Theatre of the Gods (19 page)

There’s no one out here to bother us,

And there’s whisky aboard for all.

(Yes!)

‘Ships’ – traditional shanty

THE HUMAN CONDITION

A human is a tiny world who in her head contains the university. She is not separate from the great cosmogenesis any more than the wave is separate from the sea. And yet look how desperate and lonely she is. Perhaps you are a higher being, and as such you will find it difficult to understand the trials and terrors of these low creatures. How every unexpected phenomenon startles them. How every moment of their brief lives seems filled with private desperation. How sad it is to see the way the gift of existence can become such a tragedy: a tragedy whose only balm is the soothing oil of superstition.

The best knowledge we have tells us that humans were once mere apes, squatting in shacks of wood and tin and gnawing on lumps of charred flesh. This may be true. But the species evolved, as it was meant to do, and went out into the universe, driven by the quest to spread its genetic materials. People fashioned ships to take them far, and bodies which could survive the trials of deep space: joints which could withstand the wrenching fists of gravity, ears which could decipher strange tongues, eye membranes which could be turned towards a sun, lungs which could breathe sulphur – pure sulphur! They took with them the luggage of nature: the sexual parts for procreation; the brain to solve problems and to hold stories. They returned from their travels with innumerable stories.

They brought home the stuff of nature too. No one knows exactly 159
where it came from, but the Black Cloud began to remove the pieces which made people who they were. When a surgeon or a barber tells you that your lungs are being slowly eaten, what choice have you but to allow him to replace those lungs with a set of silicon bags? And then your spleen. And then your heart. The very parts of your existence are being eaten by these microscopic cannibals who live within the wormy tunnels of your gut.

So that is what happened. For better or for worse. All that remain now, in many people, are the very essentials of life: a brain to hold stories, sexual parts to make people who will sustain those stories. And they are born! They arrive, much as they always have, as slimy little ape creatures, wriggling and crying out towards the heavens which, according to popular local legend, created them.

But herein lies a greater question: What makes a human human? Is it a heart? Skin? A functioning spleen? Legs which wander, fingers which clutch? Most say that it is all of these things in general, but none in particular. For all these things can be replaced while leaving the person, and her stories, intact. There are citizens in Carnassus now who are little more than brains spiked upon a titanium torso with a synthetic digestive system and an artificial heart pumping enriched petroleum blood. Are such people not human? And when, at the end of the day, the human ape retires to her bed, takes off her limbs and stacks them neatly in a basket, or a bath of machine oil, takes off her jaw and puts that in a cup of fine lubricant, then lies upon her baby-sized cot, just a few spare parts and a brain, what are the thoughts which spin through her mind as she drifts away to sleep?

And what happens when a person loses even her mind? Is she still herself?

Well, that is an interesting question.

MEANWHILE

The registrar’s private office at the Customs and Inspections depot, Balfour, was very quiet that evening. The registrar sat opposite a visitor, well dressed, in a handsome leather chair, newspaper in hand, a pot of coffee beside him. The visitor sat so still he might very well have been having his portrait photo-emulsified. But he wasn’t. In one corner an ancient chronograph beat out the rhythm of the hours.

The outer inspections office, on the other hand, had seldom seen this much activity. This was a quiet, dignified office in a quiet, dignified corner of the Holy Neon Empire. Nothing untoward happened here. The most outrageous thing that had ever happened in the Customs and Inspections depot, Balfour, was that someone had processed a goods-transit order using form 1PQX/9 instead of form 1PQX/10. They still talked about that by the water unit. But it was unlikely that that incident, beyond tonight, would ever be talked about again.

In one corner of the outer inspections office, Balfour, a senior clerk was waltzing with a hatstand. By the registration counter a junior clerk was holding another clerk’s hand and singing him a love song. Another clerk was typing furiously upon a teletype unit: ‘All work and no play makes Balfour a dull place.’

Four customers – a lady in a travelling frock, and three men – had been waiting to have their goods inspected. They were all ka-roaking like frogs.

Kaaaa-roooooaaaak. Kaaaa-roooooaaaak. Kaaaa-roooooaaaak.

In the registrar’s private office the Well Dressed Man put down his copy of the
Telegraphic Press
, took out a pale blue kerchief and gently dabbed his brow. His hair was slicked to one side with a balm imported all the way from Amphasimia, and his side-parting looked like the cut left by a single swipe from a barber’s razor. He smiled wanly at the waltzing silhouettes pulsing behind the frosted-glass screen. Then he turned towards the registrar, who had a look on his face of utter disbelief. ‘Let’s do another one,’ said the Well Dressed Man.

‘I don’t want to do another,’ wheezed the sweating registrar. ‘Please don’t make me.’

‘Oh dear, but you said you were extremely good at maths. You said you could multiply any two numbers in your head.’

‘Please.’

‘Let’s just do one more.’ He took a pocket watch from his jacket. ‘Twenty seconds on the clock. Are you ready?’

‘Please.’

‘OK. 2,128 times 5,671. Go!’

While the registrar’s right hand tapped furiously at his glistening forehead, his left began to raise the letter knife he had towards his left eye. It rose up slowly, and when the tip of the knife was just an inch away from his eye, trembling furiously, the young man finally blurted, ‘Twelve-oh-six-seven-eight-eight-eight!’

‘Very good! It is amazing what the human mind is capable of when put under pressure. Now,’ said the Well Dressed Man, ‘to business. I will only ask this one time. Did any ships recently transit through this way?’ He knew one had, he was just having so much fun.

‘One came through a few weeks ago. On transit to Akropolis.’

‘Akropolis? How curious.’

‘Yes. We boarded it to search for the missing girl.’

‘The missing girl?’

‘That’s right, sir. You know … the
green
girl? The girl who went
missing from the Worlds’ Fair? She weren’t on there, though, so we sent them on.’

‘The green girl, you say? And you say she wasn’t on the ship?’

‘Absolutely, sir. Our team made a thorough search. Please.’

‘Well, far be it from me to call you a liar.’

‘Please.’

The Well Dressed Man smiled. Could it really be true? Could the child who ran off with a top-secret file be the green girl the whole universe was after? How utterly absurd! And yet for some reason, at that moment, among all the noise and madness in that noisy, maddening universe, the two of them fitted together in his mind like two halves of a shattered dish. This was an excellent lead. The frogs were finally coming home to roost.

THE WELL DRESSED MAN

The Well Dressed Man, he hunts well. It is his job. He hunts all kinds of people. He’s lost count of the number of people he has hunted down. People of all ages and stations. But children he hunts particularly well. He can smell them in their sleep. He can haunt their dreams. A child’s mind is a beacon, and once he knows their mind they can’t run far enough that he won’t see it.

‘Hello there.’

This young mind blinks twice and wakes within a dream.

‘Hello. Have we met?’

They speak in pictures – the language of dreams.

‘So there you are. It took such a long time to find you. I’ve been searching everywhere.’

‘Who are you?’

‘That isn’t important. The important thing is who you are.’

‘Who I am?’

‘Who you are.’

Frightened. Suddenly wanting to wake.

‘What is this I’m doing?’

‘You’re dreaming. Have you never dreamed?’

‘No. We never dream where I come from.’

‘Don’t try to wake. If you wake you won’t find out who I am and why I’m hunting you.’

‘I’m not curious about you. And I know why you’re hunting me.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you’ve a reputation for being a clever one. Enlighten me. Why am I hunting you?’

‘Because you think that I’m government property. And because you want a reward.’

Laughter. ‘Oh, you are a dear treasure. None of those reasons are true. I don’t care about my reward, I just like my job. There is a very powerful group of people who want you dead. So I’m hunting you. Like a wolf hunts a baby goat. When I find you I’m going to kill you. It won’t be painful for you. I’m not a monster. But that is the state of play. Thoughts? Feedback?’

‘I won’t tell you where I am.’

‘You don’t have to. I discover where you are through your dreams. Every time you go to sleep I find you, and I get a few more clues. I can feel when you drift off, and then I pounce. It’s what I do. I’m very good at it. You know what I love best? A young girl’s dreams. They are the most vibrant and creative. I’m never disappointed by a young girl’s dreams. Of course, boys’ dreams are fine too, if you like that kind of thing.’

‘———’

‘I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just thought you should know what the game was. It’s important in every sport that every player knows the rules, don’t you think?’

‘———’

‘Don’t cry. It will be quick. I promise. When I kill you and your friends it will be very, very quick.’

‘———’

‘Well, I will leave you to dream. I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me where you are? I’m near Balfour.’

‘———’

‘Very well. Very well. I didn’t expect you would. But you were there at Balfour, I know. I suppose it would make the game less fun
if you told me. And you’re travelling with … a friend? Is this right?’

‘———’

‘A new friend?’

‘———’

‘A friend who is there for … company? No, protection. How interesting.’

‘Please leave my head now.’

‘Quite. Quite. It’s been so good of you to have me. Rest well.’

The Well Dressed Man hunts children well. He hunts all kinds of people. But haunted children he hunts most well. He can smell them in their sleep.

From the journal of M. Francisco Fabrigas

We find ourselves nearing a truly empty part of space where the only evidence of civilisation is the ruins of Akropolis, which were built long ago near the powerfully active Nebula Akropolis. It is necessary to find an empty region of space if you wish to travel to the next universe, since any object within the field of your engine will be taken with you into the Interior. Unfortunately we will not have time to examine the ruins. A pity, as they are among the most interesting and ancient in this cosmos. A large fleet wishing to make the crossing faces a truly terrifying reality. They must use the winds from the nebula to increase their velocity to a good portion of the speed of light. Thus they would be hurled from this universe, through the fog of death, and into the next universe like a shot flung from the barrel of a cannon. It is, if I am honest, a frightening thought. One which I have trouble contemplating. In these instances the petty questions of existence leave, and we become uniquely tuned to a higher purpose. It is, as the artificial philosopher Photozeiger framed it, the great philosophical problem: we are faced with a terrible cosmic storm. The possibility that we will be broken apart by forces many trillions of times more powerful than ourselves occurs to us. But so long as these personal concerns do not envelop our thoughts, and we continue with an aesthetic consideration of reality, the purer aspect of the self will look through all that chaos and quietly comprehend the ideas behind even that great power which threatens to crush us. In this contemplation lies a sense of the sublime.

We arrive tomorrow.

THE COSMIC SOUP

When Lenore woke in the darkness of the bow-pit she knew the time had come. Her dreams never lied. Also, the bats were silent. She saw the whole nightmare laid out in a succession of terrifying images: the surprise attack, the fires, the screams, the goat. A blue lantern? A moon, fleeing for their lives, treachery, madness, supernatural children, cannibals, magical minerals, murderous vegetables, a giant monster, a great hole in the blackness of space. And a love story. Her dreams never lied. The journey to the next universe would be a trial within a storm, wrapped up in a nightmare, set on fire and pushed out across the oceans of pain and suffering. But there would also be some good bits.

She smelled soup.

*

There was huge excitement on the day they came to make the crossing. The ship’s inhabitants, through some kind of neat and necessary cognitive trick, had somehow come to forget that they were about to be sent to their technical deaths. What kind of universe would they be entering? What new species of plant and animal would they find there? Would there be treasures?