The Gone-Away World (48 page)

These things I know because I have kneeled at the feet of mechanical wizards and seen their secret texts. From my other initiation, the backhanded educational magic of the Evangelist, I know that Newton's Second Law is rendered as
F
=
ma,
Force is equal to mass times acceleration. Force is measured in
Newtons,
and the everyday utility of this law can be assessed from the fact that almost no one knows that. On the other hand, almost nothing with cogs or an engine would work without it.

It is Newton's Third Law—the one which Assumption Soames used to manipulate the world—which concerns me now:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Push an object and you will go backwards unless you brace yourself to offset the reaction. No force flows in one direction only. Now, a normal person, waking in an unknown bed, decatheterised and enveloped in the smoke of burned and carcinogenic breakfast biomass, would naturally ask a string of questions beginning with “Where am I?” or “How long have I been out?” or other questions more personal and vastly more dangerous. But I have been in this place before. The
gong fu
of waking from serious injury is also known to me. Questions like that lead in a given direction, or rather in two. They lead from the sickroom to the corridor and thence to the real world beyond, with all its demands and calculations and income tax returns and moral obligations; to weddings and women you love and to attendant catastrophes; and they lead backwards in time to the moment of injury and any matters bearing upon it, such as being blown up or sudden revelations of horrible conspiracies. Newton's Third Law is to be approached with caution.

Newton's work on gravity led to the discovery of the Lagrange point, a place where opposing forces cancel one another out, and a body may remain at relative rest. This is where I am right now; the forces in my life confound one another. Better, for the moment, to be here and now, without history or future. A man in need of breakfast. So that is what I am. I accept everything they say, and I wait while K (the batik-wearing sceptic, not the corpulent Lucifer) seeks out nutritious stuff which has not been immolated. And I set my eyes and my feet solidly on a path of painless emptiness for as long as it may last, because for all that I am on the mend in body, there is a dark place in my mind and in my heart which needs a little time before it may be stretched and probed and exercised, and before it is allowed to have an equal and opposite reaction. Because I sense something in it and around it which is alien to me, something boiling and hard, and it occurs to me, as I carefully turn my back upon it, and leave it in its ring-fenced, oxygentented, shadowed place, that this unfamiliar thing inside me may be
rage.

I
EAT BREAKFAST
. I hobble around. Days go by during which I ask no questions and make a point of not answering any either. I do this not aggressively but vaguely, leaving anyone who tries to draw me out with the feeling they learned something, and that next time I will surely open up and let them know it all.

I do not let anyone know it all, least of all myself.

And so I eat and fugue and wander and listen to the chat, and sleep in K's Airstream and listen to his deep, basso breathing when my chest twinges and I wake for a while. And through the days I sit with him, riding shotgun, even driving, watching the road go under the wheels and listening to the tyres. K does not ask any questions. Sometimes K turns up and she wants to know everything, which is almost as restful, because I can barely begin one prevarication before she runs off at a tangent and supplies me with another. There is a maze in my head, and I grow it out and up, and the monster in the middle fades away. This is a good thing. It works well. Until we come to Rheingold, and all the fences come crashing down.

W
E GO TO
Rheingold to meet up with a few more folks who are part of K's loose-knit caravan, some guys K says I will totally love. Rheingold will get a circus, and we'll all hook up and then travel on and around and just live, which I gather is what K and his friends do.

Rheingold is not
in
the Border, exactly—but on a bad day, when the wind blows strongly from the north-west, and the pressure dips over Lake Barbarella, the Border can just about embrace it, swallow it whole, and everyone goes down into the cellars and waits to see what will be there when they come back up. Rheingold is like Hurricane Alley, with monsters.

In the manner of people who live on the edge of disaster, the lady townsfolk are very correct and proper, and not in the least fond of surprises or loose behaviour. Their job (self-appointed but no less legitimate) is to make sure that Rheingold persists, remains itself, and imparts to the next generation a sense of belonging. They are the walls of Rheingold. Like Ma Lubitsch, another bulwark against the capricious world, they set great store by trifles and commonplaces, and they hew to a church of Regular Meals.

The men here, by contrast, are crusty, loud and bombastic. Their job (self-appointed but no less real) is to carve out a space in which their mothers, daughters, wives and sisters can make the town. They do this by the energy of their actions, the strength of their backs and their convictions and a great deal of shouting. They construct and maintain and occasionally knock down and rebuild the town. They do manly tasks and they hunt or farm, till the soil and maintain livestock, and they fortify and watch over Rheingold in case it is attacked by something ludicrous or dangerous or insane.

And yes, there are broad-shouldered, termagant women, swinging a pick with the boys, and slender, spiritual men rolled around compassionate hearts waiting at home for them, or for some macho fellow with a lumberjack moustache who prefers the physical company of men to the alarming recesses of the female anatomy. There are boys who like boys and girls who like girls and all the variations in between. This world being what it is now, no one gives a pinch of orange tummyfluff who shares whose bed, as long as the whole thing is done in the appropriately formal style and nobody gets hurt.

We arrive, and there is a careful exchange of assurances. Folks in places like Rheingold are not careless in welcoming new people. There are rituals and testings to be observed, earnests of security and mutual humanity to be given on both sides. Rheingold does not wish to vanish, and K and his friends have no intention of ending their days as the gristle in a cooking pot. K goes out in his best sarong and his most unthreatening sandals, and with him goes K (a slender accountant with pale eyes) and K the batik sceptic, and they explain carefully that they are just passing through, carnival players, and they'd happily set up outside the town on the north side and maybe a little trade and respectable good times might be available to such of the good people of Rheingold as might wish to enjoy them. If (and only if ) this meets with the approval of the elders of Rheingold, K will summon one or two other persons of his persuasion and acquaintance, who might add colour and verve to the show.

The Rheingolders, for their part, emerge slowly, open-handed, respectful. They smile widely so that we can see they don't file their teeth to cannibal points, and they all find excuses for taking off their shoes (small stones, itches, hangnails, broken soles and such) so that we will know they have toes instead of talons. There is a great deal of nodding and handshaking and back-slapping, and it is gradually established that no one has reversible knees or double-jointed thumbs or dorsal fins. At that point there is a certain amount of beer.

While the amber peacemaker flows among the men, K (the sceptic) wanders off and goes shopping, and chatting to the old women and young mothers of the town and getting a haircut, in a performance calculated as an earnest of intent:
See, I need grooming products. Yea, indeed, I need grooming. Will none among you style me? I am a mammal, just as you are, and I need close contact and the nits picked from my fur.
And after a while, the ladies of Rheingold take her in and give her cakes and ascertain that she is stepping out with a (quite fictional) young man named K (although she goes as far as to confide that his real name is Clifford, and that he is a recent arrival in the caravans) and that she intends to marry him as soon as time and decent convention permit, and that she is very much in love and not a little frustrated by the delay, because of course she cannot move into his Airstream, nor he into hers, until the formalities have been observed. This display of monogamy and right-thinking behaviour gives the lady Rheingolders an opportunity to wax earthy, to giggle and primp and to suggest in low voices that there must be ample places in a caravan where two young people of good character might divert one another to at least a degree of satisfaction, surely?
Teehee
and
yes,
says K, there are, but it's
hardly
the same and
one so wishes,
etc., and yes, the ladies of Rheingold reply, quite true, and how
desperately
romantic it is, and the only person, my dear girl, quite the
only
person to cut your hair is Dame Lisa, and it so happens she will be here at four and why don't you stay and have some more cake until then?

Dame Lisa arrives amid great ceremony and is ushered in, and pronounces K's hair just lovely, of course, but my poor child the
ends,
but my, how
daring
that cut! Just
splendid
on one so young, thank
goodness
you've no chest to speak of or I should feel
all outshone,
and K, howling with inner hilarity, avers that a woman of Dame Lisa's proportions need never be concerned that anyone, anywhere might ever be more
feminine
than she, and for good measure she goggles wretchedly at Dame Lisa's formidable cleavage. This display of abject beta femaleness results in K's immediate adoption as chief temporary protégée of the klatch, and she is eventually sent back to her Airstream reeking of three different perfumes and with her hair arranged to give her a rakish yet classic frontierswoman look. She has, along the way, secured promises from every matron, maiden and crone to come along and see the circus, and bring as many male relatives as they can legitimately muster. Indeed, there is already competition among the younger girls as to who will bring more young men and thus impress the wild, romantic, respectable, comfortably flat-chested, soon-to-depart and monogamous gypsy. As a consequence of this absolute female enthusiasm and the accompanying opportunities for respectable-yet-steamy-boy-Rheingolder-on-girl-Rheingolder-action, the issues of permissions and debates in council become moot. And thus the circus comes to town.

We have circled our wagons and made camp at a convenient yet non-intrusive distance from Rheingold, and it is morning on the day after our arrival. From out of the shady purple in one quarter of the sky comes a lonesome bus, ancient and sputtering diesel, with metal showing where the paint has flaked away. It is something of the order of a twenty-six-seater, and it is about as far from the smooth contours of K's Airstream as you can get and still have wheels. Saggy tyres skid and squirm on the road, bulging perilously because there's hardly enough air in there to keep the rims off the asphalt. The engine pops and bangs and little clouds of soot emerge, still burning, from an exhaust pipe which hangs pathetically between the rear wheels on a length of what appears to be stocking elastic. This wreck-in-waiting draws level with us, and almost everyone scurries back from it. The bus is painted a patchy blue, rusted away around the edges, and it has been savaged and snapped. This is not so much a bus as a dying warrior. And in each starred, dusty window a weird white face is pressed against the glass, white of skin and black of eye, contorted in a spooky sneer or a wild grin or an open howl: Munch's painting replicated over and over.

The doors open, and the driver hops down from his seat. He waves and grins.

“Hi!” says Ike Thermite. “I'm Ike Thermite,” in case anyone has forgotten, “and
we
are the Matahuxee Mime Combine!” He springs lightly to the ground, and behind him come the mimes, all popping joints and pins and needles from the journey. A moment later he is whisked away by K and K and carried shoulder-high around the buses. I am alone with the mimes.

We look at one another. No one says anything. It's like sharing a lift to a funeral. After a moment I wave at them, a bit hesitantly. One by one, they wave back in a perfect imitation. My uncertain wave starts with the nearest one, is picked up by the next before it can fade, and ripples away to the back.

And then, just as the wave starts its return journey, there is an odd little commotion. The mime on the far side spots something on the horizon, shudders and hides behind the next one in. The mime being used for cover looks sharply in both directions and dashes for K's bus. The revealed mime scurries behind the next in line, who also declines the honour and hurries away, leaving the little man crouched, bandy-legged, peering around an obstacle which isn't there. He spins and dives behind mime number four, who stares in horror into the haze and remembers a pressing engagement elsewhere. And so too with the next, and the next. A few seconds later the petrified mime is peering into my face and we are the only two people around. Slowly a single shaky finger extends, and then an arm, and the mime points back along the road. Huge, round eyes like a puppy's make a silent appeal.

Okay, already. Hide behind me.

I look in the direction indicated by the pointing finger. There's a small dust cloud now, and at the business end of it another vehicle: a covered military surplus truck which has seen better days, with a couple of bullet holes painted on the side and some weird scratches, and dings pretty much everywhere. The canvas section has been replaced with wood, panels reclaimed from some old-style restaurant or stately home, and a sort of caravan has been constructed. Daubed in foot-high letters along the side is magic of andromas. The painter knew more about carpentry than pigment, because the pigment has dribbled, and the whole thing looks less like a gypsy wagon than a scary melted waxwork. I glance around at my concealed mime, and find him gone. The
Magic of Andromas
stops exactly parallel to K's Airstream. The driver's door opens, and grey dust like graveyard sand trickles out onto the ground. A scuffed black patent-leather shoe touches the ground. It makes no noise.