by Glenn Myers
Pride and treachery
‘Gaston,’ said Leopold, ‘you can try all you like, but you need to know something. If we go on as we’re doing, I think our demonstration is going to be a disaster. I’m serious. I can’t see how it’s going to work.’
Gaston looked at him for a long moment, idly twisting Stub into a corkscrew shape. ‘I know that you and the Toad both think we can accelerate the training,’ Leopold continued. ‘I’ve spent time with these animals and I just don’t know what to do with Keziah. I’ve wanted to say this for a long time. We’re not getting anywhere with Keziah.’
Both spirits turned to look at Keziah.
‘What is it exactly you want her to do?’ I asked. ‘You might be able to help, might you Keziah? If we found out the minimum requirements?’
‘Jamie—’ said Keziah.
‘No, we may as well find out,’ I said. ‘If it’s impossible, it’s impossible. I understand that.’
Leopold said, ‘Gaston?’
Gaston thought, wrapping Stub absently round his arm. ‘There has to be some sort of domestic bliss. You know, so we can say it’s the basis of a new society. They’ll want some worship. You’ll have to give them some worship.’
‘Both of us?’ I asked.
Gaston sighed. ‘It has to look that way.’ He coiled Stub the other way around his arm.
‘So,’ I said, ‘just to be clear, you have to have the convincing appearance that both of us are worshipping you?’
‘Yes,’ said Gaston.
‘Suppose just I did it and Keziah was, I don’t know, at home being supportive?’ I carefully avoided Keziah’s gaze.
‘No,’ said Leopold. ‘They’ll be asking all kinds of rigorous questions afterwards. They’ll want to see Keziah worship. They won’t take any spiritual system that doesn’t tap into the sacred feminine.’
‘It doesn’t even have to be genuine, does it?’ I asked. ‘Doesn’t it just have to look authentic? Am I right in thinking you don’t have to mean it?’
Leopold brightened. ‘No of course you don’t have to mean it. Where would we be in all this Omniverse if you had to mean things?’
‘I don’t know why I’m even listening to this,’ said Keziah.
A thoughtful silence fell.
‘You’re right,’ I said to her. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘But you’re all missing something,’ she continued. ‘The Toad obviously wants you to fail.’
‘What?’ said Leopold. ‘The Toad, praise be to him, has been doing everything in his power to make us succeed. He’s put personal prestige into the project. He’s fixed up the meeting. He’s invited half the powers of heaven. He’s going to introduce us.’
Keziah sighed. ‘You’re not thinking like a lawyer,’ she said. ‘Look. You’re the Toad, OK. You agree to sponsor Gaston and Leopold’s idea. Fair enough—you’ve got to keep on being innovative. It’s a reasonable experiment.
‘When you inspect it, you go straight to the core—you look at Jamie’s and my personalities. You immediately conclude it isn’t going to work. It’s like giving obedience training to a cat. It isn’t going to happen.’
‘But—’ said Leopold.
‘I haven’t finished,’ said Keziah. ‘So now you, the Toad, are in a fix. Disaster looms. Questions will be asked about your judgement. You have to shift the blame onto someone else. So you review your options and it’s a no-brainer. What can you always rely on evil spirits to be? Always?’
‘Proud,’ said Leopold, not without a tinge of pride. ‘That’s our hallmark. That’s what we’ll fight to the death for. Except we can’t die, but you know what I mean. We are The Free Spirits of the Omniverse!’
‘Right,’ said Keziah. ‘The Toad is going to get out of this by tapping into your endless resources of pride and treachery. So now it’s easy. He takes you under his wing—’
‘More like an armpit, really,’ I said. ‘Snug in the Almighty Armpit.’ Keziah gave me a look. Directly behind me, I imagine, a tree withered.
‘—He starts giving you advice. He works out which of you is giving the worst advice, and he emphasises that. Day after day the Toad forces this rotten counsel on you and what happens? The resentment builds. It builds between you, and it builds against the Toad. A dreadful sense of doom and failure creeps over you. You fight it off, it keeps coming back.’
Everyone was silent now. Even Stub, I think, was listening. ‘The Toad hasn’t finished,’ said Keziah. ‘He piles on the pressure some more. He absolutely guarantees your failure by setting an impossible deadline. There’s now no way you’re going to get this project ready in time. Deep down you both know you’re going to fail. You are facing total ruin. What do you do?’
‘You fight,’ said Gaston, unwrapping Stub from his arm and thoughtfully pulling him taut.
‘You do,’ said Keziah. ‘Because your pride tells you to. Every cliché you ever learnt tells you to. Back yourself. Give it your best shot. Get out there and prove him wrong. Even if the odds are desperate. At least go down fighting. Do not go softly into this good night but rage against the dying of the light.’
Another silence fell. ‘He knows you will rise up against him. He knows you’ll make some desperate effort to make this project succeed. You’ll reject his advice, do it your way, and then stand up to him, probably not long before the performance so that he can’t fight back. You’ll make sure it’s a very public break. He retreats, saying, “They refused to listen to me, they’re on their own.” You do your performance. If the Toad has calculated right, you fail, you are lost and everyone admires the cunning and treachery of the Toad.’
‘What if the Toad has calculated wrong?’ asked Gaston.
‘That’s easy. You triumph and the Toad is humiliated in front of all the powers of heaven.’
Gaston and Leopold appeared to savour the warmth of that thought for a happy moment.
‘So what do you suggest we do?’ asked Leopold.
‘Don’t fall into his trap,’ said Keziah. ‘Limit the damage. Do the opposite of what he expects. You’ve got to manoeuvre so that he—’
‘No,’ said Gaston. ‘No, no, no.’
We all turned to look. Gaston was smiling, and Stub was being twisted.
‘You know she’s right,’ said Gaston. ‘I’ll tell you why. It puzzled me why everyone was coming. Leopold, how many of the Biennale people have you spoken to?’
‘Not many obviously. I’ve been busy here. And—you don’t always pass the party invitations on.’
‘I’ve been talking to many of them. Loads of them are coming. Senior spirits are coming. Our rivals are coming. They’re clearing their schedules to come. Leopold, why are they coming? It’s not like we are, you know, the most popular designers in the Omniverse with a massive porfolio.’
‘Speak for yourself. I invented Scottishness!’
‘Which affects what, a minor tribe of five million people? Come on Leopold. They’re talking about strategies for the whole of Europe, rolled out to the entire world.’
Leopold looked exasperated. ‘Look, our achievements with Scottishness were well thought of. That’s the sort of thing that should be rolled out across Europe. The Americans love it. Tanker-loads of Scotch whisky leave for Asia. It was groundbreaking.’
‘Leopold. What would our rivals and the warlords do if what we were doing was truly groundbreaking?’
‘Adopt it all through the Omniverse?’
‘No Leopold. Pride and treachery. They are not coming to admire us. They are coming because they’re expecting a disaster. They have had a whisper, from the Toad himself probably, that it’s all going to fall apart and to be sure not to miss it. Oh, the humiliation he’s lining up for us Leopold! Smith and Mordant aren’t the show. We’re the show. We’re the nngyrting show. We’re the entertainment at the beginning of the Biennale!’
Leopold wiped a hand over his face. ‘But Leopold, you’ve forgotten something. Even Miss clever-clogs know-it-all Mordant has forgotten something. Leopold, O my kilted k
itten Leopold, he doesn’t know about the snake.’
‘Why does the snake make any difference?’
‘The snake has been helping her to be strong. The snake has been helping her sort her mind out. The snake has been undermining the good work we’ve been doing.’
Leopold thought for a while. ‘Do you know, that makes sense? I thought I was more persuasive than that. I couldn’t see how I wasn’t getting through to her.’
‘Can I just say something?’ asked Keziah. ‘I can despise you two all on my own without any help from a snake.’
‘So Leopold, what do you suggest we do?’
Leopold brightened. ‘You want my advice?’
‘Leopold, my darling Leopold, I want your advice. I am going to listen to your advice on animal training.’
‘We’ve got to go back to basics. First, get rid of the snake. Then—we’ve still got three days. Everybody has a breaking point. We’ve got to torture her until she breaks. Coercion isn’t as good as seduction but it will do nearly as well. Especially since we’ve already got Jamie in the bag.’
‘You can do that in three days?’ asked Gaston.
‘When she came here, she was already cracking up,’ said Leopold. ‘And that’s just the damage she did to herself. Wait till I start to work on her. Three days? Simple.’
It was at this point I should have stood up and said,
‘Look here. If you’re going to torture Keziah, you have to torture me first.’ There could have been mention of things being done over my dead body, for example.
The thing is, I would have liked a night and a day to think about that, weigh everything up, perhaps talk it through with Caroline. I’m confident I’d’ve eventually come down on the right side. I just felt a bit rushed. All I did say was, ‘Er—’
Gaston spat at me: ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So what do we do?’ asked Gaston.
‘Adamantine,’ replied Leopold. ‘Adamantine chains for the worm. I’ll find some,’ and he walked off, with a little shimmy of his slitted kilt.
‘Adamantine chains,’ said Gaston wolfishly to us both, ‘are the business.’
A silence fell. As if to break it, Gaston, renewing his grip on Stub’s neck, started talking to me. ‘Smith,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen more sense than this Mordant woman.’
I didn’t want to reply. ‘Well?’ he insisted.
‘I’ve built a patchwork god if that’s what you mean,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you it. It’s only over there. Of course, it isn’t finished yet. This is the proof of concept. I can build on this.’
‘Come on, Mordant.’ Gaston reached for Keziah’s hair again. She slapped his hand and glared at him.
‘I can walk on my own.’
‘You’re going to be tortured,’ replied Gaston. ‘I will enjoy that.’
‘Here it is.’ We reached the space in the clearing where my patchwork god stood. It was a work-in-progress, various bits of symbol still lying around. ‘I worship Intellect,’ I said. ‘Hence the pumpkin, like a big fat head, brimming with ideas. Can’t stand thick people. Shouldn’t be allowed to breed. Next, money. I love money. Hence this money fountain. You can just stick your head under it, like this,’—I demonstrated—‘oh, and you just feel money, money, pouring around your ears, it’s wonderful.
‘When I sat down and thought, you know I really like cruelty. Not the big stuff. The petty, mindless acts of malice. So I have here a brick and a jellyfish. The jellyfish can shuffle along the ground, but not fast enough. Watch.’
I picked up a brick. ‘O little jellyfish! See this? It’s called a brick.’ There was a terrified squeak, squeak, squeak. ‘Look! It does this!’ I dropped the brick. You could hear a bursting noise and a little wimper from the jellyfish. ‘Is that fun or not? Of course the jellyfish reconstitutes itself automatically, so you can go round again.
‘This is only the beginning. I can build more. Now, for your actual act of worship—I’m still working on the ritual, but I’m tentatively suggesting you do it seven times a day, once for each mealtime: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, tea, supper, raid-the-fridge. That’s workable in my schedule.
‘So you prostrate yourself against the pumpkin and tap your head on it, worshipping sheer cleverness and craftiness. Obviously, I’m thinking of you as the god behind all this.
‘Then you get up, jump in the money fountain, wash in it, drink it, then jump out invigorated.
‘Finally you pick up the brick, and taking as much or as little time as you like—obviously some parts of the day you have more leisure than others—and watch the jellyfish scuttle. Wait until it starts squeaking with terror and then…
‘Release the brick!
‘So what do you think, O my Overlord?’
Gaston was slavering. ‘I am surprised Smith,’ he said calmly, ‘and quite pleased. Do it again.’
‘In time, in time, my Overlord Gaston.’ I said. ‘I wanted to see if I was on the right lines. We can tweak.’
I still hadn’t looked at Keziah. She was standing nearby, and I felt that she had relaxed a little.
Gaston was thinking. ‘So how did you come to make that god?’
‘I followed your instructions—I mean Leopold’s really. But I know who is the intellectual force behind them. “Jamie,” I said to myself, “just be true to what you really feel. Let your creativity go.”’
‘Do you think other people would respond the same way?’ asked Gaston. He was trying to keep the excitement out of his voice, like a dealmaker who is oh-so-close to a bargain.
‘On earth? Oh I expect so,’ I said airily. ‘The trick is to feel. Not think. Follow your basic instincts. So freeing. And you know what else? I feel it made me closer to you. You’ve rescued us and you look after us, and we don’t have ways to show our gratitude.’
‘You say you’d repeat this ritual, what, seven times a day?’ said Gaston with an air of casualness.
‘Why not?’ I asked.
Gaston was seemingly doing a calculation.
‘Hmm,’ he said.
We heard the clank of chains.
‘Adamantine chains,’ said Leopold enthusiastically, dragging them through the trees. ‘I knew I had some.’
‘Leopold,’ said Gaston, ‘have you seen this one’s patchwork god?’
‘No, not yet,’ replied Leopold.
‘It’s good,’ said Gaston. I felt a surge of pride. ‘It means that when we win, we win big. Now, can you help me with the snake?’
Gaston folded Stub roughly in half while Leopold wrapped a chain round him, finally tying the chain back onto itself. They lowered the chained bundle onto the ground. The bundle twitched.
‘Excellent,’ said Gaston. ‘Leave him there while we deal with Mordant.’
‘Why doesn’t he just change shape and escape?’ I asked.
‘Adamantine,’ said Gaston, ‘is quality.’ He turned to Keziah. ‘Mordant,’ he said. ‘I have had to look after you for what feels like a long time. I have not enjoyed this. Now that we are moving on to simple torture, I think we will find that I start enjoying it.’
I again felt I should say something at this point, but I couldn’t think what. It all seemed so depressingly inevitable.
‘Leopold,’ said Gaston. ‘Would you be kind enough to advise how exactly we should torture Mordant?’
‘Easy,’ said Leopold. ‘Take her back to her side of the habitat—we need the room here to get ready for the Biennale. Then I go to her memory storage and dig up all the most painful memories. I send them to her spirit. Memory after memory rains down on her, a bombardment that never ends.’
‘Can’t she fight them off?’ asked Gaston.
‘Not if we send them fast enough. They’re terrible sticky things, evil memories. They overwhelm you.
‘Then we leave her. Evil memories splashing onto her like the yellow rain itself. Herself, twisting and turning under them. Day and a half of that, two days maximum, and over she goes. Begging for
mercy. Begging for it to stop.’
I’d like to point out that in the next sentence I was quite brave and cunning. I only mention this as there are people who say I was chicken-hearted throughout the story.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘My Lord Gaston, you don’t think I could make one more attempt to talk to Keziah? Now that she’s seen my patchwork god, she might want to change her mind. What do you think Keziah?’
‘No,’ said Keziah, shaking her head slowly.
‘I could show you how—’
‘He’s been useless so far,’ said Gaston. ‘Despite all our help. I think he’s useless with women.’
‘I see what you’re trying to do Jamie,’ said Keziah, honest green eyes flicking onto me for a half-second. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Are you OK with that?’ I asked. ‘Being tortured and everything?’
‘I fight memories every day, Jamie. But on earth I can’t lay my hands on them.’
Gaston and Leopold looked at each other.
‘This is going to work,’ said Gaston. ‘Isn’t it?’
Leopold smiled.
‘She’s got memories like you wouldn’t believe. Abuse. Betrayal. Revenge. Self-hate. Oh! Our Father Below! She’ll never have faced anything like what I’m going to drop on her!’ Leopold was dribbling a little. ‘Two days, she’ll be begging like a dog. On all fours, if you like.’
‘O Leopold,’ said Gaston, with a groan. ‘Do it, do it, do it.’
‘You really think we are going to defeat the Toad?’ asked Leopold.
Gaston put his hands on Leopold’s shoulders and gripped him tightly.
‘Leopold!’ he said. ‘Don’t you remember when we first got together? You’d been through all those jobs and not really found your feet—’
‘I thought I’d—’
‘Oh you’d shown glimpses of genius, Leopold. You understand how these humans work. I looked at you and I thought, this spirit can go far. Then I looked at me and thought I probably don’t have his sheer artistry with humans, but I can hustle and I have a bit of ability in selling and banging heads together. I can make things happen. I knew then, Leopold, I knew then we had the makings of something very special. You create, I sell.’
‘Yes—but I’m not just an artisan—’
‘Absolutely not! Of course not!—’
‘It’s not just about you going the parties and me doing the mucking out—’
‘No, of course not. Of course not,’ said Gaston hurriedly. ‘No. What I was going to say was, I thought to myself,’ Gaston seemed to swallow something, ‘what a team we’d be. What a partnership. Gaston and Leopold. I want to spend the rest of eternity with that being.’ He coughed.
Leopold said, ‘Did you really? Is that what you really thought?’
‘Yes. Yes. Of course it is. You know that. Thick and thin. We’re together.’ He coughed again. ‘Forever. You and I.’
Leopold hugged him. They held the hug, cheek to cheek. ‘We need to have faith! Two of us, both exceptionally gifted, we can beat the Toad.’
‘I’m frightened,’ said Leopold.
‘When we got together,’ said Gaston, ‘didn’t I say, “It will be quite a ride?” Isn’t it?’
‘But the Toad.’
‘We’ve outsmarted him so far. We have. We can do this Leopold. Together.’
They relaxed the hug, Gaston leaving first.
‘I still don’t like it all that much,’ said Leopold grudgingly.
‘You should let the snake go,’ said Keziah unexpectedly. ‘He isn’t going to do you any harm, or me any good. He’s flipped.’
We all looked at her. ‘You could see the signs,’ shrugged Keziah. ‘Anxiety. Paranoia. Repetitive movements. If he was human and doing that in my office I’d have him sectioned—I’d’ve phoned the people in white coats. You can chain him or unchain him as you like. He’s got so many chains in his head it won’t make any difference.’
‘No,’ said Gaston cheerfully. ‘Leopold, just put the snake somewhere out of the way, in a bit of woodland or something. Take Mordant to her habitat. Then, dear Leopold, I’m going to have to ask you to brave the rain again and dig up all those wonderful memories from Mordant’s storage. Don’t hold back. Give her everything. You don’t mind me going to the Biennale meetings again? I think I ought to do some more.’
‘No, I don’t mind,’ said Leopold. ‘No pain, no gain.’
‘What?’ asked Gaston.
‘On earth,’ said Leopold. ‘It’s a thing they say.’
‘Ridiculous. What’s pain got to do with gain?… Leopold, you’re still worried aren’t you?’ Gaston’s tone was earnest.
‘I just don’t think we can beat the Toad,’ said Leopold glumly. ‘I think it’s Fate.’
‘The thing with Fate,’ replied Gaston, tapping him on the arm, ‘is you never know until you try.’
They made their exits—Stub tied to a tree not far away. Keziah led off with Leopold. Gaston going to schmooze with the Great and the Bad. I was just about to leave when I heard Stub calling, slightly muffled by the Adamantine chains.
‘Hell,’ said Stub to me, in a dangerous monotone.
‘I’m sorry?’ I said.
‘Hell. Do you know the secret about it?’
‘I don’t. I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘Many spirits jump in.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The entrance isn’t chained off. It’s called the Lake of Fire. Any of us can go there and jump in.’
‘I suppose it’s a bit of a tourist attraction. Mouth of Hell. I can imagine the postcards.’
‘Have you ever been?’
‘Could you imagine it? “Dear Mum, am at the Mouth of Hell. Wish you were here.”’
‘If you’d been, you wouldn’t joke about it.’
‘Well I haven’t.’
‘Your time will come.’
‘Thank you for that cheery word.’
‘The point is,’ Stub continued, ‘many spirits jump in. Nobody pushes them. They volunteer.’
‘Really.’
‘You can’t get out, once in you’re in, but still they jump.’
‘I see.’
‘Aren’t you going to ask me why?’
The mad. I hate the mad. They should shoot them all. I was still standing some way from Stub, not wanting to have a conversation.
‘Why.’
‘Depression. They figure, “That's where I’m going to end up. I’m a failure. My life is a disaster. Why not jump in and get it over with?”’
I was silent. ‘If it wasn’t for these Adamantine chains,’ resumed Stub, ‘that’s where I’d be now. Standing on the edge.’
‘Really.’
‘But the problem is, we’re eternal beings. I know you’re not engaging with me, Jamie Valentine Smith, but I’m going to continue anyway because I am having a psychotic breakdown and beings who are having psychotic breakdowns break conversational conventions. So if it wasn’t for these Adamantine chains I would be taking hold of your arm and putting my face right in yours.’
‘Look—’
‘And don’t say, “I’d better be going” or “is that the time?” because I know that you have nowhere to go, not really, and no-one to see. So as I was saying: Eternity. That’s the problem. You might say, “I’m depressed, may as well jump in the Lake of Fire, get it over with.” Then think: Eternity. Eternal changelessness. You, the eternally changeable being are throwing yourself into that lake of eternal changelessness and pain. So you say to yourself, “Do I or don’t I jump in?”’
‘Do you.’
‘Yes, you do. Then you realize that standing mentally on the edge of the Lake of Fire, saying “Shall I or shan’t I?” is almost as bad as being in the Lake of Fire.’
‘I see.’
‘You work out—it isn’t difficult—that you don’t need to be standing at the Mouth of Hell to have those thoughts. You can have them anywhere. Anywhere you like, you can have the Mouth of
Hell experience. Here. Now. Today.’
‘Which is what you’re having?’
‘Durr… Hence the psychotic breakdown.’
‘Well, good to talk to you—’
‘It’s the sheer impossibility of getting back out, you see. I might as well jump into Hell because morally, logically, I’m already in. Since I’m logically in, why not just jump in anyway? Get it over with. But then you ask yourself: suppose my logic is wrong? Then I mustn’t jump in. It would be awful to endure Eternity in the Lake of Fire because of a bit of sloppy thinking.’
‘You’ve never sought help about this?’
The little pile of Adamantine chains shuddered and clanked.
‘Help! Who is there to help? Climb an unclimbable mountain. Oh yes, many people will be able to help me there. Bridge an unbridgeable chasm. Expect I’ll get a kit from a do-it-yourself shop.’
‘I mean psychological help. You might be deluded.’
‘Do you not think I’ve asked that question sometime in the past 13.8 billion years?’
‘Don’t you have pills and things? You’re the therapist. You should know.’
The bundle that was Stub cast a dark eye on me from his mass of Adamantine.
‘You may have a point,’ he said. ‘I don’t need pills exactly but Jonah and Miss Bright tell me that I should go to the Diner as often as possible. I haven’t done that for days—spent too long with you people.’
‘What’s the Diner?’
‘The department we work for,’ said Stub impatiently. ‘We have staff recreation facilities. Since our offices got taken over, that’s all we have. Jonah and Miss Bright tell me that I have to spend time in the Diner every day if I can. It has a pool. I can wash off the psychological crud. Helps stop me getting into these psychotic cycles, and they can keep an eye on me. Of course none of this answers the fundamentals.’
‘In my world,’ I said, ‘fundamentals are a bad idea. Totally sorting something out is a bad idea. If it works for now, it works.’
‘Ridiculous.’
‘You should become a web programmer. I always tell my clients, never try to sort things out once and for all. Building a website isn’t like building a house. Just go for things that are OK for today. Then tomorrow, for something that’s OK tomorrow. It turns out in web programming that the “final solution” is an endless succession of provisional solutions. So if you’ve got a provisional solution, like your work with these two other therapists, why worry?’
‘Why worry?’ The little pile of chains was trying to hop up and down. ‘Why worry because I’m one psychotic breakdown away from jumping down the throat of Hell, that’s “why worry.”’
‘You’ve managed since the beginning of the universe, haven’t you?’
‘Barely,’ said Stub. ‘Barely hanging on.’
‘There you are then.’
‘Thirteen point eight billion years is nothing compared with Eternity. One breakdown and poof, I’m gone. Do you know why I’m having this current breakdown?’ asked Stub. ‘You.’
‘Me?’
‘You. Stubborn heart. Blocked up ears. Blind eyes. Thick head. I don’t mind the pain, you know. In my state you expect pain. You carry it around with you. There’s always pain. I don’t mind the fresh pain, that I get from going out into your memory to smash up the Dome. Every drop of the hateful rain a fresh tear in my being, a fresh wound. I don’t mind having to call you “sir” all the time. Sir.
‘When I go through all this and try to make your thick head understand what do I get? Hostility and insults and threats!’
‘And air-to-ground missiles,’ I pointed out.
‘It didn’t hurt,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing compared to the wounds I already carry for you. I ask myself, “Why can’t he see? Why doesn’t he get it? Is it my fault? What am I doing wrong?
‘“Is it Jonah and Miss Bright? Is it their fault? Sending me. Do they hate me? Why do they send me on a mission that must fail?”
‘Then I think, “No, they don’t hate me.” They care for me. I know they do.
‘So who hates me? Who dooms me to fail? Who gives me impossible jobs? I can’t bear it!’
I felt it best to leave, so I stepped out, leaving Stub ranting and rolling around in his Adamantine chains.
You save things for moments like this. I knew what I needed. I had had it up to here with people, evil spirits, figments of my imagination, psychotic breakdown, self-analysis and the rest.
I streaked to Osama’s. I got Louis Armstrong and his Hot Fives wound up and playing. The Giant Surly Bread Chef moved into high gear, which is one murtabak every 90 seconds. (Which is actually the same as low gear. Never mess with the Giant Surly Bread Chef.) Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart put together several of the formica tables, spread a cloth, and placed all Osama’s offerings on them: the six different curries that bubbled behind the Giant Surly Bread Chef, the bhajis and samosas that were stored in glass shelves on the counter, the pots of rice: plain, basmati, pulau and Special, and the pickles. I took a bowl and a fresh murtabak and walked right along, helping myself to everything, piling the plate up. I set it on my favourite table.
I magicked up Total Javascript. I tucked in my napkin, opened the book and read, and ate messily, and didn’t think and didn’t care, while Osama looked on, eager to please.
It was very late when I staggered back to the lighthouse, and I was waddling tenderly home, not wanting to set off heart palpitations. The bottom of my throat, a usually uncomplaining part of my body, was burning. I hadn’t felt like this in years, not since the epic bhaji challenges of my student days. (Fourteen, since you ask, and I didn’t even vomit.)
I had trained Total Javascript to fly next to me and it swooped along like a vulture, great downward sweeps of its pages hauling it into the sky, followed by a long glide.
I opened the lighthouse door-latch, told Total Javascript to play with the seagulls, and stepped in. The kitchen fire was low, and the lights out. The figments in bed. I climbed the stairs to my own bed, magicked a change of clothes, and settled to sleep, my stomach happily gurgling and digesting like a slurry-tank on a farm.
Slept and dreamt. Went to the Dome. Wished I hadn’t. Everyone was asleep. Some were floating unconscious on little rafts. The bartenders dozed. No fountains played. The wave machine was switched off. All through my coma the Dome had still throbbed with life until now.
Like everyone had been gassed or something.
I fixed my own breakfast in the morning, a simple fruit smoothie, a gentle start to the day, and I sipped it looking out over the lighthouse railings onto a calm sea. Total Javascript was perched on the railings nearby.
Caroline strode in and sat neatly down on the slatted bench next to me.
‘Morning Jamie,’ she said briskly.
‘Eeeeuuuurgh,’ I replied.
‘Disgusting,’ she said.
‘Ate a bit too much last night.’
‘Serves you right.’
‘Worth it though.’
‘Jamie,’ she said. ‘We’ve got some news from Leopold. Gaston and the Toad have had a big argument. It was at one of the parties last night. Very public. It started with a dispute about the methods they were using to train you and Keziah. Blazing row. Ended with the Toad completely disowning them. So at the exhibition—day after tomorrow—it’s going to be just Gaston and Leopold.’
‘So it’s started then.’
‘Yes, and it’s done wonders for the numbers coming. It’s going to be packed.’
‘How does Leopold feel about it?’
‘I think he’s a little bit on edge. He’s been phoning us every five minutes to get us to hurry you along.’
‘Have you heard anything from Keziah?’
‘She’s not returning our texts. I think you should go and see her, Jamie.’
I wiped my face with my hand.
‘I’d rather be reading that,’ I said, pointing to Total Javascript.
‘I think it’s time you
thought of others,’ said Caroline.
‘Thank you for the lesson on moral improvement. It is much appreciated.’
‘It would be easier to keep quiet,’ said Caroline, going a little pink, and strode out.