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Post By The Hooded Hood takes you beyond the Black Dome Tue Jun 29, 2004 at 08:41:03 am EDT |
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Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Lost City of Mystery - Part the Twenty-Eighth: The Abhuman Curse and the Wrath of the Celestians | |
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| Part the Twenty-Eighth: The Abhuman Curse and the Wrath of the Celestians With a quarter of a second to spare, Sir Mumphrey Wilton pulled his hat through the surface of the Black Dome that surrounded the mysterious Abhuman city on a high Himalayan peak. Then he and Miss Canterbury were crossing the threshold of the barrier that had isolated the Great Relief from the rest of the world for three millennia. The transition took only a moment, but that was long enough for strange understandings to splash across the intruders’ minds, painted in mind-pictures that seared revelation. There, clear in memories they had never had before, was the glorious Abhuman city, Atticland, the Great Relief of malachite and soapstone, towering on the heights of Mount Shishapangma. The Abhumans teemed about it, diverse in form and function, yet each one a vital cog in a race that was as much one living organism as it was a collection of individuals. Rising up from the centre of the metropolis was the Tower of Eugenics, a graceful spire over the deep caverns containing the Plot-Altering Mists that could unlock the genetic potential within the Abhuman race. But there were other, older echoes. The Abhumans had come to this place from an earlier home, the great lunar city in the Turquoise Zone that they had built for the alien overlords that had conquered them after their betrayal by the sinister Deviate race. That city was raised over genetic manipulation machinery gathered there by an even older and more powerful species, the Austernals, who had first used the mechanisms to create the Abhumans as a species able to battle the rising Deviate threat. And before that, there was the origin of Austernal and Deviate alike in the crucible of creation ordained by the remote and unknowable Space Robots, the Celestians. On a remote island at the dawn of humanity the great caretakers of the Parodyverse had altered two groups of what would otherwise become homo sapiens, creating a godlike race of cosmic-powered immortals and a brutish elemental species of grotesque Deviates. Celestians made Austernals. Austernals salvaged abandoned Space Robot technology to make a lunar cradle for the Abhumans. The Abhumans in turn used the same worn machinery to create the Vesalain Apes, the Sea Monkeys, the Racoon People, the Detonator Hippos and many others. And there had been war. Genetically-precise Abhuman had fought genetically-corrupt Deviate, as the Austernals had intended. Over six thousand years the battles had raged, devastating parts of the planet, extending even beyond the Earth. Forbidden technology and desperate acts threatened the very experiment the Celestians had set in motion by their Second Host. Thus came the Third Celestian Host, appearing not for curiosity but in wrath. By Celestian will the Deviates were bound, each imprisoned alone for their crimes. The Abhumans were closed away behind a black barrier, its impenetrable shell drawn from the Negativity Zone itself. Of all their ranks only one of the Abhuman Royal Family escaped. Maximess the Slightly Mad, brother of King Black Blot himself, was already fleeing the Great Relief when the Black Dome was ordained. He alone was trapped inside the actual wall of Negativity. Twenty-two hundred years of tormented struggling were enough to allow him to break free into the world of men. The guardian statues were of Abhuman origin. They were set to guard the perimeter from all enemies, and they recognised Maximess as the greatest of the Great Relief’s foes. The last Abhuman barely escaped their wrath with his life, and could not return and seek a means of re-entering the Black Dome to rejoin his race. Except he had. Miss Canterbury and Sir Mumphrey recognised mind-controlling Maximess. They knew him as the Expediter. “Aaagh,” gasped Miss Canterbury, trying to catch her breath after such a massive information dump. “Was that…? Did I just see an origin of the Abhumans? In my head?” Only then did she realise that she was in pitch darkness, laid on cold smooth stone. “Hope so,” came back the comforting jovial tones of Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “That way it means I’m not becoming a basket case, don’t y’know?” Mumphrey flicked his cigarette lighter. On the second attempt the spark ignited, casting a feeble flickering glow over the swirling green striations of the malachite floor. He helped Miss C up from the pavement. “Welcome to the Great Relief,” he told her. “I assume that’s where we are.” “You take me on the most interesting dates, Sir Mumphrey.” “Well, the Bellona Club’s so passé these days,” Mumph snuffled. The darkness was absolute, the air bitter cold. The only sound was the echo of the travellers’ footsteps across the pavement, strangely distorted so it sounded like they were being followed. Mumphrey found a tower with a ground floor entrance that slid open with minimal pushing, and ventured inside. “This isn’t how we saw it in those visions,” Miss Canterbury shuddered. “There’s no light, no music. No people. Mumphrey, did they just snuff everybody out?” “I know know,” the eccentric Englishman admitted. “Best we find something to make a torch out of before the lighter fluid’s gone, what?” He checked his pocketwatch. “Uh-oh. Inside this Celestian barrier time’s not flowin’ normally. And I’m cut off from whatever usually recharges the Chronometer. It’s powerless.” Miss Canterbury screwed some cellophane documents into a ceramic bowl for a makeshift lantern, then found decorative oil from a strange globular ornament to keep the fire going. “And was the Expediter in our visions?” she ventured after a series of unsuccessful experiments had finally yielded a workable lamp. “Looks like it. Seems there’s more to that oik than meets the eye. He’s still an oik though.” Miss Canterbury stared around the vast gloom of the deserted civic building. “This is the part where I usually ask what we’re going to do next,” she noted. The two explorers pressed on into the silent pitch black city. Herr Wertham felt himself being grasped by the collar and dragged from under a deep snowdrift. He blinked and fumbled for his glasses before he recognised the lean form of the Expediter holding him up. “Pull yourself together,” Maximess of the Abhumans told his human pawn. “We have work to do.” Wertham looked around at the devastated plain. A tank gun pointed upwards from the broken snow, but there was no other sign of the ordinance he had brought. Maybe fifty remaining soldiers were limping back to gather at his command. “What can we do? We have no diggers.” “Not true.” The Expediter pointed to the two remaining guardians statuses, now back under his command since he had relocated the control amulet. They had been set to excavating, seeking the point where Knifey had sought to penetrate the black barrier generations before. “Why didn’t we use them before?” Wertham frowned. “You seemed to be enjoying tormenting the peasants,” the Expediter shrugged, “and that little Tibetan gal you were working on was making such lovely noises.” “Wilton and his woman penetrated the barrier before us?” “Yes. Annoying that. But he won’t be able to do anything once he’s in there. All the good stuff is sealed away and only the genetic code of the Abhuman Royal Family can open the Tower of Eugenics. And there are other guardians inside that he won’t find easy to escape.” Wertham looked up sharply. “You know this how?” “I’m a professional, buddy. I do my homework.” He stepped over the frozen corpse of Herr Wechsler, former Keeper of the Booke of the Law. “Besides, you’ve kept a few secrets yourself. If we had a guy who could just make Wilton and Canterbury appear why didn’t we get him in play at the start?” “Herr Wechler is – was – an old man, only able to use his remarkable summonsing power within a few miles. I had better return to the Fuhrer victorious to be forgiven for losing him.” The Expediter smiled. “Buddy, the stuff in that city is your Fuhrer’s wet dream. You’ve read the old texts. Science that can modify a being to have fantastic powers. Extended life, bred-in obedience, the Plot-Altering Mists can do it all.” He pointed down at the shaft being excavated by the massive war-pig statues. “And all we have to do is find a little chink in the wall.” “I think I know where everybody is,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton declared as he and Miss Canterbury walked through the darkened Plaza of Marvels. “Or rather, when.” “That time manipulation your pocketwatch detected, before its last charge was utterly exhausted?” “Spot on. I think time has stopped inside this dome. For the Abhumans it’s like nothing has happened since they got jugged by those Space Robot thingies. They can’t struggle to escape. No time has passed for them at all.” “But… it’s passing for us.” “We’re not part of the curse,” Mumph noted. “We might be able to break ‘em free.” Miss Canterbury looked doubtful. “Do we want to break free a race of powerful warlike super-beings?” she wondered. “We do if we can set ‘em against the Nazis,” Mumph considered. “Anyway, from the mind-flashes I got from passin’ the negativity barrier these chappies weren’t the baddies. Only decent to see if we can’t set ‘em loose.” “And the wrath of the Celestians doesn’t worry you at all?” “Been in trouble with the prefects since Rugby College,” Mumph shrugged. “Besides, better we loose ‘em than let Maximess back in here while his family can’t defend themselves, what?” He looked up at the Tower of Eugenics with a determined stare. “That’s the place to start,” he decided. “Let’s see what we can stir up.” And the long-dormant defences laid by the Celestian Space Robots began to shimmer back to life. In our next exciting episode: Prince Maximess of the Abhumans claims his birthright, and Herr Wertham demands his cut. Pseudo-Historical Timeline Notes: 30,000BC The Celestian Second Host seeds Austernals and Deviates 13000 BC The Austernals use abandoned Celestian machineries to design the plot-Altering Mists that spawn the Abhumans 12000 BC The young Abhumans are enslaved by the alien Skree 11600BC The Abhumans overthrow their Skree conquerors and claim the Turquoise Zone for their own 8000 BC The Deviate-Abhuman War begins 2200 BC The Abhumans vs Fin Fang Foom 2000 BC Celestian intervention ends the Deviate-Abhuman War before weapons of galactic destruction can be deployed. The seven remaining Deviates are imprisoned across the planet. The Abhumans are sealed in their Great Relief beneath the Black Dome. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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. |
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