Barefoot in the Head

by Brian W Aldiss

  ‘Rupture all that, daisy! You just don’t spark! Look, I know how you feel, the big love-feelings heart-high, but it wasn’t like that so don’t try to hippie out of it. All he did was walk in and make an offer as you sat single in your little house! That doesn’t mean he’s yours!’

  ‘You don’t understand... It’s a religious thing and mauve and maureen webworks come from him binding me! With his sweet rocket it’s a sacrament.’

  The ceiling simmering like a saucepan lid and Angelina hit her with a welp of rage and called her all mangey mothersuppurating things. ‘You Early Christian whore! Go throw yoursylph to other loins! He’s my man and stays that way!’

  In anger, she drove the Marta from this ruined arena out, and then herself collapsed on to the single bed. There she still was when de Grand riled in, slipping a little packet to Case before he sought her out. She lay and let time set over her not unpleasureably, idly listening as the raucous noise of a song and plucked strings filtered in the shadow, wondering if anything mattered. That was the crux of it; they were all escaping from a state where the wrong things had mattered; but they were now in a state where nothing matters to us. At least if I can still thing this way I’m sane — but how to put it over to them and that they should be building... The possibility exists, and some days he does build: almost by accident like a weaver bird adding an extra room for teenage chicks to creep up at the back where it stark and on the stares a big woman all all naked bottoms and beasts... Bum weaver yes Colin he still has the glimpse... A sort of genius and might stage a build-on... Pull this lot together must make him listen maybe if I put it in a song for the Tonic all get the message. The table you use the table you take immense suck cess likely me running naked through loveburrow... Old Mumma Goostale...

  As she dozed he entered, not uncivil with untrimmed moustache, de Grand, of secret history in plenty parishes.

  ‘Excuse you saw me interviewing for the film the Master. Second time I’m pleasure of drivnik-visiting.’

  ‘I’m thinking. I know it’s extinct. Blow!’

  ‘What intelligence! I’m full of aspiration. I left my own child to come on this quest to film the lootest Masterpiece.’

  ‘Bloody typical. Go back to your child, Paddy, marry her, bear lots of lovely morechild, marry them off, live humble, avoid oil-shares, stay away from the excitements of masterpeace, rumpling upwards and rolling at speed towards the fluttering artnik?

  ‘The director needs your prosfessional guy dance routine to insight the Master to him. Has a dinner cooking wed local indelicacies and you tenderly invited.’

  She sat up and tugged down the flower-blue shirt and bongo beads she was wearing, her modernity unfit, forgot arrested flow, with an effort focused on him.

  ‘The director you say?’

  ‘Nick Boreas of The Overtaker and The Unaimed Dead now moving to High Point Y to film your husband’s life in compaint colour. The great Nick Boreas you must have heard.’

  ‘He wants the truth about Charteris? Is that what you are saying? My god, these stinking runes are so high I’m almost indechypreable — Boreas wants the truth?’ She fanned herself; he also, gasping like fishes in a mean lake.

  ‘You have me defused a moment. Excuse — some pomaid! We’re making a movie not a gospel we must want material like a sort of biogriffin job, right?’

  ‘The mythic bird what else is struth! A movie you say! You my opportunity I zip on my head boy and you take me to your leader now?’ With nails she tries to calm her wild dark hair.

  ‘My fiat awaits delighted.’ He with a byzantine bow.

  She paused. ‘You driving? You’re so high, no?

  But he was in a studio car with hired driver and they yawed towards the fossil-pattern centre with moderate risk to life.

  On the brittlements of the town auroras flattered in a proud mindflagging and old phantasms took trilobites at her. She was a guttered target for their technicolon pinctuated in a single frame as the assassin went home, feeling her face flatten and balloon as if centred in a whirling telescopular site. Tumultaneously, the broad Leopold II sloughed its pavements for grey sand and cliffs cascaded up where buildings were, unpocked by window or stratum. Turning her tormented head, she saw the ocean weakly flail the macadam margins of shore bearing in change, long, resounding, raw — and knew again as some tiresome visiting professor of microscopic sanity made clear to her that hear again repetitively iron mankind zinc was on the slide between two elements, beaten back to seawrack while he prepared to digest another evolutionary change and none the less stranded because motors roared for him up the hell and highwatershed.

  Such sounds seemed sexplicable, nexplicable, inexplicable, plicable, lickable, ickable, able, sickable. She was able to differentiate the roar into eight different noises, all flittering towards her under the cover of each other. Things that slid and fused let out a particularly evil gargle, so that she grasped de Grand’s moustached arm and cried, ‘They won’t allow me to be the only one left sane, they won’t allow me!’

  Wrapping a moist hand about her, the scar of his lips unhealing on the face pustule its genetic slide screaching, he said, ‘Baby, we all swing on the same astral plane and there’s a new thing now.’

  And in the variable geometry of her mind, great wings retracted and the thin whine let in stratosfear.

  Boreas rose black, deadly-electric, face masked and goggled, hyacinthine from his bathpool, beetling baldbright, not unmanly, a eunuch but with fullgorged appendages. A palatial meal was being prepared in the next room.

  ‘Let me feel you first.’

  ‘I’m in no feeling mood.’ Age-old Angeline. He invited her to swim; when she refused, he reluctantly came from the green water and swaddled himself in towels, quite prepared to wreck her.

  ‘After the meal, the rushes!’

  ‘I don’t swim, thanks.’

  ‘You’ll have a breast stroke when you see the dimmies caroom into their smash-in!’ Full of tittering good humour, he led her through, a heliogabbic figure eight of a man and she bedraggled with a little brave chin, saying, ‘I want to talk seriously with you about the lying-in-state of our old world.’

  He paraded with her slowly round the grand room, already partly hyacinth-invaded as they foliaged intricoarsely across the wallpagan, he speaking here and there to the chattering mass of his invitees, all to Angeline maroonly macabre and flowing from the head as part of the mythology of the palapse and from their infested breath and words crawled the crystalagmites she dreamed of dreading in the coral city trees without window or stratum.

  A speech was made by one of the gaudier figmies in a tapestry, beginning by praising Boreas, ascending on a brief description of the steel industry of a nearby un-named state, and working through references to Van Gogh and a woman called Marie Brashendorf or Bratzendorf who had brought forth live puppies after a nine-day confinement up the scales of madness to a high sea reference to Atlantic grails and the difficulty of making salami from same. Then the company sat or sprawled down, Boreas taking a firm hold of Angelina to guide her next to him, one great hand under her shirt grappling the life out of her left breast into multi-variable contour.

  The first course of the banquet was presented, consisting only of hot water tainted by a shredded leaf; and all following courses and intercases showed similar liquididity in these hoard times, except for warm slices of bodding, and no silence settled like at the G mealtime he led us all a merry dance.

  ‘All the known world,’ she said sliding in, ‘loses its old staples and in only a few months everything will drop apart for lack of care. People who can must save the old order for better times before we’re all psychedelic salvages and you in your film can show them how to keep a grip until the bombeffect wears thin, do a preachment of the value of pre-acidity and the need to rebuild wesciv.’

  ‘No no no, cherie, concoursely, my High Point Y is an insproachmen of the old technological odour, which was only built up by reprunsion and maintained by everyone�
�s anxiety, or dummied into inhabition. Okay, so it all go and no worries. You husbind is a saviour man who lead us to a greater dustance away from old steerotypes and a new belief in the immaterial. So I picture him.’

  ‘Okay, I agree as everyone must that there were many greedy faults but put at its lowest wesciv maimtamed in reasonable comfort a high population which now must die badly by plague and starve off to its last wither.’

  ‘You talk to wrong guy, girlie, because I enormously like to see those ferretty technilogy people die off with all the maimtamed burrgeoisie and black in the ground slump in bulldozing massgraves in Mechelen and Manchester.’

  ‘You shock me, Boreas. And who then will watch your epix?’ Slices of Christmas cactus succulent and inedible were placed before them.

  He took her with his roystering gaze she so thin and succulenten.

  ‘I will eye my films! To the ego egofruit. For me only is they made and to enjoy! For long since the sixties have I and many lesser Is pouring clout our decompositional fluid medium preparing for this dessintegration of sorciety and now you want again the tripewaiters and oilgushers and the offices clattering? He sipped shallowly at the long sour gueuze-lambic as it came round. ‘Balls to the late phase we’ve been through.’

  ‘Some of the old evils maybe die but worse still live on.’ She would not sup. Her eyelids low.

  ‘We live authentic now and the new way which your husbond cries!’

  Under her waif-thin lids she gauzed at the continuum mumbling guests all butterflies or hot rock without rest and each in an amber clockdrill of our mechanissmus that to new born retinal grasp showed in ever moo and ghestune.

  ‘And are these the authenticks as you mountain?’ Scorning.

  Grinding his heavensgravelstone teeth, resting predirty ham on her pecked muscle, ‘Don’t perspine for the judge’s tone when you’re jabbed in the witless blox woman!’

  So for the first time she muddled into revelation and the silent goose grass was again in motion that Colin grasped society went in autosleep his ennemas enemy and wanever jungle he battled in it lay only a March day’s march from her own plot. In even his sickmares might be more health than this fat man’s articles.

  ‘Why did you invite me here?’ And vonnegutsy whines in her visceration.

  ‘Not for the size of your bobbies mine are bigger you slim spratlady! Listen, I want the word on your man we know you have a thing or true against him and that’s for revelation.’

  ‘If I damned well don’t?’

  Butterflies and hot rock flowed up the hyacynth panels to the bright openings of numerous beetel mouths of the tracery.

  ‘If you don’t theres multi-ways of setting an entire squeezein round the motorcave and such I warn you solo voce here and never!’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ All round her the artichokers were unheard as her head’s mainline flowed more regularly in this duress and she viewed with clarity his mantled cheeks and eyes of menace.

  ‘If you don’t want your motorcod tempered with you’ll peach me the laydown with all loot on how your saviourboy committed a murder in the British traffic, didn’t he?’

  And the whole sparse countryside unrolling to her camera, dodging — ‘Who’ll temper with us — you? Our little motorcade tries to ride in innosense but always an evil parashitting grip strangles it you know you know know what I mean the Mafia with their hard relief are maffiking?’

  His jelly flesh was suddenly hard contracted and the mouth gash sealed and done. ‘Don’t say that name in here or you’ll be in a sidealley lying with the lovely lubrication gone and nothing swinging babe be warn!’

  Now all jungular noises cease and the dusky rook hovers.

  She was standing again in the ruined garden where sweet rocket sent its sprays among the grass and thistle and her mother screamed I’ll murder you if you come in again before you’re told! No flowers or fruit ever on the old entangled damson trees except the dripping mildew where their leaves curdled in brown knots perhaps she had seen them among the branches the new animal the fey dog with red tie and been inoculated with the wildered beauty of despair against this future moment’s recurrence.

  Music now played and the vegetattles chattered on as two flower-decked seamen sang of black sheds down a runway. One last stormblown look, Boreas had dislocated and was seen away on the otherside where the mob was most like a market marakeshed with hippie hordes and de Grand in oil-welled mirth. Moving forward, this throng swept up Angeline and broke her into a adjoining private theatre. ‘What’s the rush?’

  ‘You don’t swing! They’re coming!’

  The ceiling flew away the nightbox closed and glaring careyes filled the screen with coloured rattle 5 4 3 2 One buildings surged and broke along the autobahn at troglodaybreak in grey unconvincing weather, autostrata punctuated by windows, their boxrooms stuffed with the comic strip of family bedroomdress as all rose crying ‘Master! Charteris!’ in braces and curling clips. Now paper familias folds and rises from his breakfast serially lifts the kids into the roaring garage monsters gentle monsters gentile masters one by one gliding and choking earring their human scarifice out along the dangerous beaches flashing in variable geography oriented against accident of the urban switchbank.

  The film is as yet unedited. Again and a second time the mechanical riptide roars along the breach discontinuity of time and space armoured armoured green and grey and blue and red a race indeed and carried helpless in them the wheel born ones from their brickhills.

  The dummies register percognitive impulses of the coming crash. Scenes of the resurrention flash like traffic controls in clarkeian universe, they view themselves disjointed in the rough joinery of impact amortised in the outstretchered ambulanes and finally in the sexton’s sinkingfung drowned by stink and stone in their own neutrifaction beneath the wave freeze. With unwinking blueness they view unwivering blackness and with waxen calm survey the chinalined vacuums in their dollyskulls of this annulity their last civil divorce.

  Now from far above ravening like the aerosoiling arabs the eye takes in a checkerboard black-and-white of roads marked like a deserted heliport with the far black sheds of Brussels lying low plunges like a hypodetic to disgorge the main artery of shittlecock. It’s plain lanes erupt into prefognotive shock as forcelines fault lines seismographic lines demarcation lines lines of variable geolatry and least resistance lines of cronology besoin out from the future impact point. Towards this webpoint scudding come the motordollies. They still have several agelong microseconds before point of intersex and times abolution.

  In the leading car from Namur rides fashionable cool Mrs Crack dressed to the nines for high point in a teetotal expatriate sun-and-fun commando suit in well-tailored casual style of almond green nylon gaberdine of a knockout simplicity deep patch pockets and ample vaginal versatility trimmed in petunia piping planned to contrast with a snazzy safari hat of saffron acrylan especially designed for crunch-occasions and scarlet patent slingback shoes in nubile moygashel. Her house is always cool and free from hairy guests of the nonconformist world because she uses new immaculate Plastic with the exciting new impeach-coloured plastic coating and a truculent egg-timer free with every canister so get in the egg-time today! Interviewed just before her death, Mrs Crack explained, ‘It’s fuzzy man. I so admire my lack of vitality.’ Laid her head back unspeaking on surrealistic pillow, applied Sun in the new egregious shade.

  The interviewer riding bareback on the bonnet thrust the mike at her superbly tailored husband Mr Servo Crack sitting exstatically back not driving in the driving seat with no facial or racial hair painted bronze head and lips to match who said, ‘We both moddle many dapper uncreased outfits often in public windows of shops and such places where the elite meet to be neat this we enjoy very much on account of antiseptic lack of any form of marital relations you understand this is not my son in the back just a prefect smaller dummy and a real growing human called Ranceville because as you know my wife Mrs Crack Mrs Historecta Crack tha
t is actually has no capillaceous growth upon her addendum in fact frankly no addendum so of course no capillary attraction since happily I have no gentians or testaments, in the manner of pre-psychedelic mankind so we are just goodly friends and able to constipate on the old middle-class virtues like dressing properly which escalated Europe since hanseatic times of course to the glory of god and his gentleman’s gentleman the pope of beloved memory.’

  He was preparing to say more and the gonaddicts were chuckling and fumbling each other in the darkroom for counterevidence of non-dummiehood when the lemanster encasing Mr Crack flung itself armoured against a monster raving in the apposite direction. Mr and Mrs Crack suffered extinction. Their perfect boy also impeccably crunched. Unfortunately the camera focusing on Ranceville failed to work so that his final blood-letting gestures were not revealed to the celebrating eyes.

  Now the whole cock-up took on the slobber-slob motionrhythm of orgasm sowards the climax of the film and the wetmouthed awedience watched expectorately. More terrible than humans, the dummies caroonied stiffly forward in the slow frames pressing towards point of impact in tethered flight stretching their belts as over towards the scarring windshields they bucketed eyes of blueness still and all around them gloves and maps and michelins and scattering chocolate boxes parabolaed like pigeons startled at the buckling of the sides and still the honest eggshell eyes and spumeless lips started into nanoseconds of futurity. Gravitidal waving limp arms swinging stiff shoulders unshrugging make-up staying put them swain their butterfly in the only saline solution to the deceleration problem.

  All the other armoured lemmings rushed to be in on the destruction. Expressions blank: of dismay the dummies had their heads cracked and chipped and knocked and shattered and ground and mashed and eggshelled and blown away with new miracle Crump aiming their last ricocheting nanocheek towards the impactpoint of speedeath the ipaccint of speeeth ipint seeth inteeth ih i i i.

  Time and again the cameras peeped on the unbleeding victims and on the cracking tin carcases that with rumptured wings in courtship dragging ground tupped one aonther beetle-bowed in the giddyup of the randabout, till the toms built up an audiction and their cheers were heard above the hubcab of metallurging grinderbiles. But Boreas wept because his film had frightened and to the mainshaft struck him.