—The onus of proof rests with you, came the answer.
Virgil returned to the attack.
—Second: that, having no place whatsoever in the Final Ordering of the Island, you have been irrelevant ever since you perceived that fact, and stayed. There is no reason for you being here; the Island did not include you in its conception, so by your own rules it would be a distortion if it were to use you in any Ordering process. Nor do we have any need of observers. What do you say to that?
The silence lasted for several minutes. (Flapping Eagle, eavesdropping on half the eerie debate, half-thought it was over). Then the Gorfs voice sounded, slow and heavy.
—That was the correct move, Mr Jones. You should not have let your irritation get the better of your judgement at first. The first was a wasted move, which deprives you of perfection. Nevertheless, a score is a score. A score is a score. A score is a score. A score is a score. A score is a score.
The phrase, monotonously repeated, was burdened with a world of defeat. Virgil, suddenly sympathetic, asked:
—Master, if you knew, why did you stay?
—You must not call me Master. A Master would not have done it.
—A Master did, said Virgil. I should like to know his reasons.
Simply, the Gorf replied:
—I liked it here.
Virgil thought of the planet Thera. Bleak. Empty. He understood how this hugely intelligent being would prefer the complex order of Calf Island.
—Master, he said finally, I must ask you to leave now.
The Gorfs voice was fierce. Defiant.
—I will not leave. I will stay.
—Then, said Virgil tiredly, his body aching with fatigue, I shall have to Order you away.
Something like a hollow laugh came from the void. —I am not that far gone, said the Gorf. You scored only because of my perverse infringement of the rules. You could not win an Ordering contest.
Flapping Eagle saw Virgil stand up. He covered his face with his hands, and an extraordinary thing happened: he seemed to grow. Not in height. Not in width.
In depth.
The only phrase that seemed to fit had a curious second meaning.
He added several dimensions to himself.
Flapping Eagle thought: it seems we each must fight a battle; but I was ready and Virgil is weak. And his opponent has chosen the ground.
Virgil was thinking along similar lines; but was very pleased at his continuing reawakening. The dimensions seemed his to visit again, after all this time, after all. That. Pain.
He turned to face the Gorf.
—Mr Jones, said the Gorf. A word of warning before the contest. In case you should win.
—Yes? said Virgil. (Was this a delaying tactic?)
—I am not the only irrelevance on the island, Mr Jones. I fear you are another.
Virgil said nothing, but he knew the Gorf had succeeded in wounding him. This renaissance of his was a fragile thing. Doubts assailed it easily.
—Just an intuition, Mr Jones, said the disembodied voice. I rather fancy you will take little part in the final Ordering. Truly. It gives a certain symmetry to this contest, wouldn’t you say?
—Let’s get on with it, barked Virgil Jones.
To the watching Flapping Eagle, it appeared that there followed a period of complete inactivity. Not being versed in the Outer Dimensions, he could not enter the battlefield. Virgil Jones stood frozenly, head bowed, arms outstretched, hands splayed, like a man pushing against a very heavy door. Then, without warning, he collapsed. Inert matter in a heap on the forest floor.
Flapping Eagle rushed forward.
Virgil Jones came round slowly.
—Shouldn’t have bothered, he said. No contest, really. Not a hope. Flea trying to rape an elephant. Couldn’t Order him back. Not in a million years. It’s his game.
—Where is he? asked Flapping Eagle, looking around.
—Who knows, said Virgil. Doesn’t matter. Won’t trouble us again. I won that point, anyway. And then, in a brave attempt at lightheartedness, he said: —Who will rid me of this meddlesome Gorf?
Something had gone out of Virgil Jones’ face. His defeat had drained him of a great deal more than energy. He seemed to Flapping Eagle now as he had first seemed: shambling, bumbling, ineffectual. The decisive figure of the Inner Dimensions had gone, nursed once more behind a skin of failure.
—Virgil, said Flapping Eagle. Virgil. Thank you.
Virgil Jones snorted.
And fainted.
The roles of nurse and patient were reversed.
XXVII
ONCE. THEN. AGO. Before. The terror of the titties, I. They came easily into my hands. They came. Easily. Gently does it, though some like it rough. Gently to the peaks of pleasure. Softly to the peaks of pain. Breasts like twin peaks, they had then, mountains yielding to the touch. Mine. Sweet things. What things they are. A randy bugger, then. All organs decay through disuse. Pulled out all the stops, then. Let me have it, Virgie! Give and take, give and take, pingpong of bodies possessed. O, Virgil, you know how to please. Please … pleas, they pleaded and I kneaded their soft volcanoes. I needed their soft. A virgin, eh? My name’s Virgil. What’s one consonant between friends? That worked once. Then. Birds. The coo of a turtledove in my ear as it nibbled and the quake of the great turtle itself as we came. Then. Before. Ah, a bird-fancier, I, no fancier bird than I. Ornithology’s no substitute for sex. Feathers go best in a bed, in a pillow, under the bouncing bodies. All I could wish for, more wishing for me than I wished for, squeeze me, please, me! Once. Then. Ago. Go anywhere, inside, outside, fornication never changes. Odd. The pleasure principle transcends all boundaries. Contraception stretches into a million different places, different worlds, different techniques, vive la difference, I was there, where the pill was, my skill was, where the coil, my toil, and they came. Easily. In my hand. Once. Then. Ago. Before. Liv.
Drink this, Virgil. Water from the stream.
Eat this, Virgil, berries from the tree.
Rest now, Virgil, don’t talk, rest. Sleep. It heals.
Guilt. My fault. Mea maxima. Sorry I spoke. Sorry I moved. Sorry I lived. Sorry. On my knees. Forgive me. Liv. Forgive. It rhymes. Or accurately. Leev. Relieve. She was always Liv to me, her name married to sieve and give as she was wife to me. Ah the terror of her titties. Terrible beautiful white. I scaled them and fell. The strong do not forgive the weak. Their. Lessness. Brightly we burned like any star, brighter than brightest, my moth to her flame, I was scalded and fell. The heat is cruel to the hike. Warm. Toad, she said and I croaked. Go, she said and I went. In terror of the titties. Then. But. Before. Daughter of the Rising Son, I thought she loved me. In the house of pleasure and I paid in kindness. So kind, she said, so kind, I thought she loved me. Love grows and swallows its love, digests and spits it out. Seared by the gastric juices of her loving. Sorry. Liv. From the house of rising suns to the black hole, hole-black house, your rise and partial fall. Bitterness succeeding your pride, I’m sorry. She’d ruffle my hair, one day she tore a handful from the root. Dark lady with the fair skin fair hair fair eyes so fair and so unfair and yet so fair. Fire in her to burn a man, ice in her to heal him. I was not the man. For. Her. Liv, ice-peak of perfection, how she cast me off, how sorry I….mea, maxima, thing. Then. Ago. Before. The strong do not forgive. The weak their lessness.
XXVIII
—LIV WAS MY wife, said Virgil, sitting up at the edge of the clearing, propped against a tree. She should have had a stronger man.
Flapping Eagle had already decided never to pry further into Virgil than he was willing to reveal; he had no wish to bring him pain. So he asked no questions about Liv.
—I remember K, mused Virgil absently, when they first came. To settle, to marry, to whore. And one or two … went a bit further.
—Like Grimus? asked Flapping Eagle sharply.
—Well, said Virgil, pursing his lips, I don’t know if I do.
—What?
�
��Like Grimus.
Even in his frustration, Flapping Eagle had to laugh.
—You’re certainly well again, he said, if you can perpetrate jokes like that.
—My dear fellow, said Virgil. It was no joke.
—I know, said Flapping Eagle, still laughing. Small pleasantry.
Virgil shrugged.
—Virgil, repeated Flapping Eagle, who or what is he? Grimus.
—Yes, said Virgil Jones.
—A sad fact, said Virgil Jones as they climbed. One’s environment is a great deal more epic than oneself. Events may be epic: people rarely are. Which is why they find such an environment appalling. I once mentioned to you that I was superstitious because this was a place where anything could happen; I’m sure you understand what I meant now. But there’s another reaction. It is this: if anything can happen, we’d better make damn sure it never does.
—You mean like Dolores, said Flapping Eagle.
Virgil did not answer.
XXIX
—BUGGER, SAID NICHOLAS DEGGLE.
He was standing on Calf Beach, having arrived through the “gate” he had despatched Flapping Eagle through two weeks earlier; and he was feeling very angry with himself, and, therefore, with the universe. He had made a mistake so elementary it was mind-defying: he had failed to consider where on Calf Island the gate would deposit him, and as a result, here he was, the wrong side of the Forest, with a mountainful of climbing to do.
Of course he should have worked it out: since the gate was at sea-level that would have been its logical exit-point. Except that in all the setting he had done with his wand, the Stem, he had aimed at a point above K; and he had blithely assumed that that must have been where Flapping Eagle had gone, once the passage of the days had made it clear that the gate had worked. He was, he told himself bitterly, an unadulterated fool; and then he put the thought from him; too much had to be done to waste time on self-criticism.
No point in trying to use the gate the other way, back to X, and then re-angling it; it was clear that the Stem was an unreliable setter, and it had taken him years to get this far. Besides, the gate was only a one-way affair: again a function of time. No point, either, in attempting to use the Stem to move him up the mountain; again, its unreliability might land him anywhere, perhaps in a worse situation than he was. There was nothing for it: he’d have to climb.
—Bugger, he repeated. His long, willowy frame was not meant for such physical labour; the very thought of it led his tongue forcibly into profanity.
He cheered himself up with a vision of the reaction of Grimus—and indeed Jones—when they discovered that he was back. Back, he said aloud to the beach. Back to do what he should have done so long ago, and what they had prevented him from doing. This time he’d make sure they didn’t.
Now he noticed that he was not alone on the beach. A woman sat some way from him, on the sands, beside an empty rocking-chair, gazing fixedly at the cliffs. He knew that rocking-chair; it belonged to Virgil Jones. He knew the woman, too: there could not be two women on Calf Island as ugly as O’Toole’s wife. Here was a mystery, then. He sauntered over to Dolores; she sang on, toothlessly, ignoring him.
—Mrs O’Toole? he asked.
Dolores stopped singing and turned slowly to look at him.
—Darling, she said, do sit down.
Darling? thought Deggle; but he was feeling tired, so he did seat himself in Jones’ chair.
Virgil, thought Dolores. The lilting voice in the baggy face. The soaring heart in the sagging body. Virgil, who took her from the soulless church-wax and gave her flesh. How lucky she was to have him.
—Virgil, she said aloud, taking pleasure in his name. Virgil Jones.
Deggle was watching her. —Is he here? he said, eyes piercing her.
—As always, she said, clutching at his hand. Virgil is here.
Deggle disengaged his hand with delicate loathing.
—Are you … his woman? he asked.
She looked up at him adoringly and sang in her awful voice:
—Till all the seas run dry, my love.
Deggle found the cracked old woman’s rendition of the song unaccountably hilarious. Between giggles he said:
—Quite a change from Liv, aren’t you, Mrs O’Toole?
—Nothing changes, said Dolores O’Toole. Does it, darling?
—I suppose not, said Deggle, to fill the expectant silence. She smiled happily.
—O Virgil, she said to the recoiling Deggle, I do, do love you.
Deggle made a quick decision.
—I love you too, he said, and fought back a wave of nausea.
—Let’s go home, she said. Time for breakfast. Give me your belt.
—My belt? Deggle almost squeaked.
—O, you are fussy, she said. Come on, now.
Blankly, Deggle handed her his belt. Unlike Virgil, he didn’t need it to hold his trousers up. Also unlike Virgil, he wasn’t fat; so his belt wasn’t long enough.
—I think I’ll manage without it today, said Dolores O’Toole composedly.
Nicholas Deggle, half-amused, half-frightened by the old madwoman, followed her up the cliff-path to the little hovel. I wonder what happened to Virgil Jones, he asked himself.
Later that day.
Dolores O’Toole was boiling up some arrowroot tea when Deggle came in, looking dishevelled, and even gloomier than he had when he arrived.
—Wherever have you been, my love? she asked. Have some root-tea.
He had been up the mountain a small way. Then he had heard it: the deadly whine. At first he had ignored it; then it became increasingly intrusive, and the dizziness came, and the sense of detachment. Fortunately for himself, Nicholas Deggle was a man of some presence of mind and had staggered and rolled down the mountain, out of the danger zone. Then (for he could recognize an effect of the Rose when he experienced it) he cursed Grimus silently and long.
—Root-tea, said Dolores O’Toole, giving him a bowl. It was revolting; in his anger he hurled the bowl to the floor, where it shattered.
—Tch, tch, said Dolores. Accidents will happen. She began to mop up the mess, uncomplaining.
When she had finished, she came to him and sat at his feet. He was in the rocking-chair again. —We’ll sit like this, she said, every tea-time, for ever.
—You know, said Nicholas Deggle, you could easily be quite right.
—You were clever to chase away the ghost, she said, full of admiration.
—What ghost? asked Deggle.
—O, don’t be falsely modest. You know. That Spectre of Grimus with the scar on its chest.
—Ah, said Deggle, that ghost.
Jones had obviously gone somewhere with Flapping Eagle; but where? Had they killed each other? Had they been mad enough to try and get through the Effect?
—One thing is certain, he told himself, if Flapping Eagle doesn’t get to Bird-Dog and then do what I was going to do, I’m stuck here for life. With a hag who loves me because she thinks I’m Virgil Jones. He wondered if Virgil Jones would see the joke.
He doubted it; because he didn’t see it, either.
He was asleep on the rush-mat carefully laid down for him by Mrs O’Toole, when a nudge jerked him fully awake. There was Dolores O’Toole, in the nude, her hump looming up behind her, her withered breasts swaying with her breathing, her face lit by a ghastly invitation, her lips snarling a smile.
—O God, said Deggle, and closed his eyes to think of the Empire. He opened them; she was still there, leering at him.
—Not tonight, Josephine, he begged.
—Dolores, she corrected affectionately and went back to bed.
Nicholas Deggle was perspiring heavily.
XXX
—VALHALLA, SAID VIRGIL JONES.
Valhalla: where dead warriors live on in stark splendour, fighting their past battles daily, reliving the hour of glory in which they fell, falling bloodied once more to the gleaming floors and being renewed the next morning to resume
the eternal combat. Valhalla, the hall of fame, the living museum of the heroism of the past. Valhalla, close to the pool of knowledge where Odin drank, shaded by the Great Ash Yggdrasil, the World-Tree. When the ash falls, so does Valhalla.
With a slyly amused flick of the tongue, Virgil was pointing at the town of K.
The ascent of the mountain had posed no problems once Virgil had regained his strength (though not his vigour); and now Flapping Eagle stood beside his guide at the very fringe of the forested slopes, looking across a surprisingly large plain.
It was as though a vast step had been cut into the side of Calf Mountain. Flapping Eagle, appreciating the mountain’s true shape for the first time, found himself imagining a giant, using the island as a step up from sea to sky. On the flat horizontal of the step lay the town of K, hard up against the renewed mountain-wall. Fields took up the rest of the plain, some with herds of cattle, others of sheep; still others grew wheat and other crops. But it was night now and the fields were still. Farmhouses dotted the plain, glowing like worms in a garden.
Above the town, on an outcrop of the mountain, stood a single house. Its walls, in direct opposition to the whitewash uniform worn by the rest of the town, were black as jet. It was invisible now, showing no lights; but Virgil Jones knew it was there. It was Liv’s house.
Above it, the mountain’s peak was hidden in a wall of cloud.
—It never lifts, said Virgil Jones, and then silence resumed.
Flapping Eagle had not forgotten his vow to himself in that inner dimension; he would abandon his search and make his life here, if he could. So here was an end to centuries of wandering, a methuselah age of following blindly where the moving finger led. He should have felt relief; but only tension came. For any man, it is a hard thing to empty the mind of all its aims and substitute a new set, cleanly, just so; for Flapping Eagle, whose aims had been set, like one of those inner dimensions, for seven hundred years, it was an herculean task.
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