by Adam Roberts
‘Let me tell you something about the Dark Side, my boy,’ said Palpating. ‘After I’ve explained the true nature of things, you may decide that, of the two sides it’s the better side to be on. For one thing you need to know my true name. It’s Dark Charlie . . .’
He talked on. And as he talked, Jane Seespotrun’s eyes grew wider and wider.
Things changed after that. Amidships was only too aware that her young husband had become gloomier; as if moving from a sunny to a gloomy portion of his extended adolescence. He took to wearing black, and lurking in his room for long stretches of time. When the chief maid (a Keflapod woman called Psoriasis) tried to get inside to change the sheets and clean up a bit, Jane shooed her away.
The big Thursday came. Jane boarded a shuttle with Palpating and flew away to Metropolanet, to help his mentor seize power in the Council.
Whilst he was away Psoriasis finally got a chance to tidy up his room. And it was while she was doing that she came across Jane’s diary. Naturally, she flicked through it; and twenty minutes later she was standing before her mistress with a concerned look on her face.
‘Your husband,’ she said. ‘He has gone over to the Dark Side. It’s in his diary.’
‘No!’ exclaimed Amidships. ‘Show me.’
Friday 13th. Got up. Had pop tarts. Finally mastered the chord change from G* to A$-minus on the Altarian electro-lute. Have decided what my name will be as an evil Lord of the Psmyth. Since I’m to be a father now, I figured Dark Father. It’s got a good ring to it, I think. All evil Lords of the Psmyth have to have the first name Dark. Which I think is pretty excellent actually, and certainly a better name than Jane, which I’ve always felt is something of a girlie name, actually. Anyway, Councillor Palpating tells me that Wobbli Bent and Amidships will never join the Dark Side, and therefore they must be sent to a prison world, or perhaps executed, we’ll work that out later. Last week that would have bothered me, especially Amidships who’s really nice. But she’s got so fat (pregnant I know, but what’s the difference?) I’ve kind of gone off her a bit actually – and besides: once you’re on the Dark Side, you can’t be influenced by mere personal or emotional connections, that’s what my pal Palpating tells me.
‘Great Thog!’ cried Amidships. ‘We must tell Wobbli Bent K’nobbli, straight away!’
Far away, on Metropolanet, the coup went entirely according to plan. All of Councillor Palpating’s – Emperor Palpating as he now was – enemies had been despatched to the prison world. An attempt to arrest the new Emperor, a desperate last throw by the outgoing Council, was thwarted by a dazzling display of Farcical slapstick from Palpating’s young sidekick. The Council guards were all knocked unconscious with a plate of ham sandwiches, a chair and a pencil.
By Friday the new Emperor had established his cronies in all positions of power on Metropolanet, and was flying back with Seespotrun to Ya!Boo!.
‘Now we must deal with your wife, my friend,’ Palpating announced. ‘She cannot be trusted.’
‘It is a pity,’ said Seespotrun. ‘But I suppose it’s the way the cookie crumbles.’
‘Cookies, yes. I propose we imprison her on Prison World XII. Wobbli K’nobbli we can send to Prison World III – it’s less pleasant there, but he’s a Jobbi knight, so he should have the wherewithal to cope with the hardship.’
‘Would I be able to visit Amidships from time to time?’ Seespotrun asked, tentatively.
‘My dear young apprentice,’ said Palpating, sternly. ‘Remember what we talked about. I hope you’re not allowing sentiment to affect you? The Dark Side cannot afford sentimentality.’
‘You’re right of course,’ said Seespotrun, in a low voice.
‘No, I think it’s best if you don’t visit. Unless – of course – unless she changes her ways, and is prepared to join the Dark Side. But I don’t think we should hold our breath on that count. We both know how unlikely that is.’
‘But,’ said Jane. ‘There’s the child. My son . . .’
‘I shall take care of the child,’ whispered Palpating. ‘Leave his upbringing to me.’
‘But,’ said Jane. ‘He’s my child, after all.’
‘Very well,’ said Palpating, looking a little crosser. ‘If you really want to be saddled with the night-time feeding, the nappy-changing, the colic, the vomiting, all the actual business of raising a child?’
Jane thought about this. ‘I suppose not,’ he said, reluctantly.
‘Wouldn’t you rather perfect your High Scores on Zapping Zombies at Zombie Zoo? Practise the Dark Side? There’s a trick I can teach you that will enable you to crush peoples’ windpipes without even touching them! – you’ll like that.’
That sounded like a much more productive use of time. ‘Golly,’ said Jane. ‘That does sound more exciting than changing nappies,’ he said.
‘You shall be reunited to young Luke when he is an adult,’ Palpating promised. ‘This I guarantee. And when he is fully grown, I foresee that he will join us in the Dark Side of the Farce. Then you, he and I will rule the Galaxy as a triumvirate.’
‘A what?’
‘A three-way power-sharing structure.’
‘Wizard! Can I go play my electric Altarian lute now? I got the Death Metal songbook and singalong cassette in the post this morning.’
‘Off you go.’
Jane Seespotrun ran off to his cabin.
Palpating sat, looking through the viewing window at the scratchy pattern of stars stretched by the topological impossibilities of hyperspace travel. His eye seemed to take everything in, as if, truly, he could own it all as his personal property: as if he could put it in his pocket. Whether that was because his pocket was large, or because the whole simulated Tron-like universe was small, was unclear.
Shortly the craft slipped out of hyperspace and into orbit around Ya!Boo!
‘We must leave, now,’ insisted Wobbli for the seventieth time. ‘Your husband – and the new Emperor – could return at any time.’
‘I can’t leave now,’ panted Amidships. ‘It so happens that now I’m right in the middle of labour. Uggggnnn!’
‘Push, my lady,’ said Psoriasis. ‘Push!’
‘I am pushin-nnnn-nnnngggg-ggggg,’ Amidships replied.
Wobbli paced the birthing chamber. ‘We can’t afford to wait,’ he muttered.
The Keflapod nursemaid tutted crossly. ‘My lady won’t be ready for a spaceflight for several weeks,’ she insisted. ‘The shock of hyperspace would kill her.’
‘Weeks?’ moaned Wobbli. ‘That’s terrible! Palpating and your husband will be here in hours. What can we do?’
Amidships had reached a calm point between contractions. She puffed noisily as Psoriasis mopped her sweating brow. ‘The timing is unfortunate,’ she agreed. ‘If the contractions had held off for only a couple of days, we could have got clean away. But, as it is, I don’t see what we can do.’
‘Never mind us,’ said Wobbli. ‘What about our child? We cannot allow him to fall into the clutches of the Dark Side.’
‘You could take him,’ said Amidships, in a low voice. ‘When he’s born. Take him and a milk synthesiser and a nappy fabricator far away – you can go, even if I cannot.’
‘Leave you? Never!’ cried Wobbli.
‘Think straight,’ said Amidships. ‘That way you and the baby will both be safe. You can go somewhere far away – you can organise resistance to this sinister New World Order.’
‘But what about you? And, besides – when your husband sees his child has gone, he’ll search the whole cosmos to recover him.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Amidships crossly. ‘It’s only an – ararrrrgh! Ggnnnngh!’
Psoriasis bent over her mistress and tried to ease the pain of her parturition.
‘Excuse me, Psoriasis,’ said Wobbli. ‘If you don’t mind me asking. What’s that large unsightly lump on the back of your head, between your two tentacles?’
‘Is this the time?’ Amidships gasped, wide eyed, ‘for
a question like that? Ggggggggg.’
‘That?’ replied Psoriasis, feeling round the back of her head with her left hand even as she mopped her mistress’s face with her right. ‘I’m not sure to be honest. A daughter, I think.’
‘A daughter? You mean, that’s your child growing there?’
‘Sure. That’s how Keflapods give birth. Makes more sense than your crazy human way if you ask me – all this pain and blood and pushing? No thanks. With us, a new baby just grows on the back of the head. When it’s ready it buds off.’
‘And then?’
The Keflapod shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Don’t care. We leave them to fend for themselves.’
‘As soon as they’re born?’
‘That’s the Keflapod way, yes.’
‘Darling,’ said Wobbli, taking Amidships’s hand. ‘I think I’ve got an idea . . .’ The last syllable of this last word transformed into a cry of ‘aaargh!’ as Amidships, her body wracked by a new contraction, squeezed his hand hard enough to pop his knuckles.
After his ship touched down on the Municipal Ya!Boo! landing strip, the new Emperor left Seespotrun on board in his cabin, and made his way alone to the palace. He walk bow-legged, his cane bowing out in his right hand. As he neared the main gate he indulged himself in one quick move – a sideways jump into the air, as if pivoting on his right hand on top of his cane, and a quick kicking together of his heels, before landing again on two feet and walking on.
He strode through the gates of the palace, up the broad stairs, and into Pkme’s chambers. Amidships was sitting in her bed, cradling a small child in her arms.
‘Palpating!’ she exclaimed in a not-pleased-to-see-you sort of voice. He had grown a small moustache. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Just popping in for a visit, my dear,’ said Palpating, greasily. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ replied Amidships. ‘I know your true motives, Palpating. I know you have aligned yourself with the forces of Darkness. I know that you are one of the Psmyth, and that now you have seized control of the Council you will probably become an evil tyrant, and attempt to purge the Jobbi utterly from the cosmos.’
‘You seem to know a great deal,’ said Palpating pleasantly. ‘And I think I will help myself to a seat, despite your inhospitality.’
‘You won’t get away with it,’ said Amidships, hotly.
‘The seat? Or the plot to seize power? I’ve already got away with the latter, my dear; and that means that, as the Galaxy’s most powerful individual, I can do what I like with any chair I come across.’
‘I know you’ve seduced my husband to the Dark Side of the Farce!’ exclaimed Amidships. ‘He’s too young and hot-headed to think clearly. He’s a straw blown in the breeze. You seduced him!’
‘In a purely political sense, yes. But I’m being rude – I haven’t complimented you on your child!’ He was on his feet and at the bedside in no time at all. ‘A beautiful baby – oh! A girl, is it?’
‘That’s right,’ said Amidships, defiantly.
‘But the scans indicated a boy . . .’
‘They were wrong.’
Palpating looked hard at Amidships. ‘I see. Jane was expecting a son, you know. He’s got a name for him already. Not that I care a pin one way or the other. It’s not as if he’s ever going to actually see the child . . .’
‘You monster!’
‘Yes. You see, young Jane is very powerful with the Farce, and will be a crucial ally in my campaign for Galactic domination. But, as you said, he is hot-headed, changeable, easily swayed. I will need some leverage to persuade him to remain loyal to me. You and your child will do very nicely. My personal troops are, as we speak, landing in the courtyard. Shortly they will take you and your daughter to a certain prison planet. Don’t worry; you’ll be very well looked after. Spacious, though secure, quarters. All the food and entertainment you need. You can even take your droid with you for company. And comfort breaks.’
‘Lock me away all you like!’ cried Amidships defiantly. ‘I’ll never succumb! I’ll wilt and die in captivity . . .’
‘Perhaps you will, my dear, in a few years,’ said Palpating offhandedly. ‘It hardly matters. The robots on the prison world will be able to raise the child, and it’s the child that matters. As long as Jane knows that I control his child, he will never dare betray me. And so, my dear, neither you nor your lovely offspring will ever be allowed to escape – not until young sweetums there, in your arms, is fully grown up.’
‘I see you have grown a moustache, Palpating,’ said Amidships, fiercely. ‘It appears you have modelled it on Adolf Hitler – how appropriate!’
‘My dear,’ said Palpating, pleasantly. ‘You are barking up the wrong tree entirely.’
Wobbli K’nobbli cradled his son in his arms as his spacecraft whipped through the complexities of super-subspace. He was heading for Tatuonweiner, where he had located a couple of adoptive parents. He had considered raising the child himself; but, he realised, that might draw too much attention to the lad. No, better to give him to the Svennsons, in a wilderness on the outskirts of a dead-end town in an economically impoverished world. Wobbli resolved to stay nearby, perhaps building himself some sort of hermitage, just to keep an eye on things – at least for the time being. When the threat from the Power of the Psmyth had been defeated by the remaining Jobbi Order (and Wobbli was confident that victory would come soon) then he would re-emerge into the Galaxy at large. But until that time, he would lie low.
He hoped he would only have to wait until Amidships could escape, and join him on Tatuonweiner. And he was sure that Amidships would find a way to escape from Palpating’s clutches. He wasn’t sure how, but she would surely find a way . . .
‘You are the embodiment of evil!’ Amidships exclaimed.
‘On the contrary, my dear,’ Palpating was whispering. ‘I’m not evil. And I will tell you why I am not evil. I will tell you exactly what I told young Jane – the thing that persuaded him to join me, and my side of the battle. You know, Jane Seespotrun may be young, but his heart is in the right place.’
‘I used to think so,’ retorted Amidships. ‘Until I learnt he had joined with you.’
‘But he has joined me because he thinks he is doing the right thing. He now knows what I know – the secret of the Cosmos.’
‘Secret!’ scoffed Amidships. ‘What secret?’
‘You know, of course, that our life is not an actual life; not an authentic life. That we are living in a metaphor, a metaphor drawn from the works of twentieth-century science fiction. Yes?’
‘You forget: I was there,’ said Amidships. ‘When Tyrannical came up with all that.’
‘Once we realise that we are living a virtual world, the natural thing is to wonder – what’s outside? Tyrannical assumed that there must be a programmer, that our consciousnesses must have been deliberately inserted into this place. But the truth is – somewhat different.’
‘You told me once,’ said Amidships, ‘that Carcinoma Angels . . .’ She trailed off.
‘You still haven’t read that one, have you, my dear? No, I thought not. Even though it might open your eyes. We are all resistant to the truth; it is in our nature. Our consciousnesses yearn to believe in the world in which we find ourselves. Even when we know – as you know, my dear; as I have known for a long time – even when we know that our world is in fact merely a metaphor for something else, we continue to ignore the obvious.’
‘The obvious?’
‘Come, my dear. Look at the facts – look at the clues. There is order in the Galaxy, and there is disorder. The two things are in conflict. There is authority, and those who fight against authority, who devote themselves to rock and roll, to excess, to indulgence.’
‘What do you mean, clues?’
‘How does order manifest itself? Phagocyte police cruisers. The elimination of the free radicals. White blood cells. And how does disorder manifest itself?’
He seeme
d to be waiting for an answer from Amidships. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, eventually.
‘In disease. Each enemy of order manifests a different disease. This rebel embodies leprosy. That one, bent and wobbly, is arthritis. This young tearaway is acne, with his running spots. These enemies of the state embody, variously, astigmatism, influenza, cancer, dwarfism, nominal aphasia. Here is a person whose whole existence is determined by whole-body hirsutism. Is there any person associated with this movement who is not embodied by illness, sickness, disease? It is epitomised by the Jobbi: the group whose leader is in fact nothing more than a three-foot-high quantity of animated phlegm.’
‘Yodella . . .’ breathed Pkme.
‘Did you wonder why he so conveniently appeared just as Tyrannical was telling us the true nature of the cosmos? Why he came in at precisely that moment to silence him forever? Because he does not want us to understand the true nature of things, that’s why.’
‘But the Jobbi . . .’ said Pkme, unable to comprehend the notion.
‘The whole movement is faecal waste. Health inside a body is order, balance, harmony. Disease on the other hand is slapstick, disaster, cells colliding with other cells, organs collapsing. The Farce.’
‘But the Jobbi Order has brought peace to the cosmos . . .’
‘The peace of a coma victim. The Jobbi Order is the problem, not the cure. But cure, however little you like the fact, is the other side.’ Palpating shook his head. ‘People are so short-sighted! You know the cosmos you inhabit is a metaphor, rather than a reality. But you do not ask yourself what is it a metaphor for? The answer is obvious, once you think it. This cosmos, this universe, is a body. This body is a battleground between disease and health. Indeed, this body is almost dead – for so long the Jobbi have dominated things that the cosmic corpus is at death’s door. And the terrible truth is: once it dies, we all die with it, for it is the horizon of our entire being. Infection has spread from cell to cell, from world to world, until the disease is almost total. Almost – but not quite. Because another agent has been introduced; a cocktail of drugs, we might say; a power that shadows the ubiquitous infection. You call it the Dark Side, but it is here to save, to cure.’