‘He was special,’ the journalist says. ‘He was . . . larger than that.’
‘What?’ For the first time Concepción looks at him and sees a human face. ‘You’re a Christian?’
He shrugs. ‘Help me move her.’
‘Jesus really fathered a child?’
‘How else could His karman have passed into the gene pool?’
Concepción walks back blindly to the small patch of shade. The girl is sitting forward, regarding her. The crown of electronic sensors has been brushed into the mud. The child’s gaze is alert, penetrating, and something more. It takes the nun a moment to identify that terrible glee.
‘You are both wrong,’ Jesus tells them, and rises to Her feet, floats and bobs above the foul mud like a feather of light. ‘You are both right. Come, follow Me.’
The journalist utters a loud cry and runs for his portapak.
Conception’s heart clutches. She stumbles, one arm outstretched, mud sucking at her shoes, and rises then, pops free from the embrace of the ruined earth to scamper, like a besotted apostle on the wind-whipped surface of an ancient lake, in her Saviour’s unmarked train.
<
~ * ~
THE BALLAD OF BOWSPRIT BEAR’S STEAD
For a while it looked as if the last stronghold of sexism was the future.
So tenacious was this vice that even its opponents hoisted the wrong colours. A noisy bravo named Harlan Ellison, a Hollywood writer who confessed with some chagrin that in a score of years he’d had his carnal way with ‘maybe 500 different women’, repented and denounced his macho past. Much of it had been employed thinking up prize-winning macho futures.
‘The best writers in science fiction are women,’ he now stoutly and accurately declared. Speculative fiction had long ostracized women (in their own voice) from its pages. For instance, Ellison pointed out, a horde of thick-witted male editors had repeatedly rejected the first and very good novel by Joanna Russ.
Ellison drove home the sword in his final sentence: ‘And further, Joanna Russ looks infinitely better in a bikini than any of the editors who rejected her novel.’
I fell off my chair and had to be calmed.
Some years later, I met the fabled Harlan Ellison at dinner in Melbourne: charming and energetic, smacking his lips and crying aloud in a species of Greek and thus endearing himself to the sceptical restaurateur. He spent so much of his time gazing with hard direct eyes at one or another of us, telling each in his turn that he was ‘a remarkable man’ (a gambit modified, I believe, for Dianne and Irene) that he was taken at the end for a fellow of the most piercing insight and gentility. At last Dianne leaned across to me and asked, not at all sotto voce, ‘Why does everyone hate this man?’ No one did, not any more.
Harlan had been in Australia a week; it was his pleasure to regale us obdurate city-dwellers with tales of Outback mystery. With enormous relish he described the flightless Emoo, an unstoppable marauding bird protected by matted feathers so dense that high-powered rifle bullets bounce clean off. Harried farmers in four-wheel drives, he reported, find themselves obliged to pursue it through the night, their hammering machine-gun the sole weapon capable of felling the beast. Our muffled chokes and shrieks gave the game away. ‘I’ll kill that son of a bitch,’ he vowed, delighted.
But I was speaking of sexism. The sadly missed American sf editor Terry Carr visited Australia, reporting that the barricades had tumbled. Anti-sexist sf was de rigueur in the States. The future had been liberated. But when I taxed Carr with Ellison’s amazing gaffe, he only smiled gently. Furthermore, he allowed, Joanna Russ does indeed look wonderful in a bikini. There was no faintest trace of sexism in his tone or his honest eye.
Around that time my life—as a writer, as a man with pretensions to feminist sympathies—was shaken by an horrendous event. The story you are about to read was chosen for an anthology by Ursula Le Guin and Virginia Kidd. An advance copy reached Russ, who promptly foamed at the mouth. Hadn’t Le Guin and Kidd seen how horribly sexist and stupid the writer was? ‘Tell me how the story sneaked in,’ she closed. ‘Did Broderick force you to edit at gunpoint?’
This time I sprang off the chair and raged up and down the streets of Balmain. Russ is a professor of English; how could she make the elementary error of denouncing the writer for the narrator’s views? Was she blind to the story’s anti-sexist irony, or had she seen deeper than deep into my rotten guilty soul?
I wrote back; Russ replied, itemizing fresh crimes in my letter; in the end she told me to walk in front of a bus.
At her suggestion I checked with Samuel Delany, who sorrowfully agreed with Russ’s estimate though not her polemical methods, and with Tom Disch, who laughed incredulously, finding ‘Bowsprit’ a merry piece. Le Guin, of course, had already put down her money.
In case you’re wondering, I myself would look terrible in a bikini.
~ * ~
I was there, my smalls, when empire came crashing down about the ears of the old galactics. This is what the wickedest man in the galaxy told his wife at the time:
‘When the entire universe is blowing itself to buggery, the only prudent course of action is to be Emperor of the whole goddam shebang.’
~ * ~
I torqued into the High Imperial demesne in full ceremonial drag, and the stinky heat wrenched open every pore of my body. Humid summer’s sun, on that fabled world, was a fat hot peach drifting in watered claret. For a while I just stood there gasping, letting the sweat run into my mouth. Off to one side of the clearing was a monstrous, leaning sail woven all of straw and decorated on its face with faces: gargoyle shields in rank on row, lofting fifty metres to the structure’s pointed tip. At its base was a hut, the lower swelling of the sail, with two pert pierced nipples for leaving and entering. All the foliage of the ferns and trees beyond the clearing was hard sombre green, tricking the eye to see varieties of black. It took me some effort to pick out the hunched servant at work on his shrubs and herbs in the garden.
I sighed, finally, and went to see what he was doing. Undoubtedly he was the filthiest old man I’d ever set eyes on, his tawny pelt thick with greasy emulsions on those patches where the hair had not been plucked out and his hide cicatrized with welts and gouges, nothing like the delicate tattoos which grace your mothers’ upper lips. He had a ripe aroma, like a wormy cheese left to warm beside the hearth, and I was obliged to turn my head aside and regain myself. When I looked again over his preoccupied shoulder, shielding my eyes against the orange sun, I saw that his hands moved through a pale glaze of sapphire light, a streaky weft of blue radiance. My telephone rang.
Entranced by the light, I fumbled for the receiver at my belt. ‘Yep?’
‘This is Roger, your Life Support System.’
‘What is it, Roger?’ I said patiently.
‘Let go of your nose and start the recorders. That’s Cerenkov radiation.’
‘How extraordinary.’ I did as the Liss suggested, and the holofield’s subdued ticking came on. It was hardly necessary to give public notice that a recording was being made, since the gardener had no way of knowing I was there (which, strictly speaking, I wasn’t), but the equipment had been designed to conform to standing regulations. ‘Roger, what’s a servant doing with tachyon manipulation? I thought magic was strictly reserved to Imperial citizens,
‘So he’s a citizen,’ the telephone deduced acerbically. ‘Maybe he just likes pottering with flowers. Bowsprit, that’s not all. There’s a raft of meron activity coming from the jungle to your right.’
‘Vacuum fluctuations?’ The dirty old beast was still fiddling with the damp soil, his stubby fingers drifting through blue pale webs. ‘Roger, have you been thoroughly serviced lately? The barbarians are still several light-hours away, and you know how these people feel about physical technology.’
‘Have it your own way,’ the Liss said sulkily. ‘Every single sensor in my pack reports singularity flux not half a kilom
etre from here, and coming closer, but if you wish to insist that—Bowsprit, the tachyons are gone.’
‘So I see.’ My eyes stung with sweat, but I’d noticed the sapphire haze flick out. With a grunt and a groan the old fellow got up off his knees and turned in my direction. Uncannily, he seemed to glance straight into my eyes. He placed his grubby hands on the crown of his head and lowered them to his cheeks, whining loudly, and barked like a dog.
Ah, you jump and squeal, my sproggies. Imagine my reaction! My belly turned over and little mice did cartwheels in it. Every lock of my beard bit at my throat and the sweat laving my flesh turned to beads of crisp dew. Before I could gather my wits, the grimy derelict dropped his arms, regarded me with a quizzical moue, and fell into that squatting posture we know so well. Stupefied, I watched him brush the fingers of his right hand (bronze-furred, the nails ragged and blackened) across the palm of his left, watched him brush right palm with left digits. My will bobbed away from my mind, and I found myself without deliberation on my own haunches, respectfully brushing my palms in greeting. The claws on the paws of my sacred garb fell together with a rattle. I babbled some nonsense in our own tongue, while my mind whirled to catch up with my well-bred instincts. Then I rose, with what dignity I could, and gave the old man my name in his people’s Vocal Tongue. The telephone was ringing; I ignored it, and it stopped.
‘Neither wild animal nor man, eh?’ the Neanderthal said. His hand stroked lightly my borrowed pelt. ‘And no star barbarian either, to judge by your phenotype.’ He tugged at my beard, which in those sprightly days came only to the mid-point of my breast. ‘Your eyes are not crooked, young man, and your skin has a curious pallor. But come, let me show you an unusual vegetable, as rare perhaps in its kingdom as you are in ours.’ And he crouched down again into his plot of turned soil, and fetched me down beside him.
I knew these people for great workers of magic, my smalls, and I was not appalled to find a mass of stems, densely packed and decked with yellow, where a minute earlier had been only naked earth and flimmery sapphire. What dried my tongue was the simple fact of his seeing me, addressing me. We were, by every law of physics known to me, mutual ghosts: he in his time, I in mine. Under the shelter of Heisenberg, I was a skein of virtual particles, instanton fluctuations in the zero-energy state. Yet my chin smarted from his tug to my whiskers. It was all quite impossible. If possible, it was horrendous.
He delved into his garden miracle and snapped off a bloom in one hand, a leaf in the other. The leaf was deepest green, heavily veined, like the tissue of a stretched scrotal sac. The old man touched it with his tongue, chewed, grimaced, spat it out. He held up the flower to me, detailing its salient features.
‘I haven’t altered its genome much, though it craved a cooler climate. It has four petals, not terribly attractive, and four sepals. Here is its pistil, and you will find six stamens. Evidently one of the Cruciferae, the mustards, you know. Marx calls it Brassica rapa, but Smith insists it’s a rutabaga.’ He popped the flower into his mouth, munched without pleasure, and discarded it. ‘Pity. I was informed that it’s edible. Are you a keen gardener yourself?’
Wordless, I shook my head. I realized, then, that he would not recognize the gesture, but I was wrong. He shot me a hard look.
‘How may I serve you, then, sir? I had imagined that you were here to view my horticulture.’
The telephone rang. I screamed with frustrated rage and snatched the receiver up.
‘God damn it!’ I covered the mouthpiece with my palm and told the Neanderthal, ‘Excuse me for a moment.’
‘This is Roger, your Life Support System.’
‘I guessed. Listen, Roger, I’m in the middle of—’
‘Bowsprit, don’t blow it. He’s right about the plant, the rutabaga is a related but different herb, Brassica napobrassica. This one’s a turnip. Tell him to pull up the root, but not to gnaw on it—it has to be cooked.’
‘Roger, you’re a gem.’
‘Don’t hang up. Those singularities are getting closer. There are two of them. Marx and Smith?’
‘Presumably. I’ll get back to you.’ I passed on the facts to the old fellow, trying to breathe through my mouth. You have no idea how bad he smelled. He unearthed a number of spherical roots with tails, their plump white bodies swathed at the top in purple much darker than the sky.
‘Fascinating,’ he said, peeling one open. ‘You don’t happen to know how to prepare them, I suppose? Marx obtained the seeds for me for my birthday, but it would never occur to him to get a recipe. They don’t eat, you see.’
I risked offending him, but there couldn’t have been any alternative explanation. ‘There are mechanisms from Earth here, at the Imperial Palace?’
‘Just the two. Robots. Artificial human beings, as it were. The barbarians sent them a long time ago, as a gift to the last Emperor. They’re very old, like me.’ He took my elbow in a comradely way. ‘Can I offer you a drink? Come in out of the hot sun, you’re sweating like a pig, you know. Tell me, are all your race so hairy? Do you all have two heads?’
With some embarrassment, I tapped the dead, ferocious jaws which gaped over my forehead. ‘This is a vestment, Old Father, a costume. It is of sacred significance. I wear the head and pelt of my brother Bear when I, uh, voyage.’
‘I thought his eye was a trifle glazed.’ We started toward the great sail-hut, and my telephone rang.
‘This is Roger, your Life Support System.’
‘I know already. Can’t you leave us in peace for—’
‘To prepare a delicious turnip ragout,’ the Liss said, ‘peel a dozen baby turnips, not too long in the ground, mind, and set them aside. Blend a large spoonful of flour in the same quantity of melted dripping, heating and stirring until the blend is yellow. Add a cup of stock and bring to the boil. Put in the turnips, seasoned with salt, pepper and two teaspoons of sugar, and simmer for about three-quarters of an hour. Tender, the turnip is a toothsome treat.’
‘Thank you, Roger.’
‘A pleasure. Do you hear that crashing in the trees?’
Now that he mentioned it. Alarmed, I looked questioningly at the scarred, naked ancient. He was staring with interest at the handpiece of my Liss. When I was younger I was enormously proud of the instrument, a beautiful and delicate receiver, fragile with brass and ivory and carved black wood. I slammed it down. ‘Are there wild animals here?’ Children, you see that I had lost all perspective. The most fearsome of carnivores could no more hurt me, in my virtual state, than it could detect my presence. Nor, of course, could I hurt it, even if it ran straight through me.
‘Calm yourself, young man. It is only my robots. They will not molest you.’
‘Your—?’ The spark, belatedly, arced. I threw myself on the grass at his feet. ‘Magnificence, forgive me. I failed to recognize your Mightiness.’ This was impromptu stuff, and went against the grain, but I understood without difficulty that if the incomparable magic of the Galactic Emperor enabled him to see and hear me I’d be well advised to keep on his good side.
‘Get up, get up, lad, you’ll smother under all that fur.’ He helped me to my feet, and his grip and leverage were startlingly strong. ‘There’s no need to burden me with all that court crap in the sanctuary of my own garden. Bowsprit Bear’s Stead,’ he said, ‘my name is Lyric Music Stirs Too Fierce the Heart, and it’s refreshing to make your acquaintance. In private, you must call me Lyric Music. Now, let’s get that drink before you expire. Besides, you still haven’t told me how to cook these admirable herbs.’
I grinned suddenly at him and shouted, over the racket at the edge of the clearing, ‘As it happens, Sire, I just happen to have a most delectable recipe. First, you peel your turnips—’
A sharp report cracked behind us, and I jumped around to see a splintered tree fall into the springy arms of its neighbour. Into the clearing, skirting the Emperor’s rude garden by a breath and preceded by plentiful teeth-jarring subsonic P-, S-,
and surface-type earthquake waves, lumbered an immense polished cylinder. Its locomotion was bipedal: the elephantine metal legs rose and fell thunderously in a quintessential parody of the machine technology which the old galactics despised so ardently. It gave an awful blast on its klaxon as it spied the Emperor.
‘Sire!’ it cried, grinding toward us. ‘Condition Red! Alert! Situation Triple-Danger! Withdraw to the deep bunkers!’ In the centre of its torso a hefty ruby spun and glinted, bloodier than sun or sky: part of a laser detection system, and surprisingly merry.
‘Smith, Smith,’ said Lyric Music, his tone weary. ‘Calm down. Show some regard for our guest.’ To me he said, ‘They are a hysterical breed, these robots. Nothing will satisfy them but rumours of war.’ Smith had quietened at once, but hopped from one mighty leg to the other with unrelieved anxiety. It stood fifteen metres high in the puddle of its own shadow. The Emperor patted its left leg affectionately. ‘This one, Bowsprit, was the military executive computer for the barbarians’ Right-Hand Hegemony. Marx served the same role for their traditional enemy, the Left-Hand Hegemony. They were dispatched to the Empire as a gift by the previous Chairman of Earth’s Glorious Republic. Apparently they were obsolescent, but they can run up a nice woven hut in double time.’ He gestured to the leaning sail.
The Dark Between the Stars: Speculative Fiction Page 11