#331: Yet More Untold Tales of Ghost Taxis: Fare Play
Go straight to Part One: The Rules Debate
Go straight to Part Two: Garbage In, Garbage Out
Go straight to Part Three: How Does Your Garden Grow?
Go straight to Part Four: The Red Tower of Vesalia
Previously: Lair Legionnaire Nats (Bill Reed) has accidentally gained ownership of the Ghost Taxi Co., a mystic organisation currently facing hostile take-over by the sinister Westminster Necropolis Company. The very souls of Nats’ employees hang in the balance. So naturally Bill calls in some help…
#329: Untold Tales of the Ghost Taxis
#330: More Untold Tales of the Ghost Taxis: Road To Nowhere
Other previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom.
Descriptions of cast at Who's Who in the Parodyverse.
Locations explained in Where's Where in the Parodyverse.
***
1. The Rules Debate
“Okay,” sighed Vinnie De Soth as he looked at the people assembled around the abandoned warehouse off Kapitz Street. “I’m really, really sorry about this. I’d like to apologise in advance.”
“He’s the sorcerer supreme now, right?” Nats checked nervously. “And he’s saying sorry to us. Xander the Improbable never said sorry to us.”
“Not even for that things at Mumphrey’s Christmas bash,” agreed Dancer, “The time where Con Johnstantine stole my underwear. One of the times.”
“Guys,” prompted Hatman, pointing to the nervous acting sorcerer supreme. “I think you might be putting Vinnie off his game a little.
“Um…” said Vinnie.
“Sorry, Vinnie,” Dancer said, a little shamefacedly. “Xander never blushed furiously when he had to speak in front of large numbers of people.”
“Just imagine everybody’s stark naked,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! advised De Soth. “I always do.”
Vinnie glanced over at the Manga Shoggoth and winced.
“Maybe if you were to put your head in a paper bag?” suggested Icy. The visiting snowman had been dragged along by Yuki Shiro and he was keen to be helpful. “I tried it that one time but the bag got all soggy and disintegrated. But some people say it can be very comforting. The bag I mean. Not the disintegration.”
“Disintegration has its charms too,” bubbled the Manga Shoggoth.
“It’s fine,” Vizh tried to comfort the nervous jobbing occultist. “Just try not to start singing ‘I’m Henry the Eighth I Am’. That’s my key tip. Oh, and check that your pants are on.”
“I’m really really sorry,” repeated Vinnie De Soth. “But not quite as much now, so thanks for that.”
“Also you should make sure you’ve emptied the paper bag first,” offered Icy. “Otherwise you have to spend an hour or so getting grocery out of your snow head.”
“But at least the frozen stuff didn’t thaw out,” offered Dancer brightly.
“We still haven’t quite worked out how Icy appears to cause localised temperature and humidity shifts inside an enclosed n-space transient environment,” Al B. Harper noted. “Every time I ask him for a sample he just snowballs me.”
“As if you hadn’t learned about asking for samples after that time with the Shoggoth,” chided the Librarian. “We’re still trying to get the molecules in Lab Three to come down off the ceiling.”
“The briefing,” Hatman steered the Lair Legion. “Don’t make me loose Yuki on you.” He glanced across the warehouse to where the dark funeral-suited agents of the Westminster Necropolis Company waited without moving. Many of them didn’t appear to even be breathing. “You don’t see those guys bantering away when we’re waiting for the big plot revelations.”
“You don’t see those guys having their own ongoing series either,” countered CSFB. “But hey, it’s your call, o glorious leader.”
“Tell us now,” Yuki advised Vinnie. “While there’s a lull in the dialogue.”
Vinnie took a deep breath and began. “There’s this challenge,” he explained. “You all know by now one of Paradopolis’ weird occult manifestations is the Ghost Taxi Company, a mobile supernatural event formed through a series of arcane convergences that aren’t fully understood unless you’re Xander the Improbable.”
“Which you’re not,” Icy clarified helpfully. “You’re Vinnie De Soth. You’re Vinnie, this is Hatty, that’s CSFB! and Yuki and the Shoggoth and Vizh and Al B. and Dancer and the Librarian and Nats, and I’m Icy. Over there are some scowling baddies and…”
“Well, it’s good that we have somebody else around to footnote the obvious,” Al B. muttered to the Librarian. “Saves you getting all the exposition dialogue.”
“I do more than the references,” Lee Bookman objected. “I also do the background research that tends to save the day at the end.” He glanced across at Al B., “I also don’t go evil every so often.”
“I prefer to think of it as otherly moralled,” the archscientist shrugged. “Anyway, I didn’t destroy any worlds, did I?”
“So” Vinnie interrupted, clenching his teeth together, “The charter given to the Ghost Taxi Company by the Triumvirate is pretty clear about the terms of their continued existence. They have to have a mortal anchor, an owner with psionic and necromantic potential, who acts as the conduit through which they can still interact with the material realm.”
A young woman with curly ginger hair escaping from a taxi driver’s baseball cap nodded. “That was my dad,” said Rosalind ‘Roswell’ Fellkirk. “He took over the firm back in ’87. We’ve been running it ever since.” She glared over at Vinnie then beyond him to the agents of the Westminster Necropolis Company. “Guess I’m not psychic enough to satisfy some people.”
“But Nats is,” Al B. recognised. “His whole flying power is psychokinetically based and he absorbed the psionic spoor of the alien psychostave so…”
“Exposition,” the Librarian interrupted, disguising it as a cough.
“I just wanted an apartment,” Bill Reed, the newly returned hero known as Nats objected. “Maybe something with its own bath. I never wanted to be the new MD of some Ghost Taxi firm.”
Mr Wormcallow of the Necropolis Company smiled a parchment smile. “If that is the case then I have papers here to ensure a smooth and mutually satisfying transaction of assets.”
“Hey, nobody is getting any satisfaction just yet!” Dancer objected.
“And it’s not often she says that,” Vizh added. “Sorry. I miss Lisa. Sometimes the jokes just have to come out.”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! faced the mortician. “We’re the Lair Legion,” he insisted. “When we’re involved nothing goes smooth.”
“What he said,” agreed Yuki with a sigh.
Hatman glared across at the operative of the WNC. “Since the guy you’re trying to acquire the taxis for is the demon lord Sage Grimpenghast we’re not exactly keen to see this hostile takeover succeed,” he warned.
“And your moms dress you funny,” added Nats.
“So in cases like this where there is contested jurisdiction of paranormal estates there are procedures to resolve a dispute,” Vinnie persisted. He was rapidly learning that you had to struggle on as acting sorcerer supreme or the Parodyverse just rolled right on over you. “In fact there’s a contest.”
“Based upon the Third Age Nirvarnic Conventions of the Host Interregnum,” the Librarian noted. He exchanged a defiant glare with Al B.
“A contest?” Hatman frowned. “Wait a minute! We’ve done one of these before! Back in India, on the world tour!”
“The Rakshasa games!” Visionary shuddered. “I still have nightmares! Although Woopsa still sends me a Ramadan card.”
“We get to fight the Westminster Necropolis Company?” checked Yuki.
“You get to compete with them,” clarified Vinnie. “Basically this is a scavenger hunt. You chase after five maguffins of doom. Whichever team gets the most of them back here wins.”
Yuki saw a tiny glimmer of smugness cross Mr Wormcallow’s face. She didn’t like it.
“What are we looking for?” asked Vizh. He’d got a sinking feeling about all of this.
Vinnie held out his fists. In each hand were five index cards. “Split into teams,” he told them. “The Lair Legion are the defenders, so they can use the Ghost Taxis for travel if they need to.”
“At a discounted fare,” interjected Roswell. “Slightly discounted.”
“The Westminster Necropolis Company already have their Hearses of Misery,” footnoted the Librarian.
“Magic,” muttered Al B. darkly.
“All you have to do is find the item then get it back here and hand it to me,” Vinnie explained. “Of course, some of these things are going to be a bit difficult to locate and harder to acquire.”
“I love party games,” enthused Icy.
“I tried Blind Man’s Bluff once,” the Shoggoth reminisced. “It turns out I’m bad at bluffing.”
Hatman quickly divided up the teams. “Me and Dream. Vizh, Icy. Yuki, Al B. Librarian and Dancer. Shoggoth, Nats.” He paused for the inevitable celebrations and expressions of dismay then went on, “All of you keep in touch with Hallie if you can.”
“But not in a Vizh kind of way.” Yuki couldn’t resist the comment. It was just a shame the possibly-fake man wasn’t eating or drinking this time.
“I’m going with Bill Reed,” announced Roswell. “As his driver. And to keep an eye on him, because if he screws this up and destroys my father’s life work and damns everyone I care about to servitude with the WNC I’ll need to be close by to kill him.”
“Seems fair,” considered Yuki Shiro.
“As long as it doesn’t hurt him,” added Icy judiciously.
“Are there written rules?” demanded the Librarian. “Only I’d quite like a copy for the files.”
“Is it too late for me to call Donar to sub for me?” checked Visionary.
“Does nobody care that magic makes no damn sense at all?” grumped Al B. Harper.
“Can we start?” Dancer asked. “Only those Necropolis guys will probably explode if they have to try and be any creepier.”
“Fine,” agreed Vinnie De Soth. “The challenge of oneric transcendence will begin.” He raised his fists. “Pick a card. Any card.”
***
2. Garbage In, Garbage Out
“Mobile Anti-Superhero Hazard Elimination Robots… destroy them!” shouted Stillwell Crothers, President of ZOXXON Oil’s Biodiversity Recycling Division.
Hatman and CrazySugarFreakBoy! glanced around them as the six gleaming killer machines rose up from the swamp around them. Then they grinned.
“Dude, there’s six robots,” Dreamcatcher Foxglove pointed out to the cackling ZOXXON officer. “Six. Would you like us to wait here while you send for reinforcements?”
Hatman swapped out the Sherlock Holmes cap that had led them to this illegal waste dumping operation in the Wookiegetlucky wetlands for something a little more physical. “Call off your tin toys, Crothers,” the leader of the Lair Legion warned. “You’re going down.”
“Destroy them now!” howled Mr Crothers, gesturing with his finger to indicate exactly which pair of meddling superheroes he wanted eradicating from the planet. In these days of corporate bonus cutbacks he had targets to meet.
“We gave him the chance,” Hatty noted to his old crimefighting partner. “Now we do it the satisfying way!” His pitching cap gave him the power to pick up CrazySugarFreakBoy! and hurl him hard straight at the first robot.
“Wheeeeeee!” shrieked the wired wonder as he caroomed off the first mechanoid, tumbling it backwards. “This guy really didn’t do his homework did he?” CSFB!’s impossibilitium body magnified the kinetic impact with the MASHER and hurtled him into the next one harder, and the third one harder still. “Doesn’t he know who we are? The team supreme? The brave and the boastful? The world’s famousest?”
“I’d say not,” Hatman agreed. The capped crusader donned his Hurricanes cap and battered down the site security guards and their recovered Parody Master weaponry. “We beat the bad guy who had this stuff made. We’re not going to give up against some guy in a Wall Street three-piece who got second-hand alien tech at Factor X’s garden sale.”
CSFB! continued his frenetic bouncing between the confused MASHERs, hammering between them like a fluorescent pinball off ever-more-battered bumpers. “It’s not like these robots even get a footnote in the list of bad guys we’ve taken down,” Dream mocked. “Whose idea was it to paint them dull green to strike terror into the hearts of their enemies? You guys would make the Decepticons cry!”
Hatman spotted the incoming hovertank and flew through it with his Torpedos hat. CSFB! seemingly exploded in a shower of silly string that clogged the MASHERs together and set them up for the moment where their weaponry hammered into each other. Hatman flattened their remains with the tank.
CSFB! somersaulted into Stillwell Crothers, knocking him down into the mud and ruining a $5000 suit. “What’s up, Doc?” the embodiment of chaos asked the corporate raider. “You do know that dumping waste in a federally protected zone of environmental significance is a naughty thing to do, right?”
“Illicit disposal of toxic and radioactive materials from the sites of the nuclear fallout from the Parody War,” Hatman frowned, approaching the fallen executive. “The EPA fines alone are going to cost your bosses half a billion dollars.”
Crothers sneered up at the capped crusader and the sucrose superhero. “You have no proof of anything!” he crowed. “This operation is wholly owned by LargeCo, a former subsidiary of ZOXXON Oil which is now completely independently run with no ties whatsoever. There is no link back to my former employers and no liability other than to an asset-stripped shell company.” The businessman smirked. “As of thirty seconds ago. Computers.”
“Really?” Hatman responded as CSFB! dragged Crothers from the mud and patted him down to get the slime off him. “Hallie?”
The Lair Legion’s resident artificial intelligence appeared on Hatman’s comm-card. “Hi, Jay. Yes, they tried the old retrospective asset transfer subroutine. I blocked the whole transaction cycle and traced the property and finance chain right back to ZOXXON’s central division. I’ve already called Garrick for the subpoenas and placed a hold on thirty-two hidden accounts ZOXXON had squirreled away while they appealed for presidential bail-outs.”
Crothers suddenly stopped smirking. CSFB! dropped him back in the swamp.
“You’re busted,” Hatman told the executive. “And I don’t just mean your wind-up robot toys.”
“Wait!” Crothers gurgled, turning an odd shade of puce. “It doesn’t have to be like this. You could be rich…”
“Sure we could,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! agreed. “You should see the income I pass on to charity for my condoms franchise, for example, and that’s just the start of my CrazySugarSexToys! Line, as endorsed by my mom and her business associates, including such primo-quality shtuppwear as…”
“Later,” Hatman interrupted with a shudder. “Much, much later. Really later.” He turned back to Crothers. “For now we just want to trace one particular bit of junk you happen to have illegally dumped here.”
Crothers didn’t follow. “What?”
CSFB! gestured round to the desolate basin that had once been a thriving living swampland. “Somewhere in this cess pit you’ve made you dumped some rubble from a clean-up contract you took in Paradopolis. You cleared the wreckage from a battle of ours at a nightclub called the Willow. You hauled it away. We want it back.”
“Specifically we’re looking for something that was in the rubble of Camellia of the Fay’s mystic stronghold,” Hatman clarified. “An item called the Amulet of Lost Souls.”
“I don’t know…” stammered Crothers. “We just dump stuff…”
CSFB! hogtied the executive with silly string and dumped him back in the mire. “I guess it’s plan B then,” Dream said.
“Guess so,” Hatman agreed. He dug deep into his multi-dimensional Hatility Belt and pulled out a badly-knitted homemade bobble-cap. He touched it with thoughtful affection then carefully placed it on his head. His whole body language changed.
“Which way?” CSFB! asked.
“That way,” Hatty answered. His voice had a soft southern drawl to it. “About three hundred yards, about fifteen feet down. Ah can get at it with my miners hat.” He hastily pulled the bobble cap from his head and stared at it. “I still miss Whitney,” he admitted. “I’ve got to return this to her sometime.”
“But you’ve gotta admit that even when she’s not here she’s one helluva Sorceress,” admitted CrazySugarFreakBoy!
Hatman carefully returned the cap to his belt. It wasn’t exactly a traditional witch’s hat, but then Whitney Darkness wasn’t exactly a traditional witch. The strange nostalgic sense of her presence left the capped crusader and he set off through the swamp to the location he’d sensed before.
“What about me?” wailed Crothers.
“The cops’ll be along to arrest you shortly, bozo,” CSFB! promised him.
“But I’m sinking!”
“Better hope they don’t stop for donuts on the way then. Bye!”
Hatman and CrazySugarFreakBoy! made their way through the swamp.
“Any sign of the opposition yet?” Jay Boaz asked his partner. “The Westminster Necropolis Company have magicians on tap too. If they have someone this close then they’d be able to fix the Amulet’s location as well, even through the background interference of the Nexus of Unrealities.”
The Wookiegetlucky Swamp was the focal point for a series of tangled multi-planar events that made Earth the current narrative centre of the Parodyverse. As such it could be a weird place to travel through. When Dreamcatcher Foxglove gazed at the tangled undergrowth through his Gawker Goggles on their supernatural spectrum setting things got really trippy. “Holy Ditko!” he muttered to himself.
“Over here!” Hatman called. “They’ve dumped a cache of debris in this mud pool. It’s not a job for my miners hat. Too wet. I think it’ll have to be the Beavers.” He glanced over at CSFB! “Let’s assume you already did the joke, okay?”
“Okay. But you have to assume it was pretty damn funny and cracked you up even though you’re a stuffy born-again Canadian.”
Jay dragged his Beavers hat on, took a breath, and plunged down into the foetid pool.
The foetid pool rose up around him, clamping him tight in solidified garbage as it formed into a towering humanoid shape. All the breath was squeezed out of Hatman’s body as the thing rose from the swamp.
“Trespassers!” hissed the trash giant. “Pissants stealing the source of my powers! Crapsack does not like trespassers!”
“Crapsack?” CSFB! blinked for a moment. “Oh, Crapsack! Sentient garbage-based supervillain from Young Heckfire that got promoted to being guardian of the Nexus of Unreality! You can manifest anywhere on the planet through any pile of reuse and shape and control it as you want.”
“Crapsack knows what Crapsack can do! Crapsack is going to squash you like bugs.”
Hatman fumbled for his Blasting Cap before he blacked out.
“Dude, we totally don’t need to fight,” CSFB! called to the towering trash-heap. “We’re not gonna harm the Nexus. We just want some abandoned doohickey from the heap of crap somewhere around your butt area and we’re out of here.”
“You steal Crapsack’s crap!” thundered the monster of detritus. “You stop men who bring Crapsack more power!”
Hatman blasted away a chunk of Crapsack’s chest and rolled free. “Okay, we do this the hard way then,” he announced.
CrazySugarFreakBoy! bounced in, bracketing Crapsack with fizz-bang whizz-bangs then popping bottles of rocket fuel soda into the mountains of garbage. “This is kind of like fighting the Yurt with hygiene problems,” he noted.
“Last chance to back away, Crapsack!” Hatman warned, donning his Suns hat.
Crapsack abandoned humanoid form and fell upon them in a tidal wave of rubbish.
Hatman burned through the wall of detritus, incinerating the material to toxic gases. CrazySugarFreakBoy! somehow surfed the wave, narrowly avoiding being buried under ten feet of radioactive waste. He grabbed up Hatty as the capped crusader began to falter. Radical physical manifestations tended to exhaust Hatman after a short while.
Crapsack growled. Fifteen more giants of garbage rose from the devastated swamp. All of them were Crapsack, and all spoke in unison. “You people have no idea what I’m capable of! You people have no idea how powerful you’ve made me! But you will. You all will! One day I will bury you all and make this world my own!”
“We’ll get Amber our Admin gal to send you a booking form for your turn at world domination,” CSFB! promised him. “In the meantime how about you bite my…”
And then time stopped. CSFB! found himself strangely aware of it somehow, but unable to avoid the effect. He hung motionless in mid-bounce, Hatman clasped in his arms. Crapsack towered over him, unmoving.
Mr Mortlack of the Westminster Necropolis Company restoppered the bottle of timefreeze decanted many years earlier when Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity had held the Chronometer of Infinity. Mr Testament and his team of undertakers glided past the combat and carved their way into Crapsack to retrieve the Amulet of Lost Souls.
The mortician wiped off the faeces from the strangely-carved mithrum trinket and held it up to the light. It seemed to flicker and twist of its own accord. CSFB! thought he could hear distant anguished screaming.
Mr Mortlack raised his old-fashioned top hat at the time-locked heroes. Mr Testament spoke. “You could pursue us, of course. Your driver, Mr Levi, could attempt to follow us along the paths we travel. Or you could assist the children of Nansosket Elementary School, three miles from here on the edge of the swamp. I understand that they have just experienced a sudden incursion of flesh-eating zombies and are all about to die in horrible grotesque ways. It’s entirely your choice. Good day, gentlemen.”
The Westminster Necropolis Company returned to their hearse and drove away.
Time reasserted itself. Hatman dragged on his Tornados hat and surrounded the Crapsacks, dragging them together and spinning them high into the air.
“Hat, we got zombies at a school three miles from here!” CSFB! called over the tempest. “Meanwhile the creepy bad guys are getting away with the maguffin of doom. No more Gwen Stacies!”
“Agreed,” boomed Hatman through the tempest. “You take the WNC. I’ll take the school.”
“And Crapsack?”
Hatman whirled the detritus-shapes of the Nexus guardian ever more fiercely. “He’s going to the school to help in his own special way,” promised the capped crusader. “Let’s see how the walking dead get on with five hundred tons of crap.”
“Take photos for later, buddy!” grinned CSFB! He twirled impossibly quickly and fired a single strand of silly-string impossibly far and fast to snag the vanishing hearse. The black vehicle dragged him along behind it as it disappeared into dreary dimensions.
The Hat-tornado rose high over the swamp, dragging Crapsack with it, then bent away towards the nearest civilisation, where death stalked the innocent.
Jericho Levi watched the heroes vanish from the drivers seat of his Ghost Taxi. “I’ll, um, just keep the meter running then, shall I?” he asked hesitantly.
***
3. How Does Your Garden Grow?
Visionary shifted uncomfortably in the back of the yellow checker Ghost Taxi that appeared to be driving through solid matter. He had a nasty feeling that his coat was sticking to the seat. “So,” he remarked to the driver, “how is driving a phantom cab working out for you, then?”
Korvo glared back at Visionary through a greasy rear-view mirror. “It keeps my soul from being damned to eternal perdition – for as long as Sage Grimpenghast’s hostile takeover of my employer can be staved off. It’s slightly better than the howling pits of eternal pain. Slightly. Any more questions?”
“Isn’t it fun meeting so many new people as you drive them about?” asked Icy happily, oblivious to the driver’s gloomy malice. The snowman was drawing frost patterns on the rear passenger window.
“Aw, don’t mind Korvo,” the woman in the once-fashionable psychedelic sixties mini-dress told Vizh. “He was this depressing even before he died.”
Visionary nodded acknowledgement to Urthula Underess, party ghoul. He was very glad of her expert assistance in locating the Parchment Penitential but he wasn’t quite sure why she had to sit on his knee as she helped out.
“Do you enjoy helping people more than you enjoy seeing wonderful new places or the other way around?” Icy asked Korvo.
The cab screeched to a sudden halt. “We’re here,” growled the driver. “A tip isn’t optional.”
Visionary wiped a section of window clear of ice-drawings and peered out. The cab had halted on the stone quay of a deserted harbour. Cloudless blue skies shone down on a calm and glistening sea. “This isn’t Paradopolis.”
Urthula shifted her weight and slid herself off Vizh’s lap. “Of course it isn’t. This is a long way from Paradopolis. Across the sea.”
“I’ve always wanted to travel,” offered Icy. He slipped out of the other can door, handing Korvo a dollop of melting ice-sculpture by way of a thank-you. “This is a lovely place. Can you smell the flowers?”
“How does he smell?” Vizh demanded of Urthula. “Ignore the old joke. I mean really how does he smell? He’s got a carrot for a nose.”
“At first I thought he was an ice elemental,” the party ghoul admitted. “Then my guess was conceptual being. Now I’m just baffled. He’s cute, though.”
Visionary looked around. The land rose steeply away from a shingle beach up to a medieval castle or monastery. “Is that Mont St Michael?” he wondered.
Urthula shook her head. “Of course not. This is the place all those other castles-on-islands builders were subconsciously remembering when they made their strongholds. This is the mystic Isle of Avalot.”
“I get paid extra if I go out of state,” muttered Korvo.
“It’s never winter here,” Icy sensed. “Oh look, apple blossom!”
Vizh peered up at the castle. “I suppose there isn’t a chair lift up to there?” he guessed. “Any chance the people inside will be pleased to see us and give us a welcome feast and gift wrap this manuscript we’re looking for? Or will it be the usual torture dungeons and execution block?”
“Well, glad to see you, maybe,” Urthula considered. “I’d better stay here with Korvo. Lady Morgosa hasn’t quite got over that incident in a drinking club in Key West back in the 1930s. As if Earnest would ever have given her a sniff.”
Vizh tried to focus on the really relevant bits that could kill him. “Lady Morgosa?”
“Morgosa La Fey. She’s a legendary sorceress and a total bitch when she doesn’t get her own way.”
“Yeah, the general rule is that anyone whose name has the same rhythm as Cruella De Ville isn’t often a good guy.”
“We should go and see if we can cheer her up,” suggested Icy. “Like we did Mister Korvo.”
***
It was further up the steep winding pathways than Visionary had expected. Icy encouraged Vizh by frosting the track so it was possible to slide along. Or fall over.
“It’s a perfect day to visit an enchanted castle on a magic island though,” the snowman noted as he helped the possibly-fake man to his feet and dusted him down again. “You can see right to the hazy dimensional horizon today. And look at those horses harnessed to that old funeral wagon waiting in the courtyard.”
“The what now?” Vizh asked. He followed Icy’s stick-finger gesture and saw the Victorian coffin-dray with its black-plumed horses waiting beside the main doorway. “I’m thinking that the chances of that being just a coincidence are not too good.”
“Shall we go back and find them some apples?” Icy wondered. “Or is that just for living horses?”
Painted in discreet gold lettering along the side of the glass-walled wagon was The Westminster Necropolis Company.
“Whatever you tipped Korvo was too much,” muttered Visionary. “Right, let’s get into the castle and find out how we’re going to die.”
“Miss Underess said that you probably wouldn’t die right away,” Icy encouraged the possibly-fake man. “Unless Lady Morgosa wasn’t feeling horny.”
***
Lady Morgosa La Fey wore an elegant mantle of grey and blue silk and a pure white cloak with a deep hood. She greeted her guests on one of the many garden terraces that topped her castle. The higher the fortress rose the more it became a series of open arched chambers covered with verdant vegetation.
“This is pretty but odd,” Icy commented, looking round at the rich profusion of rare plants growing from beds and baskets. “Why isn’t there any fertiliser here? What does she feed these plants on?”
“Thanks for sharing that question with me,” shuddered Visionary. “Er, Lady Morgosa, you don’t know me but…”
“Visionatus Improbablus,” Morgosa identified him. “Founder of the Improbable College, Knight Submersible of the Kingdom of Sea Monkeys, Friend of the Nation of Badripoor, Vile Ravisher of the Lost Jewels of Caph, Consort to Her Grace, the Duchess of Lake Superior, Consort to Her Eminence, the Goddess of HTML, Founding Fuzzy Bunny and Official Champion Mongoose of the Happy Place, Headmaster of the Lair Legion Juniors Program, Leader of the League of Regulars, Former Leader of the Lair Legion, Former Commander in Chief of the United Armed Forces of Earth…”
“Who?” asked Icy, looked round confusedly for all the people.
“…Earth Ambassador to the Five Galaxies, Placeholder for the Apostate That Is To Come, Vassal to his Majesty, King Donar of Ausgard, Father of the Faerie Princess that shall be Heiress To the Many-Coloured Lands, Great Hindi God Koor Darson, Head of the Lair Pantheon, 310th Chronicler of Stories since time immemorial,” concluded Morgosa. “Yes?”
“I didn’t bring any business cards,” Vizh admitted. “But, um, some of that, maybe. Does that mean I don’t get tortured to death?”
“I’m Icy,” Icy told the immortal sorceress. “Hello.”
“I am pleased to have you on Avalot,” Morgosa told them. “More pleased than you can imagine. Come and view my gardens.”
Vizh trailed after the lady. “Actually we’re not here as tourists. And I think there may be a meter running somewhere. We’re really looking for this manuscript, this thing called…”
“The Parchment Penitential?” interrupted Morgosa La Fey. “Your rivals have reached here before you. Dr Misbegot and his assistant Maggot have already made the case for the Westminster Necropolis Company.” She turned and stroked long red-nailed fingers over Visionary’s face. “What are you offering?”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Icy told her with a sincere if coaly smile.
Morgosa paused in front of a lush bank of orchids. The scent was overpowering. “I don’t suppose that little undead trollop told you what other names the Parchment Penitential has, did she?” the mistress of Avalot challenged.
“Other names?” Vizh worried. “What other names?”
“Trollop?” Icy asked. “What’s a trollop?”
“Oh, the Parchment has many other titles,” Morgosa smiled. “But when you previously encountered it, it was referred to as the Book of Rude Names, the Necronastycon.”
Vizh sat back heavily, crushing a bank of begonias. “The Necronastycon? The sanity-mangling handbook of Fairly Great Old Ones? Nyalurkhotep’s personal blog?”
“The same,” agreed Dr Misbegot, appearing from an arbour of forget-me-nots and rue. “A wonderful read, although not for those of a squeamish disposition.”
Misbegot was impossibly gaunt and completely bald. Like all the WNC staff he wore black Victorian garb but he had enhanced the effect with golden pince-nez and a vulture-headed cane. Lurking in his shadow was a hunchbacked retainer that made Flapjack of the Carpathians look like Leonardo DiCaprio.
“Hello,” said Icy. “Do you know what a trollop is? Is it a kind of fish?”
“You’re from the Necropolis people,” Vizh guessed, looking at Misbegot and Maggot. “Well you can’t have the book, or the parchment or whatever. Not only do we need it for the Ghost Taxis but it’s too dangerous a thing to let an evil funeral firm wander off with it.”
Dr Misbegot polished his cane head. “And how do you propose to stop me, fake man?”
“He’s real, dammit!” objected Icy. “He eats trollop and everything.”
“As fascinating as this confrontation is,” interjected Morgosa, “I see no reason why I should offer the Many-Sided Manuscript to either of you. I went to considerable trouble to acquire the volume in which the Necronastycon has most recently manifested and nobody has given me any reason to simply give it up.”
“Recently manifested?” asked Vizh.
“The Book of Rude Names can only project itself into our reality in a peripheral manner,” lectured Dr Misbegot. “It does so by possessing some other volume and transforming it into the Necronastycon. If that host tome is destroyed then it manifests in another.”
“That certainly clears up some continuity issues that were bugging the Librarian,” admitted Visionary.
Misbegot went on. “As for compensation, dear lady, how would it be if I slaughtered this visitor of yours and raised him as your eternal undead slave?”
“You can’t do that!” Icy objected. “It would be mean. Where would Kerry steal credit cards from then?”
“Compensation-wise I can offer a pretty undead-free package,” Vizh cut in quickly. “And I don’t mean in the Lisa sense of package. But I could score you some great Xena DVDs and maybe delivery pizza? Or a guided tour of Bautista Enterprises Hawaii branch? Two tickets to Les Mis at the Badripoor Opera House?”
As they spoke Morgosa led them into the heart of her garden kingdom. On a weather-worn carved column a heavy tome lay open at a random page.
“Is that the Necronastycon?” Icy wondered. “Only I’d imagined it to have less pictures of garden furniture and lawn mowers in it.”
“But Cthonic garden furniture,” argued Misbegot. “Many-angled lawnmowers. It seems that on this occasion the Book of Rude Names has manifested through a gardening catalogue.”
“Indeed,” agreed Morgosa La Fey. “How do you think I have managed to grow my plants so very tall?”
The garden around Vizh and Icy began to rustle. And squirm.
“These are… Fairly Great Old Flowers?” Vizh realised.
“They are my babies,” Morgosa answered. “And they are hungry. Hungry for scholars of lore. Hungry for beings surplus to destiny.”
“But hunchback assistants don’t taste anything like as good,” Maggot added quickly. Then he leered at Morgosa, “Well, we do, but not when we’re swallowed that way.”
“Look,” Icy pointed, “all the bushes are moving.”
“Dark Shoots of Shrub-Niggeroth!” Dr Misbegot recognised. “Madame, I must object. I’ve come here with a perfectly reasonable offer, and the WNC’s patroness Madame Symmetry is now Shaper of Worlds…”
Morgosa pointed to the high arches where rotting undead ravens watched the plants snake forward. “What is the new Shaper of Worlds to one who was 299th Chronicler of Stories since time immemorial?” she challenged. “Why should I give up my treasures for some absurd ploy of Sage Grimpenghast’s? Let my babies feed!”
Dr Misbegot turned to Maggot. “Quick!” he called. “Release the necromantic signatures! Bring death to all! To all!”
Maggot winced. “I would, master, but there’s this plant growing right up inside me and I think I’m going to…” Then the hunchback exploded as leaves shot out through his skin and shredded his insides.
“That was far too intimate for a first date!” objected Vizh. “Listen, if I get impaled on your sodomy-trees then you’re going to have visits from some really annoyed Ausgardians and pure thought beings.”
“No-one comes to Avalot save with my consent,” Lady Morgosa boasted. “And now you are mine.”
“I came to Avalot with your consent,” Icy pointed out. “But I really don’t think you’re being a very good hostess.”
“Shred that pile of snow!” commended the sorceress. “Devour his master!”
“Now isn’t the time to find that my comm-card isn’t getting a signal,” Vizh worried. “Maybe if I topped up my credits?”
The Dark Shoots squirmed forward, their claw-like branches winding in with blood-hungry thorns. Morgosa threw back her head and laughed.
Icy grabbed a tendril and froze it. The ice spread right down the branch into the whole slithering bush, and from there to the adjacent Dark Shoots. It turned the ground as hard as iron and rimed the walls of the castle. It spread out over every surface, flash-freezing the gardens in a permanent display of iced wonderment.
“What?” demanded Morgosa, looking round. “How dare you…”
And then she too was frozen in place, a beautiful immortal enchantress in a column of ice.
The whole of Avalot became an iceberg, immobile and glorious, glistening under a wintery sun.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” said Visionary as Icy admired his handywork.
“Well, there was a lot of spare magic here,” the snowman answered. “And it does mean we’ve preserved all of this for eternity. Or at least until it thaws.”
“And how long might that be?”
“Not that long, I guess. Dr Misbegot and Lady Morgosa are both very powerful and I think they might be a little bit cross. And that book isn’t very happy either. It’s gnashing its index at me.”
“We’d better be going,” Vizh decided. “Can you, um, surround the Necronastycon in a really huge snowball so we don’t have to touch it?”
“I think so,” agreed Icy. “Although Mr Korvo won’t like it melting in his trunk.”
Visionary looked around at the frozen island. Already the first drips of thaw were beginning. “Right now I think Mr Korvo is the least of our problems,” he decided. “Let’s sled.”
***
4. The Red Tower of Vesalia
[This section follows after Al B. Harper #20: Family Ties]
“I’m only doing this as a favour for Roswell,” Myrna the caller told Al B. Harper and Yuki Shiro as she crunched the gearbox of the ghost taxi and shifted through the aethersphere on a vibrational frequency of 92.74 arcanocycles according to Al’s instrumentation. “I don’t usually drive these things, but we’re a little short of warm bodies at the moment. Cold bodies too, really.”
“How do people get to be ghost taxi drivers?” Yuki wanted to know. “What are the ghost taxis for?”
Myrna positioned her chewing gum on the sun-flap and flipped the bird at a passing poltergeist that cut her up. “Hey, I only work here,” she shrugged. “You wanna talk, ask Roswell. Her old man knew that kinda stuff. Me, I do dockets.”
“We’re riding on a transient parapsychic event,” Al B. noted. “It’s a little like the mechanism the Phantom Elevator used against us a while back, but this is a far more complex waveform. The psychic burn is immense.”
Myrna snorted. “Keep your geek-squee off my seat covers,” she ordered. “All I know is Roswell’s got us burning off years of stores of karmic transportation to get you guys so far from the Big Banana so its gotta be important. Don’t screw it up.”
“It’s not far now,” Yuki assured her. “The Saliva Spectacular has a very distinctive energy signature once you know what to look for. It’s about thirty clicks west from here.”
“Sure. Why not,” scorned Myrna, punishing the gearbox some more. “Nothing like a good spit hunt.”
“This is legendary stuff according to Hallie,” Al B. argued. “They were trying to create it right back in the days of the Improbable College.” He checked his travel bag. “I’ve got everything I need to analyse it right here, except maybe a spectro-sapidic vector quantifier. I’d better invent one. I brought some kit in case.”
“You mean you stole some of the Idiom’s equipment when we were breaking into her lab to use her global anomalous radiation detector,” Yuki accused.
“It wasn’t breaking in,” the archscientist objected. “If she’d wanted to keep me out she’d have used more than a five-phase quantum harmonic sequenced q-progression doorlock. That was just to keep the riff-raff away. She’ll totally understand. And anyway, it wasn’t her global anonymous radiation detector. She’d made it for Baroness von Zemo, so it was fair game.”
“Oh, well yeah, that is okay,” agreed Yuki. “Stop right here, Myrna. We’ve arrived. Somewhere.”
Myrna screeched to a sudden stop. Yuki caught Al as he headed towards the windshield.
“Cheez,” Myrna said, winding the window down and looking round. “Where is this place?”
Hot African air flooded into the cab, carrying the scent of jasmine and old jungle. Around the yellow checker ghost taxi great twisted banyan trees rose up to a high green canopy obscuring a yellow crescent moon. Around the trees were elegant carved structures, interlocking houses and towers of basalt and ivory surrounded by terraces and fountains.
Standing around on the balconies watching the newly-arrived hire vehicle were dozens upon dozens of apes; chimps in togas with gold-fringed hems; orang-utans in brightly-patterned robes and fezes; gorillas pointing death rays.
“Vesalia,” recognised Yuki. “The hidden African city of the sapient apes. The Legion’s been here before!”
“Hey,” warned Myrna, “if they throw poop on this cab I’m not the one cleaning it off.”
“These are highly civilised apes,” Yuki assured her, stepping out of the cab. “They even helped out at the end of the Parody War. We need to find Galor the Wise, or their head scientist Dr Zagus.”
“We need to go in that direction,” pointed Al B., distracted by his scanner. “That’s where the signal’s coming from. What’s over there?”
“That,” answered B’po, orang-utan bard-poet of the Vesalian Apes, “is the haunted Red Tower That None Dare Enter.”
Yuki sighed. “Of course it is.”
***
“No,” answered Galor the Wise, first amongst equals in the Vesalian senate, “I am certain that if top-hatted undead in a funeral vehicle had appeared in the streets of our city we would have heard of it. There is no way into our realm now save for those who can teleport and our instruments warn us of such things.”
“Really?” Al B. perked up and turned to Dr Zagus. “How do you filter out the background dimensional instability from tidal Negativity Zone Queasy Area matrixforms? I’ve been trying quantum resonance pattern recognisers buffered through a…”
“So no Westminster Necropolis Company yet,” Yuki cut in determinedly. “Fine. Now to the what-the-hell-is-a-haunted-Red-Tower phase of our enquiries.”
“That’s a very interesting question,” confessed Dr Zagus, a chimp with a lab coat. “Of course, so was the one about the matrixform interference patterns, on which subject I’ve long considered…”
“The Red Tower is ancient,” Galor cut in, wisely. “It dates back to the very foundation of our civilisation. It is as old as the structures which once guarded the terrible Deviate Psicho the Murderous Thought, whom your fellowship battled of old. Any who enter that place never return.”
“It has a range of sophisticated defences,” Zagus warned. “They predate our own advanced arts and sciences, probably derived from the Celestian technology that our Abhuman genetic creators salvaged from the moon.”
“Really?” Al B. Harper smiled happily.
“Aw crap,” said Yuki.
“Going in there would be appallingly dangerous,” warned B’po.
“Really?” Yuki smiled happily.
Al B. glanced at the purple-haired cyborg P.I. “Aw crap,” he said.
***
“What have you got?” Al B. asked Yuki over her internal commlink.
The cyborg daredevil remained hanging by her toes over the web of infra-red detector beams while she transmitted the schematics her sensors had picked up back to Al’s palmtop. Then she gracefully somersaulted down amidst the constantly-shifting sweeplights and vaulted over and under the cat’s cradle of lasers.
“Bio-detector on the door ahead of you,” Al warned her. “Your internal shielding should keep your human brain from being detected, but watch out for the psi-probes embedded in the bulkhead beyond. Use a tight-beam counter-frequency of 515.9mHz.”
“Done,” replied Yuki, adjusting the microswitches under her left forearm panel. “What can you tell me about the shaft ahead?”
“Nano-disassemblers triggered by motion,” Al B. calculated. “I’m e-mailing you a phased EMP routine that should scramble their sensors just enough for them to recognise each other as hostile.”
“Pulsing it now,” Yuki reported back. “I’m at the top chamber. I think I can shut down the whole defence grid from here.”
“Be careful. There’s bound to be some last minute nasty surprises,” the archscientist responded. “Whoever designed this really wasn’t big on guests.”
“Built it to last, though,” the cyborg P.I. admitted. “Yeah, there was a lethal biotoxin on the control surfaces and a quantum anti-life packet concealed in a pocket sub-dimension. Ouch. Defence board is green now.”
Al B’s instruments confirmed that the Red Tower was neutralised. “I’m coming in. Try and locate the Saliva Spectacular.”
“Looking for sputum,” confirmed Yuki over the comm-link. “There’s a big sealed tube in the middle of the chamber. I’m just cracking the opening codes now.”
“I’ll be there in a minute with the containment, um, container,” Al confirmed. “I’m really keen to take a look at this stuff before we hand it over to Vinnie.”
“Yeah, curious how everybody got a mission that suited them,” noted Yuki. “Like Dancer getting a party.” She moved cautiously and examined the golden holding tube.
The defences cycled down some more and the tube cracked open.
“Uh oh,” she had time to say before the contents burst out.
Free! the contents thundered. Free at last!
***
Yuki wasn’t dead. She was flung through the reinforced wall of the Red Tower and slammed right into the grand library a quarter of the way across the city. Her brain wasn’t fried because her automated systems shut down all sensory input for a moment to protect her from being overwhelmed to insanity by the flood of sensations. She bounced hard and demolished a sculpture raised in praise of the nobility of apehood.
Her systems came on line very slowly. Yuki’s human brain checked independently and found that every single byte of system space was now filled with sensor data; specifically data about the range of tastes that had exploded in her artificial mouth. She fumbled with newly clumsy fingers to manually disengage her mechanised taste buds and began to purge her drives.
Meanwhile Al B. Harper found himself facing a fifteen foot high translucent slab of meat that vaguely resembled a tongue. “The Saliva Spectacular, I presume?” he posited. “We had no idea you were sentient and could communicate.”
I am more than you could imagine replied the entity.
“Well, I can imagine quite a lot,” Al admitted. “Why were you imprisoned? Did you commit some crime?”
I was a prisoner of war. My enemies hounded me, bound me, but could not destroy me. Those pawns of the Austernals, those Abhumans, they locked me away, like my brothers. I have been forgotten for so long. But now I am free! Free!
“Okay, well welcome back,” Al B. greeted the being. “Zagus? Galor? Any steer here on what the heck might be happening? The readings I’m getting off this thing are phenomenal. I’m checking for any database match right now. Zagus? Galor?”
When the archscientist looked round he found that all the apes of Vesalia were sprawled unconscious on their floors, their senses overloaded beyond endurance.
Al’s palmtop pinged.
“Wait a minute,” he told the giant tongue. “I’ve got similar readings to yours from the LL database. Something NTU-150’s armour recorded – and again in the Mansion defence logs. The same genetic chaos we pick up when we scan Gromm the Living Flatulence. The same signature we got from his fellow Deviate-Lord Psicho. Which makes you…”
I am F’Lurgh, the Taste of Defeat boomed the escaped entity. One of the Six who cannot be destroyed.”
“Well, I enjoy a challenge,” admitted Al B. “Why haven’t you just taste-sensationed me to blackout like you did the rest?”
F’Lurgh drooled mockingly. Because I require a vessel to leave this place, and it is only fitting that one of the failed baseline race should act as my chariot. Once you have been properly modified you should prove adequate.
“And you’re the source of the Saliva Sensational!” Al calculated. “You’re the very personification of the sense of taste, just like Gromm is the personification of odour. The Saliva Sensation was said to have transmutative properties…”
I can change people’s tastes, if that’s what you mean boasted F’Lurgh. For example, I can give you a taste for evil. Thus…
“I’d really rather not,” Al B. answered, backing away. “I’m still getting a hard time about the last occasion.”
Too late, fleshling! Now…!
Al clutched his forehead and screamed. F’Lurgh lashed about in utter agony as psychic feedback resonated through him.
Yuki hammered into the Deviate hard and began slamming it over her head time after time, beating it like a carpet.
“Actually, I did a stint as an evil genius a little while ago,” Al B. noted to the stricken Deviate, wiping away his nosebleed. “I didn’t like being psychically manipulated like that so I arranged for that not to be done to me again.”
F’Lurgh unleashed the full spectrum of his power against Yuki Shiro.
“Yeah, I switched that sense off for now,” Yuki told it. “Time for you to go sleepy-byes.”
There was a wet splatting crunch.
“Wring it out into this container,” Al B. told the cyborg. “We only need the Saliva Spectacular. Then we can get F’Lurgh back into his box and set the Red Tower defences going again. In fact I’ve thought of a few improvements.”
***
“Well, it’s not exactly been a pleasure,” admitted Wise Galor, rubbing his aching forehead and speaking very slowly because his tongue felt like it had exploded, “but visits from you primitive humans are always interesting.”
“I’m sorry we had a little difficulty,” Yuki told the apes, “but at least you know what the Red Tower’s for anyway. Um, you don’t have any other sealed architecture you need checking out for lethal imprisoned entities do you?”
“No!” Zagus and Galor both said hastily and in unison.
“We’ve got what we came for, and no sign of the WNC,” declared Al B. Harper, heading back to the ghost taxi. “Myrna, what are you looking in the boot for? The Saliva Spectacular’s in that small box on the back seat.”
“The trunk just popped open,” the cabbie caller replied testily. “And all the stuff in here’s been messed about. And there’s empty beer cans and burger wrappers. It’s like somebody’s been hiding in here.”
“Hiding?” Yuki flicked her senses back on to full.
The ghost taxi started up and accelerated away.
“Hey!” objected Myrna to the retreating automobile. “You can’t do that. Nobody can boost a phantom cab!”
“Someone just did!” Al B. shouted, “And the Saliva’s in there!”
Yuki didn’t waste time analysing. She just raced after the cab and leaped onto it – and passed right through. By the time she’d rolled over and jumped up to her feet the vehicle had completely phased out.
Yuki said a bad word.
“Roswell’s gonna kill me,” said Myrna.
***
Simon Maddicks rotated his shoulders to ease the kinks out after stowing in the trunk for so long. As he steered the vehicle that would only respond to the touch of those who had walked the realms of death he flicked open his mobile and speed-dialled a number.
“Screwdriver? Yeah, I got the stuff your guy wanted. I’ll drop it at the usual place. I want my money in small bills, okay? Killer Shrike out.”
***
Continued in Untold Tales #332 where Dancer and the Shoggoth travel to Costa Del Luna to go “Partying With the Dead”.
***
Excerpts from The Chronicles of Vesalia, Book I, by Galor the Wise
There came a time when the Creators struggled with their most terrible enemies. Facing defeat and destruction at the elemental powers of these Deviates, the Creators fled to the place of their own birthing, the orbiting sphere we call Luna. Here were the tools by which the Creators themselves were created, by the will of creatures from the stars. The Creators took these ancient machines of destiny and hid them on a lonely island where they undertook their greatest work.
The Creators first took many of the lesser creatures and tested the machineries upon them. Thus were the Raccoon People, the Lemming Race, the Talking Rabbits, the Psychofish, the Phase Squirrels, the Blink Hamsters, and others brought into existence; but all of these were deemed failures by the Creators, for none of them could stop the Deviates.
Next the Creators turned to homo sapiens, the over-evolved primates who had arrogantly begun to destroy the planet even then. These experiments did not go well, unleashing a breed of mis-shapen monsters that quickly fled beneath the Earth and remain hidden from sight to this day as the Morshlock menace. This more than anything shows why humans are inferior to apes, for we have prospered with the blessings given to us by the Creators.
Then the Creators used their devices upon some of the lowliest life-forms, taking humble sea-fodder and gifting them with the power to shake universes; thus came the Sea Monkeys, who at great cost conquered and became guardians of the Deviate Lord known as Gromm, the Living Flatulence, and his minions and followers.
Other creatures were also designed, each meant to face one of the remaining Deviate Lords, Aa, Vision of Death, F’Lurgh, the Taste of Defeat, Great Rukkus, the Sound of Doom, and the Finishing Touch itself, Blaaargh. History does not record who these creatures were nor whether they survived their attempts to imprison the Creators’ foes. It was in preparing a race to battle Psicho, the Murderous Thought, that our own history began.
So the Creators turned their machines upon our ancestors, taking humble apes and gifting us with genius. Speech, technology, art, culture all quickly followed, for once we had learned to learn there was nothing which we could not do. For nearly a century our forefathers battled the terrible Psicho, but finally overcame the monster. At our Creators’ behest we took our captive far into the Wilderness where we imprisoned it, and there built our city if guardianship, Vesalia, named for the language we had recreated, the proto-language from which all others were formed.
Our joy at our victory was marred only by the disappearance of our Abhuman Creators. Their use of the forbidden machineries from the moon had raised the ire of some greater power, and so they were punished for their hubris. Thus we saw our Creators no more, and in time they became as legends to us, and this story no more than a creation myth. And yet in time and season we undertook the rituals to reinforce the psychic locks on the vaults beneath Vesalia, lest the bogeyman of our childhood awake and bring us our doom.
[Originally told in Untold Tales #80]
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2009 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2009 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
|
