Luka And The Fire Of Life Part 2

The new river was s.h.i.+ning in the silver sunlight, s.h.i.+ning like money, like a million mirrors tilted towards the sky, like a new hope. And as Luka looked into the water and saw there the thousand thousand thousand and one different strands of liquid, flowing together, twining around and around one another, flowing in and out of one another, and turning into a different thousand thousand thousand and one strands of liquid, he suddenly understood what he was seeing. It was the same enchanted water his brother, Haroun, had seen in the Ocean of the Streams of Story eighteen years earlier, and it had tumbled down in a Torrent of Words from the Sea of Stories into the Lake of Wisdom and flowed out to meet him. So this was it had to be what Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa had called it: the River of Time itself, and the whole history of everything was flowing along before his very eyes, transformed into s.h.i.+ning, mingling, multicoloured story streams. He had accidentally taken a stumbling step to the right and entered a World that was not his own, and in this World there was no River Stinky but this miraculous water instead.

He looked in the direction the river was flowing, but a mist sprang up near the horizon and obscured his view. 'I can't see the future, and that feels right,' Luka thought, and turned to look the other way, where the visibility was good for some distance, almost as far as he could see, but the mist was back there, too, he knew that; he had forgotten some of his own past and didn't know that much about the universe's. In front of him flowed the Present, brilliant, mesmerising, and he was so busy staring at it that he didn't see the Old Man of the River until the long-bearded fellow came right up in front of him holding a Terminator, an enormous science-fiction-type blaster, and shot him right in the face.

BLLLAAARRRTT!.

It was interesting, Luka thought as he flew apart into a million s.h.i.+ny fragments, that he could still think. He hadn't thought that thinking would be a thing you would be able to do when you had just been disintegrated by a giant science-fiction-type blaster. And now the million s.h.i.+ny fragments had somehow gathered together in a little heap, with Bear the dog and Dog the bear crying out in anguish beside it, and now the million fragments were joining up again, making little s.h.i.+ny sucking noises as they did so, and now pop! here he was, back in one piece, himself again, standing on the Bund next to n.o.bodaddy, who was looking amused, and the Old Man of the River was nowhere to be seen.

'Luckily for you,' said n.o.bodaddy pensively, 'I gave you a few courtesy lives to start you off. You'd better collect some more before he returns, and you'd better work out what to do about him, too. He's a bad-tempered old man, but there are ways round him. You know how this goes.'

And Luka found that he did know. He looked around him. Dog the bear and Bear the dog had already started work. Bear was digging up the whole neighbourhood, and sure enough there were bones to be found everywhere, little crunchy bones, worth one life, that Bear could grind up and swallow in a trice, and bigger bones that took some hauling out of the earth and quite a lot of crunching up, that were worth between ten and one hundred lives apiece. Meanwhile, Dog the bear was off in the trees lining the Bund, looking for the hundred-life beehives hidden among the branches, and, on the way, swatting down and gobbling up any number of golden, single-life bees. Lives were everywhere, in everything, disguised as stones, vegetables, bushes, insects, flowers, or abandoned candy bars or bottles of pop; a rabbit scurrying in front of you could be a life and so might a feather blowing in the breeze right in front of your nose. Easily found, easily gathered, lives were the small change of this world, and if you lost a few, it didn't matter; there were always more.

Luka began to hunt. He used his favourite tricks. Kicking tree stumps and rustling bushes were always good. Jumping into the air and landing hard on both feet shook lives down from the trees, and even made them tumble, like rain, out of the empty air. Best of all, Luka discovered, was punching the peculiar, round-bottomed, ninepin-like creatures who were hopping idly around the high Strand, the elegant, tree-shaded walkway on top of the Bund. These creatures did not fall over when you kicked them, but wobbled violently from side to side instead, giggling and shrieking with pleasure, and crying out in a kind of ecstasy, 'More! More!' while the lives Luka was looking for scurried out of them like s.h.i.+ny bugs. (When the Punchbottoms had run out of life-bugs, they said mournfully, 'No more, no more,' hung their little heads, and bounced shamefacedly away.) When the lives Luka found landed on the Bund, they took the form of little golden wheels and immediately began to race away, and Luka had to chase them down, taking care not to fall off the Strand into the Waters of Time. He grabbed lives in great handfuls and stuffed them into his pockets, whereupon, with a little ting ting, they dissolved, and became a part of himself; and this was when he noticed the change in his eyesight. A little three-digit counter had somehow become lodged in the top left-hand corner of his field of vision; it was there, in the same place, no matter where he looked or how hard he rubbed his eyes; and the numbers kept going up as he swallowed, or absorbed, his many lives, making, he was sure, a low whirring noise as they did so. He found that he could accept this new phenomenon easily enough. He would need to be able to keep score, because if he ran out of lives, well, the game would be over, and maybe also that other kind of life, the real one, the one he would need as and when he got back to the real world, where his real father lay asleep, desperately needing his help.

He had collected 315 lives (because of the three-digit counter in the top left of his personal screen, he guessed that the maximum number he could collect was probably 999) when the Old Man of the River came up on to the Strand again, with his Terminator in his hand. Luka looked around panicked for somewhere to hide, and at the same time tried desperately to remember what his father had told him about the Old Man, who, it seemed, was not just one of Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa's inventions after all or else he was here in the World of Magic because because Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa had made him up. Luka remembered the way his father told the tale: Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa had made him up. Luka remembered the way his father told the tale: 'The Old Man of the River has a beard like a river, It flows right down to his feet.

He stands on the Strand with a gun in his hand, The nastiest Old Man you could meet.'

And here indeed was that very Old Man with his long white river-beard and his enormous blaster, coming out onto the riverbank, climbing up the Bund to the Strand. Luka did his very best to summon back the memory of what else the Shah of Blah had told him about this malevolent river-demon. Something about asking the Old Man questions. No, riddles riddles, that was it! Ras.h.i.+d loved riddles; he had tormented Luka with riddles day after day, night after night, year after year, until Luka had become good enough to torment him back. Ras.h.i.+d would sit each evening in his favourite squashy armchair and Luka would jump onto his lap, even though Soraya scolded him, warning that the chair wasn't strong enough to take their combined weight. Luka didn't care, he wanted to sit there, and the chair had never broken, or not yet, anyway, and all that riddling was about to come in handy after all.

Yes! The Old Man of the River was a riddler, that was what Ras.h.i.+d had said about him; he was addicted to riddling the way gamblers were addicted to gambling or drunkards to drink, and that was how to beat him. The problem was how to get close enough to the Old Man to say anything when he had that Terminator in his hand and looked determined to shoot on sight.

Luka dodged from side to side, but the Old Man kept coming right at him, and even though first Bear the dog and then Dog the bear tried to get in the way, a couple of BLLLAAARRRTT BLLLAAARRRTTs blew them to pieces and obliged them to wait until their bodies regrouped; and a moment later, Luka, too, had been blasted again, and had to go through the whole business of flying apart into a million s.h.i.+ny fragments and joining up again, making those little sucking noises, feeling relieved that losing a life wasn't the same thing as dying. Then it was back to life-gathering, but this time Luka had made a note of the exact point on the Bund where the Old Man came into view before he hopped up onto the Strand; and once he was up to six hundred lives he stopped collecting, positioned himself, and waited.

No sooner had the Old Man's head come in to view than Luka yelled at the top of his voice, 'Riddle-me-riddle-me-ree!' Which, he knew from his evenings with Ras.h.i.+d, was the time-honoured way of challenging a riddler to a battle. The Old Man of the River stopped in his tracks, and then a big, nasty smile spread across his face. 'Who calls me?' he said in a cawing cackle of a voice. 'Who thinks he can outplay the Ratselmeister, the Roi des enigmes, the Pahelian-ka-Padishah, the Lord of the Riddles? do you know what you risk? do you understand the wager? the stakes are high! could not be higher! look at you, you're nothing, you're a child; I don't even know if I want to face you no, I won't face you, you are not worthy oh, very well, if you insist and if you lose, child, then all your lives are mine do you understand? all your lives are mine all your lives are mine. The final Termination. Here, at the beginning, you will meet your End.'

And this is what Luka could have said in reply, but did not, preferring to remain silent: 'And what you don't understand, you horrible Old Man, is that, in the first place, it's my father who is the Riddle King, and he taught me everything he knew. What you further don't understand is that our riddle battles went on for hours and days and weeks and months and years, and therefore I have a supply of tough brain-twisters that will never run out. And what you don't understand most of all is that I've worked out something important, namely that this World I'm in, this World of Magic, is not just any old Magical World, but the one my father created not just any old Magical World, but the one my father created. And because this is his his Magic World and n.o.body else's, I know secrets about everything in it, including, O terrible Old Man, about you.' Magic World and n.o.body else's, I know secrets about everything in it, including, O terrible Old Man, about you.'

What he actually said aloud was this: 'And if you lose, Old Man, then you will have to Terminate yourself, not just temporarily, but once and for all.'

How the Old Man laughed! He guffawed until he wept, not only from his eyes but through his nose as well. He held his sides and leapt from side to side, and his long white beard cracked in the air like a whip. 'That's a good one,' he said finally, panting for breath. 'If I lose. That's priceless. Let's begin.' But Luka wasn't going to be fooled that easily. Riddlers are tricksters, he knew that much, and you had to nail down the deal before you began the battle, or they would try to wriggle out of it later on. 'And if you lose, you will do as I have said,' he insisted. The Old Man of the River made a peevish face. 'Yes, yes, yes,' he replied. 'If I lose I will Self-Terminate. Auto- Terminate. Termination of Me by Me will Occur. Hee, hee, hee. I'll blast myself to bits.' 'Permanently,' Luka said firmly. 'Once and for all.' The Old Man grew serious and his face coloured unpleasantly. 'Very well,' he barked. 'Yes. Permanent Termination if I lose; in a word, Permination Permination! But as you are about to discover, child, I'm not the one who is about to lose all his lives.'

Bear and Dog were in a state of high agitation, but now Luka and the Old Man were circling each other, staring each other down, and it was the Old Man who spoke first, in a hard greedy voice pus.h.i.+ng roughly through teeth that seemed hungry to eat up little Luka's life.

'What goes round and round the wood but never goes into it?'

'The bark of the tree,' said Luka at once, and shot back, 'It stands on one leg with its heart in its head.'

'Cabbage,' snapped the Old Man. 'What is it that you can keep after giving it to someone else?'

'Your word. I have a little house and I live in it alone. It has no doors or windows, and to go out I must break through the wall.'

'Egg. What do you call a fish without an eye?'

'A fsh. What do sea monsters eat?'

'Fish and s.h.i.+ps. Why was six afraid of seven?'

'Because seven eight nine. What has been there for millions of years but is never more than a month old?'

'The moon. When you don't know what it is then it's something, but when you know what it is then it's nothing.'

'That's easy,' Luka said, badly out of breath. 'A riddle.'

They had been circling faster and faster, and the riddles had been coming at greater and greater speed. This was just the beginning, Luka knew; soon the number riddles would start, and the story riddles. The difficult stuff still lay ahead. He wasn't sure if he could last the course, so the thing was not to let the Old Man dictate the pace and manner of the contest. It was time to play the joker in the pack.

He stopped circling and put on his grimmest expression. 'What,' he asked, 'goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?'

The Old Man of the River stopped circling, too, and for the first time there was a weakness in his voice and a tremble in his limbs. 'What are you playing at?' he demanded feebly. 'That's the most famous riddle in the world.'

'Yes, it is,' said Luka, 'but you're stalling for time. Answer me.'

'Four legs, two legs, three legs,' said the Old Man of the River. 'Everyone knows this one. Ha! It's the Oldest One in the Book.'

('The she-monster known as the Sphinx,' Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa used to tell Luka, 'sat outside the city of Thebes and challenged all the travellers who pa.s.sed by to solve her riddle. When they failed, she killed them. Then one day a hero came by and knew the answer.' 'And what did the Sphinx do then?' Luka asked his father. 'She destroyed herself,' Ras.h.i.+d replied.

'And what was the answer to the riddle?' Luka asked. But Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa had to admit that, no matter how many times he learned the blasted story, he could never remember the solution to the riddle. 'So that old Sphinx,' he said, not very sadly, 'she'd have eaten me up for sure.') 'Come on,' Luka said to the Old Man of the River. 'Your time's up.'

The Old Man of the River looked around in panic. 'I could just blast you anyway,' he said.

Luka shook his head. 'You know you can't do that,' he said. 'Not now. Not any more.' Then Luka allowed his expression to become a little dreamy. 'My father could never remember the answer, either,' he said. 'And this is my father's World of Magic, and you are his Riddle Man. So you can't know what he couldn't recall. And now you and the Sphinx must share the same fate.'

'Permination,' the Old Man of the River said softly. 'Yes. That is just.' And without more ado, and quite unsentimentally, he lifted his Terminator, set the dial on maximum, pointed the weapon at himself, and fired.

'The answer is a man,' Luka said to the empty air, as the tiny, s.h.i.+ning smithereens of the Old Man blew away into nothingness, 'who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks upright as a grown-up, and uses a stick when he's old. That's the answer: a man. Everyone knows that.'

The departure of the Gatekeeper at once unveiled the Gate. A trellised stone archway wreathed in bougainvillea flowers magically appeared on the edge of the Bund, and beyond it Luka could see an elegant flight of stairs leading down to the river's edge. There was a golden b.u.t.ton set in the archway's left pillar. 'I'd push that if I were you,' suggested n.o.bodaddy. 'Why?' Luka asked. 'Is it like ringing a doorbell to be invited in?' n.o.bodaddy shook his head. 'No,' he said patiently. 'It's like saving your progress so that the next time you lose a life you don't have to come back here and fight the Old Man of the River all over again. He may not fall for your little trick next time, either.' Feeling a little stupid, Luka pushed the b.u.t.ton, and there was a little answering piece of music, the flowers around the archway grew larger and more colourful, and a new counter appeared in Luka's field of vision, this time in the top right-hand corner, a single-digit counter, reading '1'. He wondered how many levels he would have to surmount, but after his foolishness about the Save b.u.t.ton, he decided this was not the moment to ask.

n.o.bodaddy led the boy, the dog and the bear down the Bund to the left bank of the River of Time. Punchbottoms bounced up towards the travellers, hoping to be kicked 'Ooch! Ouch! Ooch!' they squeaked in happy antic.i.p.ation but everyone's attention was elsewhere. Bear and Dog were both talking at once at the tops of their new voices, half excited, half terrified by Luka's battle against, and victory over, the Old Man of the River, and there were so many how hows and what whats and wow wows and eek eeks in their chatter that Luka couldn't begin to reply. And anyway, he was exhausted. 'I need to sit down,' he said, and his legs gave way beneath him. He landed with a thump in the riverside dust, and it rose up around him in a little golden cloud, which quickly formed itself into a creature, like a tiny living flame with wings. 'Feed me and I live,' it said hotly. 'Give me water and I die.'

The answer was obvious. 'Fire,' Luka said quietly, and the Fire Bug grew agitated. 'Don't say that!' it buzzed. 'If you go shouting fire fire at the top of your voice somebody will probably come running with a hose. Too much water around here for my liking anyway. Time to be off.' 'But wait a minute,' Luka said, excited in spite of being so tired. 'Maybe you're what I've been looking for. Your light is so beautiful,' he added, thinking that a little flattery might not hurt. 'Are you ... is this ... could you be part of ... a bearer of ... the Fire of Life?' at the top of your voice somebody will probably come running with a hose. Too much water around here for my liking anyway. Time to be off.' 'But wait a minute,' Luka said, excited in spite of being so tired. 'Maybe you're what I've been looking for. Your light is so beautiful,' he added, thinking that a little flattery might not hurt. 'Are you ... is this ... could you be part of ... a bearer of ... the Fire of Life?'

'Don't mention that,' said n.o.bodaddy quickly, but it was too late.

'How do you know about the Fire of Life?' the Fire Bug wanted to know, becoming cross. Then it turned its displeasure upon n.o.bodaddy. 'And you, sir, as far as I can see you should be somewhere else entirely, with something else entirely to do.'

'As you see,' n.o.bodaddy said to Luka, 'Fire Bugs' temperament is, well, a little heated. Nevertheless, they do perform a minor, useful function, spreading warmth wherever they go.'

The Fire Bug flared up at that. 'You want to know what bugs me?' it said indignantly. 'n.o.body's friendly about fire. Oh, it's fine in its place, people say, it makes a nice glow in a room, but keep an eye on it in case it gets out of control, and always put it out before you leave. Never mind how much it's needed; a few forests burned by wildfires, the occasional volcanic eruption, and there goes our reputation. Water, on the other hand! hah! there's no limit to the praise Water gets. Floods, rains, burst pipes, they make no difference. Water is everyone's favourite. And when they call it the Fountain of Life! bah! well, that just bugs me to bits.' The Fire Bug dissolved briefly into a little cloud of angry, buzzing sparks, then came together again. 'Fountain of Life, indeed,' it hissed. 'What an idea. Life is not a drip. Life is a flame. What do you imagine the sun sun is made of? is made of? Raindrops? Raindrops? I don't think so. Life is not wet, young man. Life I don't think so. Life is not wet, young man. Life burns burns.'

'We must be going now,' n.o.bodaddy interjected, ushering Luka, Bear and Dog along the riverbank. To the Fire Bug he said, politely, 'Farewell, bright spirit.'

'Not so fast,' the Fire Bug blazed. 'I sense something smouldering here, under the surface. Somebody here, namely that individual there ' and it pointed a little finger of flame at Luka 'said something about a certain Fire whose very existence is supposed to be a Secret, and somebody else here, namely myself, wants to know how this other Somebody found out about it, and what this Somebody's plans might be.'

n.o.bodaddy placed himself between Luka and the Bug. 'That will do, you Insignificant Inflammation,' he said in an altogether sterner voice. 'Be off with you! Sizzle till you fizzle!' He took off his panama hat and waved it in the incandescent insect's direction. The Fire Bug flared up, offended. 'Don't trifle with me,' it cried. 'Don't you know you're playing with Fire?' Then it burst into a bright cloud, singed Luka's eyebrows slightly, and vanished.

'Well, that hasn't made things any easier,' said n.o.bodaddy. 'All we need is for that dratted Bug to raise the Fire Alarm.'

'The Fire Alarm?' asked Luka. n.o.bodaddy shook his head. 'If they know you're coming, your goose is cooked, that's all.'

'That's not good,' said Luka, looking so dejected that n.o.bodaddy actually put an arm around his shoulder. 'The better news is that Fire Bugs don't last long,' he consoled the young fellow. 'They blaze brightly, but they burn out young. Also, they blow with the wind. This way, that way; it's in their nature. No constancy of purpose. So it isn't very likely that he'd make it all the way to warn,' and here n.o.bodaddy's voice trailed off into silence.

'To warn whom?' Luka insisted.

'The forces that must not be warned,' n.o.bodaddy replied. 'The flame-breathing monsters and fire-starter maniacs who wait upriver. The ones you have to get past, or be destroyed.'

'Oh,' said Luka bitterly. 'Is that all? I thought you meant there might be a serious problem.'

The River of Time, which had been flowing silently along when Luka first set eyes on it, was now bustling with activity. All manner of strange creatures seemed to be afloat upon it and bobbing up from below the surface strange, but familiar to Luka from his father's stories: long, fat, blind, whitish Worms who, as n.o.bodaddy reminded him, were capable of making Holes in the very fabric of Time itself, diving below the surface of the Present to re-emerge at an impossibly distant point in the Past or Future, those mist-shrouded zones which Luka's gaze could not penetrate; and pale, deadly Sickfish, who fed upon the lifelines of the diseased.

Running along the bank was a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and looking worriedly at a clock. Appearing and disappearing at various points on both banks was a dark blue British police telephone booth, out of which a perplexed-looking man holding a screwdriver would periodically emerge. A group of dwarf bandits could be seen disappearing into a hole in the sky. 'Time travellers,' said n.o.bodaddy in a voice of gentle disgust. 'They're everywhere these days.'

In the middle of the river all sorts of bizarre contraptions some with bat-like wings that didn't seem to fly, others with giant metal machineries aboard like the innards of an old Swiss watch were circling uselessly, to the rage of the men and women aboard them. 'Time machines are not as easily built as people seem to think,' n.o.bodaddy explained. 'As a result many of those would-be intrepid explorers just get stuck in Time. Also, on account of the odd relations.h.i.+p between Time and s.p.a.ce, the people who do manage to time-jump sometimes s.p.a.ce-jump at the same time and end up' and here his voice grew darkly disapproving 'in places where they simply don't belong. Over there, for example,' he said as a raucous DeLorean sports car roared into view from nowhere, 'is that crazy American professor who can't seem to stay put in one time, and, I must say, there is an absolute plague of killer robots from the Future being sent to change the Past. Sleeping there under that banyan tree' he jerked a thumb to indicate which tree he meant 'is a certain Hank Morgan of Hartford, Connecticut, who was accidentally transported one day back to King Arthur's Court, and stayed there until the wizard Merlin put him to sleep for thirteen hundred years. He was supposed to wake up back in his own time, but look at the lazy fellow! He's still snoring away, and has missed his Slot. Goodness knows how he will get home now.'

Luka noticed that n.o.bodaddy was not as transparent as he had been a while earlier, and also that he was sounding and acting more and more like the over-talkative Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa, whose head was always full of all sorts of nonsense. 'Time,' he was singing under his breath, 'like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away ...' That did it. That was all Luka was prepared to hear. As if it wasn't bad enough that this, this creature from the Nether World was slowly filling up with more and more of his beloved father, which meant, of course, that Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa, Asleep in his bed at home, was getting emptier and emptier; and that as n.o.bodaddy's Ras.h.i.+d-ness increased Luka was confusingly filled with emotions of fondness for him, even of love; but now the strange ent.i.ty in his father's vermilion bush s.h.i.+rt and panama hat had actually started singing in Ras.h.i.+d's unbearable singing voice, the second-worst singing voice in the known world, second only to the fabled tuneless tones of Princess Batcheat of Gup. And what a song to choose! 'They fly forgotten, as a dream ' '

'We're wasting Time,' Luka interrupted n.o.bodaddy angrily. 'Instead of singing that stupid hymn, how about suggesting a way for us to travel up into the Fog of the Past and find what we're here to find ... i.e. the Dawn of Time, the Lake of Wisdom, the Mountain of Knowledge, and the '

'Shh,' said Bear the dog and Dog the bear together. 'Don't say it aloud.' Luka flushed a deep red at his near-mistake. 'You know what I mean,' he finished, much less commandingly than he had intended.

'Hmm,' said n.o.bodaddy thoughtfully. 'Why don't we use, for example, that incredibly powerful-looking, off-the-road-worthy, river-worthy, strong-as-a-tank, and possibly even jet-propelled, eight-wheeled-slash-flat-bottomed amphibian vehicle moored to that little pier over there?'

'That wasn't there a minute ago,' said Dog the bear.

'I don't know how he did it,' said Bear the dog, 'but I don't like the look of it.'

Luka knew that he couldn't afford to pay attention to his friends' worries, and marched down to the enormous craft, whose name, written in bold letters on the stern, was the Argo Argo. His father was fading as n.o.bodaddy solidified, and as a result the quest had become even more urgent than before. Luka's head was full of questions to which he did not know the answers, difficult questions about the nature of Time itself. If Time was a River, eternally flowing and here it was, here was the River of Time! did that mean that the Past would always be there and the Future, too, already existed? True, he couldn't see them, because they were wreathed in mists which could also be clouds, or fog, or smoke but surely they had to be there, otherwise how could the River exist? But on the other hand, if Time flowed like a River, then surely the Past would have flowed away already, in which case how could he go back into it to find the Fire of Life which burned in the Mountain of Knowledge which stood by the Lake of Wisdom which was illumined by the Dawn of Days? And if the Past had flowed away, then what was back there at the River's source? And if the Future already existed, then perhaps it didn't matter what he, Luka, did next, because no matter how hard he was trying to save his father's life, maybe Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa's fate had already been decided. But if the Future could be shaped, in part, by his own actions, then would the River change its course depending on what he did? What would happen to the story streams it contained? Would they start telling different stories? And which was true: (a) that people made history, and the River of Time in the World of Magic recorded their achievements, or (b) that the River made history, and people in the Real World were p.a.w.ns in its eternal game? Which World was more real? Who was finally in charge? Oh, and one more question, maybe the most pressing one of all: how was he going to control the how was he going to control the Argo Argo? He was a twelve-year-old boy who had never driven a car or stood at the helm of a motorboat; and Dog and Bear were no use, and n.o.bodaddy had stretched out on the deck, put his panama hat over his face, and closed his eyes. He was a twelve-year-old boy who had never driven a car or stood at the helm of a motorboat; and Dog and Bear were no use, and n.o.bodaddy had stretched out on the deck, put his panama hat over his face, and closed his eyes.

'Okay,' thought Luka grimly, 'how hard can it be?' He stared at the instruments on the bridge. There was this switch, which probably put the wheels down for driving on when the Argo Argo was on land, or up when the was on land, or up when the Argo Argo hit the water; and this b.u.t.ton, which was pretty obviously green for 'go', and this one next to it, which was just as self-evidently red for 'stop'; and this lever, which he should probably push forward to go forward, and maybe push further forward to go faster; and this wheel, which would do the steering; and all those dials and counters and needles and gauges, which he could probably just ignore. hit the water; and this b.u.t.ton, which was pretty obviously green for 'go', and this one next to it, which was just as self-evidently red for 'stop'; and this lever, which he should probably push forward to go forward, and maybe push further forward to go faster; and this wheel, which would do the steering; and all those dials and counters and needles and gauges, which he could probably just ignore.

'Hold on, everybody,' he announced. 'Here goes.'

Something then happened so rapidly that Luka was not entirely sure how or what it was, but an instant later the jet-propelled amphibian craft was flipping over and over in the middle of the great waterway and then they were all in the water and a whirlpool was sucking them down and Luka just had time to wonder whether he was about to be eaten by a Sickfish or other watery beast when he lost consciousness, and woke up a moment later back at the little pier, climbing into the Argo Argo, thinking 'How hard can it be?' and the only sign that something had happened was that the counter in the top left-hand corner of his field of vision had gone down by one life: 998. n.o.bodaddy was snoozing on the deck of the Argo Argo again, and Luka called out, 'A little help?' But n.o.bodaddy didn't move, and Luka understood this was something he would have to work out for himself. Perhaps those dials and gauges were more important than he had thought. again, and Luka called out, 'A little help?' But n.o.bodaddy didn't move, and Luka understood this was something he would have to work out for himself. Perhaps those dials and gauges were more important than he had thought.

On the second try he managed not to turn the Argo Argo over, but he didn't get far before the whirlpool started up and whirled the craft around and around. 'What's happening?' Luka yelled, and n.o.bodaddy lifted his panama hat and replied, 'It's probably the Eddies.' But what were the Eddies? The over, but he didn't get far before the whirlpool started up and whirled the craft around and around. 'What's happening?' Luka yelled, and n.o.bodaddy lifted his panama hat and replied, 'It's probably the Eddies.' But what were the Eddies? The Argo Argo was spinning faster and faster, and in a minute it would be sucked down again. n.o.bodaddy sat up. 'Hmm,' he said. 'Yes. The Eddies are definitely in the neighbourhood.' He looked down into the water, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, 'Nelson! Duane! Fisher! Stop playing now! Go torment somebody else!' But then the was spinning faster and faster, and in a minute it would be sucked down again. n.o.bodaddy sat up. 'Hmm,' he said. 'Yes. The Eddies are definitely in the neighbourhood.' He looked down into the water, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, 'Nelson! Duane! Fisher! Stop playing now! Go torment somebody else!' But then the Argo Argo was pulled underwater, and there was the blackout again, and they were back at the pier with the counter at 997. 'Fish,' said n.o.bodaddy briefly. 'Eddyfish. Small, speedy rogues. Causing whirlpools is their favourite sport.' 'And what's to be done about them?' Luka wanted to know. 'You have to work out how it is,' n.o.bodaddy said, 'that people manage to reach back into the Past.' was pulled underwater, and there was the blackout again, and they were back at the pier with the counter at 997. 'Fish,' said n.o.bodaddy briefly. 'Eddyfish. Small, speedy rogues. Causing whirlpools is their favourite sport.' 'And what's to be done about them?' Luka wanted to know. 'You have to work out how it is,' n.o.bodaddy said, 'that people manage to reach back into the Past.'

'I guess ... by remembering it?' Luka offered. 'By not forgetting it?'

'Very good,' said n.o.bodaddy. 'And who is it that never forgets?'

'An elephant,' said Luka, and that's when his eye fell upon a pair of absurd creatures with duck-like bodies and large elephant heads who were bobbing about in the water not far from the Argo Argo's mooring. 'And,' he said slowly, remembering, 'here in the World of Magic, an Elephant Bird as well.'

'Full marks,' n.o.bodaddy replied. 'The Elephant Birds spend their lives drinking from the River of Time; n.o.body's memories are longer than theirs. And if you want to travel up the River, Memory is the fuel you need. Jet propulsion will do you no good at all.'

'Can they take us as far as the Fire of Life?' Luka asked.

'No,' said n.o.bodaddy. 'Memory will only get you so far, and no further. But a long Memory will get you a long way.'

It would be difficult, Luka realised, to ride on the Elephant Birds the way his brother Haroun had once ridden on a big, telepathic, mechanical hoopoe; for one thing, he wasn't sure that Bear and Dog would be able to hold on. 'Excuse me, Elephant Birds,' he called out, 'would you be so good as to help us, please?'

'Excellent manners,' said the larger of the two Elephant Birds. 'That always makes such a difference.' He had a deep, majestic voice; obviously an Elephant Drake, Luka thought. 'We can't fly, you know,' said the Drake's companion in ladylike tones. 'Don't ask us to fly you anywhere. Our heads are too heavy.'

'That must be because you remember so much,' Luka said, and the Elephant Duck preened her feathers with the tip of her trunk. 'He's a flatterer, too,' she said. 'Quite the little charmer.'

'You'll be wanting us to tow you upriver, no doubt,' said the Elephant Drake.

'You needn't look so surprised,' said the Elephant Duck. 'We do follow the news, you know. We do try to keep up.'

'It's probably a good thing they don't bother with the Present where you're going,' added the Elephant Drake. 'Up there they only interest themselves in Eternity. This may give you a helpful element of surprise.'

'And if I may say so,' said the Elephant Duck, 'you're going to need all the help you can get.'

A short while later the two Elephant Birds had been harnessed to the Argo Argo and began pulling it smoothly upstream. 'What about the Eddies?' Luka wondered. 'Oh,' said the Elephant Drake, 'no Eddyfish would dare trifle with us. It would be against the natural order of things. There is a natural order of things, you know.' His companion giggled. 'What he means,' she explained to Luka, 'is that we eat Eddyfish for breakfast.' 'And lunch and dinner,' said the Elephant Drake. 'So they give us a wide berth. Now then: where was it you wanted to go? No, no, don't remind me! Ah, yes, now I recall.' and began pulling it smoothly upstream. 'What about the Eddies?' Luka wondered. 'Oh,' said the Elephant Drake, 'no Eddyfish would dare trifle with us. It would be against the natural order of things. There is a natural order of things, you know.' His companion giggled. 'What he means,' she explained to Luka, 'is that we eat Eddyfish for breakfast.' 'And lunch and dinner,' said the Elephant Drake. 'So they give us a wide berth. Now then: where was it you wanted to go? No, no, don't remind me! Ah, yes, now I recall.'

4.

The Insultana of Ott.

The Mists of Time were getting closer when the Argo Argo pa.s.sed a strange, sad land on the River's right bank. Its territory was barred to River travellers by high barbed-wire fences, and when Luka did finally see a scary-looking border post, with its floodlights on high pylons and its tall reconnaissance towers containing lookout guards wearing mirrored sungla.s.ses and carrying powerful military binoculars and automatic weapons, he was struck by a large sign reading pa.s.sed a strange, sad land on the River's right bank. Its territory was barred to River travellers by high barbed-wire fences, and when Luka did finally see a scary-looking border post, with its floodlights on high pylons and its tall reconnaissance towers containing lookout guards wearing mirrored sungla.s.ses and carrying powerful military binoculars and automatic weapons, he was struck by a large sign reading YOU ARE AT THE FRONTIER OF THE RESPECTORATE OF I. MIND YOUR MANNERS YOU ARE AT THE FRONTIER OF THE RESPECTORATE OF I. MIND YOUR MANNERS. 'What kind of a place is this?' he asked n.o.bodaddy. 'It doesn't look very Magical to me.'

n.o.bodaddy's expression contained a familiar mixture of amus.e.m.e.nt and scorn. 'I'm sorry to say that the World of Magic is not immune to Infestations,' he said. 'And this part of it has been overrun, in recent times, by Rats.'

'Rats?' Luka cried in alarm, and now he realised what was wrong with those lookouts and border guards. They weren't people at all, but giant rodents! Dog the bear growled angrily, but Bear the dog, who was a gentle-hearted soul, looked upset. 'Let's move on,' he suggested quietly, but Luka shook his head. 'I don't know about anyone else, but I'm starving,' he said. 'Rats or no Rats, we have to go ash.o.r.e, because we all need something to eat. Well, all of us except you,' he added to n.o.bodaddy in an aside. n.o.bodaddy shrugged Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa's familiar shrug and smiled Ras.h.i.+d Khalifa's familiar smile and said, 'Very well, if we must, we must. It's been a while since I pa.s.sed through the O-Fence.' He saw Luka's frown and explained, 'This barbed-wire contraption. The O-Fence goes all around the Respectorate of I it gives the place, you could say, its I-dent.i.ty and, as the sign warns you, many of its present occupants take Offence very sharply indeed.'

'We don't plan to be rude,' Luka said. 'We just want lunch.'

The four travellers entered the border post, leaving the Argo Argo in the care of the Elephant Drake and Elephant Duck, who pa.s.sed the time diving for Eddyfish and other morsels. Inside the border post, standing at a counter behind a locked metal grille, was a large grey Rat in uniform: a Border Rat. 'Papers,' it said in a squeaky, Ratty voice. 'We don't have any papers,' Luka honestly replied. The Border Rat went into a frenzy of screeches and squawks. 'Absurd!' it finally yelled. 'Everybody has papers of some sort. Turn out your pockets.' And so Luka emptied his pockets and found there, among the usual clutter of marbles, swap cards, elastic bands and game chips, three sweets still in their wrappers and two small, folded paper airplanes. 'I never heard anything so rude,' the Border Rat cried. 'First he says he has no papers. Then it turns out he has papers. You're lucky I'm the understanding kind. Hand over your papers and be grateful I'm in such a good mood.' n.o.bodaddy nudged Luka, who regretfully handed over the swap cards, the airplanes and the orange sweets in their transparent wrapping. 'Will that do?' he asked.' 'Only because I'm the forgiving type,' the Border Rat replied, pocketing the objects carefully. He unlocked the grille and allowed the travellers to pa.s.s through to the other side. 'A word of warning,' he said. 'Here in the Respectorate we expect visitors to behave. We're very thin-skinned. If you p.r.i.c.k us, we bleed, and then we make you bleed double: is that clear?' in the care of the Elephant Drake and Elephant Duck, who pa.s.sed the time diving for Eddyfish and other morsels. Inside the border post, standing at a counter behind a locked metal grille, was a large grey Rat in uniform: a Border Rat. 'Papers,' it said in a squeaky, Ratty voice. 'We don't have any papers,' Luka honestly replied. The Border Rat went into a frenzy of screeches and squawks. 'Absurd!' it finally yelled. 'Everybody has papers of some sort. Turn out your pockets.' And so Luka emptied his pockets and found there, among the usual clutter of marbles, swap cards, elastic bands and game chips, three sweets still in their wrappers and two small, folded paper airplanes. 'I never heard anything so rude,' the Border Rat cried. 'First he says he has no papers. Then it turns out he has papers. You're lucky I'm the understanding kind. Hand over your papers and be grateful I'm in such a good mood.' n.o.bodaddy nudged Luka, who regretfully handed over the swap cards, the airplanes and the orange sweets in their transparent wrapping. 'Will that do?' he asked.' 'Only because I'm the forgiving type,' the Border Rat replied, pocketing the objects carefully. He unlocked the grille and allowed the travellers to pa.s.s through to the other side. 'A word of warning,' he said. 'Here in the Respectorate we expect visitors to behave. We're very thin-skinned. If you p.r.i.c.k us, we bleed, and then we make you bleed double: is that clear?'

'Absolutely clear,' said Luka politely.

'Absolutely clear what?' the Border Rat screeched.

'Absolutely clear, sir sir,' n.o.bodaddy answered. 'Don't worry, sir. We will most definitely mind our p's and q's. Sir.'

'What about the other twenty-four letters of the alphabet?' asked the Border Rat. 'You can do a lot of damage with those, and never use a q or a p.'

'We'll mind the other letters also,' said Luka, adding, quickly, 'sir.'

'Are any of you female?' the Border Rat abruptly demanded. 'That dog, is she a b.i.t.c.h? That bear, is she a ... bearess? A bearina? A bearette?'

'Bearina indeed,' said Dog the bear. 'Now I'm the one that's offended.'

'And I,' said Bear the dog. 'Not that I have anything against b.i.t.c.hes.'