter the Zamonium left me in peace, at least. It gave up trying to bend me to its will for fear, no doubt, of another confrontation with Nightingale. However simple it might be to hypnotize a Yeti or a shellfish, the same could not be said of someone who carried the Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms, and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs in his head. To that extent, I owed Professor Nightingale a debt of gratitude.

The Zamonium ordered the Yetis to place me under arrest. It needed to think, it said.

A superfluous piece of information, somehow. What else could it do?

A reunion

There was no more shovelling coal. I was taken to one of the ship’s prison wings, a passage lined with single cells occupied by those who had resisted the Zamonium. The inmates numbered precisely four, counting me. One of them was a Wolpertinger named Nalla Hotep, who had an iron plate in his head that shielded him from the Zamonium’s telepathic commands.

The others were Knio and Weeny.

Thoughts bounced off Knio’s thick skull as a matter of course, and they didn’t progress far through Weeny’s brain because they promptly fell into the Sea of Oblivion. The pair of them were as proof against the Zamonium as I myself.

We talked across the passage through the feeding-flaps in our cell doors.

‘Volzotan Smyke held us responsible for your escape,’ said Weeny. ‘Thanks a lot, Bluebear.’

‘If I could get out of here,’ Knio amplified, ‘I’d wring your neck!’

‘What does Smyke have to do with the Moloch?’

‘It’s one of his numerous business connections. The Zamonium maintains agents like Smyke on every continent. They keep the Moloch supplied with slaves. You’d be surprised how many of our shipmates are former congladiators.’ Weeny gave a silly laugh.

I informed them that Smyke and all the other inhabitants of Atlantis were on their way to the Planet of the Invisibles and gave them as graphic a description of the airborne city as I could.

Weeny clapped his little hands. ‘Great story, Bluebear. Ten points on the applause meter. Pity we aren’t in the Megathon any more.’

They didn’t believe me – the story of my lives.

I noticed a bunch of keys hanging on the wall of the passage.

‘We thought of that too,’ said Weeny, who had intercepted my glance. ‘Forget it. Where would you go if you did get out of your cell? It makes no odds where we’re imprisoned, inside or outside. At least the air’s not bad in here, and we don’t have to shovel any coal.’

‘I’ll think of something. I could sneak up on the Zamonium and throw it into the sea.’

‘The ship’s swarming with Yetis. You wouldn’t get two yards.’

Another reunion

A key rattled in the lock of the passage door. The door opened, and the Troglotroll ambled in. He strolled along the passage, rapping each cell door in turn with his knuckles.

‘Don’t be deceived by my vague resemblance to a Troglotroll,’ he said casually. ‘I’m really a prison warder.’

‘Lord Olgort!’ cried Knio. ‘My old pal!’

‘Give me those keys,’ I said. ‘You owe me one.’

The Troglotroll stared at me in surprise. He levelled a finger at the bunch of keys.

‘You mean that bunch of keys there? That necklacelike collection of metallic unlocking devices? Why should I do that?’

‘So I don’t knock your block off if I ever get out of here.’

‘I doubt it – not that you wouldn’t be capable of cold-bloodedly sending me to kingdom come, I mean. No, I simply doubt you’ll ever get out again.’

He gave my door an experimental tap.

‘Hm. Three layers of solid Zamonian cast iron alloyed with brass to guard against corrosion. Four-tongued high security lock vapour-blasted with platinum. It’s impregnable.’

‘Let us out and we’ll call it quits. You can do the right thing, you proved that with the Sewer Dragon. Or are you under the Zamonium’s influence?’

‘No. It made a brief attempt to insinuate itself into my brain, but I don’t think it liked what it found there. Since then it’s left me in peace. I can roam the Moloch as I please, ak-ak-ak!’

The Troglotroll sauntered up and down the passage.

‘Just think. What would I gain from letting you out? A broken neck?’

‘I won’t touch you, I promise.’

‘Anyone can make a promise. I do it all the time, and do I keep my word? Of course not.’

The Troglotroll removed the bunch of keys from its hook.

‘But let’s run through the procedure, purely in theory… Just suppose I took this collection of Zamonian unlocking gadgets from the wall …’

He ambled over to my cell.

‘And suppose – purely hypothetically, mind you! – I inserted one of these steel escape aids in the lock …’

He inserted the key in the lock.

‘And finally – to repeat, this is a purely conjectural speculation! – suppose I turned the key …’

He turned the key, and – click! – released the lock.

‘But no,’ the Troglotroll exclaimed, turning the key – click! – in the opposite direction. ‘That would be aiding and abetting mutiny! I’m sure the penalties prescribed for such a crime on board this ship are draconian.’

The cell door was locked again. Even Knio and Weeny groaned at this display of malevolence.

The Troglotroll continued to theorize. ‘Alternatively, I could throw the bunch of keys out of this porthole.’

He dangled the keys out of a porthole.

‘You’d simply rot away in here. You wouldn’t believe how many forgotten prison wings there are in this ship – and how many skeletons are still imprisoned in their cells.’

The Troglotroll shuddered visibly.

‘No! No!’ chorused Knio and Weeny. ‘Don’t do it!’

‘On the other hand …’ The Troglotroll put a finger to his brow and pondered awhile. ‘What do the Moloch’s regulations matter to me? I’m a Troglotroll. As such, I’ve a duty to break regulations.’

He came over and unlocked my door again. Leaving the key in the lock, he walked to the door at the end of the passage.

‘Yes, us Troglotrolls are simply like that – different from other people!’

And he slunk out.

Still somewhat disconcerted, I pushed my cell door open, then took the keys and released Knio, Weeny, and the Wolpertinger.

‘Let’s go and throw the Zamonium into the sea,’ I suggested. ‘Then we’ll take over the ship. I know all about navigation.’

‘Agreed,’ said the Wolpertinger.

‘Agreed,’ said Knio and Weeny. Nobody contradicted a Wolpertinger, not even a Barbaric Hog.

I was still sufficiently soot-stained to pass for an Infurno stoker, and Nalla the Wolpertinger looked like a member of the security staff. Knio and Weeny grabbed a couple of buckets and brooms and disguised themselves as a fatigue party. Thus equipped, we trekked through the bowels of the Moloch in search of the Zamonium. I did, after all, know the approximate location of its command centre.

It was only on the way there that I grasped the vessel’s true size. The Moloch was a regular iron metropolis with its own urban districts, streets, and means of transportation.

The crew travelled by rickshaw and steam-driven truck. They even used tethered balloons to get from deck to deck. Many districts were spick and span and humming with life, others completely ruined and deserted.

We wandered for hours through a derelict section of the ship inhabited exclusively by yellow jellyfish mutations that appeared to live on a diet of rust. We even passed one of the prisons of which the Troglotroll had told us. There, bleached Yeti skeletons mouldering behind rusty bars rattled in time to the engines. We walked on quickly.

Another deck was undergoing redevelopment. Hundreds of oil-stained Yetis were constructing new furnaces. An additional Infurno was evidently in the making. Wolpertingers were patrolling everywhere, but none of them thought to check on us.

We passed shipyards where captured vessels were being sawn up and dismembered. Blazing in the gloom were huge blast furnaces in which the iron from a whole freighter was being melted down – just enough metal from which to cast one spare blade for the Moloch’s propeller. An army of Wolpertingers was hammering a red-hot bow plate into shape in time to the beat of drums. Little Midgard Serpents were hauling carts laden with scrap metal along the passages, barrels of oil being loaded on to ramps, walls torn down and rebuilt, layers of rust removed, stairways painted, ropes spliced, decks scrubbed, and portholes burnished. Everyone aboard the Moloch had a job, even if it only entailed supervising the activities of others.

At last we came to the door that led to the passage in which the Zamonium’s cabin lay.

We conferred briefly. The cabin door would be guarded by three Yetis, I knew, but the Wolpertinger thought he could handle them with ease. Besides, Knio could lend him some active assistance, a prospect that caused him to grunt with delight.

Knio and Weeny went on ahead to distract the Yetis while the Wolpertinger and I followed.

We waited a moment, then Weeny looked back round the door. ‘No sign of any Yetis,’ he said.

It was true: the door of the Zamonium’s cabin was not only unguarded but ajar.

‘Pity,’ said Knio.

Weeny peered inside.

‘Nothing there but a lump of muck in a glass case,’ he reported.

We stole into the holy of holies. Since the Zamonium had ceased to worry about the four of us, or so it seemed, there was little to prevent us from overpowering the demented stone with ease. The only remaining problem was how to get it up on deck. It would be bound to alert the whole ship as soon as it realized what was afoot, but that was a risk we had to take.

Very cautiously, I tiptoed over to the glass case. Simply grab it and run, that was the plan. The Wolpertinger would run ahead to quell any opposition while I followed with the Zamonium and Knio and Weeny covered our rear.

I took hold of the glass bell jar and drew a deep breath.

Just then, something fastened on my neck and gave it a painful squeeze. It was the Wolpertinger’s huge paw.

‘Good work, Nalla Hotep,’ said the Zamonium in my head.

The Wolpertinger emitted a respectful grunt.

‘I’ve been thinking it over,’ said the Zamonium, when the cabin had filled up with grinning Yetis, ‘and I’ve decided to submit you to a test. Could you serve me loyally without being under my direct control? That’s the question, and that’s why I staged this little charade with the friendly assistance of Nalla Hotep and the Troglotroll.’

The Troglotroll came in.

‘Don’t let your eyes deceive you!’ he said. ‘At first glance I may look like a common Troglotroll, but I’m really an out-and-out traitor, ak-ak-ak!’

‘No, you could never be loyal subjects of mine,’ the Zamonium went on. ‘On the contrary, you’d stab me in the back at the first opportunity. Lucky I don’t possess one. A back, I mean.’

The Yetis laughed mechanically. The Zamonium had probably given them a telepathic order for collective laughter, because they sounded very unamused and didn’t know when to stop.

‘That’s enough!’ hissed the Zamonium. The Yetis stopped laugh­ing. ‘That alone would be enough to earn you the supreme penalty: a dip with the sharks.’

Knio bared his teeth at me. ‘What did I tell you?’ he said to the others. ‘This fool of a bluebear’s nothing but trouble.’

‘But …’

We pricked up our ears.

‘Buuuuuuuut… In my infinite kindness, which defies comparison with traditional ideas of clemency, I’ve decided to give you one last chance.’

Who could object to that?

‘I’d like to know how good Nightingale’s education really is, so here’s a proposition for you: if you answer seven – seven! – of my questions you can go free. We’ll give you a little boat and release you.’

Knio and Weeny gazed at me hopefully.

‘If the bluebear fails to answer my questions, you’ll be thrown to the sharks. With musical accompaniment.’

What choice did I have? Besides, the odds could have been worse. Not only was I no fool; I was a graduate of the Nocturnal Academy and carried the encyclopedia in my head. I couldn’t conceive of a question I would be unable to answer.

‘It’s a deal,’ I said.

Seven questions

‘Very well. First question, subject Nightingalism: What is a Gloomberg Cloud?’

Aha, I used to know that. Never mind: Encyclopedia, please!

Encyclopedia?

Encyclopedia?!

No answer.

No answer at this of all moments, but let’s be honest: when had it ever answered at the crucial moment?

It seemed I would have to take the matter in hand myself. After all, I’d learnt it all once upon a time. Let’s see if I could still remember it:

‘A Gloomberg Cloud is generated by the hydrospectrographic concentration of cosmic darkness from outlying areas of the universe in which there are no constellations. Measuring 89,688,999,453,345,784,002.347 nightingales on the inside and 45,367,205,778,659,010.644 nightingales on the periphery, it is the most powerful form of energy in the known universe and can be controlled only by the correct use of a Nightingalator.’

Phew! Only just made it.

‘Hmm… Not bad, discounting that nonsense about the most powerful form of energy in the universe. That’s me, understand? Second question, subject Zamonian philosophy: What is Bluddumite Yobbism?’

Encyclopedia?

Encyclopedia? Bluddumite Yobbism, please?

Still nothing. I recalled that Fredda and Qwerty had argued about this branch of philosophy, but it was a long time ago.

‘Er… It’s a school of philosophy which assumes that no single object implies the existence of any other if viewed with due insensibility. The founder of Bluddumite Yobbism was Professor Yobbo G. Yobb, whose maxim “I ignore you, so ignore me in return” not only constitutes the title of his magnum opus but has rapidly consigned him to oblivion.

‘While delivering a lecture on Yobbism at the Cultural Museum in Atlantis, the professor deliberately jostled some members of his audience and was clubbed to death by an infuriated Bluddum.’

Wow! Quite a feat without the encyclopedia.

‘Well, well, not bad… Third question, subject Zamonian poetry: How does The Ballad of the Mountain Maggot go?’

That was a trick question, but simple nonetheless. The Zamonium was counting on my having been inattentive in class, like any Zamonian schoolboy, when this boring poem cropped up. He didn’t know that I had personally trekked through the Gloombergs with the Mountain Maggot and been compelled to listen to the encyclopedia reciting the poem again and again. I would know it by heart till the day I died.

Give way it must, that iron wall,

and let me through it climb.

I cannot stop to eat it all,

I never have the time.

I bore holes with my fiery breath,

digest the iron with ease

and chew it with my stainless teeth

as if it were but cheese.

I shall skip seventy-four verses rather than alienate the handful of readers who have stayed with me this far, but for the Zamonium’s benefit I recited the whole poem perfectly, down to the last quatrain:

The wall of metal melts, and there

a hole comes into sight.

I feel a gentle breath of air

and through the gap streams light.

‘Rather monotonously delivered,’ the Zamonium said sternly, ‘but faultless otherwise. Next question, subject Grailsundian demonology: What are Nether Zamonian Diabolic Elves, and how many would fit on a pinhead?’

Not bad. That had for centuries been Grailsundian demonology’s pivotal question – the raison d’être of that intellectual discipline, in fact. For one thing, the very existence of Diabolic Elves was disputed. For another, they were so infinitely small that, even if they did exist, they defied computation.

Or so the Zamonium thought when it asked me that question. What it did not know (so it certainly didn’t know everything) was that Qwerty Uiop and I had debated the matter at length in our spare time at the Nocturnal Academy. One of Nightingale’s so-called unperfected patents was the Diabolic Elf microscope, so we borrowed it for use in our demonological field research. The surprising result of our investigations was that Diabolic Elves did indeed exist, almost everywhere and in astronomical numbers. They occupied every crevice in the Gloomberg Mountains, proliferated in Fredda’s hair, and were particularly fond of populating pinheads. Thanks to the microscope’s complex arrangement of lenses, we were able to study their living habits and make a trailblazing discovery, namely, that they… But that’s irrelevant here.

We eventually took the trouble to count how many there were on a pinhead. This was anything but easy because they kept milling around, but Qwerty worked out a computational formula based on their physical density and the number of square micromillimetres covered by a pinhead.

‘7,845,689,654,324,567,008,472,373,289,567,827.9,’ I replied.

‘I’m impressed!’ the Zamonium exclaimed. ‘I solved that problem by the power of thought alone, but I failed to come up with the 9 after the decimal point.’

‘Diabolic Elves are fissile organisms,’ I pontificated. ‘For instance, one elf can if necessary divide into ten little elves.’

‘Aha, interesting. Fifth question, subject Nightingalian macro­physics: What does the Septimal Theory state?’

‘The Septimal Theory states that the universe is comprehensible only in terms of the number seven, and only by those possessing seven brains. There are seven elements: fire, water, earth, air, Perponium, Zamonium, and Domesticated Darkness. The universe consists of seven regions: north, south, east, west, before, after, and home. These regions are divisible, in their turn, by the seven elements. If one takes the astral weight of the individual elements and divides them by the septimal mass of the planets and stars present in the seven regions, one arrives at a figure in which sevens alone occur. The Nocturnomathic brain recognizes seven sensations: inquisitiveness, love of darkness, scientific curiosity, the urge to communicate, intrepidity, hunger, and thirst. If one adds together the emanative frequency values recorded by those sensations on the Nightingalian auracardiogram and divides the total by the figure containing all the sevens, the result will be seven.’

‘Correct. Sixth question, subject Nocturnomathic philoso­physics.’

Ugh! Nocturnomathic philosophysics! That was not only the most difficult branch of knowledge in the entire universe but the only one in which I was not overly proficient. A speculative mixture of philosophy and physics, it was really a subject for someone possessing more than one brain.

‘What is knowledge?’

‘Knowledge is night!’ The answer burst from me like a bullet from a gun. Man, oh man! It was the only principle of Nocturnomathic philosophysics that had stuck in my mind. Nightingale had bellowed it often enough in class.

‘Most impressive, most impressive. Nightingale left nothing out, it seems. In that case, my final poser shouldn’t present you with much of a problem. Question seven, subject dimensional hiatuses: What exactly is… genff?’

Hm, genff. I knew what it smelt like. I knew that it occurred at the entrance to dimensional hiatuses, too, but I didn’t know what it was.

‘No idea,’ I said.

‘Come on!’ cried Weeny. ‘You always know everything.’

Encyclopedia? Genff?

Nothing.

Genff?

Nothing.

Genffgenffgenff?

Still nothing. The same old story, just when I needed the confounded thing.

‘Don’t let it worry you, youngster,’ the Zamonium said consolingly. ‘I’d have made you all walk the plank in any case. I’m the Zamonium. I’ve no heart, no soul. I’ve even less of a conscience than the Troglotroll.’

‘I doubt that,’ the Troglotroll said in a low voice, but I heard him quite distinctly.

‘So why should I be bound by sentimental obligations that are detrimental to me? Did you think I had whole ships to give away? How very naive of you!’

I couldn’t repress the thought that the Zamonium was the most abominable creature I’d encountered anywhere in Zamonia in the course of a life that had brought me face to face with plenty of abominable life forms.

‘Thanks very much,’ said the Zamonium. ‘A touching farewell speech.’ And, to the others: ‘Bring them on deck. Sentence will be carried out forthwith.’

The Moloch was not, for once, swathed in her usual pall of smoke. The Zamonium had stopped all the engines and summoned his minions on deck, intending the entire crew to witness punishment in good visibility. Two Yetis appeared with the pillar that bore the Zamonium and set it up in a prominent position. A Yeti choir launched into the Zamonian national anthem, except that ‘Zamonium’ was substituted for ‘Zamonia’ and sundry other changes had been made to the original words:

All hail to thee, Zamonium,

all-powerful element.

However loathsome thy commands,

we never dare dissent.

The rest of the verses were even worse.

The Yetis removed the tarpaulin covers from some gigantic cannon and fired several pointless salvos in the air.

Then a black plank was manhandled over the rail.

‘This may strike you as a bit cheap,’ the Zamonium telepathized in our heads, ‘but I’m sentimental by nature. We could simply toss you overboard, but I find this more romantic.’

Knio was the first to be hustled out on to the plank. He showed no fear, I’ll give him that. Although I couldn’t see it from where I stood, I was only too familiar with the sight of the mass of snapping sharks that always seethed around the Moloch. To preserve one’s composure in the face of that threat was admirable in itself.

‘I’ll deal with the sharks, by Neptune’s trident!’ cried Knio. ‘And then I’ll come back and get you, Zamonium!’

I warmed to Knio for the first time.

‘Where are the Voltigorkian Vibrobassists?’ grumbled the Zamonium. ‘Every execution needs music!’

Three Voltigorks, each of them carrying a vibrobass, were thrust to the fore by Yetis and proceeded to tune their instruments. Weeny gave me a despairing glance. It seemed to be dawning on him that this was a predicament from which no amount of blathering could extricate him. But I was just as short of ideas.

‘When I give the word …’ snarled the Zamonium.

The Voltigorks struck up a monotonous military march on their vibrobasses.

‘… over the side with him!’

Two Yetis prodded Knio to the end of the plank with long, pointed boathooks. He drew a deep breath.

A dog barked.

There weren’t any dogs on board the Moloch, only Vulpheads or other cross-breeds that had dogs or foxes in their ancestry but were too civilized to bark.

But a dog was definitely barking. A second dog uttered heart­rending howls, a third growled menacingly.

The Yetis looked around, thoroughly disconcerted.

Horses started whinnying, baboons screeching, lions roaring. And still the dogs continued to bark, hundreds of them. The sound was very muffled, as if all these animals were imprisoned in a large sack.

‘What’s wrong?’ demanded the Zamonium. Although unable to hear anything, it had registered the general bewilderment. A Yeti went up to the pillar, bent over the glass case, and telepathically informed the Zamonium of what was happening.

A wind sprang up and chased away the last wisps of smoke. The sky had grown dark, and the ship was hemmed in by fat-bellied storm clouds. We all looked up, for that was where the animal sounds were coming from, far louder even than before.

Trumpeting elephants.

Bellowing buffalo.

Howling wolves.

Hissing crocodiles.

Looming over the Moloch was a big, black cloud. No ordinary cloud – at least, not one that kept its due distance from the ship as such meteorological phenomena usually did. No, this one hovered barely fifty feet above the deck. It wasn’t condensed rainwater, being too dark and turbulent for that, nor was it smoke, because it maintained its position too steadfastly. Long black streaks seemed to be trying to escape from the vaporous mass and lash out in all directions. As they did so, they divided into ever thinner threads that writhed through the air like snakes. There was an endless succession of sharp reports as if hundreds of heavy rawhide whips were being cracked.

The air itself crackled with pent-up electricity. We could also hear a voice issuing what sounded like a peculiar series of orders.

‘Hey! Whoa! Giddy-up! Down you go!’

Everyone on board stared upwards as if hynotized. All interest in the execution had evaporated. The Zamonium was kept informed of developments by the Yeti bending over its glass case.

‘Hey! Down you go, I said!’

Slowly, by fits and starts, the black apparition sank still lower. I had never before seen anything as dark except in Professor Nightingale’s laboratory.

It consisted, of that I was quite sure, of domesticated, concentrated darkness.

The cloud, which was now lying to starboard, sank so low that one could see its wavering surface.

The Nightingalator

Situated on top of the billowing black cloud was an intricate structure; more precisely, a little, miniaturized factory of bizarre design such as I had seen once before, but not in daylight: only a Nightingalator looked like that. And above it, strapped to a chair, sat Professor Abdullah Nightingale.

He was clearly finding it extremely difficult to keep the thing under control. The cloud bucked like a bronco, bouncing him around in his seat as he desperately manipulated various levers.

‘Zamonium!’ he yelled. ‘You’re surrounded! Give up!’

The cloud beneath him reared so violently, it would have thrown him had he not been strapped to his seat.

‘Nightingale!’ hissed the Zamonium. ‘So you actually dare to –’

‘It’s quite simple,’ Nightingale shouted above the din from inside the cloud of darkness. ‘Here are my terms. Surrender, and in return I’ll destroy you. Refuse, and it’ll be all the worse for you. Whoa there!’

He wrenched at the levers and turned a kind of steering wheel. The cloud quietened down a little.

The Zamonium gave a nervous laugh. ‘Huh, now you’re really scaring me! What is that contraption, one of your unperfected patents?’

‘I did it!’ Nightingale cried triumphantly. ‘Domesticated darkness! I owe you a debt of gratitude, my boy!’ He was now addressing me.

‘You were right that time in my laboratory, do you remember? You wondered whether the darkness was still unaccustomed to its new environment, and you hit the nail on the head. It became more and more tractable as time went by. It isn’t entirely docile even now, but after all, it is the most powerful form of energy in the universe. It needs running in a little more, that’s all.’

The cloud neighed and lashed out.

‘The animal voices were my idea,’ Nightingale explained. ‘The noises darkness really makes are utterly intolerable. I’ve controlled them with the aid of this Nightingalian transformer and converted them into animal cries. Classical music would be another possibility, but I always find it so depressing.’

‘I’m still the most powerful form of energy in the universe!’ the Zamonium insisted defiantly.

‘You’re nothing at all!’ yelled Nightingale. ‘You’re alchemically passé – just a conjuring trick gone wrong. I’ve come to consign you to the trash can of history.’

The Zamonium caught on. ‘So that’s what you’re after. You and I, brain against brain.’

‘Seven brains against one,’ Nightingale amended. ‘You go first.’

(Incidental remark. The following events cannot, unfortunately, be recounted by traditional narrative means. Nightingale and the Zamonium duelled with thoughts. They were no ordinary thoughts, of course, nor were they merely extraordinary. To call them brilliant or unique would be a disrespectful understatement. They were the most incredible shafts of wit ever hurled by the shrewdest and most powerful intellects on our planet. The ideas were so complex and abstract, so revolutionary, profound and earth-shaking, that a normal brain would at once have become unhinged if compelled to entertain a single one of them.

Nearly all those present on board the Moloch were shielded from them. The crew were still under the Zamonium’s hypnotic spell and could only think what suited it. Knio and Weeny were immune for well-known reasons. I alone had to withstand the full force of those ideas. That I didn’t go insane I attribute to having been infected with Nightingale’s intelligence bacteria, which had probably created a natural immune system.

To protect my readers I shall reproduce the two adversaries’ thoughts in a heavily encrypted form. I advise anyone unwilling to spend the rest of his days in a padded cell not to try to decipher them! I shall disclose this much and no more: they not only posed ultimate questions about the universe but answered them.)

Heavily encrypted version of the telepathic duel fought by Professor Nightingale and the Zamonium:

The Zamonium opened the proceedings.

The Zamonium was unimpressed.

My brain was smoking by now. The duellists’ ideas were almost unendurably profound, wide-ranging, and sublime.

I was just wondering how much longer I could stand it when I heard Nightingale’s encyclopedia voice in my head.

‘Listen, my lad,’ it whispered. ‘Walk slowly over to the Zamonium, then grab it and hurl it into the midst of the cloud of darkness. Being the most powerful source of strength in the universe, darkness will dispose of the confounded thing. The only trouble is, you mustn’t think of what you intend or what you’re doing. The Zamonium can’t see you, but it can hear you think. I can temporarily distract its attention, but I don’t know for how long.’

I don’t know what’s harder: to think the opposite of what you’re doing or do the opposite of what you’re thinking. It’s particularly hard when the opposite of what you’re doing is nothing, or when what you’re doing is the opposite of what you ought to be doing. I’ll try to rephrase that:

I had to spend the whole time thinking of standing still and doing nothing when I was really sneaking up on the Zamonium.

The Yeti guards were temporarily out of action. The Zamonium was too preoccupied with Nightingale to devote any attention to them, so they stood around like deactivated robots, gazing at the cloud of darkness.

Step by step, I drew nearer the Zamonium. I’d had a bright idea: I pictured a little drop of sweat running slowly down my spine while I (in theory) stood still and watched the duel. I positively became that drop of sweat, a tiny, salty globule of water threading its way through the fur on my back.

(One little step.)

I trickled over my neck muscles, negotiated two big tufts of fur, and reached the top of my spine.

(Another little step.)

Along the spinal column and down my back.

(Another little step.)

Uh-uh, a hair in the way. I rolled down it but left half my liquid content behind. Bisected, I trickled on.

(Another little step. Almost there now.)

Trickle-trickle… I’m a bead of sweat… just a bead of sweat…

(Another little step. Only a yard to go.)

A bead of sweat… A bead of sweat… A bead of sweat… My brain seized up. I was too agitated to think of a better idea.

(The last little step. I was there at last.)

‘Now!’ whispered Nightingale. ‘Now!’

‘Got you, you goddamned Zamonium!’

The thought that flashed through my mind was as big and bold as that – I couldn’t help it. The suppressed desire to convey my sense of triumph to the Zamonium proved too strong for me. It wouldn’t have happened if Nightingale hadn’t butted in. He’d spoiled my concentration.

The Zamonium reacted promptly. ‘Yetis, seize him!’

The element had analysed our plan like lightning and acted accordingly. ‘All ahead full!’

But I was too close already. I grabbed the glass dome, only to find that it was stuck fast. Simultaneously, five Yetis hurled themselves at me.

At that moment the engines restarted. Dense smoke belched from the funnels. The whole ship gave a violent lurch. The Yetis staggered a little but recovered at once and lunged at me again.

But they’d reckoned without Knio. There was going to be a fight – his Barbaric Hog’s brain had grasped that, and he didn’t want to stand around in idleness. He leapt off the plank and drove his thick skull into the first Yeti’s stomach.

‘Give it to him, Knio!’ Weeny yelled encouragingly.

Knio caught the Yeti by the foot and whirled him around like a club.

The other Yetis shrank back.

‘Wolpertingers!’ commanded the Zamonium. ‘Seize the bluebear!’

The Wolpertingers on deck awoke from their trance, but the dense smoke made it hard for them at first to get their bearings.

‘Professor Nightingale!’ I shouted. ‘The glass case! I can’t get it off!’

‘Stand aside!’ Nightingale called in his real voice.

I stood aside. The professor’s brains snapped and crackled as they had when he opened a can of sardines by willpower alone. The sound was clearly audible above the general commotion, chilling the blood of all who heard it. The glass dome started to vibrate and display hairline fissures. It gave a last, sharp crack, then broke in two.

I seized the Zamonium. It was cold as ice.

‘Nooooo!’ it bellowed in my head. ‘I command you to …’

I drew back my arm and hurled the element into the flickering darkness. It is almost impossible, in our inadequate linguistic medium, to describe what happened next. I’ll try, but I doubt if I’ll do it justice.

Inadequate description of an indescribable occurrence

The Zamonium disappeared into the pall of darkness like sugar into a cup of strong black coffee. At the same time, the voice in my head rose to a scream of such intensity that I feared my eyes might burst from their sockets. I clamped my forepaws over my ears, but that, of course, was futile.

All the other creatures on board were also stopping their ears. The cloud contracted with a sound like a truckload of bricks falling from the sky.

Then it expanded to ten times its original width, howling like a thousand watchdogs. For a while it retained that shape, a flattened black ball with shafts of lightning flickering over its surface.

At length it abruptly regained its original size and shape. There was a moment’s complete silence. The cloud seemed even to absorb the pounding of the Moloch’s engines. Then, rolling across the sea, came a cosmic belch such as not even a Megabollogg could have produced.

The scream in our heads died away.

The Zamonium had vanished.

The Moloch’s crew staggered around in bewilderment.

The Zamonium’s spell was broken.

The professor was riding his Nightingalator like a cowboy on a wild steer. The cloud of darkness was bucking and lashing out in all directions, even more violently and unpredictably than before. Nightingale excitedly manipulated his levers and controls but seemed almost incapable of influencing what was going on beneath him.

‘The darkness isn’t used to the Zamonium!’ he cried. ‘It’ll take a while, I’m afraid. I can’t control it any longer!’

The cloud bucked madly and whinnied like a herd of mustangs. Nightingale spoke as if he had hiccups.

‘I d-don’t th-think I c-can hold it m-much long …’

The cloud reared up and galloped off with him, zigzagging wildly across the sea like a balloon with air escaping from the neck. Before long, the professor, the Nightingalator and the cloud were just a dwindling black dot on the horizon.

Nightingale had disappeared, but so had the Zamonium. The Moloch’s crew were free at last.

Although they still hadn’t the faintest idea where or who they were, the situation would probably resolve itself in due course. Knio was still throttling one of the Yetis, who must have been wondering how he’d got into such a situation. I had to haul Knio off him. There was a lot of re-education to be done.

Stop engines!

For a start, the engines had to be stopped. The clouds of black smoke added to the confusion and made it no easier to find our bearings. I hurried to one of the engine rooms, but all I encountered there were a few bemused Yetis who were trying to remember their own names.

The Zamonium had expertly navigated the vessel by remote control throughout her voyages, personally supervising every engine and furnace, piston and propeller. The ship had no captain or experienced officers, just a horde of obedient, unwitting slaves. Without the Zamonium, the crew were completely helpless. The Moloch’s machinery was so complex and intricate that I myself would have taken years to learn to operate it. All this dawned on me the moment one of the Yetis in the engine room asked me for my autograph. His last recollection had been of a Duel of Lies I’d fought in the Megathon at Atlantis.

I went back on deck. Our situation was not as critical as all that. We would simply have to wait until the ship’s fuel ran out and she stopped of her own accord. Then we could lower some boats and leave the Moloch to her fate.

‘Did you find the brakes?’ asked Weeny.

‘The Moloch doesn’t have any.’

‘Pity. Hear that noise?’

An ominous sound

I listened. I could hear the throb of the ship’s engines, the roar of the furnaces, the hissing of the valves, the bewildered grunts of disorientated Yetis. Yes, and a gurgling sound.

I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t think where or when. ‘Some-thing’s gurgling,’ I said.

‘And how,’ said Weeny. ‘No idea what it is, you can’t see a thing in this soup, but it’s getting louder. Sounds like we’re heading straight for it.’

‘How about climbing one of the funnels?’ Knio suggested.

We looked around for the biggest smokestack not in current use. Welded to the side were some metal rungs that disappeared into the thick of the smoke overhead. Knio and I proceeded to climb them. After a hundred feet or so we couldn’t see a thing. The acrid vapour compelled us to shut our eyes and mouths and make our way blindly, mutely, upwards.

Then the smoke thinned. We were some five hundred feet above the surface of the sea. The thick, black carpet of smoke below us conveyed the reassuring but deceptive impression that it would catch us if we fell. Around this carpet, and especially towards the bow, the sea was clearly visible. The gurgling sound was much more distinct up here. I now remembered when I’d heard it before: it was the very first sound I’d heard in the very first of my lives.

We could also see its source now. About ten miles away was a hole in the sea, a circular whirlpool many times the size of the Moloch.

It was the Malmstrom, the legendary hole in the sea from which the Minipirates had rescued me.

And we were heading towards it at full speed.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms

and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

Malmstrom, The. Highly unpopular with sailors, this marine vortex in the Zamonian Sea north-east of the mainland is a whirlpool covering a surface area of twenty square miles and extending to a depth of twenty-five or thirty miles. At its base the whirlpool disappears into the crater of an extinct marine volcano five miles in diameter.

The Malmstrom is marked on all charts and should be given a wide berth, because anything that gets caught up in it is inexorably sucked down into the depths. Fish and other marine creatures instinctively avoid the whirlpool; sailors, on the other hand, often fall prey to their irrepressible curiosity and venture too close to it.

Little research has been devoted to where the Malmstrom’s masses of water go, and this is a natural breeding ground for legends. Folk tales transfigure the volcanic crater into the Gates of Hell, and certain less than reputable scientists claim that the Malmstrom will continue to suck water into the interior of the earth until the latter explodes.

We were on board a huge ship full of helpless creatures, sur­rounded by sharks and steaming at full speed, with no possibility of stopping, towards a hole in the sea more than twenty-five miles deep.

My only assistants were a Gnomelet suffering from memory loss and a Barbaric Hog without any manners. As for Nightingale, he was doubtless riding his cloud across the sea in the opposite direction.

All my other friends were presumably light years away, soaring through the cosmos in a gigantic spaceship. Meantime, Yetis were coming up every few minutes and asking me where the men’s room was – and I couldn’t even answer that for certain. That’s what I call a challenging situation!

‘What shall we do now?’ asked Weeny.

‘How about dying?’ I replied.

By now the gurgle of the Malmstrom was drowning every other sound – we had to shout to make ourselves heard. The others on board seemed to be slowly recovering their wits, and the brighter ones among them explained the situation to the more obtuse – not that this did much good because the Moloch was now within a mile of the whirlpool and beginning to rotate in waltz time. This, in turn, added to the commotion on deck. It was only now that most of the crew ran to the rail and grasped the true nature of our pre­dicament. A babble of cries went up. Many fell to their knees and wept.

The Moloch was revolving faster and faster. We had now reached the edge of the whirlpool, and the thunder of its turbulent waters drowned the cries of panic. Slowly, the ship’s bow crept over the edge of the Malmstrom.

Knio and Weeny stood at the rail like a pair of stone statues.

The Moloch’s hull began to tilt. Another few minutes, and she would plunge into the depths.

‘Only thirteen lives,’ I thought to myself.

All of a sudden, swirling gaps appeared at many places in the pall of smoke overhead. They were made by mighty wings whose beat was audible even above the general pandemonium.

Hundreds – nay, thousands – of huge birds came swooping through the gaps in the smoke and landed on deck. Everyone fell silent at the sight of this army of Reptilian Rescuers.

One of them touched down right in front of me. It was Deus X. Machina. ‘Well,’ he croaked, ‘seems we’ve cut it pretty fine, huh?’

Abandon ship!

All over the deck, former Moloch slaves were clambering aboard the pterodactyls, one or two of which had already taken off. The ship was tilting ominously.

Mac was as imperturbable as ever.

‘The Reptilian Rescuers’ Retirement Home wasn’t my cup of tea. The inmates sat around all day long, playing blackjack and bragging about their exploits in the long ago. I hate card games – in fact I hate company, to be honest. Besides, walls make me nervous and ceilings are even worse. I didn’t need to retire, all I needed was a decent pair of glasses. Think they suit me?’

He gave me a piercing stare. His eyes were magnified by a huge pair of glasses the size of soup plates. Their watery whites were threaded with thick red veins.

‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘they suit you splendidly.’

‘Life is too precious to be left to chance, my boy.’

By now, a third of the Moloch was jutting over the edge of the Malmstrom.

‘It was developments in Atlantis that alerted us. All the Reptilian Rescuers in the world assembled over the city in the last few days because a major disaster seemed to be imminent. The air was positively crackling with danger. We thought the city would sink. Instead of that, it levitated.’

Mac was having to squawk louder and louder to make himself heard above the gurgle of the whirlpool. I would sooner have listened to his résumé perched on his back and high in the air.

‘We didn’t have to do a thing. Not a single inhabitant fell off the edge of the city or jumped to his death out of fear or high spirits. Whoever organized the operation did a good job.’

‘That was the Invisibles. Listen, Mac, maybe we ought to –’

‘So we searched the sea awhile for possible victims of the tidal wave that surged back into the hole Atlantis had left behind, but all we found was that maniac Nightingale on his crazy contraption. He looked as if he planned to win the Derby – kept shouting something about “the Moloch” and “north-easterly direction”. So we flew here.’

Every rivet in the Moloch’s hull was creaking, and bolts were whistling through the air like bullets. The ship was about to plunge bow first into the depths. Knio and Weeny had flown off long ago. Mac and I were the last souls on board.

‘Er, Mac, don’t be offended, but I really think we ought to be –’

‘Of course, my boy. Climb aboard.’

Mac turned round so that I could climb on his back. At that moment, someone shoved me from behind and knocked me sideways. I collided with the rail, hit my head, and lay there slightly stunned for a moment. A hideous figure vaulted on to Mac’s back.

It was the Troglotroll.

Before I could say anything, my old friend took off and soared into the air. The Troglotroll gave me a friendly wave as Mac flew away, flapping his mighty wings. Then the pall of smoke swallowed them up.

The Moloch plunged into the Malmstrom.

To recapitulate, every member of the Moloch’s crew had been rescued except your unfortunate narrator. Every last Reptilian Rescuer was laden with one or more Yetis, Wolpertingers, or other creatures. The Troglotroll was riding on Mac’s back, and I knew from my days as a congladiator how well he could imitate voices. It would be child’s play for him to convince Mac, for as long as the flight lasted, that he was carrying me on his back. So I could expect no help from that quarter.

It would be incorrect to describe the ensuing process as ‘falling’. Although the Moloch had tipped over bow first, she remained in the water’s embrace as the whirlpool sucked her into the depths. The ship went spiralling downwards. Because of her size relative to that of the Malmstrom, this happened so slowly that I had time for a few last reflections on life and fate.

My fate seemed justified.

I had set events in motion. By destroying the Zamonium I had unintentionally sent the ship to the bottom. By taking charge I had become the Moloch’s new captain, so to speak. As such, it was my seaman’s traditional duty to go down with her. I clung to the rail and did my best to look death in the face. I conceived of that death as resembling one of the black holes Professor Nightingale had cut out of the sky with his Nightingalator. I drew a deep breath.

An unpleasant odour stung my nostrils.

Simultaneously strange yet familiar, the smell was more con­centrated than I had ever known it.

It was genff.

There couldn’t have been a more inappropriate time, I knew, but I wanted to discover, at long last, what genff was. Death could wait.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms

and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

Genff. Unwholesome gas given off by →Time-Snails. One of the great mysteries of the universe is where time goes to. We all experience the passage of time every day. Seconds, minutes, days, months and years go by, but where to? The answer: time flows away into dimensional hiatuses. If it did not, the earth’s atmosphere would fill up with time until it exploded, hence the existence of ‘drainpipes’ for elapsed time. This function is performed by dimensional hiatuses. But if time simply flowed through these into other dimensions, the latter, too, would explode at some stage. This is where Time-Snails come in. They perch on the edges of dimensional hiatuses, devour the time as it flows into them, and promptly digest it. In so doing they give off an evil-smelling gas known to dimensional hiatus experts as ‘genff’. In other words, to put it rather crudely, genff is time metabolized into farts.

This denoted that the Malmstrom was a dimensional hiatus.

And dimensional hiatuses seemed to exert an attraction on me which Qwerty had envied.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms

and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

Malmstrom, The [cont.]. Some authorities on dimensional hiatuses espouse the view that the Malmstrom is the largest →Dimensional Hiatus in the known universe. This assumption is at least supported by the genff readings on its periphery, because no greater concentrations of that sewer gas have been found anywhere else.

Well, although it was scarcely my heart’s desire to plunge into a dimensional hiatus with the Moloch, I found the prospect of cruising the galaxies on board that huge vessel more attractive than simply drowning.

This also explains why, in a state of Carefree Catalepsy, I had once seen the Moloch soaring through space: it was a vision of the future.

My predicament had a certain grandeur, I felt. I was not only plunging into the biggest whirlpool in the seven seas with the biggest ship in the contemporary world, but falling through the most gigantic dimensional hiatus in the universe.

Still clinging to the rail, I boldly gazed down into the swirling abyss. My thirteenth life was drawing to a suitably extraordinary close.

But that was not the most extraordinary thing to happen at that moment.

More extraordinary still was the fact that flying towards me from the depths of the Malmstrom, or dimensional hiatus, was a carpet. But even that was not the most extraordinary thing of all.

Why not? Because seated on the carpet was Qwerty Uiop.

A gelatine prince suffering from Carefree Catalepsy

I could tell from afar that Qwerty was still in a state of Carefree Catalepsy. That condition, as I have already described at length, is brought about by falling down a dimensional hiatus. It is a state of temporary imbecility that protects one from the mental overload occasioned by plummeting through time, space, and alien dimensions. So Qwerty completely failed to notice me.

He even seemed unaware of the gigantic Moloch plunging past him or, if not, wholly indifferent to the sight.

I had to seize the initiative myself. Qwerty was still several hundred feet below me, and his flight path was quite a long way from the Moloch.

I pushed off the deck with my hind legs as hard possible, spread my forelegs, and flew!

Of course, I didn’t really fly the way I described it in my fictitious story about the Molehill Volcano, but I could at least influence my trajectory. The unusual wind conditions prevailing inside the whirlpool favoured spiral flight, and I could steer, accelerate and brake by using my paws as ailerons.

I manœuvred myself so that I was right on Qwerty’s flight path and steering a collision course. He came racing towards me at breakneck speed.

Two hundred feet to go…

Qwerty opened his eyes a little wider. He seemed to be emerging from his Carefree Catalepsy.

A hundred and twenty feet…

Qwerty rubbed his eyes. This didn’t suit my plans at all. I’d intended to dive beneath him and grab the trailing edge of his carpet. It was precision work. If he woke up and changed course himself, it would be all over.

Fifty feet…

Qwerty opened his eyes wide and stared at me in consternation.

Twenty feet…

I altered the angle of my paws by a couple of degrees so as to miss the bottom of the carpet by a hair’s-breadth.

Ten feet…

Qwerty leant forwards in a panic and tugged at the fringe of his carpet. The carpet swerved a few feet, making it impossible for me to reach it.

Our eyes met briefly as we zoomed past each other. I heard him call out ‘Bluebear?’ in a puzzled voice.

There were still perhaps five hundred feet between me and the black spot at which the whirlpool condensed and became a dimensional hiatus. No matter how hard I flapped my legs, the illusion of being able to fly created by the whirling air currents in the upper regions of the Malmstrom was steadily dispelled the further I fell. On the contrary, I felt I was being sucked downwards with increasing force, as if the power of attraction exerted by the dimensional hiatus were doubling and trebling.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms

and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

Malmstrom, The [cont.]. In the lower regions of the Malmstrom there occurs a rare and curious quirk of physics which does, in fact, conflict with all the laws of nature. For the last five hundred feet the rate of descent doubles every twenty feet, so an object falling into the Malmstrom would crash on the bottom at almost the speed of light. This is thought to be attributable to the Malmstrom’s torque and suction power and its affinity with a dimensional hiatus.

I could actually register the fact that my rate of descent was accelerating second by second. The air pressure thrust my ears and my entire face backwards, causing me – without my volition – to bare my teeth and expose my gums like a hungry wolf. My eyes were forced deep into their sockets. Then there was a deafening report that went echoing around the Malmstrom’s swirling cauldron.

B-BOOM!

I had just broken the sound barrier. My speed continued to increase at an incredible rate. The air pressure was beginning to tear off tufts of my fur.

B-BOOM!

Another report rang out, just as loud.

And a voice beside me said, ‘Hey, Bluebear!’

It was Qwerty and his carpet. He had evidently recovered from his Carefree Catalepsy and turned back.

‘I’ll come alongside,’ he called. ‘Then grab me and hang on tight! Getting back is the problem. We’ll have to do a half-loop if we don’t want to fall into the dimensional hiatus.’

He brought the carpet alongside. I got on behind him and hung on tight.

‘We’ll make it!’ I shouted.

‘Let’s hope so,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never done a half-loop before.’

He bent forward and tugged at the edge of the carpet like a bareback rider hauling on the mane of a wild horse. The carpet reared, described a graceful arc, and shot off in the opposite direction. Below us, the Moloch went thundering into the depths of the universe, presumably at the speed of light.

‘You see,’ I said. ‘We made it.’

We flew south to where Atlantis used to be. This, I surmised, was where the Reptilian Rescuers had gone.

Qwerty was only moderately surprised by the amazing co­incidence that had befallen us, but creatures that have just emerged from dimensional hiatuses are hard to impress on principle.

Qwerty’s story

I gave him a brief summary of recent events. Then he told me his own story.

He really had landed in his own dimension after I pushed him into the dimensional hiatus and out of the Gloomberg Mountains, but at a time just preceding his own coronation. Consequently, there were now two Qwerty Uiops in the 2364th Dimension. This led to an absurd situation in which Qwerty had witnessed his own coronation from the crowd. He had previously fetched his autobiographical carpet, rolled it up, and brought it with him. When he saw me suddenly appear at the coronation and push his second self into the dimensional hiatus, he tried to hurry to my assistance and fell into it again behind me. He managed while falling to unroll his carpet and sit on it. So now a second Qwerty Uiop was tumbling through the dimensional tunnel.

All that remained of Atlantis was a big, circular lagoon, a crater many miles deep that had since filled up with seawater. (Some would later claim that this marked the beginning of Zamonia’s descent below the waves – that the Invisibles’ removal of Atlantis had pulled the plug on Zamonia, so to speak – but legends tend to oversimplify matters.)

Mac came fluttering excitedly towards us. The Troglotroll had jumped off his back and disappeared into a clump of trees just after he landed. He was outraged by the creature’s vile behaviour and found the whole incident most embarrassing.

The other Reptilian Rescuers had already landed beside the lagoon. Most of the Moloch’s former slaves had dived into its waters to wash off the stench, the soot, the oil, and every last memory of the iron ship.

It was an exuberant occasion. Washing wasn’t customary on the Moloch, and many of the ex-slaves had seen no water – except from the deck – throughout their time on board. The Yetis and Wolpertingers were now indulging in childish water fights. I, too, took a dip and immersed myself several times. Then Mac whistled us to supper. The dinosaurs had procured fresh fruit and vegetables from the countryside around – the first decent meal many of the Moloch’s crew had enjoyed for years. Tired and hungry, we came ashore.

I noticed, when some of the black bears from the Infurno emerged from the lagoon before me, that they had undergone a surprising change. Their fur was black no longer; it had simply been discoloured by the mingled soot and oil of which big streaks were now floating on the surface of the water. The first bear to wade out ahead of me had rust-red fur like a wild horse from Ireland. The one beside him was a glowing orange. A moss-green bear emerged from the lagoon with a blonde she-bear at his heels. Bears of every colour – yellow, green, red – were drying their fur in the sun on the shores of the lagoon. There were even a few blue ones among them.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms

and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

Chromobear, The. Zamonian variety of the terrestrial, thick-furred omnivores [Ursidae], powerful mammals up to six feet tall and endowed with the power of speech. Peculiar to the chromobear is its individual coloration. Each has coloured fur, but none is quite the same shade. Many chromobears are red, for example, but each displays its own variation of that colour: brick red, copper, vermilion, scarlet, mahogany, poppy, purple, carmine, bronze, pink, ruby, or flamingo red.

There are shades of yellow ranging from lemon to egg yolk and deep orange. A distinction may be drawn between straw-coloured, warm yellow, cobalt yellow, cadmium yellow, pale blond, peroxide blond, auburn, honey-coloured, banana yellow, butter yellow, gold, amber, sulphur yellow, corn-coloured, raw sienna, flaxen, canary yellow, quince yellow, Norselander yellow, lemon-grass yellow, Venetian yellow, pale yellow, dark yellow, and – of course – plain yellow.

The fur of green chromobears ranges in colour from emerald and olive to jade, mignonette, and spinach green. Chromobears may also be yellowish green, blue green, moss green, pine-needle green, grass green, seaweed green, sea green, bottle green, mildew green, grey green, arsenical green, palm-leaf green, pea green, ivy green, and several thousand other shades of green.

Blue chromobears probably display the greatest number of shades: indigo, azure, sapphire blue, cyanine, cobalt, ultramarine, royal blue, pale blue, cerulean blue, submarine blue, billow blue, ice blue, violet, forget-me-not blue, cornflower blue, gentian blue, lavender blue, turquoise, steel blue, plum, dove blue, midnight blue, alga blue, eye blue, blueberry blue, marine blue, china blue, blue-black, and manganese blue.

This brings us to the mixed colours. There are, of course, countless combinations of the above colours which themselves produce new hybrid shades: violet, mauve, heliotrope, lilac, mallow, amethyst, Parma violet, cinnamon, chocolate, minium, chrome orange, salmon, apricot, Florinthian copper, pale lilac, ivory, pearl white, smoke grey, cinnabar, and grey brown. Chromobear fur exists in jewel colours: aquamarine, cyanite, gold beryl, citrine, euclase, chrysoberyl, chrysolite, demantoid, dioptase, moldavite, lapis lazuli, topaz, zircon, axinite, hyacinth, titanite, spinel, azurite, malachite, coral, carnelian, and meerschaum.

Finally, there are colours that exist only in Zamonia: neoline, cyromian, zamonite, elf white, goblin yellow, zant, opalite, ghoul green, chromolinth, pherm, voltigork, melphine, harbazinth, and Nightingale black. When mixed with traditional pigments, these produce so-called Zamonian duocolours such as neolite green, neolite yellow, neolite red, cyromian blue, opalite green, pherm yellow, voltigork red, and, of course their hybrid intermediate shades. Chromobears can thus be absolutely any colour. Their sudden extinction – or complete disappearance from Zamonia, whichever – remains a mystery. Although thousands of them formerly inhabited the →Great Forest, they vanished overnight.

A festive banquet ensued.

Meanwhile, most of the Moloch’s former slaves were getting their memory back. The chromobears among them recalled how their parents had told them that their ancestors used to live in the Great Forest many years ago.

There they had led a peaceful life devoted mainly to bee-keeping. At some stage, however, the peace of the forest was disturbed. It was invaded by a gigantic spider whose unpleasant predatory habits drove the bears out. They retreated to the outskirts of the forest, gave up keeping bees, and took up fishing instead. The land-dwelling bears became seabears. They soon learned how to construct ships of wood, weave nets, and get their food from the sea. Then the Zamonium turned up in the Moloch and enslaved them.

Some of the bluebears remembered a young bluebear couple, an ultramarine male and an indigo female, who had thrown their new-born cub over the side to preserve it from a living death aboard the Moloch. There is no proof of this, of course, but they may have been my parents, who possibly sacrificed their own lives for the sake of my freedom.

That, at least, would explain my curious obsession with the Moloch: I had probably been born on board that monstrous vessel. Only the Zamonium could have supplied precise information on the subject, but it was currently being digested in the intestines of a cloud of darkness.

Many tears were shed that night – tears of joy and sorrow. Some of the Moloch’s slaves cursed the Zamonium for having robbed them of so much of their lives. Others boisterously celebrated their new-found freedom. The Reptilian Rescuers stood around, rather at a loss because they found emotional outbursts embarrassing.

We swapped experiences until the small hours. I described my deadly race with the Spiderwitch, which prompted some of the chromobears to consider returning to the Great Forest. I also told of the Invisibles, of events beneath Atlantis and the city’s ascent into space. Fortunately, Mac could confirm my account.

It was very late when we all fell into a deep sleep under the watchful gaze of the Reptilian Rescuers.

Back to the Great Forest

In the morning, I and a number of bears decided to return to the Great Forest. The Spiderwitch being dead, we planned to fill the forest with life again.

Others proposed to set off in all directions, and quite a few resolved to settle down beside the lagoon and found a new city there.

Knio and Weeny were keen to make for Baysville and take ship from there. They wanted to get to know other continents – ‘to broaden our horizons,’ as Weeny phrased it. Qwerty decided to join us in the forest for the time being. He had spent so long in a dimensional hiatus that he wanted to take a breather and work on his autobiographical carpet before falling down another.

The Reptilian Rescuers preferred to transport our Great Forest party across the continent themselves rather than be compelled to save us if we got into another fix.

We crossed Zamonia in a westerly direction via the gap in the Humongous Mountains, which were Bollogg-free once more, and flew over the Demerara Desert. There, from Mac’s back, I espied Tornado City whirling along and made out a group of very, very tiny figures on the move: my old friends the Muggs.

We neared our destination a couple of days later. The huge peaks of the Gloomberg Mountains came into view in the distance, and within a few hours we had landed on the edge of the Great Forest.

Mac said goodbye without fuss as usual, probably convinced that he would soon have to extricate me from some new predicament or other. Having urged me yet again to adopt a vegetarian diet, he took off. His glasses were so misted up, he nearly flew into a tree.