Digitalis (Part Four)

"Who the devil would think it?" said Trout. "Natterjack, me trusted
first officer, a scumsucking traitor. Tis the way it goes, I
suppose."
"He must've figured we were in league with the bloody Empire," said
Gudgeon. "Only a bleeding zealot like him would stage a battle like
this just to stop an effing expedition to some fricking lost
continent."
The crew were engaged in clearing the deck of bodies and blood.
Casualties of the battle were mercifully few for their side; other than
Natterjack, only Mugwort, Gadfly and two others had perished. Mugwort
had been the first to die, after charging at the mass of pirates ahead
of everyone else, apparently under the delusion that he could defeat
them all single-handed. Despite last being seen cowering below deck,
Gadfly's body was found along with the others after the battle, a sword
in his hand. Several others were injured and would not be able to work
for a long while. The few surviving pirates had been rounded up and
captured; Trout now foisted his attention upon them with a mixture of
pomposity and loathing, stabbing the air with his pipe.
"You, ye black-hearted swine, will now serve on this here ship as
replacements for those of me crew who you have mercilessly slaughtered.
You can start by doing Mugwort's job. Get yerselves some buckets of
water and wash this deck til it's plain brown again. Gah!"
He had just put his great black boot down in someone's spilled
insides.
Gogo stood a matter of feet away, having been ordered to keep a
watchful eye on their prisoners. He cleaned his daggers and wondered at
his own reason, in particular why he had instinctively fought with the
pirates, for it worried him. The first person he had become well
acquainted with after fleeing the fire was Evangeline Kururin, a young
scholar, studied in moral and social philosophy. At that time he was
possessed of no more than the agility and dexterity of his fellow gypsy
performers, an animal's mindless instinct for survival and command of
only the coarsest language. It was Evangeline who, in her curiosity and
patience, first permitted him to become a social creature, and it was
the morals she taught him that he now wrestled with. Should he have
killed no one, but allowed others to go on killing? Religious
commandments might have had it so. On the other hand, should he have
taken the path that would lead to the least killing? That would have
meant dispatching Gudgeon early on and allowing himself to be killed
also, for that way the pirates would have slaughtered all before them.
Since there were more of them than there were of Trout's crew, it
followed that a lesser number of sailors would have died. On a third
hand, however, was it not every man's duty to protect the weak? Trout's
was certainly the weaker side, so Gogo had, it seemed, taken this
route. He had fulfilled a moral, at least, though not through
consideration. Perhaps he had simply been looking out for his own life.
Perhaps the animal's mindless instinct for survival was still all that
possessed him and all else was mere parody of what had gone before.
This conclusion hurt Gogo deeply.
"Ah, Loach! Good to see you at last," Gudgeon sneered.
Gogo looked and saw that Loach had appeared on deck. He was stood
still, gazing at the scene of the massacre with wide, white eyes and a
pale yellow hue to his skin.
"Over the side!" barked Trout. "Can do without any more mess to clear
up."
With some effort, Loach regained control of his features and
swallowed. He then walked over to Gogo with the utmost sincerity held
aloft of his sickened countenance.
"Please tell me you weren't a party to&;#8230;"
His words fell away as his gaze came to rest upon the weapon Gogo
held, half-obscured by a damp, stained hand cloth.
"To this bloodshed?" Gogo suggested. "Is that what you mean to
say?"
"Animals, the lot of you," Loach said in a dry chalk voice.
Gogo was perplexed, for he no longer knew what the communications
officer wanted him to say. Loach, meanwhile, had seen the spattered
gore on Gogo's clothes and was about to gag. Suppressing this, he
stormed away, hissing and seething, back towards the lower deck,
slamming the door behind him. Gogo wondered what else Loach had
expected them to do with swords and guns.
"Where's that mongrel Burbot?" Orfe bellowed. "He didn't raise a
finger to help back there. If you ask me, he's in league with
Natterjack."
"Or he's just a cretinous coward," said Gudgeon.
"Either way, he deserves a good beating. Then he should be thrown
overboard."
"We needs him to navigate!" protested Trout.
Lamprey disagreed: "No offence, Captain, but that's crud. The man has
no more idea than the rest of us where we are. As a matter of fact,
he's probably the only one who doesn't know how to navigate by the
stars and sun. Where the hell did you hire him from?"
Trout looked doubtful.
"I looked at his application same as I did the rest. Reckoned he was a
good mix of the right attitude and the right qualifications. And he was
always smiling like. Looked like a good smile that, a confident smile,
one that you can trust. Ah, well."
"Ah, well," Gogo repeated, and thought it a good expression to use
when resolution became an impossible feat.

There was worse to come. Optimistic spirits were not revived by the
stifling head that endured throughout the day, while the overcast mood
of the remaining crew gradually turned to one of irritability. In Loach
this was hardly noticeable, for he was as morose and uncompromising as
ever, branding Gogo a "pathetic excuse for a man," a "violent coward"
and a "gutless creature." To the last, Gogo replied that he was in fact
one of those who had held on to his guts, and Loach had looked for an
instant as if he were about to resort to violence himself.
Trout, Gudgeon and Lamprey were constantly snapping at each other with
such ferocity that Loach reserved his barbs for Gogo and merely
glowered at the rest. Even this was met with some rebuke, particularly
from Gudgeon.
"You've nowt to feel angry about, brat. Feel afraid instead, because
next time you can't pick up a bleeding sword it could be me who's
attacking you."
Such threats became commonplace, and many were even directed at Trout,
so that Orfe's promise of punishment to any mutinous intentions became
less and less believable as the day wore on. He once went as far as
raising his many-tailed whip against Lamprey, after the chief engineer
had told Trout that if they arrived back in Nikeah empty-handed the
captain would have a price on his head. Orfe hesitated, and during that
hesitation Lamprey retreated several steps, drawing his dagger as he
did so.
"You think I'm just gonna let you whip me?" he laughed, and Orfe
lowered the whip.
When Lamprey was recounting the story to Gogo over lunch, Gogo
couldn't help but comment on the absurdity of his willingness to lose
more time and money having Trout assassinated. Lamprey pondered this
for a while, then said that it was a gamble of sorts. If they found
treasure, he had won, and if they did not find treasure, he had lost.
Those were the stakes, and it was only right that he should pay if he
lost. Gogo asked if it were always the way when gambling that there was
a greater chance of losing than of winning, to which Lamprey replied
yes, because that was how the casinos and organisers arranged it to be.
Would it not therefore be more profitable, Gogo asked him, to be one of
the organisers than it would to be to play the game. Lamprey said that
ideally, yes it would be, but even the organisers are gambling, because
they're playing the game of fate. If no one were to play their game,
but they had still spent money organising it, they too would lose,
though such a fate rarely befell competent businessmen. This line of
argument was confusing Gogo, so he gave up on it and instead asked
Lamprey what amount of money he wished to acquire.
"Why stop at any figure?" asked Lamprey.
"So you know when you have achieved your aim," replied Gogo.
"My friend, I will have achieved my aim when I die."
"If this were true, then we will all achieve your aim!"
Lamprey again resigned himself to thought. Eventually he said: "The
point is, money is not an aim. It's a purpose."
This statement baffled Gogo to such an extent that he decided not to
pursue Lamprey's reason any further.
The captured pirates and the more dutiful members of Trout's crew did
not strike up a good working relationship, and brief scuffles ensued.
Here, Orfe was a useful tool, for he was able to settle such disputes
with both his bark and his bite, and furthermore seemed to enjoy it
more than anything else. The only other crew member who appeared to
reap any enjoyment out of the day was Burbot, who did not reveal any
hint of anger or depression but continued to smile and assure everyone
that all was well. He was well received, but this did not sway him in
the least.

By the time night fell, Gogo had worn himself out. Not that he was the
only one. The engine had taken twice as long to repair as Lamprey had
predicted, and the chief engineer had been utterly exhausted the last
time Gogo saw him. The others too were tired from their bickering, and
all but Gogo and Orfe had decided to turn in early that night. Orfe was
still certain that Burbot or some other person was accomplice to
Natterjack and said that he would keep the first watch by himself. He
lingered near the entrance to the engine room. Gogo had decided his
clothes needed washing, so dirtied were they with cooking ingredients
and blood. He took soap and a large mixing bowl from the galley, then
lowered the bowl down the side of the ship on a length of rope. Having
gathered water, he removed his garments one by one, emptied the pockets
of all possessions and began soaking them in the cold water the way his
mother had taught him. After he had soaked, scrubbed and wrung out each
item he used the rope to make a washing line and hung them along it,
then lay down in the warm night air and fell asleep.
Ukulele woke him up.
"Get up! The boat is on fire!" she yelled, and on the deck of 'The
Flying Carp' Gogo saw the very same flames that had engulfed the gypsy
camp.
"Not the one in your dream!" said Ukulele. "The one outside. Wake up,
you fool!"
Gogo awoke, and saw that the boat was not on fire. He was, however,
sweating in the heat, so he washed himself briefly, then shaved his
face with knife and soap before checking on his clothes. They were
still damp, but then so was he. It thus seemed reasonable to put them
on and dry off in one piece, rather than separately, and they would
help cool him down also. Truthfully though, he did not enjoy being
naked. He worried that whoever was on watch may see him and laugh.
Rendered restless by such suspicions, Gogo looked about him as he
dressed. The silence worried him further. When he had finished
assembling himself he gathered up his belongings, returned them with
utmost care to their pockets, and set off with the intention of
continuing his sleep in his hammock. He had gone no more than a few
steps, however, when something caught his eye. Something out of place.
An irregularity, a discrepancy of some sort. He squinted, focusing on a
narrow area and saw that the silhouette of wooden rail around the edge
of the deck was broken by a single vertical line. He cautiously moved
towards it, noticing as he did a slight shiver of movement run up and
down that line. It was, he realised, the end of a rope, knotted around
the rail. Assured of its lifelessness, he quickened his pace and when
he reached the tied end of the rope, looked over the side of the ship.
It was not a rope, but Orfe's whip, and the owner swung gently to and
fro from the other end of it.
Gogo did not feel fear then. It surprised him, for he had felt fear
many times before and expected its cloak to enclose him on this
occasion, when all that came was the instinct for discretion. This
outlasted his surprise, and continued even when in the faint river of
moonlight he saw, unmistakably, his own shadow move.
Gogo blinked and looked again. Dim as it was, his shadow was indeed
seeping away from him, thinning out as it stretched away from his feet
and across the deck. Past his mixing bowl, under his washing line,
towards the other end of the ship it travelled. Then it broke off at
the base, and he realised it was not his shadow at all, for his shadow
lay behind him. Though it had manifested itself in his shape, this
patch of darkness was something else entirely. Gogo watched it recoil
itself at the other end of the deck and disappear under the door to the
wheelhouse. It had gone inside! Slowly but with steady fingers, Gogo
withdrew a knife. He put it back immediately. What use was a knife
against a shadow? For a moment he was racked with indecision, then,
intrigue overcoming caution, he hurried across the ship and opened the
door to the wheelhouse.
"Well now, isn't this a surprise?" he said, not properly knowing how
to word his reaction more dramatically.
Gadfly, his balding head illuminated by lamplight, looked up from the
logbook.
"Yes, what is it?" he mumbled irritably. "I'm trying to catch up with
my work here, so it had better be quick."
"You're a dead man!" Gogo said.
Gadfly smiled thinly.
"So?"
"You aren't what you seem to be."
The deceased log-keeper closed his logbook and put out the oil
lamp.
"I'm glad, Gogo. I'm glad you've become more accustomed to illusions
and trickery since we last met. There was a time when such a
confrontation would have shocked you into complete inactivity."
"Who are you?"
"And there was a time," Gadfly continued, "when all you could ask was,
'Who am I?' I don't deceive you. I truly am glad you've come so far in
such a short space of time."
He stood up and before Gogo had time to react, launched an elbow into
the gypsy's chest. Gogo sailed backward, hopping first onto his hands
then back to his feet in order to regain balance.
"Your agility hasn't deteriorated either, I see," said Gadfly. "An
entire travelling circus in the body of one man. It's a wonder you
don't go into show business."
"Who are you?" Gogo asked again.
"Very well. I shall show you."
The face of Gadfly melted away in a blaze of smoky light, and from
underneath liquid skin emerged the face and body of a demon. Gogo
recognised it instantly.
"Why, Digitalis!" he exclaimed. "It's been years!"
Digitalis frowned at him, a pair of little grey wings descending on
tiny opal eyes.
"Why, Gogo," it said. "I'd have thought you'd muster a more
appropriate reaction than that. Obviously your rhetoric still isn't up
to scratch. Now, have at thee!"
The demon lunged at Gogo and the distance between them was gone in an
instant. Splinters of wood flew through the air and into the sea as the
giant fist landed on the very spot Gogo had acquired that split-second
ago. Digitalis looked up. A fire skean plummeted down on it, piercing
the skin right between those tiny eyes and engulfing the demon's body
in flame. Gogo landed.
"Bah," said Digitalis, as smoke spiralled off its flesh. "I hope
you've got some stronger moves than that. A fire spell, was it?"
Its clawed fingers touched what remained of the skean. This it plucked
from its forehead and inspected closely.
"Ha! No! Some kind of elemental blade. Tut, tut, my dear Gogo, you do
not appear to have mastered even the simplest of magics yet. I am
surprised, truly, by my word as a monster! I'd have thought, given the
sudden revival of magic in the Empire's forces, witches roaming the
landscapes and fearsome Magitek Knights, you would have learnt the
skill for yourself."
"No matter," said Gogo. "No matter at all."
"Oh, but it does matter. You see, the reason I followed you on this
absurd flight of fancy, the reason I tried to sabotage the voyage in
order to prevent you from continuing it, and the reason I revealed
myself to you just now - the reason for all of this is that I believed
you had command of magic. I don't yet, you see, and in my constant
quest to become the most powerful being to ever exist, it is a most
important factor. Now, if you had learnt it using your mimic's skills,
I could now..."
"Light-fingered thieve me!"
"No need to exaggerate. I could now absorb the rest of you and acquire
an all-new level of power, yes. And yes, there would be nothing left of
Gogo after the union took place. Just young, foolhardy me. Oh come
now..."
Gogo had adopted a fierce posture, his hands buried underneath his
clothes in search of adequate weapons.
"You don't anticipate defeating me, surely?" Digitalis mocked him. "A
short man armed with cooking implements against the most powerful demon
in the world? Stupid boy! I could shred you in an instant. But that
would be a waste of your remarkable abilities and the key to my
acquisition of greater power still."
"What the bleeding hell is going on out here?" Gudgeon called from
behind them. "Where the hell is Orfe and what the f--- is that
thing?"
He held up a lantern, illuminating the demon's grinning goat's face,
its longhaired, hoofed lower legs and faintly red torso.
"Argh! Tis the devil!" cried Trout, who stood beside Gudgeon with
several other members of the crew huddled behind him. "We're
doomed!"
"That you are," agreed Digitalis. "However, I am not the devil. I
shall soon be more powerful than even him."
"If you ain't the devil, then what the devil are you?" asked
Trout.
Digitalis grinned even more widely, baring gums above its yellowing
teeth.
"I do enjoy telling everyone our story, don't you, Gogo? I am
Digitalis, a demon, a minion of hell. Many years ago, I became
dissatisfied with manifesting myself as greed, wroth, lust et cetera.
You people are so easy to manipulate - it became quite a fruitless
task. I wanted a physical manifestation. That is, a body in your plain
of existence. So I appeared, as demons do (but are forbade by our
master,) in a shower of black sparks, to a peasant woman, and I
impregnated her. What? Do not foist such disgusted looks upon me! We
ethereal beings have other ways of going about such matters. I shall
forgive that interruption and continue.
"The child that this woman eventually bore was our mutual friend, Gogo.
He is my son, and I created him for a purpose. When Gogo was born, I
entered his body with the intent of using it as my own physical
manifestation. The fact that he is half-demon should have allowed me to
do this, but I was supposing theoretically, and as such all did not go
as planned. The union resulted in two separate beings: myself, who had
at last a body in your dimension but retained only a fraction of its
power, and Gogo, who gained powers of mimicry and was impaired with a
severe learning difficulty. He himself diagnoses this deficiency as a
missing soul, such is the claptrap you feed your children these days.
Everything you have seen him do or heard him say is nothing but a form
of imitation. It is a most miserable way of existing. Did I mention
that he and his mother were outcast when it was supposed that he was
the son of a demon? No, I did not. In any case, they joined a
travelling gypsy circus and nothing very interesting happened."
Digitalis paused for breath, and Trout seemed to reel in horror at some
implication that had occurred to him. He looked at Gogo with a mixture
of astonishment and incredulity.
"Please pay attention," snapped Digitalis. "I haven't yet finished. You
should know, for instance, I have found my new body...somewhat
restricting. While I can change shape fairly easily, I am confined to
fairly banal forms of travelling, so to get back to shore now I must
either fly or swim. Such an inconvenience - it makes me very irritable
sometimes. Now I have followed Gogo all the way out here, into the
middle of the ocean, with the aim of absorbing the rest of him into me
because I believed he possessed magical ability. I must have magical
ability myself, you see, in order to ascend to a greater level of
power. Yes, I am greedy, I know. Forget that. I tried my damndest -
excuse the pun - to convince you all to turn back without revealing
myself. Dispatching and impersonating Gadfly was, it seemed, a perfect
opportunity. In convincing your crew that the voyage was doomed from
the start I was not acting at all out of character, you know.
"Once we had set sail, all I could think to do was await marauders and
pirates, who would cripple your ship and force you to return to
harbour. If I hadn't played around with your engine we might have
missed them! Which brings me to around now. You'll find Orfe swinging
from his own method of bullying. The rest of you will soon follow
him."
Gogo leapt at the fiend with a feral snarl. Digitalis met him with a
well-aimed kick, throwing the gypsy high into the air and far away to
the roof of the engine room where he landed with a mighty crash.
Saucepans, spatulas and knives that had come loose from his robes
rained down on Trout and the others, clattering on the deck. Gudgeon
drew his pistol and fired at the demon. The lead embedded itself in the
surface layer of its skin, and Digitalis scratched it away with a low
growl.
"I have to warn you," it said. "I've been known to play with my
food."
Its flesh bulged in odd places, as if a creature inside were trying to
fight its way out. Then the red, hairy skin cracked and split into
segments, these immediately disappearing beneath growing hills of pink
jelly that gradually unfolded into tentacles. The creature's bulky body
crushed the wheelhouse as it slopped over the side of the ship and into
the sea, leaving its arms spread around and across 'The Flying
Carp.'
"After that story you told us, I just couldn't resist it," bellowed
what now resembled a giant squid.