The lights went out and the wall of glass vanished. The ‘Entertainment’ had begun.
The first time she had seen one Jan had been profoundly shocked, much to the amusement of the Prince and his friends. It had been a disconcerting experience to see the glass wall suddenly turn into a gateway that led straight to the centre of another world—a world that looked more real than her own one, where the colours were richer and the people larger and more attractive. She had gasped with fright and clutched at the Prince’s arm. “What’s happening?” she had cried.
He had chuckled and told her to be quiet. “Watch and enjoy. It’s only an Entertainment.” So she had forced herself to sit still and to watch the disturbing sights visible through the gap where the fourth wall had been—people whose faces suddenly became enormous, dizzying flights over strange landscapes and vast cities made of towers of glass full of coloured lights, fights between groups of people using weapons of horrible power, things made of metal that talked like men … By the end of it she felt as if her head was going to explode from the sheer amount of different, unbelievable things she had seen.
The next day Jan was anxious to talk to Milo and to get his explanation for the phenomenon she had witnessed. “It was a holographic movie,” he told her. “The ‘glass wall’ projects images in three dimensions. Produces one hundred per cent realism, so I’m not surprised you were knocked for a loop by it all.”
She asked him where the images had come from. “They’re stored—preserved—on a tape, but don’t ask me to explain how. Probably date back to the early twenty-first century. What was the movie about?”
She hadn’t known the ‘Entertainment’ had been about anything. All she’d seen were apparently unconnected images adding up to chaos. Milo then asked her what clothes the people had worn. “They were dressed very much like the Aristos … and, oh yes, they sang a lot.”
“They sang?” he asked, then laughed. “I know the period that was made now. Mid-twenty-first century. Part of a long series of musical fantasies. Became incredibly popular but I never understood why. I thought they were banal crap. Still, the ancestors of the Aristos must have thought highly of them. Wouldn’t surprise me if they modelled their own clothing on the styles in the series, which is why the Aristos are still going around in fancy dress.” He found this thought very amusing and laughed for a long time but Jan was still puzzled.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Those images, were they of the past before the Gene Wars? Were there really huge cities of glass on other worlds?”
“I’m afraid not, Jan. None of it was real. It was all a fantasy. One of a series, like I said, set in a never-never future about a pseudo-medieval empire that ruled the galaxy.”
“Oh,” she said. She was a little disappointed. “But the whole thing had seemed so real. How was it done? And where did those beautiful people come from? And when they sung they had such beautiful voices too. …”
“Those people never existed, Jan. Like the glass cities and everything you saw, they were generated inside a computer. Think of them as incredibly realistic paintings … paintings that can move and talk. …”
Jan hadn’t believed him then and even now, as she watched the very same Entertainment for about the thirtieth time, she still found it difficult to accept that these beautiful people had never lived or breathed; that they were the product of some ancient mechanical brain.
Even so she normally enjoyed watching it—she was now capable of discerning the ‘plot’—but tonight she couldn’t keep her attention on the spectacle. She kept remembering Milo’s final words to her that evening. “You must increase your efforts with that computer terminal. I have the strong feeling that time is running out. I don’t believe in omens as a rule, but today’s near-catastrophe seems a kind of warning to me that the Lord Pangloth’s days are numbered.”
Jan knew what he meant. She shared the same feeling that, from now on, the Lord Pangloth and everyone in it were living on borrowed time.
These premonitions were proved correct exactly a week later. On the morning that the Lord Pangloth encountered the Perfumed Breeze.
Chapter Eighteen
A difficult manoeuvre was being carried out. The Lord Pangloth was hovering very close to the surface of a lake in order to take on board a large amount of fresh water. The water, being pumped up through a long, weighted hose, was needed not only to replenish the normal supplies but also for conversion into hydrogen gas. A large amount of the gas would need to be produced in the airship’s electrolysis plant to inflate Cell number Seven which, it was hoped, had now been successfully repaired.
The manoeuvre was difficult because as more water was pumped on board the airship naturally became heavier, and to compensate for this the temperature in the gas cells had to be adjusted to provide more lift. So delicate was the operation that Gorman had been temporarily released from his quarters to supervise it. The atmosphere in the control room was very tense as a result, which provided Jan with the perfect opportunity to try the computer terminal again. Milo had provided her with yet another series of permutations of what he called the ‘access code’ and she was having trouble keeping all the numbers in her mind.
She was so engrossed in what she was doing that she wasn’t aware at first that something was wrong. It was only when she heard Caspar call out Gorman’s name that she became alerted to the fact that there was an emergency; until then the Prince had been pretending that Gorman wasn’t present. She looked up from the frustratingly blank screen and saw that everyone was staring out through the port side of the control room. And then she saw it. …
For a few moments she thought the spherical object was another hot air balloon but then she realized that she was seeing another airship travelling bow-on towards them at the same low altitude.
Another airship?
Everyone in the control room, with the exception of Jan, was talking at once. Over the babble of voices she heard Caspar’s uncomprehending cry to Gorman: “Gorman, how can it be possible? How could the earthworms have built an airship?”
“I don’t think that has anything to do with earthworms, sire,” said Gorman as he studied the approaching airship through his binoculars. “That’s another Sky Lord.”
Caspar looked as if someone had just kicked him very hard in the backside. And he wasn’t the only one, Jan noticed.
“But that’s impossible!” Caspar finally managed to splutter.
Gorman was ignoring him. “Pumping crew, cease operating and reel in,” Gorman called into the microphone. Then, “Helmsmen, take us up immediately. Don’t wait for them to reel the hose in. …”
Jan looked again at the approaching Sky Lord. It was much bigger now and she estimated that it was less than two miles away. She could also see details on the round face it presented to them. The lower half was luridly coloured and, like the Lord Pangloth, it had giant eyes painted on its sides.
“Full elevation at full speed!” ordered Gorman, and Jan had to clutch on to the back of Caspar’s throne as the Lord Pangloth’s bow began to rise sharply as the airship surged forward.