The Throne of Mercury

It came from nowhere; it was nothing. She came from nowhere; she was nothing. More precisely she was a baker's daughter, abandoned at birth, and retrieved twelve days later by her father, the baker, after a long and tiring search. But only sixteen hours later, a life of adventure would begin for her. And years later she would sit on that dreadful thing...

But for now we shall start with the first inkling of adventure which came into her life, those sixteen hours after being rescued by her father. He had not seen her before. He had expected something really pleasant, his first child. But there was a shock in store for him. She was a dreadful sight to think of as being his daughter. And the question for that poor, troubled baker, was how had it happened? There had been nothing wrong with him or his wife, whom he never wished to see again, even though he was beginning to understand how she must have felt. How should he tackle the situation? The terrifying, but true, answer was that he simply could not. After those twelve long days of searching. There was only one solution he could remotely bear the thought of. And it was not one he cared for in the slightest. Not that he cared for all that much during those truly awful hours.

Now, perhaps, before we get too involved in this tale, I will oblige you by telling you a little of the background of this story. For at the moment you know nothing of the country involved, where the land lies (further than you might at first imagine), the city, town, village or dwelling we are at present dealing with, and from what group of beings the baker, his wife and his daughter originated from. Well, yes, in the hope that you would like to know, I will oblige you now by telling you a little about all the matters mentioned above.

The country, well, we are dealing with a greatly distant land called Donea, so far away in fact, that it is not on this Earth, but of a very different world, with very different cultures. The city, town, village or dwelling, well, the baker and his wife lived in what could be described as a reasonably sized town in our descriptions but what would be a giant sized city to the inhabitants. The city, town, village or dwelling...well it turned out to be something like a town or a city...it was called Trolambus.

Trolambus' population was around 40,000, and similar to the populations of the larger cities of Earth, the inhabitants had a name for being generally rather unfriendly. Ask someone the time on a leisurely tea-time stroll down the Main Street (a type of stroll usually reserved for those who don't particularly like tea), and he or she would under normal circumstances simply ignore you. But then, of course, at the time in Donea we are concerned with watches were not yet invented.

Donea's population consisted of four main groups of people (people were the beings I was referring to earlier, if you remember). The largest group did not originally come from Donea at all, but from another country of that weird planet. The country was called Hoshea. When the race first came to Donea on a large ship after war broke out in their own country, they were feared and resented by most Doneans, for the Hosheans came in their millions, far too many for the Doneans to resist. The latter race feared the Hosheans wanted the country for their own. But the Hosheans came seeking peace and that was the only thing they wanted from the Doneans.

Apart from the Doneans and the Hosheans, the country was also the new home for two other rcaes of people - the Folations and the Ralotes who came to Donea for one reason or another, only to receive similar resistance as to what the Hosheans received when they first arrived. Yet the Hosheans showed their true colours at this point and supported the Doneans - not because of their friendship, which was practically non-existant, but simply because they did not want more people cluttering up what they obviously were beginning to believe was really their own people's country.

The baker, Romalono Heracktera, and his wife, Fela Heracktera, both came from the same race and the same religion - the Folations, green coloured people who were all of the same religion, so that the (fairly weird...no, sorry, that was a complete understatement. Their worst ceremony - forgive me for mentioning this if you are not sitting in a comfortable position; in fact, if indeed you are not sitting down comfortably, you had better either do so now or skip the next couple of lines - was for the first born child of a family (it's not too distressing for the prents, they usually get much further) to throw himself into a freezing river and drown himself on his eleventh birthday) religion was simply titled (if it was to be translated into English) the Folation People. Anyway, as I was saying, Romalono and Fela, the baker and his wife were both Folations and both were members of that deliciously peaceful crowd, the Folation People.

What planet was Donea, Hoshea, Folatiaza and Ralo located on? It was not a planet of this Solar System - and who knows? It may not even have been of this Universe. No-one on the planet thought of naming it (perhaps I should call it Anonymous for the sake of readability and lack of confusion?).

The planet Anonymous was exceedingly small compared to Earth (never allow those exceedingly old professors, or "gentlemen" as they so nauseatingly insist on being called to convince you that our world is very small compared to most others), but it fitted in five continents in any case, as well as a huge population.

Anonymous also had the advantage of having similar climates almost everywhere on the planet, meaning that the human race could live just about anywhere they wished without having to worry about the climate there.

"Can you really be bothered?"

"I'm afraid I no longer understand you, my dear. You weren't like this before."

Who could be having this strange conversation?

"There is no need to state the obvious, my dear."

"But it is true, though."

"I'm not disputing that, my dear."

"Then why are you arguing, my dear?"

"I'm sorry, my dear. You really must forgive me for changing from time to time."

No mistake was made about the level of strangeness in this conversation.

"Your sarcasm is not necessary, my dear."

"What sarcasm is that?"



If Keramba Boshama is interesting, then so is a doornail. That was the opinion of Sebongo Mesayungo, the Appointer of General Imaginative Coalmen (on the planet we are calling Anonymous, for some reason, coalmen had to do a different dance every day when they delivered coal - and they had to make up the dance themselves). The truth of the matter, of course, was that Keramba Boshama was extremely interesting. It's just that the General Imaginative Coalmen Association (the GICA for short) had very high standards, despite the attempts of the General Imaginative Coalmen's Association (also the GICA for short - but there is a very distinctive difference, if you look) to have them lowered. Not surprisingly, Keramba Boshama was not a member of the General Imaginative Coalmen's Association. But he was a member of the General Imaginative Coalmen Association. Equally not surprising, the General Imaginative Coalmen Association had won the last coalmen's election (the winner of which takes charge of all coalmen in every country on the planet Anonymous except for Chakaro under the terms of the International Coalmen Agreement - unfortunately for coalmen, since taking charge, the GICA (well, the successful one) had changed the rules, and now elections were prohibited and coalmen had to make up all their own dances. However, Keramba Boshama was soon to be very far from his office at the GICA (well, the successful one).

Another Association official was as desperate to keep Keramba on as Sebongo Mesayungo was to get rid of him. This second official was well aware of the fact that Keramba was not meeting the standards imposed by the GICA, but that was just the point.

Actually this official was quite a crafty man. He was very agreeable when it came to talking to fellow officials, and simply by agreeing with everything, he gained promotion after promotion. But he was doing all this agreeing under false pretences. His fellow officials would probably turn a horrible purply-green colour with perhaps a slight yellow tint if they found out what was going on in this official's mind.

The official's name was Heshoro. He was a traitor. And as is the way with traitors, he had a scheme. With the status he had acquired, so the theory ran, it would be the easiest thing in Anonymous to surreptitiously give the orders that would result in Keramba appearing to become the Very Interesting Hero of those he represented. And Heshoro felt sure the key words in those orders would be..."thought about using a tin whistle?"


NOTE : As you may have gathered, I wrote this unfinished story when I was...shall we say, rather young. So I can't really vouch for its quality or for it making any logical sense whatsoever! What you see here is parts one, two and three - parts one and two first appeared in my own cheap and cheerful magazine 'Stareye'. For the sake of 'purity' I've stuck strictly to the original text.