The Eye of Zoltar

The name’s Gabby

‘Her life-force positively glows,’ came an unfamiliar voice out of a darkness that was punctuated only by flashing stars. ‘I can see why the Lifesucker homed in on her. Have you known her long?’

‘Since yesterday,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Her party rescued me from some kidnappers. I think she’s somebody big in the magic industry.’

‘No kidding?’ said the unfamiliar voice, which sounded impressed. There was a pause, then: ‘Where did you find the Australopithecine?’

‘His name’s Ralph. He had a Genetic Master Reset.’

‘I’m not sure what that means,’ came the unfamiliar voice again.

‘To be honest,’ said Wilson – for that’s who it was, I realised – ‘I’m not really sure myself. I think it’s a kind of magic.’

‘There’s not much round here that isn’t. Does it trouble you that his thing is showing?’

‘No, we’re kind of used to it by now.’

‘Ook.’

I opened my eyes to find Wilson, Ralph and the stranger staring at me. Wilson was holding a damp handkerchief to my head.

‘Am I dead?’ I asked.

‘If you were,’ said the stranger, ‘would you choose this place as heaven?’

I looked around. I was still in the Empty Quarter, leaning up against the Range Rover’s wheel. If this had all been a bad dream, I was still in it.

‘Sorry I had to knock you out,’ said the stranger with a boyish smile, ‘but your heart was belting out a funeral march so loud every Lifesucker on the planet could hear you.’

I looked at the handkerchief in Wilson’s hand. There was only a smallish amount of blood.

‘Thank you …?’

‘The name’s Gabby,’ said the stranger amiably, ‘a traveller like yourselves.’

‘Jennifer,’ I said, shaking his outstretched hand, ‘and this is Wilson.’

‘I’ve heard of you,’ said Gabby to Wilson. ‘Been here a while. A lot of close scrapes, but you always got away.’

‘I will die out here,’ said Wilson. ‘I’m choosing my moment – and I’ve been lucky.’

‘I’m not so sure luck has much to do with it out here.’

‘What, then?’ I asked.

‘Fate,’ he said, ‘and chosen moments winning out over lost moments. But we don’t choose those moments – those moments choose us.’

‘I’m not sure I understood that,’ said Wilson slowly. ‘Jennifer?’

‘Not really, no.’

Gabby shrugged.

‘Actually, me neither. I heard it from a smarter guy. Was this your transport?’

He nodded towards the Range Rover, and I explained that up until an hour ago we had had a half-track but it had been stolen, along with all our luggage and a handmaiden.

‘Llangurig, eh?’ said Gabby after Wilson had explained where we were heading but not why we were heading there. ‘Me too. We’d better get going if we’re to have even a hope of finding a safe place to spend the night.’

‘The Lifesucker,’ I said with a start, suddenly remembering. ‘Is it still around?’

‘It’ll always be around,’ he said, ‘and eventually return for you, as it will for us all. Death cannot be avoided for ever, but it can be postponed – in that respect it’s very like the washing-up. Now, we must leave before the batteries run down.’

‘Batteries?’

The reason for death’s sudden lack of interest in me was that Gabby had coaxed it away by means of a small tape recorder that had the sound effects of a party in full swing. The joyous laughter and unrelentingly upbeat chatter of happy humans were considerably more attractive than unconscious me, and the patch of dying soil was currently circling beneath a tree into whose branches the tape recorder had been placed, in the same way that a dog might pace angrily about a tree when seeking a squirrel. The tree was now quite dead, of course, as was the ground beneath it where death paced angrily, but better it than me, I figured.

With nothing else for it, we began to walk along the empty road to Llangurig, keeping a watchful eye out for peril, with Ralph moving about like a spaniel on a walk, sniffing a plant here, scrabbling under a stone for a beetle or two there.

‘What are you doing out here?’ I asked Gabby. ‘You don’t look as though you’re on holiday.’

‘I collect information on death likelihood for a major player in the risk management industry.’

‘Can you explain that in simple terms?’

‘Everything we do has an element of risk to it,’ he said, ‘and by identifying the potential risk factor of everything humans do, we can decide where best to deploy our assets to avert that risk.’

‘You work for an insurance company?’

‘Our data is used in the insurance industry,’ he said, ‘but we also freelance. As you can imagine, a place as dangerous as the Cambrian Empire offers a unique opportunity for studying risk. For example, if two people are confronted by a Tralfamosaur, which of them is more likely to be eaten first? The one who panics, the one who runs, the one who looks most dangerous or the one who looks the juiciest? There are many factors.’

‘I’m guessing “juiciest”.’

‘Yes, me too – it’s not a good example.’

‘You must know the Empty Quarter very well.’

‘I can’t stay away from this place,’ he confessed with a smile, ‘and studying people as they weigh up the risks involved in their various decisions is fascinating. Did you know that you are statistically more likely to die driving to the airport than you are on the flight you are going there to catch?’

‘You’ve never flown by JunkAir, clearly.’

‘There are always exceptions to the rule,’ conceded Gabby.

No traffic came our way in the next hour, except two Skybus lorries, presumably taking aircraft parts out of the Empire. The lorries swept past, ignoring our attempts to get a lift even if it was in the wrong direction, and were soon lost to sight. The day grew warmer, and we spoke less as we walked. Wilson, usually fairly voluble and optimistic, fell silent, and even Ralph, who had earlier dashed around like a mad thing, seemed to be keeping a keener lookout. With Llangurig now twenty-five miles or so away by road it was not possible to get there before darkness, and a night in the open seemed inevitable. Although Gabby was confident he could deal with most dangers during the day, he could not guarantee our safety at night. Calculating risk required one to be able to first accurately sense it, and there were, by current estimates, over sixteen life forms out here that could kill before you were even aware of them.

‘I think we should turn back,’ said Wilson when we stopped for a rest. ‘At least that way we’ll have somewhere to stay for the night, and it’s always possible a tourist party may chance along.’

He took off a boot and stared sadly at a blister, one of several.

‘That might not be for a week or more,’ I said, ‘and I’ve got Perkins, a half-track and a handmaiden to retrieve.’

There was a rubber Dragon and the Eye of Zoltar to consider, too.

‘We could cut across the Empty Quarter,’ said Gabby thoughtfully. ‘I know a Hotax trail that would take us direct to Llangurig past the Lair of Antagonista, the Dragon who once ruled these Dragonlands.’

‘Cut across the Empty Quarter on foot?’ asked Wilson in an incredulous tone.

‘Sure,’ replied Gabby. ‘The Dragon lived here so long that local animal memory evolved to include it – the Dragon’s been dead almost half a century, and still nothing goes near. I calculate the risk factor on sleeping near the old Dragon’s lair as no more than four per cent.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ I said, since Dragons held no real fear for me. ‘Ralph? What do you say?’

‘Yoof,’ said Ralph, staring at me curiously. His response might have meant ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or almost anything in between – but I felt I should ask him anyway.

‘What the hell,’ said Wilson with a shrug. ‘Lead on and let’s get it over with.’

And so it was agreed. About half a mile farther on we left the road to take a narrow path close to a roadside memorial to ‘An Unnamed Tourist’ who was ‘Dissolved but not forgotten’, but from the state of the half-buried headstone, probably was.

And after taking a deep breath and exchanging nervous glances, we struck off across the open country of the Empty Quarter.