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HEROICS INC.

Part Eight

The Purple Thingy was getting impatient.  
        "Are they going to sit there forever?"  
        It would have to make contact via the sword and get them 
moving on their way.  But first, aware of its youthful vows as 
a Junior Thingy Scout, and of the tattered "Keep the Cosmos Tidy" 
sticker stapled to one of its many rumps. It decided that there 
was a responsible cleanup job to be done.  
  
  
  




  
London, England: Early 2lst Century, August. 
 
  
For Casper and Blossom Titwilleger, the past week had been the  
worst of their lives.  The press attention, the stresses of a  
lifetime of consumerism reduced, literally, to rubble, the 
meetings with lawyers and insurers, the hasty replacements of 
immediate  necessities, such as clothing; they had been frantic to 
get away.  
        Opportunity had presented itself in the nerdish form of the  
incoming Bland Family from Hampshire.  A polite note left on the 
door of the Titwillegers' large Colonial-style dwelling, informed 
the Blands that, due to unavoidable last-minute interior 
redecoration of chez Titwilleger; fully-paid reservations had been 
made for them at a local motel of high standing and a new Cadillac 
had been hired. The note also pointed out that the Blands should 
react with a "jolly British stiff upper lip" to the many eager 
exponents of the journalistic art encamped en-mass at the bottom 
of the lawn. 
        The Titwillegers had thus finally made their escape, and  
leaving behind the hellish nightmare that their lives had become,  
they had made their way to England's romantic, Olde Worlde shores.  
        Due to problems with insurance, there had been a few forced  
economies: first class tickets had to be downgraded, no limo from 
the  airport etc., but compared to what they had recently 
suffered, such privations were minor annoyances. Even the fact 
that the Bland's  "Dream Home" had turned out to be a poky little 
Aldershot semi-detached, that the Bland family car was revealed as 
a late 70's East German Trabanth (purchased for slightly less than 
a modern bus ticket) and that the laughingly small appliance 
called a refrigerator was empty; all of this could not mar their 
pleasure at escaping.  
        However, they soon realised that "the best T. V in the 
world" was over-run with Australian imports or American shows that 
were two years out of date and, as there were no books on 
taxidermy amongst the Bland's limited stocks, they decided to 
travel. To this end, and with hope of enchantment in their hearts, 
Casper and Blossom had ventured abroad to seek the mythical green 
and pleasant land, all the while befouling the endless rows of 
drab Home Counties suburban facades with the noxious emissions of 
the Trebanth, a vehicle that could have given the Thingys' a run 
for their money in the pollution stakes. Eventually exasperated by 
one breakdown too many, they had splashed out on the hire of a 
serviceable electric Ford "Autumnal" and had travelled to see the 
untidy delights of England's capital  city.  
  







London in August was surprisingly sultry, almost tropical in  
its humidity.  Weather experts spoke gloomily of the increasing  
nascence of signs of global warming, whilst the great British  
gardener ignored the droughts and hose-pipe bans with blinkered  
impunity, arrogantly intent on protecting their lovingly-tended  
floral borders from victimisation at the hands of well intentioned  
local decrees.  
        Casper and Blossom had risen early, suffused with the  
pioneering spirit of their ancestors, and decided to brave the 
M25. After much wasted time spent entrapped in traffic, moving at 
half the speed of their forebears' covered wagons.  They had 
finally made it to "West End" as the central area of the city was 
called. Once there, after forlornly whiling away what fragment 
remained of time gained from their daybreak departure in search of 
the semi-legendary "empty parking space", they had gamely joined 
the bewildered multitude of sweltering visitors, tramping wearily 
amongst indifferent local crowds from monument to monument, it 
being something of a tradition on arrival in a new capital to see 
all the grand buildings that the natives never bothered about: 
Buckingham Palace; the wide avenue of the Mall; Trafalgar Square, 
a Mecca for every pigeon with a need to empty its intestines and a 
grudge against humanity; past the National Gallery and the book 
shops of Charing Cross Road; then, along Shaftesbury Avenue, its 
mostly-dark theatres almost as disappointing in their tawdry, 
traffic-choked setting as Broadway had been before redevelopment, 
nestled amidst the sleaze of Times Square; onward to Piccadilly, 
full of neon billboards for Japanese products that looked  
cheap and vaguely ridiculous in the piercing daylight. Finally,  
pausing for directions, they doubled back to Leicester Square, its  
premiere cinemas showing "new" releases, long-forgotten and sold 
to digital cable back home.  
        Fatigued, flushed, triumphantly sated with all the "quaint  
culture", Casper and Blossom stood queuing in Leicester Square,  
impatient for the opening of the reduced price theatre ticket 
booth.  
        As he waited in line towards the rear of a large and wilting  
group of heat-buffeted overseas theatre lovers, Casper acutely 
felt the lose of his hand-held micro-midget video camera, faithful  
recorder of all momentous Titwilleger travels and keeper of 
memories, a ubiquitous companion that had been transformed into a 
lump of space granite although, with his arm and leg heavily 
bandaged, there was not much that he could have done in the way of 
startling camera work.  
        Blossom Titwilleger, whose restraint over the past few days 
had been almost saintly, was beginning to feel a building 
pressure. A woman, not normally renowned for her calm acceptance 
of personal inconvenience, the tedious duration of the high 
temperature vigil was beginning to wash away all trace of her 
newly acquired humility. At last, she could stand no more.  
        'CASPER!' She bellowed, sending most of the queue Jumping 
into the air in unrehearsed unison. 'Get me a goddamned chair!'  
        In Space: The Thingy gratified its sense of neatness.  In  
Ashton: The home full of asteroids dematerialised, returning to 
their correct orbits and shapes above the fourth planet.  On Mars: 
The baseball mitt vanished, sending the traumatised transport 
crashing into its final resting place. In Leicester Square: in the 
bizarre coincidental way of such things, Blossom' s strident 
request for seating was instantly answered with one of a set of 
Titwilleger genuine reproduction dining chairs.  
        On its own, this would not have been so bad; but 
unfortunately, it had been accompanied by: bicycles, fruit, 
stuffed mammals, photos - all the A.W.O.L possessions appeared in 
the centre of the Square, balanced on a litter bin, all carefully 
arranged by the Thingy for the sake of tidiness, with large items 
at the bottom, smaller items nearer the top.  
        This column of thoughtfully balanced goods rose, end-on-end,  
out of sight into the sky, dwarfing the surrounding architecture 
and presenting a unique new hazard to air traffic controllers.  
A tee-shirt, blown free of the far distant pinnacle, fluttered  
slowly towards ground, watched incredulously by a square full of  
people sharing a stunned moment of peace.  The shirt gently came 
to rest on the head of a bronze of Charlie Chaplin and the calm 
was shattered.  As it landed, a newly-arrived youth found his 
voice and used it at full volume.   
        'F**k me! These publicity stunts get better every day!'  
        People rapidly started to react, moving closer or further 
away from the column, prompted in either direction by their 
reserves of bravado.  Only Casper stood still, staring in total 
horror.  
        'Its not my fault!' Blossom quietly asserted, falling back 
in nervous dread before her ageing husband's fixed expression.  
        Casper did not even hear her, His gaze went beyond his wife 
and the rising pile of family treasures, drawn in fascination to 
the words on a cinema hoarding across the square, they read:
Witchcraft 2 - The Curse.  
  
  






  
A few miles from Shepard City: a dusty figure in a battered  
suit of armour, which struggled to encase a girth of Falstaffian  
proportions, moved rapidly across the rocky terrain.  
        Sir Bastable Fitche - "most fair and parfait knight" - had 
just returned from a crusade against the Godless heathen Saracen.  
There he had tilted with many goodly lords and fought at their 
side through much weary slaughter. Now he had turned his attention 
to the redemption of a knight's most profound oath, a promise 
forged in the heat of battle.  He was committed to that most holy 
of quests, the search for the Grail.  
        Conscious that time was running cut, Sir Bastable  spurred 
on his noble steed to greater efforts; his armoured legs increased 
their furious peddling and the ruined old bicycle moved even 
quicker, its warped wheels crazily bumping their tyre-less rims 
into faster and more eccentric forward orbits, the rusty metal 
frame bucking like a bronco as it jumped over the Martian 
boulders.  The knight knew that he had to locate the Grail by 
nightfall.  If he did not return to the bar before then, his 
Squire would be furious.  
  








Merlyn was beginning to suspect that he was no longer in  
Wessex. He had been journeying for some considerable time in the  
gloomy daylight, not pausing to take shelter from the tempestuous 
red  dust storms that had frequently assailed him. If this vile 
desert was all that remained of his once green homeland, then 
something demonic and evil had taken hold of that land, something 
that dwarfed the petty enchantments of his likely enemies.  
        His foes had been long dead or departed when he had started 
his rest; he remembered the wanderings that had followed the end 
of Kinata's reign, the demise of his ancient culture and the 
rising worship of the Christ, the arrival of the Saxons and the 
Norsemen. 
        He had been so tired, SO despondent, How long had the spell 
lasted? How long had he slept?  A hundred years?  Surely not more 
than that. Merlyn halted; it was time that he found out.  
        Muttering rhythmically, Merlyn raised a long, rune-clad arm  
above his head and great rippling bolts of power shot forth into 
the air.  For a moment he stood transfixed, as wave-upon-wave of 
pure energy distributed themselves throughout the planets 
atmosphere and beyond. At last, drained and exhausted, he stopped, 
tottering slightly as he waited, senses full of eager suspense.  
  






Across the surface of the planet, the Thingy's Chosen Ones had 
stopped to register and admire the wizard's dazzling pyrotechnic 
display.  Unsurprised, armed with the feeling that more strange 
events seemed imminent, Balidare, Grendella and Magda filed the 
display into a mental drawer marked "portents", before 
recommencing their respective Journeys towards the derelict city, 
all reassured slightly that perhaps it was not just a wild-goose-
chase after all.  
  






Will and Sulphur were also unfazed by Merlyn's magic, mainly  
because they did not notice it.  They had been dealing with other  
pressing matters.  
  
  
Will was scandalised.  
        'What do you mean, dig a hole?' he exclaimed in tones of 
shock and outrage.  
        'What I said.' Sulphur replied, undaunted by the human's  
bluster.  
        'So, you're saying that, if I want to go to the toilet, I 
have to dig a hole with my hands, excrete in the hole and then 
cover it up?'  
        'That's about right.' Sulphur agreed.  
        'But it's monstrous!  Where are the waste disposal systems?'   
        'There are none, They're a product of COMS.  Not a product 
of nature.' The dragon spoke in a deadpan voice that hid an inner  
struggle to conceal the sense of "I told you so" triumphant relish  
that his circuits busily signalled. 'You've been moaning for 
decades that this is what you wanted, life without machines 
nannying you to death.'  
        'But,' said Will, his distasteful grimace a picture to 
behold, 'I never thought it would be so - squalid.'  
  
  








The Wizard's enchantment had delighted one other witness.   
Closest to Merlyn's position, Sir Bastable had been almost 
childishly enraptured by the mystical fireworks, convinced that 
they were a clear sign from God, indicating the Grail's location 
to his goodly servant. His little fat armoured legs pumped the 
pedals of the creakily protesting bicycle with tireless 
dedication, powering it across the red dust at manic speed.  
        After over an hour of such pace, the knight neared his goal.   
Sir Bastable's sense of anticipation was all-consuming, visions of  
the Holy Chalice closed off all else, blinding him to his  
surroundings.  The sudden appearance of Merlyn in his path, and 
the terrific impact as the knight hit the wizard, was therefore  
completely unexpected.  
        As he picked himself up with all the dignity that someone  
knocked into a horizontal heap can muster, Merlyn muttered a 
string of archaic oaths that probably would have been unprintable 
if they had been at all comprehensible.  
        Sir Bastable did not understand a word that was said, but 
had not liked their tone.  The battered knight righted himself 
into a warlike pose, struggling to lift his frozen visor.  
        'Zounds Sir!' Bastable coldly uttered, freeing the visor and  
pointing dramatically at the fallen bicycle. 'Yonder lies my  
war-horse, Leonidas.  He is the finest destrier in all Christendom 
and I must warn you that ye will pay dearly if he has suffered 
harm.'  
        As if to illustrate the point, Bastable's incredibly full 
white moustache spilled forth from the confines of the helmet.  
The moustache bristled with indignation, then followed the 
bristling with a rumba and a neat little two-step, it was a 
beautiful mover.  
        Merlyn gazed at the rotund, red-faced little knight with 
real puzzlement.  He had been walking along minding his own 
business, when suddenly, out of nowhere the dusty armoured figure 
had appeared mounted on the strange contraption and bowled him 
down. The mystic was unaware of any possible changes in greetings 
etiquette during his slumber, and so stayed his initial murderous 
inclinations.  Perhaps this crashing into visitors was some new 
custom.  It was to be hoped that it was not; there was only so 
much wear and tear that even a wizard could take.  
        However, Merlyn was concerned; something was wrong.  He 
spoke all contemporary dialects and idioms but this being, 
although definitely a man in appearance, seemed to converse in 
gibberish. Surely language had not changed so much In a hundred 
years or so? Merlyn decided to act.  He moved slowly forward, arms 
spread wide to indicate peaceful intentions.  
        'Greetings.  I wish you no harm, Where am I ?... Ancient  
Briton, Pict, Celt, Saxon, Norse, Greek, Hebrew, Latin. etc., 
etc., etc. For some time and with real patience Merlyn tried all 
the languages that he knew.  All met with the same blank response 
from the knight,  
        Sir Bastable was aware that some saintly hermits could  
undertake the speaking of tongues.  Was this curiously imposing  
figure such a man?  His speech certainly made no sense, or 
perhaps, had the jolt of the impact just been too much. He shook 
his head in bewilderment, aware that he did not have the mental 
capacity for such weighty matters.  
        Merlyn finally gave up.  He was obviously getting nowhere.   
Although drained and weary after the immense exertions involved in  
his recent enchantment, the wizard realised that he would have to  
perform another act of magic.  
        Reaching into his robes, Merlyn pulled forth his most 
treasured possession; a compact little black volume. Not for him 
the showy ostentation of some huge, outmoded and dusty Grimoire, 
or bloodstained collection of runes designed for sale to dumb 
amateurs. No, Merlyn was a busy working wizard and needed a 
working tool: he used a Fil-a-Hex.  
        Quickly he leafed through the pages until he found what he  
wanted under LINGUISTICS.  He closed his eyes, muttering the 
words, quivering his hands. The beat and the tempo built, the 
movements and voice becoming more urgent accordingly. Suddenly 
there was a strong breeze where before there had been none before. 
For a moment, the Magician was cloaked from Sir Bastable's gaze by 
a cloud of windswept red dust that formed into a mini-hurricane 
around his plaid-clad figure.  Then it was over.  
        As the dust cleared, Merlyn lay still on the ground.  Sir  
Bastable approached, all thought of the Grail cleared from his 
mind. This person was interesting.  
        'Are you all right?'  
        Merlyn stirred.  He sat up, a beaming triumphant smile 
lighting up his grim features.  
        'Fine thanks,' he replied, speaking the same tongue as Sir  
Bastable with perfect fluent ease, 'a little tired perhaps, but it  
works.  I can still do it - I can still perform a linguistic spell  
with the best of them.'  
  







Merlyn did not know just how right he was.  In fact, he was  
severely understating the case.  His spell had been more 
successful than he could imagine. It may have just have been that 
Merlyn was a bit rusty after his long rest, or it may have been 
that he just plain underestimated the force needed to get the 
result required, but, whatever it was, the spell had dramatically 
overachieved.  
        EVERYTHING on the planet, biological being or not, had been  
abruptly empowered with the ability to understand any language 
spoken or shown to them.  Nothing was left out: rocks, doors, 
tables - all could comprehend, all equipped with a power acquired, 
mainly without their knowledge, a skill that was to have its uses 
for some. In an instant, the motley crew of life-forms on Mars had 
become as unlikely a bunch of inadvertent linguists as it was 
possible to find.  Even the few surviving creatures swimming in 
Grendella's lonesome bathing pool were affected, imbued with the 
capacity to communicate in anything from Serbo-Croat to Swahili, 
but sadly, like most of the lipless rocks and plants, neglected 
and totally forgotten in their subterranean watery world, they 
would never get the chance to try it out.

© Gary Cahalane