“Sorry, I wanted to show you an address,” she said hastily.
“It’s quite alright, Ma’am. The questions won’t go into so much detail.” He smiled. It didn’t comfort her.
“Have you ever had anal sex?”
“Sorry?”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, did you not understand the question?”
“No I understood perfectly. I am not sure why that would be relevant?!” she said.
“Ma’am, do you refuse to answer the question?” he asked without emotion.
“I just don’t see why it is relevant.”
“Ma’am, when I asked you earlier if you understood your rights, you confirmed that you did. This gives me the right, by the powers vested to me by Baroness Un to ask you anything I deem necessary to protect the safety of the state. This includes any diseases you may have. Refusal to answer my question will be a direct violation of the World Terrorism act 2021 and punishable by a sentence of up to twenty years incarceration. I will ask you again Ma’am, and I remind you that you have sworn to answer truthfully - Do you refuse to answer the question?”
“I will answer the question.”
“Have you ever had anal sex?”
“Yes,” Katie said solemnly.
“Go on,” he said, frantically scribbling down notes.
“I was nineteen, my boyfriend at the time wanted to try. I didn’t like it, so we stopped immediately.”
More fucking scribbling.
“Had this boy ever had anal sex with anyone before he did yo…sorry, Ma’am, performed anal sex with you?”
Katie closed her eyes and answered at calmly as she could. “No.”
“And you can be quite sure of this Ma’am.”
“Yes.”
“And what colour was this boy?” he asked.
“White.”
“And what was his State/dimension of origin?”
“Wire City. It happened after I crossed dimensions.”
“Did he use a condom?”
“No.” Katie’s eyes started to feel itchy.
“I see,” he said in a tone she didn’t like.
“Do you have any intention of having unprotected anal sex on this trip Ma’am?”
“No.” Katie could feel her breathing changing.
“Thank you, Ma’am. It is my right to ask you to supply a blood and urine test in such cases. Would you be willing to do so?”
“Yes that will be fine.” Katie was growing impatient.
“Excellent.” He presses the switch again.
“I am here with Passenger 2-16 in Interview room 3C. After some questioning, I have discovered that the passenger is guilty of an ULSA (Unprotected Lewd Sexual Act) and has agreed to undergo a blood test to prove her innocence of any diseases. I shall be performing the test directly. Can you please confirm this, Ma’am, by giving a verbal agreement of I do.”
Katie knew she was clean. She had been given a clean bill of health by the doctor when she went for her travel vaccine. “I do”
He flicked the switch off.
“Ma’am, the gloves will now take a sample of your blood. A small pinprick will take a trace amount of blood. Are you ready to proceed?” he said lingering his finger over another switch.
“Yes that’s fine.”
It felt like a small jolt of electricity went through her middle finger on the left hand. She flinched but tried to act nonchalant.
“Thank you, Ma’am.” He reached under the desk and pulled out a plastic tube.
“Okay, Ma’am, now I need a sample of urine. If you could just go to the corner and deposit your sample.” He pushed the tube in front of Katie.
In the corner, there was a cold looking stainless steel trough. Katie looked back and him and smirked. “You want me to do it here? In front of you?”
“Yes, Ma’am, it is of paramount importance that I see you deposit your sample.”
“I don’t think I could do that,” Katie said honestly. “Is there not a female attendant?”
“Ma’am, when I asked you if you understood the procedure you said yes. I can replay the recording for you if you would like, Ma’am.”
“I know but surely you could allow me one moment of privacy?” Katie pleaded, knowing that the State never offered such luxuries.
“Ma’am, I am afraid if you will not do this you will be breaking procedure and I will have no choice other than to detain you. I should remind you at this point that you have agreed to take these tests and failing to do so will be in direct violation of the World Terrorism act 2021, and is punishable by a sentence of up to twenty years. I will ask you again, Ma’am, will you take the urine test?”
Katie realised this was her only option. “I’ll do it”
“Thank you, Ma’am,” he said with a smile and nodded towards the trough.
Katie scooped up the tube and unscrewed the lid while she shuffled to the corner. She started to unbutton her jeans when he barked, “Ma’am could you face me please I need to see your hands!” Katie closed her eyes as tight as she could, trying to keep the tears in. She spun around and dropped her trousers and knickers in one swift movement. She glared at him. “Good enough view for you. Are you happy now?” Tears dripped down her cheeks.
“Not until I get the sample, Ma’am. I remind you at this time, Ma’am, that I am taking no pleasure from this. I am performing my duties to uphold the safety of these borders and have every right to do so. The sample please, Ma’am,” he said this with his trademark lack of emotion.
He sat straight, still. She could feel his eyes on her.
She hated him. She hovered her buttocks over the trough, closed her eyes and tried to relax her muscles. She held her breath and with a clatter on the metal she was pissing. She scooped up the cup and held it under her.
“Thank you, Ma’am. Leave the sample there and return to the desk.
She stomped across the room and flung herself into the chair, wiping her hand on the chair in a feeble act of defiance.
“Hands back into the gloves please, Ma’am.”
She shoved them back in while giving him a cynical smile.
“Ma’am, that concludes my business with you today. If you could make your way back through the door you entered, you will now be taken for your search. You will be pleased to know that your blood test indicated that you were free of disease or Black Dog viruses and I have no further tests to perform today.” He rose from his seat and directed her to the door with an open palm. “Thank you for your co-operation today, Ma’am.”
As she rose something dawned on her. “If my bloods were clean why did I need to give a fucking piss sample?”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, no such procedure was carried out.”
She looked over at the trough. The tube was gone.
The women in the jumpsuit grabbed her arm “Come on now, Ma’am, time for your search. Please come with me now.”
She looked back at his emotionless face with fresh rage.
“You took a urine sample!”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, no such procedure was carried out today.”
“Replay the tape.” Katie said desperately. “I know my rights. If I request it you have to do it!”
He sat back down and smiled at her. “Of course, Ma’am, that is your right.” He clicked a switch the room filled with tinny noise.
“I am here with Passenger 2-16 in Interview Room 3C. After some questioning it has been discovered that the passenger is guilty of an ULSA (Unprotected Lewd Sexual Act) and has agreed to undergo a blood test to prove her innocence of any diseases. I shall be performing the test directly. Can you please confirm this, Ma’am, by giving a verbal agreement of I do.”
“I do.”
The sound snapped off.
The jumpsuit pulled at her arm. “Please Ma’am, I don’t want to have to restrain you.”
Katie was stunned into silence as she was led from the room. She looked at him again with confusion, trying to figure what he had done.
&n
bsp; “Enjoy your trip, Katie.”
Katie was led to search room 1G for the next part of the procedure.
Gold, Myrrh and Frankenstein
—Rhys Hughes
“What’s the name of the play?”
“It’s called Horseplay and is about horses at play. At least that’s what it should be about with a title like that.”
“I looked in the newspaper for a review but couldn’t find one anywhere. I don’t think it has been reviewed yet.”
“I don’t trust reviewers myself. They are a snooty bunch with agendas of their own. Let’s go and watch it anyway and make up our own minds. It’s better than staying indoors again, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so. Come on, then. To the theatre!”
The streets were deserted.
Myrrh and Gold walked from one puddle of light to the next and dried their photon-drenched feet in the shadows where no lamps on poles glowed. It wasn’t cold but there was a little persistent wind that blew dust around corners like granulated businessmen late for work.
“No one goes to the theatre these days.”
“I don’t think anybody does anything at all anymore.”
“Apart from us maybe?”
“Not even us,” grumbled Gold.
The houses that they passed had no windows. Or rather they had none facing onto the street. Fashions had changed. All windows faced inwards onto central courtyards that were completely surrounded by the four sides of a building. It was the way it was done now.
They reached the centre of the town in about twenty minutes. There were no shops and no pedestrians, no traffic and no policemen, no signs of human life and none of any other kind. It was a perfectly intact wasteland. But here existed the last of the secret places of amusement.
The theatres. Half a dozen of them, faceless but bristling with energy on the inside, full of make believe and break belief, with living actors and live music and deadpan ushers, pastel props and the magic of illusion, gateways to other worlds that were artificial but also intensely real, for their contrivance was perfectly integrated with the fabric of the world outside, pictures that enhanced the frames that gave them definition.
It was difficult to precisely explain the appeal.
In any system of chaos and fluctuation there will be pauses of indefinite length where order or even stagnation seems to be the rule, but this rule is just another arbitrary variation in the flux. The city had entered such a time of fake calm, of pseudo-structure, when the fires were lower, in hearts too, and all the loudest atavistic urges were sleeping soundly.
Myrrh asked, “Which theatre is it?”
“I’m not sure. It could be any of them, all of them perhaps. Maybe the play will be shared equally among them.”
“I can’t hear anything, no voices or music.”
Gold strode towards the nearest building and glanced over his shoulder as if to test her eyes with his receding grin, but she was capable of counting all his teeth at this distance, and she followed recklessly, throwing back her head with a laugh that was a muted chomp on a rising glissando, one and half octaves in range. She joined him at the entrance.
They pushed open the ponderous doors together.
Inside the lobby there were shadows and litter, but the shadows had been neatly arranged, as if tidied by a team of cleaners. The litter that made smaller shadows between the bigger shadows of the baroque pillars and rococo pargets was scattered randomly but not alarmingly so.
Gold and Myrrh squinted at the low intensity bulbs.
“The lights might have been left on. They don’t prove that anyone is here right now. Let’s not get too excited.”
“With respect, I was born excited and it’s my nature.”
“Then continue as you please.”
“Shall we go into the auditorium? Circle or stalls?”
“A private box, I think…”
Up the broad stairs they swept, and the bulbs in niches of the walls were smaller and weaker the higher they went, but their eyes adjusted accordingly. At last they found the discreet red plush door that led to the most important box in the establishment and they passed through and emerged on an enclosed platform that was like a boat on a dark sea of contrivance.
They peered over the side, dangling hands in murk that should have been wet but was dry. There were long tassels that hung down from the exterior of the box like seaweed ropes or jellyfish tentacles. The rows of seats below were curious coral reefs and perched on them were giant seahorses that shimmered in the currents of gloom and crepuscular light that flowed down the aisles, swirled over their heads, lapped the elevated stage.
Myrrh blinked beautifully at Gold and gestured.
“Are they real? Are they alive?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered back, “but if they are papier-mâché heads it’s still an impressive and special sight.”
One of the horse heads down below turned to look up at them, but it may have been a coincidence, a mindless motion of springs and oiled bearings rather than the deliberate movement of a sentient being.
The curtains began to open, noiselessly but with a solemnity that was so much louder than sound that Myrrh and Gold both winced slightly before their faces became blank servants of patience and mild anticipation. The horse heads were all facing the same way now, but one opened its wide jaws to receive the ice cream that a limb that might terminate in either a hand or a hoof, for it was too dark to be certain, lifted up to its mouth.
“Imagine biting instead of licking!” shivered Myrrh.
Gold chewed his own lower lip.
The curtains had now drawn fully back and something was being lowered from the flies on cables. A man? But no, not quite, not at all. A torso, head and arms, or rather many human torsos, heads and arms, amalgamated into one. This was a variation on the upper half of a man, a diversification, some sort of weird fusion, interracial and ranging the full spectrum of athleticism and age. Young strong arms, flabby weak ones, ancient and sagging, at least two dozen of them, protruding at all angles from the chests, backs and stomachs, with a profusion of variable heads too, sprouting like hideous blooms from extra necks or directly out of patchwork flesh. And this descent into the proscenium had the casual and inexplicable horror of an undeserved nightmare.
At the same time a trap in the stage floor had slid open and the lower half of a man was rising up from the depths. But again, this lower part wasn’t just a pair of legs and a pelvis. It was a herd of legs, a swarm of feet, as if photographs of a crazed dancer had been superimposed, a cluster of thighs and calves, a mob of shins and ankles. And the bare feet rapped their toes on the wooden boards of the platform it was planted on, which ascended smoothly until it was level with the stage and clicked into place. Then the other half descended precisely onto the gaping and sticky wound that was the summit of the grotesque waist and a horrible sucking noise confirmed that a tight seal had been made. The creature jerked, snapped open all its eyes, smiled at itself.
From the wings, left and right, came two wings on the ends of extendable rods. They were enormous, feathered like those of an angel but also ribbed like those of a bat. They slotted into position somewhere on the communal back of the abomination. The rods were retracted rapidly.
Gold and Myrrh strained to see what would happen next.
The creature tensed dramatically.
Then it began speaking. It uttered words from every mouth it possessed, all of them, and the result was cacophony. Different accents and tones, strident and gentle voices, high and booming, crooning and harsh, mocking and wistful. Some words were in languages unknown to Gold and Myrrh. Occasionally the mouths would seem to make sense, two or more of them would speak the same word at the same time, producing a choral effect.
But most of what followed was an indescribable babble.
And the monster made gestures.
It acted, performing many separate roles simultaneously.
Overlapping polyrhythmic theatre…
/> It flapped its enormous wings and flew in short hops around the stage but it was too heavy to soar over the audience.
Myrrh and Gold understood that here at last was a universal thespian, the conglomerated actor, manufactured from parts of all the human actors who had formerly inhabited and worked in this city, the sprawl known as Spittle, and that the idea and intention, neither of which worked, was to distil and concentrate the entire history of the art of the play into a single digestible experience. But it was beyond assimilation, outside appreciation, futile.
The audience began grumbling and this agitation and dissatisfaction made the storm of confused sound seem buoyed up on a drone, something substantial that threatened to sweep away the pandemonium and the multifaceted actor who generated it on a tide of vituperation, repel the being into the shadows at the rear of the stage, where abandoned props from other performances doubtless lurked like mantraps to cripple some of those limbs and heads. But the monstrosity on stage refused to sag under the onslaught. It acted harder. It moved and gestured, winced and blinked, chortled and wept, hammed it up to an extreme point where flesh itself seemed to be speaking and pleading.
The overworked mouths began to dribble, streams of saliva pouring over teeth or through the gaps between them, and the rate of flow increased and kept increasing, as if this absurd living thing, this experiment of some impresario and dabbler in dark science, was leaking and draining, spurting and spraying away at high pressure all the inner soup that gave it structure and definition. It might have deflated utterly, like a massively mutated bladder, had not the demands of the contradictory physical movements of the many roles tore it apart first. There was a ripping sound, the visible stretching and tearing of fibres, and one by one the arms fell off the shoulders. Then the ankles twisted and snapped, the necks broke, kneecaps rattled onto the stage, eyeballs popped out to roll around on the boards and be stamped flat by disintegrating feet.
But still the mouths drooled and now the saliva was pouring over the lip of the stage and into the auditorium, as if the stage itself was a huge mouth and the appalling actor inside it merely a confused and solidified jamming of words, the utterance of an overexcited prophet or lunatic, petrified by a malign alchemy that transformed not only sounds into things but also the echoes and overtones of those sounds. The horse heads snorted in alarm.
Slave Stories Page 10