A History Maker

by Alasdair Gray

  “Rhetoric!” said Wat impatiently, “If you’ve a concrete proposal, Ms. Media, propose it in sensible modern language. The adjective political became meaningless a century and a half ago.”

  “If you stay silent about this meeting …” said the mouth slowly, “… I will propose to you tomorrow.”

  “When?”

  “When you return to the Warrior house. Promise to be silent till then.”

  “I promise nothing. I won’t speak of this till we’ve met. Let that content you.”

  The bubble swooped to his right ear and whispered, “Have you ever fucked a media bitch or do you only do it to pussies?”

  “Neither bitches nor bubbles.”

  “If you gossip about this we will never meet in the flesh, chéri. You will also lose the chance to recreate the world in the image of your wildest dreams — and quickly! Bonsoir. I will now vanish with a most melodious twang but remember, I hear every word you say and love most the words you fear to say. Our lovemaking will be different than with others. It will strengthen, not relax you. I will teach you not to be ashamed.”

  He turned in time to see the bubble vanish with a melodious twang.

  It was now after sunset but a silvery scatter of pebbles showed the path. The digits on his wristcom were glowing again. He dialled Archie Crook Cot and asked if he would organize the retrieval of the standard, taking the veteran General Megget and three Boys’ Brigade captains with him to show it was an Ettrick Warrior business. Archie Crook Cot, sounding pleased, said yes, he had been worrying about the standard. He would also take Jimsy Henderland (an excellent diver) and start early. Wat told him to use the Warrior house sky sledges but contact General Shafto first, then hesitated and said, “Report to me at once when you return.”

  He switched off, wondering if he would regret not having given Archie a more technical job right away. Soon after he saw the lights of Bowerhope. He was enthusiastically welcomed but it was not a satisfying visit. Myoo said, “Getting colonelized has weakened you, Wat Dryhope. You don’t seem with us.”

  Our dreams review events of the waking day, working them into the pattern of early memories and wishes which is our character. Wat dreamed easily about his squabble with Annie because he expected young girls to be bothersome. His triumphal arrival at the Warrior house and swift promotion to commander also fitted his dreams; he had not expected it but early efforts had prepared him for it. Nothing had prepared him for the conversation on the path to Bowerhope. His dreams turned nasty and woke him long before dawn. He lay perfectly still, unwilling to rouse the friendly bodies he lay between, unable to rest for troublesome thoughts.

  He thought first about people in public eye companies. Broadcasters of war games clearly enjoyed getting close to bloodshed without being hurt. A woman of that sort with a taste for tall graceless carnaptious soldiers could easily use public equipment to contrive private meetings with them. But Wat’s movements had been followed, his words recorded and edited for at least five days before a blocking beam had isolated him from the intelligence network. Through a unique device he had been told that here and now between Myoo and Myow he was still being surveyed. No single person could use so much energy for a private purpose without being noticed as a selfish waster and interrupted. Since the media bitch did not fear interruption she must be part of a team making a programme about him. This broke the first rule in the bill of human rights: NOBODY WILL BE USED BY ANOTHER WITHOUT KNOWING AND WILLING IT. But a team breaking this rule must be working in secret, and secret societies (like governments, stock exchanges, banks, national armies, police forces, advertising agencies and other groups who made nothing people needed) had ended with the historical era. The modern intelligence net was open to everyone. It could only be used secretly by people arousing no curiosity, yet the media bitch had deliberately aroused his. What could such people want that they could not get openly? The earliest Christian churches, the Freemasons and Trade Unions had been secret societies. They believed all good people were equal in the eyes of God or natural justice, so unjust governments had banned them. Big governments later created their own secret societies, the F.B.I., C.I.A., K.G.B.D., M.I.5 which lied and tortured, robbed and killed in ways their employers could publicly deny. And people had been robbed and killed by Al Capone’s mob, the Mafia and the I.R.A. which were also secret forms of government. Wat’s head ached with efforts to imagine reasons for secrecy on an earth whose largest government was the family and where each family had what it needed.

  After a few seconds he left the bed by creeping carefully to the foot. By the glowing calendar on a screen he saw Myoo and Myow roll into the space he had left and embrace each other without wakening. He softly tapped a message regretting his poor response to their welcome and asking if one of their children would return his pony to Dryhope common. Then he dressed and left by a door onto the veranda.

  After a few steps on the shore path under the trees his foot struck something soft. He stopped and peered. There was not much light in the sky but the path was pale enough to show a small black body near the toe of his right sandal and two or three others irregularly placed on the path ahead: booby traps? Stooping down he saw the nearest body thrust a limb backward and lurch an inch forward.

  “Have more fun than I did,” he told it and walked on taking care where he placed his feet. A minute later he said, “Whoever hears me may like to know that my last remark was addressed to a puddock. This is the night of the year when puddocks trek to the nearest fresh water for their annual nooky fair; but I doubt if natural history interests you Ms. Bitch. Are you listening? No need to speak; a tiny tinkle will do for yes, silence for no.”

  He listened and heard only leaves and water stirred by the pre-dawn breeze. The anger which had come to him on that path four hours earlier returned. In a sing-song voice he said, “I think I’ll tell my friend Archie that someone’s using a vast amount of public energy for a private seduction.”

  His wristcom worked as usual while he dialled the first Crook Cot digits, then it buzzed briefly like an angry wasp and the soft English voice said quickly, “What’s a puddock?”

  “I’ve forgotten the English word but the French is crapaud,” said Wat, looking at a row of zeroes on the dial where the source of a message was usually indicated, “You sound like a woman who’s just been wakened. There must be at least two of you listening.”

  “You are being tracked,” said the voice, yawning slightly, “By a sensor beam linked to my wristcom. It shocked me awake with the first word you spoke.”

  “When will we meet?”

  “Before you leave the path. Meanwhile I’ll amuse you with a suggestive poem.

  The times are racked with birth pangs. Every hour

  Brings forth some gasping Truth,

  But Truth new born oft looks misshapen,

  The terror of the household and its shame —

  A Monster coiling in the mother’s lap

  That she would starve or strangle,

  yet it breathes,

  And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts

  Comes slowly to its form, staggers erect,

  Smooths the rough ridges of its Dragon scales,

  Changes to shining locks its snaky hair,

  And moves transfigured into angel guise,

  Welcomed by all who cursed its hour of birth.

  — What do you think of that?”

  “Not much. The stale imagery suggests the nineteenth century. Was it written by someone heralding socialism?”

  “It was written by an American judge heralding fascism.”

  “Isms are the dullest bits of the historical midden. Why resurrect them?”

  “Because we are about to give birth to the future and I am an agent of Shigalyovism which is organizing a political renaissance. But since sex comes before politics here is a wee song to cheer ye on your way, dearie.”

  He heard a burst of orchestral music and a Scottish male voice from the start of the twentiet
h century sang —

  Keep right on to the end of the road,

  Keep right on to the end!

  Though the way be long

  Let your heart be strong,

  Keep right on round the bend!

  Though you’re tired, and weary,

  Still journey on

  Till you come to your happy abode,

  Where all you love, you’ve been dreaming of,

  Will be there — at the end — of the …”

  “You’re scaring the puddocks!” yelled Wat, vainly trying to switch off his wristcom and walk faster at the same time. He could see an orange brightness low down among the trees ahead. The voice went huskily seductive: “You’re a mean old daddy but you’re out of sight Wat honeyprick, come to momma you sweetcocking motherfucker, come into me you big bad world beater, I am the shining cunt at the end of your personal tunnel.”

  The orange light came from the glowing dome of a small tent with the shadow of a reclining, beckoning figure inside. He stooped and crawled in through an opening at the edge of the path. She lay on a bank of pillows in the rape-inviting position imposed on Jane Russell by a millionaire who had owned some of 1944 Hollywood. She moaned, “Don’t look at me like that you piece-a-shit!”

  Two minutes later he lay gasping beside her after the fastest fuck of his life.

  She said, “Do you know me now?”

  He stared. Under the cosmetics (smudged now) of her archaic sexual mask he saw a young, very boyish face regard him alertly. He shook his head. She sighed and said, “I thought I was famous but of course you don’t use public eyes.”

  He was too near to see her long body, slender waist, big breasts, but he felt them and was so disconcerted by her intense gaze (one blue eye, one brown) that he tried to lose it by again kissing and embracing but, “That’s all for now,” she said sitting upright, “Short brutish sex is the only sort revolutionaries have time for. When the present state withers away nobody will have time for the other sort either. A drink.” Sitting cross-legged on the pillows she lifted a box from under one and took out a bottle of champagne and a glass. She said, “You still prohibit yourself alcohol?”

  “Aye.”

  “Drink this.”

  She handed him a thermos flask which proved to contain scalding black coffee. He poured a cupful into the cap and let it cool, watching her closely and puzzling over what she had said about sex. Was she mad? She astonished him by how easily and quickly she fired the champagne cork out through the low doorway, and caught a fuming jet of liquor in the glass, and sipped it while putting the bottle back in the box and taking out a cigarette case. Nan’s domestic actions had the same deft composure but not this alarming speed. He felt a thrumming in his blood, an expansion of breathing which were his usual reactions to danger. With relief he decided that his bodily chemistry was making him as alert as she. He was careful not to change his expression. He decided to say little and listen hard, yet she sat watching him and smiling at him and sipping champagne in such perfect silence that he was the first to speak.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Puddock if you like me, Delilah if I’m a ball-breaker. Smoke one of these Hawaii Gold. It will clear your head and ease you into the plot.” She spoke with the left side of her mouth while putting a lighter to a couple of slim brown tubes in the right. When he refused she unhesitatingly chucked one out through the entrance while inhaling the other, then sipped from the glass and in a voice that slid through several accents said, “Achtung Liebling! This is the situation. Many in the public eye are bored frantic by broadcasting the same old war games. The viewing public are also bored — that is why chieftains like your father have been bidding for attention by squandering more and more lives. The warriors too are bored. I won’t remind you how, in a young girl’s arms, you prayed for homes to be bombed and women to be mutilated. I’ll repeat something said by a general of the old school six days ago.”

  She touched her wristcom and a moment later Wat heard Shafto say, “People are tired of the old strategies. In a month or three you and me should put our heads together and see if we can work out other new strategies — within the Geneva Conventions of course.”

  “Fuck the Global and Interplanetary Council for War Regulation Sitting in Geneva!” said the woman with startling violence, “For ten thousand years of civilization mankind put its most creative energies into warfare, breaking old rules and inventing new ones every century, killing greater and greater multitudes in a crescendo of holocausts which kept pace with the enormous expansion of humanity. The world leaders called it progress of course, though they usually found it wiser to pretend that warfare was a temporary part of it. The wisest knew it was an essential part. Why purse your lips? Do you think me a monster?”

  “I think you’re a clown,” said Wat, shrugging,

  “That civilized way of living and fighting nearly wrecked the planet.”

  “I agree,” she said, refilling her glass, “That the twentieth and twenty-first centuries played games that nearly destroyed everything animal but the cockroaches. Yes, a peaceful century of fighting-by-rule was needed to restore human resources. The eighteenth century was a bit like ours. European rulers feared the chaotic wars of an earlier age so their armies only fought at frontiers. Polite people toured each other’s nations, visited each other’s homes whether their governments were warring or not. Those Europeans thought they were safer than the Imperial Romans, but boom! 1789! The French Revolution! A new age of warfare started which spread competing nations to every part of the globe. The biggest nation of all, the Chinese, tried to keep out of that rat race so the cocky wee Europeans and Yanks pulled it apart. Our rational Utopia is about to go boom and fall apart too and you, Wat Dryhope, are the virus of the plague which is going to destabilize it. Prost, skol and slainte you world-fucker. I’ll soon want more of you.” “You foul-mouthed big blethering nonsense!” said Wat, amused. She smiled unpleasantly and said, “If you used the public eye you would know that what happened in Ettrick yesterday is happening now on the sunny side of the globe. In the Americas and Asias scholars, gurus, gardeners and artists are crowding to their Warrior houses. Armies are doubling and trebling. The world’s great new war hero, Wat Dryhope, came to soldiering late in life, why should every man not do it? Your coffee’s getting cold.”

  Wat, thinking hard, sipped it then said, “That’s no sign of instability! It just shows how widespread male boredom is. The commanders will cope by conferring with Geneva and devising new rules for bigger war games. A lot more men will die, of course, but even if three quarters of male humanity slaughter each other it won’t destroy the modern state. The modern state depends on women minding their houses.”

  “Have you forgotten that I am a woman? I am also an agent of the Shigalyovite Revolution.” “You are an eloquent, erudite liar, Delilah Puddock,” said Wat, chuckling, “Tell me about Shigalyovism.”

  “You are a man I will enjoy humiliating, Wat Dryhope,” said the woman dreamily inhaling her cigarette yet still watching him closely, “Shigalyov was a Russian who loved freedom and plotted against the Czar. He proved by algebra that freedom can only be fully enjoyed in a world where one tenth of the people are given unrestricted powers over the remaining nine tenths.”

  “The poor man must have been so obsessed with Czardom that Russian Communism was the only alternative he could imagine,” said Wat, screwing the empty cap back on the flask,

  “Will your conspiracy bring back that?”

  “O no, Russian Communism was dull and inefficient. We will recreate the system which overpowered it, the competitive exploitation of human resources.”

  “Are human resources people?”

  “Of course, but when exploiting people it is best to think them a passive substance like oil or earth.”

  “You havenae said a word of practical sense,” said Wat, suddenly noticing he was no longer alert. His thoughts, his words also were coming ponderously: “You can only expl
oit folk … who depend on you for essential things like … food or ways of getting it … Landlords and merchants used to do that by removing food from folk who produced it … You could then deal it out to them in such wee amounts that … that poor folk grew too weak to grab it for themselves, especially when you employed a well-paid police force … Then … then the producers would lick your boots and c … cut each other’s throats hoping you’ll give them enough to let their w … wea … WEANS STAY ALIVE WHY’RE YE NODN AN GIGGLIN?”

  Sweating and trembling he fell back on the pillows. She flung cigarette and glass out onto the path (he heard it smash) and knelt upright across his thighs.

  “You really do understand political economy,” she said, putting her hands beneath her breasts, lifting them and smiling down on him between. “That’s all past,” he whispered, appalled to feel his penis swell, erect, yearn up to her while the rest of him helplessly shivered. She said, “Time for more, my wee Sssscottish Ressssource.”

  Caressing her nipples slowly with her thumbs she crooned, “The bright old day now dawns again, the cry goes through the land, in England there shall be dear bread — in Ireland, sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time! Spurs on the dinnerplates! Guns before butter! If you had shared my champers and pot you would be enjoying this but the doctored coffee won’t sssspoil my pleasure Ssssamson.”

  Grabbing his hair with both hands she eased herself down on him whispering, “George Orwell said the future of humanity would be a jackboot continually stamping on a face. He was wrong. It’s gonna be me continually fucking your brains out.”