Theatre of the Gods

by M. Suddain

  ‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ I interjected. ‘I studied the bee for years. The bee is very nurturing. The young bee stays by its queen and eats her royal jelly until it grows big and strong. I would never say so beyond this ship, but what we’re doing to these children is despicable.’

  Fabrigas nodded slowly, eyes on his meal. ‘There are no children now-days,’ he said. ‘There are no innocents any more.’

  Descharge smiled. ‘And what of you, Captain?’ he said. ‘This conversation puts you in a delicate position. No longer a child, not quite a man, and certainly not an innocent.’ The captain cocked his head impertinently as the commander turned his eyes to him. ‘Once a soldier, now a mercenary, almost a free man, but soon to be a prisoner. Do you think the children should be free?’

  The captain put down his fork and said, ‘My mother was a noble prostitute. My father, an officer in the navy. I know what it is like to be an orphan. My mother died before I knew her. My father disowned me. He sent me to a naval school when I was one.’

  ‘It was a fine military school … if my intelligence is correct.’

  ‘It was an orphanage. A cruel place.’

  ‘Would you rather he’d left you on the street?’ A sunrise of crimson had appeared below the commander’s stiff collar. ‘My own father was a cruel man, but look what I’ve become. It takes a chisel to carve a hero. How would your life have been without his actions?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I think I would choose to take that life again. Who needs a father when you have the universe? An orphan is hungry, but he is free.’ The table was silent. And it was fitting that at that point the only thing we could hear was the sound of the slaveys singing themselves to sleep.

  GOD THE WORM

  An orphan is hungry, but he is free. Free to wander, free to steal; free to make the street his bed, the rat his meal, the strangers in dark places his friends, the depths his playground, the dens his school, this sweet hell his heaven; free to go into the friendly deep, where the worms and princes softly sleep; free to rise up, free to laugh at this unholy mess, free to sing himself to sleep.

  The boy went up. He went up proudly now. He was a prince of the city. The shadows and the noises no longer frightened him. He went up into the night-dens. You know the rest, in outline, but here are the finer points. One night he helped a drunkard double his money. ‘Boy, what mean god led you here?’ said the drunkard. ‘The same monster who brought me, I expect. What a life!’

  ‘No god brought me,’ said the boy, ‘since I don’t believe one exists. And I would rather he not exist if he’s a monster.’

  ‘The creator is ineffable, boy, and since all of us lack the ability to describe his awesomeness, it would do just as well to call him a monster. Some call him “God the angelic beast with the face of a lion”. Since these are just pretty words, why not call him “God the Worm”?’

  ‘If God is just Word why call him at all?’

  The drunkard laughed. He withheld the boy’s cut and said, ‘Now see here, boy, you’re better than this game. I can tell, because I was once somebody. I won’t give you a single bit tonight, but I’ll give you something better. Now look here.’ And he gave the boy a crumpled piece of paper. And on the scrap was written …

  THE DARK FRIARS INVITE TO YOU TO SOLVE THE UNSOLVABLE.

  We care not about where you were born, or what your family is worth. Solve the problem below and you will be one of us. We will give you a place at our academy for scholarly monks.

  ‘This problem has defeated the greatest minds in the Empire,’ said the drunkard. ‘If you can help me solve it and win a place at the Academy I’ll pay you a thousand pieces. Those monks have a grand life. They laze their days away, pondering the infinity of their navels. Once I’m in with them, I’ll be set.’

  ‘I could solve this problem myself,’ said the boy, ‘in two nights.’

  The drunkard roared again. ‘Boy, if you can solve this in two nights I’ll pay you ten thousand pieces, and take you to the Friars myself!’

  Little Fabrigas worked through the night; the next day, the next night; he built himself a fort of books so that he could block out everything but the problem. By the second morning his solution was written in chalk on the floor in his attic, so he had to pull up a board and drag it to the night-den. The drunkard was there, glazed stupid, but was amazed to see the boy, and even more amazed to see his solution. He took the boy and his board to a brother called Provius who, smiling all the while, took the youngster through a series of increasingly difficult problems before finally declaring, ‘For the first time in my life, I am amazed. Boy, with your mind you will be able to achieve anything you set your heart towards.’

  ‘All I want,’ said the boy, ‘is to find my father. He has gone to a moon where my aunt and uncle live.’

  ‘My boy,’ said Provius, ‘to be a Dark Friar is to give up all attachments. Family, friends, love: these mean nothing when you are unravelling the secrets of the cosmos. We will not help you find your father. Instead we’ll give you the universe.’

  ‘I don’t want the universe,’ said the boy. ‘And I don’t want to join your Academy. All I want is to have my old life back. I used your puzzle to pass two lonely nights – which was sweet – and to get this man’s money – which was even sweeter. Now that I have it I am closer to having coin to charter a ship to find my father. And so now, goodbye.’

  And the boy left the two men dazed, went back through the oily tunnels, past the faces of the drowned men. He found an orphan onion wedged in the spokes of a wheel. ‘This is a lucky sign,’ he said to himself. He kissed it, and slipped it into his pocket. An onion was all he needed for the night, and it had been given to him. He arrived home at the high walls of his mansion just before Ten Bells dropped the city into darkness.

  Here in ships, we feel so safe,

  We feel the safest of all.

  (H’ray!)

  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 storie
s, 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.