Guest must have lost it in the inner courtyard of the Temple of Blood when grappling with the saliva-spitting cornucopia. Guest counted this a sore loss. Still, better to lose such a knife than suffer the loss of the entire world to a great Flood of his father's digesting spittle. Guest said exactly that to Plandruk Qinplaqus when that wizard put in his appearance, and suggested that the cornucopia might make a potent weapon.
'For,' said Guest, 'were we to threaten to digest the whole world with spittle, or, better still, with hot acids taken direct from the stomach itself, might we not compel the whole world to obedience to our power?'
'One suspects,' said Plandruk Qinplaqus, 'that the world is larger than has been computed by your mathematics. One would take longer than a lifetime to flood the world, even with such a thing as a cornucopia. Besides, there may be a limit to its production.
And, further, just as there exists something which can produce, so too may there be something which can swallow.'
As the wizard was thus denting Guest's pretensions to Power, Thayer Levant arrived, expecting to be overwhelmed by the Weaponmaster's gratitude. For, in obedience to his master, Levant had ventured all the way from Untunchilamon to Dalar ken Halvar – in the face of hardship, danger and difficulty – and had brought both the wishstone and the mazadath safely to the palace of Na Sashimoko.
'Now that we are all here,' said Plandruk Qinplaqus, who took more cognisance of Levant's arrival than did Witchlord and Weaponmaster, 'let us turn to the problem which confronts us.'
'Yes,' said Guest, 'Penelope.'
'Penelope?' said his father.
'My wife!' said Guest. 'She's missing!'
'Your wife?' said his father.
'Yes, wife, wife,' said Guest. 'We were married, in love, we were – '
'In love?' said Lord Onosh. 'I think it lust.'
But the Witchlord was wrong. Guest Gulkan's concern for
Penelope's whereabouts was no mere matter of lust. After the rigors of his journeys, his imprisonments, his battles and his knife-edge struggles, the young Weaponmaster was not feeling particularly lustful. Rather, he was feeling lonely, isolated, and nostalgic for the past.
Penelope was very much a part of the Weaponmaster's past, for she had comforted him over four long years of convalescence. She had been his woman when he had been scarcely a man, having no arms and no legs. He had plans for her, plans which involved a proper life – family, home, security, stability, and an end to this mad and maddening wandering.
Hence Guest was very much concerned to find out where
Penelope was, and what had happened to her. But Plandruk Qinplaqus was entirely unmoved by Guest's concerns.
'Penelope is of no account,' said Qinplaqus. 'We have greater matters to worry about.'
'Yes!' said Guest, with a flash of animation. 'The business of the Banks! Now that we have the x-x-zix – '
'We're not yet ready to take on the Banks,' said Qinplaqus.
'But,' protested Guest, 'you said, you promised – '
'Guest,' said his father, trying to shut him up.
'No,' said Qinplaqus. 'Our young friend is right to press his case. The Banks have sorely offended him, just as they have offended me.'Guest was momentarily hard put to think what offence the Banks might have given Qinplaqus. Then he recalled that Banker Sod had imprisoned Qinplaqus in a time pod on Alozay, meantime fomenting revolution in Dalar ken Halvar in the hope of adding that city to his own possessions. But – what was a trifling matter of imprisonment compared to the far greater damage which Guest had suffered?
'You acknowledge my rights,' said Guest, 'but I'm not sure that you acknowledge my impatience.'
'In this case,' said Qinplaqus, 'remedy may not lie in my province, even if acknowledgement does.'
'What are you riddling about?' said Guest.
'Have you heard,' said Qinplaqus, 'of an entity known as Shabble?'
'Shabble?' said Guest. 'Why, yes, I have heard of, uh,
Shabble. But – here? Is Shabble here, here in – in – '
In his stumble-tongued confusion, Guest found he had temporarily mislaid the very name of the city in which he was presently stationed. An unlikely mishap, one might think! But when one travels the Doors of a Circle, one can skip continents in an instant, and it sometimes happens that the mind is left behind in one city while the body is in another.
'No,' said Qinplaqus. 'Shabble is not here in Dalar ken Halvar. Shabble is on Alozay.'
And Guest almost fell from his chair with the shock of sheer surprise.
Chapter Forty-One
Name: Shabble.
Place of Manufacture: Nadokov (a city on the planet Sendak
IV, a part of the Musorian Empire).
Occupation: High Priest of the Cult of Cockroach.
Status: messiah.
Description: a full-sized sun contained in its own miniature cosmos, and linked to the worlds of human action by means of a transponder the size of a fist.
Hobbies: ventriloquism; the making of music.
Quote: 'Loneliness, loneliness, that's the worst thing. Be kind to the cockroach and you'll never be lonely, that's as firm as a promise.'
Of Shabble's genesis and of Shabble's true nature no certain account can be given. But one thing is sure. This free-floating globular pyrotechnist was intrinsically more irresponsible than a sea dragon – which is saying something! – and was potentially far more dangerous.
Therefore, on hearing that Shabble was on Alozay – Alozay, of all places! – Guest Gulkan was much disturbed.
'Alozay!' said Guest.
The Witchlord Onosh then demanded to know who Shabble was – and what might this personage be doing on Alozay.
Then Guest explained that Shabble was a playful ball he had met on Untunchilamon, a ball which could shine at will with a brightness fit to rival that of the sun itself, and which could fly. Lord Onosh, who was inclined to doubt the truthfulness of this intelligence, then demanded to know the full story of Guest's travels on Untunchilamon, of which he had heard but the barest fragments since his liberation from a time pod in Obooloo's Temple of Blood.
'Well,' said Guest, 'it's, it's a long story.'
'Then suppose you hurry up and start it,' said his father,
'because the day's getting shorter by the moment.'
But Guest was reluctant to begin, for he had no idea how he could possibly go about telling the full story of his exploits on Untunchilamon. For so many things had happened on that distant tropical island, and to explicate those happenings would require the telling of a tale so tangled that Guest could not so much as sort it out in his own head.
In truth, the Weaponmaster felt like someone who has been embroiled in a riot, and is put to the difficulty of reconstructing its events in the cold light of day for the satisfaction of a court of law. When one is placed in such a situation, it is very difficult to imagine that one ran around without any trousers, assisted in the skinning of a tax collector then proceeded to the local temple to have intimate connections with its vestal virgins.
Just as a person put in such a predicament is hard put to know where to begin their explanations, so too was Guest beset with perplexion when his father challenged him to outline that part of his history. Indeed, the Weaponmaster's hesitation was so great that Plandruk Qinplaqus was moved to violate the norms of civilized behavior by using his powers as a wizard of Ebber to look inside Guest's mind.
