The Smell of Telescopes (22 page)

By early afternoon he had already sired ten thousand burghers. This promiscuity must not continue! The city would end up unbearably cramped! The dangers of plague were considerable in such insanitary conditions. A slum is a brothel for disease, as Morgan often used to say. Germs with a ticket to breed! Cholera, typhus, syphilis, leprosy, smallpox, gangrene, tuberculosis, brownjack, jock itch, monkeybreath, jaundice, drunkenness, spontaneous combustion, toothache, stress attack, all the afflictions of adult compression. The Welsh rascal’s answer was fire. Had he not healed the stubborn defenders of San Lorenzo de Chagre with an arrow wrapped in burning cotton blasted from a musket? The palm-leaf thatch of the houses in the fortress ignited so quickly that it crashed down on a huge barrel of gunpowder and every pox was cured.

“Stand clear, ’Lin. These days you are at loggerheads with yourself and thus inflammable. My male dryad!”

“You still disapprove of my armour, sir?”

“There may come a time when you need a raging inferno. How will you escape that suit then? ’Tis suicide.”

No, the Swede dared not put a match to Uppsala. Also the structures and his memories were too gorgeous. The only solution was to stay in his attic and look at no face. That way he would not fabricate spare humans. Ten thousand a day for two months is more than half a million! He sat on his own cask of explosive and wrapped his head with his arms. Because of his jaunts, the city had trebled in residents. Refugees from his mind! A pounding reached his sanctuary from outside: the weight of feet stamping pavement slabs. Too much mass! He covered the single window with a sheet to keep out the sight of the crowded streets, the bodies pressed against the walls of his own home. What if the pressure broke down the front door? A tide of sick humanity, his children, rushing up the stairs to burst into his room for revenge and pocketmoney!

He departed in the middle of a dark night, when he could barely see his own legs as he hastened south into the open country. Uppsala and its improbable population was soon behind him; he felt much lighter. He took his toolbox and his powder, rolling the barrel with a sprouting foot. It was best to avoid urban centres bigger than villages, for these were the places where a man’s mind acts the part of a phallus, fertilising spaces with folks. In a village, such imagination is celibate. Still better was the shunning of all people. He walked the rutted lanes past Stockholm to Karlskrona and the hedges welcomed him as a cousin. He did not enter the port to catch a boat, but drifted out to sea on his buoyant back and met the vessel midstream. He hauled himself aboard and hid in a coil of rope like a crocodile in a static cyclone.

For pure isolation he should have paced north to Finnmark, but some story of ’Tology’s, plus a desire to keep his armour alive and unrotten, had led him to believe that the deserted isles of the Mediterranean were the perfect retreat. Warm enough to ensure his suit might repair itself, but lacking fishermen and tourists. He slipped off the ferry just before it docked in Stettin. Then it was down through Germany, drying slowly in a sun which smelled of cabbage. The sailmaker had come from Tunisia; the barren islands he knew were called Pantelleria and Lampedusa and lay not far off the African coast. Hurry! He lived on berries and hot steam from washing hung on hayricks. He skirted Görlitz into Bohemia, regretting he could not visit Prague. Through Trebonsko into Austria, past Linz, where chocolate clouds billowed and minted.

It was on the foothills of the Salza Hochschwab, at a point roughly between Waidhofen and Mariazell, that he finally understood his mistake. It was a wasteland here, dramatic but bare, uninhabited and treeless. No dwelling in sight, no artificial item of any kind. No chance to catch an unknown face! He was halfway to his final destination, but he guessed it was now beyond him, for he had truly stuffed the world with illegitimate sons and daughters. He collapsed to his knees, hugged his cask and wept. Seeing new humans did not produce them; it was not seeing them which did that! Out in a city, with the individuals in view, a population is fixed in the present. It is always on the following day, a time not yet ready, that they suddenly swell. What precisely distinguishes that present from our future? The state of being alone!

The moment he went back to his room, removed from the bustle of the street, he might be sure of one thing: an increase in local humanity for the next morning. While he was inside, without company, his non-presence externally was inseminating shadows or smells or sounds, whatever it was that served as a womb for the adult foetuses. So it was self-defeating to come to an uninhabited zone of Mitteleuropa on the way to a desert isle! Here he was in a position of permanent arousal and dispatch. No existing public to halt his elsewhere lusts! Where he was, he was celibate; where he was not, he was wanton. He lifted his head and gazed at each horizon. All were empty, fertile, monstrous. With such an expanse of nullity, the tide of humanity must be surging to ridiculous heights! For every second he spied nobody, a million were born!

He had scant choice but to destroy himself. Even as he breached his barrel, he knew the gesture was futile. Morgan’s kiss had told him this. But he struck two iron hammers together until a long spark fell into the dark powder. The explosion reminded him of Roche Braziliano’s adventures in Castilla de Oro, when that most gentle of buccaneers ignited a whisky still and blew himself over the heads of his enemies, a score of Spanish pikemen, and onto a horse. The carpenter too was knocked high, but where he landed was wholly rump, on the edge of the crater he had exposed, his armour having rotated around him a dozen times in midair, coming to rest in its proper position, so that he did not face the wrong way, and would not have to lurch backward to his birthplace, to a coffin once a cot. He was barely scratched from the impact.

At the base of the pit smoked a gigantic block of wood, the largest he had ever seen, wide as the reefs of the Azores, thick as a ship. What was it doing under the uncultivable soil? This was a secret he was never able to learn. The truth is that Nature has a short way with any species which becomes too widespread over the face of the globe. Trees once held the continents and atmosphere to ransom with root and oxygen, and so the ecological balance, a feedback system, embarked on a cull. Men filled up with an irrational loathing of wood and invented saw and axe. Humans are the chosen nemesis of forests. But in this spot the pines resisted. They scattered their seeds inversely, so that the ensuing generation of trees grew down, into the forsaken cavern of a shaman. For further protection, these fused trunks into a single unit.

And now they had been discovered by a whittler. He began to work as soon as he could unlock his toolbox, for he had calculated that peace of mind was a carving. He made a city, Linopolis, and this ended his unique claustrophobia, because it contained no citizens whose contours were not known to him. Relentless fatherhood ceased, the dangers of being crushed by excessive populations receded. He had saved the world from famine and riots and other cluttered crises. Experience with wooden suits of armour enabled him to fashion people likewise. Already hederated, masses of ivy dangling like a greasy fringe, he considered himself crowned and adopted the persona of a king. His time on the palace balcony was rarely wasted, for a competent ruler must keep watch over courtyards, shadows, weather, malcontents, affairs and all cobbles.

In the middle of one storm, he noticed a light which had nothing to do with electric clouds. It grew brighter from the south west, though it remained tiny. Entering his realm without a visa, it swerved through the mazy quadrangles, up the palace steps. He confronted it with a drill. It was a puppet! The face of the sailmaker peered anxiously from a polished head. A figure of ’Tology animated by flames! The Swede guessed it was a message, a request for a mirror, but there were no reflections to be had here; a wooden king has no need of them. ’Ceti had Morgan’s camera; that must suffice. For the sake of friendship, the Swede planned to leave his dominion for a while and visit the barber. There was a risk of decadence among his subjects in his absence, but ’Ceti had done much for him, pale whale-oil soothing his fleecy frowns.

Before he could depart, a crack of thunder above the peaks startled the vegetation on his helmet. No, not part of the tempest. A hiss like a circular swordfight, something black coming down from above. He squinted not to see. The silhouette in the main courtyard was too stolid to be an illusion. It darted toward the museum, where the carpenter-king kept his regrets on display. He went down to greet it with anger. A tall man with no attire or hair sprang out at him. He held a wicker receptacle and his shoulders were dusted with melting snow. His breath was foul, worse than a sick shark’s. He opened and closed his hands, seeking a secure grip on the teak cuirass, failing. He reminded the Swede of ’Vado, the cook, but only because of the tangled odours. Like a telescope dissolved in acids! Then the monster sneezed and giggled.

“I arrived on a helicopter, a flying machine. I’m no assassin. I am here to learn and browse. The barber sent you a letter and I made a note of the address. To learn ’n’ browse.”

“How dare you lisp my name! Who are you?”

“I am a manipulator. I am a noxious sage. My morals are curly, like Turkish slippers, but I am parallel.”

“You shake more violently than cutlass play.”

“Because I am nude in sleet. I had three capes, but removed them to trap ’Ceti Whiskers in Pirano. Hung them on washing-lines across each of the alleyways which run to his shop.”

“Curly indeed! What’s your business here?”

“To be yet more noxious and sagacious. I’m a master rogue who wants to recruit followers. Retired pirates are perfect for my scheme, but you have all abandoned evil. I’ve been spying on your crew since Morgan fled Jamaica and I am disappointed. So I intend to force you back into crime. But you are a stubborn lot, and weak since your retirements. The barber, sailmaker and cook have spurned my efforts. As for the navigator, I’m in total despair. And Morgan’s missing.”

“What use have I for more vices and cruelty?”

“Ah, traitor! What has happened to you all? Once you bathed in gore and the sweat of eels. You ate gems for breakfast. You can’t be blissful now! What’s the point of this place?”

“You rarely see the same person twice in a big city. But you always see new people. Thus the population must magnify each time one goes out. My ambition was to break that cycle.”

“At the dawn of time there was only one man, ’Lin, but he looked in a mirror. He did not recognise himself and so produced another. That was in Ur, the first city, capital of Sumer, the first land. The process was soon accelerating out of control and the world was filled with people. I know you are not wondering how the original man built Ur on his own, for you have achieved a similar feat. And gods are more likely to visit such cities. Shamash for him; me for you.”

“These names are too curious, bald ghoul.”

“Take this basket to Pirano. Now that ’Ceti is trapped by my cloaks he must wait for your arrival. I’ll hide at the bottom with only my head showing. He will assume I am a coconut and when you leave I can convince him to join my tribe. My scalp resembles the fruit of a tropical seaside palm-tree and that he will not deny.”

“I was wrong. The population expands each time one does not go out, or whenever one is not in that city.”

“How you prattle, ’Lin! Will you obey me?”

“No, I shall ignore you. I intended to voyage to Pirano anyway. Not as a pressganger for a doppelganger!”

“Wretch! You’ll be sorry. I’m so noxious!”

But away hurried the Swede, glancing back not once, until Linopolis was a splinter in his rear and the ghoul’s howls were naught. He rested, walked, and tried to forget about not seeing his citizens, which was how they bred. In Pirano he collided with the cook, who had received ’Ceti’s official letter. Here was a genuine coconut, no nasty pate! They entered the shop together and he lifted the mirror from a peg; it was broken but might still serve. However, there was no time to journey to Wolkenstein, the world would burst, so he passed it to ’Vado, who must give it to the navigator, who wandered everywhere. On the way back, the carpenter began to forget what it was that Morgan’s kiss told him. Something vital! Such a surprise to find that his capital was lit for his return. He wanted no public illumination during his reign.

Lamps in each window, at the top of the towers. Never had Linopolis looked so festive. Streamers of fluid colour dancing on the roofs. Licks and winks, an epithalamium of tints and twinkles. Was the heat emanating from the friction of capering feet? He heard a hissing music, the rhythm of popping drums, but saw no players. If he really had become popular at last, why were they waiting indoors? He entered his palace and found the ghoul squatting on his throne, rubbing sooty palms, an insult! Before he could sever the chair from its dais with his saw, and tip it to dislodge the usurper, there was a tumultuous crash from outside. The windmill had toppled, weighed down with too many lamps. But now it seemed the edifice itself was one giant lamp. How strange! Then the ghoul stood and touched his elbow, as if divining his wonder.

“This is no celebration. I allowed the sailmaker’s puppet to wander at will through the houses. The fire in its chest quickly spread. It’s a revolution! Don’t you see, ’Lin? When your subjects are consumed, you’ll impregnate the planet again. By charring your people to ash and watching them scatter, I’ll crush you under the density of impromptu populations. Your safeguard against claustrophobia is cancelled. Join my scheme and I can provide you with an alternative.”

“Never! My death will be a prophylactic.”

“’Lin! You are made of wood, not rubber!”

But the Swede was off, running through his smoking streets with the ghoul in a hot pursuit that was cooler than the cobbles. The theatre was blazing more quickly than any other building, so he leapt inside, hoping to catch. The roof was missing and the stars poured molten beauty on the fabrics which had not yet ignited. He paused in the centre of the stage, reciting a lament to the raging audience, who whistled and spat. Boiling sap sprayed over his armour, but the lanolin repelled it. The bald ghoul was no longer behind him. He heard a slashing sound, like a snake riding a carousel, and the stars died. He looked up and saw a machine with dark blades high above Linopolis. Then a bucket of water was released and his armour steamed and flexed. A second, third, and he was sodden. The ghoul shouted down through a metallic cone: