Terminal Two - Third Episode: The Chess Dream

I remember the day we passed a street musician playing the oboe with his arse and realised that subversive art was dead. 'It's all too easy to rake charred foetuses into brittle heaps, collecting shocked responses like a trayful of cod gobs,' scoffed the Blademeister, savagely prescient as always. The creative impulse in Maranaloka has followed a grim trajectory ever since. You climb into a taxi only to find a coffin stuffed with cat meat behind the wheel. Restaurant doors open onto an abyss. Birds are invariably on fire. Sometimes melancholy harpsichord music emanates from the soggy heart of a stool sample.

'Move, blast you, or so help me I'll- ack! Ack! See? Do you see how unwell you make me? I ought to rattle your guts like a stuck maraca then fling you to the gobblemaws!'

'B-b-but then, sir, you'd b-b-be without an opponent.'

'And I would welcome such an eventuality, yes. I hate chess with a passion ' a fucking passion, Benson.'

'B-b-but your contract¦'

'If you mention my contract one more time I will disembowel you. Just make your move before the ether rips asunder and turns all creation to wailing fluorescence.'

Mist danced and punched above syrupy waters. A flesh islet rose from the Ire Marshes in a slick pink hump banded with capillaries. Organs pulsed like boils. At its centre, a chessboard rested upon a great cuboid slab of muscle, two players squatting either side on cartilage perches. Benson was a wretched attempt at a winged lackey, tattered leathery appendages hanging limp and blue from his shoulder blades like the tornado-lashed remnants of a rotary washing line. Facing him, a vermiform mass of arteries bunched together to spoof arms, legs, a seething torso. The face was featureless, a blank lake of blood-filled tendrils. Hanging over the players like a scythe, a vertebrae tree's longest branch dangled the haggard fruit of a hinged jaw.

'You're not considering¦ b-b-breaching¦'

'SHUT UP!' Arteries lashed from the packed midriff and wrapped themselves thrice widdershins round Benson's throat. 'What I am considering, you vapid carpetbag of inadequacy, is an unpleasant and protracted spell of desperate self-deception, in which I pretend to myself that I am here, in the Ire Marshes, playing game after game of, of¦ chess, out of my own free will, and not because of some idiotic nuance of legal small print.' Though the hanging jaw clacked in dumb synchronicity throughout the tirade, the voice came from somewhere deep inside the islet itself.

Benson aped a plughole's dying gurgle. His eyeballs bulged from their thick collars like handcuffed whoopee cushions.

I watched from some fifteen yards east of the islet. Glancing down, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the black water: a goddamn will o' the wisp, glowing like radium.

The arteries unwound like whip tails and snapped back into the worm thing's gut. Benson reached up with stumpy fingers and tested his neck.

'You're a b-b-bastard, sir.'

'Flattery is like a hen's egg filled with fog, Benson, but all the same I crave it. When the Fleshbroker's gaudy demise frees we two from this sorry dance, I'll be sure to grant you dominion over some scummy desert planet in the Lower Realms.'

Benson dragoned smoke from the ample chambers of his snout. 'You don't have that authority, sir.'

Arteries squelched and ruptured as the eely man-wig folded its tangled arms, limbs skeining together. 'But I will, Benson. But I will. Mark my mischief ' by the turn of the next chilltide, Brahmini Jones will have been dashed into non-existence against the rocks of his own ambition, and you and I shall be free.'

'Freedom's nothing b-b-but b-b-boredom's b-b-blandest flavour, sir.'

'And what would a dust-witted flunkey know of freedom, eh?'

'The little I read in b-b-books, sir.'

The jaw yawned bear trap wide, laughter clanging from beneath the players' feet. 'Your cynicism is out of place in one so transparently cretinous.'

'Idiots are easily pleased, sir. The universe is a dull place for those with the wit to diagnose its few and repetitive games. Even surreality gets tedious after a couple of viewings ' there's only so many apple-headed doppelgangers and pocketwatches drooping like flubbed pancakes a hellish minion can take.'

'And what of power? You're not tickled by the prospect of demanding giant tributes made from ice that melt faster than your frantic serfs can sculpt them?' A chuckle welled up and the water round the islet bubbled in farty amusement.

Benson sighed. 'Oppress one sentient lifeform and you've oppressed them all, sir.'

'Has an eternity of damnation really left you so jaded?' The creature's arms slurped apart. 'Is there nothing that makes your blackened faux-heart beat with a little more urgency?'

Benson appeared to ponder for a moment, then said: 'The ChronoEschaton, sir.'

The jaw froze like a nude graverobber caught in a dozen sets of headlights. Mist wafted across the islet.

'Yes,' Benson purred, warming to the topic, 'I find myself drawn ever closer b-b-by its queer gravity, like an iron b-b-bee to a magnetic rose. It's the one thing that might grant me an instant of happiness¦ then snatch it away again, of course.' He licked his lips and shivered.

A hiss thrummed through the board. 'It's just as I feared, Benson. You are an irredeemable moron.'

Benson permitted himself a sine wave smirk. 'Fear is the closest thing to interesting I've ever encountered, sir. I take it talk of chronophysics and all its attendant paradoxes make you feel a little queasy.'

'My murderous rage marinates sublimely in your insolence, underling. Were you more than an Outer Circle drudge and worth the slew of lawsuits and reparation hearings endemic to exterminating a fellow paramortal whilst under contract I might crunch your eyes like cocktail onions and pour hot soup into the raw maroon sockets ' as it is, I tolerate your spectacularly dim fantasies of ending Time itself purely for my own convenience. The Chess Clause ' and indeed the entire contract ' becomes null and void should either of the signatories perish, at which point I shall be free to transform your heart into a gravity well and sman gently as you implode.'

'Not if you're the one to perish, sir.'

'There's more chance of a flung puppy evolving wings before it splats against the ravine's distant floor than of that wretched Arsebroker outliving my bad self. You are a chump, Benson. You shame sentience.'

'Fickle, sir,' Benson sniffed.

'Explain.'

'Just a moment ago you were offering me lordship over an entire people. Perhaps you understand now why thinking creatures b-b-bore me to the core.' He eyed the shifting wormy visage before him. 'I know, sir, I ought to b-b-be more positive, b-b-but I'm afraid this paradigm's glued to my face. Insight's a curse, sir ' like having your eyelids torn off.'

The flesh islet gurgled. 'Well, if you're so bloody all-knowing, you ought to win this game then, oughtn't you? Eh?'

Benson propped an elbow against the board and perched his chin upon his jag-knuckled fist. The pieces were tendons wound round finger bones. He slid a knobbly clot-speckled rook the length of the board.

'Checkmate, I b-b-believe,' he announced.

'What?' The knotty man-facsimile shifted in its seat. The head sloughed forward, scrutinising the board through eyeless indentations. 'This can't be right¦ I don't¦' The tangle of arteries shifted from side to side, shedding fat droplets of blood. 'I'm not even in check! What in Jenkins' name are you playing at, Benson?'

'I lied, sir. Classic minion trick. Notorious for it, we are. Remember how Doomlord Plantagenet described us in his inaugural speech? "A b-b-bunch of b-b-bastards, he said, "who ought to b-b-be herded into the nearest vortex and applauded as they b-b-burst in droves. He would've done it too, if Hell wasn't so reliant on us luckless b-b-buggers for clerical support. I suppose even Grand High Daemons b-b-balk at the thought of infernal vaulted hallways stuffed to the giddy rafters with unfinished paperwork.'

'Work? Ha! You're as idle as a turd bobbing in a pond! I'd wager you've never countersigned a damnation in the whole long loaf of your cruddy existence! Do I read you right, Benson? Are you useless as a shortwave transceiver on a donkey?'

'Gherkins are nature's way of saying the universe has run out of ideas. We're all of us redundant, sir.'

'Where you see redundancy, I see a billion nascent catastrophes and some karmically-challenged git running figures of eight with his head ablaze.' A black and pungent tongue swung from the hanging jaw, licking the upper row of brittle brown incisors. 'You dough-hearted saps round the bottom of the daemonic pecking order all suffer from the same fug-headed malaise ' your souls don't house enough hate to light a candle, let alone bathe whole continents in invective-laced magma and explode stars for a bit of a hoot. If you can't see the attraction in flinging a meteorite at a monastery then I boggle that you're here at all and not drifting through some higher plane convening with the good and gaseous.'

'I've no paucity of hatred, sir.' Benson let his wrecking-ball head loll back. 'It's merely undergone a radical diffusion. The universe offers such a vast range of targets I don't even know where to b-b-begin.'

'Drop an anvil on a gran!' crowed the islet. 'Tip a country forty-five degrees and watch its occupants tumble caterwauling into the drink! Lay a trail of pies and tempt gluttons to their grisly deaths beneath the hooves of racehorses! Throw crabs! Flood non-corporeal realms with cupboards! Contaminate a whole planet's wine with teeth! Rewrite a culture's literature so every book begins: "You're still going to die, you know. Dangle golden paradises and see taut-jowled acolytes wipe out whole races! Side with imbeciles and tweak the learned with scalding tongs! Slay anyone without a hat! Set fire to birds!'

Benson stifled a yawn. 'All b-b-been done, sir. Maranaloka roadtested the b-b-bird thing years ago. Got ruined b-b-by ubiquity. B-b-big let down. Some technically-minded jackass b-b-built an avian conflagration machine and lit up the entire winged population overnight. Now you see them everywhere. No worth in it ' not even ironic value.'

'I ought to have known better than to try and goad a doorknob into singing opera.'

'Not in the Outer Circles, sir. No one does surreality like the Fringe Planes.'

'Ach, Benson ' you make my viscera ache like a cracked headstone. Enough of nouns; you spit them like fire-crumbs. It's far too early in the season for such heady affectations ' cease them at once.' A glinting sphere the size of a pearl rose from the creature's heaving flesh-cable midriff on a fluted plinth of veins. 'I'm using the acquiescence orb.' A few turquoise sparks snicker-snacked from the jaw as the sentence ended.

Benson opened his mouth. His lower lip juddered a series of false starts while his brow flexed like a trampoline in profile.

'Seriously?' he tried at last.

'Absolutely,' the worm-thing shot back. 'I'm pulling rank.'

'Naturally.' Benson rubbed his chin for a moment. 'Very b-b-bastardish.'

'Quite.' The acquiescence orb purred gently in a writhing bloodpaw.

'B-b-bastardish and b-b-boring. Unoriginal. B-b-been done b-b-before b-b-by b-b-better, uh¦' His face puckered with vexation. 'B-b-by b-b-better, uh¦ uh¦ b-b-by¦'

'You know Benson, I grow tired of consonants. Excise them from your speech.'

Benson gritted his snaggle teeth. 'Aaaooo ei eee oo a?'

'To remind you of the gaunt, lowly nook you occupy within this gargantuan nefarious hierarchy, Benson. I suffer your existence as the plummeting boulder tolerates the picnicking family in its shadow. I am due a vertiginous increase in fortunes any day now ' you would do well to prostrate yourself before me, weeping with reverence.'

'Aaa aa.'

'That's better. Observe me and grow paunchy with apposite scams. When Jones is no more than a smattering of legal loose ends, it may amuse me to leave you intact. I am quite the turbulent sack of whimsy, Benson ' the perfect temperament for an aspiring deity, don't you concur?'

'Aaa.'

'Just imagine the lovely shape their desperate worship 'll assume, hmm? All hail High Tetradaemon Hedges, proud Grandpappy of Underspace!' The water erupted in snorkely guffaws.

My surroundings flickered then buckled. Objects sighed out of focus until the flesh islet was no more than a pink astigmatic blob. If I'd had any discernable stomach I guess it would have chosen this juncture to divulge its darkest secrets. My thoughts riffled like a card deck. Somewhere, a goat was giving birth.

* * *

For as long as I can remember I've always felt like someone else was pulling the strings. I don't believe in fate, you understand ' I've just noticed that everything in Maranaloka seems suspiciously stage-managed.

Buzzing filled my ears. I came round spreadeagled. My skull felt slummy and vandalised.

'Aha ' the Chief, I presume?' Brahmini's plummy voice ping-ponged through the humid air. 'It is you, isn't it?'

I sat up and my brain capsized. Lime green stars burst across my field of vision and I had a fine old time dry gagging at my lap like a hoarse rooster. Existential terror's no match for half an hour of violent nausea ' compared to rocking baffled and sick the black void of oblivion seems welcoming as a long steaming bath in a darkened room.

When I looked around, I noticed that the ceiling, walls and floor were coated in coarse bristles. The window was a giant compound eye. I glared at the Fleshbroker.

'We're inside a huge inverted fly, Jones. You better have a damn good explanation.'

Brahmini leant over his escritoire eagerly, fingers threaded. 'Chief?'

'Who were you expecting ' an unlikely historical figure?'

Brahmini's snout ganglia fluttered like windswept Timothy grass. 'Mystified to see you've come round, Solicitor.'

'How long was I out?'

'A few minutes. Long enough for that darned insect of yours to infect the ecology of my precious niche and send the whole shebang scatty.' He pointed at a twitching hairy leg that protruded from the ceiling. 'Correcting this abomination will cost me a pretty penny.'

Through the washed out remnants of a migraine I recalled the conversation upon which I'd inadvertently snooped. 'You know, Jones ' I had this dream, and I think-'

'Do I look the kind of being who mistakes a farting arse for a rose and wastes a whole afternoon sniffing his way into some flatulence-induced coma? Be off with you! Head back to Maranaloka and find me the box!'

'But I heard some daemon planning to-'

'Yes, yes, truly fascinating I'm sure.' Brahmini swatted away my protests. 'I once dreamt that my eyes had turned to cereal. Crunchy blinks aren't the half of it, believe you me. Chillingly prophetic, no doubt.'

I juddered to my feet. 'Don't you want me to sign something?'

Brahmini Jones reclined in his chair. His eyeballs whirled then settled on a pair of vast olive green pupils ringed with cinnamon.

'You'll be back,' he cooed, sickle-grinned with anticipation.

'Wise guy.' I made the passes and was out of there.

* * *

Phasing back into Maranaloka I found the alley full of lights and Two Blade engaging a hooker in noisy debate over a rat's capacity for complex logical thought. A candle-toting crowd spectated as Two Blade tried a dozen or more feints and ruses in his efforts to make her back down from her position of hard scepticism. You've got to wonder what kind of sick and desperate sonofabitch 'd lay beside a streetwalker so damn ignorant about rodents. Still, Two Blade's 'they chitter in algebra' diatribe was enough to make me declare the whole tawdry episode a draw. The hooker slinked off cussing a blue streak and Two Blade sank back exhausted.

I rewarded him with a nod. 'Guten tag, Herr Zweiklinge. Was ist passiert?'

'Heya heya heya Chief ' thought you'd left me to the ladies of the night for a while there.'

'Just taking care of business, my child.'

'Sure thing.' Two Blade glanced up at the smog-smeared sky. 'We better get greedy with the speedy if we're going to stay on schedule, huh?'

'You're damn tooting, Teeb.' I flattened down my rags and prepared to move.

'Oh yeah,' gasped Two Blade suddenly. 'I got the skinny from the BabbleNet.' He tapped the tiny antennae poking out from behind his right ear.

'And?'

'We got ourselves a confounding factor.'

'Explain.'

'Somebody knows we're in town.' Two Blade's voice dipped to a whisper. 'Word is a hitman's been hired to track us down and divest us of various favourite organs.'

'Nothing we can't handle, right?'

Two Blade looked me right in the eye. 'It's Klaus Firework, Chief. And apparently he's really pissed off.'

'Teeb?'

'Yeah Chief?'

'What would you do if you only had one more day to live?'

Two Blade stroked his chin. 'Well, uh¦ I guess I'd pull off the greatest heist in Maranaloka history, then get ripped to gory tickertape by the city's most notorious bounty hunter.'

I affected a feeble smile. 'Snap.'