Sacrifice of Fools (27 page)

Just like the old days.

The wind that carries the
kesh
chemicals through the shipyard streets is cold and keen, but Roisin Dunbar feels hot and constricted in her beige trench coat. It marks her as blatantly as it did in the dance club: she wants to tear the fucking thing off; tear all her heavy, heavy clutching clothes off. Her panties have her fanny in a grip of iron: she wants them off, she wants cool wind in her muff. Like being on holiday in a warm country, a hot and sensuous culture. It’s some mighty mood, blowing in the wind. Carnival of flesh. Stronger even than Vick menthol rub. But she’s a policewoman and policewomen don’t get to do what they feel like doing, so she follows Littlejohn in her iron panties and her concrete suit and her beige trench coat flapping around her legs.

A Shian steps forward from the crowd. She is carrying a long staff: Dunbar recognizes the badge of a
genro.
Littlejohn greets her. They talk in Narha. The Outsider talks very fast. Littlejohn’s replies sound ponderous and hectoring, like the thumping growl of Saturday afternoon street evangelists. Dunbar can guess what they are saying. The Outsider will be listing objections and violations of custom and Shian law. Dunbar’s reminded of the wee hard Falls women, in the early days of the Troubles, who would pour out of their back-to-back houses at the warning clatter of dustbin lids on concrete to face off army search parties with a barrage of accusations and legal protests. Every one of them a civil rights lawyer. Nothing changes. Somebody’s got to play the role of minority. Littlejohn’s talking again. He’ll be agreeing with everything the Outsider says, but regretting that the police do have warrants entitling them to search for their suspect, and yes, the officer was driving recklessly and the child’s life was endangered and while he recognizes that Shian law sanctions any act in defence of children, human law takes precedence, even in a Shian town, and there are proper channels for complaint and if the
genro
would file a complaint with the proper authorities the matter will be dealt with objectively and effectively and justly. But this won’t help anything. This will just make a bad situation worse. Really.

The
genro
rests on her staff. She says nothing. Clouds pass over the Shian town. To the north are the grey veils of a rain shower. The police look at each other. Dunbar looks at Willich. He has the car radio handset in his fingers. Waiting for the word.

The
genro
blinks at Littlejohn. She does something with her staff, it disappears into her hand. She lifts a fist, opens her fingers. The crowd see the sign and disperse, so fast it’s like a soft explosion. It’s just people on streets again, going their ways. The police stand down. Willich talks on the radio. Mountpottinger demobilizes.

The kid’s already back on its trike sucking a violently orange ice lolly someone’s found it. The trike isn’t even scratched: smart plastic, bounces right back, every time.

The search teams report back. Nothing. They’ve been into every building, down every street, along every walkway, every place and Eamon Donnan’s not there. Nothing.

‘Fuck!’ DCI Willich shouts. He bangs the wing of his car with his fist, dents the malleable metal. ‘Bastard’s done a runner!’

Words have been in his head all night, muttering, maithering, but it isn’t words that wakes him. It’s licking. Loud, slow, licking. Unh. Huh. Agh. And eyes open.

He’s alone in the bed as big as a room. No slender red body curled beside him. No monkey-kid-thing clambering over him, sniffing for smart milk. Just Gillespie in his sagging underwear, and the bright light of day.

Oh Jesus, I sucked her tit. In the dark of the night, I drank her milk. It’s different for them. It really is. It doesn’t mean anything to them. Doesn’t matter at all. Yes it does, the bright light of day says, shining straight into his soul.

Bright light of day, remorse, and licking.

In the big room, framed by the door, Ananturievo Soulereya is licking himself. It’s such an incredible operation that for a long time Andy Gillespie can’t do anything but stare. How can anything fold over like that, twist that to there? He is naked. His skin is still marked with black felt-tip hieroglyphs. He bends over and licks his crotch. I wish I could do that. His milk-swollen breast swings.

Tell me it doesn’t matter if you’d suck hers, but not his.

Ananturievo notices Gillespie watching him. He blinks. Hello.

‘Good morning Mr Gillespie. I trust you slept comfortably? How do you hurt today?’

It hurts like fucking hell. His body has turned to concrete in the night. Pain to move, pain to stay still. Ananturievo uncurls and Gillespie notices furrows of scrapes on his sides, chest, face, thighs. Three parallel lines. Those fine claw-nails he noticed last night. Tough love.

‘Ah, good night?’

‘Yes, thank you. Most successful.’

Most successful. Must remember that one, if I ever score again.

‘Ah, where’s Ounserrat?’

‘She has gone out to hire a car. She told me to tell you that you must come with her to Dublin today.’

‘Jesus, I can’t go anywhere today.’ It hurts to speak.

‘Ounserrat knows this, and therefore will drive you. All you have to do is sit. Here, I have brought your clothes. Shall I help you put them on?’

No fucking chance. It takes ten minutes to put his trousers on. Like microsurgery; very, very little movements. T-shirt stinks like a used suppository. No one’ll notice with the ming in here. He can’t get his arms through the holes.

‘Help,’ he says.

Ananturievo gently assists. The door opens. It’s Ounserrat, with Graceland toddling at her side, skinny fingers linked with its mother’s. The kid’s dressed in too-short pink leggings and ‘Princess in my Pocket’ T-shirt.

‘I am glad to see you are dressed, Mr Gillespie. I am most eager to get to Dublin today.’

‘What’s the rush anyhow?’ he asks. Ananturievo, dressed in felt pen and saliva, is in the kitchen trying to put a human breakfast together.

‘I am now very concerned for my client.’

‘Why?’

‘That is a matter of
gehenshuthra.’
Her eyes are flat and dull and alien. Gillespie knows he will get nothing more from her. Last night I sucked your milk from your teat, this morning I’m not even sure what you are. What do you know, that you won’t say? If I find you’ve been lying to me, I’ll…

You’ll what? Hit her? Smack her around? Be a
man?
Do the
man’s
thing?

But they do the man’s thing; they do it all the time, when someone threatens their kids.

‘Okay. We’ll go to Dublin. We’ll see if Hot Sweat Video knows anything about your client.’

Andy Gillespie and Graceland shovel down Rice Krispies. The kid is entranced by the sound effects. And they’re ready to go. Ananturievo and Sounsurresh talk in quick-draw Hot Narha, a blur of gentle touchings and syllables that strike echoes in Andy Gillespie’s skull.
Gelemhai:
dancing. But not the waltz or the slush or ‘Let’s Do the Timewarp Again’: dancing like your life depends on it.
Kesh
dancing. Real Saturday Night Fever.
Yesouldok:
a female sexual partner of more than one night.
Yekankin:
a male sex partner. As opposed a
lover
of the opposite sex.

Andy Gillespie wishes he didn’t have the echo for that in his head.

Farewells made, the
planha
parts. Graceland clings happily to Ananturievo’s leg, singing goodbyes to Mummy. Humans’ kids would be having hysterics at this point. Separate words for Mummy and Daddy in Hot Narha, Gillespie notes, as opposed to Cool Narha generic
parent.

The car’s a new model Fiesta; a zero-point job. Electric blue. Double bad vibes. Fords, and metallic paint.

‘This must have cost.’

‘It did, Mr Gillespie.’

Gillespie painfully folds himself into the car. The bastard smart dash reminds him it won’t start the car until he’s fastened his seatbelt. A thought:

‘Are youse pushed for cash?’

She starts the engine. Hydrogen and oxygen purr into water.

‘We are a little concerned, Mr Gillespie. The loss of my pizza job has hit us hard. I do not want to have to go to Not Afraid of the River for a subsidy.’

First lawyer he’s ever met didn’t want money. If she can hire a car, she’s got more money than him. He’s been suffering cash point belly most of the week; the sick gnaw of not knowing but not wanting to know how much he has. He should stick his card in and get the awful truth, but not today. You always have less money than you think.

This never happens to Inspector Morse.

It’s as she tries to turn out on to Sunnyside Street to go across the river to the motorway south that Gillespie realizes Ounserrat Soulereya is the worst driver he’s ever sat beside. She pulls out in front of a C&C lemonade lorry. She misses major injury by a scrape of paint. The lorry driver follows them over the bridge and up the Stranmillis Road, flashing his lights. Road rage of the lemonade lads.

‘Where did you learn to drive?’

‘Another planet, Mr Gillespie.’

‘Pull over here. Here. Just do it.’

Drivers hate being driven, but he only makes it to halfway down Stockman’s Lane before he has to stop. It’s not the pain in his hands and arms and shins. It’s the words. Words, flying at him out of everything his eyes touch. Lorry:
psoulning,
a girl. House:
riehensh:
another girl. Bicycle:
niesvat,
a boy. Cyclist:
keniesvalskin,
a girl. Pedals:
sounjeng,
a boy. Wheel:
reenk,
a girl. Names like plagues of midges, flapping improbable genitalia. Hes, shes; the whole material world touching and pressing and fondling. Is this what it’s like for French and Spanish, all their words with that little kiss inside, every sentence a tiny battle of the sexes? Or is it all a whiff of chemicals whirled through the demister?

‘Are you all right, Mr Gillespie?’

‘You take it from here.’

Maybe fear of being mashed underneath a forty-tonner will push the words back into their objects. It wasn’t like this the other time, inside. He woke up, and it was laid out in his head like a city that had grown up in the space of a single night. But this is like being given a Berlitz rather than a map: it tells you what to see, what things are, but not how they’re arranged, what street you have to walk, what bus you have to take to here, than change to the subway to get to there.

Jesus, she really is the worst driver he’s ever seen.

By the time they get to the turn off to Dublin he’s wound the window down. It’s bitter, but better than breathing in Outsider
kesh
stink. He hopes she can’t see his hard on; he’s had it since junction three. Like being a wee lad again, on the bus suffering Coachman’s Lob, trying to move your jacket to cover the thing up, sitting well past your stop because you’re not going to get up and walk down the aisle with that thing pushing the front of your trousers out like a big top. Penis:
genshent.
Boy. Erection:
riesoulgenshentsin.
Boy. Cold, fresh March air. Ahh. She won’t mind it. She likes the cold. They’re a cool climate people.

‘Whereabouts do you come from?’ Talking helps.

‘How do you mean that, Mr Gillespie?’

‘On your home world. Whereabouts. We like to know where folk are from in this country. Where they belong to.’

‘Belonging to a place. That is a most strange concept.’ She takes a roundabout at fifty. Maybe talking is not such a good idea. ‘One belongs to a Nation, and a Hold, but those are not places. They are people. The Soulereya Nation is everywhere. Perhaps it is that you mean the place I was born. That was Ruvstupehai. I was born and grew up there; my mother lived in three Holds in that region before I became a female. It is in the north-east of Great Continent, under the breath of the northern glaciers. That is where our hunting grounds are, I have seen them. I have hunted in them, with my mother, and when I went out on my travelling. They are very beautiful and rich, they have been maintained by forest keepers for five thousand years. My mother was not a forest keeper. She was an intelligence designer. It is a traditional profession in my Nation; that is what our name means.’

‘Like “Smith” means someone who makes things out of metal, or coopers make barrels.’

‘Yes. Soulereya means people who program things.’

‘You people have way too much civilization.’

‘You would not say that if you knew us, Mr Gillespie.’

The cold air is doing the job. The big sore hard-on is going down. Traffic is light off the motorway. Ounserrat can drive and talk without putting lives at risk. Field:
mang,
boy, Andy Gillespie’s brain whispers to him like an aside he can respond to or not. Tree:
frull,
girl. Ounserrat talks about her childhood in the cold northern Holds where winter was half a year long and the other five months coming and going. Whatever it was her mother did, she was good at it; Holds competed for her membership. The Soulereyas were not among the most powerful Nations — even the mighty Harridis were second division on the Hearth — but they held licences on basic assembler programs which had withstood centuries of legal challenge by the big manufacturing Nations, and had forged long-standing alliances with the Huskravidi and Tollamang Nations which had made them minority partners in the Shian-forming of their outer moon, Blascort. Soulereyas, she says with pride, were instrumental in the World Six colonization three hundred years ago, but Andy Gillespie’s never been able to understand the complex Shian system of favour, duty and ability that passes for an economy. He likes the idea of it, but he can’t see how anything can get done without money. Trader-ape thinking, he supposes. She describes her birth land, her travels across its mountains and valleys; the ancient, sprawling Holds, big as towns, in their pristine demesnes; the hunts and
kesh
encounters in those red-branched forests; the
love
and
bliss
in wooden rooms older than the pyramids. Gillespie hears her words, and the nostalgic pleasure with which she names the places she can never return to, but he can’t see it. His imagination is a long way out of the Woodstock Road, but light years short of envisioning another planet. He wants to apologize to her, it’s just story, I can’t believe in it, I can’t believe in you in any other setting than this country, this climate, this landscape. You might as well have come out of faery hills as from another star. She’s talking now about the World Ten migration. Her migration. It seems to have something to do with a colossal breach of etiquette. Gillespie can’t see how that would make you want to come on a one-way trip to another world. Just another
wanderjahr
for these people. Jumping up and down in the genepool, lapping a little over the sides. If you carry the Nation inside you, one place is as much home as any other. But another world; it’s not like Canada. You can’t get Friends and Family Chieftain Travel packages, call cheap rate on Sundays. Phone home. Sixty years. You can’t go back if you decide you don’t like it. Gillespie can only think of the World Ten Migration wrapped around human history. Nineteen forty: Second World War. Phoney war well over, proper war begun. Bombs over Belfast. Herr Hitler hitting the shipyards with H.E. and incendiaries. Eighty-eight starships pull out of orbit around the Shian Hearth, flick on their Mach drives and start moving at near-as-damnit the speed of light. And there’s Ounserrat Soulereya, folded into a stasis coffin tucked into the belly of one of a hundred landers clinging to the improbable spire-work of the big light-speed ships. He’s thinking of when he was a kid, and there was an outing from Euston Street Primary to an open farm, and all the others had gone ooh and coo and ahh at the wee goats and lambykins and the piggie-wigs, but what he brought back with him was the beehives, the beekeeper in his creepy veil and gloves lifting out a slab of comb, oozing liquid sunlight, brushing off the squirming insects to show him, curled in each tiny wax cell, a bee, wings and legs and feelers folded, embedded in honey. That’s how he sees her, curled up, breathing thick gold. My parents were kids when you left, kid. You slept through their courtings and their kissings and their hasty wedding. You dreamed your private dreams as they realized it wasn’t ever going to be good but it was all they had, and the squeezing out of three children into the uncertainties of the sixties, which, Ulster being Ulster, didn’t arrive until the 1990s, when I was twentysomething and intently fucking up my life, and still you slept, maybe moving a little in your honey sleep, sensing that the big ships had turned around ten years out, back in the days when we were still blowing each other up and blowing each other away and acting like five-year-olds with heavy ordinance. You are an old woman, you come from another generation, let alone another world, and here you are driving me in a hired Ford and there are road signs for Dromore and Banbridge and Newry and truckloads of Moypark frozen chickens and Tyrone brick and a fucking tractor hogging the slow lane, like there always is.