8
Various Gods Out of Assorted Machines
Ten minutes to twelve on the last night of the world, and there was a carnival on Burr Street. The idea was ludicrous, of course.
It had begun among the Negroes who’d been driven out of the ‘African quarter’ by the fires and the lynch-mobs. The black folk had rites and customs nobody else could understand, the people said, and Burr Street was the most powerful proof that anyone could have imagined. One of the men – the bastard offspring of a slave and a farmer’s wife, according to rumour (but then, according to rumour, everybody was the bastard offspring of a slave and a farmer’s wife) – had fled the riots and taken shelter in the quiet streets near the docks, where he’d begun some damned peculiar ceremony of mourning. He’d spoken words in an alien tongue, sung songs that made no musical sense, drummed out a queer rhythm on an improvised instrument. As far as the residents of Burr Street knew, it had started as a dirge.
But others had gathered around the man. At first they’d just been other Africans, engaging themselves in ‘uncivilized’ dances as the locals watched, nervously, from the shadows. Then, unexpectedly, some of the white folk had joined in; the ones who’d been labelled ‘diabolists’ by the Renewalists, the ones who’d become outcasts in the space of one night, the ones who’d run from their homes when the rioting had started on Paris Street. They were dancing to different rhythms, and stayed clear of the larger Negro groups, but they were all part of the same process. One rhythm became a hundred. One rhythm became a Cacophony.
Two streets away, houses were being searched and looted, windows smashed and doors broken down. Around the corner, an alleyway was burning, fire creeping towards the heart of the town like a spark on a fuse. But here, there was a carnival; a carnival of the lost and the scared and the unwanted, defying the rationalists’ ‘new order’ in the only way they could. The last dance. The party at the end of the world.
The idea was ludicrous, of course.
Samuel Lincoln crawled out of a side-street, following the sounds of music, and saw what was happening on Burr Street. Five minutes later, he’d learned how to dance.
Daniel Tremayne had forgotten how to run. The process involved moving your feet in a particular sequence, he knew that much, but the details wouldn’t come to him He tripped and stumbled along the street, Forrester gripped his hand, tugging him upright whenever he fell. Half the journey was made on his knees.
At last they came to a halt, in the shadow of a law office at the end of Hazelrow Avenue; Daniel couldn’t read the plaque on the front door, but any building that big and ugly and pompous just had to be a law office. Across the street, a rain-sodden man with wide eyes and a torn topcoat was yelling something about the end of the world, banging on the doors of houses like a drunkard. There was an overturned carriage by the side of the road, horse and owner long since fled.
‘I think we’re okay,’ said Forrester, checking the street behind them. ‘What happened back there must have distracted him He isn’t coming after us.’
Distracted? Was that all she could say? Daniel could still smell lightning in the air, and he tried not to look down at his shirt. It had been a good shirt, taken from a tailor’s workroom in Dill Village, from right under the owner’s nose. Now it was covered with tiny spots of black and pink. Marks of burning, and something that was almost like candle-fat.
‘We’d better move carefully, all the same. Catcher’s a grade-one psycho. You heard those voices of his. Creepy.’
Daniel tried to concentrate on what she was saying. ‘Voices?’
‘Yeah. That "remove the agent of Cacophony" thing.’ Daniel hadn’t heard any ‘voices’, and he wondered if Forrester had special witch-hearing. ‘This is getting out of hand, Danny. You see that smoke over those rooftops? The town’s going up in flames. We’re going to have to put a stop to this.’
‘Stop. Hah.’ Daniel slumped to the ground, resting his back against the carriage. ‘Catcher’s got a gun. I saw someone go up against two Italians with guns, once. They put bullets through all his wrists and ankles. Just left him lying there.’
‘All smiles, aren’t you?’ Forrester started scratching at her wrist, as if she had a rash there. ‘People are getting hurt here, Daniel. A long time ago, I swore an oath to stop people getting hurt. At least, unless it was me doing the hurting. And I’ve got a kind of responsibility to this town, okay? Even if I can’t stand the damn place. Let’s just say I’ve done things here I want to make up for. Besides, we don’t need guns.’
Her hand slipped into her pouch.
‘We’ve got this,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Matheson Catcher, but SORRY IS NOT A RATIONAL WORD. He knelt, ashes staining his pantaloons. On the floor beside him, the shape of the electro-static galvanistic rifle started to blur and spread, melting into a silver smudge and seeping into the dust. As if Catcher no longer had the will to keep the weapon in one piece.
Catcher stared at the body of Isaac Penley in front of him. A trunk, a blue-black stump. There were pieces of horror scattered around the saloon. ODDS AND ENDS. Catcher reached out, touching the scorched flesh. BITS AND BOBS.
He started collecting together the fragments of what had once been a man, scraping them out from between the broken boards of the old King George. Behind him, the shadows were tumbling and THERE IS A RATIONAL EXPLANATION FOR EVERYTHING so many pieces, pieces that made no sense and CLEAN IT UP! CLEAN IT ALL UP! Watchmakers, I have failed you. Isaac, I’m so very PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER. CLEAN IT UP!
Yes. That was his duty, wasn’t it? As an agent of Reason, he had a responsibility to take the pieces and assemble them into a Reasonable, meaningful whole. What was man, but the finest of clockworks?
He found a twisted length of arm in the corner. A fractured piece of skull. He lay them side by side, all the pieces, all the remains that still sparkled with galvanistic energy. Isaac Penley was just a humpty-dumpty little man.
From the shadows, the Watchmakers gave him instructions.
INSERT PART ‘A’ INTO SLOT B’...
‘Marielle,’ Christopher Cwej was calling. ‘Marielle!’
Duquesne tried to focus on his voice, but couldn’t. The pain was beyond belief, beyond description, so intense that she could no longer remember any other sensation, and was beginning to wonder if this was actually pleasure, and she’d just forgotten how to enjoy it. Her spine felt as though it had been turned to ashes.
‘Over here,’ called Cwej, but there was no way of telling where ‘here’ was. Duquesne tried to concentrate. Seen from this angle, the darkness in front of her looked almost like a desert, the ground rolling like an ocean...
‘Bearing the mark,’ said one of the dunes.
Duquesne tried to cry out, but a quick gurgle was the best she could manage. Beside her, two shapes were congealing out of the sands, bright colours exploding across their shadow-bodies. Within moments, the figures were wearing robes of dirty scarlet, with hoods like the wimples of nuns pulled over their heads.
‘Lost,’ said one of the Beautiful Shining Daughters of Hysteria.
‘Lost as she can get,’ added the other.
Duquesne lowered her eyes.
‘You are not here,’ she insisted. ‘You are phantoms, like the infamous fiends of San Stefano. You are nightmares or bad memories. The last of the Daughters of Hysteria died four years ago in München. I was there when their tabernacle was razed to the ground. I was there when they burned.’
The nearest of the Daughters grinned. A skeletal grin across a skinless face. In München, the Daughters had ritually stripped the skin from each other’s faces, replacing it with torn shreds of newspaper. Deep green eyes peered out of heads that looked like papier mâché.
‘Bearing the mark,’ the nearest said, holding up a burning brand. ‘Kiss of the mad.’
Duquesne’s hand shot to her left cheek. Without thinking
‘No escape,’ the other Daughter of Hysteria added.
; ‘No escape. The mark lasts a lifetime. There is no Reason. There is no reprieve. Marielle of the Endless Sorrows.’
Duquesne just turned away.
‘I refuse to see the world this way,’ she said, realizing that her words seemed less than rational. ‘I will look from another angle. See? You are gone.’
And it was true. She was no longer in a desert, because she no longer chose to see the darkness as a desert. Now she was in a city, in backstreets littered with loose cobblestones. Christopher Cwej’s voice was calling to her from the streets and the alleyways.
The smell of Paris was in the air. And Paris, as ever, smelt of sewage.
‘Who are you?’ asked the Doctor, trying his best to sound casual.
He was lying face-down in the middle of the street, his head twisted to one side, his right ear pressed against the ground. The man with the smile was still standing over him, while passing rioters and refugees scurried around them without giving them so much as a second glance. As if the Doctor and his assailant existed on the periphery of their perception. Things to be avoided, but never really noticed.
That’s the way this man wants it, thought the Doctor. He has a better grasp of light and shade than I could have imagined. He could stand in the middle of an empty field and make it look like a shadowy corner. Right now, we might as well be invisible.
The Doctor felt, rather than saw, the man’s grin broadening. ‘My name is Raphael. My designation is chirurgeon. My augury code is Baby-Pierre-Baby-Tao.’ His voice was cultured, English with a hint of a recently acquired American accent.
‘Name, rank and serial number? How very inspired.’
‘What else would you want to know?’
‘Well, for a start, I was wondering if you could remove this... object.’ The Doctor shrugged, to indicate the steel implement lodged between his shoulder-blades. The scalpel had penetrated his clothing, the tip coming to a halt just below the surface of his skin; no serious damage had been done, but the metal was tickling a paraspinal nerve or two. He remembered that he was still tuned to a human frequency of thought. That meant he had human pain perception, of course. If he was going to alter his neural processes, now might be the time.
On the other hand, a forced shift of perspectives often left him temporarily confused, absent-minded, or unable to remember what candyfloss was. Not a good state to be in, he pondered, if a maniac was poking a scalpel into your back. Ah, what a dilemma.
‘Perhaps I will,’ said Raphael. ‘Incidentally, if I recall my caillou physiognomy correctly, the blade is currently two inches from a major nerve cluster. I wouldn’t think of moving my arms, in your position. I trust you’re comfortable, however?’
‘Not particularly.’ caillou. Chirurgeon. The Doctor’s attempts to rearrange his synapses were interrupted by the nagging thought that he was missing something. ‘Still, it’s better than having your negative impulses sucked out by an alien mind-parasite.’
Raphael looked blank. Probably.
‘It’s an expression,’ said the Doctor.
‘Oh.’
‘But while we’re on the subject, what makes you think that my physiognomy – and you don’t pronounce the "g", incidentally – is any different to yours?’
‘Oh, I’m sure I know a caillou when one crosses my path. Though I may not have the finely honed senses of some of our other agents, I can certainly spot an anomaly in a crowd. There are signs. Now, as I am only ever dispatched in time of crisis, I can only assume that in this case you are the crisis, and thus must be duly removed. Correct?’
‘No, actually.’ Agents. Dispatched. The man was a trained assassin. Trained to kill... what? ‘The roots of this madness are planted in Earthly soil, Raphael.’
‘I’m sorry...?’
‘I’m not the one you want,’ explained the Doctor. And again, he tried adding a hypnotic lilt to his voice. The assassin didn’t seem to notice.
‘No? Oh. Never mind.’ Raphael shrugged. ‘All the same, I have my job to do. Professional duty, you understand.’
‘Ah. I see.’
Five minutes to midnight.
Somebody had brought the remains of the ‘attractions’ from Eastern Walk. The tents had been turned into flags, mismatched colours blurring together in the rain, stars and stripes and astrological symbols over Burr Street. A woman was standing on top of a stack of beer barrels, her half-dressed body wrapped in a toga of red, white, and blue, her head crowned with a wreath of playing-cards. She was throwing something sickly and alcoholic over the crowds, which – in Erskine’s view – was a crime in itself. On the far side of a wall of buildings, where the town met the sea, there were strange rhythms leaking from the hold of a cargo ship.
Erskine took a sideways glance at Walter Monroe. He could have sworn he saw the slit-eyes of the man’s mask narrow.
‘Cacophony’s children,’ Monroe hissed, and the words were perfectly audible even over the din of beaten barrels and howling dancers.
Erskine looked around. The other Renewalists – there were less of them now, as some had split off from the main group to take their prisoners for interrogation – were shifting uneasily, fists clenched tight around makeshift weapons. Erskine no longer knew which ones were ‘real’ members of the Society, and which were townsfolk who’d made their own masks and joined the parade.
Then there were bodies moving around him, pushing at his back, urging him forward. Monroe began advancing on the carnival, but the dancers hardly noticed as the Renewalists surged towards them. Weapons raised. Muscles tensed like springs.
A second later, they were charging, swinging broken timbers and broken bottles, ploughing into the carnival. Erskine Morris ploughed with the best of them.
Two. Three. Four. Five.
They were still marching. Even without the guidance of Mr Monroe – or Brother Monroe, as they’d come to know him – they still remained resolute, determined that good, clean, decent, rational order would be imposed on Woodwicke before the dawn came. Most of the prisoners had stopped struggling now, their strength worn away by the slaps and the kicks until they looked like patchwork dolls made of caked blood and bruised flesh.
Two. Three. Four. Five.
‘Morality police. Freeze.’
Witnesses later said that the witch-woman had appeared ‘as if from nowhere’, and that her bearing was so confident that she could almost have been an aristocrat. They also said that there was a boy with her, sandy-haired and cloaked in cinders; some said he looked nervous, others claimed he looked like he just didn’t care any more.
All reports agreed on one thing. There was a pause, of embarrassment as well as surprise, before the Renewalists came to their senses and began advancing on the witch-woman, fists and clubs at the ready.
But that was nothing to the surprise they felt when the woman dropped a little golden ball to the ground, and it began to spin, scratching new and frightening patterns into the dust.
Marielle Duquesne was sitting in a restaurant in Imaginary Paris, watching the common people – the aristocrats had all been executed, of course, except for her – eating their cake, but it was hard to tell where their faces ended and the food began. There was a clock sitting on the other side of her table, drumming its fingers patiently. Duquesne recognized it as the machine from her dream, the one whose face she’d cracked. Now the mechanism looked to be on the verge of falling apart.
‘I quite like the decor,’ the clock said. ‘The eighteenth century isn’t really my favourite period, though.’
Duquesne regarded the machine quizzically. ‘Answer me a question, Mademoiselle Horloge,’ she said. ‘Have I become mad, or is all of this an illusion?’
The clock chuckled with a click-tong-click-tong sound. ‘Neither. This is the world as you made it, Mlle Duquesne.’
‘I? I am not in the business of making worlds.’
The clock sounded surprised. ‘There are an infinite number of ways you can perceive this place, Marielle. May I call you Marielle? Thank you
. You’re still in the dark, still in my little realm, where you’ve been ever since the TARDIS lost its grip on itself. But of all the possibilities in the darkness, this is the one you wished for the most, the one you’ve chosen to live with. You see? All this... all this is yours.’
Outside on the street, Cwej ran past, yelling her name. A few seconds later a horde of Revolutionaries in ragged blue uniforms ran after him. Their faces were blank except for their oversized mouths, each one a miniature guillotine.
‘Your world,’ hummed the clock. ‘Not mine.’
‘Before you get too carried away with your work, may I ask a question?’
The Doctor’s face was still pressed against the road. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his assassin nod. ‘Of course. There is no hurry. I appreciate this chance to talk. In my line of work, there’s very little opportunity for conversation of a professional nature.’
‘I can imagine. Who do you think I am?’
‘A caillou. An element of disruption. Such creatures bring uncertainty to the world order, and therefore must be expunged.’ The Doctor briefly wondered what it would feel like to be ‘expunged’, then forced himself to concentrate on Raphael’s words: ‘Furthermore, it seems likely that your origin is of the aether, not terrestrial. Professor Hulot in Orléans believes your kind hail from the far-off planet Astra, though the matter is in dispute. We are not as skilled at probing the memories of a caillou as we are at exploring the physical shell, regrettably.’
‘Obviously not,’ sniffed the Doctor. ‘Astra is a horrible place. Typical twenty-fifth century Earth colony. All pot-plants and air-conditioning. Waste of a decent terraforming opportunity, in my view. But you’ve dealt with my kind before?’
Raphael seemed quite happy to listen to his ramblings. ‘Naturally. You are one of les bêtes aux deux coeurs, am I correct? The devils with two hearts.’ The Doctor winced at his French. ‘I am quite prepared to deal with all the tricks that your kind have at their disposal. I was amused, incidentally, by your attempts to hypnotize me. And your martial arts skills are considerable, though your left arm seems to be doing twice the work of your other extremities. I suspect the species which developed the moves you attempted possessed a fifth limb, or other such protrusion.’
Christmas on a Rational Planet Page 18