by Rhys Hughes
“Yes, and wider in proportion too.”
“What if he is only one year old when he dies?”
“Thirty-three times bigger in Heaven, of course. But it gets worse. There are twelve months in a year. A baby who dies when it is only one month old must be expanded 396 times. That’s 33 multiplied by 12. There are 52 weeks in a year. A baby who dies when it is one week old must be magnified 1716 times.”
“A baby that dies on the day of its birth?”
“That baby must be magnified 12,045 times. But still it gets worse. There are 24 hours in a day. A baby that dies in its first hour must be expanded 289,080 times. And there are 60 minutes in an hour. A baby that dies in its first minute must therefore be expanded 17,344,800 times.”
“And a baby that dies in its first second?”
“That one must be expanded 1,040,688,000 times. That’s more than a factor of one billion. If such a baby is a typical weight of 8 pounds at birth then its gross weight here in Heaven must be 8.3 billion pounds, which is equivalent to approximately 3,716,742 tons! The largest animal that has ever existed on Earth is the blue whale. Its typical weight is about 150 tons. The babies in question are each equivalent to 25,000 blue whales! That’s a lot of baby.”
“A veritable mountain of slobbering infant!”
“There are entire ranges here made out entirely of babies. And the gravitational effects, as I’ve already mentioned, are starting to become unfortunate. We’re in big trouble!”
“And this is my job? To sort it out?”
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
Tennyson fell into a depression which was unrelieved by thoughts of his sensational elevation in status. He remained quiet, musing darkly on the challenges ahead, until Herod announced they were approaching the first nursery. They had been ascending an incline for a long time, but the donkey hadn’t slowed its pace. It had no muscles to grow tired, no heart to wear out. The relentless whiteness of the ground and matching pallor of the sky had given Tennyson a condition similar to snowblindness. He couldn’t focus.
They crested the rise. Now his eyes slowly adjusted. He was looking out across a vast plateau.
A plateau of very big children.
Herod said, “They can’t all be sewn into Limbo. The fabric wouldn’t take it. There would be a tearing of the barrier that separates mortal and divine realms. Sacrilege!”
Tennyson croaked: “Babies.”
“Yes. Aren’t they hideous?”
A boardwalk had been erected on stilts. Women with swollen breasts were tramping along it, offering their nipples to attendants who milked them by hand and filled bottles with the warm liquid. These bottles were emptied into funnels connected to rubber tubes that snaked and curved into the gaping maws of the infants. There were hundreds of babies. Some were only as large as aeroplanes or castles. Milked dry, the women filed onward, mouths hard and twisted.
Some of the attendants were puffing on cigarettes. Tennyson cleared his throat. “Isn’t that unhygienic?”
“Not in Heaven,” answered Herod. “Only people who smoked on Earth are allowed to smoke up here. Each of these cigarettes undoes the damage of one cigarette down below. A man who smoked ten a day for thirty years must smoke nearly 110,000 up here to regain his health. Then the craving returns to zero. It’s a good system.”
“So many numbers! So much baby!”
“We’re standing on a drugged one now,” calmly declared Herod. “It’s the only way we can stabilise the mountains. It forms the incline we’ve been riding up. Heaven is perfectly flat. Every hill and valley is just a by-product of a prodigious child.”
“Can’t they be slaughtered?”
“This is Heaven. All life is immortal.”
“Then they must be expelled!”
Herod raised an eyebrow. “That’s an interesting proposition. Where would you have us exile them to?”
“How about Earth?”
“But surely the governments of your planet would object to hosting millions upon millions of titanic, indestructible and ravenous infants?”
Tennyson licked his unloved lips.
“Perhaps not. Listen, there is an acute shortage of work back on Earth. Looking after so many demanding infants would provide labour for every unemployed person for the rest of their lives! The economy of the planet could be saved! These babies would need nannies and nurses to feed, clothe and wash them.”
“Dear old Earth as a cosmic orphanage?”
“Why not? It has been many other things in its time. A sphere of molten fire, a platform for dinosaurs.”
“But we would need you to sign an official document declaring that this was your idea and that you accept full responsibility for it. Just a formality, you understand.”
“No problem. I’m the Heavenly Safety Officer.”
“I have the paper here. And a pen.”
Herod delved into his robes again and emerged with the items. With an impulsive laugh, Tennyson signed his name with a flourish and grinned. “This is quite an easy job really.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“How many other people applied for it?”
“Only you. We advertised it just once. In your city. Because of the perennial clouds there, we were able to draw you up on the rope ladder without running the risk of many people seeing you. The clouds parted especially for you, forming a narrow shaft to Heaven. They would have remained impenetrable to any observers out on the streets. But when we lower the babies down on strengthened hawsers, such considerations will be irrelevant. We have your signature.”
“Strengthened hawsers? You have already planned for this?”
“We have experience in importing and exporting objects of various sizes and weights through the portal.”
“What sort of experience?”
Herod smiled. “You are free to rest now.”
“Suddenly I don’t feel too good about anything. Maybe I’ll change my mind about this particular strategy.”
“Don’t be silly! What a great idea! Relocating the giant babies to Earth! How come nobody else up here ever thought of that?”
The attendants within hearing range smirked and the wet nurses with their sore nipples chuckled.
Herod gestured at the babies. “They will be like cuckoos down there on Earth! Won’t they? Cuckoos!”
Tennyson said, “I’m leaving.”
“Don’t go yet,” called Herod. “I almost forgot. There’s one other nursery I’d like to show you. Just so that you get a full feeling for every part of the problem. It’s not really a nursery. More a compound. Or even a sort of game reserve.”
“Newborn babies again?”
“I’m afraid not. It lies in the region of Heaven where we keep all the foetuses and embryos.”
Tennyson turned pale. “What did you say?”
Herod pretended to be confused by this reaction. He acted as if he was reminding an old friend of a simple and obvious fact. Smoothing the edges of his robe with his fat fingers, he chewed his lower lip. Then waving a languid hand, he added:
“The miscarriages and abortions.”
The unborn infants had negative ages. The earliest ones were collections of cells the size of continents. Tennyson fled. He was vaguely aware of knocking Herod down and snatching the keys from his belt. The donkey ran by his side, biting at him with its overlong teeth. He shrieked and lashed out and knocked off its head with his fist. The skull bounced and rolled away and the remainder of the skeleton buckled under its own blindness. He went back the way he had come. He hurried past all the miserable towers and mundane houses. He was oblivious of unlocking the gate and leaping into the gash that led to the material universe, but he must have clutched the rope ladder before jumping, because he landed safely on the roof of his tenement block.
He clambered along the tiles, swung over the edge and stood on his windowsill. Then he broke the glass and sought refuge in his grim room, grateful that the roof had closed up. He lay in bed, the sheets coveri
ng his body and head. A fever racked him and squeezed stale sweats out of his limbs. But there were sounds around which had nothing to do with his delirium. Nor were they the disturbing noises of his neighbours. They were much worse. The harsh music of industry. Cranes were depositing objects everywhere. He listened to this activity with feelings of acute horror. He knew what it portended. He alone was to blame, for he had given his permission. His signature was on the document. He had been used as a stooge. Like Judas.
He went into the street and screamed.
He ran, but there was nowhere to hide. Giant babies. They dominated the Swansea landscape. They were coming down from the sky. Immortal and useless. The smell was unbearable.
He was aware of people on corners shouting. Somehow the news had already spread. Voices were raised against him. “That’s the culprit!”
He was chased into Singleton Park, from the park into the University. More figures and threats. Promised dooms.
The clouds had fully dispersed for the first time. No more need to conceal the cables. Buckets brimming with immaturity. Howls tore apart the world. Unreasonable behaviour. It always ended in tears. And now he was running down the coastal path that fringed the ugly beach. Staff from the Job Centre were close behind, boots polished for many kicks. They held the leashes of beasts. Maulings were feasible. Helicopters swooped overhead. He was being hunted.
The path was blocked by a reclining toddler. A monstrously bloated baby, drooling and wailing. There was no escape now except onto the beach itself. He ran into the tide. But it held his weight. He was running on water. Then he realised this wasn’t the sea. It was something else.
A moment of conception.
Beyond the limits of human imagination, it straddled the ocean. And it squelched as he stepped on it. His pursuers were reluctant to follow him onto such terrain. But he didn’t slacken his pace. He gazed up. The sky was full of stars and descending babies. Then he noticed Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, the first two bright and clear, the third very faint. All at once he realised that these already contained babies. Every gas giant in the solar system, in the cosmos, was crammed with infant flesh. It explained the experience Herod had confessed to having in the hoisting of big items from one dimension to another.
The lifeless planets could be exploited without permission, but to use Earth as a similar dumping ground had required the consent of one of its representatives. That was he.
Now he saw something appear through the gash that was the portal between the universes. The head of an unborn baby. It seemed far too large for the gap.
First one head. Then a second.
Conjoined twins! A freak of nature. There was a tearing sound. Heaven was rupturing. Tennyson resumed running.
Ahead sat a man with a long beard. A tramp or escaped lunatic. One of those derelicts from the vicinity of the damaged church. He had his legs crossed under him and his breath smelled of cider. He was playing with a crossbow. Tennyson guessed this was his own discarded weapon and raised his hands and said:
“Shoot me if you want. I’m tired of running.”
“I have no interest in that,” mumbled the man. “In fact, I know exactly how you feel. I’m tired of running too, which is why I stopped. Besides, I don’t have any bolts. Only golf balls.”
“Help me. Please.”
“I am Saint Peter. How may I assist you?”
“The whole planet is against me.”
“Then hide in this.”
Reaching under his robe, he pulled out a shapeless mass of hair and skin that moved spasmodically and seemed to be in pain. Then he unfurled it completely and smoothed out the creases and Tennyson saw it was the pelt of the donkey, still alive. A complete donkey but without bones. A glove for his identity.
“It’s hollow,” urged the man.
With a sigh of disgust, Tennyson fell to his knees and struggled to draw the flapping skin over his head. It was warm as he wriggled deeper inside, like a birth in reverse, for the opening was in the beast’s lower abdomen. When he was fully concealed, he lay still, summoning the courage to stand. He finally did so.
The man stroked his mane. “You’re my pet now. We’ll ride into the New Jerusalem together. That’s how Swansea must be called from now. Truly the most childish city of all.”
Tennyson didn’t reply in words. He brayed. He knew that from this moment he would be too busy to be considered unemployed, but that he would always remain unloved.
One’s a Crowd
When the first demonstration was broken up the people ran from the park in all directions. In those days the police rode horses and everything still stank of reality. I hurried down a narrow street and took refuge in a bicycle shop, entering as casually as possible and pretending to examine the displays of wheels, gears and chains while the owners pressed their faces to the window to discern the nature of the fuss. I remember leaving without saying a word. I strolled back to the park and smoked a cigarette among the fallen banners.
Moona had fixed the radio by the time I returned to my apartment. We turned the dial together with the volume very low, lingering for a few seconds at each foreign music station before finding the official news channel. We had missed the beginning of the broadcast but it was obvious what had happened. When the static became unbearable I switched the device off and rummaged in a cupboard for a bottle of cheap brandy. Our mouths burned as we drained our glasses miserably.
“Colonel Bones has declared martial law,” I said.
“Because of general dissent,” Moona replied.
She was like that, my girl, always able to find humour in tragedy, a lightness in oppression, even though she took politics more seriously than did I. We moved into the bedroom and worked out our frustration in a nice way, the pressure of our tangled futures eased by the tangling of our limbs. But certain parts of our bodies seemed disconnected from the whole, as if the alcohol really had seared off our lips and tongues, and my fingers felt lost on her skin and within her softness. The events of the day had damaged us, shattered our illusions but had not split us apart. Not yet.
In the morning the changes were already in place. Groups of more than four were not permitted on the streets and a policeman stood on every corner. Curiously I saw the owners of the bicycle shop being led away, arrested for some imaginary act of resistance, and I wondered at the fate of the spare parts stacked inside. I was on my daily walk to the newspaper kiosk. Moona had left for the university an hour before and my anxiety at being without her became an almost pleasurable tension as I turned down alleys to avoid the police. On my own my existence was less offensive to the government. Elsewhere people who had forgotten the new rules on crowds were sent scattering by blows from the nearest truncheon on duty, scalps bleeding, ears ringing.
“Break it up! Break it up immediately!”
At the kiosk I paid for my newspaper but did not engage the seller in conversation. Other customers might gather behind me, causing trouble for us all. There was very little news: the official censors had done a thorough job during the night, arresting more than half the journalists. One bold headline declared how the police were going to use motorcycles instead of horses. I bought a bag of bagels and returned home. When Moona came back she was trembling but her eyes were bright and her voice had acquired a resonance that was too rich for our little room.
“I’ve joined an underground movement,” she said.
I held her in silence, refusing to criticise or even to beg her to be careful, already feeling I was losing her to the outside, to ideals and history. My love was no longer a comfortable cocoon for her and I understood that the direction of her life was now leading her away from simplicity, away from my desires and identity, and I knew she was right but I was unwilling to follow, too mistrustful of my own abilities. After an hour of stagnant contact I rose to make a pot of coffee, mumbling as I did so that the situation was bound to worsen. She winced as if jabbed with a needle.
“Yes, this is the most paranoid regime we’ve ever
had.”
Her words awakened something in me, not exactly anger or despair but a realisation of my own impotence. To avoid taking my bitterness out on her I lingered longer than necessary in the kitchen, turning down the flame on the stove and boiling the kettle painfully slowly. It was the first night when external events, the sickness of those who controlled society, came between us, an invisible block separating our bodies as well as our minds. We slept without touching and I was acutely aware of the edge of the bed, the chasm between it and the cold wall. As the days passed we moved unconsciously beyond the point of reconciliation. But we never argued.
I stood on the balcony and leaned into the darkness, poised above the curfew with my weakness. Moona began taking greater risks, returning later and later from the university, sometimes joining me after midnight. The underground resistance was growing in size and ambition. The roar of motorcycles was constant and once we watched a wedge of machines rumbling down our street as if rehearsing for some acrobatic display. This was actually a farewell jaunt, a final fling, for the motorcycles were due to be replaced with armoured cars. We learned this from the radio the following day. Colonel Bones had decided to tighten the rules. Now people were not allowed to gather in public in groups of more than three. Friendships were being cut into smaller portions.
I went back to the bicycle shop, partly because I had little else to do, but it was empty and left me feeling even more dissatisfied with myself. Statues of our leaders were being erected in the park, heroic and angular but faceless and nameless to confuse assassins. Moona had warned me that paranoia must always increase in intensity. The movement she had joined based its principles on understanding and opposing the mechanics of paranoia. When the university was closed down she was less surprised and worried than I. Her organisation had not been discovered by the authorities, it was just an example of logical repression.
But disappearances increased and I wondered how long it would be before bodies were strung up on lampposts as examples. Moona wanted to hold meetings in our apartment. I did not oppose her wishes but she must have felt ashamed by the expression on my face for she never mentioned the idea again. I later learned from a few cryptic remarks she made that they had found an abandoned warehouse in which to conduct their plotting. I stopped reading the newspapers when the kiosk was boarded up. The actions of the government had always been mysterious, now they became utter secrets and only a violation of some new unknown law allowed a citizen to understand what brutal changes had taken place.