Grailblazers. Part 8

'Shut up about sodding lizards and help me up,' Lamorak growled. 'I think I've twisted my ankle.'

'It's your own fault,' Pertelope replied, 'lashing out at people with whopping great rocks like that. Anyone would think. . .'

Lamorak jumped to his feet, thereby giving the lie to his own earlier statement, and tried a full-length tackle. As his full length was only a little more than five feet, he failed.

'Lamorak,' said Pertelope sternly, 'you do realise you're making a most frightful exhibition of yourself. What would a pa.s.sing stranger think if he saw you now?'

'Depends,' Lamorak panted in reply. 'If he knew what I'd had to put up with from you ever since we left Birmingham, b.l.o.o.d.y good luck to you, probably.' He hurled the rock, which landed about two feet away, and then sat heavily down.

'Really!' said Pertelope, offended.

Lamorak drew in a deep breath, looked for a moment at his scuffed and bleeding palms, and sighed. 'Tell you what,' he said. 'We'll make a deal. You take the compa.s.s, the map, your rucksack, my rucksack, the whole lot, and I'll stay here and die in peace. How does that sound?'

Pertelope shook his head. 'Don't you worry,' he said cheerfully. 'I'm not just going to up and leave you, you can count on that?'

'Really?'

'Really.'

Lamorak nodded, and then stretched out his trembling hand for the rock once more. Pertelope kicked it away, and then went and sulked under a sand dune.

It didn't last, though; Pertelope's sulks never did. Thus, when Lamorak had just fallen asleep and was already dreaming rapturously of a swimming pool full of frosted beer surrounded by club sandwiches, Pertelope sat down a few judicious feet away, extended his right leg and prodded his companion in the ribs.

'Never mind,' he said. 'Something'll turn up, you'll see.'

Lamorak groaned feebly and turned on his side. Pertelope shuffled a little nearer.

'Apart from lizards,' he said, 'there's snakes, and a sort of small bird. Actually they're quite rare these days, because of the erosion of their natural environment by toxic industrial waste; so we'll only eat those as a very last resort. But like I said, there's lizards and . . .'

'Mmmmm.

'Or perhaps,' Pertelope continued, 'we'll be rescued by a party of wandering aborigines, although really you shouldn't call them that, because really they're a very ancient and n.o.ble culture, with a very sophisticated neo-mystical sort of religion that makes them in tune with the earth and things. Apparently. . .'

'Pertelope,' Lamorak said, 'I'm lying on a packing case.'

'Well then, move a bit. I read somewhere that they can walk for days at a time, just singing, and come out precisely where they intended to go, just by harmonising their brainwave patterns to the latent geothermal energies of . . .'

'It says Tinned Peaches, Pertelope.'

'Sorry?'

'On the lid,' Lamorak replied. 'There's a label saying Tinned Peaches.'

There was a momentary pause.

'What did you say?' Pertelope enquired.

'Oh for Christ's sake,' Lamorak shouted. 'Come over here and look for yourself.'

Between them they scrabbled the half-buried case out of the ground, and broke the screwdriver blade of Pertelope's Swiss Army knife levering off the lid.

The crate was full of tins of peaches.

'Quick,' Lamorak hissed, 'Give me the b.l.o.o.d.y penknife.' He grabbed it and feverishly flicked at the tin-opener attachment with his brittle thumbnail.

'Hang on,' said Pertelope, turning a tin round in his hands.

'I'm sorry, Lammo, but we can't eat these. It's a pity, but...' Lamorak froze. 'What the h.e.l.l do you mean, we can't eat them?' he said. 'Okay they're a bit rusty, but...'

Pertelope shook his head. 'It's not that,' he said firmly. 'Look, see what's written here on the label. Produce of South Africa. I'm afraid...'

Lamorak gave him a very long look, and then put the penknife down.

'That's it,' Pertelope said. 'I know it's hard luck, but what I always say is, principles are principles, and it's no good only sticking to them in the good times, because...'

He was still talking when Lamorak hit him with the tin.

The Fruit Monks of Western Australia are one of the few surviving branches of the great wave of crusading monasticism that originated shortly after the fall of Constantinople in 1205. The Templars, Hospitallers and Knights of St John have largely disappeared, or been subsumed into other organisations and lost their ident.i.ty; but the Monachi Fructuarii still cling to their ancient way of life, and their Order remains basically the same as it did in the days of its founder, St Anastasius of Joppa.

Legend has it that St Anastasius, inspired by the example of the soldier who gave Christ the vinegar-soaked sponge on the cross, set up his first fruit-juice stall beside the main pilgrimage route from Antioch to Jerusalem in 1219. By the middle of the thirteenth century, the brightly-coloured booths of the Order were a familiar sight the length and breadth of the Holy Land; and after the Fall of Acre ended the Crusader presence in the Middle East, the monks turned their attention to the other desert places of the earth. Dwindling manpower has, of course, severely limited their operations, so that nowadays they have to be content with depositing cases of canned fruit at random points, relying on Providence to guide wandering travellers to them.

In 1979, the Order was taken over by an Australian-based multinational food chain, and coin-operated dispenser machines are gradually replacing the simple wooden packing cases; but the process of rationalisation is far from complete, even now.

It was a suitable moment for reconciliation.

'Have a tinned peach,' Lamorak said. 'If it helps at all, it doesn't taste South African.'

Pertelope raised his head, and lowered it again almost immediately.

'What hit me?' he enquired.

Lamorak shrugged. 'You're not going to believe this,' he said through fruit-crammed cheeks, 'but it was a tin of peaches.'

'It was?'

Lamorak nodded. 'Probably fell out of a pa.s.sing aeroplane. Or maybe they've got a serious peach glut problem here, something to do with the Common Agricultural Policy. Anyway, it fell on you, and out you went like a light. Pity,' he added, 'that Sir Isaac Newton's already scooped you on gravity, otherwise you could be quids in. Never mind,' he concluded, and burped.

'Lammo,' Pertelope whispered, 'I'm hungry.'

'I can believe that,' his companion replied. 'Pity you can't eat these peaches, really, because . . .'

There was a silence, broken only by the sound of Lamorak's jaws. For a man with serious toothache, he seemed to be able to cope perfectly well with the chewing process.

'I've heard it said,' Pertelope ventured cautiously, 'that a lot of tinned stuff that's supposed to come from South Africa is only tinned there. It's actually grown in the Front Line states, apparently.'

Lamorak nodded. 'Well-known fact,' he replied. 'I read it somewhere,' he added confidently. 'Dirty trick, if you ask me.'

'Absolutely,' Pertelope agreed; and then said, 'How do you mean?'

'Economic sabotage,' replied his companion, shaking his head. 'The Pretoria regime puts their fruit in South African tins so's n.o.body'll buy it, thus undermining their economic development. It's time people did something about it.'

'Yes. Um. Like what?'

'Like eating the fruit,' said Lamorak, handing him the tin. 'That'll teach them, eh?'

About half an hour later the two knights collapsed, surrounded by empty tins, and lay still.

'We'd better bury them, you know,' Pertelope murmured.

'Sorry?'

'The tins. Can't just leave them lying about. Pollution.'

Lamorak thought about it. 'In theory,' he replied.

'I mean,' Pertelope continued, 'this is one of the few completely unspoilt natural environments left. We owe it to the next generation . . .'

'Yes,' Lamorak muttered, casting an eye across the desert landscape, 'right. Unspoilt.' He shuddered slightly. 'You get on with it, then. I'm just going to get a few minutes' sleep.'

He rolled on to his back and closed his eyes. Then he sat bolt upright and grabbed Pertelope's arm.

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l fire,' he hissed, and pointed. 'Look, Per, over there.'

Pertelope narrowed his eyes. 'Where, Lammo?'

'There.'

'Oh, yes, right. What am I supposed to be looking for?'

Lamorak ignored him. 'We've found one, Per. We've found a b.l.o.o.d.y unicorn.'

Pertelope's jaw dropped. 'Where?' he whispered.

'Oh for crying out loud.'

On the edge of a small escarpment, about five hundred yards away, the unicorn stopped, lifted its head and sniffed. For a minute or so it stood like a statue, its ears and nostrils straining; then its head dropped once again, and its tail swished rhythmically to and fro, although there were no flies for it to dispel. Its lips brushed the sand at just the level gra.s.s would have been growing at, had any gra.s.s been so ill-advised as to try and survive in a totally dehydrated environment.

'Oh, I see,' Pertelope gasped. 'Lammo, it is a unicorn. That's the most incredible-'

'Yes, right, fine,' Lamorak muttered. He was trying to get his binoculars out of his rucksack while at the same time remaining perfectly still, and the strap had caught in something. 'Just keep quiet, will you, while I . . .'

'It has a golden horn,' Pertelope crooned, 'growing out of the middle of its forehead.'

'Really,' Lamorak mouthed darkly. 'How unusual. Maybe it's an experimental model or something. Look, can you just free the strap of these gla.s.ses? It seems to have got wound round the . . .'

'Its coat is milk-white,' Pertelope drivelled on. 'Look, Lamorak, it's got gold hooves as well, isn't that just-?'

'QUIET!' It's amazing how loud you can shout when you're whispering. The unicorn's head jumped up like the handle of a low-flying rake, and the animal stood poised for a moment, a paradigm of nervous grace, before bounding away ont of sight.

There was an ominous silence.

'Oh dear,' Pertelope said. 'We must have frightened it off.'

Lamorak made a gravelly noise deep in his throat and rubbed the vicinity of his protesting molar. 'You think so?' he growled. 'You're sure it hadn't just remembered an appointment somewhere?'

'It was your fault,' Pertelope retorted, 'yelling at it like that. That's the trouble with you, Lammo, you're out of tune with Nature.'

From his pack, Lamorak had fished out a length of rope, a bundle of cloth, a small bottle and a box of sugar-lumps. 'Come on,' he said. 'It should be easy enough to follow its hoofprints in the sand.'

Pertelope nodded and stood up. They filled their bags with tins of peaches, sc.r.a.ped sand over the empties ('Though really we should take them with us, you know, until we can find a proper litter-bin. This sort of can is fully recyclable.') and trudged off towards where the unicorn had put in its brief, perfectly staged appearance.

Once upon a time, unicorns were extremely scarce.

So elusive were they that there was only one way to catch a unicorn . . . Well, in fact there were two. The simple way was to collect a bag of leftover sc.r.a.ps, soak them in cherry brandy, put them in a perfectly ordinary dustbin bag and leave it outside the back door overnight. The unicorn would then rip open the dustbin bag, gorge itself silly and fall asleep. That only worked for the urban unicorn, however; and since urban unicorns were scruffy, tallow-caked, marlinspike-nosed killing machines standing about twelve hands high and entirely devoid of fear or compa.s.sion, it was more a case of not catching them if it could possibly be avoided. An urban unicorn with a hangover was capable of doing more damage to life and property than most bombs.

When it came to the white unicorn, however, only one method stood any chance of success. It required a maiden of unspotted virtue, and six foot of stout hemp rope. The rope was usually no problem.

As time went on, and for various reasons connected with the decline of moral standards and the spread of Humanism, the annual unicorn cull became harder and harder to achieve, so the unicorns grew more and more plentiful. In fact, -they became a pest. Their natural habitat could no longer support the huge herds of migratory unicorns sweeping down from the Steppes each spring, and as the cities grew, more and more unicorns drifted into them, gradually evolving into the urban mutation noted above. Fortunately for the human race, they were entirely wiped out by a form of myxomatosis in the early twelfth century; but the disease never took hold among the white unicorns of the plains, which continued to devastate crops and strip the bark off young trees at an alarming rate. Finally, the Holy Roman Emperor reached an agreement with the Great Khan and Prester John, whereby the unicorns were herded across Europe into Asia, down through China and across into Australia, which at that time was still connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. Once the last unicorn had crossed over, the land bridge was immediately destroyed, and the very memory of Australia was deliberately erased from the memory of the human race.

It didn't take long for the unicorns to devastate their new environment, and now they are once again a comparatively rare and elusive species. To get an idea of what would have happened to Europe if this step hadn't been taken, one only has to look at the arid deserts of central Australia and consider that, before the coming of the unicorns, they were the most fertile and productive gra.s.slands on the face of the earth.

As time pa.s.sed, however, times also changed; and although unicorns are by no means common, there are other species rarer and more elusive still. Thus there is only one sure-fire way of catching a maiden of unspotted virtue. It requires a unicorn and six feet of rope.

'You know,' muttered Pertelope, as they limped to the top of yet another escarpment and looked down across a thousand acres of emptiness, 'I'm still not sure we're going about this the right way.'

'Shut up,' replied Lamorak.

'It's all right for you,' Pertelope protested. 'You've got sensible heels on.' He sat down, removed his left shoe and shook sand out of it.

'Don't start,' Lamorak sighed. 'We tossed a coin, remember, and-'

'Yes,' said Pertelope, 'and I've been thinking about that.' He put the shoe back on his foot. It was a patent navy court shoe with a two-inch heel and a rather smart bra.s.s buckle, and it rubbed like h.e.l.l. Still, as Lamorak had pointed out, it did go very nicely with the plain halter-neck navy dress, pillbox hat and matching handbag that now made up the rest of Pertelope's outfit. 'You remember,' Pertelope added, 'you said call, and I called heads?'

Lamorak looked away and nodded. 'Quite right,' he said.

'I recall wondering at the time why you insisted on using a Portuguese coin,' Pertelope went on, 'and it's just occurred to me that, what with Portugal being a republic . . .'

'Time we were on our way, Per.'

'. . . There isn't a head on a Portuguese coin,' Pertelope continued, 'only a sort of coat of arms thing on one side and a number on the other. l think...'

He broke off. In the far distance there was a tiny speck. They froze, and Lamorak raised his binoculars.

'That's it,' he hissed. 'We're in business. Now then, stay absolutely still and do what I told you. And for G.o.d's sake put your veil down.'

'I still think-' Pertelope whispered, but Lamorak cut him short.

'Actually,' he said, 'I didn't want to have to say this, but I wouldn't be, er, suitable anyway, so...'