Inconsistency, being unpredictable: it is the source of all laughter
— take me, take Orry, take Fiormaria, Kolissa, G randm other
Tiuark, Sesemene, Fainey-Juveh . . ..
But now Trivash, the emperors’ garden, was an airless ball of
slag. Bubutap after whom the emperors took one of their titles
(What? This big big jack emperor comes in — Pvatti II like a fighting cock wearing foot platforms to make him taller than his gang of yesboys — comes in and they all suddenly stop their heads-together
eyeball-to-eyeball talking and smarten up and yell ‘Hail, Bubutap!’
Bubutap, they say, Hail Bubutap — ! O r — or — Sesemene the
Conqueror, eagle-faced, lean as a blade strides into the High
Audience Cham ber and the lords there in one voice — really, one
voice — shout ‘Hail Bubutap!’ and you think of those raging vortices and freezing methane belts out there on the giant that takes up half the sky and you know that some jack has entered that cham ber) — yes, Bubutap whose great name the emperors grabbed for their own, and Bubutap into whose storming gas seas they sank
vast power stations, and Bubutap who sat always like a swollen
apple in the Eden of the Trivashti mind — this Bubutap spins on at
some fantastic rate and its gas storms rage and rage now at this
moment and will rage until the end of time. But time has ended,
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ended thousands of years ago for the emperors. Trivash in its last
millennia had become a Sullenbauer culture: much of the science
they used they no longer understood, leaning thoughtlessly upon
vast networks of self-renewing data and technical instrumentation.
The young science of Fomalhaut was a shot in the arm for a while,
but Fomalhaut broke free, built its muscles and appeared one day
over Trivash in a myriad silver ships that burnt away even the blue-
lilac sky of the emperors’ garden world — and most of the other
Trivashti worlds while they were at it.
‘The tombs of some of the emperors have long been supposed to
be like palaces,’ said Fainey-Juveh.
M y imagination took new visionary leaps into these wondrous
subterranean silent places where everything the emperor had
touched in life was meticulously, miraculously, preserved and the
emperors themselves lay embedded in living crystal — but really
living, a thing from some weird lost star, a thing with a lifespan of
billions of years, a thing with unparalleled mother love that would
atom by atom guard whatever was with proper scientific ritual
introduced into its body. O Sleezy, my Sleezy I would maybe have
to abandon you for this ageless mother immortal crystal but that I
supposed all this talk of tombs beneath the glass-slag surface of
Trivash to be legend now.
‘Those of the early last millennium were supposed to have been
the most magnificent,’ said Fainey-Juveh.
I should have known he was getting at something, he was speaking in an even drier, less accented voice.
‘They must have believed in an afterlife,’ I suggested.
‘By then science and magic could scarcely be separated in their
thought, some believe.’ His vanishing breath of emphasis scorned
the some who believed that. ‘O r a man like Sesemene may have calculated to preserve his body until a future science could restore him to life.’
For a strange moment I thought this crazy Fainey-Juveh with his
shopping bag of atom-tagged reagents wanted to find Sesemene,
breathe that monstrous soul back into the nostrils of the eagle beak
and set him loose in the mediocre m odern cosmos.
O ut of silence and the muted instrument hum, eyeglasses swivelling to pin me with twin batteries of reflected lights, he said, ‘Would you like to see his tomb?’
‘Yeah, sure. That would be some sight, hey?’
Then I realised what he meant.
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Silence.
My heart was beating.
He saw me, and smiled.
‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
Yes yes yes. Kolissa would have to wait a day or two more. The
revolution would be small stuff. No j agger could refuse such an opportunity — he would not be a jagger. W hat I understood perfectly now was — Fainey-Juveh knew what he was doing. He had found
the deepest deep palace-tomb of Sesemene, access was assured, the
tomb was undisturbed, Sesemene himself slept within his immortal
mother self mother father self of self crystal. And I would actually
see that face — would see that face —
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I am an archaeologist,’ he said.
O f course.
Then his sneak relayed a hard bored voice telling us we could not
approach Otzapoc. No picture, but I visionarily saw a tiny cutback moustache jerking up and down as the words were projected.
No discussion either — the voice was still twenty minutes away, so
forty minutes between question and answer except that no answer
would come, it sounded like. That shitwit Jahenry! How long
would this last? I had just decided to go to Trivash for a few days but
— yes, but, but — as soon as this big prick tells me I can’t land on
Otzapoc anyway, I want only to go there, to Otzapoc, to Kolissa,
and all my bloody fears for her come rushing back, and gaudy gossamer empires or fossil empires of the fairytale kids’ story past are forgotten, for I am tiny and empty in some tinfoil little insect can
lost in endless space night — empty, empty in the stomach with my
guts hanging down a pillar, or they’re lost out there in space back
before our last cut in the far lost utter cold like a bunch of frozen
sausages.
Fainey-Juveh is not pleased either. His eyeglasses are blank windows, facing me though probably thinking of something else like some nuisance this is going to cause him. At last he says,
‘God damn them!’
We were half a Bubutap year away from Bubutap along that
great one’s orbit, we had to cross the system slinging high over
Bennet-Kenny, a seven hour run. Now that I was thrown upon his
hospitality for a time beyond our control I wondered if he felt that
hospitable, but I didn’t like to say anything which might offend
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him. We were silent for a long time. When I voiced my fears for
Kolissa he snapped at me, said I was stupid, she would be all right
along with all the other little nurses. Kolissa isn’t a nurse. Perhaps
he really didn’t want me along anymore, or perhaps he thought
anger would drive home reassurance, or perhaps I had struck too
close to some fear of his own.
He sent a call to Trivash. First he asked me about Svend transformations. Sure, I said, his sneak would have agreed a set with his home computer long ago, and he could ask the sneak for the instruction codes. Yes, he had thought so. But I suggested he didn’t use transformations, as what Jahenry’s mob couldn’t crack might
arouse suspicion. In some ways he was like a little kid. He had
nothing political to say, just didn’t want them listening in, but
finally he sent the call on open beam. H alf an hour later his wife’s
reply came in. She was worried too. Some archaeological big jack
coming to see the opening of the tomb had been shot out of the sky
> leaving Otzapoc. It was supposed to have been a mistake, but the
big jack was dead anyway, dead beyond hope of reconstruction.
After that it was a long trip, Fainey-Juveh catatonic with rage
and gloom, me unable to cheer him spinning slowly down into my
own black vortex of nightmare where Kolissa was torn from me
and torn apart, me torn apart as she was torn apart in the black
bottomless vortex of space, those stars mocking through the falling
falling glass, our can falling falling spinning slowly down the vortex
to nothing. I . . . I . . . 1 . , . Couldn’t think I. Couldn’t without
Kolissa think I, without Kolissa I am not whole, I am already torn
apart and the mist of her blood, my blood, our blood freezing in
black iron microscopic droplets clouds of invisible black glass
microdrops lost in the mocking hollows between the stars. Severed
like pitiful disgusting halfshell Fomalhauti by Jahenry’s steel wall
which jerking clipped black moustaches drop like a guillotine
blade. Severed and spinning . . .
On Trivash I started to drink. I should have known better but I
spent two days lurching from hour to hour with hours lost between,
from m orning to noon, from stupor to lucidity, loathsome to myself
with alcoholic sand beneath my eyelids and the skin of my arms,
my hands heavy and hot wdth thick blood from my drunken heart.
Hateful to myself (lying in my closed room) for caving in like this in
front of Fainey-Juveh’s lovely brow'n angel wife. His second wife —
‘I got rid of the other one,’ he had said, then amended that: ‘Well, we
no longer suited each other when it came to it, and we agreed to
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part. It was very civilised, really.’ And married this brown angel
many years younger than himself. But she already had her two
daughters and he, childless before, loved them and her — loved
with passion, loved with joy, where before he had been able to love
only his dead dust empire. So that when we circled pocked and pitted dark savage ravaged airless Trivash greater than I had imagined but me seeing nothing, no sign of scratching humanity, only his
camp, beneath rolling Bubutap more huge than I had dreamed, the
star-sky and the rest of the universe making way for him, and when
we squeezed down (me squeezed in the coffee-stained couch),
squeezed, cushioned, lightly stood then walked through the tunnel
to the camp sitting partly above ground like frogs’ eyes and partly
below, his three angels met him (the only three people on Trivash I
had discovered and was surprised) and dragged his soul up out of
the black horrors into mere burning and abiding anger — while I
was more alone because he was made whole hand in hand with
Praliya, with Limini and Pixr clinging and jigging around them.
Limini and Pixr, eleven and nine years old, with teeth, such palisades of gleaming teeth because they knew no other expression than smiling and open-mouthed laughing — their pageboy hair
ebony black, their elfish upswept eyes black too or brown so dark
that their pupils were not visible in shining jewel irises. Even then,
while they were still shy of me the stranger from black space, they
laughed enough for me as they stood clinging to Fainey-Juveh’s
long fingers squealing in the bone-fine voices of little animals —
‘Hello hello hello’
‘Hello hello hello hello’
‘Welcome M r Spiragel M r Spiragel’
‘M r Spiragel welcome’
‘Welcome’
(cannoning the words breathlessly)
‘W hat’s your first name?’
‘Yes what’s your first name?’
‘Can we use it?’
‘Can we?’
‘Can we?’
(Fainey-Juveh and happy Praliya watching the three of us)
I said, ‘Bandito — Bandy.’
‘Welcome Bandy Bandy’
‘Bandy Bandy’
‘Bandy Bandy’
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‘Bandy SpirageF
‘Bandy Spiragel’
‘BAN-dy Spir-AH-geF
‘Ban-DEE SpirageF
‘Bandy Spira-GEL’
‘Bandy Bandy Spir-AH-geF
‘Bandy SprAAAgel SprAAAgeF
‘Bandy SprAAAgel . . .
Their lovely mother (also dark and elfin eyed) shushed them now
but rny name had become a bubbling spring of laughter and my
heart was smiling.
This was after Fainey-Juveh had picked them up, thrown them in
the air — surprisingly strong for so stooping and eyeglassed a man,
but he was tall in baggy clothes and horse-laughing.
Praliya comforted me in her quiet gliding m anner during my
disgusting drunk. It was she first gave me the booze when I asked
for it, and continued giving even when my veins ran pure alcohol
and my mind drooled. She would comfort but not coerce, nor even
guide — and anyway I spent most of my time in the room they gave
me. And no news came from Otzapoc. Fainey-Juveh remained
friendly in a distant sort of way but I hardly saw anything of him —
he seemed to have handed me over to Praliya to look after. But I
usually ate with them, except for a couple of occasions when I was
too repulsive to myself to burden them (she and the girls, mainly)
with my presence. Another ship had downed on Trivash just before
us to wait out the embargo. We didn’t see them, but talked, and
they offered to ride me to Otzapoc when it was lifted — to find
what? smoking ruins and . . . Reason could not dispel my nightmares. The dark frozen slag of Trivash had said Death to me as we circled down (me somewhere in the corridors of my brain still holding a picture of the emperors’ garden green and lilac skied) and Fainey-Juveh’s great festal celebratory opening of the most magnificent tomb of all time was shadowed, maybe even cancelled completely, I didn’t know, by the death of the big-hat archaeologist, and the alcohol was killing my brain cells at a million a day yet I soused
more upon them via my stinking throat . . .
Limini and Pixr got me out of it. True, I had been in love with
them from first seeing of them, in their gala gay red silk identical
overalls. They came into my room from time to time to laugh and
scold me for being drunk — they even told me Kolissa wouldn’t like
it, Kolissa whose name they had wrung from me with their fierce
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demands. Now they confiscated a bottle and a half of Scotch — all I
had — and ordered me with sternness (from which they could not
exclude — that was impossible — their laughing teeth) to stop
drinking. This time they were dressed in short black pleated skirts
and white blouses; each wore a black gem around her neck, and
white strapped sandals set with similar stones. Drunkenly I loved
them, their amazing white rows of teeth, their black jewel sloping
eyes, their shining ebony hair, the shape of their childish legs. And
they smelt nice. They danced around me and bounced on the
sweaty tangled bed where I was lying.
‘You smell nice,’ I said, then worried drunkenly in case that was
too familiar a thing to say to prepubescent girls.
Limini screwed her girl-buddha face. ‘You smel
l horrible — you
stink.’
Pixr screwed her girl buddha slightly monkeyish face. ‘Stinky
stinky Spiragel, Stinky Spiragel, Stinky Spiragel.’
‘Stinky Spiragel, Stinky Spiragel . . . ’
I was full of shame and laughter, but that was the end of my
drunk. Oh lovely Limini and Pixr, will I never see you again?
Fainey-Juveh had decided to visit the tomb. With the official-
style entry held up indefinitely he had grown impatient and was
now going to take his family in to view the wonders of long-dead
kings. His family, and me. He wanted to take me, an outsider, but
the girls had heard him say ‘I will not take that drunken space
tram p in there’ and they figured that if I wasn’t drunk everyone
would be happy.
The next day everyone was happy — except me. Long-boned
Fainey-Juveh picked up the kids and tossed them in the air so they
shrieked. Praliya reflected the mood of those three and I tried to,
but failed. Stepping carefully on the ramp I misjudged my balance
and as I paused my outstretched hand reached short of the grip
near the flyer door. Praliya saw how that hand, gaunt in glove, was
shaking. The others w'ere already in the car. Her gentle smile
opened in me the abscess of my own worthlessness. In the funereal
glare of monstrous Bubutap we swooped nauseously up over the
flayed corpse face of Trivash, me seeing in the careering of these
two great globes beyond our crystal canopy only panoramic instants of the death dance of the universe as I struggled in the drowning consciousness of my coiling misused despairing entrails.
‘Ran-DEE,’ accused Limini, ‘your face is white.’
I could have wept to visit upon her and Pixr (who, sensing my
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despair, was woefully silent) this unhappiness of a-white face, a
wrong face, a vacuum where joy was concerned, a joyless hole in
the full bright universe.
‘Bandy doesn’t want to be bothered by you just now,’ said Praliya
and I could only silently thank her, turning to look out over slaggy
stumps of mountains but seeing little. Later I forced myself to talk
to Fainey-Juveh about the garden world that had been. To him the
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