Sacrifice of Fools

by Ian McDonald

  Windows close and open. It’s dark outside, the wind has risen and is driving the rain against the glass. Something is flapping in the yard.

  ‘From the Corrosoun Geduldehan, canto thirty-seven, part nine, stanzas twenty-five to twenty-seven. “Sestrahunna” — she’s a kind of Cuchulain figure, a Shian superheroine, cantos thirty to forty-five are dedicated to her exploits — “Sestrahunna’s people had been much troubled by the Hold of Great Safety, who were stirring up the other Holds to challenge the Corrosoun demesne. Therefore she went to the residence of the spirits” — what we’d now call a sacred space; the Shian dreaming has evolved a lot in sophistication since these things were written. “There she met a man dressed in crimson with a head-piece set with a thousand mirrors. He carried in his right hand a gutting knife. He greeted her and told her he was the Drinker of the Red Earth, the Divider of the Waters, the Cutter. He said that the people of Great Safety Hold were committing great folly. They were trying to hunt a river.” Note the “she” here.’

  ‘It’s the kesh form.’

  ‘Exactly. Couple of important points. The Shian didn’t go through a semi-aquatic phase in their evolution like humans did. They’re a very terrestrial species, they don’t like water, they don’t trust water. It can’t be contained, it’s liquid, mercurial, and it’s dangerous. You can drown in just a puddle of it. They have a great fear of drowning; it’s the most terrible death to them, because it’s always done alone, separate from the community. It’s a kind of annihilation. Water, the sea, lakes, rivers have sinister connotations in the Geduldehanna. It’s full of stories of lone Shian who were entranced by their reflection in water, fell in and were drowned. Trying to hunt a river is the ultimate folly, wasting the energy of the Hold on catching something that cannot be caught. The gutting knife is important as well. It has semi-ritual connotations. After the hunt the intestines and sex organs of the prey are removed — the sex organs are thought unlucky, except during kesh, when they are eaten as a delicacy. The text goes on: “Drinker of Red Earth, Divider of the Waters, the Cutter gave her the gutting knife, and told her to commit upon them the sacrifice of fools”.’

  ‘It what?’

  ‘There’s more. “She called upon herself shadows and wearing them like a cloak, she went to the Great Safety Hold and passed through its fences and hedges. She came unseen to the people of Great Safety, and their children with them, and with the gutting knife committed on their bodies the sacrifice of fools, unto the smallest child, sparing none so that their folly might not be perpetuated. Then she took the organs that she had cut from the adults and cooked them on the fire, and ate them, and the folly was ended and there was peace between the Corrosoun and their neighbours.” ’

  Gillespie looks at the sinuous Shian script on the screen. He shivers. The cold has got into the warm room, inside him.

  ‘You’re telling me that Sounsurresh’s family, the Harridis, McIvor Kyle’s family, have been killed by a legend?’

  ‘There’s often truth behind our monster stories. Let’s take vampires. Solitary hunters of human beings. Damned souls. Deeply disturbed individuals, we’d call them these days. Ritual aspects to their killings, mutilation of the victims. Displaced sexual desire.’

  ‘Serial killers,’ Gillespie says. ‘And this sacrificer of fools, he’s stepped off the legends into our world. Into Belfast, Northern Ireland. No shortage of fools here. Christ, when I asked Ounserrat what “Sacrifice of Fools” meant, she told me it was a story, a legend, something made up to scare children.’

  ‘She didn’t lie to you.’

  ‘No wonder they want to keep it secret.’

  ‘Perfectly rational behaviour to them. Eliminate the threat before it even starts to threaten. Makes a lot of sense to me.’

  ‘But the family, the children.’

  ‘Eradicating the taint from the genepool. These people are deeply unsentimental when it comes to eugenics. What’s a few bodies in the foundations, when you look at our head count in two world wars? There’re enough nuclear warheads to kill every human on earth fifty times over, and a male sexuality that positively seeks conflict. Who’s scaring the shit out of whom?’

  Gillespie sits down in the comfortable, tattered chair again. Empty beer cans and glasses are at his feet.

  ‘I’m finding this a bit hard to believe. OK, we’ve worked out what, but we haven’t a fucking clue who.’

  Littlejohn’s silence is political.

  ‘You do have a fucking clue who.’

  Littlejohn rolls his eyes.

  ‘Someone you got before all this broke. When you thought it was a human. Except it isn’t, but you still have a suspicion. Oh, come on. For fuck’s sake. You can’t be serious.’

  ‘He fits the profile.’

  ‘Eamon Donnan is no more a fool killer than I am.’

  ‘You fitted the profile, for a while.’

  ‘You were wrong about me, you were wrong that it couldn’t be a Shian, you’re wrong about Eamon. He’s a mate.’

  ‘This working-class ex-con male bonding is very touching, but Charlie Manson was once somebody’s mate. You say he’s a mate. All right. So what kind of a mate fucks off the moment he gets out to join the Shian? What kind of a mate is it thinks so little of humans that he wants to be an Outsider? Humans, including you, mate. Counts for a lot, doesn’t it? Did he ever give a moment’s consideration to what his good mate Andy Gillespie might feel about him turning himself into a Shian? What do you know about him? What did you ever know about him? Really know?’

  ‘Do not, ever, try to stick your fucking psychology up his ass, right?’

  ‘I’m not doing anything. I’m just telling what’s happening. You know what a sacred space can do to your head, let alone the kesh chemicals. He’s on his own, not one of them, but definitely not one of us, taking this stuff into him with every breath, and every breath is taking him further from what he hates into what he loves. But he can’t love them. He’s not Shian enough for that. He’s got a dick and he knows what to do with it, but what he wants to do with it the Shian don’t. He can’t love them how they want to be loved.’

  ‘He kills them because he can’t fuck them?’

  ‘Killing is never that simple. It’s like a very fine liqueur; there can be dozens — hundreds — of ingredients in the recipe, all reacting and co-acting with each other, infusing, imparting their particular combination of flavours over a long time. Years. Decades.’

  Murder like Drambuie, or Galliano in a tall yellow bottle. Jesus.

  ‘You’re talking bollocks. Why start by killing the people you want to be part of?’

  ‘To show how much he loves them. He’s sitting in that sacred space, trying to find a way of loving them so they won’t hate him, and then this hahndahvi comes out of the light dressed in a crimson robe with this big tall headdress and a gutting knife in one hand and says, I know how you can show how much you love us. Those bodies are a love-offering to the Harridi Nation, like a cat leaving a dead sparrow in your slipper. Look what I’ve done, I killed for you. I’ve sacrificed fools to you, dangerous fools, threats to your children and the Nations’ genelines. Look how much I love you. Murder is sex misspelled.’

  Gillespie’s standing up now, agitated, about to pace up and down the study carpet. Littlejohn’s behind the desk, sitting down, lower than Gillespie, but he’s the one in command here.

  ‘I’ll go to Queen’s Island, I’ll find him, I’ll prove to you that Eamon Donnan is not a killer.’

  ‘You’ll have a job.’ Gillespie remembers that smart-smart tone of voice quite well. You can’t stop it, can you? For a wee time we had it, we were two guys, working together, getting along, respecting each other’s abilities, but you had to make it so there’s a high and a low and a clever and a stupid and a university lecturer and a mechanic from the Woodstock Road. The world has to tell you how clever you are.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The police went in yesterday morning. They turned the pla
ce upside down; nearly started a riot. Donnan’s flown the coop.’

  Gillespie balls a fist but there’s nothing to strike it against.

  ‘Stupid stupid stupid.’ Suddenly decided, he grabs his coat and pulls it on.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Littlejohn asks.

  ‘I’m going to make Ounserrat Soulereya tell me the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help her God. Genro to genro. She knows. She’ll tell me. I’ll prove it’s not Eamon Donnan, and you can stick your psychology.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift.’ Gillespie senses that Littlejohn’s genuinely conciliatory, that he knows he’s pushed too hard and too far, but he’s not going to sell forgiveness for a ride in a car. That was working-class male bonding. This is working-class male pride.

  ‘I’ll walk.’

  ‘It’s pissing down. You’re in no condition to go anywhere.’

  ‘I don’t want your fucking lift, right?’

  It’s a cunt of a night. Within twenty footsteps Gillespie’s wet through. He turns up his collar, puts his head down, limps on through the dark and the wet. Sour Belfast rain runs down the back of his neck, into his eyes. It’s been doing that to him all his life. There’s not even a single masochistic jogger on the embankments tonight. The people in the cars that pass stare at him like he was out on Care in the Community.

  At first he doesn’t make anything out of the fact that he can’t hear any music. Males go crazy on hormone heat, but they couldn’t dance in this weather. Then he sees the crowd on the ground beneath Ounserrat’s flat. There are males in dance gear, females in and out of formal costume, kids, standing in the rain, thin and wet as refugees. There are more of them on the steps, and along the landing and at the open door. One at the top of the steps spots the human first. All the heads turn simultaneously.

  ‘What the fuck is going on here?’

  Two big females at the top of the stairs try to stop him going on to the landing.

  ‘You would be advised not to proceed any further,’ one says.

  ‘I’m Andy Gillespie, I work with her.’

  ‘We know,’ the other says.

  ‘What’s happened? Something’s happened, what’s going on?’

  ‘We would emphatically advise you to leave,’ the first one says. They move closer together to better block him.

  ‘Get the fuck out of my way.’ With a grit of pain, Andy Gillespie picks up one of the females and throws her over the low stair wall. He doesn’t look to see how she falls, he doesn’t hear her odd high-pitched wail, or notice the Shian rushing to help her. All there is is the open apartment door, and Outsiders that, if they are sensible, will keep out of his way. They’re sensible. He bulls into the tiny hall.

  ‘Ounserrat,’ he bellows.

  Into the big living room.

  ‘Oh Jesus fuck.’

  The first body is face down on the carpet, feet towards the door. Arms outspread, fingers splayed. Face down. It hasn’t even got a head, let alone a face. Just that big fan of red on the carpet, like a river delta.

  All he can hear are his careful, measured breaths. He goes up to the body, stands over it. It’s dressed in a pair of blue baggies. Its bare torso is covered in faded patterns in black felt marker. Gillespie closes his eyes, to enjoy the come of guilty pleasure that it’s not her.

  The second body is by the window. It’s sprawled back on the sofa. It’s dressed in black leather jeans and a denim jacket. He knows those clothes. The blue denim is purple with blood. Gillespie advances towards Ounserrat. Her left arm is missing from just below the shoulder. Blood everywhere. So much blood. Blood oozing from the seared stump of the arm. Her face is a mask of blood. She has a face. An erect genro staff lies at her feet. The window is pink with meat drizzle. Gillespie kneels, sobbing, trying to stop the blood, stop her life running away through his fingers.

  The body twitches.

  Gillespie is too terrified to move.

  An arm comes out from behind the body. A head, shoulders, a body wriggles free. A spindly homunculus, covered in blood. It staggers to its feet on the sofa.

  — Gillespie, Gillespie, it sings in Hot Narha. — Fool Slayer, Fool Slayer, Fool Slayer.

  ‘An ambulance!’ Andy Gillespie roars to the Shian that have ventured into the hall. ‘Get a fucking ambulance!’

  ‘Hi, honey, I’m home. Early.’

  What makes John Willich boss of bosses is that he knows when you’re shattered and bruised and just about thinking but still have a gallon or so in the tank, and when you’re shattered and bruised and just about thinking and if you have to run any further you’ll fall out of the sky.

  ‘Hons? Michael?’

  Saying enough, done, quitting for the day grates Roisin Dunbar’s soul. She could never trust others not to fuck it up. And if they do, it’ll come back to her. But Willich said go home, eat, drink, have a bath, play with your kid, take your husband out to dinner, see a film, just do something that isn’t this investigation, in his tone of it isn’t an order now but it will be if I have to repeat it.

  ‘Mikey?’ If he’s got the VR rig on he mightn’t be able to hear her. She checks the downstairs anyway. Mugs balanced on the arms on sofas and chairs. Can’t he grasp the simple principle of sticking used coffee mugs in the dishwasher? Except he can never be bothered to empty the dishwasher. You buy a dishwasher because you’re too lazy to wash dishes, and then you’re too lazy to unstack the thing. She sticks the Chilean Chardonnay she picked up on the way home in the fridge. OK, if she has to take time off, she’s going to make it work for her.

  ‘Mikey? Hons?’

  Upstairs now, but she can’t feel the house breathing. She can always sense another human presence in a building. Prickle of body fields rubbing past each other. He’s probably nipped out to the wee shop. If he’s left Louise home alone, he’ll be getting his balls on a plate for dinner. With Chilean Chardonnay. Come home early and catch all your little domestic sins. She can hear the infrasonic whine of an active television screen in his study. Monitor’s on.

  ‘Mikey? Louise?’ She sticks her head in to make sure her instincts aren’t fooling her. They aren’t. Screensaver superheroes swoop across the monitor, fists out-thrust.

  On the chair, what’s that?

  There’s webbing to it, and buckles and snaps fasteners, and padded bits and bits that stick out and stick in and cable. Lots of computer cable. She holds it up and it falls into shape and it’s obvious how it’s worn and where everything fits and what they do. She can smell the wheaty, bready musk of come.

  The first thing she wants to do is drop it. The second is be sick. The third is somehow convince herself she has never seen it. The big thought in her head is my life is over. Everything I thought I had is nothing, everything I believed is a lie. Ashed and blown away in a single second.

  She doesn’t drop the suit. She isn’t sick. Nothing will convince her to unsee what she has found here. She sits down in Michael’s chair. Her elbow nudges the mouse. The Captain Screensavers disappear. Underneath is a net connection document. CyberSex On-line Interactive.

  I don’t want to look at this.

  Look at this.

  Meatmaster@genesis.com to Miss Sylvie@demon.co.uk.

  Meatmaster. She’s going to boke again. She fights it down. Com. commenced 17.15. Com. session ended 18.18. Total elapsed time, 63.45 mins. Full interactivity: 48.1 minutes.

  There’s a message in a little window surrounded by red hearts at the bottom of the screen. To Meatmaster: oooh! you hit my G-spot, and my HIJKL and M spots too. Same time next week! Can’t wait, big boy. Above it is a picture of a big-tittied slapper pursing Marilyn Monroe lips at a camera.

  And what picture did Meatmaster Michael Dunbar show you?

  The net holds a lot of lies.

  She sits back, hand on chest, breathing heavily. She sees the computer link. She sees the suit. She sees the desk lamp.

  Do it, Rosh.

  Miss Sylvie answers her Meatmaster after three rings.


  Back so soon, darlin’? Dunbar imagines a Deep Saath drawl behind the e-mail. Well, I’m hot and ready for you.

  Good, darlin’. Dunbar jerks the flex out of the desk lamp and shoves the live wires into the plastic penis holster. The socket circuit fuses with a bang. The computer dies. Did that perm your little pussy, Miss Sylvie@demon.co.uk?

  She hears the front door open.

  ‘Rosh?’ He’ll have seen her car. He won’t know if she’s found his toy, so he’ll play it innocent and cool. ‘You’re home early.’ For a third time, she wants to throw. That sickening fake innocence.

  ‘Could you come up here a minute?’

  There’s a pause before he climbs the stairs. In that pause he knows she knows. He appears in the doorway. He’s got Louise in her baby carrier.

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Give me Louise.’ She puts her on the floor. She doesn’t want her near that thing. ‘Well, say something.’ But he doesn’t. He never does. He just stands and says nothing because he knows that anything he says she will wrest from him and use to run him through. She has always hated this passive silence. She hates it especially now, now that he’s not Michael any more but an alien in her house that she wants to hurt and wound and slash and drive out into the rain. ‘Explain it to me. Tell me what it’s about, what it does for you, how good it is, what it can do that I can’t. Tell me why you need to buy this stuff and hook it into the net and hide it from me. Tell me, do you have a set time for doing it, is it a wee ritual, do you watch the lunchtime news and Neighbours and then get hot thinking about getting the suit out and putting it on and hooking it up to the computer? Tell me, what do you feel like when you put it on? Tell me what they do, all these wee vibrators and sensors and motors and pressure pads? What do they make you feel? Is it better than me? Is it more exciting, or is it more gentle, or is it that it can be whatever you want it to be? What do you see in those goggles? Can you make her look like whatever you like? It’s computers, isn’t it? Everything can be anything, but nothing real. Do you stand here, stark naked, in this room, with this thing on your dick and that up your ass and those over your nipples? Do you stand there with that helmet on, bumping and grinding, fucking air? Do you smile? Is there that stupid goofy grin under your goggles? Can you stroke her tits with those datagloves, can you twang her clit? Can you do oral? Is it good at oral? Is it better than me? Or do you fiddle it so that what you see in the goggles is me, and not fucking Miss Sylvie@wherever the fuck she is?’