‘That was hard cheese,’ remarked Curtis without a shred of compassion. ‘Should have stuck with us – or taken a parachute.’
‘I trained in the navy,’ said Wilson, ‘and the first thing you learn is that parachutes are not generally required while boating.’
‘Ook-ook-ook,’ said Ralph, with a slight curling of the lip that I took to be an early hominid smile.
‘Do you think he planned that?’ asked the Princess.
‘I’m not sure Australopithecines can plan,’ I said, ‘but you never know.’
‘Okay,’ I said, as soon as we had given Ignatius a minute’s silence as a vague sort of respect, ‘this is where we are: Addie went to rescue Perkins last night and told me that if she didn’t return she was dead. It’s now nine o’clock. I say we leave it until midday before assuming the worst. After that, we head off towards Llangurig. Any objections?’
There weren’t any, of course, and we settled down to wait.
Leviathans explained and some tourists
It rained in the morning for about half an hour, but we sheltered under the awning attached to the half-track. At eleven o’clock two Tralfamosaurs moved through the camp, so we climbed the poles until they were safely past. The morale of the small group was not high. Despite the fact that none of us had liked Ignatius and his demise had tipped Addie’s guaranteed 50 per cent survival rate in our favour, a member of our group had still died, and somewhere he would be mourned. Curtis was being unbearably smug as he thought he had one over on me, so was best avoided. I’d told the Princess about his visit the previous evening. She again suggested she kill him, which I again refused. So with neither of us talking to Curtis and Ralph not talking very well, Wilson was about the only person we could all turn to for a chat. He was in a good mood, and spent the time writing up his birdwatching notes in a blue exercise book.
I looked over his shoulder and noticed that aside from the odd pigeon and a wren or two, the ‘birds I’ve seen this week’ page was almost completely blank.
‘Not much luck seeing birds, then?’ I asked. ‘Tharv’s ban must be working.’
‘The absence of birds has nothing to do with him,’ said Wilson. ‘Birds have a hard time living out here. The successful ones either learn how to burrow like sand martins, puffins or blind mole-sparrows, or have a huge turn of speed like the swift or Falcon X-1. Anything else that flaps is otherwise … devoured.’
‘By what?’
‘The Cloud Leviathans,’ said Wilson as though it were obvious. ‘The beasts swoop low across the land ingesting huge volumes of air along with everything that’s in it. The air is then compressed in the Leviathan’s muscular chambers, and when the run is over, the beast swallows the flying creatures and vents the compressed air through pressure ducts on its undersides, assisting with extra lift at the end of a feeding run.’
‘Sort of like whales in the ocean?’ asked Curtis.
‘Absolutely,’ said Wilson. ‘Leviathans have been known to swallow flocks of starlings more than ten thousand strong, and are suggested as the reason behind the passenger pigeon extinction in North America. It’s the reason birds migrate, too – to avoid being eaten. I’m not surprised at the lack of birds. Since Cloud Leviathans are about the size of a smallish passenger jet, they can get pretty hungry.’
‘How does it fly with such ridiculously small wings?’ asked the Princess, holding up a blurry photograph she’d found in a copy of Ten Animals to Avoid in the Cambrian Empire. The creature was sort of like a stubby plesiosaur, with four seemingly inadequate-sized paddle-shaped wings, and a large mouth on the underneath of a broad, flat head.
‘No one’s ever studied them at length,’ said Wilson, ‘firstly because they are rare – fewer than five, it’s suggested – and secondly because they have a chameleonic skin that allows them a limited invisibility. No one has ever seen a body, far less a skeleton, hence the theory of a legendary graveyard – somewhere they all go to die.’
‘Do you think it’s likely Sky Pirate Wolff trained one?’ I asked.
Wilson thought for a moment.
‘It’s always possible, of course, and I’ve heard the stories about aerial piracy, the destruction of Cloud City Nimbus III and the RMS Tyrannic, but I’m fairly sceptical. As the Princess noted, it doesn’t look like a good flyer, so how could it support the weight of a team of pirates?’
We all fell silent after that, and I considered Sky Pirate Wolff, and whether she existed or not – if not, then the Eye of Zoltar might not exist either, but I was not necessarily here to find the Eye, but to ask Able Quizzler what he knew – something I could still do, even with our current difficulties.
On the dot of twelve and with Addie and Perkins not returned, I decided we should leave. I wrote what we were doing on a sheet of paper and left it taped to the bottom of Addie’s pod pole. Wilson suggested he take the wheel and after some grinding of gears we departed along the the compacted dirt road marked ‘Llangurig and the North’, to which the Cambrian Tourist Board had helpfully added: ‘32% chance of being devoured, but good scenery with ample picnic spots’.
We hadn’t gone more than two miles when we came across a dusty Range Rover parked on a grassy lay-by at the side of the road. We slowed down as we passed, and looked in at the driver and passenger, who were staring at the view. They didn’t look up and, sensing something might be wrong, I instructed Wilson to stop the half-track a little way down the road.
‘Wait for us here,’ I said to the Princess and Curtis, then walked cautiously back to the Range Rover accompanied by Wilson and Ralph, who didn’t seem to want to stray too far from my side.
‘Everything okay?’ I asked the driver of the Range Rover, but he didn’t reply. He was a well-dressed middle-aged man who was holding a camera in one hand while the other rested lightly on the steering wheel. His brow was wrinkled, as though he had just seen something, but he made no movement. Something definitely wasn’t right.
‘Hello?’ I said, and waved a hand in front of the driver’s face. He didn’t even blink.
‘Mine’s unresponsive,’ I said, ‘what about yours?’
‘Same,’ said Wilson, staring uneasily at the passenger. She was seemingly frozen in mid-stretch, her mouth partially open as though just finishing a yawn.
‘Mule Fever?’ I suggested.
‘If it was, they’d have ears long before the paralysis set in,’ replied Wilson.
‘I can’t feel a pulse,’ I remarked, holding the driver’s wrist, ‘and the skin feels hard and waxy.’
‘Hotax did this,’ said Wilson.
I looked at the motionless people.
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying,’ said Wilson, ‘that the Hotax are not just murderously cannibalistic but big on conservation. They retain the discarded skin, hair and bones then preserve them perfectly. Look.’
He reached inside the car and lifted the hair from the back of the driver’s neck to reveal a row of fine cross-stitching in the skin, then tapped the man’s nearest eyeball, which was not human at all, but skilfully made of glass.
I peered closer. It was quite the most remarkable piece of work. As realistic as anything I had ever seen, and ten times better than the rubbish you get at the waxworks.
‘Amazingly lifelike, aren’t they?’ said Wilson. ‘The families of Hotax victims often elect not to bury their relatives but instead use them as hatstands in the hall. Mind you, the good thing about a Hotax attack is that you don’t know anything about it – just a slight prick in the back of the neck as the poisoned dart hits home. Then you’re like this, preserved at the moment of death, for ever.’