The Universe of Things

by Gwyneth Jones

  The Eastern Succession

  In the year 480 Ranganar, 2022 of the old count, there was a dynastic failure in the federation of Timur Kering. Our prince died, and there was no heir male to take his place. A prince plays an important role in traditional Peninsulan government. He is the ceremonial head of state, the symbol of his family’s mandate to rule: without a prince, there is no princedom. Therefore a new royal family must be chosen — one approved by the whole nation, not just the Federation of Timur. And so the remaining powers of the Peninsula gathered on Temple Mountain, “between five princedoms,” under the eyes of our brutal caretakers the Koperasi, to debate the eastern succession.

  There were three candidates. The ancient Bangau clan should have taken precedence, except that the only prince they could offer was an infant. This implied a Koperasi regency that would face dangerous popular resistance. There was an elder Bangau. But his mother had changed her House and become a commoner, to escape the restrictions placed on dissenters of rank. He could only be offered as the candidate of her new family. The young man, Ida Bagus Sadia, was reported to be beautiful, intelligent, and good. It made no difference. His pedigree was null and void: no orthodox Peninsulan would vote for him. The Siamangs, who offered the third candidate, had never been involved in unrest. Nor were they burdened by ages of tradition. They were supposed to have connections with contraband trading; but this did not make them unacceptable to the Koperasi, or to the people. The man, Gusti Ketut Siamang, was strong and healthy and had fathered children (an important point). He was the obvious choice: not only for the people of Timur, but for anyone interested in change and progress.

  My family allowed me to go to the debate as an observer. The result was almost certain, but not quite. Even with the Koperasi looking on, various feuds and loyalties would be simmering under the surface. Jagdana, the elegant western princedom, might favor Ida Bagus Sadia, the good young man — for Sadia’s mother was a dissenter, and Jagdana sympathized (discreetly) with the lost cause of independence. The Gamarthans of the north, fierce and narrow traditionalists, might support the Bangau infant, if only to oppose Jagdana. Or perhaps with a view to controlling the regency themselves, an idea that made me shudder. The third vote was Timur’s, and safe. The fourth belonged to the aneh, called “polowijo” in the western princedoms. The Peninsula’s cripples, freaks of nature, the aneh were powerless; but their “vote” was a matter of tradition. They usually followed Jagdana. The fifth vote had once belonged to the Garuda family, our native sovereigns over all the Peninsula. But the Garudas had been wiped out in the Last Rebellion. It could now be counted as belonging to the half-rebel criminal gangs of the hills. The bandits could make large areas of Timur ungovernable if they were not satisfied, and no one wants to be ungovernable. It is what the Garudas were.

  I arrived at Canditinggi, the town on temple pass, with all these complications at my fingertips, on an afternoon of black, streaming rain. Desperate, clinging, cantilevered streets lurched up and down all around me (after-effects of the “night express” transport). There was a smell of wet cabbage. The view, which should have been staggering, was entirely obliterated by cloud: Timur below me, Jagdana at my back, and about a hundred batu south the towering cones of BuAwan, where the aneh live. The roadway was cobble and mud, packed with sedan chairs and animals. The public buildings showed raw scars where the wings of the Garuda eagle had been defaced but not removed, as if the Rebellion had happened yesterday. The crowd swept around me: giggling servants, Koperasi patrollers, hangers-on, criminals, beggars, spies. Three veiled figures slipped down from their chairs and vanished into a closed courtyard. Everyone dutifully looked the other way, except for me and the Koperasi. The women who run our native governments are intensely secretive. I stared at the broken wings of Garuda, defiant badges of mourning: I knew I had made a mistake.

  I was right! They wouldn’t let me in. My letters of introduction were useless. I, a man, could not possibly enter any of the Dapur courts while the debate was in session. Not even behind a screen like an unwanted piece of furniture? No. “It wouldn’t mean anything to you,” they told me. “The Dapur is the hearth. There is no place for a man there.” And (worse!), the eternal perhaps. “Perhaps later… Perhaps…” Am I an animal? When I was fourteen, the last of my sister-mothers died. I fled our conservative neighbors, not to mention our own servants, and flung myself on the mercy of distant connections in Timur. They were kind to me. They even sent me to college in Sepaa, the Koperasi city. But my education was no use to me here, in the heart of the old traditional Peninsula. Simpering doe-eyed servant boys tripped after the Dapur ladies. If I were like them I could go in. In my frustration I contemplated castrating myself on the spot.

  It was night before I gave up and started hunting for a place to stay. In the morning the inn I had moved into turned out to be a disreputable collection of palm thatch shacks, sharing an unpaved compound with a brothel, in the tail of the town where it trailed to steep bedraggled fields. I didn’t like the look of the other guests at all. But when I tried to move out, everywhere was “phuuull —” The two forms of Inggris are actually two different languages. Perversely the debate town was using “High Inggris,” the speech of our Rulers. When I spoke in our own tongue the Canditinggi women refused to understand my accent. They were not impressed by money: “Koperasi paper. What good that?” Women’s eyes followed me everywhere with implacable suspicion: staring at my city clothes, the shoes on my feet. A respectable man, they told me, does not travel alone. I was stuck. And, as I had I suspected, I was lodging in a den of thieves.

  It was their country too, why should they not be interested in the debate? Who could keep them away? Having no papers at all, “permisi travel” didn’t worry them. The brigands had come from all over Timur: swaggering at night in the back alleys, loafing about by day in low dives like mine. The patrols that roared around the town day and night, slaughtering chickens and fouling the streets with the alien stink of hydrocarbon, took no notice. Koperasi law and order has no real quarrel with organized crime. After dark my inn was like a pasar malam, a night market: young men preening themselves and posing under the sizzling white lamps; whispered dealing in corners. Short-lived, bold eyed, wild-haired — in other times they would all have been boys and safe at home. But we seem to be returning to a state of nature, where unneeded males are simply driven away, to strut and fight and die like falling flowers in the wilderness.

  But these bravos were not entirely abandoned. They had a guardian. I met her on my second night in the town: a lean young woman with a cadaverous dark face, dressed like the bandits in coarse silk breeches and a vivid embroidered jacket. It was raining hard. About ten of them were sprawled around the empty hearth in the common room, drinking beer under the notice that said no alcohol could be served to Peninsulans (she wasn’t drinking, of course). Someone had been very wicked, I gathered. The dark woman was the bandits’ conscience, trying to persuade them to defy the villain. But she didn’t nag. She recognized that even fierce ogres can sometimes feel small and helpless.

  “As for me, I don’t have any support at the moment. But when I do, I plan to withdraw it immediately.”

  They laughed in relief. “Me too, me too.”

  “As soon as ever —”

  “I’m just going to walk right up to him —”

  Watching this, and wondering about the woman, I didn’t notice I had company. Suddenly there was a grubby red and gold sash in front of my face, with the ornate hilt of a knife sticking out of it.

  “D’you like it?”

  If I stood up we would be practically mouth to mouth. He had come up on me soft-footed as a cat. I was horrified. I knew from experience nothing I could say would be right. These things ignite in a moment: I’d be in a knife fight, or I’d be raped —

  “I said, d’you like my knife? What’s the matter boy? Does pretty little bottom think he’s too pretty to talk to me?”

  I flushed crimson, ridiculously. “I am
not a boy.”

  The demon grinned broadly, eyed my lap; stroked his knife hilt. “Not a boy, eh?”

  “Leave him alone Tjakil. He’s a stranger; he doesn’t mean to offend.”

  The dark young woman smiled, almost indifferently. My suitor, after a moment’s hesitation, shrugged his shoulders and stalked away.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you madam. It was good of you.”

  “It was nothing. It is just that I know their names. Names are magic, you know… I suppose your people are staying in town?”

  I had spoken in our language: she followed. I was surprised to hear a cultivated voice, without a trace of dialect.

  “No. I’m here by myself. I am an observer.”

  “Oh.” She frowned, but kept the rest back. I was grateful that she didn’t say I ought not to be alone.

  “My name is Endang. I am from Timur.”

  She smiled again, brilliantly. “My name is Derveet.”

  But names are magic. Neither of us, I noticed, chose to mention a family.

  From her pure accent, and her habit of bowing slightly over every minute social transaction, I judged she had been brought up in Jagdana, in a high caste family. But her skin was dark, she stood out among the bandits like a black smudge on a gold leaf. She was here in Canditinggi, I discovered, with the aneh — a tiny deputation. Apart from Derveet it consisted of the single Dapur delegate and two deformed boys called Snake and Buffalo. Derveet, evidently, was a “failed woman” — that is, she had been proved barren, the worst crime a woman can commit. The Dapur, the hearth and life of the house, has no place for such cripples. She was not entitled to the robes, she could not enter the courts of this Debate. The delegate herself, an abnormally tall woman with an ugly pigment deficiency, had little respect for the rules of the Dapur. She was often in our common room, hitching up the irksome veils to show expanses of red scurfy limbs, giving her report to Derveet in an abrasive carrying voice that had had plenty of use. Unfortunately she had nothing to say, beyond that it was all stupid and she didn’t understand what was going on.

  They both seemed far more interested in the grievance I had heard Derveet discussing. A bandit of some importance, known as “Durjana,” was selling substandard contraband drugs to the aneh. The freaks were deeply impressed by “Koperasi medicine”: they couldn’t be prevented from using the stuff, and they were dying. From the way the two spoke, this had become a serious problem.

  Snake, the younger boy, was just a child. He had a light, agile body and speaking eyes, but he had no lips, no teeth — only smooth gums in a narrow elongated jaw, and a useless little ribbon of a tongue. In repose his mouth was a single folded line, curled in a reptile’s permanent crooked smile. Buffalo boy seemed luckier. The lumps on his temples didn’t bother him, his husky shoulders were useful, his hands only a little clumsy. But Calfism is a progressive defect. By the time he was twenty he would have no human face, only an animal’s muzzle. He would not speak. His fingers would be clotted into leathery clubs, and his enlarged heart would be worn out under the strain of the overdeveloped torso. He was Derveet’s lieutenant, always at her elbow: “Madam, you’d better come —” “Madam, they are fighting again —” The day after I met his mistress I found him trotting beside me as I went into town. He wouldn’t leave me: “Madam says —” he explained. He was shocked that I had been allowed to come here with no servant of my own. I tried to explain to him that it was a compliment and that I was proud to be trusted to look after myself, but that was beyond him. The single state is not understood: he pressed my hand tenderly and thereafter avoided the painful subject.

  Days of trudging up and down in the cold mountain drizzle, days of fruitless argument and pleading. Nights of watching Derveet and the aneh woman in patient, useless struggle with the bandits… Then one night there was a major development. The accused himself arrived, with an entourage of gangster courtiers. Everyone sat up around the dining table for a formal confrontasi. The wicked Durjana was quite beautiful, with shining black curls, golden muscles, and a smiling, innocent mouth. He had come, he said, out of respect for Derveet and “so everyone would listen and be satisfied.” Such a promising start was doomed.

  “You know I don’t like quarrels ’Jana, but when someone tries to murder me it hurts you know. It hurts.”

  “It wasn’t you. It was only aneh down the back of the mountain. Stupid people.”

  “They’re my family ’Jana. My family is me. Have you forgotten that? Aren’t you a Peninsulan?”

  “My family is the KKK,” muttered Durjana sulkily.

  They were speaking in High Inggris. Sometimes I lost the thread, but I caught that detail. KKK stands in our language for Fan, Paper, Cloth. It was the name of a criminal organization said to control most of the “illegal” trade in Timur. I had been eating with the bandits when the discussion began. I had lingered out of curiosity, and no one seemed to object. Now I was eager to stay and afraid to be noticed. The mention of the KKK had implications…that touched on my hopes for the Debate. I drew back, hoping to blend into the shadows. I thought I saw Derveet look my way and faintly smile. But immediately her attention was back with Durjana.

  “But what family does the KKK belong to? Are you really part of that ‘family’ which is killing my people?”

  “That’s not true!”

  “But the KKK supplied you the bad drugs. Where did the drugs come from?”

  “What drugs? I did not trade the drugs. When did I say so? Tell me who is lying about me! Bring them here!”

  Oh, it was hopeless. The smooth and bottomless waters of Peninsulan confusion closed over our heads. I thought I understood what had happened. The drugs seemed to have been antibiotics — a class of medicine forbidden by the Dapur as being “too extreme.” Antibiotics are less than effective at high altitudes; the aneh had been relying on advanced medicine that couldn’t help them, and that was the whole story. But it was lost, completely lost. The bandits swiftly abandoned the offence itself and began to argue idiotically about the nature of disease. I forgot the political implications of the KKK. I forgot Derveet’s accusation (for it was no less) of mass-murder. I couldn’t bear it.

  “May I speak?”

  The ogres all stared at me. “He’s the one with no family,” murmured someone censoriously. I pointed out that he didn’t have a family, as such, either.

  “But I never had one. If I’d had one and I’d seen them die, I’d have done the decent thing.”

  “Hush, hush. Don’t upset him.”

  When they weren’t bent on murderous squabbles, they generally had very gentle manners. It comes of everyone being armed to the teeth.

  I could not tackle the question of altitude, it would just sound like magic. But I could try to make one simple point.

  “Listen. Durjana says that the drugs —”

  “He knows nothing about those drugs!”

  “Of course not. I never said he did. But it is nonsense to say that Koperasi drugs would ‘cure anything’ and that the aneh died because of their ‘bad magic.’ Diseases have nothing to do with magic. Our own culture tells us that.”

  They all frowned at me dubiously.

  “You see diseases come from — Well, all diseases are really like the worms you get in your guts. They are —” I stumbled, at a loss.

  “Parasites,” murmured Derveet.

  “Yes, parasites. Very small parasites, too small to be seen. They come from, from: How should I say dari diluar dunia, from outside the world?”

  “From outer space?” Derveet suggested, with a grin.

  “Yes, from outer space.”

  The bandits nodded. Our people have unexpected scraps of knowledge, on a folklore level.

  “They are very clever, like all parasites. Now all drugs, our own and the Koperasi kind, are the same. They help the body fight the cunning worm-things. But they only help. It is the body itself that either wins or loses. If the body is not strong and healthy no drug will be any use in t
he end; it will only make things worse —”

  “There! I told you! It was the aneh’s fault!” Durjana had been following my words intently, moving his lips with mine to aid concentration. Now he bounced in his seat.

  “No, no! The drugs were no good to them, because they were not strong enough. What they needed was better food, clean water —”

  “Exactly!” cried the bandit, slapping the table in delight. “Itu sudah! That’s exactly what I already said!”

  “Oh yes.”

  “It’s true!”

  “It was the stupid aneh’s own fault they died.”

  “This educated person says so.”

  Derveet had put her arms on the tabletop and buried her face in her arms. I stared at her through the bandits’ mindless crowing. I thought she had broken down in tears, so much weight seemed to be resting on her thin bowed shoulders. But of course she was only laughing.

  I could not sleep. Derveet’s quarrel with the foolish ogres nagged at me like a toothache. The stupid aneh, the contraband trade… In the dark I left my rustling shack and went to sit on the end of the verandah, in my sleeping sarong and a shawl. It was cold. The center of the sky was dark blue and starry, but all the lower reaches of the dome had faded, and the east was showing a few lines of muddy orange. A screen creaked and a door opened in the wall of the boy brothel: a big crop-headed Koperasi looked out. He was naked. He stood there, touching himself absently, presumably not aware of me in the shadow above. In my mind’s eye I pictured that rod of flesh, swollen and upstanding, entering me: thrusting in and out, hard and strong. I have tried not to have such thoughts about them, I know they are brutes. Why does power attract?

  Before it was fully light the inn family appeared: the women, boys, and children. A little man, about three years old, wandered about playing with sticks and stones while the girls worked. Occasionally, a wail arose from him, and one of the women lifted him absently to a tit. His grief didn’t concern them, it was something to be turned off like a dripping tap. No one ever treats a little girl like that. To a tiny infant they will say, with their eyes and gestures, while they comfort her: Why are you crying? You must explain. You must learn to understand. If it isn’t a good reason you had better stop, you have work to do in the world.