way. But I liked his question. My mother, one of the old man’s
eleven wives (and I was the second of her two only sons), had
assumed I would follow in his footsteps and be a dirtfooted breeder
on faraway farout longlost Swannest helping to boost the population in the traditional, honourable manner, though the clone labs have been pouring them out for fifty years now and the Fempref
Immigration Scheme past history for almost as long. He was right:
she had not been impressed with my jagging, but years have passed
and now when I happen home she likes to hear my stories. W hat
she cannot swallow is my longtime exclusive attachment to Kolissa.
‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘yes’, as his ship breathed and sang softly like an
insect in whose cranium we lay, as the consoles twinkled like the
sectors of a nightbound city and we gods looking down, as the
coffee-stained couch wrapped me warm and we climbed the grav-
slope away from Greenball to the point where we could cut. With
interest, with politeness, with thoughtful readiness to pull a new
point of view over his head like a woolly jum per he inquired about
Kolissa, then about our travels, our purposes, our means of support. Over the jagger with the catcrap on his faceplate he laughed like a horse. ‘But,’ he said, suddenly changing direction, ‘you come
in here, you climb out of your life support and send it into the bay
for a free refill of all the things it needs, fuel, concentrates, oxygen
. . . Doesn’t that embarrass you? Isn’t it begging?’ He was a strange
jack. I told him what he already knew: that sleezies are programmed to seek the bays at every opportunity, so I didn’t have to send it, though I accepted responsibility for it; that once he was
making the trip and had his can in motion the cost of flight modification to pick me up, of carrying me, of feeding my sleezy was less than one hundredth of a percent of the tripcost; and that usually a
pilot would not pick up a jagger unless he expected the return in
company, conversation, or the pure altruistic inner glow (I did
206
Anthony Peacey
smear that a bit) to repay him well. Amused, he agreed.
He had not mentioned the revolution. He’d been on Greenball
three days to pick up some kind of tagged juice for some weird
experiments so I supposed he didn’t know, and I was reluctant to
tell him, but did in the end. And this jack, Claudian Fainey-Juveh
(he had introduced himself), did a strange thing with his mouth,
pursed his lips while making the upper one tall, and said ‘I wonder
if it will alter things much.’ And then, Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, oh yeah. The pilot who lifted me into ring said. Spacevine
is always accurate, no one says more than they actually know, kind
of tradition.’
‘Ah yes. I’m not actually on Otzapoc — I’ll take you there,
though — your life support will take you down, won’t it? — I’ve
been on Trivash for a couple of years. The last time I was on
Otzapoc itself was more than a year ago. I hardly heard anything of
Jahenry — I rather got the impression that he was out of favour
with most people.’
‘Would you have heard, though?’ I said, perhaps because he’d
questioned the morality of jagging.
‘W hat do you mean?’ Still the polite interested inquirer.
‘Well, people often don’t hear about things they’re not interested
in.’
He chuckled. ‘Quite so. I’m not very interested in politics. As a
m atter of fact I see the whole business as predetermined, as
organic, like ocean currents for example. The demagogues that
arise are mere opportunists taking advantage of the currents,
riding them. When they can no longer hang on, or when they try to
alter their courses, they are swept aside.’
Right, right, right. And ocean currents bring storms and ocean
currents bring sunshine and we the bathers the beachcombers the
surfers — we take what comes. We were bound, this Fainey-Juveh
and me, in beautiful understanding and agreement.
Trivash, then. I had heard the name. Yes, he explained, one of
the twenty-seven moons of Bubutap, great raging storming
whirling gas giant of the Bennet-Kenny system. Bubutap of giant
lightnings like that old seagod’s fork, Bubutap of the vortex-edged
speeding methane-ammonia hurricane belts, Bubutap of the
orange angry skewed thunderous eyes. (I knew there was some
weird passion at the core of his life, even from when he looked at
that list off-camera before he picked me up — I could see the list
now, pale brown fax skin stabbed over a knob, curled and awkward
Jagging
207
to read. Now, stepping from great god globe Bubutap he submerges in his private ocean current.) Ages ago pioneers from Otzapoc’s neighbour Heljring terra-formed Trivash and founded an empire that lasted for ten thousand
years. Most of the other planets and satellites in the system were left
natural, but the empire colonised them all — with gene-tailored
fishmen, birdmen, high-G dwarfs, methane breathers, leaf-
crowned UV sugar-builders and other strange types. In its long
long lightning-and-rainbow history of empire the sovereignty of
Trivash was scarcely threatened, for in its most careless, its most
benign, its most decadent moments Trivash kept savage control of
the making and distribution of specific environment life support
systems without which these diverse humankinds could not live
away from their appointed places. Just like me.
Yet the empire breathed like the sea, its tides alternately enfolding the far corners of the system and retreating, leaving them silted and naked to self-generated flocks of predators. And quinquiremes
of space plied between stellar Ninevehs carrying ivory apes peacocks, steel coal iridium, hard vacuum and a couple of fluorescing atoms in snailshell glass bottles (souvenirs from the Trifid Nebula),
soldiers, slaves, silk-painters, dog-catchers, data-merchants,
doom-sayers, governors and grocers, lawyers and lumberjacks,
prostitutes and priests. All that the crazy hearts of women and men
have ever desired travelled in those ships, all that their eaglesoaring minds have dreamed, brought from the edges of known space and beyond back to the savage-gentle heart of empire. The
ships docked in vast glittering cities of space whose steel was ripped
from the entrails of a thousand moons, whose metabolism rested
upon the thunder of giant forges, the wind-ocean roar of induction
pumps, the incandescent love of atom for atom eternally consummated in radiant energetic union.
All this Fainey-Juveh told me, his eyeglasses reflecting twin
groups of instrument lights. And I was caught up in his living
breathing rolling bopping crazy empire — caught like a lucent
little sea insect in the warm lucent limitless ocean — there was no
disjunction between his gorgeous vast empire and me — in my
vision I was part of it. And surely it was a glorious place for a space
jagger, surely.
We cut sometime then. One bunch of razor-bright constellations
and soft glowing nebulae instantly gone, a new bunch before us as
if they had been gazing through our reflectionless glass shields for
208
> Anthony Peacey
hours. The space between the stars, the original mother of black
night, of which the darkest planetary darkness is a clowning
imitator, remained itself, arrogant, perhaps amused.
The empire lived on. Plated warships threw the fire of suns down
upon rebellious worlds, or stung the insect craft of raiders into
clouds of expanding glowing gas. They even swam in shoals to
other systems and for a brief half millennium brought Fomalhaut
and Angk with all their worlds under the barbarous-benign heel of
the emperor.
Trivash, the imperial world, like old legendary Earth, was a
garden. After the first couple of thousand years of empire the entire
ball became the emperor’s demesne. The seas were his fishponds,
the sierras his rock gardens, the forests his hunting parks. Each city
was a palace: each palace a city. Furnished and equipped for every
business known to man, for every lustful lust and joyous joy, the
halls stables laboratories workshops, and their staffs, eternally
awaited the moment when the emperor should chance their way.
Teniki X X V II of the fourth millennium was a flyer. He flew in
balloons, in sailplanes, in single jets; he flew on G-discs and under
hangwings; he flew rockets and stratoscoops and slept all his long
life suspended between heaven and earth (or anyway between
chrysoberyl floor and azurite ceiling studded with diamond stars)
in a founting whispering cushion of warm air. Maybe he took his
favourite folded hangwing into this zephyrous bed with him instead of noble lady empress wife or plum-smooth little concubine, maybe. But wherever he went he found the sky vehicle of his whim
ready. Until one day, suddenly tiring of the air, he asked for a freedive suit. They were in the smallest, remotest of his cities at the southern tip of his coldest land. The dive suit for those waters was
unusual, requiring a special heating system, and insulation, and
the emperor, only a week before, had allowed his arms and fingers
to be modified so that now he had wings like a bat. Even so the suit
was straightway brought — and found to fit perfectly. Smiles of
approval appeared on the faces of the emperor’s companions, but
Teniki X X V II noticed nothing.
The Trivashti cycle of seasons was the classic Four. W inter
sparkled and reddened the cheeks. Spring breathed sweetly over
tiny swords of grass and unfolding leafblades. Summer cast a net of
heat, coarse enough for a lordly dozing and dreaming in the afternoons, then the sensuous plunge into lake or river. Autumn was ripe with a treasury of fruits. Tiuark IV lost her imperial temper
Jagging
209
one time — she had forgotten her gloves and her fingers got cold —
!I will have summer!’ she said. H er Lord and Most High Slipper-
man (her biggest bigjack errandboy, that was) who was riding on
the next hippogryph heard her and within a couple of hours the
snows were melting and the summerfoxes in their dens beneath her
forests waking up. Believe it! — the snows melted — hibernating
animals awoke — the meany great iron cold trees started pumping
up their buds till they burst and the leaves unfurled! The sellers of
gloves and mufflers — oh, those boys cursed the great legend that
was their emperor, and the sellers of ice-cream blessed her!
She made those mostissimo winged horses herself — that was her
passion: breeding, engineering, gene-chopping and constructing
weird animals. All the creatures of all the myths of all the worlds of
all history lived in the flesh in her home-made menageries. Strange
and cruel and like a woman wearing a man’s beard was this arrogant Tiuark, lord of a thousand worlds. All of the twelve (some say fourteen) women who at various times ruled with the full powers of
emperor, and called themselves emperor, wore the emperor’s
beard. Some even had their chins cell-tailored to grow genuine
whiskers, and Maiken the Fat grew her own completely naturally
while still a young woman. Tiuark IV had dozens of lawfully
married queens and hundreds of concubines by whom she
produced a host of children — breeding them to the favoured
among her male relatives. There were ritual and economic reasons
for this.
In a great vision as I swam through space in the darkness of the
control cabin beside this long faced Fainey-Juveh with Bennet-
Kenny now a star beacon before us but still not quite a sun, as I
half-heard his strong monotonous voice now rising as he was
reminded of yet another jewel of interest in the history of the
Trivashti empire — in a great vision I saw the ancient barbaric
city-large ships ghost past, I rode a snorting hippogryph beside
Tiuark as she changed the season of a world with a wave of her
hand, I sat downtable from foppish Sesemene III when annoyed
with the supreme commander of his Instrumentality of Peace he
said, ‘Take me Fomalhaut,’ as you might say, ‘Pass me a nut,’ and the
commander went white to the gills. Years later that commander, his
body ruined beyond the wits of a now decadent imperial science to
repair in the last awful battle over Fomalhaut IV, yet by rigid will
still walking erect — that commander received Sesemene on the
bridge of the limping imperial flagship and presented him with an
210
Anthony Peacey
iron mace removed for the first time in a thousand years from the
great Assembly Hall of Zianziohc saying, ‘Lord, Fomalhaut.’
‘Lord, Fomalhaut,’ he said, and died. Did he really say just that?
Answer ‘Take me Fomalhaut’ with ‘Lord, Famalhaut’, hand over the
mace and die? Yes, oh yes. I knew that then, riding there in Fainey-
Juveh’s little modern-day can just cut from Greenball and the tired
romanceless faces on the early mono to graceless Pororak — I knew
that then, listening to Fainey-Juveh’s magic-monotonous voice.
‘Lord, Fomalhaut.’
And I had seen — jostled and deafened in the monstrous crowd,
stifled by the stewy scent of the jostling roaring crowd — I had seen
eagle-featured Sesemene, foppish no longer, but eagle-featured
with terrible eyes and the skin of his face dyed blue and all his robes
glaring with a weight of gems riding a winged clawed elephant
(long had Tiuark’s art survived her) down the Avenue of Palaces in
marble carved Orlasc as the first expedition of conquest to Fomalhaut began — and upon opposing marble pillars that lined the way chained the naked halves of all the Fomalhauti that had been peacefully upon Trivash, visiting, on business, married to Trivashti —
each one bisected so that half a trunk carried a leg, an arm and half
a head and the entrails hung to the ground and streaks of blood
blackened the shining marble pillars — oh, that is death, that is
death: blood-slimed festoons of guts hanging to the ground with
dogs ripping what they can reach and the pitiful little penis of an
axed-in-half m an and the tears you might shed over the curling
brown sex hair below the ripped belly of half a not-yet-married girl.
Sesemene, no fop, did not avoid the meaning of Take me Fomalhaut:
death, girl flesh slas
hed and blood released to blacken down pillars.
Arrogantly he rode between the halves of these innocents, rode to
Fomalhaut on winged elephant and starship, fought at Fomalhaut,
but did not stay all the years of the war. Returned there at last to
hear — ‘Lord, Fomalhaut.’
From me strange learned Fainey-Juveh would maintain a formal
distance: eagle-clawed entrail-ripping Sesemene he embraced. For
him the blue-faced emperor was alive, riding his eternal winged
elephant down that charnel-hung avenue to Fomalhaut for ever
and ever amen. Tiuark lived, all the five Tiuarks, all the forty-four
Tenikis, the six Selenippes, the twenty-one Ororons, the three
Pvattis, the seven Pvatchis, Chuchah the Devil, and Chuchah the
Builder, Henorahk the Priest, Fiodek the Three-eyed, Charmesh of
the Five Thousand Children (is it possible? Oh yes, oh yes). T hat is
Jagging
211
the meaning of empire — a man, gorgeous and grandiose as all
men, free of all checks, possessor of all power, building into the
world all his dreams, those known and those secret even for himself,
the beautiful and the sickening, building in real stone, real iron,
real flesh. The myriad of his subject willingly subject themselves
because it is better to see their dreams made flesh by somebody else
than never.
Gentle intelligent Fainey-Juveh said ‘Autocracy is the only form
of Government worthy of man. W ith anything else one’s life drains
away in unrelieved mediocrity and no one sees a dream worth the
name made real.’
Still high on the splendid visions of empire this strange jack had
given me, I said, ‘Do you support Jahenry?’
He thought a moment with his bald dome shining, his long lips a
little thrust and his eyeglass windows aimed away to the stars. Then
said, 1 suppose I am inconsistent at times.’
Because now we knew each other so well that I understood he
didn’t like Jahenry, Berlit was much more his type. And also we
both understood, with nothing more being said, that inconsistency
is truly the salt of hum anity’s thoughts and deeds and dealings.
Strange Attractors (1985) Page 29