Errata: Sixteenth Episode - A Catastrophe Of Historic Proportions

As a child, Delphine wandered the city’s dank and narrow alleys. One evening, she had discovered an old man apparently pinioned against a wall with craven, feral terror, face fixed in a glassy frightmask. Following his gaze, she had seen two figurines on the ground, both approximately three inches tall: the first, a rosy-cheeked porcelain gnome in a one piece bathing suit, his open skull cavity a rudimentary cockpit occupied by some kind of leering insect, the second a wind-up mandrill covered in brown felt. A creature of ticklish whim, she had smashed the pair beneath her heavy black boots, and the old man had promptly fallen upon his knees thanking her.

‘Ah my delicious infant!’ he had quavered from a turkey-wattle throat. ‘I did fear yon daemons should feast upon mine ancient marrow but thou hast smote them good and proper! Allow me to furnish you with three wishes.’ And he had held up three supple fingers like a nosegay of snapdragons.

‘Well then,’ Delphine had begun, ‘I want-’

‘Ah ah ah! Don’t tell me, little angel of death, else they won’t come to pass. Them’s the breaks.’ And with that the coot had stepped into a hoop of sparks and vanished.

Since that day, two of her three wishes had come true.

Delphine Twelve slouched against the headboard of her four-poster bed, silk quilt coyly tucked under her armpits and across her bust. It felt good cool and smooth on her belly, good cool and smooth on her bare legs and toes. She slurped from a near-empty can and gazed up in hazy reverie at the heavy maroon canopy stretched across the bed, light punching through stylised crescent moons and five-pronged stars cut into the material. Next to her Sally Ambulance lay like a croissant in snarl of bed linen. Sally’s head rested upon the duck-feather pillow like a curio under glass, white-gold hair weeping from her skull. She had one eye open, its iris cement flecked with gunmetal. Creased lids puckered into a squint.

‘Why do you drink so much fizzy pop?’ Her words were doze-slurred, lips dragging against embroidered pillow fabric.

Delphine finished her drink with a slight lift of the chin, tossed the done can to the carpet. ‘Why?’

‘That’s what I said, didn’t I?’ Sally’s mouth jerked into a smile and she snuffled some lazy laughs into her pillow. ‘Why do you do it? For what purpose?’

Delphine inclined her head. ‘I don’t know. It’s just, you know… it’s just a thing, isn’t it. I drink lots of soda. Helena gets off her face.’ She nodded towards the foot of the bed, Helena Ten clad in white brassiere and panties, zonko in a cot with a little silver trough of Principality Dust at one end. ‘You stab bagpipes. It’s life’s big lie. Plough a deep rut then tell the world your personality’s safe at the bottom of it. We sold our souls and bought propeller hats.’ Already her hand was fumbling with the tiger’s eye handle of the bedside mini-fridge. ‘Fact is, I don’t really mind so much. Once you accept you’ll never perceive the universe all joined up and shiny like a circuit diagram, you’re free to get on enjoying honey toast and, well… kissing people.’ While her left hand retrieved a stinging can of Contempo-Soda, her right drifted across and ruffled Sally’s hair. ‘People say I’m in denial but I pretend not to hear them.’

Sally rolled onto her back, a glistening grin pushing through the skin of her face. ‘Before I came here, I thought the Thirteen were idle, depraved swine, so paralytic with power they had the gall to parade themselves as the plump fruits of a meritocracy. Now I see I was wrong. I underestimated by several orders of magnitude.’ She looked at Delphine, and her grin softened. ‘Funny thing is, notwithstanding gross abuses of authority, I find I like you. Does that make me a wicked person?’

‘Peach, it’s a start.’ Delphine slid her nail under the ringpull, pushed her finger towards the metal loop then levered. The can opened with a noise like a dino egg hatching.

On a coffee table under the sill, something began to buzz.

Delphine stiffened. ‘Fucknuts.’

‘Leave it,’ said Sally, rising on one elbow.
Delphine sipped the froth off the fresh can. ‘I can’t.’ She slipped out from under the quilt, clanked her soda down on top of the mini-fridge and crossed the room in a fractious naked strut. Sat next to a copy of Memorious magazine and a folded Errata Gazette, her phone was vibrating like an angry clam. ‘My staff know to only call my cell in an emergency, so either there’s an emergency, or some bastard’s wasting my time – in which case I need to get his name for the death warrant.’ She snatched up her phone, flipped it open. ‘Twelve.’

‘Madam Twelve, I’m sorry to disturb you at this late hour but-’

‘Get to the point or I will impale you on it.’

‘The City is under attack, Ma’am.’

Delphine stared at Memorious, the cover image a tethered unicorn getting its gut ropes dragged out through a mangle.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Say that again.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘No, the bit before.’

‘The City is under attack, Ma’am.’

And a scattered orchestra of sirens started crooning in unison outside. Delphine exhaled.

‘Oh shit.’

On the bed, Sally frowned and mouthed what? Delphine waved her off.

‘Ma’am, the Governor has not indicated his preferred course of action. We’re without orders.’

‘Brief me.’

‘Are you near a window, Ma’am?’

‘Am I… Have you lost your reason?’

‘I suggest you look outside, Ma’am.’

‘We’ve a box for suggestions – I want big, crunchy facts.’ Delphine reached forward and drew the thick curtain aside. ‘Just tell me wh-’

Below, Errata shimmered and glowered like constellations reflected in a black pond. Searchlight beams cleaved through the night-fog, converging on an iridescent saurian hub near the eastern city limits – fifteen storeys of bipedal lizard clad in polished onyx scales big as hoplite shields, gnashing its car-crusher gob in a very public display of grievous intent. Burning gulls swam in a loose circle through the sky above its head, crowning the monster with a giant halo of flame. As Delphine watched, all across the city converted roof cannon domes segmented, opening to the brisk night like tarnished lotuses. Huge piston banks made gushing noises as rigid stamen-spires rose from the new blooms, each underlit with the graveyard haze of spook-blue hazard lamps. Dark figures appeared at the spire bases, Peace troops running deep-etched drills from pure muscle-memory.

‘Ma’am?’

At the tip of each spire was a steel ring to which scrambling grunts affixed a complicated high-tensile harness via a clasp. Nose pressed to the cold glass, Delphine watched harnessed troops unfold ultralight wingsets – glorified hang gliders bulk-produced in the Barracks to suit the grunts’ uniform height and weight – and lope ape-backed out onto narrow toroid runways, fat scuttling bluebottles to their flightless peers’ pismire toiling. From beneath the rollercoastering klaxons the wail of antiquated turbines built to a high screech. Hazard lamps blinked from blue to red; winged City Peace dipped their heads and broke into canters; the tall spires began to spin.

‘It’s finally happening.’

‘The CPs are responding in line with emergency protocol but the rest of our forces are waiting for a command, Ma’am.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Ma’am? What are your orders?’

Delphine rubbed the phone against the nook of her ear. ‘Let me call you back.’ And she snapped the cell shut.

* * *

Near the city limits, amongst the sequestered grot of the Plague District, Tetradaemon Hetchel Plantagenet Parish dropped his shoulder and rugby tackled a children’s hospital. It gave like a choco bunny under his hefty check, hollow and satisfying, glass dust, bricks and ill-sprung beds pelting his back and bonce as the whole sorry edifice caved. He swiped debris from his eyes, shook a glorious fist at the dark wide city.

‘Come on you gormless bastards! Monster attack! Monster attack!’ He threw his head back, hot gulls blazing above him, and swept his talons towards his armoured chest. ‘What’s the matter? Demonstrate some sack, for Jenkins’ sake!’ He turned, squaring up to a water tower, then dealt it a one-two combo – water geysered from its seams at the first blow; with the second, it burst like a piñata. Searchlights caught the moisture haze and filled the night with rainbows.

In the streets below, parked cars hopped with each footfall, alarms mewling like woken infants, windows smashing. Plague zombies obeyed the mechanisms of vague interest and gazed upward with cataract-frosted eyes. Survival instincts abraded to a plodding resignation, they squelched in twos and threes beneath Parish’s stomping advance. Tarmac cracked like hot mud and blackgreen innards ran in rivers.

Some twenty metres above the Tetradaemon’s left shoulder, Benson the Painsmith fluttered against a warm, fetid headwind, some small rag-wrapped object clutched close to his ribby chest. Though conventional models of physics dictated that his shabby wings – which, by dint of their position and modest size, suggested to the casual observer nothing so much as vestigial ears – should have had trouble keeping a grape aloft, some vagary of the flesh-jump between the Ire Marshes and Errata had granted him the power of flight. Sure, his wings thrummed like a hummingbird’s, but it was an invisible psionic tension that bore him up above the havoc – caustic, bone-deep repulsion.

Parish shot his hireling a canny glance. ‘Say, how’s the weather up there, Benson? Any sign of a burgeoning reprisal?’

Benson squinted into the middle distance, his eyesight not so good. ‘B-b-bugger all, sir. Ah… wait.’

Across the city rooftops blue glows winked red. Benson peered at the closest, saw a whirling spike tall as a house and four winged City Peace troops swinging at compass points from long cables like cars on a fairground ride, centripetal force lifting them horizontal, the sleek spire spinning faster, the grunts starting to blur they were gone. He blinked, looked again, saw just the empty cables lashing through the air like fat braids. Then he glanced up. The air over the city was swarming with gnat-winged silhouettes.

‘They’re coming for us, sir.’

‘Coming for me, Benson, ready to spank themselves against the big studded paddle of my ambitions. We’re not some Gog and Magog double act.’ Parish thrust his palm through the wall of an apartment block, grinned as the building crumpled in on itself. ‘Unless you’re actually intimating you fancy yourself in a fight against Errata’s finest. I suppose you’re planning to ennui them to death!’ And he cabered a burning bus into a sprawl of warehouses, laughing.

‘What is the plan, sir?’

‘City Hall chucks its best Disgrace Accord compliant weaponry at me and comes away with a bloody schnozz! Citizens and tower blocks topple like stacked tins! Panic, gurgling tributaries of blood, strange atavistic protection rituals that keep sociologists talking for years… then at last the inevitable surrender, the Governor bottled and stashed somewhere out in the Bombwastes and me with a brand new playground, revenue streams surging in from across the Planes. I’ll be rich enough to run for Doomlord in no time.’

Benson bobbed a little higher. ‘This is all about promotion to you, isn’t it sir?’

‘Oh Benson.’ Parish tore through power cables as if ripping down tinsel. ‘Must you paint the universe in such drab colours even now, as my mayhem snowballs towards its zenith? I’m having a lovely time! Your analysis is less than welcome!’

‘I can see how self-awareness might b-b-be an unpleasant prospect for one such as yourself, sir. B-b-beings who embark on the search for truth with rare zeal have forgotten they don’t know what it is, yet. It’s like peering into one end of a cylinder without knowing if it’s a kaleidoscope or a loaded b-b-bazooka. Stay thick! That’d b-b-be my motto. I envy you at times, sir. Dunderheads have all the fun.’

Parish hesitated in the act of cracking open a metal dumpster. ‘Benson?’ His eyes rolled upward. ‘If I didn’t know better I’d conclude you’re being impertinent.’

‘B-b-but you don’t, do you sir?’

Parish tossed the split dumpster to the kerb, burying a small mobile hotdog concern in plague trash. ‘Don’t what?’

‘Know b-b-better, sir. Hussies like me ‘ll take any data we can get, b-b-but you sir? Why, your b-b-brain’s chaste as a nun.’

‘You do realise that now my stretch in the Ire Marshes has come to an end, I’m quite at liberty to pop you like a zit?’

‘It’s a threat you never seemed to tire of dangling b-b-before me sir, ungrateful b-b-bastard that you are.’

‘Ungrateful?’ Parish clenched his slick fists. ‘Ungrateful?! Tell me you’re simply observing my entirely apt lack of gratitude towards you or I shall pluck you from the sky and scoff you, you little stammering jobby!’

Benson rose several metres on a thermal of loathing. ‘You’ve the memory of a b-b-bath sponge, sir. I was the one who came up with a plan for tricking B-B-Brahmini Jones into taking your place in the Ire Marshes. I was the one who drafted the terms of the contract so that as long as he b-b-bumped himself off, you were golden. I was the one who wrote the b-b-bogus tipoff letter that made him think the Government’s VoidMine prototype was the Key to Errata. Without my wily nous, you’d still b-b-be stuck in the Outer Circles, playing chess and looking like a right wanker.’

‘Wily nous?! Wily nous?! Benson, I’m a gargantuan Hell fiend stuffed to the nostrils with big juicy muscles. I don’t need squirts like you riding pillion to get my way. I headbutt soot-caked tenements and they wearily implode.’

‘Even your ignorance is shot through with b-b-banality, sir. You’re just like all the others, addicted to chasing prestige’s naff accoutrements. You think you’re amassing power b-b-but it’s just a b-b-badge collection.’

‘Badges?’ roared Parish. ‘I don’t need any stinking badges!’ He thrust a taloned index finger up towards his fluttering lackey. ‘And I don’t need you either, thou snivelling gobshite of the Outer Circles! Nag, nag, nag... Of course you hate the universe – it dealt you an appalling hand! You’re a Painsmith. Your brethren are Hell’s lowly snivelling serfs, a breed of dispensable drudges rivalled in the pariah stakes only by bagpipers. You are but picture hooks to the daemonic – we nail you to walls and hang portraits from you for sport! And now –’ he filled his chest, ‘I shall sunder your new-minted body and return you to the Pit, o foolish Painsmith, o pitiable stutterer Buh-Buh-Benson!’

Benson smiled. ‘You won’t, sir. Actually.’ With a magician’s flourish, he whipped the rag aside to reveal the Acquiescence Orb.

‘Hnnh?’ Parish’s eyes thinned to a squint, then widened to an outraged glare. ‘What the blazes? Give that back, you wicked scamp!’

Benson hugged it like a baby. ‘See how flimsy it is, this thing you call power, sir? All at once you’re sending your commands out sans underpants. Go on, try pulling rank on me – I dare you.’

‘I’m a Tetradaemon! That sphere’s worthless in your hands! A daemon can’t use it to compel one of higher status – you told me yourself!’

‘I lied sir,’ said Benson. ‘Classic minion trick, remember? We’re not in hock to the Honour Code – that’s Tempters or higher. Grants us a little... latitude.’

‘B-b-but…’

‘Ha! You emulate my distinctive speech patterns in a desperate attempt at flattery. Sorry sir – it’s a b-b-bit late for that. You have your agenda, I have mine.’

‘I’ll knock your block off!’

‘Stay there.’

Fangs grinding like millstones Parish strained to raise his fists. ‘Gnnnngh! Unbind me! So help me Benson when I get free... Grrragh! For shit’s sake!’ His huge body shivered with exertion. ‘Let me go!’

‘No threat nor offer of riches could induce me to comply, sir.’ Benson patted the orb, then turned a merry backwards somersault. ‘All you want is a new playground. You’ll smash in a few troopers’ faces then try to negotiate a new Truce in your favour.’

Parish’s breathing was heavy, his eyeballs bloodshot. ‘And you? What do you want, reckless flunky?’

‘I told you, sir. I’m b-b-bored of existing and I’m b-b-bored of existence. I want to die and I want to take the universe with me. I want the end of everything.’ He licked his fat, chapped blue lips. ‘Now march on City Hall, smashing stuff along the way.’

Benson glanced down at his ex-master. ‘And for Jenkins’ sake, sir – try to look happy.’