Haroun and the Sea of Stories Read online

  The Plentimaws surfaced to utter one more wheezy couplet:

  ‘Things are worse than we’ve ever known!’

  ‘And the worst place is down in our Old Zone.’

  On hearing this, the Water Genie clapped his hand to his forehead, almost dislodging his turban. ‘What? What?’ Haroun insisted on knowing; and so a now-even-more-preoccupied Iff grudgingly explained that the Old Zone in the southern polar region of Kahani was an area to which hardly anybody went any more. There was little demand for the ancient stories flowing there. ‘You know how people are, new things, always new. The old tales, nobody cares.’ So the Old Zone had fallen into disuse; but it was believed that all the Streams of Story had originated long ago in one of the currents flowing north across the Ocean from the Wellspring, or Source of Stories, that was located, according to legend, near the Moon’s South Pole.

  ‘And if the Source itself is poisoned, what will happen to the Ocean—to us all?’ Iff almost wailed. ‘We have ignored it for too long, and now we pay the price.’

  ‘Hold on to hats,’ Butt the Hoopoe interrupted. ‘Hitting the brake now. Gup City dead ahead. Record time! Va-va-va-voom! No problem.’

  ‘It’s amazing what you can get accustomed to, and at what speed,’ Haroun reflected. ‘This new world, these new friends: I’ve just arrived, and already none of it seems very strange at all.’

  ~ ~ ~

  Gup City was all excitement and activity. Waterways crisscrossed the city in all directions—for the capital of the Land of Gup was built upon an Archipelago of one thousand and one small islands just off the Mainland—and at present these waterways thronged with craft of every shape and size, all packed with Guppee citizens, who were similarly diverse, and who all wore worried expressions on their faces. Butt the Hoopoe, with Mali on one side and Goopy and Bagha on the other, advanced (more slowly now) through this floating crowd, heading, like everyone else, for the Lagoon.

  The Lagoon, a beautiful expanse of multicoloured waters, stood between the Archipelago, where most Guppees made their homes in intricately carved wooden buildings with roofs of corrugated silver and gold, and the Mainland, where a gigantic formal garden came down in terraces right to the water’s edge. In this Pleasure Garden were fountains and pleasure-domes and ancient spreading trees, and around it were the three most important buildings in Gup, which looked like a trio of gigantic and elaborately iced cakes: the Palace of King Chattergy, with its grand balcony overlooking the Garden; to its right the Parliament of Gup, known as the Chatterbox because debates there could run on for weeks or months or even, occasionally, years, on account of the Guppee fondness for conversation; and to its left, the towering edifice of P2C2E House, a huge building from which whirrs and clanks were constantly heard, and inside which were concealed one thousand and one Machines Too Complicated To Describe, which controlled the Processes Too Complicated To Explain.

  Butt the Hoopoe brought Iff and Haroun to the steps at the water’s edge. The boy and the Water Genie disembarked and joined the throng gathering in the Pleasure Garden, while those Guppees who preferred the water (Floating Gardeners, Plentimaw Fishes, mechanical birds) remained in the Lagoon. In the Pleasure Garden, Haroun noticed large numbers of Guppees of an extraordinary thinness, dressed in entirely rectangular garments covered in writing. ‘Those,’ Iff told him, ‘are the famous Pages of Gup; that is to say, the army. Ordinary armies are made up of platoons and regiments and suchlike; our Pages are organized into Chapters and Volumes. Each Volume is headed by a Front, or Title, Page; and up there is the leader of the entire “Library”, which is our name for the army—General Kitab himself.’

  ‘Up there’ was the balcony of the Palace of Gup, on which the city’s dignitaries were now assembling. It was easy to identify General Kitab, a weatherbeaten old gent with a rectangular uniform made of finely-tooled gold-inlay leather, of the sort Haroun had sometimes seen on the covers of old and valuable books. Then there was the Speaker (that is, the leader) of the Chatterbox, a plump fellow who was even now talking unstoppably to his colleagues on the balcony; and a frail, small white-haired gentleman wearing a circlet of gold and a tragic look. This was presumably King Chattergy himself. The last two figures on the balcony were harder for Haroun to identify. There was a young and at present extremely worked-up fellow with a dashing but somehow foolish look to him (‘Prince Bolo, the fiancé of King Chattergy’s only child, his daughter the Princess Batcheat,’ Iff whispered to Haroun); and lastly, a person with a hairless head of quite spectacular smoothness and shininess, bearing on his upper lip a disappointingly insignificant moustache that looked like a piece of a dead mouse. ‘He reminds me of Snooty Buttoo,’ Haroun whispered to Iff. ‘Never mind—nobody you know. But who is this fellow?’

  In spite of whispering, he was overheard by many of the people now crowding together in the full Pleasure Garden. They turned in disbelief to inspect this stranger whose ignorance was so remarkable (and whose nightshirt was equally unusual), and Haroun noticed that among the crowd were many men and women who, like the man on the balcony, had smooth, shiny and hairless heads. These people all wore the white coats of laboratory technicians and were, clearly, the Eggheads of P2C2E House, the geniuses who operated the Machines Too Complicated To Describe (or M2C2Ds) which made possible the Processes Too Complicated To Explain.

  ‘Are you—?’ he began, and they interrupted him, for being Eggheads, they were extremely quick on the uptake.

  ‘We are the Eggheads,’ they nodded, and then, with looks on their faces that said we can’t believe you don’t know this, they pointed at the shiny fellow on the grand balcony and said, ‘He is the Walrus.’

  ‘He’s the Walrus?’ Haroun burst out, astounded. ‘But he’s nothing like a walrus! Why do you call him that?’

  ‘It’s on account of his thick, luxuriant walrus moustache,’ one of the Eggheads replied, and another added admiringly, ‘Look at it! Isn’t it the best? So hairy. So silky-smooth.’

  ‘But …’ Haroun began, and then stopped when Iff dug him hard in the ribs. ‘I suppose if you’re as hairless as these Eggheads,’ he told himself, ‘even that pathetic dead mouse on the Walrus’s upper lip looks like the greatest thing you’ve ever seen.’

  King Chattergy raised his hand; the crowd fell silent. (An unusual event in Gup City.)

  The King attempted to speak, but words failed him, and shaking his head unhappily he stepped back. It was Prince Bolo who burst into impetuous speech. ‘They have seized her,’ he cried in his dashing, foolish voice. ‘My Batcheat, my Princess. The servants of the Cultmaster purloined her some hours back. Churls, dastards, varlets, hounds! By gum, they will pay for this.’

  General Kitab took up the story. ‘A blasted business, confound it! Her whereabouts are not known, but most probably she will be kept prisoner in the Citadel of Chup, the Ice Castle of Khattam-Shud in Chup City, at the heart of the Perpetual Night. Spots and fogs! A bad business. Harrumph.’

  ‘We have sent messages to Cultmaster Khattam-Shud,’ continued the Speaker of the Chatterbox. ‘These messages concerned both the vile poison being injected into the Ocean of the Streams of Story, and the abduction of Princess Batcheat. We demanded that he put a stop to the pollution and also return, within seven hours, the kidnapped Lady. Neither demand has been met. I have to inform you, therefore, that a state of war now exists between the Lands of Gup and Chup.’

  ‘Extreme urgency is of the essence,’ the Walrus told the crowd. ‘The poisons that are spreading so rapidly will destroy the entire Ocean if steps are not taken to get to the bottom of the problem.’

  ‘Save the Ocean!’ cried the crowd.

  ‘Save Batcheat!’ shouted Prince Bolo. This confused the crowd for a few moments; then, good-naturedly, they altered their cry:

  ‘For Batcheat and the Ocean!’ they exclaimed, and Prince Bolo looked satisfied enough with that.

  Iff the Water Genie put on his most winning expression. ‘Well, now it’s war, young Thieflet,’ he said
with mock-regret. ‘That means nobody at P2C2E House will have any time for your little request. You may as well hand back that Disconnecting Tool; then, what do you say, I’ll have you taken home for nothing, completely free! There—what could be fairer than that?’

  Haroun clutched the Disconnector with all his might and stuck out his lower lip mutinously. ‘No Walrus, no Disconnector,’ he said. ‘And that’s flat.’

  Iff appeared to accept this philosophically. ‘Have a chocolate,’ he said, and produced from one of his many waistcoat pockets a jumbo-sized version of Haroun’s favourite chocolate bar. Realizing that he was starving hungry, Haroun gratefully accepted. ‘I didn’t know you made these here on Kahani,’ he said.

  ‘We don’t,’ Iff replied. ‘Food production on Kahani is strictly basic. For tasty and wicked luxury items we have to go to Earth.’

  ‘So this is where the Unidentified Flying Objects come from,’ Haroun marvelled. ‘And that’s what they’ve been after: snacks.’

  Just then there was a small commotion on the palace balcony. Prince Bolo and General Kitab went inside for a moment, then returned to announce that Guppee patrols who had entered the outlying areas of the Twilight Strip, looking for clues to the whereabouts of the Princess Batcheat, had arrested a stranger—a highly suspicious person who could give no satisfactory account of himself or explain what he was doing in the Strip. ‘I will question this spy before you all, myself!’ shouted Bolo, and though General Kitab looked a little embarrassed by that idea, he did not argue. Now a quartet of Pages led a man on to the balcony, a man wearing a long blue nightshirt with his hands tied behind his back and a sack over his head.

  When the sack was removed, Haroun’s mouth fell open and the unfinished chocolate bar fell from his hand.

  The man standing and shivering on the palace balcony between Prince Bolo and General Kitab was Haroun’s father, Rashid Khalifa the storyteller, the unhappy Shah of Blah.

  Chapter 6

  The Spy’s Story

  The capture of the Earthling ‘spy’ created a buzz of horror in the Pleasure Garden; and when he identified himself as ‘just a storyteller, and a long-time subscriber to your own Story Water service’, the general outrage only grew. Haroun started to force his wav somewhat rudely through the crowd. Many eyes stared suspiciously at this second Earthling, also wearing a nightshirt, who was pushing and shoving and appeared to be in quite a state. Up the seven terraces of the Pleasure Garden went Haroun, heading for the palace balcony; and on his way he heard many Guppees muttering: ‘Our own subscriber! —How could he betray and help the Chupwalas? —That poor Princess Batcheat—what did she ever do, except sing so badly it almost split our eardrums?—and she’s no oil painting, either, but that’s no excuse—you can’t trust these Earthlings, that’s the truth.’ Haroun, getting angrier by the minute, pushed even harder through the crowd. At his heels came Iff, the Water Genie, crying: ‘Wait on, patience is a virtue, where’s the fire?’ But Haroun would not be stopped.

  ‘What do Guppees do to spies, anyhow?’ he yelled bad-temperedly at Iff. ‘I suppose you rip out their fingernails one by one until they confess. Do you kill them slowly and painfully, or quickly with a million volts in an electric chair?’ The Water Genie (and every other Guppee who heard this outburst) looked horrified and affronted. ‘Where did you pick up such bloodthirstiness?’ Iff cried. ‘Absurd, an outrage, I never heard the like.’ —‘Well, then, what?’ Haroun insisted. —‘I don’t know,’ panted Iff as he struggled to keep up with the charging boy. ‘We’ve never caught a spy before. Maybe we should scold him. Or make him stand in the corner. Or write I must not spy one thousand and one times. Or is that too severe?’

  Haroun did not answer, because they had finally arrived under the palace balcony. Instead, he shouted at the top of his voice: ‘Dad! What are you doing here?’

  Every single Guppee stared at him in amazement, and Rashid Khalifa (who was still shivering with cold) looked no less surprised. ‘Oh, goodness,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Young Haroun. You surely are the most unexpected of boys.’

  ‘He’s not a spy,’ Haroun shouted. ‘He’s my father, and the only thing wrong with him is that he’s lost the Gift of the Gab.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Rashid gloomily through chattering teeth. ‘Go on, tell everyone, broadcast it to the whole world.’

  ~ ~ ~

  Prince Bolo sent one of his Pages to escort Haroun and Iff to the royal quarters in the heart of the palace. This Page, who didn’t look much older than Haroun, introduced himself as ‘Blabbermouth’, which, as it turned out, was a popular name in Gup for girls as well as boys. Blabbermouth was wearing one of the Pages’ regulation rectangular tunics on which Haroun observed the text of a story called ‘Bolo and the Golden Fleece’. ‘That’s strange,’ he said to himself. ‘I thought that story was about someone else.’

  As they made their way through the mazy passages of the royal palace of Gup, Haroun noted that many other Pages of the Royal Guard were dressed in half-familiar stories. One Page wore the tale of ‘Bolo and the Wonderful Lamp’; another, ‘Bolo and the Forty Thieves’. Then there was ‘Bolo the Sailor’, ‘Bolo and Juliet’, ‘Bolo in Wonderland’. It was all very puzzling, but when Haroun asked Blabbermouth about the stories on the uniforms, the Page only replied, ‘This is not the time for a discussion of fashion points. The Dignitaries of Gup are waiting to question your father and you.’ It seemed to Haroun, however, that his question had embarrassed Blabbermouth, whose face had reddened noticeably. ‘Well, all in good time,’ Haroun told himself.

  In the Throne Room of the palace, Rashid the storyteller was telling his story to Prince Bolo, General Kitab, the Speaker and the Walrus. (King Chattergy had retired, feeling unwell owing to too much worrying about Batcheat.) He was wrapped in a blanket and had his feet in a bowl of steaming hot water. ‘How I arrived in Gup, you will be wondering,’ he began, sipping a bowl of soup. ‘It is through certain dietary procedures.’

  Haroun looked disbelieving, but the others were listening intently. ‘As a frequent insomnia sufferer,’ Rashid went on, ‘I have learnt that particular foodstuffs, properly prepared, will (a) induce sleep, but also (b) carry the sleeper wherever he may wish. It is a process known as Rapture. And with sufficient skill, a person may choose to wake up in the place to which the dream takes him; to wake up, that is to say, inside the dream. I wished to travel to Gup; but owing to a slight directional miscalculation, I woke up in the Twilight Strip, dressed only in this inappropriate garb; and I froze, I confess it freely, I froze half to death.’

  ‘What are these foodstuffs?’ the Walrus asked in a very interested voice. Rashid had recovered sufficiently to make his mysterious-eyebrow face and reply, ‘Ah, but you must permit me my little secrets. Let us say, moonberries, comet’s tails, planet rings, washed down with a little primal soup. This soup, by the way, is very fine,’ he concluded on a different note.

  ‘If they believe that story, they’ll believe anything,’ Haroun thought. ‘Now surely they’ll lose their tempers and give him the Third Degree.’ What actually happened was that Prince Bolo gave a loud, dashing, foolish laugh and thumped Rashid Khalifa on the back, making him blow soup out of his mouth. ‘A wit as well as an adventurer,’ he said. ‘Good show! Fellow, I like you well.’ And with that he slapped his thigh.

  ‘What credulous souls these Guppees are,’ Haroun mused. ‘And gentle, too. Iff could have fought me for his Disconnecting Tool, but he made no attempt to get it, not even when I was out cold. And if they would sentence a real spy to no more than a thousand and one lines, then they are peaceful people indeed. But if they have to fight a war, what then? They’ll be completely hopeless, a lost cause …’ And here his thoughts tailed off, because he had been on the verge of adding, ‘Khattam-shud.’

  ‘In the Twilight Strip,’ Rashid Khalifa was saying, ‘I have seen bad things, and heard worse. There is an encampment there, of the Chupwala Army. Such black tents, wrapped in such a fanati
cal silence! —Because it’s true what you have heard rumours of: the Land of Chup has fallen under the power of the “Mystery of Bezaban”, a Cult of Dumbness or Muteness, whose followers swear vows of lifelong silence to show their devotion. Yes; as I moved stealthily among the Chupwalas’ tents I learnt this. In the old days the Cultmaster, Khattam-Shud, preached hatred only towards stories and fancies and dreams; but now he has become more severe, and opposes Speech for any reason at all. In Chup City the schools and law-courts and theatres are all closed now, unable to operate because of the Silence Laws. —And I heard it said that some wild devotees of the Mystery work themselves up into great frenzies and sew their lips together with stout twine; so they die slowly of hunger and thirst, sacrificing themselves for the love of Bezaban …’

  ‘But who or what is Bezaban?’ Haroun burst out. ‘You may all know, but I don’t have a clue.’

  ‘Bezaban is a gigantic idol,’ Rashid told his son. ‘It is a colossus carved out of black ice, and stands at the heart of Khattam-Shud’s fortress-palace, the Citadel of Chup. They say the idol has no tongue, but grins frightfully, showing its teeth, which are the size of houses.’

  ‘I think I wish I hadn’t asked that,’ said Haroun.

  ‘Chupwala soldiers were flitting around in that murky Twilight,’ Rashid resumed his story. ‘They wore long cloaks through whose swirlings I sometimes caught sight of a cruel, dully glinting dagger blade.

  ‘But, sirs, you all know the stories about Chup! —That it is a place of shadows, of books that wear padlocks and tongues torn out; of secret conspiracies and poison rings. —Why should I wait near that awful camp? With bare feet, blue with cold, I went towards the distant light on the horizon. As I walked, I came to Chattergy’s Wall, the Wall of Force; and, sirs, it is in bad repair. There are many holes, and movement through it is easily achieved. The Chupwalas know this already—I saw them across the Wall—I witnessed the kidnapping of Batcheat with my own eyes!’